Background
Ivan V. Lalić was born on June 8, 1931, in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, now Serbia. He was a son of Vlajko Lalić, a journalist. His grandfather Isidor Bajic was a celebrated composer.
Ivan Lalić, correspondent, editor, translator, author, poet.
Ivan Lalić, correspondent, editor, translator, author, poet.
Ivan Lalić, correspondent, editor, translator, author, poet.
Trg Republike Hrvatske 14, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia
Ivan Lalić studied law at the University of Zagreb.
(In Roll Call of Mirrors the translator Charles Simic capt...)
In Roll Call of Mirrors the translator Charles Simic captures poems in Lalic's own idiom. He retains their spare beauty, from the lyrical intensity of the early poems - by a poet "destined to burn" - to his later love of sonnets, to his most recent, more meditative work on "what geometry dreams."
https://www.amazon.com/Roll-Call-Mirrors-Selected-Translation/dp/0819511528/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Ivan+V.+Lalic&qid=1601664891&sr=8-1
1988
(Fading Contact is a middle-period masterwork by the great...)
Fading Contact is a middle-period masterwork by the great Serbo-Croat poet who died suddenly at the height of his powers in July 1996. It marks the watershed between the blazing, vivid imagery of his youthful poetry and the measured, complex verse of his later work.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0856462810/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i1
1997
correspondent editor translator author poet
Ivan V. Lalić was born on June 8, 1931, in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, now Serbia. He was a son of Vlajko Lalić, a journalist. His grandfather Isidor Bajic was a celebrated composer.
Ivan Lalić was eight years old when the Second World War broke out, and during the war experienced the deaths of many of his school-friends in an air raid - a trauma that affected him profoundly. Lalić is quoted as saying "my childhood and boyhood in the war marked everything I ever wrote as a poem or poetry." In 1946, his family moved to the Croatian capital of Zagreb, and soon after his mother died. Lalić, after graduating from high school, studied law at the University of Zagreb. During this time his poems began appearing in literary magazines, and in 1955 his first volume, Bivsi deiak, was published.
Ivan Lalić's appearance as a writer was in 1951, with a translation of Arthur Rimbaud's Le Bateau ivre, and he remained a prolific translator of French, English, and German poetry. Beginning in 1955, he worked as a correspondent, editor, and senior editor at Radio Zagreb. In 1964, he became an editor at "Jugoslavia" publishing house. In 1979-1993, he was an editor at "Nolit" publishing house.
In his early work, Lalić explored episodes and characters from classical, national, and literary history. Smederevo, an early work reprinted in Izabrane i nove pesme (Selected and New Poems), tells of the medieval Serbian soldiers who defended their last fortress against the unstoppable Ottoman invaders. The poem emphasizes the personal rather than the political. The poem's narrator is an Everyman, waiting "beneath the indifferent stars," hoping "never to be forgotten." Melisa examines death and memory in an entire volume of hexameter sonnets based on the Greek legend of a woman, first tom to pieces for refusing to divulge the secrets of the goddess Demeter, and then turned into a swarm of bees by the grateful deity.
After Melisa, Lalić abandoned strict meter and rhyme for creative blank verse. His imagery became sparer and clearly defined, although his language remained musical. Though he changed his poetic form, he was still devoted to historical and classical subjects. For Izabrane i nove pesme (Selected and New Poems), Lalić wrote two cycles of poems, one around the city of Dubrovnik and one around Byzantium. Dubrovnic was the gateway to Western Europe, through which came the influence of the Italian Renaissance. Byzantium, which opened to the East, symbolized Yugoslavia's classical Grecian heritage.
Smetnje na vezma (Fading Contact) appeared in 1975. There he used largely historical subjects, but with more of a personal touch. During the late 1980s, Lalić returned to formal meter and rhyme. Pesme contained a cycle of sonnets, Deset Soneta nerodjenoj kceri (Ten Sonnets to an Unborn Daughter), and all poems in Pisrno are in strict syllabic meter, most using complex rhyme schemes. In his final work, Cetiri kanona, he employed the Byzantine kanon form, a cycle of poetic meditations upon a selected set of biblical quotations.
The title of one of his major collections, Strasna Mera (The Passionate Measure), offers an adequate definition of Lalić's tone: poised, balanced, meticulously judged, these poems owe their existence to love, a word used with unselfconscious frequency in his work as the impetus for all achievements of value, from the intimate bonds of family to the great structures of past civilizations. Like all enduring poetry, Lalić's work is a celebration of the delicate power of language.
(The Works of Love provides a representative selection fro...)
1981(Fading Contact is a middle-period masterwork by the great...)
1997(A Rusty Needle traces Ivan Lalic's development over nearl...)
1996(In Roll Call of Mirrors the translator Charles Simic capt...)
1988Ivan Lalić was a general secretary of the Yugoslav Writers Union in 1961-1964 and 1975-1979.
Ivan Lalić was married to Branka Lalić. They had two sons: Vlajko and Marko.