Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (48.2015)

The Death of a Youth of Senj combines typical
components of its genre: oddity and rarity, horror
and tragédy, and addition of mythical admixture.41
(Fig. 8) The event is extremely weird, implying that
a giant snake killed a young man in a garden near the
town of Senj: he marched ont of the town only “two
times two hundred steps”, and an “exlraordinanly large”
snake “sei^eď him, that is to say, it wrapped several
coils around him, as is typical of boa constrictors
and pythons which kill their prey by constriction.
Although giant snakes are not venomous, Valvasor
says that it bit the youth several times “with its venom-
ous fang’ and adds that it killed him with its breath.
Thus the author combines two facts from natural
science which are completely incompatible and
enlivens this with his comment that the snake had
two tails. Furthermore, he adds a fairy-tale dimen-
sion because he compares the snake to the mythical
basilisk, which can kill with its deadly breath. Doing
so, he deliberately enhances the horror of the event,
which is even more terrifying because Valvasor leaves
no place for doubt about its truth and even locates
it in a familiar setting. Even more: the death did not
occur in a faraway country or in a wild forest of a
closer-lying land, but in a garden on the fringe of
Senj, the well-known and relatively nearby town. So,
it can happen to us too — this point effectively helps
the reader to expérience the young man’s death as
a thrilling and horrifying event. Valvasor moreover
adds a tragic motif of the mother who finds her
dead son, by which he skilfully plays on the émo-
tions of the readers and further brings this unusual
death case doser to them. Unlike other stories, this
one contains no directly articulated moralistic note;
nevertheless, it teaches us a lesson that death can
corne at any time and at any place, in the prime of
life, in a pleasant and apparently safe environment,
where it is least expected.

íSntcr fdjirôfcÇc 147

In dicm perditionis fervatur impius, & ad diem futoris
ducetur. Job. cap. 21.


Qcr^ôfctviiï&cfyaitcnan bctť&rg M Tkrtwbeité/eitë
«uff ben 'Ayj bcfi ©nmmeité timt er 6rací)t werřeij,
Job. cap. 21.
T2 HAT

Fig. 9: Johann Koch, The Death of Jakob Vojnié, J. W. Valvasor,
Theatrum mortis humanae tripartitum, 1682,p. 147.

Besides weirdness, rareness and horror, which
the author relates with an almost documentary un-
concern of a court stenographer, the story about the
terrible end of the brigand Jakob Vojnié also contains
moralizing and a belief, typical of such stories, that
crime should be punished without mercy, and the
cruelty of the punishment should be in proportion
to the brutality of the offence.42 Fig. 9 According to
the belief of the authors of collections of horror

41 »Segmaa exieratpuer hospitis unus ad hortum,
Vix quadringentis passibus urbe procul;
Prendit eum subito praegrandi corpore serpens,
Qui fuit & caudas visus habere duas,
His veluti binis miserum implicat undique spiris,
Atque venenato dente, halituque necat,
Deinde suum repetit genitrix maestissima natum,
Tot tarnen ex monstti morsibus exammem.o
'•.Theatrum mortis, p. 182.)

42 »An melior Voynitsch milesve latrove Croata,
Us manet: eximie primus & alter erat:
Qui quod bissenas Comiti succenderit arces,
Non procul a Gayga flumine forte sitas,
ïllius & raptam Turcae paulo ante sororem,
Vendiderit: positis prenditur insidiis.
Atque veru inftxus lento circumdatur igné,
Sic miser assatus vociferando petit.«.
(.Theatrum mortis, p. 146.)

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