Aldous Huxley in the prefaces of Vinko Krišković

Abstract

The article treats a segment of the work of Vinko Krišković (1862-1952), an important but up to now neglected mediator of English literature in Croatia between the world wars. Krišković wrote prefaces to his translations of Huxley's stories and essays in selections published under the titles Gioconda's Smile and Other Stories (Giocondin posmijeh i druge pripovijesti, 1938) and Olive Tree and Other Essays (Maslina i drugi eseji, 1939). To Krišković, Huxley is a “documentary interpereter of the psyche of the West European intellectual between the two wars" (J. Horvatl. Because of lus education and professional absorption with political questions it is understandable that Krišković focuses mainly on the semantic system of Huxley's work, particularly its ideological and ontological components (the social, political and partly prescriptive literary message of his works) on which the principal impulses for his interest in Huxley were based. Although he does not neglect the expressive characteristics (especially those related to the composition of Huxley's novels) Krišković does not treat tnem with care, his comments are not adequately connected and are not systematic. Although Krišković's approach to Huxley's literary creation is positivistic, devoid of true criticism, it is important because it was pioneering: through Krišković's prefaces and translations the work of this notable representative of English literature had finally reached the wider circle of the Croatian reading public.