SLFK 214, January 20, 2004
Last lecture &endash; intro
Course will have three parts &endash; Slavic understandings of space
Different cultures will even treat something that seems as concrete and physical as space differently
They should have noticed construction of enclosed units
The openings to these are protected
And space units are seen as alive, entities with which you INTERACT
We will look at space through the various place spirits = demonology
We will also look at things like houses and housing &endash; from what I did at the end of the hour, they know that this is material culture
Unit two is Slavic ideas about time and we will look at these through ritual, specifically the rituals of the calendar year like Christmas, Easter, etc. Marriage, birth, and death
This, also from the material at the end, is social culture, various actions, something like dramatic forms
And of course there are stories, as about the spirits, and songs that go with ritual &endash; these are oral or verbal culture
Then unit three - I stop lecturing and they go and do a collection project
Where they either participate in a ritual and describe it
Or they interview people about a ritual and present the data
For the first part &endash; lecture and section
Sign up for both
In lecture, I will mostly PARALLEL the readings (I assume they can read on their own except when it comes to difficult theoretical works like Turner and some of the stuff out of Bogatyrev)
Discussion section &endash; discuss readings, material covered in lecture, various exercises
This is for covering parts I and II
I am assuming that they found the readings on the syllabus
When they get to the project, lecture stops, section stops
They meet with us individually and do their work
Virtues of collecting in terms of the skills that they acquire
Go back, review, and from that work into new material
Standard folklore division &endash; material, social, verbal culture
Objects, actions, words
Separate, but overlap
So, while we are after material culture at the beginning of the course
I can tell verbal stories about this and still get at the same info.
Story about domovoi and food on Christmas means that they overlap with ritual, or social culture also
Belief systems can govern things as fundamental as time and space and we started talking about space
If you are dealing with Slavs
Personal space is smaller
Things are more "intimate"
You have a whole lot less privacy
The house in Iavorivka and how many people stay there
Sleeping in same bed with various people
Various jokes about public transportation in the big cities
Apartment size in big cities; Communal apartments
Typical apartment has komnata
Kukhnaia
Vannaia
Tualet
Komnata is living room during the day
Dining room for guests
Bedroom at night
How the main room works in Iavorivka
Where who sleeps
Where a couple lives when they get married
Eating patterns
Setting a dish out in the middle and you dig in with own spoon or whatever
Leaving food out and lack of refrigeration
Space is protected, especially the openings into a unit of space
Orientation of house
In Russia and Ukraine
Among immigrants to the US
Using the side door &endash; as in when I was a kid
Among Ukrainian communities in PA
If there is no side or back door, you make one
Decorations around doors and windows
They will see same thing on clothing shortly
Behavior at openings
Already mentioned shaking hands over a threshold
What is done at the threshold when the last daughter marries
"Welcoming" a stranger
Person has to enter the house
Orientation of icon corner vis-à-vis the door
Person supposed to bow to icons and cross self
Then person is FED &endash; at least given bread
The bread and salt ceremony
Then you ask him who he is and what he wants, etc.
This is NOT just being polite &endash; in a sense person is proving that he is human and not some sort of spirit and they will see why soon as I get back to spirits and talk about spirit behavior
So, this behavior toward strangers is a form of protection against them
Tying strangers with a ritual towel across the heart
Food and the opening to a person's body
Ivanits on crossing mouth, crossing food, esp. bread
And threat of little devils getting in there if you don't
This is important if you are going to be a guest in someone's home, or even business
They offer you food or drink
American says, "Thanks, I'm not hungry right now." Or "I don't drink this early." Comparing experiences with Mike Terpak
Bad local reaction
We will come back to boundaries and special meaning of the road
Right now still to the physical stuff
Fencing off everything in sight
The farmstead
The road
Even GRAVE plots
Moving through the space of the farmstead and the house
Note how it is arranged
Entry to the farmstead and then you go around to entry to the house
Animal and human areas clearly segregated
We will talk about the spirits of these various buildings and their characteristics
Please note that excretion occurs near the animal area
And this is not just human waste, it is bathing
Special roll of bathhouse and its spirit, too
So animal areas are "unclean" in a way
But wait till you see what happens (or rather happened) in the bathhouse
Please note the orientation of the kitchen
Summer kitchen is fairly recent fad
Before outdoor stove
Still, it tends to be on the outside
Look at how pattern is repeated in the house itself.
Winter kitchen and orientation of the stove
Cooking area and sleeping area
Stove is kitty-corner from the icon corner
Note the symmetry
Stove is cooking &endash; food preparation
Icon corner is eating &endash; food consumption
Stove is associated with women and the word for stove is feminine gender
Icon corner is associated with men &endash; same for grammatical gender
Perpetual fire &endash; maintained in stove by women
Maintained under icons in icon lamp by men
Babies and birth associated with stove
Death associated with icon corner &endash; this is where body is laid out before burial
Said last lecture that space is a continuum
To deal with it, need to organize, to establish categories
So, with any organization of the "mess" of reality
Certain PARAMETERS chosen by each culture
Here we see
Gender
Food
Work
Human-nonhuman = beginning and end of human existence
Other thing I said about space last lecture is that it is seen as alive
A lot of what we are going to talk about in this course is people interacting with nature
For the sake of producing food
So, whether dealing with time or with space, it is how this culture seeks to interact with its environment
To control its environment
It's a way that this culture sees the place of people in the universe, but that is to come.