Neya Vécher / Нея Вечер
Ceramic Glaze
Permanent Installation for a private vacation home
Rose Valley, Kazanlak region, Bulgaria
1,5 X 7 metre Mural installation of 500pcs. hand-painted / glazed ceramic tiles, gypsum and fiberglass sheating and iron profile frame structure;
Transcript:
Early one crisp morning nearing Midsummer in a small forgotten village in the rose valley of Bulgaria, where in quiet summer nights the sky is smelling of fermented flowers,
I was sat down with a coffee on the stoop of my late grandfather’s old house. An unremarkable little cottage that was once home to generations of my ancestors. And upon which, as I listen to a neighboring rooster, I notice all the many ways in which he’s left his fingerprints. Thinking of lineage and the kind of memory we carry in our bones, I am reminded of an old folk tale we may or may not have talked about when I was little.
Midsummer is a time of year that for ever has been center to folkloric traditions, rituals, story and legend. In Bulgaria, the morning of Enyovden is known to be the ripest moment for the earth and vegetation and it is believed that on the special day, the threshold of our world and higher realms is open and divine forces or mythical creatures enter to bless the earth and enhance all plants and herbs with healing properties.
Though lucid through many variations, the following tale feels especially potent here, in an agricultural region dedicated to the cultivation and harvest of roses.
In short, it goes like this:
The samodiva or vila are mythical forest creatures—ethereal maidens who inhabit the dark forests of the Balkan region. They keep to themselves, as is their wildish nature, especially avoidant of humans, and they serve a divine purpose in the cycles of vegetation. Village folk fear them, believing it a bad
omen to lay eyes upon their kind, for they can be vengeful if disturbed, and so those female spirits of exceptional beauty exist unbothered, locked in harmony with the forest and all things wild and natural.
On the night when the earth peaks in fertility, the samodiva women celebrate. They make noise, light fires, and dance until dawn, their passion drawing them closer to the human world. That night, filled with longing, the village shepherd sits by the riverbank, playing his pipe blissfully, enchanting the forest maidens. …And here reenacts itself an old folk tale about one such nymph-like creature who lives in the forest wild and free, and a human shepherd who - through trickery - steals her powers in order to forcibly make her his wife.
A promise is made then that she can have her powers back on said day seven summers down the line and so a family is created, and children brought to the world.
Alas, when the day comes and the human man breaks his promise, the nymph woman in turn uses his ways of deception to take back what was stolen, but bitter and enraged from his deceit and empowered by her newfound freedom and abilities, she dramatically then disappears into the night never to be seen again, abandoning forever their shared home and children.
Afterword:
It is quite typical for legends with pre-Christian or pagan origins to have a tragic or brutal ending.
But I think there’s something to be said here about the timeless nature of these stories. They have - as dr. Martin Shaw called it - a kind of eternal currency.
For always the characters and those situations which befall them, seem to have an archetypal role, of playing out or portraying two sides of a coin, metaphors for human experience, locked in an ancient dance of advancing and retreating.
And what is timeless is the inevitability
of encounter, friction, clash.
It’s the writing on the wall and the stuff, perhaps,
responsible for the very cycle of change…
As in the story of the shepherd and the wood nymph, or fisherman and seal-woman, as they appear in analogous legends throughout Norse mythology,
She is the personification of the wild and perilous, yet healing and pure force of nature, living in accordance with the seasons and tides, untouched and unseen, but by other nymphs.. Yet it is their passion unleashed, lust even, that brings them down to human shores..
Whereas with the boy, or shepherd, fisherman, Orpheus, Apollo, Alexander, Dionysus - many play the part, it is his human longing and thirst, for a spiritual experience, a touch to the divine, some kind of elevation
That brings him out, rough around the edges, maybe trespassing, But seeking and ready;
And it’s the same which allows him to master the flute (or other), to play an instrument to such bliss, as to draw a nymph out the woods
To each their own…
But there’s a balance to these stories
beyond our understanding of morality
keeping them alive.
Elenka / August 2024
