Croatia [antikvár]

Zelenjak nearby Klanjec, a monument to the Croatian national anthem on the site which inspired its composer Antun Mihanovic Left: Velebit, the stream PaklenicaWhen at the dawn of Croatian Romanticism the poet Antun Mihanovic wrote his poem Croatian Homeland which, amongst other Illyrian patriotic songs, was published in 1835 in the famous journal Danica it was even then recognized as a wholly singular expression of love of country and patriotism. In its originally seven two stanza fragments, instead of the then usual bombastic style, the poem succeeded, in a poetically convincing and Romantically exalted manner, to condense the sense of the natural beauty and the diversity of the homeland and in its verses to conjure up the mentality and describe the habits of the poet's people. As an authentic and harmonious work of art, integral in its conception, with a fine rhythm and with its powerful sound patterns, the poem is simultaneously both poetically gentle, resolute and solemn. Powerful and suggestive in its recitation, since its first publication the poem has had a huge public. In 1846 the young cadet of the lO"1 border infantry regiment Josip Run-janin composed the music to accompany its verse. At the beginning of the 1860s the poem was harmonized for a men's choir and it became exceptionally popular. During the competition held at the large exhibition of the Croatian-Slavonian Economic Society in Zagreb in 1891,under the title "Our Beautiful Homeland" the poem was proclaimed by a largemajority the Croatian national anthem. Exactly a hundred years later, in the year when the Croatian state gained independence, it finally became the official national anthem.Why this account of the anthem in the introduction to this kind of text? We mention the anthem because within the context of the time when it was written it expressed in succinct form, better than any other literary artifact, the essence of the Croatian land, its people and its history. It needs to be said that not many European nations possess a solemn song which, without battle cries or the flatulent rhetoric referring to ruler and state, with such sincere exultation celebrates the beauty and the diversity of the homeland, gently addresses it as "dear" and with an emphatic love speaks of the zeal and the habits of its people. Amongst the people "Our Beautiful Land" has become so popular that in everyday conversation it has become a synonym for Croatia itself.That Croatia is truly a country of exceptional natural beauty, possessing a rich heritage, can be established by anyone who has attempted to know it in the abundance of its exceptional diversity. This includes its rich geographical morphology, the lushness, variety and the many specific rarities of its vegetation and animal life, the monuments of human habitation stretching from the earliest periods up to contemporary