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The Winged Horseman by Jure Kaštelan, an anthology edited by Branimir Donat, includes poems from all phases of the poet's creative career, from his debut collection, Red Horse (1940) to When Birds Disappear (1989).
This collection traces Kaštelan's development from his surrealist beginnings, imbued with motifs of love, freedom and death, to mature meditations on existence, homeland and modern man.
In The Red Horse, Kaštelan combines surrealist imagination with folk poetry, expressing revolutionary fervor and fear of war. The poem Typhus from The Rooster on the Roof (1950) brings a powerful portrayal of partisan suffering, while To Be or Not (1955) and A Little Stone and Many Dreams (1957) introduce a modernist expression, inspired by Lorca and Whitman, with themes of life and death, such as the cycle Horse Without a Rider.
Later collections, such as The Wild Eye (1978) and The Vow for Epetion (1984), deepen his reflections on the Dalmatian landscape, stone and sea, and universal questions of freedom and identity. Poems such as Lamentation of the Stone and Dream in Stone highlight elliptical syntax and the dichotomy of light and darkness.
Kaštelan's language, imbued with native rhythms and metaphors (horse, bird, stone), combines tradition with modernism. The anthology, with graphics by Edo Murtić, celebrates the poet who, through free verse and powerful images, shaped 20th-century Croatian poetry, leaving a mark of universal humanity. The book is accompanied by a plaque on which the poet speaks his verses.
Two copies are available
