On the question of axiological-semantic differences in authorial approaches to a literary adaptation of the first and second parts of the epic poem “Digenes Akritas”

Abstract

The question of the correlation between the first and second parts of the Byzantine epic poem “Digenes Akritas” is still insufficiently covered in academic literature. Thus, for example, Byzantine scholars highlight both this work’s semantic-value integrity, and the fact that the folk songs serving as the basis of it had presumably been of diachronous nature. This determines the relevance of the poem’s axiological analysis, aiming to compare its parts with one another, as well as to clarify whether the artistic organization of “Digenes Akritas” involves a certain degree of inner unity and coherence. According to the present article, the famous Byzantine epic poem, when systematically studied in such a manner, reveals itself as a work implying a fundamental difference between its various plot-compositional parts. Examining the poem in terms of the heroes’ motivational values – which are, as a consequence, decisive for the plot, – we have identified eight axiomotifs (one for the introduction, three for the first part, and four for the second one) and analyzed them successively. The results are of obvious regularity. Thus, the poem’s first part – the one depicting the main hero’s parents – presupposes a Christian value perspective (i. e., a plot emphasis put on the categories of neighbor, compassionate love, and the glory of God), while the life story of the protagonist himself focuses on such individualistic unchristian concepts as personal fame and personal honor. Digenes, even if depicted in the poem as a man of faith, turns out to be motivated only by his own interests, and never acts selflessly for the sake of other people, religious shrines or the glory of God. As a result, it is possible not only to emphasize the fact that the epic in question has been created on the basis of different folk works, but also to establish that these works have been processed by at least two separate individuals – one of them a practicing Orthodox believer, while the other a person completely alien to Christian values – and combined mechanically only later. Consequently, an axiological analysis of the poem “Digenes Akritas” allows one to understand its genesis and its semantic-compositional structure in a more complete way, while creating prerequisites for similar studies of other Byzantine folk and literary epics, among them “The Tale of Belisarius”, “The Lay of Armouris”, and the more recent “Acritic Songs”.

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