Biography

Miroslav Krleža (pronounced [mǐrɔ̝slav̞ kř̩le̞ʒa]; 7 July 1893 – 29 December 1981) was a Yugoslav and Croatian writer who is widely considered to be the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century. He wrote notable works in all the literary genres, including poetry (Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh, 1936), theater (Messrs. Glembay, 1929), short stories (Croatian God Mars, 1922), novels (The Return of Philip Latinowicz, 1932; On the Edge of Reason, 1938), and an intimate diary. His works often include themes of bourgeois hypocrisy and conformism in Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Krleža wrote numerous essays on problems of art, history, politics, literature, philosophy, and military strategy, and was known as one of the great polemicists of the century. His style combines visionary poetic language and sarcasm.Krleža dominated the cultural life of Croatia and Yugoslavia for half a century. A "Communist of his own making", he was criticized in Communist circles in the 1930s for his refusal to submit to the tenets of socialist realism. After the Second World War, he held various cultural posts in Socialist Yugoslavia, and was most notably the editor of the Yugoslav Lexicographical Institute and a constant advisor on cultural affairs to President Tito. After the break with Stalin, it was his speech at the 1952 Congress of Yugoslav Writers that signaled a new era of comparative freedom in Yugoslav literature. Miroslav Krleža was born in Zagreb. He enrolled in a preparatory military school in Pécs, modern-day Hungary. At that time, Pécs and Zagreb were within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Subsequently, he attended the Ludoviceum military academy at Budapest. He defected to Serbia but was dismissed as a suspected spy. Upon his return to Croatia, he was demoted in the Austro-Hungarian army and sent as a common soldier to the Eastern front in World War I. In the post-World War I period Krleža established himself both as a major Modernist writer and politically controversial figure in Yugoslavia, a newly created country which encompassed South Slavic lands of the former Habsburg Empire and the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro.

Krleža was the driving force behind leftist literary and political reviews Plamen (The Flame) (1919), Književna republika (Literary Republic) (1923–1927), Danas (Today) (1934) and Pečat (Seal) (1939–1940). He became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1918, but was expelled in 1939 because of his unorthodox views on art, his opposition to Socialist realism, and his unwillingness to give open support to the Great Purge, after the long polemic now known as "the Conflict on the Literary Left", pursued by Krleža with virtually every important writer in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in the period between the two World Wars. The Party commissar sent to mediate between Krleža and other leftist and party journals was Josip Broz Tito.

After the establishment of the Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia under Ante Pavelić, Krleža refused to join the Partisans headed by Tito. Following a brief period of social stigmatization after 1945, he was eventually rehabilitated. In 1947, he became vice-president of the Yugoslav Academy of Science and Arts in Zagreb, and from 1958 to 1961 he was president of the Yugoslav Writers' Union. During this time, Croatia's principal state publishing house, Nakladni zavod Hrvatske, published his collected works. Supported by Tito, in 1950 Krleža founded the Yugoslav Institute for Lexicography, holding the position as its head until his death. The institute would be posthumously named after him, and is now called the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography.From 1950 on, Krleža led a life as a high-profile writer and intellectual, often closely connected to Tito. He also briefly held the post of president of the Yugoslav writers' union between 1958 and 1961. In 1962 he received the NIN Award for the novel Zastave, and in 1968 the Herder Prize.Following the deaths of Tito in May 1980, and Bela Krleža in April 1981, Krleža spent most of his last years of his life in ill health. He was awarded the Laureate Of The International Botev Prize in 1981. He died in his Villa Gvozd in Zagreb, on 29 December 1981 and was given a state funeral in Zagreb on 4 January 1982. In 1986, Villa Gvozd was donated to the City of Zagreb. It was opened to the public in 2001, but is temporarily closed due to the 2020 Zagreb earthquake damage as of 2021.