To modern people, folklore images seem fabulous, fantastic and unreal, and the actions of the heroes are mysterious. This is understandable: after all, when talking about folklore, we are talking about a different level of thinking, about a different representation by a person of the world around him, the roots of which go back to the mythological past.

The word folklore literally translated from English means folk wisdom. This is poetry created by the people and existing among the masses, in which they reflect their work activities, social and everyday life, knowledge of life, nature, cults and beliefs. Folklore embodies the views, ideals and aspirations of the people, their poetic fantasy, the richest world of thoughts, feelings, experiences, protest against exploitation and oppression, dreams of justice and happiness.

The Slavs created a huge oral literature (wise proverbs and cunning riddles, fairy tales, funny and sad ritual songs, solemn epics chanted to the sound of strings), which became the Dignity and Mind of the people. She established and strengthened his moral character, was his historical memory, the festive clothes of his soul and filled with deep content his entire measured life, flowing according to the customs and rituals associated with his work, nature and the veneration of his fathers and grandfathers.

Unfortunately, too little is devoted to the study of folklore in literature and music lessons in the school curriculum. In this regard, through the integration of subjects, we tried to show the areas of contact between academic disciplines, and through them organic connection give students an idea of ​​the unity of the world around us. An example of the implementation of integrated tasks is the summary of the lesson “In the world of Slavic folklore” for 6th grade students of a secondary school.

Target:

Show the importance of Slavic folklore in the life of the people;

Tasks:

· education of moral and aesthetic feelings: love for the Motherland, pride in the achievements of Russian musical art, respect for the history and spiritual traditions of Russia;

· formation of foundations musical culture through emotionally active perception;

development of artistic taste, interest in musical art And musical activity;

· implementation of one’s own creative ideas in various types of musical activities (singing and interpretation, musical-plastic movement and improvisation);

· formation of integrity of perception and understanding of the world around us through interdisciplinary connections of literature and music lessons.

Equipment: multimedia equipment, presentation, sound files, folk costumes.

During the classes:

Music sounds (Vladimir horns playing)

Literature teacher:

We are entering the amazing and beautiful, mysterious world of folk wisdom - the world of folklore. It contains a fairy tale and a song, a riddle and a proverb... Here they play, sing, tell and listen... Here you can learn a lot, think about a lot, understand a lot...

In ancient times, when people did not yet know how to write, they passed on their knowledge about life to each other, playing games, performing rituals, singing songs….

Each nation had its own songs, rituals, games - its own folklore.

· Question for students:

We have already heard the word “folklore” several times. What does this word “folklore” mean? (Folklore - folk wisdom, folk art.)

We want to learn as much as possible about Russian folklore - the folklore of our ancestors. These were strong, beautiful, kind people. They were attentive to nature, noticed its every movement, and by signs they knew how to properly manage a household.

The life of Russian people has always consisted of a series of everyday life and holidays. Everyday life is a time filled with work and worries. Distinctive feature Everyday life consisted of the routine of home existence, moderation in food, simple, comfortable clothing, calm and benevolent relationships, and the isolation of the family world.

A holiday is opposed to everyday life - a time of rest, fun and joy. The alternation of everyday life and holidays was considered a necessary component of the normal course of life, and failures could even lead to the destruction of the world.

There were many holidays a year. They arose in different historical eras.

The most ancient holidays were those associated with the agricultural calendar. They were called calendar or annual holidays, since they lasted throughout the year, ending in late autumn with the completion of the harvest.

The main ones were those that were associated with the four most important natural and astronomical phenomena: the winter and summer solstices, the spring and autumn equinoxes.

Along with the ancient pagan agricultural holidays, there were many holidays in Russian life Orthodox Church. They began to be established from the end of the 10th century in Rus' with the adoption of Christianity.

Music teacher:

The most revered by the people were the Nativity of Christ, Epiphany, the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Trinity, and Easter.

Among the holidays dating back to the ancient agricultural tradition, Maslenitsa was revered.

Each holiday had its own program, verbal formulas, and songs marked by tradition. To the program holidays also included the performance of rituals and customs of the annual cycle associated with economic activity Russian farmer.

· Question for students:

What does “rite”, “ritual songs” mean?

(Ritual- a set of actions established by custom, in which some religious ideas or everyday traditions of the people are embodied.

Ritual songs- these are songs that were performed during a variety of rituals and were an important component and a necessary part of them).

Music teacher:

Ritual songs - special music world. If there are Russian fairy tales, epics, and proverbs, then calling ritual songs Russian is not correct. Their name is SLAVIC ritual songs. This is due to the fact that the baptism of Rus' occurred only in the 10th century, and rituals dedicated to a good harvest, timely rain, and warm sun existed before that. And the territory of Rus' at that time was completely different from what it is now. An analysis of ritual songs from different parts of our country, as well as Ukraine and Belarus, showed the similarity of language and modal and intonation basis.

Ritual songs are closely related to pagan rituals; the main melodic turns and modal basis remain from previous pagan times. Since some pagan deities and rituals were placed in parallel with Christian saints (Perun - Ilya, Velos (Volos) - Vlasiy, Yarilo - Yuri, George), it is quite obvious that the musical basis of such cult pagan songs later influenced the Slavic early Christian cult melos. In particular, the melodies of many chants and chants are intonationally close to the simplest types of church singing of ancient Rus'.

· Question for students:

What types of ritual songs do you know? (calendar, family and church)

Literature teacher:

The attitude of Russians towards the holiday was extremely serious.

“We work all day for the holiday.” “At least pawn everything and celebrate Maslenitsa.” “Life without a holiday is like food without bread,” the peasants liked to say.)

Russian people believed that any holiday requires respect.

Autumn holidays of the Russian peasant agricultural calendar

dedicated to summing up the results of the working year. In other words, it is a harvest festival.

Music teacher:

Among them are the holidays associated with the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Students tell the story of the origin of the Intercession holiday.

Music teacher:

In the popular consciousness, the Most Holy Theotokos is a loving Mother for all people, Defender, Comforter, Intercessor. Her image is closely connected with the image of the “mother of the damp earth-nurse”, her native land and, ultimately, with the image of the Motherland. Church hymns “To the Virgin Mary” are performed by brothers from Valaam Monastery And " to the Most Holy Image yours" performed by the children's choir of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Novosibirsk). Students analyze musical fragments and make comparative analyses.

An interesting feature of the autumn rituals was that they did not coincide with the usual calendar. Autumn rituals began already in August from the beginning of the harvest. Each ritual had its own intonation feature, its own special scale, which was very different from the scale of songs dedicated to other seasons. Many ritual songs are in the nature of chants, chants, built on 3-4 notes and, according to people, have magical powers. The simplest form went to autumn ritual songs. People worked hard, they were tired and they wanted peace and rest. Sometimes autumn ritual songs were called PITY. But they were not always sad.

Students show a dramatization:

Women reapers gathered in the field near the unharvested strip. The eldest, the most respected of the reapers, twisted and twisted the stems of plants so that they touched the ground, in the form of a rope or a wreath, tying them with colored ribbons. The girls dance in a circle and say:

The field is yours to plow,

It’s easy for us!

This year gave birth, and don’t forget next year!

Performing the autumn ritual song “Don’t Scold Autumn.”

(Children with ears of corn read by role)

We stung, stung,

They stung and reaped, -

We reap the young

Golden sickles,

Niva debt,

Stand wide;

They stung for a month,

The sickles were broken,

Haven't been to the region

We didn't see any people.

And he said rye grain,

Standing in an open field,

Standing in an open field:

I don’t want it, but rye grain,

Yes, stand in the field, yes, stand in the field.

I don’t want it, but rye rye

Yes, standing in the field - waving an ear of corn!

But I want rye grain,

Tie into a bun,

Cuddle into a song

And for me, and rye grain,

Tied into a bun,

They took the rye out of me

The decorated last sheaf was carried with songs to the village, where a festive meal was prepared: pies, porridge.

Literature teacher:

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the date of which coincided with the day of the autumnal equinox, was timed to coincide with Osenin (from the word canopy, the place where hay was stored) - the meeting of autumn. Women gathered early in the morning and went out to the banks of rivers, lakes and ponds to meet “Mother Osenina.” This holiday is characterized by hospitality, the visiting of relatives, especially newlyweds, to the parents of the young woman. On these days, they sang songs, danced in circles, and held games.

Performance of the song-game “Autumn”

Music teacher:

The topic of Slavic folklore is still relevant today. Many modern composers use quotes from folk ritual music in their works. Sometimes there are works written in a very unexpected style.

Listening to the song “Ovsen” by the group “Nevid”.

At the end of the lesson, after summing up the results, the girls bring out apples, pears, and bagels on a platter and distribute them to students and guests.

In 1971, the publishing house “Nauka” published a small collection of articles “Slavic and Balkan folklore”, which did not imply any continuation, the executive editor of which was I. M. Sheptunov, a specialist in the field of South Slavic Hajdut folklore, who headed the at that time the Group for the Study of Folklore of the Peoples of Central and South of Eastern Europe at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The authors of this first collection of “Slavic and Balkan folklore” included folklorists: B. N. Putilov, S. N. Azbelev, Yu. I. Smirnov, L. N. Vinogradova, L. G. Barag and others. And only in 1978, already as the first issue of the future series, a volume entitled “Slavic and Balkan folklore: Genesis” was published. Archaic. Traditions", the executive editor of which was again I.M. Sheptunov, who, before his death (which happened in the same year), managed to attract a wonderful team of famous and just beginning scientists to participate in this publication, such as E.V. Pomerantseva V.K. Sokolova, N. I. Tolstoy, S. M. Tolstaya, A. F. Zhuravlev, Yu. I. Smirnov, V. V. Usacheva, A. V. Gura, L. N. Vinogradova.

From 1981 to 1995 The famous Slavist, founder of the Moscow Ethnolinguistic School, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikita Ilyich Tolstoy, became the editor-in-chief and one of the leading authors of all issues of this series. During this period, six volumes of “Slavic and Balkan Folklore” were published, which received wide recognition among specialists - folklorists, ethnolinguists and ethnologists. The focus is on the established team of authors (mostly they were employees of the Department of Ethnolinguistics and Folklore of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, headed by N. I. Tolstoy: S. M. Tolstaya, L. N. Vinogradova, V. V. Usacheva, A. V. Gura , O. A. Ternovskaya, T. A. Agapkina, A. A. Plotnikova, O. V. Belova, E. S. Uzeneva, M. M. Valentsova) - the tasks of a comprehensive study of the spiritual culture of the Slavs and, above all, its forms , which preserve common Slavic mythopoetic traditions, manifested in different ways in language, rituals, beliefs and folklore. On the initiative of N.I. and S.M. Tolstoy, two issues of the series (1986, 1995) were specifically devoted to the problems of ethnolinguistic study of Polesie. They present the results of mapping individual fragments of the traditional culture of this unique region: folk terminology, rituals, folklore motifs, demonological beliefs.

After the death of N. I. Tolstoy in 1996, the editorial board of the series was headed by S. M. Tolstaya. Under her editorship, two volumes of the series were published: “Slavic and Balkan folklore: Folk demonology” (M., 2000) and “Slavic and Balkan folklore: Semantics and pragmatics of the text” (M., 2006).

Over the 30 years of the series’ existence, among its authors were such famous domestic and foreign Slavists as B. N. Putilov, V. E. Gusev, E. V. Pomerantseva, V. K. Sokolova, V. N. Toporov, V. V. Ivanov, T. V. Tsivyan, A. F. Zhuravlev, S. E. Nikitina, O. A. Pashina, I. A. Dzedzelevsky, M. Matichetov, L. Radenkovich, E. Horvatova, M. Wojtyla-Swierzowska and etc.

/ Rep. ed. I. M. Sheptunov. M.: "Science", 1971.

Introduction

South Slavic epic and problems of the Serbian Middle Ages ( E. L. Naumov)

Motives for killing the enemy king in epics and Kosovo songs ( S. N. Azbelev)

Plot closure and the second plot plan in the Slavic epic ( B. N. Putilov)

Similar descriptions in Slavic epic songs and their meaning ( Yu. I. Smirnov)

Compositional analysis of Polish carol ritual songs ( L. N. Vinogradova)

About musical parallels in the songs of Southern Russia and Southwestern Bulgaria ( S. N. Kondratieva)

On the significance of Slavic folklore for the study of the Balkan epic community ( Yu. I. Smirnov)

Plots and motives of Belarusian fairy tales. (Systematic index) ( L. G. Barag)

The similarity of Slavic proverbs ( A. M. Zhigulev)

Slavic and Balkan folklore: Genesis. Archaic. Traditions / Rep. ed. I. M. Sheptunov. M.: “Science”, 1978.

Introduction

L. N. Vinogradova. Spell formulas in the calendar poetry of the Slavs and their ritual origins

V. V. Usacheva. The “polaznik” ritual and its folklore elements in the area of ​​the Serbo-Croatian language

V. K. Sokolova. Maslenitsa (its composition, development and specificity)

A. F. Zhuravlev. Protective rites associated with livestock deaths and their geographical distribution.

N.I. and S.M. Tolstoy. Notes on Slavic paganism. 2. Making rain in Polesie

S. M. Tolstaya. Materials for the description of the Polesie Kupala rite

E. V. Pomerantseva. Interethnic community of beliefs and tales about midday

A. V. Gura. The symbolism of the hare in Slavic ritual and song folklore

F. D. Klimchuk. Song tradition of the Western Polesie village of Simonovichi

Yu. I. Smirnov. Epika Polesie

Slavic and Balkan folklore: Rite. Text / Reply ed. N.I. Tolstoy. M.: “Science”, 1981.

Yu. I. Smirnov. Focus of comparative studies on folklore

L. N. Vinogradova. Girl's fortune telling about marriage in the cycle of Slavic calendar rituals (West-East Slavic parallels)

N. I. and S. M. Tolstoy. Notes on Slavic paganism. 5. Hail protection in Dragacevo and other Serbian zones

A. V. Gura. Weasel (Mustela nivalis) in Slavic folk ideas

O. A. Ternovskaya. To a description of some Slavic ideas associated with insects. One system of rituals for exterminating domestic insects

L. G. Barag. The plot of snake fighting on a bridge in the tales of East Slavic and other peoples

N. L. Ruchkina. Genetic connections between the Akritan epic and Kleft songs

Yu. I. Smirnov. Epika Polesie (according to records of 1975)

Appendix - Indexes to the article by N. I. and S. M. Tolstoy “Notes on Slavic paganism. 5"

Slavic and Balkan folklore: Ethnogenetic community and typological parallels / Rep. ed. N. I. Tolstoy . M.: "Science", 1984.

Introduction

N.I. Tolstoy. Fragment of Slavic paganism: archaic ritual-dialogue

L. N. Vinogradova. Types of carol refrains and their areal characteristics

T. V. Tsivyan. On the mythological interpretation of the Eastern Roman carol text “Plugushor”

O. A. Ternovskaya. Perezhina in the Kostroma region. (Based on materials from the questionnaire “Cult and National Agriculture” 1922-1923)

A. V. Gura. Weasel (Mustela nivalis) in Slavic folk ideas. 2

E. N. Razumovskaya. Crying with the cuckoo. Traditional non-ritual voting of the Russian-Belarusian borderland

Materials and publications

Yu. I. Smirnov. Epika Polesie according to records of 1976

F. D. Klimchuk. Songs from the south-eastern Zagorodye

N. L. Ruchkina. Greek Akritan songs about a hero slaying a dragon

I. A. Dzendzelevsky. Prohibitions in the practice of Carpathian sheep breeders

Slavic and Balkan folklore: Spiritual culture of Polesie on a common Slavic background / Rep. ed. N.I. Tolstoy. M.: “Science”, 1986.

Materials for the Polesie ethnolinguistic atlas. Mapping experience

Preface ( N.T., S.T.)

The sun is playing ( S. M. Tolstaya)

Ritual outrages of youth ( S. M. Tolstaya)

Trinity Greens ( N. I. Tolstoy)

Plowing rivers, roads ( S. M. Tolstaya)

Frog, snake and other animals in rituals of causing and stopping rain ( S. M. Tolstaya)

Sretenskaya and Thursday candles ( S. M. Tolstaya)

Rain during a wedding ( A. V. Gura)

Invocation of Spring ( T. A. Agapkina)

The daughter-in-law became a poplar in the field ( N. I. Tolstoy)

O. A. Pashina. Calendar songs of the spring-summer cycle of southeastern Belarus

V. I. Kharitonova. Polesie tradition of lamentation in Polesie on an East Slavic background

Articles and research

V. E. Gusev. Driving an "arrow" ("sula") in Eastern Polesie

On the problem of the ethnographic context of calendar songs

L. N. Vinogradova. Mythological aspect of the Polesie “Russian” tradition

N.I. Tolstoy. From observations of Polesie conspiracies

Materials and publications

A. V. Gura. From Polesie wedding terminology. Wedding ceremonies. Vocabulary: N – Svashka

S. M. Tolstaya. Polesie folk calendar. Materials for the ethnodialect dictionary: K – P

Yu. I. Smirnov. Epika Polesie

Slavic and Balkan folklore: Reconstruction of ancient Slavic spiritual culture: Sources and methods / Rep. ed. N.I. Tolstoy. M.: “Science”, 1989.

N.I. Tolstoy. Some thoughts on the reconstruction of Slavic spiritual culture

V. N. Toporov. On the Iranian element in Russian spiritual culture

V. V. Martynov. Sacred world "Tales of Igor's Campaign"

V.V. Ivanov. Ritual burning of a horse skull and wheel in Polesie and its Indo-European parallels

M. Matichetov. ABOUT mythical creatures among the Slovenians and especially about Kurent

L. N. Vinogradova. Folklore as a source for the reconstruction of ancient Slavic spiritual culture

L. Radenkovic. Symbolism of color in Slavic spells

S. E. Nikitina. On the relationship between oral and written forms in folk culture

E. Horvatova. Traditional youth unions and initiation rites among the Western Slavs

Z. Mikhail. Ethnolinguistic methods in the study of folk spiritual culture

T. V. Tsivyan. On the linguistic foundations of the world model (based on Balkan languages ​​and traditions)

M. Wojtyla-Swierzowska. Terminology of agrarian rituals as a source for studying ancient Slavic spiritual culture

S. M. Tolstaya. Terminology of rituals and beliefs as a source of reconstruction of ancient spiritual culture

T. A. Agapkina, A. L. Toporkov. Sparrow (Rowan) night in language and beliefs Eastern Slavs

A. A. Potebnya. On the origin of the names of some Slavic pagan deities ( Preparation of the text by V. Yu. Franchuk. Notes by N. E. Afanasyeva and V. Yu. Franchuk)

About the work of A. A. Potebnya, dedicated to the origin and etymology of the names of Slavic pagan deities ( V. Yu. Franchuk)

Slavic and Balkan folklore: Beliefs. Text. Ritual / Rep. ed. N. I. Tolstoy . M.: “Science”, 1994.

I

N.I. Tolstoy. Once again about the theme “clouds are beef, rain is milk”

L. N. Vinogradova, S. M. Tolstaya. On the problem of identification and comparison of characters in Slavic mythology

O. V. Sannikova. Polish mythological vocabulary in the structure of folklore text

II

T. A. Agapkina. South Slavic beliefs and rituals associated with fruit trees in a pan-Slavic perspective

S. M. Tolstaya. Mirror in traditional Slavic beliefs and rituals

I. A. Sedakova. Bread in the traditional rituals of the Bulgarians: homelands and the main stages of child development

III

N.I. Tolstoy. Vita herbae et vita rei in the Slavic folk tradition

T. A. Agapkina, L. N. Vinogradova. Good wishes: ritual and text

G. I. Kabakova. The structure and geography of the legend of the March Old Woman

V.V. Usacheva. Vocative formulas in Slavic folk medicine

N. A. Ipatova. Werewolfism as a property of fairy-tale characters

E. E. Levkievskaya. Materials on Carpathian demonology

Corrective additions to the article by N. I. Tolstoy “Vita herbae et vita rei in the Slavic folk tradition”

Slavic and Balkan folklore: Ethnolinguistic study of Polesie / Rep. ed. N. I. Tolstoy . M.: “Indrik”, 1995.

N.I. Tolstoy. Ethnocultural and linguistic study of Polesie (1984–1994)

I. Polesie ethnolinguistic atlas: research and materials

T. A. Agapkina. Essays on the spring rituals of Polesie

A. A. Plotnikova. The first cattle pasture in Polesie

L. N. Vinogradova. Regional features of Polesie beliefs about the brownie

E. E. Levkievskaya, V. V. Usacheva. Polesie vodyanoi on a common Slavic background

L. N. Vinogradova. Where do children come from? Polesie formulas on the origin of children

V. L. Svitelskaya. Experience of mapping Polesie funeral rituals

M. M. Valentsova. Materials for mapping the types of Polesie Christmas fortune-telling

M. Nikonchuk, O. Nikonchuk, G. Orlenko. Actors of the terminology of material culture in the towns of the right bank of Poliss

O. A. Parshina. Calendar cycle in the northwestern villages of Sumy region

II. Ethnolinguistic dictionaries. Publications

S. M. Tolstaya. Polesie folk calendar. Materials for the ethno-dialect dictionary: R – Z

A. V. Gura. From Polesie wedding terminology. Wedding ceremonies. Dictionary (Svenochelniki – Ш)

F. D. Klimchuk. Spiritual culture of the Polesie village of Simonovichi

III. Applications

N. P. Antropov, A. A. Plotnikova. Chronicle of Polesie expeditions

List of settlements in the Polesie ethnolinguistic atlas

Abbreviations of names of regional centers and districts

Slavic and Balkan folklore: Folk demonology / Rep. ed. S. M. Tolstaya . M.: “Indrik”, 2000.

Preface

N.I. Tolstoy.“Without four corners a hut cannot be built” (Notes on Slavic Paganism. 6)

L. N. Vinogradova. new ideas about the origin of evil spirits: demonologization of the deceased

S. M. Tolstaya. Slavic mythological ideas about the soul

E. E. Levkievskaya. Mythological characters in the Slavic tradition. I. East Slavic brownie

Dagmar Klimova (Prague).Hospodářík in the beliefs of the Czech people

T. V. Tsivyan. About one class of characters of lower mythology: "professionals"

N. A. Mikhailov. To one Balto-South Slavic folklore and ritual formula: lit. laimė lėmė, ltsh. laima nolemj, slvn. sojenice sodijo

L. R. Khafizova. Buka as a character in children's folklore

T. A. Agapkina. Demons as characters of calendar mythology

A. A. Plotnikova. Mythology of atmospheric and celestial phenomena among the Balkan Slavs

V.V. Usacheva. Mythological representations Slavs about the origin of plants

A. V. Gura. Demonological properties of animals in Slavic mythological ideas

V. Ya. Petrukhin.“Gods and demons” of the Russian Middle Ages: gender, women in labor and the problem of Russian dual faith

O. V. Belova. Judas Iscariot: from the Gospel image to a mythological character

M. M. Valentsova. Demon saints Lucia and Barbara in Western Slavic calendar mythology

Polesie and Western Russian materials about the brownie

: Semantics and pragmatics of text / Rep. ed. S. M. Tolstaya . M.: “Indrik”, 2006.

Preface

Pragmatics of the text

T. A. Agapkina. The plot of East Slavic conspiracies in a comparative aspect

O. V. Belova. Slavic biblical legends: verbal text in the context of ritual

E. E. Levkievskaya. Pragmatics of mythological text

L. N. Vinogradova. Socio-regulatory function of superstitious stories about violators of prohibitions and customs

S. M. Tolstaya. The motive of posthumous walking in beliefs and ritual

Text and ritual

A. V. Gura. Correlation and interaction of actional and verbal codes of the wedding ceremony

V.V. Usacheva. Verbal magic in the agricultural rites of the Slavs

A. A. Plotnikova. Spring spell formulas for “expelling” reptiles from the southern Slavs (in an areal perspective)

Vocabulary and phraseology and their role in the generation of text

M. M. Valentsova. Calendar paremias of the Western Slavs

E. L. Berezovich, K. V. Pyankova. Food code in the game text: porridge And kvass

A. V. Gura. Moon spots: ways to construct a mythological text

O. V. Chekha. Linguistic and cultural image of lunar time in the Polesie tradition ( young And old month)

E. S. Uzeneva. The relationship between chrononym and legend (the feast of St. Tryphon in an areal perspective)

Several folk Christian legends from Transcarpathia ( publication by M. N. Tolstoy)

Vladimir Nikolaevich Toporov and his texts ( S. M. Tolstaya)

Slavic and Balakan folklore: Vinogradye. For the anniversary of Lyudmila Nikolaevna Vinogradova / Rep. ed. A. V. Gura . M.: “Indrik”, 2011. – 376 p.

The eleventh issue of the series “Slavic and Balkan folklore” is dedicated to the anniversary of Lyudmila Nikolaevna Vinogradova.
The articles included in the collection are grouped into five sections, which are related to a wide range of topics of interest to Lyudmila Nikolaevna. The first section is devoted to general issues of ethnolinguistics, semantic categories of cultural language, cultural semantics and the function of vocabulary and phraseology. The second section contains works on Slavic folk demonology - the area closest to the hero of the day. The third section publishes articles analyzing folklore texts of a magical nature (spells, curses) and spiritual poems. The fourth section examines rituals (wedding, calendar, occasional) and ritual folklore in the context of beliefs and mythology. Finally, the articles in the fifth section analyze mythological motifs in literary works and art. Several publications are devoted to the folk culture of Transcarpathia, with which Lyudmila Nikolaevna’s early years are connected - she graduated from high school in Mukachevo, and from the philological faculty of the university in Uzhgorod.
The collection ends with a list scientific works hero of the day

Preface

Language and culture

Tolstaya S. M. Subject oppositions, their semantic structure and symbolic functions

Antropov N. P. Axiological motives of ethnolinguistic attraction

Berezovich E. L., Kazakova E. D. The situation of “language testing” in folk culture

Kabakova G. I. Invitation to a feast

Gura A.V. ABOUT conflict situations in traditional peasant culture

Morozov I. A., Frolova O. E. Zhivoe/inanimate in cultural and linguistic contexts

Folk demonology

Radenkovic L. Dangerous places in Slavic folk demonology

Kolosova V. B. Demonology in Slavic ethnobotany

Andryunina M. A."Hostage" dead - loci of the body and loci of the soul

Yasinskaya M. V. Visualization of the invisible: ways of contacting the other world

Moroz A. B."Old man." Experience of describing a mythological character

Dobrovolskaya V. E. hiccups in traditional culture(based on materials from the Vladimir region)

Plotnikova A. A. Folk mythology in Transcarpathian Verkhovyna

Tolstaya M. N. Potinka And babble in the Transcarpathian village of Synevyr

Valentsova M. M. Orava's demonological ideas

Folklore: themes, motives, pragmatics

Nikitina S. E. Fire, water and (copper) pipes (based on folk religious song texts)

Niebzegowska-Bartmińska S."Posłuchajcie, grzesznicy, o straszlisym sądzie..." Wykonawca, narrator i bohater ludowych piesni dziadowśkich

Neklyudov S. Yu. Naked bride on a tree

Agapkina T. A. On some features of the transmission and functioning of the East Slavic charm tradition

Yudin A.V. Grandmother Solomonia in East Slavic conspiracies and the sources of her image

Sedakova I. A. Curse in Bulgarian folk songs: Ethnolinguistics and folklore poetics

Rituals and ritual folklore

Pashina O. A. On the criteria for identifying types and versions of a fun wedding (using the example of a Smolensk wedding)

Kurochkin A.V. Elements of Greek Catholic syncretism in the calendar rituals of Ukrainians

Belova O. V.“Tuti-tutti, Moshke, let’s take a walk for a little bit...” (modern Yuletide dressing up in Galicia)

Chekha O. V. Yuletide mummery in western Macedonia: ρογκατσάρια And μπουμπουτσιάρια

Bondar N. I. Magic of the moon (from the occasional rituals of the East Slavic population of the North Caucasus: XIX - early XXI centuries)

Uzeneva E. S. Prohibitions and regulations in the traditional culture of Transcarpathia (the village of Kolochava, Mizhgorsky district, Transcarpathian region)

Myth – folklore – literature

Petrukhin V. Ya. Mother's milk eaters in Pseudo-Caesarea: demonological motive or “religious slander”?

Toporkov A. L. Mythological image of a tree growing from a woman's body

Sofronova L. A."Someone" and "something" in Gogol's early stories

Ajdachic D. Warlock Pan Tvardovsky and the pact with the devil in XIX literature V.

Tsivyan T.V. Palm theme in Russian literature of the 20th century: flickering mythology (several examples)

Svirida I. I. Svoe And someone else's name in art

List of scientific works by L. N. Vinogradova

oil and gas named after. Gubkina I.M. in Orenburg

Content

Introduction

Veles's book
History of the book
Veles's book on the origin of the Slavs
Triglav of the gods
Mother cult

Svarog
Spiritual kinship between the cultures of the Slavs and Indo-Aryans
Perun and Sventovit

The connection between customs and natural forces
Dual faith: paganism and Christianity

Writing of the ancient Slavs
First alphabets
What came first: Glagolitic or Cyrillic?
Knot writing
Prototypes of pictographic writing

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Myth and folklore of the ancient Slavs

1.1 Veles book
1.1.1 History of the book

Currently, a huge amount of work has been done to restore Slavic anthropotheocosmogonic myths based on folklore and the texts of the tablets of the Book of Veles. The history of the book, which is dedicated to the god of wealth and wisdom of the ancient Slavs Veles or hair, mysterious and tragic. During the Civil War of 1919, she was found by White Army officer F.A. Isenbek near the Velikiy Burluk station near Kharkov on the estate of the princes Kurakins. In Brussels, the book fell into the hands of the writer Yu.P. Mirolyubov in 1924 The writer rewrote and deciphered ancient records for 15 years, copying about 75% of the text. In German-occupied Brussels, after Isenbek’s death, his entire archive disappeared in 1943, as well as the original Veles Book. Only the notes of Yu. P. Mirolyubov and a photograph of one tablet remained.

1.1.2 Veles’s book on the origin of the Slavs

Veles's book is a complex and voluminous monument. It is as difficult to forge it as it is impossible to create the Rig Veda, Avesta or Bible again. This book resolves the ancient dispute about the origin of the Slavs. She tells the fate of various tribes that participated in Slavic ethnogenesis. The most ancient event presented in it is the exodus of Indo-European tribes from Semirechye, an area that is concentrated near Lake Balkhash and currently bears the same name because of the seven rivers flowing into it. The migration of Indo-European tribes, according to archeology, from Central Asia took place in the last third of the 2nd millennium BC. e. and unfolded over a vast territory from the Balkans (Hellenes-Dorians) to the Yenisei and Northern China (Massagetae and Saka). Veles's book shows the events of the mythical and ancient history of the Slavs at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e. - end of the 1st millennium AD e.

1.1.3 Triglav of the gods

The beginning of Veles's book is shown with a call to bow before Triglav gods: Svarog, Perun And Sventovit. This Slavic archaic trinity is close to the Hindu Vedic Trimurti, in which the ancient Aryans involved Varuna - the heavenly god (among the Slavs Svarog), Indra the Thunderer (analogous to Perun) and Shiva - the god of the destroyer of the Universe (Slavic Volos or Veles). Different ancient Slavic priestly schools understood the mystery of the Trinity differently. In Kyiv it included Svarog, Dazhboga And Striboga. Besides them, the most revered were the god of fire Semargl, a mediator between people and heavenly gods, who appeared in the form of the sacred falcon Rarog and won the first battle of the light and dark forces Black Snake; god of wealth and livestock Veles, a guide to the underworld and its king, the destroyer of the Universe and at the same time a symbol of wisdom, the son of a heavenly cow Zemun, Perun's rival in the wedding myth, cast down to earth from the vault of heaven; mother of a happy lot, goddess of fate and the water element Makosh, who, together with her assistants Shares And Nedolej spins the threads of human destiny, like the ancient Moirai; sisters of the goddess of life and death Alive And Madder(Marmara).
Triglav was understood differently in Novgorod. Initially it included Svarog, Perun And Veles. Reflections of such an understanding were preserved in the Book of Veles under the names Did - Oak - Sheaf. Velez was later replaced Sventovit. The Novgorodians believed that the heavenly father, the grandfather of the gods, was only Svarog, who awaits people in the heavenly paradise of Iria, or Svarga-Yasuni. He is the beginning of the entire Rod, the male half, the hypostasis of the Rod. The oldest supreme male deity of the Slavs was Genus - god of the sky, thunderstorms, fertility. The genus is the ruler of all living moving things. The clan, according to the ancient Slavs, is the entire Universe, but it was also understood as a domestic ancestor, an ancestor god, a progenitor. Rod, as an individual, rarely performed, so they glorified not himself, but the male embodiment of Rod - Svarog. He acts as the creator of the Universe, takes the Earth out of the Ocean. Hitting the “white flammable stone” with a hammer, like a blacksmith of heaven, revives Semargla(god of fire) and creates the first people, teaching them blacksmithing, giving them laws. Female hypostasis of Rod and wife of Svarog, mother of the gods Lada. She - the Woman in Labor, the Mother of Birth - helps during childbirth. Lada is the goddess of marriage, abundance, and the time of harvest ripening. They turned to the goddess with prayers, petitions, and entreaties. Her name has appeared more than once in the choruses of songs - “Oh, Lado!”

1.1.4 Mother cult

The veneration of female ancestors is closely related to the widespread mother cults. From France to Lake Baikal, everywhere you can find stone figurines of female gods, women in labor with pronounced gender features, which are called paleolithic evening and served as features of fertility magic. During patriarchy, maternal cults change into female hypostases of gods, while maintaining the full weight of archaic semantic load and symbolism. At the same time, they acquire a certain unified function - they become the patroness of home, hearth, fire, territory, country, person, family, love in the form of housewives (Mistress of the Copper Mountain in Bazhov’s tale), grandmothers, mothers (for example, Mother of India or Mother Swa, the patroness bird Rus', incarnation of the Great Mother). Women's cults, no matter what changes they occur, always rush towards one of their two manifestations: either they personify the world of heavenly love (Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus, Slavic Lelya), or the earthly one (Gaia, Juno, Slavic Mother of Cheese Earth).

Cosmogonic ideas of the ancient Slavs

2.1 Svarog

The increased organization of the structure of the socio-political life of the Slavs caused the god of the ordered cosmos, Svarog, to come to the fore. The name Svarog comes from Sur (Sanskrit), Suar, Svar, Svarga, hence Svarog. Researcher D. Dyadechko points to explanations in the annals of the ancient Czech Sur (Svor) with the word Zodiacus - the zodiacal path of the Sun (ecliptic). In the Ipatiev Chronicle, “The Sun is the Tsar, the son of Svarog is Dazhdbog,” according to other sources, the son of Svarog, the Sun, is called Fire: “And the Fires pray, they call him Svarozhich.” In Ukraine, the zodiac itself or the zodiacal path of the Sun was considered the celestial Fire, which in each constellation acquired the characteristic features and properties of a new deity.
Svarog is the god of the sky (as space), and Dazhdbog is the fire (light) of heaven. Dazhdbog is one of the most famous gods of the East Slavic tribes. The author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” calls all Russians God’s grandchildren. That is, this is literally our grandfather, ancestor, ancestor, progenitor. This is a giving god, a giver of earthly goods, and also a god who protects his family. He gave man everything important (by cosmic standards): the sun, warmth, light, movement (natural or calendar - the change of day and night, seasons, years, etc.).
The archaic philosophy of ancient peoples, the level of their spiritual maturity is most accurately and completely reconstructed based on the cosmogonic myths of the main sacred books. With name Svarog is connected with the ancient cosmogonic myth of the Slavs, which reveals the content of the “Russian Vedas”:

Before the birth of white light, the world was shrouded in pitch darkness. Only Rod, our Ancestor, was in the darkness. Rod - Spring of the Universe, Father of the Gods.
At first the Rod was enclosed in an egg, it was an ungerminated seed, it was an unopened bud. But the imprisonment came to an end. Rod gave birth to Love - Mother Lada.
The family destroyed the prison with the power of Love, and then the world was filled with Love.
And He gave birth to the kingdom of heaven, and under it He created the heavenly things. He cut the umbilical cord with a rainbow, separated the Ocean - the blue sea - from the heavenly waters with a firmament of stone. He erected three vaults in the heavens. He divided Light and Darkness, Truth and Falsehood.
The clan then gave birth to Mother Earth, and the Earth went into the dark abyss, and was buried in the Ocean...
The heavens and all under heaven were born for Love. Rod - Father of the gods. Rod and Mother of the gods. Rod - born by itself and will be born again.
Rod - all the gods and everything under heaven. Genus - what was and what is to be, what was born and what will be born.
The family gave birth to the heavenly Svarog and breathed into him its mighty spirit. I gave him four heads so that he could look around the world in all directions... Here Svarog walks around the sky and looks around his possessions. He sees the Sun rolling across the sky, the bright moon sees the stars, and beneath it the Ocean spreads... He looked around his possessions, but did not notice only Mother Earth.
- Where is Mother Earth? - I was saddened.
Then he noticed that a small dot in the Ocean-Sea was turning black. It’s not a dot in the sea that turns black, it’s a gray duck swimming, born of sulfur foam.
- Don’t you know where the Earth lies? - Svarog began torturing the sulfur duck.
“The Earth is below me,” she says, “buried deep in the Ocean...
- At the behest of the Heavenly Family, at the will and desire of Svarozh, you will obtain the Earth from the depths of the sea!
The duck didn’t say anything, dived into the Ocean-Sea and hid in the abyss for three years. When the time was up, she rose from the bottom.
She brought a handful of earth in her beak.
Svarog took a handful of earth and began to crush it in his palms.
- Warm it up, Red Sun, light it up, Bright Moon, you wild winds - blow! We will sculpt from the damp earth Mother Earth, the mother-nurse. Help us. Genus! Lada, help!
Svarog crushes the earth - the sun warms, the moon shines and the winds blow. The winds blew the Earth from the palm, and it fell into the blue sea. The Red Sun warmed her - Mother Earth was baked into a crust on top, but the bright Moon cooled her down.
This is how Svarog created Mother Earth. He established three underground vaults in it - three underground, pekel kingdoms.
And so that the Earth would not go into the sea again, Rod gave birth to the powerful Yusha under it - a wondrous, powerful snake. His lot is hard - to hold Mother Earth for years and centuries.
Thus Mother Earth of Cheese was born. So she rested on the Snake.
If Yusha the Snake moves, Mother Cheese Earth will turn.

2.2 Spiritual kinship between the cultures of the Slavs and Indo-Aryans

There was then neither the non-existent nor the existing... There was then neither death nor that which lives forever; no sign separating night and day. This single lifeless thing breathed only its own essence. Apart from him there was nothing at all. There was darkness: hidden at first in darkness, it was all formless chaos. Everything that existed then was empty and formless. This unity was born by the great power of heat. Then desire first arose - the primary seed and embryo of the spirit... Who truly knows and who can say here when it was born and when this act of creation was accomplished?
The gods appeared after the creation of this world. Who then knows when the world appeared? He is the primary source of everything created, no matter whether he created it all himself or not. He whose eye watches over this world from the heights of heaven, he truly knows this, or perhaps he does not know.

The single sacred ancestral source, which once existed as a common spiritual cradle, determines the similarity of ideas in the Slavic and Indian Vedic cultures about the initial anthropomorphic being, the owner of the highest life principle- love or warmth - tapas, and the initial seed, the golden embryo (hiranya garph), germinating during the formation of humanity, - the power of desire.
Thus, by the power of Love in Slavic mythology, the Sun was summoned, emerging from the face of the Family, the bright Moon - from His chest, the frequent stars - from His eyes, the clear dawns - from His eyebrows, the dark nights - from His thoughts, the violent winds from His breath , Rain, Snow, Hail - from His tears, Thunder and Lightning - from His voice. In the source of India, the Upanishads, such an original anthropomorphic being Purusha (“purusa”, literally from Sanskrit man, man), the guardian of the worlds, was drawn from the waters by Atman, the one who was truly one at first, and who gave Purusha an external appearance.

2.3 Perun and Sventovit

Son of Svarog Perun, the second person of the Slavic Trinity - Triglav, the god of war and thunderstorms, revived what was revealed, monitored the peaceful order, rotating the solar golden wheel.
The cult of the victorious beast Skipper, Tsar Pekla, the Sea Tsar and Veles was supported by the highest strata of patriarchal Slavic society, princes and warriors, especially in the era of confrontation with the world of nomadic tribes. After the Christianization of Rus', the cult of Perun was changed by Ilya the Prophet, and in the folklore tradition - by Ilya Muromets and Yegor the Brave.
The third hypostasis of Novgorod Tritlava-Sventovit was originally the god of light among the Western Slavs. His four-headed idol stood in Arkon, the main sanctuary Baltic Slavs on the island of Ruyan in the Baltic Sea. Faith in him was brought to Novgorod by settlers from western lands - the Obodrits and the Ruyans. Veles's book speaks of the great secret of the trinity of Svarog - Perun - Sventovit, the power of which penetrated all levels of life, multiplying the worlds of gods and people with the power of love. The sacred knowledge of the ancient Slavs had the features monotheism, but combined it with primitive forms of religion: totemism, fetishism, animism and magic.
So, both the worldview of the Indo-European peoples and the worldview of the ancient Slavs was characterized by anthropotheocosmiz, that is, the indivisibility of the spheres of the human, divine and natural, reflected in each other. This is what Heraclitus placed in the concept of “spheros” as a world not created by anyone, “an eternally living fire, gradually lighting up and gradually extinguishing, for which all things smelted from it like ingots of golden sand are exchanged.”
Signs of ancestor cult, which are called manism, are most clearly stated in the fact of tracing the genealogy of the Slavs to the forefathers, relatives of the gods, who taught people various crafts and the ability to handle iron. Knowledge is presented as an instant penetration into the existence of all things, carried out with the help of magical operations, and with the goal of ordering the habitat of ancient man from the chaos. Sacrifices to the deified forces of nature, based on the Sun, were part of the practice of the magic of life, which did not separate word and deed and served the goals of man’s victory over non-existence, over death.

Rituals and customs of the ancient Slavs

The ongoing struggle and changing victory of the light and dark forces of nature is most clearly expressed in the Slavs’ ideas about the cycle of the seasons. Its starting point was the onset of the new year - the birth of a new sun at the end of December, a celebration that received the Greco-Roman name among the Slavs "Carols"(calendae - first day of a new month). The final victory of the new thunderer over winter - “death” on the day of the spring equinox was celebrated with a funeral ceremony Madders. This also includes the custom of walking with May(symbol of spring), a small Christmas tree decorated with ribbons, eggs, paper. The deity of the sun, seeing off for the winter, was called Kupala, and also Yarily And Kostroma. In one of the ancient monuments of the 17th century. it was described this way:

On the evening before Midsummer's Day, young men and women gather together and weave wreaths of different flowers, putting them on their heads or hanging them from their belts. They light a fire and, holding hands, dance around it and sing songs in which the Cupola is often mentioned. Then they jump over the fire.

Burning or drowning a straw effigy or other image of Kupala in the river recalls the connection of the holiday with the solar deity.
Ancient folk holidays, such as New Year's fortune-telling, rampant Maslenitsa, round dances and green birch trees "Semika", "Russian Week" and many others, were accompanied by incantatory magical rituals and were similar to prayers to the gods for general well-being, harvest, deliverance from thunderstorms and hail. Thus, on the gloomy day of Ilya, Russian peasants back in the 19th century. they slaughtered a bull fed by the entire village in honor of the Lord of Lightning, the successor of ancient Perun.
Large deep vessels in Ancient Rus' were called charms and used for New Year's fortune telling about the harvest (witchcraft). They often drew 12 different designs in the form of a closed circle - a symbol of 12 months. An ancient sanctuary of the Chernyakhov culture of the 2nd-4th centuries was found in the village of Lepesovka in Volyn. The altar of the sanctuary was assembled from fragments of large clay bowls. Along the rim of one of them was an ornament of 12 rectangular frames with various designs. They contained three oblique crosses, which designated the three dates of the main solar holidays: December 25, March 25 and June 24. The three remaining drawings depicted ralo, ears and plaits of flax, which are similar to the months: April - plowing with rawl, August - harvesting and October - flax crushing. Lepesovskaya Chara is a characteristic ritual vessel of the ancient Slavs, prepared for New Year's fortune-telling. Vessels used for sowing-harvest rituals, spring-summer water rituals held in sacred groves, near springs and associated with the maiden goddess, patroness of fertility, were also found and identified.

3.2 Dual faith: paganism and Christianity

By the time of the adoption of Christianity, the Slavic religion had not yet developed strict forms of worship. The priests did not yet belong to a special class. Sacrifices to the clan and heavenly gods were presented by representatives of clan unions, and free-practicing magi took care of relations with the lower demons of the earth, ridding people of their harmful influence and obtaining various services from them. Place of sacrifice temple, did not turn into a temple even at the time when a kap-idol depicting the gods (kap-kapishche) began to be erected in this place.
During the accession of Vladimir I in Kyiv, he carried out a kind of pagan reform in 980. In an effort to raise ancient folk beliefs to the level of a state religion, next to his towers, on a hill, the prince ordered wooden idols of six gods to be erected: Perun with a silver head and golden mustache, Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Semargl and Mokosh. Vladimir even established human sacrifices to these gods, which was supposed to give their cult a tragic, but at the same time very solemn character.
The cult of the main god of the druzhina nobility was introduced in Novgorod by Dobrynya. Eight unquenchable fires burned there near the idol of Perun, and the memory of this eternal fire was preserved by the local population until the 17th century.
By the end of the period of paganism, in connection with the development of the druzhina element, the funeral rites of the Slavs. Along with the noble Russians, they burned their weapons, armor, and horses. According to the Arab traveler Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, who traveled to Volga Bulgaria as an ambassador of the Baghdad caliph, he saw a Russian funeral and described a ritual murder at the grave of a rich Russian wife.
A huge mound as high as a four-story house (“Black Tomb” in Chernigov) confirms this. According to legend, the Chernigov prince was buried at this place. During the excavations in the mound, gold Byzantine coins, weapons, women's jewelry, turk's horns bound in silver were found, with embossed patterns of an epic plot - the death of Koshchei the Immortal in the Chernigov forests.
Since ancient times, people, protecting themselves from evil forces, covered their clothes and homes with images - amulets, weaving protective symbolism into a single image of the universe. This is exactly what the attire of ancient Russian princesses from the times of dual faith (paganism and Christianity) looked like and the images on the facades of Russian huts, preserved in the North to the present day.
The princess's headdress symbolized the sky and was crowned with a diadem depicting the most important heavenly powers; in the center was Dazhdbog or Christ (depending on whether the entire attire was pagan or Christian). The princess's forehead was decorated temporal rings, meaning the movement of the sun across the sky. Chains descended from the crown - ryasny, symbolizing airspace. They were covered with images of either streams of rain, or birds, or seeds falling from the sky. They hung from the cassocks Colts(pendants) depicting mermaids, winged pitchforks irrigating fields. These colts were placed on the same level with necklaces depicting blossoming sprouts. Paintings were presented on women's bracelets rusaliya(spring holidays in honor of goddesses - rain givers). A long chain with two Lizard heads, fastened with a ring symbolizing the sun, was placed around the neck. Thus, the woman’s costume reflected the entire picture of the creation of the world - heaven, earth and the underworld.
On the facade of the Russian hut the heavens and the course of the sun were depicted. The sky seemed to have two layers, consisting of “firmament” and “abyss”, that is, inexhaustible reserves of water. The abysses were depicted as wavy lines. On the firmament, located below the abysses, the position of the sun was shown in three positions - in the morning, at noon and in the evening; to emphasize that it was moving below the abyss, images of the luminary were placed on wooden “towels” descending from the roof. The central “towel”, symbolizing noon, was especially brightly and richly decorated with a pattern - there the brightly shining sun was depicted several times, or the sign of the sun (a circle divided into eight sectors) was duplicated by the ridge of the roof, meaning the Sun-horse. A thunder sign (a circle divided into six sectors) was often placed on the central “towel” - a symbol of Rod or Perun, which protected the house from being struck by lightning.
etc.................

The oral poetic creativity (folklore) of the ancient Slavs has to be largely judged tentatively, since its main works have come down to us in the records of modern times (XVIII-XX centuries).

One might think that the folklore of the pagan Slavs was associated primarily with labor rituals and processes. Mythology has already developed at a fairly high stage of development. Slavic peoples and was a complex system of views based on animism and anthropomorphism.

The Slavs apparently did not have a single higher pantheon like the Greek or Roman, but we know evidence of the Pomeranian (on the island of Rügen) pantheon with the god Svyatovid and the Kiev pantheon.

The main gods in it were considered Svarog - the god of sky and fire, Dazhdbog - the sun god, the giver of blessings, Perun - the god of lightning and thunder, and Veles - the patron of the economy and livestock. The Slavs made sacrifices to them. The spirits of nature among the Slavs were anthropomorphic or zoomorphic, or mixed anthropomorphic-zoomorphic in the images of mermaids, divas, samodivas - goblins, water creatures, brownies.

Mythology began to influence the oral poetry of the Slavs and significantly enriched it. Songs, fairy tales and legends began to explain the origin of the world, humans, animals and plants. They featured wonderful, human-speaking animals - a winged horse, a fiery serpent, a prophetic raven, and man was depicted in his relationships with monsters and spirits.

In the preliterate period, the culture of artistic expression of the Slavs was expressed in works of folklore, which reflected public relations, life and ideas of the communal-tribal system.

An important part of folklore was work songs, which often had magical meaning: they accompanied rituals associated with agricultural work and the change of seasons, as well as the most important events human life (birth, marriage, death).

Ritual songs are based on requests to the sun, earth, wind, rivers, plants for help - for the harvest, for the offspring of livestock, for luck in the hunt. The beginnings of drama arose in ritual songs and games.

The most ancient folklore of the Slavs was diverse in genres. Fairy tales, proverbs and riddles were widely used. There were also toponymic legends, tales about the origin of spirits, inspired by both oral tradition and later traditions - biblical and apocryphal. The most ancient chronicles have preserved the echoes of these legends for us.

Apparently, heroic songs also arose early among the Slavic peoples, which reflected the Slavs’ struggle for independence and clashes with other peoples (when moving, for example, to the Balkans). These were songs in praise of heroes, outstanding princes and ancestors. But heroic epic was still only in its infancy.

The ancient Slavs had musical instruments, to the accompaniment of which they sang songs. South Slavic and West Slavic written sources mention harp, whistles, pipes, and trumpets.

The ancient oral poetry of the Slavs largely influenced the further development of their artistic culture, but it itself also underwent historical changes.

With the formation of states, the adoption of Christianity and the emergence of writing, new elements entered folklore. Songs, fairy tales and especially legends began to combine old pagan mythology and Christian ideas. Christ, the Mother of God, angels, saints appear next to the witches and divas, and events take place not only on earth, but also in heaven or hell.

On the basis of the worship of Veles, the cult of Saint Blaise arose, and Elijah the Prophet took possession of the thunders of Perun. New Year and summer rituals and songs were Christianized. New Year's rituals were attached to the Nativity of Christ, and summer rituals to the Feast of John the Baptist (Ivan Kupala).

The creativity of peasants and townspeople was somewhat influenced by the culture of feudal circles and the church. Among the people they were processed and used for denunciation social injustice Christian literary legends. Rhyme and strophic division gradually penetrated into folk poetic works.

The spread of legendary and fairy-tale stories from Byzantine literature, literature of Western European and Middle Eastern countries in the Bulgarian, Serbian, and Croatian lands was of great importance.

Slovenian folk art already in the 9th-10th centuries. mastered not only literary plots, but also poetic forms, for example the ballad, a genre of Romanesque origin. So, in the 10th century. In the Slovenian lands, a ballad with a tragic plot about the beautiful Vida became popular.

A song about her originated in Byzantium in the 7th-8th centuries. and then through Italy it came to the Slovenians. This ballad tells how an Arab merchant lured the beautiful Vida onto his ship, promising her medicine for a sick child, and then sold her into slavery. But gradually the songs became stronger in terms of motives reflecting reality and social relations (ballads “The Imaginary Dead”, “The Young Groom”).

Songs about a girl’s meeting with overseas knights and the fight against the “infidels” were popular, which was obviously a reflection of the Crusades. The songs also contain traces of anti-feudal satire.

A new and important phenomenon of Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian folk art in the XII-XIV centuries. there was the emergence and development of epic songs. This process went through two stages: first, songs of everyday content arose, reflecting the uniqueness of social relations and life of early feudal society; almost simultaneously with them, heroic songs also emerged.

Subsequently, with the creation and strengthening of the state, with the beginning of the struggle against Byzantium and the Turks, youth heroic songs began to be created and gradually took first place in the epic. They were created by folk singers shortly after the events sung in them.

The South Slavic epic was created with the creative cooperation of all Balkan Slavs, as well as with the participation of individual non-Slavic peoples. The epic songs of the Southern Slavs are characterized by common plots, which are based on the events of the struggle with neighboring peoples, common heroes, common means of expression and forms of verse (the so-called decasyllable). At the same time, the epic of each nation has its own distinctive features.

The Serbo-Croatian epic is historical at its core. Despite the presence of anachronisms, fantasy and hyperbolization, the texts that have reached us also contain historically correct information. The songs reflected the features of early feudal relations, the political system and culture of that time. In one of the songs Stefan Dusan says:

I curbed the obstinate commander,

Subjected them to our royal power.

The songs express thoughts about the need to maintain state unity and the attention of feudal lords to the people. Stefan Dečanski, dying, bequeaths to his son: “Take care of the people as you do your own head.”

The songs vividly depict feudal life, the relationship between the prince and his squads, campaigns, battles and duels, and military competitions.

The earliest songs, the so-called Dokosovo cycle, are dedicated to the events of the reign of the Serbian princely (from 1159) and then royal (from 1217) Nemanjić dynasty. They have a religious overtones and talk about the “holy deeds” and “righteous life” of the Serbian rulers, many of whom were canonized by the church as saints: the songs condemn feudal strife and civil strife.

Many songs are dedicated to Sava, the founder of the Serbian church. These earliest songs are a valuable cultural monument. They provide a vivid artistic summary of the destinies of their native land, are distinguished by great content of plots and images, and remarkable mastery of the poetic word.

Unlike the folklore of the Eastern and Southern Slavs, the Western Slavs - Czechs, Slovaks and Poles, apparently did not have a heroic epic in such developed forms. However, certain circumstances suggest that heroic songs probably also existed among the Western Slavs. The Czechs and Poles had widespread historical songs, and the predecessor of this genre is usually the heroic epic.

In a number of genres of Czech and Polish folklore, especially in fairy tales, one can find plots and motifs typical of other peoples’ heroic epics (combat-duel, getting a bride): certain Western Slavic historical figures became heroes of South Slavic heroic songs, such as Vladislav Varnenchik.

In the historical chronicles of Poland and the Czech Republic (Gall Anonymous, Kozma of Prague, etc.) there are plots and motifs, apparently of epic origin (legends about Libusz, Krak, about the sword of Boleslav the Bold, about the siege of cities). Historiographer Kozma Prazhsky and others testify that they drew some materials from folk legends.

The formation of a feudal state, the idea of ​​the unity of Polish lands and patriotic goals in the fight against foreign invaders determined the popularity of historical legends, the appeal to them by chroniclers, thanks to whom these legends are known to us.

Gall Anonymous indicated that he used the stories of old people; Abbot Peter, the author of the “Book of Henryk” (XIII century), named the peasant Kwerik, nicknamed Kika, who knew many legends about the past of the Polish land, which were used by the author of this book.

Finally, these legends themselves are recorded or retold in the chronicles, for example, about Krak, the legendary ruler of Poland, who is considered the founder of Krakow. He freed his people from a cannibal monster who lived in a hole. Although this motif is international, it has a clear Polish connotation.

Krak dies in the fight with his brothers, but the throne is inherited by his daughter Wanda. The legend about her tells how the German ruler, captivated by her beauty, tried to persuade her to marry with gifts and requests. Having failed to achieve his goal, he started a war against her. From the shame of defeat, he commits suicide, throwing himself on his sword and cursing his compatriots for succumbing to female charms (“Greater Polish Chronicle”).

The winner Wanda, not wanting to marry a foreigner, rushes into the Vistula. The legend about Wanda was one of the most popular among the people. Both its patriotic meaning and the romantic nature of the plot played a role in this. Dynastic legends also include legends about Popel and Piast.

Popel, the Prince of Gniezno, according to legend, died in a tower in Kruszwice, where he was killed by mice; a similar motif is common in medieval literature and folklore. Piast, the founder of the Polish royal dynasty, according to legend, was a peasant charioteer.

The chronicles mention songs in praise of princes and kings, songs about victories, chronicler Vincent Kadlubek talks about “heroic” songs. The “Greater Poland Chronicle” retells the legend about the knight Walter and the beautiful Helgund, which indicates the penetration of the German epic into Poland.

The story about Walter (Valgezh the Udal) from the Popel family tells how he brought the beautiful Helgunda from France, whose heart he won by singing and playing the lute.

On the way to Poland, Walter killed the German prince who was in love with her. Arriving in Poland, he imprisoned Wieslaw, who was plotting against him. But when Walter went on a two-year campaign, Helgunda freed Wieslaw and fled with him to his castle.

Walter, upon returning from the campaign, was put in prison. He was saved by his sister Wieslawa, who brought him a sword, and Walter took revenge on Helgunda and Wieslawa by cutting them into pieces. Literary historians suggest that the legend about Walter and Helgund goes back to the poem about Walter of Aquitaine, which was brought to Poland by the Shpilmans, participants in the Crusades.

However, in Polish folklore there were tales that were original works in plot, type of characters and form.

Chronicles and other sources attest to the existence of songs about historical heroes and events. These are songs about the funeral of Boleslav the Bold, songs about Casimir the Renovator, about Boleslav Crooked-mouth, about the latter’s battle with the Pomeranians, songs from the time of Boleslav Crooked-mouth about the attack of the Tatars, songs about the battle of the Poles with the Galician prince Vladimir, songs about Polish knights who fought the pagan Prussians. The report of a 15th century chronicler is extremely valuable.

Jan Dlugosz about the songs about the battle of Zavichost (1205): “the glades sang of this victory [...] in various kinds of songs that we hear to this day.”

The chronicler noted the emergence of songs shortly after the historical event. At the same time, historical ballads, or thoughts, began to appear. An example would be the thought of Ludgard, the wife of Prince Przemysław II, who ordered her to be strangled in Poznań Castle because of her infertility.

Dlugosz notes that even then a “song in Polish” was composed about this. Thus, Polish folklore is characterized not by heroic songs such as epics and South Slavic youth songs, but by historical legends and historical songs.

History of world literature: in 9 volumes / Edited by I.S. Braginsky and others - M., 1983-1984.

Folklore and literature among the Slavs

Folklore and its main forms. Literature of the Orthodox Slavs in the 11th–16th centuries. Modern Slavic literatures

The topic of folklore and Slavic literature is touched upon in our manual only in connection with Slavic verbal culture in general, and in detail on this topic (in particular, in the discussion current state folkloristics) we do not go deeper. There are many valuable manuals specifically devoted to folklore as such (Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, etc. folk art), as there are similar manuals related to Russian and other Slavic literatures. We refer readers to them who are interested in an in-depth acquaintance with this topic.

The Slavic peoples created such an important folklore genre, like fairy tales, and a rich set of fairy-tale plots (magical, everyday, social, etc.). Fairy tales feature the most colorful human characters, endowed with folk ingenuity - Ivan the Fool among the Russians, the cunning Peter among the Bulgarians, etc.

According to the witty observation of F. I. Buslaev, “The fairy tale glorifies mainly heroes, heroes and knights; the princess, who usually appears in it, is very often not called by name and, having married a hero or knight, leaves the scene of action. But, inferior to men in heroism and glory gained by military exploits, a woman in the era of paganism... was a demigoddess, a sorceress...

Quite naturally I could folk tale Add physical strength to a woman’s mental strength. So, Stavrov’s young wife, dressed as an ambassador, defeated the Vladimirov wrestlers.”

The Eastern Slavs developed epics. Among them, the Kiev cycle (epics about the peasant Mikul Selyaninovich, the heroes Svyatogor, Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, etc.) and the Novgorod cycle (epics about Vasily Buslaev, Sadko, etc.) stand out. A unique genre of heroic epic, Russian epics constitute one of the most important accessories of the national verbal art. Among the Serbs, the heroic epic is represented by stories about Miloš Obilic, Korolevich Marko, and others. There are similar characters in the epic of the Bulgarians - Sekula Detenze, Daichin the Voivode, Yankul and Momgil, etc. Among the Western Slavs, the heroic epic, due to a number of complex reasons, did not show itself so impressively .

An epic is not a historical chronicle, but an artistic phenomenon. Russians usually have a good sense of distance between a real person St. Elijah of Muromets and the epic image of the hero Ilya of Muromets. About the Serbian epic by its researcher Ilya Nikolaevich Golenishchev-Kutuzov(1904–1969), for example, wrote:

“In addition to events that do not violate the boundaries of the reliable,<…>in songs about Prince Marko there are stories about winged horses, speaking in a human voice, about snakes and mountain sorceresses-forks.”

As F.I. Buslaev expressively characterized oral folk art, “The people do not remember the beginning of their songs and fairy tales. They have been carried on from time immemorial and are passed down from generation to generation, according to legend, like antiquity. Even the singer Igor, although he knows some Boyan, already calls ancient folk legends “old words.” In “Ancient Russian Poems,” a song or legend is called “old times”: “that’s how old times ended,” says the singer... Otherwise, a song with narrative content is called “bylina,” that is, a story about what was.<…> Therefore, when finishing a song, sometimes the singer adds the following words in conclusion: “then the “old thing”, then the “deed”,” expressing with this verse the idea that his epic is not only an old thing, a legend, but precisely a legend about the “deed” that actually happened. "

The Slavic peoples have preserved legends related to their origin. Both Western and Eastern Slavs know the legend about the brothers Czech, Lech and Rus. Among the Eastern Slavs, the founding of Kyiv is associated with the legendary Kiy, Shchek, Khoriv and their sister Lybid. The Poles, according to legend, imprinted the names of the children of the forester who lived here in the name of Warsaw: a boy named Var and a girl named Sawa. Very interesting are the tales, stories and legends about Libusz and Přemysl, about the Maiden's War, about the Blanice knights of the Czechs, about Piast and Popel, Krak and Wanda among the Poles, which contain a variety of information about prehistoric times.

For example, the plot of the legend about the Maiden War makes us recall the struggle between matriarchal and patriarchal principles in Slavic society of ancient times.

According to him, after the death of the legendary Czech ruler Libusha, who relied on girls and women and even kept a female squad, her husband Przemysl began to rule. However, the girls, accustomed to rule, rebelled against the men, built the Devin fortress and settled in it. Then they defeated a detachment of men who frivolously tried to capture the fortress - three hundred knights died, and seven were personally stabbed to death by the leader of the women’s army, Vlasta (formerly the foremost warrior in Libushi’s squad). After this victory, the women treacherously captured the young knight Tstirad, who rushed to save the beauty tied to an oak tree, and wheeled him on the wheel. In response, the men united into an army and completely defeated the women, killing Vlasta in battle and capturing Devin.

The poetic genres of folklore among the Slavs are extremely diverse. In addition to epics and myths, this includes various songs - youth and haidut songs among the southern Slavs, bandit songs among the eastern Slavs, etc., historical songs and ballads, Ukrainian thoughts, etc. The Slovaks have a very interesting cycle folklore works about the noble robber Juraj Janosik.

Many poetic works were performed to the accompaniment of various musical instruments (Russian gusli, Ukrainian bandura, etc.).

Small genres of folklore (proverb, saying, riddle, etc.) are of particular interest to philologists who study semasiological problems. So, for example, A. A. Potebnya dedicated in his work “ From lectures on the theory of literature" a special section on "techniques for transforming a complex poetic work into a proverb", emphasizing: "The whole process of compressing a longer story into a proverb is one of the phenomena that is of great importance for human thought" (Potebnya called these phenomena "condensation of thought").

Among the collections of Russian proverbs, “ Russian folk proverbs and parables"(1848) I. M. Snegireva, " Russian proverbs and sayings"(1855) F. I. Buslaeva and " Proverbs of the Russian people"(1862) V.I. Dalya.

Among the collectors of Slavic folklore are the largest cultural figures (for example, A. I. Afanasyev And V. I. Dal from the Russians, Vuk Karadzic among the Serbs). In Russia, talented enthusiasts like Kirsha Danilov and professional philologists were engaged in this matter P. N. Rybnikov, A. F. Gilferding, I. V. Kireevsky and others. Ukrainian folklore was collected, for example, N. A. Tsertelev, M. Maksimovich, Y. Golovatsky etc. The brothers did a great job among the southern Slavs Miladinovs, P. R. Slaveykov and others, among the Poles Waclaw Zaleski, Zegota Pauli, Z. Dolenga-Chodakowski and others, among the Czechs and Slovaks F. Chelakovsky, K. Erben, P. Dobshinsky and other philologists.

Slavic literatures are very diverse. Old Russian literature, a characteristic manifestation of literatures of the so-called “medieval type,” existed from the 11th century. Let us recall several important points related to it.

Academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev(1906–1999) rightly wrote: “Ancient Russian literature was not only not isolated from the literatures of neighboring Western and southern countries, in particular from Byzantium, but up to the 17th century. we can talk about absolutely the opposite - about the absence of clear national boundaries in it. We can rightfully talk about the common development of the literatures of the Eastern and Southern Slavs. There were unified literature(italics mine. - Yu. M.), a single script and a single (Church Slavonic) language among the Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), Bulgarians, Serbs and Romanians" (as mentioned above, the Romanians, as Orthodox Christians, actively used the Church Slavonic language until the second half of the 19th century) .

D. S. Likhachev’s expression “unified literature” should not be absolutized. He further explains his thought: “The main fund of church and literary monuments was common. Liturgical, preaching, church-edifying, hagiographic, partly world-historical (chronographic), partly narrative literature was uniform for the entire Orthodox south and east of Europe. Common were such huge literary monuments as prologues, menaions, solemniki, triodions, partly chronicles, paleas of various types, “Alexandria”, “The Tale of Barlaam and Joasaph”, “The Tale of Akira the Wise”, “The Bee”, cosmographies, physiologists, hexadays, apocrypha, individual lives, etc., etc.”

Obviously, they were not common " A Word about Igor's Campaign», « Teaching"Vladimir Monomakh, " A word about the destruction of the Russian land», « Zadonshchina», « Prayer of Daniel the Imprisoner"and some other works, perhaps the most interesting in ancient Russian literature to our contemporaries. However, for the medieval reader, whose heart was turned primarily to God, and not to earthly human problems, they were not “the most important” among literary texts. No matter how difficult it may be for a person of the 21st century to comprehend this fact, the Gospel, lives of saints, psalms, akathists, etc., and by no means “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” and similar masterpieces of fiction, were in the center of attention of ancient Russian readers (namely that is why the “Word” was so easily lost and was only discovered by chance at the end of the 18th century).

After the above explanations, it is impossible not to join the thesis of D. S. Likhachev that “Old Russian literature before the 16th century. was united with the literature of other Orthodox countries." As a result, if you turn to manuals such as “Ancient Serbian Literature”, “Ancient Bulgarian Literature”, etc., the reader will immediately encounter in them many works known to him from the course of Old Russian literature.

For example, in the “History of Slavic Literatures” by academician Alexander Nikolaevich Pypin(1833–1904) and Vladimir Danilovich Spasovich(1829–1906) those mentioned above by Academician Likhachev appear as ancient Bulgarian (and not ancient Russian!) Prologue», « Palea», « Alexandria”, etc. Moreover, according to the authors, it was the Bulgarians who created “an extensive literature in the Old Church Slavonic language, which was completely passed on to the Russians and Serbs”; “the church relations of the Russians with the Bulgarians and with Mount Athos, the close proximity of the Serbs with the Bulgarians established an exchange of manuscripts between them”; “As a result, the Serbian writer represents the general type that we see in the Bulgarian and ancient Russian writers of this kind.”

In turn, I. V. Yagich in his “History of Serbo-Croatian Literature” stated the same trend: “Ancient Serbian original(italics mine. - Yu. M.) works constitute a very insignificant part of the rest of the literature."

I. V. Yagich admitted that “from our current point of view,” “a thin notebook of medieval folk songs and the like” seems more important than “the entire huge stock of biblical, theological, and liturgical works translated by the Orthodox Slavs.” However, he immediately emphasized that one must “vividly imagine the views of those times, according to which there was no occupation more sacred than this.”

Unfortunately, the actual discovery of “thin notebooks” of this kind is extremely rare. As a result, in the era of romanticism, some West Slavic patriots (in the Czech Republic) could not resist compiling such artistic hoaxes, How Kraledvor manuscript(1817, “discovered” in the town of Kralevodvor).

This “notebook” of “the newest works of ancient Czech literature,” as V.I. Lamansky ironized, is a collection of masterful stylizations of Slavic antiquity. The Kraledvor manuscript includes, for example, epic songs about knightly tournaments and feasts, about the victory of the Czechs over the Saxons, about the expulsion of the Poles from Prague, about the victory over the Tatars, etc. The lyrical poems present the usual love theme, and the influence of Russian folklore is noticeable.

The author of the texts was Vaclav Hanka(1791–1861), famous Czech cultural figure and educator. And soon the student Josef Linda“found” a manuscript with “The Love Song of King Wenceslas I” (Zelenogorsk manuscript). Thinking in terms of romanticism, they both clearly wanted to elevate the historical past of their people, who, after the defeat of the Czechs at the Battle of White Mountain (1620), were actually enslaved by the Austrian feudal lords.

Many people believed in the authenticity of the Kraledvor manuscript almost until the beginning of the 20th century. This beautiful hoax was exposed by philological scientists - linguists and paleographers, who discovered errors in verb tenses, endings, letter forms impossible in ancient times, etc., as well as historians who pointed out factual inconsistencies. At the same time, there is no doubt that the stylizations of Ganka and Linda had a great positive impact on contemporary literature, giving rise to many bright artistic variations, imagery and plots revealed in them.

Around the middle of the 17th century. Old Russian literature was replaced and surprisingly quickly - over the course of two generations - the literature of modern times took hold in society. This means literature in the narrow strict sense of the word - artistic, having the system of genres familiar to us to this day (poem, poem, ode, novel, story, tragedy, comedy, etc.). Of course, such a rapid spread new literature due to the fact that the prerequisites for its appearance in Rus' gradually took shape and invisibly accumulated over the course of several previous centuries.

It is not difficult to feel the differences between modern literature and ancient Russian literature by comparing, for example, “The Life of Sergius of Radonezh” (written in the era of Dmitry Donskoy by Epiphanius the Wise) with the novel by Leo Tolstoy (or even with “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum”) or by comparing the ancient Orthodox Christian akathist and spiritual ode to Derzhavin. In addition to clearly visible specific genre and style differences, there were also global differences.

The author of the life of the saint and the compiler of the chronicle, the author of the church akathist were engaged in a sacred craft - the aesthetic principle, to the extent of personal talent, of course, entered into their works, but still as a side effect. In ancient Russian writing there were separate works where, just like in the literature of modern times, the artistic side prevails (the above-mentioned “The Tale of Igor’s Host”, “The Teaching” of Vladimir Monomakh, “The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land”, “The Prayer of Daniil the Zatochnik”, etc. ). However, they are few in number and stand apart (although, we repeat, for the reader of the 21st century, these works of art in the narrow sense of the word are perhaps the most interesting and internally close).

The creative tasks of the chronicler, the author of a historical tale, the author of a patericon life, a solemn church sermon, an akathist, etc. corresponded to a special (hardly understandable to a person of our time without special philological training) “aesthetics of the canons” (or “aesthetics of identity”).

This aesthetics professed fidelity to “divinely inspired” authoritative models and a sophisticated reproduction of their main features in one’s own work (with subtle innovations in detail, but not in general). Thus, the ancient Russian reader of hagiography knew in advance how the author would describe the life of a saint - the genre of hagiography included a system of canonically strict rules, and hagiographic works were similar to each other, like siblings; their content was in a number of ways predictable in advance.

This feature of Old Russian literature, reflecting the socio-psychological characteristics of the people of the Russian Orthodox Middle Ages, as well as the essence of that complex cultural and historical phenomenon, which is now called “Old Russian literature”, was replaced in the 17th century. alive to this day with the “aesthetics of novelty.”

Writers of modern times do not engage in “sacred craft”, but in art as such; the aesthetic principle is the primary condition for their creativity; they care about recording their authorship, strive to ensure that their works do not resemble the works of their predecessors, are “artistically original,” and the reader appreciates and considers the unpredictability of the development of artistic content and the uniqueness of the plot as a natural condition.

New Russian literature at the initial stage was literature baroque. Baroque came to us through Poland and Belarus. The actual founder of Moscow Baroque poetry Simeon of Polotsk(1629–1680) was a Belarusian invited to Moscow by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Among the other most prominent representatives of Baroque poetry can be named a resident of Kiev Ivan Velichkovsky, and at the beginning of the 18th century. - St. Dimitry Rostovsky (1651–1709), Feofan Prokopovich(1681–1736), satirical poet Antioch Cantemir(1708–1744), etc. At the origins of the prose of the Baroque era stands the powerful figure of the archpriest Avvakum Petrova (1620–1682).

It is necessary to take into account the special status of grammatical teachings in the cultural consciousness of the Baroque era. “Grammar,” as F.I. Buslaev put it, “was considered the first step... on the ladder of sciences and arts.” About Smotritsky’s grammar, he recalls that “they studied using it in the time of Peter the Great; it was also the gate of wisdom for Lomonosov himself. In addition to its literary and educational significance, it is still sacredly revered among schismatic Old Believers (Buslaev means its Moscow edition of 1648 - Yu. M.), because in the verses or poems appended to this book for example, the form Isus is used - obviously for verse and measure, vm. Jesus. This explains the extreme high cost of the 1648 edition.” Further, Buslaev openly laughs at such a religious celebration of grammar by the Old Believers, recalling that Smotritsky “submitted to the pope and was a Uniate.”

M. Smotritsky, a graduate of the Jesuit Vilna Academy, in the future, indeed, a supporter of union with the Roman Catholic Church, from an early age came into contact with circles that cultivated typically Baroque ideas, ideas and theories (Baroque in Catholic countries arose much earlier than in Rus', and the “Jesuit Baroque” was its real offshoot).

It should be noted that our Baroque was closely connected, sometimes merged, with other arts. In other words, he was distinguished by his complex artistic synthesis. For example, the literary image is often closely intertwined in the works of this time with the pictorial image.

In the field of painting of the 17th century. changes similar to those in literature occurred. Secular painting quickly takes shape here - portraits, genre scenes, landscapes (previously religious painting dominated here - icons, frescoes, etc.). Icon painting itself is evolving - authors appear who create so-called “life-like” icons, and a sharp struggle flares up between them and supporters of the old style.

Verbal-textual manuals for icon painters, the so-called “Originals”, which existed before, acquire new qualities of real works of literature. Speaking about this phenomenon, F. I. Buslaev wrote:

“Thus, expanding its limits more and more, and getting closer and closer to literary interests, the Russian artistic Original insensitively merges with the ABC Book, which for our ancestors was not only a dictionary and grammar, but also an entire encyclopedia. It is difficult to imagine a more friendly, more harmonious agreement between purely artistic and literary interests after this, so to speak, organic fusion of such opposites as painting and grammar with a dictionary.”

Buslaev further examines the example of pictorial “symbolism of letters” in the Original of the “era of syllabic verses” (that is, the Baroque era. - Yu. M.), where “on each page, in cinnabar, one of the letters” of the name “Jesus Christ” is written in sequential order, “and under the letter there is an explanation in syllabic verses, namely:

І (the first letter of the name in the old spelling. - Yu. M.) in the form of a pillar with a rooster on top:

Our Jesus Christ is tied to the pillar,

Velmi was always scourged from the torment of the evil ones.

WITH with the image inside his pieces of silver:

They bought a piece of silver for Jesus for thirty.

So that he would be condemned to death.

U Church Slavonic, in the form of pincers:

Nails were removed from hands and feet with pliers,

Sometimes they took it down from the cross with their hands.

WITH with a picture of his four nails inside.<…>

X with an image of a cane and a spear arranged in a cross.<…>

R in the form of a bowl...<…>

AND in the form of a staircase...<…>

T in the form of a cross...<…>

ABOUT in the form of a crown of thorns...<…>

WITH with a hammer and instruments of punishment...<…>».

The pictorial principle penetrated into literature more deeply than in similar syllabic couplets. Thus, Simeon Polotsky, Ivan Velichkovsky and other authors created a number of poems-drawings (in the form of a star, heart, cross, bowl and other figures); they wrote such semantically structured texts in a special way as palindromons, crayfish, labyrinths, etc. , they used letters of different colors for figurative and expressive purposes.

Here is an example of “controversial cancer” from Ivan Velichkovsky - in his words, a verse “whose words, when read in a flash, are disgusting (opposite in meaning. - Yu. M.) text express":

Btsa - With me, life is not the fear of death, - Evva

I will not die by living.

That is: “Life is with me, not the fear of death, by me you will not die” (Mother of God); “Fear of death, not life with me, Die, undead with me” (Eve).

On your own historical path Russian literature from the second half of the 19th century. managed to take the position of one of the world leaders. Already I. S. Turgenev, without saying a word, was called the best writer in Europe by the Goncourt brothers, George Sand, Flaubert. Soon L. N. Tolstoy gained enormous prestige throughout the world as an artist and thinker. Later, readers all over the world discovered F. M. Dostoevsky, A. P. Chekhov, A. M. Gorky, M. A. Sholokhov, M. A. Bulgakov...

Contribution of other Slavic literatures to the world literary process was not so global. Thus, writers of Little Russian (Ukrainian) origin in the 18th–19th centuries. most often they wrote in the Great Russian (Moscow) dialect, that is, they became figures Russian literature. It refers to Vasily Vasilievich Kapnist (1757–1823), Vasily Trofimovich Narezhny (1780–1825), Nikolai Ivanovich Gnedich (1784–1833), Alexey Alekseevich Perovsky(1787–1836, pseudonym Antony Pogorelsky), Orest Mikhailovich Somov (1793–1833), Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809–1852), Nestor Vasilievich Kukolnik (1809–1868), Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817–1875), Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko(1853–1921), etc.

N. S. Trubetskoy noted: “Kotlyarevsky is considered the founder of the new Ukrainian literary language. The works of this writer ("Aeneid", "Natalka-Poltavka", "Moskal-Charivnik", "Ode to Prince Kurakin") are written in the common Little Russian dialect of the Poltava region and in their content belong to the same genre of poetry, in which the deliberate use of simple vernacular quite appropriate and motivated by the content itself. The poems of the most important Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, were written for the most part in the spirit and style of Little Russian folk poetry and, therefore, again by their very content motivate the use of the common language. In all these works, just like in stories from the folk life of good Ukrainian prose writers, the language is deliberately vernacular, that is, as if deliberately unliterary. In this genre of works, the writer deliberately limits himself to the sphere of such concepts and ideas for which ready-made words already exist in the unsophisticated folk language, and chooses a topic that gives him the opportunity to use only those words that actually exist - and, moreover, precisely in given value- in living folk speech."

The Balkan Slavs, and in the west the Czechs and Slovaks, were under foreign oppression for several centuries.

The Bulgarians and Serbs did not experience processes parallel to the Russians in replacing medieval literature with literature of a new type. The situation was completely different. Bulgarian and Serbian literature experienced a break in their development of more than four centuries. This unfortunate cultural and historical phenomenon directly follows from the occupation of the Balkans by the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages.

Bulgarians are a Slavic people, but the name of this people comes from the name of a Turkic nomadic tribe Bulgars, in the 7th century. n. e. under the leadership of Khan Asparukh, who occupied the lands of seven Slavic tribes on the Danube. On these lands Asparuh founded his Bulgarian kingdom with its capital in the city Pliska. Soon the conquerors were assimilated into the incomparably more numerous Slavic environment.

In 1371, the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Shishman, after decades of increasingly weakening resistance, recognized himself as a vassal of the Turkish Sultan Murad I. Then in 1393, the Turks took the then Bulgarian capital of Veliko Tarnovo. Three years later, the last pillar of Bulgarian statehood was taken by storm - the city of Vidin (1396). A Turkish governor settled in Sofia.

Serbia fell under the Turkish yoke after its defeat in the battle with the Turks on Kosovo Polje(1389), that is, approximately in the same years (in Rus', nine years earlier, the battle with the Tatars took place on the Kulikovo Field, which had a completely different outcome for the Russians).

The indigenous Bulgarian and Serbian population engaged in peasant labor, paid unaffordable taxes to the Turks, but stubbornly resisted Islamization. However, real picture The subsequent vicissitudes of the history of both peoples were very ambiguous and complex. Feudal strife led to the fact that some of the Slavs from time to time found themselves in one or another military clashes against Catholic Christians on the side of the Muslim Turks. In relation to Serbian history, a number of facts of this kind were cited in his monograph “The Epic of the Peoples of Yugoslavia” by I. N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, who wrote:

“Thus, from the end of the 15th to the end of the 18th century. Serbs were in both camps, fighting for the cause of Christian sovereigns and Turkish sultans... there was no period in which the Serbian people did not have weapons. The idea of ​​an amorphous Serbian peasant mass... does not correspond to historical reality.<…>

In the 15th–17th centuries in Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro and Dalmatia there was not a single area in which the haiduks did not operate.”

Some Serbs and Croats were nevertheless forcibly converted to Islam. Their descendants now make up a special ethnic group called “ Muslims”(that is, “non-Muslim”). The Bulgarians and Serbs survived some Orthodox monasteries, where the rewriting and reproduction of literary texts continued (the Bulgarians did not yet know printing even in the 17th century) - on Mount Athos, the Bulgarian Zografsky and Serbian Hilendarsky monasteries, as well as the Troyan, Rylsky (it was destroyed several times, but was restored); “in the monastery of Manasseh the last center of national culture of the Serbs arose in the Middle Ages”: “There were workshops where they copied and decorated manuscripts in Church Slavonic, which was also the literary language. Serbian scribes were strongly influenced by the destroyed Bulgarian school of the Old Slavic language in Tarnovo.”

The oppressed people gradually began to look at the ancient handwritten book as a national shrine.

Bulgarian and Serbian priests were in fact the only bookish (and generally literate) people in this difficult era for the cultures of the southern Slavs. They often went to study in Russia and then wrote in a language in which, in addition to Church Slavonic basis, there were not only words from the folk language, but also Russianisms.

In 1791, the first Serbian newspaper began to be published in Vienna. Serbian Novini" In 1806, the first printed Bulgarian work “ Weekly» Sophrony Vrachansky.

Bulgarian monk Paisiy in 1762 he wrote a history of the Bulgarians, imbued with a desire for national independence, which circulated in manuscript for decades, and was published only in 1844. In Serbia and Montenegro, the Montenegrin prince (and metropolitan) awakened the people with his fiery sermons Petr Petrovich Iegosh(1813–1851). Montenegrin by origin and the greatest romantic poet, he wrote the dramatic poem “ Mountain crown» ( Gorskiy Vijenac, 1847), calling the Slavs to unity and depicting the life of the Montenegrin people.

In the era of romanticism, the Bulgarians and Serbs began to develop fiction. Poets are at its origins in Bulgaria Petko Slaveykov (1827–1895), Lyuben Karavelov(1835–1879) and Hristo Botev(1848–1876). These are revolutionary romantics, whose bright talent was objectively prevented from manifesting itself in full force only by the lack of the necessary national literary and artistic tradition behind them.

The great Bulgarian poet, prose writer and playwright worked under the great fruitful influence of Russian literature Ivan Vazov(1850–1921), author of the historical novel " Under the yoke"(1890).

Serbian poetic romanticism is represented by such poets as Djura Jaksic(1832–1878) and Laza Kostic(1841–1910), among the Montenegrins - for example, the work of the king Nikola I Petrovich(1841–1921). In the Vojvodina region, a center has developed in the city of Novi Sad Slavic culture. A remarkable educator acted here Dositej Obradovic from Vojvodina (1739–1811), the actual founder of modern literature.

A playwright with a sparkling satirical gift later appeared in Serbian literature Branislav Nusic(1864–1938), author of comedies " Suspicious person"(based on Gogol's "The Inspector General") (1887), " Patronage"(1888), " Madam Minister"(1929), " Mister Dollar"(1932), " Saddened relatives"(1935), " Dr."(1936), " Deceased"(1937), etc., as well as full of self-irony " Autobiographies».

Laureate Nobel Prize in 1961 became a Bosnian Serb Ivo Andric(1892–1975). Among his historical novels, it should be noted first of all “ Bridge on the Drina"(1945), " Travnica Chronicle"(1945), " Damn yard"(1954), etc.

Czech and Slovak literature, the literature of the Balkan Slavs (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Macedonians, etc.), as well as the cultures of these Slavic peoples as a whole, have essentially survived centuries break in development.

If we mean the Czechs, this truly tragic collision is a consequence of the seizure of Czech lands by Austrian feudal lords (that is, Catholic Germans) after the defeat of the Czechs in the Battle of White Mountain in the 17th century.

Medieval Czechs were a courageous and freedom-loving people. A century and a half before the reform movement of Calvinists, Lutherans, etc. split the Catholic world, it was the Czechs who fought against Catholicism.

Great figure of Czech culture, preacher and church reformer Jan Hus(1371–1415), rector of Bethlehem Chapel in the old part of Prague, and later rector of the University of Prague, in 1412 sharply opposed the Catholic practice of trading indulgences. Hus had already begun reading sermons in Czech rather than in Latin. He also criticized some other Catholic institutions relating to church property, the power of the pope, etc. Hus also wrote in Latin, using his knowledge to expose the vices nesting in the Catholic Church (“ About six fornications»).

Acting as a public educator, Jan Hus also devoted his energy to philological work. In his essay " About Czech spelling"he suggested for the Latin alphabet superscripts, which made it possible to convey sounds characteristic of the Czech language.

The Catholics lured Hus to the Council of Constance. He received a safe conduct, which, after his arrest, was blatantly disavowed on the grounds that the promises made to the “heretic” were invalid. Jan Hus was burned at the stake (he has not been “rehabilitated” by the Catholic Church to this day). The Czech people responded to this atrocity with a national uprising.

A nobleman stood at the head of the Hussites Jan Zizka(1360–1424), who turned out to be a wonderful commander. He also fought at Grunwald, where he lost an eye. Zizka's army repulsed several crusades organized by Catholic knights against the Hussites. Jan Zizka created new type troops traveling on armored carts and having artillery. The carts, lined up in a row or in a circle and secured with chains, turned into a fortress on wheels. More than once the Hussites brought down heavily loaded carts from the mountain, crushing and putting to flight knights who outnumbered them many times over.

Having lost his second eye in battle, Zizka continued to command the troops as a blind man. It was only when he died of the plague during the siege of Przybyslav that the united Catholic forces managed to curb the Hussite movement, which had terrorized all of Europe for more than 20 years.

In the next 16th century, the Austrians infiltrated the throne in Prague. Of these, Archduke Rudolf II of Habsburg remained in history as a philanthropist and ruler prone to religious tolerance. Under him, astronomers Tycho Brahe and Kepler worked in Prague, and Giordano Bruno was hiding from the Inquisition. Protestantism spread in the Czech Republic.

In 1618, Protestant Czechia rebelled against the rule of Catholic Austrians. This uprising ended in defeat at the Battle of White Mountain (1620).

Upon entering Prague, the victors carried out a brutal massacre. The Slavic aristocracy was diligently destroyed. The Austrians set themselves the task now and forever to suppress the people's ability to resist. Even the tomb of Jan Zizka in 1623 (199 years after the death of the commander) was destroyed by order of the Austrian emperor, and his remains were thrown out.

The era of 300 years of domination in the Czech Republic by the Austrian Habsburg dynasty began (it ended in 1918 after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of independent Czechoslovakia). Austrian feudal lords and their henchmen systematically suppressed national culture in the Czech Republic.

In the Czech Republic already in the 14th century. there was developed medieval literature in the native language (chronicles, lives of saints, chivalric novels, dramatic works etc.). The works (sermons, epistles and other philosophical and theological works) of the great reformer Jan Hus were written in Czech. A bishop with great artistic talent Jan Amos Comenius(1592–1670), teacher and theologian, used Czech along with Latin. For example, his allegory, which is distinguished by its high literary merits, is written in Czech. Labyrinth of the world and paradise of the heart"(1631). However, J. Comenius died in exile in Holland. The Germans ruled the homeland.

In 1620 the written tradition itself was interrupted. From now on, the Czechs began to write in German, and this was controlled by the winners with truly German punctuality. The victors were especially zealous in destroying the Slavic culture of the vanquished during the first century and a half. Counter-Reformation and forced Germanization were carried out; Jesuits burned Czech books at the stake. As a result, in the past, independent Czechs were reduced to the status of German serfs ( serfdom was abolished here in 1848). The national nobility was destroyed (the surviving Slavic nobles mainly tried to imitate themselves as “Germans”).

In the peasant Slavic environment, during the centuries of Austrian dominance, oral folk art continued to develop latently. But writers of Slavic nationality, when they appeared, created their works in German. Baroque art in the conquered lands was cultivated by Catholic clergy, did not produce significant works and was not directly related to the culture of the Slavs as such.

Only at the end of the 18th century. patriotic philologist Joseph Dobrowski(1753–1829) took up the grammatical description of the Czech language and issues of Czech literature, writing (in German) its history, scientifically substantiating the rules of syllabic-tonic versification for Czech poetry. The literary language had to be created anew. N. S. Trubetskoy speaks about this situation like this:

“Thanks to the activities of Jan Hus and the so-called Czech brothers, the Czech language by the 16th century. took on a completely formed appearance. But unfavorable circumstances interrupted its further development, and the Czech literary tradition almost completely dried up for a long time. Only at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. The revival of the Czech literary language began. At the same time, the figures of the Czech Renaissance turned not to modern folk dialects, but to the interrupted tradition of the old Czech language of the end of the 16th century. Of course, this language had to be somewhat renewed, but nevertheless, thanks to this connection with the interrupted tradition, the Modern Czech language received a completely unique appearance: it is archaic, but artificially archaic, so that elements of completely different eras of linguistic development in it coexist with each other in artificial cohabitation.”

The practical consequence of this is that literary Czech is very different from spoken Czech. Having learned to read works of Czech literature fluently, a foreigner suddenly faces the fact that he does not understand the live speech of the Czechs, and they do not understand him when trying to communicate.

Romantic poets began their creativity in Czech Frantisek Celakovsky (1799–1852), Vaclav Hanka (1791–1861), Karel Jaromir Erben(1811–1870), etc. Old Czech literary monuments began to be republished.

In the second half of the 19th century. the most brilliant poet and prose writer of the period of national revival appeared in the Czech Republic Svatopluk Czech(1846–1908). His defiantly bold " Slave songs» ( Pisn? otroka) called the Czech people to fight for freedom. Historical poems from the glorious Czech past were rich in plot and also enjoyed great readership. Satirical novels " Mr. Broucek's true journey to the moon» (« Pravy vylet pana Brou?ka do M?sice", 1888) and " A new epochal journey of Mr. Broucek, this time to the fifteenth century» (« Novy epochalni vylet pana Brou?ka, tentokrat do patnacteho stoleti", 1888) anticipated the satirical prose of J. Hasek and K. Capek.

Contemporary of S. Cech Alois Irasek(1851–1930) began as a poet, but, having switched to prose with plots from Czech history, became a classic of national literature (he also wrote historical dramas). He created a series of novels about the Hussites " Between the currents» ( Mezi proud, 1887–1890), " Against all» ( Proti vsem, 1893), " Brotherhood» ( Bratrstvo, 1898–1908); plays about Jan Hus and Jan Zizka.

In Czechoslovakia, which was formed after the end of the First World War, the satirist and humorist was popular Jaroslav Hasek (1883–1923) With his anti-war novel " The adventures of the good soldier Schweik» ( Osudy dobreho vojaka ?vejka za sv?tove valky, 1921–1923). Hasek was a communist and a participant in the Russian Civil War, which contributed to his fame in the USSR.

Karel Capek(1890–1938), playwright and prose writer, famous for his plays " Makropoulos remedy» ( Vec Makropulos, 1922), " Mother» ( Matka, 1938), " R.U.R.» ( Rossumovi Univerzalni Roboti, 1920) and others, novels " Factory of the absolute» ( Tovarna na absolutno, 1922), " Krakatite» ( Krakatit, 1922), " Gordubal» ( Hordubal, 1937), " Meteor», « War with the salamanders» ( Valka s mloky, 1936), etc. Along with the Pole S. Lem, Capek can be recognized as a classic of philosophical fiction. Karel Capek died, having a hard time surviving the Munich Agreement, which handed over his homeland to the power of the Germans.

Centuries of slavish dependence on the Germans, apparently, did not pass without a trace for the Czechs as a nation, having taught them to humbly accept the vicissitudes of fate. As you know, Hitler met desperate resistance in Poland in 1939. A year earlier, fascist troops invaded the Czech Republic almost without firing a single shot. The Czech Republic, at that time a powerful industrial country with an excellent defense industry and a strong army equipped with the most modern weapons (much stronger than the Polish army), surrendered to the Germans. (Subsequently, Czech tanks fought during the Great Patriotic War against the USSR, and Czech soldiers abounded in Hitler’s army.)

In 1938, some in the Czech Republic felt doomed that their usual hosts, the Germans, had returned... A poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, who loved Czechoslovakia with all her heart, recalls these dramatic days “ One officer" The Russian poetess prefaced this work with the following epigraph:

“In the Sudetes, on the forested Czech border, an officer with twenty soldiers, leaving the soldiers in the forest, went out onto the road and began shooting at the approaching Germans. Its end is unknown ( From September newspapers 1938)».

Tsvetaeva writes:

Czech forest -

The most forested.

Year - nine hundred

Thirty-eighth.

Day and month? - peaks, echo:

The day the Germans entered the Czechs!

The forest is reddish,

The day is blue-gray.

Twenty soldiers

One officer.

Round-faced and round-faced

An officer guards the border.

My forest is all around,

My bush, all around,

My house is all around

This house is mine.

I won’t give up the forest,

I won't rent out the house

I won’t give up the edge,

I won’t give up an inch!

Leafy darkness.

Hearts are frightened:

Is it a Prussian move?

Is there a heartbeat?

My forest, goodbye!

My century, goodbye!

My land, goodbye!

This region is mine!

Let the whole region

At the enemy's feet!

I'm under your feet -

I won't give up the stone!

The clatter of boots.

Germans! - leaf.

The rumble of iron.

Germans! - the whole forest.

Germans! - peal

Mountains and caves.

Threw the soldier

One is an officer.

From the forest - in a lively manner

To the community - yes with a revolver!

Incurred

Good news,

What - saved

Czech honor!

So it's a country

So it’s not delivered,

Means war

Still - it was!

My land, vivat!

Bite it, Herr!

...Twenty soldiers.

One officer.

Consequences of a break in cultural and historical development during the 17th–18th centuries. are already visible from the obvious fact that Czech literature, unfortunately, has shown little of itself at the international level. However, writers like A. Irasek and K. Capek, and other authors translated into foreign languages, worthily carry its ideas and themes to a variety of countries. Russian readers have great sympathy for Czech literature.

Even in the early Middle Ages, the lands of the Slovaks became part of Hungary, whose feudal authorities invariably and brutally suppressed the Slovak national culture. However, in the 16th century. Hungarians lost their national independence. The German language was introduced in Hungary, and the local feudal lords themselves had a hard time. Together with their long-time oppressors, the Hungarians, the Slovaks fell under the scepter of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty, which soon absorbed the Czechs. The nuance is that for the Slovaks, with this subjugation of them to the Austrians, i.e., the Germans, the cruel rule over them weakened Hungarians, against which the Slovaks fought for centuries. In addition, unlike the Czechs, the Slovaks were Catholics, like the Austrians - that is, there was no religious confrontation here. And today, a noticeable majority of citizens of the Slovak Republic formed in 1993 are Catholics (almost all others are Protestants, as in the Czech Republic).

(The Slovak state was first created - for political reasons - by Nazi Germany after its capture of Czechoslovakia. After the liberation of the Czechs and Slovaks by Soviet troops, the unified Czechoslovak Republic was restored (as a socialist one). In other words, in the period 1918–1993, Slovakia was almost always in composition Czechoslovakia.)

Slovaks were greatly influenced by Czech culture in general and literature in particular. From the 16th century those Slovaks who became Protestants. In this environment, people willingly wrote in Czech - for example, poets Juraj Palkovich(1769–1850), author of the book of poems "Muse of the Slovak Mountains" (1801), and Boguslav Tablitz(1769–1832), who published his collections “Poetry and Notes” one after another (1806–1812). Tablitz also published an anthology of Slovak poetry of the 18th century. “Slovak Poets” (1804) - also in Czech.

IN Catholic Slovak circles at the end of the 18th century. a philologically interesting attempt was made to create a system of Slovak spelling (the so-called “bernolacchina” - named after its creator, a Slovak Catholic priest Antonina Bernolaka(1762–1813). A number of books were published at Bernolaccina. Although this cumbersome system never caught on, Bernolak attracted the efforts of national cultural figures to create a Slovak literary language. However, N. S. Trubetskoy made a keen and capacious observation:

“Despite the desire of the founders and main figures of Slovak literature to dissociate themselves from the Czech language, adherence to the Czech literary and linguistic tradition is so natural for Slovaks that it is impossible to resist it. The differences between the Slovak and Czech literary languages ​​are mainly grammatical and phonetic, but the vocabulary of both languages ​​is almost the same, especially in the sphere of concepts and ideas of higher mental culture.”

Started writing poetry in Slovak Jan Kollar(1793–1852), who created odes, elegies, and wrote the patriotic poem “ Daughter of Glory"(1824).

Slovak by nationality was one of the largest philologists of the Slavic world Pavel Josef Safarik(1795–1861). Living in Prague for many years, he wrote mainly in Czech. His most famous work is “ Slavic antiquities"(1837).

Philologist and Hegelian philosopher Ljudevit Stuhr(1815–1856) in the 30s years XIX V. headed the department of Czechoslovak literature at the Bratislava Lyceum. He promoted the writer's loyalty to the spirit of the people, which is refracted in oral folk art.

Romantic poets worked under the influence of Stuhr's ideas Janko Kralj(1822–1876), who is characterized by rebellious motives (for example, a cycle of his poems about the “Slovak Robin Hood” robber Janosik) and prose writer Jan Kalinchak(1822–1871), who wrote historical stories about the Slavic struggle for independence - “ Bozkovići"(1842), " Milko's grave" (1845), " Prince Liptovsky"(1847), etc.

In fact, the named authors and some of their contemporaries played the role of the founders of the young (in historical terms, and a century and a half later still quite young) Slovak literature. This literature is full of fresh energy, but its entry into the wider international arena is a matter of the future.