Jacopo Sannazaro

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Titian : Jacopo Sannazaro

Jacopo Sannazaro (born July 28, 1458 in Naples ; † August 6, 1530 there ) was one of the leading poets of Renaissance humanism . Until his exile in 1501, he wrote his highly influential works, which were read all over Europe, in Italian and Latin , then only in Latin.

Life

Jacopo Sannazaro was born on July 28, 1458 in Naples. After the early death of his father, he grew up with his mother in San Cipriano Picentino . He then returned to Naples in 1474, attended the university there and completed his education at the Accademia Pontaniana of Giovanni Pontano , which he entered in 1478 and where he took the poet's name " Actius Sincerus ". Dialog Actius , written by Pontano in 1499 , identifies his student Sannazaro as a special authority on the works of Virgil . Sannazaro is also reported to have celebrated October 15, Virgil's birthday, with special celebrations. With his poems, Sannazaro also drew the attention of King Ferdinand of Naples and his sons Alfons and Friedrich, and in the role of secretary he became their friend on their travels and campaigns. When Frederick I ascended the throne in 1496, he gave the poet the Villa Mergellina on the western outskirts of Naples. When he had to leave his empire in 1501, Sannazaro followed his patron into exile in France and did not return to Naples until 1505 after Frederick's death (1504). As before his exile, Sannazaro was an important figure in the literary and court circles of Naples. He also stayed in the vicinity of the Accademia Pontaniana and became its director after the death of Pietro Summonte (1463-1526). Sannazaro died in Naples on August 6, 1530. His grave is in the church of Santa Maria del Parto , which Sannazaro had built not far from his Villa Mergellina near the grave of his constant poet, Virgil.

Works

Sannazaro's handwriting, here from his careful copy (approx. 1501–1503) of late antique poems and the Pervigilium Veneris

Following on from ancient models, Sannazaro gives a poetologically thought-out and constructed overview of his entire oeuvre in a very late, autobiographical elegy to Cassandra Marchese (Elegia 3.2).

His fame as a poet in the Italian language is based on the extensive pastoral romance Arcadia , which is considered the most excellent bucolic poetry of the Italians and will remain the generic model of erotic shepherd poetry throughout Europe for generations. Sannazaro had been working on this prosimetric (see Prosimetrum ), ie, poetry consisting of prose and verse , since the 1580s , which was first reprinted in Venice in 1504 and there in 1514 in a strongly corrected version. Sannazaro's other Italian poems, consisting of sonnets and canzons, are among the models recognized by the Academy of Crusca because of the purity of their language . A complete edition of his Italian works was published in Padua in 1723.

Sannazaro enjoyed the highest reputation as a poet in neo-Latin literature at the latest when, in May 1526, five works, finely honed over many years, appeared in one fell swoop. It is preceded by his Kleinepos De partu Virginis (“On the Birth of the Virgin”), which is in the tradition of the Biblical epic and characterized by intense reception by Virgil , which consists of no more than 1500 verses and on which he has worked for more than twenty years . Contemporaries, but also later ones, appreciate this biblical epic, "a masterful epyllion", as a piece of excellence in religious poetry of Renaissance humanism and count it among the most outstanding Renaissance Latin works of all. Hardly less attention was paid to the five Eclogae piscatoriae (fishermen eclogues) Sannazaros, published in 1526 together with De partu virginis , in which fishermen (from the Bay of Naples) did not appear as the main characters according to the previous genus tradition, but now also fishermen (from the Bay of Naples). The 113-verse poem Salices (pastures), based on the representations of Virgil and Ovid, addresses a metamorphosis of nymphs of the Campanian river Sarno , which flows into the Mediterranean near Naples . Another poem emphasizes religious content is the 118 verse long Nänie (funeral poem) De morte Christi Domini ad mortales lamentatio ( lamentation over the death of our Lord Christ to all mortals ).

From a young age, Sannazaro wrote elegies and epigrams on various occasions . In his elegiac love poems he mainly follows Catullus (cf. Epigr. I, 13).

The epigram on Venice (1.35), for which the Senate of the Republic paid him an enormous 600 zecchins , caused a national sensation.

XXXV. De mirabili urbe Venetiis / Viderat Hadriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis / stare urbem et toto ponere iura mari: / "Nunc mihi Tarpeias quantumvis, Iupiter, arces / obiice, et illa tui moenia Martis," ait. / "Si pelago Tybrim praefers, urbem adspice utramque: / illam homines dices, hanc posuisse deos."

XXXV. Over the wonderful city of Venice / Over the waves of the Adriatic, Neptunus saw Venice / Shimmering, the city that imposes its own law on the sea. / If you like me, Jupiter, said he, the tarpic bulwark / boast as much as you can, including the walls of Mars, / if you prefer the Tiber to the sea, compare the two: / This is human work, that of gods built.

reception

A reprint (1602) of Sannazaro's complete works

It was only posthumously that his poet friend Antonio Garlon collected Sannazaro's Latin poems and published this Opera omnia latine scripta in Venice in 1535 with the publisher Paolo Manuzio . Because of the philological remarks by Petrus Vlamingius (1686–1733), the complete edition of the Latin works, published in Amsterdam in 1728, is also worth mentioning.

Sannazaro's little poem De partu virginis , published in May 1526 , after an enthusiastic reception in circles of Italian humanists, received a harsh criticism from Erasmus of Rotterdam in March 1528 , which made his work even better known in Central and Northern European regions in an unexpected way. In his Dialogus cui titulus Ciceronianus, sive De optimo dicendi genere (The Ciceronian, or The Best Style. A Dialog), Erasmus accused Sannazaro's poetry of falling into a worldly enthusiasm for antiquity and of having placed the classical form above the Christian statement. Julius Caesar Scaliger replied to this criticism again in favor of Sannazaro with his very polemical Oratio per M. Tullio Cicerone ad Desiderium Erasmum Roterodamum (speech for M. Tullius Cicero to Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam), published in 1531 .

Pietro Bembo composed the following distich as a grave epigram on Sannazaro: Da sacro cineri flores; hicillo chestnuts / Sincerus musa proximus ut tumulo. Give flowers to the holy ashes: here lies the Sincerus who is closest to Virgil in his poetry, as well as in his grave. (Translation by W. Ludwig, see below, p. 54)

In his highly influential poetics textbook Poetices libri septem (book 6, chap. 4, ed. Lyon 1561, reprint Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1964, pp. 313b-315b), the aforementioned Julius Caesar Scaliger placed in the list of neo-Latin poets in his highly influential poetics textbook in the 16th century behind the leading Girolamo Fracastoro (Hieronymus Fracastorius) Sannazaro in second place, ahead of Marco Girolamo Vida , Angelo Poliziano , Pietro Bembo and Paolo Cerrato (1485–1540).

Jacob Burckhardt sees Sannazaro's merit in his work The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) above all in his ability to convincingly synthesize the Christian and the pagan in his poetry:

“Sannazaro impresses with the steady, mighty river in which he relentlessly pushes pagan and Christian things together, with the plastic power of the portrayal, with the perfectly beautiful work. He had no fear of comparison as he interwoven the verses of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue with the song of the shepherds in front of the manger. In the realm of the beyond he has here and there a trait of Dantesque boldness, such as B. King David in the limbo of the patriarchs rises to singing and prophecy, or like the Eternal, enthroned in his cloak, who shimmers with images of all elementary existence, addresses the heavenly spirits. [...] Sannazaro's fame, the multitude of his imitators, the enthusiastic homage to the greatest of his time - all of this shows how much he was necessary and worthy of his century. For the church at the beginning of the Reformation he solved the problem: to write poetry in a completely classical and yet Christian way, and Leo and Clemens both thanked him for it. "

Editions, comments and translations

  • Actii Sinceri Sannazarii, Patricii Neapolitani. Opera latine scripta. Ex secundis curis Jani Broukhusii. Accedunt Gabrielis Altilii, Danielis Cereti, & Fratrum Amaltheorum Carmina; Vitæ Sannazarianæ, & Notæ Petri Vlamingii. Apud Hermannum Uytwerf, Amsterdam 1728 ( archive.org ).
  • Carl Becker (Ed.): Summa Poetica. Greek and Latin poetry from Christian antiquity to humanism. Munich: Winkler 1967, pp. 672-677.
  • Ralph Nash (Ed.): The Major Latin Poems of Jacopo Sannazaro. Translated into English prose with commentary and selected verse translations. Detroit: Wayne State UP 1996
  • Fred J. Nichols (Ed.): An anthology of Neo-Latin poetry. New Haven / London: Yale University Press 1979, pp. 288-317, 678 f.
  • Alessandro Perosa, John Sparrow (Ed.): Renaissance Latin Verse. An Anthology. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1977, pp. 142-158.
  • Jacopo Sannazaro: Eclogae piscatoriae II (Galatea) . In: Harry C. Schnur (Ed.): Die Hirtenflöte. Bucolic poems from Virgil to Geßner (= Reclam's Universal Library. 690). Reclam, Leipzig 1978, pp. 115–117 (German translation)
  • Harry C. Schnur , Rainer Kößling (ed.): Galle and honey. Humanist epigrams. Latin and German (= Reclam Universal Library. 942). Leipzig: Reclam 1982, pp. 24-27.
  • Walther Ludwig : Humanistic poems as school reading. Interpretations on Sannazaro, Flaminio and Pontano. In: Der Altsprachliche Studium 21 (1986), Heft 1, p. 53-74 [there p. 54-62 a detailed interpretation of Sannazaro, Eleg. II, 9: 'Hic, ubi Cumae surgebant inclyta famae'].
  • Charles Fantazzi, Alessandro Perosa (eds.): Iacopo Sannazaro: De Partu Virginis (= Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento. Studi e Testi , 17). Olschki, Florence 1988, ISBN 88-222-3615-7 .
  • Petra Maisak / Corinna Fiedler (eds.): Arkadien. Landscape of ephemeral happiness (= Insel Taschenbuch 1421). Frankfurt / M .: Insel 1992, 23-27 (Arcadia, Pr. I, 18; Ecl. VI, 58-114). 47-52 (Pr. X, 1-20)
  • Francesco Erspamer (Ed.): L'Arcadie. Editon critique. Introduction, traduction, notes and tables by Gérard Marino; avec une préface de Yves Bonnefoy (= Les classiques de l'humanisme). Paris: Les Belles lettres 2004 (lx, 426 p .; ill.)
  • Michael CJ Putnam (Ed.): Jacopo Sannazaro: Latin Poetry (= The I Tatti Renaissance Library. Volume 38). Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-03406-8 (Latin text and English translation)
  • Chiara Frison (Ed.): Gli Epigrammi di Jacopo Sannazaro nell'edizione aldina del 1535. Presentazione di Angela Caracciolo Aricò (= Richerce. Collana della Facoltà di Let-tere e Filosofia dell'Università di Venezia, 65). Padova: Il poligrafo 2011 (274 pages), ISBN 978-88-7115-723-8
  • Carlo Vecce (Ed.): Iacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia. Introduzione e commento (= Classici italiani 26). Rome: Carocci editore 2013 (391 pages), ISBN 978-88-430-6623-0 (Italian text with very detailed commentary)
  • Helmuth Widhammer (Ed.): Iacopo Sannazaro. Arcadia. Ed., Translated and commented (= Stuttgart study editions, vol. 2). Stuttgart: Hiesemann 2018 (328 pp.), ISBN 978-3-7772-1801-4 (first complete German translation of Arcadia [pp. 2-213]; cites secondary literature only up to 2010, does not know about it or takes it into account in the commentary [p . 221-247] not the epochal Arcadia edition by Carlo Vecce 2013; detailed afterword [pp. 268-324])

literature

  • Carol Kidwell : Sannazaro and Arcadia. Duckworth, London 1993, ISBN 0-7156-2477-6 [currently the most extensive complete account of Sannazaro's biography and all of his works, tends to have a strongly biographical interpretation of his poems; very rich and well illustrated]
  • Winfried Wehle : Diaphora - Baroque: a figure of reflection from the Renaissance. Changes in Arcadia with Sannazaro, Tasso and Marino (= Romanist Colloquium. Vol. 9). In: Küpper / Wolfatine (Ed.): Discourses of the Baroque. Fink, Munich 2000, pp. 95–145 ( PDF )
  • Angela Caracciolo Aricò / Davide Canfora (eds.): La Serenissima e il Regno. Nel V Centenario dell'Arcadia di Iacopo Sannazaro. Prefazione di Francesco Tateo . Atti del Convegno di Study (Bari-Venezia 4-8 ottobre 2004) (= Collana del Dipartimento di Italianistica dell'Università di Bari 2/2006). Bari: Cacucci editore 2006 (791 pp.)
  • Eckart Schäfer (Ed.): Sannazaro and the Augustan poetry (= NeoLatina. Vol. 10). Narr, Tübingen 2006, ISBN 3-8233-6193-7 .
  • Pasquale Sabbatino (Ed.): Iacopo Sannazaro. La cultura napoletana nell'Europa del Rinascimento (= Biblioteca dell '"Archivum Romanicum". Ser. I, vol. 356). Olschki, Florence 2009, ISBN 978-88-222-5847-2 .

Web links

Wikiquote: Jacopo Sannazaro  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dating from C. Kidwell: Sannazaro and Arcadia. London: Duckworth 1993, p. 168 with note 44. - Other dates such as April 20 or 24, 1530 are incorrect.
  2. ↑ Cecil Clementi ( Pervigilium Veneris. The Vigil of Venus , 3rd edition, Blackwell, Oxford 1936, pp. 42–47) has proven that it is Sannazaro's own handwriting ; DR Shackleton Bailey (ed.), Anthologia Latina , Teubner, Leipzig 1982, p. VI, who dates the codex to 1501-1503, shares this judgment .
  3. ↑ Cf. the intensive narratological interpretation of this elegy 3.2 in Karl AE Enenkel : The invention of humans. The autobiography of early modern humanism from Petrarch to Lipsius . Berlin / New York: de Gruyter 2008, pp. 513-545.
  4. ↑ Gerhard Binder : Golden Times: Again and again a messiah is born ... Examples of modern appropriation of Virgil's 4th Eclogue. In: Thorsten Burkhard / Markus Schauer / Claudia Wiener (eds.): Vestigia Vergiliana: Vergil Reception in the Modern Age (Göttingen Forum for Classical Studies, Supplements, New Series). Berlin / New York: de Gruyter 2010, pp. (51-72) 52.
  5. ^ Translation by Carl Becker. In: Carl Becker (Ed.): Summa Poetica. Greek and Latin poetry from Christian antiquity to humanism. Munich: Winkler 1967, p. 677.
  6. ↑ Erasmus of Rotterdam: Dialogus cui titulus Ciceronianus, sive De optimo dicendi genere (The Ciceronian, or The best style. A dialogue "). Translated, introduced and annotated by Theresia Payr. In: Erasmus von Rotterdam: Selected writings. Lat .-dtsch., edited by Werner Welzig . Darmstadt: WBG 1995, Vol. 7, pp. 1–355, there pp. 316–323.
personal data
SURNAME Sannazaro, Jacopo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sannazar, Jacques; Sannazarius, Iacobus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian poet
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1458
PLACE OF BIRTH Naples
DATE OF DEATH August 6, 1530
Place of death Naples