FAMOUS CROATS, PETAR HEKTOROVI

Petar Hektorović (Petre), Croatian erudite and poet, was born between 18 February and 1 July 1487 in Stari Grad or Hvar on the island of Hvar as a descendant of a patrician family, the didići nobility class. He was probably educated at the Hvar Humanities School and continued his education with the Dominican Order in Split. Around 1520, he began to build Tvrdalj in Stari Grad, a palace-fortress with a park and a pond. He corresponded with dignitaries and humanist writers from Dubrovnik through Stari Grad and Hvar to Split, Trogir and Zadar. He traveled to Dubrovnik in 1557 to visit friends and was hosted by the poet Nikola Nalješković. He died in Stari Grad on 13 March 1572. He left the property to his natural daughter Margarita and distributed the movable property to the servants and the poor. He included literary texts in the epistolary framework as letters to friends. Among the translations, his work Knjiga Ovidijeva od lika ljubenoga (1528) stands out the most, and in its accompanying epistle he presents his views on translation. It is assumed that he wrote love poems in the first phase of his literary career, but his preserved work reveals a man who thought about the futility of worldly possessions and God's grace (Tombstone of Frane Hektorović, etc.). The famous book Fishing and Fishermen's Conversations (completed in 1556, printed in 1568) contains other literary forms in addition to the travel eclogue written in dodecasyllable. The building block of Fishing and Fishermen's Conversation is a real journey he took with fishermen Paskoje and Nikola from Stari Grad to Nečujam and back. Adhering to the principles of truthfulness and authenticity, he wrote down folk songs and other folklore forms (riddles, wise sayings, etc.) and stands out as the first recorder of folk songs and tunes. He also made a historically valuable description of the Tvrdalj Castle and its flora. He praised Marko Marulić in Fishing and Fishermen's Conversation, and with a trip to Dubrovnik and a prose letter to Mikša Pelegrinović (1557) he paid tribute to the culture and literature of the Croatian south and affirmed the idea of canons and classics, role models in the past and present. His immediate Chakavian expression and the directness of the description have a particular value: “We came to Zavala hunting, as if in a mirror, all at the bottom seeing.” In one record he left a testimony about the Croat migration to the Italian shores, from which descended the Croats from Molise. Hektorović's oeuvre is a prominent example of awareness of the value of “heritage”.