Anafora (Dec 2014)
Interpretive key to the works of Mirko Jirsak
Abstract
The primary objective of the study is to find and decode an interpretive key to the works of Mirko Jirsak (1909–1999), a Croatian poet, writer, journalist and translator. In the search of his model of creativity, I try to get a sense of the man behind the verse, i.e. the poetic consciousness, which is expressed in the works. The analysis includes published collections of poetry: Poems (Pjesme), The Figure in the window (Lice za oknom), From the end of the plain (Sa ruba ravnice), Bridge (Most), and Sand and gypsum (Sadra i pijesak), poetry left in manuscript: Cantilena. Poems outside a volume (1927–1945) (Kantilena. Pjesme izvan zbirki (1927.–1945.), Colours and stones (Boje i obluci) and Late hours (Kasni sati). Using a cultural canon (mainly a philosophical and literary one ) and in accordance with the need to explore the human existence, Mirko Jirsak builds a lyrical subject on the ontological status of human beings by Søren Kierkegaard, human loneliness by Jean Paul Sartre, fear of inner freedom by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Christian relation of I and you. Re-evaluating them according to his own worldview and talent, his work paradigm is based on: 1. anthropology of loneliness, i.e. the concept of transcendental homelessness and 2. human individualism (the impossibility of functioning within the boundaries of we and evoking social mental states in a poetic way).
