The Soul in The Axiosphere

The Soul in the
Axiosphere from
an Intercultural
Perspective,
Volume One
The Soul in the
Axiosphere from
an Intercultural
Perspective,
Volume One
Edited by
Joanna Jurewicz, Ewa Masłowska

and Dorota Pazio-Wlazłowska
The Soul in the Axiosphere from an Intercultural Perspective,
Volume One
Edited by Joanna Jurewicz, Ewa Masłowska

and Dorota Pazio-Wlazłowska
This book first published 2020
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2020 by Joanna Jurewicz, Ewa Masłowska,

Dorota Pazio-Wlazłowska and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-4564-4

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-4564-9
CONTENTS
Contributors ................................................................................................ ix
Introduction ................................................................................................ xi
Ewa Masłowska
Part I: The soul from the perspective of humanities
Chapter 1 ..................................................................................................... 2
Metaphysics and psychology: two narratives of the soul and body
in Polish. A linguistic/cultural approach
Dorota Filar
Chapter 2 ................................................................................................... 36
When the brain changes the soul – a neuropsychological perspective
Agnieszka Maryniak
Chapter 3 ................................................................................................... 49
How the soul acts as an organ of evaluation and is itself subject
to evaluation
Galina Kabakova
Chapter 4 ................................................................................................... 66
Three souls of the Polish peasant
Izabella Bukraba-Rylska
Chapter 5 ................................................................................................... 83
In Search of the SOUL of Home – side notes of axiological portrait
Dorota Pazio-Wlazłowska
Chapter 6 ................................................................................................. 103

The concept of a child´s soul: a cognitive linguistic analysis
of the discourse among Czech-speaking women
Lucie Saicová Římalová
vi Contents
Part II: The linguistic conceptualisation of the soul
Chapter 7 ................................................................................................. 120

Names of mental illnesses in different languages
Alena Rudenka, Fan Sjan
Chapter 8 ................................................................................................. 126

The soul in Hebrew idioms and biblical sayings
Roman Marcinkowski
Chapter 9 ................................................................................................. 164

“My soul knoweth right well”: The biblical definition of soul
(heb. ‘nefeš, gr. ‘psyche’) and the epistemology of embodied cognition –
an ancient source of a modern concept?
Róbert Bohát
Chapter 10 ............................................................................................... 205

The Soul in the axiosphere according to Ukrainian phraseology
and paremiology
Marina Valentsova
Chapter 11 ............................................................................................... 228

Soul as a value: mythological-Christian ideas about the soul in Ukrainian
phraseology
Iryna Chybor
Chapter 12 ............................................................................................... 240

Duša (soul) and it’s axiological aspects in Slovac phraseology
Anna Gálisová
Chapter 13 ............................................................................................... 254

Understanding and translating the HEART and the SOUL
James Underhill
Chapter 14 ............................................................................................... 281

Axiological aspects of the lexeme душа “soul” and its derivatives used
in the function of address in Ukrainian
Marijan Skab
The Soul in the Axiosphere from an Intercultural Perspective, vii
Volume One
Chapter 15 ............................................................................................... 294

The axiological dimension of the Ukrainian concept душа “soul”
Marija Skab
Chapter 16 ............................................................................................... 309

Adjectives derivative from the soul lexeme in the light of contemporary
synonymous words
Iwona Burkacka
Chapter 17 ............................................................................................... 328

Axiological aspects of the soul from the perspective of Bulgarian
paremiology
Joanna Kirilova
Chapter 18 ............................................................................................... 336

The value of the human soul as reflected in (de)motivational posters
Olga Makarovska
Chapter 19 ............................................................................................... 360

Macedonian soul and the soul in the Macedonian language
Veselinka Labroska, Violeta Nikolovska
Part III: The soul in a traditional culture, language, rituals and beliefs
Chapter 20 ............................................................................................... 372

Mercy – a ticket to heaven. Divine and human dimension of mercy
from the ethnolinguistic perspective
Ewa Masłowska
Chapter 21 ............................................................................................... 416

The existence of the soul in the body in the light of ethnolinguistics
Joanna Szadura
Chapter 22 ............................................................................................... 447

Turkish names based on the word soul
Kamila Stanek
Chapter 23 ............................................................................................... 475

I won’t sell my soul. Soul as a value – on the ethical profile of the soul
in Czech
Irena Vañková
viii Contents
Chapter 24 ............................................................................................... 521

The soul as a theme in Azerbaijani folk literature
Shahla Kazimova
Chapter 25 ............................................................................................... 533

The soul and Particular Judgement in beliefs of the inhabitants of Opoczno
and Radom regions
Zdzisław Kupisiński
Chapter 26 ............................................................................................... 545

The soul as a transmitter of values. Selected first-person epitaphs on Polish
and Romanian headstones
Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk
Chapter 27 ............................................................................................... 579

Interpreting the concept “soul” in Northern Russian and Upper German
dialects
Mihail Kondratenko
Chapter 28 ............................................................................................... 588

Folklore notions of the soul as an animal (zoopsychonavigations):
folklore Christianity as the counterpoint to the dogma of Christianity
Suzana Marjanić
CONTRIBUTORS
Róbert Bohát Chapter 9. (translated by the author)

Izabella Bukraba-Rylska Chapter 4. (translated by Karolina Sofulak)
Iwona Burkacka Chapter 16. (translated by Marek
Mazurowski)
Xiang Fan (co-author) Chapter 7. (translated by the author)
Dorota Filar Chapter 1. (translated by Emilia
Leszczyńska)
Anna Gálisová Chapter 12. (translated by the author)
Galina Kabakova Chapter 3. (translated by Peter Chekin)
Shahla Kazimova Chapter 24. (translated by Michał Krawczyk)
Joanna Kirilova Chapter 17. (translated by Daniela Kirova)
Mihail Kondratenko Chapter 27. (translated by Vladyslav Kahal)
Zdzislaw Kupisiński Chapter 25. (translated by Michał Krawczyk)
Veselinka Labroska (co- Chapter 19. (translated by Vladimir
author) Cvetkoski
Olga Makarovska Chapter 18 (translated by Wladyslav Kahal
Roman Marcinkowski Chapter 8 (translated by the author)
Suzana Marianić Chapter 28. (translated by Milica Jelic)
Agnieszka Maryniak Chapter 2. (translated by the author)
Ewa Masłowska Chapter 20. (translated by Kamila Wysłucha)
Violeta Nikolovska (co- Chapter 19. (translated by Vladimir
author) Cvetkoski)
Dorota Pazio- Chapter 5. (translated by Wladyslav Kahal)
Wlazłowska
Lucie Saicová Římalová Chapter 6. (translated by the author)
Alena Rudenka (co- Chapter 7. (translated by the author)
author)
Marija Skab Chapter 15. (translated by Nadia Sadovnyk-
Chuchvaha)
Marijan Skab Chapter 14. (translated by Nadia Sadovnyk-
Chuchvaha)
Kamila Stanek Chapter 22. (translated by Maciej Żurawski)
Karina Stempel- Chapter 26. (translated by Marek
Gancarczyk Mazurowski)
Joanna Szadura Chapter 21. (translated by Michał Krawczyk)
x Contributors
James Underhill Chapter 13. (author is a British native

speaker)
Marina Valentzova Chapter 10. (translated by Makhovikova
Diana Vladimirovna)
Irena Vañková) Chapter 23 (translated by Lucie Chlumska)
INTRODUCTION
Axiosphere of the Soul in Intercultural Perspective is the work of many

authors, representing not only different cultures but also multiple
disciplines. The essays collected in two volumes form an interdisciplinary
discourse (religious, philosophical, historical, ethnocultural and sociocultural,
literary and linguistic) focusing on two keywords: soul and values. A
multicultural approach to the problem of the soul allows for an insight into
its implementation on a microscale, focused on national/regional
specificity, as well as on the macro scale, oriented on universal values
attributed to the soul from the point of view of human spiritual needs,
which can be observed in the cultures of peoples distant from each other in
time as well as in space.
This two-volume monograph is a continuation of the international and
interdisciplinary debate over the anthropological and linguistic images of
the soul in intercultural perspective that opened in 2015 as part of the
conference “The World through the Eyes of the Soul – The Soul in the
Eyes of the World”, which resulted in a two-volume publication under the
same title. 1 The contributions included in this volume are the result of the
next conference from this series, devoted to axiological problems, which
took place in Warsaw in 2017. 2 Due to the fact that many authors
1 Antropologiczno-językowe wizerunki duszy w perspektywie międzykulturowej (2

vols.). Vol. 1, Dusza w oczach świata, ed. Ewa Masłowska and Dorota Pazio-
Wlazłowska; Vol. 2 Świat oczyma duszy, ed. Magdalena Kapełuś, Ewa Masłowska
and Dorota Pazio (Warsaw: Institute of Slavic Studies and Oriental Studies,
University of Warsaw, 2016).
2 The second international conference of the series Anthropological and Linguistic
Images of the Soul in Intercultural Perspective, titled Aksjosfera duszy – dusza w

aksjosferze, was held in Warsaw on October 19-21, 2017, organized by Institute of
Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences and Oriental Studies, University of
Warsaw and The Slavic Foundation. The Multilanguage’s (Slavic) publication of
the contributions of the conference is located in the repository ireteslav: Joanna
Jurewicz, Ewa Masłowska, Dorota Pazio-Wlazłowska (ed.), Antropologiczno-
językowe wizerunki duszy w perspektywie międzykulturowej, t.3. Aksjosfera duszy –
dusza w aksjosferze, Warszawa: Instytut Slawistyki PAN, 2018:
http://www.ireteslaw.ispan.waw.pl/handle/123456789/1065
xii Introduction
participated in both sessions, their articles represent in some cases the

further development of previously held views.
The two-volume monograph consists of 39 chapters, in six parts (three
in each volume), addressing the fundamental themes of human existence,
subject to axiological reflection, which find expression in cultural texts in
the colloquial and artistic language, and also have a prominent place in the
anthropological, psychological, metaphysical and theological debate.
Volume One consists of three parts:
1) The soul from the perspective of the humanities

2) Conceptualization of the soul in a language
3) The soul in traditional language and culture: folklore, ceremonies,
rituals and beliefs
Part One, The soul from the perspective of the humanities, opens with a
chapter by Dorota Filar dedicated to two extensive narratives about the
soul and body from the perspectives of metaphysics and psychology,
mutually interacting and shaping the way of thinking of modern man. The
psychological perspective (from the point of view of neuropsychology) is
also present in the second chapter, in which Agnieszka Maryniak attempts
to explain disease processes taking place in the brain causing changes in
the personality (the soul). On the other hand, Galina Kabakowa’s essay
refers to the “carnal narrative” about the soul by showing the emotional
functions of the soul in relation to other bodily organs (especially the
heart) responsible for emotions. The field of emotional expression is
related to the article by Dorota Pazio-Wlazłowska, devoted to the
metaphor of the soul of the home in Russian lingvoculture. The
sociological approach is presented in the articles by Izabella Bukraba-
Rylska, about attempts to manipulate the soul of the Polish peasant, and
Lucie Saicová Římalová, about the soul of a child in discourse led by
mothers on internet forums.
The second part, devoted to the conceptualization of the soul in
language, contains 13 essays, in which multilingual images of the soul and
the values assigned to it are presented in works based on different levels of
language:
a) Phraseology and paremiology: Marina Vlentsova reconstructs the
axiological idea of the soul in Ukrainian, Iryna Chybor investigates the
mythological and Christian imagination about soul in Ukrainian, Anna
Galisová explores the interdependence of spiritual values and the concept
of the soul in the Slovak language image of the world, Joanna Kirylova
directs attention to the functioning of the concept of the soul in the
The Soul in the Axiosphere from an Intercultural Perspective, xiii
Volume One
axiological aspect in Bulgarian, Violetta Nikolovska and Veselinka

Laborska study the semantics and phraseology of the lexeme soul in the
contemporary Macedonian language in confrontation with the definition of
the soul of the Byzantine theologian and saint, Maximus the Confessor;
b) Through lexicographical and semantic data: Maria Skab presents the
concept of the soul in Ukrainian (with reference to other Slavic languages)
on the basis of historical and contemporary, etymological, phraseological
and associative dictionaries. Roman Marcinkowski reproduces the
meaning of the soul (nefesz) based on idioms and metaphors in the Hebrew
Bible, and Róbert Bohát shows the role of the soul as a cognitive and
experiencing (emotional) subject in the biblical language image of the
world. On the other hand, the issues of nomination of disease states
indicating the lack of mental balance (disease of the soul) in three
languages (Chinese, Russian and English) are introduced by Alena
Rudenka and Fang Xiang, and James Underhill presents the interpreter’s
dilemmas in the synonymous use of heart/soul lexemes in texts (using the
examples of English, French, German and Czech);
c) At the level of word formation, Iwona Burkacka analyzes the
semantics of compound adjectives (such as magnanimous or mean-
spirited) derived from the lexeme soul, and Maryan Skab presents the
functioning of the soul and its derivatives in Ukrainian acts of
communication;
d) On the basis of the analysis of internet memes (motivators and
especially demotivators), Olga Makarowska examines the image of the
values (attributes, qualities) attributed to the soul today in relation to the
archetypal features of the concept.
In contrast, different nation-specific linguistic images of the soul in the
world of values emerge, especially from ethnolinguistic analyses, in the
third part, where cultural codes and language are treated together. Taking
into account the belief base and folklore material allows us to discover
meanings that are realized in specific cultural contexts. The problem of
guilt and the punishment of sin in Polish folk culture is mentioned in two
articles: Ewa Masłowska treats the concept of mercy as central in the
axiosphere of the soul (passage of the soul to Heaven) and Zdzisław
Kupisiński takes up folk images of God’s Particular Judgment which
awaits the soul after death. Joanna Szadura attempts to reconstruct the
traditional image of the presence of the soul in the body, typical of Polish
culture, based on the analysis of lexis and dialect texts. Kamila Stanek, on
the other hand, introduces the secrets of “the soul’s designing” of a child
in Turkish tradition by giving him names that contain a message about the
soul. The ethical problem in relation to profiling the soul in Czech culture
xiv Introduction
is investigated by Irena Vañková based on Czech phraseology and lyrics

from contemporary Czech songs. Mikhail Kondratenko compares the
vocabulary in Northern Russian and Upper German dialects, proving that
their peripheral location away from cultural centres determines linguistic
conservatism and that the analysis of lexis and semantics related to the
soul reveals the archetypal layers of tradition and the assessment of the
soul as the most important attribute of humanity. Similarly, Shahla
Kazimova, in the article devoted to Azerbaijani folk literature, discovers
ancient, pre-Islamic layers of totemistic and animistic beliefs included in
the way of perceiving the soul. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk describes the
dialogues of the living with the souls of the dead, “heard” at Orthodox
cemeteries in Romania and Catholic necropolis in Poland. The analysis of
inscriptions placed on tombstones reveals the mediating role of the soul in
dealing with the supernatural reality attributed to it by the families of the
deceased, who expect its advice, prayers, and support. The cultural-
linguistic debate is closed by the confrontational approach to worldviews
represented by Christian churches denying the existence of an animal soul
in relation to the positions held by pre-Christian and non-Christian
religions and Christian folklore, as well as representatives of unorthodox
theology (John Wesley) and philosophy (Tom Regan).
The reader will find the continuation of the present discussion in

volume two of the monograph, which contains studies from different
perspectives: artistic assessments of the soul (in literature and the arts),
mystic and theological reflections on spirituality in the Christian religion
as well as in the Orient and Ancient Egypt. The contributions of volume
two will afford the viewer a wider perspective on the concept of the soul in
its ethical, emotional and theological dimensions, in the European and
Non-European cultures and languages, in their artistic, philosophical and
religious texts.
On behalf of the authors,

Ewa Masłowska
PART I:
THE SOUL FROM THE PERSPECTIVE

OF HUMANITIES
CHAPTER 1
“METAPHYSICS” AND “PSYCHOLOGY”:

TWO NARRATIVES OF THE SOUL
AND BODY IN POLISH.
A LINGUISTIC/CULTURAL APPROACH
DOROTA FILAR
MARIA CURIE-SKŁODOWSKA UNIVERSITY IN LUBLIN, POLAND
1.1. Introduction
This study relies on the definition of language as an interpretation of

the world, motivated by experiential and cultural factors. Linguistic-plus-
cultural meaning is thus captured as culturally-defined conceptual models,
as interpretations of the universe we live in. At the same time, linguistic
worldview is not a static, frozen construct. On the contrary, I assume that
language as “grand narrative” is an imagistic story of how we perceive
reality and how things “happen” in the world.
Linguistic worldview comes in the form of diverse portions of
knowledge, offered to the speakers of a given language in the lexicalized
content, grammaticalized relations, verbalized axiologies, and historically
accumulated experiences, building up a comprehensive conceptualization.
The richer the history and the tradition of a given speech community, the
larger the complexity and diversity of the views that acquire their
linguistic manifestation. Knowledge is not a state and is never
exhaustively “formatted” and confined: it is constantly changing. This is
particularly visible in the case of words that are “semantically sensitive” to
changing worldviews, to collective thinking and individual consciousness,
the values and assumptions that one makes about the world and human
nature. The lexeme analyzed in this chapter, dusza (“the soul” in Polish) is
a good example of a word of this kind.
“Metaphysics” and “Psychology” 3
Out of the numerous meanings of the word, for the purpose of the
present analysis, I have selected two that I consider fundamental in
contemporary Polish:1
- “the divine, eternal aspect of a human being” (dusza1).

- “the mental and intellectual aspect of a human being” (dusza2).
The focal point of my interest is that they both belong to two different
narratives. Each of them comes from a somewhat different source,
represents a different understanding of human existence and generally of
what it means to be human. For the sake of the analysis, one of them will
be referred to as the metaphysical narrative, while the other as the
psychological narrative.
1.2. Language as a “grand narrative”, a word as “micro-narrative”
Narrative and storytelling “were born with humanity” (Barthes 1968,

327). They have always been the basic forms of cultural and individual
expression, even though initially they were linked to the structure of a
literary work.2 Nowadays, however, narratives are understood in a broader
sense and encompass the schemas of human thinking and behaviours as
natural elements within active human scale (Fauconnier and Turner 2002,
312). Reflection on narratives has been enriched by input from
psychologists, linguists, philosophers and neuroscientists.3 It is claimed in
these studies that “describing our lives as well as the processes and events
that take place in the world” (Rosner 2003, 12) is a fundamental function
of narrative as a universal cognitive procedure:
Narrative imagining – a story – is a fundamental instrument of thought.

Rational capacities depend upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the
future, of predicting, planning and explaining. (Turner 1996, 4-5)
1 Dusza has many other meanings, including metaphorical ones, that are derived
from its semantic potential and textual uses.

2 I refer here to the entire history of the term “narrative”, from Aristotle and Plato
to literary theory and contemporary transdisciplinary definitions.

3 The authors of publications devoted to narratives often elaborate on the
development of the theory of narration. The Polish scholars who have published on
the topic include Rosner (2003), Trzebiński (e.g. 2002), Burzyńska (2008), Filar
(2013, 2015, 2016), and others.
4 Chapter 1
For a long time, linguistics has capitalized on the achievements of

frame theory (Fillmore, e.g. 1982 and 1985), scripts (Taylor 1995, 87-88),
scenarios (Lakoff 1987, 285-286, Langacker 2008, 531-535) and
frameworks, 4 which allow us to describe linguistic meanings within
dynamic systems, in the context of events and cause-effect relationships.
Many other researchers, including Polish ones, without directly employing
the terms related to the study of narratives, use a method of defining that
takes into account the “tools” characteristic of a narrative, e.g., the subject,
intention and purpose of an action, cause and effect relations, the
chronology of events. The conceptual narrative procedure may, therefore,
act as a foundation for describing the meaning of a word in a complex,
dynamic form that distinguishes a protagonist, uses temporal and causal
relations, presents the world through the lens of human intentions, goals
and value, and relates to the narrative view of reality as a space-time and
cause-effect continuum, motivated by culture and worldview.
I assume that language is a kind of a grand narrative,5 an imagistic
story of how we perceive reality and how things “happen” in the world,
within an intersubjective cultural space. Interlinked fragments of the
4 Work on schemas is usually associated with Schank, Abelson, and Mandler et al.
The authors consider scripts, stories and scenes to be vital elements of the
organization of knowledge. Other concepts have also been inspiring, for example,
those that analyze certain dynamic systems of knowledge, e.g., the theory of
conceptual frames as described by Minsky and Barsalou and–in linguistics–
Fillmore's theory of semantic frames (1982, 1985). In Poland, Ryszard Tokarski
uses frame theory in his study of the semantics of colours (Tokarski 1995). I have
discussed the topic extensively elsewhere (Filar 2013, 47-64), comparing different
views and different theories of schemas.
5 The concept of metanarratives (grand narratives) and micro-narratives (small
narratives) comes from the philosophy of history and has been proposed by
Lyotard 1997. It can be inspiring for semanticists, but one reservation has to be
kept in mind: the terms “grand narrative” and “micro-narrative” themselves must
be categorically redefined within the field of linguistics. Language is a “creation”
produced by a society that shares a language and culture and, just like other grand
culture-shaping narratives, it does not have a single author (Dryll 2010, 178). It
expresses meanings that are linked to the most vital problems of the human
existence, opinions and values. I do not, however, analyze here the main theme of
Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition: the crisis of metanarratives and the lack of
trust for the “grand narratives” that is typical of postmodernism (see e.g. Lyotard
1997, 20).
“grand” narrative of language understood in this way might be found and

read in its smaller elements (e.g., lexical items). The essence of a narrative
description of meaning is the assumption that units of language can
activate micro-narratives imprinted in their meanings. This is because
word meanings contain human attitudes and “scenarios of human
behavior” connected with the portion of reality expressed in and through a
given word. Therefore, sometimes the histories inherent in lexical
meanings are in a way “coiled up”, they constitute a micro-narrative
“folded stories”, apparently without being directly appreciated by
speakers. But thanks to our cultural, social, and experiential knowledge,
we are easily able to “expand” these histories to their full form most
readily accepted by the human mind: in the words of Fauconnier and
Turner, to “come up with a story” (2002: 312). Therefore, language,
understood here as an interpretation of the world, motivated by
experiential and cultural factors, can be analyzed as a narrative. The
central element of the model, with consequences for language-entrenched
conceptualizations, is the protagonist of the story: a homo narrator
equipped with the “human scale” necessary for interpreting the universe.
The Polish lexeme dusza is an exceptional word since each of its two
basic meanings is “woven” into a different story about humans.
1.3. The soul in metaphysics and psychology and the linguistic

meaning of dusza
The views of philosophers and psychologists evolve constantly; they

depend on the findings of the most recent research and on the dominant
model of humanity and the world proposed by sciences at a given point in
time. How and to what an extent could these views influence the formation
of linguistic meanings?
Metaphysics is, in general, devoted to studying the reality beyond our
senses and beyond the physical (in Greek, metá means “above, after,
super”, see Kowalczyk 1997). In Polish, the word metafizyka (metaphyscs)
is often used colloquially to describe things that are “difficult to
understand, mysterious or impossible to grasp through one’s senses”
(Bańko 2000); it can be used to refer to “problems such as life after death,
death itself, love or experiencing the presence of God” (Bańko 2000). As it
6 Chapter 1
evolves through the ages, metaphysics has been defined in various ways.6
In Polish, the presence and influence of Christian metaphysics have been
particularly notable.
Today, one can notice “the metaphysical narrative” in systemic and
textual meanings of dusza, even if “the belief in the existence of divine
souls created by God is a part of human philosophy that is not embraced
by everyone” (Wierzbicka 1999, 52).
The other relevant meaning of the word dusza defines the soul as “the
mental aspect of a human being” (Bańko 2000). It is a synonym of
“psyche” or “a person’s characteristic features and internal processes,
emotions, intellect, capabilities and experiences that are specific for the
person and that define the person’s abilities” (Bańko 2000). “The study of
the human psyche and the rationale behind human behaviours” is, in turn,
psychology (Bańko 2000). The subject of psychological research has
evolved significantly, 7 changing from the soul as the state of one’s
emotions and consciousness to the physiological processes that happen
within the nervous system and motivate human behaviour. In contemporary
Polish dictionaries, the first meaning being presented (i.e., the basic one) is
related to psychological knowledge.
Can we assume that the meanings of dusza remain "insensitive" to the
evolution of our knowledge about the world? The answer seems obvious,
but an objective analysis of the dependencies involved calls for more
precise theoretical and methodological assumptions.
6 These various definitions include metaphysics as a study of the basic matters

related to existence and its ultimate reason, a study of all that is fundamental,
essential and common, as well as a study devoted to God, the human soul and the
spiritual world. Other perspectives encompass the preception of the absolute as the
source of moral values, a priori knowledge (Kant), or intuitive knowledge
(Bergson) (based on Kowalczyk 1997).
7 It was defined as, for example, conscious experiences (the soul as the sum of
ongoing processes that happen in the psyche), the development of human higher
functions in history and culture, active and intentional experiences, perceptional
processes, objectively observed sets of human behaviours, “the unconscious
awareness”, subjectivity, sociobiological determinants of human nature,
physiological mechanisms of the nervous system that motivate human behaviours.
The so-called popular psychology and its conception of the human being have also
been appreciated in scientific inquiry (see Łukaszewski 2000).
1.4. Linguistic meaning as an interpretation of the world
Questions about the essence of meaning have been asked since

antiquity. Nevertheless, meaning–including linguistic meaning–still cannot
be considered as fully investigated, nor can the term meaning be regarded
as fully defined. As many researchers note: “even the most basic issues—
for example, the role of cognition in semantics—are points of chronic and
continued contention”. (Langacker 2008, 27). Contemporary researchers,
however, are privileged in that they can rely on well-established traditions
and an abundance of various theoretical and analytical approaches.
In this study, I refer to anthropological–cognitive and cultural–
perspectives, in which semantics is the description of the way that people
perceive the world and express their psychological, biological and cultural
experience through language. Contemporary studies of this kind use the
achievements of cognitive and cultural linguistics, as well as invaluable
finding in the fields of the philosophy of language and cultural
anthropology.8
The method of analysis adopted in this research comes from studies
concerned with the notion of linguistic worldview: they have for years
marked one of the most important directions in Polish linguistics. 9
8 I refer to the inspirations based on the views of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Edward
Sapir or Benjamin L. Whorf, as well as numerous works that have shaped the
contemporary map of linguistic research–works that belong to the cognitive branch
of linguistics, as well as those that focus on cultural and anthropological aspects of
language. (To name but a few: George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Ronald Langacker,
Charles J. Taylor, Charles Fillmore, Anna Wierzbicka, Gary B. Palmer and Farzad
Sharifian. Many other scholars have studied these topics, but it is impossible to
mention them all.)
9 Sources and inspirations for the studies devoted to linguistic worldview have
their roots in German philosophy (mainly the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt) and
in American cognitive anthropology (Sapir and Whorf). The present chapter
follows, above all, to tradition and research directions marked out by research
pursued in Lublin, Poland, especially by two major research teams. One of them
has been engaged in two research programs: Językowy obraz świata “Linguistic
worldview” and Alternatywne sposoby kształtowania obrazu świata w systemie
językowym i tekstach “Alternative ways of shaping the worldview in the language
system and texts” (the scholars involved include, among others, Ryszard Tokarski,
Anna Pajdzińska, Dorota Filar, Dorota Piekarczyk, Aneta Wysocka, Katarzyna
Sadowska-Dobrowolska and Elwira Bolek). The other group is an ethnolinguistic
team (Jerzy Bartmiński, Stanisława Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska, Ewa Masłowska,
8 Chapter 1
Developed and modified over a few decades, they are based on the
assumption that linguistic worldview cannot be defined as a “reflection” of
reality in language, but as its subjective (in the sense of subject-oriented)
interpretation, where the conceptualising subject is in fact understood
intersubjectively and collectively. That interpretation is entrenched and
expressed in the lexicon, grammar, and texts of a given language. It is
anthropocentrically motivated by people's experiences, biology, and
culture, as well as being linked, through reciprocal dependence, with the
sphere of values and beliefs concerning humans and their world. In short,
it is “ingrained” in the entire body of world knowledge.
At the same time, linguistic worldview is not a frozen construct, or a
set of “static images” to be found in language. On the contrary, I assume
that language as “grand narrative” is an imagistic story of how we perceive
reality and how things “happen” in the world, within an intersubjective
cultural space; this is why I regard narrativity as one of the crucial aspects
of linguistic worldview. As I see it, linguistic worldview is a “dynamic,
multi-layered narrative that resembles the human understanding of the
world” (Filar 2013: 186).
1.5. Two narratives about the soul in contemporary Polish
Each of the two key meanings of the lexeme dusza (dusza1 and dusza2)
comes from a different source of knowledge about the world, capitalizes
on different beliefs and, eventually, differently interprets the essence of
being human. Therefore, each belongs to a different narrative about
humans–a narrative that is motivated by worldview, language and culture.
These two interpretations were not “born in language”, but were instead
added to the meaning of words in the long process of accumulating
knowledge about humans and of forming beliefs that have migrated to
collective consciousness.
On the general level, one can define these two approaches as “platonic
spiritualism” and “psychophysical materialism”. However, Polish
colloquial linguocultural consciousness is closer to two other socially
sanctioned views, each of them “promoting” a different image of the soul.
Each interprets its provenience in a different way and each views its
Joanna Szadura, Urszula Majer-Baranowska, Małgorzata Brzozowska, Marta

Nowosad-Bakalarczyk, Beata Maksymiuk-Pacek, Katarzyna Prorok, Urszula
Bielińska-Gardziel, Sebastian Wasiuta and several others).
somatic connection to the human sphere as well as the “scenario of events”

associated with the soul in a different manner. These two worldviews are:
- a traditional religious interpretation of the world and

- the scientific model of reality based on scientific progress,
especially in the fields of philosophy, biology and medicine.
1.6. Dusza: “the divine element” versus “the mental aspect”
Depending on what we take the soul to be, its existence might be just a
derivative of one’s beliefs or it can be scientifically proved. Language
follows both of these perspectives.
Firstly, dusza1 is “the divine element of a person”. It is a linguistic
manifestation of metaphysical intuition, which is difficult to verify and
which allows for interpreting the nature of humans in a religious
perspective. Secondly, dusza2 is “a mental, psychological aspect of a
person, associated with their emotions, mental states and processes, and
thinking”. This meaning, to a large extent, corresponds to the state of
contemporary psychological and medical knowledge about humans. The
first meaning introduces a perspective that is, within the present chapter,
linked to a broadly defined metaphysics. The second meaning opens a
narrative that I call “psychological”. Apparently, they do not seem to be in
conflict; one may even say that they both “tell the story of the same
object”, defined in two separate ways. However, a more detailed semantic
analysis shows that each meaning implies a different definition of the
human being and each tells a different “story about humans”. One of the
major disparities is the way in which the relation between the soul and the
body is defined and understood within each perspective.
It is usually assumed that the image of the human being, as it is
expressed in Polish, is dualistic (person as the soul and the body). 10
Wierzbicka maintains that this concept dominated the entirety of Western
philosophy and culture for a long time: “Undoubtedly, dualism is a
characteristic feature of the traditional, current Western philosophy and it
results from its traditionally Christian provenance” (1999, 530). The
conviction that a human being “as a whole” is composed of a spiritual and
10 Extensive research confirms this assumption, cf. Grzegorczykowa 1999, Czaja
2005, Maćkiewicz 2006, Filar 1993, 2012, 2014, 2016, Lisczyk 2012, Piasecka
2013 among many others.
10 Chapter 1
a physical sphere and the two aspects have a common subject, the human
“I” (which spans the physical and spiritual aspects of life and cognition) is
ingrained in “popular philosophy” and expressed in the lexical and
semantic layer of the Polish language (e.g., in its phraseology and
numerous lexicalized metaphors). 11 How is this spiritual-and-corporeal
unity of humans understood? In a simplified description, it might be said
that lexical and semantic data present two paths, and each of them
proposes a slightly different interpretation of this issue.
The “psychological” meaning of dusza1 is listed first in all contemporary
dictionaries. It can be assumed that this is because it is the currently
dominant meaning of the word. However, following the process of
semantic development of dusza, my analysis begins with an investigation
of the word’s origin. There is ample evidence suggesting that dusza is
“entangled in a metaphysical narrative”.
1.7. The soul in a metaphysical narrative
One of the key meanings of the lexeme dusza is associated with

religion. It is defined as, for example, “the intangible element of a person,
considered immortal and believed to leave the human body after a person’s
death” (Bańko 2000); or: “according to the majority of religious beliefs
and trends in idealistic philosophy: an intangible and immortal aspect of a
person, which animates the body and leaves it at the moment of death”
(Szymczak 1996).
1.7.1. Where does the soul “come from”?

The linguistic “metaphysical narrative” begins with the mystery of the
soul’s provenance. We say dusza ludzka “the human soul”, but within the
linguistic/cultural model discussed, human beings are neither the creators
of the soul nor the sources from which the soul arises. It is difficult to find
a definitive explanation to this problem by means of a semantic analysis of
the contemporary Polish lexicon or a survey of contemporary dictionaries
of the language. However, some argumentation might be proposed on the
basis of etymological data. Grzegorczykowa analyses the results of Polish
11 Human existential unity understood in this way was not and is not an
indisputable aspect of philosophy, religion, or psychology. Depending on one’s

worldview, spirituality and corporeality are analyzed within the framework of
dualism, monism, pluralism, or personalism. All of these paradigms are internally
complex. (For a broader discussion see Filar 2016.)
etymological research and notes that the Polish semantic unit dusza has its
morphological roots in the pre-Slavic words duša and duch (duch can
mean either “spirit” or “ghost”); in Polish, dusza has undergone a semantic
concretization and now “refers to ‘that “portion” of the spirit that can be
identified in a person. It corresponds to the theological-philosophical
concept that defines the soul as an entity which achieves individualism in
connection with matter” (Grzegorczykowa 1999, 337). Interestingly, a
similar reasoning has been documented in a few older dictionaries, e.g., in
Słownik Warszawski “The Warsaw Dictionary” (Karłowicz, Kryński and
Niedźwiedzki 1900), which, among other definitions, proposes that dusza
is “‘an individual spirit’ that–together with the body–constitutes a human
being” (emphasis D.F.).
Many aspects of Polish linguistic/cultural conceptualization have
undoubtedly been influenced by the Christian worldview, according to
which God “bestows” souls on people. In contemporary Polish, there is no
extensive phraseology and there are no lexicalized metaphors or semantic
derivatives of the lexeme dusza that could clearly support the belief that
the soul comes from God. There is only one indication, a minor one, of the
belief that souls are God-given: the expression oddać duszę Bogu “to give
one’s soul back to God”, in the sense of “die”. This could signal that the
soul was originally given to a person by God, but only if the verb oddać is
used in the sense “to give a thing that was for some time at the disposal of
someone else back to the owner” (e.g. to give someone’s money back to
them, to return a book to a library, etc)12. The expression ktoś/człowiek
Bogu ducha winny “someone/a person owes God their soul”, synonymous
with being innocent, might also be used as evidence of the relationship
between the soul and God. However, this problem, as I have already noted,
is not interpreted clearly or unambiguously in contemporary Polish. Much
more can be seen in various texts,13 especially in those that use typical,
conventionalized images associated with the word dusza:
12 In other contexts a verb oddać means to ‘give’, e. g. the expression oddać komuś
ostatnią koszulę – to “give someone your last shirt” in the sense of sharing
everything you have with others.
13 I do not, however, use religious or theological texts even though they describe
the relationship between the soul and God in a very effective way. Nevertheless,
they cannot, similarly to other specialized texts that are not based on everyday
consciousness, be treated as reflections of common knowledge entrenched in the
Polish language.
12 Chapter 1
Boże, czemuś dał duszę, co snu musi żebrać, —

I życie, które można tak łatwo odebrać?
I czemuś mnie z takiego utworzył marliwa,
Że mnie w tę obcą ciemność byle noc porywa?
(Bolesław Leśmian, Pogrzeb; emphasis D.F.)
God, why have you given a soul that has to beg for sleep, —
And a life that can be taken away so easily?
Why have you made me of such a dead-matter,
That a mere night sweeps me into that strange darkness?
(Bolesław Leśmian, Funeral; emphasis D.F.)
The “speaking I” addresses God who “has given a soul” and “made”
humans by doing so. The neologism marliwo (translated as “dead-matter”)
was created from the stem in umrzeć, umierać “to die, to be dying” in the
variant that is used in forms such as zmarli, umarli “the dead ones”. A
characteristic nominal suffix was added to the stem–the same one that can
be found in words such as tworzywo, paliwo (these two mean,
respectively, “the substance from which something is made” and “fuel”).14
The human body is, therefore, compared to an ephemeral, perishable
“material”, in which God’s intention “materializes”. In (numerous) texts
that reflect these typical beliefs, the scenario that is entrenched in popular
conceptualization becomes fully visible: someone receives the soul from
God who, by merging it with a physical (perishable) body, creates a
human being.
The soul is what brings life to this entire system, as is clearly visible in
many expressions that use the word dusza to refer to “life”: e.g., ujść z
duszą “to make it out alive” (or, literally, “to escape with one’s soul”),
paść/leżeć bez duszy “to collapse soulless, to collapse dead”, wyzionąć
ducha/duszę, oddać duszę “to die” (lit. “to breathe out one’s soul”). This is
indicated in older dictionaries, e.g., in Linde’s dictionary (1807-1814),
which connects the word dusza with metaphorical “life”, whereas
bezduszny “soulless” means “dead”. (In contemporary Polish, bezduszny is
usually used to mean “heartless, cruel”.)
Grzegorczykowa observes that “Polish terms for the spirit and the soul,
duch and dusza, respectively, belong to a group of lexemes that are
etymologically linked to the pre-Slavic verb *dъchnąti, which means ‘to
14In Polish, tworzyć means “to create” and tworzywo refers to the material that is
used to create something. Palić means “to burn” and paliwo means “fuel”–something
that is used to create fire or propel an engine (cf. Grzegorczykowa 1984, 347).
breathe’” (1993, 333), and thus, just like in the entire family of Slavic
languages, they are conceptually motivated by the notion of breath.
Breath–as the most fundamental physical aspect of life, a sign of actually
being alive–motivates the connection between dusza and the concept of
LIFE. Undoubtedly, in the case of “the metaphysical narrative about the
soul”, the etymological foundation and the biblical tradition are important.
Pajdzińska (1999) discusses the conceptual, experiential, semantic and
religiously motivated links between the concepts of LIFE, BREATH, SPIRIT,
and SOUL in Polish (as well as in other languages). Furthermore, she cites
numerous fragments of different Polish translations of the Bible, in which
the creation of humans is associated with the image of God breathing life
into the human body.15
The phraseological units życie doczesne, życie ziemskie “the earthly
life, the worldly life” and życie wieczne, dusza nieśmiertelna “the eternal
life, the immortal soul”, reveal different aspect of life as being associated
with the soul in the “metaphysical narrative” from the one linked with the
body. The adjectives doczesny “earthly” and ziemski “worldly” refer to
evanescence and ephemerality. In turn, wieczny “eternal” and
nieśmiertelny “immortal” refer to spheres beyond these boundaries. The
mortal body and the soul that continues to exist after the body dies–the
immortal soul–are present in the popular expression dusze zmarłych “the
souls of the dead”: “the immortal souls of those who are physically dead”.
1.7.2. How to describe the soul?
Polish colloquial linguacultural consciousness captures the soul and the

body as a dualistically understood whole, as in the expression duszą i
ciałem “with one’s soul and body”, which means “completely, totally,
fully”. In Polish, this model operates as the CONTAINER METAPHOR: there
is a bodily shell, in which the soul can be found, like in wielka dusza w
małym ciele “a big soul in a small body”, and one may, for example,
15 For example, in Jakub Wujek’s translation of Genesis into Polish: Utworzył tedy
Pan Bóg człowieka z mułu ziemie, i natchnął w oblicze jego dech żywota, i stał się
człowiek w duszę żywiącą “[T]hen the LORD God formed man from the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a
living being”; or, in The Wisdom of Solomon: [Bóg], który weń tchnął duszę, która
działa, i natchnął weń ducha żywiącego “[God] breathed into him an active soul,
and breathed in a living spirit” (both Polish quotations come from The Jakub
Wujek Bible–based on the Vulgate – as quoted in Pajdzińska 1999, 54).
14 Chapter 1
wytrząsnąć/wytrząść czyjąś duszę z ciała “shake one’s soul out of the

body”. The body belongs to the physical, material sphere. It can be defined
with physical parameters: colour (cf. a pale, tanned, swarthy body), size (a
small or a massive body), shape (a shapely, deformed body), and features
that can be recognized by touch (a smooth, rough, soft, lean, toned body),
etc.
How to describe the human soul? Wierzbicka describes the meaning of
the word soul in English (linked to “the metaphysical narrative” discussed
here) as connected to the transcendental and religious worldview; it is “one
of the two parts of a human being; it cannot be seen” (1999, 527).
Nevertheless, in contemporary Polish, there are no lexical units that could
confirm or contradict the popular faith in “the invisibility of the soul”.
Even if contemporary Polish texts refer to the belief that the soul is
invisible, in many cases they do not take it literally. As an example, let’s
analyze one of the aphorisms by Stanisław Jerzy Lec:
Dusza chyba dlatego potrafi być nieśmiertelna, że jest niewidzialna.

(Lec, 2006, 249)
It seems the soul can only be immortal because it is invisible.
Lec alludes to two characteristic features of the soul that are rooted in “the
metaphysical narrative”: immortality and invisibility. It is interesting that
invisibility is simply stated (“it is invisible”), while immortality is
presented as conditional and modal (“the soul can/is able to be
immortal”).16 The sequence of cause and effect created in the aphorism
(“because”) suggests that invisibility is a requirement for immortality and
thus all visible beings are subject to death. Is it a metaphysical idea? Or is
it a kind of black humor that reveals the nature of human beings who can
annihilate anything that they can see (cf. the following Polish expressions:
wyciąć co do jednego, do nogi/co do nogi, w pień, ze szczętem, zabić/ubić
wszystko, co się rusza, which refer to killing everything or everyone that
can be seen and counted, everything that is moving)? Is invisibility the
only means of survival–whatever the author would like to understand by
literal or metaphorical invisibility? The hypothetical character of this
thesis is signaled by the appearance of the lexical unit chyba “it seems”.
16Cf.: “If we can do something, it means that we have enough strength, experience
and abilities to do it when present conditions allow for it” (Bańko 2000, the
definition of Polish potrafić “can/be able to”).
As the analyzed context suggests, the attributes of “invisibility” and

“immortality” are conventionalized parts of the meaning of dusza, and
they are used as a “stable starting point” in the process of using the word.
In contemporary texts, they might, however, be reinterpreted in surprising
ways that question the literalness of “the metaphysical narrative”.
Interestingly, in aiming to tame what is unknowable, members of the
Polish linguacultural community try, at times, to “materialize” the soul,
make it visible or generally perceptible to one’s senses (as in some
traditional folk texts). In conventional imagery, the soul is, at times,
represented in a “human form”–in a way, of course, that is not fully physical,
however it often has biological sex and resembles a dead person (the “owner
of the soul”). It might also look like a supernatural being (an angel) possessing
certain human features as in one of Julian Tuwim’s poems:
Dusza z ciała wyleciała,

Na zielonej łące stała.
Ja pobiegłem, patrzę na nią:
Nie wiedziałem, żeś ty anioł.
A tyś anioł jak z obrazka,

Nad twą głową wieńcem łaska,
Szklane oczy, lniane włosy,
Suplikacje wniebogłosy.
(Julian Tuwim 2002, Piosenka umarłego)
The soul flew out of the body,

And stood on a green meadow.
I ran, I’m looking at it:
I didn’t know you were an angel.
You’re an angel, pretty as a picture,

A wreath of grace above your head,
Glass eyes, flaxen hair,
Loud supplications.
(Julian Tuwim, 2002, A Dead Man’s Song)
This is a 20th-c. poem but the author uses the stylistics of a medieval
song (“The soul flew out of the body”)17 and refers to popular convictions
17“Dusza z cieła wylecieła”–an incipit of a Medieval Polish song (it is probably a

final section in a para-theatrical script) written in a codex of Latin sermons. Today,
16 Chapter 1
based on religion, but not on theology: the soul is an entity that resembles
a person. The soul is visible, which is confirmed in the line “I’m looking at
it”. It has somatic features: the head, the eyes (“glass eyes”), hair (“flaxen
hair”) and it behaves like a human being (it “stood on a green meadow”).
At the same time, it does differ from the typical image of a person because
of its angelic aspect (“You’re an angel, pretty as a picture”). Iconic
representations–and religious paintings in particular–often picture the soul
as a material entity (a person). Even when it is a metaphor or an allegory
(especially in the Middle Ages), it undoubtedly follows the paths of
conventionalized collective imagery.
The visibility/invisibility of the soul and “the form of its existence” can
be interpreted in various ways, especially in texts, but they seem to have
no unambiguous expression in contemporary Polish. However, even if it is
an interesting problem in itself, it is still a secondary issue within the
metaphysical narrative, as its most important feature is the fact that dusza
is “the divine element in a person”. It is, then, a moral subject that gives
the person an opportunity to experience the world of real values. In
Wierzbicka’s metalanguage, it can be said, “because of this part [i.e., the
soul] a human being can be good” (1999, 526). Many Polish lexical units
indicate that the soul itself is also an element that can be subjected to
moral judgement–especially with respect to religious values. This belief is
embedded in the expressions grzeszna dusza, dusza zatracona, czysta
dusza/duszyczka, czystość duchowa, zbawienie duszy “a sinful soul, a lost
soul, a pure soul, spiritual purity, salvation of the soul”. Dusze
pokutujące/dusze czyśćcowe “repentant souls and the souls in purgatory”
are particularly interesting expressions. One can help those souls by saying
a special prayer–the context associated with these units is clearly religious.
1.7.3. The relation between the soul and the body
In order to understand the unique position of the soul within “the

metaphysical narrative”, one has to consider–in detail–its relation to the body.
The issue is deeply rooted in cultural, philosophical, and ideological beliefs.
Throughout the ages, the attitude to the human somatic sphere has
fluctuated between fascination and revulsion, between the cult of the body
and the senses and the conviction that the body is in conflict with the
this quote is often used as a popular, simple, rhymed saying, with most speakers
being unaware of its origin.
higher spheres of the soul: ethics and religion. Experiencing corporeality

as a contemptible sphere, “the worse one” or “the subservient one” in
relation to the soul is loci communes in many cultures; contempt for the
body is a cultural and literary topos that has been known since antiquity.
Even though ancient art extensively portrayed the beauty and harmony of
the human body, some philosophers–such as Plato–assumed that somatic,
sensual cognition warps and falsifies the image of the world as a perfect
entity and a perfect idea. In Porphyry’s Life of Plato, we learn that “Plato,
the philosopher of our times, was ashamed of dwelling in a body” (cited in
Stala 1994, 229).
The major religions of the world have also portrayed carnality as an
obstacle on the path to human perfection: fight against the body is a
recurrent theme in, among others, Asian beliefs (Hinduism, Buddhism,
Taoism). A seminal yoga handbook says: “in the end, a yogi overcomes
the body and transforms it into a spiritual tool and frees himself or herself
from the consciousness of the body” (Iyengar 1990, 17). For ages,
Christianity has interpreted the human body in a similar manner: as weak,
sinful and unable to sense God’s will. Even though the New Testament
sacralizes the body in the act of the New Covenant–it accentuates the
holiness of Jesus Christ’s body–the body was, especially in the Middle Ages,
perceived as the cause of human moral weakness and the domain of sin.
Christian morality encouraged asceticism, mortification of the flesh and
control of the body (through virginity, celibacy, self-flagellation, and fasting).
This motive returns in later periods: for example, at the end of the Renaissance
and the beginning of the Baroque, it is present in the form of “the war that we
wage against Satan, the world and the body” (fragment of the title of a sonnet
by Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński, a seventeenth-century Polish poet).
These cultural, philosophical, religious and ideological contexts have
become “absorbed into” the language. Language indeed is a narrative, a
collective “work” of linguocultural community, “a story” that cannot be
detached from culture, which is a form of a collective mental activity. The
grand linguistic and cultural narrative reacts to the changes in our
worldview and to the developments in our world knowledge.
Cultural content, as well as experience-based content, is thus
“entrenched” in the linguistic image of corporeality in contemporary
Polish, and both have accumulated over the ages. Polish proverbs and
expressions refer directly to, for example, the belief that the bodily sphere
is inferior and that the spirit is superior to the body. This belief can be
found in proverbs, for example Co ciało lubi, to duszę gubi “What the
body likes is the ruin of the soul” and in phraseological expressions:
cielesna pokusa/uciecha “bodily temptation/pleasure”; żądza cielesna
18 Chapter 1
“desires of the flesh”. These, too, refer to the belief that “what comes from
the body” is in conflict with the reasoning of the soul and the mind:
morality and wisdom.
Contemporary interpretations of the spiritual and physical axiosphere,
even when they maintain the conventional image of the dualism of human
nature, are not always unambiguous–this is especially true for those who do
not accept the bipolar (black and white) view of the spiritual and physical
spheres. A poem by Anna Świrszczyńska may serve as an example:
Dusza na plaży
studiuje podręcznik filozofii.
Dusza pyta ciała:
- Kto nas związał razem?
Ciało mówi:
- Trzeba opalić kolana.
Dusza pyta ciała:
- Czy to prawda,
że nas wcale nie ma?
Ciało mówi: - Opalam kolana.
Dusza pyta ciała:
- W tobie czy we mnie
zacznie się umieranie?
Ciało się śmieje.
Opaliło kolana
(Anna Świrszczyńska, 1993, Dusza i ciało na plaży)
The soul on the beach

studies a philosophy handbook.
The soul asks the body:
-Who bound us together?
The body says:
-One has to tan the knees.
-Is it true
that we do not exist at all?
The body says: -I’m tanning my knees.
-Will dying start in me
or in you?
The body laughs.
It has tanned its knees
(Anna Świrszczyńska, 1993, The Soul and the Body on the Beach)
The starting point for the scene is the conventional dualistic image of a
person as an entity that is made of the soul and the body; these two are
“bound together” by “someone”. The “metaphysical narrative” would

undoubtedly see God’s action here. But the question Kto nas związał
razem? “Who bound us together?” implies human cognitive uncertainty.
The answer is not given. However, at the same time, since the lexeme kto
“who” is used to inquire about the agent performing the act, the question
implies that “someone” has intervened in the process of creating humans
beings. The form of a dialogue between the soul and the body indicates a
difference between the worlds to which the two belong. The expression
studiuje podręcznik filozofii “studies a philosophy handbook”, questions
such as Kto nas związał razem? Czy to prawda, że nas wcale nie ma? W
tobie czy we mnie rozpocznie się umieranie? “Who bound us together?”,
“Is it true that we do not exist at all?”, “Will dying start in me or in you?”
indicate that, in accordance with the conventional linguistic image of the
soul, the soul is the serious and profound one and has an insight into the
essence of things: it is the soul that is concerned with such matters as
philosophy, human nature, and death. The body seems to “ignore” these
important issues. The only thing it is interested in is the trivial, mundane
idea of “tanned knees”. The purely somatic impressions, carelessness and
joy that can be found in the phrase “the body laughs” as well as its lack of
response to serious philosophical questions indicate how limited human
nature is but, at the same time, they do not inspire negative emotions. The
simple joy of feeling the warmth of the sun create an image in which the
physical sphere is appreciated and valued. The poem, however, reflects the
traditional way of thinking about humans as creatures full of contradictions
and conflicting aspirations that are difficult to reconcile. Their synthetic
representation refers to the body-soul dualism.
These contradictions, rooted in the image of the human body and soul,
are at times a part of a tragicomic reflection on the human condition. It is
reflected in an epigram by Stanisław Jerzy Lec, titled Wspólnota
“Commonality”: Biedny duch/Ma z ciałem wspólny brzuch “Poor spirit/It
has to share a stomach with the body”.
1.7.4. The “separation” of the soul and the body
In the “metaphysical narrative”, human beings are not interpreted as

“permanent constructions” made of the soul and the body. The last phase
of the narrative is the moment of physical death, when the soul leaves the
body (dusza z ciała wyleciała “the soul flew out of the body”.) One can
find many images–graphics and literary works–in which death is portrayed
as a “separation” of the body and the soul.
20 Chapter 1
A poem by Adrian Szary titled Proscenium is an example of a

contemporary realization of the convention:
Jeżeli życie jest teatrem to już rozumiem ludzkie

Tragedie
I rekwizyty i grę światłem i perypetie komedie
Single panowie samotne damy w lichej scenerii przy

Pustym stole
Czasami grywa się monodramy nie zawsze piękne

Miłosne role
Jeśli znajdziecie się w dramacie w kwestiach wciąż

Robiąc błąd za błędem
Grajcie do końca siostro i bracie aż życie skończy się
Happy endem
A gdy umilkną już dialogi kostiumy ciała zdejmą wasze

Dusze
To spłynie na was kurtyn spokój błogi i zrozumiecie
Swoje scenariusze.
(Adrian Szary, Proscenium, emphasis D.F.)
If life is a theatre then I finally understand human

Tragedies
And the props and the play of light and capers comedies
Single men lonely ladies against a poor scenery at

An empty table
Sometimes one acts in monodramas not always beautiful

Romantic roles
If you find yourself in a drama making

Mistakes all the time
Act till the end sisters and brothers until life ends with
A happy ending
And when dialogues go silent and your

Souls will take off the costumes of the bodies
The calm of curtains will descend on you and you will understand
Your scripts.
(Adrian Szary, Proscenium, emphasis. D.F.)
The poem is constructed on the basis of the conventional metaphor

LIFE AS A THEATRE. The last stanza is particularly important. The poetic
phrase “costumes of the bodies”, used in close proximity to the verb “take
off”, suggests the obvious image of death as the moment when the soul
frees itself from the body. The soul is the proper subject here: it takes off
the costume. Body–which is called “a costume”–is just an external,
redundant theatrical prop. Additionally, the word “costume” might ascribe
a negative value to the body: it might also mean “disguise”, and to wear a
costume of someone (a princess, a pirate) means “to disguise oneself as
that kind of person”. This suggests that the body is an entity that does not
say much about the “true” person. It is only when one discards “the
costume of the body”–at the moment of death–does the “true” human
being (the soul) remain on the stage. The phrase “when dialogues go
silent”–especially the verb umilknąć “to go silent” or “to stop talking, to
cease to produce sounds”–is a clear reference to death. Similarly, spłynie
na was kurtyn spokój błogi “the calm of curtains will descend on you” is a
reference to the end of a play, a metaphor of the end of human life.
1.7.5. “The metaphysical narrative”: A synopsis
The analyses above, in a somewhat simplified perspective, reveal

ideological sources and the character of “the metaphysical narrative of the
human soul” as it is expressed in Polish. The narrative is linked to the
meaning of dusza as “the divine element in a human being” and the
Christian worldview. It can be summarized in accordance with the logic of
“a story” that creates a narrative schema, corresponding to a set of
conventional beliefs embedded in the structure of Polish. The set might be
employed in texts in a more profound manner, it might be made more
complicated or reinterpreted. It is a cognitive narrative schema and, as
such, it constitutes a model that represents, in a simplified way, the outline
and the major points of a story:
• “The metaphysical narrative” derives from a dualistic, religious

representation of a human being. According to this interpretation,
the soul is one of two parts that coexist during a person’s earthly
life.
• Language expresses particular values, intentions and characteristic
features of the soul, present in common consciousness: the soul
guarantees a connection between a human being and God and
allows us to navigate the world of values; it is not a physical entity,
and it might be conceptualized and expressed in language as “an
invisible, bodiless element of a human being”, but it is sometimes
22 Chapter 1
(especially in art) pictured as “a figure” that resembles a person; its

true nature, however, is not, in fact, portrayed in the Polish
language.
• “The metaphysical narrative of the soul” assumes a precise
sequence of events that happen in time. It is propelled by a relation
of causes and effects according to “the metaphysical rationale”: the
soul comes from God and by God’s will, the soul and the body
become bound together; the soul animates the body and coexists
with it, thus making up a person. The body ages and eventually
dies, but the soul is immortal, so its existence is not affected by
death; the soul continues to exist regardless of the death and
disintegration of the body.
• Throughout life, a human being is entangled in the fight between
good and evil; the soul is the agent that gravitates toward good
more than the body does and it is often in conflict with “worldly” or
“bodily” motives. Nevertheless, the soul itself is subject to
judgment, especially in terms of moral and religious values. If a
person is good, then his or her soul will experience salvation after
the death of the body (cf. pobożna dusza “a pious soul”, zbawienie
duszy “salvation of the soul”) while the souls of bad people (cf.
zaprzedać/oddać duszę diabłu “to sell one’s soul to the devil”,
bezbożnik “a godless person”) will be damned.
The “metaphysical narrative of the soul” as it is reconstructed from

lexical and semantic data is–as I have stated above–a simplified narrative
schema. It arose from and was shaped by religious beliefs and the
Christian worldview, with regard to life as such and to humans
specifically. However, there is a degree of doubt connected with the
narrative. We do say, of course, w zdrowym ciele zdrowy duch, or wielka
dusza w małym ciele, wytrząść z kogoś duszę (literally: “a healthy spirit in
a healthy body”, “a big soul in a small body”, “to shake the soul out of
someone”), etc; yet we also say that the sun rises and sets, even though we
have known for a long time–and this is an obvious element of the
collective knowledge–that the sun does not circle the Earth but that it is the
other way around. The question, then, is, does the traditional dualism that
is embedded in language correspond to the meaning of dusza that is now
linked to the metaphysical narrative? Changes in contemporary knowledge
are undoubtedly related to the dynamic development of sciences–
especially medicine and biology. Does it influence the modification of the
traditional “metaphysical narrative of the soul”? The correct answer is
probably “yes, it does” if we remember that language is a “grand
narrative” that is embedded in the dominant ideology of an era and reacts

to the changes and developments of world knowledge. First, however, it is
necessary to analyze another narrative that closely co-aligns with the
current dominant ideology. For the sake of the present article, I call it “the
psychological narrative”.
1.8. The soul in “the psychological narrative”
In all Polish lexicographic sources published in the last few decades,

the first meaning of dusza is not the one related to the metaphysical
sphere, but rather the one associated with the inner life of a person, or
with the ability to think and feel, e.g., “the site of feelings and thoughts”
(Bańko 2000);18 “the sum of the attributes and mental dispositions of a
person, his or her spiritual powers; psyche, consciousness” (Doroszewski
1960, Szymczak 1996); “a person’s mental attributes related to the mind
and emotions; psyche, spirit, consciousness” (Dunaj 1996).
In Polish, human inner life can be described in many ways. One way
links the psyche with lexical items that suggest a precise “part” of a
person–for example, a somatic element in which the spiritual life is
“located”.
1.8.1. Dusza as “one of the ‘aspects’ of a human being”
Three basic lexemes showing “the placement” of a person’s inner life

can be found in Polish: dusza “the soul”, głowa “the head”, serce “the
heart”. These three words accumulate in themselves features associated
with emotions, will, mental or psychological states, actions, and processes.
In a manner of speaking, the words serce “heart” and głowa “head” seem
to be “specialized”. In simple terms, the former might be characterized as
“the site of feelings”, while the latter as “a container for thoughts, ideas,
wisdom, knowledge, memory”. The lexeme dusza implies a general
reference to various characteristics, states, mental processes and
psychological processes. 19 It refers to both personal features (harda,
rogata, poczciwa dusza “a tough, horny, kindly soul”), acts of one’s will
18 Interestingly, the connection between dusza and emotions or a person’s inner life
has been extensively recorded in older dictionaries as well; cf. Linde’s dictionary
(1807-1814), which defines it as “an emotion, the heart”.
19 Anna Wierzbicka points to a similar semantic value of the Russian word duša
(Wierzbicka 1999, 539).

24 Chapter 1
(pragnąć, chcieć czegoś z całej duszy “to desire/want something with

one’s entire soul”), emotions (kochać, nienawidzić z całej duszy “to
love/hate with all one’s soul”), mental states (mieć szczęście, spokój,
niepokój w duszy “to have peace, calm, anxiety in one’s soul”; być chorym
na duszy “to have a sick soul (to be depressed, anxious, worried)”), and
thoughts and intentions (rozważać coś w duszy, w głębi duszy “to consider
something in one’s soul, to think, to consider a difficult decision”;
otworzyć przed kimś duszę “to open one’s soul to someone, to share one’s
deepest thoughts, intentions and desires with someone”).
According to the simplified logic of linguistic conceptualization, the
inner world (dusza as “the inside”) is usually situated within (“inside”) the
external sphere, i.e. the body (cf. spokój wewnętrzny “internal peace, a
deep peace of the soul” and zewnętrzne opanowanie “external control,
apparent peace, control over one’s body and external signs of emotions:
facial expressions, gestures, the tone of one’s voice”). Many linguists have
claimed that, in this context, the human body can be described by referring
to the CONTAINER metaphor. 20 THE BODY-CONTAINER accommodates “an
inner (spiritual) space” that is abstract and not fully defined; the adjective
wewnętrzny “inner” (problemy wewnętrzne, życie wewnętrzne “inner
problems, inner life”) refers to the inside of a human being, that is to the
soul (cf. wielka dusza w małym ciele “a big soul in a small body”, about a
not-so-tall person with a strong character; w zdrowym ciele zdrowy duch “a
healthy spirit in a healthy body”).
The image of a person as a being that is made of a physical container
and a soul that is located inside that container might be supplemented by
an analogical metaphorical representation, according to which the soul
itself is a container that holds emotions, thoughts, will, processes,
conditions, mental and psychical actions. These states arise or are born in
the soul, and then a person “stores” them there: he or she has them in the
soul, which can be filled with them or even, overflowing with them. The
following lexical units illustrate this conceptualization: uczucie
(miłość/tęsknota/żal) rodzi się w duszy “a feeling (love/longing/regret) is
born in the soul; ktoś nosi/ma w duszy smutek/radość/szczęście/spokój/lęk
“someone has/carries sadness/joy/happiness/peace/fear in their soul”;
czyjaś dusza jest przepełniona/wypełniona smutkiem, tęsknotą,
20I refer to the classic image schema proposed by Lakoff (1987) and Johnson
(1987); see also Lakoff and Johnson (2011).
wdzięcznością “someone’s soul is filled with/overflows with sadness,

longing, gratitude”, etc.
We also link dusza to ethics and morality. Even though the
“specialized” semantic value of “the moral element in a human being” is
ascribed to the lexical unit of sumienie “conscience”, dusza might also
refer to the meaning pointed out by Wierzbicka: “this element makes it
possible for a person to be good”,21 although it is not well documented in
systemic data of contemporary Polish. Textual connections of the lexeme
dusza confirm its strong relationship with the axiological sphere.
1.8.2. “The persistence of the soul and the body”: human existential unity
Does dualism, understood as the coexistence of two parts of a human

being, correspond fully to dusza as “a psychological element, a mental
element, inner life”? While we use the word dusza in this sense, do we
always mean one part of ourselves? A different hypothesis might assume
that (in a linguistic interpretation of a human being) we perceive two
aspects (as opposed to two parts) of a person. The difference (a part vs. an
aspect) may appear insignificant, but if we recognize two aspects in one
being, it means we accept their inseparability. As a result, we move away
from the traditional form of dualism, since we assume that the physical-
spiritual nature is the core of human existential unity. It is difficult to find
examples of units in the language system that would unambiguously point
to a change in contemporary popular images of a human being that
develops in this direction. Contemporary texts, however, do signal this
change. Consider the fragment of a poem by Zbigniew Herbert below, in
which dusza is contextualized ethically, with rejection, refusal,
stubbornness, and courage as indicators of an unbreakable integrity:
To wcale nie wymagało wielkiego charakteru

nasza odmowa niezgoda i upór
mieliśmy odrobinę koniecznej odwagi
lecz w gruncie rzeczy była to sprawa smaku
Tak smaku
w którym są włókna duszy i chrząstki sumienia
(Herbert 1998, Potęga smaku)
21Wierzbicka sees, in one of the meanings of the English word soul, an ethical
element, even though nowadays, as she notes, moral values tend to be linked to the
noun conscience (in Polish: sumienie) (1999, 526).
26 Chapter 1
It didn’t require great character at all

our refusal disagreement and resistance
we had an ounce of necessary courage
but fundamentally it was a matter of taste
Yes taste
in which there are fibers of the soul the cartilage of conscience
(Herbert 1998, The Power of Taste)
The poetic expressions włókna duszy “fibers of soul” and chrząstki

sumienia “cartilage of conscience” arose in the process of blending
vocabulary items from two different spheres: dusza “soul” and sumienie
“conscience” are names of abstract units associated with inner life, while
włókna “fibers” and chrząstki “cartilage” indicate anatomical elements:
“cells of the body that are characterized by elongated shape” (fibers) and
“parts of the tissue that connect some skeletal elements” (cartilage). The
“fibers of soul” metaphor creates an image of the soul as a unit that is
“constructed”, just like the muscles of the body, out of fibers. Similarly,
conscience is portrayed as a physical part of a person, built of cartilage
(just like elements of the skeleton). These metaphors blur the line between
physical and spiritual experience, they bring the soul and conscience into
the corporeal domain of person, anchoring them in physical aspects of
human nature.
Cognitive linguistics has been trying to identify the traces of the
physical-spiritual nature of human beings in linguistic facts. Authors have
emphasized that all cognitive processes, from pre-conceptual image
schemas, through sensual foundations of terms, to categorization, are
anchored in physical, somatic aspects of human nature. Human inner life is
not, therefore, “bodiless” because the basic determinants of cognition and
feeling are linked to human somatic experience:
Tought is embodied, that is, the structures used to put together our
conceptual systems grow out of bodily experience and make sense in terms
of it; moreover, the core of our conceptual systems is directly grounded in
perception, body movement, and experience of a physical and social
character (Lakoff 1987, xiv)
The conceptual system is therefore determined not only by what is

objective in the world but also by our nature–the nature of living beings:
Our embodiment is essential to who we are, to what meaning is and to our

ability to draw rational interferences and to be creative. (Johnson 1987,
xxxviii)
In other words, human inner life is “embodied” thanks to the somatic

foundations of our basic experience. The significance of somatic
categories for the conceptual organization of language has been also
proven in numerous works on Polish linguistic worldview. Somatisms
have been recognized as an important lexical indicator and a “resonator”
for emotions (Pajdzińska 1990b), while sensual expressions related to
physical qualities are taken as the foundation of metaphors that describe
the categorization of complicated, abstract events and processes (cf.
Pajdzińska 1996). Semantic-lexical analyses of the words for human body
parts have also confirmed the hypothesis that the linguistic representation
of the human somatic sphere embraces fundamental cognitions that refer
to both the physical and social dimensions of life, interpersonal relations
and subtle emotional, ethical and intellectual content (cf. e.g., Filar, Głaz
1996).
The spiritual-physical unity of a person is therefore perceived as the
essence of being human. These notions are accentuated in many
contemporary texts: dusza “the psychical, mental, emotional element” is
strongly linked with the physical construction of a person; indeed, it is
represented as one of the physical “layers” of the human body, as in in the
following fragment of a poem by Marcin Świetlicki:
Pierwsza warstwa: skóra.

Druga warstwa: krew.
Trzecia warstwa: kości.
Czwarta warstwa: dusza.
(Marcin Świetlicki, 1996, McDonald’s)
First layer: skin.

Second layer: blood.
Third layer: bones.
Fourth layer: soul.
(Marcin Świetlicki, McDonald’s)
Dusza as “inner life, the mental, psychical element” seems to be

“inseparable from the body” and the experiences of the soul, together with
the experiences of the body, appear to be indivisible and mutually
influencing aspects of a person:
The lexeme warstwa “layer”, repeated in every verse, is crucial in the

interpretation of this fragment and the image of a person that it projects.
People “are made of” somatic “layers”: starting from the external coat of
the skin, through the blood that flows deeper, to bones which can be found
even deeper inside the human body. At the very center of this “construct”
28 Chapter 1
is the fourth, innermost “layer”: the soul. The physical relation between the
soul and the body presented here suggests their existential unity,
inseparability, especially since the categorizing element–genus proximum
LAYER–remains the same for dusza and for all the other (somatic) names
of that which makes up the human body (the skin, the blood, bones). The
soul, devoid of metaphysical aspects, becomes in this instance “an inner
layer” of a human being and remains in close relation with the body. (Filar
2016b, 11)
1.8.3. The end of bodily life – the end of spiritual life
“The metaphysical narrative of the soul” ends with a separation of the

body and the soul: a person’s body dies, passes away, but their soul is
immortal. The psychological narrative that connects the physical and
spiritual aspects of human beings in an indivisible way cannot end in a
similar manner. Interestingly, in Polish, there are no conventional,
systemic units that would unambiguously point to the conceptualization of
dusza as mortal. Some sources might offer a supplementary note to this
effect although in this type of imagery the lexeme dusza simply does not
appear. The following fragment of a poem by Stanisław Barańczak may
serve as an example:
pajęczyna, koncentryczne kręgi: tak

narasta ból; odśrodkowe promienie:
taką gwiazdą martwą się upada;
symetryczna śmierć;
harmonijna hańba;
upodlenie uporządkowane;
czujesz tylko muśnięcie na twarzy.
(Stanisław Barańczak, 1970, Pajęczyna)
the spiderweb, concentric rings; pain

grows this way; centrifugal rays;
a dead star decays this way; symmetrical death;
harmonious disgrace;
tidy degradation;
you only feel it brush your face.
(Stanisław Barańczak, Spiderweb, transl. by Clare Cavanagh)
The comparison between “the spiderweb” and “symmetrical death” is

the axis of the poem. It is also developed in the very construction of the
poem: the nouns śmierć, hańba, upodlenie, “death”, “disgrace”,
“degradation”, share a semantic dominant: they belong to the field of
experiences and states that inspire fear and are associated with suffering
and evil. The adjectives that they are paired with (symetryczna,
harmonijna, uporządkowane, “symmetrical”, “harmonious”, “tidy”) are in
turn linked by a semantic feature that can be described as “order with a
positive connotation”. Two conflicting semantic fields have thus been
juxtaposed, resulting in an interpretative enigma. What do the adjectives
mean? Literally, they refer to the symmetry of a spider web. Can we pair
them with the order of life and death, which is certain to come its course
and always symmetrical? The last line (“you only feel it brush your face”)
is certainly an important one in that it concludes the poem as a whole.
Interpretations of the poem might, of course, depend on the readers’
individual beliefs, but this last line seems to directly compare the short but
unpleasant contact of the human body with a spider web to death.
Importantly, this fragment does not picture death as a metaphysical
moment of the separation of the soul and the body, but rather as an
“evanescent” moment, like a brush of something against one’s face. Thus,
death is portrayed as a physical experience.
1.8.4. “The psychological narrative”: conclusions
“The psychological narrative of the soul” is linked to the meaning of

dusza as “the mental aspect of a person”. The narrative schema that acts as
the foundation for this interpretation of the soul is, in many elements,
unambiguously ingrained in the meanings of conventional Polish words
and expressions. Some of the elements, however, are not clearly recorded
in systemic meanings–but they can still be used in texts. We are dealing
here with a cognitive narrative schema, a model that represents only the
main outline, the major points of a narrative. It can be assumed that data
found in dictionaries and texts allow one to reconstruct “the psychological
narrative of the soul” in a way that more or less corresponds to the
following schema:
• The “psychological narrative” assumes an existential unity of the

soul and the body, presenting an image of the human being that
differs from the one derived from traditional dualism. According to
this interpretation, the soul is, in a way, “embodied” in and
interwoven with the physical aspect of human nature.
• The human soul encompasses the traits of one’s character, acts of
will, emotions, mental states and moods, thoughts, and intentions.
Importantly, the soul allows a person to navigate the world of moral
values.
30 Chapter 1
• “The psychological narrative of the soul” assumes a defined

sequence of events in time: the soul (the inner life) is closely linked
to the human somatic sphere; psyche is the highest human “function
of life”. The physical and spiritual modes of existence are
interdependent: the beginning of bodily life and its development is
at the same time the beginning and development of spiritual life.
Physical death (the death of the body) must, therefore, mean the
end of the soul defined in this way. It must be equal to the end of a
person’s mental functions.
1.9. Conclusion
This chapter offers an analysis of two meanings of the word dusza “the
soul” that are dominant in contemporary Polish: dusza1 “the divine aspect
of a human being” and dusza2 “the mental, psychical aspect of a human
being”. Adopting a narrative model of linguistic meaning brings the
semantic description closer to universal cognitive categories: to the story
of “how human life progresses”. By applying a broad, open description of
lexical meaning, one that includes complex structures of knowledge
(cultural, empirical and scientific knowledge), to the lexeme dusza I have
proposed two linguistic-cultural narratives that are activated by two
meanings of the word. These are two narratives about what it means to be
human, two ways of interpreting human nature. Are these two images in
conflict or are they complementary? In other words, is the polysemy of
dusza a signal of an ideological rift or is the image of person coherent
despite the existence of the two narratives? Systemic data alone are
insifficient to answer these questions; one can, however, search for
answers in contemporary literary texts. Textual analysis shows that the
points of view associated with the two meanings of dusza can intersect or
exhibit large measure of “confluence”, or that they can “clash”. In the
latter case, the conflict seems impossible to resolve and causes uncertainty,
so that no unambiguous definition of the word dusza can be provided (For
a more in-depth analysis, see Filar 2016b.) In conclusion, the meaning of
this word is characterized by a peculiar sensitivity to ideology and, at the
same time, an openness to subjective and complex interpretations of
reality.
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Summary
In its cognitive, cultural, and anthropological dimensions, semantics is not only
concerned with the problem of how linguistic meanings fit into the narrow frames
of definitions, but also with the description of human understanding of the world–
an understanding that is psychologically, biologically, and culturally motivated.
Semantic analysis thus reveals “stories of the world”: the “micro-narratives” and
“grand narratives” inherent in word meanings.
The goal of the present study is to discuss two grand narratives of the soul,
central to contemporary Polish worldview. Metaphysics and psychology give
access to two intersecting perspectives, whose mutual permeation may (but does
not always have to) lead to a certain “rift” in worldview, an epistemological
uncertainty. This is because each perspective defines the spiritual aspect of humans
in a different way, and each differently positions the soul in relation to the body.
Are these perspectives in conflict? Are we dealing with two distinct definitions
of the soul in Polish, or do they tend to merge into an open definition, in response
to human cognitive and epistemological needs? No pretense is made here as to the
unequivocal solution to the problem; rather, a solution is proposed using
contemporary meanings, inscribed in linguistic-cultural narratives of dusza (“the
soul/mind”) and corporeality/the body. The analysis is based on Polish
lexicographic and textual data.
Keywords: semantics, linguistic worldview, narratives, soul/spirituality, the body,

corporeality.
CHAPTER 2
WHEN THE BRAIN CHANGES THE SOUL —

A NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
AGNIESZKA MARYNIAK
UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW, POLAND
2.1. Soul and personality
When we examine the frequency of usage of these two words over time
(from 1800-2008) in Google Books Ngram Viewer (Figure 1), an interesting
relationship emerges. In particular, there is a negative correlation (r=-0.6) in
the usage of these words such that the frequency of the word personality
has been increasing since 1800 whereas the frequency of the word soul has
been declining. This was the case until the beginning of the seventies of
the 20th century when the curves became even. Interestingly, however,
since 1984 the opposite tendency has emerged such that the word soul is
used more often than personality. Can it be that these two words have been
used interchangeably over time?
In the latest edition of the Dictionary of the Polish Language (Słownik
Języka Polskiego PWN, https://sjp.pwn.pl), the word soul is defined as the
“totality of mental, emotional and intellectual disposition of a human being
which defines his personality.” Personality is defined as the “entirety of
constant mental traits of inner mechanism which regulate man’s
behaviour.” There are notable similarities between these two definitions.
In particular, both definitions refer to individual persistent traits of the
person in broad areas of intellect, emotion, and regulation. What is more,
the concept of personality is even provided in the definition of the soul.
Would the soul then be considered a component of personality?
When the Brain Changes the Soul 37
Fig. 1. The frequency of occurrence of words soul and personality in Google's text
corpora in English. 1
Obviously, the meaning of these two words is not identical. Soul and
personality are even used by different disciplines. In particular, the word
personality is commonly used in academia and in clinical psychology.
Personality is often the subject of experimental research, scientific
reflection, and to some extent therapeutic effects. The word soul, a part of
the meaning which was quoted above, is commonly used "in religion and
philosophy not-material and immortal element in a human being, which
inspirits the body and leaves it in the moment of death" (op. cit.)
Scientific psychology dissociates itself from the soul – which cannot be
empirically examined, even though the soul is a part of the written
etymology of the field. 2 However, in psychological practice, we often hear
about the soul, its suffering, wounds and loss. Sometimes, families of
patients suffering from neurological illness or brain damage speak about
the soul when describing their experiences. Other times, the patients
themselves refer to the soul when describing their own experiences.
2.2. The transfigured soul
Two years before his death in 1518, Rafael started to work on a

painting — “The Transfiguration.” 3 In the upper illuminated portion of the
painting, Jesus Christ is depicted soaring to heaven and is accompanied by
1 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=soul%2C+personality&year_
start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3
B%2Csoul%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cpersonality%3B%2Cc0
2 Psychology – from Greek: ψυχή psyche = soul, and λόγος logos = word.
3 Currently, the painting is in Vatican Pinacoteca.
38 Chapter 2
two prophets Jesus' followers are also depicted as covering their faces in
awe. At the bottom portion of the painting, in the dark, people's lives are
carrying on. However even in this continuation, there is transformation; a
boy being carried by his father with a distorted body and with an open
mouth as if screaming. This boy is attracting a crowd's attention. In his
raised up eyes, there is no consciousness. The renaissance master has
faithfully portrayed an epileptic seizure. Painting this character, did he
actually notice in the sick boy the reflection of transformation — a
temporary turn of the soul toward different worlds? Just like Christ
revealing, for a short moment, his divine identity?
Epileptic seizures have always fascinated and terrified. During a
seizure, there is a sudden deprivation of an individual’s consciousness
and/or bestowment of an extraordinary experience upon him or her. These
experiences were thought to be supernatural forces at work – for e.g., good
or evil spirits — that were taking over the soul. Just as it happened in the
evangelist tale of healing an epileptic:
A man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is

possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. Whenever it seizes
him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth
and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they
could not.” You unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I
stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.” So
they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy
into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the
mouth. Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”
“From childhood,” he answered. “It has often thrown him into fire or water
to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” ‘If
you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome
my unbelief!” When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he
rebuked the impure spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I
command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” The spirit
shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much
like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand
and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up. (Mark 9:14-27 New
International Version)
In the polish language, there are also apparent traces of a perceived

connection between epileptic seizures and supernatural forces. For
example, such connections are evidenced in a collection of medical articles
published in 1846 in Vilnius: “The latest practical observation of some
doctors,” “One can encounter a thesis,” “Describing an example of mental
insanity connected with Kaduk” with the addition of practical remarks by
K. Maleszewskiego, or “The history of Kaduk and paralysis of the right

side of the body" by M. Trachtenberg (Majkowski, 2006). In addition,
according to the Polish Language Dictionary published in 1861 in Vilnius
(Zdanowicz et al, 1861), the word Kaduk has one such meaning: "3. A
great illness versus disease of Saint Valentine, epilepsy; it used to be
called a parliamentary disease because when somebody was knocked
down by Kaduk, the parliament used to be broken off (…) 5. One of the
Slavic pagan devils punishes malicious people with a great illness."
Prior to this time, Hippocrates had already attempted to desacralize
epilepsy. He wrote: "Epilepsy seems neither more divine nor more sacred
than any other disease, and it has a natural cause and reason. However
people due to their inexperience and its weirdness, recognized it as a
divine phenomenon after all epilepsy is not similar to any other disease at
all" (Magiorkinis et al., 2010). The ancient medic had connected the
symptoms of epilepsy with brain damage, even though he had no
knowledge about the mechanisms underlying the generation of seizures.
Seizures are a “temporary disorder of brain activity due to excessive and
sudden bioelectrical discharge in nerve cells” (Jędrzejczak, 2012). The
clinical manifestations of this bioelectrical discharge depend on the
localization and range. Seizures can be generalized tonic-clonic (or ‘grand
mal’), which are associated with loss of consciousness and convulsions of
the whole body. Alternatively, seizures can be temporally uncontrolled
movements of one limb or sensual experiences which are unrelated to
external stimuli. Sometimes, epileptic seizures are preceded by an aura,
which arouses mystical experiences in a patient. Epilepsy has also been
assigned to many saints, including Saint Teresa from Avili and Joanna
d’Arc (Motta & Kazibutowska, 2012). In addition, in the letters
documenting the research of Saint Pavel, he recognized the experiences
that may accompany epileptic seizures (Landsborough, 1987):
I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on

to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who
fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the
body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this
man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God
knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things
that no one is permitted to tell. (2 Cor, 12, 1-5, New International Version)
Similarly, Fyodor Dostoevsky recorded some experiences that

accompany epileptic aura:
40 Chapter 2
There are moments, and it is only a matter of five or six seconds when you
feel the presence of the eternal harmony ... a terrible thing is a frightful
clearness with which it manifests itself and the rapture with which it fills
you. If this state were to last more than five seconds, the soul could not
endure it and would have to disappear. During these five seconds, I live a
whole human existence, and for that, I would give my whole life and not
think that I was paying too dearly … (Sacks, 1986: 162)
There individual cases demonstrate that epileptic seizures affect the

deepest layers of personality, emotion, and spirituality. This is further
evident in the examples provided below.
Figure 2 shows magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from a five-
year-old boy. What is evident in these images is the dramatic increase in
contrast, revealing a tumour, in the medial part of the right temporal lobe
(shown in the radiologic convention.)
Fig. 2. A tumour in the right temporal lobe. Images in the radiologic convention.
The first symptom of the child’s illness was a reported transient state,
which the boy described as: “I feel as if there is nobody in the world.” 4 At
first, this state was not recognized as an epileptic seizure. The states were
only later recognized as seizures when they were accompanied by a
transient loss of consciousness — a so-called absence (or ‘petit mal')
seizure. Electroencephalography (EEG) tests were also were carried out
and, due to inconclusive results, an MRI was subsequently performed. The
MRI revealed the presence of a brain tumour. The tumour was located in
4If there are no other sources given, described cases of patients come from the
clinical practice of the author.
the medial part of the right temporal lobe, near the limbic system, which is
involved in emotion-related processes. Pathological discharges occurring
in these brain regions may have resulted in an aroused complex emotional
state, which was experienced by the boy as a state of deep loneliness.
There were no natural causes of the state – there was nothing happening in
the boy's life, no unpleasant thoughts or memories; yet suddenly, for a few
seconds, he experienced an intense feeling of isolation and loneliness. It
was as if activity in the brain transformed the boy's soul for a time.
The next example patient had a long medical history. At the age of 11,
the patient experienced encephalitis, which was followed by epileptic
seizures. In a computed tomography (CT) scan, an arachnoid cyst of the
left lateral sulcus was identified. Following this, the patient underwent a
few neurosurgery procedures, including a left sided temporal lobectomy.
As a teenager, he reported a state which he described as a feeling of deep,
moral disgust — the one you feel being a witness of cruelty. Strikingly,
however, this feeling occurred in everyday neutral situations. The boy was
cognitively competent and understood the pathophysiology epilepsy, and
he understood that these states were symptoms of the illness. Despite this
recognition, when he again found himself in the place or situation in which
he had experienced this state, he felt discomfort, anxiety, and fear that
accompanied a flashback to witnessed events that would arouse feelings of
moral disgust. It is surprising that such a complex state — that involves
activation of emotional processes as well as moral judgment — can be
triggered simply by abnormal discharges in a small cortical area, the
insular cortex. The insular cortex, situated deep in the lateral surface of the
brain, is involved in experiences of abomination, and disgust with physical
stimuli as well as in social situations (Vicario 2017). Once again, the brain
seems to transform the soul and interfere with moral judgment and related
emotions, which after all appear to belong to the attributes of the soul.
2.3. A replaced soul
On September 13th 1848, on the construction site of the railway in

Vermont, USA, there was an accident. As a result of a small explosion, a
steel rod for kneading gunpowder fired and pierced the skull of a 25 year-
old worker named Phineas Gage. The steel rod pierced below his left eye,
went behind his eye socket and induced severe damage to the frontal lobes
of the brain. After piercing the upper layer of the scull, the rod flew away
to a significant distance. The event appeared to be extremely dramatic, but
to the surprise of eyewitnesses, Gage survived and made a relatively rapid
recovery. Interestingly, Gage was observed to have no apparent deficits in
42 Chapter 2
movement, speech, or memory. However, according to John Martin

Harlow, a physician who was taking care of the patient and observing him
for many months after the accident, Gage started to have difficulties at
work and social relations. Harlow recounted these difficulties here:
The equilibrium or balance, so to speak, between his intellectual faculties

and his animal propensities, seems to have been destroyed. He is fitful,
irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not
previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows,
impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times
pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many
plans of future operation, which are no sooner arranged than they are
abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible. (…) In this regard,
his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and
acquaintances said he was "no longer Gage." (Harlow 1868, 1869, cf.
Macmillan, 1996, 247)
Phineas Gage went down as the first person in recorded scientific

history to have a disorder associated with damage to the frontal lobe of the
brain (Damasio, 1994). Frontal lobe damage is hallmarked by changes in
behaviour regulation. That is, despite relatively ‘normal' intellectual
abilities and lack of movement deficits, patients with frontal lobe damage
have difficulty in coping with everyday chores, taking up or sustaining a
job, and in maintaining interpersonal relationships. In addition, these
patients have difficulty in suppressing impulses, even when they are aware
of and understand the consequences of their behaviour. Sometimes these
symptoms are accompanied by fear, and these patients appear anxious and
irritable. Kevin Walsh writes in this context about modification of
personality (Walsh, 1991): “We can hear from their loved ones words full
of pain: it is not the same man anymore, as if somebody has replaced his
soul.”
Damage to the frontal lobe of the brain is a common consequence of
automobile accidents, bleeding from aneurysms or hemangiomas, and in
some instances, brain tumours. This damage often causes extremely
difficult circumstances for patients and their loved ones. These difficulties
are encapsulated in the title of one of the articles on the functioning of
families of American veterans: "He looks normal, but..." (Saban et al.,
2015). Indeed, patients with frontal lobe damage can regain full physical
function and they do not show significant cognitive deficits in several
areas, including speech, memory, and spatial imagination. These patients
often score quite well on medical and psychological tests and can show
high intellect. However, in everyday life, they are irresponsible, act
impulsively, react fiercely and even aggressively, and they often do not
abide by basic rules of social relations. Just like Gage, they fantasize about
their future achievements, create plans, describing them vividly, and the
next day at the mention of these stories they shrug their shoulders. Being
encouraged, they try to take up a job but are unable to hold one down
because of a lack of sustained motivation. Such patients can be dismissed
from jobs because of lack of action and motivation, and they openly
express their dissatisfaction — sometimes very bluntly. These patients can
commit minor offences or make reckless financial decisions, (e.g., take out
loans) without regard for the consequences, which are often passed on to
their family members. Despite these severe consequences, it is very
difficult to obtain a formal confirmation of disability for these patients.
Lack of movement- and cognitive-related deficits, and satisfactory tests
results are, according to the judges, arguments against the need for
disabilities benefits. As a result, when the family members cannot or do
not want to care for the patient and the various consequences of his/her
actions, these patients often spiral into further problems, including
homelessness or criminality.
The novel by Christian Jungersen entitled "You disappear" is about a
man with a frontal lobe tumour and his wife. In the novel, a woman asks
herself:
“Did Vibecke yell at the desisted brain, which cannot help itself or at the
person with the soul and sense of responsibility? Can you be responsible if
you do not have a soul? Can you have a soul and not be responsible?
Responsible for ruining of the whole school? For destroying the life of the
wife and son?” (Jungerson, 2015: 141)
Again, a question about the soul appears – is the soul there or did it
disappear altogether with the onset of the brain damage? Does brain
damage change the soul, making a man a different person than he was
previously?
2.4. The lost soul
“Do you think, he has a soul?” This is what Olivier Sacks asked his
coworkers when discussing one of his patients for whom the time had
curiously stopped when he was a 20-year-old wireless operator of a
submarine (Sacks, 1986). Since then, the patient — whom Sacks referred
to as "Jimmy J." — did not remember anything new. Thirty years had
passed, and to Jimmy J, these 30 years did not even exist. His perception
of time included 20 years of youth and the preceding three minutes at any
given moment, which disappeared from his memory after a moment. There
44 Chapter 2
were the present and the distant past, with nothing in between. For Jimmy,
just looking in the mirror caused him shock – who is this elderly man, how
can one make such a horrible joke replacing a young man with an
unfamiliar aged face? Sacks, who had shown Jimmy the mirror, was upset
about the patient's reaction and his own cruel thoughtlessness. Fortunately,
however, Jimmy forgot the strange incident after a while.
Sacks connected the symptoms observed in Jimmy J. with Korsakoff
syndrome, a form of alcohol-induced dementia. Korsakoff syndrome
results from a deficiency of thiamine, which causes damage to the
mammillary bodies. Similar symptoms are observed in patients with bilateral
damage to the medial structures of the brain, including the hippocampus,
thalamic nuclei, and portions of the frontal lobe cortex, and not related to
alcohol use (Kopelman 1999).
It is interesting that Sacks brings up the notion of the patient's soul in
these reports: "Is that soul, losing memory, continuity of your own identity
a man loses his soul?" Another interesting case is a character from
Umberto Eco's novel antique bookseller — called "Jambo” by his loved
ones. As a result of a stroke, Jambo forgets who he is and loses all the
memories from his life; however, interestingly he preserves the knowledge
acquired during the study and his professional work:
The encyclopedia was tumbling down on me with scattered papers, I felt

like waving hands as if I found myself in a swarm of bees. Meanwhile,
children were saying to me "grandpa,” I knew I should love them more
then myself I did not know which one I am supposed to call Giang, Sandro
or Luka. I knew everything about Alexander the Great and nothing about
my little Sandr. I said I that I felt weak and I wanted to sleep. They got out
and I cried. Tears were salty so I have some feeling yet. Yes, but very
fresh. Those from the past were no my anymore. Who knows, I thought,
have I ever been religious? Whatever it was, I have certainly lost my soul.
(Eco, 2005: 26)
These words by Eco are strikingly similar to Sack’s thoughts. It is as if

the soul is inscribed in human memory of oneself, or the memory is
inscribed in the soul.
In the classification of memory, autobiographical memory is divided
into two types: semantic and episodic. Episodic memory contains the
memory of events from the actor or observer's point of view. Semantic
memory, in contrast, is a collection of information about yourself referring
to lived history (e.g., day and place of birth; we do not have memories
about this explicit event but were given information about this) as well as
concerning your own characteristics or preferences (i.e. knowledge about
yourself, which is developed by living) (Maruszewski, 2005). What is

fascinating is that one can lose all the knowledge and memories about
his/her own life, while retaining the acquired knowledge associated with
the outside world. “… Somebody was touching my arm, saying: ‘Paulina,
open your eyes’. They called me Paulina, so I knew that was my name.”
This is how a 14-year-old girl described the moment of regaining
consciousness after being hit by a car. She had suffered a minor injury to
the temporal and frontal lobes of the right hemisphere of the brain. 5 The
girl did not know her name but she was able to deduce it from situational
cues. She did not know who she was, but she did know that people have
names. She did not remember her parents, but she was able to guess that
they were the man and woman sitting beside her hospital bed. She recalls
thinking that “children have parents, the parents stay with them when they
are sick, these people are with me so they are certainly my parents.” She
had preserved her knowledge of social structures and relations but had no
memory of experiencing them herself. She was able to recognize the
President of Poland in a photograph, but she did not recognize her own
brother. She was able to solve an equation, but she did not remember
learning it nor was she able to recollect her teachers. When she arrived
back home, she felt strange; like she is a guest at a distant relatives' home.
She did not feel any attachment with her family or with old friends. She
tried to build new relationships, but this caused her a lot of trouble as if
she was out of this world. Thus it was as if she was able to learn the world
but was not able to experience it — as if her soul had got lost.
Another patient with amnesia, a hero from the reportage by Wojciech
Tochman “A man who has raised from the tracks” (Tochman 2003) finds
his soul in pain:
Take a bucket and bring electric power – construction workers gave him
such a task. Janek took a bucket, went out and asked people when he could
find electricity because they had told him to bring a full bucket. People
were rolling on the floor laughing and he did not know why. He kept going
and kept asking. He felt greater and greater despair that is what he cause
expanding suffering of the soul. So big, he had never felt before. It could
not be compared with any physical pain. According to Janek, it was proof
that the soul exists. (Tochman, 2003)
5The detailed description of this case is included in: “Forgotten ties: a teenage girl
with posttraumatic selective loss of autobiographical memory,” written by
Maryniak 2010.
46 Chapter 2
2.5. Brain and the soul
We live in the era of incredible development of experimental science,

and in particular the study of the human brain. The Decade of the Brain,
proclaimed by United States President George W. Bush in 1990, resulted
in thousands of research studies on the human brain – its structure,
functions, diseases processes and possible therapies. Thanks to advances in
neuroscientific methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), electrocortical evoked potentials and near-infrared spectroscopy
(NIRS), we are able to observe brain activity in living human beings while
they perform various tasks (e.g., recognizing single sounds, perceiving the
face of a loved one.) We now know more about the brain than ever before,
and in particular, the various ongoing processes that take place in the
brain. Despite these dramatic advances, we are still helpless in our
understanding of the human experience. The aforementioned examples
citing the soul in the context of neurological diseases suggest that the
construct of the soul is sometimes needed to express the experiences of a
patient or describe his/her environment. The concept of the soul is
commonly referenced in situations when the disease causes profound
changes in personality, emotionality, or interpersonal relationships, or
when it affects the delicate sphere of relation with the Absolute. As if it
was difficult for us to accept that what is the most human is a simple
expression of activity of the organ that fills the skull. Maybe that is why,
as the data from the Google database shown in Figure 1 indicates, the
frequency of the word soul is once again increasing. As far as neurological
patients are concerned, the word soul may be necessary to ask questions
and look for answers. Even when we contest the statement of Professor
Jerzy Vetulani: “Regardless the possibility of the independent existence of
the soul, it has no chance to express itself without working brain…
(Vetulani, 2008, p.39).”
References
Bush, George. 2000. Project on the Decade of the Brain. Presidential
Proclamation 6158. http://www.loc.gov/loc/brain/proclaim.html.
Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the
Human Brain. New York: Avon Books.
Eco, Umberto. 2005. Tajemniczy płomień królowej Loany. Warszawa:
Noir sur Blanc
Jędrzejczak, Joanna. 2012. Wprowadzenie. In: Padaczka, eds. Andrzej.

Szczudlik, Joanna. Jędrzejczak and Maria. Mazurkiewicz-Bełdzińska,
13-14. Poznań: Termedia.
Jungerson, Christian. 2015. Znikasz. Kraków: Społeczny Instytut
Wydawniczy Znak.
Kopelman, Michael. 1999. Korsakoff’s syndrome. In: Blackwell Dictionary
of Neuropsychology, eds. J. Graham Beaumont, Pamela M. Kenealy
and Marcus J.C. Rogers. Oxford: Blackwell.
Landsborough, David. 1987. St Paul and temporal epilepsy. Journal of
Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 50: 659-664.
Macmillan, M. 1996. Phineas Gage: A Case for All Reasons. In Classic
Cases in Neuropsychology, eds. Chris Code, Yves Joanette, André
Roch Lecours and Claus-W Wallesch, 243-262. Hove: Psychology
Press.
Magiorkinis, Emmanouil, Sidiropoulou, Kalliopi and Diamantis, Aristidis.
2010. Hallmarks in the history of epilepsy: Epilepsy in antiquity.
Epilepsy and Behaviour 17: 103-108.
Majkowski, Jerzy. 2006. Bibliografia padaczki 1534-2000 w pracach
autorów polskich oraz zagranicznych publikujących w Polsce.
Warszawa: Fundacja Epileptologii.
Maruszewski, Tomasz. 2005. Pamięć autobiograficzna. Gdańsk: Gdańskie
Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne.
Maryniak, Agnieszka, Ondruch, Agnieszka and Jurkiewicz Elżbieta. 2010.
Zapomniane więzi: nastolatka z pourazową wybiórczą utratą pamięci
autobiograficznej. In: Neuropsychologia a humanistyka, eds. Maria
Pąchalska and Grażyna. Kwiatkowska. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS.
Motta, Ewa and Kazibutowska, Zofia. 2012. Padaczka – rys historyczny,
In: Padaczka, eds. Andrzej. Szczudlik, Joanna. Jędrzejczak and Maria.
Mazurkiewicz-Bełdzińska, 15-18. Poznań: Termedia.
Saban, Karen L., Hogan, Nancy S., Hogan, Timothy P. and Pape Theresa
Luise-Bender. 2015. He Looks Normal But... Challenges of Family
Caregivers of Veterans Diagnosed with a Traumatic Brain Injury.
Rehabilitation Nursing 40: 277-285.
Sacks, Olivier. 1986. The man, who mistook his wife for a hat. London:
Summit Books.
Słownik Języka Polskiego PWN, https://sjp.pwn.pl
The Holy Bible. https://www.biblegateway.com
Tochman, Wojciech. 2003. Człowiek, który powstał z torów. Duży format
12, 22.
Vetulani, Jerzy. 2008. Mózg i świadomość. In: Prace Komisji Filozofii
Nauk Przyrodniczych PAU, 2.
48 Chapter 2
Vicario, Carmelo M., Rafal, Robert D., Martino, Davide and Avenanti
Alessio. 2017. Core, social and moral disgust are bounded: A review
on behavioral and neural bases of repugnance in clinical disorders.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 80: 185-200.
Walsh, Kevin. 1991. Understanding brain damage. A primer of
neuropsychological evaluation. Edinburgh, New York: Churchill
Livingstone.
Zdanowicz, A. et al. 1861. Słownik języka polskiego. „Edycja elektroniczna
Słownika wileńskiego.” http://eswil.ijp-pan.krakow.pl
Summary
In the Polish Dictionary, the soul and personality have similar meanings. Also
in neuropsychological practice, you can hear how close relatives of persons with
neurological disorders say metaphorically: "he's not the same person he used to be,
as if someone has changed his soul" or "as if he has lost his soul.” Such impression
appears when the person's behaviour and personality change as if the patient has
lost empathy and sensitivity to other people emotion, has lost the ability to
distinguish between good and evil. This condition can occur due to damage to the
frontal lobes of the brain.
Another neurological disorder with which the soul is associated is epilepsy.
Epileptic seizures can manifest as transient changes in mental or emotional state
and even moral judgment, so they affect the areas which are considered as
attributes of the soul. Also, amnestic disorders leading to the loss of
autobiographical memory, raising questions about the essence of the person, evoke
the concept of the soul.
The soul seems to be a construct filling a gap that psychology cannot fill, not
knowing the answer to questions about the consciousness, the identity of a person.
The concept of the soul is needed when looking at a neurological patient, it is
difficult for us to accept that his personality, individuality, identity is simply the
result of brain activity.
Keywords: personality, soul, neurological diseases, epilepsy, frontal brain lobes,

amnesia, autobiographical memory
CHAPTER 3
HOW THE SOUL ACTS AS AN ORGAN

OF EVALUATION AND IS ITSELF SUBJECT
TO EVALUATION
GALINA I. KABAKOVA
SORBONNE UNIVERSITY IN PARIS, FRANCE
3.1. The soul as an organ of evaluation
A traditional worldview, insofar as it is expressed in the vocabulary

and phraseology of the Russian language and its dialects, understands the
soul as a kind of organ that includes an instrument of ethical evaluation:
Bishop Herman (Ryashentsev), who spent almost the entirety of the 1920s
and 1930s in captivity (in 1937 his trail goes cold), as well as Archbishop
Luka, are among those whose view of the reality that surrounded and,
seemingly, completely rejected them could not obscure what they had
suffered; they judged life according to some other sort of criterion in their
soul [v dushe], different from the standards used by those whose
comparatively untroubled biographies rather benefited, from the very start,
from the social advantages of the Soviet system, and who today enthusiastically
denounce its ungodly aspect.” (Ks. Mialo, “‘Bogoprichastnost’ ili
‘bogootverzhennost’?” in Nauka i religiia 2010). 1
In proverbial discourse, the soul can appear not only as an organ where
emotions are concentrated but also as a certain rational principle capable
of defining standards. In this sense it is contrasted with the heart, which
has the gift of premonition, cf.: “the heart is a soothsayer, but the soul is a
1 For contextual examples drawn from the “Natural Corpus of the Russian
Language” [Natsional'nyi korpus russkogo iazyka, NKRIa], the work’s author,
title, and date of creation are given in lieu of a full citation.
50 Chapter 3
gauge/measure” [Сердце — вещун, а душа — мера]. 2 More often,

however, the second half of this proverb is used in the form of the locution
душа (и) мера [soul and measure] or the saying душа меру знает [the
soul knows the measure (of things)].
A sense of measure allows it to act as a regulator of human behaviour:
“grandmother herself would have been unhappy with this. My behaviour
would have long ago outraged her soul, which knew the measure of things
[Её душа, знающая меру]” [M. Palei, Pominovenie]. Poets begin to
polemicize precisely against the soul’s proverbial reputation for being
measured and balanced: “The soul which knows no measure [Её душа, не
знающая меры], the soul of the khlyst and the fanatic, longing for the
whip, runs to meet the hangman, like a butterfly from a chrysalis! The soul
that has not swallowed its hurt that sorcerers are no longer burnt, like a
long, tarred rope, smouldering under a hair shirt... a screeching heretic –
Savonarola’s sister, a soul worthy of the pyre!” [M. Tsvetaeva, Dusha, ne
znaiushchaia mery], “Rustling in coffeepots, the fortune-telling drink is a
reminder that the soul is not a measure but an excess [душа — не мера, а
избыток]” [Iu. Morits, Litso].
However, the most frequent context of the use of the saying душа
меру знает [the soul knows the measure of things] is that of mealtime
gatherings or feasts. The saying may serve as a formula of the offering, cf.
“to the warden of the prison where Anisim was confined, he offered a
silver cup-holder with душа меру знает [the soul knows the measure]
engraved in enamel and with a long teaspoon” [A. P. Chekhov, V ovrage]
and may form part of longer formulas such as пей из ковша, а мера душа
[drink from a dipper, and the soul is the measure]. 3 The saying can serve
as a formula of offering as well as of refusal: in Siberia, “when offering
food to guests, we say, “Поелозьте, гости, поелозьте! [Have some food,
guests, have some!]” To that, the guests reply: “Наелозились, душа мера,
наелозились!” [We’ve had enough, the soul is the measure, enough]”. 4
Corresponding expressions that refer to the soul, in turn, take on a
quantitative meaning: in Tver and Vologda, душа мера, in Novgorod,
душемера meaning “enough, in large amounts”, 5 in Perm, душа и мера
[soul and measure] meaning “as much as you like, as much as is needed”
(“I bought you some milk, I’ll bring it by – drink as much as you like,
2 Berezovich 2006, 86-93.

3 Mikhelson 1902, 18.
4 Slovar’ russkikh narodnykh govorov 1983, 263.
5 Gerd 2004, 57, Slovar’ vologodskikh govorov 1983, 67, Levichkin, Myznikov
2010, 239.
How the Soul Acts as an Organ of Evaluation and is itself Subject 51
to Evaluation
душа и мера, all of it, even”), 6 and finally the archaic сколько душа мера
просит [as much as the soul-measure asks]. 7
This conception of the measure of consumption reflects a traditional
and primarily peasant view of the function of food, which I have already
had the occasion to analyse: in a situation of permanent food scarcity, the
opportunity to eat one’s fill becomes an important value, attainable only
during holiday feasts. For this reason, the persistent formula the soul is the
measure, systematically applied to the use of alcohol, often acquires ironic
meanings of unrestrained drunkenness and debauchery; cf. “when the
душа-мера had reached an appropriate level of intensity, the honoured
guest got up from behind the table, shoving a lady doctor who hadn’t
moved aside in time, rolled up his sleeves, and started lifting the heavy
larch-wood chairs, grabbing the front leg alternately with his left and with
his right hand, demonstrating his harmoniously developed physique.”
[V.T. Shalamov, Kolymskie rasskazy], as well as a drunkard’s proverb:
“Душа – мера, а мера – пудовка” [The soul is the measure, and the
measure is a pood 8] from the Urals. 9
The notion of the soul as a measure is tacitly implied also in another
proverb: хлеба с душу, денег с нужу, платья с ношу [bread according to
the soul, money according to need, and clothes according to wear]. 10 At
the table, hosts incite their guests to eat in amounts that would correspond
to the needs and “capacities” of the soul: “Хлебайте, по душе хлебайте
да сыто йиште” [Drink according to the soul and eat fully]. 11 Once again,
this semantics of “soul and measure” are often expressed in the context of
meals and feasts: in the Urals, про душу means “moderately” or “as much
as the soul desires”, в любу душеньку means “as much as was desired”
(“Нагрызлась я семечков в любу дyшеньку, аж на языке чуть не
мозоль образовался” [I chewed sunflower seeds up to my dear soul, so I
almost got a callus on my tongue]), 12 in the Archangel region по душе; in
the Perm region, в свой душок, “to one’s heart’s content” 13 ; in the
Novgorod region, к душе (“Сваришь каши, постного масла нальёшь и
наешься к душе” [You’ll boil some kasha, pour in a little vegetable oil,
6 Prokosheva 2002.
7 Getsova 2004, 407.
8 Archaic Russian unit of weight equivalent to 16 kg.
9 Malecha 2002, 458.
10 Dal 1880, 505.
11 Getsova 2004, 407.
12 Malecha 2002, 448.
13 Getsova 2004, 407, Prokosheva 1972, 35.
52 Chapter 3
and eat your fill]), 14 in the literary language, от души, cf. “Viktor ate his
fill [от души наелся] of half-smoked sausage while feeling a teasing
sense of relief” [Tatiana Alferova, Lestnitsa Lamarka]. Quantity can also
be expressed by an adverb derived from душа: in the Perm region,
подушёвно “as much as the soul desires, to one’s fill, to one’s desire”, e.g.
“A rich host has enough vodka and everything – you can drink as much as
you want [подушёвно], drink your fill if you want, guzzle away.” 15
But how exactly does popular language comprehend the ability of the
soul to consume, as well as measure the amount of what it consumes? The
soul can play the role of a subject endowed with a certain physical
capacity necessary for consumption: Novg. что душа подынет meaning
“as much as you want” (referring to food and drink), e.g. “Скатерть-
самобранку раскинули. Пить и есть, что душа подынет” [They laid out
the self-setting tablecloth. 16 There was as much food and drink as the soul
could take]; 17 Arch. сколько душа пользует [As much as the soul should
use]. 18
Moreover, the soul takes on the role of subjectively evaluating a
person’s quality or integrity, and also that of an object of its penchants. At
the same time, the soul as a subject can occupy a certain spatial position or
move through space in relation to the object of its evaluation: the soul
“leans/does not lean” (лежит/не лежит) towards something, Orel, Smol.
прилегает душа towards someone; Orel. не налегает; 19 Psk. не
оборочивается 20 ; Sib. припадает towards someone, “regarding a
feeling of affection or love toward someone”: 21 Psk. душа не ворoчается
“not disposed or inclined” toward something or someone. 22 In addition,
the process of positive evaluation can be described as a “working”
process: Karel. Russ. душа не робит [the soul doesn’t labour]. 23
Positive or negative evaluations can be expressed using verbs of
motion, whereby the soul turns out to be a patiens, and "endpoint" in the
motion of the object of evaluation: e.g. прийтись по душе, Smol. идти
14 Levichkin, Myznikov 2010, 239.

16 Refers to Russian folkloric equivalent of the horn of plenty.
18 Getsova 2004, 404.
19 Slovar’ russkikh narodnykh govorov 1997, 273-274, Bakhvalova 1990, 93-94.
20 Pskovskii oblastnoi slovar’ s istoricheskimi dannymi 1979, 168.
21 Fedorov 1983, 66.
23 Gerd 2002, 532.
to Evaluation
на душу, 24 Psk. идти к душе, 25 Arch. по душу попасть, в душу

пасться; 26 Oneg. запаcть в душу “to make a big impression”; 27 Psk.
впасть в душу “to please or elicit positive feelings”; 28 Volgogr.
катиться в душу “to suit someone’s tastes, to be liked; to seek to please
or be liked”; 29 Sib., Psk. лечь в душу, 30 привиться к душе. 31 Alternately,
the object of affection is located within the soul’s space: Psk. лежать на
душе “to be to one’s liking, to be liked”, 32 N.-Pechor., Tver. в душе
лежать, Tver., Sib. у души лежать “to be loved and to love”, 33 Oneg.
сесть (в) душу “to leave an unforgettable impression (of oneself).” 34 A
favourable impression can be expressed not only as motion but also as a
blow: Sib. ткнуть на душу. 35 In many cases, the verb is merely implied
and only prepositional constructions remain: Psk., Ryaz., Sverd., Sib. к
душе; Smol. на душу; Ryaz. у душе; Sverd. до души, с душок, по душе,
в душе. But also, when, on the contrary, something does not elicit positive
feelings, we have: Psk. не с души, не по душе, не в душе; Psk., Perm.,
Sib. не к душе, Leningr. не в душу, Novg. без души, Vlad. опричь души,
Irk. у души, Volog. (быть) в душеньку “to be liked, loved.” 36
The ability to charm the soul becomes a trait of the corresponding
object of evaluation: particularly with reference to food, there are terms
such as Mosc. подушный квас, подушная пища, Tamb. душелюбная
пища, душелюбное питье (i.e. food and drink that please the soul). 37
And, in turn, that which the soul rejects is labelled as Arch. душевeреднoй
“life-threatening, evil, cruel”; 38 cf. “We pump our bellies full of vodka,
but it’s got a bitterness, so we don’t fire our guns so much as we dart into

25 Pskovskii oblastnoi slovar’ s istoricheskimi danymi 1983, 13.
26 Getsova 2004, 407.
27 Gerd 1996, 406.
29 Kudriashova 2007, 56.
30 Pskovskii oblastnoi slovar’ s istoricheskimi dannymi 1994, 67, Slovar' russkikh
narodnykh govorov, 1981, 30, Fedorov 1983, 105.

31 Dal 1882, vol. 3, 402.
33 Stavshina 2008, Slovar' russkikh narodnykh govorov 1980, 281, Fedorov 1983,
67, 104.
34 Gerd 2005, 78.
35 Afanas’eva-Medvedeva 2014, 189.
36 Kabakova 2015, 337, Bukhareva, Fedorov 1999, 81.
37 Dal 1882, vol. 3, 213, Slovar' russkikh narodnykh govorov 1972, 282.
38 Getsova 2004, 417.
54 Chapter 3
the bushes because of it – that’s it, you see how dangerous [душевредная]
the vodka is!]” [V.Ia. Shishkov, Emel’ian Pugachev]. Characteristically,
this feature, which originally had to do with the spiritual, acquires a
quantitative meaning in a mealtime context: Perm. недушeвередно “not
very much”, cf. “Мине по моей болезни совсем пить отказано. А я
недушевередно пью” [Because of my illness, I’m not allowed to drink at
all. Instead, I don’t drink very much]. 39
Turning to the soul’s paradigmatic relations, one ought to note that the
soul, in its sense of an organ that produces evaluations according to
principles of liking and disliking, has many synonyms in both the
anatomic and the immaterial spheres. The greatest number of expressions
refer to that other concentration of emotions, the heart, e.g.: Arch. поесть
по / к серцу “to eat one’s fill, to eat as much as one wants”, 40 к серцу / не
к серцу (“Что ни съест, все не к сердцу” [Whatever (s)he eats, it’s not
enough]) 41 ; Orel. не в сердцы, 42 Voron. не по сердцам. 43 In various
dialects, the site of evaluation may also turn out to be:
the mind [ум] (Oneg. folk. прийти по уму, Ural. по мысли), 44

the guts [нутро] (inform. (прийтись) по нутру / не по нутру, 45
Ryaz. не в нутрё, Ryaz., Rus. Mordov. не по нутрю́), 46
the nose [нос] (Smol., Rus. Karel. не в нос, Rus. Karel. в нос не
браться, Ural. в нос не лезет, не по носу, Psk. не пойти, не полезть в
нос, Rus. Mordov. не к носу), 47
the lip [губа] (inform. не по губе, 48 “She would hardly have been able
to hide the fact that I displeased her [я ей не по губе], for in everything
else it was as if she liked me” [G. V. Ammosov, Dnevnik (1900)], Novosib.
не в губу, “ему это было не в губу, не пондравилось” [it didn’t please
him, he didn’t like it]), 49
39 Slovar' russkikh narodnykh govorov 1986, 39.

40 Berdnikova 2000, 311.
41 Dal 1882, vol. 4, 174.
42 Bakhvalova 1990, 9.
44 Slovar' russkikh narodnykh govorov 1997, 235, Kartoteka
ètnoideograficheskogo slovaria russkikh govorov Sverdlovskoi oblasti.

45 Smirnov 1901, 113.
46 Ossovetskii 1969, 349.
47 Gerd 1999, 41-42, 1986, 285-286, Mokienko, Nikitina 2008, 447, Akimova
2013.
48 Podiukov 1991, 111.
49 Slovar’ russkikh govorov Novosibirskoi oblasti 1979, 111.
to Evaluation
the eye [глаз] (Psk. по глазу, Arch. не на глаза), 50

the bone [кость] (Ural. не в кость). 51
3.2. The soul as an object of evaluation
The human soul can, in turn, become an object of evaluation. Since the
soul is a polysemic concept, its various aspects, its moral, emotional, and
rational principles, are all subject to evaluation. This evaluation can touch
on the presence or absence of a soul in a given person. A soulful, kind-
hearted person (Samar. душевой, 52 Ural. подушенный) 53 contrasts with a
soulless, heartless person. In dialects, the interpretation of the soul’s
presence or existence appears more complicated than in the literary
language, as Olesia Surikova has demonstrated. On the one hand, a
soulless person, Novg., Psk. бездушéвный, Volog. бездýший, meaning as
in the literary language, is a rough person lacking sensitivity and warmth;
Murm. безотдушный, to the contrary, means “kind, soulful”, без души
means “kind, simple”. Surikova describes this enantiosemy as the result of
“different interpretations of the internal form of words and compounds:
бездушный describes a person “without a soul”, but also one “capable of
giving his soul”. 54
Ethical evaluations of the soul, and what ultimately the soul’s possessor
receives, employ a number of semantic models. Its characteristics can proceed
from an ethical perspective, while its evaluations rest upon certain
dichotomies:
light / dark (светлая, темная душа),
truth / falsehood (правдивая, лживая),
beauty / ugliness (красивая, уродливая),
purity/impurity (Arch. “Что зеваешъ-то, окаянный, неумытая
душа” [What are you yawning for, you knave, you unwashed soul], 55
“Until that day Sashen’ka had never thought about his soul, thinking that
the following were just words: “depth of soul”, “largesse of soul”, “purity
of soul”, “open soul”, “simple soul”, “filthy little soul”, “lightness of
soul”, “heavy soul”, “the soul hurts”, “a soul warms a soul” [“глубина
50 Slovar’ russkikh narodnykh govorov 1970, 186, Getsova 2004, 80.

51 Kartoteka ètnoideograficheskogo slovaria russkikh govorov Sverdlovskoi
oblasti.
53 Malecha 2002, 264.
54 Surikova 2016, 108.
56 Chapter 3
души”, “широта души”, “чистота души”, “открытая душа", “простая

душа”, “грязная душонка”, “легко на душе”, “тяжело на душе”, “душа
болит”, “душа душу греет”]” [V. Mikhalskii, Vesna v Karfagene], cf.
Rus. Komi душа мутная pejor. “refers to an egotistical, arrogant
person”, 56
kindness / viciousness (добрая, злая, злобная),
generosity / avarice (cf. Leningr. талодуший, талодушный “full of
desire to share what one has, generous”, 57
simplicity/complexity (N.-Pechor. простая душа “is said of a kind,
responsive person, a generous, welcoming person”; 58 “Why does he bother
with her, if he’s not going to get her?” I thought, looking at Mustafa and
trying to comprehend the horse-tender’s complicated soul [сложную
душу]” [F. Iskander, Loshad’ diadi Kiazyma]);
strength / weakness (слабодушный),
youth / age (молодая, старая душа),
life/deathh (“But one shouldn’t confuse everyday people without
higher purposes or thoughts with spiritually dead people, dead souls
[мёртвых душ]” [collective forum, Liubov’ i golubi]).
The soul can also be considered a material object, for example, in
terms of its parameters and from the point of view of size: большая,
широкая, великая juxtaposed with малой, мелкой, ничтожной,
короткой (“See, Gavrila is a man of little soul [небольшой души], he’s in
no hurry to help” [A.S. Pushkin, Arap Petra Velikogo]); location in space:
высокая (“From one day to the next he became more and more attached to
the sovereign and understood his lofty soul [высокую душу] better and
better” [A.S. Pushkin, Arap Petra Velikogo]), a возвышенная [exalted]
soul is juxtaposed with one that is низкая [base], one that is открытая
[open] with one that is закрытая [closed] (“The same sounds, which once
brought tears to the eyes, now sought entry into a closed, harsh soul [в
закрытую, чёрствую душу]” [I Grekova, Fazan]), while this closure and
impenetrability can be described through an imaginary “impermeable”
material exterior (“The Russian soul is more sensitive to mystical currents,
it encounters spirits that are closed to the armoured western soul [для
забронированной западной души]” [N.A. Berdiaev. Dukhi russkoi
revoliutsii]).
Among other descriptive parameters, there is that of the form:
56 Kobeleva 2004, 62.

57 Gerd 2005, 437.
58 Stavshina 2008.
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“straightness” of soul contrasts with “skewedness” (прямодушный,

криводушный, e.g. N.-Pechor. кривая душа, с кривой душой “is said of
an insincere, hypocritical, two-faced person”; 59 Perm. криводушник pejor.
“a two-faced person, someone without principles” 60) or with crookedness
(корявая душа);
temperature: warmth contrasts with cold (горячая, холодная, cf.
“Your friendship has replaced my happiness, my cold soul [холодная
душа моя] can love you alone” [A.S. Pushkin, Kishinevskii dnevnik]),
texture: softness, looseness / hardness (“Nature had put a great, hard,
and beautiful soul [великую, твёрдую и прекрасную душу] into a small
and frail body, a contemporary biographer wrote of him” [S.A. Eremeeva,
Lektsii po istorii iskusstva], “And with a hatred that was odd in a man with
such a soft soul [мягкой души], he spoke of “world-eaters”” [Maksim
Gorkii, Moi universitety], “Zhukovskii gave Emperor Alexander II, by
nature too sensitive and soft-souled [мягкодушный] a person, a
sentimental upbringing, of the kind which relaxed his spirit the most”
[M.O. Menshikov, Natsional’naia treshchina], “But can there be in that
communist world a person like Katia – meagre in thought and loose in
soul [рыхлый душой]?” [G.E. Nikolaeva, Bitva v puti]), “He suddenly felt
terribly sorry for his brother, sorry for the golden happiness, which
somehow came to his death, hard soul [мертвой твердой душе], and
which he himself want to reject” [M.P. Artsybashev, Milliony]). In
addition, hardness does not necessarily represent a negative quality, cf.
твердодушие “valorous steadfastness”, 61 твердодушный “constant,
unshakable.” 62 In literary texts, these qualities can be expressed through
the mention of material (metal, wood, fabric), out of which the soul-organ
is supposed to be “made”: “But this did not mean that Volodia was
wooden, as can be people with a kind of wooden soul [с какой-то
деревянной душой]” [V.A. Kaverin, Otkrytaia kniga], “The one who
traversed all levels of villainy with a stone soul [с каменной душой]”
[A.S. Pushkin, Brat’ia razboiniki], “The prince and heir Peter Petrovich
had passed away: this death finally broke Peter’s iron soul [железную
душу]” [A.S. Pushkin, Istoriia Petra I], “In a word, the most superficial
glance at this person caused the unbidden impression that this was truly a
steel soul [стальная душа], impartial to everything” [M.E. Saltykov-
59 Stavshina 2008.
60 Slovar' govora derevni Akchim Krasnovisherskogo raiona Permskoi oblasti
1984, 80.
61 Dal 1882, vol. 4, 394.
62 Slovar' Akademii Rossiiskoi po azbuchnomu poriadku raspolozhennyi 1822, 681.
58 Chapter 3
Shchedrin, Poshekhonskaia starina. Zhitie Nikanora Zatrapeznogo,

poshekhonskogo dvorianina], “All brides had been of a kind to me. But
here I met my match! The girl figured out what was what and found her
way into my leaden soul [в свинцовую душу], cracked my code, fooled
this Russian for sure!” [I.N. Skobelev, Rasskazy russkogo invalida], “His
soul is insensible, like this glass. All the sunlight goes through it, and it’s
still cold. [...] You have a glass soul [стеклянная душа], Stepan.” [Iu.O.
Dombrovskii, Khranitel’ drevnostei. Prilozhenie], “They say that soft hair
is a sign of a soft, gentle, silken soul [шелковой души]” [A.P. Chekhov,
Drama na okhote], “And a certain Babek Serush looked in this new merry
band as a truly odd bird – a “passport-less trader” with a golden soul [с
золотой душой], a dubious reputation and a tight purse” [David
Karapetian. Vladimir Vysotskii. Vospominaniia].
The soul can receive an ethical evaluation using identifications with
the animal world (душа львиная, волчья, собачья, птичья, воробьиная,
куриная, цыплячья, писклячья, крысья etc.), with images from the world
beyond (ангельская, божья, чертова, бесова, Kuban. анцыбуляньска(я)
душа, 63 a possible borrowing from the Czech ancibel, jancybel “devil,
Antichrist”), social and gender-related phenomena (попова 64, мужицкая,
cf. “It is a characteristic of our movement, that the workers most often
retain a village, peasant soul [деревенскую мужицкую душу]” [M.M.
Prishvin, Dnevniki], “Well, Lord – the woman answers him in a barely
audible voice ― was it I who made my heavy body, was it I who distilled
the waters, was it I who invented this lonely, silly woman’s soul [бабью
душу одинокую, глупую]” [I.E. Babel, Iisusov grekh].
In popular language, a person can be described and evaluated through
the penchants assigned to his or her soul. This model, which remains
productive, reduces a person to his or her athletic or aesthetic interests: the
soul can be артистическая, танцевальная, песенная cf. “These and
similar persons felt the musical and artistic soul [песенную и
художническую душу] of the people” [B.V. Shegrin, Slovo ustnoe i slovo
pis’mennoe. Besednye ocherki], спортивная, рыболовная, хоккейная,
волейбольная, футбольная душа. This type of denomination is widely
used when describing a person using his or her nutritional passions:
грибная, кашная, рыбная, мясная, пельменная, кофейная, компотная,
63 Borisova 2005, 48.

64 “Безмен — не попова душа: не возьмёт барыша” [The scale isn’t a priest’s
soul, it won’t take a profit], “Bес да мера не попова душа” [Weight and measure
are no priest’s soul] refer to “a person with certain (usually positive) character
traits.” Ivantsova 2006, 269.
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кисельная, колбасная, макаронная, конфетная душа, 65 Rus. Karel.

чайная душа, Perm., Ural., Rus. Mordov. картовная душа. 66 This
passion can be of an exclusive nature: Sverd. “Уж картовна душа не
будет морковны пироги есть: ему давай картовны шаньги да пироги,
да всяку картовь” [A potato soul at any rate won’t eat carrot pies: it just
wants potato cakes and pies, and all kinds of potatoes]. 67 The soul’s
“rejection” of one dish or another can also become definitive of their
personality (Rus. Karel. преснодушный “a person who does not like
freshwater fish”: “Ooh, преснодушный! He can’t stand to eat the fresh
stuff, the fish seems freshwater to him.” 68 This manner of characterising a
person according to his or her main trait also came up in the past, as in, for
example, a description of a limited bureaucrat: бумажная, чернильная
душа [a paper/ink soul]. 69
Aside from these evaluative definitions of a person’s character and
habits, one also encounters, although more rarely, definitions of emotional
states: a light (с лёгкой душой “lightly, calmly, without bitterness; with a
sense of relief, without feelings of guilt”) / heavy soul (тяжело на душе,
с тяжелой душой, but this can also refer to a personal trait: “You are a
very good person, Pavel, kind, courageous, strong. But you have a heavy
soul [тяжелая душа]. It seems like you don’t know how to laugh at all.”
[M. Shishkin, Venerin volos].
In the dialects, the soul can correspond not only to the spiritual and
soulful world, but also to the intellect. In this case, the aforementioned
definitions (бездушный, легкий, малый, простой), in connection with the
soul as a rational principle, acquire an exclusively pejorative meaning:
Kalug. бездушный “stupid”, 70 N.-Pechor. легкодушный “unserious,
absentminded” 71 (note that, in the context of intellectual activity,
heaviness or weight, especially in the dialect of Nizovaya Pechora, is seen
as weightiness, a positive trait: тяжелый ум “clever, quick-minded”;
тяжелое слово “an important, meaningful word”), 72 Kuban. простодушный
“absentminded, careless”, cf. “А вона яка простадушна була: вин дом
строе, а вона гуляе да деньги спуска” [And how careless she was: he’s
65 Kabakova 2015, 342, 372.

66 Gerd 2002, 51, 561, Prokosheva 1972, 35, Akimova 2013.
67 Andreeva 1978, 48-49.
68 Gerd 2002, 143.
69 Dal 1882, vol. 3, 219.
71 Ivashko 2003, 378
72 Ivashko 2005, 368
60 Chapter 3
building the house, while she has fun and wastes money], 73 Ural.
малодушный “foolish, dull-minded, slow-witted, simpleton” (“Брат-от у
меня малодушный был. Мать говорит, говорит ему – ничё не
понимат” [Now my brother was a simpleton. Mother tells him once, tells
him twice – he don’t get it]). 74 The soul can also mean memory: Sib. душа
коротка “regarding poor memory” 75 and even conscience: Yar.
бездушный “shameless.” 76
In dialectal speech, the soul is also associated with a physical principle
– with the body – and indicates this physical principle’s immaterial
component, its (life) force. It should be noted, however, that it is always
referred to in a negative context, that is to say with a lack of, a weakening
of, or an absence of health: Mosc., Volgogr., Yar., Kalug., Kostr. Ryaz.,
Sib. бездушный “weak, powerless, feeble, sickly”, 77 cf. Rus. Mordov.
обездушеть “to become enfeebled, to weaken.” 78
A want of strength and health may also express itself in outward
appearance: Ural. суходушный “thin, skinny, gaunt”, cуходушина “a
small, withered person”, 79 малодушный Psk. “skinny”, Psk., Tom. “frail,
weak of health”, 80 тщедушный (“frail”) also belongs to this group of
meanings; cf. also в худых / плохих душах “refers to a very tired,
exhausted person”, Rus. Karel., Perm. “refers to a person in a subdued
state”, Perm. на худых душах, Ural. при худых душах, Sib., N. Rus. в
худых / плохих душах “refers to a severely ill person close to death”; 81
Sib. худо в душах, but also Sib. в худых душах “refers to a person in a
state of alcoholic intoxication who has lost control of himself, who is
acting in a rowdy and unruly fashion”, 82 N.-Pechor. душа короткая
meaning “someone’s life is coming to an end”, 83 Rus. Karel., Amur. душа
73 Borisova 2005, 192.

oblasti.
75 Fedorov 1983, 66.
77 Kudriashova 2006, 113, Voitenko 1995, 31, Slovar' russkikh narodnykh govorov
1966, 190, Bukhareva, Fedorov1998, 58, Ossovetskii 1969, 85.

78 Akimova 2013, vol. 2.
oblasti.
81 Chernykh 2010, 239, Mokienko, Nikitina 2008, 447, Kartoteka
ètnoideograficheskogo slovaria russkikh govorov Sverdlovskoi oblasti.

82 Afanas’eva-Medvedeva 2014, 180-2.
83 Stavshina 2008.
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коротка стала meaning “to lose all one’s strength”. 84

Let us see to what extent other organs “duplicate” the soul’s place in
the evaluative domain. The closeness of the soul and the heart in the
sphere of ethical evaluation has often been noted. E. Uryson sees a
semantic difference between the two concepts due to the fact that, when
united with adjectives of ethical judgement, the soul tends to be described
based on its internal structure, while the essential nature of a given
person’s relations with others tends to govern descriptions of the heart. 85
Without disputing this semantic difference, it is important to note that, in a
large number of parallel phrases, the heart is mainly tied to emotions and
feelings, while the soul, in addition to its ample representation in the
emotional sphere, is also characterized as an ethical principle, which
interacts with higher powers, whence its characterizations according to
traits such as straight / crooked, tall / short, light / dark, etc. In Russian
dialects and, to a certain extent, in the literary language, the soul
encompasses the mind, strength, and the anatomy, even if it tends to give
each of these a negative value when combined with adjectives
emphasising weakness and inadequacy.
As Elena Berezovich and I have shown in our recent work, the womb
is also associated with the soul and the heart. “In the literary language and,
to a lesser extent, in the dialects, the guts, as well as the womb, insides,
viscera, liver [потроха, утроба, нутро, кишки, печенка] indicate the
true essence of a person, which can take part in all sorts of experiences and
shows itself in special situations. As a rule, this entity, given clarifications,
can be both positive (нутро здоровое “healthy insides”) and neutral. [...]
However, нутро, потроха, печенки are often used in negative contexts,
and a person’s essence appears as something negative (as in воровское
нутро, совковое нутро, классово чуждое нутро, змеиное нутро, etc.
[“thieving”, “Soviet” (pejor.), insides; those “of an alien class”, “of a
snake”]), carefully hidden under an outwardly positive aspect.” 86 Like the
soul, these internal organs can appear as a focal point of physical force that
is capable of enacting plans, always with the implication of their
inadequacy. To all appearances, want of strength, in this case, comes from
a sense of "feeling sensations of hunger": vern. кишка тонка “refers to a
lack of strength, capacity, or means to achieve something", Perm. брюхо
тонковато “someone lacking the strength or capacity to do something”:
"Одному-то избу не срубить – брюхо тонковато, дак помочь

85 Uryson 1997, 90.
86 Berezovich, Kabakova 2017, 256.
62 Chapter 3
созывают” [Alone, he can’t build a log house – belly’s a bit too thin – so
they ask for help], Chit. жидковат на печенку; cf. also Yar., Vlad.,
Kostr., Kalug. безживóтный “thin, skinny; lacking strength”. 87
In this way, aside from the obvious similarities between the conception
of the soul and the heart as organs in which emotions are concentrated, the
soul takes on material characteristics to a greater degree than the heart. In
addition, the soul also intersects semantically with the guts both
expressing a person’s essence and vital potential.
Abbreviations
Amur. – Cis-Amur dialect
Arch. – Archangel dialect
Chit. – Chita dialect
Irk. – Irkutsk dialect
Kalug. – Kaluga dialect
Kostr. – Kostroma dialect
Kuban. – Kuban dialect
Leningr. – Leningrad (Oblast’) dialect
liter. – literary language
Mosc. – Moscow dialect
Murm. – Murmansk dialect
Novg. – Novgorod dialect
Novosib. – Novosibirsk dialect
N.-Pechor. – dialect of Nizhnaya Pechora
N. Rus. – northern Russian dialects
Oneg. – Onega dialect
Orel. – Orel dialect
pejor – pejorative
Perm. – Perm dialect
Psk. – Pskov dialect
inform. – informal speech
Rus. Karel. – Russian dialect of Karelia
Rus. Komi. – Russian dialect of the Komi Republic
Rus. Mordov. – Russian dialect of Mordovia
Ryaz. – Ryazan’ dialect
Samar. – Samara dialect
Sverd. – Sverdlovsk (Oblast’) dialect
87 Berezovich, Kabakova, 241.

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Sib. – Siberian dialect

Smol. – Smolensk dialect
Tamb. – Tambov dialect
Tver. – Tver dialect
Tom. – Tomsk dialect
Ural. – Ural dialect
vern. – vernacular
Vlad. – Vladimir dialect
Volgogr. – Volgograd dialect
Volog. – Vologda dialect
Voron. – Voronezh dialect
Yar. – Yaroslavl dialect
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Krasnovisherskogo raiona Permskoi oblasi 2. Perm: PGU.
Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi po azbuchnomu poriadku raspolozhennyi 6.
1822. Saint Petersburg.
Smirnov, Ivan T. 1902. Kashinskii slovar’. Sbornik ORIaS 70 (5): 1-212.
Stavshina, Natalia A., ed. 2008. Frazeologicheskii slovar’ russkikh
govorov Nizhnei Pechory 1. Saint Petersburg: Nauka.
Surikova, Olesia. 2016. Leksicheskie edinitsy s pristavkoi i predlogom bez
v russkikh narodnykh govorakh i fol’klore: semantiko motivatsionnyi i
ètnolingvisticheskii aspekty. PhD dissertation. Ekaterinburg: UrFU.
Uryson, Elena V. 1997. Dusha 1. In Novyi ob’iasnitel’nyi slovar’
sinonimov russkogo iazyka 1: 87-92. Moscow: Shkola ‘Iazyki russkoi
kul’tury’.
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Logos.
Summary
In traditional worldviews, the soul, insofar as it is reflected in the vocabulary
and phraseology of the Russian language and its dialects, appears as a principle
and measure of spiritual and material phenomena. The soul evaluates them from a
quantitative point of vie, and also based on their correspondence to its tastes. Yet
the soul itself, as the expression of the deepest essence of a person or of its
personal penchants, becomes in turn subject to evaluation. My objective also
includes the analysis of the paradigmatic relations between the soul and the parts
of the human body (the heart, the stomach, and so on), which are mentioned in
phraseology expressing evaluation and preference.
Keywords: soul, heart, innards, body, evaluation

CHAPTER 4
THREE SOULS OF THE POLISH PEASANT
IZABELLA BUKRABA-RYLSKA
INSTITUTE OF RURAL AND AGRICULTURE OF THE POLISH
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
The concept of “soul” is essentially alien to sociological reflection.

This state of affairs persists, despite the “spiritualization" of the discipline
begun by Emil Durkheim, constituting the result of an escape from the risk
of the naturalistic, i.e., materialistic and biological reductionism (Kaufmann
2004: 169). After all, refusing to acknowledge the role of matter and
corporeality, as well as all other natural determinisms, does not imply a
turn to transcendent determinants conditioning social life, or a search for
permanent traits in human beings that would not be subject to the
influence of specific circumstances. This is also due to the fact that, once a
socialized individual has been torn from the power of what is physical and
physiological, sociology subjected it to the no less absolute power of
society and culture. The assumption that all objects are not what they
objectively appear to be, but rather what a given group defines them to be,
found its counterpart in the definition of a human being: he or she is solely
what society has made him or her to be and how it has perceived him or
her. Even in the most distinctive behaviour of an individual there is
nothing that would not have been conditioned by the influence of the
environment, and in the individual's most subjective self-image there is be
no place for any self-definition that does not stem from the opinion of
others.
These assumptions, typical of consequent sociologism (a position
allowing the explanation of social phenomena exclusively through other
social phenomena), are criticized using the example of specific modes of
constructing the “soul” of the Polish peasant over the centuries. There
have, of course, been numerous such modes, as historically the Polish
peasantry have functioned in diverse conditions, and have had various
images, stereotypes and “legends” (a “golden” as well as a “black” one)
Three Souls of the Polish Peasant 67
attached to it and confirmed in Polish literature and culture (Ziejka 1977,

1984). For the purposes of his discussion, the two most significant ones
will be chosen: one relating to the period of serfdom and the other
promoted during the transformation period from communism to
capitalism. Terms from the vocabulary of social sciences will be used in
the following considerations, such as personality, identity, self, mentality
or self-identification, and not the eponymous “soul” – although it will
become apparent to what great use one of the discussed authors puts the
latter concept.
In 1904, on the 110th anniversary of the Battle of Racławice, Jakub
Bojko from Gręboszów – a prominent folk activist and writer – published
a text entitled “Two Souls.” This manifesto, written in the style of a cynic
diatribe, offers a sociologically relevant analysis of the changes that
occurred in the peasant personality under the influence of serfdom, and
which still persist – despite the abolition of serfdom and even among those
who rose up to intelligentsia or clergy from peasantry. In this sense,
Bojko's tract can, after more than a century, be read as an important
contribution to the description of the mentality of a large part of Polish
society. Bojko's beautiful writing style is a significant advantage of his
prose, which attests not only to the outstanding literary and rhetorical
talent of its author but also to his impressive reading in fiction (Polish and
foreign), as well as in serious scholarly works, mainly on the subject of
history. His reading list from the year 1887 encompasses 25 titles,
frequently multi-volume ones, including also regularly read press
publications.
Here is an example of Jakub Bojko’s literary talent and, at the same
time, a presentation of his manifesto’s most important thesis: “In us,
peasants, apart from our little soul, dwells still one more”, he writes on the
first page of his text:
Within us dwells a soul of a very old, ugly lady, who died in 1848, and her
name was serfdom. The lady in question held in dreadful captivity our
entire humble tribe for more than 400 years, and she killed the man in the
peasant. She made him into a piece of junk, a machine with which she
could do as she pleased… This horror of serfdom so permeated the
people’s blood that to this day it rebounds on them in a glaring way, and
not only among simple folk but also among their sons who thanks to
schooling rose to high positions. The ghost of serfdom, the ghost of
slavery, dwells within all of us. (Bojko 2002, 21)
How does the persistent existence, even in the 20th century, of the
peasant “soul” formed under serfdom manifest itself? In answering this
68 Chapter 4
question, Bojko sketches several typical situations illustrating the specific

social relations into which the representatives of this social stratum enter:
There you are, a peasant. Of fine stature, with God-given beauty such that
often even women don’t have. You’ve made some money, you’ve got
children and a fine wife and you call yourself a husbandman. And if your
wife or someone else crosses you, you grow enraged and say: Ho, ho! I’m
still the lord and husbandman here! .... And what happens when you
address for instance some higher official, a layman or a cleric? Your soul
retreats down to your heels, and the other one, the serfdom soul makes you
into a chump, a fool, who bows low like a slave, by which not only does he
not do himself any good, but often sells short the case of his own
brethren… (22-23)
These words were illustrated by a scene that played out in Brussels and
was broadcast on TV around a year ago, wherein Polish MEPs were
greeted by Jean-Claude Juncker in a distinctive way: by a vigorous pat on
the cheek, or a tap on the forehead with a flat hand. It is remarkable that
this gesture – supposedly friendly, but resembling rather the manner of a
steward governing a serfdom-based farm – was not reciprocated by any of
the Polish politicians, which reveals the asymmetry of relations in the
salons of Brussels, as well as the condescending manner of the EU
officials. Worse, the Polish representatives accepted it as natural.
At the end of his description of a peasant’s confrontation with an
official, Bojko turns to his readers:
Place your hand on your heart and tell me if I’ve lied in any way, tell me
we don’t have a serf’s soul. We do, and those who rid themselves of it and
openly tell the truth to the people are today branded as troublemakers and
rabble-rousers, etc. (24)
By raising the subject, Bojko had in mind his own experience from the
time he was a borough mayor, when he faced the representatives of local
clergy. In these encounters, he revealed his own soul – certainly not serf-
like, but definitely a wild one. It started with a dispute with Rev. Henryk
Otowski, known as "Cezar", the parson of Gręboszowo, and later came the
feud with the bishop of Tarnów himself, Rev. Leon Wałęga. The first
conflict ended in Bojko's victory, because in the meantime the case of "the
priest's child out of wedlock" was disclosed, as the relevant footnote
informs (one might wonder if a priest could even have a "child within
wedlock", and whether it would have changed anything in the way the
situation was assessed), after which the priest was forced to leave the
parish. The story must have been well known since it served as the plot of
Stanisław Wyspiański's celebrated and highly publicized tragedy –

"Klątwa" ["The Curse"], the action of which takes place in Gręboszowo.
The second conflict concerned a ban issued by bishop Wałęga (himself of
peasant origins), prohibiting priests from absolving the supporters of the
people's movement. Bojko published "Two Souls" in response to that ban,
including in it a few warm words addressed to the bishop…
How can we interpret Jakub Bojko’s analysis of the “serfdom soul” in
sociological terms? It would seem that it inadvertently fits with the
assumptions of a research orientation known as the concept of “culture and
personality.” Situated on the borderline of sociology and anthropology,
this school of thought explains the personality traits and behavioural
patterns of a given group by the influence of culture and practices
conditioned by it, even as mundane as the way of swaddling an infant.
Researchers have therefore distinguished the "tribal personality" (Ruth
Benedict, Margaret Mead), the "basic structure of personality" formed by
primary social institutions (Abram Kardiner, Ralph Linton), and finally
"status personality" and dependent on the position held and roles
performed (Ralph Linton), but it always concerned a certain organized
collection of acquired attitudes determining the actions of an individual.
The naturalistic reductionism allowed previously in social sciences
(natural conditions determining the so-called national character, climate
influence, racial traits) have been replaced by socio-cultural reductionism,
granting the formative role in all subsequent human behaviour to an
appropriately shaped environment and experiences gained within it.
The appearance of “serfdom soul” could be explained then by the
prolonged persistence of an oppressive system, which – like any social
discourse in Michel Foucault’s sense – did not consist merely of
verbalized commands and prohibitions, but above all in the designed
institutional order (such as the roles of the master, borough mayor and
parson), the proxemic distances introduced (division into the manor, farm,
village) and in the most unforgiving factor of socialization – in the order of
inarticulate objects confirming and enforcing the established rules (on the
one hand, the tools of labor, on the other, devices for exacting
punishment). Karol Modzelewski wrote on material objects as symbols of
the peasant condition (Modzelewski 1987). The persistence of this
particular mental structure, even in spite of the abolition of the conditions
that shaped it, could be explained by the "principle of functional
autonomy", frequently referred to in sociological works. First observed by
Gordon Allport in the field of social psychology, the principle gained its
sociological interpretation in Robert Merton's texts, but perhaps its most
70 Chapter 4
apt description is found in Georg Simmel's reflection, wherein he explains

the centuries-long contempt for labour among the Spaniards:
… stemmed from the fact that for a long time the Spaniards used the
subjugated Moors as labourers. When they later destroyed the Moors (and
expelled the Jews), they yet retained the air of superordinates, although
there no longer were any corresponding subordinates. (Simmel 1975, 269)
A similar force of inertia characterizes also the “serfdom soul”

presented by Jakub Bojko, but one should look for the traces of its
astonishing durability not only in the condition of the “hopeless
proletarian” analyzed in Florian Znaniecki’s book “Ludzie teraźniejsi a
cywilizacja przyszłości” [“The People of Today vs. the Civilization of the
Future”] or in Józef Chałasiński’s descriptions of serfdom-based farm
laborers, or finally in the descriptions of former state collective farm
laborers researched by Hanna Palska (1998), but also in the current
behavior of our political elites when abroad. As it turns out, even now, at
the beginning of the 21st century, the “serfdom soul rears its foolish and
servile head” in the least expected circumstances (Bojko 2002, 52).
Reading sociological and journalistic texts written after 1989 provides
examples of a completely different way of constructing the peasant “soul.”
In contrast to the previously discussed variant associated with the serfdom
period, this second version refers not so much to “personality” (which is
most often understood as a permanent mental structure that determines
habitual reactions), but rather to “identity” (i.e. self-image), although the
latter – according to sociologists – is constructed by the individual mainly
on the basis of the opinions about themselves provided by their
environment. This dependent, because mediated, mechanism of self-
perception is well reflected in Charles Cooley’s term “looking-glass self”,
commonly used in all interactive concepts of society. The earlier,
substantive and essentialist understanding of human beings (their nature,
essence, temperament, character, self) is replaced therefore by a view that
they constitute a certain tabula rasa, which is actually filled in by others.
Georg Herbert Mead expresses this emphatically as follows:
The individual experiences himself as such, not directly, but only

indirectly, from the particular standpoints of other individual members of
the same social group, or from the generalized standpoint of the social
group as a whole to which he belongs. (Mead 1975, 138)
The above quotation is taken from his lectures on social psychology

reconstructed on the basis of student notes and it shows well the essential
difference between the two concepts. While "personality" refers to

attitudes acquired in contact with society and the devices typical of it,
"identity" is rather a sense of self that is formed thanks to such specific
interactions. Secondly, when referring to "personality" in the sense
described here, one means rather the actual, although not necessarily
realized structure, whereas in the case of "identity" precisely the opposite
is the case: it is not about what the person is like, but what they think of
themselves, therefore it is a reflexive construct. And finally, "personality"
must be expressed in concrete types of behaviour, because it is only on
their basis that it is identified, whereas "identity" can be declared "without
cover", that is demonstrated verbally, and not necessarily in accordance
with an inner sense or even factual state – therefore constituting simply a
"façade", as Adam Podgórecki calls it (Podgórecki 1968).
Such is, put in the simplest way possible, the outline of the problem of
human “soul” expressed in sociological terms. It is generally assumed that
it is created by society and without the participation of “nature”, and even
more so – without “transcendence”: it is either shaped unconsciously
under the influence of the circumstances in which the individual functions
(personality) or it is consciously created by the individual, but based on
their experiences of their environment (identity). This is not, fortunately,
an exhaustive and properly deepened conceptualization, and it has often
been suggested (yet never further developed) that something else exists –
some residue irreducible to external factors – but I shall return to it in the
final part of these considerations. At present, however, it is worth taking a
closer look at the opinions on the Polish peasant that have been formulated
in scientific discourse, but also in the media, after 1989, in the hopes that
they will contribute to shaping the peasant’s appropriate “looking-glass
self”, as well as at the reasons underlying the formulation of those
opinions.
The dominant motive of the debate carried on in the last 25 years on
the place of the countryside and agriculture in Poland has been the
conviction that the so-called agrarian sector is a very troublesome legacy
of the past, a factor that is seriously threatening the ambitious
modernization plans of the state, or even a reason for shame. "The
countryside has the bad press – increasingly so", stated Jerzy Jastrzębski as
early as in the first decade of the political transformation. "Its main sin is
that it exists at all. There are too many villagers left around, and not the
kind that are needed in Europe, in Poland, in the cities and
municipalities… In the march towards Europe, the peasants are like stones
in our pockets or sacks of unnecessary potatoes on our backs. With such
baggage, they won't let us into the salons" (Jastrzębski 1998, 509). The
72 Chapter 4
direction of transformation decreed by prominent sociological authorities

from the "particularist-welfare-resitutionary-traditional-communal-
egalitarian" order to the "universalist-market-achievement-innovative-
individualist-antiegalitarian" one, as Marek Ziółkowski elaborately puts it
(Ziółkowski 2001), thus excluded from the circle of desirable creators, or
even actors of the bright, new future almost 40% of citizens – rural
residents, and certainly, several million peasants – small farmers. The
group was characterized in markedly negative terms, pointing most of all
to its size (there are so many peasants that they literally "stomp out the
ground", as one scholar puts it), as well as its archaic and relic nature. In
the famous text "Klasa z przeszłości" ["The Class of the Past"] Edmund
Mokrzycki argues that society in which the peasantry live, especially as
numerous as they are in Poland, is characterized by "a deep civilizational
rupture separating the basic mass of the rural population from the rest of
the society. The first live in a civilizational niche that goes back deep into
the past, while the second follows the developing world. The civilizational
niche frees the peasants from the coercion towards modernization, but at
the same time condemns them to the status of humans from an inferior
world… The peasantry is a structural mark of time, and the very fact of the
existence of that class is today a testimony to the country's backwardness"
(Mokrzycki 2001, 52-53).
What defects was this social stratum seen to have? The list goes on, but
one needs only to list a few most important ones. On the basis of polls,
which indeed showed considerable doubts as to the direction of the
changes introduced to the economy, skepticism about the mechanisms of
democracy, and especially a fear of Poland’s accession to the EU (all this,
as it turns out, not entirely unfounded), the peasants were diagnosed with
numerous “mental barriers”, “irrational phobias” and evident deficits in
“civilizational competence.” They were also accused of “having stalled in
the process of evolution into capitalist normality”, of constituting “a
bastion of resistance to market capitalism”, and of being characterized by a
“vagrant lack of standards”, because “they have not learned how to work”
and instead display a “demanding attitude” and “learned helplessness.”
Sociologists also liked to cite the term coined by Rev. Józef Tischner:
“thieving-beggar classes” (because they rob the weaker and beg from the
stronger) and used the definitively negative term homo sovieticus
(Buchowski 2008). The latter concept especially deserves attention,
because it was manipulated in a particularly cunning way. Its author,
Aleksander Zinowiew, in his well-known, eponymous book, does not
mean ordinary citizens, and definitely not labourers or peasants, but the
group of ideological front employees, privileged under the communist
rule, who held favorable positions in the education, science, culture or

management sectors and eagerly propagated the totalitarian ideals, and
once the system had changed, were able, at a moment’s notice, to turn into
followers of the new order. Such semantic devices, typical of the language
of the Third Polish Republic, have been exposed by Dawid Wildstein and
Katarzyna Majchrowska, who indicate that homo sovieticus "is not a
transformation loser" (a former state collective farm labourer, a small
farmer or a worker threatened by unemployment), but the same person as
described above: "a resourceful cynic, a malleable form able to adapt to
new conditions, and as such, devoid of its own essence – able to adapt to
any "historical necessity.” Be it the struggle of the classes or
Europeanization”, write the authors and emphasize that the perverse
misrepresentation accompanying these metamorphoses is an attempt to
legitimize the current political system and protect the privileged positions
of certain milieus, rather than a neutral description of reality (Wildstein
and Majchrowska 2013, 16).
An important thread in the literature of the transition period was also
pointing out imagined deficiencies aimed at discrediting peasants not only
in the role of efficient producers, as required by the market economy but
also citizens of a modern state. The social capital of the countryside,
diagnosed on the basis of indicators selected in an ineffective and biased
manner (as they did not allow for the specificity and tradition of rural self-
organization), did in fact appear less advantageously against the
background of impressive data on the number of foundations, associations
and other NGO-type organizations registered in cities. And even if its level
approximated the national average or even surpassed it, such results were
explained by the existence in the countryside of mainly "dirty", "mafia-
like" kind of social capital, saturated by nepotism, amoral familism and
clientelism. The negative and fundamentally erroneous attitude of
sociologists toward these phenomena has been aptly criticized by the
historian Antoni Mączak, who shows that the greatest powers of the world
were built on exactly such relations and values, whereas absolutizing
Western-centered points of view is here particularly misleading and unjust
(Mączak 2003). It does not change the fact that – also contrary to Kajetan
Koźmian’s concept of political community expressed by the words “city
has inhabitants, the countryside has citizens” (Mycielski 2004)–
sociologists agreed in announcing that the rural population “could become
the gravedigger of liberal state and market economy” (Rychard and
Federowicz 1993), and even worse: “impede the common effort towards
European citizenship par excellence” (Lamentowicz 1995).
74 Chapter 4
In the debates taking place at the time, attempts were made at exposing
the moral deficits and other abominable traits typical of rural dwellers, in a
word – as social psychologists term it – to give the group a “dirty
significance.” Research conducted at the time treated the countryside as a
veritable breeding ground of all negative phenomena: xenophobia and
anti-Semitism, authoritarianism and intolerance, and, in addition, ill-
treatment of animals–attitudes instilled in successive generations thanks to
the “socializing pathologies" cultivated there. According to Krystyna
Szafraniec, the Polish countryside is a certain "closed socio-cultural entity
with relatively strong ties and hierarchical order of relationships", the
structure of which is dominated by groups "with notably unfavourable
characteristics” (Szafraniec 2005, 393). In turn, Mokrzycki, previously
cited, writes that among the small farmers constituting the Polish
underclass:
…an irreversible degradation of their social fabric is taking place, with

mechanisms of automatic reproduction of misery being activated, while the
subculture of dependence and crime is passed down from generation to
generation. (Mokrzycki 2001, 55)
Bogusław Łagowski seconds him, using equally strong words: “Polish

countryside does not represent currently anything valuable in terms of
customs, culture or morality. On the contrary, it is a place of moral decay
and lumpen-proletarianization” (Łagowski 2003). The scene outlined by
Marcin Król completes this image of misery and despair:
A horse-drawn cart. A lonely cow standing in the meadow. Pigs eating

greedily from the family table. One can glimpse cottages with TV
antennas, but surrounded by straw, mud, chopped wood and accompanied
by the pungent stench from the cowshed. (Król 2002)
It is difficult not to classify these formulations as "hate speech", which

is commonly stigmatized, but strangely enough only when it is directed at
ethnic or religious minorities, hardly occurring in Poland. In regard to a
few million of Poland's own citizens, its use never arouses opposition.
However, a suggestion offered by Monika Bobako, who uses the term
"neoliberal racist discourse" for such practices, appears to be a more
important direction in the analysis of anti-peasant and anti-countryside
discourse of the transformation period. Drawing on Etienne Balibar and
Immanuel Wallerstein, the author recalls that racial concepts were
originally not ethnic or national, but primarily class-based and cultural
(Bobako 2010). They were used in relation to those groups of one's own
society that had to be included in the existing social and economic order
but on the basis of subordination. The application of "racism" to such

groups consisted in essentialization, naturalization and reification of the
attributes ascribed to them that served to justify their unequal treatment
(lower intelligence, weaker performance, lack of discipline). “Inferiority”
and “lowliness” diagnosed in such a way – not biological, but cultural –
allowed to hold the groups in subservience, use their work at the lowest
cost, or even eliminate them (negative and positive eugenics enjoyed great
popularity in the progressive academic circles at the beginning of the
twentieth century), since they proved to be defective members of society
(Frykman and Lofgren 2007). Adam Kuper, having analyzed scientific
publications in American anthropology, argues that even today culture
performs a euphemistic, therefore politically correct role, in terms of
“race”. The contemporary concept of culture is not a critique of racism, he
concludes – it is a form of racism (Kuper 2005, 207).
Bobako finds a lot of evidence for the presence of racist content
understood in such a way in an apparently democratic and liberal discourse
of the transformation period, created mostly by prominent representatives
of social sciences. She shows at the same time to what trivial, yet
dangerous conclusions it leads: in accordance with neoliberal social
Darwinism:
… poverty, lack of education and rural origins are indicative of the

defectiveness of individuals marked by them and can constitute a basis for
limiting their rights. (Bobako 2010, 177)
The fact that the accusations levelled at the peasants were used to
formulate concrete practical recommendations is again shown in scientific
and journalistic texts. The frequently appearing term "ballast"
(developmental, modernizational, civilizational) had to finally lead to the
conclusion about the necessity of somehow getting rid of “special needs
citizens”, i.e. of the inefficient, the ineffective, and the insufficiently
productive, which, in turn, resulted in the concept of “the last emigration.”
It justifies the fact that 2.5-3 million small farmers have permanently left
Poland by claiming they constitute labor resources that are difficult to
manage; their socio-demographic characteristics, systems of values and
habits are disproportionate to developmental needs, which make them into
a surplus inhibiting modernization processes in Poland (Grabowska-
Lusińska, Okólski 2009). Thus, after approximately a hundred years, terms
and ideas proposed, and subsequently practised, by the Nazi, have returned
to official discourse. It is easy to see the disturbing resemblance of the
term "ballast" to the term "ballastexistenzen" proposed by eminent
German scholars, a professor of the law and a doctor – Karl Binding and
76 Chapter 4
Alfreda Hoche in 1920 (Lemke 2010). The rhetoric of modernization and

productivity as the basic criterion of human usefulness is also strikingly
similar to nationalist-socialist ideology (Alber 2000). Finally, it is notable
that both at that time and now, the academic circles were the authors of the
terminology employed, as well as innovations designed (Peukert 2000).
Since it is already known why at the period of transformation such a
method of constructing yet another “soul” of the Polish peasant was
employed, it is necessary to ask the question to what extent all those
devices have produced the expected effect – that is, not only defined a
given social group as other and inferior, but also instilled this conviction in
the group itself. As far as the effectiveness of the discursive practices is
concerned, one can doubt whether they brought the expected results. Even
though rich argumentation was developed in the scientific and media
debate (the previously cited terms being merely a modest sample thereof),
it left astoundingly little trace in social consciousness. This is evidenced
by the representative national research carried out at the Institute of Rural
and Agricultural Development of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the
first years of the 21st century, concerning the knowledge and opinion of
Poles on rural areas, folk culture, farmers and agriculture (Bukraba-Rylska
2004). As a result of the research, it turned out that in the case of the
Polish society we are dealing with two relatively independent discourses.
The first one, of a more modest range, was called "urban-intellectual" and
was characterized by an external view of countryside matters, a reluctant
attitude to farmers and an acceptance of the actions of the authorities of the
time introducing liberal solutions in the economy and promoting the idea
of accession. The second one, shared by a larger number of respondents,
presented a positive image of this environment, its traditions, agriculture
and farmers (based on the closer, for instance familial, relations with
countryside dwellers and different knowledge of countryside realities than
the one based on the media influence or tourist encounters). Of course,
rural respondents displayed the most favourable attitude towards the
countryside and especially farmers, which proves that the propaganda
devices of the Third Republic of Poland “soul engineers” came to nothing.
At least when it comes to the intention of instilling in several million Poles
a feeling that they are of “inferior sort”, and therefore of implanting within
them such a “soul”, which would justify the condition of “the losers of
transformation” not on the defects of the system, but their own
shortcomings.
Thus, one of the most important assumptions of sociology was
undermined by the determinant role of environmental assessments in
shaping one’s self-image. However, what mechanisms were at work, if
socialization to which the peasantry was treated turned out to have been
unfortunate? It seems that an element familiarized and neglected in
interactionist-oriented sociological theories played an essential part here,
although, in their precursor, Mead, the presence and significance of this
element is very clearly emphasized. I mean here the double concept of “I”
formulated by Mead, when its author proposed to distinguish between the
objective “I” (me) and the subjective “I” (I). The objective “me” is to be an
organized set of attitudes of others, which the individual adopts and
generalizes, whereas the subjective “I” constitutes according to Mead a
response of the organism to the attitudes of others, i.e. something prior,
independent and biologically conditioned rather than existing at the level
of consciousness – therefore, something irreducible to the influences and
opinions of the environment. Unfortunately, these intriguing themes in
Mead’s works (as well as others, relating to the presence of meaning in
social action before consciousness first appears) are completely ignored in
the canonical interpretation of the sociological implications of George
Herbert Mead as developed by Herbert Blumer (Blumer 1969). More is the
pity, as such inspirations would allow for a return from the blind alley of
“spiritualism” in which sociology is stuck, still carried out according to
Cartesian “egocephalocentric” paradigm constituting today a typical
“degenerate research program” (Lakatos 1995), which makes the
discipline closed to neo-naturalistic proposals formulated by an increasing
number of its representatives (Bukraba-Rylska 2013), but also authorities
in the field of natural sciences (Wilson 2016).
At the end of these deliberations, it is worth going back for a moment
to the serfdom "soul" of the peasant and ask whether in fact it also
impressed itself as strongly on the mentality of this social group, as it is
described by sociologists. Jakub Bojko, even though he laments the effects
of serfdom, is himself the best example of the fact that it was possible to
throw off these limitations and form a fully sovereign subjectivity. Yet
another example is provided by a confrontation of two cases linked by a
certain analytical concept that the ancients termed as latratus canis (the
bark of the dog). The first case, drawn from Witold Gombrowicz’s novel
“Ferdydurke”, is referred to by Andrzej Leder in his book “Prześniona
rewolucja” [“The Over-dreamt Revolution”]. The second is furnished by a
situation observed by Franciszek Bujak from Żmiąca village, and the
entire juxtaposition will be commented on via Umberto Eco’s erudite
essay entitled “The Dog that Barked” (Eco 2009):
Gombrowicz was the one to create the strongest, dialectical portrayal of the
imagined self-reflection of the peasant – a portrayal which depicts the
78 Chapter 4
position that befalls the peasant in the symbolic universe of the Second
Republic of Poland.
Leder writes, and cites a scene in which frightened peasants sitting in a

potato ditch answer the questions of an “urban” master with barking:
“We’re dogs, dogs we are! Woof! Woof.” Leder interprets the scene just
like Gombrowicz does: the peasants bark at the masters, because they feel
like dogs. And they feel like dogs because, in the social imaginarium of
the Second Republic of Poland dominated by masters, they were assigned
a dog’s lot. However, is it an apt interpretation? Or perhaps Leder (as
Gombrowicz before him) falls prey here to his urban-intellectual optics
and fails to appreciate the cunning of a peasant who effectively
manipulates his social image, without necessarily immersing himself into
the role designed for him by others? After all, it is well known how “the
serfs cunningly act with masters”, therefore perhaps Gombrowicz’s
peasants merely want to confirm the masters in their delusion, while
keeping an entirely different self-identification for themselves? Franciszek
Bujak sets us on the path of a different interpretation of emitting the sound
of a dog’s bark in his first eponymous monograph on the village “Żmiąca”,
written in 1903. There is also a scene depicting peasants barking at
strangers, but it is interpreted quite differently. According to Bujak, the
peasants from Żmiąca bark at strangers, in this case local Jews, not
because they consider themselves dogs, but because they consider the Jews
to be dogs. Bujak cites a local proverb while illustrating this example of
peasant anti-Semitism: “unchain the dog, chain the Jew” (Bujak 1903,
106).
Leaving aside the social and cultural issues (especially the concept of
“national fantasies” pushed by Leder), let us attempt to look at these two
instances of canine barking on the part of the peasants by employing the
tools of semiotics or, more accurately, zoosemiotics, as Eco suggests in his
text. The Italian scholar draws here on ancient and medieval theories and
shows that latratus canis (as that is how the problem was known as in
scholastic literature) had at least two interpretations. According to
Aristotle, barking should be classified as voices and be ascribed an
expressive function (that of a natural symptom expressing one’s own
state). According to the Stoics, however, with their classification as signa
(signs), barking would serve a denoting function (therefore that of an
intentional indication of something outside of oneself). As Eco adds,
medieval scholastics met an unpleasant fate: even though they wrote so
eruditely on latratus canis, successive commentators termed their own
writing as “the barking of the dog.” Therefore the learned men were
deprived of their typically human ability to “name”, which was replaced

with the ability to “express”, reserved for animals.
By following these intuitions one might risk the claim that
Gombrowicz and Leder, by refusing human intentions to the barking
peasants – convinced as they are, as members of the intelligentsia, of the
ability of higher and more enlightened strata to model other people’s souls
– will themselves deserve a similar treatment, when it becomes apparent
that having formulated such a diagnosis of the peasant condition they did
not objectively “indicate” it as such, but rather unconsciously “expressed”
it, convinced of the universalism of their own imaginarium – the same one
that Józef Chałasiński rightly called an “intelligentsia ghetto.” In contrast,
Bujak, himself of rural origins and perhaps for that reason perceiving a
symbol of humanity in the barking of the peasants from Żmiąca (as in the
light of semiotics it lies in the ability to "name", "designate", therefore not
a "natural", but a "conventional" or fully "cultural" behaviour) will be
spared such a degrading categorization.
Regardless of the scientific and literary examples cited here, it is clear
that the issue of social identity (which can be metaphorically referred to as
the “soul”) deserves to be treated differently than is usually the case in
sociology. The quoted arguments and opinions show that the own image of
a given group does not necessarily have to be a derivative of external
influences or other people’s opinions. According to Mead’s intuition, it is
possible to discover in peasant self-awareness elements confirming the
existence of this mysterious “I”: the image of self that has nothing to do
with a “looking-glass self”, but rather with what Jose Ortega y Gasset calls
“estimative solipsism.” He explains this in his essay “Contribution to The
Topography of Spanish Conceit” as follows:
There are people who attribute a certain value to themselves, self-absorbed

and judging others according to their own feelings… .We call this
spontaneous judgment. But there are also those who judge themselves after
first having looked to the others, and having learned the others’ opinion on
their person. I call this looking-glass judgment… The soul that judges its
value by a reflection is drawn to others and lives as if on the periphery of
other souls. A soul that judges its value spontaneously has its centre of
gravity within itself and the opinions of others have no decisive influence
on its judgment. (Ortega y Gasset 1980, 137)
The “souls” of the Polish peasant, even though shaped strenuously, at

times brutally, but always against their interest by extraneous social forces,
turn out to be constructs of limited scope and effectiveness. Independently
of them, the Polish peasants seem to be equipped with their own, original
80 Chapter 4
“soul” – regardless if one calls it “natural”, “Christian” or “spontaneous” –

and that soul constitutes their real subjectivity. And even though in the
light of sociological analyses not much is known about it, one thing can be
said with all certainty: it is definitely not a subjectivity available to the
current conceptual apparatus of sociologists. They are only able to report
on what Krzysztof Okopień repeats after Samuel Bogumił Linde, citing a
definition of subject from “Słownik Języka Polskiego” [“The Dictionary of
the Polish Language”]: “subject – all that is flung on, by another closed,
suggested, falsified” (Okopień 1997, 45).
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Summary
In Polish sociology, there are three descriptions of the Polish peasant. The first was
written in 1903 by Jakub Bojko, a social worker. It concerns the “serfdom soul”,
shaped by 300 years of serfdom. The second one refers to the public discourse in
Poland after 1989, when sociologists attempted to construct a “looking-glass-self”
of the Polish peasant by describing them as individuals unadjusted to the new
circumstances. The third one emerges from the attitudes of peasants themselves
and serves as an example of "estimative solipsism" or self-opinion, which is
independent from life conditions and from others’ opinions as well.
Keywords: soul, personality, mentality, serfdom soul, “developmental ballast”,

“estimative solipsism”
CHAPTER 5
IN SEARCH OF THE SOUL OF THE HOME –

SIDE NOTES OF AXIOLOGICAL PORTRAIT
DOROTA PAZIO-WLAZŁOWSKA
INSTITUTE OF SLAVIC STUDIES OF THE POLISH ACADEMY
OF SCIENCES
5.1. Anthropocentrism of the metaphoric expression the soul of the home
It seems obvious that HOME has a significant place in the axiological

sphere as it is one of the most important and prototypic values in the life of
each person. Its perception is based on the opposition “friend/foe.” Origin
of HOME is connected not only with the building but also with the com-
munity which dwells together. Thus, HOME has inextricable connection
with FAMILY as it is “(…) символом (symbol) (…) является очаг,
олицетворяющий психологическую атмосферу людей, живущих в
доме (the fireside which embodies the psychological atmosphere of those
who live there),” (Poturaeva 2010, 60). These immaterial but clearly de-
fined components of HOME demonstrate its uniqueness and individual
character. One such component is the construction, expressed through a
metaphorical phrase, the soul of the home, which originates from the
home-person image:
Это выражение употребляется в переносном значении. У дома как
таковой души нету, однако энергетику от старых хозяев, к примеру,
он может хранить долгое время (This expression has a figurative mean-
ing. The home itself cannot have any soul but it may preserve the energy
of the previous owners for a long time.) (Annet007) 1 (1) 2
1 Nicknames or names of the authors are listed in parentheses.

2 Spelling and punctuation of the source texts have been preserved.
84 Chapter 5
The aforementioned metaphoric expression highlights one of the most

significant signs for the perception of the home-person. E. A. Poturaeva
(Poturaeva 2010, 66) states that:
Подобно человеку, имеющему свою анатомию и свой внешний

облик, свой характер и являющемуся носителем определенных
признаков, дом тоже характеризуется своими внешними и
внутренними характеристиками, что находит выражение в
лексических наименованиях (Just like any person has his/her viscera,
appearance and character which reflects some characteristic features,
home can be characterized by its inner and outer features which are ex-
pressed in lexical units.)
Metaphoric expression, seen as:
(…) основная ментальная операция, которая объединяет две

понятийные сферы и создает возможность использовать потенции
структурирования сферы-источника при концептуализации новой
сферы (the primary mental operation which unites two cognitive spheres
and makes it possible to use the potential of structuring the source upon
the conceptualization of the new sphere.) (Chudinov 2001, 37)
This helps to explain the phenomenon of home (Kondratyeva 2011). It

is especially important to consider the fact that home is conceptualized
upon the model of the human’s body and soul. The structure of the body
serves as a matrix and a primary characteristic of the home.
Selected samples contain examples which show that home is complete-
ly equated with a person: “Живой... Все, как у людей (Alive… Just like a
human)” (Olga Borisova) (2).
Exterior elements of the home are perceived as if they are the parts of
the human's body. Rooms and items are compared with the vitally im-
portant viscera. Anthropocentric metaphoric expression definitely influ-
ences our perception of home. Metaphoric expansion absorbs not only
important viscera but also those which have symbolic significance and
some kind of cultural meaning: heart, umbilical cord, belly and eyes
(Poturaeva 2010, 66). The heart is especially important as the soul is close-
ly connected to it. E. A. Poturaeva (Poturaeva 2010, 67) states that:
(…) при этом душа дома – тот предмет или человек, который придает
дому особую атмосферу, является незаменимой частью дома в том
смысле, что лишившись его, дом потеряет свой особый облик (the
soul of the home is either an object or a person that has impact on the
In Search of the Soul of the Home 85
home and is its essential part; if it is left without this part, it will lose its
peculiar identity.)
It is necessary to mention that SOUL has a special place in the Russian

national system of values which:
(…) на первом месте стоит духовность, «душа», главное, стержневое

понятие, превалирующее над рассудком, умом, здравым смыслом (is
led by spirituality, where “soul” is the primary and basic notion which
dominates over mind, intellect and common sense) (Ter-Minasova 2000,
165; cf. also Wierzbicka 1990; Przybył-Sadowska, Sadowski, Urbanek
2016).
This statement has critical significance for further reasoning as the

evaluation of the concept in question is impossible without reference to the
whole system of values and outside cultural and historical context.
The aim of the present research is to analyze the conceptual metaphoric
expression the soul of the home in Russian linguistic culture. Samples for
research have been taken from the Russian National Corpus and the Rus-
sian part of the Internet (Runet). 3
5.2. Soul as a component of home?
The home is treated as if it is a living human who has both body and
spirit. Thus, it’s natural that each home has its soul which is also treated as
a living creature. This creature is also alive as it can wake up, look out of
the window, have memories and scream in pain. Presence of the soul is the
mandatory component of the home. It is a sign which confirms that the
home is alive:
У каждого дома есть своя душа, он живой (Each home has its soul, as it
is alive.) (25)
Через окно, по народному поверью, «душа дома» созерцала красоту
мира, ею жила, ею лечилась, ею наслаждалась (People believe that “the
soul of the home” beholds the beauty of the world, lives with it and enjoys
this beauty through a window.) (3)
Шатаясь, Василий встал на него и, прикрывая лицо ладонями,
отступил, теперь он отчетливо слышал, как кричит от боли душа
3 No formal criteria were taken into account in the selection of samples for analy-
sis. Therefore, we analyzed source texts of different types.
86 Chapter 5
дома, сработанного его собственными руками и сердцем (Vasiliy

made a step back, staggering and covering his face with his palms. He
could definitely hear the screams of the soul of the home, the home which
was created with his own hands and heart.) (4)
One should treat the home as an animate object, take care of it and re-
spect it. The home has direct relations with its dwellers and demands atten-
tion and love:
Получается, дом – живое, одушевлённое существо! А потом домик

еще раз напомнил хозяйке, что у него есть душа (Thus, home is a liv-
ing and animate object! It reminded her about its soul once again) (…).
Любите свое жилище, берегите его, заботьтесь о нем, не обижайте.
Уверяю вас – у каждого дома есть душа! (Love your dwelling, keep it
safe, take care of it and do not insult it. Be sure that each home has its
soul!) (6)
But there also exist homes without souls. This is caused by the absence
of care, love and attention from people as any home absorbs the emotions
of its owners:
Но почему же иногда случается так, что в самых безупречно

отделанных комнатах, мы чувствуем себя, словно в гостиничном
номере? Заходишь в дом, удивляешься и радуешься продуманной
планировке, поражаешься креативности мышления дизайнера,
придумавшего всю эту красоту, мастерству строителей, воплотивших
этот проект, но не возникает у тебя желания задержаться в этих
стенах (Then why do we sometimes feel uncomfortable even in perfectly
furnished rooms? When you come in, you are astonished and glad to see
the elaborate design created by means of the blending of the designer’s
creative mind and the skills of the workers. Nonetheless, you have no de-
sire to stay there another minute.)
В чём же причина? Причина в душе дома. Мало задумать и
реализовать масштабный ремонт, надо ещё и вдохнуть жизнь в новое
жилище, передать пространству свою энергетику, поселить у себя
Домового, если угодно (What is the reason? It is connected with the soul
of the home. It is not enough to plan and implement the new design. It is
mandatory to breathe life into the new dwelling, transfer its energy and, if
necessary, accommodate a home spirit.) (7)
5.3. Elusiveness of the soul of the home
У каждого пространства есть своя душа. Есть энергетика, которую

оно несет (Each space has its own soul and energy.) (8)
Вот и кончилось то, что началось так давно, кажется, в начале жизни,
а на самом деле, так недавно, что доставляло столько радости, а
порой страха и смертной жалости, что было словно душой дома, его
скрытой добротой, увы, на поверхности этой доброты почти не
осталось (Everything was over. It began long ago, almost at the very be-
ginning of life, and it brought so much joy and, sometimes, fear and sor-
row, as if it was the soul of the home, its hidden kindness. Unfortunately,
this kindness is deep inside.) (11)
The soul of the home is something indefinite and incomprehensible: 4
У любого дома есть своя энергетическая составляющая, которая

называется аурой и ее не видно невооруженным взглядом, но зато ее
можно ощутить своей душой и своим сердцем. Им в таком доме
будет спокойно и приятно, и такой дом не хочется покидать. И
обычно люди в таком случае говорят, так тут хорошо, что уходить
совсем не хочется. Обычно это всегда чистый дом, очень уютный и с
приятным запахом или ароматом от выпечки или кофе. Там очень
уникальная и теплая атмосфера, которую невозможно описать
простыми словами. И про такой дом говорят – у него есть душа,
потому что такой уютный и теплый дом притягивает к нему
вернуться опять (Each home has its energy which is also called aura. It
cannot be seen but it can be felt with your own soul and heart. You feel
nice and calm and you do not want to leave it. People usually say that it is
so good that they do not want to go further. It is usually a clean and cozy
home with a pleasant aroma of pastry or coffee. It has a unique and warm
atmosphere which can’t be described with ordinary words. People say that
such a home has a soul, as it attracts people and makes them want to re-
turn there.) (Peresvetik) (1)
The soul of the home cannot be seen or touched. L. L. Fedorova stated:
4 It is necessary to mention that the soul of the home attracts those who are inter-
ested in feng shui. However, such people are constantly looking for pleasant
streams of energy and this is not connected with the content of the metaphoric
expression in question. Thus, we do not intend to perform such analysis. But one
should remember that interest in feng shui may influence the increase in the num-
ber of similar Internet texts which are dedicated to the ‘vibes’ of some particular
place.
88 Chapter 5
Поскольку душа неосязаема и невидима (...) про нее только и

возможно говорить метафорами (as soul is elusive and unseen (…) we
can only use metaphoric expressions to talk about it.) (Fedorova, in press)
This statement applies not only to the human’s soul, but also to the soul
of the home:
Считаю, что и такое возможно, не очень в этом разбираюсь, но

иногда чувствую что такое необычное есть, оно не видимо но оно
есть... (I am not a specialist but I think that it is possible. I sometimes feel
something unusual and unseen. But it exists…) (Nazar Semenov) (12)
Dwellers feel the soul of the home and think that it is the most im-
portant component of their home. Their memory preserves the image of
the soul of the home where they lived in childhood or which they had to
leave due to some reason. The soul cannot be described and has no materi-
al form but it gives the dwellers some most important things: peace, safety
and comfort. These values are precious for everyone.
The soul of the home is eternal due to its immaterial character. That is
why even shabby houses have a soul and they are still alive after being
demolished:
И у брошенного дома есть душа (An abandoned house has its soul)
Пусть сам дом уже не стоит и гроша (Even though it costs nothing)
Ты прислушайся, мой друг, и помолчи (Keep silence, my friend, and listen)
Тихо, слышишь, будто голоса в ночи (There are voices in the night) (13)
Selected samples contain texts which are dedicated to the resurrection

of the soul of the home. This process is similar to reincarnation when the
souls of the deceased resurrect in the bodies of the newly born (Tolstaya
1999, 163). But all the debates about the eternal character of the soul of
the home, its reincarnation and embodiment in material form, seem to be
accidental. They are not primary for the content of the metaphoric expres-
sion in question. Thus, we treat them as peripheral:
Душа! О, лишь она дана нам вечной (Soul is the eternal gift)
Она не только у людей жива (It is alive not only for people)
Быть может, дом разрушенный, безпечный (Perhaps a destroyed house)
Чей сруб гнилой распилен на дрова (blocks of which have been taken
away)
Коттеджем юным каменным восстанет (would resurrect as a stone cot-
tage?)
Юна и обновлена, хороша (Being young and pleasant)
Из дрёмы, сна воскреснет и воспрянет (from oblivion would resurrect)

Его неугомонная душа (its restless soul) (14)
5.4. Material realizations of the soul of the home
Similarly to the human's soul, the soul of the home has no material
embodiment. But in the language we try to identify it with physically per-
ceived objects – people, animals, things. Representation of the human soul
is the same. The aforementioned functional aspect of the soul of the home
plays an important role in its material identification. It goes without saying
that all attempts at the material representation of the soul of the home are
of metaphorical origin.
5.4.1. Identification of the soul of the home with specific objects
Curtains, balconies, stoves, books and artworks are referred to as the

soul of the home. Its image is also reflected in windows and doors:
Шторы – душа дома (Curtains are the soul of the home.) (10)
Помимо серебра – ее великой страсти, – подлинной душой дома
являются произведения современного искусства (Apart from silver,
which she really adores, the real soul of her home lies in the contemporary
artworks.) (15)
У балконов свой собственный запах. Балконы эти – как бы душа
домов. Листья деревьев о чем-то нашептывают деревянным
столбикам перил, похожим на детские игрушки (Balconies have their
own odor. They are similar to the soul of the home. Leaves are constantly
whispering something to the railings, which look like children’s toys.)
(16)
Дом наш давно был разграблен, но отцовский музеум, душа дома,
словно сохранив неуязвимость, присущую святыням, уцелел (перейдя
затем в ведение Академии Наук), и этой радостью совершенно
искупалась гибель знакомых с детства стульев и столов (Our house
was desolated and robbed long ago but the museum of my father, the soul
of our home, preserved the invulnerability, typical of ancient sanctuaries,
and was not damaged. It was then passed to the Academy of Sciences.
This news made me forget the destruction of chairs and tables which I had
known since childhood.) (17)
Печи-камины с продуманным дизайном и отличными теплотехническими
характеристиками станут «душой» Вашего дома и будут долгие годы
дарить мягкое тепло (Stoves with elaborate design and perfect thermal
characteristics would become “the soul” of your home and would make
you warm for a long period of time.) (18)
90 Chapter 5
Душа нашего дома – КНИГИ. Для нашей семьи дом – где нам
спокойно, удобно и у каждого есть свой уголок для уединения (The
soul of our home lies in BOOKS. The home of our family is a calm and
cozy place where everyone has some quiet corner to sit alone.) (12)
Окна – зеркало души дома (Windows reflect the soul of the home.) (19)
Двери как зеркало души дома (Doors as a mirror of the soul of the
home.) (20)
Objects which are called the soul of the home create a special atmos-
phere and uniqueness. Significant material realization of these objects is
their anthropocentric moment. A person selects and creates all the objects
which become the soul of the home. There is a close complementary con-
nection between the owner, who is in charge of the design, and the soul of
the home. A person takes care of the material realization of the soul of the
home and chooses the objects which would decorate the dwelling. The
owner forms the soul of the home whereas the soul is in charge of the
owner’s mood and feelings. The owner and the soul of the home comple-
ment each other and it is difficult to say who or what is more important:
Дом хранит человеческую любовь и подаренное ему Тепло. Жилищу

свойственно впитывать эмоциональную энергетику человека: царит
ли в доме любовь и согласие или тяжёлая негативная атмосфера.
Точно так же и он «отвечает»... (Each house preserves love and warmth
gifted to it. Any dwelling always absorbs the energy of a person and it is
not important whether there are love and harmony or negative atmosphere
at home. The house “responds” similarly…) (21)
People also mention the ensoulment of the home. It means that the soul
has material realization and home is the place where it is stored (Fedorova,
in press) on the initiative of the owner. 5 Therefore, the home is treated as a
kind of container for storing immaterial soul:
5 We should mention the similar process by which God or an angel “puts” soul into
the body of a person: Согласно верованиям, душа появляется у человека до
или в момент рождения: человек рождается вместе с душой (According to
some beliefs, soul is born either before or at the moment of a human’s birth –
therefore, we are born with souls); Бог (ангел) «вкладывает» душу в тело; ангел
приносит младенческую душу и вкладывает ее в зародыш в час зачатия (…),
во второй половине беременности (…); души умерших переселяются в
новорожденных (…) (God (or the angel) “puts” soul into the body; the angel
brings the soul and puts it into the fetus upon impregnation (…); souls of the de-
Душа зарождается в доме, когда ее туда вкладывают. Мастерская

«Душа Дома» занимается именно этим. Мы одушевляем дома
обратившихся к нам людей. Мы все и всегда делаем с душой:
начиная от проекта, продолжая выбором строительных материалов и
заканчивая качеством отделочных работ (Soul is born at home when-
ever it is stored there. “Dusha Doma” studio does the same. We make the
houses of our clients alive and we are fully dedicated to our work no mat-
ter whether it is connected with design, selection of building materials or
quality of finishing works.) (22)
It is also necessary to mention explicitly commercial use of the idea of

material realization of the soul of the home and perception of home as soul
repository. The noun душа (soul) and its derivative verb одушевлять
(animate) are used in the advertisements of studios and shops which deal
with interior design. Advertising of objects, which are exact material reali-
zations of the soul of the home, attracts people through the ideal prototypi-
cal image of a home and traditional dreams about the home where one may
find protection from all external worries. More important is the advertising
motto that the realization is extremely easy and people don't have to do
anything difficult. All they need is to buy the object mentioned in the ad-
vertisement. Advertising texts also promise the absence of any troubles
and ensure people that they will get a final product – a house with soul.
These words are no more than an illusion and semantical analysis of the
metaphoric expression душа дома (the soul of the home) proves this. Only
the owner can create a unique atmosphere which would express his true
soul:
Понятно, что главный в создании уюта, ‒ это сам человек: можно

загромоздить своё жилище большим количеством красивых и
нужных вещей, но Тепла и Уюта всё же не будет... Приобретая
любой предмет в свой дом, ты хочешь как Красоты, так и Уюта,
поэтому наделяешь предмет любовью, с которой будешь относиться
к нему всю жизнь. Так обретают предметы свою душу. Если ты это
почувствуешь, то однажды ощутишь живое тепло, как от
присутствия ещё одного человека. Поскольку тебя в Доме окружают
нужные и любимые вещи, и предметы, то от этого ты уже
чувствуешь не только Тепло, но Уют и даже Комфорт. Как
говорится, ‒ «Дом дышит» вместе с тобой... (It is obvious that a person
plays the most important part in the creation of comfort. One may fill the
ceased reincarnate in newborn babies) (Tolstaya 1999, 163). Thus, a person is

compared with God whereas his/her house becomes a masterpiece.
92 Chapter 5
dwelling with tons of beautiful and useful objects, but there would be no
Warmth and Comfort… When we buy something, we want this object to
bring Beauty and Comfort to our home. Thus, such an object gets love and
care. That is how different objects find their souls. If you feel this, you
will find it similar to the presence of some other person. When you are
surrounded by necessary and favourite things, you feel not only Warmth
but also Comfort. They say that your home is “breathing” with you…)
(21)
Nonetheless, the phrase душа дома (the soul of the home) can often be
seen in the names of the shops which sell household materials:
Душа дома. Розничная сеть по продаже товаров для дома и ремонта

(The soul of the home. Retail chain which sells household materials.) (23)
People also say that the thing is made with soul when its creator fully
dedicated him/herself to the production process and did everything with
love. A similar connection characterizes the relations between the home
with soul and its owner. The soul of the home absorbs the values which are
gifted by the owners:
Аурой (энергетикой) обладает любой предмет. Понятие душа, как

набор всех энергий вселенских присуще человеку. Человек-творец и
в порыве творчества он может создать вещь, имеющую
определенную энергетику. В этом случае незримо мы чувствуем ее и
говорим: «Вещь сделана с душой». Возможно в случае с домом и
имеет место это событие (Each object has its aura or energy. A person
also has soul which is a set of universal energies. Human creativity may
result in the creation of an object with a specific energy. In such a case we
feel it and say that “the object is made with soul.” Perhaps, the same re-
lates to our home.) (Aleksandr Andreevich) (1)
Конечно есть душа... Мы же строили дом с душой и поэтому он нашу
частичку в себе хранит (Soul definitely exists… We built our house with
our soul and it keeps a part of it.) (Arina) (12)
5.4.2. Location of the soul within the house space
All the attempts to identify the soul of the home with specific rooms
are similar to the attempts to answer the question about the location of the
human’s soul. Remarkably, for both the answer is connected with the word
сердце (heart):
«Кухня – это сердце дома, а стол – его хозяин» ‒ как часто мы

слышим это крылатое выражение. Кухня – это действительно и
сердце и душа дома. Это место, где мы не только готовим вкусную

домашнюю еду своими руками, но и наслаждаемся чашечкой
утреннего кофе, ужинаем в кругу семьи, отдыхаем от мирских
забот... (A kitchen is the heart of the house whereas a table is its master.
Such a saying can be heard quite often. The kitchen is definitely the heart
and the soul of the home. This is a place for cooking tasty meals, enjoying
morning coffee, dining with the family and having a rest from all trou-
bles…) (24)
Душа моего дома ‒ это просторная кухня, на которой любят
собираться члены моей большой семьи (A spacious kitchen is the soul
of my home. All the members of our big family love spending time there.)
(Stepanida Olegovna Upyreva) (12)
Каждая из нас – хозяйка и огромное количество времени проводит на
кухне. Вообще говорят, что кухня – душа дома (Each of us is a house-
wife and spends much time in the kitchen. People say that the kitchen is
the soul of the home.) (26)
It is obvious why the soul of the home is found in the kitchen. Most of
us treat the kitchen as the most significant room and a place for important
conversations (Fiodorowa, Pazio-Wlazłowska 2015, 162):
Мама говорит, что кухня ‒ это душа дома. Ведь там не только вкусно
едят, но непременно общаются, делятся переживаниями и радостями,
а уютная атмосфера располагает к хорошим отношениям. Поэтому
мама сама была дизайнером и вложила в кухню «кусочек души». Ей
хотелось, чтобы кухня была светлой, просторной, максимально
комфортной, с нотками кантри (My mother says that the kitchen is the
soul of the home because we can eat, communicate, share our stresses and
joy there. Moreover, its cozy atmosphere encourages good relations. My
mother was a designer and she left a “part of her soul” in this kitchen. She
wanted to make it a light, spacious and comfortable place filled with the
sounds of country music.) (27)
It is necessary to mention that the kitchen is treated as a woman's space

as women are in charge of taking care of the soul of the home (Fiodorowa,
Pazio-Wlazłowska 2015, 167‒168). Thus, as we see below, there is a dis-
tinct and constant connection between the soul of the home and its mis-
tress.
The attempt to demonstrate the location of the soul within the home
space is not limited to the kitchen. Living rooms and bedrooms are also
mentioned in some texts from Runet as places where the soul of the home
dwells. Moreover, neither bathrooms nor halls have been mentioned in the
selected samples. We may suppose that this is connected with the fact that
these rooms have service functions. Therefore, the location of the soul of
94 Chapter 5
the home is connected with the rooms where all the members of the family
usually gather or feel comfortable and safe:
Гостиная – душа дома (The living room is the soul of the home.)
Гостиная ‒ это центр дома, место, где собирается семья и где
принимают гостей. Именно с гостиной ассоциируется понятие
домашнего очага (The living room is the center of the home and the
place where the whole family gathers and communicates with guests or
with each other. The notion of the hearth is closely connected with the liv-
ing room.) (29)
5.4.3. Identification of the soul of the home with animals
The soul of the home is depicted as a butterfly. Furthermore, local folk-

lore compares the human soul with butterflies, moths, fireflies, flies, birds
(especially such birds as owls and eagle-owls), reptiles, mice and fish
(Tolstaya 1999, 165–166; Belova 2016, 394; Moroz 2016, 438). O. Belova
states that a butterfly is a symbolic depiction of the soul of the deceased.
This soul gets back to the relatives on the death anniversary in order to
remind them about its presence. The butterfly “(…) своим поведением
демонстрирует желание установить контакт с родней (demonstrates its
desire to get in touch with the relatives).” (Belova 2016, 396).
5.4.4. Identification of the soul of the home with characters
The soul of the home is also identified with the characters dwelling in
the house:
У каждого дома есть душа ‒ это живущий в нём человек (Each home
has its soul – it is the person who dwells there.) (30)
Обитатели его ‒ его душа (Its dwellers are its soul.) (Serguello) (12)
It is necessary to mention that the soul of the home is identified with

two different types of characters – either a mythical home spirit (the keep-
er of the hearth) or specific people who dwell in the house.
5.4.4.1. Identification of the soul of the home with mythological

characters
Домовой – это душа дома, духовная сущность, которая живет на

данном участке территории, где стоит дом (The home spirit is the soul
of the home and its spiritual nature, which lives on the same territory) (…)
(31)
Домовой ‒ это душа дома, покровитель жилища и людей, живущих в

нем. Домовой ‒ идеальный домохозяин, вечный хлопотун, зачастую
ворчливый, но заботливый и добрый (The home spirit is a patron of the
home and its dwellers. It is an ideal master who constantly takes care of all
issues. It is a bit grouchy but very kind.) (32)
The home spirit is an important character of Slavic mythology. It is a

kind spirit which protects the house and helps people who dwell there:
Домовой (…) это домашний дух, мифологический хозяин и покровитель

дома, обеспечивающий нормальную жизнь семьи, здоровье людей и
животных, плодородие (...). Домовой существует в каждом доме и
связан с определенным родом, предком которого он мыслится (The
home spirit (…) is a mythological master and patron of the home who is in
charge of the normal life of the family, its health and fertility (…). Each
house has a home spirit as it is connected with a certain family and is their
ancestor.) (Levkievskaya 1999, 120)
5.4.4.2. Identification of the soul of the home with specific and real
character
The soul of the home is usually identified with a mistress who is in

charge of the household. Taking care of the home is the most traditional
chore of a woman in a family:
(…) женщина во все времена была и остается хранительницей

домашнего очага, а не разрушительницей. Она является воином,
охраняющим очаг от нежелательных вибраций из чужеродных
энергий в форме зла, негативных мыслей, ссор и скандалов (A woman
has always been and still remains the mistress of the home. She is the war-
rior who protects the hearth from the influence of hostile vibrations, nega-
tive thoughts, arguments and scandals.) (25)
Women are also in charge of the preservation of family values. They

also keep the history and the traditions of the family:
Говорят, что женщина Душа дома. (…) Говорят ‒ что женщина это
Душа квартиры (They say that a woman is the soul of the home. (…)
They say that a woman is the soul of an apartment.) (8)
Она обладала, скажу так, совершенно мужским интеллектом, при
этом была душой дома, хранительницей семейных преданий,
нравственных ценностей (She had a kind of masculine character but still
was the soul of the home and the one in charge of family values and tradi-
tions.) (5)
96 Chapter 5
Пусто так кругом, недостает ее − хозяйки, души дома! (We miss the
mistress and the soul of the home so much!) (33)
Душой дома была Карина: обаятельная женщина, аристократка, она
импонировала всем (…) (Karina was the soul of the home: she was a
nice and noble woman and everyone liked her) (…) (34)
Настоящей душой дома была тетя Оля – мать всех
наимногочисленнейших Черновых детей (Auntie Olya was the real soul
of the home and the mother of the numerous children of Chernov.) (35)
Душой дома была Наталья Петровна – мать Андрона и Никиты, одна
из интереснейших женщин, когда-либо мной встреченных (Natalya
Petrovna, the mother of Andron and Nikita, was the soul of the home. She
was one of the most interesting women I’ve ever met.) (36)
A woman is the soul of the home and its mother/mistress who takes
care of the family and household. The role of woman/mistress is set
against the typical image of a man who doesn’t pay significant attention to
the household and hearth.
But even a man can be the soul of the home if he takes care of the oth-
ers. It is a mandatory requirement because the soul is not identified with a
specific gender or importance in the family. Only the actions of the charac-
ter (especially the care toward the others and their health) are taken into
account:
И мне кажется, что Эскин работает не директором, а душой Дома

актера, родного дома актеров (It seems that Eskin worked as the soul of
Actor’s House and not its head.) (28)
Frequent identification of the soul of the home with a woman/mistress

lets us draw the conclusion that the mistress herself is characterized
through the image of the soul of the home. There is a constant connection
between the home and its mistress (or even master) who does everything
to turn the house into a “living creature”.
5.5. Functions of the soul of the home
As the soul of the home does not have exact material realization, lan-
guage tries different means of “expressing the inexpressible.” These at-
tempts are not limited to the identification of the soul of the home with
specific material realizations mentioned earlier. The soul is also character-
ized on the basis of the functions it performs.
It is interesting that some functions of the soul of the home are similar
to the functions of the home itself. The soul protects the dwellers and their
comfort. It is associated with the hearth which is treated as something
desired. The hearth is connected with the image of a small flame in the
darkness. It is identical with the light in the window, which, as L. L. Fedo-
rova states:
(…) связывается с концептом ПУТИ и с путником, странствующим

во тьме и обретающим надежду, цель, к которой стремится. Свет для
него – отрада и ориентир, придающий смысл пути. Странник уже не
блуждает, а устремляется, притягивается к этому маяку.
Единственное окошко, светящееся в темноте ночи, заманчиво,
обещает радость и покой, утешение и отдых (is connected with the
concept of the PATH and the traveler who is travelling in the darkness and
suddenly finds hope and aim. Such light is a landmark which gives sense
to his/her path. The traveller does not wander but is magnetized by this
lighthouse. The only gleaming window in the darkness promises joy,
calmness, solace and rest.) (Fedorova 2016, 375)
Taking into account the aforementioned facts, it is reasonable to per-

ceive the soul of the home as a value:
Каждый дом есть горящий огонек во Вселенной. Пока в нем будет

гореть пламя, он будет живым и реальным. Это пламя живет
благодаря таким человеческим чувствам, как любовь, нежность,
взаимопонимание, забота, ласка, тепло. Каждое такое чувство
является маленькой искоркой, поддерживающей свет и тепло в
семейном очаге (Each home is a flame in the Universe. It remains alive
and real as long as the flame exists. This flame is strengthened by such
human feelings as love, tenderness, mutual understanding, care, and
warmth. Each such feeling is a small sparkle that supports the light and
warmth of the hearth.) (25)
5.6. Place of the soul of the home in the system of values
The soul of the home is closely connected with the most important val-
ues in the lives of the people: family, kindness, love and peace:
«Вложите в меня свою душу, свою любовь, свой труд, старание, и я

вас тоже отблагодарю», ‒ говорит (дом) (The home asks to be filled
with soul, love, labor and commitment and it promises to thank one back).
Чем больше любви и заботы человек вкладывает в дом, тем
гармоничнее будет жизнь. Стены впитывают все: и нашу любовь, и
наши конфликты, и брань и ругань, и недовольство, и уныние. Это
все будет обратно излучаться (The more love and care people give to
their home, the more harmonious their lives will be. The walls absorb our
love, arguments, curses, sorrow and dullness. And they return all these
things back.) (9)
98 Chapter 5
The presence of the soul of the home is connected with the other values
as the soul isn't an inborn element of any home. Moreover, it can be char-
acterized as potential and the desired gift which can only be received in
connection with the other values. They are complementary and their ab-
sence equals the absence of the soul:
К сожалению многие дома бездушные и сами люди даже не

подозревают... Не может быть души там, где нет любви! (Unfortunate-
ly, a lot of homes are soulless and people don’t know it… There is no soul
in the place without love!) (Esenia) (12)
Thus, the concept of the soul of the home lies beyond the external char-
acteristics of the dwelling. It relates to a manifold structure of values as it
is interconnected with a positive attitude towards family, love, safety,
protection, comfort and good relations with the environment, neighbours
and guests. The soul of the home may be treated as one of the subconcepts
of the notion home. But it is necessary to remember that the soul of the
home is not limited by its physical aspect. It goes beyond it and is con-
nected with the chain of positively-evaluated emotional relations between
people. The soul of the home is always positive and has only positive
connotations. That is why it can be neither assessed nor calculated, as it
has no definition which could have given us any qualitative or quantitative
characteristics.
The soul of the home reminds us of the anthropocentric perception of
the world and the allocation of human qualities to the dwelling.
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Summary
The aim of the research is to analyze the conceptual metaphorical expression
душа дома (the soul of the home) in Russian linguistic culture using samples
selected in Runet and Russian National Corpus. Results of the research demon-
strate that the metaphorical expression душа дома (the soul of the home) reflects
an anthropocentric perception of the world, the embodiment of the home and as-
signing to it of human qualities. It may be explained by the fact that the structure of
the human body serves as a matrix for the characteristic of the home. The soul of
the home relates to a manifold structure of values as it is interconnected with a
positive attitude towards family, love, safety, protection, comfort and good rela-
tions with the environment, neighbours and guests. Thus, it is connected with a
chain of positively-evaluated emotional relations between people.
Keywords: concept, metaphorical expression, home, soul, Russian language,

axiological sphere, the soul of the home
CHAPTER 6
THE CONCEPT OF A CHILD’S SOUL:

A COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
OF THE DISCOURSE AMONG CZECH-SPEAKING
WOMEN1
LUCIE SAICOVÁ ŘÍMALOVÁ

CHARLES UNIVERSITY, CZECH REPUBLIC
The “soul” is among those concepts that are difficult to compare

between cultures. As a concept, it is influenced by a number of different
factors – cultural, religious, historical and individual – and expressed
linguistically in different ways (Chlup 2007).
In this study, I analyse the concept of the soul in contemporary Czech
discourse. I focus on how a child’s soul is conceived and valued by Czech-
speaking women, especially young mothers, pregnant women, and women
who plan to become pregnant. I believe that it is important to know what
young parents and parents-to-be think about the concept and the values
they associate with it, as such conception may influence parents’
behaviour towards their children. Parents also transfer some of their
beliefs and values onto the next generation.
My research is linguistically oriented, grounded in a cognitive analysis
of the overall linguistic picture of the concept and based on data retrieved
from the Internet. Linguistic research into the concept in the Czech
1 The research was supported by the project PROGRES Q10, Language in

Changes of Place, Time, Culture of the Charles University, Faculty of Arts. The
present study is a significantly revised and elaborated version of the first version
published in Czech: Saicová Římalová (2018).
104 Chapter 6
Republic today is still at a preliminary stage and oriented towards different

contexts (e.g. Vaňková 2016, Janovec 2016).
In the Czech language, the noun duše is the main lexical exponent of
the concept “soul”. In some contexts (such as communication about and
with children), the diminutive form dušička is also common. The
diminutive form is associated, among others, with positive emotional
colouring and is typical of child-directed speech. Vaňková (2016, 271–
272) states that duše (soul) is not a keyword in Czech culture (unlike in,
for example, Russia), but it may nevertheless be of significant value.
Both duše and dušička are polysemous words that have several
semantic profiles (Vaňková 2016), but only some of the meanings
appeared in the material analysed: the most important distinction was that
between the soul as a “spiritual” (religious) phenomenon and as a
“psychological” phenomenon. These two understandings of the concept
and the possible tension between them appear in other languages and
cultures (Filar 2016, Vaňková 2016). My analysis focuses on this
psychological-spiritual polarity with respect to the conception of a child’s
soul.
6.1. Data and Methods
The data were retrieved from websites written in Czech and intended
primarily for mothers of young children, for pregnant women, and for
women who plan to become pregnant. The analysed texts consist mainly
of contributions from discussion forums. A smaller amount of material
was taken from question-and-answer web pages and from individual blogs.
The main sources were: www.emimino.cz and www.modrykonik.cz,
supplemented by www.babyonline.cz and www.mimibazar.cz. For a
broader context, selected websites addressed to other groups were also
viewed, such as general websites for female readers, or websites for
Christians (e.g. www.vira.cz). The websites were viewed between May
2017 and April 2018.
The material has a number of noteworthy characteristics. The
discussions are public, but they create an illusion of private, mostly
informal conversation. The texts are anonymous: we can only infer facts
concerning the authors. We do not know how strongly the authors believe
what they say or how widespread their ideas are in the community. It
should be noted that some authors stated that they did not believe in
anything like a “soul” and did not agree with the opinions expressed by
other participants.
The Concept of a Child’s Soul 105
The Internet search started with the keywords duše and dušička, which
enabled me to delimit a set of topics containing discussions about the soul
in general, and a child’s soul in particular (the beginning of human life,
what happens after death, reincarnation, and so on). I continued the search
within texts related to these topics. This method led to a large corpus of
texts of varying length and quality. In this article, I focus on texts which
discussed the soul of a child and the values associated with it; for a more
detailed analysis of texts concerning the “adult” soul, see Saicová
Římalová (2018).
The textual corpus was analysed using methods from a cognitive
approach to language, especially the linguistic picture of the world / the
linguistic worldview (cf. Vaňková et al. 2005, Bartmiński 2009). The
theory of the linguistic picture of the world studies what linguistic
expressions reveal about a speaker’s understanding of the world, including
their evaluation of it, and how this understanding is related to the cultural
background associated with the given language. Other theories, such as the
“classic” version of the conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson
1980) or the theory of blending (Turner 2014), were applied to relevant
cases. The combination of methods focuses on reconstructing the “picture”
of the studied phenomenon as encoded in the given linguistic material. It
does not attempt to “guess” what the real intentions of the original authors
were or the extent to which the content was expressed intentionally.
6.2. Concepts of the Soul of a Child
The material analysed contained four meanings of the word duše and
several definitions (profiles, Bartmiński 2009) of the concept: (a) the soul
as a psychological phenomenon; (b) the soul as a spiritual phenomenon;
(c) the metonymy where the soul stands for the whole person (dobrá duše:
“good soul”, referring to a person who is willing to help), and (d) duše as
the inner part (inner tube) of a pram wheel or other wheel. Some meanings
and definitions described by other sources (Vaňková 2016) were not
found.
Only two of the above are relevant to this study: the soul as a
psychological phenomenon and the soul as a spiritual phenomenon. These
two concepts tend to behave in different ways and are associated with
different values. The distinction between the two definitions (profiles) is
usually clear but not always, such as when bringing up children is
described as taking care of their soul. (These unclear cases were left aside
for the moment.) I will begin with a discussion of the “psychological”
soul, and then turn my attention to the “spiritual” soul.
106 Chapter 6
6.3. The “Psychological” Soul of a Child
The concept of the “psychological” soul of a child falls within the

broader cultural context of the concept of childhood, parenthood and
family, and of cultural norms which define the way children should be
treated. It has been repeatedly noted that adults’ relationship to children
has changed significantly in Czech culture over the past two centuries: the
importance of the emotional function of a family is growing (Lenderová,
Jiránek and Macková 2009, 164), relationships between family members
and adults’ relationships with children have become more “emotional” and
less authoritative (Lenderová and Riedl 2006, esp. 134–160), and
“Motherhood” has become more important (Lenderová 2016, 107). One
cause of such changes may be that families are becoming smaller (Možný
2008).
The “psychological” definition models a child’s soul typically as the
psychological and emotional features of children as human beings: their
personality. The diminutive form, dušička, is frequent in this context and
the metaphor “the soul is a container” appears. A child’s “psychological”
soul is typically seen as fragile, vulnerable, as something that should be
protected, should not be harmed, and that is important. For example:
Duše je křehká nádoba a jakýkoliv pocit ne-pohody je nutno prozkoumat. 2

A soul is a fragile container and any feeling of discomfort must be
investigated.
(www.babyonline.cz/strach-u-deti)
The “psychological” soul of a child can also be depicted as something

that adults find difficult to understand, something that is to a large degree
unpredictable and that causes the child to behave differently from an adult
(that is, unpredictably, “un-reasonably”, inconsistently):
holt dětská dušička je opravdu samá záhada

well, a child’s soul [diminutive] is really full of mysteries
(www.emimino.cz/diskuse/boji-se-vysavace-17071/)
Takže dětská dušička je opravdu citlivá […] a mohla se stát jen nějaká
blbost a to dítě na to reaguje tímto
2 Extracts from websites are not edited. They remain in their original form,
including any linguistic mistakes.

So, the child’s soul [diminutive] is really sensitive […] and some stupid
thing could have happened and the child reacts in this way
(www.emimino.cz/diskuse/skoro-3leta-dcera-naschval-cura-do-postele-
182593/)
It is difficult to connect this type of concept with values, but I believe

that similar explanations for unusual or unpleasant behaviour in a child
may help adults accept the child’s behaviour. The concept may thus serve
a protective function towards the child. The emphasis on the emotional or
psychological well-being of children corresponds to the general importance
of the emotional function of a family and of human relationships in general.
6.4. The “Spiritual” Soul of a Child
Spiritual definitions (profiles) of a soul (including a child’s soul) are

influenced by the general cultural and religious background of
contemporary Czech culture. It has been repeatedly stated that Czech
society is increasingly secularized and that the role of religion in everyday
life is diminishing (Havlíček, Klingorová, Lysák et al. 2017, 10).
Religiosity is becoming more privatized and less institutionalized
(Havlíček, Klingorová, Lysák et al. 2017, 10): people may describe
themselves as religious but without declaring allegiance to any particular
church (Havlíček, Klingorová, Lysák et al. 2017, esp. 90–93 and 114–
115). Some studies indicate that many people believe in various types of
“magic” (Hamplová 2008).
The contemporary situation is partly a product of the complex
development of Czech history. It may be influenced by the forced re-
Catholicization in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and by the
communist regime in the twentieth century, which restricted religion in
general (Havlíček, Klingorová, Lysák et al. 2017, 20). According to the
results of national censuses, interest in religion increased immediately
after the events of 1989 but later began to decrease once more (Havlíček,
Klingorová, Lysák et al. 2017). Havlíček, Klingorová, Lysák et al. (2017,
12) suggest that the role of the “traditional”, mostly Christian churches and
denominations (especially the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical
Church of Czech Brethren, and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church) is
decreasing in contemporary Czech life, while “alternative religious
movements” and religions imported from other regions have become more
popular.
Analysis of the concept of a “spiritual” definition of the soul (not just a
child’s soul) revealed numerous “naive” theories of the soul (for a more
detailed analysis see Saicová Římalová 2018). These theories mix
108 Chapter 6
elements from several religious systems (often simplified or distorted,

such as the Christian and Judaic concepts of the soul, reincarnation,
Karma), various metaphors (including personifications – the soul as an
entity that can move, that can have its own will, its own life), and
blendings (the blending of a soul and a ghost, the blending of a soul and an
angel, and so on). The concepts are frequently organized along the line of
opposites, such as the body versus the soul, “this world” versus “that
world”, the soul as a passive element versus the soul as an active agent, the
individual soul versus a single universal soul, and so on. The fact that such
theories are highly variable and eclectic could be seen as a reflection of the
general state of religiosity (or the lack of it) in Czech culture.
A spiritual definition of a child’s soul is grounded in the more general
concept of the soul as described above, but it also has its own particular
features that are different from the “adult” soul. In the material under
analysis, the spiritual soul of a child appears in the following contexts: (a)
the authors discuss how to communicate with children about such topics as
the soul or death; (b) the authors discuss a child’s spiritual soul and its role
in human life.
6.5. The Spiritual Soul in Child-Directed Communication
The material contains several discussions in which adults share how

they explain to children such phenomena as the soul or death. Typically,
they try to find a way to simplify these complex topics and make them
easier to imagine or understand. At the same time, it is apparent that they
want to present the topics in such a way to enable children to accept them
without having negative feelings towards them. Diminutive forms, typical
of child-directed speech in Czech, are especially common in this context.
The discussions cover the subject both of an adult’s soul and of a child’s
soul.
The spiritual soul is described using colour concepts or various shapes
(www.babyonline.cz/diskuzni-klub/diskuze-dne?site=57&id=123863#r12
32863). In the case of a “good” or “normal” soul, the colours are typically
white, whitish-transparent, or a rainbow; in the case of a soul that is
carrying the burden of some bad deed, the colour is generally black. Some
authors suggest that each person’s soul has a different colour (red-violet,
orange) and that the authors can even see it, which could be interpreted as
a blending of the soul and the aura. The “shape” of the soul is typically
rounded, without firm boundaries; the texture is soft. The soul is seen as
kulička – “a small ball” [diminutive] or bílej obláček – “a white cloud”
[diminutive], with an accompanying comment that this image originates in
fairy-tales where vodník (the “waterman”) keeps the souls of drowned

people in mugs.
In some texts, the spiritual soul’s function is described: the soul is seen
as something inside the human being that serves as an evaluating “organ”
and that can tell the person what is “good” and what is “bad”. Another
concept sees the soul as equivalent to the “good” part or the inner part of a
human being:
...že není vidět, ale že to je to dobré v ní, to jak má lidi ráda a co má ráda a
jak myslí…
...that it cannot be seen, but is what is good inside her [the child], how she
likes people and how she thinks...
(www.babyonline.cz/diskuzni-klub/diskuze-
ne?site=57&id=123863#r1232863)
...proto, abys vzdy vedela, ze se chovas spravne a jsi hodna holcicka.

Dokud nebude ta kulicka cerna, nemas se ceho bat...
...so that you [the child] would always know that you behave correctly and
you are a good girl [diminutive]. Until the small ball [the soul; diminutive]
is black, you do not have to worry about anything...
(www.babyonline.cz/diskuzni-klub/diskuze-
ne?site=57&id=123863#r1232863)
Child-oriented discussions concerning death usually emphasise the

question of the relationship between the soul and the body. The authors
typically suggest that the soul and the body separate after death: the body
is placed in the grave or burned and the soul “goes to heaven”. Diminutive
forms are again common. See, for example, extracts from a discussion
concerning how to explain “what is inside the grave” to a pre-school child:
Když člověk umře – což pochopily, tak už tělo nepotřebuje. A tak se spálí
a vloží do krabičky a ta je v tom hrobečku a dušička jde do nebíčka
When a person dies – which they [children] understood, they do not need
the body any more. So it is burned and placed in a box [diminutive] and it
is inside the grave [diminutive] and the soul [diminutive] goes to heaven
[diminutive]
(www.emimino.cz/diskuse/jak-vysvetlit-smrt-51337/)
One person suggests that the soul can also be found in the grave:
Je tam jen jeho dušička

Only his soul [diminutive] is there
110 Chapter 6
Some authors do not talk about the soul, or the body and the soul, but
about the person, that is, they use various blendings of the soul and the
person:
Ten kámen nám jenom ukazuje, kde dědeček spinká, a hlídá, aby ho nikdo
nerušil. Dědeček je uložený hluboko pod ním v takové zvláštní postýlce.
The gravestone shows us where grandfather [diminutive] sleeps
[diminutive] and makes sure nobody disturbs him. Grandfather
[diminutive] is placed deep underneath it in something like a special bed.
ví že princezna […] už se nevrátí. Ví že je v nebíčku

she [the child] knows that the princess [her sister] […] will not come back.
She knows that she is in heaven [diminutive]
sestřička je v nebíčku, kouká na ni a pomáhá jí

her sister [diminutive] is in heaven [diminutive], watches [informal
expression] her [the child] and helps her
Some of the examples compare death with sleep, but some authors
react negatively to such suggestions. They claim that such analogies could
be confusing for children and result in problems with sleeping patterns.
The last example above contains the motif of a dead relative who watches
living relatives from heaven and helps them. The motif also appears in
other discussions (see below).
As far as the values associated with the “spiritual” soul in the context
of child-directed communication are concerned, the descriptions
containing colours or shapes draw clearly upon culturally determined
connotations (evaluations): in Czech-speaking culture, light colours, round
shapes or soft textures are typically associated with a positive evaluation,
innocence, and so on, and dark colours with something negative (cf.
Vaňková et al. 2005). Descriptions of the soul’s functions are built from
two perspectives: in some cases, the value is associated with the soul itself
(the soul is the sum of the “good” in a human being), in some cases the
soul is seen as an “organ” that indicates values (for example, values
associated with human behaviour). Explanations regarding death bring the
relationship between the body and the soul into the centre of the picture.
The body and the soul are typically seen as separable and, unlike the body,
the soul is considered to be something that continues even after death.
6.6. Adult Communication about the Spiritual Soul of a Child
The concept of the “spiritual” soul of a child in discussions oriented

towards adult speakers seems to be influenced by two main factors: the
age of the child whose soul is being discussed (the soul of a small child or
an unborn child may be associated with specific features); and whether the
child is alive or dead.
Particular features of a child’s spiritual soul in the material studied
include: the soul of an unborn child can heal the mother or help her to
develop her personality; the spiritual soul of a child (typically a child of a
young age) can be more sensitive – it can, for example, see other souls (or
ghosts; cf. the conceptual blending of a soul and a ghost) or can remember
something from previous lives.
The material includes three relevant topics concerning the child’s
spiritual soul: (a) the soul of an unborn child; (b) the soul of a dead child;
and (c) the role of the soul in such events as miscarriage, abortion, bad
behaviour or deeds, and physical or mental disability.
The motif of the soul of an unborn child appears frequently in texts
discussing the question as to when human life begins. The answer to the
question is important because at that moment the child is considered to be
a human being and should be treated as such.
The beginning of human life is often equated with the moment when
“the soul enters the body”, but the authors disagree as to when this “event”
happens. They suggest various possibilities, sometimes with a significant
temporal distance between them: from the moment the sperm and the egg
merge (fertilization), to the moment after birth when the child starts to
breathe independently (www.emimino.cz/diskuse/duse-jeste-nenarozenych
-86545/ and www.modrykonik.cz/forum/o-tehotenstvi/od-kdy-ma-mimin
ko-v-brisku-dusi-co-myslite/).
The suggested time when the soul starts to be present in the child’s
body includes some of those moments seen as thresholds in prenatal
development: the moment of fertilization; when the egg implants in the
uterus; when the initial cells change into a “small creature” (maličký
tvoreček – diminutive) with small hands and legs; when the “creature”
starts to resemble a human being; the first beat of the heart; the first
movement of the child’s body; when the child starts to perceive; when the
child is capable of independent life (without further specification
regarding how independent life should be). Sometimes, the presence of the
soul is even placed after the moment of birth, for example when the child
takes its first independent breath. Some suggestions emphasised the
perspective of the pregnant woman: the child has a soul from the moment
112 Chapter 6
the pregnant woman starts to believe the child has a soul or starts to
perceive the child, starts to talk to it, or the child starts to perceive her.
Other, less typical images concerning the moment when the soul enters
the body also emerge. Some authors, for example, suggest that the soul of
the child can initially stay by the body of the mother (sometimes even
before the woman conceives) and only joins the body of the child after
some time; the soul may enter the child’s body during pregnancy, but it
can leave again, even repeatedly, or the souls can change in the child
during pregnancy:
Kamčo, jak jsem psala, je to individuální, kdy dušička vstupuje do těla,

aspoň tak si to myslím já podle různých mých zkušeností apod. Je možné,
že jakmile začne tlouct srdíčko, dušička vstoupí do těla poprvé, ale ještě
tam není definitivně zakotvená, může odcházet a vrací se. Když je
miminko v bříšku, dušička už se zdržuje u těla maminky, ale ještě není v
tělíčku stále... Já jsem třeba zažila dušičku, která čekala na vtělení v
porodnici…
Kamča, as I have said, it is individual when the soul [diminutive] enters the
body, at least I think so according to my various experiences. It is possible
that the soul enters the body for the first time as soon as the heart
[diminutive] starts to beat, but it doesn’t have to stay there. It can leave and
return. When the baby [diminutive] is in the tummy [diminutive], the soul
[diminutive] stays by the body of the mother [diminutive], but it is not in
the body [diminutive] the whole time… For example, I have known a soul
[diminutive] that waited for the embodiment in the maternity ward…
(www.emimino.cz/diskuse/duse-jeste-nenarozenych-86545/)
One author thinks the soul of a child may originate in part of the
mother’s soul:
spíš bych to viděla tak, že každé miminko když se narodí, tak si vezme
kousek své dušičky z duše maminky, do té doby jsou, jak se říká „jedno
tělo, jedna duše“, nebo ne?
I would see it a bit like every baby [diminutive] when they are born takes a
part of their soul [diminutive] from the soul of the mother [diminutive],
they are, till then, “one body, one soul”, as they say, or not maybe?
(www.modrykonik.cz/forum/o-tehotenstvi/od-kdy-ma-miminko-v-brisku-
dusi-co-myslite/)
Some contributions mention re-incarnation and discuss whether the

soul of a relative who died (usually recently) can return in the body of the
new-born child, or whether the soul of a child that died during pregnancy
can return in the next pregnancy of the same mother.
From this wide range of possibilities for when a child receives their
soul, three seem to be the most frequent: the moment of fertilization; when
the heart starts to beat; and when the child takes its first breath. Breathing
and the beating of the heart are strongly associated with life in a “naive”
picture of the world as reflected in the Czech language (Vaňková et al.
2005). The association of the soul with breathing may be also supported
by an etymological relationship between the Czech words duše (soul) and
dech (breath) (Rejzek 2001). Breathing and the beating of the heart are
also discussed in the context of death: life begins with breathing or the
first heartbeat and ends when breathing stops or the heart stops beating.
The beginning and end of human life are thus seen as a symmetry framed
by analogous signs.
The soul of a dead child is sometimes associated with features such as
the ability to keep watch over relatives who are still alive and to stay close
to them and guard them. This concept seems to be particularly strong in
cases when one of a pair of twins dies, especially when this happens
before birth. The soul of the dead twin can, according to the authors, stay
close to the living twin and guard it. This corresponds to a general folk
belief that the relationship between twins is closer than that between other
brothers and sisters (cf. www.emimino.cz/diskuse/duse-zemreleho-
dvojcete-192679/).
Sometimes the authors claim that mothers can perceive the souls of
their dead children. A mother can, for example, “see” that the soul is
somewhere and watching over her. In some cases, the soul of a dead child
is seen as the child itself and the metonymy “soul for the whole being” is
applied. Authors sometimes state that they believe that mothers will be
together with their dead children after their own death
(www.emimino.cz/denicky/denicek-maminky-andilka-7059/).
One concept seems to be especially strong in this context: when the
child dies before or during birth, perinatally, or at a young age, the child or
their soul can become an “angel”. Mothers of dead children may then be
referred to as andělské maminky (“mothers of angels”; diminutive form of
“mothers”).
Some of the concepts of the soul of a dead child mentioned above
could be interpreted as being part of a coping strategy when a child dies.
Such strategies can offer some kind of comfort to the parents by
suggesting, for example, that the child and the relationship between the
mother and the child still exist in some way or that the mother will meet
the child again one day. The strategies offer at least something positive
and can help a parent make sense of the situation. For example, the child’s
being in heaven means the child is well and comfortable. We should also
114 Chapter 6
note that believing the soul of a dead child guards relatives who are still
alive reverses the typical roles of parents and children: in reality, parents
typically take care of and guard their young children.
In some cases, the soul (both of a child and of an adult) is conceived as
an entity with its own will, an entity that can decide to do something, that
has its duties to fulfil or has to obey orders given to it by some “higher
power” or “god” (cf. Saicová Římalová 2018). The soul is thus seen as
being responsible for human deeds. Some authors state that the soul
“wants”, “decides”, “needs” or “is ordered” to do something and therefore
something (for example, an abortion) happens. In some versions of this
concept, the authors state that the soul is responsible not only for deeds in
“this life”, but also in previous lives. They also discuss how deeds in “this
life” influence the future life of the soul, or how the life of a predecessor
can influence the soul of someone from the next or a succeeding
generation. Some authors propose a simple cause-effect relationship: the
soul or the person with the soul (or a predecessor of the person) did
something wrong in a previous life and therefore the soul (and the person
with it) is “punished” in this life. In the case of a child’s soul, this concept
is foregrounded especially in discussions of topics such as miscarriage,
abortion, disability (especially physical disability) or why some people do
“bad things” or why “bad things” happen to them.
Several authors state that an abortion, a disability, or a “hard life” are
punishments for the deeds of the soul in a previous life or for the deeds of
a predecessor, or that the soul “needs” to undergo such an experience for
some reason:
Já věřím, že ta duše si vybírá i rodiče, takže i horší nebo lepší rodinu, aby
mohla splnit to, co v životě chce. Ale u těch potratů vůbec netuším jak by
to tak mohlo být, jestli se třeba duše může vrátit znova k těm stejným
rodičům, když poprvé těhotenství nedopadne.
I believe that the soul chooses the parents as well, or a worse or a better
family, so that it can fulfil what it wants in life. But with abortions, I don’t
have any idea how it is. Whether, for example, the soul can return to the
same parents when the pregnancy didn’t turn out right the first time.
(www.emimino.cz/diskuse/duse-jeste-nenarozenych-86545/strankovani/2/)
Holky já si třeba myslím, že ta duše si vybere tu maminku, která půjde na

potrat schválně, aby si zažila tu zkušenost s tím jaký to je být nechtěný.
Třeba pro svůj růst potřebuje tuto zkušenost nevím je to můj názor. Třeba
je to odplata za něco co způsobila v minulém životě.
Girls, I think the soul intentionally chooses the mother [diminutive] who
will have an abortion in order to live through the experience of being
unwanted. It may need this experience for its growth, for example. I don't
know, it's just what I think. It may be revenge for something it caused in a
previous life.
(www.emimino.cz/diskuse/duse-jeste-nenarozenych-86545/strankovani/2/)
The concept of the soul as an entity with its own will or as fulfilling
orders from a “higher power” may be a way of explaining some events or
coping with feelings of guilt. Such a strategy may shift the burden of guilt
or responsibility for some event (such as abortion) from the mother to the
child. It may also help the parent to cope with a loss (such as a
miscarriage) and frame it as something that is not the fault of the mother.
6.7. Discussion and Conclusion: The Concept, Value and Function of

the Soul of a Child
The material under analysis and the methods applied in that analysis
are highly specific and set clear limits to my research. The material is
anonymous: we know little or nothing about the authors and have to rely
on context and inferences within the texts. Those who join such
discussions represent a limited set of people, so the results cannot be
generalized to the whole of Czech society. The methods applied focus on
the concept of a child’s soul that can be reconstructed from the available
linguistic material. Just as the methods do not allow verification of the
identity of the authors, nor can they reveal their genuine opinions or
intentions or show the extent to which the authors believe what they are
writing, or how widespread the ideas expressed are.
The concept of a child’s soul and how it is valued is associated with
the more general concept of the soul itself. The latter (cf. Saicová
Římalová 2018) is typically divided into a polarity: the psychological soul
and the spiritual soul. The concept of the spiritual soul covers a wide range
of theories which tend to mix ideas and concepts from various religious
systems, folk traditions, prejudices and blendings (for example, the
blending of a soul and a ghost or a soul and an angel).
The concept of the soul of a child is very particular in certain respects:
the psychological soul of a child is typically seen as vulnerable, valuable
and deserving protection and tolerance; the spiritual soul of a child is
viewed as a complex phenomenon. The soul of an unborn child, the soul
of a dead child, and the concept of the soul as an active entity with its own
will seem to be important motifs. A child’s spiritual soul is sometimes
seen as being capable of actions that are not as typical of the soul of an
adult (for example, healing, watching over living relatives). The values
associated with the spiritual soul of a child in the material analysed in this
study are quite varied and not as unified as the values of the psychological
116 Chapter 6
soul. In some cases, the spiritual soul is identified with the child itself and
valued as such. On the other hand, it can also be seen as an independent
entity that decides about and is responsible for the person’s deeds
(including bad deeds). In such cases, the soul can be interpreted as the
cause of “bad things” and not valued so positively.
The concepts of the soul of a child can serve various functions and be
part of certain communicative strategies. For example, the authors may try
to draw the attention of other participants in the discussion to themselves
by expressing unusual opinions or by depicting themselves as “experts” in
a certain type of naive theory of the soul of a child (for example, a theory
concerning the presence of a child’s soul before birth or the “speed” of
reincarnation). The discussion may then change into a question-and-
answer session in which one participant reacts to questions or comments
from the others and becomes the centre of the communicative event.
The authors may also use various concepts of a child’s soul to explain
a child’s behaviour (this is typical of the concept of the psychological
soul), to explain certain (often negative or upsetting) experiences (the
death of a child or a physical disability), or to deal with feelings of guilt
(for example, after an abortion). The concept of a child’s soul as an entity
with its own will is important here. Seeing the child’s soul as having its
own will or as fulfilling orders given by some higher power can help the
authors justify events or their own actions or help them shift any feeling of
guilt onto something or someone else.
It would be interesting to know how the various concepts and
evaluations of a child’s soul influence parents’ behaviour towards their
children, but it would be necessary to apply other research methods and
use additional data. We can only guess which ideas may be potentially
helpful or harmful (cf. the idea that a child’s psychological soul deserves
protection or the role of the concept of the soul as having its own will in
discussions concerning abortion). Answers to the question as to when
human life begins (often perceived as the moment when the soul joins the
body) seem to be especially important, as parents generally see this as the
moment the child becomes a human being. Analysis of the concept of a
child’s soul and analysis of the opinions of young Czech women
concerning this topic are worthy of further investigation.
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Summary
The author analyses the concept of a child’s soul in contemporary Czech discourse
of Czech speaking young mothers, pregnant women, and women who plan to
become pregnant. The research is linguistically oriented and grounded in the
cognitive analysis of data retrieved from the Internet. Two understandings of the
concept are discussed: the psychological soul and the “spiritual” soul. The
psychological soul is typically seen as vulnerable, valuable and deserving
protection, while the spiritual soul is viewed as a more complex phenomenon and
its values are not so unified.
Keywords: Child’s soul, Czech language, function, the linguistic picture of the
world, metaphor, soul, value
PART II:
THE LINGUISTIC CONCEPTUALISATION

OF THE SOUL
CHAPTER 7
NAMES OF MENTAL ILLNESS

IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
ALENA RUDENKA, FANG XIANG

BELARUSIAN STATE UNIVERSITY IN MINSK
The specificity and importance of the concept “soul” in the Russian

linguistic worldview is well known; it has been repeatedly and variously
described (here we refer only the conference at Warsaw, dedicated to the
concept “soul”, and the book published after this conference: Masłowska,
Pazio-Wlazłowska 2016, Kapełuś, Masłowska, Pazio-Wlazłowska 2016).
It should be noted that only in Russian, mental illnesses received a
generalized name душевная болезнь (literally ʽan illness of soulʼ).
Everyday common nominations, like умственная отсталость ʽmental
handicap’, слабоумие ʽdementia’, etc. show that the Russian word душа is
synonymous with the words разум and интеллект ʽintelligence, mind’,
when we are talking about diseases. In other contexts, the soul and heart
are equated. The name психическая болезнь (literally ʽan illness of
psycheʼ) is also used only in the Russian language: it is created by analogy
with душевная болезнь on the basis of the derivative from borrowing (<
Greek psyche ʽsoul’).
In many other languages, the common names of mental and nervous
diseases are based on the absence, lack, defect of the mind—a concept of
“mind, intelligence” is their nominating basis. In particular, it is in
English: mental affection, disease, illness, disorder, alienation, handicap,
disability, deficiency; unsoundness of mind, illness of the mind, feeble-
mindedness < feeble-minded, weakness of mind, intellectual impairment,
etc.
Both in Russian and in English, there is the possibility of generalization: a
particular concept can be denoted by the general one. In Russian,
умственно отсталый человек ʽmentally defective man’ can be called
simply больной ʽa sick man’; Eng. insane (> insanity) comes back to Lat.
Names of Mental Illness in Different Languages 121
insanus ʽcrazy, abnormal’ < in ʽnot’ + sanus ʽhealthy’ (> Eng. sane
ʽhealthy’) [Online Etymology Dictionary].
Semantics and compatibility of Eng. soul do not differ fundamentally
from Rus. душа, except that the specificity of the Russian lexeme, which
has been widely discussed.
Russian душа and English soul correspond to two words in Chinese:
心灵 [xinling] < 心 [xin] ʽheart’ + 灵 [ling] ʽspirit’; 精神 [jingshen], that
was borrowed from Japanese 精神 [せいしん].
The history of the word with Japanese origin is as follows. In
accordance with the Taoist tradition, three treasures are emphasized and
must be "protected" and "nourished" throughout human life. The first one
is Jing (精), which can be translated as ʽsemen’ or ʽessence’. It is a special
substance (a kind of energy) that carries information about the structure
and certain characteristics of the physical human body. On the basis of this
concept of Taoism, the Japanese created the word 精神 [せいしん] ʽsoul’,
which came into Chinese later. The second treasure is Qi (氣)—vital
energy (vital force) that circulates in the human body and allows all organs
and systems of the body to function. Shen (神) is the third treasure. This
term can be translated as ʽSpirit’. It is Shen that makes us reasonable,
thinking, capable for self-improvement, and this is the third Chinese
lexeme, which correlates with Rus. душа and Eng. soul. From the above-
mentioned borrowing from Japanese we can trace the Chinese word 精神
病 [jingshenbing] ʽmental illness’ < 精神 [せいしん] ʽsoul’ + Chinese
suffix 病 [bing] ʽsickness’ 1.
However, the following nominations are more frequent. The concept of
“mental retardation” is denoted in Chinese by lexeme 智力障碍
[zhilizhang'ai] (simplified 智障 [zhizhang]) <智力 [zhili] ʽintellect’ + 障
碍 [zhang'ai] ʽhindrance’. Chinese 痴呆症 [chidaizheng] ʽdementia’
comes back to 痴呆 [chidai] ʽstupidity’ + suffix 症 [zheng] ʽdisease’. Its
synonym is 失智症 [shizhizheng] < 失 [shi] ‘loss’ + 智 [zhi] ʽintelligent’
+ suffix 症 [zheng] ʽdisease’.
In all three analyzed languages, the names created by the native means
of each language are only used for the general notion of "mental illness,
mental retardation". The designation of particular, specific mental
diseases, as usual, are borrowed words. This general tendency is due to the
fact that the nature and aetiology of mental illness were usually ignored by
1 Chinese 病 [bing] ʽillness’ is treated in this article as a suffix, because in modern
Chinese it cannot be used alone. Independent use of 病 [bing] is possible as a

shortened variant of 疾病 [jibing] ʽillness’ or as an archaism.
122 Chapter 7
the majority of the language speakers—their goal was to denote the fact of
illness in general.
Here are some examples of the names of specific mental or
neurological diseases in English and Russian, which come back, as a rule,
to Latin or Greek roots—they are often internationalisms. As a rule, such
names are medical terms, for example, Eng. oligophrenia ʽcongenital
mental retardation, dementia’, different degrees of which are denoted by
words idiocy, imbecility, debility—its Russian correspondences are
олигофрения, идиотизм, имбецилизм, дебилизм. This list is very long:
Eng. dementia (< Lat. dement-, demens ‘crazy’ < de- + ment-, mens
‘mind’)—Rus. деменция ʽdegradation of mental functions, resulting from
brain damage’; Eng. hypomania—Rus. гипомания ʽan easy degree of
mania’; Eng. bipolar disorder—Rus. биполярное расстройство (calque of
the Latin expression) ʽmaniac-depressive psychosis’; Eng. kleptomania—
Rus. клептомания, and many others. There are also a series of international
disease names which origins can be traced back to proper nouns, for
example, Eng. Lou Gehrig’s disease—Rus. болезнь Лу Герига (Henry Lou
Gehrig was a famous American baseball player who suffered amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis) [Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary]. Eng.
Munchausen syndrome—Rus. синдром Мюнхгаузена is named after the
literary character of Baron von Munchausen, who liked to draw the
longbow. Eng. Parkinson’s disease—Rus. болезнь Паркинсона (> Eng.
parkinsonism—Rus. паркинсонизм) is named on behalf of English
physician James Parkinson. The French neurologist Jean Charcot suggested
this name in honour of the British doctor and author of "An essay on the
shaking palsy", whose work was not properly appreciated during his life.
In Chinese, the general trend of denoting specific concepts by
borrowing remains, but it is realized differently—often through loanwords
from the Japanese. For example, Chinese 白痴 [baichi] ʽidiocy’ was
borrowed from Japanese.
There are many other Japanisms among Chinese medical terms.
Chinese (simplified) 洁癖 [jiepi], traditional 潔癖 ʽmisophobia’ = ʽa
pathological fear of contamination and germs, avoidance of contact with
surrounding objects’ < Japan. 潔癖症 [けっぺきしょう]. The hieroglyph
洁 [jie] has the meaning ʽcleanliness’, and 癖 [pi] means ʽeccentricity,
strangeness’. The productive Chinese suffix 癖 [pi] with the semantics of
ʽeccentricity, strangeness’ is often used for the terminology of mental
illnesses; it often appears as a part of terms like 窃盗癖 ʽkleptomania’, 藏
书癖 ʽcompulsive hoarding’, or ʽhoarding disorder’, 异食癖 ʽpicacism’ =
ʽthe desire to eat something inedible’.
Chinese 神经病 [shenjingbing], traditional Chinese 神經病

ʽpsychosis’ consists of word 神经 [shenjing] ʽnerve’ + 病 [bing]
ʽsickness’. The meaning of ʽpsychosis’ was borrowed from Japanese 神経
症 [しんけいしょう]. The very word from the traditional Chinese 神經
can be traced back to the Chinese 神 ʽthe god, the spirit’ + 經 ʽa book, a
text', and in archaic Chinese, it meant ʽthe mysterious book or text’, i.e. it
was not related to medicine. The medical meaning of 神經 ʽnerve’ was
created by Japanese doctor Sugita Genpaku (Japan. 杉田玄白 [すぎた
げんんぱく]) by means of a semantic translation of Dutch zenuw [黃河清
1996]. In the early twentieth century, the word with this new meaning
came into Chinese medical terminology—at that time the dictionary of the
Chinese language was actively replenished with Japanese lexemes. A
number of other Chinese psychiatric terms are also connected with the
word 神经 [shenjing] ʽnerve’.
Chinese 神经官能症 [shenjingguannengzheng] ʽneurosis’ is a
compound word consisting of 神经 [shenjing] ʽnerve’ (semantic
borrowing from Japanese) + 官能 [guanneng] = 功能 ʽfunction’ + Chinese
suffix 症 [zheng] ʽsyndrome / illness’. The term 神经官能症 is most often
used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, and on the mainland of China,
they prefer to use the word 神经症, which has the same meaning.
Simplified Chinese 神经过敏 [shenjingguomin] ʽhyperesthesia’ =
ʽhigh sensitivity’, traditional Chinese 神經過敏 < 神經 [shenjing] ʽnerve’
+ 过 [guo] = 过于 [guoyu] ʽexcessively, overly, overmuch’ + 敏 [min] =
敏感 [mingan] ʽsensitive’ is borrowed from Japanese. In modern Chinese
神経過敏 is polysemantic: the first meaning of it is the medical term
ʽhyperesthesia’, and the second one is ʽskeptical (person)’, ʽparanoid
(person)’.
Chinese 神经衰弱 [shenjingshuairuo] ʽneurasthenia’, consisting of
word 神经 [shenjing] ʽnerve’ + 衰弱 [shuairuo] ʽweak’, also was
borrowed from Japanese 神経衰弱 [しんけいすいじゃく].
The name of the concept "autism" was borrowed from Japanese, too.
Simplified Chinese 自闭症 [zibizheng], traditional Chinese 自閉症, which
includes characters 自 [zi] ʽself’ + 闭 [bi] ʽclose’ + 症 [zheng] ʽdisease’
come back to Japanese 自閉症 [じへいしょう].
The Chinese 恐高症 [konggaozheng] ʽacrophobia’ = ʽirrational fear or
phobia of heights’ is not related to the Japanese. The word goes back to
the Chinese character 恐 [kong] ʽfear’ + 高 [gao] ʽheight’ + 症 [zheng]
ʽsyndrome / disease’, it is the semantic calque of the internationalism
acrophobia (< Greek ἄκρον ʽpeak, summit, edge’ and φόβος ʽfear’ +
Chinese suffix 症 [zheng] ʽsyndrome / disease’).
124 Chapter 7
There are also some special names of mental illnesses in Chinese that
can be traced back to traditional Chinese medical terms, for example, 癔病
[yibing] ʽhysteria’ = 癔症 < 癔 [yi] ʽhysteria’ (the term from traditional
Chinese medicine) + suffix 病 [bing] ʽsickness’. The other term from
traditional Chinese medicine is 谵妄 [zhanwang] ʽdelirium’ < 谵 [zhan]
ʽto rave’ + 妄 [wang] ʽludicrous, absurd’, i.e. the disease is named
metonymically according to the characteristic symptom—the patient’s
incoherent speech.
Other metonymic transfers are also commonly used: mental diseases
are nominated not only as problems with the mind and intelligence
(Russian сумасшедший ‘crazy’), but also as problems with organs
"containing" the intelligence: Russian expressions на голову больной
ʽwith a sick head’, на голову хромает (verbatim ʽhis head is limp’), с
головой не дружит (verbatim ʽwith a head is not friendly’); English go
out of one’s head, crack one’s brains. Obviously, this is due to the
metonymic nomination of the mind through the name of the organ that is
“responsible” for it.
Often a mentally ill person or a person with inadequate behaviour or a
fool is designated by the same lexeme: in Rus. it is сумасшедший ʽcrazy’,
or the colloquialism псих ‘psychopath’, in Eng. it is crazy ‘mentally ill
person' → ‘person with inadequate behaviour'. Examples of the same
semantic development also exist in Chinese: 神经不正常
[shenjingbuzhengchang] ʽnervous, troubled, abnormal (person)’ can be
traced back to 神经 [shenjing] ʽnerve’ + 不正常 [buzhengchang]
ʽabnormal’. The Chinese colloquialism 疯子 [fengzi] ʽmadman, loco,
loony’ contains both meanings: ʽmentally ill person’ and ʽperson with
inadequate behaviour' (< 疯 [feng] ʽcrazy’, ʽinadequate behaviour' + 子
[zi] Chinese suffix without semantics).
The semantic transfer ʽmentally ill person’ → ʽa fool’ is represented in
Russian as идиот ‘idiot’, or дебил ‘moron’; in Eng. as idiot, or imbecile;
and in Chinese as 傻子 [shazi] ‘imbecile’, or 傻瓜 [shagua] ‘moron’. In
Chinese, this semantics may also be transferred by lexemes like 白痴
[baichi] ʽidiocy (sickness)’, ʽstupid’ (Japanism); 弱智 [ruozhi] ʽmental
handicap (illness / disability)’, ʽstupid’ (< 弱 [ruo] ʽweak’ + 智 [zhi]
ʽintelligence, mind’); and 智力障碍 [zhilizhang'ai] (often abbreviated as
智障 [zhizhang]) ʽmental handicap’, ʽretard, moron’ < 智力 [zhili]
ʽintelligence’ + 障碍 [zhang'ai] ʽhindrance’. The shortened word 智障
[zhizhang] ʽmental handicap, intellectual incapacity’ (→ ʽa fool’) came
into Chinese through semantic translation from the English intellectual
disability.
Thus, there are several common trends in the nomination of mental

illnesses in languages of different types.
Firstly, the native nominative means of a particular language are used
for the nomination of mental illness in general (non-special names), but
when naming specific mental diseases, usually, borrowing is preferred.
Secondly, in all analyzed languages there are such semantic
metonymic transfers as: 1) the genus-species synecdoche—mental illness
can be nominated through naming a concept of "disease"; and 2) mental
illness can also be nominated as a problem with the organ which is
responsible for intelligence.
Thirdly, there are other frequent semantic transfers: ‘mentally sick
person' → ‘person with inadequate behaviour'; ‘mentally ill person' →
‘fool, stupid'.
References
Lees, Andrew J. 2007. Unresolved issues relating to the shaking palsy on
the celebration of James Parkinson's 250th birthday. Movement
Disorders 22, suppl. 17: 327–334.
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 2008. 11th ed., Springfield,
Merriam-Webster.
Online Etymology Dictionary. URL: https://www.etymonline.сom
李養正 , 2011. 道家精氣神學說. 國際道家學術總會. Taipei, Republic of
China. URL: http://www.etaoist.org/taoist/index.php/ 2011-08-22-02-
11-46/2011-09-13-16-05-29/1865-2012-08-01-10-48-03.
黃河清, 1996. 神經考源. 学术集林 VII, ed. Wang Yuanghua. Shanghai:
Shanghai Far Eastern Press. URL: http://www.huayuqiao.org/
articles/huangheqing/hhq04.htm.
Summary
The names of mental disorders in English, Chinese and Russian are the best
way to reveal the national specifics of this fragment of the language worldview.
The methods of nominating of such words indicate the nature of this specificity.
However, except specifics, there are a number of common features in the
nomination of mental diseases in languages of different types: the use of native
language resources in common names and borrowings in special ones; the same
metonymic transfers, the closeness of semantic spheres of "mental illness" and
"stupidity".
Keywords: mental illness, nomination, semantic transfer, borrowing

CHAPTER 8
THE SOUL IN HEBREW IDIOMS

AND BIBLICAL SAYINGS
ROMAN MARCINKOWSKI
In the first edition of the scientific conference which opened up a series

entitled Anthropological and Linguistic Images of the Soul in an
Intercultural Perspective I presented the main Hebrew terms used
regarding the soul and defined them taking into consideration the
differences in Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism. In this work, the problem
focuses exclusively on the Hebrew Bible and, more specifically, on the
meaning of the Hebrew term nefesh and its occurrence in popular Hebrew
idioms and sayings taken from the language of the Bible. I was inspired
mainly by the publication by Dan Yahav Tanakh Yom Yom (in English:
Everyday Bible), Tel-Aviv 1999, Tammuz Publishers (quoted as Yahav).
It is a book written in Hebrew and addressed to Israeli readers with the
hope of reminding and incorporating into the modern language idioms and
Biblical sayings in order to enrich everyday Hebrew. A similar purpose
followed a different publication from which I also drew several
expressions titled Nivon Iri Hadash (in English: The New Dictionary of
Hebrew Idioms) by Tuvya Cohen (hereinafter referred to as Cohen)
Hotsaat Sefarim, Tel-Aviv 1991. I also included a Hebrew publication by
Ruvik Rosenthal, Milon hatseirufim. Nivim umatbeot lashon beivrit
hahadasha: gilgulim, meqorot, shimushim (in English: The Hebrew
Dictionary of Expressions, Idioms and Language Phrases in Modern
Hebrew: Transformations, Sources, Usage.), Keter Books, Jerusalem 2009
(The official title in English is: Dictionary of Hebrew Idioms and Phrases).
The basic text in this study, however, was the Hebrew Bible. I will try to
present here the most interesting phrases, first in their original wording
and then in several translations into Polish, English, German and Russian,
which will facilitate their understanding.
The Soul in Hebrew Idioms and Biblical Sayings 127
Of the five terms which are used in the Hebrew language to define soul
(neshamah, ruah, nefesh, yehidah, hayyah) I chose the most popular one,
‫ נפש‬nefesh. The occurrence of this term in the idioms and Biblical sayings
that have entered into the modern Hebrew language and their
understanding is the subject of this study.
In the work, I used the Bible Works 8 computer program from which the
original version of the Hebrew Bible and its translations can be derived
and used. The names of which I put below according to their
abbreviations:
Hebrew
WTT – Leningrad Hebrew Old Testament

CGM – Targum Cairo-Geniza Morphology
Polish
BGP – Biblia Gdańska (1632)

BTP – Polish Biblia Tysiąclecia, Wydanie 4. (1965/84)
English
NAS – New American Standard Bible with Codes (1977)

KJV – King James (1611/1769) with Codes
TNK – JPS Tanakh (1985)
German
ELB – Revidierte Elberfelder (1993)
Russian
RSO – Russian Synodal Orthodox Version

CRV – Contemporary Russian Version
I collected twenty-four idioms and Biblical sayings containing the

word nefesh, which have undoubtedly enriched the modern Hebrew
language. I managed to classify them into the following ten thematic
groups:
128 Chapter 8
I. Life/Death
II. Vitality
III. State of Mind
IV. Desires, Feelings
V. Pleasure/Refusal of Pleasure
VI. Life Wisdom and Perception of the World
VII. Sensitivity and Empathy
VIII. Attachment
IX. Impatience
X. Danger and Risk.
I admit that sometimes the choice was difficult and there were cases
where I had to classify the same idiom into two thematic groups.
According to the thematic division, I present below the Hebrew idioms
and Biblical sayings in the original and then for a better understanding, I
have enclosed translations into Polish, English, German and Russian.
Roman numbers indicate a successive topic. Arabic number indicates one
of the twenty-four selected idioms and Biblical sayings containing the
word nefesh. For the sake of clarity, each idiom and occurrence of nefesh
have been highlighted in the original text and in the translations.
I. Life/Death
I.1 i I.2 / 1Kings 19:4

‫וְ ֽהוּא־הָ לַ ֤� בַּ ִמּ ְדבָּ ר֙ ֶ ֣דּ ֶר� י֔ וֹם ַו ָיּ ֕ב ֹא ַו ֵ֕יּשֶׁ ב ַ ֖תּחַ ת ֣רֹ תֶ ם אֶ ָח֑ד וַיִּ ְשׁ ַ ֤אל אֶ ת־ ַנפְ שׁוֹ֙ ל ָ֔מוּת ַו ֣יּ ֹאמֶ ר׀ ַ ֗רב‬
‫ֹא־טוֹב אָ נֹ ִ ֖כי מֵ אֲבֹ ָ ֽתי׃‬ ֥ ‫ﬠ ָ ַ֤תּה יְהוָה֙ ַ ֣קח ַנפְ ֔ ִשׁי ִ ֽכּי־ל‬
BGP
1 Kings 19:4 A sam poszedł w puszczę na jeden dzień drogi: a gdy
przyszedł, i usiadł pod jednym jałowcem, życzył sobie umrzeć, i rzekł:
Dosyć już, o Panie; weźmijże duszę moję, bom nie jest lepszym nad
ojców moich.
BTP
1 Kings 19:4 A sam na odległość jednego dnia drogi poszedł na
pustynię. Przyszedłszy, usiadł pod jednym z jałowców i pragnąc umrzeć,
rzekł: «Wielki już czas, o Panie! Odbierz mi życie, bo nie jestem lepszy od
moich przodków».
KJV
1 Kings 19:4 But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness,
and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself
that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my
life; for I am not better than my fathers.
NAS
and came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself
that he might die, and said, "It is enough; now, O LORD, take my life, for
I am not better than my fathers."
TNK
1 Kings 19:4 he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. He
came to a broom bush and sat down under it, and prayed that he might die.
"Enough!" he cried. "Now, O LORD, take my life, for I am no better than
my fathers."
ELB
1 Kings 19:4 Er selbst aber ging in die Wüste eine Tagereise weit und
kam und ließ sich unter einem einzelnen Ginsterstrauch nieder. Da
wünschte er sich, sterben zu können, und sagte: Es ist genug. Nun,
HERR, nimm mein Leben hin! Denn ich bin nicht besser als meine Väter.
RSO
1 Kings 19:4 А сам отошел в пустыню на день пути и, придя, сел
под можжевеловым кустом, и просил смерти себе и сказал: довольно
уже, ГОСПОДИ; возьми душу мою, ибо я не лучше отцов моих.
‫שואל את נפשו למות‬: ‘to lose hope', ‘to resign', ‘to be in despair', ‘to wish
death upon oneself’, to end one’s life [intentionally];
Biblical ‫וַיִּ ְשׁ ַ ֤אל אֶ ת־נַפְ שׁוֹ֙ ל ָ֔מוּת‬:‘He desired to die.’, ‘He wished death upon
himself.’ (see 1 Kings 19:4; Judges 16:16; Judges 16:30; Yahav, p. 57)
֣ ַ ‘Take my soul.’, ‘Take life from me.’ (see 1 Kings

Biblical ‫קח אֶ ת־נַפְ ֔ ִשׁי‬:
19:4)
I. 5 / Esther 7:7
‫יתן וְ הָ ָ ֣מן ﬠ ֗ ַָמד לְ בַ ֵ ֤קּשׁ ﬠַל־נַפְ שׁוֹ֙ ֵ ֽמאֶ ְס ֵ ֣תּר הַ מַּ לְ ָ֔כּה ִ ֣כּי‬
֑ ָ ִ‫וְ הַ ֜ ֶמּלֶ� ָ ֤קם בַּ חֲמָ תוֹ֙ ִמ ִמּ ְשׁ ֵ ֣תּה הַ ַ֔יּיִן אֶ ל־גִּ נַּ ֖ת הַ בּ‬
‫ָר ֔ ָאה ִ ֽכּי־כָלְ ָ ֥תה אֵ לָ ֛יו הָ ָרﬠָ ֖ה מֵ ֵ ֥את הַ ֶ ֽמּלֶ�׃‬
BGP
Esther 7:7 Tedy król wstał w popędliwości swojej od onej uczty, a
szedł do ogrodu przy pałacu; ale Haman został, aby prosił o żywot swój
Estery królowej; bo wiedział, że mu zgotowane było nieszczęście od króla.
BTP
Esther 7:7 Wtedy król w gniewie swoim wstał od picia wina i poszedł
do pałacowego ogrodu. Haman zaś stanął przed królową Esterą, aby prosić
o życie swoje, ponieważ dostrzegł, że król postanowił jego zgubę.
130 Chapter 8
KJV
Esther 7:7 And the king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath
went into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make a request for his
life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against
him by the king.
NAS
Esther 7:7 And the king arose in his anger from drinking wine and
went into the palace garden; but Haman stayed to beg for his life from
Queen Esther, for he saw that harm had been determined against him by
the king.
TNK
Esther 7:7 The king, in his fury, left the wine feast for the palace
garden, while Haman remained to plead with Queen Esther for his life; for
he saw that the king had resolved to destroy him.
ELB
Esther 7:7 Und der König stand in seiner Wut vom Weintrinken auf
und ging in den Garten des Palastes. Haman aber blieb, um bei der
Königin Ester um sein Leben zu bitten; denn er sah, daß das Unglück
gegen ihn beim König beschlossen war.
CRV
Esther 7:7 Царь в гневе покинул пир и вышел в дворцовый сад, а
Аман остался, чтобы вымолить себе жизнь у царицы Эсфири: он
видел, что царь уже решил его участь.
RSO
Esther 7:7 И царь встал во гневе своем с пира и пошел в сад при
дворце; Аман же остался умолять о жизни своей царицу Есфирь, ибо
видел, что определена ему злая участь от царя.
‫( לבקש על נפש‬contemporary meaning): ‘to beg and pray for the preservation
of life’, ‘to ask for forgiveness’; (Yahav, p. 120)
I. 6 / Jeremiah 22:25
‫אצּ֥ר ֶ ֽמלֶ�־בָּ ֶב֖ל וּבְ יַ ֥ד‬
ַ ‫ֵיה֑ם וּבְ יַ ֛ד נְבוּכ ְַד ֶר‬
ֶ ‫וּנְ תַ ִ֗תּי� בְּ יַד֙ ְמבַ קְ ֵ ֣שׁי נַפְ שֶׁ֔ � וּבְ יַ ֛ד אֲשֶׁ ר־אַ ָ ֥תּה יָג֖ וֹר ִמפְּ נ‬
‫הַ כּ ְַשׂ ִ ֽדּים׃‬
BGP
Jeremiah 22:25 I podam cię w rękę tych, którzy szukają duszy twojej,
i w rękę tych, których się ty twarzy lękasz, to jest, w rękę
Nabuchodonozora, króla Babilońskiego, i w rękę Chaldejczyków;
BTP
Jeremiah 22:25 Wydam cię w ręce tych, co nastają na twe życie, w
ręce tych, przed którymi odczuwasz lęk, w ręce Nabuchodonozora, króla
babilońskiego, w ręce Chaldejczyków.
KJV
Jeremiah 22:25 And I will give thee into the hand of them that seek
thy life, and into the hand of them whose face thou fearest, even into the
hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of the
Chaldeans.
NAS
Jeremiah 22:25 and I shall give you over into the hand of those who
are seeking your life, yes, into the hand of those whom you dread, even
into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of the
Chaldeans.
TNK
Jeremiah 22:25 I will deliver you into the hands of those who seek
your life, into the hands of those you dread, into the hands of King
Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon and into the hands of the Chaldeans.
ELB
Jeremiah 22:25 Und ich werde dich in die Hand derer geben, die nach
deinem Leben trachten, und in die Hand derer, vor denen du dich
fürchtest, und in die Hand Nebukadnezars, des Königs von Babel, und in
die Hand der Chaldäer.
CRV
Jeremiah 22:25 Я отдам тебя в руки тех, кто жаждет твоей
смерти, в руки тех, перед кем ты трепещешь, — в руки
Навуходоносора, царя вавилонского, в руки халдеев!
RSO
Jeremiah 22:25 и отдам тебя в руки ищущих души твоей и в руки
тех, которых ты боишься, в руки Навуходоносора, царя
Вавилонского, и в руки Халдеев,
‫ מבקשי נפשי‬/ ‫( לבקש נפש‬contemporary meaning): ‘looking for/demanding

my soul’ (literal), threatening my life, ‘wanting to do evil unto me, to kill
me’, ‘plotting to destroy me; (Yahav, p. 73)
I.11 / Proverbs 13:3

‫נֹ ֵצ֣ר ֭ ִפּיו שֹׁ ֵ ֣מר ַנפְ ֑שׁוֹ פֹּ ֵ ֥שׂק ֜ ְשׂפ ֗ ָָתיו ְמחִ תָּ ה־לֽ וֹ׃‬
BGP
Proverbs 13:3 Kto strzeże ust swych, strzeże duszy swojej; kto
lekkomyślnie otwiera wargi swe, będzie starty.
132 Chapter 8
BTP
Proverbs 13:3 Kto ust swych strzeże — ten strzeże życia, kto usta
rozwiera — zgubi sam siebie.
KJV
Proverbs 13:3 He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that
openeth wide his lips shall have destruction.
NAS
Proverbs 13:3 The one who guards his mouth preserves his life; The
one who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.
TNK
Proverbs 13:3 He who guards his tongue preserves his life; He who
opens wide his lips, it is his ruin.
ELB
Proverbs 13:3 Wer seinen Mund behütet, bewahrt sein Leben; wer
seine Lippen aufreißt, dem droht Verderben.
CRV
Proverbs 13:3 Кто свои уста стережет — жизнь сбережет, а кто
несдержан на язык — себя погубит.
Proverbs 13:3 Кто хранит уста свои, тот бережет душу свою; а кто
RSO
широко раскрывает свой рот, тому беда.
‫( נוצר פיו שומר נפשו‬contemporary meaning): ‘[By] guarding his mouth he

watches over his soul.’ (literal), ‘The fence for wisdom is silence.’, ‘Life
and death depend on the tongue.’; (Yahav, p. 100)
I. 12 / Proverbs 22:5
‫וֹמר ַ֜נפְ ֗שׁוֹ ְיִר ַח֥ק מֵ ֶ ֽהם׃‬
֥ ֵ ‫צִ ִנּ֣ים ַ֭פּחִ ים בְּ ֶ ֣ד ֶר� ﬠִ ֵ ֑קּשׁ שׁ‬
BGP
Proverbs 22:5 Ciernie i sidła są na drodze przewrotnego; kto strzeże
duszy swej, oddala się od nich.
BTP
Proverbs 22:5 Ciernie, sidła na drodze złoczyńcy, kto życia strzeże,
ten od nich jest z dala.
NAS
Proverbs 22:5 Thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse; He
who guards himself will be far from them.
TNK
Proverbs 22:5 Thorns and snares are in the path of the crooked; He
who values his life will keep far from them.
ELB
Proverbs 22:5 Dornen und Schlingen sind auf dem Weg des
Verschlagenen; wer sein Leben bewahren will, hält sich fern von ihnen.
CRV
Proverbs 22:5 На пути лжеца — шипы да сети, кто жизнью
дорожит, не пойдет туда.
( ‫( שמר נפשו )עצמו‬contemporary meaning): ‘to be careful’, ‘to beware’, ‘to

watch out for something’; (Yahav, p. 103)
I. 19 / Psalm 119:109
‫ַנפְ ִ ֣שׁי בְ כ ִ ַ֣פּי תָ ִ ֑מיד ְ֜ו ֽת ָוֹר ְת ֗� ֣ל ֹא שָׁ ָ ֽכחְ ִתּי׃‬
BGP
Psalm 119:109 Dusza moja jest w ustawicznem niebezpieczeństwie;
wszakże na zakon twój nie zapominam.
BTP
Psalm 119:109 Moje życie jest w ciągłym niebezpieczeństwie, lecz
Prawa Twego nie zapominam.
KJV
Psalm 119:109 My soul is continually in my hand: yet do I not forget
thy law.
NAS
Psalm 119:109 My life is continually in my hand, Yet I do not forget
Thy law.
TNK
Psalm 119:109 Though my life is always in danger, I do not neglect
Your teaching.
ELB
Psalm 119:109 Mein Leben ist ständig in meiner Hand, aber dein
Gesetz habe ich nicht vergessen.
RSO
Psalm 118:109 Душа моя непрестанно в руке моей, но закона
Твоего не забываю.
‫( נפשי בכפי‬contemporary meaning): My soul is still in my hands.’ (literal),

‘to take a great risk/challenge’, ‘to make a difficult decision’; (Yahav, p.
94)
I. 21 / Judges 9:17
‫ֲאשֶׁ ר־נִ לְ ַח֥ם אָ ִ ֖בי ֲﬠלֵיכֶ ֑ם ַויּ ְַשׁלֵ ֤� אֶ ת־נַפְ שׁוֹ֙ ִמ ֶ֔נּגֶד ַויּ ֵַצּ֥ל אֶ ְתכֶ ֖ם ִמיַּ ֥ד ִמ ְד ָ ֽי ן׃‬
BGP
Judges 9:17 (Albowiem walczył ojciec mój za was, i podał duszę swą
w niebezpieczeństwo, aby was wyrwał z ręki Madyjańczyków;
134 Chapter 8
BTP
Judges 9:17 Oto podczas gdy ojciec mój walczył za was, gdy życie
swoje narażał, aby was wybawić z rąk Madianitów,
KJV
Judges 9:17 (For my father fought for you, and adventured his life far,
and delivered you out of the hand of Midian:
NAS
Judges 9:17 for my father fought for you and risked his life and
delivered you from the hand of Midian;
TNK
Judges 9:17 considering that my father fought for you and saved you
from the Midianites at the risk of his life,
ELB
Judges 9:17 denn mein Vater hat für euch gekämpft und sein Leben
eingesetzt und euch der Hand Midians entrissen;
CRV
Judges 9:17 Мой отец воевал за вас, жизнью рисковал, чтобы
спасти вас от мидьянитян!
RSO
Judges 9:17 За вас отец мой сражался, не дорожил жизнью своею
и избавил вас от руки Мадианитян;
‫( השליך את נפשו מנגד‬contemporary meaning): ‘to risk oneself’, ‘to risk’, ‘to
do something at the risk of [losing one's] life’, ‘to make a sacrifice’, ‘to
put oneself in danger’; (Yahav, p. 43-44;Cohen, p. 60)
II. Vitality
II. 13 / Proverbs 25:13

‫ַת־שׁלֶג׀ בְּ י֬ וֹם קָ ֗ ִציר ִ ֣ציר ֶ֭נאֱמָ ן לְ שֹׁ לְ ָח֑יו וְ נֶ ֖פֶשׁ אֲדֹ נָ ֣יו י ִ ָֽשׁיב׃ פ‬
ֶ֙ ‫כְּ צִ נּ‬
BGP
Proverbs 25:13 Jako zimno śnieżne czasu żniwa: tak poseł wierny
tym, którzy go posyłają; bo dusze panów swych ochładza.
BTP
Proverbs 25:13 Czym jest chłód śniegu w dzień żniwa, tym wierny
zleceniu posłaniec: bo ducha panu orzeźwia.
KJV
Proverbs 25:13 As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a
faithful messenger to them that send him: for he refresheth the soul of his
masters.
NAS
Proverbs 25:13 Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest Is a
faithful messenger to those who send him, For he refreshes the soul of his
masters.
TNK
Proverbs 25:13 Like the coldness of snow at harvesttime Is a trusty
messenger to those who send him; He lifts his master's spirits.
ELB
Proverbs 25:13 Wie Kühlung des Schnees an einem Erntetag ist ein
zuverlässiger Bote denen, die ihn senden: die Seele seines Herrn erquickt
er.
CRV
Proverbs 25:13 Прохлада снега в разгар жатвы — таков для
хозяина верный исполнитель, придаст он сил своему господину.
13) ‫( משיב נפש‬contemporary meaning): 'to refresh', ‘to give strength’, ‘to
restore’; ‘to rescue life’, ‘to save his life’ (figurative); ‘to restore the
soul’(literal); (Yahav, s. 104)
III. State of Mind
III. 4 / 2 Samuel 17:8

‫ַו ֣יּ ֹאמֶ ר חוּשַׁ֗ י אַ ָ ֣תּה ָ֠ידַ ﬠְ תָּ אֶ ת־אָ ִ ֙בי� וְ אֶ ת־ ֲאנָשָׁ֜ יו ִ ֧כּי גִ בֹּ ִ ֣רים ֗ ֵהמָּ ה וּמָ ֵ ֥רי ֶ֙נפֶשׁ֙ ֔ ֵהמָּ ה כְּ דֹ֥ ב שַׁ כּ֖ וּל‬
‫בַּ שָּׂ ֶ ֑דה וְ אָ ִ ֙בי�֙ ִ ֣אישׁ ִמלְ חָ ֔ ָמה וְ ֥ל ֹא י ִ ָ֖לין אֶ ת־הָ ָ ֽﬠם׃‬
BGP
2 Samuel 17:8 Nadto rzekł Chusaj: „Świadomyś ojca twego i mężów
jego, iż są mężni, i serca zajuszonego, jako niedźwiedzica osierociała w
polu; do tego ojciec twój jest mąż waleczny, i nie będzie nocował z
ludem…”
BTP
2 Samuel 17:8 Potem Chuszaj dodał: „Znasz swojego ojca i jego ludzi.
Oni są dzielni, nadto są rozgoryczeni jak niedźwiedzica na polu, której
zabrano młode. Ojciec twój to człowiek znający się na wojnie i nie spędza
nocy razem z ludźmi…”
KJV
2 Samuel 17:8 For, said Hushai, thou knowest thy father and his men,
that they be mighty men, and they be chafed in their minds, as a bear
robbed of her whelps in the field: and thy father is a man of war, and will
not lodge with the people.
2 Samuel 17:8 Moreover, Hushai said, ” You know your father and his
NAS
men, that they are mighty men and they are fierce, like a bear robbed of
136 Chapter 8
her cubs in the field. And your father is an expert in warfare, and will not
spend the night with the people…”
TNK
2 Samuel 17:8 “You know”, Hushai continued, “that your father and
his men are courageous fighters, and they are as desperate as a bear in the
wild robbed of her whelps. Your father is an experienced soldier, and he
will not spend the night with the troops…”
ELB
2 Samuel 17:8 Und Huschai sagte weiter: Du kennst ja selbst deinen
Vater und seine Männer: Helden sind sie und voll erbitterten Mutes wie
eine Bärin auf dem Feld, der man die Jungen geraubt hat. Und dein Vater
ist ein Kriegsmann; er wird mit dem Volk keine Nachtruhe halten.
RSO
2 Samuel 17:8 И продолжал Хусий: ты знаешь твоего отца и
людей его; они храбры и сильно раздражены, как медведица в поле, у
которой отняли детей, и отец твой— человек воинственный; он не
остановится ночевать с народом.
‫( מר נפש‬expression): 'irritable', 'embittered', 'angry'.
III. 8 / Ecclesiastes 6:9

‫֛טוֹב מַ ְר ֵ ֥אה ﬠֵינַ ֖ יִם ֵ ֽמ ֲהלָ�־נָ ֑פֶשׁ גַּם־זֶ ֥ה ֶה֖בֶ ל ְוּרﬠ֥ וּת ֽרוּחַ ׃‬
BGP
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Lepiej jest co oczyma widzieć, niżeli tego żądać; aleć
i to marność i utrapienie ducha.
BTP
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Lepsze jest to, na co oczy patrzą, niż nie zaspokojone
pragnienie. To również jest marność i pogoń za wiatrem.
KJV
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of
the desire: this is also vanity and vexation of spirit.
NAS
Ecclesiastes 6:9 What the eyes see is better than what the soul desires.
This too is futility and a striving after wind.
TNK
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Is the feasting of the eyes more important than the
pursuit of desire? That, too, is futility and pursuit of wind.
ELB
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Besser das Sehen mit den Augen als das
Umherschweifen der Begierde! Auch das ist Nichtigkeit und ein
Haschen nach Wind.
CRV
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Лучше то, что видят глаза, чем то, к чему влечется
душа. Это — пустое, это — погоня за ветром.
RSO
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Лучше видеть глазами, нежели бродить душою. И
это— также суета и томление духа!
‫( טוב מראה עיניים מהלוך נפש‬contemporary meaning): 'Better is the sight of

the eyes than the imagination of the soul (a translation close to the original
meaning: 'What we see is more right than what we imagine'), 'something
specific, essential', 'It is better to see something than to imagine it.', 'That
which is concrete is better than an idea.'
‫הלוך נפש‬: 'Walking the soul (literal)', 'state of mind', 'thought, idea,
intention', 'imagination', 'fantasy' (Yahav, p. 116-117; Cohen, p. 79)
III. 15 / Psalm 42:7

‫מוֹנים מֵ ַה֥ר ִמצְ ָ ֽﬠר׃‬
ִ ֗ ‫וֹח֥ח ﬠַל־ ֵ֗כּן אֶ֭ ְזכּ ְָר� מֵ ֶ ֣א ֶרץ י ְַר ֵ ֑דּן ְ֜וחֶ ְר‬
ָ ‫�הי ָﬠלַי֘ ַנפְ ִ ֪שׁי ִת ְשׁ ֫תּ‬
ַ ֗ ‫�א‬
BGP
Psalm 42:7 Boże mój! dusza moja tęskni sobie we mnie; przetoż na
cię wspominam w ziemi Jordańskiej i Hermońskiej, na górze Mizar.
BTP
Psalm 42:7 i mojego Boga. A we mnie samym dusza jest zgnębiona,
przeto wspominam Cię z ziemi Jordanu i z ziemi Hermonu, i z góry Misar.
KJV
Psalm 42:6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will
I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the
hill Mizar.
NAS
Psalm 42:6 O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I
remember Thee from the land of the Jordan, And the peaks of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
TNK
Psalm 42:7 O my God, my soul is downcast; therefore I think of You
in this land of Jordan and Hermon, in Mount Mizar,
ELB
Psalm 42:7 Mein Gott, aufgelöst in mir ist meine Seele; darum denke
ich an dich aus dem Land des Jordan und des Hermon, vom Berg Misar.
RSO
Psalm 41:6 Что унываешь ты, душа моя, и что смущаешься?
Уповай на Бога, ибо я буду еще славить Его, Спасителя моего и Бога
138 Chapter 8
моего. 7 Унывает во мне душа моя; посему я воспоминаю о Тебе с

земли Иорданской, с Ермона, с горы Цоар.
‫( השתוחחה נפשו‬contemporary meaning): 'His soul bends down [to the

earth] (literal)', ‘the state of the spirit of a depressed, nailed, a low-morale,
broken, pitiful man without a backbone'; (see Psalm 44:26; Yahav, p. 90)
III. 16 / Psalm 44:26

‫ִ ֤כּי ָ ֣שׁחָ ה ֶלﬠָפָ ֣ר נַפְ ֵ ֑שׁנוּ דָּ בְ ָ ֖קה ל ָ ָ֣א ֶרץ בִּ ְט ֵנֽנוּ׃‬
BGP
Psalm 44:26 Albowiem potłoczona jest aż do prochu dusza nasza, a
przylgnął do ziemi żywot nasz.
BTP
Psalm 44:26 Albowiem dusza nasza pogrążyła się w prochu, a ciało
do ziemi.
KJV
Psalm 44:25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust: our belly
cleaveth unto the earth.
NAS
Psalm 44:25 For our soul has sunk down into the dust; Our body
cleaves to the earth.
TNK
Psalm 44:26 We lie prostrate in the dust; our body clings to the
ground.
ELB
Psalm 44:26 Denn unsere Seele ist in den Staub gebeugt, unser Bauch
klebt an der Erde.
RSO
Psalm 43:26 Ибо душа наша унижена до праха, утроба наша
прильнула к земле.
‫( שחה לעפר נפשו‬contemporary meaning): 'His soul bowed to the earth

(literal)', 'to be humiliated, depressed, beat down, humbled and made low';
(see Psalm 42:7; Yahav, p. 90)
III. 18 / Psalm 69:2

‫ֱ�הים ִ ֤כּי ָב֖אוּ ַ ֣מיִם ﬠַד־ ָ ֽנפֶשׁ׃‬
֑ ִ ‫הוֹשׁיﬠֵ ֥נִי א‬
ִ
BGP
Psalm 69:2 Wybaw mię, o Boże! boć przyszły wody aż do duszy
mojej.
BTP
Psalm 69:2 Wybaw mnie, Boże, bo woda mi sięga po szyję.
KJV Psalm 69:1 Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my
soul.
NAS Psalm 69:1 Save me, O God, For the waters have threatened my life.
TNK Psalm 69:2 Deliver me, O God, for the waters have reached my
neck;
ELB Psalm 69:2 Rette mich, Gott, denn Wasser sind bis an die Seele
gekommen.
RSO Psalm 68:2 Спаси меня, Боже, ибо воды дошли до души.
‫( באו מים עד נפש‬an expression): hopelessness, 'The water has come to the
soul (literal).', 'All hope has fallen.’, ‘to have more than one can handle’,
‘a great worry’, ‘to beat one's head against the wall’ (Yahav, p. 91)
III. 22 / Judges 16:16

‫ַ֠ויְ הִ י ִ ֽכּי־הֵ ִ ֙ציקָ ה לּ֧ וֹ בִ ְדבָ ֶ ֛ריהָ כָּל־הַ יּ ִ ָ֖מים ו ְַתּ ַ ֽאל ֲֵצ֑הוּ ו ִַתּקְ ַצ֥ר ַנפְ ֖שׁוֹ ל ָֽמוּת׃‬
BGP
Judges 16:16 A gdy mu się uprzykrzała słowy swemi na każdy dzień,
i trapiła go, aż zemdlała dusza jego na śmierć,
BTP
Judges 16:16 I gdy mu się tak każdego dnia naprzykrzała, że go
przyprawiała o strapienie, a nawet o śmiertelne wyczerpanie,
KJV
Judges 16:16 And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with
her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death;
NAS
Judges 16:16 And it came about when she pressed him daily with her
words and urged him, that his soul was annoyed to death.
TNK
Judges 16:16 Finally, after she had nagged him and pressed him
constantly, he was wearied to death
ELB
Judges 16:16 Und es geschah, als sie ihn alle Tage mit ihren Worten
bedrängte und ihn plagte, da wurde seine Seele es zum Sterben leid,
140 Chapter 8
CRV
Judges 16:16 Что ни день, донимала она его такими просьбами,
допекала. Устал он от этого до смерти
RSO
Judges 16:16 И как она словами своими тяготила его всякий день
и мучила его, то душе его тяжело стало до смерти.
‫( תקצר נפשו למות‬contemporary meaning): ‘to be impatient’, ‘to not be able

to stand something’, ‘to despise life’, ‘life that has lost its meaning’, ‘It
disgusted him.’, ‘It was hard on his soul.’, ‘to break down’; (see Judges
16:30; 1Kings 19:4; Yahav, p. 44)
III. 23 / Judges 16:30

‫ַיִּפּל הַ ַ֙בּיִת֙ ﬠַל־הַ ְסּ ָר ֔ ִנים וְ ﬠַל־כָּל־הָ ﬠָ ֖ם אֲשֶׁ ר־‬
ֹ ֤ ‫ַו ֣יּ ֹאמֶ ר ִשׁ ְמ ֗שׁוֹן תָּ ֣מוֹת נַפְ ִשׁי֘ ﬠִ ם־פְּ לִ ְשׁ ִתּי ֒ם וַיֵּ ֣ט בְּ ֔ ֹכחַ ו‬
‫ֲשׁר הֵ ִ ֖מית בְּ חַ ָיּֽיו׃‬ ֥ ֶ ‫מוֹתוֹ ַר ִ֕בּים מֵ א‬֔ ְ‫ֲשׁר הֵ ִ ֣מית בּ‬ ֣ ֶ ‫֑בּוֹ וַיִּהְ י֤ וּ הַ מֵּ ִתים֙ א‬
BGP
Judges 16:30 Zatem rzekł Samson: Niech umrze dusza moja z
Filistynami; a gdy się o nie mocno oparł, upadł dom na książęta, i na
wszystek lud, który w nim był, i było umarłych, które on pobił umierając,
więcej niż onych, które pobił za żywota swego.
BTP
Judges 16:30 Następnie rzekł Samson: «Niech zginę wraz z
Filistynami». Gdy się zatem oparł o nie mocno, dom runął na władców i
na cały lud, który w nim był zebrany. Tych, których wówczas zabił sam
ginąc, było więcej aniżeli tych, których pozabijał w czasie całego swego
życia.
KJV
Judges 16:30 And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And
he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and
upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his
death were more than they which he slew in his life.
NAS
Judges 16:30 And Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!"
And he bent with all his might so that the house fell on the lords and all
the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were
more than those whom he killed in his life.
TNK
Judges 16:30 Samson cried, "Let me die with the Philistines!" and he
pulled with all his might. The temple came crashing down on the lords and
on all the people in it. Those who were slain by him as he died
outnumbered those who had been slain by him when he lived.
ELB
Judges 16:30 Und Simson sagte: Meine Seele sterbe mit den
Philistern! Und er beugte sich mit aller Kraft. Da fiel das Haus auf die
Fürsten und auf alles Volk, das darin war. So waren die Toten, die er mit
seinem Tod tötete, zahlreicher als die, die er in seinem Leben getötet hatte.
CRV
Judges 16:30 — Пусть я умру вместе с филистимлянами! —
воскликнул Самсон. Он изо всех сил налег на столбы, и дом
обрушился — на филистимских правителей и на всех, кто там был.
Самсон, умирая, убил еще больше врагов, чем при жизни!
‫תמות נפשי עם פלישתים‬: 'I'm dying [from natural causes, from wounds or
illness].', ‘a hopeless situation with no way out'; (Yahav, p. 44; see Judges
16:16; 1 Kings 19:4)
IV.1 / 1 Kings 19:4

‫וְ ֽהוּא־הָ לַ ֤� בַּ ִמּ ְדבָּ ר֙ ֶ ֣דּ ֶר� י֔ וֹם ַו ָיּ ֕ב ֹא ַו ֵ֕יּשֶׁ ב ַ ֖תּחַ ת ֣רֹ תֶ ם אֶ ָח֑ד וַיִּ ְשׁ ַ ֤אל אֶ ת־ ַנפְ שׁוֹ֙ ל ָ֔מוּת ַו ֣יּ ֹאמֶ ר׀ ַ ֗רב‬
‫ֹא־טוֹב אָ נֹ ִ ֖כי מֵ אֲבֹ ָ ֽתי׃‬
֥ ‫ﬠ ָ ַ֤תּה יְהוָה֙ ַ ֣קח ַנפְ ֔ ִשׁי ִ ֽכּי־ל‬
BGP
1 Kings 19:4 A sam poszedł w puszczę na jeden dzień drogi: a gdy
przyszedł, i usiadł pod jednym jałowcem, życzył sobie umrzeć, i rzekł:
Dosyć już, o Panie; weźmijże duszę moję, bom nie jest lepszym nad
ojców moich.
BTP
1 Kings 19:4 A sam na odległość jednego dnia drogi poszedł na
pustynię. Przyszedłszy, usiadł pod jednym z jałowców i pragnąc umrzeć,
rzekł: «Wielki już czas, o Panie! Odbierz mi życie, bo nie jestem lepszy od
moich przodków».
KJV
and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself
that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my
life; for I am not better than my fathers.
NAS
and came and sat down under a juniper tree; and he requested for himself
that he might die, and said, "It is enough; now, O LORD, take my life, for
I am not better than my fathers."
142 Chapter 8
TNK
1 Kings 19:4 he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. He
came to a broom bush and sat down under it, and prayed that he might die.
"Enough!" he cried. "Now, O LORD, take my life, for I am no better than
my fathers."
ELB
1 Kings 19:4 Er selbst aber ging in die Wüste eine Tagereise weit und
kam und ließ sich unter einem einzelnen Ginsterstrauch nieder. Da
wünschte er sich, sterben zu können, und sagte: Es ist genug. Nun,
HERR, nimm mein Leben hin! Denn ich bin nicht besser als meine Väter.
RSO
1 Kings 19:4 А сам отошел в пустыню на день пути и, придя, сел
под можжевеловым кустом, и просил смерти себе и сказал: довольно
уже, ГОСПОДИ; возьми душу мою, ибо я не лучше отцов моих.
‫שואל את נפשו למות‬: ‘to lose hope', ‘to resign', ‘to be in despair', ‘to wish
death upon oneself’, to end one’s life [intentionally]; Yahav, p. 57; Judges
16:16; Judges 16:30
IV.3 / 1 Samuel 18:1

‫יְהי כְּ כַ�תוֹ֙ לְ דַ ֵבּ֣ר אֶ ל־שָׁ ֔אוּל וְ ֶ֙נפֶשׁ֙ יְ ֣הוֹנ ֔ ָָתן נִ קְ ְשׁ ָ ֖רה בְּ נֶ ֣פֶשׁ דָּ ִו֑ד) ַו ֶיּאֱהָ בוֹ( ] ַו ֶיּאֱהָ ֵב֥הוּ[ יְ הוֹנ ָ ָ֖תן‬
ִ֗ ‫ַו‬
‫כְּ נַפְ ֽשׁוֹ׃‬
BGP
1 Samuel 18:1 I stało się, gdy przestał mówić do Saula, że dusza
Jonatanowa spoiła się z duszą Dwidową, i umiłował go Jonatan, jako
duszę swoję.
BTP
1 Samuel 18:1 Kiedy właśnie przestał przemawiać do Saula, dusza
Jonatana przylgnęła całkowicie do duszy Dawida. Pokochał go Jonatan
tak jak samego siebie.
KJV
1 Samuel 18:1 And it came to pass when he had made an end of
speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of
David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
NAS
1 Samuel 18:1 Now it came about when he had finished speaking to
Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan
loved him as himself.
TNK
1 Samuel 18:1 When David finished speaking with Saul, Jonathan's
soul became bound up with the soul of David; Jonathan loved David as
himself.
ELB
1 Samuel 18:1 Und es geschah, als er aufgehört hatte, mit Saul zu
reden, verband sich die Seele Jonatans mit der Seele Davids; und Jonatan
gewann ihn lieb wie seine eigene Seele.
RSO
1 Samuel 18:1 Когда кончил Давид разговор с Саулом, душа
Ионафана прилепилась к душе его, и полюбил его Ионафан, как свою
душу.
‫ נקשרה נפשו‬and ‫ אוהב את נפשו‬are phrases similar to another, well-known,

Biblical saying �‫ וְ ָ ֽאהַ בְ ָ ֥תּ לְ ֵרﬠֲ�֖ כּ ָ֑מוֹ‬: ‘You will love your neighbour as
yourself.' (see Lev. 19:18) ‘The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of
David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.’ (see 1 Samuel 18:1;
Yahav, p. 49)
IV.17 / Psalm 63:2

ֽ ָ ִ‫ֱ�הים׀ אֵ ִ ֥לי אַ ֗ ָתּה א�שַׁ ֲ֫ח ֶ ֥ר ָךּ צָ ְמ ֬ ָאה לְ �֙ ׀ נַפְ ֗ ִשׁי כּ ַ ָ֣מהּ לְ �֣ בְ שָׂ ִ ֑רי בְּ ֶ ֽא ֶרץ־צִ יָּ ֖ה וְ ﬠָיֵ ֣ ף בְּ ל‬
‫י־מיִ ם׃‬ ִ֤ ‫א‬
BGP
Psalm 63:2 Boże! tyś jest Bogiem moim; z poranku cię szukam;
pragnie cię dusza moja, tęskni po tobie ciało moje w ziemi suchej i
upragnionej, w której nie masz wody;
BTP
Psalm 63:2 Boże, Ty Boże mój, Ciebie szukam; Ciebie pragnie moja
dusza, za Tobą tęskni moje ciało, jak ziemia zeschła, spragniona, bez
wody.
KJV
Psalm 63:1 <A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of
Judah.> O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth
for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no
water is;
NAS
Psalm 63:1 A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of
Judah. O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly; My soul
thirsts for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee, In a dry and weary land where
there is no water.
TNK
Psalm 63:2 God, You are my God; I search for You, my soul thirsts
for You, my body yearns for You, as a parched and thirsty land that has no
water.
ELB
Psalm 63:2 Gott, mein Gott bist du; nach dir suche ich. Es dürstet nach
dir meine Seele, nach dir schmachtet mein Fleisch in einem dürren und
erschöpften Land ohne Wasser.
144 Chapter 8
RSO
Psalm 62:2 Боже! Ты Бог мой, Тебя от ранней зари ищу я; Тебя
жаждет душа моя, по Тебе томится плоть моя в земле пустой,
иссохшей и безводной.
‫( נפש צמאה‬contemporary meaning): 'a thirsty soul (literal)', 'a desire to

know wisdom', 'inner desire for something', 'craving for something',
'longing for something'; Yahav, p. 91.
V. Pleasures – Refusal of Pleasures
V.7 / Ecclesiastes 4:8

‫ֹא־ת ְשׂ ַבּ֣ע ֑ ֹﬠשֶׁ ר‬
ִ ‫ין־לוֹ וְ ֵ ֥אין קֵ ץ֙ לְ כָל־ﬠֲמָ ֔לוֹ גַּם־)ﬠֵינָיו( ]ﬠֵינ֖ וֹ[ ל‬ ֗ ‫יֵ ֣שׁ אֶ חָ ֩ד וְ ֵ֙אין שֵׁ ֜ ִני גַּ ֣ם ֵבּ֧ן ו ָ ָ֣אח ֵ ֽא‬
‫טּוֹבה גַּם־זֶ ֥ה ֶה֛בֶ ל וְ ﬠִ נְיַ ֥ ן ָ ֖רע ֽהוּא׃‬
ָ ֔ ‫וּמחַ ֵ ֤סּר אֶ ת־נַפְ ִשׁי֙ ִמ‬ְ ‫וּלְ ִ ֣מי׀ א ֲִנ֣י ﬠ ֗ ֵָמל‬
BGP
Ecclesiastes 4:8 Jest kto samotny, niemając żadnego, ani syna, ani
brata, a wżdy niemasz końca wszelakiej pracy jego, ani oczy jego mogą
się nasycić bogactwem. Nie myśli: Komuż ja pracuję, tak że i żywotowi
swemu ujmuję dobrego. I toć jest marność, i ciężkie udręczenie.
BTP
Ecclesiastes 4:8 Oto jest ktoś sam jeden, a nie ma drugiego, i syna
nawet ni brata nie ma żadnego — a nie ma końca wszelkiej jego pracy, i
oko jego nie syci się bogactwem: «Dla kogóż to się trudzę i duszy swej
odmawiam rozkoszy?» To również jest marność i przykre zajęcie.
KJV
Ecclesiastes 4:8 There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he
hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither
is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and
bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.
NAS
Ecclesiastes 4:8 There was a certain man without a dependent, having
neither a son nor a brother, yet there was no end to all his labour. Indeed,
his eyes were not satisfied with riches and he never asked, "And for whom
am I labouring and depriving myself of pleasure?" This too is vanity and it
is a grievous task.
TNK
Ecclesiastes 4:8 the case of the man who is alone, with no companion,
who has neither son nor brother; yet he amasses wealth without limit, and
his eye is never sated with riches. For whom, now, is he amassing it while
denying himself enjoyment? That too is futility and an unhappy business.
ELB
Ecclesiastes 4:8 Da ist einer allein und kein zweiter bei ihm, auch hat
er weder Sohn noch Bruder, und für all sein Mühen gibt es kein Ende,
auch werden seine Augen am Reichtum nicht satt. Für wen mühe ich mich
also und lasse meine Seele Gutes entbehren? Auch das ist Nichtigkeit und
ein übles Geschäft.
CRV
Ecclesiastes 4:8 Человек один, и нет рядом с ним другого, нет у
него ни сына, ни брата. Нет конца его трудам, и не радует его вид
собственного богатства. Для кого же тружусь я и лишаю свою душу
счастья? Это — пустое, это — тягостная работа.
‫( לחסר את נפשו מטובה‬contemporary meaning): 'deny yourself', 'take away

pleasure', 'save', 'reduce'; Yahav, p. 116.
V.9 / Leviticus 16:31

‫עוֹלם׃‬
ֽ ָ ‫יתם אֶ ת־נַפְ שֹׁ תֵ יכֶ ֑ם ח ַ ֻ֖קּת‬
֖ ֶ ִ‫שַׁ ַ֙בּת שַׁ בָּ ֥תוֹן הִ יא֙ ָל ֶ֔כם וְ ﬠִ נּ‬
BGP
Leviticus 16:31 Sabatem odpocznienia będzie wam to, w który trapić
będziecie dusze wasze ustawą wieczną.
BTP
Leviticus 16:31 Będzie to dla was święty szabat odpoczynku.
Będziecie w tym dniu pościć. Jest to ustawa wieczysta.
KJV
Leviticus 16:31 It shall be a sabbath of rest unto you, and ye shall
afflict your souls, by a statute forever.
Leviticus 16:31 "It is to be a sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you
NAS
may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute.

TNK
Leviticus 16:31 It shall be a sabbath of complete rest for you, and you
shall practice self-denial; it is a law for all time.
ELB
Leviticus 16:31 Ein Sabbat völliger Ruhe soll er euch sein, und ihr
sollt euch selbst demütigen - eine ewige Ordnung.
RSO
Leviticus 16:31 это суббота покоя для вас, смиряйте души ваши:
это постановление вечное.
‫( עינה את נפשו‬contemporary meaning): ‘to fast ', 'to afflict oneself’, 'to
sacrifice', 'to punish yourself '; Yahav, p. 31.
146 Chapter 8
VI. Life Wisdom – Perception of the World
VI.8 / Ecclesiastes 6:9

‫֛טוֹב מַ ְר ֵ ֥אה ﬠֵינַ ֖ יִם ֵ ֽמ ֲהלָ�־נָ ֑פֶשׁ גַּם־זֶ ֥ה ֶה֖בֶ ל ְוּרﬠ֥ וּת ֽרוּחַ ׃‬
BGP
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Lepiej jest co oczyma widzieć, niżeli tego żądać; aleć
i to marność i utrapienie ducha.
BTP
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Lepsze jest to, na co oczy patrzą, niż nie zaspokojone
pragnienie. To również jest marność i pogoń za wiatrem.
KJV
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of
the desire: this is also vanity and vexation of spirit.
NAS
Ecclesiastes 6:9 What the eyes see is better than what the soul desires.
This too is futility and a striving after wind.
TNK
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Is the feasting of the eyes more important than the
pursuit of desire? That, too, is futility and pursuit of wind.
ELB
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Besser das Sehen mit den Augen als das
Umherschweifen der Begierde! Auch das ist Nichtigkeit und ein
Haschen nach Wind.
CRV
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Лучше то, что видят глаза, чем то, к чему влечется
душа. Это — пустое, это — погоня за ветром.
RSO
Ecclesiastes 6:9 Лучше видеть глазами, нежели бродить душою. И
это— также суета и томление духа!
‫( טוב מראה עיניים מהלוך נפש‬contemporary meaning): 'Better is the sight of

which is concrete is better than an idea.'; Yahav, p. 100.
‫הלוך נפש‬: 'Walking the soul (literal)', 'state of mind', 'thought, idea,
intention', 'imagination', 'fantasy' (Yahav, p. 116-117; Cohen, p. 79)
VI.11 / Proverbs 13:3

‫נֹ ֵצ֣ר ֭ ִפּיו שֹׁ ֵ ֣מר נַפְ ֑שׁוֹ פֹּ ֵ ֥שׂק ֜ ְשׂפ ֗ ָָתיו ְמחִ תָּ ה־לֽ וֹ׃‬
BGP
Proverbs 13:3 Kto strzeże ust swych, strzeże duszy swojej; kto
lekkomyślnie otwiera wargi swe, będzie starty.
BTP
Proverbs 13:3 Kto ust swych strzeże — ten strzeże życia, kto usta
rozwiera — zgubi sam siebie.
KJV
Proverbs 13:3 He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that
openeth wide his lips shall have destruction.
NAS
Proverbs 13:3 The one who guards his mouth preserves his life; The
one who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.
TNK
Proverbs 13:3 He who guards his tongue preserves his life; He who
opens wide his lips, it is his ruin.
ELB
Proverbs 13:3 Wer seinen Mund behütet, bewahrt sein Leben; wer
seine Lippen aufreißt, dem droht Verderben.
CRV
Proverbs 13:3 Кто свои уста стережет — жизнь сбережет, а кто
несдержан на язык — себя погубит.
Proverbs 13:3 Кто хранит уста свои, тот бережет душу свою; а кто
RSO
широко раскрывает свой рот, тому беда.
‫( נוצר פיו שומר נפשו‬contemporary meaning): ‘[By] guarding his mouth he

watches over his soul.’ (literal), ‘The fence for wisdom is silence.’, ‘Life
and death depend on the tongue.’;
VI.12 / Proverbs 22:5

‫שׁוֹמר ַ֜נפְ ֗שׁוֹ ְיִר ַח֥ק מֵ ֶ ֽהם׃‬
֥ ֵ ‫צִ ִנּ֣ים ַ֭פּחִ ים בְּ ֶ ֣ד ֶר� ﬠִ ֵ ֑קּשׁ‬
BGP
Proverbs 22:5 Ciernie i sidła są na drodze przewrotnego; kto strzeże
duszy swej, oddala się od nich.
BTP
Proverbs 22:5 Ciernie, sidła na drodze złoczyńcy, kto życia strzeże,
ten od nich jest z dala.
Proverbs 22:5 Thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse; He
NAS
who guards himself will be far from them.

148 Chapter 8
TNK
Proverbs 22:5 Thorns and snares are in the path of the crooked; He
who values his life will keep far from them.
ELB
Proverbs 22:5 Dornen und Schlingen sind auf dem Weg des
Verschlagenen; wer sein Leben bewahren will, hält sich fern von ihnen.
CRV
Proverbs 22:5 На пути лжеца — шипы да сети, кто жизнью
дорожит, не пойдет туда.
(‫( שמר נפשו )עצמו‬contemporary meaning): ‘to be careful’, ‘to beware’, ‘to
watch out for something’; Yahav, p. 103.
VI.14 / Psalm 24:4

‫ַשּׁוְ א נַפְ ִ ֑שׁי וְ ֖ל ֹא נִ ְשׁ ַבּ֣ע לְ ִמ ְר ָ ֽמה׃‬
֣ ָ ‫ָשׂא ל‬
֣ ָ ‫ֲשׁר׀ ל ֹא־נ‬
֤ ֶ ‫נְ ִ ֥קי ַכ ַ֗פּיִם וּֽ בַ ר־ ֵ֫ל ָב֥ב א‬
BGP
Psalm 24:4 Człowiek niewinnych rąk i czystego serca, który nie
skłania ku marności duszy swej, a nie przysięga zdradliwie.
BTP
Psalm 24:4 Człowiek o rękach nieskalanych i o czystym sercu, który
nie skłonił swej duszy ku marnościom i nie przysięgał fałszywie.
KJV
Psalm 24:4 He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not
lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
NAS
Psalm 24:4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not
lifted up his soul to falsehood, And has not sworn deceitfully.
TNK
Psalm 24:4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not
taken a false oath by My life or sworn deceitfully.
ELB
Psalm 24:4 Der unschuldige Hände und ein reines Herz hat, der seine
Seele nicht auf Falsches richtet und nicht schwört zum Betrug.
RSO
Psalm 23:4 тот, у которого руки неповинны и сердце чисто, кто не
клялся душою своею напрасно и не божился ложно,— (Psa 23:4 RSO)
‫( לא נשא לשווא נפשו‬contemporary meaning): 'to not swear falsely', 'to keep
promises' and without negation ‫נשא לשווא נפש‬: ‘to swear falsely', ‘do not
keep promises'; Yahav, p. 88-89.
VII. Sensitivity - Empathy
VII.10 / Proverbs 12:10

‫יוֹד ַﬠ צַ֭ ִדּיק נֶ ֣פֶ שׁ בְּ הֶ ְמ ֑תּוֹ ְ ֽו ַרח ֵ ֲ֥מי ְ ֜רשָׁ ֗ ִﬠים אַ כְ ז ִ ָֽרי׃‬
ֵ֣
BGP
Proverbs 12:10 Sprawiedliwy ma na pieczy żywot bydlątka swego;
ale serce niepobożnych okrutne jest.
BTP
Proverbs 12:10 Prawy uznaje potrzeby swych bydląt, a serce
nieprawych okrutne.
KJV
Proverbs 12:10 A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the
tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
NAS
Proverbs 12:10 A righteous man has regard for the life of his beast,
But the compassion of the wicked is cruel.
TNK
Proverbs 12:10 A righteous man knows the needs of his beast, But
the compassion of the wicked is cruelty.
ELB
Proverbs 12:10 Der Gerechte kümmert sich um das Wohlergehen
seines Viehes, aber das Herz der Gottlosen ist grausam.
CRV
Proverbs 12:10 Праведник и скотину пожалеет, но милость
нечестивца — хуже жестокости.
RSO
Proverbs 12:10 Праведный печется и о жизни скота своего,
сердце же нечестивых жестоко.
‫( ‘יודע צדיק נפש בהמתו‬contemporary meaning): ‘A good man understands

the needs of another.', 'Is sensitive to the needs dependent on him.’, ‘needs,
success, prosperity', 'sensitive to misery', 'measure of mercy', 'empathy';
Yahav, p. 100.
150 Chapter 8
VIII. Attachment
VIII.3 / 1 Samuel 18:1

‫וַיְ ִ֗הי כְּ כַ�תוֹ֙ לְ דַ ֵבּ֣ר אֶ ל־שָׁ ֔אוּל וְ ֶ֙נפֶשׁ֙ יְ ֣הוֹנ ֔ ָָתן נִ קְ ְשׁ ָ ֖רה בְּ נֶ ֣פֶשׁ דָּ ִ ֑וד) ַו ֶיּאֱהָ בוֹ( ] ַו ֶיּאֱהָ ֵב֥הוּ[ יְ הוֹנ ָ ָ֖תן‬
‫כְּ ַנפְ ֽשׁוֹ׃‬
BGP
1 Samuel 18:1 I stało się, gdy przestał mówić do Saula, że dusza
Jonatanowa spoiła się z duszą Dwidową, i umiłował go Jonatan, jako
duszę swoję.
BTP
1 Samuel 18:1 Kiedy właśnie przestał przemawiać do Saula, dusza
Jonatana przylgnęła całkowicie do duszy Dawida. Pokochał go Jonatan
tak jak samego siebie.
KJV
1 Samuel 18:1 And it came to pass when he had made an end of
speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of
David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
NAS
1 Samuel 18:1 Now it came about when he had finished speaking to
Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan
loved him as himself.
TNK
1 Samuel 18:1 When David finished speaking with Saul, Jonathan's
soul became bound up with the soul of David; Jonathan loved David as
himself.
ELB
1 Samuel 18:1 Und es geschah, als er aufgehört hatte, mit Saul zu
reden, verband sich die Seele Jonatans mit der Seele Davids; und Jonatan
gewann ihn lieb wie seine eigene Seele.
RSO
1 Samuel 18:1 Когда кончил Давид разговор с Саулом, душа
Ионафана прилепилась к душе его, и полюбил его Ионафан, как свою
душу.
(1Sa 18:1 RSO)
Biblical ‫נקשרה נפשו‬: ‘The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of
David.’ (1 Samuel 18:1)
In this verse occurs the phrases: ‫ נקשרה נפשו‬and ‫ אוהב את נפשו‬which are
closely related to another, better known saying �‫‘ —וְ ָ ֽאהַ בְ ָ ֥תּ לְ ֵרﬠֲ�֖ כּ ָ֑מוֹ‬you
will love thy neighbour as thyself.’ (Leviticus 19:18).
VIII.20 / Genesis 44:30

‫שׁוּרה בְ נַפְ ֽשׁוֹ׃‬
֥ ָ ְ‫וְ ﬠ ֗ ַָתּה כְּ בֹ ִאי֙ אֶ ל־ﬠַבְ ְדּ�֣ אָ ִ֔בי וְ הַ נַּ ֖ﬠַר אֵ ינֶ ֣נּוּ ִא ָ ֑תּנוּ וְ נַפְ ֖שׁוֹ ק‬
BGP
Genesis 44:30 Przetoż teraz jeślibym przyszedł do sługi twego, ojca
mojego, a dziecięcia by z nami nie było, (ponieważ dusza jego jest
przywiązana do duszy jego),
BTP
Genesis 44:30 Gdybym więc teraz przyszedł do sługi twego, a mojego
ojca, i nie byłoby z nami chłopca tak przez niego umiłowanego,
KJV
Genesis 44:30 Now therefore when I come to thy servant my father,
and the lad be not with us; seeing that his life is bound up in the lad's life;
NAS
Genesis 44:30 Now, therefore, when I come to your servant my father,
and the lad is not with us since his life is bound up in the lad's life,
TNK
Genesis 44:30 Now, if I come to your servant my father and the boy is
not with us — since his own life is so bound up with his.
ELB
Genesis 44:30 Und nun, wenn ich zu deinem Knecht, meinem Vater,
käme und der Junge wäre nicht bei uns — hängt doch seine Seele an
dessen Seele -,
CRV
Genesis 44:30 Так разве могу я, — спросил Иуда, — вернуться
домой, к отцу‚ рабу твоему‚ без сына‚ к которому он так привязан?
‫( נפשו קשורה בנפשו‬contemporary meaning of the Biblical phrase): 'His soul

is attached to his soul (literal)', 'attachment', 'love for the truth', 'male
friendship'; Yahav, p. 23.
IX. Impatience
IX.22 / Judges 16:16

‫ַ֠ויְ הִ י ִ ֽכּי־הֵ ִ ֙ציקָ ה לּ֧ וֹ בִ ְדבָ ֶ ֛ריהָ כָּל־הַ יּ ִ ָ֖מים ו ְַתּ ַ ֽאל ֲֵצ֑הוּ ו ִַתּקְ ַצ֥ר נַפְ ֖שׁוֹ ל ָֽמוּת׃‬
BGP
Judges 16:16 A gdy mu się uprzykrzała słowy swemi na każdy dzień,
i trapiła go, aż zemdlała dusza jego na śmierć,
BTP
Judges 16:16 I gdy mu się tak każdego dnia naprzykrzała, że go
przyprawiała o strapienie, a nawet o śmiertelne wyczerpanie,
152 Chapter 8
KJV
Judges 16:16 And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with
her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death;
NAS
Judges 16:16 And it came about when she pressed him daily with her
words and urged him, that his soul was annoyed to death.
TNK
Judges 16:16 Finally, after she had nagged him and pressed him
constantly, he was wearied to death
ELB
Judges 16:16 Und es geschah, als sie ihn alle Tage mit ihren Worten
bedrängte und ihn plagte, da wurde seine Seele es zum Sterben leid,
CRV
Judges 16:16 Что ни день, донимала она его такими просьбами,
допекала. Устал он от этого до смерти
RSO
Judges 16:16 И как она словами своими тяготила его всякий день
и мучила его, то душе его тяжело стало до смерти.
‫( תקצר נפשו למות‬contemporary meaning): ‘to be impatient’, ‘to not be able

to stand something’, ‘to despise life’, ‘life that has lost its meaning’, ‘It
disgusted him.’, ‘It was hard on his soul.’, ‘to break down’; Judges 16:30;
1 Kings 19:4; Yahav, p. 44.
X. Danger – Risk
X.19 / Psalm 119:109

‫ַנפְ ִ ֣שׁי בְ כ ִ ַ֣פּי תָ ִ ֑מיד ְ֜ו ֽת ָוֹר ְת ֗� ֣ל ֹא שָׁ ָ ֽכחְ ִתּי׃‬
BGP
Psalm 119:109 Dusza moja jest w ustawicznem niebezpieczeństwie;
wszakże na zakon twój nie zapominam.
BTP
Psalm 119:109 Moje życie jest w ciągłym niebezpieczeństwie, lecz
Prawa Twego nie zapominam.
KJV
Psalm 119:109 My soul is continually in my hand: yet do I not forget
thy law.
NAS
Psalm 119:109 My life is continually in my hand, Yet I do not forget
Thy law.
TNK
Psalm 119:109 Though my life is always in danger, I do not neglect
Your teaching.
ELB
Psalm 119:109 Mein Leben ist ständig in meiner Hand, aber dein
Gesetz habe ich nicht vergessen.
RSO
Psalm 118:109 Душа моя непрестанно в руке моей, но закона
Твоего не забываю.
‫( נפשי בכפי‬contemporary meaning): My soul is still in my hands.’ (literal),

‘to take a great risk/challenge’, ‘to make a difficult decision’; Yahav, p.
94.
X.21 / Judges 9:17

‫אֲשֶׁ ר־נִ לְ ַח֥ם אָ ִ ֖בי ֲﬠלֵיכֶ ֑ם ַויּ ְַשׁלֵ ֤� אֶ ת־ ַנפְ שׁוֹ֙ ִמ ֶ֔נּגֶד ַויּ ֵַצּ֥ל אֶ ְתכֶ ֖ם ִמיַּ ֥ד ִמ ְד ָ ֽי ן׃‬
BGP
Judges 9:17 (Albowiem walczył ojciec mój za was, i podał duszę swą
w niebezpieczeństwo, aby was wyrwał z ręki Madyjańczyków;
BTP
Judges 9:17 Oto podczas gdy ojciec mój walczył za was, gdy życie
swoje narażał, aby was wybawić z rąk Madianitów,
KJV
Judges 9:17 (For my father fought for you, and adventured his life far,
and delivered you out of the hand of Midian:
NAS
Judges 9:17 for my father fought for you and risked his life and
delivered you from the hand of Midian;
TNK
Judges 9:17 considering that my father fought for you and saved you
from the Midianites at the risk of his life,
ELB
Judges 9:17 denn mein Vater hat für euch gekämpft und sein Leben
eingesetzt und euch der Hand Midians entrissen;
CRV
Judges 9:17 Мой отец воевал за вас, жизнью рисковал, чтобы
спасти вас от мидьянитян!
RSO
Judges 9:17 За вас отец мой сражался, не дорожил жизнью своею
и избавил вас от руки Мадианитян.
154 Chapter 8
‫( השליך את נפשו מנגד‬contemporary meaning): ‘to risk oneself’, ‘to risk’, ‘to
do something at the risk of [losing one's] life’, ‘to make a sacrifice’, ‘to
put oneself in danger’; Yahav, p. 43-44; Cohen, p. 60.
X.24 / 1 Samuel 19:5

‫ַויָּשֶׂ ֩ם אֶ ת־נַפְ שׁ֙ וֹ בְ כ ַ֜פּוֹ וַיַּ ֣ � אֶ ת־הַ פְּ לִ ְשׁ ִ֗תּי ַו ַ֙יּﬠַשׂ יְה ֜ ָוה ְתּשׁוּﬠָ ֤ה גְ דוֹלָה֙ לְ כָל־יִ ְשׂ ָר ֔ ֵאל ָר ִ ֖איתָ ו ִַתּ ְשׂ ָ ֑מח‬
‫וְ לָ ֤מָּ ה ֶ ֽתחֱטָ א֙ בְּ ָ ֣דם נ ֔ ִָקי לְ הָ ִ ֥מית אֶ ת־דָּ ִ ֖וד חִ ָנּֽם׃‬
BGP
1 Samuel 19:5 Gdyż położył duszę swą w ręce swej, i zabił
Filistyńczyka, i uczynił Pan wybawienie wielkie wszystkiemu Izraelowi.
Coś widział, i uradowałeś się. Przeczżebyś tedy miał grzeszyć przeciw
krwi niewinnej, chcąc zabić Dawida bez przyczyny?
BTP
1 Samuel 19:5 On przecież swoje życie narażał, on zabił Filistyna,
dzięki niemu Pan dał całemu Izraelowi wielkie zwycięstwo. Patrzyłeś na
to i cieszyłeś się. Dlaczego więc masz zamiar zgrzeszyć przeciw niewinnej
krwi, bez przyczyny zabijając Dawida?»
KJV
1 Samuel 19:5 For he did put his life in his hand, and slew the
Philistine, and the LORD wrought a great salvation for all Israel: thou
sawest it, and didst rejoice: wherefore then wilt thou sin against innocent
blood, to slay David without a cause?
NAS
1 Samuel 19:5 "For he took his life in his hand and struck the
Philistine, and the LORD brought about a great deliverance for all Israel;
you saw it and rejoiced. Why then will you sin against innocent blood, by
putting David to death without a cause?"
ELB
1 Samuel 19:5 Er hat sein Leben aufs Spiel gesetzt und den Philister
erschlagen, und der HERR hat ganz Israel einen großen Sieg verschafft.
Du hast es gesehen und dich darüber gefreut. Warum willst du dich an
unschuldigem Blut versündigen, daß du David ohne Ursache tötest ?
RSO
1 Samuel 19:5 он подвергал опасности душу свою, чтобы
поразить Филистимлянина, и ГОСПОДЬ соделал великое спасение
всему Израилю; ты видел это и радовался; для чего же ты хочешь
согрешить против невинной крови и умертвить Давида без причины?
‫שם נפשו בכפו‬: ‘put his soul into his hands (literal)', ‘to risk oneself'; Cohen,
p. 190.
Below I present collected idioms divided into thematical groups paying

close attention to the Hebrew term nefesh. Roman numbers indicate a
successive topic. Arabic number indicates one of the twenty-four selected
idioms and Biblical sayings containing the word nefesh. For the sake of
clarity, each occurrence of nefesh has been highlighted in the translations.
I. Life/Death
1, 2, 5, 6, 11, 12, 19, 21
1) ‫שואל את נפשו למות‬: ‘to lose hope', ‘to resign', ‘to be in despair', ‘to wish
death upon oneself’, to end one’s life [intentionally];
Biblical ‫וַיִּ ְשׁ ַ ֤אל אֶ ת־נַפְ שׁוֹ֙ ל ָ֔מוּת‬:‘He desired to die.’, ‘He wished death upon
himself.’ (see 1 Kings 19:4; Judges 16:16; Judges 16:30)
֣ ַ ‘Take my soul.’, ‘Take life from me.’ (see 1 Kings

2) Biblical ‫קח אֶ ת־נַפְ ֔ ִשׁי‬:
19:4)
5) ‫( לבקש על נפש‬contemporary meaning): ‘to beg and pray for the

preservation of life’, ‘to ask for forgiveness’; Biblical ֙‫לְ בַ ֵ ֤קּשׁ ﬠַל־נַפְ שׁוֹ‬: 'to
make a request for his life', 'He asked for his life.' (see Esther 7:7)
6) ‫ מבקשי נפשי‬/ ‫( לבקש נפש‬contemporary meaning): ‘looking for/demanding

my soul’ (literal), threatening my life, ‘wanting to do evil unto me, to kill
me’, ‘plotting to destroy me;
ְ threatening your life, ‘seeking my soul’ (see
Biblical: � ֶ֔‫מבַ קְ ֵ ֣שׁי נַפְ שׁ‬:
Jeremiah 22:25)
11) ‫( נוצר פיו שומר נפשו‬contemporary meaning): ‘[By] guarding his mouth
he watches over his soul.’ (literal), ‘The fence for wisdom is silence.’,
‘Life and death depend on the tongue.’;
Biblical ‫נֹ ֵצ֣ר ֭ ִפּיו שֹׁ ֵ ֣מר נַפְ ֑שׁוֹ‬: 'He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life', 'Who
guards his mouth guards his soul.' (see Proverbs 13:3)
12) ‫( שמר נפשו )עצמו‬contemporary meaning): ‘to be careful’, ‘to beware’,

‘to watch out for something’; Biblical ‫שׁוֹמר ַ֜נפְ ֗שׁוֹ ְיִר ַח֥ק מֵ ֶ ֽהם‬:
ֵ֥ ‘Whoever cares
for himself stays away from danger.', ‘He who guards his life distances
himself from them.', ‘Whoever guards his soul, distances himself from
them.’ (see Proverbs 22:5)
156 Chapter 8
19) ‫( נפשי בכפי‬contemporary meaning): My soul is still in my hands.’

(literal), ‘to take a great risk/challenge’, ‘to make a difficult decision’;
Biblical ‫נַפְ ִ ֣שׁי בְ כ ִ ַ֣פּי תָ ִ ֑מיד‬: ‘My life is in constant danger.', ‘My soul is in
constant danger.' (see Psalm 119:109)
21) ‫( השליך את נפשו מנגד‬contemporary meaning): ‘to risk oneself’, ‘to risk’,
‘to do something at the risk of [losing one's] life’, ‘to make a sacrifice’, ‘to
put oneself in danger’;
Biblical ‫ ַויּ ְַשׁלֵ ֤� אֶ ת־נַפְ שׁוֹ֙ ִמ ֶ֔נּגֶד‬: ‘He threw his soul opposite'(literal),
‘adventured his life’, ‘placed his soul in danger’ (see Judges 9:17)
In these sayings, the term nefesh is most often translated as 'life'.
II. Vitality
13
13) ‫( משיב נפש‬contemporary meaning): 'to refresh', ‘to give strength’, ‘to
restore’; ‘to rescue life’, ‘to save his life’ (figurative); ‘to restore the
soul’(literal); Biblical ‫וְ נֶ ֖פֶשׁ אֲדֹ נָ ֣יו י ִ ָֽשׁיב‬: ‘refreshens the soul of his masters’
(literal), He 'cools the souls of his masters.,' 'The spirit refreshes you.', 'He
gives strength.' (see Proverbs 25:13)
In these sayings, the term nefesh is translated as 'soul' or 'spirit'.
III. State of Mind
4, 8, 15, 16, 18, 22, 23
4) ‫( מר נפש‬expression): 'irritable', 'embittered', 'angry': Biblical ֙‫וּמָ ֵ ֥רי ֶ֙נפֶשׁ‬

‫המָּ ה‬:
ֵ ֔ 'They are embittered.', 'of overwhelmed hearts' (see 2 Samuel 17:8)
8) ‫( טוב מראה עיניים מהלוך נפש‬contemporary meaning): 'Better is the sight of

which is concrete is better than an idea.'; Biblical ‫ ֛טוֹב מַ ְר ֵ ֥אה ﬠֵינַ ֖ יִם ֵ ֽמ ֲהלָ�־נָ ֑פֶשׁ‬:
'What the eyes look upon is better than unsatisfied desire.', 'It is better to
see with eyes than to desire it.' (see Ecclesiastes 6: 9). ‫הלוך נפש‬: 'Walking
the soul (literal)', 'state of mind', 'thought, idea, intention', 'imagination',
'fantasy'.
15) ‫( השתוחחה נפשו‬contemporary meaning): 'His soul bends down [to the
earth] (literal)', ‘the state of the spirit of a depressed, nailed, low-morale,
broken, pitiful man without a backbone’; Biblical ‫וֹח֥ח‬ ָ ‫ ָﬠלַי֘ נַפְ ִ ֪שׁי ִת ְשׁ ֫תּ‬: 'In me
my soul is oppressed.', 'My soul yearns in me.' (see Psalm 42: 7, compare
Psalm 44:26)
16) ‫( שחה לעפר נפשו‬contemporary meaning): 'His soul bowed to the earth
(literal)', 'to be humiliated, depressed, beat down, humbled and made low';
Biblical ‫שׁחָ ה ֶלﬠָפָ ֣ר נַפְ ֵ ֑שׁנוּ‬:
֣ ָ 'Our soul has been plunged in the dust.', 'Our soul
is crushed to the dust.', ‘душа наша унижена до праха’ (see Psalm 44:26,
compare Psalm 42:7)
18) ‫( באו מים עד נפש‬an expression): hopelessness, 'The water has come to
the soul (literal).', 'All hope has fallen.’, ‘to have more than one can
handle’, ‘a great worry’, ‘to beat one's head against the wall’: Biblical ‫ָב֖אוּ‬
‫ַד־נפֶשׁ‬ ֣ ַ ‘The water is up to my neck.’, ‘Water has come to my soul. ‘
ֽ ָ ‫מיִ ם ﬠ‬:
(see Psalm 69: 2)
22) ‫( תקצר נפשו למות‬contemporary meaning): ‘to be impatient’, ‘to not be

able to stand something’, ‘to despise life’, ‘life that has lost its meaning’,
‘It disgusted him.’, ‘It was hard on his soul.’, ‘to break down’; Biblical
‫ו ִַתּקְ ַצ֥ר נַפְ ֖שׁוֹ ל ָֽמוּת‬: ‘fatal suffering', ‘His soul was vexed unto death.’ (see
Judges 16:16, compare Judges 16:30; 1 Kings 19:4)
23) ‫תמות נפשי עם פלישתים‬: 'I'm dying [from natural causes, from wounds or
illness].', ‘a hopeless situation with no way out'; Biblical ‫תָּ ֣מוֹת נַפְ ִשׁי֘ ﬠִ ם־‬
‫פְּ לִ ְשׁ ִתּי ֒ם‬: ‘Let my soul die with the Philistines (literal).’, ‘May I die (be lost)
with the Philistines.’ (Judges 16:30, compare Judges 16:16, 1 Kings 19:4)
In these sayings, the term nefesh is translated as 'soul' or sometimes as

'spirit'.
1, 3, 17
1) ‫שואל את נפשו למות‬: ‘to lose hope', ‘to resign', ‘to be in despair', ‘to wish
death upon oneself’, to end one’s life [intentionally]; Biblical ‫ַיִּשׁ ַ ֤אל אֶ ת־‬
ְ ‫ו‬
‫ נַפְ שׁוֹ֙ ל ָ֔מוּת‬:‘he desired to die’, ‘he wished death upon himself’ (see 1 Kings
19:4; Judges 16:16; Judges 16:30)
158 Chapter 8
3) ‫ נקשרה נפשו‬and ‫ אוהב את נפשו‬are phrases similar to another, well-known,

Biblical saying �‫ וְ ָ ֽאהַ בְ ָ ֥תּ לְ ֵרﬠֲ�֖ כּ ָ֑מוֹ‬: ‘You will love your neighbour as
yourself.' (see Lev. 19:18) ‘The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of
David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.’ (see 1 Samuel 18:1)
17) ‫( נפש צמאה‬contemporary meaning): 'a thirsty soul (literal)', 'a desire to
know wisdom', 'inner desire for something', 'craving for something',
'longing for something'; Biblical ‫‘ – צָ ְמ ֬ ָאה לְ �֙ ׀ נַפְ ֗ ִשׁי‬My soul thirsteth for
thee.’, ‘My soul longs for thee.’, (see Psalm 63:2)
In these sayings, the term nefesh is translated as 'soul', 'man alone' and
exceptionally as 'the desire to die'.
V. Pleasures – Refusal of Pleasures
7, 9
7) ‫( לחסר את נפשו מטובה‬contemporary meaning): 'deny yourself', 'take away

pleasure', 'save', 'reduce'; Biblical ‫טּוֹבה‬ ְ ‘I deny my soul of
ָ ֔ ‫וּמחַ ֵ ֤סּר אֶ ת־נַפְ ִשׁי֙ ִמ‬:
pleasure.’, ‘I take away goodness from my life.’ (see Ecclesiastes 4:8)
9) ‫( עינה את נפשו‬contemporary meaning): ‘to fast ', 'to afflict oneself’, 'to
sacrifice', 'to punish yourself '; Biblical ‫יתם אֶ ת־נַפְ שֹׁ תֵ יכֶ ֑ם‬
֖ ֶ ִ‫וְ ﬠִ נּ‬: 'You will fast on
this day.', 'You will afflict your souls.', (see Leviticus 16:31)
In these sayings, the term nefesh expressing 'mortification' is usually

translated as 'soul', 'life' or is given back by the reflexive pronoun 'self'.
VI. Life Wisdom – Perception of the World
8, 11, 12, 14
8) ‫( טוב מראה עיניים מהלוך נפש‬contemporary meaning): 'Better is the sight of

which is concrete is better than an idea.'; Biblical ‫טוֹב מַ ְר ֵ ֥אה ﬠֵינַ ֖ יִם ֵ ֽמ ֲהלָ�־נָ ֑פֶשׁ‬:֛
'What the eyes look upon is better than unsatisfied desire.', 'It is better to
see with eyes than to desire it.' (see Ecclesiastes 6: 9)
11) ‫( נוצר פיו שומר נפשו‬contemporary meaning): ‘[By] guarding his mouth
he watches over his soul.’ (literal), ‘The fence for wisdom is silence.’,
‘Life and death depend on the tongue.’; Biblical ‫נֹ ֵצ֣ר ֭ ִפּיו שֹׁ ֵ ֣מר נַפְ ֑שׁוֹ‬: 'He that
keepeth his mouth keepeth his life', 'Who guards his mouth guards his
soul.' (see Proverbs 13:3)
12) ‫( )שמר נפשו )עצמו‬contemporary meaning): ‘to be careful’, ‘to beware’,

‘to watch out for something’; Biblical ‫שׁוֹמר ַ֜נפְ ֗שׁוֹ ְיִר ַח֥ק מֵ ֶ ֽהם‬:
ֵ֥ ‘Whoever cares
for himself stays away from danger.’, ‘He who guards his life, distances
himself from them.’, ‘Whoever guards his soul, distances himself from
them.’ (see Proverbs 22:5)
14) ‫( לא נשא לשווא נפשו‬contemporary meaning): 'to not swear falsely', 'to
keep promises' and without negation ‫נשא לשווא נפש‬: ‘to swear falsely', ‘do
not keep promises'; Biblical ‫ַשּׁוְ א נַפְ ִ ֑שׁי‬
֣ ָ ‫ָשׂא ל‬
֣ ָ ‫ ל ֹא־נ‬: 'He hath not lifted up his
soul in vain (literal).' ‘He is not condemned to the vanity of his soul.’, 'He
hath not bent his soul unto vanities.' (see Psalm 24: 4)
In these sayings, the term nefesh is usually translated as 'soul', but also as
'life' or is expressed by the reflexive pronoun 'self'. It usually expresses a
demand, desire or desire. It can also mean "swearing falsely", "not keeping
a promise."
VII. Sensitivity - Empathy
10
10) ‫( ‘יודע צדיק נפש בהמתו‬contemporary meaning): ‘A good man

understands the needs of another.', 'Is sensitive to the needs dependent on
him.’, ‘needs, success, prosperity', 'sensitive to misery', 'measure of
mercy', 'empathy'; Biblical ‫יוֹד ַﬠ צַ֭ ִדּיק נֶ ֣פֶ שׁ בְּ הֶ ְמ ֑תּוֹ‬
֣ ֵ "'The [righteous man]
recognizes the needs of his cattle.', 'The righteous care for his livestock.'
(see Proverbs 12:10)
Here the term nefesh expresses sensitivity to people or animals, is

translated as 'needs', 'success', 'prosperity', 'life'.
160 Chapter 8
VIII. Attachment
3, 20
3) Biblical ‫נקשרה נפשו‬: ‘The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of
David.’ (1 Samuel 18:1)
20) ‫( נפשו קשורה בנפשו‬contemporary meaning of the Biblical phrase): 'His

soul is attached to his soul (literal)', 'attachment', 'love for the truth', 'male
friendship'; Biblical meaning: see Gen. 44:30.
Here the term nefesh above all expresses attachment. In the translations of
idioms, the words 'soul' and 'life' are used alternately.
IX. Impatience
22
22) ‫( תקצר נפשו למות‬contemporary meaning): ‘to be impatient’, ‘to not be

able to stand something’, ‘to despise life’, ‘life that has lost its meaning’,
‘It disgusted him.’, ‘It was hard on his soul.’, ‘to break down’; Biblical
‫ו ִַתּקְ ַצ֥ר נַפְ ֖שׁוֹ ל ָֽמוּת‬: ‘fatal suffering', ‘His soul was vexed unto death.’ (see
Judges 16:16, compare Judges 16:30; 1 Kings 19:4)
The term nefesh is translated as ‘soul’, ‘contempt for life’, ‘death’.
X. Danger – Risk
19, 21, 24
19) ‫( נפשי בכפי‬contemporary meaning): My soul is still in my hands.’

(literal), ‘to take a great risk/challenge’, ‘to make a difficult decision’;
Biblical ‫נַפְ ִ ֣שׁי בְ כ ִ ַ֣פּי תָ ִ ֑מיד‬: ‘My life is in constant danger.', ‘My soul is in
constant danger.' (see Psalm 119:109)
21) ‫( השליך את נפשו מנגד‬contemporary meaning): ‘to risk oneself’, ‘to risk’,
‘to do something at the risk of [losing one's] life’, ‘to make a sacrifice’, ‘to
put oneself in danger’; Biblical ‫ ַויּ ְַשׁלֵ ֤� אֶ ת־נַפְ שׁוֹ֙ ִמ ֶ֔נּגֶד‬: ‘He threw his soul
opposite’(literal), ‘adventured his life’, ‘placed his soul in danger’ (see
Judges 9:17)
24) ‫שם נפשו בכפו‬: ‘put his soul into his hands (literal)', ‘to risk oneself' (see
Cohen, p. 190); Biblical ‫ ַויָּשֶׂ ֩ם אֶ ת־נַפְ שׁ֙ וֹ בְ כ ַ֜פּוֹ‬: ‘to risk one's life' (see1 Samuel
19:5).
The term nefesh translated as 'life' or 'soul' in idioms expresses 'danger',

'risk', or 'threat'.
In the discussed idioms and Biblical sayings expressing life or death,

vitality, state of mind, desires, feelings, sensitivity, empathy, pleasure or
refusal of pleasure, attachment, impatience, danger, risk, but also life
wisdom and perception of the world, the expression nefesh is usually
translated literally as 'soul' or figuratively as 'life', 'the source of life',
including 'contempt of life' and even 'death'. (80%). To a lesser extent, it
appears as a 'ghost' (10%). Sometimes it is expressed by the reflexive
pronoun 'oneself' or 'self' (10%). Understanding the term nefesh more as
'life' (or 'lack of life') than as 'spirit' is no surprise. Let's recall that nefesh
in the Hebrew Bible refers to a person, a corporeal being, and even occurs
in the meaning of 'body' in the context of human corpses such as - 'body of
the deceased'. The meaning of the term nefesh so understood in most of
the studied idioms refers to vitality and life, its lack, or danger.
References
Alcalay, Reuven. 1996. The Complete Hebrew-English Dictionary. Tel-

Aviv: Chemed Books – Yedioth Ahronoth.
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. 1969. Editio funditus renovate. Ed. Karl
Elliger et Wilhelm Rudolph. Masoram curavit Gerard E. Weil.
Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
Biblia to jest Pismo Święte Starego i Nowego Testamentu. 1976.
Warszawa: The British and Foreign Bible Society.
Biblia Tysiąclecia. 1980. Pismo Święte Starego i Nowego Testamentu w
przekładzie z języków oryginalnych. 3. wyd. Poznań–Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Pallotinum.
Cohen, Tuvya. 1991. Nivon Iri Hadash (in English: The New Dictionary
of Hebrew Idioms). Tel-Aviv: Hotsaat Sefarim.
Dalman, Gustaf H. 1938. Aramäisch-neuhebräisches Handwörterbuch zu
Targum, Talmud und Midrasch. Göttingen: J. Kauffmann.
Gesenius, Wilhelm. 1899. Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch
über das Alte Testament. Leipzig: Verlag von Friedrich C. W. Vogel.
162 Chapter 8
Jastrow, Marcus. 1950. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli

and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. I–II. New York: Pardes
Publish House.
Koehler, Ludwig und Walter Baumgartner. 1985. Lexicon in Veteris
Testamenti Libros + Supplementum, Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Marcinkowski, Roman. 2016. Pojmowanie duszy w judaizmie, in:
międzykulturowej, 1. Dusza w oczach świata. Warszawa: Instytut
Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Wydział Orientalistyczny
Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, p. 79–92.
Popowicz, Kamil. 2016. Troista natura człowieka w świetle twierdzeń o
niezupełności Gödla, in: Antropologiczno-językowe wizerunki duszy
w perspektywie międzykulturowej. 1. Dusza w oczach świata.
Warszawa; Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Wydział
Orientalistyczny Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, p. 93–104.
Yahav, Dan. 1999. Tanakh Yom Yom (English title: Everyday Bible). Tel-
Aviv: Tammuz Publishers.
Bible Works 10. 2018 – the original languages Bible software program
which includes:
Hebrew Bible
WTT – Leningrad Hebrew Old Testament
CGM – Targum Cairo-Geniza Morphology
and its translations:
Polish
BGP – Biblia Gdańska (1632)
BTP – Polish Biblia Tysiąclecia, Wydanie 4. (1965/84)
English
NAS – New American Standard Bible with Codes (1977)
KJV – King James (1611/1769) with Codes
TNK – JPS Tanakh (1985)
German
ELB – Revidierte Elberfelder (1993)
Russian
RSO – Russian Synodal Orthodox Version
CRV – Contemporary Russian Version
The Responsa Project CD 23 Plus. 2015. Bar-Ilan University
Summary
The aim of this paper is to broaden and deepen the understanding of the soul in
Judaism which was the topic of my paper during the first edition of the Scientific
Conference which opened up a series entitled Anthropological and Linguistic
Images of the Soul in Intercultural Perspective. At the previous Conference, I
presented the main Hebrew terms describing the soul and I defined them by taking
into consideration the differences between Biblical and Rabbinic Judaism. This
time the problem focuses exclusively on the Hebrew Bible, and – in more detail –
on the understanding of the Hebrew term nefesh and its use in the popular Hebrew
idioms and sayings taken from the language of the Bible. Some more interesting
expressions will be presented in the first place in the original context and then in
several translations into Polish, English, German and Russian, which will facilitate
their understanding.
Keywords: soul, Hebrew idioms, Bible, translation

CHAPTER 9
“MY SOUL KNOWETH RIGHT WELL”:

THE BIBLICAL DEFINITION OF “SOUL”
(HEBR. NEFEŠ, GR. PSYCHÉ) AND THE
EPISTEMOLOGY OF EMBODIED COGNITION –
AN ANCIENT SOURCE OF A MODERN
CONCEPT?
RÓBERT BOHÁT
CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
Introduction 1
"What is a man?" (Psalm 8:4, ASV 2) This question entails not only the
mystery of human self-definition but also the puzzle of our own cognition
that studies itself – the only known process in the material universe
capable of doing so. Some propose that the “equation” of a human
1 The author would first of all like to acknowledge his great debt of gratitude to the
late Ing. Ján Vechter who (as a physicist) helped him (a biologist) years ago to
understand not only the Biblical concept of the soul, but also the principle of
respecting the “limits of interpretation” while working with a text, as well as how
to use a concordance and analyze the Biblical text as such. Another inspiration
came from Mgr. Vladimír Rusó who taught me to work with the original texts of
the Scripture, and whose beautiful music resonated even in his reading of the
Greek and Hebrew texts. I also thank doc. PhDr. Irena Vaňková, CSc., PhD and all
colleagues from the linguistic association ANTROPOLINGVA at the Faculty of
Arts, Charles University (Prague); they acquainted me with the inspiring work of
Bartminski and the Lublin School of Cognitive Ethnolinguistics.
I also feel endless gratitude to my wife and family without whose support I could
not have completed this work and “my soul” would know much less. SDG.
2 American Standard Version of 1901.
“My soul knoweth right well”: The Biblical Definition of “Soul” 165
represents a dichotomy: a material body plus a non-material and immortal

soul, put together, form a human being. “It is by virtue of his spiritual soul
that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body…” (John
Paul II, 1996). Others go further in splitting the human being into a
trichotomy, which can be defined as “the belief that human beings consist
of three basic components: body, soul, and spirit.” (Smith 2000) Such
views on the duality (or more) of human nature (body vs. soul) is often
termed “Christian” or “biblical”. Is this really the case?
There are, on the other hand, many – including many proponents of
modern cognitive linguistics (and “embodied realism”) – who argue that
“as commonplace and ‘natural’ as this concept is, no such disembodied
mind can exist. Whether you call it mind or Soul, anything that both thinks
and is free-floating is a myth. It cannot exist.” (Lakoff and Johnson 1999:
563)
Perhaps surprisingly, the biblical view of the soul (nefeš 3 in Hebrew,
psyché in Greek) supports the latter view; in sharp contrast to the above
dualism of body and soul, the New Catholic Encyclopedia describes the
Bible’s soul as follows:
Nepes [i.e. nefeš] is a term of far greater extension than our ‘soul,’
signifying life (Ex 21.23; Dt 19.21) and its various vital manifestations:
breathing (Gn 35.18; Jb 41.13[21]), blood (Gn 9.4; Dt 12.23; Ps 140
(141).8), desire (2 Sam 3.21; Pr 23.2). The soul in the O[ld] T[estament]
means not a part of man, but the whole man – man as a living being.
Similarly, in the N[ew] T[estament] it signifies human life: the life of an
individual, conscious subject (Mt 2.20; 6.25; Lk 12.22-23; 14.26; Jn 10.11,
15, 17; 13.37). (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. XIII: 467)
Such a non-dualistic view of the biblical soul is confirmed by the

Czech scholar Adolf Novotný in his Biblický slovník (Bible Dictionary):
"The fundamental statement we need to start from is Genesis 2,7… This
text does not say that a human has a soul but that the whole of him is a
soul, that soul is his very substance. He who is not a soul is not a human…
Thus, the soul is tied to the body. At the death of a human, the soul also
dies… The soul in the OT presupposes a body.” 4 (Novotný 1956: 135)
What, then, is the biblical soul? Is it (together with its cognition)
material or non-material, mortal or immortal, embodied or disembodied?
3Also transcribed as nephesh, nepes, nepeš, nepeś, etc.

4Czech original: “Základní výpovědí, od níž musíme vycházet, je Gn 2,7… Zde se
nepraví, že člověk má duši, nýbrž že celý je duší, že jeho podstatou je duše. Kdo
není duší, není člověkem…Je tedy duše vázána na tělo. Při smrti člověka umírá i
duše... Duše předpokládá ve SZ tělo.” (Novotný 1956: 135, translated by RB)
166 Chapter 9
An accurate understanding of the biblical concept of the soul can be an

asset not only to cognitive linguistics but also to ethnolinguistics,
providing us with the linguistic image of humans in the ancient biblical
civilization, described by Tresmontant as “the Hebrew Thought”
(Tresmontant 1998) and by Jerome as “hebraica veritas” (Jerome, Epistula
78, in: Ozog 2010: 513).
Furthermore, the so-called “mind-body problem” is still topical, and
given that the Bible is one of the foundational documents of Western
civilization, an accurate account of the biblical soul can be useful for the
cognitive sciences in general and for pedagogical theory and practice in
particular (including an understanding of the cognitive metaphors of
learning that constitute the principal framework and motivation behind this
study). In commenting on J. A. Comenius (an influential Czech
pedagogical reformer), Brekle stated: “He attacked the dualism Descartes
had set up between the soul (= res cogitans) and the body (= res extensa).”
(Brekle 1975: 318) If Descartes’ dualism is correct, then the best learning
takes place in an abstract, speculative, introspective manner - a manner
that is as disembodied as possible. If, however, the locus cognitionis or res
cogitans is an embodied soul, then Comenius is correct, and learning is at
its best when it happens experientially, holistically, in an embodied way.
This is why the goal of this study is to provide a coherent biblical
interpretation of the psalmist’s words to God: “Wonderful are thy works;
and that my soul knoweth right well.” (Psalm 139:14, ASV) What exactly
is the “soul” that “knoweth right well”, and how does it know? Is it
possible that the biblical soul is a harbinger of the modern concept of
embodied cognition?
This first stage of analysis of the biblical soul attempts to answer the
following questions:
1. Is the biblical soul embodied or disembodied? (Ergo: is biblical

anthropology dualistic or holistically monistic?)
2. Is the concept of the soul coherent throughout the biblical canon?
3. As a seat of cognition, how does this soul know – is it in an
embodied or disembodied way?
4. What metaphors of learning or cognition appear in connection
with the biblical soul?
Methodology
Theoretical background of interpretation. An ideal goal is to read and

interpret each text as it is, biblically speaking “not to go beyond the things
which are written,” that is, not to cross the limit of meanings justified by
the text itself. (1 Corinthians 4:6) Umberto Eco expresses the same
principle as follows: “…the interpreted text imposes some constraints
upon its interpreters. The limits of interpretation coincide with the rights of
the text.” (Eco 1990: 6–7) The analyzed text thus has “rights” to have the
limits of the possible meanings permitted by “the things which are written”
respected, to be interpreted “on its own terms” and in harmony with its
own semantic and syntactical setup, including the interpreter’s duty to
distinguish between the literal and the metaphorical within the norms
established by the text (and not according to the interpreter’s own
philosophical preferences or prejudices). The Companion Bible
summarized the matter as follows: "Ignorance of Figures of speech has led
to the grossest errors, which have been caused either from taking literally
what is figurative or from taking figuratively what is literal." (The
Companion Bible. Appendix 6 (on Figures of Speech): 8)
This research started by identifying the etymological and semantic
limits of the term nefeš with the help of dictionaries. Klein’s A
Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language states
about nefeš: “1 breath, breath of life. 2 soul. 3 mind. 4 person, human
being. 5 will, desire. 6 self (used to paraphrase to the reflexive person).”
(Klein 1987: 422) In connection to the root naphash, it adds that it means
“to blow, to breathe. [base of nefeš… Base naphash is related to nashaph
(= to blow), prob. also to nasham (= to breathe)...] … Niph. nippash he
took a breath, refreshed himself, rested…" (Klein 1987: 422; similarly, in
Gesenius and Fürst, 1872: 418; Koehler and Baumgartner, 1985: 626–628)
Thus, etymology and lexicography agree that nefeš is “a living,
breathing being”, “a breather” in short, and this etymological approach
then determined the direction of all interpretation, including the decision
whether the context requires the basic meaning or a
metonymical/metaphorical meaning, or, alternatively, whether a given
context uses parallelism, merism, or other figures of speech (compare
Heriban 1998: 773, 684). In other words, I strove to "hear" the meaning of
the root word "breathe" or "breath" constantly, as would an ancient
Hebrew speaker, whose mother tongue was used in the text.
If a context did not make it possible to use the “basic meaning”
(Pragglejaz Group 2007) coherently and consistently, the following
question was asked: is it possible to interpret the meaning of this text by
168 Chapter 9
means of metonymy or metaphor without – as stated by the principle of

Occam’s Razor – “unnecessarily multiplying entities” and postulating an
independent, disembodied soul without explicit textual justification? When
deciding on metonymical and metaphorical uses of the word, the MIPVU
procedure (Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University Amsterdam)
was used. (Pragglejaz Group 2007: 3)
Data collection and analysis. The concordance used in analyzing the
754 5 occurrences of the word nefeš in the Hebrew text was Lisowsky’s
Konkordanz Zum Hebräischen Alten Testament (1981) and in analyzing
the 102 passages with the New Testament term psyché, it was the
Handkonkordanz zum Griechischen Neuen Testament (Schmoller 1989).
Dictionary definitions (especially Gesenius and Fürst 1872: 418;
Koehler and Baumgartner 1985: 626–628) and concordance results led to
the division of the term into seven basic semantic categories:
I. “breather”/ living being kept alive by breathing

a. animal
b. human
c. animal and humans together
II. life (a metonymic shift)
III. blood (a metonymic shift)
a. direct metonymy: blood = soul
b. close connection: “blood of a soul”
IV. desire (a metonymic shift)
V. mortal/dead being
VI. pronominal meaning “I”, “you”, “-self”, etc.
VII. cognitive-affective subject
Data quantification. Semantic categories of nefeš and psyché are

quantified in terms of absolute frequency, and percentage for each section
of the biblical corpus – the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings and the New
Testament.
Results
As shown in Table 1, the most frequent meaning of “soul” in the Torah

is “breathing living being”, while in other parts, the most frequent meaning
5
The sums of occurrences in tables below are a little higher than these numbers
from the Concordance. The reason is that the word nefeš (and psyché) in some
texts entails two or more possible meanings, thus placing them in more than one
category.
is “life”. In the Writings (Hagiographa) and the New Testament, the

category of the soul as a “cognitive-affective subject” is the second most
frequent. Overall, the metonymy of “soul = life” ranks as the most
frequent category in the whole biblical corpus (around 24% of all
occurrences).
Table 1: Semantic Category Frequencies of “Soul” in the Whole Bible
Semantic Torah Prophets Writings New Total Percentage

Category (Pentateuch) Testament
Breathing 77 29 25 18 149 17.1%
living being
Life 23 66 80 39 208 23.9%
(metonymy)
Blood 10 1 1 2 14 1.6%
(metonymy)
Desire 14 22 19 1 56 6.4%
(metonymy)
Mortal 40 48 19 9 116 13.3 %
being
As a 40 50 61 11 162 18.6%
pronoun
Cognitive- 17 35 64 22 138 15.8%
affective
subject
Special 2 15 9 2 28 3.2%
(about God)
Total: 223 266 278 104 871 100%
Graph 1: Seven categories of soul in the whole Bible (absolute frequency)

170 Chapter 9
Table 2: Soul in the Torah (Pentateuch) - I. “breather” (living being)
References Absolute
Frequency
a. Animal: (13x) 77
Ge 1:20; 2:19; 9:10, 15; Le 11:10, 46; Le 24:18;
As a subject: Ge 1:30;
As an object: Ge 1:21, 24;
b. Human: (61x)
Genesis: (15x)
Ge 2:7; 42:21; 46:18, 26, 27 (2x);
As a subject: Ge 46:15, 22, 25, 26, 27(2x);
As an object: Ge 12:5; Ge 14:21; Ge 36:6;
Exodus: (5x)
Ex 1:5; 12:4, 16; 16:16;
As a subject: Ex 1:5;
Leviticus: (23x)
Le 2:1; 4:2; 5:1, 2, 4, 15, 17, 21[E=6:2] 6; 7:20a[eats],
21a[touches], 27a[eats, dies]; 17:10[eats, dies], 11b,
15[eats]; 20:6a; 22:6[touches]; 23:29[dies];
As a subject: Le 4:27; Le 7:18; Le 17:12; Le 23:30a
As an object: Le 22:11; Le 27:2;
Numbers: (16x)
Nu 15:28, 30a[dies]; 19:18[touches, is sprinkled on];
30:13[fasts]; 31:35 [2x], 40 [2x], 46; 35:11[dies], 15, 30
[dies];
As a subject: Nu 5:6; Nu 11:6; Nu 15:27; Nu 19:22
[touches material objects];
Deuteronomy: (2x)
Dt 10:22;
As a subject: Dt 24:7;
c. Human and animal: (collectively used): (3x)
Ge 9:12, 16; Nu 31:28;
The Torah (Pentateuch) is the starting point of the whole biblical

corpus, and thus its concept of the soul is key to any further analysis of the
term. Novotný proposes: “The fundamental statement we need to start with
is Ge 2,7” (1956: 135). The Hebrew text of Genesis 2:7 reads: “va-jipach
be-apav nišmat chajjim va-jehí ha-adam le-nefeš chaja”, that is, “and-
6 Verse numbering sometimes differs between the original text and the English
translations; in such cases, the Hebrew verse number is given first, followed by
[E=…], indicating the verse number in square brackets.
breathed into-nostrils-his breath-of life and-he-became the-man (in)to-soul

living”. The ASV translates: “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living soul.” This means that God did not “breathe the soul into”
the first human, as the folkloric paraphrase goes, but – strictly logically –
He breathed into his nostrils breath (nešama, not nefeš). The first human
did not “get a soul” but “became a soul”; in other words, the word “soul”
as used in the Torah does not describe something a person has but
something that he or she is. The Biblical human does not have a soul; he or
she is a soul. 7
As Table 2 shows, the biblical definition of “soul” also includes
animals. Contrary to the traditional Western view, the soul is not
something that distinguishes humans from animals but is the common
denominator of humans and animals, their shared category. It is significant
that before humans appear in the text as “souls” in Genesis 2:7, there are
four mentions of “soul” in connection with animals. A neutral reader of the
original will have read the word “soul” in the sense of “animal” in the
context, and thus will understand that – in terms of the Hebrew Bible – not
only does nefeš = human but also nefeš = animal. The original semantic
meaning of the root word for nefeš – “breather, a breathing being” – helps
us understand the sense in which this equation holds true and what its
limits are. Thus, “soul” is not the factor that accounts for the greater value
of a human over animals. It is nonetheless clear that the Hebrew “soul” is
“an animal, a human or a creeping (moving) creature, preserved alive by
breathing”.
Table 3: Soul in the Torah (Pentateuch) - II. “Life” (metonymy)
References Absolute Notes

Frequency
Genesis: (9x) Ge 9:5b*; 23 * Legal context: soul = the life of a

19:17; 35:18; 44:30[2x]; human, i.e., the principle of
As a subject: Ge 12:13; Ge equivalence of the damage and the
32:31[E=30]; Ge 44:30 [2x] punishment, namely “a soul for a
As an object: Ge 9:5*; soul” (earthly judges obviously
Exodus: (7x) Ex 21:23* could not have taken a person’s
[2x], 30; 30:12, 15, 16; disembodied soul, but they could
As an object: Ex 4:19 “take” that person’s life); also, in Dt
7 A simple, everyday example to illustrate the difference: it is one thing to have a
dog, and quite another to be a dog.

172 Chapter 9
Leviticus: (1x) As an 19:21, the “soul” is listed with

object: Le 26: 16 physical and bodily parts, e.g.
Numbers: (2x) Nu 17:3 “eye”, “tooth”, “hand”, and “foot”.
[=16:38/E]; 35:31*; This juxtaposition of soul and
Deuteronomy: (3x) Dt bodily organs points to an internal
19:21* [2x] coherence of the embodied character
As an object: Dt 24:6; of the Biblical soul.
The close link between soul and life is evident from the first
occurrence of the term nefeš in the book of Genesis, where it is frequently
referred to as “the living soul” (nefeš chajah). In the light of Genesis 2:7,
breath, soul and life go “hand in hand”, and hence the natural metonymic
shift from “life-preserving breath” to “life” in the metonymy of CAUSE IS
EFFECT (more specifically, BREATH IS LIFE). A typical example is
Genesis 9:5: “at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother I will
require the soul (or life) of man.” (Jubilee Bible 2000 [JB2])
The significance of this embodied concept of the soul is also evident in
the fact that it was one of the key legal concepts of the Mosaic legislation,
and thus also one of the key terms of the Ancient Hebrew culture, with
very practical consequences (compare the note on Deuteronomy 19:21 in
Table 3). The term “soul” also appears in laws regulating creditor-debtor
relationships. An example of this is the case of a three-step metonymy (or
metonymy within a metonymy) in a relationship such as: “life-preserving
breath  life  life-preserving bread  millstone”. Deuteronomy 24:6
says, literally: “No one will take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge, for
that would be taking a soul in pledge.” The English Standard Version
(ESV) renders it as follows: “No one shall take a mill or an upper
millstone in pledge, for that would be taking a life in pledge.” Bread
provides chemical energy (in saccharides) that makes respiration possible
(according to modern biological theory, respiration at the cellular level
indeed involves the breakdown of saccharides). But acquiring bread is
impossible without a mill to grind the raw grain. The mill and the upper
millstone thus provide the food necessary for the preservation of breathing
(respiration), and respiration, in turn, keeps the soul alive. Thus, first there is
the metonymy of THE TOOL IS THE PRODUCT (namely, THE
MILLSTONE IS FOOD), then THE MEANS IS THE EFFECT (i.e., FOOD
IS LIFE) and ultimately there is the metonymy of LIFE IS SOUL and SOUL
IS LIFE. At every level of this graduated metonymy, there is contiguity (a
real connection or association) between the interconnected parts.
Table 4: Soul in the Torah (Pentateuch) - III. “blood” (metonymy)

Frequency
Direct metonymy: blood = soul 10 Dt 12:23 – parallel with the

(5x) meaning of life; “ki ha-dam hu
Ge 9:4; Le 17:14a,c [dies]; Dt ha-nefeš ve-lo tochal ha-nefeš
12:23 [2x] im ha-basar”; literal translation
Juxtaposition: “blood of the by RB: “because the-blood he
soul”: (5x) the-soul and-not you-shall-eat
Ge 9:5a; Le 17:11a,c, 14b; As a the-soul with the-flesh”; i.e. it
subject: Le 17:14b; is possible to eat a biblical
soul, hence, it must be
embodied.
Genesis 9:4 states: “But flesh with the soul (or life) thereof, which is its
blood, ye shall not eat.” (JB2) Leviticus 17:14 adds: “The soul (or the life)
of all flesh is its blood.” (JB2) If we keep in mind the basic meaning of the
word nefeš, that is, “breather”, we can see a direct metonymy here:
breathing oxygenates the blood, which in turn carries the oxygen all
around the body. Without oxygenated blood, there is no life. This explicit
connection between blood and breathing (the "breather" soul) was made in
the Bible centuries ahead of Galen, William Harvey, and their colleagues
(compare Aird 2011).
The conceptual metaphor of vessel explains the following use of nefeš
in Leviticus 17:11: “The soul (or life) of the flesh is in the blood”. (JB2)
Thanks to cognitive linguistics we can read this text without “magical
spectacles”; a rational (not rationalistic) explanation: breath preserves life
thanks to the blood that carries oxygen all around the body, which is why
there is a contiguity between the soul ("the breather") and blood; thus, the
metonymy of THE MEANS IS THE EFFECT (i.e., blood as the means of
oxygenation/breathing, the effect being the life of the “breather”) is justified.
This is semantically close to the meaning of SOUL IS LIFE in Table 2.
This metonymy establishes a deep axiological aspect in the relationship:
“The soul (or life) of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you to
reconcile your persons (or souls) upon the altar; therefore the same blood
reconciles the person.” (JB2) Inasmuch as the value of blood equals the
value of life, whose value, in turn, equals that of the soul, this soul
(represented by blood) plays a key role in the atonement and reconciliation
between an imperfect human being and the perfect God (including the
forgiveness of sins). It is this relationship that Jesus of Nazareth later
174 Chapter 9
alludes to in the New Testament when he says that he came “to give his
soul (psyché, often translated as life) as a ransom for many.” (Matthew
20:28; literal translation by RB)
Table 5: Soul in the Torah (Pentateuch) - IV. “desire” (metonymy)

Frequency
[including the meanings of 12 Exodus 15:9: conceptual

“agreement”, “appetite”, metaphor: SOUL IS A
“wish”, etc.] CONTAINER and
Ge 23:8; Dt 12:15, 20b, 21; SATISFACTION IS FILLING A
18:6; 21:14; 23:25[=24/E]; CONTAINER. Heb. “amar
As a subject: Ge 34:3, 8; Ex ojjev:… achaleq šalal, timlaemo
15:9; Dt 12:20a; nafší”, i.e. “said the enemy:… I-
As an object: Dt 24:15 will-split plunder, she-will-fill-
itself-with-it my-soul” (literally,
by RB)
Table 5 points to another metonymy: SOUL IS DESIRE. A similar

connection appears in some other languages, such as Czech and Slovak,
where the verb dýchať (to breathe, also the root for the word duša, soul)
and the verb dychtiť (to desire, pant for something) are derived from the
same root. Intensified breathing is often a “side-effect” of a strong desire
(e.g., with babies desiring milk, panting for it), so there is contiguity
between the two. The metonymy of CAUSE IS THE SIDE-EFFECT (as in
DESIRE IS BREATHING/BREATHER) is visible for example in
Deuteronomy 24:15, where a hired labourer’s wage is in view: “elav hu
nose et nafšó”, (literally, “to it [= the wage] he lifts his soul” (by RB)].
Deuteronomy 12:20 says: "Thy soul desireth to eat flesh" (ASV).
Deuteronomy 14:26 adds that these desires of the soul are physical: "Thou
shalt bestow the money for whatsoever thy soul desireth, for oxen, or for
sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul asketh of
thee; and thou shalt eat there before Jehovah thy God, and thou shalt
rejoice, thou and thy household." (ASV) It is worth noting that the
axiological aspect of "the soul as a desire" is connected to the affective
gestalt of joy: the satisfaction of bodily needs of the embodied soul by
means of eating and drinking leads to joy.
Table 6: Soul in the Torah (Pentateuch) - V. “Mortal / dead being”

Frequency
a. “Nefeš” = corpse: (10x) 40 *Example of the absence of

Leviticus: Le 19:28; 21:1; 22:4; dualism: Numbers 15:30, 31:
Numbers: Nu 5:2; 6:11; 9:6, 7, 10; “‘But the soul who does
19:11, 13a; anything with a high hand
Deuteronomy: N/A [Hebr. be-jad ramah], whether
b. “Nefeš met(a)” – dead he is native-born or a foreigner,
soul, etc. (3x) the same blasphemes Yahweh;
Leviticus: Le 21:11 and that soul shall be cut off
Numbers: Nu 6:6; As a subject: Nu from among his people…his
23:10 iniquity shall be on him”
c. “Tikkaret”/nikreta ha- (World English Bible [WEB])
nefeš – the soul will be “cut This seems to be a
off” = executed (18x) “confluence” of several
Genesis: As a subject: Ge 17:14; semantic elements: firstly, the
Exodus: Ex 12:15, 19; Ex 31:14; soul is mortal, inasmuch as it
Leviticus: Le 20:6b; 23:29; As a can be “cut off”, i.e. executed.
subject: Le 7:20b; 21b; 25, 27b; Le Furthermore, unlike
18:29; Le 19:8; Le 22:3; unintentional sin “by mistake”
Numbers: As a subject: Nu 9:13; (Hebr. bi-šgagah), a deliberate
Nu 15:30b, 31*; Nu 19:13b, 20, sin “be-jad ramah”, i.e. “with a
d. “makeh/racach/horeg nefeš” – lifted hand” (the deliberate
to strike/kill a soul (9x) nature of the sin seems to be
Genesis: As an object: Ge 37:21 embodied, as expressed by the
Leviticus: As an object: Le 23:30b; metonymy of hand). Thirdly,
Le 24:17; the responsibility for the
Numbers: Nu 35:30a; As an object: “iniquity” is “on him”, borne
Nu 31:19 by the “soul”, i.e. the whole
Deuteronomy: Dt 19:6,11; 22:26; human person, not just the
As an object: Dt 27:25 “body”.
The expression “dead soul(s)” is considered an oxymoron in many

cultures. In Hebrew thought, however, the connection is natural and bears
no hint of a paradox, as this is the logical consequence of the text in
Genesis 2:7 (quoted above). For if a human being is an embodied soul,
then at the moment of a human’s death, the soul (which he or she is) also
dies (compare parts b, c, and d in Table 6).
176 Chapter 9
Table 7: Soul in the Torah (Pentateuch) - VI. Soul as a Pronoun

Frequency
Genesis: (7x) 40 *Ge 19:19 - Lot asks for:

As a subject: Ge 19:20; Ge 27:4, 19, “le-hachajót et nafší”,
25, 31; Ge 49:6; i.e. to “preserve-alive my-
As an object: Ge 19:19*; soul”; just as asbestos or
Leviticus: (8x) any other incombustible
As a subject: Le 17:11; material does not need to
As an object: Le 11:43; Le 11:44; Le be protected from fire, an
16:29,31; Le 20:25; Le 23:27, 32; immortal soul would need
Numbers: (14x) no protection from death
Nu 30:3, 5[2x], 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, to preserve itself alive. If
13 [E=30:2, 4[2x], 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, Lot’s soul needs that, then
12]; 31:50; “his soul” is mortal.
As an object: Nu 29: 7; Nu
30:14[E=13]
Deuteronomy: (2x)
Dt 4:15; 13:7[E=6];
The use of nefeš as a pronoun is a further example of the coherence of

the term in the Bible’s linguistic image of the world. Forasmuch as a
human is a soul (Genesis 2:7), then a human referring to himself or herself
could – in addition to the personal pronoun “anochí” or “aní” (i.e., “I”) or
the suffix “-ní” – use the word “nafší”, literally “my soul”. Naturally, as is
evident from the examples in Table 7, this use can be applied to other
persons, as in the example of Jacob’s “tevarcheni nafšecha” (“your soul
[i.e., you] will bless me” – in Genesis 27:4, 19). It is noteworthy that nefeš
in this context consumes food and is affected by it.
Another linguistic (stylistic) tool for a deeper analysis of the term nefeš
is parallelism. In Genesis 49:6, Jacob says: “Into-trust-their do-not-go my-
soul, into-congregation-their do-not-join my-glory” (literal translation by
RB). Here, “soul” is in parallel with glory, dignity – a very optimistic and
encouraging perspective of a human soul, the embodied and holistic
human self. In the Bible, human dignity does not, therefore, depend on an
immortal “spiritual soul” separated from the body, but precisely on the
embodied, material, unified and indivisible soul – the whole human
created “in God’s image” (Genesis 1:26, 28; 9:5)
From the axiological point of view, this places the soul very high on
the human hierarchy of values; indeed, it has the same value as life.
However, unlike in many other cultures, this value of life is not the highest
value of all. As the psalmist expressed it: “Kí tov chasdecha me-
chajjim…”, that is, “For better (is) your-loyal-love [i.e. God’s] than-life...”
(Psalm 63:3, literal translation by RB). The ASV translates: “Because thy
lovingkindness is better than life…” Thus, the soul has the great value of
life itself, of the whole human self that is so dignified (because of the
“image of God” it reflects) that it is used in parallel with the word “glory”.
And yet – in the biblical Hebrew linguistic image of the world – there is
something of even greater value than nefeš: the concept of divine chesed
(“lovingkindness”, or “loyal love”). To put it in a mathematical equation:
nefeš = adam = chajjim < chesed, or: soul = human = life < loyal love.
Table 8: Soul in the Torah: VII. Cognitive-Affective Subject

Frequency
Thinking and spiritual activities: 17 * “seeking God with a

(6x) whole soul and heart”
Dt 4:29*; Dt 11:18#; Dt 26:16★; Dt (merism – with all of one’s
30:2, 10;★ being, from inside and
As an object: Dt 4:9a outside)
Love and emotional gestalts: (11x) # “putting God’s words
- Love with a whole soul: Dt 6:5; onto one’s soul and heart”
13:4[E=3]; 30:6; ★ – “keeping the
- Love and work/serve with a commandments with all
whole soul: Dt 10:12; 11:13; one’s soul”
- “Narrowness of soul” – a - "keep thy soul… lest
emotional anxiety: Dt 28:65; thou forget", i.e. memory
- Empathy: As an object: Ex 23:9; and cognition connected to
- Soul despises something: As an the soul.
object: Le 26:15,43; Nu 21:4,5;
According to Table 8, the embodied biblical soul “seeks God”, “puts

His words onto the soul and heart”, “keeps the commandments”, and
“loves” as well as “serves”; it is often emphasized that it must be “whole”,
complete, undivided in these activities. Merisms are also frequent,
emphasizing the wholeness of the soul by listing its parts: for example, the
well-known “Shema” in Deuteronomy 6:5 gives the command to love God
with all of one’s “soul, heart and strength” – completeness that must lack
nothing, none of its aspects. This reminds us of the word "individual" in
English (and other languages), derived from the Latin word for
178 Chapter 9
“indivisible”. The biblical soul works in an undivided way; it is a living

individual, an indivisible whole. Any splitting, dividing, separating or
incompleteness devalues its work and endeavours.
It was by means of this embodied soul that the ancient nation of Israel
learned empathy. The words of Exodus 23:9 resonate with their
humaneness and profundity: "The-foreigner do-not oppress for-you know
the-soul of-foreigner because of foreigners you-became in-the-land of-
Egypt" (literal translation by RB). “You know the soul of the foreigner” –
with their whole embodied selves the nation had experienced
discrimination, racism and enslavement in Egypt. This holistic experience
was to be a constant reminder to them, every time they saw a foreign
resident in their midst; they were to "love him as themselves". "The
stranger who lives as a foreigner with you shall be to you as the native-
born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you lived as
foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God." (Leviticus 19:34,
WEB) The soul is a seat of cognition not only in theoretical matters but
also in one's efforts to understand the social relationships and
psychological states and experiences of other people (i.e., empathy).
Table 9: Soul in the Torah (Pentateuch) – Special Cases
References Absolute Frequency Notes
God & soul: Le 26:11, 30; 2 “divine pronoun”
Nefeš as a “divine pronoun”: as a blessing for obedience, God promises

in Leviticus 26:11, 30: “I will put my tent in your midst and my soul [i.e.,
God himself] will not loathe you” (literal translation by RB). This
metaphorical transfer of the “soul” onto God (who is a spirit par
excellence, and is explicitly described as such in John 4:24) does not make
God material, nor does it make humans a kind of “spiritual soul”. It is
simply another case of metaphorical anthropomorphism – the divine
“supra-material”, transcendent “I” addresses the material human “you”
(compare Buber 2016) in a language that the embodied earthling
understands, just like a parent speaks to a young child in terms of his or
her limited childhood experience (e.g., “daddy go bye-bye”, etc.). This
anthropomorphism emphasizes the intensity of divine empathy, humility
and willingness to draw close to human beings (compare James 4:8 and
Psalm 18:36 [E=35]).
Graph 2: Soul in the Torah: Absolute frequency of semantic categories
Table 10: Soul in the Prophets (Neviim): I. “Breather” (a living being)

Frequency
Animal: (1x) 29 *Jr 52:29,30: number of

As a subject: Ez 47:9: people: “nefeš šmone meot”,
Human: (22x) (literal translation by RB:
1 Sam 18:1a,b; 2 Ki 12:5 [E=4]; Is “soul – eight hundred”).
49:7; Jr 52:29, 30*; Ez 13:20a; Ez. #Hosea 9:4: “lachmam le-
18: 4a,b; 27:13 nafšam”, (literal translation by
As a subject: Is 55:3; RB: “their-bread for-their-
As an object: Jr 31:25 [2x]; Jr 43:6; soul”), i.e. soul eats bread
Ez 13:18(3x), 19(2x), 20b,c(2x); Ez aIs 29:8: “heqic ve-rejqah
22:25; nafšo (šoqeqah)” – soul is

Texts emphasizing the material hungry and thirsty.
nature of soul: (6x) bJob 6:7: “meana lingoa nafší
Hosea 9:4#; hemma”, (literal translation

As a subject: Is 29:8a [2x]; Is 55:2; by RB: “my soul refuses to
Jr 50:19; Job 6:7b; touch [tasteless food]”)
180 Chapter 9
Table 11: Soul in the Prophets (Neviim): II. “Life” (Metonymy)

Frequency
Jos 9:24; 2 Sam 18:13; 2 Sam 66 a1 Sam 26:21, 24: “jaqra

23:17; 1 Ki 2:23; 1Ki 19:3; nafší be-ejnejcha”, that is,
20:39,42; 2 Ki 7:7; 10:24; Is 10:18; “my soul was precious in
Is 43:4; Ez 32:10; your eyes”, i.e. “you spared
my life”; “kaašer gadla
As a subject: 1 Sam 25:29; 1 Sam nafšecha be-ejnaj, ken
26:21, 24a; 2 Sam 1:9; 1 Ki 17:21, tigdal nafší be-ejnej
22; 1 Ki 20:39,42 [2x]; 2 Ki 1:13 JHVH”, “as your soul was
[2x],14; 2 Ki 10:24 [2x]; Jr 21:9; Jr great in my eyes, so may
38:2; Jr 39:18; my soul be great in the eyes
of YHWH”;
As an object: Jos 2:13; Jud 5:18; cJr 15:9: “umlela joledet ha-
Jud 9:17; Jud 12:3; Jud 18:25 [b,c: šiva nafcha nafšah”, “the
2x;]; 1 Sam 19:5; 1 Sam 19:11; 1 mother of seven fainted, her
Sam 25:29; 1 Sam 28:21; 2 Sam soul breathed out” – a pun
4:9; 2 Sam 14:14; 2 Sam 19:6 [4x]; that seems to indicate a
1 Ki 1:12 [2x]; 1 Ki 1:29; 1 Ki “living” connection
3:11; 1 Ki 19:4b; Is 38:17; Jr 15:9c; between soul and breathing
Jr 20:13; Jr 38:16a; Jr 45: 5; Jr (the verb “nafcha” as in Ge
48:6; Jr 51:6, 45; Ez 33:5; Ez 33:6; 2:7).
Amos 2:14, 15; Jonah 4: 3; Jon
1:14; Jon 2:6[E=5];
Redeeming a soul (life): As a

subject: Is 53:10;
By means of metonymy, the value of the soul equals the value of life;
in mathematical terms, soul = life. And life is precious, as we can see from
the words of Abigail to David: "And though men are risen up to pursue
thee, and to seek thy soul, yet the soul of my lord shall be bound in the
bundle of life with Jehovah thy God". (1 Sam 25:29, ASV) This value –
soul – is "bound in the bundle of life", just as valuables or money used to
be bundled in a moneybag. The word-picture implied is a beautiful
metaphor of the soul as a jewel or precious stone bound in a protective
bundle or moneybag.
That is why sparing or saving human life is described as "my soul was
precious in thine eyes” (compare 1 Sam 26:21, 24, KJV – Table 11). In the
context of the passage, David had not saved Saul’s “spiritual soul”, but
had just spared his “biological life”. Wherein lies the value or dignity of
the human soul? Not in any presumed “spiritual nature” of the soul, but in
the fact that this material, embodied soul was created “in God’s image”:
“Whoever sheds man's blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God
made man in his own image.” (Genesis 9:6, WEB; compare with Genesis
9:4 and the metonymy of “soul is blood”.) A human being, that is, a soul,
is an “image” of divine qualities, a sort of living metaphor of God in the
material universe. Thus, in order to determine the value and dignity of the
human soul, there is no need to postulate a “spiritual soul”, that is, a
disembodied soul; the Biblical text assigns great value to the embodied
souls through the "image of God" reflected in them. Among the divine
qualities included in the "image of God" is also the gift of selfhood and
cognition – the ability to know and reflect on one’s self as well as on the
world (compare Colossians 3:10 in its context).
Table 12: Soul in the Prophets (Neviim): III. “Blood” (Metonymy)

Frequency
Close association a“dam nafšot evjonim” (literally,

(juxtaposition): Jr 2:34a 1 by RB: “blood of the souls of the
poor”)
Table 13: Soul in the Prophets (Neviim): IV. “Desire” (Metonymy)

Frequency
Human “desire of the 22 *(ofdogs) "azej-nefeš" - "strong of the

soul” [“avat nefeš”]: soul", i.e. gluttonous, greedily desirous
1 Sam 23:20; Is
56:11*; Jr 2:24; Jr 34:16#; #they sent the slaves “chofším le-
Ez 13:27; Ez 24:25; Mic nafšam” - “free for their soul”, i.e. they
7:3; could go wherever they wanted.
As a subject: 1 Sam a“chelev, basar” – i.e. soul desires fat,
2:16a; 1 Sam 20:4; 2 Sam meat.

3:21; 1 Ki 11:37; Micah b“ejn eškol leechol, bikura ivtah nafší” –
7:1b; the soul desires grapes and figs.

As an object: Is 32:6; Is c”nefeš naana tasbia; hisbia nafšecha
58:10b, 11c; Jr 22:27; Jr ve-acamotejcha jachalic” – to satisfy

182 Chapter 9
31:14; Jr 44:14; Ez 7:19d; the soul and strengthen the bones (i.e.
Hosea 4:8; Habakkuk the soul has bones)
2:5; d”nafšam lo jisabeu u-meejhem lo
Agreement (as an yemale’u” - “their soul they will not

expression of wanting, satisfy and their entrails they will not
willingness or desire to fill”
do something) – a eJehu: “im ješ nafšechem” – literal
possible connection translation by RB: “If your soul is”, i.e.

(overlap) with the “if you agree”, “if you want”.
cognitive category: 2 Ki
9:15e;
The embodiedness of the biblical soul is visible in the fact that this soul
desires fat, meat, and fruit (1 Samuel 2:16; Micah 7:1), as well as from
various parallelisms in which the satisfaction of the soul is connected to
the filling up of the entrails or strengthening the bones. (Is 58:11; Ez 7:19)
The desire of the soul is not limited to food only; released slaves were
temporarily “chofším le-nafšam”, that is, “free for their soul” – in other
words, they could move freely, they could go wherever “their soul” felt
like going (Jeremiah 34:16). Jehu, the new king, is making sure about the
“soul” or “affirmative desire” of his counselors: “im ješ nafšechem”, that
is, “if your soul is”, or “if you agree, do not let anyone go out of the town”
(2 Kings 9:15).
Table 14: Soul in the Prophets (Neviim): V. “Mortal / dead being”
References Absolute
Frequency
a. “Nefeš” = corpse [literal or legal responsibility for death] 48

1 Sam 22:22; 2 Sam 14:7; Hg 2:13;
b. “Nefeš met(a)” – dead soul:
As a subject: Jos 2:14; Jud 16:30;
“Nefeš tamut” – soul dies: 1 Ki 19:4; Ez 18:4c, 20; Jonah 4:8;
c. “Tikkaret” etc. – soul “cut off”, i.e. executed
As an object: Ez 17:17;
d. “Makeh/racach nefeš” – to hit or kill a soul
Jos 20:3,9; Jr 40:14,15;
As an object: Jos 10:28, 30, 35, 37(2x), 39; Jos 11:11;
e. “Sword reached the soul” (naga cherev ad ha-nefeš): Jr
4:10; Jr 19:7, 9; 21:7; 22:25; 34:20, 21; 44:30; 46:26; 49:37;
f. “They dug a pit for my soul”: Jr 18:20
g. “To seek the soul of someone” – wanting “to take their

life”:
As an object: 1 Sam 20:1; 1 Sam 22:23 [2x]; 1 Sam 23:15; 1
Sam 24:12; 1 Sam 25:29; 2 Sam 4:8 ; 2 Sam 16:11; 1 Ki 19:10, 14;
Jr 4:30; Jr 11:21; Jr 38:16b;
h. Miscellanea: Jr 42:20; As an object: Is 53:12; Ez 22:27;
Of the 250 occurrences of the word “soul” in the Prophets, 48 (almost

20%) are directly linked to death or dying. No prophetic text mentions the
idea of the immortality of the soul (as taught explicitly by Plato and
others). On the contrary, they describe the soul as something that is
explicitly mortal and physically vulnerable.
Table 15: Soul in the Prophets (Neviim): VI. Pronoun
References Absolute
Frequency
a. Nafší (“my soul” = “I”): 50

Jud. 5:21; 1 Sam 28:9; Mi 6:7;
As a subject: 1 Ki 20:32; Jr 4:19, 31; Jr 13:17; Ez 4:14;
As an object: Is 58:3, 5, 10a;
b. “As one’s soul” – one’s own self: 1 Sam 18:1c, 3; 20:17;
c. “Your soul” etc.:
1 Sam 1:26; 1 Sam 17:55; 20:3; 25:26; 2 Sam 11:11; 14:19; 1Ki
19:2; 2 Ki 2:2, 4,6; 4:30; Is 3:9; 51:23; 53:11; Jr 6:16; 17:21; 26:19;
44:7; Ez 13:5;
As a subject: Jr 3:11; Jr 31:12; Jr 38:17,20;
As an object: 1 Ki 19:2 [2x]; 1 Ki 20:31; Is 44:20; Is 47:14; Jr
37:9; Ez 3:19, 21; Ez 14:14, 20; Ez 18:27; Ez 33:9; Habakkuk 2:10;
The pronominal use of nefeš allows a person, inter alia, to have an

inner dialogue with his or her own self, as in Jeremiah 37:9: “Thus said
Jehovah: Lift not up [i.e., do not deceive] your souls saying, the Chaldeans
surely go from off us, for they do not go.” (Young’s Literal Translation
[YLT]; compare Jr 4:19) Such an inner dialogue (be it self-deception or a
genuine reflection) is connected to the functioning of human cognition in
both our conscience and consciousness (including metacognition).
As for the soul of those who will return from captivity in Babylon, it is
written that they “shall flow unto the goodness of Jehovah, to the grain,
and to the new wine, and to the oil, and to the young of the flock and of
184 Chapter 9
the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not
sorrow any more at all.” (Jr 31:12, ASV) The metaphor of the soul “as a
watered garden”, prosperous because of “grain, new wine and oil” and the
fact that “they shall not sorrow any more”, connects the purely physical
factors with emotional, affective psychological states (gestalts).
Table 16: Soul in the Prophets: VII. Cognitive-Affective Subject
References Absolute
Frequency
a. To love and to serve (God): Jos 22:5; 35

b. To keep commandments with all soul, to obey: 2 Ki 23:3; 1
Ki 8:48; 2 Ki 23:25;
c. Emotional states: Jud 18:25a; 1 Sam 1:10; 2 Sam 5:8; 17:8; Is
19:10; 38:15; Jr 12:7; Ez 24:21; 25:6; 25:15; 27:31; 36:5;
As a subject: 1 Sam 30:6; 2 Ki 4:27; Is 15:4;
As an object: 1 Sam 1:15; 1 Sam 2:33; 1 Sam 22:2;
d. “Guard your souls” by love for God: Jos 23:11;
e. “To know with one’s whole soul”: Jos 23:14;
f. "To walk in front of God with the whole soul": 1 Ki 2:4;
g. A desire for the Name of God: Is 26: 8, 9;
h. Soul find delight or despises: As a subject: Jud 16:16; Is 66:3;
Jr 23:17, 22, 28; Ze 11:8 [2x];
i. Soul has moral responsibility: As a subject: Hab 2:4
The soul as a cognitive-affective subject in the biblical corpus is rich in

metaphors, often connected to the everyday physical activities of the soul,
such as eating, walking, physical delight, or savouring food or despising it.
So, for example, a person who is upset is “mar nefeš”, a person “of bitter
soul” (pointing to the physical taste of bitterness; Jud 18:25a; Jud 18:25a;
1 Sam 1:10; 2 Sam 5:8; 17:8; Is 19:10; 38:15). “Shortness of soul”
describes impatience, lacking in long-suffering (Ze 11:8). The soul is also
the subject that experiences joy (Ez 24:21; 25:6).
The concept of desire appears in the same connection, but in Isaiah
26:8, 9 it is no longer a physical desire for food or drink, but a spiritual
desire: “le-zichrecha taavat-nefeš”, that is, “for your [God’s] memorial
name there is the desire of the soul”. Habakkuk 2:4 points to the moral
depravity and responsibility of the soul: “his soul is not upright in him”.
This expression combines two metaphors: THE RIGHT IS
UPRIGHT/STRAIGHT and A HUMAN IS A CONTAINER.
Table 17: Soul in the Prophets (Neviim): Special Cases
References Absolute
Frequency
God and soul: 15

1 Sam 2:35; Jr 32:41; Jr 51: 14; Am 6:8; Jud 10:16; Is 1:14; Is
42:1; Jr 5:9, 29; Jr 6:8; Jr 9:8[E=9]; Jr 15:1; Ez 23:18 [2x] Jr
14:19
Graph 3: Soul in the Torah vs. the Prophets (absolute frequency)

186 Chapter 9
Table 18: Soul in the Writings: I. “Breather” (a living being)
References Absolute
Frequency
a. Animal: As a subject: Job 41:13 [E=21!] As an object: Ps 74:19; 25

b. Human: Ps 106:15; Pr 25:25; Pr 27:7a; 1 Chron 5:21;
As a subject: Ps 25:13; Ps 105: 18; Pr 27:7b;
As an object: Pr 11:30;
Emphasizing the material nature of soul: As a subject: Ps 31:10
[E=9]; Ps 44:26; Ps 107:18; Ps 119:25; Job 7:15; Job 33:20; Pr
11:25; Pr 13:4b; Pr 19:15;
As an object: Ps 107:9 [2x]; Ps 142:8 [E=7]; Pr 6:30; Lam 1:11;
Lam 1:19;
Table 19: Soul in the Writings: II. Life (Metonymy)
References Absolute
Frequency
Ps 17:9; 19:8 [E=7]; Ps 94:21; 142:5; Job 2:4; 16:4; Pr 7:23; Pr 80

13:8; Pr 14: 25; Ru 4:15; Lam 2:19; 3:58; 5:9; 1 Chron 11:19; Ps
35:4, 5; 38:13; 40:15; 54:5; 59:4; Ps 71:10, 13; Ps 109:31; Ps
143:12; Pr 1:18; Pr 18:7; Pr 22:23; Est 7:7; Est 8:11; Est 9:16;
As a subject: Ps 107:5; Ps 119:109; Ps 124:7; Job 12:10; Job 14:22;
Job 30:16; Song of Solomon 5:6; Esther 7:3;
As an object: Ps 22:21 [E=20]; Ps 23:3; Ps 31:14 [E=13]; Ps 34:23
[E=22]; Ps 35:17; Ps 49:16 [E=15]; Ps 55:19 [E=18]; Ps 72:13; Ps
72:14; Ps 86: 14; Ps 97:10; Ps 116:4; Ps 141:8; Job 2:6; Job 6:11;
Job 9:21; Job 13:14; Job 27:8; Job 31:30; Pr 1:19; Pr 6:26; Pr 8:36;
Pr 13:3; Pr 15:32; Pr 16:17; Pr 19:8; Pr 19:16; Pr 20:2; Pr 21:23; Pr
22:5; Pr 25:13; Pr 29:24; Lam 1:16; Ps 54: 5 [E=3]; Ps 56:7 [E=6];
Ps 63:10 [E=9]; Ps 70:3 [E=2]; Ps 143:3; Pr 29:10; 2 Chron 1:11;
Redeeming a soul - life: Ps 49:9; As a subject: Ps 71:23;
Table 20: Soul in the Writings: III. Blood (Metonymy)

Frequency
Close association 1 “adam ašuq be-dam nefeš” – a

(juxtaposition): “blood of a human burdened by the blood of
soul”: Pr 28:17 a soul (i.e. bloodguilty)
Table 21: Soul in the Writings: IV. “Desire” (Metonymy)
References Absolute
Frequency
a. Animal desire (nefeš behema): As an object: Pr 12:10; 19

b. Human “desire of the soul” [“avat nefeš”]:
Ps 10:3; Ps 78:18; Pr 13:25; Pr 23:2; Pr 28:25; Ec 6:2, 9; Ps
105:22; Ps 27:12; Ps 35:2; Ps 41:3;
As a subject: Pr 13:2; Pr 16:26; Pr 21:10; Song of Solomon
6:12; Eccl 6:7;
As an object: Pr 10:3; Pr 19:18;
Nefeš in the metonymic sense of “panting” (“breathing desire”) can

also be seen in Proverbs 12:10: “The righteous one knows the soul of his
animal…” (literal translation by RB). The genitive of “nefeš behemato”,
that is, “the soul of his animal”, points to the animal’s desire (typically for
water and food – just like the human soul’s desire). It is interesting to note
that the biblical concept of righteousness includes the requirement to treat
animals kindly and with consideration.
Table 22: Soul in the Writings: V. Mortal/Dead Being
References Absolute
Frequency
As a subject: Job 36:14; Ps 69:2[E=1]; Ps 124:4, 5; Pr 6:32; 19

Lam 2:12; Ps 94:17; Job 33:22;
As an object: Ps 33:19; Ps 56:14 [E=13]; Ps 78:50; Ps 86:13;
Ps 89:49 [E=48]; Ps 116:18; Job 33:18; Job 33:28; Job 33:30;
Pr 23:14; Pr 24:12;
188 Chapter 9
Table 23: Soul in the Writings: VI. Pronoun
References Absolute
Frequency
a. Nafší (“my soul”): Ps 3:3[E=2]; Ps 11:1; Ps 57:5; Ps 103:1, 2, 61

22; Ps 104:1, 35; Ps 109:20; Ps 116:7; Ps 138:3; Ps 146:1; Lam 3:51;
As a subject: Ps 6:4; Ps 57:2 [E=1]; Ps 62:2 [E=1]; Ps 119:175;
Ps 120:6; Ps 143:6; Job 10:1; Job 16:4 [2x]; Song of Solomon 1:7;
3:1, 2, 3, 4; Lam 3:24;
As an object: Ps 6:5 [E=4]; Ps 7:3 [E=2]; Ps 7:6 [E=5]; Ps 16:10;
Ps 17:13; Ps 22:30; Ps 25:20; Ps 26:9; Ps 30:4 [E=3]; Ps 35:3, 12,
13; Ps 41:5 [E=4]; Ps 49:19 [E=18]; Ps 57:7 [E=6]; Ps 66:16; Ps
86:2; Ps 88:15; Ps 120:2; Lam 3:17;
b. “Your soul” etc.: Pr 22:25; Pr 29:17; Est 9:31;
As a subject: Job 24:12; Pr 13:4a; Eccl 6:3;
As an object: Ps 66:9; Ps 121:7; Job 18:4; Job 32:2; Pr 11:17;
Eccl 2:24; Eccl 4:8;
Table 24: Soul in the Writings: VII. Cognitive-Affective Subject
References Absolute
Frequency
Seeking (God): 2 Chron 15: 12 64

As an object: 1 Chron 22:19;
Serving God: 1 Chron 28:9; 2 Chron 34:31;
As a subject: Ps 119:129; Ps 119:167; 2 Chron 6:38;
Seat of emotional life: Ps 31:8[E=7]; Ps 42:6, 12; Ps 43:5; Ps
62:6; Ps 69:11[E=10]; Job 3:20; Job 7:11; Job 10:1; Job 21:25; Pr
14:10; Pr 31:6;
As a subject: Ps 42:7 [E=6]; Ps 77:3[E=2]; Ps 88:4 [E=3]; Ps
123:4; Ps 143:11; Job 30:25
As an object: Ps 42:5 [E=4]; Job 19:2; Job 27:2;
Knowing with the soul: As a subject: Ps 139:14;
Seeking knowledge: Pr 2:10; 3:22; Pr 24:14
As a subject: Eccl 7:28;
Spiritual and mental activities: Ps 42:2,3 [E=1, 2]; Ps 63:2
[E=1], 6, 9 [E=5, 8]; Ps 84:3 [E=2]; Ps 119:20; Ps 119:81; Ps
13:3[E=2]; Ps 69:19[E=18]; Pr 13:19; Pr 16:24; Pr 27:9; Pr 19:2;
Pr 23:7; Est 4:13;
As a subject: Ps 107:26; Ps 119:28; Ps 131:2b;
Hope, joy, peace:
As a subject: Ps 33:20; Ps 34:3[E=2]; Ps 35:9; Ps 130:5, 6;

As an object: Ps 25:1; Ps 86:4 [2x]; Ps 94:19; Ps 143:8; Job
31:39; Ps 131:2a;
In the Bible’s linguistic image of the world, “the soul knoweth”, that is,
gets to know the world and itself (Psalm 139:14). This Psalm first
discusses divine Wisdom in general, and then narrows its attention to the
human, that is, to the embodied soul that has kidneys (v. 13) and bones (v.
15). Verse 16 then adds: “Your eyes looked upon my embryo, and
everything was recorded in your book…” (ISV) In the light of molecular
genetics, the Bible's metaphor of human embryo having its structure
“recorded in a book” is well ahead of its time and fitting, inasmuch as the
nucleus of a human zygote contains over 3 billion chemical “letters”
(nucleotides), which constitute around 750 megabytes of information that
could fill 5,000 books (Davies 2003: 18, 43). This soul that has its parts –
kidneys, bones, and the rest of the body – written down “in a book”, is the
same soul that “jodaat meod”, “knoweth right well” (KJV) or “knows
intensively” (literal translation by RB).
The whole human being as an embodied soul is thus a seat of
knowledge and cognition, indeed a locus cognitionis. This is why Solomon
encourages the pursuit of wisdom, because then “…wisdom shall enter
into thy heart, and knowledge shall be pleasant unto thy soul.” (ASV)
Proverbs 3:21-23 adds: “…Keep sound wisdom and discretion, so they
will be life to your soul and adornment to your neck, then you will walk in
your way securely” (NASB). “Sound wisdom and discretion will be life to
the soul and adornment for the neck” (a physical organ) provide an
example of the metaphor IDEAS ARE OBJECTS, connected with
“walking securely”, that is, COGNITION IS A JOURNEY.
The embodied soul also knows according to the metaphor
COGNITION IS EATING: “My son, eat honey, for it is good, yes, the
honey from the comb is sweet to your taste; know that wisdom is thus for
your soul; if you find it, then there will be a future, and your hope will not
be cut off.” (Proverbs 24:13, 14, NASB)
The human soul is also metonymically identified with the desire for water
and food. However, the desire of the soul transcends material yearning: “As
the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My
soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” (Psalm 42:2, 3 [E=1,2], NASB) It is
noteworthy that the human soul’s panting and thirsting for God is
metaphorically compared to the panting of another living soul – the deer, an
animal soul – for the water brooks: DESIRE FOR KNOWLEDGE IS
THIRST, thus also an existential need, necessary for survival (just like water).
190 Chapter 9
Graph 4: Absolute Frequency of Semantic Categories in the Hebrew Scriptures:

The Torah vs. the Prophets vs. the Writings. The Writings (i.e. the genre of
wisdom literature) have the highest frequency in the category of the soul as "life"
and the "cognitive-affective subject". The categories of the soul as "pronoun" (self-
reflection) and as "mortal being" prevail in the prophetic writings.
Table 25: Soul in the Writings: Special Cases
References Absolute
Frequency
God and soul: 5x 9

Pr 6:16; As a subject: Ps 11:5; Job 23:13; Lam 3:20; As an object:
Ps 24:4;
Outliers:
Is 3:20: “batej ha-nefeš”; literal translation by RB: “houses of the
soul” (Koehler and Baumgartner 1985, p. 628 comment: “perfume
boxes? Neckerchiefs?”)
Job 11:20: “tiqvatam mapach nafšam” – the hope of the evil
people is the “breathing out of soul”, an apparent pun with the root
word “breath” [“gasp of soul”, NIV]
As a subject: Is 46:2: “nafšam be-švi halacha” - “soul” of the

idols went into exile.
As an object: Is 5:14: “hirchíva Šeol et nafšah”; literal translation
by RB: “sheol (= grave) widened its soul”, i.e. many people died.
Personification of sheol.
Table 26: Soul in the New Testament: I. “Breather” (A Living Being)

Frequency
a. Animal: Rev 8:9; Rev 16:3; 18 a2 Pe 2:14 – a soul

b. Human: Acts 2:41; Acts 7:14; 1 Pe can be unstable; this
3:20; Αcts 27:10, 22; Acts 27:37; has cognitive-
Rom 13:1; 1 Cor 15:45 [quotation affective causes, as
from Ge 2:7]; 2 Pe 2:14a; Rev 18:13; well as consequences.
c. Emphasizing the material nature of
soul: Mt 6: 25 (2x) // Lk 12:22, 23;
Lk 2:35; Heb 4:12;
In the New Testament (NT), in 1 Corinthians 15:45, the word for the
soul (psyché in Koine Greek) is connected directly to the Hebrew concept
of nefeš from Genesis 2:7 in an extended quotation. The fundamental
definition of nefeš and psyché in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures is
therefore the same. In other words, here is an explicit passage that justifies
the equation nefeš = psyché. In the NT, too, therefore, a human “is a soul”
and does not simply “have a soul”. Furthermore, the context of 1
Corinthians 15 analyzes this passage and emphasizes that psyché and its
related adjective psychikos are earthly, made of dust, corruptible (1
Corinthians 15:42-48). This stands in sharp contrast to the “last Adam”
(i.e., the Messiah) who “became a life-giving spirit”.
Immortality and “spiritual nature” are not innate attributes of the
biblical soul but are the “things” the soul will “put on” (i.e., acquire
conditionally) in the future, at the resurrection and the last judgment
(compare 1 Corinthians 15:45-54). The soul in the NT is thus not only “not
spiritual” but the very opposite and counterpart to the spirit beings (such
as angels). This is further emphasized by the use of the adjectival form
psychikos, among whose attributes are “corruptible”, “earthly”, the merism
of “flesh and blood” (hence: “flesh and blood = soul”), and “mortal” (with
a further confirmation in Hebrews 4:12).
192 Chapter 9
Table 27: Soul in the New Testament: II. Life (Metonymy)
References Absolute
Frequency
Mt 2:20; Rom 11:3; Mt 10:39 [2x]; Mt 16:25[2x], 26 [2x]; // Mk 39

8:35 (2x), 36, 37; Lk 9:24 (2x); / Lk 17:33; Mt 20:28 // Mk 10:45;
Lk 12:20; Lk 14:26; Lk 21:19; Heb 10:39; Jn 10:11, 15, 17, 18; Jn
13:37, 38 [2x]; Jn 15:13; 1 Jn 3:16[2x]; Acts 15:26; Acts 20:10;
Acts 20:24; Rom 11:3; Rom 16:4; 1 Thes 2:8; 1 Thes 5:23; 1 Pe
2:25;
Matthew 16:25, 26 says: “What will a human give (as) the equivalent
of his soul?” (literal translation by RB) This rhetorical question implies
that the whole world would not have a value equivalent to the preciousness
of one human soul (compare Mark 8:35 and 36, 37; Luke 9:24) Hence the
axiological inequality of soul > the world.
Table 28: Soul in the New Testament: III. Blood (Metonymy)
References Absolute Frequency
Direct metonymy: blood = soul; Rev 6:9; 20:4; 2
The context of these verses shows that blood is implied in harmony

with Genesis 9:4 and Leviticus 17:10, 11. In Revelation 6:9 we read: “I
saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word
of God, and for the testimony which they held.” (ASV) This is a direct
reference to the Old Testament sacrificial altar, at the base of which the
blood of sacrificial animals was poured (Leviticus 4:25, 30, 34).
Forasmuch as both Genesis and Leviticus say that “blood is soul”, the
“souls” underneath the sacrificial altar means the blood of the innocent
martyrs (similarly in Revelation 20:4). Yet, how can this blood “cry with a
loud voice” (Revelation 6:10)? The answer is: figuratively, in the same
way as Abel’s blood: “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the
ground.” (Genesis 4:10, ISV; compare Hebrews 12:24)
Table 29: Soul in the New Testament: IV. Desire (Metonymy)

Frequency
Desire: Rev 18:14 1 “And the fruits of the desire of thy soul are
departed from thee, and all the fat and
excellent things are departed from thee, and
thou shalt find them no more at all.” (JB2)
Table 30: Soul in the New Testament: V. Mortal/Dead Being
References Absolute
Frequency
a. God can destroy the soul: Mt 10:28 [2x]; 9

b. Humans can kill a soul: Mk 3:4 // Lk 6:9; Jn 12:25;
c. Soul is in the grave: Acts 2:27;
d. Soul in physical danger: Phil 2:30; Jas 5:20; Rev 12:11
It is paradoxical that some passages referred to in Table 30 as a “mortal

or dead being” are sometimes used as evidence of the very opposite – the
assumed “immortality” of the soul (see, e.g., White 1993: 296; Vine et al.
1996: 588). Which of the interpretations goes “beyond the things which
are written” (1 Cor 4:6) and oversteps the “limits of interpretation”
promoted by Eco? Matthew 10:28 says: “Do not be afraid of those who
kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can
destroy both soul and body in hell.” (NIV) 8 Those who read only the first
half, read “under the things which are written”, so to speak, and that is
why they do not seem to “see” that God “can destroy [Gr. apolesai] … the
soul”; hence: if it can be destroyed, then it is destructible, mortal.
The biblical psyché is thus both destructible and mortal; the first part of
the passage does not say anything about the supposed “immortality of the
soul”. All it says is that some people cannot “kill the soul”, that is, life as a
gift from God. This does not mean, however, that no one can do that.
(Additionally, the English word “hell” also contributes to the false
8 The Emphatic Diaglott (interlinear Greek – English text by Benjamin Wilson,

1942) renders Matthew 10:28 as follows: “Be not afraid of THOSE who KILL the
BODY, but cannot destroy the [future] LIFE; but rather fear HIM who CAN
utterly destroy both Life and the Body in Gehenna.”
194 Chapter 9
impression of a post-death existence in the form of an afterlife; in the

original text, however, the word is gehenna, a Hellenized form of the
Hebrew term Ge Hinnom, i.e., the Valley of Hinnom outside the walls of
Jerusalem, where rubbish was burned. This valley later came to symbolize
the punishment of “everlasting destruction”, not hellfire torment. Compare
2 Thessalonians 1:6-10, NIV.) The fact that even a human can “kill a soul”
(Greek: “psychén… apokteinai”) is clearly stated in the Greek text of Mark
3:4. Furthermore, Acts 2:27 adds that the soul “in Hades”, that is, “in the
grave”, can “see corruption” (Greek: “idein diafthoran”, i.e., undergo
decomposition), and thus cease to exist.
Table 31: Soul in the New Testament: VI. Pronoun
References Absolute Frequency
Lk 12:19 [2x]; 2 Cor 1:23; 2 Cor 12:15; Heb 13:17; 1 Pe 11

1:9; 1 Pe 1:22; 1 Pe 2:11; 1 Pe 4:19; 2 Pe 2:8; 3 Jn 2
Table 32: Soul in the New Testament: VII. Cognitive-Affective Subject
References Absolute
Frequency
a. Soul receives spiritual refreshment: Mt 11:29; 22

b. Loving, obeying and serving God with the whole soul: Mt
22:37 // Mk 12:30 // Lk 10:27; Eph 6:6; Col 3:23; Acts 3:23
c. Soul experiences grief: Mt 26:38 // Mk 14:34 // Jn 12:27; Rom
2:9;
d. Soul in suspense: Jn 10:24
e. The soul is afraid: Acts 2:43
f. Soul and unity: Acts 4:32; Phil 1:27
g. Soul and negative emotions: Acts 14:2
h. Strengthening a soul: Acts 14:22; Heb 6:19
i. Subverting a soul: Acts 15:24
j. Soul magnifies God: Lk 1:46
k. The soul is tired: Heb 12:3;
l. Inculcating the Word saves a soul: Jas 1:21
Graph 5: Absolute frequency of the semantic categories of the soul in the Torah vs.
the Prophets vs. the Writings vs. the New Testament. It is noteworthy that the
categories of “life” and “cognitive-affective subject” are prevalent in both the
Writings and the New Testament.
Table 33: Soul in the New Testament: Special Cases

Frequency
God and Soul: Mt 2 Both passages use the “Divine Pronoun”

12:18; Heb 10:38 and are quotations from the Old Testament
A brief summary of the results:

The goal of this first stage of analysis of the biblical concept of the soul
was to find answers to the following questions:
(a) Is the biblical (i.e., Hebrew in the OT and Greek in the NT) soul
embodied or disembodied? (Ergo: is biblical anthropology dualistic or
holistically monistic?) Both nefeš and psyché (in both “Testaments” of the
biblical canon) mean an embodied, earthly, unified and indivisible soul.
196 Chapter 9
Biblical anthropology (in its linguistic image of humans) is thus non-

dualistic, monistic, holistic. Semantically speaking, the biblical nefeš as a
cardinal attribute of humans and animals (but not plants) is close to the
biological term “heterotrophic organism”.
(b) Is the concept of the soul coherent throughout the biblical canon?
The results of the analysis of all occurrences of the term “soul” in all the
books of the Bible point to a coherent concept throughout the biblical
corpus. Not a single text was found that would explicitly or inevitably
signify any disembodiedness in connection with the biblical soul and its
cognition. On the contrary, a consistent application of the principle of the
hermeneutic circle (compare Heriban 1998: 451), the conceptual metaphor
and metonymy theory, merism, and parallelism lead to the removal of
some of the seeming paradoxes of the Judeo-Christian soul, such as, if the
soul is non-material and disembodied, how can it eat meat? And if it is
immortal and indestructible, how can it be lost?
(c) As a seat of cognition, how does this soul know? In an embodied or
disembodied way? The biblical nefeš (= psyché) knows in an embodied
way, by means of its senses, as well as “with the whole soul”, that is,
holistically, with all of one’s being, all of one’s self. In this (as well as in
associating blood with breathing and in foreshadowing the concept of
genetic information in the embryo), the biblical text was well ahead of its
time and agrees with Comenius rather than with Descartes. In other words,
the biblical res cogitans is Descartes’ res extensa; the “thinking thing” is
embodied.
(d) What metaphors of learning or cognition appear in connection with
the biblical soul? The most frequent cognitive metaphors include COGNITION
IS CONSUMPTION, COGNITION IS A JOURNEY, IDEAS ARE
OBJECTS, A HUMAN IS A VESSEL. A more comprehensive analysis of
these metaphors would require a separate study.
Conclusion
The results of this introductory analysis of the soul in the Bible confirm
Heller’s conclusion:
Ancient Israel, as described in the Old Testament, differs from its

surroundings in at least two ways: in its radical disinterest in the
netherworld and in worship from which any – even the minutest – residues
of magic were gradually and more consistently removed. It was therefore
precisely the faith of Israel that became the starting point for the journey
into the freedom from all human religious imaginations and the supporting
pillar of the spiritual future of mankind. 9 (1988: 351, translated by RB)
Kittel, commenting on the “OT conquest of death”, adds: “Absolutely non-

magical, non-mythical, non-speculative is this certainty which …
proceeded only from the concept of grace and nothing else.” (Kittel 1986,
Vol. I–II: 280, translated by RB) 10 This is one of the main differences
between biblical faith and non-biblical superstition; in this way – and long
before Weber – the Bible demystified and disenchanted not only the world
but also its anthropology – the concept of a human being, of a soul.
Interestingly, in their Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff and Johnson stated:
One might imagine a spiritual tradition in which such a Soul is

fundamentally embodied – shaped in important ways by the body, located
forever as part of the body, and dependent for its ongoing existence on the
body. The results about the mind discussed throughout this book in no way
rule out the existence of that kind of Soul, an embodied Soul. (Lakoff and
Johnson 1999: 563)
It is exactly such an embodied soul that is described by the biblical terms

nefeš and psyché, that is, a material soul that must eat and drink, that gets
tired, desires knowledge, comes to know things, examines, loves, and so
on. This embodied soul “knoweth right well” (Psalm 139:14, KJV), so it is
the seat of cognition, and this is why the biblical human being knows
holistically, “with all of one’s soul and heart” (Joshua 23:14).
The fact that numerous passages describe cognition in terms of the
metaphors of eating, drinking, digesting, and other bodily functions raises
a question: could it be that these bodily function metaphors are so
widespread precisely because the human soul (as locus cognitionis) is
physical and embodied (as conceptualized in the Bible)? It is evident that
such physical activities are natural to the biblical soul, that they are its
modus operandi, and can thus be a logical and natural source domain for
9
Czech original: “Starověký Izrael, jak nám o něm podává zprávu Starý zákon, se
od svého okolí liší přinejmenším dvěma věcmi: radikálním nezájmem o záhrobí, a
kultem, jenž byl stále důsledněji zbavován jakýchkoli i sebenepatrnějších zbytků
magie. Tak se právě víra Izraele stala výchozím bodem pro cestu do svobody od
všech lidských náboženských představ a nosným pilířem duchovní budoucnosti
lidstva.”
10 Slovak translation from German: “Absolútne nemagická, nemýtická, nešpekulatívna,
nemystická je táto istota, ktorá ... vyplynula jedine z myšlienky milosti a ničoho
iného.”
198 Chapter 9
the conceptual metaphors of cognition – as in “taamu u-reu”, that is, “taste

and see” that God is good (Psalm 34:8), or in Job 34:3: “...the ear tests
words as the tongue tastes food.” (NIV)
Hebrew thought and its concept of a soul purified from the external
layers of pagan speculation and dogmas, idealism, dualistic rationalism
(and all other -isms) has the great potential of becoming a valuable asset in
supporting the progress of the cognitive sciences (as well as pedagogical
practice) in disenchanting the soul from all forms of dualism (latent or
explicit). This is still a topical issue, as Bateson pointed out:
While much that universities teach today is new and up to date, the
presupposition or premises of thought upon which all our teaching is based
are ancient and, I assert, obsolete. I refer to such notions as: a. The
Cartesian dualism separating “mind” and “matter”. b. The strange
physicalism of the metaphors which we use to describe and explain mental
phenomena – “power,” “tension,” “energy,” “social forces,” etc. c. Our
anti-aesthetic assumption, borrowed from the emphasis which Bacon,
Locke, and Newton long ago gave to the physical sciences, viz. that all
phenomena (including the mental) can and shall be studied and evaluated
in quantitative terms. The view of the world – the latent and partly
unconscious epistemology – which such ideas together generate is out of
date in three different ways… (1979: 217–218)
Accurate knowledge of the fact that a dualistic and disembodied soul is

foreign to the Bible can help to revise an unconscious dualistic
epistemology, at least among those who identify with the legacy of the
Judeo-Christian civilization.
Halík (1998) also emphasizes the historic contribution of the Bible:
In the Old Testament, we find the first step towards “secularization” – in

the Bible, “the world is desacralized” – of both nature and the society …
Thus, the Bible's view of nature freed the space in which natural science
could later arise. 11
Following such a demythologization of the world, the time has come

for a consistent demythologization of the human being, that is, of the soul.
Perhaps the Bible’s concept of the soul can help “free the space” for a
better, more coherent and consistent non-dualistic practice of the cognitive
11 Czech original: “Ve Starém Zákoně najdeme první krok k "sekularizaci" - v
Bibli je "desakralizován svět" - a to příroda i společnost...Tak pohled bible na

přírodu uvolnil prostor, v němž mohla později vzniknout přírodní věda.” (Halík
1998, translated by RB)
sciences (both theoretical and applied), at least among those who

(knowingly or not) feel a strong commitment to dualism because of its
presumed ties to their Judeo-Christian spiritual heritage.
This seems especially relevant given the fact that together, in 2010,
Judaism, Christianity and Islam constituted around 54% of the world’s
population (Wormald 2015). Their concept of the soul is likely, therefore,
to influence a significant part of the world (including philosophers,
linguists and cognitive scientists). Realizing that dualism comes from non-
biblical, external sources and that the Semitic monotheism of the Bible is
actually holistic and monistic can thus be of use in establishing an
embodied approach to cognition more firmly (at least) among monotheist
experts.
In summary, the embodied and material biblical soul has interesting
implications for several (cross-disciplinary) areas of human knowledge.
First, it seems appropriate and intellectually honest to correct the
misinterpretation of Western civilization’s foundational document – the
Bible. Having been invoked for centuries as providing authoritative
support for dualism, a linguistic analysis of the text on its own terms
(within its own limits of interpretation) suggests that in fact, it has been
non-dualistic, holistic, all along. This raises the question of how many
other concepts – biblical or otherwise – are still misinterpreted and
misunderstood, and what is the extent of our illusion of knowledge and of
the bias of our cognitive processes?
From the point of view of the history of cognitive linguistics, it is
noteworthy that the roots of the concept of embodied cognition are much
older than previously assumed, inasmuch as the biblical corpus clearly
speaks of “cognition in the flesh” in a manner similar to Lakoff and
Johnson’s “philosophy in the flesh”.
In spite of modern scientific progress, many human societies seem still
to be “under the spell” of dualism. Here, the biblical concept can also help
in demythologizing, demystifying and disenchanting the concept of the
human soul and its cognition on the deep personal level, where
professional psychological or cognitive sciences have little or no influence.
But we must, of course, avoid the other extreme - that of scientism and
reductionism ad absurdum.
Ethnolinguistically, we can see a type of syncretism in European (and
“Western”) civilization, where the pagan Greek doctrine of a disembodied
soul was grafted onto Christianity. A more accurate (and cognitive)
definition of the biblical soul can also help us to refine the comparative
axiology of the soul: for example, the fact that (unlike in many other
cultures), the biblical soul takes only the second most important place in
200 Chapter 9
its value system, after the value of the loyal love of God and of the truth.
And yet the human soul is much more valuable than the whole world
because it has the value of life itself, and cognitively active life at that
(thanks to the "image of God" in which it was created).
From the semiotic and linguistic point of view, it is interesting that the
same sign (word), psyché, means two contradictory things at the same time
(i.e., in the 1st century C.E.), when it represented the disembodied soul of
many Platonists and the embodied soul of the NT (and the LXX). In other
words, the same word in the same language does not necessarily have the
same semantic value if used in two different cultures simultaneously. This
seems to indicate the need for a cognitive definition of the biblical soul
and a critical comparison with other cultural versions of the concept.
Pedagogically speaking, "reviving" the embodied, holistic, biblical
soul can mean ancient support for the modern efforts toward a holistic
education in which students learn “with their whole soul”, experientially,
through their whole embodied self. In the Comenius vs. Descartes debate,
the biblical corpus supports the approach of Comenius, who was well
known for including embodied learning in his pedagogy, such as in his
principles of schola ludus (school as play), Orbis sensualium pictus (A
world perceived by the senses) or fabricando fabricamur (by making
[things] we are being made). The popularity of kinesthetic and heuristic
learning activities among students of all age groups also gives support to
the efficacy of embodied approaches to cognition.
We can, therefore, attempt at least a partial answer to the introductory
question of "what is a man?" A human being in the Bible’s linguistic
image of the world is an embodied material living soul (biologically
speaking, a heterotrophic organism) with embodied cognitive capabilities.
This soul is kept alive by breathing, is created “in God’s image”, that is,
possesses to some degree divine attributes such as cognition (“wisdom”),
personhood (including self-reflection and conscience), emotional gestalts
(“love”, “affection”), axiological evaluation (“a sense of justice”, “ethical
reasoning”) and communication with a productive, abstract language. All
of this imbues the human soul with powers exceeding those of other types
of soul, that is, the souls of animals. Thus, in order to justify the
extraordinary dignity of human beings, there is no need to postulate an
immortal “spiritual soul”; as demonstrated above, the biblical dignity of
humans is rooted precisely in the embodied “image of God” in Homo
sapiens. Furthermore, history shows that faith in the disembodied,
immortal soul did not prevent the large politicized religions from shedding
“the blood of the souls of the poor innocents” (Jeremiah 2:34, KJV).
Respect for the dignity of these souls was therefore not guaranteed by
dualism. For this reason, when it comes to dualism, we may repeat

Heschel’s profound question: “Is it not conceivable that our entire
civilization is built upon a misinterpretation of man?” (Heschel 1965: 5)
The human being, the soul, is the only known material entity which
examines and systematically studies itself, which speaks about its own
speaking, thinks about its own thinking, and is capable of expressing both
agreement and disagreement (and is thus capable of real choice). This in
itself is sufficient for us to be amazed at this human phenomenon, just like
the psalmist when he exclaimed: “I will give thanks to you, for I am
awesomely and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul
knows that very well.” (Psalm 139:14, New Heart English Bible – NHEB;
compare with Shakespeare’s exclamation “What a piece of work is a
man!” in Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, lines 323–329).
The axiosphere of the biblical soul is charged with the dynamics of the
freedom of choice and responsibility, with the capacity of abstraction (and
yet embodied), with the functionality of conscience and respect for life,
that is, respect for the soul (one’s own and others’, human as well as
animal), and with the dynamics of the capacity to know and to love (see
Isaiah 5:20). And if breathing is what the biblical nefeš has in common
with animals, it has self-reflection and self-knowledge in common with
God (see Tables 7, 9, 15, 17, 23, 25, 31 and 33 above).
The human species, the soul, is also a paradox: it is no more than
“dust”, and yet it carries “the image of God”; it “indeed is flesh” (Genesis
6:3, Darby), and yet it is “expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words” (1
Corinthians 2:13, Berean Study Bible [BSB]); it is often fooled by its
senses (Proverbs 14:12), and yet it keeps searching by means of the same
senses – and gradually keeps finding and refining – the sense, the meaning
of the world and aspects of the truth (John 8:32; Matthew 7:7). This is why
– with all the biblical optimism regarding our embodied cognition – there
is still a memento: “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does
not yet know as he ought to know.” (1 Corinthians 8:2, ESV)
For this reason, may all who have to do with the miracle of the human
mind – be they parents, teachers, trainers, instructors, leaders, presenters,
students – in fact, may all human souls learn to learn (and teach) better and
help each other to get to know the world, so that the soul of all learners
may “be as a watered garden,” because their soul “knows very well” from
experience that wisdom is as sweet as honey (Jeremiah 31:12, ASV; Psalm
139:14; Proverbs 24:13, 14).
202 Chapter 9
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Summary
Is the concept of the “soul” relevant to a better understanding of human
cognition? In contrast to popular ideas of the dichotomy of a material body and an
non-material soul, the Bible presents a coherent concept of the “soul” as an
embodied, material unity, where the human is (not has) a soul (Heb.
nefeš/nephesh, Gr. psyché). A concordance analysis of 754 occurrences of the
Hebrew nefeš in the Old Testament (OT) and 102 occurrences of the Greek psyché
in the New Testament (NT) indicates that the biblical corpus demystified,
“disenchanted” (Weber) the concept of the soul, with interesting theological, socio-
cultural as well as psycholinguistic and pedagogical implications. When this
biblical soul “knows right well” (Psalm 139:14, KJV), it “knows” not in an
idealistic, disembodied “Platonic” sense, but – being material – it knows and feels
holistically, as a whole embodied being. In this study, possible parallels between
the ancient biblical concept of the soul and modern embodied cognition are
explored, as well as the possibility that the OT might have been a forerunner or
harbinger of the modern concept of embodied cognition and one of the earliest
known sources of some conceptual metaphors of learning.
Keywords: soul, Biblical definition, embodied cognition, conceptual metaphors of

learning/cognition, dualism, embodied realism
CHAPTER 10
THE SOUL IN THE AXIOSPHERE ACCORDING

TO UKRAINIAN PHRASEOLOGY
AND PAREMIOLOGY 1
MARINA M. VALENTSOVA
INSTITUTE OF SLAVIC STUDIES OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY
OF SCIENCES
11.1. Introduction
Axiosphere is a complex philosophical concept, associated with the

concepts of the noosphere, infosphere, semiosphere, and logosphere. There
are several definitions of axiosphere, the essence of which can be
summarized as follows, it is a sphere of values and norms of human
society, including the system of value relations and attitudes to the world,
or, more simply, the world of values.
Values are studied in different aspects of many sciences – philosophy,
psychology, sociology, ethnography, economics, biology, as well as
linguistics (Arutyunova 1988, Puzynina 1992) and ethnolinguistics
(Bartmin'skiy 2005, Bartmiński (ed.) 2003, Falkenberg, Fries, Puzynina
(ed.) 1992, Abramowicz, Bartmiński, Bielińska-Gardziel (ed.) 2012,
Tolstaya 1997, 2009, 2015, Vinogradova 2008, 2015, Sedakova 2009,
2010, 2011, 2013, Tolstaya (ed.) 2015, etc.). Lesser genres of folklore
1 The research is financially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic

Research grant “Linguistic and ethnocultural dynamics of traditional and non-
traditional values in the Slavic world” №18-512-76003, led by Dr.Hab. I.A.
Sedakova (Programme ERA.Net.RUS Call 2018, # 472-LED-SW) (грант РФФИ
«Лингвистическая и этнокультурная динамика традиционных и нетрадиционных
ценностей в славянском мире» №18-512-76003, рук. д.филол. н. И.А.
Седакова).
206 Chapter 10
have also been specially studied in the light of axiology, such as good
wishes, proverbs, dream interpretations, incantations, etc. (Niebrzegowska-
Bartmińska 1996, Nebzhegovskaya-Bartmin'skaya 2011, Tolstaya 1994,
Vinogradova 2012, Valentsova 2015, etc.).
A philosophical approach to the study of values is common in
linguistics and ethnolinguistics. In philosophy, the development of the
axiological problems of ethics, aesthetics, ideas of good, beauty, and
greatness began in antiquity, but “these phenomena were analyzed
separately, for they were not perceived as specific manifestations
originating from a single source” (Kagan 1997, 9). Greek thought was
focused on intelligence as cognitive ability and logos as the unity of the
word and the thought it designated. That is, Greek philosophy was “purely
rationalistic”. Medieval European philosophy, as well as Russian thought,
“was under the strongest influence of theology”, which “does not know a
theory of values, as it accepts only one true value – the Divine" (Kagan
1997, 30). As an independent philosophical science, axiology was formed
only at the end of the previous century, and the axiosphere of culture –
even later. The most widespread development of axiological problems in
philosophy began only in the last decades of the 20th century (Kagan
1997, 10, 21).
At that time, a number of philosophical observations and conclusions
were made, which served as a basis for other sciences. For example, one of
the relevant theses says that
the axiological attitude from the subject’s point of view is realized in two
ways – as a reference to the value of the evaluated object and as its
comprehension. ... On the one hand, when perceiving an object, the subject
proceeds from an already formed idea of values, and evaluation of the
object becomes a reference to value..., on the other hand, the reference
presupposes the possibility, and more often the necessity, of
comprehension of the evaluated phenomenon, i.e. revealing and
understanding the concrete meaning that the given object has for you as a
subject” (Kagan 1997, 52).
If we talk about the ethnolinguistic aspects of the axiosphere of the

soul, then other philosophical thoughts on understanding the axiosphere of
culture are also relevant. First, it is the revealing of the meaning in the
field of subject-object relations “as a way for a subject to discover the
meaning of an object for his subjective being, in other words – as
attributing value to everything that enters the field of culture from the
world of nature and, moreover, to everything that is created by culture
itself”. Secondly, the subject of evaluation “can be complex, whereby not
The Soul in the Axiosphere According to Ukrainian Phraseology 207
and Paremiology
only personal meanings differ, but also national, social, class-determined,

confessional interpretations of the same phenomena...” And thirdly, the
axiological attitude exists in the real social and cultural environment
(Kagan 1997, 53, 54).
This is also what S.M. Tolstaya wrote about referring to the study of
Slavic traditional folk culture, “most of the evaluations in folk culture are
normative, that is, they follow the standards and stereotypes preassigned
by tradition... The subject of these evaluations is society as a whole and
tradition itself...” (Tolstaya 2015, 26).
Evaluation and understanding of the soul (as well as other ethical,
aesthetic, religious, social, and vital values and the correlation between
them) has been changing and is still changing in time and space.
Evaluations also differ in certain ethnic traditions – for example, Slavic
and Germanic, in the Russian tradition, “the soul, in addition to a religious
meaning, corresponding to the Eng. soul, includes the entire sphere of the
inner life of a man in its semantic spectrum, but accentuates primarily the
emotional and psychological aspects, unlike the Eng. mind, which is
mainly related to the intellectual and rational world of a man” (Tolstaya
2000, 53). Or another opinion: in the German tradition, the “soul” is more
often associated with a religious concept, whereas in the Russian
consciousness it is not so much “divine” as “human”, that is, it is
associated with the psychological processes happening within the person
himself (Ter-Minasova 2000, 167).
As studies show, the understanding and evaluation of the soul is
similar for all Slavs, although it is not identical in different traditions. We
find "purely national specificity" (Mokiyenko 2008, 21) neither in the
notion of the soul nor in other phenomena. However, the notions are also
not completely identical, since the understanding of the soul belongs to the
mind, and "...the human mind is always ethnically conditioned"
(Alefirenko 2008, 147).
This already gives grounds for searching for specificity of
understanding of the soul in the Ukrainian language tradition – as it is
imbedded in the phraseology and paroemias (proverbs, sayings, good
wishes, predictions etc.), which are in fact closely related to traditional
folk culture, a traditional worldview 2, and a number of the phraseological
and paremiological resources directly belong to the verbal level of
ritualism (ritual texts reduced to paroemias or phrasemes). For example,
the ritual of salting or rubbing a newborn with red pepper among
2See, for example, articles by N.I. Tolstoy, «Здрав као риба», «Пьян, как земля»
(Tolstoy 1995, 405–417).
208 Chapter 10
Bulgarians became the basis of the phraseological unit соленый болгарин,

лютый болгарин (salty Bulgarian, fierce Bulgarian) (Tolstoy 1995, 418-
426), other examples are given in Tolstoy 1995, 373-382, Tolstoy 2003,
83-84.
In their turn, phraseology and paremiology, especially their dialectal
realizations, “allow to restore many parameters of the cultural concept of
the soul (and not only of the soul – M.V.), which are supported in beliefs
and folklore" (Tolstaya 2000a, 54). At the same time, it is necessary to
take into account that the traditional culture has its own specificity
associated with symbolism, mythology, ritual and the magical nature of
folk worldview and the language describing it. Various aspects of the
category of evaluation in the language and text are considered in Tolstaya
2015.
The concept of the soul is central in the axiosphere of all Slavic
cultures, and its various aspects have been repeatedly analyzed (Walter
2013, Kalita, Michalová 2016, Skab 2008, Timoshenko 2005, Rusetskaya
2012, etc.), including the material of Ukrainian phraseology (Karakutsya
2002, Prudnikova 2011, 2005). However, in the axiological sense,
Ukrainian phraseology with the component soul (including more than 400
examples (Karakutsya 2002, 19, Skab 2008, 473)) and paremiology have
not yet been the subject of a detailed study.
11.2. The soul in the axiosphere of the Ukrainian culture
The soul is unquestionable value in Ukrainian culture – vital, religious,

and ethical. It is associated with such values as life, God, the good, and the
eternal. The soul is a necessary component and the differential sign of
human personality (the personality of a mentally ill person is destroyed)
and of a man as a physical being (in the unity of the soul and the body).
We can judge the special value of this “substance” on the basis of a
representative diachronic series of meanings of the word soul in the
Ukrainian language, which is given by M.V. Skab, “the immortal non-
material basis in a person that makes up the essence of his life and is the
source of psychic manifestations”, “the inner psychic world of a person
with his experiences and feelings”, “a human, a creature”, “life”, more
rarely “a set of traits, qualities, peculiar to a certain individual”, “a man as
the bearer of certain traits or qualities.” Until the 16th century soul had the
meanings “conscience”, “oath, vow”, and from the 16th century the
meaning “the main aspect of something, the essence of something” begins
to function, and in the 19th century the meaning of “depression in the
lower front part of the neck” appears (Skab 2008, 469).
and Paremiology
Phraseology and paroemias represent all the abovementioned meanings,

but a number of new, contextual meanings, primarily “corporal”, physical
and physiological, are also formed.
One of the most important qualities of the soul is its holiness, its God-
given nature. This religious meaning, which arose in accordance with the
biblical myth that God embreathed a soul into the first human, apparently
was superimposed on more or less accordant pre-Christian beliefs about
the soul by the time of the adoption of Christianity, compare, божi душi
(God’s souls) (Shukhevych 1997, 40), душа чиста (the soul is pure)
(Shukhevych 1997, 37), винен Богу душу (he owes his soul to God)
(Franko 1908, 175), Вiн лиш Богу душу винен (He owes his soul only to
God) (and nothing to anyone else 3) (Franko 1908, 80), Лиш єдну душу
маю, тай та божа (I have only one soul, and that belongs to God) (when
a person is asked for something that he does not have) (Franko 1908, 82),
Бог ми душу дав, а ти не маєш права вiдбирати (God gave me my soul
and you have no right to take it away) (Franko 1908, 80), віддати Богові
душу (to give one’s soul to God) (“to die”) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000,
294), Здох як пес – кром души святои (Died like a dog – except for his
sacred soul) (Iľkevich 1841, 36), Вняв Бог душу, як у пня (It is as if God
placed a soul into a stump) (about a clumsy person) (Franko 1908, 80),
Утулив Бог душу у пень, Уклав (утеребив, улiпив, вложив) Бог душу,
як у пня (... як у пень, та й каєцця) (God tucked the soul into a stump, It
is as if God placed (stuck, put) the soul into a stump ... and now repents)
(Nomys 1993, 162), Дав Бôг душу як в грушу, волѣвбы козу, тобы
молока дала (It is as if God gave a soul to a pear tree, at least if He had
chosen a goat, it would give milk) (Iľkevich 1841, 22), Вложив (уклав)
Бог душу, як в (у) грушу (It is as if God gave a soul to a pear tree), Мав
Бог дать душу, та дав грушу (God meant to give a soul, but he gave a
pear tree) (Nomys 1993, 162).
The sacredness of the soul, and therefore its value, is clearly expressed in
the phraseology of the people in Polessye. This is what Cheslav Petkevich
wrote about this:
A person from Polessye never speaks offensively of a soul, even that of

their greatest enemy – instead of cursing or damning the soul, he would
say the spirit, which in his opinion is inherent in every living creature, for
example, in curses, Нехай з цебе дух выпре! И нет на твой поганый дух
чорта! (May your spirit be squeezed out of you! And there is no devil for
your filthy spirit! etc.) When a pure man dies, they say, Богу душу аддаў
3 Explanations for the proverbs are given by the author of the quoted book.
210 Chapter 10
(Gave his soul to God), and if a bad one dies – Аддаў чорту свой
паганый дух (Gave his filthy spirit to the devil). (Pietkiewicz 1938, 150-
151).
The view of the soul as sacred leads people in Polessye to endeavour to

separate the concepts of the "good" soul and the "evil" soul in their
terminology. In other idioms of the Ukrainian language, the same tendency
is expressed in the association of different modifiers with the lexeme soul.
For a “good” soul – big, wide, lively, kind, golden, широка душа, широке
серце, щира (золота) душа, щире (золоте) серце (wide (open) soul,
wide (open) heart, sincere (golden) soul, sincere (golden) heart) (Vynnyk
2003, 229), душа щира (sincere soul) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 295),
жива душа (lively soul) (Vynnyk 2003, 228), добра душа (добре серце)
(kind soul (kind heart)) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 294), добра душа
вiдлетiла в небо (a kind soul flew away to heaven) (Vynnyk 2003, 226),
Людина великої душі (великого серця) (A person of great soul (great
heart)), То душьи не чоловiк (That is a soul, not a man) (warm-hearted)
(Franko 1908, 83).
A soul that is pleasant to other people and to society as a whole is
opposed to the soul that is evil, unkind, sinful, dark, withered, small,
bestial, empty, and sick, порожня душа, порожнє серце (empty soul,
empty heart) (Vynnyk 2003, 229), черства душа, черстве серце (callous
soul, callous, hardened heart), (Vynnyk 2003, 229), мишача душа (soul of
a mouse) (Vynnyk 2003, 229), заяча душа (soul of a hare) (Vynnyk 2003,
228), хвора душа, солом’яна душа (sick soul, straw soul) (Karakutsya
2002, 21), бiсова (проклята, собача) душа (demon (cursed, dog) soul)
(Vynnyk 2003, 225), бісова душа, черства душа, носитися як чорт з
грішною душею (demon soul, withered soul, rushing about like a devil
with a sinful soul) (Karakutsya 2002, 10), темна душа (dark soul)
(Karakutsya 2002, 15), Каïнова душа (Cain’s soul) (Vynnyk 2003, 228),
чорнильна душа (inky soul) (Vynnyk 2003, 229), Маєш душу, як
зогнилу грушу (You have a soul like a rotten pear tree) (about a drunkard
or a heartless person) (Franko 1908, 82), Отто рогата душа! (Now that
is a horned soul! – about a proud, stubborn, unpleasant person) (Franko
1908, 83), У него душа рогата – тяжко му сконати (He has a horned
soul – it’s hard for him to die) (Iľkevich 1841, 97), Пнуцця, як грішні
душі до пекла (They are thronging like evil souls to hell) (Nomys 1993,
144), Душа до нього спати ходить (The soul only comes to him to
sleep) (Iľkevich 1841, 30, Nomys 1993, 392) (understood in the sense that
a shameless, immoral person spends the whole day “without a soul”).
Generally, the attribute "small" encoded in the phraseme "soul of a
mouse" or "hare," is often evaluated negatively in traditional culture. In
and Paremiology
the phraseology of the soul it is brought to its logical conclusion, the soul
can become so small that it practically disappears. Then one speaks about
the “absence” of the soul, such a person is incapable of sympathy, love
and other emotions, he is perceived as inanimate (dead to society) or
equated to inanimate nature, Людина без серця (без душі, без почуття)
= камінь, а не людина (A man without a heart (without a soul, without
feelings) is a stone, not a man (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 295), без душi
(without a soul) (“dead,” and as an adverb – “strongly”, “to the point of
self-forgetfulness”, “terribly frightened”) (Vynnyk 2003, 230), без душі
робити що (to do something soullessly) (mechanically) (Vyrgan,
Pilinskaya 2000, 293), Душi в нïм нема (He is soulless) (he cannot utter a
word in fear) (Franko 1908, 81), Аж у мнï душi не стало (I almost had
no soul left) (about a strong fright) (Franko 1908, 79).
The absence of the soul (assuming that God gives the soul to everyone)
is also interpreted as an act of selling it to the demon, devil, i.e. the soul is
still in the body and gives it life, but no longer belongs to the person,
Запродав чортови душу (He sold his soul to the devil) (about a miser or
an evil person) (Franko 1908, 82), продавати / продати душу (to sell
one’s soul) (Uzhchenko, Uzhchenko 1998, 55), Продав (запродав)
чортові душу (He sold his soul to the devil) (Nomys 1993, 163), Псові
очі 4, а чортові душу запродав (He sold his eyes to a dog, and his soul to
the devil) (Nomys 1993, 163), записати чорту душу, губити душу (to
sign one’s soul over to the devil, to destroy one’s soul) (Shukhevych 1997,
169), Як душі не вложив — так нарядив хороше (If he didn’t sell his
soul, then he did well) (Nomys 1993, 494).
The presence of two souls is evaluated as negatively as the absence of
the soul, (in both cases it is a violation of the norm), in figurative meaning,
Він (вона...) двоєдушний (двоєдушна...) (He (she) is a double-hearted
person), i.e. sly, deceitful (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 250), but in the direct
meaning, дводушник “shape-shifter” (Kercha 2007, 206), двадушникьи
(Plotnikova 2009, 215), ďv'idúšnɪk “double-souled” (Nikolayev, Tolstaya
2001, 80).
The presence of the soul correlates with the principle value in a person’s
axiosphere, which is life, and is identified with breathing, У нього (у неї)
тільки душа в тілі (He (she) has only the soul in the body), душа в нім
(у ній) лиш на волоску держиться (the soul in him is hanging on by a
4This phraseological unit refers to the whole block of phrasemes with the meaning
“without the eyes” – “without conscience”, “without a soul”, shameless eyes, the
eyes are the mirror of the soul and others, compare Czech and Slovak. bezočivý
“shameless, impudent” (literary “eyeless”).
212 Chapter 10
thread) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 293), Душа держиться (тримаєтся)

в тiлi (The soul holds on in the body) (Vynnyk 2003, 226), Душа в тѣлѣ
– а сорочку воши з’ѣли (The soul is in the body, but the shirt is eaten by
lice) (Iľkevich 1841, 30), Ледве (насилу) душа держиться (тривається) в
тiлi (The soul barely remains in the body) (Vynnyk 2003, 229).
The notion of "life" characterizes not only a human and animals but the
whole of nature, which is animated in the folk worldview (compare with
popular beliefs about the soul of a tree, a stone, a spring). On the other
hand, the human soul is opposed to the soul of animals, which is called
пар, пара (vapour). Obviously, this opposition developed later and was
religiously determined, as there are ethnographic materials where the souls
of humans and animals are terminologically the same, or where some
animals are attributed with the “human” term for soul, with the motivation
that these animals are saints or gods (for example, a bee is endowed with a
soul – see (Gura 2009, 367)). There are also phraseological units that
combine “soul + animal” (пропав ні за цапову душу (he was lost for a
goat’s soul—he died for nothing) (Nomys 1993, 121, Belenʹkova 1969,
33), з горобину душу (from a sparrow’s soul) (Vynnyk 2003, 231) and
others.
The absence of the soul– of breath – means death, уже й духу нема
(не чути) в кого, (іноді) дух спустив хто (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000,
291), віддати дух, спустити дух (душу), пуститися духу (to draw
one’s last breath, give up one’s spirit), (informal) визіхнути (визівнути)
духа (to yawn out (to blow out) one’s spirit), зітхнути (to sigh) (Vyrgan,
Pilinskaya 2000, 292), душа покинула кого (the soul has left him)
(Vynnyk 2003, 226), душа переставилася (преставилася) (the soul has
departed) (Vynnyk 2003, 226), душа прощається (розлучається) з
тiлом (the soul bids farewell to (separates from) the body) (Vynnyk 2003,
227), вийняти (витягти) душу (серце) з кого (to take out (to pull out)
the soul (heart) of somebody) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 293), Кнут не
ангел ‒ душі не виме, а правду скаже (The whip is not an angel – it will
not take out the soul, but will tell the truth) (Nomys 1993, 591), Віддати
Богові душу, пішла душа наввиринки (To give one’s soul to God, the
soul went up) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 294‒295), душа на плечі (на
рамені) (the soul is on one’s shoulder) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 296),
ледь тлінна душа в тілі (= barely catch one’s breath, barely breathe)
(Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 296), поки бабуся спече книші, а у дідуся не
буде душі (by the time grandma finishes baking pies, grandpa will be
without a soul) (Nomys 1993, 269), Малом душi не позбув (nearly died)
(Franko 1908, 82), Душу з тебе випру (I will choke you) (Franko 1908,
82), Без душiм став (half-dead from fear) (Franko 1908, 80).
and Paremiology
The same nondistinction of the later opposition “the soul (of a human)
versus пара (‘vapour, steam’ of an animal)”, as in these examples from
Polessye, дух вышев (вышеў), душа вышла (the spirit went out, the soul
went out) (Gomel., Sum., Chernig., Brest.), пара вышла, пара вылагае,
ужэ сам пар выпирае, пара стоўбом вишла, остатня пара вышла (the
soul leaves a dying person through the mouth in the form of vapour, the
last breath), but only sporadically they are opposed, з худобы выходиц’
пара, а з людыны токо душа выходиц (from cattle vapour comes out,
but from a man, only the soul comes out) (Borovoye) (Plotnikova 1996).
The same nondistinction of a soul (душа) and vapour (пара) is found in
curses, Вийшла би з тебе пара! (May the vapour come out of you!)
(Franko 1908, 170), Витьигло би з тебе душу (May your soul be drawn
out!) (Franko 1908, 194).
The soul as the fundamental characteristic of a person becomes his or
her designation as a whole, through metonymic substitution, the person is
identified with the soul, (А)ні (живої) душі, (а)ні (живої) душечки,
(а)ні (живого) духа, (colloquial) ні хуху ні духу “no one” (Vyrgan,
Pilinskaya 2000, 294), сам душею (in person) (Nomys 1993, 473),
стояти над душею чиєю, у кого, кому (breathe down (somebody’s)
neck) “hover over someone” (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 295), Сира душа
істи хоче (The orphan soul wants to eat) (Nomys 1993, 109), I моя душа
не повстянка (And my soul is “not made of felt”) (УРС 3, 508) (= And I
was not born yesterday) (Belenʹkova 1969, 17).
In the folk perception, the equivalence of soul = man (or man = soul)
remains even after death, moreover, the earthly characteristics of a person,
the qualities of a person’s nature and even materiality are transferred to the
soul, Та по ёму, на тім світі хоч тин душею підперай, аби ёму тут
гаразд! (As for him, in the next world his soul can even prop a fence up,
as long as he is fine here) (Nomys 1993, 163).
As the soul in a living person can be good or evil, so the soul (spirit)
separated from the body remains good or evil. According to folk beliefs,
the soul of a good person on the 40th day after death goes to heaven, while
an evil one continues to "walk" on the ground, harming the home and the
whole household, and scaring night travellers. In the Carpathian-Ukrainian
traditions, such evil or miserable souls become the leaders of storms and
hail clouds that destroy crops. Perhaps the gradual demonologization of
the impure soul led to the appearance of evil spirits as particular demons
and mythological characters, Нечистий (дух) (лихий) попутав (An
unholy (spirit) (evil) confused someone) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 292),
214 Chapter 10
Вiдьма то кругла душьи, йик клубок 5 ... (A witch has a soul round as a
ball of thread) (Shukhevych 1997, 203).
The unity of the soul and the body in phraseology has its gradations:
a. The soul “lives” in the body as an independent entity and even
controls the body, Душа грішить, а тіло покутує (The soul sins, and the
body repents) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 294), Горда душа в убогим теле
(Proud soul in a crippled body) (Iľkevich 1841, 21), Погана душа в
ладнiи тïлï буває (There can be a filthy soul in a beautiful body) (Franko
1908, 83), Гуляй, душа, в тілі, поки кості ціли (Stay, soul, in the body
while the bones are whole) (Nomys 1993, 548), Душа і редьку з'їсть, а
тіло любить масло (The soul will even eat a black radish, but the body
loves butter) (Беленькова 1969, 44), От уже сёго душа не скаже, що в
пню жила! (The soul of this man will not say that it has lived in a stump)
(about something cheerful, merry) (Nomys 1993, 553).
b. The soul and the body are different but interrelated and
interdependent, У поганому тілі погана душа (In a filthy body there is a
filthy soul) (Nomys 1993, 382), душею i тiлом (with body and soul)
(FSUM 1993, 283), душею i серцем (with soul and heart) (Vynnyk 2003,
230), І душею, й тілом невинний (Innocent in soul and body) (Vyrgan,
Pilinskaya 2000, 294), Що тіло любить, тоє душу губить (What the
body loves is bad for the soul) (Nomys 1993, 390), Не поберігши тіла, и
душу погубиш (If you don’t take care of the body, you will also destroy
the soul) (Nomys 1993, 390).
c. The soul is conditionally identified with the body, and it is
represented as a material entity, analogous to the body (in spite of the
opposition of the soul as spiritual and fleshless to the body as corporal,
material, visible). In some contexts, the soul in the understanding of
“person” is identified with the body through actional and attributive
characteristics (it sings, flies, leaves, gets cold or warm, eats and drinks),
i.e. “it kind of “enters” a person’s body as one of the “organs”, which, as
well as the others, can hurt, be out of place, etc.” (Tolstaya 2000, 53,
based on the research of A.D. Shmelev).
This group includes phrasemes and paroemias, explicitly equating the
soul and the body, as well as those with the soul used in “corporal”,
material contexts, Душа обливається кров’ю (The soul (heart) bleeds)
(Vynnyk 2003, 226), Дай му Боже душеньцi легко! (God, give lightness
to his soul) (Franko 1908, 76) – in commemoration of the dead, Як по
5Compare folk beliefs that a witch at night turns into animals or objects (i.e., the
soul of a witch leaving the body during sleep acquires such form), including a ball
of thread, and in this incarnation it enters different yards in order to do harm.
and Paremiology
душі маслом (As if buttering the soul) – said when praising (Nomys 1993,
340), На душі похололо (Feeling cold at heart) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000,
293), Зiгрiти душу, охолождувати душу (To warm the soul, to cool the
soul) (FSUM 1993, 286‒287), Не заростеть душа полином, аби гроші
(The soul will not grow with wormwood, if only there is money) (Nomys
1993, 102), Хоць душею ригни, а дай (Even if you have to burp with the
soul, you must give) (Nomys 1993, 152), Як окраєць на столі, так и
душка веселій (When a hunk of bread is on the table, there is joy in the
soul) (Nomys 1993, 538). This connection between emotions in the soul
from satisfaction of material needs, for example, joy from satiety and
warmth or suffering from hunger and cold were simplified in paroemias
down to the direct connection of the soul and hunger, Не я скачу ‒ моя
душа істи хоче (It’s not me, who jumps, it’s my soul that wants to eat)
(Nomys 1993, 131), Наша душа наісцця и з ковша (Our soul will even
eat from the ladle) (Nomys 1993, 534), Нá вже, полатай (поласуй) душу
(Here you are, patch (treat) your soul) (Nomys 1993, 630), Богу хвала, що
ся душа напхала (Thank God, that the soul is full) – said jokingly after a
substantial dinner (Franko 1908, 71), Чим будь Бога задурити, аби душу
закропити – to drink something (e.g. honey), to keep the body and the
soul together (Franko 1908, 88), Без бариша голодна душа (Without a
profit the soul is hungry) (Nomys 1993, 469), Аби душа сита, та тіло
не наго (If the soul is full, the body is not naked) (Nomys 1993, 440), Якъ
то ёго душа навернецця в пъятницю скоромне істи? (How will his
soul come around to eat humbly on Friday?) (Nomys 1993, 64).
Such "materiality" of the soul is determined not only by the laws of the
formation of the proverbial stock with ellipses, synecdoches and other
types of tropes but also by the interconnection of the words soul and
breathe, i.e. live, implemented in the language, Slav. *duša – derivative
with suff. -j-a from *duхъ, it is possible to assume the existence of I.-E.
*dhoṷsi̭ ā, compare to Lit. daũsios f. pl. “air”, “empyreia”, “paradise”, then
– Gallic. dusios “fantasmi” (Trubachev (ed.) 1979, 164).
Some paroemias, such as Кожух та свита, то й душа сита (With a
sheepskin coat and woven coat, the soul is satiated) (Nomys 1993, 493),
На пану шовчок, а в животі щолчок, а у мене хоч свита, та душа
сита (The lord is dressed in silk, but his stomach is empty, and though I
have only a woven coat, my soul is full) (Nomys 1993, 496) can be
understood in two ways. First is that the soul feels warm and cold, full and
hungry, like the body. Another possible interpretation is the use of the
word soul in the meaning of “human”. Thus, these paroemias can be
understood as “even though dressed plainly, he is content”.
216 Chapter 10
11.3. Axiosphere of the soul
Phraseological units and paroemias also give an idea of the

understanding and evaluation of the soul – its essence, the locus of its
dwelling, activity, etc. It can be thought that its value is determined (or,
conversely, coded) by its internal, medial position in the body, positioned
in the most important organs (in the heart, head, stomach). Perhaps such
an understanding is mainly based on naive physiology (damage to these
organs leads to the death of a person whereby the soul leaves the body).
The following are some examples in which the soul is mentally identified
(synonymous in phrasemes) with different organs of the body, which
reflects the corresponding beliefs,
The soul=the heart, Занепадати (підупадати) духом, падати
серцем (lose courage) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 292), у глибині (на
споді, на дні) душі (се, падати рця), глибоко в душі (у серці) (deep in
one’s heart) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 293), До глубини душі, (аж) до
дна душі, до живого (до самого) серця, усією душею, цілим серцем (to
the bottom of one’s heart) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 293), душа (серце)
не на мiсцi (to be worried sick, restless) (Vynnyk 2003, 227), душа
(серце) перевертається/перевернулася (to have strong feelings of pity,
compassion for another) (Vynnyk 2003, 227), добра душа (добре серце)
(warm heart, good heart) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 294), весело ми на
серци ... на души (in good spirits, relieved) (Franko 1908, 149), серцем
душу пре (sick at heart) (Nomys 1993, 367).
The Ukrainian Podolian idea that “dusza jest wszędzie w ciele, ale „w
sercu najwięcej” (the soul is everywhere in the body, but “mostly in the
heart”) is demonstrative in this sense. Therefore, in part of Ukraine and in
eastern Poland they say that a ghoul has two hearts, and in central and
western Poland he is said to have two souls (Moszyński 1967, 595).
It is possible that the abundance of phraseology identifying the soul
and the heart was also influenced by religious philosophy and literature.
According to the research carried out by T.S. Sokolova, “phraseological
units with the component heart are quite active in the written heritage of
the 11th-17th centuries. One of the ethnocultural reasons for the presence
of a considerable amount of such phrasemes in the language of the past is
the influence of the texts of the Bible, where the lexeme heart is used
more than 150 times. In the canonical text, the main function of the word
heart is the designation of the centre of the inner world of a Christian
man" (Sokolova 2013, 243-245).
The soul=the head, Чужа душа (чужа голова) — темний ліс
(another person’s soul is always dark/is a mystery) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya
and Paremiology
2000, 295), Порух душі (мислі) (the movement of the soul (thought))
(Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 249).
The idea that the soul is in the head («душа е в голови») was also
stated by V. Gnatyuk (Hnat’uk 1912, 340).
The soul=the stomach, злякався, аж у серці (у животі) похолонуло
(so frightened, that the heart (the stomach) went cold) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya
2000, 293), Чоловічина! одна душа в чоботі, друга в животі, а третя
по світу (шахрай) (What a man! One soul is in his boot, another in his
stomach, and the third goes around the world) (about a cunning person and
a wise one) (Nomys 1993, 165). Compare, the idea of Ukrainian Podolia,
"U mężczyzny dusza jest koło serca, a u kobiety – w brzuchu" (The man's
soul is close to his heart, and the woman's soul is in the stomach)
(Moszyński 1967, 595).
Such positioning of the soul is reconstructed on the basis of apotropaiс
actions performed on the dead who were suspected of vampirism and
double-heartedness, колом ёму в спину! (a stake in his back!) (Nomys
1993, 55), осиковий му кіл у серце! (an aspen stake into his heart!)
(Franko 1908, 481), клинъ ёму въ голову забивъ (drive a wedge into his
head) (Zakrevs'kiy 1861, 170), клин му в голову забив (drive a wedge into
his head) (Pazyak 1989, 251).
Fear and other strong emotions cause displacement of the soul from
the center (heart, head, stomach) to the periphery of the body, into the feet
(Душа в п’яти (п’ятки) тiкає (опускаєтся, ховаєтся) (have one’s
heart in one’s heels) (Vynnyk 2003, 226), Аж душьи в пjити забiгла
(about somebody very scared and running away fast) (Franko 1910, 79),
душа у п'яти втекла (сховалася) в кого, аж душа в п'яти забігла
кому, душа вже кому в п'ятах, злякався, аж у п'яти закололо
(Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 293), душа в п’яти тiкає, душа в п’ятках
опинилася (FSUM 1993, 278, 284), душа въ пъятки зховалась (Nomys
1993, 217)), onto the shoulder (Душа на плечі (на рамені) (with one’s
soul on one’s shoulder) “about a dying person” (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000,
296), Душа на плечи сïдит (ready to take to one’s heels in fright) (Franko
1908, 81)), in the back, behind (З переляку душа аж у паністарі
опинилась (Nomys 1993, 218), У хвості була душа з страху и тогди
(Nomys 1993, 218)).
In addition to the medial position and the function of maintaining life, the
value of the soul also lies in the fact that it is the essence of a human, the
source of feelings, experiences, strength, and knowledge stored у глибині
душі, на самому дні душі (in the depth of one’s soul, at the very bottom
of one’s soul), in talking about intimacies, a person виливає душу,
відкриває душу (pours his heart out), the circumstances can мутити
218 Chapter 10
душу, скаламутити душу, сколихнути в душі (muddle one’s soul, stir

up one’s soul, rouse one’s soul) (the phrasemes are from (Karakutsya
2002, 16)).
Acting as an organ of feelings, the soul converges with the heart (in
idioms they are interchangeable). It aches, feels happy, sad, torn to pieces,
it likes or dislikes, it wants or does not want, Душа/серце радується,
душа тiшиться (one’s heart fills with joy) (FSUM 1993, 277), боліти
серцем (душею) за ким, за чим, за кого, за що (to be heartsick), брати,
взяти (торкати, торкнути) за душу (за серце) кого (to tug at one’s
heartstrings), відкривати, відкрити кому, перед ким душу (серце) (to
lay bare one’s heart), розгортати, розгорнути душу (серце) перед ким
(to open one’s heart), до душі діймати, дійняти кого, до душі
доходити, дійти кому, душа горить чия (one’s soul is on fire),
ненавидіти з усієї (з цілої) душі кого, що, усіма фібрами душі
ненавидіти кого, що (to hate from the bottom of one’s heart) (Vyrgan,
Pilinskaya 2000, 293), наболіла (зболіла) душа, наболіле (зболіле) серце
(to be sick at heart), на душі (на серці) скребе (як кішка лапою) (to feel
rodents gnawing at the bottom of one’s heart), душі не чути за ким, у
кому, упадати всією душею коло кого (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 294),
душа ниє, душа щемить, душа розривається – душа радіє (one’s heart
is breaking, tearing – feeling happy), душа крається – краяти душу,
чути (всією) душею (the soul tears – to tear the soul, to feel with the
(whole) soul) (Karakutsya 2002, 11), душа/серце радується (heart fills
with joy) (FSUM 1993, 277), душа сохне (the soul dries out), кипить
(закипає) душа (серце) (the soul (heart) boils), душа (серце)
разривається (рветься) надвоє (навпiл) (the heart tears apart), душа
(серце) спiває (the soul (heart) is singing) (Vynnyk 2003, 228),
похолонуло (похололо) в душi (в грудях, на серцi) (it went cold in the
soul (in the breast, in the heart) (Uzhchenko, Uzhchenko 1998, 55), як по
душі дере (feel gnawing at one’s heart) (Nomys 1993, 154), (Vyrgan,
Pilinskaya 2000, 293), Душа ные, бо чуе якоесь нешчасьце (The soul
whines, because it feels misfortune), Стало радасно на душы (The heart
filled with joy) (Pietkiewicz 1938, 151).
According to Ukrainian researchers T.I. Prudnikova and M.V. Skab, in
the Ukrainian language the word soul "most actively functions precisely in
the meaning of "feeling", less often as "mind, thoughts", however, the
phraseological units depicting the connection between the soul and the
mind are very few, душа говорить, розуміти душею (серцем),
викладати / викласти душу ‒ “to openly, sincerely share thoughts,
experiences with somebody” (FSUM 1993, 703), відводити / відвести
душу ‒ “to trust someone, sharing one’s thoughts, experiences, intentions”
and Paremiology
(FSUM 1993, 97, Prudnikova 2011, 297). Also in the proverb, Чує щось
душа, та менi не каже (The soul feels something, but doesn’t tell me)
(Nomys 1993, 56).
Another interesting example in folk phraseology is the inversion of the
correlation, "the soul inside the person" – "the person inside the soul",
Кричить ув одну душу, Аж з душі вилазить (to shout very loudly)
(Nomys 1993, 183) “scream at the top of one’s lungs”. In this expressive
phrase, the soul does not come out of the person, but the person comes out
of the soul. A well-known analogy to this may be found in the Russian
phraseological unit сойти с ума (go mad) (or from A.S. Griboyedov, с
ума спрыгнýл).
The soul is not only something medial, internal, but also hidden,
preserved, innermost, В чужу душу не влізеш (не заглянеш) (You can’t
read another man’s soul) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 293), у тайниках
душі, у таємних (потаємних) закутках душі (in the inmost (secret)
recesses of the soul) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 293), закрадатися
(утиратися) в душу кому (в чиюсь душу, до чиєїсь душі), залазити,
залізти (улазити, влізти) в душу кому (в чиюсь душу) (dig into
someone’s soul) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 270), Без мила в душу (в
гу...о) лізе (to worm one’s way into somebody’s good graces) (Nomys
1993, 166).
It is something that cannot be withdrawn or chased away from the
body, Що ж робить ‒ треба жить! душа не пташка ‒ не виженеш!
(What can be done – you have to live! the soul is not a bird – you cannot
chase it out) (Nomys 1993, 141), Душа не сусід, іі не випреш (The soul is
not a neighbour, you cannot kick it out) (Nomys 1993, 371), Душі не
вихрянуть (не выплювати) (You cannot shake out (spit out) the soul)
(Nomys 1993, 371), З душі ніхто не вийме (Nobody will take your soul
out) (Nomys 1993, 537), Вийми з мене душу, бо бiльше не маю нiчого
свого (Take out my soul, because I have nothing else of my own) (Franko
1908, 169), Тілько нашого, що в душу вложено (Only that is our own,
which is put in the soul) (Nomys 1993, 532).
The soul is consciousness (as opposed to sleep, death – the unconscious),
Ні сном ні духом (сном-духом, сном і духом) не знаю, не відаю (not
knowing a single thing) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 292), it is the will and
desire, Додавати, додати (піддавати, піддати) духу кому (To give
somebody. spirit) (give courage) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 292), Порух
душі (мислі) (Movement of the soul (thought)) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000,
249), Душа в мене вступила (to rally one’s spirits) (Franko 1908, 81).
The soul is a measure of strength, truth/justice, sincerity, and other
spiritual qualities, but also a regulator of physiological processes,
220 Chapter 10
especially eating, кривити, покривити душею (to act against one’s

conscience), криво-душити, скриводушити, узяти гріха на душу (to
take a sin upon one’s soul) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 294), він (вона...)
двоєдушний (двоєдушна...) (double-hearted) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000,
250), Аби душа чиста! (May the soul be pure) (pure in mind) (Nomys
1993, 314), Не буду душі вбивать, буду правду казать (I’m not going
to kill my soul, I’ll tell the truth) (Nomys 1993, 338), з (від) душі
сказати (вимовити) (to say from the heart) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000,
294), з (від) серця (від душі) радий (to be glad with all one’s heart)
(Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 295), Душа не прыймае, душа меру знае (the
soul doesn’t accept, the soul knows its limit) (response when the treat is
too much) (Pietkiewicz 1938, 151), Душа міру знає, душа на мірі стає
(the soul knows when to stop) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 293) – also in
ironic use, rather often in proverbs as a genre, Душа міру знає (mostly
when horilka is drunk not from a glass, but right from the bottle) –
Прийма душа и з ковша (The soul even accepts from the ladle) (Nomys
1993, 509), Iв би очима, та душа не приймає (My eyes would eat, but
the soul won’t have it) (Nomys 1993, 529), Не йде на душу. Через душу
ім (It doesn’t go with my soul. I’m eating against my soul) (Nomys 1993,
529).
Being the organ of feeling and choice at the same time, the soul is also
the organ responsible for committing, understanding and redemption of
sin, брать грех на душу (to take sin upon one's soul), снять грех с
души..., Як грiх на душi! (Like a sin on my soul) (Nomys 1993, 157),
Ходиш, неначе як гріх без душі (You are wandering as a sin without a
soul) (Nomys 1993, 486), Рада б душа в рай, та грiхи не пускають (It
would’ve been nice to be in paradise, but many a sin doesn’t let me in!)
(Nomys 1993, 257).
In general, the soul is the true master of a man and his body, it not only
feels and thinks, makes mistakes, commits sins and serves punishment for
sins, but also directs, makes one act, wants or does not want, accepts or
does not accept, за велiнням души (at the bidding of the heart) (FSUM
1993, 285), не до душі (не до серця), з душі верне кому (it doesn’t fit my
soul (my heart), my soul doesn’t accept) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 294),
скільки (чого) душа (душечка) забажає (as many as (what) the heart
desires) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 295), куди душа забажає, захоче,
запрагне (wherever the soul would desire) (FSUM 1993, 281), душа не
приймає (the soul doesn’t accept) (Vynnyk 2003, 226), Моя душа кривая
‒ усе приймає (My soul is crooked, it accepts everything) (Nomys 1993,
534), душа (серце) не лежить до цього, не пристає серце на це (one’s
heart isn’t in it) (Vyrgan, Pilinskaya 2000, 293), душа не приймає чого, у
and Paremiology
душу не лізе (the soul doesn’t accept, it doesn’t get into the soul) (Vyrgan,
Pilinskaya 2000, 293–294), припадати, припасти до душі (до серця),
пристати (прийтися) до душі (it doesn’t fit (enter) my soul) (Vyrgan,
Pilinskaya 2000, 295).
One pleases not a person but his or her soul, раз душі догодить (... не
десять) (to please the soul for once) (Nomys 1993, 532), Як заспіваю
було, так его (батькова) душа в небо росте (When I sing, my father’s
soul grows up to the sky) (Nomys 1993, 545).
The soul is the inner “self” of a person. This is its special role and
value. That is why the soul in the traditional folk understanding remains
the most important, basic and valuable thing that is in a person, regardless
of his material or social status. This is the basis on which a person is
judged and what makes him human, Хоч у мене шуба овеча, та душа
чоловіча (Although I have a sheepskin coat, my soul is human), Не той
бідний, хто хліба не має, а той, хто душі (It is not he who has no bread
that is poor, but he who has no soul), То чорт бідний ‒ що душі нема
(It’s the devil who is poor, because he has no soul) (Nomys 1993, 110), В
старецькім тілі та панськая душа (In a beggar’s body there is a lord’s
soul) (Nomys 1993, 229).
That is why the devil or other evil spirits steal or buy a person’s soul as
the greatest valuable, Хватило, як лихе за душу (or, Вхватило, як лихе
душу) (It grabbed like evil grabs the soul) (Nomys 1993, 367), ті и
вхопили батька, як чорт грішну душу... (they grabbed father as a devil
grabs a sinful soul) (Nomys 1993, 627).
The body without the soul is dead, but also the soul without the body is a
solitary, lonely wanderer, whose home is in heaven. Compare in riddles,
Бери мене, бо я подорожня, а з притиском, бо сирота, а скоро, бо
додому йду (душа) (Take me, for I’m a passerby, and hold tight, for I’m
an orphan, and quickly, for I’m going home – Soul) (Nomys 1993, 650).
As the unity of the body and the soul, a person appears in another riddle, В
лісі росло, листок иміло (и листя було), тепер носить душу и тіло
(колиска) (Grew in the forest, had leaves, now bears the soul and the body
– Cradle) (Nomys 1993, 654). This unity falls apart after death, the soul
goes to heaven, and the body to the earth, Умер Адам, ні Богові, ні нам,
ні душа до неба, ні кості до землі (розбитий горщик) (Adam died,
neither for God, nor for us, neither soul to heaven, nor bones to earth –
Broken pot) (Nomys 1993, 658).
The data of Ukrainian phraseology and paremiology show the
predominance of views on the soul as a material substance living in the
centre of the human body, associated with the heart and the head, less
often with the stomach, due to the presence of which a person lives, thinks,
222 Chapter 10
feels, acts and is what he is. At the everyday and individual level, the soul
is rather highly valued, милійша душка, ніж телушка (the soul is dearer
than a heifer) (Nomys 1993, 314), and at a higher level of abstraction, the
soul is invaluable. The axiosphere of the concept soul includes a number
of conceptual spheres, primarily, "man/person/self”, “life-death”, “God-
devil”, “feelings”, “conscience”, “truth/fact”, “mind”, “measure”, etc.
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Summary
The article analyzes paroemias and phraseological units with the component
soul in the Ukrainian language and dialects from the point of view of axiological
theory. On the one hand, the soul belongs to the values recognized by society, on
the other hand, it is understood as a value of each individual. The aspects
and Paremiology
considered include the sacredness of the soul, its God-given nature, the
presence/absence of the soul, double-heartedness, the quality of the soul (добра
душа – заяча душа – чорна душа), the unity and opposition of the soul and the
body – which makes the soul one of the most important human values. The
individual evaluation and understanding of the soul itself are implicated in
phrasemes and paroemias about the essence of the soul, the locus of its dwelling,
its activity, the identification of the soul with personality, will, consciousness, etc.
The predominant understanding of the soul in the examined Ukrainian material is
that it is a material substance living in the centre of the human body, thanks to
which a person lives, thinks, feels, acts and is what he or she is.
Keywords, axiology, phraseology, paremiology, Ukrainian traditional culture,

soul, axiosphere
CHAPTER 11
SOUL AS VALUE, MYTHOLOGICAL-CHRISTIAN

IDEAS ABOUT THE SOUL IN UKRAINIAN
PHRASEOLOGY1
IRYNA CHYBOR
BORYS HRINCHENKO KYIV UNIVERSITY, UKRAINE
Old Slavic mythological ideas about the soul are closely associated with
the concept of death and afterlife. Pagan Slavs believed that a person does
not end their life after death, but only goes to another world (the soul does
not leave the body) (Ilarion 1992, 238). According to Ivan Ohiyenko, later
than Pagan times but before the spread of Christianity, a different
understanding of the soul arose: “after the death of a person the soul
separates itself from the body that dies and lives a separate life forever” 2
(Ilarion 1992, 238). In the Christian religion:
The soul is immortal, it leaves the body of a person after death and stands
before God, who, depending on the saintly or sinful life of the person on
earth, decides about the soul’s fate in the afterlife. (Shevchenko 2004, 131)
1 The subject of analysis in this article is phraseological means of the Ukrainian

language. I will use the term idiom (or phraseological unit), which I treat as "a
relatively stable, reproducible combination of words, characterized by imagery,
semantic non-summation and expressiveness" (Nowakowska 2005, 23). In order to
explore the issue of representation of the mythological-Christian ideas about the
soul and its value in phraseology, in some cases, I also discuss proverbs as well as
idioms.
2 Quotations in the text are given as my own translation.
Soul as Value, Mythological-Christian Ideas about the Soul 229
in Ukrainian Phraseology
As can be seen, in Christianity the concept of the soul changed slightly

in terms of mythological worldview; namely, it was supplemented with
information about the soul’s location and fate after a person’s death.
Because Christian understanding of the soul arose from the old
mythological ideas, phraseological units whose motivation is associated
with the concept of the soul as an immortal and immaterial element in a
person are considered to be on the periphery of the mythological ethnic
cultural code 3 as the implementation of the mythological-Christian inter-
code transition 4 (see Chybor 2016, 196).
The objective of this chapter is to outline the peculiarities of the
representation of the mythological-Christian ideas about the soul and its
value in Ukrainian phraseology. 5
According to folk beliefs, a person has only one soul, which is valued
above all, hence the idioms мила душа кождому (the soul is dear to
everyone) (Nom., 371) and любити/полюбити як свою душу (to love
like one’s own soul) (SFUM, 231, FSLH, 84), and the proverb люби
жінку як душу, а труси як грушу (love your wife like your own soul, but
shake her like a pear-tree) (Nom., 403). Ukrainian phraseology also
reflects the belief that semi-demonic beings have two souls, human and
demonic, cf. the phraseological unit то дводушник, не чоловік! (it is not a
man, but a two-souled creature!), written by Ivan Franko with the
explanation, “ghouls are believed to be дводушники (creatures with two
souls), that is, besides the ordinary human soul, they have a demonic one
that does not leave the body even after its death” (Fr. І, 534), and
чарівниця два духи має (a sorceress has two souls) (Fr. ІІІ, 298), which
represents the idea of a witch as a being with two souls.
3 (Ukr. міфологічний етнокод культури) is “the totality of images of the primary

worldview ideas of an ethnos that correlate with the image-bearing basis of the
primary combination of words in a phraseological unit and reveal themselves in its
meaning and components” (Chybor 2016, 47).
4 , I treat the inter-code transition (Ukr. міжкодовий перехід) as “the
representation of the signs of one cultural code with the signs of another, which is
expressed in images, components or meaning of a phraseological unit” (Chybor
2016, 48).
5 The phraseological material under analysis comes from modern standard and
dialectal Ukrainian. In order to show how phraseological units change their

meaning while collecting research material I also consulted lexicographical works
and folklore collections from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
230 Chapter 11
Formerly it was believed that the “human soul” leaves the body of a
semi-demonic being without any obstacles, which indicates the death of a
person, and the “demonic soul” gives life force to a demonic being of
дводушник (in the case of ghouls, it brings them out of the grave and lets
them hurt people) or does not want to leave the body and, as a result, a
person gets very tired and suffers before death (see Skurativs’kyy 1996,
290–291), hence the idioms душа рогата—тяжко сконати (if
someone’s soul has horns, i.e. is demonic, it is hard for them to die)
(Nom., 371) and рогата душа, що не вийде з тіла (a horned soul cannot
leave the body) (Fr. ІІІ, 32). In addition, the following phraseological units
are found in dialectal phraseology, 6 south-western отто рогата душа
(that’s a horned soul) meaning “an arrogant, stubborn, discordant person”
(Fr. ІІ, 83), and northern чорна душа (a black soul), meaning “an
insidious person” (FSHZh, 67). The components рогата (horned) and
чорна (black) correlate with the attributes of the devil, and this determines
the meaning of the phraseological units that preserve negative character
traits associated with the devil in Slavic folk culture. The curse а вмирав
бис два рази! (may you die twice!) (Fr. ІІІ, 239) was probably addressed
to such people.
In Ukrainian phraseology, a person’s possession of a soul was
interpreted in the context of positive character traits, мати душу (to have
a soul)—“to be compassionate, kind, kind-hearted” (SFUM, 373) and нa
душу багатий (rich in soul)—“attentive, caring” (FSSSHD, 196). This is
probably motivated by the Christian faith, because, according to Мaria
Skab, based on the religious view that “the soul connects a person with
God, which increases the value of the soul, and that is why it carries a
certain ethical ideal” (Skab 2008, 408). Similarly, the phraseological unit
не мати душі (to have no soul) means “to be dishonest, unkind, cruel”
and потеряти душу (to lose one’s soul) means “to have no shame, to
become amoral” (FSSSHD, 197), cf. the proverbs не той бідний, хто
хліба не має, а той, хто душі (he who has no bread is not poor, but he
who has no soul is) (Nom., 110), and бідний той, хто душі не має (he
who has no soul is poor) (Chub., 250, PP-2, 253, PP-3, 203) etc., which
encode a person having a soul as a value.
6 Dialectal phraseological units have the qualifier northern, south-western or

south-eastern, according to the traditional division into dialects. These qualifiers
indicate the location where the phraseological unit was recorded, not the borders of
its use.
According to folk beliefs, the soul appears at the moment of birth,

accompanies a person throughout their life, and leaves the body only
during sleep. As ethnographic sources show:
When a person is sleeping and dreaming that they are somewhere far away
from their place of being, their soul is really there, and the body is lying in
the place where the person went to sleep. (Hnatyuk 2000, 53, see also
Chubyns’kyy 1995, 158)
cf. the idioms душа спати не ходить (the soul does not go to sleep)
(Nom., 499) and чоловік спит, а душьи хто знає куди літає (a man is
sleeping, but his soul is flying somewhere) (Fr. III, 316). The above-
mentioned beliefs about the soul wandering during sleep are probably
related to the motivation of the phraseological unit душа до него спати
ходить (the soul comes to him to sleep) (Nom., 392, cf. Zakr., 160, Il’k.,
30, PGUR, 260, Fr. ІІ, 81), and south-western до него душа лем спати
ходит (the soul only comes to him to sleep) (FSLH, 262), meaning “to be
unfaithful in marriage.”
The soul has a certain location in the human body, but ethnographic
material does not provide an unequivocal answer to the question of the
exact place. Volodymyr Hnatyuk states:
Some think that the soul sits in the head or in a hole under the neck,
others—that it is in the blood, in the breasts, in the stomach, in the liver, in
the throat or under the right armpit. (Hnatyuk 2000, 52)
Phraseology registers movement of the soul from a neutral place in the

human body vertically upwards or downwards, which metaphorically
indicates a physical or mental state different from the norm, e.g. душа не
на місці (the soul is not in its place)—“someone is in the state of anxiety,
stress, worry” (SFUM, 227, cf. Ud. І, 182, PP-4, 240, FSHZh, 66).
Positive emotions encourage the soul to move up vertically (аж) душа
(вгору) росте (the soul is growing)—“someone is feeling excited,
inspired, delighted” (FSUM, 277) or to return to its usual location душа
стала нa місце (the soul returned to its place)—“someone has already
calmed down, stopped being stressed, worried,” south-western with the
similar meaning душа юж на місці (the soul is back to its place) (FSLH,
83), and northern душа на місце вернулась (the soul returned to its
place)—“someone is feeling relief after some trouble” (Mats., 81).
In Ukrainian phraseology, negative emotions are usually represented as
movement of the soul vertically downwards, e.g. душа так і покотилася
(the soul rolled down) (FSUM, 280), у хвості була душа з страху и
232 Chapter 11
тогди (the soul went into the tail from fear) (Nom., 218, PP-2, 409), душа
в п’яти (п’ятки) тікає (опускається, ховається)/втекла (опустилася,
сховалася) (the soul runs away (sinks, hides)/ran away (sank, hid) into the
heels) (SFUM, 226, cf. Nom., 217, Dubr., 123, Ud. І, 182, Uzhch., 49, PP-
2, 253, FSHZh, 66, 144, Chab., 40, Vikt., 114), душа аж (вже й) в
п’ятах (п’ятках) (the soul is in the heels) (SFUM, 226), душа заглядає в
п’ятки (the soul is looking into the heels) (SFUM, 226), в п’ятки
проситься душа (the soul is asking to hide in the heels) (Ud. І, 124), з
переляку душа в п’ятки утекла (the soul ran away into the heels from
fear) (PP-2, 408), south-western душа пішла в п’яти (the soul went into
the heels) (Push., 93), northern душа в п’ятки впала (the soul fell into the
heels) (FSHZh, 66), south-eastern душа в п’ятках теленькає (the soul is
beating in the heels) (Vikt., 114), and душа в чоботах теленькає (the
soul is beating in the boots) (Chab., 40), etc., all of which mean “someone
suddenly feels strong fear,” as well as заганяти душу в п’яти (to send
one’s soul into the heels), which means “to scare someone, to cause the
feeling of fear” (FSUM, 302).
People believed that strong fear could cause the soul to leave the
human body, cf., душа вискочить (the soul will jump out) (Ud. І, 182),
душі не стало (the soul disappeared) (SFUM, 689), south-western бою сі
аж у мні душі нема (I am so afraid, as if I had no soul) (Fr. І, 114), вже
душа була на рамени (the soul was on the shoulder) (Fr. ІІ, 80), душа на
плечи сідит (the soul is sitting on the shoulder) (Fr. ІІ, 81), and душа на
плечах була (the soul was on the shoulders) (Push., 93), etc.
A disease that often led to death was interpreted similarly, in that the
soul changes its location and prepares to leave the body, cf. ледве душа
держиться в тілі (the soul is barely holding in the body)—“someone is
very weak, frail, barely alive” (SFUM, 229), south-eastern де (тільки) та
душа держиться (wherever that soul is holding, i.e. a person is very
weak) (Vikt., 102), and south-western вже душа на порозі (the soul is
already on the threshold, i.e. ready to die) (Push., 38), etc. Conversely, the
return of the soul into the body meant recovery, душа в мене вступила
(the soul entered my body) (Nom., 240). І. Franko cites the phraseological
unit душа в мене вступила (the soul entered my body) with the meaning
“mustered courage, became brisk” (Fr. ІІ, 81). The meaning of these
idioms indicates the treatment of the soul as the necessary life energy that
in the first case provides a person with physical strength and in the second
with spiritual strength.
The concept of the immortality of the human soul, in contrast to the
mortal body, is represented in dialectal phraseology, e.g. northern живе як
душа без тіла (lives like a soul without a body) (Dobr., 113) and south-
western танцює як душа без тіла (dances like a soul without a body)
(Push., 270), etc.
Death in the Slavic culture is interpreted as the absence of the soul in
the human body. In phraseology, the process of dying and the fact of death
are represented by the metaphorical separation of body and soul, e.g.
розлука з душею (parting from the soul) (SFUM, 611), душа прощається
(розлучається)/попрощалася (розлучилася) з тілом (the soul is bidding
farewell to (parting with)/bid farewell to (parted with) the body) (SFUM,
227, Vikt., 114), northern душа з тілом розстається (the soul is parting
with the body) (Mats., 81), and south-western душа тіло оставыт (the
soul will leave the body) (FSLH, 83).
According to folk beliefs, the soul leaves the human body after death,
taking on the form of a bird, a bee, a fly, etc. (see Chubyns’kyy 1995, 158,
Hnatyuk 2000, 53, Bulashev 1993, 92), hence the idioms where dying and
death are metaphorically presented as the soul flying away, e.g. душа
вилітає (відлітає, тікає)/вилетіла (відлетіла, втекла) з тіла (the soul
flies out of (flies away from, escapes)/flew out of (flew away from,
escaped) the body), which means “someone dies, perishes” (SFUM, 226),
northern душа вилітає (the soul flies out), which means “to die” as well
as “to worry” (FSHZH, 66), south-eastern душа вилетіла з тіла (the soul
flew out of the body), душа відлетіла (the soul flew away) (Vikt., 114),
душа до ангелів полетіла (the soul flew to the angels) (FSSSHD, 196),
which both mean “to die,” etc. In addition, the human soul was compared
to smoke, cf. the phraseological unit коменом душьи вийшла (the soul left
through the chimney), which І. Franko explains as “the human soul is
similar to smoke that comes out of the chimney” (Fr. ІІ, 8).
The integration of mythological and Christian ideas about the soul is
represented in phraseological units with the component Бог (God), which
mean “death,” e.g. віддати/віддавати Богу (Богові) душу (to give one’s
soul to God) (SFUM, 99, cf. Uzhch., 11, PP-4, 322, FSHZh, 21, 66, Vikt.,
65), Богу душу віддати (to give one’s soul to God) (Hr. І, 460, Fr. І, 71),
cf. northern ходить як Богу душу віддати зібрався (walks as if going to
give his soul to God) (Dobr., 74), and чут' Богу душу не одала (almost
gave her soul to God) (Mats.-2, 26), etc.
Ukrainian phraseology represents the fact that the separation of the
soul from the human body is a result of the actions of a higher,
supernatural power, either God or the devil, e.g. northern Бог забирає
душу (God takes one’s soul) (Mats., 462), south-eastern Бог взяв його
душу до себе (God took his soul) (Vikt., 35), and south-western чорти
душу взяли (the devils took one’s soul) (FSLH, 253). In addition, the
idioms душу вийняти (to take out one’s soul)—“to plague someone with
234 Chapter 11
threats, demanding something” (Ud. І, 183), вийняти душу з кого (to take
out someone’s soul)—“to cause someone’s death” (SFS, 52), and northern
вийняти душу (to take out one’s soul)—“to worry” and “to get tired”
(FSHZh, 65), represent folk ideas about personified death imperceptibly
extracting the soul from a person (cf. Chubyns’kyy 1995, 214).
According to beliefs, after death, the soul travels to the afterlife. This
happens in two directions, vertically upwards, to God, to Paradise, e.g.
добра душа відлетіла в небо (a good soul flew away to heaven) (SFUM,
226), душа пішла в рай (the soul went to Paradise) (FPSSS, 104) and
душа проситься на небо (the soul is asking to go to heaven) (FSSSHD,
196), and downwards, to the devil, to hell, e.g. душа у землю проситься
(the soul is asking to go into the ground, i.e. hell) (FSSSHD, 196), and до
чортів податися (to go to the devils) (FSSSHD, 528), etc.
Understanding of the soul as a value is reflected in the motifs of selling
the soul to the devil for certain material goods. Usually, a person who
moved away from God to realize their plans was looking for support from
the devil. The price of such support was the soul of that person after death.
These ideas described became the basis for coining the following idioms,
запродав чортови душу (he sold his soul to the devil)—“of a miserly
person or a usurer” (Fr. ІІ, 82, cf. Zakr., 164, Il’k., 35, PGUR, 266, Nom.,
163, Fr. ІІІ, 324, PP-3, 288), він сі дідькови запродав (he sold himself to
the devil) (Fr. І, 585), запродати душу чорту (дияволу, сатані) (to sell
one’s soul to the devil/Satan)—“to betray someone’s interests, to betray
universal values” (FSUM, 316), продавати/продати душу дияволу (to
sell one’s soul to the devil)—“to lose one’s dignity while serving
someone, to betray” (SFUM, 573, cf. Ud. ІІ, 165, Uzhch., 50), and псові
очі, а чортові душу запродав (he sold his eyes to a dog and his soul to
the devil) (Nom., 163, cf. Zakr., 200, PGUR, 326, Fr. ІІ, 477, PP-1, 194,
PP-2, 240).
According to Pavlo Chubynskyy, after concluding an oral contract with
someone, the devil demanded a receipt written in blood (Chubyns’kyy
1995, 191), cf. він би й душу дідькові записав (he would even sign off his
soul to the devil) (Fr. І, 585), записав чортові душу—приготовляйся в
пекло (if you signed off your soul to the devil—get ready for hell) (PP-3,
293), where the component записати (to sign off) indicates that it was a
written agreement with the devil. Ukrainian dialects also feature the
idioms угода з дияволом (a deal with the devil), which means
“dishonesty” (FSHZh, 570), as well as у нього би й дідько душі не купив
(even the devil would not buy his soul) (Fr. І, 594). The presence of the
verbs продати/купити (to sell/to buy) in the structure of these
phraseological units indicates material benefits that a person received as a
result of the concluded contract, cf. south-eastern душу (свою) продати

за гроші (to sell one’s soul for money)—"to meddle with hellspawn"
(FPSSS, 104).
In Modern Ukrainian, the phraseological unit віддати чортові
(дідькові) душу (to give one’s soul to the devil) (SFUM, 100) is used with
the meaning “to die”, its motivation refers to the aforementioned beliefs
about concluding a contract with the devil. This is confirmed by the use of
this idiom to mean “to sell out to someone, to depart from moral norms”
(SFUM, 100), and also by the presence of the above-mentioned
phraseological unit in sources from the end of the XIX century, віддать
чортам свої душі (to give one’s souls to the devils) with the meaning “to
pledge one’s soul to the devil” (FPSSS, 276) and віддати свою душу
нечистому (to give one’s soul to the impure one, i.e. the devil) with the
meaning “to sell out to someone” (FPSSS, 104).
The idiom бісова (чортова) душа (devil’s soul), which “is used to
express extreme dissatisfaction with someone, irritation, indignation about
something” (SFUM, 225, FSLH, 84), is probably motivated by beliefs
about making a deal with the devil and was coined as a term for a person
whose soul already belonged to the devil.
In Ukrainian phraseology, there are idioms with the component душа
whose motivation refers to animalistic beliefs, e.g. заяча душа (the soul of
a hare)—“a timid, fearful person” (SFUM, 228, cf. Ud. І, 209, Uzhch., 49,
PP-4, 242, Mats., 81, FSHZh, 66, FSSSHD, 287), мишача душа (the soul
of a mouse)—“a timid, fearful, wicked person” (SFUM, 229), south-
western то хробачлива душа (the soul of a worm)—“a frequently sick or
amoral person” (Fr. ІІІ, 286), and блукає, як кінська душа без обороті
(wanders like the soul of a horse without a harness, i.e. aimlessly) (PP-4,
148), etc. These phraseological units refer to people with negative
character traits or whose physical state deviates from the norm. Idioms
indicate the greater value of the human soul compared to the soul of an
animal. This is motivated by the anthropocentrism characteristics of
animalistic phraseology, which is realized by the binary opposition
“native/foreign” (see Rak 2007, 181). It is also associated with the belief
that “animals have no soul, only steam” (Hnatyuk 2000, 56), hence the
curses вийшла би з тебе пара! (may the steam leave you!) (Fr. І, 170), а
втекла би з тебе пара! (may the steam escape you!) (Fr. І, 285), and
бодай ті лишила погана пара! (may the bad steam leave you!) (Fr. ІІ,
502). I. Franko in his commentary on these curses points out the
contemptuous use of the word пара (steam) instead of душа (soul), which
is motivated by the fact that “according to folk beliefs, only animals have
steam, as they have no soul like a human being” (Fr. I, 170), cf. the
236 Chapter 11
modern idiom бісової пари (by devil’s steam), which “is used as a curse
to express dissatisfaction with someone or something” (SFUM, 485).
The value of the human soul compared to that of an animal is reflected
in the following phraseological units, ні за цапову душу (for the soul of a
goat) with the words загинути, пропасти (both mean to perish)—“in
vain, to no avail, for nothing” (SFUM, 231, Ud. ІІ, 82, Uzhch., 50, PP-4,
260, FSHZh, 66, FSLH, 84), не переводь свита за цапову душу (do not
die for the soul of a goat, i.e. do not die in vain) (Kom., 21), пропав ні за
цапову душу (perished for the soul of a goat, i.e. died for nothing) (Nom.,
210, cf. Zakr., 200, Hr. IV, 422, Dubr., 70, PP-3, 99, PP-4, 69, Push., 232),
as well as dialectal попасти під цапову душу (to fall under the soul of a
goat) with the meaning “to be unlucky” (SVF, 129). According to Olha
Karakutsya, “the image of a goat softens the pejorative colouring of the
idiom ні за чортову душу (for the devil’s soul) (the word цап (goat) is a
substitute for the taboo lexeme чорт (devil))” (Karakutsya 2002, 12).
Similar phraseological units with the meaning “in vain, to no avail” are
preserved in Ukrainian, за пухлу (пухлого) душу (for the soul of the
swollen one) (SFUM, 231, FSHZh, 66), ні за пухлу душу (for the swollen
soul) (Ud. ІІ, 82, cf. Ud. ІІ, 168), and in dialectal за опухлу душу (for the
swollen soul) (SVF, 61), where the word пухлий means “devil”, cf. якого
йому пухлого чорта треба! (what swollen devil does he want? i.e. what
the hell does he want?) (see Skab 2008, 242–243). These phraseological
units clearly indicate that in folk culture, the human soul is treated as a
value.
In summary, Ukrainian phraseology that is motivated by the

mythological-Christian ideas about the soul represents the understanding
of the soul as a value, which is characteristic of the Slavic ethnic culture.
As this analysis shows, the very fact of a person having a soul is a value,
but the absence of a soul, in turn, is seen negatively. Ideas about the soul's
location, its movement in the human body and leaving the body are
reflected in Ukrainian phraseology in the form of the binary opposition
upwards/downwards, partly in correlation with the oppositions God/devil
and life/death. Ukrainian idioms also encode information about the soul as
a material value and Ukrainian phraseology preserves the idioms that
indicate the worthlessness or negative evaluation of the animal and
demonic soul—the realization of the opposition native/foreign.
Abbreviations
Chab. — Chabanenko, Viktor. 2001, Frazeolohichnyy slovnyk hovirok
Nyzhn’oyi Naddnipryanshchyny. Zaporizhzhya: Stat i K.
Chub. — Chubinskiy, Pavlo. 1877. Poslovitsy, in: Trudy etnografichesko-
statisticheskoy ekspeditsii v Zapadno-russkiy kray, snaryazhennoy
Imperatorskim russkim geograficheskim obshchestvom. 2nd. edition:
227–304. S.-Peterburg.
Dobr. — Dobrol’ozha, Halyna. 2003. Krasne slovo—yak zolotyy klyuch,
Postiyni narodni porivnyannya v hovirkakh Seredn’oho Polissya ta
sumizhnykh terytoriy. Zhytomyr: Volyn’.
Dubr. — Dubrovs’kyy, Viktor. 1917. Moskovs’ko-ukrains’ka frazeolohiya,
Kyiv: Drukarnya Kyivs’koyi Drukars’koyi spilky.
FPSSS — Uzhchenko, Viktor, Nataliya Barvina et al., eds. 2013.
Frazeolohichno-paremiynyy slovnyk Skhidnoyi Slobozhanshchyny XIX
stolittya. Luhans’k: Vydavnytstvo LNU imeni Tarasa Shevchenka.
Fr. — Franko, Ivan. 1901–1910. Halyts’ko-rus’ki narodni prypovidky. 3
vols. L’viv: Naukove tovarystvo imeni Tarasa Shevchenka.
FSHZh — Dobrol’ozha, Halyna. 2010. Frazeolohichnyy slovnyk hovirok
Zhytomyrshchyny. Zhytomyr: PP Tulovs’kyy.
FSLH — Stupins’ka, Halyna and Yaryna Bytkivs’ka. 2012.
Frazeolohichnyy slovnyk lemkivs’kykh hovirok. Ternopil: Navchal’na
knyha—Bohdan.
FSSSHD — Uzhchenko, Viktor and Dmytro Uzhchenko. 2013.
Frazeolohichnyy slovnyk skhidnoslobozhans’kykh i stepovykh hovirok
Donbasu. 6th edition. Luhans’k: Vydavnytstvo LNU imeni Tarasa
Shevchenka.
FSUM — Bilonozhenko, Vira, Vasyl’ Vynnyk et al., eds. 1993.
Frazeolohichnyy slovnyk ukrayins’koyi movy. 2 vols. Kyiv: Naukova
dumka.
Hr. — Hrinchenko, Borys. 1907–1909. Slovar’ ukrayins’koyi movy. 4 vols.
Kyiv.
Il’k. — Il’kevych, Hryhoriy. 1841. Galitskiye pripovedki i zagadki.
Viden’.
Kom. — Komarov, Mykhailo. 1890. Nova zbirka narodnykh malorus’kykh
prykazok, prysliv’yiv, pomovok, zahadok i zamovlyan’. Odessa:
Tipografiya E. I. Fesenko.
Mats. — Matsyuk, Zoryana. 2013. Shcho sil’tse, to nove slivtse, slovnyk
frazeolohizmiv Zakhidnoho Polissya. Luts’k: Zakharchuk V. M.
Mats.-2 — Matsyuk, Zoryana. 2006, Iz narodu ne vykynesh, dialektnyy
slovnyk frazeolohizmiv. Luts’k: Vezha.
238 Chapter 11
Nom. — Nomys, Matviy. 1993. Ukrayins’ki prykazky, prysliv’ya i take

inshe. Kyiv: Lybid’.
PGUR — Poslovitsy i pogovorki Galitskoy i Ugorskoy Rusi. 1869.
Zapiski Imperatorskogo russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva po
otdeleniyu etnografii. Vol. 2: 227–362. S.-Peterburg.
PP-1 — Pazyak, Mykhailo, ed. 1989. Prysliv’ya ta prykazky, Pryroda.
Hospodars’ka diyal’nist’ lyudyny. Kyiv: Naukova dumka.
PP-2 — Pazyak, Mykhailo, ed. 1990. Prysliv’ya ta prykazky, Lyudyna.
Rodynne zhyttya. Rysy kharakteru. Kyiv: Naukova dumka.
PP-3 — Pazyak, Mykhailo, ed. 1991. Prysliv’ya ta prykazky, Vzayemyny
mizh lyud’my. Kyiv: Naukova dumka.
PP-4 — Pazyak, Mykhailo, ed. 2001. Ukrayins’ki prysliv’ya, prykazky ta
porivnyannya z literaturnykh pam’yatok. Kyiv: Naukova dumka.
Push. — Pushyk, Stepan. 2009. Prypovidky, pochuv, zapysav i
vporyadkuvav Stepan Pushyk. Ivano-Frankivs’k: Foliant.
SFS — Kolomiyets’, Mykola and Yevhen Rehushevs’kyy. 1988. Slovnyk
frazeolohichnykh synonimiv. Kyiv: Radyans’ka shkola.
SFUM — Bilonozhenko Vira, Iryna Hnatyuk et al., eds. 2003. Slovnyk
frazeolohizmiv ukrayins’koyi movy. Kyiv: Naukova dumka.
SVF — Kirilkova Nataliya. 2013. Slovnyk volyns’kykh frazeolohizmiv.
Rivne: Vydavnytstvo Natsional’noho universytetu Ostroz’ka
akademiya.
Ud. — Udovychenko, Hryhoriy. 1984. Frazeolohichnyy slovnyk
ukrayins’koyi movy. 2 vols. Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo AN Ukrayiny.
Uzhch. — Uzhchenko, Viktor and Dmytro Uzhchenko. 1998.
Frazeolohichnyy slovnyk ukrayins’koyi movy. Kyiv: Osvita.
Vikt. — Viktorina, Olena. 2006. Slovnyk leksyky ta frazeolohiyi narodnoyi
medytsyny y likuval’noyi mahiyi Kirovohradshchyny. Kirovohrad:
Tsentral’no-Ukrayins’ke vydavnytstvo.
Zakr. — Zakrevskiy, Mykola. 1861. Starosvetskiy bandurist. Vol 2:
Malorossiyskiye poslovitsy, pogovorki i zagadki i galitskiye pripovedki.
Moskva: V Universitetskoy tipografii.
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relihiyakh, pohlyadakh ta viruvannyakh. Kosmohonichni ukrayins’ki
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Chubyns’kyy, Pavlo. 1995. Mudrist’ vikiv. Ukrayins’ke narodoznavstvo u
tvorchiy spadshchyni Pavla Chubyns’koho. Book 1. Kyiv: Mystetstvo.
Chybor, Iryna. 2016. Slov’yans’ka mifolohiya v ukrayins’kiy frazeolohiyi.

Kyiv: Oleh Filyuk Publishing.
Hnatyuk, Volodymyr. 2002. Narys ukrayins’koyi mifolohiyi, L’viv:
Instytut narodoznavstva NAN Ukrayiny.
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ukrayins’koho narodu. Kyiv: Oberehy.
Karakutsya, Ol’ha. 2002. Frazeolohizmy ukrayins’koyi movy z
komponentom “dusha” (strukturno-semantychnyy, ideohrafichnyy,
linhvokul’turolohichnyy aspekty) (PhD statement 10.02.01). Kharkiv:
Kharkivs’kyy derzhavnyy pedahohichnyy universytet imeni
H. S. Skovorody.
Nowakowska, Alicja. 2005. Świat roślin w polskiej frazeologii. Wrocław:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego.
Rak, Maciej. 2007. Językowo-kulturowy obraz zwierząt utrwalony w
animalistycznej frazeologii gwar Gór Świętokrzyskich i Podtatrza (na
tle porównawczym). Kraków: Scriptum.
Shevchenko, Valentyna. 2004. Slovnyk-dovidnyk z relihiyeznavstva. Kyiv:
Naukova dumka.
Skab, Maria. 2008. Zakonomirnosti kontseptual’noyi ta movnoyi
katehoryzatsiyi sakral’noyi sfery. Chernivtsi: Ruta.
Skurativs’kyy, Vitaliy. 1996. Rusaliyi. Kyiv: Dovira.
Summary
This chapter analyzes Ukrainian phraseological units motivated by
mythological-Christian ideas about the soul. Peculiarities of representing the
evaluation of ideas about the soul in Ukrainian phraseology are described in the
context of the interconnectedness of language and folk culture. The chapter
examines the ways in which mythological-Christian inter-code transition is
implemented in Ukrainian phraseology, the origin of which is associated with
elements of the original mythological worldview combined with later Christian
religious ideas. The ethnolinguistic basis for coining the linguistic units under
study was analyzed and the etymology of some of them was specified.
Keywords, phraseology, phraseological unit, an ethnic cultural code,

mythological-Christian inter-code transition, ideas about the soul.
CHAPTER 12
DUŠA (SOUL) AND IT’S AXIOLOGICAL ASPECTS

IN SLOVAK PHRASEOLOGY
ANNA GÁLISOVÁ
MATEJ BEL UNIVERSITY IN BANSKÁ BYSTRICA, SLOVAKIA
12.1. Beliefs about the Soul
It is clearly evident that beliefs about the soul had begun to emerge by
the early stages of mankind’s cultural development. Slovak culture itself,
as a part of the European cultural space, is based particularly on ancient
and Judaeo-Christian traditions. Although early Greek philosophers
initially understood the soul as a natural force (Democritus, for example),
Plato later introduced the idea of man’s consisting of a material, mortal
body, and an immaterial, immortal soul. In addition, Aristotle’s concept of
a connection between the soul and the body, as they pertain to humans –
also related to the abilities of sensory perception and thinking – has
influenced contemporary ideas of the soul (Duch 1999, 13–15). The Old
Testament view of the soul is exceptional – it differs from the ideas of
ancient Greek philosophers, as well as from the New Testament, God
breathed into the body – the matter – the spirit of life, in order for it to
become a living soul. In Christianity, the soul denotes the spiritual, non-
physical nature of a human being that animates the body and does not
cease to exist upon death (Novotný 1992, 135–136). In Slovak folk
culture, the soul is considered to be an immaterial, movable self that can
be separated from the body; according to traditional notions previously
favoured in Slovakia, it might take the form of a cloud or of a bird
(Chorváthová 2011). This image is also captured by the older Slovak
saying, Bodaj naraz duša z neho/teba vyletela! (SPPÚ, 296, SOPČ, 44) – a
curse, that was uttered when one was angry with someone else; an image
conjured up – "May your soul fly away from your body!" – which means
nothing less than death. In medieval fine art, the soul was depicted in the
Duša (soul) and it’s Axiological Aspects in Slovak Phraseology 241
form of small beings with hands crossed across their chest, which
sometimes in the pictures emanates from the mouth of a dying person
(Lemaître, Quinson, Sot 1997, 74). In Slovak traditional folk culture, the
soul as an entity that returns from the beyond is also associated with
various demonic creatures like the vodník (similar to Jenny Greenteeth in
English folklore), the mora (similar to a mare in English folklore), the
zmok or the čert (devil) 1. This notion of the movement of the soul into and
out of the body appears as early as ancient Egyptian mythology 2. Although
all these ideas differ from one another, their representations are layered
and reflected in Slovak phraseology.
12.2. Duša (soul) in Slovak Phraseology
The analysed material consists of approximately 100 Slovak

phraseological units, 3 which have been extracted from the entire range of
Slovak dictionaries and phraseological publications, Slovník súčasného
slovenského jazyka A – G (SSSJ), Krátky slovník slovenského jazyka
(KSSJ), Slovník slovenského jazyka I A – K (SSJ), Malý frazeologický
slovník (MFS), Slovenský frazeologický slovník (SFS), Frazeologický
slovník. Človek a príroda vo frazeológii (FS), Západoslovanská rčení
(ZR), Slovenské príslovia, porekadlá a úslovia (SPPÚ), Slowár Slowenskí
Česko-Laťinsko-Ňemecko-Uherskí (SSČL), Slovník slovenských nárečí I
A–K (SSN), and Historický slovník slovenského jazyka I A – L (HSSJ) 4.
The analysed idioms and paremiological units have also been verified
in the Slovak National Corpus (SNK).
1 These demonic creatures lurked in different ways around human souls, it was
possible to sell or sign away one’s soul to the čert and the zmok – both of them
endowed with certain of the devil’s features – while the vodník dragged people into
his water kingdom, their souls hiding in vessels, and the mora had gnawed the
souls of people as they slept, bringing on bad dreams. (Nádaská – Michálek 2015,
Zych – Vargas 2014).
2 The ancient Egyptians believed that the soul – ba – can leave the body but always
remains in its vicinity (Duch 1999, 12–13; Bailey 2006, 284–286).

3 We understand the phraseology in this text in a wider sense, which means as a
collection of classical types of phraseological units (with characteristics of

figurativeness, stability, semantic transposition, compositeness, expressivity,
secondariness and atemporality) as well as a collocation of the paremiological
features of nature.
4 See the sources at the end of the text.
242 Chapter 12
The Slovak idioms with the duša component vary and their frequency
of use in common communication also ranges widely – some are archaic
or rare, Zdravie mu dušu naháňa. (“he is healthy”) (FS, 119), whereas
others are used quite often, as evidenced by their entries in the
monolingual or phraseological dictionaries, sometimes also in the
dialectology dictionary or in various phraseological collections, (ani) živej
duše niet/nebolo/nevidieť alebo nikde ani živej duše (SSSJ, 821), niet,
nevidieť (ani) živej duše (KSSJ, 145), nebolo tam ani živej duše (SSJ, 345),
(ani) živej duše niet (nevidieť a pod.) (MFS, 54), ani živej duše tam
nebolo; živej duše sa nemohol dovolať (SFS, 116), niet/nevidieť (ani) živej
duše/nebolo tam živej duše (ZR, 70), žádná živá duša (SSČL, 516), aňi
živej duše zme ňestretli (SSN, 413) – all with the meaning, “not a
living/mortal soul”. The connection of the verb in the negation + (ani)
živej duše (“not a living/mortal soul”) is also abundantly represented in the
SNK (610 occurrences), “Na lesných chodníkoch, kde nebolo ani živej
duše, sa mi všeličo prehnalo hlavou, so smiechom zaspomínal F. Karaffa.”
(“On the forest paths, where there was not a living soul, all sorts of things
crossed my mind, remembered F. Karaffa, laughing.”) 5 (SNK). In Slovak
phraseology, at the level of figurative meaning, it is possible to identify a
variety of phraseological units, with both higher and lower degrees of
figurativeness, e.g. hrabať/prehrabávať sa vo svojej duši (“try to
remember”), dušu by na dlaň vyložil (either “wear one’s heart on one’s
sleeve”, or “one is very willing, kind-hearted, selfless”), otvoriť (si) dušu
(dokorán) (either “bare one’s soul”, or “sincerely say something”) (SSSJ) 6.
From the point of view of the structural classification of phraseological
units 7, those with the construction of a verbal syntagma predominate, duša
mu piští za niekým, za niečím alebo duša mu prahne po niekom, po niečom
(“one desires somebody, something a lot”) (SSSJ), but there are also
phrasemes with the duša component with a non-verbal syntagma the
construction in Slovak, o dušu/odušu (spasenú) (“hell for leather, very fast,
eagerly”), (ani) za živú dušu (“no way, not at all, absolutely not”) (SSSJ).
Also, the semantic meanings of the lexeme duša include metaphorically
and metonymically extended meanings which are also reflected in the
phraseology of the Slovak language. In the SSSJ, the fifth and sixth
5 Quotations in the text are given as my own translation.

6 If a phraseological unit occurs in a number of Slovak monolingual or
phraseological dictionaries and it is captured in the SSSJ, only this dictionary is
mentioned as the source.
7 Closer to the structural type of phraseological units, see Mlacek 2001.
meanings of the lexeme duša (“soul” as a person) are metonymically

derived from the basic meaning,
5. person as a bearer of certain mental characteristics/attributes, a

human being at all, dobrá, šľachetná, jemná, poctivá duša (be a
good, noble, gentle, honest soul); obetavá duša (selfless person);
príbuzná, spriaznená duša (a soul mate),
6. (archaic) person in relation to a residence, inhabitant, dedina s 1
200 dušami (a village with 1 200 “souls”).” (SSSJ, 820-821)
There are also several metaphorically implicit meanings in the Slovak

monolingual dictionary cited above, which refer to the essential part, the
contents of a certain specific object, duša kolesa (the inner tube of a tire),
bazová duša (the pith of an elder tree) and so on (meanings 7 – 9) or the
foundation/core, the most important element of something, duša rodiny,
kolektívu (the soul of the family, team) and so on (meaning 4). Older
Slovak monolingual dictionaries contain similar entries.
The naive image of the soul in the Slovak linguistic worldview is
clearly not only a reflection of the Christian tradition; there are also other
layers of many traditional beliefs. Analysis has shown that the single
concept of the soul has several layers which can be projected into individual
phraseological units and that these layers can overlap. For example, the
idiomatic phrase byť jedno telo, jedna duša (SSSJ) (“be a good match, live
in harmony”) has a Biblical motivation 8, but in everyday communication,
language users most often make use of it when the intensity of emotion
(love) or general harmony between two people’s souls need to be
underlined.
The phraseological units analysed were divided into several semantic
groups,
a) The soul as breath, life energy,

b) The soul as interior, mind, one’s own world,
c) The soul as the seat of emotions and interpersonal relations,
d) The soul as one’s conscience,
e) The soul as a connection with God,
f) The soul as a human being.
8 See Mark 10,6-8.

244 Chapter 12
12.2.1. The Soul as Breath, Life Energy
The etymological connection among the words dych (“breath”) – duch

(“the spirit”) – duša (“the soul”) – is a well-known fact in Slavistics,
From the form dous- come verb duchati (“to breathe”) and the noun
duchь (“spirit”), from which the root form duchja was derived by way
of the suffix - ja, in the fifth century palatalised to duša” (Ondruš 2000,
138).
The lexemes duch and dych were used synonymously in Slovak a few
centuries ago, as confirmed by Bernolák’s dictionary as well as by the
Historical Dictionary of the Slovak Language. Bernolák’s dictionary’s
entry for duch lists an idiom ducha vypustiť (today, dušu vypustiť) (“give
up the ghost, breathe one’s last, (almost) to die”), as well as the synonyms
dich, dicháňí, para (SSČL, 510) (“breath, breathing, steam”). As in other
Slavic languages, so in Slovak, the etymology of the word duša is
reflected in its phraseology, vypustiť dušu/dušičku, (vyzerá) akoby mal
dušu vypľuť, čo aj dušu vypľuje alebo aj keby mal dušu vypľuť (urobí
niečo), môže (aj) dušu vypľuť (SSSJ) vypustiť/vydýchnuť/vypľuť dušu
(SSJ), skoro dušu (ducha) vypustil (MFS, 55) – all with the meaning “give
up the ghost, breathe one’s last”, then also vytriasť/vytĺcť dušu z niekoho,
skoro mu dušu vytriaslo or div/dobre/dobreže z neho dušu nevytriaslo or
išlo mu dušu vytriasť (SSSJ), vytriasť dušu z niekoho (SSJ), Bili (zmlátili,
tĺkli) ho, akoby chceli dušu z neho vytriasť. (FS, 99), Ak ťa chytím, tak ťa
zmrvím, že dušu z teba vytrasiem. (SPPÚ, 291) – all with the meaning
“beat the living daylights out of somebody”, and mať dušu na jazyku (SSJ)
(“be at one’s last gasp, be dying”). These semantic connections are now
obscured for common language users, and the duša is more or less
perceived metaphorically as “a life”, or as “life energy”. Here the soul
represents the value of life, which is, as it is said, the most precious thing
one has – a manifestation of its high position in the folk hierarchy of
values. The high value of human life is also mirrored in the idioms čo aj
dušu vypľuje, aj keby mal dušu vypľuť – “at any price” (SSSJ), hence
figuratively also for the cost of living, „Primátori a starostovia sami
pripúšťajú, že majú vo svojich radoch kolegov, ktorí sú ochotní aj dušu
vypľuť za svoju obec, ale i takých, ktorí pracujú len odtiaľ-potiaľ.”
(“Mayors of towns and villages themselves admit to having colleagues
who are willing to give up the ghost for their town or village, but also
those, who just clock in and clock out every day.”) (SNK). In this group of
phraseological units, the motif of the movement of the soul from the body
or back to the body occurs repeatedly – on one hand, this is probably
related to the natural process of breathing, but in some idioms we might
also consider the mythological image of the soul’s return to the body, duša
chodí doňho (iba) spávať, duša sa ho (už) ledva/sotva drží (SSSJ), Iba čo
duša chodí doň nocúvať (SPPÚ, 70) – all with the meaning of “one is
seriously ill, one is going to die”. In this group, there are several
phraseological units with the duša component which are semantically
related to death and bear the meaning of “to die, almost to die, to kill”,
vypustiť dušu (“give up the ghost, breathe one’s last”), vytĺcť dušu z
niekoho (“beat the living daylights out of somebody”), duša sa ho už ledva
drží (SSSJ) (“one is seriously ill, one is going to die”), striehnuť niekomu
na dušu (SSJ), Má dušu na jazyku. (FS, 123), Už mu je duša na jazyku.
(SFS, 116) (“be at one’s last gasp, be dying”).
12.2.2. The Soul as Interior, Mind, One’s Own World
In both dictionary meanings and phraseology, the image of the soul

refers to the interior of a human being, their thoughts, their intentions that
can be known/learned, čítať niekomu z duše, vidieť/nazrieť/nahliadnuť
niekomu do duše/(až) na dno duše (“see into somebody’s soul, tell
somebody one’s innermost thoughts”), but also to memory,
hrabať/prehrabávať sa vo svojej duši (“try to remember”), vštepiť si niečo
do duše (“remember”) (SSSJ); or it expresses consent, consensus in
thinking, hovorí mi z duše (SSJ) ("you can say that again"). In this type of
phraseological unit, the "soul" appears in images of the specific cognitive
processes of a human being – thinking and remembering. The degree of
abstraction and vagueness is relatively low in these idioms and their
expressivity is less intense than in the other groups of Slovak
phraseological units with the duša component.
12.2.3. The Soul as the Seat of Emotions and Interpersonal Relations
A person’s “inner world” is not limited to thinking and remembering

but also constitutes other cognitive processes, perception and feeling. This
is the most numerous group of Slovak phraseological units with the duša
component. The words srdce (“heart”) and duša (“soul”) often appear as
interchangeable phraseme components, and there is the same phenomenon
in Czech, Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian. Natalia Korina (2016), by means
of a comparative analysis of Russian and Slovak idioms with the duša
component, demonstrates that neither the number of phrases nor the
interchangeability of the components the words srdce (or other internal
organ) and duša are necessarily equal among Slavic languages. According
to Korina (2016), the cause probably lies in the different cognitive
246 Chapter 12
priorities of the individual language cultures as well as in the different

religious traditions. It is on the basis of an analysis of the
interchangeability in a given range of Russian and Slovak phrasemes that
the author attributes greater concreteness to the Slovak mentality, and
greater abstractness to the Russian. It could be hypothesised that Western
European positivism had a greater impact on Slovak than on Russian
society, and this is reflected in the general Slovak mentality and
consequently in the language, forms of communication and cultural
products. Similar results come from Inna Kalita and Patricie Michalová
(2016), who, when comparing Czech and Belarussian phraseological units
with the duša component, also reveal a quantitative asymmetry in favour
of Belarussian (twice as many phraseological units containing duša as in
Czech), as well as a lower degree of spirituality within the Czech
phraseology using the duša component, which the authors link to the
respective importance of religion in the two national cultures in question.
The “soul” may be perceived by users of the Slovak language as the
seat of emotions, those emotional qualities of a human being which are
often appreciated by society at large. In these metaphors, the “soul” is
expressed as a three-dimensional vessel that holds the human being’s real
emotions (though they might be kept hidden), something that can be felt or
done z hĺbky duše (“from the bottom of one’s heart”), v kútiku/v hĺbke duše
(“in a corner/depth of one’s mind, in one’s heart of hearts”) one hopes,
believes, thinks about something, one can conceal something na dne duše
(“in one’s heart of hearts, secretly, covertly”). The “soul” is also an
expression of sincerity; it can be symbolically given to someone (it can be
“put on a palm”), dušu by na dlaň vyložil (either “wear one’s heart on
one’s sleeve”, or “one is very willing, kind-hearted, selfless”), honest
words can “come straight from the soul”, hence “from the bottom of one’s
heart” (vychádzať priamo z duše). The soul is also a seat of love and
support, one can be devoted to someone/something “with the whole soul”
(byť celou dušou oddaný niekomu/niečomu – “totally”). When Slovaks
encourage or reassure someone, they “pour some hope into someone’s
soul” – vlievať niekomu do duše nádej, hence – “raise hopes” – and a
good-hearted, selfless person “would give even give their soul to someone
else” (aj dušu by inému dal). These phrasemes can also be an expression
of trust, otvoriť (si) dušu (dokorán) (either “open one’s heart to
somebody”, or “honestly say something”); of desire, má (všetko), čo si
(len)/čo mu duša zažiada (“to have whatever one wants”), čo/koľko duša
ráči (“to one’s heart’s content”); of willingness and enthusiasm, mať dušu
zapálenú za niečo (“be enthusiastic, zealous”), and one can also do
something z hĺbky duše (“from the bottom/depths of one’s heart”); or it can
also be an expression of peace and emotional stability, mať dušu na

mieste/na pokoji (“for one’s heart to be at ease”) (all SSSJ). The soul can
represent the whole spectrum of emotions, even negative ones. In that case
these phrasemes will refer to some burden, sorrow, sadness, and emotional
pain that one often needs to talk about, niečo ho tlačí na duši (either “it
weighs heavily on one’s conscience”, or “there is something one wants to
say”), Čo máš/čo ti leží na duši? (“What’s bothering you?”), and raniť
niekomu dušu (“break one’s heart; offend someone”) (SSSJ).
Although in the Slovak language there is no such thing as a universal
concept of the soul (bridging the naive concept of the soul and the
theological term), as Natalia Korina notes in connection to Russian (2016,
199), it is still possible to consider that the high number of these
phraseological units and their connection to emotions, or rather to the
experience of emotion, reflects the prioritised position of the soul within
the value system fixed in the Slovak language 9. This is also illustrated by
the sphere of usage of these phraseological units, they are used in
communication situations, in which the same entities manifest themselves
as values. At the same time, they are the assessment criteria for human
activity and behaviour in these situations (cf. Dolnik 2010, 50). These
phrasemes have an evaluative function; they are an expression of that kind
of socially desirable behaviour that follows the social norm, which is an
integral part of any culture. Naturally, this group of idioms with the duša
component reciprocally influences the formation and stability of the social
norm.
12.2.4. The Soul as One’s Conscience
This group is somewhat related to the previous one, but it is analysed

separately here, because the ethical dimension is at the forefront and,
moreover, there is a lack of interchangeability between the components
duša and srdce. In these images, the soul acts as the conscience of a
human being, as their sense of responsibility. When researching the Slovak
historical lexicon in legal texts, R. Kuchar (2008, 101-102) analysed the
synonymous oaths of witnesses/defendants “on their conscience” and “on
the soul”, the oath “on the soul” is considered to be stylistically marked (as
opposed to the stylistically neutral “conscience”) and colloquial. This is
9Similarly, I. Vaňková (2016, 271-272) writes that although duša is not a cultural
keyword, it still represents a significant value in the Czech linguistic worldview.
248 Chapter 12
confirmed by a number of historical records, chcze dussy swu potwrdyty,

ze jaczmenem zaplatyl – “he wants to take an oath on his soul that he has
paid with barley” – (Liptov 1588), aby na swu dussi powiedal, dal-li mu
(peniaze) – “he should take an oath on his soul that he gave him the
money” – (Brezno 1609), oni su na to swu dussy a prissechu polozyli –
“they have taken an oath on their souls” – (Žabokreky 1572) (HSSJ, 326).
There is also a rather specific meaning here which reflects the alleviation
of remorse, uľahčiť si na duši (“confide in somebody, complain”), or in the
form of an oath, in the act of dušovanie 10, Na moj/môj (hriešnu) dušu!
(“cross my heart!/really and truly!/in all conscience!/honestly!”), literally
“upon my (sinful) soul”; or sľúbiť na dušu – “swear on the soul” (this has a
lower frequency of use than the previous phraseme) (SSSJ). The semantic
dimension of the soul as one’s conscience is also evidenced by the older
sayings No nach ti bude na duši/na svedomí. (“Well, it is on your
soul/conscience”) (SOCC, 45).
The oath na moj (hriešnu) dušu has a relatively high frequency of use
and is captured in most dictionaries and phraseological collections. It also
appears in Bernolák’s dictionary, hence in one of the oldest Slovak
dictionaries, Na mogu Dussu (SSČL), and we can find it in Dobšinský’s
and Záturecký’s paremiological collections, and in contemporary
monolingual and phraseological dictionaries as well as in Slovak folk fairy
tales. Its higher frequency of use is documented by the SNK (together in
all orthographic forms 2,120 occurrences). It is a fossilised phraseme that
can be used in communication, morphologically speaking, as a particle,
Keby to bol urobil, tak ho namojdušu zastrelím. (“If he had done it, I
would have killed him.”) (SNK), or it may act as an interjection when it
expresses emotions, Vilo! Namojdušu! Bolo to tenké, nekonečné… (“Vilo!
Cross my heart! It was thin, infinite...”) (SNK). As a particle, it has a
persuasive function, and its optional component hriešnu (sinful) intensifies
its expressivity. The usage of this phrase as different parts of speech is
related to its orthographic variability. This phrase has four orthographic
forms, which are also documented by SNK, namojdušu, na môj (hriešnu)
dušu, namôjdušu, na moj (hriešnu) dušu (arranged according to the
frequency in the corpus). The phraseme probably comes from an oath (in
court). The relatively new forms containing the component môj (my) are
captured in the latest Slovak monolingual dictionary, SSSJ. Here it is
10In Slovak, there is the verb dušovať sa, meaning to take an oath or to try to
persuade.
important to emphasize that an oath is a human act that confirms the truth
of a claim, and as a guarantee, something valuable, indeed precious, is
offered (soul, life, faith, children, everything that is holy to me and so on).
This confirms again the relatively high status of the soul in the folk
hierarchy of values.
12.2.5. The Soul as a Connection with God
In Slovak phrasemes, the soul is also associated with Christian values –

especially immortality. According to the Christian faith, the soul is eternal
and immortal; therefore, after the death of the body, it belongs to God,
odovzdať/oddať/poručiť (svoju) dušu Pánu/Pánovi/Bohovi/Stvoriteľovi
(“commend one’s soul to God”); the priest who is a pastier duší (“the
shepherd of souls”) takes care of the faithful’s souls; and the people are
sinful, so one sa trasie o svoju (hriešnu) dušu (“shakes in one’s boots”).
The Slovak phrasemes demonstrate that the soul can also belong to the
devil (čert/diabol) 11, if people enter into unholy bond, predať/upísať svoju
dušu čertovi/diablovi/satanovi (“sign away/sell one’s soul to the devil”)
(all SSSJ), Číha ako čert na dušu. (“wait for something intensively, ‘like
the devil for a soul’”) (SPPU, 190), but nowadays it is difficult to
determine accurately the ratio of Christian thinking to the mythological
residue here.
12.2.6. The Soul as a Human Being
The word duša in Slovak can also refer metonymically to a person, this
is expressed for instance in the phraseology (ani) živej duše
niet/nebolo/nevidieť, nikde ani živej duše (“not a living soul, nobody”),
occurring in all Slovak dictionaries and also in SNK.
11 The čert can often be perceived identically as the diabol, but it is distinctly
possible the čert might be an older demon, while the diabol probably has its origins
in Christianity. They might have merged in the medieval era. There are several
clues that lead us to think so, the čert occurs in Slovak folk fairy tales not only as a
demon, but also as a helper or a comic character, and it is not unusual for it to have
a plural form in Slovak idioms.
250 Chapter 12
12.3. Conclusion
The phraseological material analysed demonstrates that the soul has a

relatively high position in the axiological system of the Slovak linguistic
worldview. In many of the analysed phraseological units, the soul is an
expression of something precious, of extremely high value – life, life
energy, love, the heart, different emotions, inner feelings, and other
socially appreciated values – positive characteristics, for instance, or
socially desirable forms of behaviour). Some (even older) phrasemes and
sayings directly refer to the soul as something extremely valuable or
precious, which in these expressions appears in relation to money,
greediness, the price of the soul, (aj) dušu by dal za niekoho, za niečo – a
metaphor of someone willing “to give even their soul for somebody,
something”, meaning here “to be selfless” (SSSJ). In the saying Trasie sa
za grošom ako čert za hriešnou dušou, there is the image of a person who
is trembling with greed for money like the čert with greed for souls he
wants to bring to hell. This same negative perception of greed is indicated
in another saying, Za peniaze i dušu si predá. (FS, 54) – the image of
someone being so avaricious that they are capable of selling even their
own soul. There is also the simile Lakomý na peniaze ako čert na dušu.
(SPPÚ, 143) – to be as greedy as the devil for a soul. The high value of the
soul is also reflected in the intimate collocation of address, Duša, poklad
drahý! (SPPÚ, 246), where the soul is synonymically represented as
“precious treasure”. Likewise, the oath on the soul confirms its high
position in the folk hierarchy of values. Also, various (older) profanities,
folk curses and expletives are expressions of an attack on the soul,
something precious, invaluable, which can be lost or damned,
Hrom/parom/sto striel ti do duše!, Hrom ti dušu páral!, Ja tvoju dušu!,
Dušu ti naháňam! (SSSJ), Jebem ti dušu! (colloquial), Bodaj mu čerti dušu
na panvici pražili!, Dušu ti kolem!, Krížom ti dušu páralo! (SPPÚ, 296 –
297), Diuk ti dušu jedol!, Strela ti do duše! (SOPČ, 44 – 46). In all these
sayings an evil wish is expressed – in these images the soul is aggressively
attacked respectively by some bullets, thunder and/or parom (devil), it can
be chased, stuck on a stake, torn into shreds, eaten by an evil demon, fried
in a frying pan by the čerts (bad demons) and it can even be sexually
assaulted and raped.
The results of this analytical probe into phraseological material with
the duša component show us definitively that the image of the soul is
richly represented in Slovak phraseological units. For Slovak language
users, it provides a convenient inventory of finished, fixed units that
reflects the perception of values past and present in the linguistic and
cultural community. In order to be able to define more precisely the

position of the soul in the Slovak linguistic worldview and its axiology,
further research is needed (analysis of the word duša in relation to the
linguistic system, discourse analysis, song material, folk narratives, places
of occurrence of the “soul” motif, and so on).
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úslovia. Bratislava: SVKL.
SSČL — Bernolák, Anton. 1825. Slowár Slowenskí Česko-Laťinsko-
Ňemecko-Uherskí. Buda: Budae Typis et Sumtibus Typogr. Reg.
Univers. Hungaricae.
SSJ — Peciar, Štefan. 1959. Slovník slovenského jazyka I. Bratislava:
Vydavateľstvo SAV.
SSN — Buffa, František, Adriana Ferenčíková, Anton Habovštiak, Štefan
Lipták, Mária O. Malíková, Jozef R. Nižnanský, Ivor Ripka, and
Jarmila Šikrová. 1994. Slovník slovenských nárečí I. A – K. Bratislava:

Veda.
SSSJ — Buzássyová, Klára, Alexandra Jarošová, Ľubica Balážová, Mária
Čierna, Bronislava Holičová, Nicol Janočková, Adriana Oravcová,
Anna Oravcová, Magdaléna Petrufová, Elena Porubská, Anna
Šebestová, Alexandra Šufliarska, and Marta Zamborová. 2006. Slovník
súčasného slovenského jazyka. A-G. Bratislava: Veda.
ZR — Mrhačová, Eva, Mieczysław Balowski, Milan Hrabal, Alfred
Měškank, Marta Pančíková, and Justyna Pomierska. 2016.
Západoslovanská rčení. Ostrava: Ostravská univerzita.
SNK — Slovenský národný korpus – prim-7.0-public-all. 2015. Bratislava.
http://korpus.juls.savba.sk (accessed 9. September 2017).
Summary
This chapter searches for connections between the spiritual values of Slovak
culture and the Slovak concept of the soul (duša) as it appears in phraseological
units, in an attempt to identify the concept’s axiological position in the Slovak
linguistic worldview. The aim of the text is to present duša as it is manifested in
Slovak phraseology. This chapter analyses Slovak phraseological material –
describing and defining duša in the linguistic system as well as in usage, devoting
particular attention to the characterization and categorization of semantic features
of phrases involving the concept. Slovak phraseology proves to us that the concept
of duša takes quite a high position in the Slovak hierarchy of values.
Keywords: soul, Slovak language, phraseme, linguistic worldview, value,

meaning, axiology
CHAPTER 13
UNDERSTANDING AND TRANSLATING

THE HEART AND THE SOUL
James W. Underhill
ROUEN UNIVERSITY, FRANCE
13.1. Introduction
Are ‘heart’ and ‘soul’ values? Is the heart good? Is the soul of vital
importance to man? In religion and in everyday life, in music, in films and
in literature – judging from conversations and everyday speech – it would
seem that these two concepts are essential, and essentially good. Anything
that harms the soul or the heart, harms the person at the deepest possible
level. To strike someone at the heart, is to attack his or her physical,
psychic, moral and emotional self. To harm someone’s soul, not only hurts
them, but deregulates their capacity to live full lives. If something is soul-
destroying, it perturbs our ability to function and distorts the way we
perceive the harmony and order of the world around us. Heartless and
soul-dead people are not considered to be able to feel in a harmonious
wholesome manner. Their vision and understanding of the individuals that
people their world is deregulated and deeply distorted. If this is true, then
the soul-dead person cannot fully know the world. In this sense, the heart
and soul should not so much be considered as values in themselves, but as
faculties that enable us to value what is good. The heart and soul according
to this view constitute the affective, social, emotional, and spiritual
capacities or sensibilities that enable us to know the world.
Curiously, in marketing, in the promotion of sports, in self-help
literature, in the widespread medical advice found in magazines, and in
everyday discussion, the heart is regularly reduced to an organ; the heart is
a “motor” or a “pump”. Indeed, it is a universal truth that the heart IS an
organ. For this reason, translating cardio and cardio training or cardiology
into various languages – into Russian, Slovak, Czech, Spanish, French and
Understanding and Translating the Heart and the Soul 255
German and so on – proves fairly straight-forward. But does this cover all
the meanings we attribute to the heart? And is it not true that this “motor”
that “keeps the machine running”, this pump that regulates the blood and
brings the necessary nutrients to the cells of all living breathing organisms,
proves more complicated on further consideration? Indeed, this restrained
or reductive physiological definition forces us to consider whether we can
distinguish between humans and animals; it forces us to ask ourselves
what we mean when we say someone is “heartless” or “soulless”, words
that usually evoke much more than a simple statement about whether
someone is living or dead in a medical biological sense. So, what do we
mean by the soul? What values do we invest in the heart or associate with
it? These are the axiological questions that will be discussed and explored
as we move between the worldviews that languages open up for us.
Although these are fundamental and perhaps universal questions regarding
how we relate to each other and to the world, these questions certainly
appear to be formulated in different ways in different times when we enter
into dialogue and study the discourse of specific languages.
13.2. Ethnolinguistic Methodology
The approach I invented for this study was a hybrid synthetic and
analytic approach that involved combining:
• the traditional philological study of philosophical, literary, and

medical texts and translations selected for an ongoing series of
papers focusing on the way we conceptualize the heart and the soul
in English and other languages
• research and analysis using the leading online electronic corpora
(Leipzig Wortschatz, COCA, BNC, Frantext and so on)
• the use of my own more restrained personal electronic corpora for
English, Scottish, American and French texts ranging from one to
three million words in length
• watching films in various languages (French, German, Czech,
Russian, Spanish & English)
• listening to songs, and watching songs on youtube in various
languages
• recording short film interviews primarily with French- and English-
speakers (but also the speakers of other languages) concerning how
the interviewees conceive of and understand the idea of “the heart”.
• organizing the Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project international
conference, Hearts, Homelands & Heartlands in Rouen, France, 6-
256 Chapter 13
12 June 2018 with on-line accessible papers on how we

conceptualize the heart in English, Welsh Gaelic, French, Basque,
Spanish, Polish, German, and Flemish.
13.3. Concepts, Values, Gender & Paradoxes
The idea of the body as a machine, and the heart as a pump or motor, is
one that has become widespread over that past two hundred years.
Although William Harvey (1578-1657) was making an earthshattering
discovery when he understood the way the blood is pumped round the
body by the heart in the mid-sixteenth century, the idea inevitably took
some time to assert itself in the popular imagination, because for probably
more than three thousand years, the heart had been considered as a moral
and spiritual faculty, much more fundamentally enrooted in feeling and
social relations than the physical body.
Indeed, in a more fundamental sense, we all reject a reductive
materialistic conception of the heart as much as the soul, judging from the
way we act and speak in our everyday lives. The heart is related to how we
feel, how we love, and with our own deeper sense of identity or self-hood.
Our centre is an emotional, psychic self. It is the centre that welcomes and
opens up. That centre can allow us to move beyond our limits and enter
into contact with others. This space inside us is the space that opens up to
the world, and to God.
The Wikipedias in English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese
all provide impressive explanations of the heart, heart disease and heart
failure, as well as explaining the way the heart interacts with other organs.
The video images integrated into these websites undeniably provide
fundamental, verifiable, and valuable information about the material
reality of the heart. And this is no small advance. Given the fact that heart
failure remains – with cancer – one of the main causes of mortality in the
affluent Western world, our modern scientific knowledge of the heart
should not be dismissed lightly. Nonetheless, language study generates a
very different impression of the heart. We soon form the impression that
the medical material heart is not what we bear in mind when we open up
our hearts, or admit the desires in our heart of hearts.
The soul is regularly dismissed by many academics today throughout
Europe and the Americas as an anachronism (see Naugle 2002).
Nonetheless, the word remains productive in everyday English. And if the
word is used, then we are forced to conclude that it is held to be “useful”.
It refers to something that is commonly held to be meaningful. The soul
circumscribes a profound and meaningful sphere of living and feeling.
Evidently, as linguists or social scientists, we cannot content ourselves

with a vague impression; we must strive to circumscribe its meaning in
language study and elsewhere.
When we consult the COCA examples for ‘soulless’ we come across:
soulless places, soulless houses, soulless tower blocks, soulless concrete
and glass structures, soulless dormitories, soulless institutions, soulless
bureaucracies, soulless monochrome universes. What do such references
lead us to conclude? That none of this cares for us. None of these places
welcome us, or make a home for us in the world. Such places scare and
damage the soul. The heart is not contented in such places. And the heart
cannot grow in such places. A soul that stayed in them would become
stunted.
Who could survive such scarring places and experiences? Only a
‘soulless being’ or a ‘soulless creature’. Not a human being, because a
“soulless being” is “inhuman”. These references enable us to generate two
related hypotheses.
1. Humanity itself is defined in terms of the soul. The soul makes us

“human”. And this sets up an opposition: a “being” is not a human
being, just as a “creature” is not a human being.
2. The soul develops during life the capacity for feeling and
perceiving. The capacity for living a full life develops over time,
and the development of the soul can be hindered or even blocked if
the growing soul is not nurtured or is harmed.
“Heart” works in an analogical way. The heart is bound up in what it

means to be human. But do we talk about humans in general, when we
think of the heart? Or are we thinking in terms of men and women?
Negation proves revealing once more: heartless teaches us what facets of
the heart are being highlighted. When the world-famous rapper Kayne
West (born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1977) sings “How could you be so
heartless?”, this is the song of a man singing to a woman. The singer
appears to find it impossible to believe — to conceive — that a woman
could be so…so…heartless…so unnatural. On one level, this is because,
we are all supposed to have a heart, if we are human or humane. It is the
jilted lover lamenting.
Nonetheless, this song forces us to ask whether the heart is not
gendered; because this is very much a man singing to a woman, and if the
roles were inversed, the phrase would take on a whole new meaning.
Kayne West is appealing to a popular idea or myth, a folk theory,
according to which the woman is defined in terms of her heart. The
258 Chapter 13
prototypical woman is the mother-lover; and as both mother and lover,

woman teaches man to love. More than fifty years ago, the Beatles were
singing a very different song, but one which implied the same folk theory
of the female lover-guide when they sang “If I fell in love with you /
Would you promise to be true/ And help me understand…” This
conception clearly circumscribes the domain of the heart as a feminine
faculty. Men may enter, but they must be led towards understanding the
heart, allowed access to the heart, through the agency of woman. This is a
fundamental inversion of the active male-passive female paradigm. In the
ideal of the woman as knower of the heart, woman has power over man.
Woman is wise because she understands what feeling and understanding
really are. Men may understand things, ideas, laws and obligations, but the
faculty of understanding is clearly defined as a feminine faculty in this
folk theory, and men are logically made dependent on woman according to
the logic of this conception.
Wisdom is ultimately what is at stake here, and woman becomes the
educator. Negation once more helps us understand how this works. A
loveless child, a motherless child, has difficulty learning to love others, or
even to understand what love and loving is. This should help us
understand why Kayne West sings his lament in a whinging whining tone.
The plaintive rapper sings in a recriminating voice to his lover: How could
you be so heartless? He is not simply rebuking her for abandoning him. He
is questioning her fundamental identity, not as a human being but as a
woman. The heartless woman – he appears to imply – is an aberration of
nature. The heartless woman denies herself, in this folk tale of maternal
care and romantic fidelity. She refuses her femininity. Things work very
differently, if we consider how the heart is negated when we consider men
in corpora and texts in English.
A heartless man is a ‘bastard’ judging from the phrases and
collocations found in COCA. He can be reduced to an animal state: he is a
“heartless dog”: As we can see, the opposition in play here is man vs
animal. The question of manliness does not come into play. The man loses
his humanity if he is heartless, he is reduced to his egotistical bodily drives
and desires. Woman, on the other hand, does not lose her humanity, but
her capacity to be a woman. This implies two hierarchies, both related to
status, but of essentially different kinds. Men are being considered in
terms of human worth, women are being evaluated in terms of how much
they live up to a supposed feminine ideal, an ideal defined in terms of how
women serve men by guiding them towards the wisdom they hold in their
hearts. A heartless woman is ultimately of no use to men.
This contrasts with the heartless man. Moreover, the inhuman character
of the heartless man is ambiguous, because if a man is a “heartless
bastard” or a “heartless dog”, he may still be popular with women. He may
be what is called “a player”, or more often, “a playa”, a man who wins
adoration from men, and the sexual favours of women by provocatively
bending and breaking the rules, asserting his own egotistical lusts and
desires, where other men remain slaves to self-inhibiting social
conventions (see Urban Dictionary, or Wolfe 2005). In such cases, the
insult “you heartless bastard!” becomes praise. You dare where we
wouldn’t. You are true to your desires.
There is, however, a more fundamental insult encapsulated in this
phrase – “You heartless Bastard!” – one which dates back to another
period: ‘bastard’ stresses that a man does not “belong”, belong to his
father, to his family, to his community or to the people he associates with.
So, in the history of the concept, heartless refers to men who stand outside
the heart. These men have not learned how to love yet. This explains why
they “play” with things. They do not enter into real relation with people.
Heartless bastards have fun, they amuse themselves with games, but they
live in a world of fragments – individual parts. Heatless bastards are
unconnected, adrift: they cannot connect with others. They neither respect
one another, nor do they know what it means to work harmoniously
together as the wholesome whole should.
This does not stop the heartless bastard from attracting women, and
winning the admiration of other men. But whether the “heartless bastard”
is an outcast or an object of desire, in the songs, texts or corpora consulted,
he never appears to enter into authentic relation with others. His concept of
society, social relations, colleagues, even “friends” and “family” is
utilitarian. He interacts with others, exchanges with them, giving in order
to get back something in return from them. He uses people. And
predictably, these people are rated by him only in terms of how useful they
are to him. For the heartless man, this makes sense: the parts can only use
one another. In this way, he sees nothing aberrant or worthy of reproach in
his conduct. For the heartless person, there is no “you”: there is only “he”
and “she” and “them”; and they are all treated as an “it”, something that
serves the selfish man’s needs. They are all to be used by a “me” that has
not learned how to say “I”, as an invitation to enter dialogue and relation.
This is a short summary of what songs, texts, and online corpora allow
us to conclude about what it means to have a heart or a soul, and what, by
logical implication, it means to be heartless or soulless. Soulless places
inhibit our spiritual, emotional and psychic development. We need soulful
260 Chapter 13
people to grow up into hearty healthy people. Heartless people are harmful
for us, and spending too much time with them can irreparably scar us.
These impressions are broadly true of the texts and corpora I studied in
French, Czech, German, English, American, Scottish, and Australian
English. A wide range of short film interviews were carried out over a year
with speakers of these languages to corroborate these findings. And
though, there were various minor discrepancies, the Chinese, Korean,
Filipino and Russians I interviewed and who accepted to share their
impressions with me, did not fundamentally contradict the idea that the
heart is a faculty of understanding, a sensibility of a moral and emotional
nature.
When we look more closely, things are inevitably much more
complicated, but this overall impression remains intact when we stand
back and ask what the heart means in different cultures and different
languages. Questions of the heart introduce us to curious perversions that
relate to the way the heart and the soul can be duped, twisted, destroyed,
negated, or rejected. And individuals have their own personal perspectives
that both confirm what they share with their cultures, and enable them to
define themselves in counter-distinction, against the backdrop of the
cultures they belong to. Overall, though, among the languages I was able
to study, something approaching a shared multicultural concept for the
heart does emerge.
13.4. Can we translate the heart and soul?
Translators, ethnolinguists, and linguistic anthropologists are at ease in

confronting radically different cultural concepts, and facing up to alterity
in language and culture. But heart and soul are perplexing in this regard,
because the overriding impression comparative analysis and translation
leaves us with is that these two concepts are astoundingly easy to translate
from one language to another. At other levels, we shall not escape
complex problems related to grammar, figurative representations, spatial
definitions, semantic associations, and negation. But at the level of lexis,
word for word translation rarely seems to work so well as it does for heart
and soul.
Online Bible resources, such as the Bible Study Tools website
(http://www.biblestudytools.com) make it much easier today to compare
and contrast various Bible translations. Online resources at times
encourage us to make quick sweeping statements, but consulting a wide
variety of printed Bibles confirms the findings and overall impression
generated by the Bible Studies Tool resource, when comparing heart and
the corresponding words in other languages. Consider the following verse

(8:36) from the Book of Mark, translated into various languages.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul?
King James Version
quid enim proderit homini si lucretur mundum totum et detrimentum faciat animae
suae, Latin Vulgate
Et que sert-il à un homme de gagner tout le monde, s'il perd son âme?
Louis Segond 1910
36 ¿Y qué beneficio obtienes si ganas el mundo entero pero pierdes tu propia

alma?
Nueva Traducción Vivente
Was hülfe es dem Menschen, wenn er die ganze Welt gewönne, und an seiner
Seele Schaden?
Luther Bibel 1912
Luther’s German translation in its 1910 version appears most “faithful”

to the Latin vulgate in stressing what does harm to the soul, rather than
speaking of the “loss” of the soul. This represents a significant shift in
conceptual and metaphoric framing, but the word itself, soul, is easily
transposed from English into its counterpoints Seele, alma, anima, and
âme.
Likewise, my research into the use of heart in the Old Testament
invariably leads me to conclude that the heart (leb, and lebab, in Hebrew,
and Kardia, in Greek) present relatively few problems for translators
moving between Czech, English, German, Spanish, and French. Ezekiel
speaks of the need for a loving responsive heart by contrasting it with the
metaphor of a lifeless matter, stone:
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart
of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. “(Ezekiel 8:36),
In Ezéchiel 11:19 of the Traduction Œcunémique de la Bible, in French we

find “le cœur dur comme pierre” (the heart hard as stone)
And in the Book of Job, Luther translates into German, “Sein Herz ist so hart
wie ein Stein.” Hiob (Job) 41:16.
262 Chapter 13
These various examples all show that the metaphor of hardness is used
as a counterpoint to underline the fact that the human sensibility must be
flexible, living, and open to interaction with others and with the divine
Godhead. The heart is a social and spiritual organ, that makes men and
woman godlike in that they share a capacity with God, that transcends the
other animals.
Distinctions are interesting: in the same verse translated by Luther, the
French TOB (page 965), quotes Ezéchiel 11:19 as: “Son cœur a durci
comme la pierre”. We are dealing with a quality of hardness in German,
but the French presents this more as a process of hardening. And
hardening the heart is a common theme in the Bible. The words for obey
and listen derive from the same etymology in Hebrew, and those who do
not listen to God, and turn away from Him lose their human capacity to
rise above the dust and enter into dialogue with Him and with their fellow
men. This entails negating the soft flexibility of the heart which is
supposed to be its true quality.
The heart itself is a complex concept. From the beginning, the heart of
man is said to be evil or easily led astray. It “inclines” towards evil. In the
King James Version provided on Bible Study Tools, this is expressed in
Genesis 6:5 as: “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually”. This contrasts with the idea that man speaks within himself,
in his heart of hearts, in his inner being, hidden from others. God himself
speaks to himself in his heart in a similar manner. But this space is
corruptible in man, and evil can enter, to make the heart, “evil-hearted”.
There is a paradox here: the heart is essentially good, but it can be evil.
This paradox is fairly easy to resolve though. The heart is a capacity, a
faculty, without which, goodness is impossible, but that capacity can be
perverted, negated or lost, if the individual does not tend to his own heart,
or neglects it, if he turns away from God and from others.
These are not simply religious expressions. The google search engine,
and the search for pictures finds no shortage of examples for “srdce z
kamenů” (Czech for ‘heart of/from stone). Contemporary culture and
marketing, in Czech and other European languages, promote the heart of
stone metaphor in the same way that ads for Yoga and Meditation courses
and seminars in Czech, German, French and English invite you to “Listen
to your heart”.
In more elevated circles, established culture perpetuates the same
metaphor. Shakespeare echoes Ezekiel’s words, when his Titus laments
the indifference of the Roman Senators to his sons who have sacrificed
their lives to save them in their beds and save Roman civilization against
the Goths, but are now to be put to death by those they have served
because of some trumped up charges. When his son rebukes him for
speaking to the stones, Titus argues that they listen to him more
compassionately than the hard-hearted Senators and Tribunes.
LUCIUS
O noble father, you lament in vain:
The tribunes hear you not; no man is by;
And you recount your sorrows to a stone.
TITUS ANDRONICUS
Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead.
Grave tribunes, once more I entreat of you,—
LUCIUS
My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.
TITUS ANDRONICUS
Why, tis no matter, man; if they did hear,
They would not mark me, or if they did mark,
They would not pity me, yet plead I must;
Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep, they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me; (Act III:i)
(http://shakespeare.mit.edu/titus/full.html)
On a more popular note, the Mexican pop song diva from the 1970s
and 1980s, Lucía Méndez, evokes the same metaphor of a heart of stone
when she sings Corazón de Piedra (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=FocsK46kS18). Indeed, the stone heart, the cold heart, the
beating heart, and the stolen heart, all appear to be common metaphors
among many European languages. And the pictures generated by Google
search in French, German, Czech or Polish tend to confirm the
impressions that corpora and textual analysis leave us with concerning
broken hearts, and offering your heart.
13.5. How Productive is “heart”?
The productivity of the heart is a conceptual nexus around which

various lexical resources gravitate. This proves true, if we consider
English, German, French, Czech, and Polish. English provides us with a
great variety of compound words and expressions making use of ‘heart’.
264 Chapter 13
Lexis Hearty
Heartily
Compound Heartbreak
words Heartstrings
Heartrending
Heartland Heartburn
Heartfelt
Hearty/heartily
Expressions From the heart

By heart
To take something to heart
Set your heart on something
The heart of the matter
Now let’s compare this to German.
Lexis Herz
Herzhaft, hearty (Ein herzhafter Eintopf A hearty stew,)
Herzlich hearty/heartily
Herzig, dear, delightful
Herzlichkeit, warmth, kindness, sincerity,
Herzlos, heartless
Mein Herz, darling
Herzchen, honey (my little heart)
Compound Herzensangelegenheit, affair of the heart

words Herzeleid, heartbreak
Halbherzig, half-hearted
Herzerfrischend, refereshing (to the heart)
Herzangst (deep/heartfelt anxiety)
Herzbildung, sensitivity
Der Herzbrecher, lady-killer/heartbreaker
Herzdame, Queen of Hearts
Expressions Ein gutes Herz haben, have a good heart

Ein treues Herz haben, have a true heart
Ein warmes Herz haben, have a warm heart
Von Herzen gern, gladly
Ein Herz fassen, pluck up one’s courage
Die Herzen bewegen/rürhen, to touch people’s hearts
Jmdm das Herz schwermachen, make someone feel
heavy-hearted
Ein Herz und eine Seele sein, to be bosom friends
Of all the languages, German appears to be the most explosively

productive in terms of words, and compound words. German in no way
underperforms in producing rich images and striking expressions. French
is weak in compound words and prefers to link nouns. But, as we can see
from my translations above, even English often has to resort to such
structures to translate the great variety of compound words German
provides derived from ‘Herz’.
In French “cœur” is very productive, in both the lexis and the
imagination. Despite being weak as regards compounding, “cœur”
provides the crossroads at which various fields of meanings converge and
coincide.
Language French
Compound words ---

Invariably translated into expressions
Battement de cœur (heartbeat)
insuffisance cardiaque (heart-failure)
Expressions Du fond du cœur, from the bottom of the heart

Qui fend le cœur, heart-rending
Qui réchauffe le cœur, heart-warming
Au cœur de, at the heart of
Coup de cœur (a strike of the heart : a sudden whim, fancy
or deep spontaneous desire)
Cœur ouvert (heart to heart)
Czech provides us with a wide range of derived words relating to

people with feeling, ‘hearty’ welcomes, and cordiality. Like French, on the
other hand, although highly productive with affixes (suffixes and
prefixes), Czech is weak on compounds.
266 Chapter 13
Language Czech
Lexis Srdcář, can be both a doctor (cardiologist) but also a

patient, and srdcář, is also used for people who fight for
a cause, a kind of warrior of the heart,
Srdéčný hearty, sincere
Srdéčnĕ, (yours) sincerely, faithfully, authentically
Srdéčnost, cordiality
Srdéčko, for addressing one’s honey (dear little heart)
Srdnatý stout-hearted, gallant
Srdatný človĕk, a stout fellow
Srdcovka, bleeding heart, or tender-hearted person (in pop
songs for instance)
Compound words Milosrdenství, mercy

Bůh je milosrdný, merciful: God is merciful
Nemilosrdný, merciless
Srdcervoucí, heartbreaking
Srdceryvný, heartbreaking
Dobrosrdečný, good-hearted
Expressions Bez srdce, heartlessly

Ze srdce rád, with all one’s heart
Od srdce, from heart to heart
Až si srdce smálo, it did one’s heart good/till one’s heart
smiled
Srdce mu spadlo do bot, his heart sank (into his boots)
Polish appears to provide a broadly similar range of meanings to Czech

and the other languages, and the following list can easily be added to by
native speakers. The few examples quoted below are simply intended as an
invitation to native speakers to open up “serce” to further analysis:
Language Polish
Lexis Serce
Serdecznie, heartily
Compound words ---
Expressions Bez serca

Zawód miłosny
Z głębi serca, heatfelt
Radujący serce
It is clear from these examples that the agglutinating force of the

Germanic languages asserts itself in both words and compound words.
Neither the Slavic languages, Polish or Czech, nor the Romance language,
French, appear to be able to compete with them. To this degree, we can see
how grammar reflects the paths and possibilities that languages open up to
the imagination. The imagination is “free” to the extent that we continually
reaffirm and revise the paths of language use. The work of the mind is
continually forging our shared frameworks for thinking and feeling.
Speech communities can go straight ahead in some cases, or they find
round about ways of creating original expressions. But creative players
play by the rules, bending, them and improvising in their own special ways
along the lines language opens up for us. We create within linguistic
contours, even if we are the ones who contribute to reshaping and
redrawing those contours.
Two things are clear, at any rate The heart is a key cultural concept in
all the five languages quoted above that I have investigated in my reading
and research, in listening to songs and listening to the responses of those I
have interviewed. The vast majority of expressions linked to the heart
evoke positive values. This was the impression I was given in April 2018
by Olga and Vania, two eloquent Russian students studying at the Caen
University, in France who allowed me to interview them on the subject of
what сердце evoked for them. (www.rep.univ-rouen.fr). A native Russian
teacher in France gave a similar positive evaluation, although she
explained that in her experience, the French tend to think with the heart
(cœur), while the Russians feel more with the soul (душа) (https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=-Dv6Q-bKN1Y).
Interviews enable us to ask questions, gain impressions, and formulate
working hypotheses. As an ethnolinguist, I am convinced we must proceed
by painstakingly researching texts and corpora, and listening to people, by
consulting the Media and online media.
The IT revolution has put undreamed of resources at our disposal.
Google Translate does appear to give a fairly reliable overall impression of
what сердце might mean for Russian-speakers. If we consult the following
list of Russian translations for English “heart”, we can see that the core,
and the physical pump are common conceptions. But core does not
necessarily mean centre, and Russian centre (центр) does not evoke
“heart” when referring to headquarters and town centres in Russian.
Another organic metaphor, that of the kernel or the nucleus (ядро), tends
to come into play rather than the heart in Russian. And as in many Slavic
languages, the omnipresence of soul tends to dominate in spheres of
emotional, social and spiritual life that are spoken of more in terms of
268 Chapter 13
heart in English or cœur in French. This tends to confirm what the Russian
teacher claims, that Russian speakers speak “cœur à cœur”, while Russians
speak душа к душе (soul to soul). This makes Google Translate a very
useful tool, as we can see from the concise summary of the various facets
of the meaning of English “heart”.
сердце heart, core, soul, bosom, ticker
душа soul, spirit, heart, mind, psyche, inside
центр center, heart, focus, core, headquarters, nucleus
суть point, core, substance, heart, gist, content
сердцевина core, heart, pith, kernel, medulla, boon
ядро core, kernel, nucleus, heart, ball, hard core
любовь love, amour, fondness, affection, heart, flame of love
чувства feelings, heart, susceptibility, quick
сущность essence, entity, nature, fact, spirit, heart
мужество courage, bravery, guts, fortitude, virility, heart
сердечник core, mandrel, heart, mandril
черви Heart
(Google translate, consulted 13 June 2018,
https://translate.google.com/#en/ru/heart)
13.6. Is the heart “in”, or on its way out?
How frequent is “heart” used in English, and does this change over
time? In English, the Google ngram viewer records roughly half as many
uses “heart” in 2000 compared with 1860: ‘hearty’, and ‘heartily’ decrease
sevenfold and eightfold over the same period. The social sciences, notably
economics and psychology, became increasingly allergic to anything
smacking of the subjective. Even literary scholars, linguists and
philologists have tended to prefer, for more than a hundred years or so,
terms such as “worldview” which stress the intellectual, conceptual side of
understanding, at the expense of the emotion or feeling involved in
experience.
But those very sciences demonstrate how short-sighted they are when
authors and academics get bogged down in their own reasoning, and find
themselves obliged to invent bridges between responses of an intellectual,
moral, emotional, and spiritual nature, because they no longer have the
conceptual tools to express experiences that are inextricably bound up
together. Such schismatic reasoning produces curiosities such as “thought-
feeling”, in T.S. Eliot’s aesthetics (Eliot quoted by Smith 1996: 89).
Translators who invent brain-heart in their attempt to translate “Xin” from
Chinese are grappling clumsily with the same dichotomy. And this merely
demonstrates that the Anglo worldview has begun encouraging us to
accept an impoverished understanding of the human heart.
Given this state of affairs, the American Historian of Ideas, Naugle,
argues we would do well to start thinking in terms of “the heart”, the
Christian concept, rather than the morally dubious and relativistic
philosophical concept of “worldview” (Naugle 2002). Philosophers,
Sociologists, Anthropologists, Linguistic Anthropologists and Ethnolinguists
in most of the European traditions would contradict David Naugle. They
prefer worldviews, and they seek to explain how individuals learn to
apprehend the world as they are socialized into society, history, culture
and ideology. Corpora and textual analysis in French and English tends to
confirm the opening statement made by Izabella Burkraba-Rylska, in
Chapter Four of this book: “The concept of “soul” is essentially alien to
sociological reflection”.
But as a Christian academic lecturing in an American Univeristy,
David Naugle (2002) is worried. He feels that modern science, education,
and the social sciences and the humanities have forgotten the heart and the
soul. The enlightenment has not only robbed Christ of the limelight, but
deprived him of his very role to enlighten man and teach him to cleave to
God. Plunged into relativism, doubt, and feelings of misgivings about his
relationships with others and with society, modern man disparages the past
and worries about the future. Neither traditions nor social projects seem
worthwhile or meaningful. This is the Christian reading for modernity, and
that reading posits that it is the failure to cultivate the heart that is in part
to blame for man’s modern condition. Naugle clearly considers heart as a
way of helping men and women to find their way back to God, to
community and to a deeper sense of peace within themselves.
13.7. Philosophy & Thinking in Language
The heart and soul are paradoxical: these keywords are deeply enrooted
in the here and now, but they open up windows to other dimensions. Like
270 Chapter 13
all words, heart and soul, Herz and Seele, srdce and duše evolve in space
and time, however, and the history of ideas affects the places these
keywords occupy in the imagination. The trajectories they take, as well as
the dead ends they enter into when they start slipping out of usage have to
be traced as conceptual mutations. For this reason, it is certainly worth
consulting the philosophers. What is the soul? What is the heart? How do
philosophers define them?
Two of the greatest thinkers, Aristotle and Aquinas, are concerned with
the five specific powers of the soul (Aquinas http://www.newadvent.
org/summa/1076.htm, Aristotle 1907, Aristotle 2005, Ethics, Bk 1:13,
Aristotle quoted in Tracy 1974):
1) the living soul, the vegetative soul that lives and feeds,
2) the sensitive soul that feels,
3) the appetitive soul with its desires,
4) the locomotive soul that seeks to satisfy its desires and moves
towards the objects of its desires,
5) the intellectual soul.
Such great systematic thinkers are not to be dismissed. Their profound

thoughts continue to inspire contemplation and reflection. And, as we have
already seen in our study of corpora, the desires of the heart and the
appetites of the soul broadly coincide in representations we have studied in
the way they are understood by these two thinkers. Certainly, the five-
point definition above might be used to cover the various meanings related
to the heart that we have spoken of so far. As in our corpora, our
philosophers believe the soul seeks what it desires, and the intellectual
soul can investigate the imagination or seek to join with God, just as the
heart clings to God. These are deeply meaningful, basic definitions. Even
when we might be inclined to question the ideas of such philosophers, we
find ourselves engaged in debating with our own cultural and intellectual
traditions, because Aquinas and Aristotle have influenced the way we
think and feel about words like the soul to a great extent in the West.
Essentially, however, defining and limiting the soul is a philosophical
endeavour, perhaps for the very reason that Western philosophy, from
Plato onwards, has been ESSENTIALLY interested in determining the
ESSENCE of concepts. The philosophical mode of investigation means
striving to gain access to some transcendental universally shared meaning.
And such an aim necessarily means limiting the polysemy of the word and
marginalizing or obscuring the various facets of lived everyday existence.
Spheres of meaning are transformed into centres and peripheries, and
peripheral meanings are subordinated to one central, dominant, prototypical

core. Philosophers tend to seek out what is at heart of concepts. And to a
great extent this is where their strength lies.
This essentializing mode of inquiry lies behind the realist tradition in
philosophy, and it is a strong current in Anglo linguistics and philosophy
today. But does this approach work for cultural keywords? When it comes
to exploring all of the facets of the heart, and all the dimensions of the
soul, this, ultimately proves to be a naïve method, if it obscures the
complex and subtle ways we cultivate the soul and interact with others in
heart to heart or soul to soul encounters and relationships.
Behind this endeavour lies the belief – or the desire to believe – that
core concepts are universal, and that the fundamental human experience of
reality is basically the same all over the world. But is this so?
Linguistically-enlightened scholars, such Anna Wierzbicka (Wierzbicka
1996, Wierzbicka 1997, Harker & Wierzbicka 2001) and Cliff Goddard
(Goddard 2001), demonstrate that neither the soul nor the heart are
universals.
This will come as no surprise to Asians. Translators know the
difficulty of translating Chinese Xin into English and constantly hesitate
between ‘mind’ and ‘heart’, often opting for ‘heart-mind’. Xin is the heart
that speaks to us in our “heart of hearts”. This is a serious philological and
philosophical question, but it is also one that proves unavoidable in
everyday cross-cultural exchanges. In my interviews with speakers of
Chinese and Korean (Eunji interview), Asians expressed perplexity
concerning the Western tendency to divide thinking and feeling.
Interviewees suggested this could be misleading when it came to
explaining the concept of Xin, which Korean shares with Chinese. Indeed,
Eunji, a Korean-speaker, politely but firmly, stressed that Westerners tend
to cut up concepts in an either-or fashion that does not correspond to the
inseparable way in which feeling and thinking are conceived in Korean.
Goddard’s Natural Semantics Method leaves English-speakers
perplexed in a similar manner. Goddard’s staunchly affirms that heart does
not function universally as the same nexus for thinking and feeling as it
does in the Anglo worldview. His study does, on the other hand, highlight
the parallels between the Malay concept of “hati” (the liver) and the
complex, Anglo concept of the heart with which it broadly coincides. In
Goddard’s words:
the nearest English gloss for hati is 'heart' (in its emotional-moral sense)
[but] the two words are not semantically identical, if only because the
Malay hati is significantly more active, and more cognitive, than the
English heart. (Goddard 2001, 1)
272 Chapter 13
Working with the Natural Semantics Method, Goddard debunks the

idea of a shared universal faculty of feeling. Goddard evokes a wide
variety of “fixed expressions concerning attitudes, moods, and personal
traits, e.g. susah hati 'troubled, worried', hati keras 'deter-mined', rendah
hati 'humble, modest' ” (Goddard 2001, 1). That these expressions appear
to us comprehensible tends to confirm that humans share similar
sensibilities. As we can see in the following examples, the “hati” – the
concept broadly equivalent to English “liver” – can be at ease, annoyed,
offended, satisfied, hurt, or worried.
• susah hati 'troubled, worried',

• senang hati 'relaxed, easy at heart',
• sakit hati 'annoyed, offended',
• puas hati 'satisfied (with someone)',
• kecil hati 'feel hurt'. (Goddard 2001, 1)
Nonetheless, since the concepts and arguments used by Malay-

speakers and English-speakers to define, express and negotiate their
feelings diverge in important respects, it is far from clear whether they are
expressing the same experiences when Malay-speakers use “hati” and
English-speakers use “heart”. Both Malay- and English-speakers seek to
anchor emotional, intellectual, spiritual and moral experience in the body,
but it is clearly not exactly the same body, and the bodily experience
appears to be understood and expressed in distinct ways.
How do such studies challenge the philosophers? The challenge turns
out to be partial. Goddard’s paper eloquently demonstrates two
fundamental points about the shared need of humans to express how they
feel:
1. That the faculty of understanding and feeling is linked not only to

the mind and the body, but also to the moral sense that is part of
that capacity for feeling and understanding considered to be
essentially “human” in Malay.
2. That we seem to need to anchor moral, emotional or conceptual
impressions in bodily experience. It appears necessary for us to
“locate” within the body a seat of emotions, a place in which to
situate ideas, feelings, and emotions related to interacting with
others in a moral or emotional way.
Indeed, however far back we go, the soul is associated with the throat,
with the stomach, the guts, the heart, the lungs, as well as the head in
various language systems. The individual locations are experiential, deeply
felt: parts of the body are clearly in play. But ultimately, the exact location
is, perhaps, somewhat arbitrary. After all, bodily representations act more
like metonymies than metaphors, evoking the tip of an experience that is
fuller and more multiple than any precise bodily reaction. The mouth may
grow dry, the breathing may become stifled, the heart may beat more
rapidly, and we may feel a nervousness running down our spines, and
tingling in our toes and our fingertips, under the duress of a single
emotional response. It is not so much that heart – a part – as the whole
body that comes into play, when our emotions manifest themselves in
physical feeling.
If I have combined – and then opposed – philosophers and
ethnolinguists it is to highlight their different methodologies, aims, and
objections. Philosophers help us to limit and define our concepts. They
systematize and schematize; but how far are our thoughts and feelings
alike cross-culturally speaking? And how far can we trust philosophers
who speak to us of universals, and strive to circumscribe clear-cut
concepts transposable across cultures? How far can we trust dominant
cultures to understand less powerful cultures with concepts, terms,
definitions, and values that are not their own?
It is clear that in Malay, in French and in German we understand and
express our emotions and our bodily and emotional responses in different
terms. And even in English, it now appears to us curious to speak of an
upset tummy as “mal au cœur” in French, although English-speakers once
invented the term “heartburn” and English-speakers still speak of “gut
reactions”.
13.8. The Ethnolinguistic Challenge
The body, experience, and linguistic expression take us into confusion

and contrasts. Meanings appear as blurred and fuzzy. Should this dismay
us? Or should we rejoice in the kaleidoscopic variety of human
experience, and celebrate the wide variety of ways we express our
experience? From the ethnolinguistic point of view, translating becomes
an observation tower, a lookout point. Gazing across the world of
experience from one language into another, we see similar forms and
shades and hues, but those shades and shapes form very different
landscapes. French cœur is not Anglo heart,and German Herz is not Czech
srdce. And Malay (Goddard 2001) and Yolngu an indigenous Australian
language (see Frances Morphy 2018) simply do not need “heart” to speak
of feelings. And it would be misleading to assume the speakers of such
languages “lack” a concept of heart.
274 Chapter 13
From the ethnolinguistic perspective, this is not simply a philosophical

conundrum: it is a moral challenge. It is the key to understanding what we
do not understand, when we encounter very different worldviews. If we
refuse this, and if we try to make “them” fit into “our” terms, we remain
stuck in our own prejudice and narrow-minded self-satisfied paradigms. If
we insist on believing that cultures think and feel in mutually coinciding
concepts, we simply strip those cultures of many of their core meanings.
We fail to meet them. Our worldviews do not clash, they simply pass by
one another like cars on the highway at night: indifferent, oblivious. If we
accept to highlight one dimension of our key concepts at the expense of
others, we impoverish the reality that we experience in everyday life. We
blind ourselves to many of the shiny facets that make these keywords,
beautiful, and profoundly useful.
This is the aesthetic challenge of ethnolinguistics. Cultural difference,
aesthetic response, and feeling are all somewhat challenging for
philosophers, because they are resolutely personal, subjective, and because
these experiences are invariably shared. Philosophers tend to seek to
extract an unchanging clearly circumscribed truth from lived experience.
But can we do this when we speak of the heart? Probably, if we try, we
will find that we have ripped the heart from the body to get a better grip of
it. This may reassure some people who need to get their hands on ideas in
order to feel they master them. But this is the method of the butcher. And
extracting the heart does indeed reduce the organ to mere meat. In no way,
can the heart fulfil its function, even at a physical bodily level, if it is
extracted from the body. And in parallel to this, the heart and soul are cut
off from their nature and their function if we subtract them from the “we”
of community and shared human relations.
For some thinkers this is a problem: words and concepts don’t fit. But
for the ethnolinguist, this proves the very raison d’être, the value of
linguistic anthropology and translation studies. It reminds us that we think
in language. Since Wilhelm von Humboldt, ethnolinguists have recognized
that we think with particular language systems, French, Polish, German
and so on. Language is not simply a means of expression, a tool.
Languages enable us to learn to think together. This is Sprachdenken,
thinking-in-language, and that concept opens up the horizons for a
philosophy of language that is infinitely richer, and more meaningful than
traditional Western modes of thinking, analysing, and synthesizing, and
critically appraising what concepts are and how terms must be defined. If
we understand that heart and soul are not mere concepts but are keywords
that are both intimately bound up in how we begin to learn to master
concepts, to communicate and to share experience, then that makes the
ethnolinguistic approach not simply a pastime for academics and

university students. It makes studying the cultural concepts urgent for our
global community today.
Emmanuel Kant was concerned with the way we create concepts and
with the fate of humanity. His anthropology was no less important for him
than his study of Reason and the way we develop our faculty of
understanding. Kant was more concerned with Geist than with Herz and
Seele, however. And since his days, Anglo philosophers and scientists
have tended to focus more on “brain” than “mind”. Meanwhile, in the
nineteenth century, a growing desire to move towards an objectivizing
positivism tended to marginalize “heart” and “soul”. But if we reach back
into our own tradition, and if we explore other traditions, we may find
enlightening concepts that can clarify the way we think and feel.
13.9. Translation as a Look-Out Point
Such questions take us beyond the scope of thischapter. But language

study, translating, and ethnolinguistic research certainly remind us that the
heart and soul are still very much at the centre of our lives, although many
of those who seek to educate and instruct us, tend to feel the contrary is
true, or should be so. In this way, exploring other languages can remind us
of our own experience in two important ways. It can remind us of
meanings that have become lost. And it can help us make meaningful
associations and links between ideas that we feel to be right or logical,
although our languages tend to encourage us to divide experience into
separate boxes. It is probable that such schismatic thinking causes more
problems than it solves in “explaining” the meaning of experience and the
“sense” we make of our lives.
In this respect, the way we translate English “heart” into Czech can
prove enlightening, because it demonstrates that Czech translators have
had to assimilate one mode of dividing and linking concepts and find
similar patterns or paths to reconstruct the same meanings. Jan Caha, and
Jíří Krámský’s 877-page Anglicko-slovník, published in 1964, provides a
fascinating and accurate definition in Czech words for what the English
mean by “heart” in all of the contexts they encountered the word. The
definition proves perplexing for English-speakers, and, interestingly, it
does not coincide with the five facets of our philosophers.
It is my contention that the Czech lexicographers have something to
teach monolingual English-speakers about the dimensions of the heart that
they only partially glimpse: they show us the way various concepts come
into play in the Anglo worldview and are closely linked in the linguistic
276 Chapter 13
patterning of English for them. In the Anglo mind, “heart” covers the
following meanings in Czech. I have offered word for word translations of
the Czech terms in order to highlight the diversity of meanings that are
extricated and transposed into Czech. Logically, each one can be rendered
as “heart”, if translated back into English. But what do we mean by
“heart”? Given the complexity and diversity of the meanings, it seems
unlikely that an English-speaker would find it easy to explain more than a
few of these, if asked to. And despite the eloquence of many the English-
speakers who were kind enough to let me interview them, few came up
with anything approaching such an eloquent summary as the following one
that the Czech lexicographers provided. For these Czech translators,in
English, “heart” means:
srdce heart
prsa breast/breasts
nitro the interior, heart, inward nature/mind, for intérieur, heart

of hearts
mysl, duše, duch mind, soul, spirit
cit, citivost feeling, sensibility
podstata basis
odvaha courage
temperament temperament?
drahoušek Dear, Honey, Darling
človĕk human being, man
This list demonstrates two things:
• ten, not five concepts are in play,

• many of the single definitions prove perplexingly complex.
What is this heart of hearts, the nitro, the inner soul, that the French
call “le for intérieur”? And can we consider “mind”, “soul” and “spirit” to
be synonyms? For Jan Caha and Jíří Krámský, mysl, duše and duch, mind,
(soul, and spirit) can often be used interchangeably. In the same way,
“heart” and “soul” are often used in the same way in English, when
English-speakers encourage people “to put their heart and soul into
something”.
To a disconcertingly great degree, translating “heart” proves easy, if
we consider the word alone. But the way the word works in the worldview
of each language, and the way our understanding of this keyword changes
from situation to situation, and changes over time, proves perplexing.
Discerning how words and meanings fail to coincide across languages is
fascinating. It takes us back to language study. But language study opens
up for us, not a can of worms, not a headache, not a set of problems, but a
whole range of new horizons. And perhaps the journeys we take into
ethnolinguistics bring us closer to who we are, and what we are, and what
we do and say in words. And that, for the ethnolinguist is the heart of the
matter.
Corpora
BNC. https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/
COCA. https://corpus.byu.edu/COCA/
Faactiva. https://www.dowjones.com/products/factiva/
Frantext. http://www.frantext.fr
Leipzig Wortschatz. http://corpora.uni-leipzig.de
My Personal Corpora (British English 3 million words, American English
3 million words)
Australian Interviews, Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project website.
www.rep.univ-rouen.fr,
Australian Interviews. Lubin 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
Dv6Q-bKN1Y
Interview with Eunji, Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project website.
www.rep.univ-rouen.fr
Interview with Martin Bohat, Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project website.
www.rep.univ-rouen.fr
Webography
Aquinas. Question 76: The Union of the body and the soul, from the
Summa, in: New Advent,
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1076.htm
Aristotle. 1907. De Anima, 1907. Translated and Introduction by R. D.
Hicks. Cambridge.
https://archive.org/details/aristotledeanima005947mbp
278 Chapter 13
Aristotle. 2005. The Ethics. Introduction by J. A. Smith. On gutenberg.org,

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438-images.html
The Beatles, If I fell, BBC Radio, 1964,
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=the+beatles+
if+i+fell+in+love+with+you+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Europa Website. English version.
https://europa.eu/european-union/index_en
Europa Websie. French version.
https://europa.eu/european-union/index_fr
Gutenberg Project. http://www.gutenberg.org
Ezekiel. http://www.biblestudytools.com/nkjv/ezekiel/36-26.html
The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk
https://www.google.com/
https://www.google.de/
https://www.google.fr/
https://www.google.cz/
Google ngram viewer. https://books.google.com/ngrams
https://translate.google.com/
James, W. 1901-1902. The Variety of Religious Experience.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/621
Morphy, F. 2018. Homelands & Heartlands Conference, June 2018. Rouen
Ethnolinguistics Project website, www.rep.univ-rouen.fr
Nijlstra, M. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LErSTlI0Jhg
Rouen Ethnolinguistics Project website, www.rep.univ-rouen.fr
De la Rochefoucault, Réflections: Sentences ou maximes morales,
De la Rochefoucault, Reflections: Sentences or Moral Maxims
Smith, A. 1759. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Part 6.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-
adam/works/moral/part06/part6a.htm
Stanford University. A History of the Heart.
https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/heartpag
es/heart.html
Starbucks website.
https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/mission-
statement
The Sunday Herald, http://www.heraldscotland.com/
Tracy, Th. S. J. 1974. Heart and Soul in Aristotle. Chicago.
https://orb.binghamton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1
&article=1089&context=sagp
Urban dictionary. https://www.urbandictionary.com/

West, K. Heartless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co0tTeuUVhU
https://en.wikipedia.org
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch
https://fr.wikipedia.org/
https://pt.wikipedia.org/
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Česká_Wikipedie
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Summary
This paper will focus on two rival synonyms, the heart and the soul in various
languages, by focusing on English, Czech, French and German, in order to
280 Chapter 13
understand what they mean and the values they engender. Is the soul a value in
itself or the property of other ideals? How does the heart contain or relate to other
virtues? Is the heart good in and of itself? This would appear to be the case, if we
consider ‘heartless’, and the gift of the heart to men by God. But even at the
beginning of Genesis, the heart of men is said to be “evil”. The heart and the soul,
are complex in themselves, they follow tortuous paths, and translating them will
take us on intriguing but surprising, even upsetting adventures.
Keywords: duše, for intérieur, heart, heartless, Herz, human, soul, soulless, srce,
values, ethnolinguistics
CHAPTER 14
AN AXIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF THE LEXEME

ДУША “SOUL” AND ITS DERIVATIVES USED
IN THE FUNCTION OF ADDRESS IN UKRAINIAN
MARIAN SKAB
YURI FEDKOVYCH CHERNIVTSI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY,
UKRAINE
One of the main components of most constructions used as a form of

address by Ukrainians, as well as by the representatives of other ethnic
groups, is the name of the addressee, which can be a name of a person (in
its direct or figurative meaning) in the form of the Vocative Case (see
Skab 2002, 83).
Most vocative forms contain the names of people and animals,
however, as Shapovalova rightly observes:
the range of lexical meanings of nouns in the vocative role goes beyond the
names of creatures and encompasses a group of metaphorical notions. 1
(Shapovalova 1979, 47)
Such use of figurative nouns to name the addressee is traditional for

Ukrainians, which is supported by numerous facts from folklore and
fiction (see, for instance: Musiyenko 1992, Polyuha 1984, Solohub 1992).
The “Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language” cites the use of a number of
personified nouns in the function of address, which in their direct
meanings do not name people: these are primarily the names of birds,
animals, fish, insects, reptiles, plants or their parts, celestial bodies,
substances, and abstract notions; the lexeme душа “soul” and its
1 Quotes and dictionary definitions are translated by the author.

282 Chapter 14
derivatives occupy the leading place among them (see on this: Skab 2003,
71‒72, Skab 2006).
We have already written about the use of the lexeme душа “soul” and
its derivatives as a form of address in Ukrainian (see, for instance: Skab
2007, 2008). The objective of this particular study is to analyze the
axiological peculiarities of the above-mentioned use of the lexeme душа
“soul”. We assume in advance that the specificity of use of the word душа
“soul” as a form of address in Ukrainian lies in the lexeme’s peculiar
semantics: on the one hand, Ukrainians have been using it to denote an
essence that is real for them and can also be addressed directly, and on the
other, the aforementioned lexeme and its derivatives can be actively used
when naming people figuratively.
The object of this study was entries of the analyzed lexemes in modern
Ukranian dictionaries and, in part, in other languages’ dictionaries, as well
as dictionary entries in specialized dictionaries (dictionaries of speech
etiquette, dictionaries of affectionate lexis, dialectal dictionaries, etc.). We
compared lexicographic information with the material of the card index,
which comprises more than forty thousand micro-contexts selected from
texts reflecting different periods of the Ukrainian language, as well as data
cited in previously published articles.
The “Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language” provides the following
meanings of the polysemantic lexeme душа “soul”: 1. The inner psychic
world of a person, with their moods, experiences, and feelings. //
According to religious beliefs—an immortal immaterial foundation in a
person that constitutes the essence of their life, is a source of psychic
phenomena and distinguishes them from an animal. 2. A set of features
and qualities inherent in a particular person. // A human being as a person
with certain traits and qualities. // Feelings, inspiration, energy. // Of a
person with wonderful character traits. 3. colloq. Of a person (usually
when determining the number of people). 4. fig. of smth the main part of
something, the essence of something; // The central figure of something. 5.
colloq. A concavity in the lower front part of the neck (SUM2: t. ІІ, 445‒
446). An analysis of the definition makes it possible to assume that the
forms of the lexeme душа “soul” can be used as the forms of address in its
first (direct) and third (figurative) meanings, although the dictionary entry
does not contain any direct indication of this. 2
2 Interestingly, the entry for ДУША/SOUL in the Belarusian dictionary cites a
peculiar meaning: 5. (usually with the word “мая (my)”). Colloq. Friendly
informal address—Паглядзі, душа мая, што гэта робіцца ў нашым царстве…
Axiological Aspects of the Lexeme душа “soul” and its Derivatives 283
Used in the Function of Address in Ukrainian
Among the numerous examples of different styles provided in the

dictionary, we found only one case of address that illustrates one of the
shades of the third meaning: // Проклята (чортова, іродова,
анахтемська і т. ін.) душа (Cursed (devil’s, Herod’s, anathema, etc.)
soul)—swearwords. Він стискував зуби.—Прокляті душі! на вас трохи
такої муки, трохи каторги... “He was clenching his teeth. ‘Cursed
souls! Such torture and hard labor are not enough for you…’” (Myrnyi II
1954, 199).
Let us also emphasize that the definition of the meanings of the lexeme
душа “soul” in the eleven-volume “Dictionary of the Ukrainian
Language” does not contain any direct axiological qualifications, although,
as correctly observed by Maria Skab:
the very presence of the soul in a person implies their positive moral traits
and “therefore, in folklore, one’s beloved is often called душа (soul),
душка (the derivative of soul with a diminutive suffix)” and further: “the
use of the word душа (soul) when addressing a friend or a beloved, that is,
a person who invokes sincere, good feelings in the speaker, could only
arise on condition that the soul was perceived as a set of positive human
qualities. (Skab 2008, 134)
According to the analyzed dictionary entry and the material of our card
index, the axiological character of the addressee’s name is provided
mainly by the attributes of the word душа “soul”. The attributes of the
lexeme душа “soul” used as a form of address (when addressing one’s
own soul, the possessive pronoun моя “my” is usually used) contain
qualifiers with positive (безгрішна “sinless”, безжурна “carefree”, біла
“white”, врятована “saved”, добра “kind”, світла “light”, християнська
“Christian”, чиста “pure”) and negative (анахтемська “anathema”,
бісова “devil’s”, іудина “Judas’s”, іродова “Herod’s”, нечиста
“impure”, пекельна “hellish”, рабська “slavish”, собача “of a dog”,
сяка-така “such-and-such”) evaluations.
As our previous studies show, Ukrainians traditionally used the lexeme
душа “soul” as a form of address with a pre-positive and post-positive
attribute in the lexeme’s religious meaning, which probably originates
from the Bible, namely, the Book of Psalms:
“Look, my soul, what is going on in our kingdom…” (Tlumachal’ny slownik

byelaruskay movy. 1978; one of the new Russian dictionaries by Yefryemova
(2000) also gives the following meaning: used as an affectionate friendly address).
284 Chapter 14
Тільки від Бога чекай у мовчанні, о душе моя, від Нього спасіння моє!
(Пс. 62: 2); Благослови, душе моя, Господа, і все нутро моє—святе
Ймення Його! Благослови, душе моя, Господа, і не забувай за всі
добродійства Його! (Пс. 103: 1-2) (Bibliya)—“Truly my soul waiteth
upon God; from Him cometh my salvation (Ps. 62: 1); Bless the Lord, O
my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O
my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” (Ps. 103: 1-2) (Bible)
The same type of use is found, for instance, in the works of Lesia
Ukrainka: Молися ж їй, душе моя, молися їй ретельно, як той, хто
бачить свій остатній час! “Pray to her, my soul, pray to her heartily,
like he who sees his final hour!”; I. Franko: Душе моя! Вспокойся, не
ридай!; О, веселись, душе моя, / Що праведних таких і мудрих /
Суддів знайшла нарешті я “My soul! Calm down, stop weeping!;
Rejoice, my soul, for I have finally found such righteous and wise
judges”; V. Samijlenko: Не сумуй ти, душе, Не боли через край “Do not
be sad, o soul, do not hurt so much”; and V. Sosiura: Вперед, душа моя
крилата! Я молодий, я молодий! “Onwards, my winged soul! I am
young, I am young!”
Similar names of the addressee are also used by our contemporaries:
Ярій, душе, Ярій, а не ридай! “Blaze, o soul, blaze and do not weep!” (V.
Stus). One of the most recent instances of use of the lexeme душа “soul”
without an attribute is found in the chorus of a popular song by the band
“Мірко Сабліч” written about and for the Ukrainian soldiers who protect
Ukraine today: Гори, душа, гори! Прапори догори! Не задля нагород—
Встаю за свій народ. “Burn, o soul, burn! Raise the banners! Not for
rewards—I stand to protect my people.”
All dictionary entries for душа “soul” in all the contemporary
Ukrainian dictionaries that we analyzed (see: VTSSUM, 333; SUM1, 261;
SUM3) practically repeat the definition in the entry from the eleven-
volume dictionary and do not contain any separate indication of its use in
the function of address or any axiological remarks.
Much more information about the axiological component of its use in
the function of address is contained in the dictionary entries on the
derivatives of the lexeme душа “soul”. The entry for ДУШЕНЬКА (a
derivative of душа “soul” with a diminutive suffix that means endearment)
gives the definition “Affect. for душа (soul) 1–3” (SUM2: t. ІІ, 447),
which leaves no doubt about the presence of a positive connotation in the
address. The dictionary does not contain the necessary illustrations of the
address used in speech, therefore we find them in the material from the
card index:
Ой ти, душенько, наша Галочко, Вийди, мати, з хати Та й будеш

питати; Ой ти, душенько, наша Марусечко, Ой до бору, дружечки,
до бору, Рубати сосну додолу “O you, dear soul, our Halochko, Leave
your house, mother, and then you will ask; O you, dear soul, our
Marusechko, To the woods, friends, to the woods, let’s cut down a pine
tree” (Folklore); О грішна душенько, отсе Послідній твій часок іде! Не
будь уперта, покорись. І з паном богом примирись “O dear sinful soul!
Your final hour is near! Do not be stubborn; humble yourself! And make
peace with Lord God!” (І. Franko); modern poetry: Ось так би
відштовхнутися від слова І полетіти птахом у світи. Нехай дрібна
відсіється полова. Лети, моя ти душенько, лети! Душенько моя
ясна, співай! Ти ж одна з мільярдів шести, Ти ж не віриш в
посмертний рай, А життям недалечко плисти “I wish I could spring
off the word and fly into the wide world like a bird. May all the small chaff
be sifted (i.e. may all trivial things be left behind). Fly away, my dear soul,
fly away! Sing, my dear clear soul! You are one in six billion. You do not
believe in Paradise after death. And not much life is left to live” (О.
Vershynina); Чому ти плачеш, душенько тендітна? Чому ти,
Україно, у сльозах? Чом сива стала небосинь блакитна? Чому від
суму не співає птах? “Why are you crying, o dear fragile soul? Ukraine,
why are you in tears? Why did the blue sky turn gray? Why isn’t the bird
singing from sorrow?” (the poem by an unknown author dedicated to
Viktor Humeniuk, who perished participating in ATO); Душенько зоряна,
поглядом зорана, смутком розорена, натовпом зморена “O dear starry
soul, plowed by gazes, devastated by sorrow, weary of the crowd.”
(Yevtushenko)
In such cases, the vocative form душенько is used with attributes that
enhance the semantics of positive evaluation provided by the diminutive
suffix.
In addition to the information on the use of the lexemes душечка and
душка as the diminutive forms of душа “soul”, with its first and third
meanings, which are possible in speech as forms of address, the definitions
of these lexemes already contain parts that directly refer to this with the
respective examples-illustrations: ДУШЕЧКА, n, f. Affect. for душа
“soul” 1–3, 5; colloq. Used as an affectionate address for women:
Далі дівчата, буцімто жартуючи, і заспівали: Та ти, душечко, наша

Мар’єчко! "And then the girls started singing as if joking: O you, dear
soul, our Mar’yechko!” (Kv.–Оsn., II, 1956, 76); Жінко-душечко!
Приголуб мене, щебетушечко! “O dear wife, dear soul! Would you
caress me, my birdie?” (Rudan., Tv., 1956, 65) (SUM2: t. ІІ, 447)
286 Chapter 14
and ДУШКА, n, f. 1. Affect. for душа “soul” 1, 2, 5. 2. colloq. Of a

person with wonderful character traits. // As an affectionate address:
Хорунжівна знай спросоння приговорює:—Микиточку, душко

Уласовичу! час від часу дужче тебе люблю! “The wife of the banner
bearer says, not fully awake:—Mykytocho, dear soul, Ulasovychu! from
time to time, I love you so much!” (Kv.–Оsn., II, 1956, 203); Вона наче
крізь сон почула.—Як спали, Палагночко, душко? “She heard, as if in a
dream.—Did you sleep well, Palahnochko, dear soul?” (Kotsiub. II, 1955,
339) (SUM2: t. ІІ, 448).
Thus, as the dictionaries and material of the card index show, in

addition to the direct address to the soul, we mainly deal with the
metonymical use of the lexemes as the names of people, in particular, the
people the speaker treats with the greatest affection, as discussed by
linguists:
Abstract names with figurative meaning are also used to address one’s
beloved. They indicate how dear that person is to the poet: душе моя, моя
доле кохана… (my soul, my destined beloved…). (Polyuha 1984, 71)
One’s beloved is mostly called душа “soul” in folklore: Чи варила, душа

мила, Чи варила джар? “O dear soul, did you brew dzhar?”, but more
often they are addressed by the forms душкa: Ой Галочко-душко,
Прислухайся дужче, Сонце низенько, Друженьки близенько, гу! “Oi
Halochko, o dear soul, Listen carefully, The sun is setting, Friends are
near, hu!”; душечка: Перепроси ти мене, Моя душечко! “Forgive me,
my dear soul!”; and душенька: І узяв дівоньку за білую руку:—
Дівонько-душенько, миленька ми будеш “And he took the girl by her
white hand:—O lass, o dear soul, you are so dear to me.” Such use is
mostly found in the Bukovynian songs called коломийки, where the
analyzed lexeme often becomes synonymous with the lexemes серце
“heart”, пташка “bird”, etc.: Дівчино-душко, дівчино-пташко, Подай
ми рученьку, чось мені тяжко “O girl, o dear soul, o birdie, Give me
your hand, I feel sad for some reason.” According to our calculations, the
diminutive form душка is most frequently used in folklore texts, it is a
form of address in half of the detected cases, for example: Катерино, моя
душко, як без тебе мені скучно:—Катерино, серце моє! "Kateryna, my
dear soul, I am so bored without you:—Kateryna, my heart!"; the second
most actively used lexeme is the diminutive form душечка: Чи вийдеш
ти до мене, моя душечко? "Will you come to see me, my dear soul?”
The diminutive form душенька is also often used to address one’s
beloved: І узял дівоньку за білую руку:—Дівонько, душенько, миленька

ми будеш “And he took the girl by her white hand:—O lass, o dear soul,
you are so dear to me.” Folklore sources also register the use of the lexeme
душейка—the diminutive form of душа (soul) with the dialectal suffix -
ейк - (from the book “Ukrainian Wedding” by Yo. Lozynskyi): Марисю,
душейко! Шануй мого батейка, Бо я твого шанував, Як-єм до тебе
уїжджав “Marysiu, o dear soul! Respect my father, for I respected yours
when I was courting you.” Incidentally, the use of the aforementioned
lexemes in the Ukrainian language when addressing one’s beloved is also
registered in dialectal lexicographic sources: Horbach in the “Dialectal
Dictionary of the Village of Brodina” (Rădăúţi County, Romania) cites
душко! (the vocative form of душа “soul” with a diminutive suffix) as “an
address to children in the house” (Horbach 2000, 275); in Transcarpathian
dialects: душка—“beloved woman” (Zhehuts 2001, 53); душка—
“beloved woman, lover” (Pipash 2005, 53).
New Ukrainian literature continues the folklore traditions of using
derivatives of the analyzed word-building cluster. According to our
observations, the lexemes душка, душечка, душенька (derivatives of
душа “soul” with diminutive suffixes that mean endearment) show a
tendency towards the use in naming one’s beloved, most often when
directly addressed, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: in the
works of Kotliarevskyi—душка (1); Hulak-Artemovskyi—душка (2);
Kvitka-Osnovyanenko—душка (10), where it is used nine times as a form
of address and once in the narrative text; душечка (1), душенька (2)—as
an address (from a wedding song); romanticist poets—душка (4),
душенька (2); in Shevchenko’s Ukrainian works душка (1)—as an
address; Rudanskyi душечка (1)—as an address; in the works of Yu.
Fedkovych душка (29)—twenty-eight of them as addresses, душечка
(12)—only once as an address; Nechui-Levytskyi—душка (1) as an
address; Panas Myrnyi—душка (2) as an address; Starytskyi—душка (5),
two of them as addresses and all of them to name one’s beloved; душечка
(1)—as an address; Hrinchenko—душечка as an address; Kropyvnytskyi
душка (12)—eleven of them as addresses, душечка (12)—one of them as
an address; Karpenko-Karyi: душка (10)—all as addresses; Lesia
Ukrainka does not use the aforementioned lexemes, only her folklore
records cite дуся (another variant form of душа “soul”) (1): Приніс мене
сивий кінь До Антосі в новий двір. До Антосі, до серця, На білоє
ряденце, До Антосі, до дусі, На білії подусі “My gray horse brought me
to Antosia’s new house. To Antosia, my heart, on a white cloth, to
Antosia, my dear soul, on a white pillow” (26, ІХ, 63); Kotsiubynskyi:
душка (5)—as an address; Teslenko: душечка—as an address;
288 Chapter 14
Cheremshyna: душка (13)—twelve of them as addresses, this writer

demonstrates the greatest variation in the forms of address: душко Чічко,
душко Лукинку, Федірку-душко, душко-кумко, Митришко-душко,
душко пишні, душко-зазулько, моя душко (all the examples above
combine the vocative form of душка with various proper names);
Kobylianska: душка (5)—as address, душечка (6), 2 of them with the
meaning “beloved”; Ukrainian novellas of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries: душка (3)—as an address.
In Ukrainian works of the Soviet era, the use of the lexeme душа
“soul” and its derivatives душка, душечка, душенька as a form of address
decays considerably, remaining mainly in the works on historical issues or
in texts reproducing the speech of people in Western Ukraine:
Вокресайте, камінні душі, Розчиняйте серця і чоло, Щоб не сказали

про вас грядущі:—Їх на землі не було “Rise from the dead, the souls of
stone, Open your hearts and brow, So that your offspring could not say
about you:—They did not exist on this earth” (Symonenko); Куди ти
полетіла, біла душе моя, і яких мук я маю зазнати, щоб ти скинула із
себе лебединий покров відчуження і, прийнявши знову образ діви,
з’єдналася зі мною назавжди в єдине ціле, і я не ходив би по світу,
розчахнутий на безліч іпостасей, з яких тільки одна була чиста—ти
“Where did you fly, my white soul, and what torture must I endure for you
to cast off your swan-like cloak of estrangement and, taking on the form of
a maiden again, become one with me forever, so that I would not wander
the world divided into an infinity of versions, of which only one was
pure—you” (R. Ivanychuk); Душе моя, жени лихе передчугтя “My
soul, drive away the vile premonition” (Andriyashyk); Це такі ж мозолі,
як і ви, тільки спокушені примарою дикунського царства, де не буде ні
батька, ні брата, ні порядку, ні закону—пий і гуляй, розперезана
душе! “They are slaves just like you, but seduced by the illusion of a
savage realm, where there will be no father, no brother, no order, no law—
drink and carouse, unbridled soul!” (Blyznets)
It is significant that, for example, in the works of Honchar, among 131

instances of word-use of the derivatives of the lexeme душа “soul”, only
the diminutive form душка is used once as address, which, in our opinion,
indicates that these lexemes were ousted to the periphery.
It is also interesting that the analyzed forms of address are much more
actively represented in the works of diaspora writers, dissident authors,
and contemporary post-Soviet literature:
Безжурна душе! Неземна! Ти з голубизни дивишся на нас, а ми в

грубій плоті, повній крови і нервових напружень, стоїмо на землі, не
знаючи, якою мовою з тобою говорити… “O carefree soul! Unearthly!
You look at us from the blue sky, and we, in our callous flesh full of blood
and nervous strain, stand on the ground and do not know what language to
speak to you…” (Barka); Розпросторся, душе моя, постань, душе моя
столюта!; Чи це не ти, душе моя схолола?; Начувайсь, навіжена,
скажена душе!; Мовчи, душе, притишуй серця біль “Widen, my soul,
rise, my furious soul!; Is it you, my cold soul?; Expect revenge, o furious
raging soul!; Be silent, o soul, keep heartache down” (V. Stus); I нiч, i
жах, димить волосся, i раптом голос—божий спiв:—Душе моя, не
змалоросся... “And night, and horror, and the hair is steaming, and
suddenly a voice like a heavenly song: My soul, do not become as if from
malorosiya… (a derogatory Russian name for Ukraine)” (Malkovych); Ну
чого тобі ще, моя душе, Ну яка тебе точить іржа?.. “What else do
you want, my soul, what else plagues you?” (Pavlychko); Тримайся,
душечко моя, Тримайся, як перлина в мушлі, Ти маєш бути сильна,
мужня, Інакше щезну з тебе я. Не дайся, душечко моя! “Hold on, my
dear soul, Hold on like a pearl in the shell, You must be strong and
courageous, Or I will disappear with you. Do not yield, my dear soul!”
(Severniuk)
The observed tendencies are vividly manifested in the new types of

modern dictionaries, and not only in Ukrainian. For example, the
“Dictionary of Russian Etiquette Forms” by A. G. Balakai provides
extensive dictionary entries for the forms of address (all the following
nouns are the derivative forms of the lexeme душа (soul) with various
suffixes): ДУША (Balakay 2007, 173‒174), ДУШАКА (Balakay 2007,
174), ДУШАЛЬ (Balakay 2007, 174), ДУШАНЮШКА (Balakay 2007,
174), ДУШЕНЬКА (Balakay 2007, 175), ДУШЕЧКА (Balakay 2007, 175),
ДУШКА (Balakay 2007, 175‒176), ДУШОК (Balakay 2007, 176),
ДУШОНОК (Balakay 2007, 176), ДУШОНОЧЕК (Balakay 2007, 176),
ДУШОЧЕК (Balakay 2007, 176), ДУШУЛЬ (and ДУШУНЬ) (Balakay
2007, 176).
The dictionary of modern Polish speech etiquette by Marcjanik does
not cite any forms of address of the analyzed type (Marcjanik 2014). At
the same time, we encounter the form of address duszko (the vocative form
of dusza “soul”) in the dictionary of Polish affectionate lexis, its definition
seems very interesting to us in the context of our speculations:
duszko, duszyczko “Stój poczekaj, moja duszko!”—woła ułan w jednej z

wersji powstańczej piosenki i wydaje się, że dużej części Polaków zwrot ten
kojarzy się z zacytowanym utworem, a zatem trąci myszką. Zarysowana w
piosence sytuacja zdaje się sugerować, że duszko mówiło się tylko do
kobiet. Nic podobnego—duszko (a także duszo) to zwrot kierowany także
do mężczyzny, i to niekoniecznie takiego, o którym dziś mówi się
eufemistycznie dusza, gdy nie chce się użyć słowa dosadniejszego. Dawne
290 Chapter 14
duszko ma dużo wdzięku, nawet jeśli nieco przyprószonego naftaliną. Może

warto czasem przywołać urok dawnych, dobrych czasów? “‘Wait, wait, my
soul!’—shouts a soldier in one of the versions of a rebel song, and it seems
that a large part of the Poles associate this phrase with the cited work, and
therefore the phrase feels obsolete. The situation described in the song
seems to suggest that duszko (soul) was only used to address women. That
is far from true—duszko (as well as duszo) is also a phrase used to address
a man, and not necessarily the one who is called dusza (soul)
euphemistically when one does not want to use a more specific word. The
old form duszko has a lot of grace, even if it is slightly sprinkled with
naphthalene. Maybe it is worth recalling the charm of the good old times?”
(Bańko, Zygmunt 2010, 26)
The supplement of the recently defended thesis by Moklyak, which

contains material for the dictionary of Ukrainian affectionate lexis, gives
three forms of address: душенька — Що, душенько? Я хочу в теплі
краї! “What, o dear soul? I wish I were somewhere warm!” (О.
Kobylianska); душечка—Лежи спокійно, моя душечко, моя кришечко!
“Lie quietly, my dear soul, my little one!” (Ya. Halan); душка—Ба що
ж тобі, моя душко? “What do you wish for, my dear soul?”
(Cheremshyna) (Moklyak 2015, 249).
These observations suggest that the axiological peculiarities of use of
the lexeme душа “soul” and its derivatives by Ukrainians as a form of
address depend on, firstly, what kind of addressee is referred to by the
analyzed word-forms: addressing the soul itself is deprived of evaluative
semantics, but it is possible in the personified forms of address. Secondly,
it depends on whether a form of address (or the main component of
address) is a non-derivative word-form душа “soul” or its derivative
lexemes with diminutive (and therefore evaluative) affixes. Thirdly,
additional, but very important factors of evaluative semantics are
attributive components of a composite address.
The use of the forms of address with the lexeme душа “soul” and its
derivatives, both in its direct and figurative meaning, is characteristic of all
periods of the Ukrainian language, although its frequency varied in
different eras. At the time of official Soviet atheism, not only was
addressing the soul itself ousted to the periphery, but the use of lexemes
with a figurative meaning used to address people also became significantly
less frequent. The modern era shows a marked tendency towards
increasing the frequency of the analyzed forms of address.
Analysis and comparison of the presentation of the lexeme душа
“soul” and its derivatives in contemporary monolingual, etiquette, and
dialectal dictionaries of the Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, and Polish
languages shows that, in the East Slavic languages, the respective lexemes
are more frequently used in the function of address, with their semantics
gaining distinct evaluations (mostly positive). The axiological nature of
this type of address is realized primarily by special diminutive suffixes, as
well as pre- and post-positive evaluative attributes in the composite names
of the addressee.
References
Balakay, A. G. 2007. Slovar’ russkogo rechevogoetiketa: ok. 6000
etiketnykh slov i vyrazheniy. Moscow: Astrel.
Bańko, M., Zygmunt, A. 2010. Czułe słówka. Słownik afektonimów.
Warszawa: PWN.
Bible. 21st Century King James Version. 1994. Gary, SD: KJ21 Bible
Publishers. Retrieved 14 June 2018 from
https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/21st-Century-King-James-
Version-KJ21-Bible/#booklist.
Bibliya, abo Knyhy Svyatoho Pys’ma Staroho y Novoho Zapovitu iz movy
davn’oyevreys’koyi ta hrets’koyi na ukrayins’ku nanovo perekladena.
1992. Translated by I. Ohiyenka. Kyiv: Ukrayins’ke Bibliyne
Tovarystvo
Horbach, O. 2000. Slovnyk hovirky sela Brodyna (pov. Radivtsi,
Rumuniya) // Hutsul’s’ki hovirky: Linhvistychni ta etnolinhvistychni
doslidzhennya. L’viv.
Marcjanik, M. 2014. Słownik językowego savoir-vivre’u, Warszawa:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego.
Moklyak, O. I. 2015. Linhvoprahmatychni kharakterystyky ukrayins’kykh
afektonimiv. PhD Dissertation. Kyiv.
Musiyenko, V. P. 1992. Divchyno-rybchyno… Kul’tura slova 42. Kyiv.
Pipash, Y. Halas, B. 2005. Materialy do slovnyka hutsul’s’kykh hovirok
(Kosivs’ka Polyana i Rosishka Rakhivs’koho rayonu Zakarpats’koyi
oblasti). Uzhhorod.
Polyuha, L. M. 1984. Oy ty, divchyno, yasnaya zore! (Pro zvertannya do
kokhanoyi) // Kul’tura slova. 27: 70-73.
Shapovalova, Lyudmila I. 1979. Semanticheskaya struktura
standartizovannogo obrashcheniya. Vesn. Belarus. un-ta. Ser. 4.
Filalohiya, zhurnalistyka, pyedahohika, psikhalohiya 3: 46-51
Skab, M. S. 2002. Hramatyka apelyatsiyi v ukrayins’kiy movi:
Monohrafiya. Chernivtsi : Misto.
Skab, M. S. 2003. Prahmatyka apelyatsiyi v ukrayins’kiy movi. Chernivtsi:
Ruta.
292 Chapter 14
Skab, Marian S. 2006. Funktsional’na sfera apelyatsiyi u “Slovnyku

ukrayins’koyi movy”. Naukovyy visnyk Chernivets’koho universytetu
276-277: 180-185.
Skab, M. S. 2007. Kohnityvni osnovy vykorystannya leksemy dusha u
zvernenomu movlenni ukrayintsiv, in M. V. Skab, M. S. Skab, eds.
Aktual’ni problemy mentalinhvistyky: zb. statey za materialamy V
Mizhnar. nauk. konf. Cherkasy 25-28.
Skab, Marian S. 2008. Nominatsiyi adresata movlennya v hutsul’s’kykh
hovirkakh, in M. V. Skab, M. S. Skab, eds. Visnyk Prykarpats’koho
universytetu. Seriya: Filolohiya (movoznavstvo) 19-20: 69-72
Skab, M. V. 2008. Zakonomirnosti kontseptualizatsiyi ta movnoyi
katehoryzatsiyi sakral’noyi sfery: monohrafiya. Chernivtsi: Ruta
Solohub, N. M. 1992. Yak ukrayintsi nazyvayut’ kokhanykh. “Kul’tura
slova” no. 42. Kyiv.
SUM1 — Nimchuk, V. V. et. al., eds., 2012. Slovnyk ukrayins’koyi movy.
Kyiv: Prosvita.
SUM2 — Bilodid, I. K. . ed. 1970–1980. Slovnyk ukrayins’koyi movy: V
11-ty t. Kyiv: Naukowa dumka.
SUM3 — Rusanivs’kyy, V. M., ed. 2013–2017. Slovnyk ukrayins’koyi
movy: V 20-ty t. Kyiv.
Tlumachal’ny slownik byelaruskay movy. 1978. Vols 2. Minsk.
VTSSUM — Busel, V. T., ed. 2009. Velykyy tlumachnyy slovnyk
suchasnoyi ukrayins’koyi movy. Kyiv‒Irpin: Perun.
Yefremova, T. F. 2000. Novyy slovar’ russkogo yazyka. Tolkovo-
obrazovatel’nyy v 2 t. Moscow.
Zhehuts, I., Pipash, Y. 2001. Slovnyk hutsul’s’koho hovoru v Zakarpatti.
Myunkhen.
Summary
An analysis of the use of the lexeme душа “soul” and its derivatives that serve
as a form of address in Ukrainian texts of different styles indicates that Ukrainians
use the analyzed lexeme in two cases. First, it is used as a personified metaphor
when addressing the soul itself, which probably originates from the Bible, namely,
the Book of Psalms. Second, it is used when addressing one’s beloved, which is
recorded in Ukrainian dictionaries (e.g., the “Dictionary of the Ukrainian
Language”) and is actively discussed by linguists.
The use of the first type is practically deprived of axiology; however, when the
lexeme душа “soul” and its derivatives are used in contexts of the second type,
evaluative semantics comes to the foreground and forms the basis of the meaning
of the analyzed forms of address. In these cases, the extent and specificity of the
manifestation of axiological semantics are determined by the time of the text’s
creation, its style and genre, dialectal peculiarities and other linguistic and extra-
linguistic factors.
An interesting and promising area of research is the study of peculiarities of the
axiological content of the lexeme душа “soul” and its derivatives used in the
function of address in Ukrainian against the background of other Slavic and non-
Slavic languages.
Keywords: lexeme душа "soul" and its derivatives, address, forms of address in
speech, an axiological aspect of functioning, axiological semantics
CHAPTER 15
THE AXIOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF THE

UKRAINIAN CONCEPT ДУША/“SOUL”
MARIA SKAB
YURI FEDKOVYCH CHERNIVTSI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY,
UKRAINE
The soul, undoubtedly, is one of the basic notions of the sacred sphere,
since it is an element of faith of all religious trends. Therefore, perhaps, it
has been and still is actively studied by the world’s scholarly community,
by linguists in particular, in practically all Slavic and non-Slavic countries
(see, for example, Masłowska and Pazio-Wlazłowska 2016).
The objective of our long-term work (Skab 2008) has been to analyze
how the sacred sphere is conceptualized in the Ukrainian language based
on the semantic space of the lexeme душа “soul”, by analyzing changes in
the ways of categorizing or systematizing the meanings of words in the
language consciousness of Ukrainians. We have researched extensive
linguistic material obtained by the method of consecutive sampling from
the texts of Ukrainian belles-lettres, publicist and scientific works dating
from the time of the first written texts until the early twenty-first century.
In an attempt to make the study of the concept more objective by
formalizing the method of conceptual analysis, we use the notion of a
word’s semantic space, which has three directions: paradigmatic (the
development of its semantic structure starting with its primary
etymological meaning), word-building (the dynamics of the analyzed
word’s derivatives), and syntagmatic (its ability to combine with other
words). The functioning of the word’s semantics is conveniently described
as space, because, according to Gak:
The Axiological Dimension of the Ukrainian Concept душа/“Soul” 295
The development of the word's meaning or root can be manifested in the

language in three ways: 1) in the new meanings of the word itself; 2) in the
formation of its derivatives; 3) in the formation of phraseological units that
include the word. (Gak 1998, 694). 1
Thus, the semantic space of a word is the totality of its meanings that
function in language and speech and that is realized in all directions of its
semantic expansion.
The analysis of a word’s semantic space enables us to identify the
features of an object or phenomenon that are most relevant for the
speakers (reflected in their language worldview), since, also according to
Gak:
The same aspects of an object can be symbolized in all directions of the

development of the word’s meaning and root, that is, the original word
with a certain meaning, its derivatives and idioms can contain the same
elements of its inner form. (Gak 1998, 694)
In order to study the development of a word’s semantic space deeply

and comprehensively, we consider it necessary not only to analyze the
description of the semantic space in lexicographic works, but also to trace
a word’s use in all available written texts throughout the history of a
language from the beginning of the era of writing to this day. The
lexicographic outline of a word’s semantic structure does not make it
possible to determine the frequency of use of a particular meaning in the
language of a certain period, its presence in the texts of certain styles,
fluctuations in the active use of a particular space area, etc.
Let us start with the paradigmatic dimension. According to
etymological dictionaries, at the time of naming the word, душа “soul”
was used to denote the substance that God breathed into a person. The
“Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages” indicates that the word
душа “soul” is “derived from *duxъ with the suffix -j-a” (ESSYA 1978,
164). The “Ukrainian Etymological Dictionary” lists “proto-Sl. dušа
(<*dux-ja< *dhousiā);—related to Lith. dvasià “spirit, breath.” A similar
development of meaning can be found in Lat. anima “wind, breath”,
“soul”, in Gr. ψύχω “I breathe out, I blow”, ψυχή “soul” (ESUM: t. ІІ,
150). The “Slovene Etymological Dictionary” by Snoj states:
1 Quotes and dictionary definitions are translated by the author.

296 Chapter 15
The primary notion is “breathing”, the notional transition to “soul” is based

on the fact that breathing is the most significant sign of life, the presence of
the soul in the body. (Snoj 1997, 108)
Thus, as the inner form of the word indicates, the religious meaning was
primary.
As our observations show, various aspects of the religious meaning
served as the basis for the development of derivative meanings of new
words and phrasal units, as well as for various figurative instances of word
use, since "already in the earliest time, speech was conceived in
association with the pivotal semiotic opposition ‘sacred'—‘profane'
(Yavors'ka 1999, 18); see also (Gamkrelidze 1984, 476; Mezhzherina
2006, 19). In our opinion, this is also demonstrated by the evolution of the
semantic structure of the lexeme душа “soul” in the Bible and in folklore,
which had a significant influence on the functioning of the concept
ДУША/SOUL in the written period. Thus, in the first pages of the Holy
Scripture (Bibliya 1992) we read: “І створив Господь Бог людину з
пороху земного. І дихання життя вдихнув у ніздрі її,—і стала
людина живою душею” (Бут. 2:7)—“And the Lord God formed man of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7, Bible 1994). That is, the soul
is something that was breathed into the body by the will of God, дух
життя “the breath of life” (Gen. 6:17; 7:15).
Analysis of the language facts against the background of theological
literature makes it possible to identify the influence of Christianity on
peoples’ worldviews and to single out the most important elements of
religious beliefs registered in the language. This type of literature helps us
understand certain illogicalities in the language’s worldview. For example,
the “Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language” defines the religious meaning
the word душа “soul” as follows:
According to religious beliefs—an immortal immaterial foundation in a

person that constitutes the essence of their life is a source of psychic
phenomena and distinguishes them from an animal. (SUM: II, 445)
Although, as the language facts show, this definition does not correspond
to either folk or Christian concepts of the soul. As for the component “the
soul distinguishes a person from an animal”, Ukrainians preserve pagan
ideas concerning:
у вільному божому світі, непідлеглому нікому, „навіть самому

цареві”, усвіті прекрасного, божеського призначення, світі сонця й
радості, світі любові й терпимості, світі, де людина велика й поза

Божою волею недоторкана.., найменша билинка... має душу й мову,
свої радості й печалі (in the free world of God, not subordinate to
anybody, not “even to the king himself”, in the world of beauty, of divine
purpose, in the world of sun and joy, the world of love and tolerance, the
world where a person is great and intact outside the will of God…, the
tiniest speck … has its soul and its language, its joys and sorrows).
(Bahrianyi)
See also the saying пропав ні за цапову душу “perished for the soul of a
goat” (i.e., died in vain), the idioms заяча душа “the soul of a hare” (i.e., a
timid person), мишача душа “the soul of a mouse” (i.e., a fearful person),
з горобину душу “the soul of a sparrow” (i.e., very little of something),
etc. The explanation is found in “Законъ Божій” by Slobids’kyy, where
we read: “the soul is the life force of a person and of every living creature”
(Zakonъ Bozhіy 1994, 126). However, the human soul is glorified above
all else in this world and is an invaluable treasure.
According to Christian doctrine, the soul is responsible for thoughts,
feelings, and desires. Following Theophanes the Recluse (Zatvornik 1996,
27) in his “Законъ Божій”, S. Slobids’kyy divides all actions, or more
precisely, diverse and complex movements of the soul, into categories
(thoughts, feelings, and desires), noting that:
1. The organ of the body through which the soul performs its mental work
is the brain. 2. The central organ of feelings is considered to be the heart.
It is a measure of what we find pleasant or unpleasant... The heart is
naturally viewed as the centre of human life, the centre which contains
everything that enters the soul from without, and from which comes
everything that is revealed in the soul within. 3. Human desires are
controlled by the will, which has no material organ in our body, and the
tools to follow its orders are our members, driven by means of muscles and
nerves. (Slobids’kyy 2003, 126)
However:
body and soul—it is not yet the whole person, or rather—not a complete
person. There is something superior over body and soul—namely, the spirit
that often acts as a judge of soul and body and evaluates everything from
the special, superior viewpoint… The spirit is manifested in a person in
three forms: 1) the awe of God; 2) conscience; 3) the pursuit of God.
(Slobids’kyy 2003, p. 72)
298 Chapter 15
As Theophanes, the Recluse remarks, "the human soul makes us somewhat

superior to animals, and the spirit makes us somewhat inferior to angels"
(Zatvornik 1996, 49).
The religious meaning served as the basis for the formation of
figurative meanings. Since the soul was perceived as a source of psychic
manifestations, with the passing of time the word душа “soul” came to
denote “the inner psychic world of a person with their mood, experiences
and feelings” (SUM: t. II, 445). A. Wierzbicka calls this meaning
psychological (Wierzbicka 1990, 16).
In accordance with its purpose, the human soul has positive
characteristics. A person with a soul can never do bad things, offend, or
kill someone: Зовуть мене розбійником, Кажуть—розбиваю. Ще
нікого я не вбив, Бо й сам душу маю “The call me a highwayman, they
say I rob, but I haven’t yet killed anyone, because I myself have a soul”
(folklore). The attention of Ukrainians to their soul is reflected in the
proverbs Мила душа кождому “The soul is dear to everyone”; Милійша
душка, ніж телушка “The soul is dearer than the body”; Не той бідний,
хто хліба не має, а той, хто душі “He who has no bread is not poor, but
he who has no soul is”; and То чорт бідний—що душі нема “The devil is
poor because he has no soul” (folklore).
The very presence of the soul within a person implies positive moral
traits. Therefore, in folklore, one’s beloved is often called душа “soul”,
and even more often душка, душечка, душенька (forms of душа “soul”
with diminutive suffixes, which convey endearment). The use of the word
душа “soul” when addressing a friend or a beloved, that is, a person who
invokes sincere, good feelings in the speaker, could only arise on the
condition that the soul was perceived to be a set of positive human
qualities. Our ancestors believed that if you are a person and have a soul,
then you must be kind and sincere, love people, and help them.
To our ancestors, the soul and the spiritual were more important than
the body and the material—this is evidenced by the fact that our ancestors
equated the person and the soul. The word душа “soul” is used to mean “a
person”, especially when determining the number of people (SUM: t. II,
446): Зібралось нас душ сорок, посідлали вночі коней та й подалися
степами “We gathered forty souls, saddled our horses at night and rode
into the steppes” (folklore); У дядька мого Петра вилягло під голодовку
вісім душ сім’ї “Eight souls in my uncle Petro’s family died in the
famine” (folklore). The meaning “a person, an individual” is also
manifested in the idioms of biblical origin: жива душа “a living soul”
with the meaning “a person”, and ні (єдиної) душі “not a (single) soul” or
“absolutely no one”, cf.: Зійшов на гору, глянув—коли кругом ліс, степ
та могили і ні єдиної душі “Climbed the mountain, looked down—the

forest, the steppe and the graves, and not a single soul around” (folklore)
and ...але за цей час не бачили в цих краях ще ні одної живої людини
“… but not a single living person was seen in these parts for a while”
(folklore). From a cognitive point of view, this shows the superiority of the
value of the soul over the value of the body (as in the conceptual
component “the soul is the greatest value of a person”), which corresponds
to Christian beliefs; however, this idea may be pre-Christian, since it is
widely used in folklore.
As for the meaning “conscience”, which is registered by I. Sreznevskyi
(Sreznevskiy 1989) and in the “Dictionary of Old Ukrainian” (SSUM),
according to religious doctrine, conscience is the manifestation of a
person’s spirit (Slobids’kyy 2003, 72), but дух “spirit” and душа “soul”
are often not differentiated in everyday speech or even in specialized
theological literature, since, in a naive worldview, a person has two
components (see Slobids’kyy 2003, 70). In our opinion, the development
of this meaning shows that these notions were very important for the
Ukrainians of the tenth to fifteenth centuries.
The value of the soul is also confirmed by the fact that people often
swore by their soul: Щоб у мене душа так була! “By my own soul!” or
Дев’ять разів він присягнув на свою душу “Nine times he swore by his
soul" (folklore). The meaning "an oath, a vow" actualized the seme "what
a person values the most" (people usually swear by what they find most
valuable), which also reflected the Christian idea that the soul has a greater
value than the body, and that the soul was the basis of life values of
Ukrainian people at that time. We think that the fall of these meanings
from use (modern Ukrainian dictionaries do not cite them) reflects a
spiritual loss for society because it shows a devaluation of the human soul.
However, a peculiar compensation for the loss is the development of
the figurative meaning “the main point, the essence of something; // the
central figure of something” (SUM: t. ІІ, 446), which, according to our
card index, was widespread in Ukrainian literature in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries (Ви душа нашого товариства; ви богиня!
“You are the soul of our company, you are a goddess!” (І. Nechui-
Levytskyi); Пам’ятаєте, як ви були душею гуртка нашого? “Do you
remember when you were the soul of our circle?” (Lesia Ukrainka). Here,
the foreground seme is “the most important, the most essential.”
The word-building direction of the semantic expansion of the word
душа “soul” also registers the extraordinary value of the human soul and
its superiority to the body in the composite phrase душа-людина “a very
good person”, in the adjectives бездушний “having no soul; having no
300 Chapter 15
humane feelings, heartless, cruel” (SUM: t. I, 127) and душевний

"sincere, candid, cordial; kind, compassionate (of a person)" (SUM: t. II,
447). As we can see, this clearly registers the conceptual feature "the soul
is the source of kindness and humaneness.”
The syntagmatic dimension is manifested in set expressions; positive
characteristics of the soul are most clearly observed in the expression
мати душу “to have a soul”—“to be kind, decent, honest.”
Thus, throughout the history of use of the word душа “soul”, when it
comes to the human soul in general, the Ukrainian language describes the
human soul as having positive characteristics.
However, there is another aspect of the axiological characteristics of
the human soul. God created a human being as an individual, as a person
with their own will and freedom of choice. No wonder, then, that the word
душа “soul” in the texts is often used with possessive pronouns моя “my”,
твоя “your”, його “his”, її “her” and possessive adjectives (e.g., Маріїна,
Андрієва, etc.—expressed in English by the possessive case of a noun:
Maria’s, Andrew’s, etc.). That is why the adjectives describing moral traits
of specific people, which are used with the word душа “soul” in its
religious and psychological meanings as well as with the meanings “a set
of traits and qualities of a certain person” and “a human being as a person
with certain traits and qualities”, are usually evaluative and outline two
poles: positive and negative.
We want to pay special attention to adjectives that serve as attributes of
the word душа “soul” in folklore (as a work of collective creativity of
people), where the religious meaning prevails. The positive pole is usually
represented by the lexemes чиста "pure", which can have two meanings:
"the opposite of hellspawn" (Чи ти чиста, чи нечиста сила?—Я чиста
душа...—підхопився хлопець “Are you heaven’s kindred or hell
spawn?—I’m a pure soul… —the boy jumped up”) and “sinless” (Будь,
сину, завжди чистим душею, чесним перед самим собою і
односельцями “My son, always be pure in your soul, be honest to
yourself and your fellow villagers”); непорочна “chaste” (А напереді, як
непорочна душа перед Богом, стоїть біла, як сніг, струнка
печерська дзвіниця “And in front stands the graceful snow-white bell-
tower, like a chaste soul before God”); невинна “innocent” (То його за
невинну дитячу душу Бог покарав “God punished him for the innocent
child’s soul”); добра “kind” (В нашої баби добрая душа “Our grandma
has a kind soul”). The negative pole is usually represented by the
adjectives нечиста “impure” (Я не тому злякалася, що ти якась
нечиста душа, а з несподіванки—як ти сюди потрапив? “I wasn’t
scared because you were an impure soul, but because it was so sudden—
how did you get here?”); чорна “black” (although it is not in opposition to
білий “white”; the expression *біла душа “white soul” is not used, and
чорна means “dirty”): the soul becomes black from the sins that stain it
(Душа чорна, мов у ченця ряса “a soul as black as the cassock of a
monk”; Чорну душу милом не відмиєш “A black soul cannot be cleaned
with soap”). This combination shows a negative evaluation, since, in many
cultures, black symbolizes the Netherworld, due to the conceptual
connection with darkness, night, and the unknown (e.g., “in Western
culture, black is prototypically associated with evil and white—with
good... An angel is white, and the devil is black” (Kalisz)). The negative
pole is also represented by грішна “sinful” (Хай небо спопелить наші
грішні душі! “Let heaven burn our sinful souls to ashes!”), etc. The
attributes чистий “pure” and нечистий “impure” are conceptually very
important for the expression of the sacred part of the concept
ДУША/SOUL. According to Caillois:
The categories of pure and impure do not primarily define moral

antagonism, but religious polarity. They play the same role in the world of
the sacred as the notions of good and evil play in the world of the profane.
(Kayua 2003, 52)
Thus, the attributes of the word душа “soul” in its religious meaning
mostly reflect Christian concepts of the soul. The quality of the soul
depends on the actions performed by a person (if they do good deeds, as a
person should, then their soul is evaluated positively; if they are evil or do
bad deeds, then their soul is evaluated negatively by folk morals).
Since the religious meaning is primary, this evaluation expanded into
attributes used with other meanings. From this point of view, of interest is
the material found in the “Dictionary of Ukrainian Epithets” by Bybyk,
Yermolenko and Pustovit (1998), where the epithets are cited only for two
meanings of the lexeme душа “soul”: “traits of character, inner, mental
state of a person” and “of a human being as a person with certain
qualities” (no attributes of the religious meaning are given). The authors
singled out three groups of epithets: “about positive qualities of the soul”
(sixty-seven units); “about negative qualities of the soul” (seventy-one
units) and “about temperament, strength of a feeling; about the nature of
human experiences” (108 units); the epithets in the third group, apparently,
based on the names of the first two groups, do not have any distinct
evaluative meaning.
Among the epithets in the category “about positive qualities of the
soul” (Bybyk, Yermolenko, and Pustovit 1998, 121), we find adjectives
associated with the presence of life energy (жива “living”), the sky and
302 Chapter 15
luminaries (ангельська “of an angel”, небесна “heavenly”, світла “light”,

свята “holy”, яскрава “bright”, ясна “clear”), size, usually large (велика
“big”, велична “majestic”, висока “elevated”, глибока “deep”, широка
“wide”, переповнена “overflowing”), nobility and beauty (благородна
“noble”, шляхетна “noble”, гарна “beautiful”, прекрасна “great”,
чудова “wonderful”, золота “golden”), kindness and tenderness (лагідна
“gentle”, добра “kind”, любляча “loving”, м’яка “soft”), sincerity and
frankness (щира “sincere”, відверта “frank”, відкрита “open”,
довірлива “trusting”, ніжна “tender”, чуйна “compassionate”, тепла
“warm”), sensitivity (витончена “exquisite”), amiability (привітна
“amiable”, дружелюбна “friendly”), loyalty (вірна “loyal”, надійна
“reliable”), honesty (чесна “honest”, правдива “truthful”, пряма
“straightforward”, праведна “righteous”), strength, sturdiness, and health
(міцна “sturdy”, могутня “mighty”, сильна “strong”, гартована
“hardened”, тверда “firm”, самовіддана “selfless”, здорова “health”,
богатирська “heroic”, козацька “Cossack”, лицарська “chivalrous”),
and the absence of negative qualities (чиста “pure”, безгрішна “sinless”,
безхитрісна “free of cunning”, безхмарна “cloudless”; незлостива “free
of anger”, непідкуплена “incorruptible”, непорочна “chaste”). Both of the
adjectives складна “complex” and проста “simple” are used as positively
evaluated epithets of the word душа “soul”; the latter refers to a person
free of tricks, cunning, or secret thoughts. Interestingly, the adjectives
українська “Ukrainian” and християнська “Christian” also fall under
epithets denoting positive qualities, probably because they are centered on
our own national attributes.
The epithets that characterize “negative qualities of the soul” (Bybyk,
Yermolenko, and Pustovit 1998, 122) are associated with the absence of
life energy (мертва “dead”, напівмертва “half-dead”, гнила “rotten”,
камінна “stone”), sensitivity (глуха “deaf”, сліпа “blind”, осліпла
“blind”, німа “mute”, безголоса “voiceless”, черства “callous”, згрубіла
“coarsened”, холодна “cold”, мерзла “frozen”), moral norms (аморальна
“amoral”), small or the wrong size (маленька “small”, дрібна “tiny”,
коротка “short”, легковажна “careless”, крива “crooked”, обмежена
“limited”, однобічна “one-sided”), the absence or lack of certain qualities
(порожня “empty”, пуста “empty”, бідна “poor”, вбога “poor”, витліла
“withered”), sins that stain and blacken the soul (грішна “sinful”, брудна
“dirty”, каламутна “muddy”, нечиста “impure”, чорна “black”, сіра
“gray”, сутінкова “twilight”, темна “dark”), and in particular, venality
(підкуплена “corruptible”, підла “vile”, підступна “insidious”,
продажна “corrupt”), cowardice (боязка “cowardly”), greed (жадібна
“greedy”), laziness (ледача “idle”), villainy (зла “evil”, злочинна
“criminal”), cunning (хитра “sly”), weakness (слабка “weak”, охляла

“feeble”), and others.
However, in our opinion, it is very important to consider not only the
presence, but also the frequency of use of a certain expression in the
language. Thus, according to the “Ukrainian Dictionary of the Associative
Attributes of Nouns” by Butenko, one of the frequent attributes of the
word душа “soul” that is characteristic of the Ukrainian language is the
epithet добра “kind”, since kindness is one of the most important qualities
of the soul (the derivative adjective *dobrъ is best known in its general
evaluative meanings on the scale of “good” or “positive”; Lilich 2002,
262). Incidentally, in the above-mentioned dictionary by Butenko, the
attributes of the word душа “soul” are given in the following order:
ДУША/SOUL (715)—добра (kind) 164, чиста (pure) 59, щира (sincere)

42, лагідна (gentle), чесна (honest) 36, ніжна (tender) 33, зла (evil) 31,
відкрита (open) 24, весела (jolly) 23, чуйна (compassionate) 21, черства
(callous) 20, приємна (pleasant) 18, ласкава (tender) 17, хороша (good)
16, доброзичлива (benevolent) 14, добросовісна (conscientious), погана
(bad) 10, м’яка (soft) 9, справедлива (fair), холодна (cold) 8, тепла
(warm) 7, велика (big), щедра (generous) 6, золота (golden), красива
(beautiful), скромна (modest), співчутлива (compassionate), чутлива
(sensitive) 5, світла (light) 4, відважна (courageous), вільна (free),
кам’яна (stone), легковажна (careless), поетична (poetic), совісна
(conscientious), широка (wide), щаслива (happy) 3, байдужа
(indifferent), гарна (beautiful), залізна (iron), людяна (humane),
потаємна (secret), скритна (secret), спокійна (calm), темна (dark) 2,
безсмертна (immortal), брудна (dirty), відверта (frank), дівоча
(maiden), дорога (dear), емоційна (emotional), життєрадісна (jovial),
людська (human), мала (small), мертва (dead), мила (dear), морська (of
the sea), негрішна (sinless), недобра (wicked), неспокійна (restless),
нетлінна (imperishable), правдива (truthful), прекрасна (great), проста
(simple), противна (disgusting), смілива (brave), стривожена (worried),
таємнича (mysterious), терпляча (patient), ясна (clear) 1. (Butenko
1989, 93)
The data from the associative dictionary are also confirmed by our card
index of the works of Ukrainian literature.
Therefore, we disagree with Holubovs’ka, who states that Ukrainian
idiomatic expressions with the component душа “soul” are specialized in
“expressing negative emotions” (Holubovs’ka 2002, 42), and who
believes:
This may be another argument in favour of the recognition of Ukrainian

кордоцентризм (a philosophy centred on the heart), a special Ukrainian
304 Chapter 15
emotional character, which the tragic fate of Ukraine mainly determines

through negative sensitivity. (Holubovs’ka 2002, 42)
According to our observations, the frequency of use of expressions with

negative evaluation in Ukrainian texts is low, although the expressions
themselves are diverse and prevail in number. We think that a great desire
for spiritual balance and a Christian attitude towards one another caused
the presence of a significant number of negative epithets because it is
common knowledge that:
People perceive the interfering negative aspects of being much more

poignantly than the positive factors, which facilitate comfort and are
usually regarded as natural, normal, and therefore generating much less
emotion. (Cherepanova 1996, 90)
Everything negative is registered in the language with more detail, more

diligently, more diversely, and therefore the words with negative
evaluation—since there are more of them—divide the worldview
continuum into smaller sections, that is, more precisely (Maslova 2001,
187).
We think that Holubovs’ka’s observations are based on data obtained
from dictionaries, since all the idiomatic expressions she mentions are
cited in the “Dictionary of Ukrainian Idioms” (SFUM), and the negative
ones indeed prevail among them, but the frequency of use of these
expressions in Ukrainian texts is very low. (Based on observation, in the
works of Honchar, only one-third of the micro-contexts with the lexeme
душа “soul” reflect negative emotions; Malakhova observed the same in
the works of Samiylenko:
Although the means of expressing emotions with negative connotations are

more diverse and multifaceted, language units with positive emotional
colouring... prevail in number, their frequency of use is higher. (Malakhova
2005, 154)
Khramova also points out the tendency towards positive expression among
Ukrainians: “Ukrainian collective unconscious is positive through and
through” (Khramova 1992, 10).
We believe that it is important to take into consideration the frequency
of use of certain expressions when looking for differences in the language
worldviews of various Slavic nations. It is obvious that the language
worldviews of the Slavs will be very similar in the aforementioned
fragment because their countries are Christian and the consciousness of
native speakers is formed by Christianity. The differences, therefore, must

be sought in the frequency of use of certain expressions. For instance, the
Polish associative dictionary (Gawarkiewicz, Pietrzyk, and Rodziewicz
2008, 46-47) cites the expression czysta dusza “pure soul” as the most
frequent. The Ukrainian associative dictionary first cited добра душа
“kind soul” (Butenko 1989), and then later чиста душа “pure soul”
(Martinek 2007, 115–116). The Russian associative dictionary (RAS) cited
широкая душа “wide soul.”
Thus, all directions of the semantic expansion of the word душа
"soul"—the development of the word's semantic structure, derivation from
the analyzed word and its ability to combine with other words—
characterize the human soul as a material and spiritual essence with
distinct positive evaluation. The axiological conceptual feature "the soul is
the epicentre of positive traits of a person, especially of goodness" is
crucial, because the soul carries ethical evaluation, which is given based
on the conformity of thoughts, desires, intentions, and actions of a person
to moral standards or paragons (in particular, following God's Ten
Commandments); this feature largely defines the general context of the
concept's functioning. This confirms the opinion of Eliade, who wrote:
Secular existence never happens in its pure form. Whatever the degree of
de-sacralization of the world, a person who chose the secular way of life
cannot completely get rid of religious behaviour… even the most secular
existence preserves the traces of the religious evaluation of the world.
(Eliade 2000, 261)
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davn’oyevreys’koyi ta hrets’koyi na ukrayins’ku nanovo perekladena.
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Summary
The study of the semantic space of the Ukrainian lexeme душа “soul” shows
that the characteristic of the soul as a material and spiritual essence with a clearly
expressed positive evaluation is the main one in all directions. The lexeme душа
308 Chapter 15
“soul” is the name of the cognominal concept, which is understood as the totality
of all its meanings that function in language and speech that are realized in all
directions of its semantic expansion: paradigmatic—expanding the semantic
structure of the word, word-building—derivation from the word under analysis,
and syntagmatic—its combinability with other words. Development of the
semantic structure of the word reflects this in the rethinking of the primary
religious meaning (“the immaterial, immortal spiritual foundation of a person”)
through psychological meaning (“the inner world of a person”) into the meaning of
“conscience”, “an oath, a vow”, “of a person with excellent character traits.”
Word-building demonstrates this through the use of the lexemes душка, душечка,
душенька (the derivative forms of душа “soul” with diminutive suffixes) to
address one’s beloved, as in the composite word-combination душа-людина “a
very good person”, or the adjective бездушний “having no soul; cruel, indifferent,
uncaring”; the syntagmatic direction shows it in the expression мати душу “to be
kind, decent, honest.” The axiological conceptual feature "the soul is an epicentre
of the positive traits of a person" has been defining throughout the whole period of
the lexeme's use.
When we speak of an individual human soul, the attributes of the word душа
"soul" are clearly divided into two groups: positive character traits and negative
character traits of a person. Their evaluation depends on the conformity of the
person's behaviour to Christian moral and ethical values.
Keywords: lexeme душа “soul”, concept ДУША/SOUL, paradigmatic,

syntagmatic and word-building directions in the development of the concept’s
semantics, axiological conceptual feature
CHAPTER 16
ADJECTIVES DERIVATIVE FROM THE DUSZA

‘SOUL’ LEXEME IN THE LIGHT OF
CONTEMPORARY SYNONYMOUS WORDS
IWONA BURKACKA
16.1. Introduction
The word dusza ‘soul’, which derives from duch ‘spirit’ (see
Grzegorczykowa 2006, 24-25, 2012 (1999, 2005), 273-277) is an
incredibly important element used for describing the condition of a human
being, his qualities, psychology, spirituality and in general being a human.
The soul is quite often pictured as being in opposition to the body, with
which it forms a dual human nature. Combined with the spirit it is
responsible for a non-material sphere of life and creates a triad – spirit,
soul and psyche (see Czaja 2005, Duch 1999, Grzegorczykowa 2012
(1999, 2005)). For that particular reason the majority of lexicographical
descriptions list two basic meanings of the word, 1 a totality of
psychological dispositions and a non-material element bringing the human
body to life. The soul is also metaphorically referred to as a part of spirit
enclosed in a human body or a spirit limited to a single human body
(Grzegorczykowa 2006, 24-25). The etymological, semantic and
anthropological connections between the words soul and spirit are
common for Slavic languages which tend to identify the individual’s soul
with spirit (Grzegorczykowa 2006, 2012 (1999, 2005), 280).
1 The dusza ‘soul’ lexeme has from a couple to tens of meanings depending on the
dictionary. For example, Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego (henceforth
referred to as USJP) lists 6 meanings while Praktyczny słownik współczesnej
polszczyzny (henceforth referred to as PSWP) lists as many as 14.
310 Chapter 16
The dusza ‘soul’ lexeme is the basis of many derivatives, which

indicates the importance of the term itself (see Nagórko 2012, 1). A large
number of derivatives and a long history of their use suggests they are an
important part of the way the language describes the world (Maćkiewicz
1999, Karpiłowska 2007). In this group of words, compounds and
derivatives form 75 per cent of the root's content 2 as per Słownik gniazd
słowotwórczych współczesnego języka ogólnopolskiego (henceforth
referred to as SGS). Compound adjectives such as wielkoduszny
‘magnanimous’, małoduszny ‘ungenerous’, prostoduszny ‘ingenious’,
dobroduszny ‘good-natured’ are notable, as well as an adjective created
from a prepositional form without soul, bezduszny ‘soulless’, and
derivatives created on the basis of these, hence wielkoduszność
‘magnanimousness’, wielkodusznie ‘magnanimously’, małoduszność ‘moral
cowardice’, małodusznie ‘ungenerously’, dobroduszność ‘good-
naturedness’, dobrodusznie ‘good-naturedly’, prostoduszność
‘ingenuousness’, prostodusznie ‘ingenuously’, bezduszność ‘soullessness’,
bezdusznie ‘soullessly’. These are the only adjectives deriving from the
word dusza ‘soul’ that one can find in contemporary Polish dictionaries.
According to Aleksandra Niewiara, the second part of the compound
(prosto-, dobro-) determines the axiological markedness (Niewiara 2015,
295). She also directs our attention to the links between the concepts of
soul and heart, “in the Polish language we have both the assessment – a
magnanimous man – as well as its descriptive form – a man of big heart”.
(Niewiara 2015, 295)
16.2. Word building characteristics
The derivation of the root DUSZA ‘SOUL’ (see Burkacka 2016) built
around the lexeme ‘soul’ meaning 1) an overall psychological disposition
of a human being, 2) an immaterial, spiritual element bringing a human
body to life, or 3) a peasant, a feudal servant, 3 aims to form linguistic
structures with other words. The basic root which only includes dictionary
content (recorded in SGS) is mainly built of compound words (20
derivatives) and their derivatives (19 elements, see Burkacka 2016, 339-
2 It is worth noting that the root does not include all the synchronously motivated
derivatives (see Burkacka 2016, Nagórko 2012, 205). Including the text content
doesn’t lessen the statement – derivatives from the soul lexeme aim to form
compounds (see Burkacka 2016).
3 This meaning is a generalization of the first and second meanings (see
Grzegorczykowa 2012 (1999, 2005), 280).

Adjectives derivative from the Soul Lexeme in the Light 311
of Contemporary Synonymous Words
342). Even the root of the only verb in the whole group, duszpasterzować
(literally ‘to shepherd the souls') is a derivative of the words ‘soul' and
‘shepherd'. A large number of derivatives of the root SOUL, usually quite
old but still present in literary works, suggests the importance of the ‘soul'
lexeme in name-giving processes and in the way the world is perceived. Its
use in contemporary Polish indicates its continued need, not having been
replaced by new words. It is worth mentioning that the adjectives we’re
discussing are typical for a certain type of narrative and are rarely present
in contemporary everyday language, which does not revolve around
spirituality. It’s also observed that including textual content from many
different sources (including the Internet) has no effect on the word
building process, compound forms are still dominant (see Burkacka 2016,
341-342).
The importance of the adjectives used to describe the elements of the
world we have mentioned, as well as the fact that they have been present
in the language for a long time, does not, however, make it easy to point
out direct links between the word soul and its derivatives, not to mention
the durability of the methods of conceptualization. This is due to the fact
that most of these constructions are now onomasiological 4 derivatives,
which means that their connection with the root word is metaphorical and
not obvious, therefore requiring a certain knowledge of the surrounding
world. It is often necessary to gain insight into secondary meanings or to
include cultural information, which is why pinpointing the contemporary
motivation for some of them is not as obvious as it would seem. This paper
follows SGS's explanation that the adjectives wielkoduszny (magnanimous,
but literally ‘having big soul’) and małoduszny (ungenerous, but literally
‘having small soul’) were formed from a noun dusza (soul) and the
adjectives wielki (big) and mały (small). There is, however, a different
4 These derivatives are sometimes considered as unmotivated in a synchronous
sense (cf. Kaproń-Charzyńska 2015, 308-309) or as derivatives without full

motivation or derivatives with associative motivation (hence another term,
‘associative derivatives’, Grzegorczykowa, Puzynina 1979, 21-22, Grzegorczykowa,
Puzynina 1998, 362, 370, Nagórko 2002, 176). Their motivation is metaphorical,
often indicating the secondary features of the denotation of a name
(Grzegorczykowa, Puzynina 1979, 22, Nagórko 2002, 173). These features may
have been of great importance to humans in the past (e.g., in hunting the
capercaillie is deaf while turning, the washing properties of soapstone, the
appearance of stonecrop or white orchid), and today they are known to people with
specialist knowledge. The existence of such derivatives is often treated as an
example of the functioning of the transitional zone between diachrony and
synchrony (cf. Nagórko 2002, 174).
312 Chapter 16
interpretation, USJP points out the link between the adjectives

wielkoduszny and małoduszny with the noun duch (spirit). In this case, we
get wielkoduszny (literally ‘big-spirited’) and małoduszny (literally ‘small-
spirited’). Undoubtedly the formal similarity between the dusza (soul) and
duch (spirit) and the fact that the word dusza stems from the word duch
(Grzegorczykowa 2012 (1999, 2005), 271-275) does not make pointing
out its root any easier (see Burkacka 2016), especially since both words
share meanings in the non-physical, psychological and spiritual spheres.
The existence of the phrases człowiek wielkiej duszy (literally ‘a man of
big soul’) noted in USJP5 and człowiek małej duszy (literally ‘a man of
small soul’) indicates the relation to the noun dusza (soul).
It’s worth noting that in contemporary Polish there is a commonly
used 6 simple adjective formed from the prepositional construction
bezduszny (literally ‘without soul’) in which the semantic link with soul is
less apparent. Therefore it's also onomasiological7 derivative. Derivatives
formed in that particular way are seen as simple derivatives (see Kallas
1998, 499) rather than as forming a whole new group (Grzegorczykowa,
Puzynina 1998, 451-452), although their construction is more complex
than that of similar structures containing the base and the formants, e.g.,
dom-ek (‘little house’, formed from dom, ‘house’), koc-(i) (‘cat’, formed
from kot, ‘cat’), dyrektor-(ować) (‘to manage’, formed from dyrektor,
‘director’), anty-kobiec-(y) (‘anti-feminist’, formed from kobieta,
‘woman’), or mięcho (‘meat’, formed from mięso, ‘meat’).
16.3. Sources, the aim of the paper and methodology
The subjects of this paper are the compound adjectives wielkoduszny,

małoduszny, prostoduszny, dobroduszny and a simple adjective formed
from the prepositional construction bez duszy – bezduszny – as well as
their derivatives (wielkoduszność, wielkodusznie, małoduszność,
małodusznie, dobroduszność, dobrodusznie, prostoduszność, prostodusznie,
bezduszność, bezdusznie) but also their lexicographical meanings, the links
between them and their synonyms listed in modern dictionaries. We also
5 The merger of the great soul is recorded by Renata Grzegorczykowa, “the ‘great
soul’ in the ‘weak body’ ” (Grzegorczykowa 2012 (1999, 2005), 281), also Dys
(also a good soul).
6 The use of the adjective sultry in the sense that refers to the soul is essentially
limited to religious texts.

7 On lack of use of the -ow(y) suffix and other derivative opportunities see
Burkacka (2016, 338).

analyze the hypernyms of the adjectives listed above and their derivatives.
The selection of the source material revolving around human qualities and
behaviours is motivated by an attempt to discover the qualities in the
derivatives that are connected with the soul in modern usage.
The following dictionaries were used as source material for the
synonyms, hypernyms, the information on links between them and their
meanings used in this paper:
― Słownik języka polskiego, Doroszewski 1958-1968 (henceforth

referred to as, SJPD).
― Słownik języka polskiego, Szymczak 1978 (henceforth referred to
as SJPSz).
― Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego, Dubisz 2003 (henceforth
referred to as USJP).
― Praktyczny słownik współczesnej polszczyzny, Zgółkowa 1994-
2005 (henceforth referred to as PSWP).
― Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Żmigrodzki 2007 (henceforth
referred to as WSJP).
― Słownik języka polskiego PWN (henceforth referred to as SJP).
― Słownik synonimów, Dąbrówka, Geller, Turczyn 1995 (henceforth
referred to as SS).
― Słownik wyrazów bliskoznacznych, Skorupka 1986 (henceforth,
SWB).8
― Dystynktywny słownik synonimów, Nagórko, Łaziński, Burkhardt
2004 (henceforth referred to as Dys)
― Wielki słownik wyrazów bliskoznacznych PWN, M. Bańko 2010.
The paper uses the synchronous characterization (in its classical form:
Grzegorczykowa, Puzynina 1979, Grzegorczykowa, Laskowski, Wróbel
(ed.) 1998, Skarżyński 1999, and a slightly modified one, Nagórko 2002)
as well as the root methodology (see Jadacka 2001; Skarżyński 1999, 153-
194; Skarżyński 2003) and the terminology used therein, i.e., derivative,
compound word, simple derivative, word-creating root. It also refers to
works on language describing the surrounding world (Karpiłowska 2007,
Maćkiewicz 1999) and a philological method of comparative analysis of
lexicographical descriptions.
The listed terms are used in the following meaning, hypernym – a word
with a broad meaning constituting a category into which words with more
8 Mean-hearted is not listed, but soulless is.

314 Chapter 16
specific meanings fall, a superordinate9 (Markowski 2012, 111), synonym

– a word or phrase that means exactly10 or nearly the same thing11 but is
not identical 12 with another word or phrase in the same language
(Markowski 2012, 102-103). By synonyms we understand units differing
in both secondary and tertiary meanings and their arrangement (in
Markowski’s terms described as ‘closer’ synonyms), as well as the degree
of intensity of the transmitted content and stylistic and expressive
character, and also in part in the scope of use (Markowski 2012, 104),
which is often typical for adjectives.
16.4. Source content analysis
We may start the analysis by looking at the dictionary definitions of

the output composite adjectives and the adjective derived from the
prepositional phrase. It should be added here that pinpointing the meaning
of adjectival adjectives is extremely difficult, which is evident both in
lexicographic practice and in word-formation works (cf. Grzegorczykowa
2010a and 2010b13, 53-55). Usually, the definitions are quite general and
indicate a relationship with the basis, for example, ‘mouse', "referring to
the mouse, characteristic of the mouse", only in connection with the noun
brings a semantic concretion, e.g., a mouse-like colour. Although, as
described by Renata Grzegorczykowa, “certain types of relations,
9 In general dictionaries, a hypernym is related to the selection of the genus

proximum as an element of a definition (cf. Bańko 2001, 111-122). The problem of
categorization also occurs in synonym or synonymous dictionaries.
10 Contextual synonyms are omitted here.
11 I omit the issues regarding the determination of the limits of synonymy (degree
of interchangeability and levels of reference) and its various types (complete,

incomplete, and total which allows for the separation of absolute or partial
synonyms, cf. Markowski 2012, 104-106, Mika, Pluskota, Świetlin 1998, Polański
1999, 580), as well as the division by construction, e.g., synopses (in the spelling
sense) and multi-word (phraseological). In my work, the subjects of the description
were all words and expressions recognized by editors or authors of dictionaries as
synonymous. The name of the dictionary (synonym dictionary or thesaurus) was
also not taken into account due to the marketing nature of the name (for detailed
information on capturing synonyms and synonyms, see P. Żmigrodzki 2003, 171-
186).
12 As per Kazimierz Polański’s definition, "words or phrases with the identical or
similar meaning" (Polański 1999, 580, slogan, synonyms (synonymous words).

13 In both works, the researcher invokes a rich literature on the problems of
describing the meanings of adjectival adjectives.

contained in the semantic potential of these adjectives, often implemented

in texts, are perpetuated in the memory of the speakers as defined types of
meanings and should be recorded in dictionaries. They could be treated
from the theoretical side as potentials in the system, and they are updated
and stabilized in the lexical norm,” (Grzegorczykowa 2010a, 155). In
addition to the intrinsic meaning in the sense of ‘related to what the base
implies’ there is often a portable meaning that condenses the content.
These surplus meanings of the adjective, as Grzegorczykowa points out,
may result from the ambiguity of the noun that is the basis or from the
appearance of unpredictable metaphorical meanings (Grzegorczykowa
2010a, 155). The researcher’s findings related to simple adjective
derivatives, so they can be directly referred to the adjective ‘soulless’. I
believe, however, that they are also worth recalling in the context of
complex adjectives, e.g., the metaphorical basis for expressions evoking a
‘small soul’ or a ‘great soul’ is visible at first glance and undoubtedly
influences the sense of adjectives derived from them. Paraphrites, or more
precisely periphery word-forming adjectives,14 such as good-natured and
simple-minded have a similar character.
According to the description contained in the SJPD and SSJPSZ,
dobroduszny ‘good-natured’ refers to “having a mild, kind disposition,
expressing gentleness, having a gentle aura, gentle, honest.” The definition
included in WSJP, divided into two sub-assignments, one referring to a
human being and another given in context with the noun ‘smile’ (sign or
expression of having such a disposition), contains one more element,
honesty (WSJP, 1a, a man “characterized by a gentle disposition, sincerity
and kindness”, 1b, a smile “proving that someone is characterized by a
gentle temper, honesty and kindness”). This goodness, kindness,
gentleness and honesty can sometimes lead to naïveté, lack of distance,
which is reflected in the definition contained in Dys, “kind, gentle, honest
but also naïve and even devoid of criticism.”
The structure of the word wielkoduszny ‘magnanimous’, similarly to
the structure of dobroduszny ‘good-natured’, contains in the second
element the adjective basis essential for the meaning of the word. This
element of meaning is reflected in the definition, “characterized by the
14The derivational periphery has a broader meaning than the word-formation

paraphrase (“a kind of description, and thus something like a substitute definition”)
and is often used in the analysis of derivatives without full motivation (Nagórko
2002, 176, see also. Grzegorczykowa, Puzynina 1979, 22). In the word-formation
paraphrase, the word-formation base exists as an extra-definitional element
(Grzegorczykowa, Puzynina 1998, 371).
316 Chapter 16
great qualities of the spirit, nobility, forbearance, being an expression, a

symptom of these virtues, magnanimous,” (SJPD and SJPSz). It is also
worth emphasizing that the descriptions in other dictionaries include, apart
from magnanimity, also features such as good heart and kindness, compare
Dys, “It is someone who has a very good heart, who is on the weaker side,
(…) gives something else of his own will (that gift can be forgiveness,
trust, help)”, PSWP, “one who shows a good heart, grace and generosity,
is friendly and kindly disposed, benevolent.”
The meaning of the adjective ‘simple-minded’ carries an ambiguous
assessment, on the one hand, it indicates openness, honesty, simplicity and
good-naturedeness, but on the other, credulity and naïveté (PSWP to some
extent), compare, “characterized by simplicity, good-natured, gullible,
naïve, open, honest” (SJPSz). Sometimes excessive honesty and openness
are associated with naïveté, which is also emphasized by the presence in
the definition of a synonymous adjective, ‘good-natured', the meaning of
which is combined with naïveté.
In the definitions of two further adjectives, attention is drawn to the
presence of words that name negative human traits:
– mean-hearted, timid, cowardly, incapable of assuming

responsibility at the time of need (SJPDor, SJPSz), lacking civil
courage (PSWP, to assume responsibility for something), incapable
of noble deeds, unable to forgive, also proving of such traits (SJP).
– soulless, a) having an insensitive, ruthless (SJPSz, PSWP,
indifferent) attitude towards the world, b) expressing such a
relationship, insensitive, ruthless (USJP).15
In the light of the definitions mentioned, the soul is connected with

courage, the ability to perform noble deeds. If the soul is small, then man
is cowardly and timid, and if a man behaves as if he has no soul, he is
insensitive and ruthless. The presence of the soul also provides sensitivity
to surroundings, to the other person (see the heartless characterized by an
“indifferent attitude to the environment”, the kind-hearted or ‘kind’, the
magnanimous, “generous, forgiving”). The initial component – wielk(i)
‘great’, dobr(y) ‘good’, prost(y) ‘simple’ and mał(y) ‘small’ – also
influences the meaning of the referred adjectives. The first and last of
these can be put in the sequence of words indicating graduated quantities.
The words large (big) and small are opposites and the only example of
15 In SJPD, the meaning of this adjective is not listed.

them forming pairs within expressions are, a wielka litera ‘capital letter’
(literally big letter) and a mała litera ‘lowercase letter’ (literally small
letter). The remaining adjectives, dobry ‘good’ and mały ‘simple’, do not
enter into the relationship of broadly understood opposition.
The connectivity of the examined adjectives points to contexts
referring to a person, a part of his body thanks to which a given feature can
be seen, and actions that testify to having a certain attribute:
– dobroduszny ‘good-natured’: man, smile, laughter, face, irony,

teacher, also with negative nouns, goof, shirker (Dys).
– wielkoduszny ‘magnanimous’: man, deed, proposal, initiative,
decision, approach, conduct, forgiveness, gesture, smile, word,
look, fate (WSS).
– prostoduszny ‘simple-minded’: man, boy, woman, old man, girl,
mind, belief in something, honesty.
– małoduszny ‘mean-hearted’: man, commander, boss, person.
– bezduszny ‘soulless’: man, bureaucrat, official, face, rules, rules,
law, attitude (to people or work).
It is worth paying attention to the links between the adjective mean-

hearted and nouns naming superiors (commander, boss) and the adjective
soulless with nouns referring to the office (clerk, bureaucrat) and legal or
social regulations (law, regulations, rules). The adjective good-natured
(goof, shirker) is combined with negative nouns (except for the word
bureaucrat mentioned above). Perhaps these collocations are possible
because of the element of meaning referring to the lack of aggression.
Derivative nouns from the adjectives in question retain the sense
carried by the nouns:
– małoduszność ‘mean-heartedness’: “lack of civil courage,

cowardice” (SJPDor), “lacking civil courage, incapable of noble
reflexes, unable to forgive, also, proving of such traits” (SJP).
– bezduszność ‘callousness’: “indifference, insensitivity, also,
ruthlessness” (PSWP).
– dobroduszność ‘kind-heartedness’: “benevolent, credulous kindness,
gentleness, honesty” (SJPD), 1a. man, “a trait of a person with a
gentle, sincere and kind attitude”, 1b. face, “a trait of something
that testifies to someone’s gentle temper, honesty and kindness”
(WSJP).
318 Chapter 16
– wielkoduszność ‘magnanimity’: “generosity, nobility, sublimity”

(SJPD).16
– prostoduszność ‘simple-mindedness’: “a trait that means that
someone is open, honest and somewhat naïve” (PSWP).
The meaning of derived adverbs also remains in the sphere of

meanings carried by the adjectives, which is typical for this part of speech.
Hence in dictionary definitions, we often stop at structural information,
indicating the derivation, for example, of magnanimously from
magnanimous (SJPDor). From among the adverbs discussed, only the
word good-natured was described using a synonymous definition: “with
benevolent kindness, credulously, gently, kindly” (SJPD), “in a way that
indicates gentleness, honesty and kindness” (WSJP). When it comes to
verbs, it is important to identify if the characteristic they describe is
present in human behaviour, compare: dobrodusznie wyglądać ‘look good-
natured’, powiedzieć ‘say’, śmiać się ‘laugh’, uśmiechać się ‘smile’.
The following words are hypernyms of the analyzed adjectives:
– dobroduszny ‘good-natured’: human, good, WSS: nice, naïve, Dys:

gracious.
– wielkoduszny ‘magnanimous’: depending on the designation,
human or noble, Dys: gracious.
– prostoduszny ‘simple-minded’: WSS: trust.
– małoduszny ‘mean-hearted’: fearful, WSS: defect.
– bezduszny ‘soulless’: depending on the designation, merciless,
WSS: ruthless, terrible, evil, or official, WSS: insensitive.
The analysis of adjectives recorded in dictionaries leads to the

following conclusions, wielkoduszny ‘generous’ and dobroduszny ‘good-
natured’ are associated with features constituting the essence of being
human (attributes of human behaviour), although it should be added that
being good-natured can be judged as a form of naïveté. The adjectives
małoduszny ‘mean-hearted’ and bezduszny ‘soulless’ are associated with
negative traits (disadvantages and unacceptable traits: bezlitosny
‘merciless’, zły ‘evil’, straszny ‘scary’, or disliked in social relations,
oficjalny ‘official’).
The summation of the synonymous words17 included in Table 1 allows
us to verify our observations, only the adjective wielkoduszny ‘generous’
16 Not listed in WSJP.

is considered unambiguously positive (associated with such adjectives as

forgiving, lofty, and chivalrous), while among the equivalents of the
adjective good-natured there are words that are not so unequivocal in their
assessment: honest, jovial, ursine, which are associated with excessive
openness, sincerity or lack of cunning. These are also words with limited
connectivity (a typical connection a jovial man,18 a good boy, priest, man,
friend, sir, 19 so referring only to men, while ursine has only 21
confirmations in NKJP and none of them meets the requirement of a
minimum of 5 confirmations) and earmarked (ursine is a colloquial
adjective, and honest and jovial are, as one might think, slightly outdated).
Table 1. The synonyms derivative from adjectives
Adjective Synonyms
dobroduszny SS: kind, honest, dovish, jovial, angelic, WSS:
‘good-natured’ ursine, Dys: generous, merciful, gracious, generous
wielkoduszny‘m SS: a. liberal, tolerant, permissive ↑ *, indulgent,
agnanimous’ forgiving, b. generous, lofty, chivalrous
prostoduszny good-hearted, SS: gullible, naïve (also in WSS),
‘simple-minded’ uncritical, confident, unwise, childish, infantile,
silly
małoduszny cowardly, fierce ↑, giving up easily, WSS and

‘mean-hearted’ PWSP: petty, PSWP also: 1. timid, fearful, 2.
unmerciful, intolerant, strict, SS also: fearing ↑,
17 If the dictionaries contained the same synonyms, the source information was not
generally entered, but discrepancies were noted. Usually, similar lists of thesaurus
words included in PSWP and SS are similar, these sources also contain the richest
material referring to all analyzed units (other general Polish general dictionaries do
not contain information about synonyms in relation to adverbs and nouns as the
names of features).
18 Connection recorded as the only collocation of adjective jovial with a noun
(sample 50,000, space: 0, left and right context, minimum co-occurrences: 5,

Kolokator NKJP software, accessed: 6.12.2017).
19 Nomenclient personal contexts have been taken into account. Apart from them,
there is e.g. the name of the Fiat 126p car, called the Toddler, as well as the names
of the body parts: eye and behavior, smile - also referring to men (contexts
checked, sample 50000, space: 0, left and right context, minimum co-occurrences:
5, Kolokator NKJP software, accessed: 6/12/2017).
320 Chapter 16
shy, fearful ↑
bezduszny a. strict, harsh, cruel, cold, heartless, inhuman,

‘soulless’ insensitive, dehumanized ^, dry, barbaric, herodic
↑, merciless, brutal, bloody, bloodthirsty, feral,
degenerate, ruthless, cold, PSWP too: ruthless,
merciless
b. formalist, formal, bureaucratic, clerical, rigid,
insensitive
* arrow pointing up means a higher stylistic register, pointing down, lower
(markings used in the dictionary)
The words synonymous with the adjective simple-hearted point to the

ambiguity of the assessment, simple-mindedness is associated with
credulity and naïveté, even infantilism and stupidity. Adjectives grouped
around the word soulless reveal connections with traits that are perceived
as unsuitable for humans (inhuman, inhumane, dehumanized), referring to
uncivilized (barbarian) societies or the departure from culture (feral) and
norms (ruthless, degenerate), people known for their cruelty (herodic) or a
professional executioner. In the group of these adjectives, attention is
drawn to the presence of elements indicating the lack of something
(morpheme without, modulant un-) or deprived of something (from).
Hypernyms and synonyms of nouns naming features are presented in
Table 2.
Table 2. Hypernyms and synonyms of features’ names
Nouns Hypernyms Synonyms

dobroduszność good honesty, joviality, kindness
‘good-heartedness’
wiekoduszność forgiveness, forgiveness, altruism,
‘magnanimity’ selflessness dedication, goodness, kindness,
generosity, indulgence, honesty
prostoduszność naïvely good-heartedness, credulity,
‘simple-mindedness’ naïvely
prostodusznośc cowardice cowardice, PSWP: 1.

‘mean-heartedness’ helplessness, timidity, lack of
courage, fearfulness, 2.
ruthlessness, lack of
understanding, pettiness,
intolerance, unfriendliness,
pedantry, austerity
bezduszność a. insensibility a. insensitivity, callousness,

‘soullessness’ b. cruelty formalism, bureaucratism,
indifference, dryness, coldness
b. torture, punishment,
ruthlessness, cruelty,
insensitivity, callousness
It should be noted that the noun dobroduszność ‘good-heartedness’ is

given as a synonym of simple-mindedness. It is also worth emphasizing
the connections of the nouns described with words identifying other parts
of the body in which “the habitat of feelings, character traits” are visible,
magnanimity – heart (serdeczność ‘cordiality’), soullessness – skin
(gruboskórność ‘callousness’). Sometimes we deal with indirect reference,
e.g., generosity refers to the head as a habitat of thoughts, or bodily
reactions, e.g. coldness, insensitivity. In addition, having a great or good
soul gives us courage, the ability to do altruistic deeds (cf. foolishness as
cowardice with magnanimity as altruism), and gives the ability to forgive
(cf. grace, leniency, forgiveness, generosity).
Data on hypernyms and words that are synonymous with adverbs,
listed in Table 3, does not bring significant changes.
Table 3. Synonyms of adverbs
Adverb Hypernym Synonym

dobrodusznie kindly kindly, generously
‘good-heartedly’
wielkodusznie nobly generously, respectfully, selflessly,
‘magnanimously’ altruistically, chivalrously, honestly
322 Chapter 16
małodusznie cravenly 1. helplessly, timidly, fearfully, with

‘mean-heartedly’ fear, SS: piously ↑, fearfully ↑, 2.
unobtrusively, naughty, intolerantly,
unforgivingly, without
understanding, sternly, harshly,
unkindly
prostodusznie naïveté good-naturedly, gullibly, naïvely,
‘simple-mindedly’ SS also: trustfully
bezdusznie indifferently PSWP and SS: dispassionately,
‘soullessly’ emotionlessly, coolly, matter-of-
factly, indifferently, ruthlessly,
drily, coldly, formalistically,
bureaucratically, without
commitment, without heart
In the light of the listed synonyms, having a soul is connected to the

necessity of reaction, being active in the world, on the one hand, we have
the adverbs coldly, emotionlessly, dispassionately, coolly, drily, without
commitment, without heart (in the group of adjectives synonymous with
soullessly), and on the other, kindly, lovingly, generously, altruistically.
This reaction should be associated with emotions and feelings, hence
doing something heartlessly, doing something indifferently, matter-of-
factly, drily, and also bureaucratically, formally. It is not enough to act
properly (see businesslike). We’re expecting emotions, passion, whereas
heartlessly means without emotion, dispassionately. In this light, the soul
is responsible for feelings, emotions and displaying them.
Some adjectives form antonymic pairs, for example, magnanimous and
mean-hearted and good-natured and mean-hearted, while others enter into
relations with several adjectives unmotivated by the soul lexeme, e.g.
soulless – sensitive, merciful, gentle, simple-minded – cunning, clever.
16.5. Conclusions
In the light of the analysis of words synonymous with adjectival

assemblies motivated by the dusza ‘soul’ lexeme and adjectives derived
from prepositional phrases such as bezduszny ‘soulless’, the soul appears
as an element constituting the very essence of humanity. It permits the
performance of socially acceptable activities, allows for nobility and
generosity, provides the ability to forgive, is responsible for human
involvement, and supplies courage. It is associated with the gentleness of

character and magnanimity. The metaphorical lack of soul present in the
adjective soulless is associated with cruelty, officiousness, lack of feelings
and indifference to the world. We can see the identification of the soul and
heart in the synonymity of adjectives dobroduszny ‘good-natured’ and
gracious, merciful and generous and cordial, as well as heartless and
soulless. The soul is responsible for our feelings and emotions, the display
of which is desirable because matter-of-factness, dispassion and coldness
are not appreciated in relationships. The soul provides sensitivity and
openness to the needs of another person and commitment, which is also
highly valued.
Tracing dictionary information has also enabled the discovery of a
graduation, magnanimity is highly valued, while simple-heartedness and
good-naturedness, which are associated with naïveté and credulity, are
slightly lower on the scale. Mean-heartedness and soullessness, which
evoke indifference, cruelty and punishment, both have unequivocally
negative ratings. This can be illustrated by a diagram,
Diagram, Gradation of adjectives
(by the author.)
On the left side of the diagram are adjectives associated with negative
human traits (soulless and mean-hearted), on the right, two words with
ambiguous evaluation (simple-minded and good-natured), because being
overly open and good is treated as a sign of naïveté, credulity or excessive
324 Chapter 16
faith, and a word, magnanimous, that has an unambiguously positive

value.
Abbreviations
Dys — Dystynktywny słownik synonimów. Nagórko, Alicja, Marek
Łaziński and Hanna Burkhardt. 2004. Kraków: Towarzystwo Autorów i
Wydawców Publikacji Naukowych Universitas.
PSWP — Praktyczny słownik współczesnej polszczyzny. Zgółkowa, Halina
ed. 1994–2005. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Kurpisz.
SJP — Słownik języka polskiego PWN. https//sjp.pwn.pl/
SJPD — Słownik języka polskiego (with supplement). Doroszewski,
Witold ed. 1958–1968. Warszawa. http//sjp.pwn.pl/Doroszewski.
SJPSz — Słownik języka polskiego. Szymczak, Mieczysław ed. 1978-
1981. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Maukowe.
SS — Słownik synonimów. Dąbrówka, Andrzej, Ewa Geller and Ryszard
Turczyn, eds. 1995. Warszawa: Świat Książki.
SWB — Słownik wyrazów bliskoznacznych. Skorupka, Stanisław. 1986.
Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna.
USJP — Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego. Dubisz, Stanisław ed.
2003. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
WSJP — Wielki słownik języka polskiego. Żmigrodzki, Piotr 2007.
Kraków. https://www.wsjp.pl
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Summary
The aim of this paper is to present the results of analyzing the meaning of
adjectives derivative from the noun dusza ‘soul’ (wielkoduszny ‘magnanimous’,
małoduszny ‘ungenerous’, prostoduszny ‘ingenious’, dobroduszny ‘good-natured’
and bezduszny ‘soulless’), adverbs based on the same root (wielkodusznie
‘magnanimously’, małodusznie ‘ungenerously’, dobrodusznie ‘ingenuously’,
prostodusznie ‘good-naturedly’, bezdusznie ‘soullessly’) and names of qualities
they describe (wielkoduszność ‘magnanimousness’, małoduszność ‘ungenerousness’,
prostoduszność ‘ingenuousness’, dobroduszność ‘moral cowardice’, prostoduszność
‘soullessness’) based on their lexicographical descriptions, hypernyms and
synonyms.
From the analysis of its synonyms, the word soul seems to be an element
constituting the very being of humanity. It admits forgiveness and is responsible
for doing good deeds, is responsible for involvement, supplies courage and is
linked with serenity, mercy and generosity. The metaphorical lack of soul in the
word soulless suggests cruelty, being overly official, lack of feeling and
indifference. The equivalence of the words soul and heart becomes apparent when
we look at synonymous adjectives such as good-natured, merciful, and charitable
and nouns such as generosity and heartiness, as well as privatives such as
heartlessly and soullessly. The soul is responsible for our feelings and emotions.
Showing them is welcome as matter-of-factness, while to be impersonal and

distant in relationships is not well thought of. The soul gives us sensitivity and
openness to the needs of another human being as well as involvement, which is
highly prized. The analysis of lexicographical descriptions allows us to discover an
apparent gradation in which generosity is the most valued, followed by simple-
heartedness and good-naturedeness, which are linked to naïveté and credulity.
Keywords: soul, moral cowardice, magnanimousness, good-naturedness, simple-

heartedness, soullessness, word building
CHAPTER 17
AXIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE SOUL

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF BULGARIAN
PAREMIOLOGY
IOANNA KIRILOVA
INSTITUTE FOR BULGARIAN LANGUAGE OF THE BULGARIAN
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES IN SOFIA
The term “concept” has long been used by researchers in linguo-

culturology to define the specific amalgamation of a notion, meaning and
image that cannot be clearly denoted by either of these terms. Significant
discrepancies exist between the different schools of thought regarding their
understanding of the essence of the concept and even the methods by
which the term can be interpreted. However, there are a number of
common points that suggest it is appropriate to use the term “concept” to
denote a unit of the collective conscious and unconscious knowledge of a
particular community by means of which archetypal knowledge and pagan
ideas are preserved. This has particular ethnic specificity, and further study
leads to some interesting conclusions related to the mentality and
behavioural stereotypes of a particular community.
Concepts are not only thought but they are also experienced: “They are
the subject of emotions, sympathies and antipathies and sometimes even
confrontations” (Stepanov 2006, 21).
Bartmiński also discusses the experiences and the evaluation of the
concept as an instance (Bartmiński 2014, 406).
The linguocultural concept is poly-appealable and finds realization in
the language of a given community, not only through the representative
lexeme but also through other units of language and speech (derivatives of
the keywords, synonyms, paremias, etc.).
Axiological Aspects of the Soul from the Perspective of Bulgarian 329
Paremiology
The concepts on the basis of which the proverbial picture of the world
is formed constitute an absolute value because they represent the
axiological system of society.
Along with the condition that concept should only denote a culturally
significant entity, linguo-culturology also postulates the existence in its
content of an axiological value. The value element as a constituent in the
structure of a linguocultural concept is highlighted by the majority of the
scholars interested in its theoretical interpretation. The value element is
itself necessitated by the common cultural and historical development of
the community that determines its collective thinking and behaviour, as
well as that of the particular individual. This element is fundamental for
the concept and is determined by its "semiotic density" (Vorkachev 2003,
21), a synonym of the degree of topicality (the quantity of nominative
units through which the concept finds realization in language and speech)
defined by Karasik, as well as the possibility of attaching evaluation
categories to the concept (Karasik 2002, 133). The latter requirement
postulates that the lexical compatibility of the lexeme representative of the
concept be pro-analyzed, by considering the reference or lack of reference
to lexemes, incorporated in the plan for expression of concepts-descriptors
and concepts-relatives, such as part—whole, own—others, etc.
This study discusses the understanding of the concept as a culturally
significant entity, characterized by poly-appealability. The content plan of
the concept also includes the so-called cultural background. The concept
possesses axiological value and its structure consists of three main parts:
conceptual, descriptive, and definitive. This study focuses on the
conceptual by interpreting the conceptual characteristics of the soul, as
realized in the paremiologic fragment of the linguistic picture of the world.
The study material is sourced from various publications, as well as from
the Bulgarian Dialects Dictionary Archive at the Department of Bulgarian
Dialectology and Linguistic Geography of the Bulgarian Language
Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
In her studies on the concept “ум” (mind) (Kirilova 2017б) adopts the
theory that the concept is an amalgamation of signs, metaphors and
meanings. The etymology of the word representative of the concept falls
into the third group of principles, following the example of Vorkachev.
Dukova traces the origin of the word “душа” (soul) from the orthodox
*duxъ “gust of wind,” “breath,”, “breathing,” “the spiritual side of man,”
to which the suffix *-jā is added to form *dušā, and also identifies the
Latin notions of animus/anima as the closest correspondents to *duxъ:
*dušā (Dukova 1988: 216).
330 Chapter 17
The conceptual characteristics of “invisible to man,” “immaterial,”

“associated with one’s feelings and emotions,” “responsible for one’s
personal qualities” are easily derived from the etymology of the word
“душа” (soul).
The soul enters into synonymous relations with the human being as a
dyad of the material and the immaterial. For the average Bulgarian, the
word “душа” (soul) is a synecdochic substitute for the word “човек”
(man): Жива душа няма; Девет души с една лъжица ели и пак вълкът
не видели (There’s no living soul; Nine souls /meaning “people”/ fed from
the same spoon, and still they couldn’t see the wolf). Thus, the lexemes
“душа” (soul) and “човек” (man) become synonyms in a specific context:
Деветдесет и девет дена в мед вряла, ако би вряла сто дена, по сто
души на ден се избиваха за нея (Ninety-nine days it brew in honey,
would it have brewed a hundred days, a hundred souls /meaning “people”/
killed each other/were killed in its name). In the Bulgarian language, it is
also a common practice to replace a personal name with the vocative form
of the word “душа” (untranslatable, a form of direct addressing by name;
modern English has no preserved vocative changes) when addressing
someone: Кюти, Маро, кюти, душо (Hold on, Maro /from the female
name Mara—vocative form/, hold on, my soul /when in vocative, “soul”
can be perceived as a tender way of addressing a beloved one, similar to
“honey, dear, my soul”).
According to the archetypal views of Bulgarians, the soul has a specific
location inside the human body, although these views have never been
empirically confirmed: Доде пъка в мене душа, няма да се оставя (As
long as there is a little soul in me, I will not give up). This conceptual
characteristic has not been directly derived in the majority of the excerpted
paremias. It derives from the use of the preposition “в” and of verbs such
as изляза, вадя, извадя (come out, take out, take out: in a perfective
aspect, not present in modern English), etc., and finds an indirect
realization in paremias used to denote a crisis situation: Душата излязва,
табиета остава; Душа излязва, търса остава; Душе излазе, инат не
излазе; Раздумвай болния, доде му душата излезе; Ще го стисна, ще
му извадя душата; Вади ми душата с памук (The soul leaves, the habit
stays; The soul leaves, the yearn stays; The soul left, the stubbornness did
not; Talk to the sick one, until his soul flies away; Am I to squeeze him,
I’ll squeeze his soul out; He/she takes my soul out with kid gloves - direct
translation).
These often life-and-death situations are verbalized in paremias
through somatic lexemes indicating the boundaries of the human body,
nose, teeth, mouth and nails: Душата му под носа; Душата му седи в
Paremiology
зъбите; Отдето думата (излязва), оттам и душата; Душа са под

некет запира (His soul is under his nose; His soul sits in his teeth; Where
the word comes out, the soul comes out; The soul clenches under a nail).
For Bulgarians, the idea of the soul temporarily leaving the body is
associated with the concepts of sorrow, pain and martyrdom: Доде дойде
на болеринът кефът, на сиромахът душата излиза (While the boyar
gets his pleasure, the poor’s soul leaves).
The use of regulative-excursive verbs such as изляза, изваждам
(come out, take out: in the perfective aspect, not present in modern
English), etc., connotes exiting a specifically defined area. In the paremias
about soul this area is the human body, metaphorically perceived as a
receptacle, while the soul is its most valuable content, without which the
body ceases to be human: Двама без душа, трети без глава (Two
without their souls, third—without his head). The head is the opposite
synecdoche of mind. Just as the absence of mind dehumanizes humans
(Kirilova 2017б), Bulgarians associate the soul with the most human of all
human characteristics: feeling and empathizing. Thus the paremia Той е с
мъртва душа (He is with dead soul) refers to a man who is not touched
by others’ suffering and is deprived of emotions. This paremia is equal in
meaning to the previous one.
Bulgarians see the soul as a synonym of personality, of individuality:
Не е по душата му (It does not appeal to his soul), and thus they draw a
distinction between широката душа and черната душа (the wide soul
and the black soul); проклетата душа and добрата душа (the forsaken
soul and the blessed soul), etc. The soul is the inner world of man, his
conscience: Фърли ми са от душата (It came out of my soul). The soul
is associated with the most intimate needs of man: Който дава малко,
дава от душа; който дава много, дава от имот; За своя душа сърце
се слуша (Who gives little, gives it from his soul, who gives plenty, gives
it from his wealth).
Notwithstanding the fact that every living person has a soul, it also
serves as a value reference and a distinctive marker of the personal
qualities of the individual. In paremias this differentiation is achieved
through attributive syntagms, in which the noun “душа” (soul) is the
leading component, while categorization is achieved through adjectives
serving as agreed attributes: проста душица (a simple soul—in
diminutive form); господюва душица (God’s soul); мръзава душа (a lazy
soul); грешна душа (a sinner’s soul); добра душа (a good soul); мачкина
душа (a cat’s soul—see below in the text for a detailed explanation); мила
душа (a kind soul): Проста душица е; Тако ми мила душа с него не
прала; Той е с господюва душица; От мръзава душа излава; Тако ми
332 Chapter 17
грешната душа; Човек с добра душа (He is a simple soul; And so my

kind soul did not work with him; He’s got a God’s soul—meaning “very
emphatic, generous”; It comes out of a lazy soul; Such is my sinner’s soul;
A man with a good soul) or as nouns that are used as non-agreed attributes
(душата царвула, юмрук душа: Тако ми душата царвула; Юмрук
душа носи) (a tsarvul soul /tsarvul—a typical archaic Bulgarian pork
leather type of shoe, similar to Indian moccasin/; a fist-soul; Such is my
tsarvul soul /meaning—I am not bold or extraordinary/, He’s got a fist-
soul /meaning tough, reliable/).
It has been established that the lexical compatibility of the lexeme
“душа” (soul) and its derivatives form attributive syntagms whose
defining word is an adjective, carrying a positive or negative connotation.
Thus the concept itself has opposing evaluation characteristics. It is
noteworthy that many paremias highlight the axiology of the soul, related
to its durability and survivability in difficult situations (мачкина душа,
коча душа, яка душа, юмрук душа) (a cat’s soul; a ram’s soul; a tough
soul, a fist-soul) or its kindness and good nature (проста душица,
господюва душица, добра душа, мила душа) (a simple soul, a God’s
soul, a good soul, a kind soul).
Some paremias explicitly contrast the spiritual longings and searches
of the man with the calls of the flesh: Не за душа, а за гуша (Not about
the soul, but about the maw). Such proverbs are characterized by their
ironic tone and carry negative connotations. Thus Bulgarians implicitly
highlight the axiological value of the soul and prioritize it over the flesh.
The presence of the soul signifies life, while its absence signifies death.
The soul leaving the body is equal in meaning to death: Доде пъка в мене
душа, няма да се оставя (As long as there is a little soul in me, I will not
give up). This conceptual characteristic finds realization in the paremia
Доде квачката клопне, душа да му изскокне (Until the broody-hen cries
out, his soul to leave his body), which is effectively a curse.
For the ordinary Bulgarian, however, keeping the soul inside the body
and thus securing the perpetuation of life has never been an end in itself.
Dignified conduct, dictated by the unwritten moral code of the family, is
worth more than life: Дет ше ти излези думъ, по-убъу душетъ-ти дъ
излези; Душа да му излезе, че дума да му не излязва (If people are to
gossip about you, better your soul leaves; Better his soul to leave, than his
reputation to be lost). Man is responsible for his soul. It is up to him to
shield it from the temptations of life: Аз ще умра, ама тъй лесно душа
на дявола не ще дам. Гре(х) му на душата (I may die, but I will not
surrender my soul to the devil easily; A sin lays on his soul).
Paremiology
A direct connection exists between the spiritual and emotional

characteristics of human beings. The heart and the soul are two hypostases
of man which, in the naïve minds of Bulgarian people, are interconnected:
Душа душа познава, а сърце й вест дава; За своя душа сърце се слуша
(A soul knows another soul, and her heart sends news; for your own soul,
you should follow your heart). When the heart is callous and insincere, the
soul is doomed to sinful suffering: Клета му душа, проклета, който се
с либе шегува—либе от шега не знае; Клета му душа, проклета, кой
либи две моми (Poor soul of his, forsaken who jokes with his beloved, for
the beloved one knows no joking; Poor soul of his, forsaken who loves
two maids). The latter two paremias are intended to serve as a warning and
a curse. The quoted examples allow the conclusion that in determining
one's behaviour the soul is subordinate to the heart and the heart may lead
the soul to sin.
These observations are confirmed by a paremia expressing the idea of
the lack of archetypal difference between human souls: Твойта душа не е
от злато, и тя й като мойта (Your soul is not golden, it is the same as
mine). Through his deeds, man is responsible for preserving the primeval
“purity” of his soul (Който слуша, спасена му душа; Whoever obeys, his
soul will be saved) or he can metaphorically alter his soul and surrender it
to sin and the devil (Душа да се дава не е като дупе да се дава; Душа
дава, ду … не дава; Токо леко душа на дявола да дам; One should not
give his soul, it is not a butt to give; A soul he gives, his butt he doesn’t;
To give one’s soul to the devil easily). In the spirit of Bulgarian
Christianity, characterized by its duality, the latter paremias express the
idea that the soul can be given or surrendered to the devil by man himself.
But these paremias also demonstrate that the axiological characteristics of
the concept soul are connected with the dichotomy душа—дупе (soul—
butt) which, just like the abovementioned opposition душа—гуша (soul—
maw), unequivocally confirms the value of the spiritual, while referencing
the dyad of the intellectual upper parts of the body and the material-
sensuous lower parts of the body as formulated by Bakhtin (Bakhtin
1978).
The paremia Мачкина душа има (She's got a cat's soul), referencing
the female child, is characterized by gender specificity. It reflects the
gender stereotypes regarding the mental and behavioural characteristics of
women in Bulgarian traditional society. These stereotypes metaphorically
compare female behaviour to that of the cat as a symbol of tenacity and
ability to adapt, qualities that the traditional Bulgarian consider present in
women.
334 Chapter 17
By following the oppositions of which the concept soul is part, as well

as the lexical compatibility of the word “душа” (soul) with concepts-
relatives, such as мачкина душа—коча душа (a cat’s soul—a ram’s soul),
господюва душица—грешна душа (a God’s soul—a sinner’s soul) etc.,
it becomes possible to define the axiological aspects of the studied concept
in the mindset of the ordinary Bulgarian.
Sources
Archive BDR — Archives of the Bulgarian glossary of dialects of the
Department of Bulgarian Dialectology and Linguistic Geography at
the Institute of Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences.
BNPP — Bulgarian folk poetry and prose. Traditions, legends, proverbs
and riddles. 1983. Vol. 7. Sofia.
BNT — Bulgarian folk art in twelve volumes. 1961-1963. Sofia.
Vlahov, S. 1998. Dictionary of Proverbs (Bulgarian, Russian, English,
French, German, Latin). Sofia.
Grigorov, M., Katsarov, K. 1986. Bulgarian proverbs and sayings, Sofia
Glossary — Glossary of the Folk-Based Literary Tongue of the 17th
Century. Based on the Text of the Tikhon Damaskin et al. 2012. Sofia.
Slaveikov, P. R. 1972. Bulgarian parables or proverbs and characteristic
words. Collected by P.R. Slaveykov, Sofia.
References
Bartmiński, Jerzy. 2014. Seven key concepts of cognitive ethnolinguistics.
Bulgarian Folklore 4: 399-412.
Bakhtin, Michail. 1978. Legacy of François Rabelais and folk culture of
the Medieval and the Renaissance periods. Sofia: Nauka I Izkustvo.
Vorkachev, Sergey. G. 2003. Concept as „covering notion”. Language,
perception, communication 24: 5-12.
http://kubstu.ru/docs/lingvoconcept/ happ_comps.htm
Dukova, Ute. 1988. Slavic Perceptions of the Soul (linguistic data). Slavic
Glossary, 214-219.
Karasik, Vladimir. 2002. Language circle: personality, concepts,
discourse. Volgograd: GNOZIS.
Kirilova, Yoanna. 2017а. Concept and linguistic model of the world.
Bulgarian language 1: 68-79.
Kirilova, Yoanna. 2017b. Notions of the mind in Bulgarian linguistic map
of the world. Sofia: DioMira.
Paremiology
Stepanov, Yukiy. 2007. Concepts. A thin film of civilization. Moscow:

LitRes.
Summary
Proceeding from the widely accepted understanding of the structure of concept
as consisting of three basic components—conceptual, imaginative and
meaningful—this chapter draws attention to the conceptual part by interpreting the
conceptual signs of the “soul” embodied in the paremiological fragment of the
native Bulgarian’s linguistic world-image. On the basis of the etymology of the
word “soul,” the so-called differential signs are derived and their implementation
in proverbs and sayings are investigated. Dichotomies such as “soul—body” and
“soul—honour" are discussed. On the basis of the lexical combinability of the
word “soul” and its inclusion in attributive constructions, conclusions are drawn
about its axiological value for the traditional native Bulgarian.
Keywords: axiological, soul, Bulgarian paremiology, concept, proverbs,

anthropomorphic, archetypes.
CHAPTER 18
THE VALUE OF THE HUMAN SOUL AS

REFLECTED IN (DE)MOTIVATIONAL POSTERS
OLGA MAKAROWSKA
ADAM MICKIEWICZ UNIVERSITY IN POZNAN, POLAND
18.1. Introduction
The development of the Internet as a communicative space has resulted

in the emergence of different types of Internet communication, including
the hypertextual. According to the definition given by J. Grzenia, this type
of communication includes all applicable texts on the Net that are
unrelated to chat and correspondence (forums, e-mail, etc.) communication
(refer to Grzenia 2006, 43). The notably wide distribution constitutes a
type of hypertextual communication performed by means of popular
polycode memes, including demotivators (D) and motivators (M). 1
The most significant characteristic that differentiates these memes from
others is the vibrant axiological function, 2 which has the following specific
features:
● Orientation to spiritual and moral values (Bugaeva 2011, 151),

expressed by means of dedicating countless (de)motivators 3 to
1 The proof is in the frequency of usage of different polycode memes on the Net.
For instance (average number), demotivators – 63 million entries in the search

engine yandex.ru (as of 01.10.2017); motivators – 30 million; kotomatritsy – 13
million; advices – 2 million; atkrytki – 631 thousand.
2 This allows specialists to treat demotivators as a medium of values (Kudlińska
2014, 332), which also applies to motivators.

3 Some (de)motivational websites have special themed sections dedicated to non-
material values. For example, such websites as Rusdemotivator.ru and

The Value of the Human Soul as Reflected in (De)motivational Posters 337
specific value concepts (for example, the soul) as it helps express

their axiological importance;
● Demonstration of personal value orientations by the authors of the
memes, who use variations of the genres of (de)motivators,
primarily with regard to their textual element. The point is that
deviations from the traditional scheme (motto/slogan/title with an
explanation) and from the primary aim (to demotivate) allow
authors to be spontaneous and to act without genre limits while
creating a text and expressing their value attitude.
The primary aim of the current article is to define the peculiarities of

the expression of the soul concept in (de)motivators from an axiological
point of view. Thus, it is necessary to address a couple of tasks, to define
the significance of the soul for man; to single out its basic characteristic
features; to define its role in the inner world of man and its expression in
the external world; and to analyze the concept in connection with the other
categories and values mentioned in the posters. Methods of research –
conceptual analysis, description, comparison, modelling, and grouping as a
supplementary method. Research material – 100 memes (equal shares of
50 M and D) from the following websites http://motivatory.ru/metki/
dusha, https://demotivators.to, https://negani.com/demotivator/, http://
motivators.ru/category/dusha and a couple of others. Selection criteria –
the first batch of 50 memes corresponding to the following requirements,
traditional design, 4 tag soul, and absence of any quotations or maxims with
the name of the author.
The first criterion is applied in order to avoid any mistakes connected
with the identification of memes as modifications and transformations that
https://mumotiki.ru – Happiness, Friendship, Life, Love, etc. These sections do not

usually comprise all the significant concepts. For instance, the themed section Soul
is often absent from demotivational websites, unlike motivational sites.
4 The composition of traditional D and M is similar, an image in a narrow white
frame and an inscription created in white capital letters that acts as a

motto/slogan/title and smaller words providing an explanation. The differences are
connected with graphic design, a black frame in D and a blue frame in M; a serif
font in D and its absence in M. The aim of the text in D is to provoke sorrow and a
feeling of oppression and fatalism. A text with this aim must provoke positive
emotions and encourage the reader.
338 Chapter 18
lead to the blending or complete dissolution 5 of borders between D and M.

The introduction of the third criterion is explained by the fact that in most
cases the inscriptions on the posters, which are either literal or reworked
phrases from others, 6 are similar to statuses on social networks from the
point of view of their role and function. Specialized websites classify
statuses and quotations to separate genres 7 and this seems quite
reasonable. Thus, all the memes with quotations were not taken into
account. D with an iconic component and mainly consisting of text were
also not taken into consideration. 8
18.2. Definition of the value and the evaluation
The fact that memes about the soul are the outcome of personal non-
professional activities allows us to conclude that the authors treat the soul
from the point of view of common sense, and not as a philosophical
category. At the same time, the superiority of common sense (Bartmiński
2006, 133) permits us to assume that the evaluation of the suitability of
statements from other people (even though they have been made by
philosophers, theologians, writers, etc.) selected by the authors as
inscriptions is made within a system of common sense. Thus, in
accordance with J. Gajda, we shall apply the common definition of value –
5 A. Sliz states that the specifics of some D mean the transformation of memes into
“motivating pictures” (Śliz 2014, 162). We would add that the same applies to M,
but the transformation is into demotivating pictures. For example, D – Depression
isn’t a friend of mine (image of a kitten touching a flower with a paw – everything
is in a green-blue frame) http://www.porjati.ru/blog/vgsch/50656-demotivatory-nu-
cvetnye.html, 09.10.2017); M – How to become cruel? // It’s simple, just give your
heart and receive nothing in exchange… (monochrome image of a nude girl
kneeling in a bath with her knees covered with scarlet blood and holding out a
blood-stained heart to the reader – the image is in a pink frame),
https://mumotiki.ru/soul, 09.10.2017). The inscriptions of the memes are provided
without any changes.
6 Names of some authors can be found only with the help of search engines. For
example, the following quotation “It is only an impression that everything can be
bought with money. Really important things are paid for with fragments of the
soul” belongs to Dmitry Emets http://itmydream.com/citati/book/dmitrii-emec-
mefodii-buslaev-led-i-plamya-tartara (15.10.2017).
7 For example, refer to these websites, https://millionstatusov.ru/statusy.html,
http://www.aforizmov.net/statusi.html (05.10.2017).
8 Refer to, https://motivatory.ru/metki/dusha?page=3 (13.10.2017).
that is something valuable, corresponding to the highest requirements and

worthy of being the aim of man’s aspirations (Gajda 2009, 32). 9 As for
evaluation – this is “a kind of opinion about a thing (but also a
phenomenon and process) that expresses the characteristics of the latter by
means of its reference to a value category" (Sergeeva 2003, 48). According
to S. Tolstaya, the evaluation may be general (neutral and expressive) and
personal (hedonistic, ethical, aesthetic, utilitarian) (Tolstaya 2015). These
categories will be taken into account, as well as the depreciation, within
the study of the axiological aspect of the soul.
18.3. The significance of the soul
The importance of the soul for man is explicitly shown in one M and
four D, with a particular emphasis on its value (D – The most expensive is
not for sale // and it is impossible to touch it, isn’t it? The most valuable
things in our life // do not have shape, colour or taste, do they?), which
acts as a marker (D – The soul is your gold standard! // Be audacious
enough to become who you are!). 10 A single D and M demonstrate the
superiority of the soul over the whole world, as its significance is
diminished, D – The soul is the most important among all other things; M
– Your soul is more valuable than the whole world! // Do not forget this. 11
Thus, taking into account the aforementioned, we may single out the
following models of the soul:
Value model on the basis of Value model on the basis of

demotivators motivators
SOUL IS AN INVALUABLE SOUL IS AN INVALUABLE

ENTITY ENTITY
SOUL IS A MARKER
9 The main types of conceptualization of value and basic models of the concept on
the basis of linguistic (dictionary) data are introduced in (Sergeeva 2003, 51-64).
10 https://motivatory.ru/metki/veter,
http://demotivatoring.ru/demotivator/demotivator_568.htm (17.10.2017).
11 https://motivatory.ru/poster/sredi-vsego-sushchego-samoe-vazhnoe-—-dusha,
http://motivators.ru/ node/70213 (06.10.2017).

340 Chapter 18
18.4. Features and qualities of the soul as described in (de)motivators
The specific characteristics of the soul, as described in both D and M,

significantly intensify its value. They are as follows:
● Immortality, explicitly mentioned in D – Haven’t you substituted //

the immortality of the soul // with unlimited Internet access? //
Spiritual redemption online, exorcism, a sale of indulgences. //
Discounts for wholesale customers! We take VISA; and implicitly in
M – What a strange soul this is…Received // the diagnosis
“Killed”. Stood up, pulled itself together without haste. And it is
still alive!). 12
● Absence of isolation because of affection for another person (D – If
your soul is attracted by someone – do not resist as it definitely
knows what we need; М – A close person is not one whom // you
may touch, but one who attracts your soul…) and the presence of a
window (М – Whatever happens, always // keep the windows of
your soul open to the sun) or a door that may be closed (D – Do not
insult friends – // It may be painful for their hearts // Even though
they may forgive // The door to their soul will be closed forever). 13
● Beauty (М – Beauty will save the world! The beauty of the soul…;
D – The beauty of the body may attract // but it’s only the beauty of
the soul that may // endure). 14
● Ability to fly (D – Flying soul…freedom // thoughts… CREATE,
you are in heaven! М – The soul weighs only 21 grams... If // you
feel the light of the soul – then you have left all insults and fears.
Let’s fly!) and to sing (D – The soul is singing – give way to the
12https://demotivators.to/p/897426/a-tyi-ne-promenyal-bessmertie-dushi-na-
bezlimitnyij-internet.htm, http://motivators.ru/node/26169 (17.10.2017).

13 Correspondingly, https://motivatory.ru/poster/esli-k-komu-—-potyanulas-dusha-
ne-soprotivlyaites-ona-edinstvennaya-tochno-znaet-chto-nam-nad,
http://relaxic.net/135-motivator/, http://motivators.ru/node/ 49457,
https://motivatory.ru/poster/ne-stoit-druzei-obizhat-—-stanet-ranoi-na-serdtse-
obida-khot-druzya-i-umeyut-proshchat-dver-v (06.10.2017).
14https://poembook.ru/poem/1050042, https://motivatory.ru/poster/krasota-tela-
mozhet-privlech-no-lish-krasota-dushi-smozhet-uderzhat (09.10.2017).
soul! М – Do you know what influences your // appearance? It

depends on the song your soul is currently singing!). 15
18.4.1. Features and qualities of the soul as described in demotivators
One of the neutral features of the soul, shown in D, is its immateriality

(The most valuable things in our life // do not have shape, colour and
taste, do they?). 16 The value of the soul is also increased by its
omniscience (as mentioned above If your soul is attracted by someone …)
and, surprisingly, its fragility (the soul may be broken – A dead look //
means that the soul has already been broken by someone else) 17 in
comparison with the fact that man is usually more worried about the safety
of less fragile things. The following abilities of the soul are also valuable,
а) to cry, as it means that the soul is sensitive even though a quiet cry
without tears and shouting is harmful as in such a way “the soul is
maleficently freezing”; 18 b) to avoid loneliness (A big soul is never //
lonely. // Whatever happens to friends, it finally finds // a new one). 19
Significantly, even the loss of a soul may be positive, since this means that
a person forgets “all the nasty things”. 20 However, it can also be ill and
injured because of the mistakes of other people. 21
15http://demotes.ru/demotivatori_o_krasote/820-polet-dushi...-svoboda-mysli...-
sozidaj-ty-v-rayu.html, http://motivators.ru/node/37198,
https://motivatory.ru/poster/dusha-poet-dushe-dorogu, http://relaxic.net/115-
motivator/ (09.10.2017).
16 https://motivatory.ru/poster/samoe-tsennoe-v-zhizni (13.10.2017).
17 http://mnogopics.ru/56/ti-razbil-mne-serdtse-demotivator-1239.html
(13.10.2017).
18https://motivatory.ru/poster/i-zaplachesh-bez-slez-bez-krika-ostrozhno-tak-ne-
dysha-i-zametish-kak-zlo-i-diko-zamerzaet-v- (24.10.2017).
19 http://rus-demotivator.ru/lastnews/page/227/ (23.10.2017).
20When the soul is lost, all the nasty things // are gone
https://motivatory.ru/poster/poteryana-dusha-zabyty-vse-nenastya (17.10.2017).
21 Cold is the // most awful disease of the soul…, http://live4fun.ru/joke/404496;
We learn from our own // mistakes and then repeat them // again. Only when the
soul is completely // covered in bruises do we understand // something,
https://motivatory.ru/poster/my-uchimsya-na-sobstvennykh-oshibkakh-i-posle-
povtoryaem-ikh-opyat-kogda-dusha-uzhe-v-sploshn (17.10.2017).
342 Chapter 18
18.4.2. Features and qualities of the soul as described in demotivators
Such material features of the soul as weight are mentioned only in M.

The soul weighs 21 grams; it may be opened only with specially selected
keywords, and a woman’s soul is like an open book written in an unknown
language. 22 We can also see the independence of the soul from the
conventionalities “when it longs to float around” and the fact that the
shining of the soul and simplicity in the heart comprise the entity of
beauty, 23 which may be easily awoken (One doesn’t need much // to awake
the beauty in the soul. // Sleeping angels are easily woken…). 24 Memes
also provide information on the present condition of the soul (A sunny soul
and a merry // heart…But why? Because it’s simply WELL!), its ideal
condition (Clouds in the sky? It’s not a problem!!! // The most important
thing is that the soul is bright and happy!), and its dependence on man
himself (The weather at home, // in your soul and in your world depends
only on you). 25 Pictures also highlight the fact that the soul always strives
for light, even in the darkest nights, as it is always light for the soul when
the fireflies shine. 26
18.5. Role of the soul in the interoworld of a man
The general function of the soul is to serve as a repository, whereas its

content is treated differently: D suggest that it contains the defender of
man, the strings (of a tormented soul) and light, which may fill the soul,
whereas the devil’s soul has “the fire of the Holy Inquisition”; 27 M suggest
22 Refer to the corresponding memes at the following links,
http://motivators.ru/node/57144?utm_source=feedburner&utm_
medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+motivators+%28Позитивные+мотиват
оры+-+мы+дарим+позитив %29, http://motivators.ru/node/54458 (17.10.2017).
23 No routine would ever constrain a soul // that wants to fly!
http://motivators.ru/node/476024; The shining of the soul and the simplicity of the

heart // constitute the beauty of our life. http://www.forum-globalteam.ru/dushi-
siyane-v-serdce-prostota/ (17.10.2017).
24 https://mumotiki.ru/node/4165 (17.10.2017).
25http://motivators.ru/node/32885; http://motivators.ru/node/9966;
https://mumotiki.ru/node/ 2053?page=3 (09.10.2017).

26 The fireflies shine as if they are stars. // The soul becomes lighter,
http://motivators.ru/node/17597 (17.10.2017).
27 You may be a fallow deer // But you should remember the defender in your soul
who // would help you whenever you need it. You are not alone!)
that it contains peace and particular words that are stored throughout a
whole life. 28
Demotivators suggest the following role of the soul: to provide the
possibility of eternal life but in different bodies, 29 to enable the gaining of
experience in the “terrestrial body”, and to bring “inspiration and joy”. 30
At the same time, the aim of the soul is to strive for the motherland. 31 If
one wants to feel like someone real, one has to be a specific type of person
deep in the soul (You have to be a goth in your soul! // Otherwise, it’s just
showing off!). 32
Motivators suggest the following functions of the soul: to apprehend
love with the heart (You have to feel the Love // with your heart and soul 33)
and that love itself is born deep inside the soul. 34 The soul is also a
dwelling and one can visit it (Different souls may be similar to hot
https://motivatory.ru/poster/ty-mozhesh-byt-lanyu; A real violinist plays on the

strings // of the tormented soul, http://demotes.ru/demotivatori_raznie/2634-
nastoyashhij-skripach-igraet-na-strunax-isterzannoj-dushi.html; FILL YOUR SOUL
WITH LIGHT // and everything will change
http://demotes.ru/demotivatori_raznie/4194-napolni-svoyu-dushu-svetom-i-vse-
vokrug-tebya-izmenitsya.html; The fire of the Holy Inquisition burns in the soul of
each devil, https://demotivators.to/p/457689/ogon-svyatoj-inkvizitsii-gorit-v-
dushe-kazhdogo-dyavola.htm (17.10.2017).
28 Don’t worry. The more peaceful your soul is, // the more easily and faster you
can solve any problems you have, http://motivators.ru/node/58008; Some words //

remain in the soul for a whole lifetime), https://otvet.mail.ru/question/79597434
(17.10.2017).
29 We are very serious about temporary things such as our bodies // and
everything connected to these even though in time they will die. But we don’t pay
any attention // to the eternal mind and soul moving from one body to another
(https://motivatory.ru/poster/my-ochen-serezno-otnosimsya-k-vremennym-
veshcham-telu, 15.10.2017).
30 Two demotivators mention gaining experience and bringing inspiration and joy.
However, this idea is not explicitly expressed in the inscription but is stated in the
iconic components by means of corresponding signs
(https://motivatory.ru/metki/dusha?page=4, 13.10.2017).
31 The Motherland is the place // where your soul wants to be,
http://bomj.org/demotivators/demotivation.php?demotivator=8057 (17.10.2017).
32https://demotivators.to/p/480739/gotom-nuzhno-byit-v-
dushe.htm?comment=961281 (06.10.2017).
33 http://motivators.ru/node/12421 (15.10.2017).
34 Just like music love is born // deep inside the soul and its fate depends on what
your heart says, http://motivators.ru/node/26462 (17.10.2017).

344 Chapter 18
countries // Once you’ve been there, you fall in love with it…); “something
positive and joyful may dwell” in the soul; “a space for love” may be
found in the soul. 35
18.6. Forms of the soul in the exteroworld 36 shown in demotivators
Materialization of the soul takes place through music, by means of

tears, by turning into gold bars after the death of gold miners 37 and through
the reflection in the eyes (refer to the aforementioned D A dead look…).
However, the appearance of a person has nothing to do with the soul. 38
Spiritual redemption also takes place in the external world by means
of buying an indulgence online and ordering exorcisms (refer to the
aforementioned D Haven’t you substituted // the immortality…).
18.7. Forms of the soul in the exteroworld shown in motivators
Memes show the close connection between the soul as a fragment of

the inner world and reality on the following levels:
● Aesthetic, as the beauty of the soul saves the world (refer to the
aforementioned examples). Moreover, the soul is delighted by the
landmarks of the external world (What delights your soul? // Real
spiritual landmarks shall be always visible 39 – with a beautiful
landscape illustrated in the picture).
35 Correspondingly, https://mumotiki.ru/node/3682,
http://motivators.ru/node/59543, http://motivators. ru/node/53675 (17.10.2017).

36 Exteroworld and interoworld are corresponding synonyms of the external and
the inner worlds.

37 Music is the ideal expression of the soul // that doesn’t need words,
http://demotivatoring.ru/demotivator/demotivator_4331.html; Tears aren’t a sign

of weakness // but a sign of the presence // of the soul,
https://motivatory.ru/poster/slezy-eto-ne-priznak-slabosti-eto-priznak-togo-chto-u-
cheloveka-eshche-est-dusha; Gold bars are the souls of those // who died while
mining it, https://demotivators.to/p/809415/zolotyie-slitki-eto-dushi-lyudej-pogib
shih-pri-ego-dobyiche.htm (17.10.2017).
38 It would be much easier if // the appearance of people were similar // to the
appearance of their soul, https://motivatory.ru/poster/bylo-namnogo-proshche-esli-

lyudi-vneshne-vyglyadeli-takzhe-kak-vyglyadit-ikh-dusha (17.10.2017).
● Ethic, as man’s world corresponds to the innocence of the soul and

there is no need to hide the soul in order to preserve its purity. 40
● Artistic, as MUSIC SHOWS MAN // the potential for greatness
stored in his soul 41 and the appearance of a person depends on “the
song his soul is singing” (refer to the aforementioned M Do you
know what …). Moreover, Art washes away the dust of // routine
from the soul 42 and the soul itself is treated as a canvas used by an
artist to leave his “unique sign”. 43
Man’s attitude towards specific places in the external world is

stipulated by the soul’s (lack of) sympathy to these places: A MAN
ALWAYS RETURNS // to where he once left a piece of the soul…, but the
soul «never returns» to a place once it has left. 44
18.8. Depreciation of the soul
Pictures stating the axiological significance of the soul are

accompanied by pictures stating its depreciation, namely demotivators. On
the one hand, its value is emphasized by highlighting its significance. On
the other hand, the value is greatly diminished. First of all, the soul “loses
its strength” through the exhibition of the ways it may be broken, hurt or
lost. Secondly, it is depreciated because of the fact that it may be
exchanged for unlimited Internet or handed over to the devil (refer to the
aforementioned example). Another reason is that the soul may be useless –
a person may live without it (soul // regular examinations confirmed its
absence). 45 Finally, the soul is treated as the object of deviant actions
(anyone can spit in it). 46
40 Your world always // corresponds to the purity of your soul,
http://demotes.ru/motivatori/552-tvoj-mir-vsegda-sootvetstvuet-chistote-tvoej-
dushi.html; To preserve a pure soul does not // mean to hide it from the whole
world, https://mumotiki.ru/node/1933 (17.10.2017).
41 http://www.forum-globalteam.ru/motivatory/page/3544/ (16.10.2017).
42 http://motivators.ru/node/ 30724 (08.10.2017).
43An artist leaves // a unique sign on the canvas of the soul,
http://motivators.ru/node/ 47510 (17.10.2017).

44 http://motivators.ru/node/12937, http://motivators.ru/node/54289 (17.10.2017).
45 https://demotivators.to/p/457689/ogon-svyatoj-inkvizitsii-gorit-v-dushe-
kazhdogo-dyavola.htm, http://demotivators.cc/11548/dusha (17.10.2017).

46 If a sheep spits // in your soul - // forgive. It spits because of fear; Spitting into
the soul of others beware of the // wind…..

346 Chapter 18
The weakness of the soul does not influence its significance in

motivators. However, the soul:
● needs inspiration, both external (even the smallest flame) and

internal (it is heated by friendship), and warmth and positive
influence from outside (when someone rekindles the soul of another
person one acquires new abilities). 47
● is the object of negative actions from outside (empty words do
harm to the soul). 48
18.9. Evaluation of the soul
(De)motivators contain a general evaluation of the soul: foreign (1 D),

weird (1 М). As for personal evaluation, we may single out the following
subtypes: hedonistic evaluation (tormented soul in 1 D); ethical evaluation
(big/kind soul in 2 D and empty soul in 1 D); aesthetic evaluation
(beautiful soul in 2 D); moral and aesthetic evaluation (dear soul in 1 M).
18.10. Soul among the other values
It is worth stating that in the selected posters the soul is not shown in
the confrontation with existential categories (for instance, corporality –
spirituality), in the context of its functioning between them (life – death)
and within any timeframes (temporality – eternity). It is shown by means
of comparison phenomenon – material thing (soul – body, soul – money),
phenomenon – phenomenon (soul – dream), phenomenon – feature (refer
to the section features and qualities of the soul). Taking into account the
fact that the soul, heart, body, dream and money have already been
(http://demotivatorium.ru/demotivators/d/14719/,
http://demotivators.cc/14538/plyunuv-v-chuzhuyu-dushusledite-za-vetrom
17.10.2017).
47 It isn’t enough to have wings, as your soul must be able to // fly,
https://mumotiki.ru/node/3241; Cold? Then make a // fire! Even the smallest fire

may heat the soul…, http://motivators.ru/node/42895; FRIENDSHIP HEATS THE
SOUL, // clothing heats the body and sun heats the air
http://motivators.ru/node/32331; It is the nature of man when someone sets alight
to // the soul nothing is impossible! http://motivators.ru/node/28391 (17.10.2017).
48 KEEP SILENCE…save the moment! // Muddy rivers of empty words flood the
soul…, http://motivators.ru/node/43191 (17.10.2017).

analyzed in a series of works (Bakhtin 2000; Bykhovska 2000; Goncharov

2011; Stepanov 2001; Cherkashyna 2007), we will mention only that in
memes the soul is connected with money: a single instrumental value 49
that does not include gold bars.
Soul-body
According to D, the absence of the soul in the body interferes with the
balance, since both are depleted without each other (Balance // the soul is
weak without the body, the body is violent without the soul); 50 the body
without a soul is only “a heap of muscles”. 51 The soul has a force that
allows it to control the body (The soul was bringing a skin sack, // full of
meat and bones, in order to be at the accurst work on time). 52 It is also
capable of moving from one body to another (refer to footnote 30), but it is
not identical to the other parts of the body. 53 The beauty and the size of the
soul are demonstrated by women's breasts (A big and beautiful soul //
requires no less than a C cup, with a girl depicted who sitting in water
with her wet T-shirt emphasizing the beautiful form of her bosom). 54 Only
M show the connection and interaction between the soul and the heart as
one of the body organs: their mission is “to feel the love”; the heart is in
charge of the fate of the love born within the soul; both soul and heart have
the same feelings; the shining of the soul and the simplicity of the heart
comprise beauty.
Upon comparison of the beauty of the body with the beauty of the
soul, we tend to find that the first attracts a man, whereas the second
retains him (refer to the aforementioned D The beauty of the body may…).
49 Instrumental specialists single out values that may be used in order to
get/implement something else (Kopciuch 2009).
50 http://rus-demotivator.ru/raznyedemotivatori/4518-ravnovesie-slaba-dusha-bez-
te.html (07.10.2017)
51You are just a heap of // muscles! // Where is your soul?
http://joyreactor.cc/tag/auto/new/2088 (17.10.2017).
52 http://effektivnoe-pohudenie.ru/dusha-nesla-meshok-iz-kozhi-nabityy-myasom/
(07.10.2017).
53 The soul is not an *ss…// it can't sh*t in the other way… – depicts a girl who is
sitting on rail ties at https://demotivators.to/p/17714/dusha-ne-zhopa.htm; SOUL IS

NOT A FACE, // plastic surgery wouldn’t help! https://sfw.so/1148971782-
demotivatory.html (17.10.2017).
54 This image may be found at the following website http://jokesland.net.ru
(07.10.2017). The full link is too long (5 lines).

348 Chapter 18
At the same time, D state that people take care of the body but are
negligent of the soul (refer to the footnote 30). This is why one of the M
emphasizes that taking care of beauty begins with taking care of the soul
(Taking care of your beauty starts with the // heart and the soul as
otherwise no make-up would help you). 55
Posters also express the role of the lips, which are treated as a place of
meeting for the souls of lovers in D. The meeting takes place during a kiss.
Moreover, according to M, the kiss itself is the external expression of
something positive originating from the soul. 56
Motivators state that it is possible to love the soul “knowing nothing
about the body” and that someone who “loves the soul” would never
understand someone who “loves appearance”. 57
D only imply the concept of death; 58 for instance, in cases when “the
soul moves from one body to another”, when referring to deceased gold
miners or when an inscription is accompanied by a corresponding image
(refer to footnote 53). In one of the M, death is also implied. However, this
death is not physical but moral: What a strange soul it is…Received // the
diagnosis “Killed”. Stood up, pulled itself together without haste. And it is
still alive!) (depicting a blonde girl dressed in a white gown with a chaplet
standing in a river waist-deep and touching the water with her hand). 59
18.11. Soul and other values shown only in demotivators
Soul-money
Fractions of the soul are treated as a means of cashless payment “for all
the really important things” (refer to footnote 7) even though the whole
soul cannot be sold as a valuable item (refer to the D The most valuable
55https://yandex.kz/collections/card/591dd50bd7f77d00c09aee93/ (17.10.2017).
56 Souls meet on the lips of the // lovers…, https://motivatory.ru/poster/dushi-
vstrechayutsya-na-gubakh-vlyublennykh; Something pleasant from the soul - // you
kiss and put a strand of her hair behind the ear, http://motivators.ru/node/41132
(17.10.2017).
57https://mumotiki.ru/node/4272; http://motivators.ru/node/32806 (17.10.2017).
58 Specialists often treat death as a value of a culture (Darensky 2016, 62-73). A
positive attitude towards death is often expressed in folklore. For example,

Russians have always respected and still respect a “good (glorious, happy) death”
(Tolstaya 2012, 58-61).
things…). Memes emphasize that one should not entrust the soul to those
people “who only want money” and to women, as it is possible to end up
as a “deceived depositor”. 60 It is worth commenting that the poverty of a
man is expressed in D by means of the emptiness of the soul, not the
emptiness of the wallet. 61
Soul-dream
While sleeping, the soul is absent on all seven levels but can also stay
awake while a person is sleeping. Its aim is to call the person to wake up
and learn “something eternal”. 62
If we do not take into consideration the other aforementioned values
that are treated as signs, abilities, functions, etc., then the concept sphere
of the soul in D comprises one instrumental (money) and one non-
instrumental (dream) value.
18.12. Soul and other values shown only in motivators
In comparison with demotivators, in M the soul and the connected non-

instrumental values form a more multi-faceted concept sphere of a clearly
positive nature. Furthermore, the soul and spiritual values are expressed in
conjunction with each other. For instance:
60 Do not dedicate your soul to a woman as you // will become a deceived
depositor http://demotivators.cc/3356/ne-vkladyivay-v-zhenschinu-vsyu-dushu, Do
not trust the soul to those people // who only want money!
https://motivatory.ru/poster/ne-vkladyvaite-dushu-v-tekh-komu-dostatochno-dat-
deneg (17.10.2017).
61 A poor person isn’t the one with // with an empty wallet but the one with an //
empty soul, https://motiva tory.ru/poster/nishchii-—-eto-ne-tot-u-kogo-pustoi-

koshelek-tot-u-kogo-pustaya-dusha (17.10.2017).
62 Seven levels of a dream are found in // Creation, seven levels of dream // where
the soul is absent // Our Spirit longs to awake the world so open // the eyes of your
mind, https://motivatory.ru/poster/sem-urovnei-sna-sushchestvuet-v-tvoreni-sem-
urovnei-sna-gde-dusha-v-zabyti; Your soul is calling you to wake up // Behold
eternity!, https://motivatory.ru/poster/prosnis-—-zovet-tvoya-dusha (17.10.2017).
350 Chapter 18
Table 2.15-1. Concept sphere of the values of the soul shown in

motivators
CONCEPTS CONNECTION WITH THE

CONCEPT SOUL
Love is the soul of a genius, it
revives the soul, it is born within the
LOVE soul; “one has to feel the love” with
the soul (refer to the aforementioned
example)
“Happiness is a state of the soul and
Inner the light of happiness highlights the
conditions HAPPINESS best qualities of the soul” (refer to
(feelings) the example mentioned below)
“Joy is when the soul stops asking

JOY for the things it doesn’t have and
starts enjoying the things it has”
COMPASSION Revives the soul
Kindness is the greatest dignity of
Moral the soul and it has as many dignities
DIGNITY
category as “we can see in the others”
Goodness is a gift of the soul; the

Evaluative soul shines when one does good
GOOD
category things (refer to the example
mentioned below)
Tenderness “covers our souls with
Peculiarities TENDERNESS
goodness”
and features
WISDOM Revives the soul
It is necessary to mention that the connection between the soul and

goodness/happiness is light, which may also be treated as a value attribute
of the soul (Man's soul shines whenever // he does something good to
another. Do good things with a gift…of the soul! Show happiness! // Its
light highlights the best qualities of the soul). 63
18.13. Peculiarities of the expression of the soul in demotivators
Despite containing such concepts as light, beauty, flight, rose and bud,
demotivators about the soul neither motivate nor suppress. Their influence
on the reader is performed by means of the corresponding linguistic units
(tears, deadly look, broken soul, cry, the deceased, the deceived,
malevolent disease, etc.) of the text and/or images that provoke grief, and
by means of the black frame, often contrasting with the iconic component
and/or text.
The point is that most D (58%) contain non-depressing components: 3
memes with non-demotivating inscriptions; 7 – with the image; 19 – with
both features (2 of these are also jocular). However, the positive impact of
D is not transferred as much as with M. It can sometimes be explained by
a sorrowful frame. For example, the inscription Souls meet on the lips // of
the lovers… has a black frame, even though the image depicts a newly-
married kissing couple, holding white doves in their hands.
Motivators about the soul contain more references to positive feelings,
states and phenomena than D: light/shine – 5 (whereas D have only 1
reference to light), love/loving – 5 (absent in D), happiness – 2 (absent in
D), joy/merrily/joyful – 4 (D have 2 references to joy but none of these
references is stated in the inscription), beauty – 3 (3 in D), warmth/warm –
2 (absent in D), sun/sunny – 2 (absent in D), good/kindness – 3 (absent in
D), shining – 1 (absent in D). This makes up 54% of M. The positive
mood is even intensified with the help of a blue frame, adding colour to
black and monochrome images. Thus, these motivating factors allow M to
emphasize the valuable significance of the soul as something positive and
light.
63 http://rusdemotivator.ru/motivatory/19728-dusha-cheloveka-svetitsya-kogda-on-
delaet-dobro-drugomu-tvorite-dobro-darom-dushi.html,
http://motivators.ru/node/53104 (17.10.2017).
352 Chapter 18
18.14. Findings
Comparison of the selected and analyzed inscriptions of (de)motivators

showed that the value of the soul is expressed explicitly by means of direct
evaluation. Furthermore, it is also performed implicitly by means of the
following techniques:
● Description of particularly valuable functions.

● Demonstration of value with the help of other values.
● Cohesion of the soul with other values (for instance, with the heart)
which may result in complete transformation (for example,
transformation into gold bars, as mentioned in D).
● Demonstration of correlations between the soul and other values,
e.g. aesthetic (appearance in D and M), Christian, e.g. spiritual
redemption (in D) and redemption of the world through the beauty
of the soul (in M) and others.
● Indirect attention to the valuable features of the soul. For example,
absence of isolation, i.e. the inclination to be open, which is treated
as a communicative value (Mellibruda 2003, 118-121), refers to the
opening/closing attribute of the soul (a door, as depicted in D, and a
window, as depicted in M).
● Expression of several valuable characteristics and abilities of the
soul (immortality, beauty, striving for being with other people,
objectification in music and kisses, the ability to fly and sing);
● Spelling of the word Soul with a capital letter (5 in D and 3 in M).
This means a respectful attitude towards the soul and emphasizes
its significance.
Weakness and depreciation of the soul do not mean that it becomes

something ordinary and negligible. Even in the inscription, The soul is not
an *ss… (refer to footnote 54) the soul does not undergo banalization. It is
merely criticized, even though in a vulgar way.
Taking into account the aforementioned, we may single out the model
of the axio environment 64 of the soul represented in (de)motivators. This
64K. Jaspers wrote that the understanding of such elements as “beliefs, images,
symbols, demands and ideals” means “the understanding of the environment in
which the soul lives” and that “only such understanding gives way to the complete
perception of the essence of the soul” (Jaspers 1997). Axio environment is one of
model comprises all the values expressed either explicitly or implicitly,

positive or negative, instrumental or non-instrumental. 65 In our research,
we mostly used the classification of values introduced by J. Puzynina
(Puzynina 1992, 29-43).
Table 2.15-2. Summary model of the axio environment of the soul on

the basis of (de)motivators
POSITIVE VALUES
VALUE TYPE DEMOTIVATORS MOTIVATORS
COGNITIVE knowing entity, eternal mind, sense, wisdom,
mind, freedom of thought book, solution,
imagination, genius
AESTHETIC beauty, appearance
rose, bird, ideal, colour, make-up, simplicity
form, taste
ARTISTIC music
——— song, art, artist, canvas
ETHIC forgiveness dignity, virtue, greatness,

kindness, good, best
qualities, trust, purity
EMOTIONAL/ joy
the components of the wider environment, which includes multiple values: major
and minor, positive and negative.
65 Allocation of separate values to the exact type may be questioned, as some
scholars treat love as a hedonistic rather than an emotional value (Gajda 2009, 33).
This may be explained by the presence of different classifications and hierarchies
of values (Kurczab 2012,12) and by the peculiarities of their interpretation and
understanding from the point of view of different scholars.
354 Chapter 18
ATTITUDINAL inspiration, tears feelings, love, friendship,

intimacy, happiness,
wings (rise of the soul),
encouragement,
tenderness, compassion,
delight
BEHAVIORAL ability to fly, sing

ability to cry flying, silence, impulses
(of the soul)
EXISTENTIAL immortality, light, life, death, time, awakening,
people, Thou
eternity, dream, man, woman’s soul,
forgiveness, flight (as an world (including external
expression of freedom), objects), warm countries,
moving to other bodies, air, sun, shining, stars,
immateriality, Motherland, fireflies, fire (to heat, to
Earth, friends, lad, light up the soul)
temporary things, moving warmth, quietness,
of the soul, fate, existing routine
things, fallow deer, lovers,
eight a.m.
COMMUNI- words, absence of isolation

CATIVE
understanding ———
SOCIAL modern society ———
HEDONISTIC kiss
——— something pleasant

VITAL body, strength, arm
parts of the body: face, parts of the body: heart,

lips, eyes, bosom, *ss, mouth, hair, ears; weight
“heap of muscles”, C cups;
body as “skin sack full of
meat and bones”;
defender, plastic surgery,
balance
COMMON common conditions (weather), house
money, gold bars, door, clothing, windows, daily
unlimited Internet, routine
wholesale customer,
VISA, examinations,
violinist, strings, road,
sheep, wallet, depositor,
profit, bounty,
circumstances
CHRISTIAN redemption
heaven, exorcism, angel, revival
indulgence, Creation,
Spirit
NEGATIVE VALUES
COGNITIVE ——— ———
AESTHETIC weed ———

ARTISTIC ——— ———
ETHICAL lie, woman ———
EMOTIONAL / fear, insult

ATTITUDINAL
nasty things sorrow
356 Chapter 18
BEHAVIORAL doing harm (spitting in the worries

soul), easing oneself,
cheek, showing off,
violence, errors
EXISTENTIAL cold
loneliness, poor, ———
strangeness (alien soul),
emptiness of the soul
COMMUNI- scream empty rhetoric

CATIVE
SOCIAL Afghanistan, Chechnya, ———
Goth
HEDONISTIC ——— ———
VITAL disease, wound, injury, ———

deadly look, weakness
COMMON hated job, vodka common conditions

(clouds in the sky)
CHRISTIAN fire of inquisition, devil ———
As we can see, most negative values are shown by D, entirely

corresponding to their traditional and primary aim – to demotivate.
Common negative values in both axio environments of D and M are fear,
insult and cold. As for positive values, the axio environments of D and M
have nothing in common on the level of ethical, cognitive and social
values.
18.15. Conclusion
Despite some common elements, the selected conventional D and M

express the value of the soul differently, and the means of expression
corresponds either to demotivational or motivational features. This is
influenced by the visual image and the content of the inscription which
explicitly expressed the value of the soul within a specific axio
environment.
The fact that the authors of the memes use anonymous phrases from
famous people about the soul, in which they (the authors) have found
sense and which correspond to their views and are expressed in an
attractive meme form, is a kind of barrier that prevents the general
banalization of the concept soul. Moreover, the orientation of (de)motivators
towards the soul as a non-material value, the expression of its significance
and the unlimited target audience of memes may become a kind of role
model for the formation and development of the mindset of some readers,
especially young people.
18.16. Continuation of the research
The analysis of the peculiarities of objectification of the axiological

concept soul in non-conventional (de)motivators and other (including
foreign) (non-)creolized memes seems to be particularly promising from
the point of view of comparison and collation. The continuation of the
research is connected with the comparison of these peculiarities, with
specific visions of the value of the soul expressed in minor folklore forms
(proverbs, couplets, etc.). Such research would help us to extend our
knowledge about the axiological significance of the soul and its
axiosphere.
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gumanitarnykh nauk. Saint Petersburg: Azbuka.
Bartmiński, Jerzy. 2006. Językowe podstawy obrazu świata. Lublin:
Bugaeva, Irina. 2011. Demotivatory kak novyi zhanr v Internet-
kommunikatsii: zhanrovye priznaki, funktsii, struktura, stilistika: 147-
158.
http://www.rastko.rs/filologija/stil/2011/10Bugaeva.pdf (01.10.2017).
Bykhovskaya, Irina 2000. “Homosomatikos”: aksiologiya chelovecheskogo
tela. Moscow: Editorial URSS.
https://vk.com/doc115091650_446528081?hash=e44648887570e008f8
&dl=6c34b08e1f74f9a305 (13.10.2017).
Cherkashyna, Elina. 2007. Verbalizatsiya kontsepta «son/dream» v russkoi
i angliiskoi kul'ture. Avtoreferat dissertatsii na soiskanie uchenoi
stepeni kandidata filologicheskikh nauk. Stavropol.
http://cheloveknauka.com/verbalizatsiya-kontsepta-son-dream-v-
russkoy-i-angliyskoy-kulturah (13.10.2017).
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Darensky, Vitaliy. 2016. Smert' kak tsennost' kul’tury. Internacional

Journal of Cultural Research 2 (23): 62-73.
http://docplayer.ru/72709925-Smert-kak-cennost-kultury.html
(25.03.2018).
Gajda, Janusz. 2009. Antropologia kulturowa. Wprowadzenie do wiedzy o
kulturze. Kraków: Impuls Oficyna Wydawnicza.
Goncharov, Sergey. 2011. Logiko-kategorial'noe myshlenie. Chast' 3.
Aksiologiya myshleniya. Ekaterinburg: Russian State Vocational
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df (13.10.2017).
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Teksty drugie. Nośnik jest przekazem 3: 313-334.
Kurczab, Henryk. 2012. Z problemów wartości i wartościowania. Zeszyty
Naukowe Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego. Seria Filologiczna. Dydaktyka
7 72: 7-38.
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daktyka_7.pdf (03.11.2017).
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ulepszania kontaktów międzyludzkich. Warszawa: Instytut Psychologii
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Naukowe PWN.
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Moscow Region State University.
Stepanov, Yury. 2001. Konstanty: slovar' russkoi kul’tury. Moscow:
Akademichesky proekt.
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(wokół problemów definicyjnych memów oraz memów
internetowych). Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich 57/113, 1: 151-
165.
Tolstaya, Svetlana. 2015. Obraz mira v tekste i rituale. Moscow:
University of Dmitry Pozharsky.
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rituale-svetlana-tolstaya/~11 (16.10.2017).
Summary
The emergence of the Internet as a new communicative space has fostered the
development of new types of interpersonal communication. Some types of
interpersonal communication are expressed via new types of messages, for
example, hybrid texts, which include (de)motivators. This memetic genre has been
significantly modernized since its inception, which has also affected the possibility
of freely aligning the textual element of motivators without adhering to the
previously binding scheme, which includes a slogan with an explanatory comment
on it. The levelling of this restriction has contributed to the development of the
axiological function of (de)motivators, consisting, inter alia, of the expression of
axiological positions, including axiological orientations. Determining the
specificity of the representation of the soul in (de)motivators requires consideration
of how the authors of memes perceive the value of the soul. To this end, it is
necessary to examine the basic features of the concept of the soul, its place in the
inner world of man and its importance in the external world. It is also necessary to
compare the concept of the soul with other categories and values indicated by the
authors of memes. The results of the analysis and the comparison of the concept of
the soul with the indicated (and other) concepts will demonstrate the specificity of
the perception of the soul and its value by the authors of (de)motivators, and the
differences in the representation of the soul from a demotivational and
motivational perspective.
Keywords: demotivators, motivators, value of the soul, functions of the soul,

evaluation of the soul, depreciation, axio environment of the soul.
CHAPTER 19
MACEDONIAN SOUL AND THE SOUL

IN MACEDONIAN LANGUAGE
VIOLETA NIKOLOVSKA,
UNIVERSITY IN ŠTIP
VESELINKA LABROSKA
CYRIL AND METHODIUS UNIVERSITY IN SKOPJE, MACEDONIA
The late sixth to mid-seventh century theologian, St Maximus the

Confessor (2008) 1 speaks of the soul in Orthodox theology. Seeking the
criterion for understanding the soul, he says the soul cannot be perceived
directly by itself, but through its manifestations. What is spiritually
perceived cannot be perceived by itself, but based on external and sensory
manifestations belonging to the class of things perceptible by the senses.
I.e. the spiritual is perceived by what opposes it - the sensory. Although it
does not lose its own nature, the soul recognizes mutually opposing states.
It may hold such opposing states as righteousness and unfairness, courage
and fear as well as wisdom and incompetence. St Maximus the Confessor
claimed the soul was an essence, backing his claim by the fact that an
essence’s property was characterised by its ability to recognize mutually
opposing states and judging by what was mentioned earlier, the soul had
such a property. The soul is inside the body, but it is not the body, it is
incorporeal. Inasmuch as it feeds, it does not do so physically like the
body, but in an incorporeal way because it feeds on words and thoughts.
The soul is therefore reasonable. The author of the treatise says evidence
1 The work, a treatise translated from Greek with notes in Latin, was written more
than 1300 years ago. https://svetosavlje.org/o-dusi, accessed on 9 July 2017.
Macedonian Soul and The Soul in Macedonian Language 361
of this is that the soul itself has discovered useful skills in life. 2 The skills
are discoveries of the soul. Therefore, the soul is reasonable. The soul is
also reasonable given that our senses alone are insufficient to understand
things. Answering the question of what the soul is, St Maximus the
Confessor says it is a reasonable incorporeal essence which lives in the
body and is the reason for life (Serbian sauzrok). Attempting to answer
what mind (νους) is, he says it is the purest and most reasonable part of the
soul for perceiving things and what has already been experienced (through
the sensory organs). A feeling is an organ of the soul, the strength of the
senses, and it's capable of receiving impressions from external things. The
spirit (πνευμα) is a shapeless essence that precedes every movement.
A soul is what is alive, it is life, and what is alive has breath, it
breathes. In this sense, etymological dictionaries also define the meanings
of the lexeme soul.
According to some etymological dictionaries, the origin of the word
soul (душа) goes back to the word spirit (дух):
Pslovan. *duša “dih, sapa” i “duša” je sorodno s pslovan. *duхъ, sloven.

duh, pslovan. *duхati “dihati” (...) Prvotni pomen je * “dihanje”, pomenski
prehod v “duša” temelji na dejstvu, da je dihanje najočitnejši znak
življenja, prisotnosti duše v telesu. Tudi latinski anima “duša” je izpeljano
iz ide. korena *h2anh1- “dihati”, iz katerega je sloven. vohati in sorodno.
(Snoj 2009, 129).
... the same interpretation is given in Skok’s dictionary:
Prvobitno značenje bilo je apstraktum “dihanje, životna sila”. (…) Odatle

se iskristalizirao termin prema lat. animus/anima i gr. ψυχή (od glagola
ψύχω “hauche”)... (Skok 1971, 373).
What axiological values do Macedonian language speakers assign to

the term soul? To answer this question, we consulted Macedonian
monolingual dictionaries and conducted a survey among 70 students at
two Macedonian universities: Goce Delchev University in Štip and Tetovo
University in Tetovo. We conducted the survey in April and May of 2017.
Our respondents were Macedonian language students from the philology
faculties at both universities, German language students from the
2In a footnote, the translator has clarified further the Greek expression τας τεχνας
as arts, crafting skills, science.
362 Chapter 19
Philological Faculty at Štip University, and students of journalism and

public relations at Štip University.
The question, “What is, in your opinion, the essence of the term soul”
produced two main response tendencies. One was the Christian
interpretation of immortality of the soul while the other was the ethical
meaning – of a person with a (good) soul as opposed to a man without a
soul (evil, ruthless, pitiless):
Something invisible existing in every one of us; Soul is what leaves the
body upon its last breath. The soul lives after death; A soul is something
invisible. Everyone has experienced “pain in their soul 3 , the feeling of
disappointment and torment; Soul is a person’s invisible internal part
where spiritual life is located with all of its psychic features (conscience,
emotions); Soul is considered to weigh around 15 grams, to have the shape
of a small apparition (silhouette), and once it abandons the body, life ends;
Soul, internal (invisible) part of the person where the personal features are
located; Life lasts as long as we have souls. Everyone lives their life in
their own way and each person’s soul is different; To me, the soul is an
invisible cover of the human body that also flows through it, through its
arteries, and veins. The soul glows with all treasures, good deeds, and
painful experiences of a person. A soul is what animates our bodies at birth
and the first thing to leave us upon death. The soul is the basic necessary
value for the life of every living being; What does the word soul mean? A
person with a soul – a good person. A person without a soul – an evil
person. Soul – internal beauty. For example, when we say someone has the
face of an angel, but no soul! The soul is also what we say about something
small or something we hold dearly. E.g. Oh, what a soul he is! In my
opinion, the word soul stands for something good, sensible, e.g., a man has
cotton-soul, which means that the man is very good, with a good heart and
soul; In most cases, the soul represents the personality of an individual.
Whether they are good or evil, fair or unfair, etc. Speaking of the other
meaning of the soul, i.e. the spirit, this time seen as the soul of a deceased
person, the soul, i.e. the spirit, represents an angel, a guardian of the body.
We explain a person's qualities or behaviour: a good soul, bad soul, etc.
The students have also written about the properties of the soul, it's
suffering along the lines of the two answer types. They related the soul to
internal life: emotions, personality as well as a person's traits and behaviour.
In some of the answers, the soul featured the following virtues: empathy,
compassion, love, caring, kindness, humanity:
3 Perceiving the soul by its manifestations.

The soul, in my opinion, is an abstract term and the presence of humanity,

empathy, compassion, love, care, kindness, etc. When someone is said to
have a soul, it means they keep and cherish their internal wellbeing and not
only do they exist as an anthropomorphic heart-beating being but also as a
human being in the true sense of the word. Having a soul means that
someone is alive and she/he has not reached death before death 4.
We also received some soul-warming poetic answers:
A soul is what I wake up with every morning, the warmth within me,
something positive, irresistible and pleasant. All treasures, good deeds, and
painful experiences are in a person’s soul; The soul is soft and gentle. It is
like a flower - unless watered with care and all the fortunes that make life
happy, it will dry out; The soul is light that emanates only good things.
Interestingly, we noticed that many students of journalism understood and

interpreted the term soul in a more specific way. To them, it was the
embodiment of a loved person, something dear, family life, while some
associated it with political parties.
The true meaning of the words soul and life are when we wake up in the
morning next to the ones we love so much, who mean so much to our lives,
for whom we are ready to do anything. Of course, in order for them to be
happy and pleased. The word soul also stands for a person’s humanity and
their will to help a powerless person whereby mere help makes us feel
incredibly good and the soul feels overwhelmed with the good deed you
have done; Soul, a word that means much to me, that hints at the most
beautiful and dearest thing, at happiness, joy, love, and attention. A word
that expresses positive feelings in all people; To me, SDSM is life and
Zoran Zaev is the soul. Long live Zoka! For life in Macedonia! Amdi
Bajram and the coalition for a better Macedonia! For life in Macedonia,
may cigarettes get cheaper! Long live Zaev! 5
4 According to Christian belief, to reach death before death means to live in mortal
sin. Sin is death and one who lives in mortal sin has already tasted death during
their life. This does not mean that a person can be sinless, but that they should live
in constant repentance.
5 These last political answers to the survey have been influenced by the current pre-
electoral period in Macedonia and by the fact that we simultaneously surveyed the
same students on the axiological value of the term life. The campaign slogan of one
of the two biggest Macedonian political parties was “For life in Macedonia”.
364 Chapter 19
One of the basic linguistic problems among philosophers and linguists

since ancient linguistic research has been the question why there are
different languages, how much they are similar to and different from each
other, and how reality we live in is conceptualised in language. With
varying degree of success, ancient philosophers gave their best on this
topic (since the onset of linguistics in Ancient China, India, and Greece),
followed by mediaeval philosophers who wrote about it in their
philological and philosophical treatises up to Wilhelm Humboldt’s well-
known Weltanschauung, all the way to the most recent cognitive views on
language (Pandev 2013, 35). One of the insights made by some linguistic
theories is the term linguistic relativity, a counterpart of linguistic
universals. Different languages reflect the cultural, physical, and social
environment of a linguistic community and signal its experience as well as
its value system. In this sense, our research shows the meaning the
Macedonian word душа (soul) has, i.e. the concept behind it, structured in
Macedonian as a Slavic language, but in a specific Balkan context.
In Macedonian monolingual dictionaries, the noun soul has the following
meanings: 1. The entirety of feelings, consciousness, and personality traits of
a person, cf. spirit. 2. The non-material principle of human life that abandons
the body after death. 3. A person, family member, а citizen. Around thirty
souls used to live in a village. There hardly remained a hundred souls in the
village. 4. (fig.) The main engine of something. The soul of the
organisation. (TRMJ̌ 6 I, 560) or: 1. The spiritual and non-material often
called immortal part of the human. 2. The moral, sensitive, or intellectual
nature of a human being: you really do not have a soul. 3. A person, an
individual: there was not a living soul. 4. The most important or most
influential part: he is the soul of the team. 5. A person with a pleasant
personality, loved, adored, good, or nice person: he is a real soul, you are
a soul. 6. dial. Breath. (Murgoski 2011, 290-291).
The last meaning in Murgoski marked as dialectal is actually related to
the meaning of soul as a ‘spiritual part’ because according to common
belief, the soul leaves the body upon a person’s last breath and that is why
the word breath became identical to the word soul in dialects.
What we ought to look for in the semantics of this lexeme in
Macedonian could be its figurative meanings. Since metaphor, being an
imaginative process, plays a central role in meaning-formation processes,
6Monolingual Dictionary of the Macedonian Language, Institute of Macedonian

Language “Krste Misirkov”, Skopje (see: Bibliography)
in cognition, and in understanding and since the latter reflects the semantic
scope of the lexemes and their contextual capabilities in different
languages, we will also cover the metaphorical meanings of the lexeme
soul. The metaphorical meanings in which it is used will be shown by the
idiomatic expressions it is used as well as by the broader contexts in which
it can be found in electronic media.
The view of the soul as being the source of good things which we
found among many surveyed students complements the opinion of
Macedonian speakers that when “a person has no soul” they turn bad! In a
short story by Ivana Kostovska, a young Macedonian writer entitled A
Word or Two on the Soul, the storytelling point is that when people
ruthlessly tread on her soul and take it away from her, she becomes bad!
(Kostovska 2017, 19). This view of the soul as a “place” where all positive
personality traits are kept also reflects in many Macedonian idioms and
derivatives. We highlight the following here: he is a real soul, you are a
soul (Murgoski 2011, 290‒291), or a soul of a person (Dimitrovski and
Shirilov 2003, 291), little soul, he has a soul – has got mercy, compassion
( TRMJ̌ I, 560) as opposed to he doesn’t have a soul, he is soulless (TRMJ̌
I, 107), he ate my soul, soul-puller, etc. (TRMJ̌ I, 562). A person’s soul can
be petty (soul) – the person can be cheap, non-empathic, petty 7. a sold-out
(soul) – when the person is capable of immorality out of interest. a black
(soul) – 1. If the person is bad, 2. If the person has suffered. Some of the
idioms containing soul express different meanings: to take one’s soul – to
kill (someone). his soul went out – 1. He died, 2. He was exhausted by
something. he/she took out his soul–1. To kill someone, 2. To torture
someone. to give the soul – when we want or love something too much.
When someone loves something very much, they love it from the
bottom/depths of their heart. One sins their soul – when they do something
immoral, commit a sin, usually directed at someone. One who is dying,
fighting death is at death’s door (in Macedonian, literally, gathers soul),
their soul stands on the tip of the needle, their soul has gone all the way to
the teeth (2. They became very tired, exhausted). The soul may burn (for
something, someone, or because of something) and when something
happens which helps the person make peace (with God, their close ones, or
when they are relieved) – their soul comes to its place. The soul is fulfilled
– when a person feels happy because of something. The soul is a person’s
7According to Velkovska (2008, 156) – a petty soul – a worthless person with

narrow views
366 Chapter 19
essence which can be opened or closed: to open the soul to someone – to

trust someone, to confess. In this sense, we can make a difference between
an open person vs a closed person.
Regarding soul as an expression of human life itself, we highlight the
following idioms: He is at death’s door (literally, He gathers his soul)–he
is on the verge of death. His soul went out–he died, feed your soul so that
it may listen to you–in order to be healthy, we need to eat well ( TRMJ̌ I,
560), etc.
Following are some idiomatic expressions that have the meaning of
soul as a human individual: There is not living (christened) soul; one soul,
one pear/one soul–one neck–it is easier for a single person to take care of
themselves etc.
The idiom let the dead bury their dead, life goes on (literally for the
souls of the dead, into the necks of the living) reflects the Orthodox
Christian custom of offering food for the soul of a deceased person.
As can be seen, the soul-related idioms express the Christian
understanding of the soul as a source of life: to let go of the soul, be at
death’s door (literally gather soul), take a soul, for the souls of the dead,
into the necks of the living. The soul is a metaphor of what is good in a
person: to have a soul vs not to have a soul and soul personifies the most
essential part of a person: there is not a living soul, one soul–one neck.
Metaphorically, the concept of a soul can be found in one more
expression–the soul of the people. 8 We found the noun phrase the soul/the
spirit 9 of the people in several contexts:
• In the national dance “Teshkoto” 10, the “soul” of the people is one of
its central themes, spoken of by the poet in the fifth verse. The pain of
the long-lasting oppression intertwines with fantasies about "happy
offspring, a free world". 11
• As humour fades away, so does the spirit of the people (a title of a
newspaper article, dedicated to the presence of humour in society: in
the media, in art, and in the streets). 12
• Language is the only authentic expression of the soul of the people. 13
8 Translator’s note: the word people in the following paragraph bears the meaning
of members of a particular nation, community, or ethnic group.
9 We believe that in this context, spirit and soul are not differentiated as they are
usually in a theological and philosophical context.

10 By the well-known Macedonian author and linguist B. Koneski.
11 Wikipedia https://bit.ly/2L4IWsf (accessed on 30.05.2017).
12 Nova Makedonija Daily https://bit.ly/2JdYg0V (accessed on 30.05.2017).
• Prlichev’s Christian ethical spirituality is consistent with the popular

gospel arising from the soul of the people (national awareness,
profiling the democratic body, and the Macedonian spiritual
renaissance. Prlichev’s ethical preoccupation is Christ’s gospel and his
ethical ideal is Christ). 14
• Ivanov: Language is the soul of the people (MTV 1 / 2014):
Language is the key to understanding a nation’s culture, tradition and
worldview, its past, present and future. Language is the soul of the
people.
• Hello! I’m new to this forum and I need an essay on the topic “The
world I live in” and “Language and faith are the souls of the people”.
Thanks in advance ☺. 15
• I am very pleased that we can present with joined efforts the beauty
of the Macedonian people and Macedonian cuisine, which are very rich
and which have been passed from one generation to the next. They
represent the soul of the people and demonstrate the beauty of the
Macedonians, noted the director of the Vrshats Municipal Tourist
Organisation, Tatyana Palkovikj. (Title of the article: The Macedonian
Cuisine Represent the Soul of the People). 16
As seen from the contexts we found, the soul of the people is a noun
phrase somewhat referring to a nation’s mentality. It manifests in folklore
(music and national dances), in language, faith, and cuisine. Interestingly,
language is equalled to the soul of the people: Language is the soul of a
people. This metaphor has also been expressed by Benedetto Croce–
“Language is a spirit” (Pandev 2013, 44) and it can be found in works by
other linguists. For instance, in Humboldt: Language is “a specific
emanation of a nation’s spirit”, an external expression of an “internal
form” which reveals a certain worldview (Ivić 1983, 39). Generalizing the
meanings of the contexts wherein we found the soul of the people, we
could say that it is the mentality of a nation. Of course, this does not mean
that we have been precise in defining the semantical properties of this
noun phrase, but that we have only tried to come to an acceptable meaning
of it.
Quoting Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999), Lakoff and Núñez (2000),
Langacker (2010, 107) put forward his thesis that “a key insight emerging
13 http://makedonija.rastko.net/delo/12472 (accessed on 30.05.2017).

14 https://bit.ly/2Jajblb (accessed on 30.05.2017).
15 Maci-love. https://bit.ly/2L3cgiE (accessed on 17.08.2017).
16 https://bit.ly/2Jdxqpj (accessed on 17.08.2017).
368 Chapter 19
from cognitive linguistic investigation is the pervasive importance of

metaphor in virtually every kind of mental activity, ranging from casual
thought to artistic endeavour to intellectual inquiry”. In this sense, the
noun phrase the soul of the people is seen as a metaphor in which the soul
is the life-giving essence to a nation, personified as a body of many
individuals. Another metaphor we can extract from the contexts we
researched is: Language is the soul of a nation. We emphasise the
presence of the determiner “a” which implies that different nations have
different languages, are different from each other and have different souls.
Our statement finds confirmation in the fact that Old Church Slavonic used
the lexeme ѩзыкъ to signify both nation and language (Ugrinova-
Skalovska 1979, 168).
We conclude our contribution to determining the axiological values of
the term soul by quoting a naive, but significant answer by one of our
surveyed students: “Soul is a small word, but it has a huge meaning.” It is
this meaning of the concept of soul in Macedonian that we tried to
elaborate here without tending to make it complete. Yet, striving to cover
its most essential values that echo the worldview of the Macedonian
people, reflected in its language.
References
Dimitrovski, Todor and Tashko Shirilov. 2003. Frazeološki rečnik na
makedonskiot ǰazik. Vol. 1, A-J̌. Skopǰe: Ogledalo.
Gushevska, Liljana and Veselinka Labroska. 2016. Makedonsko-polski
paraleli vo frazeologiǰata. Glasnik 60, 2: 117-116.
Ivić, Milka. 1983. Pravci u lingvistici. Ljubljana: Državna založba
Slovenije.
Jeffries, Lesley. 1998. Meaning in English. Houndmills: Macmillan
Education UK.
Kostovska, Ivana. 2017. Feniks. Skopǰe: Tempora veritas.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago,
London: The University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The
Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York:
Basic Books.
Lakoff, George and Rafael E. Núñez. 2000. Where Mathematics Comes
From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. New
York: Basic Books.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2010. How Not to Disagree: The Emergence of

Structure from Usage. In: Language Usage and Language Structure,
eds. K. Boye, E. Engberg-Pedersen, 107-144. Berlin, New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Murgoski, Zoze. 2011. Tolkoven rečnik na makedonskiot ǰazik. Skopǰe:
avtorsko izdanie.
Pandev, Dimitar. 2013. Opšta retorika. Skopǰe: Filološki fakultet Blaže
Koneski.
Skok, Petar. 1971. Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika,
knjiga prva A-J. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti I
umjetnosti.
Snoj, Marko. 2009. Slovenski etimološki slovar. Ljubljana: Modrijan.
TRMJ̌ I — Tolkoven rečnik na makedonskiot ǰazik A-Ž. vol. 1. ed.
Koneski, Kiril. Skopǰe: IMJ Krste Misirkov, 2003.
Ugrinova-Skalovska, Radmila. 1979. Staroslovenski ǰazik, Skopǰe:
Univerzitetska pečatnica Kiril i Metodij.
Velkovska, Snežana. 2008. Makedonska frazeologiǰa so mal frazeološki
rečnik, Skopǰe: avtorsko izdanie.
Summary
Тhis paper distinguishes between the metaphorical meaning of soul of the
people which implies ethnological views and the term soul as a component of life.
To this end, appropriate philosophical and ethnological literature have been
consulted and a survey among students of Goce Delcev University in Štip and
Tetovo University has been conducted. The surveyed question to be answered is
"What is, in your opinion, the essence of a soul". Attention is paid to the values
ascribed to the word soul by our respondents. The authors also look at the
etymology of the lexeme soul, its semantic characteristics, and at the lexeme soul
as a component of idioms.
Keywords: soul, people, breathe, alive, meaning, idioms, survey, theology

PART III:
THE SOUL IN A TRADITIONAL CULTURE,

LANGUAGE, RITUALS AND BELIEFS
CHAPTER 20
MERCY – A TICKET TO HEAVEN:

DIVINE AND HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF MERCY
FROM ETHNOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE
EWA MASŁOWSKA
OF SCIENCES
20.1 Mercy from an ethnolinguistic perspective
The conceptualization of Mercy as a term emerging in both linguistic

and cultural codes poses a substantial research problem. Taking into
account that meanings are formed and employed differently in language
and in culture (Tolstaya 2015, 325-237), the ethnolinguistic perspective,
which actually combines these two modes of perception (Chlebda 2012),
enables us to describe this concept in cognitive terms – as a mental,
nation-specific phenomenon, encompassing all concerned fields of
knowledge. The analysis of the research material will be conducted by
means of research apparatus used in the Lublin school of cognitive
ethnolinguistics, 1 involving such terms as linguistic perception, etymology,
stereotype, cognitive definition, a point of view with interpretative
perspective and profiling (Bartmiński 2006a, 2006b, 2008, 2009;
Bartmiński, Niebrzegowska 1998, 2004).
1 Methodological assumptions of the so-called "ethnolinguistic Lublin School" have
been forming for many years as part of an interdisciplinary seminar "Language and
Culture", attended by researchers from various scientific centres, both Polish and
foreign. The results of scientific investigations were published in the subsequent
volumes of the following series: the so-called "red series" of the publishing house
of Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, the axiological series entitled Leksykon
aksjologiczny Słowian i ich sąsiadów, and the so-called “white series” Język a
Kultura of the University of Wroclaw Publishing House, as well as in the journal
Etnolingwistyka. Problemy języka i kultury published by Lublin University.
Mercy – a Ticket to Heaven 373
According to the Lublin school, cognitive ethnolinguistics interprets

linguistic data in cultural context, construing their contents in connection
with the mode of perception and the assessment of reality characteristic of
a certain social or national group. Ethnolinguistic analysis takes into
consideration an individual reconstruction of universal knowledge
common to a certain community, verbalized in diverse ways (linguistic
image of the universe) that may be presented as a set of preconceptions
formed in an attempt to grasp reality (stereotype), found in language
structures (etymology, word-formation, lexical semantics, symbolism,
metaphors, phrasemes, paremiology), as well as in presuppositions and
connotations occurring in folkloristic texts 2 and resulting from beliefs,
convictions, ceremonial and ritual actions, all of which are defining parts
of cognition (Bartmiński 1998). The narrational character of the definition
emphasizes the versatility of the researched concept, presenting it from
multiple perspectives of a creating entity, dependent on intention and
communication circumstances. Once all these parameters are acknowledged,
denotation profiles of the concept gradually emerge (Bartmiński 2014).
The anthropological-linguistic approach to mercy in folk culture on the
basis of folkloristic texts adopted by this study necessitates the use of tools
from outside of the scope of ethnolinguistics, such as the theory of scenes
and scenarios (G. Lakoff 2011, 282-283; R.W. Langacker 2009, 708-714),
as well as narrativistic research apparatus (Filar 2013, Trzebiński 2002).
An event-based approach in a cause-and-effect arrangement, presenting
the “protagonist” as a donor or recipient of an act of mercy, lends the
description a more dynamic and eventful character and helps bring out the
arrangement of elements that make up the motivation and purpose of its
activities in semantically related lexical sequences, as for instance:
love > providence, grace > blessing > punishment > forgiveness >
salvation of soul;
love > sympathy > pity > sacrifice > salvation of soul;
goodness > kindness > solidarity > sympathy > act of mercy;
sin > wrongdoing > punishment > penance > purgatory > forgiveness
> act of mercy; guilt > apology > forgiveness > blessing.
2 The analysis makes use of folklore material included in particular in a multi-

volume study Pieśń polska i muzyka ludowa. Lubelskie, vol. 1-5, Lublin 2012, ed.
Jerzy Bartmiński (further abbreviated to Lubelskie), in Słownik stereotypów i
symboli ludowych (abbreviated to SSiSL), the card index of the UMCS
Ethnolinguistic Archive, as well as of data contained in ethnological and
dialectological monographs.
374 Chapter 20
In order to account for the origin of the concept in folk culture and in
the Polish language in general, it is necessary to trace the Christian idea of
mercy back to its Hebrew roots and Greek equivalents. This analysis also
deals with the courses of cognitive paths involving other concepts cognate
to mercy that co-establish the scenarios for acts of mercy in the analyzed
texts. Due to the axiological nature of the concept and its overall
complexity, semantic analysis requires taking into account broadly
understood situational and cultural contexts associated with mercy in the
collective memory. The ethnolinguistic approach, seeking the synergy of
language and cultural code, enables the problem to be examined in a
broader perspective. Mercy is located in the axiosphere of the soul as a
consequence of a direct cause-and-effect relationship that links these two
concepts and determines the place which mercy occupies in the system of
values attributed to the soul.
20.2. The lexico-semantic basis of the Christian concept of mercy
The Christian concept of mercy derives from Old and New Testament
scenes depicting God’s love for people and all creation as manifested in
specific actions. Active love (understood as mercy) towards mankind is
reflected in a lexical and semantic network woven around the following
Greek nouns and their derivatives: éleos (and the verb eleéō), ɧo oiktirmós
(and the verb oiktírō), ta splánchna. Their Hebrew counterparts derived
from the basic forms ɧasad, ɧanan, raɧam and the denotations of
contextually related words (Romaniuk 1994, 7-13) will play an especially
important part in further considerations. The course of the cognitive paths
that connect them coincides with the process of conceptualizing mercy in
all its complexity. The network of interrelated phrases clusters around
hesed “faithful love”, “clemency”, “goodness” (an equivalent of Greek
éleos), employed, on the one hand, by the Hebrew Bible to describe the
relationship between the Creator and man, resting firmly on God’s faithful
and eternal love toward his subordinate creation, while on the other hand
Greek saw it as “noble feelings of goodness, kindness towards other
people”. The equivalents of Greek eleéō were, in turn, Hebrew hanan
“bestow grace”, riham, hamal “pity”, niham “console”. Merciful
compassion, expressed in Greek by the verb oiktírein and its derivatives
oiktirmós, oiktírō “regrettable because of unhappiness”, is rendered in
Hebrew as ɧen, and especially raɧim and its derivative raḥamîm “guts”,
which figuratively means “grace and mercy”. Furthermore, the splánchna
– a Greek equivalent of literal raḥamîm “entrails” (in Greek referring
above all to sacrificial organs: heart, kidneys, liver) – and a verb
splanchnídzomai, meaning “to pity, be moved over someone, sympathize
with someone” involves an additional dimension of meaning: emotional

commitment accompanying compassion, deep emotion felt physically by
internal organs, the dwelling of emotions, primarily by the heart. 3 Since in
pre-biblical texts they lacked connotations of disinterested and active
mercy in human relations (Rambiert-Kwaśniewska 2016, 320-321), Greek
eleéō and oiktírō fail to reflect the full semantic range of their Hebrew
counterparts, which justifies tracing the etymology of mercy to its Hebrew
roots. Consequently, the network of word denotations employed in the
Hebrew Bible to describe acts of mercy (divine and interhuman) clearly
indicates a kind of axiosphere in which the notion of mercy is immersed in
both the divine and human dimensions. It is built up of values, such as
goodness, love, sacrifice, grace, providence, blessing, solidarity (with
human fate), and hence suffering, compassion and pity (for everything that
is weak, in need of support and help), as well as truth and freedom
(threatened by sin or violence), and faith, joy and gratitude (for mercy
granted). Conceptualization of mercy in the biblical sense reflects the
dynamics of the concept exhibited in the active acts of the eternal and all-
encompassing love manifested to every creature by the Creator, both on
earth and in heaven:
But you, our God, are gracious and true, patient, and in mercy ordering all
things. (Wis. 15, 1) 4
The Lord is compassionate and merciful, patient and full of mercy. The
Lord is sweet to all things, and his compassion is upon all his works. (Ps.
145, 8f)
Having been granted a central position in the scheme of things by the

Father of Mercy, man was bequeathed soul, surrounded with constant care
and well-guarded against evil (enslavement and sin) as part of an alliance
based on faith and trust in the divine plan of mercy, the foremost goal of
which was human well-being and salvation – a guarantee of eternal life in
heaven – the sacrifice of God’s Son. In order to maintain this alliance with
God, a Christian should recognize his authority by showing trust and faith
(fear of God) and observe the precept of interhuman mercy: “Be merciful
as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6: 36), which signifies a readiness to
imitate biblical patterns (codified in the Old and New Testament).
3 Examples of Greek and Hebrew lexemes used in the Bible to denote mercy and
passages from the Old Testament and the New Testament are quoted from
Kazimierz Romaniuk's work (Romaniuk 1994).
4 The translation of excerpts from the Bible comes from the Catholic Public
Domain Version, Original Edition, Ronald L. Conte Jr., translator and editor.
376 Chapter 20
In the Old Testament, the scenarios of mercy involve, in particular,

divine initiative in providential acts towards the chosen people (and all
mankind), delivering them from oppression, bestowing blessings, bringing
comfort in distress, restoring to the right way by calling for repentance,
sending punishment when all else fails, but promising at the same time
forgiveness:
He is merciful, and he teaches and corrects, like a shepherd with his flock.
He takes pity on those who accept the doctrine of compassion, and he
applies his judgments promptly. (Sir 18, 13f)
Even though the images of divine mercy outnumber those of human, it

does not mean that the latter are less important in the teaching of the Old
Testament, as their paucity is compensated by a number of commands to
help others in need, and especially to observe laws protecting widows,
orphans, foreigners and all those suffering loss and poverty. Israel’s law
casts a curse on him “who subverts the judgment of the new arrival, the
orphan, or the widow” (Deut. 27: 19). 5
While the teaching of the New Testament focuses mainly on
interhuman mercy, the salvific mission and sacrifice of Jesus Christ reveal
and fulfils the divine mercy, constituting the strongest expression of God’s
intervention in man’s life, aimed at liberating him from sin and granting
him eternal life. In his encyclical Dives in Misericordia, Pope John Paul II
identifies the mission of the Son of God with the Old Testament concept
of God’s mercy:
Christ confers on the whole of the Old Testament tradition about God's
mercy a definitive meaning. Not only does He speak of it and explain it by
the use of comparisons and parables, but above all He Himself makes it
incarnate and personifies it. (DM, 2)
Christ – the very fulfilment of the messianic prophecy – by becoming the

incarnation of the love that is manifested with particular force with regard
to the suffering, the unfortunate and sinners, makes present and thus more
fully reveals the Father, who is God “rich in mercy”. (DM, 3) 6
The Gospel According to St. Matthew includes the most extensive

catalogue of merciful acts toward one’s neighbour, encompassing both
parables and deeds of Jesus on behalf of those in need of help and
5 On interhuman mercy in the Old Testament, cf. Węgrzyniak 2008, 95–111.
6 Translation of Dives in Misericordia after Libreria Editrice Vaticana,
http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-
ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia.html
consolation. Examples of such merciful acts presented as worth imitating

may be found particularly in the parables on the Samaritan, the Samaritan
woman (obligation to help one’s neighbor in need and gratitude for
mercy), the Prodigal Son (forgiveness of sins and joy of giving and
receiving forgiveness), Lazarus (active compassion towards the suffering
and poor under the threat of eternal punishment). It is not without
significance that the doctrine seems to work in two directions: insofar as
one is obliged to express gratitude for having been granted mercy, one also
faces punishment for not having bestowed it oneself. The favors with
which Christ rewards his earthly benefactors (for instance, the widow, who
shares with him the rest of her food, he rewards with pitchers constantly
refilled with flour and oil – a symbol of returned goodness on the one
hand, and on the other a symbol of food for the soul, satisfying thirst and
ensuring satiety) foreshadow the highest reward – the entry to heaven and
eternal life. On the other hand, the eternal punishment of ceaseless appetite
inflicted on a rich man after he dies for his heartless treatment of Lazarus’s
suffering illustrates the divine scale of justice that grants mercy only to
those who are merciful themselves. The catalog of merciful deeds is
complemented by the scenes of compassion and consolation that the Lord
showed to those grieving after the loss of their relatives (a widow after
losing her son, sisters Maria and Martha after Lazarus’s death, a father
after his daughter’s death), as well as to those afflicted in body (healing
the sick, lame, blind) and soul (forgiving guilt, as for instance the sinful
woman, the penitent thief). Although the remission of sins by the cross-
offering of Jesus is the highest form of mercy, in the Old and New
Testament God’s mercy is expressed by many other means, both divine
and interhuman, and most importantly by the precept of merciful
forgiveness.
At the foundation of the Christian concept of mercy lies the idea of the
soul – bestowing on man a particle of divinity – which gives a special
dimension to humanity. The divine origin of the soul induces its natural
pursuit of love, goodness, and truth, all of which guarantee a
communication with God within the framework of an alliance based on the
love of God and neighbor, granting at the same time the ability to
distinguish good from evil, the possibility of making a choice, as well as
of taking responsibility for one’s own actions. To love one’s neighbour
(corresponding to mercy broadly understood) becomes the ultimate
measure of humanity.
378 Chapter 20
20.3 Semantic scope of mercy in Polish
In Polish, the word mercy (directly deriving from the Latin

misericordia) emerges already in written monuments attested by the Old
Polish Dictionary in the fourteenth century, denoting, in a broad sense,
“mercy, clemency, compassion, forgiveness, pity, kindness, goodness”.
The individual components of the meaning are confirmed by quotations
coming mainly from the Bible (the Old and New Testament), which
explains the semantic concurrence of the Old Testament concept of mercy
with its Latin counterpart misericordia, preserved in different degrees in
the following derivatives:
– miłosierdziwy “merciful, compassionate, clement, misericords,

benignus”;
– miłosierdy /miłosirdy “resulting from mercy, merciful, misericors,
benignus, bonus”;
– miłościwy: a) “conferring mercy, compassionate, charitable,
merciful, gracious, forgiving, kind, sympathetic, loving,
distinguished by mercy, grace, benignus, clemens, propitius,
benevolus, amans, favens, amicus, misericors”; b) “imploring for
mercy, suppliant, misericordiam alicuius implorans”; c) “kind,
grateful, beautiful, worthy of love, gratiosus, amore dignus.”
The semantic scope of the last derivative – miłościwy – most fully reflects
the act of mercy that encompasses actions of a donor (agens) and of a
beneficiary actively applying for mercy, as well as the characteristic of
mercy from the perspective of a donor (beautiful, kind) and a recipient
(worthy of love, grateful).
The meanings of mercy listed in the Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku
(SPXVI) 7 oscillate between human and divine dimensions of mercy:
1) “pity, kindness, compassion shown towards someone; forgiveness

of wrongdoings, love of one's neighbor”;
2) of God: “one of the attributes of God in the Holy Trinity,
embracing the entire attitude of God to man (remission of sins,
blessings, love for man, the promise of salvation)”;
3) “love (towards man, family, homeland)”;
These denotations clearly point to a distinction between a human and a

divine dimension of mercy. With respect to human attitudes toward one's
7Cf. the index of abbreviations below the text.
neighbour (denotation 1 and 3), there is an apparent polarization of

meaning toward actions motivated by pity, compassion, and the precept to
forgive wrongdoings. On the other hand, interhuman kindness, goodness,
love that binds relatives, family, homeland or humanity (meaning 2) is less
explicit, which is consistent with the later semantic development of this
concept that increasingly narrows its semantic scope. While the Christian
ideal of mercy, based on belief in God’s unconditional love for man
(meaning 3) and the precept of mercy (“Be merciful, as I am merciful”)
finds application in strictly religious texts, in public discourse addressing
ethical problems and in the awareness of language users who follow
Christian moral principles, as well as in contemporary dictionary definitions,
the meaning is limited to “compassion, mercy, pity” and treated as
obsolete, as is indicated by the contexts quoted. On the other hand,
meanings that associate mercy with a human dimension, understood as the
ability to unselfishly provide good, feel compassion, show kindness and
protect what is weaker – often referred to as being human (as opposed to
inhuman attitudes) – are manifested in derivatives, especially in negative
forms merciful/unmerciful (miłosierny/niemiłosierny), merciful/without
mercy (miłosiernie/bezmiłosiedzia) and their synonymous equivalents,
based on the lexeme of the soul (dusza): soulless (bezduszny) “incapable
of mercy” (= human feelings), petty/magnanimous
(małoduszny/wielkoduszny), inclined/disinclined to show good, noble
feelings. These expressions discussed extensively in Iwona Burkacka’s
article included in this volume (Chapter 16. Adjectives derived from the
lexeme dusza (soul) in the light of contemporary synonyms) point to the
central place that mercy occupies in the soul's axiosphere, to its gradability
measured by the size of the soul (małoduszny/wielkoduszny – literally
having small-soul/big-soul) in contrast to its lack (soullessness), which
marks absolute dehumanization, linking the words soulless and unmerciful
(and their derivatives) to the semantic field of “cruelty, evil”.
Significantly, while the words soulless, merciless are synonymous, the
semantics of the words “generosity, simple-mindedness” coincides with a
wide range of denotations attributed to mercy in Old Polish of the
sixteenth century (cf. above, quotations from Słstp and SPXVI). This state
of affairs attests the permanence of semantic memory, which may be
manifested in terms that are synonymous and related, and especially in
derivatives, while at the same time both the semantic scope and the scope
of use of the lexeme mercy is significantly shrinking. Admittedly, WSJP
quotes other dictionaries of contemporary Polish (ISJP, SJPDor, SJPS,
USJP, PSWP, SJP PWN, SWJP) and defines mercy as “goodness and
compassion shown to a person suffering or in need”; nevertheless, the
380 Chapter 20
quotations and examples of use do not go beyond the religious context

(Sisters of Mercy, Archfraternity of Mercy, King/Father of Mercy) and
have little in common with the definition, whereas phraseological
expressions (spuścić kurtynę/zasłonę miłosierdzia, literally to draw a
curtain of mercy) are tainted in a clearly pejorative manner (mercy is
equated with indulgent pity). 8
The concept of mercy and its direct relationship with the soul was
revived during the pontificate of St. John Paul II and popularized
especially in the encyclical Dives in Misericordia, which depicts the
divine and human dimension of mercy in its original Old Testament
meaning, as well as asserting that mercy prevails over justice and, at the
same time, conditions it. Both the Dives in Misericordiae by St. John Paul
II and the “Year of Mercy” (2015-2016) recently announced by Pope
Francis helped the forgotten term find its way back into the public
discourse outside of the strictly religious framework. In particular, the
issues raised in Dives in Misericordiae, related to the sense of threat and
existential fear that human freedom may be restricted, have had a major
impact on broader audiences:
Man rightly fears falling victim to oppression that will deprive him of his
interior freedom, of the possibility of expressing the truth of which he is
convinced, of the faith that he professes, of the ability to obey the voice of
conscience that tells him the right path to follow. (DM, 11)
Although, as the pope observes, it seems that the remedy for these dangers
is justice, “the experience of the past and of our own time demonstrates
that justice alone is not enough (…) [without] that deeper power, which is
love” manifested by means of mercy (DM, 12):
Believing in the crucified Son means “seeing the Father”, means believing
that love is present in the world and that this love is more powerful than
any kind of evil in which individuals, humanity, or the world are involved.
Believing in this love means believing in mercy. (DM, 7)
This discourse gives a clear account of the limits upon the human
dimension of mercy resulting from variously interpreted fundamental
values directly associated with mercy, such as justice, freedom, equality,
security, conditioned by both the point of view of a speaking voice and the
context in which they are employed.
8 http://www.wsjp.pl/index.php?id_hasla=34191; accessed on August 4th, 2018.

20.4 The concept of mercy in folk culture
Folklore materials – especially texts deriving from oral tradition,

strongly associated with faith in divine providence (songs, ballads, stories,
tales, legends), well-preserved in collective memory and perpetuated by
cultural context – provide a rich spectrum of manifestations of mercy (acts
of mercy) from the perspective of both the experiencing and granting
entity. 9 The analysis will be conducted on texts either explicitly including
the semantic component mercy (in the form of the lexemes mercy, to be
merciful and their derivatives merciless, without mercy as well as their
synonyms pity, to pity, magnanimous, generous, gracious, selfless, kind),
or implicitly communicating the idea of mercy contained in
presuppositions. The analysis of narratives depicting acts of mercy, both
divine and interhuman, will allow us to identify semantic profiles of the
concept that include the intention of the giver and the purpose of the
action, as well as its axiological value from the point of view of an
evaluating entity.
20.4.1 The divine dimension of mercy
Folk culture, in which religiosity has a prominent place, both in

practices directly related to worship as well as in everyday life, largely
preserved the biblical concept of mercy referred to by John Paul II in his
Dives in Misericordiae in terms of active love (of God) addressed to man,
embracing everything that makes up his humanity:
This love makes itself particularly noticed in contact with suffering,

injustice and poverty – in contact with the whole historical “human
condition”, which in various ways manifests man's limitation and frailty,
both physical and moral. It is precisely the mode and sphere in which love
manifests itself that in biblical language is called “mercy”. (DM, 3)
Folk religiosity, based on deep faith in divine providence, interprets mercy

in a similar manner, linking it directly with the human plight and misery,
which finds expression both in interhuman relations (in the form of
appeals for showing mercy or complaints about lack of compassion for
misery), and in attitudes to sacrum (especially in the form of texts
pleading for mercy and thanksgiving for the favors received). Faith in
divine mercy, embracing all human affairs, temporal and eternal, is
9 Marta Wójcicka (2014: 58–70) treats a formalized oral text as a prototypical text
of culture that constitutes collective memory.

382 Chapter 20
reflected in the cognitive scenes 10 included in the narratives of popular

occasional song texts, ballads, stories of miraculous events, and
apocrypha, in which God as the source of power assumes the role of
agens; thus the act of mercy may often require his presence on stage
(when he, as the protagonist of the event, directly intervenes in human
affairs). Most often, however, God remains in the background or appears
only as an addressee of pleas or thanksgiving for favours and as the
initiator of an action made on his order. In such a case, the role of patiens
goes to a beneficiary, single or collective, who may also be an organizer of
the scene, when he is actively applying for divine mercy, directing the plea
to the “Father of mercy”, or soliciting the support of intermediaries, other
divine persons (Lord Jesus, Mother of God) and saints. The manner of
presenting acts of mercy included in the event-based scenario remains in
close connection with the genre of the text. 11
20.4.1.1 The providential profile of divine mercy
The providential profile, focused on the overwhelming mercy of God,

is expressed in religious songs (examples 1, 2) and in apocalyptic narrative
ballads (example 3) with Christ the Lord as the protagonist (stage
organizer), who, wandering the earth, preaches boundless fatherly love
with which the “Lord of heaven” surrounds each one of us individually
and all the people for whom he created the world to be their home and the
earth to feed them like a mother. In narrations praising God’s mercy,
providential profiling results from the perspective adopted by the creator,
recognizing the unceasing protective role of the “Lord of all things”, who
guards a man against misfortune (war, famine), consoles in misery and
cares for the soul of “sinful man”. The Lord Jesus and the Mother of God
also participate in the process of expressing and transmitting the Divine
Providence, as the following passages illustrate:
10My model of scene construction is based upon Langacker’s concept of an energy

chain (Langacker 2009: 473). The cause-effect structure of the event, during which
participants transfer energy, determines their positions on stage and profiles their
archetypical roles: agens (event initiator), instrument (energy transmitter), patiens
(recipient) and background scenery. In each scene we will be dealing with role
profiling in a different degree of activity, depending on the position on stage and
the function in the energy chain. The most prototypical is the role of agens, the
initiator of energy flow; the least, the role of the instrument or the recipient
(Kardela 1998, 81–84; Langacker 2009, 473; Tabakowska ed. 2001, 114-119).
11 On the role of genre specifics in shaping the reality in terms of form and content,
see Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska 2007.

(1) Wszystka moja nadzieja My entire hope

u Boga mojego, rests with my God,
ni boje ja się nieszczęścia, I do not fear misfortunes,
ni smutku żadnego. nor any sorrow.
Bóg zasmuci, Bóg pocieszy, God aggrieves, God consoles,
on jest Panem wszelkiej rzeczy, także he is the Lord of all things,
ji mojej. mine as well.
Ufam w miłosierdzie jego, I trust in his mercy,
on mnie pocieszy gerzesznego, mamy he will console me – a sinner,
w nim nadzieje our hope is in him
(Lubelskie 2, 685 Wszystka moja nadzieja)

(2) Matko, Królowo Zwierzyńca, Mother, Queen of the Bestiary
tyś panią tych lasów i pól, thou art the Lady of these fields and
tyś nas wszystkich swym płaszczem woods,
okryła, thou sheltered us all with your mantle,
w czasie wojny od nieszczęść i kul in times of war from mishaps and
(...) bullets (...)
Tyś patronką tej naszej świątyni, Thou art the patroness of our shrine,
twojej chwały składamy nasz trud, we commit thee our toil,
niech łaska twoja uczyni, let thy grace make
aby chwalił ciebie cały lud. all people praise thee.
(Lubelskie 3, 611 Matko, Królowo Zwierzyńca)
(3) Chrystus rzekł sierocie: Christ told an orphan:

Zaprawdę wam powiadam, drogie verily, I say unto you, dear children,
dziatki, none of you is an orphan,
nie jest sierotą żadne z was, although you may not have a father
choć nie ma ojca, matki (...) and mother (...)
Bo ojcem jest mu niebios pan, Since your father is the Lord of
a matko ziemia miła, heaven, and your mother kind earth,
co jako plony swoich zbóż who feeds you with her crops,
jak mlekiem wykarmiła. as with milk.
A domem jest wam cały świat, bez And the whole world is your home,
granic i bez końca, without borders and without an end,
gdzie tylko sięgnie [nieba skraj] jak wherever the rim of heavens reaches,
złota strzała słońca. like a golden arrow of the sun.
(Lubelskie 5, 330 Szedł w szczerym polu Chrystus Pan)

384 Chapter 20
The depiction of providential mercy in the context of trust and hope in

opposition to misery, sin, sadness and unhappiness marks the interpreting
and evaluating perspective of a creating entity, based on faith in limitless
divine protection over the world, and points to a lexical and semantic
network entwining the providential profile of mercy.
20.4.1.2 The profile of mercy/grace
The profile of gracious mercy is focused on the favours God bestows

on mankind as well as on blessings that sanctify human actions, in terms
of both daily activities and groundbreaking events of human life that
usually fall within the scope of rituals and are ritually sanctioned. The
images of experiencing grace, as well as merely craving grace, emerge
especially in songs of thanksgiving and supplication, purely religious and
occasional, associated with land cultivation and harvest (e.g. harvest
songs), with weddings and funerals. The most expressive scenes depicting
divine intervention in human life are included in ballad narratives about
revelations and miracles that accompany them.
An example of a narrative about a miraculous event is the Song of
Michałek, which describes how in Leżajsk “the Mother of God, Mary,
appeared on the sand next to a forest” Mary, the main character of the
scene, conveyed to Tomasz Michałek, “a simple, honest man”, the will of
the Lord, “that a church be built where God’s praises will be sung and
grace will be received”. God himself remains in the background of the
event as a giver of favours that will flow down on people praying in the
church and under the statue of the Mother of God erected in the place of
the miraculous revelation:
Figurę postawili, by się ludzie The statue was built, so that people
schodzili would come
na to miejsce, gdzie dla ludu to this place, where God bestowed
Bóg uczynił łaski cudu on the people the miracle of grace
za przyczyną Maryi by the intercession of Mary
(Lubelskie 3, 638 Pieśń o Michałku)
In scenes from the songs of supplication for the fertility of the land, the
recipient of pleading and at the same time the giver of favours and
blessings is the God-Father who, an invisible being, appears in the
background as an agential power. On the other hand, people appealing for
mercy occupy the central place on stage in the role of its organizer. The
entity appealing for grace from the “King of Heaven” takes an attitude of
humility and humbleness. The “gift of a merciful God” for a “distressed
man” assumes the role of a textual equivalent of grace. The pleading
formulas take on the form of spells, referring to the divine mercy,
redeemed by the holy blood, and include the promise of eternal worship of
the God-Sovereign:
Królu nieba wysokiego, King of the high heavens,

Boże Abrahama cnego, God of noble Abraham,
racz wejrzeć na ludzkie plemię, look graciously upon the tribe of men,
a daj urodzaj na ziemię. send good harvest to earth.
Aby cię znał lud prawdziwy, So that all the people would see
żeś ty jest Bóg litościwy, that thou art merciful God,
a my cię za ten dar wielki and we will praise thee
chwalić będziem na czas wszelki. eternally for this mighty gift.
Zlitujże się nad strapionym Have mercy on the distraught

drogą krwią twą odkupionym, with thy blood redeemed,
zlitujże się, zlituj, Panie, have mercy on us good Lord,
niech się łaska twoja stanie. let thy grace prevail.
(Lubelskie 1, 447 Królu nieba wysokiego)
In thanksgiving harvest songs, gratitude for the favour of an abundant

harvest is expressed by means of the textual equivalents generosity,
bounty as a token of “God’s paternal pity”.
Nasycił nas Bóg znowuj hojnie, God furnished us generously,

Z ojcowskiej Boskiej litości. Out of his Divine pity.
Jak wszystkie stworzenia przystojnie Just as He feeds all his creation
Zywi aze do sytości, Richly until they have plenty,
Tak i nom wziele dobrygo We also received copious good
Dała scyro rynkia Jego From His generous hand.
(Wełpa 2014: 147)
Zboże w polu stało, Corn stood on a field,

Szkody mu groziły; Threatened by harm;
Teraz gumien dachy Now barn roofs,
Będą je chroniły (...) Will shelter it (...)
Drugi siał ze łzami, Another sowed with tears,
A zbierał z radością. And reaped with joy,
386 Chapter 20
Tak Bóg rządzi nami z ojcowską This is how God governs us with
litością. paternal woe.
(Wełpa 2014: 147)
The profile of grace includes also scenes from ceremonial wedding songs
and ritual blessings of the newlyweds by their parents (see below 20.4.2 –
The interhuman dimension of mercy). Divine persons (God the Father
Himself or the Lord Jesus, the Mother of God, sometimes angels) usually
participate in the scenarios in which the bride or both newlyweds are
orphans. The organizers of the stage are then the bride and groom, who
appeal to the sacrum to descend from heaven and bestow blessings on
behalf of their dead parents:
(1) Stąpże Boże z nieba, bo nam cie Descend from Heaven, God, because
dziś potrzeba. Abyś nam wianki zawił, we need thee; to twist together our
ji nas pobłogosławił. wreaths and to bless us.
(2) A jak już ludzie nie będą chcieli, And when people refuse, angels from
pobłogosławią z nieba anieli. heaven will bless us.
(SSiSL, 1996: 102–103)
The blessing from heaven can also be conveyed by means of symbols, as

for instance a ritual wedding cake called korowaj or kołacz, ceremonially
shared between the participants of the wedding feast at midnight –
considered a liminal time marked by special power, which also
emphasized the symbolic nature of this rite of passage in which the
newlyweds change their status.
(3) Cóżeś widział, Pyszny korowaju? What did you see, Delicious Korowaj?
Oj widział ci ja Pana Jezusa w niebie, Aw, I saw the Lord Jesus in heaven as
jak błogosławił, nadobny Jasiu, ciebie, he blessed you, bonny Johnny. (...)
Aw: … Oj widział ci ja Matkę Boską Aw, I saw the Mother of God in
w niebie, Jak błogosławiła nadobna heaven as she blessed you, fair Kathy.
Kasiu, ciebie.
(SSiSL, 1996, s.102-103)
In the above, the creator of the scene believes that the korowaj is a gift
from heaven – a symbol of grace and blessing sent by the Creator
himself. 12 The kołacz/korowaj has a double function, that of the narrator

and agens (a transmitter of power), while the newlyweds and their
wedding guests are its recipients, experiencing the power of sacrum as
participants in a sacred rite.
The concept of mercy in the profile of God's grace (inscribed in the act
of blessing) is textually enmeshed in a network of lexical and semantic
relations with miracle, goodness, generosity, bounty, gift, joy, and in
opposition to distress, tears and dangers. Paternal pity or a gift from
heaven appear as textual equivalents of grace, attesting a belief-attitude of
the creating entity, who makes one’s fate dependent on the blessing of the
"King of the heavens". While favourable conditions for strengthening
connotative features of grace (a generous gift) result in a firm embedding
of the texts in ritual, repeatability of motifs, especially the number of
textual variants, determines the degree of integration of conceptualized
mercy in the social consciousness.
20.4.1.3 The profile of pitying mercy

God’s act of mercy upon man’s insignificance and weakness emerges
in texts of various genres, in Advent, All Souls’ Day and funeral songs, as
well as in Marian and orphan songs. Scenes depicting divine mercy, in
which pity is the dominant motive of action, are constructed on the basis
of typical situational contexts:
– the faithful beg God/Redemptor to have pity on their weaknesses and
plight, expecting a change of fate:
Boże wieczny, Boże żywy, Eternal God, living God,

Odkupicielu prawdziwy, True Redeemer,
wysłuchaj nasz głos płaczliwy, hear our imploring voice,
wysłuchaj nasz głos płaczliwy. hear our imploring voice.
Któryś jest na wysokości, Who art on high,
schyl nieba, użycz litości, unfasten heaven, grant pity,
spuść się w nasze głębokości, come down to our depths,
spuść się w nasze głębokości. come down to our depths.
(Lubelskie 1, 102, Pieśń adwentowa)
– laments of souls suffering in purgatory because of the lack of help from

the living arouse the pity of God, who inspires people to make sacrifices in
order to redeem the soul from purgatory:
12On the function of korowaj in wedding rites, see Szadura 2017; Bączkowska
1998.
388 Chapter 20
(...) widział to Bóg wszechmogący, że (...) God almighty

ogień pali gorący, saw that the fire burns sultry,
nikt nie podaje pomocy, but no one comes with aid
a tu cierpią w dzień i w nocy. to the suffering night and day.
Pan Bóg natchnął duchem ludzi, Lord breathed the spirit into men,
że litość w nich rozbudzi so that pity would awaken
i ofiary za nich dadzą and offerings be given
dusze z czyśca wyprowadzą and out of purgatory souls driven.
(Lubelskie 1, 521 Dusze w czyśćcu zapłakały)
– sinners beg the Mother of God for protection against God’s wrath:
(...) lubośmy Boga ciężko rozgniewali, (...) we have enraged God gravely,
A jednak żeśmy sę do Ciebie udali yet we come to thee timidly
(...) (...)
Zastaw nas Matko swojemi piersiami, Shield us Mother with your bosom,
A syn Twój niech nas zasłoni ranami. let Thy son conceal us in his wounds.
A gniew Boski w litość się obróci. And God’s wrath into pity will
transform.
(WM 5, 124)
– Our Lady heals a sick person affected by a stroke, then reveals Herself
and orders him to heal people in Her name and with Her power:
Ja przez ciebie łaski na ludzi przekażę. Through you, I will grant favours on
Będziesz kładł swe ręce, wzywał Syna people.
mego, You will put your hands down, and
kto uwierzy, to ja uzdrowię każdego. call upon my Son,
who believes, will be healed.
(Lubelskie 3, 643 Śliczna Maryja wieku dwudziestego)
– Our Lady, hearing orphaned children complain to their dead mother in

front of her picture of hunger and poverty, takes pity on their fate, and
performs a miracle by letting food drop from heaven:
Więc Matka Boska głos usłyszała, So Our Lady heard their cry,
bułki im chleba z nieba spuściła, and let rolls of bread rain from the
któregu nigdy ni używały, sky,
ali patrzajunc dosyć gu miały. the bread they had never seen thus far,
now seeing alone they had enough.
(Lubelskie 5, 329 Jest dwie siroty co puzostali)
– Our Lady takes pity on a blind girl when she hears her mother praying to
her picture, and brings the girl’s sight back:
(...) wtem, o dziwo, wstrząsnęło (...) then, suddenly, it shook the

ludem, dziecko uzdrowione cudem, crowd, the child miraculously cured,
wszyscy naraz potruchleli, ci, którzy everyone rose affright, those who
ten cud widzieli. this miracle marked.
Wszyscy obecni klęknęli, dziękczynne All present fell to their knees,
modły wznosili, and thankful prayers breathed,
do tej, co cud uczyniła, wzrok to her, who the miracle performed,
dziecięciu przywróciła and to the child its sight restored.
(Lubelskie 3, 609 O Częstochowska Królowo)
The linguistic image of the divine dimension of mercy motivated by pity is

made up of contexts of definitely negative values. Pity occurs together
with misery, bereavement, poverty, disability, suffering, sin, fear of
punishment and God’s wrath. Connotations that form the semantic
environment of pity reflect the misery of human existence. On the other
hand, the acts of God’s mercy render pity the meaning of an unlimited,
causative power capable of influencing reality and changing the course of
events. In contexts which present pity and faith as closely related, the
performative power of a merciful act is depicted as a miracle.
20.4.1.4. The profile of compassionate mercy
The profile of compassionate mercy comprises acts of mercy that are a

response of the sacrum to human grievance and misery. The representative
genres of folklore involving narratives about events demanding God’s
reaction to the misfortunes inflicted on the protagonist include especially
orphan songs, love songs, soldiers' songs, and prayer texts. The entity
creating the stage assumes the role of either a narrator or a protagonist
pitying his fate, awaiting consolation. The scenarios of the examined texts
present the following situations:
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– A girl suffering from unrequited love demands God’s compassion (in

presupposition – solace):
Pozol-ze się, Boze, zakochanio mego. Take pity, God, over my love.
Kochanie, kochanie, komu się My love, my love, whoever gets him,
dostanie, it won’t be me, who truly loved.
kogo ja kochała, tygo nie dostane
(WM 3, 118)
– Jesus comforts a man afflicted with unhappiness:
Wierna dusa, co tak błagas The faithful soul that beseeches God
Jezus dał się znaleźć ci Jesus let you find him
kiedy ufność w nim pokładas if you have trust in him
otrze z ocu twoje łzy he will wipe your tears
(WM 3, 37)
– An orphan at the grave of her mother complains about an evil
stepmother. The dead mother cannot help her daughter, but the Lord Jesus
brings justice, consigning the stepmother to hell and taking the orphan to
heaven:
Zesłał ci Pan Jezus trzech aniołów z Lord Jesus sent three angels from
nieba: heaven:
Zabierzcie sierote, do siebie, do nieba. Take the orphan with you to heaven.
Zesłał ci Pan Jezus czarta przeklętego: Lord Jesus sent a wretched devil:
Zabierz se macoche do piekła samego. Take the stepmother to your hell.
Biedna sierocina już kwiateczki zbira, Poor orphan gathers now flowers,
A macocha w piekle już sie poniewira And the stepmother thrashes around in
hell.
(Lubelskie 5, 318 Szła sierotka przez wieś)
– Nature is sympathetic to an orphaned girl frozen in a field and arranges

her funeral, while the Lord Jesus takes her soul to heaven:
siwy mrozik główke ścioł, white frost cut my little head off,
a Pan Jezus duszke wzioł. and Lord Jesus took my soul.
Zimny wiatr jo żałował, The cold wind wailed over me,
biały śnieżek pochował, white snowflakes buried me,
on mnie ubrał w sukienki and dressed me in a white gown,
do tej białej trumienki. to my white coffin.
(Lubelskie 5, 326–327 Przez zagony i pola biegnie sobie pacholę)
– Our Lady comforts all distressed who turn to her for help:
Pójdź i ty, wdowo, coś opuszczona, Come, widow, who are desolate,
od wszystkich ludzkich serc oddalona, far removed from all hearts,
bo cię Maryja szybko pocieszy, Mary will quickly console you,
wszystkich ratuje, kto do niej śpieszy. she saves everyone that hurries to her.
Więc chrześcijanie, co Boga znacie, So all you Christians, who know God,
co przed tą Panią na twarz padacie, who bend a knee in front of this Lady,
ach, popadajcie tu na kolana, wołając, oh, fall to the ground, calling out,
zbaw nas, Matko kochana. Amen. deliver us, dear Mother. Amen.
(Lubelskie 3, 645 Pójdźże me serce do Częstochowy)
20.4.1.5 The profile of forgiving mercy
An act of mercy based on forgiveness of sins constitutes the very

nucleus of Christian culture and the deepest expression of God’s love for
his creation, sealed with the sacrifice of his Son that opens the gate to
eternal life. The lexical exemplification of faith in God’s mercy and the
saving power of Christ’s death on the cross may be found in such formulas
of spells/oaths as Na miłość Boską! (On God’s love!), Na rany Chrystusa!
(On the wounds of Christ!). Similarly, in acts of requesting mercy (in the
different profiles), a reference to the passion/blood/wounds of the
Redeemer, aimed at arousing pity, occurs frequently in the texts. In the
profile of forgiving mercy, the attention of the entity creating the scene
focuses mainly on sin as the main obstacle on the way to salvation. Thus,
the central issue of contexts forming the profile of forgiving mercy is the
problem of a soul burdened with sins, which, in a worldly plan, distances
it from God and his favours, and from the perspective of eternity
condemns the soul either to the torments of purgatory or to eternal
damnation in hell.
Typical genres for texts representing this profile are Advent, Easter,
funeral, and All Souls’ Day songs, occurring in the repertoire of ancestral
songs once performed during indulgence festivals by itinerant beggars, to
which they owed their popularity. Scenarios of such texts include the
following situations:
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– At the Last Judgment, the souls who have denied God will be cast into
hell, while the good souls will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The living,
however, may count on God’s mercy; if they remember the sacrifice of
Christ, they will be provided with a place in heaven:
Syn Boży stał sie cłowiekam dla God’s son was made a man for you,
ciebie, he became flesh, took on a soul, so
wzion duse, ciało, abyś ty był w that you would go to heaven,
niebie, he died, was buried and descended
umar, pogrzebion ji do piekieł zstąpił, into hell,
tam zmartwychpowstał, na niebiosa thence he rose again and ascended to
wstąpił (...) heaven (...)
O, jeśli będziem Jezusa rany Oh, if we remember the wounds of
wspominali, Jesus,
będziem z nim wspólnie na wieki w we will reign together with him in
niebie królowali, heaven forever,
będziem z nim na wieki w niebie we will reign together with him in
królowali. heaven forever.
(Lubelskie 3, 628, Posłuchajcie grzesznicy o straszliwym sądzie)
– Our Lady summons sinners in order to obtain forgiveness for them:
(...) Gdy nas dotknie grzechów cios (...) When our sins deal us a blow,
słyszym Matki naszej głos we hear the voice of our Mother,
pójdźcie do mnie, moje dzieci, come to me, my children,
osłodzę wasz przykry los. I will soothe your sad plight.
My też z płaczem biegniemy Hence we run with tears,
litości twej żebrzemy, we beg your mercy,
zmiłuj się, Matko nad nami. have mercy on us, oh Mother.
(Lubelskie 1, 446 Już się zbliżył miesiąc maj)
– The Lord Jesus did not accept into heaven the “hardened souls” of
sinners who rejected God. When hell opened, they kneeled, asking for help
from the Mother of God who solicited remission of their sins and the
entrance to heaven.
Były dusze zatwardziałe, dać nie There were some hardened souls, who
chciały Bogu chwały. refused to give glory to God.
Jezus lekko je osądził, Jesus judged them leniently,
by po świecie się plątały (...) to wander about the world (...)
Dusze rzewnie zapłakały, Maryje se The souls cried ardently, remember

przypomniały. Our Lady.
Z to nadziejo poleciały, i o litość ją With hope, they hovered towards her
błagały. and begged for mercy.
Maryja się rozczuliła, płaszczem Mary was moved and covered them
swoim jich okryła. with her mantle.
Uprosiła swego Syna, darowana była She pleaded with her son to let go of
wina. their sins.
Dusze rzewnie zapłakały, Maryji The souls wept bitterly and thanked
podziękowały. Mary.
Za Jej czułe dobre serce Because of her tender good heart,
mogą widzieć Boga jeszcze. they may now see God.
(Lubelskie 1, 525 Dusze rzewnie zapłakały)
– The Mother of God, overcome with mercy towards a penitent soul, takes
it to the gates of heaven and pleads with her son on its behalf. Owing to a
merciful act that the soul performed on her brother when alive, the Lord
Jesus forgives its sin:
(...) Jezu Chryste, Panie miły, (...) Jesus Christ, dear Lord,
odpuść duszy wszelkie winy. remit all sins of the soul.
Powiedzże mi, duszo miła, Tell me, dear soul,
dla ubogich coś czyniła? what have you done for the poor?
Dałam ci ja jeden pieniądz I have given one coin
ubogiemu bratu swemu. to my needy brother.
Tylko za ten jeden pieniądz And because of that one coin
raczył ją Bóg w niebo przyjąć. God took it to heaven.
(Lubelskie 1, 524 Straszny termin dla człowieka)
– The Lord Jesus promises forgiveness and eternal life to infanticide on

condition that she confesses her sins and sincerely repents. During her
confession, the earth trembles with indignation, candles go out in the
church, remorse for sins burns her body, but her soul is salvaged:
Jak uznała ze to Pan Bóg, upadła mu When she realized it was God, she fell
krzyzem do nóg. down at his feet.
Dziwko, dziwko, nie lękaj sie, idź do Woman, woman, do not be afraid, go
kościoła, spowiedaj sie. to a church, confess your sins.
Do kościoła wstępowała, sidem sąźni When she was entering a church,
ziemnia drzała. the earth began to quake.
394 Chapter 20
Ułtarze sie odwróciły i śwyce sie Altars turned upside down and all the
zagasiły. candles went out.
Choręgwie sie pozwijały, a organy All the banners rolled in and the
grać nie chciały. organs fell silent.
Jak sie długo spowiedała, az sie She went on confessing until she
prochem rozsypała. burned to ashes.
I ziemnia sie drzyć przestała, bo una Then the earth ceased to tremble
grzychu nie mniała. because the sin was gone.
Ułtarze sie powróciły i śwyce sie The altars returned to their position
zapaliły. and the candles were alight.
Choręgwie sie rozwijały i organy The banners unfolded and the organs
same grały. resounded.
(Kolb, vol. 27, 367 Spotkanie grzesznicy z Bogiem)
20.4.1.6 The educational profile of mercy
Divine Mercy towards man is manifested especially in the care for his
soul:
He is merciful, and he teaches and corrects, like a shepherd with his flock.
He takes pity on those who accept the doctrine of compassion, and he
applies his judgments promptly. (Sir 18, 13)
The biblical tale about the "Good Shepherd", distributed in a folk version
by an ancestral song, reminds us that "all living" are lost sheep, and that
the Father of Mercy, taking pity on the weakness of man, endeavours in
every possible manner – alone or through his Son and the Mother of God –
to protect the human soul, prone to sin as it is, from condemnation. In
scenes depicting the profile of parental mercy, the divine persons are the
main protagonists and initiators of events, taking the initiative
(admonishing, warning or punishing) to give a chance to repent, and the
faithful themselves ask for guidance onto the right path. Narratives are
usually carried out in the form of a dialogue. Typical genres for the
educational profile are ancestral songs about the miraculous revelations of
the will of God, the Last Judgment, All Souls’ Day and Marian songs.
Scenarios for these scenes include the following events:
– Our Lady (in the form of a miraculous picture of the Black Madonna
from Częstochowa) takes a journey to all corners of Poland, in order to
guide people onto the path of salvation:
Tu jest miejsce nawiedzenia, Here is the place of visitation,

tu Maryja woła nas, here Mary is calling us,
przyjdźcie do mnie, moje dzieci, come to me, my children,
przyszedł czas, ach, przyszedł czas, the time has come, oh the time’s come
Nigdy tego nikt nie słyszał i nie The world has never heard nor has
widział tego świat, ever seen it,
by po Polsce wędrowała Matka Boska, that the Mother of God wandered
róży kwiat around Poland, the rose flower
Więc do ciebie jak do matki So to you like to our mother
wszyscy razem tulmy się, we cling together,
Matko Boska Częstochowska, Mother Mary of Częstochowa,
ty nad nami zlituj się (...) have mercy on us (...)
Prowadź nas swymi śladami, Let us follow your footsteps,
przez ciernistych pola dróg, across thorny fields,
do tej niebios swej krainy, to the heavenly land,
gdzie nas czeka dobry Bóg. where good God awaits us.
(Lubelskie 3, 560 Pieśni za obrazem)
– Our Lady performs a miracle and the place of her revelation becomes a
source of healing so that those who are gifted with grace come closer to
God and praise him:
W tej kaplicy zostało In this chapel, there remained plenty

szczudeł i kul niemało. of stilts and crutches.
Z czym kto przyszedł, to zostawił, They left behind whatever they came
zdrowy odszedł, Boga sławił, with, and went away healed, praising
każdy wielbił Maryję. God, worshipping Mary.
(Lubelskie 3, 640 Gwiazdo śliczna wspaniała)
– The Mother of God punishes with blindness a priest who did not believe in
the healing of the sick who were praying at her miraculous figure, and then
restores his sight and faith when he himself receives the miracle of healing:
Tak proboszcz przekonany, In this way, the parson convinced,

za niewiarę skarany, punished for his disbelief,
krzyżem pada i przeprasza, he prostrates himself on the ground,
już wszystkim ludziom ogłasza, and prays mercy; now he preaches all
że się tam cuda dzieją. around the miracles that take place there.
(Lubelskie 3, 640 Gwiazdo śliczna wspaniała)

396 Chapter 20
– Our Lady with a sad face appears in front of the faithful; seeing them fall
into sin, she makes them repent and come back to God:
W słonecznej światłości Najświętsza The Holy Virgin in sunshine

Panna / brightness /
na ziemię zstępuje jak zorza ranna descends to earth as morning lightness
(ref. Ave Maryja) (ref. Ave Maria)
O Matko, dlaczego twe jasne oczy, Oh Mother, why are your bright eyes
cierpienie i smutek boleśnie mroczy? dimmed with suffering and sadness?
(ref. Ave Maryja) (ref. Ave Maria)
Me serce matczyne przepełnia smutek, My motherly heart is filled with
bo dusze mych dzieci grzechem sadness,
zatrute. (ref. Ave Maryja) because the souls of my children are
O zmiłuj się, Matko, i wskaż nam poisoned by sin. (ref. Ave Maria)
drogę, Oh have mercy, Mother, and show us
co z ziemi prowadzi prosto do Boga the way,
(ref. Ave Maryja) that leads from earth straight to God
Grzesznicy niech padną przed Bogiem (ref. Ave Maria)
w skrusze, Let the sinful fall down repenting in
w pokucie i we łzach obmyją duszę front of God,
(ref. Ave Maryja) in tears and atonement, they will wash
Przeze mnie Bóg chce wam dać byt their souls (ref. Ave Maria)
spokojny Through me, God wishes to give you a
i zgasić już krwawe pożogi i wojny quiet life
(ref. Ave Maryja) and extinguish bloody fires and wars
(ref. Ave Maria)
(Lubelskie 3, 584 W słonecznej światłości Najświętsza Panna)
***
The fact that the concept of God’s mercy in a broad sense consistent
with the biblical original is rooted in traditional culture results from many
factors. Stereotypical patterns included in folkloristic texts undoubtedly
co-create collective memory (Wójcicka 2014: 58-70), especially if they are
additionally supported by a ritual. The image of the Blessed Virgin Mary
in the Marian, All Souls’ Day, orphan songs and ballads coincides with the
stereotype of a mother in folk culture, the one committed to child rearing –
warning, teaching, indicating the right course of conduct, and punishing if
reprimands prove ineffective. Similarly, the image of God fulfils the
criteria attributed to the prototype of a father/guardian of family,
defending, but at the same time strict and demanding, more often than the
mother availing himself of punishments and inclined to anger against
disobedience (Bartmiński 2006, 161-162; 2009, 195-197). People’s

religiosity is manifested in collective forms of worship, closely related to
the calendar, which is an important habituating factor. The manner and
place of performance had a significant influence on the function of the
analyzed texts in social circulation. The provenance of many of these texts
from the ancestral repertoire ensured their popularity. Wandering singers
performed them both in public places – near the church, especially on the
occasion of indulgences or annual holidays, near the cemetery on All
Souls’ Day – and on the thresholds of cottages, where a wandering beggar,
treated as a “man of God”, found hospitality and audience. Singing also
took place during pilgrimages to sanctuaries and local calvaries, during
celebrations related to peregrination of the Black Madonna picture, and
during family ceremonies (funerals, weddings) attended by members of a
community (village, settlement). The most representative profile depicting
divine mercy is the forgiving profile, which includes the Christian
viewpoint of a conceptualizer, based on the belief in the unlimited love of
God for people, bestowing the favour of forgiveness on every sinner that
showed mercy to his neighbour.
20.4.2 Human dimension of mercy
Interhuman mercy, in accordance with the divine precept “Be merciful,

as I am also merciful”, reflects the love of God directed toward man and
all his creation. The ability to empathize and take specific actions for the
other person is linguistically depicted by the dimension of the soul or heart
as generosity, simple-mindedness in opposition to faint-heartedness or
even soullessness, wholeheartedness or lack of heart (without heart) and in
connection with goodness, kindliness, to have a good heart. The broader
insight into the way the manifestations of interhuman mercy occur is
provided only in textual contexts that depict the scenes in which people
show gratuitous goodness to other people, driven by kindness, compassion,
pity, solidarity in misery.
20.4.2.1 The profile of compassion
Actions motivated by compassion are, next to pity, the most expressive

profile of interhuman mercy. Its representative genre comprises orphan
songs, soldiers’ songs, love songs and All Souls’ Day songs. Due to the
moralizing character of the message (reminding about the divine precept
of rendering mercy), many of them belong to the repertoire of ancestral
songs, to which they owe their wide range and popularity. Scenarios of
398 Chapter 20
cognitive scenes with acts of mercy are based on a similar narrative

pattern. The protagonist of the event suffers from some misery and the
participant/witness (collective or individual) of the scene, driven by
compassion, offers him help or consolation:
– An orphan at the grave of her mother complains about an evil
stepmother, on hearing which her father defends the child and
punishes/admonishes his new wife:
A była ja u swy matki, And I was at my mother’s,

mówiła swoje niestatki, I told her my misery,
bidnam sirota, bidnam sirota. poor orphan, poor orphan.
A ociec, gdy to usłyszał (...) And when father heard (...)
macoche wybiuł, macoche wybiuł. he rebuked the stepmother.
(Lubelskie vol. 5 p. 321 Tam za górą murowany słup)
– In defence of children abused by a stepmother, a dead mother emerges

from the grave to take care of her children, and admonishes the
stepmother, who under the influence of this event changes her attitude
toward the children:
[zmarła matka] Jak wszystko [dead mother] When she finished

obrządziła, tending to her things,
do macochy sie zbleżyła, she approached the stepmother,
palcem jej nagroziła (...) and she wagged her finger at her (...)
Mężu, mężu, stań prędko, Husband, husband, come quickly,
już się zmieniło wszystko. everything has changed now.
Twoja niboszka była, Your dead wife was here
palcem mie nagroziła and wagged her finger at me.
(Lubelskie 5, 335 Z płaczem stał mąż przy grobie)
– An orphan is crying from hunger, seeing which a boy asks his mother to
take her home and feed her. God rewards the good heart of the boy, who
becomes a priest and then a bishop:
[sierota] Gdy wyszła z płaczem z [an orphan] Ever since she went out
samego rana, crying in the morning,
łyżeczki strawy szuka spłakana, she has been searching for a spoonful
niejeden chłopiec ze szkół wybiegał, of food,
owe dziewczynę w sieniach a boy coming back from school saw
spostrzegał. this poor girl in the hall.

Woła do mamy: Mamu, słuchajcie, He calls to his mother: Mum, please
biedne sirote w dom zawołajcie, take this poor orphan home,
może jest głodna, już mija wrota, maybe she is hungry, she comes right
ach, płacze ciężko, biedna sierota. now, weeping heavily, poor girl.
A tego chłopca Bóg wynagrodził, And God rewarded this boy,
który uod młodych lat do szkoły who had gone to school from his early
chodził, years,
wyszed na księdza, cnót wielgich he became a priest, renowned for his
znany, virtues,
zczasem biskupem został wybrany. and after some time he was elected a
bishop.
(Lubelskie 5, 329 W pewnym miasteczku tak się zdarzyło)
– An orphan boy serves some strangers as a shepherd. His dead mother,

pitying his plight, appears in a dream to bake him bread, wash his shirt,
clean him and hug him to her heart:
(...) Śni się jemu matuś, taka jakby (...) In his dream, he sees his mother
żywa (...) the way she was (...)
Przyjdźże do mnie, Jasiu, niechaj cię Come to me, Johnny, let me clean
umyję, you,
niechaj ci koszulke upiore, uszyje, let me wash your shirt, let me mend it,
Niechaj ci upieke chleba bieluśkiego, Let me bake you white bread,
Niechaj cię przytule do serca swojego. Let me hug you to my heart.
(Lubelskie vol. 5, p. 324 Służy sierotka, służy za pastucha)
– The misery of Cinderella is pitied by her godmother, who appears as a

fairy to send the girl to a ball, where she meets a prince whom she
eventually marries. The royal couple often helps the poor, sympathizing
with their fate:
Córeczko miła – ozwie się wróżka – My daughter – says the fairy –

przyszłam wyprawić na bal I have come to send Cinderella to the
Kopciuszka. ball.
Skinęła berłem i w oka mgnieniu, She motioned with her wand, and all
stoi Kopciuszek w pięknym odzieniu. of a sudden, there stands Cinderella in
(...) Królewicz z żoną przez długie lata a beautiful dress. (...) The prince and
żyli szczęśliwie we czci u świata. his wife lived long years in happiness
Niejedną łezkę biednym otarli and high esteem of the world.
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ji żyją dotąd, jeśli nie zmarli. They wiped away many poor tears and
maybe they are still alive.
(Lubelskie 5, 336 pieśniowa adaptacja bajki o Kopciuszku)
– A beautiful orphan girl comes upon soldiers who want to seduce her and
take her away with them, but when they learn that there is no father or
brothers who would defend her, they let the girl go without hurting her:
Idź drogą, dziewczyno, niech cię Bóg Go along girl, let God guide you,
prowadzi, you don’t have a father or mother,
nie masz ojca, matki, nikt cię nie no one will betray you
zdradzi
(Lubelskie 5, 335 Szła dziewczyna przez las)
– A handsome young man, having heard a girl’s complaint on her orphan’s

lot, is moved with compassion and offers to marry her:
(...) Usłyszał pięknyj młodzieniec (...) A handsome youth heard this

dziewczyny to narzekani (...) plaint of a girl (...)
widzy mogiły w tyj rzecy, I see my grave in this river,
uojcam straciła na wojnie, I lost my father at war,
samam na liudzkiej opiece. I exist on human mercy alone.
Dziewczynó, o, ni narzekaj, Stop moaning, dear girl,
dziewczynó, liube kochani, for, my girl, you are loved,
(...) my rozdobędzim majątku, (...) we will win our bread together,
ja twojim mężem zostane. I will be your husband.
(Lubelskie 5, 331 Nad brzegiem, gdzie Wisła płynie)
– An orphan is helped by good people who take pity on her misery:
O, sirotka niboga A miserable orphan

stoi bosko u proga, stands barefoot at my doorstep,
wespomoge, czym mogę I will help her with whatever I have
i przeżegnam na drogie. and bless for her the way.
Dam i chleba skóreczkie I will give some bread-skin
i białe koszuleczkie, and a white shirt,
i trzywiczki na drogie and a pair of shoes for her way
dla sirotki ubogi. to the poor orphan.
(Lubelskie 5, 328 Sirotka uboga stoi boso u proga)

20.4.2.2 The profile of pity
Although the profile of mercy is similar to the profile of compassion,

the difference is visible already in the semantic structure of the lexeme
współczuć, to feel with someone, to experience the same feelings as
someone suffering misfortune. The ability to be compassionate is
associated with readiness to help, although, depending on expectations,
compassion sometimes requires only understanding and consolation. On
the other hand, the semantic development of the word pity,
(etymologically related to lutość “severity”, “cruelty”) 13 went in the
opposite direction to the original meaning. Already in Old Polish, the
expression was used to signify mercy, 14 and with time the lexeme lutość,
lutościwy was replaced in Polish by litość. The original meaning was
ascribed to other lexemes (harshness, cruelty) which opposed pity. A trace
of the former meaning has been preserved in the denotation structure of
cruelty as a lack of mercy. The opposition pity/lack of pity, “cruelty”
(soullessness) points to the difference between compassion and mercy, as
the lack of compassion may only be treated as faint-heartedness, which is
not synonymous with cruelty. Moreover, the relationship between the
donor and the recipient in the case of compassion is equal (someone
sympathizes with someone), whereas pity presupposes a subordinate
relationship, as is indicated by the semantic-syntactic construct itself: to
take pity upon someone who requires it. While the feeling of compassion
may be aroused by the very situation in which a person affected by a
misfortune finds himself, the act of mercy is usually an answer to a
request/plea for help. In contrast to the profile of the pitying divine mercy,
where the main reason for appealing for mercy was a sin, in interhuman
relations the constructional axis of the scenario is misery calling for
mercy, which is illustrated by the following scenes:
– A girl pities a weeping Jew, and lets him into her house:
Żyd stoi i płacze. A Jew stands and weeps.

Panna sze go dopytuje, A maiden asks him,
Czego Żydek lamentuje? (...) Why are you lamenting, Jew? (...)
Panna sze go łożuluła The maiden pities him
13 Etymologically related to *ľutъ, “cutting, sharp”, based on continuants “cruel,

severe” (Jakubowicz 2010: 235).
14 Lutościwy ‘miłosierny’ Słstp, SPXVI, Linde XVIII c.
https://spxvi.edu.pl/indeks/haslo/62511#znaczenie-1 (accessed on July, 28th, 2018).

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I do széni go wpuszczuła. And lets him in.
(Wełpa 2014: 154)
– A soldier returning from war knocks on a cottage, asking for help. A girl
pities him, shares with him the last piece of bread left for herself and her
mother. (The mother recognizes her husband in him and the soldier returns
home.):
Zawianą dróżyną szed żołnierz ubogi, A poor soldier was walking a windy
szynelo był okryty, na szczudle, bez road, wrapped in a coat, legless,
nogi, supporting himself on a crutch,
I przyszedł pod chatkę, skąd ogień And he arrived at a cottage, where he
zabłysnął, saw fire ablaze inside,
(...) Cichutko poprosił o wsparcie ze (...) with tears, he asks quietly for
łzami, help,
odmawiał modlitwę „Zmiłuj się nad repeating a prayer “God, have mercy
nami”. on us.”
(...) Wybiegła dziewczynka z białemi
włosami, (...) A white-haired girl ran out of the
wyniosła mu chleba ji rzecze ze łzami. cottage,
Przyjm od nas choć tyle, bo więcej she brought him bread and said
nie mamy tearfully, take this little bit, as we
jesteśmy też biedni, nic ci więc nie don’t have any more
damy. we are poor ourselves, we can’t give
you anything else.
(Lubelskie 3, 395 Zawianą drożyną szedł żołnierz ubogi)
– Cold and hungry carol-singers ask the hosts for a donation [during the
Christmas rite called “Rogala”]:
Pod oknem stoimy, żębami We stand at the window, our teeth

dzwonimy, chattering, our hands shivering,
ręce nam latają, w koszyk nic nie dają, nothing drops to our basket, but take
ale się zmiłujcie i nas poratujcie. pity and help us.
(Wełpa 2014: 153)

– Souls suffering in purgatory beg their families to pray for them, to order
a mass, give alms, so that they may be saved from the ordeal:
Słuchaj żyjący człowiecze, Listen you all, who are alive,

co za ogień straszliwy piecze a dreadful fire burns all the sinful
przewiniających (...); (...);
(...) dusza w czyśćcu pokutuje (...) a soul in purgatory repents
Zmiłowania wypatruje. And awaits mercy.
Czem możecie pomagajcie, Help us in every way you can,
Duszę z czyśćca wybawiajcie Save us from the purgatory
(...)Niech mszę świętą zakazuje (...) let a holy mass be ordered,
I ubogiemu ofiaruje, let money be given to the poor,
Na tym upadku nie będzie, it is nothing to you,
Dusze z czyśćca wydobędzie. but may rescue a soul from purgatory.
(Adamowski, Doda, Mickiewicz 1998, 306, Pieśni zaduszkowe)
– A robber lurking for travellers pities over the Holy Family walking to
Jerusalem and provides them with shelter:
(...)A wtenczas zbójca jidzie, widzi (...) And then a brigand goes and sees
troje ludzi, three people,
zaczął z nimi rozmawiać, bo go litość he starts talking to them and takes pity
budzi. on them.
Skądżeście to ludzie ji dokąd jidziecie, Where are you from, people, and
czy tu nocować chcecie, bo wy tu where are you going,
zmarzniecie. do you want to sleep here, because it
A Panna z Józefem w rade sie z nim is freezing outside?
wdali And the Virgin and Joseph started to
ji na swojo niedole tak sie uużalali. tell him their misfortunes.
Oto jidziem z miasteczka, z We are going away from the town, a
miasteczka małego, little town because there is no work
bo tam roboty nie ma i życia żadnego. there.
Ludzie dobrzy z Nazaret tak nam rade Good people of Nazareth gave us this
dali, advice,
do Jeruzalem miasta byście sie dostali. to travel to the city of Jerusalem.
(...) Ale do tego miasta jest ten bór (...)
niemały, But to get to this city,
a pośród niego mieszka rozbójnik we need to cross this large forest,
zuchwały. in which there lives a reckless brigand.
Dlatego sie lękamy, bardzo frasujemy, This is why we are afraid and we
bo tej drogi nie znamy, jakże go worry because we don't know the way,
miniemy? how can we avoid him?
Zbójca jim odpowiada: Już go nie The brigand answers them: Now you
miniecie, can’t avoid him,
a brat to ja jestem, czy mi wierzyć I am this brigand, and your brother,
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chcecie? will you trust me?

Pójdźcie ze mno w drogę do domu Come with me to my house and don’t
mojego, be afraid,
ji nie lękajcie się przypadku żadnego. nothing bad will happen to you.
(Lubelskie 1, 187 Gdy Najświętsza Panna po świecie chodziła)
The profile of interhuman pity goes beyond the misery associated with
poverty or adversity, it also applies to matters of the soul. The souls of the
dead, who do their penance in purgatory for sins committed, await mercy
from the living. The ritual acts of mercy include visiting the cemeteries on
All Souls’ Day and ordering prayers for the souls from itinerant beggars
(dziady kalwaryjskie) standing at the gates of a necropolis. The alms
offered to them in the form of bread baked specially for this occasion (one
loaf for each soul) constitutes a spiritual bridge between the worlds of the
living and the dead. The prayers are offered not only to the souls of the
loved ones but also to the so-called "empty souls" that no one remembers,
about whose afterlife existence no one cares anymore (Masłowska 2016:
474).
On All Souls’ Day farmers (...) distributed bread to the poor at the church
cemetery, on condition that those poor would pray for the soul of the dead
indicated by name or surname (...), for instance, for the soul of Barnaby
and his wife! For the soul of Margaret! – and for empty souls! (that is,
abandoned, forgotten, who do not have anyone to care for them) (SGP
2004: 496).
20.4.2.3 The profile of forgiveness
Textual narratives depicting forgiveness of sins are richly attested in

the context of the divine dimension of mercy, whereas in interhuman
relations, acts of apology/forgiveness are reduced to exceptional situations,
either sanctified by a rite of passage (marriage and death), and then they
have a solemn character, or concerning contacts with the netherworld
(through the intercession between the soul of the culprit, which cannot
cross the line of death before obtaining forgiveness, and the wronged).
Forgiveness in situations of ordinary life is, however, not attested. This
may indicate that the remission of sins may only be granted by God
himself or by persons acting on His behalf (a king as “anointed by God”, a
priest during confession, parents with respect to their children). Moreover,
the human sense of solidarity with the victim prompts them to demand
punishment of the culprit rather than forgiveness (Masłowska 2014a, 177-
182); in the face of death, however, the precept of mercy – to forgive all
sins – is in its full force.
In the wedding scenario, 15 an apology is combined with a request for a
parental blessing. Parents bless their children in the name of God, who is
present in the background of the scene, 16 while the main protagonists and
initiators of the event are the newlyweds. Apology and forgiveness open
the way to the grace of a blessing sent directly from heaven. Obeisances
thrice repeated, accompanied by singing performed by the participants of
the ceremony (led by a chosen person knowing by heart the entire song
repertoire performed during weddings), emphasize the significance of the
parental blessing, which also included future offspring, and without which
the marriage of the young couple would be doomed to failure:
Kłaniaj się, Marysiu, ojcu, matce do Bow, Mary, to the feet of your mother,
nóg, father,
niech ci błogosławi ten najwyższy Pan let the highest God bless you.
Bóg.
(Lubelskie 2, 447 Kłaniaj się, Marysiu)
Upadoj, Marysiu, ojcu, matce do nóg, Fall, Mary, to the feet of your mother,
niech cie błogosławi, o, najsamprzód father,
Pan Bóg. let God bless you first of all.
Upadaj, Marysiu, bo upadać trzeba, Fall, Mary, since it is necessary to fall,
niech cie błogosławi sum Pan Jezus z let the Lord Jesus bless you from
nieba. heaven.
Upadaj, Marysiu, raz, drugi i trzeci, Fall, Mary, once, twice and thrice,
niech cie błogosławió i te małe dzieci. let these small children bless you.
(Lubelskie 2, 107 Upadoj, Marysiu, ojcu, matce do nóg)
15 The wedding song repertoire reflects scenarios of the entire wedding ceremony.
Apologies and blessings were an important part of the ceremony and took place in
three stages: the first one occurred when the guests were being invited, the second
when the groom left the house, the third and most important one before the
newlyweds left for the church (Tymochowicz 2011: 53).
16 Blessings and curses were administered by God himself. Granting blessings or
casting a parental curse was considered an expression of God's will (Engelking

2010, 291-312).
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Przeproś ojca, matke przeproś, Apologize to father, apologize to

możeś rozgniewała, mother,
żebyś tyle szczęścia, zdrowia in case you angered them
w swym życiu doznała. so that you are blessed with
happiness, health in your life.
(Lubelskie 2, 446 Przeproś ojca, matke przeproś)
A scene of forgiveness/blessing is finished off with ritual thanks for

parental care and concern:
Panie Boże zapłać, oj, ty moji Dear God, bless my mother,

mamusi, who raised me, and now
oj, co mnie wychowała, da, sama robić has to work on her own.
musi.
(Lubelskie 2, 572 Panie Boże zapłać)

Narratives regarding various stages of the death ritual attended only by
family at the time of dying and by neighbours, sometimes the whole
village, in the funeral ceremony, are equally solemn. Scenes including acts
of forgiveness in funeral songs run according to customary scenarios,
which comprise the act of apology (in a presupposition of forgiveness) and
the blessing given to the family by the dying:
– The dying says goodbye to the family accompanying his last moments,
asking them to forgive him if he had ever wronged them:
(...) Żegnam was wszystkich wespół, (...) Goodbye to you all,

którzy tu stoicie, who stand here,
ciało moje na cmentarz martwe and who will convey my dead body to
prowadzicie. the cemetery.
(...)Jeślim kogo obraził, odpuście (...) If I offended anyone, forgive me,
mnie, proszę, please,
wszak ja już do Sędziego mój dekret I am, after all, already bringing my
odnoszę. sentence to the Judge.
(Lubelskie 2, 680 Jak fałszywe wszystko na tym świecie)
– The dying says goodbye to his relatives, thanking them for

accompanying him in the hour of his death and giving them his last
blessing:
[dziękuję] Wam także wszystkim, [thank] You all as well,

którzy przy mnie stojc’ie, who stand at my side,
krewni ji przyjac’iele, co na mnie relatives, friends who look at me at
patrzyc’ie. this moment.
I z wami, moje dz’iatki, już s’ie I take leave from you, my children,
rozestawam, and I commit myself to the care of the
Bogu i Matce Boskiej w opieke Mother of God.
oddawam. Thank you for the last time, we will
Ostatni raz dz’ieńkuje, juz s’ie nie not see each other again, until the
ujrzymy, judgment day of the Lord Jesus.
aż na sąd przed Pana Jezusa staniemy.
(Lubelskie 2, 609 Serdecznie oczekiwam końca szczęśliwego)
– During the funeral ceremony, an orator, on behalf of the deceased,

apologizes and asks forgiveness of the family, relatives, neighbours and
the entire world (the moon, sun, earth, sky) which he leaves forever :
Najmilsi przyjaciela, bracia, siostry Dear friends, brothers, sisters

sonsiedzi – darujcie wszystko jego neighbours – forgive all his
winy, bo jeżeli wy darujecie, to wam wrongdoings, because if you forgive,
będzie darowane. (...) Daruj i ty sam, you will be forgiven (...) Forgive him
Panie Boże. (...) Daruj i ty, słońce z also you, Lord Jesus. (...) Forgive him
księżycem. Darujcie obłoki niebieskie, sun and moon. Forgive him you
Daruj i ty ziemio święta. Darujcie clouds, forgive him also you holy
wszystkie miejsca, na których z jego earth. Forgive him all you places in
przyczyny złe uczynki popełnione which evil deeds because of him were
były. committed.
(Adamowski, Doda, Mickiewicz 1998, 277)
The function of the eulogy and funeral prayers was to free the soul from
the burden of sin that would hinder its transition to the netherworld. From
the experiencing perspective of the conceptualizer, failing to forgive or
failing to carry out the funeral ritual may prevent the soul from passing the
threshold of death and may keep it on earth, so that it might atone for its
sins. Stereotypical scenarios of contacts between repenting souls and the
living include the following situations:
– A repenting soul visits a family member in dreams, asking for prayers or

compensation. When his request is fulfilled, he ceases to come (AE: LL
1978 4-6, 178; stories circulating in oral tradition, regarding especially an
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unpaid debt, unjustly divided land, appropriation of property ascribed to

other heirs);
– An evil heir who harmed a poor person keeps appearing in his wife’s
dream until the victim is rewarded and announces to everyone that he
forgives the injustice (AE: LL 1966, 2-3, p. 42);
– A miser who hid money from his family appears every night in the place
of the stash, digs up the money, hoping that someone will hear his moans
and will order a mercy mass, or will utter a prayer that will free him from
repentance (AE: Kolb. 17 lub. 86 no. 2).
Recurring in numerous narratives, the motif of a nocturnal apparition

seeking contact with the living – daydreaming or in sleep – co-creates the
stereotype of a repenting soul, which cannot leave the earth without the
help of the living. A forgiving gesture would be, for instance, ordering a
holy mass or saying a prayer for the penitent. The profile of forgiveness of
sins is also connected with the daily duty of praying for the souls in
purgatory, imposed on all faithful by the Church, and reminded by the
evening bell for the Angelus (Masłowska 2014b, 5).
In the profile of forgiveness, mercy, depending on the situation, is
incorporated in one of the semantic sequences encompassing the meaning
fault – apology – forgiveness – blessing (marriage, death), or guilt –
penance – purgatory – forgiveness.
20.4.3 Conclusions
Anthropological-linguistic analysis of the conceptualization of mercy

in traditional culture, captured in the form of scenes, has allowed us to
show how this concept fits into the world of values, beliefs and customs
embedded in specific situations. Textual exemplifications of events
present them in a cause-and-effect order, revealing the intentions of the
creating entity and the purpose of the actions. Scenarios depicting the acts
of mercy from the divine and human perspectives demonstrate the
meaning of the concept in a dynamic manner, depending on to whom and
how mercy is granted, and who grants, receives and appeals for it. In the
analyzed texts, the religious viewpoint forms the motivational basis for
granting/appealing for mercy, both divine and human. On the concept of
mercy, folk culture bases the relationship between heaven and earth as
well as the rules governing social bonds.
Prototypically, the donor and initiator of mercy is God. The subject of
God’s mercy is, above all, grace/blessing, motivated by concern for
earthly and transmundane human existence. The goal is to provide eternal

life for all people. The actions of God’s messengers (the Mother of God,
the Son of God) – acting on his behalf – are aimed at restoring the
relationship between God and man, broken off as a result of sin. These
actions are motivated by pity, compassion – both for man’s weakness and
misery – and are directed toward forgiveness and access to favours, having
the perspective of eternity/salvation.
Both sinners and people affected by misfortune (illness, sadness,
loneliness, poverty, harm) appeal for God’s mercy, mainly through the
intercession of Our Lady or Jesus. Their actions are motivated by the need
to obtain support (comfort, improvement of fate, healing), forgiveness for
sins, guidelines on the path leading to salvation, this being the ultimate
goal of life. The souls suffering in purgatory also need God’s mercy and
appeal for intercession both to humans and to the Mother of God. Their
goal is to have the status of a divine child restored and to gain access to
heaven. The spiritual demand for mercy is reflected in rites and rituals:
– pilgrimages to sanctuaries, calvaries and participation of

indulgences;
– peregrination of the miraculous image of the Black Madonna all
over the country initiated in 1957;
– in the wedding rite (ritual apology and blessing of the newlyweds
by their parents);
– in a funeral rite (ritual public forgiveness of all wrongdoings of the
deceased):
– in celebration of Zaduszki (All Souls’ Day), the feast of the dead
(visiting cemeteries, prayers, offering sacrifices for the souls of the
dead);
– in agrarian annual rituals related to religious practices of
supplication and thanksgiving associated with the harvest (ritual
inspection of fields, harvest festivals).
Ritual and ceremonial forms of applying for God’s mercy attest that it
is strongly embedded in traditions of folk culture and that it constitutes a
manifestation of folk religiosity.
On the concept of mercy, folk culture bases the relationship between
heaven and earth and the principles of social bonds. Due to the
disproportion between divine mercy and human mercy in terms of
influence and the causative power of an act, interhuman acts of mercy are
governed in particular by a sense of solidarity with the people affected by
misfortune. Compassion also regards the repentant souls (on earth or in
410 Chapter 20
purgatory) who can no longer redeem their evil deeds, and the sufferings
they have already undergone are recognized as a form of redemption for
their sins. On the other hand, the folk sense of justice does not allow the
living to forgive as long as the culprit does not recompense the harm he
committed. Lack of bestowing mercy on human misery or suffering is met
with a strong condemnation both from people and God Himself: an evil
stepmother who harms her stepchildren is punished with hell, and
repenting souls demanding forgiveness of guilt must declare at least one
charitable act toward fellow men to be granted access to heaven. Breaking
off the relationship with God by rejecting His mercy threatens imminent
catastrophe, as end-of-the-world prophecies caution.
The narrative form of the presentation of mercy points to a network of
contextual relations in which the concept is entwined. The position of
mercy in the lexical and semantic network is determined by cognitive
paths running between contradictory values: sin, misery, suffering,
penance, death and redemption, grace, blessing, salvation, with the soul
serving as a connecting link. The ability to be sympathetic and empathic is
a measure of humanity while having a soul affords an awareness of good
and evil as well as freedom of choice. Mercy is, therefore, an anchor for
the soul, putting it on the side of good and guaranteeing redemption, while
for lost souls it is the last hope for rescue from self-destruction.
Comparison of folk contexts with meaning connotations and the
network of words appearing in biblical descriptions of acts of mercy
indicates a far-reaching convergence. The conceptualization of mercy
embedded in folk culture is consistent with its biblical model, which
connects the notion of mercy with goodness, love, sacrifice, grace,
providence, blessing, solidarity with human misery and therefore with
suffering, compassion and pity for everything that is weak, in need of
support and help.
Abbreviations
AE – Pracownia Archiwum Etnolingwistyczne Uniwersytetu Curie-
Skłodowskiej.
DM – Dives in Misericordia (Encyklika Ojca świętego o Bożym
miłosierdziu), 2012, “Akcent”.
ISJP – Bańko Mirosław ed., 2000, Inny słownik języka polskiego,
Kolb – Kolberg Oskar, Dzieła wszystkie, 1961-1976, vol. 1-56, Warszawa:
Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza; Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo
Muzyczne.
LL – “Literatura Ludowa”, 1966, 1978, Wrocław: Polskie Towarzystwo

Ludoznawcze.
L – Linde Samuel B., 1807-1814, Słownik języka polskiego, vol. 1-6,
Warszawa: Drukarnia XX. Pijarów.
PSWP – Zgółkowa Halina ed., 1994-2005, Praktyczny słownik współczesnej
polszczyzny, vol. 1-50, Poznań: Wydawnictwo Kurpisz.
SGP – Słownik gwar polskich, 1977-1991, Zakład Dialektologii Polskiej
Instytutu Języka Polskiego PAN, vol. 1-3, Wrocław–Warszawa–
Kraków–Gdańsk–Łódź: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich,
Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk; 1992-2015, vol. 4ff..,
Kraków: Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN.
SJPDor I–XI – Doroszewski Witold (ed.), 1958-1969, Słownik języka
polskiego, vol. 1-11, Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
SJP PWN – Szymczak Mieczysław ed., 1992, Słownik języka polskiego,
SPJS – Słownik pojęciowy języka staropolskiego, head of the project B.
Sieradzka-Baziur, IJP PAN, 2011-2015,
http://spjs.ijp-pan.krakow.pl/spjs/
SPXVI – Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku, IBL PAN, https://spxvi.edu.pl
(accessed on July 28th, 2018).
Słstp. – Słownik staropolski, ed. S. Urbańczyk, t. 1-11, IJP PAN, Kraków
1953-2002.
SW – Karłowicz Jan, Kryński Adam A., Niedźwiedzki Władysław ed.,
1952-1953, Słownik języka polskiego, vol. 1-8 (reprint), Warszawa:
SSiSL – Słownik stereotypów i symboli ludowych, ed. Jerzy Bartmiński,
vol. 1, Kosmos, I Niebo, światła niebieskie, ogień, kamienie, 1996; II
Ziemia, woda, podziemie, 1999; III Metereologia, 2012; IV Świat,
światło, metale, Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-
Skłodowskiej.
SWJP – Dunaj Bogusław, 1996, Słownik współczesnego języka polskiego,
USJP I-IV – Urbańczyk Stanisław ed., 2003, Uniwersalny słownik języka
polskiego, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN
WM – Słownik gwar Ostrodzkiego, Warmii i Mazur, vol. 1, 1987 and ff.,
Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków–Gdańsk–Łódź: Zakład Narodowy im.
Ossolińskich, Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk.
WSJP – Wielki słownik języka polskiego, IJP PAN, www.wsjp.pl.
412 Chapter 20
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Summary
The author attempts to reconstruct the semantic core of the concept of mercy in
Polish folklore, as well as to map cognitive links between related concepts such as
sin, harm, punishment, penance, justice and pity. An analysis of the notion of
mercy in two dimensions – divine and human – reveals that it has been shaped by
two different axiological systems. The human perspective is based upon solidarity
with the sufferers, which is illustrated by commonplace judgments of punishments
that befall the culprits in their lifetime and burden their souls after death. The
divine taxonomy of sin is related to penance, forgiveness and the power of belief in
God’s mercy which surmounts human justice. This perspective is mirrored by
stereotypical motifs in folk narratives, speech acts (warnings, dictates made by the
Virgin) and rituals (pilgrimage to holy places, indulgences, peregrination of the
miracle picture of the Black Madonna etc).
The analysis of the links between the essential concepts related to Mercy
allows for a more precise speciﬁcation of its semantic structure and a relevant
system of values, as well as for locating them on the plus-or-minus scale.
Keywords: mercy, soul, axiology, folklore, justice, sin, ethnolinguistics

CHAPTER 21
THE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL IN THE BODY

IN THE LIGHT OF ETHNOLINGUISTICS
JOANNA SZADURA
MARIA CURIE-SKLODOWSKA UNIVERSITY IN LUBLIN, POLAND
21.1. Ethnolinguistic analysis as the key to understanding the culture
Ethnolinguistic analysis views the history of culture and language as a

continuous process in which the present is understood through the prism of
the past. It aims at reproducing an image of the world recorded in
language. The ultimate goal of the analysis is “an attempt to reconstruct
the traditional image of the world (...) and an attempt to recreate the
system of values that represents the key to knowing the culture which is an
attitude towards the world, a specific mentality and behaviour”
[Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska 2010, 23].
In order to systematise my reconstruction of the traditional image of
the soul recorded in Polish culture, I will make use of the three “stages” of
the soul’s existence in the body proposed by Svetlana Tolstaya that are
specific to Slavic peoples. The first is the state of the “embodied” soul; the
second is its separation from the body; the third is when the soul finally
leaves the body and is able to roam free and to look for a place for itself,
either in the hereafter or somewhere between heaven and earth [Slav Tol
2/162-167].
My reconstruction is carried out in accordance with the rules of the
study of the linguistic world image (JOS) that are widely adopted in the
environment of Lublin ethnolinguists, which operates within the area of
linguistics. In the selection of data relevant for the JOS reconstruction, I
follow Jerzy Bartmiński [2010]. The data were presented synthetically by
Stanisława Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska [2017, 16-17]. These include:
The Existence of the Soul in the Body in the Light of Ethnolinguistics 417
(...) a) vocabulary, since “lexis, as a peculiar lively and dynamic inventory

of culture that is constantly enriched by thousands of new units, is a kind of
seismograph recording changes in society, civilisation and culture”; b)
integral meaning of words, including both the nuclear zone and the
peripheral zones, which includes categorising elements and all the features
assigned positively to objects — “encyclopaedic” and “explicitly
subjective” elements; (c) internal form of the word — according to the
belief that the perspective is included in the very name, that is in the
“living” derivational formations understandable for the users of a given
language and in the “dead”, lexicalised formations, whose meaning is
obscure for modern language users, but which are explored by
etymological research; (d) semantic fields, their internal organisation, the
quantity and quality of lexical exponents, i.e. the “equanimical”
(hiperonymic and hyponymic) parent-child relations, (Latin aequus
“equal”) which are synonyms and antonyms, regular derivative strings and
syntagmatic relations, precisely described using Fillmore's concept of
semantic roles; e) idioms, common collocations (phrasemes) and
metaphors which are semantic derivatives; f) grammar (language
categories); g) texts, ranging from minimum texts, such as proverbs, to
multi-sentence texts, in the analysis of which presupposed judgements are
of special value; h) “language-related” data: adopted and prevailing
behaviours, practices, rites and beliefs which facilitate normal language
communication and its interpretation; i) surveys, especially open question
surveys.
In view of the fact that the subject of my study is a reconstruction of

the image of the soul recorded in Polish traditional culture, I adopt the type
of data in reference to the scope of the analysis. Therefore, for the purpose
of the present study, I will use Polish language dictionaries of dialectal and
standard speech, as well as a number of nineteenth and twentieth-century
ethnographic records of accounts and descriptions of beliefs and practices.
21.2. The “embodied” soul
21.2.1. Complementarity of body and soul
The Polish language largely perceives the human being in terms of

body and soul dualism. A complete man is a man with a body and a soul. 1
1 Cf. lexicographical definitions of the word soul (“dusza”), for example,

“individual spirit which in connection with the body constitutes the human being”
418 Chapter 21
A corroboration of this conceptualisation can be observed in such

expressions as: the state of soul and body (“stan ciała i duszy”) (common),
to be devoted to something/somebody with body and soul (“duszą i
ciałem”), i.e. “completely, eagerly” (common); sold to the devil along with
body and soul (“ciałem i duszą”) [Wisła 1898/192]; to take (a sinner to
hell) with his body and soul (“z ciałem i duszą”) [Wisła 1893/1].
Therefore, a man can only live while his body is animated by the soul (cf.
the meaning of adjective soulless (“bezduszny”) “dead” [Karł SJP]), while
the soul exists inside the body, cf. the expressions: Goodbye friends,
goodbye! I shan’t see you again ere my soul leaves my body (“Żegnam
was, kolegi, żegnam, przyjaciele! Już was nie obacze, póki dusza w
ciele!”) [Wisła 1895/469]; while the soul is in the body, there is still time
for salvation (“póki dusza w ciele, jeszcze czas do zbawienia”) [Wisła
1890/47]. This unity is disintegrated at the moment of a man’s death:
The human body functions as long as the soul is in the body. From the
moment of one’s death, the body is devoid of the soul, which means death
and the end of one’s life. The body ceases to function as the soul departs
from the body, leaving a corpse without any value. [Aldeeb 2002]
The soul and the body, according to Jolanta Maćkiewicz [2006, 20-21],
enter a temporary relationship of complementarity:
(...) man consists of two distinct, though (not permanently) connected
parts: the material-visible part that is the body, and the spiritual-invisible
part that is the soul (spirit, mind). These parts enter a complementary
relationship: while they oppose each other, they complement each other at
the same time (...). It is this particular relationship of complementarity that
makes us perceive the objects involved as a cognitive whole, a unity.
In their linguistic analyses, Anna Wierzbicka [1999] and Jolanta

Maćkiewicz [2006] reconstruct an extended perception of man as a whole,
consisting of the following four elements: 1) the body; 2) the soul; 3) the
spirit, distinct from the soul and equal to reason, intellectual power; and 4)
the heart as the dwelling place of the emotions. However, the optimal ontic
structure of a man, according to Renata Grzegorczykowa, comprises: 1)
the body; 2) the psyche; 3) the soul — a spirit attached to the body that,
(“duch indywidualny, który w połączeniu z ciałem stanowi człowieka”) [Karł SJP];

see also Wysoczański [2016].
being independent of the body, does not die at death, and 4) the spirit —
free, unlimited, transcendent [Grzegorczykowa 1999, 339].
20.2.2. Scenarios of the act of the soul’s “embodiment”
The Polish language has adopted two basic scenarios for the act of the
soul’s embodiment: in the former, the soul is given to man by God; in the latter,
the active and conscious soul installs itself inside the body all on its own. These
scenarios confirm the connotation patterns of verbs denoting the act.
God breathed the soul into a man (Bóg tchnął duszę w człowieka). The
basic meaning of this verb is to “blow something in with the strength of
one’s exhalation” [Bor SEJP 629], 2 which corresponds to the Old
Testament account of the creation of man:
On the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,5 and before
every plant of the field was in the earth, and before every herb of the field
grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there
was no man to till the ground.6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and
it watered the whole face of the ground.7 And the Lord God formed man of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and
man became a living soul. [2, 4–7]
In proverbs, God puts/pours the soul into somebody; for example, “the
Lord creates, puts the soul in and that’s it” (“Pan Bóg stworzy, duszę
włoży i już”) refers to a clumsy person, a misfit’ [NKPP Bóg 511],
variants ibid., such as, “God put/poured the soul in as if one was a pear
2 According to current language data, the verb “to breathe into” (tchnąć) is combined
with nouns in its accusative form, including, primarily, such forms as soul, spirit,
breath, life (duszę, ducha, oddech, życie), and less frequently vigour, talent, skill
(wigor, talent, kunszt) The verb to breathe into (“tchnąć”), in Polish, functions also in
the sense of “secreting something so that it can be felt” (e.g. the cold, fragrance (of
wine, ripe fruit ...), aroma (of cinnamon, mushrooms ...), “to evoke, thanks to
individual features, a feeling or impression named with the following noun” (e.g.
hope, optimism, freshness, seriousness, sadness, calm; authenticity, normalcy,
professionalism; nobility, history, traditions; horror), “make oneself visible or
smellable” (e.g. the cold) “to cause someone or something to behave or act in a
manner described by the following noun” (e.g. spirit (of combat), faith in the team, in
a better tomorrow..., life in man, life in economics), “to be the incentive that has led
somebody to do something” (e.g. finally it dawned on somebody (w końcu kogoś
tchnęło), “about a smell: to be smellable” (e.g. it smelled (“tchnęło”) of concentrated
cement; the scent of soot; elegance, soundness, big world) [WSJP Żmig].
420 Chapter 21
tree” (“włożył/wsadził/wlał/wchlusnął Pan Bóg duszę jak w gruszę”, see

also NKPP soul 31). What the listed verbs have in common is that they
refer to actions of locating something inside of something else. The
meaning of inclusiveness “insertion (włożenie), penetration of something
inside of another thing (wniknięcie)” is rendered by the prefix w-.
In folk texts, God transfers (przekłada) the soul, i.e. takes it from one
person and puts it into another; for example, from a dead child.
The soul, therefore, comes directly from God, and it is He who controls
it.
I God breathe (tchnąć) one's in one's

soul body
II God a) put, insert (włożyć, one's in one's
wsadzić); b) pour, spurt soul body
(wlać, wchlusnąć)
III God transfer one's from to one's
soul one's body
body
According to another interpretation, the soul itself, by means of

incarnation, “moves” (przesiedła się) from one body to another (=
metempsychosis) [Karł SJP]:
Well, everyone says that the human soul is immortal. The body dies, and
the soul moves to another one. And again, as a young man, it is growing.
And then again it moves to another person. And as it passes, the soul
becomes young as a child. And grows (…) (Vilnius region, 1992)
[Zowczak 2013, 144]
It was believed that it might “enter a child”, if it was not burdened by

sins, or had already repented. Magdalena Zowczak recorded the following
account:
When one dies and another is born, a sinless soul, not deserving hell, it
enters the child. (Vilnius region, 1992) [Zowczak 2013, 145]
This embodiment may take place immediately after death or

somewhere in the future – it all depends on the sins the soul must repent;
e.g.:
a bat emerges from the human body buried beneath the Church floor and
the soul of the bad man has to repent inside the animal for three hundred
years. After this time, it enters a descendant of the dead man, but only a
righteous one. And that is why great-great-grandchildren are always far

better than their great-grandfathers [Wisła 1899/5].
I soul to enter into/inside one’s

body
II soul incarnate in one’s body
III soul move from to

(the body) (the body)
IV soul pass from one’s body to one’s body
The soul perceived animistically inhabits (osiedla się) [Wisła 1897/585]

the human body, and is hosted (gości) in it temporarily [Wisła 1893/697].
In this case, the body is seen as a temporary dwelling place (siedlisko), the
abode of the soul (mieszkanie duszy) where it is, in turn, viewed as a guest,
i.e. a stranger. 3 According to Polish folk beliefs, the soul may stay
(siedzieć) inside the whole body or in its parts – in the head, pupil, breast,
heart, kidneys, liver, bones, supraclavicular fossa called duszka, fingers,
hair, nails, or excretions (e.g. saliva, sweat, urine), as well as in the human
shadow associated with the body. 4 Moreover, as was noticed by Kazimierz
3 This allows for viewing the soul as an expected guest. Here, it is worth referring
to etymological studies which report that the noun guest (gość) belongs to
Interslavic vocabulary and has its root in the Proto-Indo-European *ghostis, which,
according to Franciszek Sławski and Max Vasmer, originally meant “undesirable
alien, enemy” and only later it acquired the positive connotation of “desired
stranger” [Vas ES 1/447; Sław SE 1/328]. The historical development of this word
is interpreted otherwise by Krystyna Długosz-Kurczabowa: “in some languages, it
denoted a 'desired, awaited person who came to visit', in others a 'hostile, unwanted
enemy'. The Polish language belongs to the first language group”. Moreover,
Długosz-Kurczabowa claims that the “guest” (gość) in Old Polish is indeed a
“foreigner, stranger” (...), but without any shade of animosity or hatred” [Dług SE
78-79].
4 In the beliefs of many peoples, someone who has no shadow (for example, a
ghost, a man who sold his soul to the devil) – has no soul [Herd Lek 24, Kop Sym
47, Bied Lek 54-55]. In some languages, the same word is used to denote both the
concept of the soul and of the shadow [Herd Lek 24, Bied Lek 54].
422 Chapter 21
Moszyński, its presence is connected with the movement of the human

body: 5
(...) the soul is located in the part that is moved; in another place, it does
not rest. As one walks, it's in his feet; as one talks, it resides in the head; as
one makes something with one's hands, then the soul is in the hands. [Mosz
Kul 2/601]
The Polish language also records viewing the body as “clothing”

(obleczenie) of the soul, which restricts and binds it: “Man is composed of
the soul and the body. What use, o Lord, of this dress that the body is if it
binds my free soul?” (Człowiek składa się z duszy i ciała. Na co mi, Panie,
ta suknia z ciała, co mi swobodną duszę skowała?) [Karł SJP].
It was also believed that each person comes into the world with two
souls (sometimes with one good and one bad soul), 6 and that each should
be baptised and named: 7
Our elders used to baptise with one name only, so the baptised soul was
holy, and the other was condemned and had to seek deliverance on earth.
5 The soul “enlivens” the body: it is something that forces it to move. This view is
particularly strengthened by such fixed expressions as: to lie/to be/to fall as if

without a soul (leżeć/być/paść bez duszy), “to lie without movement, without
strength, without consciousness, without feeling, without life”, “to be without a
soul” (być bez duszy), “to die”, “to faint”, “to be frightened” [Bieg Koleb 1], e.g.
(...) he escaped him, began to flee without looking back and ran back home, all
sweaty, almost without a soul (bez duszy), but managed to run away
[Wisła1887/73]. The other example can refer either to death, loss of the ability to
move, or loss of consciousness. While the soul is in the body, the person is alive,
cf. phrases: w kim się jeszcze dusza tłucze/ kołacze; Z głodu ledwie się w nim dusza
para (= kołacze) in the sense of “to have a soul inside oneself to be able to live”
[Karł SJP 6/52]; domacać się w kim duszy which means “to bring somebody to
consciousness” [Karł SJP 1/502]; ujść z duszą “to save one’s life” [Karł SJP
1/587]; proverb “Even an enema won’t help if there is no soul in a man” (Nie
pomoże już enema (= lewatywa), kiedy duszy w człeku niema) [Karł SJP 1/694].
6 One of the two souls of the owner of a double soul (dwudusznik) can have a
demonic character [Mosz Kul 2/600]; “Strzyga has two souls: one good, the other
devilish which hurts people while it lives: it sucks the blood from their sides”
[Wisła 1901/503]. According to another belief, children with two souls (and two
hearts) are the ones who were weaned and then breastfed again [ZWAK
1890/3/127].
7 This explains the custom of giving two names during baptism.
(...) There was a man from Strysawa who had two spirits. (...) as he died,
one spirit lay in the grave and the other started to wander the world. (...)
but now both names of every baby are baptised so that, upon death, it will
not become a night demon (“strzygoń”). [Lud 1910/86–87]
If one of the souls is left unbaptised, the person who “carries” it after death
will become a demon: a strzyga in the case of a woman and a strzygoń in
the case of a male corpse:
Each “strzygoń” has two spirits (in Kraków they say that ghosts have two
or even three spirits, which force them to this night-time vagrancy); one
good and one evil [K 7 Krak 63]; one (soul) comes out of the body while
the other stays. The soul that is left animates the body of the strzygoń (who,
after all, is already dead, and therefore lives while not living), who walks
the night [ZWAK 1887/3/11] and plays tricks [Wisła 1887/99]; When a
strzygoń dies, his body is buried in the ground as the custom demands,
along with the good (baptised) spirit; but his other spirit, the evil and
unbaptised one (i.e. the one that did not receive the Sacrament of
Confirmation (for no one who has been confirmed can turn into a strzygoń)
not being able to die, does not want to leave the world and starts wandering
it as a demon, dragging along its own body as a burden (being capable of
taking different forms at any moment). [K 7 Krak 64]
The souls of the owner of a double soul (dwudusznik) seem to be

closely connected and to make up a whole by themselves. The evil soul
has to undergo purification to reach the state which will enable it to leave
the body along with the other soul:
(...) if a person with two spirits dies without the Sacrament of
Confirmation, then the good spirit goes to the ground with the body and
waits until the evil one who cannot rest but can only haunt the world, is
salvaged in this way or another. [K 7 Krak 64] 8
According to Polish folk accounts, Jews were deprived of souls

[ZWAK 1884/3/238] 9 and treated as non-humans or demonic beings. This
also applied to witches: 10
8 This sometimes explained the demon as “a man living with two souls” [Spittal
1938, 168] and that “the other (...) unbaptised soul can leave the unconscious body
during sleep and wander wherever it wants to” [Spittal 1938, 168]. Vampires were
also said to possess two souls [Wisła 1902/617].
9 According to other beliefs “during a weekday a Jew has one soul, and on
Saturdays and holidays – two souls” [Wisła 1900/644].

424 Chapter 21
This is a creature (a witch) without a soul, the devil's favourite and

property at the same time. God did not give it a soul, and in return, the
devil invested it with his strength and wisdom. There are even entire
generations who belong not to God, but to the devil and, deprived of the
soul, carry inside themselves the power of the devil. This kind is called the
devilish tribe. [Wisła 1888/13]
According to folk beliefs, the soul as the living breath is granted to

man by God, but only if he is a Christian; according to some versions, only
a male was in possession of a soul for “a part of Orthodox Christians
(following the Aristotelian idea) doubted the existence of souls in women,
or, at least, that their souls were the same quality as the men's souls”
[Crick 1997, 18]. In this sense, only man can be endowed by God with a
soul; while animals cannot have them. 11 Bees stand out as an exception. In
the Polish language, a bee dies (“umiera”), a verb used exclusively in the
context of human death. For other animals, the verb that is most frequently
used is “zdychać”. 12 This notion is probably a relic of pre-Christian Slavic
beliefs.
According to other folk accounts, the soul is perceived as endowed
with individuality, consciousness and some distinctive features (e.g.
goodness or badness).
20.3. Soul’s separation from the body
The very way in which the soul leaves the body, according to the
beliefs preserved by culture, provides a great deal of information about its
characteristics. An analysis of verbs and expressions related to this
circumstance suggests that, following the imagery existing in the Polish
10 Moreover, it was believed that “witches are often old women, similarly to other
regions, who may seem of human nature, but having a soul in the body that bears
all the traits of evil spirits and is counted among their ranks” [Wisła 1887/61].
11 Animals, on the other hand, instead of a life-giving soul, have vapour (“para”)
inside them which is also associated with the breath [Bieg Koleb 4; see also Wisła
1903/150]. When the vapour leaves the body of an animal, it then dies (“zdycha”)
[Mosz Kul 2/595].
12 According to other beliefs “it is not proper to curse the bees, because they have
souls just like people do (...) bees have souls that left dead men who once lived”
[Wisła 1901/427]. See e.g. Żuk [1996] for more detail.
language, it is an active “participant” in the event (a kind of animatum 13),

or the object of someone else’s actions.
21.3.1. The soul as an active participant in the act of leaving the body
According to Polish beliefs, the soul is ultimately freed from its

incarnation at a man’s death; 14 this may also take place temporarily, for
example during sleep. The Polish language refers to this act in such
expressions as: the soul parts with the body (dusza rozstaje się z ciałem)
(common), separates itself from it (rozłącza się z nim) [ZWAK
1893/3/316], is detached from the body (odłącza się od ciała) [Karł SJP
3/618].
21.3.1.1. The soul’s final departure from the body
When the time of the soul in the body comes to a close, the immortal
soul gradually moves towards 'exit' from the mortal body. It is reported to
move primarily in the direction of the mouth and nose, both being
considered the “gates of the soul” [Fisch Pog 326, Bieg Lecz 5]. 15 This is
illustrated by such common expressions as: the soul sat on his neck (dusza
mu już siedziała na karku) “he was close to death” [Karł SJP 2/269]; the
soul could not leave the neck (dusza z trudem wylazła z szyi) “about a hard
13 The anthropomorphic image of the soul as “a miniature human”, “a little man
with no bones and no meat” or of a clean and transparent body [Slav Tol 1/165] is
popular among the Slav people, among others [Wisła 1889/456]. According to
Fisher: “In view of the fact that a sleeper does not move, talk, see etc. and is as if a
corpse, a belief emerges that inside a person there indeed lives another person who,
when leaving the body, makes it lifeless. Thus was born the idea of ‘something’
that animates the human soul” [Fisch Pog 3].
14 In our culture, the relationship of body and soul is temporal. This problem was
approached differently, for example, by the ancient Egyptians. They believed that
even after death, the soul and the body remain together, which explained their need
for maintaining the body in good shape after death.
15 There are even some beliefs that assume the soul’s ability to leave the body
through... the anus. This, however, is only applicable to extreme situations (e.g.
strong fear), or figures related to “the other” world: witches, sorceresses,
werewolves etc. [Szyjewski 2010, 203]. As the humorous saying has it: If you did
not let your spirit go, you would fart with your soul, which would spell death to
others but not to you (Gdybyś był nie wypuścił ducha, piardłbyś duszą, co śmiercią
drugim, tobie życiem przyznać muszą) [Karł SJP 7/133].
426 Chapter 21
death” [Wisła 1888/820]; 16 the soul was on the point of leaving him as it
stuck in his throat (dusza (…) już była blizko jego gardła, w chwili gdy
miała wychodzić ze swego schronienia) [Wisła 1902/600]. When the soul
escapes somebody (z kogoś ucieka) it means that the person “is very weak
or dying” [USJP Dub]. A dying person is referred to in the following
expressions: his soul escapes him (dusza z niego uchodzi) (common),
comes out (wychodzi) [ZWAK 1878/3/127], about a dead person: his soul
escaped (uszła) (common), the dead man sighed and then the soul came
out (Nieboszczyk westchnął, a duszka wyszła potem) [Bieg Śmierć 23].
The verbs: to leave, crawl out, run away, escape (wychodzić, wyłazić,
uciekać, uchodzić) refer to leaving (departing from) a place, usually to go
in a certain direction (Cf. the expressions: the soul goes to the other world
dusza uchodzi na tamten świat [ZWAK 1887/3/31]; the soul leaves/goes to
the Lord/to heaven dusza odchodzi/idzie do Pana/do nieba (common).
The verbs that name the act of separation of the soul from the body,
such as fly out (wylecieć — cf. the expression recorded in All Saints Day
songs: a soul flew out of the body; I see this weakling’s soul preparing to
go dusza z ciała wyleciała; 17 U tego zdechlaka widzę dusza na wylocie
[SJP Dor]), ulecieć (e.g. Before consolation comes the soul will fly off
Nim pociecha przyjdzie, to dusza uleci [Wisła 1890/180]; a candle fell
from the dead hands and the soul went to a better abode Gromnica
wypadła z martwych rąk, a dusza uleciała w lepsze mieszkanie! [Wój Gaw
124]) combine the idea of the soul with something that is fleeting, with an
“airy”, transparent, subtle matter that fills the human body, as well as with
birds and insects. The first image is linked to viewing the soul as a grey or
blue vapour [Wisła 1889/932], breathing vapour (common), vapour
coming from a boiling pot [ZWAK 1890/3/200], children with two souls
(and two hearts) are the ones who were weaned and then breastfed again
16 Cf. meanings of the word soul (dusza) unknown to the modern Polish language:
“the inner part of a collar”; “a piece of hard material on which a man’s scarf was
wound that was worn on the neck” [Karł SJP 1/587] which link the throat with the
location of the soul in the human body. Cf. also the song “Deadly hammer beating
in the chest and the soul holds to the neck” (Śmiertelny młot w piersi bije, a dusza
się trzyma szyje) [Wisła 1902/719].
17 The song “A soul from the body flew” (Dusza z ciała wyleciała), recorded in a
15th century Wroclaw manuscript, is still popular and widespread in Polish

folklore and has been the object of a number of analyses; for more details on this
topic, see Wyka [1968]; Michałowska [1989, 2011, 214–215, 765]; Bartmiński
[1998].
[Wisła 1897/585], smoke (for example, in Silesia the people believed that
in a house which had its windows shut when someone died inside it “on
the next day in the morning a soul could be seen which rises in the form of
a cloud of smoke from the ceiling”), fog, clouds or wind. The second
image is referred to in beliefs about the soul flying off as a butterfly or a
fly [ZWAK 1878/3/127] or a bird [Wisła 1887/61], e.g. a pigeon [Wisła
1893/107, 1889/456, 932]; or a raven. 18 The soul finally leaves the body
[ZWAK 1890/3/122], making it “empty”.
In order to help the soul in its final departure from the body, doors and
windows had to be opened and part of the roof removed [ZWAK
1890/3/121]; a board from the ceiling was removed [Wisła 1903/444]; a
corner of the ceiling above the head of the dying was lifted [ZWAK
1891/3/263], which was to grant the soul an easier path towards the
afterlife:
(a woman, who stole milk from the cows) was dying for a few days and
suffers so much that even her victims pity her and forgive her guilt. She
tosses on the bed, waving her arms; sometimes she makes movements as if
she milked a cow; some flocks of blackbirds even came to sit on the roof,
calling anxiously. When the soul cannot leave her for a very long time,
sometimes the roof and the ceiling have to be removed; then the person has
a calmer death. [Wisła 1891/3/498]
According to folk accounts, a soul awaiting hell does not want to leave
the body:
(...) the old master died and had a difficult time dying because the soul,
knowing that it will go to hell, didn't want to leave the body, so that they
not only opened the windows but also removed a part of the ceiling. [Wisła
1897/437]
At death, the soul of the person, having left the body, starts circling
around the corpse. Then, gradually, it goes in circles around his house, the
courtyard and the surroundings. At the very end, it accompanies the
deceased to the cemetery:
18 “The habitat of the soul (...) is in the mind of a living person, and as he is dying,
then the soul departs from him: if towards heaven–in the form of a white dove or
light, and if towards hell–as a black dove or a crow” [Pietkiewicz 1930, 190-191.
428 Chapter 21
A dying person, when swallowing his breath (połyka dech), is then being
settled with God; it is in vain to talk to him, as he becomes deaf and cannot
hear earthly voices. After death, the soul escapes through the mouth, yet
does not leave the body immediately, but accompanies the dead man to his
grave and vanishes only after the priest sings Requiescat [K 10 Poz 218];
(...) the soul does not depart from the body of the deceased, but stands next
to him until he is put into his grave [K 9 Poz 168]; (...) as they bring out the
body, the soul of the deceased man clings to the coffin, sinks into despair
and cries: “Oh, the miserable body that made me sinful. The body shall rot
in the ground, and I will have to suffer”. Once it is sprinkled with holy
water, the body is lowered into the grave and the soul flees and fades away.
[K 10 Poz 78]
21.3.1.2. The soul’s temporary departure from the body
The soul, according to folk beliefs, can leave the body and return to it
[Wisła 1893/680]:
There are some people who are seemingly dead but in fact are only sunk in
torpor, which is called the rapture (zachwycenie). The soul of such a person
passes to the other world and, returning to the body, makes him aware of
the future, yet he cannot reveal what he has learned to anyone [ZWAK
1887/3/31] under pain of sudden death [ZWAK 1878/3/127]; when a
person dreams of flying, they say that his soul has left the body and
wanders around. If someone woke the sleeping man, his soul would never
return to his body [Wisła 1903/444]; (...) while sleeping, the soul (of a man
who could not die) left his body and went to heaven [ZWAK 1887/3/6].
In folk tales, “the soul of the witch leaves the body as an animal and
then returns to it. Most often it takes the form of a mouse which jumps
from out of the mouth and crawls back again after a while; sometimes it
has the shape of a snake” [Wisła 1898/468]. This motif is recorded in
Slavic folk texts. 19
19 A rich set of folk tales popular among the Lusatian Serbs was written down by
Adolf Czerny, e.g. “(...) on one Sunday afternoon (the daughter) went to visit her
mother. In the courtyard in front of the hut, she saw a woman lying down and some
flea beetles biting her. She could not find her mother inside the hut; she came only
after some time, greeted her daughter and gave her a piece of bread with tasty
butter. ‘Oh, if only I could have this at home! ... but we have only dry bread to eat',
she complained. ‘Be content with what you have and do not crave for what I have.
Why don't you eat?' Now the daughter talked about the woman she saw in the
courtyard and the flea beetles biting her, and that she felt sick because of it. ‘That
In fairy tales, a wizard is able to take out his soul and hide it
somewhere (e.g. in an egg, which is inside a duck, which is inside a hare,
which is in a box) and keeps on living without it [ZWAK 1888/3/31].
Having two souls, he hides the good one.
It was also believed that the transfusion of the soul (by means of the
breath) could be achieved by blowing (the air into something), for
example, in a story about a queen she comes back to life when “Jesus blew
air into her mouth, (...) (but a Jew trying to imitate him) did not have such
power and could not blow the soul inside the queen’s body” [K 14 Poz
168-169]; cf. the symbolic meaning of the kiss, originally understood as
woman was I', replied her mother. 'But you were dead as a doornail', said the
daughter. Then the mother said: ‘Let me show you', and immediately fell asleep. A
mouse popped out of her mouth: it was her spirit. The daughter screamed and
shook her mother's body as she called her name, fearing that she would never wake
up. Then came the mouse and climbed into her mouth, and the mother was alive
again. And then said the mother, ‘If you want, you too can learn it and you will do
it as well as I do; but you must let the fleas bite you (…)’” [Wisła1898/468]; “In
Luboszec there was a girl who was known to moan (‘chejkać’ = to lamentować)
and to be ill very often. Once she helped with raking. In the evening she started to
moan and when everybody looked at her, a mouse jumped out of her mouth. They
tried to call her by her name but to no avail. After a while, the mouse came again
and climbed into her mouth, and the girl was as before” [Wisła1898/490]; “Once
there was a girl who spent the evening spinning and she kept lying down on the
bank and sleeping all the time. People called her, but she never woke up. And after
an hour she woke up all by herself. Later, people watched her to see why she
constantly slept during this particular hour and they suddenly saw a large mouse
crawl into her mouth. And the girl was alive again. And the people said she was a
witch” [Wisła 1898/490]; “(The sleeping girl) began to snore heavily. People
looked at her and saw that the mouse popped out of her mouth. The girl then lay as
if dead. After some time the mouse returned got inside her mouth and the girl was
awake. The mouse was a mare” [Wisła 1898/491]. If a soul does not return to its
body, the man has to die or get ill: “people believe that when a person sleeps, his
spirit may leave him and wander the night for some time. I was told about a girl
who put a pot of water by her bed every night for her spirit to drink so that it would
not need to go far to fetch it as she feared that ‘it might get lost and then she would
be dead’” [Wisła 1898/489]. “In Prożymo there was a girl; she fell asleep in the
meadows and the people saw a snake (=soul) crawl out of her mouth only to come
back to climb into her mouth again after a while. On the second day, she fell asleep
again at the same hour, and again the serpent came out of her. People took her
away and brought her home. The snake returned home, but the people killed it.
From then on the girl was lame and sickly” [Wisła 1898/491].
430 Chapter 21
“probably a breath of the soul living in the breath; therefore, people

imagined that it could convey power and give life”. [Herd Lek 12]. 20
21.4. The soul as an object of actions
21.4.1. A man gives up his soul to God
As God breathed the soul, living in his breath, into the human body, so
with the last breath each man gives it back to him (Cf. the expression to
give one’s soul to God (oddać duszę Bogu), or alternatively: to give one’s
spirit to God (oddać (Bogu) ducha) “to die, expire” [Karł SJP; USJP
Dub]). 21 This is also documented by the noun zdech “last breath” [Bieg
Koleb 1] and such idioms as: give away the last breath (oddać ostatnie
tchnienie) “to die” (common); give up the spirit (wyzionąć ducha — this
comes from “wydzielić”: “to secrete a smell or vapour”; this verb's usage is
today limited to such expressions as: wyzionąć ducha, życie, dech
[Pajdzińska 1999, 54; Wysoczański 2016]); breathe out one's soul or life
(wytchnąć ducha or duszę — in the Słownik warszawski the verb wytchnąć
meant “let out a breath, breathe”); “to moan with one’s soul” (kwęknąć
dusą) “lose one’s soul or life” [Wisła 1897/13]. As noted by Anna
Pajdzińska [1999, 55]:
All of these common expressions are exponents of the meaning “to die”,
while wytchnąć ducha may additionally indicate a situation where someone
lives but no external symptoms of living are observed. The repeated
exchange of the words spirit and soul (duch – dusza) is not accidental: the
religiously motivated conception of human existence implies that while
being a sign of life, the soul is not its source, but rather represents a sort of
emanation of the spirit that makes a living soul out of a man. God breathed
into him the breath of life which He takes back at the moment of death.
The image of man as animated by the Holy Spirit is also at the heart of the
phrase “to owe one's spirit to God” (ktoś jest Bogu ducha winny) meaning
“to be innocent”.
20 On the healing and life-giving power of the kiss, see also Masłowska [2012, 133;
2016].
21 In some expressions the word soul and life are used alternately, for example, to
give up one’s soul/life for someone (oddać duszę/życie za kogoś) means “to die for
someone”.
This conceptualisation of the soul as a life-giving breath and air

movement (wind) is confirmed by understanding the spirit as, following
Renata Grzegorczykowa’s words [1999, 338-339], “immaterial, unlimited
substance (the God’s breath) that is similar to air (see Lithuanian daũsas
‘air’, Russian воздух ‘air’)” and to the soul understood as “a spirit closed
in man, created from the breath of God” which is the source of life; cf. the
meaning of the words dusza “the power of life, life” [Lin SJP 1/552] and
bezduszny “soulless, dead” [Lin SJP 1/78]. The close relationship of spirit,
soul and breath is also confirmed by linguistic data, as these words stem
from the same Indo-European core. The set of Proto-Slavic lexemes based
on the verbs *duti “to blow” and *dъchnąti “to breathe” is illustrated in a
diagram by Renata Grzegorczykowa [1999, 334]. This relationship is
typical for Slavic languages. It combines two images that are distinct in
Judaeo-Christian culture: of the spirit (Hebrew ruah stands for “wind”)
and of the soul, connected to the breath (Hebrew nepheš), which in turn is
reflected in biblical languages; cf. pneuma – psyche, spiritus – anima,
ésprit – âme, Geist – Seele [see Pajdzińska 1999, 58; Grzegorczykowa
1999, 338; 2016, 127-136, Marcinkowski 2016]. Henryk Biegeleisen
wrote:
Since the most ancient times the soul has been perceived as a breath or an
airstream; we observe traces of such concepts in the Indo-European
languages in which the words spirit, soul, and breath (duch, dusza and
dech) come from one core. In Sanskrit, atasa means both “soul” and
“airstream”. For Germanic peoples, the word soul, spirit also corresponds
to breath, wind. This sensual concept of the soul is illustrated by the
following linguistic equation: in Sanskrit, the soul is called atman; in Old
German — atum — now Atem, — breath, in Irish athach. The Latin
animus = soul, anima = breath, in Greek άυεμοϛ = wind, in Irish anal =
breath, in Sanskrit aniti = to breathe. [Biegelesen 1930, 22-23]
21.4.2. A man gives up his soul to the devil
According to this concept, man, being able to dispose of his soul, can
give it in exchange for the devil’s tutelage; cf. the phrases to sell/bequeath
one’s soul to the devil (zaprzedać/zapisać duszę diabłu/czartom)
(common).
432 Chapter 21
21.4.3. The soul is taken from man by demonic forces
It was believed that the soul, under the influence of demonic forces,
can be forced to leave the body, e.g. during sneezing. 22 Moreover, the
sneezing person was believed to have died immediately so that the devil
could take his/her soul [Bieg Śmierć 177]. This is documented by the
proverbs: “the soul sneezes and all falls silent” (Dusza kichnie i wszystko
ucichnie) [NKPP dusza 17; Bieg Śmierć 178]; a runny nose expels nine
illnesses but the soul follows tenth (Katar wypędza dziewięć chorób a
dziesiątą duszę) [NKPP katar 3]; by the phrase to sneeze with one’s soul
[duszą kichnąć] “to die, to kick the bucket, to croak” [Karł SJP 2/319; Karł
SGP 2/336; K 14 Poz 331] as well as by numerous folk tales. To prevent
this from happening, the sneezing person was wished “a hundred years”
(sto lat!), “to your health” (na zdrowie!), or “good luck” (na szczęście!):
According to a story, a very long time ago sneezing was a symptom of a
serious illness, like cholera or even worse, probably the plague. The one
who sneezed soon died and there was no remedy for him. So, to ask God
for mercy over the sick and to give comfort to the suffering man, all the
people present cried out: “God bless” or “to your health”, which appeased
the severity of the disease and helped to cure it. [Spittal 1938, 172-173] 23
The man would then give thanks for the wishes and answer “God
bless” (Bóg zapłać). It was also recommended to cover one’s mouth and
nose with one’s hand when sneezing. In the Chełmskie region, sneezing
children had their mouths covered [Bieg Lecz 5] in order to prevent the
devil from entering them. (...) a sneeze lets the evil spirit take control over
a man; therefore, a wish for good health releases a child from the influence
of the evil spirit [Bieg Śmierć 178].
What was also feared was that the soul would leave the body while
yawning or during a hiccoughing fit. It was therefore recommended to
cover one’s mouth with one’s hand. When someone had a hiccough, it was
believed that his soul wanted to leave or that it talks to God. In this
22 Sneezing – some primitive peoples believed that this activity was caused by
some demons who wanted to expel the soul from the body in that way. The Sámi
people believed that a sneezing fit can lead to death. This kind of belief may also
be reflected by the custom of wishing health and happiness to the sneezing person,
attested to since ancient times” [Herd Lek 63].
23 Also, a snorting horse was wished to “stay healthy” (“zdrów”) by the coachman
to protect it from illness [cf. Spittal 1938, 172–173].

context, the saying “He who guards his mouth protects his soul” (ust
swych kto strzeże, strzeże duszy swojej) [NKPP usta 13] may be interpreted
literally. This belief is also confirmed by the practice of tying the mouth of
the deceased to prevent his soul from returning to the body or an unknown,
“evil” spirit from entering it.
After death, the devil takes the sinful man’s soul to hell [Wisła
1887/173]; cf. the expression “to lie in wait like a devil to catch a sinful
soul” (czyha jak czart na grzeszną duszę) [Wisła 1887/45; similarly Wisła
1901/334]. It was considered possible that demons could take the soul
from a man before his death and “make themselves comfortable in him”
(rozgoszczają się w nim) [Wisła 1896/667].
When a great sinner died, the soul, anticipating the awaiting
punishment, did not want to get out of the body. The devil would then
“snatch it” (wyrwać) from out of the human breast [ZWAK 1891/3/263;
Wisła 1897/585] and take it to hell [Bieg Śmierć 177]. A witch’s soul is to
be snatched away from her body by the devils [Wisła 1900/263].
21.4.4. Angels and saints come and take a man’s soul to heaven
According to some beliefs, God sends deaf and blind angels to take the
soul of a mother (so that they do not hear the cry of their orphans) [Wisła
1895/118–119]. The saints are to come to the earth and touch the pure
souls with chalices full of fragrant flowers: “such a man dies at once and
the Saint dresses his soul in his own white robe and takes it to heaven”
[Wisła 1893/99]. Often a piece of roof was removed or a hole was made in
order for the angels to have better access to the dying person [Fisch Pog
80-81].
21.4.5. Spirits come to take a man’s soul
In the Kaszuby region, the dead were placed in a so-called “empty

chamber” (“pusta izba”); nevertheless, the family stayed by their bed,
observing the practice of joint celebration of death [Perszon 1999, 147].
Apart from accompanying the deceased, they also sang, as it was believed
that the departing soul craves songs [Treder 1989, 169]. This was also
done in order not to let the evil spirits torment the deceased since it was
believed that “the souls of the dead gather at the bedside to accompany
him in agony and to bring him safely before the throne of God” [Perszon
1999, 122].
434 Chapter 21
21.4.6. Man is deprived of his soul by another
As the language data shows, the deprivation of one’s soul is understood

as deprivation of one’s life; cf. such expressions as: “to shake the
soul/spirit out of someone” (wytrząść duszę/ducha z kogoś), and “to kill by
shaking someone” [USJP Dub; see also Lin SJP, Karł SJP 7/1087]. The
same applies to the phrases: “to squeeze the soul out of someone”
(wycisnąć duszę z kogo) [Lin SJP], “to take the soul out of one’s throat”
(duszę z gardła komu wyjąć) [NKPP gardło 30], “to release the soul out of
someone” (wypuścić z kogo duszę) [ZWAK 1884/3/92].
There is an interesting group of verbs that connote the soul within a
living being which may be encouraged to leave the body, e.g. by luring
(wywabić) in the proverb “The soul’s not a bitch (female dog), a crust of
bread won’t lure it” (Dusza nie suczka, skórką chleba jej nie wywabisz)
[NKPP dusza 18]; or be forced to leave, e.g: scare the soul out of someone
(wystraszyć z kogo duszę) [ZWAK 1889/3/60]; by casting out: when a
person dies “not by one’s own death” it is said that his soul was cast out of
the body (wypędzona z ciała) before the time set by the Heavens “about
one having been killed” [ZWAK 1893/3/281].
There is also a metaphorical expression about a hypocrite that says that
he casts out the soul by caresses (duszę pieszczotami odbiera), i.e. courting
and false affection leads one to death [Wisła 1890/12].
As the Polish language data shows, the body is often perceived as a
kind of prison for the soul; cf. the expressions: “to liberate the soul from
the prison of the body” (uwolnić duszę z więzienia ciała) [NKJP:
Przybylski 2008]; “to free the soul from the bonds of the body” (uwolnić
duszę z więzów ciała) [NKJP: Kijas 2010], “to liberate the soul from the
fetters of the body” (wyzwolić duszę z uwięzi ciała) [NKJP: Kijas 2010].
21.4.7. Man deprives himself of the soul
Suicide is an act of turning against one’s soul; cf. the phrases: to

mistreat one's soul (wziąć się na swoją duszę), i.e. “to kill oneself; to try to
take one's life” [Karł SJP].
Another 'situation' is documented by the expression “to spit out one's
soul” (wypluć duszę) (e.g. a soul can be spat out because of hard work (o
wysiłku przy ciężkiej pracy) [NKPP ręka 85]; in parallel, another saying
has it that the soul cannot be spat out (duszy wypluć nie można) [Wisła
1898/328]. 24 These expressions point to the view of the soul as a substance

which may be expelled from the body. In the case of “ripping out one's
soul” (wypruć duszę z siebie) this indicates that the body is treated as a
kind of envelope for the soul: the soul is covered by the body (Dusza
obłożona jest ciałem) [Karł SJP 3/484]).
21.4.8. Verbs denoting the act of the soul leaving the body
The verbs used in the Polish language to denote the act of leaving the
body by a soul which is the object of someone's action form several
collocation groups, as illustrated by the following table:
I to give, take (oddać, odebrać) one’s from

soul somebody
II to (a) take out, pull out, rip out, (b) shake one’s a soul from
out, (c) suck out, spill out, let out, (d) soul the body
squeeze out, (e) lure out, scare out,
cast out, drag out, (f) push out
(wyjmować, wyciągać, wywlekać,
wydzierać, wyrywać), (b) wytrząsać,
(c) wysysać, wylewać, wypuszczać, (d)
wyciskać, (e) wywabiać, wystraszać,
wypędzać, wyganiać, wywlekać,
wypuszczać, (f) wypierać)
III to free, release (wyzwalać, uwalniać) one’s from the
soul body
IV to (a) spit out, throw up (wypluć, one’s from one’s
wyrzygać), (b) rip out (wypruć) soul body
V to mistreat one’s
soul
24In modern texts: throw up the soul (wyrzygać duszę), e.g. such violent vomiting
that one may throw up one's soul (wymioty takie, że duszę z siebie wyrzygasz)
[NKJP: Krzysztoń 1980].
436 Chapter 21
The first group includes verbs prefixed by od(e): oddać “to give
someone back a thing that was taken, stolen or borrowed” and odebrać:
“to take back from someone a thing that was lent, presented, or stolen”. As
noted by Renata Przybylska, they are linked by “being seen as a movement
of the given object on a FROM-TO path (where FROM is the starting
point and TO is the destination, J.S.)” [Przybylska 2006, 96]. 25 These
verbs are lexical converses, “that is, they are able to describe the same
situation, but from the point of view adopted by the conceptualiser (...)
What is important is that the modelled relationship implies
bidirectionality” [Przybylska 2006, 96]. Moreover, both verbs convey the
sense of restorativeness, i.e. “the return to a previous state of things in
which the given/accepted object was in the hands of a person at the
starting point” [Przybylska 2006: 97]. In the context of such expressions
as: “to give the soul/spirit to God” (oddać duszę/ducha Bogu), the soul
appears as a subject which is primarily controlled by God and which is
ultimately returned to Him.
Nevertheless, the soul can also be given (oddać) (i.e. “given from
oneself”) to someone who had not been disposing of it. In this case, there
is no restorative sense involved. The same applies to the expression “to
take one’s soul” (odebrać duszę komu) in the sense of “depriving someone
of it and having it for oneself”, when the one who takes the soul is another
person. In these cases, what is primarily activated is the aspect of the
meaning of the prefix od- that points to the object (the soul) being
transferred from one person to another [see Przybylska 2006, 97].
The second group includes verbs with the prefix wy- which introduces
the aspect of “movement from the inside to the outside, from below
towards above” [SJP Dor]. These structures express the idea of the soul as
something that stays inside something. They capture a very heterogeneous
image of the soul which can be reconstructed on the basis of the semantics
of verbs. In the light of these data, the soul is conceptualised as:
a) a thing (uncertain in its form and structure) that is extracted from

the inside of something (the body) – this meaning is conveyed by
the verbs: wyjmować “to extract, to take out, to get something from
the inside of something, from somewhere”, as in ciasto z pieca – “a
cake from the oven”; wyciągać “to pull, to produce, to get
25 About the basic semantic function of the prefix od(e), which consists in
informing about the direction of motion of an action from a specific point, see in
detail Śmiech [1968].
something out of something”, as in to produce a card from a bag

(dowód z torebki); the use of force is implied by the verb wywlekać
“to pull, to bring something to the outside, usually with difficulty”
as in “to bring something to the fore, to the light” (coś na wierzch,
na światło dzienne); see also below, point (e); in turn, a violent
move is expressed by the verbs wydzierać “to extract something out
of something by jerking”, as in “jerk one’s heart off” serce z piersi;
wyrywać “to pull or extract by force”, as in “pull the purse from
one’s hands” (torebkę z ręki);
b) something small (a small object) that is captured by the verb
wytrząsać “by moving vigorously, to spill, to throw something out
of somewhere, to empty”, as in “to empty one’s pockets” (piasek z
kieszeni);
c) referring to liquids or gas, e.g. the verbs: wysysać “by sucking, to
extract fluid, a liquid substance, also air” as in “blood from the
veins”, “marrow from the bones” (krew z żył, szpik z kości);
wylewać “by pouring, to remove liquid from a vessel”, as in “spill
milk from the jug” (mleko z dzbanka); wypuszczać “to cause
something to come out, fly away, disappear etc.”, as in “air from a
balloon, water from a bath tub” (powietrze z balonika, wodę z
wanny), see also below, point (e).
d) semi-solid substance – the verb wyciskać “by pressing, squeezing
with one’s fingers, to push something out of something”, as in
“toothpaste from a tube” (pastę z tuby);
e) a living creature made to leave the body by means of force or
deception – verbs: wywabiać, “by luring, to bring someone
somewhere, to urge to leave”, as in “lure someone out of their
home” (kogoś z domu); wystraszać “by frightening, to expel
someone from somewhere”, as in “expel a thief from the garden”
(złodzieja z sadu); wypędzać i wyganiać “to make a person or
animal leave a place”; wywlekać “to take out, to pull something to
the outside, usually with difficulty”, as in “to take out a prisoner
from his cell” (więźnia z celi) and wypierać ‘by pushing, to remove
something from somewhere”, as in “force the enemy out of the
fortress (wroga z twierdzy), or “wypuszczać 'to let someone or
something leave, to release (liberate) someone/something from
confinement”.
In the vast majority of instances, the subject influences the soul from
the outside (the exception is the verb wypierać).
438 Chapter 21
Verbs belonging to the third group — wyzwolić and uwolnić — are (in
the usage analysed) collocable with the phrase z czego, as in “to release/to
free one’s soul from the prison/bonds/fetters of the body” (wyzwolić/uwolnić
duszę z więzienia/więzów/uwięzi ciała). Both verbs convey the aspect of
“removing something that prevents the free movement of someone or
something” while carrying an implication of the salvation of the soul and
the restoration of his/her freedom (wyzwolić from Old Polish zwolić “to
save, rescue; to give consent, agree to something” [WSJP Żmig]; uwolnić
“to free”, from wolny “free”, from Proto-Slavic. *volьnъ “in accordance
with one’s will, such that suits one well” [WSJP Żmig]).
The fourth group again features verbs with the prefix wy-, but those
characterised by other semantic and collocative aspects:
a) for body functions and the functioning of the human body the
following verbs apply: to spit out (wypluć) “to throw something
from one’s mouth”, for example, saliva, blood, lungs, a mouth gag,
and to vomit (wyrzygać) “to throw up undigested contents of the
stomach through the mouth”, for example, blood, bile. The soul, in
this case, is referred to as something that one “excretes” from one’s
body through the mouth, by means of the forces of nature;
b) in the sense of extracting the soul from the body (seen as a shell
(“powłoka”) by breaking its natural integrity is conveyed by the
verb wypruć “by penetrating, breaking the shell, getting or throwing
something out of it”, as in “to rip one's veins, guts out” (z kogo (z
siebie) żyły, flaki, bebechy).
Both groups of verbs assume a different type of activity by the actor.
21.5. The soul “freed” from the body
According to popular beliefs, a soul released from the body does not
leave it immediately but is said to circle around it. It goes in ever wider
and wider circles, departing finally after the funeral.
The house is the first circle. The soul remains in it for between three
and forty days; during this period every day it comes back home, which is
reflected in the belief that “orphans are visited by their mother in the night,
when she washes and combs them” [Wisła 1889/730; in a wider sense, see
Slav Tol 2/165]; and also that
(...) the soul of the deceased returns to the family three days after his death
and offers some service; for example, opens the windows, puts out a lamp,
closes the door or guards the house against thieves etc. [Wisła 1895/27]
In order to let it go, usually after someone's death, all the water in the
house is removed, or mirrors are turned face down or covered, for the soul
not to stay in its reflection (common). In the Poznańskie region:
When someone dies, they hang a towel or a white handkerchief in the
chamber and attach a picture of one of the Saints to it for the soul to have a
shelter and to feel close to something blessed until the body is taken out.
[K 9 Poz 170]
The second circle is located between the house and the cemetery [see
more in Slav Tol 2/166]:
After death, the soul leaves the body and stands on its right side; it keeps
standing there until they bury the corpse [ZWAK 1878/3/127]. After death,
the soul wanders around its native village for 40 days, namely: 6 days
around the house, 3 days around the gardens, etc. Then, either it goes
where it belongs, that is to hell, to the abyss (a concept similar to
purgatory) or to heaven; or, it remains here on earth to repent [Wisła
1897/535]; the soul keeps standing by the body until it is buried; then it
wanders around the world for forty days [Wisła 1903/444]; When carrying
the coffin, the mourners hit the entrance door threshold three times, which
symbolises the dead man’s goodbye to his house; then all those present
touch the coffin (in Czarna village), in order to express their last goodbye.
After they take the deceased away, all the chambers and stables are locked;
in short, they close everything and go to the funeral (Ropczyce); in some
villages (Czarna, Krzywa), on the other hand, they open all the doors in
order to prevent property from following the deceased or the soul from
staying in the house [ZWAK 1890/3/122]; the soul follows the body up to
the gates of the cemetery, and therefore it is lighter to carry; only after the
coffin is brought to the cemetery, the soul leaves the body and the coffin
becomes heavier (Krzywa). [ZWAK 1890/3/122]
According to some folk accounts, after the final departure of the soul
from the human body, it heads towards its destination, while other texts
report that it “is carried by the winds and waits for the final judgement”
[Wisła 1889/932].
The whole world and its dimensions act as the locators of the
“released” soul: the upper realms (sky, atmosphere), inhabited and
uninhabited earth, and the lower realms (earth, underworld). According to
these beliefs, in each of these realms the soul takes on characteristic
incarnations; for example, the air souls (spirits) tend to appear in the form
of steam, fog, smoke, clouds, wind or birds:
Unbaptised children become blackbirds and wander until the end of the
world; unless they are christened by their parents in the Valley of Josaphat,
440 Chapter 21
they cannot go to heaven. However, if they do not receive baptism from

their condemned parents, they are taken to hell along with them [ZWAK
1890/3/200]; the soul of the unbaptised child murdered by its mother
wanders around the world as a blackbird and asks for baptism [ZWAK
1881/3/159]; (...) whoever hears the bird, and has a napkin or handkerchief
with him, then he has to make the sign of the Holy Cross and say the
following words “If you're a boy I name you N (e.g. Wojciech), and if
you’re a girl, I name you N (e.g. Maryna)”. The bird will presently seize
the handkerchief and the soul will go to heaven and become an angel
[ZWAK 1881/3/159]; “If a boy, your name will be Wojciech, and if you’re
a girl, then be called Maryna” [ZWAK 1889/70]; dead children without
baptism do not have names and wander after death. [Wisła 1889/932]
Repentant souls that wander the earth also take the form of animals:
After death, the soul of a suicide or a charlatan, as a rule, wanders around
and haunts; and when the priest’s exorcism or a woman’s spell drive it out,
it can be seen escaping in the shape of a goat [ZWAK 1887/3/219]; a
raven’s body houses the soul of a priest/evil and greedy doctor [Wisła
1900/37]; some forest Masurians believe that the souls of their fathers enter
their cattle, horses and other animals, and there they repent for their sins.
[ZWAK 1890/3/200]
Sinful souls have no permanent place, but have to roam around the
world in search of shelter: as a Dziady song has it, they fly to the woods,
to mountains, to fields, to meadows, to waters, and to the sea, asking each
for refuge, but they always refuse:
(...) however, the natural objects presented are not always homogeneous;
some of them belong to some extra-human world from afar (forests, sea),
some are mediators between the worlds (mountains), others (fields,
grasslands) are fragments of the world at hand, the familiar village world.
All are united by the spring landscape, which is “Holy Mary’s landscape”
represented, for example, in a popular song Chwalcie łąki umajone, góry,
doliny zielone. The “outer” world is a world at hand, a familiar one. It is
determined by the generic (Marian) character of the song. [Bartmiński
1998, 153-154]
It was also believed that:

(...) only the souls of such people for whom it was difficult to leave the
world or who have left it not having wiped out their sins must repent in
their previous earthly abode. To release them from this obligation, a
donation must be made for a mass, prayers are to be said and (alms) given
to the poor. [Wisła 1889/730]
In another group of beliefs, the soul of the deceased:

(...) stays the first night after death with Saint Barbara, the second with
Saint Thecla, the third with Saint Catherine, and thus it has to visit all the
Saints whose names it never mentioned in its prayers; all this lasts until the
final judgement has come. The saints reproach it for that, saying: “how
now, you never called us when you lived, and therefore you must visit us
all before you are allowed to stand in God's judgement”. [Wisła 1890/99,
the village of Krynice, Tomaszowski district]
21.6. Conclusion
In light of the analysed materials, the image of the soul recorded in

Polish traditional culture is ambiguous. On the one hand, it acts as a
miniature human being, an animatum, bestowed with consciousness; on
the other, it is viewed substantially as a “portion” of a living and immortal
spirit associated with the divine breath that temporarily resides in the
human body and leaves it at death; then it is reunited with the body on the
day of final judgement and exists independently from the human body.
This image is also linked to the belief in posthumous existence and shows
the unity of the individual soul and the limitless immortal spirit.
Abbreviations
Bied Lek — Biedermann, Hans. 2001. Leksykon symboli. Translated by
Jan Rubinowicz. Warszawa: Muza SA.
Bieg Koleb — Biegeleisen, Henryk. 1929. U kolebki. Przed ołtarzem. Nad
mogiłą. Lwów: Instytut Stauropigjański.
Bieg Lecz — Biegeleisen, Henryk. 1929. Lecznictwo ludu polskiego.
Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności.
Bieg Śmierć — Biegeleisen, Henryk. 1930. Śmierć w obrzędach,
zwyczajach i wierzeniach ludu polskiego. Warszawa: Dom Książki
Polskiej S-ka Akc.
Bor SEJP — Boryś, Wiesław. 2005. Słownik etymologiczny języka
polskiego. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Dług SE — Długosz-Kurczabowa, Krystyna. 2008. Wielki słownik
etymologiczno-historyczny języka polskiego. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo
Naukowe PWN.
Fisch Pog — Fischer, Adam. 1921. Zwyczaje pogrzebowe ludu polskiego.
Lwów: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich.
442 Chapter 21
Herd Lek — Leksykon symboli. Ed. Marianne Oesterreicher-Mollwo.

1992. Translated by Jerzy Prokopiuk. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo ROK
Corporation.
K — Kolberg, Oskar. Dzieła wszystkie:
K 7 Krak — Vol. 7: Krakowskie. 1962. Part 3. Warszawa: Ludowa
Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, Wrocław: Polskie Towarzystwo
Ludoznawcze. Fotoofset edition 1874.
K 9 Poz — Vol. 9: W. Ks. Poznańskie. 1963. Part. 1. Wrocław, Poznań,
Warszawa, Kraków: Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze. Fotoofset
edition 1875.
K 10 Poz — Vol. 10: W. Ks. Poznańskie. 1963. Part 2. Kraków:
Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne; [Warszawa]: Ludowa Spółdzielnia
Wydawnicza. Fotoofset edition 1876.
K 14 Poz — Vol. 14: W. Ks. Poznańskie. 1962. Part 6. Warszawa:
Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, [Kraków]: Polskie Wydawnictwo
Muzyczne. Fotoofset edition 1881.
Karł SGP — Karłowicz, Jan. 1900-1911. Słownik gwar polskich. Vols. 6.
Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności.
Karł SJP — Karłowicz, Jan, Kryński, Adam, Niedźwiedzki, Władysław.
1952-1953. Słownik języka polskiego. Vols. 8. Warszawa: Państwowy
Instytut Wydawniczy. Fotoofset edition 1900-1927.
Kop Sym — Kopaliński, Władysław. 1990. Słownik symboli. Warszawa:
Wiedza Powszechna.
Lin SJP — Linde, Samuel B. 1951. Słownik języka polskiego. Vols. 6.
Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. 3rd fotoofset edition
from 1854-1860.
Lud — Lud. Organ Polskiego Towarzystwa Ludoznawczego no. 16. 1910.
Mosz Kul — Moszyński, Kazimierz. 1929, 1934, 1939. Kultura ludowa
Słowian. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności.
NKJP — Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego. http://nkjp.pl/: 15.12.2017.
NKPP — Nowa księga przysłów i wyrażeń przysłowiowych polskich. Ed.
Julian Krzyżanowski. Vol 1: 1969, vol. 2: 1970, vol. 3: 1972, vol. 4:
1978. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
SJP Dor — Słownik języka polskiego. Ed. Witold Doroszewski. 1958-
1969. Vols. 11. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo „Wiedza
Powszechna”.
Slav Tol — Slavjanskie drevnosti. Etnolingvističeskij slovar’. Ed. Nikita I.
Tolstoj. 1995-2012. Vols. 5, Moskva: Meždunarodnye otnošenija.
Sław SE — Sławski, Franciszek. 1952-1956. Słownik etymologiczny
języka polskiego. Vols. 5. Kraków: Towarzystwo Miłośników Języka
Polskiego.
USJP Dub — Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego. Ed. Stanisław

Dubisz. 2003. Vol. 4. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Vas ES — Vasmer, Max. 1986-1987. Etimologičeskij slovar’ russkogo
jazyka. Translated by Oleg N. Trubačev. Vols. 4. Moskva: Progress.
Wisła — Wisła. Miesięcznik Geograficzno-Etnograficzny. Vol. 1: 1887,
vol. 2: 1888, vol. 3: 1889, vol. 4: 1890, vol. 5: 1891, vol. 7: 1893, vol.
9: 1895, vo1. 10: 1896, vol. 11: 1897, vol. 12: 1898, vol. 13: 1899, vol.
14: 1900, vol. 15: 1901, vol. 16: 1902, vol. 17: 1903.
Wój Gaw — Wójcicki, Kazimierz W. 1840. Stare gawędy i obrazy. Vol. 1,
Warszawa: Gustaw Sennewald.
WSJP Żmig — Wielki słownik języka polskiego. Piotr Żmigrodzki, ed.,
www.wsjp.pl (03.02.2018).
ZWAK — Zbiór Wiadomości do Antropologii Krajowej wydawany
staraniem Komisji Antropologicznej Akademii Umiejętności w
Krakowie. Vol. 2: 1878, vol. 5: 1881, vol. 8: 1884, vol. 11: 1887, vol.
12: 1888, vol. 13: 1889, vol. 14: 1890, vol. 15: 1891, vol. 17: 1893.
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międzykulturowej, vol. 1 Dusza w oczach świata. eds. Ewa Masłowska,
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Polskiej Akademii Nauk i Wydział Orientalistyczny Uniwersytetu
Warszawskiego.
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4: 4-8.
Summary
The subject of this analysis is the reconstruction of notions of the presence of
the soul in the body that are typical for Polish traditional culture. The analysis is
446 Chapter 21
organised following Svetlana M. Tolstaya’s division of the soul-body relationship

into three “stages”: the incarnation of the soul, its separation from the body and its
final release. In the light of the data presented, on the one hand, the soul appears as
a miniature human being, endowed with the consciousness of animatum; on the
other, it is viewed substantially as a “portion” of the spirit associated with the
immortal divine breath that brings life to the body. The analytical material used, in
accordance with the requirements of ethnolinguistic analysis, consisted of
linguistic data (vocabulary taken from Polish language dictionaries of standard and
dialectal speech, texts) and language-related sources (records of beliefs and
practices).
Keywords: ethnolinguistics, linguistic view of the world, spirit – soul – body,

scenarios of the act of the soul’s “incarnation”, separation and release from the
body
CHAPTER 22
TURKISH MYSTICAL NAMES BASED

ON THE WORD SOUL
KAMILA BARBARA STANEK

22.1. Introduction
The first Turkish names, which can be studied in terms of language,

semantics and culture, come from the Orkhon (Old Turkic) inscriptions of
the royal rulers Bilge Chana, Tonyukuk and Kültegin. These inscriptions
are dated to the seventh century C.E. and were prepared in Turkish runes. 1
Another source of written Turkish names is the destans – myths and
legends about the spread of Turkish tribes in Asia, from the fifteenth to
sixteenth centuries, written in the Arabic abjad. Names of Turks are also
found in Chinese chronicles, written in Chinese characters. Due to the fact
that the names were recorded in various scripts and alphabets that did not
always exactly correspond to Turkish phonetics, the sound of the names
could be distorted. On the other hand, its semantic and cultural
information, resulting both from the context of the record and the very
meaning of the name, are a valuable source of information about the
system of values and morality of the Turks.
The destans already tell us what were (and still are among the Asian
Turks) ceremonies related to naming a newborn baby. The life of nomads
(warriors and hunters) living in steppe conditions was associated with
close contact with nature. The surrounding nature provided stimuli
evoking associations with freedom, strength, and endurance. The necessity
1 Old Turkic Inscriptions – the oldest Turkish writing records discovered in 1889
on the Orkhon River in northern Mongolia. They were deciphered by Danish
scientist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893. See http://www.britannica.com/topic/Orhon-
inscriptions (04/08/2015).
448 Chapter 22
and possibility of skirmishes and fighting gave an opportunity to show

courage in battle as well as courage and endurance in suffering. Therefore,
the final name of the child was only given to him or her when he or she
showed an act worthy of having the given name. So we have to deal with
“namelessness” and the necessity of “getting a name”, that is, gaining
one’s own identity. The name was given by the oldest and most respected
member of the community (the head of the tribe or shaman). The name
given at that time was not the last one that belonged to a person for the rest
of his or her life, because it could have been changed if it outgrew his or
her abilities or turned out to be incompatible with his or her character (lit.
it was “too heavy”). 2
22.1.2. Name choice motivation
The reasons for choosing a name were many: the name of the child’s
first guest, the first word spoken in his or her company, circumstances that
accompanied the birth, such as rain, cloudiness, or someone killing an
opponent, agreeing peace between parties. 3 Even now, we can distinguish
names by the reason for their giving:
1) descriptive names referring to an event at birth: Yaǧmurgeldi –

“Rainfall” 4, Kışgeldi – “Arrival of winter”;
2) names referring to the time of birth of a child: Seher – “Daybreak”,
Bahar – “Spring”, Cuma – “Friday”;
3) names of important/elder people in the family;
4) names related to history: Orhun – “Orkhon”, 5 Yavuz 6 –
“Terrible/Strong/Bad”;
5) names appearing in the literature: Namik Kemal 7, Nedim; 8
2 Eski Türk’lerde Ad Koyma Geleneği.

3 The creation of new names was done by “joining” Turkish words with Arabic
adjectives. As the influence of the Persian language intensified, Persian adjectives
were added to Turkish words. Earlier names were created using elements of the
Mongolian language, but with the adoption of Islam, Mongolian-sounding names
are no longer popular. See: Gülensoy 1994.
4 The translation of the name is intentionally written to show that it is one word-
concept.
5 The local name in Central Asia, where Old Turkic alphabet inscriptions were
found.
6 A nickname given to rulers, e.g., in the sixteenth century, to the Turkish Sultan.
7 Turkish patriot and poet from the second half of the nineteenth century.
Turkish Mystical Names based on the Word Soul 449
6) names related to nature: animals, birds, flowers: A(r)slan – “Lion”,

Gül – “Rose”;
7) names related to geography: Firat – “Euphrates”, Tuna – “The
Danube”, Pinar – “Spring”, Derya – “Sea” (see Sakoğlu).
22.2. Semantics and word-formation of Turkish names as a reflection

of culture
In Turkish, every common word can be used as a proper name; each

name has a metaphorical and literal meaning. In principle, all names are
composed of terms relevant to culture: Ay “moon”, Gül “rose”, Er “brave”.
Complex names consist of a noun, a noun and an adjective or forms in
the imperative mood. The imperative mood carries a message – an order to
be worthy of one’s name, the fulfilment of expectations, and the
realization of the meaning contained in the name.
Ranges in name meanings include the following spheres:
1) relating to the religious sphere, e.g., Melek – “Angel”.

2) referring to nature, e.g., Toprak – “Earth”, Rüzgar – “Wind”.
3) referring to abstract concepts connected with the sphere of feelings
and experiences, e.g. Sevinç – “Joy”, Umut – “Hope”.
4) defining physical characteristics or character traits, for example,
Aydin – “Enlightened”, Olgun – “Mature”.
5) referring to ideology: Eylem – “Action”, Devrim
“Revolt/Revolution”.
22.2.1. Magical names
Due to the fact that each name has a meaning, each can also be
considered a magical name. The main premises for giving a particular
name are:
1) Protection against death.

Names in this category contain in their structure a meaningful wish-
spell that is to provide the child with health, long life, and even
immortality, e.g. Yaşar – “Living”, Binyaşar – “Living-a-thousand-lives”,
8 Turkish poet, a representative of carpet-palace literature, from the turn of the

seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries.
450 Chapter 22
Ölmez – “Immortal”, Dursun – “One-to-stop”, Durdu – “One-who-

stopped”.
Another type of magical activity to protect a child from death was to
pretend the child was purchased, so not previously owned, and then
(re)bought, e.g.: Satılmış “Sold (male)”, Satı “Sold (female)”. 9
2) Protection against evil.

According to shamanic beliefs, abusive names were given so that even
death would not take the child, e.g.: İtgördü – “Dog-saw” 10 (and the dog
did not want to take the child), Köpek – “Dog”, İtalmaz – “Dog-won’t-
take”, Domuz – “Swine”, Balçık – “Silt”/“Mud”.
3) Wishes about the child’s sex.

Traditionally, each family’s wish was to have a male descendant,
therefore girls were given names that would stop the conception of another
girl, e.g., Yeter – “Enough”, Döne – “Turn away (fate, give us a son)”,
Gızyeter – “Enough-girls”.
4) Expression of a specific wish.

Currently, parents try to give their child a name that represents the
fulfilment of their dreams for their offspring. In cities, attention is drawn
to the fact that the name is unparalleled and unique and that the child also
turned out to be that way This is often the result of unfulfilled parent
intentions. 11 This phenomenon is specific to cities, because the rural
community is more conservative and connected to the tradition. Therefore,
9 Türklerde Ad Verme Geleneği ve Kişi Adları (The custom of giving names among
Turks and names given to people), http://www.yenidenergenekon.com/294-
turklerde-ad-verme-gelenegi-ve-kisi-adlari/26.03.2015 (10.10.2017).
10 In Turkish culture, dogs are not seen as friends to humans. They are used mainly
in pastoralism, but according to one legend, due to a dog's negligence, humanity

must deal with the evil that prevails in the world (Kałużyński 1986, 94). The
symbolism of dogs, in Turkish names, is based on mythical motives. The dog,
tempted by the promise of the evil Erlik that in exchange for eating his feces he
would be reward with fur, gave in and got the promised fur, but he was punished
by the God Tanry. He got his fur, but Tanry punished him giving him "a dog's
life", because, as Tanry told him, "(...) you will be a liked creature. People will
love you, yes... but they will scold you constantly. You will be a guardian, on
which no one can depend, and when some people will pet you, others will sweep
you up." (See: Sepetçioğlu 1977, 43).
11 Aslan 2013.
more often chooses the names of ancestors, or those that come from The
Holy Quran.
22.2.2. The importance of names in the Turkish community before the

adoption of Islam
In the shamanic, nomad community, names mirrored the most

appropriate behaviour/attitude, philosophy of life and the human ideal. The
most basic names referred to bravery and heroism. In nomadic Turkish
communities, male children were more important because he took his
position after his father. It was not enough, however, to just have a son;
this son had to be brave and show courage to earn the name given to him
after recognizing his merits, mainly in the battlefield: in competition,
archery, or during hunting.
In the case of girls, beauty was considered the most valuable feature.
According to one legend, the first wife of Oǧuz 12 came from a ray
descending from the sky. Therefore, the names of his daughters refer to the
brightness and objects appearing in the sky Gün – “day”, Ay – “The
Moon”, Yıldız – “The Moon”.
Turks had common elements accompanying their naming:
1) a child gains a name that after an essential activity in the eyes of the
community.
2) naming is accompanied by a ceremony.
3) the name is given by a person who is respected.
4) the child becomes part of the community only after the name-giving
and is seen as the future protector of family and fatherland. 13
22.2.3. The importance of names in the Turkish community after the

adoption of Islam
Turks in Turkey usually name a child after a short time, from three to
forty days. This function is carried out by the oldest person in the family,
12 Legendary commander of the Turks of unprecedented strength, invincible, led by

a fawn wolf to victory. He named and assigned to the Turkish tribes specific areas
of land.
13 In the case of the Turkish peoples, changes to the names they have carried
throughout history reflect changes in the alphabet, as well as contacts with various
communities and the influence of other civilizations and religions.
452 Chapter 22
by a hoca 14 who is often invited to a house, or by an imam 15 who, during

this activity, recites ezan 16 in the child’s ear, according to the conviction
that after death a human will be called by his or her own name and the
name of his or her father. Special importance was attached to this belief.
The ceremony of name-giving after the reception of Islam includes the
recitation of the Quran, Besmele: 17 Eûzu billahi mineş-şeytânirracîm.
Bismillahirrahmanirrahîm. Kovulmuş Şeytan’ın şerrinden Allah’a
sığınırım. Rahman ve Rahîm olan Allah’ın adıyla – “I am looking for
refuge in Allah from the evil spirits of the exiled Satan. In the name of
Allah, the Merciful and Charitable, 18 and a feast forty days after the birth
of the child.”
The semantic structure of names may consist of a causal sequence
connected with the beginning and end of life, for example: Tanrıverdi –
Allahverdi – Huda Verdi – Çâlapverdi, which means “God gave; God sent
the child to live and return to him when the time comes.” 19
Some names related to religion refer to the descriptions of Allah (also
known as the names of Allah), e.g.:
• Kadir: - Kuvvetli, güçlü, kudret sahibi “Strong, powerful, with

power”; Değer, onur, kıymet, şeref “Value, honor”; Allah’ın
adlarındandır – description of Allah.
• Rahman: - Ayrım gözetmeksizin tüm canlılara merhamet eden,
koruyan “Showing mercy to all without distinction, protecting”;
Tanrı’nın adlarından Kadir - Rahman, “the name of Allah and the
names of prophets”, e.g., Mustafa, Muhammed, Ahmed, Isa, Musa,
the names of four Caliphs (Bekir, Ali, Ebubekir), or the names of
the prophet’s families (Abdullah, Amine, Fatma). There are also
abstract names containing the SOUL component, e.g., Ruh, Ruhsar,
Ruhiye, Ruhi, Özcan, Bircan, Ayçan, Tezcan. 20
14 Hoca – in Islam, the title given to a person performing religious duties – a
“religious official”; a polite title, literally a teacher formerly only in religious

schools, now also in secular schools.
15 Imam – in Islam, a person who conducts prayers – namaz.
16 Ezan – in Islam, a call to prayer.
17 Besmele – in Islam, a profession of faith that all activities are done in the name
of Allah, to his glory.

18 Author’s translation from Turkish.
19 Gülensoy 1994, 6.
20 The translation of names below in the rest of the text.
Nonetheless, protective names associated with keeping the child away

from the "evil" that could hurt them reach the Turkish (pre-Islamic,
shamanic), non-Islamic tradition. Names referring to the beauty of nature
combine both traditions. Nature is, after all, the work of Allah himself. In a
legend, Dede Kokrut, 21 who gives a name to a child, says the words: “I
give you a name and let Allah give you a life.” Names that only result
from Islamic tradition are those that appear in the Quran.
22.3. “Name” in the dictionary and in phraseology
According to the dictionary, ad “name” is defined as – Bir kimseyi, bir

şeyi anlatmaya, tanımlamaya, açıklamaya, bildirmeye yarayan söz, isim,
nam 22 – "name, the word that serves to inform, explain, define, present and
describe something or someone".
In Turkish, name-giving is lexically expressed by three analytical
expressions: ad verme “give a name”, ad koyma “impose/put a name”, ad
takma “take a name”.
For the Turks, a name is an honour of a given person, not just a proper
name. The conviction that a child should live according to the meaning of
her or her name is expressed in the saying: Adı gibi yaşasın – “that he
should live as his name”. Therefore, the name itself and its meaning refer
directly to its host. A name is worth more than life, as the proverb says:
adamın adı çıkacağına canı çıksın – “It is better that a man loses his
soul/life than his (good) name”.
22.4. SOUL in the Turkish dictionary
Words describing the concept of SOUL in contemporary Turkish are

borrowings; namely, can 23 (from Persian) “soul”, and ruh (from Arabic)
“soul, spirit, psyche”.
The Old Turkish word tin is also listed in the dictionary, but now it
means something closer to “spirit”, in philosophical terms. “Tin 24 – 1.
isim, ruh bilimi Ruh; 2. felsefe Birtakım fizikötesi kurucularının, gerçeği ve
21 Twelve stories - legends known in the entire Turkish world, written down in the
second half of the fifteenth century.

22 http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_gts&arama=gts&guid=TDK.GTS.
59de86b5158ea9.74576780 (11.10.2017).
23 Read as jan.
24 Ayverdi 2010, 181-182.
454 Chapter 22
evreni açıklamak için her şeyin özü, temeli veya yapıcısı olarak
benimsedikleri madde dışı varlık 25 – 1. ‘spirit/psyche’, 2. in psychology –
‘psychic’.” According to some of the creators of metaphysical theory, tin
refers to a non-material creative particle – the basis or essence of
something that is necessary to explain the existence of reality (the
visible/real world) and the entire universe. 26
In the dictionary of İlhan Ayverdi, Misalli Büyük Türkçe Sözlüğü
(Grand Dictionary of the Turkish Language with Examples) from 2010,
the definition of can “soul” 27 includes 8 meanings: “1. ‘immaterial being
that ensures the life of people and animals separating from the body at the
time of death; spirit’, 2. ‘human existence, life’, 3. ‘human inner world, his
or her interior, heart, feelings’; 4. ‘human, person, someone’, 5. ‘strength,
power’, 6. ‘beloved, friend, brother’, 7. ‘following the same mystical
path‘, ‘dervish’, 8. as adjective ‘charming, sweet/nice, lovely, close to
heart (beloved)’.”
In the same dictionary, the word ruh 28 has 6 meanings related to the
spirit/soul: “1. ‘immaterial being providing life to humans and animals,
separating from the body at the moment of death’, 2. ‘divine and spiritual
essence, blown into human body by Allah, continuing its being after
human death, the essence of which nature is not known’, 3.
metaphorically: ‘emotions, feelings’, 4. ‘vigor, enthusiasm, vitality’, 5.
‘innate trait, character, nature (of something)’, 6 ‘the product of
imagination, gin’.”
22.5. Turkish names containing the SOUL component – material

presentation
Names containing SOUL were selected from the online dictionary of

the Turkish Language Society. With each name the following order has
been preserved: f. – a female name, m. – a male name, translation of the
25 http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_gts&arama=gts&guid=TDK.GTS.
5acddc6ba4f927.97331067 (11.04.2018).
26 In one of the oldest records of Turkish languages from the eleventh century, the
word tin meant "breath" See: Tryjarski 1993, 104. It also meant the soul-breath,
which causes human's death when it ceases to exist (Tryjarski 1993, 266).
Currently, the word tin is used mainly in psychology and in relation to the
Hegelian theory of the development of the spirit.
27 In order to distinguish the word-concept, the two versions of word soul and
SOUL will be used in this work.

28 Ayverdi 2010, 1031-1032.
meaning of the names placed in the dictionary (tdk.gov.tr), a translation of

the meaning functioning in language, and discussion of the assembly or
grammatical construction. In Turkish, the capital letter ‘i' is written with a
dot. The letter ‘c' should be read as ‘j'.
Can 29 – 1. Ruh. 2. Güç, dirilik, 3. İnsanın kendi varlığı, özü, 4. Gönül.
5. Çok içten, sevimli, şirin kimse, f./m. lit.: “soul”, meaning: 1. “soul”, 2
“strength, animation/vitality”, 3. “essence/essence of human”, 4. “heart”,
5. “someone nice, cordial”.
İsmican – Adı da kendi gibi sevimli olan, f. lit.: “Her name is the soul”,
meaning: “the name is as nice as she is” (isim + can = name + soul).
22.5.1. The soul in a religious sense
Ruhcan – Ruh ve can, m.; literally: “spirit of the soul, spirit soul”,
meaning: “spiritual” (ruh + can = spirit + soul).
Canten – Ruh ve beden, f.; lit.: “body and soul” (can + ten = soul +
body/complexion).
Ferruh – 1. Uğurlu, kutlu. 2. Aydınlık yüzlü, m.; lit.:
“Strong/enlightened spirit/soul”, meaning: 1. “happy/bringing happiness,
blessed/sanctified”, 2. “about the bright/luminous face” (fer (Per.) + Ruh
(Ar.) = lightness, spirit/soul).
Ferican – Can aydınlığı, ruhun ışığı, f.; lit.: “luminous/light soul”,
meaning: “the brightness of the soul, the light of the spirit” (feri (Per.) +
can (Per.) = brightness + soul).
Fercan – Güçlü, parlak, canlı kişiliği olan kimse, m.; “light/bright soul
– a person with a strong, luminous spiritual personality” (fer + can =
luminous/vital/strong + soul).
Nurcan – Nurlu, ışıklı, aydın kimse, f./m.; lit.: “luminous soul”,
meaning: “a person full of light (divine)” (nur (Ar.) + can (Per.) = light +
soul).
Ruhani – 1. Ruhla ilgili. 2. Gözle görülmeyen. 3. Din adamım.; lit.: 1.
“regarding the spirit/soul”, 2. “invisible to the eye”, 3. “man of faith” (ruh
+ ani = spirit + adjectival form).
Ruhi – Ruhsal, ruhla ilgili, m.; lit.: “spiritual, concerning spirit/soul”.
29 Names containing the concept of SOUL were selected from the Internet
Dictionary of the Turkish Language Society:

http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_kisiadlari&arama=adlar&guid=TDK
.GTS.59de9374853170.52276053 (11.10.2017).
http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_kisiadlari&arama=anlami&uid=964
4&guid=TDK.GTS.58f63b5de7e991.693 (10.11.2017).
456 Chapter 22
Ruhiye – Ruhla ilgili, ruha ait, f.; lit.: “spiritual, concerning

spirit/soul”.
Ruhsal – Ruhla ilgili olan, ruhi, f.; lit.: “spiritual, concerning
spirit/soul” (ruh + sal = spirit + Turkish suffix forming adjectival forms).
Ruhittin – Dinin ruhu, özü, m.; lit.: “core of the soul –
essence/core/basis of faith” (ruhi + tin = spiritual + spirit/essence/core).
Canses – Samimi, içten ses, f.; lit.: “the voice of the soul – internal
voice” (can + ses = soul + voice).
Kayacan – Canı kaya gibi güçlü olan, m.; lit.: “soul of rock”,
meaning: “his soul is as strong as a rock” (kaya + can = rock + soul).
Tülcan – İnce ruhlu insan, f.; lit.: “tulle soul”, meaning: “a person with
a sensitive soul”. (tül + can = tulle + soul).
Velican – Can sahibi, canlı, m.; lit.: “the soul holder, having a soul,
alive/animated” (veli + can = holder + soul).
Ruhfeza – Ruha canlılık katan, f. lit.: “Heaven of the soul”, meaning:
“giving life to soul/spirit” (ruh + feza = spirit/soul + sky).
Ruhullah – İsa Peygamber – Jesus.
Nuhcan – Nuh Peygamber gibi uzun ömürlü olması istenilen, m. lit.:
“Noah’s soul”, meaning: “to live as long as the prophet Noah”.
Bican Cansız, m. lit.: “soulless” (bi + can = none + soul).
22.5.2. The purity of the soul – lack of sin
Akcan – Özü temiz, dürüst kimse, f./m.; lit.: “white soul” – “a person
with a pure, honest depth” (ak + can = white + soul).
Arcan – Özü saf, temiz kimse, m.; lit.: “pure soul, someone pure,
naive” (ar + can = purity + soul.)
Arıcan – Temiz, doğru kimse, f./m. lit.: “pure soul, someone pure,
decent/appropriate”; (arı + can = purity + soul)
Canaydın – Özü temiz, aydınlık ruhlu kimse, m. lit.: “a bright soul, a
person clean, bright within” (can + aydın = soul +
brightness/enlightenment).
Temizcan – İçi temiz olan kimse, m.; lit.: “pure soul”, meaning: “a
person pure within” (temiz + can = clean + soul).
Canfidan – Özü fidan gibi düzgün olan kimse, f.; lit.: “soul as a
momentum (of a plant)”, meaning: “a person proper (decent) within, like
the momentum of a plant (simple, not warped)” (can + fidan = soul +
momentum (of a plant/young sapling)).
Canfide – Özü çiçek fidesi gibi temiz ve güzel olan kimse, f.; lit.: “soul
like a flower seedling”, meaning: “a person clean and beautiful within like
a seedling (not broken)” (can + fide = soul + seedling).
Cangül – Özü gül gibi sar ve temiz olan kimse, f.; lit.: “rosy soul”,
meaning: “a person pure and giving joy as a rose” (can + gül soul + rose).
Canipek – Özü ipek gibi tertemiz olan kimse, f.; lit.: “silk soul”,
meaning: “pure as silk within” (can + ipek = soul + silk).
Durucan – Özü temiz kisi, m.; lit.: “pure soul”, meaning: “a person
pure within” (duru + can = clean + soul).
Cannur – Nurlu olan kimse, f./m.; lit.: “light of the soul”, meaning: “a
person who is bright (pure, blessed)” (can + nur = soul + light).
Görgüncan – Görgülü, bilgili kimse, m.; lit.: “soul with rules”,
meaning: “a law-abiding, wise person” (görgü + can = (moral) principles
+ soul)
Tancan – Özü aydınlık kimse, m.; lit.: “dawn of the soul”, meaning:
“bright within” (tan + can = dawn + soul).
22.5.3. Soul – life
Candeğer – Uğrunda can verilecek kadar güzel, değerli, sevilen, m.;

lit.: “worth of a soul/valent soul”, meaning: “someone so beloved,
precious, beautiful that you would sacrifice your life for them” (can +
deǧer = soul + value).
Canfeda – Canını veren, özverili kimse, f.; lit.: “devotional soul”,
meaning: “devoted to life, devoting herself” (can + feda = soul + sacrifice)
Cansunar/Cansunay/Cansunan – “Canını feda eder” anlamında
kullanılan bir ad, f./m.; m. lit.: “offering the soul” (can + sunar = soul +
offering (participle of “to offer”).
Cankorur – Canı koruyan kimse, m.; lit.: “protector of the soul”,
meaning: “person protecting someone’s life” (can + korur = soul +
protects).
Cansu – Can suyu, yaşam veren su, f./m, lit.: “water of the soul”,
meaning: “water of life, giving life” (can + su = soul + water).
Duracan (m)/Durcan (f) - “Yaşasın, uzun ömürlü olsun” anlamında
kullanılan bir ad, m.; lit.: “stop the soul”, meaning “live long and have a
long life” (dura + can = let it stop + soul), (dur + can = stand + soul).
22.5.4. Soul – joy and happiness
Cangün – Mutlu, sevimli gün, f./m.; lit.: “the day of the soul”,
meaning: “happy, nice day” (can + gün = soul + day).
Cankut – Kişinin mutluluğu, talihi, şansı, uğuru, m.; lit.: “happiness of
the soul”, meaning: “happiness, good luck, luck, blessing” (can + kut =
soul + blessed/saint).
458 Chapter 22
22.5.5. Soul – love – loved person
Ruhsen – “Sen cana can katıyorsun” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, f.;
lit.: “you are a soul”, meaning: “you add life to life (you make things
alive)” (ruh + sen = soul + you).
Cansen – “Sen cansın, sevilensin, sevimlisin” anlamında kullanılan
bir ad, f./m.; lit.: “the soul is you”, meaning: “you are beloved (like a
soul)” (can + sen = soul + you).
Sencan – “Sen can kadar sevilensin” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, m.,
lit.: “you are a soul”, meaning: “you are beloved, like a soul” (sen + can =
you + soul).
Cansın – “Sevgi dolusun, sevilmeye değersin, dostsun, sevgilisi”
anlamında kullanılan bir ad, f./m.; lit.: “you are a soul”, meaning: “loved,
full of love, worthy of love” (can + sın = soul + 2nd person singular “to
be”).
Canan – Sevgili, gönül verilen, âşık olunan, f./m.; lit.: “little soul”,
meaning: “a beloved person who gives away his or her heart; one to be in
love with” (canan “little soul” (diminutive of a woman)).
Özcanan – Gerçek sevgili olan, f.; lit.: “heart of the soul”, meaning:
“truly beloved” (Öz + canan = real + little soul).
Canane – Sevgili, gönül verilen, âşık olunan, f., lit.: “mother soul”,
meaning: “a beloved person who gives away his or her heart; one to be in
love with” (can + ane = soul + mother).
İlcan – Memleketin sevimlisi, m.; lit.: “the soul of the town”, meaning:
“the favourite of the country”; (il + can = town + soul).
Oğulcan/Ulcan – Çok sevgili çocuk, m.; lit: “soul of a child”, meaning:
“beloved child” (oğul + can = son + soul).
Sercan – Sevgili, sevilen, f./m., lit.: “the head of the soul”, meaning:
“beloved” (ser (Per.) + can = head + soul).
Türkcan – Sevilen Türk, m.; lit.: “Turkish soul”, meaning: “beloved
Turk” (Türk + can = Turk + soul).
Yârcan – Çok sevilen, sevgili, f.; lit.: “beloved soul”, meaning: “very
dear” (yâr + can = beloved + soul).
22.5.6. Soul – love – phrases for loved ones
Sevgican/Sevican – Gönülden gelen sevgi, f.; lit.: “the soul of love”,

meaning: “love flowing from the heart” (sevgi + can = love + soul).
Abacan – “Canım anneciğim, sevgili anneciğim”, f., lit.: “mother
soul”, meaning: “dear mummy” (aba + can = mother + soul).
Atacan – “Sevgili baba” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, m.; lit.: “father
soul”, meaning: “beloved daddy” (ata + can = father + soul).
Aycan – “Ey sevgili” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, f./m., lit.: “soul of
the moon”, meaning: “hey honey” (ay + can = moon + soul).
Cana – “Ey can, ey sevgili!” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, f.; lit.: “to
the soul”, meaning: “Hey honey” (can + a = soul + Turkish suffix dative).
22.5.7. Soul – heart – love
Canal – Gönül al, kendini sevdir, sevilen biri ol’ anlamında kullanılan
bir ad, f./m.; lit.: “take the soul”, meaning: “take away the heart, fall in
love, be loved” (can + al = soul + imperative “to take”).
Canda – İçte, özde, yürekte olan kimse, m.; lit.: “in the soul”, meaning:
“within, in the heart” (can + da = soul + Turkish locative suffix).
Candan – İçten, yürekten, samimi, f./m. lit.: "from the soul (from the
heart)", meaning: from "inside, from the heart, friendly" (can + dan = soul
+ Turkish ablative suffix).
Candaner – İçten, samimi, dost kimse, m.; lit.: “from the soul (from
the heart) husband”, meaning: “from within, from the heart, friend” (can +
dan + er = soul + Turkish ablative suffix + husband (brave)).
Caner – Çok içten, sevilen, sevimli kimse, m, lit.: “male soul”,
meaning: “someone loved from the bottom of my heart; nice” (can + er =
soul + husband (brave man)).
Sevcan – “Gönülden sev” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, f./m.; lit.:
“love the soul”, meaning “love with your heart” (sev + can = imperative
“to love” + soul).
Sevilcan –“Yürekten sevil” anlamında kullanılan bir ad. f.; lit.: “be a
loved soul”, meaning: “be loved from the heart” (sev + il + can =
imperative “be loved” + soul).
Sevencan – Gönülden seven kimse, f./m.; lit.: “loving soul”, meaning:
“a person who loves with their whole heart” (seven + can = adjectival
active participle “loving” + soul).
Severcan – Yürekten seven kimse, f. lit.: “loving soul”, meaning: “a
woman who loves with all her heart” (sever + can = “she loves” + soul).
22.6. Courage
Alcan – Cesur, yürekli, atılgan kimse, m.; lit.: “red soul”, meaning:
“brave, with heart (to fight) attacker” (al + can = red + soul).
460 Chapter 22
22.7. Soul – essence/core/human personality
Canser – “Canını, özünü ortaya koy” anlamında kullanılan bir ad,

f./m.; lit.: “spread the soul”, meaning: “show what you are, show your
inside and soul”; (can + ser = soul + imperative “to spread”/“to unfold”).
Cansun – “Kendini göster” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, f./m.; lit.:
“introduce/present the soul”, meaning: “show yourself” (can + sun = soul
+ imperative “to show”/“to present”).
Canöz – Kişinin özü, f./m.; lit.: “core of the soul”, meaning: “being/the
core of human” (can + öz = soul + core/essence/being).
Cansal – “Özünü bırak, terket” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, m. lit.:
“unleash/release the soul”, meaning: “reject/give up your heart/soul” (can
+ sal = soul + imperative “to release”/“to leave”).
22.8. Soul – person – human personality
Ayşecan – Rahat ve huzur içinde yaşayan kimse, f.; lit.: “Aisha’s

soul”, meaning: “a person living in comfort and peace” (Ayşe + can =
Aisha (wife of Mohammed) + soul).
Baycan – Zengin, varlıklı kimse, m.; lit.: “lord’s soul”, meaning:
“wealthy person” (bey + can = lord + soul).
Candar – 1. Canlı, diri., 2. Koruyucu, muhafız, m. lit.: “narrow/limited
soul”, meaning: 1. “lively, alive”, 2. “protector, guardian” (can + dar =
soul + narrow/limited).
Cansev – “İnsanları sev” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, f.; lit.: “love
souls”, meaning: “love people” (can + sev = soul + imperative “to love”).
Denizcan – Deniz adamı, denizci, m.; lit.: “sea soul”, meaning:
“sailor” (deniz + can = sea + soul).
Ilgazcan – Akıncı, savaşçı kimse, m.; lit.: “flowing soul”, meaning:
“invader, warrior” (ılgaz + can = running + soul).
İlkcan – İlk doğan çocuklara verilen adlardandır, f.; lit.: “first soul”,
meaning: “first child” (ilk + can = first + soul).
22.9. Soul – person – youth
Taycan – Genç ve güçlü kimse, m; lit.: “the soul of a foal”, meaning:

“young and strong” (tay + can = young + soul).
Tercan – 1. Genç, taze, delikanlı. 2. Kırmızı buğday, f./m; lit.: “thin
soul”, meaning: 1. “young, fresh, ripening”, 2. “red wheat” (ter + can =
thin + soul).
Torcan – Çekingen, utangaç kimse, m; lit.: “shy soul”, meaning: “shy,

embarrassed” (tor + can = shy + soul).
Toycan – Çok genç ve deneyimsiz kimse, m.; lit.: “inexperienced soul”,
meaning: “young and inexperienced” (toy + can = inexperienced
(greenhorn) + soul).
Turcan – Genç, delikanlı, m.; lit.: “young soul”, meaning: “young,
youth” (tur + can = young + soul).
22.10. Soul – person – vitality
Dirican – Güçlü, canlı kimse, m.; lit.: “lively soul”, meaning: “strong,
vital” (diri + can = strong/vital + soul),
Ömürcan – Uzun ömürlü, f./m; lit.: “life of the soul”, meaning:
“someone with a long life” (Ömür + can = life + soul).
Sağcan – Sağlıklı kimse, m.; lit.: “healthy soul”, meaning: “someone
with good health” (sağ + can = health + soul).
22.11. Soul – person – friendship
Alacan – Henüz olgunlaşmamış dost, m.; lit.: “motley/immature soul”,

meaning: “immature friend (uncertain)” (ala + can = variegated/immature
+ soul).
Alican – Yüce, ulu dost, m.; lit.: “great soul”, meaning: “great, serious
friend” (ali + can = great + soul).
Canaş – Sevgili, dost, arkadaş, f. lit.: “food of the soul”, meaning:
“dear, friend” (can + aş = soul + food).
Candaş – Dost, arkadaş, yoldaş, f./m.; lit.: “common soul”, meaning:
“friend, companion” (can + daş = soul + Turkish suffix meaning
“common”).
Canel – İçten, candan uzatılan el, dostluk eli, f./m.; lit.: “hand of soul”,
meaning: “friendly hand/help from the heart/from the depths of the heart”
(can + el = soul + hand).
Canol – “Candan dost ol, gerçek dost ol” anlamında kullanılan bir ad,
m.; lit.: “be a soul”, meaning “be a friend from the heart” (can + ol = soul
+ imperative “to be”).
Canören – Gerçek dost olan, m.; lit.: “entangling soul”, meaning:
“true friend” (can + ör + en = soul + active adjective participle of “to
entangle”).
Canözen – Gerçek dost olan kimse, f. lit.: “soul’s effort”, meaning:
“true friend” (can + özen = soul + effort).
462 Chapter 22
Cantürk – Türk’ün dostu, arkadaşı, m.; lit.: “a Turk’s soul”, meaning:

“a friend of the Turks” (can + türk = soul + Turk).
Mihrican – Gerçek dost olan değerli kimse, f./m.; lit.: “commander of
the soul”, meaning: “true friend, someone valuable” (mir + can =
commander + soul).
Ocan – “O, cana yakın dosttur” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, m.; lit.:
“he is a soul”, meaning: “he is a real friend” (o + can = he + soul).
Oğuzcan – Gerçek dost, m.; lit.: “Oguz’s soul”, meaning: “true friend”
(Oğuz + can = Oguz + soul).
Olcan – “Gerçek dost ol” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, m.; lit.: “be a
soul”, meaning “be a real friend” (ol + can = imperative “to be” + soul).
Orcan/Orcaner – Kale veya şehirde bulunanların yakın dostu, m.; lit.:
“soul of the castle”, meaning: “a real friend in a city or a castle” (or + can
= castle/town + soul).
Özcan – Gerçekten dost olan kimse, f./m.; lit.: “true soul”, meaning:
“true friend” (öz + can = essence/core/essence + soul).
Tümcan – Gerçekten dost olan kimse, f./m.; lit.: “whole soul”,
meaning: “true friend” (tüm + can = all + soul).
22.12. Soul – person – affection
Babacan – Cana yakın, olgun, güvenilir kimse, m.; lit.: “father’s soul”,
meaning: “close to heart, mature, trustworthy” (baba + can = father +
soul).
Balcan – Bal gibi sevimli ve tatlı olan, m.; lit.: “soul of honey”,
meaning: “sweet and lovable like honey” (bal + can = honey + soul).
Bircan – Çok sevimli, cana yakın, f./m.; lit.: “one soul”, meaning: “a
nice person, close to the heart” (bir + can = one + soul).
Canay – Şirin, tatlı kimse, f./m.; lit.: “moon soul”, meaning: “sweet,
charming” (can + ay = soul + moon).
Canbey – Şirin, tatlı bey, m. lit.: “lord’s/male soul”, meaning: “nice,
sweet lord/man” (can + bey = soul + lord/male).
Canhanım – Sevimli, cana yakın kadın, f.; lit.: “lady of soul”,
meaning: “nice, white-faced woman” (can + hanım = soul + woman).
Cankız – Sevilen, sevimli, şirin kız, f.; lit.: “girlish soul”, meaning:
“sweetheart, sweet and nice girl” (can + kız = soul + girl).
Cankoç – Sevimli, cana yakın kimse, m. lit.: “having soul of a ram”, 30

meaning: “beloved, close to the heart” (can + koç = soul + ram).
Cansay – Şirin, sevimli, cana yakın olarak kabul et, m.; lit.: “treat as a
soul”, meaning: “accept the fact that it is kind and close to the heart” (can
+ say = soul + imperative “to judge”/“to treat”).
Cansoy – Tatlı ve içten olan kimse, f./m.; lit.: “ancestral soul”,
meaning: “someone sweet and close” (can + soy = soul + family).
Ilıcan – Sıcakkanlı kimse, f./m.; lit.: “warm soul”, meaning: “liked
person, without distance” (ılı + can = warm + soul).
Közcan – Samimi, içten kimse, m.; lit.: “heat of the soul”, meaning:
“direct, without distance” (köz + can = heat/source + soul).
Zeycan – Candan, cana yakın, m.; lit.: “heart of the soul”, meaning:
“someone from the heart, near” (zey (Per.) + can = heart + soul)
Zican – Canlı, cana yakın, candan, f.; lit.: “living soul”, meaning: “a
person from the heart, close” (zi (Ar.) + can = animated/with soul + soul).
22.13. Soul – person – seriousness and recognition
Canaltay – Özü, ruhu yüce olan kimse, m. lit.: “a soul like a

mountain”, meaning: “a person of great soul/magnanimous” (can + altay =
soul + Altai, a great mountain).
Canbay – Özü zengin, gönlü tok olan kimse, m.; lit.: “lord of the soul”,
meaning: “rich within, a generous heart, open soul)” (can + bay = soul +
lord).
Canfer – 1. Aydın, bilgili kimse, 2. Güçlü, saygın kimse, m.; lit.:
“light/brightness of the soul”, meaning: “wise and enlightened person”, 2.
“strong, respected person” (can + fer = soul + brightness).
Beycan – Bey gibi olan kimse, m.; lit.: “a lord’s spirituality”, meaning:
“a person like a lord (power, wealth)” (bey + can = lord + soul).
Ergincan – Olgun ruhlu kimse, m.; lit.: “mature soul”, meaning: “a
man with a mature soul” (ergin + can = mature + soul).
Gürcan – Canlı, güçlü, kuvvetli kimse, m.; lit.: “abundant/full soul”,
meaning: “strong, alive, powerful person” (gür + can =
dense/strong/abundant + soul).
Ruhşan – Yüce, üstün, şanlı ruh, m.; lit.: “brave soul/glorious spirit”,
meaning: “a great, superior to all, famous spirit” (ruh + şan = ghost/soul +
glory and fame).
30The ram symbolizes strength, fertility, wealth, and morality for the Turks.
Calling someone a ram is considered to be a compliment.
464 Chapter 22
Tanırcan – Anımsayan, bilip ayıran, seçen kimse, m.; lit.: “known

soul”, meaning: “remembered, known, chosen” (tanır + can = known +
soul).
Taşcan – Taş gibi sağlam kimse, m. lit.: “stone soul”, meaning:
“strong/confident and lasting like a stone (trustworthy)” (taş + can = stone
+ soul).
Tekcan – Çok değerli, eşsiz kimse, m.; lit.: “one/one and only such
soul”, meaning: “valuable, priceless” (tek + can = only/one (unique) +
soul).
Ulucan – Erdemli, saygın, yüce kişi, m.; lit.: “great soul”, meaning:
“respectful, full of virtues, great man” (ulu + can = grand/lofty + soul).
22.14. Soul – person – wisdom
Bilgecan – Bilgili kimse, f.; lit.: “wise soul”, meaning: “wise person”
(bilge + can = wise + soul).
Bulgucan – Anlayışlı kimse, m. lit.: “discovering/understanding soul”,
meaning: “a forgiving, intelligent person” (bulgu + can =
discovery/understanding/inspiration + soul).
Erencan – Deneyimli, akıllı kimse, m.; lit.: “soul of a wise
man/prophet”, meaning: “experienced and wise person” (eren + can =
mature (who reached the truth) + soul).
22.15. Soul – person – bravery
Ercan – Yiğit, canlı, cesur kimse, m.; lit.: “soul of husband/warrior”,

meaning: “youth, motivated/alive, brave” (er + can = husband (brave) +
soul).
Dönmezcan – Sözünden dönmeyen, dediğini yapan, azimli, kişilikli
kimse, m. lit.: “irreversible soul”, meaning: “a person who does not
withdraw a given word; a strong personality” (dönmez + can = non-
inverting + soul).
Özercan – Yiğit, doğru kimse, m.; lit.: “truly male soul”, meaning:
“youth, someone decent, in the right place”; (öz + er + can = the core +
husband + soul).
Tekecan – Mert, sözünün eri olan kimse, m.; lit.: “brave soul”,
meaning: “brave, a man keeping his word” (teke + can = brave + soul).
Yiğitcan – Güçlü, korkusuz, kahraman kimse, m.; lit.: “male soul”,
meaning: “strong, brave, hero” (yiğit + can = brave + soul).
22.16. Soul – person – joy of life
Bolcan – Canlı, hareketli, neşeli, m.; lit.: “full soul”, meaning: “vivid,
impulsive, mobile, cheerful” (bol + can = full/abundant + soul).
Canfeza – Can artıran, gönle ferahlık veren, f.; lit.: “the sky of the
soul”, meaning: “increasing soul, bringing rest, comfort of the soul” (can +
feza = soul + sky).
Cangür – Canlı, neşeli kimse, m.; lit.: “lush soul”, meaning: “a happy
and lively person” (can + gür = soul + lush/abundant).
Cankan – Özü hareketli olan kimse, m.; lit.: “blood of the soul”,
meaning: “lively within (personality)” (can + kan = soul + blood).
Cankat – “Yaşama gücü ver, neşe ve mutluluk saç” anlamında
kullanılan bir ad, f./m.; lit.: “magnify the soul”, meaning: “spread
happiness and joy; add life force” (can + kat = soul + imperative “to
increase/enlarge/add”).
Canperver – Gönül açan, iç açan, ruhu besleyen, f.; lit.:
“educating/protecting the soul”, meaning: “opening heart, feeding the
soul” (can + perver = soul + raise/educate/protect).
Cansel – Özü taşkın olan kimse, f./m.; lit.: “flood of the soul”,
meaning: “of growing heart/growing within (effusive)” (can + sel = soul +
flood).
Neşecan – Neşeli, sevinçli kimse, f.; lit.: “joyful soul”, meaning:
“happy, cheerful person” (neşe + can = joy + soul).
Şencan – Canlı, neşeli, hareketli yapısı olan kimse, f./m.; lit.: “lively,
cheerful, mobile”, meaning: “lively, cheerful, mobile” (şen + can = joy +
soul).
Ruhişen – Şen ruhlu, neşeli, canlı kimse, f.; lit.: “spiritual joy/joy of
the soul”, meaning: “a joyful soul, joyful, lively” (ruhi + şen = spiritual +
joyful).
Ruhşen – Neşeli, şen, mutlu kimse, f.; lit.: “joyful soul”, meaning: “a
happy, cheerful, happy person” (ruh + şen = soul + joy).
Uğurcan – Uğurlu, hayırlı kimse, f./m.; lit.: “soul bringing luck”,
meaning: “someone lucky” (uğur + can = luck + soul).
Yurdacan/Yurtcan – Yurda canlılık veren kimse, m.; lit.: “a soul for
the fatherland/soul of the fatherland”, meaning: “one who will revive the
motherland, bringing her to life” (yurt + a + can = homeland + dative
suffix + soul).
466 Chapter 22
22.17. Soul – person – character/personality traits
Barışcan – Barıştan yana olan kimse, m.; lit.: “soul of peace”,

meaning: “a peaceful person” (barış + can = room + soul).
Cankurt – Özü kurt gibi olan kimse, m.; lit.: “with soul of a wolf”,
meaning: “about the interior like a wolf (cunning, not deceiving)” (can +
kurt = soul + wolf).
Canseven – “İnsanı seven” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, f./m.; lit.:
“loving people", meaning: “loving people” (can + seven = soul + loving –
active adjective participle of “to love”).
Canözlem – Gerçekten özlenen kimse, f.; lit.: “longing of the soul”,
meaning: “a person who is truly missing” (can + özlem = soul + longing).
Dilercan – İsteyen, dilekte bulunan, dileyen kimse, m.; lit.: “begging
soul”, meaning: “demanding, wanting something” (diler + can = to beg/to
ask + soul).
Hürcan – Özgür, bağımsız kimse, f./m.; lit.: “free soul”, meaning:
“free, independent” (hür + can = freedom/independence + soul).
İşcan – Çalışkan, becerikli, iş bilen, m.; lit.: “the soul of work”,
meaning: “hard-working, ornate, knowledgeable at his or her job” (iş +
can = work + soul).
Mocan – Soğukkanlı, güçlü, dayanıklı, m.; lit.: “strong soul”, meaning:
“composed, strong, durable” (mo + can = strength + soul).
Nazlıcan – Nazlı kimse, f.; lit.: “teasing soul”, meaning:
“teasing/coquettish” (nazlı + can = teasing/flirtatious + soul).
Özgürcan – Özgürlüğe düşkün kimse, m.; lit.: “free soul”, meaning:
“someone who is passionate about freedom” (özgür + can = freedom +
soul).
Tokcan – Gönlü tok olan, m.; lit.: “full soul”, meaning:
“undemanding, generous” (tok + can = full (saturated/full) + soul).
Uzcan – Uysal, uyumlu, iyi insan, m.; lit.: “appropriate soul”, meaning:
“compatible, fitting” (uz + can = matching + soul).
22.18. Soul – person – strong personality
Canat – “Şiddetle iste” anlamında kullanılan bir ad, m.; lit.: “to throw
the soul”, meaning: “to want something with all your might (have
passion)” (can + at = soul + imperative “to quit”).
Canbek – Özü pek, güçlü kişilikli kimse, m.; lit.: “tough soul”,
meaning: “hard within, strong personality” (can + bek = soul +
hard/robust).
Canberk – Güçlü, sağlam kişilikli kimse, m.; lit.: “hard soul”, meaning
“hard within, strong personality” (can + berk = soul + hard/robust).
Canbolat/Canpolat – Canı, özü çelik gibi güçlü kimse, m.; lit.: “steel
soul”, meaning: “a person with a strong personality, like steel” (can +
polat/bolat = soul + steel).
Candemir – Özü güçlü, demir gibi sağlam ve kişilikli kimse, m.; lit.:
“iron soul/iron soul”, meaning: “a person with a strong personality, like
iron” (can + demir = soul + iron).
Demircan/Temircan – Güçlü, kuvvetli, sert kimse, m.; lit.: “iron soul”,
meaning: “strong, durable, hard” (demir + can = iron + soul).
Canıpek – Acıya, sıkıntıya karşı dayanıklı olan kimse, f.; lit.: “full
soul”, meaning: “a person endured in worries and pain” (canı + pek = her
soul + abundant/full).
Cankaya – Özü sağlam olan kimse, m.; lit.: “rock soul/soul like a
rock”, meaning: “with a strong/permanent personality” (can + kaya = soul
+ rock).
Cankılıç – Özü kılıç gibi keskin olan kimse, m.; lit.: “soul as a sword”,
meaning: “with a sharp interior like a sword (decisive)” (can + kılıç = soul
+ sword).
Yavuzcan – Güçlü kişiliği olan kimse, m.; lit.: “dangerous soul”,
meaning: “person with a strong personality” (yavuz + can = dangerous +
soul).
22.19. Soul – person – character – wrath
Cantez (m.)/Tezcan (m./f.)/Tezcanlı (m.) – Tez canlı, aceleci,

hareketli kimse – lit.: “having a fast soul”, meaning: “rash, mobile,
impatient” (can + tez = soul + speed).
Darcan – Aceleci, sıkıntılı, m. lit.: “narrow soul”, meaning: “hurried,
in rash, worrying” (dar + can = narrow + soul).
Evcan – Aceleci kimse, f./m.; lit.: “fast soul”, meaning: “hasty person”;
(ev + can (iv/ev) = tempo/rush + soul).
Kipcan – Canlı, dayanıklı, sağlam kimse, m.; lit.: “durable soul”,
meaning: “living, durable, robust” (kip + can = endurance + soul).
Korcan – Ateşli, canlı, hareketli kimse, m. lit.: “glowing soul”,
meaning: “fiery, lively, mobile” (kor + can = glow + soul).
Okcan – Canlı, hareketli, canı tez, m.; lit.: “of soul like an arrow”,
meaning: “alive, mobile, rash” (ok + can = arrow + soul).
Salcan – Coşkulu, taşkın yaradılışlı, hareketli olan kimse, m.; lit.:
“soul of a raft”, meaning: “an excited person, effusive, mobile” (sal + can
= raft + soul).
468 Chapter 22
Selcan – Coşkulu, taşkın yaradılışlı, hareketli olan kimse, f.; lit.: “the
soul of the flood”, meaning: “enthusiastic, effusive, busy” (sel + can =
flood + soul).
22.20. Soul – person – appearance
Gökcan – Mavi gözlü kimse, m.; lit.: “blue soul”, meaning: “a person
with blue eyes” (gök + can = sky/blue + soul).
Gülercan – Gülümseyen sevgili, f. lit.: “laughing soul”, meaning:
“smiling, beloved” (güler + can = laughs + soul).
Gülcan – Gül gibi güzel olan, f.; lit.: “rose soul”, meaning: “a pretty
woman like a rose” (gül + can = rose + soul).
Gülcanan – Gül gibi güzel sevgili, f.; lit.: “beloved rose soul”,
meaning: “beloved beauty like a rose” (gül + canan = rose + little
soul/soul).
Gülruh – Gül yanaklı güzel, f.; lit.: “spirit/soul of rose”, meaning:
“beauty with rosy cheeks” (gül + ruh = rose + spirit).
Güzelcan – Güzel kimse, f.; lit.: “beautiful soul”, meaning: “beautiful
girl” (güzel + can = beautiful + soul).
Hurican – Çok güzel kadın, f.; lit.: “Beautiful soul”, meaning:
“beautiful girl” (huri + can = virgin in paradise + soul).
Karacan/Karcan – Esmer kimse, m.; lit.: “black soul”, meaning: “a
person with a dark complexion” (kara + can = black + soul).
Lâleruh – Lâle yanaklı, yanağı lâle gibi kırmızı olan, f.; lit.: “tulip
soul; spirit/soul of the tulip", meaning: “a woman with cheeks like a tulip,
i.e. red” (lâle + ruh = tulip + spirit).
Perican – Peri gibi güzel olan, f.; lit.: “soul of the fairy”, meaning:
“beautiful like a fairy” (peri + can = fairy + soul).
Ruhsar/Ruhsare – 1. Yanak. 2. Yüz, çehre, f.; lit.: “joy-giving soul”,
meaning: 1. “cheek”, 2. “face” (ruh + sar = soul/spirit + joyous).
Ruhugül – Gül yanaklı, f.: lit.: “with a rose soul”, meaning “with rosy
cheeks” (ruhu + gül = spirit + rosy).
Ruhinur – Nur yüzlü, aydınlık yüzlü, f. lit.: “spiritual light”, meaning
“with a luminous/bright face” (ruhi + nur = spiritual + light (glow)).
Ruhunur – Yanakları parlayan, f.; lit.: “of a luminous soul”, meaning
“with shiny cheeks” (ruhu + dive = spirit + light).
Selvican – Selvi gibi uzun boylu olan güzel, f.; lit.: “cypress soul”,
meaning: “a beautiful woman tall like a cypress” (selvi + can = cypress +
soul).
Tunacan – Görkemli, gösterişli kimse, m.; lit.: “wonderful soul”,
meaning: “wonderful, effective” (tuna + can = wonderful + soul).
22.21. Soul – truth
Canyurt – Gerçek yurt, m.; lit.: “soul’s motherland”, meaning: “true

motherland” (can + yurt = soul + motherland).
22.22. Conclusion
The range of names existing in a given language can contribute to the

research into the history of a given society and its spiritual development.
Naming reflects beliefs and attitudes; they change in language through
natural development and via interaction with other languages/cultures and
imposed program changes (language planning). From the mid-nineteenth
century, especially during the period of the Republic of Turkey, the purity
of the Turkish language was emphasized. Thus, borrowings from other
non-Turkish languages, especially Arabic and Persian, were unwelcome or
even forbidden. The secularity guaranteed by the constitution also
influenced given names. Quranic and Arabian cores were supplanted in
favour of Turkish ones. 31
In the Turkish tradition, a child’s name and his or her destiny are
inextricably linked, and the naming ceremony dates back to the days when
the Turks lived in Central Asia. At present, old customs of naming are
practiced by the Asian Turks, while in Anatolia only the traditional names
of legendary heroes and the symbiosis of shamanic and Islamic practices
accompanying this ritual have been preserved.
After the admission of Islam, a synthesis of Turkish and Islamic beliefs
regarding the choice and naming of a child began to emerge. The names
began to change as well. Those referring to nature, which was created by
God and through which he revealed his omnipotence, had a double
motivation. There are almost 200 names containing the words ruh or can,
which means that it is an important component to Turkish names. For the
most part, these are male names, although there are also names that can be
used by both girls and boys.
Among personality traits, bravery, recognition and seriousness, hasty
action, and mobility are the most popular references in Turkish names.
There are also those that refer to shyness and naivety. Female names with
SOUL refer mainly to the beauty of the cheeks and face, or of women who
31 In order to trace the popularity of names and to create the neologisms on the
basis of Turkish foundations, statistical data should be analyzed. However, such a

study exceeds the scope of this work.
470 Chapter 22
are the object of love. A large group of names refers to friendship and
affection.
Turkish names are usually composed of two nouns, or a noun and an
adjective; however, in some instances, present participles also appear.
Although all Turkish names contain wishes that a child’s life be like the
meaning of the name, only in a dozen or so examples do we find it to be an
imperative. All names, even those derived from the Quran, contain a
magical aspect. Names derived from the Quran are meant to ensure that
the child is religious, which is confirmed by the modern statistics of the
names given in Turkey: the names Ayşe, Ali and Mehmet/Ahmet are the
most popular.
In the case of names with SOUL, they contain relatively early lexical
borrowings, mainly from Persian and Arabic. Therefore, various
combinations of the names Ruhcan (m.), Nurcan (m./f.) Ferruh (m.),
Ferican (f.), and Fercan (m.) (“a light of the soul”) having the same
meaning are not rare, e.g., Ruhani/Ruhi (m.) – Ruhiye/Ruhsal (f.), literally:
“spiritual, concerning the spirit/soul”.
The analysis of Turkish names (in general) allows the exploration of
the Turkish language and its development, along with the movement of
Turks and the increasingly visible relationships with the Islamic world. It
also allows us to capture the essential elements of Turkish culture, namely,
the symbolism of names – from the world of animate nature and adjectives
that show what was/is the most valuable attribute of a man or a woman.
The analysis of the above names that include the component of SOUL
makes it possible to state that the rose is a symbol of beauty that the wolf
is a symbol of wisdom and experience, and the Altai Mountains symbolize
greatness.
SOUL in a purely religious sense appears in sixteen names, including
the Quranic names of Ruhullah — İsa Peygamber — Jesus, Nuhcan —
Noah. One name refers to a person who is soulless – Bican.
As many as thirteen names raise the issue of a pure soul; that is,
conduct in accordance with the principles of the general public. These
people act accordingly to the written and unwritten law, and their souls are
pure and white, and they are in the divine light.
In nine names, the meaning of SOUL is associated with the meaning of
LIFE, both in the sense of “not being dead” and “dedicating one’s life to
someone”; also “vitality”.
SOUL in the context of joy appears twice in order to describe a happy
and pleasant day and fourteen times in names referring to the character
traits of the wearer (it is worth mentioning that five of them are male, four
are male and female and female, which may suggest that the sexes were
not distinguished in terms of feeling and experiencing joy).
As many as twenty-nine names refer to love, whereby four names can
be distinguished as referring to love, as a feeling (two m./f. and one for f.
and m). A loved one is used in a total of nine names, where two are f./m.,
and three for each sex. Expressions for loved ones include not only love
for a partner, but also love for parents and their own country. There are
only six names for a beloved one; only one is completely reserved for
men, one is for everyone, and the other four are female.
As in the case of phrases for beloved ones, so it is in the case of
understanding SOUL as a heart — the focus of love. It is used in several
names referring to a feeling of enthusiasm, i.e., enthusiasm for fighting. In
total, ten names contain the meaning SOUL understood as “heart”. Only
two are female (Severcan, Sevilcan — “love” and “be loved with all your
heart”), four each have only male names and the rest can be given to both
sexes.
SOUL as a being, the essence is used in four names: three are for
women and men, one for women only.
SOUL in the meaning of “person, individual” can be considered taking
into account an additional division. In general, a man (seven names,
including three female and four male), a young person — five names
(including four male and one for both sexes), and the name Bican —
“soulless”, given to men.
Only in three names include wishes for health and long life; two are
male, one for both sexes.
SOUL, as a person who is a friend, can be part of seventeen names
(two for women, five for both sexes and ten for men), which proves the
importance of friendship in Turkish culture.
Growing friendship and being a compassionate person is the subject of
another fourteen names (three for women, four for both sexes and seven
for men).
In general, the religiousness and purity of the soul can be expressed by
means of twenty-two names; with the meaning of “life” in nine; the feeling
of joy of love, friendship and empathy includes almost half of all names,
i.e., seventy-six. Names in which SOUL means man, as a person, include
thirteen possibilities and four names refer to the essence of
human/essence/core/within.
The personality of man and his character traits were reflected in the
following aspects: seriousness and respect (eleven names, all male),
wisdom three male names, bravery five male names. Characterization of
472 Chapter 22
a strong personality defines twelve names (including eleven male and one
female).
Mobility, wrath and action are the subjects of ten names, only one,
Selcan — "flood of the soul", "enthusiasm" — is intended for women, two
are intended for both sexes, and seven are intended for men only.
Individual names refer to such features as cunning, love of freedom,
diligence, generosity, conformity, coquetry a total of twelve names,
including eight male names, two are intended for both sexes and two only
for women. In general, personality and character traits include fifty-three
names.
The last meaning of the names in which SOUL appears has to do with
external appearance. In this case, there is a predominance of female
names. In total, there are eighteen names, and only two are intended for
men: Karacan — "dark-skinned, swarthy" and Tunacan — "effective, for
a show", while others refer to women.
The individual use of the word can is a component of the name that
marks the real homeland Canyurt.
Summing up, of the 199 names with the component SOUL, seventy-six
refer to feelings, fifty-three to characters, eighteen to external appearance,
thirteen refer to a human as a person, four to something within, nine
concern life (“not being dead”), and twenty-two refer to religion.
Two names that have not been classified above are Can and İsmican;
both contain within themselves all possible meanings and aspects of
SOUL.
The multiplicity of names referring to the description of a specific trait
also sheds light on the Turkish system of values. Important values include
bravery, word-keeping, speed in making decisions, action, and having a
positive attitude. Due to the fact that SOUL often symbolizes an inner part,
there are Turkish names that describe the character of a human being. But
equally often, if not more often, the soul is described as the seat of
feelings. Therefore, the above set of names largely concerns joy,
happiness, empathy, friendship, and love. 32
32These feelings are very important in Turkish culture (which can be confirmed by
detailed sociolinguistic research). Therefore, this is not a mistake. This remark is
mentioned in the case of questioning//possible accusation about the seriousness of
these feelings because the SOUL clearly indicates such and not other associations
and functioning of names. Both in the case of these names and those containing
another lexical basis, the essence of courage, vitality and love is possible to
confirm and prove.
References
Aslan, Ali. 2013. Türk Kültüründe Ad Koyma, in: Lisan-ı Aşk Aylık Kültür
sanat ve Edebiyat Dergisi, http://lisaniask.com/ali-aslan/arastirma/turk-
kulturunde-ad-koyma/ (10.10.2017).
Ayverdi, İlhan. 2010. Misalli Büyük Türkçe Sözlüğü. İstanbul. Kubbealtı
Eski Türk’lerde Ad Koyma Geleneği.
http://www.turkcuturanci.com/turkcu/turkcu-terimler/eski-turkler’de-
isim-koyma-gelenegi/?wap2 (10.10.2017).
Gülensoy, Tüncer. 1994. Türklerde ‘Ad Verme Geleneği’ Ve ‘Hektor’ no.
5-7, http://www.millifolklor.com/PdfViewer.aspx?Sayi=22&Sayfa=4
(10.10.2017), Ankara: Geleneksel Yayıncılık.
Kałużyński, Stanisław. 1986. Tradycje i legendy ludów tureckich.
Warszawa. Wydawnictwo Iskry.
Orhon-inscriptions, http://www.britannica.com/topic/Orhon-inscriptions
(04.08.2015).
Sakoğlu, Saim. Türklerde Ad ve Ad Verme Gelenekleri.
http://www.kulturelbellek.com/turklerde-ad-ve-ad-verme-gelenekleri/
(10.10.2017).
Sepetçioğlu, Mustafa. N. 1977. Synowie Bozkurta. Tureckie legendy i mity,
trans. M. Borzęcka-Kocherowa, Warszawa. Państwowy Instytut
Wydawniczy.
Tryjarski, Edward. 1993. Kultura ludów tureckich w świetle przekazu
Mahmuda z Kaszgaru (XI w.). Warszawa. Polska Akademia Nauk.
http://www.tdk.gov.tr/(10.11.2017), (11.10.2017), (11.04.2018).
http://www.yenidenergenekon.com/294-turklerde-ad-verme-gelenegi-ve-
kisi-adlari/26.03.2015 (10.10.2017).
Summary
Language reflects the culture and values of its community. Not only does it fix
reality, but it also co-creates reality, as humans only name those areas of non-
linguistic reality that are of value to them. Words, however, not only have content
but also causative effect, especially when the magical meaning is attributed to
them.
The subject of this paper is Turkish magical proper names, whose constituent
element has the meaning “soul”. Turkish words referring to “soul” have several
meanings: life, vitality, valour, man/being endowed with divine breath, essence,
heart, joy, and affection. As a component of a name, it reflects the belief that the
name and its meaning will influence the life of its bearer.
Giving a name to a child, even before knowing his or her personality and
temperament, is a conscious effort to make the child worthy of his or her name and
474 Chapter 22
to allow him or her to meet the expectations that his or her parents have for him or
her. In Turkish, every common noun can be a proper name, so each name has a
meaning. Those with the component “soul” can be given to both boys and girls,
and depending on gender, the names relate to bravery, great heart or all the virtues
that the soul can symbolize.
Keywords: Turkish Proper Names Contain The Word “Soul”, The Meaning of
SOUL in the Turkish Language, The Tradition of Naming in Turkish Culture, The
Meaning of Names in Turkish Culture.
CHAPTER 23
I WON’T SELL MY SOUL.

SOUL AS A VALUE:
ON THE ETHICAL PROFILE
OF THE SOUL IN CZECH
IRENA VAŇKOVÁ
CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
I wander the world in a shabby hat.

I could do better, no doubt about that.
Doing what you’re told, blending in,
Out of the woods I long could have been.
But I have dignity and I won't sell my soul.
(SK3: 51, Dušan Vančura lyrics)
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul?
(Matthew 16:26, King James Bible) 1
The soul is our conscience.

(A 20-year-old survey respondent: a female student of Czech at the
Faculty of Education)
1 Like the King James Bible, the Czech Kralice Bible (published in 1613) uses the
word soul; however, the Czech Ecumenical Translation uses the expression life
instead, suggesting that these two are sui generis synonyms, cf.: Jaký prospěch
bude mít člověk, získá-li celý svět, ale svůj život ztratí? (“What will it benefit
someone if he gains the whole world yet loses his life?”) (cf. Bible 2008).
476 Chapter 23
23.1. Introduction 2
For the protagonist of the lyrics quoted in the first motto, his soul is
invaluable; it is conceptualized as something of immense value that you
cannot give up for anything. According to Czech phraseology, you can sell
out your soul (zaprodat duši), i.e. exchange it for something characterized
in the song as “doing better” (and betray yourself or your ethical
principles, inherently perceived as unbreakable). 3
However, based on the lyrics (and the Czech worldview as we will see
later), the soul is worth all the everyday misery and discomfort. In this
verse, it is paired with a similarly ethically exposed value – dignity, or
rather the state when you have dignity.
The second motto is a verse from the Gospel of Matthew encouraging
us to ponder the individual character of the soul as a value that nothing
compares to, not even the whole world. In Czech phrasemes and idioms,
the word duše (“soul”) can often be replaced by svědomí (“conscience”),
such as in phrases like promluvit / sáhnout někomu do duše / do svědomí
(literally "talk / reach into someone's soul/conscience"). Sometimes both
expressions can alternate with srdce (“heart”), cf. leží mi to na duši / na
svědomí / na srdci (literally “it lies on my soul / conscience / heart”). This
ethical aspect of the soul was also significant for respondents of our
survey: some of them even put an equal sign between soul and conscience,
cf. the female student whose answer to the question “What is a soul?” is
cited in the third motto.
However, Czech monolingual dictionaries (such as PSJČ, SSJČ, and
SSČ) comment in their headword descriptions on the value aspect of the
soul only implicitly and tend to omit the meaning parameters of the ethical
aspect altogether. It is therefore desirable to have a closer look at the issue
of the soul as a value, especially in the ethical sense.
2 This study was supported by the Charles University Research Programme

“Progres” Q10 – Language in the shiftings of time, space, and culture.
3 The expression zaprodat (“sell, betray”) has pejorative connotations in Czech,
bearing the meaning of “betray”, used often in connection with evil collaboration,
also in the form of zaprodat se / zaprodat sám sebe (“to betray oneself, to sell
out”). Cf. a dictionary entry (SSČ): zaprodanec (“sellout”), pejorative, “someone
who sold himself out”: kolaborantší zaprodanci (“collaborating sellouts”). See also
the phraseme zaprodat duši ďáblu / čertu / peklu ("to sell one's soul to the
devil/hell"), evoking the Faustian tradition deeply rooted in the Czech worldview
and also in other European languages and cultures (see further).
I Won’t Sell My Soul 477
Soul as a value in the Czech worldview has manifold aspects, resulting

from the fact that the lexeme duše (“soul”) refers to human existence as
well as existentiality and its senses cover a wide range of areas, including
breath, life force, vitality, emotionality, cognitivity, individual features and
character, sociality, empathy, and finally ethical principles and spirituality
(see Figure 1).
The value dimension of the soul (potentially linkable to all
aforementioned areas) manifests itself in language (esp. in phraseology),
in folklore and in arts while being deeply rooted in the minds of Czech
speakers as suggested by the survey (see further).
In this study, we will predominantly focus on values connected with
the ethical profile of the soul, i.e. referring to the good-evil opposition and
at the same time to conscience, i.e. to the experience of personal
responsibility for the realization of good and/or evil, or a moral code. The
ethical profile will be described in the wider semantic perspective from the
synchronic/diachronic point of view, with respect to the dual value aspect
of the soul (vital and ethical/spiritual-moral). We will track the relevant
semantic settings of the soul concept in lyrics written by Czech folk
singers and music groups that used to influence the cultural-social climate
in Czechoslovakia during normalization, i.e. between 1968 and 1989. As a
complement to this analysis, let´s look at some findings of the up-to-date
survey on the ethical profile of the soul among Czech university students.
23.2. The concept of SOUL in Czech
Based on language data, folklore and certain texts (cf. Vaňková

2016a), we can postulate that soul in Czech refers in its primary meaning
to an inner, incorporeal, invisible essence of a human being as a living
individual that transcends their corporeal existence and gives their life a
unique meaning. Czech monolingual dictionaries (PSJČ, SSJČ, SSČ)
usually assign two independent senses to the soul: as psyche in general,
and as a spiritual entity in the religious sense.
478 Chapter 23
Fig. 1: Profiles of the concept of the SOUL (duše) in Czech

According to the Biblical, or Christian, tradition which formed to a

great extent the Czech lexeme in question, the soul (representing the life
itself, the reviving principle) had been given or breathed into man by God.
It is therefore associated both with the breath and air (cf. also the Slavic
etymology of the following expressions: dech “breath”, dýchat “breathe”,
dout “blow”, vzduch “air”, duch “spirit”, duše “soul”) 4 , and with the
deity. At the end of life, the soul should be returned to God (cf. the Czech
phraseme odevzdat duši Bohu, literally “to give the soul back to God”, “to
pass away”).
The soul correlates with the body – a human being can only be whole
with both body and soul, cf. phrasemes chodit jako tělo bez duše “to walk
like a body without a soul” (“sadly, apathetically, absently”), být někdo /
něco tělem i duší “to be sb/sth body and soul” (“to fully identify with a
role”); mít jen tělo a duši “to only have a body and a soul” (“to be very
poor”). The traditional, Christian-based worldview remains to be
preserved to a great extent in a secularized society, and the notion of soul
is no exception. Although many soul-related expressions are nowadays
perceived as more or less archaic, they still belong to the passive
vocabulary suggesting that the soul in language has been considered a
significant value. In folk and cultural conceptualizations, the soul can be
given away, gambled, sold or sold out (to the devil, hell etc.); it can be
used to validate any statement with na mou duši “on my soul” (a former
oath, cf. the verb dušovat se “swear by God”). 5 You can express your
4 For the etymology references in other Slavic languages, see Grzegorczykowa
2012; Rejzek 2015 (in Czech). Contemporary Czechs are no longer aware of the
fact that the lexeme duše in old Czech also meant “breath, breathing”, e.g. see the
examples in the Gebauer’s and Jungmann’s dictionaries: neb mi hrubě mdlo, horko
a těžko bylo, tak že sotva jsem duše popadl (literally “for I felt so dizzy, hot and
sick as I could hardly catch my breath”) or komuž duše smrdí od žaludka from
medical books in 14th centuries (literally “a person whose breath stinks from their
stomach”). Gebauer’s Slovník staročeský (Old Czech Dictionary) distinguishes
between two basic senses of the headword dušě: the first one refers to the breath
(Atem) and by extension to the vital force (albeit mostly in the negative sense,
regarding the pre-death struggle and respiratory diseases), the second one to the
spirituality (Seele).
5 The reference to soul in an oath (na mou duši – “on my soul”) only confirms the
high status of the soul as a value; cf. similar values used in former oaths na mou
věru “on my belief”, na mou pravdu “on my truth”, na mou čest “on my dignity,
honestly”. See also the children’s rhymed version of this oath, mentioned by one of
480 Chapter 23
affection and devotion with dal by za někoho duši/život “he would give
away his soul/life for somebody” or duši by s každým rozdělil "he would
share his soul with everybody", signalling a friendly and generous attitude.
As regards the metaphorical extensions within the polysemy of the
Czech lexeme duše, it should be noted that this word is also used to
denominate a significant inner part of a thing – located in the centre of an
object (duše houslí “sound post (of a violin)”), often in the form of air-
filled space (duše pneumatiky “inner tube (of a tyre)”; duše balonu
“bladder (of a ball)”; duše ryby “air bladder (of a fish)”. Similarly, duše
can be used to refer to a fundamental part of an abstract entity, esp. a
community; the part that is reviving and unique, cf. matka byla duší rodiny
“mother was the soul of the family”, duše města “the soul of the city”, řeč
je duše národa “language is the nation’s soul”, melodie je duší skladby
“melody is the soul of the composition”, text je duší písně “lyrics is the
soul of the song”.
In the metonymical perspective, the soul can also stand for a person,
both as a bearer of certain qualities (dobrá duše “good soul”, umělecká
duše “artistic soul”, černá duše “dark soul”), and as an individual (bojovat
o každou duši “fight for every soul”, mrtvé duše “dead souls”; nebylo tam
živé duše “not a single living soul there”), cf. addressing a dear person,
preserved in folk songs up to this day (duše moje “my soul, my dear”,
dušičko, dušinko “my dear little soul”).
As we have already mentioned, there are several distinguishable
profiles 6 in the semantic structure of the Czech notion SOUL, namely A)
vital (material-physiological), B) psychical, C) social, D) ethical (moral),
E) spiritual (transcendent) (cf. Figure 1):
We have also suggested that in the current discourse, soul occurs
mostly in two basic contexts: psychological (‘soul is psyche’) and spiritual
(‘soul is a divine element in a man’, or ‘a spiritual dimension of a man’).
This applies not only to the Polish discourse (cf. Filar 2016), but also to
the general European discourse (Wierzbicka 1999). In a naive
the survey respondents: Na mou duši, na psí uši, na kočičí svědomí (literally “on
my soul, on dog’s ears, on cat’s conscience”).
6 Profiles are closely interconnected, often merging; we use them primarily as a
methodological tool, helping to fine-tune the possible aspects of the concept or its
meaning. These are various aspects of meaning that can emerge in different
situations and contexts or “variants of the idea of an interpreted subject”
(Bartmiński, Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska 2007), rather than individual senses of a
polysemous lexeme.
conceptualization of the soul, both contexts are interconnected and the

distinction between them is often blurred (it is not unusual that a person
integrates more perspectives in their perception). 7
The perspective ‘soul as psyche’ is closer to the physical dimension of
a man, as it relates to the psychological processes bound to human
physiology that can be empirically tested; Czech word duše (“soul”) is
used in folk psychology in connection with e.g. depression (cf. duše bolí
“my soul hurts”), but also in the professional medical discourse (cf.
duševní choroby “psychological diseases”, lit. “diseases of the soul”;
duševní zdraví “mental health", lit. "soul health"). – The perspective "soul
as a spiritual dimension" is used especially in religious discourse and
relates to spirituality in a broad sense, including alternative spiritual and
healing practises that emphasize the psychosomatic approach to health and
illness. 8
23.3. Pagan soul and Christian soul
We have already established that the notion construct related to the

soul has acquired different dimensions in the course of society and
language development; these dimensions have eventually merged into a
rich and universal notion. The task of an ethnolinguist is to distinguish
between these “merged” dimensions of the concept (e.g. based on their
meaning profiles) and discover their logical interdependence (see above).
The Czech concept of the soul has been significantly shaped by the
Christian worldview; however, some aspects of the meaning have their
roots in ancient Slavic paganism. When Igor Němec describes the
character of changes brought to the Czech pre-Christian worldview by
Christianity, he focuses on those aspects of language development that
“are related to major differences in our thinking (and Slavic in general) in
the pre-Christian and Christian era”. He demonstrates how Czech
vocabulary (together with our way of thinking) started to change and grow
7 Dorota Filar claims that we are able to perceive the reality in two or more
perspectives/conceptualizations at the same time, and this is clearly the case. "Two
European narrations" (‘soul as a divine element in a man' and ‘soul as psyche')
overlap in the worldview of today's Europeans, or they blend in a conceptual
integration (Filar 2016).
8 Grzegorczykowa (2016) writes about a clear distinction between the “psyche”
(related to corporeality) and (spiritual) “soul”. In her view, these two seem to be
independent notions rather than different profiles of the same notion.
482 Chapter 23
with the emerging Christianity, e.g. thanks to loanwords, often in the form
of semantic and word formation calques. He especially stresses the “re-
assessment of the pre-Christian meaning of local words, such as God,
neighbour, heresy, sin/to sin, love (especially the spiritual love), Pentecost,
indignation, this world and the other world, resurrect, eternal” (Němec
1994).
Based on the available clues, we can expect that the very same semantic
reassessment also applied to the concept of soul, or to a particular sense of
the lexeme soul already known to our ancestors (mutatis mutandis) before
the arrival of Christianity. The notion has a "corporeal" basis and is
closely connected with breath, cf. the tight link between life and breath:
the one who breathes lives, and vice versa, if a person does not breathe,
there is no life in them. The mysterious process of life-to-death
transformation against the nature background led people to come up with
different ideas on human destiny, reflected later in the concept of the soul.
According to Váňa, “we would not talk about a sophisticated doctrine of
immortal soul or reincarnation back then, only its rudimentary elements”
which were later surpassed and incorporated by the Christian worldview
(Váňa 1990: 133).
An introduction of a historical study from "the field of Czech mythology"
reads as follows: "Pagan Czechs imagined the soul as an independent
being, dwelling in a body, yet capable to live without it. (…) The soul
demonstrated itself through the air, i.e. breathing. It dwelled in the chest.
Should it leave its dwelling, the breathing would stop, and the life of the
body would expire. In death, the soul would leave the body through the
throat and mouth” (Jireček 1863). In the pagan view, the soul was clearly
material and lived in the body – as a strange being with the power of
breath. After the physical death, it existed on its own and could take up
many different forms (cf. the metamorphosis into a white dove, and also to
plants and trees).
According to old tales, people were, under some magical circumstances,
able to change into animals or plants, while their soul, i.e. the essence of
individual being, remained the same regardless of the physical shape, and
even preserved its feelings and affection for the loved ones, cf. a girl
transformed to a maple in a folk ballad Vandrovali hudci or a mother
turned to thyme in the poem of the same name (Erben 2003: 11). A half
transformation was also possible: a woman would stay with her family
during the day, while her body turned dead at night and her soul
metamorphosed to a willow tree (Erben 2003: 96). 9 After a person’s death,

their soul would stay with the family for a while or come back to visit and
the bereaved were able to communicate with it. Ancient traditions of
honouring the dead, e.g. by arranging a feast on their graves, later
vanished or transformed to other rituals under the influence of folk
Christianity, esp. the celebration of All Souls’ Day (cf. relevant passages
in Czech classical book Babička /The Grandmother/ by B. Němcová
(2017); for more details, see Vaňková 2016a).
The intermingling of old pagan and newer Christian concepts of soul in the
traditional Czech worldview is clearly evident in Erben’s Kytice (The
Posy) in many related contexts: reincarnation, a transformation of human
soul into plants or birds (poems The Thyme, The Willow, The Lily, The
Wild Dove); a deal with the devil, a hero’s journey to the hell for the signed
document and in the end two white doves flying away as saved souls
(poem Záhoř’s Bed); a mingling of the world of the living with the
dangerous world of the dead in a story where a dead revenant visits his
bride, the power of blasphemy and the lifesaving prayer (poem The
Wedding Shirts); a kidnap of a young maiden by a water-goblin to the
underwater world where he keeps the souls of the drowned stored in
teacups (poem The Water-goblin) (Vaňková 2011, 2016a).
In Christianity 10, the concept of the soul is perceived in a completely

different context. The soul has a spiritual-ethical dimension: it is a gift of
9 The idea of the soul being independent of the body gave rise to the concept of
stray souls that could not find peace after death (cf. phraseme chodit jako bludná
duše “wander like a stray soul”). These human demons were souls of murder
victims, non-baptized people or people who died in a horrible accident (hence a
fear of ghosts or spectres). Sometimes, the soul would leave the body at night, take
up a different shape and cause damage to others (as a moth etc.), cf. Váňa 1990:
138.
10 The concept of soul in Christianity is clearly beyond the scope of this study and
our linguistic discipline; it is a very complex issue even in the context of Christian
theology (cf. Kolář 2007). When discussed in theology, the soul is usually
described as a certain dimension of a man, as their disposition to communicate
with God (soul in a “dialogical perspective”) and at the same time as a bearer of
personal identity and human continuity; the identity of the soul is shaped and
influenced by the unique individual story of every person (cf. Kolář 2007). With
this uniqueness of the soul comes the personal responsibility of each man for their
own life, and the ethical imperative: to do good and avoid evil (also suggested by
our language, textual and empirical data in Czech). For the variety of contemporary
approaches to the soul, including biblical, philosophical and psychological (esp.
484 Chapter 23
God and the divine element in a man, it is immortal and immaterial unlike
the material body, and through its unique essence only, a man can receive
salvation and eternal life. Therefore, the soul should be nurtured, taken
good care of 11 and praised for its immense value. The old, pagan
understanding of the soul (cf. the symbol of a white dove or the connection
between soul and breath, as in The Grandmother by B. Němcová (2017)
where the window must be open after someone's death so that the soul can
fly out) did not vanish entirely; it gradually blended with other contexts of
meaning. The original pagan ideas concerning the soul were reassessed or
rather enriched with new meaning profiles related to a different value
system of a Christian man.
From the perspective of Jesus’ sacrifice and his teachings (including
paradoxical statements such as Whoever finds their life will lose it, and
whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. in Matthew 10:39 12), many
notions changed their meaning entirely compared to the pre-Christian era
(and to the present, pragmatically and practically oriented worldview):
Christianity emphasizes something more valuable than just the physical
“being alive”, which gives the notion of soul entirely new contents.
Tomasz P. Krzesowski (1998: 261) talks about the reassessment of
poverty and suffering in the Christian discourse and as an example, he
mentions Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount which shed new light on common
judgments of that time (cf. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven): to be poor, to cry, to be hungry or persecuted was no
longer considered a purely negative anti-value; on the contrary, these
states were viewed as potencies preparing man for salvation, i.e. as
positive values.
Jungian), see the Christian-oriented book by Anselm Grün and Wunibald Müller
(2009).
11 Cf. the concept péče o duši (“care of the soul”), drawn from Plato, as it was used
by Jan Patočka who considered it a fundamental European ancient-Christian value

(cf. Vaňková 2016a). Although the philosophical context is not a subject of this
study, it is worth pointing out.
12 In the Czech Kralice Bible, the word soul is used instead of life: Kdo nalezne
duši svou, ztratíť ji; a kdo by ztratil duši svou pro mne, nalezneť ji. “Whoever
finds his soul will lose it, and whoever loses their soul for me will find it.”
23.4. Soul and good in two perspectives: vital and ethical
Let us now discuss the concept of ‘good', so closely connected with the
concept of a soul. Anna Wierzbicka (1999) incorporates this element into
her specific definitions as one of the founding atoms shaping the concept
of the soul in some Russian (duša) and English (soul) conceptualizations.
There is no doubt that this very element explicitly expresses the
axiological dimension of the concept. However, we should not forget that
the good-evil opposition used to differ in the view of pagan Slavs and in
the Christian worldview. “The conflict between what seemed to be good
and what seemed to be bad was fundamental to the theology of pagan
Slavs”, as Jireček puts it, and continues:
Good and evil things did not succumb to ethical rules but were assessed
purely empirically. Everything that was unpleasant caused pain and misery
was bad; everything that was pleasing, brought happiness and joy was
good. Whether it concerned spirit or body or both, did not matter at all
(Jireček 1837). 13
As we can see, what was good for man was not judged based on some
ethical rules by our pre-Christian ancestors, but based on personal
experience; in other words, on the principles of utility, enjoyment, on a
practical and pragmatic approach to reality. This approach is, in fact,
consistent with the common, so-called naïve worldview (cf. Vaňková et al.
2005: 55).
This attitude is not so much different from that of a contemporary man
who is often inclined to utilitarianism, pragmatism and hedonistic values.
Comparably, a system of folk culture values reconstructed by Stanisława
Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska (2010) is established on similar grounds. It is
based on the interpretations of dreams, as they were still alive about two or
three decades ago in the Polish countryside. The research question was:
what is the most precious thing for ordinary people, i.e. what predictions
of the future in the interpretations of dreams are most welcome and what,
on the other hand, are most feared by the people? They want the
interpreter to predict them a long life, health, joy, a happy marriage,
children, wealth and well-being; what they do not want is to learn about
13 It is also worth mentioning that old Slavs attributed both the good and bad
events to higher powers – the good powers were called gods, the bad powers were
called demons (Jireček 1837, Váňa 1990).
486 Chapter 23
early death, illness, grievances or dissatisfaction, a loss of property, or

poverty. Such is the concept of values in folk culture (that is, what a
person traditionally understands as “good”, what they usually long for)
and, on the contrary, anti-values (what one fears or what they do not
want). According to Niebrzegowska-Bartmińska, the top of the folk value
system is occupied by the following values: 1) vital values, i.e. life and
health, and then closely connected 2) values of experience (happiness, joy,
satisfaction), 3) material-existence values (wealth, well-being), and 4)
social values (love, harmony among people).
What is different, according to the author, is a system of Christian
values (she refers to them as religious and moral values). They are
specified as God / good (in opposition to devil / evil); in this context, the
oppositions of a good man and evil man and good act (good deed) and sin
are also mentioned. We believe that it is in this context that the soul can
also be seen as a spiritual-ethical concept, i.e. the concept of a soul
traditionally associated with eternal life and salvation, with the closeness
of the soul to God, today perhaps in a more civil and "secularized" way
with pure conscience, truth, altruism and generally with life lived in
accordance with traditional (Christian or humanistic) values. 14
In connection with the values, it is possible to talk about two basic
positions or “general profiles” associated with the soul: we call them the
value profiles SOUL1 and SOUL2 (see Figure 2):
SOUL1 (vital soul – a material-physiological profile of the soul) is

associated with the individual biological life (in opposition to physical
death); in the perspective of vital values, life is a unique and highest value.
SOUL2 (ethical soul – a spiritual-moral profile of the soul) is a spiritual

and, at the same time, the moral basis of man. In this perspective, there is
something more valuable than life as a biological, material-based
existence, and that is the soul in the SOUL2 profile; in the Christian sense of
the word, it is the divine principle in every human being to be protected
and cared for; in the broader sense, this value is connected with the
moral.
14 It is commonly known that the Czechs today do not trust the church and religion
and often seek “spirituality without God”; many of them are “without confession”;
they nevertheless believe in humanistic ethical values rooted in the Christian
culture.
Fig. 2: General value profiles of the Czech concept of the SOUL (duše)
(integrating profiles from Fig.1)
488 Chapter 23
foundation of man, with their individuality and the deepest inner essence,
and of course also with the good in them. 15
However, it should be emphasized that these general profiles of the
concept of SOUL (like conceptual profiles in general) do not stand in
opposition (either – or) but are complementary in character; it is a dual
aspect of the same. The vital and spiritual life (and the associated SOUL1
and SOUL2 profiles) cannot be separated (even with reference to the
traditional Judeo-Christian conceptualization of life as “breathed into
man” by God).
23.5. The ethical profile of the soul according to the Czechs today –
insights from the empirical survey
In this part, we are interested in the extent to which the ethical profile
of the soul is alive today, especially whether and how it is anchored in the
awareness of contemporary young Czechs. The respondents of our
survey 16 gave rather heterogeneous responses to our broadly formulated
question: “What is a soul?” It turns out that the soul today represents a
wide range of facts – from the phenomenon of life (as something that
“distinguishes a living entity from a corpse”) 17 through various aspects of
15 Sometimes these profiles merge, for example, when it comes to soul and
sacrifice, cf. a phraseme dal by za někoho / za něco duši (život) “to give up the soul
(life) for somebody/something.”
16 The research was primarily carried out for the needs of the EUROJOS II
international project. It took place on 30 May and 8 December 2017 at the Faculty
of Education of the Charles University in Prague with the participation of 80
respondents, male and female students of Czech language (62) and mathematics
(18) aged approximately 20-26 years. The aim was to obtain relevant data that
would show the conceptualization of the soul of today's young Czechs. The results
of the research will, however, not be evaluated in detail here; we will only report
on how the ethical profile of the soul was thematized in the responses. The
respondents answered the following questions: 1. What is the soul? 2. What does
the soul look like, how does it manifest? How do you imagine it? 3. In what
contexts and situations do you think the soul is mentioned today? 4. What does it
mean to say, a) that someone has a soul, b) that someone has no soul? 5. Who /
what can have a soul? (Please give examples.) In line with the EUROJOS II
methodology, all questions were open so that the respondents could write a
detailed answer. We would like to thank Ladislav Janovec for his help with the
concrete realization of the survey.
17 It is a reference to one of the two general profiles of the concept LIFE, i.e. LIFE
as vitality, the vital force, or the quality of a living entity versus a dead one or of a
the psyche in the widest sense of the word (“inner world”, “mind”,
“subconscious”, “our hopes and desires”), through the individuality and
identity of a particular self (“what is inside us and makes us us”), to the
spiritual aspects (“the seat of God in man”). Quite often, the ethical
principle, which is at the center of our attention (“moral principles”,
“conscience”) 18 , is applied here, as it was mentioned less or more
explicitly by 18 respondents (i.e. 15 %).
Responses can be categorized based on these aspects in the following
way (we present several typical statements for each category):
- life: “something that distinguishes a living entity from a corpse”,

“something that is inside the living people”, “the essence of a living
being”, “the part of our self that is connected with life”, “life in the
body”, “what makes our body move”, “the spiritual part of the
human body that allows us to live”;
- mind, experience, inner world: “psyche, something non-physical”,
“the inner world of man”, “mind”, “our interior”, “inner world”,
“our hopes and desires”, “inner energies of man”, “subconscious”;
- individuality, identity, the self-experience, character, personality:
“our inner self, personality”, “personality of individual people and
every person”, “what is inside us and makes us us”, “the invisible
that creates our personality”, “something that gives personality to
the body”;
- spirituality: “the spirit”, “the seat of God in the body of man”, “the
spiritual part of the human body that allows us to live”;
- the ethical principle: “the soul is our conscience”, “a set of moral
principles that could be likened to conscience”, “moral principles”,
“a system of values, character and temperament”, “my inner
conscience and consciousness”, “my nature, personality”.
living organism versus a stone, a machine, a puppet, a robot etc. (cf. Vaňková
2016b).
18 The responses also included references to the following things: a) abstract,
immaterial, invisible, imaginary, ethereal (part of a man); b) part, particle (of a

man); c) (something that is) inside, inner, hidden, interior; d) core, essence (of a
living being); e) a set or summary; f) something incomprehensible, a secret:
“something inside us, incomprehensible, something we don’t understand”,
“scientifically unprovable thing, yet one of the most important things we have”.
490 Chapter 23
Respondents often referred to two or more areas in a single answer or

formulated their responses very broadly. The answer “the spiritual part of
the human body that allows us to live”, for example, identifies the divine
element in man with the life present in the human body (as two aspects of
the same); metaphorical responses such as “spark in us” or “light in us”
can relate to God, life, knowledge, individual charism, or a widely
understood good. 19 The ethical aspect of the soul is also closely interconnected
with other aspects, especially with the spiritual aspect and with what we
characterize above as a reference to the individuality and identity of man,
to his or her specific self; the expressions “character” 20 or “personality” 21
that appeared in the responses imply the evaluation of the moral qualities
of man.
Additionally, let us mention some interesting statements related to the
ethical profile of the soul that emerged in responses to other questions.
Regarding the second question ("How does the soul look like, how does it
manifest?"), the following answers have been recorded: "it evaluates what
is bad and good", "it manifests itself with a conscience, feelings,
conversations with yourself". Responses to the third question ("In what
contexts and situations do you think the soul is mentioned today?")
included "when a person has sinned, they have no conscience" or "when a
person does something shocking, they don't have a soul". The fourth
question (i.e. "What it means when we say that someone has a soul?") has
brought the following responses, for example, "he has a conscience, good
character, adheres to moral principles", "reassesses his actions and
behaves right", "is good". The opposite (i.e., that someone does not have a
soul) was characterized as “he is without character, heartless, he does not
have moral principles”, “he is evil, he has sold his soul to the devil, he has
lost it”, or broadly “he is bad”.
19 This confirms that the concept of SOUL is perceived (and must be perceived)
holistically; the profile allocation is merely an instrument to describe meaning.
20 charakter (“character”) 1. a set of psychical properties of personality, a temper:
mužný, pevný, osobitý charakter (“virile, solid and distinctive character”); člověk
neurčitého charakteru (“a man of vague character”), 2. reliable, uncompromising,
honest character; “a person with such a character”: mít charakter (“to have
character”); nemá kouska charakteru (“he has no character”); je to charakter (“he
is a character”) (SSČ). (We present only the first two relevant senses here.)
21osobnost (“personality”) 1. the sum of distinct qualities of an individual: kouzlo
(jeho) osobnosti (“the spell of his / her personality”). 2. a distinct individual as

their bearer, individuality: umí zapůsobit, je to osobnost (“he can impress, he is a
personality”). (We present only the first two relevant senses here.)
The responses have shown a very frequent occurrence of the most

common qualifiers "good" and "bad" or "evil". The soul is associated both
with the ability to distinguish between good and evil (and with a
conscience), and with what is good in man, or what makes him good (cf.
also Wierzbicka 1999). In both cases, it is a reference to the axiology of
the soul and its ethical profile (SOUL2).
23.6. The ethical profile of the soul in Czech folk songs from the
normalization era
If we were looking for something specifically Czech, something which

was not to be found anywhere else in the world and at the same time drew
us closer to the West in the difficult period of normalization, one of the
answers would be: Czech folk.
Folk music (...) is related to values and social protest, showing us how we
should live, even if we do not live like that (Nešpor 2006: 5).
The ethical profile of the soul (SOUL2) will be further monitored in a

specific set of texts. These are song lyrics of Czech folk singers and
musical groups influencing the cultural and social climate at the time of
normalization (i.e., namely in 1968–1989; in some cases, we also took into
account the thematically related texts that were created later, i.e. in the
1990s); some of the selected authors are still active and their style has not
changed. 22
Songwriters or singing poets, as these authors and interpreters of their own

songs are often called, have been known to represent a specific artistic and
social phenomenon from the 1960s (and not only in the Czech
environment), inspired mainly by the Anglo-American context (black folk
music, the boom of folk musical genre). 23 In their songs, the emphasis was
22 However, it should be noted that these cultural manifestations (unofficial, semi-

official, and later official) are not primarily observed as a historical, social or
aesthetic phenomenon, not even a musical or literary artefact here. We are
specifically interested in whether and how a soul is thematized as an ethical value
in these texts. They were selected based on the belief that the ethical dimension
was indeed important to their authors.
23 It is rather symptomatic that the ASCS mentions two senses for the folk
expression: 1. Anglo-Saxon folk song, its imitation (abb. folk music), 2. amateur
songwriting and singing, amateur songwriting.
492 Chapter 23
on the text component; the authors often reacted to current events,

implicitly or explicitly standing against official ideology, and emotionally,
in an individual story and often with a spiritual and moral overlap, they
expressed their own opinion and "personally responsible" attitude. This
attracted a lot of attention and interest of the audience; numerous groups of
supporters often formed around such oriented singers and groups. Many
songs lived – and still do – in the collective consciousness, they are often
shared like folk songs and referred to in allusions. 24 This unofficial or
semiofficial culture formed the counterbalance to the official popular
music broadcast by radio and television in the 1970s and 1980s. The
totalitarian regime of normalizing Czechoslovakia was intimidated by the
inconvenient artists, forbidding them to perform and forcing many to
emigrate, but later it began to tolerate them to a certain extent, especially in
the second half of the 1980s (Houda 2014). This music played its role in
the November Revolution of 1989 as well, as it accompanied the
demonstrations and was played in separate concerts performed by both folk
singers and groups (Spiritual Quintet, Jaromír Nohavica) and by those who
returned from emigration in the first days (Karel Kryl, Jaroslav Hutka) and
of course by the protesters themselves.
Texts meeting our criteria were not only those with the simple
occurrence of the lexeme soul; this was an important signal, but we also
focused on a more general thematization of transcendental values,
especially the semantic opposition of material and immaterial, this world
and the other world, the reflection of the relation to God and the over-
personal values, the emphasis on ethics and spirituality, on the good and
evil, and on values and anti-valuations in general (often grasped in the
oppositions truth – lie, love – hatred, liberty – unfreedom, etc.). These are
the semantic areas that create the inseparable context of the soul lexeme.
The examined lyrics can be divided into four groups: 1) African American
spirituals and gospels with modern Czech lyrics reflecting either biblical
themes (often in an non-religious setting) or everyday situations of
ordinary people, but with an existential overlap and an accent on ethical
values (the main representative here is the Spiritual Quintet music group);
2) Czech and Moravian folk songs from old collections (in folk
arrangements); here we refer to the lyrics Hádala se duše s tělem (“The
quarrel between soul and body”); 3) songs with lyrics rooted in the
24 In the normalization Czechoslovakia, the folk audience knew and shared songs
of their favorite authors, even when these lived in emigration for years, were
"forbidden" at home and their recordings could only spread illegally, as in the case
of e.g. Karel Kryl or Jaroslav Hutka.
European cultural context – here we will concentrate on those referring to

the story of Faust (represented by the texts of Karel Kryl and Jaromír
Nohavica); 4) other songs in which their authors deal with the theme of the
soul (and with the problem of the soul as an existential and transcendent
value) in individual creative acts and specific creative conceptualizations,
often with humour (such as in the texts of Karel Kryl, Jiří Dědeček and
Marek Eben). On the following lines, we will introduce some of the texts 25
from these four areas, but in a slightly different order than suggested by the
mentioned categorization, as we are most interested in what semantic
oppositions can be found in them and how the soul (and related reality) is
conceptualized or contextualized there.
As indicated, “folk often has the form of a very honest and straightforward
personal testimony or confession that is expressed in a folk artistic form,
usually as a song that ... can express both ordinary joy in life and serious
concern for the state of the world.” 26 We can specify that this “concern” in
our case refers to the moral and spiritual state of a normalization society,
guiding its citizens intentionally only on material, consumer values, and at
the same time often forcing them to act against their own conscience (and
soul), or against traditional Christian and humanist values.
Jiří Dědeček (*1953) reflects this difficult atmosphere with a surprising
humor in his song Dvacet deka duše (“Seven Ounces of Soul”) (Appendix
I). In his view, the soul is materialized and seen as a commodity
(ontological metaphor) of a “weighable” nature (it can be weighed in
ounces). In line with it (or in the same category), there are also other
abstract terms/values: the truth (a few pieces), the conscience (measured in
pints), the faith (in the amount for one shilling/crown – yeast used to be
sold like that), the feeling (a quarter-pound as in butter), hope (in a bottle).
However, the desire to buy these existentially vital values remains
unsatisfied. The salesperson, stereotypically annoyed, points to the long
queue (leading up “to the horizon”) which serves as a reference to the
general orientation on consumption – people waiting in the queue are not
at all interested in such important values; all they care about are “just
potatoes”.
The other texts under scrutiny also include a striking number of
expressions pointing to (high) values. The soul tends to be assigned to the
25 Rough translations into English are provided for all the selected Czech lyrics,
both in the text and in the Appendices.
26 Cf. a Wikipedia characteristic of folk: Folk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_folk_music (last accessed 14.12.2017).

494 Chapter 23
same category as truth, love, freedom, conscience, etc., often with

reference to their opposite anti-values. The same happens in the song
called Dachau blues by Karel Kryl (1944–1994), probably the most
famous personality among Czech folk singers. This song is a tense
message about a world deprived of human order. In the last stanza, urgent
questions take turns with responses full of oxymoron oppositions, such as
truth – lie ("a lie stands for the truth"), freedom – slavery ("liberty gets
handcuffed"), love – anger ("there is no love, just anger left"), (verbally
pretended) tolerance – an attack on the values of others ("Then it steals
pebbles from the Jews / And preaches about tolerance"). The last of these
questions concerns the existence of "intellect without the soul": it yields
(moral) repugnance ("it resembles an ugly toad") and pride of
irresponsible action ("a blind man dancing with a sword") in response. It is
the absence of the soul and the presence of a mere intellect (perhaps it also
refers to the "reason" or "reasonability" as qualities often encouraged in
children by their parents during normalization) that is described as a
dangerous anti-value.
Když lež je pravdy zárukou, When a lie stands for the truth,
jde volnost s pouty na rukou Liberty gets handcuffed
a vůkol kvetou – hroby, And in the bloom are – graves,
Když z lásky stal se mouřenín? When love becomes a blackamoor?
Pak děvce podá růženín Then it gives its rosary to a whore
a zbude bez ozdoby, And remains without ornaments,
Když zloba zbývá bez lásky? When there is no love, just anger left?
Pak Židům krade oblázky Then it steals pebbles from the Jews
a hlásá toleranci And preaches about tolerance,
A intelekt když bez duše? And when intellect is without the
Pak podoben je ropuše soul?
či slepci s mečem v tanci! Then it resembles an ugly toad
Or a blind man dancing with a sword!
(Dachau blues. Kryl 1998: 4)
Another song by Kryl, Martině v sedmi pádech (To Martina in Seven

Grammatical Cases), is based on the experience of a post-August
Czechoslovak emigrant (such as Kryl). In response to a letter from a
beloved girl, the protagonist explains why he cannot return to her and
names individual reasons for the inability to live in a non-free country:
Kdybych chtěl mluvit s Martinou, If I wanted to speak to Martina,

pletl bych si bukvy s latinou I’d mistake Cyrillic for Latin,
a knutu s žezlem. And a knout for a sceptre.
Měnil bych pravdu ve lhaní, I would turn truth into a lie,
v častušku hudbu varhanní, Organ music into chastushka,
plet dobro se zlem. I’d mix evil and good.
Dbal místo snění konzumu, Consumerism would rule,
nabádal děti k rozumu I would praise the reason,
z prospěchu podlý. Benefit from treason.
Žil pěkně vprostřed ohrady I’d live happily in the pen,
a zdobil okna, výklady Decorate windows
a vzýval modly. And worship idols.
(To Martina in seven grammatical cases. Kryl 1998: 299)
These oppositions based on metonymy refer to the contemporary

situation – the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia – and provide different
examples of “mixing good and evil”. Cyrillic and chastushka represent the
“Eastern” (Russian) culture, whereas Latin (alphabet) and organ music
stand for “Western” culture; the imposed Russian script and the typical
folk genre as elements associated with the occupying country correspond
with the “knout” – a torture tool known from medieval Russia, while the
scepter is an attribute of the royal sovereign.
The soul is mentioned in the chorus: the multiple repetitions of the
verse "And all that is left to declare is the soul" introduces the most
precious part of man, his inner, distinctive, essential nucleus, his self
(manifested as his own conscience): it is through the soul that man can be
(and will be one day) "declared", that is called to account for his or her
day-to-day conduct.
Ač je to jenom dvě stě kilometrů Although it is just two hundred

nebo ještě blíže miles, or even closer,
a zbývá už jen duše k proclení, And all that is left to declare is the
soul,
The political barometer is still low,
na politickém barometru setrvalá
And while it lasts, nothing will
níže,
change.
a dokud trvá, svět se nezmění.
The speaker could return to the native country only if he was willing to
adopt the principles of living in a lie and a lack of freedom, to respect the
humiliating rules, to live cattle like in the pen and pretend loyalty, to
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accept the consumerist values, and to reduce life to simply "being well-
off": represented here by "a beer gut", "all the glut", and – in a
metaphorical-metonymic conceptualization – "a fatty soul".
Smět sedět vedle Martiny Sitting next to Martina,

a píti suché Martini Drinking just dry Martini
k mokrému masu, And eating medium steaks,
sotva bych asi uznával I guess I would just cast away
to, co jsem doma zpívával Everything that I used to say
za starých časů. Back in the old times.
Ošlehán vichry větráků, Fresh, thanks to the ventilators,
měl bych už kolem metráku I’d grow fat sooner or later,
tak, jak se sluší, As befits my goal,
a kromě piva v žejdlíku And with all the glut,
měl bych i bachor z knedlíků I’d have a beer gut,
a tučnou duši. And a fatty soul.
“I guess I would just cast away / Everything that I used to say / Back in
the old times” – the protagonist expresses his doubts about the freedom of
speech and opinion in his country, especially with reference to his songs
that have a dual role: both to function as a work of art and to express their
author's civic responsibility.
In speaking and communicating, people reveal themselves, show their
thoughts and opinions, and use either writing or (primarily) speech and
voice to do so. The weight of a totalitarian system lay heavily on those
who realized this moral dilemma. It especially concerned people whose
occupation is to talk (and sing) in the public. Kryl’s song Hlas (The Voice)
(Appendix II) reflects this normalization reality and connects it with the
Faust narrative, well established in the Czech context. 27 The lyrical Ich
meets the Devil. At first, the hero only sees the beauty of the Devil and her
attractive offer: surprisingly, the Devil does not ask for his soul (as is
customary), but the voice (as his weakest spot).
27 For more information on Czech productions of Goethe’s Faust, on different

translations, adaptations, travesties, allusions, motifs and inspirations (from folk
puppet shows to Václav Havel’s Pokoušení / Temptation) see the monograph Faust
jako stav zadlužení (Faust as the State of Debt) by Vladimír Just (2014).
Voice is physically connected with the soul as the innermost essence of

the human being: as a result of vibrations of vocal cords, it is closely
associated with breath and air – and, in particular, it aims to be heard by
others, and is thus able to influence a wide audience (cf. the reference to
broadcasts in the lyrics). Voice is related to speech, and as such, it can
express truth or lies, consent or disagreement. 28 It is also (like face) an
intimate expression of an individual: every person has a different voice
and is recognizable by it. But what is most significant is that through our
voices we present ourselves as unique personalities. And we are
responsible for what we say, for its veracity; when we pronounce
something, we also guarantee it in a way (cf. the phraseme být něčí
hlásnou troubou “to be sb.'s mouthpiece"). The final, catastrophic stanza
also refers to Judas and his fate: what is most important in this
conceptualization of the soul is that the devil eventually seizes both the
voice and the soul of the hero, i.e. those who sell their soul to the devil,
lose everything in the end, including their life, they commit suicide and go
to hell.
In the song Nevermore (Appendix III) by Jaromír Nohavica (*1935),
the Faust motif is accompanied by another allusion, reflected already in
the title: the Mefisto devil (with typical attributes, only updated) arrives
with the Poe’s raven, in a gloomy atmosphere that is inherent to both of
the texts:
Usedl do křesla a černý pták He sat down in the armchair

sedl mu v klíně With the bird on his lap
bodlo mě u srdce když spatřil I felt a twinge in my chest as I noticed
můj zrak He had horsehair coming from his soles
že z podešví mu trčí koňské
žíně
Tak nás tu máte jak jste si přál Well, here we are just as you wish
na lampu padl stín
přes psací stůl když mi vizitku He cast a shadow over the lamp
dal As he reached to me with a card in his
firma Ďábel a Syn hands:
The Devil & Son Co.
(Nohavica 2010: 144–145)
28The phrase dát někomu hlas (lit. “to give sb. one’s voice”) means “to vote for
sb.”, to support them, especially in the elections.
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The crucial question “What do you ask for this?” is not explicitly
answered (“For one drop of blood I’ll give you anything”), but based on
the lyrics, it is obvious what the Devil and Son's representative requires for
the enhanced vision and poetic ability: his soul, whatever this value means
– be it moral integrity, pure conscience, salvation, or inner peace. It is
symptomatic that the reference to the soul is present only implicitly in the
text; the relevant lexeme does not appear in it at all, but the context points
to it.
Za kapku krve tě zahrnu vším For one drop of blood

co budeš žádat I’ll give you anything
vidět to co jiní nevidí tě naučím You’ll be able to see what others
cannot
a slova k slovům v písně skládat And compose songs without any effort
Co za to žádáš? ptal jsem se ptal
What do you ask for this?
jsem jen nuzný tvor
I’m just a man, puny and poor
a havran v rohu zakrákal
But the raven in the corner croaked
Nevermore
Nevermore
(Nohavica 2010: 144–145)
The song comes from the early 1990s but its text is still up-to-date and
resonates in the society. After some facts came into light about the
cooperation of some personalities of cultural life, including Jaromír
Nohavica, with the Communist Secret Police (StB), their guilt or
innocence has been discussed on social networks, etc. Nohavica’s
Nevermore song on the Youtube channel is followed by a number of
comments (some of them are very recent) that relate its textual narrative
directly to the author's life, cf .: “I think that Jarek revealed perhaps the
most about him in this song – and no one has to ask anything ... everything
is said”; “I can see that no one here understands the song. The devil is the
StB, and the obligation note is the cooperation in exchange for the fact that
he himself could sing”; “I do not care that he was an informer because he
is no worse because of that, everyone at that time did something they
regret today and I have no doubt he regrets it”; “And did he sign or not?
That is the point...” 29
29 The recording of the song and the comments are available at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qOvd1E_i7I.
The story of signing a contract with the devil is allegorically projected

onto real facts, and not only in this song; the very elliptical and metonymic
expression podepsat (“to sign”) points to the agreement of cooperation
with the Czechoslovak Secret Police (StB) or with the Communist Party.
In a subtler form and no longer referring to Faust, the devil (or Lucifer)
– together with references to the soul – appear in the song by Karel Plíhal
(*1958) called Three Angels (Appendix IV). The text describes a meeting
of three angels (one of whom is the hero’s wife) who are talking (or rather
staying quiet) about him; the protagonist then describes his soul in an
ironic way – if it is “as clean as a floor after a dancing ball”, he clearly
refers to his sins (cf. the traditional metaphorical opposition of moral
purity and moral squalor). Here the soul is part of a modernized Christian-
born narrative that leads to a more or less “earthly” belief that “as long as
angels live / we are all safe”.
The protagonist in Marek Eben’s song (*1957) The Balloon (Appendix
V) wonders about the mysterious things of this world ("things that I can't
get my head around"), whether it's the physical laws that make the balloon
float and the potential crew go up or spiritual things. The following
statements relate to both the balloon flight and the desirable state of the
human soul: "And yet it takes you up to the sky / You can’t measure it or
weigh on a scale” – “All you can do is trust and have faith / That when
you throw away all the weight / And turn on the burners, keep the flame /
You’ll fly all the way up to the sky.”
God, “the other world”, and spirituality are phenomena commonly
placed up in metaphors. These are invisible and intangible things (the soul
resembles the inside of a balloon); the weight represents life difficulties,
but also the psychological burden in the form of "sins"; heart – associated
with love, emotion and passion – is usually conceptualized as a fire
("burners"). In Czech, the word soul is polysemous: it is to be found not
only in man but also in a balloon as well as a tire or a soccer ball (tube or
bladder in English). The “soul” of the balloon is invisible, “airy”, and
carries the crew up (elevates us as the soul). In order to take-off, however,
we have to throw away all the baggage (bags of sand, i.e. our sins in the
Christian sense). Again, we can see that the soul is associated with the
opposition of up and down (with the keyword vzhůru, “up”, repeated many
times in the song) and the related opposition of lightness and gravity.
Jaroslav Hutka (*1947) chose several Moravian folk songs from almost
forgotten folk ballads collected by František Sušil (1804 – 1868) and
presented it to the contemporary audience, among them the song Hádala se
duše s tělem (“The Quarrel between Soul and Body”) (Appendix VI),
reminding of old medieval spiritual compositions. The traditional
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opposition of the soul vs. the body, their dialogically composed quarrel, is
set in the context of folk Christianity here. At a funeral (“Just before the
funeral mass”), the life of the deceased is discussed, and the personified
soul is turning to the body in the dialogue. It accuses it of misbehaviour
connected with sin, especially with pride, of indulging in worldly
pleasures with the desire for comfort and prosperity and among all these
facts the soul is neglected. A number of typical oppositions – “silver,
gold” for body, “lays in mould” for soul, "dancing in nice garments" for
body and "left there in torments" for soul – leads to a rather surprising
point: finally, the body replies to the soul's accusations and attributes the
responsibility to lead a good life to the soul itself.
The reflections of this world and the other one and the values related to
them can be found in Czech variations of American spirituals and gospels
adopted by Spirituál Kvintet’s songwriters. 30 In the song called Dvě báby
(Two Crones), two female singers take up the roles of two old women
singing in front of a chapel about how weary they are of this world and
how they want to leave this world and never come back. They condemn
everyone who'd sell you for a dime and despise the desire for wealth and
glory, earthly delights and general sinfulness ("everyone fights and
compromises their soul") while dreaming about a journey to the paradise
and a blissful life in heaven (Vančura 2008: 86).
The male protagonist of the song Co se stane s mojí duší? (“What Will
Happen to My Soul?”) is dealing with a similar question: “What will
happen to my soul / When I don’t speak what I’m told?” (Appendix VIII).
This idea of having to say what is appropriate again refers to a socially
undesirable expression of one’s own opinions. The protagonist is,
however, certain that salvation is still waiting for him despite his civil
disobedience – even if his grave is burdened with a lot of stones, his soul
will soar. The upward direction and the idea of rising and freeing oneself
from a material burden (the body) are typical attributes of the death in the
soul-related discourse. (Tichota – Vančura 2008: 80).
Finally, let us go back to the lyrics mentioned in the motto of this text:
Nezaprodám duši svou (I Won’t Sell My Soul) (Appendix IX). They
include several typical narratives connected with the soul in the spiritual
and ethical sense. Life is conceptualized as a difficult journey to an
30 This music group is closely connected with the very beginnings of Czech folk
music. Founded as early as in 1960, Spirituál kvintet has changed in many ways
since then, but its core – including songwriters Jiří Tichota and Dušan Vančura –
has remained the same.
uncertain destination ("I wander the world in a shabby hat"), a futile desire
to finally rest (“I don't see the finish line”, “I need a harbor to finally
rest”). There is a way to make the journey easier: to deny one's beliefs and
behave like the majority and the governing powers order; however, the
protagonist repeats “I won't sell my soul” in many variations. Suddenly
there is a twist in the fourth stanza: unexpected help is coming in the
critical moment (“And just as I'm starting to lose my faith") from someone
“who is dwelling in the body of mine”. The female protagonist leads a
dialogue with this peculiar partner and asks him: “Who are you, what do
you want / And why are you comforting my soul?” After the dialogue, she
reaches a catharsis – the last stanza evokes inner peace and hope: “I know
what I want, and I won't sell my soul." The soul here reflects the ability of
man to communicate with God as the inner partner (cf. footnote no. 10)
and represents a value that is handed over to God at the end of the life's
journey.
23.7. Soul in song lyrics: contexts, oppositions, metaphors
Although the concept of SOUL is used in different contexts in the

selected lyrics, the general framework is similar: the oppositions of good
vs. evil, or value vs. anti-value.
These oppositions are usually bound to the Christian worldview: this
(earthly) world vs. the other world (“sky”), God vs. Devil, God vs. secular
values. Both explicitly and implicitly, the soul tends to be related to such
values as honour, conscience or truth. On the other side, there are notions
representing anti-values: evil personified by the devil (cf. the lyrics of
Hlas, Nevermore, Tři andělé), earthly toil, pain, death, wandering (cf. the
lyrics of Dvě baby, Nezaprodám duši svou) on one hand, and worldly
pleasures, having fun, pride, vanity, piling wealth and sins in general on
the other (cf. Hádala se duše s tělem, Dvě báby).
What is often articulated is the contents of the phraseme prodat / upsat
duši čertu, ďáblu (“to sell one’s soul to the devil”), in a more or less
elaborated narrative, including the story of Faust. Among the commonly
used attributes are the devil’s promises, the desire of the protagonist to
acquire some valuable assets and the deal with the devil – a signature in
one’s own blood and eventually a tragic ending to the story. This narrative
tends to vary and focus mainly on the very act of signing the deal, as
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reflected in Czech phraseology – see upsat duši ďáblu (lit. “to sign one’s
soul to the devil”) or the elliptical expression podepsat (“to sign”). 31
Narratives associated with the reflection of good and evil, values and
anti-values, thematize the Christian-related temptation and the following
moral failure or stability of an individual as mirrored in their behaviour:
the value is attributed to the honest expression of own’s opinion, to the
truthfulness and authenticity of life, to the state characterized as “having a
dignity”, to resisting the temptation and rejecting the benefits offered.
Conversely, there are anti-values: adhering to false values of the majority,
“doing what you’re told”, “blending in”, i.e. adapting to the system,
denying one’s own values and ignoring own’s conscience – “selling one’s
soul”. In the perspective of an ontological metaphor, the soul is
conceptualized as a thing, and a very valuable thing indeed.
Tomasz Krzeszowski distinguishes three typical metaphors used in
relation to Christian ethics: the business metaphor (ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR IS
A BUSINESS TRANSACTION), the law metaphor (ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR IS IN
ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAW), and finally, the journey metaphor, usually
up the hill (ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR IS A JOURNEY UP THE HILL) (Krzeszowski
1997: 261).
In a partial overlap with these categories (with the exception of the
business metaphor), we recognize the following soul-related metaphors in
the analyzed lyrics: LIFE IS A JOURNEY (often difficult and uncomfortable);
SOUL IS CLEAN OR DIRTY; LIFE ON EARTH (“this world”) IS HEAVY / IS
DOWN, whereas AFTERLIFE (“the other world” where soul belongs) IS UP,
and finally SOUL IS LIGHT, or SOUL SOARS.
23.7. Conclusion: “Ethical soul” in the Czech worldview
In the Czech worldview, the soul is perceived as a value within two

general profiles: SOUL1 – “the vital soul”, and the SOUL2 – “the ethical
soul” (see Figure 2). This study focused on the “ethical soul”, namely on
the ways in which the conceptual potential associated with this profile is
realized in linguistic, empirical, and textual data.
31This “folded narrative” has been metaphorically updated in common

communication (e.g. nakonec podepsal “eventually he signed”) in the period of
Czech normalization when citizens were forced to sign a document in which they
had to agree to collaborate with the National Secret Police or StB (cf. the online
comment of the Nevermore song by Jaromír Nohavica “The Devil is the StB...”).
The ethical (spiritual-moral) profile of the soul is reflected in Czech

phraseology (cf. the phraseme prodat / zaprodat duši “sell (out) one’s
soul” and the correlation between the lexemes duše “soul” and svědomí
“conscience” in some phrasemes). Much more strongly, the ethical profile
of the soul demonstrated itself in the empirical data depicting the language
awareness of contemporary speakers of Czech: the survey showed a clear
connection between the soul and the conscience on the one hand, and the
character (personality) on the other, i.e. whether a man is “good” or not.
The song lyrics from the period of normalization have confirmed that
soul in Czech culture is perceived as a center of our moral (and spiritual)
integrity, be it in the perspective of folk Christianity or in other culturally
bound or individually created narratives.
The concept of SOUL relates to several oppositions in the Czech
language and Czech texts: most notably to the fundamental ethical
opposition of good and evil, concretized mainly through the orientation
metaphor GOOD IS UP (or EVIL IS DOWN). It corresponds to the opposition
of “the other world” (situated in the sky), i.e. the place where (good)
people (or their souls) go after death, and this world (represented by our
current life on Earth).
To conclude, the concept of SOUL in the Czech worldview is expressed
predominantly via metaphors which, according to Krzeszowski, are typical
of Christian ethics. The most significant of them is the metaphor of (earthly)
life as a journey, occurring in many variations and modifications. In the
afterlife context, the emphasis is on the upwards direction, especially
through the narrative of the soul soaring to heaven after the physical death.
The so-called business metaphor is also used in the discourse of the soul,
especially in relation to Faust's story about the deal with the devil.
Abbreviations
ASCS: Petráčková, Věra and Jiří Kraus. 2000. Akademický slovník cizích
slov. Praha: Academia.
PSJČ: Příruční slovník jazyka českého. 1935-1957. I-IX. Praha.
http://bara.ujc.cas.cz/psjc/
SK1: Tichota, Jiří and Dušan Vančura, eds. 2008. Spirituál kvintet, 1.
Cheb: G + W.
SK3: Tichota, Jiří and Dušan Vančura, eds. 2008. Spirituál kvintet, 3.
Cheb: G + W.
SSČ: Slovník spisovné češtiny pro školu a veřejnost. 1994. Praha:
Academia.
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SSJČ: Slovník spisovného jazyka českého, I‒IV. 1958–1971. Praha:

Academia. http://ssjc.ujc.cas.cz/
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Summary
The semantic structure of the Czech concept of DUŠE (‘SOUL’) comprises a
physiological, psychical, social, ethical as well as spiritual (transcendental) profile.
These profiles are very closely interconnected and in most of them, the soul is
presented as an axiological concept, as a value. The soul represents an existential
value (similarly to life): in Czech, one takes an oath “on the soul” (na mou duši) or
expresses one’s devotion and affection with the phraseme dal by za někoho duši /
život (“give one’s soul or life for somebody”). The value aspect of the soul is
reflected in language, in folklore as well as in belles-lettres and can also be
observed in survey data from current Czech respondents (university students). The
study also focuses on Czech lyrics from 1968–1989 written by prominent Czech
folk singers and music groups influencing the cultural and social atmosphere
during the period of normalization (e.g. Karel Kryl, Spirituál kvintet etc.). The
analysis has shown that the perception of the soul as a value in the Czech context is
reflected in two main profiles, the so-called general profiles: DUŠE1 (vital soul
associated with life) and DUŠE2 (ethical or spiritual-moral soul, associated with
conscience and the concept of good; rooted in the Christian worldview).
Keywords: duše (´soul´), Czech language, Czech worldview, values, ethical

profile, ethnolinguistics, Czech lyrics
Appendices I – IX
Appendix I
Jiří Dědeček: Dvacet deka duše Seven Ounces of Soul

Chtěl jsem si koupit dvacet deka I went to buy seven
duše, ounces of soul,
pár kousků pravdy, litr svědomí, A few pieces of truth, and a pint of
conscience,
leč prodavačka odvětila suše: But the salesperson would
just sharply say:
„Jak jsou ty lidi dneska pitomý…“ „How stupid people are today…!“
Mě ovšem tímto nevyvedla z míry, But I didn’t lose my

countenance,
řekl jsem: „Dobrá, nic se neděje, I said: „Ok, that’s no
problem, then,
dejte mi tedy za korunu víry, So just give me belief for
one shilling,
osminku citu, láhev naděje.“ A bottle of hope, a quarter-
pound of feeling.“
A ona řekla: „Musíte stát frontu.“ And she said: “Well,

you’ll need to wait.”
A fronta vedla cik-cak za hory There is a queue, just follow
it straight,
a potom dál, až někam k horizontu. Up to the horizon as far as it goes.
A všichni lidi chtěli jenom But everyone wants just
brambory. potatoes!
[Dědeček 2002: 125]
508 Chapter 23
Appendix II
Karel Kryl: Hlas (Úryvek) The Voice (Part of the text)
Ten Satan měl líbeznou postavu The Devil looked just like a beautiful
panny maiden
A nepáchla síra, však voněly květy Smelling like flowers, rather than
sulphur
A v úsměvu něha bez jediné hany And smiling gently, no spite in her
eyes
Jen z úst jako hadi mu syčely věty: But words like snakes went out of
her mouth:
„Jen nech si svou duši! Ta k ničemu “I don’t care for your soul! It has no
není! value!
Vždyť mnozí i zdarma ji upsali So many others have sold it to me
čertu,
však hlas – to je zboží, jež dneska se But the voice – that’s something
cení else!
a dobře se platí – to beze všech žertů It pays for itself and brings immense
wealth
Já pro ten tvůj hlas jsem si ohlávku I made a halter to hold your voice in
uvil
a stráž mi ho do klece vsadí And I’m going to keep it locked in a
cage
A kdybys pak stokrát i andělsky And even if you later talk like an
mluvil, angel
tvůj hlas – tě zradí!“ Your voice will betray you!”
Dnes jako kníže si v paláci žiji Now when I live like a king in a
palace
Mám ve stájích koně a v zahradách Stables with horses, peacocks in the
pávy yard
Jím ze zlaté mísy a z křišťálu piji Eating from gold and drinking from
crystal
Jen rádio nemám a nesnáším zprávy I can’t listen to broadcasts and I hate
the news
Neb kdykoli válkou se o lásce bájí For every time they explain battles
with love
Když slaví se vrazi a obchody Or celebrate murderers and fiddling
s časem with time
Když svatými slovy se bezpráví hájí Or excuse all injustice with holy
words
Když hlásá se lež – tedy vždycky Or declare some lies – it is with my
mým hlasem… voice…
Mé lůžko je měkké však propíjím My bed is so soft, yet I cannot sleep

noci
Mám z démantů bazén a ze zlata I could swim in my diamonds, build
ryby golden towers,
Mám přebytek všeho I pýchy I moci! I have it all, including power
Mám v paláci všechno Jen – lidé tu Just one thing is missing – and that is
chybí people
Dnes podruhé oko mé Satana spatří Today we meet again, me and the
Devil
Je krásný Byť s úsměvem krysím She is a real beauty, yet smiles like a
rat
Vždyť jemu dnes – s hlasem – i duše For not just my voice is hers, but also
má patří my soul
když – na větvi – visím… As I am hanging down from a tree –
dead…
[Kryl 1998: 168]
510 Chapter 23
Appendix III
Jaromír Nohavica: Nevermore Nevermore

Seděl jsem za stolem a básně čet I was sitting at the table, reading
Rádio hrálo poems With the radio on
Vtom slyším ťukání na parapet tak Suddenly I heard a knock on the
tiché, že se mi možná jen zdálo ledge
So silent I thought it was just a
dream
Zastřený mužský hlas z chodníku A husky male voice behind the
tiše se ptal window Quietly asked
Nerad vás ruším, pane básníku, I hate to disturb you, Mr. Poet,
ale mohli bychom na chvíli dál? But could we go in for one brief
moment?
V předsíni podal mi deštník a plášť In the hall he passed me his umbrella

a láhev vína and coat
And a bottle of wine
Jako bych někde už viděl tu tvář, As if I knew his face from
byla to tvář, na kterou se nezapomíná somewhere It was a face you
wouldn’t forget
V průvanu zhasla mi svíčka And then my candle went out
Zvenku studený vítr vál in the draught A cold wind blew
suddenly from outside
Na chodbě na dlaždičkách za ním And here it was, standing on the
černý havran stál floor, A black raven
Usedl do křesla a černý pták He sat down in the armchair

sedl mu v klíně With the bird on his lap
Bodlo mě u srdce, když spatřil I felt a twinge in my chest as I
můj zrak, že z podešví mu trčí noticed He had horsehair coming
koňské žíně from his soles
Tak nás tu máte, jak jste si přál Well, here we are just as you wished
Na lampu padl stín He cast a shadow over
the lamp
Přes psací stůl když mi vizitku dal As he reached to me with a card in
Firma Ďábel a Syn his hands: The Devil & Son Co.
V tolika nocích a v tolika dnech So many nights and so many days

jsem ho vzýval I used to invoke him
Volal ho na pomoc, když docházel Call him for help when I couldn’t go
dech on
A teď jsem se mu z očí v oči díval And now we were sitting here face to
face
Cítil jsem konopnou smyčku, I felt as if I had a tight noose
jak mi svírá krk Around my neck
Když ze záňadří vytáhl ceduličku When he took out a piece of an old
a dlouhý husí brk parchme And together with it a long
goose-quill
Za kapku krve tě zahrnu vším, co For one drop of blood I’ll give you
budeš žádat anything
Vidět to, co jiní nevidí, tě naučím You’ll be able to see what others
A slova k slovům v písně skládat cannot
And compose songs without any
effort
Co za to žádáš? ptal jsem se, ptal What do you ask for this?
Jsem jen nuzný tvor I’m just a man, puny and poor
A havran v rohu zakrákal But the raven in the corner croaked
Never more Never more
Na dlani zaschlou kapku krve mám I have a dried drop of blood in

A tma je v sále my palm And dark is the concert hall
Když přijdou lijáky, tak bolí ten When rainstorms come, my wound
šrám A ono podívej se z okna – prší starts to hurt And look out of the
stále window it rains all the time
Nešťastně šťastný v půlce života Unhappily happy in the prime of my
kymácející se vor life A staggering raft
A havran na rameni skřehotá And the raven on my shoulder croaks

svoje Never more Never more Never more Never more
[Nohavica 2009: 144]

512 Chapter 23
Appendix IV
Karel Plíhal: Tři andělé Three Angels

V zahradě pod vrbou smuteční seděli They were sitting there quietly under
tiše jak pěna the willow tree
Tři andělé – dva byli skuteční, ten Three angels – two of them real,
třetí byla moje žena the third was my wife
Přisednout neměl jsem odvahu, To join them I didn’t dare,

mlčeli patrně o mně this silence was about me all
Duši mám čistou jak podlahu My soul is as clean as a floor
Po plese v Národním domě. After a dancing ball
Určitě skončili u cifer, sčítajíc I bet that they ended up counting

všechny mé hříchy my sins
Až si to přebere Lucifer, nejspíš se When the Lucifer sees it, he’ll laugh
potrhá smíchy like a drain
Obloha zčernala sazemi z komínů The sky went black from all the
vesmírných lodí spaceships’ chimneys
Dokud jsou andělé na Zemi But as long as angels live,
nic zlého se nepřihodí… we are all safe...
[http://www.karelplihal.cz/texty.php?text=tri-andele]
Appendix V
Marek Eben: O balonu The Balloon

Jsou věci, který člověk nepochopí, There are things that I can’t get
my head around,
tak třeba například ty rádiový vlny, Take the radio waves as a
model case,
ve vzduchu po nich není ani stopy, You cannot see them floating
around you,
a přitom všude kolem je to vlastně Yet they are everywhere in
plný, space,
anebo balón: přece když to lítá, Or a fire-balloon: well, if it
flies,
člověk by uvnitř čekal ňáký zařízení, It should have some equipment,
right?
řekněme vrtuli, co by tam byla Let’s say a propeller, hidden
skrytá, inside,
jenže v tý kouli nic, ale lautr nic But the sphere is empty, no
není. device in sight.
A přitom vzhůru, nese tě to vzhůru, And yet it takes you up to the

sky,
nedá se to nahmatat ani změřit, You can’t measure it or weigh
on a scale,
vzhůru, nese tě to vzhůru, Up to the clouds, so incredibly high
nezbývá nic jinýho nežli věřit, All you can do is trust and have
faith,
že když odhodíš všechny pytle s That when you throw away all
pískem the weight
a nažhavíš všechny hořáky, And turn on the burners, keep
the flame
vzhůru, že poletíš vzhůru, až nad You’ll fly all the way up to the
mraky sky,
A tak má každý balón svoji duši, And so, every balloon has its
bladder
514 Chapter 23
duši neviditelnou, co ho nese vzhůru, Its invisible soul carrying it up,
dál mi to rozebírat nepřísluší, And this is not a simple matter

na to jsou odborníci nahoře na kůru.There are experts on it in a choir loft
A když má duši balón, mám ji taky, If a balloon has one, well, so do I
a ta mi poskytuje jedinečnou šanci, Giving me a perfect chance,
že kdybych odhodil ty saky paky, To throw away all of my
baggage,
tak bych se vznášet moh' se stejnou And fly up with the same
elegancí. elegance.
Vzhůru, nese tě to vzhůru… Up to the clouds, it carries you
up …
[Eben 1997: 86]
Appendix VI
Hádala se duše s tělem The Quarrel between Soul and

(Moravská lidová píseň) Body
(Moravian Folk Song)
A když bylo před kostelem, Just before the funeral mass,
hádala se duše s tělem. soul and body had a fuss.
Tělo, tělo, cos' dělalo, Body, body, what did you do,
o duši jsi nic nedbalo. care for soul was strange to you.
Cos' vidělo, to jsi chtělo, You wanted all your eyes could see,
na hříchy jsi nevzpomnělo. forgot all about the sins.
Tělo, tělo, tělo hříšné, Body, body, sinful frock,
bývalo jsi v světě pyšné. you were proud as a peacock.
Chodilo jsi v stříbře, zlatě, You wore silver, you wore gold,
a já ležím v hlíně, blátě. and I spent my days in mould.
Chodilo jsi po muzikách, You went dancing in nice garment,

a já ležím v těžkých mukách. I was left there in the torment.
Nedávej mně, duše, viny, Don’t you blame me, my dear

bylas' se mnou v každé chvíli. soul, you were with me in the whole.
Byla-li jsem já kdy s tebou, That I was there does not matter,
nevládla jsem sama sebou. I could not change it whatsoever.
A když bylo před kostelem, Just before the funeral mass,

hádala se duše s tělem. soul and body had a fuss.
[https://zpevniky.smallhill.cz/zp evnik.php?pisnicka=1112]
516 Chapter 23
Appendix VII
Spirituál kvintet: Dvě báby Two Crones

Jak léta jdou, As years go by,
svět pro mě ztrácí glanc I grow weary of the world
Všichni se rvou Everyone fights
a duši dávaj’ všanc and compromises their soul
A za pár šestáků They’d sell you for a dime,
vás prodaj’, věřte mi No doubt about that
Už víc nechci mít I’m leaving this world
domov svůj na zemi! and not coming back!
Čas žádá svý My time is up

a mně se krátí dech, and my breathing is laboured
když před kaplí Singing my song
tu zpívám na schodech on the stairs of the chapel
Svou píseň vo nebi, My song about heaven,
kde bude blaze mi the peace that I lack
Po jmění netoužím, I’m not after riches,

jsme tu jen nakrátko life is too short
I sláva je jak dým, Nor after fame
jak prázdný pozlátko of the most vacuous sort
Já koukám do voblak, An angel’s nod
až anděl kejvne mi from the clouds and I’ll pack
Říkám "good-bye" So good bye

světskýmu veselí it is to earthly delights
Těm, co si užívaj’, At least for me –
nechci lízt do zelí it’s everyone’s right
Jsem hříšná nádoba, A sinful vessel,
však spása kyne mi I’m mending my cracks
V určenej čas The time will come

kytara dohraje for the guitar to stop playing
Zmlkne můj hlas And for me to fall silent
na cestě do ráje on my way up to heaven
O tomhle špacíru Each night I dream
noc co noc zdá se mi of setting out on this track
[Tichota – Vančura 2008: 86]
518 Chapter 23
Appendix VIII
Spirituál kvintet:
Co prej bude s mojí duší What Will Happen to my Soul
Co prej bude s mojí duší, What will happen to my soul,
povídaj´ they say
Co prej bude s mojí duší, What will happen to my soul
když nezpívám, co se sluší When I don’t sing what I’m told
Tak co bude s mojí duší, What will happen to my soul,
povídaj´ they say
Počkej, jednou zazní ámen, povídaj´ Just you wait, you’ll hear Amen soon
Počkej, jednou zazní ámen, povídaj´ Just you wait, you’ll hear Amen soon
Bouchnou hroudy, bouchne kámen When the soil and stones go boom
Bouchnou hroudy, bude ámen, When the soil and stones go boom,
povídaj they say
Až mi na hrob dají fůru When they cover my grave with lots

kamenů of stones
Ať jich klidně dají fůru Let them cover my grave with lots
of stones
Moje duše vzlítne vzhůru My soul will soar
Přijde den a vzlítne vzhůru The day will come when it soars –
halelu! halleluiah!
Appendix IX
Spirituál kvintet:
Nezaprodám duši svou I Won’t Sell My Soul
Po světě chodím I wander the world
blátem, prachem, kamením in a shabby hat
Mohla bych líp se mít, I could do better,
to dávno vím no doubt about that
Občas jen kývnout, s proudem plout Doing what you’re told, blending in
Byla bych dávno, Out of the woods

dávno za vodou I long could have been
Já ale mám svou čest But I have dignity
a nezaprodám duši svou and I won’t sell my soul
Po světě bloudím I wander the world

křížem krážem jak se dá back and forth
Nevidím cíl a čas už dávno I don’t see the finish line
nehlídám or the north
Pořád mi chybí klidný kout I need a harbour to finally rest
v kterém bych mohla spočinout A secure place, a safe comfy nest
Kde ho mám vzít, kam jít, Where can I find one in this hole
a nezaprodat duši svou? Without being forced
to sell my soul?
Každý sám na vlastní pěst Everyone is on their own
Náplast hledá na bolest Looking for a place to call home
Nemusím lítat oblohou No need to streak

across the firmament
Stačí, když stojím na nohou It’s enough to stand tall and unbent
520 Chapter 23
Někdy hůř a někdy líp Good times and bad

Však nemám zač se stydět There’s no shame in that
Vždyť i v tom blátě, co se brodím The mud that I’m wading through
Každá šlápota je vidět Can attest to that

Já ale mám svou čest But I have my honour
a nezaprodám duši svou and won’t sell my soul.
Častokrát mívám sen, I have this dream from time to time
Že někdo bydlí That someone is dwelling

v těle mém in this body of mine
A když už ztrácím And just as I’m starting
víru svou to lose my faith
Tak že mě drží, drží nad vodou Their helping hand will keep me
straight
Někdy se zdá, že snad, Sometimes it seems At night, in the
že někdo tiše šeptá dark Like someone is whispering
Ale je noc a tma But I’m afraid to ask
a já se bojím zeptat
„Kdo vlastně jsi, co chceš “Who are you, what do you want
a proč konejšíš duši mou, And why are you comforting my
zrovna duši mou?“ soul Why my soul?”
Po světě chodím I wander the world

blátem, prachem, kamením in a shabby hat
Však budu líp se mít, to já už vím I will do better, no doubt about that
Nemusím kývat, I’ll do as I please

nemusím plout and I won’t blend in
Stejně budu jednou Out of the woods
za vodou I can be on a whim
Teď prostě vím, co chci I know what I want
a komu svěřím duši svou and I won’t sell my soul
CHAPTER 24
THE SOUL AS A THEME IN AZERBAIJANI

FOLK LITERATURE
SHAHLA KAZIMOVA
Analysis of the theme of the soul within the Azerbaijani folk tradition
is a challenging task, due to the fact that, to date, no comprehensive study
of the topic exists. Bearing in mind the limitations of the subject literature,
the author presents the theme of the “soul” in Azerbaijani folklore based
on research data on the beliefs and rites of the Turkic peoples 1 (since the
Azerbaijanis belong to the Oghuz group of the Turkic family).
In Turkic epic literature, one can find a few terms that carry the meaning
of “soul”. One of them is kut/gut/kat. The epic of Oguz Khan/Oguz
Khagan (Oğuz Kağan) reads as follows: “I give you my mind, my soul”
(in Old Turkic: men seŋä basumnï qutumnï berä men) (Закирова 2011:
277). The word kut/qut had several meanings:
1) “soul, life force, spirit”;

2) “happiness, well-being, grace, success, luck; 2. metaphorically:
“majesty, dignity”;
3) in religious contexts (usually Buddhist): “state of bliss” (Наделяев
in. (ed.) 1969: 471).
While in the modern Azerbaijani language the word is not preserved, it can
be found in the modern Turkish language (which is closest to Azerbaijani)
in the second meaning:
1 To avoid associations with Turkey, the author adopts the term “Turkic” to refer to
a wider group of Turkish peoples (in Russian, the counterpart for this word is
тюркский).
522 Chapter 24
a) “power in state organization, authority due to a type of activity or

experience”;
b) “luck”;
c) in mythology: “prosperity, blessing of divine origin”. 2
In contemporary Turkish, this word root forms the basis for such words as
askutlu “blessed” and kutsal “holy”.
The lack of kut/qut in the meaning of "soul" can be easily explained by
the adoption of Islam by the above-mentioned peoples since the imagery
and vocabulary associated with the concept of the soul were formed within
the religious doctrine of Islam.
What was the common denominator for the various meanings of the
word was that all the concepts it defined were associated with heavenly
nature and originated in God. Ancient Turks 3 imagined the soul as a
substance that is the cause of life, a kind of embryo, a divine charisma
bestowed upon man by the highest deity: tängri. Based on studies
concerning Orkhon inscriptions 4 and other scientific works, I assume that
within the religious concept of the Turks the tängri was a transcendental,
powerful god. By interfering in earthly affairs, the tängri could grant
people prosperity, luck, divine charisma and the soul, which was kut. In
the case of a ruler, being bestowed with kut/gut gave him the status of an
earthly god for the Turks (Tryjarski 1991, 28, 79).
The fact that, according to the beliefs of ancient Turks, the life energy
came from heaven, constitutes a plausible explanation for the association
of the spirit and the soul with a bird. This view is further strengthened by
ancient Orkhon inscriptions in which the word uč (“to fly, to disappear”)
serves to describe the moment of death of nobles and rulers. The
examination of tombstones with figures of birds depicted on them has led
researchers to conclude that the ancient Turks imagined the human soul as
a bird that flew away towards the sky after death (Tryjarski 1991, 78). In
our own times, we can find traces of these representations (to name but
one) in a metaphor for the spirit (ruh) in the Turkish language: “can kuşu”,
2 http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_gts&arama=gts&guid=TDK.GTS.5
9760d573aeff8.70360552 (12.12.2017)
3 Throughout the text, the term “ancient Turks” refers to “ancient Turkic peoples”.
4 The complex of historic tombs located in the Orkhon valley built in honour of the
8th-century rulers of one of the most ancient Turkish peoples: T’u-küe.

The Soul as a Theme in Azerbaijani Folk Literature 523
which can be translated as “the bird of life, the bird of the soul”. 5 It is
possible that it was thanks to the folk tradition that images of the soul as an
elusive being were preserved in the minds of modern Turks. This opinion
finds corroboration in a study conducted by a Turkish researcher, Sedat
Örnek, in his book Death in the folklore of Anatolia. His respondents gave
the following answers to the question “what is the soul like?”: “it is like a
breath, like breathing”; “it is like a dream”; “like a bee”; “like a dove”;
“like a fly”; “like a butterfly or ladybug”; “like a bird”; “it does not have a
definite shape, it is elusive”, etc. (Örnek 1971, 61-62). A Tatar folklorist,
Ilseyar Zakirova, finds similar themes in the folklore of the Turkic
peoples, such as “soul-as-butterfly” or “soul-as-fly”. In the Kyrgyz epic
“Manas”, there is a fragment that states that “the soul is like a fly”. The
Bashkirian poem “Ural-batyr" features a comparison of the soul to a
butterfly; moreover, in a Tatar fairy tale entitled "The Red Rooster", the
human soul is depicted in the form of a yellow fly. When a person sleeps,
his soul flies out of him in the form of a yellow fly. It is only when a fly
flies back into his open mouth that the man is able to wake up (Закирова
2011, 278).
We can also observe the theme of the soul-as-bird in some Azerbaijani
fairy tales. In “The Tale of Malikmammad” (Məlikməmməd nağılı), the
hero goes underground and unsuccessfully fights three immortal divas for
forty days and nights. It is only when the beautiful courtesans reveal that
their hearts are hidden in the glass that Malikmammad manages to destroy
them. As Malikmammad smashes the glass on the ground, a bird escapes
it. The terrified monsters plead with the hero not to kill the bird since they
claimed that it was their soul. When Melikmammad cuts off the heads of
the birds, the divas die and fall from their thrones. In this fragment, we can
see the merging of the concept of life and rulership, i.e. the phenomenon
of kut/qut described above. What is also interesting is that the soul of a
giant is located outside his body. This idea is related to the beliefs of the
ancient peoples, who believed that by hiding one’s soul, one can cheat
death.
As with the Slavic languages, in which we observe a correlation
between the words breath/spirit/soul (oddech/duch/dusza), the Turkic
languages also combine the concepts of breath and soul into a single word:
tyn/tin/tun: ajun tïnï jïlïrdï (“the soul of the world has warmed”). The
5http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_gts&arama=gts&kelime=can kuşu
&guid=TDK.GTS.597cdc6b0793e4.86916701
524 Chapter 24
expression tïn uč (literally: “the flying away of the breath”) means death:
ęr tïnï učdï “the man gave his last breath”; ol anï urup tïnï učurdï “by
striking him, he killed him” (Наделяев in. (ed.) 1969: 567). Similarly to
many other peoples, the ancient Turks realized that the breath is possessed
only by living creatures and that while its presence implies life (the soul),
its absence indicates death. The vocabulary of old Turkish provides some
examples of this dependence. For example, the expression tïn toqïr means
alive, living. In Azerbaijani, this word was replaced by the Arabic word
nafs/nafas. However, in the Turkish language, which is closest to
Azerbaijani, the word is preserved in the meaning of “spirit”. 6
Unlike the modern language, Azerbaijani epic literature retained traces
of ancient mythological motifs, including beliefs associated with the soul.
Due to text volume limitations, only the perception of the soul in destan
will be presented, which is the heroic epic Kitab-ı Dede Gorgud 7 (My
Grandfather Gorgud's Book, KDG). Formed over hundreds of years and
reflecting the primary elements of this people’s morality and beliefs, this
epic is seen as the repository of the cultural memory of the Oghuz Turks.
The first manuscript of the book was found in the Royal Library in
Dresden in the early 19th century and listed in the catalogue as having
been written in the 16th century. In 1815, the German orientalist F. von
Diez donated the copy to the Berlin Library and, being the first to translate
it into German, published the eighth story: The Song about how Basat
killed Tepe-Gioz. The second manuscript was discovered by an Italian
Turkologist, Ettore Rossi, in the Vatican Library, and published in 1952 as
The Second Kitab-i Dede Gorgud together with an extensive preface
(Rossi, 1952). The Vatican manuscript consists of six stories. The Dresden
manuscript is fuller, as it comprises an introduction followed by 12 stories
and is entitled Kitab-i Dədəm Qorqud əla lisan-i taife-i Oğuzan, which
translates into “The Book of my Grandfather Gorgud in the language of
the Oghuz tribes". The book is written in a language close to Azerbaijani.
An analysis of location names also indicates a close relationship not only
with the geography of Azerbaijan but also with Anatolia.
Each of the stories represents a different narrative with a complete and
independent plot, describing the heroic feats of the Oghuz warriors (bəy,
igid). The warriors belonged to the Oghuz community (Oğuz eli), which
6 http://www.tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_gts&arama=gts&kelime=tin&uid
=51740&guid=TDK.GTS.59862e524596a2.54101471 (22.12.2017)
7 In the text, the author gives the Azerbaijani version of the name Gorgud - Korkut,
which is used in the Polish translation of the work and in the Turkish sources.
was headed by a strong and wise ruler, Bayandur Khan. All the stories are
united by one character: Grandfather Gorgud, the Patriarch of the Oghuz, a
sage who gives names to heroes, advises and supports them and defines
moral values and ideals. However, Grandfather Gorgud is not the main
hero in the stories. Thus, the book’s title can be misleading. It is worth
remembering that the stories do not describe any of Gorgud’s adventures.
Gorgud appears only as a performer and creator, as reflected in the
concluding verses of each of the stories: “My grandfather Korkut
composed this song, said the word and created the perennial, he composed
it and said thus” (Żyrmunski, Kononov 2015, 9). Currently, a number of
researchers are trying to determine whether Gorgud had a historical
prototype or was only a legendary figure. However, this aspect is not an
important element of the perspective of this article, so I will not develop it.
Concerning this matter, it is important to emphasize only that Dede Korkut
represents a type of ozan called an ashuk, i.e. a singer who was seen as a
poet-prophet among the Turkic communities.
The crucial aspect of the problem of the perception of the soul is the time
of creation of the text of KDG. Since the adoption of Islam, Azerbaijani
literature has been evolving within the culture of the Middle East. While
the concept of the soul was presented in accordance with the Muslim
mystic philosophy (tasavvuf), the perception of the soul in KDG is
different, as it derives from ancient folk beliefs. Therefore, based on the
analysis of this motif in KDG, it can be concluded that some parts of the
text must have been formed much earlier than they were immortalized in
written form. Comparing the text of the epic with other written and oral
sources from Central Asia and Anatolia, the Russian philologist Viktor
Zhirmunsky comes to the conclusion that this cycle of epic stories
emerged as a collection of heroic songs in the 9th and 10th centuries, in
the period when the Oghuz mainly populated the region of Syr Darya.
According to Zhirmunsky, the migration of the peoples gave rise to
subsequent story layers and new characters. He also claims that the
selection and transcription of the stories took place during the war
expansion of the Ottomans in the 15th century. This, in turn, was aimed at
mythologizing the past and the creation of a symbolic monument of the
former glory and power of the Oghuz ancestors (Жирмунский 1964, 14).
In 1938, the Turkish researcher Orhan Şaik Gökyay, who was first to
transliterate the Dresden manuscript to the Latin alphabet, also believes
that the stories were written down in the second half of the 15th century.
However, after analyzing individual stories, Gökyay reaches the
conclusion that the oldest portions of the text must have been created over
the period from the 6th to the 8th century, i.e. before Islamization. In the
526 Chapter 24
later period (from the 9th to the 11th century), during the migration of the
Oghuz peoples from Syr Darya to the west, new layers, elements and
characters were being added (Gökyay 2013, 11). In his study of the metric
pattern of Turkic epic literature, Zhirmunsky indicates that it is possible to
find the same basic metric structures in many old and new records of
heroic tales of the Turkic peoples of southern Siberia that are present in
KDG (Жирмунский 1964: 18). This confirms the claim that the origins of
the heroic songs from KDG date from even before the 7th century.
However, the most original songs are those that tackle the concepts of the
soul, spirit and death.
The song about Deli 8 Domrul, son of the Spirit of Godja
Before we move on to the analysis of the song V of KDG, we should

note that researchers do not agree on the origins of this story. A renowned
Russian historian, Vasily Bartold, who made a great contribution to the
translation of and studies of KDG, along with his followers, including
Zhirmunsky, believes that the main theme of the song “life for life” was
borrowed from Greek mythology. Deli Domrul was seen as the Greek
Admetus, the king of Pherae, and his dedicated wife as Alkestis who, out
of love for her husband, was willing to die for him to prolong his life. Not
all commentators agree with this, arguing that the theme and the characters
are fully original and have Turkic origins (Sadig 2012). Because of the
scarcity of the source material, a reliable comparative analysis is in this
case impossible; therefore, the author will not focus on this issue. It is only
after reading the text of Song V that one can observe attempts to adapt the
pagan elements to the realities of Islam (the mention of Allah and Azrael).
Therefore, we can assume that, even if the main motif was borrowed,
during the creation of the older layers it was adapted to the existing system
of beliefs of the ancient Oghuz. It is difficult to imagine that some foreign
elements could have been preserved for hundreds of years in the folk oral
traditions without any changes that would adapt them to the current system
of values and beliefs.
The song is about an audacious and self-confident strongman, Deli
Domrul, who decides to rebel against the decision of the Creator and tries
to overcome death. The song begins with Deli Domrul building a bridge
and forcing people to pay for passage. Those who did not want to cross the
8 Mad, audacious, rakish.

bridge were beaten and had to pay even more. Led by the conviction that
he was the strongest, Domrul felt that no one would dare to fight him.
Once he saw a group of people crying near his bridge and asked about the
reason for their grief. It turned out that the family was mourning a young
soldier whose life had been taken by the angel of death, Azrael, according
to God’s command. In an outburst, Deli Domrul challenges Azrael: “What
kind of person is this Azrael that he can just take human souls 9 like that?
Almighty God, as proof that you are one, and that you exist, let Azrael
appear before my eyes, so that I can fight him in a battle and save the soul
of the good jigit and that he shall no longer take the souls of good jigits”
(Żyrmunski, Kononow 2015: 62). This passage confirms that, according to
the beliefs of the Turkic peoples, man, along with other living creatures,
“has a spiritual element that decides on the vital functions of the organism
and that death (...) is the departure of this element from the body”
(Tryjarski 1991: 78).
Annoyed by the attitude of Deli Domrul, God commands Azrael to
take the warrior’s soul (life). When Azrael suddenly appears at the house
of the strong man, Domrul is frightened by the old man’s white beard and
scary eyes:
Woe, who are you, a terrible old man? You were unnoticed by the
gatekeepers; the guards have not spotted you.
My seeing eyes now have become blind. My hands, able to hold, no longer
work (...)
Oh, you old man with a white beard! Oh, you old man with 10 weak eyes!
What kind of horrible man are you?!
Deli Domrul’s words rouse Azrael to anger:
You wicked madman! Why don’t you like my weak (bulging) eyes? It is
often that I take the souls of the girls with blue eyes. Why don’t you like
my white beard? It is often that I take the souls of white-bearded and black-
bearded jigits. That is the reason why my beard turned white.
You wicked madman! You boasted and said: if only the red-winged Azrael
had fallen into my hands, I would have killed him and saved the soul of the
good jigit from his hands - now, you madman, I’ve come to take your soul;
9Here and further, bold by SK.

10In another edition of KDG, this word is translated as ‘bulging’: (Hacıyev 2004,
242)
528 Chapter 24
will you give it to me or will I have to take it from you in battle?

(Żyrmunski, Kononow 2015, 63; Hacıyev 2004, 242)
The figure that emerges from the description resembles more of an evil
spirit than the Malaikat Maut (literally: “the Angel of Death”) mentioned
in the Qur’an. The ancient Turkic tribes, similarly to many other peoples,
believed that death occurs upon the permission of the supreme deity, but
mostly due to the workings of evil spirits (Tryjarski 1991: 64, 81, 89).
Here it is important to note that the song mentions the death of a young
warrior who did not die a natural death, i.e. from old age. The ancient
Turks explained such cases by the fact that the young man is killed by a
spirit who kidnaps or devours his soul (in this story, Domrul says the angel
of death that he “takes the soul like a thief”) (Żyrmunski, Kononow 2015,
63). One such spirit, according to the Altaic Tatars, was körmes (Tryjański
1991, 69). The word körmes can be translated as “invisible” or as “one
who cannot be seen”. Taking into consideration the fact that the song
speaks of the terrible eyes of Azrael and that he entered the room
unnoticed, we are able to conclude that in the original version, Azrael was
körmes or another similar spirit, the messenger of Erlik Khan, the god of
the dead.
As Domrul learns that he faces Azrael, who “takes away the souls of
the good jigits”, he challenges him: “I will kill you and save the life of the
good jigit”. Then he takes his sword and attacks Azrael, who, in the next
instant, turns into a dove and escapes through the window. Domrul mounts
his horse takes his falcon and rushes after the bird in the hope that he will
catch it. After killing a few pigeons, a content Domrul returns home. As
Domrul approaches his house, Azrael suddenly appears before his horse.
The frightened horse throws him down on the ground. Then, Azrael sits on
the chest of the strongman and begins to strangle him. The terrified
Domrul begs Azrael to save his soul. Azrael answers that he is only a
servant, an executor of God’s orders. “So the soul is given and taken by
the supreme God? (...) then go away; I shall speak to the supreme God,”
says Domrul (Żyrmunski, Kononow 2015, 63). The scene of the man’s
struggle with the angel of death, on the one hand, is universal, as it
symbolizes the eternal human struggle with death; on the other, it provides
us with some interesting information about perceptions of the soul after
death. Domrul believes that by killing the angel of death he will release
the soul of the jigit, that is, he will revive him. It may seem that he does
not understand the essence of death. However, we might well assume that
this scene is a relic of the belief that the soul before it enters the world of
the dead, can continue its earthly life for a certain period of time. A
manifestation of this conviction was strong empathy for some animals,
such as dogs, commonly exhibited in the Turkish East that shocked foreign
observers, since for Muslims these are considered unclean. In the context
of the medieval Ottoman Empire, the Polish historian M. Bałczewski calls
this attitude “the Ottoman humanitarianism”. According to him, the basis
for this phenomenon “was a common belief that before the soul finally
leaves the world, it needs to go through a number of reincarnation cycles
to be reborn in the bodies of other living beings” (Bałczewski 2001, 203).
Further developments in the Song strengthen us in the belief that the
Turks directly associated death with the loss of the soul, as well as
illustrating their approach. As with any person, Domrul is afraid of death,
but despite this, he displays a stoic attitude towards it. The only thing he
asks of God is that he takes his soul Himself. Here, a question arises: is
there a difference between whether the soul is taken by God or by the
angel of death? After all, according to the narrative, Azrael only executes
God’s command. Domrul himself argues that “the soul is given and taken
by the Almighty God.” This motif reinforces our belief that Azrael from
KDG is not the Quranic Malaikat Maut, but an evil spirit hated by the
ancient Turks. For nomadic Turks, forced to live in the harsh conditions of
the steppes and fight for survival on a daily basis, death was commonplace.
However, they usually chose to die on a battlefield by the hands of an
enemy instead of in a yurt. “A death in a yurt, especially from old age, was
a shameful thing and was to be avoided” (Tryjarski 1991, 65-66). Let us
remember that Azrael wanted to kill Domrul in his house. It is possible
that in the original version the warrior asked God for a dignified death.
The Song features the motif of “a life for a life”, meaning “a soul for a
soul”. Domrul shows repentance and humility before God, for which he
receives a chance to save his soul in exchange for another soul: “(...) let
the audacious Domrul find another soul for his place, and his soul will be
free” (Żyrmunski, Kononow 2015, 64). First, the protagonist asks his
father and his mother to give their souls for him. When both parents
refuse, the resigned Domrul asks for the last meeting with his beloved
wife. Domrul’s loving and faithful wife cannot imagine life without him,
so she swears: “let God Almighty be my witness that I will sacrifice my
soul for your soul” (Żyrmunski, Kononow 2015, 65). When Azrael comes
for the soul of his wife, Domrul prays that he either takes both souls or
spares them. The spouses’ attitude is appreciated by God, who decides to
take the “breath and the souls” (Żyrmunski, Kononow 2015, 66) of
Domrul’s parents and give Domrul and his wife one hundred and forty
years of life. As already noted, researchers continue to argue as to the
origins of the “a life for a life” motif. In our view, regardless of the plot,
530 Chapter 24
the Song of Deli Domrul corresponds to the concept of the soul of the
ancient Turks.
According to these people, the soul was the vital energy that ensured
man’s existence in earthly life and was able to fly away to another world
to continue its existence there. This, in turn, implied that a person passed
from one world to another. In the Song XI of KDG, that tells how Salur
Gazan was taken prisoner, we can find traces of these convictions. In the
story, Gazan Khan is captured and thrown into a well. One day, the wife of
the governor, due to her curiosity, comes and talks to him as if he were a
living person but belonging already to the world of the dead:
The woman said loudly: “Gazan-bey, how do you feel? Is your life under
earth better than this life on earth? What do you drink, what do you ride?"
Kazan replied: "When you give food to your dead, I take (it) from their
hands; I mount the most lively of your dead and keep lazy on a rein...". The
governor's wife said, "by your faith, Gazan-bey! I lost my seven-year-old
daughter; please show her mercy and do not ride on her back". Gazan said,
“There is no livelier thing among your dead than her; I ride her all the
time!”. (Żyrmunski, Kononow 2015, 102)
As we can see from the excerpt, the ancient Turks viewed the afterlife
as a continuation of the earthly life, but in another world. In our opinion,
the conceptions of the soul/life presented may account for the ambiguity of
the contemporary word can, which in Azerbaijani denotes either soul or
body, as well as the vagueness of the concepts of the soul and the spirit in
the Turkic languages (can and ruh).
Islamization led to the supersession of many beliefs from pagan times.
Nevertheless, similarly to the permafrost in the Altai, that store the ancient
burial mounds for thousands of years, so Azerbaijani folk literature has
preserved elements of the beliefs of Azerbaijani ancestors. Today, it can
serve as a mirror, reflecting the views of our ancestors about their world,
and also existential notions, including the soul and human life.
References
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Summary
The elements of the ancient religious and ritual traditions of the Turkic people,
including the Azerbaijanis, can be traced on the basis of an analysis of their
folk literature. The oral tradition is very deeply rooted in the culture of the
Turkic peoples. The person creating the songs and stories was called an ozan, a
bard and poet. The ozan (from the Oghuz Turkic language) or akyn (another
name for ozan used among the Turks of Central Asia) told stories about the
present, the past and the future, the earthly life as well as the afterlife. In the
present paper, the author focuses on the heroic epic entitled Kitab-i Dede
532 Chapter 24
Gorgud (My Grandfather Gorgud’s Book), the most interesting material in the
context of the research on the beliefs of the Oghuz Turks. Kitab-i Dede Gorgud
features traces of shamanistic culture along with the influences of the Muslim
civilisation that came after. An analysis of individual stories from this epic
allows the recreation of the history of changes in the perception of existential
values, such as life and death, man’s relationship to the surrounding reality,
notions of good and evil, sin, duty, justice and other concepts. Another
interesting factor is the perception of the human soul.
Keywords: soul, spirit, Turkic folk literature, epic, Kitab-i Dede Gorgud.
CHAPTER 25
THE SOUL AND THE PARTICULAR JUDGEMENT

IN THE BELIEFS OF THE INHABITANTS
OF OPOCZNO AND RADOM REGIONS
ZDZISŁAW KUPISIŃSKI SVD

JOHN PAUL II CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LUBLIN, POLAND
For living people, the afterlife constitutes one of the most puzzling
mysteries of life. Partial answers to this crucial question are offered by
some religions and philosophical systems. Christianity establishes its
views based on biblical passages about the creation of man: "And the Lord
God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life, and man became a living soul." (Genesis 2, 7), assuming
that the human soul is derived directly from God. Christians believe in the
immortality of the soul that leaves the body at death and begins eternal
life. At the time of this transition from the earthly life to the "other world",
each person stands up before God's judgement and gives an account of his
life (Rouvillois 2002, 1704, Bourgeois 2002, 1929-1931). 1
This article presents the beliefs of the inhabitants of the Opoczno and
Radom regions (most of them Catholics) on the afterlife, starting from
death and the soul’s wandering towards the “other world” to meet God the
Judge. The eschatological image of the underworld is represented, among
other things, by the mourning songs sung during funerals by the
inhabitants of the study area, which are deeply rooted in the folk vision of
the world and man. The motifs and reflections on the “other world” were
also derived from the teachings of the Church and Christian reflection.
Funeral songs were stored in manuscripts passed down from generation to
1 Quotes from the Scripture are taken from Pismo Święte Starego i Nowego
Testamentu. Biblia Tysiąclecia. III edition. Poznań – Warszawa 1980.

534 Chapter 25
generation, as well as in some older editions of prayer books used by

fraternities.
The study was conducted on the basis of religious and theological
literature, and above all on the material gathered by the author during
stationary ethnographic field research carried out in the Opoczno and
Radom regions (Central Poland) during the period of 1995-2005 (a total of
414 days) concerning the funeral and All Souls' Day ceremonial. In
addition, the study is based on comparative, phenomenological and
theological science methods. The first part of the paper will present the
dying and the vision of the soul's wandering to the other world, while the
subsequent part will focus on the particular judgement of the soul and its
consequences.
25.1. Dying
For believers, the act of dying results in the soul's "departure" from the
body and its subsequent journey into the underworld. For Christians, the
journey's aim is to meet the risen Christ. The witnesses gathered around
the dying person at home (since the home was still the usual place to pass
away back in the 70s of the last century) were exposed to the dramatic fact
of death by watching their dying relative suffer as he departed from this
world. For the dying man, the event is the personal experience of death, a
transition from the present to an unknown eternity. For the persons
surveyed here, death is a natural phenomenon, as many of them state: "he
who was born must also die". After a long or short period of illness, when
there was no hope for salvation, the dying subjected themselves to "God's
will" and the relatives who were gathered around them prayed, asking God
and the patrons of good death (St. Barbara, St. Joseph, the Virgin Mary, St.
Michael and others) to "let death come upon the dying and end his pain",
to deliver him from physical and spiritual torments and to take him to
heaven (Kupisiński 2006, 148, Idem 2007, 149; Idem 2008, 151, cf.
Perszon 1999, 125-145).
A candle, called a gromnica, was usually lit next to the dying man’s
bed. If he was able to hold it, they gave it to him with the following words:
“hold on to this tree so that it leads you to heaven.” The moribund person
was sprinkled with Holy water, prayers were said, and a scapular or a
rosary was placed on his neck. Some died in pain and suffering, others
passed away calmly, without anxiety or despair, as if they were falling
asleep. Among the respondents, a recurring belief was that "as we live, so
we shall end". If the dying person was a good man who kept God's
commandments, his death was peaceful. Persons who had not enjoyed a
The Soul and the Particular Judgement in the Beliefs of the Inhabitants 535
of Opoczno and Radom Regions
good reputation (who squabbled with neighbours and violated the

commandments) suffered a painful death. According to the persons
surveyed, a bad death was ascribed to those "who sold their soul to Satan".
By praying over the dying person, the relatives wished to lead his soul
safely to God, since, as it was argued, the moribund may be taken either by
heaven's inhabitants or by the evil spirits that attempt to capture a man's
soul (Kupisiński 2006, 148, Idem 2007, 148-150, cf. Perszon 1999, 136-
137).
Some respondents claim that after death the body should be left alone
for some time (about an hour) because the soul does not immediately
depart towards God and it is necessary to behave with dignity as "the dead
can hear everything". The relatives gathered around the dying must not
weep or cry loudly because, according to some people surveyed, "the
dying man would feel pity about leaving this world and that would prolong
his suffering" (Kupisiński 2007, 153).
25.2. The soul in the particular judgement
For Christians, the death of a person is a form of transition to another

non-material world. The belief in an individual’s life beyond death is
expressed by the Church in its doctrine. The eschatological beliefs of the
inhabitants of the Opoczno and Radom regions are based on the teachings
of the Catholic Church, presented, among others, in the Catechism of the
Catholic Church. The Catechism emphasises that the soul was created
directly by God and will finally be joined with the body again at the time
of the Parousia. The Church teaches that
Every man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very
moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ:
either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification or
immediately, or immediate and everlasting damnation. (CCC 1022).
The death experienced by a believer has a dimension of hope and love

because it opens up the way to God the Father. After death, the soul does
not lose its basic qualities, which include awareness, freedom of will and
rational cognition. In death, one is freed from purely human and worldly
thinking and enters a new world permeated by God’s existence. The
inhabitants of the Radom and Opoczno regions believe that, immediately
after one’s death, the soul comes before God the Judge to account for all a
man’s deeds, words and thoughts. Depending on the decision taken by the
Judge, the soul may go to heaven, purgatory or hell (cf. 2 Corinthians 5,
10, Strzelecka 1979: 1111, Łydko 1998, 522-523, Kupisiński 2007, 75).
536 Chapter 25
In folk consciousness, the time of death reveals the full truth about
human life. The soul, standing face to face with Christ, experiences inner
enlightenment and receives an intellectual act of recognition of its deeds.
This meeting of the soul with Christ makes the person recognise his
sinfulness and unworthiness, as he himself becomes his own judge as if
administering self-punishment. Christ, as the God of love and mercy,
desires that each man should achieve eternal life since he gave his life for
every man. Respondents believe that while living his life on earth, a
person prepares a place for himself in eschatological reality by adopting
various attitudes towards God and his neighbours (cf. Matthew 25, 31-46).
The threshold of death reveals only the truth about oneself, where "the
soul can see all his/her life" and can observe its internal state which is
either subject to purification (purgatory), happiness (heaven), or the
punishment of hell. Therefore, according to the persons surveyed, the state
of heaven immediately after death can be reached only by those whose
conduct during their earthly existence was impeccable, and who heroically
pursued evangelical counsels, as well as by martyrs who gave their life for
Christ. These are the men about whom we read in the Book of Revelation:
"These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their
robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," (7,14), and through
this they have become worthy to see God “as he is” (1 John 3:2) (see
Kupisiński 2007, 75-77).
The majority of residents of the study area (particularly older
respondents) lived with an awareness of awaiting death and particular
judgement “where one has to give an account of his entire life”, which
made them strive to keep the commandments of God in everyday life.
There existed among the respondents a fear of death and of the encounter
with the merciful, yet just, God. This fear, however, is indicative of their
humility and the awareness that they stand before the Holy God as sinners.
We could assume from the inhabitants’ opinions that, for them, death is a
natural thing that brings justice. It spares no one, because “everyone has to
die, the poor and the rich; that’s the only justice in this world” (Kupisiński
2007, 57). This deep faith and confidence of the people in God are
particularly visible in the mourning songs sung by the mourners, for the
Merciful Father can forgive all sinners (but only if they show repentance)
and cleanse penitents for the sake of Christ’s sacrifice. It is Christ who is
entrusted with their life after death, an idea expressed in the song “Christ
the Lord is my life”:
Christ the Lord is my life, he rewards me generously

To him, I will give myself and die in peace
Calmly now I go to my Christ
I hope to gain eternal life (...).
Let me join in God's majesty

And never part, and always look at You
Now the body is carried to the dark grave
And the soul must stand before God the Judge.
And give an account of its earthly life

All the good or bad that it had done
As there is no time to shout: o, righteous Judge
Let my wretched soul be treated mercifully. (Kupisiński 2007, 189-190)
The song Day of Wrath presents the feeling of horror, fear and
nothingness that accompanies man when he stands to face the strict Judge
beyond the gates of death. The soul standing before God must repent and
ask for the mercy of eternal salvation. The song is kept in the form of a
prayer that is intended to make God show mercy towards the dead. The
soul asks for help and mercy so that it does not have to wander in the
afterlife, but may instead be received into eternal joy and sit next to the
Creator:
(...) What shall say I, the miser,

And to whom shall I run,
Where the Saint has his shelter.
O king, dreadful in your splendour,

You save us with Your love,
Spare me, o source of all mercy,
Remember, Lord, my dear Saviour,

I am the cause of Your Calvary,
Do not abandon me on this doomsday (...).
You absolved the Virgin Mary

And forgave the thief his sins,
And strengthened my hope (...).
Humbled and remorseful I ask you,

And with a contrite heart,
That I may not die abandoned.
What great weeping on that day,

When the sinner will rise from the ashes
To stand trial!
538 Chapter 25
O God, spare them the punishment,

Our Merciful Lord Jesus,
And give them everlasting rest. (Kupisiński 2007, 557-558)
The inhabitants of the study area claim that the souls of those who had
prayed fervently to God to be with Him in heaven, and fulfilled good
deeds towards others, may see God “face to face”. The respondents also
trusted in the support of the Guardian angel during the soul’s last journey
and expressed a hope that he may guide the soul to heaven, which is
depicted in the song “My Guardian Angel”:
(...) I shall read the decree, and you will get your reward
For the whole of your life
From the generous God.
You will take the reward, it is ready

Why are you frightened
My dear soul?
You are frightened, yet I stand with you

I am your Guardian Angel
I say to you.
I am the Guardian Angel and the guide

Who leads the souls
To heaven.
I shall take your plight before the Good Lord

Let not the soul
Be punished harshly.
And when you stand on heaven’s threshold

Remember to give glory
To your Almighty God.
O Blessed Lady, intercede for us

Together with Saint Joseph and Saint Anne (...). (Kupisiński 2007, 574)
According to the respondents, entry to heaven can be granted only

through the mercy of God and a noble life with a ‘baggage' of good deeds.
The folk vision of heaven is particularly clearly conveyed in the words of
the song "In the cemetery, I shall live":
(...) There roses bloom and lilies,

And never-wilting wreaths are made
The Lamb’s company they enjoy,

Because without sin they die,
I go to my Jesus,
My soul rejoices in Him,
It left my body,
And now stands among Angels (...). Kupisiński 2007, 575)
The vision of heaven in the folklore songs describes it as paradise since

eschatological time always involves the renewal of the whole cosmos. In
the perfected world, the changing seasons cease to exist and the flowers
are always blooming and retain their freshness. Thus, the wreaths for the
Lamb may always be woven. People imagined heavenly existence as a sort
of "wedding feast" where one should be clad in festive attire. Those
dressed in white robes are little children who died prematurely, as well as
those who have kept a state of inner purity in their life (Lurker 1989, 42-
43). This concept is presented in the song “Goodbye Dear Parents”:
(...) I leave this miserable world,

I have not suffered its deceptions,
I walk straight to the eternal wedding,
Towards the spotless Lamb.
Dressed in the white robe I received

At my baptism in church,
Which no sin has ever stained
I sit down for the wedding (...). (Kupisiński 2007, 99, 624-625)
Between heaven and hell, according to the teachings of the Catholic

Church as well as the beliefs of the inhabitants of the Opoczno and Radom
regions, there is purgatory. This is the place for those who died in grace
and friendship with God, but have yet to rehabilitate themselves in order to
be able to dwell in the joy of heaven (cf. KKK 2002: 1030-1032).
Purgatory is, therefore, a place and a state of temporary redemption for the
souls of people who died in universal sin and those who passed away
before serving their earthly punishment (Strzelecka 1979, 939-941).
In the folk imagination, purgatory, as a place for repentant souls to be
cleansed from sins committed, is seen in a number of ways. A record
found in Wroclaw preserved an antique folk song from 1419 that shows
the fate of the soul after death. The song is well-known in the Opoczno
region:
540 Chapter 25
A soul out of the body flew,

And on a green meadow stood
Stood firmly and wept dearly.
Then St. Peter to her came:
“Why, oh soul, do you weep so?”
Said she:
"I will not cry so dearly.

But I have no place to go.”
Said St. Peter: “Come, sweet soul
I shall take you to the heavenly Kingdom.” (Budzik 1955, 35; cf. Kupisiński
2000, 107-108).
The cry of the soul implies that it does not yet reside in paradise, but
awaits entry to full happiness. In order to escape from this temporary state,
the soul asks for the help not only of people living on earth, but also of
those living in heaven: Michael the Archangel, the Guardian Angel, the
Virgin Mary, and the Lord’s Saints. The song was frequently performed as
part of the All Saints’ Day celebrations and thus became a popular folk
song. It was sung mainly for educational reasons, as it makes the listeners
aware of the soul’s punishment and its inability to find a place for itself
after death (Kupisiński 2007: 92-93; cf. Wyka 1968: 619-627; Turek 1993:
59-60).
According to the teachings of the Church:
(…) the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin go to hell
immediately after death and suffer the torments of the "eternal flame". The
main punishment of hell consists of an eternal separation from God, as it is
only God's presence that can give the man the life and happiness for which
he was created and which he desires. (KKK 2002: 1035)
In regard to the visions of hell, the respondents emphasised that the

cursed souls dwell in the fire, feel the urge “to drink water to cool
themselves” and “boil in a cauldron full of tar”. They are in hell because
“they chose Satan and damnation and thus condemned themselves to it”.
Many of these images are taken from biblical descriptions (Kupisiński
2007, 105, cf. Perszon 1999, 103-107, Bylina 1992, 88-89). Contrition for
insults made to God and the consequences of these choices are the topic of
another mourning song entitled “A Contrite Heart’s Lament”:
Who will give my eyes a river of tears?

For I shall cry forever
Because I, a hardened sinner,
By my futile whims
Dared to offend
The Lord of eternal glory
Everlasting God. (Kupisiński 2007, 106)
The song features the monologue of a soul reflecting on its past life
and describes it as a time of "futile whims". Within the perspective of
eternity, sensual and bodily pleasures and offences against God are
disproportionate to the consequences, hence the necessity for repentance
after death. Souls staying in hell regret their sinful behaviour because,
from the eternal perspective, these were merely short moments of joy
experienced by "miserable dust, who dared to shamefully offend the
Creator”. The soul is not able to save itself from the hellish sufferings, as
its only hope is God’s mercy:
Let me be cast into hell’s den

And burn there for my mortal sins,
Scorched by an eternal fire,
My wrongs cannot be righted
Lest I am pardoned,
My insult
Shall never be amended.
O! More loathsome is my mortal sin,

Then all hell's fire and all eternity,
I shall not satisfy the hurt,
In that dreadful valley
But for the blood of His Son
The debt of my sin may only be forgiven
By the merciful God. Amen. (Kupisiński 2007, 570-571)
For the inhabitants of the Opoczno and Radom regions, the particular
judgement is the revelation of truth. Within it, the soul stands face to face
with Christ, experiencing inner enlightenment that helps to reckon its
actions. The confrontation of one's own life with Christ makes the person
notice his sinfulness and the nothingness of his past existence. He can
understand what place he has prepared for himself in eschatological reality
while he adopted these and other attitudes to God and his neighbours
during his earthly life (cf. Matthew 25, 31-46). Thus, the particular
judgement consists of an indication of the soul's place, i.e. whether it is the
state of happiness in heaven, purification in purgatory or suffering in hell
(Kupisiński 2007, 104-106).
542 Chapter 25
***
In the present study, we have discussed the folk vision of dying, the
soul’s departure from the body and the particular judgement, after which
the soul goes to heaven, purgatory, or hell. In the context of death, the
superiority of the soul over the body is manifested, which is further
emphasised by the songs and prayers widely known and cited by the older
generation. The fate of the human soul and the vision of the afterlife is
shown by the example of selected mourning songs which feature a number
of both biblical and folk elements. The songs contain numerous poetic
images of the dead man’s journey to his last judgement. Before he stands
face to face with God, he has to say goodbye to his family and relatives
gathered at his home. Surrounded by a prayer vigil, the moribund person
takes his last breath and his soul goes to the meeting with the Judge on
“the other side of life”. Filled with God’s light, the soul performs, as it
were, a self-judgement over its past life. Depending on the accumulation
of “good deeds” of timeless value, it may be rewarded with a happy
eternal existence in heaven, be in need of cleansing in purgatory and
preparing itself for the state of Holiness, or go directly into the state of hell
if it chose Satan instead of God. The songs very vividly illustrate the
majesty of death and the atmosphere that surrounds it. The vision of a
place full of horrible punishments was used primarily as a pedagogical tool
that encouraged people to reflect on their lives if they wanted to avoid
suffering in hell or a heavy penance in purgatory. The supplications are
aimed directly towards God the Father or interceded by the patron saints of
good death; the believers also entrust their fate to the redemptive sacrifice
of Jesus Christ. The songs manifest the hope for purification through the
risen Christ, whose grace can heal human suffering in purgatory.
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Summary
The article presents the fate of the human soul during the transition from this
world to eternity. The publication was based on ethnographic field research
conducted by the author during the years 1995-2005 among the inhabitants of the
Opoczno and Radom regions (Central Poland) and the literature on the subject. The
respondents interviewed were Catholics, so their vision of dying and the journey of
the soul were shaped not only by the folk imagery of the afterlife but also by the
teachings of the Catholic Church.
In the first part, we discuss dying (in the past this was in the family home) and
the concerns about the dying person’s soul shown by the family. The moribund
person was surrounded by prayer, and his or her soul was entrusted to God and the
patrons of good death (Our Lady, St. Joseph, St. Barbara, St. Gertrude and others)
to carry it safely to meet the risen Christ on “the other side of life”. Among the
people studied there was a belief that at the moment of human death, both good
and bad spirits fight for one’s soul, wanting to win it.
The second part presents a particular judgement, where a person's earthly life is
reckoned by taking into account good and bad deeds against God and other people.
Depending on the decision of this court, the soul goes to heaven – a place of
happiness and of being with God and the saints; purgatory – where it repents for
the sins committed and cleanses itself internally in order to reach heaven in the
future, or hell, where souls that have chosen Satan are sent. The vision of the
particular judgement and the fate of the soul afterwards have been presented on the
basis of folk funeral songs chanted during funeral rites.
Keywords: soul, death, particular judgement, heaven, purgatory, hell.

CHAPTER 26
THE SOUL AS A TRANSMITTER OF VALUES.

SELECTED FIRST-PERSON EPITAPHS ON
POLISH AND ROMANIAN HEADSTONES
KARINA STEMPEL-GANCARCZYK
OF SCIENCES
26.1. Introduction
Within European Christian culture, the concept of the cemetery as a

sacred and inviolate space was taken over from the Roman tradition, and
the oldest Christian burial sites were isolated from ancient pagan
cemeteries. They were under the protection of the clergy from as early as
the 3rd century; next, codification of laws and acts defined and clarified
their sacred character (e.g. the Roman Council, in 1059, gave cemeteries
the status of “holy fields”, and those who desecrated them were subjected
to a curse; the synod of Sieradz, in 1233, imposed excommunication on
those desecrating a cemetery, etc.) (Kolbuszewski 1996a, 41-44).
The relationship to death has changed and evolved over the centuries.
J. Kolbuszewski distinguishes in this the following phases:
1. the time of pre-Christian culture;

2. the time of the formation of the Christian understanding of the
essence of death—including the concept of “tamed death” or
“expected death”—and this phase lasts until the late Enlightenment,
the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the
emergence of the first pre-romantic tendencies; during this period
cemeteries were located mainly next to churches;
3. the period of understanding death mainly as the “death of the
other”, initiated by the establishment of large extra-urban cemeteries
(Kolbuszewski 1996a, 94-95).
546 Chapter 26
Cemeteries around the world are perceived as cultural texts. Their

analysis is not only a source of statistical data but also allows for the
formulation of conclusions regarding the communities that erected them
(Lewicka 2017, 11-12), as well as their relationship to death, manifested in
the communication of the living with the dead in the form of grave
inscriptions. The inspiration for writing this article was the question posed
by Philippe Ariès: did the dead “recover their voices” in the 12th century,
after centuries of silence (gravestones disappeared from cemeteries in the
Old Christian era) and did they begin to address the living again? (Ariès
1989, 215). The starting point for further reflections on the “voice of
souls” was the inscriptions on the gravestones of the Cimitirul Vesel; the
“Merry Cemetery” in Săpânţa in Romania, which the author came across
during research. From the colourful gravestones, the dead “speak” to the
living in the first-person, telling them about their lives, admonishing and
sometimes giving advice. Hence, the question about “talking souls”, for
which the Merry Cemetery was the model, was placed within the context
of selected Polish cemeteries and Romanian cemeteries. The research area
covered cemeteries from areas of southern Poland 1 and cemeteries in
Carpathian Bucovina 2 : Polish (Catholic) cemeteries and Romanian
(Orthodox and Catholic) cemeteries.
In this study, it was decided to use the term “grave
inscriptions/inscriptions” rather than “epitaphs”, accepting the arguments
of J. Kolbuszewski that “epitaphs” are a genealogically marked term and
therefore do not always correspond to the material under study. “The
terminology with which we have to deal, although formally strict and
connected with the distant tradition of the phenomena of interest to us and
with various genealogical studies, does not always turn out to be fully
adequate to the essence of literary and cultural phenomena that we want to
observe here (...)” (Kolbuszewski 1996b, 33).
Gravestone inscriptions can be divided into the following types,
according to Lewicka (Lewicka 2017, 211-217):
1 Cemeteries in Olkusz, Miechów and Zawiercie districts, and the cemetery in

Pińczów.
2 For the purpose of the article I used materials obtained as part of the research for
the grant “Polish language in Carpathian Bucovina. Documentation of

disappearing national heritage” 2015-2018, NPRH, project no. 1bH 15 0354 83,
affiliation: Institute of Slavic Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences in
Warsaw.
The Soul as a Transmitter of Values 547
a) basic information (names and surnames, dates of death and—not

always occurring—births, being daily or yearly dates);
b) information referring to the life of the buried (on some graves there
are mentions of their profession, sometimes supplemented with a
graphic symbol symbolizing the profession, as well as information
on achievements or distinctions);
c) epitaph (most often religious inscriptions);
d) other types of emotional references to the deceased (this category
includes references to the causes of death such as “He died a tragic
death”);
e) traditional inscriptions and their abbreviations (RIP, DOM);
f) other inscriptions (their carriers are commemorative plaques,
obelisks, memorial monuments).
The cemetery is a space in which multidirectional communication

functions, which is clearly seen in the example of epigraphy—firstly, the
sender of the message may be a deceased person referring to God or to the
living, this could be a group of close people or the whole community; also,
third parties, e.g. a passer-by. The transmitters of messages may also be
alive, and the recipients, as before, God, the community or the deceased
himself. The message is also the voice of God himself (e.g. in the form of
quotations from the Bible—words of God the Father or Jesus Christ. Such
inscriptions are found in denominational cemeteries), who speaks in the
words of the Scriptures. The cemetery as a semiotic landscape is often a
carrier of didactic content, best reflected precisely in epigraphy (Kolbuszewski
1985, 310; Kolbuszewski 1996b, 164). Gravestones can be treated as an
area crossing the border between life and death: a dialogue between the
community of believers and their dead, performing similar functions as old
rituals (burning fire, drinking at the tombs, etc.) (Sikora 1986, 65-66).
26.2. Do the dead still “speak”? Cemetery in Săpânţa
As mentioned in the introduction, the starting point for the search for
inscriptions in which the deceased directs his message to the living or to
God, speaking in the first-person, became a Romanian cemetery in
Săpânţa in the Maramureş region, usually referred to as the Merry
Cemetery. Săpânţa is a necropolis which, as Zofia Stecka writes, deviates
from the stereotypical image of the place of eternal rest as a space of
reflection and seriousness. The cemetery, located on a meadow adjacent to
the village buildings, located about 18 km from Sighetu Marmaţiei, is a
unique burial place. The colourful, uniformly-shaped tombstones are made
548 Chapter 26
of lumber produced from sawn wood, 30 cm wide, 13 cm high and 10 cm

thick. Each is crowned with an isosceles cross, ending in a steep peak. The
colour polychrome, which covers the whole tombstone, is divided into
front and back parts: images of the deceased are shown on the front, and
short rows of inscriptions are shown below. Although they may seem
“funny” at first (Stecka 1984), reading the inscriptions allows one to
conclude that the impression of comedy is mainly due to the context: the
juxtaposition of the taboo and the sacred, which is the cemetery, with the
form of the poems (cf. Kocój, Niedźwiedź 2003). An example of this is the
inscription on the grave of the originator of this unique form of the
cemetery: “I did not do anything wrong in my life / I painted, I loved and I
drank a little” (Stecka 1984). The images on the tombstones depict scenes
from the lives of the deceased persons, most often in their daily activities,
and the poems carry onomastic information, data on professions, family
situations, grievances, petitions and admonitions (illustration 1).
Illustration 1. Colourful tombstones in Săpânţa. Phot. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk
The founder of the cemetery was Stan Ioan Pătraş (1908-1977), a

carpenter from the Maramureş region, located in north-western Romania.
His interest in tombstones developed as a result of his creative work: the
carving of house elements, roof rafters, entrance gates, church doors, and
household furniture, and Orthodox crosses, etc., which—according to local
tradition—are decorated with stars, moons, mythical trees of life, flowers,
people and animals. Pătraş built a house that was an artistic vision of the
region in which he was born and lived: on the façade, he placed portraits
of prominent representatives of Romanian literature (M. Eminescu, I.
Creanga and G. Coşbuc) and national heroes. Inside, there are carved
chairs, miniature crosses, religious scenes and scenes from the everyday
life of the inhabitants of the Maramureş region (such as “Shepherds with
sheep”, “Marriage in Maramureş”, “Gate of Maramureş”) (Săpânţa 2006:
10-12). Pătraş carved and painted the first cross in 1948. Then he created
more, covering them with colours symbolizing the harmony of natural
phenomena:
Green slowly emerges from the blue background - a symbol of life, forest,
the colour of embroideries on sheepskin coats of peasants from
Maramureş. Yellow is the colour of the sun, fertility and grain, fertility,
straw hats for boys and women's cloaks. Red - the colour of passion and
suffering, passion and fire, embroidery on wedding veils of girls and men’s
coats. Black is death, struggle, jealousy and the west. Against the
background of all these colours, blue is the symbol of complement, heaven,
hope. These five colours of the Săpînţa cemetery are like the sculptor’s
response to five periods of human life. Birth, youth, maturity, old age,
death. Life cycle. Fullness. (Kocój, Niedźwiedź 2003)
Tombstones—both graphic representations and rhymed inscriptions—

illustrate the history of life, and often also the circumstances of the death
of individual people, especially in the event of a tragic or sudden death.
Ewa Kocój and Anna Niedźwiedź call the world presented in the cemetery
in Săpânţa “the upside down world”: “As if from the second world, the
deceased himself addressed us directly and talked about himself - his
faults, virtues, pain, occupation, the sense of life”. Under the guise of
grotesque and merriment, there is a melancholy that the individual
confession of the dead is responsible for. Stan Ioan Pătraş sculpted about
180 crosses; he also educated his successor, Popa Dumitru Tincu, who has
continued to sculpt and paint more tombstones to this day. Surrounded by
older graves, we find completely fresh ones from just a few months ago.
The laughter present in the cemetery probably has its origin in the
cultural past: “Romanians like to say that old warriors on the eve of every
great battle cultivated the ritual of laughter at death that threatened them.
So—laughter as a cleansing! However, he who laughed at death also
challenged her to a duel” (Kocój, Niedźwiedź 2003). Among others,
550 Chapter 26
Mircea Eliade also studied the magic of the mingling of life and death in
Romania:
Romanians identify with the magnificent, poetic folk poem, entitled

Mioriţa (...), which most fully reflects the attitude of the Romanian soul
towards death. Death is not perceived as an act of turning into nothingness
or as a pseudo-existence of dead souls in the underground kingdom. On the
contrary, it is considered a mystical wedding act through which a man is
restored to nature again. (Eliade 1997: 79)
“The mystical act of marriage” of a deceased person with nature has a

dimension in Romania that seems to be hardly present in our Polish culture
(cf. Stempel 2016, 112). The dead at the Merry Cemetery talk about their
lives, and from their stories, the living can learn about worldliness. This is
so in the case of Popa George’s grave (died 1969), who wonders whether
death is not a punishment for the fact that perhaps his behaviour was not
always right:
Poate camfăcut şi rău Maybe it was bad and for that
cam fost şi pedepsit eu somehow I was punished
(Săpânţa 2006, 133)
The inscriptions are addressed directly to the living, such as a poem in

which a young man tells of a life full of music (his brothers played
instruments, and he enjoyed it); death reached him in the prime of life, at
the time when he should have been preparing for the wedding. The most
important value in this tombstone is life: youth and joy. The deceased
turns to his parents, and at the same time to all the living, with a request to
keep him in mind: it seems that the earthly life and things connected with
it are the only planes of communication. There is no asking for prayer,
only for remembrance:
Vă uitaţi şi-aici la mine You’re looking at me here

că-n lume mia fost şi bine seeing I enjoyed the world
căci iimi mai plăcea una (among other things) I enjoyed
cu-ai mei fraţi a mă distra playing with my brothers
ei îmi cîntau eu jucam they played, I danced
şi pe toţi noi îi distram we made people smile
pe cînd m-am avut însura and when the time of marriage came
iată m-a căutat moartea death looked into my eyes
şi mi-a luat viaţa and took my life
voi parinţi mei cei dragi my dear parents
vă mîngîiaţi cu ceilalţi find joy in others
şi vă zic la toţi cu bine and I tell you

şi să nu uitaţi de mine not to forget me
cît veţi mai trăi pe lume until the end of your days
(Săpânţa 2006: 98)
The inscriptions from the Merry Cemetery contain direct indications of

what temporal existence should look like. For example, on the tombstone
of a woman who died in 1958 at the age of 78 (as the inscription informs
us), one can read a poem in which the recipe for a successful life and
multiplying wealth is breeding calves and giving full dedication to this
work, just as the deceased did. In this case, again, life becomes the
dominant value:
Cine vre strînge avere Who wants to multiply wealth

crească viţăi cu plăcere should joyfully look after calves
şi să scoale diminiaţă getting up at dawn
eu aşam fost în viaţă as I did throughout my life
(Săpânţa 2006: 143)
Another inscription, on the tombstone of a deceased resident of the

village (from 1952), is part of the previously presented concept of dialogue
with the living. A description of the deceased's life is both a hint for the
living and a description of the most important values: an honest life and
accepting both good and evil, with peace resulting from the acceptance of
the world and flowing from the world:
Eu aici mă odihnesc I am resting here

Stan Mărie a lui Ion Stan Marie belonging to John
Petrenjel mă numesc Petrenjel is my name
cît am trăit eu pe lu- when I lived in this world
me am avut şi zile I also had good days
bune dar în bine şi but both in joy
în rău mă rugam lui and in sadness, I prayed
Dumnezeu cine to God, him who
trăieşte cinstit şi lives honestly
de lume-i preţuit is valued by the world
(Săpânţa 2006: 142)
At the Merry Cemetery, among the tombstones that exert the greatest
impression on the viewers (and readers), there is a graphic representation of
a man with a cigarette in his mouth and a bottle in his hand, from which
death emerges (a black figure with white lips, eyes and part of the skeleton).
An inscription is a form of a warning: the deceased examines his own life
and experiences and warns the recipients of the message (addressing them in
552 Chapter 26
the plural: “you”) about choosing a similar way of life. This formula
contains a negative assessment of life focused on the use of temporal
pleasures (in this case alcohol). However, there is no regret associated with
spirituality, a request for forgiveness directed to God. It is only a reference to
the temporal consequences of life in addiction (“crying and torment”):
Ţuica e curat venin Brandy is pure venom

ea aduce plîns şi chin it brings crying and torment
că şi mie mi-o adus as it did to me
moartea sub picior m-o pus death pulled my legs from under me
cui îi place ţuica bine if you like brandy like me
va păţii aşa ca mine you’ll end like me
că eu ţuica am iubit I loved brandy
cu ea-n mînă am murit and died holding it in my hand
(Săpânţa 2006: 100)3
About 800 painted crosses at the Merry Cemetery were on the

UNESCO World Heritage List. Certainly, each of these tombstones is
unique, also thanks to the form of the inscription: the dead conduct a
dialogue with the living on many levels, and the first-person form of the
narrative makes this dialogue last and continued in subsequent readings.
26.3. Romanian cemeteries
In the field of modern sepulchral art, Romanian and Romanian-Polish

cemeteries in Bucovina (in Bulai, Cacica, Vicșani, Mihoveni, Siret,
Suceava and Rădăuți) seem quite distant from the concept of “merry
death” that can be observed in Săpânţa (illustration 2).
The Catholic cemetery in Bulai (a settlement founded by migrants from
Lesser Poland) is a typical rural necropolis: on plates attached to iron,
wooden or stone crosses set on earth graves you can usually find onomastic
inscriptions, sometimes only the usual formulas: “Aici odihneşte Robul /
Roaba lui D-zeu” (“Here lies the servant of God/servant of God”) or in the
Polish language “Here rests” etc. Among the longer rhymed inscriptions,
there are rarely those formulated in the first-person. However, compared
with other rural cemeteries (in Cacica and Vicșani), the research material
that can be observed in Bulai and in Mihoveni, located a few km further
away (where the Orthodox Catholic cemetery functions) seems
3Ţuica is traditional Romanian alcohol made from plums by fermentation and

distillation.
exceptionally rich. On the tombstones in Bulai, for example, you can find
a recurring formula in Romanian, which is an appeal to a “passer-by”4,
who should stop at the grave and realize that the dead were once “body
and soul” just like those who read these words:
Trecătorule opreşteţi pasul Passer-by, slow down

şi vabateţi pe la noi and come here to us
ca şi noi am fost odată for we were once
trup şi suflet ca şi voi! like you – body and soul!
(Bulai 1950-1944-1950)5
Illustration 2. Village cemetery in Bulai. Phot. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk
This formula can also be found at the city cemetery in Suceava. There
is also another version of the “to a passer-by” call. In this case, the
deceased reminds readers that he once lived among them. This is an
indirect request to keep this in mind, and at the same time a memento mori
directed to those passing by the grave:
4 The passer-by will be discussed in the analysis of inscriptions on cemeteries in

Poland.
5 In brackets are the names of the town and dates of death visible on the
tombstones.
554 Chapter 26
Chiar călător dacă vei fi Even if only a traveller

aceste versuri vei citi reads these words
şi-ti vei aduce aminte aşa that will remind you
c-am fost şi eu cu voi cîndva I was among you
(Suceava, 1995)
The motif of reminding the living that their fate is no different from the
fate of the deceased, appearing in inscriptions in various forms, includes a
reference to the European epigrammatic tradition, referring to the Latin
formula Mihi hodie, tibi cras, which is the source of the words from the
Book of Ecclesiasticus (“Remember my judgment: for thine also shall be
so; yesterday for me, and today for thee”, Ecclesiasticus 38, 22). Biblical
words were paraphrased by St. Sylvester (Pope from 314 to 335): “What I
am, you have been; what you are, I will be”, and this formula (in various
forms) spread in epigraphy throughout Europe (Kolbuszewski 1996b, 89).
The power of memory, thanks to which the deceased remains present
despite death, is also mentioned in another inscription, repeated in the
cemetery in Mihoveni. In this case, memory becomes a guarantee of the
uninterrupted coexistence of two orders (living and dead):
De voi ca şi de viaţa With you, as with life

Ne-am despărţit nevrând we parted reluctantly
Păstraţi-ne amintirea, keep us in your memory
Vom fi cu voi oricând and we’ll be with you in each moment
(Mihoveni 2004)
Similar is the inscription in which the dead appeal to the living (whom
they “loved so much”, and yet eternity called them to each other), so that
they would not forget about their burial place. It is an empty grave (only
dates of birth are visible on the monument), but the inscription itself is
repeated in a slightly modified form in the same cemetery:
Noi v-am iubit aşa de mult We loved you so much

dar veşnicia ne-a chemat, but eternity called us
nici cînd voi să daţi uitării even when you forget
mormîntul acesta întunecat this dark grave
(Mihoveni, no date)
The deceased sometimes directly expresses his expectations: here he is

buried in a grave (“under the cross”) after a tormented life and the only
thing he is waiting for is the light that the living can ignite for him:
Viaţa-i scurtă zbuciumată My life was tumultuous

Sub o cruce fac popas Under a cross, I stop
Aşteptând o lumânare Waiting for a candle
De la cei ce au rămas From those who are left
(Mihoveni 1966-1991)
A similar inscription can be found at the cemetery in Rădăuți. The dead

asks the living to light a “light for his soul” whenever they miss him:
Când iţi va fi dor de mine when you miss me

vino la mormantul meu come to my grave
aici vei gasi o mangaiere here you’ll find a caress
aprizand o lumanare lighting a candle
sufletului meu for my soul
(Rădăuți2004)
The motif of light, as already mentioned at the outset, refers to the

mediating character of fire, which can mediate between the world of the
living and the dead (Sikora 1986).
In some of the inscriptions the deceased reminds the living that the
place where his body is located is intended for everyone and everyone will
be summoned by death, just like himself, although he lost his life
unexpectedly and too early (this inscription is repeated on the graves of
young people):
Nu uitaţi că aici e locul Do not forget that this is the place

Ce pe toţi o să vă cheme that will summon you all
Eu am fost chemat I was summoned
Pe nedrept şi prea devreme wrongly and too early
(Mihoveni 2013)
On the other hand, you can find gravestones in the Suceava cemetery
in which the ephemerality of life is emphasized. One of them, divided into
two lines, concerns the effort that a human puts in to dealing with the
hardships of everyday life and fulfilling one or another aspirations and
desires, while the end of every human existence is rest in the grave, which
occurs when “somebody’s turn comes”. In the second part of the
inscription, the conceptualization of the soul as a “navigator” appears, that
is, an internal compass indicating the right path. Under this metaphor, man
is a boat heading for the destination port: death, which means union with
God. The overriding value is therefore proper “navigation” within your
life, aimed at achieving salvation and eternal life:
556 Chapter 26
Ne luptăm ţîn viaţă All our life we struggle with

cu valuri mari sau mici the waves big and small
iar cînd ne vine rîndul but when our turn comes
ne odihnim aici… here we will sleep eternally
căci for
Omul e o luntre a man is a boat
Sufletul pilot the soul a navigator
Viaţa e oceanul the life an ocean
şi mormîntul port. and the grave a port
(Suceava, no date)
The motif of struggle with the hardships of life and life as a fight also
appears in the cemetery in Rădăuți. The deceased has maintained faith and
loyalty to God, for which he is expected to unite with the “Just Judge”
whom he will meet “on that day”. Such eternity, as the inscription reads, is
intended for all who expect the Lord’s coming:
M-am luptat lupta cea buna, I fought the good fight

Mi-am ispravit alergarea, am I finished the race, I kept
pâzit ctedinţa Deacum mă my faith. Now awaits me
aşteptă cununa neprihănirii a crown of righteousness
Pe care mi-o va da în „ziua aceea” the Lord will give me “on that day
Domnul Judecătorul cel drept. The righteous Judge.
Şi nu numai mie, ci şi tuturor But not only me, all
celor ce vor fi iubit venirea lui. That await his coming.6
(Rădăuți 2004)
In Suceava cemetery you can find an inscription which is a question

from the deceased addressed to his own life. One can see a complaint: life
and death are two separate orders, and while living, man cannot imagine
his own death. The inscription can be interpreted as a philosophical
reflection on the human condition. There is no unambiguous indication of
which of the orders is more important, although it can be assumed that the
“moment of life”, through its fleetingness, turns out to be significant from
the perspective of eternity, that the deceased did not spend enough time
thinking about what awaits after death:
6 The epitaph is a reference to the biblical quote: “Henceforth there is laid up for
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at
that day: and not to me only, but unto all those also that love his appearing”
(Timothy 4: 8).
O, clipă a vieţii mele. Oh, the moment of my life

De ce nu mi-ai dat răgaz why didn’t you let me stop to rest
să-mi imaginez sfîrşitul. and imagine my own end
(Suceava, family grave from 70’s)
In Rădăuți there is a tomb which, although still empty, has been decorated
with ornaments, graphic elements and inscriptions. It is prepared for
spouses, whose images were applied by sandblasting. Under the bust of a
woman, there is a first-person narrative: the future dead tells us that death
(and precisely fate) took her when she enjoyed life the most. Hence, this is
also a moral for the living who come to this grave: no-one can ignore the
voice of destiny.
Când mi-a fost mai dragă viaţă When life was dearest to me
să trăiesc pe-acest pământ, I lived on this earth
iată ce mi-a făcut soarta and here’s what fate brought me
să stau în acest mormănt. living in this grave.
(Rădăuți, no date)
On the man's side, you can read (words are directed to “you who come to
me here because here is my home”) that you cannot win with fate: it is
destiny that “says” when death comes:
Iar voi să veniţi la mine, You will be returning to me

că aici e casa mea, for this is my home
dacă soarta aşa spune, when fate gives an order
noi o ascultăm pe ea. we are bound to follow.
(Rădăuți, no date)
The end of life, however, does not necessarily mean sadness. Another
inscription says that the deceased, dreaming of a “quiet haven” throughout
his life, did not find it on earth. Once again, there is a motif already known
from the Succeava’s inscription: a man as a traveller (boat), seeking the
purpose of his life and finding it only at the moment of death, in union
with God:
În lumea asta zbuciumată In this troubled world

Am căutat limanul sfânt, I searched for a peaceful haven
Pe care l-am visat odată that I once dreamed of
Dar nu se află pe pamânt. but it’s not here.
(Rădăuți 2010)
558 Chapter 26
This inscription is repeated in the cemetery several times on tombstones

erected in recent years (illustration 3). Among the inscriptions containing
phrases for loved ones, there are also inscriptions in which they are
mentioned personally. This happens in the case of a poem addressed to the
heart, which gave the deceased only a sense of longing and sadness, taking
away his life at a young age and thereby plunging his children, mother and
wife (listed in this order) into grief:
O inimă! Oh, heart!

În piept mi-ai dat durere şi tristeţe! You burned my chest with pain and
suffering
Răpindu-mi viaţa în plină tinereţe Took my life away in the prime of my youth
Făcîndu-mă să las neconsolaţi copii Forcing me to leave behind my sad children
şi a mea mamă şi soţie pe veci my mother and wife in endless mourning.
îndurerate.
(Suceava 1974)
When it comes to the forms of tombstones indicating an individual

approach to sepulchral customs, among the studied cemeteries, the
cemetery in Rădăuți deserves attention, where you can find graves with
colours, forms or inscriptions distinguishing them from the others and
evoking the remarks of Mircea Eliade about the Romanian attitude to
death. One of them is the (still empty) grave of a couple, presented in a
joint photograph, with only the dates of birth recorded. Above their
likeness is another picture in a white frame with the inscription:
“Amintirea este o fereastră, / prin care te pot vedea / ori de câte ori doresc”
(“Memory is a window through which I can see you / whenever I desire”).
Below, also in a white frame, the landscape (snow-capped mountains, a
lake, forests) is presented, and two messages are recorded on it: parents
who are to be buried in this grave addressing their children and the answer
of the latter, a first-person narration in the words of the future dead and a
call to the “beloved ones” so that they do not cry, for the dead will forever
keep them in their hearts, assuring them of their love, “because love and
the soul do not die”. The text has been signed: “Mum and Dad” and
completed with names. Under the landscape within this specific
“conversation”, there is an engraved inscription: “E greu, dar îcearcă să
râzi / când inima îţi plânge!” (“Though it's difficult, try to laugh when your
heart is crying”).
Illustration 3. Town cemetery in Suceava. Phot. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk

560 Chapter 26
Illustration 4. Cemetery in Rădăuți. In the background a colourful grave chapel.

Phot. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk
The tomb in Rădăuți that cannot be ignored is also a chapel for a

married couple: onomastic information shows that the wife died in 2011,
while the husband’s likeness does not have the date of death. The chapel is
colourful: green, red and gold dominate. On one of the outer walls (as with
the Romanian orthodox monasteries painted outside), there is a mural with a
panorama of Jerusalem and (below) two Bucovina monasteries. On this side,
there is also an entrance to the interior, and through metal decorations, in the
middle of the chapel, you can see an altar with flowers, candles and photos
of the deceased (and a wall mural with a view of the sky and a flowering
meadow). At the front of the building, images of the spouses were shown
using the method of sandblasting, and above them were photo wallpapers
depicting their full figures (a woman in a white blouse and skirt, a man in a
traditional Romanian dress). Underneath there is an inscription:
am trăit gîndind we lived thinking

muncind şi iubind working and loving
am trăit o viaţa zbuciumaţi we had a tumultuous life
acum dormim împăcaţi and now we are sleeping
The chapel is one of the most characteristic landmarks of the cemetery

in Rădăuți, famous also for the fact that through its centre passes a single-
track railway line, founded by the Austrians in the second half of the
nineteenth century, at a time when the cemetery was already functioning.
Among other inscriptions on Romanian cemeteries containing
(allegedly7) the first-person narrative, one should mention the inscriptions
in Polish, such as: “Jesus, I trust in You!” (Siret 2007), “Save us, Lord!”,
“Have mercy on us!” (Rădăuți 1983-1984) etc.
26.4. Polish cemeteries
Catholic cemeteries in Poland constitute the vast majority of more than

thirty thousand functioning burial sites. In cemeteries, which have been
analyzed for the purposes of this article, grave inscriptions in the first-
person singular are usually standard and are often repeated; some of them
are inscribed in the centuries-old epigraphic tradition. An example is an
inscription:
7 These types of the inscription can also be treated as calls addressed to God by the
living.
562 Chapter 26
Boże Wszechmogący God Almighty

Żyłem bo chciałeś I lived because you wanted
Umarłem bo kazałeś I died because you ordered
Zbaw mnie bo możesz Save me because you can
(Miechów 1946, Tczyca 1993, Pińczów 1997 (with different punctuation),
illustration 5.
This formula is repeated many times, often in a slightly changed

version, e.g.:
Żyłem boś chciał I lived because you wanted

Umarłem boś kazał I died because you ordered
Zbaw bo możesz Save me because you can
(Miechów 1976-2000)
This is one of the most popular inscriptions in Polish cemeteries.

According to J. Kolbuszewski, its appearance was first recorded by Fr. Jan
Wiśniewski in the Historyczny opis kościołów, miast, zabytków i pamiątek w
Pińczowskiem, Skalbmierskiem i Wiślickiem (Mariówka 1927, p. 350), but
probably already existed before 1776. The inscription is an exactly repeated
aphorism from a prayer by St. Augustine, constituting a paraphrase, or
referring to the words of St. Paul to the Romans 14: 8: “For whether we live,
we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we
live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's” (Kolbuszewski 1996b, 152).
Another inscription with a long literary tradition that was recorded at
the Pińczów cemetery is the poem:
Panie pozwól spocząć, Lord, let me rest,

bom się bardzo strudził for I am very much afflicted
proszę mnie szczęśliwie please, wake me happily
na sąd swój obudzić to attend your court
(Pińczów 1974-1998)
In his study on Polish grave poems, J. Kolbuszewski invokes it in the

form: “Wstanę, Panie, / Gdy mnie będzie budził, / Lecz pozwól spocząć, /
Bom się bardzo strudził” (“I will get up, Lord / When you wake me / But
let me rest / for I have become very tired.”) This text appears, among
others in Tarnów, in the cemeteries of Podhale and in other parts of the
country, and in the poem by Wincenty Pol, Kościółek wiejski (A village
church) from the collection Z podróży po burzy (From the Journey after
the Storm). In the literary work, it appears as a knight’s tombstone in the
form of: “I will rise, Lord! when you will wake me up, / But let me rest,
for I am very tired” (see: Kolbuszewski 1996b, 240).
Illustration 5. Tombstone in Miechów. Phot. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk

564 Chapter 26
A popular inscription found in Polish cemeteries is also the wording

referring to the ancient motif of capturing life as a stay in hospitality, and
death as an opportunity to find yourself in an eternal home. The inscription
has many varieties: it is clearly emphasized by the didactic aspect of
memento mori (Kolbuszewski 1996b, 329):
To co mnie spotkało, What happened to me

to i Was nie minie will not pass you by
Ja już jestem w domu, I’m already home,
Wy jeszcze w gościnie you’re still in sojourn
(Miechów, 2012), ill.5.
Other occurrences are:
My już w domu We’re already home

wy jeszcze gościcie you are still in sojourn
(Pilica 1954, 1986– 1987)
Illustration 6. Tombstone in Miechów. Phot. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk

And:
Co nas spotkało i was nie minie. What happened to us will not pass you by
My jesteśmy w domu a wy w gościnie. We’re already home, you’re still in sojourn
(Pińczów, no date)
The dead can also turn to the living, reminding them of the inevitability
of death, which in the eschatological dimension makes everybody equal:
Kim ‒ byliśmy Who – we were

Wy ‒ jesteście You – are
Kim ‒ jesteśmy Who – we are
Wy ‒ będziecie You – will be
(Dłużec 1973)
Kim byłam Who I was

Ty jesteś You are
Czym jestem Who I am
Ty będziesz You will be
(Miechów 1959-1973)
Illustration 7. Votive candles in Miechów. Phot. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk

566 Chapter 26
These types of inscriptions are different paraphrases of the formula “I

was who you are; I am who you will be”, i.e. the translation of Latin Quod
sum eris, quod es antea fui (Kolbuszewski 1996b, 350).
A passer-by, to which first-person narratives are usually addressed, “is
the most important and at the same time the only formalized recipient of
the text” (Kolbuszewski 1996b, 36). Even when the inscription expresses,
for example, a dialogue of the deceased with God or with relatives, the
recipient is the reader. The category “passer-by”, inherited from Roman
epigraphy, refers to the burial tradition of the dead outside the city, at Via
Appia, where every man who was on the way, surrounded by graves, was
a passer-by. This tradition was adopted in Europe along with the
development of neo-Latin poetry at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries;
initially it was used in a conventionalized manner (on tombstones in
churches), and the actual connection with the status of “passer-by” came
about after the cemeteries were moved outside the city walls at the turn of
the 18th and the 19th centuries (Kolbuszewski 1996b, 36-39).
The cemetery as a place is a specific cultural text, i.e. a complex
phenomenon, organized either on the basis of a directive or directives - “a
set of certain signs characteristic of the phenomenon of death culture”
(Kolbuszewski 1994, 298-299). Among the versed tombstones, apart from
the works representing high literature, paraphrases, stereotypical formulas
of tombstones and inscriptions created for the specific deceased can be
distinguished (Kolbuszewski 1994, 88). The multidirectional character of
communication that takes place in the area of the necropolis also
determines the popularity of certain forms, and the specificity of a given
place their durability. J. Kolbuszewski, analyzing the repetitiveness of a
message addressed to a passer-by at the cemetery in Gorlice and
containing or asking for a sigh or a prayer for the soul of the deceased,
hypothesizes that perhaps the repetition of this form is caused by the
neighbouring old 19th century and new graves (Kolbuszewski 1996b,
184). It seems that a similar situation and analogous process occurs at the
cemetery in Pińczów, from which the inscriptions have already been cited
above. This cemetery, more than two hundred years old (Sabatowie 1996,
13), captivates with its beauty, although its structure seems rather chaotic:
there are monuments and inscriptions from the beginning of the 19th
century, next to which there are new tombstones. It seems that the
proximity of old and new graves means that modern monuments in the
cemetery in Pińczów are more often decorated with grave inscriptions than
graves in other cemeteries examined for the purposes of this study. The
“dialogue” of history with the present can already be seen when analyzing
older tombstones, an example of which is this beautiful verse inscription

from 1826:
Z Ziemi byłem utworzony I was created from earth

w Ziemię jestem zamieniony I am turned into it
a z tąd żyjącym nauka. the moral for the living
Że każdy z nich grobu szuka everybody is seeking their grave
This inscription was repeated in an unchanged form (also in terms of

writing) on a grave from 1919.
In Pińczów, next to the quarters with the oldest stone tombstones, a
place for the latest graves has been designated, on which you can find
many inscriptions, from the standard requests for prayer to quotes from
poems (e.g. Maria Konopnicka).
An example of the use of high literature in cemetery epigraphy can also
be found at the cemetery in Miechów, founded in 1640 and “fenced by the
residents of the Miechów parish” in 1873 as indicated by the commemorative
plaque. On one of the family tombs (the first date of death comes from
1990, the last from 2014) is a plaque dedicated, as the inscription says, to
“Beloved Son!”, which contains the first and last stanza, composed of 16
verses, of the poem by Adam Asnyk from 1869 entitled Pod stopy krzyża:
Dużo cierpiałem I suffered a lot

lecz koniec się zbliża but the end is near
z uspokojeniem with calmness
po przebytej męce after the torment I’ve been through
Pójdę o Chryste I’ll go, oh Christ

do stóp twego krzyża to the foot of your cross
wyciągnąć znowu to again longingly
z utęsknieniem ręce stretch out my arms
i witać ciszę and welcome the silence

zachodzącej zorzy, of the setting sun
która mnie w prochu which will turn me to dust
u stóp twych położy at your feet
Więc posłuchałem And I listened to

słodkiego wezwania the sweet summoning
i oto idę and here I come
z mem sercem zbolałym! with my heart in pain!
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I pewny jestem And I’m sure of

twego zmiłowania your mercy
bom wiele błądził for I strayed a lot
lecz wiele kochałem but also loved a lot
i drogi życia and the thorny ways of life

przeszedłem cierniste I walked through
więc Ty mnie teraz so you, o Christ
nie odepchniesz – Chryste! will not push me away now!
The appropriate choice of verses (and some modifications made in the

content) makes the inscription a moving confession of faith and hope, and
the first-person in which the lyrical subject speaks allows him to identify
with the “Beloved Son”. On the central board with onomastic information
about the dead, there is also an inscription “God so wanted”.
The inscription on the graves of young people can be considered as a
separate inscription category, which includes the following (first-person
occurrences were noted) first-person narratives. Their common feature is
that they are a form of dialogue with God, although only in the first case is
he is being addressed directly. The overriding value is life, interrupted
suddenly and somehow “taken away” from the dead; “shortened”. There is
a metaphor of a broken flower, expressed directly in a complaint to God,
and also regret that he did not consider his will to live. A man appears to
be completely dependent on God's will, without influence on his fate. It is
God who decides to stop life. In the following inscriptions, there is only
one joyful motive: hope for meeting those who have remained on earth in
eternal life:
Dlaczego o Boże skróciłeś życie moje! Why, o Lord, did you shorten my life!
(Pilica 1949)
Jeszczem nie zakwitł już mnie zerwano I’ve not yet blossomed but I was picked
Tak Pan Bóg kazał więc go słuchano The Lord has ordered and he was obeyed
Bolesne było rozstanie It was painful to part
Miłe będzie spotkanie The meeting will be sweet
(Charsznica 1961)
Żyłam krótko choć żyć chciałam I lived a short life though I wanted to live
Bóg mnie wezwał iść musiałam God has summoned me and I had to go
(Pińczów 2015)
The last group of inscriptions written in the first-person singular or

plural is a variety of calls: quite a problematic category, because they can
be interpreted as either words or wishes of the deceased, as well as the

intentions of their living relatives. This short list of selected inscriptions
contains a whole range of values to which they relate: faith and trust in
God’s mercy and divine judgments, and hope for life. Death becomes a
transition to another reality, where one can wait for a meeting with those
who have remained on earth. On the other hand, the saving of the soul and
belief in its immortality become the superior value: the pursuit of it evokes
an appeal to mercy, the promise of forgiveness of sins, and trust in God
and his judgments. For example, the following phrases:
Ucieczko grzesznych módl się za nami Haven of the sinful, pray for us
(Miechów 2007)Jezu ufam
Tobie / Jezu ufamy Tobie Jesus I trust in you/we trust in you
Bądź wola Twoja Thy will be done
Po tamtej stronie żyjemy wiecznie ‒ On the other side we live eternally ‒
po tej, dopóki trwa pamięć i modlitwa on this, as long as memory and prayer last
(Miechów 2014)
Do zobaczenia w niebie See you in heaven

(Pilica 2008)
Wyrocznią naszą jest rozstanie Our parting is the oracle

Nadzieją naszą dusz spotkanie Our hope is the meeting of the souls
(Pilica, grave of Cień family)
W Tobie o Panie jest moja nadzieja In you, o Lord, is my hope

(Pilica 1949-1986-1998)
Jezu połącz nas w niebie z tymi, Jesus, in heaven connect us

których ukochaliśmy na ziemi with the ones we loved on Earth
(Dłużec 1991)
Daj nam oglądać światło Twoje Boże Let us see your godly light
(Tczyca 1989-1997)
Panie przebacz nam nasze grzechy Oh Lord, forgive us our sins

(Tczyca 1933-1984-2017)
Rozłąka jest naszym losem, Separation is our fate

spotkanie naszą nadzieją meeting our hopeless
(Pińczów 2013)
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26.5. Summary
First-person narratives observed both in Romanian and Polish

necropolizes, regardless of whether they appear in Roman Catholic,
Orthodox or mixed cemeteries, focus on a few basic threads. Their
axiological pronunciation can be presented as follows:
1) emphasizing the transitoriness and episodic nature of life and the

inevitability of death, and thus, the inability of a man to decide his
own fate. On this type of tombstone there often appears a phrase
directed to the living or to a “passer-by”, to remind them of human
destiny and the need to focus on the values associated with eternal
life, not temporal life, which are for example: faith in eternal life,
the immortality of the soul, God’s justice, divine judgments, the
subjection of man to destiny, the necessity to lead a life of
salvation;
2) as if in contrast with the first category, focusing on life as the
greatest value; examples here may be inscriptions from the
Orthodox Merry Cemetery (focus on playing, work, multiplying
assets), but also the Orthodox Catholic gravestones of young people
(above all, but also of those older), where you can find grief for lost
life in the inscriptions (metaphor of a cut flower) or complaint to
God;
3) marking the value of memory, as a condition necessary for the
deceased spiritually to remain present among the living, but also as
a way to find consolation in mourning;
4) opposing the hardships of existence and death as relief, aimed at
making the living appreciate the values of a worthy and good life,
as well as a reminder of the promise of Paradise, i.e. rewards for the
hardships suffered in worldliness; examples include inscriptions
referring to the metaphor of the soul as a pilot or navigator, leading
a man to the destination port and to salvation (God), and
tombstones using biblical motifs of the Last Judgment and God as a
judge, holding a man to account for his life;
5) using the metaphor of life as hospitality and death as a “return
home”, carrying with these the promise of meeting people again
and referring to such values as: faith in the immortality of the soul,
faith in salvation, longing for connection with God, faith in the
“community of” souls and their reunion after death.
Modern souls—both in Poland and in Romania—still “speak”.

Increasingly, their messages are accompanied by graphic elements, and the
progressive and observable individualization of monuments and tombs
allows their performers or originators to present their own views on eternal
life.
The attitude to death both in Poland and in Romania, and consequently,
funerary customs and sepulchral art, despite religious conditions, cannot
be considered in the context of a simple juxtaposition of two cultures or
traditions.
On the other hand, mass culture makes both universal and popular
values penetrate both Poland and Romania, and these change the
perception of the subject and the problem of death, modifying attitudes
towards it. These changes also apply to cemeteries.
Cemeteries transferred at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries
beyond the city walls became an egalitarian space: dignitaries, burghers
and plebeians were buried there. In the 20th century, the place of burial
ceased to determine the validity of the deceased, and according to T.
Korczyński, the grave, as a result of the widespread availability of
stonemasonry services and the universalization of tombstones, ceased to
bear witness to its material status (Korczyński 2016, 167). Not so long
ago, J. Kolbuszewski wrote: “In new cemeteries, signs of mourning memory
could be perpetuated with regard to every human being, regardless of their
social status” (Kolbuszewski 2012, 8). In the past, geography was used to
separate ordinary mortals from eminent dead etc. (Kolbuszewski 1996a,
230-233), while the social hierarchy was reflected in the form and size of
cemetery monuments, inscriptions, type of building material, the location
of tombstones and topography of the cemetery. T. Korczyński acknowledges
that “The institution of cemeteries has not saved itself from social changes
and it also experiences the processes of postdecadentism” (Korczyński
2016, 169). The effect of these changes, according to the sociologist, is the
process of individualization of the cult of the dead and the democratization
of cemeteries. Burial sites “reflect the chaos of postdecadentism. There are
no divisions, no logic, no aesthetics, bad taste prevails and, what is most
characteristic, a specific grave uniformity” (Korczyński 2016, 172),
examples of which might be inscriptions—a manifestation of popular
culture which, in pursuit of verified literary forms most often is based on
the “exploitation of a rich resource of stereotypical formulas, sometimes
subjected to individual alterations or contamination with other formulas”
(Kolbuszewski 1996b, 77). Gravestones, just like graveyard ornamentation,
became, according to many observers, the domain of bad taste, which
equalized the dead in an egalitarian way (cf. Korczyński 2016, 172).
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Elements of the aesthetics of daub are also the coloured pictures on

tombstones, the toys on the graves of children or the expanded “perimeter
industry”, including candles for specific occasions (Christmas trees for
Christmas, bunnies for Easter etc.)8 ilustration.7.
The egalitarianism of tombstones in the 20th century, as well as the
inscriptions on tombstones, was influenced in Poland by the PRL policy.
This was accompanied by the inclination towards building a classless
society, which Barbara Lewicka points out, analyzing the cultural
landscape of the Katowice cemeteries: “Only a few tombstones created in
the period 1945-1989 stand out against the background of identical graves
built from terrazzo. (...) It seems that the epitaphs appearing on most of the
new tombstones together with the design of the monument itself were
taken from the catalogues offered by stone works, although the mentioned
inscriptions are few but repeatable” (Lewicka 2017, 202, 214). Certainly,
the tendency to erect two types of graves: covered with a terrazzo plate or
with a place for planting flowers, can be treated as a more general
example. Terrazzo, gradually replaced by granite, also dominated the rural
cemeteries. B. Lewicka also draws attention to the limited religious
symbolism used in the second half of the twentieth century (crosses,
simplified images of Christ, the Mother of God, or saints) and secular
symbolism (which includes grave photographs) (Lewicka 2017, 205), ill.8.
Taking into account the considerations of historians, anthropologists and
sociologists, one may ask the question of whether, by chance, the
stigmatized but ubiquitous bad taste in the area of the cemetery has not
become a way for modern man to hide the indecent: the individuality of
dying and his own despair.
The inscriptions mentioned in this text, which are a message from souls
directed to the living or to God, represent the whole range of values
relevant from the perspective of the soul. At one extreme is eschatology:
faith in God, eternal life, immortality, the purposefulness of life and the need
to seek salvation. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the praising of
life as a superior value, focused on experiencing worldly joy, on work,
attempts to achieve success in life and the gaining of recognition and
respect. Sometimes both these positions are accompanied by reconciliation
8 The fact that the pictures on tombstones or, more broadly, the images of the dead
do not necessarily testify to the egalitarianism of cemeteries or graves can be
witnessed on monuments where the dead are shown in situations or surrounded by
objects important to them during their lifetime. Pictures of such monuments were
taken by the world-famous Russian photographer Denis Tarasov:
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/denis_tarasov.htm
Illustration 8. Votive candles in Tczyca. Phot. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk
with fate, but it often happens that the inscription contains a complaint and
grief related to a life interrupted too early. Souls, for whom salvation is the
supreme value, “speak” above all of the value of trust and faith in God: his
wisdom and judgment. They count on mercy, refer to the promise of
574 Chapter 26
forgiveness of sins or a vision of salvation associated with the sacrifice of

Christ. The recipients of this type of transmission are the living (whose
souls are asking for prayer) or God (as well as Jesus or the Mother of God)
who are asked for forgiveness or intercession. Communiques addressed to
the living also contain a metaphorical representation of life as a journey or
sailing, aimed at bringing a man to the goal: salvation. Souls who speak
about the value of life in themselves give their recipients (living) their
experiences and tips about worldliness in which one can find contentment
and fulfilment (“Who wants to multiply the estate / let them look after the
calves joyfully”). In both cases, souls can evaluate their own lives; such a
summary is usually positive, indicating hard work, living in accordance
with the dictates of God or society; however, it sometimes happens that
this assessment becomes a warning against a particular behaviour (as in
the case of the tombstone of the alcoholic from Merry Cemetery).
Death is treated by souls as a promise of joining God (“Let us see
God’s light”), as a natural turn of things (“From Earth I was created / into
Earth I'm turned / the moral to the living / That every one of them is
seeking a grave”) or as an event that they cannot reconcile with. In the
latter case, the inscriptions are dominated by regret and misunderstanding
(“Perhaps I did evil and I was punished”, “and when the time came to
marry / unexpectedly death looked into my eyes”, “I was called here /
wrongly and prematurely”, “I've not blossomed yet / I've already broken
up / I’ve already been picked”).
From the analysis of epigraphic art on contemporary, selected
cemeteries in Poland and Romania, it appears that in recent years, one can
observe a far-reaching individualization of tombstones: a variety of
materials and forms are used to build them. The examples of first-person
narratives cited in this article also prove that epigraphic art not only does
not disappear but functions in various forms in both cultures. As Roch
Sulima wrote, the phenomena that determine the semantic expression of
the cemetery are onomastic, periphrastic and symbolic information that
identify the deceased, becoming the space that he once filled himself: the
grave or the inscription “as if balancing” and replaces the emotional and
social space that materialized around the deceased; it symbolizes man
(Sulima 1992, 90). The consequence of this type of operation is the
identification of the necropolis as a substitute for the “community of the
dead” and, at the same time, the community of the living focusing on
“their” dead (Kolbuszewski 1994, 296). Thus, the cemetery becomes a
space in which the opposition of the living and the dead is overcome. The
tombstone starts to intentionally (i.e. according to the intentions of the
living) fill the space after the dead depart. Thus, for example, on the tombs
of young athletes, there are emblems of sports clubs they belonged to

(such occurrences were recorded at cemeteries in Pińczów and Chodów –
illustration 9), or graphic motifs expressing the interests, passions or
professions of the deceased (Pilica).
The diversity of images placed on monuments is also increasing (for
example, three-dimensional glass portraits appear, as in the cemetery in
Tczyca). Modern, contemporary graves begin to differ significantly:
thanks to their individual characteristics, it is impossible to confuse them
with others. Perhaps they are also gaining the function of indicating the
material status of the deceased person again. Death was, and is,
personalized, not only in first-person narratives but also in other grave
inscriptions, e.g.:
Syneczku drogi ty żyć długo chciałeś My dear son you wanted to live long
Lecz na swoją zgubę motorkiem jechałeś But for your own ruin you rode a
motorbike
Nietrzeźwość kolegi życie Ci zabrała Your friend’s intoxication took your life
A nam smutek i wieczna żałoba została and we’re left with sadness and eternal
mourning
(Charsznica 1985)
This tombstone carries with it not only information about the

premature death of the deceased but also about its circumstances.
Significant, though not exceptional, is the indication of guilty death (J.
Kolbuszewski mentions similar grave inscriptions: in this type of
inscription the perpetrators of death or those responsible for it are often
pointed out in a very blunt manner) (Kolbuszewski 1996b, 337). The
inscription is of the mother’s words to her son, expressing not only grief
and pain related to the loss of the child, but can also be interpreted as a
warning addressed to others: the source of unhappiness (sadness and
eternal mourning) becomes the risk to life (riding a motorcycle, driving
while drunk).
The departure from similarity to individuality and uniqueness in the
field of sepulchral art seems to be gaining more and more attention in
recent years. In contemporary cemeteries, the tendency to personalize
tombstones and the gradual departure from unification does not mean,
however, a direct transition from bad taste to high art.
The observed tendencies and changes may be associated with the
redefinition of mourning in the mass culture of the twentieth century, of
which Philippe Ariès wrote: "the modern world refuses to participate in
the experiences of a man in mourning; his despair means alienation."
(Ariès 1989, 569). Meanwhile, grave inscriptions expressing pain after the
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Illustration 9. Tombstone in Chodów. Phot. Karina Stempel-Gancarczyk

loss of a loved one, supplemented with ever more accurate images of the
deceased—not only their face but sometimes their whole character—is an
attempt to update the therapeutic function after the loss (Kolbuszewski
1996b, 74). Perhaps colourful, decorated tombstones and various inscriptions
will begin to fill this space more intensely, since cultural norms and the
redefinition of attitudes towards death in the contemporary world have
taken it away from 21st-century man.
References
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Biblia Tysiąclecia. Pismo Święte Starego i Nowego Testamentu, 1980.
Poznań ‒ Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Pallotinum.
Eliade, Mircea. 1997. Rumuni. Zarys historii. Bydgoszcz: Homini.
Gorer, Geoffrey. 1979. Pornografia śmierci, Teksty: teoria literatury,
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Dolnośląskie.
Kolbuszewski, Jacek. 1996b. Co mnie dzisiaj, jutro tobie. Polskie wiersze
nagrobne. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Towarzystwo Przyjaciół
Polonistyki Wrocławskiej.
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Bujak, eds. Nekropolis. Olszanica: BOSZ.
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śmierci. Warszawa: Warszawskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne.
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578 Chapter 26
Sabatowie Teresa and Zdzisław. 1996. Cmentarze pińczowskie. Kielce:

ZPAF Okręg Świętokrzyski w Kielcach, Wojewódzki Konserwator
Zabytków w Kielcach, Muzeum Regionalne w Pińczowie.
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Ludowa – Konteksty. 40:1-2.
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“Galicja”.
Summary
This chapter is on the concept of the soul as a transmitter of values—admonishing,
giving advice, asking for prayer, waiting for help and speaking in the first-person.
The image of the soul contacting the living in matters concerning values will be
presented against the background of two orders represented by selected grave
inscriptions on Roman Catholic and mixed cemeteries, Roman Catholic-Orthodox
cemeteries in Romania (with special regard to the so-called Merry Cemetery in
Săpânţa) and Roman Catholic cemeteries in Poland.
Keywords: cemetery, epitaph, inscription, soul, Romania

CHAPTER 27
INTERPRETING THE CONCEPT “SOUL”

IN NORTHERN RUSSIAN AND UPPER
GERMAN DIALECTS
MICHAIL M. KONDRATENKO
YAROSLAVL STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY, RUSSIA
The concept of “soul” is characterized not only by the complexity of its

logical structure but also by the resulting multiple approaches to its
interpretation. For instance, we may single out metaphysical and
psychological approaches to the interpretation of the soul. Various languages
and dialects also contain such approaches, combined with the ethnic
specifics. Thus, we are interested in defining the ways of perception of the
“soul” in linguistic units of the peoples whose cultures are traditionally
opposed at a mundane level: namely, the opposition between Russians and
Germans. This opposition is constant and is illustrated by the following
Russian saying что русскому хорошо, то немцу смерть (literal
translation: a good thing for the Russian, death for the German; English
equivalent: one man’s meat is another man’s poison) or East Franconian
phrase dümmer wie die Kühe in Rußland (stupid as a cow in Russia)
(Archiv).
Both Slavic and German research in the field of semantics are well
known. As for recent studies, we may single out the works of the Austrian
S.M. Newerkla (Newerkla 2011), M. Lazinski (Lazinski 2008) and J.
Siatkowski (Siatkowski 2015) from Poland, N.I. Zubov (Zubov 2013)
from Ukraine, and many other linguists. Thus, we should take into
consideration the significant value of vernacular varieties for comparative
studies. Dialects represent an image of real and direct contact between
ethnic groups and their perception of extralinguistic reality. Moreover,
literary language is a macrosystem (which is often artificial, due to a
couple of parameters), whereas vernacular is a natural microsystem.
Therefore, the analysis of dialects allows us to have a more accurate
580 Chapter 27
stratification of the findings, increasing the consistency of the conclusion

and avoiding generalizations.
The selection of the Northern Russian and Upper German dialects is
not a coincidence. The Northern Russian dialects are peripheral and still
include otherwise archaic linguistic peculiarities. That is especially
important in terms of lexical semantics and reconstruction of the traditional
culture, as the concept of a “soul” is definitely an ancient archetype.
Furthermore, some linguists think that the area of Northern Russian
dialects is the territory of formation of the contemporary Russian nation.
Thus, these dialects have special significance for the ethnic interpretation
of linguistic phenomena. Upper German dialects are considered to be a
conservative part of traditional German culture. What is more, these
dialects are still used, despite the influence of the rapidly changing urban
culture.
From the point of view of the theoretical basis of our research, we
should single out the effective ethnolinguistic approach of scholars of the
Moscow (N.I. Tolstoy and S.M. Tolstaya) and Lublin (J. Bartmiński)
schools. Upon the analysis of linguistic units, we are interested not only in
the object of nomination but also in the perception of this object by the
speaker and how this perception characterizes the speaker him/herself.
This analysis allows us to draw conclusions about the peculiarities of the
semantic sphere of a language/dialect and about the symbolic meaning of
the semantics. Symbolic or cultural semantics may either concur or differ
when compared. For example, the lexeme cuckoo is a symbol of fate in
both Russian and German linguistic culture: Russians may ask the cuckoo
to count the years they will live, whereas the East Frankish phrase der
häert in Guggug a nemmer schreia (he will not hear the singing of a
cuckoo) means that a person will die by the next spring.
The word soul is a similar linguistic unit, with vivid cultural and
symbolic semantics. Thus, it is necessary to define the universal and
specific aspects of the soul from the point of view of the manifestation of
traditional values in lexemes and phraseology of genetically related
dialects.
The most important aspect of the concept of soul and its lexeme is an
inextricable connection with the concept and lexeme spirit. The analyzed
Upper German dialects also have the analogical phenomenon. The only
difference is that the corresponding German lexemes Seele and Geist are
non-cognate words and are connected only semantically.
Etymological dictionaries of Russian (Fasmer 1986, 556; Chernykh
1999, 275-276) and the “Etymologic Dictionary of the Slavic Languages”
(ESSYa 1978, 164) define the lexeme душа (soul) as a derivative of the
Interpreting the Concept “Soul” in Northern Russian 581
and Upper German Dialects
lexeme дух (spirit). Therefore, its meaning is connected with the process
of breathing, which is an absolute value, as it is a mandatory attribute of a
person’s life. A similar correlation between the lexemes Seele (according
to (Kluge 2002, 837), its etymology is unknown) and Geist may be found
in the German language. The etymological dictionary of the German
language (Kluge 2002, 340) shows the connection of this word with the
archetype “yawn, open the mouth”. It is similar to the correlation spirit-
breathing in the Russian language. From the point of view of word
formation, we also see the correspondence with Russian synonymic verbs:
вдохновлять, воодушевлять (inspire, invigorate) - begeistern, beseelen
(derivatives of Geist and Seele with similar meaning). Therefore, the
concept of the soul is inseparable from the concept of spirit in both
Russian and German dialects. This statement can be also confirmed with
such Northern Russian vernacularisms as дух (spirit) “soul, life, breathing”
(Dilaktorsky 2006, 115), душа (soul) “breathing” (SVG 1985, 66),
господи, перейми мой дух, так брякнулся, штё и дух вон (God, save my
soul! I’ve plummeted so bad that I can’t breathe) (POS 1994, 59).
Taking into consideration the collected materials, we conclude that the
German concept of soul, expressed by means of the lexeme Seele,
represents the following values of a traditional culture.
1. Veneration of the dead.
The expression of one’s attitude towards the dead may be seen in the
phrase arme Seele (literal translation: poor soul), which means “the soul of
the deceased person in limbo” in Bavarian dialects. Another set expression
is the saying die arme Seele hat ihre Ruh (literal translation: poor soul has
found its peace). It is translated as “the aim has been accomplished”
(Zehetner 2005, 313). Words connected with All Saints’ Day may also be
included in this category. For example, Seelenweckerl (literal translation:
bread of the soul) is a small piece of bread that was given to the poor in
Bavaria on All Saints’ Day. Other examples come from Franconia:
Seelenspitz (Bayerisch-Franken 2008, 475) “feather-edged bun which is
presented to the godfather” and Seelnschbidsn – “favourite cookies which
are eaten with coffee” (Reinfelder 1972, 174). These words, however,
have completely lost their initial religious motivation.
Moreover, Bavarian dialects still possess derivatives of Seele, such as
Seelhäuslein (Schmeller 1877, 256-257) “part of the rural church used for
storing skulls and bones”; Seelhaus (Schmeller 1877, 256-257) “a house
built by a wealthy man for the poor and unmarried people for the sake of
spiritual redemption”; Seelnonne (literal translation: the nun of the soul) a
woman who washes and dresses the deceased (Zehetner 2005, 313).
Lexeme Seelleute (literal translation: people of the soul) (Schmeller 1877,
582 Chapter 27
256-257) is connected with taking care of the soul in the other world and
means “poor people who are not beggars and who sometimes receive
bread from their wealthier neighbours”.
2. Personal traits.
2.1 Amiability. In Franconia (the northern part of Bavaria), amiable
people and kind animals are described as seelfromm (seel – soulful and
fromm – religious, pious): unser Stier ist sehr seelfromm (our bull is very
kind). A quiet, calm and dreamy person is called Saamseel (literal
translation: the soul in the lower hem) (Archiv).
2.2 Rationalism. A person who has lost his/her mind and does silly
things is described as if good spirits have left him/her: von allen guten
geistern verlassen sein (Wörterbuch der obersächsischen Mundarten 1996,
46).
3. The indicator of one's wills or traits: strength, energy, or vigour.
Upper German dialects literally describe something good as “good for
the soul” or “joyful for the soul”: seelensgut (Wörterbuch der
obersächsischen Mundarten 1996, 189), seelenfroh, seelensgern (Mitzka
1963‒1965, 1275). A brave man is said to have a rich soul - geistreicher
Kerl. Spirit is also used as an indicator of strength and abilities by means
of the following expressions: das Messer hat kein Geist mehr (the knife
has no more spirit) meaning that “the knife is blunt” (Mitzka 1963‒1965,
385), keinen Geist haben (spiritless) meaning “to have no taste”
(Wörterbuch der obersächsischen Mundarten 1996, 46), Obstgeist meaning
“hard liquor” (Zehetner 2005, 141): аuf der Flasch is kee Geist meh (literal
translation: the bottle has no more spirit) (Wörterbuch der obersächsischen
Mundarten 1996, 46).
4. Useful business activities.
Dialects of Middle and East Franconia have a verb gaaschdere
(Wörterbuch von Mittelfranken 2001, 73) “to disperse animals, especially
birds”. Its equivalent in literary German is the verb geistern “to stroll
around as if a ghost”. Silesian dialects also have a lexeme Seelenverkäufer
(literal translation: the seller of the soul), meaning “a small simple boat”
(Mitzka 1963‒1965, 1275).
5. A person, a speaker, or his/her absence.
“Soul” may represent a person: Koa Hund und koa Seel (literal
translation: neither a dog nor a soul), meaning “absence of any living
creature” (Schmeller 1877, 256-257) or ein kleiner Geist (literal
translation: small spirit), meaning “a child” Wenn ich un Stalle bin, da sin
di kleene Geister immer derbei (Wörterbuch der obersächsischen
Mundarten 1996, 46).
6. Part of the body.

The soul may dwell in certain parts of a person’s body: Seelwärma
(heater of the soul), meaning “a knitted vest” (Reinfelder 1972, 174),
Seelenwärmer, meaning “a breast wrap” (Mitzka 1963‒1965, 1275).
7. “Soul” may also represent sympathy or appeal. For example, the
expression bei meinea Siël (literal translation: to be beside my soul) means
“to like”.
Lexemes of Northern Russian dialects, meaning “spirit” or “soul”,
represent the following values:
1. The significance of a nice and pleasant interlocutor.
It is expressed by phrases such as дух, духань, духонька (spirit and its
diminutives), meaning “a soft appeal to the interlocutor”: да дух ты мой,
да спасибо тебе (oh, my spirit, thank you) (Gantsovskaya 2015, 101);
душа (soul), meaning “a gentle and polite person”; во третьём саду
садочку/cам душа гуляет (that soul is walking around the garden alone)
(Durov 2011, 108); душка (darling), meaning “a good-looking, small and
attractive woman; a nice, modest and a bit chubby young woman” (Durov
2011, 108). An absence of the soul equals the absence of a person and a
complete void: ни духу, ни духоцьки (not a single soul), meaning “no
one” (Podvysotsky 2008, 126), нет духа, нет табачку (no spirit and no
tobacco) (Dilaktorsky 2006, 115).
2. Useful business activities connected with a person.
We may single out examples such as душа (soul), meaning “a land or
water (for fishing) plot which belongs to someone whereas half a soul
means a half of such plot” (Podvysotsky 2008, 126), (Durov 2011, 108) or
разоткнуть душу (to divide a soul) means “to divide a land plot between
two masters” in Yaroslavl dialects (YaOS 2015, 214). Moreover, we also
note the semantic motivation of certain names of boats and ways of
addressing animals: душегуб (soul-murderer) (YaOS 2015, 214) “a small
light boat made of aspen”, душегубка (dugout) “a small boat which is
easily manoeuvred” (Durov 2011, 108), or душка-душка (darling-darling)
“the way of addressing pigs” (YaOS 2015, 214).
3. “Soul” as a symbol of life and activities.
This symbolism of “soul” is expressed in the saying худых душах
(poor souls), meaning “a person who is on the verge of death”
(Podvysotsky 2008, 126, Durov 2011, 108) and in the lexeme душник
(venting rod), meaning “a round hole in a Russian stove used for placing
the tube of a fire pot” (Gantsovskaya 2015, 102, SVG 1985, 67): душник-
то открой, самовар ставить будем (open the venting rod as we are
going to have some tea).
584 Chapter 27
4. “Soul” as a substance in a certain part of the body.

For example, the lexeme душевник “a bladder” (так терпела, едва
душевник выдержал) (my bladder could hardly endure) (Gantsovskaya
2015, 102); душегрейка (soul-warmer), “a short warm jacket without
sleeves” (Gantsovskaya 2015, 102), or “a warm blanket” (YaOS 2015,
214) (зимой-то под пальто душегрейку надевали) (we used to put on
soul-warmers under coats in winter). Sometimes, it may also represent
some body parts of animals: душки “respiratory organs of fish located in
branchias” (Durov 2011, 108).
5. The following set expressions show that the soul may be a symbol of
material values: пусти душу в ад, так и будешь богат (let your soul
into the hell and you’d be reach) (Podvysotsky 2008, 126; Durov 2011,
108); духу мало: капиталу мало, чтобы дом построить (you have
neither spirit nor money to build a house) (POS 1994, 58).
6. The following lexemes represent the soul as a source of vital
strength, energy, speed, vigor, and inspiration: духом (with a spirit),
meaning “right away, very quickly” (Dilaktorsky 2006, 115); выходить с
духа вон (to lose spirit), meaning “to lose strength” and что есть духу
(with all the spirit), meaning “at rapid-fire pace” (POS 1994, 58); душа на
нитке (soul on the thread), meaning “extreme tiredness of fatigue” (SVG
1985, 67); у ёго сегодне приподнят дух, даже в собранье смелее
высказываит (he is full of spirit and says everything he thinks) (Durov
2011, 108); в худых душах (in poor souls) “to get tired” (SRGK 1995,
13).
7. “Soul” as a manifestation of wishes or their absence: душу жжет
(it burns my soul) (SVG 1985, 67), meaning “a very strong wish”;
картофна душа, ягодна душа, тестянна душа (potato, berry or pastry
soul), meaning “a person who adores something” (Durov 2011, 108);
душа не несет (my soul doesn’t bring), meaning “without any will” (у
меня душа молока не несет) (my soul doesn’t bring any milk) (SRGK
1995, 13).
8. “Soul” as an indicator of mood: дух (spirit), meaning “either good or
bad mood”. Когда в духу, то соберет поесть. Дед с духом сегодня, все
ругает (When he is in good spirit, he picks something to eat. The old man
is in bad spirit today and curses everything) (POS 1994, 58). Душа
коротка, не в душу (a short soul), meaning “without interest or strength”.
Теперь песни и душа коротка петь (I am not interested in singing)
(SRGK 1995, 13).
9. “Soul” as a measure: “as much as you want, a lot of, abundance”.
Сейгод в лесах ягод душа и мера (Forest berries are in abundance this
year) (Durov 2011, 108). Знаешь, сколько я цяю выпила? — И знать не
хоцю: душа – мера (Do you know how much tea have I drunk? – No, I
don’t. The soul is the only measure) (SVG 1985, 67).
10. “Soul” may represent different personal traits:
– Frankness: душевно, meaning “frankly” (душевно тебе

сказываю) (frankly speaking) (Dilaktorsky 2006, 115).
– Kindness, simplicity: без души (without a soul), meaning “kind and
simple” (SRGK 1995, 13); душа человек (a man of the soul),
meaning “a kind and soft-hearted person who is sensitive towards
grief and misfortune of the others” (Durov 2011, 108).
– Arrogance, bossiness: бабы с духом большим (women with a big
spirit) (POS 1994, 58).
– Self-sacrifice: отдавать душу: человек – душу сваим отдает (to
give soul – a person gives his/her soul to the others) (POS 1994,
65).
– Intuition: духом чувствовать: ёны как духом чувствую (to feel
with a spirit – I do feel it with my spirit) (POS 1994, 59).
11. “Spirit” as a symbol of traditional values, habits and customs: дух

выветрился (spirit has gone away) (SRGK 1995, 12).
Thus, we may draw certain conclusions on the basis of the analyzed
materials. The concepts “soul” and “spirit” are closely interrelated in both
Upper German and Northern Russian linguistic cultures. As for the concept
“soul”, its common axiological dominant is the attribute of a person which
presents him/her in different spheres of life, both as a personality and a
producer of material assets: koa Hund und koa Seel (literal translation:
neither a dog nor a soul), meaning “absence of any living creature” in
Bavarian and разоткнуть душу (to divide a soul), meaning “to divide a
plot of land between two masters” in Yaroslavl dialects. Another common
feature for the analyzed German and Russian dialects is the perception of the
soul as the ultimate measure of the manifestation of different human
conditions: seelenfroh (heartily joyful), meaning “very joyful” in Upper
German and душу жжет (it burns my soul), meaning “a very strong wish”
in Northern Russian dialects. Association with the soul also serves as an
indicator of positive emotions: быть не у души, meaning “to dislike” in
Yaroslavl and bei meinea Siël, meaning “to like” in Southern German
dialects. Manifesting the value of the soul as a reminder of the inevitable
transition to the next world is more frequent in Upper German than in
Northern Russian dialects: Bavarian Seelhäuslein (house of the soul),
meaning “part of the rural church used for storing skulls and bones”, etc. In
Northern Russian dialects, the soul is valuable as a source of physical
strength and its “poor” character means the lack of such strength: в худых
586 Chapter 27
душах (in poor souls), meaning “to get tired”.
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Summary
Firstly, it should be noted that there are general axiological dominants in Upper
German and Northern Russian dialects. The soul is the most important attribute of
a person that presents him/her in different spheres of life both as a personality and
a producer of material assets: koa Hund und koa Seel (literal translation: neither a
dog nor a soul), meaning “absence of any living creature” in Bavarian and
разоткнуть душу (to divide a soul), meaning “to divide a plot of land between
two masters” in Yaroslavl dialects. The soul is the ultimate measure of the
manifestation of different human conditions: seelenfroh (heartily joyful), meaning
“very joyful” in Upper German and душу жжет (it burns my soul), meaning “a
very strong wish” in Northern Russian dialects. Association with the soul also
serves as an indicator of positive emotions: быть не у души, meaning “to dislike”
in Yaroslavl and bei meinea Siël, meaning “to like” in Southern German dialects.
Manifesting the value of the soul as a reminder of inevitable transition to the next
world is more frequent in Upper German than in Northern Russian dialects:
Bavarian Seelhäuslein (house of the soul), meaning “part of the rural church used
for storing skulls and bones”, etc. In Northern Russian dialects, the soul is valuable
as a source of physical strength and its “poor” character means the lack of such
strength: в худых душах (in poor souls), meaning “to get tired”.
Keywords: Slavic-German semantic parallels, Slavic and German dialectology,

folk mythology
CHAPTER 28
FOLKLORE NOTIONS OF THE SOUL

AS AN ANIMAL (ZOOPSYCHONAVIGATIONS):
FOLKLORE CHRISTIANITY
AS THE COUNTERPOINT
TO THE DOGMA OF CHRISTIANITY
SUZANA MARJANIĆ
INSTITUTE OF ETHNOLOGY AND FOLKLORE RESEARCH
IN ZAGREB, CROATIA
28.1. Animalia and anima: an introduction
This chapter is the continuation of my article “The Soul as a Post-

Mortal Bird: the Southern/Slavic Folklore Notion of the Bird-Soul and/or the
Soul-Bird,” presented at the conference Body, Soul, Spirits and Supernatural
Communication (organizer: Éva Pócs) in 2012. In that article, I analyzed the
ancient Slavic ornithological symbolism of the soul as well as
Southern/Slavic folklore notions about soul-bird and bird-soul. In the
concept “soul-animal,” and therefore “soul-bird,” there is an animal (bird)
that appears as a coexisting double of an individual, which means that their
lives are connected (cf. “Soul-Animal or Soul-Bird” 1950, 1051).
Conversely, the concept “bird-soul” means the post-mortal soul in the
form of a bird (cf. “Bird-Soul” 1949, 143). 1
1In a previous article (Marjanić 2004), I demonstrated that theoretical instrumentation

of the ethnology and, of course, the anthropology at this location generally,
dominates the dual concept of the soul (bodily and free) or the concept of the
unique (monistic) soul (more precisely, in the last case, bodily soul that in the post-
mortal existence has the attributes of the free soul). Following (rarely) mentioned
Folklore Notions of the Soul as an Animal (zoopsychonavigations) 589
28.2. The first axiom or the soul as a breath: zoopsychonavigations or

the soul as an animal
Deliberation of the zoo-conceptions of the soul in Southern/Slavic

folklore beliefs considers an interrogation/exploration of the transgression
of the soul’s topos, zoo/metempsychosis, considering that according to
certain beliefs the soul in post-mortal existence is also manifested in
animal attributes, such as a bird, butterfly and fly, as well as wind,
evaporation, and smoke (cf. Srpski mitološki rečnik, 1970, 113, Zečević
1978, 384). Indeed, as the ethnologist, Slobodan Zečević systematically
claims, in Serbian conceptualizations, there was no defined notion of the
soul: the anthropomorphic shape predominated in the majority of beliefs
and embodied the form, size and features of its owner, where the soul
figured as a duplicate. It is an indication that the soul is not smaller than
the body. The decedent will receive the suit as a posthumous gift and that
suit matches his physical proportions (Zečević 1982, 10–11).
theories about the plural, multiplied soul, which is, of course, in contrast to the
concept of the monistic soul, I tend to follow the concepts of souls shapeshifting,
zoo/psychonavigations (zoo/metempsychosis), under which I consider the soul
shapeshifting at the moment of death (post-mortal soul) and temporary death (in
this or the last case the subject is the soul’s shapeshifting of the mythical beings
and the supernatural persons in the form of an animal), in which I observed the
topos (location), configuration, chronology and transgression of the soul’s topos
(zoo-metempsychosis and translocations). During the analysis of the transgression
of the soul’s topos, on the one hand, I observed zoo/metempsychosis (considering
that the soul in the post-mortal existence manifests, according to particular beliefs,
also in animal form/attributes), and on the other hand its translocations (folklore
conceptualizations according to which the soul finds a new habitat or refuge in the
post-mortal world). According to the aforementioned beliefs about the locations of
the soul, the concepts of the monistic soul are also noticeable/manifested; moreover
the concepts of the bodily (unique) soul, considering the subject is the soul that is
bound to certain bodily organs (bodily soul), which only in the moment of death
divides/splits from the body, figures as a free soul. I have also tried to interpret the
symbol of world tree as headquarters of the souls of death, whereby it is significant
that the exact concept of bird-soul was preserved in the folklore notions about the
post-mortal soul. Numerous beliefs about the grave tree as well as the mytheme on
the tree of the fairies and witches could be taken as a proven pattern about the notion
of the world tree as headquarters of the souls of death, or a place where the souls of
death reside. Of course, it is necessary to bear in mind, as Marija S. Maerčik states,
that the mythopoetic image and mythologeme about soul-bird was more archaic
than the cosmology of the world tree with its vertical triform structure.
590 Chapter 28
Namely, the narrators discuss zoopsychonavigations that are related to

supernatural persons/creatures or mythical beings: in those mythical or
demonological traditions, the narratives usually highlight that during sleep
their soul goes, in the form of a fly, into the mouths of supernatural
persons such as shaman, witches, and mare/nightmares, and thus, using
zoometempsychosis they achieve psychonavigation (cf. Marjanić 2010).
By the term zoopsychonavigation (psychonavigation in animal form), I
denote the soul’s shapeshifting during the temporary death of supernatural
persons and mythical beings, which could be called “catalepsy” or
“cataleptic trans” (separating the soul from the body). Hence, under the
term zoopsychonavigation I observe three phenomena: zoo-metempsychosis,
zoo-metamorphosis, and riding (flying) on animal vehicles. It is important
to mention that Croatian oral traditions noted the zoo-metempsychosis of a
woman/nightmare (mare) and witch (more precisely, their souls) in a cat,
fly and night butterfly, and I have written about this more extensively on
other occasions (Marjanić 2002, 2004, 2010). 2
Therefore, we can find very similar descriptions in reports of the
shamanic experiences of ecstasy, where shamanic animal metempsychosis
and riding on animals symbolically expresses ecstasy: temporary death is
marked as an exit/coming-out/rising up of the soul from the body in the
form of an animal (Ginzburg 1991, 172; Eliade 1985, 90).
We must look to the folklore conceptions of the transgression of the
soul’s topos. The real hypertrophy of the soul’s role in the folklore religion
of the tomb is also shown by the lexical fact that considers, under the term
dying, the soul separating from the body: namely, there are many
synonyms for the verb to die that are related to census of the soul, for
example, to drop the soul, exhale, exhale the soul… (cf. Đorđević 1984,
150), 3 which partially corresponds to a Biblical description of death as a
dividing (separating) of the soul from the body. For instance, the 35
2 Tolstaja (2016) demonstrates that the Slavic beliefs in metempsychosis are based
on the mixture of pre-Christian and Christian beliefs.

3 While in particular regions it is a custom to open the windows so that the soul
could leave its earthly habitat (cf. Bulat 1927:1056), for example at Blato (Brač
island in Croatia), the household members would not only light the candle and
vigil lamp, but they would also shut the windows “so that the soul might not
escape.” With the expression “his soul is gathering” they allude to agony caused by
the straining of the breast while breathing (Milićević 1965, 26). In certain South
Slavic regions, there was a custom to lie the dying person on the ground so that
“the soul could leave easier” (Drobnjaković 1960, 159).
Genesis 18 discusses in the telling of Rachel’s death that at the moment of

(human) death, the soul departs, which is described in the following part of
the temporal clause: “When she was separating from her soul” (cf. Rječnik
biblijske teoogije 1988, 231–232). Namely, according to Christian
doctrine, the soul and the body equally participate in death, which means
that the Christianity, at the same time rejected Platonic understanding of
the body as a “prison,” from which the soul liberates, as well as the
possibility of the pre-existence of the soul and its reincarnation (Mišić
1998, 91). In Croatian folk beliefs on the religion of tomb (anthropology of
death), the status of the soul has a precisely diametrically opposite
meaning, bearing in mind the established and already mentioned belief
about dividing the soul from the body.
Finally, in the context of the referred analysis, it is not surprising that
the father of anthropology of religion, Edward B. Tylor, discussed in his
book Primitive Culture (1871) that animism is a source of religion, an
understanding that certainly also assigns a soul to animals. Additionally, it
is useful to remember that in the 1 Genesis 21–28 the Hebrew word nefesh
(meaning living being/breath, life, soul, though) is used 22 times to denote
an animal. Therefore, nefesh, besides indicating living beings as well as
the functions and feature of human beings, also means an animal. In
Primitive Culture, Tylor states that the term "animism" is not something
new but it is rarely used and that he borrowed the term from George Ernest
Stahl, who described it in Theoria Medica Vera (Halle 1737) (Tylor 1871,
385). Tylor highlights breathing as an essential deed for the apparitional
soul (ghost-soul) that is identified with life or with the soul itself. He states
that the concept of the soul as a breath could be led by Semitic and Arian
(Indo-Iranian) etymology and refers to the Hebrew word nefesh meaning
breath, life (living being), soul, thought, animal, 4 while the word ruah or
meshmas signifies the bridge between breath and spirit, the Arabic words
nefs and rug also correspond to this. In the same group, Tylor put words
atman and prana from Sanskrit, Greek words psychē and pneuma as well
as the Latin words animus, anima, spiritus, and states that the Slavic word
duša also relates to the concept of the soul as a breath (Tylor 1871, 391).
In comparison to Tylor’s theory of “apparitional soul” as a ghost-soul
(cf. De Waal Malefijt 1968, 49), Wilhelm Wundt (1920) highlighted
4 The bioethicist Hrvoje Jurić shows that the problematics of animals could be
traced through the question of “animal soul,” not only in the Bible but also in the
other religious and philosophical texts of Judeo-Christian tradition (Jurić 2010:
12).
592 Chapter 28
dyadic soul, a bodily (Korperseele) and free soul (Freiseele) that could
separate from the body and return back (regressus). Wundt’s theory on the
plural soul in archaic religions was modified by Ernest Arbman; based on
Wundt’s theory, but with specific differences, Arbman noted that the
bodily soul is not unique. Moreover, it can be divided into living souls
(those that maintain physical functions) and an ego-soul that is in charge
of psychical functions; in specific cases, ego-souls take over the functions
of the free soul (Kulmar 1997). Regarding Wundt’s distinctive terms
within the free soul of Hauchseele (breath-soul) and Schattenseele
(shadow-soul), Ernest Jones notes that the idea of breath-soul was – as
indicated by its name – primarily taken over from the phenomenon of
breathing and interruption of breathing at the moment of death and is
related to higher religious concepts, and that shadow-soul plays a role in
the analysis of ghosts and evil demons related to the feeling of fear, and it
is also related to the experience of dreams (Jones 1931, 61–62, Bremmer
1983, 22–23).
28.3. The second axiom or the souls of animals: zooethics and animal
rights
Natko Nodilo (Stara vjera Srba i Hrvata, 1885–1890) 5 noted the

ancient Slavic ornithological symbolism of the soul. For example: Poles
have discussed a dove-soul; Czechs have a notion of bird-soul that flies to
the trees from the mouth of the decedent and is pacified after cremation; in
Slavic tradition the post-mortal soul is seen as a bird; and Ancient Greek
tradition determines the soul with symbols of butterflies (Gk. psychē, soul,
butterfly). Nodilo claims that the confirmation of the historically older
beginning of soul-butterfly could be found in Lithuanian folk beliefs,
where the soul was imagined both as a bird and night butterfly and
concludes that the notion of butterfly-soul is enrooted in Indo-European
communities. However, Nodilo also refers to Preller’s interpretation
(Griechische Mythologie, 1854) that the figuration of the soul in the form
of the butterfly is a newer concept from the Ancient Greek tradition. Milan
Budimir discusses that the terms “witch” and “werewolf” also denominate
the butterfly Acherontia atropos (dead’s-head hawkmoth), which flies
around the light during the night. He mentions that another species of
5With the first study on the reconstruction of proto-Croatian, “ancient faith” could
be defined as Nodilo 1981 (1885‒1890).
butterfly, which is smaller and related to the aforementioned species, is

referred to as “witch” and that the notion of the soul of a dead ancestor in
the form of butterfly (Seelenschmetterling), known from the Minoan
epoch, played a “decisive role in that semantic evolution” (Budimir 1966,
272). From this notion of the butterfly as a decedent’s soul, originates the
belief of the butterfly as the announcer of death and sometimes as a form
of death (Gura 2005, 365–366).
The aforementioned folklore beliefs about the animal soul, more
precisely on zoo-metempsychosis, also appear in the cases of temporary
death of supernatural persons, and at the same time in ethnological literature,
the numb state of consciousness is called "catalepsy" or "cataleptic trans”
in the case of shamanic ecstasies.
These zoo-conceptions of the soul depict a certain continuity between
an animal and a human and confirm the etymological closeness of the
Latin words anima – animal and animals (cf. Visković 1996). Some
authors of analytical psychology have preserved this link. For example,
Marie-Louise von Franz states that the “self” has been depicted as an
animal that represents inherent human nature and its relationship with the
environment, and thus it is not surprising to often find an animal-helper in
myths and stories. This etymological closeness also implies a link between
the German word Thier (every wild animal), and the English word deer,
which are probably etymologically connected in the word Dunst
(evaporation), which means breath and is confirmed by the dictionary
Duden. Nikola Visković alluded to this in his book The Animal and the
Man (1996). In “Reflexion”, an appendix to Coetzee’s book The Lives of
Animals, Wendy Doniger states that the referred meaning of the German
word Thier, from which originates the English word deer, survived for a
while in English and that Shakespeare used it in that sense in the
expression small deer “little beast.”
Based on the abovementioned facts, I will here discuss how Tom
Regan, distinguished zoo-ethicist and philosopher in the movement for
animal rights, found data from Biblical accounts about animal souls (cf.
Regan 2004, 68). Regan denied Descartes’ definition of animals as
machines, among other things, and claimed that Hinduism and many
autochthonous American traditions, such as the Christian theologians (i.e.
the Anglican priest John Wesley in the 18th century), believed that an
animal has a soul. In the same fashion, the priest Gary A. Kowalski (from
All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa, Oklahoma) published in 1991 a book
called The Souls of Animals about the animal soul, and a second and
amended edition in 1999 with a preface by Tom Regan. For example,
Eugen Drewermann, an enfant terrible of contemporary theology,
594 Chapter 28
presented the concept of the immortality of the animals in his book Uber
die Unsterblichkeit der Tiere (cf. Visković 1996, 418). 6 While most of the
western faiths proclaim that people possess immortal souls and animals
allegedly do not, animal rights theoreticians claim the exact opposite
(Moussaieff and McCarty 2004, 225–226). Gary A. Kowalski (1999, 23)
stated that some truths cannot be demonstrated and, at the same time,
invited his readers to share their opinions on the experiences that might
bring to light the proof about animal souls.
However, Christian presupposition, predominately religious, argues
that slaughtering is wrong and deadly sinful only in the case of slaughtering a
being with an immortal soul—members of the human race—and for some
that justify killing animals for nourishment and other purposes.
28.4. Post scriptum: on Andrew Linzey
As regards the aforementioned beliefs of Southern Slavs on the zoo-

conception of the soul, which I have written about in more detail
elsewhere, I would like to add that there is a large gap between nature and
culture, and it is evident that Christian dogma contributed to that
speciesistic gap via its anthropocentrism, which has parallels with some
other philosophical statements encouraged by Descartes. 7 Fortunately,
6 Durkheim, although he argues for the totemistic origin of religion, admitted that
the theoreticians of animism (E.B. Tylor and H. Spencer) significantly contributed
to religious studies and the overall history of ideas because they conducted a
historical analysis of the soul. “In contrast to many philosophers who the idea of
the soul represent as a simple and direct gift of the consciousness, they saw inside
it a complex structure, a product of history and mythology and that interpretation is
more accurate. It is doubtful that the idea of the soul by itself is significantly
religious, regarding its roots and functions. Philosophers took that idea from
religion; for that reason, the form in which it appears amongst ancient thinkers is
not understandable if we do not pay attention to mythical elements that served for
its creation” (Durkheim 2008:109).
7 We should look back for a moment at the Cartesian understanding of an animal
that has remained until today. Namely, Descartes’ certainty in res extensa, a
mathematically measurable matter that a human mind can recognize, brought him
to the ghoulish certainty that animals are unconsciousness beings and that the
sounds they produce during vivisection are not much different than those from a
broken machine. Cries of pain for him were merely mechanical noise.
Additionally, there were rumours that Descartes took large parts of various animal
bodies from Amsterdam's butcheries every day, which he then anatomized. Finally,
certain denominations of Christianity, as highlighted in the previous

section, demonstrate regard toward animals, and for that reason I am
concluding this chapter with an example from Andrew Linzey, who
profoundly believes in the existence of animal soul—more precisely the
souls of an animal if we pay attention to the plurality of animal entities
that denies the arrogant use of the noun in singular to denote numerous
living beings and species who share the planet with us (Derrida 2002). 8
Andrew Linzey is a founder of the contemporary Christian movement
for animal rights, an Anglican priest, theologian, the first professor of
animal ethics in the world and, as such, an unusual figure in theological
circles. In addition to the above, he is a member of the Faculty of
Theology at the University of Oxford and a director of the Oxford Center
for Animal Ethics, which was established in 2006 and originates from
scientific research and improvement of the public discussion about
questions of zoo ethics. Linzey published his first book on animal rights,
Animal Rights: A Christian Assessment, in 1976, and the book Animal
Theology, which is discussed here, in 1994. The author’s preface for the
Croatian edition, entitled Animal Protection: the opportunity for Christians
in Croatia, poses a fundamental question on the role of the “Church among
Croats”: namely, where the Churches were during public discussion on the
enactment of laws on animal protection that came into effect on 1 January
2007, 9 and highlights that in Croatia more than 80% of the population is
Roman Catholic (around 5% are Orthodox, and there is a smaller number
of Reformists, Evangelists, Pentecostals and Baptists; indeed, he did not
mention the other religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Bahaism, or
Rodnovery, a Slavic native faith). Here we find an open call as well as a
significant accusation: “The response that the Churches have not had any
role in this discussion is terrifying. No message of support was sent by
Christian authorities” (Linzey 2013, ii). Because of this, we should not
omit that in the preface to the Croatian edition, Linzey states that, “The
it is fascinating to me that, despite everything, Descartes had a pet, a dog called

Monsieur Grat, which he, I must add, fortunately, left intact.
8 In comparison with Christianity which denies the concept of the animal soul, for
example, Zarathustra’s lesson instructs that the soul-holder (urvan) is not only a
man but also an animal: “Thus we respect the soul and creator of the cattle, our
own soul and animal soul… We also respect the soul of useful wild animals (Yasna
39, 1)” (according to Veljačić 1983, 28–29).
9 Unfortunately, even in 2017, neither of the Churches in Croatia participated in the
discussion during the enactment of laws on animal protection.

596 Chapter 28
book arrives at a critical moment for the history of animal protection in

Croatia. Are the Churches going to continue their silence or they are going
to use their vote (and power) to speak on behalf of the other suffering
God’s creatures? Croatian people traditionally deeply respect animals –
finally, the word blago, literally translated in English means wealth and
treasure (bogatstvo i blago)” 10 (Linzey 2013, vii).
Regarding theological circles in Croatia, the only academic engaged in
bioethical problematics is Željka Bišćan, who holds a masters in Catholic
dogmatic theology and is perennial course coordinator on Theological
attitudes toward zoology at the Institute of Theological culture, which is
part of the Catholic Faculty of Theology in Zagreb. She is also the author
of the prologue in this edition, and clearly states that this is not a book on
theological zoology but, as the title of the book suggests, on the theology
of animals. Paradoxically, the course was abolished during the so-called
recession, although it was a pioneering course in our circles and ran from
2004 to 2010.
Finally, it is clear that domestic theologians did not react at all to the
aforementioned book by an Anglican priest. Namely, the overall speciesism
of Thomas Aquinas still dominates in a significant part of Catholic
attitudes toward animals, and definitely not only this (Linzey 2013: 14). In
his work Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas refers to the following
speciesistic constative: “Mute animals and plants do not have the ratio that
would move them, they are moved by something else, by a kind of a
natural impulse, which means that they were naturally determined to be
slaves and to serve to the others.” The situation in the field shows that this
is indeed true. For example, we could consider a fragment of the attitude
toward animality by Tonči Matulić (2005), a bioethicist, and a priest who
teaches theological ethics and bioethics at the Faculty of Theology,
University of Zagreb: “A human is an ontological magnitude who finds his
purpose in himself, while the animals, exactly because they are animals,
therefore instinctive and unconscious, they do not find the purpose in
themselves” (stated S.M.).
Christian benevolence toward animals was established in Europe
during the 12th and 13th centuries at the time of St Francis of Assisi, and
this was entirely restructured by Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), when the
philosopher and theologian-Dominican re-established Aristotle’s image of
In contrast to Linzey, an American theoretician for animal rights, feminist Joan

10
Dunayer (2009) considers that bogatstvo, blago are linguistic speciesism because
we define them/animals according to function.
the world where humans predominate (Aristotle’s hierarchical Great Chain

of Being). This type of speciesism enabled the renaissance ethos, and at
the same time allowed the rationalism of René Descartes, and therefore the
enthronement of the ratio over the imagination via the metaphorical
celebration of life. In short, after the death of St Francis in 1225/1226, the
ground was prepared entirely for the establishment of the hierarchical
dogma of Thomas Aquinas, at the expense of animals and nature in
general, which is defined by the speciesist noun ‘environment’: animals
have suffered the same misfortune.
All of this is evidence of how difficult it is to permit animals to enter
the church in our anthropocentric culture and to embrace the faith and the
fact that the animals also have a soul (it still remains a mystery whether
we, as human beings, have one at all). In other words, as it was powerfully
demonstrated in the film Blade Runner 2049 (director: Denis Villeneuve),
the replicants were more sympathetic than the human race, even though
they have neither a soul nor the power of reproduction (namely, the power the
human soul reflects through the human power of reproduction/procreation as
well as through zoological and biological nature, according to Desmond
Morris.
Briefly, I consider that in all the anthropocentric analyses of the soul,
whether they are philosophical, psychological or religious, it is useful to
turn biocentrically toward all the species and thus to abolish another type
of discrimination: speciesism. Furthermore, as Shaun Monson showed in
the film Earthlings (2005), if all we are is Earthlings (plants, animals, the
human race), then we are all equal, and that was proved by folklore
traditions in illo tempore, after which there was a long speciesistic
oblivion due to the above dogmas both from religious and philosophical
niches. Shaun Monson reminds us that the word “Earthlings” has no sexist,
speciesistic or racist meaning in contrast to the Kafkaesque state-building
reality in which we, unfortunately, live and survive – and quietly obey.
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Summary
Christian dogma has been extremely successful in erasing the concept of the
post-moral soul as a bird or an animal, as Christianity has reinforced in its
anthropocentric worldview that animals, ostensibly, have no souls at all. Bruce M.
Hood’s (2009) ironically comments that the Latin term animalia for the animal
kingdom is not at all appropriate, as it derives from the word anima (soul). The
folklore concept of the soul as an animal (zoopsychonavigations) obviously
displeased the Church. As Mirjam Mencej (1995) points out in the conclusion of
her article, K. Moszyński drew attention to the linguistic similarity (in Slavic
languages) between the Latin words anima and animalis, and that animals, in his
opinion, should be described as the bearers of life.
In light of the above, I highlight here Tom Regan, a prominent zoo-ethicist and
a philosopher within the animal rights movement, who discusses beliefs in
Hinduism and numerous indigenous American traditions that animals have souls,
but that the Christian theologians such as John Wesley found in Biblical records is
a good source on the souls of animals (cf. Regan 2004, 68).
Keywords: animal soul/souls of animals, zoopsychonavigations, folklore

Christianity, Croatian folklore beliefs, animal rights, animal theology

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The Soul in the

Joanna Jurewicz, Ewa Masłowska

Edited by Joanna Jurewicz, Ewa Masłowska

This book first published 2020

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2020 by Joanna Jurewicz, Ewa Masłowska,

ISBN (10): 1-5275-4564-4

Part I: The soul from the perspective of humanities

Chapter 6 ................................................................................................. 103

Part II: The linguistic conceptualisation of the soul

Chapter 7 ................................................................................................. 120

Chapter 8 ................................................................................................. 126

Chapter 9 ................................................................................................. 164

Chapter 10 ............................................................................................... 205

Chapter 11 ............................................................................................... 228

Chapter 12 ............................................................................................... 240

Chapter 13 ............................................................................................... 254

Chapter 14 ............................................................................................... 281

Chapter 15 ............................................................................................... 294

Chapter 16 ............................................................................................... 309

Chapter 17 ............................................................................................... 328

Chapter 18 ............................................................................................... 336

Chapter 19 ............................................................................................... 360

Chapter 20 ............................................................................................... 372

Chapter 21 ............................................................................................... 416

Chapter 22 ............................................................................................... 447

Chapter 23 ............................................................................................... 475

Chapter 24 ............................................................................................... 521

Chapter 25 ............................................................................................... 533

Chapter 26 ............................................................................................... 545

Chapter 27 ............................................................................................... 579

Chapter 28 ............................................................................................... 588

Róbert Bohát Chapter 9. (translated by the author)

James Underhill Chapter 13. (author is a British native

Axiosphere of the Soul in Intercultural Perspective is the work of many

1 Antropologiczno-językowe wizerunki duszy w perspektywie międzykulturowej (2

Images of the Soul in Intercultural Perspective, titled Aksjosfera duszy – dusza w

participated in both sessions, their articles represent in some cases the

1) The soul from the perspective of the humanities

axiological aspect in Bulgarian, Violetta Nikolovska and Veselinka

is investigated by Irena Vañková based on Czech phraseology and lyrics

The reader will find the continuation of the present discussion in

On behalf of the authors,

THE SOUL FROM THE PERSPECTIVE

“METAPHYSICS” AND “PSYCHOLOGY”:

This study relies on the definition of language as an interpretation of

- “the divine, eternal aspect of a human being” (dusza1).

1.2. Language as a “grand narrative”, a word as “micro-narrative”

Narrative and storytelling “were born with humanity” (Barthes 1968,

Narrative imagining – a story – is a fundamental instrument of thought.

from its semantic potential and textual uses.

to literary theory and contemporary transdisciplinary definitions.

For a long time, linguistics has capitalized on the achievements of

“grand” narrative of language understood in this way might be found and

1.3. The soul in metaphysics and psychology and the linguistic

The views of philosophers and psychologists evolve constantly; they