http://www.balkaninstitut.com http://www.balkaninstitut.com INSTITUTE FOR BALKAN STUDIES OF THE SERBIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS SPECIAL EDITIONS 130 EPIC FORMULA A BALKAN PERSPECTIVE Edited by Mirjana Detelić Lidija Delić Editor-in-chief DUŠAN T. BATAKOVIĆ Director of the Institute for Balkan Studies SASA BELGRADE 2015 http://www.balkaninstitut.com 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) http://www.balkaninstitut.com 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 http://www.balkaninstitut.com 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 http://www.balkaninstitut.com FOREWORD n 1985, when his Annotated Bibliography on oral-formulaic theory was pub- lished (Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: Introduction and an Annotated BibliographyI . 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 theEpic 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. http://www.balkaninstitut.com 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 http://www.balkaninstitut.com 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.