Digénis Akritas

The epopee of Digénis Akritas (in Greek Διγενής Ακρίτας / Digenếs Akrítas ) is a Poème epic which undoubtedly emerged beginning of at the 12th century within the Byzantine Empire. The poem presents the course of a hero to the Eastern borders of the Empire, at the border of the Arab world, on the shores of the Euphrate. Digénis, presented like a man to the imposing stature, would result from a noble Byzantine and an emir of Syria. He fights against fantastic animals, creatures, amazones, etc

Handwritten tradition and date of the poem

The contents, the form and the language of the poem, which is in Greek vulgar (or demotic), suggest that it was put in writing under the reign of Alexis Ier Comnène, undoubtedly in the first decades of XIIe century. However, the described action claims to proceed much earlier (perhaps at the 10th century): for example, the enemies of the Byzantines on the Eastern borders are not the Turks, as it is the case since the Arab years 1050, but , against which Byzance fought during centuries. Moreover, the poem writes that we have perhaps joins together former songs, known as “acritic”, of which anteriority is discussed, and perhaps dating from the beginning of the 11th century.

One preserved six of them Manuscrit S divided into three popular” or “erudite” recensions more or less “, and which represent all of the important rehandlings of the original text, today lost. The language is always the Greek demotic, but with more or less pushed incursions of the erudite language. The oldest version undoubtedly (version E, or of Escorial, translated in this work) includes/understands a little less than 2000 worms. The “erudite” version more (version G, that of Grottaferrata), includes/understands some more than 3000. The four other manuscripts belong to the same recension, later, known as version Z. Slavic translations (in Russia), Turkish, Armenian are known at least partially - sign of the popularity of the character.

Context and models

The Arab incursions (frequent into the Byzantine world enters the 7th century and the 10th century, sont the context of the first left the history. The family history of the hero indeed seems to proceed in a climate of conflict. The reconciliation of the two people through the marriage of the main characters and the triumph of the Christianisme on the Islam are completed by the conversion of the emir and the integration of his people in the Byzantine company. The remainder of the history is held on a background less marked by the religious and more typical conflict of the daily life on the borders of a protected Empire from now on.

The original (lost today) was undoubtedly in a rather popular language and was thus not necessarily elaborate in the mediums of the court or the capital, because the poem completely represents the ideology and the concerns of the Eastern aristocracy of the borders. But it is not either an entirely popular or epic text, because it includes/understands aspects completely typical of the erudite novel (love story tardo-antique, which returns to the mode at the time of the Comnènes). The poem was thus composed for the Byzantine aristocracy, with a mixture of popular and erudite features, within a framework epic but taking again elements specific to the cultivated mediums.

Account

The poem is divided into two principal parts.

The first part tells the marriage of the parents of the hero: a Moslem emir converted with Christianity and a noble young lady attached in one way or another (the versions vary) to the house of the Doukas, which it takes from his family during a forwarding of plundering. Overcome by the brothers of beautiful, the emir converts by love for his prisoner and transplants all his relationship in Byzantine country. The hero, whose first name is Basile, is thus resulting from two different races (it is digénis ).

The second part (longest, much more fictionalized) tells the adventures of the hero. In its turn it removes (this time by a romantic abduction) the girl of a strategist and carries out a life of free apélate (brigand), multiplying the adventures warlike and in love. The unit is supposed to proceed on the borders ( will akrai : the hero is a akrite ) Eastern empire, that the hero releases from the monsters (dragon, lion, etc) and from the criminals (Christian or not) who infest the area. The top of the account, in the version G, is the meeting between Digénis and the Basile emperor (it is about Basile II, become a figure of legend), to which he gives councils of good government: “to like obedience, to have pity of the poor, to deliver oppressed injustice which overpowers them, to forgive the involuntary faults, not to lend the ear to calumnies, to refuse the injustice, to drive out the heretics, to support the orthodoxe ones”. The emperor gives him then by Chrysobulle full and whole authority on the borders, and Digénis is installed with his wife in a splendid palate on Euphrate. The hero dies to have drunk too cold, like Alexandre Large the in the Roman of Alexandre: his loving wife dies at the same time as him.

Random links: