What type of writer is typical for Russian literature. General characteristics of the literature of the XIX century

Speaking of copyists of books in ancient Rus', we should also mention our chroniclers

Almost every monastery had its own chronicler, who brief notes records information about the most important events of his time. It is believed that the chronicles were preceded by calendar notes, which are considered the founder of any chronicle. According to their content, the annals can be divided into 1) state annals, 2) family or tribal annals, 3) monastery or church annals.

Family chronicles are compiled in the genera of service people in order to see public service all ancestors.

The sequence observed in the annals is chronological: the years are described one after another.

If in some year nothing remarkable happened, then nothing is recorded against this year in the annals.

For example, in the chronicle of Nestor:

“In the summer of 6368 (860). In the summer of 6369. In the summer of 6370. Expelling the Varangians across the sea, and not giving them tribute, and more often in their own hands; and there is no truth in them ....

In the summer of 6371. In the summer of 6372. In the summer of 6373. In the summer of 6374, Askold and Dir went to the Greeks ... "

If a “sign from heaven” happened, the chronicler noted it as well; if it was solar eclipse, the chronicler innocently wrote down that such and such a year and date "the sun died."

The Monk Nestor, a monk of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, is considered the father of the Russian chronicle. According to the studies of Tatishchev, Miller and Schlozer, he was born in 1056, entered the monastery at the age of 17 and died in 1115. His chronicle has not been preserved, but a list from this chronicle has come down to us. This list is called the Laurentian List, or the Laurentian Chronicle, because it was written off by the Suzdal monk Lavrenty in 1377.

In the Paterik of Pechersk it is said about Nestor: “that he is contented with the summer, laboring in the affairs of chronicle writing and remembering the eternal summer.”

The Laurentian Chronicle is written on parchment, on 173 sheets; up to the fortieth page it is written in an ancient charter, and from page 41 to the end - in a semi-charter. The manuscript of the Laurentian Chronicle, which belonged to Count Musin-Pushkin, was presented by him to Emperor Alexander I, who presented it to the Imperial Public Library.

Of the punctuation marks in the annals, only a period is used, which, however, rarely stands in its place.

This chronicle included events up to 1305 (6813).

The Lavrentiev chronicle begins with the following words:

“Behold the tales of bygone years, where did the Russian land come from, who in Kyiv began before the prince and where did the Russian land come from.

Let's start this story. After the flood, the first sons of Noah divided the earth .... ”, etc.

In addition to the Laurentian Chronicle, the Novgorod Chronicle, the Pskov Chronicle, the Nikon Chronicle are known, so named because the “sheets have a signature (clip) of Patriarch Nikon, and many others. Friend.

In total, there are up to 150 variants or lists of annals.

Our ancient princes ordered that everything that happened under them, good and bad, be entered into the annals, without any concealment or embellishment: “our first sovereigns without anger commanded to describe all the good and bad who happened to be described, and other images of the phenomenon will be based on them.”

During the period of civil strife, in case of any misunderstanding, the Russian princes sometimes turned to the annals as written evidence.

The first Russian books

• Chronicles were the first Russian books

• chronicle - a genre of narrative literature in Russia in the 11th-17th centuries

• Chronicles were all-Russian and local

• Preserved mainly in later lists

The origin of chronicle writing

• Chronicle writing originated in Kyiv and Novgorod in the 11th century

• The first Russian books were created in monasteries

The authors of the first books

• Chronicle writing was done by monks specially trained by senior masters.

• The first books were written by hand parchment , quill pen, black and red ink

Chronicler's work

• The work of the chronicler required a lot of effort and attention

• The scribes worked from dawn to dusk

• To distract themselves a little, they made postscripts in the margins:

book design

• Stitched parchment sheets were placed between two boards that served as a cover at that time.

• The cover was covered with leather, often decorated with precious stones, copper inserts.

• The text of the chronicle consisted of weather (compiled by years) records

• Each entry begins with the words:

• "In the summer such and such", followed by a message about what happened in this "summer" that is, the year

• Since then, the expression “how old are you?”

How chronicles were written

• Entries related to the same year are called articles.

• The book was written in two columns in black ink.

• Capital letters were written with cinnabar - red paint

• Articles went in a row, standing out only with a red line

Types of chronicle writing

• Old Russian books written charter And

• half charter

• Messages were long, detailed stories, and were very short:

• "Into the summer 6898 there was pestilence in Pskov, as if there were no currents; where you have dug up one, that and five and ten you will put ”

• "Into the summer 6752 don't be nothing"

• The chronicler gave titles to some articles

The first Russian book

• « Tale of Bygone Years» - this is the name in historical science of the oldest of the chronicles that have come down to us, entitled with the following words:

What is the "Story" about?

• "The Tale of Bygone Years" tells about the origin of Rus', the princes, the events of the initial period of Russian history

The time of the creation of the "Tale"

• The compilation of the "Tale" refers to the XI - the beginning of the XII centuries

• This collection is also called the Nestor Chronicle, a temporary Nestor , the original chronicle

• Nestor is the author of the first edition of The Tale of Bygone Years

Authorship of chronicles

• Chronicle writing was carried out at the behest of one or another prince

• But the chronicler always wrote "all good and bad", without embellishing reality

• Chroniclers, with rare exceptions, did not indicate their names

The role of books in society

• Chronicle was an official document

• Highly valued were people who could "speak" according to the annals, that is, they knew their content well.

Review questions

• What is the name of the most ancient monuments of Russian literature?

• How the first Russian books were created?

• Who was author the first Russian chronicle and what was it called?

• How do you imagine a Russian chronicler, what qualities did he possess?

• Phraseological turnover has been preserved in speech to this day "read from board to board""fully". How do you explain its origin and what does it mean?

• What is the history of the origin of phraseology "from the red line"?

• Do you want to get acquainted with the content of Russian chronicles? What, they can interest modern readers?

CHRONICLE- in Rus' were conducted from the 11th to the 18th centuries. Until ser. 16th century, time Ivan the Terrible, they were the main type of historical narrative, only from that time "yielding primacy to another historiographic genre - chronographs . L. were compiled in monasteries, at the courts of princes (and then kings), in the offices of metropolitans. Chroniclers were almost never private individuals, but carried out an order or order from spiritual or secular rulers, reflecting the interests of certain groups of people. That is why L. often contradicted each other not only in their assessments of events, but also in the actual basis, which creates significant difficulties for researchers of chronicle writing and historians who, on the basis of L., recreate the actual course of events.

In terms of their structure, ancient Russian legends represented sets of weather articles, i.e., reports on events that occurred in each year.

Russian chronicle writing has a long history. With the current level of knowledge, it is not yet possible to establish when they began to keep records of historical events, replacing the previous form of historical knowledge - oral stories, traditions and legends. According to the majority of scientists, followers of Acad. A. A. Shakhmatova, L. takes on a stable form and begins to be systematically conducted from the middle. 11th century The oldest L. that has come down to us is The Tale of Bygone Years. Already this chronicle of the beginning. 12th century what distinguishes it is the combination of actual weather records with monuments of other genres and even documents. The Tale of Bygone Years contains texts of treaties with Byzantium, legends about the emergence of the Kiev Caves Monastery, a presentation of sacred history in the form of a “philosopher’s” story that prompted Prince Vladimir to adopt the Christian faith, etc. L. will retain this syncretic character later in further. Of particular interest are the so-called chronicle stories - plot stories about the most significant events in national history.

To date, several hundred lists of L. have been preserved (some L. are known in several lists, others in the only ones), and scientists have identified at least several dozen chronicles. Strictly speaking, each L. is a code, since it combines - in a revised, abbreviated or, on the contrary, supplemented form - the previous L. and records of events recent years or decades belonging to the chronicler himself. The consolidated nature of L. made possible the path of research into the chronicle, which was discovered and developed by Acad. Chess. If two or more L. up to a certain year coincide with each other, then it follows that either one was written off from the other (this is rare), or they had a common source that reached that year. Shakhmatov and his followers succeeded in identifying a whole chain of chronicle collections that preceded the L. XIV-XVII centuries that have come down to us: the collections of the XIV, XV and earlier centuries, up to the XI century. Of course, determining the exact date and place of compiling the codes is hypothetical, but these hypotheses, based on the texts that have actually come down to us and the relationship between them, allow us to navigate in the monuments included in the series that has been published for a hundred and fifty years - “The Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles” (PSRL ).

The chronicle containing the exposition of the ancient history of Rus' is the Tale of Bygone Years. L. South Russian principalities XII-XIII centuries. came to us as part of the Ipatievskaya L. (see. Chronicle Ipatievskaya ). Chronicles of Rostov the Great, Vladimir and Pereyaslavl of Suzdal, late XII-beginning. 13th century best preserved in the composition of the Lavrentievskaya and Radzivilovskaya L. (see. Annals of Lavrentievskaya , Chronicle Radzivilovskaya ), as well as the Chronicler of Pereyaslavl of Suzdal. The annalistic code, associated with Metropolitan Cyprian and brought to 1408, came to Troitskaya L., which burned down in the Moscow fire of 1812. Its text was reconstructed by M. D. Priselkov (Trinity Chronicle: Reconstruction of the text - M .; L., 1950 ).

Around 1412, an annalistic code was created in Tver, reflecting the supplemented revision of the all-Russian annalistic code of the end of the 14th-beginning. XV century., Close to Troitskaya L. It was reflected in Simeonovskaya L. (PSRL. - T. 18) and the Rogozhsky chronicler (PSRL. - T. 15. - Issue 1). Another source of the Rogozhsky chronicler was the Tver code of 1375, which was also reflected in the Tver collection of the 16th century. (PSRL.-T. 15). Of particular interest is the all-Russian, so-called Novgorod-Sofia code, compiled, apparently, in the 30s. 15th century (it is often defined as “the code of 1448”) and included expanded chronicle stories about the battle on Kalka, the invasion of Batu and stories about the struggle of the princes of Tver with the Tatars, which were absent in Troitskaya L., lengthy editions of the stories about the Battle of Kulikovo, the story about the invasion of Tokhtamysh, “A WORD ABOUT THE LIFE OF DMITRY DONSKOY” and so on. This code, compiled, apparently, at the metropolitan see during the feudal war in Moscow, combined the all-Russian chronicle with the Novgorod one. The code came to Sofia L. I (PSRL.-T. 5; 2nd ed. not completed: in 1925 only the first issue of this volume was published) and Novgorod IV L. (V. 4, issue 1 and 2; 2nd ed. not completed).

The first monuments of the Moscow grand ducal chronicle, which have come down to us, were formed no earlier than ser. 15th century The chronicle of 1472 was reflected in the Vologda-Perm Leningrad (PSRL.-T. 26) and Nikanorovskaya L. (PSRL.-T. 27). It was based on the Novgorod-Sofia code, edited by the Grand Duke's chronicler (who excluded, in particular, the mention of Novgorod liberties). A more radical revision of the previous chronicle was carried out by the grand ducal archers in the late 70s. XV century: The Novgorod-Sofia arch was connected with the arch close to Troitskaya L. (with censored processing of the material from both sources), and with other monuments. The Grand Duke Moscow chronicle of 1479, which reflected this revision, formed the basis of all official chronicle writing at the end of the 15th-16th centuries. It has been preserved in an unpublished list of the 18th century. (in the Hermitage collection in the National Library of Russia), and its later edition, brought to 1492, was published in the 25th volume of PSRL

Great philosophers have often said that people who do not know their past have no future. The history of one's family, one's people, one's country should be known at least so that one does not have to make the same discoveries and make the same mistakes.

The sources of information about the events of the past are official documents of the state level, records of religious, social, educational institutions, preserved eyewitness accounts and much more. Chronicles are considered the oldest documentary source.

The chronicle is one of the genres of Old Russian literature that existed from the 11th to the 17th centuries. At its core, this is a consistent presentation of events significant for history. The records were kept by year, and they could vary greatly in terms of volume and details of presentation of the material.

What events deserved to be mentioned in chronicles?

First, this turning points in the biography of Russian princes: marriage, the birth of heirs, the beginning of the reign, military exploits, death. Sometimes the Russian chronicles described miracles coming from the relics of the deceased princes, for example, Boris and Gleb, the first Russian saints.

Secondly, the chroniclers paid attention to the description of celestial eclipses, solar and lunar, epidemics of serious diseases, earthquakes, etc. Chroniclers often tried to establish a relationship between natural phenomena And historical events. For example, a defeat in a battle could be explained by the special position of the stars in the sky.

Thirdly, the ancient chronicles told about the events state importance: military campaigns, attacks by enemies, construction of religious or administrative buildings, church affairs, etc.

Common features of famous chronicles

1) If you remember what a chronicle is, you can guess why this genre of literature got such a name. The fact is that instead of the word "year" the authors used the word "summer". Each entry began with the words "In summer", followed by an indication of the year and a description of the event. If, from the point of view of the chronicler, nothing significant happened, then a note was put - "In the summer of XXXX, there was silence." The chronicler had no right to completely skip the description of this or that year.

2) Some Russian chronicles do not begin with the appearance Russian state, which would be logical, but from the creation of the world. Thus, the chronicler sought to inscribe the history of his country in the general human history, to show the place and role of his homeland in the modern world for him. Dating was also conducted from the creation of the world, and not from the Nativity of Christ, as we do now. The interval between these dates is 5508 years. Therefore, the entry "In the summer of 6496" contains a description of the events of 988 - the Baptism of Rus'.

3) For work, the chronicler could use the works of his predecessors. But he not only included the materials they left in his narrative, but also gave them his political and ideological assessment.

4) The chronicle differs from other genres of literature in its special style. The authors did not use any artistic techniques to embellish your speech. The main thing for them was documentary and informative.

The connection of the chronicle with literary and folklore genres

The special style mentioned above, however, did not prevent chroniclers from periodically resorting to oral folk art or other literary genres. Ancient chronicles contain elements of legends, legends, heroic epic, as well as hagiographic and secular literature.

Turning to the toponymic legend, the author sought to explain where the names of the Slavic tribes, ancient cities and the whole country came from. Echoes of ritual poetry are present in the description of weddings and funerals. Epic techniques could be used to depict the glorious Russian princes and their heroic deeds. And to illustrate the life of the rulers, for example, the feasts they arrange, there are elements of folk tales.

Hagiographic literature, with its clear structure and symbolism, provided the chroniclers with both material and a method for describing miraculous phenomena. They believed in the intervention of divine forces in human history and reflected this in their writings. Elements of secular literature (teachings, stories, etc.) were used by the authors to reflect and illustrate their views.

Texts of legislative acts, princely and church archives, and other official documents were also woven into the fabric of the narrative. This helped the chronicler to give the most complete picture of important events. And what is a chronicle if not a comprehensive historical description?

The most famous chronicles

It should be noted that the chronicles are divided into local, which became widespread during the time of feudal fragmentation, and all-Russian, describing the history of the entire state. The list of the most famous is presented in the table:

Until the 19th century, it was believed that The Tale of Bygone Years was the first chronicle in Rus', and its creator, monk Nestor, was the first Russian historiographer. This assumption was refuted by A.A. Shkhmatov, D.S. Likhachev and other scientists. The Tale of Bygone Years has not survived, but its individual editions are known from lists in more than later works- Laurentian and Ipatiev Chronicles.

Chronicle in the modern world

TO late XVII centuries of chronicle have lost their historical meaning. More accurate and objective ways of fixing events have appeared. History began to be studied from the positions of official science. And the word "chronicle" has additional meanings. We no longer remember what a chronicle is when we read the headings “Chronicle of the life and work of N”, “Chronicle of a museum” (of a theater or any other institution).

There is a magazine, a film studio, a radio program called "Chronicle", and amateurs computer games I'm sure you're familiar with Arkham Origins.

A. When and who wrote chronicles?

It would be nice to start by parsing the text itself. I would like to remind the reader that historians do not have a common idea of ​​who, when, where and on the basis of what sources the Tale of Bygone Years was written. Or rather, no now. For a long time, since the beginning of the 20th century, after classical works A. A. Shakhmatov on the history of Russian chronicle writing, it was believed that there were three editions of the PVL, brought, respectively, to 1111 by the monk of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery Nestor (or rather, Nester, as A. L. Nikitin rightly pointed out, it was written on the very in fact, the name of the author of "Readings on Boris and Gleb" and "The Life of Theodosius"), until 1116 hegumen of the Vydubitsky monastery Sylvester and until 1118 a certain clergyman close to Mstislav Vladimirovich. In addition, the presence of more ancient chronicles used by the authors of the Tale was assumed. Shakhmatov considered the year 1073 to be the oldest date in the annalistic code (“the most ancient”, according to its designation). Later historians could not agree with the authorship of one or another edition, the dating of the previous codes (while often deepening them into antiquity, right up to the end of the 10th century), but the main provisions of the chess concept remained unchanged.

Only in the second half of the 20th century, primarily through the efforts of A. G. Kuzmin, was it sufficiently convincingly shown that Nestor had nothing to do with the first edition of the PVL. This follows at least from the fact that the works that clearly belong to him (“Readings about Boris and Gleb” and “The Life of Theodosius”) are not only written in a different style, but even differ in facts from the Tale of Bygone Years. I will send those interested to initial stages ancient Russian chronicle. And here, in order not to be unfounded, I will at least mention that in the annals Boris (the first Russian saint) reigned in Rostov, and in the Readings ... in Vladimir Volynsky. And his brother Gleb lived, according to "Readings ...", in Kyiv and fled from there to the north on a ship. According to the chronicle, he was in Murom and from there he went to Kyiv, strictly in the opposite direction. The same is about the life of the Pechersk monks. In "Life ..." new Caves Monastery was founded by Theodosius, and according to the annals - by Varlaam. And so on.

It is interesting that the list of such inconsistencies was compiled by N.I. Kostomarov, that is, it is known to Shakhmatov. It was also known that the author of the chronicle, according to his own statement, came to the monastery under Theodosius, and Nestor - under his successor, Stefan. But Shakhmatov ignored this, simply stating that Nestor wrote the chronicle at a time that was “separated from his first literary experiments by an interval of 25 years. The techniques of his work during this time could change and improve ". What does it have to do with the tricks, if we are talking about very specific facts? Including those relating to the life of Nestor himself. Did he know better in 25 years which of the abbots he came to the monastery?

So from Nestor, as the first chronicler, it is quite possible to refuse. Rather, it should be recognized that his name hit the headlines of some annals later, when the real author was already forgotten. And Nestor, thanks to his works, in which he did not forget to mention himself, was a famous "writer". To whom, if not to him, was it left to attribute the creation of the annals? This is what some scribes and successors did. Note: not all. In a number of chronicles, the name of Nestor is not in the title.

Further, it was proved that Sylvester could be nothing more than a copyist of the chronicle, but by no means its successor. Well, at least because his postscript (“Hegumen Sylvester of St. Michael wrote these chronicle books…”) is at the end of the Laurentian Chronicle, where it stands after the unfinished chronicle entry of 1110. And Ipatievskaya, in which the weather article was completed, does not contain it. Now, perhaps, the majority of researchers admit: Ipatievskaya not only goes back to the same prototype, but is also a more complete and older presentation of it. A. A. Shakhmatov believed that later editors completed the Laurentian Chronicle, creating the Ipatiev Chronicle from it. Or even used different editions of PVL. Modern historians, especially after the works of M. Kh. Aleshkovsky, reasonably notice: it is easier to assume a contraction than an expansion. Moreover, the text shows that the Laurentian Chronicle is drier and less detailed. What, then, to consider that the ancient author of the Ipatiev Chronicle deliberately embellished the text and at the same time invented facts? It is much more logical to admit that the person who wrote the Laurentian Chronicle made extracts from full version leaving only the essentials.

Note that Aleshkovsky was even more categorical. “The text of the Tale of Bygone Years in the Laurentian Chronicle seems to be ... the result of a reduction in the text that has been preserved in the Ipatiev Chronicle. This abbreviation is not of an editorial nature, is not natural, is not the result of intentional editing, and, perhaps, appeared not in the 12th century, but later and as a result of not one, but several scribes. he wrote. That is, he did not consider Sylvester to be an editor at all, only a copyist, and even then one of many.

And it is even more problematic to recognize the presence of a third editor. He was previously identified by various historians with various characters. So, B. A. Rybakov considered him “Vasily, the husband of Svyatopolk Izyaslavich”, M. Kh. Aleshkovsky - “Vasily from Novgorod, an attentive reader of the Chronicle of Amartol”, and so on. Now its existence is generally questioned.

As a result, the history of Russian chronicle writing found itself practically in the same situation as it was before Shakhmatov: nothing is known about the place, time, and author. Everyone puts forward their own versions. The version of A. L. Nikitin seems to be the most developed at present. According to it, the author of the PVL is a monk of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery and cell-attendant of the Monk Theodosius Hilarion. This character is quite historical, since it was Nestor who mentioned it: “And here are the same black Hilarion with confessions, for better, and write books smartly, these days and nights writing books in the cell of our blessed father Theodosius, to whom I quietly sing the psalter with my mouth and spinning the wave with my hands or doing some other thing”. True, apart from these lines, we do not know anything about the hypothetical chronicler. Nikitin deduces all the "data of his biography" from the text of the chronicle, first considering a priori that the chronicler is Hilarion.

But among the diversity of hypotheses there are common points. With the exception of very big dreamers, most recognize that the annals in Rus' were not written before the second half of the 11th century. Without going into lengthy justifications, let us at least point out that the chronicles in Europe began to be compiled after the adoption of Christianity. When Rus' was baptized, remember? At the end of the X century. Chronicles were written at royal courts and monasteries. Simply because there you could afford not to think about your daily bread, but to slowly but surely fill in the sheets with stories about the past and the present. Previously, everyone had to work, not to write here! And in Rus', just during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, by the middle of the 11th century, such conditions developed. Here, for his sons, obviously, the first Russian chronicles were written. Well, or with them, since the chroniclers in Rus' worked at monasteries, and not at palaces. Therefore, by the way, there are not so many secular data in the annals. Basically just listings of who was born and died when.

A. L. Nikitin, for example, after researching the issue, came to the conclusion that chronicles began to be written in the last quarter of the 11th century. “The absence in the Kiev-Pechersk chronicle of Hilarion, beginning PVL, of any obvious borrowings from hypothetical chronicles of the 11th century, Novgorod or Kiev, as well as the absence of any reliable evidence of those who worked simultaneously with him within the limits of 1070-1140. chroniclers, since no evidence of the chronicle activity of Sylvester has yet been found, gives the right to consider the monk of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery Hilarion as the first Russian chronicler who literary depicted the events early centuries stories Russian state», he points out. And I pay attention: literary! “A factual and textual analysis of the plots included in the PVL ... leads to the conclusion that they are all built exclusively on legendary or fictional material”, Nikitin says. That is, individual legends could, of course, be written down, some documents could be preserved (such as agreements with the Greeks, and even those, rather, were brought from Greece). But certainly not weather records. The rest was thought out based on the memoirs of contemporaries of the events and oral folk art.

In addition, researchers recognize that the texts of the chronicles that have come down to us are, so to speak, collective creativity. In the sense that they are not only brought together from several sources, but also edited different people and in different time. Moreover, the editor did not always closely monitor how organically the information taken from various places was combined. And the scribe could make elementary mistakes, not understanding what he was copying. How much time has passed!

So, of course, one cannot trust the annals, one needs a “criticism of the source”.

Chapter 6 No one wrote about the war like that! It is necessary to specifically prove that Zhukov was an outstanding strategist. But no one has ever substantiated this, so for the time being we can take it as a fact that the “Marshal of Victory” understood this area insofar as (and he himself is insanely boring