Husbands asking for a memorial dinner, or the “Mythical lovers” motif. What do widows talk about after a war

Abstract

On the example of analysis of oral folklore stories of the “Mythical Lover” plot circle, we show how the historical reality enters human experience, how it is reflected in the composition of narratives and how then they are remembered and retold, creating a special remembering group. The material is ten stories of different genres of oral folklore prose – mythological stories about sexual contacts with spirits, a story about evocation of forest spirit, stories about dreams, recorded by folklorists of St. Petersburg State University in the Vologda, Arkhangelsk, Kirov regions during the last 20 years from four women born in the 1930s. Not buried in accordance with the usual funeral ritual, those who died in the war do not leave the thoughts and feelings of their widows. The grief of military widows is doubly heavy. Meanings that were not articulated by the ritual emerge in the performance of storytelling. Collective storytelling (firstly, storytellers and empathetic listeners tell their stories for the first time at the moment of events; secondly, primary storytellers, their children and grandchildren have been repeating stories about the past for more than 80 years) restores vital tissue and carries such “orienting” concepts, as excessive pain, grief outside the ritual, unrelenting grief and the danger of “evil spirits” associated with them.