Word art. Pedagogical conditions for the use of methods and techniques for introducing verbal art to children of older preschool age

The development of verbal art in Antiquity; author and reader in the literary process

The word “literature”, which has become so familiar to us, arose relatively recently: in European languages ​​it was established in the 18th century. and was formed from the Latin "lit (t) era", which means "letter". Therefore, etymologically, literature is that which is written with letters. N.A. Chistyakova successfully formulated the notion of literature that has become entrenched in the minds of modern man: literature is “the author's verbal art fixed in writing, oriented towards readers and widely replicated for them” 11 .

In Antiquity, the term "literature" did not exist; it was customary to call all works of verbal art "poetry", and verbal creativity itself - "poetic art". Nowadays, not all literary works in general are called poetry, but only those created in verse. This is quite consistent with the ancient tradition, because the concept of "poetry" arose in archaic Greece, that is, when the art of the word used exclusively poetic speech, and prose was used only in applied areas - in office work, to create various documents, etc. However, if we think about the etymology of the word "poetry", we will understand that initially for the people of antiquity the defining feature of this concept was not at all one or another type of artistic speech (poetry or prose).

The word "poetry" (ancient Greek puiesis) goes back to the ancient Greek verb "poieo" - "I do", "I create", "I create", and without further specification. This reminds us of the initial stage of the development of literature, when it was not yet an independent art form, but an integral part of the ritual and mythological complex (folk ritual syncretism - A.V. Veselovsky), which completely determined being ancient man in the conditions of the primitive community and at an early stage of class relations, and later, at the later stages of ancient history, it had a noticeable impact on the spiritual microclimate and the way of life of society.

Within the framework of folk-ritual syncretism, the art of the word was still inseparable from music, dance, pantomime, therefore, it could not receive a more precise, specific name than such a general definition as "creativity". There was this literature that did not stand out from the ritual-mythological complex in the form of oral folk art (folklore). Unlike literature, his works were not recorded in writing. The reason for this was not at all the absence of writing (we recall: the earliest ancient Greek inscriptions date back to the 8th century BC). There was no urgent need for such fixation, because labor, ritual, game songs, prayers and hymns to the gods, mythological legends, epic songs glorifying ancestors were known to everyone, were a public property. All people - fellow tribesmen, neighbors - took part in the collective creation, preservation, improvement and performance of poetic works. Thus, everyone was involved in creativity in one way or another, all participants in the ritual or holiday, during which folklore works were performed, simultaneously represented both the creating (recreating) and perceiving side of verbal art, which was quite naturally collective, and not individually authorial. . There was, of course, also no question of opposition between the author and the reader. All this also significantly distinguishes folklore from literature.

In addition, in the conditions of still fairly strong community traditions, within the framework of folk ritual syncretism, poetic creativity was rigidly conditioned by external causes. It is external circumstances: the situation, traditions, the laws of the rite, and not the arbitrary desires of people that dictate that funeral lamentations should be heard at funerals, wedding songs should be heard at marriage ceremonies, etc. So, at the dawn of Antiquity, there was no literature at all. The beginning of its formation in Ancient Greece is associated with the professionalization of the creators and performers of epic songs - Aeds and Rhapsodes (VIII - VI centuries BC). This process marked the beginning of the separation of poetry from folk ritual syncretism and its transformation into an independent art form.

From the general mass of fellow tribesmen who knew folklore, the Aeds already stood out as especially gifted people who improved their skills as singers, musicians and writers. Therefore, the attitude towards them among the people was very respectful, it was believed that, unlike ordinary people, the singer was inspired by the Muses themselves, the gods were favorable to him and spoke through his lips. It is no coincidence that the adjective "divine" has become a constant epithet for aeda.

All this testifies to the fact that between the epic singers and the audience in archaic Greece there has already been a certain distance, characteristic of any independent, professional art.

At the same time, the creativity of the Aeds still remained oral and collective. I.I. Tolstoy emphasizes that the name “demiurge” was applied to the aeds in Greece, as well as to all artisans, formed from the words “people” and “work” with the meaning: “working for the people”, “performing people’s work” 12 .

If creativity is “work for the people”, then the content of poetry (“creativity”) can only be that which is established in the people's consciousness as generally accepted, eternal, indisputably true. Greek poetry (and indeed all ancient literature) was provided with such content by mythology. “The idea of ​​creative activity in the early social consciousness was interpreted as a search for the best form of eternal content, as a struggle of timeless and permanent content for its form,” says N.A. Since the content is eternal, stable, then the forms for it require traditional, stable ones, and the skill lies in the ability to follow the established norms and rules. The rivalry between the masters (including the Aeds), which is so characteristic of Greek culture, affected only the sphere of finishing the external form, and not the conceptual basis of the work or the unique and individual style of the creator. In such circumstances, the personal principle in art could not be intensively developed. It was absorbed by tradition, to which everyone was equal. This force of tradition was fixed for a long time in ancient Greek and in general ancient literature.

And yet, in some particular moments, the Aeds already had the opportunity to show a certain creative independence. I.I. Tolstoy notes: “The singers assimilate the general canon of the epic song, strictly adhere to its plot and equipment of the epic topic, while the interpretation of a separate image or a separate position is created each time by the talent of the aed. The details are infinitely varied, the main style remains unchanged” (op. cit. – p.12).

Consequently, in the oral collective tradition of the Greek Aeds, some prerequisites for future individual creativity gradually took shape. There was no personal authorship yet, but a desire to know the creators of beloved works of literature has already arisen in a wide popular audience. This interest first took shape in the minds of the people in the form of authorities - mythologized images of the legendary masters of the word, overshadowed by a divine gift.

Here it is appropriate to make a small digression in order to delve into the essence of the concepts. In modern speech usage, the meanings of the words author and authority are quite far from each other. However, they are related words. Both of them go back to the Latin verb augeo, denoting “an action inherent primarily in the gods as sources of cosmic initiative: “I multiply”, “I contribute”, but also simply “I do” - I bring something into being or increase weight, volume or potency. already existing" 13 .

The subject of this action was called the word auctor (“author”), and the property of this acting subject was called auctoritas (“authority”). Thus, in the original sense, the “author” is the “founder”, “organizer”, “teacher”, “creator”, and the nature of his activity was realized precisely as divine due to the exceptional, all-important significance of this activity. From the verb augeo in Latin, the word augustus, "August", was also formed. “This is a man,” explains S.S. Averintsev, “who has experienced a similar action of the gods and, as a result, has become more than a man and more than a citizen. But a person and a citizen, subject to their full rights, can also be the subject of this action (augeo - O.N.). It is given to him to “multiply” the power of a certain message, vouching for it with his own name. He is able to “do” and “establish” something: for example, to erect a sanctuary, to found a city, to propose a law, which, if adopted by the civil community, will bear the name of the proposer ”(Decree cit. - P. 105). In this list of acts, the arbiter of which is the auctor, the creation of works of art, in particular, verbal art, which had priority in antiquity, can also be named. Since creativity was perceived at the dawn of Antiquity as a “work for the people” inspired by a deity, the one who performed it, in the understanding of the people of that time, simply could not be an ordinary person: his value (auctoritas) seemed to them comparable to the rank of a ruler or the value of an entire people, communities for which the singer, the master of words, creates. Truly

... There is only one mortal, whom Zeus will love from the heart. Iliad 9:116-117

The comparison of the poet-demiurge with Homer's Achilles is quite appropriate here, since the image of any epic hero embodies the same concept of a person whose deeds are of national significance, and the connection with the people is inseparable. Thus, initially in antiquity there was an idea of ​​the creator, the poet as a generalized mythologized authority.

This idea, rightly concludes S.S. Averintsev, “is in a certain proximity to such a phenomenon as an etiological myth (that is, a myth about the origin of a phenomenon - O.N.). Faced with this or that fact of cultural tradition, the archaic consciousness habitually asks the question: who established, established, introduced - who is the auctor? (op.cit. - p.109). Indeed, who created, for example, the Iliad and the Odyssey, thereby laying the foundation for all ancient poetry? The answer to this question was the legendary image of Homer, the ideal aed, the pet of the Muses, that had developed in the popular mind. The legend about the seven Greek cities that disputed among themselves the right to be called the homeland of Homer reflects not so much the absence of specific documentary information about the poet as, again, his unshakable popular authority as a divine singer. So, the Greek poet Antipater of Sidon (c. 170-100 BC) in the epigram "The Homeland of Homer" wrote:

Others call the land that brought you up the Colophon, Glorious Smyrna - some, Chios - others, Homer. Ios also boasts of this, equally blessed Salamis, Also Thessaly, the mother of the Lapith family. More than once Another place has been magnified by your homeland. But if we are called to announce the prophetic words of Phoebus, Let us say: the great sky is your fatherland, and you were not born by a mortal Mother, but by Calliope herself.

Cultivating the mythologized authorities of the pioneering poets, people's rumor attributed to them a variety of works. And it's usually very broad. So, Homer was considered the creator of not only the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also other works of the heroic epic, as well as a whole series of hymns to the gods (the so-called Homeric hymns). Aesop was seen as the writer of absolutely all Greek fables. It is interesting to note that in the literature of Ancient Egypt or the Middle East, the idea of ​​the poet as a generalized authority was fixed and preserved throughout the entire era (compare in the Bible: King David, to whom all the psalms of the Old Testament were attributed, or King Solomon, the creator of parables, as well as the evangelists of the New Testament). In ancient literature, the situation began to change rather quickly: the understanding of the creator as an author in the modern sense of the word, that is, the individual creator of a literary work, who leaves his personal imprint on his artistic world, gradually began to form (see: LES. - P.13), the subject of verbal and artistic expression. “Modern literary criticism clearly distinguishes between: 1) a biographical author – a creative personality that exists in non-artistic, primary empirical reality, and 2) an author in his intratextual, artistic embodiment”, who “in a broad sense acts as an organizer, embodyer and exponent of emotional semantic integrity, unity of a given literary text” 14 .

So, now not only a specialist, but also any cultured reader distinguishes between these two incarnations of the author. In Antiquity, the author real face and the author as the creator of a new artistic reality were often naively identified, especially at an early stage in the development of literature. However, the very emergence and growth of the general public's interest in the artist as a specific person became a very progressive phenomenon in ancient culture.

The first truly historical person of ancient Greek literature is the epic poet Hesiod (the turn of the 8th - 7th centuries BC). He is followed by lyric poets of the 7th-6th centuries. BC. Very little is known about their life, often only what they themselves reported about themselves in their poems, which also survived by no means completely. With the appearance of each of these masters, the immediate descendants associated clear ideas about their artistic discoveries: Hesiod created a didactic epic, Archilochus - iambic, Hipponakt - holiyamb, Alkey and Sappho - special poetic stanzas (Alcaeus and Sapphic). These discoveries quickly became part of the common creative routine and became fixed as traditions. It is curious that the status of tradition in ancient poetry was acquired not only by some new forms introduced by one or another creator, but also by themes and motifs. For example, the confession of the lyrical hero Archilochus (second half of the 7th century BC) about the loss of the shield, which struck contemporaries with its frankness, caused the inheritance of this theme by Alcaeus, Horace, etc. The glorification of pleasures, wine and love, which became the leading theme of the poems of Anacreon, became the object of numerous imitations in the so-called Anacreontic lyrics that developed in the era of Hellenism and during the period of Roman rule in Greece, and subsequently in the era of modern times.

In all this, features of archaic thinking are still noticeable (the poet is perceived as the "founder" of some innovation). However, the personalities of the Greek poets of the archaic era already aroused a clearly heightened interest among contemporaries. According to tradition, words still made up for the lack of accurate information about the fate of their favorite masters. folk legends based on their poetry. Apparently, this is how the stories about the unhappy love of Archilochus and about tragic death Sappho. But how the nature of these conjectures has changed! In the legendary biography of Homer, a myth was created about the son of a deity and the divine chosen one, elevating the folk singer to the rank of an eternal generalized authority. In the lyric poets of the archaic, popular rumor appreciated, first of all, deep feelings in their individual manifestation.

Thus, the idea of ​​the artist of the word as an individual author who developed his own creative manner, whose originality can be most fully appreciated when compared with others (remember the agon of Aeschylus and Euripides with the famous scene of "weighing" the poetic style of both tragedians in Aristophanes' comedy "The Frogs"). Accordingly, in the creative practice of the ancient masters of the word, various types of creative behavior were formed:

• teacher, educator of citizens (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Terence, Horace);
• lonely thinker, unrecognized genius (Euripides);
• inquisitive seeker of interesting and instructive information (Herodotus);
• scholar and courtier (Kallimachus);
• a representative of bohemia, a young man who burns his life in the fire of passions (Catullus and neoteriki).

Moreover, the choice of a line of behavior was determined partly by tradition, but also personally by the writer (biographical author). And if Hesiod at the beginning of the 7th century. BC, while creating the image of the author in his poems (the author in his intratextual being), still paid tribute to the stereotype of the demiurge-singer inspired by the Muses 15 , the lyrical hero of Archilochus at the end of the same century already openly challenged the inert general opinion:

If, my friend Esimides, you fear the reproaches of the mob, You will hardly know much joy in life.

Before us is a very early example of how the author ceases to feel like “the bearer of divine revelation, having lost the right to be considered a real healer of society and its custodian. He turned into a bearer and spokesman of a personal attitude to a changeable and mysterious existence. His work was enriched by the right to personal self-consciousness and the right to its unhindered expression” 16 .

If the author of a work of art is perceived as a person, then his relationship with the audience inevitably becomes more complicated and also acquires a personal character. However, this audience in Antiquity did not immediately become a readership. Already in archaic Greece, the works of poets were recorded, but not in order to become the property of the reading public. "The original written text served only those who professionally recited or sang literary creations, and therefore, a small closed circle" 17 .

The audience to which the poet or performer addressed was not yet readers, but listeners. Consequently, Greek poetry of the 7th - 6th centuries. BC. can be called literature (due to the presence of its written fixation and the emergence of the author's principle in it), but still this is not literature of the modern type, but its early form, intended not for reading, but for public performance. “Only during the 5th century. BC. the situation has changed, - continue the compilers of the dictionary "Ancient Writers". – Although in the future, listening to literary works (during religious festivities, friendly meetings, public recitations, theatrical performances) remained an important form of contact with literature for many, the number of those who read themselves also increased. The authors began to create primarily for the reader. The book trade developed” (p. 7). For example, the "father of history" Herodotus in the second half of the 5th century. BC. according to tradition, he willingly spoke to the audience with reading fragments of his work. However, those who wished to get acquainted with his "History" in full, could do this only by reading its text.

Literature in the modern sense of the word was finally formed in Greece, with most likely, at the end of the 4th c. BC. at the turn of two eras - classics and Hellenism, when works of verbal art began to be created and distributed primarily for the readership, and the archaic form of listening to them faded into the background. It is significant that it was at this time that the first scientific work on the theory of literature, Aristotle's Poetics, was created.

“In Rome, literature as a conscious personal creativity, intended for a certain reading environment, creativity, deliberately torn away from its former functions, is affirmed in the poetry of the neotherics and Catullus” 18, that is, in the middle of the 1st century. BC. From this we can conclude that Roman literature developed more rapidly than Greek literature, which was due both to its early Hellenization, which provided the Romans with access to highly developed cultural traditions, and to the features of their own identity.

Notes

11. Chistyakova N.A. Historical types of ancient artistic culture // Antiquity as a type of culture. – M.: Nauka, 1988. – P.105-111. - P.109.

12. Tolstoy I.I. Aeda. Ancient creators and bearers of the ancient epic. - M., 1958.

14. VV Prozorov Introduction to literary criticism. Literary work: basic concepts and terms. M., 1999. - S.11, 13)

15. At the same time, it is enough to compare the beginnings of Theogony and Works and Days with the beginnings of Homeric poems in order to appreciate the innovation of Hesiod: he already considers it necessary to tell the reader about himself, without avoiding worldly, everyday details.

16. Chistyakova N.A. The history of the emergence and development of the ancient Greek epic: a course of lectures. - SPb., 1999. P.8.

17.B.Bravo, E.Vipshitskaya-Bravo. The fate of ancient literature // Ancient writers: Dictionary. - St. Petersburg: Lan, 1999. - P.7.

18. Chistyakova N.A. Historical types of ancient artistic culture // Antiquity as a type of culture. - M., 1988. - P.109.

EAT. MELETINSKY

Archaeological material, which provides so much for the history of fine art, is of very little help in studying the roots of verbal art.

Verbal art, apparently, arose later than some other types of art, since its material, primary element is the word, speech. Of course, all the arts could appear only after a person had mastered articulate speech, but the emergence of verbal art required a high degree of development of the language in its communicative function and the presence of rather complex grammatical and syntactic forms. Apparently, the fine arts appeared first of all. The first decorated wooden and bone objects (female figurines - Paleolithic "Venus") date back to about 25 thousand years BC. e. Classical monuments of European cave painting (images of animals in Aurignac, solutre and Madeleine) date back to 25-10 thousand years BC. e.

Fine arts arose in the Upper Paleolithic (the last stage of the Old Stone Age), when a person, according to his constitution, was no longer different from the modern one, spoke, knew the tribal organization based on dual exogamy (the division of a social group into two halves, within which marriage ties are prohibited) , made perfect tools from stone, bone and horn, had primitive religious ideas. But less perfect tools were already being made by man in the Middle and Lower Paleolithic, at least 400,000 years before that.

In the process of labor, the hand was improved, which now could give the natural material a utilitarian-expedient form, and then just as expediently use the object made by it. The "intellectual" use of the hand (and eye) sharpened the faculties that made articulate speech and human thought possible.

The development of mythology certainly contributed to the emergence of symbolic and fantastic images. There is almost no doubt that Paleolithic cave painting not only synthesized observations of animals - objects of hunting - and in this case represented a way to "master" them, but also had a magical significance as a means of attracting and subduing hunting prey. This is indicated by images of spears stuck into animal figures. Undoubtedly, the “revival” of rock paintings or drawings on the ground by Australians during rituals has a magical character, with the aim of stimulating the reproduction of this type of animal. Visual arts were widely used in more complex rituals, closely associated with early religious beliefs. However, there could exist (this is confirmed by the example of the same Australians) fine art, not strictly related to religious and magical purposes.

In the famous cave of the Three Brothers, there is an image of a disguised man with deer horns dating back to the Madeleine era, that is, to the heyday of Paleolithic painting in Europe. This and similar figures undoubtedly testify to the existence of hunting dances at that time, apparently already having a magical purpose. Dance - this living plastic - is not only one of the oldest forms of art, but a kind that reached its high perfection precisely in the primitive period.

If in the ancient fine arts expressive figurative depiction was intertwined with ornamental motifs, then in dance the dynamic reproduction of hunting scenes, labor processes and some aspects of life is necessarily subject to a strict rhythm, and the rhythm of movements from time immemorial is supported by a sound rhythm. Primitive music is almost inseparable from dance and for a long time was subordinated to it.

At the primitive stage, the transforming role of art was often naively identified with a utilitarian goal achieved not by labor, but by magic. The primitive magical rite, as animistic and totem ideas developed and became more complex, the veneration of ancestors, master spirits, etc., grew into a religious cult.

The connection of dance with a magical rite, and then with a religious cult, turned out to be closer than that of the fine arts, since dance became the main factor in the ritual action.

Folk-ritual games, including elements of dance, pantomime, music, and partly fine arts (and later poetry), in their syncretic unity, became the embryo of the theater. A specific feature of the primitive theater is the use of masks, which genetically goes back to disguise as a hunting technique (dressing in the skin of an animal in order to approach the object of the hunt without arousing suspicion). Putting on the skin of an animal is common during the performance of the already mentioned hunting dances among the North American Indians, some peoples of Africa, etc. Imitation of the habits of animals using animal masks and body painting has been developed in totemic rites associated with the corresponding idea of ​​a special relationship of a group of people (certain genera) with certain species of animals or plants, about their origin from common ancestors (which were usually drawn as creatures of a half-human, half-animal nature).

The image of an animal (first an object of hunting, and then a revered totem) precedes in the "theater" (as well as in rock art) the image of a person. Human masks first appear in funeral and memorial rites in connection with the cult of ancestors (dead relatives).

The wedding ceremony among many peoples has the features of a kind of ritual-syncretic action, distinct elements of theatricality. The same should be said about various calendar agrarian folk ritual games depicting the change of winter in spring or summer in the form of a struggle, a dispute between two forces, in the form of a “burial” of a doll or actor, embodying a defeated, dying winter. More complex forms of calendar agrarian mysteries are associated with the cult of the dying and resurrecting god. Such are the ancient Egyptian cult mysteries about Osiris and Isis, the ancient Babylonian New Year's festivities in honor of Marduk, the ancient Greek mysteries in honor of the fertility gods Demeter and Dionysus. (Such, in essence, in their genesis, are the medieval Christian mysteries.)

The origin of the ancient theater is associated with the Dionysian mysteries.

In the archaic forms of the theater, the pantomime element dominates the verbal text, in some cases a small verbal part is transferred to a special “actor” (this feature is still preserved in the traditional theater of Japan and Indonesia). The transformation of a ritual-theatrical spectacle into a drama takes place already in a historically developed society by breaking away from the ritual and much more intensive penetration of elements of verbal art, often with the help of writing.

Let's go directly to verbal art.

K. Bucher in the well-known book "Work and Rhythm" 2 , relying on an extensive collection of labor songs of various peoples, hypothesized that "at the lower levels of development, work, music and poetry were something unified, but work was the main element of this trinity"; the verse meter goes directly back to labor rhythms, and the main types of poetry gradually developed from the labor song - epic, lyric, drama. This hypothesis vulgarly, one-sidedly represents the connection between labor and poetry.

The outstanding Russian scientist AN. Veselovsky in his "Historical Poetics" saw the roots of not only dance, music, but also poetry in the folk rite. Primitive poetry, according to his concept, was originally a song of the choir, accompanied by dance and pantomime. In the song, the verbal element was naturally combined with the musical. Thus, poetry arose, as it were, in the depths of the primitive syncretism of the arts, united within the framework of the folk ritual. The role of the word at first was insignificant and entirely subordinated to rhythmic and mimic principles. The text was improvised for the occasion, until, finally, it itself acquired a traditional character.

A. N. Veselovsky proceeded from the primitive syncretism not only of the art forms, but also of the genres of poetry. "The epic and lyric seemed to us the consequences of the decomposition of the ancient ritual choir" 3 . In his opinion, along with the isolation of the song from the rite, the differentiation of genera occurs, and first the epic is distinguished, and then the lyrics and drama. He considers the lyrical-epic nature of its early forms to be the legacy of primitive syncretism in the epic. As for the lyrics, it grew out of the emotional cliques of the ancient choir and short formulas of various content as an expression of "collective emotionality", "group subjectivism" and stood out from ritual syncretism, mainly from spring ritual games. Veselovsky connects the final selection of lyrics with a greater individualization of poetic consciousness than in the epic. To the folk rite, which managed to take the form of a developed cult, he erects a drama. Poetic creativity appears to him in its genesis as collective in the literal sense, that is, as choral. The poet ascends to the singer and, ultimately, to the leader of the ritual choir.

Analyzing the corresponding vocabulary, he proves the semantic similarity in the genesis of the concepts of song-narrative-action-dance, as well as song-spell-fortune-telling-ritual act.

To the ritual-choral roots of poetry, in particular to the amoeba (that is, with the participation of two half-choirs or two singers) performance, Veselovsky erects some ancient features of the folk poetic style, for example, verse parallelism. But “psychological parallelism” (comparison of the phenomena of a person’s mental life with the state of natural objects), in his opinion, is rooted in a primitive animistic worldview, representing all nature as animated. To some features of the primitive worldview and way of life (animism, totemism, exogamy, matriarchy, patriarchy, etc.). Veselovsky erects a number of typical narrative motifs and plots. His "Historical Poetics", which arose on the basis of a generalization of the vast material accumulated by classical ethnography and folklore XIX century, represents a unique consistent theory of the origin of verbal art.

However, the concept of A.N. Veselovsky in the light of the current state of science needs to be corrected. Veselovsky quite fully traced the role and evolution of the elements of verbal art in folk rituals, correctly showed the gradual increase in the proportion of the verbal text in ritual syncretism. However, the folk rite, which played an exceptional role in the development of the dance, music and theater complex, cannot be considered as the only source of poetry.

The thesis about the complete initial syncretic unity of the epic, lyrics and drama is also an exaggeration.

Veselovsky's theory is the most productive for understanding the origin of lyric poetry. Folklore lyrics are entirely songs, and the song by its very nature reflects the syncretism of music and poetry. A.N. Veselovsky and at the same time the famous French philologist Gaston Paris convincingly showed the connection between medieval knightly lyrics and traditions folk songs from the spring ritual cycle.

The epic in its genesis is much less closely connected with ritual syncretism. True, the song form characteristic of epic poetry probably ultimately goes back to the ritual choir, but narrative folklore has been transmitted since ancient times both in the form of an oral prose tradition and in a mixed song or verse-prose form, and in the archaic there is more prose (and not less, as follows from the theory of primitive syncretism of art forms and types of poetry). This is explained by the fact that although the role of the word in primitive rites is much less than the role of mimic and rhythmic principles, even among the most “primitive” tribes, up to the Australians, next to the rite there is a developed tradition of prose narration, which ultimately does not go back to expressive, but to the purely communicative function of speech. In this narrative tradition, mythology occupies a huge place, which by no means can be completely removed from poetry.

Research on the origin and early stage of poetic creativity is extremely scarce.

M. Baur does not consider the primitive song as a direct embryo of the epic. “Narrative poetry in the full sense of the word is absent among the primitives and its place is occupied by drama”; “The song is not a normal vehicle for telling myths. They are usually told in prose tales."

Indeed, acquaintance with samples of the poetry of culturally backward tribes shows that this poetry is predominantly ritual-lyrical. Here there are such genres as quackery healing conspiracies; hunting songs; military songs; songs associated with agrarian magic and accompanying both the labor operations of the farmer and the corresponding spring ritual; funeral lamentations, songs of death; wedding and love songs; "disgraceful" songs, playful song squabbles; various songs accompanying dances and being one of the elements of complex ritual ceremonies; prayer spells addressed to various spirits and gods.

Many songs have a magical purpose, such as healers' incantations, songs about the growth and reproduction of plants ...

Ritual and lyric poetry are known only in song form, very often in combination with a theatrical and dramatic element. From the point of view of the sophistication of the stylistic structure, ritual poetry ranks first, followed by proper lyrical songs. Songs can be very short, consisting of one word (for example, characterizing a certain animal) or two words (for example, the word "warrior" and the name of a warrior), but they can also be quite extensive.

In lyrics, in addition to parallelism, refrain is widely found, repetition is literal or with variations. There are metaphors in primitive poetry. They are also frequent in oratorical prose when describing the greatness of leaders or warriors. Some metaphors owe their origin to taboos about death and illness. Ritual poetry has developed permanent metaphorical formulas.

The epic in its genesis is much less connected with ritual syncretism than the lyrics. Classical epic monuments of European and Asian peoples for the most part are poetic, but in more archaic monuments of the epic (for example, in the legends of the peoples of the Caucasus, in the heroic poems of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples of Siberia, in the Irish epic, etc.), the proportion of prose is greater, the so-called mixed form is often found, i.e. combination of prose and poetry. Most of the poems convey the speeches of characters and solemn epic descriptions. Some stories have come down to us in both poetic and prose form. On the other hand, in the tales of the most diverse peoples there are often interspersed with poetry, which can be interpreted as a relic of the same mixed form.

If we turn directly to primitive folklore, then we will be convinced that the narratives here, as a rule, exist not in the form of songs, but just in the form of oral prose with poetic inserts ...

Although the song form of the heroic epic probably ultimately goes back to the primitive ritual-lyrical song, the narrative folklore from ancient times has been transmitted mainly as a prosaic or predominantly prosaic (mixed) tradition. The combination of prose and verse (song) in the mixed tradition is, of course, something completely different from the lyric-epic song in the understanding of A.N. Veselovsky.

The origin of verbal art cannot be studied only "from the outside", in its relationship with ritual and other forms of existence. The inner aspect of this problem leads us to the myth.

The close connection between myth and ritual in primitive and ancient Eastern cultures is beyond doubt; some myths really directly ascended to rituals (for example, myths about dying and resurrecting gods). However, there are myths that are clearly independent of the rite in their genesis and do not even have ritual equivalents. In rituals, fragments of myths that arose quite independently were often staged. It is known that, for example, among the Bushmen or among some groups American Indians mythology is much richer than rituals. The same applies to ancient Greece, as opposed to Egypt or Mesopotamia. The question of the ratio of myths and rituals in the genetic plan is adequate to the problem of "chicken-egg" (who is from whom?!). Mythology does not belong to the sphere of behavior, but to the sphere of thinking, which, of course, does not exclude the interdependence of these two spheres.

Ancient myths contain in undeveloped unity the germs of art, religion, pre-scientific ideas about nature and society. Mythology was undoubtedly the "cradle" and "school" of poetic fantasy, in many respects anticipated its specificity, although the complete identification of mythology and literature proposed by "ritual-mythological" literary criticism (Bodkin, Fry, Chase, etc.) certainly cannot be accepted.

But only Lévi-Strauss was able to truly describe mythological thinking in terms of its generation of symbolic modeling systems and, unlike Lévy-Bruhl, show the intellectual ability of myth to classify and analyze, simultaneously explaining those of its specific features that bring it closer to art: thinking on a sensual level, thinking that achieves its goals in indirect ways (“bricolage”) and uses a kaleidoscopic rearrangement of a ready-made set of elements, purely metaphorical thinking - some myths turn out to be a metaphorical (rarely metonymic) transformation of others, convey the same “message” in different “codes” ; transformations of mythological texts become a means of revealing the symbolic (not allegorical) meaning.

The significance of mythology is very great in the development of various types of arts, in the very genesis of artistic and figurative thinking, but, of course, mythological narration had a specific significance for the formation of verbal.

Narrative poetry, which has language and plot as its primary elements, has this relative independence to a minimal extent.

The specificity of the primitive myth lies in the fact that ideas about the structure of the world are transmitted in the form of a story about the origin of certain of its elements. At the same time, the events of mythical time from the life of the "ancestors" appear as the ultimate causes of the current state of the world. From the point of view of science, events and people are determined by the state of the world, from the point of view of myth, the state of the world is the result of individual events, the actions of individual mythical personalities. Thus, narrative enters into the very specifics of primitive myth. Myth is not only a worldview, but also a narrative. Hence the special significance of myth for the formation of verbal art, primarily narrative.

Analysis of the program tasks of introducing preschoolers to verbal art Pedagogical conditions for using methods and techniques for introducing children of older preschool age to verbal art ...

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INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………….

CHAPTER I

1. 1. Psychological foundations of the perception of verbal art by older preschoolers……………………………………………………….
   2. Historical aspects of introducing preschoolers to verbal art …………………………………………………………………….
   3. Analysis of the program objectives of introducing preschoolers to verbal art…………………………………………………………
   4. Pedagogical conditions for the use of methods and techniques for introducing children of senior preschool age to the verbal art…………………………………………………………………….
   5. Analysis of the recommended literature for reading to children on introducing preschoolers to verbal art under the program "From Birth to School", ed.N. E. Veraksy, T. S. Komarova, M. A. Vasilyeva……………………………………………………………..

CHAPTER 2. …………………………………………………………………………

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………..

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………

INTRODUCTION

An important role in preschool education and training of children belongs to children's fiction.

The relevance of the work isthat in our age of information technology, the role of the book has changed, the love of reading has begun to fall. Already at preschool age, children prefer other sources of information to books: television, video products, computers. As a result, the reading of fiction is not given due attention. Therefore, most modern schoolchildren do not like and do not want to read.

CHAPTER 1 . THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS INVOLVING CHILDREN OF OLDER PRESCHOOL AGE TO VERBAL ART, ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF OLDER PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

1. The concept of verbal art, its role in the development of preschoolers

The term "literature" in the linguistic literature is interpreted ambiguously. Let's turn to dictionaries. Explanatory Dictionary of S.I. Ozhegova: "Literature" artistic literary creativity and verbal folklore. Fine literature (an outdated name for fiction).

"Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language" D.N. Ushakov's literature is defined as follows: Creativity, expressed in the word, both oral and written, verbal creativity.

The "Popular Dictionary of the Russian Language" gives the following definition: "Literature is fiction and oral folk art, as well as the totality of literary and folklore works of any people."

In the modern literary encyclopedia, literature is understood as the totality of all texts that are in the cultural circulation of society. The concept of literature is broader than literature, since it includes oral literature, including folklore, as well as business, academic and other types of literature.

These and other dictionaries basically coincide in the formulation of this concept.

Thus, there is no strict distinction between the terms literature and literature; one and the other can be used equally. The difference is that literature refers to written works, and literature refers to oral ones. Oral creativity is carried out by the people: from generation to generation, fairy tales, songs, epics, proverbs pass from mouth to mouth - everything that can be combined under the name of literature. "Literature" comes from the Latin word litera, which means letter, writing, writing, and hence it follows that literature is verbal creativity, imprinted, enshrined in writing. Thus, "literature" or verbal art is fiction and folklore.

Literature is the most accessible and educationally effective form of art. In a literary work, the word appears in the close unity of its figurative and conceptual sides. It is this feature of verbal art that expands the possibilities of the subject of literature in comparison with other types of art.

With the help of the artistic word, the child masters the grammar of the native language in unity with the vocabulary. Literature expands the horizons of a preschooler, develops his perception, thinking, memory, imagination and creativity, is a means of shaping the personality of a child, having a strong moral and ideological impact, unites the children's team.

The art of the word reflects reality through artistic images, shows the most typical, comprehending and summarizing real life facts. This helps the child to learn life, forms his attitude to the environment. Artistic works, revealing the inner world of heroes, make children worry, experience, as their own, the joys and sorrows of heroes.

In poetic images, fiction opens and explains to the child the life of society and nature, the world of human feelings and relationships. It makes emotions more saturated, educates the imagination and gives the child excellent examples of the Russian language: in stories, children learn the conciseness and accuracy of the word, in poetry they catch the musicality, melodiousness, and imagery of Russian speech.

In working with children, small folklore genres: sentences have long been used in education as pedagogical techniques, in order to emotionally color the significance of a particular moment in a child's life, proverbs and sayings are accessible to the understanding of a child of older preschool age. Proverbs addressed to children can inspire them with some rules of behavior. Fairy tales are the most favorite type of folk art for children. Folk tales reveal the accuracy and expressiveness of the Russian word, show how rich the native speech is with humor, lively and figurative expressions, and comparisons. Fairy tales help to form an artistic taste, to cultivate a good attitude towards the world and people. (7.35-39)

Thus, verbal art helps children express their attitude to what they have heard, using comparisons, metaphors, epithets and other means of figurative expression.

When getting acquainted with the works of literature, the connection between speech and aesthetic development clearly emerges, the language is assimilated in its aesthetic function. Possession of linguistic visual and expressive means serves the development artistic taste child.

The educational function of literature is carried out in a special way, inherent only in art - by the force of influence artistic image.

In order to fully realize the educational possibilities of literature, it is necessary to know the psychological characteristics of the perception and understanding of this type of art by preschoolers.

1. Psychological foundations of the perception of verbal art by older preschoolers

At the age of 5-7 years, the child reaches a fairly high level of mental activity in the perception of works of art. This age is a stage of intensive mental development. Thinking plays a special role. At this age, there is an improvement in visual-effective thinking, an improvement in visual-figurative thinking, and verbal-logical thinking begins to actively form.

Thinking becomes out of situation, children's questions are an indicator of the development of curiosity and speak of the problematic nature of the child's thinking, a new correlation of mental and practical activity appears, when practical actions arise on the basis of preliminary reasoning; the planned thinking increases; the prerequisites for such qualities of the mind as independence, flexibility, inquisitiveness are formed.

Older preschoolers have the ability to mentally act in imaginary circumstances, as if to take the place of a hero. For example, together with the heroes of a fairy tale, children experience a sense of fear in tense dramatic moments, a sense of satisfaction when justice is won. A work of art attracts a child not only with its bright and imaginative form, but also with its semantic content. Older preschoolers, perceiving the work, can give a conscious, motivated assessment of the characters. A quick, correct understanding of a story, a fairy tale (and by the end of the preschool age of shifters, fables) is facilitated by empathy for the characters, the ability to follow the development of the plot, to compare the events described in the work with what he had to observe in life. An insufficient level of development of abstract thinking makes it difficult for children to perceive such genres as fables, proverbs, riddles, and requires the help of an adult.

The development of thinking has a positive impact on the development of the semantic side of the speech activity of an older preschooler. This period is characterized by the active development of speech. Verbal art is becoming one of the important components contributing to the expansion of vocabulary. The active vocabulary of children of this period of development includes 25003000 words, the child actively uses all parts of speech, the skill of word formation is formed. The child learns the form of dialogue.

Perception becomes a meaningful, intellectual process, allows you to penetrate deeper into the environment and learn more complex aspects of reality. A distinctive feature of perception in older preschoolers is a sharp increase in its meaningfulness. All aspects of the development of perception at this age include the use of visual-figurative thinking, therefore, perception itself merges with understanding, determining the meaning of perceived objects and their properties, their relationship to other objects and properties. In the process of perceiving works of art, children are able to make a choice of what they like best (works, characters, images), substantiating it with the help of elements of aesthetic evaluation. They emotionally respond to those works of art that convey feelings and relationships understandable to them, various emotional states of people, animals, the struggle between good and evil.

The understanding of the literary hero becomes more complicated. Although the child's attention is still attracted by actions and deeds, he begins to penetrate into experiences, feelings, thoughts. In this regard, at the senior preschool age, not only a hero with an unambiguous character (bad or good), but also a more complex character, whose behavior is characterized by contradictory actions, moral feelings, and complex motives, becomes accessible to perception. The ability to penetrate into the sphere of the hero's inner life is associated with the formation of the ability to empathize, sympathize with him. Empathy helps the child to penetrate into such motives for the actions of characters that are associated not only with their actions, but also with feelings.

With the development of perception comes the process of improving attention.

The attention of older preschoolers becomes more stable and arbitrary. They can be engaged in not very attractive, but necessary business for 20-25 minutes together with an adult, but rarely arise under the influence of any set goal.

A characteristic feature of the attention of a child of older preschool age is that it is caused by outwardly attractive objects. Focused attention remains as long as there is interest in the perceived objects: objects, events, people.

At the senior preschool age, the imagination turns from a reproductive one into a creatively transformative one, it becomes controllable. The activity of the recreating imagination also reaches a high level. At an older age, the child is able to perceive the text without the help of illustrations.Necessary for awarenessworks of association can arise without direct visual support. The illustration in the book helps the child to clarify emerging ideas, making it easier to understand the meaning of the work.At the heart of the imagination of preschoolers is a small life experience, so there is a recombination of the accumulated information. This is due to the fact that the preschooler easily combines different ideas and is uncritically related to the resulting combinations. Another feature of the imagination of children is that they are interested in the very process of creating new images, situations, characters.

The preschooler is dominated by involuntary imagination (the images created are most often associated with what greatly excited and captivated). By the end of preschool age, the child begins to arbitrarily plan some of his actions. The growth of the arbitrariness of the imagination is especially manifested in the development of the ability to create an action plan and plan its achievement. Older preschoolers are able to fantasize arbitrarily, planning the process of implementing the idea in advance before the start of the activity.

Mastering the techniques and means of creating images leads to the fact that the images themselves become more diverse, richer, more emotional, permeated with aesthetic, cognitive feelings and personal meaning.Memory in older preschool age is involuntary,memorization and recall occurs independently of the will and consciousness child . The child remembers better what is of greatest interest to him, gives the best impressions. Therefore, the amount of fixed material is determined by the emotional attitude to a given object or phenomenon.

Children's memory is also characterized by a completely opposite property - this is an exceptional photographic quality. Children can easily memorize any poem or fairy tale. If an adult, retelling a fairy tale, deviates from the original text, then the child will immediately correct him, recall the missing detail.

At the age of 5 6 years, arbitrary memory begins to form.

In older preschool age, visual-figurative memory predominates, but verbal-logical memory develops, children, when remembering, begin to highlight the essential features of objects

The child is able to retain in memory a large amount of information, he

continued reading available. Analysis of texts, viewing illustrations contribute to the deepening of the reader's experience, the formation of reader sympathy.

Summarizing the most important achievements in the mental development of a child of older preschool age, we can conclude that children at this age are distinguished by a fairly high level of mental development. At this time, a certain amount of knowledge and skills is formed, thinking and imagination are intensively developing, relying on which you can encourage the child to listen, consider, memorize, analyze, which contributes to the full perception of verbal art.

1. Historical aspects of introducing preschoolers to verbal art

In the 30s of the twentieth century, attempts were made to determine the specific content of the literary education of preschoolers. L.S. Vygotsky, an outstanding Soviet psychologist, reflected on the features of the educational program for kindergarten. Outlining his views on how to acquaint children with fiction, he pointed out: the task of preschool education, unlike school education, is not to study classical literature, its history, but to introduce the child into the world of verbal art, to open this wonderful world to him, to cultivate a sense of the word, to evoke love and craving for a book. (1, p.6)

In the future, the features of the perception of fiction by a child of preschool age are studied in the works of famous Russian psychologists and teachers S. L. Rubinshtein, B. M. Teplov, A. V. Zaporozhets, O. I. Nikiforova, E. A. Flerina, N. S. Karpinskaya, L. M. Gurovich and other scientists.

B. M. Teplov continued the research begun by Vygotsky, studying the perception of a fairy tale by a child and considering the nature artistic perception child, pointed out that empathy, mental assistance to the hero of the work is "the living soul of artistic perception." In order to correctly understand a work of art, a child must treat it as an image, as an image of real objects and phenomena. A number of studies have shown that preschool children treat the image as if it were a real object. The child begins to understand what is depicted and depicted: such are real objects and phenomena, and such is their image in a fairy tale. They are related to each other, but they are not the same thing. This is an important step in understanding the artistic image. (2; 69)

A. V. Zaporozhets, studying the artistic impact of literary works, he paid special attention to their understanding by children of preschool age. In the work “Psychology of perception of a fairy tale by a preschool child”, Zaporozhets drew attention to the fact that although the child is fascinated by the colorfulness of the descriptions, the amusing external positions that the characters fall into, the inner, semantic side of the narrative begins to occupy him very early and “gradually opens up to him ideological content of a work of art.

Considering the mechanism of perception and understanding, A.V. Zaporozhets argued that "listening to a fairy tale, along with creative games, plays an important role in shaping the type of internal mental activity - the ability to mentally act in imaginary circumstances, without which no creative activity is possible"

A.V. Zaporozhets emphasized that a properly organized artistic education would not only provide individual knowledge and skills, but would also change the attitude to reality and would contribute to higher motives for activity. (2, p. 66)

Domestic teacher N. S. Karpinskaya believed that an art book gives excellent examples literary language. In stories, children learn the conciseness and accuracy of the language; in poetry musicality, melodiousness, rhythm of Russian speech; in fairy tales - accuracy, expressiveness.

Psychologist O. I. Nikiforova identified the following levels of perception

of a work of art: understanding its subject side, understanding the subtext and the system of artistic images and means, and, finally, comprehending the ideological and figurative content of the work, leading to an assessment of what has been read, to an understanding of the main thoughts of the work, to the disclosure of motives, relationships (5, 352)

The outstanding theorist and teacher E. A. Flerina was engaged in research in the field of preschool childhood, the main of which was the problem of aesthetic education of children by means of art, visual activity, artistic expression, games and toys.

To artistic reading and retelling by E.A. Flerina approaches from the position of the concept she developed. She considers the artistic word as the most important part of the comprehensive education of children; the art of the word is a means of developing creative abilities, creative aspirations and capabilities of children; artistic word means of communication and mutual understanding of children. Flerina also noted such a feature as the naivety of children's perception: children do not like a bad end, the hero must be lucky (kids do not want even stupid little mouse eaten by a cat). Listening to a story, a fairy tale, a preschool child shows a special inner activity, becoming, as it were, an accomplice of the events described and perceived, this is the secret of the deep influence that a work of art has on a child, leaving a bright mark on his soul. (4, p.293)

Based on the generalization of scientific data and his own research, L. M. Gurovich considers the age-related characteristics of the perception of a literary work by preschoolers, singled out two periods in their aesthetic development: from two to five years, when the baby does not clearly separate life from art, and after five years, when art, including the art of the word, becomes valuable in itself for the child. The artistic perception of the child during preschool age develops and improves. Many researchers continue to work on the problem of children's perception of a work of art, such as I. A. Zimnyaya, A. A. Melik - Pashaev, N. D. Moldavskaya, M. I. Omorokova.

Based on the characteristics of perception, the leading tasks of familiarization with verbal art are put forward.

1.4. Analysis of the program tasks of introducing children to verbal art

Introduction to verbal art in kindergarten is carried out in the course of the implementation of the educational area "Reading Fiction", the purpose of which is: the formation of interest and the need for reading (perception) of books.

Formation of a holistic picture of the world, including primary value ideas;

Development of literary speech;

Introduction to verbal art, including the development of artistic perception and aesthetic taste.

Analyzed programs: "From birth to school" edited by N. E. Veraksa, T. S. Komarova, M. A. Vasilyeva; program "Childhood" edited by V.I. Loginova, T.I. Babayeva; program "Origins" T.I. Alieva, T.V. Antonova, E.P. Arnautova and others.

In all the analyzed programs, the tasks of work in this educational area are disclosed in sufficient detail (the formation of interest in fiction; the development of aesthetic perception; the acquaintance of children with the visual means of the language; the formation of expressiveness of speech; the development of performing skills, etc.).

These educational tasks are presented in most detail in the program "From Birth to School". The authors of the program consider fiction as a means of moral, intellectual, aesthetic education of children; special attention is paid to the formation in children of elementary ideas about the specifics of works of different genres, to the imagery and expressiveness of speech.

Deserves special attention educational program"Childhood", in which the child's perception of works of fiction is considered on a par with the perception of fine arts and music; among the knowledge, skills and abilities, the authors of the program distinguish cognitive skills (listening, memorizing), speech skills (transmission of text, expressiveness of speech) and attitudes (emotional response). In sufficient detail, the tasks of introducing children to fiction are presented in the "Origins" program, where the most important is the analysis of fiction at a level accessible to the child, which leads to the formation of ideas about the features of literature and the education of a competent reader. The authors of the program recommend using techniques that maximize children's interest in books (reading with "continuation", reading "thick" books, etc.).

In general, these tasks can be formulated as follows:

1. to cultivate interest in fiction, to develop the ability for a holistic perception of works of different genres, to ensure the assimilation of the content of works and emotional responsiveness to it;

2. to form initial ideas about the features of fiction: about genres (prose, poetry), about their specific features; about composition; about the simplest elements of figurativeness in the language;

3. to cultivate literary and artistic taste, the ability to understand and feel the mood of a work, to capture the musicality, sonority, rhythm, beauty and poetry of stories, fairy tales, poems; develop a poetic ear.

To solve the problems of comprehensive education of children by means of fiction, it is necessary to determine the methods and techniques of literary development.

1. Pedagogical conditions for the use of methods and techniques for introducing verbal art to children of older preschool age

The main methods of literary development of children are the following

Reading or telling the educator from a book or by heart. This is a literal translation of the text. The reader, preserving the author's language, conveys all shades of the writer's thoughts, affects the mind and feelings of the listeners. A significant part of literary works is read from the book. Expressive reading, the interest of the educator himself, his emotional contact with children increase the degree of impact of the artistic word. While reading, one should not distract children from the perception of the text with questions, disciplinary remarks, it is enough to raise or lower the voice, pause.

One of the techniques that deepen the understanding of the content and expressive means is repeated reading. Small works are repeated immediately after the initial reading, large ones require some time to comprehend. Further, it is possible to read only the individual, most significant parts. It is advisable to re-read all this material after a certain period of time (2 3 weeks). Reading poems, nursery rhymes, short stories is repeated more often.

Children love to listen to familiar stories and fairy tales over and over again. When repeating, it is necessary to accurately reproduce the original text.

1. Reading or telling one work.

2. Reading several works united by a single theme (reading poems and stories about spring, about the life of animals) or a unity of images (two tales about a fox). You can combine works of one genre (two stories with moral content) or several genres (mystery, story, poem). In these classes, new and already familiar material is combined.

3. Combining works belonging to different types of art:

Reading a literary work and looking at reproductions from a painting by a famous artist;

Reading (better than poetry) combined with music.

In such classes, the power of the impact of works on the emotions of the child is taken into account. There should be a certain logic in the selection of material - an increase in emotional richness by the end of the lesson. At the same time, the peculiarities of children's behavior, the culture of perception, and emotional responsiveness are taken into account.

4. Reading and storytelling using visual material:

Reading and storytelling with toys (retelling of the fairy tale "Three Bears" is accompanied by a display of toys and actions with them);

Table theater (cardboard or plywood, for example, according to the fairy tale "Turnip");

Puppet and shadow theatre, flannelograph;

Filmstrips, transparencies, films, TV shows.

5. Reading as part of a speech development lesson:

It can be logically connected with the content of the lesson (in the process of talking about the school, reading poetry, making riddles);

Reading can be an independent part of the lesson (re-reading poetry or a story as a consolidation of the material).

Preparation for reading includes the following points

Reasonable choice of a work in accordance with the developed criteria (artistic level and educational value), taking into account the age of children, current educational work with children and the time of year, as well as the choice of methods for working with a book;

Definition of program content literary and educational tasks;

Preparation of the educator for reading the work. It is necessary to read the work in such a way that the children understand the main content, the idea and emotionally experience what they have heard (feel it).

When reading and telling works of art, the educator uses such techniques that help children understand and, therefore, better assimilate the text, enrich their speech with new words and grammatical forms, that is, give new knowledge about the world around them.

These methods are as follows:

1) an explanation of words incomprehensible to children found in the text;

2) the introduction of words ethical assessments of the actions of heroes;

3) drawing the attention of children to the grammatical constructions of the text, replacing them with synonymous constructions;

4) comparison of two works, of which the second continues and clarifies the ethical theme begun in the first, or contrasts the behavior in similar situations of two characters - positive and negative.

Reading books is necessarily accompanied by a conversation. Children learn to evaluate the actions of characters, their motives. The teacher helps children comprehend the attitude towards the characters, achieves an understanding of the main idea. With the correct formulation of questions, the child has a desire to imitate the moral deeds of the characters.

Conversation is a purposeful discussion of something, an organized, prepared dialogue on a pre-selected topic.

Conversation types.

1. An introductory conversation that organizes children for a particular type of activity.

2. Conversation accompanying the activities and observations of children.

3. Final conversation, clarifying and expanding the experience of children.

An introductory conversation, or a conversation that precedes the acquisition of new knowledge, is usually the link between the experience children have and the one they will acquire. The role of the introductory conversation is limited. Its purpose is to bring out disparate experiences and generate interest in future activities.

The conversation that accompanies the acquisition of new experience is a transition from conversation to conversation. It is carried out in the process of children's activities. The task of the educator is to provide the most complete perception, to help children get clear, distinct ideas, to supplement their knowledge.

The main conversation in kindergarten is the final conversation, it is commonly called generalizing. The purpose of the generalizing conversation is to systematize, clarify and expand the experience of children gained in the course of their activities.

staging or dramatization is the role-playing of the content of the work. This method can be considered as a means of secondary acquaintance with a work of art. There are quite a few types of dramatizations: a dramatization game, a theatrical performance of children, puppet and shadow theaters, a toy theater, a table cardboard or plywood theater, a flannelograph, etc. Children can be both spectators and performers.

project method. The various themes of project activities can be grouped around three big ideas:

"Children's Book Publishing" production of homemade books with drawings and stories about works, retellings and creative stories by analogy with familiar texts; creation of thematic magazines and children's encyclopedias based on acquaintance with literary works (“A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it”, “How the writer helped me understand ...”, “What we learned from books” and so on);

"Children's Library" organization of a library of home-made books, as well as design and systematization of children's library books in a group;

“Book Exhibitions” preparation of thematic exhibitions for children of different age groups (“Tales of our childhood”, “Favorite literary heroes”, “Poets and artists about nature”, etc.).

Evenings of literary entertainment, literary holidays and theatrical performances. These events are held about once a month. Their topics depend on the specifics of the reading interests of children and teachers. It is advisable to take into account the dates of the “calendar of holidays” when planning them.

Thematic exhibitions in the book corner and the center of artistic and creative activity. Their themes are determined by the significant dates of the "calendar of holidays" and memorable dates in the life of writers and poets.

Thus, when introducing preschoolers to fiction, different methods and techniques are used to form a full-fledged perception of the work by children.

M. A. Vasilyeva

The literary repertoire for children of senior preschool age is distinguished by a variety of types, genres, and themes. So the works of Russian folklore begin with small forms: songs (“Like thin ice ...”, etc.), calls (“Rain, rain is more fun ...”), sentences (“Ladybug ...”), which allow children to learn the value of folk culture . These Russian folk fairy tales, full of wonderful fiction, dramatic situations, confrontations between good and evil, not only entertain and delight children, but also lay the foundations of morality. They give children lessons for life: lessons of diligence and kindness (“Khavroshechka”), friendship and warmth in relationships, mutual assistance (“Winged, shaggy and oily”, etc.), as well as courage (“Bouncer Hare”).

Also in a circle children's reading includes the folklore of the peoples of the world, songs and fairy tales, which carry a great potential of national folk cultures, make the child the owner of universal spiritual values.

Next come the works of poets and writers of Russia, where poetry is in the first place, the program list includes lyrical poems about nature by A.S. Pushkin, S.A. Yesenin, F.I. Tyutchev, I.A. Bunin, and humorous poems by V. Levin (“Chest”, “Horse”), as well as poems about the life of children.

Prose is represented by works of more complex content: about children, their actions and experiences (V. Dmitrieva "Baby and the Bug", L. Tolstoy "Bone"), about the relationship in the world of people and animals of L.N. Tolstoy ("The Lion and the Dog") , as well as stories about the need and value of friendship by V. Yu. Dragunsky (“Childhood Friend”), humorous stories by N.N. Nosova and others.

Literary tales, which differ from folk not only in detailed descriptions, but also in more intricate plots and a variety of forms, are both prose tales about animals (B. Zakhoder "The Gray Star") and poetic tales (A. Pushkin "The Tale of Tsar Saltan, about his glorious and mighty son Gvidon Saltanovich and about the beautiful swan princess"), and fairy tales (V. Kataev "Flower of seven flowers"), etc. Specially provided for the acquaintance of preschoolers with stories about little men (T. Alexandrova "Kuzka Brownie") , similar to the children themselves, but less knowledgeable, and therefore in need of sympathy for the guys.

The works of poets and writers from different countries are represented by the poetry of various authors, mainly humorous poems (W. Smith "About the Flying Cow", J. Brzekhv "On the Horizon Islands", etc.) and instructive poems (Y. Tuwim "Letter to all children on one very important matter).

In the list of works by foreign authors are also recommended literary tales: the Finnish writer H. Mäkel ("Mr. Au"), the English writer R. Kipling ("Elephant"), and the famous Swedish writer A. Lindgren ("Carlson, who lives on the roof")

Listed program works designed to be memorized, there are Russian folk songs (I. Belousov “Knock on the oak tree ...”), poems about mother (E. Blaginina “Let's sit in silence”, G Vieru “Mother's day”), which can be told at the matinee, poems about homeland (M. Isakovsky “Go beyond the seas-oceans”), etc.

For reading in faces, humorous poems are presented that are designed to entertain children.

Additional literature is also provided. different genres, these are Russian and foreign folk and author's tales, as well as prose and poetry of Russian and foreign authors.

Requirements modern life, pedagogical science are forced to constantly revise the circle of children's reading, supplementing it with new works.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Gurovich L.M. Child and book: Book. For the teacher of children garden / L.M. Gurovich, L.B. Coastal, V.I. Loginova; Under re. IN AND. Loginova. M.: Enlightenment, 1992. - 64p.

2. Zaporozhets A.V. Psychology of perception of a literary preschool child

works // Selected works. psychological works. M.: Pedagogy, 1996. 320

1. Talyzina N.F. Pedagogical psychology. M.: Publishing center "Academy", 2003. 288 p.

4 Flerina, E. A. Aesthetic education of a preschooler / E. A. Flerina; ed. V. N. Shatskaya; Acad. ped. Sciences of the RSFSR. - Moscow: Publishing House of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, 1961. - 334 p.

5. Alekseeva M.M., Yashina B.I. Methods for the development of speech and teaching the native language of preschoolers: Proc. allowance for students. higher and Wednesdays, ped. textbook establishments. 3rd ed., stereotype. - M.: Publishing Center "Academy", 2000. - 400 p.

6. Gorkina A.P. Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. M.: Rosman. 2006.

7. Dunaeva, N. On the importance of fiction in shaping the child's personality // Preschool education. - 2007. - N 6. - S.35-39

8. Childhood: An approximate basic general educational program of preschool education / T. I. Babaeva, A. G. Gogoberidze, 3. A. Mikhailova et al. St. Petersburg. : LLC "PUBLISHING HOUSE "CHILDHOOD-PRESS", 2011. 528 p.

9. Gritsenko Z.A. You tell a fairy tale to children: a technique for introducing children to reading / Z.A. Gritsenko. M.: Linka-Press, 2003. 174 p.

10. Shtanko I.V. Art Education in Kindergarten: An Integrated Approach: A Methodological Guide. M.: TTs Sfera, 2002. 144p.

11. "A complete reader for preschoolers with methodological tips for teachers and parents": In 2 books. Book. 1./comp. S. D. Tomilova. - Ekaterinburg: U Factory, 2005.- 704p.

12. Stolyarenko L.D. Psychology: Textbook for universities. St. Petersburg: Leader, 206. 592p.

13. "From birth to school" edited by N. E. Veraksa, T. S. Komarova, M. A. Vasilyeva

14. The program "Origins" The basis of the development of the child preschool / T.I. Alieva, T.V. T.V. Antonova, E.T. Arnautova and others; scientific edited by L.A. Paromonova et al. M.: Prosveshchenie, 2003. 335p.

Annex 1

"Birth to School"	"Childhood"	"Origins"
Learn to listen carefully and with interest to fairy tales, stories, poems; memorize rhymes, tongue twisters, riddles. To instill interest in reading large works (by chapters). Contribute to the formation of an emotional attitude to literary works. Encourage them to talk about their perception of a particular act of a literary character. Help children understand the hidden motives of the behavior of the characters in the work. Cultivate sensitivity to the artistic word; read passages with the most vivid, memorable descriptions, comparisons, epithets. Learn to listen to the rhythm and melody of a poetic text. To help expressively, with natural intonations to read poetry, to participate in reading the text by roles, in dramatizations. Continue to explain (based on the read work) the genre features of fairy tales, stories, poems accessible to children. Continue reading books. Draw the attention of children to the design of the book, to the illustration. Compare illustrations by different artists for the same work	Enrich the "reader's" experience of children through the works of more complex genres of folklore (fairy and everyday fairy tales, metaphorical riddles, epics), literary prose(fairy tale story, story with moral overtones) and poetry (fables, lyrical poems, literary riddles with metaphor, poetic tales). To cultivate literary and artistic taste, the ability to understand the mood of the work, to feel the musicality, sonority and rhythm of poetic texts; beauty, imagery and expressiveness of the language of fairy tales and stories. To promote the development of artistic perception of the text in the unity of its content and form, semantic and emotional overtones. To ensure the improvement of the skills of artistic and speech activity based on literary texts: retell fairy tales and stories close to the text, retell on behalf of a literary hero,expressively recite poems and poetic tales,invent poetic stanzas, riddles, compose stories and fairy tales by analogy with familiar texts. To promote the expression of attitudes towards literary works in various types of artistic and creative activities, self-expression in a theatrical game in the process of creating a holistic image of the hero in his change and development.	To form in children ideas about the characteristic structure,typical characters and plot-thematic units of literary works (in particular, fairy tales) and ways of their creative application To develop such forms of imagination, which are based on the interpretation of a literary image. To form in children dynamic ideas about the development and change of the artistic image, its versatility and multiple connections. To develop in children individual literary preferences. Continue to develop children's relationship to the bookas a product of aesthetic culture, to involve them in the creation of handwritten books.

"Birth to School"	"Childhood"	"Origins"
Continue to develop children's interest in fiction and educational literature.	To maintain children's interest in literature, to cultivate a love for the book, to contribute to the deepening and differentiation of reader interests.	To introduce children to highly artistic literature, to form in them a stock of literary artistic impressions.
Help expressively, with natural intonations to read poetry, participate in reading the text by roles, in dramatizations	To ensure the improvement of the skills of artistic and speech activity based on literary texts: retell fairy tales and stories close to the text, retell on behalf of a literary hero, expressively recite poems and poetic tales, invent poetic stanzas, riddles, compose stories and fairy tales by analogy with familiar texts.	Develop expressive literary speech To teach children to emotionally and expressively convey the content of small prose texts and recite short poems by heart, to participate in the dramatization of famous literary works
Continue to explain (based on the read work) the genre features of fairy tales, stories, poems accessible to children.	Develop initial ideas about the features of literature: about genera (folklore and author's literature), types (prose and poetry), about the variety of genres and some of them specific features(composition, means of language expressiveness).	To form in children ideas about the characteristic structure, typical characters and plot-thematic units of literary works (in particular fairy tales) and ways of their creative application

Appendix 2

Russian folklore

Songs. "Like thin ice..."; "Nicodenka-gusachok ..."; “I am amusing the pegs ...”; “Like grandmother has a goat ...”; “You are frost, frost, frost ...”: “You knock on the oak tree, a blue siskin flies ...”; "Early, early in the morning...": "Rooks-kirichi..."; “Swallow-swallow ...”: “Rain, rain, more fun ...”; "Ladybug...".

Fairy tales. "The Fox and the Jug", arr. O. Kapitsa; "Winged, hairy and oily" arr. I. Karnaukhova; "Havroshechka", arr. A. N. Tolstoy "Hare-bouncer", arr. O. Kapitsa; "The Frog Princess", arr. M. Bulatova; "Rhymes", an authorized retelling of B. Shergin's "Sivka-Burka", arr. M. Bulatova; "Finist Clear Falcon", arr. A. Platonov.

Folklore of the peoples of the world

Songs. “They washed buckwheat”, Lithuanian, arr. Yu. Grigorieva; "Old lady". "The House That Jack Built", trans. from English. S. Marshak; "Happy way!" Dutch, arr. I. Tokmakova; "Vesnyanka", Ukrainian, arr. G. Litvak; “Friend for friend”, taj., arr. N. Grebneva (abbreviated).

Fairy tales. "Cuckoo", Nenets, arr. K. Shavrova; "Wonderful stories about a hare named Lek", Tales of the peoples of West Africa, trans. O. Kustova and V. Andreev; "Goldilocks", trans. from Czech. K. Paustovsky; "Three golden hairs of Grandfather-Vseved", trans. from Czech. N. Arosyeva (from the collection of fairy tales by K. Ya. Erben).

Works of poets And Russian writers

Poetry. I. Bunin. "First snow"; A. Pushkin. “The sky was already breathing in autumn ...” (from the novel “Eugene Onegin”); "Winter Evening" (abbreviated); A. K. Tolstoy. “Autumn, our whole poor garden is sprinkled ...”; M. Tsvetaeva. "At the bed"; S. Marshak. "Poodle"; S. Yesenin. "Birch", "Bird cherry"; I. Nikitin. "Meeting of winter"; A. Fet. “The cat sings, narrowed his eyes ...”; C. Black. "Wolf"; V. Levin. "Chest", "Horse"; M. Yasnov. "Peaceful Counting". S. Gorodetsky. "Kitty"; F. Tyutchev. “Winter is angry for a reason...”; A. Barto. "Rope".

Prose. V. Dmitrieva. "Baby and the Bug" (chapters); L. Tolstoy. "Bone", "Jump", "Lion and Dog"; N. Nosov. "Live hat"; Diamonds. "Humpback"; A. Gaidar. "Chuk And Huck" (chapters); S. Georgiev. "I saved Santa Claus"; V. Dragunsky. "Childhood Friend", "Top Down, Obliquely"; K. Paustovsky. "Cat-thief".

Literary tales.T. Alexandrova. "Domovenok Kuzka" (chapters); B. Bianchi. "Owl"; B. Zakhoder. "Grey star"; A. Pushkin. "Fairy tale O Tsar Saltan, about his son glorious and mighty hero Gvidon Saltanovich And about the beautiful Swan Princess”; P. Bazhov. "Silver Hoof"; N. Teleshov. "Krupenichka"; V. Kataev. "Flower-seven-flower".

Works of poets and writers from different countries

Poetry. A. Milne. "The Ballad of the King's Sandwich", trans. from English. C. Marshak; W. Smith. "About the Flying Cow", trans. from English. B. Zakhoder; I. Bzhehva. "On the Horizon Islands", trans. from Polish. B. Zakhoder; Lzh. Reeves. "Noisy Bang", trans. With English M. Boroditskaya; "Letter to to all the children on one very important matter”, transl. from Polish. S. Mikhalkov.

Literary tales.X. Myakelya. "Mr. Au" (chapters), trans. from Finnish E. Uspensky; R. Kipling. "Elephant", trans. With English K. Chukovsky, poems from the lane. S. Marshak; A. Lindgren. “Carlson, who lives on the roof, has flown again” (abbreviated chapters), trans. from the Swedish L. Lungina.

To learn by heart

"Knock on the oak tree...", Rus. nar. song; I. Belousov. "Spring Guest"; E. Blaginina. "Let's sit in silence"; G. Vieru. "Mother's Day", trans. from mold, Ya. Akima; M. Isakovsky. "Go beyond the seas-oceans"; M. Carem. "Peaceful counting rhyme", trans. from French V. Berestov; A. Pushkin. “At the seashore, a green oak ...” (from the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila”); I. Surikov. "This is my village."

To read in faces

Y. Vladimirov. "Freaks"; S. Gorodetsky. "Kitty"; V. Orlov. "Tell me, little river..."; E. Uspensky. "Destruction".

additional literature

Russian folk tales. "Nikita Kozhemyaka" (from the collection of fairy tales by A. Afanasyev); "Dirty Tales".

Foreign folk tales. "About the little mouse who was a cat, a dog and a tiger", ind. per. N. Khodzy; “How the Brothers Found the Father’s Treasure”, Mold., Arr. M. Bulatova; "Yellow Stork", Chinese, trans. F. Yarlin.

Prose. B. Zhitkov. "White House", "How I Caught Little Men"; G, Snegirev. "Penguin Beach", "To the Sea", "Brave Penguin"; L. Panteleev. "The letter "y""; M. Moskvina. "Baby"; A. Mityaev. "The Tale of the Three Pirates".

Poetry. I am Akim. "Greedy"; Y. Moritz. "House with a rough"; R. Sef. "Council", "Endless Poems"; D. Kharms. “I have been running, running, running…”; D. Ciardi. "About who three eyes", trans. from English. R Sefa; B. Zakhoder. "Nice meeting"; C. Black. "Wolf"; A. Pleshcheev. "My garden"; S. Marshak. "Mail".

Literary tales. A. Volkov. "The Wizard of the Emerald City" (chapters); O. Preusler. "Little Baba Yaga", trans. with him. Y. Korintsa; J. Rodari. "The Magic Drum" (from the book "Tales with Three Ends"), trans. from Italian. I. Konstantinova; T. Jansson. "About the World's Last Dragon", trans. from the Swedish L. Braude; "Wizard's Hat", trans. V. Smirnova; G. Sapgir. “Fables in faces”, “How they sold a frog”; L. Petrushevskaya. "The Cat Who Could Sing"; A. Mityaev. "The Tale of the Three Pirates"

Integration of the educational area "Reading Fiction" with other educational areas.

Educational area	Tasks
Physical Culture	1. Encourage children to self-narrative, memorize nursery rhymes, songs. 2. To enrich the independent and organized motor activity of children with literary images. 3. To form interest and love for sports based on works of art. 4. Learn to organize p / and independently, come up with game options, your own games.
Health	1. Using the example of works of fiction, instill in children the habit of monitoring their appearance, improving self-service skills. 2. To educate children in the ability to resist stressful situations, the desire to be cheerful, healthy, optimistic with the help of works of fiction. 3. Form a conscious attitude to your health, awareness of the rules of safe behavior.
Socialization	1. Involving children in sharing familiar works with the teacher, in their full or partial dramatization. 2. To enrich the play, visual activity of children, design with literary images. 3. To develop in children the ability to sympathize, empathize with the positive characters of works of art. 4. Cultivate love for oral folk art. 5. Lead to an understanding of the moral meaning of the work, to a motivated assessment of the actions and character of the main characters. 6. Participate in the dramatization of familiar works.
Safety	1. To teach the child the ability to act in new, unusual life circumstances for him. 2. To teach children the elements of orienteering, to teach the rules of safe movement along the streets and parks of the city. 3. Teach children the simplest ways to provide first aid to peers in extreme situations (sunstroke, etc.).
Work	1. To form in children ideas about mutual assistance, friendship, to arouse a desire to provide all possible assistance to those who need it. 2. Cultivate a caring attitude towards animals. 3. To cultivate respect for the daily work of parents, their life experience. 4. Acquaintance with the work of adults (professions).
Cognition	1. Cultivate interest, love for fiction. Develop the ability to listen to literary works of various genres and subjects, emotionally respond to their content and follow the development of the plot. 2. To acquaint both with the variety of individual works, and with cycles united by the same heroes. 3. Systematize and deepen knowledge about literary works. 4. Form ideas about the characteristic structure, typical characters and plot-thematic units of literary works. 5. To develop the ability for a holistic perception of a fairy tale in the unity of its content and artistic form, to consolidate knowledge about the features of the fairy tale genre.
Communication	1. To form an emotional-figurative perception of works of various genres, to develop sensitivity to the expressive means of artistic speech, verbal creativity. 2. Develop the ability to naturally, expressively retell works of art. 3. To form the figurativeness of speech: sensitivity to the figurative structure of the language of a literary work, the ability to reproduce and understand figurative expressions. 4. Learn to understand the beauty and power of the Russian language, use figurative expressions in speech and speak beautifully. 5. Learn to answer questions about the content of the work, to participate in the conversation.
Artistic creativity	1. To develop an attitude towards the book as a work of aesthetic culture careful handling, the desire to listen to the book again. 2. To create a favorable atmosphere for children's word creation, game and humorous variations of poetic texts, in particular works of poetic folklore. 3. Develop sensitivity to the expressive means of artistic speech, the ability to reproduce these means in your work. 4. Develop individual literary preferences in children. 5. To cultivate the desire to express their impressions and experiences after reading a work of art in a word, drawing. 6. Bringing children to the transfer of various means of artistic expression into independent verbal creativity, productive activity.
Music	1. The development of poetic hearing, the ability to perceive musicality, the poetry of speech. 2. Development of imagery of speech. 3. In games-dramatizations, to form the ability to introduce elements of creativity into the motor and intonation-speech characteristics of the character. 4. Develop interest in theatrical and gaming activities.

Forms of educational activity.

Educational activities during regime moments	Joint activities of the teacher with children	Independent activity of children	Joint activities with family
Physical Culture
Morning exercises "Animal exercise" A. Barto.	Physical education minutes.	P / and "Geese-swans". "We are funny guys." Folk game: "Burn, burn bright!"	Joint holiday "Mom, dad, I'm a sports family" (learning poems, chants, proverbs).
Health
The use of nursery rhymes when carrying out hygiene procedures: "Oh, frets, frets, frets, we are not afraid of water ...". “If your nose is sniffling, it means that it is completely clogged ...”. "Crane, open! Nose, wash yourself! ... ".	Reading works of art: "Moydodyr" Chukovsky; "What is good, what is bad?" Mayakovsky; "Girl grimy" A. Barto.	Role-playing game "Veterinary Clinic" after reading Chukovsky's "Aibolit".	Leisure: "Journey to the country of Health".
Socialization
The use of nursery rhymes when dressing for a walk: "We will quickly dress, get ready for a walk", "We love order in everything ...".	Didactic game "Name the heroes of the fairy tale."	A dramatization game based on the Russian folk tale "like a bunny Toshka was bored."	"Poetic readings" (reading poetry with children and parents).
Safety
Morning exercises using the “Road Song” (a strict crow mother taught crows). Conversation on the content of M. Druzhinin's poem "Rules of the road".	Reading: “Tamara and I go as a couple” A. Barto, “Football” A. Usachev.	Role-playing game "Road traffic" (use of poetry).	Design of the book “Call 03 in case of fire” (using drawings and text invented by parents and children).
Cognition
On walks during observations reading poems about the seasons, about animals, about nature.	The use of riddles, sayings, proverbs, poems in the classroom for FEMP, design, ecology.	The use of poetry when creating buildings, for example, A. Barto's poems "Builders", "Truck", "Airplane".	"An evening of riddles" (thematic: about nature, animals, seasons, etc.).
Communication
Conversation on the content of the poem by E. Blaginina: “Let's sit in silence”, A.K. Tolstoy: "Autumn, our whole poor garden is sprinkled ...".	Retelling of the fairy tale "The Fox and the Jug", "The Bouncer Hare". Memorizing tongue twisters, tongue twisters: “The beaver is kind to the beavers”, “Sa-sa-sa a wasp flew to us.”	Role-playing games "Family", "Kindergarten", "School" telling familiar tales.	Theater visit.
Artistic creativity
The use of illustrations for works of art during hygiene procedures and regime moments, for example, illustrations for the poem by E. Blaginina "Alyonushka", K. Chukovsky "Moydodyr".	Didactic game "Choose an illustration" (for a work of art).	Self-drawing illustrations for familiar literary works.	Visiting an exhibition, a museum.
Music
Morning gymnastics to the song from the cartoon "38 Parrots" "Merry Exercise".	Musical and didactic game: "Guess who called?", Cognitive game "Burn, burn clearly!", "Let's dance the Hare!".	Using familiar songs in role-playing games: "Family", "Kindergarten", "Theater".	A dramatization of the fairy tale "Cinderella".
Work
Using nursery rhymes when cleaning toys, things "We play with toys, we put them in their place ..."	Reading "What do crafts smell like", "What do you have?", S. Mikhalkov "Grandmother's hands".	Work in the corner of the book: arranging books according to the subject, repairing books.	Making baby books.

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The material carrier of the figurativeness of literary works is the word that has received a written incarnation. The word (including artistic) always denotes something, has an objective character. Literature, in other words, belongs to the category of fine arts, in the broad sense of the subject, where single phenomena are recreated (persons, events, things, mindsets caused by something and people's impulses directed towards something). In this respect, it is similar to painting and sculpture (in their dominant, “figurative” variety) and differs from the non-pictorial, non-objective arts. The latter are usually called expressive, they capture the general nature of the experience outside of its direct connections with any objects, facts, events. Such are music, dance (if it does not turn into pantomime - into the image of action through body movements), ornament, the so-called abstract painting, architecture.

Verbal pictures (images), unlike picturesque, sculptural, scenic, screen ones, are immaterial. That is, in the literature there is figurativeness (objectivity), but there is no direct visualization of images. Turning to visible reality, writers are able to give only its indirect, mediated reproduction. Literature masters the intelligible integrity of objects and phenomena, but not their sensually perceived appearance. Writers appeal to our imagination, not directly to visual perception.

The immateriality of the verbal fabric predetermines the pictorial richness and variety of literary works. Here, according to Lessing, the images "can be one next to the other in extraordinary quantity and variety, without mutually overlapping and without harming each other, which cannot be the case with real things or even with their material reproductions." Literature has infinitely wide pictorial (informative, cognitive) possibilities, because by means of a word one can designate everything that is in the horizon of a person. The universality of literature has been repeatedly discussed. Thus, Hegel called literature "a universal art capable of developing and expressing any content in any form." According to him, literature extends to everything that "one way or another interests and occupies the spirit."

Being immaterial and devoid of visualization, verbal and artistic images at the same time paint a fictional reality and appeal to the reader's vision. This side of literary works is called verbal plasticity. Depictions by means of words are organized more according to the laws of recollection of what is seen, rather than as a direct, instantaneous realization of visual perception. In this regard, literature is a kind of mirror of the "second life" of visible reality, namely, its presence in the human mind. Verbal works imprint to a greater extent subjective reactions to the objective world, rather than the objects themselves as directly visible.

Fiction is a multifaceted phenomenon. It consists of two main aspects. The first is fictional objectivity, images of "non-verbal" reality. The second is actually speech constructions, verbal structures. The actual verbal aspect of literature, in turn, is two-dimensional. Speech here appears, firstly, as a means of representation (the material carrier of imagery), as a way of evaluative illumination of extra-verbal reality; and, secondly, as a subject of the image - statements belonging to someone and someone characterizing them. Literature, in other words, is capable of recreating speech activity people, and this distinguishes it especially sharply from all other forms of art. Only in literature does a person appear as a speaker.

Literature has two forms of existence: it exists both as a one-component art (in the form of readable works), and as an invaluable component of synthetic arts. This applies to the greatest extent to dramatic works, which are essentially intended for the theater. But other types of literature are also involved in the synthesis of the arts: lyrics come into contact with music (song, romance), going beyond the book existence. Lyrical works are readily interpreted by actors-readers and directors (when creating stage compositions). Narrative prose also finds its way onto the stage and onto the screen. Yes, and the books themselves often appear as synthetic works of art: their composition also includes the writing of letters (especially in old handwritten texts), and ornaments, and illustrations. Participating in artistic synthesis, literature gives other types of art (primarily theater and cinema) rich food , being the most generous of them and acting as a conductor of the arts.

Literature is usually considered from two sides:

How activity

As a work (product of activity)

As a kind of activity: the semiotic nature of art, the aesthetic nature of art, the communicative nature of art.

Semiotic nature of art connected with the nature of the sign in general: signifier, signified and meaning (or conventionality, referentiality and conceptuality). Literature is a secondary sign system (primary - language).

Aesthetic nature of art: attitude and activity. Aesthetic attitude - emotional reflection, experience of experience. "Art is always the outsideness of the author in relation to the depicted" (Bakhtin). Chekhov example. Valuable activity is introduced. “The author must take such a lifeless position that will allow him to see the phenomenon as an integrity - an objective prerequisite for an aesthetic relationship” (Bakhtin).

Communicative nature of art formed spontaneously. L.N. Tolstoy kept constant diaries ("Childhood", "Military stories"). Art is a mechanism of communication, of finding one's own kind. Readers' empathy and complicity in creating an image: the union of creative (author's) and receptive (reader's) consciousness.

Literature as the art of the word is the dynamic nature of the verbal image. The first theorist who raised the problem of the nature of the verbal image, and, consequently, the place of literature among the arts, was Lessing, fixing that sculpture is a static spatial art. Every art form has its own purpose. The static arts have a focus on bodily beauty (imprinting the eternally beautiful physicality), while literature has aesthetic and ethical values(Helen at Homer). If only the dynamic principle is put at the forefront, then music can also be attributed here. The signs in painting are natural, they are similar to what they depict, the signs of poetry are arbitrary, they have nothing to do with the subject. In music, the sequence of sounds affects, and in poetry - the sequence of meanings, it is marked by orderliness and a quick change of ideas. Poetry is the music of the soul.

Special language or special use of it? Does the verbal material, once included in the composition of a work, remain the same means of social communication, while receiving additional functions, or is this material included in the composition of a work only on the condition that it is organized by the author as a special language?

The poetic language is originally special (Potebnya). The theory of allegorical language as a source for art. Poetry is created from polysemantic words, which have both an inner meaning and an idea that can tear itself away from it.

Formalists believed that the language has a natural poetic function, it is the main factor explaining the phenomenon of literaryness.

Jacobson spoke of the message's focus on itself, "the tangibility of the artistic form." The opacity of poetic language, speech with an emphasis on expression. Aesthetic effect of the difficult form. One of the 6 functions of language according to Jacobson is poetic.

Philosophical-linguistic approach (L. Wilgenstein, M. Bakhtin). According to Bakhtin, a linguistic whole and an archetypal whole. The process of transforming a linguistic whole into an archetypal one. The aesthetic object does not include an aesthetic form, but its value value. The author's aesthetic assessment is a reaction to a reaction, an attitude to the positions of the characters, an expression in how these positions are compared.

Type of speech: poetry and prose. Poetry is rhythmically ordered speech. There is white (without rhyme) and free (rhythmically not ordered) verse. Poetic? poetic.

The relationship between structure and semantics is called verbally. The largest group is poetic verbal images: ready-made - figures (paths), topoi, emblems and unfinished, which are the product of the author's world - symbolic images.

literary centrism

In different eras, preference was given to different types of art. In antiquity, sculpture was the most influential; as part of the aesthetics of the Renaissance and the 17th century. painting experience dominated. Subsequently (in the 18th, and even more so in the 19th century), literature moved to the forefront of art, and accordingly there was a shift in theory. Lessing, in his "Laocoön", in contrast to the traditional point of view, emphasized the advantages of poetry over painting and sculpture. According to Kant, "of all the arts, poetry holds the first place." With even greater energy, he elevated verbal art above all others V.G. Belinsky, who claims that poetry is "the highest kind of art", that it "contains all the elements of other arts" and therefore "represents the whole integrity of art". In the era of romanticism, music shared the role of a leader in the world of art with poetry. Such judgments (both “literary-centric” and “music-centric”), reflecting shifts in the artistic culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries, are at the same time one-sided and vulnerable. In contrast to the hierarchical rise of one kind of art above all others, theorists of our century emphasize the equality of artistic activity. It is no coincidence that the phrase "family of muses" is widely used. The 20th century (especially in its second half) was marked by serious shifts in the relationship between art forms. Artistic forms based on new means of mass communication arose, consolidated and gained influence: oral speech heard on the radio and, most importantly, the visual imagery of cinema and television began to successfully compete with the written and printed word. In this regard, concepts appeared that, in relation to the first half of the century, it is legitimate to call "cinema-centric", and to the second - "telecentric". In contrast to the extremes of traditional literary centrism and modern telecentrism, it is legitimate to say that fiction in our time is the first among arts equal to each other. The peculiar leadership of literature in the family of arts, clearly felt in the 19th-20th centuries, is associated not so much with its own aesthetic properties, but with its cognitive and communicative capabilities. After all, the word is a universal form of human consciousness and communication. And literary works are able to actively influence readers even in cases where they do not have brightness and scale as aesthetic values. thinkers of the 20th century. argue that poetry is to other arts, as metaphysics is to science, that it, being the focus of interpersonal understanding, is close to philosophy. At the same time, literature is characterized as "the materialization of self-consciousness" and "the memory of the spirit about itself." The fulfillment of non-artistic functions by literature turns out to be especially significant at moments and periods when social conditions and the political system is unfavorable for society. “Among a people deprived of public freedom,” wrote A.I. Herzen, “literature is the only platform from which he makes the cry of his indignation and his conscience heard.”

Primitive origins of verbal art *

On the origin of verbal art

Archaeological material, which provides so much for the history of fine art, is of very little help in studying the roots of verbal art. For this, it is necessary to refer to ethnographic data, which is a significant inconvenience, since the prehistory of the verbal art of some peoples has to be judged on the basis of the archaic folklore of others, based on the idea of ​​uniform, general patterns of social development.

Verbal art, apparently, arose later than some other types of art, since its material, primary element is the word, speech. Of course, all the arts could appear only after a person had mastered articulate speech, but the emergence of verbal art required a high degree of language development in its communicative function and the presence of rather complex grammatical and syntactic forms. Apparently, the fine arts appeared first of all. The first decorated wooden and bone objects (female figurines - Paleolithic "Venuses") date back to about 25 thousand years BC. e. Classical monuments of European cave painting (images of animals in Aurignac, solutre and Madeleine) date back to 25-10 thousand years BC. e.

Fine arts arose in the Upper Paleolithic (the last stage of the Old Stone Age), when a person, according to his constitution, was no longer different from the modern one, spoke, knew the tribal organization based on dual exogamy (the division of a social group into two halves, within which marriage ties are prohibited) , made perfect tools from stone, bone and horn, had primitive religious ideas. But less perfect tools were already being made by man in the Middle and Lower Paleolithic, at least 400,000 years before that.

In the process of labor, the hand was improved, which now could give the natural material a utilitarian-expedient form, and then just as expediently use the object made by it. The "intellectual" use of the hand (and eye) sharpened the faculties that made articulate speech and human thought possible. The shape of the tools made became the plastic realization of human thought, idea, design, and corresponded to the emerging aesthetic taste. The feeling of proportions and symmetry was generated both by man's observations of animals, plants, himself, and by the technique and rhythm of labor operations. Even before the creation of the first bone sculptures and cave "clothings", the manufacture of tools more elegant, more refined than necessary to meet vital needs, testified to the emergence of an aesthetic sense.

Paleolithic cave painting had a pronounced "realistic" character; only at the stage corresponding to the Azile-Tardenoise archaeological culture did the images of animals become more conventional, schematic. But the Paleolithic, and even more so the Neolithic, along with representative, figurative art, knows the art of ornamentation that adorns tools, household items and, probably, the human body (tattoo, temporary coloring), and later objects of worship, and acting as a rhythm of forms and colors. Some models of ornament directly go back to the technique of weaving, pottery, weaving; others are a reflection of geometric forms in nature, an expression of human sensory experience. The convergence of representational and ornamental art in the Neolithic was one of the reasons for the widespread use of conditional, stylized images. Some ornaments really arose as a result of stylization realistic images natural objects, but more often their symbolic interpretation arose on the basis of later associations. Perhaps the conventionality and schematism of images were associated with the development of pictography - figured writing.

The development of mythology certainly contributed to the emergence of symbolic and fantastic images. There is almost no doubt that Paleolithic cave painting not only synthesized observations of animals - objects of hunting - and in this case represented a way to "master" them, but also had a magical significance as a means of attracting and subordinating hunting prey. This is indicated by images of spears stuck into animal figures. Undoubtedly magical in nature is the "revival" of rock paintings or drawings on the ground among Australians during rituals, aimed at stimulating the reproduction of this type of animal. Visual arts were widely used in more complex rituals, closely associated with early religious beliefs. However, there could exist (this is confirmed by the example of the same Australians) fine art, not strictly related to religious and magical purposes.

In the famous cave of the Three Brothers, there is an image of a disguised man with deer horns dating back to the Madeleine era, that is, to the heyday of Paleolithic painting in Europe. This and similar figures undoubtedly testify to the existence of hunting dances at that time, apparently already having a magical purpose. Dance - this living plastic - is not only one of the oldest forms of art, but a kind that reached its high perfection precisely in the primitive period.

If in the ancient fine arts expressive figurative depiction intertwined with ornamental motifs, then in dance the dynamic reproduction of hunting scenes, labor processes and some aspects of life is necessarily subject to a strict rhythm, and the rhythm of movements from time immemorial is supported by a sound rhythm. Primitive music is almost inseparable from dance and for a long time was subordinated to it. Musical instruments mainly beat the beat, the rhythmic element, even in singing, sharply prevailed over the melodic. The rhythmic beginning, the development of which was facilitated by labor practice, was itself important point organization of labor and ordering of psychophysical energy, synchronization of various structures of the nervous system. In addition, breaking the flow of visual, sound, motor perception into elements, highlighting individual "frames" in it, rhythm contributes to the creation of artistic images.

The reproduction of hunting, gathering roots, and then other labor processes in isolation from these labor processes themselves opened the way for the free reproduction and generalization of reality - the most important principles of art. If labor practice prepared art, then separation from the labor processes themselves was a necessary prerequisite for the development of art as a special creative activity that reflects and at the same time transforms reality. At the primitive stage, the transforming role of art was often naively identified with a utilitarian goal achieved not by labor, but by magic.

The depiction of hunting in a dance (and such hunting dances are widespread among a number of culturally backward peoples) was not a simple game, not only physical exercise and a dress rehearsal before a future hunt. It was a ritual action that was supposed to directly attract hunting prey and influence the outcome of the hunt in the future. More complex magical rites were supposed to promote the reproduction of animals and the growth of plants, maintain a regular change of seasons, in which a period of cold and poverty comes a time of warmth and abundance. The primitive magical rite, as animistic and totem ideas developed and became more complex, the veneration of ancestors, master spirits, etc., grew into a religious cult.

The connection of dance with a magical rite, and then with a religious cult, turned out to be closer than that of the fine arts, since dance became the main factor in the ritual action.

Folk-ritual games, including elements of dance, pantomime, music, and partly fine arts (and later poetry), in their syncretic unity, became the embryo of the theater. A specific feature of the primitive theater is the use of masks, which genetically goes back to disguise as a hunting technique (dressing in the skin of an animal in order to approach the object of the hunt without arousing suspicion). Putting on the skin of an animal is common during the performance of the already mentioned hunting dances among the North American Indians, some peoples of Africa, etc. Imitation of the habits of animals using animal masks and body painting has been developed in totemic rites associated with the corresponding idea of ​​a special relationship of a group of people (certain genera) with certain species of animals or plants, about their origin from common ancestors (which were usually drawn as creatures of a half-human, half-animal nature). In Australia, a classic country of totemism, such rites were carried out either for the magical purpose of breeding animals of one's totem (rites such as intichium), or for educational and educational purposes during the initiation of young men into full members of the tribe. During these rituals (initiations), the young men, after undergoing severe trials (symbolizing temporary death and a new birth), became spectators of various pantomime scenes and dances that adult men played in front of them.

It is interesting to note that these performances also included scenes of a grossly grotesque nature. The image of an animal (first an object of hunting, and then a revered totem) precedes in the "theater" (as well as in rock art) the image of a man. Human masks first appear in funeral and memorial rites in connection with the cult of ancestors (dead relatives). A special role in the preservation and development of primitive "theatrical" traditions was played by secret male unions, well preserved in Africa, Melanesia, Polynesia, and Northwestern America. The members of the unions always acted in disguise; masks depicted human ancestors, sacred animals, various spirits, often in a very fantastic guise (to intimidate the uninitiated and under the influence of a developed animistic worldview). During the period of decomposition of the tribal society, a sample of syncretic theatrical and ritual performances using masks, imitating animals, etc. is provided by shamanic rituals and similar witchcraft sessions among some peoples. The mystery "Tsam", which was played out in pre-revolutionary times in the lamaist monasteries of Mongolia, goes back to a large extent to shamanic actions.

The bear festival, widespread among the peoples of the North, combines hunting magic and the complex cult of the bear with a bright, diverse theatrical spectacle, including not only cult, but also everyday, even satirical scenes that serve exclusively for entertainment.

The wedding ceremony among many peoples has the features of a kind of ritual-syncretic action, distinct elements of theatricality. The same should be said about various calendar agrarian folk-ritual games depicting the change of winter in spring or summer in the form of a struggle, a dispute between two forces, in the form of a “burial” of a doll or actor, embodying a defeated, dying winter. More complex forms of calendar agrarian mysteries are associated with the cult of the dying and resurrecting god. Such are the ancient Egyptian cult mysteries about Osiris and Isis, the ancient Babylonian New Year's festivities in honor of Marduk, the ancient Greek mysteries in honor of the fertility gods Demeter and Dionysus. (Such, in essence, in their genesis, are the medieval Christian mysteries.)

The origin of the ancient theater is associated with the Dionysian mysteries. Revealing the primitive heritage in ancient Greek tragedy and comedy, A.D. Avdeev in his book "The Origin of the Theater" 1 suggests that the tragedy was originally based on zoopantomime, and the source of its further development as a dramatic genre was the dithyramb, which expounded the legends about Dionysus.

Even more obvious is the "primitive" heritage in the traditional theater of Indonesia (Javanese topeng), Japan (medieval theater No), China, India, Burma and other countries of the Far and Middle East, where the connection with the cult of ancestors is clearly traced, masks are used, a large place occupied by zoomorphic images, demons, etc.

In the archaic forms of the theater, the pantomime element dominates the verbal text, in some cases a small verbal part is transferred to a special "actor" (this feature is still preserved in the traditional theater of Japan and Indonesia). The transformation of a ritual-theatrical spectacle into a drama takes place already in a historically developed society by breaking away from the ritual and much more intensive penetration of elements of verbal art, often with the help of writing.

Let's go directly to verbal art.

K. Bucher in the well-known book "Work and Rhythm" 2 , relying on an extensive collection of labor songs of various peoples, hypothesized that "at the lower levels of development, work, music and poetry were something unified, but work was the main element of this trinity"; the verse meter goes directly back to labor rhythms, and the main types of poetry gradually developed from the labor song - epic, lyric, drama. This hypothesis vulgarly, one-sidedly represents the connection between labor and poetry. It has already been noted above that just the transition from genuine production activity to its generalized reproduction in folk-ritual games was an important prerequisite for the development of art, in any case, dance, music, theater.

The outstanding Russian scientist A.N. Veselovsky in his "Historical Poetics" saw the roots of not only dance, music, but also poetry in the folk rite. Primitive poetry, according to his concept, was originally a song of the choir, accompanied by dance and pantomime. In the song, the verbal element was naturally combined with the musical. Thus, poetry arose, as it were, in the depths of the primitive syncretism of the arts, united within the framework of the folk ritual. The role of the word at first was insignificant and entirely subordinated to rhythmic and mimic principles. The text was improvised for the occasion, until, finally, it itself acquired a traditional character.

A.N. Veselovsky proceeded from the primitive syncretism not only of art forms, but also of poetry. "The epic and lyric seemed to us the consequences of the decomposition of the ancient ritual choir" 3 . In his opinion, along with the isolation of the song from the rite, the differentiation of genera occurs, and first the epic is distinguished, and then the lyrics and drama. He considers the lyrical-epic nature of its early forms to be the legacy of primitive syncretism in the epic. As for the lyrics, it grew out of the emotional cliques of the ancient choir and short formulas of various content as an expression of "collective emotionality", "group subjectivism" and stood out from ritual syncretism, mainly from spring ritual games. Veselovsky connects the final selection of lyrics with a greater individualization of poetic consciousness than in the epic. To the folk rite, which managed to take the form of a developed cult, he erects a drama. Poetic creativity appears to him in its genesis as collective in the literal sense, that is, as choral. The poet ascends to the singer and, ultimately, to the leader of the ritual choir.

Within the framework of this evolution, A.N. Veselovsky places various types of singers (Finnish laulaya, Old Norse tul and skald, Anglo-Saxon ospreys, Celtic phyla and bards, ancient Greek aeds and rhapsodes, medieval wandering singers - shpilmans, jugglers, buffoons, etc.) . Analyzing the corresponding vocabulary, he proves the semantic similarity in the genesis of the concepts of song-narrative-action-dance, as well as song-spell-fortune-telling-ritual act.

To the ritual-choral roots of poetry, in particular to the amoeba (that is, with the participation of two half-choirs or two singers) performance, Veselovsky erects some ancient features of the folk poetic style, for example, verse parallelism. But "psychological parallelism" (comparison of the phenomena of a person's mental life with the state of natural objects), in his opinion, is rooted in a primitive animistic worldview, representing all nature as animated. To some features of the primitive worldview and way of life (animism, totemism, exogamy, matriarchy, patriarchy, etc.). Veselovsky erects a number of typical narrative motifs and plots. His "Historical Poetics", which arose on the basis of a generalization of the vast material accumulated by classical ethnography and folklore of the 19th century, represents a unique consistent theory of the origin of verbal art.

However, the concept of A.N. Veselovsky in the light of the current state of science needs to be corrected. Veselovsky quite fully traced the role and evolution of the elements of verbal art in folk rituals, correctly showed the gradual increase in the proportion of the verbal text in ritual syncretism. However, the folk rite, which played an exceptional role in the development of the dance-music-theater complex, cannot be regarded as the only source of poetry.

The thesis about the complete initial syncretic unity of the epic, lyrics and drama is also an exaggeration. The origin of the drama from the cult mysteries is not in doubt. As already mentioned, the pre-history of the drama belongs mainly to the pre-literary period and ritual syncretism. For its final design, in addition to separation from the cult, a significant level of development of narrative folklore as a source of plots was necessary.

Veselovsky's theory is the most productive for understanding the origin of lyric poetry. Folklore lyrics are entirely songs, and the song by its very nature reflects the syncretism of music and poetry. A.N. Veselovsky and at the same time the famous French philologist Gaston Paris convincingly showed the connection between medieval knightly lyrics and the traditions of folk songs from the spring ritual cycle.

The epic in its genesis is much less closely connected with ritual syncretism. True, the song form characteristic of epic poetry probably ultimately goes back to the ritual choir, but narrative folklore has been transmitted since ancient times both in the form of an oral prose tradition and in a mixed song or verse-prose form, and in the archaic there is more prose (and not less, as follows from the theory of primitive syncretism of art forms and types of poetry). This is explained by the fact that although the role of the word in primitive rites is much less than the role of mimic and rhythmic principles, even among the most "primitive" tribes, up to the Australians, next to the rite there is a developed tradition of prosaic narration, which ultimately does not go back to expressive, but to the purely communicative function of speech. In this narrative tradition, mythology occupies a huge place, which by no means can be completely removed from poetry.

Research on the origin and early stage poetic creativity are extremely few.

In the material-rich three-volume monograph by the English scientists K. and M. Chadwick "The Development of Literature" 4, the problem of the original genesis remains in the shadows. The book is useful due to the desire of the authors to classify the many archaic genre forms and their originality among different peoples. A serious attempt to reconstruct the very origin of poetry and its first steps is contained in the study of the English academician M. Baura "Primitive Song", which used the material of the folklore of the Australians, Negritos, Andamanese, Bushmen and other primitive hunters and gatherers of wild cereals. Baura consciously, like Veselovsky, undertakes an "evolutionary study by the comparative method" 5 , but at the same time he considers the ways of song formation both within the rite and outside it. The general picture of the formation of poetry in Baura is quite close to that painted by Veselovsky. Baura believes that poetry goes back genetically to rhythmic action and begins with the addition of a word to the rhythm of music and pantomime (the song is preceded by a melody with fixed, but devoid of direct meaning, voice sounds). The initial unit of the song, according to Baur, is, in the presence of dance accompaniment, a whole line, and in the absence of such a poetic line, prompted by the melody and the internal rhythm of the structure itself. In the latter case, the further growth of the "text" occurs in a line-by-line method, with some lines simply repeated in order to increase the magical power of the word. Repetitions from the beginning tend to vary and lead to parallelism. Alliteration and rhyme appear sporadically as an optional embellishment, and fixing the number of syllables (either stressed or unstressed) is a means of generating meter.

M. Baur, whose research results confirm many of A.N. Veselovsky's guesses, however, more clearly imagines the whole complexity of the relationship between primitive song and narrative poetry. He does not regard the primitive song as the immediate germ of the epic. "Narrative poetry in the full sense of the word is absent among the primitives and its place is occupied by drama"; "song is not a normal vehicle for telling myths. They are usually told in prose tales."

Indeed, acquaintance with samples of the poetry of culturally backward tribes 6 shows that this poetry is predominantly ritual-lyrical. Here there are such genres as healer charms, hunting songs; military songs; songs associated with agrarian magic and accompanying both the labor operations of the farmer and the corresponding spring ritual; funeral lamentations, songs of death; wedding and love songs; "disgraceful" songs, playful song bickering; various songs accompanying dances and being one of the elements of complex ritual ceremonies; prayer spells addressed to various spirits and gods. In the poetry of culturally backward peoples, one can find examples of impressive lyricism, but in general, poetry is not strictly lyrical, it contains many descriptive elements, rhetoric, ritual symbolism (this, however, is not syncretism with the epic in the literal sense of the word, as A. N. Veselovsky).

Both the content and the form of primitive lyrics are strictly canonized. In the old ethnographic literature, especially in all sorts of "journeys", primitive lyrics are often erroneously characterized as free improvisation for the occasion, direct "artless" expression of impressions and emotions. However, in most cases, these songs are not spontaneous self-expression, even if of "collective subjectivism", but a purposeful activity based on faith in the power of the word. From this point of view, one can understand the words of one Indian (Navajo) that he was such a poor man that he did not have a single song.

Many songs have a magical purpose, such as sorcerers' incantations, songs about the growth and reproduction of plants, hunting songs in which the hunter usually calls on animals as their "friend", love "drinks". Most love songs are of this nature. A number of songs, without pursuing "magic" goals, are designed to cheer up, inspire the singers or demoralize the enemy. Such, for example, are military songs containing self-praise, or "disgraceful" songs that humiliate enemies. With a similar goal, in conditions of hunger, forced loneliness, etc., obviously cheerful songs are sung that glorify life. A special case is the songs sung by warriors at the moment of mortal danger or after receiving a mortal wound. These songs express high courage, the inevitability of their death and revenge on the enemy.

Agrarian songs and prayers to spirits often contain inspirational hymns to nature, poetic images of spring blossoming, the power of the "masters" of various natural forces. A descriptive-narrative element sporadically penetrates ritual and lyrical songs in the form of an explanation of the cause of the disease (in healers' conspiracies), the feat of the god of war (in military songs); messages about the deeds of "spirits" and even the reproduction of the mythical picture of the first creation (in ritual songs), the exploits of the deceased leader (in funeral and memorial songs). In Polynesia, a special genre of panegyric developed from funeral and wedding songs. Some peoples (for example, the Eskimos or some African tribes) practice song competition, sometimes in the form of a playful squabble.

Songs are usually considered as the collective property of men's unions, ritual societies, and less often of individuals. The Pueblo Indians associated the origin of the song with the realm of death and the chthonic serpent (when the serpent was burned, the shreds of its body became songs). The source of the song is often thought to be the suggestion of spirits, usually in the form of a sleepy "vision". The Nivkhs in the past had an idea of ​​a special spirit that sits on the tip of the singer's tongue during the performance of a song. Poetry without music is completely unknown to the pre-literary period.

Ritual and lyric poetry are known only in song form, very often in combination with a theatrical and dramatic element. From the point of view of the sophistication of the stylistic structure, ritual poetry ranks first, followed by proper lyrical songs. Songs can be very short, consisting of one word (for example, characterizing a certain animal) or two words (for example, the word "warrior" and the name of a warrior), but they can also be quite extensive.

The songs are dominated by a musical element; they are dominated by a rhythm approaching the meter. Rhythmization in a number of cases is achieved by stretching or adding new syllables, as well as all sorts of emphatic particles, exclamations, etc. Rhyme is not characteristic of primitive poetry. In it, the leading principle is the repetition not of sounds, but of semantic complexes. The element of repetition is supported by faith in the power of the word, as the accumulation of this power. But the repetition of thoughts must be varied, because literal repetition is often considered dangerous. Sometimes in the ritual poetry of the Indians, ritual models require the repetition of a phrase for each direction of the world, with a change in the symbolic meaning of the name of a color, animal, plant, etc. We find repetition of lines in every enumeration.

The combination of repetition and variation leads to semantic-syntactic parallelism. In parallel lines, the reception of contrast is often manifested (such as: the white light of the morning - the red light of the evening, the falling rain - a standing rainbow). Such contrasting (day and night, man and woman, red and white falcon) is extremely characteristic of "primitive" songs. Along with contrasting, a typical feature of the style of primitive poetry is the accumulation of synonyms.

In lyrics, in addition to parallelism, refrain is widely found, repetition is literal or with variations. The repetition of a word at the end of a line at the beginning of the next line (polylogy - pickup) is one of the ways to highlight an important word. In oratory, speeches are repeated many times when referring to different persons, in new situations.

There are metaphors in primitive poetry. They are also frequent in oratorical prose when describing the greatness of leaders or warriors. Some metaphors owe their origin to taboos about death and illness. Ritual poetry has developed permanent metaphorical formulas.

The epic in its genesis is much less connected with ritual syncretism than the lyrics. The classical epic monuments of European and Asian peoples are mostly in verse, but in more archaic epic monuments (for example, in the legends of the peoples of the Caucasus, in heroic poems of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples of Siberia, in the Irish epic, etc.), the proportion of prose is greater, often found the so-called mixed form, i.e., a combination of prose and poetry. Most of the poems convey the speeches of characters and solemn epic descriptions. Some stories have come down to us in both poetic and prose form. On the other hand, in the tales of the most diverse peoples there are often interspersed with poetry, which can be interpreted as a relic of the same mixed form.

If we turn directly to primitive folklore, we will be convinced that the narratives here, as a rule, exist not in the form of songs, but precisely in the form of oral prose with poetic inserts; moreover, the poetic inserts often coincide with the speeches of the characters and, moreover, retain a fairly distinct connection with ritual patterns. This is a prayer, a spell, a call to battle, crying for the dead, a ritually fixed exchange of remarks, etc. But on the other hand, the main prose parts do not contain any traces of connection with music, rhythm, they are transmitted in ordinary language and are stylistically much less fixed and polished. than poetry inserts. Although the song form of the heroic epic probably ultimately goes back to the primitive ritual-lyrical song, the narrative folklore from ancient times has been transmitted mainly as a prosaic or predominantly prosaic (mixed) tradition. The combination of prose and verse (song) in the mixed tradition is, of course, something completely different from the lyrical-epic song in the understanding of A.N. Veselovsky.

The origin of verbal art cannot be studied only "from the outside", in its relation to ritual and other forms of existence. The inner aspect of this problem leads us to the myth. In Western science of the 20th century (Frazer, Robertson-Smith, Harrison, Raglan, Hook, James, and others), the "ritualistic" tendency is very strong7 - to bring myth to the limit and even to identify it with ritual, to see in myth only an echo of ritual. The "ritualists" tried to elevate literature itself directly to the rite - a fairy tale (Sentive), an epic (Miro, Levi, Carpenter, etc.). The close connection between myth and ritual in primitive and ancient Eastern cultures is beyond doubt; some myths really directly ascended to rituals (for example, myths about dying and resurrecting gods). However, there are myths that are clearly independent of the rite in their genesis and do not even have ritual equivalents. In rituals, fragments of myths that arose quite independently were often staged. In Australia, both interconnected myths and rites, and non-ritual myths, and rituals devoid of mythical correspondences are attested (see below on this). It is known that, for example, among the Bushmen or among some groups of American Indians, mythology is much richer than rituals. The same applies to ancient Greece, as opposed to Egypt or Mesopotamia. The question of the ratio of myths and rituals in the genetic plan is adequate to the problem of "chicken - eggs" (who is from whom?!). And their deep connection, "ideological" unity and structural homogeneity are specific to primitive culture. Mythology does not belong to the sphere of behavior, but to the sphere of thinking, which, of course, does not exclude the interdependence of these two spheres.

Syncretism is manifested in primitive culture not only in the forms of activity, but also in the forms of thinking and ideology. Ancient myths contain in undeveloped unity the germs of art, religion, pre-scientific ideas about nature and society. Mythology undoubtedly was the "cradle" and "school" of poetic fantasy, in many respects anticipated its specificity, although the complete identification of mythology and literature proposed by the "ritual-mythological" literary criticism (Bodkin, Fry, Chase, etc.) certainly cannot be accepted.

In contrast to the 19th-century notion of myths as naive rational explanations of the surrounding world, Levy-Bruhl emphasized the importance of the affective elements of "collective representations" and postulated their prelogical character due to their tendency to mystical "participations". Ernst Cassirer interpreted mythology, along with language and art, as an autonomous symbolic form of culture, marked by a special modality, a special way of symbolic objectification of sensual emotions. But only Lévi-Strauss was able to truly describe mythological thinking in terms of its generation of symbolic modeling systems and, unlike Lévy-Bruhl, show the intellectual ability of myth to classify and analyze, simultaneously explaining those of its specific features that bring it closer to art: thinking on a sensual level, thinking that achieves its goals in indirect ways ("bricolage") and uses a kaleidoscopic rearrangement of a ready-made set of elements, purely metaphorical thinking - some myths turn out to be a metaphorical (rarely metonymic) transformation of others, convey the same "message" in different "codes" ; transformations of mythological texts become a means of revealing the symbolic (not allegorical) meaning.

The significance of mythology is very great in the development of various types of arts, in the very genesis of artistic and figurative thinking, but, of course, mythological narration had a specific significance for the formation of verbal. Susanna Langer was not quite right when she said that myth has no language and meter and can "draw", "dance", etc., i.e. it is in an equal relation to all arts 8 . The drawing is even purely mythological theme due to the specifics of fine art, there is a little more freedom in the concrete-pictorial solution of this topic, even in the selection of impressions of reality as material, model. The same applies to pantomime dance, etc.

But narrative poetry, which has language and plot as its primary elements, has this relative independence to a minimal extent.

The specificity of the primitive myth lies in the fact that ideas about the structure of the world are transmitted in the form of a story about the origin of certain of its elements. At the same time, the events of mythical time from the life of the "first ancestors" appear as the ultimate causes of the current state of the world. From the point of view of science, events and people are determined by the state of the world, from the point of view of myth, the state of the world is the result of individual events, the actions of individual mythical personalities. Thus, narrative enters into the very specifics of primitive myth. Myth is not only a worldview, but also a narrative. Hence the special significance of myth for the formation of verbal art, primarily narrative.

Folklore of the Australian aborigines

For a clearer idea of ​​the ancient state of verbal art, primarily narrative, let us turn to the folklore of the indigenous population of Australia, whose culture some scholars conditionally compare with the Azilian-Tardenoise archaeological culture of the European Mesolithic.

The central place in the verbal creativity of the indigenous population of Australia is occupied by myths in which the action is attributed to some ancient, prehistoric time (Altzhira among the Aranda tribe, Mura among Dieri, Dzhugur among Alurija, Bugari among Karajeri, Ungud among Ungarinyin, Wingara among Waramunga, Mungai among Binbing etc.). In this prehistoric era, mythical heroes acted, and their actions determined the appearance of the earth's surface, called people, plants and animals to life, and determined various customs.

Such assignment of an action to a special prehistoric time is a characteristic sign of myth not only among the Australians, but also among the American Indians (according to the observations of F. Boas) and among other peoples.

In a number of Australian tribes, this mythical time is denoted by the same word as "dreams" (in Anglo-Australian ethnography, its generally accepted designation is dream time). The connection with the "dream" shows that we are talking about time not only prehistoric, but also extrahistorical, about time "out of time". It can be recreated in dreams, as well as in rituals in which the performers are identified with mythical ancestors. The latter are conceived as eternal, not created by anyone. They completed their life cycle at the time of the Altzhir (Altiira), eventually turning into rocks, trees or stone and wooden sacred churingi. These sacred objects (natural or created by human hand), according to the Australian tribes, still retain the magical creative power of the mythical ancestor and can be a means of breeding animals, a source of the souls of newborn children, which some tribes (aranda) think of reincarnation of ancestors. The life of the ancestors is described in very ordinary forms: they sleep, eat, hunt, quarrel among themselves, enter into love affairs, perform rituals; the search for food is in the foreground. It should be noted that in most cases the hunting of ancestors is successful. The "time of dreams" is depicted as an age of abundance and in this respect a kind of golden age. The main meaning of the "time of dreams", however, is not in the idealization of the past, but in the creation of the world by the ancestors.

Both the very structure of the world and the events that determine it in Australian mythology are very simple, its fantasy is devoid of quirkiness and hyperbolicity, which marked the myths of the Indians, Polynesians, and others. Western observers sometimes very inaccurately call it a "horde") is closely connected with a certain fodder territory, beyond which it practically does not go. Folklore vividly reflects the love of the Australian for this territory as for his homeland. And in myths, the main attention is directed not to the universe, but to this "microcosm".

The most common Australian myths therefore have the character of local legends, explaining the origin of all any noticeable places and natural objects in the fodder territory - hills, lakes, springs, rocks, pits, large trees, etc. Very often myths tell about the wanderings of ancestors in "the era of dreams" along certain paths. Various features of the relief, vegetation, etc., turn out to be the result and "monument" of the activity of the mythical hero, the trace of his camp, the fruit of his creative activity or the place of its transformation into churinga. The location of some objects on the ground allegedly reproduces individual scenes from the history of the ancestor. The myth very accurately enumerates and describes the terrain traversed by the hero, his route. Some mythical paths cross the territories of several local groups or even tribes. In this case, one local group turns out to be the custodian of only part of the myth. Mythical paths usually have a direction from north to south, which probably corresponds to the direction of the settlement of the mainland.

Mythical heroes are for the most part totem ancestors, i.e. the progenitors or creators of both a certain breed of animals (less often plants) and a human group that considers this breed of animals as its totem, i.e. its relatives, its "flesh" .

Totemism represents a kind of ideological superstructure in the early tribal society. He transfers to the surrounding nature (from which man has not yet learned to fully distinguish himself) ideas about the generic social organization 9 . The relationship of people among themselves appears as the relationship of man to nature. On the other hand, ideas about good known to man animals and plants, their names are widely used as material for the development of a peculiar, of course, rather cumbersome "code" that makes it possible to classify both natural and social phenomena 10 . This largely explains the fact that, along with the main (ancestral) totem, there are all kinds of individual subtotems, gender totems, etc. The main totem mostly corresponds to exogamy (the prohibition to marry within this totem) and alimentary taboo (the prohibition to eat meat of a totem animal, with the exception of special ritual moments). In ancestral myths, both exogamy and nutritional taboo are often violated.

Apparently, in places of the greatest distribution of one or another species of animals or plants, totem centers are localized, the creation of which is also described in myths. In totem centers, representatives of the corresponding totem periodically perform magical rites aimed at propagating the totemic species of animals or plants. These rites are not very accurately called intichium in the scientific literature. During such rites (as well as during the rite of initiation), the plots of the corresponding myths about totem heroes are usually staged.

Totemic ancestors in myths appear as creatures with a not completely differentiated dual zoo-anthropomorphic nature, in which, however, the human principle clearly predominates. For the most part, these are people who, in case of need, easily turn into the corresponding type of animal. In the beginning of the myths of some tribes, one can sometimes find such a form: "it was at a time when the animals were still people." Sometimes wanderings end with this transformation. So, among the Murinbata tribe (according to Stanner), myths often end with the word demnina, which means "to change the body", as well as "to turn from a man into an animal", "to go into the water". Certain events from the life of totemic ancestors motivate, explain certain features of the corresponding animals and plants (their color, shape, habits). Then the etiology (explanatory function) of the myth includes not only the features of the area, but also the features of the fauna and flora. This kind of etiology is widespread in the mythology of the most diverse peoples of the world.

Myths about the wanderings of totemic ancestors in their classical form appear in the folklore of the Central Australian tribes. An excellent connoisseur of the language, folklore and culture of these tribes, missionary scientist Karl Strelow recorded them and accurately translated them from the Aranda and Loritia languages ​​11 . His collection includes myths about the ancestors of the totems of red kangaroos, gray kangaroos, emu, eagle, wild cat, spiny anteater, bat, duck, crow, frog, snail, various snakes, birds, larvae, fish, etc.

The totemic myths of Aranda and Loritia are built almost all according to the same scheme: totem ancestors alone or in a group return to their homeland - to the north (less often - to the west). The places passed, the search for food, meals, the organization of camps, meetings on the way are listed in detail. Not far from the homeland, in the north, there is often a meeting with local "eternal people" of the same totem. Having reached the goal, the wandering heroes go into a hole, a cave, a spring, underground, turning into rocks, trees, churingas. This is often attributed to fatigue.

In places of encampment, and especially in the place of death (more precisely, the disappearance into the earth), totemic centers are formed. In some myths (for example, about people - wild cats), totem heroes carry with them churingas, cult wands (which are used as a weapon or for breaking a road in the rocks, that is, as a tool for creating a relief) and other cult objects.

Sometimes we are talking about leaders leading a group of young men who have just passed the rite of initiation - initiation into full members of the tribe. The group along the way performs cult ceremonies for the purpose of propagating their totem. It also happens that the journey has the character of flight and pursuit. For example, a large gray kangaroo runs from a person of the same totem; a man with the help of young men kills an animal, but it is resurrected, then both turn into churingas; a red and gray kangaroo run, pursued by dog-men and then by falcon-man; one of the running emus is torn apart by dog ​​people; swimming fish are chased by a crab and then a cormorant; two snakes are chased by people of the same totem. In these cases, it is not easy to figure out who is being discussed - about animals, people, or beings of a dual nature. For the most part, they mean the latter.

The circle of totemic myths of the Aranda and Loritia also includes a few legends about celestial bodies. The moon is represented by a male, originally belonging to the possum totem. The movement of the moon across the sky is explained in this way: it rose to the sky with a stone knife, wandered to the west, and then descended to the earth to hunt possums, and then again climbed the tree to the sky. After eating possums, the month becomes large (full moon); tired, he takes the form of a gray kangaroo, in this form young men kill him (new moon), but one of them saves the kangaroo bone, from which the moon grows again. The sun is a girl who climbed a tree to heaven; The Pleiades are also girls from the bandicoot totem who witnessed the initiation ceremony of young men and because of this turned into stones, and then into stars, etc. , as much attention as in more developed mythologies. Aranda mythology knows the image of the "master" of the sky (Altira, according to K. Shtrelov), but this character is very passive and does not play a special role in Aranda myths.

Some totemic ancestors of the Aranda during their wanderings introduce various customs and rituals, act as so-called cultural heroes. The fire was obtained by a representative of the gray kangaroo totem from the body of a giant gray kangaroo, which he hunted. It is impossible not to recall on this occasion the Karelian-Finnish rune about Väinämeinen getting fire from the belly of a fiery fish. Such a myth is characteristic of a primitive economy, in which, basically, ready-made fruits of nature are appropriated. Two falcon-men who came from the north to the land of Aranda taught others how to use a stone axe; the marriage rules forgotten by people were again established by one of the ancestors of the kangaroo-dart frog totem named Katukankara.

Initiation rites play an important role in Australian life. The introduction of these rites and related ritual operations on the body is attributed to ancestors - wild cats - and ancestors - flycatcher lizards (the use of a stone knife for these operations, according to myth, replaced fire sticks). The "eternal people" of the Algerian times, who later became flycatcher lizards, play a particularly important role. The tales of their wanderings take on the character of an anthropogenetic and partly cosmogonic myth. Tradition classifies their wanderings among the earliest. However, in reality, they probably mark a less primitive stage in the history of mythology, since here the origin of not one totem group, but at least several, is treated, and we are talking not only about the scattering of churingas, but about the initial emergence of "humanity".

According to this myth, the land was first covered by the sea (a mythological concept widespread throughout the world), and on the slopes of the rocks protruding from the water, in addition to the "eternal" mythical heroes, there were already the so-called rella manarinha (i.e., "glued people "), according to Strelov, or inapatua, according to Spencer and Gillen, - a bunch of helpless creatures with glued fingers and teeth, closed ears and eyes. Other similar human "larvae" lived in water and looked like raw meat. After the earth dried up, the mythical hero - the totem ancestor of the "lizards" - came from the north and separated the human embryos from each other with a stone knife, cut through their eyes, ears, mouth, nose, fingers, etc. He circumcised them with the same knife (here partly reflected the idea that only the rite of initiation "completes" a person), taught them how to make fire by friction, cook food, gave them a spear, a spear thrower, a boomerang, provided each with a personal churinga (as the guardian of the soul), divided people into phratries ("land" and "water") and marriage classes. Before us stands a typical cultural hero-demiurge - the central figure of primitive mythology.

The concept of the development of people from imperfect, helpless beings is known to other Australian tribes and many other peoples. Its echo, by the way, is the well-known Old Norse myth, retold in the Elder Edda, about how the gods found the lifeless bodies of the first people on the shore in the form of pieces of wood and breathed life into them. Along with such an "evolutionary" mythological concept of the origin of people in the same Aranda, in some myths, the "eternal" heroes of the "age of dreams" also act as true progenitors - the creators of people and animals. So, in the myth of the bandicoot totem, it is told about a certain ancestor named Karora, from under whose armpits the bandicoots first came out, and in the following days - his sons - people who began to hunt these bandicoots. (In the same way, in Scandinavian mythology, giants are born from under the arms of Ymir.) This anthropogenetic and at the same time totemic myth is intertwined with the cosmogonic myth: at the beginning of time there was darkness, and constant night pressed down on the earth like an impenetrable curtain, then the sun appeared and dispersed the darkness above Ilbalintya (totem center of bandicoots) 12 .

Similar tales of the wanderings of totemic ancestors and cultural heroes are found among other Australian tribes, but they are less fully recorded. Moreover, nowhere is the influence of totemism manifested with such force as in the Aranda and Lauriti. The Dieri and other tribes who lived southeast of the Aranda, around Lake Eyre, have numerous legends, known from the classical works of Howit 13, about the wanderings of certain mura-mura - mythical heroes similar to the "eternal" people of the Aranda, but with weaker zoomorphic features. . Various features of the landscape, the introduction of exogamy and totem names, the use of a stone ax for circumcision and the production of fire by friction, as well as the "finishing" of imperfect human beings, are also associated with the wanderings of the mura-mura. One of the mura-mura that ascended into the sky became a moon. And the sun is a woman who dug a hole and went to heaven in search of a missing child; since then, she periodically makes the same path. According to another tradition, the sun was born from the connection of a mura-mura with a dieri girl, etc.

Myths about ancestors do not always tell about their wanderings. Some ancestors (including those of the Aranda) do not make long journeys. A good collection of the myths of one of the north-eastern tribes (Munkan), only partly connected with wanderings, is compiled by Ursula McConnell 14 . This collection contains many myths about the formation of totemic centers after the "going underground" of totemic ancestors (pulwaya). Going underground is often preceded by quarrels and fights among the pulwayas, inflicting mutilations and mortal wounds on each other. Although the ancestors are presented as purely anthropomorphic beings, the description of their behavior reflected observations on the way of life and habits of the corresponding animals, and some circumstances of the life of the ancestors explain the features of these animals. Many of the features of the physical appearance of animals are motivated by the mutilations inflicted on them by pulwaya back in ancient times, when animals had a human appearance: from sand, thrown oyster pulwaya, a shark has small eyes, from a blow with a digging stick, an owl has a flat head, etc. and etc. The local breed of storks has red legs, as the pulwaya stork rubbed the spears that he held on his knees with red clay. Although the story is not dedicated to storks, but to their purely anthropomorphic ancestors (of the time when storks were still people), but in the description of how the ancestor climbs on the "sleep platform", or the posture of the ancestor sitting on a tree, observations on habits are clearly manifested these birds. Likewise, the myth of the anthropomorphic ancestors of the opossum well conveys the drowsiness and love for honey inherent in this animal. There are many such examples. The relationship of friendship and enmity of the pulwaya exactly corresponds to the relationship of various animals and plants. Some of the pulwaya perform cultural deeds: for example, the ancestor of one of the fish-eating birds of prey invented the fishing net and the spear.

The myths of the northern and southeastern tribes are also known to be more complex, more generalized and apparently developed. later images"over-totemic" mythical heroes. In the north, this is the “old mother” (Kunapipi, Clearin-cleari, Kadyari, etc.), a matriarchal ancestor, symbolizing the fertile giving birth to the earth, as well as the image of the rainbow serpent associated with it (and with fertility, reproduction) 15 . In the southeast, on the contrary, it is the patriarchal image of the universal "father". These are Nurundere, Koin, Biral, Nurelli, Bunjil, Bayame, Daramulun. The uninitiated call him simply "father" (for example, papang). He lives in heaven, acts as a culture hero and patron of initiation rites 16 . However, the mother is also related to initiation, performs cultural deeds. Both mother and father do not necessarily belong to one totem, but sometimes to many at once (for example, each part of their body can have its own totem) and, accordingly, are a common ancestor, that is, in the Australian sense, the bearer and primary source of the souls of various groups of people, animals, plants.

In myths (unlike ritual, which will be discussed below), not one mother usually appears, but several, sometimes two sisters or a mother and daughter. These legends (and the ritual) are associated with one of the halves (phratries) of the tribe (namely, with the dua), which allows the assumption of a partial genesis of these mothers from the ideas of phratrian progenitors.

Among the yulengors living in Arnhemland (according to S. Chesling), the mythical ancestors coming from the north are the junkgova, female sisters. They sailed across the sea they created. In the boat they carried various totems, which had to be hung up to dry on the trees. Then the totems were hidden in work bags and gradually distributed to different places during the wanderings. Dzhunkgov gave birth to ten children, first deprived of sex. Then, however, those hidden in the grass became men, and those hidden in the sand became women. They made for their descendants digging sticks, feather belts and other ornaments, introduced the use of fire, created the sun, taught children to eat certain types of food, gave them weapons, magical means, taught totem dances, and introduced the rite of initiation of youths.

The keepers of ritual secrets, according to this myth, were first women, but the men took away their totems and secrets, and the progenitors were driven away by singing. The progenitors continued on their way, forming the terrain, new food territories and tribal groups of people. Reaching the sea again in the west, they went to the islands, which had previously arisen from the lice shed from their bodies.

Long after the disappearance of the junkgov, the other two Wauwaluk sisters appeared in the west, born in the shade behind the setting sun. They completed the work of their predecessors, established marriage classes and introduced the famous ritual of the great mother - Gunapipi (Kunapipi), in which their deeds are partially staged. The sisters settled in a certain place, built a hut, began to collect food. One of them was pregnant and gave birth to a child. The sisters tried to cook yams, snails and other food, but plants and animals came to life and jumped out of the fire, it started to rain. The sisters tried to dance away the rain and the terrible rainbow snake, which approached them and swallowed first the totem animals and plants (the food of the sisters), and then both women and the child. Being in the belly of the snake, they tortured him, and he spat them out, and the child came to life from the stings of the ants. This myth is widespread among the northeastern tribes.

The Vauvaluk sisters (as they are called by the Yulengors and some other tribes) are also associated with the dua phratry. They are a kind of version of the same mothers-ancestresses, embodying fertility. There is also a fearsome rainbow serpent in the myth, an image widely known throughout most of Australia, as shown by Radcliffe-Brown. This peculiar mythological image combines the idea of ​​the spirit of water, a snake-monster (the embryo of the idea of ​​a dragon), a magic crystal (in which the rainbow spectrum is reflected) used by sorcerers. Swallowing and spitting out by a snake of people is certainly connected (as in other peoples) with the rite of initiation (symbolism of temporary death, renewal). The skin-changing snake naturally becomes a symbol of renewal. R. Berndt finds the erotic symbolism associated with the magic of fertility in the swallowing of the Vauvaluk sisters by a snake. It is curious that in one of the myths of the Murinbata tribe (and in the corresponding ritual), the old woman Mutinga herself swallows the children whom her parents left in search of food entrusted to her. She soothes the children, searches their heads and swallows one by one. After the death of the old woman, the children are released alive from her womb. The Mara tribal group has a story about a mythical mother who killed and ate men attracted by the beauty of her daughters. In such a demonic guise, we do not recognize the mighty progenitor. She is more like a fairy-tale witch, something like Baba Yaga. However, not only among Australians, but also among other peoples (for example, among the Kwakiutl Indians, based on the materials of F. Boas), the myth of the evil cannibal old woman is associated with the idea of ​​initiation of young men into full members of the tribe (as among the Australians) or the male union (among Indians). In some myths, the rainbow serpent accompanies the "big mother" on her wanderings.

In the Yirkalla tribal group, there is a myth about Jangavul wandering with his sisters, with whom he is in incestuous relationship. Among Murinbat, the rainbow serpent under the name Kunmangur itself acts as an ancestor, the father of the father of one and the father of the mother of the other half of the tribe. He allegedly "made us all" and also "watches the people" 17 . Kunmangur's son rapes his sisters and then mortally wounds his father. Kunmangur wanders in search of a quiet place where he can heal. In desperation, he collects all the fire that belonged to people and puts it out by throwing it into the sea. Another mythical character makes fire again (the idea of ​​renewal).

The myths about the rainbow serpent, and especially about mothers-progenitors, are closely connected with the complex ritual mystery arranged before the start of the rainy season in honor of the earth mother Kunapipi, who embodies fertility.

Let us now turn to the image of the tribal "great father" among the southeastern tribes, well studied by Howit. S.A. Tokarev quite correctly traces its origin from somewhat more primitive images: the personification of the sky of the Altier type by the Arand, the totem of the phratry, the cultural hero, the patron of initiation and the fearsome spirit that turns boys into adult men (only the uninitiated believe in it) 18. In these characters there is only the germ of a proper religious idea of ​​a creator god. Almost all of them appear as great ancestors and teachers of people who lived on earth and were subsequently transferred to heaven.

Such a transfer to the sky of earthly mythological heroes and in the mythology of other nations it often corresponds to the process of deification of folklore characters.

Bundzhil among the Kulin tribe was drawn by an old tribal leader, married to two representatives of the totem of black swans. Its very name means "long-tailed eagle" and at the same time serves as the designation of one of the two phratries (the second is Vaang, that is, the raven). Bunjil is portrayed as the creator of the earth, trees and people. He warmed the sun with his hands, the sun warmed the earth, people came out of the earth and began to dance the corroboree. Thus, in Bunjil, the features of the phratrian ancestor - the demiurge - the cultural hero predominate.

Daramulun among the tribes of the southeast coast (Yuin and others) was considered the highest being, and among the Kamilaroi, Viradjuri and Yualaya he occupied a subordinate position in relation to Bayama. According to some myths, Daramulun, together with his mother (emu), planted trees, gave people laws and taught them the rites of initiation. During these rites, Daramulun is drawn on the ground or on the bark, the sound of the buzzer depicts his voice, he is perceived as a spirit that turns boys into men.

The name Bayame in the Kamilaroi language is associated with the verb "to do" 19 , which seems to correspond to the idea of ​​a demiurge and a cultural hero. Matthew connects the etymology of this name with the idea of ​​the seed of man and animal 20 , and Langlo-Parker argues that in the Yualayi language this word is understood only in the sense of "great" 21 . The Yualai speak of the time of Bayame, as the Aranda speak of the "age of dreams." In ancient times, when there were only animals and birds on earth, Bayame came from the northeast with his two wives and created people partly from wood and clay, partly turning animals into them, gave them laws and customs (the ultimate motivation for everything is "so Bayame said). Matthew recounts the Viradjuri and Wongabong myth that Baiame went on a journey in search of wild honey following a bee to whose leg he tied a bird's feather. (Let's recall the most important cultural act of the Old Norse Odin - the extraction of sacred honey.) Four hundred and sixty kilometers from Sydney, in an outcrop of granite rock, there was allegedly the residence of Byame in ancient times. Among a number of tribes, Bayame is the center of all initiatory rites (the so-called bora), the main teacher of beginners who undergo severe initiatory tests.

So far we have been talking about myths. Already from the previous presentation it is clear that the myths of the Australians are closely connected with rituals. This connection is very clear; a variety of myths are reproduced in theatrical form, dramatized during the initiation ceremonies of youths as a means of familiarizing young people with the "sacred history" of the tribe, as a transmission of tribal wisdom. On the other hand, some myths and rites have the same heroes, myths largely serve to explain the ritual mystery, the rite makes extensive use of the language of myth. Such a direct connection exists between totemic myths and intichium rites, between myths about a heavenly phratrian ancestor - a cultural hero (Bayam) and ritual tests of boron; between myths about ancestor mothers and the cult of Kunapipi, etc. From this, however, one should not conclude that the role of myth among the Australians is reduced to commenting on the rite and that the myth is simply a rite translated into narrative form. There is no closer interweaving of myth and ritual than in the theme of Kunapipi and the rainbow serpent. However, there are legends about the rainbow serpent that do not have a ritual equivalent; the myth of the Vauwaluk sisters is closely connected with the ritual, but not with one, but with three different ritual ceremonies 22 . None of them match this myth. According to Stanner 23, along with the myth about Muting, which has a ritual equivalent in the form of the punja rite, the Murinbat has myths about Kunmangur and Kukpi (the father of one and the mother of the other half of the tribe) that do not have a ritual equivalent, and rituals of circumcision and burial that do not have a mythological equivalent.

Another thing is that, as Stanner quite convincingly shows, the rituals and myths of the murinbat are isomorphic, have an identical structure of the mystery type. Here and there, the balance of life is voluntarily or involuntarily disturbed by death, the onset of puberty in boys, the departure of parents, small children or daughters of Kunmangur in search of food, the dissatisfaction of Kukpi looking for a place, etc.). The lack of food in the Mutinga myth is adequate to the lack of wisdom (spiritual food) among young men in the corresponding ritual (punj). The disturbed balance is gradually restored, and at the highest level, as a result of a spiral movement. This spiral movement includes the same stages: the subject is taken out of the ordinary normal (boys are taken into the forest or left in the care of Mutinga, a dead body is carried out of the village, Kunmangur's children leave home, Kukpi leaves old places, etc.), the subject of the myth-rite is thus, as it were, isolated and then partially destroyed (the sacrifice of the foreskin of the boys, the destruction of the rotting body of the dead man, the infliction of ritual beatings on the initiates, their swallowing by the old woman, the murder of men thanks to the cunning of Kukpi, the violence of the son of Kunmangur over the sisters and an attempt to kill father, the destruction of the emblems of the old social statute).

This is followed by a transformation - saving the subject and returning him to a normal track at the highest level (the children are saved or returned to the village as initiators and received a new social status; the wise old man solves and neutralizes Kukpi, receiving a buzzer; the spirit of the dead is released from the body and becomes an object reverence, etc.). The final way out of the conflict situation is also dual; rise to the highest level is achieved at the cost of losses, life is renewed with the help of death, sacrifice, suffering: the fire is preserved thanks to the death of Kunmangur (father), and the life of children and their dedication is bought not only at the cost of painful trials, but also by the death of Mutinga (mother).

Of course, Stanner's interesting analysis does not lead to a conclusion about the genetic dependence of myth on ritual. Much here explains the ideological syncretism characteristic of primitive culture, which has already been pointed out above. In addition, the material cited by Stanner can also be used to identify the specific differences between myth and ritual that he left unattended, which exist even if myth and ritual are directly interconnected (as in punj). It goes without saying that the cyclically repeated ritual actions in the present correspond to a single mythical event that took place in the distant (prehistoric) past. The time of the ritual and the time of the myth exist outside the normal, ordinary frame of reference and idea of ​​time, but the ritual is focused on a kind of break in the flow of time, and the myth - on the era before the beginning of this flow of time and its countdown. The chance and sometimes unintentionality of a mythical event is opposed to the strict obligatoriness and premeditation, the organization of the ritual on the part of the tribal authorities. The parents left their children to Mutinge, prompted by hunger and as if unaware of the danger. In an appropriate ritual, the children were deliberately and forcibly taken into the forest at the mercy of the old woman. In Australian myths, the initial situation is often associated with the search for food, while the premise of the initiation rites is the need to introduce young men to tribal wisdom, that is, to saturate them with spiritual food. The difference between the myth and the punj ritual can be additionally caused in the genesis of the gap between the esoteric and exoteric versions: the patron of initiation is presented to the uninitiated as a demonic creature that kidnaps children. It is curious that the obvious evil emanating from Mutinga and similar characters (Kukpi and others) corresponds in the ritual to the secret good 24 . The imaginary friend of myth turns out to be the imaginary enemy of ritual. An imaginary friend - Mutinga - calms the children to make them easy prey, and the leaders of the ritual intimidate the young men with the voice of a buzzer. The myth of Muting ends with revenge on the old woman, and the ritual ends with the young men gaining wisdom.

Further analysis of the differences between Australian myths and rituals could lead to a more rigorous establishment of the differential features according to which myth and ritual oppose each other. It is necessary to add to what has been said that even in the case of maximum closeness, the connection of individual myths and rites, the performance of a myth is not necessarily a part of the rite, it may not accompany the rite at all or accompany it only partially, because the ritual action itself, with which it is associated, is not sacred in myth. , but the verbally expressed content, certain information, names, etc. The myth, as it were, authorizes, reinforces the rite and explains its meaning, but in its performance, the myth is relatively freer than dance, music, and even song, often directly constituting a sacred act. This largely determines the originality of the myth. But the specificity of myth as the embryo of narrative art is determined, of course, not only by the degree of freedom from ritual at the moment of performance. Among Australians and beyond the rite, there is a close thematic connection between the various arts and genres of poetry. They tell, sing, dance and make drawings with ocher on the sand and rocks about the same hero of the "time of dreams", and not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily within the framework of one ritual action. The specificity of various arts and types of poetry is well revealed, for example, in a comparative analysis of the myths, songs, aranda dances recorded by K. Strelov, as well as Spencer and Gillen, or the myths, songs and dances from the Kunapipi circle recorded by Berndt.

In principle, both dances, and songs, and myths depict the wanderings of the heroes of the "epoch of dreams." However, the specificity of the myth about the totemic ancestors of the Arandas is primarily in the communication about the places they visited during their wanderings, and in explaining the features of the landscape. The specificity of the songs (in principle, dedicated to the same wanderings) is in a kind of "exaltation" of mythical heroes. In the songs, the entire "geography" of wanderings is greatly reduced or even omitted; in the songs about the journey of the great mother, only one old woman appears, and not several (as in myths), a very general story is told about her arrival, accompanied by a rainbow serpent, about how she makes food grow with the magical touch of a digging stick, about how she it scatters the souls of people and animals, etc. First of all, its power is emphasized 25 . Of course, the songs lack all sorts of plot details that are found in individual versions of myths. Songs are very different from prose myths in form. Strelow describes in detail the performance of the songs by the Aranda and gives many examples.

The songs are performed by the old men in chorus in the form of a nasal chant. One or two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed syllable, regardless of the stresses adopted in these words in ordinary speech. All the words in the stanza are pronounced as one word. There are many words in the songs that are archaic or borrowed from the language of neighboring tribes and therefore obscure. In them, the semantic-syntactic parallelism of two lines appears extremely clearly, of which the second repeats and explains the first. As is known, such parallelism is widely found in the songs of various peoples of the world, in particular in epic songs, for example, in Karelian-Finnish runes. Australian songs about the exploits of mythical ancestors have a pronounced lyrical-epic character. They produce a strong emotional impact on listeners and performers. Sometimes the old people themselves cry with delight (as the great singer Väinämeinen cried in Kalevala). It is understood that the song has a magical meaning and should help to realize the purpose of the ritual. Such a strict poetic organization of the song largely depends on its simultaneity, coordination with the dance.

The dance also has its own specifics. Although the dancers' running or trampling on the sacred ground near the totem center depicts the wanderings of totem ancestors over a vast territory in ancient times, a certain moment comes to the fore in the dance - imitation of totem animals, their appearance and habits. For the same purpose, actors paint their bodies with ocher, blood and charcoal, arrange complex hairstyles from their own hair, bird fluff and branches. The naturalism of direct imitation is combined with the wearing of ritual objects (knatanya, kalgaranga, vaninga) symbolizing some part of the ancestor's body (heart, stomach, spine, and sometimes the ear of a kangaroo, a bat's wing, a spider's web, falling raindrops). The same purpose is served by wearing churingas decorated with spiral circles and connecting these circles. parallel lines or a chain of circles. This ornament is also interpreted as an image of parts of the body of a totem animal or as a camp of a totem ancestor and the path of his wanderings (parts of the animal's body are also depicted in a stylized manner on the ground and on the rocks).

Songs and dances, therefore, do for the most part appear in a syncretic unity, but this does not extend to the prosaic exposition of myths. Myths in prose are sometimes told in parts, sometimes in full. Something is really told by the old people during the ritual, but not with a magical purpose, but to clarify what is depicted, in the form of a kind of commentary. Parts of the myths are also expounded when visiting secret caves, inaccessible to the uninitiated, where churingas are kept 27, or during initiation trials of young men to pass on tribal wisdom to them, out of direct connection with the initiation ritual itself. Myths are presented in ordinary language, devoid of a strictly prescribed stylistic structure. Thus, in terms of the form of performance, myths are much freer than songs and less ritualized. But their main content, especially the description of the mythical paths of the heroes of the "age of dreams", is sacred and must be kept secret from the uninitiated, that is, women and children. It is sacred secret knowledge, and not rituality, that constitutes an important feature of Australian myths. Comparison various options of the same myths in the publications of K. Shtrelov, Spencer and Gillen reveals a certain freedom of invention in the field of plot details in comparison with songs, since songs are more shackled by ritualized performance. But the sacred content hinders the further development of plot fiction. From this point of view, it is big interest a record of myths from the uninitiated, such as from old women. The content of myths in one way or another penetrates the environment of the uninitiated. The exception is the especially sacred part of myths - information about mythical paths, about the ways of wandering heroes. At the same time, myths told by the uninitiated and not in connection with the transmission of wisdom, but rather for entertainment, are enriched by a freer plot fiction. This is one of the ways of forming a fabulous epic.

However, myth, even if it has partially lost its sacred meaning, retains other specific features of myth for a long time - the image of the world in the form of a story about the origin of its elements. We find good illustrations of what has been said in the already mentioned collection of Munkan myths, written down by Ursula McConnell to a large extent from women. We have already noted that in this collection there are few stories about the wanderings of totem heroes, and even where there is a fact of wandering, the route does not appear, since it is the subject of secret knowledge of the initiates.

In McConnell's collection there are many stories about the formation of totemic centers and about the emergence of various characteristic features of animals (examples were given above), that is, real etiological myths. The characteristic tendency of these legends is that the fantasy of the narrators is directed to the image family life totemic ancestors, and in this area the narrators, or rather the narrators, reveal no less observation than in the description of the habits of animals. Totemic animals act as family groups (which is absolutely not in the sacred myths of the Aranda, recorded by K. Shtrelov). Even parts of the same plant - a water lily (stem, large root, small roots) - turn out to be husband, wife, children. Yams' totem ancestor's wife refused to bring him water, leading to a quarrel; in the same way, the ancestor of the oyster totem quarrels with his wife - the ancestor of the turtle totem - because the wife refused to dig a source of clean water in the sand; because of the refusal to fulfill the request, two sisters quarrel - pulwaya of the sea and land turtles.

Difficult relationships and fatal quarrels arise between families of totems of various fish, ants, owls due to the infidelity of wives; betrayal of wives and persecution of the seducer take place among the ancestors of bird totems, etc. All this family theme gradually undermines the myth, because main interest myth is focused not on personal destinies (which is rather typical for a fairy tale), but on the origin of the world, man, animals, customs. Here a well-known contradiction arises, which in the future may be resolved by the fact that recently born stories about family relationships and social conflicts will break away from the images of mythical ancestors and the “time of dreams” and become a real fairy tale (animal, if totemic names are preserved, or magical).

However, Australian folklore, due to its archaism, knows almost no cases of the completion of such a process; he knows only the relevant tendencies. Here it should immediately be noted that secularization, the secularization of myth is not the only source of the formation of a fairy tale. Another ancestor of a fairy tale is primitive bylichki, that is, stories about people meeting in the recent past with various spirits, "masters" that bring them evil or good. Such stories may be based on real cases (were), interpreted in the light of the prevailing mythological ideas. Among such bylichkas one should also include stories with which mothers "frighten" children - about evil cannibal spirits, including spirits that kidnap (according to the ideas of the uninitiated) boys who have reached maturity to turn them into adult men - full members tribe.

In Australian folklore, the Aborigines themselves distinguish between myths and fairy tales. Tales are devoid of sacred meaning, accessible to the uninitiated, and can be told for entertainment as well as for intimidation to keep the uninitiated in obedience. In the latter case, fairy tales play the role of myths for the uninitiated. This is a specifically Australian trait. Fairy tales, however, are recorded very little (apparently, they are much less quantitatively than myths), which naturally makes their analysis difficult. Several fairy tales are given by K. Shtrelov in his capital work; Fairy tales in Arnhemland's folklore records are very distinctly identified by A. Capell 28 .

In the notes of K. Shtrelov, a number of fairy tales are dedicated to wonderful creatures (tneera and indatoa), which are mentioned in myths, but are not the subject of special reverence. Fairy tales tell about the struggle of these creatures with evil spirits. One of the tales tells of little Tuanyiraka creatures that torment boys during their initiation (initiates do not believe in these creatures). A. Capell cites a number of fairy tales that just belong to the type of mythologized bylichki. The main characters are not mythical creatures, but ordinary people who, while hunting turtles (if we are talking about men) or collecting snails (if we are talking about women), experience various adventures: they meet with evil spirits, become victims of an old woman-eater, die as a result of breaking taboos.

Cultural heroes and mythological rogues are the central characters of primitive narrative folklore.

Within the framework of this work, it is not possible to dwell on a review of the folklore of various culturally backward peoples 29 . Let's look at some of the most common questions.

The most important phenomenon of narrative folklore in the primitive communal system is the tales of the first ancestors - demiurges - cultural heroes, genetically associated with etiological myths (and more widely with the myths of creation) about the origin of various elements of nature and culture, but later, in the process of cyclization, included stories of a fabulous nature (animals , magical, proto-heroic). Despite the inclusion of genre-heterogeneous elements in these legends, they can rightly be called a mythological epic, since the center of cyclization in them is a mythical character. It should be emphasized that in a primitive society only a mythical character could be a hero, for only he possessed in the eyes of the members of the primitive community the necessary freedom of self-activity. At the same time, only a character could be a hero who modeled not the forces of nature (like, say, various master spirits), but the tribal collective itself.

Such is the tribal ancestor (conceived also as a universal human one, since tribal boundaries under the primitive communal system subjectively coincide with universal human ones) and a cultural hero.

Ideas about the first ancestors, cultural heroes and demiurges are closely intertwined, and sometimes identical in primitive folklore. Apparently, at first, the images of the first ancestors acquire distinct outlines, as if evidenced by the Australian material.

In more archaic cultures, cultural heroes are almost always ancestral, phratrian and ancestral ancestors (Australians, Papuans, Gunantuna Melanesians, Northeast Paleo-Asians, Paleo-African primitive tribes of Central and South Africa). In less archaic (part of the Indians of North America, Polynesia), the features of the first ancestor in the image of a cultural hero are relic.

On the islands of Oceania, cycles of legends about cultural heroes are ubiquitous, who are often thought of as ancestors (but not as gods). In various parts of Melanesia, these are Kat, Tangaro, Varohunuka, To Kabinana.

In Polynesia, the brothers Tangaroa and Rongo are endowed with the traits of culture heroes, but, unlike the Melanesian Tangaro, Tangaroa has become one of the great gods of the Polynesian pantheon.

However, in Polynesia, next to him, the undeified Maui is well known - a favorite character in Polynesian narrative folklore. Maui is a premature foundling thrown into the bush or into the sea. Of the many feats of Maui, the most famous are catching fish islands from the bottom of the sea, catching the sun and stealing fire, vigilantly kept in the underworld by an old ancestor. Maui even tried to overcome death, but he himself was defeated. Among the North American Indians, such popular characters as Raven, Mink, Hare or Rabbit (Manaboso), Coyote, Old Man, and others (names, apparently, of totemic origin) have distinct features of cultural heroes. The raven, for example, produces light, fresh water, sets the ebb and flow, creates certain types of fish, and participates in the creation of people. To accomplish his cultural deeds, Raven often resorts to magical transformations and cunning tricks. So, he turns into a coniferous needle, which is swallowed by the daughter of the owner of the heavenly bodies. She gives birth to a Raven from this needle. The newborn screams heart-rendingly until he is given the sun, moon and stars to play with. Putting the keeper of fresh water to sleep, Raven then falsely accuses him of soiling his bed and, as compensation, drinks water from a stone vessel, and then spits it out in the form of rivers and lakes. There are countless etiological motifs in the Raven cycle. The Raven cycle also includes anecdotal stories about how the gluttonous Raven takes prey from other animals or turns them into prey. There are similar anecdotes in the legends about Mink, Coyote, and others (see below).

The raven is also the central figure in the folklore of the northeastern Paleo-Asians (Chukchi, Koryaks, Itelmens). In many ways it is similar to the Raven Ekva-Pyrishch - the hero of the folklore of the Ob Ugrians.

The traits of cultural heroes, but not so pronounced, sometimes in a relic form are the favorite heroes of African folklore. Some of them are zoomorphic (Hare, Spider, Jackal, Praying Mantis, Chameleon, Turtle) or semi-zoomorphic (Pu, Uhlakanyana). In African folklore, the features of cultural heroes and wonderful blacksmiths are sometimes combined.

Sometimes the cultural hero is one of many brothers (as, for example, Kat, Tangaro, Maui in Oceania); very often cultural heroes are two twin brothers who compete or are at enmity with each other (Ioskega and Taviskaron among the Iroquois, To Kabinana and To Karvuvu among the Gunantuna Melanesians and many others), less often they help each other ("the boy from the wigwam" and "the boy from bushes" defeating monsters among the Indians of the south of North America). Such twins are often both phraterial ancestors. The "twinship" itself is an additional proof of the original identity of the ancestors and cultural heroes. According to the well-reasoned interpretation of A.M. Zolotarev and S.P. Tolstov, cultural twin heroes, as well as other twin pairs in mythology (Ashvins - Dioscuri, Romulus and Remus, etc.), ultimately go back to the ubiquitous at a certain stage primitive society dual-clan organization 30 .

The specific field of activity of a cultural hero is the production of fire, useful cereals, the invention of various cultural objects necessary for a person in his struggle with nature. Already due to the non-differentiation of nature and culture in the primitive worldview (for example, the idea of ​​making fire by friction, the origin of thunder and lightning, sunlight, etc.) is not sharp, there is no sharp line between the cultural hero and the demiurge.

In older versions, reflecting the specifics of the appropriating economy, the hero obtains the benefits of culture, and sometimes elements of nature, thanks to a simple find or by stealing them from the original custodian. Later, the idea arises of the manufacture of all these objects by the demiurge with the help of pottery or blacksmith tools; at the dawn of the metal age, for example, among the Paleo-African peoples, the cultural hero often appeared in the guise of a wonderful blacksmith.

These myths to a certain extent represent the chronicle of the victories of human labor and technical invention over nature, but this chronicle (partly due to the slowness of technological progress) is projected into mythical times of first creation such as the "time of dreams" of the Australians.

The model of a cultural hero - this central character of primitive mythology and folklore - is specifically associated with primitive ideological syncretism. This image can also evolve towards a creator god (then the primitive myth turns into an exclusively religious myth-legend). But in most cases, he does not become a genuine object of religious veneration, but turns into a beloved fairy-tale epic hero. Culture heroes are not generally classified as gods by the natives themselves; they usually belong to the same group with the spirits and prominent people of the past, to a certain extent in order to separate them from the gods and at the same time emphasize their magical power (mana) and significance. A striking example of the difference between non-deified and deified cultural heroes is the Polynesian god Tangaroa and the Melanesian hero Tangaro. Tangaroa, unlike Tangaro, does not occupy a significant place in folklore, and the favorite folklore hero throughout Polynesia is Maui, who never entered the supreme pantheon of Polynesian gods. Recall that the famous Prometheus was not allowed to Olympus, remained outside the Olympic pantheon.

The specific sphere of activity of the first ancestors - cultural heroes - demiurges coincides with the boundaries of creation myths, that is, etiological myths in the broad sense of the word. On the border of etiological myths proper, there are such deeds, often associated with cultural heroes, such as the fight against monsters that interfere with the peaceful life of people and gods. The fight against monsters can be one of the sides of overcoming the forces of chaos and organization - the ordering of the world order, that is, part of the process of creating the modern world. Sometimes a world is created from the body of the most defeated chthonic monster. In the latter case, the rite of sacrifice becomes a model of creation. In addition, the fight against monsters is sometimes associated with the mythical concept of the historical generational change of gods or spirits. Such myths of creation are not characteristic of primitive mythology proper, they are typical of developed mythologies such as Babylonian (the myth of the struggle of Enlil or Marduk with Tiamat), Indian (the creation of the world from the body of Purusha), Chinese (Pangu), Scandinavian (the world from the body of Ymir, Thor's struggle with the world serpent), Maya (the world from the body of the earth goddess), etc. However, a more primitive struggle with monsters, without connection with the concept of generations and not always with a clear etiological result, is found quite widely in primitive folklore, in particular , in legends about cultural heroes (Indian twin brothers from the "wigwam" and "bush", Maui in some regions of Polynesia, Raven among the Koryaks and many others).

In the plastically clear ancient Greek mythology, this new aspect of the cultural hero is well represented in Heracles (unlike Prometheus).

In monster-fighting myths, the idea of ​​overcoming chaos takes on a new direction - not just the ordering of the light of the sun, the ebb and flow, the seasons, the relationships of various animals, the prohibition of incest and other taboos, the introduction of marriage classes and rituals necessary to maintain a normal natural and life cycle. ; but also a constant struggle with natural forces that threaten to sweep away "order". This double pathos of overcoming chaos is typical of mythology as a whole; it also explains a lot in the genesis of verbal art. In essence, almost every work of art is aimed at overcoming the chaos of life through the artistic reorganization of reality.

Ideas about the elemental forces of nature (due to the identification of nature and culture, as well as one's tribe as "real people" with humanity as a whole) are often very close and even merge with the images of foreigners. Thus, the cultural hero acquires, as it were, an epic mission and the features of a hero, and the tales themselves, having gone beyond the limits of etiological myths, become a kind of heroic tales.

Legends about cultural heroes are characterized by archaic forms of idealization, in which heroic traits are not so much physical strength and courage as intelligence and cunning, magical, witchcraft abilities.

In the folklore of many peoples, as already noted, a pair image in the form of twin brothers often appears. Such two twin brothers sometimes represent a heroic pair of monster fighters. But more often, only one of the brothers retains his high essence, while the other is endowed with demonic and at the same time (paradoxically) comic features. If both brothers appear in the myths of creation, then one of them performs serious and useful deeds, while the other either consciously creates harmful and useless objects and phenomena, or does it involuntarily as a result of unsuccessful imitation (for example, To Kabinana and To Karvuvu in Melanesia; cf. Prometheus and Epimetheus in ancient Greek mythology). In non-creation episodes, the culture hero's brother or brothers often act as miserable and malevolent envious people (for example, the Maui brothers). When the hero does not have a brother, then often, along with serious cultural deeds, mischievous tricks are attributed to him, sometimes being a parody rethinking of his own serious deeds (among the Indians of the western part of North America, etc.).

Sometimes a mythological rogue does not coincide with a serious cultural hero. The mischievous tricks of the mythological rogue (trickster, in the terminology of American ethnographers who studied the folklore of the Indians) 31 serve to satisfy his greed or lust. Some tricksters are dominated by greed, others by lust. Thus, in the folklore of the Indians of the Pacific Northwest, Raven is a specifically gluttonous trickster, and Mink is lustful. Similarly, in the folklore of Dahomey, Legba is distinguished by hypereroticism, and Io by gluttony. In an effort to satisfy his insatiable desires (or simple hunger), the trickster resorts to deceit, violates the most stringent norms of customary law and communal morality. Tricksters commit incest with their daughter or sister, treacherously enjoy cordial hospitality, deprive their closest relatives and members of their family of food, devour communal supplies for the winter, etc. In other cases, their violation of taboos and any kind of profaning of shrines has, as it were, the character of disinterested mischief. . Wakdyunkaga - a trickster among the Winnebago Indians - during the sacred ceremony of preparing for a military campaign, he enters into a relationship with a woman (which is a violation of the most important taboo), destroys the boat into which he previously invited the participants of the campaign, destroys ritual objects - he does all this as a leader tribe. The explicit profanation of the shrine acquires here the character of a parody of the ritual preparation for the campaign. In another case, he parodies the most important ritual of acquiring a guardian spirit. The Raven among the Eastern Paleo-Asians often performs tricks that are obvious parodies of the actions of shamans, not to mention the fact that many of the tricks of the Raven are buffoonish imitations of his own serious creative deeds.

Acting in principle asocially and frankly profaning the shrines, the trickster nevertheless often triumphs and mercilessly cracks down on those who succumbed to his deception. Sometimes, however, the trickster himself fails. The raven, for example, experiences failure when it violates communal norms of morality or perverts human nature itself, but from this it is not yet possible to derive a rule that is binding on all tricksters.

It is noteworthy that the trickster combines the features of a triumphant rogue (acting for self-interest), an unbridled mischief and a madman; and at the same time, he often continues to be thought of as a cultural hero who has benefited humanity. True, native storytellers are able to distinguish between serious creation myths that tell about the deeds of cultural heroes, and anecdotes that serve for entertainment (with a partial zoomorphism of the trickster, they merge with fairy tales about animals). But the identification of the cultural hero and the trickster is not questioned. The question arises, how did such a combination of a cultural hero and a trickster, myths of creation and anecdotes with picaresque tricks, shamanic legends and rituals with their buffoonish profanity, sometimes reaching satirical poignancy, become possible?

A purely formal moment has a certain significance: during the cyclization of primitive narrative folklore, various plots and genre formations were combined around the cultural hero, everything was attributed to the first and only folklore hero. Various properties seemed to be forced to coexist in one image, creating its inconsistency and quirkiness. However, such a formal consideration is not enough. There must be deeper reasons for this 32 .

The figure of the trickster - this distant predecessor of medieval jesters, heroes of picaresque novels, colorful comic characters in Renaissance literature, etc. - is extremely archaic. However, the most archaic mythologies still do not know it (Australians, Papuans). The original syncretism of the cultural hero and the trickster can only be recognized in in a certain sense, with significant reservations.

The most ancient mythical heroes (totem ancestors, cultural heroes, demiurges) often act by cunning and cunning simply due to the fact that the mind in the primitive consciousness is not separated from cunning and witchcraft, the moral criteria themselves are very archaic and peculiar. Even in the Homeric epic or the Edda, the gods are much less selective in their means than the epic heroes. Of course, we are talking about illegibility from the point of view of later moral assessments. The most ancient mythical heroes participate in the creation of the world, almost every step they take has etiological consequences. Not only their purposeful activity, but also their random actions contribute to the ordering and organization of the world order. Their very behavior is often devoid of conscious purposefulness, the Promethean pathos of serving people. Sometimes, in an effort to satisfy their own needs, they produce fire, light, etc.

Such primitive heroes of myth, however, are not yet tricksters. Only as the idea of ​​the opposition of cunning and reason, deceit and noble frankness, lofty spiritualism and base instincts, pathos of conscious service to tribal interests and selfish asociality, organization and chaos arises in the very minds of folklore bearers, only as the awareness of these differences develops the figure of a mythological rogue as a counterpart of a cultural hero (his brother or "second person"). Many tricks of this character (but by no means all) go back genetically to the serious mythical deeds of cultural heroes and demiurges, to some rituals, shamanic miracles and tricks. But all these deeds and actions are rethought in a parodic way or even directly ridiculed.

Along with the parodic rethinking of old mythical plots, many new, purely anecdotal ones arise or are attached to the image of the trickster. If the trickster retains its semi-zoomorphism, as it mostly does, the jokes about him approach the type of animal tales.

Awareness of the differences between serious mythical deeds and tricks, myths and fairy tales, cultural heroes and tricksters gives particular sharpness, emphasizes the duality of the mythical character, who is at the same time a serious creator of the organized world order (natural and social) and a mischievous rogue, continuously bringing chaos into that very the organization he created, breaking taboos, deceiving or killing other beings to satisfy his baser instincts. Such a combination in one person of a cultural hero and a trickster, the elements that organize and bring chaos, is possible only because the action in the fabulous mythological cycles is related to the time before the establishment of a strict world order. This reference to mythical time largely legalizes the mischief of the trickster. Apparently, stories about the trickster are a kind of outlet (legalized due to reference to mythical times) in a strictly regulated society, which, of course, is a tribal society.

The protrusion of base instincts, all sorts of "dirty" details associated with greed, eroticism, defecation, opposes, in particular, primitive spiritualism, which received a significant, albeit primitive, embodiment in shamanism. The mockery of shamanic practice, of obligatory rituals, sometimes goes very far and is devoid of any kindness, even containing elements of social criticism. However, this does not mean that disbelief in shamanism, the rejection of the ritual life of the tribe, etc. are expressed here. Of course, jokes about tricksters exist in the same environment as serious myths, shamanic legends, etc.

The mockery in stories about tricksters is universal enough, it is merciless to the victims fooled by the trickster, and to the trickster himself when he gets into a mess. It is directed both at shamanic spiritualism, and at the base intemperance of the trickster himself, and at his attempts to change nature, to violate primitive communal morality, that is, to the manifestation of his anti-social nature. This universal comedy is akin to the carnivalism that was also manifested in the elements of self-parody that were present in the rituals of the Australians, Roman saturnalia, medieval "feasts of fools" with overturning the hierarchical order, clownish reproduction of church services, etc. M.M. Bakhtin considers this kind " carnival" is the most important feature of folk culture, widely reflected in the literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 33.

The most ancient ancestors - cultural heroes, whom we should rightfully consider as the first literary characters, appear in archaic folklore as syncretic images, often (but, of course, not always) combining three aspects - a mythical creator, a comic trickster and an archaic hero who cleanses the earth of monsters. These three aspects correspond to the well-known genre syncretism: creation myths are animal tales and anecdotes about tricksters are proto-heroic tales. This genre syncretism is outwardly expressed in the existence of single cycles of a kind of mythological epic.

Along with the gradual differentiation of narrative genres within the framework of this mythological epic about cultural heroes, etc., the development of genre varieties even on the most early stages follows the same paths outside of these cycles (the bylichki mentioned above, local traditions and legends, etc.). A significant difference arises only when the impersonal character of the primitive bylichka is replaced by the active and powerful hero of the heroic tale.

So far, we have considered archaic narrative folklore based mainly on the images of the central characters. Let us now turn to our material in terms of the historical morphology of the genre. In view of the fact that the process of genre differentiation is intertwined with the change of stages in the development of genre and style, the study of the history of oral literature of primitive society cannot be separated from the genesis of narrative genres, which in primitive folklore are in a state of formation, development, have not yet spun off completely from primary syncretism under the auspices of myth. The analysis of this dual process presents great difficulties.

From myth to fairy tale

Myth was the hegemon in that only partially dissected genre syncretism, which is characteristic of the state of narrative art in archaic societies. The point is not only that myths and fairy tales were combined into single cycles around popular mythical heroes. Myths and fairy tales were just beginning to differentiate, and some kind of intermediate forms practically prevailed. Experts such as F. Boas or S. Thompson 34 repeatedly spoke about the difficulties of distinguishing between myth and fairy tale in primitive folklore.

The natives themselves often distinguish between two forms, for example, adaox and malesk among the Tsimshians, pynyl and lymnyl among the Chukchi, Khvenokho and Kheho among the von (Dahomeans), liliu and kukvanebu among the Kirivin in Melanesia, etc., etc. Only very conditionally, these two forms can be correlated with myths and fairy tales. They mainly differ along the lines of "sacredness-non-sacredness" and "strict certainty-non-strict certainty" (that is, the admissibility of some relative freedom of fiction). F. Boas shows that the first form, i.e. myth, is rigidly associated with the attribution of action to mythical times. In addition, there is no doubt that myths are characterized by a fundamental etiological plot, while in fairy tales, if etiological endings are preserved, they acquire a purely ornamental character. Initial formulas pointing to mythical times - "this was when people were still animals" or, conversely, "when animals were still people" - and the final formulas of an etiological nature in primitive folklore are widespread both in myths and in fairy tales.

These stylistic clichés are genetically derived from myth and therefore, in primitive folklore, they are more often found in real myths, but also penetrate into fairy tales. Let us note that in European folklore it is just the opposite - etiological legends are artless, and the fairy tale sparkles with its stylistic ritualism.

In primitive folklore, myth and fairy tale undoubtedly have the same morphological structure in the form of a chain of losses and gains of certain cosmic or social values. This is also acknowledged by the structuralists (Dundes, the Marandas 35). The difference, however, lies, firstly, in the fact that in myth acquisition is usually the initial origin, origin, i.e., etiology in the broadest sense, and in a fairy tale it is the redistribution of some benefits obtained by the hero or for himself, or for their limited community. Secondly, these acquisitions themselves in the myth are of a cosmic nature: light, fresh water, fire, etc.; the acquisition can also act in a negative form as a decrease in the number of heavenly bodies, an end to the flood, etc., but this does not change the matter. In a fairy tale, the objects obtained and the goals achieved are not elements of nature and culture, but food, wonderful objects, women, etc., which make up the well-being of the hero. These differences - etiologism in the core of the plot or, at best, in the form of a decorative pendant, cosmic or family-generic, collective or individual - are even more essential for distinguishing between myth and fairy tale than sacredness - non-sacredness.

The mythical cultural hero obtains fire or fresh water by stealing it from the original custodian (an old woman, a frog, a snake). We are talking about the origin of fresh water on the earth inhabited by people. A fairy-tale hero steals the living water needed to heal a sick father (for example, Hawaii), or uses animals to make fire for his hearth (for example, Dahomey). A fairy-tale zoomorphic rogue (Hare) steals water from a well dug by other animals (in the folklore of many African peoples) by cunning. Between the "shortage" and the "acquisition of values" stands the creative act of the demiurge - a cultural hero, or the feat-test of a fairy-tale hero, or the cunning trick of a trickster. The true difference, however (within the framework of primitive folklore), is not in the very nature of the act. The demiurge, for example, often resorts to clever tricks. It was mentioned above how Raven turns into a child and, crying, demands luminary balls for the game; or Maui puts out the fire on purpose and coaxes it out of his great-grandmother again. But in these cases, we are talking about the origin of fire and the good for everyone, in contrast to the seekers of living water, fresh water, fire in the above tales. The altruism of the Hawaiian kind son, who obtained water for Kane for his father, and the selfishness of the Hare are equally opposed to the collectivism and etiologism of the myth. However, here in practice we find many intermediate cases. Most of the stories about the tricks of mythological rogues are among them, since these rogues are still mythical characters, moreover, they also perform serious creative deeds. The Indians, however, are able to distinguish between the serious deeds of the Crow-demiurge and the clownish tricks of the Crow-trickster. But among the Dahomeans, the Legba trickster cycle, associated with the pantheon of higher gods, is attributed to hvenoho (sacred myths), and the Io trickster cycle to heho (fairy tales).

It is very significant that primitive tales, although somewhat freer than myths in terms of individual invention and ritual performance, are also connected with actual beliefs, with concrete mythology, their fantasy has a strictly ethnographic, not at all conditional character. The point is not only in the difficulty of distinguishing between myth and fairy tale, but in the same syncretism, which has already been repeatedly mentioned above. One and the same text can be interpreted by one tribe or a group within a tribe as a myth, and by another group as a fairy tale, included in some kind of sacral ritual system or excluded from it. Moreover, the same text in the same audience can act both in the function of myth and in the function of a fairy tale, for example, simultaneously describe some link in cosmogenesis, sanction a well-known ritual, demonstrate the bad consequences of breaking a taboo and at the same time delight and entertain listeners with the bold or cunning tricks of a mythical hero. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a methodology for a multifaceted analysis of primitive texts - narrative-syntagmatic and symbolic-paradigmatic.

If we move from synchrony to diachrony, that is, to the historical perspective of the formation of a fairy tale, then it is quite obvious that the transformation of a myth into a fairy tale is facilitated by its deritualization (if the myth was attached to a ritual), desacralization (for example, sacred information about the routes of ancestors is omitted or declassified). in Australian folklore), the demythologization of the hero himself (the rejection of the totem or semi-divine hero, sometimes with the loss of his name), the demythologization of the time of action (the appearance of a fabulous uncertainty of time); the transition from a cosmic scale to the depiction of personal destinies, the weakening or destruction of etiologism; the separation of conditional fairy tale fiction from actual beliefs, the weakening of authenticity and the conscious assumption of poetic fiction. This transformation within the framework of primitive culture is not yet completely completed, but nevertheless a significant degree of genre differentiation is achieved.

Tales of mythological rogues, as already noted, are closely connected with the formation of fairy tales about animals. Practically in the folklore of the indigenous population of Africa and America, the trickster is the main character of such tales, and the antics of zoomorphic rogues are the main elements of most animal tales. The prerequisite for the development of this genre is the desacralization of totem characters while maintaining their zoomorphism. As totemic beliefs are forgotten, animal tales are enriched with everyday motifs, including anecdotal ones. Observations on the habits of animals are combined with the depiction of family and social relationships. Above, the great importance of the selfishness of the trickster, his hyperbolic greed and readiness to violate any social norms for the sake of personal gain was noted.

The classic form of animal tales is found in Africa. There (unlike the Indians, Melanesians, etc.) these tales are quite clearly differentiated from myths. Etiological motives, and even more so cultural deeds, were preserved there only in the form of rudiments. The tricksters' tricks are a manifestation of their cunning, but no longer witchcraft; episodes in which tricksters act like madmen are very rare. Most of the tricks (feigning death, frightening with non-existent forces, persuading other animals to agree to be tied or boiled for the sake of imaginary benefits, offering to nurture other people's children) are an attempt on common or other people's prey and, just like in the folklore of the American Indians, usually serves to satisfy hunger. But in African tales, the moralizing tendency is strengthened: the actions of the trickster destroy the initial friendship of the animals, they are evaluated as ingratitude. Etiological endings are most often replaced by moralizing ones. Elements of morality open the way for the fable, so popular in Eastern literatures and partly in Europe. However, African animal tales do not yet have frozen masks corresponding to certain human characters, there is no pure allegorism and didacticism.

The classic fairy tale about animals is the forerunner not only of the fable, but also of the everyday fairy tale. It is very likely that the tradition of folklore "tricteryads" and the animal tale (and the ancient fable, of course) had a decisive influence on the literary animal epic of the type of the medieval fox novel.

A necessary prerequisite for the development of a magical and magical-heroic fairy tale is, firstly, complete anthropomorphization and a certain degree of idealization of the hero, and secondly, his demythologization. Here, apparently, it is necessary to take into account the interaction of myths, bylichka, local legends. The hero of the tale is no longer thought of as a demigod or a totemic ancestor, although he often retains divine parents (his peculiar, of course, archaic form of idealization). The above-mentioned heroic twin brothers - fighters of chthonic monsters in the folklore of the American Indians - are a transitional stage. Along with the peculiar mythological epic about the Crow, the Mink, and the wandering twins, the northwestern Indians also have tales strongly colored by mythological fantasy about extraordinary trials that the son-in-law of the Sun or a young man pursued by an envious uncle triumphantly undergoes. These are a kind of heroic tales, but heroism here still has a witchcraft, shamanic character. The future son-in-law of the Sun was found in the belly of a pike, he himself can turn into a pike, he receives help from a pike (totemic motif). With the help of a bag of wind given to him by an old woman, the hero extinguishes the fire sent by the Sun, hunts for the daughters of the Sun, who have taken the form of goats or birds, and flies to the earth with the daughters of the Sun. Likewise, the persecuted nephew escapes his uncle's persecution with the help of miraculous objects, eventually marries the leader's daughter and takes revenge on the evil uncle.

The Polynesian legends about Tafaki and his family, which go back to some heavenly cannibal who descended to earth, have a similar character. Her son Hema, his children Tafaki and Kariki, grandson Rata and other characters of this cycle are fundamentally different from the cultural hero - the trickster Maui. Tafaki is perceived as an ideal example of a Polynesian sacralized leader, acting with his witchcraft power or the magical help of ancestors, spirits, etc. revenge, for the sake of which one has to ascend to heaven and descend into the underworld, overcoming insidious spirits and monsters.

Along with the heroes who have retained the mythical halo, already in archaic folklore there appear heroes "not promising", who are the victims of social injustice. Such, for example, is a poor orphan who is mistreated by her closest relatives and fellow tribesmen, thereby violating the covenants of tribal mutual assistance. Tales of the poor orphan girl are popular among Melanesians, mountain Tibeto-Burman tribes, Eskimos, Paleo-Asians, North American Indians, etc.

In Melanesia, an orphan is the victim of the wives of her uncle (mother's brother), who, according to tribal morality, should have been his main protector. Among the Indians, a dirty orphan "burnt belly", who lives with her grandmother on the edge of the village, eating leftovers along with dogs, is an object of contempt and ridicule of the entire village. However, with the help of spirits, a witch grandmother or deceased parents, an orphan becomes an outstanding hunter, warrior and shaman (among the Indians), reaches high degrees in a secret male union (in Melanesia).

The intervention of mythical creatures in the fate of the poor orphan is no longer the result of his strict observance of ritual prescriptions, but the result of sympathy for the socially disadvantaged, who has become a victim of the decline of tribal norms of customary law and morality. If fairy tales about the son or son-in-law of the Sun and similar "high" heroes are archaic analogues of Russian fairy tales about Ivan Tsarevich, then the poor orphan - "dirty guy" - resembles Ivan the Fool and Cinderella.

The plots of the archaic magical-heroic tale, on the one hand, reveal a clear connection with primitive myths, rituals, tribal customs, and on the other hand, they anticipate the main plot types of European and Asian fairy tales. Such, for example, are the mentioned plots of obtaining curiosities, elixirs and miraculous objects, which go back to the myths about the theft of cultural goods by a mythical hero (No. a wide range peoples the history of marriage with a wonderful totem creature, temporarily shedding the animal shell. A wonderful wife (in later versions - a husband) gives the chosen one hunting luck, but leaves him due to violation of marriage prohibitions, after which the hero seeks and finds a wife in her country and, in order to return the fugitive, is forced to undergo a series of traditional marriage trials (cf. No. 400 , 425 and some others according to the Aarne-Thompson system).

Other examples: apparently reflecting the customs of initiation, a story about a group of children who fell into the power of a cannibal and escaped thanks to the resourcefulness of one of them (cf. no. 327); the plot of the murder of a mighty serpent, originally to master its magical power or to get rid of chthonic demons (cf. No. 300 and others); the plot of visiting "other" worlds or the kingdom of the dead to free the captives who are there, by analogy with the wandering of the sorcerer or shaman in search of the soul of the sick or deceased (cf. No. 301), etc. Subsequently to these ancient stories join the motives of family and tribal relations. A fairy-tale family is certainly a generalized image of a clan or a "big family", and the plots of family strife to a certain extent reflect the socio-historical process of the decomposition of the tribal system, the transition from communal distribution to family isolation. However, in archaic folklore, as we have seen, the family theme is just emerging. The classical form of the fairy tale developed much later than the classical form of the fairy tale about animals, already far beyond the boundaries of primitive culture. We know this classical form only from the folklore of the civilized peoples of Europe and Asia.

The formation of the classical form of the fairy tale was prepared by the decline (albeit incomplete) of the mythological worldview, the separation of fairy tale fantasy from concrete tribal ethnography.

Noteworthy is the characteristic gap in European folklore between a special conditional fairy-tale mythology and the prevailing superstitions reflected in the bylichkas. Related to this is the frank recognition of fiction in a fairy tale, in contrast to both the European bylichka (synchronously) and the primitive fairy tale (diachronically). This setting for fiction is formalized in the beginnings (pointing to an indefinite place and time) and in the endings (pointing to fiction through the category of the impossible). The beginnings and endings of a classic fairy tale are polar opposites of the initial and final formulas of a primitive (syncretic) tale that go back to myth. Fairy-tale poetization of mythology captures not only the images of mythical creatures (typical for the fairy tale Baba Yaga, Serpents, Kashchei, etc.), but also magical transformations and witchcraft actions. The success and failure of the hero is no longer a direct consequence of the observance of magical prescriptions and shamanic skill, kinship or marriage with spirits, but only the result of the favor of miraculous forces as a result of observing certain rather abstract rules of behavior or a direct manifestation of kindness to miraculous persons and objects. Miraculous helpers and objects, having taken the hero under protection, to a certain extent already act instead of him.

Correspondingly, structural differences arise between the primitive syncretic tale and the classical fairy tale. The structure of the archaic mythological tale acts as a kind of metastructure in relation to the fairy tale itself. In an archaic tale, the chain of gains and losses may consist of an indefinite number of links, and a positive, happy ending (acquisition), although more common than an unhappy ending (loss), is not necessary. All links are more or less equal. In a classic fairy tale, a rigid hierarchical structure is formed of two or more often three trials of the hero. The first test (preliminary - checking behavior, knowledge of the rules), leading to obtaining a miraculous remedy, is a step to the main one, which concludes the main feat - the elimination of misfortune-lack. The third step is sometimes an additional identification test (it turns out who performed the feat, followed by the shaming of rivals and impostors). The obligatory happy ending, as a rule, concludes with marriage to the princess and receiving half the kingdom.

So far, we have been talking about the morphology of a fairy tale at the plot level. Questions of historical poetics and stylistics of a fairy tale, stylistic features of narrative folklore in archaic societies have been studied extremely insufficiently.

The style of narrative folklore of the Indians of the Northwest is illuminated in the works of Franz Boas, his observations on the folklore of the Kwakiutl and Tsimshian tribes are used by him to characterize the primitive art of the word in his classic work mentioned above " primitive art"(1927). Interesting results of the study of style on the example of the Chinooks are given in the monograph by Melville Jacobs "The Content and Style of One Oral Literature" (1959). Jacobs strongly emphasizes the theatrical elements in the performance of fairy tales by the Chinooks. The stylistic features of myths and fairy tales are the same, but myths are more polished, necessarily include beginnings and endings.The beginning includes an indication of the name and place of residence of the hero, sometimes mentioning his relatives.The sign of the myth is the addition "I don't know how long ago ..." - a hint of referring to mythical times.The ending includes a formula "Now let's part" (meaning - with the characters of mythical time), it is reported which of the characters turned into whom or into what (stars, animals, etc.). The ending ends with the words "myth, myth" or "fairy tale, a fairy tale." Jacobs lists in detail numerous "common places" in Chinook narrative folklore. These are, for example, ways of localizing or expressing distance, indicating time, symbolizing various themes, simple emotions, describing typical characters. For example, we are talking about the entrance to the last house in the village where a poor young man or an old woman lives, or, conversely, a traveler asks the children a question about the leader's house, which always turns out to be in the center of the village. The village is described from above; there are either a lot of people in it, or not a single one. The number five is used to express the multitude: "five villages" or "five mountains" indicates a large space or a long stay of a traveler on the way. Breakage of a bow or digging stick indicates misfortune; anger or depression is stylized by the message that the hero could not eat or could not speak, etc. In addition to identically verbally expressed "common places", Jacobs registers a significant number of repetitive motives, situations, etc.

Subtle observations on the poetics of the Chukchi fairy tale, moreover, in an evolutionary context, are found in the classical works of V. G. Bogoraz and especially in the articles of A. I. Nikiforov 38 .

The "real fairy tales" of the Chukchi are extremely colorful. Their richest fantasy, on the one hand, is based on the Chukchi-Eskimo sea demonology, numerous images of sea master spirits, etc., and on the other hand, shamanic mythology with its complex cosmology, animal helper spirits, and magical transformations. V.G. Bogoraz emphasized the striking difference between the sea monsters of the Chukchi fairy tale (dolphins-werewolves, the Kochatko bear with a body made of mammoth bone, the shaman Kit, overseas cannibal giants, etc.) from the "Ural-Altai" one-eyed, one-armed iron demons 39 .

A.I. Nikiforov correctly notes that transformations, i.e., transformations, of heroes into various objects and creatures, as well as movements in a multi-tiered universe (which creates the possibility of a multi-linear action) are the main springs, methods of constructing a plot in a Chukchi fairy tale. From the point of view of historical poetics, the same Nikiforov singles out examples of three stages of evolution in the Chukchi fairy tale: 1) narrative-magic incantatory stories with the absence of the structure of a primitive fairy tale (according to V. G. Bogoraz, the plot of "magical flight" - with throwing stones and grass, turning into mountains, seas, forests - gets magical use in the funeral rite); 2) "telling", in which there is no magical function, but also artistic poetics is barely outlined, as in "bylshchina"; 3) a fairy tale with more or less developed artistic means (among the more "cultured" storytellers known to Bogoraz, such as Chene, Ivan, Keutebyn). The formula, obligatory for the beginning of cosmogonic myths, with the verb "was" ("Once upon a time it was dark", etc.), indicating mythical times, is found in fairy tales only at the third step. As an ending, fairy tales know the formula: "I killed the wind" (a relic of the magical function of a fairy tale) and "began to live." In fairy tales there are a number of common places, such as, for example, the dialogue on the way of the hero with the one he meets. The developed Chukchi fairy tale is characterized by repeated moves and the law of five.

Notes

1 Avdeev A.D. The origin of the theatre. M., 1959.

2 Bucher K. Work and rhythm. M., 1923. S. 264.

3 Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. M., 1940. S. 291.

4 Chadwick K.M., Chadwick M.K. The Growth of Literature. Vol. I-III. London, 1932-1940. Reissue: London, 1971.

5 Howra C.M. Primitive Song. London, 1962. P. 265.

6 See, in particular, the brief but brilliant characterization of "primitive" poetry in the classic work of Franz Boas (Boas F. Primitive Art. Oslo, 1927), as well as the introductory articles to the anthologies of Australian and American Indian poetry (Songs of the Songmen / Retold W. E. Harney and A. P. Elkin Melbourne, 1949; The Winged Serpent; an Anthology of Indian Prose and Poetry / Ed. M. Astrov. 1950; The Sky Clears; Poetry of the American Indians / Ed. A. G. Day. New York, 1951 ).

7 See on this in detail: Kluckhohn C. Myths and Rituals. A General Theory / Harvard Theological Review. 1942 Vol. XXXV. P. 145-179; Hyman S.E. The Ritual View of Myth and the Mythic / Journal of American Folklore. 1955. No. 270. P. 462-472; Raglan F.R.S. Myth and Ritual / Journal of American Folklore. 1955. No. 270. P. 454-461; James E.O. Myth and Ritual in the Ancient Near East. London, 1958.

8 Langer S. Feeling and Form. New York, 1953.

9 Tokarev S.A. Religion in the history of the peoples of the world. M., 1964.

10 Levi-Strauss C. La pensione sauvage. Paris, 1962.

11 Strehlow C. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral Australien. Bd I-II. Frankfurt am Main, 1907-1908; cf. exposition of totemic myths in the last monograph of the classics of Australian studies Spencer and Gillen (Spencer W.B., Gilen F. The Arunta. A Study of a Stone Age People. Vol. 2. London, 1927. P. 301-309).

12 Strehlow T.E.H. Aranda Traditions. Melbourne. 1957 Ch. I.

13 See: Howitt A.W. The Natives Tribes of Southeast Australia. London, 1904. P. 475-488, 779-806 (exposition of the relevant stories).

14 Macconel U. Myths of the Munkan. Melbourne, 1957.

15 See: Radcliff-Brown A. The Rainbow Serpent Myth in Australia / Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. London, 1926. Vol. 56; Berndt R.M. Kunapipi. A Study of an Aboriginal Religious Cult. Melbourne, 1951; Chaseling S. Julengor, Nomads of Arnhem Land. London, 1957; Stanner W.E.H. On Aboriginal Religion. Sydney, 1966.

16 Howitt A.W. The Natives Tribes of Southeast Australia. London, 1904; Mathews R.N. Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of New South Wells and Victoria. Sydney, 1905.

17 Stanner W.E.H. On Aboriginal Religion. Sydney, 1966.

18 See: Peoples of Australia and Oceania / Ed. S.A. Tokareva and S.P. Tolstov. M.; L., 1956. S. 240-244.

19 Howitt A.W. The Natives Tribes of Southeast Australia. London, 1904. P. 494.

20 Mathews R.H. Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of New South Wells and Victoria. Sidney, 1905. P. 138.

21 Langloh-Parker K. The Eullaye Tribe. A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia. London, 1905. P. 6-7.

22 Berndt R.M. Kunapipi. A Study of an Aboriginal Religious Cult. Melbourne, 1951. P. 35.

23 Stanner W.E.H. On Aboriginal Religion. Sidney, 1966 (see chapters IV-V).

24 And in other myths and rituals, deliberate evil (for example, incest between the children of Kunmangur) is often a permitted, mandatory action in the ritual.

25 Songs of the songmen / Retold W.E. Harney, A.P. Elkin. Melbourne, 1949. P. 29-32.

26 Strehlow C. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral Australien. Dritter Teil (Die totemistischen Kulte). Frankfurt am Main, 1910.

27 Strehlow T.E.H. Aranda Traditions. Melbourne, 1947.

28 Capell A. Myth and Tales of the Nunguburuyn / Oceania. 1960 Vol. XXXI. No. 1. P. 31-62 (Sidney).

29 From the vast, mostly purely descriptive literature, Franz Boas' very valuable classics on the Northwest Indians should be singled out (especially Boas F. Tsimshian Mythology / 31 Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, 1916); Russian scientists V. Bogoraz, V. Yokhelson and L. Ya. 1929; Thompson S. The Folktale, New York, 1946). Of the post-war writings on the Indians, the following are of particular note: Radin P. The Evolution of an American Indian Prose Epic: A Study in Comparative Literature. Pt I-II. Basel, 1954-1956; Radin P. The Trickster. A Study in American Indian Mythology. London, 1956; Jacobs M. The Content and Style of Oral Literature. Clackamas Chinouk Myths and Tales. Chicago, 1959; Dundes A. The Morphology of the North American Indian Folktales. Helsinki, 1964 (FFC, no. 195); Levi-Strauss C. Mythologiques. I-IV. Paris, 1964-1971; Hultkrantz A. The North American Orpheus Traditions. Stockholm, 1957; Luomala K. Maui-of-a-thousand Tricks. Honolulu, 1949; Luomala K. Voices of the Wind. Honolulu, 1955; Lessa W.A. Tales from Ulithi Atoll. Berkeley; Los Angeles, 1961; as well as articles by Fischer; on various peoples - collections of Jacobs's articles (The Anthropologist Looks at Myth / Compiled by M. Jacobs. Austin; London, 1966). For North Asia, see the works of A.F. Anisimov, G.M. Vasilevich, M.G. Voskoboynikov, Z.N. Kupriyanova and others; interesting considerations on the material of the folklore of the Kets - in the works of Vyach. Sun. Ivanov, V.N. Toporova. Some information is contained in the author's works (Meletinsky E.M. The mythological and fairy tale epic of the Melanesians / Oceanic collection. M .; L., 1957; Meletinsky E.M. The hero of a fairy tale. M., 1958; Meletinsky E.M. The legend of the Raven among the peoples of the Far North (about ancient folklore Relations between Asia and America) / Bulletin of the history of world culture. 1959. No. 1; Meletinsky E.M. The origin of the heroic epic. Early forms and archaic monuments. M., 1963.

30 Zolotarev A.M. Tribal system and religion of the Ulchi. Khabarovsk, 1939; Zolotarev A.M. Tribal system and primitive mythology. M., 1964; Tolstov S.P. Ancient Khorezm. M., 1948.

31 See the fundamental work of Paul Radin on the folklore of the Winnebago and some other Prairie Indians (Radin P. The Trickster. A Study in American Indian Mythology. London, 1956).

32 P. Radin believed that the trickster from the very beginning represented the combination of the divine cultural hero and the divine jester, ever since man, as a social being, separated from the animal. In the story of a Winnebago trickster named Wakdyonkaga, Radin sees a conscious depiction of the evolution of man from natural spontaneity to heroic consciousness. It seems, however, that Radin exaggerates, on the one hand, the primordiality of this double figure, and, on the other hand, a distinct intellectual concept in the Winnebago tales as a depiction of personality development. K. Kereni (Kerynui K. Prometheus. Zürich, 1946) also considers this figure to be very ancient, but at the same time connects it with late archaism, when, due to the peculiarities of not the content, but the style itself, strongly acting, brutal entertainment elements stick out. The connection between the arch-rogue and the arch-madman seems to Kereni to be primordial. At the same time, cunning emphasizes stupidity, including the stupidity of a cunning one. Jung, in accordance with his general theory of archetypes, sees in the trickster a "psychologeme" of exceptional antiquity - a copy of the undifferentiated human consciousness that has barely left the animal world, the embodiment of all lower character traits in the individual. However, only overcoming the absolute psychological darkness, he believes, could cause such a look back of the "I" into the distant past of the collective consciousness. The trickster is a figure allegedly standing both above a person (supernatural forces) and below him (due to unconsciousness, spontaneity).

33 Bakhtin M.M. Creativity of Francois Rabelais and folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M., 1965.

34 See, for example, Thompson S. Myth and Folktale / Journal of american Folklore. 1955. No. 270.

35 Köngds E., Maranda P. Structural Models in Folklore and Transformational Essays. The Hague; Paris, 1971.

36 For an index of Aarne-Thompson stories, see Thompson S. The Types of the Folktale. Helsinki, 1973 (FFC, no. 184).

37 The presence of such structural discrepancies is striking, in particular, when comparing the structural description of the Russian fairy tale in V.Ya.

38 Nikiforov A.I. The structure of the Chukchi fairy tale as a phenomenon of primitive thinking / Soviet folklore. 1935. No. 2-3.

39 Bogoraz V.G. Materials on the study of the Chukchi language and folklore, collected in the Kolyma district. Part 1. St. Petersburg, 1900. S. 1.

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