Ivan Meštrović (1883–1962) is today praised as one of the greatest Croatian artists and an internationally recognised sculptor. He was born in Slavonia, grew up in Dalmatian, and then lived and worked around the world. From 1947 he was a Sculptor in Residence and Professor of Sculpture at Syracuse University and from 1955 a Sculptor in Residence at the University of Notre Dame. Some of you might know him from his two sculptures The Bowman and The Spearman from the Congress Plaza at the entrance to Grant Park in Chicago (pictures below). 

As you can see easily from the two statues, Meštrović’s style is unique, mixing Secession and Expressionism. For those who are interested in his art, I suggest you look at the special issue of Sculpture Journal (see link) devoted to the artist.

Immediately relevant for comparative literature and Matija Murko is Meštrović’s profound interest in folklore which informed his artistic production. Moreover, as a boy he learned to sing traditional Dalmatian folksongs, which became his regular habit. It comes as no surprise then, that he depicted the poet and priest Andrija Kačić Miošić playing on gusle:

One of the songs Meštrović knew by hearth was Hasanaginica. This poem is perhaps the best-known poem of the Dalmatian oral tradition, because it was published in 1774 by Alberto Fortis, later translated by Goethe as “Klaggesang von der edlen Frauen des Asan Aga” (1775), published in Herder’s collection Volkslieder (1778), and translated into English via Goethe by Walter Scott (1798). This poem and Matija Murko’s recording of a female singer who still knew the song will be the topic of one of our future posts. It should be mentioned, however, that Meštrović still remembered a version of the song unknown from other sources (see Milan Ćurčin and R. W. S.-W., “Goethe and Serbo-Croat Ballad Poetry”, The Slavonic and East European Review 11, no. 31 (1932): 126–134).

Due to Meštrović’s profound interest in Dalmatian oral tradition of which he knew “fifty or sixty” songs, Matija Murko visited him in Zagreb to conduct an interview in 1931 and in 1932. Here is a photo of them: Murko is sitting down, dressed in white, and Ivan Meštrović is beside him on his right.

The visit resulted in the publication of an article in 1933 (Matija Murko, “Kod Meštrovića I njegovih – Ivan Meštrović kao pjevač epsih narodnih pjesama”, Nova Evropa 26, no. 8 (1933): 345–350). As Murko reported, Meštrović learned Hasanaginica from his grandmother who was singing it to his younger brother. He described to him how he learnt the songs and why he believes folklore is for him so important. Murko concluded his report by describing how they visited their family mausoleum in Otavice, speculating about the influence of Meštrović’s cohabitation with “lyric and epic folksong” on his art. 

The story reveals how important it is to overcome disciplinary boundaries if we are to understand past scholarship, literature, and art. This is why our project seriously considers the transdisciplinary approach in studying comparative literature’s history. 

When I was informed at the end of September 2022 that our project Towards a History of Comparative Literature in a Global Perspective: Matija Murko and his International Collaborators was accepted for funding by the Slovenian Research Agency ARRS (J6-4620), I immediately informed our research team of the results. One of project team members, dr. Jan Ciglenečki replied to my email by sending everyone a well-known song by the Avsenik Brothers Ensemble entitled Tam, kjer murke cveto (in the literal translation: There, where black vanilla orchids bloom). It is just one of those songs that everyone knows: the Avsenik Brothers Ensemble is among the most famous music groups in Slovenia, the beginners of the so-called “Oberkrainer-Stil Musik,” and this song was published in 1959 on their first album with the same name. You can listen to it here:

Jan’s humorous pun was of course in drawing the attention to the similarity between the surname Murko and the name of the flower “murka” mentioned in the song (“murka” is the name for “black vanilla orchid” or Nigritella nigra). According to Marko Snoj, the name Murko literally means “the man with a darker skin” (Marko Snoj, “Od kod priimek Murko?” in: Matija Murko – Slovanski filolog v najširšem pomenu besede, ed. Marko Jesenšek and Marija Stanonik, Ljubljana, SAZU, 2020: 9) and has the same etymological root as the flower “murka” (from *murъ̏ ‛črn’ like the lat. niger in Nigritella nigra, see link) 

What made Jan’s reference even better is the second verse of the song, which mentions the Slovenian folksong Pegam and Lambergar:

The “castle Kamen” and the name “Pegam” both refer to the old theory that the folksong about Pegam and Lambergarrefers to Gašper Lambergar (Kaspar von Lamberg) who in the 16^th century owned the castle Kamen, which still stands in Begunje na Gorenjskem. 

What the folksong is about is the topic of one of our future posts—so stay tuned! For now, I just want to explain why the poem is relevant. One of the several scholars who researched it was no other than Matija Murko who wrote extensively about it in several of his writings. Murko had a prominent role in the state-sponsored project Das Volkslied in Österreich, which aimed at gathering and publishing folk songs of different languages within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it was in this context that he wrote about Pegam and Lambergar. More importantly, Murko used a comparative approach in an almost revolutionary way, and if you are interested why it was revolutionary, you can read more about it in Marija Klobčar, “Kako in kdaj so prišle žene do tega, da pojejo pesmi tudi o takih junakih, kakor sta Pegam in Lambergar —?”, Glasnik Slovenskega Etnološkega Društva 54, no. 3 (2014): 21–29 (see link) and in Marjetka Golež Kaučič, “Matija Murko med slovenskim in južnoslovanskim ljudskim pesemskim izročilom«, Matija Murko – Slovanski filolog v najširšem pomenu besede, ed. Marko Jesenšek and Marija Stanonik, Ljubljana, SAZU, 2020: 198–216.

All this neatly underlines some of the topics and questions that we will be dealing with in this project. Over the next few years, we intend to look into the work of Matija Murko, think about his comparative methodology, see how it influenced the development of comparative literature, discuss the importance of folksongs for world literature, and much more. All of you are kindly invited to follow and to contribute, so please, feel free to contact us if you are interested in our research (complitmurko@gmail.com). Or as the Avsenik’s song says, our team is There where the gentian blue / gently beckons all happily bragging (Tam, kjer encijan plav / Ves prešerno bahav nežno vabi).

This is the official webpage of the research project “Towards a History of Comparative Literature in a Global Perspective: Matija Murko and his International Collaborators,” financed by the Slovenian Research Agency. In this project, we explore different ways in which to bring peripheral academic voices to the mainstream narratives about the history of comparative literature. We are especially interested in bridging the gap between close and distant reading and micro- and macro-history, which, we believe, can assist researchers in exploring unknown narratives in history of scholarship.