SPANISH BALLADS IN JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDERS VOLKSLIEDER COLLECTION (1778/79), JAKOB GRIMMS SILVA DE ROMANCES VIEJOS COLLECTION (1815)

AND THEIR INTERCULTURAL ECHOES IN CROATIA*

SIMONA DELI

1. Introduction Extensive literature exists on the links between Herder and the study of oral poetry; however, it would seem that the theme still remains inexhaustible, constantly opening up new horizons on possible contexts of study about Herder and folklorism (midchens 1999), nationalism (Bohlman 2004), anticolonial universalism, etc.1 We have touched on these themes to the extent that the Volkslieder collection according to V. Schirmunski, represents the first step in the comparative study of style and plot (Schirmunski 1963: 64) of narrative poetry and, for the first time according to B. Dakula (Dakula 1968), confronts the Spanish romances and the Morlach ballads.2 There are diverse opinions in the context of the Croatian scholarship on literature concerning the influence of Herder and his literary practice on the poetry opus of Croatian writers. Thus, for example, Viktor mega writes: Croatian reception of Herders creativity has not been adequate, although his name has often been mentioned and is still referred to (in literary histories) whenever what is in question are the echoes of Hasanaginica which, in Goethes recasting, based on the
*
1

English by Nina Antoljak. Andreas Poltermann wrote about Herders anticolonial universalism in 1997. The manifold and diverse connections between Croatian poetry and German poetry during the pre-Romantic and Romantic periods, and with that segment that relates to the reception of the German literary ballads, was widely discussed in M. Gavrins 1970 study. This article represents an adapted chapter from my doctoral dissertation on the style and plot of the Spanish romance and Croatian ballads in oral tradition (Deli 2004). Lied und populre Kultur / Song and Popular Culture 52 (2007)

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Italian, he included in his anthology []. Certain original poems were translated into Croatian, these being atypical texts, while the occasional journalistic reviews on the two best-known works referred to were based, of course, on knowledge of the original. At the time of the authors widest popularity, during the epoch of Late Enlightenment and Romanticism, there were no fully adequate conditions in Croatia for comprehensive reception, while later, in the age of positivistic science and Naturalism, it was considered that the historiosophic works of the XVIIIth century were obsolete. It is certainly unusual that Herder particularly, who was extolled in the Slavic East as a promoter of Slavism, and of harmony between nations in general, experienced such a weak response in Croatia.3 Folklorists, on the other hand, evaluate the influence of Herders thought as having been much more significant (Cf. Bokovi-Stulli 1978). In the segment that is related to the knowledge of the original of one of Herders most popular works (mega ibid.), the Volkslieder collection, we wish to direct attention in this article to the poetry opus of Stanko Vraz (18101851).4 It seems to us that this poet interiorised certain of Herders postulates and views on oral literature. Apart from that, with the influence of his poetry opus on later generations and scholars, he initiated the tradition of the use of a particular literary term the LITERARY ROMANCE (Petrovi 1972) that was popular in 19th century Croatian literature, and, later, also the ORAL LITERARY ROMANCE (Petrovi ibid.). We will not be dealing in this article with aspects of the intertextual links and influences of Herder on Vrazs poetry opus, but we will point out certain parallels in the concept of Herders and Vrazs anthology. However, our core intention is to refer to certain similarities, and also differences, in some of the translating solutions between Vrazs translations of Spanish romances in his poetry collection, Glasi iz dubrave eravinske [Voices from the erava Woods] (1841, 21864) and Herders translations of Spanish romances, found in his famous Volkslieder collection (1778/79), which have been comprehensively examined in literature. Apart from that, Vrazs translations of Spanish romances initiated the fairly infrequent practice of translating the romances into Croatian, and also, indirectly, the formation of a
3

Viktor mega, the entry on Herder in the Hrvatska knjievna enciklopedija (Croatian Literary Encyclopaedia) [in print]. I am grateful to Mr Velimir Viskovi, the editor-inchief of this edition, for his permission to cite this text, as well as other entries prepared for the afore mentioned encyclopaedia,previously unreleased. A Slovene by birth, he wrote part of his poems in Slovenian, while the major part of his opus was written in the Croatian language. He was a member of the Croatian National Revival, the so-called Illyrian movement, inspired by Southern Slavic ideas.

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particular type of ethnographic discourse that persisted into the 20th century and right up until today, whose starting-point is the culturological similarity between Croatian and Spanish romances and ballads (Miletich 1981). 2. The anthological plot in Volkslieder and Vrazs Glasi iz dubrave eravinske We are wondering whether the parallelism we see between the title of Vrazs poetry collection (1841, 21862) and that of Herders Stimmen der Vlker in Liedern collection in Johann von Mllers posthumous edition (1807) may not be a case of mere coincidence. The title of Vrazs collection could be a culturological translation of Mllers, while this is a similar type of translation to those we can identify in Vrazs other translation work, and also in the recasting of the Spanish ballads. Apart from that, it does seem that another key work of German Romanticism and the discovery of Spanish folk poetry in German culture are intertwined into the intertextual reference of Vrazs collection title. Here, we are thinking of Jakob Grimms Silva de romances viejos (1815), which is known to have been in Vrazs possession and to have been read by him in the original (Kesteranek 1917: 584).5 It is possible that this may also have inspired Vraz to give his collection the Glasi iz dubrave eravinske title, where dubrava (nom.) (that is, woods or forest) corresponds with silva, also woods etymologically, although silva can also mean a poetry collection of various content and themes, written without method and order.6 It is probable that Vraz adopted from that collection the originals of the four ballads he translated for his collection ballads known under the titles El prisionero, Bovalas el pagano, Conde Arnaldos, or by the initial verse Yo me levantara mi madre (Kesteranek 1917) two of which were included in the Glasi iz dubrave eravinske collection, and two in the Gusle i tambura7 collection. And perhaps it is
5

6 7

Vrazs copy of Grimms book, known to have been brought to him from Vienna at the poets request by the writer V. Babuki in 1840, is kept in the National University Library in Zagreb (Ibid.). The manuscripts of Vrazs notebooks are kept at the same location; they contain his handwritten exercises in Spanish language and these are interesting material for Hispanic Studies, since they show that Vraz did not confine himself merely to passive reading of Spanish literature. Cf. http://buscon.rae.es/ drael/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=silva. Diccionario de la lengua espaola Vigsima segunda edicin < 05/10/2007> . B. Dakula provides information that Vraz translated another ballad into Croatian (Yo me era mora moraima), which remained in manuscript form. In addition, Vraz cites verses from two additional ballads: Rosa fresca, rosa fresca and A fuera, a fuera Rodrigo (Vraz

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that particular intertextual reference to Grimm who, among other, recognised the similarity between Spanish and Southern Slavic oral poetry (Miletich 1981)8 in his study of the literature of the Southern Slavs that one can thank for the founding a specific type of ethnographic discourse in Croatia. That type of discourse would also be enlivened in Croatia during the XXth century, founded on the recognition of the typological and culturological similarities between Croatian and Spanish poetry (Cf. Miletich 1981).9 If it were to be correct that we could also identify in the Vraz collection title the intertextual reference to Mllers title of the Herder collection, then we could say that Vrazs anthology and its hybrid concept is indebted to the similar concept of Herders anthological plot (Cf. Suphan 1871). Under that term, we comprehend that view of the collection as a specific form of poetry discourse which, due to its composition at least as is suggested to us from the reading of Suphans interpretation of the collection is comparable even with the narrative literary genres. It opens with a German folk poem and concludes with a German artistic poem, while the interspace between the initial and final points of the anthology is given over to poems, folk, but both popular and artistic poems, from the most diverse European and extra-European nations. The Vraz anthology includes recastings from Slovenian, Polish, Czech, German and Spanish oral and artistic poetry, in addition to the authors own poetry compositions. However, Vrazs anthology is closer to Herders concept of an anthology than to Mllers mode of classifying poems. Herder does not rely on ethnological classification of poems as is found in J. von Mllers 1807 edition (Suphan 1871). If we follow B. Suphans line of thinking, the anthological plot of Herders collection consists of juxtapositioning and interweaving of the poems of different peoples, so that one poem announces the next, which adopts and develops the motif of the foregoing poem, or, on its part, contrasts to it a theme with a converse denominator (Suphan 1871). Repetition is a process that enables one to notice the parallelism between neighbouring poems and to follow the narrative plot. Customary poetic themes of love and death along with family relations dominate as well as poems with a prevailing ele1841: 132133), and the verses of a Spanish ballad (El amor que nunca cesa) appear as a motto in the Glasi iz dubrave erovinske collection. (Cf. Dakula 1968: 408). See Maja Bokovi-Stullis entry in the Hrvatska knjievna enciklopedija (Croatian Literary Encyclopaedia) [in print] on reception of Jakob Grimm in Croatia. Naturally enough, Vraz was also influenced by poets from the Slavic cultural circle (e.g. Mickiewicz) in addition to Grimm and Herder. See Dakula 1968 on Vrazs rich literary culture. We wrote in articles 1999; 2000, about certain aspects of that ethnographic discourse.

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giac atmosphere, while the arranged order tries to vary the poems in length, metric mood and lyrical subject type (Cf. Herder 1975). A certain analogy can be noticed in that anthological plot, powerfully permeated with the Enlightenment ideology of idealistic universalism (Poltermann 1999), between the positions taken in Herders Volkslieder by the much more numerous recastings of Spanish romances10 and by the sole four Croatian songs11 (that is, Morlach songs, as both Herder and Fortis called them). In that segment of the anthology that tries to present VOLKSGEIST (folk spirit) and NATIONALCHARACTER (national character) in the Enlightenment spirit on the basis of the translated poems, Herders translations present Spanish romances and Morlach ballads as poetry conceived in those cultural regions in which the cultures of the East and the West interlace, due to the fact that the poems largely deal with Moorish or Turkish themes (Cf. Deli 2004). Apart from that, the fact is that Herder naturalised the words of Oriental ethymology from the Spanish romances of Gins Prez de Hita, words that were not usually found in Spanish traditional poetry discourse. Admittedly, he did this only where Arabisms were not customary in traditional poetry.12 Nonetheless, that
10 The selection of 12 romances among the 36 poems that the cobbler from Murcia, Gins Prez de Hita, included in his work entitled Historia de los bandos de Zegres y Abencerrajes (Zaragoza 1595, Cuenca 1619) shows that the German scholar gave priority to Moorish romances with sentimental themes. It is interesting to note that Herder did not select old Spanish ballads familiar to him from various ROMANCEROS, which he could consult in German libraries. He mentioned them in letters sent to Gleim, in which he asked the poet to send him the Cancionero General and Gngoras romances, clearly showing that he had access to the Cancionero de Romances from Amberes (Cf. Zimmermann 1997: 414). He changed his preference in the second volume and selected a song by Gil Polo and a Gngora ballad: Qu se nos va la Pascua, mozas, qu se nos va la Pascua!; Sobre unas altas rocas; Oh, cun bien que acusa Alcino,/ Orfeo de Guadiana! (Cf. Gngora 1985: 119122; 276277; 291295). 11 These are Asanaginica (Fortis I 1774: 97), Pisma od Sekule, Jankova netjaka, Divojke Dragomana i pae Mustaj-bega (Kai 1988: 422426), Pisma od Radoslava (ibid.: 164 167) and Pisma od Kobilia i Vuka Brankovia (ibid.: 222227). In the German translation: Ein Gesang von Milos Cobilich und Vuko Brankowich (Herder 1975:67-72), Klaggesang von der edlen Frauen des Asan-Aga Herder (1975:158-161). Radoslaus Herder (1975:283286). Die schne Dolmetscherin Herder (1975:287-290). 12 Thus, for example, while Abenmar lies there listlessly grieving because of his unrequited love for Galiana, the romance En las huertas de Almera described his lack of spirit in the verses Por arrimo su albornoz/ y por alfombra su adarga (Prez de Hita I 1913: 36). Herder translates that by exoticisms, clearly defining the Oriental ambience: Statt des

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Oriental discourse was inserted in such a context that decolonised the Oriental aura of those poems. Thus, for example, the Spanish romances that appear in small sections of 2 or 4 romances, have the function of directing attention to the variability of folk poetry also within an individual tradition, and not merely in the comparative context, since the same protagonists appear regularly throughout the diverse romances. If we continue to follow the logic of Suphans thought, the Croatian ballad Asan-aginica, which is the last poem in the first part of the anthology, was given the role of connecting the motifs that appeared in its immediate vicinity in the artistic texts, and those in the fragments from Shakespeare. Additionally, in his collection, Herder, similarly to Thomas Percy in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (Percy 1847), used the genre terms BALLADE and ROMANZE as synonyms, arranging poems successivly that he denoted by these literary terms. So it could be said that both Herders Spanish romances and the Morlach ballads, despite their Oriental themes, were a component part of the concept of the particularistic universalism collection. ROMANZE is a literary genre suitable, alongside with the travel writing literature, according to Ch. v. Zimmermann, for the study of the image of Spain in XVIIIth century German literature (Cf. Zimmermann 1997). For its part, when the XIXth century is in question when the romance genre confirmed in Croatia, it could be said that romances emerged as a genre which was linked to the scholarly image attributed to Spain and to the South generally, supplanting earlier stereotypes.13 So it seems to us that the Croatian literary term ROMANCA is a child of the Enlightenment and the scholarly concept of Spanish culture. Vraz classified his collection into two parts: a group of 21 b a l l a d s and a group of 4 r o m a n c e s , adopting Herders view that these were poems of the
Kissens sein A l b o r n o s ,/ seine Tartsche statt des Teppichs (Herder 1975: 46). He also transposes other words by which he manages to recast the local colour of the original: when the good Sayavedra from the Ro verde, ro verde romance tries to flee from the battle, with Renegado (Renegade) pursuing him (Prez de Hita I 1913: 312), Herder translates that with a cultural borrowed word: Hinter ihm ein Renegate (Herder 1975: 129). Still, it is only in exceptional circumstances that he introduces Orientalisms where they were otherwise absent in the original (Cf. Herder 1975: 35. Cf. Deli 2004). 13 According to Wolfgang Kayser, the Black Legend about Spain was very influential during the Enlightenment period. The key words describing the criticism devoted by Europe to Spain were: the Inquisition, a country lacking political and cultural power; and, Spain as a coloniser of countries (but not as a country that discovers the New World). The dominating human types were the fanatic priest, the grasping Conquistador, haughty nobility and gentlefolk, and vagabonds (Cf. Kayser 1945: 11 et al.).

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same genre. Vraz was aware that there were diverse interpretations of these genres. As he wrote in the afterword to his collection, some of those genres differ by the type of event being narrated. Thus, the ballad would recount heroic, intense, and entangled events, while the romance would give a playful account of female, gentle and simple events. Generally speaking, that interpretation has remained pertinent in both folkloristics and literary scholarship right up until the present: the interpretations that see ballads as being poems which describe tragic events, and romances as narrative poems with happy endings, are a continuation of the line of thinking synthesised at the very beginning by Vraz (Cf. Petrovi 1972). For their part, according to Vraz, some differentiate poems only by form, to which the poet has no objections due to the fact that both terms are also used for the identical poem genre in the Romance and German poetry tradition (Cf. Vraz 1841: 113-114). Indeed, it would seem that Vrazs romances differ only in form from the poems in the first part of the book, while in content they are also largely love poems of either tragic or dramatic character, so that Vraz anticipated a scholarly folkloristic approach to that oral literary genre. 3. Vrazs translations of Spanish romances Interpretation of Vrazs translations of Spanish romances directs one to comparison of his translating technique with that of Herder, while the poet directly points to Herder in his commentary to his Voices (Vraz 1841: 133). Herders translations are restorational, that is, they want to restore to the poems their popular tone, which the author considers to be the original form of poetry prior to its having been cloaked in an art appearance. It could be said that Herder avoids the estrangement (Carbonell) of the original in his translations, endeavouring to retain the culturological difference (Cf. Beutler 1957; Deli 2004: 1-37). In the cultural transference of his communicational translations (Carbonell), they never become cultural transplants (Carbonell) fully adapted to the new linguistic and culturological environment. In the comments on his romance Suanj [The Captive], Vraz stressed that it was partially a translation of a Spanish romance (Cf. Vraz 1841: 114). Today we see that the poet, similarly to some of his contemporaries (the Scotsman Lockhart, for example), recast the romance entitled El prisionero () (Prim. 114114a), also known in modern Hispanic tradition. Herders translation of that romance was found in the Annex that Johannes von Mller published after Herders death in Stimmen der Vlker in Liedern. Admittedly, Vrazs captive was not as stylised as

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the Spanish prisoner. He wore a beard, which is absent in the almost Victorian prisoner in Lockharts English translation (Lockhart 1847: 296-298). In Vrazs case, from our perspective, it is a matter of a restorational translation of of that kind that tries to imitate the tone of poems from the oral tradition of the Southern Slavs: a hero incarcerated in an Ottoman jail learns about the changing seasons from incidental indications during Summer a girls posy of flowers falls into his cell through an aperture in the wall, and, during Winter, a snowball thrown by a member of a troop of soldiers falls through (Delorko 1976, No. 146).14 In any case, his style of translation of the poem intentionally evokes analogy with the poetry of the Southern Slavs. From todays perspective, Vrazs open emphasis of his sources in the commentary to the collection, again perhaps following the Herder model, even more accentuated in the recastings of two romances presented in the Gusle i tambura (1845) collection, has the function of demystification of the myths of origin. Together with the other romances in that collection, Vrazs bearded Prisoner is the first to introduce the romance genre into Croatian literature. In that process, as the critics observed in Vrazs commentary to his collection,15 the poet was met with criticism due to the fact that he had introduced foreign literary genres. It seems that by revealing his models, along with reliance on the domestic folklore matrix rich in expressions of Turkish origin, Vraz was also responding to such comments, which were nationalistic in character. In that way, the case of Vrazs recasting of the romance Bovalas el pagano becomes even more interesting. Namely, the poet does not mention anywhere in the published collection or in his accompanying commentary that the romance Junak Hranilovi [Hranilovi the Hero] is also partly taken from a Spanish romance. Former critics associated this poem with domestic epic tradition failing to recognize that this was a translation of a Spanish ballad (Falievac 2003 II: 175). Indeed, we have to make an effort to recognise that concealed behind Vrazs Asanaga stands the hero in the title of the romance Bovalas el pagano (-o) (Prim. 126; Grimm 1815: 231-232), known only from XVIth century writings, but not in modern tradition.16 That protagonist in Vrazs recasting has changed both his

14 I am grateful to Madame Bokovi-Stulli for drawing my attention to this poem. 15 Slaven Juri points this out in his entry on Stanko Vraz in the Hrvatska knjievna encik-

lopedija (Croatian Literary Encyclopaedia) [in print].

16 We found data on the romance on Susanne Petersens webpage Pan-Hispanic Ballad Project

(Entry No. 1540): http://depts.washington.edu/hisprom/espanol/ballads/balladaction.php < 5.10.2007 > as follows: 1547 Canc. de rom. s.a, f. 186; Canc. de rom. 1550, f. 196;

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name and the context in which the plot of this poem is located, fully adapted to the map of Dalmatia and the Dalmatian hinterland, characteristic for the topography of the oral poem. It goes without saying that the poetry discourse is fully adapted to imitation of the formulaic nature of Southern Slavic and Croatian oral literary poems. With an exception: Vraz's poetic Dalmatian topography has realistic reference (Velebit, Senj) in a similar way as it is the case with the Spanish ballad (Tablada, Moncayo, Sevilla, Guadalquivir). It is not invented or combined in a manner that has no mimetic reference as it is the case with a good number of South Slavic poems and folklore poetics in general (Delorko 1979). One could even say from the interpretor's point of view, that Vraz, by translating Bovalas el pagano hispanicizes Croatian recasting by using mimetic poetic topography. Translational hybridity is probably exercized in twofold directions in a slightly different way that ocurrs in Herder's translations, but also enriching his own translations through experiencing the culture of other on the far side of the colonization relationship between the original and the translation. One could even say that, from the interpretor's point of view, Vraz slavicizes the Spanish original. This is especially evident in the bearded Prisoner romance, where the poet, also, uses an orthodox traditional matrix known from South Slavic traditional poetry. Below we give a synoptic review of a Spanish romance and Vrazs recasting of it, in which the poet systematically uses assonance, which, in Vrazs opinion, is more natural to a Slavic language than to German, as he points out in the commentary to his collection (Vraz 1841: 134).

Silva de 1550 t.I, f. 109; Prim. y Flor de romances No. 126, vol. II, p. 3233. No melody was recorded.

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Bovalas el pagano (Silva)

Por las sierras de Moncayo, vi venir un renegado: Bovalas ha por nombre, Bovalas el pagano. Siete veces fuera moro, y otras tantas mal cristiano; y al cabo de las ocho, enganlo su pecado. que dej la fe de Cristo, la de Mahoma ha tomado Este fuera el mejor moro que allende haba pasado: cartas le fueron venidas que Sevilla est en un llano.

Romance (Voices)
Niz planinu Velebita Jai mue junak snaan, Na vitezu konju dobru Jai aga Asanaga. Trikrat primi veru tursku, Tolikokrat i krst astan; Nakon tretje godinice Prevari ga luda glava, Pa ostavi zakon krsta, Prigrlivi red itapa. To najbolje biae Ture, to jih ima Bosna slavna. Dojde mu list knjige bele Od Udbinje tvrda grada, Da ima grad Senj bieli Sred Primorja krna, jadna, Gnezdo kleto, gde se legu Sokolovi od junakah, Koji seku turske glave, Plene grade, robe stada, Te udbinski kraj Udbinja Njim u ake pade paa. Aga skupi silnu vojsku Konjanikah i peakah. njom prevali planinicu, Pade Senju upred vrata. Trista ator' porazape Nevezenih kitom zlata. A sred beli tih atorah Dignu ator Asanaga; Na njem zlatna jest jabuka, Polumesec na njem straan, Navrh kojeg nameten je Dragi kamen alem sjajan, Koj se blista sred polnoi Kano sunce sred poldana.18

Arma naos y galeras gente de a pie y de caballo: por Guadalquivir arriba su pendn llevan alzado. En el campo de Tablada su real haba asentado. con trescientas de las tiendas de seda, oro y brocado. Nel medio de todas ellas est la del renegado; encima en el chapitel estaba un rub preciado: tanto relumbra de noche como el sol en da claro.17 []

17 Grimm 1815: 231232. 18 Vraz 1841: 8586.

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[From the Mountain Moncayo, I saw the convert descend; Bovalas is his name, Bovalias the Pagan. Seven times he switched to Islam, As many times he was a bad Christian; And the eighth time he changed his faith, He made a sinful error. And left the faith of Christ, To convert to that of Mohammed He was the very best Moor Who lived in that land: Letters came to him That Seville stood on a plain.

Ships and galleys he did raise And infantry and cavalry: Upstream from Guadalquivir Banners waving in the breeze. On the plain of Tablada They did raise their camp. With three hundred tents Of silk, and gold and of brocade. In the midst of all those tents The Renegades tent was pitched; On the tents capital Shines a precious ruby stone: It glows during the night As does the Sun at midday.]

[Coming down Velebit Mountain Rides a silent hero hearty, Mounted on a knightly steed Rides the aga Asanaga. Three times took the Turkish faith, As many times the honoured Cross; After three short years had passed His mind misled him grievously, Abandoned he the Crosss law Embracing then the Qurans rule. The very best of Turks he was, That glorious Bosnia could produce. A letter came unto his hand From the fort of Udbina, Telling of the town of Senj Perched misrably in coastal karst, A cursed nest, where there were hatched Falcons born of hero sires, Who cut the heads of Ottomans. And capture forts, and drive off herds, And by the town of Udbina Een Pasha fell into their grasp. The Aga raised a mighty army Of mounted men and infantry. With them he crossed the mountain range, To stand before the gates of Senj. There he pitched three hundred tents Embroidered with ropes of gold. And amid those snow-white tents Asanaga raised his tent; On it stands an apple golden, And a fearful crescent moon, At the top in pride of place A precious stone a diamond shining, Glowing at the midnight hour Like the sun when noon-tide comes.]

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As can be seen from comparison between the Spanish original and the translation, while Bovalas Seven times he switched to Islam,/ As many times he was a bad Christian, the hero Asanaga Three times took the Turkish faith,/ As many times the honoured Cross. While the Spanish hero was the very best Moor, it is told about Asanaga: The very best of Turks he was. And if Bovalas crosses Mountain Moncayo in the direction of Seville, in the Croatian octosyllabic romance with assonance, Asanaga rides Coming down Velebit Mountain towards Senj, once the fortress of the Christian Uskoks. Bovalas pitched his tents in Tablada field, and Asanaga does the same in the neighbourhood of Senj, and the latters tents are equally valuable. Bovalass tent has a valuable ruby on its KAPITEL which shines equally by night and by day, while Asanagas tent is also richly ornamented: Asanaga raised his tent;/ On it stands an apple golden,/ And a fearful crescent moon,/ At the top in pride of place/ A precious stone a diamond shining,/ Glowing at the midnight hour/ Like the sun when noon-tide comes.19. And while the Spanish romance ends with the brilliance of the ruby on the tent, the Croatian one goes deeper into the model of certain other romances, for example the one about Cid Ruy Daz (Prim. 32), in describing Asanaga as the bravest of the Senj heroes, also adding a description of the combat between the Christian and Turkish heroes and the battlefield, with the highly ornamented tent surrounded by the defeated opponents. We believe that the fact that Vraz omitted references to his sources is not incompatible with what we recognise from todays perspective as demystification of the myths of origin. Here, Vraz plays a twofold game: once again, he openly relies on the use of the FOLKLORE MATRIX as a sort of literary procedure welcomed in authorial poetry. This time he does not mention his sources but rather culturally transplants20 the foreign text into Croatian literature. In the process, he clouds the provenance of the original, thus emphasising how the foreign influences can be interiorised to such an extent that we forget that they are influences at all. It is no surprise in that sense that the remaining two romances from the Voices are not recastings of Spanish romances, but most probably Vrazs own authorial composi19 As far as the universal folklore matrix of the incandescent jewel motif in Hispanic and

universal folk and artistic Medieval literature is concerned (cf. Armistead; Silverman 1982: 67; fn. 13). More examples are cited by Popovi (1934: 215216), alongside with the examples of incandescent ruby found in The Legend of Good Women by Chaucer: Ne ruby noon, that shynede by nighte (ibid.: 215). 20 We would not call the process mystification due to the fact that it has negative connotations of nationalistic discourse in proving the original nature of individual traditions.

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tions or, perhaps, reflections of influence from Mickiewicz or some other Romantic poet. Thus, all four Vraz romances from Glasi iz dubrave eravinske Savjet [Advice], Suanj [The Prisoner], Junak Hranilovi [Hranilovi the Hero] and Zora i Bogdan [Zora and Bogdan] reveal, on the one hand, an entire range of intertextual interweaving between the romance and oral poetry and, on the other, written poetry in which the importance of origin is lost through that interweaving. This collection therefore confirms a playful stance over the text: on the trail of Herder, authorial insertion of the poetics of the oral literary discourse into the text of written literature. Could we say that Vrazs own playful treatment of oral poetry authorizes us, that with this indeed beautiful diamond of Vrazs translation of the Spanish ballad, lost in the sea for centuries and found by us today, we are emerging with great joy to the surface of our interpretation that tries to reconcile philological line of thinking and more recent Humanist discourse and its mutual successive fertilizations.21 Finally, for the sake of comparison with Vrazs procedure of using folklore matrices, we quote some of the concluding words on Herders folklorism in his translations of Spanish romances.22 And while, as we see, Vraz does not shrink from what we would call the cultural transplant, Herder, although he does not always avoid the use of exoticisms and cultural borrowed words, largely does not resort to culturological transplantation in his translations. While Herder rejects assonance as inappropriate to the nature of the German language, also inserting enjambement, Vraz on the other hand strictly retains the rhythm of the lines of syllabic versification, while using assonance profusely, regarding it as particularly appropriate to Slavic verse. Both introduce parallelistic structures and try to imitate the formulaic nature of Spanish folk poetry. Although Herder never as a rule left verses out of his translation or intervened in the text, since his translation was not a free recasting as was the case with Percy, where numerous toponyms and localisms were mentioned in the original, he preferred to omit them,23 unlike Vrazs skilfully
21 We are actually elaborating an extensive study on this Vrazs collection. 22 We wrote in more detail about Herders translating techniques in Deli 2004. 23 Thus, for example, the Moor who marries the unfaithful Zaida would remain without a

title or so in the translation. Y aquella noche se casa/ Con un moro feo y torpe/ Porque es Alcayde en Sevilla,/ Der Alcazar y la Torre; in Herders translation, his titles are given in abbreviated form: Und in dieser Nacht vermhlet/ Sie sich einem schlechten Mohren,/ Weil er reich und in Sevilla/ War Alcaide von Alcazar. Cf. Percys translation that is similar to Herders: She that night, seducd by riches/ Yields herself in nuptial bonds/ To the sordid old Alcayd,/ Which in proud Seville commands. The quoted verse is part of one of the romances that was included in Percys selection for the anthology,

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recast prosopography. Both of them usually translated the Orientalisms, thanks to identification with the context from which the Spanish romances emerged, only when they considered that merely the translation of the words with local colour could create an effect in the culture of reception, equal to that of the original etymological Orientalisms, completely adapted to the standard Spanish linguistic and poetic discourse. Thus, we could perhaps conclude that the translations by Vraz and Herder were closest to what is usually given the name of so-called communicational translation (Carbonell) in translation theory. In that type of translation all similarity between the original and the translated text is subordinated to the objective and purpose of the translation. When speaking of the objective of their translation, this can be identified as the restoration of the popular poetry tone for the learned public, which had been accustomed to a different type of poetry up until then (Cf. Rlleke 1975). Apart from that, Vraz introduced a new genre into Croatian literature in the face of a public that also made critical comments against this practice. On the basis of the foregoing, we could perhaps conclude that Herder and Vraz, whether actual influences or intertextual interweavings were in question, placed the anthological plot mask on the faces of their subjects, and did so in full view of their readers since they revealed their sources, also probably so that the recognition of the Other (the foreign, the domestic) would be as effective as possible. In addition, we could say that Vraz was following the trail of Herder even when he clouded the origins of his texts: Enlightenment taming of the exotic Other (foreign, village, Self) became a component part of the Other reading subject, while, after Herder, Vraz and many other poets would embrace the romance as the young literary genre, which can still seem attractive, even today. At least, it appeals to us, along with our recognition of the similarities between Herders and Vrazs poetics and translation techniques that rewrite our own interpretative subject. Bibliography
Armistead, Samuel G.; Silverman, Joseph H.: En torno al romancero sefard (Hispanismo y balcanismo de la tradicin judeo-espaola) con un estudio etnomusicolgico por Israel J. Katz. Madrid 1982. Beutler, Gisela: Thomas Percys spanische Studien, ein Beitrag zum Bild Spaniens in England in der zweiten Hlfte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Bonn 1957.
Ancient songs chiefly on Maorish subjects, which Percy never himself published but that was finally published only in the XXth century (Cf. Beutler 1957).

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Bohlman, Philip V.: The Music of European Nationalism. Cultural Identity and Modern History. Santa Barbara et al. 2004. Bokovi-Stulli, Maja: Usmena knjievnost. In: Usmena i puka knjievnost (Povijest hrvatske knjievnosti, knjiga prva). Zagreb 1978, p. 7353. Bokovi-Stulli, Maja: Grimm, Jakob. In: Hrvatska knjievna enciklopedija. Zagreb: Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krlea [in print]. Carbonell i Corts, Ovidi: Traduccin y cultura: de la ideologa al texto. Salamanca 1999. Deli, Simona: The Poetics of the Domestic Internationalism in the Comparative Research into Croatian Narrative Poem. The Balkan Ballad, the Mediteraanean Folklore Horizons. In: Narodna umjetnost 36/1 (1999), p. 253268. Deli, Simona: Strategies of Internationalism in Croatian Ballad Scholarship: The Balkan Ballad, Mediterranean Horizons, In: Bridging the Cultural Divide: our Common Ballad Heritage. Kulturelle Brcken: Gemeinsame Balladentradition. Hg. von Sigrid Rieuwerts und Helga Stein. Hildesheim et al. 2000. Deli, Simona: anr balade na Mediteranu: knjievnoteorijski i knjievnoantropoloki aspekti hrvatske i panjolske usmene tradicije u 20. stoljeu. MS. Instituta za etnologiju i folkloristiku br. 1859, (2004). Delorko, Olinko: Narodne pjesme otoka Hvara: prema zapisima osmorice sabiraa Matice hrvatske u devetnaestom stoljeu. Split 1976. Diccionario de la lengua espaola Vigsima segunda edicin. http://buscon.rae.es/drael/ SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=silva < 5.10.2007 >. Dakula, Branko: O knjievnoj kulturi Stanka Vraza (Poseban otisak iz knjige Graa za povijest knjievnosti hrvatske knjiga 29). Zagreb 1968. Falievac, Dunja: Kaliopin vrt II: studije o poetikim i ideolokim aspektima hrvatske epike. Split 2003. Fortis, Alberto: Viaggio in Dalmazia III. Venezia 1774. Gavrin, Mira: Pjesnitvo narodnog preporoda u odnosu na njemako i austrijsko pjesnitvo. U: Hrvatska knjievnost prema evropskim knjievnostima: od narodnog preporoda k naim danima. Aleksandar Flaker i Krunoslav Pranji ur. Zagreb 1970, p. 51119. Gngora, Luis de: Romances. Edited by Antonio Carreo. Madrid 1985. Grimm, Jakob: Silva de romances viejos. Vienna 1815. Herder, Johann Gottfried: Stimmen der Vlker in Liedern. Volkslieder. Zwei Teile 1778/79. Hg. von Heinz Rlleke. Stuttgart 1975. Juri, Slaven: Vraz, Stanko. In: Hrvatska knjievna enciklopedija. Zagreb: Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krlea [in print].

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Kai Mioi, Andrija; Reljkovi, Matija: Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga; Satir iliti divji ovik. Edited by Jospi Vonina. Zagreb 1988. Kayser, Wolfgang: Die iberische Welt im Denken J. G. Herders. Hamburg 1945. Kesteranek, Vladimir: Vrazove balade i romance. Nastavni vjesnik, knj. XXV (1917), p. 577593. Lockhart, J. G.: Ancient Spanish Ballads: historical and romantic. London/New York s.a. Miletich, John S.: Hispanic and South Slavic Traditional Narrative Poetry and Related Forms: A Survey of Comparative Studies (18241977). In: Oral Traditional Literature. A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Edited by John Miles Foley. Columbus, Ohio (1981), p. 375389. Percy, Thomas: Reliques of ancient English Poetry: consisting of old heroic ballads, songs, and other pieces of our earlier poets; together with some few of later date, IIII. London 1847. Prez de Hita, Gins: Guerras civiles de Granada. Primera parte. Reproduccin de la edicin prncipe del ao 1595. Edited by Paula Blanchard-Demouge. Madrid 1913. Petersen, Susanne. Pan-Hispanic Ballad Project. http://depts.washington.edu/hisprom/ espanol/ballads/balladaction.php < 5.10.2007 > Petrovi, Svetozar: Priroda kritike. Zagreb 1972. Poltermann, Andreas: Antikolonialer Universalismus: J. G. Herders bersetzung und Sammlung fremder Volkslieder. In: bersetzung als Reprsentation fremder Kulturen. Hg. von Doris Bachmann-Medick. Berlin 1997 (Gttinger Beitrge zur internationalen bersetzungsforschung), p. 217259. Prim [= Wolf, Fernando Jos]; Hofmann, Conrado 1899, Antologa de poetas lricos castellanos (tomo VIII). Romances viejos castellanos (Primavera y flor de romances). Marcelino Menndez y Pelayo ed., Madrid, Librera de Hernando y Compaa. Rlleke, Heinz: Nachwort. In: Stimmen der Vlker in Liedern. Volkslieder. Zwei Teile 1778/79. Stuttgart 1975, p. 463496. Schirmunski, V. M.: Johann Gottfried Herder: Hauptlinien seines Schaffens. Berlin 1963. Suphan, B[ernhard]: Herders Volkslieder und Johann von Mllers Stimmen der Vlker in Liedern. Zeitschrift fr Deutsche Philologie 3 (1871), p. 458475. midchens, Guntis: Folklorism Revisited. Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 36, No. 1 January April 1999. Vraz, Stanko: Glasi iz dubrave eravinske. Zagreb 1841. Zimmermann, Christian von: Reiseberichte und Romanzen: Kulturgeschichtliche Studien zur Perzeption und Rezeption Spaniens im deutschen Sprachraum des 18. Jahrhunderts. Tbingen 1997. mega, Viktor: Herder, Johann Gottfried. In: Hrvatska knjievna enciklopedija. Zagreb: Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krlea [in print].

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