Karikázó, 1984. július - 1985. január (10. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1984-07-01 / 1. szám
Before ue My farewell to the peacock, I would just like to My that this bird 1s a fine exaaple of the continuous developaent of the people't symbol-making power. When bases for coffins were no longer painted blue and widows stopped wearing "green wreath, green headdress," the peacock acquired a new symbolic Meaning. This was based on the custo« that on special occasions, when executive clemency was given to all prisoners, a peacock-feather was displayed on the district administration building, the ■egyehaz, here freely translated as City Hall. This new use, that of freedom, 1s shown in the song, so stirringly arranged by Kodály in his "Peacock Suite:" Up, up flew the peacock Over the gate of the City Hall. It proclaims the freedom Of many a poor lad. It 1s interesting to note here how a symbolof one thing may change into or embrace a symbol of its opposite, as Freud has discovered in his The Interpretation of Dreams. The amnesty gives back life to the prisoners, so the symbol of death, the peacock, becomes the symbol of life. In the same way, In the first peacock song I read, "I've Planted Some Harjoram," the apple-tree, the symbol of perfection and Immortality, became the Tree of Death. After this detour from the world of flora Into that of fauna, I would like to return for the last time to our tantalizing apple. I believe that 1t reaches Its ultimate degree of mystery in a children's song which is a great favorite of mine, "A Little Duckling." It is not too surprising that a children's song should be the most mysterious, for the children are the keepers of that special flame, the songs of magic. In the children's songs, we nay find survivals of such magic practices as counting backwards, taboos on speaking and laughing, and even the healing of a wound "with a pipe, a drum, and a reed fiddle." When we were children, we did not know why we had to sit, stand, turn, or run in a prescribed manner, but we did it with great dedication, experiencing a deep thrill every time. At the end of one of these game-songs, we had to tap the right nostril with the right index finger and repeat a now» meaningless word. We may have laughed with embarrassment later on, but we were terribly solemn while doing it. Well, here it is. I got ambitious and translated this one in the original meter and rhyme, so it may be sung in English: A little duckling Bathes in the black pond, He wants to visit His mother in Poland. His feet are slipp'ry, His heels have bruises, Turn round, turn 'round, Two golden apples! This sweet little song in one long list of unanswered questions. Why duckling? Why black pond or lake? What is his mother doing in Poland, HÉJ, PÁVA, HÉJ, PÁVA (A gőgös feleség] a foreign country across towering mountains? Why the emphasis on his feet, since he is bathing, not walking? And pray, what have two golden apples to do with all this? Why should they turn around and around? Archaeologists reconstruct a vase from a piece of broken pottery, and from a few vases, a lost civilization. Anthropologists find a bone or two and presto! A prehistoric monster. At the end of the Kalevala, we read how the magic sampo of the Finns, their greatest treasure, was broken into many small pieces. It seems to me that at one time, when all the races were much closer to each other than they are now, there must have been certain myths which all men shared. As time went on, the races drifted apart, the myths were broken up. Different peoples picked up the fragments and put them together in different combinations. One such myth was the Sumerian creation story in which the air-god Enlil displaced his father, married his mother the ancestral sea, and then he and his mother together created the world. The Greeks put some of the pieces together and called the result the myth of Oedipus. Synge put together some of them and called it The Playboy of the Western World. Continued from p.S Continued on p.7