Giovanni Francesco Sorgo

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Giovanni Francesco Sorgo also Dzivo Frano Sorkocevic (1706-1771) was a Ragusan lawyer, politician, diplomat and man of literature. He was grandchild of the great poet Ivan Gundulic. He tried his skill in translating Ovid and melodramas of Pietro Metastasio and Scipione Maffei, all still unpublished. He also rearranged Molière’s plays. Sorgo’s translation of the first two cantos of Tasso’s epos Jerusalem Delivered is of minor acknowledgement and fragmentary preserved. Sorgo’s versification in translate Tasso. It examines the metrical characteristics and the specific choice of thirteen-syllable verse (4+4+5). The examples of this verse pattern are to be found in the works of the Ragusa poets of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century. Sorgo’s motivation for the use of this verse is also studied here. As it is a verse of folk origin, Sorgo’s translation of Tasso is a convenient subject for drawing a parallel between Croatian artistic and folk versification with which the last chapter of the article deals with. In addition to being a lawyer, politician, and diplomat.

Giovanni Sorgo also delved into the field of literature - much as many other men from Dubrovnik of his standing and education did. Although his literary ac- Dubrovnik Annals 3 (1999): 55-95 Zoran Kravar, professor at the Departement of Comparative literature of the Faculty of Phylosophy, University of Zagreb. Address: Odsjek za komparativnu knjiæevnost Filozofskog fakulteta Sveucilipta u Zagrebu, I. 3, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. This article has already been published in Croatian under the following title: ˜O dvjema Tassovim oktavama u prepjevu Giovanni Gorgo i o dodirnim stihovnopovijesnim temama.« Anali Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Dubrovniku 33 (1995): pp. 67-92.56 Dubrovnik Annals 3 (1999) complishments involved few original works, he did many translations.

His opus has been saved in manuscript form, and includes translations of ten of Ovid’s Letters from Heroines, as well as the melodramas of Pietro Metastasio and Scipione Maffei. Sorgo also enriched the fund of Dubrovnik’s eighteenth-century rearrangements of Molière’s plays. From certain minimally preserved clues, in addition to some information from Dubrovnik’s biographical literature, we know that SorkoËeviÊ also translated parts of Tasso’s Jerusalem.