'Weeping at the Grave Creates the Song: Alleluia' : The Nachleben of Russian Orthodox Funeral Hymns in Modern Culture

This chapter explores the reception within modern culture of Russian Orthodox Christian funeral ritual and its hymnography, grounded in early Byzantine traditions. The selected examples of modern literary and musical works span from the 1940s to the 1990s. They are produced in Russian (Anna Akhmatova; Boris Pasternak), Swedish and Finland Swedish (Vera Alexandrova; Hagar Olsson), Church Slavonic (Krzysztof Penderecki), and English (John Tavener). Through their references to Orthodox funeral hymns and practices, a religious and cultural heritage that was severely threatened and almost destroyed by the atheistic communist state of the Soviet Union was remebered and activated anew. Due to their transfer into a secular semiosphere, the funerary texts gained new meanings and functions according to the norms and values which set the standards for modern culture.