Ancient Armenian Drama and Its Modifications

Հ այ հին դրաման և նրա պայմանա ձև երը մաս2

A story narrated in Middle Ages, an old ceremonial legend, language evidence and some analytic essays that create a dramatic atmosphere, trace back to the pre-Christian age and reach the new era. By saying old, we mean conveying the old, bringing antiquity and narrating of antiquity.

Such is the subject of our study.

We neither have nor seek for ancient evidence: we proceed from medieval references of the phenomenon. We attempt to view antiquity in the medieval light, taking into consideration the survived written and oral pieces of folk legends.

Our purpose is to examine the historical-typological and thematic interconnections of ancient Armenian drama in a particular frame, searching for semasiological and internal relations between mythological, ritual modifications and folk dramatic games, viewed in comparatively later periods. We mean the type of the phenomenon, its description and those features that bring the Armenian folk drama close to the ancient theatrical system, and the folk-dancing (choral) drama. We do not intend to identify the ancient mystic drama with the medieval folk drama, but we are prone to think that these two different types have the same roots.

We are interested in the vein hidden in the Armenian dramatic folklore, its mythological source, its trends to religious outlook, its cult symbols ( that will be thoroughly examined) and the most important of all, with its ritual and game modifications.

The most apparent of the discussed facts is the folk drama. This is an expression of game folklore that has passed through Middle Ages, bears various social-historical influences, and is rough and simplistic by appearance. But it is much more than can be judged by its appearance. It includes such depths, such invisible layers, that in order to recognize the subject it is necessary to turn to indirect parallels, to remove far from facts and sometimes to put together signs seemingly incompatible in terms of time and environment.

But shall we take into account all the rites originating in pre-written language age, all the known forms of syncretic folklore, all those expressions of conventionality of ways that include elements of action, play and rituals? Usually this is how the ancient drama is examined. This examination method creates a mode of uncertainty and the boundaries of the subject remain indefinite. Yet, our purpose is specific.

By realizing the significance of cult signs and ancient beliefs, by turning over the pages of Lives of our Fathers, the Gospel and Agathang, by paying attention to some old sites and restaurated memorials, we attempt to reflect on a certain problem in a particular direction. The purpose is to consider the general pre-theme of the drama, to examine its expressions in the folkloric environment, and its religious and artistic modifications.

Considering the historical-typological and mainly historical-philological examination of Armenian and ancient folk drama, we look for its complete, typologically constructed expressions on one hand and its literary references, signs and reflections on the other. As for the ritual and game bases of drama, we mean the dramatic structure and not the dramatic sense (it is a wider sphere). We must not confuse the two sides of dramatics: one of them is dramatic as a general strain level of an emotional state, the other is the structure-formation of contexts. In the first case, the dramatic structure is an aesthetic feature meaning an internal tension and a possibility of movement and excitement. It may be typical to all literary genres and it can be expressed in all forms of artistic mentality. This is dramatics as an aesthetic expression, and a structure characterizing its genre. The position of the subject and its relations to the reality can be dramatic, when the subject is viewed and reproduced from the spectra of “action liberty of a subject”(Hegel) as a relationship between “I” and “You”.

We think that we may use a situation or a state, for example a dramatic state of speech and an epic (narrative) situation instead of the genre.

Dramatic sense is the state or the situation where the practical will of an individual is expressed or when it possesses a potential of expression; the situation is a present condition (not past as in epic genre) and the action is its aim.

If dramatics does not lead to drama as a category of expression, then it conveys the idea of an immediate possibility or a dramatic model. If the situation can be generally repeated, i.e. it has parallels in everyday life, in history and in literature, especially in folklore and in games, and emerges into different plot structures, it is called a dramatic model or modification. For instance, two goats meet on the narrow bridge of a small river: they face an unavoidable conflict and involuntary guiltiness. This is a fable modification of a drama, its most simple and precise model which has its folklore-game variation: the children’s game called “goats’ fight.”

If the mode of the logical expression is not the result of situations, it does not cause dramatic modifications. But mediated signs and indirect references exist in Armenian song-epic folklore. They are not various and cannot be so. Dramatic modifications are limited by their typology and seem diverse because they appear in different contexts.

Considering the logical and folk-dancing extracts of ancient Armenian drama we do not intend to make it a narration, but instead find special signs that characterize the typology of the drama.

Dramatic modifications are more obvious in the game folklore. The contention for priority and the struggle to become the master of the situation, where the special spiritual strain is expressed in the form of physical activities, brings to drama. Such games are the obvious expressions and reflections of national psychology, though their semantics are not visible.

The meaning of the game is mainly incomprehensible or forgotten both for the player and the viewer. But the game is neither an endless pastime nor a mere sports activity, no matter how it is perceived. If the perception and the essence are on the same level, there is a need for research.

Each emotional situation, either a usual-ceremonial game or an unusual-circus type, has a theatrical element and consists of signs. Behind each sign there is always an invisible meaning questing for explanation.

Of course, there is not a direct link between a game and a drama. They are not isomorphous, side by side, do not replace or follow each other although they have the same origins. The environment creates the metaphysics of the drama. Ancient Indian dramas are not dramatic, but not because of the fact that the ideas of decadence and victory have been expressed in one genius game. Official religious ideology has accepted the ideas of danger and death as inseparable from the ideas of salvation and resurrection, and this reconciliation was put in the base of Brahman poetics. Card reading is a result of an environment which is dramatic both in reality and in theatre. The provision of the Angel is quite acceptable in Europe: “the dramatic action requires the realization of three principles- that of the individual liberty, self-motivation and the sovereignty of the free will responsible for personal actions and their consequences.” Hegel means the classic tragedy and the social environment for its existence, i.e. Sophocles and the polis democracy of Athens. The example of classic Greece provided Hegel with an opportunity to create a harmonious state and define the ideal regulations. Yet, the course of the history and life seems capricious.

The ideal basis for the drama (if it ever existed) has disappeared, and drama has changed the sphere and the level of expression. Hegel’s theory of drama remains a stable indicator, a conventional apparatus revealing the structure and the logic of the phenomenon, that explains by far no conceptual phenomena.

What Hegel considers a condition for tragic action, occurs in drama and in game and play- folklore, but in what sphere of life, in what spiritual space and mode of expression?

This is the starting point of our critique.

This is where we want to widen the boundaries of drama and the comprehension of dramatics. Consequently, by saying old and folk drama, we mean the song-epic and game folklore, the discovery of the completed phenomena, the transformations of the phenomenon, its potential conditions and models.

Not all kinds of Armenian folk games may be called dramatic or are adjusted to dramatic models. But there are games dramatic by nature where the phenomenon we are looking for is evident, prompting drama by semasiology. Such is for example, the mace game, rough by appearance and symbolic conflict by content, where the right of position is contended for by obvious physical means but not for the objective of physical victory. Rope-dancing is dramatically much more moderate, theatrically impressive and profound, and is the eccentric-objective and symbolic reproduction of human attitude towards the reality, the visible idea of harmony and perhaps the semasiological base of circus.

If the fable of two goats is the simplest model of drama then rope-dancing can perhaps be considered to be the main determinant of the theatre. This is a folk miracle and morality; on one hand it is a manifestation of the ambiguity of human existence and on the other, a symbolic resolution of the relation between humans and the supernatural spirits of the air.

The study of Ancient and Medieval theatre convinces that folk-dancing is the most viable and perhaps the preliminary trait in folk dramatic art. Many features of the ancient drama have faded and disappeared but this one reaches the new era. The signs of folk-dancing as an ancient theatrical system exist in folk-game, in epic narratives, in various modifications of lifestyle and in ecclesiastical ritual.

All this is mentioned in the previous research of the author, but there is a need to reveal separately the spheres of folk-dancing and to revitalize their meaning in accordance with the universal typological features.

We do not want to be repeated (the reader may get this impression in some places), we simply attempt to develop the question.

We have considered folk-dancing drama as one of the types of early medieval theatre and have searched for its survivals in song-epic folklore.

Now we attempt to interpret the same phenomenon as the main type of ancient Armenian folk drama. We choose the theatrical universality as a historical-typological orientation. This is the axis of the research. Consequently, not all facts of theatrical and game folklore are connected with ancient drama. The question is, in what kind of game and rituals does the content-structural principle of folk-dancing drama exist as a main and decisive peculiarity?

Starting with the national interpretation of mystic drama, the known ancient themes (mythological modification), linguistic facts of folk-dancing drama, as well as the general bases of the religious outlook of the drama, we try to view the branch of game folklore in the new era by the light of antiquity, called oral literature, folk ritual ( G. Srvandztyants, S. haykuni, E. Tievkants, V. Ter-Minasyan, E. Lalayan, and others) and later a game (V. Bdoyan), folk theatrical play (A. Arshakuni), theatrical performance (Srbuhi Lisityan), and further on folk dramatic work and folklore theatre.

From the ritual and other types of games we separate a definite kind of game, that is_ judge-games and circle-type games constructed by the same logic, where the opsis of folk-dancing drama is obvious.

In this games we assume the existence of an individual and the environment, a conditional conflict, an agreed action (ritual) and elemental (game) performance, creativity, eccentric change of conditions and such representational modifications, where we perceive the object and the subject (action and actor), the limits of reality and conventionality, the spectator and the actor. Calling them folk-drama, we try to clarify the types and peculiarities of these games and differentiate the drama or the dramatic models from the other forms of game folklore and dramatic rites from non dramatic ones.

It eases the comprehension of theatre as well.

Theatricality, no matter how wide the concept is (and it is), it cannot be independent from the dramatic (the dramatic action). The perception of this unity as we have mentioned, is weak in modern Armenian theatre study, although the distinction and the connection of those two features exist in dramatic theories of the past century, particularly in the theoretical analysis of France Grilpartsen.

Defining the ancient and folk drama and recognizing the ancient dramatic theme in Armenian folklore, we try to reach the basis of the ancient Armenian theatre and, find its historical (although distant) ties with the folk drama of the new era. This is one of the main questions of this research.

The concept of folk drama was not included in our philological literature. Theoretically, drama has not been distinguished from the other types of game-folklore. Documentary material has been collected and published since the end of the last century ( by P. Proshyan, Raffi, G. Srvandztyans, E. Tievkans, V. Ter Vardanyan, H. Malkhasyan, E. Lalayants, etc.). The material is systemized (V. Bdoyan), and it is difficult to input new data into it today. (The national way of life does not have the previous ethnographic richness, it moves from rural to urban areas). However, there has been no theoretical examination and especially no typological distinction of folk drama. Every ritual phenomenon, such as the wedding for example, has been called a folk theatrical play so far. This is a disputable approach which dates from the last century. One of the reasons is the disregard to the practice of the dramatic and theatrical as well as the classic esthetical theories. It has brought to the confusion of the boundaries, concepts and objects which also exists in the Russian theatrical study of the past, in the works of P. Morozov, Yu. Veselevski, V. Vsevolodski-Gernross. New authors so far have inherited the views of the past century without a theoretical revision. We think it more extraordinary when a funeral is considered as drama or theatre.

Garegin Levonyan and following Georg Goyan consider the description of Gnel’s funeral and Parandzem’s wailing in Faust Buzand’s “Armenian History” as a tragedy of the Fourth century, in case when the mystic rite as a component of Navasard holiday existed among Armenians earlier, according to Khorenatsi, during the King Vagharsh I (117-140 B.C.).

As we will see in the book, the mysterious type of the theatre already existed during the Armenian Arshakuni dynasty and that no drama could have been created from the barbarian forms of pagan wailing (described by Faust). What a poverty of spiritual life should it have been especially in the period of the prosperity of the Armenian ministry!

Life, especially in ancient and medieval centuries, had a variety of ritual expressions, if was not completely ritual. No reasons to identify the lifestyles, no matter how theatrical they were, with oral elaborated and existing composition within the life. The rite sometimes has the expression of mechanical beliefs deprived of meaning, it creates an environment of social contact and stable ways for oral literature, particularly for drama, and does not become such by itself. The study of rituals is by far not an unimportant task from the perspective of our issue, but let us not confuse the environment with the phenomenon existing in it. We had a chance to talk about it.

In the study of the Armenian ancient and folk drama, we proceed both from rituals and games considering them as factors deciding the structure of the drama or the different levels of dramatic expression. But here too, a distinction should be made. The dramatic sense is rather a result of an eventuality and an element, i.e. of the state of playing, than of an agreement- the ritual state. The rite is an agreed and stable phenomenon which implies theatrical sense. Therefore, the rite and the game are assumed to have the same relations as those existing between theatrical and dramatic senses.

Therefore, the rite and the game are assumed to have the same relations as those existing between theatrical and dramatic senses. Rituals are the regulation of the game, like theatricality for dramatic sense. Theatrical art is the internal dialectic tie between two of them. The perception of the contradicting unity of those first principles of rituals and games, are actually new and brought the theatrical artists of the beginning of the Twentieth century the idea that theatre was the solidarity of the temple and the playground, and the agreement between “the heathen priest and player.” In this work, we attempt to view those two principles separately and together according to sign links.

As an order and sequence of the inquiry, we accept the six parts of the drama defined by Aristotle: 1) fable or fabula, 2) customs or character, 3) speech, 4) idea, 5) vision or opsis and 6) play (music).

In fact these are not parts but synchronous- structural elements and layers, and the exclusion of any of them will result in a distortion of the subject. Aristotle imagines drama as literature without opsis which is “typical to a poem least of all”. The visible world, i.e. the theatre is independent. It is a formation existing beyond the speech. On one hand it is an assumed reality (according to Roman Ingonden’s interpretation), and on the other hand, it is the theatrical orchestral public realization of the literary material and its subjective determinant.

According to the six structural elements in the sequence defined by Aristotle, the base of the drama is first of all the theme, and the myth is the mythological modification (modus) in today’s terminology. According to Aristotle’s logic, the character (person, archetype) is subject to myth and plot regulation. According to Aristotle, accepting this principle, we must note that the character gets materialized when the myth is subjected to opsis and surpasses the boundaries of literature (poetry). So we arrive at the idea of ritual modification, which, in its turn, results in game modification.

The internal logic of the phenomenon, as we have noticed, has been viewed long time ago, and the bases for interpretation have already been given. Thus, it dictates us to classify the inquiries in the following sequence: a) mythological modification, b) ritual modification, c) game modification. Hence, in the first chapter we discuss the myth, the archetype (ethos) and the idea (dianoya) in the second, the ritual traces and metamorphoses in the third chapter and later, we examine the evidence of the game modifications, that is to say the folk drama with its models. We follow the sequence of historical facts, according to the opportunities provided by the material. This sequence is conditional, of course. The structural elements of drama are found in different time periods and places, far from one another and disconnected. And the purpose of our study is to review the existing connections.

Resume

The subject of our study is the ancient Armenian mysterial drama with its mythological and ritual bases and symbolic and thematic-plot typology.The Armenian version of the “Chained force” with the mysterial name of the principal personage, that is to say the ritual embodiment of Syderian year (solar-astral year), which is connected with the holiday of Navasard (pre-Christian Armenian Holiday, linking old and coming year, called Kaland) is chosen as a universal modification or model for drama. The Chained Force has three names in Armenian mythological legends: Shidar, Artavazd and Mher. All this three are symbolic-mysterial names. The study reveals the unique nature of phenomenon which is typical for the region, universal traits and typological references to Ancient Eastern and Balkanian folkloric-mythological mentality, to cosmogenic notions and rituals.

The thematic model of Ancient Armenian drama and its ritual and game modifications-metamorphosis are examined in this work. The first modification was narrated in the pre-Christian mystery Navasard, officially adopted in the Second century BC and interrupted in 301AD by the adoption of Christianity. The second modification is the Christian cleric drama, the liturgy and its formal connections with ancient rituals of Near East and ancient Greek drama.

The third modification is the comic mystery created by the Armenian monks, the “Abeghatogh” with its parallels in folk-games, i.e. the so called “Judge games.” These three trends show the historical evolution of Ancient Armenian drama on one hand, and the universal base of the dramatic mentality on the other hand. Finally, the study leads to the question: were the sources of Ancient drama and its symbolic opsys are. This question brings us to an undeclared conclusion that the roots of ancient drama can be found in Near East and Mesopotamia and that the Ancient Armenian drama is the prototype of Syderian mystery.