Two Bilingual Poems From Bosnia

Abstract

The paper contains two bilingual poems written in Turkish and Serbo-Croatian alternately. The poems are recorded in two manu·scripts (majmuas) kept in the Institute of Oriental Studies in Sarajevo (no. 4273, page 5a and no. 817, page 58b).

As is well known, in the course of several centuries, along with literature in Oriental languages, literature in Serbo-Croatian, the native tongue of the region, was written in Arabic script, the so-called alhamiado literature. Also, some local poets, although in smaller numbers, imitated the style of Oriental poets, and wrote poems in two, three, or four languages in one and the same poem (Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Serbo-Croatian), their intention being to prove their poetic gift and erudition. In view, on the one hand, the fact that our knowledge of these language and literary phenomen a is modest, and of the need for a closer study of such texts, on the other, the author has decided to publish both the original version of these two poems (fascimiles and transliterations are given), and a Serbo-Croatian translation of the sentences, or partsentences in Turkish. Both are love poems. The first is entitled „Türkü bosnaca“ (Love-poem in Bosnian), while the other has no title, the first line serving as title.