Vladimir Propp
Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analysed the basic structural elements of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible structural units. Vladimir Propp was born on 17 April 1895 in Saint Petersburg to an assimilated Russian family of German descent, his parents, Yakov Philippovich Propp and Anna-Elizaveta Fridrikhovna Propp, were Volga German wealthy peasants from Saratov Governorate. He attended Saint Petersburg University, majoring in German philology. Upon graduation he taught Russian and German at a secondary school and became a college teacher of German, his Morphology of the Folktale was published in Russian in 1928. Although it represented a breakthrough in both folkloristics and morphology and influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, it was unnoticed in the West until it was translated in 1958, his morphology is used in media education and has been applied to other types of narrative, be it in literature, film, television series, etc. although Propp applied it to the wonder or fairy tale.
In 1932, Propp became a member of Leningrad University faculty. After 1938, he chaired the Department of Folklore until it became part of the Department of Russian Literature. Propp remained a faculty member until his death in 1970, his main books are: Morphology of the tale, Leningrad 1928 Historical Roots of the wonder tale, Leningrad 1946 Russian Epic Song, Leningrad 1955–1958 Popular Lyric Songs, Leningrad 1961 Russian Agrarian Feasts, Leningrad 1963He published some articles, the most important are: The Magical Tree on the tomb Wonderful Childbirth Ritual Laughter in folklore Oedipus in the light of folkloreFirst printed in specialized reviews, they were republished in Folklore and Reality, Leningrad 1976 Two books were published post mortem: Problems of comedy and laughter, Leningrad 1983 The Russian Folktale, Leningrad 1984The first book remained unfinished, the second one is the edition of the course he gave in Leningrad university. Morphology of the Tale was translated into English in 1958 and 1968.
It was translated into Italian and Polish in 1966, French and Romanian in 1970, Spanish in 1971, German in 1975. Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale was translated into Italian in 1949 and 1972, Spanish in 1974, French and Japanese in 1983. "Oedipus in the light of folklore" was translated into Italian in 1975. Russian Agrarian Feasts was translated into French in 1987. According to Propp, based on his analysis of 100 folktales from the corpus of Aleksey Fyodorovich Afanas'ev, there were 31 basic structural elements that occurred within Russian fairy tales, he wonder tales in Russian folklore. These functions occurred in a specific; this type of structural analysis of folklore is referred to as "syntagmatic". This focus on the events of a story and the order in which they occur is in contrast to another form of analysis, the "paradigmatic", more typical of Lévi-Strauss's structural study of myth. Lévi-Strauss sought to uncover a narrative's underlying pattern, regardless of the linear, superficial syntagm, his structure is rendered as a binary oppositional structure.
For paradigmatic analysis, the syntagm, or the linear structural arrangement of narratives is irrelevant to their underlying meaning. After the initial situation is depicted, any wonder tale will be composed of a selection of the following 31 functions, in a fixed, consecutive order:1. ABSENTATION: A member of the hero's community or family leaves the security of the home environment; this may be the hero themselves, or some other relation that the hero must rescue. This division of the cohesive family injects initial tension into the storyline; this may serve as the hero's introduction portraying them as an ordinary person. 2. INTERDICTION: A forbidding edict or command is passed upon the hero; the hero is warned against some action. 3. VIOLATION of INTERDICTION; the prior rule is violated. Therefore the hero did not listen to the forbidding edict. Whether committed by the Hero by accident or temper, a third party or a foe, this leads to negative consequences; the villain enters the story via this event, although not confronting the hero.
They may be a lurking and manipulative presence, or might act against the hero's family in his absence. 4. RECONNAISSANCE: The villain makes an effort to attain knowledge needed to fulfill their plot. Disguises are invoked as the villain probes for information for a valuable item or to abduct someone, they may speak with a family member. The villain may seek out the hero in their reconnaissance to gauge their strengths in response to learning of their special nature. 5. DELIVERY: The villain succeeds at recon and gains a lead on their intended victim. A map is involved in some level of the event. 6. TRICKERY: The villain attempts to deceive the victim to acquire something valuable, they press further, aiming to earn their trust. Sometimes the villain make little or no deception and instead ransoms one valuable thing for another. 7. COMPLICITY: The victim is fooled or forced to concede and unwittingly or unwillingly helps the villain, now free to access somewhere off-limits, like the privacy of the hero's home or a treasure vault, acting without restraint in their ploy.
8. VILLAINY or LAC
Rotting Christ
Rotting Christ is a Greek black metal band formed in 1987. They are noted for being one of the first black metal bands within this region, as well as a premier act within the European underground metal scene, they are responsible for creating the signature Greek black metal sound prevalent in the early 1990s. The permanent line-up consists of brothers Sakis Themis Tolis. Andreas Lagios was the bassist since 1997, taking the stead of Jim Patsouris until the end of 2011. Nightfall's Giorgos Bokos joined as a guitarist in 2005. In February 2012, Bokos announced his departure from the band for personal reasons. In December 2012, the new members of the band were announced: guitarist George Emmanuel and bassist Vaggelis Karzis. Three keyboardists had been a part of the band; the band members from the beginning, up to Triarchy of the Lost Lovers album, were using the pseudonyms Necromayhem for Sakis, Necrosauron for Themis and Mutilator for Jim. During their rehearsal era in the late 1980s, the band began as grindcore and released various demos and splits with other bands from the Athens area.
The group would alter their sound with influence from proto-black metal bands like Celtic Frost and Venom, in the process became one of the genre's instigators. Their 5-song demo, Satanas Tedeum, would show a grindcore/black metal crossover, followed by their career-breaking album, Passage to Arcturo, in 1991. One of band's first major appearances was on the 1993 "Fuck Christ Tour" consisting of Immortal and Blasphemy. During this concert, some audience members had engaged in cutting and self-mutilation that resulted in hospitalization. Before signing to Unisound, Mayhem's Øystein Aarseth had expressed interest in distributing the band through his Deathlike Silence Productions label, but due to Aarseth's murder the same year, nothing materialized; the band would sign to Century Media in 1996 and remain on their roster for 10 years before joining Season of Mist. Rotting Christ has played in many countries outside their native Greece, including both Americas, Greater Europe, the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
Several heavy metal festivals around the world have hosted the band, including the 2003 Wacken Open Air in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Past tourmates have included My Dying Bride, Tiamat, Finntroll, Old Man's Child, Malevolent Creation, Anorexia Nervosa, Krisiun, Behemoth and Nile, among many others. Rotting Christ was one of the initial bands to be announced to perform the Barge to Hell festival, a metal-themed cruise organized by Ultimate Metal Cruises and take place aboard Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Seas. Barge to Hell set sail from Port of Miami on December 3, 2012; as of 2012, Rotting Christ has been around for 25 years and is one of the longest running bands within the black metal genre. In celebration of the band's longevity, the 2-DVD + 2-CD compilation Non Serviam: A 20 Year Apocryphal Story, shot in Athens on December 8, 2007, was released worldwide February 23, 2009. Aealo, the band's tenth studio album, was released on February 15, 2010, for Europe and February 23, 2010, for the USA.
Their eleventh album, Kata ton Daimona Eaytoy, was released in March 2013. They made their first appearance in south Asia on September 13, 2014 in India and September 14, 2014 in Sri Lanka. Rituals was released February 12, 2016. To coincide with their 30th anniversary, the band released a new 7" single "The Call" on February 9, 2018. Rotting Christ's thirteenth studio album, The Heretics, was released on February 15th, 2019. Over the years, the group has faced controversy due to their name and gained international media attention in November 1999 during the 2000 United States Presidential Primaries for Republican Nomination, when candidate/Christian conservative Gary Bauer accused the band of being "anti-Catholic", among other things. In response to Bauer's criticism, Sakis Tolis wrote: Living in democratic societies, I think everyone should have the right to call religions as he/she wants. We in fact believe they are "rotting"! We are not a "satanic-crusader" type of band but rather one of the many bands that represent the dark side in nowadays Metal music.
They have had to cancel some shows, most in May 2005, when Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine threatened to refuse to play at a Greek concert if Rotting Christ were on the bill. In response to their forced cancellation, Tolis noted: I didn't expect something like that from Dave Mustaine, you know, he's supposed to be metal — you know,'metal band,' all metal... I just feel sorry for him and for every new Christian with new ideas, because we think Christianity is the worst thing to happen in human history; this is a well-organized trick in order to control society, so when I see someone that's much Christian, that's full of the system, I feel sorry for him because he's not free. Nuclear Assault and former Anthrax bassist Dan Lilker defended Rotting Christ and criticized Dave Mustaine's actions, as did Nevermore's Warrel Dane, whose bands appeared on Mustaine's Gigantour in 2005. Dane added: Everybody is free to believe anything he wants to. I have met the guys from Rotting Christ and I don't think that they are Satanists or something.
I think. When playing in Malta, a country which in its constitution declares itself as Roman Catholic, t
Undead
The undead are beings in mythology, legend, or fiction that are deceased but behave as if they were alive. A common example of an undead being is a corpse reanimated by supernatural forces, by the application of either the deceased's own life force or that of another being; the undead may corporeal like vampires and zombies. The undead are featured in the belief systems of most cultures, appear in many works of fantasy and horror fiction; the term is occasionally used for putative non-supernatural cases of re-animation, from early experiments like Robert E. Cornish's to future sciences such as chemical brain preservation and cryonics. Bram Stoker considered using the title, The Un-Dead, for his novel Dracula, use of the term in the novel is responsible for the modern sense of the word; the word does appear in English before Stoker but with the more literal sense of "alive" or "not dead", for which citations can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary. In one passage, Nosferatu is given as an "Eastern European" synonym for "un-dead".
Stoker's use of the term "undead" refers only to vampires. Most it is now taken to refer to supernatural beings which had at one point been alive and continue to display some aspects of life after death, but the usage is variable. In Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, Van Helsing describes the Un-Dead as the following: ‘Before we do any-thing, let me tell you this, it is out of the lore and experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the UnDead. When they become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality, they cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiply-ing the evils of the world. For all that die from the preying of the Undead become themselves Undead, prey on their kind, and so the circle goes on widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water... But of the most blessed of all, when this now UnDead be made to rest as true dead the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free. Instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day, she shall take her place with the other Angels.
So that, my friend, it will be a blessed hand for her. Other notable 19th-century stories about the avenging undead included Ambrose Bierce's The Death of Halpin Frayser, various Gothic Romanticism tales by Edgar Allan Poe. Though their works could not be properly considered zombie fiction, the supernatural tales of Bierce and Poe would prove influential on writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, by Lovecraft's own admission. In the Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort uses reanimated dead bodies that are placed under his control by his dark magic powers as his guardians, they are known as Inferi. Banshee Ghost, Phantom, or Spectre Grim reaper Poltergeist Shadow person Wraith Draugr Ghoul Jiangshi Lich Mummy Revenant Skeleton Vampire Wight Zombie Afterlife Death Ghost story Ghouls in popular culture Grógaldr Immortality Jiangshi fiction Necromancy Philosophical zombie Resurrection True death Vampire fiction Völuspá Werewolf fiction Zombie
Green week
Green week is an ancient Slavic fertility festival celebrated in early June and linked with the cult of the dead and the spring agricultural rites. In Russian villages, the seven weeks after Easter were a time of festivity, Green Week took place during the seventh week; the Thursday of that week included burial services for the unclean dead. Green week is called Trinity Week in Russia, Whitsuntide week in Britain; the end of Semik inaugurated the celebrations of Trinity Sunday. On Semik, funeral rites were held for the unclean dead. Birch trees were significant to the holiday, because they were considered hosts for the souls of the deceased. Sometimes people would honor a particular tree by decorating it or carrying it around, while other times people would cut birch branches and hang them in their home; the birch was seen as a symbol of vegetative power, may have been honored with the hope of bringing its vitality to the coming season's crops. Springtime and fertility rituals were important to the holiday.
Girls brought offerings of fried eggs and beer to birches, spoke charms about improved harvest when weaving garlands for the trees. Another tradition is; some believe this to be the remnant of ritual sexual activity associated with the cult of spring. Like Kostroma during Maslenitsa, a chosen birch tree was destroyed at the end of the festivities, it was drowned "in order to provide the needed rainfall for the sprouting crops". The rusalki nature spirits were another important figure to Green Week traditions; some believe they were associated with deceased family members, or only unclean dead. Sometimes an honored birch tree would be named for a rusalka as part of Green Week; some of the rites of Green Week were thought to placate the rusalki so they would stay away from the village's agricultural fields for the season and thus not bring them harm. The rusalki are associated with water and fertility, so may be invoked during Green Week in an attempt to bring their moisture and vigor to the fields.
During Green Week, rusalki were believed to be more active, making them a greater threat to villagers. One precaution villagers took during this week was avoiding swimming, because rusalki were thought to live in the water and might drown passers by. There is a similar holiday celebrating Pentecost in Romania, called Rusalii. In Germanic tradition there is a similar tradition, for example, Pfingstbaumpflanzen in Germany. In modern-day Poland it is celebrated along with Pentecostal Sunday as Zielone Świątki. Holy Trinity Day or Svyata Triytsya and Green Holidays in Ukraine
Rusalka (opera)
Rusalka, Op. 114, is an opera by Antonín Dvořák. The Czech libretto was written by the poet Jaroslav Kvapil based on the fairy tales of Karel Jaromír Erben and Božena Němcová. A rusalka is a water sprite from Slavic mythology inhabiting a lake or river. Rusalka is one of the most successful Czech operas, represents a cornerstone of the repertoire of Czech opera houses. Dvořák had played viola for many years in pit orchestras in Prague, he thus had direct experience of a wide range of operas by Mozart, Rossini, Verdi and Smetana. Rusalka was the ninth opera Dvořák composed. For many years unfamiliarity with Dvořák's operas outside the Czech lands helped reinforce a perception that composition of operas was a marginal activity, that despite the beauty of its melodies and orchestral timbres Rusalka was not a central part of his output or of international lyric theatre. In recent years it has been performed more by major opera companies. In the five seasons from 2008 to 2013 it was performed by opera companies worldwide far more than all of Dvořák's other operas combined.
The most popular excerpt from Rusalka is the "Song to the Moon" from act 1, performed in concert and recorded separately. It has been arranged for violin and used on film sound tracks. Kvapil's libretto, based on Erben's and Božena Němcová's work, was written before he had any contact with the composer; the plot contains elements which appear in The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen and in Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, has been described as a "sad, modern fairy tale", in a similar vein to his previous play, Princessa Pampeliška. The libretto was completed by 1899, when Kvapil began looking for composers interested in setting his text, his composer friends were engaged with other works, but mentioned that Dvořák was looking for a project. The composer, always interested in Erben's stories, read the libretto and composed his opera quite with the first draft begun on 22 April 1900 and completed by the end of November. Coming after his four symphonic poems inspired by the folk-ballads of Erben of 1896–97, Rusalka may be viewed as the culmination of Dvořák's exploration of a "wide variety of drama-creating musical techniques".
Rusalka was first performed in Prague on 31 March 1901, with Růžena Maturová as the first Rusalka. It became an enormous success in Czech lands, soon gained success abroad; the first performance outside Bohemia took place in Ljubljana. The opera was given in Vienna by a Czech company in 1910; the UK stage premiere was at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1959. The United States premiere of the opera was presented by the San Diego Opera in 1975 with Kathryn Bouleyn in the title role. Rusalka was first performed in New York at the Metropolitan Opera in 1993, a production from the Vienna State Opera, directed by Otto Schenk, with Gabriela Beňačková and Neil Rosenshein. A meadow by the edge of a lake Three wood-sprites tease ruler of the lake. Rusalka, the Water-Nymph, tells her father she has fallen in love with a human Prince who comes to hunt around the lake, she wants to become human to embrace him, he tells her it nonetheless steers her to a witch, Ježibaba, for assistance. Rusalka sings asking it to tell the Prince of her love.
Ježibaba tells Rusalka that, if she becomes human, she will lose the power of speech and immortality. Rusalka drinks a potion; the Prince, hunting a white doe, finds Rusalka, embraces her, leads her away, as her father and sisters lament. The garden of the Prince's castle A Gamekeeper and his nephew, the Kitchen-Boy, note that the Prince is to be married to a mute and nameless bride, they suspect witchcraft and doubt it will last, as the Prince is lavishing attentions on a Foreign Princess, a wedding guest. The Foreign Princess, curses the couple; the prince rejects Rusalka. Rusalka goes back to the lake with her father the Water Gnome. Though she has now won the Prince's affections, the Foreign Princess is disgusted by the Prince's fickleness and betrayal and she scorns him, telling him to follow his rejected bride to Hell. A meadow by the edge of a lake Rusalka asks Ježibaba for a solution to her woes and is told she can save herself if she kills the Prince with the dagger she is given. Rusalka rejects this.
Rusalka becomes a bludička, a spirit of death living in the depths of the lake, emerging only to lure humans to their deaths. The Gamekeeper and the Kitchen Boy consult Ježibaba about the Prince, they say, has been betrayed by Rusalka; the Water-Goblin says that it was the Prince that betrayed Rusalka. The wood-sprites mourn Rusalka's plight; the Prince, searching for his white doe, comes to the lake, senses Rusalka, calls for her. He asks her to kiss him knowing her kiss means death and damnation, they kiss and he dies. Rusalka thanks the Prince for letting her experience human love, commends his soul to God, returns to her place in the depths of the lake as a demon of death. Rusalka is scored for 2 flutes, 1 piccolo, 2 oboes, 1 English horn, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, percussion and strings. Dvořák's music is through-compos
Russalka Memorial
The Russalka Memorial is a bronze monument sculpted by Amandus Adamson, erected on 7 September 1902 in Kadriorg, Tallinn, to mark the ninth anniversary of the sinking of the Russian warship Rusalka, or "Mermaid", which sank en route to Finland in 1893. It was the first monument in Estonia made by an Estonian sculptor; the monument depicts an angel holding an Orthodox cross towards the assumed direction of the shipwreck. The model for the angel was the sculptor's housekeeper Juliana Rootsi, whose grandson is the politician, Tiit Made. In 2005, Eesti Post issued a postage stamp series for the 150th anniversary of the sculptor, with the Russalka Memorial depicted on the cover. Media related to Rusalka Memorial at Wikimedia Commons From "Mermaid" - to the "Kursk"
Ivan Bilibin
Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin was a Russian illustrator and stage designer who took part in the Mir iskusstva, contributed to the Ballets Russes, co-founded the Union of Russian Painters and from 1937 was a member of the Artists' Union of the USSR. Throughout his career, he was inspired by Slavic folklore. Ivan Bilibin was born in a suburb of St. Petersburg, he studied in 1898 at Anton Ažbe Art School in Munich, where he was influenced by Art Nouveau and the German satirical journal Simplicissimus, under Ilya Repin in St. Petersburg. After graduating in May 1901 he went to Munich, where he completed his training with the painter Anton Ažbe. In the period 1902 to 1904, working under the Russian Museum he traveled to the Vologda and Arkhangelsk Governorates, performing ethnographic research, examining examples of Russian wooden architecture, he published his findings in the monograph Народное творчество русского Севера in 1904. Another influence on his art was traditional Japanese prints. After the formation of the artists' association Mir Iskusstva, where he was an active member, his entry into the newspaper and book graphics scene began with a commission for the design of magazine Mir Iskusstva in 1899 contributing essays on Russian Folk art.
Artistic design of other magazines such as Dog Rose and expenditure of the Moscow publishing house followed. Bilibin gained renown in 1899. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he drew revolutionary cartoons for the magazine "Župel", which in 1906 became prohibited thanks to an illustration by him of Tsar as a donkey.. He would further serve as the designer for the 1909 première production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel. In 1911, Bilibin was hired by the State Paper Manufacturing Section to illustrate ball programs and book posters, postcards for the Red Cross's Society of St Eugenia and envelopes and stationary with the Russian Bogatyrs. After the October Revolution in 1917, Bilibin left Russia, he moved to Cairo and Alexandria where he painted for the Greek colony settled in Paris in 1925, where he took to decorating private mansions and Orthodox churches. He still longed for his homeland and, after decorating the Soviet Embassy, he returned in 1936 to Soviet Russia. Bilibin died during the Siege of Leningrad, starving within the city when he refused to leave, was buried in a collective grave.
In 1902 Bilibin married his former student, the Irish-Russian painter and illustrator of children's stories Mary Chambers. They had two sons and Ivan. In 1912 he again married a former student, the art school graduate Renée O'Connell, granddaughter of Daniel O'Connell. In 1923 he married the painter Alexandra Shchyekatikhina-Pototskaya, with whom he had a joint exhibition in Amsterdam in 1929. Folktales published by the "Department for the Production of State Documents"Сказка об Иване-царевиче, Жар-птице и о Сером волке, 1899. Alt link Василиса Прекрасная, 1899 Царевна-Лягушка, 1899 Перышко Финиста Ясна-Сокола, 1900 Марья Моревна, 1901 Сестрица Аленушка и братец Иванушка, 1901–1902CS1 maint: Date format Белая уточка, 1902 Былина "Вольга", 1903, pdf Collections in translated tales: Wheeler, Post, ed. Russian Wonder Tales, twelve selected illustrations Afanasyev, Russkie narodnye skazki - Russian Fairy Tales, selection from "State Department" work that includes Sister Alionushka... Main illustrations onlyIllustrations of Pushkin's talesPushkin, Alexander, Сказка о золотом петушке Pushkin, Alexander, Сказка о царе Салтане Pushkin, Alexander, Сказка о рыбаке и рыбке, unpublished Pushkin, Alexander, Руслан и Людмила OtherRoslavlev, A.
S. Сказки Поди туда — не знаю куда, принеси то — не знаю что…, 1919, unpublished Contes de l'Isba, 1931 Carpenter, Tales of a Russian GrandmotherCS1 maint: Date format Contes de la couleuvre, 1932 Conte du petit poisson d'or, 1933 Le Tapis Volant, 1924 Le farouche Abd-el-Kader, 1936 Adhémar de Montgon. Henri IV, 1936 Anderson, H. C; the Little Mermaid Percheron, M. Moscou Tolstoy, A. N. Петр Первый Песнь про царя Ивана Васильевича, молодого опричника и удалого купца Ивана Калашникова, 1939 Vodovozov, N. V. Слово о стольном Киеве
Media related to Rusalka at Wikimedia Commons
