House of Marin Držić

Dom Marina Držića

Noble and goodhearted audience, old and wise common people, I can see that you stand tonight to hear and see a nice play with your inclined ears and your blurred vision and I doubt, if I am not wrong, that you intend and wish to watch an excellent play, since excellent plays have not been created in these parts, thus far!

In his prologue to Uncle Maroje , a prose comedy from 1551, Marin Držic kept promising to the audience, that they will be able to see some new and entertaining things, and that in the trading streets of Rome, performed by the Pomet Troupe and very likely presented in the Palace of the Great Council of Dubrovnik (Ragusa).What can we, at least, promise now, as occasion serves, in the eve of the 500th anniversary of the great comedy writer?

Let us remind ourselves of the possibility, by paraphrasing Rudolf Arnheim's thought on differences between reproduction and multiplication*, in order to have the museum presentation of literary works classified into a multiplication of the original, and directly of their authors which is, after all, the central theme of this two-day conference.Until then a reproduction of the original, which by its characteristics, frequently, deprives it of its quality, possessed solely by the original can be redeemed only in the eye of a spectator, its consumer, respectively.As an artistic manner of production of numerous originals, their multiplications into which along with a book, the graphics, photography a film making a work exist physically, simultaneously on an equal footing, more than once.Thus being looked upon, it becomes clearer that an actor, taken as an example, by Arnheim is not a reproduced human being, but a visual figure with its own right of existence.The Držic's written words and their peculiar mutual combinations is what it is exactly, but not its first or physically defined edition of the same occuping the readers' attention. How to transpone the equivalent of reader's attention onto the museum designator?