"Old Russian folklore as a means of expressing self-consciousness and a historical source"
Content:
Introduction
______________________________ __________________________3
I main part _________________________ _________________________4
1. What is folklore ______________________ _________________________-
2. Factors that influenced the formation of folklore _____________________ 5
3. The difference between literature and folklore ______ ___________________________7
4. About the genres of Russian folklore ___________ __________________________9
5. Functions of folklore _____________________ ________________________10
6. Mythological representations in non-ritual folklore ____________12
II About some folklore genres ________________________ ______14
- Epics ________________________ ______________________________ -
Historical songs _________________________ _________________15
Song lyrics ________________________ _____________________16
Conspiracies ______________________ _____________________________ 21
List of used literature ____________________ ___________23
Introduction.
Folklore has repeatedly been the subject of study as part of the culture of Ancient Rus' and the culture of the previous so-called "prehistoric" time. In particular, folklore often served as material for establishing ritual and magical concepts and ideas generated by the traditional agrarian and agricultural occupation of the population of Rus'.
Folklore is poetic creativity that grows on the basis of the labor activity of mankind, reflecting the experience of millennia. Folklore, being older than written literature and passed from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation, is the most valuable source for understanding the history of every nation, no matter what stage of social development it is at.
Folklore is still a significant part of modern culture. It reflected the whole set of psychological, pedagogical and religious and magical views, ethical and aesthetic ideals of the ethnic group, its poetic and musical talent, artistry, the history of family and marriage relations, folk humor and rich word creation. That is why representatives of various branches of knowledge turn to the study of folklore, including, in addition to folklorists, for example, ethnographers and linguists, philosophers and historians, psychologists, lawyers, artists, clergymen, teachers, etc.
The significance of folklore as a cultural heritage and, at the same time, modern folk art, as a material important for studying the philosophy of a people, its history and art, has now become theoretically generally recognized. The study of ancient Russian folklore is necessary to comprehend the folk mentality as the basis of ancient culture. Without knowledge of the history and customs of one's people, without familiarizing a young person with folk culture, it is impossible to educate a worthy citizen of the Fatherland. That is why I consider the topic of my essay relevant.
Main part.
I.1 . What is folklore
Until now, disputes about what folklore is, what is its specificity have not ceased. This question is far from idle. Folklore is not just folk epics and songs, fairy tales and legends, proverbs and charms. Folklore is a special kind of information, a special kind of folk art, a special form of collective creativity.
Yu.M. Sokolov gave a general definition of folklore, the most accepted to date. “Folklore,” he wrote, “should be understood as the oral poetic creativity of the broad masses of the people.”
The word "folklore" is gradually replacing such equivalent terms as "oral literature" and even "folk poetry". The English word "folklore", i.e. folk wisdom, folk tradition, is most often used in relation to folk poetic art, but along with this they also talk about musical and visual folklore. This term is international, although in different countries ah is not understood in the same way.
Folklore is poetry created by the people and existing among the masses, in which it reflects its labor activity, social and everyday way of life, knowledge of life, nature, cults and beliefs. Folklore embodies the views, ideals and aspirations of the people, their poetic fantasy, richest world thoughts, feelings, experiences, protest against exploitation and oppression, dreams of justice and happiness. This is an oral, verbal artistic creativity that arose in the process of the formation of human speech. M. Gorky said: “... The beginning of the art of the word is in folklore”
In a pre-class society, folklore is closely connected with other types of human activity, reflecting the rudiments of his knowledge and religious and mythological ideas.
2. Factors that influenced the formation of folklore.
The features of the formation of ancient Russian culture are revealed already at the initial stage of the formation of the ethnic self-consciousness of the Slavs, before the adoption of Christianity by Russia and have a close connection with those times that the Slavs themselves called the "Trojan Ages" or the old time. “There were, brothers, the times of Troyan,” writes the author of The Tale of Igor's Campaign. She calls Boyan "the old Nightingale", and Prince Igor "the mighty grandson of Troyanov."
The memory of this time is also preserved in folklore: the names of the distant ancestors of Russian heroes are mentioned in songs and epics, but nevertheless, the very space of ancient Russian culture begins to be created from the finally determined “place of development”.
Among the factors that influenced the formation of the core of Russian culture, natural and climatic conditions were of paramount importance, and they, in turn, were determined by the peculiarities of the geographical location. How did the relations of the Slavs develop with the space surrounding them? The forest played a significant role in the formation of the “life and concepts” of a person in ancient Rus'. He became a habitat and provided the ancient Slavs with a wide variety of "services". The forest fed, clothed, shod, warmed the ancient Slavs, served as the most reliable refuge from enemies. Despite this, the man was afraid of the forest, inhabiting it with all sorts of fears.
The understanding of space in Russian culture took place through the steppe. It formed an attitude to space as the absence of visible boundaries and limits, and at the same time as a threatening space, beyond which the "unknown" side began, alien, encroaching on the space, which in the minds of the ancient Slavs was already designated as "one's own", images of Russians heroes in oral folk art embodied the desire to protect themselves from this danger, thus, the steppe and the forest combined two opposite principles - infinity and border, elements and the desire to organize space.
Perhaps only the river gave the ancient Slavs a clear system of coordinates, formed the skills of joint activities, organization and order.
The natural conditions were supplemented by the peculiarities of the climate, which in turn influenced the formation of the type of economic activity, psychological make-up, habits, traditions - everything that is called the mentality of the people. The climatic conditions of the East European Plain - the zone of settlement of the Eastern Slavs in the 6th century - differed from those in which the idea of labor was formed among the peoples of Western European countries. The continental climate, with its long and cold winters, short springs, hot summers and short autumns, demanded from the farmer an enormous exertion of strength during the period of suffering and a leisurely and contemplative attitude to work during the winter.
The complexities of climatic conditions formed the idea of labor activity as an intermittent process. During the harvest, as well as "reclaiming" the space for cultivating the land from the forest, the role of collective labor increased. This is how collectivism developed, the prerequisites for individualism were poorly visible, since there were no motives for competitiveness in labor. Working in a team, people did not seek to stand out among others, since collective activity was more effective.
This was the circumstance that ensured the development of folk poetry in the past, according to N. G. Chernyshevsky, the absence of "sharp differences in the mental life of the people." “The mental and moral life,” he points out, “is the same for all members of such a people - therefore, the works of poetry generated by the excitement of such a life are equally close and understandable, equally sweet and related to all members of the people.” In such historical conditions, works appeared created by "the whole people, as one moral person." Thanks to this, folk poetry permeates the collective principle. It is present in the appearance and perception by listeners of newly created works, in their subsequent existence and processing. Collectivity is manifested not only externally, but also internally - in the folk poetic system itself, in the nature of the generalization of reality, in images, etc. In the portrait characteristics of heroes, in certain situations and images of folklore works, there are few individual features that occupy such a prominent place in fiction.
As a rule, at the time of creation, the work is experiencing a period of special popularity and creative flourishing. But there comes a time when it begins to distort, collapse and be forgotten. New times require new songs. The images of folk heroes express the best features of the Russian national character; the content of folklore works reflects the most typical circumstances of folk life. At the same time, folk poetry could not but reflect the historical limitations and contradictions of the peasant ideology. Living in oral transmission, the texts of folk poetry could change significantly. However, having reached complete ideological and artistic completeness, the works often remained for a long time almost unchanged as a poetic legacy of the past, as a cultural wealth of enduring value.
3. The difference between literature and folklore.
Folklore and literature can and should be correlated not only as two types of artistic culture (in synchronous consideration), but also as two stages, two stages, one of which (folklore) preceded the other (literature) in the historical movement of forms and types of culture (that is in diachronic consideration). Even the most ancient literatures of the world (for example, Sumerian, ancient Egyptian, etc.) arose no more than 4,000 years ago, while folklore genetically dates back to the era of the formation of human speech, that is, it arose 100,000-13,000 years ago. Among the Eastern Slavs, with the same age of folklore tradition (rooted in the proto- and pre-Slavic ethnic environment), the age of literature is much more modest - only about 1000 years.
Consideration of the differences between literature and folklore is usually based on a series of oppositions (oppositions). We list the most important of them:
| sign | Folklore | Literature |
| Social determination | People's environment | Other social strata |
| Ideological differences | People's ideology | Non-popular ideology |
| Stylistic differences | folk tradition | literary tradition |
| The ratio of tradition and innovation | Tradition dominance | Dominance of innovation |
| The nature of creativity | Collective, unconscious, spontaneous | Individual, striving for theoretical self-consciousness |
| The notion of authorship | impersonal creativity | Personal creativity |
| Text Existence Form | variation | Stability |
The question of the origin of many works of folk poetry is much more complicated than that of literary works. Not only the name and biography of the author - the creator of this or that text are unknown, but also the social environment in which the fairy tale, epic, song, time and place of their composition was formed is unknown. The ideological intention of the author can only be judged by the surviving text, moreover, often written down many years later, because in folklore the original text of the work is almost always not known, since the author of the work is not known. The text is passed from mouth to mouth and reaches our days in the form in which the writers wrote it down.
4. On the genres of Russian folklore.
The genres of Russian folklore, as well as the folklore of other peoples, are extremely diverse: some of them are epics, ballads, songs, ditties - songs and are inextricably linked with folk music, others - fairy tales, legends, legends, bylichki and byvalshchina - narrative (prose), the third - dressing up, folk plays ("Tsar Maximilian" and "The Boat", etc.), puppet shows ("Petrushka"), numerous games, round dances and a wedding ceremony that is multi-genre in its composition - dramatic. Epics, legends, fairy tales, love lyrics live out of connection with the rite; lamentations, sentences, friends, carols, stoneflies are closely related to family or calendar rites; lullabies, nursery rhymes exist in the children's environment; epics, historical songs, legends are the property of adults only, etc.
The connection of individual folklore genres with everyday life, with reality, with the living conditions of the Russian people is also different, which also determines their historical destinies.
At the same time, all genres of verbal folklore have common features: they are all works of art of the word, in their origins are associated with archaic forms arts, which exist mainly in oral transmission, are constantly changing. This determines the interaction in them of the collective and individual principles, a peculiar combination of tradition and innovation. Thus, folk genre- historically developing type of oral-poetic work. In one way or another, all folklore genres are connected with the history of the people, with the reality that called them to life and determines their further existence, their flourishing or extinction. “Tell me how the people lived, and I will tell you how they wrote” - these wonderful words of the great Russian scientist, academician A.N. Veselovsky can also be attributed to oral creativity: how the people lived, so he sang and told. Therefore, folklore reveals folk philosophy, ethics and aesthetics. A.M. Gorky could rightfully say that “one cannot know the true history of the working people without knowing oral folk art.”
Processes associated with the impact of one of the folklore genres on the traditions of others can be identified. They can be called historical-genre. Such is the connection between the traditions of ballad songs, which were originally formed on the basis of the transformation of the traditions of historical songs, and subsequently experienced the influence of epics and a number of lyrical genres: songs, lamentations.
The processes of formation of national-folk specific traditions in folklore, which stood out from the general composition of the poetic culture of kindred peoples, are seen. These are historical and national traditions. Such are the processes of the formation of the traditions of ritual folklore, epic creativity among various Slavic peoples.
Historians have long noted the historical migration process, which can be traced by studying cultural interactions in the analysis of the international distribution and national processing of some fairy tales, proverbs, and riddles.
5. Functions of folklore.
It is the function of a folklore work, its everyday purpose, that is one of the defining, but, of course, not the only feature in the concept of a genre.
So, for example, the magical function gave rise to the main features of conspiracies, which were supposed to give health, well-being, good luck in hunting, etc., and ritual poetry, which allegedly provided a good harvest, wealth, happiness in family life. At the same time, this function is not the only genre feature of incantations and ritual songs: they differ from each other in the nature of the performance, individual or collective, tale or song, and in the features of the construction of the poetic system. The informational function is the main one, but to varying degrees for historical legends, bylichki about goblin, mermaids and brownies, songs about Ivan the Terrible, Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev. However, this does not give us reason to consider all works that are profoundly different in terms of their other characteristics as one genre. We see that a fairy tale and a legend, although they differ in their function, have, since they are genres of oral prose, a number of common features, just like epics and historical songs, which are works of a song epos, or such functionally extremely different small genres as proverbs. and riddles. However, it is the function that most tangibly expresses the genre difference in many similar works. It is the function that gives grounds to divide oral prose into fabulous, for which the aesthetic function is the main one, and non-fabulous, when the informative function dominates.
The sphere of folklore covers very diverse genres, and if some of them are characterized by the dominance of the aesthetic function, then for others - the dominance of the non-aesthetic and the secondary aesthetic function. Therefore, for example, in order for a predisposition to utter a funeral lament to arise, it is not enough to tune in to the perception of the text with certain aesthetic qualities. Someone's death must occur, and the everyday tradition of the social group to which the performer and her listeners belong must prescribe in connection with this a certain type of funeral rite, which provides for mourning the dead with a lament. Consequently, the pronunciation of a folklore text can be stimulated by ritual situations and the ritual functions of the text in situations of this kind. At the same time, this does not mean that a text that has arisen or reproduced in such conditions should be devoid of aesthetic qualities. folklorists with with good reason they talk about the poetics of lamentations, incantations, ritual songs, etc., meaning that their aesthetic qualities arise in the process of ritual activity. Or, in other words, aesthetic activity appears here in a complex complex of forms and types of activity, it accompanies them, arises in connection with them. At the same time, in the folklore of all peoples, genres are well known, which are characterized by the dominance of aesthetic functions. There are no traditional prescriptions for them when they should be pronounced. However, their connection with peasant life could be expressed in the fact that in certain situations it was impossible to pronounce them: for example, fairy tales were performed in Lent. If the tradition did not prescribe ritual fun, then fairy tales could not be performed on days when there was a dead person in the village, and so on.
In some genres, for example, in a fairy tale or a song, the aesthetic function clearly prevails, in others, for example, in legend, it fades into the background, is subordinated to the informative function, even if we have a highly artistic text. It can be minimal, as, for example, in an incantation or a tale, the meaning of which is entirely contained in their utilitarian meaning, which does not prevent them, depending on the talent of the performer, from rising to the heights of poetic art.
The ratio of functions also changes, it is determined by time, place, conditions of performance, depends on the degree of talent and the nature of the performer's creativity. The nature of the work, and consequently its genre affiliation, depends on whether the narrator or the singer seeks to entertain his listeners, impress them with his skill, read them any moral teaching, communicate some knowledge, information, subordinate to his will, or whether the task of the performer - bring good luck, health, well-being.
6. Mythological representations in non-ritual folklore
All arts (with the exception of newly invented ones, such as cinema) - literature, music, dance, visual arts, theater - in one way or another go back to the ritual action of traditional societies. From the point of view of origin, they are nothing more than a late result of the decomposition of the original ritual unity and the oblivion of the original mythological meanings. The highest, from the point of view of modern man, the achievements of the spirit, manifested in art, would perhaps seem to a traditional person to be complete nonsense and a sign of the final decline of the world, evidence of its imminent end. But it should be noted that the oral tradition itself underwent a similar evolution, the development (or decline) of which also followed the path of oblivion. The original meaning of the habitual rites, which lost their "legitimacy" and "legal" status with Christianization, was increasingly eroded from the people's memory, they gradually became customs (that is, that which exists as usual, almost out of habit), accompanied by beliefs, beliefs (i.e. what they believe in, meanwhile, the traditional person knew, and in this sense his way of thinking is very close to the scientific-rational one). The verbal (verbal) side of the rite, without completely separating from the "active" (actional), gave rise to a completely new phenomenon, bearing to varying degrees the features of traditional and written culture - non-ritual folklore. Strictly speaking, only it should be called “oral folk art”, since ritual texts are inextricably linked with the corresponding actions (for example, “curling a beard” from ears), exclude the very concept of creativity as a free generation of new texts: the meaning of the rite is in its invariably precise reproduction that guarantees effectiveness. Creativity, even collective, is out of the question here - there are only slow evolutionary changes in oral texts.
Numerous reflections in folklore of mythological motifs and, more importantly, its very organization with the help of a traditional set of binary oppositions (binary oppositions), the reproduction of the ancient model of the world testify that the tradition not only did not collapse with Christianization, but completely retained its position as a universal regulator of human behavior, only partly yielding this function to the popular faith at the mass level. At its core, folk life remained traditionally pagan. But Christianization opened up new opportunities for the work of the spirit, and bookish written culture opened up new opportunities for reason, rational thinking.
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About some folklore genres.
1. Epics.
Epics (Russian heroic epic) are a wonderful heritage of the past, evidence of the ancient culture and art of the people. Arising in the XI-XV centuries. epic songs about the capital city of Kiev and its struggle with the nomads, about the trading city of Novgorod, its riches and wide international relations, songs about ancient Russian heroes, brave warriors, successful merchants and dashing ushkuiniki for several centuries were passed from mouth to mouth and partially survived in oral tradition to the present day. The Russian heroic epic has been preserved in a living oral existence, perhaps in its original form of plot content and the main principles of form. The epic got its name from the word “reality” that is close in meaning. This means that the epic tells about what once actually happened, although not everything in the epic is true. Epics were written down from storytellers (often illiterate), who adopted them according to tradition from previous generations. The main number of plots was created within the Kievan state, that is, in those places that are depicted in them .. The source of each heroic song was some kind of historical fact. In the epic, as in the folk tale, there is a lot of fiction. Bogatyrs are people of extraordinary strength, they ride mighty horses through rivers and forests, lift weights on their shoulders that are beyond the power of any person.
The epic is an old song, and not everything in it is clear, it is told in a leisurely, solemn tone. Many Russian epics speak of the heroic deeds of folk heroes. For example, epics about Volga Buslaevich, the winner of Tsar Saltan Beketovich; about the hero Sukhman, who defeated the enemies - nomads; about Dobryn Nikitich. Russian heroes never lie. Ready to die, but not leave their native land, they consider serving the fatherland their first and holy duty, although they are often offended by princes who do not trust them. Epics told to children teach them to respect human labor and love their homeland. They united the genius of the people.
Epics of the Kyiv cycle, associated with Kiev, with the Dnieper Slavutich, with Prince Vladimir the Red Sun, heroes began to take shape at the turn of the 10th - 11th centuries. They expressed in their own way the social consciousness of an entire historical era, reflected the moral ideals of the people, preserved the features of ancient life, the events of everyday life. “The value of the heroic epic lies in the fact that, by its origin, it is inextricably linked with the people, with those smerd warriors who plowed the land and fought under the banners of Kiev with the Pechenegs and Polovtsy”
2. Historical songs
Historical songs are a separate genre of folklore. Their artistic originality remains insufficiently studied. In pre-revolutionary science, they were often recognized as a degradation of the heroic epic, a scrap from epics, and in this regard, motives, images and stylistic devices common with epics (as if residual phenomena) were considered their dignity. I beg to differ. “Song of the Prophetic Oleg”, “Songs of Stepan Razin” can be put today on a par with “the captain's daughter”, “Pugachev's story” and other historical works. They are also of great artistic value. This is an expression of the historical self-consciousness of the people. The Russian people in their historical songs realized their historical significance. It is also a work of art and history about the past. Its attitude to the past is active: it reflects the historical views of the people to an even greater extent than historical memory. The historical content in the songs is conveyed by the storytellers consciously. Preservation of the historically valuable in the epic (be it names, events, relationships) is the result of a conscious, historical attitude of the people to the content of the epic. The people in their work proceed from fairly clear historical ideas about time. The consciousness of the historical value of the transmitted and the peculiar ideas of the people, and not just mechanical memorization, determine the stability of the historical content of the songs.
3. Song lyrics.
Lyrical songs have retained their connection with some rituals (wedding, round dance) or originated from playing rituals. In the texts of such songs, the influence of the traditional model of the world with its set of main oppositions, as well as some mythological motifs, is still fully restored.
Consider a lyric song.
I'll go out the gate
I'll look far.
The mountains are high there
The lakes are deep.
In these lakes
Pike fish lives
White Beluga.
I'll throw a net -
I live to take out fish.
Where to sit
Live fish to clean?
I'll sit down
To the green garden;
I'll sit still
To the valley,
On the summer trail.
Wherever the darling goes
etc.................
In the XIX - early XX century. developed the basic methods of recording and studying folklore.
Method of "Included observation"(used in the stationary form of collecting work). When using this method, conditions for easy communication are created during the collection of material. Informants constitute the natural communicative environment of the collector. The specificity of the collection work is that the texts are recorded in the situation of a conversation, but not a specially organized interview, so in such an environment it is not always possible to use a voice recorder, some of the texts are recorded from memory. The advantages of the material collected in this way are that the texts are observed in a natural setting, the conversation with the informant is provoked only by the interest of the collector, and not by the questions of the questionnaire. At the same time, the context of the conversation, status, gender and age characteristics of the interlocutors are fixed. The disadvantages of collecting material by the method of "participant observation" include, firstly, a small number of texts, which is determined by the conscious inactive position of the collector, and secondly, the inaccuracy of fixing texts (both phonetic characteristics and designations of rhythmic periods of conversation, separate introductory words necessary for the analysis of illocutionary attitudes of the text.
Statistical method(was developed by B.K. Malinovsky) - is carried out on the basis of drawing up maps and tables.
System (complex) method involves a comprehensive study of folklore, in relation to certain everyday, ethnographic realities.
cartographic method aims to identify the geography of distribution of certain genres of folklore, the study of folklore phenomena "in space and time." This is a strategic method designed for long-term research. Mapping can be carried out according to ethnic, territorial, temporal principles and makes it possible to trace the prevalence and forms of existence of folklore genres among various peoples and ethnic groups in different periods of their history. The study of folklore by the method of mapping requires a lot of preparatory organizational and collecting work, and, as a rule, requires the unification and coordination of folklorists. Thus, a mapping program is preliminarily drawn up, work is carried out to identify and systematize the available materials, gaps are identified, special maps are compiled, and principles for applying materials to the map are developed.
In the XIX - early XX century. the main directions (schools) of researchers of folk art were formed.
founder mythological school became a folklorist f.I. Buslaev, who, following the brothers Grimm, established the connection between folklore, language, mythology, singled out the principle of the collective nature of the artistic creativity of the people.
School of Borrowing pointed out the amazing similarity of many folklore works among the peoples of the West and the East, raised the question of cultural and historical ties between the folk art of different peoples. The borrowing theory found many followers in Russia (G.N. Potanin, F.I. Buslaev).
The most influential in the XIX - early XX century. was historical school. Principles historical school finally took shape in the mid-1990s. HGH c. in the generalizing work of V. F. Miller “Essays on Russian Folk Literature”. So, the researcher of epics, for example, had to answer four basic questions: where, when, in connection with what historical events it was created and what poetic sources its creators relied on. They studied the monuments of folklore and ancient Russian literature, extracting numerous parallels from the annals with the real history of the people. So the prototypes of epic heroes, names, as well as real events that formed the basis of the epic plot situations were established.
Despite the harsh criticism of opponents who reproached scientists for the "theory of the aristocratic origin of epics", the traditions of the historical school in Russian folklore of the 20th century. developed.
So, B.A. Rybakov, answering his opponents, insisted on clarifying the deep connections of the epic with the specific history of Ancient Rus'. In his research, Rybakov made extensive use of chronicles, historical and archeological facts 14 .
Among the modern methods or approaches to the study of folklore, it is necessary to name typological, explaining not individual facts, but establishing patterns. Thus, typological similarity is manifested in the folklore of different peoples in a specific type of folk art (orality, collectivity, traditionalism, variability, etc.). Typologically similar forms and ways of being. Typology explains those striking facts of similarities and coincidences that cannot be explained either by borrowing or by the genetic relationship of peoples.
Thus, the variety of approaches in the study of folk art spoke of the attempts of folklore, which is undergoing its formation, to cover the entire subject as a complex system of many genres.
In the 20th century, for a number of folklorists, the methods of formal research became an alternative to the simplified sociological approach: structural-typological method analysis, involving the identification of invariant models of genres, plots, motives and historical-typological method, involving the study of folklore works in a historical and ethnographic context.
The processes of the history of folklore explores historical poetics, created as a special direction by A.N. Veselovsky. Within its framework, poetic genera, genres, stylistic systems are considered - both in general and in their specific manifestations. Historical poetics explores the connections of oral folk art with written literature, music, and visual arts.
IN Lately the trend of a comprehensive study of folklore, language, mythology, ethnography, folk art as components of a single culture of the people was clearly outlined.
Any method involves reliance on facts. New technologies have entered the life of folklorists that improve the accuracy and quality of records, simplify the mechanical operations of accounting and systematizing material, and finding the necessary information.
There are centers for philological, musicological, choreographic study of folk art, regional folklore centers and houses of folk art with their own archives, periodicals and scientific publications.
The study of folk choreography. A special problem is the study of Russian traditional dance. It should be noted that even today, in many respects, folklore dance remains poorly understood, and our ideas about it are more often based not on scientific facts, but on “myths”. The root cause of the current situation should be sought in the apparent insufficiency of expeditionary research practice. Comparing two closely related areas of ethnography: ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology, it is impossible not to notice a huge difference in their development. Over the past two centuries, thousands of folk songs have been recorded in Russia, hundreds of song collections have been published. During the Soviet period, a number of scientific centers with extensive audio funds that are systematically replenished and processed. Constant scientific research and discussions have allowed the formation of several schools of ethnomusicologists.
The situation with ethnochoreology was quite different. Recordings and publications of authentic dances were extremely rare. The descriptions of the dances were not given in exact accordance with the authentic originals, but in adaptations or in the author's interpretation and were often passed off as originals. There was practically no research on folk terminology. Specialists studying folk dance were not trained by any educational institution which did not contribute to the emergence of an extensive and fruitful scientific discussion.
In 1987, the International Folk Dance Forum was held in Novgorod under the auspices of UNESCO. Forum participants from different countries adopted recommendations for Russian choreographers, which included 18 points. Here are some of the recommendations: “raising the question of the need for serious training of choreographers in folk traditions”; “organization of creative workshops and scientific symposiums”; "creation of a working group to clarify the terms used in folk choreography and choreology"; "creation of national archives of folk dances...".
All these questions remain relevant and practically unresolved today. To increase the level of knowledge folk dance the basis of future research should be the regional nature of traditional dance. In the all-Russian choreographic tradition, several
Rybakov B.A. Ancient Rus'. Legends. Epics. Chronicles. - M., 1963.
Original regional performing styles that differ in dance vocabulary, performance style and genre and repertoire composition. It is this originality of different regions that makes up the richness of Russian traditional dance.
However, recently there has been a positive trend in addressing the origins of Russian folk choreography, work has begun on finding and fixing authentic originals of folk choreography, which in the last five years has become the subject of expeditionary practice by many folklore and research teams. New repertory collections have appeared, scientific research in the field traditional choreography, a more active appeal of choreographers to folk themes give hope for the further development of research on folk choreography in Russia, including in the study of the entire spectrum of Russian regional dance styles.
Methods of studying folk art (arts and crafts and folk arts and crafts). The study of folk art is one of the youngest branches of the humanities. This branch of science takes shape in the second half of the 19th century. During this period, the foundations of folklore were laid, in parallel with the study of folklore, the collection of objects of Russian antiquity began. The first archaeological excavations and archival research. The concept of national heritage is expanding, the first publications appear. Of great importance are the works of the outstanding philologist, a brilliant connoisseur of Russian literature F. I. Buslaev, who turned to the most important problems of the origin, evolution, and also the nationality of Russian art. Buslaev raised the question of the close connection and interaction of folk poetry with folk art, publishing a number of interesting, previously unknown monuments.
I. E. Zabelin, who was among the scientists who first turned to the study of the history of the culture of our country, considered Russian art as a deeply original phenomenon. He owns the idea of a national, original system of artistic thinking, inherent in Russian traditional art.
The founder of the science of Russian arts and crafts was V. V. Stasov, he first revealed the artistic value of contemporary peasant art, seeing in it deep ties with ancient culture, and sought to contrast the original beginning of ancient Russian art with Byzantine influence. For us, the significance of his works, in essence the first serious analytical work in the field of folk art, is extremely great. Stasov's innovation was also reflected in the fact that he considered works of folk art not only as objects for collecting: he suggested that contemporary artists use folk art in their practice as a genuine art with deep national traditions. However, defending the originality of Russian culture, Stasov attached too much importance to the influence of the cultures of the Middle and Near East on it.
At the end of the XIX century. interest in folk life and creativity is expanding more and more. There are various publications not only of ancient monuments, but also of works of contemporary folk art.
At the end of XIX - beginning of XX century. the press reflects the attempts of a number of zemstvo figures, including artists who worked directly with handicraftsmen, to support the declining crafts, to preserve the treasures of folk art. So, S. A. Davydova left a number of works on women's folk crafts, in particular on Russian lace, the history of this traditional craft, production techniques, and individual lace-making centers. In the collection "Handicraft Industry of Russia" interesting information was published on such women's crafts as embroidery, gold embroidery, weaving.
During this period, zemstvo organizations played a very significant role in the fate of folk crafts. Surveys of handicraft industries undertaken by them, with the aim of providing them with real assistance, are recorded in reports, articles, reference books. Information on statistics, economics of crafts and production techniques, carefully collected by zemstvo figures, is the most valuable factual material for scientific research. Zemstvo organizations published multi-volume illustrated collections of handicrafts throughout Russia and individual regions, descriptions of folk art exhibitions, and proceedings of congresses of handicraft industry workers.
At the beginning of the XX century. there are studies on certain types folk art production, which is revealed as a great national art.
So, during the years 1910-1912. 12 releases of the album by A. A. Bobrinsky were published, united by a common name. It was a great contribution of the author to the culture of Russia. Albums
introduced readers to the treasures of Russian art, and also served as material for the work of researchers and artists. Bobrinsky's work is the richest source of extensive material not only conscientiously collected, but also systematized by the author. Here, for the first time, an attempt was made to accurately indicate the places of existence of most of the products.
Along with such works generalizing a wide range of material as Bobrinsky's albums, publications appear devoted to individual folk crafts, with a description of the history of their occurrence and production techniques.
A prominent role in the study of folk art was played by N. D. Bartram, an artist by profession, the organizer of the Toy Museum, unique in its collection. In the past, a member of the Zemstvo, who worked with handicraftsmen, he paid great attention to the study of the economy of crafts. Among the artists - members of the "World of Art" association, who defended aesthetic views, an environment that seemed to be far from the problems of the development of folk art, there is the greatest interest in it. A. Benois, speaking about the originality of folk art, ardently protests against the forcible introduction of alien influences into the crafts, leading to the decline - artistic culture. The same thoughts are heard in the articles by I. Bilibin and I. Grabar, who speak of the need to save folk art at all costs from the death that threatens it.
At the end of the XIX century - the beginning of the XX century. museums are active. The Stroganov School, the Moscow Historical Museum and others systematically collect materials on national art, organize expeditions to different regions of Russia. Among private collections, the unique collection of Russian costumes from different provinces and various items of folk arts and crafts by N. Shabelskaya are especially valuable. The publication of outstanding examples of folk art belonging to Shabelskaya was devoted to a special issue of the magazine "Studio". Thus, in the second half of the nineteenth century at the beginning of the twentieth century. valuable material was collected, comprehended and partially published.
A new stage in the study of folk art begins after the revolution. In the context of the development of Soviet culture, a new attitude to folk art is emerging, which contributed to the emergence of a branch of art criticism devoted to the problems of the art of folk crafts and the study of their origins. Domestic science of the Soviet period sought to actively intervene in the fate of crafts, its main goal was to promote the development of folk art. Many works of the 1920s and 1930s are a sharp controversy on the issue of restoring the foundations of folk art. Therefore, the issues of studying the best traditions of Russian art and their creative processing become especially relevant. Among the achievements of Soviet science is the organization of exhibitions in the State Historical Museum in 1922-1923, which for the first time widely familiarized the public with peasant creativity. These were the first scientifically built expositions, where extensive material was systematized. Strictly scientific selection of material allowed scientists to identify certain patterns in the development of folk art, to make a number of theoretical generalizations.
The work “Peasant Art” by V. S. Voronov, one of the leaders of expeditions and organizers of exhibitions in the Historical Museum, is of particular importance for domestic art history. In it, issues of local originality were scientifically developed. V. S. Voronov develops a convincing method for describing and analyzing monuments of folk art, which makes it possible to reveal its specificity. In the works of Voronov, devoted to carving and painting on wood, the provisions are further developed, only outlined in their time in the writings of Bobrinsky; Voronov gives a classification of folk ornament and establishes the existence of schools artistic painting: Severodvinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Gorodets. This classification has been preserved in art history to the present day.
In the 1920s and 1930s, issues of folk art were of interest to a wide range of researchers. The works of archaeologists and ethnographers make a great contribution to the comprehensive study of folk art. Among the historical and archaeological works, an article by V. A. Gorodtsov is significant, devoted to the question of the origin of a number of ancient motifs preserved in folk art. His work contains detailed iconography of ancient images that have become traditional in folk art.
The works of ethnographers based on the field collection of material containing detailed descriptions of objects are extremely valuable. folk life, techniques of their production, ornamental decorations. The most interesting and full coverage of issues related to folk clothing, in the works of N. P. Grinkova, M. E. Sheremetyeva, N. I. Lebedeva, E. N. Kletnova.
In the 1930s, along with extensive collecting and scientific activity, a great deal of practical work began directly with the existing folk crafts. During these years, the Handicraft Museum (now the Museum of Folk Art) launched an active activity, on the basis of which the Scientific Research Institute of the Art Industry (NIIKhP) was created in 1931, which carried out the artistic management of crafts. Such prominent scientists as V. S. Voronov, A. V. Bakushinsky, and later V. M. Vasilenko became the heads of the institute. The collection of material in museums and crafts was carried out by L. I. Sviontkovskaya-Voronova, the author of a serious work on carved bone, V. Ya. Yakovleva, Z. D. Kashkarova, and E. G. Telyakovsky.
This period was most vividly reflected in the works of the prominent scientist A. V. Bakushinsky, who combined scientific, literary work with practice. He found new methodology research and analysis of works of folk art.
Research methods and views of A. V. Bakushinsky are further developed in the works of V. M. Vasilenko, created on the basis of the extensive material he collected. M. Vasilenko in his works of the 30s, devoted to certain types of crafts, gives a vivid description of folk art, focusing on the art of the pre-Soviet period. His monograph "The Northern Carved Bone" is dedicated to the Kholmogory carvers.
As a result of the activities of the 1930s in the field of science and practical work with crafts, the Institute of Art Industry prepared a collection "Folk Art of the USSR in Artistic Crafts". A. V. Bakushinsky, V. M. Vasilenko, V. S. Voronov, G. V. Zhidkov, E. M. Schilling and others took part in writing the articles. The form told about the creative achievements of the masters of folk art over the two decades of Soviet power.
A new stage in the development of art history is associated with the works of Russian scientists in the post-war period, which is characterized by an appeal to a much wider range of materials that were previously unknown.
A significant event in historical science was the publication of the work of B.A. Rybakov "The Craft of Ancient Rus'", summing up the long-term research work author in the field of archeology. Rybakov's extensive work introduced scientists to a whole group of previously unknown wonderful decorative items made by masters of the distant past. New archeological data made it possible to speak more confidently about the degree of development of folk crafts in ancient times, their prevalence and diversity.
The study of the origins of folk art made it possible to raise the question of its origin, development and specifics more broadly. Deepening the research of V. A. Gorodtsov, Rybakov pays great attention to the origin of folk ornament motifs, emphasizing their artistic significance and trying to find a link between the compositions that exist in modern embroidery and their ancient prototypes.
L. A. Dintses worked in the field of studying the roots of Russian folk ornament; his works “Ancient Features in Russian Folk Art”, “Russian Clay Toy” are devoted to this topic. Among ethnographers, E. E. Blomqvist, N. I. Lebedeva, G. S. Maslova dealt with issues related to folk art. The extensive material collected by them contains valuable and detailed information about public dwelling, clothing, patterned weaving.
Thus, the fundamental works of historians and ethnographers, articles and publications in the journals "Soviet Ethnography" and "Soviet Archaeology" contained a lot of new data on the development of Russian culture.
In the 40-50s, the leading works in Soviet art criticism were the works of A. B. Saltykov. Working mainly in the field of ceramics, in his writings he touched upon a number of general problems in the development of folk art, continuing what Stasov, Voronov, Bakushinsky started. He was the first to pose many questions about the specifics of decorative art. A. B. Saltykov focused on issues of tradition and innovation, wrote about the peculiarities of solving an artistic image in the work of folk masters, touched on the problem of synthesis as a characteristic feature of decorative art.
A. B. Saltykov's method consisted in a creative approach to traditional art: he was looking for ways to use the traditions of the past in modern art, in relation to modern life.
For the Research Institute of Art Industry post-war years was a period of intensive activity for the further collection and publication of materials on
folk art and practical work with crafts. Begins teamwork on the creation of a series of books "Artistic crafts of the RSFSR". Thus, all modern Russian crafts were represented, many of which had not previously been covered in the literature. Processing expeditionary materials, comparing them with things from museum collections lead to new discoveries, make it possible to clarify the centers of crafts, to localize art schools. Particularly interesting results are obtained by complex expeditions of employees of institutes and museums: historians, architects, and art historians. I. E. Grabar played a leading role in organizing this work.
The State Russian Museum in Leningrad published a number of works dedicated to folk wooden sculpture, embroidery and lace.
It is necessary to mention the contribution to the science of folk art made by local collectors M. Rekhachev, D. V. Prokopiev, M. P. Zvantsev, I. N. Shatrov, who published a number of monographic studies on individual folk crafts in the prewar years and after the war.
Among scientific publications, the works of V. M. Vasilenko are significant. His monograph "The Art of Khokhloma" is devoted to the question of the stylistic artistic features of Khokhloma painting. A big event was the organization in 1957 of the publication of the journal "Decorative Art of the USSR", on the pages of which articles are published on various issues folk art. The first issue of the magazine was entirely devoted to folk art.
A major role in the popularization of Russian folk art was played by the work of M. A. Ilyin “Russian Decorative Art” (Moscow, 1959), translated into several foreign languages.
In 1960, the work of S. M. Temerin “Russian Applied Art” was published, highlighting the work of both craftsmen and industrial artists. The author paid great attention to the Soviet applied art of the 30s, which is very little touched upon in the literature, and characterized it from the standpoint of contemporary aesthetic views.
On present stage there are certain difficulties in the analysis of sources, since the newly published works are mainly of a highly specialized art history character.
By studying the works of folk art created in different periods, one can identify in the techniques of craftsmanship, in plots and ornaments, a living connection with the centuries-old national culture. In the conditions of handicraft production, there was also an active assimilation of the achievements of simultaneously working masters. Technical improvements, inventions and new motifs, plots and compositions quickly became common property.
Common were not only the skills of work in the field of embroidery, weaving, painting and woodcarving, but also the range of things created, their shape and character. decorative design. As a result, the traditional circle of images and techniques of folk decorative art was continuously enriched with new themes, motifs and plots.
It can be assumed that at present art crafts are both an industry and an area of folk art.
The combination of tradition and innovation, style features and creative improvisation, collective started and the views of an individual, man-made ™ products and high professionalism are characteristic features of the creative work of craftsmen and crafts artists.
In the age of technological progress, machines and automation, standard and unification, handicrafts, made mainly by hand, mostly from natural materials, have acquired special significance.
Thus, to date, the following issues of research into folk art have emerged:
1. Ethnological research, revealing the relationship of the traditional way of life, national character and the originality of the artistic creativity of a particular people.
2. Folklore studies, fixing samples of folk art and studying the history of Russian folklore.
3. Art studies aimed at analyzing the artistic and aesthetic features of amateur art (self-taught artists, amateur authors).
4. Sociological research that reveals the role and place of the NHC in the life of an ethnic group, trends and social factors development.
5. Pedagogical research of the NHC, helping to determine the spiritual and moral values and creative abilities of the individual in the process of non-professional artistic activity.
Modern Russian scientists use a variety of scientific research methods:
empirical methods; questioning; observation; testing, conversations, sociometry; analysis
and content analysis; system analysis; pedagogical modeling; pedagogical
experiment, which allows them to carry out theoretical studies of NHC (revealing the essence, principles, functions, patterns of development of NHT) and applied research (study of specific processes and phenomena in the development of NHT).
Questions and tasks for self-examination:
1. Expand the essence of the concept of "folklore"
2. Tell us about the main stages in the development of Russian folklore.
3. Describe the research methods of folk art (arts and crafts).
4. List the main methods of collecting and studying folk art.
5. Prepare a report on the topic “Formation and development of Russian folklore”, “The first collections of folklore works in Russia”, “Creativity of outstanding collectors and researchers of folklore (Kireevsky, V.I. Dal, A.N. Afanasyev, G.S. Vinogradov , E. A. Pokrovsky, V. Y. Propp, B. N. Putilov and others, to choose from)”.
Bibliography
1. Azadovsky M.K. History of Russian folklore. - M.: Uchpedgiz, 1958. T. 1. - 479 s; 1963. V.2. -363 p.
2. Asafiev B.V. About folk music / Comp. I.I. Zemtsovsky, A.B. Kunanbaeva. - L .: Music, 1987. -247 p: notes.
3. Banin A.A. Russian instrumental music of the folklore tradition. - M .: Publishing house of the state. rep. center of Russian folklore, 1997. - 247 p.: notes.
4. Bogatyrev Ts.G. Questions of the theory of folk art. - M.: Art, 1971. - 544 p.
5. Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics / Ed., entry. Art. and note. V.M. Zhirmunsky. - L.: Goslitizdat, 1940. - 364 p.
6. East Slavic folklore: Dictionary of scientific and folk terminology / Ed. V.E. Guseva, V.M. Gatsak; Rep. ed. K.P. Kabashnikov. - Minsk: Navuka i tekhshka, 1993. - 478 p.
7. Gippius E.V. Review of the most important collections of musical recordings of Russian folk songs from the 60s of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century // Materials and articles for the 100th anniversary of the birth of E.V. Gippius / Ed.-ed.: E.A. Dorohova, O.A. Flank. M.: Composer, 2003. S. 59-111.
8. Gusev V.E. Russian folk art culture (theoretical essays) / St. Petersburg, Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography. - St. Petersburg, 1993. - 110 p.
9. Eremina V.I. ritual and folklore. - L.: Nauka, 1991. - 207 p.
10. Ivanova T.G. Russian folklore at the beginning of the 20th century biographical sketches. - St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 1993.-203 p.
11. Mints SI., Pomerantseva E.V. Russian folklore: Reader. 2nd ed. - M.: Higher. school, 1971. -416s.
12. Putilov B.N. Folklore and folk culture. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1994. - 240 p.
13. Rudneva A.V. Russian Folk Musical Art: Essays on the Theory of Folklore. - M.: Composer, 1994. - 222 p.: notes.
14. Russian thought about musical folklore. Materials and documents / Comp. P.A. Wolfius. - M.: Music, 1979. - 367 p.: notes.
15. Russian folk poetry: Reader on folklore / Comp. SOUTH. Round. -M.: Higher. school, 1986. - 535 p.
16. Slavic Antiquities: Ethnolinguistic Dictionary: In 5 volumes / Ed. N.I. Tolstoy. - M.: International relations, 1995. T. 1: (A-G). - 584 s; 1999. Vol. 2: (D-K). - 704 s; 2004. V. 3: (K-P). -704 p.
17. Bibliographic series "Russian Folklore", founded by M.Ya. Meltz: Russian Folklore: Bibliographic index. 1945-1959 / Comp. M.Ya. Meltz. - L .: Publishing House of the Library of the Academy of Sciences, 1961. - 402 s; Same. 1917-1944. L., 1966. - 683 s; Same. 1960-1965. L., 1967. - 539 p.; Same. 1901-1916. L., 1981. - 477 p.; Same. 1966-1975. L., 1984. Part 1. - 420 s; 1985. Part 2. - 385 s; Same. 1976-1980 / Comp. T.G. Ivanova. L., 1987. - 399 s; Same. 1881-1900. L, 1990. - 500 s; Same. 1981-1985. SPb., 1993. -
543 s; Same. 1800-1855. St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 1996. - 262 p.; Same. 1991-1995. SPb., 2001. -642 p.
18. From the history of Russian Soviet folklore. - L.: Nauka, 1981. - 277 p.
19. From the history of Russian folklore. - L .: Nauka, 1990. Issue. 3. - 278 s; Same. - St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 1998. Issue. 4-5. - 598 p.
20. Mapping and areal research in folklore: Sat. Art. / Comp. O.A. Flank. - M., 1999. - 220 p. (Proceedings of the State Russian Academy of Sciences named after the Gnessins; Issue 154).
21. Methods of studying folklore: Sat. scientific tr. / Rev. Ed.: V.E. Gusev. - L.: Lenizdat, 1983. - 154 p. (Folklore and folkloristics; Issue 7).
Records of folklore in the period ancient Russian literature(XI-- 391 XVII centuries). As mentioned in the previous chapter, Russian literature makes extensive use of folklore already at the earliest stages of its formation and development. Various genres of folklore (traditions, legends, songs, fairy tales, proverbs and sayings) are included in the chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years" (beginning of the 12th century), in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" ( end XII century), "Zadonshchina" (end of the XIV century), "The Tale of Peter and Fevronia" (XV century), "The Tale of Woe-Misfortune" (XVII century) and other monuments of ancient Russian literature.
It is possible that individual folklore works, before getting into the literature, were first recorded. So, for example, scientists believe that "Zadonshchina" and "The Tale of Peter and Fevronia" were created on the basis of recorded folklore legends and stories. Manuscripts of the 16th century scientists have discovered records of fairy tales. From the 17th century the names of collectors of Russian folklore have come down to us. So, for example, it is known that for the English traveler Richard James in 1619-1620. in the Arkhangelsk Territory, historical songs about the events of the era of "troubles" were recorded. Another English traveler, Collins, recorded two tales about Ivan the Terrible between 1660 and 1669. In 1681 P. A. Kvashnin-Samarin recorded folk lyrical songs.
In the 17th century works of almost all genres of Russian folklore were recorded. For example, the tales “About Ivan Ponomarevich”, “About the Princess and Ivashka the White Shirt”, etc., epics about Ilya Muromets, Mikhail Potyk and Stavr Godinovich, many legends, songs, proverbs and sayings.
By the 17th century the tradition of compiling handwritten folklore collections dates back. At that time, there were many handwritten songbooks among the people, which, in addition to literary poems of spiritual content, also included folk songs. From the 17th century the handwritten collection "Tales or popular proverbs in alphabetical order" has come down to us. The collection included about 2800 proverbs.
Collection, study and publication of folklore in the XVIII century. The tradition of compiling handwritten folklore collections continued into the 18th century. There are especially many handwritten songbooks containing literary and folk songs. The XVIII century is the beginning of the development of folklore thought in Russia. Scientific interest in folklore in the first half of the 18th century. associated with the names of V. N. Tatishchev, V. K. Trediakovsky and M. V. Lomonosov.
VN Tatishchev (1686-1750) turned to the study of folklore while working on the "History of Russia ...". He draws on folklore as a historical source. Tatishchev studies folklore from chronicles and in real life. Describing ancient Russian history, Tatishchev refers to epics about Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich, Nightingale the Robber and Duke Stepanovich. He was also interested in other genres of folklore. Tatishchev, for example, compiled a small collection of proverbs.
Unlike the historian V. N. Tatishchev, the poet V. K. Trediakovsky (1703-1768) had an interest in folklore not historical, but philological. Trediakovsky studies folklore as a source of poetic phraseology and the national metric system. In the practice of Russian literature before Trediakovsky's reform, syllabic versification was used. Having studied the features of Russian folk versification, Trediakovsky, in his treatise A New and Brief Method for Composing Russian Poetry (1735), proposed a system of syllabo-tonic versification, which was later used by all Russian literary poetry. Some of Trediakovsky's remarks on the peculiarities of the language of Russian folk poetry are interesting. In particular, he notes the constant folklore epithets “tight bow”, “white tent”, etc.
Even more important in the study of Russian folk poetry are the works and individual statements of M.V. Lomonosov (1711-1765). Growing up in the North, Lomonosov was well acquainted with all genres of Russian folklore (fairy tales, epics, songs, proverbs and sayings). He also studies folklore from chronicles and handwritten collections. In his works, Lomonosov speaks of folklore as a valuable source of information in pagan rites, talks about holding calendar holidays. Following Trediakovsky, Lomonosov studied folk versification and, in his work A Letter on the Rules of Russian Poetry (1739), further developed the theory of syllabo-tonic versification. Lomonosov studies the language of folk poetry to comprehend the national characteristics of the Russian language. Folk proverbs and sayings he uses in his works "Rhetoric" (1748) and "Russian Grammar" (1757). In his works on the history of Russia, Lomonosov draws on folklore as a historical source.
IN mid-eighteenth V. Collecting folklore for historical and ethnographic purposes is being done by S. P. Krasheninnikov. In 1756, the first volume of his work “Description of the Land of Kamchatka” was published, which refers to the rituals of the Kamchadals, a number of folk songs are given. A.P. Sumarokov responded to S. P. Krasheninnikov’s book “Description of the Land of Kamchatka” with a review in which his views on folk poetry are expressed. Sumarokov evaluates the folklore of Kamchadals mainly from an aesthetic point of view. The pathos of Sumarokov's review is the struggle for simplicity and naturalness in poetry.
The work of collecting Russian folklore intensified in the last third of the 18th century. If earlier folklore records were concentrated in handwritten collections, now they, like literary works are published. For the first time samples of Russian folklore were published in N.G. Kurganov's "Pismovnik" (1796). More than 900 proverbs, about 20 songs, several fairy tales and anecdotes were published in the appendices to the "Pismovnik".
In the future, separate collections are dedicated to various genres of Russian folklore. So, M.D. Chulkov from 1770 to 1774 publishes "Collection of different songs" in four parts, N.I. Novikov in 1780-1781. publishes in six parts "New and complete collection Russian songs”, V. F. Trutovsky for the period from 1776 to 1795 publishes “Collection of Russian simple songs with notes” in four parts. At the end of the XVIII century. There are also less significant songbooks:
"New Russian Songbook" (parts 1--3,
1790--1791), "Selected Songbook" (1792),
"Russian Erata" by M. Popov (1792), "Pocket Songbook" by I. I. Dmitriev (1796), etc.
The greatest value for us is the collection of N. Lvova --I. Prach "Collection of Russian folk songs with their voices ..." (1790). This is the only collection of the 18th century in which folk songs are published in their original form, without any editorial changes. In the period from 1780 to 1783, V. A. Levshin’s collection “Russian Tales” was published in 10 parts. Here, literary and folk works are given in processing. In the collection, in addition to fairy tales of a magical heroic nature, everyday fairy tales are also published, in which satirical elements predominate. Folk tales in processed form are also published in the collections 394 "The Cure for Thought" (1786), "Russian Tales Collected by Pyotr Timofeev" (1787), " Peasant Tales"(1793), in the collection of V. Berezaisky" Anecdotes of the ancient Poshekhonians "(1798), etc.
Collections of proverbs appear. So, A. A. Barsov in 1770 published "Collection of 4291 ancient proverbs." N.I. Novikov in 1787 republished this collection. Two years earlier, the poet I. F. Bogdanovich published the collection "Russian Proverbs", in which the folklore material was selected biased and subjected to considerable literary processing.
The merit of Russian enlighteners of the second half of the XVIII century. (N.G. Kurganova, M.D. Chulkova, V.A. Levshina, N.I. Novikova and others) that they were able to correctly assess the importance of Russian folklore in the development national literature, did a great job of publishing (albeit in an edited form) folk songs, fairy tales, proverbs and sayings. In their literary work, they used folklore to depict folk customs and mores.
In the person of A. N. Radishchev (1749--1802), Russian educational thought of the 18th century. receives its highest development, rises to a truly democratic, revolutionary consciousness.
The revolutionary convictions of Radishchev determined the special nature of his use of folklore, a fundamentally new understanding of folk art. Radishchev for the first time speaks about folklore as an exponent of the people's worldview. IN folk songs Radishchev saw "the formation of the soul of our people." According to Radishchev, they reflected not only the domestic side of life, but also social ideals people. They serve to comprehend the Russian national character. In "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" (1790), Radishchev draws on folk art as a material that reveals the true soul of the oppressed people, their painful position under serfdom. It is for these purposes that in the chapter "Gorodnya" he cites lamentations for the recruitment of the mother and bride. Note that this is the first publication of (albeit literary processed) folk lamentations.
A.N. Radishchev uses folklore as a means of achieving not only nationality, but also genuine realism, deep psychologism. So, in the chapter “Copper”, against the background of a cheerful round dance “A birch tree stood in a field”, Radishchev, in contrast, deeply truthfully, with great force of psychologism, depicts a picture of the sale of serfs. Of no small importance for both literature and folklore is the problem of the folk singer, first put forward by Radishchev. The image of a folk singer is drawn by Radishchev in the chapter "Wedge" "Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow." The singing of the old blind singer in the image of Radishchev is a true art, "penetrating into the hearts of the listeners." Then to the topic folk singers Radishchev again addressed in his poem "Songs sung at competitions in honor of the ancient Slavic deities" (1800-1802). Here, folk singers-poets act as spiritual leaders of the people. It is curious that Radishchev's "Songs ..." in their poetic imagery and style have some signs of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", which Radishchev, like many of his contemporaries, considered not a literary, but a folklore monument.
From what has been said, it is obvious that the 18th century represents an important stage in the prehistory of Russian folklore as a science. At this time, significant folklore material was collected and published, its significance as a phenomenon was correctly assessed. national culture. Radishchev expresses the most valuable idea about the folk song as an expression of the soul of the people.
However, it should be noted that in the XVIII century. Russian folklore has not yet formed as a science. Folklore has not yet been recognized as an independent object of study; it is not yet distinctly separated from literature. In most collections, folklore works are placed together with literary works. Folk works are printed in literary processing. At that time, specific folkloristic methods and methods of research had not yet been developed.
At present, it is hardly necessary to prove that any art, including folklore, goes back to historical reality and reflects it, and that one of the tasks of researchers is to show this on the material that they study. Difficulties begin with how one should understand the process of history and where and in what one should look for its reflection. In this regard, two currents are clearly outlined in modern folklore. One continues the understanding of history and historical reflections that was developed in pre-Soviet science. History is understood as a chain of events of an external and internal political order; I would like to emphasize this attitude towards events. Events can always be accurately dated. They are caused by actions^ mi, deeds of people. These are historical figures, specific people with specific names. Accordingly, the historical basis of folklore is understood in the sense that historical events and historical figures are depicted in folklore. The task of the researcher is to show what events and what historical figures are reflected in individual monuments of folklore, and to date them accordingly.
Another direction comes from a broader understanding of history. This direction, firstly, strictly differentiates genres. The historical basis of the genres is different. There are genres for which the interpretation of folklore as images of events and persons is quite possible. For others, such a narrow understanding of history is not enough. The driving force of history is the people themselves; faces are a derivative of history, and not the driving beginning of it. From this point of view, everything that happens to a people in all epochs of its life belongs in one way or another to the realm of history. In the study of folklore, the main attention should be paid to what we call the basis;
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first of all, these are forms of labor, for the folklore of the feudal era - especially forms of peasant labor. The development of forms of labor ultimately explains the development of forms and types of thinking and forms of artistic creativity. The field of history covers the history of social forms and social relations up to the smallest details everyday order in relations between the boyar and the smerds, the landowner and the serf, the priest and the farm laborer. There are no names, no events, but there is a story. The history of marriage forms and family relations, which determine wedding poetry and a significant part of the lyrics, belongs to the field of history. In short, with a broad understanding of history, the historical basis means the totality of the real life of the people in the process of its development in all epochs of its existence.<...>
For a correct understanding of the historical foundations of folklore, it must be borne in mind that there is, in fact, no single folklore as such, that folklore is divided into genres. Pre-revolutionary folklore did not even use this word, while in Soviet folklore the study of genres is gradually becoming the center of attention. Genre is the primary unit from which the study must proceed.<...>One of the main features of the genre is in the unity of poetics or the poetic system of works. There are other signs of the genre, but this one is the most important. Each genre has specific features. Difference in poetic devices has more than just a formal meaning. It reflects a different attitude to reality and defines different ways of depicting it. Each genre has naturally conditioned and determined boundaries, beyond which it never goes and cannot go, or one genre develops into another, which also takes place in folklore. Bylina, for example, can be reborn into a fairy tale. Until the features of the genre are studied or at least outlined, the individual monuments that make up the genre cannot be studied.
Each genre is characterized special treatment to reality and the way it is depicted in art. Different genres are composed in different eras, have different historical fate, pursue different goals and reflect different aspects of the political, social and everyday history of the people. So, for example, it is quite obvious that a fairy tale reflects reality differently than a funeral lament, and a soldier's song differently than an epic. The question of genres has not yet been sufficiently developed in our country, but we can no longer do without the concept of a genre and without attention to its features:
118 On the historicism of folklore and the methods of its study
Can. Therefore, speaking about the historical basis of folklore and about the methods of its study, it is necessary to talk about each genre separately, and only after that it will be possible to draw conclusions about folklore as a whole.
It is quite obvious that from the point of view of a broad understanding of history, absolutely all genres of Russian folklore can be studied. In each of them, in one way or another, the reality of various eras is refracted - from very ancient times to the present.<...>Historical study must be preceded by formal study. The study of the morphology of a fairy tale is the first step, the prerequisite for its historical study. The typology of incantations, the poetics of riddles, the structure of ritual songs, the forms of lyrical songs - all this is necessary to reveal the most ancient stages of their formation and development. In the future, the whole Russian peasant life of the XIX century. can be subtracted from fairy tales, songs, lamentations, proverbs, dramas and comedies. There are no historical events or names here, but their historical study is possible, although not all epochs and not all centuries will be covered equally. This is, as it were, one type of genre, the study of which can be carried out from the point of view of that broad understanding of history, which was mentioned above.
But there are other genres in which the depiction of historical reality is the main goal of the work. They can be studied from the point of view of a narrower understanding of history and historicism. I would like to dwell on these genres in more detail. Here, first of all, it is necessary to name the genre of legends. Traditions in Russian folklore have been studied very little. Collectors were almost not interested in them, the number of records is very small. In contrast, in Western Europe, Sage is in the spotlight, with international congresses gathering to explore the genre. By their nature, Sage are very diverse and fall mainly into legends or legends of mythological and historical. A few words about historical legends.
Apparently, this genre is very ancient. Naturally, we have no records of the period of pre-Kievan Rus and the Russian Middle Ages. In such cases, one can judge by analogy with other peoples. In 1960, a magnificent publication prepared by G. U. Ergis, “Historical Traditions and Stories of the Yakuts,” was published. G. U. Ergis characterizes them as follows: “Traditions and historical stories contain narratives about real events related to the activities specific persons, reflect economic and cultural
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Tourist achievements of the people» >. The presence of such a genre among the Yakuts is especially interesting for us because the Yakuts have a magnificent, highly developed and very artistic epic. But the genre of the heroic epic and the genre of legends are never mixed by the people. The researchers do not mix them either. Ergis writes: “Historical traditions, stories and legends, in contrast to the actual artistic genres oral and poetic creativity, can be called the historical folklore of the Yakuts, based on real events and phenomena of the past” 2 . The main thematic cycles of these legends are the resettlement of the Yakuts from the south to the Lena River, clashes with hostile tribes and peoples, the settlement of Vilyui and Kobyai by the Yakuts, the entry of Yakutia into the Russian state. There are special traditions about childbirth, on the basis of which branched genealogical tables can be compiled. This is somewhat reminiscent of the Icelandic tribal sagas.
Did the Eastern Slavs have historical traditions? We can assume that they were. Fragments of them are preserved in chronicles and other sources. Such legends preserved by the annals are considered in the book by B. A. Rybakov 3 . The folklorist is accustomed to dealing with records from the lips of the people. There are records of legends about Razin, Peter I, Pugachev, the Decembrists, some tsars and others, which are still little studied.
V. I. Chicherov in a deep and interesting article “On the problem of historical and genre specifics of Russian epics and historical songs” indicates: “In historical traditions and legends, the narrative is about events and people as about what happened in reality” 4; “As for the historical tradition, it, preserving the memory of the past event and speaking of the heroic behavior of some figure, lives in the memory of the people as an oral, unwritten history” 5. I think that these observations are correct, despite the fact that many legends are of a fantastic character. It should also be added that from the artistic point of view, these legends are usually weak, little skillful. This genre is not aesthetic, as Ergis says about it. Neither consciously nor unconsciously the narrator does not seek to verbally blossom.
1 G. U. Erg and s, Historical Traditions and Stories of the Yakuts, Part I, M.-L.,. 1960, page 13.
2 Ibid., p. 15.
3 B. A. Rybakov, Ancient Rus'. Tales, epics, chronicles, M., 1963, pp. 22-39.
4 V. I. Chicherov, Questions of the theory and history of folk art. M., 1959, p. 263.
5 There same, p. 264.
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embellish the story. He only wants to convey what he considers to be reality.
In this respect, legends differ sharply from historical songs. We have an enormous literature on the question of historical songs. Historical songs were the subject of particularly close study in the Soviet era. The essence and genre nature of these songs have been and are being debated. But the following signs of historical songs seem indisputable: the characters are not fictional characters, but real historical figures, moreover, usually on a large scale.<...>The plot is usually based on some real event.<...>True, both the characters themselves and the actions do not always fully correspond to the actual story. The people here give free rein to their historical fantasy, artistic fiction. But these cases do not contradict the nature of historical songs. The historicism of these songs does not consist in the fact that they correctly depict historical figures and tell historical events or those that the people consider to be real. Their historicism lies in the fact that in these songs the people express their attitude to historical events, persons and circumstances, express their historical self-consciousness. Historicism is a phenomenon of an ideological order.<...>
A historical song is created by direct participants in the events or their witnesses.<^...>
The time of the appearance of historical songs is usually dated without any difficulty. More complicated is the question of when the genre itself appeared. On this question, Soviet scientists do not yet have a complete unanimity of opinion. What is certain is that the flourishing of historical song began in the 16th century, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible.<...>For the sudden flourishing of this genre, it was in the 16th century. there are reasons. The main historical desire of the people, expressed in the epic - the creation of a monolithic centralized state and complete liberation from the Tatar-Mongol yoke - was realized. It was also time for a cultural break. The whole nature of warfare is changing radically. The invention of firearms and the rapid development of Russian artillery overshadow the epic heroes with their swords, spears and clubs, heroes who win an easy victory, brandishing a wiry Tatar and laying streets and alleys in the enemy army. Now, instead of lone warriors, an army appears, led by the command, and instead of easy victories - heavy, bloody battles, so that "the earth is filled with willows -
On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study 121
on blood." Such is the general historical background for the appearance of the historical song genre. The monumentalism of the epics is being replaced by the realism of the historical song.
I will confine myself to these remarks. Their purpose is to show the applicability to historical songs and the legitimacy of the methods of the old historical school, which seeks, first of all, images in folklore. historical events and personalities. This does not exclude the study of them from a broader historical point of view. Most historical songs are military songs. They widely reflect the life of a soldier, sometimes down to the smallest detail in the description of clothing, food, etc.
The same can be said about the poetry of the workers. The working song, in some respects, is, as it were, the successor to the historical song. In the songs of the workers, everyday reality, the conditions in which the Russian proletarian lived and worked, are depicted with even greater force. Foreign policy events are touched upon comparatively less often - they are reflected in the songs of the historical ones themselves. These events are touched upon only when they cause national anger, as, for example, in soldiers' and sailors' songs about Russo-Japanese War. But the brighter they depict, it depicts and not involuntarily reflects the whole life of workers, starting with mine songs of the 18th century, in which all the details of the life of workers in the barracks are outlined - from waking up at five o'clock in the morning to a detailed image of "driving" through the system and sending in hospital. The presentation is dry and factual. But the song can also rise to the greatest pathos, as, for example, in the description of the events of January 9 and in the curses to Nicholas II. Such events from the life of workers as strikes, demonstrations, clashes with the police, arrests, exiles are depicted realistically.
With all of the above, I wanted to illustrate the thesis that there are, as it were, two types of genres: in some, historical reality is reflected only in general terms and against the will of the performers, in others it is depicted quite specifically, they describe historical events, situations and characters.
I deliberately bypassed the question of the historicism of epics for the time being. This question is the subject of discussion, and therefore I would like to highlight it in particular. There are heated, sometimes passionate disputes in our science on this issue.
When in 1863 L.N.
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named after the historical school. Maikov systematically studied all the historical deposits in the Russian epic. He understood that the content of the epics was fictitious, but that the setting was historical. The book consists of three chapters, of which the central second is "Consideration of epics as monuments of folk life." Here the historical realities of Russian epics are explored: the court of the prince and his squad, buildings, feasts, armor, weapons, utensils, food and drinks, etc. Issues such as land relations and some others are also explored. Consideration of the realities leads Maykov to the conclusion that the content of the epics of the Vladimirov cycle developed during the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries, and was established no later than the time of Tatar rule, that is, in the 13th-14th centuries. Somewhat generalizing Maykov's point of view, we can say that, in his opinion, the Russian epic as a genre was created in the era of Kievan Rus and subsequent centuries before the Mongol invasion.
This point of view was dominant for a long time, and now there are still some scientists who share it. However, the overwhelming majority of Soviet scientists adhere to a different point of view: the epic is created long before the formation of the state. The Great October Socialist Revolution opened our eyes to those innumerable epic treasures that the peoples inhabiting the USSR have, before the revolution, lived in everyday conditions created during the tribal system. The epic is possessed by peoples who lived before the revolution in the most archaic forms of life; these are the peoples of the Paleo-Asiatic group - the Nivkhs, Chukchi, etc. At present, the most archaic of all the epics known to us - the epic of the Nenets 6 - has been published. We got to know and studied the epos of the Karelians better. Magnificent, exceptional in scope and artistic merit, the epic was created by the Yakuts. No less perfect is the epic of the Altai peoples; We know the Shor epic especially well. The richest epic among the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, among the peoples of the Caucasus. All this leads to a completely accurate conclusion that the epic as a special kind of folk art arises before the state is created. The Eastern Slavs were not and could not be an exception in this respect. The presence of an epic in them is a historical pattern. The epic of the Eastern Slavs was created before the formation of the Kievan state. The epics of the peoples have a different degree of
On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study 123
or different forms, depending on the stage of socio-historical development of the people. All these observations and provisions form the basis of my book on the Russian epic 7 . Unfortunately, the section devoted to the epic of the peoples of the USSR had to be significantly reduced, and therefore it probably came out unconvincing.
The point of view that the Russian epic originated within the so-called Kievan Rus is still held. Yes, acad. B. A. Rybakov writes: “Epics, as a genre, appear, obviously, simultaneously with Russian feudal statehood” 8 . This is far from obvious. Objecting to me, B. A. Rybakov declares: “V. J. Propp, fighting the bourgeois historical school, tore Russian epics from historical reality in general, declaring that a significant part of the epic originated even under the primitive communal system” 9 . In these words, the primitive communal system is generally not recognized as historical reality. The point of view of L. N. Maikov and his modern followers, that the epic originated within the so-called Kievan Rus, cannot be supported and is not supported by the majority of Soviet folklorists. If it is true that the epic arises before the state, the task historical research should consist primarily in the fact that, by comparing the epics of different peoples at different stages of their development, it is precisely to establish which plots were created before the emergence of the state and which after it.
The number of pre-state plots in the Russian epic is extremely large - more than it might seem at first glance. Plots in which the hero meets with some kind of monster (Serpent, Tugarin, Idolishche, etc.) or goes to woo a bride and sometimes fights with a monstrous opponent (Potyk, Ivan Godinovich), plots in which he finds himself in an unearthly world (Sadko in the underwater kingdom), plots in which women such as the Amazons act, with whom the hero enters into a relationship or whom he marries (fight between father and son), and some others could not be created or invented in the conditions of state life. In Kievan Rus, the plot of snake fighting could not have arisen, this is historically impossible. All of the aforementioned plots were created earlier, and all of them can be documented in the epic of the peoples of the USSR.
7 See: V. Ya. Propp, Russian heroic epic, M., 1958, pp. 29-59 (“Epos during the period of decomposition of the primitive communal system”).
8 B. A. Rybakov, Ancient Rus', p. 44.
9 Ibid., p. 42.
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When a nation enters the stage of state building, its epic is subjected to significant changes. The old epic is being reworked, and at the same time a new one is being created, already reflecting the state and state interests (epics about the fight against the Tatars, etc.). The ideology of the tribal system clashes with the interests of the young state. The clash of two ideologies in the old plots is subject to detailed study. Such a study can be called historical. The snake, which used to kidnap women, now not only kidnaps women, but captivates the Russian people, the people of Kiev. The hero is already freeing not the girl, but Kyiv from the attacks of the snake. Such is the plot of the Russian epic about the snake fighter Dob-ryn in the light of comparative data. This is just one of many possible examples. From all this it is quite obvious that it is impossible to date such epics. They are not born on the same day or hour or year, their occurrence is the result of a long historical process. If, therefore, Maikov was mistaken in referring the emergence of the epic to the 10th-12th centuries, then he was still right in establishing historical realities. The epic, getting into a new historical environment, absorbs it into itself. The absorption process continues later. The epic is similar to such layers of the earth, in which there are deposits of various geological epochs.
Maykov's initiative was not supported by subsequent Russian science. In the works mainly of Vsevolod Miller and his followers, the historical formulation of the study of the epic was extremely narrowed. True, both life and other historical realities were studied. These works or these pages are among the most valuable and will never lose their value. However, the main, most important, almost the only question of research has now become the question of the historical prototypes of epic heroes, what events are depicted in the epics and what year the emergence of the studied epics can be dated. But since there are no direct, clear traces of historical events in the epics themselves, the epics are declared to be a distorted depiction of events by uneducated, ignorant peasants, and the task of science is to eliminate the distortions introduced by the people into the presentation of events. A long series of works began, dedicated to the establishment of prototypes of the heroes of the Russian folk epic. It turned out, for example, that Nightingale Budimirovich is not Nightingale Budimirovich at all, but the Norwegian king Garald; Duke is the Hungarian king Stephen IV; Potgk is the Bulgarian Saint Michael from the town of Potuki; serpentine-
On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study 125
Dobrynya’s legacy is not snake fighting at all, but the baptism of Novgorod, etc.
There was no unity in the opinions of scientists, and they disputed each other. In this regard, opinions about the historical prototype of the epic Vol-ga are especially variegated.<...>
What's the matter here? Why such diversity? Maybe the researchers lacked erudition? But such an assumption is no longer valid: they are all the greatest scientists and experts. The reason is different here. It lies in an erroneous methodology. A.P. Skaftymov in his book “The Poetics and Genesis of Epics” (Saratov, 1924) convincingly showed how such conclusions are obtained with the help of what stretches. The attitudes of the so-called historical school were subjected to serious criticism. But this only temporarily suspended attempts at similar historical interpretations. At present, we can talk about the revival of the historical school of Vsevolod Miller. They try to avoid some of her mistakes - the assertion that the epic arose in an aristocratic environment, as well as neglect of the artistic features of the epic - they try to avoid, but basically everything remains the same. B. A. Rybakov writes that the epic epic should be approached, “again checking and expanding the historical comparisons made a hundred years ago” 10 . These words mean that we must remain on the same positions as a hundred years ago, and only quantitatively expand the material, re-verify it, and everything will fall into place. One cannot agree with this at all. What is needed is not a quantitative increase in the material, but a qualitative revision of the methodological premises. What was progressive a hundred years ago in bourgeois science cannot be considered progressive in today's Soviet science. The methodology of the representatives of the so-called historical school proceeds from one basic premise, which is that the people in epics want to portray the current political history and really depict it. So, M. M. Plisetsky writes: “Songs arose with the aim of fixing historical events.” “If this premise is correct, then the direction that seeks images of political events and historical figures in epics will be legitimate. If this premise is incorrect, the whole methodological basis this trend is collapsing.
This premise is wrong. Moreover, it is anti-historical. She attributes old Russian man such aesthetics
10 Ibid., p. 43.
and M. M. Plisetsky, Historicism of Russian epics, M., 1962, p. 141.
On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study
cial aspirations and a form of their implementation, which could not have taken place before the XIV-XV centuries. Russian man early medieval could not depict reality in his verbal art. This aspiration, as a leading one, will appear in folklore much later, only in the 16th century, when the historical song begins to develop widely. It was said above that there are two types of folklore genres: in some, reality is reflected regardless of the will of the creator, in others, its depiction is the main goal of the artist. Bylina does not belong to those genres where a conscious goal was set - the depiction of actual history. Their historicity lies on a different plane. For comparison, we can refer to the fine arts of ancient Russia. Russian icon painting, like any art, arises on the basis of reality and indirectly reflects it; this is the art of the Russian Middle Ages. It depicts different types people: young and old, men and women, bearded and beardless, stern and tender, etc. But icon painting is alien to the art of a realistic portrait and everyday painting. The icon painter does not depict events and does not portray people. He elevates and transforms them in his own way, he creates the faces of saints. This does not exclude the fact that in some cases real people were also depicted: Yaroslav Vsevolodovich (1199 - Savior on Nereditsa), Boris and Gleb. But even in these rare cases, the image is conditional and subordinate to the style of this art. To attribute to icon painting the desire to depict reality means not to understand the differences between Rublev's icon and Repin's painting, and to attribute to ancient Russia the aesthetic aspirations of the 19th century.
Fundamentally, the same is true of verbal art. If in the icon the faces are transformed into faces, then in the epic people are transformed into sublime heroes who perform the greatest feats that an ordinary person cannot perform. Therefore, one cannot talk about these feats, one can only sing about them.
The mistakes of the followers of the old historical school stem from a misunderstanding of the genre; the nature and specificity of the epic. Characteristic is the statement of M. M. Plisetsky, who argues as follows: if specific events are depicted in the Tale of Igor's Campaign, in songs about the capture of Kazan, about Razin, in good historical novels(he even refers to the novels of Leo Tolstoy "War and Peace" and A. N. Tolstoy "Peter the Great"), then "why is this not allowed by epics?" It’s very simple why: because these are genres of different eras, different social orientations, different aesthetic
06 historicism of folklore and methods of its study 127
sky systems. Bylina is not Tolstoy's novel. The epic arises on historical soil, it reflects it, but the active depiction of current historical reality, current events is not included in the artistic tasks of the epic, does not correspond to its aesthetics and poetics. The formulation of the question of the depiction of historical reality, which is legitimate for the genre of legends and for historical songs, is illegal for epics. But the followers of the historical school consciously deny the difference between these genres. For them, what an epic, what a historical song, what a legend is one and the same. So, M. M. Plisetsky is trying to completely erase the difference between the epic and the historical song, which was emphasized by some Soviet scientists. He objects to the point of view according to which the historical song is composed by participants and witnesses of events, which we do not have in epics. “Of course,” he writes, “epics, like other heroic-historical works, were created by participants in the events or arose in the environment closest to them” 12 . But how to imagine the participants in such events as the transfer of Svyatogor's power to Ilya Muromets? Only two people act here - which one of them composed the epic? What witnesses could see, and therefore sing the dance of the sea king at the bottom of the sea to the play of Sadko on the harp? On this issue, I would like to express my solidarity with the views of VI Chicherov. He has two works: one early - "On the Stages of Development of the Russian Historical Epos" 13 , another late article, already mentioned by us - "On the Problem of the Historical and Genre Specificity of Russian Epics and Historical Songs". In these works, different, one might say opposite, views are expressed. In the first, the very term "historical epic" shows that, following Vsevolod Miller and others, he believed that both epics and historical songs were based on specific events. Bylina is nothing but the most ancient form of historical song. There are no fundamental differences between them. "Historical epic" is a collection of epics and historical songs. But after that, V. I. Chicherov worked hard and hard on historical song. This is evidenced by at least an anthology published in the Poet's Library. Now he clearly saw and understood with his own eyes what a profound difference there is between the epic and the historical song. I will not repeat the arguments given by Chicherov, but simply refer to his work those who
12 Ibid., p. 109.
13 Historical and literary collection, M., 1947, pp. 3-60.
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I would like to seriously consider this issue. “Historical songs are built differently than epics,” he briefly formulates his view. They differ in the era of occurrence, other principles artistic reflection and images of reality, other poetics and aesthetics. This is opposed by the thesis of M. M. Plisetsky, who says: “Such a difference in genres (epics and historical songs.- V.P.) completely unfounded." After a remarkable collection of historical songs, the first volume of which was published by the Pushkin House, the study of historical song as a genre has a solid base in the materials, and B.N. this question 15 .
A few words about the methods of historical study of folklore. I believe that in folklore the method can only be inductive, that is, from studying the material to conclusions. This method was established in the exact sciences and in linguistics, but it was not dominant in the science of folk art. Deduction prevailed here, that is, the path from a general theory or hypothesis to facts, which were considered from the point of view of pre-established postulates. Some sought to prove without fail that epic folklore is the remnants of the cult of the sun, others tried to substantiate the Eastern, Byzantine, Romano-Germanic origin of folk art, others argued that the heroes epic poetry- these are historical figures, the fourth - that folk art is realistic through and through, etc. And although there is some truth in each of these hypotheses, the methodological basis should be different. In the presence of a biased hypothesis, it is not scientific evidence that is obtained, but the fitting of the material to pre-compiled theses. Many works of folklorists are based on this.<...>
Basically, a truly historical method can only be comparative in the broadest sense of the word. In this respect, the international congresses of the Slavists taught us a lot. So, for example, the plot of the epic about Ivan Godinovich is usually interpreted as primordially Russian, even attempts are made to determine the time and place of its occurrence. Meanwhile, this plot is typical for the pre-state epic. You can only talk about the Russian form this story. Another
14 M. M. Plisetsky, Historicism of Russian epics, p. 103.
16 Historical songs of the XIII-XVI centuries. The publication was prepared by B. N. Putilov and B. M. Dobrovolsky, M.-L., 1960; B. N. Putilov, Russian historical and song folklore of the XIII-XVI centuries, M.-L., 1960.
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example: the plot of the epic about the Danube and his trip for a bride for Vladimir is compared with the story of Russian chronicles about the marriage of Prince Vladimir to Rogneda. Here, therefore, there are two objects of comparison. Meanwhile, B. M. Sokolov in a large special article compared this plot with the cycle of tales about Koltom, with the cycle of Germanic tales about the marriage of Gunther to Brünnhilde in all its versions (Nibelungs, Elder Edda, the younger Edda, the saga of the Velsungs, Tidreksaga), with Russian chronicle materials and with all variants of the epic 16 . There are no longer two objects of comparison, but many more. The international character of this plot, with all the differences national specifics becomes quite obvious. But representatives of the modern historical school ignore this work of Sokolov and do not even consider it necessary to argue about it.
Further, speaking of the method, it should be emphasized that the most important thing in the epic is its plot, the plot as a whole. This plot must be established with all the details, in all its versions. This is the main subject of study. In an epic, the plot, as a rule, does not have the character of only adventurous, plot entertainment. It always expresses a certain idea, and this idea must be understood and defined. But ideas are born not by themselves, but in known time and in a famous place. The historical study of the epic consists in establishing in what era the idea embodied in this art form could have arisen. In most cases, in epics, one can trace the deposits of several eras or periods, the ideas of which may collide. The presence of such collisions and collisions is one of the most interesting, but also the most complex phenomena of the epic epic.
8 determining the historical meaning and significance of the ideological content of the epic, establishing when such a complex formation could have been created, is the task of historical research.
In many works, historicity is determined not by the whole, not by the plot and its historical significance, but in various details. So, for example, the historicity of the epic about Sadko is proved on the basis of one fact - the construction of a church by him. The hero of the epic is declared identical to the chronicle character, and this is supposedly the whole historicism of the epic. The plot as a whole, the conflict between Sadko and Novgorod, its immersion in water, the figure of the sea king
16 B. M. Sokolov, Epic tales about the marriage of Prince Vladimir, ^ German-Russian relations in the field of the epic). - Scientific notes of the Saratov University, vol. I issue 3, 1923, page 69-122.
9 Zach. 80
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etc. are not studied by representatives of the so-called historical school; this is all pure fiction and therefore they are not interested. Meanwhile, even if it turned out that the image of the epic Sadko reflected the historical Sotko Sytinich, the historicism of the plot of this epic would not have been explained.
In explaining the historical fate of the plot, historical realities can be of great help. The epic is very rich in such realities, and the number of realities gradually increases as the epic develops. All these realities must be studied in the most careful way. These realities may include historical names, and geographical names, which should be studied in accordance with modern onomastics and toponymy, and not by completely guessing approximations, by approximate sound similarity.
How richly the most diverse realities are represented in the epic can be seen in the example of a relatively late epic about Mikul Selyaninovich. Here, for example, the following questions can be posed: what is the act of assigning cities to Prince Volga from a historical point of view? What rights and obligations were accompanied by such challenges and which of them are reflected in the epic? In what era were such endowments possible? Is it possible or impossible to find these cities on the map? How to interpret the name Volga and how did it get into the epic? What is the Volga squad? What is the legal and social position of the peasant in relation to the prince in the epic? On whose land does Mikula plow? How is his plow arranged? How is he dressed? What land relations are depicted in the epic? In the epic, Mikula goes for salt. What is the route of this trip? Isn't natural economy reflected here? In the epic there are obscure traces of taxation of the salt trade. What monetary system is reflected in the epic? The development of such details does not yet reveal the essence of the plot as an ideological and artistic whole. The meaning of the meeting and collision of the plowman Mikula and Prince Volga can be revealed only by studying the artistic fabric of the work. But the development of historical realities helps to establish all the historical coordinates of the plot and in this respect contributes to the disclosure of its primordially historical meaning. Here for the historian a wide expanse. Here the folklorist is waiting for the help of the historian. But representatives of the method of narrow-historical study snatch out only two out of the whole complex of questions: what cities are depicted in the epic, who is the historical prototype of the Volga? The idea that Volga may not have a prototype at all
06 historicism of folklore and methods of its study 131
the fact that cities are named arbitrarily and that their names are not essential for historical study is not allowed. Mikula, as a character clearly fictional, has not been studied from this point of view. If he was studied, then on the basis that he was smartly dressed, he was declared a representative of the kulaks and kulak ideology (B. M. Sokolov). This is what the study of details in isolation from the whole leads to. In conclusion, I want to say the following: as I have already noted, any study of folklore at the present time is based on various and many-sided comparisons. Meanwhile, neither the technique nor the methodology of comparison have been developed in our country. Therefore, many folklore works both in the past and now are full of false analogies and erroneous conclusions.<\..>
STRUCTURAL
AND HISTORICAL STUDIES
FAIRY TALE
The book "Morphology of a Fairy Tale" was published in Russian in 1928. "It at one time caused twofold responses. On the one hand, some folklorists, ethnographers and literary critics greeted it kindly. On the other hand, the author was accused of formalism, and such accusations repeated to this day.This book, like many others, was probably would forgotten, and only specialists would occasionally recall it, but now, a few years after the war, it was suddenly remembered again. It was talked about at congresses and in the press, it was translated into English 2 . What happened, and how can this renewed interest be explained? Huge, stunning discoveries have been made in the field of exact sciences. These discoveries became possible thanks to the use of new precise and precise methods of research and calculations. The desire to apply exact methods has also spread to the humanities. Structural and mathematical linguistics appeared. Other disciplines followed linguistics. One of them is theoretical poetics. Here it turned out that the understanding of art as a kind of sign system, the method of formalization and modeling, the possibility of applying mathematical calculations were already anticipated in this book, although at the time when it was created, there was no such circle of understanding.
1 V. Propp, Morphology of a fairy tale, L., 1928.
2 V1. Rgor, Morphology of the Folktale. Edited with an Introduction by Svatava Pirkova-Jacobson. Translated by Laurence Scott, Bloomington, 1958 ("Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore and Linguistics, Publication Ten") (Reprints: International Journal of American Linguistics, vol. 24, no. 4, pt 3, October 1958; " Bibliographical and Special Series of the American Folklore Society, Vol. 9, Philadelphia, 1958); V. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale. second edition. Revised and Edited with a Preface by Louis A. Wagner. New Introduction by Alan Dundes, Austin-London .- Ed.
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ty and the terminology that they operate modern sciences. And again, the attitude to this work turned out to be ambivalent. Some considered it necessary and useful in the search for new refined methods, while others, as before, considered it formalistic and denied any cognitive value behind it.
Among the opponents of this book is Prof. Levi-Strauss. He is a structuralist. But structuralists are often accused of formalism. To show the difference between structuralism and formalism, prof. Lévi-Strauss takes as an example the book Morphology of a Fairy Tale, which he considers formalistic, and by its example outlines this difference. His article "La structure et la forme. Reflexions sur un ouvrage de Vladimir Propp" is attached to this edition of "Morphology" 3 . Whether he is right or not, let the readers judge. But when a person is attacked, he tends to defend himself. Against the arguments of the opponent, if they appear to be false, one can put forward counter-arguments that may turn out to be more correct. Such controversy may be of general scientific interest. Therefore, I gratefully agreed to the kind offer of the Einaudi publishing house to write a response to this article. Prof. Levi-Strauss tossed me a glove and I pick it up. Readers of the Morphology will thus be witnesses to the duel and will be able to take the side of whom they consider the winner, if any.
Prof. Levi-Strauss has one very significant advantage over me: he is a philosopher. I am an empiricist, moreover, an incorruptible empiricist, who first of all peers intently at the facts and studies them scrupulously and methodically, checking his premises and looking back at every step of reasoning. Empirical sciences, however, are also different. In some cases, the empiricist may and even has to be content with a description, a characterization, especially if a single fact serves as the subject of study. Such descriptions are by no means devoid of scientific value, if only they are made correctly. But if a series of facts and their connections are described and studied, their description develops into the disclosure of a phenomenon, a phenomenon, and the disclosure of such a phenomenon already has
3 C. Levi-Strauss, La structure et la forme. Reflexions sur un ouvrage de Vladimir Propp, - "Cahiers de l "lnstitut de Science economique appliquee", serie M, No. 7, mars, 1960 (reprint: "International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics", III, s "Gravenhage, 1960; in Italian, the article is included as an appendix to the Italian version of the book by V. Ya-Propp). - Ed.
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not only private interest, but disposes to philosophical reflection. I also had these thoughts, but they are encrypted and expressed only in the epigraphs that accompany some of the chapters. Prof. Lévi-Strauss knows my book only from the English translation. But the translator allowed himself one impermissible liberties. He did not understand at all what epigraphs were for. Outwardly, they are not connected with the text of the book. Therefore, he considered them unnecessary decorations and savagely crossed them out. Meanwhile, all epithets are taken from a series of works by Goethe, united by him under the general title "Morphology", as well as from his diaries. These epigraphs were supposed to express what the book itself does not say. The crown of any science is the discovery of regularities. Where the pure empiricist sees scattered facts, the empiricist philosopher sees the reflection of the law. I saw the law in a very modest area - in one of the types of folk tales. But even then it seemed to me that the disclosure of this law could have a broader meaning. The very term "Morphology" is not borrowed from such manuals of botany, where the main goal is systematics, and also not from grammatical works, it is borrowed from Goethe, who under this title combined the works of botany and osteology. Behind this term, Goethe reveals a perspective in recognizing patterns that permeate nature in general. And it is no coincidence that after botany Goethe came to comparative osteology. These works can be strongly recommended to structuralists. And if the young Goethe in the face of Faust, sitting in his dusty laboratory and surrounded by skeletons, bones and herbaria, sees nothing but dust in them, then the aging Goethe, armed with the method of exact comparisons in the field of natural science, sees through the individual - the great penetrating all of nature general and whole. But there are no two Goethes - a poet and a scientist; Goethe "Faust", striving for knowledge, and Goethe, the naturalist, who has come to knowledge, are one and the same Goethe. Epigraphs to individual chapters are a sign of admiration for him. But these epigraphs must also express something else: the realm of nature and the realm of human creativity are not separated. There is something that unites them, there are some common laws for them that can be studied by similar methods. This thought, vaguely looming then, now underlies the search for exact methods in the field of the humanities, which was discussed above. This is one of the reasons why the structuralists supported me. On the other hand, some structuralists did not understand that my goal was not to get tired
Structural and historical study of the fairy tale 135
to innovate some kind of broad generalizations, the possibility of which is expressed in epithets, and that the goal was purely professional and folklore. Yes, prof. Lévi-Strauss twice asks himself a bewildered question: what reasons prompted me to apply my method to a fairy tale? He himself explains to the reader these reasons, of which, in his opinion, there are several. One of them is that I am not an ethnologist and therefore I do not have the material of mythology, I do not know it. Further, I have no idea of the true relationship between fairy tale and myth (pp. 16, 19) 4 . In short, my interest in fairy tales is due to my insufficient scientific horizon, otherwise I would probably have tried my method not on fairy tales, but on myths.
I will not enter into the logic of these theses (“since the author does not know myths, he is engaged in fairy tales”). The logic of such statements seems weak to me. But I think that no scientist should be forbidden to study one thing and recommended to him to study another. These remarks by Prof. Levi-Strauss show that he imagines the matter as if a scientist first has a method, and then he begins to think about what to apply this method to; in this case, for some reason, the scientist applies his method to fairy tales, which does not really interest the philosopher. But it never happens in science, and it never happened to me. The matter was quite different. Russian universities of tsarist times provided philologists with very poor literary criticism. In particular, folk poetry was in a complete corral. To fill this gap, after graduating from university, I took up famous compilation Afanasiev and began to study it. I attacked a series of fairy tales with a persecuted stepdaughter, and then I noticed the following: in the fairy tale "Morozko" (No. 95 according to the numbering of Soviet publications), the stepmother sends her stepdaughter to the forest to Morozka. Frost tries to freeze her, but she answers him so meekly and patiently that he spares her, rewards her and releases her. native daughter the old woman does not stand the test and dies. In the next tale, the stepdaughter no longer ends up with Frost, but with the goblin, and in the next one, with the bear. But it's the same story! Morozko, goblin and the bear test and reward the stepdaughter in different ways, but the course of action is the same. Did no one notice this? Why do Afanasyev and others consider these tales to be different? It is quite obvious that Morozko, the goblin and the bear in different form commit
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the same act. Afanasiev considers these tales to be different because different characters act. It seemed to me that these fairy tales are the same because the actions are the same. actors. I became interested in this and began to study other fairy tales in terms of what characters do in a fairy tale in general. Thus, by entering into the material, and not by abstraction, a very simple method of studying a fairy tale was born by the actions of the characters, regardless of their appearance. The actions of actors, their actions, I called functions. The observation made on the tales of the persecuted stepdaughter turned out to be the tip by which one could grab the thread and unwind the whole ball. It turned out that other plots are also based on the repetition of functions, and that, in the end, all the plots of a fairy tale are based on the same functions, that all fairy tales are of the same type in their structure.
But if the translator did a bad service to the reader by omitting the epigraphs from Goethe, then another violation of the author's will was committed not by the translator, but by the Russian publishing house that published the book; its title was changed. It was called "Morphology of a Fairy Tale". In order to give the book more interest, the editor crossed out the word "magic" and thereby misled readers (including Professor Levi-Strauss) as if the regularities of the fairy tale as a genre in general were being considered here. A book with such a title could be on a par with etudes such as "Morphology of a Conspiracy", "Morphology of a Fable", "Morphology of a Comedy", etc. But the author by no means had the goal of studying all types of a complex and diverse genre of a fairy tale as such. It considers only one type of it, which differs sharply from all its other types, namely fairy tales, and only folk tales. This is, therefore, a special study on the particular issue of folklore. Another thing is that the method of studying narrative genres according to the functions of the characters can be productive not only in application to fairy tales, but also to other types of fairy tales, and perhaps also to the study of works of the narrative nature of world literature in general. But it can be predicted that the specific results in all these cases will be quite different. For example, cumulative fairy tales are built on completely different principles than fairy tales. In English folklore they are called Formula-Tales. The types of formulas on which these tales are based can be found and determined, but their schemes will turn out to be completely different from those of fairy tales. There are thus
Structural and historical study of the fairy tale 137
different types of narratives, which can, however, be studied by the same methods. Prof. Levi-Strauss cites my words that the conclusions I have found are not applicable to the fairy tales of Novalis or Goethe and, in general, to artificial fairy tales of literary origin, and turns them against me, considering that in this case my conclusions are erroneous. But they are by no means erroneous, they just do not have the universal meaning that my respected critic would like to give them. The method is broad, while the conclusions are strictly limited to the kind of folklore narrative creativity, on the study of which they were obtained.
I will not answer all the accusations leveled against me by Prof. Levi-Strauss. I will focus only on a few of the most important ones. If these accusations turn out to be unfounded, others, smaller ones and arising from them, will fall away of their own accord.
The main accusation is that my work is formalistic and therefore cannot have cognitive significance. Exact definition of what is meant by formalism, prof. Levi-Strauss does not give, limiting himself to pointing out some of its features, which are reported in the course of the presentation. One of these signs is that the formalists study their material without reference to history. He attributes this formalistic, non-historical study to me as well. Wanting, apparently, to soften his harsh sentence somewhat, prof. Lévi-Strauss informs readers that, having written Morphology, I then abandoned formalism and morphological analysis to devote myself to historical and comparative research on the relationship of oral literature (as he calls folklore) to myths, rites and institutions (p. 4) . What these investigations are, he does not say. In the book "Russian Agrarian Holidays" (1963) I applied exactly the same method as in "Morphology". It turned out that all major major agrarian holidays consist of the same elements, differently decorated. But about this work, Prof. Levi-Strauss could not yet know. Apparently, he is referring to the book "Historical roots of a fairy tale", published in 1946 and published by the Einaudi publishing house in Italian. But if Prof. Levi-Strauss looked into this book, he would have seen that it begins with a presentation of those provisions that are developed in the Morphology. The definition of a fairy tale is given not through its plots, but through its composition. Indeed, having established the unity of the composition of fairy tales, I had to think about the reason for such unity. That the reason lies not in them-
138 Structural and historical study of the fairy tale
manent laws of form, and that it lies in the field early history or, as some prefer to say, prehistory, that is, that stage of development human society which is studied by ethnography and ethnology was clear to me from the very beginning. Prof. Levi-Strauss is quite right when he says that morphology is sterile unless it is directly or indirectly fertilized by ethnographic data (observation ethnographique - p. 30). That is why I did not turn away from morphological analysis, but began to look for the historical foundations and roots of the system that was revealed through a comparative study of the plots of a fairy tale. "Morphology" and "Historical Roots" are, as it were, two parts or two volumes of one great work. The second follows directly from the first, the first is the premise of the second. Prof. Lévi-Strauss quotes my words that morphological research "should be connected with the study of history" (p. 19), but again he uses them against me. Since in "Morphology" such a study is not actually given, he is right. But he underestimated that these words are the expression of a certain principle. They contain also some promise in the future to produce this historical study. They are a kind of bill of exchange, on which, although many years later, I nevertheless honestly paid. If, therefore, he writes about me that I am torn between the “formalist ghost” (vision formaliste) and the “nightmarish necessity of historical explanations” (l "obsession des explications historiques - p. 20), then this is simply not true. I, according to opportunities, strictly methodically and consistently, I turn from a scientific description of phenomena and facts to an explanation of their historical causes.Not knowing all this, Prof. Levi-Strauss even attributes to me the repentance that made me abandon my formalistic visions in order to arrive at historical investigations.But I feel no remorse and no remorse.Professor Lévi-Strauss himself considers that the historical explanation of fairy tales in general is virtually impossible, "because we know very little about the prehistoric civilizations where they originated" (p. 21). He also complains about the lack of texts for comparison, but the point is not in the texts (which, however, are available in quite sufficient quantities), but in the fact that the plots are generated by the life of the people, their life and the resulting forms of thinking in the early stages of human social development. and that the appearance of these plots is historically logical. Yes, we still know little about ethnology, but nevertheless, a huge fact has accumulated in world science.
Structural and historical study of the fairy tale 139
material which makes such investigations quite reliable.
But the point is not how the "Morphology" was created and what the author experienced, but in matters of fundamental principle. Formal study cannot be separated from the historical and opposed to them. Quite the opposite: a formal study, a precise systematic description of the material being studied, is the first condition, a prerequisite for historical study and, at the same time, its first step. There is no shortage of scattered study of individual plots: they are given in large numbers in the works of the so-called Finnish school. However, when studying individual plots in isolation from each other, supporters of this trend do not see any connection between the plots, they do not even suspect the existence or possibility of such a connection. Such an attitude is characteristic of formalism. For formalists, the whole is a mechanical conglomeration of disparate parts. Accordingly, in this case, the fairy tale genre is presented as a collection of separate plots that are not interconnected. For the structuralist, the parts are considered and studied as elements of the whole and in their relation to the whole. The structuralist sees the whole, sees the system where the formalist cannot see it. What is given in "Morphology" makes it possible to study the genre between plots as a kind of whole, as a kind of system, instead of studying the plot, as is done in the works of the Finnish school, which, in spite of all its merits, it seems to me, is rightly reproached for formalism. . Comparative inter-plot study opens up broad historical perspectives. First of all, it is not individual plots that are subject to historical explanation, but the compositional system to which they belong. Then a historical connection will open up between the plots, and this paves the way for the study of individual plots.
But the question of the relation of formal study to historical study covers only one side of the matter. The other concerns understanding the relation of form to content and how to study them. By formalistic study is usually understood the study of form without regard to content. Prof. Levi-Strauss even speaks of their opposition. Such a view does not contradict the views of modern Soviet literary critics. Thus, Yu. M. Lotman, one of the most active researchers in the field of structural literary criticism, writes that the main flaw of the so-called “formal method” is that it often led researchers to look at literature as a sum of techniques, mechanical
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conglomerate 3 . To this one could add something else: for the formalists, the form has its own laws of self-sufficiency and immanent laws of development independent of social history. From this point of view, development in the field of literary creativity is self-development, determined by the laws of form.
But if these definitions of formalism are correct, the book Morphology of a Fairy Tale cannot by any means be called formalistic, although Prof. Levi-Strauss is far from being the only accuser. Not every study of form is a formalistic study, and not every scientist who studies the artistic form of works of verbal or visual arts, there is certainly a formalist.
I have already quoted Prof. Levi-Strauss that my conclusions about the structure of a fairy tale are a phantom, a formalistic ghost - une vision formaliste. This is not a randomly dropped word, but the deepest conviction of the author. He believes that I am a victim of subjective illusions (p. 21). Out of many fairy tales, I construct one that never existed. It is "an abstraction so non-objective that it does not teach us anything about the objective reasons why there are many separate tales" (p. 25). That my abstraction, as the scheme I have drawn, is called by prof. Levi-Strauss does not reveal the causes of diversity - this is true. This is taught only by historical consideration. But that it is pointless and is an illusion is not true. The words of prof. Lévi-Strauss show that he simply did not seem to understand my completely empirical concrete detailed study. How could this happen? Prof. Lévi-Strauss complains that my work is generally difficult to understand. It can be seen that people who have many thoughts of their own find it difficult to understand the thoughts of others. They do not understand what an open-minded person understands. My research does not fit the general views of Prof. Levi-Strauss, and this is one of the reasons for such a misunderstanding. The other lies within myself. When the book was written, I was young and therefore I was convinced that it was worth expressing some observation or some thought, as everyone would immediately understand and share it. Therefore, I expressed myself extremely briefly, in the style of theorems, considering it superfluous to develop or prove my thoughts in detail, since everything is already clear and understandable at first sight. But in this I was wrong.
5 Yu. M. Lotman, Lectures on structural poetics. Issue. I (Introduction, Theory of Verse), Tartu, 1964 (Scientific Notes of the Tartu State University, issue 160. Works on sign systems, I), one hundred. 9-10.
Structural and historical study of the fairy tale141
Let's start with terminology. I must admit that the term “morphology”, which I once treasured so much and which I borrowed from Goethe, putting into it not only a scientific, but also some kind of philosophical and even poetic meaning, was not chosen very well. To be absolutely precise, it was necessary to say not “morphology”, but to take a much narrower concept and say “composition”, and call it “Composition of a folklore fairy tale”. But the word "composition" also requires a definition, it can mean different things. What is meant by this here?
It has already been said above that the whole analysis proceeds from the observation that in fairy tales different people perform the same actions or, what is the same, that the same actions can be carried out in very different ways. This has been shown in variants of the group of tales about the persecuted stepdaughter, but this observation is true not only for variants of the single plot, but for all plots of the fairy tale genre. So, for example, if the hero leaves home on some kind of search and the object of his desires is very far away, he can fly there through the air on a magic horse, or on the back of an eagle, or on a magic carpet, as well as on a flying ship, on the back of the devil, etc. We will not give all possible cases here. It is easy to see that in all these cases we have the hero's crossing to the place where the object of his search is located, but that the forms of this crossing are different. We, therefore, have stable magnitudes and variable, changeable magnitudes. Another example: the princess does not want to get married, or the father does not want to marry her to a candidate who is objectionable to him or her. The groom is required to do something completely impossible: he would jump on a horse to her window, bathe in a cauldron of boiling water, solve the riddle of the princess, get a golden hair from the head of the sea king, etc. A naive listener takes all these cases for completely different - and in his own way he is right. But an inquisitive researcher sees behind this diversity some kind of unity, established logically. If in the first series of examples we have a crossing to the place of search, then the second one represents the motive of difficult tasks. The content of tasks can be different, it varies, it is something variable. The assignment of tasks as such is a stable element. These stable elements I have called the functions of actors. The purpose of the study was to establish what functions are known to a fairy tale, to establish whether their number is limited or not, to see in what sequence they are given. Result-
