How Zadar romantics translated Ignjat Đurđević

Abstract

In the mid 19th century Dalmatian and especially Zadar periodicals published, with romantic enthusiasm, many Italian translations of Croatian folk and authorial poetry. When we talk about translations of the then contemporary authorial poetry, it becomes obvious why learned Dalmatians wanted to join the global European atmosphere of revival, which would mainly link them to Zagreb Illyrian Movement. However, there were also translations of older Croatian poetry in the fore-mentioned periodicals, especially that of the Dubrovnik literary circle of the 16th and 17th century.Within the framework of this phenomenon, this paper deals with a contrastive analysis of two translations of the religious epic "Uzdasi Mandaljene pokornice u spilji od Marsilje" by Ignjat Đurđević (1675-1737) of Dubrovnik. Over a period of 18 years, this epic was translated and published in its entirety by Marko Antun Vidovich (Venice 1829) and only in part by Nikola Stipišić, whose translation was published by Ivan Franceschi in Zadar paper "La Dalmazia" in 1847. In its analysis, this paper has made an attempt to encompass both endogenous and exogenous reasons which might have stirred the interest of Dalmatian romantics in Croatian Renaissance and baroque poetry. Special attention was paid to the comparison of the two translations on all the linguistic levels, at the same time taking into account the fact that they were translations done by one experienced and ambitious translator (M. A. Vidovich) and an unknown literary amateur (N. Stipišić). The author of the paper also considers the fact that the older Vidovich was, if only in traces, influencedby the "la bella infedele" technique of translation, whereas the younger Stipišić was inclined towards the integral "la brutta fedele" type of translation.