Comparative mythology. Comparative mythology and its method

Serf Russia in the second half of the 18th century

In the 2nd half of the 18th century. Russia expanded its borders in the south and west, annexing the Black Sea and Azov regions, the Buzh-Dniester lands, Belarus, and part of the Baltic territory.

Compared to the first half of the 18th century. By the end of the century, the population doubled and amounted to 36 million people, with only 4% of the population living in cities; in Russia the predominant population was rural. Up to half the population are privately owned peasants.

The development of the annexed territories was accompanied by the growth of feudal-serf relations in breadth and depth.

For 1783–1796 serfdom spread to the Ukrainian lands, Crimea and Ciscarpathia. Agriculture developed mainly extensively, due to new Russian lands and advancement into suitable areas of the Urals and Siberia.

With the increasing exploitation of peasants, serfdom expanded deeper. By a decree of 1765, landowners were allowed to exile their peasants without trial or investigation to hard labor in Siberia, which was counted as fulfilling conscription duties. The sale of peasants and cruel punishments were widespread. According to the decree of 1763, peasants themselves paid the costs, if they were recognized as instigators, for suppressing unrest. Finally, in 1767, Catherine II issued a decree prohibiting peasants from complaining about their masters.

In the 2nd half of the 18th century, two large regions with different forms of serf exploitation were identified in Russia. In the black earth provinces with fertile soil and in the south, corvée prevailed. Sometimes the landowner took the land from the peasant, and he actually turned into a farm laborer working for meager pay. In areas with infertile soil, cash rent prevailed. Some landowners sought to increase the profitability of their estates, used technical devices, introduced crop rotation, introduced new crops imported from other countries - tobacco, potatoes, sunflowers, built manufactories, then using the labor of their serfs. All these innovations were a sign of the beginning of the disintegration of serfdom.

In 1785, a special “craft regulation” (from the “Charter of Grant to Cities”) regulated the development of crafts in cities. Craftsmen were grouped into workshops, which elected foremen. This organization of life for artisans created better conditions for their work and apprenticeship. With this provision, the government hoped to turn urban artisans into one of the classes of feudal society.

Along with the city, crafts were widely developed in industrial villages. Thus, Ivanovo was famous for textile production, Pavlovo for metal products, Khokhloma for woodworking, Gzhel for ceramics, etc.

Second half of the 18th century. for Russia this means further growth in manufacturing production. If in the middle of the century there were more than 600 manufactories, then at the beginning of the 19th century. up to 1200. Manufactories using the labor of serfs predominated. But manufactories using free labor also appeared, in particular in textile production. The role of civilians was played by serfs released on quitrent. The relations of free employment were capitalist relations.

In 1762, it was forbidden to purchase serfs for factories, and manufactories founded after this year used civilian labor.

In 1775, peasant industry was allowed, which led to an increase in the number of business owners from merchants and peasants.

The process of the formation of capitalist relations became more and more noticeable and irreversible. The market for civilian labor appeared and began to grow. However, new relations appeared in a country where serfdom dominated, which influenced this process.

In the 2nd half of the 18th century. The all-Russian market continued to form. The specialization of the regions became more noticeable: the black earth Center and Ukraine produced bread, the Volga region supplied fish, leather, wool, the Urals - iron, Novgorod and the Smolensk lands - flax and hemp, the North - fish, furs, Siberia - furs, etc. All this was exchanged at auctions and fairs, the number of which grew. Through the ports of the Baltic and Black Sea regions, Russia conducted active foreign trade, exporting its goods - metal, flax, hemp, sailing cloth, timber, leather, bread. Russia imported sugar, cloth, silk, coffee, wine, fruit, tea, etc. Russia's leading trading partner at that time was England.

Trade primarily served the needs of the state and the ruling class. But it contributed to the establishment of a capitalist structure in the country.

In the 2nd half of the 18th century. The class system of the country is strengthened. Each category of the population - nobility, clergy, peasantry, townspeople, etc. - received rights and privileges by appropriate laws and decrees.

In 1785, in development of the Manifesto on the Freedom of the Nobility (1762), a Charter to the Nobility was issued, which confirmed the exclusive right of landowners to own land and peasants. The nobles were freed from compulsory service and personal taxes, and received the right to special representation in the district and province in the person of leaders of the nobility, which increased their role and importance locally.

Strengthening the class system in the 18th century. was an attempt to maintain the power of the ruling class, to preserve the feudal system, especially since this happened on the eve of the Great French Revolution.

Thus, in the 2nd half of the 18th century. The reserves of feudalism in the country had not yet been exhausted, and it could still ensure progress, despite the development of capitalist relations.

Catherine II. Enlightened absolutism 60–80 XVIIIV. Catherine II (1762 - 1796), having taken the throne in difficult times, showed remarkable abilities as a statesman. And indeed, her inheritance was not easy: the treasury was practically empty, the army had not received money for a long time, and manifestations of the ever-growing protest of the peasants posed a great danger to the ruling class.

Catherine II had to develop a policy that would meet the needs of the time. This policy was called enlightened absolutism. Catherine II decided to rely in her activities on certain provisions of the ideologists of the Enlightenment - the famous philosophical movement of the 18th century, which became the ideological basis of the Great French bourgeois revolution (1789–1794). Naturally, Catherine II set out to use only those ideas that could help strengthen serfdom and feudal orders in the country.

In Russia, apart from the nobility, there were no other forces capable of personifying social progress.

The French encyclopedists Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Rousseau developed the main provisions of the Enlightenment, affecting the problems of social development. At the center of their thinking was the theory of “natural law,” according to which all people were naturally free and equal. But human society in its development it deviated from the natural laws of life and came to an unjust state, oppression and slavery. In order to return to fair laws, it was necessary to enlighten the people, the encyclopedists believed. An enlightened society will restore fair laws, and then freedom, equality and fraternity will be the main meaning of the existence of society.

Philosophers entrusted the implementation of this goal to enlightened monarchs who wisely used their power.

These and other ideas were adopted by the monarchs of Prussia, Austria, and Russia, but approached them from the position of serfdom, linking the demands of equality and freedom with the strengthening of the privileges of the ruling class.

Such a policy could not be long-term. After the Peasants' War (1773 - 1775), as well as in connection with the revolution in France, the end of enlightened absolutism came, the course towards strengthening internal and external reaction became too obvious.

Catherine II had been corresponding with Voltaire and his associates since 1763, discussing with them the problems of Russian life and creating the illusion of interest in applying their ideas.

In an effort to calm the country and strengthen her position on the throne, Catherine II in 1767 created a special commission in Moscow to draw up a new set of laws Russian Empire to replace the "Conciliar Regulations" of 1649

573 deputies were involved in the work of the Commission - from nobles, various institutions, townspeople, state peasants, and Cossacks. Serfs did not participate in this Commission.

The commission collected orders from localities to determine people's needs. The work of the Commission was structured in accordance with the “Order” prepared by Catherine II - a kind of theoretical justification for the policy of enlightened absolutism. The order was voluminous, containing 22 chapters with 655 articles, most of the text was a quotation book from the works of enlighteners with justification for the need for strong monarchical power, serfdom, and the class division of society in Russia.

Having begun its meetings in the summer of 1767, the Commission solemnly awarded Catherine II the title of “great, wise mother of the Fatherland,” thereby declaring her recognition by the Russian nobility. But then, unexpectedly, the peasant question came into focus. Some deputies criticized the system of serfdom; there were proposals to attach the peasants to a special board, which would pay the landowners' salaries from peasant taxes; this was a hint of the desire to free the peasants from the power of the landowners. A number of deputies demanded that peasant duties be clearly defined.

The commission worked for more than a year and was dissolved under the pretext of the outbreak of war with Turkey, without creating a new code.

Catherine II learned from parliamentary speeches about the mood in society and in further legislative practice proceeded from her “Order” and the materials of this Commission.

The work of the Statutory Commission showed a growing critical, anti-serfdom attitude in Russian society. Pursuing the goal of influencing public opinion, Catherine II took up journalism and began publishing in 1769 the satirical magazine “All Things”, in which, trying to divert attention from criticism of serfdom, she offered criticism of human weaknesses, vices, and superstitions in general.

The Russian enlightener N.I. spoke from a different position. Novikov. In the magazines “Drone” and “Painter” he published, he spoke out, defending specific criticism of vices, namely, he castigated the unlimited arbitrariness of the landowners and the lack of rights of the peasants. It was expensive for N.I. Novikov had this position, he had to spend more than 4 years in the Shlisselburg fortress,

Criticism of serfdom and Novikov’s social activities contributed to the formation of anti-serfdom ideology in Russia.

A.N. is considered to be the first Russian revolutionary-republican. Radishchev (1749 – 1802). His views were formed under the strong influence of internal and external circumstances. These are the Peasant War of E. Pugachev, and the ideas of French and Russian enlighteners, and the revolution in France, and the War of Independence in North America (1775 - 1783), and the work of Novikov, and the statements of deputies of the Statutory Commission.

In the work "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow", the ode "Liberty" and others, Radishchev called for the abolition of slavery and the transfer of land to the peasants, for the revolutionary overthrow of the autocracy.

Catherine II called Radishchev “a rebel worse than Pugachev.” He was arrested and sentenced to death, commuted to 10 years of exile in Siberia (Ilimsky prison).

So, Catherine II is a traditional figure, despite her negative attitude towards the Russian past, despite the fact that she introduced new techniques in management, new ideas into social circulation. The duality of the traditions that she followed also determines the dual attitude of her descendants towards her. The historical significance of Catherine's era is extremely great precisely because in this era the results of previous history were summed up and the historical processes that developed earlier were completed.

Encyclopedia Signs and Symbols

There is such a science - comparative mythology. She demonstrates miracles. If we compare the endless variety of cosmologies, cultures, gods with each other, we will discover numerous correspondences and parallels. From the night of human prehistory the most bizarre associations emerge. In the most opposite parts of the globe, images, systems, rituals, dances and personalities are found that are so similar to each other that it would be absurd to attribute all this to the whim of chance. Comparative religion is gaining incredible popularity, accompanied by both strictly scientific evidence and sometimes very amateurish “Sherlock Holmesism.” Millions of readers are intensely comparing evidence and evidence that confirms or refutes the similarity of gods and myths and their common origin. The most famous in this tinsel of discoveries were the aliens from space Dsniksna. Despite all the scientific controversy of his postulates, it must be admitted that Dsniken aroused public interest in eternal question: where do we come from, what is the original matrix with which a person is printed, his behavior, his emotions, his thinking?

In Germany, the foundations of the comparative scientific study of religions were laid after scientific world got acquainted with “Rigvsda” - one of the most ancient monuments of philosophy and mythology of India. The Indian pantheon is so densely populated, there are so many gods represented, its myths are so colorful and varied in plot that it is not difficult to find parallels in Indian mythology. Even Celtic and Greek mythologies cannot deny kinship with Indian roots. It is enough to name the name Prometheus and remember that the Indian “pramata” means “to take for oneself”, as well as “to receive fire by friction.”

The trident of Shiva is again found in the hands of Poseidon and the Celtic sea god Mannanan, son of Lehr, but Christian devils in hell are also brandishing tridents. The healing god Apollo-Aesculapius reveals a striking similarity with the Indian Rudra: here is initiation into youth, and arrows that bring illness, and the art of healing. There is a legend in India in which God, the lord of the winds, fought with demons who stole his cattle. How can one not recall the Greek Apollo, who was looking for the cows stolen from him? The battle of Hercules with Geryon finds a parallel in the battle of Indra with Vitra. When the ancient Germans told of the wild hunter and mad boars, when the classical Greek myths tell of the orgies of Dionysus, we also remember Indra, who rides on a white horse with the greyhound Saramssy at his stirrup. Like Jupiter and Wotan, he throws thunder and lightning, he kills the snake Ahi - of course, he is the prototype of all heroes who defeat dragons and giants, be it Perseus, Tristan or the “brave little tailor”.

Each nation had its own god and its own goddess of love, the sun god, the god of war, the mother goddess of the earth and the god - ruler of the underworld. However, not only the personalities of the gods and heroes are similar, but also the rituals, prayers, dances, and cults. Here is one of the most striking leitmotifs in terms of overall similarity: heroes or saints cope with many trials. He enters into battle with demons and monsters, whether they are creations of his imagination or real phenomena, and when he defeats them thanks to his courage, dexterity, intelligence or other virtues, he learns the great truth and becomes immortal. This pattern, which is present in the epics of a wide variety of religions and mysteries, is noted not only in highly developed cultures. No, it is also found in the legends of the Prairie Indians, the Kirghiz, and the indigenous inhabitants of the central regions of Australia. Scientists paid attention to this circumstance when studying the Iliad and sources related to this work.

Unlike theologians, we believe that the world of the gods arose not only to fulfill cosmic law, but also to convey some basic principles or Platonic ideas. It is also intended to display the great diversity and diversity of images and events that man encounters on earth. In its appearance, the world of the gods is aesthetic, in its manifestations it is sensual. Thus, it connects the real and the spiritual, the mystical and the material, the soul and the surrounding world. In the history of Indian religions, this combination is most clearly expressed in Tantrism, which also seeks harmony between matter and spirit.

Tantrism, as its followers say, fills the gap between physical reality and the inner world; for it there is no contradiction between the organic and the generated spirit. The word “tantrism” comes from the Sanskrit root “tan” - expansion; it is a method of further development of human consciousness, awakening the spiritual forces dormant in a person, attracting them to perform real tasks. Tantrism is not only a theory, but also a practice, it tries to reunite spirit and matter. He proceeds from the premise according to which consciousness and being are the single and only force of personality formation.

It is interesting to note that for the essence of mythology it makes no difference whether we move from bottom to top or from top to bottom. One can descend from the heights of cosmic creations down to the infinite variety of concrete forms that a single spirit takes, or, on the contrary, a person can soar from the sphere of concrete feeling to the heights of universal consciousness. This movement in both directions is an essential characteristic of the world of the gods; in it we see a reflection of both abstract principles and the plastic diversity of human feelings. Hades, Poseidon and Zebe not only represent the past, present and future, but also experience genuine love and military adventures. We see this dualism - the obvious and hidden aspects of the deity - in Indian mythology in the image of Shiva-Shakti: Shiva is the principle of calm, Shakti is the feminine principle - the principle of creative energy, self-disclosure and at the same time knowledge of nature, the active principle thanks to which God the spouse shows his potential qualities. In this striking duality lies total universality.

Just like the Greek world of gods, the teachings of Tantrism rest on a fundamental dualism: the idea of ​​a man is “purusa” (cosmic consciousness) and the idea of ​​a woman is “prakriti” (cosmic force of nature). Purusa acts statically and reflects the transcendental level, prakriti, on the contrary, is kinetic energy, the impulse of creation from which the sensory world arises and develops. Tantrism sees its purpose as integrally connecting polarities in order to experience the joy of realizing the spiritual. The sensual energy of the Greek gods and goddesses, their assertion of infinite cosmic diversity and, above all, their numerous love affairs indicate that the secrets of the love art of the Hindus penetrated into Hellas. Eros sets motionless transcendence in motion, and the meditating Shiva brings it to vibration, creating an eternal connection between the erupting principle and the receiving womb. The world in all its splendor and diversity arises from the unification of the initially contradictory masculine and feminine principles.

This event is finally realized due to the revelation of the cosmic force dormant in man - kundalini. This energy accumulates at the bottom human body, but determines the entire psychophysical essence of a person. To awaken this power, a strict ritual has been developed that stimulates the body's psychic centers (chakras). Kundalini rises through the body from bottom to top up to the highest level of consciousness, giving full disclosure of a person’s capabilities and contributing to their physical realization. In other words, we need to thoroughly shake up the sleeping areas of our brain, in which an infinite number of pictures and ideas have accumulated, but which are used only to a negligible extent. The highest psychic center, in which kundalini is fully revealed, is called tpahas-rava. The process of ascent is accomplished through asana - the union of a man with a woman. Their sexual energy is transformed into a cosmic flow, figuratively speaking, the third eye opens. Thus, Indian mythology transforms erotic feeling into a spiritual principle, and the emphatically amorous pastime of the Greek gods turns out to be necessary for the full disclosure of all their other virtues.

Symbolically, kundalini is depicted as a fiery snake, which in good condition rests motionless in the lower parts of the body. It is easy to see the similarity here with the phallus (linga). It is appropriate to note that mysteries with a snake or phallus were found in abundance in Ancient Greece. The symbols of the snake are Athena, Dmstra, Dionysus, Zeus, Asclespius. The caduceus, the rod of Hermes, is entwined with two vipers; the Pythia in Dslfah, like Kikrey on Salamissus, were snake gods. The followers of Dionysus are also entwined with snakes, they carry a rod, at the end of which there is a pine cone, strongly reminiscent of a phallus. When the skillful Prometheus stole the divine fire, he hid it in a hollow branch and carried it away from Olympus, waving the branch like a snake.

As the antiquity researcher Robert von Ranke-Gravss writes, in the pre-classical era in Greece, male deities were subordinate to the main goddess. But she had her own son as a lover, who is represented either as a serpent of wisdom or as a star of life. Are we not reminded here of Xtzalcoatl, the feathered snake of the Aztecs and Mayans? And in Ancient Egypt the cult of the snake was known. The Book of the Dead says: “And Set, he weaves in my spinal cord... My phallus is the living greeting of Osiris” (meaning that the power of the snake rises in the spinal cord from bottom to top).

The cross on the forehead, which we often see in images of the pharaoh, is the third eye, and the intersection of a vertical line with a circle indicates the connection of the masculine with the feminine. It seems that it is not difficult to prove that the Ursus snake on the head of the Egyptian kings also has a connection with kundalini. The snake was revered by the Gnostics and numerous heretics of the Middle Ages. For the Gnostics, it meant the universe and the continuous cycle of the unfolding of the general from the particular and the return of the general to the particular. Unlike Christian mythology, the Gnostics believed that the snake was the very origin of life, freeing Adam and Eve from the shackles of prejudice. The snake thus becomes the first rebel of world history, who takes away their holy secrets from the gods and introduces people to them.

But snakes often became symbols of protecting secrets and mysteries. This means that they symbolized not only rising energy, but also a demonic, poison-spewing monster. In Greek mythology, serpentine demons guard various objects - symbols of knowledge and cosmic revelations. These are the golden apples of the Hesperides, which Hercules stole, and the golden fleece, which the Argonauts encroached on. As guardian of the sanctuary of Olympia Zeve, Sosipolis appears in the form of a snake to prevent the collapse of the arcades. The dog Ksrbsra, which guards the entrance to hell, has a snake tail. Thus, the fiery snake combines both the demonic and the enlightenment of light, and it is logical to interpret it as a symbol of the path through the labyrinth that the hero must go through in order to achieve higher knowledge. The heroes of the Greek epic - Theseus, Perseus, Hercules, the Argonauts - had to put an end to both external enemies and the internal contradictions that tormented them before reaching a higher level of consciousness.

In Tantrism we also find the idea of ​​using medicinal substances to expand the capabilities of consciousness and facilitate the path to various chakras. Wayne tried to prove that the famous divine drink of the Indians - soma - was obtained from the extract of the fly agaric (amanita imisearia). Tantrics used substances that expand the capabilities of consciousness during certain rituals. They drank "bharig" - a mixture prepared from hemp leaves, or smoked "ganja" - another narcotic drug, or rubbed the ashes of burnt narcotic herbs into their skin.

Greek mythology, especially in all the various mysteries, abounds in magical drinks and witches' cauldrons. The scientist Ranke-Gravss suggests that both goat-footed satyrs and horse-people (centaurs) chewed the fly agaric. At the same time, they experienced hallucinations, acquired the gift of prophecy, and increased muscle strength and sexual potency. On the frame of one Etruscan mirror, a fly agaric is depicted at the feet of Ixion. Ixion was a Thessalian hero who ate ambrosia in the company of the gods. On the Attic vase depicting the centaur Nsss, you can also see a small thin mushroom that grows on cow dung.

The gods, who, strictly speaking, ate only nectar and ambrosia, condemned King Tantalus to eternal hunger precisely because he broke the taboo and distributed ambrosia to mortals. In a book published in 1960, Robert von Ranke-Gravss suggested that ambrosia is a mysterious element of the Orphic, Eleusinian and other mysteries associated with Dionysus. At the same time, all cult participants had to keep in the strictest confidence what they ate. Unforgettable visions opened before their eyes; it seemed that immortality was opening up to them. Ranke-Gravss's assumption has now been confirmed by a detailed study of the Dmstra cult carried out by Hofmann and Wasson. They believe that during the mysteries associated with Demstra, ergot containing LSD was also used.

Just as we find analogies between the cultures of India and America in the image of a feathered or fiery snake, we also find analogies in the use of a small mushroom that grows on dung. The mushroom is called "psilocybe". Now everyone knows about the experiments performed by Huxley, Hofmann, Jungsrs and Gslpx. The experiments of Ranke-Gravss are less known, and they reveal a striking similarity between Indian cults and the mysteries of Ancient Greece. The scientist himself, having taken such a drug, heard the voice of a priestess calling upon the mushroom god Tlaloc. As in Greek myths, Matsatsk legends say that mushrooms appear where lightning strikes.

The snake crown of Dionysus adorns the head of Tlaloc, and just like his Greek “colleague,” Tlaloc, if he had to escape, went to the bottom of the sea. Bloodthirsty local custom tearing off the heads of the victim may have been allegorically derived from the custom of tearing off the caps of sacred mushrooms, because the stems of mushrooms are not eaten in Mexico. Often a toad sits on a mushroom, so the amphibian also became the emblem of Tlaloc. Eroticism and psychedelic plants are the two pillars on which the world of the gods is built throughout the world. We find both elements in the mythology of any people. Only in the materialistic world of the West did they acquire an apocryphal meaning, in particular in the 19th century in bohemian circles, and only in the 60s of our century this combination of basic elements was rediscovered. The man credited with discovering the connection between Tantrism and conscious drug use is Timothy Leary.

Here it is appropriate to recall once again that it was the tantrists who made an attempt to smooth out the contradiction between the external (physical) and internal (spiritual) world. Accordingly, when interpreting myths, there are two approaches: psychological, especially in Jung and Ksreni, and historical, where it is appropriate first of all to mention the name of Ranke-Gravss. Psychologists see in mythology the root causes of the human soul, the most primary forms and norms of life. The psychological world of man is born from myth. “This is a scheme for all times, a spiritual formula that draws its typical features from the subconscious and translates them into the language of practical life” (Thomas Mann). Thus, myth is an arch-stylistic, impersonal reservoir of images from which the human soul draws figures and events. This is the material from which all our dreams are woven, and anyone who wants to deal with the human soul must unravel the myths. Mythology in this sense is called “collective psychology,” “the shared possession of knowable and recognizable images that does not belong to just one person” (Ksrsni).

At the same time, Ranks-Gravss, who, as he admits, was able to penetrate into the essence of the mysteries through special experiments on himself, with the goal of expanding the possibilities of knowledge, sees political-religious history in Greek mythology. For him, the world of the gods fits into a gigantic historical painting conflicts between the principles of patriarchy and matriarchy in Europe. Ancient Europe, according to Ranke-Gravss, did not know any gods, there was only one Great Goddess, and only she was revered as immortal and unchanging. Its power is seen, for example, in the fact that religious ideas did not yet have the concept of fatherhood. The Great Goddess had lovers, but only for her own pleasure. People were in awe of the goddess, they made sacrifices to her and worshiped her. In caves and huts, there was a hearth in the center; it also represented the core of a person’s life at that time, the heart of the community, a symbol of the mystery of primordial motherhood.

Ranke-Graves also looks towards India, in the south of which matrimonial societies still exist, where offspring can only be traced through the mother. Noble women give birth to children from unnoble lovers without a name or title. Thus, Greek myth is primarily the story of the struggle between the traditions of matriarchy, which are supplanted by new forces of conquerors from the north. And Ranks-Gravss easily finds echoes of this historical struggle in any Greek myth.

Let us listen to the tantricist, and he will easily resolve this dispute. He will say: both adherents of the psychological school and adherents of the historical school are right, because our soul is reflected in history, just as history reflects our soul. Subjective and objective are expressions of the same thing, they are only different angles viewpoints under which the same object is viewed. It is difficult for a European to understand this, because the European tradition is based on the fundamental opposition of subject and object.

Ever since Socrates mocked myths in the market square, they began to be relegated to the realm of delusional fantasies. Scholastics, positivists and supporters of Marxist teaching made a significant contribution in this direction. The years of fascism caused especially irreparable damage to the myth. The National Socialists tried to cover up their destructive thirst for power with the screen of a German myth, which existed only in the fevered imagination of fascist ideologists and was devoid of any historical tradition. Runes and Germans, supposedly rediscovered in the thirties, never existed historically. After the collapse of the “thousand-year Reich,” they tried to save the myth by giving it the color of rationalism. But is it possible to tame a monster simply without noticing it?

Again and again attempts are being made to introduce life into a box with only rationalistic shores. But few would argue that rationalism alone is sufficient to interpret mass consciousness our society. The entire history of the 20th century, its political figures are mythologically defined to a greater extent than the world of the ancient Greeks. Such modern myths as atomic energy, biological computers and stations in low-Earth orbit immediately find their adequate reflection in science fiction.

If we recognize that man is involved in the spiritual and the sensual, then there is nothing left to do but recognize the significance of myth, in which history is recorded in sensual form. Of course, positivists and left-wing liberals may disagree with us, but the myth will disappear only when man disappears. Therefore, when interpreting myth politically, it is appropriate not to deny this fact, but to address the question of which myths should be welcomed: paranoid-hybrid or positively lisping. The question is not easy, but before you undertake to answer it, you should study the myth and understand what is hidden behind it and how you can use it to change the world. It is in this sense that we want to present below the figures of Greek mythology.

An attempt to present the psychological and historical sides of a myth, its current and timeless essence, its origin and its aspiration is a very difficult matter, because the study of relationships of this kind has only just begun. And yet, the children of the Earth have already set out on a journey - in search of the ancient art of love, in discovering the secrets of medicinal plants and means that expand the horizons of knowledge.

The course is taught by: Doctor of Philosophy, Professor - Svetlov Roman Viktorovich

Section 1.

The comparative method of studying ancient religions makes sense only if we start from the general, from the primordial basis, which varies in different cultural regions due to the diversity of historical conditions. Such a fundamental principle can be accepted dogmatically (as in the case of the proto-monotheistic theory, which asserts that primitive religions were preceded by prehistoric revelation), but can also be deduced from the available ritual and mythological material. The latter testifies that ancient man perceived the world in the aspect of its formation. The theme of the birth and death of everything in the world, so essential for the consciousness of ancient cultures, leaves an imprint on their perception of the world itself. It turned out to be eternally created and destroyed by supernatural forces, which acquired their own meaning precisely and only in this process of creation and destruction. In other words, ideas about the world, about its spatial, geographical, semantic structures, about society, and finally, ideas about deities were expressed through cosmogonic legends.

By the time the first state civilizations emerged, these legends had already acquired a stable form. They are recorded in rituals that sometimes have national significance, since they were associated with the sacralization of political power received from the demiurge gods (in general, in ritual-myth dualism, ritual plays a leading role; myth is its verbal expression, it pronounces the action). The structure of the cosmogonic myth has a three-part structure. The following steps are clearly distinguished, which, at the same time, are structural moments of the universe: Chaos. Chthonia. Space.

Chaos is the primordial substance that generates the maw-womb, often identified with pre-cosmic waters. There are no qualitative differences in it, it is the Father and Mother of all gods, or all the gods before their separation. Pagan theologians of later eras identified the First Principle with chaotic substance (the One in ancient Neoplatonism. Brahman in traditional Indian culture).

Chthonia is a substance usually figuratively identified with the element of earth. The chthonic principle is generated and released from the chaotic womb. They are personified by the “elder gods” (the Titans of the Hellenes, the Anunnaki of the Sumerians, the Asuras of the Indo-Aryans), who ruled the world in that era of cosmic creation, when the earth and heavens were not yet separated, when there was no separation of the divine and the human, that is, in the era of the “golden age.” century."

The chthonic element acts as an enemy of the demiurge gods. If the transition from chaos to chthonic is natural, then cosmos is the result of ritual confrontation. One side of the latter is the head of the chthonic gods (for example, Kronos in Hesiod’s Theogony), which can be replaced by an extremely complex, mixanthropic creature, a kind of embryo of the Cosmos (Python of the Hellenes, Pan-gu of the Chinese, Purusha of the Indians). On the other hand, there is the demiurge god, the future head of the cosmos. Depicted in legends as a fight, sometimes accompanied by verbal play, in rituals this situation is revealed as a sacrifice. Indeed, the demiurge (Zeus, Indian Indra, Babylonian Marduk) is a sacrificer, a chthonic being is a victim. The latter is dissected and named, which is already the creation of the Cosmos, the division of earth and heaven, the distribution of parts of the world, the creation of cosmic elements and phenomena, the establishment of the destinies of existence.

Sacrifice means the sanctification of the sacrificed. But, on the other hand, it places guilt on the donor. Its redemption is the establishment and maintenance of cosmic order. Here lies the central point of pagan religions. They are rooted in how man's relationship to the created world is interpreted. In most cases, anthropogenesis repeats cosmogenesis and man is considered as one of the bearers of this guilt. Life in the world below is for him both a gift from the gods and a redemptive act that can lead to deification. In those later religions that treat the world as a place of suffering (Buddhism) or even evil (Gnosticism), a person must atone for his voluntary or involuntary participation in the life of the Cosmos. Thus, pagan religion establishes the connection between man and God through the establishment of the causes of the creation of the world.

The main cosmogonic myth does not point to an event that once happened. The event of world creation is constantly present, forming the semantic and spatial structure of the world. The chaotic is those roots of things that lie in the very depths (literal) of the world and, at the same time, that oceanic flow that embraces the Cosmos (“periphery”, for ancient consciousness the embracing is more primary than the embraced). Chthonic is the depth of the earth, opposite the heavenly Olympus of the cosmic gods. Such, for example, is Tartarus, a place of eternal dying, where the Titans, chthonic rivals of the Hellenic Olympian gods, are imprisoned. Inside the Cosmos, the place of the chthonic element is the underworld: Hades (Hellas), the kingdom of Yama (India), or Osiris (Egypt). Death, therefore, is a departure into the past, into that state of existence when there was no birth or distinction. Hence the semantic opposition of the Top (Heaven) to the Bottom (Counterheaven), which is duplicated by the opposition of the East (where birth occurs) to the West (where the underworld begins). The Earth, as the pre-cosmic parent of everything, also appears in the image of the Universal Mother, the Earth-Mistress (for example, the Phrygian Cybele, which combined the features of the nameless Mistresses of the primitive cultures of Europe and Asia).

The presence of a cosmogonic situation is always expressed in calendar myths. The latter constitute the most famous and interesting layer of ancient religious consciousness in European culture. The tales of Adonis, Osiris, Attis, Tammuz and similar ones are associated with the initiation of earthly fertility, with the change of seasons (hence the name: “calendar”). In the symbols of the dying-rebirth of nature, with the various aspects of which the heroes of such myths are associated, the same cosmogonic structure is revealed, where there is a chthonic victim, and a sacrificer, and death as atonement for ancient guilt, and guilt that turns into salvation. The calendar unfolding of the cosmogonic myth means the perception of what is happening in the world through the ideologeme of eternal return, which creates ancient “cyclical” ideas about history.

The listed features of ancient paganism do not, of course, exhaust its entire content. However, when studying ancient religious cultures, it is necessary to remember that they are a kind of interpretation of the original cosmogonic structure.

Questions for section 1:

The concept of myth.

Myth and religion.

Myth and ritual.

The structure of the cosmogonic myth.

Cosmogony and sacrifice.

Myth and historical time.

Calendar forms of cosmogony.

Anthropogonic myth.

The structure of the human being in the views of archaic cultures.

The concept of paganism.

Tests for section 1.

1. Temporal, spatial, semantic relations in cosmogonic myth.

   The origin of the idea of ​​the cycle of times in archaic cultures.

   Forms of cosmogonic myth.

   Cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis.

   Mystery cults of antiquity. Their connection with the calendar unfolding of the cosmogonic.

Basic literature for section 1.

Archaic ritual in folklore and early literary monuments. M., 1988.

Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. M., 1940.

Gritsner P.A. Epic ancient world. M., 1971.

Dumezil J. Gods of the Indo-Europeans. M., 1983.

Evzlin M. Cosmogony and ritual. M., 1993.

Lévi-Strauss K. Primitive thinking. M., 1994.

Lotman Yu.M., Uspensky B.A. Myth-Name-Culture. Tartu. 1973.

Meletinsky E.M. Poetics of myth. M., 1976.

Mythology of the ancient world. M., 1977.

Myths of the peoples of the world: in 2 volumes. M., 21982-84.

Propp V.Ya. Historical roots of fairy tales. L., 1946.

Svetlov E. In search of the path, truth and life: in 6 volumes. Brussels.

Svetlov R. Ancient pagan religiosity. St. Petersburg, 1993.

Toporov V.N. On the cosmological sources of early historical descriptions. Tartu, 1973.

Terneo V. Symbol and ritual. M., 1983.

Fraser J. The Golden Bough. M., 1985.

Fraser J. Volkler in the Old Testament. M., 1989.

Freidenberg O.M. Myth and literature of antiquity. M., 1978.

Elliade M. Space and history. M., 1987.

Eliade M. Sacred and secular. M., 1994.

The course on the history of ancient paganism examines the religious culture of the first state civilizations. Its lower boundary is the centuries of the formation of these civilizations (for example, for Egypt - the turn of the third and fourth millennium BC, for China - the middle of the second millennium BC), and the upper - the century of the appearance of “new religions”: such like Christianity in the Mediterranean, Buddhism in India. The order of studying ancient cultures is not chronological (from more ancient to more modern), but geographical.

What did people talk about ten thousand years ago? What worried them? Comparative mythology allows us to reconstruct elements of the worldview of our distant ancestors and identify the common roots of spiritual culture different nations.

Probably everyone remembers - if a ladybug sits on your hand, you need to ask her: “Ladybug, fly to the sky, bring me bread, black and white, but not burnt.” Different peoples have similar sayings. For example, English children say: “Ladybug, fly home, your house is on fire, your children are in trouble...”, and Norwegians ask her: “Goldenbird, fly east, fly west, fly north, fly to south, find my love." Among the Dutch, a ladybug landing on their hands or clothes is considered a good omen. Linguist Vladimir Toporov studied the names of the ladybug in different languages ​​and came to the conclusion that its image is associated with the ancient beliefs of the Indo-Europeans and their myth about the thunder god, who, suspecting his wife of treason, threw her from the sky. If the assumption is correct that the myth existed before the collapse of the single Proto-Indo-European language into separate branches, then this belief is several thousand years old. That is, each of us in childhood, without knowing it, reproduced a traditional text that has passed through hundreds of generations.

How many such stories have survived? How long do myths last? folk tradition? For thousands of years they have formed a vital part of spiritual culture. Reconstruction of ancient mythologies would provide insight into our ancestors' ideas about the world and themselves. Of course, studying the mythological traditions of the past is possible on the basis of written sources. The scientific sensation of the 19th century was the discovery and deciphering by the curator of the British Museum, George Smith, of the Sumerian legend of the flood, written in hieroglyphs on clay tablets. Analysis of the texts has shown that the biblical legend about Noah coincides in detail (with the exception of some differences) with the more ancient Sumerian story about Utnapishtim. But where did this myth come to the Sumerians? And when did it arise? The oldest Egyptian and Sumerian mythological texts belong to the third, Chinese. to the first millennium BC. e., and the creators of the civilizations of Peru had no written language at all. Does this mean that we will never know how people of the past imagined their world? Could ancient ideas have been preserved in myths that have survived to this day?

The archaeologist offers his answers to these questions Yuri Evgenievich Berezkin, Doctor of Historical Sciences, head of department at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. He developed a method for reconstructing elements of spiritual culture. The idea behind his research is quite simple.

In order to identify ancient myths, it is necessary to compare the mythological traditions of different peoples and identify common elements. For example, the myths and legends of the American Indians and the peoples of Eurasia, who had no contact for thousands of years. Some common themes for them, which the aborigines could not possibly have borrowed from recent European settlers, were known earlier, but no one had conducted a systematic, large-scale search that could reveal very ancient connections before Berezkin. Before the advent of computers, such work was hardly possible.

Yuri Evgenievich Berezkin analyzed more than 30 thousand texts out of 3000 literary sources in eight languages, representing the mythological traditions of the peoples of the New World, Oceania and part of Eurasia, and created Digital catalogue, describing these texts. The history of the creation of this catalog is indicative. Berezkin, an archaeologist by education and vocation, who spent a quarter of a century in excavations on the border of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, in the 90s, due to changes in the political situation and funding of domestic science, in his own words, “orphaned” - was not able to continue archaeological work in the usual way. It was then that, in order not to break away from what he loved, he began collecting a collection of mythological texts. The database he created has no analogues in the world in terms of volume and completeness of description of the material. For each text in the catalog, a brief retelling is provided, and the code designation of myth elements (motives) from the list selected by the researcher is entered into a separate database. This makes it possible to carry out statistical processing of texts and identify similar motifs between the mythological traditions being studied.

In this case, one should take into account both the possibility of a random coincidence, the independent occurrence of similar phenomena among different peoples, and the high probability of borrowing, repeated copying of cultural elements from generation to generation and from one people to another. It is clear that borrowing is more likely for related peoples living close to each other, and less likely for peoples located at great distances from each other. Nevertheless, it was possible to identify more than a dozen common motives.

For example, the story of the Kiowa Indians about the appearance of bison. The hero of the story, Sendeh, a trickster and a deceiver, learns that the White Raven hid all the bison in his cave. Sendeh sneaks into the cave, releases the bison, and so that the Raven standing at the entrance does not kill him, he turns into a burr and sticks to the bison’s belly. Replace Sendeh with Odysseus, the Raven with the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, and the bison with goats and sheep, and you will receive famous story from Greek mythology. It is also found among other nations ( rice. 1). The Kazakh myth is very similar to the Greek one. Burgan-batyr and his comrade are brought into the cave by a one-eyed old man who was going to eat them. The batyr burns out the cannibal’s only eye and hides in a cattle pen. To get out, he puts on the skin of a goat. Animals (not goats, but wild deer and kulans) run away from the cave. Since then, ungulates have roamed the steppe and are hunted by people. Probably, in the Kazakh and American versions, explaining the origin of wild animals, elements that arose before the spread of cattle breeding were preserved, that is, more ancient than the Greek myth. It is interesting that the peoples of Eurasia living east of Mongolia, this myth is missing.

This example, firstly, illustrates the features of reproducing mythological texts. The fact is that the lifespan of the mythological text itself on a historical scale is not too long. But the elements that make up these texts (certain character traits or certain plot twists) turn out to be quite stable. From these elements we will call them mythological motifs, in different combinations, like from a mosaic, new texts are assembled, the meaning and details of which may vary in different traditions and even within the same tradition.
Secondly, it provides an opportunity to discuss three options for explaining the similarity of myths among peoples so distant historically and geographically.

First- the presence of universal forms of thinking, similar to Jungian archetypes, which are reflected in myths. But, as an analysis of a huge corpus of mythological texts has shown, motifs that could reflect universal psychological characteristics of all people on all continents, are characteristic of some territories and completely uncharacteristic of others.

Second possibility- is the appearance of similar myths in similar natural or social conditions. Of course, there is a rational grain in such an approach. But in the end, both the social and natural environment only sets some restrictions, leaving freedom for countless variations. For example, it is clear that only in low latitudes, where the crescent moon is located horizontally, is it associated with a boat, but in the Arctic there is no image of a moon-boat. However, even in the tropics, such an image is quite rare and, moreover, is found only in certain areas.

Place of first publication: journal “Chemistry and Life”, 2006, No. 3, www.hij.ru

A. N. Veselovsky. Favorites. On the way to historical poetics M.: "Autokniga", 2010. - (Series "Russian Propylaea")

Comparative mythology and its method

Zoological Mythology, by Angelo De Gubernatis. London. Trübner. 1872. 2 w.

The science of comparative mythology has not been particularly happy lately. It only recently announced its arrival in the family of other sciences related to it with the famous book of Kuhn, the brilliant studies of Max Müller and a few of his imitators - but that’s where it all stopped. Other imitators appeared, second-hand workers who believed, with their eyes closed, in two or three propositions expressed by teachers, and hastened to apply them to some special task, not caring about testing the principles. And science has its own hobbies, fashion. Just as previously they naively believed in the historical background of every myth, so now, carried away by the comparative method, they strove to turn every ordinary story into a myth. One had only to find that in one or another chronicle, epic, or legend there are common passages found in other chronicles and legends in order to immediately suspect their authenticity and remove them from history. They thought to explain them differently - either by borrowing, transferring some indifferent details from one monument to another, or by myth. But borrowing would have to be proven for each given case, and the myth hypothesis is so convenient! Commonplaces, motifs and situations repeated here and there, sometimes at such distances and in such circumstances that there is no visible, traceable connection between them - what is this if not myths, if not fragments of one common myth? One has only to take this point of view once, and the reconstruction of this myth and its explanation is an easy matter, given the pliability of the material with which mythical exegesis deals. Thus, not so long ago they wanted to turn Roland, the associate of Charlemagne and the hero of a very real chanson de geste, into a German god, because both had similar features. It is clear why not only classical mythologists, who have always disliked the somewhat broad methods of the new school, are now beginning to rebel against such hobbies, but also people who have always had a sympathetic attitude toward it and who were expecting its revelations with hope. But what most of all damaged its cause in the eyes of serious figures were premature generalizations and attempts at popularization. Science has not yet made up its mind, has not yet clarified the properties of its material or its methods of research: it has barely had time to pose a few questions, ask two or three hypotheses - and already the books of Cox 1 * and Burnouf 2 * are rushing to acquaint the public with its results, which have yet to be no, with the whole system, when it is still in operation and can still be restructured one way or another, depending on the data that the study of some special series of facts brings with it. The public really gets in these books something similar to general conclusions, to an organism; Taking a closer look, it is not difficult to make sure that under both of them are hidden the same two or three hypotheses, which should still be confirmed or refuted, but they are put at the forefront, skillfully removed by facts, commonplaces, and the impression comes out as if the whole this integrity is obtained in a strictly scientific way; unfolded logically from a series of completely proven truths. But these are not truths, but hypotheses, and all development is dialectical. If the science of comparative mythology follows this path, it may rush into the arms of that metaphysical discipline which has long been suspected under the name of "philosophy of religion" - and a new rubric will not be needed. I do not completely deny the benefits this kind hasty generalizations - for the mass of readers; but this benefit is one-sided and mixed with a large amount of grief. It is useful in any case that the ordinary reader, who does not look into special books, learns that a new science has been born, which sets out to study the development of religious consciousness, collects fairy tales, and looks for the pearls of primitive myth in folk superstition. But when the same reader comes to the desire to collect these tales, to write down these superstitions, then these books can only confuse him: he will approach the matter with a preconceived system, enticing with its breadth, but devoid of scientific significance; the system will determine his choice, guide his interpretation - when the task of anyone seriously interested in comparative mythology can still be one: to collect everything and only collect; if a lot of material accumulates, group it not according to preconceived hypotheses, but according to purely external categories: according to content, some general features, a combination of motives, epic techniques, symbolic details. At first, this may result in the following: multiplying the material will increase the means of comparison and give more stability to statistical conclusions; an external grouping of facts, unscientific in itself, can lead to a number of partial generalizations and independent hypotheses, which will either increase the number of those few from whom mythical research is usually launched, or will verify them and cancel others as unproven. The more such private, modest works appear, the more likely it is that, with mutual verification, both the general methods of research and the subjectivity of researchers will finally level out and give way to an exact method. With the method, the future science of mythology will appear, the tasks of which I can define for myself in no other way than by calling it in advance the psychology of the mythical process. I do not see that in modern works devoted to this area these problems are especially prominent. Any similarity between mythical types, manifested in fairy tales, beliefs, and rituals, is explained either by historical transfer from one area to another, or by elevation to one prehistoric type, from which elements developed that retained a related appearance to varying degrees. But this explanation is possible and understandable as long as the similarity remains within one race, one historical tradition. Since the development of folk literature has extended the range of study to all kinds of races and nationalities, such cases have become more frequent that some Eskimo tale shows features similar to an African one, or an ancient Roman custom is preserved on the islands of Polynesia. So, for example, in New Zealand it is said that Rona, while walking on the water, stumbled in the dark and scolded the moon, which was hidden behind the clouds at that time, and the angry moon descended and kidnapped her along with the tree on which she decided to seek refuge. Both the Rhone and the tree can now still be seen in what seems to us to be spots of the month 2. But the same legend is found in the Edda and among the Buryats. In such cases, scientists limit themselves to simple rapprochement - which, of course, is much more prudent; or they indulge in vague considerations that lead nowhere, so there is nothing to follow. Meanwhile, the following question is posed quite naturally: just as in languages, with differences in their sound composition and grammatical structure, there are common categories (for example, numerals) that correspond to general methods of thinking, and the similarity of folk beliefs, with differences in races and the absence historical connections , can it not be explained from the nature of the mental process taking place in a person? How else can we explain that in the fairy tales and rituals of peoples, sometimes very sharply separated from each other both ethnologically and historically, the same motives, the same tasks and general outlines of action are repeated? What made everyone always talk about brothers, usually three or two, of whom two are considered smart, and the third is a simpleton, who in the end turns out to be wiser than the smart guys? Or about the sisters, one of whom, the stepdaughter, is in a pen and then from a dirty place becomes a princess, triumphant? Or about a brother stalking his sister, a father stalking his daughter, etc.? These motifs are too common, too regularly repeated, for one to fail to see in them a certain folk-psychological legitimacy. It will be possible to find this legitimacy, of course, not through metaphysical constructions, but along the well-trodden path that all modern sciences strive to follow: it is necessary to start from the beginning, by collecting the largest number of facts, fairy tales, beliefs, rituals, selecting fairy tales based on motives and combinations them, beliefs in content, rituals on annual holidays, or those everyday relationships (wedding, funeral, etc.) to which they are attached. Such an arrangement in the future will better clarify the internal legitimacy of the folk poetic organism than all sorts of experiments by theorists on this “unknown land.” One can say more: only such a collective study of beliefs and rituals will eventually give us the science of mythology, just as a similar study of fairy tales and legends will create the science of folk narrative literature. The first has been started for several years already by Mannhardt 3 *, the second has recently been undertaken by Oesterley 4 *. I mean his library of oriental fairy tales and stories, the first volume of which was published in Breslavl 3 . Here is what the editor writes about the general tasks of his work: “The fact has not escaped the attentive observer that for some time a significant number of philologists and literary historians in Germany and France, Belgium, Italy and England have been zealously engaged in a task that is modest and unassuming in appearance, but promising in time to give birth to a new science. The foundations of this science have only just been laid, and not everywhere; there is still a lot to be collected, broken, hewn stones, because the building being prepared is vast and grandiose. No one knows the architect and only a few have seen the plan, but, despite Moreover, everyone works strictly in one direction, although unconsciously, as if by instinct: this is the work of bees and ants. .. This building, this new science will be called comparative history of literature, or the history of folk literature, and its task will be: to determine the paths of development followed spiritual material any literature, i.e. poetic motives, both in time, over the course of centuries, and in space, in the communication of countries and peoples." 4 I have already said that the science of comparative mythology can only result from a similar kind of preparatory work. The considerations I have expressed explain my demands from any mythological work, and my relationship to the book of Mr. De Gubernatis. The book of Mr. De Gubernatis represents a very extensive collection of folk literary or, if you like, mythological material. The author is also a collector, and this is his main merit. Of course, the material is not collected evenly everywhere, which is impossible to demand given the extensive scope of the work. Thus, for example, the Vedas and Indian poems are examined in detail, but relatively little attention is paid to the rest of the East. The Western section came out even poorer, of course, with the exception of Italy, in popular beliefs and the tales of which the author dealt with specifically 5; but medieval literature remained almost untouched. This is all the more unfortunate since novels, bestiaries and fabulous legends about animals in the tales of Alexander the Great represent a rich source of information specifically for animal mythology. The author obviously depended on his library and therefore did not use Bochart (Hierozoikon) 5 *, or even such accessible book, as "Teratology" by Beiger de Xivrey In the chapter on the cuckoo, Mannhardt's famous monograph is not even named. All these shortcomings are made up for by something that is so rarely found in European works on comparative mythology: abundant references to Slavic, mainly Russian material. The author has extracted the contents of almost the entire collection of Afanasyev, and in this respect his book will be the same revelation for European science as famous sketch Rolston 6 * about Russian folk poetry. Until now, Russian fairy tales and Russian songs have entered the West by chance, in fragments, in poor translations. Benfey used the tale of Malandrach Ibrahimovic. Mr. De Gubernatis's book will for the first time indicate to Western researchers what a rich source of comparison they will find in the literature of Russian fairy tales. But he will only point out - no more: for the benefit of that science of the future, about which more than one Esterley dreams, it would be desirable that instead of the short reports of Mr. De Gubernatis, determined partly by the mythological tasks of his work, all Afanasyev’s fairy tales were translated, or, according to at least published in extract. I heard that Professor Yuly started a similar work 7 * for several years now. The weak side of M. De Gubernatis's work seems to me to be the one in which he, in all likelihood, believes his greatest strength: I am talking about his mythological ideas. I don’t understand why, having such extensive knowledge of Eastern literature and generally such rich mythological material, he arbitrarily killed himself, abandoning any attempt to reach independent conclusions. The ideas of Kuhn and Max Müller are his ideas, and he limited himself to adding many new comparisons to them. But there are not many of these ideas and that they are not enough to explain the entire stock of mythological ideas, anyone who has ever worked in this area knows. When there was so much new at hand, why not try for a new generalization? This would only increase the number of guiding ideas and make things easier for the future employee. G. De Gubernatis chose to enroll in school, and this refusal of independence was reflected apparently for everyone in the contrast that is noticeable between the title of his book and its content. We are promised animal mythology, yet you read dozens of pages and not a single mythological animal will scare you along the way. In the first part of the book this inconsistency is especially noticeable. It is explained in this way: according to the ideas of the school, all fairy tales are of a mythical nature, and their prototype is found in ancient myths, especially freshly preserved for us by the Vedic hymns. These hymns are dominated by zoomorphic images: cloud cows, cloud snakes, ram, goat, horse, etc. This gave the blueprint for animal mythology and explains the distribution of fairy-tale material among animals 6 according to the principle that everything found in a fairy tale should also be found in the Vedic myth. The distribution sometimes turns out to be completely external: sometimes a cow is mentioned in a fairy tale, not playing a din, however, no significant role, perhaps introduced there completely by accident, but for this reason the whole fairy tale will fit into the chapter about the mythical cow; on the other hand, all the fairy tales about our Ivan the Fool are collected there. There is nothing animal in them, nevertheless, they must submit to the system: you just have to convince yourself that there is nothing easier and more natural than turning from a bull into a handsome young prince (“how natural it is to pass from the bull to the handsome hero prince". I, 257), or a cow to turn into a princess. Our Ivanushka the Fool was undoubtedly a bull, otherwise his genealogy would not have reached the Vedic period. For the sake of this animal theory, fairy tales are sorted in such a way that fragments of them can be found in different chapters, due to the mention of different animals in them, and the reader cannot form an idea of ​​​​their entire composition, which would be especially necessary if someone there was a desire to use them from a different point of view, or distribute them according to other principles. I will point out here one logical inconsistency in Mr. De Gubernatis’s method: the Vedic hymns present very little integrity in their plots; it has to be restored, and the author uses fairy tales based on the axiom (which still needs to be proven) that there is a genetic connection between the Vedas and fairy tales. Having restored the Vedas with the help of fairy tales and having found in them in their embryonic state all the later fairy-tale plots (two sisters, a stepmother and a stepdaughter, the persecution of a daughter by a father, a sister by a brother; three brothers; a blind and a lame man, etc.) he takes the first ones as the basis for the division and, himself without noticing it, she rotates in a vicious circle. But since the matter is about understanding fairy tales, and the Vedas are only a help, it would be more rational to take the fairy tales themselves as the point of departure, arranging them according to guiding themes. Then there would be no need to look for Ivan Tsarevich in the chapter about the bull, with whom he only has the common feature that Ivan Tsarevich drinks and the bull drinks (I, 194). But then the very title of “animal mythology” would be destroyed. The title is not the book itself, and the work of Mr. De Gubernatis will remain as before a rich encyclopedia of fairy tales, arranged and explained according to the principles of Kuhn and Max Müller. It will not occupy the last place in the history of their school, and it must be admitted that Mr. De Gubernatis can only be reproached for the extreme consistency with which he applies its principles. After him, there will be no living place in the fairy tale that would not be explained mythically, even under the fear of stretches and historical inaccuracies. The latter is a common thing: not everyone is given the ability to know everything, and the broader the tasks, the sooner there will be mistakes and oversights. The latter are especially common in the analysis of Old Norse beliefs. Russian readers know Mr. Buslaev to explain the mysterious Troyan "The Tale of Igor's Campaign": he brought this legend closer to the Serbian belief about King Troyan, and both with the Scandinavian Alvismal, where Thor argues with the wise dwarf Alvis and deliberately continues the conversation until dawn: as soon as morning appeared, Alvis is petrified because he belongs to a breed of black elves who are alien to the day. This explanation can hardly be doubted: it is rooted in the Edda's ideas about the black elves, döckralfar. G. De Gubernatis was so carried away by his mythological theory that because of it he forgot the facts: he compares Alvis with a seven-year-old girl from a Russian fairy tale (Afanasyev, VI, 41), in which he sees Aurora, seeing and knowing everything (and therefore wise) , protecting the poor against the rich, the innocent against the guilty 7 . Alwis is also Aurora, and for the sake of his explanation, the author retells the myth as follows: “when he (that is, Alvis) finished his answers, the day dawned and the sun appeared” (I, 207). If so, then his identification with Aurora is probable; but it was necessary to add that Alvis turned to stone under the influence of the sun's rays, and the identification disappears. Elsewhere (I, 260-261), Mr. De Gubernatis calls the same Alvis the double of Thor. Equally unsuccessful - from the point of view of specifically Scandinavian ideas - are the explanations of the well-known Edda myths about the creation of the first man and Thor's fishing (I, 224-225): the author sees the sun and Aurora everywhere. This is not an oversight, but the exaggerations and hobbies of a person who is looking for confirmation of his system at all costs. And he finds this confirmation thanks to the special treatment of his material, which I have already pointed out. By tearing apart the integrity of the tale, examining it in parts, he facilitates his mythological interpretation in the sense of his theory. But the accuracy of the explanation is suspicious: the meaning of the phrase is understandable only in the context and only in it receives a proper assessment; tear it out of its connection, and it will find itself in your hands as a common place, to which it is easy to assign one meaning or another - whatever you want. So it is with fairy tales and myths: study the fairy tale in detail, put forward the myth from the organism in which the special beliefs of the German-Scandinavian, Slavic, Greek tribes have developed - they will answer you for any explanation. But this technique is hardly logical and its results are evidential. Do you want to study the mythological content of a fairy tale or myth? Take the fairy tale in its entirety, study the fusion of various motifs in it, consider it in connection with the fairy tales of the same people, determine the features of its physiological structure, its folk individuality, and then proceed to comparison with the fairy tale and fairy tales of other peoples, which, for their part, are subject to the same preliminary clarification. The same must be done with religious power itself, with myth: the path must go from the particular to the related and general; from fairy tales it will be possible to reach the Vedas. The mythological hobbies of Mr. De Gubernatis are explained mainly by the fact that he preferred to march back, taking as the point of departure the Vedic myths, which he had previously built up with fairy tales - and some other theoretical considerations about the susceptibility of primitive man and the special nature of the mythical process that took place in his head In the latter respect, I cannot help but speak out against his ideas. If you believe Mr. De Gubernatis and some other modern researchers in comparative mythology, then our pastoral forefathers not only were not primitively naive, but in many ways outdid the people of the 16th and 20th centuries. To encounter such a subtle understanding of nature and its beauties, which is revealed to us at the basis of their myths, we must step over the Middle Ages straight to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Buffon and the Leucists; in order to be able to so deftly notice every little thing, every shadow in a cloud, to comprehend every step of the sun across the vault of heaven - you had to be a fearless, coldly conscious allegorizer, and we again point to the 18th century, and we are unaware that all this consciousness and artificiality occurs already at the first manifestation of human thought on earth - in myth 8 *. G. De Gubernatis brings together Bertha - the wide foot, Freya - the swan foot of German beliefs, with Aurora, seated on a wide chariot: both the chariot and the foot are wide, because the dawn takes up a large place when appearing in the sky (1, 253) . “Myths based on the fickle phenomena of the sky have given rise to the greatest number of legends,” says the author elsewhere, regarding the Vedic myth of the Asvins. "Constant transitions of shadows, half-lights, flickering, from the dead of night to the silver moon, from the month to the gray tone of the morning dawn, which grows stronger and merges with the dawn; from dawn to the sun; and the same change, only in reverse order, in the evening, when it has set the sun gives way to a crimson dawn, dawn - again to half-light and a month and a dark night: all these transformations of colors and lights, now meeting, now merging with each other, gave rise to ideas about heavenly comrades, friends, relatives who live now in the world, now in enmity, they sometimes converge in love and affection, sometimes they rush at each other in enmity and anger, being alternately victims and persecutors, seducers and seduced, deceivers and deceived. Where there is a family, there is love, there are exemplary brothers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, full of tenderness, but immediately meets reverse side medals: where there are relatives, there are quarrels, jealousy and envy, evil mothers-in-law and stepmothers, tyrant fathers and treacherous wives . If it is difficult to explain psychologically these opposing feelings in a person, then all the more difficult is their analysis in myth, to which a quick impulse of imagination gave an animal image, which also quickly disappears" (I, 319--321). But in the mental process that Mr. De portrays to us Gubernatis, I do not so much see a flight of imagination as the conscious observations of a colorist over the shadows of the evening and morning sky. The mythologists of the comparative school were least aware of the degree of consciousness that is assumed by mythical creativity and at which the human individual was at the time of this creativity. That is why they explanations of the genesis of myths often come out in such a way that they at least match our reflective and natural-scientific times. Burnouf in his "Science des religions" suggests in our forefathers the anticipation of such truths as the unity of forces, or the chemical influence of the sun's rays on earthly life. All this is them clearly expressed in their myths. G. De Gubernatis, interpreting the proverb that the cow overtook the hare, finds in it the doctrine of a lunar eclipse; the hare is a symbol of the moon, the cow is either the night, or Aurora, or the earth; in Sanskrit go means both cow and earth; a cow that has overtaken a hare that has rushed a mile is the earth passing by the month and covering it (1, 24). By the same lack of precise ideas about the nature of culture, among which the origin of myths is only conceivable, I explain to myself the fact that mythical interpretation sometimes extends to such an area and to such phenomena that we are accustomed to consider as conscious, belonging to personal invention. Schwartz 9 *, as you know, was not averse to finding myths in Heine’s songs. G. De Gubernatis, finds them in Rabelais, exactly where his humor diverged on the account of the gigantic appetite of his heroes: Gargamela, being pregnant, Gargantua eats a countless amount of bull tripe; Gargantua has just been born and asks for a drink: the milk of 17,913 cows quenches his thirst. All this is connected with the mythical attitude of the bull to childbirth and pregnancy! The explanation of Esmeralda's love in "Notre Dame de Paris" for the monstrous Quasimodo is no better: this is the nymph Galatea, who loves the Faun; The faun is known to be goat-footed; Esmeralda walks with a goat (1,421). Let me quote a few words of caution on this matter from Taylor's remarkable book: "Primitive Culture" 8 . “When first becoming acquainted with the views of the newest school of mythologists, and sometimes even after a long and careful study of them, many are often half-skeptical of the elegance and simplicity of their explanations, and ask - is this really true? Is it really possible to explain such a significant part of classical, barbarian and medieval European poetry with the same image of the sun and sky, morning and evening dawn, day and night, summer and winter, clouds and storms? A study of natural mythology from the present point of view speaks in favor of these explanations - at least regarding the guiding principle... At the same time, it should be clearly realized that the correctness of such common beginning cannot serve as a guarantee for the correctness of private interpretations, which some mythologists think to base on it, since many of these interpretations are extremely speculative, and many are hopelessly absurd. Indeed, natural myth requires recognition of its vast significance in the legendary poetry of man, but only insofar as this claim is supported by solid and reliable evidence... Hasty conclusions that, due to apparent similarities, deduce episodes of myth from episodes of nature, should be treated with extreme distrust, since the scientist, who has no other, stricter criterion for his myths about the sun and sky and dawn, will find them wherever he thinks to look for them. A simple test is enough to see where such a method can lead; there is no legend, allegory or children's song that would be safe from the hermeneutics of the everywhere penetrating mythologist-theorist. If you just want it, the Danish song of sixpence will turn out to be a heavenly myth, Cortes landing in Mexico will be the sun, and the life of Julius Caesar fits the scheme of the solar myth. In whatever country he comes, he comes, sees, and conquers; he leaves Cleopatra, establishes a solar year, and dies by the hand of Brutus, like Siegfried in the "Song of the Nibelungs", dying from Hagen's hands, and, falling under many blows, stained with blood, he wraps himself in a toga to die in darkness. In the language of the solar myth, the following verses might be more applied to Caesar than to his murderer Cassius: ...On the setting sun ; As in thy red rays thou dost sink tonight, So in his red blood Cassius" day is set; The sun of Rome is set! 10 * Comparative mythology so often makes forays into the realm of historical facts, so carelessly treats the integrity of folk tradition, that such prudent reminders can only be received with gratitude. M. De Gubernatis himself shares these ideas, at least in principle. “Concerning some myths,” he says, “we must limit ourselves to only general evidence until new, positive data appears on which explanations of mythological facts can be confidently based” (I, 321). I have limited myself to a few examples from the work of Mr. De Gubernatis, leaving myself to cite others when I have to talk about his interpretation of Russian fairy tales. I must, however, now make a reservation: examples of artificial, strained interpretation of myths do not so much serve to characterize Mr. De Huber-natis, how much to understand the hermeneutical techniques of the school to which he belongs. In itself, his book is a very respectable work, rich in materials and witty connections, which a person, even hostile to his explanatory system, will involuntarily stop at. And here I have to once again complain about the author. He could give up independent lusts and go down the wrong road - this is his good will; but he should have explained his system, the basic methods of his exegesis. Meanwhile, he does not do this anywhere, and, with the exception of some general passages scattered throughout the book, he gives us the same results and constructions everywhere - as if the question cannot be raised whether this is so, and whether there is a slip in the very principle of explanation , in the path it followed? He does not, in fact, assume that the teachings of the comparative mythological school are the same axioms, that there is nothing to argue about them - when a dispute is still possible about whether there is such a specialty as comparative mythology and whether it can be recognized science? G. De Gubernatis, who explained hundreds of myths in his book, had at hand all the means to test both the mythological theory, of which he is a follower, and the method of its research, as far as he managed to find out in those special works that applied it to the facts. The lack of this generalization in Mr. De Gubernatis's work prompts me to propose in the following pages a few questions and considerations concerning theory and method. The same book will give me examples mainly. The first questions that everyone who begins the study of folk beliefs asks themselves are the following: what departments of folk poetic literature should be subject to mythological interpretation? What is the starting point of this interpretation? Folk poetry, in the broad sense of the word, is rich in genera: it embraces both a fairy tale and a song, a ritual and local belief, a riddle and a proverb, and a superstitious conspiracy. What of all this should the mythologist turn to from the very beginning? Undoubtedly, to what the people themselves still regard as their belief - therefore, to a ritual, ritual and children's song, to a conspiracy; in them we will most likely find echoes of that direct relationship to nature, to the world of animals and humans, which should have been the basis of ancient folk religions. This and is the main material for mythical exegesis, material of unequal merit, which is why it should be treated differently: conspiracies have long become a secret knowledge, the property of a few; it’s more dangerous to look for traces in them folk myth, while rituals tied to certain relations of pastoral or agricultural life have always been the common property of the people, expressing their inherent need to idealize the everyday side of their working life. It is impossible to assume that they were adopted from anyone; they were so firmly rooted in everyday life itself that they could only be borrowed along with it; but everyday life is not borrowed, but created - and we are forced to look for the beginning of our rituals at the beginning of civilization, when rituals were, together with religion, expressing the practical side of myth. So, from a ritual, a ritual song, a conspiracy, a researcher who wants to recreate common features ancient mythology, and it makes no difference whether he decides to confine himself to one folk individual, or to extend his review to the beliefs of an entire race. Only having come to some solid conclusions based on the indicated materials, can he turn to other types of folk poetry, for example, fairy tales, looking for in them the same motives, traces of the same mythological system. But he needs to remember that the people do not even see in the fairy tale, not only the belief that it is a fold for them, sometimes not even folded by them, but brought from unknown where. It is known that there is a whole hypothesis, not without some basis, according to which most of the fairy tales circulating in Europe are not of European, but of Eastern origin; This opinion extends even to those fairy tales that, due to their direct, naive tone, are most easily mistaken for folk tales. If, according to Weber 11 *, Aesop's fables penetrated into India quite early, then, on the contrary, Indian collections enriched them with their content European literatures, passed from the book to the people; next to Reinhart 12 *, in which the German animal tale developed into a whole epic, the same epic becomes, but only borrowed from Indian sources, in Raymond Lull's "Libre de Maravelles" 13 *; and perhaps many of the European animal tales will have to be left in doubt: how far they folk, those. to what extent they can answer the question about the folk origins of the myth. G. De Gubernatis, however, had little concern with these doubts and the whole theory about the transition of fairy tales. From his point of view, it doesn’t matter whether, for example, a Russian fairy tale was borrowed from the East or not; no matter where it came from or where it came, its content remained the same, in its main features - and this content is mythical; he interprets it and interprets only fairy tales: ritual poetry occupies such an insignificant place in his books that there is nothing to talk about it. Or better yet, it remains for me to repeat what was said above - that in mythical exegesis fairy tales should play a secondary role and the foundation of the system should not begin with them. But Mr. De Gubernatis has never expressed the limits within which he understands his mythological material. This was reflected not only in the incomprehensible preference for fairy tales over other works of folk poetry, but also in another, no less important issue. The reader would probably be interested to know what this comparison, which knows neither geographical nor historical boundaries, leads to, a comparison of Iranian and Turanian fairy tales, the Vedas with the Kalevala, stories from the Radlov collection 14 * with Italian fairy tales of the 17th century? They are grouped according to mythical ideas, which are revealed from their totality, so that the Finnish epic sometimes completes what was left unsaid by the Zendavesta. This grouping suggests that the author has a very definite view of the relationship of mythology to ethnology; but he never fully expressed this view, although it would have been worthy of discussion. The similarity of myths, therefore, is not determined by tribal unity; the boundaries of race and language are not written for it? Or could this similarity be explained by the borrowing of beliefs and stories by one people from another? Or, perhaps, does it go back to the primitive unity of races and peoples, now separated by language and appearance? Regarding the Iranians and Turans, at least the author is inclined to the latter assumption; The Finnish epic presents many myths related to the Iranian ones, he says in one place: these are the stories about the resurrected hero, about the acquisition of a beauty, about three sisters and a self-assembled tablecloth (Sampo), etc. - which proves that the Turanians were originally and the Iranians were more similar to each other than it seems to us now, thanks to the difference in languages ​​and partly to different degrees of education (I, 150). But this is only a particular solution, after which others will be required: we have seen that New Zealand beliefs are found in the Edda and among the Buryats. How to be in this case? The question of material must be followed, as I have already said, by the question of the principles of mythological interpretation - in other words, the question of method. Since M. De Gubernatis is a follower of a well-known school in this respect, the doubts that I will propose in the following pages will again concern the very system of interpretation that comparative mythologists generally now follow. The main feature characterizing the mental (and, therefore, mythical) activity of primitive man is his tendency to personify. This is what we are told, and we cannot but agree with this position. The study of folk poetry in its most ancient remains reveals everywhere the same naive point of view: all nature was imagined to be living, that is, thinking, suffering, loving, hating, like people; Animals have the same individual life as people: the same struggle for existence, the persecution of the weak by the strong, the same victories and defeats. In trees, mountains and rivers, signs of personal life were also suspected, although in them less noticeably what constituted the main difference of personality was manifested: free will, reflected in movements. Because where there was movement, a change of phenomena, the strongest presence of the life principle was assumed, and personification came into force: the dawn rose and fell from the sky, the sun either made love with the moon, or pursued it; in the phenomena of the cloudy sky, in thunder and lightning, in the clouds, sometimes closed overcast, sometimes pouring out blessed rain - in all this there was too much drama for primitive man not to hasten to explain it in his own way. Something was moving there, struggling; the winds were chasing the clouds, someone shot lightning and opened the cloud. There was obviously life there, because there were signs of it, there was movement and passionate impulses that primitive man could observe in man or in animals, which he did not separate too sharply from himself. When he asked himself: who lives and fights there, he instinctively answered by populating the sky with half-human, half-animal images: the cloud reminded him of a giant cow giving milk - rain; For a long time she did not give him rain - milk; Apparently someone kidnapped her and locked her in a stronghold; he has a bad time, and he’s not the only one: in the cloudy sky there is movement, a struggle, a lightning strike is heard and waters, somewhere closed until then, spill onto the ground. The cloud cows are freed. The shepherd drama, probably quite common among shepherd people, is entirely transferred to the clouds; the personification penetrated into the sky, with more grandiose, monstrous images. The phenomena that took place in heaven were no match for those on earth: a person could not cope with them, they terrified him with a terrible manifestation of power, and at the same time kept him dependent, they could give him something to drink and feed, or destroy him; That’s why his relationship with them was formed half from superstitious fear and half-childish hope. Remaining in the same rut of personifications, suspecting personality in spontaneous phenomena, he tried to enter into close connections with them - in order to beg them or appease them, turn away their anger or call on love. This is how naturalistic religion was born: having populated the sky with his own life, familiar images, man recognized these images as gods. That is why all kinds of Olympus are in such close proximity to the sky; Among them, the Vedic Olympus is the most ancient; it still represents to us that stage of mythical personification, when it had not yet reached anthropomorphism and the clouds were indifferently filled with animal and human forms. But celestial phenomena are not only grandiose and terrible, they are, at the same time, the most constant. Any event in the life of a person or animals occurs and will pass, repetitions are rare; the earthly struggle dies along with the personality somewhere in the depths of the forest. Meanwhile, the sun and moon complete their cycle correctly; The stormy sky is forever the same, and you can be sure that everything in it will happen as before, the same change of phenomena will repeat today and tomorrow, and so on for an infinite time. The same old song, the same Vedic hymn can always go on about them; That’s why stories about struggle and persecution, love and hatred, with which the entire living and inanimate world was filled during the period of personification, were attached primarily to the facts of the cloudy sky: they alone did not know change and at the same time represented an abstract environment in which all life’s plots were idealized, receiving known legendary strength. This is how the first mythical legends were created, with cloudy content, with animals and human images ; they formed the basis of mythology and developed and fell with it. When man felt himself to be the center of creation and lost part of his superstitious fear of nature, his image took the forefront on Olympus, animals disappeared, hiding here and there in the form of symbolic companions of one or another deity, in stories about the conversion of deities into animals. Then the mythical legends took on a different character, and anthropomorphic gods and heroes began to participate in the original cloud drama; the very meaning of the drama began to change. Then the time came when people began to understand the spiritual deity, freeing it from carnal forms and human relationships; then natural myths were no longer relevant; they were either no longer understood or were ashamed. But they were too firmly ingrained in the memory to be forgotten immediately - and they did not immediately renounce any relationship to religion, which was entering a new era of development. Finally, they have existed for too long not to exist for another few centuries and not reach us - in the form of fairy tales. The cloud animal fairy tale passed through the form of an anthropomorphic myth and again turned out to be a fairy tale, retaining in itself the features of various everyday transformations: animals reminiscent of the time of cloud struggle, and Ivan Tsarevich - an anthropomorphic god. Its content remains the same, although dark for anyone who does not bother to illuminate it with his own history, comparing fairy tales with Greek and Scandinavian myths, with the hymns of the Vedas. Only a comparison reveals their unity, and the fairy-tale prince, going to the thirtieth state for living water, is still the same old god, going to the cloudy sky for the milk of the heavenly cows. If I accurately recounted the principles of mythological interpretation that Mr. De Gubernatis follows, then at the same time the grounds became clear on which he considers himself entitled to interpret the content of fairy tales mythically. I can now offer some doubts regarding the unconditional applicability of this explanatory system. I will note, first of all, that the explanation of mythological genesis I reported suffers from one-sidedness, which cannot but affect its further application, for example, to the interpretation of fairy tales. Cloud myths play a big role in the beginning of different mythologies; these are some of the main myths; but they are not the only ones. What, in fact, are cloud myths if not one of the expressions of that mental act that perceived all nature as living, acting according to the laws of personal life? The phenomena of heaven were undoubtedly more majestic, more wonderful than others, more mysterious in their fatal legality; it is clear that the personification took possession of them with special love; but it also penetrated the forest and waters. It was looking for a whole special world in the forest, just as mysterious and just as scary for primitive man. There lived a community of animals according to their own morals and customs; they have their own language and wisdom, which to old people seemed like prophetic knowledge, which we call instinct; they go fishing, make friends and fight; They have their own king, a bear or a lion, and he has servants. Just like people, and at the same time something special. Animals could harm a person or live in peace with him, they could be begged; our hunting plots preserve in a new, partly book form, traces of this old forest fear. Here, therefore, there were all the elements for a fantastic personification, for the development of religious awe, in a word, for the creation of a special mythological cycle that could be called an animal. Animal myths, plant myths, etc. appeared next to cloud myths. I imagine the development of ideology not from one center, but from many centers. In countries where the phenomena of the sky were not particularly sharp and did not clearly strike the imagination, some other mythological cycle could come to the fore and give color religious ideas. But even where cloud myths formed the basis of religion, other cycles continued to exist together with them and were to determine, to a certain extent, the content of folk mythology. I'm talking about togetherness, not about dependence on each other; Both myths originated independently, in different circles of ideas, and should not have developed smoothly. Most likely, myths about animals could have lost their religious meaning: people are more comfortable with animals than with the phenomena of thunderstorms, day and night; rather understood them - and then all religion towards them disappeared; he learned to fight with them, made some of them home; he interpreted prophetic wisdom with cunning (fox), and the brute strength of his muscles began to amaze him with its clumsiness (bear). When the comic element was introduced into religion, the animal myth became an animal epic, a fairy tale, while the cloud myths still continued to hang over Olympus. An animal tale is a direct continuation of an animal myth; it cannot be linked to the cloud; the similarities seen between them are explained not by the origin of the animal myth from the cloud myth, but by the general techniques of the mental process, which we called personification. When there was a desire everywhere and in everything to see the manifestation of the same life principle, it is understandable why sometimes the same thing was told about the cloud animal and about the animal walking through a very real forest. There is no genetic connection between them. From all that has been said, my conclusion can only be one: that animal tales, which directly follow from animal myth, cannot be explained entirely from the myths of clouds and thunderstorms. Despite all the efforts of Mr. De Gubernatis to tie the fairy-tale bear to the monkey he saw in the cloud hymns of the Vedas (vol. II, chapter II), I cannot convince myself that all the tricks of our Fox-Patrikeevna ever took place in the clouds , not in the chicken coop. But, according to the author, the fox that unsuccessfully seduces the rooster in Afanasyev’s Russian fairy tale (IV, 3) is nothing more than the night trying to keep the sun in its power ( solar rooster), which nevertheless triumphs over her (I, 137), as day triumphs over night. But let us turn from animal tales to fairy tales in general and ask ourselves whether everything in them can really be explained mythically? If, for example, a fairy tale talks about three brothers, two sisters, a fox and a wolf, do we have the right to assume that all this was certainly once told about the sky and the aurora, the sun and the moon? I keep this question even when in fairy tales and in religious myth itself one of any people, the same motives were repeated, and the idea of ​​​​an internal connection between them can come quite naturally. But even in such cases, I will allow myself to deny not the possibility, but necessity this connection. Let us just remember how the heavenly myths were created: in their images we discover earthly forms, in their motives everyday relationships. In order to see a cow or some other mythical animal in a cloud, it was necessary for a person to see this cow, or the prototype of this animal nearby, on earth, to become in a certain relationship with them, to know their harm or benefit in his own life. Only under such conditions was their further idealization in myth possible. In the same way, if gods walk and fight in the sky, a father pursues his daughter, Indra Vritra - then all this was previously seen in life, the same movements and the same passions. Myth only consolidated everyday and social relations into broader images and preserved them longer due to its cosmic basis, whereas in life they either did not attract attention to themselves or gave way to others and were forgotten. But some of them could have been saved from oblivion in another way, besides myth. I imagine that some of those simple everyday events that were so often depicted in myth strongly captured the attention of a primitive clan: a neighboring tribe made a raid, two knights entered into single combat, or a bloody drama took place in the family of an elder, a girl was taken away and someone went to get it, etc. Whether it was to be told or not, the fact, common to itself, was imprinted in the memory by association with historical names or circumstances of local or tribal interest. In this way, an epic story or song was composed - the embryo of a folk epic. It is not surprising that in it we will find common features with one or another ordinary myth, in which, if not that very fact, then a whole category of similar facts found ideal enlightenment. As can be seen, such a similarity between the motifs of the cloud myth and the epic song could occur without any genetic connection between the two. But let's go further. The myth was forgotten, gradually losing its religious character and turning into a fairy tale; but the same thing happened with the epic song: historical names dropped out, local indications faded, and a legendary skeleton remained - again a fairy tale. If, together with me, they recognize the likelihood of such a development scheme, then they will agree with the following: not everything that in fairy tales resembles the motifs of the cloud myth necessarily came from it; much of them belongs to the area of ​​everyday relations, which once aroused special interest and lost it only when folk memory They were betrayed and the epic was broken into fairy tales. In the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, in the Iliad and the Nibelungs, there is no doubt a lot of mythical element mixed in; in the latter from memory, in the former because, having originated in an era of highly developed religious interests, they could not help but reflect the dominant worldview, not accept its images and legends. But to deny any factual or, if you like, historical background in them, destroying Indian poems into the hymns of the Vedas, Siegfried into Krishna, is the same as denying the possibility of the independent emergence of a folk song or story about a fact that happened on earth and not in heaven . We are now unable to determine exactly this historical outline, and Mr. De Gubernatis was right when, in an essay published several years ago (“Le fonti vediche dell”epopea” 15 *), he pointed out the futility of attempts to connect events and popular names, mentioned in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, to the exact history and map of Kiepert. But he did not stop at denial and went further than was perhaps safe for him: in Indian poems he saw the entire content of the Vedas, only transferred to earth In his present book, he defends the same theory: only “Shah-Name” has now been added to the “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata.” The boundaries of myth and epic, heaven and earth have been violated, and nothing prevents us from going further, from “Shah-Name.” Name" to "Siddikyur", "Arji-barji", throughout the literature of short stories, and agrees with the same view to deny the everyday origin of proverbs, discovering in them fragments of the same myth. A person is supposed to be so bound by mythical memories that he cannot make not a single real observation of life so as not to fall into the rut of the Vedas. I do not deny that in some old proverbs old mythical ideas, in images and phrases, are not visible; but for me there is no doubt that the very structure of the proverb belongs to the realm of other views: this age-old wisdom, a collection of simple observations, whatever you want, but least of all a myth. The Hungarians say: even a black cow has white milk (I, 167), the Germans: even red cows have white milk (1, 228); One can imagine quite a lot of variations on this theme. The meaning of this proverb is quite clear: it is simply a statement of ordinary fact, like, for example, la nuit tous les chats sont gris. But Mr. De Gubernatis prefers to interpret it mythically, bringing the Hungarian proverb closer to the Vedic myth about a black cow giving birth to a white-headed calf: this is the night that gives birth to the month. He immediately cites another Hungarian proverb: in the dark, all cows are black, and refuses the mythological explanation - but after a few pages the method comes into full force. To express something impossible, the Germans say that a cow cannot outrun a hare; but this is not an impossibility, but a myth! We say: when you take your head off, you don’t cry through your hair; Germans: lock the stall when the cow is taken away. This is again the myth about a young man who frees a girl or a cow from a prison, which is taken away by his brothers or comrades, having imprisoned the liberator in advance (see especially I, 220 et seq.)! It is impossible to go further in mythological interpretations. I will, however, make a concession to the author and his school, and assume for the moment that fairy tales are dominated by mythical material and that they should be interpreted from this point of view. But should they be interpreted? completely, from the first to the last word, from one favorite point of view - that is the question. G. De Gubernatis does this all the time; sometimes a doubt arises in him that the fairy tale is collected from different episodes, that it is stitched together, but he immediately calms himself with the following assurance: “this fairy tale contains several similar myths that occurred independently" (I, 167). This is again a question of method, too important not to dwell on it. And religious myth , and the fairy tale has its own history, analogous, developing in parallel series of forms and transformations. The myth of Zeus in the Iliad or in Hesiod already presents a complex form: it is the result of the coupling of several regional and tribal types that converged into one cycle, into one folk religion, as the idea of ​​a common, popular connection arose in the Greek tribes. . But regional myths, in turn, developed in exactly the same way: around a few indigenous mythical images and legends, others were grouped, auxiliary to them, either occurring independently or developing by analogy with the previous ones. These images and legends were welded together all the more easily because, according to the well-known process of personification, the most natural unifying idea known to ancient man was immediately transferred to them: the idea of ​​family, clan. A family appeared, a genealogy of gods and myths; a regional mythical cycle was compiled, which itself was the product of a complication. Already in the hymns of the Vedas one can, it seems to me, see traces of this complication, gradual growths, in a word, stories. I conclude this from the dual, or better, two-faced character that they give to this or that mythical image. So the clouds are Indra's cows; as such they participate in his luminous nature, therefore they are also a symbol of the moon and the aurora; Indra frees them from the evil demon Vritra, who kidnapped them. But in other cases they appear terrible, monstrous, and then they represent darkness and dark power (see I, 15, 47-48, 175 and passum). According to Indian belief, meeting a cow during the day signifies happiness, but seeing it in a dream is a bad omen. G. De Gubernatis explains this duality by the trick that cows, stolen by a demon, a snake, become his henchmen, hostile to the bright hero liberator; themselves - from light - to dark. So in fairy tales, a girl falls in love with the monster who kidnapped her and, having become his wife, together with him you begin to plot intrigues against your brother or knight who wants to free her. But the same duality is repeated in the Vedic myths about Aurora: she is sometimes beautiful, beneficial, and sometimes evil, causing trouble, so that Indra himself opposes her and destroys her. And she entered into friendship with the monster of the night and entered into a conspiracy with him against her brother the sun. “Whoever has ever observed the ominous appearance of the evening sky, painted in a crimson color, will find this image very natural,” says the author on this occasion (I, 211). I could write out several more such interpretations, leading the duality of meaning to the unity of type; but they are too witty to be natural, and, moreover, do not meet the requirements of the most ordinary, let alone primitive, symbolism. When I look at a cloudy sky, and small clouds seem to me like lambs, I cannot at the same time imagine them as a tree or a mountain. Another time, in a different mood, the impression may be different, and I will imagine a tree or a mountain instead of lambs. I can even make a certain effort on my imagination and bring all these different impressions into one whole image - but it will obviously be the product not of a primary perception, but of several repeated perceptions. In the same way, if the darkness of the night strikes me as something evil, mysterious, terrible, I cannot at the same time imagine it as the beginning of good and light, the parent of the day. Subsequently, I will also reveal these symbolic relationships, but having already weaned myself from the fear of the night, treating it as a concept, as a common place, without any association with the ideas of evil. Or some person makes me laugh with his gait, as if he had swallowed an arshin; I’ll put it in the caricature; but on another occasion he will strike me with his resemblance to some animal - and my caricature will come out different. In a word, I am not able to see at the same time, in the same image, light and dark, good and evil, crooked and straight. Whenever such a duality of ideas comes across to me in a mythical symbol, I can directly say that only one of these ideas is primary, that the other developed later, not from itself, but only with the same image, and that between one and the other it is necessary assume a third degree of development: before moving to the opposite meaning, the image had to sacrifice the reality of its original meaning, become a commonplace, approach an abstract concept. Only by assuming this mediocre, abstract form can one naturally explain to oneself how the light Aurora became dark, the cows of Indra - the cows of Vritra. To try to interpret these opposites from one primary impression, which immediately gave content to the whole myth, means to deny its history. In addition to the above bifurcation, played a major role in the development of mythology complication myths, due to their joint development. The phenomena of the sky, the life of the forest and waters evoked whole cycles of images and legends, independent of each other, in the human imagination. But the mixing was to begin very soon. Whether the cloud legend spoke about animals - another legend, which originated in the thicket of the forest, knew other details about them, and they could be transferred to symbolism with which they initially had nothing in common. Later, at the time of the formation of regional and folk mythical cycles, the mixture was supported by genealogical ideas again attracted to them, since the gods of the sky became related to the deities of the earth and the underworld. At present we are mostly dealing with such myths, complicated by episodes or symbolism borrowed from other circles of ideas. Even in those cases where this complication cannot be proven factually - which is always difficult - it is necessary to keep this possibility in mind so as not to get carried away in interpreting an entire myth from one idea supposedly inherent in it. All the same phenomena were repeated in the history of fairy tales, and are still being repeated before our eyes, which is why here, too, the requirement for caution is most appropriate. Who doesn’t know how sweet epics and fairy tales are to the so-called epic repetitions! Whether a knight is going to his heroic deeds, his equipment and farewell are described every time and for the most part with the same features. He goes to get the beauty - and not just once, but several times; it's the same figure again; Usually his encounters on the road are the same, and his deeds are similar. Or instead of one knight there are several; I don’t know why there are most often three of them, just as I don’t know why one hero is often told that he made three trips. But it is easy to imagine that three heroes are the same repetition as three trips of one; if only the last of them manages to fulfill what the other two did not do, then this is only a requirement of symmetry: the denouement of the fairy tale, the accomplishment of the feat must certainly be at the end; this is left to one hero; others failed to do anything, they envy the first and, further, begin to quarrel with him. The antagonism of valor and cowardice, good and evil, could naturally develop over time from the very course of the tale, without being given at its foundation. Thus, the Italian novels of the Carlovingian cycle turned Ganelon and similar images of the old French epic into a whole race of traitors, fatalistically hostile to Charlemagne and his paladins. Perhaps in other cases this antagonism should be assumed to be more ancient, lying in the very design of the types. But the question always presented itself to me: why are these knights, of whom one is always kind and bright, the others evil, usually called brothers why does such a contrast appear between sisters! In these related names one can perhaps also see signs of epic repetition: when one hero gave way to several performing the same feats, it was natural to call them brothers or sisters. The development of the fairy tale plot, which I just pointed out, led them into unfriendly relations with each other - and then brothers and sisters, good and evil, appeared. Thus, only by taking into account some general techniques noticed in folk poetry, and, undoubtedly, playing a large role in its history, it is easy to explain to oneself other symbolic details of fairy tales, without resorting to comparison with myth. But an even greater role in the history of a fairy tale is played by the process, which, speaking about myths, we called the process complications. Make any storyteller or “storyteller” repeat it to you several times, and even better, in different time the same epic or fairy tale. Every time he introduces into his story, sometimes subtly milking himself, something new, some detail or an extra trip. He does not compose, but only confuses. For inept storytellers, this confusion gets to the point that sometimes you don’t recognize the tales, he mixes up so many tales at once, out of forgetfulness, out of unconscious selection of one detail for another. But those fairy tales that we consider to be well preserved and read in printed publications developed in exactly the same way. Most of them are as summary, or, if you like, complicated, as the myths with which the mythologist has to tinker. And this arch took place very naturally, and perhaps quite early time . The fairy tale, for example, was about a hero who was helped in his exploits by various animals; but there were special stories about them, animal epics; and here is the reason for confusion, at least for the introduction of some extraneous details or episodes. Or the hero, seeking the hand of a beauty, must perform various difficult tasks: get living and dead water, or some other epic rarity. But there was special talk about these wonders, about the invisibility hat, the running boots; if one of them was transferred by affinity into a fairy tale about difficult tasks, then the episode attached to it could move along with it. Thus, a consolidated tale was compiled in which the unevenness of the arch was smoothed out in constant retellings, so that now it is difficult to discover the existence of a groove somewhere in them. I will give examples. No. 23, Volume II of Rudchenko’s collection tells about Popovich Yasat. One priest had three sons: two were reasonable, and the third, Yasat, was a fool. The king calls out throughout the land: whoever gets him a horse so that one hair is gold and the other silver, he will give him his daughter and half of the kingdom. Yasat and his brothers undertake to complete this task by first choosing horses from the herd that has been brought in, and Yasat chooses the most pitiful water-carrying nag. They are going; On the way, they see three snakes chained in the barn. To the brothers' question, one of them answers that at midnight a snake with three heads flies to her; the second, that at the dead of midnight a snake with six heads flies to her, and to the third - with twelve, as soon as midnight passes. We asked around and went; and along the road there is a house, and chambers, and a stable - everything is glass. The brothers don’t want to go there, but on Yasat’s advice they turned around, went to sleep near the horses, and Yasat was in the middle of the yard: he said that he was not feeling well, maybe he would feel better in the wind. The brothers fell asleep, and he went under the bridge. It is not yet midnight, but the earth is knocking; a snake with three heads rides on a horse; the horse stumbles, the dog howls, the falcon hits the ground. “Stop, horse, don’t stumble; dog, don’t howl; don’t hit the ground, falcon; there’s no one here to play with us; there is priest Yasat, thirty lands away, he would have played with us, but the crow wouldn’t bring his bones here.” Then Yasat got out and let’s fight the snake. - “Wait,” says the snake, let’s go fight on that mountain over there. Blow on it so that it becomes stone.” “Die, damn you, if you have such strength,” Yasat answers. He died and the mountain became stone. The fight begins. Yasat kills the snake, burns it and flies it to the wind, put his horse in the stable, and again presses himself under the bridge. The battle with the second (six-headed) serpent is told with the same epic details and turns of phrase. Only the mountain, from the breath of the serpent, this time becomes iron, as the third time, in the battle with the twelve-headed serpent, it became tin. The fight against the latter is the most difficult. In preparation for it, Yasat hangs a stick on the crossbar, placing a plate under it, and says to the brothers: “When blood starts dripping from the stick, run to such and such a mountain to help me.” As Yasat hit the kite, he plunged into the tin up to his knees, and Yasat, from the kite’s blow, went into it up to his groin. Ask the serpent to rest for three hours - will the brothers come up; and they are sleeping. Then he took off his red boot and, as soon as he let it go, he straight through the stable. The brothers woke up, looked, and blood was not only dripping from the stick, but the whole plate was floating in it. The brothers go to the aid of Yasat, defeat the third snake and, having taken the snake horses, want to go home. But Yasat says that he forgot his neckerchief at the overnight stay and needs to come back for it; No matter how much the brothers tried to dissuade him, he went anyway, turned into a red rooster and sat down on the fence. And the snakes are right there. “If I knew who killed mine, I would have turned into a well for him on the way: as soon as I got drunk, I would burst.” - "And I would be an apple tree with apples; as soon as I had eaten, I would have burst." - “And I would burn him with fire.” Yasat catches up with the brothers, does not allow them to drink from the well or taste the apples, but his horse stands in front of the fire, and the snake catches up with them. Yasat hides in the forge. “Give me Yasat,” the snake says to the farrier. - “Lick the door, I’ll put it on your tongue.” She had already licked the hole, and the blacksmith heated the pliers and hit her by the tongue. That's where they killed her. Returning home, Yasat gives the king a horse and marries his daughter 9 . But what horse? The king demanded that they deliver him one with one hair of gold and the other silver, and Yasat went for him. In the tale, obviously, something was left out, or some detail was forgotten, or the story at the beginning was about the capture of the horse of one of the snakes. Now it's unclear. The fairy tale rewarded itself by inserting a completely unnecessary episode, well known from other stories: I’m talking about the brothers’ choice of horses, and Yasat, like Eruslan Lazarevich, like many other heroes, chooses a nag for himself. In these stories, this episode is in place, because the nag later turns out to be a marvelous horse and serves its owner a heroic service. She is only mentioned in the tales about Yasat, and then never appears on stage. Perhaps the last detail in the fairy tale about the snake and the blacksmith 10 should be considered the same added episode. But let's move on to the doublet of the same tale, placed in the same collection by Rudchenko, immediately after the previous one (II, 24: Catch). Once in the fall a gentleman went hunting; A cold, rainy night found him in the forest with the hunters. “If we now had a warm house, a white bed, soft bread, and sour kvass, there would be no need to grieve: we would tell fairy tales until the morning.” 1lyad - there is a hut, there is bread and kvass on the table; The house is warm, the bed is white. They entered, prayed, dined, and went to bed. Only one is awake. He hears, around midnight, someone comes under the window and says: “Look, the warm-hearted ones said that if only they had a warm house, a white bed, soft bread and sour kvass, there would be no need to grieve, they would tell fairy tales until daylight.” "Now they've forgotten! Wait: when the gentleman goes home, he will have an apple tree on the way, he will taste the apples from it, and he will burst. And whoever overhears this and tells him, he will be petrified up to his knees." And he, who had not slept, listens and says: trouble. Then, someone else comes a second and third time; the same reproaches and threats: to become a well on the way, or a bed with a feather bed; As soon as the master gets drunk or lies down on the bed, that’s the end for him. And whoever tells him about this will become a stone up to his chest, and then up to his neck. The next day, on the way, all the said meetings, but the one who overheard chops down an apple tree, a well and a bed with a feather bed: the apple tree was “taken by ash”, the well with blood, the bed with coal. Pan is angry with the hunter and, arriving home, demands him to answer; he asks to bring himself a crappy nag and, sitting on it, relays the night conversation he overheard - which is why it is not he, but the horse, who turns to stone. When it came to the third demand, he jumped off the horse, and she was petrified up to her neck. The relationship of this tale to the previous one is clear. They have one common episode: unkind meetings on the road, the meaning of which was overheard by chance at night. The snakes and serpents disappeared - in the second, and at the same time the very motivation of the story is the tasks given by the king, after which Yasat and his brothers go on a search. This fairy-tale beginning is replaced in the second edition by another - a non-fairy tale, an overnight stay in the forest, and the end is developed with the addition of a new episode, borrowed from another cycle: that the hero reveals a secret in order to save others, and thereby dies and turns to stone. There is also a third, Galician fairy tale (in “Russian Reader” by O. Partitsky. Lvov 1871, II, pp. 187--191: Korshchbury-Popelyukh), where some episodes of the previous two are complicated by even more new material. We will retell it briefly, breaking it down into its component parts: 1) One king has three sons: two reasonable, the third a fool; his name was Popelyukh, because I was always lying in ashes. The sea herd poisons the royal wheat every night. None of the older brothers managed to guard him; Popelyukh goes and made himself a bed of thorns on an apple tree that stood near the sea, so as not to doze off, and to guard the horse - all in the stars - on the first night, on the second - the horse with the moon, on the third - the horse with the sun. On each of them he rode along and across the world, and each time the horse said to him: now you are my master, and I am your horse. He puts them in his stable. 2) Another king sends a letter from across the sea of ​​red: whoever reaches his daughter to the second floor will take her for himself. The brothers are getting ready to go, and Popelyukh is with them - on a nag; falling behind them, he returns home, goes to the stable, looks into the horse’s ear: all his clothes are gold. On this horse he gallops up to the princess, puts a ring on her finger, gives her half of the scarf, and that’s it. Later, getting ready to go to the wedding, he gives the younger brother a star horse, the second month old, he himself took the solar one. This episode contains features reminiscent of the choice of horses at the beginning of the first of the above tales. 3) Three filthy kings gathered for war against Popelyukh: one with two heads, another with three, the third with four. Popelyukh is riding with his brothers; they reach the forest, the tin bridge; Popelyukh hid under the bridge and said to his brothers: pray that I don’t die, I’ll have a war. Then the king came running with two heads, his horse stumbled on the bridge. “The raven would like to drink your blood,” says the king; haven’t you eaten or drunk? There is no one who could defeat me—except Popelyukh, but the raven won’t even bring his bones here.” Popelyukh responds from under the bridge, and in the next fight he beats the Tsar. The brothers went further, and Popelyukh killed the three-headed king on the iron bridge. Further still there is a stone bridge and a king with four heads. The brothers fell asleep: Popelyukh orders them to come to his aid if the dry bowl he places in front of them fills with blood. Popelyukh turned into a red rooster, the king turned into a black one; then Popelyukh with a white flame, the king with a blue flame. The battle is on, half the bowl is already filled with blood, and the brothers are sleeping. A raven flies over them and caws. “Dip your wings in the sea and extinguish the white flame,” the king says to the raven: “I will give you your head and corpse.” And Popelyukh promises him two heads and two corpses if he, after wetting his wings, sprinkles them in his brothers’ eyes. Raven performs this; the brothers woke up and helped finish off their enemy. This is the episode about the three snakes of the first fairy tale, only instead of snakes there are kings, instead stone, iron and tin mountains - tin, iron And a stone bridge. Just as Yasat turns into a rooster, so here the same thing is told about Popelyukha and the four-headed king, only in a different setting. 4) On way back there is a yard on the road. One Popelyukh comes there, turns into a cat and overhears the conversation of three queens, the wives of the kings he killed. One promises to become a well on their way, the other an apple tree, the third will overtake and swallow Popelyukha. This entire episode, as well as the denouement that follows, are exactly the same as in the tale of Yasat: and here in the conclusion there is the same detail about the forge. I would now propose to compare the three tales cited and try to come to some general conclusion regarding them. What are these - editions of the same fairy tale, with one general plot, which was left unsaid one time, then developed with inappropriate prefixes the next? Or did all three tales come together through a random selection of details, with one starting from one motive, the other from another, which seemed more significant to her? Whatever may be concluded about them, they all seem to be the result of agglomeration, so that they cannot be said to have one basic type. If from this point of view we were to study the variants of a number of fairy tales, epics, even ritual songs, they would turn out to be for the most part the same summary, i.e. those in which the component parts are welded together by chance, for an external reason. The apparent diversity of fairy tales is explained not so much by the richness of their motifs, but by the variety and randomness of the vaults, which gave rise to more and more new variants. Sometimes one small change in the story, the replacement of one detail with another, was enough for all the small features associated with it to disappear along with the old one, and new ones appeared, conditioned by a new image: in a word, a new version. There is a well-known Bogomil tale, widespread among the Slavs, about how God and the devil created the world, and the devil dives into the sea and brings up sand and flint from the bottom, from which the Lord creates the earth, etc. In one Galician carol, published in Pravda (1868, p. 82), instead of God and the devil there are two brothers - undoubtedly a very ancient feature; but the details of creation are lost: Oh, how it was from the beginning of the world, Oh, how there was no holy land, Oh, but on the sea there are little spiders, Oh, there little brothers are gladdening: How could we, brother, dry up the world? Let us go, brother, into the deep waters, Then for us, brother, the world is settled, the Light is settled and filled, the Light is filled and filled. Later, the essence of the Bogomil belief was forgotten - and the integrity of the legend was maintained because secondary images appeared with new meaning, and the incomprehensible in them was interpreted according to euhemeristic methods 16 *. The devil appeared in the form of a floating "gogol", evoked by the image of the sea, as in one edition of the Bogomil legend; I had to somehow explain to myself the mysterious brothers who create light on the sea, time them in accordance with the requirements of song probability - and behold, a green sycamore rose from the sea, as in another Galician carol (in Golovatsky, Christomatiya, p. 343), and on it the doves rejoice, like to found light: they extract sand from the bottom and golden stone. There are not two doves, as would be the case in the dualistic belief, but three. Finally, in the third edition of the same carol ("Pravda", 1868) there is not even a motif of creation, although the song also begins "from the beginning of the Holy Day, as if there had not yet been heaven or earth." Instead of two brothers, three comrades: a clear sun, a clear month, a little rain. Each of them boasts about what he will do for the benefit of people. If we did not know that all these carols are different modifications of the same cosmic legend about the creation of the world by God and the devil, we could easily get carried away by the most distorted of them and take up the mythical interpretation of doves on a green sycamore tree. In the same way, if you do not realize the collective principle that introduced such a variety of editions into our epics, it costs nothing to surrender to the idea that from a comparison of their variants a poetic biography of this or that hero will emerge in primitive integrity, as the people intended it. The method requires, on the contrary, not comparison, but the selection of what is involved in them by chance. The same thing should be said about fairy tales: suppose that someone, without analyzing the complex genesis of another fairy tale, undertakes to explain it entirely, as an integral expression of some one plot, mythical or not; The results can and have been the most disastrous. I will point out just one of them. The researcher studied, say, several fairy tales about the wolf, brought them closer to cloud myths and came to the conclusion that the wolf is a symbol of dark, demonic force. But here, there are a number of other stories where the wolf helps the hero, feeds him with its milk, hunts for him, in a word, should be recognized as a beneficent creature (see: De Gubernatis, II, Chapter XII). What should a researcher do here? If he does not take history into account, then he has only one way out: to recognize the dual symbolic nature of the wolf. He did so, and not with just one animal symbol, but with almost all of them: there is almost not a single animal that would not be at the same time good and evil, white and black, a helper of day and light, or friend of night and darkness (dove, swan, rooster, magpie, O ron, and even a toad and a snake). With such a convenient principle in hand, you can very conveniently interpret any myth or fairy tale in one direction or another, and even bring two fairy tales closer together, without worrying too much about the fact that, for example, the symbolism in them is somewhat different: since every animal can have several meanings, it is easy to assume that, within certain limits, each of them could take the role of the other. But it should be clear to everyone that with such an exegetical principle we have not gone far from the methods of the old etymologists, according to which it was possible, with a little effort of imagination, to produce any word from any other. One had only to convince oneself, together with Menage 17 *, that from lat. mus happened first muratis, Then ratis, finally French. rat; from lat. faba --fabaricus, Then fabaricotus, aricotus where -- haricot. Thus, rat was produced from mus And haricot orrfabal Other explanations of comparative mythologists are no worse than these. Meanwhile, the box opens even more easily; most of these too witty inventions turn out to be superfluous in the extreme. There is no doubt for me that only in some fairy tales did animals or other fairy-tale images retain their primordial symbolic meaning; in others, where they appear with the opposite meaning, they were introduced later, from other cycles of legends, as an incidental detail and a common place - which is why they cannot be interpreted in connection with the facts, among which they were placed completely by accident. Thus, the apparent duality is resolved into a sequence of transformations and growths, which not a single work of the popular word, condemned to pass from mouth to mouth and to be distorted, has escaped. The whole question is how to distinguish these later additions from what in fairy tales can be recognized as fundamental and non-random. The answer to this may be the same old one: you need to do some research first. content folk tales in general from the point of view of the main motives that they use. The more fairy tales the same motif is repeated, the closer we are to the goal of criticism: from a comparison of different editions of the same story it will be easy to draw a conclusion about its common, unchangeable features, and on the other hand, about those by which it was modified here or here. The first must be recognized as belonging to the main fairy-tale types, and I understand that the idea may arise of bringing them closer to folk myths and even explaining from them the origin of all fairy tale literature. As for the latter, such an explanation should not concern them; they belong own history fairy tales and their style. Only when this division has been made will mythological exegesis feel for the first time solid ground under its feet. It is not an easy task to separate pure gold from tin in a variety of sometimes confusing ways. But in the folk tale, the witch sets her persecuted stepdaughter an equally difficult task: to separate a quarter of the wheat from the nigella mixed in with it in a day. And there were helpful animals, ants or mice, who did this. I have already said that the most original part of Mr. De Gubernatis’s book consists of numerous excerpts from Russian fairy tales, which have never before appeared in such quantity before the European reader. He refers to them most often, so that if selected information from them were removed from his book, it would be reduced by at least one third. He rarely used the collection of Rudchenko 18 * (the third volume of which, as I heard, should appear in a short time), but Erlenwein's book 19 * gave him 13 fairy tales, and almost everything interesting was extracted from Afanasyev's extensive collection. If I was not mistaken in the count, then the author borrowed up to 159 NoNos from it, and probably more - a huge percentage, if we take into account that for the 350 NoNos of the Afanasyev collection, fairy tales (not counting variants) there are only 220. Let's see, how the author used the rich material at his disposal. I’ll start with the little things, if you want nit-picking - although it’s somehow inappropriate for a Russian person to pester with schoolboy remarks a foreigner who had the patience to work through hundreds of fairy tales written in a language so little known to Europeans as Russian. But the fact is that if Western science begins to turn to our texts and our materials, then who should establish scientific tradition here if not us? In view of this, I will allow myself to draw attention to the transcription of Russian words used by the author: he writes them as they are pronounced, forgetting the etymology, for example, ahota, bagatir, svetazor, salavei, Papovic, parok(threshold), vsiakavo vstrecnavo, etc. It's the same as writing in French O,cho vm. eau, chaud. What is most strange is that the same phonetic spelling is applied to Little Russian words, where, as is known, O does not pass without accent in a. I I believe that it is this one, not at all scientific system, and led the author to that unfortunate etymology that we read from him on page 405 of the 1st volume. Regarding one Russian fairy tale (Athan. I, 4; IV, 17), where a goat calves under an apple tree, we learn that in Greek melon-- goat and apple tree, in Sanskrit petvas husband. R. -- ram, a petvam avg. R. -- ambrosia.“The mythical apple tree has the same relationship to cloudy ambrosia as the cornucopia of the mythical goat, and it seems to me that, without leaving Slavic soil, one can see the same analogy between the Russian ôblaka, in plural ablakâ, And iablony, in plural jablognajablok". A reference in Miklosic's dictionary 20 * could have saved him from this etymological myth, and Dahl's dictionary would have kept him from the following definition: golub, or brown, violet, and azure, is a name given in Russia to the dove (II, 337 approx.). Other errors in spelling may, however, belong to the proofreader (Gory I, 177 vm. Grief, the character in the fairy tale; Froh and Laver I, 264 = Frol and Laurus; dievki cernavke I, 342 vm. Chernavka girl), like an unsuccessful transfer proper names by the person who supervised the translation. Why, for example, is Alyosha Popovich translated by Alessino (as in the English text) Papovic, and Emelya by Emilius (I, 195 and 202); or firebird = burning bird, i.e. burning (I, 213), guc lebedi (II, 307) = goose-swans. As always happens with a foreigner who first approaches a field, the full knowledge of which requires not only book study, but also acquaintance with the people, this has happened more than once with the author. He often makes mistakes due to ignorance of the living language and embarks on approaches that a Russian researcher would wisely refrain from. Thus, pursuing the mythological type of Ivan the Fool, he finds it in Alyosha Popovich, in Baldak and Vasily Beschastny, and in Ilya Muromets and even in Foma Berennikov 21 *. He, perhaps, does not know that “clear falcon” is a common epic expression of Russian songs and epics and that it means nothing more than a well done, handsome guy. Instead of saying: I liked Satan better than the red fellow, they say: I liked Satan better clear falcon (II, 192, note). G. De Gubernatis considers this connection between Satan and the falcon to be somehow necessary and explains that the devil often took the form of this bird, as, for example, in the English legend of Endo. No better is the mythical interpretation of the saying: “the titmouse flies and says: blue is good” (I, 176). But we are absolutely perplexed from what sources was the information drawn that Vladimir the Red Sun is one of the patrons of knightly orders? This is what the author says (I, 355-356): “When Christianity turned the old pagan gods into saints... the mythical horse also came under the protection of various saints, ranging from the Sicilian St. Aloi to the Russian St. Frol and Laurus, not speaking of the glorious knights St. George, St. Michael, St. James, St. Mauritius, St. Stephen, St. Vladimir and St. Martin, who were especially revered by soldiers and in whose honor they were established Europe's main orders of knighthood." Order of St. Vladimir was indeed established, but, as you know, quite late. But Mr. De Gubernatis is not at all selective in his sources and especially in their chronology, and I should have long ago mentioned this main “fundamental” shortcoming of his book. You cannot use Krylov and Ershov (the author of "The Little Humpbacked Horse") on a par with folk tales, and at the same time quote Grimm's collection and sleek, well-dressed retellings of M-me d'Aulnoy 22 *, much less explain mythically the details of her contemporary costume (oisean bleu, couleur du temps, 11, 175), in which she was pleased to dress up old fairy-tale heroes. On the other hand, as a foreigner, Mr. De Gubernatis had advantages that are rarely given to a Russian scientist: one has to live in the West and often handle books about which we almost never remember to find other comparisons, which the Russian scientist will use with gratitude. Who would think to rummage through Paul Jovius 23 * in order to find in him a mention of a Russian fairy tale? G. De Gubernatis quotes him from Aldro Vandi "The Moscow ambassador Dimitri, sent to Rome, not long ago told his neighbor about a peasant who, having gone to look for honey, fell into the hollow of one huge tree, up to his neck in honey. He feeds on it for two days; the place was deserted and there was no one to hear his cries and requests for help. He was already in complete despair when he was saved by a bear who had descended into a hollow for the same prey: he grabbed her fur from behind, and she, frightened, rushed out and pulled him out." G. De Gubernatis sees in this a Russian fairy tale - and barely Isn’t it fair, although the comparison that he found for it concerns not a Russian fairy tale, but a Slavic one, given by Afanasyev in the notes to the 1st volume of his collection, and, moreover, somewhat different from the story of Ambassador Dimitri: a bear, deceived by a hare, got stuck in a hollow ; a peasant passes by, whom the bear asks to free him - as a reward, he promises to show him the hive. The man frees him and returns home with honey (II, 110). I'll let others judge the similarities. Be that as it may, if the author had collected more such comparisons, he would have done no small service not only to Russian scientists, but also to those Western ones for whom Afanasyev’s publication is inaccessible. For the latter, it would be even more useful to simply convey the rich stock of options and paraphrases that adorn Afanasyev’s notes, and moreover, perhaps solid transmission of fairy tales printed by him. After all, not every reader agrees a priori with the exegetical method of Mr. De Gubernatis, and it is all the more difficult for him to try for a new explanation with his materials, since they are scattered. The tales are conveyed fragmentarily, not all parts are equally complete - because not all fit equally into the author’s system; finally, the retelling is constantly interrupted by mythical interpretations of particulars, making it difficult to trace it as a whole. This, however, is a matter of presentation, and I will not dwell on it. More interesting are the interpretations of Mr. De Gubernatis. That they are mythical, and, moreover, in the special sense of a cloud myth, is expected by anyone who has bothered to read the previous presentation. It’s the same everywhere, you can’t take a single step without encountering an aurora, a moon or “forests of the night,” “the milky moisture of the night,” etc. The author has developed a special terminology for himself, in which one cannot help but recognize the poetic flavor, and at the same time, a certain nebula. It is suitable for a general description of the mythological worldview, but it hardly has a place in the study of its particulars. The reader will verify this for himself from the following extracts. In one Russian fairy tale by Afanasyev (VI, 54), an old woman has three ugly daughters, one with one eye, another with two, the third with three; they only eat and do nothing, and stepdaughter Marya has too much work and little food. Marya goes to herd the cow, and her stepmother gives her a lesson: five pounds of yarn, which she must spin, reel and bleach in one night. A cow consoles a crying girl: enter me in one ear, come out through the other, and everything will be done. In the Italian version of this tale, says Mr. De Gubernatis, the cow spins on her horns the yarn given to the girl while she scratches the head of the old woman, the sorceress, or the madonna. The author recognizes the moon in this old woman. The moon, like the sun, was imagined in connection with the dawn, especially the evening one, which it accompanies; she is the mistress, leader, patroness of the evening hero or heroine, lost or pursued in the night; The moon rises after the evening dawn, just as the sun appears in all its splendor after the morning dawn. The Vedic aurora is called the purifier; from here it was easy to move on to the image of a girl cleaning and scratching the head of an old woman or a Madonna; from dawn, i.e. after her, the month appears in the bright sky - that’s why pearls fall out of the Madonna’s hair; when another time the stepmother sends her (evil) daughter to the field instead of her stepdaughter, and she scratches the old woman’s head, then lice fall out of her hair: this is a month that cannot show its light in the darkness of a cloudy, black night. Just as here the cow is a symbol of light, so in another fairy tale, (Athan. V, 35) she is a demonic creature: Ivan, whom the king condemned to be a shepherd, must kiss her tail; and in the same tale it is said about old witch, sucking the breasts of a beautiful girl who must at the same time search in her head. Both the cow and the witch are symbols of the dark night; the explanation is confirmed by the fact that the shepherd - the hero Kotoma, handsome and agile, finally kills a cow that shamelessly raised its tail; The morning sun, the shepherd of light cows, flays the skin of a dark cow in the dead of night. There are a number of Russian and Western fairy tales (to which should be added famous story 1001st night) about wonderful apples, which, if you taste them, the one who eats them grows horns. In Erlenwein's 15th tale, the third brother Ivan comes to an apple tree with red apples; of these he eats four, and four horns grow on his head, so high that they prevent him from entering the forest. They disappear as soon as he eats four white apples from another tree. The meaning is this: the solar hero approaches in the evening an apple tree with red apples, i.e. to the evening dawn, and immediately becomes ugly, lost in the darkness of the night; in the light of the moon and the dawn, he comes to a tree with white apples, loses his horns and again becomes young and beautiful. In another story (Athan. VI, 57) he gives Ivan Tsarevich rejuvenating apples the sister of the sun, into whose home he penetrates as follows: Ivan (the sun) has a sister (no doubt from another father or mother) - a snake, a witch (night), who has already managed to devour his father and mother (i.e. the sun and the evening dawn, which give birth to the night and are absorbed by it). The witch is chasing her little brother Ivan and wants to eat him; he runs, but she overtook him near the home of the sister of the sun (Aurora, Ivan’s real sister). The witch invites Ivan to weigh himself on the scales; He had just sat down when the witch pulled him over, and he found himself with the sunny sister. A wonderful myth, the author explains; its meaning is obvious: Ivan is the sun, Aurora is his sister; in the morning, near the Aurora’s home, i.e. in the east, fall night shadows and sun rises On sky; mythically this is expressed in the image scales So in Christian beliefs, St. Michael weighs human souls, and those that outweigh go to hell, while the light ones go to heaven (I, 179--183). The trinity of our fairy-tale brothers attracted the attention of Mr. De Gubernatis. Usually the third brother is called Ivan: Ivan the Tsarevich, Ivan the Prince, or Ivan the Fool, the fool, which does not prevent him from usually becoming smarter and more profitable than the smart ones. Sometimes he is called Emelei, as in Afanasyev’s fairy tale (V, 55). He agrees to ride on the water because his sister promised him red boots as a reward. He has a weakness for this color: later the king dresses him all in red. Not only Russians, but also Estonian and Italian fairy tales know about this passion of fairy-tale heroes and heroines. The red shoes are a modification of the Aurora's sandal, which she lost when she fled from the sun that pursued her; or the third sister got dirty when, hastily leaving the holiday, she dropped her tiny shoe, which no one can put on except her, which is why she is recognized (Athan. VI, 30). The author connects to this myth the custom of European girls - throwing a shoe on New Year's Eve in order to guess by the direction in which it will fall, in which direction they should be married. But let us return with the author to Emelya: having gone on the water, he caught a pike, which he released when she promised him to fulfill all his desires. For the first time, “at the command of the pike, at my request,” the barrel of water goes home on its own (in the Vedic hymns, the cloud is depicted as a barrel; it moves by itself, like Emelya’s barrel; the hero, while he is imprisoned in the cloud, remains a fool). Another time, when Emelya is sent to the forest for firewood, all he has to do is give the order, and the wood itself is chopped, stacked and taken home (interesting modifications of the myth about the walking forest or cloud). When the tsar sends for Emelei, he goes to him, again at the behest of the pike, on the stove. Noticing that the princess has fallen in love with a fool, the king orders them both to be locked in a barrel and floated on water (this is again a barrel - a cloud). They land on the island where Emelya, who had become handsome and rich, lived happily with the princess in a magnificent palace (Aurora and the evening sun, thrown together into the ocean of the night, land on the happy island of the east, and rise again in all their glory). One of the most common pranks of the fairy-tale fool is that, left at home alone, he releases wine or beer from a barrel (Athan. V, 4) - this is Indra piercing a cloud barrel with lightning, from which rain moisture comes out (T, 195-- 198). Regarding Ivanushka the Fool and Emelya, the author talks about the meaning of fairy-tale atavism and interprets it: “the law of atavism is reflected in generations of mythical heroes, as well as in generations of people. A stupid father will give birth smart son, who in turn has a stupid son. I do not know how to explain this law in natural history; in mythology it is quite explainable: a bright day is followed by a dark night, a dark night is followed by a bright day, summer is followed by winter, winter is followed by summer; white is replaced by black, and vice versa, and heat and cold also alternate" (I, 200). If this is the mythical background in fairy tales, where it is easy to assume the greatest participation of free humor, then in others, with more serious content, in tales about abductions, transformations , monsters - it should have an even stronger effect. The frog princess (Athan. TT, 23), becoming a beauty while her husband sleeps (i.e. at night) - this is the month; when her skin is burned, she is removed into far away kingdom, into the thirtieth state, i.e. into hell, or the darkness of the night, where the aurora and the moon hide, from where the latter emerges again, being renewed in periods 27 days (II, 377--378). I won't say here how I feel about all these explanations. As for general ideas and questions of method, I think I have spoken enough about this subject in the previous chapter, and I would have to repeat the same thing if I decided to now embark on a criticism of particulars. It would only lead us a second time to the conclusion that I had previously reached regarding the book under discussion. “It is very possible to make a mistake in the classification and in the particular interpretation of mythical facts,” says Mr. De Gubernatis in one place (II, 422), “and I cannot guarantee that here or there I have not offered some unsuccessful explanation. In such cases, the fault may be mine: I could have been insufficiently prepared, insufficiently insightful; the failure, in any case, should not be attributed to the fundamental truths that allow comparative mythology to declare itself as positive a science as others, and, like them, to instruct and teach." I think that this phrase should be rearranged, giving the author the first warning for excessive modesty. He cannot be blamed for a lack of wit, nor for the fact that he was little read, or that he was not very hardworking. The trouble is not this, but that the so-called “fundamental truths” require revision, that the method that comparative mythologists have hitherto followed, their starting point of view, requires new verification. At one time, this method did a great job, putting the study of folk beliefs on a scientific basis; but in order for mythology to become a truly positive science, it needs to be updated - by posing new questions and a more critical analysis of the material on which it is working. The questions raised by comparative mythology are so important, they represent such universal interest that our requirements from a new figure in this field: not to waste effort on collecting data in order to bring them under established categories, which may still be subject to abolition, but to engage in a new development of the method. This would undoubtedly be useful and would remove many existing prejudices against the case itself. Comparative mythology is rejected by people of the old school as unscientific, as an impostor science. Against it, they continue to present a series of private monographs and textbooks, written in the traditionally established style - but at the same time, such books as the works of Bachofen and Braun 24 *, where the arbitrariness of interpretation and "enchantment" reach limits to which they have never reached before not a single comparative mythologist, no matter how flamboyant he may be. Comparative mythology has even become the subject of parody. They laugh at her techniques, at her one-sidedness and illegibility in materials. In 1856, she gave the late Wackernagel a reason for a rather evil and learned, although heavy-handed joke in German. It was recently reprinted in the first volume of his collected works, 11 where anyone can read it. In Basel, you see, they talk about a person who is always late, about everything that happens or comes at the wrong time, when everything is over and there is no need for mustard after dinner: he has arrived, or it is just in time, like a Bretzville dog. And in the same Basel there is another legend, recorded back in the 1511th century, about a dog from Bretten who fed his starving owner with sausages stolen from shops. One day, a butcher waylaid her at the scene of a crime, cut off her tail and put it across her face instead of sausage. The dog, out of old habit, ran to its owner, put its tail in his hands and immediately died. Wackernagel arms himself with all classical and Scandinavian learning, imagines himself temporarily inhabiting the body of some comparative mythologist, and thus begins to interpret this sentimental legend. The dog is an old chthonic symbol, a symbol of death: let us remember Cerberus, the gatekeeper of hell, Hecate, surrounded by black dogs; she herself imagined herself with a dog's head, like an underground Anubis. Actaeon, who saw Diana bathing, was torn to pieces by the dogs; he dies because anyone who sees a god or goddess with mortal eyes is subject to death; and his death is depicted by dogs. In Vegtamskvid, Odin travels to Niflheim, the kingdom of Gela, where the terrible dog of the goddess of death rushes at him with barking. One of Dürer’s most beautiful engravings depicts a knight on horseback, next to him a bony death is dragging along on a nag, and between them a dog is running, treacherously hidden: this is again the same image, and the knight is not Franz von Sickingen - only narrow-minded people can interpret this - and the same old Odin, I don’t know in which of his many transformations. - So, the dog is explained; There's still some sausage left. The ancients depicted eternity, immortality in the image of a snake biting its tail; why couldn't a sausage tied at its ends do the same? Our ancestors were more spontaneous than we are and, having a more realistic approach to life, were not so pampered in their images. But if a snake biting its tail was a symbol of immortality, then why not a dog: dogs often bite and catch their own tail. Of course, the dog from Bretten bit him out of captivity, because its tail was cut off - but this is already a distortion of the legend. In this style, the explanation goes on, interspersed with quotes and connections, so that if it weren’t for the humorous tone of the speech, it would be easy to take a joke for business, i.e. for one of the comparative mythological fabrications passed off as serious. But it seems to me that comparative mythology can and should be taken seriously. As in any new direction, here too there may be hobbies, what I would call scientific typos. The book of Mr. De Gubernatis is not free from them, which does as much credit to its author as it does to modern Italian science. Among such hobbies I include his consistency, his endless faith in several principles - and all this in an area where there is little to follow, where paths have not yet been traveled. In such faith there is a kind of heroism and moral feat: it is not so easy to be consistent when any excess of meaning in this can cause a smile on the lips of a neighbor who is perplexed that a frog could pretend to be an Aurora.

Florence

Notes by A.N. Veselovsky