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Humanist Literary Communication in the Manuscript Collection Varia Dalmatica (Codex Lucianus)
Neven Jovanović
orcid.org/0000-0002-9119-399X
; Filozofski akultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
Ninety-nine of the pieces in the MS collection Varia Dalmatica (Zadar, Science Library, shelf no. 253290, MS 617) were meant for local literary communication. All of the pieces were written up to January 1614, and transcribed by Petar Lucić from Trogir; four poems on his death were transcribed by his son Ivan, the future famed historian. The local literary communication pieces are mainly poems (just two are in prose). In all, they comprise 1336 verses: somewhat more than a third of the verses in the whole manuscript. There are eight poems with 30 or more verses, while the shortest are couplets – 12 of them; and the most common in the corpus are six-lined poems, of which there are 17. We know the names of 36 of the authors of these poems (three names remain unclear); seven poems are anonymous. The greatest number of authors are connected to Trogir (11) and Split (10), followed by Šibenik (5); also to be found are writers from Brač, Skradin and Kotor, while the origins of five of the authors have not been determined. The most frequent author in the corpus is Valerij Mazzarelli from Trogir, who contributed 7 poems. Then come Sabo Mladinić, Brač, and Martin Statilić, Trogir, each with six poems. Five texts each are contributed by Marko Marulić, Jerolim Martinčić and Nikola Alberti (Split), Ludovik Paskalić (Kotor), Frano Mužić (Šibenik). As for the groups or individuals who gave rise to the communication texts, there are 56 of them. Among them there are three groups of people and two generic addressees (reader and critic); 17 persons connected with writing and education; nine public officials (all Venetians); five church officials. There are four women, mostly from the Lucić family, all of them addressed in epitaphs. Like the authors, the addressees are mainly related to Trogir, Split and Šibenik. Fourteen are connected with Italy (counting in the Venetian officials). We meet one person each related to Zadar, Dubrovnik and Skradin. Fourteen cannot be connected with any particular place. Many addressees belong to the family, relatives or in-laws of Petar Lucić. Finally, in the list of addressees we can find ten persons also known as authors in the corpus (Trankvil Andreis, Frane Martinčić, Frane Božićević, Ivan Pridoević, Antun Vrančić, Grgur Kabalin, Chrysogonus, Marko Marulić, Petar Lucić, Valerij Mazzarelli; the last three authors are “addressees” also of epitaphs).
The poems of the communication corpus are most commonly epigrams (89 of the texts). Five are elegies, there is one long silva in hexameters (Paskalić’s De nemore Corytio, addressed to Emiliano Scheni of Piacenza), another long hexameter encomium (Frano Mužić’s to the rector of Trogir Alviz Barbari, of 1586-87) and one ode (an unknown author writes in honour of Trogir rector Franceso Quirino). The metrical repertoire is fairly restricted; mostly there are elegiac couplets (81 poems), then hexameters (11 poems), hendecasyllabics (3 poems), sapphics (2).
Most of the poems in the corpus were written on the occasion of someone’s demise: 56 epigrams and one elegy. The funerary epigrams can be divided in two groups. In one of them are the epitaphs – texts similar to inscriptions on tomb-stones, where authors use the conventions known from the tradition of the ancient epigram (address to the passing traveller, invocation to the grave, the motive of the urn or the tombstone, the fictional speech of the actual deceased, and deictic statements of the type “here lies…”). In the other group are poems “on the death of” someone, often expressly addressed to the mourners, sometimes conceived as consolations. Among the epitaphs there are even three epigrammatic compliments: Ivan Pridoević, addressing Frane Lukarević, father of the deceased Ivan, praises the epitaph of Valerij Mazzarelli in honour of the deceased. Mazzarelli replies with lauds on Pridoević’s epitaph on the same occasion. The same author compliments Pridoević one more time, commending his epitaph written on the death of Franciska Papalić.
The communication texts that are not epitaphs – the remaining third of the pieces in the corpus – are mainly panegyrics, sometimes connected with the political life of the community, particularly with important occasions like the coming of a new Venetian rector (proveditore). Ten of the pieces introduce other literary works, and five pieces are undoubtedly epistles. Two epigrams are recommendations of persons interested in the position of teacher in Trogir. Of the three satirical epigrams from the corpus, two are also connected to the school context.
The most frequent literary procedures in the corpus are etymological puns, exempla, exchanges of questions and answers, and conceits. In the etymological puns we see a particularly distinct feature of this corpus; the name or surname of the addressee (or the person the poem is about) is linked with some almost always positively connoted concept. Authors use such puns everywhere in the poems of our corpus, even in the epitaphs. Plays on words may seem to us unsuitable in the context of death, but in the world of Petar Lucić this may be a welcome signal that there is a deeper link between signified and signifier. The most common topoi in the epitaphs are grief, the next world, virtue, posthumous fame, general mortality (“we all have to die”). Then come the subject of the Muses, the contrast of heaven and earth, or spirit and body, and the interesting topos of the envious Parcae – they cut short somebody’s life because they envied the person.
The texts of “professional” writers, Marko Marulić and Ludovik Paskalić, stand out in length, content and occasion. In the second rank are Frane Mužić, Valerij Mazzarelli and Sabo Mladinić (whose consolatory epistle to his friend Petar Lucić stands out because of its intimate tone).
It is important to note what is missing from this corpus. There are hexameters and elegiac couplets, to a smaller extent hendecasyllabics and sapphics, but there are no iambs or other lyrical metres. There are epigrams to do with death, but none relating to birth and no epithalamia. There are texts related to serious events, but none connected with little everyday intimate moments (of the kind we know from the Glasgow Manuscript of Marulić’s Latin verses). The corpus abounds in encomia, we can find a few mild satires and elegiac complaints, but there is neither humour nor amorous verse.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
23914
URI
Datum izdavanja:
22.4.2008.
Posjeta: 2.617 *