Ivo Vojnović

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Ivo Vojnović also Conte Iván de Vojnovich (October 9, 1857 - August 30, 1929) was a writer from Dubrovnik. He is often nicknamed The last great Dubrovnik writer.

Ivo descends from the Vojnović house, the Užice counts in the Ottoman Empire. His ancestors Miloš and Vojin in 1699 handed over Trebinje and Popovo to the Venetian Republic, also attaining nobility and abandoning Serbian Orthodoxy in favor of Roman Catholicism.

Vojnović was born in Dubrovnik as the second son of Count Constantin de Vojnovich (1832-1903) and María de Serraglí (1836-1922) on 9 October 1857 in Dubrovnik, the Habsburg Monarchy. He inherited Catholic Christian faith from his mother and not from his Eastern Orthodox father (born Kosta Vojnović). The city of his birth and its rich history had an important influence on his later literary work. Most of his childhood however he spent in Split actually, where he met with Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. As a young man he moved to Zagreb where he attended the University of Zagreb (Faculty of Law).

Until 1884 he served as a trainee of the "Kings official desk" in Zagreb. After that he continued his judicial career in Križevci, Bjelovar, Zadar, Dubrovnik. His career as a judicial official ended when he was fired from the office in Supetar on the island of Brač. He then started to work in the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, where he worked for four years. In 1911 he became a professional writer and decided to travel around Italy, his literary sympathy and ideal.

Vojnović entered literature in 1880 when August Šenoa's Vienac published his short story Geranijum under the pseudonym Sergej P. Matica hrvatska under the leadership of Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski also published his novel's Perom i olovkom in (1884) and Ksanta (1888) under the same pseudonym.

Vojnović was the author of dramas of naturalistic cut, inspired by the literary and patriotic traditions of the Republic of Ragusa. He is best known for his Dubrovačka trilogija (Dubrovnik Trilogy, 1902 in Zagreb) - a trilogy in which he describes the fall of the Dubrovnik Republic. Some of his other known works are: Death of the Mother of the Jugović (1906) and Resurrection of Lazarus (1913). Also he is the author of psychological dramas like: Lady of the Sunflower (1912), and of pieces such as: Dance of Masks in the Attic (1922) which reflect the influence Pirandello's theater on Vojnović.

In 1914 upon his return to Dubrovnik during the politically fabricated mass-arrests across Austria-Hungary of Serb activists in the wake of WWI, Ivo was arrested too. After the war ended he moved to Belgrade,in 1924, he was elected into the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. where he in 1929 died completely blind and heavily stricken by sickness.