Од Божидара Вуковића до Дионизија дела Векије: идентитет и псеудоним у култури раног модерног доба

Abstract

Разматрајући питања у вези с различитим варијантама имена Божидара Вуковића, у раду смо нарочиту пажњу посветили пореклу етимолошко-семантичких облика Dionisio della Vecchia, односно Dionisius a Vetula, које је Вуковић користио у иностраној средини. Након преиспитивања аргумената на којима је почивала теза о Божидаревом преузимању жениног презимена, показано је, с позиција савремених идентитетских теорија и уз коришћење компаративне анализе, да је Божидар Вуковић сам обликовао свој псеудоним према уобичајеним облицима и моделима познатим у ширим европским оквирима у култури раног модерног доба.

himself had invented his Italianized name Dionisio della Vecchia, and the Latinized version Dionisius a Vetula, by incorporating in the surname the translation of Starčevo (Starčeva Gorica), as his place of origin. Among other things, this was indicated by written sources published in some editions of his son Vicenzo Vuković and Stefan of Scutari. Nevertheless, when publishing the wills of Božidar and his brother Nikola Vuković, Jorjo Tadić put forward the hypothesis that would later prevail in scholarly literature; according to him, after the marriage with Apollonia, Božidar adopted her surname. In order to support this hypothesis, Tadić cited the fact that her brother Gasparo was mentioned under this surname in later sources, leaving aside the fact that the same surname was also used by Vuković’s best man, Venturin di Cornovi. However, the fact that Venturin di Cornovi actually added “della Vecchia” to his name after the name of the bottega that he co-owned with Božidar Vuković, with whom he was a partner in trade, shows that the arguments presented by Tadić are not reliable. At the same time, the genealogical tree of this prominent Venetian family shows that Venturin had no kinship ties with Apollonia. Among other things, the reliability of Tadić’s hypothesis if further challenged by the fact that Božidar’s brother Nikola could not have build his identity by adopting the surname of his brother’s wife, especially having in mind that he was married to Dionora Gabbiano, the daughter of Giovanni Bartolomeo Gabbiano, who had been the head of one of the leading transnational publishing and book distribution companies in Europe in the 1530s. Modern theoretical considerations show that identity is not a fixed, but rather a temporally and spatially variable category, as well as that the awareness of a personal identity and its formation was present in Early Modern culture, while the creation of pseudonyms was a form of individual self-formation. This is indicated by the book by Adrien Baillet Auteurs déguisez, sous des noms étrangers (1690), which shows that one of the most common forms of creating pseudonyms in Early Modern culture was based on using the name of one’s place of origin, and this was a common practice throughout the cultural sphere of the South Slavs, including the Serbian ethnic group. When moving to another country, some people created a new name for themselves by translating and adapting their old name to the spoken language of their new environment, or by using Latin or Greek equivalents. This was done with the desire to facilitate the integration into the new social system and business environment. Božidar Vuković relied on the same model rooted in European experience when constructing his identity, which was also reflected in translating and adapting the name of Starčevo, as his place of origin, to etymological and semantic forms that were well-known in Italian and Latin – della Vecchia, or a Vetula.