Tale
Veli Jože
Vladimir Nazor · 1908
Opening lines
Bilo je to davno, kad su ono providur Barbabianka i šjor Zuane Dalla Zonta, proto arsenala u Mlecima i kapetan motovunske šume, išli po mletačkoj Istri da označe vapnom cerove koji će se oboriti i prevesti u Mletke.
It was long ago, when the provveditore Barbabianka and sior Zuane Dalla Zonta, master of the Venetian arsenal and captain of the Motovun forest, went about Venetian Istria marking with lime the Turkey oaks to be felled and carried to Venice.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
In Istria, in the days of Venice, only one giant is left in each town. The one in Motovun carries loads, ploughs, and lets himself be led by the patricians who have him for nothing. One day he learns that elsewhere there once lived free giants, and that he would be owed a right of which no one can find a written trace. He sets his mind on going to see.
Context
The book appeared in 1908 in Ljubljana, from Dragutin Hribar, under a subtitle that presents it as a tale from Istria. The author was then teaching in the province. He related that he had got the idea on seeing in Motovun an enormous man carry on his shoulder a trunk almost bigger than himself, and that he had then assembled the legends of the place: they hold that the peninsula once counted many benevolent giants, poisoned by the locals except for one per town, kept for the labours nobody else wanted. He later reworked his text for children, removing part of the marvellous, and it is that version that served in schools. An English translation, made from the 1908 text, appeared in 2022.
Who it is for
About a hundred easy pages, which nonetheless assume the reader knows what Venetian Istria was. No French translation; the English translation keeps the original title.
Prizes and reception
The best-known work of its author, reprinted dozens of times and read by Croatian schoolchildren for over a century.