E.Yu. Poltavets the CHARIOT MOTIF and ITS MYTHOLOGICAL AND

E.Yu. Poltavets THE CHARIOT MOTIF AND ITS MYTHOLOGICAL AND RITUAL BASIS (AS ILLUSTRATED BY LEO TOLSTOY’S WORKS) When travelling by land, the heroes of classical Russian literature generally use a wheeled carriage. The development of railways resulted in the fact that the train, as an everyday literary detail, inherited many of those functions which had been previously connected with the “literary carriages”—including, of course, the multifarious symbolism of vehicles,—and so the image of railway became one of the most profound cultural concepts (though some of these functions nowadays are acquired by the image of car). The information on the differences in design of varied carriages (for instance, horse carriages, barouches, droshkies, waggonettes, britzkas, and so forth), on the relationship between the vehicle and the social status and prosperity of its owner, as well as on etiquette principles guiding any movement through space (including, for example, the ceremonial ride)—all this interesting information can be easily found in the editions explaining the obscure places in Russian classical literature. So, the task of our article is quite different: it consists in the mythological-restoration (according to S.M. Telegin) analysis of the “chariot” motif as represented in literary works by the references to any animal-drawn wheeled carriages. The chariot symbolism is multifarious: Chichikov’s britzka with its bird-troika or the existential image of the cart of life in A.S. Pushkin’s poem of the same title. Even the tarantass in the eponymous story by V.A. Sollogub may be treated as a literary image with a certain symbolical aspect, though its transformation into a bird takes place only in the dream of a hero. However, the reconstruction of those meanings which are connected with the “chariot” motif is semantically relevant for the whole artistic structure even in the case of Russian realistic novel, where the references to vehicles are seemingly identical to other irrelevant details. In this regard, it should be noticed that the very mythologem of chariot is an interesting subject of study for those scholars who pay their attention to the mythological traditions as reinvented and yet continued, to the patterns of mythological and ritual meanings. Thus, comparing the ritual function of the chariot racings with the rendering and meaning of the respective motif in Homer’s Iliad, Vyacheslav Vs. Ivanov finds that methodological basis or model which could be properly implemented during other comparisons made between the reconstructed archaic material and the Classical Antiquity results of its remaking [5: p. 9]. This, however, concerns not only Greek and Roman literature. Speaking of the symbols and allegories rendered in A.S. Pushkin’s poetry—and, indeed, of the mythological-poetical images as transcendent phenomena,—M.F. Muryanov adds as if in an offhanded manner the following remark: The principle of continuity is sometimes realized imperceptibly: thus, the historians of technology were very surprised on discovering the fact that the rail gauge prevalent in Western Europe (1435 mm) is equal to the distance between the wheels of those carts, which were typical in the Mediterranean Region during Classical Antiquity; this is all the more surprising since the formers of the rail transport, calculating in the XIX century the optimal (i.e., providing the maximum car-motion stability) width for the railroad track, were guided by the equations of theoretical mechanics and not by archaeological data. For their part, the formers of the ancient carts, being mere practitioners, didn’t know the equations of theoretical mechanics at all. So, the coincidence between the new and the ancient gauge is a wonder of continuity, the one which took place against the will of the persons involved [7: p. 172]. Repeatedly analyzing the universal mythologem of chariot, A.M. Piatigorsky never stopped to emphasize the special role of Sanjaya and Krishna, the characters from the M ahābhārata, whose particular importance is connected with the fact that they are charioteers. According to the scholar, this occupation or function endows both Sanjaya and Krishna with a kind of super-knowledge: the “charioteer” is almost a universal mythological m etaphor for the soul, inasmuch as it is the Divine Soul which conveys its wisdom through the supernatural qualities of the charioteer [9: p. 182]. Having chosen the mythologem of chariot as a compelling example of traditions’ continuity—or even as a metaphor for the “intermediary” between the natural (knowledge) and its Devine equivalent, the Absolute [9: p. 183],— philologists appear to pay unknowingly tribute to a certain transcendental law, under which the charioteer and the team of horses turned out to be, many centuries ago, a metaphor for the soul (in the Indian religious and didactic epic Mahābhārata, as well as in Plato’s Phaedrus1), while the chariot itself was treated as an philosophical example for existential elusiveness and, moreover, even as an ancient metaphor for the exercise in semiotics as described below. It is also important for philology that charioteers were not only warriors but often sūtas (as in M ahābhārata), i.e. bards of heroic exploits, storytellers, and poets, prophets and sages (this connection is characteristic not only for the epics of ancient India: let’s remember, for instance, the epithet of the wise Nestor—the Gerenian horseman, the chariot of Elijah the Prophet, and the legends of Alexander the Great attributing him the fulfillment of the prophecy about the authority over all Asia territory by the cutting of the Gordian Knot, which was, as is known, a part of a chariot). In the case of Buddhism, the charioteer also has an honorable place. According to the biography of Siddhārtha Gautama, it was precisely prince’s driver who opened his eyes to the existence of human sufferings. The heroes of M ahābhārata A rjuna and his charioteer Krishna should be treated as connected with the myth of the twin Ashvins. According to the Rigveda, 1 The Gogolian motif of the bird-troika as connected with Plato’s Phaedrus and the theme of Gogol’s Platonism were thoroughly analyzed by E.A. Smirnova and M. Weisskopf in their scholarly works. the Ashvins—the celestial gods, whose appellation derives from the word ashva meaning horse— steer the cosmic chariot which dispels the darkness. (The twin myth is extremely relevant for M ahābhārata.) In this, almost every part of the chariot and harness has its own allegorical meaning: the body means righteousness, the awning—conscientiousness, the horses—senses, the whip—sacred books, the charioteer himself—reason, and so on. In the case of Hinduism, this symbology covers even more extensive range of details than in Plato’s philosophy; according to A. Coomaraswamy, the symbology of chariot is Indian to the same extent as Platonic [6: p. 261]. Ego is the passenger, the owner of the chariot […], Reason – the coachman […] it (i.e., Reason—A.P.) can, because of its dual nature, both human and divine, exalted and evil, either to allow the horses to lapse from virtue […] driving into the area of paganism […] or to guide them in accordance with the will of the Spirit [6: p. 261-262]. Therefore, the charioteer—an owner of so many holy objects and a performer of such sacred actions—has supernatural abilities and even is a god, as is the case with Krishna, who, in his turn, may be treated as an avatar of Vishnu. As for the harness, it is called yoga in Epic Sanskrit; this polysemantic word, one of the key concepts of M ahābhārata, is generally translated into Russian as sopryazhenie (i.e., junction or conjugation). In L.N. Tolstoy’s novel W ar and Peace, the concept of sopryazhenie is also extremely important being intensified by the semantic difference between the two Russian verbs, zapryagat (to harness) and sopryagat (to join or to unite). This correlation of meanings may be compared with the one of Epic Sanskrit: the word yoga in the sense of harness is historically connected with the Russian noun igo (oppression or yoke). When the charioteer harnesses his horses, he simultaneously joins or unites them with the chariot, i.e. performs the most important soteric action, being a savior of the world that will die if he stops. Under the doctrine of Krishna, personal social duty should be “joined” with the general duty, w hich is the universal harmony of the world [4: p. 327]. In the novel W ar and Peace, it is precisely the riding-master (or, according to some English translations, the groom; in the Russian original, bereytor) who wakes up Pierre Bezukhov at the inn with the words it is time to harness (zapryagat nado) which are perceived by the dreaming hero as the voice from on high repeating the request to unite (sopryagat). This phonetic and semantic affinity between the lexemes zapryagat and sopryagat can’t be considered as a play on words—the one masterfully demonstrating a further device of psychological characteristic—but as a token of the most important “yoga” subtext characteristic for the episode. Of course, the riding-master rendered here isn’t a serf coachman; he could be a free man, a foreigner (as in the case of the novel Anna Karenina, where the riding-master is an Englishman) serving as an instructor, horse trainer, and so on. Nevertheless, the riding-master has a relation with the horses; he drives them and so should be regarded—along with the coachman—as an “heir” of the mythological charioteer.

Load more