Preface

It was the summer of 2013 when I drove my family from Brseč to Mošćenice for lunch. As we were about to enter the town’s only restaurant, Perun, we passed by a set of expressive and colorful oil paintings depicting fish, flowers, sea, and vistas of those two towns. The paintings were exhibited in front of the restaurant, and they were decorative, somewhat abstract, and attractive. After lunch, I bought two or three of them from the painter who introduced himself as Zdenko Velčić.

He told me he was from Golovik, down the road where we’d just come from. I told him that I used to spend summers in Brseč, in a house my parents bought when I was one year old. He pulled out a book with what looked like one of his paintings on the cover. As I leafed through it, I realized that it was the most comprehensive account of the life of Brseč, Mošćenice, and Kvarner ever written. The book was Čarobni kvarnerski trokut (Magical Triangle of Kvarner), which he had written and published in 2009. I immediately bought a copy. I began reading it that night and couldn’t put it down.

As I read about life in the area—the vanishing customs, trades, crafts, fishing, tourism—I relived what I’d experienced in Brseč as a child, and learned a lot in the process. Many things that had intrigued me for years were suddenly explained. The dictionary in the back of the book elucidated many words I was familiar with but hadn’t known their precise meanings. 

For me, Brseč was always a magical spot of beauty, unspoiled nature, and freedom where I was unshackled from the restraints of my Zagreb-apartment lifestyle. I loved Zagreb, but in Brseč I could play with friends, roam freely, frolic at the sea, swim and sunbathe, lie in a field, or spend time with the locals learning how to row a boat, cook just-harvested mussels on Cape Šip, or eat freshly fried ribice (sardines) at gospa Anica’s. The book, whose original title claims that Kvarner is magical, completely delivered on that claim for me because it described the very experiences that had shaped my youth.

Next time I saw Zdenko, he was selling his paintings at the entrance to Brseč. As we spoke, a tourist with a Swedish license plate stopped by, bought a few paintings, but also bought the book—in Croatian! He knew he wouldn’t be able to read it, but said the pictures in it would remind him of this moment and this gorgeous area. That’s when I decided that the book must be translated, and I knew I had to do it. Who else speaks Croatian, understands the Brseč dialect, can write in English, and has publishing experience? Just months earlier I’d self-published my own book, Pianos Inside Out, and I’d learned so much about writing from my editor, Richard Lehnert. Fate was calling me.

I gave Zdenko a proposal and he immediately agreed, gambling on someone he had little reason to trust. That leap of faith paid off, and here we are, 10 years later, making this gem available to the world.

Adriatic Reverie captures not only the hard facts of ethnography, customs, crafts, trades, nature, and history, but the unique spirit of the people of Kvarner. Having endured centuries of poverty, struggle, wars, and attempts to erase their language and identity, these people have managed to keep their smiles and remained optimistic, humble, friendly to each other, warm, hard-working, and strangely content. Speaking softly, they always emphasize the positive, are constructive, and look to lift you up. They flow down the river of life with a Zen-like equanimity. This book illustrates that, not only through the many interviews with local people, but through its very structure—a treatise in ethnology and history is followed by a meditative fishing trip, humorous anecdotes from old fishermen, and a reverie on the beauty of springtime insects and plants. The real, the everyday, the mundane are somehow always engulfed in a mist of wisdom and transcendence. When you think someone’s situation is so dire that it will throw him or her into terminal self-loathing and despair, you get back a humorous quip or just “a pusti, ma će i to pasat” (let it go, that too will pass). The prevailing sentiment seems to be Se će bit dobro (Everything will be fine). 

As much as the text of the book transports us to those people and to that beautiful countryside, it is the author’s art throughout that lets us experience each topic as if we are looking through his eyes. His paintings, drawings, pastels, and watercolors transport us through time and space, allowing us to feel fully immersed in this amazing area. In a way, the book is an exhibition catalogue of the author’s art, and, as that Swedish tourist understood, is valuable for that alone.

With the changes this area has undergone recently—population loss, vanishing traditions, dialect under assault, explosion of tourism, the biosphere transforming due to climate change and other factors—the book is even more relevant today than when it was first published in 2009. It documents the way things were when the area was still predominantly rural, more isolated, and more self-reliant. The price of development is that the face of this land is irrevocably changing. If the current plans to develop a golf course and resort in Brseč come to fruition, this book soon may be the only way to learn about the not-so-distant past.

This edition stays fairly true to the original text, with the following changes: some sections were removed, some shortened; chapters were rearranged; critical reviews and names of people in the trades and professions were moved to the website; titles were added to aid in navigation; callouts were created; footnotes were incorporated into the main text; some illustrations were added and a few removed; a dictionary of marine life and an index were added; the book was redesigned, and is available as ebook.

Mario Igrec
Translator and editor

Translating a book that relies on a distinctive and mostly informal dialect with many variations presents a particular challenge. I was fortunate to have been helped by several dictionaries—including, of course, the one in this book, but also Kastavski Rječnik (Dictionary of the Kastav dialect), by Cvjetana Miletić; Čakavski rječnik by Lokalpatrioti, Rijeka; and English–Istrian–Croatian–Italian Dictionary, by Milan Šarić and Ed Brumgnach. In translating specialized terms, I relied on a multitude of online resources, and was helped by several people who are listed in the Acknowledgments.

This edition is translated using standard American English. All measurements are stated in Imperial and metric equivalents.

Where translated, many terms, names of objects, phrases, sayings, and toponyms are also given in their original form, usually in dialect, and sometimes also in standard Croatian. To avoid ambiguity, the common names of plants and fish are also accompanied by their Latin names. The names of saints in church names are typically left unchanged. For example, the main church in Brseč is referred to as the church of St. Juraj, not St. George. All poems are printed side by side in their original and translated versions.

Comments in [brackets] are editor’s notes.