Kreft, Bratko

Kreft, Bratko

 

Born Feb. 11, 1905, in Maribor. Slovene writer and literary critic; member of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts (1961).

Kreft was editor of the journals Mladina (1925–27) and Knjizevnost (1932–35), which propagandized the principles of Marxist aesthetics. He became a professor of Russian literature at the University in Ljubljana in 1957. As critic, journalist, and prose writer, he exposed bourgeois reality and wrote about the fate of youth and its road to revolution (in the novel, A Man Among Skulls, 1929); he did not, however, completely escape the influence of naturalistic aesthetics.

Kreft is a prominent playwright and director. His plays include The Counts Celjski (produced in 1932) and The Krajina Comedians (produced in 1940, published in 1946). He has written many works about Russian and Soviet writers and the Soviet theater (including an introduction to the collected works of F. M. Dostoevsky).

REFERENCES

Riabova, E. I. “Osnovnye napravleniia v mezhvoennoi slovenskoi literature.” In the collection Zarubezhnye slavianskie titeratury: XX vek. Moscow, 1970.
Bershads’ka, M. L. “Roman B. Krefta ’Liudyna sered cherepiv.’” In Slov”ians’ke literaturoznavstvo i fol’klorystyka, 1968, fasc. 4.

E. I. RIABOVA