Created 1646–49 | Purpose Mourning song | |
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Location Imotski, Bosnia Eyalet, Ottoman Empire Author(s) | ||
Hasanaginica, less commonly Asanaginica, (first published as "The Mourning Song of the Noble Wife of the Hasan Aga'") is a South Slavic folk ballad, created during the period of 1646–49, in the region of Imotski (in modern Croatia), which at the time was a part of the Bosnia Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire.
Contents
Background
The ballad was handed down from generation to generation in oral form until it was finally written and published in 1774 by an Italian traveler and ethnographer Alberto Fortis in his book Viaggio in Dalmazia ('A travel across Dalmatia') while traveling through Dalmatia in 1770. During his travels, he discovered what he called a "Morlachian ballad" (a term he used to distinguish the peoples from coastal Dalmatia) from the inland locals, a term that was criticised by Croatian writer Ivan Lovrić, who accused Fortis of many factual errors in his own response, Notes on 'Travels in Dalmatia' of Abbe Alberto Fortis, which he then attempted to rectify. It was subsequently translated to German (Goethe, 1775), English (Scott, 1798), Russian (Pushkin 1835, beginning, and Akhmatova 1950s, in full), French (Mérimée, 1827 and Mickiewicz, 1841) and other world's languages, becoming an integral part of the world literary heritage already in the 18th century. Today, Asanaginica has been translated into more than 40 languages. It is considered a part of the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian literary heritage.
When a manuscript was found in the legacy of Split family Papalić it was hinted that the Fortis' version was not the original but a copy from this newly found manuscript, which was corroborated by further philological analyses. Fortis' friend Matej Sović (archdeacon of the Osor chapter on the island of Cres) has the original Roman Ikavian text copied to Western Cyrillic, and Fortis or someone else has recopying the text to Roman script transcribed the Cyrillic jat in Ijekavian form.
The meter of the ballad is classical South Slavic decasyllable or 10-syllable verse, translated by Goethe as trochaic pentameter. According to Mikhail Gasparov, after Goethe's version epic and/or mourning odes in trochaic pentameter became popular in the German poetry, this semantic feature of this meter was later borrowed to the Russian poetry as well.
Story
Hasanaginica, "The Mourning Song of the Noble Wife of the Asan Aga" is a ballad about the Muslim family Arapović in Dalmatia. The incidents take place along the Province of Bosnia's frontier in Vrdol (today Zagvozd), near the Biokovo mountains of Dalmatia, where the Lord (aga) Hasan Arapović had large estates. The ruins of the Hasan towers exist today, as well as the place where Hasanagica is understood to be buried, near the ruins of the tower, on the southwestern slopes of the Blue Lake.
The ballad relates that following a battle, whilst lying wounded, Hasan-aga summons his wife, Fatima Arapović (née Pintorović), who was unwilling to accompany him to the battlefield. Deeply angered and in pain, Hasan-aga sends his wife a message ordering her to leave his castle without their children. Despite pleading with her brother, who brings her the message and the divorce papers, Hasan-aga's wife is ousted from her home and her brother arranges her to be married to a wealthy kadı. As a last wish before she is married, she asks her brother for a long veil so that she does not see her children as the wedding procession pass by her old castle. Ultimately, her children see her and call out for her. As she stops to bid them farewell one last time, she dies of sorrow.
There is much debate about whether the ballad was purely poetical and fictional, or based on real people and events. However, the following people did actually exist and are believed to be the basis of the ballad: