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The Cretan drama of the Sacrifice of Abraham in the dialect of the Mariupol Greeks*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Apostolos Karpozilos
Apostolos Karpozilos*
Affiliation:
University of Ioannina
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Extract

In 1932 Kassandra Kostan (Aleksandra Konstantinovna Gargala, 1897-1939), published a book on the literature of the Greeks living in the Donetsk region of Southern Ukraine. It was a worthy undertaking because in her short anthology Kostan, a pioneer researcher in the history and folk traditions of the so-called ‘Roumaioi’, collected several poems and songs composed in the Greek dialects spoken in the various villages and communities around Mariupol. In her anthology she included old folk songs and poems, some of them dating from as early as 1778 or even earlier. One of the oldest songs composed before 1778 is about the city of Kaffa and another about the exodus of the Greeks from Crimea and their subsequent settlement around Mariupol under Catherine II in 1778-1779. It is only unfortunate that Kostan did not publish this interesting selection of songs and poems in their original Greek form, but instead translated them into Ukrainian. Now the loss is probably permanent, since most of these songs have been forgotten and, to make matters worse, nothing has survived to this day from the papers of Kostan, who died in St. Petersburg in 1939.

Type
Articles:
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 18 , 1994 , pp. 155 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1994

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References

1. K. Kostan, ZLiteraturi Mariyupol’skikh Grekiv (Ax tu Rumeku t’ literatura as f Mariupolia (s.1. 1932).

2. Ibid., 30-32.

3. See Serafimov, S., Krymskie Khristiane (greki) na severnykh beregakh Azovskogo Morya (Kherson 1862) 1–33 Google Scholar. Khartakhai, F., Khristianstvo v Krymu (Simferopol 1864)Google Scholar. Gavriil, A. Kh., ‘Pereselenie Grekov iz Kryma v Azovskuyu guberniyu’, Zapiski Odesskogo Obshchestvo istorii drevnostei 1 (1884) 197–204.Google Scholar

4. The study by Grigorovich, B. was published in Zapiski antikvara o poezdke ego na Kalku i Kalmius (Odessa 1874)Google Scholar, and was translated in the same year by Blau, O. under the title: ‘Über die griechisch-türkische Mischbevölkerung um Mariupol’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 28 (1874) 576–583 Google Scholar. See also O. Blau, ‘Griechisch-türkische Sprach-Proben aus Mariupoler Handschriften’, ibid., 562-576.

5. To cite only the most significant: Spiridonov, D., ‘Istorychnyi interés vivchennya govirok Mariyupilskykh Grekiv’,Schidnyi Svit 12 (1930) 171–181 Google Scholar. Sokolov, I.I., ‘O yazyke Grekov Mariupol’skogo i Stalinskogo okrugov. Predvaritel’nyi ocherk’, Yazyk ¡Literatura 6 (1930) 49–67 Google Scholar. Yali, S., Greki na Ukraine, (Khar’kov 1931)Google Scholar. Sokolov, I.I., ‘Mariupol’skie Greki. 1. Mariupol’skie Greki do poseleniya ikh na Ukraine (XV-XVIIIvv.)’, Trudy Instituta Slavyanovedeniya AN SSSR, 1 (1932) 297–317 Google Scholar. Sergievskii, M.V., ‘Mariupol’skie Grecheskie Govory’, Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR. Otdelenie Obshchestvennykh Nauk (Moscow 1934) 533–587 Google Scholar (hereafter, Sergievskii).

6. Yali, S., 22 (478), 7. VII. 1928 Google Scholar. Kovalenko, N., ‘To 45 (57), 15. IX. 1931 Google Scholar. Karpozilos, A., 40 (1985) 97–112 Google Scholar, esp. 108-110. The dialect of the Roumaioi and their cultural and political activities had interested Dawkins, R.M., ‘The Pontic Dialect of Modern Greek in Asia Minor and Russia’, Transactions of the Philological Society (London 1937) 15–52, esp. 19–24.Google Scholar

7. See Kostoprav, G., (Mariupol 1934)Google Scholar. Cf. also 3 (1935) 85-91. Chekhov, A.P., transl. Kostoprav, G. (Mariupol 1936)Google Scholar. Chekhov, A., I transl. Kostoprav, G., (Mariupol 1936)Google Scholar. Pushkin, A.S., ed. Kostoprav, G. (Mariupol 1937).Google Scholar

8. Writing about these in the periodical one of its subscribers from Mariupol who signed only with his initials remarked: See P.M.K., 16 (1866) 533-535.

9. Kostan, op. cit., 48-50, 150-151. About the life and work of Damian Bgaditsa, ibid., 40-43. Born in Sartana in 1850 and orphaned in childhood, the poet left Sartana to work as a clerk in Kiev. Later, he returned to his native village and finally settled in the village of Makedoniya (1888). His poems were never published during his lifetime, yet they enjoyed considerable popularity, especially the Sacrifice of Abraham and the biography of the life of the legendary poet Leonti Chonagbey (1853-1918).

10. H ed G. Megas (Athens 1943) 94, 95-96. See also Bakker, W.F., 15 (1979) 23–74 Google Scholar; Oikonomidou, D.B., 7 (1953) 112–113.Google Scholar

11. Kostan, op. cit., 50, distich 10, 12-14.

12. Chernysheva, T.N., ‘Itogi dialektologicheskoi ekspeditsii Filologicheskogo fakul’teta KGU v Pervomaiskii raion Stalinskoi oblasti USSR’, Naukova Sesiya KGU (Kiev 1954) 62–65.Google Scholar

13. Beletskii, A. A., ‘Grecheskie dialekty yugo-vostoka Ukrainy i problema ikh yazyka i pis’mennosti’, Balkanskaya filologiya, Uchenye zapiski Leningradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta (Leningrad 1970) 5–15, esp. 8–9.Google Scholar

14. Sokolov, op. cit., 63–64; Spiridonov, op. cit., 177: I=Urzuf and Yalita (Yalta); II= Styla, Konstantinopol’ and Bolshoi Yanisol’; III= Bolshaya Karakuba, Novaya Karakuba and Bugas (Volnovakha); IV = Sartana, Chermalyk and Makedoniya; V = Malo Yanisol’, Novo Yanisol’ and Cherdakly.

15. H ed. Megas, 101, 106, 120, 145.

16. Horbatsch, O., ‘Türksprachige Lehnwörter im Dialekt der Donec’ker (Azow-) Griechen in der Ukraine’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3/4 (1979-1980) 421–444 Google Scholar (hereafter, Lehnwõrter).

17. Cf.Karpozilos, A., ‘Pontic Culture in the USSR between the Wars’, Journal of Refugee Studies 4 (1991) 366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Beletskii, op. cit., 11-13.

19. Dawkins, op. cit., 42.

20. Sergievskii, 535ff.

21. Ibid., 535-544, esp. 540-542.

22. Ibid., 550-551.

23. Ibid., 550-570; Beletskii, op. cit., 10.

24. L. Kiryakov has published one collection of his poems with the title Amphora (Kiev 1988) and edited an anthology Pirnesu Astru (= Morning Star): Styxja, Piimata, Δyimata (Donetsk — Donbas 1988).