Nikola Nalješković

Nikola Nalješković (around 1500, Dubrovnik - 1587, Dubrovnik) was a Croatian poet, playwright and scholar. He wrote poetry, romantic canzones, masques (carnival songs), epistles, pastoral plays, mythological plays, farce, comedy and drama with features of Plautine erudite comedy and Roman mime. His dramatic works include lascivious and common themes.

Born a commoner from a family of merchants and scientists, he attended a graduate school in Dubrovnik, and had a financially unsuccessful commercial career which left him bankrupt. Nalješković worked as a scribe, chancellor, and surveyor.

In his later years, he engaged in astronomy and mathematics. He was asked by Rome to give his opinion on the reform of the calendar while Pope Gregory XIII was preparing the debate (Dialogo sopra la sphere del mondo). Due to his age, Nalješković was unable to travel to Rome, but he sent his written support for the leap year.

In the mid 16th century, Nalješković was the central personality in Croatia's first interlinked literary circle (with Mavro Vetranović, Ivan VIDALIćI, Peter Hektorović and Hydrangeas Bartučević). He is significant for the genre diversity of his opus, which interlaced the paradigms of Mediaeval, Renaissance and Mannerist poetry, contrasting the themes of privacy and publicity, physicality and spirituality, laughter and isolation, realism and sensualism, rationalism and sentimentality, death and joy.

Nalješković's works were printed in 1873 and 1876 in Stari pisci hrvatski (Old Croatian Writers). In the 1960s, the oldest known manuscript (from the 17th century) was discovered. To this day, this manuscript has not been released. It is kept in the National and University Library of Zagreb.

In the history of Croatian literature, Nalješković is also notable because the language in which he penned his works was expressly called Croatian, and the Croatian name is emphasised relatively often ("Tim narod Hrvata vapije i viče" - "this nation of Croats cries and clamours").

In his 180 romantic canzones (published in 1876, under the title Pjesni ljuvene), a kind of history of the poet's love was set, from time to time in a morally didactic tone, and a view of Dubrovnik's social life at the time was given, intertwining reflection and melancholia, pain in love and "general pessimism."

...
Wikipedia