Original scientific paper
Once again about the Allegorical Interpretation of Judita
István Lőkös
; Filozofski fakultet, Debrecen
Abstract
Considering »ideas about the Turks in Croatian literature of the early modern age« Davor Dukić in his book Sultanova djeca / Children of the Sultan (Zadar, 2004) raises the question: »Was Marulić thinking of the Turks in Judita?« Al-most at the same time in Colloquia Maruliana XI (2002) Ružica Pšihistal published her own interesting study entitled »Does Marulić’s Judita Need an Allegorical Interpretation?«. Croatian literary history tradition thought the first Croatian epic an allegorical expression indeed of the anti-Turkish viewpoint of Marulić. Literary history, to back this up, has cited works in which anti-Ottoman themes have appeared either directly or by patent implication (Prayer against the Turks, Complaint of the City of Jerusalem, Epistle to Hadrian VI), as well as the historical facts of the time (the Ottoman attacks on the Dalmatian towns of Split, Zadar, Šibenik and Trogir; the death of Ban Petar Berislavić in 1520; the fall of Belgrade in 1521, for example). In these anti-Turkish works of Marulić the Turks are dis-cussed directly, while there is never a mention of them directly in Judita. Hence the writers of the studies cited have proposed an interpretation of Judita in a Chris-tian moralist and not in a patriotic allegory light. The conclusion that the poem does have a Christian moralist character is not in doubt, and needs accepting in its entirety.
But while they analyse only the text of Judita, we here propose observing the Marulić poem in a comparative context. As is well known, the topic of Judith appears in Polish, Czech and Hungarian literature in the 16th century. The Bohe-mian writer Mikulaš Konač wrote a textbook didactic drama about Judith and Holofernes; the Hungarian poets Sebestyén Tinódi and Mihály Sztárai in their »historical songs“ (históriás ének) give the example of the »holy widow« with undoubted anti-Turkish allegorical allusions. Sztárai was formerly a Franciscan, and then a Protestant preacher. Tinódi served Count Tamás Nádasdy as court scriv-ener and singer; in their work, both of them took their cue from the Reformation. In Hungarian literature there were other poets too who were active representatives of the Counter Reformation, and wrote historical poems on Old Testament topics, with a contemporary moral and political tendency however. These two kinds of engagement, the anti-Turkish and the moralist, were always linked in their works, and cannot be easily distinguished. If such examples, close to Marulić in time and geopolitics, are considered, then his Judita can be seen as somewhat more delicately shaded, taking into account the connection of the moral allegory and anti-Turkish layers in the works cognate to his Judita.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
23921
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2008.
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