Nikola Nalješković
Nikola Nalješković (around 1500, Dubrovnik - 1587, Dubrovnik) was a Croatian poet, playwright and scientist. 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).
Creative works
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").[1]
Lyrics
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 researching 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).
References
- ↑ ↑ Hercegbosna.org Jezik, lingvistika i politika