Prešeren’s Role in Establishing the Wreath of Sonnets as an Art Form

Abstract

The author discusses the history of the poetic form of the wreath of sonnets, starting with the corona sonnet cycle. – In literary history, it has long been established that the wreath of sonnets (corona di sonetti) was invented and its rules defined by members of the so-called “Sienna Academy”; however, scholars so far have devoted too little attention to Prešeren’s role in shaping this demanding poetic form. What the inventors of the wreath of sonnets left behind were solely the rules as to the formation of this cyclic form, so it is not known whether it was ever accomplished in practice. However, judging by the surviving data, it was regarded purely as mannerist entertainment, an occasional parlor game of educated court circles. This finding has great bearing on the status of Prešeren’s “Wreath of Sonnets” in literary history: it is possible, since no wreath of sonnets by the Sienna Academy survives, that Prešeren was the first to accomplish this form in practice. Even providing for the possibility that a wreath of sonnets observing these rules was written by a member of the renaissance Sienna Academy, or by a later poet of another national literature, the Slovenian romantic poet France Prešeren (1800–1849) was the first to breathe true artistic verve into this complex form. He, therefore, elevated the rules of this playful exercise in versification to the level of high poetry and, through his ideas, gave the form a mythic significance, hence reserving it aside, in Slovenian and other literatures, for the most meaningful poetic messages. – Prešeren further “complicated” the strict rules of the Sienna wreath of sonnets by introducing an acrostic, a dedication to Julija Primic (Primicovi Jul’ji). – The Wreath of Sonnets by France Prešeren performed an initial role in applying this form to Russian and other Slavic poetries. A key role in the process of the dissemination of Prešeren’s masterpiece was played by the Russian translation of the “Wreath of Sonnets”, published in the magazine Ruskaja misl by the poet, translator, linguist and scholar Fedor E. Korsh. The translation was received widely among Russian poets and brought about a positive wave of Russian sonnet wreaths. Korsh, a professor at Moscow University, “infected” with his enthusiasm for poetic forms his student Valeri Briusov, one of the main figures of Russian symbolism and an important researcher of poetic forms. It might well have been under the influence of Korsh’s translation of Prešeren’s piece that Briusov wrote his own two wreaths of sonnets. – The international golden age of the form in the 19^th and 20^th centuries is therefore greatly indebted to the great poet of a small nation, France Prešeren.