Jovan Sundečić (1825–1900) - the poet of integrating Slavism

Abstract

From the literary and historical viewpoint, the name of Jovan Sundečić takes a rather marginal place in the Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin poetry of the second half of the 19th century. Although he established himself as a literary-cultural and political enthusiast in the above-mentioned countries, the aesthetic values of his literary work are not acknowledged today. The reason for such a treatment lies in the fact that his literary work, viewed from the aesthetic positions and compared to what was aesthetically valuable and live in European literary terms, was a belated poetic anachronism of his time and the trends which were prominent and affirmed in the other national literature such as Croatian, Serbian and Montenegrin.Nevertheless, his name was a nexus, which connected, bounded and pervaded these nations at that turbulent time through his exceptional political and cultural activity aimed at unifying and integrating South Slavic literature into a unity of All-Slavic integralism. In this paper we emphasize that J Sundačić is known in the history of literatureand literary criticism only as the author of numerous works of poetry. However, in the Orlić journal (1865. – 1870.), (1875.), there are two stories "Junak vladika" and "Osvetnici ili nevina žrtva", published under the pseudonym "S. J. Zdravković". Examining Narodni list (II Nazionale) , the newspaper published in Zadar we found that "S. J. Zdravković" was mentioned as "the alleged J. Sundečić". Analyzing the content, themes and the style of the above- mentioned short stories we came to the conclusion that the assumption made in the Zadar newspaper was basically correct and that these stories had been written by J. Sundečić. They were written in the same manner and genre as his earlier didactic story "Radomil i Neradomil", which was published in Srpsko-dalmatinski magazin (Serbo-Dalmatian Magazine) in 1849.