mari poetry of goodness.

{chokecherries in the river valley}

Finally finishing my SSHRC grant does not actually entail a break for me, but it seems that the more schoolwork I have, the more inspiration I have to put things in here. Instead of reading articles on claiming indigeneity in Siberia, I'm flipping through a lovely book, The Great Bear -- an anthology of Finno-Ugric oral poetry, compiled by the Finnish oral historian & verbal art scholar Lauri Honko.

My current favourite piece is the following, in the Mari language -- it's very simple, it reminds me a little of Ukrainian folk songs (the kolomijky in particular) in its simple, 4-line structure, berry imagery & this particular sort of suggestive playfulness:

* * *

Törgom gonaj wokten shem shoptoret
wüdos konaj wozon shulalesh.
Mon denemok motor wozoldetkon
pelt-üj ganak onde shulalat.

In the stream your black currants
fall and melt away.
Fair one, if you sleep with me
you'll melt like butter.

* * *

Which reminds me that I want to write a post all about kalyna-berries & Ukrainian songs. Perhaps soon...

There's really a not a lot of English material on Finno-Ugric poetic forms, or really on many aspects of these cultures... so to be able to read Karelian and Udmurt and Mari and Khant songs all in one book, translated alongside their original forms, fills me with such delight I really don't know how to express it. Delicious delicious poems.

On another Mari note -- I found a blog (of a linguistics student) that provides a link where you can hear some Mari pop music by one Elvira Toktasheva... It's a bit cheesy-sounding, but it's traditional in that the pentatonic scale is used! But yes -- Mari is quite a lovely sounding language with its vowel harmony and plentiful post-alveolar fricatives... so that can be enjoyed. & it's thoroughly good to see an entire CD compilation exists in a language some feel is becoming increasingly threatened by Russian.

The whole political situation in Mari El in the last little while concerns me. You can read about it the basic situation here, & old news articles here. The Russian government is very very frightening.