Nikola Nalješković

Nikola Nalješković (around 1500, Dubrovnik - 1587, Dubrovnik) was a Croatian poet, playwright and scholar. He wrote poetry, romantic canzones, masques (carnival songs), epistles, pastoral plays, mythological plays, farce, comedy and drama with features of Plautine erudite comedy and Roman mime. His dramatic works include lascivious and vulgar themes.

Biography

Born a commoner from a family of merchants and scientists, after attending graduate school in Dubrovnik and a financially unsuccessful commercial career which left him bankrupt, Nalješković worked as a scribe, chancellor and surveyor.

In his later years, he engaged in astronomy and mathematics. He was asked by Rome to give his opinion on the reform of the calendar which Pope Gregory XIII was preparing the debate (Dialogo sopra la sphere del mondo). Due to his age, Nalješković was unable to travel to Rome, but he sent his written support for the leap year.[1]

Literary work

In the mid 16th century, Nalješković was the central personality in Croatian literature's first interlinked literary circle (with Mavro Vetranović, Ivan VIDALIćI, Peter Hektorović and Hydrangeas Bartučević). Poetically, and in terms of generation and value, he was located between Mavor Vetranović and Marin Držić. He is worthy of an aesthetically valuable place today for the genre diversity of his opus, in which the paradigms of mediaeval, Renaissance but also Mannerist poetics switched (the interlacement of privacy and publicity, physicality and spirituality, laughter and isolation, realism and sensualism, rationalism and sentimentality, death and joy).

Nalješković's works were printed in 1873 and 1876 in Stari pisci hrvatski (en: Old Croatian Writers). In the 1960s, the oldest known manuscript (from the 17th century) of all of this author's works was discovered. To this day, this manuscript has not been released. It is kept in the National and University Library of Zagreb.

In the history of Croatian literature, Nalješković is also notable because the language in which he penned his works was expressly called Croatian, and the Croatian name is emphasised relatively often ("Tim narod Hrvata vapije i viče" - "this nation of Croats cries and clamours").[2]

Poetry

In his romantic canzones (only just published in 1876, under the title Pjesni ljuvene), a kind of history of the poet's love in around 180 poems, a morally didactic tone was set from time to time, and a view of Dubrovnik's social life at the time was given, intertwining reflection and melancholia, pain in love and "general pessimism."

Nalješković probably wrote pjesni bogoljubne, i.e. religious, spiritual poetry, in his old age. Continuing the mediaeval tradition, the themes of Christian theology enriched the complex forms and meditative-reflective emphases in his poetry, as well as the extremely emotional attitudes of the lyrics' subject. The religious reflexivity of the individual verse subjects are characteristics of Renaissance poetics, while the motifs (Marian themes, and themes of passion), composition and language were influenced by mediaeval poetics. Nalješković's religious lyrics were associated with his piety, due to his membership of the Saint Anthony fraternity.

Epistles

Nalješković was the most prolific writer of epistles of the Croatian Renaissance. He wrote 37 epistles, which addressed friends and family (especially poets: Petar Hektorović, Nikola Dimitrović, Mavor Vetranović, Dinko Ranjina etc.) from Zadar to Dubrovnik. He also wrote to princes, as well as ecclesiastical and secular potentates. Besides exploring Croatian cultural history, Nalješković's epistles (written with doubly rhymed dodecasyllables or in octosyllable quatrains) were often tinged with a feeling of pain, thirst for peace and freedom and Croatian national pride, all in a laudatory tone, have substantial poetic value (elements of humour and satire).

Tombstones

Nalješković's tombstones were, in terms of genre and expression, close to epistles, apart from the odd single instance in which there was a motive for them to deal with universal content (the phenomenon of death).

Masques

Twelve of Nalješković's carnival songs (Pjesni od maskerate; the 9th, 4th and 7th masques were published in 1844 and 1858, and all of them in 1873) constituted complete masques. The first was a sort of prologue announcing the arrival of the company (composed of masked speakers of other songs: lovers, Latins, gypsies, shepherds, slaves). From the usual framework of carnival masque tradition, Nalješković's masques stood out for their risky carnival obscenity and erotic verbosity, reflecting the merry and lascivious Renaissance carnival atmosphere.

Drama

Comedies

Seven of the unaddressed stage work manuscripts, composed of a prologue and one act in verses, have been classed as comedies (they were printed for the first time in an issue of Stari pisci hrvatski). The first four comedies enter into the scope of the "pastoral" genre.

Komedija prva (the first comedy) dramatises typically pastoral themes, with some magical elements, reminiscent of Tasso's Aminta but also of Džore Držić's eclogue Radmio and Ljubimir, and the prophetic Tirena by Marin Držić. The allegoric, celebratory setting was dynamised by the alternation of realism and fantasy, lasciviousness and sentimentality, naturalism and humour.

Komedija druga (the second comedy), a mythological play, dramatises a motif of classical mythology which is known as the court of Paris. At its core, it is a wise judge of a dramatic story (three fairies quarrel over which of them an apple bearing the words "for the most beautiful" was left for, a pastor takes them to a judge, after the judgement the fairies run amok in the forest with the pastors) - a judge of peace and justice in the grove/Dubrovnik, who established a momentarily disturbed peace. (??)

Komedija treća (the third comedy) is, with regards to genre, a Croatian dramska robinja ('dramatic threnody'). The position of the fairy who laments, however, turns this pastoral dramatic threnody into a real scene play: agony and competition akin to a moreška between a satyr hunter (nature) and a seeker of youths (culture) [...] a kind of deux ex machina while freeing the slave-girl.

The unfinished Komedija četvrta (fourth comedy), a fragment of earlier texts on the topic of moreška, dramatises the theme of peace and freedom in the grove.

‘’Komedija peta’’ and ‘’Komedija šesta (the fifth and sixth comedies) are, with regards to gender, the first examples of farce in Croatian literature; both realistically show life in a Dubrovnik home, cultivating a theme of unfaithful men of [...]. They adjoin the tradition of Middle Age farce and ancient mime.

In Komedija šesta (published in 1873), one [...] farce of similar charge and relations to the fifth and reminiscent of French mediaeval farce, the plot entangles itself: a housemaid was smitten with the lord, but so was the midwife; having found this out, the woman pretends to be dead, and the priest calms the situation. The social criticism of this comedy was stronger; the language was more crude, and the situation harsher and more naturalistic.

Komedija sedma (the seventh comedy), a snippet of Dubrovnik life as well as a farce and divided into three acts, has some characteristics of Plautine erudite comedy and Roman mine (romantic intrigue). Based on real dialogues and concrete details, characters and images of Dubrovnik life, it is a kind of forerunner to Marin Držić's Dundo Maroje, but also Novela od Stanca.

Works

References

  1. ↑ Dadić 1988, p. 178.
  2. ↑ ↑ Hercegbosna.org Jezik, lingvistika i politika

Sources

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/21/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.