“Katerina – Hurdy-Gurdy”: a Name – a Thing – a Sign

Abstract

Study of the origins of the popular European street instrument traditional names (Russian sharmanka, Polish katarynka, Yiddish katerinke) reveals the nonlinear nature of the processes of the origin and fixation of these names, and also discovers the fact that different objects can hide behind the same name: a laterna magica, a theater of puppets or live animals, whose performances were accompanied by the melodies of the street organ. Nevertheless, in the historical perspective in the studied ethnic and cultural traditions the barrel organ acquires stable complex of associations depending on such properties of the cultural object as mechanical reproduction of stereotypical melodies and annoying clichéd cries of the musician. Advertised by the organ-grinder and broadcast by his instrument tragicomic images of “turn of fate” and “penny happiness” become the topos of both high literature and mass poetry of 19th–21st centuries.