VRKLJAN, Irena 1930-

PERSONAL: Born August 21, 1930, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro); married. Education: Attended schools in Zagreb, Croatia, and Berlin, Germany.

ADDRESSES: Home—Zagreb, Croatia, and Berlin, Germany. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Northwestern University Press, 629 Noyes Street, Evanston, IL 60208-4210.

CAREER: Writer. Poet, novelist, and television screenwriter.

WRITINGS:

Krik je samo tisina, Nolit (Belgrade, Yugoslavia), 1954.

Paralele, Lykos (Zagreb, Croatia), 1957.

Stvari vec daleke, Zora (Zagreb, Croatia), 1962.

Doba prijateljstva, Mladost (Zagreb, Croatia), 1966.

Soba, taj strasni vrt, Prosveta (Belgrade, Yugoslavia), 1966.

(With Benno Meyer-Wehlack) Modderkrebse, Wagenbach (Berlin, Germany), 1971.

Ihre Paulina Golis, Reclam (Stuttgart, West Germany), 1980.

U kozi moje sestre, Naprijed (Zagreb, Croatia), 1982.

Tochter wischen und West, Rogners (Berlin, West Germany), 1982.

Svila, sˆkare, Graficˆki zavod Hrvatske (Zagreb, Croatia), 1984, translation by Sibelan Forrester and Celia Hawkesworth published with Marina, ili o biografiji as The Silk, the Shears; and Marina, or, About Biography, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1999.

Marina, ili o biografiji, Graficˆki zavod Hrvatske (Zagreb, Croatia), 1986, translation by Sibelan Forrester and Celia Hawkesworth published with Svila, sˆkare as The Silk, the Shears; and Marina, or, About Biography, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1999.

Vece poezije, CDK (Zagreb, Croatia), 1987.

Berlinski rukopis, Graficˆki zavod Hrvatske (Zagreb, Croatia), 1988.

Dora, ove jeseni, Graficˆki zavod Hrvatske (Zagreb, Croatia), 1991.

Pred crvenim zidom, Durieux (Zagreb, Croatia), 1994.

Posljednje putovanje u Bec (title means "The Last Journey to Vienna"), Znanje (Zagreb, Croatia), 2000.

Smrt dolazi sa suncem, SysPrint (Zagreb, Croatia), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Croatian writer Irena Vrkljan is a poet, a television screenwriter, and the author of the critically acclaimed two-part memoir The Silk, the Shears; and Marina, or, About Biography. Born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Vrkljan's family moved to Zagreb, Croatia, in 1941, after the Nazis occupied Belgrade. During the 1950s and 1960s she published several works of highly regarded poetry, and in 1969 she moved to Berlin, West Germany, to attend a film academy. After establishing a successful career in television, Vrkljan began to divide her time between Berlin and Zagreb.

The two parts of The Silk, the Shears; and Marina, or, About Biography, were originally published separately as Svila, sˆkare and Marina, ili o biografiji. According to Women's Review of Books critic Alison Anderson, "the first part is a typical memoir, intimate and subjective; the second is more of a literary work, an intellectual reflection on both Vrkljan's own life and that of Marina Tsvetayeva, one of Russia's greatest twentieth-century poets." In The Silk, the Shears; and Marina, or, About Biography Vrkljan "vividly captures a sense of the chaos on both the historical and the personal level that continues to sweep southeastern Europe," remarked Aida Vidan in World Literature Today. Vidan added that the "autobiographical works do not have an explicit political dimension, but they nevertheless depict the profound effect that historical changes can have on an individual and on the way that individual understands these changes at different points in her life."

In Svila, sˆkare Vrkljan recounts her childhood in Yugoslavia, her adolescence in Croatia, and her formative years as a writer in Zagreb and Berlin. World Literature Today critic Ivo Vidan, reviewing the original publication of Svila, sˆkare, described the work as a "mosaic" of Vrkljan's life. The narrative is not chronological, Vidan observed; instead, the author's "life story is created through a sequence of selective details representative of people, environment, and personal contacts, functioning as allusions to social circumstances, historical changes, and human behavior rather than as self-standing and comprehensive symbols." A critic in Kirkus Reviews praised the work, stating that "Vrkljan writes with honesty and tenderness about her family and friends, about her development as a poet, her own and her mother's unsatisfactory role as wife, her oppressive father, and the troubles of women in society."

In the second part of the work, the fictionalized biography of Tsvetayeva, Vrkljan "turns to both recorded fact and imagination to provide the elements of another woman's life, and in so doing to illuminate her own," wrote Anderson in Women's Review of Books. Like Vrkljan, Tsvetayeva left her homeland because of political turmoil; she lived much of her life in poverty and eventually committed suicide in 1941. "Clearly, the theme of exile, and the strong effect it can have on the life of the artist, is shared by the two women," Anderson noted. The separate memoirs in The Silk, the Shears; and Marina, or, About Biography "complement each other in a way no ordinary memoir or series of memoirs can do," Anderson continued. "This may well have been Vrkljan's intention, to start out by telling her own life in a simple and evocative way, then to re-examine both her life and her first memoir through the study of the life of a much-admired predecessor."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 2003, review of Smrt dolazi sa suncem, p. 1653.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 1999, review of The Silk, the Shears; and Marina, or, About Biography, p. 55.

Women's Review of Books, September, 1999, Alison Anderson, review of The Silk, the Shears; and Marina, or, About Biography, p. 11.

World Literature Today, winter, 1986, Ivo Vidan, review of Svila, sˆkare, p. 142; winter, 2000, Aida Vidan, review of The Silk, the Shears; and Marina, or, About Biography, p. 191; spring, 2001, Aida Vidan, review of Posljednje putovanje u Bec, p. 387.*