Author(s): Nataša Gavrilović / Language(s): Serbian
Issue: 3/2023
The Yugoslavian Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić, an author with strong ties to Italian literature and culture, has left indelible traces and testimonies of his both direct and indirect encounters with the Apennine Peninsula, during his diplomatic voyages and in his many readings of Italian authors. Arguably the most important of these encounters is the translation of Guicciardini’s Ricordi, not finished and published posthumously by Nikša Stipčević. Analysis of Andrić’s translation in terms of language, style and precision, while also taking into account his preparatory notes and readings, shows the translator’s profound interest in and in-depth examination of Guicciardini’s philosophical, ethical and political thought. Namely, the main principle of the Florentine’s “poetics” is clarity of thought, which naturally implies clarity of language and style. Therefore, Guicciardini’s complex syntax, i.e. periods including many dependent clauses, is the embodiment of equally complex thought, dialectic and problematizing, of his philosophical-ethical system. Furthermore, another stylistic device is used by Guicciardini to problematize and relativize his fragments and therefore the system beyond them – synonymic pairs (dittologie). This device is typical of the Italian lyric tradition from its origin, where it has an expressive and rhythmical role, mostly formed by adjectives. In his prose, Guicciardini assigns this figure another, philosophical value, crucial to his philosophical-ethical system. In the bibliography on Guicciardini’s language and style, dittologie have already been identified as one of the distinctive characteristics of his work (the most important studies on this subject being the ones by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo). Just as syntactic complexity reflects complexity of thought on which every fragment is based, where exceptions are even more important than “rules,” the role of these pairs is to relativize every concept, by adding another synonym that completes it and gives it another meaning (one of the most famous examples from Ricordi, on which Guicciardini’s entire ethics is based, is onore e utile, honour and utility). The present paper focuses primarily on analyzing this stylistic figure in the translation, since it seems that Andrić fully realized its particular role in Ricordi’s system. Namely, not only did he translate the pairs whenever they appeared in the original, but he himself also created a number of them where he thought that one word wasn’t enough to explain some of Guicciardini’s complex concepts. Moreover, this device, used in Guicciardini’s manner became a typical feature of Andrić’s own prose, especially in his fragmentary short prose, Signs by the Roadside, to which he dedicated his entire life. Not typical of the Serbo-Croatian literary tradition, synonymic pairs may be a trace of Andrić’s encounter with Guicciardini’s prose and they may have also contributed to the calm rhythm of the famous “Andrićesque phrase,” the main literary model for Yugoslavian literature after the Second World War.
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