The Concept of “The Other World” in Panteleymon Kulish’s Folkloristic Discourse

On the basis of Wandering about the Other World, included into the first volume of The Notes on Southern Rus’ by Panteleymon Kulish, our paper highlights the specificity of folk visions the Ukrainians who experienced clinical death had about “the other world”. We underline that such visions are traditional, and the folk narrator’s material is analyzed in the context of other folk (Ivan Petrov’s records of folklore) and literary (the description of Hell in Ivan Kotliarevskyi’s Aeneid) stories about a soul’s adventures after death. The text of Wandering allowed us to make a conclusion that the Ukrainians imagine the other world as a 3-dimensional space. A field is a borderline territory that partially belongs to someone, but gradually transforms into a “foreign” (or otherworldly) space in its horizontal dimension (here the “dying woman” meets brothers who turned into dogs biting each other). The horizontal dimension ends with a deep hole in the ground leading to Hell, but also has certain features of a purgatory, since there are people who gave charity to the poor and saved old men and women from starving. Olena Dubynykha visited this part of the other world, saw sinners’ sufferings, a happy and carefree life of the righteous and had to tell the living all about it. Due to the fact that the “dying woman” had to come back to life, the guide saved her from falling into real Hell (a deep abyss) where one could get through the hole. Dubynykha’s stories have a moral and ethical sense, they warn people against committing sins and put special emphasis on the most serious ones. Kulish continued to take interest in the topic of Hell, and we can see that from his further folklore and literary preferences.