engleski

The Reception of Samuel Beckett in Croatia during the 1950s

Samuel Beckett has been present in the Croatian culture since 1954. Thanks to Roger Blin’s successful production of Waiting for Godot in Paris, the rumour of an intriguing new dramatist spread to Croatia. Samuel Beckett was introduced to Croatian culture earlier than in other Eastern European countries (such as the GDR or Bulgaria) thanks to official policies that allowed and encouraged a cultural opening to the West. The introduction of Samuel Beckett’s work to Croatian culture did not pass without debate. Judgements of his work were completely contradictory. His early Croatian reception, especially during the fifties was caught up in a wider web of debate in Croatian literature between the partisans of socialist realism and Marxist theory and those who fought for the liberty of artistic expression and modernism. During the fifties, and occasionally even the sixties, Beckett was regarded by those who loudly opposed to new trends in literature as a nihilistic and pessimistic writer and his characters were viewed as representatives of “bourgeois man” and as such unsuitable for Croatian audiences.

reception; Croatian culture; Samuel Beckett; socialist realism; modernism; Miroslav Krleža; theatre of the absurd

Rad je kao predavanje prezentiran na skupu Samuel Beckett : Out of the Archive, održanom od 22.-25.06.2011.g., York, Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo ; uz međunarodnu recenziju objavljen u Knjizi sažetaka.