THE POET AND THE RULER
A PLAY BY IVAN SUPEK
By ANTE KADIĆ
Here lies Ianus, who first brought poetry to his native Danube from Mount Helicon
When Ianus Pannonius (Ivan Česmički, 1434-72) was thirty years old, he wrote an elegy about his sickness in a camp ("De se aegrotante in castris"). While accompanying King Matthias Corvinus on his military expeditions, Ianus had contracted tuberculosis and malaria. Afraid that he would die soon, at the end of the poem he added the epitaph quoted above and begged passers-by not to desecrate it.
Ianus was a shining meteor, which appeared and vanished. His poems have been seldom published and studied. Since the fifties, however, when his Poems and Epigrams appeared, with the translation into Croatian by Nikola Šop,[1] he has been the subject of several erudite interpretations.[2]
While the Croatians rightly consider him their native son, the Hungarians too claim him as their countryman; as a rule they omit to mention the real place of birth of Ianus and his uncle, Ivan Vitez of Sredna, a famous Latin orator and archbishop of Estergoan.
Ivan Supek's play entitled Pjesnik i vladar (The Poet and the Ruler) was recently published in the Zagreb periodical Forum (1980, nos. 1-2); in it Supek proved not only his historical knowledge but also a keen psychological intuition, skillfully sketching the gradual but inevitable parting and final quarrel between Ianus and the King, who started as good friends. As in his other plays, so in this one Supek often alludes to a contemporary situation in which Ianus' spiritual descendants oppose another ruler in whom they too had initially believed.
In order to understand the rebellion of Ianus Pannonius, I will briefly describe his youth, education in Italy, his service at the court of Corvinus, his painful disappointment with the arbitrary and cruel warrior, the rebellion of the magnates and its failure, Ianus' desperate flight to Medvedgad (near Zagreb) and his early death.
I
In his famous panegyric to his teacher Guarino, Ianus says that he comes from that region where the Drava river flows into Danube ("qua mox Danubio mixturus nomen et undas"). Since Česmica is located near Čazma, not far away from Zagreb, the specialists conclude that Ivan (who only later was nicknamed Ianus[3]), though by his ancestry from Česmica, was born in the eastern of Slavonia.
His father died when Ivan was very young. He was the youngest child and the darling of his mother Barbara, who perhaps was the first to realize his exceptional intellectual gift. Whatever "she earned with weaving and spinning, she spent on his education".[4]
Ianus repayed his debt to her by a moving elegy about her death ("De morte Barbarae"). Though the Croatian poets have written plenty in honor of their mothers, it seems to me that this poem by Pannonius is among the best. While in his other elegies and epigrams the mythological element is overpresent, in this one pulsates the son's afflicted heart; he had visited her on her sick-bed, but was away, in the company of King Matthias, when his mother left this world. Even today, more than five centuries after the poem was written, the reader is enchanted by Ianus' superb portrayal of his unforgettable parent:
Once conceived, you carried me in your womb
until the time of nine months had passed by.
Then me, an infant, you swung in your arms;
I sucked your breast with my lips.
You embraced me, you spoiled and cared for me
as if I were the only son. You warmed me in your lap.
Maybe the mother guesses the fate of the child
or loves more tenderly the youngest one.
As soon as I began to walk with a steady step
and my tongue had mastered the basic vocabulary,
you attracted me at once to the elements of learning
and did not allow me to remain idle at home.
Just as I, still green, began to read and write
and gave definite proofs of a promising future,
then your brother sent me to the shores of Italy
so chat I learn poetry in that distant land...
Ianus remained in Italy for eleven years, the first seven in Ferrara as a pupil of the great humanist Guarino, where he distinguished himself in writing epigrams, and then in Padua, where he obtained a doctorate in law. Having gained an enviable knowledge and many friends, known and respected as a poet, Pannonius returned home. Very soon, thanks to the influence of his uncle, he reached the royal court in Buda(pest) and was appointed a bishop in Pecs.
Though he was very sad to leave beautiful and cultured Italy, and his colleagues and a carefree student life, as soon as he was named the court poet, Ianus sincerely believed that somehow he would find his way in this war-like and barbarian milieu.[5]
The Turks had defeated Serbia (1389) and Bulgaria (1393) and conquered Constantinople in 1453; soon thereafter they launched their military assault against Bosnia. In this "tragic moment, when the Sultan Mehmed kills the last Bosnian king Stjepan Tomašević and threatens with an unavoidable catastrophe the rest of Croatia, because there was nobody who cared about us" (Krleža),[6]-- the young King Matthias (only twenty five years old) rushed through the river Sava into Bosnia and gloriously conquered the city of Jajce (on Christmas day, 1463). The western world was jubilant; they sent Matthias numerous congratulations.
When an Italian, Antonio Constanzi, addressed to the King an epistle in which he compared him to Alexander the Great and Caesar, the ruler ordered Ianus, who had witnessed the ferocious battle for Jajce, to reply in his name to his former colleague. Pannonius readily accepted this demand. In his sixth renowned Elegy he glorified the King's extraordinary courage and gave an impressive picture of Bosnia, which geographers and historians consider an accurate description of this mountainous and impassable area:
Eagerly I rush through the enemy's fields,
behind me the lament is heard and in front fear.
The Turkish power is destroyed, and everywhere around
there is killing, fire, destruction and ashes...
It used to be a part of Illyria, but now is called Bosnia,
a wild land, but opulent with a silver ore.
There did not stretch spacious fields with deep furrows
nor the meadows which would bring an abundant harvest,
but naked, menacing mountains, inaccessible rocks
and elevated towers built on the rugged edges ...
Though Ianus was aware that his elegy, written in the name of the King, would be copied and read in the West, he was unable to control his temperament and disappointment over the lack of any real help from the West, and therefore he included a bitter attack on the Christian powers:
Who thinks to help me in my endeavors?
France sleeps, nor does Spain care about Christ;
England is ruined by rebellious noblemen,
and neighboring Germany wastes its time in endless meetings.
Italy continues to be interested in her commerce…[7]
As if he had not said enough, at the very end, in two last verses, Pannonius rails at the sleepy, indifferent, pragmatic and egoistic West, which does not see much farther than its nose and therefore its lords fight between themselves on account of their petty interests or religious bigotry:
We shall remain loyal to our homeland and faith,
no matter if we get much help from you or a trifle.
The two men in whom Janus until then had believed, namely the Pope in Rome and the King in Buda, soon showed themselves to be narrow-minded and insatiable in their ambitions.
In 1465 Matthias sent Ianus to Rome to obtain from the new pope, Paul II, financial help for his battle against the Turks. Ianus was received with pomp, became acquainted with many prelates and artists, and met certain of his former colleagues, but the Pontiff did not want to promise a yearly subvention of one hundred thousand florins.[8]
Ianus experienced an even greater shock. His ruler, instead of continuing the campaign against the Turks and thus helping Ianus' native land (Croatia), which was bleeding under the Ottoman attacks from the Srijem region down to Dalmatia, became solely interested in extending his Hungarian domain: he named a Hungarian as a governor in Jajce, he took away from the Frankopan family the city of Senj and, encouraged by the Roman curia, he became involved in a religious war against George Podebradski, king of Bohemia. In addition, he quarreled with the German emperor Frederich III and took from him Vienna (1485). All these were short-term acquisitions, because after Matthias' death (1490) Bohemia and Austria separated from the Hungarian throne.
While Matthias was burning, destroying and extorting in the central-European countries, the south-eastern flank of his kingdom was left unprotected. First Croatia was defeated on the field of Krbava (1493); a quarter of a century later Hungary itself was so weakened at the battle of Mohacs (1526) that for two centuries it felt its disastrous consequences.
The ambitious but self-destructive plans of Matthias displeased the feudal lords whose power he was steadily restricting. He was imposing upon them taxes which overstrained their means.
Ivan Vitez of Sredna, who had been most instrumental that Matthias, the son of Janos Hunyadi, was elected the king, had reproached his former pupil for his arbitrary rule. Matthias, being of a violent and uncontrolled temperament, slapped the old archbishop so strongly that he fell on the floor. The courtiers remained speechless, but they were aware that the king had forever lost a benefactor.
Janus, prone to sickness and delicate by nature, began to avoid the king's company. Matthias had expected that the poet would celebrate his father Janos and his own military enterprises, but Ianus could not extol the man in whom he was so disappointed. He had written a (few epigrams of no great value in his honor. The ruler became suspicious and asked the poet what his silence meant. The poet at first tried to excuse himself by sickness, lack of inspiration, the primitive environment, and then said frankly that he was tired of the horse-hoofs and the laments of the widows. The insatiable warrior tried to attract Ianus by various promises, but the poet begged him humbly to leave him in peace and solitude (in the epigram "To the King—Ad Regem").
Although not mentioned by the biographers of both men, there was something extremely important what finally alienated the ruler and his poet. According to Ludovik Crijević (Tubero, 1459-1527), the Hungarians were jealous that Ivan Česmički, a Croatian and Slav, had become the court poet; by various and constant slanders and insinuations they succeeded in separating the two former friends. Crijević is sure that Pannonius alluded to this Hungarian envy ("livor") in the two last verses of his elegy about his sickness in military camp.[9]
In his excellent introduction to Pannonius' Poems and Epigrams, Mihovil Kombol has thus summarized the conflict between Ianus and Matthias: "It is hard to conceive a permanent harmony between the arbitrary king Matthias, who was bursting with will-power and action, and the gentle intellectual Ianus, who considered pain the greatest evil, abhorred war and cherished his poetic reputation as his highest achievement".[10]
II
Just as in Shakespeare's Hamlet the action begins when the old king is poisoned and his son plans revenge, so already in the first pages of Supek's play we guess that a sheer fate had linked the two characters, who sooner or later (volens-nolens) will go in opposing directions.
The first act takes place in Jajce, just as it was liberated from the Turks (1463). On the stage immediately appear the Poet and the Ruler. In the background the magnates quarrel. Matthias hates them, considers them arrogant and selfish. Look, Jajce is freed, but instead of celebrating this great success and gathering around their commander, they are already disputing who will be the governor of this stronghold. They all invoke old documents and are ready to murder those who oppose them. Matthias confesses that he had reached a sad conclusion that only "the dead aristocrat is not dangerous."
Matthias recognizes that his father-in-law, the Bohemian king, and Ianus' uncle, the Archbishop of Estergosn, had liberated him from jail and placed on the throne, but he does not want that his "enthroners" manipulate him as they had done with his father Hunyadi. He wishes to stand on his own feet. He will not, above all, share his trophies with anyone.
The ruler suspects that the poet has seen through his real character, that Ianus dislikes his autocracy and savagery. Matthias tries to convince Pannonius that his duty is to depict him not as he really is, because then the subjects would soon dethrone him, but with traits similar to those which he enjoys in the imagination of the "naive populace."
Ianus admits that this "war of liberation", when looked upon from a distance, seemed to him quite different. He does not distinguish anymore between the victors and their victims. He concludes that both sides will go through the same atrocities, pain and death.[11] While Ianus expresses his torments, Matthias does not listen: he does not respect him as a human being who sincerely abhors any kind of violence and injustice. Matthias is not aware that he hurts Ianus when he repeats that he would give him whatever he wants if he would assiduously work in promoting his glory.
Already in the first act, on the basis of Corvinus' utterances, it is clear that, though a Hungaro-Croatian king, he supports only Hungarian interests. He regularly offends the Croatian magnates; he tells them openly that whatever they have they owe to his magnanimity:
In the second act, which takes place at the royal palace in Buda, Matthias has convened an important meeting (1468). There is also a papal nuncio who urges the magnates and officers to fight "against the enemy of the holy mother Church and stubborn heretic", namely George Podebradski.
Vitez and Pannonius are opposed to this enterprise, being convinced that the Hussites are not heretics. When Janus stressed that the anathema of the Bohemians, who received communion drinking also from the chalice, "was not founded on the Savior's teaching," the nuncio reprimands him and declares that certain humanists "are attacking Saint Peter's throne using the devil's horns."' [12] Moreover, he accuses him of being cynical about the Pontiff and teaching some heterodox views.[13]
The nuncio informs that the Holy See is without financial resources, and therefore at this meeting it should be decided that in the future they spend less on education and more on the army.
Vitez, who had built the schools, universities and libraries, in vain speaks to those primitives that "science is highest man's achievement and remains the strongest defense of his survival."[14]14
Matthias listens only to those who flatter him, who think as he does that he must continue to wage wars. Aware that he has not sufficient military power to march on Constantinople, he will attack Bohemia again, sure that he will conquer it easily and thereafter plunder it
Vitez reproaches him that he is leaving Croatia without any protection against an imminent Turkish invasion. In the opinion of this shrewd and intrepid statesman this means the beginning of the shameful end of Hungaro-Croatian kingdom.
As in his poems, so in Supek's drama, Janus suffers from insomnia and consequently is apathetic toward everything. He avoids the lords and courtiers who inform him (as if he did not notice himself) that Matthias, because of his megalomania, us betraying his royal duties. The same people at times accuse Ianus that he himself, though unwillingly, by his initial eulogies had contributed to the egocentrism of this irascible monarch.
In the third act Matthias and Ianus meet again, in the archbishop's palace, in Estergom, during summer of 1471. They talk as old friends.
The king says about himself that he is a passionate hunter; even as a youth he waited for hours in the bush until the game appeared. He does not care for things easily available. He is aware that his black legion is looting, that the laments are heard where ever his horsemen burst in, but all this does not disturb him a bit.
Ianus suggests to Matthias, although he had transformed the noble crusade into bloody expeditions, that he could still save himself. The ruler reproaches him that he lacks the courage to endure his enterprise.[15]15 Janus wonders how power corrupts, what had happened to the young man whom he knew well and loved, who was genuinely kind to his fellow men and behaved as a gentleman toward his enemies.
The courtiers are coming; at their head are the nuncio and Vitez. Vitez, realizing in which direction the Roman curia is guiding the egomaniac, criticizes it for pushing the young king from one crime to another. Upon hearing this, Matthias becomes angry and slaps his former educator and benefactor.
As soon as Matthias is gone, Vitez asks his associates how to remove him from the throne. John Tuz, the governor of Croatia, suggests poisoning him, but the noble prelate explains to them: "There is no question of removing one obnoxious young man. The entire tyrant system must be brought down! We too must publicly recognize our responsibility! [16]16 Therefore, in accordance with the stipulations of the Golden Bull (1222), we shall convoke the Parliament. Justice and reason will prevail."
Once the conspiracy was concocted by the others, Ianus too entered into it.
The king quickly discovered the rebellion and subdued the leaders of the opposition. Toward some of them he was indulgent while others he punished severely. Vitez was jailed and Ianus fled to Medvedgrad; upon reaching the citadel he was not only disappointed, but also exhausted and deadly sick.
The fourth act takes place in the fortress of Medvedgrad, in February of 1472.
Ianus explains to his friends conspirators that the Hungarian lords became afraid of the Slavic league, extending from Cracow and Prague to Zagreb and Senj, and therefore in the critical moment they turned to Matthias.
While the bureaucrat and careerist Tuz suggests that Croatia alone cannot withstand the Ottoman army and therefore must unite with a powerful state,[17] on the other hand, the fiery princess Zrinska, whose husband was murdered by Matthias' soldiers, stresses the fact that "both the Croatian noblemen and burghers are for a break in the union with Hungary. The Hungarian kings and lords had always grabbed our possessions. At our Diet (Sabor) either in Zagreb or Knin we shall write down our own Constitution.[18]
The dying poet, in a state of hallucination, sees the ruler who invites him to follow him. Ivan Česmički rejects him categorically. He says to the tyrant: "I will remain faithful to myself and my people. I am horrified even by the touch of your hand. You are a cold eastern wind ('kolava'), a brutal force against the last civilized fortress, the power of the proud desperadoes."[19]
In the forty pages of his drama Ivan Supek has successfully depicted the causes of the conflict between Matthias Corvinus, the Hungarian king, and Ivan Česmički, the Croatian poet.
Supek, the former rector of Zagreb University and the "heretic on the left", insists upon the duty of each intellectual, as soon as he realizes the mistakes of his youth or idealism, to recognize them publicly and resolutely enter into the ranks of ordinary people, who long ago have become convinced that all unions were only the mask of someone's imperialism and that there is no "brotherhood" among the nations. Each one should be the master in his own state!
The destinies of humans are rather strange: while certain former demolishers of the altars and thrones (such as e.g. Miroslav Krleža), at their old age, are pleased when invited to official receptions and are more than happy when "the ruler" deigns to play chess with them, on the other hand the former Sauls are converted into Pauls, the humble courtiers turn into rebels, the dogmatists become heretics, the glorifiers of the "immortal" commander begin to reveal his incredible shortcomings and particularly his criminal mentality.[20]
[1] Stihovi i epigrami, Hrvatski latinisti, Zagreb 1952.
[2] . Gortan, in Enciklopedija Jugoslavije 4, 1960, s.v.; Miroslav Krleža, Eseji III, 1963, 167-76; E. Šinko, in Rad 333, 1963, 518-26.
[3] In the epigram "De immutatione sul nominis" the poet says that he changed his name Ivan into Ianus ("Ioannes fueram, Ianum quem pagina dicit"), not from any pride but simply because he began to write the verses in Italy.
[4] In his third Elegy "De morte Barbarae" Ianus says:
Quidquid lana tibi, quidquid tibi tela lucelli
contulerat, coerces crudientis erat...
[5] In the epigram to his friend Galeotto from Narni ("Ad Galeottum Narnienseni") Ianus confesses that the region and the milieu is which he moves have a tremendous impact upon his creative mood. "In the land of the barbarians, he says, I speak as one of them."
[6] Krleža, Eseji III, 173.
[7] This strong and bitter attack reads in Latin as follows:
Qui studeat nostris addere rebus opem.
Gallia dormitar, nec curat Iberia Christum,
Anglia gentili seditione ruit,
Proxima conventus Germania cogit inanes,
Permutat merces Italy terra sues ...
[8] Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vita di uomini illustri del secolo XV, Milano 1951, p. 180.
[9] Cf. Hrvatski latinisti, I, Zagreb 1969, 326. — Vespasiano da Bisticci agrees with Crijević-Tubero affirming that the Hungarians were greatly jealous ("grandissima invidia") and therefore wanted to poison Janus (Vita di uomini illustri, p. 175).
[10] Ivan Česmički—Ianus Pannonius, Pjesme i epigrami, Zagreb 1952, p. XII.
[11] "Izdaleka mi se ta oslobodilačka vojna drukčije pričinjala ... Više ne raspoznajem tko su podbjednici a tko poraženi. Sve je to ista ljudska patnja, grozota, smrt" (Forum 1980, nos 1-2, 15).
[12] "Humanistička čeljad udara vražjim rogovima na Petrovo zdanje" (Forum, 30).
[13] Supek did not distort Pennonius' religious attitude when he presented him in this light. The poet had recognized that he became the bishop for financial reasons. In the epigram addressed to his friend Galeotto he affirms that it is impossible to be at the same time a religious and a poet ("nemo religiosus et poeta est"), and in the other one, in which he ridicules the pilgrims to Rome, he says that he does not know if this credulity would help them but certainly will be welcomed by the Pontiff:
Nescio, credulitas haec si sua proderit ipsis,
hoc scio: Pontifici proderit ipsa satis.
[14] "Znanost je najviši čovjekov domes i najjaća obrana opstojnosti" (Forum, 31).
[15] U tebe nije kičme da izdržiš u mojem pothvatu. Makni se s puta povijesti" (Forum, 36).
[16] "Cijeli susrav tiranije ima biti oboren ... Mi treba da javno ispravimo svoj istočni grijeh" (Forum, 40).
[17] "Hrvatska se sama ne može oduprijeti najezdi s istoka. Mi se moramo prikloniti jednoj jačoj kruni" (Forum, 46).
[18] "Raspoloženje je medju plemstvom i gradjanstvom da se raskine unija s Madjarskom. Madjarski kraljevi i magnati posizali su za našim posjedima. Na Saboru ovdje u Zagrebu ili u Kninu moramo napokon urediri svoju državnu konstituciju" (Forum, 46).
[19] "Ti si hladna košava, zrvno jurišnika u kapiju zadnjeg ljudskog utvrdjeaja, toranj sunovratnika" (Forum, 52).
[20] Supek's rebellion is not of recent date. Already in 1963 he had written his play about Mark-Anthony de Dominis, the heretical archbishop of Split, with the idea that the resistance against any tyranny is "the fire which blazes through the centuries" (I. Supek, Heretik, in his collection Drame, Zagreb 1971, p. 137). In his recent book Krivovjernik na ljevici (A Heretic on the Left, published by BC Review, Bristol 1980) he openly states why he is disappointed with the situation in Yugoslavia and particularly in his native Croatia. Supek's brilliant analysis is a lucid condemnation of the oppressive regime. When compared with Djilas' writing, Supek impresses his reader by sincerity, moderation and belief that a really democratic or "humanistic" socialism remains the best solution for the problems of this world.