Гротескната същност на българските народни кукерски игри
The grotesque nature of the Bulgarian folk mummer’s plays

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the character of the grotesque in the Bulgarian folk mummer’s plays. It is traced from ancient times through the medieval carnivals to the present-day customs of Bulgarian mummers. The grotesque nature of the Bulgarian folk mummer’s plays lies in the contrast and the comic unity of old age and infancy in the mummers’ masks and behaviour. This takes us back to the ancient idea about the birth-giving and burying bosom of earth and represents the jolly carnival death which marks growth and merger of life’s beginning and end in the microcosm and the macrocosm. In a tragic version (death without rebirth) the idea about the autochthones and its surmounting is found in the ancient Hellenic legend of Oedipus. In the Bulgarian folk mummer’s plays the sense of autochthones is not completely overcome, as far as one can judge by the joyous attitude towards the matter of the fecundating and birth-giving lower part – a matter of both infancy and ripe old age. The conquered fear death on the very feast of the mummers when the two phases of development – beginning and end, winter and spring, death and birth are set by one another, actually constitutes the meaning of the carnival contest – feigned killing for a new birth.

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