Category talk:Kopjafa

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Kopjafa a Hungarian sculptural art form with a distinct meadiaeval origin as a jousting stick or pole or staff which originally had been transformed from a weapon of war or sport to a memorial or mortuary pole or stick or staff: Therefore the correct etymological English translation would be jousting pole stuck in a grave as a headstone. In fact it has become almost exclusively a grave marker in folk art mainly Szekely from Transylvania but present in all of former Hungary probably mostly in Unitarian Calvinist but also rarely in Catholic cemeteries where it was mostly supplanted by crosses. It in fact functioned as a cross. Here we run into a problem. If the origin is indeed the high Middle Ages when Hungary was almost exclusively Christian and of course before the Reformation Catholic how did an almost certainly preChristian or pagan symbol arise out of a Catholic milieu.

The only solution I can proffer is that the word kopjafa jousting stick is indeed meadiaeval but the form and structure of this sculptural artform is prehistoric.

Apparently it does not exist in any of the neighbouring ethnic groups thus becoming a very strong identification with what it means to be a Hungarian with the only exception being some vaguely similar but stone Turkish headstones which of course are Musulman but may also very well be pre Islamic.

The square (and not round as would be natural in a wooden object made from a tree as is the case in West Coast Indian totem poles) cross section, never hexagonal pentagonal triangular or indeed circular in fact relates to the Roman CIPPUS which is always to my knowledge square and squat but on closer study turns out to be as almost everything else that we think of as Roman in fact Etruscan.

So while some Platonic solid type carving sub structures are clearly related to Turkish forms, the totem like elongation has distant echoes in West Coast Indian specifically Haida totems, the square cross section is possibly Etruscan-Roman.

The tulip is congruent with Mesopotamian Persian decorative elements as it occurs in Hungarian embroidery as one of the most dominant elements. The tulip being female and either the star which is in fact a St Andrew's cross or a globoid polygon being the male as the apex. The most common forms are loaves, rings which should be called more descriptively accordion monomers, and the above mentioned oblique crosses which may Christian elements. They have extreme variability yet all X and O are structurally isomorphous.

This is a noble art with extreme simplicity and poverty of forms and restraint in controlling repetition and variation like a poem in wood or a carved sonata. Yet the variation of each form is almost infinitely complex novel and enthralling like a Bach fugue or a Hungarian folksong.

These mortuary poles indeed are poems and melodies in wood.

There is some confusion even among Hungarians thinking that a kopjafa may contain other elements such as naturalistic heads or writing. Not so, only these abstracted elements for they are indeed abstracted from human forms head neck body legs must be respected and used exclusively+.

In this they are very different from West Coast totems which have obviouis representational point of reference.

One again thinks of Turkish gravestone poles, but curiously in spite of them being Islamist iconoclast yet they have obvious head forms which a true kopjafa must never have.

So a kopjafa although in its name is a jousting pole broken converted into a headmarker over the grave of the dead warrior in whom it was broken has become nowadays a distinct sculptural artform which is used as sacred commemorative public memorial with no reference to jousting.

Alexander Jablánczy aljablan"sympatico.ca