Jerko Skračić - Croatian writer in the shadow of memory (the short stories "The Sunny Islands")

Abstract

This paper presents a collection of short stories entitled "The Sunny Islands"written by Jerko Skračić.The author first deals with two short stories which preceded the collectionfrom 1943. The short stories "Braco" and "Kolporter" point out at two dominantcharacteristics of Skračić's future literary work: the family theme and the dramaticstructure of the theme.The collection "The Sunny Islands" consists of three parts. In the first part("The Shadows of Memories" – "Sjene uspomena"), Skračić evokes his childhoodmemories in the style of first-person narrative. In the second part ("The SunnyIslands" – "Osunčani otoci"), in one-day short stories, J. Skračić describes the eventsand writes about the crisis of consciousness of the lonely people on the KornatiIslands. The third part ("The Worried Village" – "Selo u brizi") are romanesque,moreover, dramatic stories from a family life in a closed village world. The shortstories in the latter two sections are written in the style of third person narrative.One part of Skračić's short stories is structured in accordance with the maintheoretical postulates of this type of prose. Some of them, however, are composedon a romanesque, time wise longer, matrix. The reason for this is the dramatic,psychological situation of the characters, especially emphasised in the familyrelationships and the family attitude to the rural surroundings.J. Skračić as a writer, drawing on the great French and Russian novelists, remainsan impartial witness to the events. However, his empathy for the consciousness crisisof the characters cannot remain unnoticed as well as his "sad and ironic" view ofthe world in which they live.