La singularite des Aroumains dans leur poesie populaire
Part of : Balkan studies : biannual publication of the Institute for Balkan Studies ; Vol.28, No.2, 1987, pages 373-389
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373-389
Parallel Title:
The uniqueness of the Aroumanians in their folk poetry
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Articles
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Abstract:
The author begins with a well-documented introduction to the Latinisationof certain Greeks of the north, who survive under various names, butcall themselves Aroumanians. He then goes on to discuss the unequal natureof their diglossy, which he attributes to the fact that they have continued touse their ancestral tongue, Greek, almost unceasingly down the centuries,even in the dark period of Turkish domination, founding at their own expenseGreek schools in the Vlach mountain villages. Indeed, such was their zeal andlove for the Greek language, that they played no small part in its spread amongthe neighbouring peoples with whom they had dealings.Their gradual acquisition of the popular Latin of the East gave thesebilingual Greeks, the Aroumanians, a certain Romanic character. But theydiffer from the other Romanic peoples, such as the Dacians and the Gctae,for instance, whose ancestral tongues were so culturally inferior to Latin thatit eventually supplanted them completely. The Aroumanians, however, neverdiscarded their ancestral tongue: they used Latin primarily in their dealingswith the Romans and thereafter only within a close family or professionalcontext. Consequently, since Greek remained their principal linguistic organ,the Aroumanian tongue inevitably atrophied to the extent that it becameinadequate for the composition of verse. This is precisely the reason why thereis no genuine Aroumanian demotic poetry. Amongst the Romanic peoples,the Aroumanians are unique in this respect. With a few possible exceptions,the demotic songs which have been presented as Aroumanian from the nineteenthcentury onwards are not genuine. The Aroumanians do indeed havesplendid demotic verse of their own, but it is in Greek, bemuse, as T. Papahagiso correctly observes, Greek is incomparably superior to the Aroumanianlanguage.
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Ρουμάνικη λαϊκή ποίηση
