Interpretive key to the works of Mirko Jirsak

Abstract

The primary objective of the study is to find and decode an interpretive key to the works of Mirko Jirsak (1909–1999), a Croatian poet, writer, journalist and translator. In the search of his model of creativity, I try to get a sense of the man behind the verse, i.e. the poetic consciousness, which is expressed in the works. The analysis includes published collections of poetry: Poems (Pjesme), The Figure in the window (Lice za oknom), From the end of the plain (Sa ruba ravnice), Bridge (Most), and Sand and gypsum (Sadra i pijesak), poetry left in manuscript: Cantilena. Poems outside a volume (1927–1945) (Kantilena. Pjesme izvan zbirki (1927.–1945.), Colours and stones (Boje i obluci) and Late hours (Kasni sati). Using a cultural canon (mainly a philosophical and literary one ) and in accordance with the need to explore the human existence, Mirko Jirsak builds a lyrical subject on the ontological status of human beings by Søren Kierkegaard, human loneliness by Jean Paul Sartre, fear of inner freedom by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Christian relation of I and you. Re-evaluating them according to his own worldview and talent, his work paradigm is based on: 1. anthropology of loneliness, i.e. the concept of transcendental homelessness and 2. human individualism (the impossibility of functioning within the boundaries of we and evoking social mental states in a poetic way).