The Siege of Sziget or The Peril of Sziget (Hungarian: Szigeti veszedelem, Latin: Obsidio Szigetiana, Croatian: Opsada Sigeta) is a Hungarian epic poem in fifteen parts, written by Miklós Zrínyi in 1647 and published in 1651, about the final battle of his great-grandfather Nikola IV Zrinski (also Miklós Zrínyi in Hungarian) against the Ottomans in 1566.
The poem recounts in epic fashion the Battle of Szigetvár, in which a vastly outnumbered Croatian-Hungarian army tried to resist a Turkish invasion. The battle concluded when Captain Zrinski's forces, having been greatly depleted, left the fortress walls in a famous onslaught. Approximately four hundred troops forayed into the Turkish camp. The epic concludes with Zrinski killing Sultan Suleiman I, before being gunned down by janissaries. Being in the epic tradition, specifically modeled on the Iliad and the Gerusalemme Liberata, it opens with an invocation of a muse (in this case, the Virgin Mary), and often features supernatural elements; Cupid even appears in Part XII. Zrinski is several times compared to Hector in the text.
Kenneth Clark's renowned history Civilisation lists the Szigeti veszedelem as one of the major literary achievements of the 17th century. While John Milton's Paradise Lost is often credited as resurrecting the classical epic, it was published in 1667, a full sixteen years after the Veszedelem. Petar Zrinski, the author's brother, published a Croatian version of the epic in 1660. The first English translation was published in 2011.[1]
- ^ Miklós Zrínyi The Siege of Sziget, translated by László Körössy with an introduction by George Gömöri. (Washington D.C., 2011: Catholic University of America Press)