Dragotin Kette

Dragotin Kette
Kette by Ivan Vavpotič (1932)
Born	(1876-01-19)January 19, 1876 Prem near Ilirska Bistrica, Duchy of Carniola, Austria-Hungary (now in Slovenia)
Died	April 26, 1899(1899-04-26) Ljubljana, Duchy of Carniola, Austria-Hungary (now in Slovenia)
Occupation	Poet
Literary movement	Fin de siecle, Neo-romanticism

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 the founder of modernism in Slovene literature.

Kette was born in the 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 in the State Secondary School in Ljubljana. In 1894, his maternal uncle, Janez Valenčič, who was paying for Kette's scholarship, withdrew his financial support because Kette published some satirical verses about the bishop of Ljubljana Jakob Missia in the student paper. Kette had to continue his studies in Novo Mesto, where he passed his high-school leaving 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 writers Ivan Cankar, Oton Župančič, and Josip Murn, who were introducing modernist elements into Slovene literature.

After graduating from high school, 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 flophouse on the banks of the Ljubljanica River (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 tended by his close friend Josip Murn, who died two years later in the same bed.