Fango pannonico. Un paradigma populista per Miroslav Krleza

As an obsessive keyword, the Pannonian mud appears in several writings of Miroslav Krleza. It represents the core of Croatian periphery, in particular the Podravina region, which was for long time untouched by modernity, and oppressed by feudal governments even after the fall of the Austrian Empire, from 1918 onwards. In this timeless place watered by the river Drava, the mud acquires a paradigmatic role like a phenomenon that causes historical conflicts. However, its ambiguous status of metahistorical symbol of a long lasting collapse is a contradictory factor, because of the consequences arising from it are unpredictable. As a contribute to this paradoxical attitude some images occur in Krleza’s word: a hat from Styria, the smoky taverns, the cobbled S. Mark square in Zagreb. These are the evidences of a pitiless self-representation in form of a sectarian, dangerous double-face populism shifting from left to right. In the meantime, Krleza’s topoi are enclosed in a new viewpoint on the national art, which was free from political influences at the time of the polemics regarding the social engagement of the artists, that flourished during the 1930s when the communist party of Yugoslavia was under the guide of the Soviet Union. The incredible and grotesque situations, the low status of peasants, deserters and robbers, the rebellious or submitted people unable to leave the muddy paths are the theatre in which the anarchic and expressionist experience of the novelist develops. Because of his eccentric style, Krleza has become the most important Croatian-Yugoslavian writer, and a true intellectual of Central Europe, who refused either the Habsburg civilization, or the Southern Slavic authoritarianism after the first world war.