A LIFE-LONG JOURNEY DRAMATIZED CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS

In the heart of any nation lies a thirst for great perfection, an aspiration to embody the ideal. One of its proofs is the existence of art in all times and among all nations.


However, producing great and minor artists, none of the nations renounced any artistic activities, not subcontracted them entirely to the geniuses, satisfying the thirst for beauty only with masterpieces. It is rare to see the summit without the other mountains and ridges. Still, it is impossible to have an ingenious artist without the emergence of many of his less gifted colleagues. Masterpieces of art could not be created for no reason, from nothing. They appear only on a sufficiently prepared ground enriched by everyday folk art.


Separating the masterpieces from the people's lives is impossible. No matter how we try, they will still be only a manifestation of the rarest and most successful satisfaction of a national thirst for the ideal in beauty. But the dream is impossible to achieve - a skeptic will slyly remind. Yes, the dream is impossible, but why not try to reach it?


 And then, in this aspiration, we learn what is right, what is not good, and what does not get us anywhere?


Of course, not every peasant was able to build the Dom church, as not every girl could make silk embroidery. But, by no means in every home, there were order and cleanliness, and not every village had enough bread until the new harvest.


However, there was a great aspiration to the beauty of life in the nation's heart. And where there's a will, there's a way - a realization which measure of accomplishment would not be apparent without the ideals of beauty and order. Therefore, it is difficult to take apart folk art from the whole entity of a peasant's way of life.


Established folk art was tightly intertwined with the labour, household and religious traditions. The desire for beauty is illustrated, in particular, in dramatized customs and rituals, from which the whole annual life cycle of a person, and consequently, of the entire village and the ethnic group consisted.


Until now, domestic and some work traditions have had ritual nature. A ritual is always an act, and an act is already a drama. Drama, according to Aristotle, always has the beginning, the middle and the end. They cannot be reversed without destroying their very essence.


Many folk customs and rituals gravitate to such metaphoric similarities. For example, the rumour always strives to have a plot that feeds incredible gossip exaggerations. Usually, a folk ritual could be called a mini-drama. But here, perhaps, our abilities to borrow from the high culture would stop. So, "tragedy" and "comedy" are no longer suited to this or that custom. However, it is very appealing, for example, to refer to a funeral to the genre of tragedy and the Yuletides to the style of comedy.