Serbo-Croatian epic

[Aida Vidan]

Hello,

Here are a few titles which may prove helpful in the research on guslari. As
mentioned in a previous posting, indeed, in addition to Milman Parry’s and
Albert Lord’s work, some of the best earlier studies were by scholars
affiliated with the German/Austrian universities. Probably the most relevant
are Maximilian Braun's Das serbokroatische Heldenlied and Alois Schmaus's
Studije o krajinskoj epici (I believe this was originally published in German).

The first recordings and analyses of the verse structure/formulas were actually
done by a Slovenian, Matthias Murko ("Die Volksepik der bosnischen
Mohammedaner." Zeitschrift des Vereins fu¨r Volkskunde 19, 1909). His La poesie
populaire epique en Yougoslavie au debut du XXe siecle may also be of interest
(sorry, the accent marks are scrambled), as well as his Tragom srpsko-hrvatske
narodne epike. Putovanja u godinama 1930-1932, which contains all kinds of
interesting ethno data. Parry met Murko during his studies in Paris and it was
Murko who directed Parry to the region of the South-Western Serbia, Montenegro,
and Herzegovina where he recorded the materials currently held at the Parry
Collection (Widener Library) at Harvard. Parry, however, had much better
equipment for recording (double turntables) which allowed him to record the
singer without interruption. This means that the stops in the song were
generated by the singer rather than the "technological" needs.

Other names that come to mind are Djenana Buturovic (Bosnian), Svetozar Koljevic
(Serbian), Zdeslav Dukat (Croatian). A younger generation of American scholars
includes David Bynum, Ronelle Alexander, Margaret Beissinger, and John Miles
Foley. All have worked on the Parry materials but Foley has the longest list of
publications in this area (The Theory of Oral Composition. History and
Methodology; Traditional Oral Epic. The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the
Serbo-Croatian Return Song; Immanent Art; The Singer of Tales in Performance,
etc.).

Some of the most interesting materials (including the longest epic by Avdo
Medjedovic, “Osman Delibegovic i Pavicevic Luka,” which has 13,331 verses) were
published in the series Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs (Lord; Bynum co-edited some
volumes; the series contains the originals and English translations). From what
I remember the breaks in singing are not marked in this edition (easy to check
but I'm out of the country!). Since it took about sixteen hours to perform this
particular song (recording sessions were conducted over several days), there are
plenty of stops. One may have to go back to the actual disks to be able to
determine where the stops are. It is, of course, possible to tell occasionally
from the wording where the stops might be. There are cc. 1500 epic songs in the
Parry coll., ranging anywhere from several hundred to several thousand lines in
length and one can easily collect numerous examples of how the singers handled
the stops. I don't recall having seen anything in the interviews with the
singers that pertains to this specific subject, but there's a lot on the
question of what a "word" and "line" are, and how the songs are learned and
remembered so there may be something that indirectly explains the process of
resuming the song. Some of the materials are also available on the Parry
collection website: http://chs119.harvard.edu/mpc/

Hope this helps. Best regards,

Aida Vidan


Dr. Aida Vidan
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Barker Center 340
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
U.S.A.
tel.  617-495-2933
email: avidan at fas.harvard.edu


Quoting Ray Person <r-person at ONU.EDU>:

> Is anyone aware of a study on how Serbo-Croatian guslari begin their
> performance after a break?
>
> In "Homer and Huso I" (p. 111) Albert Lord gives the following example of
> what he calls "the ordinary formulaic lines to take up the song":
>
> De li bismo, de li ostavismo
> Malku pjesmu o duga zemana?
>
> Where were we, where did we leave
> Our little song of times long past?
>
> I'm interested in this general phenomenon in oral traditions, so I would
> welcome references to primary texts (preferably with English translations)
> as well as any secondary studies you might be familiar with.
>
> Thanks,
> Ray Person
> Ohio Northern University
>
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