Marko Marulić and the Slovenians

Slovenian cultured public never showed much interest in the literary work of Marko Marulić. The principal reason lies in the fact that, geographically and chronologically, Slovenian and Croatian literatures developed always as two independent literatures. Consequently, it is only on important anniversaries that Marulić‚s life and works rouse the interest of Slovenian cultural circles, as when, in past, the 500th anniversary of the poet‚s birth (1950) and the 400th and 450th anniversaries of the production of his poem Judith (1901 and 1951) were celebrated. Yet, it is symptomatic that on the mentioned occasions only around fifteen informative articles appered in Slovenian papers. At the start of the century the anniversary of Judith was recorded in the pages of the two journals most representative of the taste and opinions of the age, Ljubljanski zvon and Dom in svet, and in the newspapers Slovenski narod, Slovenec and Slovenka. In 1950 articles remembering the 400th anniversary of the poet‚s birth appeared in som Slovenian dailies like Slovenski poročevalec, Ljudska pravica, and in the pages of the journals Nova obzorja, Mladinska revija, Tovariš and Naša žena. The works of Marulić were never translated into Slovenian, except in one case, when the first twenty’eight lines of the Carmen de doctrina Domini nostri Jesu Christi pendentis in cruce were brought out in Slovenian translation. Regarding the earliest editions of Marulić‚s works, the author knows only of four editions of the De institutione, preserved in the Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica at Ljubljana. Such weak response, which Marulić‚s works met in Slovenia, was largely due to different lines of developments which the two literatures took from the start. For the Croats Marulić marks the beginning of national literature, while for the Slovenians he is only another cultivated Humanist, belonging to the old’Dalmatian tradition and completely extraneous to Slovenian literary world