Buzzing Around

On the Verse Forms of Péter Zrínyi

Abstract

Péter Zrínyi (1621–1671), the younger brother of the poet Miklós Zrínyi, played a significant role in the history of Hungarian–Croatian literary relations. He translated his brother’s epic poem and the entire Syrena volume into Croatian, producing two different versions (1660, 1666). The adaptation involved not only content-related changes but also formal modifications, including alterations in the structure of certain poems. This workshop study investigates the reasons behind these changes within the framework of Hungarian and Croatian poetic systems, and explores the relationship between the two traditions with respect to orality and sung poetry. The paper was originally written in honour of Sándor Bene, a distinguished Zrínyi scholar, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in 2024. The title of the study is also borrowed from him, as he used this phrase to characterize the relationship between the two brothers.