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UKRAINIAN MASQUERADES, OR THE DEFENCE OF HORPYNA

100%

Bednarczuk M., Pogonowska E.

Slavia Orientalis

2007

vol. 56

issue 4

521-538

The article deals with a vision of Ukraine as a meta-space of adventure that has been very popular among Polish writers and artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. However, the authoresses argue that it is not only, or not primarily, the 'adventure' which is at stake in those widespread literary pictures of Polish knights and noblemen riding horses and winning battles against the 'wild' Cossacks and Tatars but that to a much greater extent they concern the ideological, national or cultural dimensions of such plots. In order to prove this thesis, they analyse two texts: the first, 'With Fire and Sword' (1884) by Henryk Sienkiewicz, belongs to the Polish literary canon and deals with the Ukraine as a political order, a challenge, a phantasm, and a strictly political 'problem', while the other is a short story little known although deserving attention - 'Honeymoon in Ukraine' by Eugeniusz Malaczewski (1921). The latter is directly connected with Sienkiewicz's work for it uses and reverses the scheme of 'the Beauty and the Beast'. The heroine's name is the same as that of Sienkiewicz's ambiguous 'witch' - Horpyna, and furthermore, its style continues in the tradition of the 'noble tall story'. In relation to feminism, psychoanalysis, gender studies, and post-colonial criticism, the authoresses demonstrate the grounds of such constructions as the Ukrainian 'anti-family', native female 'witches', the subversive social order remaining on the one hand the negative idea of 'anarchy' as well as a sabbath (i.e. the confusion of gender roles in Sienkiewicz's novel and the presentation of the year 1918 as a 'feminine' political, sexual, and simultaneously ethnic revolution by Malaczewski), and on the other hand, of the primordial nature-friendly and pre-industrial 'matriarchy'. These questions coexist with the omnipresent, superficially 'innocent' and mostly amusing motif of masquerade which allows to look at the Ukrainian landscape in terms of a transgressive and transgression-generating space: the one liberating, luring, encouraging to cross the sexual and gender boundaries imposed on a person in their own (Polish, West European, Latin) culture. The paper is an attempt to re-read and re-interpret Polish 'colonising' tendencies that have for a long time found their expression not only in political and economic actions taken in the so-called Eastern Borderlands, but also, or above all, in our collective imagination where they still seem to be firmly rooted for emotional reasons.

AFRICANS CONCEPT OF MASQUERADES AND THEIR ROLE IN SOCIETAL CONTROL AND STABILITY: SOME NOTES ON THE ESAN PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA

72%

Akubor E. O.

Asian and African Studies

2016

vol. 25

issue 1

32 – 50

In every culture there are certain ideas explicit in the interaction of different elements which in turn sometimes act as an instrument of social control with which different cultural segments are held together. Prior to the spread of Islamic and Christian influences, most societies in Africa believed in a complex structure of spirits and ancestors who influenced the living. This was contained in the traditional belief which reflects the wholeness of the universe, i.e., the various elements of which constituted not only the living, but also the dead and spirits. Thus among the Esan, the Erinni (Elimin masquerades) are organic to their myth of creation. In this way, they function as the major stabiliser of the people’s destiny. As far as the people are concerned, they are ancestral spirits who periodically visit their living forebears in masquerade forms. Their visits are regarded as spiritual interventions to the world of the living and as a result are highly venerated. To the Ifeku-Ibaji, Egwu (masquerade) symbolised both the ancestral shrine as well as represented the resurrected spirits of a dead elder, whose appearance and performance played a protective and regulatory role in the affairs of the living. Specifically, it governed the laws which were irrevocable and punishable by death. In the Ejagham society of Cross River, the task of detecting witches and wizards rested with the Echi-Obasi-njom (the masquerade), it usually carried out this function in a wheeling, gliding dance organised by the society. Echi-Obasi-njom was usually accompanied by attendants as it swiftly moved round the settlement in search of witches and wizards in their hide outs. All over Yoruba land, the Egungun represent the spirit of the ancestors who have descended from heaven/ mountains. It celebrates a period when the dead interact with the living, as it is their responsibility to compel the living to uphold the ethical standards of past generations. The data obtained from primary and secondary sources were deployed to carry out the study in an analytical and narrative historical method. Findings indicate that unlike, the neglect of this practice in most societies (especially while the advent of Christianity and Islam), has led to an alarming rise in crime.

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1 Asian and African Studies

1 Slavia Orientalis

1 Akubor E. O.

1 Bednarczuk M.

1 Pogonowska E.

1 2016

1 2007

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UKRAINIAN MASQUERADES, OR THE DEFENCE OF HORPYNA

AFRICANS CONCEPT OF MASQUERADES AND THEIR ROLE IN SOCIETAL CONTROL AND STABILITY: SOME NOTES ON THE ESAN PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA