EPIC FORMULA - mirjanadetelic.com

256 Pages·2015·4.78 MB·English

INSTITUTE FOR BALKAN STUDIES
OF THE SERBIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS
SPECIAL EDITIONS 130
EPIC FORMUL A
A B A L K A N P E R S P E C T I V E
Edited by
Mirjana Detelić
Lidija Delić
Editor-in-chief
DUŠAN T. BATAKOVIĆ
Director of the Institute for Balkan Studies SASA
BELGRADE 2015
Publisher
Institute for Balkan Studies
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Belgrade, Knez Mihailova 35/IV
www.balkaninstitut.com
e-mail: [email protected]
Reviewed by
Nada Milošević-Djordjević, full member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Prof. Ljiljana Pešikan-Ljuštanović, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad
Front cover
Fresco from the Monastery of St. Moses the Abyssinian, Nabk, Syria
Photo: James Gordon, Los Angeles, California, USA, originally posted to Flickr by
james_gordon_losangeles at http://flickr.com/photos/79139277@N08/7430258250
Translated into English by authors and Ana Sivački
Layout
Kranislav Vranić
Printed by
Colorgrafx, Belgrade
300 copies
ISBN 978-86-7179-091-8
The publication of this volume has been financially supported by the Ministry of Educa-
tion, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia
(project 178010: Language, folklore and migrations in the Balkans)
CONTENTS
FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
I BASIC CATEGORIES: SPACE AND TIME
Lidija Delić
POETIC GROUNDS OF EPIC FORMULAE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Dragoljub Perić
TEMPORAL FORMULAS IN SERBIAN EPIC SONGS . . . . . . . . 43
Nemanja Radulović
ARBOR MUNDI. VISUAL FORMULA AND THE POETICS
OF GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
II BALKAN CONTEXT
Aleksandar Loma
TWO BLACK RAVENS. CORVUS CORAX IN SLAVIC EPICS
– A COMPARATIVE OUTLOOK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Pierre Sauzeau
THE NAME ARGOS: ETYMOLOGY, SIGNIFICATION
AND HOMERIC USAGES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Predrag Mutavdžić & Saša Djordjević
SOME TYPES OF INTRODUCTORY FORMULAS
IN GREEK KLEPHTIC (HEROIC) EPIC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Karl Reichl
THE VARIETIES OF FORMULAIC DICTION
IN TURKIC ORAL EPICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Ana Sivački
SPECIFIC INITIAL (INTRODUCTORY) FORMULAS
IN ALBANIAN (DECASYLLABIC) SONGS
OF THE FRONTIER WARRIORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
III SOUTH SLAVS AND SLAVIC CONTEXT
Smiljana Djordjević Belić
FORMULA IN TRANSFORMATION – HARBINGER FAIRY . . . 201
Marija Bradaš
THE TRANSLATION OF EPIC FORMULAS IN VARIOUS
ITALIAN INTERPRETATIONS OF KOSOVKA DJEVOJKA
(THE KOSOVO MAIDEN) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Mirjana Detelić
GENERIC LACUNA IN THE EPIC POEMS USING
THE FOG FORMULA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
FOREWORD
In 1985, when his Annotated Bibliography on oral-formulaic theory was pub-
lished (Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: Introduction and an Annotated
Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing; rpt. 1986, 1989 – 718 p.), John
Miles Foley made it clear that, although big enough, it could not do justice to
everything written about the epic formula and still of any importance. Since
then the number of works in this field has multiplied many times over and
now an endeavour such as Foley’s would be hard, if not impossible, to achieve.
From that point of view, yet another book on epic formula may seem redun-
dant in every respect. The editors of the Epic Formula: A Balkan Perspective
nonetheless believe that such a title has been long overdue, and here is why.
The epic poetry of the South Slavs has been the subject of research and
discussion on many occasions since it was introduced to the world for the sec-
ond time by Parry and Lord in the 1930s.1 Seldom, though, has any Slavic re-
searcher of oral epics, except for few giants such as Jacobson and Bogatyrev,
been invited to contribute to some of the numerous edited volumes, and of the
South Slavs almost none. Any serious study of the oral epics of the South Slavs
ought to welcome a native speaker’s contribution if for no other reason than a
correct reading of texts and solid knowledge of historical data.
It may prove difficult to note all lapses and errors made with regard to
the oral tradition of the Balkans. A recent case in point is an ambitious project
under the title History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe. Junctures
and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Volume III: The Making and Re-
making of Literary Institutions, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2007). Part III (Forg-
ing the Past: The Uses of Folklore, pp. 269–343) is devoted to the use of folklore
1 The first introduction, by J. G. Herder, Vuk Karadžić, J. W. Goethe, G. W. F. Hegel,
TALVJ (Therese Albertine Luise von Jakob), P. Mérimée, took place during the
romantic movement in nineteenth-century Europe.
8 EPIC FORMULA
for political purposes. There, Estonian, Baltic, Latvian, Czech, Slovakian, Ro-
manian, Bulgarian, Albanian and Macedonian folklores are introduced as rep-
resenting Central- and East-European cultures. The author of the introductory
text, which happens to be about Serbian oral poetry and about Vuk Stefanović
Karadžić, the most respected of all collectors of Serbian oral tradition in the
nineteenth century, is John Neubauer, one of the volume editors. In this text,
“Introduction: Folklore and National Awakening” (pp. 269–285), the author
has confused the titles and editions of Vuk Karadžić’s works: he mistakes the
four-volume Leipzig edition Narodne srpske pjesme of 1823, 1824 and 1833 for
Narodna srbska pjesnarica, a collection published in 1815, and then builds on
this mistake and says that the latter, Pjesnarica, is Vuk Karadžić’s ultimate col-
lection (Srpske narodne pjesme printed in Vienna in 1841, 1845, 1846 and 1862).
One would let it pass as a mere technical error were it not for the fact that the
subject spoken about is one of the most important events in the history of ro-
manticism and oral tradition collecting in nineteenth-century Central Europe:
it was Goethe, Mérimée, the Grimms, TALVJ and other leading members of
European literary circles who responded heartily to Karadžić’s collections.
The author also misspells the names of Vuk’s singers. The most favoured
of Vuk’s reciters, Tešan Podrugović, figures as “Podgurović”, and the blind
woman singer Živana as “Živena”. Moreover, he describes Živana as “another
unnamed blind woman, sometimes referred to as Živena”. In fact, the blind
Živana is known quite well indeed, she is known better than any other of Vuk’s
female singers. She was a widow of Pavle Antonijević, a registered taxpayer
from the town of Zemun which was in Austrian territory in the nineteenth cen-
tury, and she was a Serb by birth. She did travel, as a beggar, as far as Bulgaria,
but Zemun was her regular place of residence. She died in 1827 (December
20) leaving behind a granddaughter, Julijana. Vuk precisely noted which of the
songs he collected from her.
Another mistake concerns the historical prototype of the most famous
Balkan hero, Prince Marko. The author explicitly claims that he became “king
of Prilep” after the death of his father Vukašin at the battle on the river Maritsa
in 1371. In point of fact, Marko Vukašinović (Mrnjavčević) was the last lawfully
crowned Serbian king. His father, king Vukašin, had been a co-ruler with the
last Nemanjić ruler, the Serbian emperor (tsar) Stefan Uroš V, son and heir of
the emperor Stefan Dušan, and he had been crowned king with Uroš’s blessing.
Marko Kraljević (literally Prince Marko or Marko the Prince) bore the title of
“junior king” as his father’s successor, and upon the demise of both Vukašin
and Uroš, he was the only crowned Serbian king left. However, his real power
was small because local lords had become virtually independent. Marko the
Foreword 9
Prince was the last owner of the Serbian crown instituted by the Nemanjić dy-
nasty, and by no means just a “king of Prilep” (a small town in today’s Mace-
donia).
One reason for this volume was to present a variety of views from schol-
ars grounded in a personal knowledge of the region and the material. A second
reason was geographical. The source of all interest in the epic formula and the
starting point of the oral-formulaic theory as we know it today is closely con-
nected with Homer and ancient Greece – part of the Balkan Peninsula. It is rea-
sonable to suppose that the old tradition had spread across all of the Balkans,
and that was the reason Parry and Lord came to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to
test their theory about the oral roots of Homer’s epics. In fact, Serbo-Croatian
epics, which they recorded, are not the only ones to be taken into account.
There is also the Albanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian and Macedonian oral
epic poetry of a similar style in terms of both poetics and performance (with
or without the accompaniment of the gusle). Finally, the issue of Turkish influ-
ence is also to be considered seriously, for Ottoman rule in the Balkans lasted
almost five centuries. Due to the language barriers, that influence could not
have been direct, but its impact, from the point of view of anthropology, sociol-
ogy, and culture in general, was enormous.
A third reason for this book was its timeframe. Our intention was to
connect the present-day epics with their ancestors, but not in a comparative
manner. That is why we asked a few scholars to examine the possible prov-
enance of motifs and poetics, some kind of nuclei all the epic traditions could
have started from. It is exciting to see that the analysis proves – for example in
the case of the formulaic attributes white and bright and their transpositions – a
very old origin common to traditions coming from regions extremely far from
one another. It points to even deeper roots which could probably be found
in the Indo-European substratum. It is the editors’ hope that this volume will
offer a new way of thinking about old things and some answers to some of the
questions, old and new.