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For some reason, this makes me cranky...
Jul. 3rd, 2012 12:31 amSo -- that picture of Baba Yaga's house, that I posted, the other day?
A ballpoint pen and pencil sketch of a small house with a crooked chimney walking on a pair of giant chicken legs -- After the witch "Baba Yaga's" house from traditional Russian folklore.
I have plans-not-ready-to-discuss for it, I think. Anyway, that meant a little Web-surfing to refresh my memory of the Baba Yaga's stories, and the House's role in them, in particular.
And I came upon this page: Baba Yaga Stories, by Susun Weed (Samhain, '08). And this is how the article about her begins:
And I don't know... But, today, at least, that just rubs me the wrong way. It's as if a figure from legend and folklore isn't worth thinking, (talking, or learning) about until we turn that figure into some archetype we can admire, regardless of how that figure was actually thought about by the people who originally told those stories. It makes me feel a bit like I do when someone says to me:
"I admire you So Much! When I see you, I don't see a person with a disability, at all!" which (they think) they mean as a compliment, but which I hear as: "Disability is so repulsive to me that I can't think of you as a person unless I pretend that half of your life doesn't exist." So much of New Age Paganism (not all, but a lot of it) has a similar impulse to erase the lived, cultural, experiences of the people to whom these stories first belonged -- especially if that experience doesn't sit well with our twentieth/twenty-first century mores.
Though, actually, no. Now that I've copy-pasted that bit in isolation, and started writing my response to it, I see what else bothers me about that. The author so blithely and easily conflates Slavic folklore with ancient Greek, and also Tibetan -- simply because of the sound of her name -- regardless of what her name actually means, in Russian.
That said... I still want to take the house out of its cultural context and put it in a story of my own, because I think it's nifty... People in Chicken-legged houses shouldn't ... ?? play marbles ???
But at least I'm not trying to pass my nonsense off as Truth and Scholarly Understanding. So maybe I can be forgiven?
A ballpoint pen and pencil sketch of a small house with a crooked chimney walking on a pair of giant chicken legs -- After the witch "Baba Yaga's" house from traditional Russian folklore.
I have plans-not-ready-to-discuss for it, I think. Anyway, that meant a little Web-surfing to refresh my memory of the Baba Yaga's stories, and the House's role in them, in particular.
And I came upon this page: Baba Yaga Stories, by Susun Weed (Samhain, '08). And this is how the article about her begins:
(Quote)
Who is Baba Yaga? She is the Goddess, she is the Witch, she is the Wise Woman, she is the Crone, she is aged Artemis.
Baba is Grandmother. In Tibet, fierce demons are Yagas. So she is the Grandmother Demon, Grandmother Dragon, the fearsome, the fierce.
(Unquote)
And I don't know... But, today, at least, that just rubs me the wrong way. It's as if a figure from legend and folklore isn't worth thinking, (talking, or learning) about until we turn that figure into some archetype we can admire, regardless of how that figure was actually thought about by the people who originally told those stories. It makes me feel a bit like I do when someone says to me:
"I admire you So Much! When I see you, I don't see a person with a disability, at all!" which (they think) they mean as a compliment, but which I hear as: "Disability is so repulsive to me that I can't think of you as a person unless I pretend that half of your life doesn't exist." So much of New Age Paganism (not all, but a lot of it) has a similar impulse to erase the lived, cultural, experiences of the people to whom these stories first belonged -- especially if that experience doesn't sit well with our twentieth/twenty-first century mores.
Though, actually, no. Now that I've copy-pasted that bit in isolation, and started writing my response to it, I see what else bothers me about that. The author so blithely and easily conflates Slavic folklore with ancient Greek, and also Tibetan -- simply because of the sound of her name -- regardless of what her name actually means, in Russian.
That said... I still want to take the house out of its cultural context and put it in a story of my own, because I think it's nifty... People in Chicken-legged houses shouldn't ... ?? play marbles ???
But at least I'm not trying to pass my nonsense off as Truth and Scholarly Understanding. So maybe I can be forgiven?
