Trace of Faction/Fiction in Roberto Kauk's Historical Narrative Last
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Croatian Journal of Education Vol.19; Sp.Ed.No.1/2017, pages: 37-53 Original research paper Paper submitted: 8th September 2016 Paper accepted: 10th November 2016 https://doi.org/10.15516/cje.v19i0.2432 Trace of Faction/Fiction in Roberto Kauk’s Historical Narrative Last Days in the Life of Nikola Zrinjski Jr., Croatian Viceroy (1879) Anica Bilić The Center for Scientific Work of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Vinkovci Abstract The question of parallelism of past events and their account in literary discourse, legitimation of oral accounts as historical facts and appreciation of oral preservation of antiquities has been studied on the literary text Last days in the life of Nikola Zrinjski Jr., Croatian Viceroy, written as a historical narrative by Franciscan Robert Kauk (Vukovar, 1848 – Zagreb, 1900). We observed traces of fact and degree of referencing of what has been written relying on the positivist and mimetic approach to text and the dominating rationalist tradition. Then we continued with observing traces of fiction with non-historical elements referring to the achievements of narratology and linguistic inversion which place the center of interpretation on the role of language and narration, thus unburdening referential verification and text value, and emphasizing the narrative identity and symbolic structure of the story. The different ending of Kauk’s story, as a deviation from the official story of the death of Nikola Zrinski in a boar hunt near Čakovec on November 18, 1664, indicates an awareness that the textual legacy contains historical and linguistic structures indicating differences between faction and fiction. Key words: faction; fiction; historiographic discourse; literary discourse; narratology. Introduction The most distinguished sprouts of the genealogy tree of the Zrinski family are recorded in the collective memory not only as historical figures but also as heroic 37 Bilić: Trace of Faction/Fiction in Roberto Kauk’s Historical Narrative Last Days in the Life of Nikola Zrinjski Jr., ... figures and literary characters. From the aspect of literary history, we can conclude that the conspirators Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan, the date April 30, 1671 and the hero of Siget Nikola Šubić Zrinski from 1566 have been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Croatian and Hungarian literary processes in various genres. Dramatizations relating to the mentioned are united under the common name zrinijada, which have been performed at event anniversaries in national theaters as the media with high performative power. Although the recognized and acknowledged hero, the celebrated, skilled commander to whom European contemporaries sang dithyrambs, politician and Croatian Viceroy Nikola Zrinski VII, Jr. or of Čakovec is shadowed in literature by his great grandfather, the hero of Siget – Nikola Šubić Zrinski and the Siget epopee from 1566 and brother – conspirator Petar Zrinski. For instance, there is no complete biography of Nikola Zrinski, and we will deal with the tragic ending of his life on a corpus of two texts. Under unexplained circumstances far from the public eye, on November 18, 1664 in the forest hunting grounds, present-day Roma settlement, Kuršanečki Lug, near Čakovec, the Croatian Viceroy Nikola Zrinski, died in his heyday, at the peak of his fame, known across Europe for his heroism and poetry. The Croatian Viceroy Nikola Zrinski was clasped like the Croatian national area between the expansionist politics of the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg Monarchy. He had a dangerous enemy whom he successfully fought in the battlefield, where his bravery, military strategy and skill came into view. However, he also had a dangerous political rival tsar/king Leopold 1st and the Viennese court who used different strategies, often obstructing the efforts of the Zrinski, Croats and Hungarians, who defended with blood the boundaries of their territory and property. Historical pieces of the clash of Islam and Christianity and pieces on the clash with the double-headed eagle of Habsburg make up a mosaic in the political area of Croatia flooded in blood and clasped between two imperial powers. Kings of Arms of the two dynasties faced each other over the issue of rule and authority and the interpretation of the Golden Bull of Andrew 2nd which enabled nobility to lead defense wars at their own expense and also to appropriate the spoils of war. What is more, article 31 stated that in case of obstruction of the ruler, it gives nobility the right of defense of the ruler due to illegal deeds and denial of rights, while tsar and king Leopold 1st increased the discontent by undermining the caste system of Hungary and Croatia. The more the Zrinski were successful in wars, the more powerful, recognized, famed and richer they became – under the authorization of the Golden Bull, thus becoming a threat to the centralist politics of Leopold 1st (Kallay, 2002, pp. 209–222). Historical Truth and Literary Fiction We do not know what happened on November 18, 1664 in Krušanečki Lug, but we do know what was recorded. While the historian is interested in history as a historical subject and the question of “what happened”, the philologist is primarily interested in 38 Croatian Journal of Education, Vol.19; Sp.Ed.No.1/2017, pages: 37-53 “what has been said, what has been recorded” (Katičić, 1993, p. 11). The historical truth of the death of the Croatian Viceroy Nikola VII Zrinski turned into an inheritance of written and oral stories from which we well select two texts of different postings and discourse: the memorial Mars Hungaricus (Esterházy, 1989) written in Latin 1665 – 1668 by Pál Esterházy (1635 – 1713) and the text Last Days in the Life of Nikola Zrinjski Jr., Croatian Viceroy: historical narrative by Franciscan writer Robert Kauk,1 unveiled in print in Vukovar in 1879. Each text holds a secret, and by tacit agreement entices us to penetrate the text, follow it, comprehend and understand, enjoy it and identify with the empire as if, upgrade it and mentally expand it. We can believe it, find it truthful or false, and search for reflections of the extra-textual world or socio-physical reality. By correlating extra- textual and literary reality, extra-textual and textual world, it has become necessary to emphasize the difference between the terms faction and fiction. Depending on the degree of referencing reality in a literary text, we differentiate faction from literary fiction. Faction implies the type of register which has a greater referential relationship towards reality such as a description of facts or an account of what has happened. Faction embraces accounts/descriptions of historical events where we expect a great degree of referencing towards reality. Literary faction refers to narrative prose based on true events and documentary literature which Gerard Genett (2002, pp. 46–67) names factographic story. If the degree of referencing reality is smaller, we refer to literary fiction which does not have pretensions towards the truth. The relationship between historiography and literature is usually observed as a relationship of reality and fiction, showing more trust in history as a mindful awareness and science as a rationally arranged knowledge, while literature is considered fiction. Due to the dominating rationalist tradition in approaching texts, primarily positivist and mimetic, we check for facts and the degree of referencing of the written text in relation to objective facts, we check for truthfulness and credibility of the entry regardless of whether the discourse is historiographic or literary. In accounts of past events, whether historiographic or literary discourse, the issue of parallelism of past events and their accounts is raised, as the past can yield “many possible forms of its own historiographic account” (Biti, 2000, p. 14). That is how historiography as “strict and objective science seriously became shaken, while its figurative, fictional aspect emerged into the foreground” (Biti, 2000, p. 32). Along with historical ambiguity, what happened (experience) and what has been said/written 1 Franciscan writer Roberto Kauk was born on July 4, 1848 in Vukovar. In 1862, he entered the novitiate St. Ivan Kapistran. He attended the school of theology in Baja and was ordained in 1871. He was professor of theology at schools of theology in Baja and Vukovar where he taught church history and canonical law. In Ilok he was guardian and vicar 1885 – 1890, definitor 1887 – 1890, secretary of the Province 1890 – 1893, head of the house in Zemun 1891 – 1892, and prison chaplain in Lepoglava. He died in Zagreb on October 16, 1900. Works: Last Days in the Life of Nikola Zrinjski Jr., Croatian Viceroy: historical narrative (1879), Entertaining and educational stories (1880), Milica (1884), Fiancé: story from life (1885), Juditha or faith and homeland (1883), Collected poems (1894), Convict (1900), Images from prisoners’ lives (1902) and other. 39 Bilić: Trace of Faction/Fiction in Roberto Kauk’s Historical Narrative Last Days in the Life of Nikola Zrinjski Jr., ... to have happened (account/description), literature brings with it the what could have happened. In both of the mentioned texts, truth can be observed only in the textual, linguistic world, i.e. what was said/written to have happened (account). Truth in the textual world of a written narrative on the death of Nikola Zrinski is formed and transferred through language. The truth about language is that it is “a mobile army of metaphor, metonymy and anthropomorphism. In short, a sum of human relationships which are poetically and rhetorically magnified, transposed and beautified and which, after prolonged use, seem strong, canonical and mandatory: truths are illusions about which man has forgotten that this is what they are” (Nietzsche, 1954, pp. 46–47). While reading older texts we meet up with their opaqueness considering that incomprehension of their speech and cultural tradition in which they were written contribute to the change of codes of the written culture.