Read the path of animal words. Mikhailin V.M.

Nikolay Inodin

Animal path. Dilogy

ANNOTATION

Nikolay Inodin

Animal path

Nikolay Inodin

Animal path. Dilogy

Title: Animal path. Dilogy

Publisher: Publishing House "Leningrad", SI

Pages: 650

ISBN 978-5-516-00183-3

Format: fb2

ANNOTATION

He could not live among people and went to a place where they had never been. Will our contemporary be able to survive, finding himself empty-handed and alone with wildlife? Will he want to, because you can’t run away from yourself? Each of us has a place in the world, and, thinking that he is leaving forever, a person is just starting a long road back. Even if at the beginning of the journey you have to cut the path with a stone axe.

Nikolay Inodin

Animal path

- Dad, if you leave from everywhere, where will you end up? (With).

The stone was wonderful. Not smooth and round, but rough and flat, it lay at the bottom of a deep crevice in the eastern slope of the mountain. The rays of the rising sun have already warmed its surface. After the coolness of the night, it was pleasant to relax, absorbing the life-giving warmth throughout my body. The narrow and deep shelter made it possible not to fear a sudden attack by an eagle - the most dangerous enemy in the mountains, and the rodent caught the night before pleasantly stretched the stomach. Warmth, satiety and safety - what else is needed for happiness?

Of course, the viper basking on the stone could not reason in this way, but in its tiny brain everything described merged into one pleasant sensation.

An almost meter-long body, covered with gray scales with a brown pattern, was lying relaxed on a flat piece of rock when a stone flying from above crushed the reptile’s head. Following the stone, a naked man jumped into the snake's shelter. Having caught a ledge of rock with his thigh, he hissed, then, with a satisfied rumbling, he grabbed the snake’s body, beating in agony, cut off what was left of the head with the sharp edge of a stone fragment, and crawled out of the crevice.

CHAPTER 1

Bad luck comes in different forms. Someone is always lucky, and such an individual is deservedly called lucky. To ordinary people when you are lucky, when you are not, and especially unlucky individuals refute the theory of probability, more often than others getting into trouble.

So, only a person who myopically stares at the world through thick rose-colored glasses could call Romka Shishagov unlucky. Bad luck was born before Roman, and has been a natural habitat for twenty-six years.

An object belonging to him, consisting of more than one part, was sure to break. Necessary things disappeared as soon as the need for them arose, and appeared in plain sight as soon as the need for them disappeared. Transport always disappeared from under his nose. The only exceptions were those rare cases, when, having driven halfway through the stop, the driver announced: “Due to a technical fault, the bus will not go further.” Naturally, while the disembarked passengers were stomping towards the nearest stop, empty buses passed them one after another, but at the stop they had to wait half an hour for the next one.

In short, the drowned man could envy Shishagov - he was unlucky once, and Roman lived in all this bad luck. And I wasn’t going to give up, because I didn’t know how. He left the house early, trained things to lie in strictly designated places, repaired everything that could be repaired, from a folding knife to a television and an infantry fighting vehicle.

It all started with the fact that Romina’s mother abandoned her son in the maternity hospital, so Roman fell directly, one might say, from his mother’s womb into the caring but harsh hands of the most workers’ and peasants’ state in the world. His first and last name and patronymic were given to him in the orphanage by combining the data of the doctor on duty who delivered the baby, the surname of the manager and the name from the book read by all the staff on duty.

Since the time of Makarenko, the Soviet Union has been rightfully proud of its orphanages. Large, bright classrooms and small well-kept bedrooms, best toys for the little ones, clubs, workshops, discos and cinemas for the older ones, wise, sensitive and caring teachers (through one - innovators) helped orphaned children grow up as strong, brave, intelligent and skillful members of a socialist society. I saw it myself - it was shown on TV.

Roma was just unlucky again. He grew up in a small, shabby establishment, out of harm's way outside the city limits. Together with him, several barracks-type bedrooms were inhabited by about a hundred children of both sexes of all ages. The old maid who headed this center of education and upbringing had been poisoning the atmosphere of the establishment for decades with the products of the decay of hormones not spent for their intended purpose. Under the cast-iron foot of this vixen, who, according to rumors, in her heyday called the wife of the founder of the state Nadenka, two dozen veterans of pedagogy, sluggishly, out of habit, depicted the educational process.

The orphanage proudly bore the name pioneer hero Pavlik Morozov, and the staff considered their main task to be the education of worthy successors to the work of this outstanding nugget. Repetition legendary feat every day and on any occasion was encouraged and inculcated in every possible way, being the main source of information about the wards for educators. Shishagov flatly refused to knock, for which he was classified as a child who was difficult and resistant to upbringing.

He had no close friends, and quickly realized that any conversation or action would be quickly and in detail reported to the aunt teacher by the children. Isolating himself from everyone by silence and unsociability, he played his own games that were incomprehensible to outsiders and learned to read early. I read a lot, voraciously, dived into each new book, completely falling out of my surroundings. The library and a large abandoned park replaced everything he had been deprived of in life. After reading a book about Mowgli, Roma populated the park with friends whom no one but him had seen, and could spend hours running through the bushes or climbing trees, trying to compete in strength and dexterity with Kipling’s hero. His amusements were considered quiet and harmless; perhaps, over time, the staff could have completely stopped paying attention to him, if not for the terrible habit, in the opinion of elderly teachers, of taking revenge on his offenders. And the kids did a lot of nasty things to Romka - from the step on the stairs to the dark one.

In response, Shishagov caught the offenders one by one and beat them. Thanks to plenty of practice, he beat even those who were a year or two older. He was often beaten himself, but he always fought. The reputation of a bandit and a hooligan who would come to a bad end had grown on him, it seemed, forever.

Only grandfather Filipich, the night watchman, furrier and shoemaker, whose workshop was located against the wall of the former manor’s estate in the far corner of the park, admired Romka’s exploits.

Over time, the old man began to invite the guy to visit him, treating him to tea and talking about life. The boy quickly got used to these gatherings and disappeared in the workshop for hours, learning the simple life experience and the basics of shoemaking.

But the first friend in Romka’s life drank like a shoemaker, which is why he burned out at work, falling asleep drunk on a trestle bed with an outstanding Belomorina in his hand. The fire was noticed quickly, the fire was extinguished with a garden hose even before the firefighters arrived, but by this time the old man had managed to suffocate in the smoke.

Romka, pushing his way to the body pulled out under the trees, carefully examined what was left of the kind and funny man. Even the smell of burning could not drown out the fusel aroma of lousy moonshine coming from the corpse. Being an impressionable boy, growing up,

Vadim Mikhailin. Path of animal words. Spatially oriented cultural codes in the Indo-European tradition. M., “New literary review”, 2005, 540 pp., 1500 copies.

A monograph belonging to a researcher previously known to the general reader solely as a translator of Lawrence Durrell and Gertrude Stein, one of the best stylists in newest school Russian translation, but one could only guess about his interests in anthropology and cultural studies from the elaboration of his commentary on the “Alexandria Quartet”. First big job Mikhailina in the field of historical, cultural and social anthropology is devoted to the issues of determination of various cultural practices by the territory on which “an individual or group of individuals is currently located. Moreover, the term “territory” (or “zone”) is understood here not from a purely spatial, but from a cultural-anthropological point of view...” The three main sections of the book are “Scythians”, “Greeks”, “Archaic and Modern”. The concept presented by Mikhailin in the book was born in the atmosphere of many years of creative work at the Saratov State University seminar “Spatial-backbone aspects of culture”, and then at the “Laboratory of Historical, Social and Cultural Anthropology”, so the author of the monograph can also be considered a representative of the current Saratov anthropological school .

N.V. Motroshilova. Thinkers of Russia and the philosophy of the West. M., “Republic”, “Cultural Revolution”, 2006, 477 pp., 1000 copies.

Monograph in which the history of Russian philosophy is presented as part of the world philosophical culture. Four parts of the monograph - four Russian philosophers: V. Solovyov (in most detail), N. Berdyaev, S. Frank, L. Shestov. The journal hopes to review this monograph.

Vl. Novikov. Dictionary buzzwords. M., “Zebra E”, 2005, 156 pp.

A book of ironic sociocultural essays, written in the genre of a dictionary entry and published in the magazine “New Eyewitness”. “GRANDMAS.” Slang noun pluralia tantum, that is, used in the plural. And, of course, when talking about significant amounts. The money that a mother gives her son for ice cream cannot be called “grandmother”; salaries received by state employees; royalties paid in thick literary magazines...”; vocabulary: loot, chaos, damn it, bomb, boutique, glamor, emelya, specifically, creatively, cool, etc.

Russian Troubles. Translation and compilation by Maria Lazutkina. M., “Olma-Press”, 2006, 576 pp., 2500 copies.

A collection that includes four plays by English and French playwrights (L. Halévy, R. Cumberland, J.-G. Alexander, E. Meshchersky), in which we're talking about about Boris Godunov, Dmitry the Pretender, Vasily Shuisky, Pyotr Basmanov, Marfa Nagaya, Marina Mnishek, Ksenia Godunova and others; and historical essays Prosper Merimee “An Episode from the History of Russia. False Dmitry” and “The first steps of an adventurer. (False Dmitry).” All texts are published in Russian for the first time.

Jean Paul Sartre. A man under siege. M., “Vagrius”, 2006, 320 pp., 3000 copies.

Memoir-philosophical prose - “Words” (translation from French by Yulian Yakhnin, Lenina Zonina), “Diaries of the Strange War”. September 1939 - March 1940” (translators O. Volchek, Sergei Fokin), “Existentialism is humanism” (translator M. N. Gretsky), as well as “Why I refused Nobel Prize”, recordings of conversations with Simone de Beauvoir about politics, music and painting (translator L. Tokarev).

Leon Trotsky. About Lenin. Materials for biography. M., “Griffin M”, 2005, 128 pp., 3000 copies.

n1.doc

TRAIL OF ANIMAL WORDS

Spatially oriented

Cultural codes

In the Indo-European tradition

New Literary Review

UDC 930.84(4) BBK 63.3(4)-7

NEW LITERARY REVIEW

Scientific application. Vol. L1II

Mikhailin V. M69 Path of Animal Words: Spatially oriented culturesnew codes in the Indo-European tradition / Preface K. Kobrina.- M.: New Literary Review, 2005. - 540 p., ill.

The book proposes an innovative approach to the study of a wide variety of cultural phenomena, characteristic of the Indo-European circle of cultures. The Scythian “animal style” and Russian swearing, the culture of the ancient Greek feast and the customs of archaic military communities, the nature of sports competitions and cultural codes underlying classical literary traditions - each of these phenomena becomes the subject of an interested anthropological analysis, as a result of which they all begin to take shape into a single consistent picture. A picture of three thousand years of European culture, seen from an unexpected and unusual angle.

UDC 930.84(4) BBK 63.3(4)-7

ISBN 5-86793-392-х

© V. Mikhailin, 2005

© K. Kobrin. Preface, 2005

© Decoration. "New Literary Review", 2005

The path is the essence plural from Trolos;".

Mikhail Eremin

1 Trblos, (ancient Greek) - direction; way, image, manner, manner; character, character, custom, habit, mode of action, behavior; figure of speech, trope; musical tonality, mode; form of syllogism, figure.

NOT FOREWORD

This is extremely difficult for a modern thinker to do, because a modern thinker is always madly fascinated historically with himself, with his place.

It is very funny.

Alexander Pyatigorsky

No, this is not a “preface” - for many reasons. Firstly, the genre itself is questionable, which presupposes either a preface, wise with years and fame, introducing a young debutante (debutante) into the world of adult uncles,” or, as was the case in recent years, ideologically consistent (at worst, “ideologically restrained”). transmitting the work of a progressive foreigner into the hands of a Soviet reader full of ideological health. Secondly, the situation when a book is preceded by a preface is assumed. What in this case is it assumed that someone will not understand this work, and therefore it is necessary to interpret it in advance? to the reader, but I strongly disagree with such suspicion and did not sign up for such a thing. Thirdly, prefaces are often written when the author is dead, his works are forgotten (or half-forgotten) and a caring publisher (together with the publisher) is trying to present it well. the forgotten old as the terribly relevant new. In my case, everything is completely different. The author - Vadim Mikhailin - is alive and well, famous, the texts included in this book have been widely published, and he absolutely does not need any guides, no guides, no guides. in publishers. That’s why I won’t write a “preface”.

And who am I to write a preface to a book on historical anthropology? 7 I have never studied this subject professionally, and in my historical studies I have rarely crossed the boundaries of creeping positivism, proven over decades. However, there is a clue. I, as editor of the “Practice” department of the “New Literary Review” magazine, printed (after reading and proofreading) many of the texts included in this book. And while reading and proofreading, I thought about them as

1 You can appreciate the cleverness of the image by quietly reading the book behind me!>

V. Mikhailin

I am a historian, doing something that is not entirely typical for me. And what I have come up with over the years has resulted in the following chaotic notes from a (historicizing) historian.

I will begin with an attempt to historicize historical anthropology. Why and when did “historical anthropology” appear? When and why did the desire arise to consider “historical” peoples as “non-historical”, to study, for example, the attitude towards the death of some “civilized Frenchman”, as if he were not a Frenchman, but an Australian aborigine 1? The answer is obvious: when the traditional idea of ​​“history” for the 19th century (mainly “political”, but also “economic”, “cultural” and even “social”; the latter at the end of the century before last was equal to the so-called “folk”), let us remember at least Green) was questioned. This doubt gradually, and then rapidly, destroyed “history” as a subject, and the main weapon for its destruction was the demand for “scientificness.” History, like physics or mathematics, must have its own laws: from the moment this phrase was uttered, the atom of history disintegrated into a specific “historical narrative”, which, as the “new historians” explained to us, is simply one of the literary genres, and into numerous particles that can be vaguely called “human sciences.” The energy released as a result of the disintegration of the atom of history turned out to be gigantic and very useful - where it was used for peaceful purposes. By the end of the last century, this energy had so transformed the landscape of the humanities that it was recognizable as the industrial landscape of the era of assembly line production. national stories"It's absolutely impossible. Lenin, sitting in Capri, became interested in contemporary physics and wrote an essay (which later became famous) in which he simultaneously asserted that “matter has disappeared” and “the electron is practically inexhaustible.” No one could explain to him that it was not “matter” that disappeared, but what he, following some authors of the 18th and 19th centuries, considered “matter.” So, can the same be said about “history”?

I will not multiply platitudes and retell to the prepared reader the content of the special course, which is usually taught in the first year of the history department and which is called “Introduction to the Specialty.” Or the one that is already taught in the third year under the general meaningless title “Historiography”. Historically, “history” was understood in different ways - that’s clear. It is equally clear that it is not entirely different: a certain common substrate of “history” has always existed - of those peoples who were engaged in preserving and writing

1 Sometimes it seems to me that “historical anthropology” is nothing more than the “ashropology of historical peoples”

9

Neem "history". It is even more obvious that this substrate relates to “time” and not, say, to “space”. Therefore, the requirement to present specific “historical patterns” in order to prove that “history” belongs to the rank of “sciences” instantly led to the disintegration of this very substrate: “regular” means “repeated”, “unchangeable over time”. As a result (largely through the efforts of the “annalists”), “history” began to gradually shift from “time” to “space”, from “history” itself to “historical anthropology”. The researcher decisively “steps out” of that time and the culture that he is studying; he finds himself in another space and, as it were, outside of time 1 and from there he observes the object of his research. He is an anthropologist conducting field research, but the people whose behavior he studies are long dead 2. Mark Blok’s “miracle-working kings” look like Iroquois leaders, and not like the most Christian sovereigns of a great European country. A little later, structuralism appeared, which finally separated “anthropology” from “history”: the “history of structures” and “cultural codes” is not “history” (in all senses), but “change”. Here I am not interested in the content, course and results of this process of “refusal of history”, but in its historical circumstances. This refusal was certainly modernist in nature and was a consequence of the horrific First World War. The Europeans (and a little later the Americans - but in a slightly different way 1) were “tired” of “history”; they wanted to wake up from its “nightmare”, free themselves from it, so that history would no longer send them to idiotic trenches 4 . One of the main tools for awakening from “history” was the timeless “myth”, which in the 20-30s began to be “researched”, “recognized”, “revived”, “created” from different sides. Of course, what Propp did was very different from the manifestos of the surrealists, the reports at the College of Sociology, and especially from the ideological practice of Nazism; but historically all these things are derivatives of one era. After about forty years, it was not modernists who began to abandon history, but postmodernists - and for completely different reasons. The withering of universalist modernist concepts predetermined the temporary success of extreme relativism; It was he who dissolved history into a “historical narrative,” depriving it of any meaning other than genre.

1 Outside of time and history That’s why it’s so sweet to historicize the historical
sky anthropologist.

2 Just as physically this “field” does not exist
1 Considering the “youth” of this nation

4 In the end they ended up in the trenches and even in the cuepin camps. but it was not “Istria” that poisoned them, but “myth”

To Mikhailan

Vadim Mikhailin’s book has the subtitle “Spatially oriented cultural codes in the Indo-European tradition.” This already signals that there is no “history” in it - since there is no “time.” There are only various spaces and the cultural codes reigning in them. This book is not “not -”, and “a-historical” At the same time, Mikhailin’s a-historicism is fundamentally modernist in nature and fundamentally gravitates towards the modernist “big life” I think that his book is generally one of the last modernist projects in the humanities

Let's try to understand what - in addition to the universal anthropological meanings - is hidden behind Mikhailinsky's “space” “Space” is a very Russian and very British theme Russian, because “ice desert”, because “for three days you won’t be able to ride”, because “one-sixth” Russia in general is first of all “space”, and then “time”, “history” and so on. But the British twist on this topic is also very important." “Space” is the giant British colonies, India, Africa, Asia, Australia , that is, the very places where tribes and peoples live, which are natural material for anthropologist research. The British gentleman, going to the colonies, retained many habits from the life of the metropolis, but in some Peshewar he did things that were completely incompatible with the peaceful houses of his native Derbyshire This is exactly how those very “spatially oriented codes” worked, about which the book was written, which is now located at a distance from the reader in the last paragraph of my “Non-Preface.” And this book itself is built on a spatial principle - the author travels, follows the “path of animal words” along several his chosen spaces (from Scythia and the Homeric epic to modern Russian prison and porn art) and thoroughly releases all the same immutable cultural codes Which 7 To find out this, you need to read the book

AND latest Book Vadim Mikhailina, although she talks about spatially oriented cultural codes, says a lot about time, our time, and about attempts not to fall under the influence (even charm) of the tricks of this very our time. In other words, it is also about history

Kirill Kobrin

1 Let me remind readers of another aspect of Vadim Mihan 1in - he is a famous translator with Ashliiska. It was Mikhai inn who gave the Russian reader the colonial, oriental Shyskii “Alexandrian Kvarge!” Lawrence Durrell and the ultra-modern prose of Geriruda Slaip

This book is the result of five years of work with a set of hypotheses in the field of historical, cultural and social anthropology, which back in 1999 received the working name “spatial-magnetic approach.” The term is necessarily precise, and therefore it has to be explained. First of all, we are talking about the determination of various cultural practices (behavioral modes, skills of social self-organization, code systems, ways of perceiving the world) by the territory on which an individual or group of individuals is currently located. Moreover, the term “territory” (or “zone”) is understood here not from a purely spatial, but from a cultural-anthropological point of view and goes back to anthropological theory, which is related to events very distant (in time) from the phenomena that I chose as research objects.

At one time, the American anthropologist Owen Lovejoy, discussing the reasons that gave rise to human bipedalism, put forward a hypothesis about the chain of factors that actually gave birth to humans as a biological species. One of these factors, which was of decisive importance, he considered a change in the method of reproduction, which allowed anthropoids to sharply increase the population size while simultaneously increasing winning survival strategies. Great apes, from his point of view, are dying out primarily because they give birth to too smart children. A large brain, which allows a sharp increase in the number of potentially available behavioral skills, requires, firstly, a long intrauterine period of fetal maturation, and secondly, an even longer period of “childhood” necessary for the assimilation of the corresponding skills already accumulated by the group at the time of the birth of the baby . As a result, the period from the birth of one calf to the birth of another is delayed by long years, since the female simply cannot “afford a second one” until she “puts the first one on her feet.”

From Owen Lovejoy's point of view, hominids solved this problem elegantly and simply. They came up with a “kindergarten”. In fact, why should each female carry her cub (which, among other things, leads to limited mobility and a deterioration in her own diet), when two or three adult females with

V. Mikhailin

The help of several immature “girls” (who cannot yet have their own children, but are quite capable of caring for strangers) can ensure the relative safety and care of the cubs of the entire flock. Wherein most of adult females do not move far from the “nesting zone”. Males pass through this zone, without consuming anything but on the other hand, no longer being constrained by cubs and females, they can significantly expand the outer boundaries of “their” territory. This strategy “frees the hands” of the majority of the flock, which can now afford to develop completely different ways of “consuming territory.” And besides, in this way the “birth limiter” is removed: humans, as we know, are perhaps the only biological species that copulates and reproduces without direct dependence on any seasonal, periodic and other natural factors.

New ways of “consuming territory,” according to Lovejoy, primarily come down to the fundamental delimitation of zones and methods of obtaining food between various groups hitherto united “flock”. Lovejoy compares two territorial matrices associated with the age-sex differentiation of the food territories of putative anthropoids. At the first, corresponding to the early stages of development of upright walking (which, in Lovejoy’s theory, is linked to the development of a number of other ecological, biological and social group factors), the feeding zones of males and females actually coincide. In the second, conditionally “final”, “properly human” (I omit the intermediate stages), three clearly different zones are identified: 1) central, corresponding to the territory of joint residence of the entire group, divided in this case into nuclear married couples, also known as the “children’s” zone garden", which is also - in the future - an area for accumulating food supplies, etc.; 2) the middle, corresponding to the “female” food territory, and 3) the outlying, food territory of the males. Since Lovejoy was interested almost exclusively in the problem of the origin of bipedia, he actually ignored the exceptional, archetypal, in my opinion, sociocultural significance of the “final” scheme he derived for the entire subsequent history of mankind.

Given the inevitable principle in this territorial scheme of the formation of groups engaged in active searches for food, according to sex and age, sex and age specialization should be clearly identified both in the types and methods of obtaining food, and in forms of behavior, adequate to these methods of obtaining food. Invariance of behavior in this context has a strict territorial attachment. Those ka-

13

The qualities that are necessary for an adult male in the “hunting” territory (aggressiveness, group orientation, etc.) are frankly opposite to those qualities that are acceptable as system-forming ones in the territory where a number of individual family groups live together (thus, the level of aggressiveness must inevitably be reduced, the focus on the team should at least be combined with defending the interests of one’s own family). Consequently, there must be mechanisms, firstly, for memorizing and accumulating various mutually exclusive forms of behavior, and secondly, for updating this specific behavioral system in certain conditions adequate to it. Moreover, in relation to this specific territory, all other methods of behavior characteristic of “other” territories are redundant. This scheme leads to the emergence of a special “revolving” structure of consciousness, characteristic, in my opinion, of almost all known archaic cultures. The essence of this structure is that each culturally marked territory automatically “turns on” forms of behavior that are adequate to it and “turns off” all others that are incompatible with it. Hence the rigid attachment of archaic cultures to ritual, which, in essence, is a legalized means of “remembering” the redundant forms of behavior latently present in the collective memory and ensuring the “correct” (that is, not threatening the identity of both the individual and the collective as a whole) magical transition. Hence the need for total coding of all environment: since in order to maintain “cultural adequacy”, any phenomenon must inevitably be “inscribed” in one of the cultural zones, the marker of which it henceforth becomes.

Hence, another concept I need: magicalcue The concept used in traditional European knowledge magical presupposes the purposeful use by a person of those codes with the help of which he systematizes the world around him. A person who causes rain by splashing water, or causes damage by piercing a wax figurine of an enemy with a needle, undoubtedly performs a magical act. Magic is the power of man over code.

However, there is also inverse relationship. A person often does not realize the reasons why he commits certain actions, actualizes certain behavioral forms: in such cases, his actions are performed “under the influence of the moment,” “feelings,” “impulse,” etc. He simply begins to behave differently than he did five minutes ago, not realizing that the system of reactions to codes that he had once learned and brought to automaticity

V Mikhail and N

irritants marking the transition from one cultural zone to another simply “turned on” a different model of behavior in him Four intelligent Russian-speaking men who decided to go fishing will begin to speak obscenely (or at least not experience internal discomfort when using this verbal code ), as soon as they cross the border of the “cultural” urban territory and are left alone, that is, as soon as the systems of code markers regulating the external (another cultural zone) and internal (another way of organizing the intra-group structure and interaction with other groups) space are combined. And they they will stop speaking obscenities as soon as they get on the “return bus”

So, magic - this is the power of the code over a person. Magic and magic go hand in hand and are often difficult to distinguish from each other. When a modern person knocks on wood or spits over his shoulder, uttering a good wish, he performs a magical action inscribed in the logic of “apotropaic security.” However, this action is often has a purely automatic character - or it is emphasized, demonstratively ritualized; I do this because it is customary to do so, and I want to comply with all the “code” conventions. Thus, a person “agrees to yield to the code”, purposefully accepting its power over himself and thus acquiring within its framework, greater behavioral freedom. In the modern urban situation, where all the main cultural zones are mixed together, such freedom of “balancing on the edge” and juggling with various code and behavioral skills is equated to the know how of cultural adequacy. However, with all the greater pleasure does a modern urban person plunge into into “pure”, “unalloyed” magic, of which the best evidence is the famous “crowd effect”

However, in order to study the “cultural cocktail” that splashes inside a modern urban person, you must first identify the main components of this cocktail, determine their composition and properties, and understand the historically established methods and proportions of mixing ingredients. Actually, this is what my book is dedicated to

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, I want to express my sincere gratitude to the team with whom I have been working for the past few years. The same few people led the seminar “Spatial-magnetic aspects of culture” at Saratov State University in 2002, and then, in 2004, formed the backbone of the Laboratory of Historical, Social and Cultural Anthropology. Sergey Trunev, Olga Fomicheva and Ekaterina Reshetnikova all these years were the reference group on which I tested the newly born concepts and each participant of which, in turn, generated their own ideas and approaches, which made it possible to significantly expand the scope of the basic system of hypotheses and correct individual provisions and directions of research activities. For these few years, the happy atmosphere of continuous creativity became the air we breathed almost constantly. Each of the three had their own established sphere of scientific interests, but we can still afford the luxury of almost complete mutual understanding: for which - special gratitude.

All of the above also applies to our “Moscow branch” in the person of Irina Kovaleva and Anton Nesterov, whose gratitude is included in a separate line - just for the sake of putting it in a separate line.

The discussion of the main provisions - and the “side branches” that arise along the way, sometimes quite fraudulent - became the reason for meeting Natalya Sergieva, Elena Rabinovich, Svetlana Adonyeva, Irina Prokhorova, Kirill Kobrin, Ilya Kukulin, Ilya Kalinin, Alexander Dmitriev, Alexander Sinitsyn, Svetlana Komarova, Nick Allen, Sir John Boardman, Alain Schnapp, Annie Schnapp-Gourbeillon, François Lissarrague, François de Polignac, Véronique Schiltz, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Andreas Wittenberg, Nina Strawczynski, Catherine Merridale and many other people significant to me , whose opinion I highly value and to whom I am grateful for their intelligence, professionalism, openness and willingness to help.

I am grateful to my family for the very fact that these people exist next to me and for the patience with which they treat this circumstance.

And I want to dedicate this book to Grigory Stepanovich Mikhailin and Vasily Pavlovich Pozdnyshev, a Saratov peasant and a Don Cossack, my grandfathers, each of whom was the youngest son in his family: that’s why he survived.

PECTORAL FROM A THICK GRAVE

AND THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION

SCYTHIAN ANIMAL STYLE 1

The fundamental monograph by D.S., published back in 1985. Raevsky’s “Model of the World of Scythian Culture” rightly claimed to be created in national science a precedent for a systematic and complete (to the extent of the available material) consideration of the issue of the formation of a probabilistic model of the Scythian worldview. The concept put forward by the author is based on a deep analysis of archaeological and literary discourses and fits the Scythian model of the world into a broad Iranian, Indo-Iranian and Indo-European context. In my opinion, this book can still rightfully be considered the pinnacle of modern Russian Scythology. Masterfully executed by D.S. Raevsky’s interpretations of specific Scythian “texts” and entire semantic complexes are based on a strictly systematic methodological basis. However, it is precisely this basis, from my point of view, that from time to time fails the author, making his interpretative techniques dependent on a structural-semiotic model that is not always adequate to the material. As a result, the author’s original and conceptual observations are formalized into a rather controversial, in my opinion, interpretive system, to which I would like to contrast my own, based on the analysis of the involved D.S. Raevsky semantic material.

1. PECTORAL AS A SINGLE TEXT. FEATURES OF THE “STRUCTURAL-TOPOGRAPHIC” CODE

Having devoted the fourth and final chapter of his research to a comprehensive analysis of the famous pectoral from the Tolstaya Mogila mound and calling this chapter “Greco-Scythian cosmogram,” D.S. Raevsky singled out this Scythian toreutical

1 First publication [Mikhailin 2003] For mshimo i)dlpiya rckci would i revised and expanded

V. Mikhailin. Path of Animal Words

It is an openwork gold bib made of four twisted strands, fastened at the closed ends with patterned clips and lion heads. The space between the bundles forms three lunar fields on which various images are placed. The central place in the upper belt is occupied by the figures of two half-naked men, stretching out a sheepskin robe by the sleeves and, apparently, finishing its sewing. On both sides of them are figures of female domestic animals with cubs, between which are two figures of Scythian youths; one of them milks a sheep, the other plugs an amphora into which milk has obviously been poured. On each side this composition is completed by a bird figurine. Middle belt is full

1 Most likely Greek in execution, but Scythian in “containing”
nia". Analysis of the problem of the relationship between the Scythian “order” and Greece
ical “execution” is also given in the original work.

2 In the same work, see also a representative bibliography on inter-
the problem facing us and Scythology in general, as well as a critical analysis
a number of author's concepts - including several interpretations of "tech
hundred" pectorals. Criticism of B.N.’s interpretations Mozolevsky, D.A. Machinsko-
go, A.P. Mantsevich and others are so complete and convincing that I don’t think
it is necessary to raise questions related to it here again.

The fancifully curving shoots of acanthus, on which five bird figures are placed - one strictly in the center and two on each side. Finally, in the lower belt we see a thrice-repeated scene of a horse being tormented by a pair of griffins; This composition is accompanied by scenes of torment by feline predators on one side - a deer, on the other - a wild boar. This belt ends on each side with an image of a dog chasing a hare, as well as

Til a pair of grasshoppers.

4 [Raevsky 1985: 181]

When analyzing the semantics of the pectoral D.S. Raevsky, unlike his predecessors and completely, in my opinion, justified, prefers “the path not from the plot scene, even though it occupies a central (both compositionally and in meaning) place in it, but from the general structures monument”, setting themselves the task of “analyzing the entire set of presented motives and the relationships between them” [Raevsky 1985: 187]. First of all, he orients the pictorial text in space, starting from both “the position of the pectoral in the personal attire of its bearer” [Raevsky 1985: 188], and from the semantics of the images presented in certain parts of it. Having defined the middle frieze as primarily ornamental, he further focuses on the semantic characteristics and binary semantic opposition of the two “extreme” friezes, defining one as “upper” and “central”, and the other as “lower” and “outer”, “peripheral” .

At the same time, the “upper/central” frieze is strictly linked by the author with the world of “culture”, “fertility” and with the “middle”, human world in general. The figurines of female domestic animals with their cubs placed on the frieze perfectly correspond to this idea. The strict hierarchy of the symmetrical image, which repeats the series of “five parts of cattle” traditional in Indo-Iranian sources (man-horse-cow-sheep-goat), allows us to fit the upper frieze into a broader semantic context and interpret it as “a kind of pictorial equivalent magic formula, ensuring well-being, and above all the multiplication of livestock” [Raevsky 1985: 195]. The central composition in the “upper” frieze (two Scythians with a sheepskin shirt) is interpreted as semantically related to “the same idea of ​​fertility and prosperity” [Raevsky 1985: 196] on the basis of fairly broad parallels with Roman, Hittite, Greek and Slavic rituals and folklore texts.

The “lower/outer” frieze, filled primarily with scenes of torment or pursuit, is interpreted through the basic

In Mykhailin Path 1 of the Verins from the youth

For the entire work “interpretation of the motif of torment in the art of Scythia as a metaphorical designation of death in the name of birth, as a kind of pictorial equivalent of sacrifice for the sake of maintaining the established world order, animals tormented in the lower register die in order for the act of birth to occur, embodied in the images of the upper register” [Raevsky 1985 191]

The further logic of the study is obvious if we proceed from the Tartu-Moscow structural-semiotic models that have not lost their positions in the domestic humanities to this day. However, it is the desire at all costs to tie the semantics of this or that image to the structural model basic for this school and undermines from within the unity of the author's scheme of analysis

Naturally, the center of the composition becomes the world tree, represented in the pectoral by a central, plant-ornamental frieze (the analogy is reinforced by images of birds woven into the ornament, characteristic inhabitants of the upper third of the world tree). The basis for such a reading of the central frieze is also the fact that this “escape ""serves as the main organizing element connecting the upper and lower friezes (iesp upper and lower worlds), which corresponds to the function of the world tree" [Raevsky 1985 200] Why in in this case the world tree organizes space into horizontal plane, with the upper and lower worlds located on both sides of it, and the birds, which, logically, should be tied to the top of the tree, clearly gravitate towards its middle (if not at all to the roots - despite the fact that in the center " plant" frieze there is a palmette, from which, according to D. S. Raevsky, "a plant shoot grows" [Raevsky 1985 201]), the author does not explain

Another contender for the role of the world tree is the vertical axis of the composition, which organizes, from the author’s point of view, a series of symbolic images according to the same traditional tripartite logic. In this case, the images placed in the center of each frieze are organized by the author around the central axis in such a way that their meaning one way or another corresponded to the place of each in the corresponding “part” of the world tree. Thus, the “upper” image appears to be hanging over the head of one of the half-naked Scythians burning with a bow. The author notes in this regard that

“some of which peck at the branches and others do not, as is known, is a traditional motif associated in the Into-Iranian world with the world tree > (Raevsky 1985 2001