Етнопсихологічна специфіка образу Смерті у казках українців Закарпаття, Словаччини та Сербії.

Abstract

The article is dedicated to a rethinking of the semantics of the image of Death in the folklore of Ukrainians of Transcarpathia, Slovakia and Serbia. The tales about Death were analyzed in this article. The tales under analysis were noted by V. Gnatyuk in Zeplinskiy (Eastern Slovakia) from 1896 to 1897 and in Bach-Brodskiy (Serbia), M. Gyryak in Svynschyna (Eastern Slovakia, 1962), M. Fintsytskiy (at the end of ХІХ century) and P. Lintur (at the second half of ХХ century) in Transcarpathia. In the folklore, the image of Death is closely connected with ideas about a person’s fate and it is often objectified in the image of a woman, rarely – a man (“A Death is a corny”) or an animal (of white color). In tales and mythological stories, the image of Death has the archetypical semantics: the archetype of Anima (“As a Man Becomes Death’s crony”, “A Poor Man and a Death”, “As a Death was a Guest of a Man”, “About a Knight and a Death”, “A Knight and a Death”, “A Death and a Theft”) and archetype of Self (“A Death is a corny”) are projected into it. That is why it appears either as a man or a woman. A Death in the image of a woman is the personification of a dark side of an ancient Goddess, Horrible Mother, as “the birth” of a soul in the beyond world is a traumatic experience and a negative event for a man. In folklore stories of Slavs, a Death is supposed to wear white clothes, because the white color is symbolized the conversion of a man from life to death. According to psychoanalysis, before a man dies he sees an unknown aspect of his own soul in the image of Death who becomes his guide to the beyond world. In tales a Death becomes a crony of a man, she functions as an assistant – she makes her crony rich and gives him an ability to predict if a sick person recovers or not, but it doesn’t give him immortality. Crony-Death functions as benefactor, temper and judge. In these folk tales, people’s imagination metaphorically models the psychological process of a person’s obsession with negative Anima, because this person got the wealth as a gift and it does not provide his spiritual development. An attempt to deceive a Death-crony failed in all the tales. In tales “About a Knight and a Death”, “A Knight and a Death” there is a motive of marriage with a Death: before dying a knight made a marriage proposal to an awful woman-Death, but she refused and took his life. In the tales “A Death and a Theft” and “About a Grey Beard” the image of a Death is of the other semantics – here she is not a fateful deity, but a demonic creature, and a man looks better and humanistic in comparison with her.