Beside the elementary facts of the life and work of Filip Grabovac, the author in this article gives an analysis of his oldest poem in its dual significance both, as an independent composition, and as an integral part of his »Cvita razgovora« to which it was attached twenty years after its first publication. Subsequently he draws attention to the special significance of Grabovac’s book in the general cultural climate in the so called Venetian Dalmatia of the first half of the XVII century. Namely, Grabovac represents a change in relation to the prev ous pious practice of writing: alongside religious teachings (in the first half of the book) he gives (in the second part) teachings in the basics of world and national history. It is true that these are vague and unclear, yet nevertheless they are given in a fashion which testifies that the writer hankers for the national coming to consciousness of his fellow countrymen amidst conditions in which protracted forcing rule had almost erased in the people the consicousness of their identity. Indeed, in the realization of this bas c idea, Grabovac acted with the best of intentions, but also extremely naively: flagellating certain vices and behavious of his countrymen he had sufficiently concretized for them to recognize themselves, by which he drew upon himself hatred and the desire for revenge. Accused before a Venetian court of anti-Venetian activity by his own countrymen, he died after two years of imprisonment on the islet of Saint Spirito, south of Venice. Grabovac is mainly important for the ideas he held at the time and in the space where he appeared. Through them he blazed the path for Andrija Kaćić Miošić who, enriched by his experience and instructed by his ill-fated destiny, will carry on his work.
