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Efimova Ekaterina Sergeevna

A Human Being within the Space of Tragedy. Prison (on the present-day life of mythological perceptions)

The tendency to mythologize crisis situations (a war, a natural calamity, a serious illness or death of relatives and friends) is a universal phenomenon. Having found himself/herself in a new social environment, a modern person adjusts himself/herself to it in conformity with traditional schemes of experience resorts to mythologizing the process of his/her socialization. The adjustment normally takes time. For a more or less long period a new situation is seen as a crisis, as an in-between position or a temporary death. The prison world is described by inmates as a disorderly, alien, socially unassimilated world without meaning, as a non-differentiated chaos. The specific character of eschatological vision results in the fact that binary oppositions – pledge of the world stability – are nullified. On the one hand, the indefiniteness of the world with its oppositions nullified is a mythological construct in itself (possesses mythological semantics). On the other hand, it gives rise to further mythologizing. M. Heidegger wrote, 'The uncertainty of something that inspires terror is not just a lack of certainty, but an absolute impossibility of ascertaining'. Eschatological crisis indefiniteness of the prison world is the principle indefiniteness, determined by the mythological logic of the description. The study of semiotics of present-day jail culture has found that this culture contains codes and semiotic texts which are interesting and important not only for the research into the lower strata of culture, but also for better understanding of the specific ways of the perception of the picture of the world and assimilation by someone on the brink of death, or thus mythologizing his/her new social position. Universal archetypes of mythological consciousness, universal concepts of the sacred, universal eschatological picture of the world can be recognized in the notions of inmates.

At the investigation stage jail is perceived as a disintegrated chaotic world. For signs of the new world to acquire meaning it is necessary to perform a certain ritual, which is the key to the culture. In the transition rites (socialization, initiation) the person to be initiated must himself/herself become the 'foundation-block' sacrifice, from which the construction of the new world begins. According to jail mythology, the fundamental ritual in the creation of the new meaningful world is the trial and the offering, defining the new space, is the prisoner at the bar. Entering the new space involves fear. The newcomer is out of his/her bearings; the space becomes eternally alienated from the cognizing Ego. The person does not believe in the possibility of comprehending the meaning of the jail text or in the very existence of the meaning - one of the distinctive words used by inmates while characterizing the initial phase is the word 'meaningless'.

In the prison world one of the central cultural oppositions – life-death – is nullified. Many authors of jail memoirs compare life in prison to death. F.M. Dostoyevsky calls a prison the House of the Dead; Italian socialist Turati calls it the Cemetery of the Quick. An alive person feels dead in prison; the cell is the place of demise where people are demolished, burned. In prison slang a jail is called a crematorium and a cell is a graveyard or a cross. Comparison of a jail to a grave, a terror-inspiring house of the dead, the nether regions, the realm of motionless sleep is not just a means of artistic expression, but an actual experience of inmates.  Many people who have gone through prison and labor camps wrote about it in their memoirs. P.F. Yakubovitch, for example, describing a night in prison, wrote that an inmate sees his fellow prisoners as the dead, but not as living beings, 'It is dead silence both in the cell and in the corridors of the jail… not a sound, just like a grave… Where am I? Some corpses are lying around me, on my right and on my left and beneath me. Am I the only living creature among the dead? They are alive and dead at the same time…'

Prisoners are inhabitants of a different world, which is transcendental and sensual at the same time, in some ways similar to our human world and in some ways alien, opposite to it, neither living, nor dead. Here characters act in compliance with topsy-turvy laws (daytime – sleep, night – vigilance). Night is marked by a waking condition, rendering meaning to life – real work and real life in a jail begin at night (GRC). The daytime is marked by sleepiness: I wanted to sleep. An inmate recollects her prison life, 'I dreamt about freedom, I lived in those dreams. When I woke up, I saw only gray walls and grief, that's why I tried to sleep as much as possible.' (FC). An inmate poet writes, 'Every day here passes as is if in fog/You are either asleep or waiting for it day by day.' (GRC). In this inverted world life turns into sleep, sleep into life. An inmate writes, 'You live in such a way that sleep seems to be life, and life appears to be a dream. Years pass by as if in a dream, and when you look around, you see only darkness.'(JC).

Communicative difficulties which a newcomer comes across when trying to communicate with prison space cause him to seek shelter from the text in a strange language, to hide himself/herself in a more familiar place, which sleep provides: under the conditions when reality is seen as pseudo life (neither life, nor death, nor sleep) sleep as a psychosomatic process becomes sleep in a dream, having utter semiotic, sacramental significance. Jail dreams are contrasted with beyond-jail dreams as prophetic dreams with usual ones. An inmate reminisces, 'For three and a half years, while the investigation lasted, I had dreams every night. I remember those unusual dreams very well; they told me what was going to happen to me in future. Some of them have come true, some haven't. But they were really very unusual. They can't be compared to those I have or used to have out of prison.' (FC).

In the prison world dreams rank with poetry, philosophy and mysticism – they are synonyms. A female inmate writes, 'There (in jail – E.E.) they believe dreams, especially dreams involving saints. Many people see Madonna in their dreams. In prison one feels much closer to the nether world. I, for example, realize that for three and a half years I lived in a sleep. Then I began to write poems, to read. It is said that recidivists who are serving a long time in high security colonies are great philosophers.'(FC). According to an enduring prison notion, jail gives birth to poets. It reveals an obvious link with the mythopoetical concept of the poet as someone who has been to the world of the dead and back. A poet is like an intermediary between that kingdom and this one. In this sense a poet is like a shaman, bearing the stamp of the other kingdom.

The fact that jail is perceived as a world with indefinite meaning (just like a dream) makes it a sacramental space. Here are some quotations from the collected archives.

'Everyone is subject to mysticism in jail.'(FC).

'Prisoners are very superstitious. I think in prison people are far more superstitious than out of it.'(FC).

In prison culture all things connected with life outside jail are generally treated as common and everyday, while things connected with prison life are perceived as mystical.

Another opposition nullified in the prison world is the opposition human-inhuman. Characteristically, inmates are distinguished by anomalous appearance and behavior. Describing their first day in the cell, inmates use the words 'hell' and 'hellish'. Jails, just like hell, are overcrowded. The liquidation of the emptiness due to which the mankind still exists, is characteristic for them both. The overcrowded condition of hell is the sign of the impending end. So the state of being overcrowded is perceived as the proof of transition of the human world into the inhuman, of the upper world into the lower. The overcrowded condition of jail has the same symbolic meaning. Here are some examples of the texts, characterizing convicts' first impressions of the cell:

Four shkonkas (bunks) can be occupied by twelve inmates; twelve shkonkas house from thirty to forty; and obstchak can accommodate as many as a hundred prisoners. An inmate remembers, 'When I entered a cell for the first time I could not move because everywhere were people, sitting and standing. I literally could not move. The door shut behind me and I was left there standing. That was all. My first impression was: it is hell. Real hell. It was summer. Around me I saw stripped bodies, evil faces. The people were stripped because it was very hot. And there was hardly any room for standing, let alone sitting. Those who had been there for a long time occupied bunks, but there was very little room left for the rest. People were yelling, cursing and swearing at each other.'(FC).

 Another inmate writes, 'People were everywhere, even on the floor from under the shkonkas. Half of them were bald-headed. They all were wearing sheets because it was very hot. Having all the clothes on would have been unbearable.'(FC).

Jail space is perceived as narrow, congested, and at the same time as enormous (pre-cosmos immeasurable space). It is simultaneously visible and invisible; its light is inseparable from its darkness. This is how inmates describe a jail, 'It is empty, monotonous. Like under water where it is always murky. Light bulbs create a horrible impression because thick cigarette smoke makes them brown and their light eerie.'(FC).

'It is dark here, it is so dark. There is nothing to wait for, nothing to live for.' (FC).

'I can see the sun but it is still dark. My sun is behind the clouds.' (FC).

The courtyard where inmates take walks is one of the worst parts of prison space. In their descriptions prisoners stress its confined character, its complete separation from the outer world; they see it as a square concrete sack with four walls. Absence of entrance and exit, which are necessary for a house to retain its status, and which are a fundamental feature of any space intended for living, has a semiotic meaning. Confined space without windows or doors symbolizes death. Here motion is pseudo-motion (stamping back and forth or round and round) and communication is pseudo-communication. A female inmate recollects the hardest moments of her life, 'I remember the cramped space, the four walls, the bars overhead, the sky behind the bars, us stamping back and forth. Passing by the others, I noticed how much estranged everyone looked. While in the cell, we relate to each other to a certain degree, but in the yard everyone withdraws. Being unable to see anything is a scary feeling. In the cell we can peer through the window and see something in the distance. In the yard there is nothing but the walls. And the sky above. That was horrible - absolute isolation from the outer world.' (FC).

In the courtyard prisoners feel forced to try and interpret the prison world and correlate themselves with the confined and alien reality within the four walls.

A contemporary convict writes about the prison:

'Day after day burns in an unbearable anguish,

And our thoughts get darker and darker.

We keep walking round and round in the concrete sack,

And our souls are turning callous and black.'

'In the dead house an ideal organization of the power to punish creates the body to be disciplined.' (M. Fuco). In the motionless impersonal world, symbolized by stone walls around a person, an inmate (in company with his/her fellow prisoners) is compelled to move in a circle or back and forth. This motion is just an imitation of life, but not real life, and it is perceived like imitation. It has neither purpose, nor sense. In terms of ontology, it symbolizes meaningless motion in the universe, which causes feelings of fear, despair and hopelessness. Meaning of this space situation is disclosed in a number of works of art. Figures of prisoners in the courtyard render futility of people's efforts and loneliness of the human being in the dead universe. At that, pessimistic outlook can reach great philosophical heights. There are Prisoners by Van Gogh, whose portrayal is close in its vision to the existentialist philosophy (the picture was painted under the influence of Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead). The painting by M. Dobuzhinsky Devil has the same meaning. P. Ivanov-Razumnik, serving time in a Soviet jail, saw the courtyard through the prism of this painting, 'These twenty or thirty people, circling around the fat watch-tower, reminded me of Dobuzhinsky's Devil: In the middle of a huge, cathedral-size, prison cell there sits a giant spider with fiery eyes, wearing a mask. Tiny people are walking in a circle between its furry legs. We have the tower with the armed guards in place of the spider. The mask is not necessary: Under all regimes it covers essentially identical features of the state. It is clear what the artist meant: the cell is the world, the prisoners are the humankind, the spider's mask is the devil. But walking around the courtyard, one tends to narrow the meaning of the picture. O.Wilde wrote:

" I walked, with other souls in pain,

Within another ring …"

The inmates, walking in the yard, are in the tragic and dying world as physical incarnation of the invisible world of sinners' souls, dead for God, without hope to be saved, as a symbolic reminder of universal absurdity involving both material and spiritual phenomena. For thinkers and artists the courtyard (the square bounded by four walls) is the point of utmost freedom, sacramental center of the godless world (for Christian thinkers the role of the sacramental center is performed by the space within monastery walls). It is freedom associated with suffering, but not with joy, the freedom to accept the world as it is, without sense, without God, without hell or paradise. At the same time sense of freedom involves perception of human loneliness, which comes when an inmate is not alone, but in company with his/her fellow prisoners. S. Kierkegaard said, 'Genuine muteness is not in silence, but in conversation of close and distant people, alienated from one another in the face of Nothing (jail).' It is the kind of estrangement mentioned by the inmate describing the condition of prisoners in the courtyard. Being held captive by prison walls, an inmate comes to realize his/her loneliness and experiences uplifting awe or depressing fear in the presence of the mute Nothing. He/she either accepts his/her ontological slavery or discovers his/her tragic freedom.

Van Gogh's prisoner could repeat Orestes's words addressed to Jupiter: 'You are a God, but I am free; we are equally lonely and tormented by the same depressing fear.'

Nullification of the opposition motion-immobility spreads to the category of time as well. In immobile prison world time loses sense and stops. According to inmates' statements, time spent in prison is the time lost because of the apathetic attitude of the tired mind to everything.

 'Years of dead existence are crossed out of life.' (FC).

'The time has stopped free running/By throwing our fates onto the scales' (GRC)

'The bustle of everyday life has gone/ There is no motion and no life.' (FC).

'I sink into madness/To the sound of frozen time.' (FC).

'Here every day submits to depression/The cold world has frozen in its aloofness.'(GRC).

Under these conditions keeping a calendar becomes senseless and even impossible. Everything that happens in prison bears a stamp of eternity, but eternity without light, without rescue. A young inmate writes, 'Years pass here as if in a dream/ You look back and see only darkness.'(JC). A female prisoner thinks the same. She writes, 'It's time to count down / The groan escapes / To test the strength of the soul / To upset the heart/The cry escapes / Thoughts in the brain / The executioner has already raised his sword / (FC).

We come across the same perception of time in G. Byron's prisoner:

It might be months, or years, or days

I kept no count, I took no note...

For years: I cannot count them o'er,

I lost their long and heavy score...

Dark and absurd eternity becomes that very emptiness of non-life about which J. Brodsky says that it is more probable and more terrifying than hell.

How to impart meaning to the senseless world? How to foresee one's fate? To answer these questions modern people resort to chiromancy, fortune telling and the like, just the way our ancestors did at the time of crisis. Inmates say that during the period prior to the trial they feel being enveloped by special, mystical world and they ask unknown gods about future and they are constantly resort to fortune telling. They recognize that everybody is subject to mysticism in jail. Convicts in colonies say,

'Everyone had a go at fortune telling. To this end, we used bread, coffee grounds, domino pieces, and what not; we did it mostly on Wednesdays and Fridays.'

In the prison world people use fortune telling to communicate with the court (pointing to the number, the measure, corresponding to a certain individual) or the inmate's fate (pointing to its own value). The measure of punishment is perceived as the fate, which exists there and in the present time, before the court pronounces a sentence, but it exists in a different (mythological) dimension.

The key prophecy symbols are the same as in the traditional culture, but there are some distinctive symbols as well. For example, the preliminary accusatory resolution acquires a mythoritual function, which at first sight is just a juridical document. An inmate gets the resolution at the culmination point of the crisis situation – on the eve of the trial. The reception of the resolution inspires fear like expecting any verdict would, be it a verdict of the jury or a verdict of the fate. Not only the text of the resolution, but the paper itself on which it is written arouses fear. The legal document is seen as sacramental, as the embodiment of both justice and fate, which allows it to function as the principal ritual object-symbol – it gets included into the fortune-telling paraphernalia.

It would seem that the text in the penitentiary system has no religious meaning, yet it is perceived by prisoners as mystical because it determines their future in one way or another. Despite the fact that inmates blame lawyers for their imprisonment and maintain that they serve time, being innocent, at the subconscious level they perceive the text of the resolution as sacramental or given by God. Both the content of the document, determining the time to be served, that is an inmate's fate, and the paper on which the resolution is written – a sacred sheet of paper, a materialized embodiment of the future - are perceived as having equal sacramental significance.

Here is a record of our conversation with an elderly inmate of Lipetsk general regime colony about a specific way of fortune telling, involving the text of the resolution.

Question: You say many inmates engage in fortune telling, don't they?

Answer: Yes, that's right. It's a very popular pastime. You may consider it a tradition. First, before the decision of the court he or she is just a person under the investigation. After the sentence of the court defining the article and the term, the person becomes a convict. But before that the person gets the preliminary accusatory resolution. When an inmate receives the preliminary accusatory resolution, he/she finds out according to which article of criminal law he/she is likely be convicted. Then it is customary to do the following. You take a mug, a usual half-liter mug, and draw a circle around it. The circle is divided into equal sectors, their number corresponding to the number of parts of the given article. You pour water into the mug, stir it with a spoon, light a matchstick and put it in the water. The matchstick rotates slower and slower and finally stops: it points to a part of the article, in other words to the sentence time. In 98 per cent of cases it comes true.

Question: Is it done on the eve of the trial, at night?

Answer: Yes, on the eve of the trial, a couple of days prior to the trial. And almost always it comes true. It is a time-tested method. And the most popular, too. (GRC).

Functionally, the accusatory resolution is in some social situations a legal document and in others a sacramental object. It serves as a book of fate, a book of the dead, mysterious writings, in which priests see the future of the living and after-death fate of the dead.

It is remarkable that although any fortune-telling book, for example Centuries by Nostradamus, deals with concrete, personal fortunes, a fortune-teller has to decode your name and other data. A preliminary accusatory resolution speaks about you, calls you by your name, which renders it more trustworthiness and, consequently, a higher status than name-avoiding prophecy books enjoy. It would appear that the document is concrete enough. Nevertheless, it is a mysterious, encoded text, and for its decoding a ritual is necessary. The degree of trustworthiness of a preliminary accusatory resolution is not clear for an inmate. In spite of its content being rather concrete, it is somewhat ambiguous, which allows it to function as a fortune-telling book. It is their poly-semantic character that creates a necessity for the principal fortune-telling symbols to be interpreted by priests or fortune-tellers.

On the other hand, every inmate before trial hopes to be acquitted – absolutely unreasonably and contrary to the preliminary accusatory resolution (the proof of it we see in the rituals performed on the eve of the trial). The sacramental document tells the future, but it can be corrected. The fortune-telling rituals before the trial reflect the view of one's misfortunes as a cast lot. Measure of punishment is not linked with the degree of seriousness of the committed crime: impersonal power is responsible for passing sentences and thus determining inmates' future.

The central ritual of the prison world is the trial. The trial approaches slowly but inevitably. Describing their condition before the trial, prisoners use words 'fear', 'listening'. There is a prison saying: An inmate lives by his ears, especially before the trial. Life in prison is divided into two periods - before and after the trial. The period before the trial is characterized by destruction of space and time, by chaos and emptiness, time doesn't exist in this mystical space. Paradoxically, an inmate sees the trial –an offering where he/she is sacrificed - not only as a culmination, but also as a denouement of prison tragedy. The perception of the trial as both the highest point of the crisis situation and the reconciliation of all contradictions is traditional.

Here is an answer given by an inmate in response to a questionnaire compiled in 1914:

'It was unbearably hard at first, during the period of uncertainty, but having learnt that I would have to serve 11 months – that's rather long – spiritually I felt much better. I started a calendar and planned my time.'

A present-day inmate writes, 'When a sentence has been passed, even if the time is longer than he expected, a person relaxes.'

The ritual meaning of the trial is reduced to the creation of a new world: at the moment when the sentence is being pronounced the prison cosmos acquires meaning. The person receives a new starting-point and a new calendar.  After the trial, instead of listening to the world of uncertainty and trying to predict future, the inmate begins to count days of his time in prison. The disintegrated world gains a new meaning as a result of the performed ritual. The house of the dead remains the house of the dead, but after the trial it begins turning into a home. If we try to render this life experience in the language of literature studies, we can say that the inmate can be seen as the protagonist of a tragedy, whose demise is catastrophically inevitable for the inner structure of the tragedy. The hero has been sacrificed. The tragedy is over. The curtain falls. But cathartic purifying essence, enlightening the world, has already been included into the finale – the death of the tragic hero.

Abbreviations:

JC – juvenile colony

FC – female penal colony

GRC – general regime colony  

I would like to express my deep gratitude to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for its support, without which this research work would have been impossible.