Abstract
Petr Grigorevich Bogatyrev was without question one of the most significant Russian folldorists of the twentieth centwy. His participation in the organization and activity of the Moscow Linguistic Circle which, along with the Petrograd Society for the Study of Poetic Language, gave birth to the Russian Formalist School, and his subsequent work with the Prague Linguistic Circle nurtured his own pioneering interests and activities in the field of ethnography. His life in Stalinist Russia was, naturally, not without tragedy. He suffered immensely as a result of his work abroad as a translator for the Soviet embassy in Prague between 1922-1939, as well as for his association with foreign folldorists, among them his compatriot Roman Jakobson who chose to immigrate to the United States on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia while Bogatyrev returned home to Russia. Amidst the valuable pieces of scholarship he left behind are his studies of Rusyn folldore from the Carpathian MOlmmln~, which he researched in a series offield expeditions dming the 1920s and 1930s. Of these, the greatest gem is his monograph entitled Magical Acts. Rites. and Beliefs in SubcaJ:pathian Rus'. published initially in a French translation by the Institute of Slavic Studies (lnstitut d'etudes slaves) in Paris in 1929 lActes Ma~ques. rites et crovances en Russ;e subcm:pathique). Here, he succeeded in describing what in the 1920s was still, as he stated in his diary, one of the most archaic of Slavic peasant cultures. The relative isolation of the region with its scattered mountain villages allowed for the smvival of traditional folklore and for the perpetuation of ritual and magical practices which elsewhere were fading or already extinct. Bogatyrev's monograph offers a full and systemic description of the ritual-mythological aspect of Rusyn peasant life. After a lengthy introduction in which he discusses his use of the synchronic method in his research illustrated with numerous examples from Rusyn folklore practices and beliefs he moves through the feasts of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic liturgical year descnDing in intricate detail various folk rites and beliefs connected with each of them. Finally, he scrutinizes significant moments in the peasants' lives birth and baptism, weddings, and funerals, as well as their experience of the world of apparitions and supernatural beings and, here again. describes intriguing folk rituals related to these. In 1998, the first English translation ofBogatyrev's monograph under the title Vampires in the Car.pathians: Magical Acts. Rites. and Beliefs in SubcaJ:pathian Rus'. was published by Columbia
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call