Column | Déjà vu - The Influence of Oral Storytelling

When I was a kid, I often had a dream that a man in a Russian hat (winter hat with ear protection) and a long army green coat was chasing our family on a train. Not sure if it's a memory in the genes or a dream about a previous life (I obviously don't believe people have a previous life). This dream first appeared before elementary school. At that time, I had no concept of the Soviet Union. After all, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, I had just entered kindergarten, and it was impossible for me to have the opportunity to know such a distant country.

Perhaps as a Taiwanese immigrant from China, I have been extremely disgusted with the Communist Party and socialism since I was a child. That is the only way a child can show patriotism. Subtly, when I grew up, I naturally rejected the former Soviet Union countries... It was not until middle school that I became fascinated by a novel by a Russian secret police, and I began to be curious about the Soviet Union before the disintegration.

As an adult, I realized that dreaming when I was young is not a supernatural experience, but a story I heard from my elders a long time ago, not necessarily even to me, sometimes just overheard the right of an adult. Talk, put it together and burn it in your mind.

I recently read a book that mentioned nomadic bards. I originally wanted to write a column about oral poetry, about the Gypsies I saw in Paris (called Bohemia in French), but I just read a paragraph "Bohemian" before I started writing. The narrative of "Senya Muslim Singers" also passed on distinctive songs in oral form, so the article was changed to "The Influence of Oral Storytelling".

Bosnia, where the Russian-Ukrainian war was brought up again

Most people don’t pay much attention to Bosnia, but when it comes to Serbia’s massacre of Bosniaks 30 years ago, there are still 8,000 massacres under the leadership of Serbian general Ratko Muradic. There are only a few Bosnian Muslims, and 250,000 to 30,000 Bosnians were expelled. It was the ethnic cleansing that shocked the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. With the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war in March this year, Russia even more so threatened Bosnia (Bosnia and Herzegovina) that if it wants to join NATO, it may create a situation similar to Ukraine, which has brought the world's attention to the Balkan country again.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the average Bosnian Muslim singers were proficient in thirty or forty songs, and some were proficient in more than a hundred. Every song is a story, and some have to sing for hours to fully express the story. This is an inheritance of oral creation. The lyrics sung by different singers have different versions of the story, and the poems heard are translated from memory. out, but there is no way of knowing where it came from or what the original version was.

Chanting is an extremely ancient art. In the tenth century BC, this culture existed in the society of ancient Greece. Poets handed down Homer's epics by word of mouth. At that time, only a very small number of powerful people were literate. Of course, the bards were illiterate, and the common people listened to oral writing. Stories add different cultural characteristics in different regions. Excellent poets are invited to dinner performances in noble houses. "Stories" are the key to their entry into the upper class. Poets also learn to improvise and add flattering stories to the host. plot.

Bards were initially low in society, and by the second century BC they were privileged in ancient Celtic society, praising tribal leaders, celebrating heroic deeds, celebrating the issuance of laws... Bards in Gaul It disappeared during the Roman Empire, while the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland existed until the eighteenth century.

The 19th century "Il trovatore" (Il trovatore) is one of the three masterpieces of the middle period of Verdi , adapted from the Spanish play "El Trobador" of the same name, which tells the story of the gypsies. Since the Middle Ages, the appearance and existence of Gypsies have been very mysterious in the eyes of Europeans. Most of them are engaged in divination, singing and dancing, and they are discriminated against by the public because of their unsettled life. Such a narrative is also in Hugo. It can also be seen in Notre Dame de Paris.

Street performers no longer exist in modern society, but we are all influenced by oral stories. Folk tales, prophetic legends, religious classics, the family history of yours and mine—we've heard a lot from grown-ups long before we could understand words, or even languages. In the process of growing up, I gradually became literate, learned culture and literature, and finally found that these stories had long been in my memory.

Those dreams that seem similar to the past, is this how they came?

Author: @Chin
Column area: Chin's misunderstanding
Further reading:

🎏The eternity of love is a curse, since Eve encouraged Adam to eat the fruit of good and evil
🎏Inspirations from Simon Powa
🎏 Freedom for walkers
🎏 Taste of food
🎏 Has our aesthetic changed since Netflix?
🎏 Live the imagination
🎏 Is the label "feminism" too heavy?
🎏 You are what you wear｜Do you have your own style of dressing?
🎏Atypical love in movies｜"Soul or Body" is a multiple choice question beyond "Love or Bread"
🎏Traveling alone is a daily life without motivation

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