Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević (1865-1908) was a notable poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He spent most of his active life in Bosnia and Herzegovina where he wrote his mature verse. His father, Spirdion Kraincevic, was a clerk. Kranjčević began to write poetry at high school. He studied Theology at the Collegium Germanico- Hungariicum in Rome but after six months returns to Zagreb, did one year diploma at the teacher training college and, unable to get a job in Zagreb because of the political situation, went as school master to Bosnia serving in Mostar, Livno (2886), Bijeljina, Livno again and finally Sarajevo. He edited the Nada (Hope) literary review although its nominal editor was K. Hormann, Kalay’s collaborator. When Nada ceased publication Kranjcevic became headmaster of the Sarajevo business school and died in Sarajevo in 1908 after two major operations. He is buried in the Koševo cemetery.
During his lifetime three collections of his poetry were published: Bugarkinje (1885), Selected Poems (1898) and Trzaji (Convulsions, 1902). He died not live to see the publication of his fourth book Poems (1908). The great Croatian twentieth century poet, dramatist, and novelist, Miroslav Krleža, quoted an important review of Kranjčević’s work by A.G.Matoš “Kranjčević is a national poet, completely Croatian, more rhetorical than lyrical, more the result of contact with Croatian than with foreign poets. And Krleža concludes his own review “Kranjčević is the most remarkable poet of the 1880s and 1890s, far stronger and more timeless than the rest of the poets of the Secession period. He had no examples to follow, no precursors, he began his creative work in an unskillful, uneducated manner, 50 years too late, but begin he did!”
His first poems were devoted to the ideals of his homeland (“My Homeland”, “To Mother Croatia”) later his vision was extended to the essentials of humanity and he produced the first social verse in Croatian (“The Worker”). His writing is often pessimistic but despite his doubts and dilemmas he transcended his personal tragedy and depicted the fighter who will not give up( “Convulsions”, “Excelsior#). Krleža’s top ten of Kranjčević’s poems are: “Lucid Interval”, “In the Night of the Dead”, “Thought of the World”, “Cheroneia Lion”, “Two flags”, “Eli, eli lama azavtani”, “Resurrection”, “Moses”, “To Master kastor”, “Emigree”. Two poems showing bleak melancholy and inner reflection on the mood of contemporary man are “The last Adma and “Resurrection”. The paradox of life is reflection in his lines “You die when you begin to doubt your ideals”. Tin Ujević’s remark about himself “If I am not a poet, I am a sufferer” are an accurate description of Kranjčević. He was, and still is, the sufferer of his nation.
