Tears of the Prodigal Son

The Tears of the Prodigal Son (Croatian: Suze sina razmetnoga) is a poem written by the Croatian Baroque poet Ivan Gundulić. It was originally published in Venice in 1622.

The poem is composed of three laments (cries) (plač): the Sin (Sagriješenje), the Comprehension (Spoznanje) and the Humility (Skrušenje), presenting the three basic categories of Christianity — sin, repentance and redemption — through contrasts like death/life, sin/purity and Hell/Heaven.

The poem Tears of the Prodigal Son draws on the well-known biblical Parable of the Prodigal Son found in Luke 15:11-32, the basis of which forms a story on a father forgiving his son's spendthriftness and greed, after the son comes back home remorseful of his actions. Gundulić adapts and heavily elaborates the original storyline, but still leaves clearly recognizable traits of the biblical template.

Parable as a literary form represents an elaborated simile or a metaphor, inserted into a larger literary works — the Bible in this case. Biblical parable on the prodigal son has but merely two dozen lines, while Gundulić's poetical cultivation extends to 1332 verses, being permeated with numerous son's contemplations on the meaning of life and death, the sin, and numerous verses dedicated to his repentance.

In monologue form the son introduces the plot to the reader, and therefore beside being the main character serves also the role of a narrator, with the exception of sporadic occurrence of the omniscient narrator who announces the monologue. In the biblical parable, however, only the omniscient narrator appears.

Significantly different is the elaboration on the sin itself, being portrayed in the biblical parable as a hedonistic enjoyment in life's pleasures, excessive luxury and overindulgence. The poem adapts those sins too, but ultimately binds them into the foremost sin of lust, induced by a beautiful woman. Lust has encouraged the son to prodigality, for his fortunes fade not for his own self-centered "riotous living", but for the sake of pleasing the woman by buying her valuable presents. The character of a salacious woman is non-existent in the biblical parable, and as a counterbalance the poem omits the character of an older son which slightly changes the poem's ending and significantly the moral lesson learned.

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