Machiavelli Niccolo: Vladar

Niccolo Machiavelli: The Ruler

This new translation into Croatian of the famous political work Il principe (The Ruler) by Niccolo Machiavelli is the work of political scientist Damir Grubiša, who for decades has been persistently - scientifically, editorially and translating - dealing with the epoch-making political opinion of the great Florentine. Vladar has experienced two translations in Croatia. The first was a pioneering venture by F. M. Dominiković entitled The Prince (1918). We owe the second to the literary historian and theoretician I. Frangeš (1952, subsequently reprinted five times), who is considered a literary exemplary translation because he expertly conveys the syntax of Renaissance literary discourse into Croatian. In our country, the literature on Machiavelli is also very extensive, and The Ruler is one of the reference classic works that are referred to, studied and critically evaluated by all who are even seriously engaged in political science, especially political theory. That Machiavelli in our country has long enjoyed the status of a recognized classic of political thought is evidenced by the first-rate undertaking of publishing the Selected Works of N. Machiavelli in two voluminous volumes in 1985, edited by Damir Grubiša and enriched with a comprehensive preface "Introduction to Machiavelli". In 1998, he also prepared a polished translation of Vladar by Frangeš, in a bilingual edition, and accompanied it with a large introductory study "How to read Vladar". During almost sixty years, our reader could therefore get to know the Ruler only through Frangeš's translation. In addition to its undoubted quality in a purely literary and linguistic sense, the edition also had major shortcomings in the form of skimpy comments alongside the main text itself, a careless attitude towards the key categories virtu, fortuna and principato, and certain arbitrary encroachments on the text itself (the most drastic example is found in the strategic chapter IX, where principato is expressed as tyranny, and liberta as democracy). In a professional and theoretical sense, a new translation of Vladar has therefore been necessary for a long time. The one offered to us by Damir Grubiša does not try to modernize Machiavelli so much as to interpret him from the context of his time and the political discourse of that time, so that we can understand the innovation of Machiavelli's political ideas and their significance for the modern world. Equipped with an introductory study and extensive notes along with the translation, this edition can without any hesitation be called the first critical Croatian edition of this classic work, which is also emphasized by the translator's decision to return the work to its original title De principatibus (while retaining, in order to avoid confusion, the customary title Vladar).