The Venerable Maker (Matoš on Marulić)

The writer analyses the perception of Marko Marulić in the oeuvre of Antun Gustav Matoš, in the writings published in the first decade of the twentieth century. Although he wrote no dedicated work or article about the first Croatian literary classic, Matoš mentioned him relatively frequently in associative sequences, catalogues, when he was speaking of the Croatian past and the contemporary state of the nation, as poetic and national value from the tradition that needs to be kept up. The writer in addition establishes certain intertextual links between Matoš and Judita, in an account of a journey the poet took to Samobor. It is also established that Matoš was the first to use the now well-known affective titles for the “father of Croatian literature” - the maker and Marul. A particular analysis is made of Matoš’s assessment that Marulić is the first Croatian national poet and the first modern Croatian littérateur. Matoš places him, as author of Judita in contrast tohis own contemporary intellectuals, whom he vehemently criticised for the patriotic feebleness and indifference to the unpropitious circumstances in the country. The writer several times points out that Matoš, with his astute critical intuition, recognised how exceptional Marulić was in the literature and national tradition, and that through this vision he adumbrated the way Marulić was to be understood at the end of the 20th century