One of the most pressing tasks is to introduce reading and understanding modern reader monuments of the word art of Ancient Rus'. The art of words is in an organic connection with the fine arts, with architecture, with music, and there cannot be a true understanding of one area without an understanding of all other areas of artistic creativity of Ancient Rus'. In the great and unique culture of Ancient Rus', they are closely intertwined art and literature, spiritual and material culture, broad international connections and a pronounced national identity.

Russian literature is almost a thousand years old. This is one of the most ancient literatures in Europe. It is older than French, English, and German literature. Its beginning dates back to the second half of the 10th century. Of this great millennium, more than seven hundred years belong to the period commonly called “ancient Russian literature.”

Literature arose suddenly. The leap into the kingdom of literature occurred simultaneously with the emergence of Christianity and the church in Rus', which demanded writing and church literature. The leap to literature was prepared by the entire previous cultural development of the Russian people. High level the development of folklore made it possible to perceive new aesthetic values, which were introduced by writing. We can truly appreciate the magnitude of this leap if we pay attention to the superbly organized writing brought to us from Bulgaria, to the wealth of literary language transmitted to us from the same place, capable of expressing the most complex political, moral and philosophical ideas, on the abundance of works translated in Bulgaria and originating in it, which have been created since the end of the 10th century and begin to penetrate into Rus'.

At the same time, the first work of Russian literature was created - the so-called “Philosopher’s Speech”, in which, based on various translated sources, the history of the world was briefly told from its “creation” to the emergence of the universal church organization.

What was Russian literature like in the first seven hundred years of its existence? Let's try to consider these seven hundred years as a kind of conditional unity (we will turn to chronological and genre differences later).

Artistic value ancient Russian literature has not yet been truly defined. A century has already passed since ancient Russian painting was discovered (and continues to be revealed) in its aesthetic merits: icons, frescoes, mosaics. For almost the same amount of time, experts have been fascinated by ancient Russian architecture - from churches of the 11th - 12th centuries to the “Naryshkin baroque” of the late 17th century. The urban planning art of Ancient Rus' is amazing, the ability to combine the new with the old, to create the silhouette of the city, the sense of ensemble. More recently, they began to “notice” ancient Russian sculpture, the very existence of which was denied, and in other cases continues to be denied to this day. The curtain has been lifted on the art of ancient Russian sewing.

Ancient Russian art is making a victorious march throughout the world. The Museum of Old Russian Icons exists in Recklinghausen (Germany), and special departments of Russian icons are in museums in Stockholm, Oslo, Bergen, New York, Berlin and many others.

But ancient Russian literature is still silent, although works about it appear in different countries More. She is silent, since most researchers, especially in the West, do not look for aesthetic values ​​in her, not literature as such, but only a means for revealing the secrets of the “mysterious” Russian soul. And so the ancient Russian culture is declared “the culture of great silence.”

Meanwhile, in our country the path to opening artistic value literature of Ancient Rus' have already been found. They were found by F.I. Buslaev, A.S. Orlov, V.P. Adrianova-Perets, I.P. Eremin. We are standing on the threshold of this discovery, trying to break the “silence”, and this silence, although not yet broken, is becoming more and more eloquent. What ancient Russian literature is about to tell us now does not conceal the effects of genius; its voice is not loud. The author's origin was muted in ancient Russian literature. There was no Shakespeare or Dante in it. This is a choir in which there are no or very few soloists and mostly unison dominates. And yet this literature amazes us with its monumentality and grandeur of the whole. She has the right to a prominent place in the history of human culture and to high appreciation of her aesthetic merits. The absence of great names in ancient Russian literature seems like a death sentence. But the harsh sentence imposed on her on this basis alone is unfair. We proceed from our ideas about the development of literature - ideas nurtured over centuries, when individual, personal art - the art of individual geniuses - flourished.

Ancient Russian literature, however, is closer to folklore than to the individualized creativity of modern writers. We admire folk sewing, but can we find among the nameless craftswomen of this sewing anyone who could be likened to Giotto or Cimabue?

The same is true in ancient Russian painting. True, we know the names of Rublev, Theophanes the Greek, Dionysius and his sons. But their art is first and foremost the art of tradition and only secondarily the art of individual creative initiative. However, it is no coincidence that in ancient Russian art we call the era of Rublev and Feofan the era of the Pre-Renaissance. Personality was already beginning to play a noticeable role at this time. There are also many names of major writers in Ancient Rus': Hilarion, Nestor, Simon and Polycarp, Kirill of Turovsky, Kliment Smolyatich, Serapion of Vladimir and many others. Nevertheless, the literature of Ancient Rus' was not the literature of individual writers: it, like folk art, was supra-individual art. It was an art created through the accumulation of collective experience and making a huge impression on the wisdom of traditions and the unity of all, mostly anonymous, writing.

Before us is literature that rises above its seven centuries as a single grandiose whole, as one colossal work, striking us with its subordination to one theme, a single struggle of ideas, contrasts that enter into a unique combination. Old Russian writers are not architects of free-standing buildings. These are city planners. They worked on one common grand ensemble. They had a remarkable “shoulder sense”; they created cycles, sets and ensembles of works, which in turn formed a single edifice of literature, in which the very contradictions constituted a kind of organic phenomenon, aesthetically appropriate and even necessary.

This is a kind of medieval cathedral, in the construction of which thousands of free masons took part over several centuries with their lodges and their mobile artels, moving from country to country, which made it possible to use the experience of the entire European world as a whole. We see in this cathedral both buttresses that resist the forces pushing it apart, and an aspiration to the sky that resists earthly gravity. The figures of saints inside correspond to the figures of chimeras outside. Some look to the sky, others look blankly at the ground, preoccupied with everyday life. The stained glass windows seem to reject inner world the cathedral from what is outside it. It grows among the dense buildings of the city. Its splendor contrasts with the poverty of the “earthly dwellings” of the townspeople. His paintings distract them from earthly worries and remind them of eternity. But still, this is the creation of human hands, and the city dweller feels next to this cathedral not only his insignificance, but also the strength of human unity. It was built by people to rise above them and to elevate them at the same time.

Every literature creates its own world, embodying the world of ideas of its contemporary society. Let's try to restore the world of ancient Russian literature. What is this single and huge building, on the construction of which dozens of generations of Russian scribes worked for seven hundred years - unknown or known to us only by their modest names - and about which almost no biographical data has been preserved, from which there are not even autographs left?

A feeling of the significance of what is happening, the significance of everything temporary, the significance of history even human existence did not leave the ancient Russian man either in life, or in art, or in literature. A person, living in the world, remembered the world as a whole as a huge unity, and felt his place in this world. His house was located at a red corner to the East. Upon death, he was placed in the grave with his head facing the West, so that his face would meet the sun. His churches were turned with altars towards the emerging day. The East symbolized the future, the West - the past. In the temple, the paintings reminded him of the events of the Old Testament and the New Testament, gathering around him a world of holiness: holy warriors below, martyrs above; in the dome the scene of the ascension of Christ was depicted, on the sails of the vaults supporting the dome - evangelists, etc. The church was a microcosm, and at the same time it was a macroman. She had a head, under the head there was a “neck”-drum, “shoulders”. Windows were the eyes of the temple (this is evidenced by the very etymology of the word “window”). There were “edges” above the windows.

Big world and small, universe and man! Everything is interconnected, everything is significant, everything reminds a person of the meaning of his existence, the greatness of the world and the significance of human destiny in it.

It is no coincidence that the apocrypha about the creation of Adam tells that his body was created from the earth, bones from stones, blood from the sea (not from water, but from the sea), eyes from the sun, thoughts from the clouds, the light in the eyes from the light of the universe, breath from the wind, body heat from the fire. Man is a microcosm, a “small world,” as some ancient Russian works call it (see, for example, the article “What made up the world and the small world - man” (16th-century manuscript, State Public Library in Leningrad, 101/1178, l. 261 vol. et seq.).

Man felt like an insignificant particle in the big world and yet a participant in world history. Everything in this world is significant, full of hidden meaning. The task of human cognition is to unravel the meaning of things, the symbolism of animals, plants, and numerical relationships. The number one testified to the unity of God, two reminded us of the dual nature of Christ, three spoke of the trinity of God, and four was a symbol of the material world. Therefore, the world has four cardinal directions, it is composed of four elements. Seven embodied the connection Divine number three with the material number four and represented a person. Therefore, everything that concerns man is sevenfold in nature: seven deadly sins and seven sacraments opposed to them, seven ages, seven planets that control his life, seven days of the week on which the world was created, seven millennia human history etc. Three multiplied by four represented the superhuman principle: the twelve apostles, the twelve months of the year. Three multiplied by three is purely Divine: nine circles of heaven. One could cite many symbolic meanings individual numbers. But in addition, there was the symbolism of flowers, precious stones, plants and animals. When there were not enough animal symbols in nature to embody all the signs of the Divine will expressed by God to people, fantastic beasts of ancient or eastern mythology came into play.

The universe is a book written by the finger of God. Writing deciphered this world of signs. The feeling of the significance and greatness of the world lay at the basis of ancient Russian literature.

Literature had an all-encompassing internal unity, a unity of theme and a unity of view of the world. This unity was torn apart by contradictory views, journalistic protests and ideological disputes. But nevertheless, it was torn apart because it existed. Unity was mandatory, and therefore any heresy or any class or estate uprising required new unity, a rethinking of all available material. Any historical change required a revision of the entire world history - the creation of a new chronicle, often from the “flood” or even from the “creation of the world.”

Old Russian literature can be considered as literature of one theme and one plot. This plot is world history, and this theme is the meaning human life. It’s not that all works are devoted to world history (although there are a lot of these works): that’s not the point! Each work, to some extent, finds its geographical place and its chronological milestone in the history of the world. All works can be placed in one row one after another in the order of events: we always know to what historical time they are attributed by the authors. Literature tells, or at least strives to tell, not about the imagined, but about the real. Therefore, the real - world history, real geographical space - connects all individual works.

In fact, fiction in ancient Russian works is masked by truth. Open fiction is not allowed. All works are dedicated to events that happened, happened, or, although they did not exist, are seriously considered to have happened. Old Russian literature, up to the 17th century, does not know or almost does not know conventional characters. Names characters- historical: Boris and Gleb, Theodosius of Pechersky, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Sergius of Radonezh, Stefan of Perm... At the same time, ancient Russian literature talks mainly about those historical figures who played a significant role in historical events: be it Alexander the Great or Abraham Smolensky.

Of course, historically significant persons From a medieval point of view, there will not always be those whom we recognize as historical - from the point of view of people of modern times. These are predominantly persons belonging to the very top of feudal society: princes, generals, bishops and metropolitans, and to a lesser extent, boyars. But among them there are also people of unknown origin: holy hermits, founders of monasteries, ascetics. They are also significant from the point of view of a medieval historian (and the ancient Russian writer is, for the most part, a historian), since these individuals are also credited with influencing the course of world history: through their prayers, their moral influence on people. The ancient Russian writer is all the more surprised and delighted by this influence because such saints were known to very few of their contemporaries: they lived in the solitude of “hermitages” and silent cells.

World history depicted in medieval literature, great and tragic. At its center is the humble life of one person - Christ. Everything that happened in the world before His incarnation was only preparation for it. Everything that happened and happens after is associated with this life, one way or another correlates with it. The tragedy of the personality of Christ fills the world, it lives in every person, and is reminded in every church service. Its events are remembered on certain days of the year. The annual cycle of holidays was a repetition of Sacred history. Each day of the year was associated with the memory of certain saints or events. Man lived as if surrounded by the events of history. At the same time, the past event was not only remembered - it seemed to be repeated every year at the same time. Kirill Turovsky in his “Word for the New Week of Easter” says: “Today spring is shining, reviving earthly existence... Nowadays the apostolic rivers are flooding.” Nature itself seemed to symbolize with its spring blossom the events of the Ascension of Christ.

One of the most popular books of Ancient Rus' is “The Six Days” by John Exarch of Bulgaria. This book tells about the world, arranging its story in the order of the biblical legend about the creation of the world in six days. On the first day light was created, on the second - the visible sky and waters, on the third - the sea, rivers, springs and seeds, on the fourth - the sun, moon and stars, on the fifth - fish, reptiles and birds, on the sixth - animals and humans . Each of the days described is a hymn to creation, the world, its beauty and wisdom, the consistency and diversity of the elements of the whole.

History is not made up. From a medieval point of view, the essay is a lie. Therefore, enormous Russian works expounding world history are primarily translations from Greek: chronicles or compilations based on translated and original works. Works on Russian history are written shortly after the events took place - by eyewitnesses, from memory or according to the testimony of those who saw the events described. In the future, new works about the events of the past are only combinations, compilations of previous material, new processing of the old. These are basically the Russian chronicles. Chronicles are not only records of what happened on a yearly basis; these are, to some extent, collections of those works of literature that were at hand by the chronicler and contained historical information. The chronicles included historical stories, lives of saints, various documents, and messages. Works were constantly included in cycles and collections of works. And this inclusion is not accidental. Each piece was perceived as part of something larger. For the Old Russian reader, the composition of the whole was the most important thing. If in some of its parts a work repeated what was already known from other works and coincided with it in text, this did not bother anyone.

These are the “Chronicle of the Great Exposition”, “Greek and Roman Chronicler”, various kinds of expositions of Old Testament history - the so-called paleia (historical, chronographic, explanatory, etc.), time books, power books and, finally, many different chronicles. All of them are codes, compilations. These are collections of previous historical works, with limited processing of them in the depths of a new work, covering a wider and more recent range of sources.

The apocrypha is inspired by the same desire to answer the basic questions of the world order. They complement and develop the narrative of Holy Scripture.

There are a great many historical works. But one of their features is amazing: when talking about the events of history, the ancient Russian scribe never forgets about the movement of history on its global scale. Or the story begins with a mention of the main world events in their medieval understanding (the creation of the world, global flood, the Babylonian pandemonium and the incarnation of Christ), or the story is directly included in world history: in any of the large vaults according to world history.

The author of “Reading on the Life and Death of Boris and Gleb,” before beginning his narrative, briefly tells the history of the universe from the creation of the world, the story of Jesus Christ. The Old Russian scribe never forgets about the attitude towards general movement world history is what he talks about. Even when telling an unwise story about an unknown young man, a drunkard and a gambling dice player, a man who has reached the last stages of his fall, the author of “The Tale of Woe-Misfortune” begins it with the events of the history of the world - literally “from Adam”:

And at the beginning of this perishable century

created heaven and earth,

God created Adam and Eve,

commanded them to live in holy paradise.

Story individual person, even the smallest one, is only part of the history of the world; the author and the reader see in it the fate of man in general. That is why in ancient Russian literature there are so many huge works that combine individual narratives into a common narrative about the fate of the world. There is a kind of continuous cyclization going on. Even the notes of the Tver merchant Afanasy Nikitin about his “Walk across the Three Seas” after his death were taken to Moscow by clerk Mamyrev and here they are included in the chronicle, where they find a place under the year of their discovery - 1475. From a composition, from our point of view, a geographical note, these notes become a historical composition - a story about the events of a trip to India. Such a fate is not uncommon for literary works Ancient Rus' - many of the stories over time begin to be perceived as historical, as documents or narratives about Russian history: be it the sermon of the abbot of the Vydubetsky monastery Moses, delivered by him on the occasion of the construction of the monastery wall, or the life of a saint.

The works were built according to the “enfilade principle”. The life was supplemented over the centuries with services to the saint and descriptions of his posthumous miracles. It could grow with additional stories about the saint. Several lives of the same saint could be combined into a new single work. The chronicle could be supplemented with new information. The end of the chronicle seemed to be pushed back all the time, continuing with additional entries about new events (the chronicle grew along with history). Individual annual articles of the chronicle could be supplemented with new information from other chronicles; they could include new works. Chronographs and historical narratives were also supplemented in this way. Collections of words and teachings grew.

Just as we talk about the epic in folk art, we can talk about the epic in ancient Russian literature. Epic is not simple sum epics and historical songs. The epics are plot-related. They paint us a whole epic era in the life of the Russian people. This era is fantastic in some of its parts, but at the same time historical. This era is the time of the reign of Vladimir the Red Sun. The action of many plots is transferred here, which obviously existed before, and in some cases arose later. Another epic time is the time of independence of Novgorod. Historical songs they paint for us, if not a single era, then at least a single course of events - the 16th and 17th centuries predominantly.

Ancient Russian literature is also a cycle. A cycle that is many times superior to folklore ones. This is an epic telling the history of the universe and the history of Rus'.

None of the works of Ancient Rus' - translated or original - stands apart. They all complement each other in the picture of the world they create. Each story is a complete whole, and at the same time it is connected with others. This is only one chapter of the history of the world. Even such works as the translated story “Stephanit and Ikhnilat” (an ancient Russian version of the plot of “Kalila and Dimna”) or “The Tale of Dracula”, written on the basis of anecdotal oral stories, are included in collections and are not found in separate lists. They begin to appear in individual manuscripts only in the late tradition - in the 17th and 18th centuries.

It is difficult to imagine what has been said from anthologies, anthologies and individual editions of ancient Russian texts, torn from their surroundings in manuscripts. But if we remember the extensive manuscripts in which all these works are included - all these multi-volume Great Chetya-Menaion, chronicle vaults, prologues, Chrysostoms, Ezramagds, chronographs, separate chets collections - then we will clearly imagine the feeling of the greatness of the world that Old Russian scribes sought to express in all their literature, the unity of which they vividly felt.

There is only one genre of literature that seems to transcend this medieval historicity: parables. They are clearly fictitious. In an allegorical form, they present moral teaching to readers, representing, as it were, a figurative generalization of reality. They talk not about the individual, but about the general, constantly happening. The genre of the parable is traditional. For Ancient Rus' it also has biblical origin. The Bible is littered with parables. Christ speaks in parables in the Gospel. Accordingly, parables were included in the compositions for preachers and in the works of the preachers themselves. But parables talk about “eternal things.” Eternal - reverse side a single historical plot of ancient Russian literature. Everything that happens in the world has two sides in it: the side facing the temporal, imprinted by the singularity of what is happening, what has happened, or what is about to happen, and the eternal side: the eternal meaning happening in the world. The battle with the Polovtsians, the change of prince, the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks or the annexation of the principality to Moscow - everything has two sides. One side is what happened, and in this what happened there is a real causality: mistakes made by the princes, lack of unity or lack of concern for the safety of the Motherland - if it is a defeat; personal courage and intelligence of commanders, the courage of soldiers, the desire to “put in great labor for the Russian land” - if this is a victory; drought - if there is a crop failure; the carelessness of a “certain woman” - if it is a city fire. The other side is the eternal struggle between evil and good, this is God’s desire to correct people, punishing them for their sins or interceding for them through the prayers of individual righteous people (this is why, from a medieval point of view, the historical significance of their solitary prayers is so great). In this case, according to ancient Russian ideas, superreal causality is combined with real causality.

Temporary, from the point of view ancient Russian scribes, only a manifestation of the eternal, but practically in literary works they show rather something else: the importance of the temporary. The temporary, whether the scribe wants it or not, still plays a greater role in literature than the eternal. Baba burned the city of Kholm - this is temporary. The punishment of the inhabitants of this city for their sins is the meaning of what happened. But how the woman burned and how the fire occurred - this can be specifically and colorfully told, but God’s punishment for the sins of the inhabitants of the Hill - can only be mentioned in the final moral ending of the story. The temporal is revealed through events. And these events are always colorful. The eternal has no events. It can only be illustrated by events or explained by an allegory - a parable. And the parable itself strives to become a story told by reality. Her characters are often given historical names over time. She is included in the story. The movement of the temporal draws into itself the immobility of the eternal.

The final moralizing is usually the linking of the work to the mastering literature main topic- the topic of world history. Having told about the friendship of Elder Gerasim with the lion and how the lion died of grief at the elder’s grave, the author of the story ends with the following generalization: “All this was not because the lion had a soul that understood the word, but because God wanted to glorify those who glorify him not only in life, but also after death and show us how the animals obeyed Adam before his disobedience, blissfully in paradise.”

A parable is a kind of figurative formulation of the laws of history, the laws that govern the world, an attempt to reflect the Divine plan. That is why parables are very rarely invented. They belong to history, and therefore should tell the truth, should not be made up. Therefore, they are traditional and usually pass into Russian literature from other literatures as part of translated works. The parables just vary. There are a lot of “wandering” stories here.

Applied to new literature we often talk about the internal patterns of development of literary images, about the actions of heroes determined by their characters, and the ways inherent in these characters to react to the influences of the outside world. From this point of view, the actions of the characters may even be “unexpected” for the authors, as if dictated to the authors by these characters themselves.

There is a similar conditionality in ancient Russian literature: similar, but not quite the same. The hero behaves as he is supposed to behave, but not according to the laws of behavior of his character, but according to the laws of behavior of the category of heroes to which he belongs. Not the individuality of the hero, but only the category to which the hero belongs in feudal society! And in this case there are no surprises for the author. The ought invariably merges with the existent in literature. An ideal commander should be pious and should pray before going on a campaign. And in “The Life of Alexander Nevsky” it is described how the latter enters the Church of Sophia and prays there with tears to God for the granting of victory. The ideal commander must defeat a numerous enemy with few forces, and he is helped by God. And so Alexander appears “in a small squad, not relying on much of his strength, trusting in the Holy Trinity,” and an angel beats up his enemies. And then all these features of the behavior of Saint Alexander Nevsky are mechanically transferred in another work to another saint - Prince Dovmont - Timofey of Pskov. And there is no plagiarism, lack of understanding, or deception of the reader in this. After all, Dovmont is an ideal warrior-commander. He must behave the way another ideal warrior-commander, his predecessor Alexander Nevsky, behaved in similar circumstances. If little is known about Dovmont’s behavior from the chronicles, then the writer, without hesitation, supplements what is known from the chronicles from the “Life of Alexander Nevsky”, since he is confident that the ideal prince could only behave in such a proper way, and not otherwise.

That is why in ancient Russian literature, as in folklore, types of behavior are repeated, individual episodes are repeated, formulas are repeated that define this or that state, event, describe a battle, or characterize behavior. This is not a lack of imagination - this is literary and folk etiquette. The hero is supposed to behave this way, and the author is supposed to describe the hero only in appropriate terms. The author is the master of ceremonies, he composes the “action”. His heroes are participants in this “action”. The era of feudalism is full of ceremoniality. The prince, bishop, boyar are ceremonial, and the life of their courtyards is ceremonial. Even the life of a peasant is full of ceremony. However, we know this peasant ceremony under the name of rituals and customs. A fair share of folklore is dedicated to them - folk ritual poetry.

Just as in icon painting the figures of saints seem to hang in the air, weightless, and architecture and nature serve not as their surroundings, but as a kind of “backdrop,” background, so in literature many of its heroes do not depend on reality. Their characters were not nurtured by the circumstances of earthly life - the saints came into the world with their essence, with their mission, and act according to the etiquette developed in literature.

Stable etiquette features are composed in literature into hieroglyphic signs and emblems. Emblems replace lengthy descriptions and allow the writer to be extremely concise. Literature depicts the world with the utmost laconicism. The emblems created by literature are common in a certain, “visual” part with the emblems of fine art.

At the same time, the emblem is close to an ornament. Literature often becomes ornamental. “Weaving of words,” which widely developed in Russian literature from the end of the 14th century, but was present in elements in previous centuries, is a verbal ornament. We can graphically depict the repeating elements of the “weaving of words”, the rhythm of this weaving, and we will get an ornament close to the ornament of handwritten headpieces - the so-called “braid”.

At the same time, ornamentation does not contradict the peculiar laconicism of ancient Russian literature. Ornament is created not by additions, not by external decoration of some basic material, but by simplifying and schematizing processing of the main themes, motives, thoughts, verbal construction, by cutting off the excess that does not fit into this ornament. The ornament is not attached, not “hung” on the main presentation, but is created by the presentation itself. It does not so much decorate as organize literary material.

Here is an example of a relatively simple “weaving” from the “Tale of the Coming of Khan Temir-Aksak”, which was part of the chronicles. The author strings together long rows of parallel grammatical constructions and synonyms - not in a narrow linguistic sense, but more broadly - in a logical and semantic sense. News comes to Moscow about Temir-Aksak, “how he is preparing to fight the Russian land and how he boasts of going to Moscow, even if he takes it, and captures the Russian people, and destroys holy places, and eradicates the Christian faith, and persecutes the Christians, languishes and tortures them in the caves.” and sever swords and swords. But this Temir Aksak Velmi is merciless and extremely unmerciful and a cruel tormentor and an evil persecutor and a cruel tormentor,” etc.

Even more complex was the compositional and rhythmic design in hagiographic (hagiography) literature. It is enough to cite a small excerpt from the “Sermon on the Life and Repose of Grand Duke Dmitry Ivanovich” (Dmitry Donskoy), dividing it into parallel lines for clarity:

young in age,
but spiritual affairs are diligent,
don’t make empty conversations,
and the verb is not to love shameful people,
and turning away evil-minded people,
and you always talk with the good ones... etc.

The lace of words is woven, developing the theme rather than stopping it. The ornament does not interrupt the theme, does not interfere with its development, but turns the story itself into decoration. Ceremony and etiquette require some solemnity and decoration, but this decoration until the 16th century, in any case, was not external to the plot, themes, motives, but constituted a form of their organization. Idle talk begins to develop primarily only from the 16th century, when the standardization of content and ideology required its camouflage.

So, literature forms a certain structural unity - the same as that formed by ritual folklore or historical epic. Literature is woven into a single fabric thanks to the unity of theme, the unity of artistic time with the time of history, thanks to the attachment of the plot of works to real geographical space, thanks to the entry of one work into another with all the ensuing genetic connections and, finally, thanks to the unity of literary etiquette.

In this unity of literature, in this erasure of the boundaries of its works by the unity of the whole, in this lack of identification of the author’s principle, in this significance of the theme, which was all devoted to one degree or another to “world issues” and was not very entertaining, in this ceremonial decoration of the plots there is a peculiar grandeur. The feeling of greatness and significance of what was happening was the main style-forming element of ancient Russian literature.

Ancient Rus' left us many brief praises of books. Everywhere it is emphasized that books benefit the soul, teach a person abstinence, encourage him to admire the world and the wisdom of its structure. Books reveal “the thoughts of the heart,” they contain beauty, and the righteous need them like weapons for a warrior, like sails for a ship.

Literature is a sacred act. The reader was in some respects a praying person. He stood before the work, like the icon, and experienced a feeling of reverence. A touch of this reverence remained even when the work was secular. But the opposite also arose: mockery, irony, buffoonery. Bright representative This opposite principle in literature is Daniil Zatochnik, who transferred the techniques of buffoonery to his “Prayer”. A lush courtyard needs a jester; The court master of ceremonies is opposed by a joker and a buffoon. In his “Prayer,” Daniil Zatochnik ridicules the path to achieving well-being in life with a tinge of cynicism, amuses the prince and emphasizes ceremonial prohibitions with his inappropriate jokes.

It is no accident that buffoonery and buffoonery are opposed to solemnity and ceremony in literature. In medieval literature, in general, two principles exist and contrast with each other. The first is described above - this is the beginning of eternity; the writer and the reader realize in it their significance, their connection with the universe, with world history. The second beginning is the beginning of everyday life, simple themes and small scales, interest in a person as such. In its first themes, literature is filled with a sense of the sublime, solemn and sharply separated in language and style from everyday speech. In the second themes, she is extremely businesslike, simple, unpretentious, reduced in language and in her attitude to what is happening. The throne and at its foot is a jester!

What is this second beginning - the beginning of everyday life? To answer this question, it is necessary to address the question of how literature developed. We need to move from considering elements of statics in literature to considering its dynamics.

So, we have outlined ancient Russian literature as if in its “timeless” and “ideal” state. However, ancient Russian literature is not at all static. She knows development. But the movement and development of ancient Russian literature is not at all similar to the movement and development of modern literature. They are also unique.

To begin with, the national boundaries of Old Russian literature are far from being determined precisely, and this greatly affected the nature of development. The main group of monuments of ancient Russian literature, as we have seen, also belongs to the Bulgarian and Serbian literatures. This part of the literature is written in Church Slavonic, an ancient Bulgarian language in origin, equally understandable for southern and Eastern Slavs. It includes church and church-canonical monuments, liturgical works, works of the church fathers, individual lives and entire collections of the lives of saints, such as the “Prologue” and patericon. In addition, this literature, common to all southern and eastern Slavs, includes works on world history (chronicles and compilation chronographs), works on natural history (“Six Days” by John Exarch of Bulgaria, “Physiologist”, “Christian Topography” by Cosmas Indikoplov) and even works not approved by the church, such as the apocrypha. The development of this literature, common to all southern and eastern Slavs, was delayed by the fact that it was scattered over a vast territory, where literary exchange, although intense, could not be rapid.

Most of these works came to Rus' from Bulgaria in Bulgarian translations, but the composition of this literature, common to all southern and eastern Slavs, soon began to be replenished with original works and translations created in all southern and eastern Slavic countries: in the same Bulgaria, in Rus', in Serbia and Moravia. In Ancient Rus', in particular, the “Prologue”, translations from Greek of the “Chronicle” of George Amartol, some lives, “The Tale of the Devastation of Jerusalem” by Josephus, “The Acts of Devgenius”, etc. were created. The book “Esther” was translated from Hebrew, There were translations from Latin. These translations passed from Rus' to the southern Slavs. They quickly spread among the southern Slavs and such original Old Russian works, such as the “Sermon on Law and Grace” by Kiev Metropolitan Hilarion, the lives of Vladimir, Boris and Gleb, Olga, the story of the creation of the churches of Sophia and St. George in Kiev, the works of Cyril of Turov, etc.

Neither the world of literature nor political horizons could be confined to the boundaries of the principality. This was one of the tragic contradictions of the era: the economic community covered narrow boundaries of the area, connections were weak, and ideologically man sought to embrace the whole world.

Manuscripts were donated and passed not only beyond the borders of the principalities, but also outside the country - they were transported from Bulgaria to Rus', from Rus' to Serbia, etc. Artels of master architects, fresco painters and mosaicists moved from country to country. In Novgorod, one of the churches was painted by the Serbs, the other by Theophanes the Greek, and in Moscow the Greeks worked. Scribes also moved from principality to principality. “The Life of Alexander Nevsky” was compiled in the north-east of Rus' by a Galician. The life of the Ukrainian by origin Moscow Metropolitan Peter - the Bulgarian by origin Moscow Metropolitan Cyprian. A single culture was formed, common to several countries. The medieval bookish man thought about the general world, about the whole world, and very often felt himself part big world, did not confine himself to the boundaries of his locality, moved from principality to principality, from monastery to monastery, from country to country. “Citizen of the mountainous Jerusalem” Pachomius the Serb worked in Novgorod and Moscow.

This literature, which united various Slavic countries, existed for many centuries, sometimes absorbing the peculiarities of the language of individual countries, sometimes receiving local versions of works, but at the same time it was freed from these local characteristics thanks to the intensive communication of the Slavic countries.

The literature common to the southern and eastern Slavs was European in type and, to a large extent, in origin. Many monuments were also known in the West (ecclesiastical works, works of the church fathers, “Physiologist”, “Alexandria”, stories about Troy, individual apocrypha, etc.). This was literature close to Byzantine culture, which can only be attributed to the East, and not to Europe, only by misunderstanding or by blind tradition coming from P. Chaadaev.

In the development of ancient Russian literature there were very great importance the vagueness of external and internal boundaries, the absence of strictly defined boundaries between works, between genres, between literature and other arts - that softness and instability of structure, which is always a sign of the youth of the organism, its infant state and makes it receptive, flexible, easy for subsequent development.

The development process does not proceed through direct fragmentation of this unsteady whole, but through its growth and detailing. As a result of growth and detailing, individual parts naturally split off and bud off, they acquire greater “rigidity”, and the differences become more noticeable.

Literature is retreating more and more from its original unity and infantile lack of form. It is fragmented according to emerging nationalities, divided into themes, into genres, and is in ever closer contact with local reality. Reality constantly “feeds” the flow of literature, changes its character, enriches it with new content that required new forms of reflection.

New and new events demanded their coverage. Russian saints create a need for new lives. There is a need for sermons and journalistic writings devoted to pressing phenomena of local reality. The developing national self-awareness demanded the historical self-determination of the Russian people. It was necessary to find a place for the Russian people in the grandiose picture of world history that was given to us by translated chronicles and the compilative works that arose early on their basis. And so it is born new genre, which Byzantine literature did not know - chronicle writing. When we talk about the emergence of chronicle writing, we must keep in mind the emergence of chronicle writing precisely as a genre, and not as historical records in themselves. Historians often say that chronicle writing in Ancient Rus' arose already in the 10th century, but they mean that some information on ancient Russian history could or should have already been written down in the 10th century. Meanwhile, a simple record of an event, church commemorations of deceased princes, or even a story about the first Russian saints was not yet chronicle writing. The genre of chronicle writing did not arise immediately (about the beginning of chronicle writing, see: Likhachev D.S. Russian Chronicles. M.-L., 1947. P. 35 -144).

“The Tale of Bygone Years,” one of the most significant works of Russian literature, defines the place of the Slavs, and in particular the Russian people, among the peoples of the world, depicts the origin of Slavic writing, the formation of the Russian state, etc.

The theological and political speech of the first Russian metropolitan Hilarion - his famous “Sermon on Law and Grace” - speaks of the church independence of Russians. The first lives of Russian saints appear. And these lives, like Hilarion’s “Lay,” already have genre differences from the traditional form of lives. Prince Vladimir Monomakh addresses his sons and all Russian princes with the “Instruction”, quite accurate genre analogies for which have not yet been found in world literature. He writes a letter to his enemy Oleg Svyatoslavich, and this letter also falls out of the genre system adopted by Russia. Responses to the events and unrest of Russian life are ever growing, ever increasing in number, and all of them, to one degree or another, go beyond the stable boundaries of those genres that were transferred to us from Bulgaria and Byzantium. The unusual genre is “Tales of Igor’s Campaign” (it combines the genre characteristics of an oratorical work and folklore glories and laments), “Prayers” by Daniil Zatochnik (a work influenced by buffoon jokes), “Tales of the Destruction of the Russian Land” (a work close to folk laments, but having a political content unusual for folklore). The number of works that arose under the influence of the urgent needs of Russian reality and do not fit into traditional genres is growing and growing. Historical stories about certain events appear. The genre of these historical stories was also not adopted from translated literature. Especially many historical stories appear during the period of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. “The Tale of the Battle of Kalka”, “The Tale of the Ruin of Ryazan by Batu”, the Kitezh Legend, stories about the Shchelkanovshchina, the invasion of Moscow by Tamerlane, Tokhtamysh, various stories about the Battle of the Don (“Zadonshchina”, the chronicle story about the Battle of Kulikovo, “The Tale of the Life” Dmitry Donskoy”, “The Tale of the Massacre of Mamayev”, etc.) - all these are new works in terms of genre, which were of great importance in the growth of Russian national self-awareness, in the political development of the Russian people.

In the 15th century, another new genre appeared - the political legend (in particular, the legend of Babylon-city). The genre of political legend developed especially strongly at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries (“The Tale of the Princes of Vladimir”) and at the beginning of the 16th century. (the theory of Moscow - the third Rome of the Pskov elder Philotheus). In the 15th century, based on the hagiographic genre, the historical and everyday story appeared and had important historical and literary significance (“The Tale of Peter and Fevronia”, “The Tale of the Journey of John of Novgorod on a Demon” and many others). “The Tale of Dracula” (late 15th century) is also a new work in terms of genre.

Turbulent events early XVII centuries give rise to a huge and extremely diverse literature, introducing new and new genres into it. Here are works intended for distribution as political propaganda (“New Tale of the Glorious Russian Tsardom”), and works describing events from a narrow personal point of view, in which the authors do not so much narrate events as justify their past activities or expose their former (sometimes imaginary) merits (“The Tale of Abraham Palitsyn”, “The Tale of Ivan Khvorostinin”).

The autobiographical moment was consolidated in different ways in the 17th century: here is the life of a mother, compiled by her son (“The Life of Juliania Osorgina”), and “The ABC,” compiled on behalf of a “naked and poor man,” and the autobiographies themselves - Avvakum and Epiphanius, written simultaneously in one earthen prison in Pustozersk and representing a kind of literary diptych. At the same time, in the 17th century, a whole vast section of literature developed - democratic literature, in which a significant place belongs to satire in its most diverse genres (parodies, satirical everyday stories, etc.). Works appear that imitate works of business writing: diplomatic correspondence (the fictional correspondence of Ivan the Terrible with the Turkish Sultan), diplomatic reports (fictional article lists of the Sugorsky embassy), parodies of court cases (the satirical “The Tale of Ersha Ershovich”), petitions, paintings dowry, etc.

Systematic poetry appeared relatively late - only in the middle of the 17th century. Until then, poetry had only been encountered sporadically, as the need for love lyrics satisfied with folklore. A regular theater also appeared late (only under Alexei Mikhailovich). Its place was taken by buffoon performances. Subject literature to a large extent (but not entirely) replaced the fairy tale. But in the 17th century, in the upper strata of society, translations of chivalric novels appeared next to fairy tales: stories about Beauvais, about Peter of the Golden Keys, about Melusine, etc. A special role in literature XVII century, a historical legend begins to play (“The Tale of the Beginning of Moscow”) and even essays on certain issues of world history (“On the causes of the destruction of kingdoms”).

Thus, historical reality, more and more new needs of society created a need for new genres and new types of literature. The number of genres is growing unusually and many of them are still in a precarious position. XVIII century this diversity had to be reduced and stabilized.

If the most briefly to determine the values ​​that were created by ancient Russian literature, they can be seen in several areas.

Ancient Russian literature developed that amazing sense of social responsibility of the writer, which has become a characteristic feature of Russian literature of modern times. Already in Ancient Rus', literature became the pulpit from which the teaching word was constantly heard.

In ancient Russian literature, an idea was formed about the unity of the world, about the unity of all humanity and its history, combined with deep patriotism - patriotism devoid of feeling. national exclusivity, stupid and narrow chauvinism. It was in ancient Russian literature that that broad and deep view of the entire “inhabited world” (ecumene) was created, which became characteristic of it in the 19th century.

Through its rich translated literature, ancient Russian literature was able to assimilate the best achievements of Byzantine and South Slavic literature and become European literature.

In ancient Russian literature, the art of narration, the art of laconic characteristics, and the ability to create brief philosophical generalizations developed.

In Ancient Rus', on the basis of two languages ​​- Old Church Slavonic and Russian - a surprisingly diverse and rich language of literature was created.

The system of genres in ancient Russian literature turned out to be extremely diverse and flexible.

Ancient Russian literature represented that developed, widely spread root system, on the basis of which the literature of modern times could quickly grow in the 18th century and to which the achievements of Western European literature could be grafted.

(Likhachev D. The Great Path // The Formation of Russian literature XI-XVII centuries. M., 1987).