INTERPRETATION OF A GROUP OF TERRACOTTA FIGURINES FROM ANCIENT GREEK SANCTUARIES OF THE CRIMEAN PRYAZOVIA

В статье рассматривается группа терракотовых статуэток с изображениями мальчиков, происходящая из раскопок сельских святилищ Крымского Приазовья. Сюжеты с детьми широко представлены в боспорской коропластике II-I вв. до н. э. и долгое время считались бытовыми. Однако обстоятельства находок и анализ иконографии позволяют проследить сакральный смысл этих статуэток. В контексте ритуальной практики святилищ фигурки детей с сопутствующими атрибутами (птица, собака, лошадь, щит) могут быть интерпретированы как воплощение полисемантического образа божественного ребенка, символизирующего плодородное жизненное начало, потенциальную жизнь, обновление, возрождение, заключающего в себе характеристики лиминального существа, помещаемого в сакральном пространстве на границе земного и потустороннего миров, наделенного функциями медиатора, связующего космические зоны. The paper reports on a group of terracotta figurines featuring boys that comes from excavations of rural sanctuaries in the Crimean Priazovia. Narrative scenes with children are widely represented in Bosporan coroplast of the 2 - 1 cc. BC, for a long time they were considered items for household use. However, circumstances of the finds and analysis of iconography suggest sacral meaning of these figurines. In the context of the sanctuary practice, the children figurines with accompanying attributes (a bird, a dog, a horse, a shield) can be interpreted as incarnation of a polysemantic image of a divine child as a symbol of a fertile start of life, potential life, renewal, rebirth that includes characteristics of a liminal creature placed in sacral space on the borderline between the human world and another world with functions of a mediator linking cosmic zones.

Vom »Mozartbuch für die Jugend« zu »Little Amadeus«

Artikelbeginn:[English title and abstract below] Das Bild Wolfgang Amadeus Mozarts ist nicht nur durch seine Musik sowie unzählige biografische und musikhistorische Darstellungen geprägt, bereits früh wird es – angefangen bei E.T.A. Hoffmanns Don Juan (1813) und Eduard Mörikes Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (1855/56) – durch literarische Texte dämonisiert, romantisiert, idyllisiert, später dann entheroisiert, neutralisiert, sentimentalisiert, trivialisiert oder popularisiert. Betrachtet man das Mozart-Bild im Kinderbuch, so lassen sich zwei Phasen deutlich voneinander trennen: Wird Mozart in den 1940er- und 1950er-Jahren religiös verklärt und zum göttlichen Kind stilisiert, steht in den Mozart-Kinderbüchern und -medien im beginnenden 21. Jahrhundert eine entmystifizierte Sichtweise im Vordergrund., sondern vor allem auch an der breiten Diskussion und der Gründung neuer Institutionen. From The Mozart Book for Youth to Little AmadeusThe Image of Mozart in Children’s Literature and Media Mozart is the most represented composer in literature and media for children, since the biography of his childhood is of genuine interest for that age group. Since the mid-twentieth century, however, the image of Mozart in children’s literature and media has undergone a significant change. Whereas the historical narratives of the 1940s and 1950s worship him as divine child and genius, the literary portrayals of him from the 1970s and 1980s are considered a turning point. This coincides with a caesura in Mozart biography generally, which replaced the hitherto heroising depictions with ones of a childishly naive, obscene and exalted clown. In the early twenty-first century depictions, child protagonists undertake fantastic time travels and meet young Mozart as equals. Instead of adopting a nostalgic attitude towards the wunderkind, these texts are characterised by their explanatory approach towards the composer and his time. Children’s literature written around 2006, Mozart’s 250th birthday, individualises the image of the famous composer, utilising sophisticated literary forms of presentation. The animated television series Little Amadeus, to name one of many examples discussed in the article, gives insight into both the popularisation and the trivialisation of contemporary depictions of Mozart.

Masculinity in Algirdas Landsbergis's Short Stories

In interwar and post-war societies, men were required to show endurance, courage, and emotional stability, but their traumas, caused by the experience of war and the economic, political, and social realities of the post-war period, are just started to be analysed. Algirdas Jeronimas Landsbergis (1924–2004), a playwright, prose writer, editor, literary and theatre critic of the Lithuanian diaspora, conveys these themes in his work. The images of masculinity revealed in the texts help clarify the general experience of the society hidden in the works and understand what kind of masculinity prevailed in society after the world wars changed the lives of women and men. Using K. G. Jung’s theory of analytical psychology, the article analyses A. Landsbergis’ short stories, which literature researchers less studied. Texts are explored as reflections and shapers of society, and in the case of masculinity, it is discussed what is meant by the archetypes of masculinity recorded in the literature. Based on the work of R. L. Moore and D. Gillette and J. C. Campbell, the archetypes of the divine child, the child prodigy, the Oedipus child and the hero and mature masculinity – the king, warrior, magician and lover are distinguished.

Archetypical images of a child and a cultural hero in the playwrights of Edward Franklin Albee and Sławomir Mrożek in the light of the generational problem

The article examines the place of archetypal images of a child and a cultural hero in the ideological and imaginative system of theatre of the absurd of Edward Franklin Albee and Sławomir Mrożek. It is stated that in Albee’s dramas ("The Sandpbox", "The American Dream", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", "A Delicate Balance") and Mrożek’s dramas ("Tango", "A Happy Event", "Racket-Baby") the archetypal images of a divine and demonic ("unruly") child, outlined in Carl Gustav Jung's psychoanalytic philosophy, enter into ambivalent relations. The thanatological motifs which accompany this archetypal duality testify to the distorted image of the future in the consciousness of twentieth-century human, so that the image of a child in the drama of the absurd becomes a reflection of the general process of dehumanisation in modern society as well as in the family. The archetype of the cultural hero, according to the world mythological tradition, embodies the ideas of individuation and transformation of a child growing into adulthood. However, through the presentation of grotesque and parodic images of children and young men in the work of playwrights, the understanding of the child archetype as a potential cultural hero does not include the idea of civilisational progress as the "futureness" of the world, but rather reflects the eschatological scenario of the world history. The problem of family relations, which captures the generational conflict in its carnivalised version (the inverted relations between the "older" and the "younger"), is an indicator of the social absurdity represented in the plays. The comparative analysis of the plays in the light of the ambivalent archetype of "divine child" – "unruly child" contributes to the identification of national and socio-cultural specificity of the conflict of "fathers and sons". It is concluded that the collective experience of the generation to which Albee and Mrożek belonged to determines the pessimistic vision of the future by both playwrights.

An Unlikely Hero: Reconsidering Michael Endeʼs Momo as a Divine Child

The Divine Child was introduced by Carl Gustav Jung as an archetype closely linked to the process of individuation. Beyond the realm of analytical psychology, this peculiar child figure has been observed in myths and folklore and eventually evolved into a literary archetype known alternatively as das fremde Kind (the strange/alien child). Numerous child figures have since been regarded as representations of this archetype, with the titular character of Michael Ende’s novel Momo (1973) being one of them. While her initial appearance is evocative of the Divine Child, over the course of the story Momo has to accept her fate as the chosen one in a battle against a mysterious foe, ultimately finding herself in the role of the hero of the story. This paper examines the traits of both the archetype of the Divine Child, as well as that of the Hero – including a variation specific to child characters – with the goal of reconsidering if Momo is truly exemplary of the archetype of the Divine Child. This is done with particular regard to Christopher Vogler’s observation that literary archetypes are character functions, rather than fixed types, and as such this paper will discuss how Ende’s protagonist is ultimately an example of this fluidity of functions.

Slava’s SnowShow Searching For The Divine Child

The performance SnowShow, created by Russian artist Slava Polunin, had its premiere in Moscow in October 1993. It won Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and was nominated at Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event. Currently, this performance-event has world tours periodically.The contemporary art can be characterized by the hybridization of the expression forms, by the impressive blend of antagonistic signs and concepts. SnowShow consists of at least two spectacular forms: theater and clownery. There can be observed many overall compositional elements specific to clownery (the characters’ costumes, the expression of the relationships, the artist / audience ratio, the construction of the sequences). Likewise, the dramatization of the theme, the philosophical conceptualization, and the characters’ existence, the presence of various emotions, the placement of laughter and other clown-related motifs in the background are among the aspects indicating the fundamentally dramatic structure of the performance. The initially perceived individual anxiety and the singular nature get general, multiplied proportions. SnowShow is, perhaps, a recontextualization of Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

Childhood time and literary space in the Gennadiy Aygi’s poetry

Certain features of spatial images representation in the Gennadiy Aygi’s poetry which are often related to the time and images of childhood are highlighted. The natural topoi of the forest, field, etc., including the place of an individual plant, the child’s body as a place and the mortal places are analyzed. It is concluded that childhood images are able to set a positive interpretation vector of the natural space or create a semantic contrast in the context of anthropogenic mortal spaces. The plant topoi endowed with the traits of childishness and the child’s body topoi are considered from the position of the general cultural “divine child” archetype. At the same time, according to our opinion, plant images can be correlated with national and mythological images of the poet’s native culture, and hyperbolization of the child’s body, which is presented as a limitless, comprehensive space, is an individually poetic realization of the grotesque body’s image.