Koraljna vrata

The novel Koraljna vrata (first published in 1990) encourages a look in the literary-historical rear-view mirror. With this novel, the baroque epic is sewn into contemporary Croatian literature. Pavličić's 13th novel in a row is written in 20 chapters. Gundulić's Osman was sung in 20 cantos. The novel Koraljna vrata begins with the moment when the philologist Krsto Brodnjak, at the age of 33 (!), and in search of undiscovered manuscripts of older Croatian literature, arrives on the island of Lastovo. The discovery of the lost parts of Osman is connected with the disruption of the relationship between good and evil.

The reader is drawn into the story as if he himself, like Brodnjak, fell into the emptiness of the epic. And that is the most that a writer can achieve with his text.

The novel was written in the summer of 1989, the year of the great anniversary of Ivan Gundulić (1589 – 1638). In the same year, Pavao Pavličić gave a lecture entitled The Letters of Osman at the Gundulić Conference. This text, and how useful it is for interpreting and evaluating the novel, is being published for the first time with Koraljna vrata.