Marshes: the inverted world

“…The forest was beginning to wither, was less dense than before. And soon an endless plain came into view.

This was not an ordinary plain throughout which our rye rolls on in small rustling waves; it was not even a quagmire… a quagmire is not at all monotonous. You can find there some sad, warped saplings, a little lake may suddenly appear, whereas this was the gloomiest, the most hopeless of our landscapes: the peat-bogs. One has to be a misanthropist with the brain of a cave-man to imagine such places. Nevertheless, this was not the product of the imagination, here before our very eyes lay the swamp…

This boundless plain was brownish, hopelessly smooth, boring, gloomy.

At times we met great heaps of stones, at times it was a brown cone… And the forest that dragged on beyond the plain seemed even gloomier than it really was. After a short while there began to appear little islands of trees even on this plain, trees overgrown with moss and covered with cobwebs, most of them as warped and ugly as those in the drawings that illustrate a horribly frightening tale.”

Such gloomy and somber scenery was chosen by outstanding Belarusian writer Uladzimir Karatkevich for his famous novel “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt”,  a haircurling and deeply romantic piece at the same time. Actually, it is just impossible to find a better solution for the thrilling mixture of mysticism, legends of the hoary past, people’s degradation, falsehood, betrayal and a young hero standing alone against the evil.

"People on the Marsh” was the title of a novel by another renowned Belarusian man of words, Ivan Melezh. It saw the light of day in the 1960s, and soon after that its title turned into a metaphor of Belarusian people as a whole. No wonder! Even today, after large-scale melioration, marshlands occupy more than one tenth of Belarus’ territory. Several decades ago this share was much higher.

Indeed, from times immemorial marshland has been an essential part of Belarusian natural, cultural and mental landscape. It’s safe to say that it is one of key archetypes of the Belarusian traditional culture and mentality. Marshes’ genesis is even described in a special myth.

Originally, there was water everywhere. And God and devil decided to create the land as it was not convenient to walk on the water. Then God sent devil to the bottom that he brought some soil from there. Devil brought sand in both hands and in his mouth. He gave God the soil that was in his hands but hid the one that was in his mouth. God scattered the sand and thus the land emerged. Then, he ordered that grass and trees grew on it. Thus, trees started growing right in the devil’s mouth. He couldn’t bear it and spat it out. This way marshlands appeared.

The cosmogonic symbolism of marshes is inseparable from their real features, a disorderly mixture of water and soil, the original Chaos that hasn’t come to order. The world inside-out, the anti-world. That’s why before they imagined swamps as the realm of supernatural forces. They settled them in the hoary rustling reeds, reflection of the blue sky and changeable ripple on the water’s surface, frozen cranberries on the snow, pugmarks… All of this became signs of the invisible life of ghosts and deities that beguiled a careless person and bogged him or her down. Those artful evil creatures could treat a man with winy berries, dope him with smells of poisonous grasses, entice him with rare flowers or emerald greenery of mosses so that he never found his way home.

Ancient Belarusians believed that the gates to hell were scattered amid swamps and looked like small lakes called “devil’s windows” or “devil’s eyes”. Therefore, they avoided measuring their depth or throwing things in them. We still can hear people saying: “there is a devil in each marsh” or “he shakes like a devil in the swamp”.

And how is it possible to live side by side with such danger? Actually, our wise ancestors took marsh as a necessary and common element of the environment, tried to investigate it and use for their own purposes. They observed the peculiarities of different kinds of marshes, found safe places and pathways, polished up their skills of fishing and hunting there. During wars, whole villages could migrate across swamps that seemed impassable, and survive in their depth for months. People’s centuries-long experience found its reflection in dozens of words denoting marshes in the Belarusian language and its dialects. And still, they never underestimated the forces of nature and always took bogs seriously.

Marshland is attractive, whatever one may say. It gives very special emotions, the feeling of a borderline: it lies there between water and dry land, between everydayness and the next world; it tickles our nerves with devilish jokes and reflects the blue sky in water mirrors. It makes one be careful every moment, catching each move of shaky ground, a bird’s cry or a crack of a broken branch. It tunes one’s attention to perception of every small detail. And the familiar reality reflected in the marshland's water seems to obtain new features, new forms and new beauty as if seen through a looking glass.

Interestingly, the Belarusian people used to believe that a mysterious dragon, known as Cmok, lived in the marshes. It possessed the great power of creation and destruction and the land’s fertility depended on this creature. Certainly, it’s a fantastic symbol. But it is true that our environment depends on marshes. It is for a reason that Belarusian bogs are called “the lungs of Europe”. They provide us with oxygen, give birth to numerous rivers and springs and house dozens of rare species of animals and plants. This is why we protect our marshes. Otherwise, we may lose clear waters, diverse flora and fauna, our mysterious and unique landscapes and… a part of our soul, too.

Sincerely yours,

Volha Blazhevich.

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