Sky-blue Flower part 2.pdf

QP Olga Levaniouk, Sky-Blue Flower: Songs of the Bride in Mode,,. https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4647 They say that the hymenaeus is sung at weddings concerning in longing and search for Hymenaeus the son of Tepsichora, who, they say, disappeared once he married. §130. The applicability of the Russian comparative evidence stretches, of course, beyond direct equations as Russian wedding songs find their echoes in Ancient Greece not only in the laments of the brides but in multiple genres, both verbal and visual. The comparison becomes more meaningful if it focuses not only on single elements, however tantalizingly similar those may sometimes be, but also on the contexts of such similarities, the sequences and structures of which they are part. It makes sense, therefore, to follow the bride's progression through the steps of the wedding, the progression that begins, both in Russia and also in Ancient Greece, in a group of girls. §131. In her meticulous study of the maidens depicted on Attic vases, Ferrari has observed a pattern whereby a spinning girl may be depicted in the context of an amorous encounter, or wool baskets appear in scenes of courtship and play where little actual wool-working is being done. Ferrari identifies these figures, whom she calls "spinners" as pathenoi, marriageable but as yet unmarried girls, and defines their essential characteristics in at both visual and verbal.[183] On vases, the central characteristic of the "spinner" is that she appears in a group of peers, and Ferrari finds a corresponding image in poetry and myth, where "girls come in packs" (the Nereids, Minyads, Proetids, the companions of Artemis, Persephone, Nausikaa etc.). There is ambiguity in depictions of such groups: often there is a central figure, distinguished from the rest, sometimes there is none. In those cases when one maiden is singled out the distinction is subtle: one girl may be seating while others are standing and she may be offered objects by the others, but she and her helpers are depicted in a way so similar that, as Ferrari puts it, they "fade into each other." [184] Describing an Athenian red-figure pyxis[185] decorated with the toilet of the Nereids, Ferrari writes: "The picture gives the model of the sisterly band of maidens all of an age, all noble, beautiful and virtuous, led by one who is the most beautiful, noble, and virtuous of all."[186] §132. Ferrari's interpretation of the visual evidence, as she points out, corresponds exactly to Calame's model for the choruses of maidens on display in Alcman's Partheneion, Moschus' Euopa, and Theocritus' Epitha/amium for He/en.[187] In each case, the maidens orm a group, and the leader is one of them, prima inter pares. The maidens are all companions, they are of the same age, they all play and work together (mnoa ... ouv rmai, Theocritus 18.13), and yet the leader is also distinct: Europa stands out among her peers as Aphrodite does among the Graces, Helen is compared to Dawn or Spring in the midst of an undiferentiated chorus of maidens, and Hagesichora outshines her companions in the Patheneion. [188] In the same way, Nausikaa stands out among her companions and, like the spinners on vases, her group both plays and works.[189] On vases the work of the maidens is spinning and weaving, while in the Odyssey it is the washing of the clothes, but the two tasks are complementary: there is little doubt that Nausikaa's laundry presupposes her woolworking. §133. Calame demonstrates that the paradigm for such a band and its leader is Artemis with her nymphs, but Ferrari notes that another paradigm is frequently evoked in poetry: Aphrodite and the Graces.[190] Based upon Calame's findings and her own analysis, Ferrari draws together the essential traits of such groups and their leaders, and it is hard to improve upon her description, which I quote in full: 87 of 135 8/19/18, 5: 16 PM QP Olga Levaniouk, Sky-Blue Flower: Songs of the Bride in Mode... https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4647 but there are exceptions, and they speak the same visual language. wo miniature /ekythoi by the Amasis Painter depict the scenes of wedding, and Ferrari observes that they establish a contrast between the bride and her age-mates "in the manner of wedding songs. "[194] One leythos is painted with scenes of cloth production on its body, and a wedding scene on its shoulder: the bride sits in a mantle covering her head and body, lifting its edge to reveal her face and holding a wreath in her hand, while the parthenoi dance in a circle around her. On the body of the second lekythos, the bride, dressed in the same way and making the same gesture, is seated in a carriage being taken in a wedding procession to her husband's house, while on the shoulder of of the /ethos the girls dance to the accompaniment of aulos and lyre. The visual and verbal depictions of the maidens examined by Ferrari bring together several notions which, as she points out, "are not easily reconciled in the mind of a modern interpreter: physical beauty, described in terms of splendor (bath and cosmos), chastity and wisdom made visible by the enveloping mantle and modest gaze, and constant toil." [195] §137. The notions might indeed present a puzzling combination but only if the modern interpreter were unfamiliar with the workings of a traditional Russian village wedding. Just as the maidens on Greek vases are engaged in wool-working, so too the bride and her friends spend every evening of her wedding week sewing, an action that seems almost as symbolic and impractical as the presence of wool baskets in abduction scenes. In fact, the bride's cloth-making is already done, and the wedding songs refer to the accumulation of her work: she has spun and woven, she has put her textiles in a chest and even had to push them in with her knee-a visible token of her "constant toil." In several regions the bride was expected in the course of the wedding to give a towel or runner or other product of her weaving and embroidery to each member of the groom's family.[196] These gifts, especially the long, narrow towels, were not for practical use, but rather symbolic and decorative. As on Greek vases, the beauty and splendor of the bride praised in songs and put on display in her splendid and traditionally determined wedding costume coexists with the vision of the bride as a worker, and specifically as a maker of cloth. In both contexts, maidenly weaving is distinct from that of a wife, and its interruption can signal a maiden's transition to married wife: in the Vologda region, while the bride's friends sew in the evenings, the bride no longer does so, though she sits with them. This pause in her work brings to mind the maiden who can no longer weave in Sappho fr. 102 Voigt, her work too interrupted by the intrusion of Aphrodite into her life: yuKJU µdTep, OUTOI Mvaµrn Kp:KJV TOV (rov 168w1 6.µe1oa rToo; �paoivav 61' Appooirnv Sweet mother, I cannot weave at the loom any longer Overcome by desire for a boy(?) through slender Aphrodite.[197] §138. The third notion included by Ferrari in her list, namely the "chastity and wisdom made visible by the enveloping mantle and modest gaze," is also well represented in the domena and /egomena of the Russian village wedding. In the Vologda region, the wedding proper begins when the bride is covered, and from that point on she remains veiled. Veiled she is taken to church, and veiled again from the church to the house of the groom. Ferrari remarks that on Greek vases the veiled figure often shows signs of being restricted by the veil, for example, when she has to thrust her hand out awkwardly to pick up an object.[198] In a similar way, the Vologda brides in their laments cannot walk as fast or as far as before and cannot see "half the white light." These Vologda brides are separated from their age-mates in the same way as the brides on the 89 of 135 8/19/18, 5: 16 PM QP Olga Levaniouk, Sky-Blue Flower: Songs of the Bride in Mode ... https://chs.harvard.cdu/CHS/article/display/4647 (Maiden): Maidenhood, maidenhood, where do you go, forsaking me? (Maidenhood): I will come to you no more, I will come no more. The sentiment finds its precise equivalents in the Russian songs, but equally noteworthy is the dialogic form. In the same way the krasota, the preeminent symbol of maidenhood, is personified and given voice in the Russian wedding, being acted out by one of the maidens, who says that the bride will never be a maiden again and bids her a sad farewell.[221] Thus the pathenia in Sappho, once it is separated from the bride, acquires its own voice and says to its former owner exactly what the krasota says to Russian girl, "I am never coming back to you." §151. The notion of the maidenhood's irrevocable departure is echoed in Russian songs by the notion of a decisive separation between the bride and her mother, and this theme is also expressed in Sappho fragment 104a Voigt, which seems to come from a wedding song: "Eonepe mtvm ptpwv ooa paivoAt; eoKeoao' Auw;, tptpet; otv, ptpet; aiya, pepet; arut µcTept raToa. Hesperus, bringing all that the shining dawn scattered, You bring a sheep, you bring a goat you bring a child back to (?) its mother. The interpretation of this fragment is complicated by a textual problem, but Petropoulos compares it to a lament of a bride recorded in Cappadocia at the turn of the last centuy: The East [i.e. dawn] has broken and the West has lit up [i.e. dawn has boken], the birds have gone to their pasturage and desolate persons have gone to the West, and so also do I, in my desolation, go towards the Bridge of Adana.[222] §152. On the basis of this comparison, Petropoulos hypothesizes that Sappho 104a might also be a lament or "complaint" sung by the bride or others on her behalf and that its theme is the inevitability of the bride's separation from her family: the sheep, the goat, and the child all return to their home in the natural course of events, and just as inevitably the bride has to depat from her natal home.[223] The mention of animals and a child in the same line is hardly coincidental, for this combination occurs again and again in connection with brides. In Theocritus' Epithalamium to Helen, as in the Russian songs, the members of the chorus picture themselves continuing their maidenly pursuits: just as before they will go to the meadows to gather flowers and make wreathes, but Helen will no longer go with them. A less familiar image follows: the girls long for Helen the way suckling lambs long for their mother: aµµe; 6' e; ,p6µov jpl Kai e; Aetµwvta puMa :p)e0µe; reptvw; ope)euµevm ctou rvtovm;, roAAl Teo0;, 'EA:va, µeµvaµtvm w; yMa8ivai apve; yetvaµtva; otoc; µaarov ro8emom. Theocritus 18.39-42 We will go early in the morning to the Racecourse and to the meadow grasses To pluck sweetly smelling wreathes, Thinking of you often, Helen, just like suckling 95 of 135 8/19/18, 5: 16 PM QP Olga Lcvaniouk, Sky-Blue Flower: Songs of the Bride in Mode ... https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4647 KArt8i M3n T' EV VUKTl ppoVT[6wv µ:po; \TOI rpo; OV6po; \ T:KVWV po3ouµ:vrt· 144-150 A young life is tended In its own places, and neither the heat of the god [i.e. sun] Nor the rain, nor any of the winds assail it. Instead, it takes up a toil-free life amidst pleasures Until such time as she is she is called a wife instead of maiden And picks up in one night her share of cares, Fearing either for her husband or for her children. Deaneira never explicitly identifies the maiden with a flower or a tree in a protected garden, but her words seem to presuppose such images, since the "young life" is sheltered precisely from the dangers that threaten young saplings and tender flowers- the sun, rain, and wind. The carefree life of the maiden ends suddenly when in becoming a woman she acquires her share of cares in a single night. Similar sentiments are expressed in Russian laments and with similar diction. The brides refer to their new state as being beset with cares,[231] and, just like Deaneira, they emphasize the abruptness of the change: in Fedosova's lament the bride acquires "cares" "in one minute" (s M!HY o63a6ornnl, 295), a more extreme parallel to Deaneira's "one night."[232] §159. Seaford compares Deaneira's words to those uttered by an unidentified female speaker in a fragment of Sophocles' Tereus (fr.583 Radt): vOv 6' ou6:v eiµ1 xwp[;. aMa IOAAOKt; e3\ela rnuTn TflV yuvmKeiav pumv, w; ou6:v Eoµev. at v:m µ:v Ev rmpo; \610Tov, oIµm, �wµev av8pimwv 3iov· T:pIVW; yap Oel it6a; OVOia Tp:pet. OTQV 6' E: i3iv EEtK<liµe8' eµppove;, w0ouµe8' :Ew Kat 61eµ10\wµe8a 8ewv 1mp>wv TWV Te.puo.VTwv cmo, ai µ:v E:vou; rrpo; av6pa;, al 6e 3ap3.pou;, al 6' et; ayi8i 6wµa8', al i' Erippo8a. Now I am nothing {being) apart. But frequently I have seen the nature of women in this way, How we are nothing. As young ones in our father's house, We live, I think, the sweetest life of all men. For always folly delightfully sustains children. But when we reach the prime of youth and become sensible, We are pushed out and sold, Away from our ancestral gods and our parents, Some to strangers, some to barbarians, 98 of 135 8/19/18,5:16PM QP Olga Levaniouk, Sky-Blue Flower: Songs of the Bride in Mode ... hltps://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/arlicle/display/467 circulation and placed in the vault, from which she will be taken out when the moment comes to hand her over to the groom."[251] Ferrari's explanation of the metaphor implicit in engue is much more precise than a derivation from guion "the hand" and it finds a parallel in the Russian custom of "covering" and hiding the bride after the betrothal. In Siberia, a betrothed maiden retreated to a pantry-like space known as the kut'-essentially a vault. There is little doubt that in Russian villages this covering and hiding reflected the fact that the bride was no longer one of the maidens who are conspicuous in their beauty, visible to all and available for young males and their parents to look at. She has been claimed and, to use Ferrari's term, "taken out of circulation," set aside for one man alone. §166. At the same time, the Russian evidence also corroborates the ancient folk etymology of engue as derived from guion 'hand'. Betrothal is a contract between two males and just as Gernet suggested for ancient Greece it was marked in Russia by a handshake or a hand-slap, in some cases a special or elaborate one (involving touching of the shoulders, for example), for which the rules differed from region to region. The double name of the event in the Vologda region, both 'hand-slapping' and 'covering', testifies to its double significance for the males (for whom both aspects of the process, and both terms, are of importance) and for the bride, who has no part in the hand-slapping, but for whom being "closed off," to use yet another term applied to this event, was of momentous consequence. §167. If engue finds its parallels in the Russian evidence, then so does anakaluptea, perhaps the most discussed element of the Greek wedding. According to Pollux, the term refers to the day on which the groom "uncovers" the bride and also to the gifts given on that day.[252] Harpocration similarly explains anakalupteria as gifts given to the bride by the groom and his family when she is uncovered for the first time "so as to be seen by the men."[253] Hesychius gives a slightly different but compatible definition, namely the occasion on which the bride was led out (of her chambe) on the third day: oTe [V vuµp�v rpinov :�ayoumv [rnO 0A6µou] i Tpil 7µ:pt.[254] §168. The long-established idea that the bride was formally unveiled at this ceremony, perhaps shown to the groom for the first time, is challenged by Ferrari, who notes that the "anaka/upteia does not mean an act of unveiling. "[255] The term does, however, signify the day on which the bride was "revealed" for the groom and his family to see and the gits given to her on this occasion. Whether the "revelation" involved unveiling or not is a difficult, if not insoluble, question. There is cetainly plenty of evidence that the bride was heavily veiled during the procession to the house of the groom and that she was also veiled at the banquet. Ferrari points out that the brides on the Athenian black-figure vases wear elaborate and ornate shawls drawn over their heads and lift them in what is known as the "bridal gesture," holding the veil out so as to shield the left cheek-a gesture which Ferrari interprets as "an exaggeration of the act of veiling oneself, which is peformed by all persons possessed of aidos. "[256] It is not clear, however, what these depictions of the veiled brides mean for the interpretation of the anakalupteria, for none of them depict the actual ceremony. The antiquarians and lexicographers do not mention mantles in connection with anaka/upteria. On the other hand, a very impotant mantle plays a central role in the aiion of the ceremony, which survives in fragment of the sixth-century BCE cosmogony of Pherecydes of Syros: 102 of 135 8/19/18, 5:16 PM QP Olga Levaniouk, Sky-Blue Flower: Songs of the Bride in Mode... https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4647 the "tempestous head" of a hero or a maiden (the epithet is applied to both sexes) refers to one with willful thoughts or one with luxuriant hair, both meanings being common.[268] In the case of maidens there are contexts where the second denotation is made clear, and y et the first one seems to be present implicitly. Most directly, however, the adjective refers to the exuberant hair of the maiden. The hair is her pride and joy, she grows it long and decorates it with flowers and ribbons. The fact that the hair is "exuberant" does not mean that it is wild, uncombed, or worn loose. In most cases, the maidens in Russian villages would braid their hair and let a single braid fall down their backs. The exuberant hair is also not necessarily uncovered. Rather, there were maidenly kerchiefs and womanly headdresses, with an important diference. While it is clear that a womanly headdress was designed to hide her hair and indeed in many regions of Russia it was seen as improper or even dangerous for a married woman to show her hair in public, the maidenly headdress is a decoration, not a concealment, of the hair. §180. The luxury of the maiden's hair could also be a object of pride and rivalry in ancient Greece, precisely among marriageable girls, the bride's age-mates who dance at weddings. Such is the case in Euripides' /phigeneia in Tauris, where an escapist chorus recalls their maidenly thiasoi: xopoT; 6' :vo-rai�v, 081 Kai trrap0:vo; eu6oKiµwv yaµwv rapct r66' dAiooouoa ,iAa; µm:po; ]AiKwv 816oou; :; tµiAAa; xapiTWV a3pOIAOUTOIO xaiTa; d; eptV 6pvuµ:va IO\UTIOiKI\Q lapea Kai IAOKaµou; rep13Moµ:va y:vumv :oKia�ovt 1151-1164 May I enter into the dances of glorious weddings, Where I was as a maiden, dancing with the bands of my age-mates By my dear mother. I entered the contest of charms, The strife of luxuriant hair, I shaded my cheek with Ornate veil and locks of hair. Practically everything in this chorus would have been recognizable to the maidens in remote villages of Russia at the turn of the twentieth century: the choral dances and songs at weddings, the proximity of the mother to the maiden, the rivalry of luxurious hair, its coverings that are ornate and thus attract attention without concealing the hair (both the locks and the veil shade the maiden's cheek). The adjective ct3porAoun; used here of the hair overlaps with buinyi in conveying exuberant abundance. §181. The rivalry of hair among maidens is present also in Alcman's Patheneion, where Hagesichora's golden hair is like a flower, outshining all others: 107 of 135 8/19/18, 5: 16 PM QP Olga Levaniouk, Sky-Blue Flower: Songs of the Bride in Mode ... https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4647 paticular locations, suggesting that they were common in many places.[292] §202. This phenomenon, which is part of a much broader custom of hair dedications, finds no parallel in Russia, and it would be hasty to connect such dedications directly with age- or marriage-related changes in hairstyle.[293] On the other hand, if a woman's hairstyle did indeed change upon marriage, then we might find some traces of the maidens' attitudes to their hair in their dedications of the locks. More to the point, the poetic descriptions of these dedications hint at the maidens' pre-wedding behavior, of which the dedications formed a part. This behavior included, to judge from the Hippolytus, both tears and songs, perhaps wedding laments. We learn about these songs, moreover, in a play where Hippolytus himself, it has been argued, is presented as a reluctant bride.[294] As they are making their dedications and cying for Hippolytus, the brides perhaps also lament for their maidenhood and their dedication of hair signals a transition to an age where neither their hair nor they themselves will remain unbound. There is no reference to the songs in Callimachus, but the pointed use of µopµuooem1, a verb derived from the name of the bogey-woman Marmo, suggests that the future brides are gripped by a childish fear, a likely description of the emotions often expressed in wedding laments. §203. I will have more to say about such dedications in the next edition of this work. For now, I would like to conclude with a description of maidens from the Homeric ymn to Demeter that encapsulates many of the themes touched upon so far. As they lead Demeter to their father's house, the daughters of Keleos run joyfully along the way: ai 5' &; T' J ehcpm J n6pne; japo; wpn ahhovT' av he1µwva Kopeaoiµevm pp:va pop3t, i; ai :max6µevm :avwv muxa; iµepo:VTwv \YEav KOLArJV KUT' iµaEtTOV, aµpi 6: XULTQI Jµm; OOOOVTO KpOKjrp tV8et 6µmat. 174-178 Just as does or heifers in the season of spring Bound through the meadow, their hearts sated with grass, So they, lifting up the folds of their lovely robes, Rushed along the hollowed-out wagon road and their hair Bounced about their shoulders, looking like the crocus flower. §204. The four maidens, described earlier (108) as Koupr[iov avBo; exouam, "in the bloom of maidenhood," are compared to heifers frolicking in the springtime, bringing to mind the theme of bride as a lost heifer. These heifers are not yet lost, but still safe and innocent as they run home to their mother, another sharp contrast to the wedding laments, and, of course, to Persephone, who is indeed gone and alone, separated from inconsolable Demeter. The meadow where the heifers play is the very space from which Persephone was abducted, the verdant and eotically charged locus of potentialities, the place where maidens engage in the double-entendre that is their "play." As the daughters of Keleos run, their unbound hair bounces freely on their shoulders and is compared to the crocus flower. In its freedom and its likeness to a flower the hair of the Keleos' daughters evokes associations that are vey similar to the ones attaching to maidenly ll5 of 135 8/19/18, 5: 16 PM QP Olga Lcvaniouk, Sky-Blue Flower: Songs of the Bride in Mode... https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4647 kasota in Russian songs: the playful freedom of the maidens, their conspicuous beauty as yet not hidden from view, and the fact that all of this will be as shot-lived as a crocus or hyacinth, that they will soon be taken from the meadow, just as Persephone has been, their hair bound or covered and their beauty hidden within the house. The distance between the laments performed by the Russian brides at their own weddings as late as the 1930s and the Homeric mn to Demeter is immense. All the more remarkable, therefore, are the echoes in ritual and in song, in action and in word, echoes that reveal the strength, the systemic and diachronic persistence, of wedding poetics. 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Classical Philoloy 74:16-27. Campbell, J. 1964. Honou, Famil, and Patonage: A Study of Institutions and Moal Values in a Geek Mountain Community. Oxford. Calame, C. 1997. Chouses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: heir Mopholog, Reigious Role and Social Function. Lanham. - - - . 1999. he Poetics of Eos in Ancient Geece. Princeton. Chantraine, P. 1968-1980. Dictionaire etymologique de la langue grecque. Paris. Chistov, K. and T. Bernshtam (K.B. IICTOB, T.A. 5epHWTaM) 1978. PyccK1M HapOJHb/M CBaJeBHblM o6plJ. Leningrad. 116 of 135 8/19/18, 5: 16 PM