| Matija Mažuranić | |
|---|---|
Signed photograph of Matija Mažuranić |
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| Born | 1817 Novi Vinodolski, Croatia |
| Died | April 17th, 1881 Feldhof, Austria |
| Occupation | writer |
| Literary movement | Romanticism |
Matija Mažuranić (Novi Vinodolski 1817- sanatorium in Feldhof near Graz, April 17, 1881), was a Croatian writer.
Travelogue writer, brother of more noted Ivan, the writer of Smrt Smail-age Čengića. He attended a German school in has native town, where he was trained to became a blacksmith. Often he indulges into travels (Montenegro, Serbia), and exceptionally in a few occasions to Bosnia. In 1841 he is back to Novi, practising his craft and agriculture, but also with literature and cultural issues in general. In 1847 he ends up in Vienna, in 1848 again in Bosnia (in Sarajevo, at the court of Fazli-paša Šerifija), as if had been attracted by the Bosnia and the Orient by some irresistible power. Preserved letters provide evidence that Matija was well aware that he was abandoning his wife and family, but he couldn't resist nevertheless. So, at the end of 1848, in a latter addressed to his brothers he says: "I don't know when I shall return home, for I have been, I'm afraid, created for this country. Turks[1] are very fond of me for my prudence, they say, and rayah grows ever more trust in me, and therefrom there is no other outcome but mitre on the head or a stake in the arse".[2] After Sarajevo, Matija goes even to Istanbul (though the exact dates cannot be ascertained), and according to some legends even further, to Suez and the Egypt. At any case, in 1852 Matija is back to Novi, where he settles until growing ill in 1879. As a distinguished businessman and a wealthy citizen of his birth town, Matija seemed to have been destined to end uneasily, even when he decides the opposite: to commit to secluded life and peaceful work. Symptoms of mind degeneration have started to show, and he died at the sanatorium of a well-known psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, near Graz, on April 17, 1881.
Matija wrote the travelogue Pogled u Bosnu, which at the moment of appearance represents the pinnacle of Croatian literary art. By travelling in 1839 to Bosnia (from Karlovac, Sisak and Kostajnica, over Belgrade, on foot and horse, to Sarajevo, Travnik, over Romanija up to Zvornik) - Mažuranić has in a vernacular way, with no external stimulus or literary influences, as a connoisseur of vernacular literary genius, managed to create a piece which can be read both as an adventure and as a realistic account of seen and experienced. The travelogue intermixes author's views on the relationships between the Ottoman Turks and the Bosniaks, Islam and Christianity, with accounts of the customs of everyday life, images of vizier courts of agas and pashas, but also of folk meyhanes, contemplations on everyday life, love and death. All of it written in vigorous narrative tone and harmonious folk tongue.
This travelogue "pearl of Croatian prose", as it was termed by the critics, does not contain patriotic overtones or overemphasized utilitarian tendency, regardless of writer's remarks being of great deal of use to Croatian revivalists, especially to Ivan Mažuranić when writing his famous epic. This way has Matija Mažuranić by means of this simple travelogue booklet, thanks to his sensation for pure, original folk tongue and expression, for primal realistic detail, but also for well-chosen description of the customs and relationships among people, for the legend and the anecdote - managed to impose himself as top-quality Croatian revival writer, achieving it exactly in the genre of travelogue, i.e. literary class sensing poetry, essay and critic - setting path to further efforts of raising Croatian literature to the level of real art.