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Abstract
The Sephardim published Judeo-Spanish ballads, tales and proverbs in Ladino in the numerous periodicals they produced in Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia. Occasionally, the work of Sephardic authors or collectors would also be published in Serbian regional and local newspapers. In this paper I examine the case of a text in Serbian entitled Ženske Šale (Women's Jokes) which, in 1885, was published in the Serbian newspaper, Videlo (Light), in which this story was alleged to be a Judeo-Spanish folktale collected by a Sephardic Jew named Haim Davičo. This article demonstrates the tale's similarity to Tirso de Molina's short story, Los tres maridos burlados (1624), a connection which has previously gone unnoticed. Through a comparison of the Serbian text with Tirso's original story, while highlighting the former's Sephardic cultural traits, this paper shows that Ženske Šale (Women's Jokes) is actually quite an accurate Serbian rendering of Tirso's story probably translated directly from the original by Haim Davičo.
Notes
* This article was written as a part of the research project FFI2012-31625 ‘Los sefardíes ante sí mismos y sus relaciones con España III: hacia la recuperación de un patrimonio cultural en peligro’ supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, for the Instituto de Lengua, Literatura y Antropología del CSIC, Madrid. I should like to thank the Cambridge Overseas Trust, which is generously sponsoring my PhD studies at the University of Cambridge.
1 For a brief history of Belgrade's Sephardic community, see Krinka Vidaković, Kultura španskih Jevreja na jugoslovenskom tlu (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1990 [1st ed. 1986]), 21–22, and Ivana Vučina-Simović & Jelena Filipović, Etnički identitet i zamena jezika u sefardskoj zajednici u Beogradu (Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike, 2009).
2 For an account of Manrique's journey to the Balkans and his fieldwork among the Sephardim in Belgrade and other parts of the Eastern Mediterrean, see Samuel G. Armistead, ‘Introducción’, in his El romancero judeo-español en el Archivo Menéndez Pidal. Catálogo-índice de romances y canciones, 3 vols (Madrid: Cátedra/Seminario Menéndez Pidal, 1978), I, 7–39; and Diego Catalán, El archivo del romancero: patrimonio de la humanidad; historia documentada de un siglo de historia, 2 vols (Madrid: Fundación Ramón Menéndez Pidal, 2001), I, 66–72. For information on fieldwork carried out among Judeo-Spanish communities in Bosnia and Macedonia, see J. Subak, ‘Zum Judenspanischen’, Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, 30 (1906), 129–85; Max A. Luria, A Study of the Monastir Dialect of Judeo-Spanish Based on Oral Material Collected in Monastir, Yugo-Slavia (New York: Instituto de las Españas en los Estados Unidos, 1930); and Cynthia M. Crews, Recherches sur le judéo-espagnol dans les Pays Balkaniques (Paris: Droz, 1935), 80–177, and ‘Textos judeo-españoles de Salónica y Sarajevo con comentarios lingüísticos y glosario’, Estudios Sefardíes, 2 (1979), 91–249 (pp. 168–93).
3 In the only existing catalogue of the Judeo-Spanish Press, El Amigo del Puevlo appears as item number 30. See Moshe David Gaon, A Bibliography of the Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) Press [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Monoline Press, 1965), 23–24.
4 For more information on the Sephardic Press in the former Yugoslavia, see Vidaković, Kultura španskih Jevreja, 54–98.Although Ladino and Judeo-Spanish are today used interchangeably, and I shall be treating them as such in this work, the former referred to a literary method devised to translate the Bible and other holy texts to make them accessible to the believers in times when Hebrew ceased to be used, whilst the latter, judeoespañol, djudesmo or djudió, represented an everyday language. For more information, see Paloma Díaz-Mas, Los sefardíes: historia, lengua y cultura (Barcelona: Riopiedras, 2006 [1st ed. 1986]), 115–52.
5 Vidaković, Kultura španskih Jevreja, 56. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from Serbian (provided in brackets after the English versions) are my own.
6 The tales in question are, ‘Naumi: jalijska noveleta’, Otadžbina, 14:55 (1883), 321–36; ‘Jalijske zimske noći: Luna’, Otadžbina, 20:78 (1888), 345–56; ‘Perla: slika iz beogradske jevrejske male’, Otadžbina, 29:115 (1891), 333–58. In 1898 these three tales were reprinted in one book, Sa Jalije (From Yalia) (Belgrade: Štamparija S. Horovica). The fourth tale, ‘Buena’, was published in Delo, 66:2 (1913), 161–72; 66:3 (1913), 361–70; 67:1 (1913), 20–31; 67:2 (1913), 181–90. All four tales, along with two more of Davičo's texts, were subsequently published under the title Priče sa Jalije (Tales from Yalia), ed. Vasa Pavković (Belgrade: Centar za stvaralaštvo mladih, 2000). All references are to this edition.
7 Krinka Vidaković-Petrov, ‘Identity and Memory in the Works of Haim S. Davicho’, in Los sefardíes ante los retos del mundo contemporáneo: identidad y mentalidades, ed. Paloma Díaz-Mas & María Sánchez Pérez (Madrid: CSIC, 2010), 307–16 (p. 314). For biographical information on Haim Davičo, see David A. Alkalaj, ‘Hajim Davičo, književnik sa Jalije’, Gideon, 4–5 (1925), 74–85, and Vidaković, Kultura španskih Jevreja, 113–22.
8 Paloma Díaz-Mas, ‘Romances sefardíes de endechar’, in Actas de las Jornadas de Estudios Sefardíes: [Cáceres 24–26 marzo 1980], ed. Antonio Viudas Camarasa (Cáceres: Univ. de Extremadura, 1981), 99–105 (pp. 99–100).
9 Yalia was the name of the old Jewish quarter in Belgrade and it derives from the Turkish word yali, which means strand or bank. It was linked to Belgrade's community of Spanish Jews because the area they inhabited was situated next to the Danube.
10 Davičo, Priče sa Jalije, 33. All Hispanic ballads about the adulteress are classified in Armistead's catalogue under M. This particular ballad is numbered M8. In addition, the Sephardim modified the name Landarico to Andarleto (or one of its less-widely used variants: Andarico; Andalito; Angelito, etc). See Armistead, El romancero judeo-español, II, 64–73.
11 Vidaković, Kultura španskih Jevreja, 118.
12 Davičo, Priče sa Jalije, 104–05.
13 Haim Davičo, ‘Jalijske poslovice’, Otadžbina, 32:129 (1892), 654–65. In a brief introduction, Davičo states that he handed the manuscript containing the proverbs in Judeo-Spanish to a scholar in Budapest, whom he does not name.
14 Meyer Kayserling, Refranes o proverbios españoles de los judíos españoles (Budapest: Sr. C. L. Posner y hijo, 1889), 5–24. Kayserling later reprinted the collection in Biblioteca Española-Portugueza-Judaica. Dictionnaire bibliographique des auteurs juifs, de leurs ouvrages espagnols et portugais et des oeuvres sur et contre les juifs et le judaïsme: avec un aperçu sur la littérature des juifs espagnols et une collection des proverbes espagnols (Strasbourg: Charles J. Trubner, 1890), 119–40. Five years later R. Foulché-Delbosc published most of these proverbs alongside others that he had personally collected in Turkey and Greece (see ‘Proverbes judéo-espagnols’, Revue Hispanique, 2 [1895], 312–52). However, since he had left some out, Kayserling decided to publish the missing twenty-three proverbs in the same journal. See Meyer Kayserling, ‘Quelques proverbes judéo-espagnols’, Revue Hispanique, 4 (1897), 82.
15 Meyer Kayserling, Refranes o proverbios, 3.
16 Publication of the journal was halted on several occasions. The first issue came out on 2 January 1880 and marked the beginning of what would be the newspaper's most fruitful period until 1896. The next two stages, comprising the periods 1906–1908 and 1921–1922, were extremely brief compared to the first.
17 Stanka Kostić, ‘Videlo’, Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, 8 vols (Zagreb: Leksikografski zavod FNRJ, 1971), VIII, 491.
18 On account of their links with the Iberian Peninsula, the Sephardim in Serbia were often referred to as Spaniards, and their language as Spanish.
19 Haim Davičo, Ženske šale—Španjolska priča tije Bohore la Komerčere sa beogradske Jalije’, Videlo, 26 February 1885, 41; 28 February 1885, 43; 2 March 1885, 45; 3 March 1885, 46; 5 March 1885, 47; 6 March 1885, 48; 7 March 1885, 49; 8 March 1885, 50. The number following the year of publication refers not to the page (as the leaves of the newspaper are not numbered) but to the issues in which the tale was published.
20 See Haim Davičo, Ženske šale’, 41.
21 See Alkalaj, ‘Hajim Davičo’, 79; Mihailo B. Milošević, ‘Hajim S. Davičo (1854–1918)’, Jevrejski almanah 1965–1967 (Belgrade: Savez jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije, 1967), 129–35 (p. 129); and Vidaković, Kultura španskih Jevreja, 115.
22 Milošević, ‘Hajim S. Davičo (1854–1918)’, 130.
23 See Haim Davičo, ‘Jovan Dimović, učitelj u Trstu’, Bosanska Vila, 15 September 1900, pp. 225–27.
24 Davičo, ‘Luna’, Priče sa Jalije, 57. The bold emphasis in these quotes is mine.
25 Alkalaj, ‘Hajim Davičo’, 80.
26 Joseph Nehama, Dictionnaire du judéo-espagnol (Madrid: CSIC, 2005 [1st ed. 1977]), 93.
27 Elena Romero, La creación literaria en lengua sefardí (Madrid: Maphre, 1992), 239.
28 I use Uther's revision of Aarne and Thompson's tale-type numbers. See Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography; Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, 3 vols (Helsinki: Soumalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004), II, 198. No further examples of this tale-type have been recorded thus far among the Sephardim, though, besides Tirso's tale, there are two other examples of this tale-type known in Spanish literature. In this connection, see Clemente Sánchez de Vercial, Libro de los exenplos por a.b.c., ed. crítica de John Esten Keller, vocabulario etimológico por Louis Jennings Zahn (Madrid: CSIC, 1961), 238–39, and Francisco de Medina, ‘Cuento muy gracioso que sucedió a un arriero con su muger, y fue q porque no se santiguava de las mugeres, quando yva fuera, su misma muger le hizo una burla, dadole un mal rato, aviendole primero embriagado, y rapado la barva toda, y hechole la corona. Y de una vengaça que tomó el marido de su muger por la burla que dél hizo’, in Alan C. Soons, Haz y envés del cuento risible en el Siglo de Oro (London: Tamesis Books, 1976), 76–80.
29 Tirso de Molina, Cigarrales de Toledo, ed., intro. & notas de Luis Vázquez Fernández (Madrid: Castalia, 1996 [1st ed. 1624]), 456–97.
30 For further information on miscellanies, see Mercedes Alcalá Galán, ‘Las misceláneas españolas del siglo XVI y su entorno cultural’, Dicenda: Cuadernos de Filología Hispánica, 14 (1996), 11–19.
31 Ángel Pulido, Españoles sin patria y la raza sefardí (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de E. Teodoro, 1905), 402. It was Pulido's book that drew Spain's attention to the Sephardim at home and abroad, and which resulted in several fieldwork surveys being carried out in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the North of Africa. See note 2 above.
32 Vidaković, Kultura španskih Jevreja, 121. I have also found his translation of Ramón de Campoamor's play El palacio de la verdad (Palata istine), published in the Serbian journal Kolo, 1:6 (1901), 269–76; 1:7 (1901), 419–24; 1:8 (1901), 485–92.
33 Alkalaj, ‘Hajim Davičo’, 78.
34 The School for Higher Education (Velika Škola) was at that time the highest educational institution in Serbia. Founded in 1863, it was active until 1905 and comprised three faculties: Law, Philosophy and Engineering.
35 Milošević, ‘Hajim S. Davičo (1854–1918)’, 130.
36 See Jasna Stojanović, Servantes u srpskoj književnosti (Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva, 2005), 266; 279–83.
37 Milošević, ‘Hajim S. Davičo (1854–1918)’, 135.
38 Vučina-Simović & Jelena Filipović, Etnički identitet, 133–41.
39 Tirso's tale is commonly held to be titled Los tres maridos burlados; this title was added by modern critics, not the author himself.
40 For more information on the different editions of Tirso's miscellany to appear, both complete and partial, see Vázquez Fernández, ‘Introducción’, to his edition of Tirso de Molina, Cigarrales de Toledo, 9–71 (pp. 73–82). Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from Tirso's novela are taken from this edition (see note 29).
41 For full information on the Serbian text as published in the periodical Videlo, see note 19. All quotations from Ženske Šale (Women's Jokes) are taken from the relevant issues of Videlo.
42 Guillermo Gaustavino Gallent, ‘Notas tirsianas’, Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 67 (1959), 676–96 (p. 689).
43 Los tres maridos burlados, in Cigarrales de Toledo, ed. Vázquez Fernández, 458, n. 1065.
44 Los tres maridos burlados, in Cigarrales de Toledo, ed. Vázquez Fernández, 471, n. 1088.
45 Los tres maridos burlados, in Cigarrales de Toledo, ed. Vázquez Fernández, 465, n. 1075.
46 [Anon.] ‘Beelzebub’, in The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia: An Authoritative and Popular Presentation of Jews and Judaism since the Earliest Times, ed. Isaak Landman, Louise Rittenberg & Simon Cohen, 10 vols (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1969 [1st ed. 1939–43]), II, 132.
47 Kaufmann Kohler, ‘Beelzebub’, in The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, ed. Isidore Signer, 12 vols (New York/London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1900–1906), II, 629–30 (p. 629).
48 Vázquez Fernández, ‘Introducción’ to Cigarrales de Toledo, ed. Vázquez Fernández, 67.
49 None of these celebrations preceding Easter has any place in Jewish culture and an authentic Sephardic transmission of the tale would probably have omitted or adapted them, as happened with similar Christian references in many Judeo-Spanish ballads of Hispanic origin. As this is a translation made from the original written text, some Christian details are kept. For examples of de-Christianization in Sephardic balladry, see Samuel G. Armistead & Joseph H. Silverman, ‘Christian Elements and de-Christianization in the Sephardic Romancero’, in Collected Studies in Honour of Americo Castro's 80thYear, ed. M. P. Hornik (Oxford: Lincombe Research Library, 1965), 21–38.