ПРОСТІР ПОЗА МЕЖАМИ ЖИТЛА ТА «ЧУЖИНА» В ТРАДИЦІЙНИХ УЯВЛЕННЯХ УКРАЇНЦІВ

Abstract

The article considers the issue of ideas about space outside the home and the concept of «foreignness» in the traditional worldview of Ukrainians. That topic is insufficiently covered in the professional literature, because authors often focus either on covering the topic in global or regional (Eastern European) contexts, or on considering certain aspects of it. Worldview issues for the traditional outlook are universal, but their individual manifestations and importance in each culture play the role of a national marker. Therefore, this article is based on the analysis of numerous examples of Ukrainian folklore, especially lyrical and calendar-ritual songs, legends and fairy tales, as well as descriptions of rituals collected by ethnographers and folklorists in the XIX – early XX centuries. In the course of the research, the authors find that spatial conseptions were based primarily on binary oppositions, that is the opposition of the simplest understood descriptive characteristics: «near-far», «big-small», «domestic-foreign». The opposition of «domestic» and «foreign» in the delimitation of space was of key importance: «domestic» seemed everything clear, inhabited, native, related to personal experience; «foreign» – distant, incomprehensible, dangerous. To understand the spatial delimitation, the authors consider worldviews in the semantic pairs «in the house»/»outside», «in the yard»/»beyond the gate», «in the own village»/»outside the village», «own land»/»foreignness». Particular attention is paid to the concept of «foreignness» in the Ukrainian worldview, which demonstrates worldviews of distant uninhabited space. The token «foreignness» has a large number of meanings that vary depending on the context of using the verbal wording. A «foreignness» can be a space outside the yard, a neighbor’s house, a neighboring village, a distant land, another state, and so on. An important element of the topic is the study of boundary symbolism, because the zoning of space determines the presence of symbolic limits between individual territories with different semantics. These boundaries are often acted upon by objects, loci, or architectural elements that are quite familiar to us. For example, gates, fences, relief elements. All these boundaries were symbolic, were part of the worldview and played a significant role in rituals.