Original scientific paper
Odiljam se and the Tradition of the Dipartita
Tomislav Bogdan
orcid.org/0000-0003-3353-6509
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
The anonymous love poem Odiljam se from the Nikša Ranjina Miscellany is one of the best-known lyrical poems in older Croatian literature. It is written down in the first, the older, part of the Miscellany and belongs among the oldest strata of the Dubrovnik Renaissance lyric poetry. It seems to have been written at the end of the 15th or in the very beginning of the 16th century. In the poem an enamoured man addresses his lady, bidding her farewell prior to departing on a long journey. Since the poem stages an attempt to maintain a liaison already established, which might be broken off only because of outside circumstances, it is clear that Odiljam se is not a Petrarchan poem of unrequited love. The following opinions about the poem have long prevailed in the scholarship: a) the writing was powerfully influenced by the folk lyric, its metre being a variant of the bugarštica verse form; b) the unknown author demonstrates his distinctive linguistic and expressive skill and competences; c) the poem is worthy of attention because of its concept of male and female relations, the concept which can be directly connected with the oldest traditions of European vernacular literature, primarily with the medieval crusader lyric. Zoran Kravar called into question some of these positions, and I have tried to reject all of them totally. First of all, I was interested in literary models that the unknown writer of this celebrated poem might have drawn on. I have endeavoured to show that its creation could more reasonably be connected with Italian poetry at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, particularly with courtly poetry and the tradition of the popular dipartita poems which develop the theme of lovers’ parting. The new reading of Odiljam se opens important questions for the study of early Dubrovnik Renaissance literature as a whole. What should be reconsidered is, firstly, the variety of amorous discourses that appear in our oldest authorial lyric poetry and their interrelations; secondly, possible performative nature of some texts from this body of poems; and thirdly, the role played by folk poetry or popular culture in its genesis. The new reading of Odiljam se also shows that is possible that the Dubrovnik poem was an adaptation of some Italian lyrical form that was intended to be performed to musical accompaniment.
Keywords
Odiljam se; Renaissance love lyric; Nikša Ranjina Miscellany; Italian courtly poetry; dipartita; Italian lyric forms intended for musical performance
Hrčak ID:
321708
URI
Publication date:
25.10.2024.
Visits: 0 *