{"id":15770,"date":"2021-03-12T16:40:42","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T15:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.p-portal.net\/?p=15770"},"modified":"2021-07-15T10:45:15","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T08:45:15","slug":"dubrovnik-poet-medo-pucic-one-of-the-last-prominent-catholic-serbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/p-portal.net\/en\/dubrovnik-poet-medo-pucic-one-of-the-last-prominent-catholic-serbs","title":{"rendered":"Dubrovnik Poet Medo Puci\u0107, One of the Last Prominent Catholic Serbs"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this day, March 12, 1821 \u2013 precisely two centuries ago \u2013 writer, poet, scientist and politician Medo Puci\u0107<\/strong> was born in Dubrovnik. He was a descendant of one of the oldest noble families of Dubrovnik, the family of Puci\u0107, whose line goes back to the 13th<\/sup> century and who were awarded the title of counts (\u201ccount of the hinterland\u201d) by Austria centuries later. As with other noblemen, when introducing himself in one of his books, his list of titles and awarded ranks is impressive: \u201cnobleman of Dubrovnik, count of the hinterland, johannite knight, chamberlain to His Royal Majesty, the Spanish infant and Duke of Parma, member of the Roman Academy of Quirites and of the royal Viennese Society for the conservation of antiquities\u201d. Elsewhere he is mentioned as a member of the \u201cSovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Grgo Jelavi\u0107, PIXSELL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like many others from his social class, he was educated at the lyceum in Venice, after which he studied philosophy and then graduated in law in Padua. He would remain professionally tied to Italy as the chamberlain of two of the greatest noble houses \u2013 first as the chamberlain to the Duke of Lucca and then as the chamberlain to the Duke of Parma. More importantly, Puci\u0107 is inseparable from Italy because he would write in and translate to Italian almost his whole life, signing his work with Orsatto Pozza<\/em>, the old, customary Italianized version of his surname and the noble house of Puci\u0107 used through centuries. He was a scholar in history and left us two extremely important historiographic works. In this sense, he is a romantic, as were many young intellectuals of the period who came from \u201csmall\u201d Slavic peoples experiencing national awakening and seeking emancipation within old empires. As a student of Jan Kollar, the main ideologist of the Slovak national revival, he was also a Pan-Slavic idealist, follower of \u0160afarik and a convinced \u201cpreacher of Slavic reciprocity\u201d, just like the great but today less celebrated Kollar.<\/p>\n

A scholar inspired by folk poetry about Kosovo<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Like many young men of his generation, he also tried his hand at poetry in the popular ornate, emotionally charged romantic style. This was very much in line with the personal and cultural heritage of Puci\u0107 as an author from Dubrovnik, a city with an immense and unique literary tradition. It was also in line with his mother tongue, the dialect that had the status of the ideal and our \u201cTuscan\u201d before Vuk<\/strong>\u2019s reform. However, the future key influence on his aesthetics and ideas will lead Puci\u0107 to change his style and bring it closer to an expression characteristic of the people, the folk.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Grgo Jelavi\u0107, PIXSELL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He started publishing poetry as a man classically educated in Latin, Greek, law, philosophy and history (the latter being an area of professional work for him), as a man of wide culture and as a child of romanticism and romantic literature. However, the main literary and cultural influence on his poetry came from a different, unexpected source: Serbian folk poetry, above all the so-called \u201cKosovo cycle\u201d.<\/p>\n

The change was not only aesthetical. It was preceded by a fundamental change in ideas, a combination of political and historical convictions that would over time become an astounding shift of identity. Prior to that, he went to Italy, where, despite deep personal, cultural and historical connections, he never felt at home, but always considered it a foreign country (which he would express in his poetry). When he returned to Dubrovnik after years of service in Italy, his path was already decided. In Dubrovnik, he and Matija Ban<\/strong> (after whom the Belgrade neighborhood of Banovo Brdo is named) were the founders and editors of the first literary magazine in the Croatian language. He wrote historiographical studies, studies in cultural history and, of course, poetry. However, whatever he was working on \u2013 and he was involved in politics, science and art, being one of the first to single out the talent of the young Vlaho Bukovac<\/strong> \u2013 this path led in only one direction.<\/p>\n

The Belgrade period and educating the young king<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In the fatal 1868, after the assassination of Prince Mihailo Obrenovi\u0107<\/strong> in Ko\u0161utnjak, Puci\u0107 came to Belgrade to be the private tutor of Prince Milan<\/strong>, then still a child, intended to be the heir to the dynasty while the famous Blaznavac regency ruled in his stead. Puci\u0107 remained in the Prince\u2019s service until his maturity and coming-of-age. It would not be for nothing \u2013 the Prince would become the first king of the independent Serbia.<\/p>\n

The significance of his time in Belgrade is shown in a sentence recorded by writer and encyclopedist Milan \u0110. Mili\u0107evi\u0107<\/strong>: \u201cI began my career with the oldest dynasty in Europe and ended it with the youngest, the Obrenovi\u0107 dynasty.\u201d<\/p>\n

This suggestive sentence was published as part of Puci\u0107\u2019s biography in the very valuable Pomenik znamenitih ljudi u srpskog naroda novijega doba <\/em>(a biographical lexicon of notable persons of the Serbian people) from 1888. The designation of \u201cnotable persons of the Serbian people\u201d is worth noticing.<\/p>\n

Literary historian Andra Gavrilovi\u0107<\/strong> included Puci\u0107 in his book Prominent<\/em> Serbs of the 19th<\/sup> Century<\/em>, and the indispensable and meticulous Vladimir \u0106orovi\u0107 <\/strong>mentions him much later in his History of the Serbian People<\/em>, stating, in a typically unconventional sentence, that Medo Puci\u0107 was \u201can honest and well-intentioned but rather carefree man\u201d.<\/p>\n

How did a Dubrovnik nobleman with a double, Italianized name, a devout Catholic and count \u2013 although a member of the Serbian Learned Society and, naturally, the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts \u2013 end up among prominent Serbs? How did it happen?<\/p>\n

A unique phenomenon of a unique City \u2013 \u201cSerbs of the Roman law\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In the long and dramatic history of this region, at the turn of the 19th<\/sup> century there appeared a little talked-about and permanently ignored phenomenon kept from the wider public consciousness and the masses, a historical phenomenon approached to this day \u2013 and especially today \u2013 with extreme discomfort in this country. In Dubrovnik, a city which is a completely separate fact of Croatian, Serbian and Yugoslav history, a phenomenon sui generis<\/em> in every regard and an indispensable constituent of national identity, there appeared in the 19th<\/sup> century a group that would grow into a whole movement. Recruited in large part from the highest social circles, from Dubrovnik nobility and elite, this unusual, complex and undoubtedly important phenomenon was \u2013 Dubrovnik Catholic Serbs, also named \u201cSerbs of the Roman law\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Jovica Drobnjak<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the 19th<\/sup> century, the period of the release of great national energies in the Slavic South and all of Europe, full of subjugated peoples, the period of seeking and creating new identities, political and cultural emancipation, in the strivings to cast off foreign rule and in the dreams of independence and peoples\u2019 own states, an important part of the Dubrovnik elite \u2013 intellectuals, scientists and artists \u2013 fervently and unexpectedly claimed their belonging to the Serbian cultural and national circle.<\/p>\n

In his book Serbs in Croatia<\/em>, Drago Roksandi\u0107<\/strong> writes about this very briefly, but with a fragment that speaks volumes, pointing out the \u201cextraordinary phenomenon of Serbs-Catholics, mostly in Dubrovnik, in the period between the 1880s and the First World War. The movement encompassed a significant part of Dubrovnik nobility and intelligentsia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roksandi\u0107 also points out that this group is \u201cof a very liberal inspiration and predominantly leads in the understanding between Serbs and Croats, although it also decisively defends its Serbian national choice in countless debates\u201d.<\/p>\n

Late historian Ivo Banac<\/strong>, himself a Dubrovnik native and member of a later, economic elite, dedicated an entire volume of his work published and printed in the US to this phenomenon. Although he tries, from his ideological position, to deconstruct this movement and relativize it as a temporary epiphenomenon brought about by historical forces and a specific moment in time and culture, paradoxically and unintentionally ironically, he gives the best and most precise definition of the movement. Since the Catholic Serbs, in a radical shift, considered religious affiliation secondary to national identity, and closely tied to the strong and numerous Pan-Slavism of a part of the Catholic elite not only of Dubrovnik, but of Croatia in general, Banac explains the very essence of the matter by writing that Catholic Serbs \u201cdisrupt the \u2018rule\u2019 of religious affiliation which existed up to that point\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Grgo Jelavi\u0107, PIXSELL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A fascinating and astonishing list of names appears when we examine which persons elected this apostasy at the time. Among Dubrovnik Catholic Serbs were such fundamental names of Croatian culture as <\/span>Baltazar Bogi\u0161i\u0107<\/strong>, Matija Ban, <\/span>Milan Re\u0161etar<\/strong>, <\/span>Lujo Vojnovi\u0107<\/strong>. In this first line stood Medo Puci\u0107 as well, through his own choice, heart and convictions, perhaps most steadfastly of all.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDescendant of Lazar\u2019s peers\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Indeed, it suffices to read some of Puci\u0107\u2019s work to see this. Poetry speaks most directly and unreservedly about his fascinations and national, ideological and aesthetic passion, written in a sweeping romantic manner and the rhetoric of patriotic songs:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Serb steps hard<\/p>\n

on fatal Kosovo field<\/p>\n

(\u2026)<\/p>\n

O davori! Kosovo is<\/p>\n

ours, ours, forever ours!<\/p>\n

The living rays of light warm him<\/p>\n

of nine birds of Jugovi\u0107i\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Dubrovnik he writes that \u201cevery Serbian heart beats\u201d. His incantation is \u201cGlory, glory, glorious kindred\u201d, and he rhymes \u201cjoys\u201d and \u201choly bones\u201d \u2013 \u201cRelics of Serbian martyrs!\u201d He even enumerates the geographical places, giving them the aura of the almost sacred and mythical:<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Vu\u010ditrn, from Pri\u0161tina,<\/p>\n

from Nerodilj, from Ka\u010danik\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He lists and repeats all the main points of the Kosovo and Vidovdan mythology, Lazar\u2019s supper, the Kosovo Covenant and mythical heroes from the folk tradition in exemplary folk octosyllable.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, ancient shadows rise,<\/p>\n

those lordly bright faces!<\/p>\n

Tsar Lazar, leader Milo\u0161,<\/p>\n

with Kosan\u010di\u0107 friend Toplica,<\/p>\n

old Bogdan with seven birds,<\/p>\n

love the earthly kingdom,<\/p>\n

fortify it in Kosovo!<\/p>\n

To the Serbian king, Kosovo-field,<\/p>\n

Kosovo-field, give the throne!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, he does not create mere repetitions, such as existed by the dozens in the Serbian national and cultural circle of the time, both in Serbia and other regions where Serbs lived. Puci\u0107 goes further and creates a direct connection by connecting the Vidovdan myth with his world and the City itself:<\/p>\n

\u201cThese words that fly from the heart,<\/p>\n

from the once glorious Dubrovnik city,<\/p>\n

wove into a garland in memory<\/p>\n

the descendant of Lazar\u2019s peers\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Catholic Puci\u0107 even varies the learned style of Orthodox prayer:<\/p>\n

\u201cRelease your servant, God,<\/p>\n

now I have seen the Savior,<\/p>\n

I can exclaim under grey hairs\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the end, like old masters who embed a miniature self-portrait within a large composition, he invokes himself and his biography as \u201cthe teacher of Milan\u2019s youth\u201d.<\/p>\n