Epic
The Siege of Sziget
Szigeti veszedelem
Miklós Zrínyi · 1651
Synopsis
God, seeing the faith and morals of the Hungarians weaken, sends the archangel Michael to hell; the fury Alecto makes her way to Turkey and, in the guise of his father, appears in a dream to Sultan Suleiman to urge him to war. The sultan convenes his council and sets his army marching towards Hungary. At Szigetvár, Captain Miklós Zrínyi prays, and the crucifix bends towards him to promise him martyrdom.
Context
Great-grandson of the captain who defended Szigetvár, the author wrote the poem around 1647-1648 and published it in 1651 in Vienna, in a collection entitled Adriai tengernek Syrenaia, the Siren of the Adriatic Sea. Fifteen cantos in quatrains on a single rhyme, in twelve-syllable lines, follow the rules of the ancient epic, with their divine interventions. His brother Petar produced a Croatian adaptation of it in 1660, which adds one hundred and thirty-seven stanzas and removes forty-one.
Who it is for
Fifteen cantos in seventeenth-century Hungarian; a bilingual French translation has existed since 2015, an English one since 2011.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first epic of Hungarian literature; its French translation received the Nicole Bagarry-Karátson prize.
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