«Da qualche parte si veglia ancora...». La poesia «Сидзӕргӕс» di Kosta Chetagurov

Among the poems of Kosta Khetagurov included in the collection Iron Fӕndyr (Ossetian Lyre), the one entitled “Sidzӕrgӕs” (‘Widow’, literally ‘Mother of Orphans’) deserves particular attention. Written probably at the end of the 1880s, the text describes a tragic familiar scene with an unhappy end. The portrait of a young woman, cooking a soup, and her five hungry children, sitting around the hearth and eagerly awaiting the dinner, is one of the most tearful and emotional scenes, well-known and beloved by all Ossetians. The present article presents a multi-layered analysis of the text. The introduction provides relevant biographical and historical information on “Sidzӕrgӕs” and its historical, cultural and literary environment. The Italian literal translation is followed by an interlinear gloss: the first line contains a phonetic-phonological transcription of the text; the second features a semantic and morphosyntactic interpretation of the Ossetic text. In the appendices, beside a cognate poem, written by Kosta in Russian (“V burju”), the reader will find two previously unpublished typescript German translations of “Sidzӕrgӕs”, from the archive of Gappo Baev (Berlin State Library).