SLFK 215 - September 16, 2003
Last lecture - minstrels not only take care of the problems of individuals, they take care of the problems of a social group
They sing a very peculiar genre called epic
Look at epic
Considered glorious poetry of valiant deeds in battle
And it is
But please note that, to be valiant, you have to keep fighting when things don't look to good, fighting when the odds are against you
Fighting when you are on the winning side is just not heroic
Being heroic may be glorious, but being heroic often means being dead
These are stories where the hero dies
He doesn't get the girl
Or he gets her, but she betrays him
Epics, or distress stories, are stories that come and go
Once the distress is over, there is no need for this sort of story
You have a problem
You heal and get over it and the sort of thing that helped you heal is no longer necessary
In fact, the happily ever after stories are always around
But not epic, or epic-like material
It comes and goes
Why are epics told - or sung?
When something is distressing enough, what heals is expression of the distress
It is not cheering up with happy stories, happy thoughts
Their response to the survey
Nadia and Palvo and the sorts of songs Nadia likes to sing
And apparently it needs to be seriously distressing and distressing in a certain way
As the individual distress that minstrels dealt with had to do with death
Unquiet death
At wrong time
In the wrong way
But it is death of a person, an individual
So epic deals with a social death of sorts
What dies is a way of life
An outlook, a system of belief
This is said after the effects of 9/11
Mentioned a number of epic poetries around the world
Including Western Europe
One thing they have in common is that they are performed by the side that lost the battle - not the side that won
Picking my dissertation topic years ago
Another important feature is that there is a religious conflict involved
In Russian and Ukrainian material: Christians against Muslims
Turkish material: Sunni/Shiite
French: Christians/Muslims again
German: Christian/pagan or Muslim
What you need is to lose in such a way that your fundamental belief system is affected
If you are fighting a religious war, God should be on your side
If God is on your side, how can you lose?
And if you do lose, what does it mean? That you've got the wrong god?
Or that God is displeased with you in some way:
Testing you
Making you suffer
Most people opt for the latter
And suffering becomes a big issue
Valor, in epic poetry, is not just fighting when things don't look too good
It is standing up for the old way, which is equated with the true and the good way
Roland gets ambushed
He could win by using the tactics of the enemy, refusing to fight in the open when they are not fighting in the open
But that wouldn't be right and he refuses
And by the time he realizes that this is a tactical error, it is too late
He dies
Beowulf could have asked a younger person to fight for him
Most poignant is the Turkish story of death of Koroglu
What he does is both futile - and heroic
In epic hero suffers, like Roland
When I mentioned the dilemma of God is on your side and you lose anyway must be that God is testing you and making you suffer
Next logical step is that, if you suffer, this is good
You become more noble, closer to God
Ukrainian epics which focus on the suffering of the hero or heroes
3 brothers by Samarka - physical suffering
3 brothers escaping from Azov - physical and psychological, at least of the youngest brother
And also a whole category of songs called psalmy which tell about suffering
Point of these is that the hero or the heroine suffers and achieves the kingdom of heaven
No good deeds necessary - suffering is enough
Well, if you are suffering, then it is nice to know that, at some point, you will be rewarded for all the horrible things you endured
But no one would set out to suffer to get blessings in the afterlife - or would they?
The phenomenon of the iurodevye or Fool in Christ
But before that a few words on begging and the phenomenon of being a mendicant
Suffering is associated with minstrelsy
Minstrels relieve things like the suffering of individuals
Unquiet dead who cannot rest
They help with social distress - the suffering that comes when what you believe in is called into question
The songs they sing, be it epic songs or others, have suffering as their subject matter
With suffering as a leitmotif of minstrelsy, they themselves should be sufferers
Well, having a physical problem certainly puts you in that category
By they suffer further by being put in the position where they have to beg rather than being able to earn a living
Have to rely on charity rather than a salary
This is really awful and humiliating
Suprun at UVA
There are very strong and peculiar Slavic beliefs about money
As in that it is not good
That it is the root of all evil
But we put those off for a bit and pick up again as we get closer to talking about the Skoptsy
Here - a particular problem of minstrelsy and of certain religious sects is mendicancy - you have to wander
Not allowed to stay in one place
Great Slavic prohibitions against motion
Motion is bad; it is like death
Border-consciousness of Russian and Ukrainian culture
Everything is fenced in
Doors face away from the street and all openings are protected
You can see some of the reasons behind the magic of the portal
Peculiar treatment of travelers and test of strangers
Icon corner and bread test
Anyone who travels is dead in a way
Treatment of recruits and laments for recruits
This is when they go off to join the army; not when they die
Stories of mistreatment of children slated to become recruits
Treatment of the bride, esp. Russian
She laments as if she were going to die
She is removed from the house the same way a corpse is removed
She cannot go back home, esp. after she has given birth
Wedding dress used as funeral dress
Implying that wedding = death
And in epic, death can be pictured as wedding to a foreign woman
Where what happens to the man is something like what happens to a woman in a normal marriage
Normal marriage: woman leaves home and goes to live with husband's family
She is as good as dead from the point of view of her family
Epic: man is dying
Has horse tell mom that he has gone to live in the home of his bride
She is in a foreign land
Give steps of wedding that should reveal to mom that it is not wedding at all, but death
Tsarist and Soviet use of exile as punishment
So, if motion in space is akin to death
Being a traveler, a wanderer, like minstrels, is a terrible thing
Again, no Slav would do this unless they were a cripple or a blind person - or would they?
The phenomenon of the Iurodevyi or Fool in Christ
These are persons who wander
Give up home and all possessions
In addition, they do nasty things to their bodies in pursuit of holiness
Horsehair shirts
Chains
Bare feet in winter
Are mendicants and beggars - no possessions
Just what people will give them
And anything extra they give away
Who becomes
Supposedly a rich person who saw they light
Had a dream that he had done bad things
Often the bad thing is simply being rich and not giving the money away
Or specific act of refusing charity
Person gets sick
And sicker and sicker
Dream is half hallucination, fever and delirium
This causes person to see the light and go and abuse himself in public
And Iurodevye are just one category
Whole slew of sects who do various things to themselves
For the sake of salvation
Various powers are attributed to them
To heal the body and the mind