Folk art.

Every piece of oral folk art not only expresses the thoughts and feelings of certain groups, but is also collectively created and distributed. However, the collectivity of the creative process in folklore does not mean that individuals did not play any role. Talented masters not only improved or adapted existing texts to new conditions, but sometimes created songs, ditties, fairy tales, which, in accordance with the laws of oral folk art, were distributed without the name of the author. With the social division of labor, peculiar professions arose associated with the creation and performance of poetic and musical works (ancient Greek rhapsodes, Russian guslars, Ukrainian kobzars, Kyrgyz akyns, Azerbaijani ashugs, French chansonniers, etc.).

In Russian folklore in the 18-19 centuries. there was no developed professionalization of singers. Storytellers, singers, storytellers remained peasants, artisans. Some genres of folk poetry were widespread. The performance of others required a certain skill, a special musical or acting gift.

The folklore of each nation is unique, just like its history, customs, culture. So, epics, ditties are inherent only in Russian folklore, thoughts - in Ukrainian, etc. Some genres (not just historical songs) reflect history given people. The composition and form of ritual songs are different, they can be dated to the periods of the agricultural, pastoral, hunting or fishing calendar, enter into various relationships with the rites of the Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or other religions. For example, the ballad from the Scots acquired clear genre differences, while among Russians it is close to a lyrical or historical song. Some peoples (for example, Serbs) have poetic ritual lamentations, while others (including Ukrainians) have them in the form of simple prose exclamations. Each nation has its own arsenal of metaphors, epithets, comparisons. So, the Russian proverb “Silence is gold” corresponds to the Japanese “Silence is flowers”.

Despite the bright national coloring of folklore texts, many motives, images and even plots different peoples are similar. Thus, a comparative study of the plots of European folklore led scientists to the conclusion that about two thirds of the plots of the fairy tales of each nation have parallels in the fairy tales of other nationalities. Veselovsky called such plots "stray", creating a "theory wandering plots”, which has been repeatedly criticized by Marxist literary criticism.

For peoples with a common historical past and speaking related languages(For example, Indo-European group) such similarity can be explained by a common origin. This similarity is genetic. Similar features in the folklore of peoples belonging to different language families, but who have been in contact with each other for a long time (for example, Russians and Finns) are explained by borrowing. But in the folklore of peoples living on different continents and probably never communicated, there are similar themes, plots, characters. So, in one Russian fairy tale it is said about a clever poor man who, for all his tricks, was put in a sack and is about to be drowned, but he, having deceived the master or the priest (they say, huge shoals of beautiful horses graze under water), puts him in a sack instead of himself. The same plot exists in the tales of Muslim peoples (stories about Khadja Nasreddin), and among the peoples of Guinea, and among the inhabitants of the island of Mauritius. These works are independent. This similarity is called typological. At the same stage of development, similar beliefs and rituals, forms of family and public life. And consequently, both ideals and conflicts coincide - the opposition of poverty and wealth, intelligence and stupidity, diligence and laziness, etc.

From mouth to mouth.

Folklore is stored in the memory of the people and reproduced orally. The author of a literary text does not have to directly communicate with the reader, while the work of folklore is performed in the presence of listeners.

Even the same narrator voluntarily or involuntarily changes something with each performance. Moreover, the next performer conveys the content differently. And fairy tales, songs, epics, etc. pass through thousands of mouths. Listeners not only influence the performer in a certain way (in science this is called feedback), but sometimes they themselves are connected to the performance. Therefore, any work of oral folk art has many options. For example, in one version of the fairy tale, the Frog Princess, the prince obeys his father and marries the frog without any talk. On the other hand, he wants to leave her. In different ways in fairy tales, the frog helps the betrothed to complete the tasks of the king, which are also not the same everywhere. Even such genres as epic, song, ditty, where there is an important restraining beginning - rhythm, chant, have great options. Here, for example, is a song recorded in the 19th century. in the Arkhangelsk province:

Sweet nightingale,

You can fly everywhere

Fly to merry countries

IN glorious city fly Yaroslavl...

Approximately in the same years in Siberia they sang to the same motive:

You are my rassy little dove,

You can fly everywhere

Fly to foreign countries

To the glorious city of Yeruslan…

Not only in different territories, but also in different historical eras, the same song could be performed in versions. So, songs about Ivan the Terrible were remade into songs about Peter I.

In order to memorize and retell or sing some work (sometimes quite voluminous), the people developed techniques polished over the centuries. They create a special style that distinguishes folklore from literary texts. In many folklore genres there is a common beginning. So, the folk storyteller knew in advance how to start a fairy tale - In a certain kingdom, in a certain state ... or Once upon a time .... The epic often began with the words As in a glorious city in Kyiv .... In some genres, endings are repeated. For example, epics often end like this: Here they sing glory to him .... A fairy tale almost always ends with a wedding and a feast with a saying I was there, I drank honey-beer, it flowed down my mustache, but it didn’t get into my mouth or And they began to live and live and make good.

There are other, most diverse repetitions in folklore. Individual words can be repeated: Past the house, past the stone one, // Past the garden, the green garden, or the beginning of the lines: At dawn it was at dawn, // At the dawn it was at morning.

Entire lines are repeated, and sometimes several lines:

He walks along the Don, walks along the Don,

A young Cossack walks along the Don,

A young Cossack walks along the Don,

And the maiden cries, and the maiden cries,

And the maiden weeps over the swift river,

And the maiden weeps over the swift river.

In the works of oral folk art, not only words and phrases are repeated, but also entire episodes. On the triple repetition of the same episodes, epics, fairy tales, and songs are built. So, when kaliks (wandering singers) heal Ilya Muromets, they give him a “honey drink” to drink three times: after the first time he feels a lack of strength in himself, after the second - an excess, and only after drinking the third time, he receives as much strength as he needs.

In all genres of folklore there are so-called common or typical places. In fairy tales - the rapid movement of the horse: The horse runs - the earth trembles. “Vezhestvo” (politeness, good manners) of an epic hero is always expressed by the formula: He laid the cross in a written way, but he led bows in a learned way. There are formulas of beauty - Not in a fairy tale to say, not to describe with a pen. Command formulas are repeated: Stand before me, like a leaf before grass!

Definitions are repeated, the so-called constant epithets, which are inextricably linked with the word being defined. So, in Russian folklore, the field is always clean, the moon is clear, the girl is red (red), etc.

Other artistic techniques also help with listening comprehension. For example, the so-called method of stepwise narrowing of images. Here is the beginning of the folk song:

There was a glorious city in Cherkassk,

New stone tents were built there,

In the tents, the tables are all oak,

A young widow is sitting at the table.

A hero can also stand out with the help of opposition. At a feast at Prince Vladimir:

And how everyone is sitting here, drinking, eating and boasting,

But only one sits, does not drink, does not eat, does not eat ...

In a fairy tale, two brothers are smart, and the third ( main character, winner) for the time being a fool.

Stable qualities are assigned to certain folklore characters. So, the fox is always cunning, the hare is cowardly, the wolf is evil. There are certain symbols in folk poetry: the nightingale - joy, happiness; cuckoo - grief, trouble, etc.

According to researchers, from twenty to eighty percent of the text consists, as it were, of finished material that doesn't need to be remembered.

Folklore, literature, science.

Literature appeared much later than folklore, and always, to one degree or another, used his experience: themes, genres, techniques are excellent in different eras. So, the plots of ancient literature are based on myths. Author's fairy tales and songs, ballads appear in European and Russian literature. Due to folklore, the literary language is constantly enriched. Indeed, in the works of oral folk art there are many ancient and dialect words. With the help of affectionate suffixes and freely used prefixes, new expressive words are created. The girl is sad: You are parents, destroyers, my slaughterers .... The guy complains: Oh, sweetie-twist, cool wheel, twirled my little head. Gradually, some words enter into colloquial, and then into literary speech. It is no coincidence that Pushkin called: "Read folk tales, young writers, in order to see the properties of the Russian language."

Folklore techniques were especially widely used in works about the people and for the people. For example, in Nekrasov's poem Who in Rus' should live well? - numerous and varied repetitions (situations, phrases, words); diminutive suffixes.

At the same time, literary works penetrated folklore and influenced its development. As works of oral folk art (without the name of the author and in various options) the rubaiyat of Hafiz and Omar Khayyam, some Russian stories of the 17th century, the Prisoner and the Black Shawl of Pushkin, the beginning of Nekrasov's Korobeinikov (Oh, the box is full, full, // There are chintz and brocade.// Pity, my sweetheart, // Molodetsky shoulder...) and much more. Including the beginning of Ershov's fairy tale The Little Humpbacked Horse, which became the beginning of many folk tales:

Beyond the mountains, beyond the forests

Beyond the wide seas

Against heaven on earth

An old man lived in a village.

Poet M.Isakovsky and composer M.Blanter wrote the song Katyusha (Apple and pear trees blossomed…). The people sang it, and about a hundred different Katyushas appeared. So, during the Great Patriotic War, they sang: Apple and pear trees do not bloom here ..., The Nazis burned apple and pear trees .... The girl Katyusha became a nurse in one song, a partisan in another, and a signalman in the third.

In the late 1940s, three students - A. Okhrimenko, S. Christie and V. Shreiberg - composed a comic song:

In an old and noble family

Lived Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy,

He ate neither fish nor meat,

I walked barefoot through the alleys.

It was impossible to print such poems at that time, and they were distributed orally. More and more versions of this song began to be created:

Great Soviet writer

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy,

He didn't eat fish or meat.

I walked barefoot through the alleys.

Under the influence of literature, rhyme appeared in folklore (all ditties are rhymed, there is rhyme in later folk songs), division into stanzas. Under the direct influence of romantic poetry (see also ROMANTICISM), in particular ballads, a new genre of urban romance arose.

Learn oral folk poetic creativity not only literary critics, but also historians, ethnographers, culturologists. For the most ancient, pre-literate times, folklore often turns out to be the only source that conveyed to the present day (in a veiled form) certain information. So, in a fairy tale, the groom receives a wife for some merits and exploits, and most often he marries not in the kingdom where he was born, but in the one where his future wife comes from. This detail of a fairy tale, born in ancient times, suggests that in those days a wife was taken (or abducted) from another kind. There are also echoes of the ancient rite of initiation in the fairy tale - the initiation of boys into men. This rite usually took place in the forest, in the "men's" house. Fairy tales often mention a house in the forest inhabited by men.

Late-time folklore is the most important source for studying the psychology, worldview, and aesthetics of a particular people.

In Russia at the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st centuries. increased interest in the folklore of the 20th century, those aspects of it that not so long ago remained outside the boundaries of official science (political anecdote, some ditties, folklore of the Gulag). Without studying this folklore, the idea of ​​the life of the people in the era of totalitarianism will inevitably be incomplete and distorted.

Scientific editions of Russian folklore began to appear in the 30s and 40s of the 19th century. First of all, these are collections of professor of Moscow University I.M. Snegirev "Russian folk holidays and superstitious rites" in four parts (1837-1839), "Russian folk proverbs and parables" (1848).

Valuable materials are contained in the collections of the folklorist I.P. Sakharov "Tales of the Russian people about family life of their ancestors" (in two volumes, 1836 and 1839), "Russian folk tales" (1841).

Gradually, broad public circles became involved in the work of collecting folklore. This was facilitated by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society established in 1845 in St. Petersburg. It had a department of ethnography, which was actively engaged in the collection of folklore in all the provinces of Russia. From nameless correspondents (village and city teachers, doctors, students, clergy, and even peasants), the Society received numerous records of oral works, which made up an extensive archive. Much of this archive was later published in Zapiski Russkogo geographical society in the department of ethnography". And in Moscow in the 60-70s, the Society of Lovers Russian literature". Folklore materials were published in the central journals "Ethnographic Review" and "Live Antiquity", in local periodicals.

In the 30-40s P.V. Kireevsky and his friend the poet N.M. Languages ​​were widely deployed and led the collection of Russian folk epic and lyrical songs (epics, historical songs, songs of ritual and non-ritual, spiritual poems). Kireevsky prepared materials for publication, but an untimely death did not allow him to fully implement his plan. During his lifetime, a single collection was published: spiritual poems. "Songs collected by P.V. Kireevsky" were first published only in the 60-70s of the XIX century (epics and historical songs, the so-called "old series") and in the XX century (ritual and non-ritual songs, "new series" ).

In the same 30-40s, V.I. Dahl. He recorded works of various genres of Russian folklore, however, as a researcher of the "living Great Russian language", Dal focused on preparing a collection of small genres, the closest colloquial speech: proverbs, sayings, sayings, etc. In the early 60s, Dahl's collection "Proverbs of the Russian people" was published. In it, for the first time, all the texts were grouped according to the thematic principle, which made it possible to objectively present the attitude of the people to various phenomena of life. This turned the collection of proverbs into a genuine book of folk wisdom.

Another detailed folklore publication was the collection of A.N. Afanasyev "Folk Russian Tales", to which Dal also made a great collecting contribution, who gave Afanasyev about a thousand fairy tales recorded by him.

Afanasiev's collection was published in 8 issues from 1855 to 1863. There are a little more than a dozen fairy tales recorded by Afanasiev himself, he mainly used the archive of the Russian Geographical Society, the personal archives of V.I. Dahl, P.I. Yakushkin and other collectors, as well as materials from old manuscripts and some printed collections. Only the best material was published in the first edition. Approximately 600 texts of the collection covered a huge geographical area: the places of residence of Russians, as well as partially Ukrainians and Belarusians.

The publication of Afanasiev's collection caused a wide public response. It was reviewed by prominent scientists A.N. Pypin, F.I. Buslaev, A.A. Kotlyarevsky, I.I. Sreznevsky, O.F. Miller; in the journal "Contemporary" a positive assessment was given by N.A. Dobrolyubov.

Later, fighting against Russian censorship, Afanasiev managed to publish in London the collection "Folk Russian Legends" (1859) and anonymously in Geneva in 1872 the collection "Russian cherished tales".

Afanasiev's collection was partially translated into various foreign languages, and completely translated into German. In Russia, he withstood 7 complete editions.

From 1860 to 1862, simultaneously with the first edition of Afanasiev's collection, a collection of I.A. Khudyakov "Great Russian Tales". New trends were expressed in the collection of D.N. Sadovnikov "Tales and legends Samara region"(1884). Sadovnikov - the first who drew close attention on a separate talented storyteller and recorded his repertoire. Of the 183 tales in the collection, 72 were written down from Abram Novopoltsev.

IN mid-nineteenth century in the history of the collection of Russian folklore happened significant event: in the Olonets region, an actively existing living epic tradition was discovered. Its discoverer was exiled in 1859 for political activity to Petrozavodsk P.N. Rybnikov. While working as an official in the governor's office, Rybnikov began to use official travel to collect epics. Within a few years, he traveled over a vast territory and recorded a large number of epics and other works of oral folk poetry. The collector worked with outstanding storytellers T.G. Ryabinin, A.P. Sorokin, V.P. Shchegolenok and others, from whom other folklorists subsequently recorded.

In 1861-1867, a four-volume edition of "Songs collected by P.N. Rybnikov" was published, prepared for publication by P.A. Bessonov (1 and 2 vols.), Rybnikov himself (3 vols.) and O. Miller (4 vols.). It includes 224 recordings of epics, historical songs, ballads. The material was arranged according to the plot principle. In the 3rd volume (1864), Rybnikov published "A Collector's Note", in which he outlined the state of the epic tradition in the Onega region, gave a number of characteristics to the performers, raised the question of the creative reproduction of epics and the personal contribution of the narrator to the epic heritage.

Following in the footsteps of Rybnikov, in April 1871, Slavic scholar A.F. went to the Olonets province. Hilferding. In two months, he listened to 70 singers and wrote down 318 epics (the manuscript was more than 2000 pages). In the summer of 1872 Hilferding again went to the Olonets region. On the way, he fell seriously ill and died.

A year after the death of the collector, "Onega epics recorded by Alexander Fedorovich Hilferding in the summer of 1871. With two portraits of Onega rhapsodes and melodies of epics" (1873) were published. Hilferding was the first to use the method of studying the repertoire of individual storytellers. He arranged the epics in the collection according to the narrators, with biographical information prefaced. As a general introductory article, Hilferding's latest journal publication "Olonets Gubernia and Its People's Rhapsody" was placed.

60-70s XIX years centuries were for Russian folklore a real flourishing of collecting activity. During these years, the most valuable publications of various genres were published: fairy tales, epics, proverbs, riddles, spiritual poems, incantations, lamentations, ritual and non-ritual songs.

At the beginning of the 20th century, work continued on collecting and publishing folklore. In 1908, a collection of N.E. Onchukov "Northern Tales" - 303 fairy tales from the Olonets and Arkhangelsk provinces. Onchukov arranged the material not according to plots, but according to storytellers, citing their biographies and characteristics. Subsequently, other publishers began to adhere to this principle.

In 1914, a collection of D.K. Zelenin "Great Russian fairy tales of the Perm province". It includes 110 stories. The collection is prefaced by Zelenin's article "Something about storytellers and fairy tales of the Yekaterinburg district of the Perm province." It characterizes the types of storytellers. The material of the collection is arranged by performers.

A valuable contribution to science was the collection of brothers B.M. and Yu.M. Sokolov "Tales and songs of the Belozersky region" (1915). It includes 163 fabulous texts. The accuracy of the record can serve as a model for modern collectors. The collection was compiled based on the materials of the expeditions of 1908 and 1909 to the Belozersky and Kirillovsky districts of the Novgorod province. It is equipped with a rich scientific apparatus. Subsequently, both brothers became famous folklorists.

Thus, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a huge amount of material was collected and the main classical editions of Russian oral folk art appeared. This was of tremendous importance both for science and for the entire Russian culture. In 1875, the writer P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky in a letter to P.V. Sheinu described the significance of the work of folklorists-gatherers in the following way:

“For a quarter of a century, I traveled a lot around Russia, wrote down a lot of songs, legends, beliefs, etc., etc., but I couldn’t set foot if there weren’t the works of the late Dal and Kireevsky, there weren’t your works printed from Bodyansky, the works of L. Maikov, Maksimov and - may the Lord calm his drunken soul in the bowels of Abraham - Yakushkin.I find your comparison of your work with the work of an ant not entirely fair.<...>You are bees, not ants - your business is to collect honey, our business is to cook honey (hudromel). If it wasn't for you, we would have cooked some kind of dank kvass, not honey.<...>In less than half a century, grandfather's traditions and customs will dry up among the people, old Russian songs will become silent or distorted under the influence of tavern and tavern civilization, but your works until remote times, until our later descendants, will retain the features of our ancient way of life. You are more durable than us." 1

In the first decades of the 20th century, Russian folklore finally became self-determined as a scientific discipline, separating itself from other sciences (ethnology, linguistics, literary criticism).

In 1926-1928 the brothers B.M. and Yu.M. Sokolovs. The materials of the expedition were published in 1948. Recordings of epics of 1926-1933 from the collections of the Manuscript Depository of the Folklore Commission at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences were included in the two-volume edition of A.M. Astakhova "Epics of the North". The collection of epics continued in the war and post-war years. Materials of three expeditions to the Pechora (1942, 1955 and 1956) made up the volume "Epics of the Pechora and the Winter Coast".

Many new recordings of fairy tales, songs, ditties, works of non-fairytale prose, proverbs, riddles, etc. were made. Firstly, the genre principle, and secondly, the regional principle prevailed in the publication of new materials. Collections reflecting the repertoire of a region, as a rule, consisted of one or a few related genres.

Collectors began to purposefully identify working folklore, the folklore of hard labor and exile. The Civil and Great Patriotic Wars also left their mark on folk poetry, which did not pass by the attention of collectors.

Classical collections of Russian folklore were republished: collections of fairy tales by A.N. Afanasiev, I.A. Khudyakova, D.K. Zelenin, a collection of proverbs by V.I. Dahl, a collection of riddles by D.N. Sadovnikova and others. Many materials from old folklore archives were published for the first time. Multi-volume series are published. Among them are "Monuments of Russian Folklore" (Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg) and "Monuments of Folklore of the Peoples of Siberia and the Far East" (Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk).

There are centers for the philological study of Russian folklore, with their own archives and periodicals. These are the State Republican Center of Russian Folklore in Moscow (publishing the journal "Live Antiquity"), the sector of Russian folk art of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg (yearbook "Russian Folklore: Materials and Research"), the Department of Folklore state university them. M.V. Lomonosov (collections "Folklore as the Art of the Word"), as well as regional and regional folklore centers with their archives and publications ("Siberian Folklore", "Folklore of the Urals", "Folklore of the Peoples of Russia", etc.). 2

In the study of folklore, one of the leading places is occupied by the Saratov school of folklore, the history of which is associated with the names of Professor of Moscow University S.P. Shevyrev, songwriter N.G. Tsyganov, local historian A.F. Leopoldov, a member of the Saratov Scientific Archival Commission A.N. Minha; later - professors of Saratov State University - B.M. Sokolova, V.V. Bush, A.P. Skaftymov. A great contribution to the study of folklore was made by professors T.M. Akimov and V.K. Arkhangelsk. 3

Folklore in the "broad" sense - all folk traditional peasant spiritual and partly material culture. In the "narrow" sense - oral peasant verbal artistic tradition, "oral literature", "oral folk literature". Folklore has specific features, which fiction does not have - the art of the word.

The international term "folklore" appeared in England in the middle of the 19th century. It comes from English. folk-lore ("folk knowledge", " folk wisdom") and denotes folk spiritual culture in a different volume of its types.

a) folklore - orally transmitted common people's experience and knowledge. This refers to all forms of spiritual culture, and with the most extended interpretation - and some forms of material culture. Only a sociological restriction (“common folk”) and a historical and cultural criterion are introduced - archaic forms dominating or functioning as remnants. (The word "popular" is more definite than "folk" in sociological terms and does not contain an evaluative meaning ("people's artist" "people's poet");

b) folklore - common people artistic creativity or by a more modern definition of "artistic communication". This concept allows us to extend the use of the term "folklore" to the sphere of music, choreography, visual arts, etc. folk art;

c) folklore is a folklore verbal tradition. At the same time, from all forms, it is simple people's activities those associated with the word are highlighted;

d) folklore is an oral tradition. At the same time, oral language is of paramount importance. This makes it possible to single out folklore from other verbal forms (first of all, to oppose it to literature).

That is, we have the following concepts: sociological (and historical and cultural), aesthetic, philological and theoretical and communicative (oral direct communication). In the first two cases, these are the "broad" use of the term "folklore" and in the last two - two variants of its "narrow" use.

The unequal use of the term "folklore" by supporters of each of the concepts indicates the complexity of the subject of folklore, its connections with various types human activity and human life. Depending on which connections are given particular importance and which are considered secondary peripheral, the fate of the main term of folklore is also formed within the framework of one or another concept. Therefore, the named concepts in a certain sense not only intersect, but sometimes do not seem to contradict each other.

So, if the most important features of folklore are verbal and oral, then this does not necessarily entail a denial of connection with others. art forms activities, or even more unwillingness to reckon with the fact that folklore has always existed in the context of folk everyday culture. That is why the dispute that flared up more than once was so empty - is folklore a philological or ethnographic science. If we are talking about verbal structures, their study must inevitably be called philological, but since these structures function in folk life, they are studied by ethnography.

In this sense, folklore is at the same time component and one and the other science at every moment of its existence. However, this does not prevent it from being independent in a certain respect - the specificity of the research methods of folklore inevitably develops at the intersection of these two sciences, as well as musicology (ethnomusicology), social psychology, etc. It is characteristic that after disputes about the nature of folklore (and not only in our country), folklore studies noticeably philologized and at the same time ethnographized and moved closer to musicology and the general theory of culture (the works of E.S. Markaryan, M.S. Kagan, the theory of ethnos Yu.V. Bromley, semiotics of culture, etc.).

So, folklore is the subject of study of various sciences. Folk music is studied by musicologists, folk dances are studied by choreographers, rituals and others spectacular forms folk art - theater researchers, folk decorative and applied art- art historians. Linguists, historians, psychologists, sociologists and other scientists turn to folklore. Each science sees in folklore what interests it.

Folklore - the art of the word, the totality of oral artistic works of various genres created by many generations of the people; traditional everyday artistic creativity for the people and its result, reflecting the self-consciousness of the people, formed as a result of centuries of history and manifested orally and in in large numbers product options.

Imagine the general evolution of folklore from ancient times to the present day.

About availability primitive forms of folklore among our distant ancestors are evidenced by many data. Already during the formation of the Eastern Slavic tribes, peculiar games and rituals were common, which were accompanied by round dances, singing, playing the simplest musical instruments, dances, games, a complex of ritual actions.

Items for household and labor purposes found today by historians and ethnographers, as well as the simplest artistic tools, give reason to speak of quite developed forms of folklore (in the current sense) human practice on the territory of pre-Christian and early Christian Rus'. Perhaps this can be referred to as the form early traditional folklore. In one of the first documents of Ancient Rus' - "The Tale of Bygone Years" it is said that "games were organized between villages, and they converged on these games, on dances and on all sorts of demonic songs, and here they kidnapped their wives in collusion with them."

This document reflects its time - the time of early Christianity - and bears its signs. In particular, it assesses folklore as a demonic occupation bearing pagan influence. It is also important to note something else: the development, social organization and practical meaning of such games, which could not appear overnight, which means they had a long prehistory.

The Christianization of Rus' is far from being an unequivocal phenomenon for folk culture, which was rooted in paganism and retained its powerful influence, gradually being included in a new religious and spiritual system. pagan roots are the first and main sign in the development of early traditional folklore. Folk tales, round dances and songs, epics and thoughts, colorful and deep in meaning wedding ceremonies, folk embroideries, artistic woodcarving - all this can be historically meaningful only taking into account the ancient pagan worldview.

Paganism determined the special flavor of Slavic folklore. Pagan romance gave a special brilliance to Russian folk culture. All heroic fairy tales turn out to be fragments of ancient Slavic myths and heroic epic. The ornamentation of peasant architecture, utensils and clothing is associated with paganism. Complex, multi-day wedding ceremonies are imbued with pagan motifs. A significant part of the song repertoire is imbued with pagan worldview. Vivid, unfading form of ritual dance, accompanied by music and singing, are colorful village round dances.

The main pagan rites, holidays and songs are mainly related to agriculture. The folk calendar, which we are trying to reanimate and adapt to new conditions today, is an agricultural calendar, which means that all ritual folklore bears the features of a pagan character.

It is impossible to ignore or underestimate the fact that early traditional folklore, having its origins since pagan times, was subjected to constant pressure from Christian ideology, which was the church. This was most clearly manifested in the struggle against buffoonery, some rituals and customs, and musical instruments in Rus' in the 15th-17th centuries.

It can be said with a certain degree of conventionality that folk musical instruments, singing, elements of dramatic play and dance were widespread in all groups of the population, as well as applied arts and crafts (in the current sense). Life, life, labor practices were permeated with myths, rituals, rituals, festivities.

At the initial stages of culture, folklore in its diverse forms and manifestations captured a vast sphere of life, and its share in the artistic culture of the Middle Ages was more significant than in the art system of modern times. Folklore filled the vacuum created by the absence of written forms of secular musical creativity. Folk song, the art of folk "gamers" - performers on musical instruments were widespread not only among the working classes, but also in higher strata society up to the princely court.

Until the era of Peter I, folklore remained the dominant artistic system in Rus'.

At the same time, it is necessary to note another important regularity - the gradual growth of the layer of peasant folklore due to the growth of the mass of the peasantry.

Folklore has a specific historical coloring and a specific historical meaning: sacred, ritual, aesthetic, pragmatic. Within the boundaries of historical eras, various folklore waves arose associated with specific historical events. At the same time, each folklore genre is distinguished by its own patterns of emergence, flourishing, fading, inclusion in culture. Its development does not coincide in its time frame with the boundaries of the phenomenon that caused them. Historical songs, stories about the Pugachev or Razin uprisings were born by them, but remained in culture even after their suppression.

Throughout a long historical period, peasant folklore remained the most powerful and integral worldview and cultural system. The traditional centuries-old culture of the Russian village is not only a source of information of interest to us about its roots. At the same time, they are the roots on which the mass of the working peasantry stood for a thousand years, the roots that nourished not only the village, but also the urban settlement.

Due to the features social development Russia, which entered the capitalist path of development only in the second half 19th century., peasant folklore remained the dominant form of folk art until the beginning of XX V. At the same time, we should talk about the emergence of new, and the attenuation and disappearance of the old genres of folklore. Behind these changes are objective historical prerequisites that ensure the adequacy of folk art to the fundamental requirements that were associated with the social, economic, political situation in Russia.

Under the influence of powerful social factors since the second half of the XIX century. Peasant folklore is undergoing a transformation, moving to the periphery of artistic culture. This could not but affect cardinally the nature of his existence, development, inclusion in the general context of life.

The emergence and development of other social groups, each of which developed its own specific forms folklore creativity (today they talk about student, intelligentsia, philistine, worker folklore), led to its complication and differentiation.

The folklore of a certain group performs specific functions in relation to this group, has its own tasks, features and characteristics. Folklore transferred from the peasant environment to princely court or perceived by the working environment, becomes a different phenomenon, from an aesthetic point of view, because it begins to play a different role. The creativity of various groups naturally comes into contact, borderline borrowings arise. However, the specificity of each of the streams is always expressed quite clearly, even in the case of deep transformations. This applies to all genres and types of folklore of peasants, intellectuals, workers, etc., without exception.

With the complication of the forms of social and spiritual life of society, folklore forms of peasant creativity were perceived and actively developed by representatives of the newly emerging classes and groups. The formation of the working class in Russia in the middle of the 19th century, its entry into the historical arena, the increase in numbers, the growth of political consciousness - all this was accompanied by the formation of a specific ethno-folklore environment. Forms of artistic creativity appeared that corresponded to the spirit and tasks of the proletariat and were called workers' folklore.

We can talk about the existence in Russia of the XIX century. folklore culture of landlord and noble estates, the Russian intelligentsia, who declared themselves in full voice starting from the beginning of the 19th century, and then students, workers and the city as a whole. Despite a certain difference in the forms of creativity, genre composition, artistic imagery, the folklore of all social groups had a lot in common. Only with time, gradually, did their own features appear in the folklore of each social group.

Beginning with late XIX V. folklore, under the influence of objective geopolitical and economic processes taking place in the country, experienced increasing pressure from other layers of culture, lost its most stable peasant origins. Mass depeasantization, the destruction of the natural way of life of the peasantry, accompanied by the physical destruction of a significant part of it, led to the global destruction of the peasant layer of culture. Its erosion, observed for more than half a century, has become an irreversible process.

Planting in the mass consciousness the ideology of intolerance towards traditions, towards folklore culture, led to the fact that they were really expelled from life, allegedly because of their patriarchal and outdated nature. Folklore fell out of the field of attention of the powerful and extensive system of state and public assistance to folk art. All pre-revolutionary mass publications on traditional culture and folklore were closed and re-profiled (for example, the Zhivaya Starina magazine, etc.). Practice focused on creating folklore forms amateur art. This approach was dominant, defining. Some specialists laid a "scientific" basis for the process of the withering away of folklore and considered it necessary to pay increased attention to the creation of "novelties"—Soviet folklore.

The idea spread in folk art to use folklore opportunities to praise the victories and achievements of socialism, the personalities of Lenin and Stalin, and other leaders of the state.

Meanwhile, the participants of scientific expeditions noted the presence of strong foundations for the development and existence of folklore. The village remained largely archaic. Former traditions and customs were maintained by artificial "freezing" of the village (its inhabitants could not change their place of residence without special permission until the 60s). Many rituals remained in active use - weddings, christenings, funerals, folk singing, playing the harmonica, balalaika. Still alive were really outstanding folk performers, whose skill, knowledge of folklore, the ability to create it took shape at the time of the active existence of traditions. They formed a folklore environment around them. In general, the intra-village way of life retained the features of the pre-revolutionary one. New phenomena did not lead to fundamental changes in the cultural way of life.

Folklore in the prewar decades had not yet been destroyed as an integral aesthetic phenomenon. In its depths, often implicitly, the most complex evolutionary processes took place, affecting primarily the qualitative aspects of its future existence.

The rate of destruction of the cultural and everyday way of life accelerated significantly after collectivization, and then during the Great Patriotic War. If collectivization laid the foundation for this process, then the war, having displaced hundreds of millions of people from their original places of residence, destroyed the folklore environment in essence throughout the entire European part of the territory of the USSR.

Folklore of the second half of the 40s - early 70s is folklore that exists, as it were, outside the socio-spiritual framework that has developed in society. He not only did not fit into them, but he was artificially taken out of the frame artistic life the masses of the people. A situation arose when, despite the fact that the folklore tradition was still vital, retained its bright forms, it did not receive proper support, it turned out to be crushed and opposed to amateur art. The neglect of folklore traditions took sharp forms of rejection of traditional forms of folk life.

Planting among the masses, both in the city and in the countryside, the values ​​​​of pseudo-folk culture or culture that they do not perceive (in particular, opera, symphonic music, visual arts, classical ballet, etc.), led to blurring and accessible, close to the people culture is traditional. The goal of introducing everyone to the heights of the musical, choreographic, dramatic, and visual arts came into conflict with the needs of the vast majority of the population, who could not accept these values ​​in their mass.

Today, folklore is actively collected and studied by researchers, as modern society has come to understand its value and great educational value.

Folk verbal creativity was kept in the memory of people, in the process of communication, works passed from one to another and were not recorded. For this reason, folklorists should be engaged in so-called "field work" - go on folklore expeditions to identify performers and record folklore from them. Recorded texts of oral folklore works (as well as photographs, tape recordings, diaries of collectors, etc.) are stored in folklore archives. Archival materials can be published, for example, in the form of folklore collections.

Folklore has its artistic laws. The oral form of creation, distribution and existence of works is the main feature that gives rise to the SPECIFICITY of folklore, causes its difference from literature.

1. Traditional.

Folklore is mass creativity. Works of literature have an author, works of folklore are anonymous, their author is the people. In literature there are writers and readers, in folklore there are performers and listeners.

oral works were created according to already known samples, even included direct borrowings. The speech style used constant epithets, symbols, comparisons and other traditional poetic means. The works with a plot were characterized by a set of typical narrative elements, their usual compositional combination. In the images of folklore characters, the typical also prevailed over the individual. Tradition required the ideological orientation of the works: they taught goodness, contained the rules of human behavior in life.

Storytellers (performers of fairy tales), songwriters (performers of songs), storytellers (performers of epics), wailers (performers of lamentations) sought, first of all, to convey to the listeners what corresponded to the tradition. Repeatability oral text allowed its changes, and this allowed an individual talented person to express himself. There was a multiple creative act, co-creation, in which any representative of the people could be a participant.

The oral artistic tradition was the common stock. Each person could choose for himself what he needed.

Not everything newly created was preserved in oral existence. Repeatedly repeated fairy tales, songs, epics, proverbs and other works passed "from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation." Along the way, they lost what bore the stamp of individuality, but at the same time revealed and deepened what could satisfy everyone. The new was born only on a traditional basis, while it had to not just copy the tradition, but supplement it.

In folklore, a creative process constantly proceeded, which supported and developed the artistic tradition.

2. Syncretism.

The artistic principle won in folklore not immediately. In ancient society, the word merged with the beliefs and everyday needs of people, and its poetic meaning, if any, was not realized.

Residual forms of this state were preserved in rituals, incantations and other genres of late folklore. For example, a round dance game is a complex of several artistic components: words, music, facial expressions, gesture, dance. All of them can exist only together, as elements of a whole - a round dance. Such a property is usually denoted by the word "syncretism" (from the Greek synkretismos - "connection").

As time went on, syncretism historically faded away. Different types of art overcame the state of primitive indivisibility and stood out on their own. In folklore, their late compounds began to appear - synthesis.

3. Variation.

The oral form of assimilation and transmission of works made them open to change. There were no two completely identical performances of the same piece, even if there was only one performer. Oral works had a mobile, variant nature.

Variant (from lat. variants - "changing") - each one-time performance of a folk work, as well as its fixed text.

Since a folklore work existed in the form of multiple performances, it existed in the aggregate of its variants. Any variant differed from others, told or sung at different times, in different localities, in different environments, by different performers or by one (repeatedly).

Oral folk tradition sought to preserve, to protect from oblivion what was most valuable. The tradition kept the changes of the text within its borders. For variants of a folklore work, it is important what is common, repeated, and secondary, how they differ from one another.

4. Improvisation.

The variability of folklore could practically be realized thanks to improvisation.

Improvisation (from Latin improviso - "unforeseen, suddenly") - the creation of the text of a folk work, or its separate parts, in progress.

Between acts of performance, the folklore work was kept in memory. Each time the text is voiced, it seems to be born anew. The performer improvised. He relied on knowledge poetic language folklore, selected ready-made artistic components, created their combinations. Without improvisation, the use of speech "blanks" and the use of oral poetic techniques would be impossible.

Improvisation did not contradict tradition; on the contrary, it existed precisely because there were certain rules, an artistic canon.

The oral work obeyed the laws of its genre. The genre allowed for this or that mobility of the text, set the boundaries of fluctuation.

In different genres, improvisation manifested itself with greater or lesser force. There are genres focused on improvisation (lamentations, lullabies), and even those whose texts were one-time (fair cries of merchants). In contrast to them, there are genres designed for accurate memorization, therefore, as if not allowing improvisation (for example, conspiracies).

Improvisation carried a creative impulse, generated novelty. It expressed the dynamics of the folklore process.

Russian folklore

Folklore, in translation, means "folk wisdom, folk knowledge." Folklore is folk art, the artistic collective activity of the people, reflecting their life, views and ideals, i.e. Folklore is the folk historical cultural heritage of any country in the world.

Works of Russian folklore (fairy tales, legends, epics, songs, ditties, dances, legends, applied art) help to recreate the characteristic features of the folk life of their time.

Creativity in antiquity was closely associated with labor activity human and reflected mythical, historical ideas, as well as the beginnings scientific knowledge. The art of the word was closely connected with other types of art - music, dance, decorative arts. In science, this is called "syncretism."

Folklore was an art organically inherent in folk life. The different purpose of the works gave rise to genres, with their various themes, images, and style. IN ancient period most peoples had tribal traditions, labor and ritual songs, mythological stories, conspiracies. The decisive event that paved the line between mythology and folklore proper was the appearance of fairy tales, the plots of which were based on a dream, on wisdom, on ethical fiction.

In ancient and medieval society, there was heroic epic(Irish sagas, Russian epics and others). There were also legends and songs reflecting various beliefs (for example, Russian spiritual verses). Later, historical songs appeared, depicting real historical events and heroes, as they remained in the people's memory.

Genres in folklore also differ in the way of performance (solo, choir, choir and soloist) and in various combinations of text with melody, intonation, movements (singing and dancing, storytelling and acting out).

With changes in the social life of society, new genres arose in Russian folklore: soldier's, coachman's, burlak's songs. The growth of industry and cities brought to life: romances, anecdotes, worker, student folklore.

Now there are no new Russian folk tales, but the old ones are still told and made into cartoons and feature films. Many old songs are also sung. But the epics and historical songs in live performance almost do not sound.

For thousands of years, folklore has been the only form of creativity among all peoples. The folklore of each nation is unique, just like its history, customs, culture. And some genres (not only historical songs) reflect the history of a given people.

Russian folk musical culture

There are several points of view that interpret folklore as folk art culture, as oral poetry and as a combination of verbal, musical, playful or artistic types folk art. With all the variety of regional and local forms, folklore has common features, such as anonymity, collective creativity, traditionalism, close connection with work, life, transmission of works from generation to generation in oral tradition.

Folk musical art originated long before professional music Orthodox church. In the social life of ancient Rus', folklore played a much greater role than in subsequent times. Unlike medieval Europe, Ancient Rus' did not have a secular professional art. In its musical culture, folk art of the oral tradition developed, including various, including "semi-professional" genres (the art of storytellers, guslars, etc.).

By the time of Orthodox hymnography, Russian folklore already had centuries of history, the established system of genres and means of musical expression. folk music, folk art has firmly entered the life of people, reflecting the most diverse facets of social, family and personal life.

Researchers believe that the pre-state period (that is, before the formation of Ancient Rus') East Slavs already had a fairly developed calendar and household folklore, heroic epic and instrumental music.

With the adoption of Christianity, pagan (Vedic) knowledge began to be eradicated. The meaning of the magical actions that gave rise to this or that type of folk activity was gradually forgotten. However, the purely external forms of ancient holidays proved to be unusually stable, and some ritual folklore continued to live, as it were, out of touch with the ancient paganism that gave birth to it.

The Christian Church (not only in Rus', but also in Europe) had a very negative attitude towards traditional folk songs and dances, considering them a manifestation of sinfulness, devilish seduction. This assessment is recorded in many annalistic sources and in canonical church decrees.

Fervent, cheerful folk festivals with elements theatrical action and with the indispensable participation of music, the origins of which should be sought in the ancient Vedic rituals, were fundamentally different from temple holidays.

The most extensive area of ​​folk musical creativity of Ancient Rus' is ritual folklore, which testifies to the high artistic talent of the Russian people. He was born in the depths of the Vedic picture of the world, the deification of the natural elements. The most ancient are calendar-ritual songs. Their content is connected with ideas about the cycle of nature, with the agricultural calendar. These songs reflect the various stages of the life of farmers. They were part of the winter, spring, summer rites, which correspond to the turning points in the change of seasons. Performing this natural rite (songs, dances), people believed that they would be heard by the mighty gods, the forces of Love, Family, Sun, Water, Mother Earth and healthy children would be born, a good harvest would be born, there would be an offspring of livestock, life would develop in love and harmony.

In Rus', weddings have been played since ancient times. Each locality had its own custom of wedding actions, lamentations, songs, sentences. But with all the endless variety, weddings were played according to the same laws. Poetic wedding reality transforms what is happening into a fantastically fabulous world. As in a fairy tale all images are diverse, so the rite itself, poetically interpreted, appears as a kind of fairy tale. The wedding, being one of the most significant events of human life in Rus', required a festive and solemn frame. And if you feel all the rituals and songs, delving into this fantastic wedding world, you can feel the poignant beauty of this ritual. Colorful clothes, a wedding train rattling with bells, a polyphonic choir of “singers” and mournful melodies of lamentations, the sounds of waxwings and horns, accordions and balalaikas will remain “behind the scenes” - but the poetry of the wedding itself resurrects - the pain of leaving the parental home and the high joy of the festive state of mind - Love.

One of the most ancient Russian genres is round dance songs. In Rus', they danced round dances for almost the entire year - on the Kolovorot ( New Year), Shrovetide (seeing off winter and meeting spring), Green Week (round dances of girls around birches), Yarilo (sacred bonfires), Ovsen (harvest holidays). Round dances-games and round dances-processions were widespread. Initially, round dance songs were part of agricultural rituals, but over the centuries they became independent, although the images of labor were preserved in many of them:

And we sowed millet, sowed!
Oh, Did Lado, sowed, sowed!

The dance songs that have survived to this day accompanied male and women's dances. Men's - personified strength, courage, courage, women's - tenderness, love, stateliness.

Over the centuries, the musical epic begins to replenish with new themes and images. Epics are born that tell about the struggle against the Horde, about traveling to distant countries, about the emergence of the Cossacks, popular uprisings.

Folk memory has long kept many beautiful ancient songs for centuries. In the XVIII century, during the formation of professional secular genres (opera, instrumental music) folk art for the first time becomes the subject of study and creative implementation. The enlightening attitude to folklore was vividly expressed by the remarkable humanist writer A.N. Radishchev in the heartfelt lines of his “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”: you will find the education of the soul of our people.” In the 19th century, the assessment of folklore as the “education of the soul” of the Russian people became the basis of the aesthetics of the composer school from Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, to Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Kalinnikov, and folk song was one of the sources of the formation of Russian national thinking.

Russian folk songs of the 16th-19th centuries - "like a golden mirror of the Russian people"

Folk songs recorded in various parts of Russia are a historical monument to the life of the people, but also a documentary source that captures the development of folk creative thought of its time.

The struggle against the Tatars, peasant riots - all this left an imprint on folk song traditions for each specific area, starting with epics, historical songs and up to ballads. Like, for example, the ballad about Ilya Muromets, which is associated with the Nightingale River, which flows in the Yazykovo area, there was a struggle between Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber, who lived in these parts.

It is known that the conquest of the Kazan Khanate by Ivan the Terrible played in the development of oral folk art, the campaigns of Ivan the Terrible marked the beginning of the final victory over Tatar-Mongol yoke, who freed many thousands of Russian prisoners from full. The songs of this time became the prototype for Lermontov's epic "Song about Ivan Tsarevich" - a chronicle of folk life, and A.S. Pushkin used oral folk art in his works - Russian songs and Russian fairy tales.

On the Volga, not far from the village of Undory, there is a cape called Stenka Razin; songs of that time sounded there: “On the steppe, steppe of Saratov”, “We had it in Holy Rus'”. Historical events of the end XVII beginning 18th century captured in the compilation about the campaigns of Peter I and his Azov campaigns, about the execution of archers: “It’s like the blue sea”, “A young Cossack walks along the Don”.

With the military reforms of the beginning of the 18th century, new historical songs appeared, these are no longer lyrical, but epic. Historical songs preserve the most ancient images of the historical epic, songs about the Russian-Turkish war, about recruiting and the war with Napoleon: “The French thief boasted of taking Russia”, “Don’t make noise, mother green oak tree”.

At this time, epics about "Surovets Suzdalets", about "Dobrynya and Alyosha" and a very rare tale of Gorshen were preserved. Also in the work of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Nekrasov, Russian epic folk songs and legends were used. The ancient traditions of folk games, disguise and a special performing culture of Russian song folklore have been preserved.

Russian folk theatrical art

Russian folk drama and folk theatrical art in general are the most interesting and significant phenomenon of Russian national culture.

Dramatic games and performances as early as the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 20th century constituted an organic part of the festive folk life, whether it was village gatherings, soldiers' and factory barracks, or fair booths.

The geography of the distribution of folk drama is extensive. Collectors of our days have found peculiar theatrical "centers" in the Yaroslavl and Gorky regions, Russian villages of Tataria, on Vyatka and Kama, in Siberia and the Urals.

Folk drama, contrary to the opinion of some scholars, is a natural product folklore tradition. It compressed the creative experience accumulated by dozens of generations of the widest sections of the Russian people.

At urban, and later rural fairs, carousels and booths were arranged, on the stage of which performances were played on fairy-tale and national historical themes. The performances seen at the fairs could not completely affect the aesthetic tastes of the people, but they expanded their fairy-tale and song repertoire. Lubok and theatrical borrowings largely determined the originality of the plots of folk drama. However, they "lay down" on the ancient playing traditions of folk games, disguise, i.e. on the special performing culture of Russian folklore.

Generations of creators and performers of folk dramas have developed certain techniques for plotting, characterization and style. Expanded folk dramas are characterized by strong passions and insoluble conflicts, the continuity and speed of successive actions.

A special role in the folk drama is played by songs performed by the characters at different moments or sounding in chorus - as comments on ongoing events. The songs were a kind of emotional and psychological element of the performance. They were performed mostly in fragments, revealing the emotional meaning of the scene or the state of the character. Songs at the beginning and end of the performance were obligatory. The song repertoire of folk dramas consists mainly of author's songs of the 19th and early 20th centuries, popular in all sectors of society. These are the soldiers' songs "The White Russian Tsar Went", "Malbrook went on a campaign", "Praise, praise to you, hero", and the romances "I walked in the meadows in the evening", "I'm leaving for the desert", "What is clouded, clear dawn " and many others.

Late genres of Russian folk art - festivities

The heyday of the festivities falls on the XVII-XIX centuries, although certain types and genres folk art, which constituted an indispensable accessory of the fair and city festive square, were created and actively existed long before the designated centuries and continue, often in a transformed form, to exist to this day. Such puppet show, bear fun, partly jokes of merchants, many circus numbers. Other genres were born from the fairground and died out with the end of the festivities. These are comic monologues of farce barkers, raeks, performances of farce theaters, dialogues of parsley clowns.

Usually, during festivities and fairs in traditional places, entire pleasure towns were erected with booths, carousels, swings, tents, in which they sold everything from popular prints to songbirds and sweets. In winter, ice mountains were added, access to which was completely free, and sledding from a height of 10-12 m brought incomparable pleasure.

With all the diversity and variegation, the city folk festival was perceived as something integral. This integrity was created by the specific atmosphere of the festive square, with its free speech, familiarity, unrestrained laughter, food and drinks; equality, fun, festive perception of the world.

Herself holiday square amazed by the incredible combination of all kinds of details. Accordingly, outwardly, it was a colorful loud chaos. Bright, motley clothes of those walking, catchy, unusual costumes of "artists", flashy signboards of booths, swings, carousels, shops and taverns, handicrafts shimmering with all colors of the rainbow and the simultaneous sound of hurdy-gurdies, trumpets, flutes, drums, exclamations, songs, cries of merchants , loud laughter from the jokes of "farce grandfathers" and clowns - everything merged into a single fireworks fair that fascinated and amused.

A lot of guest performers from Europe (many of them keepers of booths, panoramas) and even southern countries (magicians, animal tamers, strongmen, acrobats and others) came to large, well-known festivities “under the mountains” and “under the swings”. Foreign speech and overseas curiosities were commonplace at capital festivities and large fairs. It is understandable why urban spectacular folklore was often presented as a kind of mixture of "Nizhny Novgorod with French".

The basis, heart and soul of Russian national culture is Russian folklore, this is the treasury, this is what filled the Russian person from the inside from ancient times, and this internal Russian folk culture eventually gave rise to a whole galaxy of great Russian writers, composers, artists, scientists in the 17th-19th centuries , military, philosophers who are known and revered by the whole world:
Zhukovsky V.A., Ryleev K.F., Tyutchev F.I., Pushkin A.S., Lermontov M.Yu., Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E., Bulgakov M.A., Tolstoy L.N., Turgenev I.S., Fonvizin D.I., Chekhov A.P., Gogol N.V., Goncharov I.A., Bunin I.A., Griboyedov A.S., Karamzin N.M., Dostoyevsky F. .M., Kuprin A.I., Glinka M.I., Glazunov A.K., Mussorgsky M.P., Rimsky-Korsakov N.A., Tchaikovsky P.I., Borodin A.P., Balakirev M. .A., Rachmaninov S.V., Stravinsky I.F., Prokofiev S.S., Kramskoy I.N., Vereshchagin V.V., Surikov V.I., Polenov V.D., Serov V.A. ., Aivazovsky I.K., Shishkin I.I., Vasnetsov V.N., Repin I.E., Roerich N.K., Vernadsky V.I., Lomonosov M.V., Sklifosovsky N.V., Mendeleev D.I., Sechenov I.M., Pavlov I.P., Tsiolkovsky K.E., Popov A.S., Bagration P.R., Nakhimov P.S., Suvorov A.V., Kutuzov M. I., Ushakov F.F., Kolchak A.V., Solovyov V.S., Berdyaev N.A., Chernyshevsky N.G., Dobrolyubov N.A., Pisarev D.I., Chaadaev P.E. ., there are thousands of them, which, one way or another, the whole earthly world knows. These are world pillars that grew up on Russian folk culture.

But in 1917, a second attempt was made in Russia to break the connection between times, to break the Russian cultural heritage of ancient generations. The first attempt was made back in the years of the baptism of Rus'. But it did not succeed in full, since the power of Russian folklore was based on the life of the people, on their Vedic natural worldview. But already somewhere in the sixties of the twentieth century, Russian folklore began to be gradually replaced by pop-pop genres of pop, disco and, as it is customary to say now, chanson (prison thieves' folklore) and other types of Soviet art. But a special blow was struck in the 1990s. The word "Russian" was secretly forbidden even to pronounce, allegedly, this word meant - inciting ethnic hatred. This position remains to this day.

And there was no single Russian people, they scattered them, they made them drunk, and they began to destroy them at the genetic level. Now in Rus' there is a non-Russian spirit of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens and all other inhabitants of Asia and the Middle East, and in the Far East there are Chinese, Koreans, etc., and an active, global Ukrainization of Russia is being carried out everywhere.

Introduction

Folklore is folk wisdom. Folklore is the study of folklore. Folklore combines different types of arts (music, pagan and Christian rites and traditions). The core of folklore is the word. Folklore is a phenomenon, not an art, it combines the arts. And above all, it is a synthetic phenomenon. At the time of the formation of folklore, syncretism should be attributed (mutually; penetration; fusion; connectedness.) One of the most important qualities of folklore is the oral nature of its existence. The genre of folklore dies when its creativity ceases to be passed from mouth to mouth. In folklore, variability is widely developed (everyone who hears information conveys it in his own way.). Tradition in folklore is the rules, the framework that must be observed. Contamination is the merging of several stories into one. folklore reflects popular position, upbringing, morality, worldview.

History of folklore

The oral word, ancient stories passing from generation to generation, from mouth to mouth, were the beginning from which, through the millennia, folk tales about the Gods, fairy tales and anecdotes grew, and then history, and science, and literature.

This oral word, the rhythms of tunes, the peoples carried from the primeval forest through the centuries and settled on the earth, and, creating this or that culture in every corner, put the word and rhythm at the basis of their oral and musical creativity.

"The Russian people have created a huge oral literature: wise proverbs and cunning riddles, funny and sad ritual songs, solemn epics - spoken in a singsong voice, to the sound of strings - about the glorious deeds of heroes, defenders of the land of the people - heroic, magical, everyday and ridiculous tales.

It is vain to think that this literature was only the fruit of popular leisure. She was the dignity and mind of the people. She became and strengthened his moral character, was his historical memory, festive clothes of his soul and filled with deep content his whole measured life, flowing according to customs and rituals associated with his work, nature and veneration of fathers and grandfathers. "Russian Folklore" / Edited by V.P. Anikin; - M. : Art Lit., 1985. - p. 3.

The term "folklore" was introduced into science by the English scientist William Thoms in 1846. The term is accepted in international science and in translation means - the wisdom of the people. hard to give short definition such a concept. Folklore is the life of the people, its history, its gradual development. Folklore is not invented from above, it is created by the people in the process of life and for the good.