Historical document of the feudal period as a folklore source (source notes). The phenomenon of folklore and its educational value

Records of folklore in the period of 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.

The possibility is not ruled out that individual folklore works were first written down before they got into literature. 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, 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 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. He uses folk proverbs and sayings 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 the middle of the XVIII century. 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 the “New and Complete Collection of Russian Songs” in six parts, V.F. Trutovsky for the period from 1776 to 1795 publishes the “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. Lvov --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 before that, the poet I. F. Bogdanovich published the collection "Russian Proverbs", in which the folklore material was selected biased and subjected to significant 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 of national literature, did a great job of publishing ( however, in an edited form) of 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, Radishchev again turned to the theme of folk singers 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 of national culture was correctly assessed. 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.

Literature and library science

The main problems of modern folklore. Modern folkloristics has the same problems as new academic schools. Problems: the question of the origin of folklore. problems of studying new non-traditional folklore.

11. The main problems of modern folklore.

Modern folklore studies inherit the wealth of academic schools, while removing exaggerations.

Modern folkloristics has the same problems as academic schools + new ones.

Problems :

The question of the origin of folklore.

Storyteller problemcorrelation of individual and collective beginnings in folklore.

Was placed in XIX century, but decided in XX century.

Dobrolyubov: “The principle of the vital principle is not observed in Afanasyev’s book” - it is not known who and when wrote down the folklore text.

There are different types of storytellers.

In XX the problem was dealt with by M.K. Azadovsky

- the problem of interaction between literature and folklore.

Folklore is necessary for an adequate perception of a literary text.

D.N. Medrish

- the problem of studying various folklore genres and specific works.

The problem of collecting folkloreit is necessary to have time to collect what is still remembered; new genres of folklore appear.

- problems of studying new, non-traditional folklore.

Non-traditional folklore:

Children's

School

Girls' and demobel albums

- "colloquial" folklore talking on the phone, talking in public transport.

student folklore.

After the collapse of the USSR, magazines about folklore began to appear again:

"Living Antiquity"

Arbem mundi "("World Tree")

In XX century, problems were solved from the point of view of either the mythological or historical school.

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 down to the smallest details of the 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 by a special attitude 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 stories about real events related to the activities of specific individuals, 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, as opposed 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 specific Russian epics and historical songs” points out: “In historical traditions and legends, the narrative is about events and about persons as about what happened in reality” 4; 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 nature. It should also be added that from an artistic point of view, these traditions 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 flourish,.

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.

120 On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study

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 it seems undeniable the following signs historical songs: 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 aspiration of the people, expressed in the epic, is the creation of a monolithic centralized state and complete liberation from the Tatar-Mongol yoke - was carried out. It was also time for a cultural break. The whole nature of warfare is changing radically. invention firearms and the rapid development of Russian artillery push into the background 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 in folklore, first of all, images of 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.

122 On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study

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 originates before the state, the task of historical research should be, first of all, to establish, by comparing the epics of different peoples at different stages of their development, 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.

124 On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study

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 by “re-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 depict the current political history and really depicts 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 entire methodological basis this trend is collapsing.

This premise is wrong. Moreover, it is anti-historical. She attributes to ancient Russian man such aesthetic

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. The Russian man of the early Middle Ages could not depict in his verbal art real reality. 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 of people: young and old, men and women, bearded and beardless, stern and tender, etc. But the art of realistic portrait and everyday painting is alien to icon 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 depicted and real people: 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 specifics 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 Leo Tolstoy's novels "War and Peace ”And A.N. Tolstoy“ Peter the Great ”), then“ why is this not allowed by epics? Very simple why: because these are genres different eras, different social orientation, 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 oldest form 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.

128 On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study

I would like to seriously consider this issue. “Historical songs are built differently than epics,” he briefly formulates his view. They are distinguished by the era of their origin, other principles of artistic reflection and depiction of reality, different 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 methods historical study folklore. I believe that in folklore the method can only be inductive, that is, from studying the material to conclusions. This method has been approved in exact sciences ah and in linguistics, but he 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. One can only talk about the Russian form of this plot. 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.

On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study129

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 Brynhilde in all its versions (Nibelungs, Elder Edda, Younger Edda, Velsungs saga, 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. He always expresses known idea, and this idea must be able to understand and define. But ideas are born not by themselves, but at a certain time and in 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 by various particulars. 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

130 On the historicism of folklore and methods of its study

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. Among such realities may be both 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 from the whole complex of questions snatch out only two: which cities are depicted in the epic, who historical prototype 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 humanitarian sciences. Structural and mathematical linguistics appeared. Other disciplines followed linguistics. One of them - theoretical poetics. 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.

133

ty and the terminology used by 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.

134 Structural and historical study of the fairy tale

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, the scientist for some reason applies his method to fairy tales, which does not interest the philosopher very much. But it never happens in science, and it never happened to me. The matter was quite different. Russian universities of tsarist times gave philologists a very weak literary training. In particular, folk poetry was in complete turmoil. To fill this gap, after graduating from the university, I took up the famous collection of 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. The old woman's own daughter 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 forms commit

136 Structural and historical study of the fairy tale

the same act. Afanasiev considers these tales to be different because different characters act. It seemed to me that these tales are the same because the actions of the characters are the same. 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 Conspiracy", "Morphology of a Fable", "Morphology of Comedy", etc. But the author by no means had the goal of studying all kinds of 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. Precise 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 himself to historical and comparative inquiries into the relation 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, i.e., that stage in the development of 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 whole, as a 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

140 Structural and historical study of the fairy tale

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 formalist study, and not every scholar who studies the artistic form of works of verbal or visual art is necessarily 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 thing, 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-

On present stage In the development of society, the problem of turning to Russian folklore as a historical source is topical. The chosen topic is especially relevant in the modern world, as it helps to trace the historical life of the people and get an idea of ​​their worldview and psychology. This knowledge makes it possible to understand history more deeply.

The history of folklore is inseparable from the history of the people. Researchers of such sciences as philosophy, history, philology, ethnography, archeology, etc. have been and are engaged in the study of folklore. The use of folklore material in history lessons in grades 6-7 is especially effective.

In the works of folklore, we can see the description of Russian cities. For example, according to epics, one can get an idea of ​​Kyiv, as it was before the defeat by the Tatar-Mongols in 1240. Kyiv is always called the capital city and great - it was for a long time the capital of the ancient Russian state. The city was surrounded by a city (city) wall, at the corners of the wall there were corner towers.

“Jump over the city wall, through that corner tower,” Batu, the leader of the enemy army, says to his ambassador in one of the epics. Almost all old Russian cities have preserved such walls and such towers. At first they were wooden, and then stone. We can find out what weapons the heroes had: a tight bow, red-hot arrows, a club, a Murzavets spear (from the Tatar word “murza” - “prince”), a dagger, and sometimes a saber.

In 6th grade, when studying the topic “The reign of Prince Vladimir and the baptism of Rus'”, you can use the epic about Vladimir’s matchmaking with Apraksia, the youngest daughter of the Politovsky king. Separate versions of the epic preserved the historically reliable answer heard by the prince’s matchmakers from the Politovsky king: “Yes, how your prince is small in himself,” and also: “And the prince - from Volodymyr and being a serf.” The chronicle under 980 tells that even during the reign in Novgorod, Vladimir sent matchmakers to Polotsk to ask Prince Rogvolod for the hand of his daughter Rogneda. The proud Polotsk princess refused the ambassadors, saying that she did not want to “take off the shoes of the robichich”. In the wedding ceremony, “undress the groom” meant becoming a wife, and “robichich” meant the son of a slave (Vladimir was indeed the son of the housekeeper Malusha and Prince Svyatoslav). Rogneda insulted the prince. Vladimir ruined Polotsk and took Rogneda as his wife by force. The Principality of Polotsk was located on the western outskirts of the Russian lands and later, for some time, was included within the borders of Lithuania. Therefore, epics speak of “Politovskaya land”.

Talking about the invasion of Batu into Rus', one can cite an excerpt from the epic “Ilya and Kalin-Tsar”.

A lot of force is driven,
As from a cry from a human,
Like the neighing of a horse.
The human heart desponds;
Mother earth shook from the army;
There was no red sun to be seen in the horse top,
And the bright moon from a pair of horses faded west ...

The noise of convoys captured by the epic, screams, neighing, suffocating horse fumes, dust that darkened the sky are historically reliable.

The epic talks about how events could have turned out if the mutual enmity and disagreement between the prince and the soldiers had been forgotten. The name of the leader of the Tatar hordes does not correspond to the name of the historical Batu. Kalin is a slightly distorted common noun for the biblical killer Cain.

In the study of the political life of Novgorod XII - XIII centuries. you can use the epic about Stavra. Stavr is a historical figure. He really lived in Novgorod in the X-XI centuries. and was the leader of a hundred. In the epic, Stavr is a merchant-usurer. He boasts of lending money to the poor. The prince of Kiev is angry with Stavr for his boasting. What is the reason for his anger? Here it should be said about the existence of the charter of Vladimir Monomakh on interest. The Kiev prince, wishing to weaken the power of the Novgorod usurers, limited them in collecting interest on growth. Vladimir was angry with Stavr for his boast of wealth.

The events of epics are of great importance for the fate of the people and the state. The epics poetically depict the military-political clashes and social situations characteristic of Ancient Rus'.

Bylin "About Vasily Buslaev" reproduces the struggle of Novgorod political parties. Since childhood, Vaska Buslaev has had a spirit of hostility towards the trading post. Especially often he beats his peers from the suburb. Posad peasants threaten to “make the river Volkhov dirty” - to drown Vaska: convicts in Novgorod were thrown off the bridge. This is how serious crimes were punished. To protect himself, Vaska recruits a squad. Eminent Novgorod people kept armed servants with them. Vaska is of a noble family, literate and rich. The squad was not just good fellows, able to withstand the blow of a scarlet elm on a violent head. They are united by a common hostility to the settlement. These are people from different classes and even from other cities. Among them - Kostya Novotorzhanin, a daring from Novy Torzhok, two brothers are mentioned - a boyarch and men from some Zalesye - “Zaleshana”, “Sbrodovichi brothers”, roamers, the prototype of the “Ushkuiniki”, who went in boats far beyond the borders of Novgorod land. Vaska and his comrades appear at the feast, where the townspeople have gathered, and start a quarrel. The belligerents hit on a mortgage - to give the beaten all the state and be in submission. The side of the settlement was taken by the prince, the archbishop. Vaska threatens to beat “the whole of Novgorod”, although he means precisely the settlements - “men of Novgorod”, “rich merchants”. Posad took so much power in Novgorod that it connected with the concept of the city. In the same sense, “the whole of Novgorod” is also named in the ancient acts of business writing. Vaska's dispute with the trading post reproduces a serious urban clash. In Novgorod XII-XIII centuries. ball very strong "Suzdal party", which consisted of wealthy merchants. Their benefits depended on ties with the northeastern principalities. With the enmity of Novgorod with the Vladimir-Suzdal principalities, they suffered losses. Speaking against wealthy merchants, Vaska fights against the grand ducal claims to power over Novgorod.

Novgorod in epics is glorious and great. The peculiar life of the trading republic is widely shown. There are no military feats here. The trading power of Novgorod, its wealth, its rivalry with Moscow are described. It contains many details of the life of a medieval city - for example, fistfights are depicted - a favorite pastime of the ancient Novgorodians.

In the 7th grade, studying the period of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, one can refer to the historical song “The Capture of the Kazan Khanate”. The capture of the Kazan Khanate in 1552 was approved by the people. Regardless of the particulars in the depiction of the siege of Kazan, the song variants speak in the most detailed way about what happened near its walls. The gunners rolled a barrel of gunpowder into a tunnel under the Kazan wall and placed a candle on one of them. The candle will burn down to the base - an explosion will occur and destroy the wall. The same candle for control was placed in the field near the royal tent. And then the outer candle burned out, and the one in the dungeon should also burn out, but there is no explosion. The tsar-sovereign "gets angry - gets angry", wants to execute the gunners of the lighters. He suspected treason. All the big people were frightened, and the young gunner stepped forward and said:

“Oh, you are a goy, Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich!
Do not order, sovereign, to execute, hang,
Order you, sovereign, to pronounce the word.
In the wind, the candle will soon burn,
In the wilderness, a candle glows for a long time.

He just spoke out - barrels of gunpowder exploded. Russian soldiers entered the gap, and Kazan fell. The singers said that the king is suspicious, he sees treason even where it does not exist. The sharpness of the song's intention is understandable if we recall that in Rus' under Ivan the Terrible there was a mass extermination of the innocent population. The singers portrayed many authentic features of the siege of Kazan. In many variants, the “topography” of the siege is also reproduced:

Approached the Kazan kingdom for fifteen miles,
They became a mine under Bulat (Bulak) - the river,
They came under another under the river - the river under Kazanka ...

The river Sviyaga, Sviyazhsk-fortress, Sulai-river are also mentioned.

The historical song about Ivan the Terrible's anger at his son Fyodor is very interesting. In it, the people expressed their attitude to the oprichnina. The evidence of folklore is all the more valuable because Grozny's biography has been completely silent for a number of years and there is no information about his family relationships and affairs.

According to the variants, the song names the reason for Ivan the Terrible's anger at Fedor in different ways. As if he opposed his father - he saved the inhabitants of the cities in which the king committed mass executions. The cities in which, according to the songs, executions took place are different: Novgorod, Pskov, Moscow, even Tsargrad, but most often the name is missing. Numerous indications are also indicative of the scale of the coverage of the country by repressions. Grozny himself and his henchmen from the oprichnina with Malyuta Skuratov at the head are depicted as tormentors. On the street where they were traveling, “and the chicken did not drink” - all living things were exterminated: the king “cut everyone, and stabbed, and planted on a stake”.

Fedor confronts the tsar and the oprichnina. Terrible appears hasty in action and wrong. Singing Malyuta Skuratov is a real historical person, Grigory Skurata-Belsky. His name became a household name, a synonym for the executioner.

In the 7th grade, studying the history of the Time of Troubles, a song about Grigory Otrepyev can be cited as an example. In it, the people denounce the impostor. He is a violator of good Orthodox customs. Otrepiev married “Marishka the daughter of Yuryevna” not on the “decree day”. This is stated in the earliest song that has come down to us in the recording:

And the wedding was on a spring holiday,
On the spring holiday, Mikolin's day:
Mikolin's day was on Friday,
And Grishka had a wedding on Thursday...

The wedding of Gregory and Marina Mniszech was really played on Thursday, May 8, 1606, on the eve of St. Nicholas Day. The song says that the Moscow boyars are going to the matins, “Grishka and Marishka went to the bayna”, the boyars go from the matins, and “Grishka and Marishka from the bayna go”. Inappropriate behavior exposed the impostor as both a sinner and a violator of piety.

Also of interest to history is a song about the hero of the liberation struggle, the governor - Prince Mikhail Vasilyevich Skopin-Shuisky. The nephew of Tsar Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky, the young governor Skopin, became famous for his brilliant victories over his enemies. Under the agreement of 1609, acting at the will of the king, he managed to get a mercenary Swedish army. Combining his actions with the actions of the Volga rati F.I. Sheremetiev, he began a liberation campaign in May. Victories were won in districts along the Volga, in the Vladimir-Suzdal land, the siege was lifted from the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, Dmitrov was taken. In March 1610, Moscow greeted the winners with a bell ringing, and in April, at the moment of its highest fame and glory, the successful young governor died. This happened after the christening at Prince I.M. Vorotynsky. The song gives an idea of ​​the event and the mood of that time. The death of Skopin is mourned by the "guests" of Moscow: these are artisans and merchants, the predominant part of the inhabitants of Moscow.

“And now our heads are bent,
What did not become our governor
Vasilyevich Prince Mikhail!
Otherwise they perceive the news of the "princes-boyars" -
And among themselves they the word was spoken,
And they said a word, grinned:
“High the falcon has risen
And I hurt the earth on the mother’s cheese!”

Names of ill-wishers are named. Among them - "Mstislavskaya, Prince Vorotynskaya." F.I. Mstislavsky - the head of the seven boyars who replaced Vasily Shuisky. I.M.Vorotynsky is his associate, an influential boyar. At the christening, it was at Vorotynsky's, as they said in Moscow, that Skopin was poisoned.

The mention of the sadness of the “Svetsky Germans” is very interesting. All foreigners were called "Germans" as if they did not speak Russian. The Swedes mourned the commander - they were connected with Skopin by military affairs, and their grief was an expression of personal affection for the successful commander.

The Germans ran to Nov-gorod
And they locked themselves in Nove-Gorod.

Indeed, the remnants of the Swedes-mercenaries after the defeat near Smolensk, led by Jacob Delagardie, retreated to Novgorod, and a year later, in 1611, here, taking advantage of the current situation, they began to act against the Novgorodians.

And many world-people have been destroyed,
And turned into the Latin land.

The song about Skopin directly echoes the “Scripture on the Presentation and Burial of Prince Mikhail Vasilievich Shuisky, recommended by Skopin”. It is believed that "Scripture" was created on the basis of folk songs.

The creators of the song “Yaik is flowing quickly, snatching steep banks ...” call Razin “the soul of a thieves' chieftain”. The words "thieves", "thief" in modern meaning associated with a negative assessment. In the old language, others used it in a condemning sense: “thief”, and theft was accordingly called “tatba”. “Theft” was not called a secret, but an open attack. For this reason, the combination “the soul of a thieves' chieftain” did not contain a contradiction and an openly negative meaning .. The song said a lot to the contemporaries of these events. The Razin community united people loyal to each other. Their rallying around “father” Stepan was so close and close that his fellows called themselves “sons”.

Thus, we see that folk poetry, having originated in ancient times, for a long time, before the advent of writing, was the only “unwritten history” of the people, artistically reflecting the most important stages of its life. Folklore for many centuries served the people both as a “textbook of life”, passing on from generation to generation their wisdom, worldly philosophy, ethics, and as a means of educating character, the best human qualities: patriotism, courage, courage, stamina, honesty, kindness. Folklore is a true encyclopedia of the poetic knowledge of the people, which gives a complete picture of the ideological and aesthetic riches of their work. Therefore, folk works are the most valuable material for studying the popular worldview of many centuries and its historical evolution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Anikin V.P. Russian oral folk art: Textbook / V.P. Anikin. - M .: Higher. school, 2001. - 726s.
2. Bakhtin V.S. From the epic to the counting rhyme: Tales of folklore / Republished .; rice. S. Islands. - L .: Det. lit., 1988. - 191s., ill.
3. Epics / Compilation, introductory article and notes by S.N. Azbelev.-L .: Lenizdat, 1984.-398s. - (B-ka of folk poetry).
4. Bychko A.K. Folk Wisdom of Rus': An Analysis of a Philosopher. - K .: Higher. school Publishing house at Kyiv. Univ., 1988. - 200p.
5. History of Russia from ancient times to the end of the 17th century / A.P. Novoseltsev, A.N. Sakharov, V.I. Buganov, V.D. Nazarov; resp. ed. A.N. Sakharov, A.P. Novoseltsev. - LLC "Publishing house AST-LTD", 1997. - 576 p., ill.
6. Putilov B.N. Russian historical and song folklore of the XIII-XVI centuries. M.-L., 1960.
7. Rybakov B.A. Ancient Rus'. Legends. Epics. Chronicles. M., 1963.
8. Shimbinago S.K. Ancient Russian dwelling according to epics // Anniversary collection in honor of Academician V.F. Miller. M., 1990.

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1. The social nature of folklore. In our time, the problems of folklore are becoming more and more relevant. Not a single human science - neither ethnography, nor history, nor linguistics, nor the history of literature can do without folklore materials and research. We are gradually beginning to realize that the clue to many and very diverse phenomena of spiritual culture lies in folklore. Meanwhile, folkloristics itself has not yet defined itself, its tasks, the specifics of its material and its own specifics as a science. True, in our science there are a number of works of a general theoretical nature. However Life is going forward at such a rapid pace that the provisions put forward in these works no longer satisfy, do not correspond to the extremely complex picture that has gradually been revealed to us as a result of persistent research work. To determine the subject and essence of our science, to establish its place among other related sciences, to determine the specifics of its material has become a matter of urgent necessity. The correctness of the methods and, consequently, of the conclusions also depends on the correct understanding of the essence and task of science. The formulation of general theoretical questions has not only a general cognitive, philosophical significance, but also helps to concretely resolve the research problems that confront us.

In Western Europe there is also no shortage of general theoretical work. However, these works as a whole satisfy us even less than the early Soviet works. Folkloristics is an ideological science. Its methods and attitudes are determined by the worldview of the era and reflect it. With the fall of the worldview, the principles of the science he created fall. We cannot be guided by scientific views created by romanticism or enlightenment or any other direction. Our task is to create science from the worldview of our era and our country.

The specifics of folklore 17

What is meant by "folklore" in the latest Western European science? To answer this question, it is enough to open any monograph under the appropriate title. So, if we take the book of the famous German folklorist Ion Meyer "Deutsche Volkskunde" (1921, "German Folklore"), then we will see the following sections there: village, buildings, courtyards; plants; customs; superstition; language; legends; fairy tales; folk songs; bibliography.

Such a picture is typical of all Western European science, predominantly German and French, and to a lesser extent - for English and American. The same picture, but with more specialization, is given by magazines. Here, for example, the smallest details of buildings, architraves, shutters, princelings, the construction of furnaces, utensils, household items, vessels, cradles, spinning wheels, costumes, hats, etc., etc. are studied. Along with this, ritual life is studied, weddings, holidays, as well as the entire field of poetic creativity: fairy tales, legends, songs, traditions, sayings, etc.

This picture is not accidental. It reflects a certain understanding by science of its tasks. The presuppositions or propositions on which this science is built may be reduced to the following:

1) the culture of one stratum of the population is studied, namely, the peasantry;

2) the subject of science is both material and spiritual culture;

3) the peasantry of only one people serves as the subject of science, namely, in most cases, its own, the one to which the researcher himself belongs.

None of these provisions can be accepted by us. Our science is entirely built on other foundations.

We, firstly, separate the realm of material and spiritual creativity and make them the subject of different, albeit related, related, mutually connected and dependent sciences. The view that the material and spiritual creativity of the peasantry can be studied by one science is essentially a noble view. This is not done for the culture of the ruling classes. The history of technology and architecture, on the one hand, and the history of literature or music, etc., on the other, are different sciences, because here are the upper strata of society. On the contrary, as far as the peasantry is concerned, the construction of ancient stoves and the rhythm of lyrical songs can be studied by the same science. We know perfectly well that there is the closest connection between material and spiritual culture, and yet we share

18 The specifics of folklore

The area of ​​material and spiritual creativity is exactly the same > as it is done for the culture of the upper classes. Folklore refers to spiritual creativity, and even; already, only verbal, poetic creativity. Since poetic creativity is in fact almost always associated with music, one can speak of musical folklore and single it out as a special folklore discipline.

Such an understanding of folklore has long been characteristic of Russian science. Thus, what we call folklore is not called folklore at all in the West. We call folklore that which in the West is called traditions populaires, tradizioni populari, Volksdichtung, etc., and which is not the subject of an independent science there. On the contrary, what is called folklore in the West, we do not consider science, but at best we recognize it as popular science of homeland studies. But whose poetic work is being studied? As we can see, peasant creativity is being studied in the West. To this it must be added that the modern peasantry is being studied, but only in so far as this modernity has preserved the past. Its subject is the "living antiquity" - an installation that we also kept for quite a long time.

Such a point of view is unacceptable for us because we study every phenomenon as a process in its motion. Folklore existed before the peasantry appeared on the historical arena in general. Approaching the matter historically, we will have to say that for pre-class peoples we will call folklore the creativity of the totality of these peoples. All the poetic creativity of primitive peoples is entirely folklore and serves as the subject of folklore. For peoples who have reached the stage of class development, we will call folklore the creativity of all strata of the population, except for the dominant one, whose creativity belongs to literature. First of all, this includes the creativity of the oppressed classes, like peasants and workers, but also of intermediate strata, gravitating towards the social ranks. So, one can still talk about petty-bourgeois folklore, but it is no longer possible to talk, for example, about the folklore of the nobility.

Finally, we see that in the West, folklore is understood as the peasant culture of one people, namely, in most cases, their own. The principle of selection here is quantitative and national. The culture of one people is the subject of one science, folklore, Volkskunde. The culture of all other peoples, including primitive ones, is the subject of another science, called very differently: anthropology

The specifics of folklore 19

Gia, ethnography, ethnology, ethnology - Volkerkun-de. There is no clear terminology.

Although we fully recognize the possibility of a scientific study of national cultures, nevertheless, such a principle is completely unacceptable for us, and it is easy to bring it to the point of absurdity. Indeed: if, suppose, a French scientist studies French songs, then this is folklore. If this scientist studies, for example, Albanian songs, then this is already ethnography. We must clearly oppose our point of view to such an understanding: the science of folklore embraces the creativity of all peoples, no matter who studies them. Folklore is an international phenomenon.

All of the above allows us to summarize our positions and say: folklore is understood as the creativity of the social lower classes of all peoples, at whatever stage of development they may be. For pre-class peoples, folklore is understood as the creativity of the totality of these peoples.

Here the question naturally arises: what is folklore in a classless society, in the conditions of our socialist reality?

It would seem that as a class phenomenon it would have to die out. However, after all, literature is a class phenomenon, but it does not die out. Under socialism, folklore loses its specific features as the work of the social rank and file, since we have neither the top nor the bottom, there is only the people. Therefore, folklore in our society becomes a national property in the full sense of the word. That which is inconsonant with the people in the new social situation dies off. The rest undergoes profound qualitative changes, approaching literature. What these changes are - this is yet to be shown by research, but it is clear that the folklore of the era of capitalism and the era of socialism cannot be the same.

2. Folklore and literature. All the foregoing determines only one side of the matter: this determines the social nature of folklore, but nothing has yet been said about all its other features.

The above features are clearly not enough to single out folklore as a special kind of creativity, and folkloristics as a special science. But they determine a number of other signs, already specifically folklore in essence.

First of all, let us establish that folklore is the product of a special kind of poetic creativity. But poetry is also literature. Indeed, between folklore and literature, between folklore and literary criticism, there is the closest connection.

20 The specifics of folklore

Literature and folklore, first of all, partially coincide in their poetic genres and genres. True, there are genres that are specific only to literature and are impossible in folklore (for example, the novel), and vice versa: there are genres that are specific to folklore and impossible in literature (for example, conspiracy). Nevertheless, the very fact of the existence of genres, the possibility of classifying here and there into genres, is a fact that belongs to the realm of poetics. Hence the commonality of some tasks and methods of studying literary criticism and folklore.

One of the tasks of folklore studies is the task of identifying and studying the category of genre and each genre separately, and this task is literary criticism.

One of the most important and most difficult tasks of folklore studies is the study of the internal structure of works, in short speaking, study compositions, building. A fairy tale, an epic, riddles, songs, conspiracies - all this has still little studied laws of addition, structure. In the field of epic genres, this includes the study of the plot, the course of action, the denouement, or, in other words, the laws of plot structure. The study shows that folklore and literary works are built differently, that folklore has its own specific structural laws. Literary criticism is unable to explain this specific regularity, but it can be established only by the methods of literary analysis.

The same area includes the study of means of poetic language and style. The study of the means of poetic language is a purely literary task. Here again it turns out that folklore has means specific to it (parallelisms, repetitions, etc.) or that the usual means of poetic language (comparisons, metaphors, epithets) are filled with a completely different content than in literature. This can only be established through literary analysis.

In short, folklore has a very special, specific poetics for it, different from the poetics of literary works. The study of this poetics will reveal the extraordinary artistic beauty inherent in folklore.

Thus we see that not only is there a close connection between folklore and literature, but that folklore as such is a phenomenon of a literary order. It is one of the types of poetic creativity.

Folkloristics in the study of this side of folklore, in its descriptive elements, is a literary science. The connection between these sciences is so close that between

The specifics of folklore 21

Folklore and literature and the corresponding sciences often put an equal sign in our country; the method of studying literature is wholly transferred to the study of folklore, and this is the end of the matter. However, literary analysis can, as we see, only establish the phenomenon and patterns of folklore poetics, but it is unable to explain them.

In order to protect ourselves from such a mistake, we must establish not only the similarities between literature and folklore, their relationship and to some extent consubstantial, but also establish the specific difference between them, determine their difference. Indeed, folklore has a number of specific features that distinguish it from literature so strongly that the methods literary research not enough to solve all the problems associated with folklore.

One of the most important differences is that literary works always and certainly have an author. Folklore works may not have an author, and this is one of the specific features of folklore.

The question must be posed with all possible precision and clarity. Or we recognize the existence of the people; creativity as such, as a phenomenon of the social and cultural historical life of peoples, or we do not recognize it, we affirm that it is a poetic or scientific fiction and that only the creativity of individual individuals or groups exists.

We stand on the point of view that folk art is not a fiction, but exists precisely as such, and that the study of it is the main task of folklore as a science. In this regard, we stand in solidarity with our old scientists, like F. Buslaev or O. Miller. What the old science felt instinctively, expressed still naively, clumsily, and not so much scientifically as emotionally, must now be cleansed of romantic errors and raised to the proper height. modern science with her thoughtful methods and precise techniques.

Brought up in the school of literary traditions, we often still cannot imagine that a poetic work could arise in any other way than a literary work arises through individual creativity. We all think that someone had to compose or put it together first. Meanwhile, completely different ways of the emergence of poetic works are possible, and the study of them is one of the main and very complex problems.

22 The specifics of folklore

Folkloristics. There is no way to go into the full breadth of this problem here. It suffices to point out here only that folklore should be genetically close not to literature, but to language, which is also not invented by anyone and has neither an author nor authors. It arises and changes quite naturally and independently of the will of people, wherever appropriate conditions have been created for this in the historical development of peoples. The phenomenon of universal similarity is not a problem for us. It would be inexplicable for us that there is no such similarity. The similarity indicates a pattern, and the similarity of folklore works is only a special case. historical pattern leading from the same forms of production of material culture to the same or similar social institutions, to similar tools of production, and in the field of ideology - to the similarity of forms and categories of thinking, religious ideas, ritual life, languages ​​and folklore. All this lives, is interdependent, changes, grows and dies.

Returning to the question of how to empirically imagine the emergence of folklore works, it will suffice here to point out at least that. folklore may initially constitute an integrating part of the rite. With the degeneration or fall of the rite, folklore is detached from it and begins to live. independent life. This is just an illustration of general position. Proof can only be given by specific research. But the ritual origin of folklore was already clear, for example, to A. N. Veselovsky in the last years of his life.

The difference cited here is so fundamental that it alone forces us to single out folklore as a special kind of creativity, and folkloristics as a special science. The historian of literature, wishing to study the origin of a work, seeks its author. The folklorist, with the help of broad comparative material, establishes the conditions that created the plot. But this difference is not limited to the difference between literature and folklore. They differ not only in their origin, but also in the forms of their existence, their existence.

It has long been known that literature is distributed by writing, folklore - by word of mouth. This difference is still considered a purely technical difference. However, this difference goes to the heart of the matter. It marks the deeply different life of these two types of poetic creativity. A literary work, once created, does not change. It works in the presence of two quantities:

The specifics of folklore 23

This is the author, the creator of the work, and the reader. The intermediate link between them is a book, manuscript or performance. If a literary work is unchanged, then the reader, on the contrary, is always changing. Aristotle was read by the ancient Greeks, Arabs, humanists, and we read it, but everyone reads and understands it differently. A true reader always reads creatively. A literary work can please, delight or revolt. He would often like to intervene in the fate of the heroes, reward or punish them, change their tragic fate to a happy one, and execute the triumphant villain. But the reader, no matter how deeply he may be moved by a literary work, is not able and has no right to make any changes to it to suit his personal tastes or the views of his era.

What is the situation with folklore in this respect? Folklore also exists in the presence of two quantities, but quantities different from what we have in the literature. This is the performer and the listener, directly, or rather, directly opposed to each other.

Let's focus our attention first on the performer. As a rule, he performs a work not created by him personally, but heard by him before. In this case, the performer can in no way be compared with the poet reading his work. But he is not a reciter of other people's works, not a reciter, accurately conveying someone else's work. This is a figure specific to folklore, full of the deepest interest for us and requiring the closest historical study from the primitive choir to the storyteller Kryukova and others. The performer does not repeat letter for letter what he heard, but makes his own changes to what he heard. Even if these changes are sometimes quite insignificant (but they can be very large), even if the changes that occur with folklore texts sometimes occur with the slowness of geological processes, the very fact of the variability of folklore works is important in comparison with immutability " works of literature.

If the reader of a literary work is, as it were, a powerless censor and critic deprived of any authority, then every listener of folklore is a potential future performer, who in turn - consciously or unconsciously - will introduce new changes into the work. These i changes are made not by chance, but by known laws. Everything that is not in tune with the era, the system, new moods, new tastes, new ideology. These new tastes will be discarded.

24 The specifics of folklore

Sy will affect not only what will be discarded, but also in what will be reworked and added. A significant (although not decisive) role is played by the personality of the narrator, his individual tastes, outlook on life, talents, and creative abilities. Thus, a folklore work lives in constant movement and change. Therefore, it cannot be fully studied if it is written down only once. It must be written the maximum number of times. We call each such entry a variant, and these variants are a completely different phenomenon than, for example, editions of a literary work created by the same person.

Thus, folklore works circulate, changing all the time, and this circulation and mutability is one of the specific features of folklore.

But literary works can also be drawn into the orbit of this folklore appeal. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain is told like a fairy tale, Lermontov's Sail, Delvig's The Nightingale, etc., etc. are sung.

How are we going to qualify this case? What do we have in this case - folklore or literature? The answer seems to be quite simple. If, for example, a lubok book, or life, etc., is recited by heart without any changes against the original, or “The Black Shawl” is sung exactly according to Pushkin, or from Nekrasov’s “Peddlers”, then this case is fundamentally not much different from a performance from the stage or wherever. But as soon as such songs begin to change, to be sung differently, to create variants, they already become folklore, and the process of their change is subject to the study of the folklorist.

Obviously, however, there is something else. There is an essential difference between the folklore of the first kind, which often dates back to prehistoric times and has variants on an international scale, and the poems of poets, freely performed and transmitted further by ear, there is an essential difference. In the first case, we have pure folklore, i.e., folklore both in origin and in circulation and circulation. In the second case, we have folklore of literary origin, which includes only one of its features, namely, folklore only in circulation, but literature in origin.

This difference should always be kept in mind when studying folklore. A song that we consider to be purely folklore, in fact, by origin, may turn out to be an author's, literary one. So, such, it would seem, purely folklore,

The specifics of folklore 25

Well-known songs like “Dubinushka” or “Because of the island on the rod” belong to little-known poets, one - to Trefolev, the other - to Sadovnikov. There are many such examples, and the study of these literary-folklore connections is one of the most interesting tasks of both the history of literature and folklore. In a broader aspect, this is a question about the book sources of folklore in general.

But this case brings us back to the above question of authorship in folklore. We took only two extreme cases. The first is folklore, individually created by no one, which arose back in prehistoric time in the system of any rite or otherwise, and survived in oral transmission to the present day. The second case is clearly an individual work of modern times, circulating as folklore. Between these two extreme points, in the course of the development of both folklore and literature, all forms of transition are possible, which here can neither be foreseen nor analyzed. This is a matter of concrete consideration in each case separately.

For any modern folklorist it is obvious that such questions are resolved, however, not descriptively, statistically, but in their development. The genetic study of folklore is only a part of its historical study, and this leads us to another question, to the question of folklore as a phenomenon not only of a literary, but also of a historical order, and of folklore as a historical, and not just a literary discipline.

3. Folklore and ethnography. In our time, all the humanities can only be historical. We consider every phenomenon in its movement, starting from its inception, tracing its development, flourishing and, perhaps, degeneration, fall, disappearance. This, however, does not mean that we are on the evolutionary point of view. Evolutionary science, having established and traced the fact of development, is limited to this. Genuine historical science requires not only the establishment of the very fact of development, but also its explanation. Poetic creativity there is a phenomenon of superstructural order. To explain means to elevate a phenomenon to the causes that created it, and these causes lie in the sphere of the economic and social life of peoples.

The science that studies the earliest forms of material life and the social organization of peoples is ethnography. Therefore, historical folklore, which studies the origin of phenomena, their first link, is based on ethnography. Ta-

26 The specifics of folklore

Some study is the first link in genuine historical study. Therefore, between folklore and ethnography there is the closest connection. Outside of ethnography there can be no materialistic study of folklore.

We still do not know exactly what exactly and to what extent is born in primitive society. In any case, a fairy tale, epic, ritual poetry, incantations, riddles as genres cannot be explained without the involvement of ethnographic data. And not only genres, but also many motifs (for example, the motif of a magical helper, marriage with an animal, the thirtieth kingdom, etc.) find their explanation in ideas and religious and magical practice at different stages of the development of human society. The involvement of ethnographic materials is important, however, not only for genetic study in the narrow sense of the word, but also for the study of initial development, because from forms of material and social life depends not only on the origin of genres, plots and motifs, but also on their future life and variability.

The implementation of this principle is interesting and fruitful only if it is given to the full extent of the material, penetrating into the smallest details of both folklore and ethnographic materials. It is not enough to say that the motif of noble animals is of totemic origin, that the Edda was created at the stage of decomposition of the tribal system, etc. This must be shown in such a way that there is no doubt about this, that is, on a very broad concrete comparative material. . So, for example, to study the marriage of a hero (and matchmaking is one of the most common motifs of myth, fairy tale and epic), it is necessary to study the forms of marriage that existed at various stages of the development of human society. Moreover, we need knowledge, and, moreover, if possible, detailed knowledge, of marriage rites and customs. For example, we want and must know exactly at what stages of development and among which nations the bridegroom is tested and what is the nature of this test. Only then will we properly understand the corresponding phenomena in folklore.

However, in the implementation of these principles, it is easy to fall into error, believing that folklore directly reflects social or domestic, or other relations. Folklore, especially at the early stages of its development, is not everyday life. The matter is extremely complicated and complicated by the fact that reality is not transmitted directly, but through the prism of certain thinking, and this thinking is so

The specifics of folklore 27

Personally, it is very difficult to compare many phenomena of folklore with anything else. Cause-and-effect relationships do not yet exist in the system of this thinking, other forms of connection predominate here, and which ones we often do not yet know. There are no generalizations yet, no abstractions, no concepts; the process of generalization here corresponds to some other, still little studied operations of thinking. Space and time are perceived differently than we perceive them. The categories of unity and plurality, the qualities of subject and object (identifying oneself with animals) play a completely different role than they play with us, in our thinking. What is recognized as real is what we never recognize as real, and vice versa. Primitive man sees the world of things differently than we do, and at different stages of development he sees it differently. Therefore, sometimes we will search in vain behind the folklore reality for everyday reality.

In folklore, people act in this way and not otherwise, not because it was so in reality, but because it seemed so according to the laws of primitive thinking. And consequently, this thinking and the whole system of the primitive worldview must be studied. Otherwise, neither the composition, nor the plots, nor individual motifs can be understood, or we run the risk of either falling into a kind of naive realism, or we will perceive the phenomena of folklore as grotesque, exotic, free play of unbridled fantasy.

There is no need to say here that one of the manifestations of this thinking are religious ideas, which have the closest connection with folklore.

Here, not only religious phenomena and mental images are important, but religious and magical practice, the whole set of ritual and other actions by which a primitive person thinks to influence nature and protect himself from it, is important. Folklore here itself will turn out to be part of the system of religious ritual practice.

From all that has been said, by the way, it is clear that the textual study of folklore, that is, the study of only texts taken without connection with the economic, social and ideological life of peoples, is a vicious method. Meanwhile, in the West, for the most part, only collections of texts are published; the scientific apparatus of such collections consists of indexes of motifs, plots, sometimes variants to them, but without any data about the people from whom it was collected, about the forms of existence and functions of folklore, about the specific conditions for performance and recording. All the above considerations are enough to see how close the connection between folklore and ethno-

28 The specifics of folklore

Graphics. Ethnography is especially important for us in the study of the genesis of folklore phenomena. Here ethnography forms the basis of the study of folklore, and without this base the study of folklore hangs in the air.

4. Folkloristics as a historical discipline. It is quite obvious, however, that the study of folklore cannot be limited to genetic research, and that far from everything in folklore goes back to primitiveness or is explained by it. New formations take place throughout the entire historical development of peoples. Folklore is a historical phenomenon, and folklore is a historical discipline. Ethnographic study is, as it were, the first stage of such historical study.

The task of historical study is to show, firstly, what happens to the old folklore under new historical conditions, and, secondly, to study the emergence of new formations.

Here, of course, it is impossible to establish all the processes that take place in folklore during the transition to new forms of social order or even during development within a given system. These processes take place everywhere with surprising uniformity. One of them is that the inherited folklore comes into conflict with the old social system that created it, and denies it. He denies it, of course, not directly, but denies the images he created, turning them into their opposite or giving them a reverse, condemning, negative coloring. Once holy turns into hostile, great - into harmful, evil or monstrous. But at the same time, the old is sometimes preserved without any special changes, coexisting peacefully with the New images and relationships. This is how folklore comes into conflict with itself, and there are always a lot of such contradictions in folklore. Thus, folklore formations are created not as a direct reflection of everyday life (this is a relatively rarer case), but from contradictions, from clashes of two eras or two ways of life and their ideology.

But the old and the new can be not only in a state of uncoordinated contradictions, but also enter into hybrid combinations. Both folklore and religious ideas are filled with such hybrid compounds. The dragon, the serpent is a combination of a worm, a bird and other animals. Marr showed how, with the domestication of the horse, the cult role of the bird passes to him. The horse becomes winged. From this it becomes clear flying ships, and winged chariots, etc. Study

The specifics of folklore 29

The cult role of fire will show why the horse enters into union with fire, becoming a fiery horse, and how the idea of ​​a fiery chariot is created, etc. Such hybrid connections are possible not only in the field of visual images, they are deeply hidden in the field of the most diverse representations and relations. By transferring the new to the old, entire plots can be created. Thus, it can be shown that the plot about the hero who kills his father and marries his mother, i.e. the plot of Oedipus, was created as a result of the transfer of hostile relations to the daughter's fiancé, son-in-law-heir, to the heir-son, and the role of the daughter the king, as the transferor of the throne through marriage, to the king's widow. Such formation is not accidental and not isolated, it is in the nature of folklore.

Finally, the old is simply rethought, and there are extremely many types of rethinking. Rethinking consists in changing the old according to the new life, new ideas, new forms of consciousness. Strictly speaking, transformation into its opposite is only one of the types of rethinking. The study of rethinking is not always an easy task, since changes can reach unrecognizability, and the disclosure of the original forms is possible only if there is a very large comparative material on different nations and stages of their development.

We call this kind of study staged study. Arranging the material according to the stages of development of peoples, understanding by "stage" the degree of culture, determined by the totality of signs of material, social and spiritual culture, we will have to get " historical poetics” in the true sense of the word, that historical poetics, the foundation of which was laid by Veselovsky.

The path indicated here is the historical path leading the study from the bottom up, from the old to the new. It must be said that ethnography and history do not yet help us enough in this respect. We do not have a clear periodization of the stages of development. Morgan's scheme, backed up by Engels, has not yet been worked out by anyone on a broad basis, not developed, not carried through to the end.

Along with such a bottom-up study, our science has adopted the reverse path from top to bottom, i.e., the reconstruction of early "mythological" foundations by analyzing late materials. Such a paleontological study, shown by Marr for language, is fundamentally correct and quite possible for folklore. But this way is more risky and difficult. It is necessary and inevitable where there are no immediate materials for the early stages. It may turn out that folklore

30 The specifics of folklore

For some peoples it will be a precious historical source, according to which the ethnographer reconstructs both the social system and the ideas of the people. Folklore, requiring historical study, can thus itself turn out to be a precious historical and ethnographic source.

The path of study outlined here represents the conquest of our science. In the West, the principle is still dominated not by stages, but by simple chronological study. The ancient material will always be considered older than the material recorded in our day. Meanwhile, from the stadial point of view, the ancient material may reflect a relatively late stage of the agricultural state, and the modern text - much earlier totemic | relationship.

It is obvious that each stage must have its own social system, its own ideology, its own artistic creativity. But the fact is that folklore, like other phenomena of spiritual culture, does not immediately register the change that has taken place and for a long time under new conditions retains the old forms. Since every nation always goes through several stages of its development, and all of them are reflected in folklore, settle in it, the folklore of any nation is always multi-stage, and this is one of its characteristic phenomena. The task of science is to stratify this complex conglomerate, and thereby recognize and explain it.

The process of reworking the old into the new is the main creative process in folklore, traceable to the present day. To say this does not at all mean to belittle the creative principle in folklore. The concept of "creativity" does not mean the creation of something completely new. The new naturally grows out of the old. Folklore is creatively active by its very nature and essence, but creativity is carried out on the basis of some laws, and not arbitrarily, and the task of science is to clarify these laws.

We know what happens among peoples whose folklore has been recorded in our time, among peoples of the most diverse stages of development and living in the most diverse conditions of nature, we know. But there are stages that are not currently represented by any living peoples, stages that have irrevocably receded into the past, and of whose folklore we therefore know nothing directly. This is the stage of the early slave-owning agricultural state, of different types and different natural and historical conditions, such as the Eastern states, Egypt, Greece, Rome were in antiquity. A folklorist who studies historically any material, whether it be a genre,

The specifics of folklore 31

Jet, motif or something else, here sees himself covered in nebula, for it is obvious that no one wrote down folklore in those days. This is all the more painful because this stage for the first time gives the right to talk about the formation of classes; this is a stage in the development of agriculture and agricultural cults, a stage in the formation of a new consciousness. It is obvious that profound changes must have taken place with folklore, about which we know nothing directly.

However, where there are no direct sources, there are indirect sources, which to some extent and sometimes still hypothetically allow filling this gap. When social differentiation leads to the formation of classes, creativity is differentiated in the same way. With the emergence of writing, a new formation arises among the ruling classes, namely (writing, fiction, i.e. fixing the word through its recording. We now know that this early, first literature is entirely or almost entirely folklore. The beginning of literature is listed on writing folklore, "and consequently, the position for the researcher is no longer hopeless. This means that the study of ancient literatures, such as the Egyptian "Book of the Dead", the myth of Gilgamesh, the myths of ancient Greece, ancient tragedy and comedy, etc. is mandatory for a folklorist. True, this is not just folklore, but folklore in reflections and refractions If we have managed to correct for the priestly ideology, for the new state and class consciousness, for the specificity of the new literary forms developed and created by this consciousness, we will be able to see behind this motley picture of its folklore background.

Here folklorist and literary critic will meet in their aspirations. What happens to folklore and literature at this stage of development is of the greatest importance for understanding the history of spiritual culture in general. Folklore is the bosom of literature, it is born from folklore. Folklore is the prehistory of literature. All the literature of the peoples of this stage can and must be studied on the basis of folklore. Thus, the transmission process basically goes from the bottom up; it can be traced in feudalism in all its varieties, it is clear in the folklore and literature of the Mongolian peoples, it becomes clear for European Middle Ages. Already in other forms, we see the use of folklore sources in the literature of the late 18th and all of the 19th centuries, and it exists today. In this article there is no need to show this with examples, this is a matter of special investigations.

32 The specifics of folklore

This process is natural and historically conditioned. Therefore, any attempts to assert the opposite phenomenon, to depict folklore as a "descended cultural heritage" (that is, descended from the social elites) are not scientific. Such statements are usually based on the fact that the people sing songs created by the ruling class. Indeed, such songs are sung. But to erect this particular phenomenon in general principle there is a profound mistake inherent in alien and hostile worldview systems.

Literature born from folklore soon leaves the mother who nursed it. Literature is the product of a different form of consciousness, which can conditionally be called individual consciousness. This does not mean that it is carried out through an individual cut off from the environment; this, on the contrary, means that the individual represents this environment and his people, but represents them in his individual, unique personal creativity.

On the other hand, in the social ranks, creativity continues on the old foundations, sometimes in relationship with the creativity of the ruling class. It is passed from mouth to mouth, and we have already given its specific features above. It only needs to be added here that it (in our country right up to the October Revolution, and in the West up to the present day) is determined by other forms of consciousness than the creativity of the upper classes. If the old science called this creativity "unconscious" or "impersonal", then these terms may not be very precise and do not exhaust the essence of the matter, but they reflect some thought that is itself true. Suffice it to say that Marx even characterized Greek mythology as "nature and social" forms that have already received unconscious artistic processing in folk fantasy "(our detente). If Marx is not afraid of this word, then we have no reason to avoid it. Our business is to develop and clarify What is hidden under this, but we cannot get around this problem of the specifics of folk art, as an act of still little studied forms of consciousness.

Like any genuine art, folklore has not only artistic perfection, but also a deep ideological content. The disclosure of this ideological content is one of the tasks of folklore. The old science in the person of Buslaev and his followers was again right when they saw in him the expression of the moral foundations of the people, although, perhaps, they saw these foundations and ideals not where we now see them. The ideological and emotional content of Russian folklore can be briefly reduced not to the concept of good, but to the category

The specifics of folklore

Rii fortitude. This is the same strength of spirit that leads our people to victory. The study of Russian folklore shows that Russian folk art is saturated with historical awareness to the strongest degree. This can be seen both in the heroic epic, and in historical songs, and later in songs from the times of the Civil and Patriotic Wars. A people with such an intensity of historical consciousness and with such an understanding of its historical tasks can never be defeated.