# Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević

Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević (Croatian pronunciation:; 17 February 1865—29 October 1908) was a Croatian poet. His reflective poetry contributed to modern themes in Croatian poetry.

## Early life

Kranjčević was born in Senj on the 17th of February in 1865 to his parents, Spiridion and Marija. As a teenager, he completed his secondary education at a gymnasium, but did not graduate. He joined the elite Germanico-Hungaricum Institute in Rome, aiming to become a priest, but changed his mind and left. The short stay in the Eternal City would be alluded to in his poetry years later.
He attended the one-year course for language and history teachers in Zagreb. He gained a diploma as a teacher in "citizen schools" and left to work in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He taught in Mostar, Livno, Bijeljina, and Sarajevo. During this time, he began experimenting with poetry.
While Albanian writer, Gjergj Fishta, attended Franciscan schools in Bosnia, he met Bosnian Grga Martić and Kranjčević, who at that time lived in Bosnia. Martić and Kranjčević awakened the literary instinct in Fishta.
Kranjčević's first poem, Zavjet (The Pledge) was published in 1883, a couple of months before he left for Rome, in the magazine Hrvatska vila, which was led by Eugen Kumičić. He sent another two poems from Rome in 1884, Pozdrav (Salutations) and Senju-gradu (To the City of Senj), to Sloboda, a magazine in Sušak. When he came back from Rome, he published Noć na Foru (A Night at the Forum) in Vienac.
Politically, he was a follower of Starčević and the Croatian Party of Rights. The dark moods of his poems are related to the Hungarian oppression of Croatia.

## Bugarkinje

Kranjčević published his first poetry book, Bugarkinje, in 1885 in his native language, Senj. Titled after a genre of traditional elegiac Balkan folk songs, the work drew primarily on three central themes: Homeland, Man, and Universe. The first criticism of the book was written by the classical philologist and literary critic Milivoj Šrepel [hr] in Vijenac. Šrepel noted Kranjčević's "vivid imagination" and "true poetic enthusiasm", but deplored the uneven quality of his poems. Nevertheless, he concluded that "a new and talented hand has appeared in the Croatian Parnassus".
Later literary figures also spoke fondly of Bugarkinje. The writer Miroslav Krleža said they presented Kranjčević as a genuine "standard-bearer of freedom". More recently, the literary historian Ivo Frangeš [hr] said that the prophetic and bitter energy of its poems, although occasionally falling into pathos and rhetoric, embraced universal and cosmic themes, which made the young Kranjčević stand out among his contemporaries, such as August Harambašić, whose main themes were declamatory patriotism or romantic love.
Bugarkinje tried to formulate a poetic and political program, with the dedicatory poem to August Šenoa expressing the poetic credo of Kranjčević, while the poems to Croatia, the People, and the Worker stood as three pillars of the poet's national and political beliefs.
Kranjčević used Biblical, and classical parables, as well as symbols from the history of Christianity and Judaism; their allegorical nature suited his poems about fundamental human issues.

## Later life

His next poetry book, Selected Poems, came more than a decade later in 1898. It would be followed by two more books: Trzaji (Quivers) in 1902 and Poems in 1908.
In Sarajevo, he was the editor of Nada, which was a literary magazine published by the Bosnian government for eight years (1895–1903). The nominal editor was the government adviser Kosta Hörmann, the benefactor of Antun Gustav Matoš. Nada was part of the Croatian pre-modernist movement, Moderna. It was there that Kranjčević published most of his literary essays and criticisms.