IZABELLA BUKRABA-RYLSKA
Cultural and Artistic Self-knowledge of Folk Artists (A Study of a Set
of Letters)
SUMMARY
The wosk presents a reconstruction of views on culture and art formulated by folk artists. They articulated their reflections in ca. 350 letters. These letters are realizations of a certain form of discourse on folk character. This discourse was produced by a definite group of respondents, in a suggested by the researcher interaction, and was put down in a series of letters having the features of a "private conversation". The letters were then subject to methodogical, content, and pragmatic analyses.
The methodogical analysis was based on the following premises:
- The statements of the respondents should be considered according to the principle of Znaniecki's humanistic coefficient. This principle, after a critical analysis, was supplemented by conclusions dervied from reflections on the problems of understanding. These issue, basic for hermeneutics, was studied by understanding sociology and cultural antropology.
- The letters of the artists containing (besides the answers to the questions) also many personal references, were considered as biographical material. This decision justified the application of the apparatus derived from the method applied to personal documents and modified in some important points.
- The autobiographical statements defined in such a way were given the status of a cultural and not only linguistic text. This allowed to study the statements not only in their mimetic (folk character as a subject) dimension but also in the performative one (folk character as activeness).
The analysis of the content was aimed at establishing:
a) the ways of defining folk culture and national culture by folk artists
(folk culture as a set of values typical for the rural life or as a number of
pictoresque elements and curiosities; the national culture as a sacrum shared by the whole nation, the
heritage of generations).
b) the postulated by the artists ideal vision of the social role of a folk
artist (the folk artist as: the quardian of folk culture, local activist, model
of personalny, disseminator of all-human values, a non-professional).
c) the opinion of the respondents on modern literature (acceptation of the
"local context" - the local milieu or aspiring to the
"substitlate context" the national literature).
d) the perceived by the artists relations between their own lives and
creative activeness (life and creative activeness as separate spheres of
activity or as one sphere of self-realization).
The starting point of the pragmatic analysis was to define the
sociological survey in terms of a private conversation. The first step was to
indicate the character of the contact: the sociologist - the respondent
(between scientific research and a personal contact). Secondly, the most
frequently used by the folk artists ways of speaking about oneself were
extracted from the letters (self-representation of the type: artist, the human
lot, activist, stereotypical features, questionnaire data, my personalny,
ideological peasantlikeness, a good farmer). Thirdly,
various types of perception by the respondents of the very situation of survey
were reconstructed. The most often used definitions of the survey had complementary roles
of the participants: the researcher and the respondent. These were: examinator
- story teller; scientist - collaborator; spokesman of the village - activist;
confidant - lyrist; advisor - suppliant.
The final reflections, included in the summing-up chapter are a tentative presentation of the hypothetical relations between the there distinguished levels of analysis. In personal documents, which the letters from folk artists are considered to be, three aspects of folk character have been distinguished: folk character as a subject, as a tool, and as a certain ideal model. These three aspects correspond to three approaches to the text pragmatically understood as:
- a set of mimetic meanings, a document (denotative function);
- a proposed model of interaction (intratextual communication scenario);
- a suggested and in same sense realized vision of the desired worki (performative function, text as action, doing, making).
The discourse on folk charcater made by folk artists with the
cooperation of a scientist has revealed one, superior function of the
statements used by the respondents. This was the function of restituting,
bringing bark, restoring the world once alive, and now belonging to the past,
and, according the artists, deserving a renewed existence: the world of folk
culture.