Bonfire of the Virus
Natalia Jafar-Biglou on the Nikola-Lenivets Art Park’s Maslenitsa celebrations, fighting coronavirus with fire
Зима недаром злится, прошла её пора. Весна в окно стучится и гонит со двора.
Winter’s spite is vain for its time has come at last. Knocking at the panes, spring has cast it out.
Fyodor Tyutchev (1803-1873)
The Russian winter is legendary. Its bucolic winter landscapes have long provided inspiration for poets and writers but it is as inhospitable as it is beautiful, having also contributed to the failures of countless foreign invasions (this winter has been particularly gruelling, with sub-zero temperatures continuing well into March against the backdrop of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic). So joyful is winter’s retreat, the great ‘thaw’, that it is celebrated in its own holiday, Maslenitsa, the week before Lent. Though now very much a Christian holiday, Maslenitsa stems from an ancient Slavic sun worshipping ritual. It famously involves heavy consumption of ‘blinis’, pancakes, before the Lenten fast – the pancakes, round, yellow and buttery, are said to resemble the sun. The week-long folk celebration culminates in a bonfire on Sunday evening. Traditionally, a wood and straw effigy of Lady Maslenitsa, symbolic of winter, is put to the flames and, with the advent of spring, banished to the past.
Corona Tower in flames. Photo: Natalia Jafar-Biglou
Nikola Lenivets is a sprawling sculpture park and artists’ colony situated in a national park along the Ugra River, about 130 miles south-west from Moscow. Every year, the park’s founder, artist Nikolay Polissky, spends several months constructing his own straw effigy – a monumental land art installation to burn at the end of a spectacular Maslenitsa carnival. The Maslenitsa event at Nikola Lenivets is often likened to Burning Man in the United States. Always topical (and at times controversial – his installation in 2018, the 30 metre-tall ‘Flaming Gothic’, drew some criticism from the Russian press as it closely resembled a cathedral), this year’s event, themed around ‘vaccination’, featured an installation, titled ‘Corona Tower’ in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Maslenitsa was traditionally a time to honour and remember those who had passed away, with Sunday serving as a day of forgiveness. On this day, people sought forgiveness from the living and visited family graves to pay their respects to the dead. As I watched Polissky’s ‘Corona Tower’ burn last weekend in a clearing in the surrounding snow-covered spruce forest, its heat and swirling light searing my face like the sun, I thought of the millions of lives claimed by Covid-19 around the world. Russia is one of the countries most affected by the pandemic, with some 400,000 Covid-related deaths reported to date. Polissky says: “Now everyone is thinking about the new 'plague' – coronavirus. Scientists and doctors are fighting to rid us of this disease and we, ordinary people, must also help them as much as we can.” But with the government rescinding most orders to halt the spread of the virus and a widespread national reluctance to vaccinate, I wondered how close we really were to spring.
