| Abstract [eng] |
It is the subject of comparative Indo-European poetics (Watkins 1995) that studies the poetic diction common to Indo-European tradition. Moreover, the Indo-European daughter traditions share a common division of mythology. With reference to comparative mythology and the roles of gods, the general division of the universe reveals the following layers: ‘magical sovereignty (and heavenly administration of the universe), warrior power (and administration of the lower atmosphere), and peaceful fecundity (and administration of the earth, the underworld and the sea).’ (cf. Dumezil1988, 121). The essential aspect of archaic worldview exhibits itself as follows: ‘life is lived on a twofold plane; it takes its course as human existence and, at the same time, shares in a transhuman life, that of the cosmos or the gods’ (Eliade 1961, 167). This paper aims at revealing the transformations of the theme of the celestial wedding from the sacred to the profane with reference to the poetic narrative of ‘The Lay of Skirnir’ and Lithuanian folk songs. My argument proceeds in the following way: (1) to analyse the reflection of the myth theme and its motifs in the poetic narrative; (2) to decipher mythic formulas as embedded in the context of the poetic narrative. In the folk songs, the bride and the bridegroom imitate the actions of their celestial prototypes. The motif of shaking the earth as rendered by the formulas Jörð bifask ‘the ground shakes’ and žemužė dreba ‘the earth shakes’ is manifest in both traditions, inasmuch as it is linked to the metaphorical ‘shaking the bride’ in the prototypical quality of the mytheme employed to convey the unwillingness of the bride towards marriage. |
