| |
"Ancient Symbolism of Kozak-Mamai Image"
By Tetyana Poshyvaylo-Marchenko, Art Historian,
Deputy Curator of Ivan Honchar Museum, Kyiv, Ukraine
Photos by Serhiy Marchenko
Welcome to Ukraine Magazine, Kyiv, Ukraine
Issue Number Two, 1999
|
Kozak-Mamai by a villager from the land
of Cherkasy.
End of the 18th – first half of the 19th
century,
oil on canvas, 78 cm x132 cm.
|
Though you’re looking at me, you won’t
guess
where I’m from, what’s my name you won’t tell
neither,
only if you’ve happened have been in the steppe
wide
with no end to it, then you might figure out who I
am.
From an inscription
on one of the Kozak-Mamai pictures.
|
|
Kozak-Mamai (Mamai the Cossack) is an image
often portrayed in folk paintings in Ukraine in the 17th-19th centuries.
It became so popular that it was regarded as a sort of national Ukrainian
symbol. Kozak-Mamai was painted on the walls of houses, on doors
and windowsills, on tiles and chests, on many household objects, even on
bee hive houses in apiaries. It would be premature to say that we know all
there is to know about the genesis of these representations and reasons of
their popularity. There is enough evidence to suggest that the
representation of Kozak-Mamai goes back to very early times. It was
known to many ethnic groups that lived in the territory of the present day
Ukraine in the first millenium BC and the first millenium
AD.
|
Kozak-Mamai (detail).
End of the 18th –
beginning of
the 19th century.
Oil on canvas, 98 cm x75 cm.
Dnipropetrovsk Museum of History.
|
|
Kozak-Mamai (folk painting).
18th century.
Oil on
canvas, 88 cm 567 cm.
Poltava Oblast.
|
So,
Kozak-Mamai is a result of complex interactions of several ethnic
groups and cultural traditions.
Though we cannot give yet a
comprehensive answer to the question which factors contributed to such a
wide and consistent popularity of the Kozak-Mamai image that
persisted for centuries, we know for sure that Kozak-Mamai is a
deeply symbolic image, a concentrated expression of Ukrainian people’s
reflections over their ethnic identity.
The Cossack (and before the
Cossack, a free warrior ready to stand up in defense of his homeland) was
an embodiment, in the collective consciousness of the people, of spiritual
strength and adamant will to fight invaders and oppressors. In later
times, when the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks were disbanded by the Russian
Imperial authorities, Kozak-Mamai was looked upon as a reminder of
the heroic past. In spite of the fact that Kozak-Mamai was usually
represented in the state of thoughtful repose rather than in battle with
the enemies, the onlooker could feel there was strength and readiness
behind the peaceful front.
|
The Cossacks upheld the moral precepts and
cultural traditions of their ancestors, among them the ideals of
camaraderie and collectiveness. In the Cossack collective consciousness
the pagan mythological and poetic view of the world got mixed up with
moral and ethic principles of Christianity. The Cossack mentality
reflected the entire scale of Ukrainian national values, in the foundation
of which there were Ukrainian concepts of God, Love, Homeland, Land as
Mother of all Life, Native People, Statehood, Independence, Freedom,
Aspiration to Be Liberated from Foreign Domination, Justice. The
Zaporizhzhya Sich (a self-governed Cossack Community in Southern Ukraine
centred on the Dnipro River) turned to be a spiritual centre around which
the ethnic awareness and national mentality of the Ukrainian nation was
formed.Practically everything that can be seen in Kozak-Mamai
pictures has some symbolical significance. For example, there is a tree,
usually appearing in Mamai pictures, mostly oak. This tree, one of the
central traditional symbols of the Ukrainians, symbolizes strength and
longevity of the nation on the one hand, and on the other it is a
universal symbol of life, of the Universe, its structure and its life
cycles.
Another important element in Kozak-Mamai pictures is the
representations of the horse. Cossacks were excellent horsemen. In the
Ukrainian symbolism the horse embodies the concepts of destiny,
faithfulness, loyalty, love of freedom and self-sacrifice. Cossack chiefs’
coats of arms often carry representations of horses. In age-long folklore
traditions the horse symbolized fire and light; the horse protected its
master against evil spirits. In the cosmological Ukrainian symbolism it
was a symbol of cycles in the development of the Universe, embodiment of
the cosmos itself.
Bandura, a Ukrainian musical instrument appearing in
Kozak-Mamai pictures, symbolizes love of songs and music, wisdom
and dreaminess, whimsicality and belief in ultimate victory. The song was
a vehicle for expressing feelings, thoughts, aspirations. Through songs,
the Cossacks told of their perception of the world and gave their
assessment of reality around them. The last words of a dying Cossack were
addressed to his bandura. Cossack bandura-players passed cultural
traditions from generation to generation.
|
All kinds of cups, goblets,
bowls, beakers that can be seen in Kozak-Mamai pictures symbolize
(in addition to being things indispensable in the Cossack life) the
life-giving force, the womb of the Universe, the universal feminine
principle.
Hillocks, featuring in the background of Kozak-Mamai
pictures, symbolized the Ukrainian homeland, the place of the final rest,
heroic death in defence of homeland, unity of the Cossack clan. The burial
mound was often topped with a stone “baba” (female idol) which was the
cosmological symbol of the maternal source from which everything living
had sprung.
|
Kozak-Mamai by P. Zakharenko.
End of the 19th –
beginning of
the 20th century.
Oil on canvas, 102 cm 573
cm.
Folk Architecture and Life Museum of Ukraine (FALM of
Ukraine)
|
|
The spear
stuck into the ground as part of the funeral rights had a pennon affixed
to it. It symbolized the Cossack glory, respect for the deceased and
grief.
In combination with the bowl, the tree and the cross, the spear
was a sign of spatial orientation. The pennon indicated spiritual side of
the Cossack-knight, his standing above the mundane, his victory and
self-assertion. Even the Kozak-Mamai’s hat and its shape had some
symbolic meaning.
Powder-flasks were almost exclusively depicted as
horns, and horns are universal symbols of male strength. In Ukraine there
was an additional association with the ox, symbol of sacrifice,
self-denying industriousness, and with the astronomical Taurus, the
zodiacal sign of Ukraine.
|
Kozak-Mamai.
First half of the 19th
century.
Oil on canvas, 100 cm 5110 cm. Chernihiv
Museum
|
|
Kozak-Mamai
by F. Stovbunenko, 1928.
Oil on
canvas, 98 cm x80 cm.
Ivan Honchar Museum.
|
Bow and
arrows, though out of use in the 17th century, invariably make their way
into Kozak-Mamai pictures, symbolizing the tension between
spiritual and natural forces, connections between sky and earth, the
worlds of the living and of the dead; arrows are symbols of the light of
the Supreme Force, of sunrays.
All of the features of the picture were
designed to heighten the importance of the central figure, that of
Kozak-Mamai. All the details mattered here — his posture, bearing,
dress. Kozak-Mamai was shown sitting the way sacred representations of the
Orient show their gods and divine personages, Buddha among them. Mamai’s
head is shaved with only one tuft of hair remaining and sticking right out
of the middle of his forehead. The shaved head symbolized in many cultures
of the world the resignation from the mundane world. Probably, the
Cossacks shaved their heads in token of their desire to give up the
secular life and devote themselves to asceticism.
|
The image of
Kozak-Mamai can be regarded from the point of view of a symbolic
representation of the Cossack, the prototype of all the Cossacks, who
carried the heavy cross of serving the national idea of independence and
fighting for it. From the mythological and poetic point of view
Kozak-Mamai can be viewed as a mysterious image combining in itself
many features of the universal, cosmic symbolism.
The
meaning of the word “Mamai” cannot be adequately determined, evidently it
carries something enigmatic, something that cannot be explicitly revealed.
The ancient people believed that words could be materialized and then act
on their own, independently of the one who uttered them. Nothing, they
thought, should be expressed with exhaustive completeness, a measure of
secrecy should be persevered as a way of preserving the true knowledge. In
other words, the image of Kozak-Mamai could be regarded as a symbol
of a coded Weltanschauung system of the Ukrainians. With a considerable
degree of certainty we can say that Kozak-Mamai is a symbolical
sign system, into which vitally important principles of Ukrainian
ethnicity have been programmed, and which carries the basic national
ideals and spiritual reference points of the Ukrainian people.
|
Kozak-Mamai,
painting on the front of the chest.
19th century. Oil on wood.
The
village of Kuzemyne, Okhtyrsky Raion,
Sumy Oblast. (FALM of
Ukraine.)
|
"Welcome to Ukraine" Magazine, Issue Number Three, 1999
Kyiv, Ukraine, http://www.wumag.kiev.ua
Not for reproduction or distribution,
FOR PERSONAL and ACADEMIC USE ONLY
| |
back
