The Translation of the Petrarch’s Sestina A Qualunque animale alberga in terra by Dinko Ranjina

Malinar, Smiljka. (2012). The Translation of the Petrarch’s Sestina A Qualunque animale alberga in terra by Dinko Ranjina. Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagrabiensia, 57. pp. 31-47. ISSN 0039-3339

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Abstract

In this article we shall analyse the way in which the Dubrovnik poet Dinko Ranjina translated Petrarch’s sestina A qualunque animale alberga in terra while adapting it to the possibilities of Croatian versifi cation. The sestina, the highest formal achievement of Provencal poetry, is based on a multiple combination of the number 6 (six stanzas of six lines using six rhyme -words), with a strictly determined alternation of rhyme-words in each stanza (according to the retrogradatio cruciata scheme) and a predetermined manner of linking the stanzas (described by the term coblas capfi nidas). Ranjina retained the six-line stanza, and the linking of the strophes according to the coblas capfi nidas system. But the Croatian traditional line, the dodecasyllabic, which he uses instead of Petrarch’s hendecasyllabic, is handled according to its own rules. Dodecasyllabics are regularly used in pairs, and both verses are linked by rhyme. This automatically cancels out the possibility of applying the scheme of the retrogradiato cruciata, which includes a reciprocal relation of the rhyme-words of two neighbouring stanzas and is based on the division of the sestina into two three-line sections. The dodecasyllabic verse scheme is the cause of other formal deviations from the original; Ranjina’s composition is two stanzas shorter than Petrarch’s and the fi nal three-line stanza is replaced by a couplet. In addition, it also leads to a reduction of the range of the motifs of the original, simplifying and sometimes trivialising its lexical and semantic components.

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