Talk:Ivan Gundulić

Igor's edits

I am restoring the title Ivan which was moved by copy&paste to Dzivo (Dživo) because this name is far more often used. Even on Google, 426 hits for "Ivan Gundulić", 308 hits for "Ivan Gundulic", 10 hits for "Dzivo Gundulic", 9 hits for "Dživo Gundulić". --Shallot 19:57, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I would also like to note that Igor has littered the version he improperly moved to Dzivo Gundulic with vague yet seemingly fervent accusations of nationalism and misappropriation by the Croats. I'll restrain myself to stating merely that this is not suitable for encyclopedia. --Shallot 20:06, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

After fixing the bad move, the diff of Igor's changes is here. It would be interesting to see an elaboration of this. --Joy [shallot] 12:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

removed sentence

Removed from the article (regarding Serbian extreme nationalists):

"This is another attempt to achieve their goal after they failed in most recent war of aggression on Croatia."

I don't think that would be relevant to this article, even if it were written from an NPOV. Wmahan. 01:20, 2004 Apr 21 (UTC)

Would you incline that Ivan Gundulić is of Serbian origin? (catholic Serb) HolyRomanEmperor 15:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Britannica fell under heavy Greater Croatian influence. It shows Rudjer Boskovic as a Croat, as well... I see no point not to concider Ivan Gundulic Serbian as he dedicated a large part of OSMAN to the Serbs and their love for freedom and figts against the Ottomans. HolyRomanEmperor 18:00, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

He might've been than a Serbophil Croat; but mention of Serbian as an adjective is a necessity. HolyRomanEmperor 18:02, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, he's a Croatian poet according to:

• Britannica
• Encarta
• Great Soviet Encyclopedia

No Serbian connection is even mentioned by any of the three. --Elephantus 22:10, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

The older version of Britannica here: [1] mentions him as a Serb and here: [2] Besides that, his perfect genealogy is explained in here: [3] where one can see his entire family lineage. HolyRomanEmperor 19:58, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The latest version of Britannica has shown many errors, and has sucumbed to the nationalist tensions of Greater Croatdom in this case; only because Dubrovnik is now a part of Croatia does it say that he was Croatian (it didn't before Dubrovnik's integration into Croatia) HolyRomanEmperor 20:00, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

An interesting note should be also read in here: [4] a book that perfectly describes everything about the Serbs of Dubrovnik in those ages. HolyRomanEmperor 20:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The new version of Britannica was already proven inacurrate ages ago (see talk page of Rudjer Boskovic), when it called the father of Rudjer Bošković (who was a Serb) a Croat. So deos the Great Soviet Encyclopedia too. HolyRomanEmperor 20:07, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The new version of Britannica was already proven inacurrate ages ago (see talk page of Rudjer Boskovic), when it called the father of Rudjer Bošković (who was a Serb) a Croat. So deos the Great Soviet Encyclopedia too. HolyRomanEmperor 20:07, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Encarta also mentiones the Bosnian Croat Ivo Andrić (who was a Serb only by self-determination) as a Bosnian Serb. So it is wrong as well... HolyRomanEmperor 20:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Besides, if anyone remembered to read Osman, he would notice that around 1,100 lyrics are dedicated to Serbs magnifying their suberp defeating of the infidel Emperor on Kosovo (see: Battle of Kossovo) and the glorious Kings of Rascia, the Nemanjić. Very little dedicated to anything Croatian indeed... HolyRomanEmperor 20:13, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Besides, Ivan overrexagerates with his metaphoric parts of his poems when he mentions that Alexander the Great of Macedon was a Serb :))) HolyRomanEmperor 20:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

And, Dubrovnik was at the time in the Serbian sphere of influence (it was from the VII to the late XIX century that way); the majority of the population being Catholic Serbs. The Slavic dialect spoken in there was shtokavian dialect, present only in the Serbian language until the reforms of Ljudevit Gaj which engulphed Serbdom. HolyRomanEmperor 20:21, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

As for 1911 Britannica, it's questionable at best because it lumps all Dalmatian and Dubrovnik writers under "Servian", including Marko Marulić. The other source you cite, Columbia Encyclopedia, confirms him as a Croatian poet :-). The "genealogy" is basically just a Serb propaganda piece which takes an inocuous topic of Dubrovnik nobility and sprinkles "Serbian" adjectives every couple of sentences. Really, no serious non-nationalistic sources confirm this "Gundulić - a Serbian poet" thing. Sorry. --Elephantus 17:42, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

That is not true. It is an article written by professor of the Faculty of Philosophy in Kosovska Mitrovica Marko Atlagić for their magazine "Komunikacija". The article has 98 references. I'll be returning "Serbian" with the article as the reference. Nikola 09:14, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

It is understandable that those pages are somewhat NPOV - Dubrovnik has been heavily Croatianized; and they are far more detailed about his life than the sources that you mention. His life's litterarry orientation is firstly Polish, then Serbian... and Croatian somewhere to the bottom. So, we can only agree that he is both Serbian and Croatian. Sorry. HolyRomanEmperor 20:35, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

As for that second link - my bad; I meant: [5] I think that we would make the article most NPOV and democratic if we state both afiltrations! And read the genealogy before making early conclusions :))) HolyRomanEmperor 21:13, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

As for that second link - my bad; I meant: [6] I think that we would make the article most NPOV and democratic if we state both afiltrations! And read the genealogy before making early conclusions :))) HolyRomanEmperor 21:14, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

The genealogy text doesn't gain anything in value by repeated readings; its claim of "Serbianness" of the Gundulić family is supported by a reference to this book, a sad piece of propaganda published in Belgrade in 1992, apparently in an attempt to justify the Serbian attack on Dubrovnik at the time as a simple "retaking of what is already ours". --Elephantus 15:31, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Please, could you actually find mistakes on those sources rather than acuse them of being nationalistic (which I accepted that they are) HolyRomanEmperor 15:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

You're claiming that the article is nationalist because it uses as a reference a book for which your claim that it is nationalist! Sorry, but that doesn't mean anything. Nikola 18:17, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

It's a piece of war propaganda designed to convince people that everyone and everything in Dubrovnik is Serbian, and because of that it's worthless as a source of information in this article (unless it can be corroborated by other, more serious sources). It would be useful when talking about, say, history of Serbian expansionism, attacks on Dubrovnik in 1991/92 and justifications offered for that. Even so, its claim is very weak: it seems to consider Gundulić a Serbian poet only because he wrote about, among other things, Serbian resistance to Turkish onslaught, despite the fact that the name "Serbs" was used, even back then, exclusively for adherents of Eastern Orthodoxy. --Elephantus 19:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

So say you. Actually, Ivan is mentioned in the book 130 times. It considers Gundulic a Serbian poet, among other reasons, because several notable people close to his time have said that he was Serbian poet, and several other that he is approproated by Croats. Nikola 20:18, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Extremely small or vastly limited minority

Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia's founder, says:

If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.

(quoted from Wikipedia:No original research)--Zmaj 08:00, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales also said: If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents HolyRomanEmperor 15:06, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, that logic could apply to this: Penkala was half-Dutch, half-Pole, yet everyone concerns him as a Croat. Should then his original ethnicity details be deleted? HolyRomanEmperor 15:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

The same thing should apply to Ivo Andrić - a Croat (majorily considered as a Serb) HolyRomanEmperor 15:13, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

user:Elephantus claimed that the name Serbs was used exclusivly for adherents of Eastern Orthodoxy. This is highly incorrect. The Lower Dalmatians were generally considered as Serbs until the first half of the XX century. HolyRomanEmperor 20:03, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I believe that most Serbs believe that Ivan was Serb. Ten million people is hardly extremely small or vastly limited. Nikola 14:26, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Protection?

How would you people feel about protecting this page from changes for a while, so that you can work out your differences on the Talk page? I would like to see someone put this up on RfC too. At present, it just seems to be constantly reverted, and it has been going on for a while. — David Remahl 09:56, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Serbian

Here are the sources stating that he was a Serb:

• Marko Atlagic: Grbovi nekih srpskih plemickih porodica u Dubrovniku
• Srpstvo Dubrovnika
• Serbian noble families of Dubrovnik
• Momcilo Ivanic, O Ivanu Gundulicu kao srpskom pjesniku, Nastavnik, knj. 4, str. 5, Belgrade, 1893.
• Marko Car, Ivan Gundulic, Letopis Matice srpske, knj. 350, Novi Sad, 1938, str. 45.
• Mitovic Jeremija, Sukob Srba i Hrvata prilikom otkrivanja spomenika Gundulicu 1893. u Dubrovniku, Zbornik O Srbima u Hrvatskoj, 1991, sv. 2, str. 195
• Ivan Gundulich in Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911
• Ivan Gundulich in the Online Edition Encyclopedia Britannia
• Serbs in Croatia
• [7]
• 100 most famous Serbs, Belgrade, 2002.

As can be seen on [www.rastko.org.yu the Serbian Cultural Centre] and several other sources, he wrote about the Serbian culture and history a lot (mentioning in his poems that Alexander the Great was a Serb, and magnifying the fall of the "Infidel Emperor" in the Battle of Kossovo, as well as calling the Polish king to liberate those holy lands from the Ottomans); although this has no connection to his ethnicity; it should be included. HolyRomanEmperor 11:54, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Voting

Vote here if you agree with adding Serbian by stating Support/Oppose following a short comment explaining why you voted.

Supporting

1. Support. I stated all the sources and info. HolyRomanEmperor 11:57, 3 December 2005 (UTC) (vote like this)
2. Support I agree with the upper-mentioned --Jovanvb 12:00, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
3. Support I agree -- Obradović Goran (ta^lk 13:00, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
4. In principle, voting should not be used to determine content of articles (it should be used mostly for organisational problems and the like). Having said that, I support that we use references we used in the article, as I find them credible, and from there this logically follows. Nikola 21:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Comments regarding the voting

Here you can open the discussion regarding your votes and/or verifying various sources. HolyRomanEmperor 11:58, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Serb or Croat

I think that Ivan Gundulić was not either Serb or Croat, but Dubrovinian (Dubrovčanin). In that time, people of Dubrovnik were separate independent nation, thus not Serbs or Croats. Since Dubrovnik is now part of Croatia, it would be more correct to say that he was Croatian than Serbian poet, but as I said, both claims would be essentially wrong, since Dubrovinians were separate nation in the past (Today they are part of Croats, of course). PANONIAN (talk) 13:49, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Why not yugoslav? User:Bonaparte

In the US at least, Yugoslav means a political affiliation (relating to the 20th century state of Yugoslavia), as opposed to an ethnic group (like Slovenian, Serbian, or Croatian). A similar example would be "Czechoslovak" meaning something from the state of Czechoslovakia, not someone of a Czechoslovak ethnicity (in comparison to Czech, Moravian, or Slovak). Regardless, using the term Yugoslav to refer to Gundulić is anachronistic. During the time he lived, would he rather have been referred to simply as a Ragusan? Olessi 18:21, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

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Yes, that is what I said: Dubrovinian or Ragusan (two names with same meaning). PANONIAN (talk) 21:42, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Actually, even Serbian sources prior to 1990 and the resurgence of Greater Serbian nationalism which happened at that time _don't_ really consider him a Serbian author: such is the case with the two general histories of Serbian literature available on-line at Project Rastko and created before 1990, both written by Serbs (Jovan Deretić and Milorad Pavić). He is considered a Croatian author (and his works included in Croatian literature) by reference works such as the latest editon of Encyclopedia Britannica, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and Microsoft Encarta. Should Wikipedia be used as a vehicle for spreading this kind of thing? IMHO, no. --Elephantus 01:32, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm with Elephantus here; claims on his Serb ethnicity (based on his ethnic origin?) look very weak to me -- sort of eugenics theories. Panonian has a point though, that Ragusans probably did not associate themselves with Croats at the time as well (when nations in today's sense barely existed), but they posthumously got associated with Croatian corpus with unification and later "by extension". It's questionnable what they would have told about it, but there's no way to ask them. Nevertheless, the article in its current state is fairly OK on the issue IMO. Duja 10:59, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

AFAIK, unlike with Bošković, no actual claims of Serb ethnicity or ancestry are made about Gundulić. --Elephantus 23:44, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Except that there are eleven on this very talk page. Nikola 07:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, but claims about his Croatian ancestry are even weaker. So we can put either both Croatian and Serbian or just Ragusian. HolyRomanEmperor 11:37, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

"100 most famous Serbs"?

The mention of the book '100 most famous Serbs' should probably be removed from this article. Here's a link to a review of the book by Gojko Nikoliš, a doctor and a high-ranked communist politician who was apparently one of the few Serbian public figures to stand up to growing nationalism of the early 1990's: here. He clearly states that both Gundulić and Ruđer Bošković shouldn't have been included in the book because they weren't Serbs. Despite taking the dubious story of the conversion of Bošković's father for granted, Nikoliš points out that it wasn't reason enough to include him in the book. Here are the most important parts:

A careful reader of the book will notice that the editorial board and the authors of the biographies did not always manage to avoid traps. For example, important figures who are not Serbs have been included in the book (Rudjer Boskovic and Ivan Dzivo Gundulic).

...

[after the discussion of the Bošković claim]...It is even less clear why Ivan Dzivo Gundulic has been included in the book. It is true that he was a poet with very deep feelings for the Slav and Yugoslav idea, but this is not enough to consider him a Serb.

...

Once we have allowed ourselves to be led by such reasons, there are no limits to the greedy appropriation of a cultural heritage which does not belong to the Serbs and Serbia, and never did. An ideological analogy with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's "liberating" strategy in Bosnia-Herzegovina comes to mind.

--Elephantus 23:02, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

"High-ranked communist politician" - you said it all. I agree however that the book is not too important. Nikola 09:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Mediation?

I've been silently watching the revert war over this article, Rudjer Boscovich and List of Serbs for few months. I know you people just sit over there and revert the article when it appears in your watchlists, but that's not the way to do it. May I remind you to WP:Consensus? Duja 13:22, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Since the compromise apparently cannot be reached by means of article talk (abandoned long time ago), I suggest to present the case to the mediation commitee. On one side would be Zmaj and Elephantus, and Nikola and Pannonian or HolyRomanEmperor. Is that OK? Duja 13:22, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Gondola was a Ragusan man

I found the article House of Gondola that mostly talks about Ivan Gundulić and his nationalty. It seems to take a side in the dispute whether he was Serbian or Croatian; I know nothing about that, but wanted to bring the article to the attention of editors here. Kusma (討論) 16:46, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

In the old Republic of Ragusa, the people spoke ITALIAN language and the dialect was a dalmatic (extint), derived of the romance language (latin) and the origin of the Gondola family, was a italian and dalmatic gen, the other discussion of, than is croats and servs, is a political new stuff (modern), Ragusa was still independent, without croats and serbs national fights.

Serbian misappropriations

Well, let's see what the entire mess is about.

1. a few (not all!) Serbian users seem to be obsessed with everything Croatian, from medieval history, art and literature to the language, recent wars & political figures-even Croatian tourism. This obsesion is not, as far as I can see, reciprocated. Croatian users generally don't care about Serbian history, culture or geography. They simply don't know much about it (ca. 70 ys of common life in ex-Yugoslavia hadn't left much knowledge about our neighbors) and, what is more important- do not even presume to interfere in the matters of a neighboring nation.

2. so, why this constant Serbian Croatomania ? Why this perpetual obsession ? It would take too much time to delve into the abovementioned disputed subjects, from one to another. So, let's address the Gundulić issue:

3. Ivan Gundulić's (as well as other Ragusan Renaissance, Baroque and Classicist writers's and philologists's heritage) is central to the codification of modern standard Croatian language. Gundulić's fame has waned from the peak in 1840s and 1850s during Illyrian movement near-deification of the poet, but he remains one of the most important Croatian pre-Illyrian writers, along with Marko Marulić and Marin Držić. And, this is a fatal blow to the mythology of Serbianization of Croatian cultural heritage that had begun with the muddles & distortions of early Slavic studies (Jan Dobrovsky, Pavel Šafařik, Franc Miklošič,..) and reached the peak with the ideology of national-dialectal pan-Serbism of Vuk Karadžić. Those knowledgeable with Croatian, may see an analysis and presentation of this stuff on Croatian wiki articles http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srpskohrvatski_jezik_%28povijest%29 & http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rekli_su_o_hrvatskom_jeziku. Essentially, since Serbian langauge does not have a recorded history of literary and philological works in the vernacular-unlike Croatian- Serbian ideologues still try, as much as they can, to assert "Serbdom" of Croatian linguistic heritage in the 1500s, 1600s and 1700s, written in the Shtokavian vernacular. There are no arguments in favor of this claim-just a muddle of hearsay, hints and array of distortions. For instance, Serbian linguists carefully avoid the mention of two most important early štokavian philologists, Bartol Kašić (author of the first, štokavian-čakavian grammar, dating back to 1604. and a 1599. manuscript dictionary-available for search at http://crodip.ffzg.hr/default_e.aspx, as well as Mikalja's 25.000 entries dictionary from 1651.-http://www.ihjj.hr/Projekti.aspx (English in the right upper corner, Mikalja's dictionary). They know that these works, actually more important for the description and prescription of Croatian and, partially, Serbian language are unknown to their general reading public-unlike Gundulić. So, the myth about Serbian affiliation of Štokavian vernacular production from 1500s on is easily refutable and refuted on philological and historically-cultural ground. Gundulić, who is just one writer in the corpus of Dalmatian and Dubrovnik literary and philological heritage from 1500s to 1800s, is thus artificially pulled out the entire cultural matrix he belonged to. There was just one instance of Gundulić's entry into Serbian cultural circle before the mid-19th century wave of misappropriations: it was a translation of Gundulić's epic "Osman" into Serbian-Slavic, made by one Jevta Popović, and published in Budim in 1826. as "Collected works of Jevta Popović" ! Gundulić has no place in Serbian culture, is not listed in corpora of the Serbian literature (for instance, even flawed Serbian corpus avoids Croatian Rennaisance and Baroque writing: http://www.serbian-corpus.edu.yu/ns/sample/esample.html) and it is, among respectable sources, only on English wikipedia that 150 or so ys old expansionist political ideology of Greater Serbia in linguistic and cultural disguise finds a place under the sun. Mir Harven 20:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)