ИСТИНА

Artistic use of language and ethnicity of a “small” Balkan people: (self)identification in (quasi)Arvanite prose by the modern Greek writer D. Papamarkos Arvanites are a subethnic group of Orthodox immigrants from Albania who moved to Greece in 12th – 16th centuries, mostly to the central and southern regions. According to the Greek historiography the Arvanites (Albanians) were mentioned for the first time in the “History” of Mikhail Attaliat when describing the reign of Michael IV Paflagon (1034-1041). Anna Komnina in the “Aleksiad” (Book XIII, Chapter 5) mentions Arvanon (Arbanon) in 1148. Most Arvanites moved to Greece, playing the role of mercenaries in the armies of the Byzantine Empire and various Despotates, mainly Epirus and Morea. Greek Arvanites speak a specific old dialect of the Albanian language - Arvanitika, which historically was one of the southern dialects of Albania (it has many similarities with the Tosk dialect). The Arvanite language was strongly influenced by the modern Greek language, which was especially reflected at the lexical and phonetic levels. ¥ One of the "problematic" points of Arvanite identity: Some Arvanites abandon the ties of their language (arvanitika) with Albanian, since they have a Greek ethnic identity. The assimilation of the Arvanites took place in Greece for a long time, most of them were bilingual, they equally well knew their native Arvanite and Greek languages. Regarding the ethnic self-identification, two levels can be distinguished for this group: at the microregion level, within their community, they determine themselves as Arvanites; and at a wider level as the Greeks, however, it never caused any cognitive dissonance. Many famous heroes of the Greek War for Independence in 1821 - 1830 were Arvanites (Marcos Botsaris, Odysseas Andrutzos, Laskarina Bubulina) as well as some famous Greek artists (Melina Mercury, Sotiria Bellou, Nikos Engonopoulos) were of Arvanite origin. By the 21st century, the majority of Arvanites have become so hellenized that many of their descendants may no longer remember their ethnic origin, and the Arvanite language is now on the verge of extinction, like many so-called “small” Balkan languages, that only older people speak well, while young people and children know only a few everyday phrases and fragments of folklore texts, so the Modern Greek language has become for the Arvanites Language 1. The modern Greek writer D. Papamarkos (born in 1983), being of Arvanite origin (he was born and raised at the Arvanite village Malesina, Greece), has published in 2014 his book “Gjak”, which immediately became wildly popular, so it is considered one of the brightest works of the Modern Greek literature. The title of the book is a transliteration of the Arvanite lexeme gjak, which means ‘blood’, ‘family ties’, ‘blood feud’. “Gjak” is written in the Modern Greek language, close to the version used by the Arvanites in the early 20th century, only a few phrases are given in Arvanitika, which performs an important artistic function since the Arvanite speech can be heard only in the tensest moments of the narrative. One can say D. Papamarkos has invented his own “quasi-Arvanite” language with special vocabulary, specific concepts of the traditional Arvanite culture, as well as with skillful reflection of language interference (Greek lexical equivalents of the evidential verbal forms characteristic for the Arvanite language, etc.).