Ivan Goran Kovacic Biography

Ivan Goran Kovačić (21 March 1913 - 13 July 1943) was a prominent Croatian poet and writer of the 20th century. He was born in Lukovdol, a town in Gorski Kotar, a mountainous region of western Croatia, and his middle name Goran stems from that ("goran" meaning "hill-man").

During World War II, he joined the Partisan forces. His best known work is "Jama" (The Pit), which ranks among the most celebrated Croatian poems ever written. He penned it during the war, while in service near the city of Livno, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The poem was written out of intellectual and ethical responsibility that condemns fascist atrocities committed by the Ustaše. Ivan Goran Kovačić was killed by Serbian Chetnik troops in an east-Bosnian village of Vrbica near Foča on July 13 1943.

His work is an example of anti-war poetry with messages against torture, mass murders and war crimes. Jama was studied in elementary schools throughout the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Many schools in the successor states still bear his name. Kovačić attended the Gymnasium Karlovac in the city of Karlovac in Croatia. In his honour, the Karlovac city library — the city's oldest cultural institution founded in 1838 — was re-named after him.

The poem Jama praises Zion as the "place from which light comes", which is an obvious opposition to extermination policy against Serbs of Ustaše regime of the time. [citation needed] Another controversy is that use of Zion here is probably a Biblical metaphor, but the poem was still supported and taught by Communist regime throughout four decades in schools.

The poem starts with a striking metaphor of blood replacing both light and darkness as victim's eyes were plucked out with a knife. That common torture was probably a mere sadism, since the victims were mass-murdered after that anyway:

Blood is my daylight and darkness too.

Blessing of night has been gouged from my cheeks

Bearing with it my more lucky sight.

Within those holes, for tears, fierce fire inflamed

The bleeding socket as if for brain a balm –

While my bright eyes died on my own palm