SLFK 215, September 4, 2003
Last class &endash; dealing with a peculiar view of art and the artist
The artist is not someone who is talented (though lots of them are &endash; that is not what determines whether you become one)
Artist, at least one type of artist, is blind
Well, blindness could foster talent
Compensation for organ inferiority
Art is not just for pleasure
Art accomplishes good things
Spiritual good for the individual
Sets right things that are wrong in the world, out of balance
Unquiet dead
Helps heal &endash; spiritual health for sure &endash; and any physical consequences of spiritual imbalance
For that, you want someone with special ties to the spirit world
Such a person is a person who someone gave up part of his body
Did something to his body
This can be something that is done UNTO the person
Need not be done by choice
So a person crippled at birth or an accident victim is just fine
Ideas about the body and that you have to have a certain type of body integrity
If you don't, you are partially dead and in spirit world
Ideas about death and decay
In terms of funerary practices, an important turning point seems to be one year
Why? Has something to do with decay
Gave you evidence from normal funeral practices and commemoration of the dead
Ended at funeral practices with a certain type of monk
Live in cave monasteries
Practice mortification of the flesh
Denial of earthly pleasures and body functions
Argue that such monks overcame the flesh in life
Estheticism
Therefore flesh preserved in death and person is holy
You don't give them money, but you can pray to them
Trip to Lavra when Dad is sick
Certain monk relics for certain problems
(Totally different interpretation of failure to decay &endash; as in vampirism &endash; but that comes later. I already introduced you to diametrically opposed interpretations of the same phenomenon, as long as it is marked, a bit.)
Concern with decomposition of flesh seen not only in old religious practices, but also in Russian lit.
Father Zosima in Brother's Karamozov
Bobok
Sort of like American Werewolf in London, Paris
Seen in what is done in the Soviet period &endash; to Lenin
Why bother? If it were not for these ancient and tenacious beliefs
Seen in post-Soviet times in concern with American products that fail to decay, esp. meats
Bushovy nozhki
Worry about body decay
Never heard this or thought about it until I was working there
Bread, as something connected with the body, esp. the body of ancestors, is sacred and used for all sorts of things
To greet strangers
To bless marriage
To welcome the newborn
So, except in special circumstances, body is supposed to decay
Here we see that the soft tissue and bone distinction is important
Soft tissue is supposed to decay, but bone is to stay
And the bones that stay are supposed to be ALL THERE
You have to have all of your parts
Evidence for this &endash;
Beggars who display their bones
Virgin of Chernihiv stories
Some evidence of keeping other hard things, like teeth, though this is not throughout the East Slavic area
Contemporary fears of organ donation
Somewhat marginal
Should not be afraid of soft tissue loss
Perhaps it is more of an issue that you do not get to decay properly and all together
Legends about women from the former Soviet Union taken as brides and used as body parts
Same for baby adoption
Or children (as those affected by Chornobyl) taken supposedly for medical treatment, but used for parts
Early story was of a US business that sets up a Coma-like facility in Moscow
Here &endash; not so much use of bone as no proper death and no proper joining with the soil
Recall also Repentance &endash; end of Soviet era movie about Stalin where body not allowed to be interred
Woman keeps digging it up
Supposedly really bad person rejected by the earth
Earth will not accept, will not allow the bad person to become a part of it
Please note difference in focus East and West
West &endash; focus on sex trade and slavery
Slavs &endash; focus on what happens to body and body integrity
Stories at airport, hospital in L'viv
So, people with something missing from the body
Cripples without a limb, or an atrophied limb
People who are blind
Allowed to beg
What does this mean? Again, act of begging is special
By giving alms, you are doing something good for yourself
Not in terms of this world, but in terms of other
Person with a handicap is closer to God
Person missing something from the body is partially in the other world
A part of him is "dead" and so he is partially in the world of the dead
What is the other world?
It is the world of the dead and of spirits, but not that only
And we need to look at special position of blindness in this cosmology
Just went through soft tissue/hard tissue (bone) differences
According to this, only hard tissue (bone) matters
So why are eyes included in the missing body parts that give you special access to the other world?
One reason is what I argue in the book &endash; namely eyes are the only soft tissue thing that makes you incapable of work, at least standard agriculture work
Supruns work in a factory making blinds in the Soviet era
So, you couldn't work if you were missing an arm or a leg
But, if you had smallpox and were badly pockmarked, you could still work and did not need to be an artist
But there is much more to eye beliefs, in this culture, and others too
Think of body orifices
Eyes are the orifice which is not an orifice
Something inside
Eyes give you the impression of access to inner being, to the soul, spirit
So, if losing a limb makes you partially dead and thus partially in the other world
So, losing the thing that is the gateway to your spirit is analogous
Numerous eye beliefs
It is through the eye that you can cast spells, sometimes inadvertently
It is through the eye that your spirit affects other people or theirs affects you.
The jealous gaze and ways to avoid it
In this culture, if you want something, and you want it excessively
You can harm the object or the owner with your gaze
Numerous ways of deflecting a compliment
Story of Sten'ka Razin and the rich man who wants his cloak
Protecting children from strangers, esp. childless strangers
From strangers who praise too much
World War II experiments
Weaning beliefs and inadvertently creating a child with an evil eye
Warding off the evil eye &endash; in children, in adults
Looking and not looking
Cassian the bad saint
If he looks at you and/or your cattle, you or the animals can sicken and die
Some beliefs that you have to LOOK BACK
Prohibitions on looking at a funeral procession
Making sure the eyes of a deceased person do not open so that he or she cannot look upon anyone
The all-seeing eye of the devils
Seeing certain things prohibited to humans
Usually the future
Fortune-telling
Story of the man who sees a witch remove her head
Seeing the witch is enough to make her sick
Hiding under a bread trough
Only the witch who has not suckled milk can see him
Identifying witches by looking through a knot-hole in aspen wood
Please note the role of a portal in the aspen wood belief and in the looking through a window
Note looking through a mirror to see the future
And seeing child's future when a midwife comes to deliver a baby
Here, too, implication is that you should not look into the spirit world
Will get into trouble that way
No stories of curing by looking
Just of cursing by looking
A blind person cannot in any way or under any circumstances cast the evil eye
They have INSIGHT only
Look into the world of the spirits
And it is a world of spirits that is good &endash; no malefice
Minstrels have to do with health and well-being
With helping reestablish order and harmony
What sort of health and well-being, order and harmony do they affect
Go back to idea of life as cycle
Already did that cycle needs to take place
Person lives a life
Is born, marries, has children, dies
His body becomes one with the soil while the bones remain
Body nourishes future generations
What if something goes wrong?
Body part missing
Or whole body missing, as in fire
Or body lost, as in drowning
What if person does not complete cycle?
Dies young and before his or her time?
Dies violently
Dies unmarried
Suicides esp. bad &endash; cannot be buried in a normal funeral
Before &endash; could not be buried in a normal place
At border of graveyard, not with other deceased
Need to say prayers or have prayers said for a long time
"Buy" prayers in a monastery or nunnery