SOURCE: "Krleza's Tormented Visionaries," in The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. XLV, No. 4, January, 1967, pp. 46-64.

In the essay below, Kadic establishes a biographical context for an examination of Krleza's early works, tracing his preoccupation with "tormented" protagonists.

Since Miroslav Krleza (born in 1893) is the leading Yugoslav Communist writer and as such believes in the progress of mankind and the ultimate victory of the proletariat, Yugoslav critics have been understandably reluctant to analyse his early output, especially the plays written at a time when he was a nihilist and sceptic. A thorough examination of the early work of Krleza, in which his doubts remain unsolved, is worth-while.

For an appreciation of Krleza's early plays in which, at the beginning of his literary career, he portrayed certain well-known historical figures as idealists who gradually became disillusioned both with their own visions and with their followers, some biographical details...