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THE SAURIS CARNIVAL - DER TSARAR VOSANKH
The "Night of the Lanterns".
Period of the event: FEBRUARY \ MARCH.
The carnival always takes place on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday.
The precise date depends, therefore, upon the liturgical calendar but is always some time in FEBRUARY or MARCH.
It takes place in SAURIS in the Lumiei Valley. Sauris, or Zahre in the local dialect,
is one of the three communities of German origin which moved to the Carnia mountains,
probably between the second half of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th century,
from villages between the Pusteria Valley and the Carinthian Lesachtal.
There is no written record of the Carnival and its origins.
Although the dialect word for it, Vosankh, goes far back in time, according to oral tradition
it wasn't until the early 19th century that masks were worn.
The older people of Sauris remember The Carnival as an eagerly awaited event:
It marked a time of the year they could dedicate to having fun, a time for celebration
which set it apart from daily life.
It was a moment of enchanted freedom culminating in
acting out the "topsy-turvy world" in which space-time relations were reversed, social
class no longer existed and, thanks to the masks, roles and sexes could be switched.
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The opportunity for transgression was particularly
welcome to the people of Sauris who, after long periods of hard work in an often hostile environment,
desired nothing more than to set aside toil and worry and build up a store of energy and strength
for the future.
While daily life meant careful saving, these celebrations were a chance to squander,
eating and drinking more than was usual and meeting up to talk and laugh, to joke and prepare
for the masquerade.
The carnival season began the night before Epiphany, immediately after the blessing of the water.
Masks were worn on the Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. The last three Sundays before the beginning
of Lent were dedicated to three different social strata: the rich (Hearnsuntach), the peasants
(Pauarsuntach) and beggars (Petralsuntach).
Children were allowed to dress up and spend an afternoon in revelry only on the Thursday before Lent.
The last day of the Carnival was marked by a public ball. The masque followed a precise ritual.
The first to appear in the streets of the town was the Rolar, his face and hands covered in soot,
wearing rough clothing, and carrying a stick and a belt full of bells called the Roln (hence his name)
which he rattled incessantly. His task was to urge the people to prepare for the Carnival kermis.
He went round the town three times, the first immediately after the Hail Maria, with three messages:
"This evening masks are to be worn", "All children must go home", "It is time to dress up".
The masquers then prepared themselves, dressing up either to be "ugly" or "handsome".
The handsome masquers, Sean Sembin, wore elegant bodices, flowered skirts, white shirts and stockings,
party shoes and, on their heads, a garland of paper flowers and sparkling baubles which held
in place a pretty shawl which covered both shoulders and face.
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The male version of the costume was a wooden mask, a hat decorated with the flowers of conscripts,
woollen stockings, knickerbockers and white socks turned down over the uppers of their shoes.
The ugly masks, Seintan Sembin, wore old, worn-out clothes, a shabby hat or woollen beret,
overlarge gaiters, an ugly mask or a rag placed over the face and knotted at the back of the neck.
The wooden face masks mainly represented the stern features of the elders.
Everyone wore gloves so that they could not be recognised by their hands.
The true orchestrator of the evening was the Kheirar, "the one with the broom".
The Kheirar dressed worse than everyone else His hands blackened with soot, he brandished a broom
and wore an intimidating wooden mask. When he appeared on the scene the message was:
"Get a move on! It's time to assemble". Accompanied by a group of musicians, the masquers then
began their tour of the town, the Kheirar in front. He would knock on each door, go into the kitchen,
inviting the players to follow and sweeping the floor with his broom as he went,
and then beat on the door to bring in the couples of handsome and ugly masks one by one.
The Carnival of Sauris, its protagonists, the costumes and performance are full of symbolic meaning.
The use of old clothes and of wooden masks inspired often by the faces of the elderly was a means
symbolically to bring back their ancestors, to breathe life into the past, into the world of has-been
and of tradition to give it a new life.
Dividing the masks into ugly and handsome was only one of the distinctions held dear by the Carnival,
itself a synthesis of a complex of opposites and reversal rituals.
The presence and activities of the Rolar and Kheirar are themselves full of symbolism.
The continual noise made by the Rolar with his cowbells was certainly apotropaic, to ward off evil
and negativity.
The sweeping of the floor by the Kheirar has a similar significance; everything old,
ugly and negative, winter and the cold, were symbolically piled together and thrown away to make
room for more positive, good and beautiful things, in particular the springtime which brought with
it the cultivation of crops, haymaking, grazing, and the renewal of life after a long and often
difficult winter dormancy. Once the floor was cleaned, the masquers could give free rein to the dancing,
the merrymaking and the clamour, putting their hope in the future. |
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