Josip Bersa’s »Sonetti uaratini«

Abstract

Josip Bersa wrote collection Sonetti zaratini using the dialect of Zadar. In the 58 sonnets that make up the collection, Ihe poet abandons the cosmopolitan sphere and comes down to earth among his lellow citizens, rejecting the hovering in space, skyclimbing and the sighing alter chimeras which characterized the collection Pjesme that appeared in Croatian eleven years earlier. impressed by the fact that the respectable archeologist, historian ol art and established writer assumed a fictitious name and chose the dialect ol Zadar as his literary mode of expression, the author examines the motives treated by the poet, the linguistic resources he used, the contents that filled out his poems, hut before all, the reasons for his orientation. The analysis of the sonnets enforces the claim that Josip Bersa decided to use the lively dialectical word in order to find Inspiration and poetic motives in everyday occurren- ces, in the swarming city and in transient encounters. The street offers him spectacles, insights into human behaviour, social differences, moral transgressions, etc. He follows his fellow-citizens on their walks, into their homes from which there come echoes of their speech. He depicts most of them as they pass, with the speed they move at. This procedure permits him to socially differentiate, helps him to perceive the threats to the moral unity of man and society, and especially the threat to the family. The threats come from the civilization encroaching from the West. Using a method that reminds one of the verlsts he does not bypass the truth. He represents it in fragments, sketches, jokes that do not allow the poet to have free course, to add lyrical elements to the narrative-descriptive ones, to resort to stylistic or aesthetic effects. He thought it most important to justify the motive he was working on naturally and without polish, to justify the things he wanted to express, the images and scens he intended to represent. The dialectal expression, although essentially poor with an accentuated local colour, reached icasmic power, permeated by plebean humour and a thought-out irony. In conclusion it is stated that the aesthetic merit of the collection Sonetti zaratini is restricted by space, time and the dialect itself. Because simplicity, immediacy and frankness, a critical spirit and devotion to the ideal coexist in the poet, Josip Bersa’s sonnets represent a credible testimony about a decisive period when Zadar made strides to catch up with the technical and cultural achievements of the large cities: the value of the sonnets consists in this.