Travesty, Parody, Enchantment: Translating Hanibal Lucić's Vila

‘Jur nijedna na svit vila’, by Hanibal Lucić ( c.1485–1553), is one of the best known and most loved poems of the Croatian Renaissance, but translating it into a different context poses problems of reception. The article uses travesty and parody to address the issues of poetic vocabulary and gender regime, and finds similarities between such techniques and translation. Each of these can prompt a critical interpretation of the poem. But the resulting critical gaze does not necessarily lead to an adequate reading, and the article goes on to discuss aspects that are obscured in translation, from echoes of oral literature to the grammar of traditional love-charms, suggesting that the point of the poem is to convey an emotional effect, that of enchantment or wonder, that is not accessible through critique. But does such magic, which demands exact repetition, work in translation?