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Croatian Renaissance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2019
Extract
A number of recent publications by Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti (the Yugoslav Academy of Science and Arts, in Zagreb) calls attention to an important literary renaissance in Croatia during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Evidence of this renaissance is the considerable amount of writing done by Croatian poets, most of whom lived in the cities and islands of that narrow coastal strip in Dalmatia which had not been overrun by the Turks.
At present the Yugoslav Academy is engaged in printing the books of Neo-Latin humanist writers of Croatian origin. It is also making available photostatically reproduced texts of the most important authors who wrote in the national language.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1959
References
1 Cf. ‘Devedeset godina Jugoskvenske Akademije znanosti i umjetnosti’ by Dr. Andrija Štampar on the 90th anniversary of the Yugoslav Academy, in Politika, 18 March 1958, p. 17.
2 Pjesme i epigrami, p. xvi.
3 Typical of Česmički are his compact and very picturesque verses about the Bosnian landscape:
Pars fuit Illyrici, quam nunc vocat incola Bosnam,
Dura, sed argenti munere dives humus.
Non illic virides spacioso margine campi,
Nee sata qui multo foenore reddat ager.
Sed rigidi montes, sed saxa minantia coelo,
Castella et summis imposita alta jugis… .
Cf. Pjesme i epigrami, pp. 36 and 322. This same text was translated into English and published in the magazine Yugoslavia, in the issue devoted to Bosnia and Hercegovina (no. 7, 1953. P-3).
4 De origine successibusque Slavorum, pp. 41 and 58.
5 Poetici Lusus varii, p. 399 (editor's epilogue). The most interesting is his Epigram 68, In Grillum Dalmatam italizantem, from which I shall quote only the beginning and the end (p. 232):
Italus esse cupis, non es sed Dalmata, Grille,
Voce, animo, curis, gestibus, ore, gradu… .
O Venere invita prognate, quid ardua poscis
Quidve reluctantem pruris in Italiam?
Cur te ipsum et patriam dediscere, Grille, laboras,
Dum stulto satis est, si queat esse suus?
6 The Croatian writers August Šenoa and Josip Eugen Tomić read the Annuae before their publication and found in them the material for some of their historical novels.
7 The best study in English about Marko Marulić was written by Usmiani, Mirko, in Harvard Slavic Studies III (1957), pp. 1–48 Google Scholar.
8 Ibid., p. I.
9 Davidias (ed. Josip Badalić), p. 43.
10 Badalić, in Davidias, p. 9 and 228 (‘Comparationes autem et interpretationes nominum personarum earumque actionum, quibus in explicatione alegorica poeta usus est, non semper cum vera catholicae fidei doctrina congruunt, immo vero ab ea discrepant’).
11 Badalić, in Davidias, p. 7.
12 Recently Professor Miroslav Marković has published another edition of Davidias (University of Mérida, Venezuela), based on a different manuscript, also from Turin, which he claims to be closer to Marulić's original than that used by Badalić (cf. Croatia Press, New York, 1958, no. 3, p. 7).
13 Zbornik Marka Marulića, p. 28 ff.
14 Marulić led a solitary life and encouraged some of his friends to follow his example. Here is one of his shorter Latin poems (Zbornik, p. 10):
Quaeris cur conjunx quae te dilexerat olim
Nunc fugit et duris litibus exagitat.
Verius haud quicquam possum tibi dicere, Marce:
Dilexit iuvenem, nunc fugit ilia senem.
Omnibus hoc vitium est miseros odere maritos,
Aetas longa quibus languida membra facit.
Vis tu pace frui, cum sit tibi Candida barba,
I procul, atque alio vivere discere loco.
15 Cf. St. Zimmermann, ‘Juraj Dragisić (Georgius Benignus de Salviatis) kao filozof humanizma’, Rad 227 (1923), 59-79. Also Kombol, Mihovil, Poviest hrvatske književnosti (History of Croatian literature) (Zagreb, 1945), p. 70 ffGoogle Scholar.
16 Korbler, Dj., ‘Jakov Bunić dubrovčanin, latinski pjesnik’, Rad 180 (1910), 58–134 Google Scholar.
17 Rački, Fr., ‘Iz djela E. L. Crijevića dubrovčanina’, Starine IV (1872), 155–200 Google Scholar; N. Sola, ‘Aelii Lampridii Cervini operum latinorum pars prior’, Archivio storico per la Dalmazia, XVI-XIX.
18 Šišgorić's De situ Illyriae et civitate Sibenici a. 1487, was published by Šrepel, M. in Gradja za pouijest književonsti hruatske 11 (1899), 1–12 Google Scholar. In his extremely interesting last chapter (‘De moribus quibusdam Sibenici’), appears this sentence concerning folk love poems: ‘Petulans deinde iuventus, cupidinibusque capta, voce valens amatorium carmen tale noctu decantant quale vix cultus Tibullus aut blandus Propertius aut lascivus Licoridis Gallus aut Lesbia Sappho decantaret’ (in Gradja II, 11).
19 In the same chapter about popular customs, Šišgorić declares: ‘Siquidem proverbiis Illyricis utuntur, quae nos dicteria diximus, et ex lingua vernacula in latinum vertimus.’ It is a pity that this unique translation is lost.
20 Kombol, , Poviest hrvatske knjivevnosti, p. 60 Google Scholar.
21 The poems of Djore Držić were twice published (1870 and 1937) in the collection Start Pisci Hrvatski with comments by such outstanding scholars as Jagić, Vatroslav and Rešetar, Milan. Cf. also Dragoljub Pavlović, Dubrovačka poezija, 2d ed. (Belgrade, 1956), pp. 57–59 Google Scholar.
22 Pavlović, , Dubrovačka poezija, pp. 60–62, 193-198Google Scholar.
23 Barac, Antun, A History of Yugoslav Literature (Belgrade, 1955), pp. 29 Google Scholar ff.; Subotic, Dragutin, Yugoslav Popular Ballads (Cambridge, 1932), p. 147 Google Scholar; Murko, Matija, Tragom srpsko-hrvatske narodne epike (Zagreb, 1951)Google Scholar, passim; and Munro, H. and Kershaw Chadwick, N., The Growth of Literature (Cambridge, 1936), II, 300 Google Scholar: ‘The oldest texts of oral poetry which have been preserved are two heroic poems included in Petar Hektorović's Ribanje (Fishing), written in 1556, which the author states that he had heard from the fishermen in the island of Hvar.’
24 Kombol, , Poviest hrvatske književnosti, pp. 129–134 Google Scholar; Ježić, Slavko, Htvatska književnost (Zagreb, 1944), pp. 86–89 Google Scholar; Vj. Stefanić, Planine (Zagreb, 1942), ‘Introduction’.