| Dragotin Kette | |
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| Born | January 19, 1876 Prem near Ilirska Bistrica, Duchy of Carniola, Austria-Hungary (now in Slovenia) |
| Died | April 26, 1899 Ljubljana, Duchy of Carniola, Austria-Hungary (now in Slovenia) |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Literary movement | Fin de siecle, Neo-romanticism |
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Dragotin Kette (19 January 1876 - 26 April 1899) was a Slovene Impressionist and Neo-Romantic poet. Together with Josip Murn, Ivan Cankar and Oton Župančič, he is considered as the beginner of modernism in Slovene literature.
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Kette was born in a small village of Prem near the Carniolan town of Ilirska Bistrica, in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Slovenia). His father was a teacher and a choirmaster; his mother died when he was four years old. In 1898, he enrolled to the State Gymnasium in Ljubljana. In 1894, his maternal uncle, Janez Valenčič, who was paying for Kette's scholarship, withdrew his financial support, because Kette published some satyric verses on the bishop of Ljubljana Jakob Missia in the student paper. Kette had to continue his studies in Novo mesto, where he successfully passed his matura exam in 1898] In Novo mesto, he fell in love with the daughter of the district judge, Angela Smola, to whom he dedicated his most beautiful poems.
During his high school years, he became acquainted with the young authors Ivan Cankar, Oton Župančič and Josip Murn, who were introducing modernist elements in Slovene literature.
After finishing his high school studies, Kette was drafted by the Austro-Hungarian Army and sent to Trieste. In Trieste, he fell sick with tuberculosis and returned to Ljubljana, where he settled in a small room in a slum building on the banks of the river Ljubljanica (an abandoned sugar factory, known as Cukrarna). He died there in 1899, at the age of 23. In the last weeks of his life, he was catered by his close friend Josip Murn, who would die two years later on the same bed.
He is buried in the Žale cemetery in the Bežigrad district of Ljubljana.
Kette's poetry was influenced mostly by Slovene folk songs and by classical authors such as Goethe, Heine and Prešeren. Through his friends, he became acquainted with French symbolist and decadentist poets, particularly Paul Verlaine and Maurice Maeterlinck, but rejected them. He chose instead an original approach, similar to neo-romantic trends in fin-de-siecle Europe.
His most famous works include the lyrical impressionist poem Na trgu ("On the Square"), and a cycle of eight poems entitled Na Molu San Carlo ("On Saint Charles Pier") written in Trieste.
Kette is also famous as the author of popular children literature. He wrote around 25 tales and poems for children, with the most famous being, "The Tale of the Dressmaker and the Little Scissors", "The Sultan and the Doggy" and "The Bee and the Bumblebee". His children literature is still widely popular and it has been translated into German, Czech, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and Hungarian.
Contrary to his friend Josip Murn, Kette became an established poet already during his lifetime. His death was followed by a semi-official mourning and several public figures, such as the mayor of Ljubljana Ivan Hribar, participated in Kette's funeral. His collected poems were published in 1900, edited by Anton Aškerc, who was then considered the most important author in the Slovenian language, who had previously rejected Kette's poetry. Aškerc's condenscendingly patronizing preface to the edition was strongly criticized by Ivan Cankar and Oton Župančič, leding to a public dispute in which the young Slovenian writers challenged the esthetic standards of the older generations, represented by Aškerc. On the first anniversary of Kette's death, Ivan Cankar published an influential essay in his memory, which began with the words:
A year ago Dragotin Kette passed away in Ljubljana and some newspapers reported that we had lost a very talented poet. There were few who realized that the young man who had died was the biggest talent we have had since Prešeren.
Kette had an important influence on future generations of Slovenian authors, such as Alojz Gradnik, Srečko Kosovel, Miran Jarc, Ivan Minatti, Janez Menart, Kajetan Kovič and Ciril Zlobec.