engleski

Dalmatia - Bettizaʼs lost homeland

The paper analyses the potential of Bettiza’s fiction for the development of Croatian and Italian cultural relations as well as tourist promotion of the Croatian historical region of Dalmatia. Particular attention is focused on the novel Exile, in which the author writes a family chronicle by evoking his Split roots. At the same time, he describes the atmosphere, customs and picturesque figures of Dalmatian towns in the interwar period, the encounter of Slavic and Roman culture, as well as the destiny of the Italian population there who, due to the turmoil of war and socialist revolution, decided to leave their homeland. Reception of Bettiza’s work, as an account of an individual history that is completely different from the written (national), the collective history, can positively affect the Italian perception of Dalmatia as a tourist destination, and it can improve the distorted image of Croats living there, which has been created for decades in Italy, through the activist action of extreme groups, therefore it can be of multiple use. Proving that not all Italians forcibly left their former homeland, but that a part of them left freely seeking a better life for themselves and their families not seeing any perspective in the upcoming communism, allows for the construction of bridges between Slavic and Roman culture, and an even better and more effective tourism promotion of this Croatian region in the context of Italian tourist interests. The research results show that the reception of Bettiza’s work may have a positive impact on the promotion of Dalmatia and may be used for that purpose.

Enzo Bettiza ; Dalmatia ; Split ; Zadar ; migrations ; tourism

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