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Section 1. Study of art
However, the museum’s main claim to fame comes from its amazing collection of famous paintings rather than from its ethnographical materials. Both were collected by the museum’s extraordinary and much-loved founder, Igor Savitsky.
Igor Vitalyevich Savitsky was born in Kiev in 1915. His father was a lawyer and his grandfather a professor of Slavic studies. In the early 1920s his family moved to Moscow and the young Savitsky was encouraged to draw and to paint, going on to study at the «1905 School of Art». He was later sent to work in the studio of a well-known local artist, who happened to be a friend of the Zhdanko family. In Karakalpakstan Savitsky worked as an illustrator for some seven years, attached to the Institute of Ethnography at the Academy of Sciences in Nukus, sketching and drawing the monuments and finds excavated by the archaeologists. It was during this period that he developed his interest in the ethnography of the Karakalpaks being studied by Zh-danko and her team. He started to collect local Karakalpak folk art, visiting towns and villages throughout the delta. As his enthusiasm for local Karakalpak culture developed he decided to abandon his flat in central Moscow and to go and live permanently in Nukus. Having familiarized himself with amazing history and ancient culture of Karakalpakstan he took a great interest in ethnography and archeology, and Karakalpakstan became his second homeland.
In time he had assembled thousands of items representing every aspect of Karakalpak folk art: costume, jewellery, carpets, yurt decorations, wood carvings, horse trappings and domestic utensils.
The Museum was opened in 1966 and initially its collection was exhibited in seven small rooms. It was only 20 years later that a special building was constructed to accommodate the Museum. Today the exposition of the Museum consists of three parts: department of ancient and medieval art, which represents ancient culture of Khorezm — a state once located on the territory of Karakalpakstan, [3, 76] the department of
folk applied arts, and the department of fine arts. The museum department of ancient and medieval art displays archeological findings which tell us about the history of ancient Khorezm — the homeland of “Avesta” and the trade links of local people with antique world, unique terracotta statuettes of Zoroastrian Goddess of fertility Anakhit, ossuaries — the containers for holding the bones of the dead relatives (fire-worshippers’ tradition), various articles made of ceramic and bronze.
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Karakalpak art museum
The foundation for the department of folk applied arts was the collection of items made by Karakalpak craftsmen. These items were collected during the expedition of Karakalpak branch of the Academy of sciences of Uzbekistan. Today the department of folk applied arts possesses a rich collection of national Karakalpak jewelry made of silver and cornelian, traditional hand-made carpets, embroidery and applique.The department of fine arts represents paintings and drawings collected by Igor Savitsky, art works donated to the Museum by noted artists of the country, and the paintings by Karakalpak artists.
At the present time this museum is our pride. The percentage of tourists who is coming to visit this museum is rising year by year. Nowadays there is building new two building which is part of this museum [3, 98].
References:
1. Karimov I. Joqari manawiyat-jen’ilmes ku’sh. - N.: Ma’naviyat, 2008.
2. Tlewmuratov M, Berdiev J, Tlewmuratova Qaraqalpaqstan tariyxi. - N.: Bilim, 2014.
3. Kamalov S, Saribaev Q, Karlibaev M, Saribaev M Qaraqalpaqstan tariyxi. - N.: Bilim, 2005.
Ponikarovska Nataliia Andriivna, Kharkiv State Academy of Culture Post-graduate, Department of Cultural Studies and Media-Communications
E-mail: natapinta@gmail.com
People’s ideas of the covered dead as a sense-making factor of burial ritual in Ukraine. The past and the present
Abstract: The article deals with the people’s ideas of “the covered dead” (a person who died but has not found peace after death) as a sense-making factor of elements of traditional and modern burial ritual in Ukraine. Analyzing
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People’s ideas of the covered dead as a sense-making factor of burial ritual in Ukraine. The past and the present
the development of the special way to bury “the covered dead" and historic conditions which influenced the transformation of the system of cultic and customary ceremonies, the deep meaningful links of modern Ukrainian ideas of death and after-death with the Old Slavic ones have been revealed.
Keywords: “the covered dead", ideas of death and after-death, cultural permanence, burial rituals, Slavs.
Certain elements of Ukrainian burial rituals are rooted in Old Slavic cultural tradition and formed on the base of fundamental world-view ideas inherent to mythological thought. Historic conditions of the area of modern Ukrainian state, such as baptism of Kiev Rus in the 10th century, influence of atheistic ideology common in the 20th century, attempts to return to historic roots of the end of the 20th — the beginning of the 21st centuries, have changed immensely the form of burial rituals connected with burial and prayers for the dead, fundamentally preserving the layers of meanings corresponding to different world-view principles. The rudiments of these elements are still present in modern burial ritual, but they are unperceived. The most essential in this situation is understanding of both primary meanings of such elements and those acquired by them in the process of historical development. The importance of influence of “the covered dead" on formation of Old Slavic picture of the world and the fact that studying the idea of “the covered dead" as a sense-making factor of the elements of traditional and modern Ukrainian rituals is not enough, makes topical the proposed set of problems.
The burial ritual and prayers for the dead of the East Slavs have been studied by famous scientists, such as О. Se-dakova [4], L. Vynogradova [2], V. Bilyi [1]; the fundamental research of “the covered dead" as a specific category of the dead was made by D. Zelenin [3]; the work of a well-known English ethnographer E. Tyler is devoted to the problems of deep links of the old times and the present [5]. Despite the marked interest to these themes, the problem of people’s ideas of “the covered dead" as a sense-making factor of the elements of burial rituals has not been paid enough attention yet. On the basis of the above mentioned realities, the aim is: to consider the conception of “the covered dead" as a sense-making factor of the certain elements of traditional and modern burial ritual in Ukraine.
The object of the research is the people’s ideas of “the covered dead"
The subject of the research is the process of formation and transformation of the certain elements of Ukrainian burial rituals in the process of historical development.
Ukrainian national burial tradition largely inherits the Old Slavic tradition, where, along with the leading importance of the forefathers cult, the key factor in relation to the dead person was the type of his death, which is concretized in division into “natural" and “unnatural” [3, 39]. In case of natural death, that is, the death from natural factors like old age, the dead were treated with great respect and veneration, they were prayed for several times a year and called “parents". Such dead acquired the status of clean ancestors, and, by popular notions, united with the great kin, i. e., all previous generations of the certain family. The burial ritual itself was perceived by
people’s consciousness as a moment of transition, in which the change of a person’s status is allotted with the help of the ritual. Rituals like washing the body and dressing it in clean clothes, burial train, weeping and lamentations, decent attire of graves, further prayers as the act of communication with the dead relatives, invitation “for a visit" on definite holidays, bringing food and necessary things, etc., were aimed at facilitation of transition to the Other world and paying respect to the dead as a new part of a great kin.
The second category of the dead are “the covered dead",
i. e. people who died accidentally or violently before the time of their natural death, often young, suicides, drunkards, witches, wizards, people cursed by their relatives, those who got missing, who died without a certain initiation or stillborns. Such dead were considered unclean, unworthy of respect and prayers, and often harmful and dangerous [3, 39-40]. According to the popular idea, due to the fact that they did not live the age given to them by their birth, i. e. the certain term of life, and did not acquire their fate, i. e. did not fulfill their life assignment, the transition to the next stage of being, which is logical for clean ancestors, is not made by unclean ones, and they “get stuck" in the world of living, not so rarely passing into the hands of “devilry".
The term “the covered dead" seems a bit artificial, it was introduced in the scientific vocabulary by the famous ethnographer D. Zelenin, who wrote the fundamental work on this problem. In this connection he notes, “There is no general and popular name for those who died unnatural death. As a general rule people avoid giving precise and clear names to dangerous beings. Sometimes such dead are called with the word corpse, which is a contemptuous name for the dead" [3, 41]. The author borrows the very name of “the covered dead" from people who live in Vyatka, and its meaning is disclosed through the way of burying the dead which verges on it complete absence: “the covered dead" were not buried in the earth or in some other way, their bodies were dumped in the wastelands, in ravines, bogs, thick windfall bushes in the forests, and the body was covered with branches and stones. The taboo for burial of “the covered dead" in the ground was connected with the fear to defile the earth, which is a sacred space, by an unclean body. As people imagined, the Mother-Earth could respond with frosts and poor crops, which could cause famine. “The covered dead" were deprived of other honours, such as burial train, they were not lamented over, not prayed for, people did not bring them food. The following custom was exclusive: when the parents were invited during the Christmas holidays, the food for them was put under the table, because of the fear to infuriate “the covered dead", as it was considered that they would come anyway, but were not allowed to sit at one table with the parents. There was also a way to pray for
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Section 1. Study of art
“the covered dead" by putting branches on their graves, which also has something in common with the peculiarities of their burial, and scatter grains on the cross-road for free birds who symbolized the soul for the Slavs. As in the previous case, the motive to pray for “the covered dead" in this way was not the respect and the wish to honour the dead, but the fear of them. When the bodies were prepared for burial, much was purposefully done inversely, for example, the dead was carried headfirst, was turned three times on the cross-road not to remember the way home, etc. “The covered dead" was never carried across the sown field, and the grains, stored at home, had to be moved and turned so that they could “stay alive"
Once the Christianity was established and the church started fighting with pagan cults, the so called “skudelnytsya" or “a miserable house" began to appear, which was a big hole in the earth with a room for prayer above it, where “the covered dead” and the unknown bodies were collected and left uncovered up to the seventh Thursday after the Easter Day. Then the people “out of godfearing Christian sedulity" came to cover the hole and dig the new one, this action was often accompanied by commemoration with meals. As a Ukrainian ethnographer V. Bilyi says [1, 83], appearance of these “miserable houses" was a kind of a compromise between a people’s idea of not allowing to bury “the covered dead" and an ecclesiastic idea, according to whose dogmas a body must be buried in the earth, but without a funeral service or not on the church cemetery. Later “miserable houses" became something like children shelter, as children were abandoned there both dead and alive, and the keepers of these “miserable houses" took them for upbringing.
The reason for making “miserable houses" was not the wish to reach a compromise, but the cases when in drought or some other all-people disaster, people just dug out their dead and dumped them on the wastelands or bogs, or coated with water, because it was considered that “the covered dead drinks water from the earth and the sky" The most recent cases were recorded in Dniepropetrovsk (then Katerynoslavsk), Kyiv and Kharkiv regions in the late nineteenth century [3, 100-109].
Modern burial ritual in Ukraine is performed in various ways considering the wish of the person who died, their family, their religion, etc. It is interesting that in burial ritual the elements still exist in definite forms whose sense-making factor is the ideas of “the covered dead" which, as a system of world-view beliefs, is completely unknown to most of our contemporaries. The famous English ethnographer E. Tyler, looking into the problem of the origin and development of religious beliefs and turning to the area of superstitions and survivals in traditional culture, wrote, “When a custom, an art, or an opinion is fairly started in the world, disturbing influences may long affect it so slightly that it may keep its course from generation to generation, as a stream once settled in its bed will flow on for ages. This is mere permanence of culture" [5, 63]. In modern Ukrainian burial ritual we can find two similar strongly pronounced elements — the custom to bury unmarried girls in a wedding dress, and the custom to wash
the floor after the dead has been taken out. Let us look into them separately.
The custom to bury unmarried girls in a wedding dress originates in special attitude to a person’s assignment in this world, moreover, the word “fate" is used here not in the sense of objective regularity, i. e. destiny, doom, but just in the sense of assignment, which is varied according to the sex, age, etc.: the child’s assignment is to respect the parent’s will, the girl’s — to marry and give life to children, a man’s — to defend his family, parents’ — to bring up their children and pass them traditional knowledge. In Ukrainian folklore we encounter such collocations as “a soldier’s fate", “a woman’s fate". The fate-assignment regulates social roles, relations, duties. A person living their life according to their gender, social, family assignment, acquire their fate. In the Old Age unmarried girls were not just buried in the wedding dress, but there were also future husbands chosen for them, the best men appointed, their heads were decorated with wedding chaplet, the wedding cake was baked. The girl, who did not create her own family and did not continue the kin, could find herself outside the kin, and, by people’s imagination, could turn into a mermaid, forest dryad or some other devilry. “Marrying off" the girl in this way her parents tried to help her avoid such a fate. Today this custom has acquired a new meaning, for example, it is considered, that every girl dreams of getting married, and thus, they make her last wish come true, or, if a girl is not married, she becomes a Christ’s bride, and she must appear in front of her groom in a proper manner.
The custom to wash the floor after the coffin has been taken out of the house, the floor being washed thoroughly, starting from the far corner, has been preserved until now. It is considered that this water must not be left at home, or pour out in the yard, or used for household needs. The water, that was used to wash the floor, must be taken away to the crossroad and poured out there. This custom is rooted in the idea that water is an irresistible barrier for the soul. Thus, washing the floor is an attempt to prevent the soul from returning to the house, to protect the space of life from intrusion of the space of death. It should also be noted that the floor is washed not only after “the covered dead" died, but after any death.
Now both these customs are fulfilled according to the wish, the first is more common than the second one. The water, after the floor has been washed, is also seldom taken to the cross-roads. It should be mentioned that in the countryside these customs are more observed than in the cities.
So, people’s ideas of “the covered dead" belong to the complex system of world-view concepts and originate in Old Slavic cultural tradition. Along with the cosmogonical myth, they are a sense-making factor of certain elements of national burial culture which has kept the remains of pagan world view, rudiments, that still exist, that are performed unconsciously, or, in general, acquire new or additional meanings in the process of transformation of people’s idea. In modern Ukrainian burial ritual such elements can include the custom to bury unmarried girls in the wedding dress and the custom to wash the
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Semiotics and manuscript heritage of Ukraine and Greece
floor after the coffin has been taken out of the house. In first case, the motive is the attempt to help the girl avoid the fate of “the covered dead”, in the second — to protect the living space and people who live there from destructive influence of death, which “the covered dead” impersonates. Understanding of primary meanings, which were put into these customs in
times of pagan world view, help us indicate deep continuity and permanence of the Old Slavic culture by Ukrainian one, it lays a certain ground for further study of influence of the Old Slavic traditions on modern ideas of death and after-death in the Ukrainian society.
References:
1. Б1лий В. Звичай кидати плки на могили «заложних» мерщв//В. БНий. Етнографичний вшник, кн. 3. - Кшв: Друкарня укра'шсько! академи наук, 1926. - С. 82-94.
2. Виноградова Л. Н. Народные представления о происхождении нечистой силы: демонологизация умерших//Л. Н. Виноградова. Славянский и балканский фольклор. Народная демонология. - М: «ИНДРИК», 2000. - 400 с.
3. Зеленин Д. К. Избранные труды. Очерки русской мифологии. Умершие не своей смертью и русалки//Д. К. Зеленин. - М.: «ИНДРИК», 1995. - 432 с.
4. Седакова О. А. Поэтика обряда. Погребальная обрядность восточных и южных славян//О. А. Седакова. - М: «ИНДРИК», 2004. - 339 с.
5. Tylor E. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. Vol. 1//E. D. Tylor. - London.: Albemarle Street, 1871. - 453 с.
Tereschenko-Kaidan Liliya Vladimirovna, The National Academy of Managerial Personnel of Culture and Art
Doctoral Candidate of Culturology E-mail: lilijatereshenko@rambler.ru, sacra28@ukr.net
Semiotics and manuscript heritage of Ukraine and Greece
Abstract: The article presents innovative studies of the Slavic Cyrillic manuscript fund by way of semiotics. It refers to both traditional and polysemiotic language methods, when semiography and semiotics are combined, as well as ethnosemiotic methods of research. Special emphasis is put on the uncovering of chironomic system by way of semiotics.
Keywords: semiotics, polysemiotics, semiography, ethnosemiotics, semiosis, chironomy, Slavic Cyrillic manuscripts.
Speaking about the problems of parallelism and peculiarities of development of the spiritual culture of Ukraine and Greece in particular, and the spiritual culture of Slavs and Greeks in the whole, sooner or later the scientific world will refer to the manuscript heritage of the mentioned nations. As it was repeatedly mentioned in previous works, a manuscript is a genetic code of a nation, with the help of which one can give answers to many questions that attract interest of modern science.
With evolving scientific thought and innovation of studies, new methods and forms of research appear in scientific usage. These innovations also refer to the manuscript heritage. We will speak about semiotics that is closely related to the manuscripts, not only in the narrow language sense, but in the wide sense of a research of the manuscript heritage. Consequently, the topic of the present study is current and scientif-cally reasonable.
The object of the present research is the manuscript heritage of Ukraine and Greece.
The subject of the research is semiotics as a method of research of the manuscript fund of two countries.
The goal of the work is a wide introduction of new principles of research of the manuscript heritage of Ukraine and Greece by way of semiotics in the scientific usage.
In accordance with the above set goal of the research, the following tasks are formed:
— to explain how one can study Slavic (Ukrainian) and Greek manuscripts with the help of semiotics;
— to understand the structure of semiotic principles of research of the manuscript heritage of Ukraine and Greece;
— to show in practice the effect of semiotic principles with regard to the manuscript heritage of Ukraine and Greece.
Semiotics as a science covers a wide specter of its activity. Formed in France in the form of the so called Paris school of A. Greimas and asserted as a direction of knowledge of R. Bart, semiotics expanded the sphere of its influence in the notion of Semiotics of communication by G. Mounin and A. Martinet.
In Italy semiotics is developed by U. Eco and in Switzerland by F. de Saussure. F. de Saussure proposed the 1st program of semiotics, the main principle of which was the form of semiotics that gives unity in combination with the content.
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