I have nothing to do with the cinema except that sometimes I watch it. I study the folklore and partially the mythology. I will simply introduce some principal points of the topic that I was supposed to speak on. I will try to connect it with the question which is being discussed here. It is what we called the inseparable unity of time and space. In other words, the chronotope, I am more used to this term. I won’t go into historical details of the question, I’ll draw your attention to just a few points, as I’ve already said. Besides, one of the words that I heard today in this room is «mythologeme», which has a lot to do with my topic. I would like to start, I guess, from the following thing: really, the problem of the unity of time and space, from my point of view, is in dividing of space, dividing of time, in determination of time and space limits which are interconnected, plus in the semantics of the objects of time and space that especially distinguishes. But since I study the traditional culture and the mythology on the first place, I’ll try to denote a few points that are typical for the mythological perception of time and space. I will have to digress a bit from the problem and start from the way man - a long time ago, when he was just becoming man - perceived the surrounding world. He perceived it indivisibly. From the point of view of a lot of mythological schools, man, when he becomes man, when he creates his own mythology, believes himself to be in the unity with the world. This is where the problem of chaos arises. That is, if he perceives himself in unity with the surrounding world and if he can not describe it, if he can not give any spatial reference points, then he lives in chaos and is a part of this very chaos. There exist the points of view of the neostructuralists, the neosemiotics. Actually, now we already can speak about the neosemiotics - a man distinguishes himself from the environment and only then he becomes one, and only then he can denote some spatial reference points within which he actually moves. A man becomes a man only when he is in motion, including the motion in the anthropocentric system. We all, speaking generally, live in the anthropocentric system, we put ourselves into the center of the Universe. Naturally, a man who is placed into this anthropocentric system can describe space only in the categories in which he can move. This category is absolutely simple and doesn’t need any serious explanation.   That is the man can move forward, backward, on the left, on the right, up and down. And that’s all. That is space is described only this way.

            Actually, time is also very simply described. A man is being in constant motion in time, and, just like he is in the center in space, he is in the center in time. He is in the present which means that he can’t reach what’s before or behind him, he can’t as well reach what’s on the left, on the right, what’s above and what’s under. By analogy  - the man can not get into the future and he can not get back into the past. It seems to be quite simple. Why the man can not get into the future? Because he lives in the present. Why the man can not «get into» what is ahead? Because when he starts moving, the system of coordinates moves together with him.  That is he can move himself. It is motion itself, motion as such, to my mind, that is the key to understanding of how man perceives the surrounding world in the mythological system. For him the system of coordinates where he lives is not simply spatial, he gradually starts perceiving it under the influence of ideas connected with his self-cognition. That as long as he’s alive - he can move. When a man dies, he can’t move anymore. But then he becomes movable. And since he becomes movable, typical ideas about inanimate objects can be applied to him. And gradually man starts forming in the mythological system the idea that there is him - human, and there is inhuman because otherwise he actually can’t live. Since  man is in the middle, then everything that’s on the right, on the left, above, below, ahead or behind is inhuman. What’s in the future is inhuman; but man does have his own ideas about the future. What’s in the past is also inhuman. Besides, these ideas are being influenced by the ideas about the movable object, that is not only about man but about the inanimate object. And gradually on this time and space axis man starts populating what’s on the left, on the right, etc. with creatures that are not alive. But in fact, only a man can be «not-alive». Correspondingly, there appears the following system of ideas: in the future and in the past are those who are INANIMATE, who are not alive, that is those who are already dead and those who are not yet born - ancestors and descendants. Naturally, the idea about the ancestors and the descendants appears relatively late, but for a man whose life is limited by the mythological time the problem of time doesn’t exist because he lives always in the present and has the opportunity to reflect. About the problems of chaos and order; not like we’re doing it now, of course, during three or four hours, he reflects on it for centuries. Gradually the ideas became more complicated because man, cognizing himself, looked to his organism. Thus appeared the ideas that there is what’s inside and what’s outside. This opposition which formed gradually lies, to my mind, in the basis of the idea about soul, for example, with the notions of «the pure» and «the impure».

            Everybody heard the myth about Prometheus who was punished by gods for giving people the fire, teaching them trades and being a hero of culture, who was chained to the top of a rock and every day there came an eagle who pecked his liver. It’s a kind of mysterious - why exactly the liver? Most of the hypotheses try to justify this saying that only this way the eternal suffering to which he had been doomed could be realized because liver is one of the organs that can regenerate. This is one of the well-known hypotheses.

            But in the mythology of the Caucasian peoples there is a similar hero of culture who had been chained to the top of a rock, and every day there came a monstrous bird who pecked his heart. As far as I know, heart can not regenerate like liver, that is in this case the hypothesis that heart and liver can regenerate and that’s why they were chosen proves to be wrong, I guess. And here arises the question which is also connected with space: a man perceives the space of his body in analogy with the way he perceives the surrounding space. That is a man whose way of thinking is mythological perceives himself as a cosmos, cosmos he perceives as himself, that is the notions of microcosm and macrocosm for those with the mythological way of thinking are actually not divided.              

            And then there arises the question: what exactly is the difference between liver and heart? Naturally, one organ is to the right, and the other is to the left. We can add that in the late mythology when there appears the notion of totem and the rite of sacrificing totem animals, only priests were allowed to eat their liver and heart. According to the beliefs of different tribes, either heart or liver is the center of a man’s soul. It’s true that some of them believe it to be in heals, and some eastern peoples - somewhere around  stomach, but in general the mythology of many peoples considers it to be placed in heart or liver.

            But if the totem ancestor is the first man, these ideas concern him, too. And there comes the next question. Man has already understood the difference between the right and the left not only in physical but also in moral respect, and now he must explain this difference. So gradually formed the notions of «the pure» and «the impure». That is the left for those tribes who thought the man’s soul to be in his liver, became «impure», inhuman, and the right became «pure» and human. Thus gradually each space coordinate was filling with its own semantics. And this semantics was gradually spreading on almost everything that surrounded man. I can’t be as precise and  unequivocal as in so many manuals and books that have been published lately on the Slavonic mythology. The question of the Slavonic mythology is a difficult one. The only opportunity to solve it is to turn to the rites and traditions that are being kept up to the present day. So if we turn to the rites of the Slavonic peoples that have something to do with space, we should first of all consider the home as a closed space. Why exactly the closed space? When a man is moving, except the direction in which he’s moving he must also have some landmarks that help him on his way. Only still subjects can serve landmarks. Naturally, the closed space gives plenty of such landmarks. If a man is in an open space which is not really a human space, he loses his landmarks and the man who is an exponent of the mythological system of ideas stops being a man to so