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
(cont.)

The second paradigm has been constituted in literature since the beginning of the XX c. and in the period between the two World Wars, over-all within the social plays (Marko Cepenkov, Vojdan Cernodrinski, Nikola Kirov Majski, Dimitar Molerov), and continues in the early post-war theater and literary narrative corpus with historical, national and rural topics (Stale Popov).This paradigm radically simplifies the image of the Turk, characterizing him stereotypically in black-and-white contrast, always antagonistically opposed to the image ofthe Macedonian, in a sparse stylistic and semantic ambience dominated by principles of aversion and inversion.

The dominant ideologema of oral lyric poetry and ballads ("better death than converting to Islam"), infects also Macedonian social plays from the beginning of the XX c. considered more as a phenomenon of scenarios and theater than of literature. This can be marked overall in the Ilinden corpus formed (primarily) by the following minor plays, national-historical tragedies and melodramas: (a) Crne the Chieftain (1903) by Marko Cepenkov (1829-1920); (b) Macedonian Blood Wedding (1900), The Slave and the Aga (1902), We suffer from the Head (1902) and Evil for Evil (1903) by Vojdan Cernodrinski (1875-1951); (c) Ilinden - Images from the Great Macedonian Upraisal of 1903 (1923) by Nikola Kirov Majski (1880-1962); The Ajduk's Meadow {trans. note: ajduk: Turk brigand} (1902/3) by Dimitar Molerov. After the Second World War other theater plays follow bringing up the Ilinden topics, yet belonging to a different theatrical and imagistic strategy (Goce by Venko Markovski - 1952, Blacknesses by Kole Casule, etc).

The space of the plays implicates a narrowing, agorge, an absence, a lack; a tension between "inside" and "outside", home and foreign land, which generates dramatical and dramatic migrations and peripetias, plots and situations. Precisely the space maked some dramatical persona a desirable one, from some others an undesirable personality, a wished Good or an unwanted Evil (Etien Suriaux, 1982). "...the Turks are displaced from their 'natural environment' and pushed onto Macedonian soil, necessary have to become evildoers - otherwise dramatical tension would not arise" (J. Luzina, 1995, 180). Macedonian theater from the beginning of this century stereotypically typifies and impregnates this predisposition of the dramatical space in two mimetically polarized and confronted dramatical protagonists/agencies: on one side there are Macedonian men and women, revolutionaries and heroes, fighters for freedom, fierce defenders of national identity, brave and sacrificing positive types; on the other side - Turkish 'aga'-s and 'beg'-s, 'dusman'-s (trans. note: Turk. foes), representatives of the Ottoman hegemony and ideas, negatively comprehended characters and their according functions (abductors and molesters of young and beautiful maids and brides, actors of the conversion and the Islamization of the Christian population, "loathed Turks").

The tension emerges between two basic topical forces, between two antagonistic yearnings: to preserve their own "levelled" national identity (Christian, Slavic, local, Macedonian), while erasing the other's. The conflicted yearnings surrounding this brings conflict onto the stage, implicates a separation, polarization and rivalry. The stage becomes full of pathos, tragedy, melodrama, epic glorification and tale-like outcomes of the climax. The idealization of one inclination results in the annihilation of the opposite one. Translated in the language and the signs of the theatrical micro-cosmos, that conflict can be read and pictured on the stage as a scene and mise-en-scene full of illusory death, with spectacular deaths and murders. These rules of the dramatically conflict's structure in the social plays are the basis of the theater conventions wherein all the components of the dramatic art and medium participate: the author, the dramatical text, the directing, the actors, the stage adaptation, the audience, the critics, the social reception in amore general sense...

The most exploited and the most popular pattern in this theatrical model of projection/mirage of the Turk, not only as a character but as a dramatical function as well, as an agent, is Vojdan Cernodrinski's Macedonian Blood Wedding. The dramatical situations created by the act of abduction of a young Macedonian harvester-girl Cveta, by Osman-beg, and her imprisonment in his harem, together with other Christian women with similar fates. In contrast to the resigned, submissive reconciliation to polygamy and religious conversion of the other women, Cveta is presented as a rebellious character, and her temporary submission is dramatically explained with the influence of "one water, one remedy" through the magical act of brain-washing and hypnosis, by Selim-odja, the beg's friend. After numerous dramatical plots, the play ends in blood, as explicitly suggested by the very title, with Cveta's murder, as Osman-beg's revenge, aimed to prevent her wedding to her beloved (the shepherd Spase). Dying Cveta pathetically utters the cathartic patriotic replic-amblem: "I am dying... yet Turk I have not become!" The image of the Turkish cultural code is supplemented also with the scenes in the saraj/harem with the three Macedonian women Nevena, Rumena, Velika (The Slave and the Aga, Cernodrinski). Precisely in this melodrama can be seen the unique excess of the cliche-phototype of the Turk in the Macedonian social play, as well as in the "Macedonian dramatics" most probably, as stated by Jelena Luzina (1995, 212). That is the character of Sadria, whom Neven kills, "out of ignorance", not recognizing him in the night darkness.

Other plays from this complex put in focus the armed conflicts between Macedonian chieftains/'komita's and Turkish soldiers, gendarmerie, beg-s, aga-s, spies... Marko Cepenkov's Crne Vojvoda (1903) and Nikola Kirov Majski's Ilinden (1923) are paradigmatic for this type of projection. Crne Vojvoda is a kind of a "borrowing", an adaptation and inter-textual reinterpretation of dramaturgical re-make of the folk song about Spiro Crne and Kucuk Sulejman, whose noter, perhaps even the author, is the same person - Cepenkov (G. Todorovski, 1990, 115)! We are referring to "a historical drama in five acts", as it is mentioned in the play's para-textual subtitle, the play remaining on level of a "political tract" (G.T.). Macedonian resistance against the Ottoman authorities comprehended as generating terror and tyranny (through the events of 1879) is focused in this dramatical-political mixture.

In Majski's play Ilinden the "Manifest" of the Krusevo republic is even explicitly or integrally quoted, and quite pragmatically the program principles of the Ilinden Upraise are incorporated. The main representatives of the Turkish-Ottoman syndrome in this play are Jaja, Gemal, Suleiman, Airedin and Zenil. The projection of the Turk in the works from this black-and white imagological paradigm is inseparable from the parallel application of the Turkish verbal pattern. It is functionally applied overall in reference to the radical social and ethnic confrontation of the play's characters and situations.

The motif of seizing of a girl and converting her to Islam, supplemented with the harem, janissary and revolutionary chronotops, is characteristic for Stale Popov's (1899-1965) opus of novels: Patched Life (1954), Tole Pasa (1956), Sakir Vojvoda (1966), Dilber Stana (1958). We will mention here the example of the minor novel Kales Angja (1958), hiper-textually derived from the matrix of the popular folk song "Kales Angja". The narrative situation is situated in the historical frame of events connected to the Mariovo Rebellion, 1538. The historical characters, along with the motif of seizing, are a pretext for raising into an epic and national cult - the religious identity and the so-called "mass heroism" (D. Mitrev, 1990). The conflicted and dramatical situations are placed around the jeopardy and the defense, and against the loss and the oblivion of personal identity (name, religion, and origin). Personal identity in the given cultural-historical context is perceived as an equivalent to the collective. The Macedonian is contrasted to the Turk (Selim-aga, Arslan-aga, Suljo-Aga) on several levels: religious, verbal, cultural, social, political, military...

The idea is recognizable, in accord to the referent and pragmatic conventions of the narrative strategy of the traditional historical and social novel. It is interesting that precisely such an unobjectively structured description makes the idea about the Turkish period tolerant toward the historical facts. The realistic "verity" of the descriptions follow and suggests, namely, information about the privileged position of the peasants of the isolated region of Macedonia - Mariovo, a position that up to 16 c. included certain political and cultural autonomy and economic independence (it is well-known that the Mariovo inhabitants were freed from many taxes, also were outside the severe social hierarchy).

© Katica Kulavkova, 2001-2007.
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