Conference paper
LET THEY BE FORGOTTEN… ABOUT AUTHORS FROM THE ADRIATIC COAST OVERSEAS
Branka Bezić Filipović
; Hrvatska matica iseljenika, Podružnica Split, Hrvatska
Abstract
In leaving for distant destinations in search of a better life, Croats carried with them memories of the old country that they handed down to their children, and many of them did not wish to see
the memories fade so they wrote them down. In this way they incorporated them into the literature of distand countries. Although distand from home, this literature is still a part of the Croatian
cultural heritage. The first written accounts from the emmigrant
community were letters written to Juraj Kapić, the founder of the “Pučki list” periodical from Split, in which emmigrants described the life in new lands, and they were regularly published in newspapers in Split at the end of the 19th century. We can consider the authors of the letters to be the Þ rst correspondents. The exhibition “Lest they
be forgotten” speaks about all those that left the Adriatic coast and took up the pen, regardless of the extent to which they were successful, which does not have a literary value nevertheless has an
emotional or documentary value. The largest number of writers from the Adriatic coast wrote from South America, and in Chile alone there were some two hundred of them, including as many as nine academy members. In cases where they did not write poetry, novels or stories, our emmigrants in most cases described the history of the arrival of Croats to the place where they lived or wrote professional literature dealing with their profession. Unfortunately, only rarely did they write in Croatian since they forgot it soon after leaving because of assimilation.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
77014
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2007.
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