Proljeća Ivana Galeba
The most significant novel by the Croatian writer Vladan Desnica, which, according to the author's own admission, took twenty years to complete, from 1936 until the publication of the novel itself in 1957.
The plot of the novel is quite simple; it is about the recollections of the main character Ivan Galeb, a musician, during his stay in the hospital between two springs. It is a confessional prose, a psychoanalytic self-analysis that presents the entire life of the main character, from childhood to his stay in the hospital, with all the experiences that an intellectual experiences and feels.
Quote from the work: “I would like to die on a sunny day. I have carried the germ of this small secret desire within me since childhood. What scares me most about death is the idea of darkness with which it is connected. I admire the religions of the East, which have managed to conjure up a bright, sunny death for man, to instill in him the idea of infinite joy beyond the grave. They have, perhaps, done man the greatest good that can be done for a mortal. I would like to die sprawled on the good, hot earth, all in the sun and joy, to die in the fullness of the day, in the hour of the boiling crickets. In the hour when the bent grain is sleepily silent and the heavy grapes bloom silently, in the hour of the hot midday silence. I am afraid of death in the evening, death in autumn, death behind the slanting curtains of rain.”
“Words always fail thought. And especially fail feeling.”
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