The directory «Plots»

Gučetić Ivan
(1451—1502)

Ivan Gučetić from Dubrovnik, was one of the members of the Dubrovnik humanistic circle gathered round Ilija Crijević. When we think of him nowadays, he seems to have been in sharp contrast to Crijević. While the laurel-crowned and glorified Aelius Lampridius Cerva, one of the best known Croatian humanists, became well-known and praised as a poet in the humanistic circles all over Europe, the destiny of Ivan Gučetić was shaped in a sad way; though praised by Crijević himself, nowadays we only remember him as a name, and this only in his most imminent environment. Nothing has remained of what he had written and we would probably cease mentioning him were it not for his eminent contemporaries who kept talking about him and rendering important things that can impossibly be disregarded. It is primarily Ilija Crijević himself who has paid him a tribute as a trilingual poet, writing in Latin, Greek and the "Illyrian" language which actually means Croatian. Moreover, he speaks of the "Illyrian nectar" of Gučetić's Croatian poems, and this carries much weight taking into consideration the fact that Cerva himself was unfavourably disposed to poetry written in any other language but Latin, and he remained that way even after having uttered, quite exceptionally, praise for Gučetić's "Illyrian" poems. Gučetić was also praised by his contemporary, the literary arbiter Angelo Ambrogini, the well known Poliziano, who resembles Gučetić in being himself a poet writing in three languages: Greek, Latin and Italian. Some authors mention that among Gučetić's admirers there were also other well-known and influential humanists. Crijević mentions some works of Gučetić, among them the Latin epic poem Delphine, and he had also written epigrams and love poems. Our literary historian Milorad Medini writes that Gučetić burned three collections of love poems. According to what Medini writes, definitely on the basis of convincing indications, Gučetić might have been writing poems in Croatian even before Marulić, in any case we could say that he was Marulić in miniature a number of years before the advent of Marulić himself. What Marulić achieved in the wide scope of Croatian literature, Gučetić had done some time before him in his Dubrovnik circle: he had acted as a conciliator among our poets writing in Latin and Croatian. This alone remains a sufficient reason for his name to be remembered in the history of Croatian literature.

Croatia, 2002, Villa