Sociocultural regional studies. Folk art

The art of ancient Rus'.

Writing and education Socio-political thought and literature.

Acceptance of Christianity.

Slavic paganism. Folklore.

The first mentions of the Slavs in Greek, Roman, Arab and Byzantine sources date back to the turn of the 1st millennium AD. e. By the 6th century, the eastern branch of the Slavs was separated. In the 6th-8th centuries. In conditions of growing external danger, a process of political consolidation of the East Slavic (Polyans, Drevlyans, Northerners, Krivichi, Vyatichi, etc.) and some non-Slavic tribes (Ves, Merya, Muroma, Chud) took place, culminating in the formation of the Old Russian state - Kievan Rus (IX century) . Being one of the largest states of medieval Europe, it stretched from north to south from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the shores of the Black Sea, from west to east - from the Baltic and the Carpathians to the Volga. Thus, Rus' historically represented a contact zone between Scandinavia and Byzantium, Western Europe and the Arab East. But the interaction of cultures for Rus' was not reduced to slavish imitation or a mechanical combination of heterogeneous elements. Possessing its own cultural potential, pre-Christian Rus' creatively assimilated influence from outside, which ensured its organic entry into the pan-European historical and cultural landscape and gave rise to “universality” as the most characteristic feature of Russian culture. As a result The unification of East Slavic tribes gradually formed the Old Russian nationality, which had a certain common territory, language, culture and was the cradle of three fraternal peoples - Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian.

A high level of figurative, poetic, irrational worldview developed among the Eastern Slavs in the “preliterate” period, in the era of paganism. Slavic paganism was an integral part of the complex of primitive views, beliefs and rituals of primitive man for many millennia. The term “paganism” is conditional; it is used to designate that diverse range of phenomena (animism, magic, pandemonism, totemism, etc.) that are included in the concept of early forms of religion. The specificity of paganism is the nature of its evolution, in which the new does not displace the old, but is layered on top of it. The unknown Russian author of “The Lay of Idols” (XII century) identified three main stages in the development of Slavic paganism. At the first, they “put offerings (sacrifices) to ghouls and beregins,” that is, they worshiped the evil and good spirits who controlled the elements (water sources, forests, etc.). This is a dualistic animism of ancient times, when people believed that deity in the form of a spirit lives in various objects and phenomena, and animals, plants and even rocks have an immortal soul. At the second stage, the Slavs worshiped Rod and women in labor. According to B. A. Rybakov, Rod is the ancient agricultural deity of the Universe, and women in labor are deities of well-being and fertility. According to the ideas of the ancients, Rod, being in heaven, controlled rain and thunderstorms; sources of water on earth, as well as underground fire, are associated with him. The harvest depended on Rod; it is not without reason that in East Slavic languages ​​the word freak was used to mean harvest. The Feast of the Family and Women in Childbirth is a harvest festival. According to the ideas of the Slavs, Rod gave life to all living things, hence a whole range of concepts: people, nature, relatives, etc. Noting the special significance of the cult of Rod, the author of the “Tale of Idols” compared it with the cults of Osiris and Artemis. Obviously, Rod personifies the actual Slavic tendency of the transition to monotheism. With the founding of a single pantheon of pagan gods in Kyiv, as well as during times of dual faith, the importance of Rod decreased - he became the patron saint of the family and home. At the third stage, the Slavs prayed to Perun, i.e., a state cult of the princely-squad god of war, who was initially revered as the god of thunderstorms, took shape.

In addition to those mentioned, at different stages of paganism the Slavs had many other deities. The most important in pre-Perun times were Svarog (god of the sky and heavenly fire), his sons - Svarozhich (god of earthly fire) and Dazhdbog (god of the sun and light, giver of all blessings), as well as other solar gods, who had other names among different tribes - Yarilo, Horse. The names of some gods are associated with the veneration of the sun at different times of the year (Kolyada, Kupalo, Yarilo). Stribog was considered the god of the air elements (wind, storms, etc.). Veles (Volos) was the patron of livestock and the god of wealth, probably because in those days livestock was the main wealth. And among the warriors, Veles was considered the god of music and songs, the patron of art; it is not without reason that in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” the legendary singer Boyan is called Veles’s grandson. In general, the cult of Veles was unusually widespread in all Slavic lands: judging by the chronicles, all of Rus' swore by his name. According to popular beliefs, Veles’s companion was the goddess Mokosh (Makosh, Mokosha, Moksha), who was somehow connected with sheep breeding, and was also the goddess of fertility, the patroness of women, the hearth and the economy. For a long time after the adoption of Christianity, Russian women revered their pagan patroness. This is evidenced by one of the questionnaires of the 16th century, according to which the priest at confession had to ask the parishioners “Didn’t you go to Mokosha?”

Places of worship were pagan temples, temples, temples, in which the Magi - priests of the pagan religion - prayed, performed various rituals, made sacrifices to the gods (the first harvest, the first offspring of livestock, herbs and wreaths of fragrant flowers, and in some cases living people and even children).

Realizing the importance of religion for strengthening princely power and statehood, Vladimir Svyatoslavich in 98O tried to reform paganism, giving it the features of a monotheistic religion. The pantheon, unified for all of Rus', included the gods most revered by different tribes, including, in addition to the Slavic ones, the Persian - Khors, and the Finno-Ugric (?) - Mokosh. Primacy in the hierarchy of gods was given, of course, to the princely warrior god of war Perun, to increase whose authority Vladimir even ordered the resumption of human sacrifices. The composition of the Kyiv pantheon reveals the goals of the reform - strengthening the central government, consolidating the ruling class, unifying tribes, establishing new relations of social inequality. But the attempt to create a unified religious system, preserving old pagan beliefs, was unsuccessful. Reformed paganism retained the remnants of primitive equality, did not eliminate the possibility of traditional worship only of one’s own tribal deity, and did not contribute to the formation of new norms of morality and law that corresponded to the changes taking place in the socio-political sphere.

The pagan worldview found its artistic expression in folk art back in the pre-Christian era. Later, during the period of dual faith, the pagan tradition, persecuted in the sphere of official ideology and art, found refuge precisely in folklore, applied art, etc. Despite the official rejection of pre-Christian culture, it was the mutual influence of pagan and Christian traditions in the pre-Mongol period that contributed to the “Russification” Byzantine artistic norms and, thus, the creation of an original culture of medieval Rus'.

Since time immemorial, the oral folk poetry of the ancient Slavs has developed. Spells and spells (hunting, shepherding, agricultural); proverbs and sayings that reflected ancient life; riddles, often containing traces of ancient magical ideas; ritual songs associated with the pagan agricultural calendar; wedding songs and funeral laments, songs at feasts and funeral feasts. The origin of fairy tales is also connected with the pagan past.

A special place in oral folk art was occupied by “old times” - epic epics. The epics of the Kyiv cycle, associated with Kiev, with the Dnieper Slavutich, with Prince Vladimir Krasno Solnyshko, and heroes, began to take shape in the 10th-11th centuries. They expressed in their own way the social consciousness of an entire historical era, reflected the moral ideals of the people, and preserved the features of ancient life and events of everyday life. Oral folk art has been an inexhaustible source of images and subjects that have nourished Russian literature, fine arts, and music for centuries.

The folk art of the Eastern Slavs represents a huge and special field of study. Within the framework of the general course, we can touch only on its most basic phenomena. The variety of forms of folk art of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and the high artistic perfection of many of their works are such that only a few other peoples of the Soviet Union can compete with them in this regard.

Oral folk art (folklore, folk literature) of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians reveals a complex combination of old, traditional and new forms. Previous folklorists considered oral folk art exclusively as a monument of antiquity, believing that in the modern era, starting with the penetration of capitalism into the countryside, it is doomed to decline and disappearance. But Soviet folklorists have established that this is not true: folk art does not dry out even today; moreover, in the Soviet era, some traditional genres of folklore are revived, imbued with new content, and completely new ones are developed. “Folklore,” says one of the prominent Soviet folklorists, Yu. M. Sokolov, “is an echo of the past, but at the same time the loud voice of the present.”

The traditional genres of East Slavic folklore include: ritual songs, lyrical songs, folk theater, fairy tales, proverbs, sayings and riddles, epic poetry - epics and historical songs, spiritual poems.

Ritual songs are perhaps the oldest type of folk poetry. They accompanied various rituals from the calendar cycle, from Christmas to stubble. Together with these rituals, they arose in a distant era on the basis of the spontaneously materialistic labor attitude of the farmer to the natural environment, but they were also colored by magical ideas. Other ritual songs were associated with family rituals - these are wedding songs, funeral lamentations (lamentations, lamentations); Of the latter, the northern ones are especially interesting. Nowadays, with a few exceptions, this ritual poetry is a thing of the past.

Lyrical folk poetry is extremely diverse. It is dominated by sad motives generated by the difficult lot of the working people in the past. Love and family songs are distinguished, then songs about conscription and soldiering, about serfdom, barge haulers, coachmen, prison songs, comic-satirical songs and others. In addition to songs of peasant origin, from the 18th century. Factory worker poetry also began to emerge, which, however, retained close ties with village poetry.

Folk theater was once quite widespread. Among the Eastern Slavs this is mainly a puppet theater,
known in several forms. Among the Russians, the most famous theater is “Petrushki” (puppets worn and moved on the fingers); the main character of the performances is Petrushka, a brave, resourceful, witty hero who enters into a fight with a merchant, a policeman, a doctor and overcomes everyone; in this image the spontaneous protest of the people against social oppression found expression. Ukrainians and Belarusians were better known for another type of theater - the “nativity scene”, where dolls moved through slits in the floor of the stage; The content of the performances were partly church subjects, partly everyday satirical scenes. The third type of theater is “rayok” among the Russians: these are different pictures that were shown to the audience by rewinding between two rollers, and the rayoshnik gave humorous rhyming explanations.

Much less widespread was the theater of live actors. Only a few plays of this folk theater are known, which arose around the 18th century: these are “Tsar Maximilian”, “The Boat”, “The Naked Master”, etc.

In the old days in Rus' there were wandering professional actors - the so-called buffoons. But the government and the church persecuted them for satirical speeches against those in power, and already in the 18th century. The buffoons are gone.

The fabulous epic of the Eastern Slavs is extremely rich. It is customary to divide folk tales into types: tales about animals, fairy tales, fairy tales, legends, everyday tales, fairy tales, anecdotes, fairy tales and short stories. Fairy tales with an element of the miraculous are generally more ancient. But the opinion of previous researchers, especially supporters of the mythological school, is erroneous, that at the heart of every fairy tale, and above all, is a myth or religious idea. Soviet folklorists and ethnographers came to the conclusion that the fairy-tale creativity of the people from the very beginning existed independently of religious and mythological ideas, although, of course, there was mutual crossing of both. It is noted that (P. G. Bogatyrev), images of fairy tales among the Eastern Slavs - such as Baba Yaga, Koschey the Immortal, the Firebird - are not found at all in folk beliefs (i.e., the people do not believe in their existence) and, on the contrary, objects of popular belief - goblin, water goblin, brownie, etc. - almost never appear in fairy tales. Fairy tales of everyday content are associated with social themes, often have a satirical overtones and contain almost no elements of fantasy: here there are stories about a priest and his worker (a priest is always depicted with negative traits), about a stupid gentleman and lady, about a soldier, etc. In these In fairy tales, people captured their hostility towards the exploiters and sympathy for the disadvantaged.

Proverbs and sayings are extremely numerous. They also express folk wisdom, popular ideas about morality, and a critical attitude towards the exploitative system. It is known how widely classics of literature used and continue to use folk proverbs, and how often politicians use them in their speeches.

One of the most specific types of Russian folklore is the heroic epic, the so-called epics. Unlike other types of folklore, their distribution is limited: they are preserved almost exclusively in the north - in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Arkhangelsk, Vologda regions, Pechora, and in some places in Siberia. But by their origin, epics are associated with the ancient centers of Rus' - mainly with Kiev, Novgorod, and less with Moscow. They were created, according to most experts, between the 12th and 17th centuries. Soviet folklorists have established that epics, like other types of folk poetry, are not half-forgotten fragments of antiquity, but still live a full-blooded life, change, and are even enriched with new details. However, the main content of the epics is the exploits of ancient heroes. Of these, the most beloved is the peasant hero Ilya Muromets, next to him stand Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, Volga Svyatoslavich, Mikula Selyaninovich and others. These are the heroes of the Kyiv cycle. Sadko and Vasily Buslaevich especially stand out from the Novgorod cycle. The word “epics” is not popular; it was introduced by folklorists, the first of whom was I. I. Sakharov. People often call these works “antiques.” They are performed by special specialists - “storytellers”, talented singers with enormous memory, because you have to remember thousands of lines of text in a row. The most famous Storytellers are the Ryabinin family, the Kryukov family (Marfa Kryukova, who died in 1954, was an order bearer and a member of the Union of Soviet Writers). Epic poems are sung, and their motifs are often heard in works of Russian classical music.

“Historical songs” are close to epics. They are dedicated to historical figures - Ivan the Terrible, Stepan Razin, Pugachev, etc., and convey historical events more closely. They are usually shorter in size.

Ukrainians also have historical songs. But a special genre of folk historical poetry, the so-called “thoughts,” gained great importance among them. In terms of content, most of the thoughts are devoted to historical events, the struggle of the Ukrainian people with the Tatars, Turks, Poles; but there are also thoughts of everyday content. A characteristic feature of thoughts is the presence in them, along with purely folk art, of elements of bookish and intellectual writing. Dumas were usually sung by blind lyricists, kobza players, and bandura players.

Spiritual poetry is an obsolete form of folk poetry. In the Middle Ages, they reflected the sentiments of dissatisfied sections of the population who adhered to various “heresies”; but subsequently this “heretical” spirit of theirs disappeared. Spiritual poems were sung by various wanderers, blind beggars, and pilgrims who stayed near monasteries. It was a type of religious propaganda that stupefied the consciousness of the people.

But the bulk of the works of traditional East Slavic folklore are of great ideological value. V.I. Lenin treated them with interest. Having familiarized himself with the records of Russian folklore texts, he once said to one of his interlocutors: “What interesting material... I quickly looked through all these books and see that, obviously, there are not enough hands or the desire to generalize all this, to look at it all from a socio-political angle . After all, this material could be used to write an excellent study about the aspirations and expectations of the people. Look... in Onchukov’s fairy tales, which I leafed through, there are wonderful places here. This is what our literary historians should pay attention to. This is genuine folk art, so necessary and important for the study of folk psychology in our days."

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 literatures is touched upon in our manual only in connection with Slavic verbal culture as a whole, and we do not delve into the details of this topic (in particular, into a discussion of the current state of folklore studies). 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 as 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, a folk tale could 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 feel well the distance between the real personality of the Monk Ilya Muromets and the epic image of the hero Ilya 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 the 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 in the name of Warsaw the names of the children of the forester who lived here: 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, robber songs among the eastern Slavs, etc., historical songs and ballads, Ukrainian thoughts, etc. The Slovaks have a very interesting cycle of 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», « Paleya», « 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 a 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 themes, 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 of new literature is due to the fact that the prerequisites for its appearance in Rus' gradually took shape and invisibly accumulated over the previous several 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 of 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 semantically structured texts in a special way, such 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: “With me there is life, 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 its 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...

The 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 the common language is 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 this meaning - 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, the real picture of the subsequent ups and downs of the history of both peoples was 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 the 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, 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 region of Vojvodina, in the city of Novi Sad, a center of Slavic culture developed. 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».

Bosnian Serb won the Nobel Prize in 1961 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 devoted his energy to philological work. In his essay " About Czech spelling“He proposed superscripts for the Latin alphabet, 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 Žižka created a new type of army that moved on armored vehicles and had 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, switching to prose with plots from Czech history, he 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 had 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 of the 19th century. 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.