LOVE AND SHAME

The ballad Hasanaginica revolves around the woman, her role and her shame which prevents her from visiting her husband, which in turn results in a series of tragic events. This shame, which is the main driver of the plot, is understandable and non-understandable at the same time. On the one hand, it is the place where the text of the ballad becomes open to reception beyond the borders of the culture where the ballad was created, since it is the shame that makes it mysterious and interesting for interpretations, literary discussions and controversies, and on the other, this shame is a place, i.e. a motif which is incomprehensible for readers from other cultures (cf.: Jakiša/Deupmann 2004: 387).

Alberto Fortis, an Italian travel writer and scholar, who was the first to write down the text of the ballad, already spoke about a kind of foreign shame, which is not easy to present and explain to other cultures since this shame is determined by cultural codes.

Many other writers were also fascinated with Hasanaginica's character and intrigued by her shame, which resulted in all the subsequent events in the ballad, even the fatal ones.

Bosnian and Herzegovinian literary theorist Vedad Spahić (1999: 85-90) is one of those who have been involved in this topic. He explained why the verse which speaks about Hasanaginica’s shame about visiting her husband is the most important verse in the whole ballad. Hasanaga is an officer who was wounded in the war and who is visited by his mother and sister, but not by his wife, Hasanaginica, who is ashamed of doing it. Hasanaga is resentful, disappointed and furious, and decides that his wife should not wait for him in the castle, i.e. at their home when he returns from the battlefield. The shame which Hasanaginica feels is the basis, motivation, and driver of all the subsequent events in the ballad.

What many critics disagree about and what is not so simple to explain is the issue of the nature of the shame. There are two most accepted interpretations in this respect.

One is the theory that the shame is a characteristic of all Muslim women of the time, since the shy and reticent woman was the ideal of the time and the environment where the ballad was created, which is in turn rooted in hadith which says that shame is half of the faith, and that the author of this folk poem did not feel the need to explain the feeling of shame in detail. However, in their text Jakiša and Deupmann (2004: 392) claim that shame was not even characteristic only of women from Muslim environments but was also an essential feature of women who belonged to Western-Christian culture. Still, it was probably more visible in the Muslim culture, where it was customary for a wife to visit and cure her wounded or sick husband only when all other men leave the room where he stayed.

Hasanaga, who belongs to a lower social class than Hasanaginica, believes that he will be degraded in the eyes of the society because of the fact that his wife, which belongs to a fairly closed class – that of beys – did not visit him. Thus, according to this view, he is not angry only because his wife did not visit him, but primarily because he feared that it would besmirch him and his family. To compensate it in a way, he returns to his initial mistake in biography, i.e. marriage with a woman from a higher social class and decides to oust her from his home (cf.: Jakiša/Deupmann 2004: 398-400).

What makes the first interpretation partly questionable is the fact that in this case Hasanaginica loses characteristics which make her an individual, and becomes a kind of a mass product.

This thesis was advocated by many literary critics, e.g. by Salih Alić (1974: 319-327), who says that Hasanaginica was doubtlessly raised in the patriarchal society and in a Muslim environment, where a shy woman was the ideal of the time. However, in case of shyness which resulted in all the subsequent events in the ballad, it is another kind of shame, i.e. shame which does not have roots in upbringing but rather in family relations. As a matter of fact, Alić believes that there were problems in the marriage even before the beginning of the plot in the ballad, since Hasanaginica was aware of her origin and was proud of it, while at her new home she was subordinated to Hasanaga's mother, a woman who had the main role in the house and in the family. Their marriage should be viewed from two aspects: as a religious/Islamic institution and as a social institution with customs of the time, where social classes were clearly separated and it was not customary for people belonging to different classes to get married. Alić believes that there may have been a conflict between Hasanaginica and Hasanaga's mother, that Hasanaginica, in a fit of anger, said words she was later ashamed of, and did not feel ready to visit her husband.

Hasanaginica belonged to a fairly closed social class (family of beys) which had customs and rules of their own, and therefore it is highly likely that problems in marriage existed even before the beginning of the plot of the ballad, that Hasanaga struggled with the sense of inferiority and that the problems only reached the climax during the events presented in the ballad, i.e. due to Hasanaginica's refusal to visit her husband.

In any case, it can be concluded that Hasanaginica is a victim of misunderstandings and a lack of communication (cf.: Buturović 2010: 65). Her husband Hasanaga was not able to understand her value and the subtlety of her soul. Besides shame, Hasanaga's impulsive and temperamental character is certainly another important driver of the plot of the ballad. Hasanaginica is a victim of both a lack of communication and the complex relations of subordination and superiority (cf.: Jakiša/Deupmann 2004: 401). On the one hand, the noble and brave Hasanaginica is aware that she belongs to a higher class than her husband and that she comes from a respectable family, which makes her proud, and on the other she is “only” a woman who must comply to her husband and his whims, which are not in line with the traditional model of behavior of the time.

Shame, courage, strength, devotion, love and resignation of the noble woman Hasanaginica have left an eternal stamp on Bosnian and Herzegovinian oral literature, making this ballad the only folk poem which has received so much love, attention and painful work.

References:

1. Alić, Salih (1974), Društvena pozadina balade o Hasanaginici, Čapljina.

2. Buturović, Lada (2010), Treptaj žanra u poetici usmene književnosti, Svjetlost, Sarajevo.

3. Jakiša Miranda, Christoph Deupmann (2004), “Ponosni stid Hasanaginice: Goetheova ‘Tužbalica o plemenitoj ženi Hasanage’ i južnoslavensko izdanje kao arhiv kulturno-sinkretističkih procesa”, (“Die stolze Scham der Hasanaginica: Goethes ‘Klaggesang von der edlen Frauen des Asan Aga’ und die südslavische Vorlage als Archivkultur synkretistischer Prozesse”), Poetica, 36 (3/4), Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink GmbH&Co. Verlags-KG S., str. 379-402.

4. Spahić, Vedad (1999), Tekst, kontekst, interpretacija, Grafičar – CKO, Tuzla-Tešanj.