The Winding Path Leading to the Goal: the Evolution of the East European Labyrinth Poem

ARTICLES

TATIANA NAZARENKO (Winnipeg, MB, Canada)

THE WINDING PATH LEADING TO THE GOAL: THE EVOLUTION OF THE EAST EUROPEAN LABYRINTH POEM

Since antiquity, the image of the labyrinth, a mystical mazelike structure, has been continuously used in European literature, architecture, graphic arts, and garden design. The essential form and characteristics of the labyrinths are most likely derived from the plans of royal tombs and mortuary temples� in ancient Egypt2 dated as early as 3000 BC. The creation of the first European labyrinth modeled on the temple of Amenemhet III, king of Egypt of the 12th dynasty (reigned 1818-1770 BC),3 is credited to the Athenian architect and inventor Daedalus. He later constructed a maze for King Minos in the palace of Knossos in Crete4 in order to imprison the terrible Minotaur, a half bull and half man monster5 that feasted on human flesh. ,

* The author would like to express sincere gratitude to Jars Balan, V:ilen Barsky, Myroslav Korol and Mykola Soroka for permission to use their visual poems in my work, as well as to Mykola Soroka and Piotr Rypson for the permission to reproduce visuals from their monographs; the publishing houses Nauka (Russia), Naukova dumka (Ukraine), and Mystestvo (Ukraine) for their permission to reproduce illustrations published in their books, and to the Foksal Gallery Ar- chive (Poland) for permission to reproduce two compositions by Stanislaw Drozdz. The author would also like to acknowledge Polish language consultations generously provided by Magda- lena Blackmore. 1. The internal construction of Egyptian pyramids is labyrinthine in character. See C. N. Deedes, "The Labyrinth," in S. H. Hooke, ed., The Labyrinth: Further Studies in the Relation Between Myth and Ritual in the Ancient World (New York: Macmillan, 1935), pp. 3,14. 2. Ancient Greek burial places sometimes had a labyrinthine plan as well. See James Hall, Il- lustrated Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art (New York: Icon Editions, 1994), p. 72. 3. The temple of Amenemhet III, built beside his pyramid in Al-Fayyum, was known to classical writers as the Egyptian Labyrinth. Its plan and significance was established before the 6th dynasty. It was connected to the myth of the death of Osiris and the funerary rituals (c. 2325-c. 2150 BC). See Deedes, "The Labyrinth," p. 21; Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britan- nica, Multimedia Edition, 1999, CD 1. 4. The "Palace of Minos" named for the legendary ruler and located in north central Crete was uncovered in 1906 by a British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans. Today Knossos is the site of ■I

The etymology of the word "labyrinth," as most scholars suggest, remains obscure. There are those who endeavor to derive it origins from the words "labor" and "intus" which, according to Penelope Doob, can be interpreted to highlight various essential qualities of the maze There are also attempts to trace it to the Greek "labs" which means cave, to "labrys," the double headed cult axe of the earliest cultures at Knossos and in Mesopotamia, or "place of labrys," as well as to the whole phrase which suggests a game or playing upon [within] a cave.' The latter meaning is especially suggestive as it links the word's denotation to the "geranos" or crane dance8 of the Delians (the residents of the confederacy of ancient Greek states under the leadership of Athens, with headquarters at Delos) described in many ancient sources. The dance is thought to have been originated by Theseus and the Athenian youths liberated from the Cretan labyrinth following the hero's slaying of the Minotaur.9 According to Deeds, the Cretan dance is connected to the Egyp- tian ritual dancing which played an important part in the Labyrinth rites. 10 Originally a labyrinth was defined as any large building, entirely or partly subterranean, with a complicated plan, such as the palace of Minos at Knos- sots." Later, it began to identify a system of caves or buildings, "containing chambers and passages that renders egress difficult" or "the maze occurred in formal gardens, consisting of intricate paths separated by high hedges."12 A labyrinth may be designed as a single linear or circular path leading to a goal (the so-called "unicursal" labyrinth) or it may have a pattern configuration, a

not one but many places: Minoan, Mycenaean, and British. The "Palace of Minos" consists of a labyrinthine ground floor with well-designed rooms grouped around a central court, numerous stairways, mysterious sunken rooms and storage areas. See Loise Hitchcock and Paul Kou- dounaris, "Virtual Discourse: Arthur Evans and the Reconstruction of the Minoan Palace of Knossos," in Yannis Hamilakis, ed., Labyrinth Revisited: Retltinking "Minoan Archeology (Ox- ford: Oxbow Books, 2002), pp. 42, 43. 5. In Egypt, the king and the bull were one. Bull-games occupied a significant position in Egyptian religious rituals. See Deedes, "The Labyrinth," p. 28. 6. PenelopaReed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Mid- dle Ages (Ithaca\ NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1990), p. 97. 7. Emanuel Friedman, ed., Collier`s Encyclopedia (New York: Macmillan Educational Cor- poration, 1980), 14: 238; Paolo Santarcangelli, II libro dei labirintl (Firenze: Valechi Editore, 1967), p. 238; Piotr Rypson, "The Labyrinth Poem," Visible Language, 20, no. I (1986), 71. 8. The meaning of the name of the dance remains rather vague. Piotr Rypson refers to the hypothesis of the Polish ethnologist Stefan Czamowski who indicated the role of cranes in divi- nation and navigation See Rypson, "The Labyrinth Poem," p. 73. '_ ' 9. Deeds, "The Labyrinth," p. 27; Piotr Rypson, "Homo Quadratus in Labyrintho: The cubus or labyrinth poem," in Gyorgy E. Szonyi, ed., European Iconography East and West: Selected papers of the Szeged International Conference (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), p. 9. 10. Deeds, "The Labyrinth," p. 26. 11. l. Hall, Illustrated Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art, p. 72. 12. Encyclopaedia Britannica, CD 1.