Moja zemja – Pod U？kun: the literary motif and or symbol of the U？ka Mountain in the chakavian poetry of Drago Gervais

Sa？etak Drago Gervais (Opatija, 18 April 1904 – Se？ana, 1 July 1957) was a poet, prose writer, dramatist, essayist, feuilltonist, historian, culture and social professional, but above all, a patriot. His departure from Opatija, from his native Liburnia, the never-forgotten native region, remained as an eternal wound on his poetic heart. From his exile position, he started writing his Chakavian verses, which are considered anthological in Croatian literature. Gervais’s paradigmatic poem is Moja zemja (My Country), which was, in the original version (？akavski stihovi - Chakavian Verses), 1929), published in eight parts. The fifth part later gained its independence under the title Pod U？kun (Beneath the U？ka), which became accepted. This paper is an analysis of the integral original eight-part version of the poem and interprets its thematic, motivic, conceptual and symbolic elements which are, as the paper shows, fundamentally linked to the poetic and ethical topos of U？ka at multiple levels