Dragotin Kette

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. 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 whe... more

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. 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... less