The Bulgarian Odyssey of Vesna Parun

A little known fact of the biography of the most prominent Croatian poet in the second half of the 20th century Vesna Parun is that she lives in Bulgaria from 1962 to 1967. Here for the first time she writes travelogues, establishes friendships with Bulgarian intellectuals and dissidents such as Radoy Ralin and Blaga Dimitrova. Here she falls in love, suffers, weeps and laughs.

Vesna Parun was a Croatian poet. After schooling in Zlarin, Šibenik and Split, she studied Romance languages and philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. From 1947 she was a free artist, writing poetry, essays, criticism and children's literature. She translated works from Slovene, German, French and Bulgarian. 

Starting with the poems collection Crna maslina (1955) love was the primary motif of her written opus. Incessantly working on romantic lyrical poetry, from the 1960s on she published satiric verses directed at politics and the erotic. She wrote more than 20 works for children alone, the most prominent and widely performed being Mačak Džingiskan i Miki Trasi. She also wrote several drama pieces, the most significant of which is the ballad Marija i mornar. She is the first woman in Croatia who earned her money solely by being a writer. She published, printed and made illustrations for some of her own books.