Marin Držić
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Marin Držić (1508-1567) is considered the finest Croatian Renaissance playwright and prose writer.
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[edit] Life
Born into a well to do numerous family (with 6 sisters and 5 brothers) in Dubrovnik, Držić was trained and ordained as a priest — a calling very unsuitable for his Rabel temperament. After being ordained in 1526, Držić was sent in 1538 to Siena in Tuscany to study the Church Canon Law, where he didn't excel in studying, but, thanks to his extravert and warm personality, captured the hearts of his fellow students and professors. By them he was elected to the position of Rector of the University. Having lost interest in studies, Marin returned to the Dubrovnik Republic in 1543.
Here he became an acquaintance of Austrian adventurer Christoph Rogendorf, then at odds with Vienna court. After a brief sojourn in Vienna, Držić came back to his native city. Other vagabond exploits followed: connection with a group of Dubrovnik outlaws, journey to Constantinople and a brief trip to Venice. After a career of interpreter, scrivener and church musician, he even became a conspirator. Convinced that Dubrovnik was governed by a small circle of elitist aristocracy bent to tyranny, he tried to persuade, in five letters (four survive), the powerful Medici family in Florence to help him overthrow the government in his home town. The Medicis didn't even bother to respond to him. Marin died surprisingly in Venice in 1567. He was buried in the Church of St. John and Paul.
[edit] Works
Držić's works cover many fields: lyric poetry, pastorals, political letters and pamphlets, and comedies. While his pastorals ("Grizula," Tirena; Venera i Adonis/Venus and Adonis) are still highly regarded as masterful examples of the genre, the pastoral has, as artistic form, virtually vanished from the scene.
However, his comedies are among the best in European Renaissance literature. As with other great comedy writers like Lope de Vega, Ben Jonson or Molière, Držić's comedies are full of exuberant life and vitality, celebrating love, liberty and sincerity and mocking avarice, egoism and petty tyrants — both in family and in state. His best comedies include:
- Dundo Maroje (1551)
- Skup, The Miser
- Novela od Stanca, Story on Stanac
- Pomet
The gallery of young lovers, misers, cuckolds, adventurers, senile tyrants, painted with the gusto of buoyant idiom that exemplifies richness of the Croatian language in the Renaissance period has remained the pillar of Croatian high comedy theatre ever since.
[edit] Legacy
Since its independence Croatia has awarded the Marin Držić Award for dramatic work.[1] The Croatian Parliament also declared 2008 the Year of Marin Držić, as it is the 500th anniversary of his birth.[2]
