Assoc. Prof. Kata Kulavkova, Ph.D.
Department od General and Comparative Literatute
Faculty of Philology: "Sts. Cyril and Methodius" University
Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

FROM SIMPLIFICATION TO PARONOMASIA:
The Re-semantization of the Paradigm of the Turk in Macedonian Literature

Istanbul, March 1999

Macedonian oral literature is not only domain of discourse where the anthropological and historical figure of the Turk and the "Turkish" have been shaped. The first paradigm of the Turk is constituted within and integrates two semantic aspects: the archetypal and the pragmatic. The archetypal brings out the ambivalent and palimpsest symbols of diabolic and evil (morphologized in the karagjoz, the ambiguous and ethnically undefined "Black Arab"). The pragmatic refers to social, religious and communal relationships: polarization of the powerful and rich Turks, 'kadija"-s, 'pasha'-s, 'aga'-s, 'beg-'s, 'sultan'-s {trans. note: Turkish titles' authorities} opposed to the powerless and poor 'argat'-s (trans. note: Turk. farm-hand)/the 'raja' (trans. note: Turk. rightless Christians as Turkish subjects); Islam opposed to Christianity; the particular Ottoman chromatized sevda conceptualized as a poetics and praxis of longing for the Other (person, life) and for Otherness (religion, language/logos), as a kind of solipsism and rebellion; the discrepancy between the eros and the praxis; the religious and ethnic export-import and transfer of taboos and violations...

Traditional culture's various forms of laughter, jest, jokes, satire, anecdote, humor, grotesque and allegory with motifs from the Turkish epoch (unconsciously!) halt the automatic transfer of historical aversions and prejudices. Signals of literary expression's process of autonomization can be noticed. The discourse of humor in Macedonian and South-Slavic areas is homologous and isomorphic to the carnevalized discourse of the late medieval period, the pre-renaissance and renaissance fiction in Western Europe, first oral, later authorial, such as Rabelais (Mikhail Bakhtin, 1965/1978; Aaron Gurevitch, 1981/1987). In the focus of interest are social paradigms, injustice, poverty, the deep social gap between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the subdued. Such a praxis generates a correspondent, critical, satirical and grotesque intonation of the logos. It becomes a part of the traditionalized communication context corresponding with the national spirit and the local milieu, abundant with humor, witticism, aphorisms, proverbs, folklore didactic, familiarities, lascivious lexis, ludic and cathartic reception where the subdued exults over the conqueror's trouble ("and indeed, since the kadija-s has started to judge falsely and to take bribe, henceforth the Turks began losing their kingdom and, if they proceed like that, they will lose it all", Sapkarev, 241/p. 485).

An internationalized character of a Turk, known as Nasradin Odja, in Macedonian realistic and humorous stories or narratives, anecdotes and legends, is opposed to the character of the Macedonian Itar Pejo (occasionally Itroman Petar). This contrast is primarily antagonistically situated on the supra-textual level of ethnic and religious identity, and secondarily on the inter-textual semantic level, Iter Pejo usually fools and outwits Nasradin Odja. That trickery initiates social allusion and Mariovian {trans. note: area in Central Macedonia}, wich means Macedonian nostalgia for triumphing over the powerful and superior Turks. Paradoxically, yet in humoristic cycle of outwitting in particular, impregnated within mimetic images of profane reality, the Turk begins to enter the focus objectively also, disburdened from the ideological evaluations of social milieu. Thus, this cycle's anecdotes do not exclude the possibility of Nasradin Odja appearing as a "winner" of the outwitting, more cunning and wiser than the idealized and nationalized Iter Pejo. Illustrative is the "Nasradin Odja" anecdote where Iter Pejo is duped by Nasradin Odja, to prop up a wall for thee hours, as well as the "Nasradin Odja and the Workers", considered to be a "variation" of the well-known "Itar Pejo" anecdote, noted down by Sapkarev, No. 147, where Nasradin Odja dupes Iter Pejo about the cow that he is taking for the fair for sale (1976, Vol. 5, 322/3). Precisely in the Iter pejo and Nasradin Odja narratives occurs and approximation of these two nationally separate characters. Occasionally they "inter-fuse" to such a level that they come into coincidence and equivalence.

Life within each other's proximity and the multitude of inter-subjective, intercultural, inter-linguistic and other communication between Macedonians and Turks has brought them also to "natural" emotional and amorous relations. They have encountered numerous hindrances as well, from banal to tragical, producing corresponding human and inter-human situations, Varied traces of such emotional and existential situations are present in the oral lyricism and epic/heroic poetry, especially in Marko Krale cycle. They are usually interwoven with inhibitions of religious origin, and they bring up the theme of converting to Islam, of slavery and janissary: "Mehmed-Aga and teh Maid", "Neda and Mehmed-Bej", "White Neda and Arslan-Aga", "Neda ans Ismail-Aga", "Turk-Chieftain and Maid" etc. - Sapkarev, Vol. 3; "Murat-Beg and Maria", 125/p.170 "Dafina and Omer-Aga", 176/p. 175 - the Miladinovs; the thirteen-poems cycle selected by Blaze Konesky "Turk Was Passing Throug the Woods", 1986; "Turkish Slave-Girl and Her Brother", Kiril Penushlisky, 1983, 104/p. 229 etc.

The ethnical criticism of the Turks is situated in a wider context, supposed to provide objectivity and to release it from the mortgage of the exclusive ethnic and confessional aversion: "The Turk cannot be an intimate friend"; "an adopted son cannot be a son"; and "a woman shouldn't be trusted" (Sapkarev, 242/p. 487). The mirage of the Turk is an impetus also when it comes to Islamic converts: detecting/identifying them immediately determines and re-directs the axiological prism in the direction of human virtues ("Stojan, the Bride and the Convert", the Miladinovs, 137/p. 184).

The profound traumas survived by Macedonians in the period of janissary, of the conversion and deprivation of social and legal rights, are not a reason, despite all, within their collective consciousness and imaginary world, to project the archetypal sign of evil on the Turks. That role of an archetype of evildoing, in the pre-cognitive discourse of the subconscious memory, of the dream and the idiomized logos reflected in the oral literary and pre-literary forms (legends, narratives, beliefs, epics, lyricism), is reserved for a certain para-ethnic or supra-national category, coded in time, nowadays read semantically utterly ambivalently and polyvalently, in the Black Arab. Namely, the question is posed - which ethnos and which epoch hides behind the Blac Arab/Black Arabs: for example, a character who is demonized and frequent in the Macedonian oral (even in modern) literature, locus communi in the form of synegdoha of the idea of jeopardy, direct and evident misfortune, a potential, menace, enemy, robber, rapist...? We will point out only few sources: the heterogenous 'Bolen Dojcin' cycle of poems, i.e. 'Black Arab' cycle, also poems such as "Marko, the Arab and Marko's Wife", "Marko and Murat-Beg", 125, "The German Queen and Marko", 126, - the Miladinovs, etc. The Black Arab plays a role in the other South-Slavic nations as well, and there are indications that he is prototype of a primordial archetype modified in several Mediterranean cultures, spreading its symbolism from evil to good (J, Luzina, MANU, 1996). The later shows a structural and aemantical inclination of this literary myth toward the equally ambivalent myth of the Giant/Ogre (Pierre Brunel, 1988, 1102).

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