Cyfrowa Etnografia

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Part of Summary of articles / Polska Sztuka Ludowa - Konteksty 1994 t.48 z.3-4

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SUMMARY ОF
J e r z y P г о к o p i u к THE MYTH OF PARADISE
This article is a review of variegated forms of the image and myth of
paradise created by human imagination both among primitive people as
well as in polytheistic and monotheistic religions of the world. Such a survey
permits us to formulate a quintessential description of paradise which
appears to be a mythical and basically spiritual - rarely physical - "place"
of residence, once accessible to all and today only to a chosen few.
K i r s t e n H a s t r u p NATURE AS HISTORICAL SPACE
The author presents the range of contemporary anthropological know­
ledge about Nature. The thesis of the rather general paper concerns Nature
as a category, geography, landscape, motion and history. The intention of
the author is to demonstrate that our knowledge is sufficient to enable us to
formulate the outline of a new anthropological conception of Nature.
M i r c e a E I i a d e THE MYTH OF THE GOOD SAVAGE, OR THE
PRESTIGE OF THE BEGINNING
The sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced the
concept of the "noble savage" which corresponded to their moral, political
and social prejudices. This text focuses on the mythicised recollection of the
model-like vision of the "noble savage".
M a r c i n B r o c k i CULTURE AND NATURE. REMARKS ON
THE MARGIN OF RESEARCH INTO GESTURES
The distinction between culture and Nature is not a problem concerning
the world but a certain discourse. The source of the latter is to be found in
the philosophy of Plato and in the mathematical paradigm of science
established by Descartes. Investigations into gestures reveal that the use of
language whose conceptual structure contains distinction, puts an end to
the project of a complete description of bodily expression. It becomes
necessary, therefore, to determine the category of culture and Nature anew
and in a different perspective.
J a g n a K n i t t e l THE MYTH OF NATURE. WHAT IS NATURE
LIKE?
"Nature" is one of the most significant concepts with which human
thought expressed itself. The call for "a return to Nature" constitutes
a leitmotif which systematically recurred in reflections pursued by the
humanities. An examination of the history of conceptions of Nature makes
it clear that they comprise a record of human longings that change with
time. In this aspect, the vision of Nature can bring to mind the myth of
paradise: "the return to Nature" is an endeavour to recapture something
which we have lost while Nature is perceived as an opposite of culture. The
author proposes deliberations on the myth of Nature starting with
a presentation of the views expounded by Jean Jacques Rousseau.
M a r i a J a n i o n , M a r i a Ż m i g r o d z k a ROUSSEAU - THE
EXISTENTIAL HERO
The middle of the eighteenth century marked an important date in the
European history of ideas. The impact exerted by Rousseau not only shaped
for decades to come all perception of relations between nature and culture
but it essentially altered the very perception of man.
Rousseau - the rebellious son of the Enlightenment and a master of the
Romantic men of letters - must be envisaged as an author of a transitory
period.
M a ł g o r z a t a Ł u k a s i e w i c z IN ONE HOUSE
Die Wahherwandtschaften, Leipzig 1976 by Johann Wolfgang Goethe is
a pretext for presenting remarks about Nature and culture. A ruthless war is
waged between people and Nature, and the prime tactical principle
observed by the former is to reject the tactics of the enemy. If Nature
appears to be chaos, a haphazard accident or the activity of unforeseeable
forces - then people will counterpoise order, deeds, purposefulness and
a plan. The slightest neglect signifies defeat. This model resembles to
a certain extent the conceptions propounded by Freud and in particular the
view which claimed that culture predominantly defends against Nature and
essentially is anti-Nature.
Z y g m u n t K r z a k MAN OF THE GOLDEN AGE
The article discusses the oldest distinguishable stage in the development
of human thought: the structure of thought pursued by man of the Stone
Age - the Golden Age. All narratives depicting the primeval period when
human beings could enter heaven and maintain contact with the deities
mention that this universal contact was severed by to a certain event. From
that moment on, only shamans were capable of communicating with the
heavens.

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ARTICLES

The author maintains that myths about the presence of mankind in
paradise should be regarded as testimonies of original pan-shamanism. He
also proposes an interpretation of myths about paradise and the Golde Age
in categories of pan-shamanism conceived as the prime cognitive paradigm.
D i o n i z j u s z C z u b a l a IN THE WORLD OF CONTEMPORARY
MYTHS. MONGOLIAN AND SIBERIAN TALES ABOUT THE
SNOWMAN
In Mongolia, the myth about the existence of the almas (the "snowman")
is ancient and firmly enrooted in social consciousness. At present, it has
been revived probably under the impact of a global fascination with the
mysterious figure of the mountain-dwelling recluse. The old legendary
motive is made topical and conceivable by its introduction into the world of
contemporary reality and be determining the time of the events. The author
penetrates the ancient folklore of Central Asia and the Far North and
demonstrates that we are dealing with a traditional and ancient myth shared
by many people.
A l e k s a n d e r J a c k o w s k i THE MYTH OF ART BEYOND
CULTURE. ART BRUT
The creativity discussed by the author is closer to that extremity of
Nature whose characteristic feature is independence from tradition trans­
mitted by way of memory or writing; this is not to say that it is completely
severed from the experiences of memory. The concept of art brut can be
regarded as helpful for reflections on the phenomenon of this variety of
creativity. It was introduced in 1945 by the French artist Jean Dubuffet who
wished to present creativity free from the pressure of culture. Brut denotes
raw, rough and not alleviated by any sort of conventions. Dubuffet claimed
that in order to be truly oneself, and emancipated from the impact of culture
one must oppose social norms and customs.
A d a m C z y ż e w s k i ARCHITECTS AND THE PROTECTION OF
BIRDS
Contemporary town planning, projects and visions dating from this
century are partof an all-present heritage of the departing epoch. It is
interesting that in their studies on formal solutions accepted in the praxis of
architectonic design, historians of architecture and town planning do not
notice their ecological lineage. Twentieth-century town planning is simply
an organic ecological reflection. In the opinion of the author, this fact
means that it is impossible to conduct within its range any sort of a discourse
which would not exploit texts shared by the two disciplines, a procedure
which calls for the intervention of the anthropologist of culture.
Monika Sznajderman
"JARDIN DES PLANTES: PO­
STCARDS", OR THE PLANT METAPHOR OF JAMES CLIFFORD
Here the author trnaslates and subsequently comments upon a brief
chapter of J. Clifford's The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-century
Ethnography, Literature and Art, "Jardin des Plantes: Postcards". The

literary and at times even poetic impressions about plants and people
conceal elements of a broader anthropological theory of culture which
Clifford shares with other contemporary philosophers and ethnographers.
W o j c i e c h M i c h e r a THE DEATH OF HANS AND GRETEL
"Home" and "Nature" are radically opposite categories of the imagina­
tion. The image of Nature is created in our imagination predominantly by
areas free from traces of civilization: mountains, seas, deserts, and forests. If
one were to examine freedom (from the subjugating norms of civilization)
which is sought in Nature without Arcadian optimism then it becomes
apparent that it is tantamount to death. The author cites texts by
Mickiewicz, Dante and Rilke and portrays the forest as a mythical space full
of assorted obstacles which radically separate Civilization from Nature and
which make it impossible for man to penetrate the regions forbidden to him.
Nature is an element, a life whose intensity is unrestrainable and which,
therefore, turns into its own negation, chaos and death.
J a c e k O l ę d z k i FILÓDZOĄĄN. THE ONE WHICH ENJOYS
LIFE OR OGŁAWIANIE. THE CULTURE OF THE WILLOW
The foremost issue examined by this article concerns different beliefs and
the general attitude towards trees disclosed by Slavs, Fins and Germans; it
also contains an attempt at presenting the causes for the existing differences.
The author proposes a classification of trees outlined by Kazimierz
Moszyński and Adam Fiszer using the categories of their meaning in
assorted beliefs. He devotes particualr attenction to the symbolics of
willows and poplars which, by means of concepts and images that were
connected with them in culture, introduced order into a comprehension of
reality and coded knowledge concerning the latter.

E l ż b i e t a U m i ń s k a PLANTS I N FOLK BELIEFS
This is an outline of research concerning folk beliefs and knowledge
about plants, conducted by Polish scientists in the 1842-1939 period and the
historical region of the Commonwealth.
The nineteent century witnessed the emergence of two trends of research:
mythological which sought the roots of beliefs about plants in pan-Slav
mythology, and positivistic which described the function, significance and
application of plants in folk science and beliefs.
This was the period of the appearance of three scientifically important
herbaria: two Polish-language publications by Bronisław Gustawicz (1882)
and Józef Rostafiński (1895) and a work in German by Adam Fischer (prior
to 1939 and intended as a Polish contribution to an unrealised general work
on Slav beliefs about plants, initiated by professor E. Schneeweis at the first
Congress of Slav Philologists in Prague).
The article makes use of the contemporary methodology of investigations
into myths: the semiotics of folk culture and the phenomenology of religion
by M . Eliade in order to present Polish exemplifications of biological
hierophancies in which it discovers the myth about the tree of life and traces
of the cosmogenic myth; it also considers the questioin of sacral time in
rituals of gathering plants. The author demonstrates the existence of
a composition of blessed plants which has remained unchanged for over 200
years and which at that time became surrounded with so-called duplications
of the centre. Finally, the article proves that in Poland too medicinal herbs
are rationalised and devitalized variants of the archetypes of herbs of
eternal youth and immortality. The author discusses the ritual gathering of
herbs and their blessing during Corpus Christi and the feasts of the
Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist.
Z b i g n i e w L i b e r a EARTHLY DEITIES
This article indicates the reasons why rural communities are unwilling to
seek the advice of trained medical doctors (a phenomenon unexplained by
insufficient money, distances to town or village xenophobia but primarily
by the chasm between scientific and folk medicine). Subsequently, the auhor
lists persons predestined to be medically treated (the elderly, children,
women, the ill and outsiders). The article basically deals with the institution
of witch doctors and magicians. The author maintains that the witch healer
in folk culture is a functional continuum of the image of the Master of the
Thunderbolt while the magician r should be perceived as a transformation
of the mythical antagonist of the God of the Thunderbolt.
A n d r z e j R ó ż y c k i TRAVEL NOTES FROM POLAND
The author - a film director - noted down his impressions from journeys
to various interesting places. He describes, for instance, the old and

little-known ritual of floral decorations along the route of a church
procession held on Corpus Christi in Spicymierz (a village on the river
Warta). He also visited the borderland settlement of Krynki (in the
voivodeship of Białystok) once "the heart of European (world) Jewry"
where he was fascinated with the stone matzevas - tombstones whose
Hebrew inscriptions recall the buried persons.
E w a K o r u l s k a ON THE PEASANT - UNTITLED
Thanks to tens of literary works of varying rank, the author examined
mythicised images of the Polish peasant which function in universal
consciousness. She concluded that such images were moulded in the second
half of the nineteenth century by the literature and art of the intelligentsia;
the "positive" and "negative" portrayal of the peasant co-exists in time and
produces a highly contrasted, black-and-white picture.
W i e s ł a w M y ś l i w s k i , R o c h S u l i m a , A l e k s a n d e r Jac­
k o w s k i WE ESTABLISHED NATURE
The conversation deals with Nature, birds, animals and cruelty. In
testimonies of peasant culture, signs denoting Nature are conventional.
Nature does not occur here as an object of contemplation which according
to Roch Sulima, appeared when peasants began to write. The written word
set free a certain perception of Nature. For Wiesław Myśliwski, the manner
in which peasants express nature is totally original and remains outside our
conventions. The drawing of conclusions must primarily lead to reflections
on the system of the language in which the peasant described his situation.
Aleksander Jackowski declared that aesthetic evaluation is a privilege
enjoyed by people who are not compelled to pay attention to other
functions.
W. Myśliwski is of the opinion that our view of peasant culture,
behaviour and aesthetics cannot apply our concepts, habits or language.
For the peasant there are no superfluous or unnecessary things; nor are
there any things which exist only for our admiration. Under the impact of
civilizational progress we have distinguished Nature and endowed it with
a new function - that of an object; one could say that we have brought
Nature into being.
R y s z a r d C i a r k a THE KILLING OF ANIMALS
Killing animals is one of the most universal activities pursued by man in
order to satisfy his basic needs. The intention of the author is to review the
cultural determinants of a phenomenon when an animal which is often
connected with various symbolic and mythological connotations, suddenly
changes into nourishment or, on the contrary, lives and becomes as if partof
society, receives a name and enjoys considerable esteem.
"Ways of killing animals" consists of two separate paradigms which

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determine our attitude towards the suffering and death of animals;
"deception" - a form of a cultural game with the environment which creates
a veritable bond between man and the surrounding world, and the "lie"
- a form of a game played with oneself when the supreme aim of concealing
the fact of death is to obtain a rapid and superficial answer.
A g n i e s z k a T a b o r s k a THE ART OF POSITIVE EATING
Although Kansas is still covered in cattle farms, forty years after the
"invention" of hamburger, McDonald's is now introducing ecological food
for growing numbers of vegetarians. Fast food, which until recently was
universally accepted, is being rejected by the today's thirty-year-olds. In the
"food pyramid" noodles are placed above meat in importance. Macrobiotic
cuisine triumphes. The supermarket chains of the end of this century are
using slogans like "Cultivate the Art of Positive Eating".
Jeremy R i f k i n THE ANATOMY OF A CHEESEBURGER
In the mid - 1950s the hamburger became the foremost form of American
"fast food". Ray Kroc, one of the founders of the McDonald network
which specialized in hamburgers, altered the eating habits of the Americans.
Today, 200 Americans purchase one or more hamburgers every second. The
production process has been divided into several precisely described stages.
They exclude improvisation, and deviations are strictly forbidden, AH
hamburgers are always identical and the consumers were advised to resign
from requests to take into consideration their personal tastes.
M a ł g o r z a t a H a l a d e w i c z PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
The author considers some aspects of relations between thought,
language and culture. By basing herself on the acoomplishments of general
semanlicists she conducts a synchronic analysis of one of the traditions of
our culture - subsistence on animal products. The article shows the degree
in which language assists the creation of concepts which reduce animals to
the role of raw material in accordance with the demands of contemporary
civilization. The ensuing register which made this operation possible is
divided into words which conceal the relation between living creatures and
the end product (words such as pork in the sequence: pig, pork, pork chop),
words and collocations which objectivise animals intended for consump­
tion (industrial production, meat plants), prototypes which serve the
promotion of the commodity and, finally, words which conceal the overly
drastic provenance of certain dishes (blood sausage, pottage).
Iga C z a c z k o w s k a THE COMMUNITY OF NATURE, GOD
AND MAN
Contemporary Christian theological thought is experiencing distinct
changes as regards its mode of speaking about Nature. To a considerable

176

extent these alterations have been produced by a harsh critique of
Chrisianity which is charged with the present-day state of the natural
environment. The author demonstrates the way in which theologians
examine their own tradition and seek within it trends which could have truly
contributed to shaping the overly anthropocentric mentality of modern
man whose concern for the welfare of Nature is by no means excessive. In
the first place, they point to the much too strong connection between
Christian thought and Greek dualistic philosophy as well as the hierarchic,
patriarchic manner of thought pursued by the Hebrew tradition. A more
careful acquaintanceship with Biblical texts and the context of their origin,
however, does not entitle us to claim that Christianity is incapable of
proposing the contemporary world and intellectually and morally more
profound reflection about nature. An example of such a current could be
the intuition revealed by theologians representing various currents, for
example, the theology of the process, the theology of liberation, ecofeminism and the theology of creation. Theologians of assorted creeds reach for
heretofore little emphasized Biblical texts and theological intuitions from
past centuries in order to show the communicty of Nature, God and man.
They talk about a God who remains in close contact with His creatures and
establishes relations which man is unable to perceive to the very end. They
also depict Nature as a creation beloved by God, and endowed with beauty,
goodness and sanctity. On the other hand, they do not severe man from the
world as a whole; on the contrary, they disclose the common pieregrination
of man and all the other creatures towards an ultimate fulfilment in God. In
this great community God, man and Nature mutually shape themselves.
J a d w i g a R o d o w i c z A DIALOGUE WITH EARTH
In the Far East the traditionally interpreted attitude towards the Earth
and the environment stemmed from a particular perception and was totally
dominated by categories incompatible with ours. The best example are rock
gardens situated next to Buddhist temples which served the purposes of
contemplation and meditation. The contemplation of a garden became the
contemplation of the inner state of the person who found himself in the
garden, and the order of the latter and its innermost dynamics in a certain
fashion organized the intimate world of the observer.
K o j i К a m oj i THE RYÓANJI ZEN GARDEN AND MY DREAM
ABOUT THE GARDENER
The Zen garden is closely connected with Buddhism and Zen philosophy.
It is composed of water, plants, sand and rocks similarly to other gardens all
over the world but its characteristic feature is the fact that the purpose of
these items is not to stir up emotions of a solely aesthetic or intellectual
nature. This is a garden which introduces us to a world which is devoid of
relations.
On Haiku - Haiku is poetry in which the descriptive form is diminutive.