engleski

The Waschzettel of Croatian Dante: Marulić's Repertorium and marginalia

Marko Marulić (Marcus Marulus, Split, 1450--1524) is considered the first great author of Croatian literature. He composed an epic poem in Croatian (Judita, 1501) and two Europe-wide early modern best sellers in Latin (De institutione bene vivendi and Evangelistarium). Marulić styled himself as a Croatian Dante ; in Croatia after 1848 he is regarded as a national icon. Even so, one of his Latin works, surviving in an 800 pages long autograph manuscript, was not published until 1998. Existence of this work, the Repertorium, was signalled to the scholarly community in 1923. And yet the lucky discoverer, the historian Ferdo Šišić, succinctly judged that “it would be absolutely pointless to publish” the text. This verdict seems to have been approved for 75 years, even among Croatian literary scholars. What could have been the reasons? Today we realise that there are even more Marulić's texts, written in his own hand, that are not even considered for publication. These are marginal notes in books from his library. It is true that the marginalia are neither independent writings, nor do they belong to conventional literary genres. But — bearing in mind the notorious Waschzettel of Schiller and Goethe — in the case of a national classic, any text could be considered important. What can be done in the time of limited resources, in a small country and a small culture?

Marko Marulić; commonplace-book; neo-Latin; scholarly edition

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