THE IMAGE OF CASSANDRA AS A METONYMY OF THE "OTHER": IMAGOLOGICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE HUTSULS IN THE NOVEL "THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR" BY GREGOR VON REZZORI

Abstract

The article analyzes the image of Cassandra as a collective imagological portrait of the Hutsuls in the novel "The snows of yesteryear" (Schnee von Gestern, 1989) by Gregor von Rezzori (1914–1998), a classic of German-language literature and native of Chernivtsi. The book depicts the narrator’s childhood and youth – family relocations and separations caused by the First World War, his return and early years in Chernivtsi, and relationships with those closest to him. The narrator draws the recipient’s attention to the stages of shaping his worldview, aesthetic tastes, political and civic stance, awareness of privilege, and social stratification (with linguistic and cultural interaction with representatives of other ethnic groups playing a key role).

The narrator’s nanny – through him we recognize the author himself – embodies the physical, primordial, earthly principle that contrasts with the aristocratic world of the Austrian family. He associates the wet nurse with the ethnic group inhabiting the Carpathians and, accordingly, expands the image, rooted in his childhood impressions of Cassandra, into metonymic descriptions of the Hutsuls as an exotic ethnicity, deeply grounded in its own traditions and isolated from civilization, living according to its own inner laws. In analyzing the heroine and her interactions with the environment, reference is made not to objective reality but to the fictional reality reflected in the novel, layered with numerous subjective factors that influenced the author during the writing process.

The profound inner bond that developed between her and the narrator over many years – until the point of final separation – shaped his worldview, speech, and behavioral habits. The novel also partially illustrates the phenomenon of the nanny’s transition from the category of the "Other" to the category of the "Stranger" under the family’s influence. The wet nurse’s nickname alludes to the legendary prophetess, yet the work itself provides no explanation of the motivation behind such a naming. The narrator’s archetypal Cassandra was his mother – frail, anxious, and sensitive to every stimulus, a woman who foretold misfortunes. To reconstruct the literary portrait of the Hutsul heroine, the article addresses her origins and examines the specifics of her speech, as well as her physical, psychological, moral, and spiritual characteristics, along with her interaction with the narrator.