Slovenska Literatura (Aug 2002)
Agreement of poetics of the book of poems Básně Jána Kollára with the poetics of Book of Songs of Francesco Petrarca
Abstract
The study Agreement of poetics of the book of poems Básně Jána Kollára (The Poems of Ján Kollár) with the poetics of Book of Songs of Francesco Petrarca was written to the 700th birth anniversary of F. Petrarca and the 150th anniversary of the death of Ján Kollár. During his first staying in Jena Kollár got known the first German translation of Petrarca´s Canzionere. It resulted in his first collection of poems Básně (The Poems, 1821) which contains 86 sonnets. He put them later into his next work Slávy dcera (The Daughter of Sláva). The mentioned sonnets became a foundation of the latter book, they are ground of its modernistic aspects. While Petrarca in his poetry wanted to realise a thesis of early Christian philosopher Augustin about overcoming the life barriers in the life of a person in a way not to be a superman. That means he has to keep down his subjectivity in the sense of ontology. It is not possible in prayer, prose or other acts of interpretation. The only way for that was in poetry. According to Dotti´s opinion Petrarca´s poems in Canzionere are made in elegic mood. It was the attempt of the author to comfort himself as he cannot understand his life as a victorious battle. In the first 119 poems he proves his afflictions he suffers because his love to Laura was not positively answered. Poetry is his solution. It is not a full compensation for lost subjective feeling but it is the most adequate compensation from the aspect of Augustin´s demand. The insufficiency of poetry as a substitution of a subjective feeling of life fullness is a basement of modern understanding of poetry and modernism as a life feeling inspirational for generation of Romanticism. The study compares all 86 Kollár´s sonnets to relevant Petrarca´s ones from this point of view. Through his modern understanding of Petrarca Kollár made in world range a new type of literary continuance to the message of Petrarca. He also gave foundations of Slavonic interliterary communication as a very modern type of literary communication. The study maps renewing and restoring topos ,themes and means of expression in Kollar´s works – ways of expression.
