Original scientific paper

Marko Marulić, our Contemporary

Rafo Bogišić

Abstract

There are two creative concepts and literary themes that make Marulić a close and living presence and — why not — a contemporary: One of them would be the stress he lays upon the necessity of norm in human behavior and such a terrestrial life that should be lived within the scope of the Christian outlook; the other one, drawing on patriotic feelings, could be described as the deep concern for the future of the land and the people, the preoccupation that was particularly felt in the time following the Turkish penetration into the central part of the Croation ethnic space.
These two conceptual bases of Marulić’s work still represent the two fundamental, existential Croatian preoccupations and problems, the thematic and conceptual framework within which the Croatian man still lives. As in Marulić’s time the very existence of the people is in peril; as then, the physical struggle for survival is inseparable from the battle for ethical principles and a moral codex. It is very much alike the Biblical situation of the Hebrew people in the Desert, when the two forms of battle could not be separated; once divided, they did not function.
Although Marulić’s battle for ethical and moral principles, and spiritual values in general, could be seen as the reflex of the inherited, lasting Christian direction of action, it could be understood also as a concrete effort, with the ultimate scope of getting over the religious and general cultural crises that appeared in the contemporary Europe.
Even the present Croatian situation is marked by universal and eternal battle for Christian principles and, at the same time, by the necessity of spiritual renewal and the restoration of the long neglected, even openly negated, values. Without the possibility of organizing its own life, the Croatian people was subjected, over the last two centuries, to tendencies which systematically destroyed its spiritual integrity, largely eroding its moral codex. However, it was the morally devastating communist period to bring about the worst degeneration of the behavior and the attitudes of the people. It was accompanied by the destruction of ethical values and a general passivity, now requiring a long period of renewal and restoration. At the same time, the Croatian people is forced to struggle (like in Marulić’s days) for its very physical survival, abandoned, now as then, isolated and surrounded by incomprehension.
That is why Marulić’s works, which clearly point out the ordeal of identity preservation and survival, communicate successfully with present time. It becomes apparent that the two basic motives of Marulić’s work (and, at the same time, the basic preoccupations of the Croatian Renaissance literature in general) — patriotism (i.e. battle for survival) and conservation of an ethical and moral codex — are still topical and really inseparable: the negation of one leads to the negation of the other, as well.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

9821

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/9821

Publication date:

22.4.1995.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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