A new theoretical framework for improvised bertsolaritza

3 A new theoretical framework for improvised bertsolaritza

3.1 Improvised bertsolaritza as a rhetorical genre

From what we have dealt with up to now, we can deduce that improvised bertsolaritza is a genre which is:

• oral
• sung
• improvised
• not specifically literary (its aim is to arouse specific emotions amongst the audience) but definitely close to literature (capable of producing texts subject to literary analysis).

This last feature makes bertsolaritza a genre closer to rhetoric than literature. Thus, Aristotle defines rhetoric as:

… the faculty for considering, in each case, all that is necessary in order to persuade.(54)

Two millennia have gone by since Aristotle formulated this definition of rhetoric and it might seem strange to today’s reader his idea of rhetoric and persuasion being the same. This is specially so given that the accepted meanings of both terms have changed so radically over this long period. Particularly in its use as an adjective (“rhetorical”) it has come to mean “empty and misleading verbosity”. The expression, “persuasion” is today almost exclusively used in the sphere of advertising and propaganda.

George A. Kennedy, perhaps the most prestigious researcher of classical rhetoric as art of persuasion, gives us a much more descriptive description of rhetoric than that of Aristotle, and one that should be taken into account:

Rhetorike in Greek specifically denotes the civic art of public speaking as it developed in deliberative assemblies, law courts and other formal occasions under constitutional government in the Greek cities, especially the Athenian democracy. As such, it is a specific cultural subset of a more general concept of the power of words and their potential to affect a situation in which they are used or received.(55)

As is well-known, there are three rhetorical genres, according to the aim and the type of persuasion in each case: judicial, deliberative and epideictic. The judicial and deliberative genres were clearly practical and were used to practice a type of direct persuasion in the currently accepted sense of the word. The idea was to win over the agreement of the audience to the theses of the orator; theses which, in the case of the judicial genre, dealt with past events, and, in the deliberative genre, with future themes.

In the epideictic genre, on the other hand, “persuasion” has a different meaning:

Perhaps epideictic rhetoric is best regarded as any discourse that does not aim at a specific action but is intended to influence the values and beliefs of the audience.(56)

We have stated that the main aim of the bertsolari is to “arouse emotions” amongst the listeners. Maybe it is not the best formulation, but it should suffice to recall Jon Sarasua’s words to illustrate that “arouse emotions” and “to influence values and beliefs” in the audience are two sides of the same coin:

This is the question: how to approach the performance, where to start, how to surprise the audience, where the argument is going, how you perceive the world of your listeners and what you do to become involved therein…(57)

If there remains any doubt about the pertinence of improvised bertsolaritza belonging to the epideictic genre of rhetoric, here we have the description of the same by Chaïm Perelman, the main driving force behind the reinstatement of rhetoric in the middle of the XX century:

It is to do with a funeral eulogy or an elegy of a city before the citizens, with a theme bereft of current usage, as in the praise of a virtue or a divinity while the listeners, according to the experts, only play the part of mere spectators. After listening to the orator, they do nothing more than applaud and leave. These discourses were, as well, a select attraction in those festivals where people from one place or more regularly met. And the most obvious result was to make the author of these verses famous.(58)

It seems undeniable that improvised bertsolaritza, by its nature and aims, fits in better with this description than with any other literary genre, oral or written.

It remains to be seen if the epideictic genre of rhetoric turns out to be a bed of Procuste, too short for improvised bertsolaritza. In other words, may not the assimilation of bertsolaritza into the genre of rhetoric impede the appreciation of a literary excellence which, in some cases, the bertsolari achieves? Nevertheless, the analysis of bertsolaritza as a genre of rhetoric does not have to involve the uprooting, as a principle, of its literary character even though this character does not constitute an end in itself. As Perelman well makes clear:

It is in the epideictic that all the procedures of literary art are admissible, given that it makes possible all that enhances the communion between artist and audience. It is the only genre which makes one think immediately of literature, the only one which could be comparable to the libretto of a cantata, which thus is most likely to become recitative, to become rhetorical, in the pejorative and habitual sense of the word.(59)

We can state, thus, that it is rhetoric and more specifically its epideictic genre, which is the natural framework for a full understanding of the phenomenon of improvised bertsolaritza. Now, the assimilation of bertsolaritza into this rhetorical genre should not be mechanistic, but it behoves us to fit rhetorical doctrine to the differentiated characteristics of improvised bertsolaritza which, unlike other manifestations of epideictic rhetoric, is a sung and improvised genre.

We can, therefore, refine our definition of improvised bertsolaritza offered at the beginning of this section, stating that bertsolaritza is a rhetorical genre of an epideictic, oral, sung and improvised nature.