What is verbal art. See what “verbal art” is in other dictionaries

Primitive origins of verbal art *

On the origin of verbal art

Archaeological material, which provides so much for the history of fine art, helps very little in studying the roots of verbal art. To do this, you need to turn to ethnographic data, which is a significant inconvenience, since the prehistory of the verbal art of some peoples has to be judged on the basis of the archaic folklore of others, based on the idea of ​​uniform, general laws of social development.

Literary art, apparently, arose later than some other types of art, since its material, the primary element, is the word, speech. Of course, all arts could appear only after a person had mastered articulate speech, but for the emergence of verbal art, a high degree of development of language in its communicative function and the presence of rather complex grammatical and syntactic forms were required. Apparently, fine art appeared first. The first decorated wooden and bone objects (female figurines - Paleolithic “Venuses”) date back to approximately 25 thousand years BC. e. Classic monuments of European cave painting (images of animals in Aurignacian, Solutre and Madeleine) date back to 25-10 thousand years BC. e.

Fine art arose in the Upper Paleolithic (the last stage of the Old Stone Age), when man, by his constitution, was no longer different from the modern one, spoke, and knew the clan organization based on dual exogamy (division of a social group into two halves, within which marriage ties are prohibited) , made perfect tools from stone, bone and horn, and had primitive religious ideas. But man has already made less perfect tools on average and Lower Paleolithic, at least 400 thousand years earlier.

In the process of labor, the hand was improved, which could now give natural material a utilitarian and expedient form, and then it is equally expedient to use the object made by it. The "intellectual" use of the hand (and eye) sharpened the abilities that made articulate speech and human thinking possible. The shape of the manufactured tools became the plastic realization of human thought, idea, design, and corresponded to the emerging aesthetic taste. The feeling of proportions and symmetry was generated both by human observations of animals, plants, and oneself, and by the technology and rhythm of labor operations. Even before the creation of the first bone sculptures and cave paintings, the production of more elegant, more refined tools than were necessary to satisfy immediate needs testified to the emergence of an aesthetic sense.

Paleolithic cave painting had a pronounced “realistic” character; Only at the stage corresponding to the Azilian-Tardenoise archaeological culture did images of animals become more conventional and schematic. But the Paleolithic, and even more so the Neolithic, along with representative, figurative art, knows the art of ornamentation, decorating tools, household items and, probably, human body(tattoo, temporary coloring), and subsequently objects of worship, and acting as a rhythm of forms and colors. Some patterns of ornamentation directly go back to the techniques of weaving, pottery, and weaving; others are a reflection of geometric shapes in nature, an expression of human sensory experience. The convergence of representational and ornamental art in the Neolithic was one of the reasons for the widespread use of conventional, stylized images. Some ornaments actually arose as a result of stylization of realistic images of natural objects, but more often their symbolic interpretation arose on the basis of later associations. Perhaps the conventionality and schematism of images were associated with the development of pictography - picture writing.

The emergence of symbolic and fantastic images The development of mythology certainly contributed. There is almost no doubt that Paleolithic cave painting not only synthesized observations of animals - objects of hunting - and in this case represented a way of “mastering” them, but also had magical significance as a means of attracting and subjugating hunting prey. This is indicated by images of animal spears stuck into the figures. Of course, the “revival” of rock paintings or drawings on the ground among Australians during rituals, aimed at stimulating the reproduction of a given animal species, has a magical character. Fine art was also widely used in more complex rituals, closely related to early religious beliefs. However, there could be (this is confirmed by the example of the same Australians) fine art that was not strictly associated with religious and magical purposes.

In the famous Cave of the Three Brothers there is an image of a disguised man with deer antlers dating back to the Madeleine era, that is, the heyday of Paleolithic painting in Europe. This and similar figures undoubtedly indicate the existence at that time of hunting dances, apparently already having a magical purpose. Dance - this living plasticity - is not only one of the most ancient forms of art, but a form that reached high perfection precisely in the primitive period.

If in the most ancient fine arts expressive figurative imagery was intertwined with ornamental motifs, then in dance the dynamic reproduction of hunting scenes, labor processes and some aspects of everyday life is necessarily subject to a strict rhythm, and the rhythm of movements has been supported by sound rhythm since time immemorial. Primitive music is almost inseparable from dance and has been subordinate to it for a long time. Musical instruments mainly beat time; the rhythmic element, even in singing, sharply prevailed over the melodic one. The rhythmic principle, the development of which was facilitated by labor practice, was itself an important moment in the organization of work and the streamlining of psychophysical energy, the synchronization of various structures of the nervous system. In addition, by breaking the flow of visual, sound, and motor perception into elements, highlighting individual “frames” in it, rhythm contributes to the creation of artistic images.

The reproduction of hunting, gathering roots, and then other labor processes in isolation from these labor processes themselves opened the way for the free reproduction and generalization of reality - the most important principles of art. If labor practice prepared art, then separation from the labor processes themselves was a necessary prerequisite for the development of art as a special creative activity that reflects and at the same time transforms reality. At the primitive stage, the transformative role of art was often naively identified with a utilitarian goal, achieved not by labor, but by magic.

The depiction of hunting in dance (and such hunting dances are widespread among a number of culturally backward peoples) was not a simple game, not only a physical exercise and a dress rehearsal for a future hunt. This was a ritual action that was supposed to directly attract hunting prey and influence the outcome of the hunt in the future. More complex magical rituals were supposed to promote the reproduction of animals and the growth of plants, and maintain a regular change of seasons, in which the period of cold and scarcity was followed by a time of warmth and abundance. A primitive magical ritual, as animistic and totemic ideas developed and became more complex, veneration of ancestors, master spirits, etc., grew into a religious cult.

The connection between dance and magical ritual, and then religious cult, turned out to be closer than that of fine art, since dance became the main factor in ritual performance.

Folk ritual games, including elements of dance, pantomime, music, partly fine art (and later poetry), in their syncretic unity became the embryo of theater. A specific feature of primitive theater is the use of masks, which genetically goes back to camouflage as a hunting technique (dressing in the skin of an animal in order to approach the object of the hunt without arousing suspicion). Putting on animal skins is common when performing the already mentioned hunting dances among North American Indians, some peoples of Africa, etc. Imitation of animal habits using animal masks and body painting was developed in totemic rituals associated with the corresponding idea of ​​​​the special kinship of a group of people (certain genera) with certain species of animals or plants, about their origin from common ancestors (who were usually depicted as creatures of half-human, half-animal nature). In Australia, a classic country of totemism, such rituals were carried out either for the magical purpose of breeding animals of their totem (rites such as inticium), or for educational purposes during the initiation of young men into full members of the tribe. During these rituals (initiations), the young man, after passing severe tests(symbolizing temporary death and rebirth), became spectators of various pantomimic scenes and dances that adult men performed in front of them.

It is interesting to note that these performances also included scenes of a grossly grotesque nature. The image of an animal (first an object of hunting, and then a revered totem) precedes the image of a person in the “theater” (as well as in rock painting). Human masks first appear in funeral and memorial rites in connection with the cult of ancestors (dead relatives). A special role in the preservation and development of primitive “theatrical” traditions was played by secret male unions, well preserved in Africa, Melanesia, Polynesia, and North-West America. Members of unions always acted in disguise; masks depicted human ancestors, sacred animals, various spirits, often in a very fantastic form (to frighten the uninitiated and under the influence of a developed animistic worldview). During the period of decomposition of clan society, an example of syncretic theatrical and ritual performance with the use of masks, imitation of animals, etc. is provided by shamanic rituals and similar witchcraft sessions among some peoples. The mystery “Tsam”, played out in pre-revolutionary times in the Lamaist monasteries of Mongolia, largely goes back to shamanic actions.

The bear holiday, widespread among the peoples of the North, combines hunting magic and a complex cult of the bear with a bright, varied theatrical spectacle, including not only religious, but also everyday, even satirical scenes that serve solely for entertainment.

The wedding ceremony of many nations has the features of a unique ritual-syncretistic action and distinct elements of theatricality. The same should be said about various calendar agrarian folk ritual games that depict the change of winter in spring or summer in the form of a struggle, a dispute between two forces, in the form of a “funeral” for a doll or actor, embodying the defeated, dying winter. More complex forms of calendar agrarian mysteries are associated with the cult of a dying and resurrecting god. Such are the ancient Egyptian cult mysteries about Osiris and Isis, the ancient Babylonian New Year celebrations in honor of Marduk, the ancient Greek mysteries in honor of the fertility gods Demeter and Dionysus. (These are, in essence, the genesis of the medieval Christian mysteries.)

The origin of the ancient theater is associated with the Dionysian mysteries. Revealing the primitive heritage in ancient Greek tragedy and comedy, A.D. Avdeev in the book “The Origin of the Theater” 1 suggests that the original basis of the tragedy was zoopantomime, and the source of its further development as a dramatic genre was the dithyramb, which set out the legends about Dionysus.

The “primitive” heritage is even more obvious in the traditional theater of Indonesia (Javanese topeng), Japan (medieval Noh theater), China, India, Burma and other countries of the Far and Middle East, where the connection with the cult of ancestors is clearly visible, masks are used, great place occupied by zoomorphic images, demons, etc.

In archaic forms of theater, the pantomimic element dominates the verbal text, in some cases a small verbal part is transferred to a special “actor” (this feature is still preserved in the traditional theater of Japan and Indonesia). The transformation of ritual and theatrical spectacle into drama occurs already in a historically developed society through a break from ritual and a much more intensive penetration of elements of verbal art, often with the help of writing.

Let's move directly to verbal art.

K. Bücher in famous book“Work and Rhythm” 2, relying on an extensive collection of work songs of various peoples, hypothesized that “at the lower stages of development, work, music and poetry were something unified, but the main element of this trinity was work”; verse meter directly goes back to labor rhythms, and from labor song the main types of poetry gradually developed - epic, lyricism, drama. This hypothesis represents the connection between labor and poetry in a vulgar, one-sided way. It was already noted above that precisely the transition from genuine production activity to its generalized reproduction in folk ritual games was an important prerequisite for the development of art, in any case, dance, music, and theater.

The outstanding Russian scientist A.N. Veselovsky in his “Historical Poetics” saw the roots of not only dance, music, but also poetry in folk ritual. Primitive poetry, according to his concept, was originally a choir song accompanied by dancing and pantomime. In the song, the verbal element was naturally combined with the musical. Thus, poetry arose, as it were, in the depths of the primitive syncretism of the arts, united within the framework of folk ritual. The role of the word at first was insignificant and entirely subordinated to rhythmic and facial principles. The text was improvised on occasion until it finally acquired a traditional character.

A.N. Veselovsky proceeded from the primitive syncretism of not only types of art, but also types of poetry. “The epic and the lyrics seemed to us to be the consequences of the decay of the ancient ritual choir” 3. In his opinion, along with the separation of song from ritual, a differentiation of genders occurs, with epic being distinguished first, and then lyricism and drama. He considers the lyrical-epic character of its early forms to be the legacy of primitive syncretism in the epic. As for the lyrics, it grew out of the emotional cries of the ancient choir and short formulas of various contents as an expression of “collective emotionality”, “group subjectivism” and emerged from ritual syncretism, mainly from spring ritual games. Veselovsky associates the final emphasis on lyricism with a greater individualization of poetic consciousness than in the epic. He builds drama into a folk ritual that has already taken the form of a developed cult. Poetic creativity appears to him in its genesis as collective in the literal sense, that is, as choral. The poet ascends to the singer and, ultimately, to the lead singer of the ritual choir.

Within the framework of this evolution, A.N. Veselovsky places Various types singers (Finnish laulaya, Old Scandinavian tul and skald, Anglo-Saxon ospreys, Celtic philes and bards, ancient Greek aeds and rhapsodes, medieval wandering singers - shpilmans, jugglers, buffoons, etc.). Analyzing the corresponding vocabulary, he proves the semantic similarity in the genesis of the concepts of song-tale-action-dance, as well as song-spell-fortune-ritual act.

Veselovsky traces some ancient features of the folk poetic style, for example, verse parallelism, to the ritual and choral roots of poetry, in particular to amoebic (i.e., with the participation of two half-choirs or two singers) performance. But “psychological parallelism” (the comparison of the phenomena of human mental life with the state of natural objects), in his opinion, is rooted in the primitive animistic worldview, which represents all nature as animate. To some features of the primitive worldview and way of life (animism, totemism, exogamy, matriarchy, patriarchy, etc.). Veselovsky constructs a number of typical narrative motifs and plots. His "Historical Poetics", which arose on the basis of a generalization of the vast material accumulated by classical ethnography and folkloristics of the 19th century, represents the only consistent theory of its kind on the origin of verbal art.

However, the concept of A.N. Veselovsky in the light of the current state of science needs adjustments. Veselovsky very fully traced the role and evolution of the elements of verbal art in folk rituals, and correctly showed the gradual increase in the proportion of verbal text in ritual syncretism. However, the folk ritual, which played an exceptional role in the development of the dance-music-theater complex, cannot be considered as the only source of the emergence of poetry.

The thesis about the complete original syncretic unity of epic, lyricism and drama is also an exaggeration. The origin of drama from cult mysteries is beyond doubt. As already indicated, the prehistory of drama mainly belongs to the preliterary period and ritual syncretism. For its final formation, in addition to breaking away from the cult, a significant level of development of narrative folklore as a source of plots was necessary.

Veselovsky's theory is most productive for understanding the origin of lyric poetry. Folklore lyrics are entirely songlike, and song by its very nature reflects the syncretism of music and poetry. A.N. Veselovsky and at the same time the famous French philologist Gaston Paris convincingly showed the connection between medieval knightly lyrics and the traditions of folk songs from the spring ritual cycle.

The epic in its genesis is much less closely connected with ritual syncretism. True, the song form characteristic of epic poetry probably ultimately goes back to the ritual chorus, but narrative folklore has been transmitted since ancient times both in the form of an oral prose tradition and in a mixed song-or poetic-prose form, with a specific weight in archaic there is more prose (and not less, as follows from the theory of primitive syncretism of types of art and types of poetry). This is explained by the fact that although the role of the word in primitive rituals is much less than the role of the mimic and rhythmic principles, even among the most “primitive” tribes, including the Australian ones, next to the ritual there is a developed tradition of prose storytelling, which ultimately does not go back to expressive, but to the purely communicative function of speech. In this narrative tradition, mythology occupies a huge place, which in no way can be completely removed from the boundaries of poetry.

Research on the origins and early stages of poetic creativity is extremely scarce.

In the three-volume monograph of English scientists K. and M. Chadwick, “The Development of Literature,” 4 rich in material, the problem of initial genesis remains in the shadows. The book is useful due to the authors' desire to classify the many archaic genre forms and their uniqueness among different peoples. A serious attempt to reconstruct the very origin of poetry and its first steps is contained in the study of the English academician M. Baura “Primitive Song”, which used material from the folklore of the Australians, Negritos, Andamanese, Bushmen and other primitive hunters and gatherers of wild cereals. Baura consciously, like Veselovsky, undertakes an “evolutionary study using the comparative method,” 5 but at the same time considers the ways of song formation both in the ritual and beyond. The big picture The formation of poetry in Baura is quite close to that painted by Veselovsky. Baura believes that poetry genetically goes back to rhythmic action and begins with the addition of words to the rhythm of music and pantomime (the song is preceded by a melody with fixed, but devoid of direct meaning, vocal sounds). The initial unit of a song, according to Baura, is, in the presence of dance accompaniment, a whole line, and in the absence of it, a poetic line, prompted by the melody and the internal rhythm of the structure itself. In the latter case, further expansion of the “text” occurs using the “line by line” method, with some lines simply repeated in order to increase the magical power of the word. Repetitions from the very beginning tend to vary and lead to parallelism. Alliteration and rhyme appear sporadically as optional decoration, and fixation of the number of syllables (either stressed or unstressed) is a means of developing meter.

M. Baura, whose research results confirm many of A.N. Veselovsky’s guesses, understands more clearly the complexity of the relationship between primitive song and narrative poetry. He does not consider primitive song as the direct germ of the epic. “Narrative poetry in the full sense of the word is absent among the primitives and its place is taken by drama”; "song is not a normal means for telling myths. They are usually told in prosaic tales."

Indeed, acquaintance with samples of poetry of culturally backward tribes 6 shows that this poetry is predominantly ritual and lyrical. There are such genres as healer healing spells, hunting songs; war songs; songs associated with agricultural magic and accompanying both the labor operations of the farmer and the corresponding spring ritual; funeral lamentations, songs of death; wedding and love songs; “disgraceful” songs, playful song squabbles; various songs that accompany dances and are one of the elements of complex ritual ceremonies; spells-prayer addressed to various spirits and gods. In the poetry of culturally backward peoples one can find examples of impressive lyricism, but in general the poetry is not strictly lyrical, it contains many descriptive elements, rhetoric, ritual symbolism (this, however, is not syncretism with epic in the literal sense of the word, as A. N. Veselovsky).

Both the content and form of primitive lyrics are strictly canonized. In old ethnographic literature, especially in all kinds of “travels,” primitive lyricism is often mistakenly characterized as free improvisation on occasion, a direct “unsophisticated” expression of impressions and emotions. However, in most cases, these songs are not spontaneous self-expression, even of “collective subjectivism,” but purposeful activity based on faith in the power of words. From this point of view, one can understand the words of one Indian (Navajo) that he was such a poor man that he did not have a single song.

Many songs have a magical purpose, for example, witchcraft spells, songs about the growth and reproduction of plants, hunting songs, in which the hunter usually calls on animals as their “friend,” love “drinkers.” Most love songs are of this nature. A whole series of songs, without pursuing “magical” goals, are designed to cheer up, inspire the singers or demoralize the enemy. These are, for example, military songs containing self-praise, or “shame” songs that humiliate enemies. For a similar purpose, in conditions of hunger, forced loneliness, etc., deliberately cheerful songs are sung, glorifying life. A special case is the songs sung by warriors at the moment of mortal danger or after receiving a mortal wound. These songs express high courage, the inevitability of one’s death and revenge on the enemy.

Agrarian songs and prayers to spirits often contain inspired hymns to nature, poetic images of spring blossoming, and the power of the “masters” of various natural forces. A descriptive-narrative element sporadically penetrates into ritual and lyrical songs in the form of an explanation of the cause of the disease (in healer conspiracies), the feat of the god of war (in military songs); messages about the actions of “spirits” and even reproductions of the mythical picture of first creation (in ritual songs), the exploits of a deceased leader (in funeral and memorial songs). In Polynesia, a special genre of panegyric developed from funeral and wedding songs. Some peoples (for example, the Eskimos or certain African tribes) practice song competition, sometimes in the form of a playful squabble.

Songs are usually considered as the collective property of men's unions, ritual societies, and less often individuals. The Pueblo Indians associated the origin of the song with the kingdom of death and the chthonic serpent (when the serpent was burned, the flaps of its body became songs). The origin of song is often thought to be the suggestion of spirits, usually in the form of a dream "vision". In the past, the Nivkhs had an idea of ​​​​a special spirit that sits on the tip of the singer’s tongue during the performance of a song. Poetry without music was completely unknown in the pre-literary period.

Ritual and lyric poetry are known only in song form, very often in combination with a theatrical and dramatic element. From the point of view of the sophistication of the stylistic structure, ritual poetry comes first, followed by the lyrical songs themselves. Songs can be very short, consisting of one word (for example, describing a particular animal) or two words (for example, the word "warrior" and the name of the warrior), but they can also be quite extensive.

The songs are dominated by the musical element; they are dominated by a rhythm approaching the meter. Rhythmization in some cases is achieved by stretching or adding new syllables, as well as all kinds of emphatic particles, exclamations, etc. Rhyme is not typical for primitive poetry. In it, the leading principle is the repetition not of sounds, but of semantic complexes. The element of repetition is supported by faith in the power of the word, as the accumulation of this power. But the repetition of thoughts must vary, because literal repetition is often considered dangerous. Sometimes in the ritual poetry of the Indians, ritual models require the repetition of a phrase for each direction of the world, with a change in the name of a color, animal, plant, etc., which has a symbolic meaning. We also find repetition of lines in any enumeration.

The combination of repetition and variation leads to semantic-syntactic parallelism. In parallel lines, the technique of contrast is often manifested (such as: White light morning - the red light of the evening, falling rain - a standing rainbow). Such a contrast (day and night, man and woman, red and white falcon) is extremely characteristic of “primitive” songs. Along with contrast, a typical feature of the style of primitive poetry is the accumulation of synonyms.

In lyric poetry, in addition to parallelism, refrains and repetition, literal or with variations, are widely encountered. Repeating a word at the end of a line at the beginning of the next line (polylogy - picking up) is one of the ways to highlight an important word. In oratory, speeches are repeated many times when addressing different persons in new situations.

Metaphors are found in primitive poetry. They are also common in oratorical prose when describing the greatness of leaders or warriors. Some metaphors owe their origin to the taboo against mentioning death and illness. In ritual poetry, constant metaphorical formulas have developed.

The epic in its genesis is much less associated with ritual syncretism than lyrics. The classical epic monuments of European and Asian peoples are mostly poetic, but in more archaic epic monuments (for example, in the tales of the peoples of the Caucasus, in the heroic poems of the Turkic-Mongol peoples of Siberia, in the Irish epic, etc.) the proportion of prose is greater and is often found the so-called mixed form, i.e. a combination of prose and poetry. The verses mostly convey the speeches of the characters and solemn epic descriptions. Some stories have come down to us in both poetic and prose form. On the other hand, in fairy tales of various peoples there are often poetic inclusions that can be interpreted as a relic of the same mixed form.

If we turn directly to primitive folklore, we will be convinced that the stories here, as a rule, do not exist in the form of songs, but in the form of oral prose with poetic inserts; Moreover, poetic inserts often coincide with the speeches of the characters and, in addition, retain a fairly clear connection with ritual patterns. This is a prayer, an incantation, a challenge to battle, a cry for the killed, a ritually fixed exchange of remarks, etc. But the main prose parts do not contain any traces of connection with music, rhythm, they are conveyed in ordinary language and are stylistically much less fixed and polished than poetic inserts. Although the song form heroic epic, probably ultimately goes back to the primitive ritual-lyrical song, but narrative folklore has been transmitted since ancient times mainly as a prosaic or predominantly prosaic (mixed) tradition. The combination of prose and verse (song) in a mixed tradition is, of course, something completely different than a lyric-epic song in the understanding of A.N. Veselovsky.

The origin of verbal art cannot be studied only “from the outside,” in its relationship with ritual and other forms of existence. The internal aspect of this problem leads us to myth. In Western science of the 20th century (Fraser, Robertson-Smith, Harrison, Raglan, Hook, James and others) there is a very strong “ritualistic” tendency 7 - to bring myth closer to the limit and even identify myth with ritual, to see in myth only an echo of ritual. The “ritualists” tried to link literature itself directly to the ritual - fairy tales (Sentiv), epics (Miro, Levi, Carpenter, etc.). The close connection between myth and ritual in primitive and ancient Eastern cultures is beyond doubt; some myths actually directly went back to rituals (for example, myths about dying and resurrecting gods). However, there are myths that are clearly independent of ritual in their genesis and do not even have ritual equivalents. In rituals, fragments of myths that arose completely independently were often staged. In Australia, interconnected myths and rituals, non-ritual myths, and rituals devoid of mythical correspondences are attested (see more about this below). It is known that, for example, among the Bushmen or some groups of American Indians, mythology is much richer than rituals. The same applies to Ancient Greece, as opposed to Egypt or Mesopotamia. The question of the relationship between myths and rituals in genetic terms is adequate to the “chicken-egg” problem (who from whom?!). And their deep connection, “ideological” unity and structural homogeneity are specific to primitive culture. Mythology refers not to the sphere of behavior, but to the sphere of thinking, which, of course, does not exclude the interdependence of these two spheres.

Syncretism manifests itself in primitive culture not only in forms of activity, but also in forms of thinking and ideology. Ancient myths contain, in a still undeveloped unity, the germs of art, religion, and pre-scientific ideas about nature and society. Mythology undoubtedly was the “cradle” and “school” of poetic fantasy, and in many ways anticipated its specifics, although the complete identification of mythology and literature proposed by “ritual-mythological” literary studies (Bodkin, Fry, Chase, etc.) certainly cannot be accepted.

In contrast to the prevailing 19th-century view of myths as naive rational explanations of the surrounding world, Lévy-Bruhl emphasized the importance of the affective elements of “collective ideas” and postulated their prelogical character due to the tendency towards mystical “participations”. Ernst Cassirer interpreted mythology, along with language and art, as an autonomous symbolic form of culture, marked by a special modality, a special way of symbolically objectifying sensory emotions. But only Lévi-Strauss was able to truly describe mythological thinking in terms of its generation of symbolic modeling systems and, unlike Lévy-Bruhl, show the intellectual ability of myth for classification and analysis, while explaining at the same time those of its specific features that bring it closer to art: thinking on a sensory level, thinking that achieves its goals indirectly ("bricolage") and uses a kaleidoscopic rearrangement of a ready-made set of elements, purely metaphorical thinking - some myths turn out to be a metaphorical (less often metonymic) transformation of others, conveying the same "message" in different "codes" ; transformations of mythological texts become a means of revealing symbolic (not allegorical) meaning.

The importance of mythology is very great in the development of various types of arts, in the very genesis of artistic and imaginative thinking, but, of course, specific meaning the mythological narrative had to shape the verbal one. Susanna Langer was not entirely right when she said that myth has no language and meter and can be “painted,” “danced,” etc., i.e., it is in equal relation to all arts 8 . Drawing, even on a purely mythological theme, thanks to the specifics of fine art, is somewhat freer in the concrete pictorial solution of this theme, even in the selection of impressions of reality as a material, a model. The same applies to pantomime dance, etc.

But narrative poetry, which has language and plot as its primary elements, has such relative independence to a minimal extent.

The specificity of a primitive myth lies in the fact that ideas about the structure of the world are conveyed in the form of a narrative about the origin of certain of its elements. At the same time, the events of mythical time from the life of the “first ancestors” appear as the final causes of the current state of the world. From the point of view of science, events and people are determined by the state of the world; from the point of view of myth, the state of the world is the result of individual events, the actions of individual mythical personalities. Thus, narration is included in the very specificity of primitive myth. Myth is not only a worldview, but also a narrative. Hence the special importance of myth for the formation of verbal art, primarily narrative.

Australian Aboriginal folklore

For a more visual idea of ​​the ancient state of verbal art, primarily narrative, let us turn to the folklore of the indigenous population of Australia, whose culture some scientists conditionally compare with the Azilian-Tardenoise archaeological culture of the European Mesolithic.

The central place in the verbal creativity of the indigenous population of Australia is occupied by myths in which the action is attributed to some ancient, prehistoric time (Altjira among the Aranda tribe, Mura among the Dieri, Dzhugur among the Alurija, Bugari among the Karajeri, Ungud among the Ungarinin, Wingara among the Waramunga, Mungai among the Bingbing etc.). Mythical heroes acted in this prehistoric era, and their actions determined the appearance of the earth's surface, brought people, plants and animals to life, and determined various customs.

This attribution of action to a special prehistoric time is a characteristic feature of myth not only among Australians, but also among American Indians (according to the observations of F. Boas) and other peoples.

Among a number of Australian tribes, this mythical time is designated by the same word as “dreams” (in Anglo-Australian ethnography, its generally accepted designation is dream time). The connection with "dream" shows that we're talking about about time not only prehistoric, but also ahistorical, about time “out of time.” It can be recreated in dreams, as well as in rituals in which the performers are identified with mythical ancestors. The latter are thought of as eternal, not created by anyone. They completed their life cycle during the time of Altjira (altiira), eventually turning into rocks, trees or stone and wooden sacred churingas. These sacred objects (natural or created by human hands), according to the ideas of Australian tribes, still retain the magical creative power of the mythical ancestor and can be a means of reproduction of animals, the source of the souls of newborn children, which in some tribes (Aranda) are thought of as the reincarnation of ancestors. The life of the ancestors is described in very ordinary forms: they sleep, eat, hunt, quarrel with each other, enter into love affairs, perform rituals; the search for food is in the foreground. It should be noted that in most cases the ancestors' hunt is successful. "Dreamtime" is portrayed as an era of abundance and in this respect a kind of golden age. The main meaning of the “dream time,” however, is not in the idealization of the past, but in the creation of the world by the ancestors.

Both the very structure of the world and the events that determine it in Australian mythology are very simple; its fiction is devoid of the whimsicality and hyperbolicity that characterizes the myths of the Indians, Polynesians, etc. Local group (the basic social unit of Australian society with paternal kinship, usually coinciding with the totemic clan; Western observers sometimes very inaccurately call it a “horde”) is closely associated with a certain feeding territory, beyond which it practically does not go. Folklore vividly reflects the Australians' love for this territory as their homeland. And in myths the main attention is directed not to the universe, but precisely to this “microcosm”.

The most widespread Australian myths therefore have the character of local legends, explaining the origin of all any noticeable places and natural objects in the feeding area - hills, lakes, springs, rocks, pits, large trees, etc. Very often myths tell about the wanderings of ancestors in "age of dreams" along certain paths. Various features of the relief, vegetation, etc. turn out to be the result and “monument” of the activity of the mythical hero, a trace of his camp, the fruit of his creative activity, or the place of his transformation into a churinga. The location of some objects on the ground supposedly reproduces individual scenes from the history of the ancestor. The myth very accurately lists and describes the areas traversed by the hero and his route. Some mythical paths cross the territories of several local groups or even tribes. In this case, one local group turns out to be the custodian of only part of the myth. Mythical paths usually run from north to south, which probably corresponds to the direction of settlement of the mainland.

Mythical heroes are mostly totemic ancestors, i.e., the progenitors or creators of both a certain breed of animals (less often plants), and a human group that considers this breed of animals as its totem, i.e., its relatives, its “flesh” .

Totemism represents a kind of ideological superstructure in early tribal society. He transfers to surrounding nature(from which a person has not yet learned to completely separate himself) ideas about the generic social organization 9 . The relationships between people are represented as the relationship of man to nature. On the other hand, ideas about animals and plants well known to man and their names are widely used as material for developing a unique, of course, rather cumbersome, “code” that makes it possible to classify both natural and social phenomena 10 . This largely explains the fact that, along with the main (tribal) totem, there are all kinds of individual subtotems, gender totems, etc. The main totem mostly corresponds to exogamy (the prohibition of marrying within a given totem) and an alimentary taboo (the prohibition of eating meat of a totem animal, with the exception of special ritual moments). In ancestor myths, both exogamy and nutritional taboos are often violated.

Apparently, in places where a particular species of animal or plant is most widespread, totemic centers are located, the creation of which is also described in myths. In totem centers, representatives of the corresponding totem periodically perform magical rituals aimed at the reproduction of the totemic species of animals or plants. These rituals in scientific literature not very accurately called inticium. During such rites (as well as during the initiation rite), the plots of the corresponding myths about totemic heroes are usually dramatized.

Totemic ancestors in myths appear as creatures with a not fully differentiated dual zoo-anthropomorphic nature, in which, however, the human principle clearly predominates. For the most part, these are people who, if necessary, can easily turn into the appropriate type of animal. In the beginning of the myths of some tribes one can sometimes find the following form: “it was at a time when animals were still people.” Sometimes this transformation ends the journey. Thus, among the Murinbata tribe (according to Stanner), myths often end with the word demnina, which means “to change the body”, as well as “to transform from a person into an animal”, “to go into the water”. Certain events from the life of totemic ancestors motivate and explain certain characteristics of the corresponding animals and plants (their color, shape, habits). Then the etiology (explanatory function) of the myth includes not only the features of the area, but also the features of the fauna and flora. This kind of etiology is widespread in the mythology of various peoples of the world.

Myths about the wanderings of totemic ancestors in their classical form appear in the folklore of Central Australian tribes. An excellent expert on the language, folklore and culture of these tribes, missionary scientist Karl Strehlow recorded them and accurately translated them from the Aranda and Loritya languages ​​11. His collection includes myths about the ancestor totems of the red kangaroo, gray kangaroo, emu, eagle, wild cat, spiny anteater, bat, duck, raven, frog, snail, various snakes, birds, larvae, fish, etc.

The totemic myths of the Aranda and Loritya are built almost all according to the same pattern: the totemic ancestors, alone or in a group, return to their homeland - to the north (less often - to the west). The places covered, searches for food, meals, organization of camps, and meetings along the way are listed in detail. Not far from the homeland, in the north, there is often a meeting with local “eternal people” of the same totem. Having reached the goal, the wandering heroes go into a hole, cave, spring, underground, turning into rocks, trees, churingas. Fatigue is often blamed for this.

Totemic centers are formed in parking places and especially in places of death (more precisely, going into the ground). In some myths (for example, about people - wild cats), totemic heroes carry with them churingas, cult rods (which are used as weapons or for making a road in rocks, i.e., as a tool for creating relief) and other cult objects.

Sometimes we are talking about leaders leading a group of young men who have just undergone an initiation rite - initiation into full members of the tribe. The group performs cult ceremonies along the way in order to propagate their totem. It also happens that the journey has the character of flight and pursuit. For example, a large gray kangaroo runs from a person of the same totem; a man, with the help of young men, kills an animal, but it is resurrected, then both turn into churingas; red and gray kangaroos run, pursued by dog-men and then by a falcon-man; one of the fleeing emus is torn to pieces by the dog people; swimming fish are chased by a crab and then a cormoran; two snakes are pursued by people of the same totem. In these cases, it is not easy to figure out who we are talking about - animals, people or creatures of dual nature. For the most part, the latter are meant.

The circle of totemic myths of Aranda and Loritya also includes a few legends about heavenly bodies Oh. Luna appears to be a man who originally belonged to the possum totem. The movement of the month across the sky is explained in this way: it rose to the sky with a stone knife, wandered to the west, and then descended to the ground to hunt possums, and then climbed back up the tree to the sky. Having eaten possums, the month becomes large (full moon); tired, he takes the form of a gray kangaroo, in this form the young men kill him (new moon), but one of them saves the kangaroo bone, from which the moon grows again. The sun is a girl who climbed up a tree to the sky; The Pleiades are also girls from the bandicoot totem, who witnessed the initiation ceremony of the young men and because of this turned into stones, and then into stars, etc. As already noted, celestial phenomena did not attract the attention of the Australians, in particular the Aranda and Loritya , as much attention as in more developed mythologies. Aranda mythology knows the image of the “master” of the sky (Altiira, according to K. Strelow), but this character is very passive and does not play a special role in Aranda myths.

Some totemic ancestors of the Aranda during their wanderings introduce various customs and rituals and act as so-called cultural heroes. The fire was obtained by a representative of the gray kangaroo totem from the body of a giant gray kangaroo that he was hunting. In this regard, one cannot help but recall the Karelian-Finnish rune about Väinämöinen getting fire from the belly of a fiery fish. A similar myth is typical for a primitive economy, in which, basically, ready-made fruits of nature are appropriated. Two falcon men who came from the north to the land of Aranda taught others to use a stone ax; The marriage rules forgotten by people were again established by one of the ancestors of the kangaroo dart frog totem named Katukankara.

Initiation rites play an important role in the lives of Australians. The introduction of these rituals and related ritual operations on the body is attributed to the ancestors - wild cats - and the ancestors - flycatcher lizards (the use of a stone knife for these operations, according to myth, replaced fire sticks). The “Eternal People” of Altjir times, who later became flycatcher lizards, play a particularly important role. Tales of their wanderings take on the character of an anthropogenetic and partly cosmogonic myth. Tradition considers their wanderings to be among the earliest. However, in reality they probably mark a less primitive stage in the history of mythology, since they deal with the origin of not one totemic group, but at least several, and we are talking not only about the scattering of churinga, but about the original emergence of “humanity.”

According to this myth, the earth was first covered by the sea (a mythological concept widespread throughout the world), and on the slopes of rocks protruding from the water, in addition to the “eternal” mythical heroes, there were already the so-called rella manerinhas (i.e., “glued people” "), according to Strehlow, or inapatua, according to Spencer and Gillen, - a bunch of helpless creatures with glued fingers and teeth, closed ears and eyes. Other similar human "larvae" lived in water and looked like raw meat. After the earth had dried out, a mythical hero - the totemic ancestor of the "lizards" - came from the north and used a stone knife to separate human fetuses from each other, cut through their eyes, ears, mouth, nose, fingers, etc. With the same knife he circumcised them (here partly reflects the idea that only the initiation rite “completes” a person), taught them to make fire by friction, cook food, gave them a spear, a spear thrower, a boomerang, provided each with a personal churinga (as the guardian of the soul), divided people into phratries (“earth” and "water") and marriage classes. Before us appears a typical cultural hero-demiurge - the central figure of primitive mythology.

The concept of the development of people from imperfect, helpless creatures is known to other Australian tribes and many other peoples. Its echo, by the way, is the famous Old Norse myth, retold in the Elder Edda, about how the gods found the lifeless bodies of the first people on the shore in the form of pieces of wood and breathed life into them. Along with such an “evolutionary” mythological concept of the origin of people among the same Aranda, in some myths the “eternal” heroes of the “age of dreams” also act as true ancestors - the creators of people and animals. Thus, the myth of the bandicoot totem tells about a certain ancestor named Karora, from under whose arms bandicoots first came out, and in subsequent days - his sons - people who began to hunt these bandicoots. (In the same way, in Scandinavian mythology, giants are born from under the arms of Ymir.) This anthropogenetic and at the same time totemic myth is intertwined with a cosmogonic myth: at the beginning of time there was darkness, and constant night pressed on the earth like an impenetrable curtain, then the sun appeared and dispersed the darkness above Ilbalintja (totem center of bandicoots) 12.

Other Australian tribes have similar tales about the wanderings of totemic ancestors and cultural heroes, but they are less fully recorded. In addition, nowhere is the influence of totemism manifested with such force as among the Aranda and Loritya. The Dieri and other tribes who lived southeast of the Aranda, around Lake Eyre, have numerous legends, known from the classical works of Howit 13, about the wanderings of certain Mura-Mura - mythical heroes similar to the “eternal” Aranda people, but with weaker zoomorphic features . Various features of the landscape, the introduction of exogamy and totemic names, the use of a stone ax for circumcision and making fire by friction, as well as the “finishing” of imperfect human beings are also associated with the wanderings of the Mura-Mura. One of the mura-mura, who ascended to the sky, became the month. And the sun is a woman who dug a hole and went to heaven in search of a missing child; Since then, she has periodically made the same journey. According to another tradition, the sun was born from the relationship of Mura-Mura with a Dieri girl, etc.

Myths about ancestors do not always tell about their wanderings. Some ancestors (including those of the Aranda) do not make long journeys. A good collection of myths from one of the north-eastern tribes (Munkan), only partially connected with wanderings, has been compiled by Ursula McConnell 14. This collection contains many myths about the formation of totemic centers after the “going underground” of totemic ancestors (pulvaya). Going underground is often preceded by quarrels and fights between the Pulvayas, inflicting injuries and fatal wounds on each other. Although the ancestors are presented as purely anthropomorphic creatures, the description of their behavior reflects observations of the lifestyle and habits of the corresponding animals, and some circumstances of the life of the ancestors explain the characteristics of these animals. Many of the features of the physical appearance of animals are motivated by the injuries inflicted on them by Pulvaya back in ancient times, when animals had a human appearance: from sand, thrown by Pulvaya oysters, a shark has small eyes, from a blow with a digging stick, an owl has a flat head, etc. and etc. The local breed of storks has red legs, since the Pulvaya stork rubbed red clay on the spears that it held on its knees. Although the story is not dedicated to storks, but to their purely anthropomorphic ancestors (from the time when storks were still people), the description of how the ancestor climbs onto the “sleeping platform”, or the posture of the ancestor sitting on a tree, clearly demonstrates observations of the habits these birds. Likewise, the myth of the opossum's anthropomorphic ancestors well conveys the sleepiness and love of honey inherent in this animal. There are many similar examples. The relations of friendship and enmity of the Pulvaya exactly correspond to the relationships of various animals and plants. Some of the Pulvayas perform cultural feats: for example, the ancestor of one of the breeds of fish-eating birds of prey invented a fishing net and a spear.

The myths of the northern and southeastern tribes also contain more complex, more generalized and apparently later developed images of “above-totem” mythical heroes. In the north, this is the “old mother” (Kunapipi, Kliarin-kliari, Kadyari, etc.), a matriarchal ancestress, symbolizing the fertile birthing earth, as well as the image of the rainbow serpent associated with it (and with fertility, reproduction) 15. In the southeast, on the contrary, it is the patriarchal image of the universal “father”. These are Nurundere, Koin, Biral, Nurelli, Bunjil, Bayame, Daramulun. The uninitiated simply call him "father" (for example, papang). He lives in heaven, acts as a culture hero and patron of initiation rites 16. However, the mother is also involved in initiation and performs cultural acts. Both mother and father do not necessarily belong to one totem, but sometimes to many at once (for example, each part of their body can have its own totem) and, accordingly, are a common ancestor, i.e., in the Australian understanding, the bearer and primary source of the souls of various groups of people, animals, plants.

In myths (as opposed to ritual, which will be discussed below), usually not one mother appears, but several, sometimes two sisters or a mother and daughter. These legends (and ritual) are associated with one of the halves (phratris) of the tribe (namely with the dua), which allows for the assumption of a partial genesis of these mothers from ideas about phratrial ancestors.

The Yulengors living in Arnhemland (according to S. Chesling) have mythical ancestors coming from the north - the Djunkgova, female sisters. They sailed across the sea they created. In the boat they carried various totems, which they had to hang on trees to dry. The totems were then hidden in work bags and gradually distributed to various places during the travels. The Junkgovas gave birth to ten children, initially desexed. Then, however, those hidden in the grass became men, and those hidden in the sand became women. They made digging sticks, feather belts and other ornaments for their descendants, introduced the use of fire, created the sun, taught children to eat certain types of food, gave them weapons, magical means, taught totem dances and introduced initiation rites for young men.

According to this myth, at first women were the keepers of ritual secrets, but men took away their totems and secrets, and drove away the ancestors with singing. The ancestors continued on their way, forming the terrain, new feeding territories and clan groups of people. Having reached the sea again in the west, they went to the islands, which had previously arisen from the lice they had thrown off their bodies.

Long after the disappearance of the Junkgow, the other two Wauwaluk sisters appeared in the west, born in the shadows of the setting sun. They completed the work of their predecessors, established marriage classes and introduced the famous ritual of the great mother - Gunapipi (Kunapipi), in which their deeds were partially dramatized. The sisters settled in a certain place, built a hut, and began collecting food. One of them was pregnant and gave birth to a child. The sisters tried to boil yams, snails and other food, but the plants and animals came to life and jumped out of the fire, and it began to rain. The sisters tried to drive away the rain and the terrible rainbow serpent by dancing, which approached them and swallowed first the totem animals and plants (the food of the sisters), and then both women and a child. Being in the belly of the snake, they tormented him, and he spat them out, and the child came to life from the bites of the ants. This myth is widespread among the northeastern tribes.

The Wauwaluk sisters (as they are called by the Yulengors and some other tribes) are also associated with the Dua phratry. They represent a unique version of the same ancestral mothers who embody fertility. The myth also features a terrible rainbow serpent - an image widely known throughout most of Australia, as Radcliffe-Brown showed. This unique mythological image combines the idea of ​​the spirit of water, a snake-monster (the embryo of the idea of ​​a dragon), and a magic crystal (in which the rainbow spectrum is reflected) used by sorcerers. The swallowing and spitting out of people by a serpent is certainly connected (as among other peoples) with the rite of initiation (symbolism of temporary death, renewal). The snake changing its skin naturally becomes a symbol of renewal. R. Berndt finds in the swallowing of the Wauvaluk sisters by the snake erotic symbolism associated with the magic of fertility. It is curious that in one of the myths of the Murinbata tribe (and in the corresponding ritual), the old woman Mutinga herself swallows the children who were entrusted to her by their parents who had gone in search of food. She calms the children, searches their heads and swallows them one by one. After the death of the old woman, the children were released alive from her womb. The Mara tribal group has a story about a mythical mother who killed and ate men attracted by the beauty of her daughters. In such a demonic form we do not recognize the powerful ancestor. She rather looks like a fairy-tale witch, something like Baba Yaga. However, not only among Australians, but also among other peoples (for example, among the Kwakiutl Indians, according to materials by F. Boas), the myth of an evil old cannibal woman is associated with the idea of ​​​​initiating young men into full members of a tribe (as among Australians) or a male union (among Indians). In some myths, the rainbow serpent accompanies the “big mother” on her travels.

In the Yirkalla tribal group there is a myth about Jangavul traveling with sisters with whom he is in an incestuous relationship. Among the Murinbat, the rainbow snake under the name Kunmangur himself acts as an ancestor, the father of the father of one and the father of the mother of the other half of the tribe. He supposedly “made us all” and also “watches over the people” 17. Kunmangur's son rapes his sisters and then mortally wounds his father. Kunmangur wanders in search of a quiet place where he can heal. In desperation, he collects all the fire that belonged to the people and extinguishes it by throwing it into the sea. Another mythical character produces fire again (the idea of ​​renewal).

The myths about the rainbow serpent and especially about the ancestral mothers are closely related to the complex ritual mystery held before the start of the rainy season in honor of the earth mother Kunapipi, who embodies fertility.

Let us now turn to the image of the tribal “great father” among the southeastern tribes, well studied by Howit. S.A. Tokarev quite correctly traces its origin from somewhat more primitive images: the personification of the sky like Altiira among the Aranda, the totem of the phratry, the cultural hero, the patron of initiation and the terrifying spirit that turns boys into adult men (only the uninitiated believe in him) 18. In these characters there is only the germ of the actual religious idea of ​​​​a creator God. Almost all of them appear as the great ancestors and teachers of people who lived on earth and were subsequently transferred to heaven.

This transference of earthly mythological heroes to heaven in the mythologies of other peoples often corresponds to the process of deification of folklore characters.

Bunjil among the Kulin tribe was depicted as an old tribal leader married to two representatives of the black swan totem. His name itself means “long-tailed eagle” and at the same time serves as a designation of one of two phratries (the second is Vaang, i.e. raven). Bunjil is portrayed as the creator of the earth, trees and people. He warmed the sun with his hands, the sun warmed the earth, people came out of the earth and began to dance the corroboree. Thus, in Bundjil the features of a phratrial ancestor - a demiurge - a cultural hero predominate.

Daramulun among the tribes of the south-eastern coast (Yuin and others) was considered a supreme being, and among the Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri and Yualaya he occupied a subordinate position in relation to Baiama. According to some myths, Daramulun, together with his mother (emu), planted trees, gave people laws and taught them initiation rites. During these rituals, Daramulun is drawn on the ground or on the bark, the sound of the buzzer represents his voice, he is perceived as the spirit that turns boys into men.

The name Baiame in the Kamilaroi language is associated with the verb “to do” 19, which seems to correspond to the idea of ​​​​a demiurge and a cultural hero. Matthew connects the etymology of this name with the idea of ​​the seed of man and animal 20, and Langlo-Parker argues that in the Yualaya language this word is understood only in the sense of “great” 21. The Yualai speak of the time of Baiame as the Aranda speak of the "age of dreams." In ancient times, when there were only animals and birds on earth, Baiame came from the northeast with his two wives and created people partly from wood and clay, partly turning animals into them, gave them laws and customs (the final motivation for everything is “so said Baiame"). Matthew cites a Wiradjuri and Wongabon myth that Bayame went on a journey in search of wild honey following a bee to whose leg he tied a bird feather. (Let us recall the most important cultural act of the Old Norse Odin - the extraction of sacred honey.) Four hundred and sixty kilometers from Sydney, in an area of ​​outcropping of granite rock, Baiame allegedly lived in ancient times. For a number of tribes, Baiame is the center of all initiation rites (the so-called bora), the main teacher of beginners undergoing severe initiation tests.

So far we have talked about myths. Already from the previous presentation it is clear that the myths of Australians are closely connected with rituals. This connection manifests itself quite clearly; various myths are reproduced in theatrical form, staged during initiation ceremonies for young men as a means of introducing youth to the “sacred history” of the tribe, as a transmission of tribal wisdom. On the other hand, some myths and rituals have the same heroes, myths largely serve to explain the ritual mystery, and the ritual widely uses the language of myth. Such a direct connection exists between totemic myths and rituals of inticium, between the myths about the heavenly phratrial ancestor - the cultural hero (Baiam) and the ritual tests of boron; between myths about ancestral mothers and the cult of Kunapipi, etc. From here, however, one should not conclude that the role of myth among Australians is reduced to commenting on the ritual and that myth is simply a ritual translated into narrative form. There is no closer interweaving of myth and ritual than in the theme of Kunapipi and the rainbow serpent. However, there are tales about the rainbow serpent that have no ritual equivalent; the myth of the Wauwaluk sisters is closely connected with ritual, but not with one, but with three different ritual ceremonies 22. This myth does not coincide with any of them. According to Stanner 23, the Murinbat, along with the myth about Muting, which has a ritual equivalent in the form of the punja rite, has recorded myths about Kunmangur and Kukpi (the father of one and the mother of the other half of the tribe) that have no ritual equivalent, and circumcision and funeral rites that have no mythological equivalent.

Another thing is that, as Stanner very convincingly shows, the rituals and myths of the Murinbat are isomorphic and have an identical structure of a mystery type. And here and there the balance of life is voluntarily or involuntarily disturbed by death, the onset of puberty of boys, the departure of parents, small children or daughters of Kunmangur in search of food, the discontent of Kukpi looking for a place for herself, etc.). The lack of food in the myth of Muting is adequate to the lack of wisdom (spiritual food) among the young men in the corresponding ritual (punj). The disturbed balance is gradually restored, and at the highest level, as a result of spiral movement. This spiral movement includes the same stages: the subject is taken beyond the boundaries of the everyday normal (the boys are taken into the forest or left in the care of Mutingi, the dead body is carried out of the village, the children of Kunmangur leave home, Kukpi leaves the old places, etc.), the subject of the myth-rite is thus, as it were, isolated and then partially destroyed (the sacrifice of the foreskin of boys, the destruction of the rotting body of a dead man, the ritual beating of the initiates, the swallowing of them by the old woman, the murder of men thanks to the cunning of Kukpi, the violence of the son of Kunmangur against the sisters and the attempt to kill father, destruction of the emblems of the old social statute).

What follows is a transformation - the salvation of the subject and his return to normal at the highest level (the children are saved or return to the village as those who have been initiated and received a new social status; the wise old man unravels and neutralizes Kukpi, receiving a buzzer; the spirit of the dead is freed from the body and becomes an object veneration, etc.). The final way out of a conflict situation is also dual; rise to a higher level is achieved at the cost of loss, life is renewed through death, sacrifice, suffering: the fire is preserved through the death of Kunmangur (father), and the life of children and their dedication is purchased not only at the price of painful trials, but also by the death of Mutinga (mother).

From Stanner's interesting analysis, of course, the conclusion about the genetic dependence of myth on ritual does not follow. Much here is explained by the ideological syncretism characteristic of primitive culture, which has already been pointed out above. In addition, the material cited by Stanner can also be used to identify specific differences between myth and ritual that he left unattended, which exist even if myth and ritual are directly interrelated (as in punj). It goes without saying that cyclically repeated ritual actions in the present correspond to a one-time mythical event that took place in the distant (prehistoric) past. The time of ritual and the time of myth exist outside the normal, everyday system of reference and ideas about time, but ritual is focused on a kind of break in the flow of time, and myth is focused on the era before the beginning of this flow of time and its countdown. The randomness, and sometimes even the unintentionality, of a mythical event is opposed to the strict obligatory and deliberate nature of the ritual on the part of the tribal authorities. The parents left their children in Mutinga, driven by hunger and seemingly unaware of the danger. In a corresponding ritual, the children were deliberately and forcibly taken into the forest into the power of the old woman. In Australian myths, the initial situation is often associated with the search for food, while the premise of initiation rites is the need to introduce young men to tribal wisdom, that is, to saturate them with spiritual food. The difference between the myth and the punj ritual may in its genesis be additionally due to the gap between the esoteric and exoteric versions: the patron of initiation appears to the uninitiated as a demonic being who abducts children. It is curious that the obvious evil emanating from Mutinga and similar characters (Kukpi and others) corresponds in the ritual to secret good 24. The imaginary friend of myth turns out to be the imaginary enemy of ritual. An imaginary friend - Mutinga - calms the children in order to make them easy prey, and the leaders of the ritual intimidate the young men with the voice of a buzzer. The myth of Muting ends with revenge on the old woman, and the ritual ends with the acquisition of wisdom by the young men.

Further analysis of the differences between Australian myths and rituals might lead to a more rigorous establishment of the differential features by which myth and ritual are opposed to each other. To what has been said, it is necessary to add that even in the case of maximum closeness and coherence of individual myths and rituals, the fulfillment of a myth is not necessarily part of the ritual, it may not accompany the ritual at all or accompany it only partially, because what is sacred in a myth is not the ritual action itself with which it is associated , but verbally expressed content, certain information, names, etc. Myth, as it were, authorizes, reinforces the ritual and explains its meaning, but in its execution, myth is relatively freer than dance, music and even song, which often directly constitute the sacred action. This largely determines the uniqueness of the myth. But the specificity of myth as the embryo of narrative art is determined, of course, not only by the degree of freedom from ritual at the moment of execution. Among Australians and outside the ritual, there is a close thematic connection between various types of art and genres of poetry. They talk about the same hero of the “time of dreams,” sing, dance and make ocher drawings on the sand and rocks, and not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily within the framework of one ritual action. The specificity of various arts and types of poetry is clearly revealed, for example, when comparative analysis myths, songs, Aranda dances recorded by K. Strehlow, as well as Spencer and Gillen, or myths, songs and dances from the “Kunapipi” circle recorded by Berndt.

In principle, dances, songs, and myths depict the wanderings of the heroes of the “age of dreams.” However, the specificity of the myth about the totemic ancestors of the Aranda lies primarily in the message about the places they visited during their wanderings and in the explanation of the features of the landscape. The specificity of the songs (in principle, dedicated to the same wanderings) is in the peculiar “glorification” of mythical heroes. In the songs, the entire “geography” of wanderings is greatly reduced or even omitted; in the songs about the journey of the great mother, only one old woman appears, and not several (as in myths), a very general story is told about her arrival accompanied by a rainbow serpent, about how she makes food grow with the magical touch of a digging stick, about how she scatters the souls of people and animals, etc. First of all, its power is emphasized 25. Of course, the songs lack all sorts of plot details that are found in some versions of the myths. The songs are very different from prosaic myths in form. Strehlow describes in detail the performance of Aranda songs and gives many examples 26.

The songs are sung by the elderly in a choir in the form of nasal chants. One or two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed syllable, regardless of the stress accepted in these words in everyday speech. All words of the stanza are pronounced as one word. The songs contain many words that are archaic or borrowed from the language of neighboring tribes and therefore difficult to understand. In them the semantic-syntactic parallelism of two lines appears extremely clearly, of which the second repeats and explains the first. As is known, such parallelism is widely found in songs of various peoples of the world, in particular in epic songs, for example in Karelian-Finnish runes. Australian songs about the exploits of mythical ancestors have a pronounced lyrical-epic character. They produce a strong emotional impact on listeners and performers. Sometimes the old people themselves cry with delight (as the great singer Väinämöinen cried in Kalevala). The song is implied to have magical meaning and is intended to further the purpose of the ritual. Such a strict poetic organization of the song largely depends on its simultaneity and coordination with the dance.

The dance also has its own specifics. Although the running or trampling of dancers on sacred ground near the totemic center depicts the wanderings of totemic ancestors across a vast territory in ancient times, a certain moment comes to the fore in the dance - imitation of totemic animals, their appearance and habits. For the same purpose, actors paint their bodies with ocher, blood and charcoal, and arrange complex hairstyles from their own hair, bird fluff and branches. Naturalism of direct imitation is combined with the wearing of ritual objects (knatanya, kalgaranga, waninga), symbolizing any part of the ancestor’s body (heart, stomach, spine, and sometimes a kangaroo’s ear, a bat’s wing, a spider’s web, falling raindrops). The same purpose is served by wearing churinga, decorated with spiral circles and connecting these circles with parallel lines or a chain of circles. This ornament is also interpreted as an image of parts of the body of a totemic animal or as the camp of a totemic ancestor and the path of his wanderings (in a stylized manner, parts of the animal’s body are also depicted on the ground and on rocks).

Songs and dances, therefore, do for the most part appear in syncretic unity, but this does not extend to the prosaic presentation of myths. Myths are told in prose, sometimes in parts, sometimes in full. Some things are actually told by old people during the ritual, but not for a magical purpose, but to clarify what is being depicted, in the form of a kind of commentary. Parts of the myths are also recounted during visits to secret caves, inaccessible to the uninitiated, where churingas 27 are kept, or during initiation tests of young men to transmit tribal wisdom to them, without direct connection with the initiation ritual itself. Myths are presented in ordinary language and lack a strictly prescribed stylistic structure. Thus, in terms of the form of performance, myths are much freer than songs and less ritualized. But their main content, especially the description of the mythical paths of the heroes of the “age of dreams,” is sacred and must be kept secret from the uninitiated, that is, women and children. It is sacred secret knowledge, and not ritualism, that constitutes an important feature of Australian myths. A comparison of various versions of the same myths in the publications of K. Strehlow, Spencer and Gillen reveals a certain freedom of invention in the field of plot details compared to songs, since songs are more constrained by ritualized performance. But the sacred content prevents the further development of the plot invention. From this point of view, it is of great interest to record myths from the uninitiated, for example from old women. The content of myths in one way or another penetrates into the environment of the uninitiated. The exception is the especially sacred part of myths - information about mythical paths, about the paths of heroes’ wanderings. At the same time, myths told by the uninitiated and not in connection with the transmission of wisdom, but rather for entertainment, are enriched with a freer plot of invention. This is one of the ways to form a fairy tale epic.

However, a myth, even if it has partially lost its sacred meaning, retains for a long time other specific features of a myth - the image of the world in the form of a story about the origin of its elements. We find good illustrations of what has been said in the already mentioned collection of Munkan myths, recorded by Ursula McConnell, largely from women. We have already noted that in this collection there are few tales about the wanderings of totemic heroes, and even where there is a fact of wandering, the route does not appear, since it is the subject of secret knowledge of initiates.

In McConnell's collection there are many tales about the formation of totemic centers and the emergence of various characteristic features of animals (examples were given above), that is, real etiological myths. The characteristic tendency of these tales is that the storytellers' imagination is aimed at depicting the family life of totemic ancestors, and in this area the storytellers, or rather the storytellers, show no less observation than in depicting the habits of animals. Totem animals act in family groups (which is absolutely not in the sacred Aranda myths recorded by K. Strehlow). Even parts of the same plant - a water lily (stem, large root, small roots) - turn out to be husband, wife, children. The wife of the totemic ancestor of the yam refused to bring him water, which led to a quarrel; in the same way, the ancestor of the oyster totem quarrels with his wife - the ancestor of the turtle totem - because the wife refused to dig a source of clean water in the sand; Because of the refusal to fulfill the request, two sisters quarrel - Pulvaya the sea turtle and the land turtle.

Complex relationships and fatal quarrels arise between families of totems of various fish, ants, owls due to the infidelity of wives; betrayal of wives and persecution of the seducer take place among the ancestors of bird totems, etc. All this family theme tika gradually undermines the myth, because the main interest of the myth is focused not on personal destinies (which is more typical for a fairy tale), but on the origin of the world, man, animals, and customs. Here a well-known contradiction arises, which in the future can be resolved by the fact that recently born stories about family relationships and social and everyday conflicts will break away from the images of mythical ancestors and the “time of dreams” and become a real fairy tale (an animal, if totemic names are preserved, or a magical one).

However, Australian folklore, due to its archaic nature, knows almost no cases of the completion of such a process; he knows only the corresponding trends. Here we should immediately make a reservation that secularization, the secularization of myth, is not the only source of the formation of a fairy tale. Another ancestor of a fairy tale is primitive tales, that is, stories about meetings of people in the recent past with various spirits, “masters” who bring them evil or good. Such stories may be based on actual incidents (that were), interpreted in the light of prevailing mythological ideas. These tales include stories with which mothers “frighten” children - about evil cannibal spirits, including spirits that kidnap (according to the views of the uninitiated) boys who have reached maturity, in order to turn them into adult men - full members tribe.

In Australian folklore, the Aborigines themselves distinguish between myths and fairy tales. Fairy tales are devoid of sacred meaning, accessible to the uninitiated, and can be told for entertainment, as well as for intimidation, to keep the uninitiated in obedience. In the latter case, fairy tales play the role of myths for the uninitiated. This is a specifically Australian trait. However, very few fairy tales have been recorded (apparently, there are much fewer of them in quantity than myths), which naturally complicates their analysis. Several fairy tales are given by K. Strehlov in his major work; fairy tales are very clearly highlighted in the records of Arnhemland folklore by A. Capell 28 .

In the notes of K. Strehlow, a number of fairy tales are dedicated to miraculous creatures (tneera and indatoa), which are mentioned in myths, but are not the subject of special veneration. Fairy tales tell of the struggle of these creatures with evil spirits. One of the tales tells of small Tuanyiraka creatures that torment boys during initiation (the initiates do not believe in these creatures). A. Capell cites a number of fairy tales that precisely belong to the type of mythologized tales. The main characters are not mythical creatures, but ordinary people who, while hunting turtles (if we are talking about men) or collecting snails (if we are talking about women), experience various adventures: meeting evil spirits, becoming victims of an old cannibal woman, die as a result of breaking a taboo.

Culture heroes and mythological rogues are the central characters of primitive narrative folklore

Within the framework of this work, it is not possible to dwell on a review of the folklore of various culturally backward peoples 29. Let's look at just some of the most common questions.

The most important phenomenon of narrative folklore under the primitive communal system are tales about the first ancestors - demiurges - cultural heroes, genetically related to etiological myths (and more broadly with creation myths) about the origin of various elements of nature and culture, but subsequently, in the process of cyclization, included plots of a fairy-tale nature (animals , magical, proto-heroic). Despite the inclusion of genre-heterogeneous elements in these tales, they can rightly be called a mythological epic, since the center of cyclization in them is a mythical character. It should be emphasized that in a primitive society only a mythical character could be a hero, because only he had, in the eyes of the members of the primitive community, the necessary freedom of initiative. At the same time, the hero could only be a character who modeled not the forces of nature (like, say, various master spirits), but the tribal collective itself.

This is the tribal ancestor (also thought of as universal, since tribal boundaries under the primitive communal system subjectively coincide with universal ones) and cultural hero.

Ideas about ancestors, cultural heroes and demiurges are closely intertwined, and sometimes even identical, in primitive folklore. Apparently, the images of the first ancestors first take on clear outlines, as the Australian material seems to indicate.

In more archaic cultures, the cultural heroes are almost always the ancestors, phratrial and ancestral ancestors (Australians, Papuans, Gunantuna Melanesians, North-East Paleo-Asians, Paleo-African primitive tribes of Central and South Africa). In less archaic ones (part of the Indians of North America, Polynesia), the features of the ancestor in the image of a cultural hero are relict.

On the islands of Oceania, cycles of tales about cultural heroes, who are often thought of as ancestors (but not as gods), are ubiquitous. In various parts of Melanesia these are Kat, Tangaro, Varohunuka, To Kabinana.

In Polynesia, the brothers Tangaroa and Rongo are endowed with the characteristics of cultural heroes, but, unlike the Melanesian Tangaro, Tangaroa developed into one of the great gods of the Polynesian pantheon.

However, in Polynesia, next to him, the undeified Maui is well known - a beloved character in Polynesian narrative folklore. Maui is a premature foundling thrown into the bush or into the sea. Of the many exploits of Maui, the most famous are catching island fish from the bottom of the sea, capturing the sun and stealing fire, vigilantly guarded in the underworld by the old ancestor. Maui even tried to overcome death, but he himself was defeated. Among the North American Indians, such popular characters as Raven, Mink, Hare or Rabbit (Manabozo), Coyote, Old Man, etc. (names apparently of totemic origin) have distinct features of cultural heroes. The raven, for example, produces light and fresh water, sets the ebb and flow of the tides, creates some types of fish, and also participates in the creation of people. To carry out his cultural deeds, Raven often resorts to magical transformations and cunning tricks. So, he turns into a pine needle, which is swallowed by the daughter of the owner of the heavenly bodies. From this needle she gives birth to a Raven. The newborn screams heart-rendingly until he is given the sun, moon and stars to play with. Having put the keeper of fresh water to sleep, Raven then falsely accuses him of soiling his bed and, as compensation, drinks water from a stone vessel, and then spits it out in the form of rivers and lakes. There are countless etiological motives in the Raven cycle. The Raven cycle also includes anecdotal stories of how the voracious Raven takes prey from other animals or turns them into prey themselves. There are similar anecdotes in the tales of Mink, Coyote, etc. (see more about this below).

The raven is also a central figure in the folklore of the northeastern Paleo-Asians (Chukchi, Koryaks, Itelmens). In many ways, Ekva-Pyrisch is similar to the Raven, a hero of Ob Ugrians folklore.

Favorite heroes of African folklore sometimes have traits of cultural heroes, although not so clearly expressed, sometimes in relict form. Some of them are zoomorphic (Hare, Spider, Jackal, Mantis, Chameleon, Tortoise) or semi-zoomorphic (Pu, Uhlakanyana). African folklore sometimes combines the traits of cultural heroes and miraculous blacksmiths.

Sometimes the cultural hero is one of many brothers (as, for example, Kat, Tangaro, Maui in Oceania); very often, cultural heroes are two twin brothers, competing or at odds with each other (Ioskega and Tawiskaron among the Iroquois, To Kabinana and To Karvuvu among the Melanesians Gunantuna and many others), less often - helping each other (“the boy from the wigwam” and “the boy from bushes", defeating monsters among the Indians of southern North America). Such twins are often simultaneously phratrial ancestors. “Twinness” itself is additional proof of the original identity of the ancestors and cultural heroes. According to the well-reasoned interpretation of A.M. Zolotarev and S.P. Tolstov, cultural twin heroes, as well as other twin pairs in mythology (Ashvins - Dioscuri, Romulus and Remus, etc.), ultimately go back to the universally existing at a certain stage of primitive society of dual-clan organization 30.

The specific sphere of activity of a cultural hero is the production of fire, useful grains, and the invention of various cultural objects necessary for man in his struggle with nature. Already due to the undifferentiation of nature and culture in the primitive worldview (for example, the idea of ​​making fire by friction, the origin of thunder and lightning, sunlight, etc. comes closer), there is no sharp line between a cultural hero and a demiurge.

In more ancient versions, reflecting the specifics of the appropriating economy, the hero obtains the benefits of culture, and sometimes elements of nature, thanks to a simple find or by stealing them from the original keeper. Later, the idea arises of the production of all these objects by the demiurge using pottery or blacksmith tools; At the dawn of the metal age, for example among the Paleo-African peoples, the culture hero often appeared in the guise of a wonderful blacksmith.

These myths to a certain extent represent the chronicle of the victories of human labor and technical invention over nature, but this chronicle (partly due to the slowness of technological progress) is projected into the mythical times of first creation such as the “dream time” of the Australians.

The example of the cultural hero - this central character of primitive mythology and folklore - is specifically associated with primitive ideological syncretism. This image can evolve towards the creator god (then the primitive myth turns into an exclusively religious myth-legend). But in most cases, he does not become a genuine object of religious veneration, but turns into a beloved fairy-tale-epic hero. Cultural heroes are for the most part not classified as gods by the aborigines themselves; they are usually grouped with spirits and prominent people of the past, to a certain extent in order to separate them from the gods and at the same time emphasize their magical power (mana) and significance. A striking example of the differences between non-deified and deified cultural heroes is the Polynesian god Tangaroa and the Melanesian hero Tangaro. Tangaroa, unlike Tangaro, does not occupy a significant place in folklore, and the favorite folk hero throughout Polynesia is Maui, who never entered the supreme pantheon of Polynesian gods. Let us remember that the famous Prometheus was not allowed to Olympus and remained outside the Olympic pantheon.

The specific sphere of activity of the first ancestors - cultural heroes - demiurges coincides with the boundaries of the myths of creation, that is, etiological myths in the broad sense of the word. On the border of actual etiological myths are such actions, often associated with cultural heroes, as the fight against monsters that interfere with the peaceful life of people and gods. The fight against monsters can be one of the aspects of overcoming the forces of chaos and organization - ordering the world order, i.e., part of the process of creating the modern world. Sometimes a world is created from the body of the most defeated chthonic monster. In the latter case, the ritual of sacrifice becomes a model of creation. In addition, the fight against monsters is sometimes associated with the mythical concept of the historical succession of generations of gods or spirits. This kind of creation myths is not typical for primitive mythology itself, they are typical for developed mythologies such as Babylonian (the myth of the fight of Enlil or Marduk with Tiamat), Indian (the creation of the world from the body of Purusha), Chinese (Pangu), Scandinavian (the world from the body of Ymir, the struggle of Thor with the world serpent), Maya (the world from the body of the earth goddess), etc. However, a more primitive struggle with monsters, without connection with the concept of generations and not always with a clear etiological result, is found quite widely in primitive folklore, in particular , in tales about cultural heroes (Indian twin brothers from the "wigwam" and "bush", Maui in some areas of Polynesia, Raven among the Koryaks and many others).

In a plastically clear ancient greek mythology this new aspect of the culture hero is well represented in Hercules (as opposed to Prometheus).

In myths about the fight against monsters, the idea of ​​​​overcoming chaos takes a new direction - not just the ordering of the light of the sun, the ebb and flow of the tide, the seasons, the relationships of various animals, the prohibition of incest and other taboos, the introduction of marriage classes and rituals necessary to maintain the normal natural and life cycle ; but also a constant struggle with natural forces that threaten to sweep away “order.” This double pathos of overcoming chaos is typical of mythology as a whole; it also explains a lot in the genesis of verbal art. In essence, almost every work of art is aimed at overcoming the chaos of life through the artistic reorganization of reality.

Ideas about the elemental forces of nature (due to the identification of nature and culture, as well as one’s tribe as “real people” with humanity as a whole) often become very close and even merge with the images of foreigners. Thus, the cultural hero acquires, as it were, an epic mission and the features of a hero, and the legends themselves, going beyond the boundaries of etiological myths, become a kind of heroic tales.

Tales about cultural heroes are characterized by archaic forms of idealization, in which the heroic traits are not so much physical strength and courage as intelligence and cunning, magical, witchcraft abilities.

In the folklore of many nations, as already noted, a paired image in the form of twin brothers often appears. Such two twin brothers sometimes represent a heroic pair of monster fighters. But more often, only one of the brothers retains his high essence, while the other is endowed with demonic and at the same time (paradoxically) comical traits. If both brothers appear in creation myths, then one of them commits serious and useful deeds, and the other either consciously creates harmful and useless objects and phenomena, or does this involuntarily as a result of unsuccessful imitation (example - To Kabinana and To Karvuvu in Melanesia; cf. Prometheus and Epimetheus in ancient Greek mythology). In non-creation episodes, the culture hero's brother or brothers often appear as pitiful and unkindly envious people (for example, Maui's brothers). When the hero does not have a brother, then often, along with serious cultural deeds, mischievous pranks are attributed to him, sometimes being a parodic rethinking of his own serious deeds (among the Indians of the western part of North America, etc.).

Sometimes a mythological rogue does not coincide with a serious cultural hero. The mischievous tricks of the mythological trickster (trickster, in the terminology of American ethnographers who studied Indian folklore) 31 serve to satisfy his greed or lust. Some tricksters are dominated by greed, others by lust. Thus, in the folklore of the Indians of the northwestern coast of the Pacific Ocean, Raven is a specifically gluttonous trickster, and Mink is lustful. Similarly, in Dahomey folklore, Legba is distinguished by hypereroticism, and Io by gluttony. In an effort to satisfy his insatiable desires (or simple hunger), the trickster resorts to deception, violating the strictest norms of customary law and communal morality. Tricksters commit incest with a daughter or sister, insidiously take advantage of warm hospitality, deprive their closest relatives and members of their family of food, devour community supplies for the winter, etc. In other cases, their violation of taboos and all kinds of profanation of shrines has the character of disinterested mischief . Wakdyunkaga - a trickster among the Winnebago Indians - during a sacred ceremony of preparation for a military campaign, he enters into a relationship with a woman (which is a violation of the most important taboo), destroys the boat into which he had previously invited the participants of the campaign, destroys ritual objects - he does all this while being a leader tribe. The obvious profanation of the shrine here takes on the character of a parody of the ritual preparation for the campaign. In another case, it parodies the most important ritual of acquiring a guardian spirit. Among the Eastern Paleo-Asians, the Raven often performs tricks that are obvious parodies of the actions of shamans, not to mention the fact that many of the Raven's tricks are a clownish imitation of his own serious creative acts.

Acting in principle asocially and openly profaning sacred things, the trickster nevertheless often triumphs and mercilessly deals with those who succumbed to his deception. Sometimes, however, the trickster himself fails. The raven, for example, experiences failure when it violates community moral norms or perverts human nature itself, but from this it is still impossible to derive a rule that is mandatory for all tricksters.

It is noteworthy that the trickster combines the features of a triumphant rogue (acting for self-interest), an unbridled mischief-maker and a madman; and yet he often continues to be thought of as a cultural hero who has benefited humanity. True, native storytellers are able to distinguish between serious creation myths, telling about the deeds of cultural heroes, and anecdotes that serve for entertainment (with the partial zoomorphism of the trickster, merging with fairy tales about animals). But the identification of culture hero and trickster is not questioned. The question arises: how did such a combination of a culture hero and a trickster, creation myths and anecdotes with picaresque tricks, shamanic legends and rituals with their clownish profanation, sometimes reaching satirical sharpness, become possible?

A purely formal point has a certain significance: during the cyclization of primitive narrative folklore, various plots and genre formations were united around a cultural hero, everything was attributed to the first and only folklore hero. Various properties seemed to be forced to coexist in one image, creating its inconsistency and whimsicality. However, such a formal consideration is not enough. There must be deeper reasons here 32 .

The figure of the trickster - this distant predecessor of medieval jesters, heroes of picaresque novels, colorful comic characters in Renaissance literature, etc. - is extremely archaic. However, the most archaic mythologies still do not know it (Australians, Papuans). The original syncretism of culture hero and trickster can be recognized only in a certain sense, with significant reservations.

The most ancient mythical heroes (totemic ancestors, cultural heroes, demiurges) often act with cunning and cunning simply due to the fact that the mind in the primitive consciousness is not separated from cunning and witchcraft, the moral criteria themselves are very archaic and original. Even in the Homeric epic or in the Edda, the gods are much less choosy in their means than epic heroes. Of course, we are talking about illegibility from the point of view of later moral assessments. The most ancient mythical heroes participate in the creation of the world; almost every step they take has etiological consequences. Not only their purposeful activities, but also their random actions contribute to the ordering and organization of the world order. Their very behavior is often devoid of conscious purposefulness, the Promethean pathos of serving people. Sometimes, trying to satisfy their own needs, they produce fire, light, etc.

Such primitive heroes of myths, however, are not yet tricksters. Only as the very consciousness of the bearers of folklore develops the idea of ​​the opposition between cunning and reason, deception and noble straightforwardness, sublime spiritualism and base instincts, the pathos of conscious service to tribal interests and selfish asociality, organization and chaos, only as these differences develop. the figure of a mythological rogue as a double of a cultural hero (his brother or “second person”). Many of this character's tricks (but not all) genetically go back to the serious mythical acts of cultural heroes and demiurges, to some rituals, shamanic miracles and tricks. But all these acts and actions are reinterpreted in a parodic way or even outright ridiculed.

Along with the parodic reinterpretation of old mythical plots, many new, purely anecdotal ones arise or are attached to the image of the trickster. If the trickster retains his semi-zoomorphism, as is mostly the case, the anecdotes about him approach the type of animal tales.

Awareness of the differences between serious mythical deeds and tricks, myths and fairy tales, cultural heroes and tricksters gives special poignancy and emphasizes the duality of the mythical character, who is at the same time a serious creator of the organized world order (natural and social) and a mischievous rogue who continuously brings chaos into that very the organization he created by breaking taboos, deceiving or killing other beings to satisfy his baser instincts. Such a combination in one person of a culture hero and a trickster, an element that organizes and brings chaos, is possible only because the action in fairy-tale-mythological cycles dates back to the time before the establishment of a strict world order. This attribution to a mythical time largely legitimizes the trickster's mischief. Apparently, stories about the trickster are a kind of outlet (legalized by virtue of their association with mythical times) in a strictly regulated society, which, of course, is a tribal society.

The protrusion of base instincts, all kinds of “dirty” details associated with greed, eroticism, defecation, is opposed, in particular, to primitive spiritualism, which received a significant, albeit primitive, embodiment in shamanism. Ridicule of shamanic practice and obligatory rituals sometimes goes very far and is devoid of any good nature, even containing elements of social criticism. However, this does not mean that this expresses disbelief in shamanism, rejection of the ritual life of the tribe, etc. Of course, jokes about tricksters exist in the same environment as serious myths, shamanic legends, etc.

Mockery in stories about tricksters is quite universal, it is merciless to the victims fooled by the trickster, and to the trickster himself when he gets into trouble. It is addressed both to shamanic spiritualism, and to the base intemperance of the trickster himself, and to his attempts to change nature, to violate primitive communal morality, i.e., to the manifestation of his antisociality. This universal comedy is akin to the carnivalesque that manifested itself in the elements of self-parody present in the rituals of the Australians, Roman Saturnalia, medieval “Feasts of Fools” with the overturning of the hierarchical order, the clownish reproduction of a church service, etc. M. M. Bakhtin considers this kind of " carnival" is the most important feature of folk culture, widely reflected in the literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 33.

The most ancient ancestors - cultural heroes, whom we should rightfully consider as the first literary characters, appear in archaic folklore as syncretic images, often combining (but, of course, not always) three aspects - a mythical creator, a comic trickster and an archaic hero who cleanses the earth of monsters. These three aspects correspond to the well-known genre syncretism: creation myths - animal tales and trickster jokes - proto-heroic tales. This genre syncretism is externally expressed in the existence of single cycles of a kind of mythological epic.

Along with the gradual differentiation of narrative genres within the framework of this mythological epic about cultural heroes, etc., the development of genre varieties, even at the earliest stages, follows the same paths and outside of these cycles (the above-mentioned tales, local tales and legends, etc.) . A significant difference arises only when the impersonal character of the primitive tale is supplanted by the active and powerful hero of the heroic fairy tale.

So far we have considered archaic narrative folklore, based mainly on images central characters. Now let us turn to our material in terms of the historical morphology of the genre. Due to the fact that the process of differentiation of genres is intertwined with the change of stages in the development of genre and style, the study of the history of oral literature of primitive society cannot be separated from the genesis of narrative genres, which in primitive folklore are in a state of formation, development, have not yet completely branched off from the primary syncretism under the auspices of myth. Analysis of this double process presents great difficulties.

From myth to fairy tale

Myth was the hegemon in that only partially dismembered genre syncretism that characterizes the state of narrative art in archaic societies. The point is not only that myths and fairy tales were united into single cycles around popular mythical heroes. Myths and fairy tales were just beginning to differentiate, and some sort of intermediate forms practically predominated. Experts such as F. Boas or S. Thompson 34 have repeatedly spoken out about the difficulties of distinguishing between myth and fairy tale in primitive folklore.

The aborigines themselves often distinguish two forms, for example, adaox and malesk among the Tsimshians, pynyl and lymnyl among the Chukchi, hwenoho and heho among the Fon (Dahomeans), liliu and kukwanebu among the Kiriwin in Melanesia, etc., etc. Only very Conditionally, these two forms can be correlated with myths and fairy tales. They mainly differ along the lines of “sacredness-non-sacredness” and “strict authenticity-lax authenticity” (i.e., the admissibility of some relative freedom of fiction). F. Boas shows that the first form, i.e. myth, is strictly associated with the attribution of action to mythical times. In addition, there is no doubt that myths are characterized by a fundamental etiology of the plot, while in fairy tales, if etiological endings are preserved, they acquire a purely ornamental character. Initial formulas pointing to mythical times - “it was when people were still animals” or, conversely, “when animals were still people” - and final formulas of an etiological nature in primitive folklore are widespread in both myths and fairy tales.

These stylistic clichés genetically go back to myth and therefore in primitive folklore they are more often found in real myths, but also penetrate into fairy tales. Let us note that in European folklore it is just the opposite - etiological legends are artless, and the fairy tale sparkles with its stylistic ritualism.

In primitive folklore, myth and fairy tale certainly have the same morphological structure in the form of a chain of losses and acquisitions of certain cosmic or social values. This is also recognized by structuralists (Dundes, Maranda 35). The difference, however, lies, firstly, in the fact that in myth acquisition is usually the initial emergence, origin, i.e. etiology in the broadest sense, and in a fairy tale it is the redistribution of some benefits obtained by the hero or for himself, or for their limited community. Secondly, these acquisitions themselves in myth are of a cosmic nature: light, fresh water, fire, etc.; the acquisition can also appear in a negative form, such as a decrease in the number of heavenly bodies, the cessation of the flood, etc., but this does not change the matter. In a fairy tale, the objects obtained and the goals achieved are not elements of nature and culture, but food, wonderful objects, women, etc., which make up the well-being of the hero. These differences - etiology in the plot core or, at best, in the form of a decorative pendant, cosmic or family-clan, collective or individual - are even more significant for distinguishing between myth and fairy tale than sacredness - non-sacredality.

The mythical culture hero obtains fire or fresh water by stealing it from the original guardian (an old woman, a frog, a snake). We are talking about the origin of fresh water on earth inhabited by people. Fairytale hero steals the living water necessary to heal a sick father (for example, Hawaii), or obtains fire for his hearth with the help of animals (for example, Dahomey). A fairy-tale zoomorphic rogue (Hare) uses cunning to steal water for himself alone from a well dug by other animals (in the folklore of many African peoples). Between “lack” and “acquisition of values” stands the creative act of a demiurge - a cultural hero, or a feat-test of a fairy-tale hero, or a cunning trick of a trickster. The true difference, however (within the framework of primitive folklore), is not in the very nature of the act. The Demiurge, for example, often resorts to clever tricks. It was mentioned above how Raven turns into a child and, crying, demands luminary balls to play with; or Maui deliberately puts out the fire and lures it away from his great-grandmother again. But in these cases we are talking about the origin of fire and the good for everyone, in contrast to the seekers of living water, fresh water, and fire in the above fairy tales. The altruism of the Hawaiian good son, who obtained Kane water for his father, and the selfishness of the Hare are equally opposed to the collectivism and etiology of the myth. However, here too in practice we find many intermediate cases. These include most of the stories about the tricks of mythological rogues, since these rogues are still mythical characters, moreover, at the same time committing serious creative acts. The Indians, however, know how to distinguish between the serious deeds of the Raven-demiurge and the buffoonery of the Raven-trickster. But the Dahomeans have a cycle of the trickster Legba associated with the pantheon higher gods, is classified as hwenoho (sacred myths), and the cycle of the trickster Io is classified as heho (fairy tales).

It is very significant that primitive fairy tales, although somewhat freer than myths in the sense of individual invention and ritual performance, are also associated with current beliefs, with specific mythology; their fiction has a strictly ethnographic, not at all conventional character. The point is not only in the difficulty of distinguishing between myth and fairy tale, but in that very syncretism, which has already been mentioned several times above. The same text can be interpreted by one tribe or group within a tribe as a myth, and by another group as a fairy tale, included in or excluded from some kind of sacred ritual system. Moreover, the same text in the same audience can act both as a myth and as a fairy tale, for example, simultaneously describe some link in cosmogenesis, sanction a well-known ritual, demonstrate the bad consequences of breaking a taboo and at the same time delight and entertain listeners with the daring or cunning tricks of the mythical hero. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a methodology for a multifaceted analysis of primitive texts - narrative-syntagmatic and symbolic-paradigmatic.

If we move from synchrony to diachrony, i.e. to the historical perspective of the formation of a fairy tale, then it is quite obvious that the transformation of a myth into a fairy tale is facilitated by its deritualization (if the myth was attached to a ritual), desacralization (for example, sacred information about the routes of ancestors is omitted or declassified in Australian folklore), demythologization of the hero himself (rejection of the totemic or semi-divine hero, sometimes with the loss of his name), demythologization of the time of action (the appearance of fairy-tale uncertainty of time); transition from a cosmic scale to the depiction of personal destinies, weakening or destruction of etiology; the separation of conventional fairy-tale fiction from current beliefs, the weakening of authenticity and the conscious assumption of poetic fiction. This transformation within the framework of primitive culture is not yet completely completed, but nevertheless a significant degree of genre differentiation is achieved.

Tales of mythological rogues, as already noted, are closely related to the formation of fairy tales about animals. Almost in the folklore of the indigenous population of Africa and America, the trickster is the main character of such tales, and the tricks of zoomorphic tricksters are the main elements of most fairy tales about animals. The prerequisite for the development of this genre is the desacralization of totemic characters while maintaining their zoomorphism. As totemic beliefs are forgotten, animal tales are enriched with everyday motifs, including anecdotal ones. Observations of animal habits are combined with depictions of family and social relationships. Above, the great importance of the trickster’s selfishness, his hyperbolic greed and willingness to violate any social norms for personal gain was noted.

The classic form of animal tales is found in Africa. There (unlike the Indians, Melanesians, etc.) these tales are quite clearly differentiated from myths. Etiological motives, and even more so cultural acts, were preserved there only in the form of rudiments. The tricks of tricksters serve as a manifestation of their cunning, but no longer of witchcraft; Episodes in which tricksters act like madmen are very rare. Most tricks (feigning death, scaring with non-existent forces, persuading other animals to agree to be tied up or cooked for imaginary benefits, offering to nurture other people's children) are an attempt on common or someone else's prey and, just as in American Indian folklore, usually serve to satisfy hunger. But in African fairy tales the moralizing tendency is strengthened: the actions of the trickster destroy the initial friendship of animals and are assessed as ingratitude. Etiological endings are most often replaced by moral ones. Elements of moralizing open the way to the fable, so popular in Eastern literature, and partly in Europe. However, in African fairy tales about animals there are still no frozen masks corresponding to certain human characters, there is no pure allegorism and didacticism.

The classic tale about animals is the predecessor not only of fables, but also everyday fairy tale. It is very likely that the tradition of folklore "tricksteriads" and animal fairy tales (and ancient fable, of course) had a decisive influence on literary animal epics such as the medieval novel about the Fox.

A necessary prerequisite for the development of a magical and magical-heroic fairy tale is, firstly, complete anthropomorphization and a certain degree of idealization of the hero, and secondly, his demythologization. Here, apparently, it is necessary to take into account the interaction of myths, tales, and local legends. The hero of a fairy tale is no longer thought of as a demigod or totemic ancestor, although he often retains divine parents (his peculiar, of course, archaic form of idealization). The above mentioned heroic twin brothers - destroyers of chthonic monsters in the folklore of the American Indians - are a transitional stage. Among the Northwestern Indians, along with the peculiar mythological epic about the Raven, Mink and the wandering twins, there are also tales, strongly colored by mythological fiction, about extraordinary trials that the son-in-law of the Sun or a young man persecuted by an envious uncle triumphantly undergoes. These are a kind of heroic tales, but heroism here also has a witchcraft, shamanistic character. The future son-in-law of the Sun is found in the belly of a pike, he himself can turn into a pike, and receives help from the pike (totemic motif). With the help of the bag of winds given to him by the old woman, the hero extinguishes the fire sent by the Sun, hunts for the daughters of the Sun, who have taken the form of goats or birds, and flies to earth with the daughters of the Sun. Likewise, the persecuted nephew escapes from his uncle’s persecution with the help of miraculous objects, eventually marries the leader’s daughter and takes revenge on his evil uncle.

The Polynesian legends about Tafaki and his family, which go back to a certain heavenly cannibal who descended to earth, are of a similar nature. Her son Hema, his children Tafaki and Kariki, grandson Rata and other characters in this cycle are radically different from the cultural hero - the trickster Maui. Tafaki is perceived as an ideal example of a Polynesian sacralized leader, acting with his witchcraft power or the magical help of ancestors, spirits, etc. The main motives associated with Tafaki, Rata and others are the heroic childhood typical of a heroic tale, miraculous matchmaking and especially family revenge, for the sake of which one has to ascend to heaven and descend into the underworld, defeating evil spirits and monsters.

Along with the heroes who have retained a mythical aura, “unpromising” heroes who are victims of social injustice appear already in archaic folklore. Such, for example, is a poor orphan who is mistreated by his closest relatives and fellow tribesmen, thereby violating the covenants of tribal mutual assistance. Tales of the poor orphan are popular among Melanesians, Tibeto-Burman mountain tribes, Eskimos, Paleo-Asians, North American Indians, etc.

In Melanesia, an orphan is a victim of the wives of his uncle (mother's brother), who, according to tribal morality, was supposed to be his main protector. Among the Indians, a dirty orphan “burnt belly”, living with his grandmother on the edge of the village, eating scraps with dogs, is an object of contempt and ridicule for the entire village. However, with the help of spirits, a witch grandmother or deceased parents, the orphan becomes an outstanding hunter, warrior and shaman (among the Indians), and reaches high levels in a secret male union (in Melanesia).

The intervention of mythical creatures in the fate of a poor orphan is no longer so much the result of his strict adherence to ritual instructions, but rather the result of sympathy for the socially disadvantaged, who has become a victim of the decline of tribal norms of customary law and morality. If fairy tales about the son or son-in-law of the Sun and similar “high” heroes are archaic analogues of Russian fairy tales about Ivan Tsarevich, then the poor orphan - the “dirty guy” - resembles Ivan the Fool and Cinderella.

The plots of the archaic magical-heroic fairy tale, on the one hand, reveal a clear connection with primitive myths, rituals, and tribal customs, and on the other hand, they anticipate the main plot types of European and Asian fairy tales. Such, for example, are the mentioned plots of obtaining curiosities, elixirs and wonderful objects, going back to the myths about the theft of cultural goods by a mythical hero (No. 550, as well as 560 and 563 according to the Aarne-Thompson plot index 36), or the story of marriage with a wonderful totemic creature that has temporarily shed its animal shell. A wonderful wife (in later versions - a husband) gives the chosen one good luck in hunting, but leaves him due to violation of marriage prohibitions, after which the hero searches and finds a wife in her country and, in order to return the fugitive, is forced to undergo a series of traditional marriage tests (cf. No. 400 , 425 and some others according to the Aarne-Thompson system).

Other examples: the story, apparently reflecting the customs of initiation, about a group of children who fell into the power of an cannibal and were saved thanks to the resourcefulness of one of them (cf. No. 327); the plot of the murder of a mighty serpent, initially to master his magical power or to get rid of chthonic demons (cf. No. 300, etc.); the plot of visiting “other” worlds or the kingdom of the dead to free the captives there, by analogy with the wandering of a sorcerer or shaman in search of the soul of the sick or dead (cf. No. 301), etc. Subsequently, family and tribal motifs are added to these ancient plots relationships. A fairy-tale family is certainly a generalized image of a clan or a “big family,” and the plots of family feuds to a certain extent reflect the socio-historical process of the decomposition of the clan system, the transition from communal distribution to family isolation. However, in archaic folklore, as we have seen, the family theme is only emerging. The classical form of a fairy tale developed much later than the classical form of a fairy tale about animals, already far beyond the borders of primitive culture. We know this classical form only from the folklore of the civilized peoples of Europe and Asia.

The formation of the classical form of the fairy tale was prepared by the decline (albeit incomplete) of the mythological worldview, the separation of fairy-tale fiction from specific tribal ethnography.

The characteristic gap in European folklore between the special conventional fairy-tale mythology and the prevailing superstitions reflected in the tales deserves attention. Connected with this is the frank recognition of fiction in a fairy tale, in contrast to both the European fairy tale (synchronously) and the primitive fairy tale (diachronically). This attitude toward fiction is formalized in beginnings (indicating an indefinite place and time) and in endings (indicating a fable through the category of the impossible). The beginnings and endings of a classical fairy tale are polar opposites to the initial and final formulas of a primitive (syncretistic) fairy tale, which go back to myth. Fairy-tale poeticization of mythology captures not only images of mythical creatures (typical of the fairy tale Baba Yaga, Snakes, Kashchei, etc.), but also magical transformations and witchcraft actions. The success and failure of the hero are no longer a direct consequence of compliance with magical prescriptions and shamanic skill, family or marriage ties with spirits, but only the result of the benevolence of miraculous forces as a result of compliance with certain, rather abstract rules of behavior or direct manifestations of kindness towards miraculous persons and objects. Wonderful helpers and objects, having taken the hero under protection, to a certain extent act instead of him.

Accordingly, structural differences arise between the primitive-syncretistic fairy tale and the classical fairy tale 37 . The structure of an archaic mythological tale acts as a kind of metastructure in relation to the actual magical one. In an archaic fairy tale, the chain of acquisitions and losses may consist of an indefinite number of links, and a positive, happy ending (acquisition), although more common than an unfortunate one (loss), is not obligatory. All links are more or less equal. In a classic fairy tale, there is a rigid hierarchical structure of two or more often three trials of the hero. The first test (preliminary - testing behavior, knowledge of the rules), leading to obtaining a miraculous remedy, is a step to the main one, which concludes the main feat - eliminating the misfortune-shortage. The third stage is sometimes an additional test of identification (it is revealed who accomplished the feat, followed by the shaming of rivals and impostors). The obligatory happy ending usually involves marrying a princess and receiving half the kingdom.

So far we have been talking about the morphology of the fairy tale at the plot level. Issues of historical poetics and the stylistics of fairy tales, the stylistic features of narrative folklore in archaic societies have been extremely insufficiently studied.

The style of narrative folklore of the Northwest Indians is illuminated in the works of Franz Boas; his observations on the folklore of the Kwakiutl and Tsimshian tribes were used by him to characterize the primitive art of words in his classic work “Primitive Art” (1927), mentioned above. Interesting results of a study of style using the example of the Chinooks are given in Melville Jacobs's monograph “The Content and Style of One Oral Literature” (1959). Jacobs strongly emphasizes the theatrical elements in the Chinooks' performance of fairy tales. Stylistic features myths and fairy tales are the same, but myths are more polished and necessarily include beginnings and endings. The beginning includes indicating the name and place of residence of the hero, sometimes mentioning his relatives. A sign of a myth is the addition of “I don’t know how long ago...” - a hint of an appeal to mythical times. The ending includes the formula “now we will part” (implied with the characters of the mythical time), it is reported which of the characters turned into whom or into what (stars, animals, etc.). The ending ends with the words “myth, myth” or “fairy tale, fairy tale.” Jacobs lists in detail numerous "commonplaces" in Chinook narrative folklore. These are, for example, ways of localizing or expressing distance, indicating time, symbolizing various themes, simple emotions, and describing typical characters. For example, we are talking about the entrance to the last house in the village, where a poor young man or old woman lives, or, conversely, a traveler asks the children a question about the house of the leader, who always turns out to be in the center of the village. The village is described from above; there are either many people in it, or none. The number five is used to express plurality: “five villages” or “five mountains” indicates a large space or a long stay of the traveler on the road. The breaking of a bow or a digging stick indicates misfortune; anger or depression are stylized by the message that the hero could not eat or could not speak, etc. In addition to the identically expressed verbal “commonplaces,” Jacobs registers a significant number of recurring motifs, situations, etc.

Subtle observations on the poetics of the Chukchi fairy tale, moreover, from an evolutionary perspective, are available in the classical works of V.G. Bogoraz and especially in the articles of A.I. Nikiforov 38 .

The “real fairy tales” of the Chukchi are extremely colorful. Their richest fantasy, on the one hand, has its source in Chukchi-Eskimo sea demonology, numerous images of sea master spirits, etc., and on the other hand, shamanic mythology with its complex cosmology, animal spirit helpers, and magical transformations. V.G. Bogoraz emphasized the striking difference between the sea monsters of the Chukchi fairy tale (were-dolphins, the Kochatko bear with a body made of mammoth bone, the shaman Keith, overseas cannibal giants, etc.) from the “Ural-Altai” one-eyed, one-armed iron demons 39 .

A.I. Nikiforov correctly notes that transformations, i.e. transformations, of heroes into various objects and creatures, as well as movement through a multi-tiered universe (which creates the possibility of multi-linear action) are the main springs, methods of constructing a plot in a Chukchi fairy tale. From the point of view of historical poetics, the same Nikiforov identifies in the Chukchi fairy tale examples of three stages of evolution: 1) narrative-magical spell stories with the absence of the structure of a primitive fairy tale (according to V. G. Bogoraz, the plot of “magical escape” - with throwing stones and grass, turning into mountains, seas, forests - receives magical use in funeral rites); 2) a “suggestion”, in which there is no magical function, but also artistic poetics barely outlined, as in “byvalshchina”; 3) a fairy tale with more or less developed artistic means (from more “cultured” storytellers known to Bogoraz, such as Chene, Aivan, Keutebyn). The formula with the verb “was”, which is obligatory for the beginning of cosmogonic myths (“It was once dark,” etc.), indicating mythical times, is found in fairy tales only at the third stage. As a fairy tale ending, they know the formula: “I killed the wind” (a relic of the fairy tale’s magical function) and “they began to live.” There are a number of common passages in fairy tales, such as the dialogue between the hero and someone he meets along the way. The developed Chukchi fairy tale is characterized by repeated moves and the law of fivefold.

Notes

1 Avdeev A.D. Origin of the theater. M., 1959.

2 Bucher K. Work and rhythm. M., 1923. P. 264.

3 Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. M., 1940. P. 291.

4 Shadwick K.M., Shadwick M.K. The Growth of Literature. Vol. I-III. London, 1932-1940. Reprint: London, 1971.

5 Bowra S.M. Primitive Song. London, 1962. P. 265.

6 See, in particular, the brief but brilliant account of "primitive" poetry in Franz Boas's classic work (Boas F. Primitive Art. Oslo, 1927), as well as the introductory articles to anthologies of Australian and American Indian poetry (Songs of the Songmen / Retold W. E. Harney and A. P. Elkin. Melbourne, 1949; The Winged Serpent; an Anthology of Indian Prose and Poetry / Ed. M. Astrov. 1950; The Sky Clears; Poetry of the American Indians / Ed. A. G. Day. New York, 1951 ).

7 See about this in detail: Kluckhohn C. Myths and Rituals. A General Theory / Harvard Theological Review. 1942. Vol. XXXV. P. 145-179; Hyman S.E. The Ritual View of Myth and the Mythic / Journal of American Folklore. 1955. No. 270. P. 462-472; Raglan F.R.S. Myth and Ritual / Journal of American Folklore. 1955. No. 270. P. 454-461; James E.O. Myth and Ritual in the Ancient Near East. London, 1958.

8 Langer S. Feeling and Form. New York, 1953.

9 Tokarev S.A. Religion in the history of the peoples of the world. M., 1964.

10 Levi-Strauss C. La pensée sauvage. Paris, 1962.

11 Strehlow C. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral Australien. Bd I-II. Frankfurt am Main, 1907-1908; Wed presentation of totemic myths in the last monograph of the classics of Australian studies Spencer and Gillen (Spencer W.B., Gi1len F. The Arunta. A Study of a Stone Age People. Vol. 2. London, 1927. P. 301-309).

12 Strehlow T.E.H. Aranda Traditions. Melbourne. 1957. Ch. I.

13 See: Howitt A.W. The Natives Tribes of South-East Australia. London, 1904. P. 475-488, 779-806 (presentation of relevant legends).

14 Macconel U. Myths of the Munkan. Melbourne, 1957.

15 See: Radсliff-Brown A. The Rainbow Serpent Myth in Australia / Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. London, 1926. Vol. 56; Berndt R.M. Kunapipi. A Study of an Aboriginal Religious Cult. Melbourne, 1951; Chaseling S. Julengor, Nomads of Arnhem Land. London, 1957; Stanner W.E.H. On Aboriginal Religion. Sidney, 1966.

16 Howitt A.W. The Natives Tribes of South-East Australia. London, 1904; Matthews R.N. Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of New South Welles and Victoria. Sidney, 1905.

17 Stanner W.E.H. On Aboriginal Religion. Sidney, 1966.

18 See: Peoples of Australia and Oceania / Ed. S.A. Tokareva and S.P. Tolstova. M.; L., 1956. S. 240-244.

19 Howitt A.W. The Natives Tribes of South-East Australia. London, 1904. P. 494.

20 Mathews R.N. Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of New South Welles and Victoria. Sidney, 1905. P. 138.

21 Langloh-Parker K. The Eullaye Tribe. A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia. London, 1905. P. 6-7.

22 Berndt R.M. Kunapipi. A Study of an Aboriginal Religious Cult. Melbourne, 1951. P. 35.

23 Stanner W.E.H. On Aboriginal Religion. Sidney, 1966 (see chapter IV-V).

24 And in other myths and rituals, known evil (for example, incest between the children of Kunmangur) is often a permitted, obligatory action in the ritual.

25 Songs of the songmen / Retold W.E.Harney, A.P.Elkin. Melbourne, 1949. P. 29-32.

26 Strehlow C. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral Australien. Dritter Teil (Die totemistischen Kulte). Frankfurt am Main, 1910.

27 Strehlow T.E.H. Aranda Traditions. Melbourne, 1947.

28 Capell A. Myth and Tales of the Nunguburuyn / Oceania. 1960. Vol. XXXI. No. 1. P. 31-62 (Sidney).

29 From the vast, mostly purely descriptive literature, the very valuable classic works of Franz Boas on the Northwestern Indians should be highlighted (especially Boas F. Tsimshian Mythology / 31 Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, 1916); Russian scientists V. Bogoraz, V. Jochelson and L. Ya. Sternberg on Paleo-Asians, as well as articles by I. N. Nikiforov, review works on the Indians by S. Thompson (Thompson S. Tales of the North American Indians. Cambridge, Mass., 1929; Thompson S. The Folktale (New York, 1946). Of the post-war works on Indians, the following should be especially noted: Radin P. The Evolution of an American Indian Prose Epic: A Study in Comparative Literature. Pt I-II. Basel, 1954-1956; Radin P. The Trickster. A Study in American Indian Mythology. London, 1956; Jacobs M. The Content and Style of Oral Literature. Clackamas Chinouk Myths and Tales. Chicago, 1959; Dundes A. The Morphology of the North American Indian Folktales. Helsinki, 1964 (FFC, no. 195); Levi-Strauss C. Mythologiques. I-IV. Paris, 1964-1971; Hultkrantz A. The North American Orpheus Traditions. Stockholm, 1957; Luomala K. Maui-of-a-thousand Tricks. Honolulu, 1949; Luomala K. Voices of the Wind. Honolulu, 1955; Lessa W.A. Tales from Ulithi Atoll. Berkeley; Los Angeles, 1961; as well as articles by Fisher; on various peoples - collections of Jacobs' articles (The Anthropologist Looks at Myth / Compiled by M.Jacobs. Austin; London, 1966). For Northern Asia, see the works of A.F. Anisimov, G.M. Vasilevich, M.G. Voskoboinikov, Z.N. Kupriyanova and others; interesting considerations on the material of Kets folklore are in the works of Vyach. Sun. Ivanova, V.N. Toporova. Some information is contained in the author’s works (Meletinsky E.M. Mythological and fairy-tale epic of the Melanesians / Oceanic collection. M.; Leningrad, 1957; Meletinsky E.M. Hero of a fairy tale. M., 1958; Meletinsky E.M. The Tale of the Raven among the peoples of the Far North (about ancient folklore relations between Asia and America) / Bulletin of the History of World Culture. 1959. No. 1; Meletinsky E.M. The origin of the heroic epic. Early forms and archaic monuments. M., 1963.

30 Zolotarev A.M. Tribal system and religion of the Ulchi. Khabarovsk, 1939; Zolotarev A.M. Tribal system and primitive mythology. M., 1964; Tolstov S.P. Ancient Khorezm. M., 1948.

31 See Paul Radin's fundamental work on the folklore of the Winnebago and some other prairie Indians (Radin P. The Trickster. A Study in American Indian Mythology. London, 1956).

32 P. Radin believed that the trickster from the very beginning represented a combination of the divine culture hero and the divine jester, ever since man as a social being separated from the animal. In the story of a Winnebago trickster named Wakdyonkaga, Radin sees a conscious depiction of the evolution of man from natural spontaneity to heroic consciousness. It seems, however, that Radin exaggerates, on the one hand, the originality of this double figure, and on the other, a distinct intellectual concept in Winnebago tales as an image of personality development. K. Kereni (Kerynui K. Prometheus. Zьrich, 1946) also considers this figure to be very ancient, but at the same time connects it with the late archaic, when, due to the peculiarities of not the content, but the style itself, powerful, brutal entertaining elements emerge. The connection between the arch-rogue and the arch-madman seems primordial to Kereni. Cunning emphasizes stupidity, including the stupidity of the cunning person. Jung, in accordance with his general theory of archetypes, sees in the trickster a “psychologem” of exceptional antiquity - a copy of the undifferentiated human consciousness that barely left the animal world, the embodiment of all the lower character traits in the individual. However, only overcoming absolute psychological darkness, he believes, could cause such a look back to the distant past of the collective consciousness. A trickster is a figure supposedly standing both above a person (supernatural powers) and below him (thanks to unconsciousness, spontaneity).

33 Bakhtin M.M. The work of Francois Rabelais and the folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M., 1965.

34 See, for example: Thompson S. Myth and Folktale / Journal of American Folklore. 1955. No. 270.

35 Ktsngds E., Maranda P. Structural Models in Folklore and Transformational Essays. The Hague; Paris, 1971.

36 For an index of Aarne-Thompson's plots, see: Thompson S. The Types of the Folktale. Helsinki, 1973 (FFC, no. 184).

37 The presence of such structural discrepancies is striking, in particular, when comparing the structural description of the Russian fairy tale in the “Morphology of the Fairy Tale” by V.Ya. Propp (1928) and the methodologically identical description of the fairy tale of the North American Indians by Dundes (1964).

38 Nikiforov A.I. The structure of the Chukchi fairy tale as a phenomenon of primitive thinking / Soviet folklore. 1935. No. 2-3.

39 Bogoraz V.G. Materials on the study of the Chukchi language and folklore, collected in the Kolyma district. Part 1. St. Petersburg, 1900. P. 1.

The material is posted on the site with the support of grant No. 1015-1063 from the Ford Foundation.

If we use the concept of “language of art” in the meaning that we agreed to give it above, then it is obvious that fiction, as one of the types of mass communication, must have its own language. “Having your own language” means having a certain closed set of meaningful units and rules for their connection, which allow you to transmit certain messages.

But literature already deals with one type of language - natural language. How do the “language of literature” relate to the natural language in which the work is written (Russian, English, Italian or any other)? And is there really this “language of literature,” or is it enough to separate the content of the work (“message”; cf. the naive reader’s question: “What is it about?”) and the language of fiction as a functional-stylistic layer of a national natural language?

To clarify this issue, let us set ourselves the following very trivial task. Let's choose the following texts: group I - Delacroix's painting, Byron's poem, Berlioz's symphony; group II - Mickiewicz's poem, Chopin's piano pieces; group III - poetic texts by Derzhavin, architectural ensembles by Bazhenov.

Now let us set ourselves the goal, as has been done repeatedly in various studies on the history of culture, to present the texts within each group as one text, reducing them to variants of some invariant type. Such an invariant type for the first group will be “Western European romanticism”, for the second - “Polish romanticism”, for the third - “Russian pre-romanticism”. It goes without saying that one can set oneself the task of describing all three groups as a single text by introducing an abstract model of the second-stage invariant.

If we set ourselves such a task, then we will naturally have to identify a certain communication system - “language” - first for each of these groups, and then for all three together.

Let us assume that the description of these systems will be in Russian. It is clear that in this case it will act as a metalanguage of description (we leave aside the question of the incorrectness of such a description, since the modeling influence of the metalanguage on the object is inevitable), but the described “language of romanticism” itself (or any of its particular sublanguages ​​corresponding to the indicated three groups) cannot be identified with any of the natural languages, since it will also be suitable for describing non-verbal texts. Meanwhile, the model of the language of romanticism thus obtained will be applicable to literary works and, at a certain level, will be able to describe the system of their construction (at a level common to verbal and non-verbal texts).

But it is necessary to consider how those structures that are created within verbal artistic constructions and cannot be recoded into languages ​​of non-verbal arts relate to natural language.

Fiction speaks a special language, which is built on top of natural language as a secondary system. Therefore, it is defined as a secondary modeling system. Of course, literature is not the only secondary modeling system, but considering it in this series would take us too far away from our immediate task.

To say that literature has its own language, which does not coincide with its natural language, but is built on top of it, means to say that literature has its own, unique system of signs and rules for their connection, which serve to convey special, not otherwise transmitted messages. Let's try to prove this.

In natural languages, it is relatively easy to distinguish signs - stable invariant units of text - and syntagmatic rules. Signs are clearly divided into planes of content and expression, between which there is a relationship of mutual unconditionality and historical conventionality. In a verbal artistic text, not only the boundaries of signs are different, but the very concept of a sign is different.

We have already written that signs in art are not conventional, as in language, but have an iconic, figurative character. This situation, obvious for the visual arts, in relation to the verbal arts entails a number of significant conclusions. Iconic signs are built on the principle of a conditioned connection between expression and content. Therefore, the distinction between the planes of expression and content in the usual sense for structural linguistics becomes generally difficult. The sign models its content.

It is clear that under these conditions in a literary text there is a semantization of extra-semantic (syntactic) elements of natural language. Instead of a clear delineation of semantic elements, a complex interweaving occurs: what is syntagmatic at one level of the hierarchy of a literary text turns out to be semantic at another.

But here it should be recalled that it is the syntagmatic elements in natural language that mark the boundaries of signs and divide the text into semantic units. Removing the opposition “semantics - syntactics” leads to blurring of the boundaries of the sign. To say: all elements of a text are semantic elements means to say: the concept of text in this case is identical to the concept of a sign.

In a certain respect, this is true: the text is a holistic sign, and all the individual signs of a general language text are reduced in it to the level of sign elements.

Thus, each literary text is created as a unique, ad hoc constructed sign of special content. At first glance, this contradicts the well-known position that only repeatable elements forming some closed set can serve to transmit information. However, the contradiction here is apparent.

Firstly, as we have already noted, the occasional structure of the model created by the writer is imposed on the reader as the language of his consciousness. Occasionality is replaced by universality. But it's not only that. A “unique” sign turns out to be “assembled” from standard elements and, at a certain level, is “read” according to traditional rules. Every innovative work is built from traditional materials. If the text does not maintain the memory of traditional construction, its innovation ceases to be perceived.

Forming one sign, the text simultaneously remains a text (sequence of signs) in any natural language and therefore retains the division into words - signs of the general language system. This is how the phenomenon characteristic of art arises, according to which the same text, when different codes are applied to it, in various ways breaks up into signs.

Simultaneously with the transformation of general linguistic signs into elements of an artistic sign, the opposite process also occurs. Elements of a sign in the system of natural language - phonemes, morphemes - becoming in the ranks of some ordered repetitions, are semantized and become signs.

Thus, the same text can be read as a certain chain of signs formed according to the rules of natural language, as a sequence of signs larger than the division of the text into words, up to the transformation of the text into a single sign, and as a chain of signs of more fractional ones organized in a special way , than a word, down to phonemes.

The rules of text syntagmatics are also related to this provision. The point is not only that semantic and syntagmatic elements turn out to be mutually reversible, but also something else: a literary text acts as a set of phrases, and as a phrase, and as a word at the same time. In each of these cases, the nature of the syntagmatic connections is different. The first two cases require no comment, but the last one should be discussed.

It would be a mistake to believe that the coincidence of the boundaries of the sign with the boundaries of the text eliminates the problem of syntagmatics. A text considered in this way can be broken down into signs and syntagmatically organized accordingly. But this will not be the syntagmatics of a chain, but the syntagmatics of a hierarchy - the signs will be connected, like nesting dolls nested one inside the other.

Such syntagmatics are quite realistic for constructing a literary text, and if it is unusual for a linguist, then a cultural historian will easily find parallels for it, for example, in the structure of the world seen through the eyes of the Middle Ages.

For a medieval thinker, the world is not a collection of entities, but an essence, not a phrase, but a word. But this word hierarchically consists of individual words, as if nested within each other. The truth is not in quantitative accumulation, but in deepening (one must not read many books - many words - but read one word at a time, not accumulate new knowledge, but interpret old ones).

From what has been said it follows that although verbal art is based on natural language, it is only in order to transform it into its own - secondary - language, the language of art. And this language of art itself is a complex hierarchy of languages, mutually related, but not identical. Related to this is the fundamental multiplicity of possible readings of a literary text. Apparently connected with this is the semantic richness of art, which is not accessible to any other - non-artistic - languages.

Art is the most economical and compact way of storing and transmitting information. But art also has other properties that are quite worthy of attracting the attention of a cybernetics specialist, and, over time, perhaps even a design engineer.

Having the ability to concentrate enormous information on an “area” is very small text(compare the volume of Chekhov's story and a psychology textbook), a literary text has one more feature: it gives different information to different readers - each to the extent of its understanding, it also gives the reader a language in which to learn the next portion of information when reading again. It behaves like some living organism located in feedback with the reader and teaching that reader.

The question of how this is achieved should concern not only the humanist. It is enough to imagine some device, built in a similar way and producing scientific information, to understand that revealing the nature of art as a communication system can revolutionize the methods of storing and transmitting information.

Lotman Yu.M. The structure of a literary text - M., 1970.

Religious dogmas say: “In the beginning was the word.” And now there is no point in arguing about whether this is really so. Words are an integral part of every person's daily life. Thanks to them, we have the opportunity to receive or transmit important information and learn something new. Words are perceived as something ordinary, but only in skilled minds can they become a real work of art, which everyone is accustomed to calling literature.

From the depths of history

Literature as the art of words arose in ancient times. Then science and the arts were intertwined, and scientists were both philosophers and writers. If we turn to the mythology of Ancient Greece, we can clearly see in it the unity of art and science. Myths about the muses, the daughters of Zeus, say that these goddesses patronized poetry, science and art.

If a person does not have knowledge of literature, it will be difficult for him to study other sciences. After all, only those who master the word can learn the countless information that humanity has accumulated over the centuries.

What is art?

Before answering the question of why literature is called the art of words, it is necessary to understand

In a broad sense, art refers to craftsmanship, the output of which evokes in consumers. Art is a figurative representation of reality, a way to show the world in an artistic context in such a way that it interests not only its creator, but also consumers. Just like science, art is one of the ways to understand the world in all its aspects.

Art has many concepts, but its main purpose is to satisfy the aesthetic needs of the individual and instill a love for the world of beauty.

Based on this, we can confidently say that literature is an art. And fiction, as the art of words, has every right to create its own niche among all varieties of art.

Literature as an art form

The word in literature is the main material for creating a masterpiece. With the help of lacy intricacies of verbal turns, the author draws the reader into his world. Makes him worry, sympathize, rejoice and be sad. The written text becomes like virtual reality. The imagination draws another world, which is created through verbal images, and a person is transported to another dimension, from which one can exit only by turning the last page of the book.

Literature as the art of words originates from the origins of oral folk art, echoes of which can be found in many works of art. Today literature is the basis for the development of many cultural spheres of human activity.

Source

Fiction as the art of words became the fundamental basis for the creation of theater. After all, many theatrical performances were staged based on the works of great writers. Thanks to literature, opera was also created.

Today, films are made based on text scripts. Some films adapt famous works of art. Particularly popular ones are “The Master and Margarita”, “Anna Karenina”, “War and Peace”, “Eragon” and others.

Part of society and leader of the arts

Literature is society. It is here that the social, historical and personal experience in exploring the world. Thanks to literature, a person maintains contact with previous generations, has the opportunity to adopt their values ​​and better understands the structure of the universe.

Literature can rightfully be called a leader among other forms of art, because it has a huge influence not only on the development of an individual, but also on humanity as a whole. Based on all of the above, literature, as the art of words, became the object of study in lessons in the 9th grade. Lessons of this kind should have a certain structure. Students should not only learn the information easily, but also be interested throughout the lesson.

Literature - the art of words

The purpose of such a lesson: to make the student understand that literature is a unique form of art, the main instrument of which is the word. Accordingly, the topic: “Literature as the art of words.”

One of the optimal lesson plans may have the following structure:

1. Epigraph. You can choose among quotes from famous people about art or beauty.
2. Formulation of the problem. Alternatively, you can give examples from modern life, where a lot of attention is paid to politics, technology and science, while forgetting about ordinary human needs and art in general.
3. Introduction. It would be logical to continue to develop the problem. It is worth mentioning that fiction no longer takes up as much space in school life as it did before. It was replaced by computers, televisions, the Internet and telephones. To interest students, you can retell a summary of Ray Bradbury's book “Fahrenheit 451”. This dystopia tells the story of a city where reading is strictly prohibited. People who keep books are sentenced to death and their houses are burned. And what seems interesting about these books? But since people are ready to die for them, it means there really is something there.
4. Survey. Based on the material presented, you can create an express questionnaire in which students would write how they would behave in the city of Ray Bradbury.
5. Literature is art. A little theory about what art is and how literature arose will not hurt.
6. Fiction as a guide to life. You can cite several excerpts from the books of classics, where books appear. For example, A.P. Chekhov’s story “At Home”.
7. Conversation with students. Define what literature means as the art of words and its role in human life. In a particular case, it is necessary to analyze why a fairy tale has become a better educator than logical arguments and beliefs.
8. conclusions. Students must answer the question: “How do you understand literature - the art of words?”
9. Epilogue.

Secret

After teaching the lesson “Literature as the Art of Words,” 9th graders often wonder whether writing is really so difficult, since words are accessible to everyone. Perhaps it’s all due to teenage maximalism, but that’s not the point.

If we talk about the difficulty of writing works of art, we can draw an analogy with drawing. Let's say there are two people: one likes to draw, the other prefers to sing. None of them have a special art education, none of them became famous as an artist and did not attend special courses. For the purpose of the experiment, they are given a sheet of paper, a simple pencil and asked to draw something that will cause aesthetic pleasure.

As with words, they have the same resources, but the result is different for each. The best drawing came from a person who loves to draw. He may not have any special talent, but he personifies the world around him with his drawings.

Also with literature, the secret is not that words are accessible to everyone, but in being able to use them correctly.

Simple example

Literature as the art of words emerges from simple, everyday words. Some will definitely say that this is all nonsense. You can't create a masterpiece out of nothing. But from this “nothing” you can create emotions, open the door to a new Universe and show that the world around you has no boundaries.

The art of words is born deep in the soul of a writer or poet. He strives not only to tell a story, but to make the reader experience certain emotions. Draw him into your world and talk about something important. A simple person will write: “It was raining outside the window.” The writer will say the following: “Drops autumn rain, like funeral tears, flowed down the glass.”

This is how art is born

Essentially, these two sentences say that it is simply raining outside. But once you “dress” a sentence with additional nouns, adjectives and definitions, it turns into art. And this art catches, fascinates and makes you plunge deeper and deeper into the abyss of words. And emerging from them, each reader holds in his hands priceless treasures and unforgettable memories of a conversation with a writer who has been gone for a long time.

The artistic image is the basis of any type of art.

Reader's imagination and artistic image.

The imaginary simplicity of writing.

“Increased” imagery of words in literature.

Art as thinking in images.

Verbal image and poetic idea (pathos).

Types and properties of artistic image.

Art is a complex interweaving of various concepts and categories. We have identified a number of essential properties that are characteristic of all known forms of art. There is another universal category that allows us to see the kinship between different arts. This is a category artistic image, which is built on the basis of a certain conditional agreement between the author and the reader, viewer, listener - the perceptive side of art. The category of artistic image is a universal category of art. This is both a part, a detail of the text, and the very way of existence of a work of art.

Already in ancient times, when the first works of art appeared, theories appeared to explain the origin of art and the ways of reflecting reality in it. One of the oldest such theories is Aristotle’s theory (IV century BC) about mimesis (imitation). Aristotle said that art is a form of imitation of life. Later, new theories emerged to explain the relationship between art and reality. There have been many attempts to understand the meaning of this relationship.

All theories that have emerged to date can be divided into two large groups. On the one hand, this is a group of theories that prove that art is called upon reflect reality, "continue" her and hers explain. As a rule, the authors of these theories strive to give a completely realistic explanation of art, to show that art is created in accordance with the artist’s intention, but at the same time it is somehow inscribed in the social context and, to one degree or another, depicts existing reality.

The process of creating a work of art becomes a completely conscious act. This fact gave reason to believe that creativity can be put at the service of a specific idea, and the creative process should be subject to constant control. This is, for example, how representatives of Marxist literary criticism treated art.

Another group of theories is related to the idea of ​​the unconscious in the creative process. It is believed that the artist-creator works by inspiration and embodies in his work only the world created in his own mind. A work of art that arose as a result of an unconscious artistic act may have absolutely no connection with social demands, but embodies only the creative will and imagination of the artist.

In Russia there were many culturologists, art historians and literary critics who considered the absolute moment of the unconscious in artistic creativity. Among them, the name of Yuli Isaevich Aikhenvald (1872–1928), a literary scholar and critic of the 1910–1920s, especially stands out.

Modern literary criticism adheres to quite broad views and, defining the boundaries of a writer’s freedom and the peculiarities of his creative thinking, proceeds from equal opportunities for the conscious and unconscious in artistic creativity. For the modern researcher, the influence of the artist’s associative thinking on the creative process also becomes important.

It turns out that in the creative process not everything is born in accordance with the plan or strict artistic logic. The creative process takes place primarily in the sphere of the author's subconscious. Consciousness often plays a subordinate role here.

The creative process appears as if by chance and develops as if by touch. It is naive to believe that the author knows everything in advance, knows what he wants. Very often in the process of creativity he finds himself in a situation where you are looking for India, but you find America...

A lot is born unexpectedly, spontaneously; one thought can evoke a whole series of associations. When observing a work of art, it turns out that the same artistic image can emphasize individual and generalize typical features, evoke specific, clear ideas and fleeting associations, be the result of the writer’s scrupulous planning work and his unconscious attractions to certain artistic incarnations. All this is extremely important for understanding the category of artistic image.

Artistic image is the basis of any type of art. Many researchers believe that it is the category of artistic image that distinguishes art from other spheres of human spiritual life. Any work of art consists of artistic images, and their number cannot be counted, since the image appears at each level of the work of art.

If we talk about literature, then an artistic image arises at the level of an individual sound and sound combinations, words and connections between them, meaningful pauses and rhythm. It arises at the level of depicting an object, phenomenon, fleeting motif and at the level of artistic comprehension of space, iconic place, and temporal extent.

An image in a work of art appears in the mind of the artist, then it must appear in the mind of the reader. That is, the usefulness of an artistic image appears only after reading and understanding the artistic text.

Sometimes an artistic image is compared to familiar determining the meaning of the text, with a key that helps to comprehend the work. In some Eastern cultures, a sign becomes a means of communication; an artistic image is perceived there as a system of signs inscribed in a certain tradition.

N. Zabolotsky’s poem “Art” can be read as a short treatise on the role and purpose of art and why the poet needs artistic images.

The tree grows, reminding

Natural wooden column.

Members diverge from her,

Dressed in round leaves.

A collection of such trees

Forms a forest, an oak grove.

But the definition of forest is inaccurate,

If you point to one formal structure.

Fat body of a cow

Placed on four endings,

Crowned with a temple-shaped head

And two horns (like the moon in the first

quarters),

It will also be unclear

It will also be incomprehensible

If we forget about its meaning

On the map of living people around the world.

House, wooden building,

Made up like a graveyard of trees,

Built like a hut of corpses,

Like a gazebo of the dead, -

Which mortal understands him?

To whom among the living is available,

If we forget a person,

Who built it and cut it down?

Man, ruler of the planet,

Lord of the wooden forest,

Emperor of cow meat,

Hosts of a two-story house, -

He rules the planet too,

He also cuts down forests,

He will even slaughter a cow,

But he can’t say a word.

But I, a monotonous person,

He took a long shining pipe into his mouth,

Blown, and, subordinate to the breath,

Words flew out into the world, becoming objects.

The cow cooked porridge for me,

The tree read a fairy tale

And the dead houses of the world

They jumped as if they were alive.

The objects and phenomena surrounding the poet, at his will, turn into works of art, overturn the ideas of the average person, and make a fairy tale out of history. The important thing is that, according to the poet, the world is a cycle of objects and, being named, with certain words and images, these objects acquire true life.

The artistic image is different in different types of art and is associated with materials of a given type. In different types of art the very structure of the image is different. An artistic image can “reconstruct” an object in more or less detail, or it can completely avoid copying it, representing a new embodiment of this object. In music, for example, the artistic image has little connection with the subject sphere and largely reflects the associative sphere of the composer’s thinking.

Feature verbal artistic image is that there are no closed areas for him, he can go not only into two-dimensional or three-dimensional space, but also comprehend the fourth dimension. A writer in a literary work is able to convey both the world of colors and the world of music.

Wonderful Russian writer of the 20th century. K.G. Paustovsky talks about the famous painting by artist M.V. Nesterov “Vision to the Youth Bartholomew”:

“For many, this youth, this village shepherd with the deepest purity of blue eyes - white-headed, thin, in onuchakh - seems to be the personification of ancient Russia - its hidden quiet beauty, its dim skies, the mild sun, the radiance of its boundless distances, its pastures and quiet forests, its legends and fairy tales. This picture is like a crystal lamp lit by the artist for the glory of his country, his Russia.” The pictorial canvas in literary presentation begins to pulsate with new artistic meanings, new images that contain everything depicted on the canvas, and perceived and experienced by the writer.

A literary and artistic image that contains musical composition, is even more complicated. Beethoven's Sonata No. 2, sounding like a refrain in the story by A.I. Kuprin’s “Garnet Bracelet” is interpreted through the feelings that arise in the heroine during the sound of a piece of music: “She recognized from the very first chords this exceptional, unique work of depth. And her soul seemed to split into two. She simultaneously thought that a great love had passed her by, which is repeated only once in a thousand years... And words were formed in her mind. In her thoughts they so coincided with the music that it was as if they were verses that ended with the words: “Hallowed be Thy name.”

In a verbal artistic image, various pictures alternate, addressed to our perception; they can turn to the reader with both the “visible” and “audible” side. In a literary work, everything comes to life, moves, breathes, speaks, and is meaningfully silent. An artistic image is able to convey the slightest movements of thought, feeling, human emotion, capture subtle overtones of meaning, the subtlest fleeting subtexts, not to mention the seasons, changeable weather, the play of clouds, the sound of rain, sparkling snow. Here is a poem by A.A. Feta:

Wonderful picture

How dear you are to me:

White plain,

Full moon,

The light of the high heavens,

And shining snow

And distant sleighs

Lonely running.

This poetic masterpiece has been familiar to us since first grade. Later we learned that Fet more than once tried to do without verbs in his poems. But they are the ones who convey action and movement in language. It would seem that a verbless poem can only photographically accurately convey the picture of nature seen, a static landscape. But with Fet, in some miraculous way, everything comes to life, everything moves, the snow sparkles and shimmers under the full moon.

This happens because the nouns taken by the poet not only carry a certain shade of “verbalism” (for example, the word run is a verbal noun, it in itself already expresses movement, and even fast movement), but also because the poet is counting on the experience of the reader, on the fact that he also had to observe such a “wonderful picture”, on ours creative thinking.

Yes, word light combined with words high heavens immediately evokes a stream of associations: light of the high heavens does not fall from the sky, but flows, flickers, dissipates, casting bizarre moving shadows on the snow, which continually change their size and shape. Not static, but in constant change and movement shiny snow, which sparkles, glares, reflects with multi-colored sparkles - from bright white to bluish and reddish.

As we see, understanding artistic imagery requires the reader’s imagination. The image that arose in the mind of the writer may or may not be repeated, rethought or distorted in the mind of the reader. It turns out that Not only the author, but also the reader should be endowed with imaginative thinking.

Literary writing sometimes seems like a very simple matter: look around you, write down, come up with characters, their dialogues and monologues - and the literary work is ready. In “Theatrical tour after the presentation of a new comedy” N.V. Gogol two talk about the writer’s work:

"First. Think about it: well, a dancer, for example, is still an art, there’s no way you can do what he does. Well, even if I wanted to, for example: my legs simply won’t lift... But you can write without learning...

Second. But, however. Still, he must know something: without it you can’t write...

First....Why is there a mind here... Well, if there were, let’s say, some kind of scientific science. Some subject that you don’t know yet. But what is this? After all, every man knows this. You see this every day on the street. Just sit by the window and write down everything that happens - that’s the whole point!”

This deceptive idea of ​​the simplicity of writing led to the fact that people who had barely mastered literacy immediately began to write. So, for example, it happened immediately after the revolution of 1917, when a huge number of people rushed “to become writers”, who had neither a reading memory, nor a general culture, nor a special ability to turn simple everyday objects and phenomena into a miracle of literature - all that without which a real writer fails.

The craving for literary creativity without special skills or grounds is called "graphomania". And these days, the number of graphomaniacs is not decreasing: Internet sites, blogs, and newspapers with free advertisements with poems, which are coyly called “congratulations,” are filled with their “works.” This happens because the language we speak and write seems to be a common property. The illusion of lightness of a writer’s bread arises. Meanwhile, in literary creativity there is no last role plays endowment with a special, artistic consciousness, the ability to think in artistic images.

For literature, not every word is important, but only those that can evoke a sympathetic response. In artistic speech, thanks to its imagery, the word carries a much greater load than in everyday speech. This “increased” imagery of the poetic word Poets feel well. D.S. Samoilov writes:

And the free horn of the wind,

And the sound of cheerful waves,

And the glow of the month,

As soon as they fell into verse.

Acquired significance

And so - who knew them.

And my story is vague.

And the news about the two of us,

And a true saying

As soon as they fall into verse,

Will gain meaning

And so - who knew them!

That is, poetry returns to the word the worn-out, forgotten, unseen by the “non-poet” meaning of the word.

When they lose their meaning

Words and objects

To the ground for their renewal

Poets come -

The word in a literary text has truly magical properties precisely because the poet’s consciousness gravitates toward artistic imagery. An artistic image can be born not only in artistic, but also in everyday everyday speech. When a person talks about something, he may well saturate his speech with artistic images.

At the same time, the presence of artistic images is not necessary for everyday speech. For art, which, according to Belinsky, is thinking in images, artistic images are organic. If in everyday life a person may or may not use artistic images, then in art, thinking without images is impossible . An artistic image is both the language of art and its individual statement.

It is impossible to decompose a literary work into artistic images; they do not exist separately, by themselves. B.L. Pasternak wrote: “...the image enters the image...”. Each figurative detail in a work is perceived only through the general context, and the general figurative context is made up of artistic details.

The artistic image is a complex concept due to the elusive essence of this subject: the artistic image cannot be fully explained due to its inexhaustibility and fragility of boundaries.

It is interesting that some researchers talk about the artistic image as a phenomenon that gives art some hyperbolicity, since the artistic image exaggerates the significance of the object, making it a particularly valuable object, even if it is the Mirgorod puddle in Gogol.

Others (for example, D.S. Likhachev), on the contrary, believe that imagery contributes to the fact that art represents litotes ( deliberate understatement of an object ) and that art leaves things unsaid and thereby makes people guess about the whole, and then admire this whole as their guess.

Imagery can be understood as the language of art. To create artistic images, the writer uses a huge arsenal means of artistic expression. However, their absence does not mean that the image has not been created. On the contrary, it is especially interesting to observe how an artistic image is formed out of the blue of ordinary everyday vocabulary, unobtrusive syntax, and ordinary sound.

How is an artistic image born in a poetic line?

One of the founders of modern literary criticism V.G. Belinsky believed that the artist (poet) must experience not only the insight and inspiration that comes from above, but also go through creative torments comparable to the torments that accompany childbirth.

“The higher the poet, the more original the world of his work - and not only great, even simply wonderful poets differ from ordinary ones in that their poetic activity is marked by the stamp of a distinctive and original character. In this characteristic feature lies the secret of their personality and the secret of their poetry. To grasp and determine the essence of this feature means to find the key to the secret of the poet’s personality and poetry,” writes Belinsky.

In fact, Belinsky pushes us to try to unravel the mystery of every great poet through understanding the peculiarities (“peculiarities”) of the creative process. Belinsky considers the “mighty thought” that took possession of the poet to be an important component of this process. But this, from the point of view of the great critic, is not enough. After all, a thought, even a very deep one, can come to the mind of any person, especially one who has a philosophical mindset and character. But then “for someone who is not a poet by nature, even if the thought he comes up with is deep, true, even holy, the work will still come out petty, false, false, ugly, dead, and it will not convince anyone, but will rather disappoint everyone in the thought he expressed, despite all its truthfulness!

What kind of thought, according to Belinsky, can become “the living embryo of a living creature”? Such a thought can only be poetic thought ! It is this poetic thought, poetic idea that moves a true artist on the path of creating a work.

Belinsky calls this force, this passion that has mastered the artist pathos. “In pathos, the poet is in love with an idea, as with a beautiful, living being, passionately imbued with it - and he contemplates it not with reason, not with reason, not with feeling, and not with any one ability of his soul, but with all the fullness and integrity of his moral being - and therefore the idea is, in his work, not an abstract thought, not a dead form, but a living creation, in which the living beauty of the form testifies to the presence of the divine idea in it and in which there is no feature indicating stitching or soldering - there is no boundary between idea and form, but both are whole and single organic creation.”

So, the unity of the poetic idea and poetic form, nurtured and born in agony as a result of divine insight and creative passion - these are, in general terms, the stages of the creative process that leads to the creation of artistic imagery.

Let's see how these stages are interpreted by the poets themselves. In the creative heritage of A.A. Akhmatova’s famous cycle of poems “Secrets of Craft”. The first two poems from this cycle are called “Creativity” and are dedicated specifically to the creative process:

It happens like this: some kind of languor;

The chime of the clock does not stop in my ears;

In the distance, the rumble of fading thunder.

I imagine both complaints and groans,

Some secret circle is narrowing,

But in this abyss of whispers and ringings

One, all-conquering sound rises -

This is how this poem begins, and the poet feels the mysterious process of creativity so fragilely and sensitively.

What can serve as the initial impetus? Silence, silence, complaints and groans or roar, thunder? Unclear and unrecognized (secret – whose?) – voices? And some one - all-conquering - sound must arise from this unclear sound confusion, from this bizarre scale, in order to suddenly help the poet find an amazing inner readiness for creative creation?

The second half of Akhmatova’s poem only partially provides answers to our naive questions:

It’s so incredibly quiet around him,

You can hear the grass growing in the forest,

How he walks dashingly on the ground with a knapsack...

But now the words are heard

And light rhymes signal bells, -

Then I begin to understand.

And just dictated lines

They go into a snow-white notebook.

From the mass of unclear, difficultly dissected sounds, one is born, it is clearly audible, since absolute silence reigns around. It is so quiet that other sounds become audible, in principle beyond the control of the human ear. But if we, although we are not given the opportunity to hear the sound of growing grass, are still able to imagine it in our own imagination, then only the poet can perceive the steps-call signs of a dashing person walking on the earth (i.e., troubles, misfortunes). Rhymed words begin to form from this incredible melody, and it seems that they were simply dictated by someone.

We have taken on a very thankless task - the literalist interpretation of something that is not subject to such an interpretation and resists this procedure in every possible way. But where is the poetic idea that Belinsky speaks of? What does it involve? And most importantly, how to distinguish the stages of the creative process? Where do poems come from, how are they born?

These questions are partly answered by Akhmatova’s second poem, placed under the title “creativity.” Perhaps for the first time in Russian poetry, it was in this poem that an attempt was made to present a register of words and concepts, verbal artistic images creating a poetic text.

Entering into a polemical dialogue with many predecessors and contemporaries who worked in the poetic field, Akhmatova creates her own poetic dictionary. It is not the sky and the stars, not the fogs and distant continents, not the expanses of the sea and the exoticism of distant travels that, from Akhmatova’s point of view, become the subject of the main poetic experiences:

I don't need odic armies

and the charm of elegiac undertakings.

For me, everything should be out of place in poetry,

Not like with people.

If only you knew from what kind of rubbish

Poems grow without shame,

How yellow dandelion at the fence,

Like burdocks and quinoa.

Angry shout, tar smell fresh,

Mysterious mold on the wall…

And the verse already sounds, perky, tender,

To the delight of you and me.

Imagine burdocks, quinoa and mold as poetic objects? In this poem, Akhmatova not only boldly pushed the boundaries of art, identifying the entire - without exception - surrounding world as objects of high poetry, but also made an important discovery, explaining to lovers of the poetic word that poems can “grow” from any observation, experience, state, feelings.

Types of verbal and artistic images in literature depend on what level, “floor” of the literary text they are at. These can be: sound images (assonance and dissonance, onomatopoeia, alliteration, etc.), verbal images (various types of metaphors, hyperbole and litotes, comparisons and likenings, epithets, etc.), images created at the syntactic level of the text (repetitions, exclamations, questions, inversions, etc.), images created at the level of the motif of a literary work, images of literary characters, images of nature (landscape), images of things (interior).

Artistic images are also distinguished by aesthetic tonality: tragic images, comic images, satirical images, lyrical images. In this case, one should keep in mind the ability of artistic images to grow and connect with other images.

It is generally accepted that images of people in a literary work have such properties as a combination of individual and typical traits, external design and psychological content. It is worth paying attention to such figurative means, used to create an image of a person, such as grotesque, irony, sarcasm. In the scientific literature there are attempts to arrange artistic images according to the principle of their universality: national, universal, social.

Art reflects the experience of many generations, but at the same time, each artist creates his own world. Literature is one of many types of art, but this special one is verbal art, and therefore literature stands apart from other types of art.

EAT. MELETINSKY

Archaeological material, which provides so much for the history of fine art, helps very little in studying the roots of verbal art.

Literary art, apparently, arose later than some other types of art, since its material, the primary element, is the word, speech. Of course, all arts could appear only after a person had mastered articulate speech, but for the emergence of verbal art, a high degree of development of language in its communicative function and the presence of rather complex grammatical and syntactic forms were required. Apparently, fine art appeared first. The first decorated wooden and bone objects (female figurines - Paleolithic “Venuses”) date back to approximately 25 thousand years BC. e. Classic monuments of European cave painting (images of animals in Aurignacian, Solutre and Madeleine) date back to 25-10 thousand years BC. e.

Fine art arose in the Upper Paleolithic (the last stage of the Old Stone Age), when man, by his constitution, was no longer different from the modern one, spoke, and knew the clan organization based on dual exogamy (division of a social group into two halves, within which marriage ties are prohibited) , made perfect tools from stone, bone and horn, and had primitive religious ideas. But people had already made less advanced tools in the Middle and Lower Paleolithic, at least 400 thousand years earlier.

In the process of labor, the hand was improved, which could now give natural material a utilitarian and expedient form, and then just as expediently use the object it made. The "intellectual" use of the hand (and eye) sharpened the abilities that made articulate speech and human thinking possible.

The development of mythology certainly contributed to the appearance of symbolic and fantastic images. There is almost no doubt that Paleolithic cave painting not only synthesized observations of animals - objects of hunting - and in this case represented a way of “mastering” them, but also had magical significance as a means of attracting and subduing hunting prey. This is indicated by images of animal spears stuck into the figures. Of course, the “revival” of rock paintings or drawings on the ground among Australians during rituals, aimed at stimulating the reproduction of a given animal species, has a magical character. Fine art was also widely used in more complex rituals, closely related to early religious beliefs. However, there could be (this is confirmed by the example of the same Australians) fine art that was not strictly associated with religious and magical purposes.

In the famous Cave of the Three Brothers there is an image of a disguised man with deer antlers dating back to the Madeleine era, that is, the heyday of Paleolithic painting in Europe. This and similar figures undoubtedly indicate the existence at that time of hunting dances, apparently already having a magical purpose. Dance - this living plasticity - is not only one of the most ancient forms of art, but a form that reached high perfection precisely in the primitive period.

If in the most ancient fine arts expressive figurative imagery was intertwined with ornamental motifs, then in dance the dynamic reproduction of hunting scenes, labor processes and some aspects of everyday life is necessarily subject to a strict rhythm, and the rhythm of movements has been supported by sound rhythm since time immemorial. Primitive music is almost inseparable from dance and has been subordinate to it for a long time.

At the primitive stage, the transformative role of art was often naively identified with a utilitarian goal, achieved not by labor, but by magic. A primitive magical ritual, as animistic and totemic ideas developed and became more complex, veneration of ancestors, master spirits, etc., grew into a religious cult.

The connection between dance and magical ritual, and then religious cult, turned out to be closer than that of fine art, since dance became the main factor in ritual performance.

Folk ritual games, including elements of dance, pantomime, music, partly fine art (and later poetry), in their syncretic unity became the embryo of theater. A specific feature of primitive theater is the use of masks, which genetically goes back to camouflage as a hunting technique (dressing in the skin of an animal in order to approach the object of the hunt without arousing suspicion). Putting on animal skins is common when performing the already mentioned hunting dances among North American Indians, some peoples of Africa, etc. Imitation of animal habits using animal masks and body painting was developed in totemic rituals associated with the corresponding idea of ​​​​the special kinship of a group of people (certain genera) with certain species of animals or plants, about their origin from common ancestors (who were usually depicted as creatures of half-human, half-animal nature).

The image of an animal (first an object of hunting, and then a revered totem) precedes the image of a person in the “theater” (as well as in rock painting). Human masks first appear in funeral and memorial rites in connection with the cult of ancestors (dead relatives).

The wedding ceremony of many nations has the features of a unique ritual-syncretistic action and distinct elements of theatricality. The same should be said about various calendar agrarian folk ritual games that depict the change of winter in spring or summer in the form of a struggle, a dispute between two forces, in the form of a “funeral” for a doll or actor, embodying the defeated, dying winter. More complex forms of calendar agrarian mysteries are associated with the cult of a dying and resurrecting god. Such are the ancient Egyptian cult mysteries about Osiris and Isis, the ancient Babylonian New Year celebrations in honor of Marduk, the ancient Greek mysteries in honor of the fertility gods Demeter and Dionysus. (These are, in essence, the genesis of the medieval Christian mysteries.)

The origin of the ancient theater is associated with the Dionysian mysteries.

In archaic forms of theater, the pantomimic element dominates the verbal text, in some cases a small verbal part is transferred to a special “actor” (this feature is still preserved in the traditional theater of Japan and Indonesia). The transformation of ritual and theatrical spectacle into drama occurs already in a historically developed society through a break from ritual and a much more intensive penetration of elements of verbal art, often with the help of writing.

Let's move directly to verbal art.

K. Bücher in the famous book “Work and Rhythm” 2, relying on an extensive collection of work songs of various peoples, hypothesized that “at the lower stages of development, work, music and poetry were something unified, but the main element of this trinity was work”; verse meter directly goes back to labor rhythms, and from labor song the main types of poetry gradually developed - epic, lyricism, drama. This hypothesis represents the connection between labor and poetry in a vulgar, one-sided way.

Outstanding Russian scientist AN. Veselovsky in his “Historical Poetics” saw the roots of not only dance, music, but also poetry in folk ritual. Primitive poetry, according to his concept, was originally a choir song accompanied by dancing and pantomime. In the song, the verbal element was naturally combined with the musical. Thus, poetry arose, as it were, in the depths of the primitive syncretism of the arts, united within the framework of folk ritual. The role of the word at first was insignificant and entirely subordinated to rhythmic and facial principles. The text was improvised on occasion until it finally acquired a traditional character.

A. N. Veselovsky proceeded from the primitive syncretism of not only types of art, but also types of poetry. “The epic and the lyrics seemed to us to be the consequences of the decay of the ancient ritual choir” 3. In his opinion, along with the separation of song from ritual, a differentiation of genders occurs, with epic being distinguished first, and then lyricism and drama. He considers the lyrical-epic character of its early forms to be the legacy of primitive syncretism in the epic. As for the lyrics, it grew out of the emotional cries of the ancient choir and short formulas of various contents as an expression of “collective emotionality”, “group subjectivism” and emerged from ritual syncretism, mainly from spring ritual games. Veselovsky associates the final emphasis on lyricism with a greater individualization of poetic consciousness than in the epic. He builds drama into a folk ritual that has already taken the form of a developed cult. Poetic creativity appears to him in its genesis as collective in the literal sense, that is, as choral. The poet ascends to the singer and, ultimately, to the lead singer of the ritual choir.

Analyzing the corresponding vocabulary, he proves the semantic similarity in the genesis of the concepts of song-tale-action-dance, as well as song-spell-fortune-ritual act.

Veselovsky traces some ancient features of the folk poetic style, for example, verse parallelism, to the ritual and choral roots of poetry, in particular to amoebic (i.e., with the participation of two half-choirs or two singers) performance. But “psychological parallelism” (the comparison of the phenomena of human mental life with the state of natural objects), in his opinion, is rooted in the primitive animistic worldview, which represents all nature as animate. To some features of the primitive worldview and way of life (animism, totemism, exogamy, matriarchy, patriarchy, etc.). Veselovsky constructs a number of typical narrative motifs and plots. His “Historical Poetics”, which arose on the basis of a generalization of the vast material accumulated by classical ethnography and folkloristics of the 19th century, represents the only consistent theory of its kind on the origin of verbal art.

However, the concept of A.N. Veselovsky in the light of the current state of science needs adjustments. Veselovsky very fully traced the role and evolution of the elements of verbal art in folk rituals, and correctly showed the gradual increase in the proportion of verbal text in ritual syncretism. However, the folk ritual, which played an exceptional role in the development of the dance-music-theater complex, cannot be considered as the only source of poetry.

The thesis about the complete original syncretic unity of epic, lyricism and drama is also an exaggeration.

Veselovsky's theory is most productive for understanding the origin of lyric poetry. Folklore lyrics are entirely songlike, and song by its very nature reflects the syncretism of music and poetry. A.N. Veselovsky and at the same time the famous French philologist Gaston Paris convincingly showed the connection between medieval knightly lyrics and the traditions of folk songs from the spring ritual cycle.

The epic in its genesis is much less closely connected with ritual syncretism. True, the song form characteristic of epic poetry probably ultimately goes back to the ritual chorus, but narrative folklore has been transmitted since ancient times both in the form of an oral prose tradition and in a mixed song-or poetic-prose form, with a specific weight in archaic there is more prose (and not less, as follows from the theory of primitive syncretism of types of art and types of poetry). This is explained by the fact that although the role of the word in primitive rituals is much less than the role of the mimic and rhythmic principles, even among the most “primitive” tribes, including the Australian ones, next to the ritual there is a developed tradition of prose storytelling, which ultimately does not go back to expressive, but to the purely communicative function of speech. In this narrative tradition, mythology occupies a huge place, which in no way can be completely removed from the boundaries of poetry.

Research on the origins and early stages of poetic creativity is extremely scarce.

M. Baur does not consider primitive song as the direct embryo of the epic. “Narrative poetry in the full sense of the word is absent among the primitives and its place is taken by drama”; “Song is not a normal means for telling myths. They are usually told in prose tales."

Indeed, acquaintance with examples of poetry of culturally backward tribes shows that this poetry is predominantly ritual and lyrical. There are such genres as healer healing spells; hunting songs; war songs; songs associated with agricultural magic and accompanying both the labor operations of the farmer and the corresponding spring ritual; funeral lamentations, songs of death; wedding and love songs; “disgraceful” songs, playful song squabbles; various songs that accompany dances and are one of the elements of complex ritual ceremonies; spells-prayer addressed to various spirits and gods.

Many songs have a magical purpose, for example, witchcraft spells, songs about the growth and reproduction of plants...

Ritual and lyric poetry are known only in song form, very often in combination with a theatrical and dramatic element. From the point of view of the sophistication of the stylistic structure, ritual poetry comes first, followed by the lyrical songs themselves. Songs can be very short, consisting of one word (for example, describing a particular animal) or two words (for example, the word "warrior" and the name of the warrior), but they can also be quite extensive.

In lyric poetry, in addition to parallelism, refrains and repetition, literal or with variations, are widely encountered. Metaphors are found in primitive poetry. They are also common in oratorical prose when describing the greatness of leaders or warriors. Some metaphors owe their origin to the taboo against mentioning death and illness. In ritual poetry, constant metaphorical formulas have developed.

The epic in its genesis is much less associated with ritual syncretism than lyrics. The classical epic monuments of European and Asian peoples are mostly poetic, but in more archaic epic monuments (for example, in the tales of the peoples of the Caucasus, in the heroic poems of the Turkic-Mongol peoples of Siberia, in the Irish epic, etc.) the proportion of prose is greater and is often found the so-called mixed form, i.e. a combination of prose and poetry. The verses mostly convey the speeches of the characters and solemn epic descriptions. Some stories have come down to us in both poetic and prose form. On the other hand, in fairy tales of various peoples there are often poetic inclusions that can be interpreted as a relic of the same mixed form.

If we turn directly to primitive folklore, we will be convinced that the stories here, as a rule, do not exist in the form of songs, but in the form of oral prose with poetic inserts...

Although the song form of the heroic epic probably ultimately goes back to the primitive ritual-lyrical song, narrative folklore has been transmitted since ancient times mainly as a prosaic or predominantly prosaic (mixed) tradition. The combination of prose and verse (song) in a mixed tradition is, of course, something completely different than a lyric-epic song in the understanding of A.N. Veselovsky.

The origin of verbal art cannot be studied only “from the outside,” in its relationship with ritual and other forms of existence. The internal aspect of this problem leads us to myth.

The close connection between myth and ritual in primitive and ancient Eastern cultures is beyond doubt; some myths actually directly went back to rituals (for example, myths about dying and resurrecting gods). However, there are myths that are clearly independent of ritual in their genesis and do not even have ritual equivalents. In rituals, fragments of myths that arose completely independently were often staged. It is known that, for example, among the Bushmen or some groups of American Indians, mythology is much richer than rituals. The same applies to Ancient Greece, as opposed to Egypt or Mesopotamia. The question of the relationship between myths and rituals in genetic terms is adequate to the “chicken-egg” problem (who from whom?!). Mythology refers not to the sphere of behavior, but to the sphere of thinking, which, of course, does not exclude the interdependence of these two spheres.

Ancient myths contain, in a still undeveloped unity, the germs of art, religion, and pre-scientific ideas about nature and society. Mythology undoubtedly was the “cradle” and “school” of poetic fantasy, and in many ways anticipated its specifics, although the complete identification of mythology and literature proposed by “ritual-mythological” literary studies (Bodkin, Fry, Chase, etc.) certainly cannot be accepted.

But only Lévi-Strauss was able to truly describe mythological thinking in terms of its generation of symbolic modeling systems and, unlike Lévy-Bruhl, show the intellectual ability of myth for classification and analysis, while explaining at the same time those of its specific features that bring it closer to art: thinking on a sensory level, thinking that achieves its goals in indirect ways (“bricolage”) and uses a kaleidoscopic rearrangement of a ready-made set of elements, purely metaphorical thinking - some myths turn out to be metaphorical (less often metonymic) transformations of others, conveying the same “message” in different “codes” ; transformations of mythological texts become a means of revealing symbolic (not allegorical) meaning.

The importance of mythology is very great in the development of various types of arts, in the very genesis of artistic and imaginative thinking, but, of course, mythological storytelling had a specific significance for the formation of verbal storytelling.

Narrative poetry, which has language and plot as its primary elements, has such relative independence to a minimal extent.

The specificity of a primitive myth lies in the fact that ideas about the structure of the world are conveyed in the form of a narrative about the origin of certain of its elements. At the same time, the events of mythical time from the life of the “first ancestors” appear as the final causes of the current state of the world. From the point of view of science, events and people are determined by the state of the world; from the point of view of myth, the state of the world is the result of individual events, the actions of individual mythical personalities. Thus, narration is included in the very specificity of primitive myth. Myth is not only a worldview, but also a narrative. Hence the special importance of myth for the formation of verbal art, primarily narrative.