Colloquia Maruliana ..., Vol. 10 , 2001.
Original scientific paper
Uttering the word unutterable: an interpretation of Marko Marulić’s Hymnus ad Deum
Neven Jovanović
Abstract
The Hymnus ad Deum consists of 117 hexameters and is Marulić’s longest Latin poem after the Davidiad. In the Hymn, Marulić celebrates God the Father, the Creator. The poem is moving even today, and sounds amazingly modern, thanks first of all to its logic being more emotional than rational, so that the poem speaks at several layers of meaning, or perhaps even ambiguously. This brings the Hymnus closer to modern poetry. On the other hand, a reading of Hymn to God, can also provoke a liberating reaction.
An analysis of the structure of the poem produces four kinds of understanding. Firstly, the Hymn is a real hymn in the ancient meaning of the word: it uses and skilfully adapts many of the formal features of this ancient genre (e.g., the invocation, the predication, the aretalogy, the relative style and the thou-style). Second, the Hymn does not address God directly, rather the Muse; thus the poet obtains the chance to talk about his own creativity. A fact that is interpretatively important is that the lyric subject finally desires to silence the Muse at the end of the poem, thus silencing the voice of his own creativity. Thirdly, the structure of the Hymn is not linear; the poem abounds in prolepses that link together the time of Genesis with the present, helping the reader to recognise the world around him as the work of God. Fourthly, the Hymn starts as an emphatically balanced system (in terms of division into lines, in the internal organisation of the verses); however, this balance gradually disappears. The dissolution of the form signalises the growth of the excitement, the approach to God.
This paper has attempted to reveal the artistic effect of Hymnus ad Deum via the closures that we can discover in the extra-literary world thanks to our encounter with Marulić’s poem. The first closure that we can recognise is the impossibility of rational talk about God. If they want to come closer to God, who goes far beyond the cognitive capacities of the human mind, people have to accept inexplicability, plurality of meanings. God is knowable only emotionally, in an ecstasy even. That is why Hymnus ad Deum has unclear places and images that call on the reader to share the author’s exaltation, his admiratio. This latter emotional state Marulić considers a necessary element of contemplation in the Evangelistary.
Finally, the search for closure shows that the world of the Hymn to God is emphatically good, that from this world every evil has been carefully omitted. However, individual parts of the poem undercut this dominant tendency. An elementarily allusive reading (recognition of a dialogue with Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Hymn 76-81) will bring about a sense of disharmony, disturb the admiratio, and disrupt the visionary mood of the Hymn. Every reader, if he or she wants to come to terms with this tension, has to answer the following question: what is the situation of the reader’s faith? How seriously does he or she want to understand the invitation posed by the Hymn, the invitation to contemplative ecstasy? How much is he or she ready to seek God? Only very personal answers to this question are possible. Hymnus ad Deum thus reveals itself as a very serious work of art, one that can lead to self-knowledge, one that can provide liberation.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
2484
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2001.
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