Who are these mysterious creatures - cats? How was the image of a cat embodied in music, what were the composers' favorite cats? Viktor Solkin, a famous Egyptologist, tells about this, because cats are, of course, also Ancient Egypt.
I. Klenskaya: Creatures of unearthly beauty live on earth.
I think you guessed that these are cats!
March is the month of cats. Once, many centuries ago, the first cat was brought to Russia by the Byzantine princess Anna, the wife of Prince Vladimir. And since then - cats, cats and cats! And it is interesting for us to see how the image of a cat was embodied in music, what favorite cats were among composers, and in general to think about mysterious creatures - cats. We invited Viktor Solkin, a famous scientist-Egyptologist, to visit us, because cats are, of course, also Ancient Egypt.
V. Solkin: The cat was domesticated on the banks of the Nile. There is a huge number of works of art that show the amazing, difficult worldview of the Egyptians. And the cat plays a very important role in it. There are significant differences between a cat and a cat.
The cat is the embodiment of the sun god. The funeral texts tell how the cat screams in the silence of the night and creates the world with this scream. The Egyptians call him Ur-miu - the great cat. This is a bright solar demiurge who fights against chaos, tramples on evil, kills the great serpent of chaos under the sacred trees, in order for the world to triumph.
The cat is completely different. She is graceful, plastic, refined.
I. Klenskaya: Fryderyk Chopin had a cat that he loved to watch. Once he heard her jump onto the piano and touch the keys with her paws. Chopin thought, “What a charming sound! What a charming melody can be! " Waltz No. 4 he called "Cat Waltz" in honor of his kitty.
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The cat is always somewhere between worlds and between events
V. Solkin: For the ancient Egyptians, a cat is the most vivid reflection of a female character: on the one hand, tenderness, affection, motherhood, childbearing; on the other hand, danger. The cat is about to turn into an angry lioness Sekhmet - the great goddess of retribution and anger. Therefore, the cat is always somewhere between worlds and between events.
I. Klenskaya: Are the cat and the cat two different creatures?
V. Solkin: Absolutely different, with different symbolism. Even in amulets, cats and cats carry a completely separate load.
I. Klenskaya: If a cat is solar, bright energy, then a cat?
V. Solkin: A cat is something mysterious, nocturnal. I will say right away that in Egyptian culture, the cat is more popular than the cat - such an unexpected image of the mother goddess. The Egyptians loved the cat very much. This is the desired inhabitant of the house.
The cat connects all eras and all contexts: different languages, different cultures, different religions. The cat goes through them, comes from Egypt to the Russian popular print, from the Russian popular print - to the literature of the 18th-19th centuries. There is a startling phrase from the 1st century BC. It belongs to the great Egyptian sage Ankhsheshonk. He left a whole conduit of wisdom - wishes for future generations. He said: "Do not laugh at the cat" - after all, the cat is one step away from the golden goddess of love, but in the same way she is one step away from the lion-headed goddess of rage.
In Egypt there was a concept that there is a great, unknowable, primordial, Eternal deity. The incarnation, relatively speaking, of his soul is the sun god Ra. The soul of the god Ra is the goddess Isis, the well-known Egyptian Mother of God with the baby Choir in her arms. The soul of the goddess Isis is the goddess Bastet, the one who patronizes cats. Accordingly, the soul of the goddess Bastet is a cat. Such a chain directly builds a connection between the cat and the Eternal deity who creates the world.
My favorite ancient Egyptian epithet for a cat is “the lapis lazuli cat of the horizon” (VIII century BC, Nespakheran papyrus). You know how beautiful it is! Many amulets with the image of a cat, which were made from sacred stones, have been preserved. For the ancient Egyptians, this is hismin, amethyst, mefkat - the great sacred turquoise of the mother goddess.
I. Klenskaya: Domenico Scarlatti, who lived in the 18th century, had a cat named Pulcinella. This cat loved the harpsichord. The cat walked the keys imposingly and proudly, and the sounds inspired Scarlatti to create wonderful music. He named one of the works in honor of his cat: "Cat's Fugue".
V. Solkin: It seems to me that there is something that connects the Egyptian and European cat. She is a conductor between our world and another world. She is always on the doorstep. In Egyptian tombs, a door to the afterlife was depicted - the so-called false door, and there are two cats sitting on top, who look at the incoming and are ready to be his companions and guides to the space of the other world. A cat in Egypt sometimes acts as the "mistress of the embalming house", and not from the point of view of the dark ritual of mummification, but from the point of view of a helper who takes a human soul, runs in front of her and shows space. In the same way, it is believed that the goddess Bastet herself, great and very ancient, can turn into a cat, into her sacred animal, and run in front of a person in the night, showing him the right way and protecting him from nightmares.
An absolutely amazing work from the collection of the Oriental Department of the Voloshin Library is a large color triptych by the classic of Japanese graphics of the 19th century, Baido Kunimasa. He depicts the play "Cat Trouble". The meaning is as follows. Three kabuki actors in rich costumes play the story of the bakeneko ghost cat. This is a terrible cat, he is associated with a lot of Japanese legends. The central actor is depicted in the costume of this cat. He is wearing a white wig with ears. Besides the fact that it is woodcut, it is also the richest embossing - a very beautiful thing. And suddenly the space of the theater is torn apart (this can be directly seen in the engraving), and a huge muzzle of this terrible ghostly cat appears, who attended a performance dedicated to him to see what is happening there. It turns out that, it would seem, in exotic Japanese culture far from us, we find thingswhich give some kind of Gogolism. The Japanese have the idea that any cat that is either over thirteen years old or weighs more than one kan (this is three kilograms seven hundred and fifty grams) can turn into a bakeneko ghost cat.
I. Klenskaya: Not a weak kitty!
V. Solkin: Yes. At this moment, the tail of such a cat begins to bifurcate, and this cat is able to eat the owner, release fireballs and predict fate. Even such a mystical animal can turn into the cat that in the evening in the Japanese kitchen lapping oil from the lamp. The oil was made on the basis of fish oil, and therefore it is clear that it is attractive to the cat.
The Japanese also have nekomusume - a female cat, a ghost cat. This is usually a lady who has been deceived or offended by someone. And now she returns as a cat in order to take revenge on her offenders.
When you look at all this, you find out a very amazing and funny, although maybe banal thing. There are character traits of a cat that are reflected in all cultures through which this image passes (Russian classics, Japan): the principle of werewolf, the principle of the hidden side, the principle of the cat's game. Who is playing with whom: a man with a cat or a cat with a man? This is a big question.
I. Klenskaya: Théophile Gaultier adored cats, and he liked to watch them. His beloved cat always listened attentively to the singers who came to visit him, and wagged its tail. But as soon as the singer struck a high note, the cat began to get nervous and run around the room. High notes cause anxiety in cats. Who knows, maybe Andrew Lloyd Webber took this property into account in his famous "Cats"?..
Why did Bulgakov choose a cat as one of Woland's companions?
V. Solkin: This goes back to the European tradition, to the black cat - a witchcraft, magic cat, a cat predictor.
I. Klenskaya: The sailors believe that a black cat on a ship is a lucky sign. And if the cat is kicked out, you can cause trouble. In England it was believed that if a black cat lives on the shore of a sailor's wife, then nothing in the sea threatens her husband. They say that black cats can play with ghosts. Composer Sergei Slonimsky wrote Lullaby for a Black Cat.
V. Solkin: I was very surprised by the difference in attitudes towards cats in the European and Arab Middle Ages. In the European Middle Ages, a cat is a witch, a cat is a plague, a cat is a danger. And in the East, the cat is one of the most revered animals of the Koran. There is even a story about the beloved cat of the Prophet Muhammad. Her nickname is known - Muizza. This cat was very revered. The Sunnah (that is, an addendum to the Qur'an, which tells in hadiths about the life of the Prophet Muhammad) says that the Prophet Muhammad considered a cat a very pure creature, created by Allah as one of those animals that is always near man.
The Prophet Muhammad was very fond of the Muizu cat and never disturbed her sleep. Here is an amazing image, which is also in Japanese culture: he cuts off a fragment of his clothes on which the cat sleeps, so as not to wake her up. In Japan, there is a famous picture of a geisha cutting off a piece of her kimono in order not to disturb the cat. It's amazing: seemingly completely different cultures!
The Prophet Muhammad used water for washing before prayer, which the cat drank, because she is a blessed animal. The cat loved to sleep on his lap during sermons. One day a cat killed a snake, which climbed into the sleeve of his robe and was about to sting him.
The Persian historian and theologian Tabari wrote down a very interesting legend. During the "World Flood", rats and mice began to gnaw holes in the bottom of Noah's ark (in the Quran, Noah - Nuh). Nuh strokes the back of the lion, the lion sneezes, and cats jump out of its nostrils, which immediately gnaw mice and rats so that Noah's ark does not sink.
The continuity of ideas is absolutely amazing: Krylov's wonderful Russian fables go back to La Fontaine, La Fontaine goes back to Aesop, and Aesop goes back to ancient Eastern literature!
In the collection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, I was once struck by the so-called ostracons, that is, pieces of limestone on which artists painted what they were allowed to do: not something regulated by the canon, not painting on the wall of the royal tomb, but something for souls. There is a lot of satire. In the collection of the Egyptian Museum in Turin there are even whole satirical papyri, and there the history of the relationship between a cat and a mouse is generally a great classic. For example, mice are walking and carrying a palanquin in which the lady cat is sitting. They look back at her with fear and horror, and the cat pretends not to notice who is carrying it. Or the opposite situation: the great lady mouse is carried, all the animals serve her, and, clenching its jaws, the cat stands and fanns it with a large fan. This is approximately the 15th – 14th century BC.
I. Klenskaya: Gioacchino Rossini admired cats, their mysterious life, their charming wit. And we all know the duo buff for cats, for two voices.
… Solkin: I'll give you one example. This is the story of Ibn Basbad, which was recorded by Egyptian theologians and zoologists.
A certain literary specialist, grammarist Ibn Basbad was sitting with his friends on the roof of a mosque in Cairo. Friends were eating something. And a cat passed by. They gave her some bites of some kind of food. She took food, ran away. And she returned. Again and again. The pundits began to follow this cat and saw that it was running away to a neighboring house, on the roof of which was sitting another, blind cat. Next to her, our cat, the main character, left the brought pieces of food. Ibn Basbad saw in this the care of the blind animal on the part of God. And this shocked him so much that he left his belongings and began to live in poverty, relying on God until his death in 1067. This is a well-known literary fact in the Arab world. The cat as a manifestation of God's will, very serious in the Arab East.
Cairo is a city of cats. They really are as you see them on Egyptian figurines: lean, thin, with wedge-shaped muzzles. It is clear that both heat and not much food. And when by seven o'clock in Cairo the sunset begins very abruptly, the city, especially the garbage dump, comes to life, because it is the city of cats. They are both tolerated and loved, unlike, for example, a dog, which is considered an unclean animal in Islam. Hundreds, thousands of cats take to the streets, especially in the old town, where houses of the XVI-XVII centuries are still preserved.
There is an absolutely amazing book by the English writer and medievalist Robert Irwin. This is the novel "Arabian Nightmare" about a European pilgrim in medieval Cairo. In the center of some episodes of this novel is such an image - the Feline Father, a certain fortune-teller, an expert on fate and a magician who lives in the center of Cairo. And all the cats of Cairo come to him at night and tell secret stories that they spied on, eavesdropped on and sorted out. Here is such a hidden world. And if you just read this book, you think, "What a strange story!" But if you know what Cairo actually looks like, you understand that these are realities that are still preserved in the old city and that go into the Arab medieval literary traditions.
I. Klenskaya: Have you ever seen how cats gather?
V. Solkin: Yes, of course. It's not hard to see. You just have to go to the old town any evening, closer to the trash heaps. Cats are terribly sorry, because they are all terribly skinny, exhausted. You want to feed them, but you can't do that. Even if you are sitting in a cafe and you offered something to one cat, then exactly one second - and thirty cats next to you, and immediately a flock forms. But still they survive. It is an integral part of the Arab city, the Arab tradition.
How many times Medieval Europe suffered from the plague! Plague vibrio is carried by fleas that live by parasitizing on rats. Plague has repeatedly come to Europe with ships, and also due to the fact that Europe fought cats for religious reasons. And since in the Arab world the cat was revered, this, of course, entailed the destruction of rats, mice and the danger they carried.
But there is an amazing and charming thing that shocked me. I think many people know that in Islam there is a mystical current of Sufism: religious philosophers are trying to find their own, close path to God. And the Sufis believed that when a cat hums, it repeats dhikr within itself. Dhikr is a monotonous repetition of a prayer, which is based on the repeated reproduction of different names of God. Accordingly, when a cat hums, in fact, she feels union with God and is in deep meditation.
There is one amazing story. Ash-Shibli, a very famous Egyptian Sufi of the 10th century, said that he came to see other learned sages. And he saw that a certain sage Sauri was in meditation. At the same time, he is so immobile that even a hair on his beard does not move. And ash-Shibli asked him: "From whom did you learn such deep meditation?" And he replied: "I learned this from a cat, because this is how a cat waits for a mouse, sitting near a mink." Look, an interesting parallel arises: a cat that purrs is a constant inner prayer; a cat that is waiting for its prey - patience.
Now, in any Western film, we can see some American cottage with a door in the outer door so that the cat can walk back and forth. And there is a wonderful story about the Iranian shahinshah Ismail Safavi (the turn of the XV-XVI centuries). He believed that his protectors lived in cats. He pursued everyone who did not like cats. And in his tent for the first time small doors were made for cats to enter there. Naturally, only a bad cat will not come for a good treat. Ismail believed that these were his guardian spirits - a projection onto a werewolf cat, which is in all literature.
My favorite image of a cat?.. Yes Bazhov, an earthy cat in the Ural fairy tales! Remember this story? After all, she protects this unfortunate girl who is hiding from her pursuers. And burning cat ears, which are visible over the taiga. And the wolves retreat when the earth cat walks. In my opinion, a colossal, fantastic image! Maybe we don't even think about it. A cat as a protector: from Ancient Egypt and the nightmares of the night (she even goes in dreams to protect a person) to Bazhov ("Cat's ears" and an earth cat).
I. Klenskaya: There is a legend that if a person had a bad dream, if he is scared at night, he can hug a cat, stroke it, and all fears will go away, and it will take away bad dreams.
V. Solkin: Sleep is a boundary space that unites the world of the living, the world of the departed and the divine world. And the cat is a being, absolutely organic in this world and in that world. And yet, despite the danger, despite the possibility of transformation into a lioness, this image is incredibly dear to a person. And at the same time, there is a lot of wisdom and respect in this being.
I. Klenskaya: Do you have a cat?
V. Solkin: I have a cat, Mahes. By the way, Mahes is the lion-headed storm god, the son of the goddess Bastet in Ancient Egypt, so he is directly related to the cat. And in front of him I had a legendary cat who lived twenty-one and a half years.
I would say a cat is a person. The personality is bright, with its own character, with its emotions, with an understanding of what state you are experiencing at one time or another. This is a very deep dialogue.
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo has an amazing monument from the 14th century BC. This is a sarcophagus of the beloved royal cat, made of limestone. The cat belonged to Tsarevich Thutmose (era of Amenhotep III). She is depicted there on the walls and is in the capacity of an embalmed mistress. All the same funeral prayers are written for her as for a person.
I. Klenskaya: And they were also read for her?
V. Solkin: Of course we did. And this sarcophagus is modeled after a rich human burial. That is, the feeling of a cat as a person comes from there, from ancient times.
I. Klenskaya: The Greeks believed that the goddess Artemis often takes the form of a cat. Therefore, cats have always been under special protection. And in ancient Rome, cats symbolized freedom and independence. She always accompanied the goddess of freedom Libertas.
Joseph Brodsky has a poem dedicated to a cat. He believed that the cat is one of the most musical creatures in the world.
Our cheeks are hairy.
Our backs are striped
Like sheet music.
Paws - a miracle of beauty!
We are unusual beauty, The tail is bent like a treble clef.
We drag it in the dust
And in silence - we sound.
We talked today about cats: in life, in music, in legends. Our guest is Viktor Solkin, a famous Egyptologist. The program was hosted by Irina Klenskaya. Good luck.
