Digenis Akritas

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Text page from the "Androu-Athenian" manuscript

Digenis Akritas (also Digenes Akrites or Akritis ; Greek Διγενής Ακρίτας or Διγενής Ακρίτης or Έπος του Διγενή Ακρίτη ) is the title of the most important Byzantine hero epic . It is considered the oldest evidence of Middle Greek literature and thus establishes the linguistic-historical connection between ancient and modern Greek literature.

General

Digenis Akritas, the main character and namesake of the epic, is a fictional or at least mythical representative of the acritics from the time of Emperor Basil I (867–886) or Basil II (976–1025). The time of the Macedonian dynasty is generally accepted as the historical background; nevertheless, the historicity of the events and shapes of the epic remains unclear. The poem itself is written in Alexandrians and is about the life and deeds of the hero.

action

The epic begins with the origin of the Digenis: his father was Musur, Persian emir of Syria, who had stolen the daughter of a general during an invasion of Byzantine territory. When their five siblings ask the emir in vain to return their sister to them, a duel between Musur and her youngest brother emerges and emerges victorious. Nevertheless, the emir refuses to surrender the girl. Instead, he marries her, becomes a Christian, and settles on Byzantine soil. When he returned to Persia at short notice at the urging of his angry mother, he converted her there as well as his entire family to Christianity. One year after his marriage, his son Digenis is born.

Digenis has shown extraordinary skills since childhood and hunted at an early age: at the age of twelve he had already killed two bears and a lion. When he falls in love with the daughter of a general, but her parents refuse to allow her to marry, he steals her with their consent and legally takes her as his wife after killing the henchmen sent against him by her father in battle. The epic then tells of the deeds that made Digenis famous and earned him awards from the Emperor of Byzantium. Most of the space in this story is the fight of Digenis against a dragon and a lion who had stolen his wife, as well as against the so-called Apelaten ("robbers") and the Amazon Maximos, who wanted to kidnap them. In addition to his warlike deeds, two missteps on the part of Digenis are reported: once he cheats on his wife with an anonymous Arab girl whom he meets on one of his adventures; another time with Maximos after their defeat (in a different handwriting it says that he subsequently killed Maximos out of a guilty conscience). After gaining such great fame, Digenis retreats to a large tower that he built on the banks of the Euphrates. There he also died of exhaustion at a young age. Immediately afterwards his wife dies of grief.

Survival

Premodern

The figure of Digenis lives on in two types of folk songs: one thematizes his bride-robbery, the other his death. The former can in turn be differentiated into two genres: According to one tradition, Digenis kidnaps his lover with her consent; after the other, it is stolen by Saracens or Apelates. The first includes the Cypriot epic Digenis and the daughter of King Levantis ( Ο Διγενής και η κόρη του βασιλιά Λεβάντη ): Here Digenis learns that King Levantis wants to marry his daughter to a certain Ioannakos and for unevenly whom he is married to does not hold a worthy bridegroom. He offers the king hospitality, but the king refuses it. Digenis then goes to his palace and plays a magical lute there. The princess falls in love with him, but before he is allowed to marry her, she sets him a task: Digenis passes it, whereupon the girl follows him. The king then sends an army to bring them back, but Digenis repulses it.

Another folk song says that Digenis was not invited to the wedding because it was feared that he would steal the bride. In other variants it is said that Digenis was suddenly distracted by a bird that stole his wife from him. There are numerous variations of these songs, in which other heroes often take the place of the digenis.

According to the other tradition, which is closely related to the original epic, Digenis appears shortly before his death and commemorates his deeds with his comrades in arms. He then asks his wife what she will do when he is dead. Since he does not believe that she will be faithful to him after death, he strangles her with his hands. In other songs (e.g. in the fifteen-syllable Cypriot variant), unlike in the epic, Digenis does not die of weakness, but in a fight with Charon. In most of these manuscripts, Digenis appears not only of superhuman abilities, but also of superhuman body dimensions.

Modern

When the Akritenlieder were discovered in the late 19th century, who was Digenis Akritas quickly as a national symbol: He appears at Kostis Palamas in his iambics and anapaests as a symbol of the Greek national soul on that life from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the modern Greece has been. In the Dodecalogue of the Vagabond, on the other hand, he embodies the conscience of the common people in relation to the morally decayed power of the Byzantine emperor. When Angelos Sikelianos in turn, in the poem The redeemed Christ of The Death of Digenis , Digenis appears as a rebel, as well as representatives of the disadvantaged. Finally, Palamas planned a drama Digenis Akritas , which he gave up, while Ioannis Psycharis announced a work of the same name in 1921, which he ultimately did not complete. There is also evidence of a correspondingly planned epic by Nikos Kazantzakis , in which Digenis appears as a timeless symbolic figure who is present in many historical events, from the conquest of Constantinople to the present.

The handwritten records

The text of Digenis Akritas is preserved in six manuscripts that have been discovered since 1870:

  • the so-called Escorial manuscript with 1867 verses (Library of the Escorial ), editio princeps : 1911
  • the Trebizond manuscript with 3182 verses ( Sumela Monastery ), editio princeps: 1875
  • of the Androu-Athenian manuscript with 4778 verses ( Greek National Library , manuscript No. 1074), discovered in 1878
  • the Kriptoferris manuscript with 3709 verses ( Grottaferrata Monastery ), editio princeps: 1892
  • of the Oxford manuscript, an adaptation of 1670, discovered in 1880
  • the Androu manuscript ( Thessaloniki ), an adaptation of 1632.

It is assumed that other manuscripts exist without this assumption being proven so far.

Modern editions

Synoptic and text-critical editions

  • Βασίλειος Διγενής Ακρίτης και το άσμα του Αρμούρη . Critical Edition, Foreword, Notes & Glossary by Stylianos Alexiou . Hermes, Athens 1985 (Escorial).
  • Digenes Akrites. Synoptic edition of the oldest versions. Edited by Erich Trapp . Vienna 1971, ISBN 3205031571 .
  • Βασίλειος Διγενής Ακρίτας. Τα έμμετρα κείμενα Αθηνών. Edited by Petros Kalonaros . Dimitrakou, Athens 1941 (Androu, also Trapezunt, Kriptoferris and Escorial).
  • Les Exploits de Digenis Akritas - épopée byzantine du dixieme siècle. Publiée pour la première fois d'apres le manuscrit unique de Trébizonde par C. Sathas et É. Legrand . Maisonneuve, Paris 1875, (online) (Trebizond).

Editions with translations

  • Digenis acritis. The Grottaferrata and Escorial Versions . Edited and translated by Elizabeth Jeffreys . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998.
  • David Ricks : Byzantine Heroic Poetry . Bristol Classical Press, Bristol 1990, ISBN 1-85399-124-4 (edition of the Escorial version of the Digenes Akrites and the songs of Armouris with translation and annotations).
  • Digenes Akrites . Edited with an introduction, translation and commentary by John Mavrogordato . Oxford 1956, ( online ), (Kriptoferris).

Translations

  • Digenis acritis. The epic of the Greek Middle Ages or the immortal Homer. Translated into German rhymes by Georg Wartenberg. Publishing house of the Byzantine-Modern Greek Yearbooks, Athens 1936 (Texts and Research on Byzantine-Modern Greek Philology, No. 19).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Pieris Zarmas: Das Zyprische Volkslied - Akriten-Epos und Akriten-Gesänge , in: Hellenika - Yearbook for the Friends of Greece 1991, pp. 154–156.

Web links