Summary
Miroslav Krleža: The Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh
Krleža's greatest poetic achievement is undoubtedly the poetic compendium "The Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh" from 1936. In the Ballads, Krleža created his own language, a language that was never spoken or written anywhere - a perfect hybrid instrument of the fundamentally Kajkavian idiom in which Latin, Hungarian, German, Croatian Štokavian, Italian and other lexemes and stiles. The composition cannot be characterized either as a song, or as a poetic drama, or in any conventional way. In that work, the largest number of songs are dominated by the voice and vision of the Croatian plebeian "prophet" Petrica Kerempuh, in the author's mind the embodiment of the socially and nationally trampled commoner's Croatia. The subject matter is varied, but images of blood, torture, destruction, as well as motifs of betrayal, sale, high treason and rebirth prevail.
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