dukhovnye stikhi

[nataliek at UALBERTA.CA]

I wrote to Jim Bailey earlier.  I now want to respond to the list,
specifically
taking up Daniel Rancour-Laferriere question about lack of attention to or
disinterest in folk spirituality.

First, at the risk of being immodest, I would like to point out that I discuss
dukhovnye stikhi quite extensively in my Ukrainian Minstrels book.  After all,
this was their primary genre.  Now, admittedly I am dealing with Ukrainian
minstrelsy, not Russian, but minstrelsy did not really know national
boundaries
and the lirnyk phenomenon extended into Russia.  In fact, there were lirnyky
(hurdy-gurdy players) who were also blind beggars in Europe.

About kaliki/kaleki.  Both terms were used.  In the material
collected
directly from Ukrainian minstrels, they say that being a cripple is the
requirement for taking on a profession such as minstrelsy, as in you don't go
begging because you are poor; you have to be disabled.  This disability seems
to have taken the form of blindness 99% of the time, but, officially
(according
to minstrel guilds), the requirment for joining a guild was physical
disability.

Now about lack of attention to dukhvonye stikhi - some of this has to do with
the Soviet Union.  Remember, religion was a no-no in Soviet times.  Collecting
and publishing religious verse was not a good idea.  Quite a few
collections of
dukhovnye stikhi came out when the Soviet Union fell, but even Bezsonov
was hard
to get before.  Probably even more influencial on Western approaches were
nationalist concerns.  Taking Ukrainian material, which is what I know best,
most scholars and the general public want to know about epic poetry because
that is what is glorious and connected to important historic events.  The
genres that were performed alongside epic poetry were deemed to be of lesser
value and therefore not as interesting.  A big problem is precisely the
performer.  Somehow the idea of blind beggars does not fit well with ideas of
glorious artists.  With epic poetry, you could argue that it originated
elsewhere and then "sank" to the minstrel guilds (not that I buy this
argument).  This is harder to do with dukhovnye stikhi, though you could argue
that they were written by seminarians and picked up by minstrels.

I will be curious to see what happens to the study of dukhovnye stikhi.  Again
going by Ukraine, the performers are now predominantly female.  They are
usually the women who performed substitute religious services during the Soviet
period and became part of the choir or pevcha when official religion returned to
the village.  Will people be willing to look at these songs now that are are
primarily women's songs?  I have an article on them coming out in a book on
improvisation.  We'll see in anyone else will look at these very interesting
and, from the folk point of view, important, verses.

Natalie Kononenko
Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography
University of Alberta
Modern Languages and Cultural Studies
200 Arts Building
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E6
Phone: 780-492-6810
Web: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/uvp/

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