Poetic Canon

At first glance, heteronyms may be considered as imaginary names, a kind of poetic signature. However, unlike pseudonyms, heteronyms are names given to fully developed characters that, in spite of being imaginary , possess nearly all human qualities such as physical features, biog-raphies, world views, writing styles, etc. – characters that, surprisingly enough, are capable of having views in sharp contrast to those of the author who has created them. Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), arguably one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century as well as one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language, is the writer credited with the development, naming and introduction of this concept into literature. However, considering the whole body of works produced by the Irish Nobel laureate W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), strong heteronymic qualities can also be discerned in a number of his works some of which produced about twenty years before Pessoa even started his career as a writer. Through a close examination of some of Yeats's poems and other works, especially his short stories and the prose masterpiece A Vision, the present paper aims at illuminating the origins of the concept under study, as well as presenting its readers with the reasons why certain characters in some of Yeats's works go beyond mere masks and personae and fulfil the criteria to be considered as heteronyms. In those days they were men of one idea, but now we are more nervous, more developed, more sensitive; men capable of two or three ideas at once… Modern men are broader-minded (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Idiot, 1868)

The bio-bibliographic piece of writing by Ignjat Đurđević (1675-1737) Vitae illustrium Rhacusinorum (Vitae et carmina nonnullorum illustrium civium Rhacusinorum) was created in the period between 1707 and 1716 and printed in Belgrade in 1935 (P. Kolendić). It is part of a series of Latin modern bio-bibliographic works in the area of local literature (Ambroz Ranjina, Ambroz Gučetić, Ignjat Đurđević, Serafin Marija Crijević, Đuro Bašić, Sebastijan Slade Dolci, Franjo Marija Appendini). The lexicon Vitae et carmina includes entries about 105 Dubrovnik writers and scholars, from medieval writers to authors of the seventeenth century. The entries vary in their length (from two lines to eight pages). The irregular structure of the entries, the variable length and the lack of consistency in the argumentation within the entries suggests that the work was not complete, or that in the form in which it has come down to us it only represents material for a more systematic biographical lexicon. In the entries, a total of 137 poetic texts of thirty eight named authors are referred to, together with six anonymous authors, in Latin, Croatian and Italian, ranging in length from one verse to 208. Apart from the verses of Dubrovnik writers, the verses of nine foreigners are cited. The verses of the actual addressee of the entry or another author are quoted in 43 out of 98 entries, and most of the entries in which verses are quoted relate to th century authors. The purpose of quoting a large quantity of verses is twofold: on the one hand Đurđevic the biographer, in the absence of real documents, takes (mostly occasional) verses as source of biographical data; the poetry, as well as artefact, is also perceived as document. On the other hand, he cites poetic material as a kind of storehouse of anthological poetry of Dubrovnik early modern writing.
Perceptibly fewer verses are quoted form the 17th than from the previous century: the cinquecento poets dominate, it seems, as poets of a century that was already understood to be the golden age of Ragusan literature: these are well-known authors, which tradition had preserved via copies and put into the local canon. In his lexicon, Đurđević reinforces this canon and gives an anthology of representative verses.
The authors whose verses are represented are the names of older literature, among others: Miho Monaldi, Frano Lukarević Burina, Marin Kaboga, Nikola Nalješković, Oracio Mažibradić, Sabo Bobaljević Glušac, Miho Bunić, Nikola Primović, Karlo Pucić, Ludovik Paskalić, Mavro Vetranović, Ilija Crijević, Dinko Ranjina, Dominko Zlatarić, Šišmundo Menčetić, Džore and Marin Držić. The authors most quoted are Ilija Crijević (17 poems), after which come Didak Pir (13), Šiško Menčetić (12), Dinko Ranjina (11), Dominko Zlatarić and Miho Monaldi (9 each), Džore Držić (8), Sabo Bobaljević (7), and finally Marin Držić and Nikola Nalješković with four poetic texts each. The authors in whose entries there are the most poetic texts cited are Ilija Crijević (14), Šiško Menčetić (12), Dominko Zlatarić and Miho Monaldi (10), Dinko Ranjina (9), as well as Džore Držić (6) and Sabo Bobaljević (5). The poetic texts that are quoted are quite often paratexts of editions with a strong communicational component and reveal a professional and private connection of the great names of Dubrovnik and Italian poetry in the 16th century.

At first glance, heteronyms may be considered as imaginary names, a kind of poetic signature. However, unlike pseudonyms, heteronyms are names given to fully developed characters that, in spite of being imaginary, possess nearly all human qualities such as physical features, biographies, world views, writing styles, etc. – characters that, surprisingly enough, are capable of having views in sharp contrast to those of the author who has created them. Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), arguably one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century as well as one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language, is the writer credited with the development, naming and introduction of this concept into literature. However, considering the whole body of works produced by the Irish Nobel laureate W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), strong heteronymic qualities can also be discerned in a number of his works some of which produced about twenty years before Pessoa even started his career as a writer...