The ballad was handed down from generation to generation in oral form until it was finally written and published in 1774 by Italian traveler and ethnographer Alberto Fortis in his book Viaggio in Dalmazia while traveling through Dalmatia in 1770. During his travels, he discovered what he called a "Morlachian ballad", a term that was criticised by Croatian writer Ivan Lovrić, who accused Fortis of many factual errors in his own response, Notes on 'Travels in Dalmatia' of Abbe Alberto Fortis, which he then attempted to rectify. It was subsequently translated to German by Goethe in approximately 1775, first appearing anonymously as Klaggesang von der edlen Frauen des Asan Aga in 1778 in Johann Gottfried Herder's collection of . It appeared with Goethe's signature in his eight edition of collected works. Walter Scott was the second foreign author to translate Hasanaginica under the title "Lamentation of the Faithful Wife of Asan Aga," from the German of Goethe. Other British translators soon followed suit, including Sir John Bowring, James Clarence Mangan, W. Edmondstone Aytoun, Edgar Alfred Bowring, Mary AnnBurt, George Bancroft, Owen Meredith, Edward Chawner, William Gibson, Maximilian A. Mügge. W. Scott translated it into English in 1798, and later, it was translated into Russian, French and other world's languages, becoming an integral part of the world literary heritage already in the 18th century. Hasanaginica has been translated into more than 40 languages. It is considered a part of the shared Serbo-Croatian literary heritage.
Setting and plot
Hasanaginica, "The Mourning Song of the Noble Wife of the Hasan Aga" is a ballad about the Muslim family Arapović in Dalmatia. The incidents take place along the Province of Bosnia's frontier in Vrdol, near the Biokovo mountains of Dalmatia, where the lord Hasan Arapović had large estates. The ruins of the Hasan's towers exist today, as well as the place where Hasanaginica is presumed to be buried, near the ruins, on the southwestern slopes of the Blue Lake. The ballad relates that following a battle, whilst lying wounded, Hasan-aga summons his wife, Fatima Arapović, who was unwilling to accompany him to the battlefield. Deeply angered and in pain, Hasan-aga sends his wife a message ordering her to leave his castle without their children. Despite pleading with her brother, who brings her the message and the divorce papers, Hasan-aga's wife is ousted from her home and her brother arranges her to be married to a wealthy kadı. As a last wish before the marriage, she asks her brother for a long veil so that she does not see her children as the wedding procession passes by her old castle. Ultimately, her children see her and call out for her. As she stops to bid them farewell one last time, she dies of sorrow.
Linguistic and historical background
The poem's language is Serbo-Croatian, termed by Fortis as "Illyrian". The version published by Fortis was probably copied from an ikavian text and changed in accordance with the style of language spoken in Dubrovnik. It combines mostly jekavian and some ikavian forms, and includes misspellings. Serbian philologist and linguist Vuk Karadžić, who never actually heard the poem sung by a folk singer, changed Fortis's transcription to create a more Serbian version which would reflect his codification of the language. The meter of the ballad is classical South Slavic decasyllable or 10-syllable verse, translated by Goethe as trochaic pentameter. There is much debate about whether the ballad was purely poetical and fictional, or based on real people and events. However, the following people did actually exist and are believed to be the basis of the ballad:
Hasan-aga Arapović – An Ottoman aga and Ottoman Bosnian frontiersman
Fatima Arapović – Hasan-aga's wife
Pintorović-beg – An Ottoman bey and Fatima's brother
As concluded by Bosnian writer Alija Isaković in his 1975 monograph, the poem originated in the Imotski frontier. Hasan-aga held courts in Vrdovo and Župa, and belonged to the Arapović clan, whose descendants still live in Ljubuški.
