著者
赤尾 光春
出版者
北海道大学スラブ研究センター
雑誌
スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.50, pp.65-106, 2003

The breeze of liberalization, which began in the second half of the 1980s in the former Communist bloc countries, has brought about the rivival of Jewish pilgrimages to the gravesites of Hasidic leaders. The pilgrimage made by the Breslover Hasidim to Uman (Uman') stands out among others. The Breslover Hasidim are one of the Hasidic sects that regard Rabbi Nachman of Braslav (1772-1810) as its spiritual leader. Their pilgrimage to Uman on the Jewish New Year has an ongoing tradition of some two hundred years. Today this ordinary Ukrainian city has become one of the biggest pilgrimage centers outside Israel, attracting more than 10,000 Jewish pilgrims annually. This article deals with the spatial and ideological issues reflected in the historical process of the pilgrimage. After a brief survey of the general background of saints' sanctuaries in Jewish culture, ideological issues concerning of the pilgrimage inherent in the life and teaching of Rabbi Nachman, will be examined. In 1802 Rabbi Nachman settled in Bratslav, where he founded his Hasidic movement. After he became aware of his fatal illness, the forcus of his teaching shifted to the perpetuation of his spiritual heritage. This is expressed in his unusual concern for his burial place. Uman is located near his disciples' dwelling places. It was chosen for his burial for two ideological reasons. First, he considered it his last mission to lead the spiritual struggle against the Jewish enlighteners living there. The second reason is related to the rectification souls of the martyrs, who were brutally murdered in Uman in the notorious pogrom in 1786. Paradoxically, the town became the ideal place that attracted the complete devotion of this greatest tzaddik (righteous man) of his generation so conscious of his divine mission. Not only did Rabbi Nachman express a strong desire for his followers to visit his grave, but he also gave them clear instructions as to the procedure and the reward for their devotion. The ten chapters of Psalms called "Tikun ha-Klali" and "Kibuts" ("the Gathering"), which had initially developed separately, were later to be interwoven into the pilgrimage to Uman. The simplified form of prayer present in the former seems to have opened up the potential for a more voluntary mass pilgrimage. In the latter, by extending the universal Hasidic tradition after the master's death, the obligatory aspect of a sect's tradition was retained. The paradoxical nature of Nachman's choice of Uman can be grasped in a more meaningful way by examining his teaching on the Land of Israel. According to his theology, the holiness of Israel can be extended beyond its boundaries and the tzaddik's residential place is seen as the equivalent to Israel. Thus, he succeeded symbolically in turning this marginal place into a center equivalent in its holiness to the Holy Land. The following chapters will depict the history of the Kibuts, dividing it into three major historical periods: 1) the period of establishment (1811-1917); 2) the period of dispersion (1917-1985); and 3) the period of revival (1985-present). The charisma of Rabbi Nachman was so great that his Hasidim have never elected any successor as is the practice in other Hasidic dynasties. The pilgrimage to Uman has played an important role in the continuity and solidarity of the group. Initially, Rabbi Nathan, the favorite desciple of Nachman, played a crucial role in diffusing Nachman's teachings and institutionalizing the Kibuts. By the end of the 19th century, the teaching of Rabbi Nachman spread to Poland and the pilgrimage to Uman reached the peak of its popularity. The outbreak of World War I and the October Revolution with its aftermath made pilgrimage to Uman extremely difficult. The new socio-political conditions caused many a Hasidim abroad to give up any idea of a pilgrimage, while the new reality stimulated the Hasidim's imagination and generated a more adventurous spirit. On the other hand, the Hasidim who remained in the Soviet Union, preserved the Kibuts under incredibly difficult circumstances. In this way the Soviet reality generated various alternatives for the Hasidim both inside and outside the country without extinguishing their hopes completely. During the last decade, this period of revival has fundamentally changed the nature of the pilgrimage. No longer forbidden, the authorities have made the pilgrimage legal. Second, accessibility to Uman has transformed the pilgrimage into a quasi-tourist mass event. Finally, the scale and publicity of the revived pilgrimage has generated a "contested landscape" between the Jewish pilgrims and their local gentile hosts. Paradoxically enough, the unstable nature of the pilgrimage to Uman was revealed when the revived tradition seemed to have built a firm foundation for further development. Serious antagonism concerning the place of worship (Uman or Jerusalem?) developed between the central Ashkenazi Hasidim and a marginal group called the "Nachnachim." Although the focal point of their disagreement concerned whether or not the grave should be transferred to Jerusalem, this difference seems to concern their attitudes and sentiments toward the place of the burial and their struggle for control over the master's grave. While the former group has always considered Uman an unpararelled sacred place and has tried to preserve its old tradition, the latter group has attempted to popularize Nachman's cult in Israel. Although Uman has won the battle for its holiness, the dispute revealed the essential uncertainty of Jewish sacred places outside Israel. Uman is inseparably bound to the collective memory of the Breslover Hasidim and it has always been considered more of a sacred place than any other in Diaspora. However, this centrality of Uman as a sacred place is essentially ambiguous. These facts underscore the unstable relationship between Jewish people and their places of residence in Diaspora. Thus the phenomenon of the pilgrimage to Uman serves as a thought-provoking example, which makes us contemplate the unique spatial identities of Jewish people in general.
著者
相沢 直樹
出版者
北海道大学スラブ研究センター
雑誌
スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.37, pp.43-83, 1990
著者
奥 彩子
出版者
北海道大学スラブ研究センター
雑誌
スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.50, pp.1-31, 2003

Hourglass (1972) is the last book of the autobiographical trilogy of Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš (1935-1989). This novel is based on a real letter that Kiš's father wrote to his sister Olga on April 5th 1942. Kiš puts it in the last chapter of the novel as "Letter or Contents." Though the letter (which is full of complaints and grudges against relatives) illustrates the agony of the Jews in those times, for the son it is a precious "document" of his father who disappeared in Auschwitz. The novel Hourglass reconstructs the father's psychology and his acts, attempting to recreate his world. Examining the structure of the novel, its technical aspects and the hero, this paper focuses on how Hourglass fulfills the task of modern novels, which is, according to Milan Kundera, to present a new cognition of human existence. This paper starts by pointing out the differences between Halics and the other two books from the trilogy, Garden, Ashes (1965) and Early Sorrows (1969). The trilogy shares the same background -- Hungary and Vojvodina (a northern area in the former Yugoslavia) during World War II. In contrast to the first two books, where the main character is a boy named Andy, Hourglass has only one protagonist, E.S., who is that boy's father. The most important difference is the divergence of the narratives' viewpoint. In Hourglass, "objective narration" becomes an aim of the novel, as the narrator disappears. The paper further discusses some autobiographical facts about the author. The novel, which consists of 67 segments, is built upon four chapters "Travel Scenes" (20 segments), "Notes of a Madman" (34 segments), "Criminal Investigation" (9 segments), "A Witness Interrogated" (2 segments), as well as the two segments "Prologue" and "Letter or Contents." It is evident that this novel is a variation of a poetic form "Glosa," and that "Notes of a Madman" could be considered as a leitmotiv with its substitution of letters for chapters. Furthermore, by examining a chronology of "Letter or Contents" and the text, it turns out that all the events took place in the hero's consciousness during the single night of April 4th to April 5th, 1942. The number of the segments of text is equal to the Bible's 66 books, suggesting that the book could be considered as "a Holy Book". All the chapters could be read as if they had been written from the hero's viewpoint. In other words, the whole story is made up of E. S.'s experiences or delusions. Even the third person narration in "Prologue" and "Travel Scenes" expresses E. S.'s internal images. Furthermore, the paper emphasises that in Hourglass, the story is subdivided in order to reject the reader's empathy. This style could be described as "disnarrative." The paper also examines a number of techniques used for the segmentation: exaggeration of details, usage of images, enumeration, and recursive structure. The text of the "Novel in a Novel" suggests that the novel Hourglass is based upon an original recursive structure. The character of the hero is analyzed, especially from the perspective of his religion. The fact that he is a Jew is not presented at the beginning but emerges thoughout the story. E. S. is not an Orthodox Jew, nor has he completely assimilated into European society. In Hourglass, at the moment he reveals his Star of David, he accepts himself as a Jew, thus becoming subject to forced labour, only to face an even more horrible experience, the Massacre of Novi Sad. Under severe political and social pressure, through agony, hallucination, and a crisis of self-division, E. S. deepens his speculation concerning God, Humanity, and Nature. E. S.'s "real self" becomes a complete existence at the moment his own internal religion harmonizes with the appearance of God. In the last segment of the text, E. S. tries to accept his death with a calm equanimity, just as Noah accepted the destiny of the world and the human race. In the conclusion, the paper discusses Hourglass as the book of the world. Kiš describes his father's book Guidebook in his short autobiography as a "literal heritage," and in Garden, Ashes as "a Holy Book" or "Apocrypha." As a starting point when writing Hourglass, Kiš used the idea of a book as a metaphore for the world, which has a fertile tradition in European literature. To escape the deluge of the Pannonian Sea, E. S., as Noah himself, tries to load the ark with human beings, flora and fauna, all creatures and their experiences. In other words, at night, under the oil lamp, hearing the waves of history, with a pen, by writing letters, he tries to create a book or an ark, which carries the whole world. Hourglass is a true novel which is the reproduction of Noah's attempt to recreate the world and human beings, by the act of writing about one era and the world, through recording one man's entire experiences and emotions, without missing any details. Id est, Hourglass is the book of the world. For this recreation, Kiš concentrates on such structural aspects of the novel of such as the arrangement of chapters, disnarration, fragmentation of timeflow, etc. But the book could have never been written without the symbiosis of Kiš's and his father Eduard's character - E. S. Through this figure, Kiš finally reaches his aim - objective narration. Hourglass fulfills the task of modern novels, telling us that the book, as a metaphor for the world, even now can become an ark for the regenesis of all creatures, who resist death with all their might.
著者
秋月 俊幸
出版者
北海道大学
雑誌
スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.19, pp.59-95, 1974
著者
浜 由樹子
出版者
北海道大学スラブ研究センター
雑誌
スラヴ研究 (ISSN:05626579)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.51, pp.63-96, 2004

The aim of this paper is to revaluate Eurasianism from a historical perspective. It was precisely Eurasianism that defined Russia as "Eurasia," neither Europe nor Asia, for the first time in the intellectual history of Russia. Up to this time, Russian thinkers had identified "Asiatic" elements of Russia with "backwardness" or something "barbarous." They had not admitted its "inner Asia." In other words, Eurasianism can be regarded as a new self-identification of Russia. This change in the Russian view of Asia has attracted much attention among scholars and there is a good deal of discussion on this topic. Usually, however, Eurasianism has been regarded as a branch of Slavophiles, and very few attempts have been made to provide any convincing answer to the question of why Eurasianism emerged during the Inter-war period in a particular group of Russian emigres. Much work remains to be done to elucidate the historical origin of Eurasianism. There are some difficulties in studying Eurasianism: Eurasianists differ from each other in terms of both approach and specialty; the development of Eurasian movements has a complicated history; Eurasianism, in general, is characterized by the lack of coherence in political views. Riazanovsky was correct in stating that "the full answer could be given only after a detailed study of each individual case." In order to overcome these problems, this paper focuses on N. S. Trubetskoi, one of the founders of Eurasianism and a famous linguist. It considers the formation and development of his ideas, referring to a brief biography and the historical background of this period. Viewed from such a perspective, this paper will shed light on the significant aspects of Eurasianism and try to find out its historical origin. Trubetskoi began his discussion by criticizing Western civilization, saying it would destroy national and cultural diversity due to its "egocentrism." He assumed that every national culture was equally valuable in its own uniqueness. He developed this notion as a result of his life work on the cultures and languages of the Caucasus. From his viewpoint, a "top-down" Europeanization of non-European society leads to the destruction of uniqueness, whether it is compulsory or voluntary. The fact that he blamed the Russian Revolution for the Europeanization of Russia deserves attention, because he regarded Communism as a Europe-made idea, which was not suitable for Russia. While Europe encouraged uniformity, Russia, by contrast, preserved its ethnic and cultural diversity. This feature of Russia should be maintained, he said. Thereby, diversity lies at the core of his Eurasianism. It seems reasonable to suppose that he reached this conclusion through searching for the identity of Russia and considering how it should be even after his exile. Generally, Trubetskoi's Eurasianism reflected contemporary historical circumstances. He denied "self-determination" without proper self-recognition of each nation and also any "internationalism" which essentially revealed "egocentrism." At the same time, he warned that any intolerant nationalism might cause antagonism. In this respect, Eurasianism can be interpreted as a criticism of the modern "nation-state," which presupposes the homogeneity of the nation in its territory. Actually, the new states born in Central and Eastern Europe aimed at nation-building modeled after Western Europe and it inevitably caused serious problems among those states. Eurasianism intended to overcome this "false nationalism" by subsuming the whole. It may be said that Eurasianism was certainly a design proposed by emigres, who were alienated by the "nation-state." There is another aspect worth remarking: Trubetskoi's concept of "ideocracy" emerged as a criticism of Western political system. "Ideocracy" was a kind of system that the ruling party governs people on the basis of certain demotic and moral ideas. As he admitted, it had much similarity to Socialism and Fascism in terms of the political system. Of particular relevance here was the so-called "crisis of democracy." In Europe during the Inter-war period, people suffered from the devastating damage of World War I. The parliamentary democracy, which turned out to be meaningless for the people, encountered a serious challenge: the rising tide of the labor movement and the emergence of Fascism. While the colonial peoples rose up to achieve independence, the impact of the Russian Revolution was tremendous there. Except for the above remarks, which may certainly clarify some background of "Ideocracy," it must be particularly mentioned that Trubetskoi blamed racism, to which Fascism appealed, as the most inadmissible "egocentrism." When considered in this light, it is understandable why Trubetskoi's view of the Soviet relatively and gradually improved. Indeed, the matter is not as simple as preceding scholars have tended to conclude with descriptions of "Pro-Soviet" or "Anti-Soviet." Certainly, Trubetskoi's Eurasianism evolved under the conditions of the inter-war period.