Bijedna ljubav Musorgskog
Ivan Lukaš's novel depicts the tragic love story of the great Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. The novel follows his unrequited love, artistic struggle, alcoholism, and decline in 19th-century imperial Russia.
The work is a biographical-romantic novel inspired by the life of the brilliant Russian composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839–1881), a member of the famous group "The Mighty Heap". Lukaš focuses on the composer's unrequited love for a woman (romantically idealized in the novel), who becomes a symbol of his entire tragic fate.
The novel depicts Mussorgsky as a sensitive, talented, but deeply unhappy man – a nobleman who renounces a military career for the sake of music, lives in poverty, struggles with the misunderstanding of his surroundings and sinks into alcoholism. The author skillfully combines historical facts with fiction, depicting the artist's inner drama, creative crises, friendships with other Russian composers (Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, etc.), and the social atmosphere of Tsarist Russia in the second half of the 19th century.
The style is emotional, melancholic and typical of interwar biographical prose — full of pathos, romantic enthusiasm and compassion for an artist who "felt too much" for this world. The book emphasizes the theme of miserable, unrequited love as the driving force of creativity, but also the cause of ruin.
This is one of the more popular works of Ivan Lukaš in the Croatian translation from 1940. Today it is an antiquarian rarity and sought after among fans of musical biography, romantic prose and Russian themes.
One copy is available
