History of Improvised Bertsolaritza : A Proposal

According to Azurmendi, the myth of the immemorial origin of bertsolaritza1 comes from Manuel Lekuona, the first real scholar of bertsolaritza and of other manifestations of Basque popular literature. In Lekuona's work, we find a number of references to the "neolithic" or "prehistoric" character of the artistic activity. According to him, the origins of bertsolaritza have to be looked for in the times of pastoral farming. Azurmendi states that all subsequent references to the remote origins of bertsolaritza owe a debt to the position held by Lekuona. And Azurmendi produces some evidence in the form of quotations, which can give us an idea of the tone of the arguments over the remote origin of bertsolaritza. So, for example, it is stated that "All Basques sing; the whole people sing . . . from the earliest times which prehistoric science managed to penetrate, the Basques have shown examples of their poetic activity" (Gorostiaga 1957). Another formulaic statement on the same theme is the claim that "bertsolaritza is as old as Euskara itself."2: Basque Special Issue