The dramaturgical structure of the play Symphonies / Turpitude is formed through a somewhat careless selection and accumulation of vitalistic material, primarily from Miroslav Krleža's collection of poems Symphonies from 1933, highlighting the poem Pan. As a counterpoint to Krleža's cultivated orgy, there is a selection and accumulation of the poetically abrupt automatism of the surrealist poem Turpitude by Marko Ristić.
Particular emphasis is given to Ristić's diary, written from May 27 to June 12, 1938, during the Turpitude printing period in Zagreb. It is a diary of impulsive hedonism and fascination with socializing with Krleža and his friends.
The characters in the play, with the looming stone of a global catastrophe behind their navels, spend time in cafes and restaurants, sing and joke late at night, vacation together, and play tennis, all within the bounds of bourgeois presence.
The cast includes all those who dominate Krleža's and Ristić's diaries and letters: Miroslav and Bela Krleža, Marko and Ševa Ristić, August Cesarec, his wife Marija Vinski, and the "most tragic figure of that time," Zvonko Richtmann.
Amidst cheerful and intellectually charged gatherings, mundane complications such as financial worries, debts for heating, and vacation troubles, the play leads us towards the greatest tragedy, the summer of 1941 when liberal and party communists were simultaneously executed in the Kerestinec camp: "Trotskyists" and Stalinists, including Cesarec, Richtmann, and Prica. A month later, Marija Vinski met the same fate.
The question posed by Stanko Lasić to all opponents of the ad limina apostolorum conflict on the literary left and the edge of intellectual cynicism, which Krleža and Ristić managed to postpone, is: Did they extend a hand to each other in parting?