Updating laments. Lamenters’ views on improvisation in the late 20th - early 21st century

The paper analyzes a lamenter attitude towards her lament. In her other papers the author analyzed laments as a ritual folkloric text with a melody, which imitates weeping. The texts consist of folkloric formulas aiming to a communication with the dead. The lamentations are performed in funeral and commemoration feasts by special women called lamenters. The article researches lamenters’ emic (existing within the culture) attitude of lamenters towards the question of improvisation. By the material from interviews and comments appearing in the process of recordings of lamentations, it is proved that the idea of lamenting as an expression of grief is part of the lamenters’ emic concept of funeral lament. The texts of the bailichkas and oral narratives define two types of lamenters: a professional one, working for a fee, and a grieving relative, spontaneously beginning to lament at the funerals of relatives, and it is the second one, who becomes a protagonist. Tales of learning the lament also work on this idea. Despite the practice of training before the first lament, lamenters were to maintain an illusion of spontaneity and personal emotional involvement. Thus, the ethical notion of a lamenter as a ritual specialist, which was formed as the result of a long and careful analysis of texts and practices, contradicts not only the ‘romantic’ view of the world of the first collectors of folklore, but also the emotional representation that exists within the culture.

folklore study, ethnology, lament, lamenter, improvisation, folklore formula, narration, funeral rite, commemoration rite

1. Efimenkova BB. The North Russian Lamentation. Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor Publ.; 1980. 392 p. (In Russ.)

2. Azadovsky MK. The laments of Lena-river. Chita: Tipografiya Dal’profsoveta Publ.; 1922. 128 p. (In Russ.)

3. Alekseevsky MD. The Motive of the Reviving of the Deceased in Northern Russian funeral Laments: Text and Ritual Context. Forum for Anthropology and Culture. 2007;6:227-62. (In Russ.)

4. Tolstaya SM. The Ritual Lament: Vocabulary, Semantics, Pragmatics. V: The World Sounding and Silent: The Semiotics of Sound and Speech in the Traditional Culture of the Slavs. Moscow: Indrik Publ.; 1999. p. 135-48. (In Russ.)

5. Barsov EV. The Laments of the North Region. Part1: The Funeral Laments. Moscow: Tipografiya “Sovremennye Izvestiya” Publ.; 1872. 327 p. (In Russ.)

6. Yugai EF., comp. “Can neither Moor nor Stick to Any Shore”: Funeral Lamentation of Vologda Region. Iss. 1: Totemsky (Totma), Tarnogsky (Tarnoga), Nikolsky (Nikolsk) districts. Vologda: Vologodskii oblastnoi detsko-yunosheskii tsentr traditsionnoi narodnoi kul’tury Publ.; 2011. 112 p. (In Russ.)

7. Yugai EF., comp. “I Have Lost My Little Loss”: Funeral Lamentations of Vologda Region. / Сост., авт. вступ. ст. и коммент. Е.Ф. Югай. Iss. 2: Kaduy. Cherepovets: Izdatel’skii dom – Print Publ.; 2016. 128 p. (In Russ.)

8. Kruglov YuG. The Ritual Poetry. Vol. 3: Lamentation. Moscow: Russkaya kniga Publ.; 2000. 506 p. (In Russ.)

9. Kovpik VA. Ways of creating a comic effect in parodic lamentations. By the material of anecdotal stories about the unskillful lamenters. Traditsionnaya kul’tura. 2004;3:75-9. (In Russ.)

10. Lotman YuM. The Records of folk laments of the early 19th century from the archive of G.R. Derzhavin. Russkaya literatura. 1960;3:145-50. (In Russ.)

11. Vinogradova LN. The Sonic Portrait of the Evil Spirit. V: The World Sounding and Silent: The Semiotics of Sound and Speech in the Traditional Culture of the Slavs. Moscow: Indrik Publ.; 1999. p. 179-99. (In Russ.)

12. Koval-Fuchilo IM. The East-Slavic Lamentations: Features of the Transfer (a view from within the tradition). V: Заjедничко по славенскому фольклору. Белград, 2012. p. 321-34. (In Russ.)

13. Tolstoi NI., ed. Slavic antiquities: The Ethnolinguistic Dictionary. Vol. 4: Water crossing ferry-Sieve. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya Publ.; 2009. 656 p. (In Russ.)

14. Podyukov IA., ed. To the feast it is going, and to the word it is said. Folklore Paremics of Perm Krai. Sankt-Peterburg: Mamatov Publ.; 2014. 171 p.