ZMEUL ȘI ALTERITATEA
THE OPHIDIAN AND THE ALTERITY

Summary/Abstract: The article proposes an evaluation of antinomy from the ophidian’s perspective. As a protagonist of the sacred, the ophidian is the initiator of a simple process which begins with the kidnapping of a virgin and continues with her sequestration in order to obtain the acceptance of marriage and in order to impose the personal perspective of removing the border that delimitates the sacred from the profane. By the way of action, the fairy tales with dragons kidnapping virgins remind us of the bad angels myth mentioned in Genesis and largely presented in the Apocrypha of Enoch, excepting the ending. In the fairy tale it is a positive one. Just in time, by the direct interference of the Destiny, the recovering hero will cancel by the dragon’s killing, the adverse consequences of a permanent contamination of the profane with the sacred. The malfunction of its actions comes out from the relations themselves with entities from the sacred space. Totally lacking in empathy, he is withdrawn, but when he reacts he is spontaneous and aggressive. Its intrusions violate spatial and intimate delimitations of the fairy-tales characters, virgins (profane) and fairies (sacred) alike, victims sequestrated for the satisfaction of his wishes. Because it does not have and does not want a good neighbourhood the ophidian is to fear and permanently perceived as an intruder in all the existential plans of the fairy tale. Because it does not have a history that “connects” it to the sacred, functionally harmonious by the native, of the fairy-tale creator, the dragon is considered as being an intruder, a foreign entity. It results the necessity of the fairy-maker to explain its existence, by the fairy tale, which is a mythological addendum. The fairy tale does not want to clarify the audience over the ophidian’s origin but it is very clear to us about its current attributes. Permanently oriented on a position of force and reductive wanting its own interest the dragon is an intruder of the Balkan spirituality that must be eliminated, exorcised by fairy tale, a god that had been brought here from a sacred semitic environment that underwent major changes. DOI: 10.29302/InImag.2017.8.4

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