672 Slavic Review Czech researchers in their simultaneous endeavor to synthesize their presenta- tion of Bohemian Gothic avoided this unsettled problem by limiting themselves to a much more consistent period in their Ceski Umeni Goticke, 1350-1420 (Prague, 1970). It was carried out in anticipation of a large exhibition which unfortunately could not take place. MojMfR S. FRINTA State University of New York at Albany JANUS PANNONIUS VERSEI. Edited by Tibor Kardos. Budapest: Szepiro- dalmi Konyvkiado, 1972. 322 pp. 34 Ft. £ L 0 HUMANIZMUS. By Tibor Kardos. Budapest: Magvet8 Kiado, 1972. 654 pp. 35 Ft. Five hundred years ago (March 27, 1472) Janus Pannonius, the most celebrated poet of the Hungarian Renaissance, died. Son of a Croatian father and a Hungarian mother, a relative of the powerful king Matthias Corvinus, and a nephew of the respected archbishop Johannes Vitez, he was destined to have a career that reflected the turbulent and controversial times of fifteenth-century Hungary. Trained in the humanist tradition, Pannonius was sent at an early age to the famous Ferrara school of Guarinus, became his favorite student, and was soon stun- ning his friends and patrons with his literary brilliance and knowledge of classical authors. In 1458, having completed his theological studies at Padua, and by then famous as a poet, he returned to Hungary to serve Matthias at the royal court. Soon after he was made bishop of Pecs, thus achieving a politically important, and lucra- tive, position in the Hungarian hierarchy. Nevertheless, it was exactly the time when the Italian humanist past and the crude realities of a culturally barren daily existence in Hungary confronted one another in his mind and in his poetry. A lavishly executed trip to Rome (1465) representing Matthias at the papal court brought only temporary relief and ultimately deepened his embitterment. He was a true Renaissance man, also in terms of ambitions. His poetry could not flourish "in exile," away from his beloved Italy, and his political concepts (all-out war against the Turks instead of attacking the West) were rejected by an even more ambitious Matthias, whose aim was to become German-Roman emperor. In a last desperate effort, the already ailing Janus (together with other dissatisfied oligarchs) organized a plot against the monarch—and lost. Fleeing the wrath of the king, he died, a broken man, in the Slavonian fortress of his friend, Oswaldus Thuz, bishop of Zagreb. However, his poetry (as far as we know he only wrote in Latin) has survived and has appeared in many anthologies, as well as separate editions, and in various translations into Hungarian and Croatian. Commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of Pannonius's death, Tibor Kardos, the outstanding Hungarian Renaissance scholar, has published a new selec- tion of his poetry in Hungarian translation, with a seventy-page assessment of his life and work. The collection contains epigrams, elegies, and longer works by Pan- nonius, in the by now traditional groupings that reflect the three major stations of his life—the Ferrara, the Padua, and the Hungarian periods. The Hungarian rendering (including both earlier and recent translations) is the work of several translators and poets, among them Sandor Weores, Gyula Illyes, and the editor, Kardos. Reviews 673 The competent editorial work, the generally excellent translations, the attrac- tively printed volume, and the copious notes (though many of them have appeared in previous Hungarian editions) make this publication an important addition to Pannonius scholarship. Nevertheless there are a few, and (since they reflect the editorial concept) not unimportant, lacunae that deserve mention. T h e last "com- plete" Latin edition of Pannonius (used as source material for this volume) ap- peared in 1784. A bilingual edition such as the Croatian one (Hrvatski latinisti, vol. 2 ) , but with much-needed new readings of the Latin text, would have been a wel- come effort. Several delightful erotic poems of the F e r r a r a period (Vat. Lib. M S . 471) have never been published in Hungary, and owing to prudishness (unwar- ranted in a scholarly context) are once again missing from this selection, thus perpetuating an incomplete image of the young Janus. Finally, and this is the most delicate problem to tackle, the last years of Pan- nonius's public career need to be re-evaluated, especially in regard to his relations with Matthias Corvinus. This, however, cannot be accomplished before a new and critical assessment of Matthias has won acceptance and national pride gives way to unbiased scholarship. Tibor Kardos in his excellent essay on the fall of Pannonius ("Janus Pannonius bukasa," Pecs, 1935) came closest among the Hungarian scholars to presenting an impartial view; yet thirty-seven years later this book seems to be hampered by the same traditional approach that has paralyzed Corvinus scholarship for centuries. That essay on Pannonius is among the most important of the twenty-five studies by Kardos reprinted under the title £15 humanizmus {Living Humanism). In addi- tion to his discussion of Janus Pannonius's exclusively Latin poetry, Kardos, in his essay on Balint Balassi, also gives a thorough analysis of Hungarian Renaissance literature in the vernacular. However, this otherwise inspired piece, written in 1954, seems to suffer from the curtailing effects of a rather vulgarized Marxist approach, which unfortunately no Hungarian publication of that period could avoid. Other essays on earlier Hungarian literature (studies on Miklos Zrinyi and Daniel Berzsenyi) are reworked variants of previous articles, adding valuable new material to the scholarship of the Hungarian baroque and classicism, respectively. Of the wider European portrait gallery dealing with various notables of the Italian Renais- sance (Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli) as well as with Erasmus, Bacon, and Comenius, many essays render new insights and contain a critique of contemporary scholarship. The Dante article, discussing the poet's imagery, is especially rich in fine observations and new analyses. The last essay is devoted to Sandor Weores, one of the most exciting and com- plex poets of contemporary Hungarian literature. In this penetrating study Kardos undertakes to analyze Weores's poetic concepts and identifies the poet's images corresponding to these concepts. With this study Kardos, best known for his work on the Renaissance, proves that he can handle the manifold problems and phenomena of modern literature with the same knowledge and sensitivity that are found in his historically oriented writings. The particular strength of the collection is that although most of the essays address themselves to the student of literature, they also make fascinating reading for the interested layman. Perhaps two pieces, "Boccaccio-unnep Certaldoban" ("Boccaccio Festival in Certaldo") and "Parbeszed Morus Tamasrol" ("Dialogue on Thomas M o r e " ) , should have been left out. Owing to a journalese approach, their entertainment value notwithstanding, they disrupt the otherwise harmonious 674 Slavic Review style of the volume. Detailed notes informing how each essay came about and referring the reader to further relevant publications complete this handsomely printed book. MARIANNA D. BIRNBAUM University of California, Los Angeles IZABRANA DJELA IZ SLAVENSKE AKCENTUACIJE (GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN ZUM SLAVISCHEN AKZENT). By Stjepan Ivsic. Sla- vische Propylaen, Texte in Neu- und Nachdrucken, vol. 96. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1971. 804 pp. DM 148. Despite the German title on the spine (Gesammelte Schriften sum slavischen Ak- sent), all of Ivsic's articles reproduced here are in the original Serbo-Croatian, except for one very short piece he wrote in French. However, the three-page preface by Christiaan Alphonsus van den Berk is in German. The price of the book is quite steep but probably unavoidable (given the small market for such works and the complexity of the material). Stjepan Ivsic (1884-1962) was one of those legendary linguists who flourished in Croatian and Serbian lands during the first half of this century. Like Vatroslav Jagic, Tomo Maretic, Petar Skok, and Aleksandar Belie, Ivsic moved in the poly- math tradition of language scholarship, concerning himself with dialectology, historical grammar, the editing of earlier texts, language pedagogy, and (an in- escapable fate in the Balkans) politics. He succeeded to Maretic's chair at the University of Zagreb in 1914 and proceeded to train and influence the next two generations of Croatian linguists. Though his writing output is respectable, it is just a small measure of his actual work, since many of his discoveries and formula- tions emerged only in the form of university lectures or remained as field notes or unfinished manuscripts. Recently, for example, his former students published a 434-page book on comparative Slavic grammar on the basis of their student lecture notes (Stjepan Ivsic, Slavenska poredbena gramatika, ed. J. Vrana and R. Katicic, Zagreb, 1970). In the book under review another student, Bozidar Finka, has reworked Ivsic's field notes of the 1930s to produce a valuable article (pp. 723-98 and sketch maps) on the language of Croats in the diaspora, specifically in Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. But for all the breadth of his interests, Ivsic's first and most enduring love was accentology, and one can sense this early enthusiasm in his description (pp. 217 ff.) of his first field trip in Slavonia in 1905, as he walked from village to village, jotting down accentual novelties. Here are all his contributions in accentology, ranging from his seminal doctoral dissertation, Prilog za slavenski akcenat (first printed in 1911), to a latter-day two-page note on accent in Dubrovnik, as gleaned from lecture notes by Finka. An analysis of this copious material is not possible in this short review; readers interested in a detailed commentary on Ivsic's importance in Slavic accentology are advised to consult Dalibor Brozovic's "O Stjepanu Ivsicu kao slavenskom i hrvatskosrpskom akcentologu" ("Concerning Stjepan Ivsic as a Slavic and Serbo-Croatian Accentologist"), Ivsidev sbornik (Zagreb, 1963), pp. 25-36. The modern student of Serbo-Croatian accentology should realize that Ivsic worked in the old tradition of field investigation, relying (as was obviously nec- essary) on what van den Berk calls "his very fine ear, trained by long experience"