Original scientific paper
The Verses of Rajmund Kunić on Rudjer Bošković
Ivica Martinović
; Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In order to praise his famous compariot Ruđer Bošković, the professor of mathematics at the Roman College and older Jesuit brother, the Croatian Latinist Rajmund Kunić chose three poetic genres: the translation of Italian jocose tristichs in Latin elegie distichs, elegy and epigram.
Bošković’s departure for London »with a peruke on his head« in 1760 inspired Cordara’s jocose poem which Kunić transformed into three Latin elegies under the common title Deficta coma P[atris] Rogerii Boscovichii (Osimo, 1792; Venice, 1805) and thus joined the tradition of jocose poetry in the community of Roman Jesuits. During the translation he used amplification so as to express his familiarity with astronomy and natural philosophy, approaching in these verses to didactic poetry.
Kunić also wrote three original elegies on Bošković, describing his renowned friend as a scientist as well as a poet. Bošković’s return to Rome in November 1763 inspired him to write the Catullian elegy Rogerio Boscovichio Societatis Jesu Romam redeunte which during Kunić’s life enjoyed numerous publications (Vienna, 1763; Trnava, 1763; Rome, 1768; Warsaw, 1771; Cremona, 1772; Vienna, 1784). At the end of his elegies Ad Joannem Baptistam Robertum S.J., first published in Warsaw in 1771, and Ad amicum, preserved within Mss 1156 in the Archives of the Friars Minor in Dubrovnik, Kunić elaborated the motive of the scientist who »discovers the arcana of the invisible nature«, aiming at the main achievements of Bošković’s natural philosophy.
There are six epigrams by Kunić that praise Bošković, published thanks to the editorial efforts of Rafo Radelja in 1827 in Dubrovnik. The editor Radelja sorted them in the cycles Votiva, Encomiastica and Sepulcralia et lugubria. Given that they mostly contain mourning verses »in sickness« or »in memory« of Ruđer Bošković, in one of them Kunić commented on his translation of Cordara’s poem on Bošković’s peruke. The motives of this group of Kunić’s epigrams are well complemented by those that were offered in Kunić’s elegies. It is possible, for example, to establish a link between the epigram written at the first news of Bošković’s illness in Constantinople and the paraphrase in Kunić’s later elegy inspired by Bošković’s return to Rome, or between the elegy with which he translated the jocose Cordara’s capitolo and the epigram in which he evaluated the value of his and every other translation of poetry.
Beginning from 1764 to the beginning of the 19th century, Kunić’s verses on Bošković enjoyed a reception on several aesthetic and literary-historical levels: from paraphrases in Zamagna’s didactic epics Echo and Navis aëria to Paintner’s judgment of the verity and elegance of »the most tender elegy« on Bošković’s return to Rome, from culturological detail in Zamagna’s epistle to Petar Aletin to Mauro Boni’s praise of Kunić’s congenial translation of Cordara’s poem.
Keywords
Ruđer Bošković; Rajmund Kunić; jocose poem; elegies; epigrams; aesthetics; Bernard Zamanja; Michael Paintner; Petar Aletin; Mauro Boni
Hrčak ID:
239916
URI
Publication date:
20.6.1996.
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