Title of the lecture: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL LETTERS OF IVANA BRLIĆ-MAŽURANIĆ IN OUR MODERN TIMES
Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić was born in the second half of the 19th century, and in the 20th century she created her literary works that preserve the freshness of the past even in this new millennium.
These are the works that are still being read, translated, dramatized, and studied, as well as the works that inspire us and continue to live on.
On the occasion of commemorating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the writer’s birth, it is the right moment to reflect on what her literary oeuvre and rich manuscript legacy mean in our modern times, and especially the correspondence that enables a better understanding of her personality, life and significance.
Ivana herself marked the correspondence as autobiographical, and it was literally written with a quill, sometimes with a goose quill (“…I write in this handwriting because I have a quill that squeaks terribly if I hold it upside down. It does not tolerate novelty.” – in a letter to her mother from 1895) or sometimes with a pointed vine twig, while, today, we present and study her letters with new technologies.
It took a lot of time to read thousands of letters, interpret and rewrite them, but in everything we inherited from Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, we recognize her unique personality that never fit into clichés: she was rebellious in her youth, the arranged marriage was a happy one for her, accomplished motherhood and rich family life, and she was a mother / a writer in a time when there were extremely few female writers.
Her famous Croatian Tales of Long Ago are, in modern perception, undeniably original, unrepeatable and incomparable reading of lasting value, and she is a noble person, ready to make any sacrifice for the love and needs of her children, a busy traditionalist, the keeper of the Brlić family hearth, not the ashes but the living fire to continue the generational mission.
Keywords: autobiographical letters, quill, correspondence, work, Brlić family hearth