Definition of the genre of epics. Features of the historicism of epics

Among the infinitely diverse works of Russian folk art (folklore), one of the most prominent and honorable places belongs to ancient epic songs, called “starinas” or “starinki” by peasant storytellers, and in science known as “epics”. The term “epic” is artificial, introduced into scientific use in the 30s of the 19th century. amateur scientist I.P. Sakharov based on the well-known expression from “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” - “epics of this time.”

The significance of epics in the history of Russian national culture is extremely great. These ancient songs very clearly and fully reflected the most diverse aspects of the historical and everyday life of the Russian people; they are wonderful monuments of original folk art. The epics amaze with the richness of narrative plots and motifs, the generalizing power and monumentality of artistic images that embodied the heroic features of the Russian people, their dreams and aspirations, the precision of poetic forms developed by many generations of folk singers, the richness and expressiveness of the folk language.

The monumentality of epic images and the entire poetic value of Russian epics make them not only national Russian pride, but also rightfully place them among such famous works of epic of other peoples as the Greek “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, the French “Song of Roland”, the German “The Song of the Nibelungs”, the Scandinavian “Sagas”, as well as, although processed by individual writers, but based on ancient traditional folk songs, the Iranian “Shahname” by Ferdowsi, the Georgian poem “The Knight in the Tiger Skin” by Rustaveli, the Karelian “Kalevala”.

It was not without reason that Russian epics attracted the attention of not only scientific researchers (Russian and foreign), but also great poets, musicians and artists, providing many incentives for their creativity. The epics, familiar to Pushkin from the collection of Kirsha Danilov, as has now been sufficiently proven, greatly contributed to the saturation of Pushkin's poetry with images and poetic riches of folk speech. The epics inspired Rimsky-Korsakov to create the famous opera “Sadko”. Vasnetsov took the images of “Three Heroes” from epics. Epic stories are destined to inspire poets, musicians, and artists in our time and in the future.

There are about a hundred epic stories in Russian epic. Records of epic texts have accumulated about two thousand. Despite the fact that many of the epics date back to very ancient times in origin, recordings of Russian epic poetry began to be made relatively late. The oldest records date from the 17th century; the most ancient of those that have come down to us date back to 1619-1620. During these years, several historical songs were recorded for the Englishman Richard James, who came to Russia, telling about the events of the late 16th - early 17th centuries.1

From the 17th and 18th centuries. In science, only 24 records of epics are known - only five of them can be attributed to the 17th century.2 Old records set out seven different epic plots. The epic about Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber is especially common in them. These recordings of epics were made not for scientific purposes, but for the purpose of entertaining reading. It is not for nothing that in their titles they have characteristics characteristic of book literature of the 17th-18th centuries. titles: “word”, “legend”, “history”, for example, “The Legend of the Kyiv heroes, how they went to Constantinople.”

From the middle of the 18th century. The famous collection of epics compiled by the Cossack Kirsha Danilov for the Ural rich man Demidov has reached us. It contains over 70 texts.
The first (incomplete) edition of this collection was published in 1804; it was published more scientifically and fully in 1818 under the title “Ancient Russian Poems.” A completely scientific edition of this collection dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. (1901 edition edited by P.N. Sheffer).

In the first half of the 19th century. epics were collected in different places in Russia and sent to the famous connoisseur and collector of folklore P.V. Kireyevsky; They were published in ten editions of “Songs collected by Kireevsky” after his death - in 1862-1874.

Much work on collecting Russian epic epics was done in the 60-70s of the 19th century. From this time, two large and valuable collections of epics have reached us: 1) “Songs collected by P.N. Rybnikov" (1861-1867), 2) "Onega epics" by A.F. Hilferding (1873). Rybnikov recorded 224 texts of epics in the Onega region, and a few years later Hilferding recorded 318 texts in the same region.

Throughout the second half of the 19th century. Partial recordings of epics were made in other regions of the European part of Russia and in Siberia. These recordings were subsequently combined in two collections: “Epics of the Old and New Recordings” II.S. Tikhonravov and V.F. Miller, M., 1894 (85 issues), and “Epics of the New and Newest Record” by V.F. Miller, M., 1908 (108 issues).

At the very turn of the 20th century. work on collecting epic epics advanced to remote areas of the north of European Russia, where new epic riches were discovered. In 1901, a large collection “White Sea epics” (116 issues) was published, which was the result of recordings made by A.V. Markov on the coast of the White Sea1. After this A.D. Grigoriev published a collection of “Arkhangelsk epics”, vol. I, Moscow, 1904, and vol. III, Moscow, 1910 (424 issues in total), recorded in Pomorie and on the Mezen and Pinega rivers2. In 1904, a collection of “Pechora epics” (101 issues), recorded by N.E., was published in St. Petersburg. Onchukov on the Pechora River.

These collections, in terms of recording technology and the principle of publication, stood at the height of the scientific requirements of that time; Basically they follow the rules established by Hilferding.
Partial recordings of epics were also made in other places. In the Belozersky region, B. and Yu. Sokolov recorded 28 numbers of epics; in the Saratov region (M. Sokolov, B. Sokolov, etc.) 24 numbers were recorded. In Siberia V.G. Tan-Bogoraz and others recorded 27 numbers. Quite a significant amount of epic material in original variations, different from the northern texts, was recorded at the beginning of the 20th century. among the Don, Terek, Ural, Orenburg Cossacks (records of Listopadov, Arefin, Zheleznov, Myakushin, etc.)

After the Great October Socialist Revolution, collecting work in the field of Russian epic expanded even more widely and, most importantly, took a new direction in the USSR. Despite all the value of the work of pre-revolutionary collectors, their activity suffered from the greater drawback that in the process of their work they provided information only about the statics of the epic and did not collect sufficient materials to judge changes in the epic of a certain area.

A significant role in the study of Russian epic in the post-October years was played by the three-year scientific expedition of Moscow folklorists to the north, carried out under the leadership of B. and Yu. Sokolov in 1926-1928.2

According to a long-conceived plan, this expedition studied in detail the current state of the epic epic in various areas of the former Olonets and Vologda provinces. (Zaonezhye, Pudozh coast, Vodlozero, Kenozero), having visited exactly those places where, several decades earlier, epics were recorded by Rybnikov and Hilferding.

This expedition “In the footsteps of Rybnikov and Hilferding” recorded 370 epic texts and made a number of important observations on the state of the epic tradition among three or four generations of storytellers, and established the nature of the changes taking place in epic creativity over the past sixty years.

Much work on collecting epics in the north of the RSFSR in the post-October years was carried out by Leningrad folklorists, especially A.M. Astakhova.

Observations on the geographical distribution of epics show that the main custodian of the epic epic is the distant North of the RSFSR - the former Arkhangelsk province (the present Arkhangelsk region) - the coast of the White Sea, the basin of the Mezen, Pinega, Pechora rivers; the former Olonets province (part of Karelia) - mainly islands and the coast of Lake Onega. As observations made in the 19th and early 20th centuries show, epics were partially preserved in a number of other regions and territories. Many epics were recorded in Siberia, there are records from the Middle and Lower Volga region (Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Simbirsk, Samara provinces) and from the central Russian provinces: Novgorod, Vladimir, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Smolensk, Kaluga, Tula, Oryol, Voronezh, etc. Bylinas were preserved for a long time and steadily in the Russian Cossack regions on the Don, Terek and the Urals.

In Ukraine, epics were not written down in the true sense.

In Belarus they were recorded in very small numbers and in a greatly modified form. But the existence of similar plots in fairy tales and songs, the presence of the names of a number of epic heroes in Ukrainian and Belarusian folklore, the mention of the same names in some written monuments (for example, in a letter from the headman of Orsha Kmita Chernobylsky, 1574) and other indirect evidence suggests that epics in ancient times were known to a much wider extent than those in which they were preserved in the 19th and 20th centuries.

But why did epics survive over the past two and a half centuries only in a relatively narrow strip of Russian territory, mainly in the far north of European Russia, while in other areas they either completely disappeared or were preserved in fragmentary and meager remnants? The reasons for this must be sought in the special historical conditions of life of the peasantry of the Northern Territory.

In the 16th-18th centuries, when epic creativity, we believe, was widespread among the Russian population of the entire country, the Northern Territory was one of the very lively regions.

From the middle of the 16th century. until the first decades of the 18th century. The North, with its rivers and lakes, was a vibrant transit route connecting the center of the Russian state with abroad.
The trade route, which was busy at that time, attracted many people: summer traffic on boats and barges with the transshipment of goods on portages and at estuaries, horse-drawn traffic along frozen rivers in winter required a large number of loaders, carriers, barge haulers, shipmen, etc. The northern region lived a noisy life, being connected with the entire culture of the trading and administrative centers of Moscow and Novgorod Rus'.

This was reflected in the artistic culture of the peasant north; wonderful peasant huts with fine elegant carvings, ancient wooden hipped and multi-domed temples, for example the famous twenty-two-domed Kizhi Cathedral of Trans-Onezhye, amazingly beautiful brocade and silk outfits and pearl headdresses of northern peasant women, various world-famous embroideries of towels, tablecloths and pants - all this testifies to the intensity and height of the artistic culture of the peasant North in ancient times.

From the beginning of the 18th century. The fate of the region changed dramatically. With the conquest of the Baltic states (during the time of Peter I), the northern trade route quickly began to fade away, the region gradually began to fade away, and the rich artistic antiquity seemed to be mothballed.

Isolation from cultural centers and a weak influx of trends of the new culture contributed to the fact that the peasantry of the North held on to the traditions of antiquity more tightly than in other regions for more than two centuries. The preservation of this antiquity was facilitated by the characteristics of northern nature and primitive forms of agriculture. The northern land covered with stones and forest, requiring enormous labor from the tiller, still did not give him the opportunity to feed himself. The northern peasant was usually forced to turn to additional income: fishing, hunting, cutting and rafting of timber. The vagaries of the weather, which often force fishermen to wait out storms and bad weather for a long time, the work of weaving nets for many weeks and sometimes months with family and neighbors, the gang life of lumberjacks with long winter evenings in forest dugouts - all this should have been conducive to rendering and listening to long and epically calm “oldies.”

Of great importance for folk art in the North was the fact that the northern peasantry experienced less oppression of serfdom and had greater independence and independence than the peasantry of the central and black earth regions, which experienced the full brunt of serfdom.

The North turned out to be - due to the historical and natural conditions we have indicated - a living custodian of artistic antiquity. Old folk poetry, lost in many of its manifestations in the center and south of Russia, was preserved in its living forms in the North, and thanks to the memory and creative work of northern storytellers, we were able to judge the poetic creations of antiquity, creations that so vividly reflected all the diversity centuries-old life of the Russian people.

Who brought to the far north the ancient epics that tell us about the southern steppes, and about the Dnieper, about Kyiv, about Galich-Volynsky, Veliky Novgorod, Ryazan and Moscow? As we said, the North attracted the masses from all ends and edges of Ancient Rus'. Shipmen, barge haulers, and carters went to the North, masons and carpenters - builders of temples and decorated huts, and bogomaz-artists - painters (remember the wonderful frescoes of the Ferapontov and Kirillovsky monasteries) came here, and word artists - creators of monuments of folk verbal art - came here.

Bylinas, these songs, very diverse in their historical content, penetrated the North through medieval folk poets and musicians, the so-called buffoons and bahari, similar to the French jugglers, German shpilmans, Caucasian ashugs, Central Asian bakhshis, akyns.

Skomorokhs, “vagrants,” or “passers-by,” were traveling artists of the Russian Middle Ages who performed singing and playing in city squares and village streets. They were carriers of folk art, who sometimes introduced into their work a very noticeable element of social satire and protest against the ruling classes. This explains the centuries-old hatred of buffoons and their art on the part of the church. This hatred reached its apogee during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Relying on secular power, church obscurantism carried out its cruel reprisals against buffoons. Their wonderful musical instruments, abusively called “demonic vessels” by the clergy, were taken away and burned, and the buffoons themselves were caught and sent to distant “Ukraines.” But there these wonderful folk artists and poets received full opportunity to freely develop their art, finding grateful listeners and followers among the local population. Many of them settled down and completely merged with the northern peasantry, while others continued their professional artistic work.

As spokesmen for the interests of the working masses, buffoons in their works sometimes expressed a very sharp protest against the persecution of folk art by the church and the tsarist government.

In many epics, in counterbalance to the desire of spiritual preachers and tsarist officials to discredit the buffoonery art in the eyes of the people, buffoons lovingly depicted images of “daring buffoons”, “cheerful people”, “glorious goose people”.

According to the epics, an ambivalent attitude towards buffoons on the part of the ruling classes of Ancient Rus' is clearly established. Under the influence of the church, as well as from class motives, the boyars, grand dukes and royal circles could not help but be suspicious and hostile to the democratic art of buffoons. But, on the other hand, the art of folk singers, musicians and artists was so tempting that buffoons were allowed into the royal and grand ducal chambers, into the boyars' and merchants' mansions. True, the people's artist was always given the very last place.

Here the daring buffoon says:
Oh dear, darling Vladimir Stolno-Kyiv,
Where is our Skomorokhovo place?
Vladimir Stolno-Kyiv answers him:
Your place is Skomorokhov’s. Something on the stove and in the oven1.

Buffoons, in their protest against the persecution of them by the church and autocracy, did not limit themselves to satirical attacks against princes, boyars and priests, but also created entire works exalting and glorifying the art of buffoons.
The image of the Novgorod guselytsik Sadko, sad due to temporary unemployment, is depicted with exceptional sympathy:

Oh, what happened here on Sadkom now,
They haven’t called Sadka all day long and there’s a feast of honors,
Oh, they don’t call like another day to an honorable feast,
Oh, for the third day they haven’t invited me to an honorable feast.
Oh, how sad Sadku is now,
Ay, Sadko went to Ilmen and he went to the lake,
Oh, he sat down on a blue stone,
Oh, how he began to play the harp in the spring,
And I played from morning like day now until evening2.

As you know, the epic says that Sadko managed to enchant the sea king himself with his playing.

An absolutely exceptional apology for the folk buffoonery art is the unique epic about Babylon the buffoon, written down by the wonderful northern storyteller Maria Dmitrievna Krivopolenova, a direct heir to the buffoonery art. In this epic, buffoons are depicted as holy people who perform true miracles with their art. It’s not without reason that those meeting the buffoons had to admit:

These people were not ordinary people,
Not ordinary people - those saints...1

The epic tells that “cheerful people, buffoons”, raised to the position of saints, went to the “inish kingdom” to “outplay the dog king” and not only achieved their goal by “outplaying” the king, but also destroyed his kingdom, placing a peasant on the throne - buffoon Vavilu. The main anti-government meaning of this epic, clearly emphasizing the popular democratic tendencies of buffoonery art, is clear. It is quite clear that the art of buffoons was deeply accepted and developed by the northern peasantry, who brought forward from their midst bright and talented heirs and continuers of the skill of medieval folk artists of the word.

The production of epics among the northern peasantry, however, is not a common property: it always requires special artistic talent and training. In the North, epics are performed by “storytellers,” for whom the performance of epics for the most part does not serve as a professional occupation related to obtaining food, as was previously the case with buffoons. It is known, however, that storytellers who were not professionals at all were sometimes specially invited to participate - precisely as storytellers - in certain northern crafts, for example, fishing or forestry; Moreover, the storyteller, who went fishing or to work cutting down forests, received payment on an equal basis with other members of fishing and forestry artels, and sometimes even more. Often among the storytellers there were people engaged in tailoring, shoemaking or fulling, since these occupations, by their very nature, contributed to the production of long, slowly sung epics.
To memorize and perform epics, but the recognition of the northern peasantry itself, requires the possession of a “special talent,” and some storytellers are highly respected by the population.

Good storytellers treat the performance of their epics with serious attention. They deeply understand the content of epics, sensitively observe their “rituality”, i.e. the inherent features of poetic form in epics. Despite the fact that they pay great attention to preserving the texts adopted from their teachers, each storyteller always displays his own special creative individual manner of constructing the epic, and often significant changes in its content and form. This is explained by the fact that the performance of epics is never a mechanical reproduction of a hardened text, but is always an independent act of artistic creativity. When adopting an epic, the storyteller, according to researchers, never learns it by heart. He fills it with descriptions or narratives usual for the epic epic, the so-called “commonplaces”, constant epithets and comparisons and other traditional features of epic poetics.

A true master storyteller should be considered not the one who mechanically memorizes huge texts, but the one who perfectly masters the art of rendering epics. A good storyteller is, first of all, a good connoisseur of traditional epic poetics. He knows the structural features of the epic. For him, the epic consists of a “start”, “beginning”, the main narrative part of the epic and the “outcome” or conclusion.

The chant in the epic performs a certain artistic function: usually without a direct connection in its content with the epic being narrated, it strives with its melody, rhythm, and unexpected poetic way to attract the attention of listeners to the performance of the epic. The famous “single” in the epic about Solovy Budimirovich, used by Rimsky-Korsakov for the opera “Sadko”, is typical:

Is it the height, the height of heaven,
Depth, depth Ocean-sea,
Wide expanse throughout the land,
The Dnieper pools are deep.

This poetic chorus, creating an idea of ​​vast, boundless expanses, in combination with a major melody, can immediately arouse a keen interest in the listeners in the epic and dispose them to listen to a long epic narrative. There are also choruses of a different nature, clearly reflecting the wandering lifestyle of the medieval composers of epics, their experience, their cheerful profession. Such chants list the various areas that the performers of the epics had to visit during their wanderings. These choruses usually contain playful mockery or playful satire of various cities, villages and their inhabitants. For example, this is the chant:

Oh, the clean fields were near Opskov,
And the expanse to Kyiv is wide,
And the high mountains of Sorochinsky,
And a church building in stone Moscow,
Bells are ringing in Nove Gorod,
Ay, grated Valdai rolls,
Oh, you are fine, you are dandy in the city of Yaroslav,
Cheap kisses in Belozerskaya side.
And the drinks in St. Petersburg are sweet,
And mosses swamps to the blue sea,
And the hems of the Pudozhanka are wide,
Ay sundresses are tanned along the Onega river,
Fat-bellied women Leshmozsrochki,
Oh, goggle-eyed women Poshezerochki,
Ai Danube, Danube, Danube,
Yes, you don’t know how to sing forward anymore.

Some “outcomes” also have the same buffoonish quality. They sometimes contain hints of rewards and treats for performing epics. And in the “outcomes” composed among peasant storytellers and fishermen, the motive of a spell is often heard, based on faith in the power of the poetic word and chant over nature itself. Sometimes both of these types of “outcomes” are combined into one general formula:

Now the old days, now the deed,
As if to soothe the blue sea,
And glory to the fast rivers to the sea,
As if to obedience good people,
Well done to the young guys,
Also for us, cheerful fellows, for some notes,
Sitting in humble conversation,
Drinking honey, green wine.

Somewhere we drink beer, and here we pay honor to that great boyar and our affectionate master2.
The opening line in a well-composed epic does not follow the opening line. The beginning is again a traditional form that gives rise to the narrative. In epics, heroic beginnings often consist of descriptions of a feast at Prince Vladimir. The plot of the action, in a number of epics, is already given by the very beginning: the boast of a hero at a feast or the task that Prince Vladimir gives to the heroes is the starting point of the action that makes up the content of the entire epic.

Here is a typical formula for the beginning with a description of the princely feast:

Like in that glorious city of Kyiv,
Like the affectionate prince Vladimir, a feast began, a feast of honors.
And everyone at the feast got drunk,
And everyone honestly ate their fill,
And to be honest, everyone boasted too much1.
The description of boasting in the expanded formula is given as follows:
How everyone got drunk at the feast,
How everyone ate their fill at the feast,
Everyone boasted with praises.
Who boasts of what, who boasts of what:
Another boasts of countless golden treasuries,
Another boasts of his strength and good luck,
Another boasts of a good horse,
Another boasts of his glorious fatherland,
Other young youth,
He brags about how smart and sensible he is about his old father and old mother,
And the crazy fool brags about his young wife2.

As for the narrative itself, the experienced storyteller strives to strictly adhere to the traditional technique of repeating each episode three times. At the same time, repetitions are often not completely identical, but slight variations are allowed, which gives greater liveliness to the story.

Most storytellers use traditional formulas in the narration, and not only in the openings, beginnings and endings. For each typical episode found in different epics, each storyteller has his own poetic formula, molded into a more or less finished form. This is the formula for saddling a horse or a formula that represents a description of the arrival of a hero at the princely court and his arrival in the princely chambers. The same type of formula for the story about the hero’s choice of horse and weapon, about equipment for the journey, about the collision with the enemy in the field, etc.

In full agreement with the traditional beginnings, typical formulas and endings, other stylistic and compositional techniques of epics also stand.

This includes an abundance of all kinds of repetitions. Epic poetics is not embarrassed by the literal or almost literal repetition of entire motifs or episodes of epics, significant in size, creating slowness of the narrative, the so-called retardation. For example, the orders of the prince to the ambassador are repeated with literal accuracy when the ambassador presents this order to the foreign king. Triple repetitions of episodes are especially popular, although with some tendency to increase. The same principle of repetition makes itself clearly felt in the verbal style of epics. These are simple repetitions of words (“Wonderful is wonderful”, “Wonderful is wonderful”, “from the forest there was a dark forest”), repetition of prepositions, repetition of the same word in two or more consecutive verses (“Whether it’s the overseas sable, Overseas eared sable, Eared sable, fluffy"), repetition by negating the opposite (“And I go single, I walk unmarried,” “That’s no small matter, it’s great”), the use of synonyms (“Without fighting, without fighting, bloodshed,” “ You don’t know, you don’t know”), the connection of etymologically related words (“Small streams forded, deep rivers floated”, “Rain will rain”, “I will serve a distant service”), this also includes the increase in number in each new verse: “There straighten the tributes, the yields, for twelve years, and for thirteen years, for thirteen years and and a half.”

The well-established traditional techniques of the epic style also include the so-called permanent epithets attached to various objects: white (birch tree, chest, day, gyrfalcon, swan, ermine, hand, light, snow, tent), high (table, room, gate, etc. .), red (sun, gold), gray (wolf, goose, drake), wide (yard, steppe, road, share, expanse), heroic (voice, horse, horse, strength, sleep, prey). Many of these epithets give an idea of ​​the aesthetic tastes and preferences of Russian epics. Most of the constant epithets are applied to only one or two words: a clean field, a blue sea, small pearls, a walking cloud, rich guests, a tight bow, etc. Epithets often give important indications of historical relationships (glorious, rich Volyn-city, filthy Tatar, Lithuania is good, the Cherkassy saddle), historical and everyday (golden-domed mansion, gateways - the fish's tooth is dear, the stove is ant) ​​and social features (Vladimir Stolno-Kievsky, the old Cossack Ilya Muromets, Duma boyars) of previous periods in the life of Russian epics.

In the Russian epic epic comparisons are quite common, such as, for example, “Again, day after day, as if it were raining, Week after week, as the grass grows, And year after year, as the river flows.” Or in the epic about the Idol: “Eyes are like cups, Hands are like rakes”; There are even more similarities (“Vladimir is the red sun”, “The eyebrows are black of sable”).
Parallelisms are also common in epics, especially negative ones, for example: “It’s not clear that a falcon flew out here, It wasn’t a black raven that fluttered out here, An evil Tatar cap came out here.”

The traditional nature of the epic style led in some cases to insensitivity to the meaning of certain expressions, words and phrases. This should, for example, include “fossilized” epithets, i.e. such epithets, which, when used out of habit, sometimes turn out to be out of place in epics. For example, Prince Vladimir is called “affectionate” even when, according to the action of the epic, he, on the contrary, is very unkind, Tsar Kalin calls his subordinate Tatar “filthy”, and the Tatar, conveying a menacing order to Prince Vladimir on behalf of his master, calls the latter “dog” "Kalin the Tsar."

Much less developed than the external technique and stylistics of epics are questions about the techniques of epic composition. Both in the very architectonics of the internal composition of epics, and in the forms of epic action, epics are far from homogeneous. First of all, in these respects, heroic epics will differ from epic short stories, as they were long ago V.F. Miller differentiated by content. In heroic epics, the movement is distinguished by centripetal movement towards the main character - the hero. It does not always go straight, but very often with sudden shifts in the opposite direction. A favorite technique of the heroic epic is the technique of antithesis. (Ilya, despite the warning sign at the crossroads of three roads, follows them and with his actions refutes these warnings; Dobrynya does not listen to his mother’s instructions and bathes in the Puchai River, etc.)

Similar to the technique of antithesis in the development of action in heroic epics, we see the same technique of contrast in the organization of the image of epic heroes. At the beginning of the epic, the hero is underestimated, then he is discredited, the enemy seems more significant than him, stronger, then all this is immediately refuted by the subsequent and especially the final moment of the heroic epic (the hero alone deals with a hostile force of many thousands). For example, such couples as Ilya and Idolishche, Potanya and Kostryuk, Dobrynya and the Serpent, etc. are depicted in contrast.

The depiction of heroes is extremely characterized by various forms of hyperbolization of both the appearance of epic heroes and their attributes, as well as their actions and exploits.

Epic short stories (Churila and Katerina, Alyosha and Dobrynya, Khoten Bludovich, etc.), in contrast to heroic epics, include significantly more elements of purely dramatic action. Various forms of dialogue play a significant role in the poetics of epics, and in heroic military epics, dialogue or direct speech in general is less common than in short story epics, for which the dialogic form of presentation is largely a formal sign of a special epic genre. Dialogue performs an essential dynamic function in the structure of epics; it largely drives the action in epics.
With regard to sound recording, epics began to be subjected to scientific analysis only relatively recently. This is the case, for example, with rhyme in epics.

If previously it was generally accepted that epic verse is unrhymed, “blank” verse, now, according to new research (V.M. Zhirmunsky), on the contrary, final rhyme is given an undoubted role in the metric structure of epics. True, in most cases this epic rhyme is an involuntary consequence of the rhythmic-syntactic parallelism of neighboring verses or hemistiches, characteristic of the epic, and therefore it is dominated by consonances of morphologically identical endings (suffix or inflection), for example (you cheat - you mock, eat - ruin, table - oak ). In addition, our usual idea of ​​rhyme in epic verse is complicated by the fact that in this verse, when chanting, every last syllable must be stressed, regardless of the phonetic stress of this syllable (F.E. Korsh).

From this point of view, in the epic the following words will be rhymed: according to the sun, according to the month; Nikitinich, Ivanovich. However, the usual rhymed consonance in the epic extends to the third syllable from the end, acquiring the character of a dactylic rhyme with metric aggravation on the last syllable (nightingale - animal), quite frequent final consonances in the epic have the character of deep rhymes due to the parallelism of the sentences (thoughtful - overheard). As can be seen from the last example, for the epic rhyme the discrepancy between the consonants between the stressed vowel of the third syllable and the ending is not important (cf. jump - wave; good-broy - maple). In general, in epics, inaccurate rhymes, approximate rhymes, or even simple assonances predominate for the most part, so it is better to talk not about rhymes in epics, but about “rhymes” (V.M. Zhirmunsky).

Nevertheless, these final consonances give some character to the division of epic verses into uneven and inconsistent compositional rhyme-syntactic units (not stanzas, but “stanza we*”). Usually, a rhyme in an epic connects two or three verses following each other (“And the ratai is yelling in the field, urging, And the ratai’s bipod is creaking, Yes, but they scratch the pebbles”).

Sometimes more extensive strophic combinations with one rhyme are found, usually at the end of the epic or at the spectacular peaks of the action. For the most part, in epics, the sequential combination of verses with different rhymes takes the form aa - vv - sssh; here x denotes the final unrhymed verse that encloses such a stropheme. According to a rough estimate, the epic contains about a third of the verses in one form or another, connected by a rhyme “rhyme”. The qualitative and quantitative difference in their use often depends on the artistic manner and skills of individual storytellers.

In addition to the ending rhymes in the epic verse, there are frequent initial and middle rhymes (based on the same rhythmic-syntactic parallelism): “Hiss the snakes in a snake’s way, Charm the beast in a Turin way,” as well as rhyming hemistiches and “picking up” the second hemistich at the beginning of the next verse (“ And whoever stands standing also sits while sitting, and whoever sits while sitting also lies down.” In general, we personally tend to attach more importance in epic verse than to end rhymes to other types and techniques of sound writing, such as the various types of assonance, alliteration and sound repetitions that often organize entire periods of epics. For example, the above chant is based on these techniques: “Oh, the pure fields were to Op-skov, Oh, the wide expanse was to Kyiv,” etc.

In this chorus, the remarkable properties of each area are selected not according to one semantic principle, but also according to their sound attraction. Examples of constructing entire epic verses through alliteration are quite frequent (cf. “They led Ilya across an open field, And with linen sheets, They led him to a linen tent, They brought him to the dog Tsar Kalin”). We also tend to attach considerable importance to sound attraction in the formation of permanent epithets (cf. “Fiercely sucker, high exits, drunken beer”, etc.); a huge number of constant epithets, in our opinion, formed the mutual attraction of smooth consonants ril (cheese earth, red-hot arrow, damask stirrup, etc.)1.

Epic versification was developed by the famous scientist F.E. Court. Korsh considers the rhythmic structure of the epic verse in connection with the melody of the epic. The epic verse is characterized by the presence of four dominant stresses, of which the last represents the above-mentioned metrical aggravation, and when the epic is chanted, it is often accompanied by musical stretching (longitude). In an epic verse, the musical stress can be not only the stress of a word, but also the stress of an entire phrase group (good fellow, gold horde, bird with a bunch).

For epic verse, the number of unstressed syllables in a verse is unimportant. The number of syllables sometimes reaches 14 or 15, but a verse with 8 syllables is also often found. The caesura of an epic verse can be very flexible: it can be feminine (The Grand Duke had a party), masculine (And honest widows sat at the feast) and dactylic (And Dobrynina’s mother sat here) and, as can be seen from the last example, does not require a logical stop .

Epic tunes, as well as plots and style, have undergone a long series of changes. The epic has several types of chant. Of these, two tunes stand out: calm, even stately, and fast, cheerful - buffoonish. The epics are performed slowly, evenly, with rare changes in tempo. The heavy monotony of the melody not only does not distract attention from the content of the epic by any musical effects, but on the contrary, it calms the listener, being extremely in harmony with the calm, measured presentation of events from distant times.
In general, these compositional techniques, combined with triple or multiple repetitions, with stable, so-called constant epithets, with images forged over centuries, with a slow melody, give the epic epic a kind of poetic integrity, monumentality, and majesty.

Within the confines of this traditional poetics, however, scope opens up for the individual creative initiative of talented storytellers. The ability to compose an epic compositionally, in combining descriptive elements of traditional poetics, its poetic formulas, and in the predilection for individual of them, depending on one’s own tastes, expresses the unique poetic manner of each performer of the epic - the storyteller.

The creative individuality of each storyteller is manifested very clearly in the selection of his repertoire, and in the unique interpretation of the image of the epic hero, and sometimes in the change of certain details in the content and in poetics1.

The dependence of epics on the worldview and spiritual makeup of the storytellers is expressed in a wide variety of directions. When performed by a devout storyteller, the heroes of his epic become devout themselves, bowing and making crosses all the time. A storyteller who loves to read books involuntarily imbues the text of epics with bookish figures of speech or individual words taken from literature. An example of such a performer is the White Sea storyteller Agrafena Matveevna Kryukova, from whom the collector A.V. recorded epics. Markov.

The individual characteristics of the storytellers also explain some of the details of the epic text. It is completely understandable why one of the storytellers, a tailor by profession, has the head of the filthy Idolis “fly off like a button” from a blow from Ilya Muromets.

To render epics, great sensitivity was required. Usually the epic was “understood” in youth, although it was rarely performed publicly by people under forty years of age. For example,

one of the best storytellers from whom epics were recorded in 1926, the deep old man Myakishev, said that he well remembers the arrival of the collector A.F. to his village. Hilferding in 1871. In response to the question asked to the narrator, why didn’t he sing A.F. To Hilferding the epics, Myakishev replied that at that time he was still very young and although he knew the epics, the idea of ​​​​performing his epics could not even occur to him when there were old famous storytellers around, from whom he learned his art.
The rendering of epics is predominantly the work of “sedate” people (usually sixty, seventy, and sometimes even ninety and one hundred years old). The best storytellers have remarkable memories and often know tens of thousands of poems. These are

M.S. Kryukov from the White Sea or G. A. Yakushev from Lake Onega. There was a custom of passing on the art of telling epics from father to son. An example of such a family tradition can be the famous family of storytellers of the Onega region, the Ryabinins, whose art of telling epics can be traced back to the 18th century. to the present day.

The first famous classic storyteller from this family known to us was Trofim Grigorievich Ryabinin, from whom Rybnikov and Hilferding recorded twenty-three epic stories. This is how P.N. describes Rybnikov his meeting with T.G. Ryabinin: “An old man of medium height, strong build, with a small gray beard and yellow hair stepped across the threshold of the hut. In his stern look, posture and bow, gait and in his entire appearance, calm strength and restraint were noticeable at first glance.”1 Talking about how he sings, Rybnikov wrote: “The melody of the epics was rather monotonous, Ryabinin’s voice, by the grace of his six and a half decades, was not very ringing, but his amazing ability to speak gave special meaning to each verse. More than once I had to put down my pen, and I eagerly listened to the flow of the story, then asked Ryabinin to repeat the chorus, and he reluctantly began to fulfill my omissions. And where did Ryabinin learn such masterful diction! Every object appeared in his real light, every word had its own meaning!”1

This storyteller passed on his art to his son Ivan Trofimovich, an equally famous master of the tale. The fame of his art spread throughout Russia. After the death of his father, he performed in the 90s with epics in many cities, and he was even taken abroad. An eyewitness2 describes the creative method of this wonderful storyteller in these words: “When I/G. sings his epics, usually teaching them to his children while at work - at these moments one can feel the manifestation of personal creativity in him very clearly. Retaining in most cases only the general content of the epic that was once remembered, the singer uses various ready-made poetic pictures and expressions, creates new ones, thickens the colors in one place, and in another omits two or three details, sometimes forgotten, and sometimes not worthy of sympathy or attention. , and harmoniously, beautifully the old song unfolds before the listener in a new way.”

I.T. Ryabinin did not like it when, during his numerous speeches in schools, one of the teachers demanded that he omit one or another “obscene” verse in the epic.
“How can I not sing? Are there any words you'd like to remove from the song? That's why she's old, because just as the old people sang, we need to sing too. You know, it wasn’t made by us, and it won’t end by us.”
He also did not recognize the execution of epics not completely, but in parts, fragments: “Or maybe the best words will come out just at the end,” he said.

From Ivan Trofimovich, his stepson, Ivan Gerasimovich Ryabinin-Andreev, who performed in the pre-revolutionary years in St. Petersburg, took over the art of rendering epics, and, finally, the representative of the last generation of storytellers in the Ryabinin family is the son of Ivan Gerasimovich, a young peasant collective farmer who now lives in the homeland of the Ryabinins , in the village of Gar-nitsakh, Kizhi district, on Lake Onega, - Pyotr Ivanovich Ryabinin-Andreev. His work reveals a wonderful family tradition passed down from generation to generation. However, observation of the epic repertoire of storytellers from the same family over four generations leads to certain conclusions about the gradual extinction of epic creativity. With each new generation, the number of epics performed decreases. So, for example, twenty-three stories were recorded from Trofim Grigorievich (although it is very possible that he knew even more), while the modern storyteller P.I. Ryabinin-Andreev knows only eight plots.

There is undoubtedly a loss of poetic rendering techniques. Modern storytellers forget and lose various musical motifs, and if T.G. and I.T. The Ryabi-nins performed their epics to several (up to ten) different motives, but the great-grandson of all the epics sings only to two musical motives1.

Throughout the time when the epics were being recorded, folklorist collectors heard many stories and legends about many outstanding storytellers, the memory of whom has been alive for more than a century and has spread over a large area. Outstanding storytellers were teachers for several generations. In the manner of rendering epics, plots and techniques of both verbal and musical design, one can definitely see entire schools of storytellers, dating back to individual best masters. In addition to the Ryabinins, V.P. was a famous storyteller in the Onega region. Dapper, whom L.N. personally knew. Tolstoy and from whom he borrowed a number of plots for his works (in particular, for the story “How People Live”), in 1926 the epics were written down from his two daughters - very old women. On Kenozero (formerly Vologda province) in the second half of the 19th century. lived the famous storyteller Sivtsev-Poromsky, who created his own “school” of storytellers, the last representatives of which still live today.

Of great theoretical interest is the work of the above-mentioned storyteller Grigory Alekseevich Yakushov from the eastern shore of Lake Onega. Expeditions of 1926 and 1928 37 epic stories were recorded from him. As it turned out, Yakushov is a student of three talented storytellers of the era of Rybnikov and Hilferding: Ivan Feponov, Nikifor Prokhorov (Utitsa) and Potap Antonov. A comparative study of Yakushov’s texts with the corresponding texts of his teachers (based on the collections of Rybnikov and Hilferding) reveals not a mechanical adherence to them, but the development of G.A. Yakushov’s independent, individual style, testifying to the great creative work of this wonderful storyteller1.

The epics were created in tonic (also called epic, folk) verse. In works created in tonic verse, the poetic lines may have a different number of syllables, but there should be a relatively equal number of stresses. In epic verse, the first stress, as a rule, falls on the third syllable from the beginning, and the last stress on the third syllable from the end.

Epic tales are characterized by a combination of real images that have a clear historical meaning and are conditioned by reality (the image of Kyiv, the capital Prince Vladimir), with fantastic images (the Serpent Gorynych, the Nightingale the Robber). But the leading images in epics are those generated by historical reality.

Often the epic begins with lead singer. It is not related to the content of the epic, but represents an independent picture that precedes the main epic story. Exodus- this is the ending of the epic, a short conclusion, summing up, or a joke (“then the old days, then the deeds,” “that’s where the old times ended”).

The epic usually begins with the beginning, which determines the place and time of action. Following it is given exposition, in which the hero of the work stands out, most often using the technique of contrast.

The image of the hero is at the center of the entire narrative. The epic greatness of the image of the epic hero is created by revealing his noble feelings and experiences; the qualities of the hero are revealed in his actions.

Triplicity or the trinity in epics is one of the main depiction techniques (there are three heroes at the heroic outpost, the hero makes three trips - “Three trips of Ilya”, Sadko is not invited to the feast three times by the Novgorod merchants, he casts lots three times, etc. ). All these elements (threefold persons, threefold action, verbal repetitions) are present in all epics. Hyperboles used to describe the hero and his feat also play a large role in them. The description of the enemies (Tugarin, Nightingale the Robber), as well as the description of the strength of the warrior-hero, are hyperbolic. There are fantastic elements in this.

In the main narrative part of the epic, the techniques of parallelism, stepwise narrowing of images, and antithesis are widely used.

The text of the epic is divided into permanent And transitional places. Transitional places are parts of the text created or improvised by narrators during performance; permanent places - stable, slightly changed, repeated in various epics (heroic battle, hero’s rides, saddling a horse, etc.). Storytellers usually assimilate and repeat them with greater or less accuracy as the action progresses. The narrator speaks transitional passages freely, changing the text and partially improvising it. The combination of permanent and transitional places in the singing of epics is one of the genre features of the Old Russian epic.

The work of the Saratov scientist A.P. is devoted to elucidating the artistic originality of Russian epics and their poetics. Skaftymov “Poetics and genesis of epics”. The researcher believed that “the epic knows how to create interest, knows how to excite the listener with anxiety of expectation, infect the listener with the delight of surprise and capture the winner with ambitious triumph.” 1

D.S. Likhachev in his book “The Poetics of Old Russian Literature” writes that the time of action in epics refers to the conventional era of the Russian past. For some epics it is the idealized era of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, for others it is the era of Novgorod freedom. The action of the epics takes place in the era of Russian independence, glory and power of Rus'. In this era, Prince Vladimir reigns “forever”, the heroes live “forever”. In epics, the entire time of action is assigned to the conventional era of Russian antiquity. 2

Read also other articles on the topic "Russian heroic epic. Epics":

• Features of the epic genre

The epics were created in tonic (also called epic, folk) verse. In works created in tonic verse, the poetic lines may have a different number of syllables, but there should be a relatively equal number of stresses. In epic verse, the first stress, as a rule, falls on the third syllable from the beginning, and the last stress on the third syllable from the end. Epic tales are characterized by a combination of real images that have a clear historical meaning and are conditioned by reality (the image of Kyiv, the capital Prince Vladimir), with fantastic images (the Serpent Gorynych, the Nightingale the Robber). But the leading images in epics are those generated by historical reality. Often an epic begins with a chorus. It is not related to the content of the epic, but represents an independent picture that precedes the main epic story. The outcome is the ending of the epic, a short conclusion, summing up, or a joke (“then the old days, then the deed,” “that’s where the old days ended”). The epic usually begins with a beginning that determines the place and time of action. This is followed by an exposition in which the hero of the work is highlighted, most often using the technique of contrast. The image of the hero is at the center of the entire narrative. The epic greatness of the image of the epic hero is created by revealing his noble feelings and experiences; the qualities of the hero are revealed in his actions. Tripleness or trinity in epics is one of the main methods of depiction (there are three heroes at the heroic outpost, the hero makes three trips - “Three trips of Ilya”, Sadko is not invited to the feast three times by the Novgorod merchants, he casts lots three times, etc. .). All these elements (threefold persons, threefold action, verbal repetitions) are present in all epics. Hyperboles used to describe the hero and his feat also play a large role in them. The description of the enemies (Tugarin, Nightingale the Robber), as well as the description of the strength of the warrior-hero, are hyperbolic. There are fantastic elements in this. In the main narrative part of the epic, the techniques of parallelism, stepwise narrowing of images, and antithesis are widely used.

The text of the epic is divided into permanent and transitional passages. Transitional places are parts of the text created or improvised by narrators during performance; permanent places - stable, slightly changed, repeated in various epics (heroic battle, hero’s rides, saddling a horse, etc.). Storytellers usually assimilate and repeat them with greater or less accuracy as the action progresses. The narrator speaks transitional passages freely, changing the text and partially improvising it. The combination of permanent and transitional places in the singing of epics is one of the genre features of the Old Russian epic. The work of the Saratov scientist A.P. is devoted to elucidating the artistic originality of Russian epics and their poetics. Skaftymov “Poetics and genesis of epics”. The researcher believed that “the epic knows how to create interest, knows how to excite the listener with anxiety of expectation, infect with the delight of surprise and capture the winner with the ambitious triumph. The action of the epics takes place in the era of Russian independence, glory and power of Rus'. In this era, Prince Vladimir reigns “forever”, the heroes live “forever”. In epics, the entire time of action is assigned to the conventional era of Russian antiquity.

Epics and mythology

Bylinas are Russian folk epic songs about the exploits of heroes. The main plot of the epic is some heroic event, or a remarkable episode of Russian history (hence the popular name of the epic - “old man”, “old woman”, implying that the action in question took place in the past). Bylinas, as a rule, are written tonic verse with two to four stresses. The term “epics” was first introduced by Ivan Sakharov in the collection “Songs of the Russian People” in 1839; he proposed it based on the expression “according to epics” in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” which meant “according to the facts "

Mythology is an object of study in many scientific disciplines (philosophy, history, philology, etc.), including ancient folklore and folk tales: myths, epics, fairy tales, etc. Mythological ideas existed at certain stages of development among almost all peoples of the world. This is confirmed both by the study of history and by the study of modern primitive peoples, each of which has one or another type of mythology. The main task of myth is to set patterns, models for every important action performed by a person; myth serves to ritualize everyday life, enabling a person to find meaning in life.

This epic is folk epic song about a heroic event or remarkable episode of ancient Russian history. In their original form, epics arose in Kievan Rus, having developed on the basis of an archaic epic tradition and inheriting many mythological features from it; however, fantasy turned out to be subordinated to the historicism of vision and reflection of reality. From the people's point of view the significance of the epic was to preserve historical memory, therefore their reliability was not questioned. Epics are close to fairy tales about heroes. They artistically summarized the historical reality of the 11th-16th centuries and existed until the mid-20th century, corresponding to the epic creativity of many peoples of Europe and Asia. People called them “old men”, i.e. songs about actual events of the distant past. The term “epics” (scientific) was introduced in the 1840s on the basis of the “epics of this time” mentioned in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.”

In the mid-18th century, a handwritten collection of epics and historical songs was created in the Urals, later called “Ancient Russian Poems Collected by Kirsha Danilov.” In the 1830-40s, P.V. Kireevsky headed the collection of Russian songs; later, as part of the multi-volume edition “Songs collected by P.V. Kireevsky,” the so-called “old series” was published, which included epics and historical songs. In the mid-19th century, P.N. Rybnikov discovered an actively existing living epic tradition in the Olonets region (“Songs collected by P.N. Rybnikov.” M., 1861-67). Performers of epics and other epic songs were called “storytellers.” In the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries, a huge amount of work was carried out in the Russian North to identify and record epics, as a result of which a number of scientific publications appeared: A.F. Hilferding, A. Markov, A.D. Grigoriev, N. Onuchkov, A. M. Astakhova and others.

Epics and realities

The epics reflected many historical realities. Northern singers conveyed the unfamiliar geography and landscape of Kievan Rus (“the open field is pure land”), and depicted the struggle of the ancient Russian state against the steppe nomads. Individual details of military princely-squad life were preserved with amazing precision. The storytellers did not strive to convey the chronicle sequence of history, but depicted its most important moments, which were embodied in the central episodes of epics. Researchers note their multi-layered nature: they reported the names of real-life persons: Vladimir Svyatoslavovich and Vladimir Monomakh, Dobrynya, Sadko, Alexander (Alyosha) Popovich, Ilya Muromets, Polovtsian and Tatar khans (Tushrkana, Batu). However, artistic fiction made it possible to attribute epics to an earlier or later historical time and allowed the combination of names. In people's memory there was a distortion of geographical distances, names of countries and cities. The idea of ​​the Tatars as the main enemy of Rus' replaced the mention of the Polovtsians and Pechenegs.

The heyday of epics

The flourishing of epics of the earliest Vladimirov cycle took place in Kyiv in the 11th-12th centuries, and after the weakening of Kyiv (from the second half of the 12th century) they moved to the west and north, to the Novgorod region. The folk epic that has reached us allows us to judge only the content of the ancient songs of Kievan Rus, but not their form. The epic was adopted by the buffoons, who had a significant influence on it: in the epics, a number of scenes represent buffoon singers at Prince Vladimir’s feasts, and there are also buffoon epics themselves (“Vavilo and the buffoons”). In the 16th and 17th centuries, the content of epics reflected the life of the upper classes of Moscow Rus', as well as the Cossacks (Ilya Muromets is called the “old Cossack”).

Science knows about 100 plots of epics (in total, more than 3,000 texts have been recorded with variants and versions, a significant part of which have been published). Due to objective historical reasons, the Russian epic did not develop into an epic: the fight against the nomads ended at a time when living conditions could no longer contribute to the creation of a coherent epic. The plots of the epics remained scattered, but they contain a tendency towards cyclization by place of action (Kyiv, Novgorod) and by heroes (for example, the epic about Ilya Muromets). Representatives of the mythological school singled out epics about senior heroes, in whose images mythological elements were reflected (Volkh, Svyatogor, Sukhmantiy, Danube, Potyk), and about younger heroes, in whose images mythological traces are insignificant, but historical features are expressed (Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, Vasily Buslaev). The head of the historical school, V.F. Miller, divided epics into two types:

1. Bogatyrskie
2. Novelistic

For the former, he considered the heroic struggle of heroes and its state goals to be characteristic, for the latter - internal clashes, social or everyday. Modern science, introducing epics into the international context of epic creativity, groups them into the following plot and thematic sections:

• About senior heroes
• About fighting monsters
• About the fight against foreign enemies
• About meeting and saving relatives
• About the epic matchmaking and the hero's struggle for his wife
• About epic competitions.
• A special group consists of epic parodies.

Poetic language of epics

The poetic language of epics is subordinated to the task of depicting the grandiose and significant. They were performed without musical accompaniment, with recitative. Their tunes are solemn, but monotonous (each singer knew no more than two or three melodies and varied them due to the vibration of his voice). It is assumed that in ancient times epics were sung to the accompaniment of gusli. The verse of epics is associated with chanting and refers to tonic versification (see). The compositional basis of the plots of many epics is antithesis and tripling. In the repertoire of buffoons, stylistic formulas for the external ornamentation of the plot arose: choruses and outcomes (independent small works not related to the main content of epics). The tradition of epic storytelling has developed formulas for the usual image - loci communes (Latin for “common places”), which were used when repeating the same type of situations: a feast at Prince Vladimir, saddling a horse, a heroic ride on a horse, a hero’s reprisal against enemies, etc. The narration in epics was carried out leisurely, majestic. Numerous repetitions were necessarily present in the unfolding of the plot. Slowness of action (retardation) was achieved by tripling the episodes, repeating commonplaces, and the hero’s speech. The poetic style was created by the repetition of words, which could be tautological (“black-black”, “many-many”) or synonymous (“villain-robber”, “fight-rat”).

One of the techniques for connecting lines is palilogy (repetition of the last words of the previous line at the beginning of the next one). Often adjacent lines used syntactic parallelism. In epics, unity of beginning (anaphora) could appear, and at the ends of lines sometimes consonances of homogeneous words appeared, reminiscent of rhyme. Alliterations and assonances appeared. The broad typification of the characters of the epics did not exclude elements of individualization, which Hilferding noted back in 1871: Prince Vladimir is a complacent and personally completely powerless ruler; Ilya Muromets is a calm and self-confident force; Dobrynya is the personification of politeness and graceful nobility; Vasily Ignatievich is a drunkard who sobers up in a moment of trouble and becomes a hero. One of the principles of epic typification is synecdoche: epics depicted not the entire ancient Russian squad, but individual warrior-heroes defeating hordes of enemies; the enemy force could also be depicted in single images (Tugarin Zmeevich, Idolishche). The main artistic device is hyperbole. Collectors testified that the singers perceived hyperbole as a faithful depiction of real qualities in their maximum manifestation.

The plots, images, poetics of epics are reflected in Russian literature (“Ruslan and Lyudmila”, 1820, A.S. Pushkina, “Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich...”, 1838, M.Yu. “Lermontov”, “Who should live in Rus' good”, 1863-77, N.A. Nekrasova, “folk stories” by L.N. Tolstoy). Epics were a source of inspiration for artists, composers, and filmmakers.

Bylina- Russian folk epic song about the exploits of heroes. The main plot of the epic is some kind of heroic event, an episode of Russian history.

Bylina is an encyclopedia of ancient Russian life. It expresses the powerful spirit of the people:

o Patriotic theme

o History of people's life

o Spiritual qualities

Features of the historicism of epics. The epics artistically summarized the historical reality of the 11th-16th centuries, but they grew out of the archaic epic tradition, inheriting many features from it. Monumental images of heroes, their extraordinary exploits poetically combined the real basis of life with fantastic fiction. The relationship between reality and fiction in epics is by no means straightforward; along with obvious fantasies, there is a reflection of the life of Ancient Rus'. Behind many epic episodes one can discern real social and everyday relations, numerous military and social conflicts that took place in ancient times. It is also noteworthy that in epics certain details of everyday life are conveyed with amazing accuracy, and often the area where the action takes place is described with amazing accuracy. It is also not without interest that even the names of some epic characters are recorded in chronicles, where they are narrated as real personalities.

However, folk storytellers who sang the exploits of the princely squad, unlike chroniclers, did not literally follow the chronological course of events; on the contrary, folk memory carefully preserved only the most striking and remarkable historical episodes, regardless of their location on the timeline. The close connection with the surrounding reality determined the development and change of the system and plots of epics, according to the course of the history of the Russian state. Moreover, the genre itself existed until the middle of the 20th century, of course, undergoing various changes.

Cyclization of epics:

· Kyiv (Ilya Muromets, Dobryiya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich)

· Novgorodskie (Sadko and Vasily Buslaev)

Classification of epics:

· Heroic epics

· Mythological epics

· Novellistic epics (describing mainly the social and family life of the medieval Russian state)

Quantity epic stories, despite the many recorded versions of the same epic, it is very limited: there are about 100 of them. There are epics based on:

matchmaking or the hero's struggle for his wife (Sadko, Mikhailo Potyk, Ivan Godinovich, Danube, Kozarin, Solovey Budimirovich and later - Alyosha Popovich and Elena Petrovichna,Hoten Bludovich);

fighting monsters(Dobrynya and the snake, Alyosha and Tugarin,Ilya and Idolishche, Ilya and the Nightingale the Robber);

fight against foreign invaders, including: repelling Tatar raids ( Ilya's quarrel with Vladimir, Ilya and Kalin, Dobrynya and Vasily Kazemirovich), wars with Lithuanians ( An epic about the raid of Lithuanians).

They stand apart satirical epics or epics- parodies ( Duke Stepanovich, Competition with Churila).

Poetics of epics. Over the course of many centuries, unique techniques have been developed that are characteristic of the poetics of epics, as well as the method of their execution. In ancient times, storytellers are believed to have played along with themselves on the harp, later epics were performed recitative. Epics are characterized by a special pure-tonic epic verse(which is based on the commensurability of lines by the number of stresses, which achieves rhythmic uniformity). Although the storytellers used only a few melodies when performing epics, they enriched the singing with a variety of intonations and also changed the timbre of their voices.

The solemn style of presentation of the epic, which tells about heroic and often tragic events, is emphasized, and determined the need to slow down the action (retardation). For this, a technique such as repetition, and not only individual words are repeated; It is not uncommon for entire episodes to be repeated three times, with enhanced effect, and some descriptions are extremely detailed. Characteristic of the epic is the presence of “ common places", when describing similar situations, certain formulaic expressions are used. “Commonplaces” include a description of a feast (mostly at Prince Vladimir’s), a banquet, and a heroic ride on a greyhound horse. The folk storyteller could combine such stable formulas at his own discretion.

For language epics are typical hyperboles, with the help of which the narrator emphasizes the character traits or appearance of the characters that are worthy of special mention. Another technique determines the listener’s attitude to the epic - epithet(mighty, Holy Russian, glorious hero and filthy, evil enemy), and stable epithets are often found (violent head, hot blood, frisky legs, flammable tears). A similar role is played by suffixes: everything related to the heroes was mentioned in diminutive forms (hat, little head, dumushka, Alyoshenka, Vasenka Buslaevich, Dobrynyushka, etc.), but the negative characters were called Gloomy, Ignatisch, Tsarish Batuisch, Filthy Ugarishch. They take up a lot of space assonances(repetition of vowel sounds) and alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds), additional organizing elements of verse.

Epics, as a rule , tripartite:

Ø lead-in (usually not directly related to the content), the function of which is to prepare for listening to the song;

Ø beginning (within its limits the action unfolds);

Ø ending.

It should be noted that certain artistic techniques used in the epic are determined by its subject matter(thus, heroic epics are characterized by antithesis).

The narrator's gaze never turns to the past or the future, but follows the hero from event to event, although the distance between them can vary from several days to several years.