Ivan Gundulić

Ivan Gundulić (born January 8, 1589, Dubrovnik [now in Croatia]—died December 8, 1638, Dubrovnik) was a Croatian poet and dramatist whose epic poem Osman (the oldest existing copy is dated approximately 1651; it was first published in 1826; Eng. trans. Osman) was the outstanding achievement of the Renaissance and Baroque flowering of art and literature that gave Dubrovnik the name of the “South Slav Athens.”

Son of a five-time knez (the highest government post, held for only one month) of the Dubrovnik city-republic, Gundulić himself occupied various public positions, serving as a captain of the night, supervisor of the armament magazine, member of the Senate, and judge. He was a pupil of the Croatian priest Petar Palikuća, who did translations from the Italian, and of Siena’s Camilo Camilli (a great connoisseur of Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata), and in his youth Gundulić wrote 10 plays, which were performed with musical accompaniment. Some parts of them may have been sung. These plays were based on motifs from either classical mythology or Tasso’s epic; they had fantastic elements and happy endings, and they were popular with Dubrovnik’s audiences. The four plays that have survived are mostly variations on or translations of Italian works.

Gundulić later changed the tenor of his work toward a more solemn Baroque Catholic religiosity, and he wrote spiritual poetry. His poem Suze sina razmetnoga (1622; “The Tears of the Prodigal Son”) is the monologue of a repentant man who reflects on his sin and the futility of human existence and then turns to God. Divided into three laments (“sin,” “comprehension,” and “humility”), the poem is marked by genuine religious feeling. Although its plot involves obstacles in the way of true love between young shepherds Dubravka (whose name is also that of a nymph symbolizing freedom) and Miljenko, Gundulić’s original pastoral play Dubravka (1628) is primarily concerned with patriotic and ethical issues and with celebrating the long-standing autonomy of Dubrovnik.

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Gundulić’s most ambitious work is the epic Osman, whose creation was prompted by the Ottoman sultan Osman II’s defeat by the Poles at Chocim (Khotin, now in Ukraine) in Bessarabia in 1621, subsequent attempts by the young sultan to restructure his army, and the resulting rebellion against him, which led to his violent death in 1622. Though basing his plot on contemporary events of great political importance and giving realistic descriptions of Turkish and Polish settings, Gundulić nevertheless follows the conventions of the chivalrous epic by incorporating supernatural forces, love interests related to women warriors, and pastoral episodes. He uses the unfortunate fate of the young sultan as a springboard for more general reflections on the transience of human glory. The work comprises 20 cantos, but Gundulić died before finishing cantos 14 and 15; the poet Ivan Mažuranić (a member of the so-called Illyrian movement that sought to unite South Slavs) successfully wrote two substitute cantos, and Osman thus completed was published in Zagreb in 1844.