Bugarštice
The Bugarštice (also bugaršćica ) is one of the two verse forms in the oral epic poetry of the Southern Slavs . The term is borrowed from Bugarska about bugariti , the name for Bulgarian pastoral shepherd songs. In general, the Bugarštice, unlike the Deseterac derived from it , is an extinct epic medium in folk songwriting in the Serbo-Croatian language and falls between philology and medieval studies in literary terms . The last seals of the Bugarštice are mostly dated to the 18th century.
In addition to isolated Bugarštice, which are cited by some authors in their works, the corpus consists of three manuscript collections. Two belonged to Ragusaner collectors, Đuro Matijašević (collection from 1758 with 14 songs, the oldest of which dates from the 17th century) and Josip Betondić (1709–1764, 18 songs). The former Yugoslav Academy in Zagreb has two manuscripts with 23 Bugarštice from the beginning of the 18th century. These collections and a few other songs from other regions of Dalmatia were published by Valtazar Bogišić in his Narodne pjesme iz starijih, najviše primorskih zapisa 1878 in Belgrade. It is an edition with a total of about 76 Bugarštice.
The Bugarštica comes from a feudal context of the Serbian Empire; After the Ottoman conquest and the extinction of the Christian nobility, it could only be handed down in text form and thus survive for a while in the urban surroundings of the Dalmatian cities. This distinguishes it from the widespread folk poetry in the Deseterac , which has been preserved in the chants of Serbian epic poetry in the patriarchal sociocultural context for centuries until today as the epic medium of the Guslar accompanied by the Gusle .
Petar Hektorović described a musical accompaniment to the Bugarštice, but it can only be guessed with which instruments this was done.
Bugarštice singing was last described in the 19th century from Budva, where it was part of wedding celebrations as Velike pjesme . A purely historical theme is characteristic of the Bugarštice, while the Deseterac also contains non-historical elements.
origin
Although all Bugarštice from the western Balkan peninsula come from Dalmatian manuscripts, the names, heroes, themes and language (basically in the štokawian dialect) indicate an origin from the eastern or central Balkan province in old Serbia.
The earliest record of a fragment of a Bugarštice was recorded in 1497 in the Italian city of Giaoia del Colle on the occasion of the visit of the Queen of Naples Isabella Del Balzo on May 31, 1497 by the Italian court poet Rogeri di Pacienzia in the epic court poem Lo Balzino . This was performed there by a colony of Slavic emigrants to dance and music and belongs to the group of the so-called despot epics, a corpus of the post-Kosovo cycles, in which the historical event of the capture of Janos Hunyadi by Đurađ Branković was thematized :
Half a century later, in 1555, the Croatian poet Petar Hektorović made the most important epic work of the genre in the inscription of a recitation in the so-called "Serbian manner" by the fisherman Paskoje Debelja during a boat trip on the island of Hvar . Makro Kraljević and his brother Andrijaš is the classic story of fratricide , which, like later ten-syllable epics, opens with a formula-like phrase: Two poor men were good friends for a long time ( Dva mi sta siromaha dugo vrime drugovala ).
The Bugarštice Marko Kraljević and his brother Andrijaš contain some traditional formalistic expressions, some of which are only characteristic of Bugarštice, some of them both for Bugarštice and the ten-syllable epics. In the lecture, which was recited in the standard of the Ijekavian dialect, the use of Ekavian expressions is striking due to the origin of the poetry. In Hektorović's own prose, on the other hand, there are no ekavisms, but he wrote them down for Bugarštice. Some linguistic historical elements in "Marko Kraljević and his brother Andrijaš" have not been used since the middle of the 15th century, so this poetry is dated to the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th century.
The hero of the story, Marko Kraljević , appeared in legendary form for the first time in 1427 in the historical work "Život despota Stafana Lazarevića" by Konstantin Kostenezki in the passage about the Battle of Rovine , when he said: "I ... pray to God that he helps Christians even if I am the first to be killed "is quoted. Marko Kraljević's dual personality is already illustrated here. On the one hand, as a vassal of the Ottoman Sultan, he is forced to physically support the Ottomans, on the other hand, he remains a heroic figure who finds expression through his spiritual independence.
Decline
With the decline of Serbian statehood, the literary tradition that was formed succumbed to the Ottoman conquest. The feudal Serbian ballads and epics in the Bugarštice genre were cultivated in other areas with the emigration of the Serbian nobility in the 15th century by Serbian bards to the Dalmatian coastal cities and the southern Hungarian countries north of the Sava. This poetry, which goes back to feudal Serbian society, thus survived the collapse of the Serbian state for a while. Among the Bugarštice, however, none from the time of the Serbian medieval empire could be preserved, as no records have survived before the end of the 15th century. All the Bugarštice writings that were made in the Dalmatian cities of Dubrovnik , Hvar , Perast and Kotor by Croatian, Slovenian, Hungarian, Italian and German writers were already overshadowed by the linguistic bloom of the ten-syllable Serbian folk epic so that the Bugarštice in the traditional anachronistic linguistic form no longer possessed the epic, imaginative and narrative power of folk poetry.
The folk poetry in the Deseterac adopted its stories, dozens of motifs, their narrative and stylistic patterns, and hundreds of their formulaic means of language from the epic predecessors of the Bugarštice bards. Over the centuries, in the peasant patriarchal society of the simple Serbian and Croatian rural people, an extremely rich epic genre developed from this, which lasted an unusually long time as an independent poetry from the middle of the 15th century to the 19th century. It thus overshadows all other European folk song poems in their historical constancy and importance for national literature and represents by far the most important poetic legacy of the Serbian people.
Characteristic
Like all Bugarštice, they were formed as narrative oral epics through the narrative tradition of different singers over a longer period of time. The Bugarštice themselves are among the most important texts in the history of the Serbo-Croatian oral epic tradition, as many of the earliest manuscripts for the songs of Marko Kraljević and the Battle of the Blackbird can be found in them. The Bugarštice are long-lined chants, the short narration of which is presented in the structure of a ballad. In general, heroic or novelistic tales of a feudal court atmosphere are reproduced in it. It is usually made up of fifteen or sixteen syllables, usually followed by a compulsory caesura after the seventh syllable and sometimes after the eighth (7 + 8 or 8 + 8). In addition, it contains a kind of refrain.
Text example
The Bugarštice stories are mostly based on mythological or historical traditions. The Bugarštice Sultana Grozdana i Vlašić Mlađenj, which was written in the Bay of Kotor in the 18th century , takes place in a mythical and magical world of medieval grandeur in which exceeding the obligatory consanguinity and its prolongation leads to a natural catastrophe. In this Bugarštice, old pagan animistic ideas stand out in the significance of the image of maple trees as bearers of the cult of the dead of the southern Slavs, which, in their function of restoring a patriarchal order, stand in an unrealistic love affair between a Christian knight and a Turkish sultana in a rose garden of Constantinople. After the janissaries hang the knight from a maple tree after the affair is uncovered, the story culminates in the last few lines when the sultan's daughter cuts her hair in mourning and covers his face with it to protect him from the sun before she sits on the same maple tree hangs up:
Sultana Prezdana i Vlašić Mlađenj
Brzo meni ufatite Mlađenja, mlada Vlašića,
I njega mi objesite o javoru zelenomu,
Mladoga Mlađenja!
BRZE sluge ošetaše po bijelu Carigradu,
I oni mu ufitiše Mlađenja, mlada Vlašića,
Te Careve sluge,
I Njega mi objesiše o javoru zelenomu,
A to ti mi začula Prezdana, lijepa sultana,
Lepa gospoda,
U ruke mi dofatila svilena lijepa pasa,
Ter mi brže ošetala put javora zelenoga,
Prezdana gospođa.
Tu mi bješe ugledala Mlađenja, mlada Vlašića,
A Dje mi on visi o javoru zelenomu,
Vlasicu junaku,
Ona bješe obrrezala sve svoje lijepe us kose,
Ter h bješe Stavila Mlađenju na bijelo lice,
junaku Vlasicu,
Da mu ne bi Zarko sunce bijelo lice pogdilo.
Pak se bješe uspela na javoru zelenomu,
Prezadana gospođa,
Tu se bješe zamaknula zu Mlađenja, mlada Vlašića,
Prezadana gospođa.
Tuj mlađahni visahu o javoru zelenomu.
Prezdan the Sultan's Daughter and Vlašić Mlađenj
Young Vlašić Mlađenj swiftly seize,
And hang him from the maple green
Young Mlađenj!
So swift they walked through the Imperial City,
Young Mlađenj Vlašić they did seize,
Those Sultan's vassals,
And from the maple green they hanged him,
When Prezdana fair had heard of this,
Fair Lady,
She took a lovely, silken sash,
And walked so swift toward the maple green,
The Lady Prezdana.
And Vlašić Mlađenj saw she there,
As from the maple green he hung,
Vlašić, the fine hero.
And off she cut her fine, fair hair,
And placed it over Mlađenj's face,
Heroic Vlašić's
Lest burning sun disfigure it.
And she climbed up the maple green,
The Lady Prezdana,
And there fell limp beside Young Mlađenj,
The Lady Prezdana.
So Young from maple green they hung.
Web links
- bugarštica (bugaršćica). In: Hrvatska Enciklopedija . (Croatian encyclopedia)
swell
- ↑ bugarštica (bugaršćica). In: Hrvatska Enciklopedija . (Croatian encyclopedia, online edition)
- ^ John S. Miletich: The Bugarštica - A Bilingual Anthology of the Earliest Extant Suth Slavic Folk Narrative Song . (= Illinois Medieval Monographs III,). University of Illinois Press, Chicago 1990. ISBN 0-252-01711-0 , p. XIX.
- ^ Benjamin A. Stolz: On Two Serbo-Croatian Oral Epic Verses: The "Bugarštica" and the "Deseterac" . In: The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language. Vol. 2, 1969, pp. 153-164, (JSTOR: PDF)
- ^ Svetozar Koljević : Preface to the translation of Serbian-Croatian heroic songs by Anne Pennington and Peter Levi: Marko the Prince - Serbo-Croat Heroic Songs . Unesco collection of representative works, European Series, Duckworth, London 1984, ISBN 0-7156-1715-X , p. XIII.
- ^ Svetozar Koljević: The Epic in the Making . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1980, ISBN 0-19-815759-2 , p. 27.
- ^ Svetozar Koljević: The Epic in the making . Clarendon, Oxford 1980, pp. 27-28.
- ↑ Svetozar Koljevic in: Marko the Prince. 1984, pp. 49-57.
- ↑ Svetozar Koljevic in: Marko the Prince. 1984, p. 50.
- ↑ Svetozar Koljevic in: Marko the Prince. 1984, p. 52.
- ↑ Svetozar Koljevic in: Marko the Prince. 1984, p. 52.
- ^ Anne Pennington, Peter Levi: Marko the Prince - Serbo-Croat Heroic Songs . Duckworth, London 1984, p. 31.
- ↑ Svetozar Koljevic in: Marko the Prince. 1984, p. 179.
- ^ Svetozar Koljević : The Epic in the making. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1980, p. 91.
- ^ Svetozar Koljević: The Epic in the making. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1980, p. 27.
- ^ Svetozar Koljević: The Epic in the making. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1980, p. 91.
- ^ Albert B. Lord: Foreword to John S. Miletich: The Bugarštica - A Bilingual Anghology of the Earliest Extant South Slavic Folk Narrative Song . (= Illinois Medieval Monographs III). University of Illinois Press, Chicago 1990, p. VIII.
- ^ John S. Miletich: The Bugarštica - A Bilingual Anghology of the Earliest Extant South Slavic Folk Narrative Song . (= Illinois Medieval Monographs III). University of Illinois Press, Chicago 1990, p. XIX.
- ^ Svetozar Koljević: The Epic in the making. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1980, p. 117.
- ^ John S. Miletich: The Bugarštica - A Bilingual Anthology of the Earliest Extant Suth Slavic Folk Narrative Song . (= Illinois Medieval Monographs III). University of Illinois Press, Chicago 1990, ISBN 0-252-01711-0 , pp. 228-233.