The transition to agriculture as a main form of economic development necessitated an improvement in traditional measuring of time. Therefore, the lunar calendar was replaced by the solar one, in ...which periods of the year (summer and winter half-year) were determined on the basis of four key positions of the Sun – Winter Solstice, two equinoxes and Summer Solstice. These moments of the annual cycle were Christianized and associated with certain Christian saints, whose order of celebration gave order to field work as well. The songs discussed in the paper follow all segments of public life, from winter rites (the koledar procession), in which the dominant magical actions were those related to the growth of the seeds (together with the dance, koledars sing, „jump, jump, koledo, for the wheat to grow this tall”), to the songs of spring circle, where the singers bestow agricultural blessings and perform magical acts to „close the winter” and „open the summer”, along with spring fieldwork. The life cycle of a seed starts with the plowing and the sowing and finishes with the collective harvest (moba). These songs keep vestiges of the ancient belief that man can benefit only from the work that is done right, by respecting the time for work, i.e. respecting the taboo regulations related to certain days, when work is avoided.
The previous goal of this research was to show that epic time does not have
to function exclusively as “closed”, nor to hold “the island position” put
against the other epochs, the opinion that ...prevailed in recent times when
Serbian folk epic and Russian epic folk songs (byliny) were compared. The
main method of this research is semiological, but when the reseached mingled
with scientific, linguistic, literary scientific, antropological and other
types of knowledge (different methodological points of departure), it
inevitably took interdisciplinary character and lead to methodological
pluralism. The main point of this research was to figure out the way in which
time in a poetic narrative (narrative time) relates to the real (historical,
i.e., objective) time, as well as the way it functions as biographical time
of the character determined by sociocultural facts in which a variation
exists, connected to different age identities. The starting point from which
biological and social time measures is the birth of a hero. His birth as well
as his origin is highly unusual. The period of childhood lasts relatively
shortly. The liminal phase of the child is abandoned with his first
achievement, or heroic marriage. The adolescent then acquires a new status –
status of young warrior. Once the status of warrior is acquired, the hero
spends the rest of his life in constant confirmation, more with every battle.
Adulthood, therefore, functions as an unmarked (usual) maturity identity of
the hero. By handing down his heroic symbols (the horse and the weapon) to
his son, the hero renounces his status and becomes old. His leaving is
accomplished in two ways – by changing the surrounding – becoming an advisor
or a sage – or by dying whereby the unusual hero, in compliance with the the
plots of the hero's death poems, faces unusual death. Bounded by birth and
death, biography of an epic hero in a particular plot actualizes one of the
(usually most important) moments of his life (the first conflict, marriage,
etc.) weaving around this point the temporal foundation of the poem. Time in
oral folk epic creates a very compound system of relations – both in
extra-poetic reality and within the “epic time”. The first type of
relationship is achieved with breaking through the barrier of the (recent)
past in chronicle modeled poems, by introducing the narrators alter ego, a
narrator – participant (i.e., by introducing the internal perspective of the
text). Unlike the previous – mobility (before all – mutual approximation) of
different biographical times of the characters who share mutual past –
enabled different characters whose historical prototypes are severed by
several centuries to act together. Appearance of particular characters in
particular plots could be conditioned by historical setting, as well as by
the fund of knowledge in the tradition, which create the role (sphere of
interest) that the hero is going to play. Independently on the category of
character, time in the poem reflects the agrarian calendar (a year is divided
into two periods – summer and winter, i.e., St. George's and St. Demitrius'
periods). These holidays split the yearly cycle, and all the duties were
performed within that period – by connecting to certain saints – patrons of
certain activities. That was also the time for paying taxes. This caused the
hayducks to plunge the collectors, which was heroized into new plots. Since
these holidays enabled winning a great fortune, activities of the hayducks is
bounded by these holidays and proverbially expressed: St. George's day –
meeting of hayducks, St. Demitrus' Day – hayducks' goodbye. Sacred character
of these holidays and the sacrifice as a symbol, spring and winter, birth and
death (in winter shelter, with unfaithful concealers) were interwoven into
the epic narrative. Transposed onto the plane of daily cycle, symbolism of
life and death was connected to the sun's movement, its rise, and occasional
fade-away. Daily, weekly and annual cycles (the passing of time), constitute
concepts of achieved time (past) and unachieved time (future), whereof past
motivates previous events (their source and cause). The future opens new
perspectives for further events and the destiny of the heroes, leaves clues,
speaks the language of symbols (signs – omens, forebodings, and dreams), or
displays images from prophetic books. The past was also enriched by the
inserted episodes (i.e., the pre-fable) from the life of the heroes, and the
future even crossed the boundaries of the plot and announced important epic
biographies (like Marko Kraljević's). The rhythm of moving forward and
backward broke the temporal framework of narrative time. The time of the poem
is, in that way, invaded outwardly (towards the performing time), tending
towards the final points that time measuring can express – the End of Time
and The Judgment Day. Therefore time cannot be reduced to the sequence of
isolated events, “locked” in the epic “history”. On the contrary – time in an
epic poem functions as a complex network of relations, multiply overlapping
and fruitfully interweaving different dimensions of the poem. Having as a
fact that overall human experience is featured by narrativness and
conceptualizes as a tale, it is logical that it does not pass homogeneously,
but it “thickens” and “thins”. That tale can develop in continuity – from the
beginning to the end, successively, or can flow with interruptions –
diffusely and discontinuously. In both cases, shifts of narrative structure
and development of the plot are accompanied by the change of location,
connected with temporal succession of events. In that way, succession of
aggregate spatial and temporal markers builds coordinates of song's reality.
On the contrary, their abandonment, or random order, leads towards
discontinuity of the temporal structure (i.e., forking of the fable) and, in
the end, towards its (fable's) disintegration. Finally, it is possible that
nothing happens (periods of uninformative sequences of the plot). By
introducing the technique of “idle” time (sickness, imprisonment, waiting,
overnight stays, length of marital proposal, etc.) uninformative parts of the
plot are reduced. Therefore, this technique has a function of connecting the
narrative cores, keeping the hero in the spot all the time. Close to this is
the happy-end, which “freezes time” in idyllic scenery of hero's happiness
and accomplishment, but also the scene of permanent unhappiness of the dead's
relatives, in the ballad, which intensifies the feeling about the
irreparability of the loss of the close ones. Thanks to the subjective
experience of time – with its conceptualization – time is shaping to the
taste of the listeners. Narrative time can “fly” or “drag” or “linger”, run
in circles or eagerly progress towards the end of the plot (Lihačov), which
influenced the process of its creation. The whole past diminishes the
importance of single events, tends to bring them on the same level, with no
reconciliation or clear time perspective. Events themselves become autonomous
in relation to the flow of empirical time and go on together with the story.
Therefore, the singing about the past events is insensitive to the
“objective” changes of time, and different narrative sequences accordingly
relate in temporal and spatial coordinates in most various ways. In the
conclusion we may say that well-known (or imaginary) episodes from the lives
of famous people are shaped into their own temporality, and passed down
during generations, according to the poetics of singing.
Prvobitni cilj ovog istraživanja bio je pokazati da epsko vreme ne mora
funkcionisati kao isključivo kao „zatvoreno“, niti zauzimati „ostrvski
položaj“ u odnosu na druge epohe, kako se to obično smatralo, pri
neopravdanoj analogiji srpske epike i ruskih biljina. Osnovna metoda ovog
istraživanja je semiotička, a kada se istraživanje ukrštalo s naučnim,
lingvističkim, književnonaučnim, antropološkim, i drugim saznanjima
(različitim metodološkim polazištima), neminovno je poprimalo
interdosciplinarni karakter i vodilo je ka metodološkom pluralizmu. Predmet
istraživanja bio je razmotriti kako se vreme u pesmi (narativno vreme)
konstituiše u poređenju s realno postojećim (istorijskim, tj. objektivnim)
vremenom, kao i to kako ono funkcioniše na ravni biografskog vremena lika,
određenog pre svega sociokulturnim realijama društva u kome varijanta
egzistira, vezanim za različite uzrasne identitete. Početna tačka od koje se
dalje samerava biološko i socijalno vreme je rođenje junaka, koje je, po
pravilu, nesvakidašnje, kao, uostalom, i njegovo poreklo. Detinjstvo traje
srazmerno kratko, a prevazilaženje liminalnog statusa deteta ostvaruje se
prvim podvigom, odnosno junačkom ženidbom, čime se junaku adolescentu
obezbeđuje novi status – mladog ratnika. Kada jednom osvoji status ratnika,
glavni junak ostatak života provodi u njegovom stalnom potvrđivanju i
dokazivanju, iz jednog podviga u drugi. Zrelo doba, stoga, funkcioniše kao
nemarkirani (uobičajeni) uzrasni identitet junaka. Predavanjem junačkih
atributa (konja i oružja) sinu, junak se odriče svog statusa i prelazi u
kategoriju starih lica. Izlazak iz ratničkog statusa ostvaruje se na dva
načina – promenom delokruga – ulaskom u delokrug savetnika (mudraca), ili
odlaskom u smrt, pri čemu će neobičnom junaku, saobrazno sižeima pesama o
smrti junaka, odgovarati „neobična“ smrt. Ograničena rođenjem i smrću,
biografija epskog junaka, u konkretnom sižeu, aktualizovaće jedan od (obično
najvažnijih) trenutaka iz života lika (prvi sukob, ženidbu i sl), pletući oko
ove tačke vremensku armaturu pesme. Pritom, vreme u usmenoj epici gradi vrlo
složen sistem relacija – kako sa vanpoetskom stvarnošću, tako i u pogledu
vremenskog približavanja različitih, međusobno vremenski udaljenih događaja i
likova unutar „epskog vremena“. Prvi tip odnosa postiže se razbijanjem rampe
prema (nedavnoj) prošlosti u pesmama hroničarskog modela, uvođenjem
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