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Likhachev D. Poetics of Old Russian Literature

Likhachev D. Poetics of Old Russian Literature

24.04.2019

BORDERS OF OLD RUSSIAN LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

The artistic specificity of ancient Russian literature is increasingly attracting the attention of medieval literary critics. This is understandable: without a full identification of all the artistic features of Russian literature of the XI-XVII centuries. the construction of the history of Russian literature and the aesthetic evaluation of the monuments of Russian literature of the first seven centuries of its existence are impossible.

Separate observations on the artistic specificity of ancient Russian literature were already in the works of F. I. Buslaev, I. S. Nekrasov, N. S. Tikhonravov, V. O. Klyuchevsky and others. These individual observations are closely related to their general ideas about ancient Russian literature and with those historical-literary schools to which they belonged.

Only in recent years have relatively small works appeared that set out the general views of their authors on the artistic specificity and artistic methods of ancient Russian literature. I am referring to the articles by A. S. Orlov, V. P. Adrianov-Peretz, I. P. Eremin, G. Raab, and others.

(1) Orlov A. S. and Adrianov-Perets V. P. Literary criticism of the Russian Middle Ages // Izv. OLYA, 1945, No. 6; Orlov A.S. Thoughts on the status of work on the literature of the Russian Middle Ages // Izv. OLYA, 1947, No. 2; Adrianov-Peretz V.P.: 1) The main objectives of the study of Old Russian literature in the studies of 1917-1947 // TODRL. T. VI. 1948; 2) Essays on the poetic style of Ancient Rus'. M.; L., 1947; 3) Old Russian literature and folklore (to the formulation of the problem) If TODRL. T. VII. 1949; 4) Historical literature of the XI - early XV century. and folk poetry // TODRL. T. VIII. 1951; 5) Historical stories of the 17th century and oral folk art // TODRL. tales of the 17th century and oral folk art // TODRL.T. IX. 1953; 6) On the foundations of the artistic method of ancient Russian literature // Rus. Literature, 1958, No. 4; 7) On the question of the image of the "inner man" in Russian literature of the XI-XIV centuries. // Questions of studying Russian literature of the XI-XX centuries. M.; L., 1958; 8) On realistic trends in ancient Russian literature (XI-XV centuries) // TODRL. T. XVI. I960; Eremin IP: 1) The Kiev Chronicle as a monument of literature // TODRL. T. VII (see also: Eremin I. Literature of Ancient Rus'. M.; L., 1966. S. 98-131); 2) The latest research on the artistic form of ancient Russian literary works // TODRL. T. XII. 1956; 3) On the artistic specificity of Old Russian literature // Rus. Literature, 1958, No. 1; 4) To disputes about the realism of ancient Russian literature // Rus. Literature, 1959, No. 4; Raab H.: 1) Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Realismus in der russischen Literatur // Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Ernst Moritz Arnd-Universitat Greifswald. Gesellschaftsund sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe. 1958, bd. 4; 2) On the Question of the Prehistory of Realism in Russian Literature // Rus. Literature, 1960, No. 3. Cf. also: Likhachev D.S.: 1) At the forefront of the realism of Russian literature // Questions of Literature, 1957, No. 1; 2) On the question of the origin of literary trends in Russian literature // Rus. Literature, 1958, No. 2; 3) Man in the literature of Ancient Rus'. M.; L., 1958. Ed. 2nd. M., 1970; 4) Literary etiquette of Ancient Rus' (to the problem of study) // TODRL. T. XVII. 1961; 5) About one feature of realism // Questions of Literature. 1960, no. 3.

Is it possible to speak of ancient Russian literature as a kind of unity from the point of view of historical poetics? Is there continuity in the development of Russian literature from ancient to new, and what is the essence of the differences between ancient Russian literature and modern? These questions must be answered throughout this book, but they can be tentatively posed at the beginning of the book.

GEOGRAPHICAL BORDERS

It is customary to talk about the Europeanization of Russian literature in the 18th century. In what sense can ancient Russian literature be considered "non-European"? Usually, two properties supposedly inherent in it are meant: isolation, isolation of its development and its intermediate position between East and West. Did ancient Russian literature really develop in isolation?

Not only was ancient Russian literature not isolated from the literatures of neighboring western and southern countries, in particular, from the same Byzantium, but within the limits of the 17th century. we can talk about the opposite - about the absence of clear national boundaries in it. We can justifiably speak of a partial commonality in the development of the literatures of the Eastern and Southern Slavs. There was a single literature, a single script and a single literary (Church Slavonic) language among the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), among the Bulgarians, among the Serbs, among the Romanians. The main fund of church-literary monuments was common.

Liturgical, preaching, church edifying, hagiographic, partly world-historical (chronographic), partly narrative literature was the same for the entire Orthodox south and east of Europe. Common were such huge literary monuments as prologues, menaias, ceremonials, triodies, partly chronicles, palea of various types, "Alexandria", "The Tale of Barlaam and Joasaph", "The Trojan Story", "The Tale of Akira the Wise", "Bee" , cosmographies, physiologists, six-day books, apocrypha, individual lives, etc., etc.

Moreover: a commonality of literature existed not only between the eastern and southern Slavs, but for the most ancient period it also captured the western Slavs (Czechs and Slovaks, in relation to Poland - a moot point). Finally, this very common literature for Orthodox Slavs and Romanians was not isolated in the European world. And we are not talking about Byzantium alone...

H. K. Gudziy, objecting to me in this regard in the article “Provisions that cause controversy”, argued that the general monuments I have listed are “almost entirely translated”. But it is impossible to say so. I also include in my enumeration monuments of Russian origin that are included in the fund of general South and East Slavic literature, however, one could indicate no less number of Bulgarian, Serbian and even Czech monuments that have become common to East and South Slavic literatures without any translation due to the commonality of the Church Slavonic language. But the point is not whether the monuments common to all Orthodox Slavs were translated or original (both are presented in abundance), but that they were all common to all Eastern and South Slavic literatures in a single text, on the same language, and they all shared a common fate. In the literatures of the Orthodox Slavs, one can observe general changes in style, general mental currents, a constant exchange of works and manuscripts. The monuments were understandable without translation, and there is no reason to doubt the existence of a common Church Slavonic language for all Orthodox Slavs (separate “national” variants of this language did not prevent its understanding).

(1) On the commonality of development and mutual influences of the literatures of the Eastern and Southern Slavs, they wrote: Speransky M.N. On the history of the relationship between Russian and South Slavic literatures // Izv. ORYAS, 1923, vol. XXVI; republished in the book: Speransky M. H. From the history of Russian-Slavonic literary connections. M., 1960; Gudziy N. K. Literature of Kievan Rus and ancient non-Slavic literature // IV International Congress of Slavists. Abstracts of reports. M., 1960; Likhachev D.S. Some tasks of studying the second South Slavic influence in Russia Ibid.; Moshin V. A. On the periodization of Russian-South Slavic Literary Relations of the X-XV centuries, // TODRL. T. XIX. 1963.

(2) There are no generalizing large works on this subject. See the literature on the issue in the article by V. A. Moshin mentioned in the previous footnote.

(3) Questions of Literature. 1965, No. 7, S. 158.

(4) In the question of the Russian origin of the Prologue, we will reckon with the conclusions of the researchers of this very complex monument - A.I.; Sobolevsky, B. Angelov (Sofia) and V. Moshin (Belgrade). The translation of the ancient edition of the Greek Synaxarion was made in Rus', supplemented with Russian articles, received the name "Prologue" in Rus', and from here moved to the Balkans. Consequently, the "Prologue" is only partly a translated monument.

I am reminded of a story about a prominent Italian art critic who, visiting the Tretyakov Gallery and examining the works of Rublev and Dionisy, exclaimed: “This is where our kinship with you lies!” And it is no coincidence that many of the best Russian icons of the XIV-XV centuries. taken for Italo-Byzantine.

My studies in the manuscript collections in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia led me to the conclusion that the composition of the monuments of the XI-XVI centuries. basically they are the same as in Russia. The number of monuments of local importance in the South Slavic countries is relatively small. There are much more monuments of local significance for the same centuries in Russia. Russia has created an enormous literature on Russian history, secular in character, and this literature has not been transmitted for the most part to the southern Slavic peoples. She was only interested in Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.

It is quite possible to create a unified history of the literature of the southern and eastern Slavs up to the 16th century. And this unified history of literature will not be a mechanical, annalistic connection in chronological order of heterogeneous material, various national literatures, but can be understood and written as a single whole. The presence in addition to these common monuments of a very important layer of monuments of national, local distribution and national literary languages does not at all close the possibility of creating, along with the histories of the literatures of Old Russian, Old Serbian and Old Bulgarian general history of the literature of the Eastern and Southern Slavs. After all, the presence in it of regional differences, monuments of local significance and individual differences in the historical reality of the boyar republic of Novgorod from the reality of the principality of Moscow, etc., does not prevent the creation of the history of a single ancient Russian literature.

INTRODUCTION
The artistic specificity of ancient Russian literature is increasingly attracting the attention of medieval literary critics. This is understandable: without a full identification of all the artistic features of Russian literature of the XI-XVII centuries. the construction of the history of Russian literature and the aesthetic evaluation of the monuments of Russian literature of the first seven centuries of its existence are impossible.

However, not only these people were interested in many issues of ancient Russian literature, many writers of Russia and neighboring countries are dealing with these issues to this day.

Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev made his contribution to the artistic specificity of ancient Russian literature. His works are contained in the book "Poetics of Old Russian Literature", which was published more than once. The very first edition was in 1967. In 1969, Academician D.S. Likhachev was awarded the State Prize of the USSR for this book. This book has been published in different languages and in different countries. However, its content has not changed. Similar publications by other authors also took place, but none of the materials of D.S. Likhachev is not repeated in comparison with other authors. This book "The Poetics of Old Russian Literature" was gradually supplemented. Some of its sections were published much earlier than the book itself. The author dedicates this book "to his comrades - specialists in ancient Russian literature."

Before me lies the book of Likhachev Dmitry Sergeevich "The Poetics of Old Russian Literature" - the third supplemented edition, published by the Nauka publishing house (Moscow), 1979. The author of the book raises the following questions: “Is it possible to speak of ancient Russian literature as a kind of unity from the point of view of historical poetics? Is there continuity in the development of Russian literature from ancient to new, and what is the essence of the differences between ancient Russian literature and modern? These questions should be answered by this entire book of his, but they are tentatively posed at the beginning of it.
Geographic boundaries

Not only was ancient Russian literature not isolated from the literatures of neighboring western and southern countries, in particular, from the same Byzantium, but within the limits of the 17th century. we can talk about the opposite - about the absence of clear national boundaries in it. There was a single literature, a single script and a single literary (Church Slavonic) language among the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), among the Bulgarians, among the Serbs, among the Romanians. The main fund of church-literary monuments was common.

Likhachev also includes in his enumeration monuments of Russian origin that are included in the fund of general South and East Slavic literature, however, one could indicate no less number of Bulgarian, Serbian and even Czech monuments that have become common to East and South Slavic literatures without any translation into force. community of the Church Slavonic language. In the literatures of the Orthodox Slavs, one can observe general changes in style, general mental currents, a constant exchange of works and manuscripts. The monuments were understandable without translation, and there is no doubt that there is a common Church Slavonic language for all Orthodox Slavs.

Perhaps the isolation and isolation of Russian literature of the XI-XVI centuries. should be understood in the sense that Russian literature only passively received their literary monuments from neighboring peoples, without itself transferring anything to them? Many people think so, but this situation is also completely untrue. Now we can talk about a huge "export" from Kievan Rus and from Moscow Rus monuments and manuscripts created there. The writings of Cyril of Turov were distributed in manuscript throughout southeastern Europe along with the writings of the Church Fathers. Finally, the sophisticated style of “weaving words”, which arose and spread in the Balkans in the 14th and 15th centuries, developed not without Russian influence, and it was in Russia that it reached its highest flowering.

The following is characteristic: the influence of Russian literature in the countries of South-Eastern Europe does not stop in the 18th and early 19th centuries, but this was mainly the influence of ancient Russian literature, and not the new one created in Russia. In Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania, the influence of Old Russian monuments continues after the development of the traditions of Old Russian literature ceased in Russia itself. The last writer, who was of the greatest importance for the entire Orthodox Eastern and Southern Europe, was Dmitry Rostovsky. Further, only a small stream of influences of secular Russian literature of the 18th century is felt - mainly school theater and some works of a religious nature. Anti-heretical literature is also being exported from Russia. Manuscripts testify to all this.

The isolation of ancient Russian literature is a myth of the 19th century. True, one can pay attention to the fact that ancient Russian literature was closely connected with Orthodoxy and its connections with the literatures of Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, and in the most ancient period with the Western Slavs were explained mainly by religious ties. This is one of the explanations, but one cannot speak only of connections within religious literature, since these connections are noticeable both in chronography and in the traditions of the Hellenistic novel, in "Alexandria", in "natural science" literature.

Let us now turn to the other side of the question of the "Europeanization" of Russian literature in the eighteenth century: the supposed position of ancient Russian literature between East and West.

This is another myth. It arose under the hypnosis of the geographical position of Russia between Asia and Europe. I do not now touch upon the questions of the political development of Russia under the influence of East and West. I will only note that exaggerated ideas about the significance of the geographical position of Russia, about the role of "Eastern" and, in particular, "Turanian" elements in it, disappointed even their most consistent adherents - the Eurasians.

In ancient Russian literature, first of all, attention is drawn to the complete absence of translations from Asian languages. Ancient Rus' knew translations from Greek, Latin, Hebrew, knew works created in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia, knew translations from Czech, German, Polish, but did not know a single translation from Turkish, Tatar, from the languages of Central Asia and the Caucasus . Two or three plots from Georgian and Tatar ("The Tale of Queen Dinara", "The Tale of the Human Mind") came to us orally. Traces of the Polovtsian epic were found in the annals of Kyiv and Galicia-Volyn Rus, but these traces are extremely insignificant, especially if we take into account the intensity of the political and dynastic ties of the Russian princes with the Polovtsians.

Strange as it may seem, oriental stories penetrated to us through the western borders of Rus', from the Western European peoples. For example, the Indian “Tale of Barlaam and Joasaph” PS and another monument of Indian origin - “Stephanit and Ikhnilat”, known in Arabic as “Kalila and Dimna”, came to us this way.

The absence of literary ties with Asia is a striking feature of Old Russian literature.

From this it is clear that it is absolutely impossible to speak of the position of ancient Russian literature “between East and West”. This means replacing with geographical representations the absence of accurate representations of ancient Russian literature.

Oriental themes, motifs and plots appear in Russian literature only in the 18th century. They are more abundant and deeper than in all seven centuries of the previous development of Russian literature.

It is clear from what has been said: about any "Europeanization" of Russian literature of the 18th century. in general it is impossible to say. We can talk about something else: that the European orientation of Russian literature has shifted from one country to another. Literature of the XI-XVI centuries. was organically connected with such European countries as Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania. From the 16th century it is connected with Poland, the Czech Republic, also with Serbia and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. These new connections increased enormously in the 17th century. In the XVIII century. the orientation changes - a band of influences of France and Germany sets in, and through them, mainly, other Western European countries. Can we see Peter's will in this? No. Peter oriented Russian culture towards those Western European countries with which Russia had already established ties earlier, in the 17th century, partly as early as the 16th century, to Holland and England. The influence of France in the field of literature was established after Peter, outside the intentions of Peter. But neither Dutch nor English literature in the era of Peter the Great attracted the attention of Russian writers.

At first, those equal relations were not established with the Western European countries, which were in Ancient Rus' with other East Slavic countries and with the countries of South-Eastern Europe.

New connections were extremely important; they predetermined the world connections of Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Why and how is a very complex question, which I cannot touch on now. But the fact is that in the XVIII century. these ties unexpectedly and contrary to a long tradition acquired a one-sided character: at first we began to receive more than to give to others. In the XVIII century. Russian literature for some time ceased to go beyond the borders of Russia as a whole.

Chronological boundaries

Where is the line between ancient Russian literature and new? This question is inseparable from another: what does this line consist of?

Compared with the literature of the XVIII century. Old Russian literature had a religious character. With this statement, we take into general brackets all Russian literature for the first seven centuries of its existence.

Old Russian literature until the 16th century. was one with the literature of other Orthodox countries. The commonality of religion was in this case even more important than the commonality of the literary language and the proximity of national languages. Not a single country of the Eastern European literary community of the XI-XVI centuries. did not have such a developed historical literature as Russia. No other country had such a developed journalism. Old Russian literature, although on the whole of a religious character, stands out, however, among the literatures of other countries of Southern and Eastern Europe with an abundance of secular monuments. At the same time, one can speak about the religious character of Old Russian literature only within the limits up to the 17th century. In the 17th century it is secular genres that become leading. The traditionally indicated differences between ancient Russian literature and the literature of the 18th century. may be accepted with great reservations. Meanwhile, these differences are clearly felt, literature in the XVIII century. really becomes less ecclesiastical.

There is also a certain grain of truth in the assertion that Russian literature takes a sharp turn in the eighteenth century. facing European literature. In fact, the works that influenced or were translated in Rus' in the 11th-17th centuries corresponded in their nature to the medieval type of ancient Russian literature. This became especially noticeable in the 17th century. What was translated was not what was first-class, but what sometimes turned out to be secondary, which for its time was already “yesterday” in the West, but which, to one degree or another, corresponded to the internal, basically, its medieval, structure of ancient Russian literature. The treatment of all this translated material is also typical: it was the same as the treatment of their literary works. The monuments were altered by translators and subsequent copy editors in the spirit of the traditions of ancient Russian copyists.

From this it is clear that the main thing is in the internal structural features of literature, which left their mark on the treatment of Western European literature.

In ancient and modern Russian literature we have before us different types of literature and different types of literary development. The transition from one type to another took place over a long period of time.

The great "openness" of literature in relation to non-literary genres of writing has been repeatedly noted in the research literature. The genres of ancient Russian literature often had a greater ritual and business purpose than the genres of new Russian literature. One can say even more decisively: the main difference between one genre in Old Russian literature and another lies in their use, in their ritual, legal or other functions. The boundaries of literature are not delineated, although in certain genres, literariness is expressed quite strongly.

Thus, the text is unstable and traditional, the genres are sharply demarcated from each other, and the works are delimited from each other weakly, retaining their stability only in some cases. The literary fate of the works is heterogeneous: the text of some is carefully preserved, while others are easily changed by scribes. There is a hierarchy of genres, just like there is a hierarchy of writers. Styles are extremely diverse, they differ in genres, but individual styles are generally not expressed clearly. All this constitutes a sharp structural difference between ancient Russian literature and new.

When did the restructuring of one literary structure into another take place?

In fact, this restructuring was happening all the time. It began with the emergence of ancient Russian literature. The final transition from one structure to another took place in Russian literature later than in Western European literature, but earlier than in the literatures of the South Slavs.

The upheaval was gradual and lengthy, and the fracture line was extremely uneven. Some phenomena were prepared by the entire development of ancient Russian literature, others took place throughout the entire 17th century, and still others were finally determined only from the second quarter or second third of the 18th century. The structure of Old Russian literature has never been stable. Genres of a new type arose in the depths of the old genre system and coexisted with genres of the medieval type. The authority of the writer was great in some cases and weak in others. One of the features of the structure of ancient Russian literature was precisely that this structure was never integral and stable.

The Petrine era is a break in the movement of literature, a stop. Such breaks were known to Russian literature before (the second half of Grozny's reign). The time of Peter the Great, of course, gave new, very strong historical stimuli to literary development, and this should by no means be forgotten, but the development of literature itself was not marked by anything new in the time of Peter the Great. This is the most "non-literary" era of all time, the existence of Russian literature. At this time, no significant works of literature arose and its character did not change. The so-called Petrine tales sometimes appeared earlier, and sometimes later, and were associated primarily with the traditions of Russian literature of the 17th century. The image of the “new man” that emerged in them was prepared by the entire development of Russian literature of the 17th century.

A new type of literary development comes into force from the second quarter, or rather, from the second third of the 18th century. It rises and forms with unusual rapidity. A combination of reasons acted here: the appearance of book printing in literature (prior to this, printing houses served administrative, educational and church purposes), the emergence of literary periodicals, the development of a higher, secular type of intelligentsia, and much more. Separate streams of ancient literature (hagiography, annals, etc.) continue to flow, but leave the “day surface” of literature, wither, others, like church sermons, are restructured in a Catholic manner, but also leave the “day surface”.

The uneven nature of the development of Russian literature in the 11th-17th centuries, the absence of a general movement in literature, the accelerated development of some genres and the slow development of others made it possible to realize the leap of the 18th century. to a new structure of literature. Discordance concealed in itself enormous possibilities for moving forward; there was no inertia that had to be overcome by the efforts of centuries. The halt that the Petrine era represented in the development of literature meant that this leap was about to take place. The plow stopped plowing the land, it was easily dragged through a large strip, leaving it unplowed. When he again dug into the soil, Lomonosov, Fonvizin, Radishchev, Derzhavin appeared, and, finally, when the plowing became even and deep, Pushkin.

Pushkin was the first to fully feel the difference in styles of literature by era, country and writer. He was passionate about his discovery and tried his hand at different styles - different eras, peoples and writers. This meant that the leap was over and the normal development of literature began, conscious of its development, of its historical change. A historical-literary self-awareness of literature appeared. Literature entered a single channel of development and decisively changed its structure.

So, between ancient Russian literature and new there are differences in structures and in the types of their development. The poetics of ancient Russian literature differs from the poetics of modern literature. It is this difference that is the most essential for determining the boundaries between ancient Russian literature and modern.
POETICS OF LITERATURE AS A SYSTEM OF A WHOLE
The fine arts of Ancient Rus' were action-packed, and this subjectivity until the beginning of the 18th century, when significant structural changes took place in the fine arts, not only did not weaken, but steadily increased. The subjects of the fine arts were predominantly literary. Characters and individual scenes from the Old and New Testaments, saints and scenes from their lives, various Christian symbols were based in one way or another on literature - church literature, of course, mainly, but not only church literature. The plots of the frescoes were the plots of written sources. The content of icons, especially icons with hallmarks, was associated with written sources. Miniatures illustrated the lives of saints, chronographic palea, chronicles, chronographs, physiologists, cosmographies and six-day books, individual historical stories, legends, etc. The art of illustration was so high that even works of theological and theological-symbolic content could be illustrated. Murals were created on the themes of church hymns (akathists, for example), psalms, and theological works.

Much attention is paid to monuments of art in the works of Novgorod literature: in journeys to Constantinople, in Novgorod chronicles, in the lives of Novgorod saints, stories and legends. The art of the word comes into contact with the fine arts of Ancient Rus' not only through written monuments, but also through folklore monuments. Folklore interpretations of events penetrate the visual arts.

A special and very important topic of research is the role of the word in works of art. As you know, inscriptions, signatures and accompanying texts are constantly introduced into ancient Russian easel works, wall paintings and miniatures.

The art of painting, as it were, was burdened by its silence, sought to “speak”. And it “spoke,” but it spoke in a special language. The texts that accompany the hallmarks in hagiographic icons are not texts taken mechanically from certain hagiographies, but prepared and processed in a special way. The hagiographic excerpts on the icon were supposed to be perceived by viewers in different conditions than by readers of manuscripts. Therefore, these texts are abbreviated or incomplete, they are concise, short phrases predominate in them, sometimes “decoration” disappears in them, which is unnecessary in the vicinity of the colorful language of painting. Even this detail is significant: the past tense in these inscriptions is often transferred to the present. The inscription does not explain the past, but the present - what is reproduced on the hallmark of the icon, and not what was once. The icon depicts not what happened, but what is happening now in the image; it affirms the existing, what the worshiper sees in front of him.

It is necessary to penetrate into the psychology and ideology of the Middle Ages in order to understand in all depth the aesthetic significance of inscriptions in the fine arts of the Middle Ages. The word appeared not only in its sound essence, but also in the visual image. And not only the word in general, but also the given word of the given text. It was also "timeless" to some extent. That is why the inscriptions so organically entered the composition, became an element of the ornamental decoration of the icon. And that is why it was so important to decorate the text of the manuscripts with initials and headpieces, to create a beautiful page, even to write in beautiful handwriting.

A careful study of common regional features in literature and other arts, the commonality of their destinies and the content of regional, centrifugal tendencies, their simultaneous overcoming and combination with centripetal forces can clarify the process of gradual folding of a single literature. Local shades begin to disappear simultaneously in the 16th century. in various areas of artistic culture: in literature, in architecture and in painting. On the basis of the economic and political unification of individual Russian lands, the unification of the entire Russian culture takes place in the sequence and with the degree of speed that were prompted by the socio-political reality itself.

General achievements in various arts are not always, however, so revealing and "disciplined". The most common, hackneyed example of regional features common to literature and other arts - the notorious Novgorod laconicism, supposedly equally affecting Novgorod chronicles, Novgorod architecture and Novgorod fine arts - may, upon closer study, turn out to be not so revealing and simple, how it was presented over the past hundred years to art and literary critics who have studied Novgorod.

Two concepts of style in literature should be distinguished: style as a phenomenon of the language of literature and style as a specific system of form and content.

Style is not only a form of language, but it is a unifying aesthetic principle of the structure of the entire content and the entire form of a work. The style-forming system can be revealed in all elements of the work. The artistic style combines the general perception of reality, characteristic of the writer, and the artistic method of the writer, due to the tasks that he sets himself. In this sense, the concept of style can be applied to different arts, and there can be synchronic correspondences between them. The same methods of representation may be reflected in the literature and in the painting of one or another epoch; they may correspond to certain general formal features of the architecture of the same time or music. And since aesthetic principles can extend beyond the arts, we can also talk about the style of a particular philosophy or theological system. We know, for example, that the Baroque style affected not only architecture, but captured painting, sculpture, literature (especially poetry and drama) and even music and philosophy.

At present, we can talk about the Baroque style as the style of the era, to one degree or another affecting all types of artistic activity within certain chronological and geographical boundaries.

Returning to Ancient Rus', we must note that what was previously perceived as the “second South Slavic influence” in ancient Russian literature, now, thanks to the involvement of non-literary material, appears before us as a manifestation of the Pre-Renaissance throughout the south and east of Europe. It is becoming increasingly clear that the so-called Eastern European Pre-Renaissance covered an even wider range of cultural life than the Baroque. It went beyond the phenomena of art and spread its "style-forming" tendencies, taking advantage of the lack of clear boundaries of human artistic activity, to the entire ideological life of the era. As a cultural phenomenon, the Eastern European Pre-Renaissance was wider than the Baroque. In addition to all forms of art, it covered theology and philosophy, journalism and scientific life, everyday life and customs, the life of cities and monasteries, although in all these areas it was limited mainly to the intelligentsia, the highest manifestations of culture and urban and church life.

It is necessary to strictly distinguish individual mental currents and ideological trends from the phenomena of the "style of the era" - no matter how wide the range of phenomena they cover. So, for example, the desire to revive the cultural traditions of pre-Mongol Rus covers at the end of the XIV and XV centuries. architecture, painting, literature, folklore, socio-political thought, is reflected in historical thought, penetrates into official theories, etc., but this phenomenon in itself does not form a special style. They do not form a special style and numerous penetrations into Rus' of the Renaissance culture. The Renaissance, which in the West was also a phenomenon of style, in Russia remained only a mental trend.
When we talk about the connections that existed between literature and art in Ancient Russia, we must keep in mind not only the fact that literature in Ancient Russia had an extremely strong visual figurativeness, and not only that the visual arts constantly had written works as their subjects, but also the fact that the illustrators of Ancient Rus' developed extremely skillful techniques for conveying a literary narrative. The desire for storytelling was necessary for miniaturists, and they used an extremely wide range of techniques in order to transform the space of the image during the story. And these techniques were also reflected in the literary work itself, where very often the narrator, as it were, prepares material for the miniaturist, creating a sequence of scenes - a kind of "chain mail of the story." But let us turn to the narrative techniques of ancient Russian miniaturists.

The narrative techniques of the miniaturists who illustrated the annals were developed by them in relation to the content of the annals and chronicles. The images were accompanied by stories about campaigns, victories and defeats, about enemy invasions, invasions, hijackings of prisoners, sailing troops on the sea, rivers and lakes, about sitting on the table, about religious processions, the performances of the prince on a campaign, about the exchange of ambassadors, the surrender of cities, sending ambassadors and the arrival of ambassadors, negotiations, tribute payments, funerals, wedding feasts, murders, singing of glory, etc.

The miniaturist could show almost any action that was mentioned in the annals. He could not depict only that which had no temporal development. So, for example, he did not illustrate the texts of Russian treaties with the Greeks, the texts of sermons and teachings. In general, the range of subjects that the miniaturist undertook to convey was unusually large and the space depicted was wide - the range of action.

The main technique used by the miniaturist is "narrative reduction". On icons, for example, a saint can be larger than ordinary people. This emphasizes its importance. But this is done in the centerpiece, while in hagiographic hallmarks the saint will be the same size as other people. It is not people that are reduced there, but architecture, trees, mountains, to emphasize the significance of people in general. Actions in thumbnails have a monotonous image. The language of miniatures, like any language, requires some formalization and stability of the "sign system".

The miniaturist is in obvious difficulty when the speeches of the characters are conveyed in the text. The pronunciation of words is usually depicted with the help of appropriate gestures. Speakers gesticulate, occasionally pointing with a finger.

Narrative space dominates in miniatures over geographical space. One can say more - in miniatures, the narrative sequence dominates over the possible real one.

In the transfer of individual scenes in miniature, one should note the desire to depict the most important thing in what is happening and not to hide this main thing outside the image. Neither crowds of people, nor groups of troops or architectural details ever close or cut off the main action. Flamboyant slides or architectural details always only limit the attention of the audience, direct it, but never obscure the content itself. Everything is in plain sight, and at the same time there is nothing that would be outside the narration! The artist ascetically refrains from telling the viewer something that is not in the text of the chronicle. Everything is subject to the story. The characters are slightly posing for the artist. From this, their gestures, their movements seem to be hanging in the air. Each gesture is “stopped” by the artist precisely at the moment that is most expressive of the event: a saber is raised, a hand is raised for blessing or for indication, a pointing finger clearly looms over a group of people. Hands in miniatures play a paramount role. Their positions are symbolic.

The category of a literary genre is a historical category. Literary genres appear only at a certain stage in the development of the art of the word and then constantly change and change. The point is not only that some genres replace others and that no genre is “eternal” for literature, but also that the very principles of separating individual genres change, the types and nature of genres change, their functions in that or another era. The modern division into genres, based on purely literary features, appears relatively late. For Russian literature, the purely literary principles of separating genres come into force mainly in the 17th century. Until that time, literary genres, to one degree or another, carried, in addition to literary functions, non-literary functions. Genres are determined by their use: in worship (in its various parts), in legal and diplomatic practice (lists of articles, annals, stories about princely crimes), in the atmosphere of princely life (solemn words, glory), etc.

Genres constitute a certain system because they are generated by a common set of causes, and also because they interact, support each other's existence and at the same time compete with each other.

Indeed, genre indications in manuscripts are unusually complex and intricate: “alphabet”, “alphabet”, “conversation”, “being”, “memories” (for example, records of a saint or a story about a miracle that happened: “Memories of the former banner and miracles icons ... of the Mother of God ... a hedgehog in Veliky Novgorod"), "chapters" ("Chapters on the obediences", "Heads of Father Nile", "Instructive chapters", etc.), "double words", "act", etc.

An exact enumeration of all genre names would give a figure of about a hundred. It is characteristic that in ancient Russian literature there is constantly an intensive self-growth in the number of genres. This lasted until the 17th century. the principles of the medieval system of genres do not begin to partly die out, and a new system does not appear in the place of the medieval system - the system of genres of new Russian literature.

From the above enumeration of the Old Russian names of genres, it can be seen that these names differ from each other by no means exactly. Completely different works can be under the same name (see, for example: "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", "The Tale of Anti-Easter" by Cyril of Turov and "The Laudable Word" of Monk Thomas). Therefore, scribes very often put two genre definitions in the title of a work at the same time, and sometimes more: “The legend and the conversation is wise ...”, “The legend and the vision ...”, “The legend and the story ...”, “The legend and the teaching ...”, “The story and Scripture…”, “The Tale and Miracles…”, “Life and deeds and walking are known, and all the elect of the most glorious and wisest virtuous and wise husband of the autocrat Alexander, the great king of Makidon”, etc.

Sometimes the same work in different lists had different genre definitions: for example, the same work of Hilarion the Great was titled “Epistle to the Stylite Brother” and “With a Catch to the Stylite Brother”. The life of Alexander Nevsky in different lists is defined either as a "life", then as a "tale", then as a "story".

The combination of several genre definitions in the titles of a work indicates not only the scribe's hesitation as to which definition to choose, but is sometimes the result of the fact that ancient Russian works really combined several genres. One work could consist, for example, of a life, followed by a service to a saint, posthumous miracles, etc.

However, the main reason for the confusion and unclear distinction between individual genres in ancient Russian literature was that the basis for distinguishing a genre, along with other features, was not the literary features of the presentation, but the subject itself, the theme to which the work was devoted. In fact, the genre definitions of Ancient Russia were very often combined with definitions of the subject of the narrative: “vision”, “life”, “feats”, “passion”, “torment”, “walking”, “miracle”, “deeds”, etc. (cf. "The Torment of Barbara and Juliana", "The Torment of Eleazar", "The Torment of Theodora", "The Vision of Gregory").

Literary genres of Ancient Rus' have very significant differences from the genres of modern times: their existence, to a much greater extent than in modern times, is due to their application in practical life. They arise not only as varieties of literary creativity, but also as certain phenomena of the ancient Russian way of life, everyday life, everyday life in the broadest sense of the word.

It is hardly possible to discern in the literature of modern times a significant difference between the story and the novel in terms of their use in everyday life. Both are intended for individual reading. Somewhat more significant in the literature of modern times, from the point of view of everyday use, are the differences between lyrics and fiction - in the aggregate of all its genres. This is reflected, in particular, in age-related differences in interest in lyrics. People are more interested in lyrics at a relatively young age. The role of lyrics in everyday life is somewhat different than the role of other genres (lyrics and poetry in general are not only read to oneself, they are recited). However, even with all the differences in the "use" of genres, the latter does not constitute their fundamental feature.

Unlike the literature of modern times, in ancient Rus' the genre determined the image of the author. In the literature of modern times, we do not find a single image of the author for the genre of the story, another image of the author for the genre of the novel, a third single image of the author for the genre of lyrics, etc.

The literature of modern times has many images of authors - individualized, each time created anew by a writer or poet and largely independent of the genre. The work of the new time reflects the personality of the author in the image of the author he creates. Other in the art of the Middle Ages.

It seeks to express collective feelings, a collective attitude towards the depicted. Hence, much in it depends not on the creator of the work, but on the genre to which this work belongs. The author, to a much lesser extent than in modern times, is concerned about introducing his individuality into the work. Each genre has its own strictly developed traditional image of the author, writer, "performer". One image of the author is in the sermon, the other is in the lives of the saints (it varies somewhat by sub-genre groups), the third is in the annals, the other is in the historical story, etc. Individual deviations are mostly accidental, not included in the artistic intent of the work. In those cases when the genre of a work required it to be spoken aloud, was designed for reading or singing, the image of the author coincided with the image of the performer - just as it coincides in folklore.

A complex and responsible question is the question of the relationship between the system of literary genres of Ancient Rus' and the system of folklore genres. Without a number of extensive preliminary studies, this question not only cannot be resolved, but even more or less correctly posed.

If the literature of modern times in its genre system is independent of the system of genres of folklore, then the same cannot be said about the system of literary genres of Ancient Rus'. In fact, the system of literary genres was determined to a large extent by the needs of everyday life - ecclesiastical and secular. However, secular life was served not only by literature, but also by folklore. The upper strata of society in ancient Rus' in the era of feudalism still continued to use folklore. They were not free from paganism, they partially participated in the performance of traditional rituals, listened to and sang lyrical songs, listened to fairy tales, etc. Of course, the folklore that existed in the ruling class of society was special, selected, perhaps changed. It goes without saying that folklore as a whole was very far from the worldview of the ruling class.

Folklore and literature oppose each other not only as two, to a certain extent, independent systems of genres, but also as two different worldviews, two different artistic methods. However, no matter how different folklore and literature were in the Middle Ages, they had much more points of contact with each other than in modern times.

Folklore, and often homogeneous, was spread not only among the working class, but also among the ruling class. The peasant and the boyar could listen to the same epics, the same fairy tales, the same lyrical songs were sung everywhere. Undoubtedly, there were works that could not be performed for representatives of the feudal elite: some pagan ritual songs, satirical works, robber songs, etc. Those works in which the “worldview of folklore” turned out to be anti-feudal could not be distributed in the ruling class, however These were only some of the works, by no means all. The existence of folklore among the ruling class was facilitated by the fact that the feudal worldview by its very nature was contradictory. It could coexist idealistic and naturalistic elements, different artistic methods. This variegation could even permeate individual monuments. That is why some folklore works could be performed for the ruling class, sometimes with one or another omission.

If the system of genres of folklore was an integral and complete system, capable to some extent fully satisfy the needs of the people, for the most part illiterate, then the system of literature genres of Ancient Rus' was incomplete. It could not exist independently and satisfy all the needs of society in verbal art.

The system of literary genres was supplemented by folklore. Literature existed in parallel with folklore genres: love lyrical song, fairy tale, historical epic, buffoon performances. That is why entire types of literature were absent in literature, and above all, lyrical poetry.
POETICS OF LITERARY MEANS
Medieval symbolism "deciphers" not only many motifs and plot details, but it also allows you to understand a lot in the very style of medieval literature. In particular, the so-called commonplaces of medieval literature, so widespread in it, in many cases reflect the features of the medieval symbolic worldview. Yes, and in those cases when they pass from work to work as a result of borrowing, they are all the same “supported” by the symbolic meaning given to them. Thus, for example, many of the "literary clichés" of medieval hagiography are explained by medieval symbolism. The addition of hagiographic schemes occurs under the influence of ideas about the symbolic meaning of all the events of human life: the life of a saint always has a double meaning - in itself and as a moral model for other people

Also, medieval symbolism often replaces metaphor with a symbol. What we take for a metaphor, in many cases turns out to be a hidden symbol, born of the search for secret correspondences of the material and "spiritual" worlds. Relying primarily on theological teachings or on pre-scientific systems of ideas about the world, "symbols introduced a strong stream of abstraction into literature and, in their very essence, were directly opposite to the main artistic tropes - metaphor, metonymy, comparison, etc., based on likening, on an aptly grasped similarity or a clear distinction: the main thing, on a really observed, on a live and direct perception of the world. In contrast to metaphor, comparison, metonymy, symbols were brought to life mainly by abstracting idealistic theological thought. Real understanding of the world is superseded in them by theological abstraction, art - by theological scholarship.

In medieval works, the metaphor itself very often turns out to be a symbol at the same time, it means one or another theological Doctrine, theological interpretation or the corresponding theological tradition, proceeds from that “double” perception of the world, which is characteristic of the symbolizing worldview of the Middle Ages.

The use of theological symbols to build on their basis an entire artistic picture is not uncommon in ancient Russian literature and later - up to the 18th century. The addition of familiar theological symbols into a lively and "visual" picture required purely combinatorial abilities from writers. In these combinations, the symbolic meaning of certain natural phenomena was sometimes forgotten, and tasks of a different nature appeared. Already here we can notice the desire to free literary creativity from the power of theology.

Another way of liberation from the power of theology was that in a symbol of two “tossed” meanings, the preponderance turned out to be on its “material” part. Hence the medieval "realism", leading to the material embodiment of symbols.

This medieval "realism" sometimes evoked a kind of "myth-making". The materially understood symbol developed a new myth. The struggle against the theological system of symbols continued uninterrupted in ancient Russian literature until the 18th century. It was complicated by the dominance of theology. The final liberation of literature from abstract theological thought could be accomplished only after the victory in literature of the secular principle. This struggle was more successful in democratic and progressive literature, less successful in ecclesiastical literature. It took different forms and led to different results in different eras; it did not proceed in the same way in separate genres and even within the same work.

The most clear development of medieval symbolism as a system of medieval figurativeness was received in Rus' in the 11th-13th centuries. Starting from the end of the XIV century. there is a period of gradual breakdown. The style of the era of the so-called second Yugoslav influence was, of course, hostile to medieval symbolism as the basis of medieval images and metaphors. The works of this period are characterized by a new attitude to the word and new means of expression.

Poetic paths are by no means eternal and unchanging. They live for a long time, but nevertheless they still live: they appear in literature, develop, and in some cases we can observe their petrification and death. Poetic tropes are far from being limited to those usually given in school textbooks on literary theory. One of such phenomena of poetics not taken into account in the theories of literature, which later disappeared, is stylistic symmetry.

The essence of this symmetry is as follows: the same thing in a similar syntactic form is said twice; it is, as it were, some kind of stop in the narrative, a repetition of a close thought, a close judgment, or a new judgment, but about the same phenomenon. The second member of the symmetry says the same thing as the first member, in other words and in other ways. Thought varies but its essence does not change.

Stylistic symmetry is usually confused with artistic parallelism and stylistic repetition. However, stylistic symmetry differs from artistic parallelism in that it does not compare two different phenomena, but speaks of the same thing twice; What distinguishes stylistic symmetry from stylistic repetitions (common, in particular, in folklore) is that although it speaks of the same thing, it is in a different form, in other words.

Stylistic symmetry is a deeply archaic phenomenon. It is characteristic of the artistic thinking of pre-feudal and feudal society.

The phenomena of stylistic symmetry also passed into ancient Russian literature, and since the influence of the poetry of the psalms, and partly of other poetic books of the Bible, was constant, periodically intensifying and affecting especially clearly in the literature of the "high" style, individual examples of this stylistic symmetry are very numerous in all ages. However, if we compare stylistic symmetry in the psalter with the phenomena it caused in Russian literature of the 11th-17th centuries, then some differences are also noticeable in the mass: Russian symmetry is much more diverse, “ornamental”, more dynamic. It is not limited to two terms of symmetry, it goes into syntactic repetitions in general. Increasingly, it ceases to be a “stop” in the development of a poetic theme, more and more often the members of symmetry embrace different phenomena, turn into phenomena of parallelism, serve the purposes of comparison, lose contact with artistic thinking, are destroyed, formalized.

Comparisons in ancient Russian literature differ sharply in their character and inner essence from comparisons in modern literature.

In contrast to the literature of modern times, there are few comparisons based on visual similarity in medieval Russian literature. There are much more comparisons in it than in the literature of modern times, emphasizing tactile similarity, gustatory, olfactory similarity, associated with the sensation of material, with a sense of muscular tension.

For comparisons of the new time (XIX and XX centuries), the desire to convey the external similarity of the compared objects, to make the object visual, easily imagined, to create the illusion of reality is typical. Comparisons of the new time are based on diverse impressions of objects, draw attention to characteristic details and secondary features, as if extracting them to the surface and delivering to the reader the "joy of recognition" and the joy of direct visibility.

Ordinary, "average" comparisons in ancient Russian literature are of a different type: they concern the inner essence of the compared objects par excellence.

Of course, not all functions of objects are taken into account in medieval comparisons. Medieval comparisons are "ideological", i.e. they are closely connected with the dominant ideology of their time, and this explains their traditional character, their low variability, canonicity and cliché.

As is known, comparisons of modern times are of great importance in establishing the emotional atmosphere of a work3. The "rational", ideological nature of medieval comparisons provided much less opportunities for this. Comparison in ancient Russian literature is prompted not by a worldview, but by a worldview.

Even in the expressive-emotional style of literature of the XIV-XV centuries. the range of literary emotions is limited: these are the emotions of the majestic, terrible, grandiose, significant ... “King Leo, like a beast of divi, eats the flesh of those who worship holy icons.” The same King Leo, “like a great snake crawling, yawning terribly, and whistling to swallow the church, like a chick nesting bird of little feathers.”

As you know, the advantage of comparison is its completeness, diversity. It is important that the comparison concerns not one attribute, but many. Then it can be considered especially successful. This rule was fully taken into account by ancient Russian writers, who sometimes turned comparisons into whole pictures, small narratives.

The earthly world and the heavenly world, the material world and the spiritual world, therefore, are not only compared, but also opposed. This element of opposition is almost always present in medieval comparison and is the inevitable result of its ideological nature, which does not allow for the usual artistic inaccuracy in comparison.

Finally, one more remark about medieval comparisons.

Due to their "ideological" or "ideological" meaning, medieval comparisons were relatively easily emancipated from the surrounding text. They often acquired independence, had an internal completeness of thought and easily became aphorisms.
POETICS OF ARTISTIC TIME
Artistic time of a verbal work. If you look closely at how the world was understood in antiquity or in the Middle Ages, you can see that contemporaries did not notice much in this world, and this happened because the ideas about the changeability of the world in time were narrowed. The social and political structure of the world, way of life, people's customs and much more seemed to be unchanged, forever established. Therefore, contemporaries did not notice them and they were not described in literary and historical works. Chroniclers and chroniclers note only events, incidents in the broadest sense of the word. They don't see the rest.

The development of ideas about time is one of the most important achievements of the new literature. Gradually, all aspects of existence turned out to be changeable: the human world, the animal world, the plant world, the world of "dead nature" - the geological structure of the earth and the world of stars. The historical understanding of the material and spiritual world embraces science, philosophy and all forms of art. "Historicity" extends to an ever wider range of phenomena. Literature is increasingly aware of the diversity of forms of movement and at the same time its unity throughout the world.

The most essential for the study of literature is the study of artistic time: time as it is reproduced in literary works, time as an artistic factor in literature.

What is the artistic time of a work, in contrast to grammatical time and the philosophical understanding of time by individual authors?

Artistic time is a phenomenon of the very artistic fabric of a literary work, subordinating both grammatical time and its philosophical understanding by the writer to its artistic tasks.

The actual time and the time depicted are the essential aspects of the whole artistic work. The author's time varies depending on whether the author is participating in the action or not. The author's time can be motionless, as if concentrated at one point from which he leads his story, but it can also move independently, having its own storyline in the work. The time of the author can either overtake the narrative or lag behind the narrative.

Time in fiction is perceived due to the connection of events - causal or psychological, associative. Time in a work of art is not only and not so much calendar readings, but the correlation of events. Events in the plot precede and follow each other, line up in a complex series, and thanks to this, the reader is able to notice time in a work of art, even if it does not specifically say anything about time.

One of the most difficult issues in the study of artistic time is the question of the unity of the temporal flow in a work with several storylines. Consciousness of the unity of the temporal flow, the flow of historical time, does not come to folklore and literature all at once.

The events of different plots in folklore and at the initial stages of the development of literature can take place each in its own series of times, independently of the other. When the consciousness of the unity of time begins to prevail, the very violations of this unity, the differences in time of various plots, begin to be perceived as something supernatural, miraculous.

On the one hand, the time of a work can be "closed", closed in itself, taking place only within the plot, not connected with events taking place outside the work, with historical time. On the other hand, the time of a work can be "open", included in a wider flow of time, developing against the backdrop of a precisely defined historical epoch. The “open” time of a work, which does not exclude a clear frame delimiting it from reality, presupposes the presence of other events occurring simultaneously outside the work, its plot.

The author's attitude to the depicted time in all its aspects can also be different. The author may “not keep up” with rapidly changing events, describe them in pursuit of them, as if “choking”, or calmly contemplating them. The author is like an editor in cinematography: according to his artistic calculations, he can not only slow down or speed up the time of his work, but also stop it for certain intervals, “turn it off” from the work. This is mostly necessary in order to give a generalization: philosophical digressions in Tolstoy's War and Peace, descriptive digressions in Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter.

Plot time can speed up and slow down, especially in a novel: the novel “breathes”. Speeding up an action can also be used as a kind of summary. Accelerating the action in the epilogue of the novel is like exhaling. It creates the ending. Much less often, the beginning of a novel with a fast-paced, eventful action (as in Dostoevsky's novels): it is a "breath". Very often, the time of action in a work evenly slows down or speeds up its pace (the latter - in Gorky's "Mother").

The image of time can be illusionistic (especially in sentimental works) or introduce the reader into his own unreal, conditional circle. The problem of depicting time in a literary work is not a problem of grammar. Verbs can be used in the present tense, but the reader will be clearly aware that they are talking about the past. Verbs can be used both in the past tense and in the future, but the depicted tense will be present. The grammatical tense and the tense of a verbal work can diverge significantly. The discrepancy between grammar and artistic conception is, of course, only external: the grammatical tense of a work in itself often enters into the artistic conception of the highest order - into the meta-artistic structure of the work.

Each literary trend develops its own attitude to time, makes its own "discoveries" in the field of depicting time. Different types of time are characteristic of different literary movements. Sentimentalism developed the image of the author's time, close to the plot. Naturalism sometimes tried to "stop" depicted time, to create "daguerreotypes" of reality in "physiological sketches". "Open" time is characteristic of the realism of the XIX century.

It is necessary to pay attention to one more aspect of artistic time: each kind of art has its own forms of the passage of time, its own aspects of artistic time and its own forms of duration.
Artistic time in folklore. The originality of the representation of time in folk lyrics is in close connection, first of all, with the fact that there is neither an actual nor a depicted word in it. In this, folk lyrics differ radically from book lyrics, where the author is not only obligatory, but where he plays a very important role as the “lyrical hero” of the work. Russian folk lyrics are not so much "created" as performed. The place of the author is taken by the performer. Her "lyrical hero" is, to a certain extent, the performer himself. The singer sings about himself, the listener listens about himself.

The themes of folk lyrics are extremely generalized themes, in which there are no random, individual motives. They are dedicated to the situations of entire strata of the population (recruiting, military, soldier, barge, robber songs, etc.) or situations that repeat in life (calendar songs, ritual songs - lamentations, wedding songs, etc.). If in book lyrics the lyrical hero is the author, sharply individualized, whom the reader can bring closer to himself to a certain extent, never, however, forgetting about the author, then in folk lyrics the lyrical “I” is the “I” of the performer , each time new and completely detached from any ideas about the author of the song.

The exposition in a Russian lyrical song speaks of something that lasts for a long time, but this long-lasting one seems to be shortened due to the fact that the past is presented in the exposition as an explanation of the present: this is not a story about the past, but a lyrical explanation of the present. The exposition is usually followed by a complaint from the singer-poet.

A folk lyrical song sings about what its performer thinks at the moment of performance, about his position at the present time, about what he is doing now. That is why the content of a folk lyrical song is so often the very singing of the song, lamentation, complaint, appeal, and even crying.

Due to the fact that a folk song is a song about a song, its present time is special. It has the ability to "repeat". In each performance, this present tense refers to the new time - to the time of performance. This "repetition" of the present time is due to the fact that the time of the folk lyrical song is closed - it is enclosed in the plot and the plot is exhausted. If the time of a folk lyrical song were openly connected with many facts that partially go beyond the limits of the song, its “repetition” would be difficult. Everything individual, every detail, every strong historical confinement would destroy the isolation of the work's artistic time and interfere with its "repetitiveness." That is why the lyrical folk song is not only closed in its time, but also generalized to the limit.

A fairy tale cannot be fulfilled for itself. If the storyteller tells a fairy tale in solitude, then he obviously still imagines listeners in front of him. To a certain extent, his story is also a game, but unlike the game of a lyrical song, it is a game not for oneself, but for others. The lyrical song is sung about the present, while the fairy tale tells about the past, about what happened once and somewhere. To the same extent that the present tense is characteristic of a lyrical song, the past tense is characteristic of a fairy tale.

The time of a fairy tale is closely connected with the plot. The tale often speaks of time, but time is counted from one episode to another. Time is counted from the last event: “in a year”, “in a day”, “next morning”. A break in time is a pause in the development of the plot. At the same time, time, as it were, enters into the traditional fairy-tale ritual. Thus, for example, the repetition of episodes, which slows down the development of an action, is very often connected with the law of tripartism. The action is postponed until the morning with the help of the formula "the morning is wiser than the evening."

Time in a fairy tale always consistently moves in one direction and never goes back. The story always moves him forward. That is why there are no static descriptions in the fairy tale. If nature is described, it is only in motion, and the description of it continues to develop the action.

Fairy tale time does not go beyond the boundaries of a fairy tale. It is completely locked into the story. It is as if he is not there before the beginning of the tale and is not there at the end of it. It is not defined in the general flow of historical time.

The fairy tale ends with a no less emphasized stop of fabulous time; the tale ends with a statement of the “absence” of events that has come: prosperity, death, a wedding, a feast. The final formulas fix this stop: “They began to live and be, to make good - dashing to get rid of!”, “And moved out to the sunflower kingdom; and he lives very well, prosperously, and wishes himself and his children long-term peace ... "," thus his life ended. Final well-being is the end of fabulous time.

The exit from fabulous time into reality is also accomplished with the help of the narrator's self-disclosure: pointing out the storyteller's frivolity, the unreality of everything he tells, removing the illusion. This is a return to the "prose of life", a reminder of her worries and needs, an appeal to the material side of life.

Epics, like other folklore genres, do not have author's time. Their time is action time and performance time. The time of action of epics, like the time of action of fairy tales, is related to the past.

Unlike epics, the action of historical songs takes place at different times: from the 13th to the 19th centuries. Historical songs, as it were, accompany Russian history, mark its most outstanding events. In the epics, the time of the action is all attributed to some conditional era of Russian antiquity, which, however, despite all its conventions, is perceived as historical time, "bylshchina".

The action of epics could not be attached to the social situation of the XIV-XVII centuries. In the latter, epic relations between the hero and the prince are impossible. To reflect the events of this time, the people created another type of epic creativity - a historical song, where there was no place for heroes, where social inequality and the new relationship of the prince, the king to his military servant made it impossible for the epic idealization of the latter, his transformation into a hero.

Whenever an epic is composed and no matter what real event it reflects, it transfers its action to a kind of “epic time”. Russian epics reproduce the world of social relations and the historical situation of this particular time, and only the heroes of the Kiev cycle are called heroes.

Defining the time of the action of epics as conditional, we must nevertheless keep in mind that it was nevertheless perceived as strictly historical, really existing, and not fantastic. That is why the people never endow the heroes of the historical epic with fictitious names, and the action of epics takes place among real-life cities and villages.

The action of epics all takes place in the past, but not in the indefinite conditional past of fairy tales, but in a strictly limited idealized epic time, in which there are special social relations, a special way of life, a special state position of Russia, in which special conditional motivations for the actions of heroes and enemies of Russia dominate, special psychological laws, etc.

In this epic time, any number of different events can take place, always, in general, ending more or less happily for the country. The events of the epic, in contrast to the events of fairy tales, are perceived as events of Russian history, they are attributed to conventional Russian antiquity.
artistic time
in ancient Russian literature
. Artistic time in ancient Russian literature differs sharply from artistic time in modern literature. The subjective aspect of time, in which time seems to flow either slowly, or running fast, or rolling in an even wave, or moving abruptly, intermittently, was not yet discovered in the Middle Ages. If in the new literature time is very often depicted as it is perceived by the characters of the work or presented to the author or the author's "replacement" - the lyrical hero, the "image of the narrator", etc. - then in the literature the ancient Russian author seeks to depict objectively existing time, independent of any perception of it. Time seemed to exist only in its objective reality. Even what is happening in the present was perceived without regard to the subject of time. Time for the ancient Russian author was not a phenomenon of human consciousness. Accordingly, in the literature of Ancient Russia there were no attempts to create a "mood" of the story by changing the pace of the story. Narrative time slowed down or sped up depending on the needs of the narrative itself. So, for example, when the narrator tried to convey the event with all the details, the narration seemed to slow down. It slowed down in those cases when a dialogue came into play, when the protagonist uttered a monologue, or when this monologue was "internal", when it was a prayer. The action was slowed down almost to the real, when a picturesque description was required. We also saw such slowdowns in action in Russian epics - in scenes of a hero saddling a horse, a hero's dialogue with an enemy, in battle scenes, in descriptions of a feast. This time can be defined as "artistic imperfect". In epics, this artistic imperfect usually coincides with the grammatical imperfect; in works of ancient Russian literature, this coincidence of artistic time with grammatical is less common.

Precisely because the pace of narration in Old Russian literature depended to a large extent on the saturation of the narration itself, and not on the writer's intention to create this or that mood, not on his desire to control time in order to create various artistic effects, the problem of time in Old Russian literature attracted the attention of the author. relatively less than in the new literature. Artistic time did not have that measure of independence from the plot, which was necessary for its independent development and which it began to possess in modern times. Time was subordinate to the plot, did not stand above it, therefore it seemed much more objective and epic, less diverse and more connected with history, understood, however, much more narrowly than in modern times - as a change of events, but not as a change in the way of life . Time in its course seemed to capture in the Middle Ages a much narrower range of phenomena than it captures in our consciousness now.
Chronicle
time. The literary genre that for the first time came into sharp conflict with the isolation of plot time is chronicle.

Time in the annals is not uniform. In different chronicles, in different parts of chronicles throughout their centuries-old existence, diverse systems of time are reflected. The Russian chronicles are a grand arena of struggle between two diametrically opposed ideas about time: one is old, pre-literate, epic, torn into separate time series, and the other is newer, more complex, uniting everything that happens into some kind of historical unity and developing under the influence of new ideas about Russian and world history, which appeared with the formation of a single Russian state, aware of its place in world history, among the countries of the world.

Annalistic record stands at the transition of the present to the past. This process of transition is extremely significant in the chronicle. The chronicler "without deceit", in fact, writes down the events of the present - what was in his memory, and then, accumulating new records, during subsequent rewriting of chronicle texts, thereby pushes these records into the past. An annalistic record, which at the time of its compilation referred to an event of the present or only recently happened, gradually turns into a record of the past - more and more distant. The remarks, exclamations and comments of the chronicler, which, when written, were the result of the chronicler's agitation, his "empathy", his political interest in them, then become impassive documents. They do not disturb either the temporal sequence or the epic calmness of the chronicler. From this point of view, it is clear that the artistic image of the chronicler, invisibly present in the annalistic presentation, appears in the mind of the reader in the form of a contemporary writing down what is happening, and not in the image of a “scientific and inquisitive historian” creating chronicle vaults, as he appears in the studies of Russian annals.
CONCLUSION

The humanities are now becoming more and more important in the development of world culture.

It has become banal to say that in the XX century. Distances have shortened due to advances in technology. But it may not be a truism to say that they have been further reduced between people, countries, cultures and epochs thanks to the development of the humanities. That is why the humanities are becoming an important moral force in the development of mankind.

The same task stands with regard to the cultural history of the past of our own country.

Penetrating into the aesthetic consciousness of other epochs and other nations, we must first of all study their differences among themselves and their differences from our aesthetic consciousness, from the aesthetic consciousness of modern times. We must first of all study the peculiar and inimitable, the "individuality" of peoples and past epochs. It is precisely in the diversity of aesthetic consciousnesses that their special instructiveness, their richness and the guarantee of the possibility of their use in modern artistic creativity are found. To approach the old art and the art of other countries only from the point of view of modern aesthetic norms, to look only for what is close to ourselves, means to extremely impoverish the aesthetic heritage.

In our time, the study of ancient Russian literature is becoming more and more necessary. We are gradually beginning to realize that the solution of many problems in the history of Russian literature of its classical period is impossible without the involvement of the history of ancient Russian literature.

Peter's reforms marked a transition from the old to the new, and not a gap, the emergence of new qualities under the influence of trends that lay in the previous period - it is clear, just as it is clear that the development of Russian literature from the tenth century. and to this day is a single whole, no matter what turns may be encountered on the path of this development. We can understand and appreciate the significance of the literature of our day only on the scale of the entire thousand-year development of Russian literature. None of the issues raised in this book can be considered definitively resolved. The purpose of this book is to outline the paths of study, and not close them to the movement of scientific thought. The more controversy this book causes, the better. And there is no reason to doubt that it is necessary to argue, just as there is no reason to doubt that the study of antiquity should be carried out in the interests of modernity.

INTRODUCTION

However, not only these people were interested in many issues of ancient Russian literature, many writers of Russia and neighboring countries are dealing with these issues to this day.

Geographic boundaries

Not only was ancient Russian literature not isolated from the literatures of neighboring western and southern countries, in particular, from the same Byzantium, but within the limits of the 17th century. we can talk about the opposite - about the absence of clear national boundaries in it. There was a single literature, a single script and a single literary (Church Slavonic) language among the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), among the Bulgarians, among the Serbs, among the Romanians. The main fund of church-literary monuments was common.

Let us now turn to the other side of the question of the "Europeanization" of Russian literature in the eighteenth century: the supposed position of ancient Russian literature between East and West.

The absence of literary ties with Asia is a striking feature of Old Russian literature.

At first, those equal relations were not established with the Western European countries, which were in Ancient Rus' with other East Slavic countries and with the countries of South-Eastern Europe.

Chronological boundaries

Where is the line between ancient Russian literature and new? This question is inseparable from another: what does this line consist of?

From this it is clear that the main thing is in the internal structural features of literature, which left their mark on the treatment of Western European literature.

When did the restructuring of one literary structure into another take place?

POETICS OF LITERATURE AS A SYSTEM OF A WHOLE

The fine arts of Ancient Rus' were action-packed, and this subjectivity until the beginning of the 18th century, when significant structural changes took place in the fine arts, not only did not weaken, but steadily increased. The subjects of the fine arts were predominantly literary. Characters and individual scenes from the Old and New Testaments, saints and scenes from their lives, various Christian symbols were based in one way or another on literature - church literature, of course, mainly, but not only church literature. The plots of the frescoes were the plots of written sources. The content of icons, especially icons with hallmarks, was associated with written sources. Miniatures illustrated the lives of saints, chronographic palea, chronicles, chronographs, physiologists, cosmographies and six-day books, individual historical stories, legends, etc. The art of illustration was so high that even works of theological and theological-symbolic content could be illustrated. Murals were created on the themes of church hymns (akathists, for example), psalms, and theological works.

Two concepts of style in literature should be distinguished: style as a phenomenon of the language of literature and style as a specific system of form and content.

At present, we can talk about the Baroque style as the style of the era, to one degree or another affecting all types of artistic activity within certain chronological and geographical boundaries.

When we talk about the connections that existed between literature and art in Ancient Russia, we must keep in mind not only the fact that literature in Ancient Russia had an extremely strong visual figurativeness, and not only that the visual arts constantly had written works as their subjects, but also the fact that the illustrators of Ancient Rus' developed extremely skillful techniques for conveying a literary narrative. The desire for storytelling was necessary for miniaturists, and they used an extremely wide range of techniques in order to transform the space of the image during the story. And these techniques were also reflected in the literary work itself, where very often the narrator, as it were, prepares material for the miniaturist, creating a sequence of scenes - a kind of "chain mail of the story." But let us turn to the narrative techniques of ancient Russian miniaturists.

Narrative space dominates in miniatures over geographical space. One can say more - in miniatures, the narrative sequence dominates over the possible real one.

Genres constitute a certain system because they are generated by a common set of causes, and also because they interact, support each other's existence and at the same time compete with each other.

POETICS OF LITERARY MEANS

Medieval symbolism "deciphers" not only many motifs and plot details, but it also allows you to understand a lot in the very style of medieval literature. In particular, the so-called commonplaces of medieval literature, so widespread in it, in many cases reflect the features of the medieval symbolic worldview. Yes, and in those cases when they pass from work to work as a result of borrowing, they are all the same “supported” by the symbolic meaning given to them. Thus, for example, many of the "literary clichés" of medieval hagiography are explained by medieval symbolism. The addition of hagiographic schemes occurs under the influence of ideas about the symbolic meaning of all the events of human life: the life of a saint always has a double meaning - in itself and as a moral model for other people

Stylistic symmetry is a deeply archaic phenomenon. It is characteristic of the artistic thinking of pre-feudal and feudal society.

Comparisons in ancient Russian literature differ sharply in their character and inner essence from comparisons in modern literature.

Ordinary, "average" comparisons in ancient Russian literature are of a different type: they concern the inner essence of the compared objects par excellence.

Finally, one more remark about medieval comparisons.

POETICS OF ARTISTIC TIME

Artistic time of a verbal work. If you look closely at how the world was understood in antiquity or in the Middle Ages, you can see that contemporaries did not notice much in this world, and this happened because the ideas about the changeability of the world in time were narrowed. The social and political structure of the world, way of life, people's customs and much more seemed to be unchanged, forever established. Therefore, contemporaries did not notice them and they were not described in literary and historical works. Chroniclers and chroniclers note only events, incidents in the broadest sense of the word. They don't see the rest.

The most essential for the study of literature is the study of artistic time: time as it is reproduced in literary works, time as an artistic factor in literature.

What is the artistic time of a work, in contrast to grammatical time and the philosophical understanding of time by individual authors?

Artistic time is a phenomenon of the very artistic fabric of a literary work, subordinating both grammatical time and its philosophical understanding by the writer to its artistic tasks.

It is necessary to pay attention to one more aspect of artistic time: each kind of art has its own forms of the passage of time, its own aspects of artistic time and its own forms of duration.

Artistic time in folklore. The originality of the representation of time in folk lyrics is in close connection, first of all, with the fact that there is neither an actual nor a depicted word in it. In this, folk lyrics differ radically from book lyrics, where the author is not only obligatory, but where he plays a very important role as the “lyrical hero” of the work. Russian folk lyrics are not so much "created" as performed. The place of the author is taken by the performer. Her "lyrical hero" is, to a certain extent, the performer himself. The singer sings about himself, the listener listens about himself.

Artistic time in ancient Russian literature. Artistic time in ancient Russian literature differs sharply from artistic time in modern literature. The subjective aspect of time, in which time seems to flow either slowly, or running fast, or rolling in an even wave, or moving abruptly, intermittently, was not yet discovered in the Middle Ages. If in the new literature time is very often depicted as it is perceived by the characters of the work or presented to the author or the author's "replacement" - the lyrical hero, the "image of the narrator", etc. - then in the literature the ancient Russian author seeks to depict objectively existing time, independent of any perception of it. Time seemed to exist only in its objective reality. Even what is happening in the present was perceived without regard to the subject of time. Time for the ancient Russian author was not a phenomenon of human consciousness. Accordingly, in the literature of Ancient Russia there were no attempts to create a "mood" of the story by changing the pace of the story. Narrative time slowed down or sped up depending on the needs of the narrative itself. So, for example, when the narrator tried to convey the event with all the details, the narration seemed to slow down. It slowed down in those cases when a dialogue came into play, when the protagonist uttered a monologue, or when this monologue was "internal", when it was a prayer. The action was slowed down almost to the real, when a picturesque description was required. We also saw such slowdowns in action in Russian epics - in scenes of a hero saddling a horse, a hero's dialogue with an enemy, in battle scenes, in descriptions of a feast. This time can be defined as "artistic imperfect". In epics, this artistic imperfect usually coincides with the grammatical imperfect; in works of ancient Russian literature, this coincidence of artistic time with grammatical is less common.

Chronicle time. The literary genre that for the first time came into sharp conflict with the isolation of plot time is chronicle.

CONCLUSION

The humanities are now becoming more and more important in the development of world culture.

The same task stands with regard to the cultural history of the past of our own country.

INTRODUCTION

However, not only these people were interested in many issues of ancient Russian literature, many writers of Russia and neighboring countries are dealing with these issues to this day.

Geographic boundaries

Not only was ancient Russian literature not isolated from the literatures of neighboring western and southern countries, in particular, from the same Byzantium, but within the limits of the 17th century. we can talk about the opposite - about the absence of clear national boundaries in it. There was a single literature, a single script and a single literary (Church Slavonic) language among the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), among the Bulgarians, among the Serbs, among the Romanians. The main fund of church-literary monuments was common.

Let us now turn to the other side of the question of the "Europeanization" of Russian literature in the eighteenth century: the supposed position of ancient Russian literature between East and West.

The absence of literary ties with Asia is a striking feature of Old Russian literature.

At first, those equal relations were not established with the Western European countries, which were in Ancient Rus' with other East Slavic countries and with the countries of South-Eastern Europe.

Likhachev D.S. Poetics of Old Russian Literature

The relationship between literary genres

Literary genres appear only at a certain stage in the development of the art of the word and then constantly change. Genre category - historical category. Genres live independently of each other, but form a certain system that changes historically.

The combination of several genre definitions in the title of a work indicates not only the hesitation of the scribe, but sometimes is the result of the fact that ancient Russian works really combine several genres. Genres are heterogeneous and unequal, but constitute a kind of hierarchical system.

The complex structure of the interaction of genres makes up the character; feature of ancient Russian literature, which sharply distinguishes it from the new medieval literature.

In Russian medieval literature, genres are different in terms of what they are intended for.

Folklore and literature oppose each other not only as two independent systems of genres, but also as two different worldviews, two different artistic methods.

Poetics of artistic generalization

Literary etiquette is one of the forms of ideological coercion in the Middle Ages. Etiquette is inherent in feudalism, life is permeated with it. Art is subject to this form of feudal coercion.

Literary etiquette defines stable stylistic formulas. The requirements of literary etiquette give rise to a desire to distinguish between the use of the Church Slavonic language and Russian in all its varieties. Etiquette requires a certain "education". Only the behavior of ideal heroes was subject to etiquette norms.

Literary etiquette caused a special traditional character of literature, the appearance of stable stylistic formulas, the transfer of entire passages from one work to another, the stability of images, symbols, metaphors, etc.

elements of realism

Conventional art or the art of conventionality is very often combined with concretizing art, striving for clarity, for creating the illusion of reality.

For this concretized art, the term "realism" is adopted.

Separate signs of realism appear in Old Russian literature, usually in combination. The specificity of the description is combined with the presence of artistic details. The artistic detail is combined with the presence of artistic details, with the desire to explain the events as quite real.

Poetics of artistic time

The author's time varies depending on whether the author is involved in the action or not. The author's time can be motionless, but it can also move independently, having its own storyline in the work. The time of the author can either overtake the narrative or lag behind it.

Plot time can speed up and slow down, especially in a novel: the novel “breathes”.

Each kind of art has its own forms of duration.

In ancient Russian literature, the author seeks to depict the objectively existing time, independent of its particular circumstances. Time seemed to exist only in objective reality. The time of the author was not a phenomenon of human consciousness.

Artistic time is closely connected with the genre of the work, with the artistic method.

Poetics of artistic space

The forms of artistic space in ancient Russian literature do not have such a variety as the forms of artistic time. They don't change by genre. In general, they are not subject only to literature as a whole: they are the same in painting, architecture, chronicles, and even in everyday life.

Events in the annals, in the lives of saints, in historical stories are mainly movements in space: campaigns and crossings covered by the heroes of geographical space, victories as a result of the transition of the army and transitions of the army in connection with the defeat.

Likhachev, D.S. Poetics of Old Russian Literature / D.S. Likhachev. - L., 1967.