Macedonian Blood Wedding
Written by	Voydan Pop Georgiev – Chernodrinski
Characters	Cveta Spase Osman Bey Duko
Date premiered	November 7, 1900 (1900-11-07)
Place premiered	Sofia, Bulgaria
Original language	Macedonian[1]

Macedonian Blood Wedding (original title: Македонска кървава свадба, transliterated as Makedonska Krvava Svadba) is a play by Voydan Chernodrinski first published and shown in theaters in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1900. The drama was written in the Macedonian Debar dialect with influences from Turkish and following several Bulgarian Cyrillic orthography norms.^[1]

Plot

The play's main topic is "the hard and unbearable position of Macedonians under Turkish rule".^[2] It starts with the kidnapping of Cveta, a Macedonian Orthodox girl by Osman bey while she works in the field with her family members during the harvest season. He takes her to his harem where he tries to change her ethno-religious identity. There, she is pressured by the bey, the Muslim Priest Selim and two Macedonian girls, Krsta and Petkana who had succumbed to the pressure and are now the bey's wives.^[2] Both her brother Duko and the young shepherd Spase, her love interest are strongly objecting to the forceful kidnapping.

Her relatives report the case to the mayor, the consuls and Carigrad where the seat of the Ottoman Sultan is. This forces the mayor to have a public ruling of the case where Cveta is asked in front of all her relatives and the officials whether she wants to become Turkish.^[2] Cveta refuses to change her identity despite the attempts by Priest Selim to mar her mind by giving her opiates. Cveta is free again and after a while her wedding with Spase in the village begins. Furious that the girl has escaped, Osman bey goes together with his soldiers to the event to take her back to his harem. All the villagers start protesting, the bey kills Duko, Cveta stabs him with his knife. In the end, one of Osman Bey's soldiers kills her and before her death, she reiterates that she died but did not become Turkish.^[2]

Background and conception

The play takes place in the late 19th century, when the region of Macedonia was still under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The local Slavic population was then a subject to forced Islamization and oppression. The author found inspiration to write the play in the real-life case of a girl named Bozhija Manadzhieva from Valandovo about which he read in the newspaper Reformi. The girl, who worked on the fields for an agha was kidnapped by the Turkish and was taken to Thessaloniki.^[3]

The play tells the story of a young woman Cveta who is kidnapped by the bey who is in charge of the fictional region of the village Stradalovo. It follows her resistance to be converted to Islam and renouncing her national identity along with the parallel revolt of the locals against the Ottomans. Substantiating his motifs to write the play, Chernodrinski has explained in the book's preface:

"What did I write? I [personally] did not write anything. I only copied from the still unwritten bloody history of Macedonia, that which the reader will read and the spectator will see in the theater. Of the bloodlust of our Turkish beys, the preparedness of female Macedonians to die and not to change their religion and the manhood of the Macedonian man to courageously avenge the bloodshedders who will try to taint his family honor, that is mainly what the content of the play consists of".^[2]

Release

The play was written in 1900 and its premiere was scheduled for 7 November in Sofia with a performance by Chernodrinski's theater group Skrab i uteha.^[2] In order to avoid additional exasperation of its relations with another of its neighbours - the Ottoman Empire, the government banned the premiere of the openly anti-Turkish play. However, the policemen sent to the theater encountered resistance from some activists of the Supreme Macedonian Committee, and the play took place.^[4]

Chernodrinski reworked it later to give the plot and the libretto for a new opera called Cveta that was written by the Bulgarian composer Georgi Atanasov.^[5] In the mid-1930s, Aleksandar Shoumenoff from Gorno Dupeni, owner of the First Bulgarian Book Store in Granite City, USA, published Chernodrinski's works. The text wasn't translated into English but the play became popular among the Macedonian Bulgarian emigration.^{[6][unreliable source?]}

Linguistic analysis

Three editions were published in Sofia of the play; one in 1900, one in 1907 and a last one in 1928.^[2] There are several linguistic differences between the versions published in 1900 and 1928 and the lexicon and the syntax contain a lot of influence from Bulgarian and Turkish. The original dialect on which the book is based is the Debar dialect, part of Western Macedonian dialects, as the author was born in Selce.^[1] Professor Maksim Karanfilovski from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje argues that the language of the book cannot be solely attributed to the Debar dialect and notes that some of the features used are typical of the country's central dialects and some cross the borders of the Macedonian language.^[7] The language used by the main characters is mainly conversational. In order to successfully capture the atmosphere and the everyday language spoken in the villages of Macedonia at the time, the author used numerous Turkish loanwords which are currently considered archaic and are not used anymore in modern-day Macedonian.^[1] Bulgarian influence can also be seen in some verb conjugations, numbers, pronouns and loanwords as well as the orthography as the book was printed in Bulgarian Cyrillic in older Bulgarian orthography.^[1]

Language dispute

Nikolai Jordanov, a writer for the Bulgarian Homo Ludens magazine, argues that the original drama was referring to the characters in the play as Bulgarian and that after Chernodrinski's death in 1951 in then SR Macedonia, the drama Macedonian Blood Wedding was transliterated into the newly codified Macedonian language. In addition to this, he argues that parts of the text where the words "Bulgarian" were used in the publications in 1900, 1907 and 1928, were replaced with "Christian" or "Macedonian" in later editions of the play.^[8] He further emphasizes that all of the other mini-texts which do not involve the conversations between the characters, such as the preface and the instructions to the actors are written using the Bulgarian language norm.^[8] Professor Luzhina also points out in her work that there were alterations to some words from the first to the second edition to decrease the influence of Bulgarian; other words from the Debar dialect were also replaced with central Macedonian dialects.^[3]

Modern day

The play is considered today as one of the most important works in Macedonian literature.^[2] The play was adapted into a movie in 1967 under the direction of Macedonian director Trajče Popov.^[9] Following its premiere, the play was shown in numerous other Bulgarian cities.^[8] Later, the play was widely shown in numerous Macedonian cities.^[8]

References

Bibliography

External links

• Чернодрински, Войдан. „Македонска кървава сватба“ (трето собствено издание). 1928, София. Chernodrinski, Voydan. Macedonian Bloody Wedding (third edition). 1928, Sofia.