Cannabis Ruderalis

thcscience_admin

This article is about the play. For the eponymous 1967 film adaptation, see Macedonian Blood Wedding (movie).
Macedonian Blood Wedding
The cover of the original 1900 version of the play
Written byVoydan Pop Georgiev – Chernodrinski
CharactersCveta
Spase
Osman Bey
Duko
Date premieredNovember 7, 1900 (1900-11-07)
Place premieredSofia, Bulgaria

Macedonian Blood Wedding (Bulgarian: Македонска кървава свадба, romanized: Makedonska Kărvava Svadba) is a play by Voydan Chernodrinski first published and shown in theaters in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1900. From today perspective the drama was written in the Macedonian Debar dialect with influences from Bulgarian and Turkish.[1] At that time Macedonian dialects were widely considered to be part of the Bulgarian diasystem.[2][3][4]

Plot

The play's main topic is "the hard and unbearable position of Macedonians under the Turkish rule".[5] The term Macedonian according to the then used ethnic terminology included different nationalities.[6][7] When applied to the Macedonian Slavs, who were mostly Bulgarian Orthodox,[8] it meant a regional Bulgarian identity.[9][10] 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.[5] 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.[5] 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.[5]

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.[11]

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 Bulgarian identity[12][13][14] 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".[5]

Release

A Bulgarian postcard from the early 20th century, depicting a scene from the play.
Advertisement of the Shoumenoff bookstore in the local Bulgarian newspaper "Naroden Glass" in Granite City. The Chernodrinski's play is listed at No. 12.

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.[5] At that time the assassination of a Romanian newspaper editor Ștefan Mihăileanu, who had published unflattering remarks about the Supreme Macedonian Committee, brought Bulgaria and Romania to the brink of war.[15] In order to avoid additional exasperation of ist 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.[16] In fact Supreme Committee's leader Boris Sarafov, who orderied Mihăileanu's assassination, acted in combination with his brother Krastyo Sarafov, one of the first Bulgarian professionally trained actors, who participated in "Skrab i uteha".[17]

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.[18] 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.[19] After the death of Chernodrinski in 1951 in then SR Macedonia, the drama Macedonian Blood Wedding was transliterated into the newly codified Macedonian language, but the words "Bulgarian" in the text were replaced with "Christian" or "Macedonian".[20]

Linguistic analysis

Three editions were published in Sofia of the play; one in 1900, one in 1907 and a last one in 1928.[5] 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. After the Second World War Chernodrinski's native dialect was reclassified as part of the newly codified Macedonian language. 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 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.[21] 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] The preface, the scene's descriptions and the instructions at the end of the play are written in standard Bulgarian.

Modern day

The play is considered today as one of the most important works in Macedonian literature.[5] The play was adapted into a movie in 1967 under the direction of Macedonian director Trajče Popov.[22]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Peša, Tihana (2016). "Jezicna analiza drame „Makedonska krvava svadba" autora Vojdana Popa Georgieva Černodrinskog" [Linguistic analysis of the drama Macedonian Blood Wedding by the Author Vojdan Pop Georgiev Chernodrinski] (PDF) (in Croatian). Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. ^ The Macedonian partisans established a commission to create an “official” Macedonian literary language (1945), which became the Macedonian Slavs' legal “first” language (with Serbo-Croatian a recognized “second” and Bulgarian officially proscribed). D. Hupchick, The Balkans: From Constantinople to Communism, Springer, 2002, ISBN 0312299133, p. 430.
  3. ^ "The obviously plagiarized historical argument of the Macedonian nationalists for a separate Macedonian ethnicity could be supported only by linguistic reality, and that worked against them until the 1940s. Until a modern Macedonian literary language was mandated by the communist-led partisan movement from Macedonia in 1944, most outside observers and linguists agreed with the Bulgarians in considering the vernacular spoken by the Macedonian Slavs as a western dialect of Bulgarian". Dennis P. Hupchick, Conflict and Chaos in Eastern Europe, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995, ISBN 0312121164, p. 143.
  4. ^ In one respect, however, Macedonian nationalism threw up a problem which the Communist Party could not ignore: the question of the status of the Macedonian language. If, as Dr Johnson remarked, languages are the pedigrees of nations, then the Slav inhabitants of Macedonia were by any reasonable linguistic criteria part of the Bulgarian nation... The construction and dissemination of a distinctive Macedonian language was the medium through which a sense of Macedonian identity was to be fixed... The past was systematically falsified to conceal the fact that many prominent ‘Macedonians’ had supposed themselves to be Bulgarians, and generations of students were taught the pseudo-history of the Macedonian nation. The mass media and education were the key to this process of national acculturation, speaking to people in a language that they came to regard as their Macedonian mother tongue, even if it was perfectly understood in Sofia. For more see: Michael L. Benson, Yugoslavia: A Concise History, Edition 2, Springer, 2003, ISBN 1403997209, p. 89.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Belčev, Tole; Mladenoski, Ranko (2006). "„Македонска крвава свадба" – нови интерпретативни аспекти" ["Macedonian Blood Wedding" - New Interpretative Aspects]. Yearbook Faculty of Philology (in Macedonian). Faculty of Philology, Goce Delčev University of Štip.
  6. ^ Roumen Daskalov, Diana Mishkova. Entangled Histories of the Balkans Volume Two. BRILL, 2013, ISBN 9004261915, p. 503.
  7. ^ "Macedonian was an umbrella term covering Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, Vlachs, Albanians, Serbs, Jews, and so on." Bechev, Dimitar. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Historical Dictionaries of Europe, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956, Introduction.
  8. ^ Dimitar Bechev, Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia; Historical Dictionaries of Europe; second edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019; ISBN 1538119625, p. 62.
  9. ^ Chernodrinski explains in the preface of the third edition from 1928: "Although the old Turkish regime in Macedonia was replaced by two new ones - the Serbian and the Greek - the suffers of the Macedonian Bulgarians not only ceased, but on the contrary became more unbearable: the honor of many Cvetas, of all Macedonian girls is a toy in the hands of the new Serbian and Greek bloodthirsty torchers. That is why even now the Macedonian sons are fighting for the protection of their honor, property, nationality, language and tradition." For more see: Георги Николов, Било ли е, не е ли било, или е само черен сън. Литературен свят, брой от 29 май 2011.
  10. ^ During the 20th century, Slavo-Macedonian national feeling shifted. At the beginning of the 20th century, Slavic patriots in Macedonia felt a strong attachment to Macedonia as a multi-ethnic homeland... Most of these Macedonian Slavs also saw themselves as Bulgarians. By the middle of the 20th. century, however Macedonian patriots began to see Macedonian and Bulgarian loyalties as mutually exclusive. Regional Macedonian nationalism had become ethnic Macedonian nationalism... This transformation shows that the content of collective loyalties can shift. Klaus Roth, Ulf Brunnbauer. Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe, Ethnologia Balkanica Series. LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 3825813878, p. 127.
  11. ^ Luzhina 2000, p. 36
  12. ^ Here are some comparisons between the original and the Yugoslav edition made after the author's death: In the original (act 5, action III): Krsta: No, we were born Bulgarians, my sister. Petkana: (sad) Bulgarian, Bulgarian, we were born, my sister. In the Yugoslav version: Krsta: No, we were born Christians, my sister. Petkana: (sadly) We were born Christian, my sister. For more see: Йорданов, Ник., Случаят Войдан Чернодрински – “Македонска кървава сватба” и историите на тяхната “История”, в-к Културен форум, 25 фев. 2005, (in Bg).
  13. ^ "Until the late 19th century both outside observers and those Bulgaro-Macedonians who had an ethnic consciousness believed that their group, which is now two separate nationalities, comprised a single people, the Bulgarians. Thus the reader should ignore references to ethnic Macedonians in the Middle ages which appear in some modern works. In the Middle ages and into the 19th century, the term ‘Macedonian’ was used entirely in reference to a geographical region. Anyone who lived within its confines, regardless of nationality could be called a Macedonian. Nevertheless, the absence of a national consciousness in the past is no grounds to reject the Macedonians as a nationality today." "The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century," John Van Antwerp Fine, University of Michigan Press, 1991, ISBN 0472081497, pp. 36–37.
  14. ^ "At the end of the World War I there were very few historians or ethnographers, who claimed that a separate Macedonian nation existed... Of those Macedonian Slavs who had developed then some sense of national identity, the majority probably considered themselves to be Bulgarians, although they were aware of differences between themselves and the inhabitants of Bulgaria... The question as of whether a Macedonian nation actually existed in the 1940s when a Communist Yugoslavia decided to recognize one is difficult to answer. Some observers argue that even at this time it was doubtful whether the Slavs from Macedonia considered themselves to be a nationality separate from the Bulgarians." The Macedonian conflict: ethnic nationalism in a transnational world, Loring M. Danforth, Princeton University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-691-04356-6, pp. 65-66.
  15. ^ Lascu, Stoica (2016). "The Context of the Assassination in Bucharest of Macedonian Romanian Ștefan Mihăileanu (1859-1900) - In the Light of Some Epoch Testimonies". Annals of the University of Craiova. University of Craiova. 29 (1): 25–40. ISSN 1224-5704.
  16. ^ Glenny, Misha (2012). The Balkans, 1804 - 2012: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers.
  17. ^ Известия на държавните архиви, Том 90, Главно управление на архивите, България. Наука и изкуство, 2005, стр. 28.
  18. ^ "Любомир Сагаев — Книга за операта (8); Book on opera, Lyubomir Sagaev, 1983" (in Bulgarian). bg3.chitanka.info. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  19. ^ Георги Николов, Било ли е, не е ли било, или е само черен сън. Литературен свят, брой от 29 май 2011.
  20. ^ Йорданов, Ник., Случаят Войдан Чернодрински – “Македонска кървава сватба” и историите на тяхната “История”, в-к Културен форум, 25 фев. 2005, (in Bg).
  21. ^ Karanfilovski 1975, p. 34-40
  22. ^ Simjanoski, Gjoko (6 December 2017). "50 години на филмот "Македонска Крвава Свадба"" [50 years of the film Macedonian Blood Wedding] (in Macedonian). Publicitet.mk. Retrieved 14 February 2020.

Bibliography

  • Luzhina, Jelena (2000). "Македонска крвава свадба сто години подоцна" [Macedonian Blood Wedding one hundred years later] (in Macedonian). Skopje: Grafostil. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Karanfilovski, Maksim (1975). "Јазикот на Војдан Чернодрински во Македонска крвава свадба" [Vojdan Chernodrinski's Language in Macedonian Blood Wedding] (in Macedonian). L3b XXII (2). Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Macedonian_Blood_Wedding&oldid=941107989

Leave a Reply