Los gatos de Buenos Aires - El Botánico

Podría asegurar que dos ideas vienen a la mente de cualquier porteño a quien se le pregunte por «los gatos de Buenos Aires», como hizo Tamás conmigo a propósito de los gatos de la Torre de ses Ànimes.

En primer lugar, aunque reconozca que efectivamente le preguntaban por los mamíferos cuadrúpedos de la especie de los felinos, tendrá que hacer un esfuerzo por dejar de lado el sentido vulgar de «gato» en lunfardo (nuestra jerga) y olvidar entonces a señoritas de profesión antigua o a aquellas que, aún siendo amateurs, adoptan una estética muy particular y no ocultan su marcado interés por la capacidad económica de sus posibles conquistas (quien necesite aclaraciones, diríjase a Puto el que lee. Diccionario argentino de insultos, injurias e improperios, Ed. Gente Grossa, Buenos Aires, 2006, s.v. ‘gato’).

En segundo lugar, y ya sin dobles sentidos en la cabeza, el porteño al que le pregunten por los gatos de su ciudad, pensará indefectiblemente en un lugar: el Botánico.


El Jardín Botánico de Buenos Aires, inaugurado en 1898, ocupa unas 6 o 7 manzanas del barrio de Palermo y fue diseñado por el gran paisajista francés Carlos Thays, responsable de la mayoría de las plazas y parques más característicos de Buenos Aires. Ha tenido tiempos mejores y peores, con más o menos cuidado, pero para mí siempre mantiene su encanto.

El cariño es especial, además, porque hasta los 7 años viví a tres cuadras del Botánico. Así que no puedo dejar de asociar esa parte del barrio de Palermo con los años en que era chica (¡e hija única!). Los paseos por el Botánico eran cotidianos; antes de dejarme en el jardín de infantes, mi madre me llevaba casi todos los días a jugar en la plaza con juegos que tiene en uno de sus laterales. (Las anécdotas sobre mis primeras artes en las relaciones sociales, tantas veces recordadas por la familia, prefería dejarlas bajo un manto de piadoso silencio… que cada uno imagine lo que quiera.)

Toda esta digresión personal, para dar a entender el gusto de emprender la misión fotográfica que despertó la pregunta de Tamás por «cómo andan de gatos en Buenos Aires».

Fue un día gris de comienzo del otoño y muy especial para todo el país porque despedíamos los restos de Raúl Alfonsín, el primer presidente luego de la vuelta de la democracia en 1983. Luego de participar de la despedida multitudinaria, llevamos a mis hijas de safari fotográfico por el lugar de paseos y juegos de mi infancia.

Pero hablemos de los protagonistas. No sé en qué momento el Jardín Botánico se convirtió en el reservorio de gatos que es desde que tengo memoria. Hubo tiempos de discusiones e intentos de razias asesinas, pero esos tiempos han pasado. Acabo de descubrir que hay una asociación civil que se ocupa de ellos, espero que siga activa porque la página no se actualiza desde hace tiempo (y tiene unos errores ortográficos tremebundos…). Lo cierto es que hoy en día a los gatos del Botánico se los ve limpios y lozanos. Eso sí desesperados por un poco de cariño, o quizás eso nos hacen creer cuando en realidad se nos acercan esperando comida… Pero es lo mismo, para los gatos, y más aún para los callejeros, comida y cariño van de la mano.


En la entrada por la Avenida Santa Fe, un cartel apela a la compasión de los dueños que abandonan aquí sus gatos. «No abandone sus mascotas. Ellos necesitan: abrigo, alimento, vacunas y por sobre todo, cariño y cuidados.»


Este precioso gato gris ayuda con su gesto melancólico a mostrarnos el patetismo de la situación de muchas mascotas abandonadas…


Sin embargo la mayoría de los gatos del Botánico, nacieron aquí y difícilmente se adaptarían al encierro del más cómodo de los departamentos. Alejados de sus congéneres, de los innumerables árboles, escondites y perfumes de los que aquí pueden disfrutar.


También es curioso darse cuenta de que muchos de los visitantes del Botánico recorren sus senderos no sólo buscando el solaz de la vegetación en medio de la ciudad, sino que como hicimos nosotros ese 2 de abril, andan detrás de los gatos, los fotografían, acarician y eligen a sus preferidos.

Este es el mío.

Así que para responder finalmente a la pregunta de Tamás, creo que andamos bien de gatos en Buenos Aires; somos muchos los gatoadictos, filofelinos o como se quiera llamar a quienes disfrutamos, queremos y admiramos a los gatos.

Para terminar, una sabia reflexión de uno de los últimos y mejores gatos de la historieta argentina: Felini, creado por el genial Liniers.

El ruiseñor canta de nuevo

Nuestro amigo Két Sheng nos ha mostrado en los días pasados el hermoso camino que lleva desde una canción tradicional húngara, El gallo está cantando, hasta la canción sefardí Los bilbilicos cantan, a través de la bendición judía Tzur mi-shelo. Allí recordaba Két Sheng que, aparte del gallo, también el ruiseñor aparece como heraldo del amanecer y símbolo de las expectativas de la llegada del Mesías salvador en la tradición hebraica. «No podemos cerrar con más belleza el círculo de nuestro recorrido que exponiendo esta intrincada red de relaciones entre la canción hasídica húngara, la canción amorosa sefardí y el piadoso poema litúrgico judío», escribía al final de su ensayo.

Pero el círculo no está cerrado del todo. El ruiseñor como símbolo del alma que anhela al Salvador es algo bien conocido en la tradición cristiana medieval. Y su desarrollo tiene una historia tan larga y trabada que hace muy posible que la canción sefardí extrajera de ahí el motivo. Sigue siendo muy útil visitar, al respecto, aquel artículo de Mª Rosa Lida de Malkiel —que, por cierto, era judía— «El ruiseñor de las Geórgicas y su influencia en la lírica española de la Edad de Oro» (en La tradición clásica en España, Barcelona, 1975).

Los bestiarios medievales aún no reflejan este sentido alegórico. Como leemos en la página sobre el «ruiseñor» del magnífico Bestiario Medieval, solo se registran tres rasgos del ave. Plinio les da la información de que los ruiseñores empiezan a cantar en la primavera, cuando reverdecen los árboles (la calandria y el ruiseñor dialogan en el famoso romance castellano del ballestero «cuando los trigos encañan / y están los campos en flor»). Empieza entonces una verdadera competición de canto donde los perdedores pagarán con su vida el esfuerzo. San Isidoro de Sevilla en sus tan geniales como fantasiosas etimologías, hace derivar a la luscinia de lucis (luz), porque es ave que nos trae la luz de la mañana con su canto. Y por fin —aunque el Bestiario Medieval no menciona su fuente— San Ambrosio acuña la difundida parábola que compara al ruiseñor empollando los huevos y manteniéndose despierto con su propio canto, con la pobre viuda que cuida a sus hijos día y noche.

El misticismo franciscano del siglo XIII dio un nuevo giro a la interpretación alegórica del ruiseñor. Aquella nueva religiosidad, que contrastaba con el cristianismo más racionalista anterior, enfatizaba la relación personal con Dios, promoviendo las emociones, la interiorización del sufrimiento de Cristo. Y encontró en el ruiseñor un inesperado aliado. Dulcius in solitis cantat philomela rubetis, en la soledad del bosque canta más dulce el ruiseñor, escribió el rudimentario Maximianus Etruscus, convirtiendo este verso en el lema de la nueva religiosidad introspectiva y al ruiseñor en el símbolo del alma que clama por el Salvador.

El misticismo del ruiseñor, que a lo largo del siglo XIII se iría enriqueciendo con varios motivos y que, a la vez, modularía numerosos versos de la poesía amorosa cortesana (apareciendo, incluso, en los goliardescos Carmina Burana), fue resumido por el arzobispo franciscano de Canterbury John Peckham en su elegante poema latino Philomena. Este poema se atribuyó a San Buenaventura y así se divulgó e influyó en toda Europa (fray Luis de Granada, por ejemplo, hizo una delicada traducción en prosa). En sus versos, el ruiseñor —presentado con las fórmulas típicas de la lírica trovadoresca provenzal— es símbolo del monje que canta sin cesar, igual que el ruiseñor de Ambrosio, y que practica la «meditación por la imagen» que desarrollaron los franciscanos y luego impulsarán los jesuitas: desde el crepúsculo hasta la salida del sol canta sobre Adán y los sufrimientos de la raza humana irredenta; desde el alba, sobre los acontecimientos de la vida de Cristo; desde las tres, sobre las escenas de la pasión y muerte, hasta que él mismo muere de pena y agotamiento a la caída del sol. Justo como el ruiseñor de Plinio.

Manuscrito de hacia 1330 de la Philomena de John Peckham conservado en la Glasgow
Library. En la inicial inferior “P(hilomena)” el ruiseñor y el monje meditan sobre las
escenas de la vida de Cristo representadas en la inicial superior “C(hristus)”:
su nacimiento e infancia, sus enseñanzas, María Magdalena lavando
su pies, sus sufrimientos y muerte en la cruz.

Este poema de Peckham / Buenaventura fue conocido por San Juan de la Cruz —puede que en la traducción en verso de Juan López de Úbeda—. Y San Juan elige todo el material simbólico del canto del ruiseñor para descargarlo justamente en el clímax final de su Cántico espiritual (luego solo queda la última estrofa donde se cierra el poema en un cierto anticlímax). El canto en que se agotaba el ruiseñor es ahora, por el contrario, en la sintética lira de San Juan, equivalente a una «llama que consume y no da pena». Todo está ahí: el cese de los anhelos, la «soledad sonora» de los primeros versos del poema que se hace aún más dulce en «el soto y su donaire» —un soto que ya no se transita «con presura»—, el musical anuncio de la salvación inminente y definitiva, la llegada a una realidad superior y luminosa, la entrega y el descanso final en una noche que es, a la vez, un nuevo y encendido día.

El aspirar del ayre,
el canto de la dulce filomena,
el soto y su donayre
en la noche serena,
con llama que consume y no da pena.

Pero ¿dónde ha quedado en nuestro recorrido anterior la tercera característica, la del ruiseñor como portador de la luz? La alegoría medieval no se había olvidado tampoco de ella. Plinio hablaba de la canción del ruiseñor entre los árboles que reverdecen. Y en la Edad Media despunta la idea de que el ruiseñor empieza a cantar en la noche de Pascua como un anuncio de la inminente resurrección de Cristo. Así se escribe en el Carmen Paschale, el Poema Pascual, de Sedulius Schottus. Y, de hecho, la canción del ruiseñor aún resuena en la liturgia nocturna del Sábado Santo, en la secuencia del Salve festa dies de Venantius Fortunatus, donde el Resucitado trae la luz al mundo que revive y retoña.

Y aquí llegamos a la fiesta de hoy. Deseamos un muy feliz día de Pascua a todos nuestros lectores.


Canto del ruiseñor (3'15"), extraído de aquí. Otra versión se encuentra aquí (buscar „fülemüle”).

The nightingale is singing again

Két Sheng, starting from the Hungarian folk song The rooster is crowing, and arriving through the Hebrew blessing Tzur mi-shelo to the Sephardic love song Los bilbilicos cantan, has pointed out that in the Hebrew tradition not only the rooster, but also the nightingale is considered as the herald of the dawn and a symbol of the longing for the Messiah, the Savior. “We could not have rounded off more beautifully our round trip revealing the intricate network of relations between the Hungarian Hasidic song, the Sephardic love song and the pious Hebrew liturgical poem.” – he ended his essay.

But the round trip is not over yet. Because the nightingale as a symbol for the soul yearning for the Savior was also known in medieval Christian tradition. And the development of this symbol looks back to such a long and organic prehistory that it is also possible: even the Sephardic song borrowed the motif from there.

Early medieval bestiaries did not know about this allegorical meaning of nightingale yet. As we read on the “Nightingale” page of the outstanding Medieval Bestiary database, they only recorded three features for this bird. Pliny provided them with the information that nightingales start to sing in the springtime, at the leafing of the trees (as in the famous Spanish “ballad of the archer” the lark and the nightingale converse with each other “when the wheat ripens / and the fields are in flower”), organizing veritable singing competitions whose loosers often die from the efforts. Saint Isidor of Seville, with one of his usual false but genial etymologies derived the Latin name of the bird luscinia from light, lucis, as it brings the light by its early morning singing. And finally – although the Nightingale page does not mention its source – Saint Ambrose coined the widespread parable comparing the nightingale sitting on its eggs and keeping itself awake by its song, to the poor widow woman taking care of her children day and night.

13th-century Franciscan mysticism brought a new turn in the allegorical interpretation of nightingale. This new kind of religiousness, in contrast to earlier, rationalistic Christianity, laid emphasis on the personal relationship to God, on emotions, on the inner experience of the sufferings of Christ. In this it found an unexpected ally in the nightingale. Dulcius in solitis cantat philomela rubetis, sweeter sings the nightingale in the solitude of the forest, wrote the popular school author Maximianus Etruscus, and this verse became the motto of the new, introspective religiosity, and the nightingale the symbol of the soul yearning for the Savior.

The nightingale mysticism, which in the course of the 13th century was enriched with several new motifs and which on its turn also enriched the love poetry of the courts and the goliards of the Carmina Burana, was summarized by the Franciscan archbishop of Canterbury John Peckham in his elegant Latin poem Philomena. This poem was attributed to Saint Bonaventure, and thus it became widely known and influential (fray Luis de Granada for example made a beautiful Spanish prose translation of it). In this poem the nightingale – presented with the typical formulas of Provençal troubadour lyrics – is the symbol of the monk who, incessantly singing like the nightingale of Ambrose, practices the “image meditation” developed by the Franciscans and later by the Jesuits. From night to sunrise he sings about Adam and the sufferings of the unredeemed human race, then from sunrise on the events of Christ’s life, while from three o’clock on the scenes of His sufferings and death, until at sunset he dies from sorrow and exhaustion – just like the nightingale of Pliny.

A MS from ca. 1330 of John Peckham’s Philomena in the Glasgow Library. In the lower
initial “P(hilomena)” the nightingale and the monk symbolized with it meditate
on the scenes of Christ’s life represented in the upper initial “C(hristus)”:
His birth and childhood, His teachings, the washing of His feet by
Mary Magdalene, His sufferings and death on the cross.

This poem by Peckham/Bonaventure was also known by Saint John of the Cross, perhaps via the verse translation of Juan López de Úbeda, and he used all the symbolic elements of the song of the nightingale on the final climax of his Canticle Spiritual. The song exhausting the nightingale is in his enumeration “the flame that is consuming and painless.” Everything is here: the sweetest solitude in “the grove and its beauty,” the announcement of the imminent and definitive salvation, the entry into a higher and luminous reality, the self-giving and final repose which is also the beginning of a new day.

El aspirar del ayre, el canto de la dulce filomena, el soto y su donayre en la noche serena, con llama que consume y no da pena.

the breathing of the air, the song of the sweet nightingale, the grove and its beauty in the serene night, with a flame that is consuming and painless.

But where is the third, light-bringing feature of the nightingale left? The allegory did not forget about it either. Pliny related the song of the nightingale to the leafing of the trees. And in the Middle Ages they considered that the nightingale starts to sing on Easter night as a herald of Christ’s imminent resurrection, as it was taught by the Carmen Paschale, the Easter Song of Sedulius Schottus. And, as a matter of fact, the song of the nightingale still resounds in the Holy Saturday nocturnal liturgy in the sequence Salve festa dies by Venantius Fortunatus, in which the resurrecting Savior brings to the world light, revival and leafing.

And with this here we are at the object of the feast of today. We wish a blessed Easter to all our readers.


Nightingale song (3'15"), from here. Another version can be found here (browse for „fülemüle”).

Semana Santa

Vaya, esta vez nos olvidamos de dirigir a tiempo la atención hacia la Semana Santa de Úbeda, tal como hicimos el año pasado. Estas fiestas son verdaderamente de las más arraigadas e imponentes de Europa, y en ellas se involucra toda la ciudad. Empiezan oficialmente el Domingo de Ramos, pero las dieciocho cofradías de origen medieval se preparan durante meses, casi durante todo el año anterior. En su blog documentan día a día los acontecimientos con imágenes, texto y vídeo. El año pasado ya presentamos en detalle el orden de las procesiones y su desarrollo a lo largo de la semana, pero cada año hay también novedades. Con las líneas evocadoras del hijo ilustre de Úbeda Antonio Muñoz Molina en su novela Sefarad entendemos cuánto significan estas celebraciones para la ciudad y para toda España:

We have forgot to tell you in due time to follow with attention the events of the Holy Week in Úbeda just like we did in the last year. This series of celebrations which belongs to the most traditional and largest ones in all Europe and which sets all the town in motion, officially began on Palm Sunday. However, the eighteen confraternities of medieval origin have been preparing to it for months, or rather throughout all the previous year. On their common blog they document the events day by day in photo, text and video. In the last year we have already presented in detail the processions following each other in this week, but they bring some novelty as well in each year. From the evocative lines of Úbeda’s great son Antonio Muñoz Molina in his novel Sefarad we can understand how much these celebrations mean to the town and to the whole Spain:

Nos gustaba volver con nuestros hijos pequeños y nos enorgullecía descubrir que se emocionaban con las mismas cosas que nos habían ilusionado en la infancia a nosotros. Querían que llegara la Semana Santa para ponerse sus trajes diminutos de penitentes, sus capuchones infantiles que les dejaban destapada la cara. Apenas nacían los inscribíamos como hermanos en la misma cofradía a la que nuestros padres nos habían apuntado a nosotros. Viajaban ansiosos en el coche, ya un poco más crecidos, preguntando nada más salir cuántas horas faltaban para la llegada. Habían nacido en Madrid y hablaban ya con un acento que no era el nuestro, pero nos daba orgullo pensar y decir que pertenecían a nuestra tierra tanto como nosotros mismos, y al llevarlos de la mano un domingo por la mañana por la calle Nueva igual que nos habían llevado a nosotros nuestros padres, al subirlos en brazos ante el paso de un trono para que vieran mejor al borriquillo que cabalga Jesús entrando a Jerusalén, o la cara verde y siniestra que tiene Judas en el paso de la Santa Cena, sentíamos consoladoramente que la vida estaba repitiéndose, que en nuestra ciudad el tiempo no pasaba o era menos cruel que el tiempo tan angustioso y trastornado de la vida en Madrid.

We were happy to return together with our small kids and we have discovered with pride that they were enchanted by the same things which had also enchanted us in our childhood. They could hardly wait the Holy Week to come, when they can put on their small penitent’s clothes and children’s hood which leave the face free. As soon as they were born we inscribed them into the same confraternity to which our fathers had inscribed us, too. They were not much older now, as they sat excited on the back seat of the car and kept asking us how many hours we need yet to get there. They were already born in Madrid and spoke in a dialect which is not ours, but we were proud to think and say that they also belonged to our land, just as much as ourselves. And when on Sunday morning we take them by the hand, as our parents had taken us, to walk out on the calle Nuova and to lift them up when a throne passes by so that they could better see the ass’s colt on which Jesus had entered Jerusalem or the green and sinister face of Judas at the Last Supper, we are consoled by the feeling that life repeats itself, that in this town of ours time does not pass by, or at least it is less cruel than the anxious and chaotic time of life in Madrid.

Pero también las otras ciudades españolas celebran la Semana Santa con procesiones diarias. Wang Wei nos ha enviado bonitas fotos de la procesión de lunes en Palma de Mallorca. «Es una procesión pequeña», escribe, «prácticamente de Santa Clara a San Francisco. Dan la vuelta justo a nuestra casa por la calle de Montesión y luego por la calle del Sol. Siguen casi el perímetro del antiguo ghetto (el call –judería– es precisamente el nombre de la calle que se ve en las primeras fotos). Al ser una procesión pequeña, sin ningún turista, es más impresionante. Se ve bien el fondo, las raíces católicas de un pequeño pueblo, replegado sobre sí mismo, como era Palma hace siglos, y no solo el espectáculo turístico en que se va convirtiendo poco a poco.»

But the other Spanish towns also celebrate the Holy Week with daily processions. Wang Wei has sent us nice photos on the Monday procession in Palma de Mallorca. “It is a small procession,” he writes, “actually only from the Santa Clara to the San Francisco. They pass exactly in front of our house, on calle de Montesión, on the border of the ancient ghetto (the name call – ghetto – indicates precisely the street that can be seen in the first photos). It is impressive exactly because it is so small, without any tourists. They display the origins and the Catholic roots of a small settlement closed in itself like Palma was centuries ago, and not just a touristic spectacle into which the city has been converted step by step.”

Desde el call la procesión entra en la calle de Montesión. Asomados a una ventana de la casa de Wang Wei seguimos el desfile hacia la iglesia de los jesuitas, construida prácticamente sobre la antigua sinagoga.

From the call the procession enters the calle de Montesión. From a window of Wang Wei’s house we watch it proceeding towards the Jesuit church which was practically developed from the old synagogue five hundred years ago.

Las grandes procesiones de Palma, claro está, son las del Jueves y Viernes Santo. La multitudinaria es la del Viernes; sin embargo, la mayor devoción es para la del Jueves, la del Crist de La Sang (Cristo de la Sangre). Este año, después de muchos en que no fue así, la imagen salió de la Iglesia del antiguo Hospital General, donde está siempre, y llegó hasta la Catedral.

However, the main processions of Palma obviously take place on Holy Thursday and Friday. The largest one is that of Friday, but the most devotional one is the Crist de La Sang (Christ of the Blood) on Thursday. In this year, after several years when it was organized differently, the image started from the Church of the old Hospital General where it is conserved, and arrived to the Cathedral.

En nuestro pueblo la fiesta no es tan suntuosa, pero en majestuosidad seguramente no queda detrás de las españolas.

In our village the feast is not so sumptuous, but in majesty it surely does not leg behind the Spanish ones.

The rooster is crowing for the second time

Imre Ámos: Dreaming rabbi, 1938

Thanks to the inspiring comment of Julia to the post on The rooster is crowing, some fantastic new connections have been revealed between the Hungarian-Jewish folk song and the Sephardic love song.

As I wrote, the thin bond between the two songs is ensured by the piyut Tzur mi-shelo which has lent two Hebrew lines to the first song and the melody to the other one. Their similarities, however, go way beyond this. Both songs have the same scene-setting: a green forest and blooming trees. The time of the day is also identical, the dawn announced by the crowing of the rooster in the first song and by the song of the nightingales on the trees in the second one. This latter motif easily escapes the uninitiated eye, but a reader well versed in old Spanish poetry will recognize a characteristic topos of the genre borrowed from the literature of the Arabic golden age: the nocturnal intimacy of the lovers is ended by the early morning song of the birds that announces the coming of a new day and the lovers' bitter separation.

Another significant feature shared by both poems is that the beloved one appears in the allegoric form of a bird, and that the singer keeps calling this bird with a painful and yearning heart.

But why does she call him? Both poems give the very same quite striking and unexcepted answer to this question: to save her! The word “salvame” explicitly figures in the last verse of the Sephardic song, while the last strophe of The rooster is crowing explicitly links the definite union of the lover and her beloved to the coming of the Messiah, the Savior.

We could not have rounded off more beautifully our round trip revealing the intricate network of relations between the Hungarian Hasidic song, the Sephardic love song and the pious Hebrew liturgical poem.

The first cigarette

Άλκης Αλκαίος: Πρωινό τσιγάρο Χαράζει η μέρα και η πόλη έχει ρεπό στη γειτονιά μας καπνίζει ένα φουγάρο κι εγώ σε ζητάω σαν πρωινό τσιγάρο και σαν καφέ πικρό και σαν καφέ πικρό Άδειοι οι δρόμοι δε φάνηκε ψυχή και το φεγγάρι μόλις χάθηκε στη Δύση και γω σε γυρεύω σαν μοιραία λύση και σαν Ανατολή και σαν Ανατολή Βγήκε ο ήλιος το ράδιο διαπασών μ' ένα χασάπικο που κλαίει για κάποιον Τάσο κι εγώ σε ποντάρω κι ύστερα πάω πάσο σ' ένα καρέ τυφλό σ' ένα καρέ τυφλό (1984)

Alkis Alkeos: The first cigarette The day is breaking and the city reposes in our neighborhood a chimney is smoking and I want you like the first cigarette like bitter coffee like bitter coffee The streets are empty, no soul can be seen the moon has just set down in the West and I seek you like a final solution like the sunrise like the sunrise The sun has risen and on the radio a hasapiko is crying for some Tassos and I bet on you and then I pass you by the card four of a kind four of a kind

This beautiful poem by Alkis Alkeos has become widely known in the Greek world with the music of Notis Mavroudis. I do not know whether it is Mavroudis himself who accompanies it on guitar on the video below, but from the Ibanez kept in his hands in the first frame we expect exactly the sound resounding a second later. The master of classical guitar is revealed not only by the motifs echoing the great 19th-century guitar composers but also by the typical creaking at the changes of stoppings, so intimately familiar to the ears of every classical guitarist. Mavroudis has taught in the conservatories of Milano, Compostela and Athens, and when in my school days I learned classical guitar, he was a celebrated master of the summer guitar festivals in Esztergom, Hungary.


The male choir might be surprising, but Mavroudis probably imagined it exactly like this when he set the poem to music. In fact, he intended it for a great concert, the greatest concert of Greece after the military junta, organized in 1985 in memory of the great composer Manos Loizos who had kept the hope alive in face of the regime. On that occasion the song was sung by the two singer-icons Haris Alexiou and Giorgios Dalaras. Since then a number of other recordings have been made as well, with Arleta or Nina Venetsanou (this latter accompanied by Mavroudis himself), although the popularity of the song is principally attested by the large number of amateur videos scattered all over the net.

I, however, love it the most in the performance of Angélique Ionatos. Not only because some twenty years ago we became enamoured of Greek music and modern Greek poetry due to the songs of hers and of her brother Photis Ionatos. But also because their style – perhaps because they have lived in Belgium since their teens – is refreshingly free from that artificial and overstimulated emotional tone which reminds you of the hits of the fifties and which is still felt as obligatory by some Greek singers.

Angélique sings the poems of contemporary Greek and French poets on this CD. It is worth to observe how differently – with a touch of tango and of French chansons – the Algerian French guitarist Henri Angel plays the classical solos of Mavroudis. And it is also worth to note how similar is the melody of this song to that of the Al alba, the “unofficial hymn of the Spanish Transición” written some years earlier by Luis Eduardo Aute, and to the refrain of another “unofficial hym,” the Ithaca by Konstantinos Kavafis, set to music by Photis Ionatos: Tous lestrygonas ke tous kyklopas…


Angelique Ionatos & Henri Agnel: Πρωινό τσιγάρο (3'28"). From the album Chansons nomades (Gypsy songs, 2001).

The poems of Alkis Alkeos have been set to music in a great number since the end of the seventies, and it seems like several of them have become “unofficial hymns,” too. In Greek forums and blogs they are often quoted, their videos included, and commented in an enchantment like this casual example might attest it:

I have never seen him. Not even in picture. I have not heard him speaking either. I don’t know anything about him.
But I know him. In the evenings he is sitting at home and working. He is an everyday, simple man. With good humor. He loves to work in the garden. Has a few friends.
He philosophizes. Smokes a lot. Loves to sit in front of the fireplace and to go on long walks. To walk among the fallen leaves.
I have never seen him. But I know him. For me he is the most important Greek poet.

Sometimes it crosses my mind how little we know about that popular – sung – poetry that so deeply determines the everyday culture of other countries, lending them ideas, images and words to formulate their own lives. And even if the songs themselves reach us and even if we might understand their texts, we do not know the most important thing: what they mean there and to them. Like nobody outside of our country knows what the songs of the band Lokomotív Gt. meant to us in the eighties. Natives only rarely commit these meanings to writing. This enhances the importance of such exceptional sites like the database of Riccardo Venturi which makes efforts to list not only the various anti-war songs themselves but also these “local meanings” of theirs. And this is why we also try to collect in our topic of “ballads” the meanings of the songs meaningful to us.

And we hope that our Greek readers would write us about the meaning of this song of Alkeos, too.

When will that be?

“Yibone ha-mikdosh ir tziyoyn temale, then will that be” – sings Márta Sebestyén in the title-giving song of the album The rooster is crowing by the Muzsikás Ensemble.


Márta Sebestyén and the Muzsikás Ensemble: The rooster is crowing (3'06"). From the CD The rooster is crowing. Hungarian Jewish folk music (1992). – The CD was released outside of Hungary under the title Máramaros: The Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania.
(We have already written about this album, with reference to the alleged Jewish roots of the song “Bella ciao”. The Muzsikás Ensemble visited those old Gypsy musicians who used to play on the feasts of the Hasidic Jewish communities of Maramureş, destroyed in 1944, and collected from them the former songs of these communities.)

Szól a kakas már Majd megvirrad már Zöld erdőben, sík mezőben sétál egy madár. Micsoda madár, Micsoda madár Sárga lába, kék a szárnya Engem odavár. Várj, madár, várj Te csak mindig várj Ha az Isten néked rendelt Tiéd leszek már. Mikor lesz az már, Mikor lesz az már? Jibbone ha-mikdos ir Cijon tömale Akkor lesz az már.

The rooster is crowing Soon it will be daylight In a green forest, in a smooth meadow A bird is strolling. What kind of bird is it? What kind of bird is it? Its feet are yellow, its wings are blue It is waiting for me. Wait, bird, wait Always wait for me. If God ordered me to you I will be yours. When will that be? When will that be? Yibone ha-mikdosh, ir Tziyoyn temale Then will that be.

That is, when…?

In vain we turn to the leaflet of the CD for explanation. There we can only read the legendary story about the genesis of the song in the words of the musicologist Bence Szabolcsi:

The Hasidic rabbi Eizik Taub came around 1780 to Nagykálló as a melamed (teacher) of the children of the local rashekol (president of the Jewish congregation), and later he became the rabbi of the same town. A great lover of the nature and of poetical spirit, once while walking in the fields, he heard the song of a little shepherd, and he felt an irresistible urge to learn it. So he purchased the song for two forints. As soon as they made the bargain, the rabbi learned the song and the shepherd boy forgot it. Since then the Jews of Northern Hungary feel this song their own, and they sing it in all their religious feasts, because they interpret its text as allegorically speaking about the coming of the Messiah.


Of a Hungarian shepherd boy even a Tzadik can only buy an authentic Hungarian folk song. This is also attested by Bence Szabolcsi: The rooster is crowing “is, both in the text and in the melody, a not too noteworthy variant of a well-known Hungarian folk song, with forcibly inserted Hebrew lines.” (“Népdalok” [“Folk songs”], in Az Egyenlőség Képes Folyóirata, 1921.) Later we will have more about these “forcible insertions.” But first let us try to find out how a more or less typical Hungarian folk song could become such a popular Hasidic Jewish song?

Imre Ámos (1907-1944) from the Hasidic community of Nagykálló: Waiting for the dawn, 1939

An answer to this question can be found in the modality of this song. Jewish music – both Klezmer and liturgical cantorial songs – is based similarly to Gregorian music upon different modes or scales, in Yiddish shteygers. One of these modes, the Ahavoh rabboh, named after the opening words of the morning prayer of the same name which is recited in this mode, is especially popular among Hasidic Jews. A great number of Klezmer pieces of Hasidic origin and tish nigunim – songs sung on Shabbats and high holidays at the Rabbi’s table, often in ecstatic mode – are built upon this scale.

The Ahavoh rabboh corresponds to a modified Phrygian scale – from here its Yiddish name freygish, used in Klezmer music – where the third tone is raised by a half note: mi-fa-si-la-ti-do'-re'-mi'. Just like most Eastern European folk songs, so this scale does not have a definite “owner”: Spanish Flamenco uses it and calls it “Gypsy scale,” while in Arabic and Turkish music it is known as hijaz maqam. And a closer look at our folk song, The rooster is crowing reveals that it is built upon the very same Phrygian scale with the raised third tone. Thus the Jewish community could absorb it without any changes into the framework of their own traditional musical world and identify with it.

Let us hear an example of such a freygish piece from the traditional Eastern European Klezmer repertoire: the Yiddish folk song Az du furst avek – “When you leave” in the interpretation of Joel Rubin (clarinet in C) and Joshua Horowitz (tsimbl). Apart from the freygish scale, the rubato introduction and the slow, protracted, but strict rhythm also confirm the kinship of the two songs:


Rubin & Horowitz: Az Du Furst Avek (3'23"). From the album Bessarabian Symphony. Early Jewish Instrumental Music (1994).
(Joel Rubin and Joshua Horowitz in this album attempt to reconstruct the late 19th-century Jewish instrumental music. Similarly to the “historical trend” known from the performances of Baroque music, they also play on period instruments, and try to revive the authentic practice of musical performance, characterized by fluctuating rhythms, rich ornamentation, frequent use of glissandos, and generally a rendering which stood much closer to vocal technics. Their album, however, is much more than a simple excursion of cultural archaeology: it is enjoyable and living music played in a sensitive and emotionally rich manner.)

Rooster on the margin of the Kaufmann Haggadah, published by us in the internet

But let us now return to the text of the song. Apart from the last strophe, it is a typical Hungarian love song. The bird allegory of the lovers is well known from several Hungarian folk songs. The last strophe, however, is a late interpolation added by the Hasidic Jewish community – perhaps by Eizik Taub himself – which radically reinterprets the whole song.

The Hebrew line of this strophe is a verbatim quotation from a late Medieval piyut, a Jewish liturgical poem. The piyut called Tzur mishelo was composed by an unknown poet in Northern France, not later than the second half of the 14th century. This poem quickly spread among the Jewish communities of Europe, and it is still sung on every Shabbat at the festive board, as the introduction of the after-meals blessing Birkat ha-mazon. – It is interesting to note that the today widespread melody of Tzur mishelo is built around the same Ahavoh rabboh mode like The rooster is crowing.

The strophes of Tzur mishelo follow the individual blessings of Birkat ha-mazon which say thanks to God for the meal, for the land given to the Patriarchs, and then they supplicate the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the Temple.

The rooster is crowing took over from these supplications the first verse of the last strophe of the piyut: יבנה המקדש עיר ציון תמלא, in Ashkenazi prononciation: Yibone ha-Mikdosh, Ir Tziyayn temale. That is: “The Temple will be rebuilt and the City of Sion repopulated.” Then will that be!

This strophe elevates this song to the heights of the Song of Songs. As in the traditional Rabbinic interpretation the lovers of the Song of Songs allegorically represent the longing of the Everlasting One and His people for each other, so the singer of The rooster is crowing as a representative of the Jewish people in exile is longing for her lover, the Everlasting One, with whom she can unite only in the Messianic times to come, after the return to the Promised Land and the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem.

This is how the most popular Hungarian Hasidic song was born from the marriage of a Hungarian folk song with a potentially Jewish melody and of a love poem elevated to transcendental heights.

The “bridegroom”-piece of a Persian Jewish double portrait, c. 1846. Its Persian-language inscription written in Hebrew letters is: Târ-zan ʿArus ben Shelomo – “ʿArus ben Shelomo playing on tar.”

But the story is still far from its end. It is just like the piyut Tzur mishelo has a mysterious ability to inspire love poems. A thousand kilometers to the south from Nagykálló, in Sephardic Jewish communities the Tzur mishelo is intertwined with a very popular love song, although here the base of kinship is the melody rather than the text. Sephardic Jews sing to the melody of this piyut the song known both as Los bilbilicos cantan – “The nightingales are singing” – and La rosa enflorece – “The rose is blossoming.”


Savina Yannatou and the Primavera en Salonico: Los bilbilicos cantan – “The nightingales are singing” (4'11"). From the album Άνοιξη στη Σαλονίκη (Spring in Saloniki, 1995).
(From this CD of Savina Yannatou, collecting the songs of the former Sephardic community of Thessaloniki, we have already quoted two songs in two posts, here and here. This song, originating in Anatolian Sephardic communities, is our third favorite. The word bilbilico, ‘nightingale’ comes from Turkish bülbül, provided with a Sephardic diminutive suffix, while the expression “the moon is wounded” is a formula borrowed from high literature for the slowly vanishing moon.)

La rosa enflorese hoy en el mes de may mi alma s’escurese firiendose el lunar Los bilbilicos cantan con sospiros de aver, mi alma i mi ventura estan en tu poder. Los bilbilicos cantan en los arvos de la flor, debacho se asentan los ke sufren de amor. Mas presto ven, colomba mas presto ven con mí, mas presto ven, keridha, corre i salvame.

The rose is blossoming now, in the month of May, my soul is getting dark as the moon is wounded. The nightingales are singing sighing with desire my soul and my fate is in your hands. The nightingales are singing on the blossoming trees under them are sitting those suffering of love. Hurry quickly, dove, hurry quickly to me, hurry quickly, my dear, hurry, save me.

The “bride”-piece of a Persian Jewish double portrait, c. 1846. Its Persian language inscription, written in Hebrew letters is: Rahel dar hâl vasmeh keshidan – “Rachel painting her eyebrow.”

And finally let us hear The rooster is crowing as performed by its most authentic interpreter, Rabbi Eizik Taub’s sixth descendant in a direct paternal line, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Taub, the Rabbi of the Kaliver – “of Nagykálló” – Hasidic dynasty. I do not know how fluent the Kaliver Rebbe is in Hungarian, but in any case The rooster is crowing is sung by him with an unmistakable accent of Szabolcs county, the traditional region around Nagykálló. In Jerusalem, on every Shabbat, in Hungarian.