4—
Epic, Gender, and Nationalism:
The Development of Nineteenth-Century Balkan Literature

Margaret Beissinger

Epic poetry has been a vibrant oral tradition in the Balkans since at least the fourteenth century and was perpetuated through centuries of Ottoman and other foreign rule. It provided a main source of entertainment in the courts of the local aristocracy as well as among the folk. Although the first published heroic songs were included in a Croatian literary poem from the mid-sixteenth century, the systematic collecting of epic among Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, and Romanians did not begin until the nineteenth century, coinciding with the rise of nationalism, aspirations for liberation, and the formation of national or revival literatures. Oral epic—a genre that, for the "nation builders," had come to exemplify the heroic resistance of the people thus became a model for poetic masterpieces, such as Petar Petrovic Njegos's Mountain Wreath. As Margaret Beissinger argues, however, these early literary epics, while inspired by the folk genre, also evoked strong nationalistic messages that served the political agenda of the male public.

The male-dominated political milieu of the nineteenth-century Balkan world—in which nations were asserting their own identities after centuries of Ottoman authority—was unsympathetic, if not indifferent, to the female voice for the dissemination of the nationalistic messages expressed in their burgeoning discourse. While oral epic recognized women in substantial ways, written epic—a genre that mirrored the oral genre and initiated the cultural revivals of the nineteenth century—ignored them. Instead, literary epic, which became an important means for forging a sense of nationhood in the Balkans, embraced a social construction of reality created effectively by men. As nation building developed in various communities in eastern Europe, gender became an objectified issue in the creation of culture and shaping of literatures. Women were subjected in this process to reified roles, particularly in the early literary epic of the nineteenth century. The female voice in this literature, emanating from the private and personal sphere, was actually more often than not the thinly disguised voice of the more public and collective male, ardently constructing culture and nation.

This essay explores the intersection between gender roles and national-

ism in nineteenth-century Balkan culture.^[1] It examines gender and nationalism in oral literature versus orally inspired literature, and in particular how women were represented in epic poetry. Although women were rarely central figures in traditional Balkan Christian oral epic,^[2] they were often cast in significant roles that were clearly necessary and vital to the integrity of the narratives. By contrast, the first modern literary works of the nineteenth-century Balkan world were nationalistic poems that relied heavily on oral epic and yet virtually ignored women in their narratives. These were works that despite whatever judgments we may make today of their literary merits played very important roles in the making of Balkan national consciousness. In this early literary epic, unlike in oral epic, women played very minor roles (or no roles at all) precisely because the authors of literary epic, acting in their role as "cultural entrepreneurs,"^[3] crafted a literature that sought to appeal primarily to men, the main participants in nineteenth-century nationalist movements. This contrasts sharply with the art of oral epic poets, which reflected women's varied roles in society and whose intended audiences were multigender in character.

Romantic nationalism profoundly affected the cultural and literary revivals that mushroomed in the Balkans in the modern period. Johann Gottfried Herder's notion of the "Volk" was central to the larger currents of cultural nationalism that swept both western and eastern Europe. "Volk" was conceived of as a social collective or nation that was a patriarchal construction—much like a traditional nuclear family—where history, language, and culture are interrelated and shared. Implicit in this thinking was the authority of the "fathers" and other males of society.^[4] Those who espoused romantic nationalism equated much of the perpetuation of society with the transmission of tradition and folklore. The "voice of the people," as found in their folklore, was considered the core of national culture. The desire to preserve the precious oral traditions of the folk resulted in an intense interest in the collection of oral poetry throughout the eastern European world during the nineteenth century. It also fostered—in its patriarchal discourse—national literatures that developed with necessarily male topics and agendas at the forefront.

Folklore played a central role in the formation and development of Balkan national literatures in the nineteenth century. Oral tradition, viewed as a cultural treasure that survived centuries of foreign (both Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian) domination, was seen as a source of expression of struggle against foreign influence. It was a vehicle through which ideals of liberation and national identity were expounded and promoted. Fully exploited in the creation of national consciousness, folklore was manipulated for political purposes.

Throughout the nineteenth century, folklore provided ideal ingredients for what Benedict Anderson has termed "narrative [s] of 'identity'"^[5] —narratives

that validate the convictions and aspirations of nation building and that are, in fact, necessary in the creation of national culture. Folklore—as embraced by the literary public—exemplified an idealized past that became a vital component in the formation of national narratives, literature, and culture. As Roger Abrahams has pointed out, "The folk and their lore were enlisted in the nation-building cause." The manipulation of both folk and lore in this drive to create national culture was "the result of elitist social and cultural constructions. "^[6]

The first broad stage in the development of modern Balkan literatures was the composition of literary epic. The genre drew heavily from oral epic that was extant at the time. Examples of such works include Gorski vijenac (The mountain wreath, 1847) by the Montenegrin Petar Petrovic Njegos II, Smrt Smail-Age Cengica (The death of Smail-Aga Cengic, 1846) by the Croat Ivan Mazuranic, Gorski putnik (Woodland traveler, 1857) by the Bulgarian Georgi Rakovski, and Dumbrava rosie (The red oak grove, 1872) by the Romanian Vasile Alecsandri. Each of these works was inspired by Balkan oral epic: each reflects aspects of the style, language, and narrative content of the oral genre. All of these epics were key in the development of national literatures in their respective societies.

Njegos, Mazuranic, Rakovski, and Alecsandri were all major literary figures in their respective communities, as well as keenly involved in the collection and dissemination of oral traditions. Furthermore, all of them were significant political actors in the nationalist dramas of the nineteenth century, some even holding formal political offices. The educated public of the Balkans during the nineteenth century had extensive contact with oral poetry. Major collections of oral poetry became influential among those who constructed national culture (including political activists) and shaped literary development. These were collections of folklore with which the writers of early national literature were familiar and which, in fact, inspired them.

The most prominent cultural figure in nineteenth-century Serbia was Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, often referred to as Vuk. Vuk was the most important champion of folklore, collecting and publishing voraciously throughout his lifetime (1787-1864). Vuk also was an eminent grammarian. He standardized the Serbian literary language and orthography, thereby providing the context for the development of the modern Serbian language and a national literature. Vuk published his first collection of oral poetry in 1814. His continuing efforts to record and publish oral literature culminated in a four-volume anthology entitled Srpske narodne pjesme (Serbian folk songs), which was published in Leipzig between 1823 and 1833 and later expanded and reissued in Vienna between 1841 and 1862. His collections were popular and widespread in the South Slavic world, not to mention known and appreciated by Jakob Grimm, Goethe, and others in western Europe. As Svetozar Koljevic has pointed out, "Owing to the work of Vuk Karadzic, [who] gained

international recognition, the folk traditions became the objects of literary cult and inspiration."^[7] Vuk's publications of oral poetry were instrumental in the nineteenth-century development of literature in Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro. Indeed, as Albert Lord noted, "The popular poetry, especially the Vuk collection, . . . was widely imitated, and its form was influential in shaping the style of literary poetry, both narrative and lyric, throughout the century and even later."^[8]

In the oral epics collected by Vuk, women play a variety of roles that are not trivial and even often instrumental in the narratives told. This analysis focuses on what Vuk termed the oldest heroic songs, that is, the contents of his second volume of Serbian Folk Songs ( 100 in all).^[9] By and large, these epic songs are heroic and therefore are concerned with "male" narratives. They represent a deeply patriarchal way of life. Within this context, however, women frequently figure in remarkably significant and requisite ways.

Most of the female (as well as male, for that matter) figures fit into established patterns that are stereotypical throughout the tradition—a hallmark of oral literature. The most common female roles in South Slavic oral epic are helpers, clever or wise maidens, mothers, sisters, and wives of heroes, spirited women, otherworldly creatures resembling fairies, and victims. The female helper is an ancient figure, found in world epic from antiquity to the present. Female helpers typically facilitate the hero's passage. Sometimes they aid in the release of prisoners. Such helpers, often termed the jailor's daughter type, are widespread in the larger Balkan and Turkic continuum.^[10] Other female helpers include the innkeeper's wife, who drugs the enemy while he is drinking and then releases the hero—also a widespread Balkan epic figure.^[11] Clever and wise maidens also form a type. Sometimes they judiciously advise heroes; at other times they outwit the hero in a triumph of brains over brawn.^[12] Mothers also surface frequently and are portrayed as noble figures who provide counsel to their heroic sons. The advice of the hero's mother takes on a near-sacred quality because of the wisdom that it reflects.^[13] Accordingly, the proverbial "curse of a mother" is seen as the least desirable fate for a son. Sisters typically are seen as honorable and faithful to their heroic brothers.^[14] Wives of heroes fall into two broad stereotypes: the relatively passive but eternally loyal mates, and the treacherous, unfaithful ones. Both are influential insofar as they propel the narrative forward in important ways. The quintessential faithful wife steadfastly awaits her absent husband in the traditional return songs that are widespread throughout the Balkans.^[15] Her opposite, the deceitful wife, is found at times betraying her heroic husband in the interests of another man. She is usually punished, at times brutally.^[16]

Other female figures in oral epic in a sense break out of the patriarchal mold and are what I term spirited women. They include both maidens and wives. Though stereotypical in profile, they nonetheless defy the patriarchal

conventions or requirements imposed on them (for example, in refusing to marry the husband chosen for them).^[17] Yet another class of women in the epic songs are the "vilas," otherworldly female figures who inhabit forests and live near streams. They are beautiful, physically powerful, seductive, easily angered, naughty, or helpful. ^[18] Finally, female victims are utilized as a form of tax or are forced to marry against their will, to name a few of the most common types.^[19] In other words, women played significant roles in the South Slavic oral epic from which literary epic drew inspiration. Indeed, many of the figures in Vuk's collection are found throughout the other Balkan traditions.

Female figures played significant roles in oral epic, but not always positive roles. Extolling the noble character of the oral poems that he collected, Vuk himself referred to the "masculine Serbian spirit" that they mirrored.^[20] Indeed, one might ask how the various female characters in Balkan oral epic reflected nineteenth-century social reality. The women presented in these epics portrayed a variety of female roles in society, albeit within a highly patriarchal framework. To be sure, the oral traditional culture—unlike the more urbane, literary culture—acknowledged more fully the various roles that women naturally played in society. This implicit recognition is reflected in the diverse roles that women occupied in oral epic. In relating stories of relevance to the community, oral tradition embraced figures—both male and female—who represented a wide array of roles. It was the goal of oral epic poets to compose engaging narratives that resonated in the community, not to disseminate political messages. Furthermore, their audiences were—in the case of the Balkan Christian epic—multigendered.

Gorski vijenac (The mountain wreath), by the Montenegrin Petar Petrovic Njegos II (1813-1851) ,^[21] provides an excellent illustration of literary epic that was inspired by oral epic yet served—unlike oral epic—to establish a burgeoning national literature and foster a sense of nation. Published in 1847, it is considered Njegos's greatest work and occupies a venerable position in the Serbian canon. It played an integral role in the forging of Serbian nationalist culture, serving as a sacrosanct text that formed a literary basis of the nationalist ideology.

Njegos met Vuk in Vienna in 1833, at which point a lifelong friendship and meeting of minds was established (Njegos saw Vuk for the last time shortly before his own death in 1851). Njegos avidly supported Vuk's various activities—from collecting oral literature to linguistic and orthographic reforms. Furthermore, Njegos, a native of rugged and isolated Montenegro, was steeped in the oral literature that was a part of everyday life there. The oral traditional milieu that characterized village life in Montenegro had a profound influence on him. As a youth, Njegos learned the art of oral epic singing to the gusle (a one-stringed folk instrument), continuing in the tradition that his father had also mastered. He later collected folk poems and published

several volumes of them; he also wrote "folk" poetry.^[22] In other words, Njegos was constantly in contact with oral poetry. But Njegos was not only a cultural figure. Beginning in 1833, he was also the prince-bishop of Montenegro; holding firm to a nationalist agenda, he wielded considerable political power.

Loosely modeled on an oral epic that recounted the same subject, the literary epic The Mountain Wreath focuses on the theme of Turkish oppression and Slavic (Montenegrin) resistance. It powerfully moved nationalists in the nineteenth century. The Mountain Wreath depicts a meeting of Montenegrin clan leaders who must decide what to do with the Montenegrins who have converted to Islam. After much deliberation, it is finally agreed that extermination of the Muslim converts is the best method of combating the Turkish menace. Although the poem is constructed in dramatic form (complete with "stage directions"), there is virtually no action, only discussion of the problem and possible solutions. Bishop Danilo ("Vladika Danilo")—the bishop and Christian ruler of Montenegro—is the main character (and mirrors the person of Njegos himself, similarly torn between expedient and righteous postures in the mediation of the many Christian-Muslim and other tribal disputes in Montenegro).^[23] He takes counsel with his various clan leaders throughout the poem, weighing the question of whether violence should be used as a solution in the desired "extermination of Islam," or whether other modes of reconciliation might be preferable. This all culminates in a decision by the Christians to proceed with a massacre of converts—an event that the reader does not witness per se, but that takes place and is reported on, after which the poem concludes. The parallels with ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia today are obvious.

The Mountain Wreath begins with the short "Dedication to the Ashes of the Father of Serbia," which is written in sixteen-syllable meter. It is followed by the narrative itself, a dramatic epic poem of 2,819 lines, composed in deca-syllabic meter, with a word break after the fourth syllable—that is, the meter of South Slavic oral epic. Njegos turned to spoken and vernacular linguistic forms in the poetry. The poetry abounds with proverbs, incantations, and sayings taken "from the folk." A folk round dance is employed as a type of chorus. Furthermore, oral literary genres (especially wedding song and lament) are embedded in the narrative at various points, as are numerous references to oral tradition, such as traditional Serbian weddings or family feasts (the "slava").^[24] Finally, Njegos repeatedly utilized devices of oral composition—repetition, parallelism, pleonasm, and parataxis. In this way he created a poetic rhythm that imitated oral epic, thereby seeking to stir his readers. The Mountain Wreath reflects many of the characteristics found in oral epic, a genre with which nationalism identified more than any other because of its reflection of the "folk"—perceived as the soul of the nation—as well as its invocation of the glorious past and heroic ideals. Indeed, Vuk—the "father" of Serbian folklore—time and again called attention to the "sacred"

nature of Serbian oral tradition and the profound linkage between it and the Serbian nation and its history.^[25] Njegos put these same powerful symbols to equally powerful political use.

Forty individual characters figure in The Mountain Wreath. Of these, only two are women.^[26] The poetry relates a male story, with men as the central actors and speakers. The first woman in The Mountain Wreath appears about two-thirds of the way through the poem. She is the "sister of Batric," a young woman who grieves over the recent treacherous death of her brother at the hands of the Turks. Batric was a heroic ideal to his fellow Montenegrins. Batric's sister laments in poignant oral traditional style, employing the typical meter of death lament in the South Slavic tradition (an eight-syllable line followed by a four-syllable refrain). She addresses her deceased brother:

Where have you flown away from me, O my falcon, 
away from your most noble flock, my dear brother? 
Didn't you know the faithless Turks? May God curse them! 
Didn't you know they'd deceive you, O lovely head? 
My world is gone, forever lost, my brother, my sun! 
My deep wounds can never be healed, my bitter wound! 
My very eyes are plucked from me, light of my eyes!

Kuda si mi uletio, moj sokole, 
od divnogajata tvoga, brate rano? 
Da 1' nevjerne ne zna Turke, Bog ih kleo! 
e ce tebe prevariti? divna glavo
Moj svijete izgubljeni, sunce brate! 
moje rane bez prebola, rano ljuta! 
moje oci izvadjene, ocni vide!^[27]

She mourns for fifty verses, then seizes her grandfather's knife and kills herself. The sister of Batric and her lament serve to underscore the tragedy and futility of young Batric's death. The sister does not have a name, nor an identity beyond her role as sister. Indeed, after she has expressed her lament, she surrenders herself to the world that has already snatched away her brother. Joining him, she denies her own existence. After mourning, she is no longer needed in this drama, so Njegos literally removes her from the scene in a gesture that reflects not only a sister's sentimental love for her brother (providing a quintessential depiction of the cult of the sister), but perhaps even more significantly an objectification of one of the only female characters in the work. Her role in Njegos's poem is primarily to articulate her brother's identity.

Why should Batric's sister exemplify the tragedy of the dead hero? In the traditional Balkan world, it is women, not men, who perform death rites. It is they who are the caretakers of the dead, from dressing and guarding the corpse to performing laments. Death rite is a female function and a female social duty. Women alone have the license to lament and communicate with

the dead in this traditional world. Thus, by the conventions of ritual, Batric's sister is the only person who can perform this function with the intensity that Njegos intends. The death rites in Montenegro traditionally have been particularly prominent among the life-cycle rituals. Laments that glorify dead heroes—sung by female kin—are especially rich. The lament sung by Batric's sister is an exemplary poem in this regard, bridging oral poetry and literary imitation of oral poetry.^[28] Furthermore, her lament epitomizes the Balkan cult of the sister—a potent metaphor through which the tragedy of Montenegro is expressed.

The only other female figure in The Mountain Wreath, an old woman (the "prophetess-witch"), makes her appearance about 200 verses later in a gathering of the men. She forms part of a brief incident. After claiming that she is a witch and then answering a series of questions posed by the clan members, the old woman confesses that she was sent by the vizier (who has learned that the Christian Montenegrins plan to do away with their Muslim brothers). She claims that she was ordered to bewilder the men: "He sent me to confuse you," she tells the chieftains, "so you would be busy with your troubles." ("Pa me posla da vas ja pomutim, da se o zlu svome zabavite.")^[29] The woman is saved from being stoned to death by the intervention of the chieftains.

The old woman is clearly an outsider. She is past childbearing age and thus is in some senses a symbolic male. She is "betwixt and between,"^[30] neither fully female (because she no longer represents fertility) nor fully male (she is, after all, a woman). Furthermore, she is not from central Montenegro, but rather from Bar (on the Adriatic coast), and thus is very literally a stranger. A prophetess-witch was a perfect ploy for the assembled men—a figure who could pose as someone who deals in otherworldly matters. Furthermore, this "ploy" had to be someone who was vulnerable and easily duped. No better candidate could exist than an old woman—perceived as weak and vulnerable, as a result of both age and gender. In her confession, the old woman tells how the vizier threatened to imprison and burn her sons and grandchildren if she did not play his game of confusing the Christians. She herself says to the men:

It was this threat that did force me, brothers,
to sow discord 'mong you Montenegrins.

Ta me sila, braco, nacerala
to pomutit hocah Crnogorce.^[31]

Because women were associated with powerlessness (and men with power), to succumb to such threats would be considered female, something that only women would do. The old woman from Bar became the vizier's puppet because of her twofold outsider status (both as a person not from central Mon-

tenegro and as a symbolic male—thus permitted to mingle in male public space) and because of her powerlessness as a woman.^[32]

In addition to these two female characters, women are alluded to or mentioned on occasion by men in various dialogues in the poem. These references describe a number of female roles. Women are regarded as lamenters (such as the sister of Batric, who is herself a close parallel to the faithful sisters of oral epic). They mourn dead heroes—husbands, brothers, brothers-in-law, and sons. One male character, for example, declares to the bishop that "men bravely bear what women lament about" ("Ljudi trpe, a zene naricu")—an observation that pointedly juxtaposes the martial strength of men and the ritualized weakness of women.^[33] Lamenters are often compared to the cuckoo bird (kukavica); the bishop, for example, is said to be "wailing just like some cuckoo bird" (kukas kao kukavica); the simile is meant to underscore his weakness (and thus femaleness).^[34] Women are alluded to as having otherworldly connections (recall the old woman from Bar. Most notably, they are described as "vila"-like (bewitching) in their seductive powers: "She is prettier than any white vila! " ("Ljepsa muje od vile bijele! ")^[35] Women are often also portrayed as seers of the future:

Why do you talk magic like old witches 
or like some old women reading their beans?

Sto bajete kao bajalice 
ali babe kad u bob vracaju?^[36]

"Reading beans" is a reference to a traditional means of foretelling the future in the Balkans, typically performed by women.

Women are also referred to in perhaps their most important role in the nationalist cant—as those who give birth to Serbian heroes. They are seen as vessels that serve to bear male heroes. As Bette Denich has noted, in the Balkan context, "the only enduring social units are formed through the male descent line, and women are exchanged among these units to procreate future generations of males. . . .[W]omen serve merely as links between fathers and sons, and between male in-laws." Indeed, "only as the mother of sons does a wife secure a place in the group."^[37] Speaking of one of the Montenegrin heroes, a group of male voices in Njegos's poem cries out:

Serbian woman has never borne his like, 
since Kosovo or even before it!

Srpkinja ga jost radjala nije 
od Kosova, a ni prijed njega.^[38]

The mothers mentioned in The Mountain Wreath of course find parallels in the noble and wise mothers of oral epic. A mother's curse is also, as in oral epic, anathema:

The mother's curse thus fell upon her son, 
and massacred was his entire army.

Stize sina materina kletva, 
pogibe mu vojska svakolika.^[39]

Finally, women are depicted as victims captured and violated by the enemy. For example, referring to the rape of Christian maidens by the Turks, a Montenegrin chieftain tells one of the Muslim leaders:

If there is a garland of flowers 
to decorate the heads of lovely brides, 
you harvest it at the peak of flowering.

Ili imah kitnoga vijenca 
koji kruni celo nevjestama, 
poznjes mi ga u cv'jetu mladosti.^[40]

"Harvest" has a sexual meaning here; the sense extends also, of course, to the "rape" and "harvest" of Montenegro. The symbolic meaning of rape in this context is as powerful as the act itself. As Virginia Sapiro has pointed out, "The control over women's sexuality has often been played out in inter-group conflict through the dynamics of rape. . . . What we might call the 'politics of honor' [is] played out between groups through the medium of women's sexuality. The assault on the enemy involves a wide range of physical and psychological tactics, but one of the most notable means of assaulting the honor or pride of a nation or community is to assault the 'honor' of its women through rape."^[41] Obviously, this continues to remain an important dimension of nationalist politics in the Balkans today. Rape is (and has been throughout the ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia) a particularly powerful mode of warfare, because it not only attacks the honor of its female victims, as Sapiro notes, but it also shames and thus dishonors their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons.^[42] Such men are humiliated in the face of other men. As Denich has remarked, the "prescriptions for male behavior" in the Balkans involve a "public image of warrior courage . . . linked with a self-image of indomitable virility and elaborated ideologically in terms of the value codes of 'honor.'"^[43] Male honor is deeply connected to power and control over females. Thus, references to rape in The Mountain Wreath are in some senses a male symbol. As Cynthia Enloe has noted, "In the context of nationalist struggles, . . .. the abuse of women often seems recast as more a problem for men than women." Through rape, she notes, "the honor of the community's men has been assaulted."^[44]

Of course, the works of Njegos represent the use of literary epic, inspired by and drawn from oral epic, for national and political expression. There were other contemporaries of Njegos throughout the Balkans whose literary epics were related to oral epic in meter, style, language, and content and

were powerful statements to the male public, imbued with the nationalist spirit of the nineteenth century. In Croatia, the most outstanding writer of the romantic literary movement during the first half of the nineteenth century was Ivan Mazuranic (1814-1890), whose literary epic Smrt Smail-Age Cengic ( The death of Smail-Aga Cengic ) was published in 1846.^[45] Mazuranic was from a peasant family and had been fully exposed to traditional poetry. He was, like Njegos, thoroughly knowledgeable about Vuk's collections. Also like Njegos, he held a political office: "ban" (governor) of Croatia. The Death of Smail-Aga Cengic, Mazuranic's most famous work, is a poem of 1, 134 lines that relates one event in the continuing struggle between Turks and Montenegrins—the ambush of a Muslim champion, Smail-Aga, and his slaying by a band of Montenegrins in revenge for his slaughter of some Christians. Unlike the incident that Njegos related, the event that formed the basis for Mazuranic's epic actually occurred, and news of it was disseminated in the press. It created an immediate frenzy and became a type of popular metaphor for Muslim-Christian hostilities.^[46]

In The Death of Smail-Aga Cengic, Mazuranic turned to oral epic for inspiration, frequently employing decasyllabic verse, as well as oral poetic and stylistic devices such as patterned repetition, parallelism, and fixed epithets. The narrative, like that in The Mountain Wreath, is about liberation and national identity. There is not a single female character in Mazuranic's poem. A few "vilas," a faithful wife, and Christian maidens who are regularly taken "for the night" by the Turkish tax collectors are mentioned in passing by men in the text. Stereotypes who are simply background are the token female "appearances," and once again the reference to rape is effectively a male statement. As passive victims, women provide a pretext for male discourse on warfare and honor; rape challenges men's power.

Georgi Rakovski (1821-1867) was an ardent Bulgarian nationalist who collected folk songs, issued newspapers, wrote literature, and in general devoted his entire life to the Bulgarian nationalist cause. Rakovski's Gorski putnik (Woodland traveler) was first published in 1857. The poem (928 verses) centers on Bulgarian freedom fighters ("hajduti") and their stories of struggle against the "Turkish yoke." It was a clear statement on nation and liberation and has been called "the first revolutionary epic poem of Bulgarian literature."^[47] Although now generally viewed as minor literature, its impact on the Bulgarian public of its day was considerable. It was one of the most popular literary works of the Bulgarian national revival. The work idealizes the Bulgarian past and invokes it as a symbol of the power and liberation that was desired in nineteenth-century Ottoman-dominated Bulgaria. Rakovski, like his South Slavic brothers from Montenegro and Croatia, was an advocate of oral poetry and found inspiration in it for his own epic. Like Njegos and Mazuranic, Rakovski composed a narrative in which a political message dominated—a political message characterized by nationalist sen-

timent and a call to arms. Women do not figure in any significant way in Rakovski's poem.

A final example further illustrates the point. The Romanian folklorist and poet Vasile Alecsandri (1821-1890) wrote Dumbrava rosie (The red oak grove ) in 1872. It is a literary epic that narrates a struggle in the late fifteenth century between the ruler of Moldavia—Stephen the Great—and the Polish king. The message of liberation at the core of the epic was highly pertinent in the nineteenth-century context as the Romanian principalities (Walachia and Moldavia) sought to be released from all ties with the Ottoman empire, still a suzerain power at the time. The 859-line poem was an important work in its day. Alecsandri—renowned not only for his own poetry, but also for his pioneering work in the collection of Romanian oral poetry (especially epic) and his political involvement in Romanian nationalist activities—drew from oral epic in the creation of what he considered a Romanian national epic. Stephen the Great—a historical figure who was embraced in folklore and nationalist culture in the rhetoric of emancipation embodies heroic resistance to foreign invaders in Alecsandri's poem. Other male heroic figures also sing of liberation; however, the role of women in the epic is negligible.

Remarking on the gendering of nationalism among Romanians, Katherine Verdery has suggested that in the construction of a "national self" it has been a collective, implicitly male "self' that has dominated. This "entity" is characterized by "heroism, triumph, victimization, and sacrifice" and represents not only a "collective [male] individual," but also the avowed "nation that unites" this collective.^[48] Prominent "individuals" of this "collective" who epitomize this heroic concept have been invoked throughout Romanian history and include figures such as Stephen the Great, viewed as a sacrosanct emblem of the "nation." Alecsandri exploited this forceful symbol—male, heroic, defiant—as he constructed his epic of Romanian nationhood, The Red Oak Grove. Women were entirely dispensable, because the epic expressed a theme that was intended to resonate among the men who formed the elite of nineteenth-century Romanian society. As Verdery has noted, "The image of a collective Romanian nation" was "reproduced without women's intervention."^[49]

Speaking of the profound "linkage between gender and cultural identity," Sapiro has remarked that in some societies "the struggle for liberation has been termed a struggle for 'manhood.'" Furthermore, "the loss of manhood is culturally understood to mean one is being turned into a naturally weaker and less significant being: a woman."^[50] I suggest that if the centuries-long state of foreign domination (be it Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian) in the Balkans in the nineteenth century is viewed as a state of powerlessness, or, by extension, femaleness, then the struggles for liberation were effectively struggles to gain or regain maleness (manhood) and power. Thus, in order

to move from powerlessness and oppression (the state of being female) to power and independence (being male), one strategy was to objectify women and femaleness and elevate men and maleness to the center of the various narratives that aided in generating "identity." This is precisely what Njegos, Mazuranic, Rakovski, and Alecsandri did. In their literary pleas for liberation and independent national identity, they constructed male worlds that were free of the emblems of oppression and emasculation, peripheralizing female symbols. Their epics spoke to the ardent romantic nationalist desires and beliefs that men held and espoused-liberation, regaining of power, authority, and control—all concepts or states that were seen as antithetical to the status of women. Men were the main audience of this literature in the nineteenth century because they were the principal participants in the nationalist movements in the Balkans. It followed then that men also had to be the main actors and mouthpieces in this literature.

As Enloe has pointed out, "Women haven't had an easy relationship with nationalism."^[51] Nineteenth-century writers of literary epic in the Balkans were asserting a nationalism in their writing that lauded the liberation and removal of foreign oppression. These ideals were equated almost exclusively with male identity. The various literary epics discussed here were narratives primarily about manhood. When women did surface in them, they were token representations that furthered the male nationalist message: women as lamenters for dead heroes, mothers as receptacles for the birth of national heroes, women as objects in the potent national symbol of rape, and women as representatives of otherworldly connections, such as witches or "vilas." By contrast, the various roles women held in oral epic were not politically motivated in this way. Indeed, both oral and literary epic included—either actively or passively—female roles and references. Female kin, female victims, and otherworldly women all functioned in various ways, large and small, in these narratives—whether to propel the narrative forward (especially in oral epic) or to embellish the message of male-centered nationalism (as in literary epic). By comparison, the female helpers, clever maidens, and spirited women that figured (sometimes quite prominently) in oral epic were not present in the early literary epic of the Balkan world—precisely because they were not seen as effective vehicles for promoting or elaborating the nationalistic agenda.

Oral epic, as opposed to its literary imitations, reflected the greater diversity of roles that women played in traditional society and thus offered a multifaceted portrayal of womanhood. Literary epic had, after all, a political subtext. It either presented or alluded to women who could aid in the advancement of this subtext or neglected them altogether. Athough oral epic was used by nineteenth-century romantic nationalists to further their cause, it did not arise, as literary epic did, out of a need to advocate national and political convictions, but rather out of a need to relate the cherished

stories in which the deep mythic convictions of the community were expressed. By objectifying femaleness in the literary epics that they consciously constructed, writers such as Njegos, Mazuranic, Rakovski, and Alecsandri were able to embrace maleness—the essence of nationhood, liberation, and power.

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