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  EPIC AND THE DEPHTS OF HISTORY :
(texte français: cliquez ici)   Topicality of epic

 

Contrary to tales and ritual pieces, epic pieces have a singular relation to time and history. They follow a strange logic, as different from that regulating the everyday life as from that governing ceremonies.
INTRODUCTION
FOREIGN LOOK, INNER LOOK
TECHNIQUES, EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGES
TERRITORY AND MEANING OF THE PLACE
KINSHIP AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION
CUSTOM, CEREMONIAL AND RITE
TALE, LEGEND, ART OF NARRATION
EPIC, DEPHTS OF HISTORY
1 Topicality of epic
2 Living Homer
3

The night of epic songs

4 An epic hero : Royal Marko
WHAT IS CALLED VAMPIRE
IMAGINE AND THINK THE NEXT WORLD
"Royal Marko", the hero of Bulgarian epic, painted by the contemporary Italian artist David Baffetto.
 
Revoked in an imaginary past, epic heroes are nevertheless called in present times by the perfomance of singers, bearers of an obscure and important message whose interpreter and audience feel the importance while knowing that they cannot exhaust its meaning. Bulgarian, like Serbian land, offers an exceptional field for understanding this refined game of memorizing and actualization. Its aeds, bards, village rhapsodes or masters in narration, blind beggars or reciters of verses on fairs have been practising this skillfull excercice for centuries, or even millenaries (...). Moreover, the Second World War, the irruption and subsequent fall of communist regimes, the Bosnian war and the resulting unceasing civil conflicts, the demonstrations and dramatic confrontations of entire populations with foreign armies and policies have revitalized the conditions in which aeds and rhapsodes of the past sang their epic pieces. Epic expression that Parry (Parry Milman, Lord Albert, Serbocroation Heroic Songs, Cambridge Mass., Belgrade, 1954) considered out of use in the 30's in Yugoslavia, was actually still in practice until the 70's in some Bulgarian villages of the Pirine. Completely out of common use in the 90's in Bulgaria, it was well known by old people in its oral form and as a narrative genre. And above all, it was pecrfectly mastered by a few holders of the original arts of oral expression, musical accompaniment and song. So, it is thanks to Todor Todorov's advice (the author of a book in Bulgarian on blind singers and beggars in Bulgaria) and after a long searching in Bansko and Brednitza in the Pirine and, more especially, in Paniceri in the district of Plovdiv, that I could collect some marvellous pieces of Bulgarian epic poetry.  next
    J.C.: Les Noces de Marko, Le rite et le mythe en pays bulgare, Paris, PUF,1998, pp.162-164
   
 
 
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