A Poet's Struggle for a New Adriaticism in the Nineteenth Century

These stanzas are from an 1842 poem titled “Origin of the Bora,” which recounted the mythical genesis of the strong northeasterly winds that since time immemorial have plagued Adriatic sailors. In the poem, the Bora was no mere weather pattern, but instead the reincarnation of the Slavic nation searching for its slain heroes, the Uskoci pirates made famous in the writings of the seventeenth-century Venetian philosopher Paolo Sarpi and twenty-first-century historian Wendy Bracewell. In typical nineteenth-century Romantic style, the “Origin of the Bora” revealed how the winds (the soul of the sisters of the Uskoci, the Dalmatian womenfolk) blew upon the waters frantically searching for the corpses of their menfolk whom the Venetians and Germans had slain. These winds were relentless—they would never stop their frenzied quest—until the Uskoci heroes were returned home and their spirits were once again able to wield their swords along the “Illyrian contradas.” In the meantime, the poem warned, “Woe to any German or Venetian boat that advances … Their sails will fall in a heartbeat,/ And with the opposition of the wind they will be done for.”