Which Russian epic is the most ancient? Russian folk epic Old Russian folk epic tales.
Bylinas are a poetic heroic epic of Ancient Rus', reflecting the events of the historical life of the Russian people. The ancient name for epics in the Russian north is “old times”. The modern name of the genre – “epics” – was introduced in the first half of the 19th century by folklorist I.P. Sakharov on the basis of the well-known expression from “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” - “epics of this time.”
The time of composition of epics is determined in different ways. Some scientists believe that this is an early genre that developed during the times of Kievan Rus (X-XI centuries), others - a late genre that arose in the Middle Ages, during the creation and strengthening of the Moscow centralized state. The genre of epics reached its greatest flourishing in the 17th–18th centuries, and by the 20th century it fell into oblivion. The main characters of epics are heroes. They embody the ideal of a courageous person devoted to his homeland and people. The hero fights alone against hordes of enemy forces. Among the epics, a group of the most ancient stands out. These are the so-called epics about “elder” heroes, associated with mythology. The heroes of these works are the personification of unknown forces of nature associated with mythology. Such are Svyatogor and Volkhv Vseslavevich, Danube and Mikhailo Potyk.
In the second period of their history, the ancient heroes were replaced by heroes of modern times - Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich. These are the heroes of the so-called Kyiv cycle of epics. Cyclization refers to the unification of epic images and plots around individual characters and places of action. This is how the Kiev cycle of epics, associated with the city of Kiev, developed.
Most epics depict the world of Kievan Rus. The heroes go to Kyiv to serve Prince Vladimir, and they protect him from enemy hordes. The content of these epics is predominantly heroic and military in nature.
Another major center of the ancient Russian state was Novgorod. Epics of the Novgorod cycle - everyday, novelistic. The heroes of these epics were merchants, princes, peasants, guslars (Sadko, Volga, Mikula, Vasily Buslaev, Blud Khotenovich).
The world depicted in epics is the entire Russian land. So, Ilya Muromets from the Bogatyrskaya outpost sees high mountains, green meadows, dark forests. The epic world is “bright” and “sunny”, but it is threatened by enemy forces: dark clouds, fog, thunderstorms are approaching, the sun and stars are dimming from countless enemy hordes. This is a world of opposition between good and evil, light and dark forces. In it, heroes fight against the manifestation of evil and violence. Without this struggle, the epic peace is impossible.
Each hero has a certain, dominant character trait. Ilya Muromets personifies strength; he is the most powerful Russian hero after Svyatogor. Dobrynya is also a strong and brave warrior, a snake fighter, but also a hero-diplomat. Prince Vladimir sends him on special diplomatic missions. Alyosha Popovich personifies ingenuity and cunning. “He won’t take it by force, but by cunning,” they say about him in epics. Monumental images of heroes and grandiose achievements are the fruit of artistic generalization, the embodiment in one person of the abilities and strength of a people or social group, an exaggeration of what actually exists, that is, hyperbolization and idealization. The poetic language of epics is solemnly melodious and rhythmically organized. His special artistic means - comparisons, metaphors, epithets - reproduce pictures and images that are epically sublime, grandiose, and when depicting enemies - terrible, ugly.
In different epics, motifs and images, plot elements, identical scenes, lines and groups of lines are repeated. Thus, through all the epics of the Kyiv cycle there are images of Prince Vladimir, the city of Kyiv, and heroes. Bylinas, like other works of folk art, do not have a fixed text. Passed from mouth to mouth, they changed and varied. Each epic had an infinite number of variants.
In epics, fabulous miracles are performed: the reincarnation of characters, the revival of the dead, werewolves. They contain mythological images of enemies and fantastic elements, but the fantasy is different from that of a fairy tale. It is based on folk historical ideas. However, epics depict not only the heroic deeds of heroes, enemy invasions, battles, but also everyday human life in its social and everyday manifestations and historical conditions. This is reflected in the cycle of Novgorod epics. In them, the heroes are noticeably different from the epic heroes of the Russian epic. The epics about Sadko and Vasily Buslaev include not just new original themes and plots, but also new epic images, new types of heroes who do not know other epic cycles. Novgorod heroes, unlike the heroes of the heroic cycle, do not perform feats of arms. This is explained by the fact that Novgorod escaped the Horde invasion; Batu’s hordes did not reach the city. However, Novgorodians could not only rebel (V. Buslaev) and play the gusli (Sadko), but also fight and win brilliant victories over conquerors from the West. So, epics are poetic and artistic works. They contain a lot of unexpected, surprising, incredible things. However, they are fundamentally truthful, conveying the people's understanding of history, the people's idea of duty, honor, and justice. At the same time, they are skillfully constructed, their language is unique.
Artistic originality of epics
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.
EPICAL- folk epic song, a genre characteristic of the Russian tradition. The basis of the 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). The term “epic” was introduced into scientific use in the 40s of the 19th century. folklorist I.P. Sakharov.
Historical stages of development of epics. Researchers disagree on when epic songs appeared in Rus'. Some attribute their appearance to the 9th–11th centuries, others to the 11th–13th centuries. One thing is certain - having existed for so long, passed on from mouth to mouth, the epics did not reach us in their original form; they underwent many changes, as the political system, the domestic and foreign political situation, and the worldview of listeners and performers changed. It is almost impossible to say in what century this or that epic was created; some reflect an earlier, some a later stage in the development of the Russian epic, and in other epics researchers distinguish very ancient subjects under later layers.
The first recording of Russian epic songs was made at the beginning of the 17th century. Englishman Richard James . However, the first significant work on collecting epics, which had enormous scientific significance, was done by the Cossack Kirsha Danilov around 40–60 18th century. The collection he collected consisted of 70 songs. For the first time, incomplete records were published only in 1804 in Moscow, under the title Ancient Russian Poems and for a long time were the only collection of Russian epic songs.
The next step in the study of Russian epic songs was made by P.N. Rybnikov . He discovered that epics were still performed in the Olonets province, although by that time this folklore genre was considered dead. Thanks to P.N. Rybnikov’s discovery, it was possible not only to study the epic epic more deeply, but also to get acquainted with the method of its performance and with the performers themselves.
Cyclization of epics. Although, due to special historical conditions, a coherent epic never took shape in Rus', scattered epic songs are formed into cycles either around a hero or according to the community of the area where they lived. There is no classification of epics that would be unanimously accepted by all researchers; however, it is customary to single out the epics of the Kyiv, or “Vladimirov”, Novgorod and Moscow cycles. In addition to them, there are epics that do not fit into any cycles.
1) Kyiv or “Vladimirov” cycle. In these epics, heroes gather around the court of Prince Vladimir. The prince himself does not perform feats, however, Kyiv is the center that attracts heroes called upon to protect their homeland and faith from enemies. V.Ya. Propp believes that the songs of the Kyiv cycle are not a local phenomenon, characteristic only of the Kyiv region; on the contrary, epics of this cycle were created throughout Kievan Rus. Over time, the image of Vladimir changed, the prince acquired features that were initially unusual for the legendary ruler; in many epics he is cowardly, mean, and often deliberately humiliates the heroes (Alyosha Popovich and Tugarin, Ilya and Idolishche, Ilya’s Quarrel with Vladimir).
2) Novgorod cycle. The epics differ sharply from the epics of the “Vladimirov” cycle, which is not surprising, since Novgorod never knew the Tatar invasion, but was the largest trading center of ancient Rus'. The heroes of Novgorod epics (Sadko, Vasily Buslaev) are also very different from others.
3) Moscow cycle. These epics reflected the life of the upper strata of Moscow society. The epics about Khoten Bludovich, Duke and Churil contain many details characteristic of the era of the rise of the Moscow state: the clothes, morals and behavior of the townspeople are described.
Bylinas, as a rule, have three parts: a chorus (usually not directly related to the content), the function of which is to prepare for listening to the song; the beginning (within its limits the action unfolds); ending.
Plots of epics. The number of epic stories, despite the many recorded versions of the same epic, is very limited: there are about 100 of them. There are epics based on matchmaking or hero's struggle for his wife(Sadko, Mikhailo Potyk and later - Alyosha Popovich and Elena Petrovichna); fighting monsters(Dobrynya and the serpent, Alyosha and Tugarin, Ilya and the Nightingale the Robber); fight against foreign invaders, including: repelling Tatar raids (Ilya’s quarrel with Vladimir), the war with the Lithuanians (Bylina about the Lithuanian raid).
They stand apart satirical epics or epic parodies(Duke Stepanovich, Competition with Churila).
Main epic heroes. Representatives of the Russian “mythological school” divided the heroes of epics into “senior” and “younger” heroes. In their opinion, "elder"(Svyatogor, Danube, Volkh, Potyka) were the personification of elemental forces, epics about them uniquely reflected the mythological views that existed in Ancient Rus'. "Younger" heroes (Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich, Dobrynya Nikitich) are ordinary mortals, heroes of a new historical era, and therefore are minimally endowed with mythological features. Despite the fact that serious objections were subsequently raised against such a classification, such a division is still found in the scientific literature.
Images of heroes are the people's standard of courage, justice, patriotism and strength (it is not for nothing that one of the first Russian aircraft, which had an exceptional carrying capacity at that time, was named by its creators “Ilya Muromets”).
Svyatogor refers to the oldest and most popular epic heroes. His very name indicates a connection with nature. He is tall and powerful; the earth can hardly bear him. This image was born in the pre-Kiev era, but subsequently underwent changes. Only two stories have come down to us, initially associated with Svyatogor (the rest arose later and are fragmentary in nature): the story of Svyatogor’s discovery of a saddlebag, which, as specified in some versions, belonged to another epic hero, Mikula Selyaninovich. The bag turns out to be so heavy that the hero cannot lift it, he strains himself and, dying, finds out that this bag contains “all earthly burdens.” The second story tells about the death of Svyatogor, who meets on the road a coffin with the inscription: “Whoever is destined to lie in a coffin will lie in it,” and decides to try his luck. As soon as Svyatogor lies down, the coffin lid jumps up on its own and the hero cannot move it. Before his death, Svyatogor transfers his strength to Ilya Muromets, thus the hero of antiquity passes the baton to the new hero of the epic who comes to the fore.
Ilya Muromets, undoubtedly, the most popular hero of epics, a mighty hero. The epic does not know him as a young man, he is an old man with a gray beard. Oddly enough, Ilya Muromets appeared later than his epic younger comrades Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich. His homeland is the city of Murom, the village of Karacharovo.
The peasant son, the sick Ilya, “sat sitting on the stove for 30 years and three years.” One day, wanderers came to the house, “walking kaliki.” They healed Ilya, giving him heroic strength. From now on, he is a hero who is destined to serve the city of Kyiv and Prince Vladimir. On the way to Kyiv, Ilya defeats the Nightingale the Robber, puts him in a Toroki and takes him to the princely court. Among other exploits of Ilya, it is worth mentioning his victory over the Idol, who besieged Kyiv and forbade begging and remembering God's name. Here Elijah acts as a defender of the faith.
His relationship with Prince Vladimir is not going smoothly. The peasant hero does not meet with due respect at the prince’s court, he is treated with gifts, and is not given a place of honor at the feast. The rebellious hero is imprisoned in a cellar for seven years and doomed to starvation. Only the attack on the city by the Tatars, led by Tsar Kalin, forces the prince to ask for help from Ilya. He gathers the heroes and enters the battle. The defeated enemy flees, vowing never to return to Rus'.
Nikitich- a popular hero of the Kyiv epic cycle. This heroic snake fighter was born in Ryazan. He is the most polite and well-mannered of the Russian heroes; it is not for nothing that Dobrynya always acts as an ambassador and negotiator in difficult situations. The main epics associated with the name of Dobrynya: Dobrynya and the serpent, Dobrynya and Vasily Kazemirovich, Dobrynya’s fight with the Danube, Dobrynya and Marinka, Dobrynya and Alyosha.
Alesha Popovich- originally from Rostov, he is the son of a cathedral priest, the youngest of the famous trinity of heroes. He is brave, cunning, frivolous, prone to fun and jokes. Scientists belonging to the historical school believed that this epic hero traces his origins to Alexander Popovich, who died in the Battle of Kalka, however, D.S. Likhachev showed that in reality the opposite process took place, the name of the fictional hero entered the chronicle. The most famous feat of Alyosha Popovich is his victory over Tugarin Zmeevich. The hero Alyosha does not always behave in a dignified manner; he is often arrogant and boastful. Among the epics about him are Alyosha Popovich and Tugarin, Alyosha Popovich and the Petrovich sister.
Sadko is also one of the oldest heroes, in addition, he is perhaps the most famous hero of epics Novgorod cycle. An ancient story about Sadko, which tells how the hero woos the daughter of the sea king, subsequently became more complex, surprisingly realistic details appeared concerning the life of ancient Novgorod. The epic about Sadko is divided into three relatively independent parts . IN first Gusser Sadko, who has impressed the sea king with his skill in playing, receives advice from him on how to get rich. From this moment on, Sadko is no longer a poor musician, but a merchant, a rich guest. IN next song Sadko bets with Novgorod merchants that he can buy all the goods of Novgorod. In some versions of the epic, Sadko wins, in some, on the contrary, he is defeated, but in any case he leaves the city due to the intolerant attitude of the merchants towards him. IN last song tells about Sadko's journey across the sea, during which the king of the sea calls him to himself in order to marry his daughter and leave him in the underwater kingdom. But Sadko, having abandoned the beautiful princesses, marries Chernavushka the mermaid, who personifies the Novgorod river, and she brings him to his native shores. Sadko returns to his “earthly wife”, leaving the daughter of the sea king. V.Ya. Propp points out that the epic about Sadko is the only one in the Russian epic where the hero goes to the other world (underwater kingdom) and marries an otherworldly creature. These two motifs indicate the antiquity of both the plot and the hero.
Vasily Buslaev. Two epics are known about this indomitable and violent citizen of Veliky Novgorod. In his rebellion against everyone and everything, he does not pursue any goal other than the desire to riot and show off. The son of a Novgorod widow, a wealthy city dweller, Vasily from an early age showed his unbridled temper in fights with peers. Having grown up, he gathered a squad to compete with all of Veliky Novgorod. The battle ends in complete victory for Vasily. Second epic dedicated to the death of Vasily Buslaev. Having traveled with his squad to Jerusalem, Vasily mocks the dead head he encounters, despite the ban, swims naked in Jericho and neglects the requirement inscribed on the stone he found (you cannot jump over the stone lengthwise). Vasily, due to the indomitability of his nature, begins to jump and gallop over it, catches his foot on a stone and breaks his head. This character, who embodied the unbridled passions of Russian nature, was M. Gorky’s favorite hero. The writer carefully saved up materials about him, cherishing the idea of writing about Vaska Buslaev, but upon learning that A.V. Amphiteatrov was writing a play about this hero, he gave all the accumulated materials to his fellow writer. This play is considered one of the best works of A.V.Amphiteatrov.
From the very beginning of its discovery, the epic was considered a purely book and not a folklore genre. In fact, researchers treated it as a recording of some ancient historical events that had come down to us: the study of, say, the Homeric epic has always been guided by the findings of everyday historical realities in it.
“The Homeric epic was perceived as a certain history of Ancient Greece in a certain period of its time. Actually, the subsequent discovery of the European epic - this is both the “Song of the Nibelungs” and “The Song of My Side” - was studied in a similar way. Not as folklore and only as a certain book culture.”
Nikita Petrov
The discovery of the oral, so-called living epic happened only in the 19th century - including in Russia. In the middle of the 19th century, the exiled ethnographer Pavel Nikolaevich Rybnikov found himself in the Russian North - near the shores of Lake Onega. There he recorded about a hundred stories featuring strange characters - Prince Vladimir, Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich, Dobrynya Nikitich, Vaska Buslaev, Vaska the Drunkard and others.
“It was so surprising that this region was immediately called the Iceland of the Russian epic, since Icelandic sagas had recently been translated into Russian. But since the Icelandic sagas are still more history than folklore, the epics were perceived in a similar way.”
Nikita Petrov
To determine the genre of this find from the point of view of folkloristics, several things should be understood. Firstly, this is a fairly large epic, about a thousand lines, that you need to hold in your head. Secondly, the text is not told, but sung. And the third important aspect is the audience. The entire audience of the narrator knew the plot of the epic song and perceived it as a reliable event. It was this aspect—the audience and the focus on authenticity—that determined further trends in the study of the genre, which developed into the so-called historical school.
The followers of this school had a rather original approach to the study of epics: they tried to see in them echoes of ancient history, paying attention to the coincidence of toponyms, geographical names and names.
“No one will deny that in the epics there really is some kind of Kyiv. This Kyiv has streets and alleys. When Ilya Muromets beats an unfaithful force, he takes a club or an oak tree and puts down this very force. But he puts it in the streets and alleys. The understanding that the epic was created not in a peasant environment, but in an urban one, also led to the study of epics as a historical genre.”
Nikita Petrov
One example of the erroneous method of the historical school is an attempt to correlate the plot about the death of the giant hero Svyatogor with the funeral ritual of the Slavs, and his name with the specific burial place of a specific warrior who once existed.
“Svyatogor lies down in a huge tomb, and then it turns out that the coffin is just for him. A lid appears out of nowhere and slams shut. Ilya Muromets is trying to pull out his new brother-in-law, but nothing works - there are iron hoops around the coffin. It is important for us that Svyatogor died in the coffin intended for him. Scientists of the historical school, of course, are looking for the necessary details in this plot, they turn to archaeological data - and it turns out that in the 10th century in Rus' this type of log tombs was indeed very popular. And it is quite logical from the point of view of a historian who has archaeological skills and knowledge to assume that this plot is nothing more than a generalized reflection of the burial rite of the Rus in the 10th century.
Some go even further. They take a piece, such as the Svyatogorov cross, and find literal matches. That is, in one of the tombs there really is a skeleton, a horse and a pectoral cross. And they say that it was this one specific event that ended up in the epic. But here, of course, a number of questions arise. It is not very clear how this could happen? Why weren’t other specific burials included in the epic?”
Nikita Petrov
Comparative folkloristics interprets the plot completely differently and finds completely different coincidences. When different epic traditions are compared, the idea of a literal correlation between the plot and a specific historical event disappears. In fact, such coincidences have a deeper connection, which is more likely at the level of pro-epic. For example, other nations also have a story about a giant who lay down in the tomb intended for him.
“There is a hypothesis that the Indo-Europeans had some pro-epic forms. Or this is a general trend - this is how the epic genre developed. If there is a giant, then he will definitely put the hero in his pocket.”
Nikita Petrov
Abstract
The relationship of the Russian epic with the historical process is complex and ambiguous. It is impossible to separate one from the other. But it would be wrong to correlate the plots of epics with real historical events. The epic captures from history only those fragments of reality that correspond to its epic scheme. These may be names or echoes of real events. But this is not enough to talk about the historicity of the epic.
“As you remember from historical sources, Prince Vladimir did quite a lot, but the epic says nothing about his merits - only about how he walks around the upper room in Kyiv, throws feasts, shakes his yellow curls and shakes his rings. And in this case, the epic captures from historical reality only the name Vladimir, which then allows us to correlate the epic with history.”
Nikita Petrov
There is a story about Dobrynya and the Snake, which stands out quite strongly from other epic stories. After a completely ordinary beginning, something strange begins: while fighting the Serpent, who attacked Dobrynya in the river, the hero finds a cap of Greek soil on the shore and throws it at the serpent. He runs away howling, promises not to rob anything anymore, not to fly to Rus', and so on. If we compare the names and details of this epic with the history of the Baptism of Rus', a very interesting thing emerges. Dobrynya is mentioned in the epic - the same name in the chronicles of Prince Vladimir’s uncle, who actually baptized Rus' together with his nephew. There is a river - this detail is also important, since baptism always takes place in water. There is a snake - a symbolic embodiment of the pagan enemy. And finally, the strangest and most incomprehensible detail is the cap of the Greek land, with the help of which this very pagan serpent is defeated.
“And these analogies suggest a seditious thought: what if there really is something historical in the epic? The most reliable way to check this is to turn to typological parallels. If we look at the folklore of the peoples of the world, we will see that the motif of snake fighting is found in almost all traditions.”
Nikita Petrov
A logical question arises: does the epic reflect the historical reality reflected in the chronicles, or, conversely, does the chronicler collect all known plots, facts and rumors and combine them into some kind of chronicle? Most likely, it is the chronicle that borrows details and fragments from more ancient epic stories, selecting them on the basis of historical accuracy. If we talk about the historical approach to the study of the epic, we should mention the famous archaeologist and historian Boris Rybakov. It was he who instilled attention to detail in the historical school of Russian folklore, bringing epics closer in people's minds to the real course of history.
“Rybakov took all the epic stories and all the chronicle events and identified one with the other. As a result, in the minds of not only the average schoolchild, but also a person with a humanities education, there is a clear identification of the epic with real history, which in fact has no correlation with the epic.”
Nikita Petrov
Abstract
It is important to understand that folklore and partly epic exist in a special form, separate from the rest of literature. A writer can create several versions of his work, but there is always a final edition; In folklore this, of course, is impossible. There is no one model that the epic is oriented towards; each plot is unique. At the moment the plot is transferred from mouth to mouth, some details remain in the memory of the storyteller, while others disappear forever, never reaching the next storyteller.
“For example, if a storyteller has visited Ukraine, he may include something Ukrainian in the epic, but the epic will reject it. It is called . Folklore will not absorb everything, it will not devour any details. He will learn only what corresponds to the spirit of this genre or the narrative scheme of a particular epic.”
Nikita Petrov
Sometimes in the Russian epic you can find references to historical events and geographical realities, but it is interesting that the feelings of the ancient Russian man, his love relationships are reflected in the epics of that time.
Love in epics is always tragic. Of course, there are many different motives, but one of them can be called especially remarkable. This motif in epic studies is called “The Three Sciences of the Good”: epic characters deal with unfaithful wives and brides in a certain way. The main character asks the question: “Have you hugged the wrong person?” The woman replies: “I was hugging.” “Did you press your legs together?” - “Cuddled.” “Did you kiss with your lips?” - “Kissed.” Then he takes a knife and cuts off her arms, legs, and then her lips in succession.
“But the heroic heart became enraged, there was nothing to do, and Danube Ivanovich kills his wife. And he evaporates from her womb a child whose arms are in silver and whose legs are in gold. And he also says to him: “If you had waited a little, then in two or three days your son would have been born, that is, I, who would have been the strongest and most powerful hero in Rus'.”
Danube Ivanovich commits suicide, falls on a dagger, and the Danube River flows from his blood. Here's the story. As you understand, it most likely has nothing in common with history - this is such an obviously mythologically beautiful plot with an etiological ending, when an event associated with some kind of landscape occurs. In this case, with the river.”
Nikita Petrov
It is obvious that the epics do not have any clear correspondence with the real life history of Russian peasants, especially with the history of their love relationships. In most stories, the hero does not manage to marry happily at all.
There is a version that the popularity of the “Three Sciences are Well Made” motif is associated with the bookish church culture of Rus', where a woman was described as a vessel of the devil, who always leads a man into temptation. And for this, of course, she should always be punished.
“Here arises the same love conflict that we are considering. When Dobrynya turns back into a hero, Marinka complains to him: “And now who will take me as a wife?” Dobrynya replies: “Okay, I’ll take it.” He takes her as his wife, and then the motif “The Three Sciences Are Well Made” begins. He cuts off her lips, arms and legs. And sometimes he ties two horses to the tails and pulls them apart. Well, this is quite a steppe custom.
Thus, tragic love in the epic ends before it begins. It's not very clear why this happens. The number of stories where the hero - a hero, a character from an epic - cannot have a happy marriage with a woman is indeed very large. Much more than those in which there is a happy marriage.”
Nikita Petrov
Abstract
The epic as a genre tends to select from history only those facts that correspond to a certain epic plot scheme. Almost always epics are built on the simple principle of opposition: heroes are divided into friends and foes. The main character always stands on the side of good, does what is right, defends the Russian land, while the enemy only brings destruction, being essentially the complete opposite of pure good. This obvious distinction helps build the image of the main character and popularize him in culture.
“The opposition “friend - foe” plus patriotic heroism - this is how the image of a character is constructed in folklore and in mass culture in general.”
Nikita Petrov
One of the common options for plot composition in epics is its construction around one character. This cyclization around an individual hero is called biographical by epic scholars. We see an almost complete biography of the epic character.
Let's take, for example, Ilya Muromets. One of the main characters of Russian epics - there are many stories dedicated to his biography - over time becomes a full-fledged historical figure. Without being a real hero, he enters history. It was this cyclization that allowed Ilya Muromets to enter the so-called media world, into another cultural space, into our contemporary reality.
“In 1914, Igor Sikorsky’s bomber plane was named after Ilya Muromets. A little later - an armored train, and before that - a sailing frigate. As you know, ships and planes are named after real people. The story with Ilya Muromets shows how the cyclization of a plot around one character makes it possible to make it historical and thereby fit it into the context of history. And of course, most children in modern schools believe that Ilya Muromets existed, not to mention the Orthodox people for whom he was canonized.”
Nikita Petrov
The epic strives for historicity, but at the same time they begin to see history in the epics. This confusion leads to the fact that sometimes the image of an epic hero can greatly influence the formation of other images in Russian culture. The epic, on the one hand, takes what it needs, and, on the other hand, it integrates itself into historical reality, inventing and constructing a new character.
“In 1643, more than 50 different saints were canonized, including Ilya Muromets. And how is his life structured? Well, of course, exclusively based on epic episodes. This is how the canonization of a character occurs, which has no real prototype. That is, indeed, in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra there are some relics about which there were legends or, rather, even legends that it was a certain hero Chobotok. As a result, the image of Saint Elijah of Pechersk is built exclusively on the biography of the epic character.”
Nikita Petrov
Abstract
At the beginning of the 20th century, epics were still a fairly popular genre. The storytellers performed in Moscow and St. Petersburg and attracted huge audiences. This phenomenon did not go unnoticed by the Soviet authorities: folklorists were obliged to go to villages and record not only traditional folklore, but also songs about new, Soviet heroes.
Since Soviet folklore did not exist, it had to be created. This is how the pseudo-folklore, so-called “fakelore” genre of novelties appeared. They glorified the exploits and events of the heroic Soviet present. Specially trained folklorists visited village performers, showed them films, and carried out political work. Storytellers processed this material and created new works - those same novelties.
“Where the pines rustle giants,
Where mighty rivers flow
There are epics about Stalin the wise
The lumberjacks sing around the fires.”Karelian song about Stalin
Thus, the government tried to legitimize itself and its unprecedented exploits with the help of folklore tradition. Such activities at the beginning of the 20th century can easily be called propaganda.
“It was assumed that this epic would glorify the exploits of Soviet industry, the life of the leaders, and if it did not replace it, then it would stand next to the epics. But it didn’t work out that way, and the genre died in the 60s. It did not have any folklore characteristics - it was a one-time performance, few people adopted these texts further. But the phenomenon itself is very interesting.”
Nikita Petrov
Despite the efforts of folklorists (new stories were not only imposed, but also actively published), new tales did not take root. “Epics” about Stalin were replaced by songs of a different genre and format. The genre has outlived itself, since it included an ideology that is not characteristic of either epic or folklore.
“Epic is a genre that accumulates pseudo-historical events, passing them off as historical. The heroism and pathos of the epic can be used not by the bearers of folklore tradition, but, for example, by the state - for other, perhaps more important purposes. In addition, the epic allows us to consolidate what can be called Russianness. It is known that during the Great Patriotic War, novelties that storytellers wrote to soldiers at the front helped them go into battle. That is, they sang new songs and went to war.”
Nikita Petrov
The epic is almost always historical. The Russian heroic epic absorbed motifs and images that developed back in the common Slavic, Proto-Slavic and even pre-Slavic (common Indo-European) eras.
Let’s listen and think about the word “hero.” It originates from the word “God,” the roots of which are in the Indo-Aryan languages, in particular in ancient Indian and ancient Persian, where it means “lord, happiness.” Hence “wealth”, which is “from God”, and “hero” - a fighter, a warrior “from God”, a defender and provider of happiness (the second part of the word “tyr” is, rather, of Turkic origin, hence “batyr” - strong a man, a brave man, and “to dig” – to extract).
The main qualities of a hero are military valor and his efforts to protect his native land. This reflected the reality of the time. The merits of a hero are tested in battle, in an unequal battle. The composition of the epic is also connected with this, the culminating event of which will be a battle, colorfully saturated with exaggeration.
According to the prominent Russian historian S.M. Solovyov, “the history of Russia, like the history of other states, begins with a heroic or heroic period... An old Russian song very well defines for us the best person, a hero or a hero: “Strength flows through the veins so lively, heavy from the strength, as from heavy pregnancy...” Men, or heroes, begin history with their exploits; by these exploits their people become known among foreign nations; These same exploits among their people become the subject of songs, the first historical material... The very story about the exploits of the hero-sorcerer acquires miraculous power, the sea calms down when a song about the hero is heard: “Here they will say about the good old days, silence the blue sea, to all of you, good people, for obedience.” This ancient proverb shows us that heroic songs were first heard on those boats from which the Black Sea was nicknamed the Russian Sea. Tribes disappear in the first, heroic period; instead of them there are volosts, principalities with names borrowed not from tribes, but from the main cities, from government centers that attracted the regional population centers... But the changes were not limited to this: as a result of the heroic, heroic movement, distant campaigns against Byzantium, a new faith appeared and spread , Christianity, the church appeared, a still new, special part of the population, the clergy; the former ancestor, the old man, was dealt a new, strong blow: he lost his priestly significance; a new father appeared next to him, a spiritual father, a Christian priest... In general, the movement of Russian history from the southwest to the northeast was a movement from better countries to worse, to more unfavorable conditions.”
A feast of heroes at the affectionate Prince Vladimir. Artist A.P. Ryabushkin
It was under these conditions that the heroic epic arose and flourished in Rus'. Epic heroes live in a multi-layered epic world that contains real events, personalities from the history of Rus', and even more archaic ideas of the Proto-Slavs, preserved only in the oral traditions of deep antiquity.
The name “epics” was established behind Russian folk epic songs and tales about heroes and good fellows, which describe their exploits and deeds.
Each of these songs and tales usually speaks about one episode in the life of one hero, and thus a series of songs of an apparently fragmentary nature is obtained. All epics, except for the unity of the subject described, are characterized by unity of construction. The independent spirit of the epic Russian epic is a reflection of the old veche freedom, preserved by heroes, free Cossacks and free peasants who were not captured by serfdom. The spirit of community, embodied in epics, connects the Russian epic and the history of the Russian people.
It should be noted that all the epics of the Russian people were preserved only by the Great Russians, and in Belarus and Ukraine, which were under the rule of the Westerners - the Catholic Polish-Lithuanian state, there were no epics left of their own.
The first epics were composed even before the Baptism of Rus' and bore the features of a very ancient pagan epic, although subsequently they all became Christianized to one degree or another. Of the heroes of epics, Svyatogor, Mikita Selyaninovich, Volga belong to the pre-Christian cycle... Sometimes pagan influence is felt in epics of later origin (the meeting of Ilya Muromets with Svyatogor).
Svyatogor is incomparably superior to Ilya Muromets in strength and spirit. About the attack of Muromets Svyatogor says: “Like Russian flies they bite,” that is, it marked the long-standing power of pagan Indo-European unity, and perhaps Nature itself. A whole series of comparisons convinces us of how much smaller and weaker Ilya Muromets is: the blows of his legendary club are like a fly bite for Svyatogor, and Ilya himself with his heroic horse fits into Svyatogor’s pocket (bag). Let us remember that even stronger than Svyatogor, according to one of the epics, was the peasant Mikulushka Selyaninovich, who carried earthly weights with him in his purse.
Volga Vseslavevich. Artist A.P. Ryabushkin
For the heroic Kyiv epics of the Christian period, Svyatogor is a deep past. He does not perform any feats, he is in no hurry. He doesn't need anyone. Svyatogor is the embodiment of a self-contained primary community. The image of Svyatogor contains the enormous power of the Vedic culture of pagan Rus'. The bright era of Christianity has come - the Night of Svarog, and the Mother of Cheese Earth stopped wearing Svyatogor. Svyatogor turned to stone before the appointed hour, and transferred his strength to Ilya Muromets, an Orthodox hero. He conveyed it, but not all of it, but only a small part. “Otherwise the Mother of Cheese Earth will not carry you either...” since a person cannot contain all the power of nature, a Christian cannot contain the pagan essence. The same force that Ilya inherited from Svyatogor, as legend says, “death in battle is not written in,” cannot be defeated. You can only sell it yourself, squander it, drink it and stroll through the taverns...
Ancient legends mention the pagan hero Volga Svyatoslavovich (Volkh Vseslavich), who from the age of five studied cunning wisdom, knowledge of all kinds of different (animal) languages, and was able to turn around, taking the form of various animals, birds and fish. The epic image of Volkh Vseslavich is ancient. He is a sorcerer who knows how to cast a spell, he is a knight-wizard, according to legend, born from a snake, which was a sign of wisdom, he is a werewolf-wolfclaw, who has the ability to turn into a gyrfalcon (falcon), a hort (wolf), a tour, an ant.
In the epic about Volkh Vseslavyevich, which has come down to us in an early recording (mid-18th century), the hero’s “werewolfism” is depicted as a completely real phenomenon:
He will turn into a clear falcon,
He will fly far away on the blue sea,
And he beats geese, white swans...
He will turn into a clear falcon,
He will fly to the Indian kingdom.
And he will be in the kingdom of the Indians,
And he sat down on the royal armor,
To that king of the Indians,
And that window is squinting...
Sitting on the squinting window,
He listened to those speeches,
He turned himself into ermine steel,
I ran through the basements, through the cellars,
On those high chambers,
I bit the strings of tight bows,
He took out the iron from the red-hot arrows...
Ilya Muromets. Artist A.P. Ryabushkin
Tomb of Elijah “from the city of Murom” in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra
But Prince Igor escapes from captivity in The Lay:
Prince Igor, jump like an ermine to the cane,
And white nog on the water,
I cast myself upon the greyhound,
And jump off him like a barefoot wolf,
And flow to the Donets meadow,
And fly like a falcon under the darkness,
Beating up geese and swans...
Along with Volg, the legendary Vsevolod of Polotsk is mentioned; the Laurentian Chronicle says about him: “his mother gave birth to him through sorcery...”; he is also mentioned as a werewolf (werewolf) in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” (in the second half of the 11th century). The main characters of the Kyiv epics are warrior-bogatyrs who defend Rus' from the encroachments of infidels and foreigners.
Ilya Muromets became the central figure of the Kyiv heroic cycle and indeed the entire Russian epic. Few people perceive this hero as a real historical figure, a man who lived approximately in the 11th - 12th centuries, canonized by the Orthodox Church. Initially, Ilya was buried in the heroic chapel of the St. Sophia Cathedral. At one time, a detailed description of the destroyed warrior’s tomb was compiled by the envoy of the Austrian Emperor Erich Lassota. Moreover, his tomb was located in the same temple with Yaroslav the Wise and Princess Olga, which in itself says a lot. Subsequently, his relics “migrated” to the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, where they rest incorruptible in a cave. The first historical evidence of the veneration of St. Elijah of Murom dates back to the end of the 16th century.
According to the results of a modern examination of the remains of the hero, he died at the age of 40 - 55 years. Experts agree unconditionally with the cause of death - an extensive wound in the chest area. In this case, we can safely say that the epic hero died in battle.
Born in the village of Karacharovo near Murom (or Murovsk, located between Kiev and Chernigov on the Desna River) “without arms, without legs,” he sat “sitting” on the stove for “thirty years and three years” until he was healed by passers-by. The Kaliki warned Muromets against fights with the ancient, primordial hero Svyatogor, with the Mikulov family and Mikula Selyaninovich himself, with the snake son Volga Seslavich (Volkh or the Snake Fire Wolf, who gave his name to the Volkhov River, which flows through Novgorod). Healed from his weakness, Ilya uprooted the centuries-old oak trees and built a strong fence, and then headed to Kyiv, to the court of Prince Vladimir. Instructing her son on the road, the mother ordered him not to shed blood. Along the way, Muromets still breaks his mother’s covenant, destroying the enemies who are insulting the Russian land. Violation of a parental order deprives the hero of the opportunity to return to his father’s roof. In return, he acquires another mother - “damp earth” (Holy Rus').
During the Time of Troubles, one of the then impostors became famous - Ileika Muromets, who in 1605 led detachments of Don and Volga Cossacks and promised “freedom” to the common people. The “interweaving” of the hero of the ancient epic and the Cossack leader most likely gave rise to the idea of Ilya as a Murom native and an “old Cossack”.
The hero Ilya in the popular perception merged with the image of Elijah the prophet. Popular belief also connects Elijah the prophet with his mother, the raw earth and its fertility. After Elijah's day, the harvest began. On Elijah’s day, the peasants did not work in the fields and gardens for fear that the angry saint, whom people had prevented with their work from cleansing the land of filth, might unleash drought and fires on the earth for human sins. The Prophet of Thunder, according to popular belief, will descend from Heaven to earth at the end of time:
How Elijah the Prophet descends from heaven,
Mother earth will light up,
From the east it will light up to the west,
From noon it will light up until night,
And the mountains and expanses will burn out,
And the dark forests will burn out,
And the Lord will send a flood,
And he will wash mother’s damp earth,
Like a white curse,
Like an eggshell,
Like an immaculate maiden.
Three heroes. Artist V.M. Vasnetsov
Around Muromets, if we consider the epic epic as a whole, a system of images associated with the people's destinies is built: Svyatogor and Mikula Selyaninovich (trinity unity).
The number “three” has had a special, magical meaning since ancient times. In a fairy tale, the law of trinity always applies: there are three brothers, three sisters in a family, the hero strikes the enemy three times, the Serpent has three heads (or a number that is a multiple of three). All important events happen three times, the hero receives three tasks.
Thus, behind almost every step of the epic hero there is the sacred symbolism of the ancient military cult. Three elder sorcerers raise the weak Ilya of Muromets to his feet with the help of a ladle of spring water. There are also three “classical” heroes. The peasant Ilya Muromets is contrasted in age, origin and behavior with Alyosha Popovich, and the unity of the heroic army is based on a single center of gravity (Holy Rus' - Kyiv - Prince Vladimir) and on the peacekeeping mediation of Dobrynya Nikitich - a representative of the princely power.
Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber. Splint
The main plots of the epics about Ilya Muromets are as follows:
1. Ilya receives heroic strength.
After sitting around for many years, Ilya, weak on his legs, miraculously receives a heroic strength from a passer-by - God's wanderer, a figure so well known in Rus' and so beloved by the Russian people. In Vladimir Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary, “kalika” is defined as “a pilgrim, a wanderer, a hero in humility, in squalor, in godly deeds... A wandering Kalika is a wandering, mendicant spiritual hero.” In those ancient times, pagan buffoons, ofen traders, wandering kaliki, monks, holy fools and simply beggars roamed the villages of Russia. All of them made up wandering Rus', which since ancient times brought news and knowledge to settled, economic Rus'.
There are also features of wandering in the behavior of Ilya himself. He has neither a permanent home nor a household; he does not bind himself to any worldly cares and worries, despising wealth and fame, refusing ranks and awards.
The passers-by tell him:
Now grow up and straighten your playful legs,
Now get off the stove, they will carry you,
They will carry you, your playful legs will hold you...
2. The epic about Ilya and Svyatogor (The Death of Svyatogor).
3. Trip of Ilya Muromets to Kyiv.
Setting off from his native land to serve at the court of Prince Vladimir, he approaches Chernigov and lifts the siege of the “black and black stronghold”, receiving reverent magnification from the Chernigov peasants: “Ah, you are a glorious hero and Holy Russian.” Then, on the way to Kyiv, he defeats the Nightingale the Robber, Odikhmantiev's son (of easily recognizable Polovtsian origin). At that time, robbers in general were called “nightingales” in Rus', because squads of robbers communicated with each other in the forest by whistling. The singing of nightingales in the forest did not bode well for passing merchants. Apparently, it was Ilya Muromets who led the punitive operation to clear the Chernigov road of “nightingales.” This brought him popularity among Kyiv and Chernigov merchants.
According to another version, Ilya pacified the rebellious village of pagans who lived in the area of modern Vyshgorod near Kiev, on the road to Chernigov. At the beginning of the century, peasants confidently showed the mound where the prince of this tribe, Nightingale, was buried.
Having defeated him and tied him to the stirrup, Ilya arrives in Kyiv, where Vladimir the Prince has just “left the Church of God.” At first, the prince does not believe Ilya Muromets that he was able to cope with the Nightingale the Robber, calling Ilya derogatory: “A peasant hillbilly.” I had to make the Nightingale whistle. After the robber’s abilities were confirmed and the prince was “frightened,” Ilya cut off the Nightingale’s head in an open field, thereby coping with the threat from the nomadic tribes.
4. Ilya Muromets and Kalin the Tsar.
This plot can also be called “Ilya’s Quarrel with the Prince.” The prince was angry with Ilya and put the old Cossack in a cold cellar (Ilya became a Cossack during the Time of Troubles, so this indicates a late edition of the epic). The epic does not doubt the legitimacy of the princely act (a view of the divine origin of autocratic power is already being formed), but condemns its unreasonableness and haste. But then “the dog Kalin the Tsar” goes to Kyiv. Bursting into tears, the prince repents that he ruined Ilya. But it turns out that Ilya is alive - the prudent daughter of Prince Oprax ordered him to be looked after and fed in prison. Ilya does not remember the insult and promises to save the Orthodox from the filthy. When Ilya saw that there was no end to the vile power, he decided to turn for help to his companions in service - to the Holy Russian heroes. He comes to their outpost and asks for help. This plot is interesting because it proves the existence of a whole class of heroic defenders and the prevalence of sovereign heroic obedience. At first, the heroes refuse to help the prince. At the same time, the eldest of them, Samson Samoilovich, the godfather of Ilya Muromets himself, explains it this way: “He has a lot of prince-boyars, he feeds them, gives them water, and even favors them. We have nothing from Prince Vladimir.” But the resentment of the heroes does not last long, and when Ilya, exhausted in battle, again asks for help, they enter the battle and, on Ilya’s advice, take the captive “dog Kalin the Tsar” to Kyiv to Vladimir the Prince.
That is, Russian heroes are not servants of the prince; in epics their independence is emphasized in every possible way. They are ready to fight the enemy, but only in an open field (an epic symbol of freedom) and not for the sake of the prince, but for the sake of preserving the Russian land.
5. Ilya Muromets at the Bogatyrskaya outpost.
The heroic outposts, like the straight paths, are a reflection of a very real historical reality. It was these outposts that protected Rus' from raids from the Wild Field. And this was so not only during the times of Kievan and Pre-Kievan Rus, but also in more distant times, when defensive lines were held in the Dnieper region against the raids of the steppe inhabitants.
A Cossack subordination was established between the three heroes at the outpost:
Under the glorious city near Kyiv,
On those on the Tsitsar steppes,
There was a heroic outpost,
At the outpost the ataman was Ilya Muromets,
Dobrynya Nikitich was a follower,
Esaul Alyosha is the priest’s son.
These epics metaphorically describe the battles of the governor Ilya with the steppe people. If we draw historical parallels, then the wars of Vladimir Monomakh with the Polovtsy are clearly visible. In 1096, the troops of Vladimir and Svyatopolk lifted the siege of Pereyaslav; in 1103 the Polovtsians were defeated on the Molochnaya River; in 1107, the troops of Khan Bonyak were defeated near Lubny; in 1111 the Cumans were defeated on the Salnitsa River. Finally, in 1117 they recognized themselves as junior partners of the Kyiv prince.
6. Fight between Ilya Muromets and a visiting hero-praiser.
The epic describes the battle of Ilya with the Great Zhidovin, ending with the victory of the Russian hero.
Ilya went out into the field and challenged Zhidovin to a fight. The opponents fight for a long time, they cannot defeat each other.
Suddenly Ilya’s “left leg slipped away.” He fell, Zhidovin fell on him! He wants to flog his white chest. Ilya recalls:
It was written by the holy fathers,
It was thought out by the apostles:
Ilya will never be in the open field, killed.
And - his strength has tripled!
Gave Ilya strength and confidence,
That he was not supposed to die in battle.
He pulled himself together, strained himself,
He threw Zhidovin into the air,
Hit him to the ground, then cut off his head,
He mounted her on his damask spear...
There are reliable historical events that could serve as the starting point for the plot. One of them is the defeat of the Khazar Kaganate in 965, the top of which, as is known, professed Judaism.
In another version, Ilya meets in battle with his “unrecognized” son Sokolnik, whom his peers teased as an illegitimate Skolotny, and, as you know, the Skolots (Scythian farmers) were one of the ancestors of the Slavs. The motives of civil strife in Rus' may be reflected here.
7. Ilya Muromets and the filthy Idol.
This epic story describes real historical events: the march of Russian heroes and Kaliks to Constantinople, the fall of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, as well as the fight against the pagans (people who adhere to the pre-Christian faith of their ancestors) in the lands of Novgorod and the victory over them.
8. By the 17th century. attributed to the appearance of one of the last epics about Muromets - “Ilya and the Tavern Goli”. It describes the conflict between the hero - the “hillbilly” and Vladimir the Red Sun. The hero became displeasing to the court of the prince, who did not invite Ilya to the feast. Muromets, in retaliation, knocked down the golden crosses and domes from the churches, took them to the tavern and drank them away along with the tavern goli. This epic was composed based on fresh memories of the unworthy behavior of the Russian “elite” and part of the clergy during the Time of Troubles, when the people recognized themselves as the only defender of the Christian faith and the churches of God in Rus'.
Alesha Popovich. Artist A.P. Ryabushkin
A folk storyteller who uses the plot of an epic certainly brings his own understanding of what is happening, reflecting reality after all. It is reliably known that, for example, behind the legendary personality of Alyosha Popovich there are two real historical figures - Olbeg Ratiborich and Alexander Popovich. This was established by comparing the epic eventfulness with real historical facts. Alyosha's opponent, the epic Serpent Tugarin, is also identified - this is the Polovtsian Khan Tugorkan.
The epic “Alyosha Popovich and Tugarin” begins with the fact that Alyosha and his comrades are going to Kyiv for “good fellows to show off.” Entering the princely chambers, they not only “place the cross in the written way, bow in the learned way,” as the representative of the princely class Dobrynya did in other epics (and the representative of the people Ilya Muromets did not do), but also “they say a prayer, and everything is to Jesus " Vladimir invited Alyosha to a place of honor, but the young hero said that he would choose where to sit, and... climbed onto the stove under the chimney window, as befits a national hero. Meanwhile, Tugarin appeared in the princely chamber, who “A dog is no more prayerful to God, and he is no more clansy than a prince and princess, and he does not hit princes and boyars with his forehead.” Alyosha could not stand it and began to condemn the behavior of the uninvited guest from the stove.
Now the dog Tugarin says:
“Why is there a stink sitting on your stove,
He’s sitting for the stinker, but for the zaselshchina?”
Vladimir Stolnokievskaya says:
“It’s not a stinker, it’s not a village,
The mighty Russian and the hero sits,
And the name is Oleshinkya Popovich-ot.”
Nikitich. Artist S. Moskvitin
Tugarin threw his knife at Alyosha, but it was intercepted by Alyosha’s sworn brother Ekim. Then Tugarin challenged Alyosha to a fight. Alyosha agreed and asked another named brother, Gury, for the tusks of a wild boar, a shell with Greek soil and a ninety-pound staff. Tugarin mounted a horse with paper wings, and Alyosha began to pray to the Almighty Savior and the Mother of God. “Olesha’s prayer to God was successful,” and it began to rain, which soaked the horse’s wings. Tugarin's horse sank to the ground, then Alyosha jumped out from under his mane, hit the enemy with his staff and cut off his head.
Alyosha Popovich appears in the epics less often than Ilya Muromets and Dobrynya Nikitich. But many spiritual verses are dedicated to Alexy, the man of God, and very few to the prophet Elijah.
Dobrynya Nikitich is the connecting link of the trinity of defenders, the second oldest and most powerful hero, the nephew of Prince Vladimir, personifying princely power and statehood. The prototype of this character was Dobrynya, known from the Tale of Bygone Years, the uncle and devoted warrior of Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir Svyatoslavich, to whom the prince gave Novgorod. According to the Novgorod Joachim Chronicle, in 991 St. Joachim of Korsun, with the help of Dobrynya and governor Putyata, baptized the Novgorodians. If you believe the chronicle, the Novgorod pagans rebelled, and then “Putyata baptized them with the sword, and Dobrynya with fire.” The baptism of Novgorod formed the basis of the plot of “Dobrynya Nikitich and the Serpent,” where the hero defeats the Serpent and frees Prince Vladimir’s beloved niece Zabava Putyatishna.
The most skilled in wrestling, as can be seen from many epics, was Dobrynya Nikitich: “Dobrynyushka studied wrestling. He learned how to get off the hook... Great glory passed about him, The Master was Dobrynyushka in the fight, Knocked down the sir Ilya Muromets on the damp ground...”
In the epics, the image of Dobrynya was ennobled and began to represent the image of a warrior, who combines strength, courage, military skill, nobility, and education. He knew how to sing, play the harp, was skilled at chess, and had extraordinary diplomatic abilities, i.e. Dobrynya became the ideal warrior-knight of the era of Kievan Rus, not forgetting sometimes to fool the too simple and manly Ilya of Muromets.
In addition to the Kyiv cycle, there is also a Novgorod cycle, consisting mainly of epics about Sadko and Vaska Buslaev.
The church did a lot to venerate Ilya Muromets, which needed an Orthodox hero who could defeat both the Miracle Judo and the filthy Idol.
Among the people, along with the veneration of the Monk Elijah, there was also a certain humorous and ironic attitude towards his exploits. This attitude is generally characteristic of everything that was imposed by official morality. In the lands of Novgorod, the pagan roots of pre-Christian Rus' were still strong. It is the hero Vasily Buslaev who often parodies Ilya Muromets in his exploits.
From the monograph by B.N. Putilov “Folklore and folk culture”:
“The parody origin lies in the epics about the Novgorodian Vasily Buslaev. This image is striking in its paradoxicality: in the thick layer of heroic colors superimposed on it, it is not easy to separate the real from the imaginary, it is not easy to understand when he is a “true” hero, and when he is an anti-hero, an “inverted” hero... Epics about Vasily demonstrate the negation of the canons of the Kyiv epic world, offering a different epic world. The contrast comes, in particular, through the connection of the parody principle. It doesn't always open straight. Thus, Vasily’s childhood is described in the spirit of the epic tradition, with an eye to the epics about Volga and Dobrynya. Like the second, Vasily - the son of an “honest widow” - early discovers remarkable strength and tests it on his peers. Like Volga, he shows a penchant for learning. But while for Dobrynya, childish mischief is replaced by serious heroic deeds, and for Volga, teaching is the path to mastering the experience of a leader and a wizard, Vasily uses his “science” for anti-heroic deeds and remains a mischief-maker until the end of his life.”
Tour. German engraving from the 16th century.
The entire episode of Vasily’s selection of a squad is openly parodic. It contains palpable echoes of various descriptions of squads in Kyiv epics, but everything here appears in an inverted form: the idea of the correspondence of the squads to the ataman, and the focus on those who are able to drink a bucket of wine and withstand the blow of a club, and the social and professional selection of the squads...
Like Ilya Muromets, Vasily is imprisoned in the cellar at the most important moment, but only the whole situation is given a comic shade - he is locked in the cellar by his mother, sometimes using her own strength (“She grabbed Vasilyushka under her bosom”). It is described in a grotesque manner how his mother takes him out of the carnage: she jumps up behind him “on his mighty shoulders” and forces him to calm down.
Along with the parodic inversion of the classical epic tradition, there is a desire to portray Vasily Buslaev as a hero of a new type, who grew up and acted in the unique environment of Veliky Novgorod, which, as is known, was the northern opponent of Kyiv.
From the heritage of antiquity, it is necessary to mention the genre beloved by warriors - “Golden-horned Tours”, songs of a ballad nature, once the beginning of the epic. Turs are ancient bulls (later extinct), the object of princely hunting in Kievan Rus and a symbol of courage. In the epic they acquired the meaning of prophetic animals, endowed with miraculous properties and a fantastic appearance.
Turya horns - rhytons were a mandatory part of solemn ritual feasts and were an obligatory attribute of the gods, as a symbol of prosperity (“horn of plenty”). There were a large number of sacred horns from different eras, starting with stone steles on the routes of the Proto-Slavic grain trade in the 6th – 5th centuries. BC.
In Slavic tales and myths, duels and battles are a characteristic feature of the behavior of mythological characters. Among them are the most famous fights between mythological characters who are in charge of atmospheric phenomena (clouds, hail, winds) and sorcerers such as cloud chasers who fight them.
One of the clearest and most convincing confirmations of the “unifying internationality” of the Russian epic is the fact that Rus', and sometimes even the heroes of its epic themselves, were included in the epics of other peoples of Eurasia. Thus, the unifying hero of the Russian epic, Prince Vladimir, is (under the name Valdemar) the hero of the Icelandic epic, primarily the Saga of Olaf Tryggvasson, recorded in the 12th century, but in the oral tradition it undoubtedly arose earlier (the Norwegian king Olaf was a contemporary of Vladimir) .
Singing guslar. Artist A.P. Ryabushkin
In the Norwegian “Saga of Thidrek of Berne,” Vladimir (Valdemar) appears next to Ilya (Ilias), who is presented here as Vladimir’s side brother. The action of the saga takes place directly on Russian land (Ruszialand), Novgorod (Holmgard), Smolensk (Smaliski), Polotsk (Palltaeskiu), etc. are mentioned. The saga was written down in 1250, but Western researchers place its origins no later than the 10th century. Finally, Ilya the Russian (Ilias von Riuzen) is the hero of a number of works of German epic, primarily the poem “Ortnit”, recorded in 1220 - 1240, but formed much earlier.
Rus' took a prominent place in the epic of the Southeast - in Nizami Ganjavi’s poem “Iskender-name”, created at the end of the 12th century, or rather, in the first book of this work - “Sharaf-name” (“Book of Glory”), which describes the exploits of the great Iskender (that is, Alexander the Great). The sixth part of “Sharaf-name” (more than 2000 lines) is devoted to depicting his battles with the Russian army, which, led by Kintal-Rus, invaded Transcaucasia. We are talking about several campaigns of Rus' that actually took place in the cities of the eastern part of Transcaucasia, which took place in the 9th and 10th centuries. Russian warriors appear to be real heroes, and only in the seventh battle does Iskender defeat Kintal, and then conclude an honorable peace with him.
The manifestations of the Russian heroic epic outlined above in the vast space from Norway to Byzantium and from the German lands to the border of Iran give an idea of the energy and activity of the historical existence of Rus' in the heroic era of its youth, which is reflected in folk tales.
As for the absence of such a genre as “epic” in Rus', V.Ya. Propp convincingly showed that “the epic of any people always consists only of scattered, individual songs. These songs have internal integrity and, to some extent, external unity... the epic does not have external integrity, but internal unity, the unity of the images of heroes that are the same for all songs, the unity of style and, most importantly, the unity of national ideological content... A true epic is always consists of disparate songs that are not united by the people, but represent integrity. The epic is outwardly unified, but internally mosaic... The epic, as we have seen, is holistic in essence and scattered in the form of its expression.”
After the beating of Igor. Artist V.M. Vasnetsov
Russian epics, which had been waiting for their recording for several centuries, did not unite into an epic, as did later “improvers” in the West (“Song of the Nibelungs”, “Song of Roland”). The transmission of the epic in the oral tradition had its drawbacks (poetic distortions), but there was also an advantage over certain records, because in certain respects it more accurately preserved the original nature of the epic.
The performers, and very often the composers of songs and epics, were the wonderful ancient Russian guardians of traditions, artists, musicians and poets, known as bayans, guslars, buffoons. It is not without reason that in the epics themselves they are portrayed as performers of epics, true artists, from “whose touching play all the princes and boyars, and all these Russian heroes, became thoughtful at the table, yet listened deeply.”
The once united array of mythology disintegrated over time, giving rise to two directions: military rites and heroic tales, epics and legends.
The epic epic has been preserved for us mainly in its Northern Russian guise. True, Siberian and Central Russian epic texts (as opposed to Cossack - South Russian and Ural) are in principle close to Northern Russian ones and provide the same type of epic songs. But the Siberian and Central Russian tradition has been preserved immeasurably worse, is represented poorer and receives its interpretation only in the light of the Northern Russian tradition. The chronological boundaries of this tradition are the XVII-XX centuries. They coincide with the chronology of our real knowledge of the Russian epic. Here is the source of many problems, difficulties, mysteries, and insoluble obstacles. Let us remember, however, that the scientific accounting of the epic tradition of any other people is in a similar (and more often than not, much more difficult) situation. We do not know of such cases when an epic tradition would have been recorded throughout its centuries-long development, in the form of successive stages. The epic of any people comes to us as something that has long been established, as a result, or, more precisely, as one of the moments of its historical development.
As a rule, literature or science discovered an epic when there was already a long and complex history behind it, and, as a rule, the pages of this history needed to be restored, reconstructed; it was simply inaccessible to read them. The epics, in their state as they were discovered in the Russian North, were an example of a living epic heritage. The time for the productive development of the epic tradition was already behind us; Folk art has moved forward in knowledge and in the depiction of reality and in the expression of the ideals that ruled the people. The environment, which continued to preserve and transmit epic poetry from generation to generation, perceived and interpreted it as a memory of the distant past, as the history of a “different” time, continuously connected with the present time, but qualitatively different from it. For all that, epics in the general composition of the Russian folklore repertoire were not an artistic anachronism. They fit quite naturally and harmoniously into this composition, revealing diverse - sometimes lying on the surface, sometimes deeply hidden - connections with other traditional genres of folk poetry and with other types of folk art.
Bylinas were perceived as a heritage more acutely and directly not only by their archaic content, by their “remoteness” from the times glorified in them, but also by their specific position in the functional system of folklore genres. Bylinas did not have a stable everyday function, like ritual songs, and they did not belong to the genres of mass and everyday life. However, the fact that epics could live and be preserved in the North only surrounded by a rich and diverse poetic tradition and that classical Russian folklore here was in many respects united and the fates of individual genres were interconnected can hardly be disputed. Science still has a lot to do to understand the general artistic processes that took place in Northern Russian folklore. Until now, in our opinion, in this work the strength and durability of artistic traditions that determined the nature and development paths of individual genres have not been sufficiently taken into account; the fact that not only epics, but also such genres as the fairy tale and the tale of animals, calendar songs and wedding songs, lyrical plangents, spells, riddles (and maybe some others), were inherited by the northern peasantry in the current state (in terms of genre features, genre structure ) form, in established artistic types, in a certain plot composition.
The prehistory of these genres is known to us as poorly as the prehistory of epics. But on the other hand, comparative material from other regions of Russia is presented much more fully and variedly, allowing us to talk about the differences between Northern Russian folklore and the folklore of the center and south of the country. The question remains open about the origins of these differences and the time when these differences emerged: should we recognize them as late, due to the peculiarities of folk life in different regions of the country, or do they already characterize the Russian folklore of ancient Rus'? It has long been established that northern storytellers contributed almost nothing new to the plot composition of the Russian epic. “New formations” known to science are few in number and are characteristic in one respect: the “material” for them was, as a rule, not events of reality, not facts of history, but fairy tales, book legends, i.e. the same folklore, but of a different artistic system . Epic creativity in this sense is not alone: there are a number of genres that, although widely circulated in the North, know almost no northern new formations, or know those that undoubtedly go back to folklore or literature (for example, fairy tales that came from lubok, songs of literary origin and etc.). Northern Russian folklore included genres that continued to develop productively, that is, those that gave rise to new works (for example, lamentations, legends, historical songs), and genres that basically completed their productive development, the creative life of which proceeded in a specific way, within the framework of the established and a gradually fading tradition.
The epics also belonged to these latter groups. Two questions, closely related to each other, are of particular interest:) in what relation to the previous tradition are the Northern Russian epics known to us?;) what is the essence of the processes that took place in the Northern Russian epic in the last approximately hundred years? I'll start with the second one. Apparently, extreme points of view on the fate of epics in the 19th-20th centuries have been quite convincingly refuted. According to one of them, which was expressed with particular harshness at one time by the most prominent representatives of the historical school (V. Miller, S. Shambinago), epics in the mouths of generations of northern storytellers were consistently destroyed, deteriorated and distorted. According to another, expressed by some modern researchers, northern storytellers creatively reworked ancient Russian epic poetry and reflected modernity in epics - not only the environment, nature, material conditions and life, but also the social conflicts of the era. “In the epics, if we take them as a whole, the complex of local life was fully reflected - socio-economic relations, material culture, way of life and views.”
The concept according to which the fate of the Russian epic in the North was determined by the dialectical interaction of three principles: the preservation of tradition, its fading, and its creative development seems to us to be immeasurably more justified and corresponding to reality. Collectors of the 19th-20th centuries. accumulated significant empirical material, the generalization of which made it possible to see quite concretely how the epic was preserved in the North, what life circumstances supported its life, what internal conditions determined the nature of the life of the tradition and how the process of its gradual and steady extinction took place. To understand the actual creative processes that took place in the epic, special monographic studies, analysis of a huge number of records, and a special study of the art of storytelling were needed. The most significant and convincing results in this area are associated with the works of A. M. Astakhova. The researcher herself admits that her work, polemically directed against the theory of the attenuation of the epic among the peasantry, contained some exaggerations and some one-sidedness. A. M. Astakhova established with great accuracy very important features of the creative work of storytellers on epics, while emphasizing the continuity of their creativity in relation to tradition.
The one-sidedness, in fact, was manifested not in the fact that the creative side came to the fore, as if overshadowing the process of degradation, but in the fact that the creative process appeared separated from this latter, opposed to it and little connected with it. The work of storytellers (especially good, talented ones) was given a certain self-sufficient role; their work was not sufficiently objectified and did not receive quite clear coverage from the point of view of the fate of epic art as an art with its own special laws. I think that it is possible to continue and deepen what A. M. Astakhova has done on the basis of studying the Northern Russian epic as an integral artistic system that underwent changes not only in individual components, but precisely in the system as a whole. Perhaps, for methodological purposes, it makes sense to free ourselves from the “magic” of the storyteller’s personality and try to look at epics from the point of view of the ideological and structural patterns inherent in the epic. After the well-known work of A. Skaftymov, which took little into account objective laws and endowed epics with ahistorical “effects” that supposedly determined their architectonics, science paid little attention to the problems of the artistic structure of the Russian epic.
Meanwhile, significant material has been accumulated within the framework of the epic creativity of different peoples, making it possible to identify the individual components of the epic structure in their historical development and thereby get closer to understanding the structure as a whole, also, of course, in its dynamics. However, in my opinion, studying the Northern Russian epic in any aspect without at least determining in a preliminary, working manner its relationship to the Old Russian epic is extremely difficult, if not fruitless. The scientist cannot help but decide for himself what he is dealing with: the fragments of a former whole? with its natural (successive) continuation and development? with a new artistic phenomenon that arose on the basis of the processing of an old epic? Our view of the possibilities, boundaries and effectiveness of interaction between northern epics and reality, and the very nature of their life, depends on this, in particular. So, let's return to the first question posed above: in what relation to the previous tradition are the Northern Russian epics known to us? The apparent diversity of views on this issue, although not always expressed clearly enough and carried out consistently enough, can be reduced to several fundamental concepts.
One of them developed in the depths of the historical school and constituted, one might say, the methodological basis of most of the specific studies carried out by representatives of this school. No matter what different conclusions the researchers came to about the time and place of the origin of the Russian epic as a whole and its individual cycles or about the historical associations of epic plots and characters, no matter how they imagined the complex history of the epic, they seemed to be unanimous in one thing: they was guided by the conviction that although the Northern Russian epics go back to the Old Russian “epics” (“main”, “original”, “first type”, etc.), they are qualitatively different from them in their content and the nature of their historicism. From the point of view of V.F. Miller, “prototypes of epics” and “modern epics” can only be similar in “poetic form.” “The forms, structure, and turns of language are generally more conservative than the content, which has been subjected to various layers and even radical reworking over the centuries.”
The “first editions” were based on historical legends and were historical epic songs, “sagas”, in which “the historical element naturally should have ... been much more significant”, or “historical songs of praise” composed in honor of the princes; they were composed by princely and druzhina singers and were imbued with the political interests of the time; in these songs “historical facts were processed under the influence of fantasy,” their plot contained a significant proportion of “wandering” folklore and literary material. The historical school recognized that already in the productive period of the epic’s life, i.e., in the conditions of ancient Rus', significant changes, “stratifications,” “replacements,” and plot “accumulations” took place in it. A significant role in the transformation of the epic was given to buffoons. It was also believed that already in ancient times, epic songs could reach the “lowest layer of the people” and here they would be “distorted,” “just as modern epics that came to them from among professional petars are distorted among the Olonets and Arkhangelsk common people.”
Northern Russian epics are the result, on the one hand, of long and repeated creative revisions of the epic in changing historical, geographical, cultural and everyday conditions, and on the other, “damage” and distortions among the peasantry. According to the apt expression of V. Ya. Propp, for V. F. Miller “an epic is a spoiled narrative about a real event,” epics are “confused, forgotten and spoiled historical songs among the peasantry.” As a result, according to V.F. Miller, the Northern Russian epic retained only traces of the Old Russian epic, mainly in the form of elements of poetic form, names, personal and geographical, scattered everyday details and individual plot motifs. However, there was no consensus among researchers on the issue of the boundaries and volume of these traces. Certain contradictions can also be seen in their views. For example, V. Miller considered it necessary to emphasize the “considerable strength of plots, heroic types” as evidence “in favor of the remarkable strength of tradition.” Based on this position, he never missed the opportunity to see in the details of a particular plot a reflection of the facts recorded in the chronicle. It is well known to what exaggerations he resorted to.
At the same time, V. Miller repeated more than once that Northern Russian epics retained names from antiquity, but not plots. “The names in our epic, as in other folk oral works, are older than the plots attached to them.” Therefore, V. Miller refused - on the basis of Northern Russian material - from attempts to restore the content of the “original” epics and did this only when he had literary data from the time of ancient Rus'. Skepticism regarding the degree of preservation of the living epic allowed representatives of the historical school to make any assumptions and conjectures about the historical content of the “original” epics: the inconsistency of this content with the nature of the northern epic was always attributed to the fragility of the epic plots. In the historical school (and more broadly, in Russian academic science at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, and then, in a somewhat transformed form, in Soviet science in the 1980s), the prevailing ideas were that the Russian epic had undergone a long and complex evolution from the historical epic itself to the epic that retained only scattered and dull traces of former historicism, and the final stage of evolution, which most removed our epic from its historical foundations, was the northern period of its life.
True, such judgments often did not prevent scientists from highly appreciating the artistic and historical significance of the living epic. Thus, Yu. M. Sokolov wrote that “these ancient songs very clearly and fully reflected the most diverse aspects of the historical and everyday life of the Russian people.” At the same time, this did not prevent him from believing that “a wide variety of changes both in content and in... . . the form” to which epics were subjected “were not external in nature, but created a deep organic processing.” Based on the results of the work of the historical school, Yu. M. Sokolov attached individual epics to a certain era, “at least in terms of their origin.” But regarding other epics (for example, about Ilya Muromets), he believed that they “came to us in such a highly processed form that it is impossible to get to their origins. . . almost impossible". However, Yu. M. Sokolov attributed the internal processing of the epic to the time preceding the period of his northern life, and emphasized the national significance of the work of northern storytellers who preserved the ancient artistic heritage.
Also characteristic in this regard is the position of M. Speransky, who believed that the 16th century had the most decisive influence on the epic. “Detaminations of the 16th century. often so thick that from under them one can hardly see the older basis of the epic.” The later detachments are small and “easily removed,” so that “the entire range of everyday ideas and social relations in most epics does not generally extend beyond the 16th century.” or, in general, the old worldview of the time of the Muscovite kingdom.” Two initial methodological theses supported in our science the view of the northern epic as a fundamentally different stage in the history of the Russian epic: the theory of the aristocratic origin of the epic and the idea of the emergence of epics on the basis of isolated specific facts, of the creation of images of epic heroes based on real prototypes. Naturally, when the theory of the aristocratic origin of the epic was rejected as untenable, our science substantiated the view of the northern storytellers as the legitimate and natural successors of the centuries-old folk epic tradition.
The very chronological borders of the northern storytelling culture were pushed deeper - in accordance with the data on the colonization of the North. At the same time, material has accumulated, the generalization of which made it possible to more specifically establish what the Russian epic was like by the end of its productive period (XVI-XVII centuries). For us, the final conclusion about the relationship between the epics of the productive period and the northern period, made quite recently by A. M. Astakhova and based on a thorough comparative analysis of the texts of both, is very important. A. M. Astakhova establishes between the epics of two periods, i.e. between the medieval epic (in its form that took shape towards the end of the Middle Ages) and the Northern Russian epic (and more broadly - the epic of the 18th-20th centuries in general) a fundamental commonality in genre type, genre specificity , plot composition, structure and character of the plot, in the nature of the options, in the presence of motives not only heroic-patriotic, but also social, satirical, in the depiction of heroes and the characteristics of the main heroes.
Thus, under the pressure of facts, the wall between the Old Russian (“original”) and Northern Russian epics, erected by the efforts of the historical school, begins to collapse. Thus, we are approaching - on new factual and methodological foundations - to an understanding of the truth, which is not new in essence, that in its content, in its genre structure, and in the nature of its historicism, the Northern Russian epic is not something fundamentally, qualitatively new, different and that the ancient Russian epic in its origin and development remained an epic, and not a historical epic song. The question of the relationship between the Northern Russian epic (or more broadly, the peasant epic of the 18th-20th centuries) and the Old Russian epic has again become acute in recent years in connection with the revived discussion about the historicism of the Russian epic. Representatives of the neohistorical school tend to reconcile the thesis about the original concrete historical content of the epic with recognition of the high artistic and historical significance of epics of the 18th-20th centuries. In practice, this inevitably leads researchers to difficult-to-reconcile contradictions.
Thus, in the book by B. A. Rybakov it is emphasized that “folk epics are precious to us not only for their poetry and solemn melodiousness, but also for their historical truth, passed on from generation to generation for a whole thousand years.” “The history of a thousand years ago has survived in oral transmission as a folk textbook of the native past, in which the main thing in the heroic history of the people was selected.” But the “historical truth” discovered by the researcher during the analysis of individual plots appears in the form of complex puzzles, encrypted riddles; it turns out that the later epic did not preserve for us historically accurate almost a single name or geographical name, transformed the outline of events and rethought the nature of conflicts, and that in general it is “not about that.” One of two things: either if the “original” epics were historical in the sense in which B. A. Rybakov understands it, then the epics known to us from later records cannot in any way be considered the “history of a thousand years ago” that has survived to us; or, if we recognize this historical significance for them, we need to reconsider the chronicle-historical nature of the ancient epic. The views of the historical school were partly revised, partly supported and developed in the works of D. S. Likhachev. From his point of view, the epic is “not a remnant of the past, but a historical work about the past.” “The historical content of epics is conveyed by storytellers consciously.”
The epic preserves what is “historically valuable”: not only names, events, but also “partially... the very social relations of deep antiquity.” The epic reveals the past within a single epic time, which is identified with the time of Kievan Rus. The historical past in the epic is not distorted, but artistically generalized. D. S. Likhachev can be understood in such a way that epics preserve precisely the “historically valuable”, “historical basis” in the form of direct reflections and artistic generalizations. As for the rest - in the plot, language, poetic form - from the 10th to the 17th centuries. significant changes have occurred. D. S. Likhachev returned to these questions in his recent article, expanding and deepening some of the previously expressed considerations. He pays special attention to the attitude of the bearers of the epic epic themselves to the historical essence of the works they perform. “For the narrator and his listeners, the epic tells, first of all, the truth. Artistry, of course, does not contradict this truth, but allows it to be better revealed.” This thesis is substantiated by numerous facts gleaned from collectors and convincingly indicating that the storytellers (and their audience) believe “in the reality of the events told in the epic.”
A believing storyteller “sees in the epic a “single historical fact” and specific historical names.” The people of the Middle Ages saw the same thing in the epic, including chroniclers, who had no doubt that “the epic tells about events that actually took place and about people who really existed.” ". " On this basis, D. S. Likhachev refuses to consider the epic as an artistic fiction and proposes the following scheme: "The artistic generalization in the epic, as in Russian medieval literature, came from a single historical fact, from a specific historical person and a specific historical event. Epic the work at first told only about what happened. It could be a historical legend, a historical song, glory to a hero, lament for a hero, etc. Already in these first historical works there was a share of artistic generalization and comprehension of history... Then, over time events and historical figures were increasingly transformed, more and more overgrown with fiction.The work moved into another genre with a different degree and with a different quality of artistic generalization. An epic appeared. But the epic was still perceived as “truth.” The people strove to carefully preserve names, geographical names, and the historical outline of the story.”
I cited this long excerpt to show, firstly, how D. S. Likhachev understands the distance between the “original” epic and the epic known to us, and secondly, how he manages to eliminate (though only in appearance) the insurmountable barrier between an ancient epic, with an open, concrete historicism supposedly inherent in it, and a late epic, which has preserved only dubious traces of such historicism. However, the only serious factual argument that D.S. Likhachev uses is the “faith” of the storytellers, in our opinion, which serves not to support, but to refute the main thesis of the article. I will note first of all that the storytellers who preserved the epic believed in reality, if you like - in the historicity of the epic world as a whole, with all its characters, typical situations, relationships, with the struggle of various forces taking place in it, with the fantasy, miraculous or everyday and psychological unreliability. To think that the storytellers believed in this world because it artistically generalized actual facts, that is, because it can be traced back to chronicle history and this latter can be explained, we have absolutely no grounds. The storytellers themselves did not think that behind this epic world there was some other, “real” story; for them, it was this epic story that existed and was reality, the unusualness and improbability of which was removed in their minds by the distance from their time and their experience.
Following the historical school, D. S. Likhachev argues that “the people sought to carefully preserve names, geographical names, and the historical outline of the story.” But is this the essence of epics? Are the epics “Ilya and the Nightingale the Robber”, “Ilya and the Idolishche”, “Mikhailo Potyk”, “Sadko and the Tsar of the Sea” and dozens of others valuable as a “historical outline of the story”? And are names really so carefully preserved if in order to identify epic characters in our days we have to mobilize data from a number of historical disciplines? And what is the preservation of other geographical names worth if storytellers place the corresponding cities, rivers and even countries on an epic map, which would have been considered fantastic even in the Middle Ages? The storytellers treated the epic as a whole with care (although this does not mean that they did not change it), since they absolutely equally believed in the reality of all its constituent elements. But in this sense, epics are not alone. The environment that preserved the epic believed in the reality of other phenomena of folk poetry and pre-Christian mythology that it inherited. It is unlikely, however, that we will begin to look for “single facts” behind these phenomena. Rather, we will try to explain them based on the general processes of the life of the people and their consciousness. Why can’t this be done in relation to epics?
“Faith” is an organic and unique property of the epic environment, but not an objective function of the epic itself. Otherwise, we would have to admit that mythology, which also has a lot of “historical” in it, grew up as a generalization of “individual facts.” According to D.S. Likhachev, it turns out that up to a certain point, fiction in folklore is possible only as a result of the evolution of empirical (in epics - chronicles) facts. At the same time, he refers to ancient Russian literature as an analogy. But the laws of literature cannot be applied by analogy to folklore. Let us not forget that the folklore tradition, which was subjected to processing and transformation under appropriate conditions, served as an intermediate basis and mediating material for the reflection of reality in folklore. Folklore, in particular historical folklore, went through a long path of development before a specific fact became the starting point for the content of epic songs, the constructive core of their plot. The latest comparative historical studies have shown that the general general path of epic creativity goes from the mythological epic through the heroic tale to the heroic epic in its various standard forms and that historicism as an artistic defining quality is gradually, through a series of stages, formed in the epic.
Concrete historicism is the conquest of folk epic at relatively late stages of its development. The epic comes to him, and does not begin with him. In relation to the Russian epic, this means that it did not open with historical songs, but ended with them. The epic epic represents one of the natural stages in the movement of folk art towards true history, and not a manifestation of a departure from it. To understand the relationship of the Northern Russian epic to the Old Russian epic, it seems to me essential to pay attention to the following fundamental points related to the structure itself, to the artistic essence of that epic epic, which is known to us from the records of the 18th-20th centuries. . The study of the epic in comparative historical terms reveals to us in northern epics significant and diverse connections with the archaic (pre-state) epic tradition. These connections are completely organic and permeate the epic epic - its plot, imagery, character of heroism, depiction of the outside world, poetic structure. These connections in a certain way characterize the epic consciousness of the creators of Russian epics, that is, the complex of ideas about reality contained in them. If we believe that the epics known to us from records dating back to the 18th (and even the 17th century) arose as a result of the evolution of historical songs, then we will have to admit that the epic archaism is of a secondary nature.
But where and how could it have appeared, how could it have formed as an integral system? It, of course, could not be reproduced, repeated, or fantasized. Neither fairy tales nor international plots could bring it in this form and in such integrity. It could appear in only one way - as a result of the natural and logical assimilation, processing and negation of the previous epic system of pre-state epic. The northern epic correlates with the pre-state epic not directly, not directly; it represents a fairly distant continuation of the archaic tradition on the basis of the heroic (“state”) epic. There is an undoubted continuity between the archaic epic in its “pure” form and the archaic elements of epics, but there is also a considerable distance, during which the birth and development of the Russian heroic (“state”) epic took place. The successful results of the comparative historical study of folk epic, achieved on the basis of the application of the methodology of historical-typological analysis, make it possible to quite reasonably imagine - at least in principle - the nature of the archaic connections of the ancient Russian epic and their gradual evolution to the forms of northern epic known to us. In particular, significant material in this regard is provided by the research of V. Ya. Propp.
The continuity of the Northern Russian epics with the archaic epic tradition reveals itself with particular clarity in the plot. “Storylines change more and faster than names and titles. This is one of the specific features of epic creativity,” with these words D. S. Likhachev agrees with one of the provisions of the historical school. Modern comparative historical studies have shown that the main composition of epic plots can be correlated according to the principle of typological continuity with the plot typical of archaic epics. All the main plot themes that developed in the depths of the pre-state epic are known - in the forms of the “state” epic - to our epics: snake fighting and the hero’s struggle with monsters, heroic matchmaking, the conflict of heroic generations, dramatic meetings of relatives who do not know about their kinship, battles with external enemies, invaders.
Here we find typical epic situations and motifs that originate from archaic epics: the miraculous birth, miraculous growth and miraculous death of the hero; ideas about “other” worlds; miraculous transformations, magic, the ability to foresee and predict events, heroic fights, etc. It is important to emphasize that typological continuity is manifested not simply in the commonality or similarity of themes, motives, ideas, etc., but in their specific development, in specific artistic expression. Direct analysis of the relevant material leads to the conviction that the likelihood of simple coincidences and random repetitions is excluded here. Before us is a complete system that could not have been formed by changing the previous storylines, i.e., as representatives of the historical and neo-historical schools believe, the “original” songs built on a specific historical outline. This system could only emerge as a result of reworking - on new historical foundations - the plot of the pre-state epic and the centuries-long development of the new plot of the “state” epic.
The plots of ancient Russian epics owe their origin and design not to isolated chronicle facts, but to the collision of archaic epic consciousness with a historical reality new to the people, with a new consciousness and new ideals. In this sense they are fictional. D. S. Likhachev incorrectly interprets our understanding of epic fiction as a kind of conscious creative act, as a frank attitude. In his opinion, there could be nothing in the epic that did not already exist in empirical reality. “The people did not know modern forms of artistic invention, just as medieval scribes did not know them.” The whole point is that the people knew other forms of fiction that had developed in the depths of primitive folklore, which they themselves did not recognize as fiction, but nevertheless objectively were such. The plot of the ancient Russian epic, based on the transformation of archaic plots, was, of course, fiction in relation to reality, since it did not repeat it empirically. The epic world, built on the basis of real experience, ideal ideas, illusions and artistic tradition, was fictional, although its creators believed in its reality.
Fiction in the epic is not opposed to history, but it is not subordinate to chronicle empiricism and does not proceed from it. Thus, in my opinion, the plot content of epics - with its typical typical features and deep traditionality - is not “another genre, with a different degree and with a different quality of artistic generalization” (in relation to the ancient Russian “primary” songs), but natural and an organic continuation of the ancient Russian epic plot. The task is to reveal as fully and definitely as possible the dynamics of development in the epic plot from the time when it began to acquire a historical character until the time when the living process was completed. . In epics we are faced with a peculiar world in which everything is unusual - not only from the point of view of the northern singer, but also from the point of view of the historian, and this unusualness is not of the kind and scale that could be brushed aside, neglected at least for a moment. time, attribute it to later fantasy, “overgrowth with fiction.” Everything here is unusual - the geographical and political picture of the world, spatial and temporal concepts, social relations, social institutions, human capabilities, the people themselves, finally.
The unusual merges with the ordinary, interacting freely. The historical school repeatedly tried to isolate the empirical principle in later epics, but invariably failed, since it mechanically approached the relationship between real history and fiction in the epic. In his works, D. S. Likhachev tried to expand the range of traditional historical comparisons in epics. He came to the conclusion that epics not only reflect “individual historical events or individual historical persons,” but also “partially reproduce the very social relations of ancient times, transfer them to the setting of Kievan Rus.” However, in the actual argumentation of this assertion, D.S. Likhachev is wrong. In particular, there are no sufficient grounds to see the relationship between the prince and the heroes in epics as the relationship between the prince and the squad in history. The discrepancies between the epic and empirical history are original and organic, and they are explained in the light of modern scientific ideas about the typology of epic creativity. There is no reason to deny the significance of “single facts” for the epic.
But they must be understood in the general system of the epic, in the system of epic historicism, which in its development has gone through natural stages and the evolution of which is characterized not by a weakening, but, on the contrary, by a strengthening of the concrete historical principle. The epic world (epic world) arose and dynamically developed as a complex whole. Comparative historical analysis makes it possible with a certain certainty to identify the “original”, the most archaic, in it and to trace its evolution. The epics known to us from the records of the 18th-20th centuries undoubtedly reflected the process of blurring the colors that characterized the ancient Russian epic. Its historical content was eroded, but not in the sense that the historical school thought. Epic historicism evolved and changed, and ideas about the epic world and the relations prevailing in it evolved. It is this evolution in its specific and diverse representations that is most important to identify for understanding the Northern Russian epic. . Epic creativity is characterized by its own artistic laws, which together constitute a complex and relatively integral system.
The epic world, which was mentioned above, was created according to these laws; it is a manifestation of the artistic system of the epic. The words of D. S. Likhachev that “the inner world of a work of art also has its own interconnected patterns, its own dimensions and its own meaning as a system” are especially applicable to epic creativity. Especially because epic, art by its nature pre-realistic and rooted in primitiveness, is associated with the laws of collective, impersonal creativity and the specifics of collective thinking of relatively early historical eras. The epic as a phenomenon of art has a mystery that stems from its inconsistency with the real world and real relationships in it, from its artistic multidimensionality. The aesthetic system of the epic reveals itself in the unity of the epic world and artistic structure, poetics, and genre specificity of the epic. The study of epics shows that they are characterized by certain structural features, certain genre characteristics, and poetic qualities. The historical school understood the epic form purely mechanically and therefore, while declaring fundamental changes in the content of epics, at the same time allowed the preservation of their form.
Meanwhile, the epic developed and changed as a system. The northern storytellers inherited precisely the system, although, probably, as some preliminary observations show, its individual elements did not evolve synchronously and in the same way. The epic system corresponded to the consciousness of the environment that created the epic, and to a certain extent developed along with the development of this consciousness. I say “to a certain extent” because the artistic system has internal strength and is based on a powerful tradition; There is no sufficient reason to think that the epic easily changed depending on the turns of history and the ideological quests of the masses. Northern peasants were no longer the creators of the epic in the proper sense, they were its guardians. The consciousness of the singers was in complex interaction with the epic consciousness that dominated the inherited epic. There was a certain balance here, determined primarily by the narrator’s deep faith in the authenticity of the epic world. But there undoubtedly were also disturbances in this balance, due to the ever-increasing distance between the time when the northern storytellers lived and the era when the epic was created in its fundamentals. The storytellers inherited and preserved the epic, but not mechanically, but according to their concepts about it.
It is necessary to study the Northern Russian epic from the point of view of the evolution of the genre structure of the epic in such its most essential components as plot structure, compositional principles, categories of space and time, the structure of the images of epic heroes, stylistics, and the structure of the epic as a song-improvisational genre. Contrary to the statements of the historical and neohistorical schools, we rightfully consider the Northern Russian epic as the final and logical stage in the centuries-old, completely organic and natural process of Russian epic creativity. The northern epic is in no fundamental respect the result of qualitative genre transformations of the ancient Russian epic (although serious changes could have been made within the system) - it continues and completes it. The fundamental features of the Russian epic as a genre - with its characteristic plot, historicism, heroism and ideals, the range of characters, the “epic world” - were inherited by the North in their well-known, historically established diversity and in their dynamics. The epic as a system here in the North was preserved, changed and gradually collapsed.
These three dynamic qualities determine (in their unity) the character of the entire Northern Russian epic heritage as a whole, and individual plots or plot cycles, and individual texts. The methodological basis for the study of Northern Russian epics in their relation to the Old Russian epic should be a comparative analysis, conditioned by the patterns of the historical typology of the folk epic discovered by modern science and based on extensive data that expressively characterize this or that type of epic in its dynamic state. One of the conclusions suggested by modern research and of no small methodological importance is that the process of epic creativity is, in principle, irreversible: systems that arise at certain stages and are characterized by typological certainty could be supported, preserved, gradually disintegrate or transformed into new systems, but they cannot, naturally, be created a second time, anew; Oedic creativity cannot return to the typologically passed stages; archaism cannot be restored in the natural flow of epic creativity. Another conclusion is that the various elements of the system do not live at the same pace; their development occurs unevenly. In some areas, the archaic may linger more strongly, in others it can be overcome faster and more organically. The Northern Russian epic does not represent something unified at all its levels. This, of course, complicates the analysis, but it also allows us to hope to obtain conclusions that can to some extent reflect the complexity of real processes in the Russian epic.
