Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981) is the towering figure of twentieth-century Croatian literature, and his prose is famous for sentences that run for half a page, piling subordinate clause on subordinate clause, abstraction on abstraction, until the reader is held inside a single suspended thought. Krleža's work remains in copyright, so the passage below is an original composition written in his characteristic dense modernist manner to showcase the same grammar — the long periodic sentence, the wall of nominalisation, the literary aorist and imperfect, the deeply embedded relative and content clauses, and the flashes of Kajkavian and elevated lexis. The grammar is the point, and a style-faithful original teaches it exactly as a quotation would, while keeping us clear of the copyright. This page reads the passage in its constituent clauses, then unpacks the machinery.
The text
Krleža's work remains in copyright, so the passage below is an original composition in his characteristic dense modernist manner, not a quotation.
U onom sivom, kišnom popodnevu, kada se nad gradom nadvila ona ista olovna besmislenost provincijske dosade koja ga je, još od djetinjstva, ispunjavala mučninom, doktor Kamenski sjeđaše uz prozor i gledaše kako kapi klize niz staklo.
On that grey, rainy afternoon, when there had settled over the city that same leaden senselessness of provincial boredom which had, ever since childhood, filled him with nausea, Doctor Kamenski sat by the window and watched the drops slide down the glass.
Pomisli, u tom trenutku potpune rezignacije, da je čitav njegov život bio tek dugotrajno, dosadno iščekivanje nečega što nikada ne dođe.
He thought, in that moment of complete resignation, that his whole life had been merely a long, tedious awaiting of something that never came.
A vani, na blatnoj cesti, padaše kiša — tiho, ravnodušno, vječno — kao da i ona zna da je svako ljudsko nadanje samo prazna gesta pred ravnodušjem materije.
And outside, on the muddy road, the rain was falling — quietly, indifferently, eternally — as if it too knew that every human hope is only an empty gesture before the indifference of matter.
The long periodic sentence: holding the thought open
The first sentence is a classic Krležian period — a single grammatical sentence whose main clause (doktor Kamenski sjeđaše uz prozor) does not arrive until the very end, after a long temporal frame has been built up. Croatian makes this easier than English does, because subordinate clauses are explicitly flagged by conjunctions (kada, koja) and the case endings keep every noun phrase unambiguous no matter how far it drifts from its verb (see subordinate clauses overview). The reader is suspended: U onom sivom, kišnom popodnevu opens a "when," kada se nad gradom nadvila… fills it, koja ga je… ispunjavala mučninom embeds a relative clause inside that — and only then does the subject finally sit down by the window. The delay enacts the boredom it describes.
Kada se nad gradom nadvila olovna besmislenost dosade, doktor sjeđaše uz prozor.
When the leaden senselessness of boredom had settled over the city, the doctor sat by the window. (the bare frame: a kada-clause, then the long-delayed main clause)
Besmislenost koja ga je ispunjavala mučninom nadvila se nad gradom.
The senselessness which filled him with nausea had settled over the city. (the embedded koja-relative, isolated)
Nominalisation: turning verbs and adjectives into abstract nouns
Krležian prose thinks in abstractions, and the grammatical engine of that is nominalisation — deriving nouns from verbs and adjectives. The passage is dense with them: besmislenost ("senselessness," from the adjective besmislen), dosada ("boredom"), mučnina ("nausea"), rezignacija ("resignation"), iščekivanje ("awaiting," a verbal noun from iščekivati), nadanje ("hoping," from nadati se), ravnodušje ("indifference," from ravnodušan). The suffix -ost turns adjectives into abstract qualities (besmislen → besmislenost), and the suffix -nje turns verbs into verbal nouns (iščekivati → iščekivanje, nadati se → nadanje). Stacking these lets the prose talk about states and processes rather than events — exactly the static, airless quality Krleža wants.
Svako ljudsko nadanje samo je prazna gesta pred ravnodušjem materije.
Every human hope is only an empty gesture before the indifference of matter. (nadanje from nadati se; ravnodušje from ravnodušan)
Olovna besmislenost provincijske dosade ispunjavala ga je mučninom.
The leaden senselessness of provincial boredom filled him with nausea. (a chain of -ost / -a abstractions)
The aorist and the imperfect: the simple past tenses of literature
Modern spoken Croatian uses the compound perfekt (sjedio je, gledao je) for almost all past reference. The two simple past tenses — the aorist (single completed acts) and the imperfect (ongoing or habitual past) — survive almost only in literature, and Krleža wields them for texture. The passage uses imperfects sjeđaše ("was sitting," from sjediti), gledaše ("was watching," from gledati) and padaše ("was falling," from padati) to spread the scene out across durative, unending time, and the aorist pomisli ("he thought," a single mental flash, from pomisliti) and (ne) dođe ("never came," from doći) for punctual events. The contrast is the whole emotional architecture: the imperfects make the rain and the sitting feel eternal, while the lone aorist pomisli lands the one decisive thought like a blow.
Doktor sjeđaše uz prozor i gledaše kako kiša padaše.
The doctor was sitting by the window and watching the rain fall. (three imperfects = unbroken, durative past)
Pomisli da život ne donese ništa.
He thought that life had brought nothing. (the aorist pomisli = one punctual mental event)
Deeply embedded clauses: clause within clause within clause
The sentences are built by recursion — clauses nested inside clauses. In the second sentence the main verb pomisli governs a content clause introduced by da (da je čitav njegov život bio tek… iščekivanje), and inside that clause sits a relative clause introduced by nečega što (nečega što nikada ne dođe, "of something that never came"). So the structure is: [he thought [that his life had been an awaiting [of something [that never came]]]]. Croatian keeps each layer transparent with its own conjunction — da for reported thought, što for the relative — and the genitive nečega ("of something") signals that the relative is hanging off an awaited object. This stacking of da- and što-clauses is the syntactic signature of intellectual Croatian prose.
Pomisli da je život bio iščekivanje nečega što nikada ne dođe.
He thought that life had been an awaiting of something that never came. (da-clause containing a što-relative clause)
Znao je da postoji nešto što ne razumije.
He knew that there was something he did not understand. (the same da + što nesting, simplified)
Kajkavian and elevated lexical colour
Krleža, a Zagreb writer, salts his standard (Štokavian) prose with Kajkavian words and forms — the dialect of north-western Croatia and of his city — and with self-consciously elevated, often Latinate or abstract vocabulary. In the passage, the Latinate rezignacija ("resignation") and the heavy abstractions besmislenost and ravnodušje pitch the register upward into the (literary)/(academic). Where Krleža would reach for genuine Kajkavian colour, the lexicon shifts audibly: everyday standard kuća ("house") becomes Kajkavian hiža, standard djeca ("children") becomes deca, standard vrijeme becomes vreme, and the interjection kaj ("what") — the very word the dialect is named after — replaces standard što. A learner should recognise these as marked: beautiful and authentic in Krleža, but (regional: Kajkavian/Zagreb) rather than neutral standard.
Kaj buš delal, kad ti je cijeli svijet postal tuđ?
What will you do, when the whole world has become foreign to you? (Kajkavian colour: kaj for što, buš for hoćeš/ćeš, postal for postao)
U onoj staroj hiži na kraju varoši još je gorjelo svjetlo.
In that old house at the edge of the town a light was still burning. (Kajkavian/elevated: hiža for kuća, varoš for grad)
Vocabulary gloss
| Word | Form | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| nadvila se | 3sg perfekt of nadviti se (pf.) | had settled / loomed over |
| besmislenost | noun, -ost from besmislen | senselessness, absurdity |
| sjeđaše | 3sg imperfect of sjediti | was sitting |
| gledaše | 3sg imperfect of gledati | was watching |
| pomisli | 3sg aorist of pomisliti (pf.) | thought (a single flash) |
| iščekivanje | verbal noun (-nje) from iščekivati | awaiting, expectation |
| (ne) dođe | 3sg aorist of doći (pf.) | (never) came |
| padaše | 3sg imperfect of padati | was falling |
| ravnodušje | noun from ravnodušan | indifference |
| nadanje | verbal noun (-nje) from nadati se | hoping, hope |
Note the register spread. Rezignacija and ravnodušje are firmly (literary); the imperfects sjeđaše / gledaše / padaše and the aorists pomisli / dođe are (literary) by their very existence in modern prose; and the Kajkavian items glossed above are (regional). Nothing here belongs to neutral everyday speech — which is exactly the point of the style.
How the grammar serves the passage
The bleak, airless mood of Krležian prose is not laid on with adjectives alone; it is built into the syntax and the verb system. The long periodic sentence suspends the reader inside the boredom before letting the subject finally sit down. The wall of -ost and -nje abstractions replaces happening with a static contemplation of states. The imperfects (sjeđaše, gledaše, padaše) stretch time toward the eternal, so that the single aorist pomisli — the one decisive act — strikes all the harder. The deeply nested da- and što-clauses mirror a mind folding back on itself. And the Kajkavian colour roots this cosmic despair in a real, muddy, provincial Croatian town. Read the grammar and you have read the worldview: matter is indifferent, hope is an empty gesture, and the very tense of the verbs refuses to let anything finish.
Common Mistakes
❌ Saying 'doktor sjeđaše' in everyday conversation.
Register error — the imperfect sjeđaše is (literary); in speech you say sjedio je (perfekt). Krleža uses the imperfect precisely to sound elevated and durative.
✅ Doktor je sjedio uz prozor. (spoken) / Doktor sjeđaše uz prozor. (literary)
The doctor sat by the window. (perfekt for speech; imperfect for literary prose)
❌ Pomislio je da život ne dođe ništa.
Aspect/agreement slip — in the content clause the verb needs a subject and correct form; and mixing a spoken perfekt main verb with a literary aorist subordinate is stylistically incoherent.
✅ Pomisli da mu život ne donese ništa.
He thought that life brought him nothing. (consistent literary aorist throughout)
❌ Treating kaj, hiža, deca as standard Croatian.
Register/dialect error — these are (regional: Kajkavian). Standard Croatian uses što, kuća, djeca; don't carry the dialect words into neutral writing.
✅ Što ćeš raditi u toj staroj kući?
What will you do in that old house? (neutral standard: što, kući)
❌ Breaking the periodic sentence into short clauses 'to be safe'.
Stylistic loss — the suspended, left-branching period is the effect; chopping it into simple sentences erases the boredom-enacting delay that defines the style.
✅ Kada se nad gradom nadvila ona besmislenost dosade, doktor sjeđaše uz prozor.
When that senselessness of boredom had settled over the city, the doctor sat by the window. (the frame held open, then resolved)
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Start learning Croatian→Related Topics
- Stylistics of the Aorist and ImperfectC1 — When and why modern Croatian reaches for the synthetic past tenses instead of the everyday perfekt.
- Subordinate Clauses: OverviewB1 — The da, koji, što, and kad clause types and how their punctuation works.
- Nominalization StrategiesC1 — Turning clauses into noun phrases — the verbal noun in -nje with its genitive object, abstract -ost nouns, and condensing a da- or temporal clause into a noun phrase — and the formal register this creates.
- Building Cohesion Across SentencesC1 — How Croatian threads reference across a text — pro-drop and zero anaphora, demonstratives pointing back, connectives like stoga and međutim, and given-before-new ordering — without the articles English leans on.
- Literary Excerpt: MatošC2 — A close reading of an impressionistic prose passage in the manner of Antun Gustav Matoš, unpacking elaborate subordination, the synthetic aorist and imperfect, sensory vocabulary, and the Čakavian coastal lexical colour that marks his Dalmatian impressions.