What do Croatian Poets Write about when They Write about Their Country?

Sa？etak Croatian patriotic poetry is an expression of historical fate of the Croatian people. Therein lie the voices of the homeland’s beauties, folk justice, great and little men and their life events, not forgetting the pictures of destroyed cities, burnt homes, ruined palaces, in words: the pictures of its historical duration and destiny, irrespective of the momentary aesthetic challenges and moods of a single name and possibilities of the language to express it. Their common impression of the homeland is gathered in a ‘ship that shall not sink’ because thanks to the power of its spirit and genius it has found its place among the stars’, which will direct its sailing from an uncertain past and difficult reality towards a happier and safer future, with the pledge consisting in values legitimized by the community’s deepest identity, such as bravery, heroism, reliability, loyalty, hospitability, godliness, religion, friendship and similar. Each of the listed attributions of the Croatian poetry has numerous examples of poems and poetic images whose frequency speak for the deep connection of the Croatian man with his country. Greater structures are intertwined with the power of core characters, showing their referentiality when observed within the speech of more frequent literary topoi, metaphors, poetic images and motives. Among those with the highest frequency stands out a motive/symbol of the country (sea, mountains, lands, lands, landscapes, places…), followed by the metaphor of a small nation with great history, a metaphor of long centuries of unfortunate past and devastated lands (devastated and wounded, weeping Croatia), then the figure/metaphor of the opponent (the Ottomans, Venetians, Habsburgs, Germans, individuals/’others’), metaphor of great men, heroes and national victims, the topos/metaphor of the Christian affiliation to Europe and its reluctance to ‘our cause’ (bulwark of Christianity); followed by the figure of an ‘unfortunate people’ (refugees, immigration/foreign countries, war camps, displaces persons, prisons, political emigration), topos of the ‘holy places’ (torment, shrines, scaffolds, execution grounds…), figure/metaphor of the language etc