SLFK 212, April 20, 2004
Last lecture talked about funerals as they are today
Elaborate affairs, considered extremely important – whole village
goes, if at all possible
As many people as can go
So important, that a version of the funeral was performed during the Soviet
period, even though religion is a no-no and you can get yourself into
trouble for practicing
Theoretically, there is freedom of religion
But anyone who wants to have any sort of success better not be caught
doing religious acts
So – who does the practicing?
It is women, married ones, often post-menopause
They will even do things like read the Psalter and have a hand-copied
version
This is physical evidence and dangerous, but they do it
Recall role of women when they get married
In a sense their death-like experience is horrible
In a sense it gives them great power, as in to deal with the margins of
life
Death and birth
Power to deal with margins of the body
Surgeons are female
(Recall Douglas and body as symbol)
They were used politically – bab’i bunty at the point of the
institution of Soviet rule
Moms on the battlefield taking sons home during Chechen war
Evidence of importance of proper burial – the tumbochka and cross
hidden inside
Supposed to be very Soviet, but
Parallel to birth
Baptism practiced during Soviet period
Again, women do it
If a child is about to die, midwife can baptize and this has always been
so
In Soviet era, granny takes child away
She does not do the actual baptism – gets a priest
But the granny brigade arranges for the baptism, usually of a number of
kids at once
Birth-death link
And not just in terms of grannies
Birth and death real different from wedding – you don’t have
much control
Similar also in that you enter this world and leave this world
Journey idea
Certainly expressed in laments
Journey idea may come from importance of space as symbol in Russian and
Ukrainian culture
Origins don’t matter so much as the consistency of the symbol
Look at begin and end of life like journey in a second
Right now recall that the motion in space of the bride at the wedding
is a big deal
It makes her like the dead and allows married women to deal with birth
and death and the world of the spirits in general
Back to funeral
After the funeral
Take breakfast to the deceased the next morning – carry a meal out
to the grave
Then commemoration of the dead, similar to the wake
3, 6, 9, 40 days after death
6 mos. and 1 year
Three days explain that the soul is near the body (and body should be
laid out for 3 days, ideally)
Guardian angel takes soul to all of the places that it had been on Sundays
For 40 days it goes through the mytarstva, tolls booths of sorts
Little devil at each toll booth and you have to account for your sins
The departure from this world is VERY CLEARLY compared to a journey
Even has a physicality of sorts
Parallels to birth – at least in terms of dates
Certainly the 3 and the 40
1 year was the time for the cutting of the hair in the shape of a cross
Tends to get blended with baptism now
In terms of the funeral, however, the 1 year is a big deal and remains
so now
This is the point where a deceased person becomes an ancestor
At all of the point prior to the year
Count from the date of death of a specific person
Remember that person as an individual
One year – must have permanent marker on the grave
After this point, you no longer count from the date of death and you do
not remember that specific dead person
Rather, you go by certain ancestor days which are on the same date each
year
They are yearly cycle holidays, not rituals of the life cycle
And you remember the deceased along with ALL deceased, the category of
ancestors
So what’s with the year?
The 40 days seems to be the time that it takes the soul to make it to
the right world
In the case of the child, body is born and it takes it 40 days to get
a soul
In the case of the deceased, journey idea is quite literally stated
Recall swaddling of baby
Compare to shroud of the deceased
Show icons with shadow body/soul as a swaddled infant
1 year, at least in terms of the funeral, seems to have to do with body
decay
Idea that dead live in the underworld
Marry
They are certain pictured as needing to walk
You can go have chats with them
Story of Bobok by Dostoevsky articulates the “while there is flesh
there is life” idea
Evidence of double burial
Not done to ordinary individuals anymore
Only thing done to them is the permanent grave marker
But done to those who are sacred, like monks
Show pictures from the Lavra in Kyiv
Contrast the ordinary and the extraordinary deceased
Ordinary die and decay – the flesh is gone in one year – the
bones are left
Recall importance of the bones
Virgin of Chernihiv
Beggars at the Lavra and elsewhere
Special people do NOT decay
The saints in the Lavra
Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov – Father Zosima
Lenin in his tomb – the artificial preservation jokes, later discussion
These are GOOD dead
They were good in life
Their souls were pure
Purity of the soul in life
Reflected in the non-corruptibility of the body after death
You know from Douglas that something that is anomalous is marked
Can be good
Can be bad
Bad people also don’t decay
As in unquiet dead
And this being Slavic culture, they can be bad through their own fault
And they can be bad inadvertently, through no fault of their own
Like child weaned and let suckle again has evil eye
Categories of bad people – interestingly enough most stories are
about males
Vampires – can be a person who was bad, or seventh son of 7 sons
Sorcerers
Unquiet dead, esp. suicides, like drowning and hanging victims
But even more inadvertent death problems
Please notice what they do – Russian version of the vampire does
not suck blood
Rather eats flesh
Recall all of the food for the dead
Idea of communities of nurturance – living support each other
Person who is fully incorporated in the world of the dead has no problems
But someone who is betwixt and between
Whether a deceased person during the period of transition, soul journey
Or unquiet dead
Eats the wrong food – eats the living
Again, can be someone who does it though no fault of own
Husband mourned too much comes back to wife, but acts as incubus
She is not literally eaten, but wastes away, grows thinner and paler
My idea of all this – and why I included the food book
Slavic idea of life cycle is very cyclical indeed
Human being is born
Lives and dies
When the person dies, he is buried and transformed by the earth
Once transformed (but not before)
The person becomes food for the living
Food, esp. grain, grows out of the body
People harvest the grain – transform it again
Eat in the form of bread
And the whole process starts again
Various evidence – besides the importance of 1 year and double burial
The MUST food at the wake is kolivo, also called kanun
This is a food made of wheat berries or other whole grain – a seed
of sorts
ALL MUST eat 3 spoonfuls at the wake; this is the first thing you eat
At same time, prohibition on any meat at the wake – has to be Lenten
food
No flesh can be eaten in the presence of flesh that is without a soul
This flesh must be transformed be decay in the earth and become a crop
to be eaten
Kolivo/kanun at all memorial meals up to 1 year
Grain as a way to protect self if you are menstruating and need to go
to a funeral
Expressed in religious terms
The body and blood of Christ taken literally
Beliefs about wasting bread and what will happen to you in the afterlife
Material in their food book
Eating the strawberries on the graves of the deceased – that is
REAL Slavic behavior, according to Tsvetaeva
Prohibitions on flesh – as in fasting
Please note the Dostoevsky chapter and prohibitions on eating flesh of
OWN KIND
Unless it is transformed, of course, to be non-flesh
In old belief, it is vampires who eat human flesh
Sorcerers do also
Animals associated with shaman, who can “remake” a sick human,
find a soul that has wandered away from the body are animals that eat
the flesh of their own kind
Eagle – birds
Wolf – mammals
Pike – fish
More food book
Equating the body with the food that it eats – the forced hunger
chapter
I actually heard almost identical statements from Did Vasyl’
Please also note the stove chapter and what gets done to sick children
In this scheme that I have been telling them about, there is a certain
equivalency between human females, stoves, and the earth
It is these three feminine items (earth and stove are grammatically feminine,
but recall also Mother Russia) that do the transforming
Earth transforms the body so that it can become grain
Stove transforms grain so that it can be something edible
You bake bread and it becomes food
Woman transforms food to make a new person – the baby
Which is why you stick the kid in the oven to fix things if something
goes wrong – you “rebake” the child