Byrd & Lomax

“A ballad in print is a ballad already dying. . .”  –The Ballad Tree, Evelyn Kendrick Wells

If I were to sum up my week for you in a sentence, you would think it had been rough.  “Well, first I read Crime and Punishment for class and then I recited some murder ballads.”  Despite all this focus on death, violence and general unhappiness, it was actually a pretty productive week.

Tuesday night was probably the high point.  My Russian Novel compatriots & I met to discuss Crime and Punishment in-depth.  One of the first questions the discussion leaders posed was the significance of Raskolnikov’s name (meaning “to split”).  The idea was something we constantly returned to.  There was a tendency to see division everywhere in his character: in Raskolnikov’s struggle between reason & the irrational, in his constant isolation from other people, even in the workings of his mind & the reactions of his body.  One of us remarked later: “I feel like I’m talking about someone with multiple personalities.”

Raskolnikov’s mind/body split is something that still preoccupies me.  Part of this comes from a discussion that happened in my Gospel of Judas class.  Understanding the role of the body is key when studying Gnosticism.  Quick recap:  mainstream Christians believe the soul is housed in the body, which became imperfect flesh with the Fall.  After death, the soul returns to the spiritual realm until the Resurrection, when it rejoins a perfected body.  The union of these two forms is part of the Christian idea of salvation while Gnostics disagree.  The soul, the “divine spark” is the true nature of an individual and in trapped in the body.  This does not mean that Gnostics hate the flesh.  Instead, physicality is something that is meant to be endured before returning to the fullness of Diety.  There is no return to a body.

So why the recap?  This distinction was in the back of my mind we discussed Raskolnikov’s mind/body split.  Dostoevsky’s writing is very much influenced by Christianity but what’s odd is the way his style addresses the physical.  He is not a “fleshy” writer; in fact, you would probably be hard pressed to remember the physical traits of any of his characters.  Despite the strife & misery in the novel, there are few moments when the author allows his readers to see any physical pain, for example, the dream of the beaten horse or the actual murder.

Another example is the theme of prostitution that runs through the narrative.  Dostoevsky steers clear of letting any salacious details seep through.  The basic realities of this life are revealed through small details: the story of how Sonya got a yellow pass, Raskolnikov watching a man follow a disoriented, drugged girl, the bruises on a whore’s face, or the way Svidrigailov patronizes Katya the tavern singer.  Dostoevsky rarely draws attention to the physical, instead leading his readers through his suggestions to their own realizations.

After encountering Dostoevsky’s feinting style, it was definitely a change of pace to be reading murder ballads at Thursday Poems two days later.  Here was violence and gore in all its harsh glory.  I had originally decided to do this reading after finding an article called “Murder Ballads of Mormondom” in JSTOR.  The premise of the article was that as the Mormons pushed West trying to find their Promised Land, they created their own ballad traditions as they encountered violence & hardship.  Intrigued, I started looking at the form of the murder ballad &, by extension, the traditional ballad to see if the idea “fit”.

In the end, for fun, I put together a reading that combined ballads of different styles and regions that all had that common thread: murder.  Yes, I realize that only an English major would find that fun, but that’s me, so I totally own my dorkiness.  (If you want to know what I read, there’s a list below.)

The ballads are sometimes so violently over the top, there was actually unexpected laughter in places.  For instance, in “The Brown Girl”, the man not only cuts off his bride’s head but throws it against a wall.  In another, a woman leans against a wall for a kiss & ends up stabbing the man to death.  The one hitch was that I planned to read “Frankie and Johnny” but apparently my copier skills are lacking.  I read the first verse & then realized the next two were completely cut off.  Other than that, the reading went so well that one of the attending professors later said that if I wasn’t graduating this year, he’d encourage me to read again next semester.

Here’s hoping next week is a little tamer. . .

A list of what I had prepared:
The Brown Girl
Cruel Mother
The Two Brothers
Henry Lee (aka Young Hunting)
Down in the Willow Garden
Blackleg Miner
2 selections from “Murder Ballads of Mormondom”
Frankie & Albert (aka Frankie & Johnny)
Pretty Polly
Darlin’ Corey
Delia’s Gone
Women’s Prison

Sources used:
The Ballad Tree by Evelyn Kendrick Wells
More Traditional Ballads of Virginia edited by Arthur Kyle Davis Jr.
Folk Song U.S.A. edited by John A. & Alan Lomax