Izvorni znanstveni članak
Problems of Aesthetics and Poetics in Croatia in the Mid-19th Century
Zlatko Posavac
; Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Centar za povijesne znanosti, Odjel za povijest filozofije, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
In presentation of the title theme the author first points out that, in the study of aesthetics and art in Croatia in the 19th century, certain difficulties and errors have arisen due to a tendency to relate too literally the events in culture to the dates of sociopolitical history. So as well as summing up the results of all research conducted to date, there is a grave need for methodological innovation of the optics for considering the material. The poorly researched period of the 1850s and 1860s ought to be treated, in the author's opinion, within the horizon of the 19th century as a whole, and therefore, on the basis of historiographical results to date, and especially his own research, the author proposes the following periodization model adapted to the demands of what is known as the European context: Classicism (neo-Classicism) to 1830; Romanticism 1830-1850; Realism 1850-1870; Idealism and Naturalism 1870-1890 and the period of the Moderna (Sezession) 1890-1910.
During the gradual new-age disintegration of the world image within western European cultural history, pluralism, arose in the mid-19th century in the realm of the phenomenon of art, not diachronically, but synchronically. A principle issue is then posed; can this phenomenon be established, in Croatian cultural history as well? The complex of Romantic Classicism was on the wane at the end of the second third of the 19th century in Croatia, with yet vital components of Classicism and Romanticism, and the first hints of Protorealism and Realism. In the 1850s, a previously unknown (and unrecognized!) multiplication of direction appeared in Croatia in mid-century as historical reality and as a postulate of a necessary interpretative change in periodization, and it became possible to designate, in terms of the artistic directions, a pluralism in nuce. The fact of pluralism in Croatia is the beginning of the period of modernity, which ought to be distinguished, in terminology and qualification, from the broader and historically deeper »modern age« or more narrow and recent »modernism«, as well as from the Moderna (Sezession) at the turn of the 20th century.
The changes going on in the mid-19th century, neglected until now historiographically, are quite considerable. During the »Illyrian« period there is hardly any interest in aesthetic questions, while the period of the 1850s and 60s is quite richer in this respect: in the number of papers (though mostly compilations), as well as quite characteristic differences, in viewpoint. In short: Adolfo Veber-Tkalčević considers that art ought to idealize nature, Emanuel (Mane) Sladović contends that art can not compete with nature, but must strive around beauty like a sensory portrayal of the idea, Ivan Macun holds that art, ought to elevate us to higher spheres above the greyness of the everyday, while Ante Starčević, waving romantic fantasy aside, connects the activity of the heart and mind, bespeaking truth, nature and life, and in doing so, as in all his work, he motivates a conceptual climate of the course and development of Realism. But since aesthetic theses needn't necessarily correspond to artistic practise as proof of adequate phenomena of artistic reality, i. e. that really did exist, the spontaneous phenomena of Protorealism and Realism in literature are affirmed, (Starčević, Veber-Tkalčević, Jurković, Vodopić), as well as a shift towards the concept of Rea1ism in the writ1ngs by D. Demetar and J. Jurković. Demonstrating with the phenomenon of Realism that pluralism in Croatia in the mid-19th century also create s the structure of the age, the author contends that this awareness confirms the proposed periodization model, which then all together reflects, in a complex fashion, on the understanding of the 19th century in Croatia as a whole, relevant not only to interpretation of the field of aesthetics or literature, but to the theory and historiography of all the other branches of art.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
85899
URI
Datum izdavanja:
1.12.1986.
Posjeta: 1.738 *