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  IMAGINE AND THINK THE NEXT WORLD :
(texte français: cliquez ici)   The dead person at funeral table

 

At the funeral banquet one does not come to satisfy one's hunger, but to take part in a complete ceremony which has its own protocol and is presided over, in some way, by the dead himself.
INTRODUCTION
FOREIGN LOOK, INNER LOOK
TECHNIQUES, EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGES
TERRITORY AND MEANING OF THE PLACE
KINSHIP AND SOCIAL ORGANISATION
CUSTOM, CEREMONIAL AND RITE
TALE, LEGEND, ART OF NARRATION
EPIC, DEPHTS OF HISTORY
WHAT IS CALLED VAMPIRE
IMAGINE AND THINK THE NEXT WORLD
1 Art of lament
2 An hymn that makes us think
3 The dead person at funeral table
4

Figuration of the next world

The table of the dead person at the funeral banquet. A small girl eats the ritual food. Dobritsa, Rumania.
 

At the funeral banquet (...) one eats and drinks indeed with extreme moderation (...). One does not sit at the table anyhow, but to communicate with each other in the presence of the dead, and to communicate with the dead in the presence of all. This is why the absence of the dead would be literally unbearable. The dead must preside over the banquet, share the festive food. But, since he has left the world of here below and begins his journey to the next world, the living must share with him, like brothers, the special food that is now suited for him, that essential gruel called coliva. A food white as milk, mild to the taste as it (...). Immemorial. And since the dead cannot be physically present, in the flesh, and cannot be represented either by someone who would play his part, like an actor in the theater, the acts expected from him must be accomplished by a living. His complementary opposite in a way, someone who would come back from these remote places that he will reach. Someone entering this world, while he is entering the next world. A human being full of vitality and expected fecondity, while he has lost both of them. A twelve-year-old girl fulfills all these conditions. She can and must take the clay bowl (...), eat its content without repulsion. To affirm through food and gest the great fraternity betweenn the living and the dead. next

    J.C.: Mémoire des Carpathes, La Roumanie millénaire, un regard intérieur, Paris, Plon, Terre Humaine, 2000, p.369
   
 
 
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