Hearing homers song, p.32
Hearing Homer's Song, page 32
“It made him miserable”: Ibid., p. 21.
Milman’s “opacity remains intact”: Pamela Newhouse to Marian Feld, 14 March 1982, Feld.
“didn’t confide in you”; Pamela Newhouse to MTP, 14 March 1982, Feld.
“ ‘You slept well?’ ”: Zabel 38.
a useful record: That is, “Ćor Huso.”
“He was not the kind of person”: John B. Titchener to Sterling Dow, 23 November 1964, Dow.
not inclined to chatty letters: Sterling Dow’s notes from lunch with ABL, 25 November 1981, Dow.
“an impermeable steadfastness”: Bynum, Field 102.
“I went over to see this French friend”: Newhouse, p. 40.
“Milman was devoted to Marian”: Ibid., p. 58.
“In the first two great periods”: AP to sister Marian, 29 August 1949, Adam 01.
“I have always felt a darkness there”: M. V. Anastos to Sterling Dow, 14 June 1965, Dow.
Philoctetes: Account drawn from “Classical Club to Put On ‘Philoctetes’ by Sophocles This Week,” Harvard Crimson, 13 March 1933; “Harvard Classical Club, Philoctetes,” statement of receipts and expenses, Department of Classics, Harvard; Edwin Honig interview with Robert Fitzgerald, Academy of American Poets, originally appearing in The Poet’s Other Voice. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985; Klingenstein, Enlarging America, p. 441.
“laughing at the abominable acting”: Marian Feld, MP’s daughter, to her own daughter, Laura, 17 October 1976, Feld.
Part Five
Yugoslavia
22–RECONNAISSANCE
“What Musa said he would do”: Parry Text 1 (autograph), David Bynum’s enargea.org website. See also Ćor Huso 1.11–1.12.
“women’s songs”: See Mary P. Coote, “On the Composition of Women’s Songs,” Oral Tradition 7, no. 2 (1992): 332–348.
“someone went out”: Reminiscences, p. 2.
“nothing more than a mere musician’s trinket”: Beatrice L. Stevenson, “The Gusle Singer and His Songs,” American Anthropologist, New Series 17, no. 1 (1915): 58–68; see also Jasmina Talam, “Creation, Transmission and Performance: Guslars in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Musicological Annual 51, no. 2 (2015): 203–221.
“I suppose I expected”: Charles Simic, preface to The Battle of Kosovo, trans. John Matthias and Vladeta Vucković. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987.
little left of the guslars: Murko, p. 113.
“I did not seek new songs”: Ibid., p. 112.
“Dubrovnik is perhaps the most exquisite town”: Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia. New York: Penguin Books, 1982, originally published 1940, p. 231.
“there simply wasn’t any realistic alternative”: Bynum.
“This is a lovely vacation-place”: MTP to Addison Parry, 2 August 1933, Feld.
nearby kafana: Ćor Huso 1.1. Parry reports that the Arbulić kafana was located in the “Italian Market,” which is not on current maps of Dubrovnik. I owe its location to Zoran Perović and Frane Čizmić, Drzavni arhiv u Dubrovniku, the city archives.
interrogated him: Ćor Huso 1.7.
“altogether indifferent”: Ćor Huso 1.8.
“Marko and Musa”: NoviPazar, p. 359.
“Kutuzov would not believe”: Ćor Huso 1.10.
“had steeped himself”: ABL doctoral thesis, 1949, p. 18, Harvard.
One day in mid-August: Ćor Huso, 21 December 1934.
“with great difficulty and patience”: Ibid.
“in a voice whose lack of beauty”: Ćor Huso 6.2.
“Marko and Nina”: Singer, Appendix II, pp. 235–241.
“the care and the scholarly control”: AdamIntro, p xxxvii.
“to an admiring account”: Ćor Huso 5.5.
“he didn’t have very much time”: Newhouse, p. 32.
Kutuzov’s son: Young Marian to her mother, 4 August, unknown year, from Les Grouets, France, Adam 035.
“There were no rules laid down”: AdamIntro, p. xxxvi.
“as a complete outsider”: Bynum.
“the first person of any sort”: PopOral, p. 4.
“The Song of Milman Parry”: Singer, pp. 272–275.
fond farewell: Harry Levin, “From Gusle to Tape Recorder,” in Grounds for Comparison, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972, p. 213.
23–KIRKLAND HOUSE
taught the Iliad: “Announcement of the Course of Instruction,” Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 1933–34, Harvard.
“The Oral Poetry of the Serbian Peasants”: Harvard Crimson, 6 March 1934.
“Whole Formulaic Verses”: Making, pp. 376–390.
all but removed: AdamIntro, p. xxxv.
“When one hears”: Making, p. 378.
“And addressing him”: Ibid., p. 380.
“the sun set”: Ibid., p. 383.
Miĉo Savić: In ibid., p. 389, he is called Mitcho Savitch. Murko had met him years earlier and photographed him for his book.
“Two pashas we fought and overcame”: Making, p. 390.
“It is necessary to keep them in spirits”: PopOral, p. 8.
snapped a picture: Ćor Huso 6.1.
not wholly at home: NoviPazar, p. 7.
“The greater part”: PopOral, p. 8.
“singing to himself”: Ćor Huso 1.17.
“direct for the first time”: Kirkland House scrapbook, undated but approximately February 1934—apparently taken from “Parry Broadcasts Talk from Emerson Hall over WNAC,” Harvard Crimson, 8 February 1934.
the new one: Peter McMurray, “Fathers and Sons; or, Recalling the Sound of Time,” in “Festschrift in Honor of Gregory Nagy,” edited by Victor Bers, David Elmer, Douglas Frame, and Leonard Muellner. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2012; details of the recording apparatus owe to JugoWork I and II; Mitchell&Nagy, p. x; and Bynum.
“Every part”: “SoundScriber,” informational brochure, The Sound Specialties Co., MPColl.
“I made a couple of trips with Parry”: Reminiscences, p. 1.
thronged with alums: ABL’s handwritten account of his youthful impressions of Harvard, written sometime after 1966. Zabel 17.
advanced Latin course: ABL was also taking a survey course in French literature. “This early attempt of mine at Comparative Literature first brought me to Parry’s attention.” Zabel 17. See also ABL transcript, Office of the Registrar, Harvard.
Kirkland House: See Kirkland House Alumni News, beginning with its first issue, 23 January 1933; Kirkland House Scrap Book, 1931–37, which includes article about Kirkland House by Herbert N. Stevens, ’35, in unknown Harvard publication; interview with Scott Hayward, superintendent of Kirkland House in 2017.
“whimsies, scholarly essays”: November 1931 announcement in Harvard publication, unknown title, author, and date, about Kirkland House, in Hicks House library.
office, off stairway H: It is now the superintendent’s office.
“he lost himself”: M. V. Anastos to Sterling Dow, 14 June 1964, Dow.
Kirkland poker sessions: Newhouse, p. 30.
“the slurring things”: Ibid., p. 38.
“unbounded admiration”: Zabel 27.
“a very good-looking woman”: Newhouse, p. 38.
“Nineteen Thirty-Four was the first Harvard class”: ABL, Sexennial Report, 1940, Class of 1934.
“with an interest in his Homeric research”: ABL, Harvard Class of 1934, 25th Anniversary Report, p. 826. According to David Bynum, Parry’s “outstandingly able tutee had no pronounced interest in the Homeric poetry or any other of the classics, and Parry’s research activities remained quite beyond his ken all that year,” referring to his senior year, 1933–34.
“If I am not mistaken”: MP to Edward A. Whitney, draft letter, probably 8 March 1935, in folder marked “Misc,” MPColl.
“I can’t remember ever”: Newhouse, p. 33.
“with preparations during the last days”: JugoWork I, item 28.
group photographic portrait: Kirkland House library, dated March 8, probably 1934.
His passport was issued: ABL’s passport, courtesy Kit and Nate Lord.
24–THE ACTUAL PROCEDURE OF WORK
“You must go with your husband”: Newhouse, p. 56.
“living as we did”: Ibid.
Parrys lived in one of them: Location deduced from MPColl photos, examined by Zoran Perović and Frane Čizmić, staff at Drzavni arhiv u Dubrovniku, the city archives; walking tour of candidate neighborhoods on the hill behind the Old City; and Evito Fisković et al., Dubrovnik on the Old Post Cards. Dubrovnik, HR: Dubrovaĉki Muzei, 1996.
“A little town”: JugoDiary, p. 12.
He is there for Ibro Bašić: See NoviPazar, pp. 21–25.
“The actual procedure of work”: JugoWork I, p. 5.
Kijevo: Account is generally drawn from Aaron Phillip Tate, “ ‘There Were Two Foreigners and One of Ours’: Parry and Lord in Kijevo, Croatia, 24 September 1934,” Folklore 212 (December 2010): 311–320. However, based on the following evidence, I believe that Mr. Tate errs in placing Lord in Kijevo: 1. The Dow papers include Sterling Dow’s notes on his interview with Lord, in which Lord, just joining Parry after a postgraduation vacation elsewhere in Europe, says he only reached Dubrovnik on September twenty-seventh; by that time the Kijevo visit was over and Parry was in Glamoc. 2. The visa stamps in Lord’s passport have him leaving Italy on 21 September 1934 and arriving in Split on 22 September, the first day of the Kijevo visit (NoviPazar, p. 35). 3. In Lord’s “Reminiscences,” in the Milman Parry Collection, he reports that “my first trip to the interior began on the 7th of October, 1934…, my first collecting experience.” This was two weeks after the Kijevo visit by Parry. 4. The body of Tate’s article, as opposed to its subtitle, never actually attests to the contrary, never makes a specific claim to a Lord “sighting” in Kijevo. Who, then, was the second foreigner? Possibly Ilija Kutuzov, but this is only a guess. So closely linked did Parry and Lord later become that to assume the “two foreigners” referred to by Tate’s respondent meant Parry and Lord is understandable. Parry was one of the two, certainly, but Lord was not.
“heard what others could only see”: Peter McMurray, “Fathers and Sons; or, Recalling the Sound of Time,” p. 3.
“the mere organization of the work”: JugoWork I, p. 1.
“I should wish to add”: Ibid., p. 12.
“to study Southslavic popular poetry”: Ibid.
“Parry’s headquarters”: Reminiscences, p. 1.
He had no previous work experience: ABL’s nonacademic experience at the time he started at the navy yard in 1941, according to his Official Personnel Folder, National Archives and Records Administration, St. Louis, consisted of a month’s work at a photo store and a month as a salesclerk at Jordan Marsh department store, both in Boston, during the fall of 1940.
“a jack of all trades”: Newhouse, p. 32.
“I trust,” wrote Perry: JugoWork I, p. 13.
“a memorable one”: Reminiscences, p. 1.
“whom we found, as usual, in the bar”: Ibid., p. 2.
Sheep’s cheese and bread: Lord’s handwritten notes, MPColl.
Kalinovik: Reminiscences, p. 2.
“more interest in the foreigner”: ABL doctoral thesis, p. 21, Harvard.
“a decent interval”: Ibid., p. 22.
“while Parry was attempting”: Reminiscences, p. 2.
back to Dubrovnik: Account drawn from ibid.; Bynum.
“All morning long”: JugoDiary, p. 12.
took one of Milman’s academic robes: Newhouse, p. 33.
“resembled a small-town dentist”: John Gunther, Inside Europe. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937, p. 356.
“huge chimney”: Lord, notes on trip to Konevala, 19 October 1934, MPColl.
“Unflappable”: Marian Feld to Mary Louise Lord, condolence letter, 16 August 1991, Harvard: “How Albert will be missed! Quietly extraordinary, brilliant, unvainglorious.”
“I have found once more”: MP to C. N. Jackson, 24 October 1934, MPColl.
“Every few weeks”: Marian the younger, handwritten notes, “Jugoslavia,” MPColl.
“which we shall decorate,” AP to MTP, n.d., Adam 013.
“My brother and I”: Marian Feld’s talk at Harvard symposium, “Singers and Tales in the 21st Century: The Legacies of Milman Parry and Albert Lord,” 3–5 December 2010, online audio transcribed by the author.
In one story, Mickey captures: AdamIntro, p. xxxvii.
“ ‘a real hero’ ”: Ibid., p. xxxvi.
“the sojourn in Jugoslavia”: Ibid.
“Papa’s feeling”: AP to sister Marian, 13 November 1949, Feld.
“Mother was quite lonesome”: Marian Feld’s talk at Harvard symposium, “Singers and Tales in the 21st Century: The Legacies of Milman Parry and Albert Lord,” 3–5 December 2010, online audio transcribed by the author.
“I could have had”: Newhouse, p. 49.
“Well,” replied Marian: Ibid., p. 50.
“Papa is going to Novi Pazzaar”: JugoDiary, p. 22.
“was born and brought up”: NoviPazar, p. 53.
“a patriarchal way of life”: Murko, p. 112.
“first came to realize”: NoviPazar, p. 16.
“Where we sit”: Ibid., p. 90.
field experiments: Ibid., p. 14.
seventeen notable variations: Ibid., p. 350.
“By this almost revolutionary idea”: Singer, p. 30.
“patriarchal terms of deference”: Slavica Ranković, “Managing the ‘Boss’: Epistemic Violence, Resistance, and Negotiations in Milman Parry’s and Nikola Vujnović’s Pričanja with Salih Ugljanin,” Oral Tradition 27, no. 1 (2012): 17.
“While Parry may be the boss”: Ranković, p. 20.
“They both live with me”: NoviPazar, p. 235.
“His rags do not become the hero poet”: ABL, caption to Figure 10, in Lord’s photo album, MPColl.
“We quarreled among ourselves”: NoviPazar, p. 59.
“Nothing, he had no trade”: Ibid., p. 61.
“symbolized the Yugoslav traditional singer”: Making, 473.
never existed at all: See, for example, John Miles Foley, “ ‘Reading Homer’ Through Oral Tradition” in Approaches to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, ed. Kostas Myrsiades. New York: Peter Lang, 2010, pp. 15–42.
“I must stay a few weeks”: MP to Addison Parry, 11 January [1935], Feld.
occupying “volumes”: Ćor Huso, Making, p. 439.
“Being notes only”: AdamIntro, p. xxxix.
25–AVDO
“No statement made by any singer”: Ćor Huso 1.12.
“one of the final stages”: Ćor Huso, Making, p. 448.
“The material which we have obtained”: YugoWork II, p. 1.
“in a palpable near-panic”: Bynum.
“It is generally felt at home”: YugoWork II, p. 3.
electrical static: Ibid., pp. 10–11.
“In his characteristic headlong way”: Bynum.
“in their native costumes”: ABL to his family, 3 March 1935, MPColl; see also Mary P. Coote, “On the Composition of Women’s Songs,” Oral Tradition 7, no. 2 (1992): 332–348.
“So we landed in a flop house”: ABL to his family, 3 March 1935, MPColl.
“I am terribly afraid”: ABL to parents, 7 March 1935, MPColl.
“I like to think”: EpicSingers, p. 56.
“we can go much further”: Making, p. 441.
“a region of gray rocks”: “Across,” p. 2.
“we sought eagerly”: Ibid., p. 6.
Kolašin: Ibid., pp. 6–8; maps, photos, and working gusles made available by Davor Sedlarević, art director, Kolašin cultural center.
“stretch forth their arms”: Ibid., p. 8.
“These Montenegrins”: Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia. New York: Penguin Books, 1982, originally published 1940, p. 1019.
It was market day: Account drawn from ABL, “Avdo Međedović, Guslar,” in EpicSingers, chapter 3; “Across,” pp. 10–11; Meho, pp. 3–34.
“from a pipe”: ABL, caption for Figure 21, Market Day in Bijelo Polje, Lord’s photo album, MPColl.
They arranged to record him: Zabel 18 (fragment beginning, “When we arrive in the square at Bijelo Polje…”)
“We listened with increasing interest”: “Across,” p. 10.
Lord had begun a letter: ABL to parents, 3–7 March 1935, MPColl.
In recent years: “Conversations” with Avdo Međedović, trans. David E. Bynum, Meho, pp. 37–75.
“a doctor who didn’t dare”: Ibid., p. 41.
“When,” as he told Nikola: Ibid., p. 75.
For two hours each morning: Making, p. 476.
Avdo’s “singing ran ahead”: EpicSingers, p. 68.
“amazing sensitivity to the feelings”: Meho, p. 6.
“He was straining to prove himself”: EpicSingers, p. 70.
A photo taken that summer of 1951: Meho, p. 299.
“Parry found what he had searched for”: NoviPazar, p. 16.
more intriguing experiments: Singer, p. 78; EpicSingers, p. 68.
“his heart was wilted”: Singer, Appendix I, p. 223.
“To those who have ears to hear”: EpicSingers, p. 71.
“Now to you, sirs”: Meho, p. 79.
“Meho, the hadji’s son”: Ibid., p. 83.
likens himself to a woman: Ibid., p. 87.
Meho becomes a worthy hero: EpicSingers, p. 67.
