Russian folklore
Folklore, translated, means “folk wisdom, folk knowledge.” Folklore is folk art, artistic collective activity of the people, reflecting their life, views and ideals, i.e. folklore is folk historical cultural heritage any country in the world.
Works of Russian folklore (fairy tales, legends, epics, songs, ditties, dances, tales, applied arts) help to recreate characteristic features folk life of its time.
Creativity in ancient times was closely connected with human labor activity and reflected mythical, historical ideas, as well as the beginnings of scientific knowledge. The art of words was closely connected with other types of art - music, dance, decorative art. In science this is called "syncretism".
Folklore was an art organically inherent in folk life. The different purposes of the works gave rise to genres, with their various themes, images, and styles. IN ancient period Most peoples had tribal legends, work and ritual songs, mythological stories, and conspiracies. The decisive event that paved the line between mythology and folklore itself was the appearance of fairy tales, the plots of which were based on dreams, wisdom, and ethical fiction.
In ancient and medieval society, a heroic epic took shape (Irish sagas, Russian epics and others). Legends and songs also arose reflecting various beliefs (for example, Russian spiritual poems). Later appeared historical songs, depicting real historical events and heroes, such as they remained in people's memory.
Genres in folklore also differ in the method of performance (solo, choir, choir and soloist) and various combinations text with melody, intonation, movements (singing and dancing, storytelling and acting).
With changes to social life societies, new genres also arose in Russian folklore: soldiers', coachmen's, barge haulers' songs. The growth of industry and cities brought to life: romances, jokes, workers', and student folklore.
Nowadays, no new Russian folk tales are appearing, but the old ones are still told and cartoons are made based on them. art films. Many old songs are also sung. But epics and historical songs are practically no longer heard live.
For thousands of years, folklore was the only form of creativity among all peoples. The folklore of every nation is unique, just like its history, customs, and culture. And some genres (not just historical songs) reflect history of a given people.
Russian folk musical culture
There are several points of view that interpret folklore as folk artistic culture, as oral poetry and as a set of verbal, musical, gaming or artistic types of folk art. With all the diversity of regional and local forms, folklore has common features, such as anonymity, collective creativity, traditionalism, close connection with work, everyday life, and the transmission of works from generation to generation in the oral tradition.
Folk musical art originated long before the emergence of professional music Orthodox church. IN public life ancient Rus' folklore played much big role than in subsequent times. Unlike medieval Europe, Ancient Rus' did not have secular professional art. In her musical culture folk art of the oral tradition developed, including various, including “semi-professional” genres (the art of storytellers, guslars, etc.).
By the time of Orthodox hymnography, Russian folklore already had a long history, an established system of genres and means of musical expression. folk music, folk art has firmly entered the everyday life of people, reflecting the most diverse facets of social, family and personal life.
Researchers believe that the pre-state period (that is, before Ancient Rus' took shape) East Slavs already had a fairly developed calendar and family folklore, heroic epic and instrumental music.
With the adoption of Christianity, pagan (Vedic) knowledge began to be eradicated. The meaning of magical acts that gave rise to this or that type of folk activity was gradually forgotten. However, the purely external forms of ancient holidays turned out to be unusually stable, and some ritual folklore continued to live as if out of touch with the ancient paganism that gave birth to him.
The Christian Church (not only in Rus', but also in Europe) had a very negative attitude towards traditional folk songs and dances, considering them a manifestation of sinfulness and devilish seduction. This assessment is recorded in many chronicles and in canonical church decrees.
Lively, cheerful folk festivals with elements of theatrical performance and with the indispensable participation of music, the origins of which should be sought in ancient Vedic rituals, were fundamentally different from temple holidays.
The most extensive area of folk music Ancient Rus' constitutes ritual folklore, testifying to the high artistic talent of the Russian people. He was born in the depths of the Vedic picture of the world, the deification of natural elements. Calendar-ritual songs are considered the most ancient. Their content is associated with ideas about the cycle of nature and the agricultural calendar. These songs reflect the different stages of life of the farmers. They were part of winter, spring, and summer rituals that correspond to turning points in the change of seasons. By performing this natural ritual (songs, dances), people believed that the mighty gods, the forces of Love, Family, Sun, Water, Mother Earth would hear them and healthy children would be born, a good harvest would be born, there would be offspring of livestock, life in love would develop and harmony.
In Rus', weddings have been played since ancient times. Each locality had its own custom of wedding actions, lamentations, songs, and sentences. But with all the endless variety, weddings were played according to the same laws. Poetic wedding reality transforms what is happening into a fantastic fairy-tale world. Just as in a fairy tale all the images are varied, so the ritual itself, poetically interpreted, appears as a kind of fairy tale. A wedding, being one of the most significant events of human life in Rus', required a festive and solemn frame. And if you experience all the rituals and songs, delving into this fantastic wedding world, you can feel the aching beauty of this ritual. What will remain behind the scenes are the colorful clothes, the wedding train rattling with bells, the polyphonic choir of “singers” and the mournful melodies of lamentations, the sounds of waxwings and buzzers, accordions and balalaikas - but the poetry of the wedding itself resurrects - the pain of leaving the parental home and the high joy of the festive state of mind - Love.
One of the most ancient Russian genres is round dance songs. In Rus', round dances were held throughout almost the entire year - on Kolovorot (New Year), Maslenitsa (farewell to winter and welcoming spring), Green Week (round dances of girls around birches), Yarilo (sacred bonfires), Ovsen (harvest festivals). Round dances-games and round dances-processions were common. Initially, round dance songs were part of agricultural rituals, but over the centuries they became independent, although images of labor were preserved in many of them:
And we sowed and sowed millet!
Oh, Did Lado, they sowed, they sowed!
Dance songs that have survived to this day accompanied men's and women's dances. Men's - personified strength, courage, courage, women's - tenderness, love, stateliness.
Over the centuries, the musical epic begins to be replenished with new themes and images. Epic epics are born telling about the struggle against the Horde, about travel to distant countries, about the emergence of the Cossacks, and popular uprisings.
People's memory has long preserved many beautiful ancient songs over the centuries. In the 18th century, during the period of the formation of professional secular genres (opera, instrumental music), folk art for the first time became the subject of study and creative implementation. The educational attitude towards folklore was vividly expressed by the remarkable writer, humanist A.N. Radishchev, in the heartfelt lines of his “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”: “Whoever knows the voices of Russian folk songs admits that there is something in them that means mental pain... In in them you will find the formation of the soul of our people.” In the 19th century, the assessment of folklore as the “education of the soul” of the Russian people became the basis of the aesthetics of the school of composers from Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, to Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Kalinikov, and folk song itself was one of the sources of the formation of Russian national thinking.
Russian folk songs of the 16th-19th centuries - “like the golden mirror of the Russian people”
Folk songs recorded in various parts of Russia are a historical monument to the life of the people, but also a documentary source that captures the development of folk creative thought of their time.
The fight against the Tatars, peasant riots - all this left an imprint on folk song traditions in each specific area, starting with epics, historical songs and ballads. Like, for example, the ballad about Ilya Muromets, which is associated with the Nightingale River, which flows in the area of Yazykovo, there was a struggle between Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber, who lived in these parts.
It is known that the conquest of the Kazan Khanate by Ivan the Terrible played a role in the development of oral folk art; Ivan the Terrible’s campaigns marked the beginning of the final victory over the Tatar-Mongol yoke, which freed many thousands of Russian prisoners from captivity. The songs of this time became the prototype for Lermontov’s epic “Song about Ivan Tsarevich” - a chronicle of people’s life, and A.S. Pushkin used oral folk art in his works - Russian songs and Russian fairy tales.
On the Volga, not far from the village of Undory, there is a cape called Stenka Razin; songs of that time were sung there: “On the steppe, Saratov steppe”, “We had it in holy Rus'”. Historical events of the late XVII - early XVIII centuries. captured in the compilation about the campaigns of Peter I and his Azov campaigns, about the execution of the archers: “It’s like walking along the blue sea,” “A young Cossack is walking along the Don.”
With the military reforms of the early 18th century, new historical songs appeared, these were no longer lyrical, but epic. Historical songs preserve the most ancient images of the historical epic, songs about Russian-Turkish War, about recruitment and the war with Napoleon: “The French thief boasted of taking Russia,” “Don’t make noise, you little green oak tree.”
At this time, epics about “Surovets Suzdalets”, about “Dobrynya and Alyosha” and a very rare fairy tale by Gorshen were preserved. Also in the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Nekrasov, Russian epic folk songs and tales were used. The ancient traditions of folk games, mummery and the special performing culture of Russian folklore have been preserved.
Russian folk theater art
Russian folk drama and folk theatrical art in general is a most interesting and significant phenomenon of Russian national culture.
Dramatic games and performances still in late XVIII and at the beginning of the twentieth century they formed an organic part of festive folk life, be it village gatherings, soldier and factory barracks, or fair booths.
The geography of distribution of folk drama is extensive. Collectors of our days have discovered unique theatrical “hearths” in the Yaroslavl and Gorky regions, Russian villages of Tataria, on Vyatka and Kama, in Siberia and the Urals.
Folk drama, contrary to the opinion of some scientists, is a natural product of folklore tradition. It compressed the creative experience accumulated by dozens of generations of the broadest strata of the Russian people.
At city and later rural fairs, carousels and booths were set up, on the stage of which fairy-tale and national performances were played. historical topics. The performances seen at fairs could not completely influence aesthetic tastes people, but they expanded his fairy tale and song repertoire. Popular and theatrical borrowings largely determined the originality of the plots of folk drama. However, they “lay down” on the ancient gaming traditions of folk games, dressing up, i.e. on the special performing culture of Russian folklore.
Generations of creators and performers of folk dramas have developed certain techniques for plotting plots, characterizations, and style. Developed folk dramas are characterized by strong passions and insoluble conflicts, continuity and speed of successive actions.
Special role In folk drama, songs are played, performed by the heroes at different moments or sounded in chorus - as comments on ongoing events. The songs were a kind of emotional and psychological element of the performance. They were performed mostly in fragments, revealing the emotional meaning of the scene or the state of the character. Songs were required at the beginning and end of the performance. The song repertoire of folk dramas consists mainly of original songs from the 19th and early 20th centuries, popular in all strata of society. These are the soldiers’ songs “The White Russian Tsar Went,” “Malbruk Left on a Campaign,” “Praise, Praise to You, Hero,” and the romances “I walked in the meadows in the evening,” “I’m heading off into the desert,” “What’s clouded, the clear dawn " and many others.
Late genres of Russian folk art - festivities
The festivities flourished in the 17th-19th centuries, although individual species and genres folk art, which formed an indispensable part of the fair and city festive square, were created and actively existed long before the designated centuries and continue, often in a transformed form, to exist to this day. That's how puppet show, bear fun, partly jokes of traders, many circus acts. Other genres were born out of the fairgrounds and died out when the festivities ended. These are comic monologues of booth barkers, barkers, performances of booth theaters, dialogues of parsley clowns.
Usually, during celebrations and fairs, entire entertainment towns with booths, carousels, swings, and tents were erected in traditional places, selling everything from popular prints to songbirds and sweets. In winter, ice mountains were added, access to which was completely free, and sledding from a height of 10-12 m brought incomparable pleasure.
With all the diversity and diversity, the city's folk festival was perceived as something integral. This integrity was created by the specific atmosphere of the festive square, with its free speech, familiarity, unbridled laughter, food and drinks; equality, fun, festive perception of the world.
The festive square itself amazed with its incredible combination of all kinds of details. Accordingly, outwardly it was a colorful, loud chaos. Bright, motley clothes of walkers, catchy, unusual costumes of “artists”, flashy signs of booths, swings, carousels, shops and taverns, handicrafts shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow and the simultaneous sound of barrel organs, pipes, flutes, drums, exclamations, songs, cries of merchants , loud laughter from the jokes of “boothy grandfathers” and clowns - everything merged into a single fair fireworks display, which fascinated and amused.
The large, well-known festivities “under the mountains” and “under the swings” attracted many guest performers from Europe (many of them owners of booths, panoramas) and even southern countries (magicians, animal tamers, strongmen, acrobats and others). Foreign speech and overseas curiosities were commonplace at metropolitan festivities and large fairs. It is clear why the city’s spectacular folklore often appeared as a kind of mixture of “Nizhny Novgorod and French.”
The basis, heart and soul of Russian national culture is Russian folklore, this is the treasure, this is what has filled Russian people from the inside since ancient times, and this internal Russian folk culture ultimately gave birth to a whole galaxy of great Russian writers, composers, artists, scientists in the 17th-19th centuries , military men, philosophers, whom the whole world knows and respects:
Zhukovsky V.A., Ryleev K.F., Tyutchev F.I., Pushkin A.S., Lermontov M.Yu., Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E., Bulgakov M.A., Tolstoy L.N., Turgenev I.S., Fonvizin D.I., Chekhov A.P., Gogol N.V., Goncharov I.A., Bunin I.A., Griboedov A.S., Karamzin N.M., Dostoevsky F. M., Kuprin A.I., Glinka M.I., Glazunov A.K., Mussorgsky M.P., Rimsky-Korsakov N.A., Tchaikovsky P.I., Borodin A.P., Balakirev M. A.A., Rachmaninov S.V., Stravinsky I.F., Prokofiev S.S., Kramskoy I.N., Vereshchagin V.V., Surikov V.I., Polenov V.D., Serov V.A. ., Aivazovsky I.K., Shishkin I.I., Vasnetsov V.N., Repin I.E., Roerich N.K., Vernadsky V.I., Lomonosov M.V., Sklifosovsky N.V., Mendeleev D.I., Sechenov I.M., Pavlov I.P., Tsiolkovsky K.E., Popov A.S., Bagration P.R., Nakhimov P.S., Suvorov A.V., Kutuzov M. I., Ushakov F.F., Kolchak A.V., Solovyov V.S., Berdyaev N.A., Chernyshevsky N.G., Dobrolyubov N.A., Pisarev D.I., Chaadaev P.E. ., there are thousands of them, which, one way or another, the whole earthly world knows. These are world pillars that grew up on Russian folk culture.
But in 1917, a second attempt was made in Russia to break the connection of times, to interrupt the Russian cultural heritage of ancient generations. The first attempt was made back in the years of the baptism of Rus'. But it was not a complete success, since the power of Russian folklore was based on the life of the people, on their Vedic natural worldview. But already somewhere in the sixties of the twentieth century, Russian folklore began to be gradually replaced by the popular pop genres of pop, disco and, as they say now, chanson (prison-thieve folklore) and other types of Soviet-style arts. But a special blow was dealt in the 90s. The word “Russian” was secretly forbidden even to be uttered, supposedly this word meant inciting national hatred. This situation continues to this day.
And there was no longer a single Russian people, they scattered them, they made them drunk, and they began to destroy them at the genetic level. Now in Rus' there is a non-Russian spirit of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens and all other inhabitants of Asia and the Middle East, and in Far East Chinese, Koreans, etc., and active, global Ukrainization of Russia is taking place everywhere.
Signs, properties of folklore
Researchers have noticed many signs and properties that are characteristic of folklore and allow us to get closer to understanding its essence:
Bifunctionality (combination of practical and spiritual);
Polyelementity or syncretism.
Any folklore work is multi-elemental. Let's use the table:
Mimic element
Genres of oral prose
Verbal element
Pantomime, mimic dancing
Ritual performance, round dances, folk drama
Verbal and musical (song genres)
Musical and choreographic genres
musical element
Collectivity;
Illiteration;
Variant multiplicity;
Traditionality.
For phenomena associated with the development of folklore in other types of culture, the name - folklorism - (introduced at the end of the 19th century by the French researcher P. Sebillot), as well as “secondary life”, “secondary folklore” has been adopted.
In connection with its wide distribution, the concept of folklore itself, its pure forms, arose: thus, the term authentic (from the Greek autenticus - genuine, reliable) was established.
Folk art is the basis of all national culture. The richness of its content and genre diversity - sayings, proverbs, riddles, fairy tales and more. Songs have a special place in the creativity of the people, accompanying human life from cradle to grave, reflecting it in the most diverse manifestations and generally representing enduring ethnographic, historical, aesthetic, moral and highly artistic value.
Features of folklore.
Folklore(folk-lore) is an international term of English origin, first introduced into science in 1846 by the scientist William Toms. Literally translated, it means “folk wisdom”, “folk knowledge” and denotes various manifestations of folk spiritual culture.
Other terms have also become established in Russian science: folk poetry, folk poetry, folk literature. The name “oral creativity of the people” emphasizes the oral nature of folklore in its difference from written literature. The name “folk poetic creativity” indicates artistry as a sign by which a folklore work is distinguished from beliefs, customs and rituals. This designation puts folklore on a par with other types of folk art and fiction. 1
Folklore is complex, synthetic art. His works often combine elements various types arts - verbal, musical, theatrical. It is studied by various sciences - history, psychology, sociology, ethnology (ethnography) 2. It is closely connected with folk life and rituals. It is no coincidence that the first Russian scientists approached folklore broadly, recording not only works of verbal art, but also recording various ethnographic details and the realities of peasant life. Thus, the study of folklore was for them a unique area of national studies 3 .
The science that studies folklore is called folkloristics. If literature is understood not only as written artistic creativity, but as verbal art in general, then folklore is a special branch of literature, and folkloristics is thus part of literary criticism.
Folklore is verbal oral creativity. It has the properties of the art of words. In this way he is close to literature. However, it has its own specific features: syncretism, traditionality, anonymity, variability and improvisation.
The prerequisites for the emergence of folklore appeared in the primitive communal system with the beginning of the formation of art. Ancient art words were inherent utility– the desire to practically influence nature and human affairs.
The oldest folklore was in syncretic state(from the Greek word synkretismos - connection). A syncretic state is a state of unity, non-division. Art was not yet separated from other types of spiritual activity; it existed in conjunction with other types of spiritual consciousness. Later, the state of syncretism was followed by the separation of artistic creativity along with other types public consciousness into an independent area of spiritual activity.
Folklore works anonymous. Their author is the people. Any of them is created on the basis of tradition. At one time V.G. Belinsky wrote about the specifics of a folklore work: there are no “famous names, because the author of literature is always a people. No one knows who composed his simple and naive songs, in which the internal and external life of a young people or tribe was so artlessly and vividly reflected. And he moves on the song from generation to generation, from generation to generation; and it changes over time: sometimes they shorten it, sometimes they lengthen it, sometimes they remake it, sometimes they combine it with another song, sometimes they compose another song in addition to it - and then poems come out of the songs, of which only the people can call themselves the author." 4
Academician D.S. is certainly right. Likhachev, who noted that there is no author in a folklore work not only because information about him, if he existed, has been lost, but also because he falls out of the very poetics of folklore; it is not needed from the point of view of the structure of the work. In folklore works there may be a performer, a storyteller, a storyteller, but there is no author or writer as an element of the artistic structure itself.
Traditional succession covers large historical periods - entire centuries. According to academician A.A. Potebny, folklore arises “from memorable sources, that is, it is transmitted from memory from mouth to mouth as far as memory lasts, but it has certainly passed through a significant layer of popular understanding” 5 . Each bearer of folklore creates within the boundaries of generally accepted tradition, relying on predecessors, repeating, changing, and supplementing the text of the work. In literature there is a writer and a reader, and in folklore there is a performer and a listener. “Works of folklore always bear the stamp of time and the environment in which they lived for a long time, or “existed.” For these reasons, folklore is called mass folk art. It has no individual authors, although there are many talented performers and creators who are perfect mastering generally accepted traditional techniques of saying and singing. Folklore is directly folk in content - that is, in the thoughts and feelings expressed in it; Folklore is folk in style - that is, in the form of conveying the content. and the properties of traditional figurative content and traditional stylistic forms." 6 This is the collective nature of folklore. Traditionality– the most important and basic specific property of folklore.
Any folklore work exists in large quantities options. Variant (lat. variantis - changing) - each new performance of a folklore work. Oral works had a mobile variable nature.
A characteristic feature of a folklore work is improvisation. It is directly related to the variability of the text. Improvisation (Italian: improvvisazione - unforeseen, suddenly) - the creation of a folklore work or its parts directly in the process of performance. This feature is more characteristic of lamentations and crying. However, improvisation did not contradict tradition and was within certain artistic boundaries.
Taking into account all these signs of a folklore work, we present an extremely brief definition of folklore given by V.P. Anikin: “folklore is the traditional artistic creativity of the people. It equally applies to oral, verbal, and other visual arts, as well as ancient art, and to the new, created in new times and created in our days." 7
Folklore, like literature, is the art of words. This gives reason to use literary terms: epic, lyric, drama. They are usually called childbirth. Each genus covers a group of works certain type. Genre– type of artistic form (fairy tale, song, proverb, etc.). This is a narrower group of works than the genus. Thus, by genus we mean a way of depicting reality, by genre - a type of artistic form. The history of folklore is the history of changes in its genres. They are more stable in folklore compared to literary ones; genre boundaries in literature are wider. New genre forms in folklore do not arise as a result of the creative activity of individuals, as in literature, but must be supported by the entire mass of participants in the collective creative process. Therefore, their change does not occur without the necessary historical grounds. At the same time, genres in folklore are not unchanged. They arise, develop and die, and are replaced by others. So, for example, epics arise in Ancient Rus', develop in the Middle Ages, and in the 19th century they are gradually forgotten and die out. As living conditions change, genres are destroyed and consigned to oblivion. But this does not indicate the decline of folk art. Changes in the genre composition of folklore are a natural consequence of the process of development of artistic collective creativity.
What is the relationship between reality and its reflection in folklore? Folklore combines a direct reflection of life with a conventional one. “Here there is no obligatory reflection of life in the form of life itself; convention is allowed.” 8 It is characterized by associativity, thinking by analogy, and symbolism.
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Genres of folklore are varied. There are major genres, such as epics and fairy tales. And there are small genres: proverbs, sayings, chants. Small genres were often intended for children, teaching them the wisdom of life. Proverbs and sayings allowed people to preserve and pass on folk wisdom from generation to generation.
The artistic feature of all small genres is that they are small in volume and easy to remember. They are often created in poetic form, which also helped them to be remembered better. Proverbs consist of one sentence. But this sentence is very deep and capacious in its content. “Chickens are counted in the fall,” our ancestors said, and we say today. The proverb is based on worldly wisdom. It doesn't matter how many chickens you have in the spring. It is important how many of them have grown before autumn. Over time, these words began to have a generalized meaning: don’t think about how much you can get from this or that business, look at the result of what you did.
Small genres of folklore intended for children have their own characteristics and value. They entered the child’s life from birth and accompanied him for many years until he grew up. Lullabies were intended primarily to protect the baby from the terrible things that surround him. Therefore, it often appears in songs Gray wolf and other monsters. Gradually, lullabies ceased to play the role of a talisman. Their purpose was to put the child to sleep.
Another genre of folklore is associated with the period of infancy. These are pestushki (from the word “to nurture”). The mother sang them to her child, confident that they were helping him grow smart, strong, and healthy. Growing up, the child himself learned to use in his speech and games various genres. Children performed chants in the spring or autumn. This is how adults taught them to take care of the natural world and carry out various agricultural work in a timely manner.
Parents used tongue twisters to develop their children's speech. The artistic feature of the tongue twister is not that it has a poetic form. Its value lies elsewhere. A tongue twister was compiled in such a way that it included words with sounds that were difficult for a child. By pronouncing the tongue twister, the children developed correct speech and achieved clarity in pronunciation.
The riddle occupies a special place among the small genres of folklore. Its artistic feature lies in its metaphorical nature. The riddles were based on the principle of similarity or difference between objects. By solving the riddle, the child learned observation skills and logical thinking. Often the children began to come up with riddles themselves. They also came up with teasers, making fun of a person's shortcomings.
Thus, the small genres of folklore, with all their diversity, served one purpose - to figuratively, accurately and accurately convey folk wisdom, to teach a growing person about life.
Folklore is the basis on which individual creativity develops. Outstanding figures in various fields of art of the past and present were clearly aware of the importance of folklore. M.I. Glinka said: “We do not create, it is the people who create; we just record and arrange” \ A. S. Pushkin back in the early 19th century. wrote: “The study of ancient songs, fairy tales, etc. is necessary for perfect knowledge of the properties of the Russian language. Our critics have no reason to despise them.” Addressing writers, he pointed out: “Read folk tales, young writers, to see the properties of the Russian language.”
The legacy of turning to folk art has been and is being followed by the creators of classical and modern literature, music, and fine arts. There is not a single prominent writer, artist, composer who would not turn to the springs of folk art, for they reflect life of the people. The list of musical works that creatively develop the art of the people is enormous. Operas such as “Sadko”, “Kashchei” and others were created based on folk stories. Images and stories of folk art were included in art. Paintings by Vasnetsov “Bogatyrs”, “Alyonushka”, Vrubel “Mikula”, “Ilya Muromets”, Repin “Sadko”, etc. were included in the treasury of world art. A. M. Gorky pointed out that the basis of generalizations created by an individual genius is the creativity of the people: “Zeus was created by the people, Phidias embodied him in marble.” It is stated here that the art of writing, artist, sculptor only reaches its peak when it arises as an expression of ideas, feelings, and views of the people. Gorky did not belittle the role of the individual artist, but emphasized that his strength of talent and skill give special expressiveness and perfection to the form of creating collective creativity of the masses.
The connection between literature and folklore is not limited to the writers’ use of content and form individual works folk art.
Consequently, both individual and collective creativity only acquire enormous ideological and aesthetic significance in the life of society when they are connected with the life of the people and truthfully and artistically reflect it completely. But it is necessary to take into account that, firstly, the nature and correlation of collective and individual creativity at different stages of the development of human society are different and, secondly, the fact that collective and individual creativity are unique historically emerged ways of creating a work of art.
A. M. Gorky rightly said that the collective creativity of the masses was the mother’s womb for individual creativity, that the beginning of the art of words and literature was in folklore. IN early periods history, the closeness of literature and folk art was so great that it is impossible to clearly distinguish between them. “The Iliad” and “Odyssey” are rightfully considered works of ancient literature and, at the same time, the most beautiful creations of collective folk art, dating back to the “infancy period of human society.” The same lack of differentiation between individual and collective creativity is noted in a number of works by many peoples.
In the initial period of its existence, literature had not yet completely separated from collective folk art. With the development of class society, the division of individual and collective creativity gradually deepens. But, of course, the very concepts of collective and individual creativity cannot be interpreted abstractly, equally and unchangeably for all times and peoples. Individual and collective art have features determined by historical reality.
In pre-class society, collective creativity was an artistic and figurative reflection of the reality of that time, a generalization of the views and ideas of a tribe, a primitive community from which an individual had not yet emerged. In conditions when the tribe remained the border of a person both in relation to a stranger from another tribe, and in relation to himself, when an individual was unconditionally subordinated in his feelings, thoughts and actions to the tribe, the clan\collective creativity was the only possible form of artistic activity of individual individualities. The participation of the entire mass of the tribe in generalizing life experience, the common desire to understand and change reality were the basis of the pre-class epic, which has come down to us mainly in later revisions.
An example of such epic tales, which originated in the conditions of a pre-class society, can be at least the Kalevala runes, Yakut oloikho, Georgian and Ossetian tales about Amiran, North Caucasian and Abkhaz tales about the Narts, etc. In pre-class society, the collectivity of creativity not only merged with individuality, but subordinated it. Here even the most outstanding personality was perceived as the embodiment of the strength and experience of the entire tribe; This is how the characteristic of the epic and early literary creativity
depiction of the masses of the people through the image of a hero (Weinemeinen, Prometheus, Balder, later - Russian heroes and other images of heroic legends). The development of class relations could not but change collective creativity. With the advent of class society, the ideology of antagonistic classes is clearly reflected in different interpretations
images, plots of legends and songs. Examples from the epic of the peoples of the USSR confirm this. Discussion of the ideological essence of the Kyrgyz legends about Manas, the Buryat and Mongolian epic “Geser”, discussions on the problems of the epic revealed the facts of anti-national distortions by feudal circles of the creativity of the working masses. There is a constant interaction between literature and folklore. Folklore and literature, collective and individual artistic creativity accompany each other in a class society. Thus, Russian folk art of the 11th-17th centuries. had a huge impact on the works, as eloquently evidenced by “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, “The Tale of Peter and Fevronia”, “Zadonshchina”. At the same time, images of fiction increasingly entered the everyday life of oral poetic creativity. Subsequently, this process became even more intense. Lermontov, Gogol, JI. Tolstoy, Nekrasov, Gorky believed that folklore enriches the individual creativity of a professional artist. At the same time everything outstanding masters Russian literature emphasized that a writer should not copy folklore and should not take the path of stylization. A true artist boldly invades the oral and poetic creativity of the people, selects the best in it and creatively develops it. To be convinced of this, it is enough to recall the fairy tales of A.S. Pushkin. "He decorated folk song and fairy tales with the brilliance of his talent, but left their meaning and power unchanged,” wrote A. M. Gorky
The interaction between folklore and literature takes place in different forms. For example, professional artist often uses and enriches themes, plots, images of folklore, but he can use folklore without directly reproducing its plots and images. A true artist never confines himself to reproducing the form of folklore works, but enriches and develops the traditions of oral poetic creativity, revealing the life of the people, their thoughts, feelings and aspirations. It is known that the best, most progressive representatives of the ruling classes, denouncing social injustice and truthfully depicting life, they rose above class limitations and created works that met the interests and needs of the people.
The living connection between literature and folklore is confirmed by creativity best writers of all peoples. But no matter how tangible the connection between the works of writers and folk poetry is in the conditions of a class society, collective and individual creativity are always distinguished by the method of creating works of art.
In class society, differences have developed in the creative process of creating works of literature and mass folk poetry. They consist primarily in the following: a literary work is created by a writer - it makes no difference whether he is a writer by profession or not - individually or in collaboration with another writer; While the writer is working on it, the work is not the property of the masses; the masses become familiar with it only after it receives the final edition, enshrined in the letter.
This means that in literature the process of creating the canonical text of a work is separated from the direct creative activity of the masses and is associated with it only genetically.
Works of collective folk art are a different matter; here the personal and collective principles are united in the creative process so closely that individual creative individuals dissolve in the collective. Works of folk art do not have a final edition. Each performer of a work creates, develops, polishes the text, acts as a co-author of a song, a legend that belongs to the people. The term “folklore” (translated as “folk wisdom”) was first introduced by the English scientist W.J. Toms in 1846. At first, this term covered the entire spiritual (beliefs, dances, music, wood carving, etc.), and sometimes the material (housing, clothing) culture of the people. IN modern science
There is no unity in the interpretation of the concept of “folklore”. Sometimes it is used in its original meaning: an integral part of folk life, closely intertwined with its other elements. Since the beginning of the 20th century. the term is also used in a narrower, more specific meaning: verbal folk art. The most ancient types of verbal art arose in the process of the formation of human speech in the Upper Paleolithic era. Verbal creativity in ancient times was closely connected with human labor activity and reflected religious, mythical, historical ideas, as well as the beginnings of scientific knowledge. Ritual actions through which primitive sought to influence the forces of nature, fate, were accompanied by words: spells, conspiracies were pronounced, various requests or threats were addressed to the forces of nature. The art of words was closely related to other types primitive art
The Russian scientist A.N. Veselovsky believed that the origins of poetry lie in folk ritual. Primitive poetry, according to his concept, was originally a choir song accompanied by dancing and pantomime. The role of the word at first was insignificant and entirely subordinated to rhythm and facial expressions. The text was improvised according to the performance until it acquired a traditional character.
As humanity accumulated more and more significant life experience that needed to be passed on to subsequent generations, the role of verbal information increased. The separation of verbal creativity into an independent art form is the most important step in the prehistory of folklore.
Folklore was a verbal art organically inherent in folk life. The different purposes of the works gave rise to genres, with their various themes, images, and styles. In the ancient period, most peoples had tribal traditions, work and ritual songs, mythological stories, and conspiracies. The decisive event that paved the line between mythology and folklore itself was the appearance of fairy tales, the plots of which were perceived as fiction.
In ancient and medieval society, a heroic epic took shape (Irish sagas, Kyrgyz Manas, Russian epics, etc.). Legends and songs reflecting religious beliefs also arose (for example, Russian spiritual poems). Later, historical songs appeared, depicting real historical events and heroes, as they remained in people's memory. If ritual lyrics (rites accompanying the calendar and agricultural cycles, family rituals associated with birth, wedding, death) originated in ancient times, then non-ritual lyrics, with its interest in to an ordinary person, appeared much later. However, over time, the boundary between ritual and non-ritual poetry is erased. Thus, ditties are sung at a wedding, while at the same time some of the wedding songs become part of the non-ritual repertoire.
Genres in folklore also differ in the method of performance (solo, choir, choir and soloist) and various combinations of text with melody, intonation, movements (singing, singing and dancing, storytelling, acting, etc.)
With changes in the social life of society, new genres arose in Russian folklore: soldiers', coachmen's, barge haulers' songs. The growth of industry and cities gave rise to romances, jokes, worker, school and student folklore.
In folklore there are productive genres, in the depths of which new works can appear. Now these are ditties, sayings, city songs, jokes, many types children's folklore. There are genres that are unproductive, but continue to exist. Thus, no new folk tales appear, but old ones are still told. Many old songs are also sung. But epics and historical songs are practically no longer heard live.
The science of folklore folkloristics classifies all works of folk verbal creativity, including literary ones, into one of three genera: epic, lyric, and drama.
For thousands of years, folklore was the only form of poetic creativity among all peoples. But with the advent of writing for many centuries, right up to the period of late feudalism, oral poetic creativity was widespread not only among the working people, but also among upper strata society: nobility, clergy. Having arisen in a certain social environment, a work could become a national property.
Collective author. Folklore is a collective art. Each piece of oral folk art not only expresses the thoughts and feelings of specific groups, but is also collectively created and disseminated. However, the collectivity of the creative process in folklore does not mean that individuals did not play any role. Talented masters not only improved or adapted existing texts to new conditions, but sometimes also created songs, ditties, and fairy tales, which, in accordance with the laws of oral folk art, were distributed without the name of the author. With the social division of labor, unique professions arose related to the creation and performance of poetic and musical works (ancient Greek rhapsodes, Russian guslars, Ukrainian kobzars, Kyrgyz akyns, Azerbaijani ashugs, French chansonniers, etc.).
In Russian folklore in the 18th-19th centuries. there was no developed professionalization of singers. Storytellers, singers, storytellers remained peasants and artisans. Some genres of folk poetry were widespread. Performing others required certain training, a special musical or acting gift.
The folklore of every nation is unique, just like its history, customs, and culture. Thus, epics and ditties are inherent only in Russian folklore, dumas in Ukrainian, etc. Some genres (not just historical songs) reflect the history of a given people. The composition and form of ritual songs are different; they can be timed to coincide with periods of the agricultural, pastoral, hunting or fishing calendar, and enter into various relationships with the rituals of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or other religions. For example, the ballad among the Scots has acquired clear genre differences, while among the Russians it is close to a lyrical or historical song. Among some peoples (for example, Serbs), poetic ritual lamentations are common, while among others (including Ukrainians), they existed in the form of simple prosaic exclamations. Each nation has its own arsenal of metaphors, epithets, comparisons. Thus, the Russian proverb “Silence is gold” corresponds to the Japanese “Silence is flowers”.
Despite the bright national coloring of folklore texts, many motifs, images and even plots are similar among different peoples. Thus, a comparative study of the plots of European folklore has led scientists to the conclusion that about two-thirds of the plots of fairy tales of each nation have parallels in the tales of other nationalities. Veselovsky called such stories “stray”, creating the “theory wandering stories”, which has been repeatedly criticized by Marxist literary criticism.
For peoples with a common historical past and speaking related languages (for example, the Indo-European group), such similarities can be explained common origin. This similarity is genetic. Similar features in the folklore of peoples belonging to different language families, but have long been in contact with each other (for example, Russians and Finns) are explained by borrowing. But even in the folklore of peoples living on different continents and probably never communicating, there are similar themes, plots, and characters. Thus, one Russian fairy tale talks about a clever poor man who, for all his tricks, was put in a sack and is about to be drowned, but he, having deceived the master or the priest (they say, huge schools of beautiful horses are grazing under the water), puts him in the sack instead of himself. The same plot can be found in the fairy tales of Muslim peoples (stories about Haju Nasreddin), and among the peoples of Guinea, and among the inhabitants of the island of Mauritius. These works arose independently. This similarity is called typological. At the same stage of development, similar beliefs and rituals, forms of family and social life develop. And therefore, both ideals and conflicts coincide - the opposition between poverty and wealth, intelligence and stupidity, hard work and laziness, etc.
Word of mouth. Folklore is stored in the memory of the people and reproduced orally. The author of a literary text does not have to directly communicate with the reader, but a work of folklore is performed in the presence of listeners.
Even the same narrator, voluntarily or involuntarily, changes something with each performance. Moreover, the next performer conveys the content differently. And fairy tales, songs, epics, etc. pass through thousands of lips. Listeners not only influence the performer in a certain way (in science this is called feedback), but sometimes they themselves become involved in the performance. Therefore, every piece of oral folk art has many variants. For example, in one version of the fairy tale Princess Frog The prince obeys his father and marries the frog without any further discussion. And in another wants to leave her. In different fairy tales, the frog helps the betrothed to complete the king’s tasks, which are also not the same everywhere. Even such genres as epics, songs, ditties, where there is an important restraining principle - rhythm, melody, have great options. Here, for example, is a song recorded in the 19th century. in Arkhangelsk province:
Dear Nightingale,
You can fly everywhere:
Fly to joyful countries,
Fly to the glorious city of Yaroslavl...
Around the same years in Siberia they sang to the same tune:
You are my little darling,
You can fly everywhere
Fly to foreign countries,
To the glorious city of Yeruslan...
Not only in different territories, but also in different historical eras the same song could be performed in variations. Thus, songs about Ivan the Terrible were remade into songs about Peter I.
In order to remember and retell or sing some piece of work (sometimes quite voluminous), people have developed techniques that have been polished over centuries. They create a special style that distinguishes folklore from literary texts. In many folklore genres there is a common origin. So, the folk storyteller knew in advance how to start the tale In some kingdom, in some state.... or Lived once…. The epic often began with the words Like in the glorious city of Kyiv.... In some genres, endings are also repeated. For example, epics often end like this: Here they sing his glory.... A fairy tale almost always ends with a wedding and a feast with a saying I was there, I drank honey-beer, it flowed down my mustache, but it didn’t get into my mouth. or And they began to live and live and make good.
There are other, most varied repetitions found in folklore. Some words may be repeated: Past the house, past the stone one, // Past the garden, the green garden, or the beginning of lines: At dawn it was dawn, // At dawn it was morning.
Entire lines are repeated, and sometimes several lines:
Walking along the Don, walking along the Don,
A young Cossack is walking along the Don,
A young Cossack is walking along the Don,
And the maiden weeps, and the maiden weeps,
And the maiden weeps over the fast river,
And the maiden weeps over the fast river.
In works of oral folk art, not only words and phrases are repeated, but also entire episodes. Epics, fairy tales, and songs are built on the threefold repetition of identical episodes. So, when the Kaliki (wandering singers) heal Ilya Muromets, they give him a “honey drink” to drink three times: after the first time he feels a lack of strength, after the second - an excess, and only after drinking the third time does he receive as much strength as he needs it.
In all genres of folklore there are so-called common, or typical, passages. In fairy tales fast movement of a horse: The horse runs the earth trembles. The “courtesy” (politeness, good manners) of the epic hero is always expressed by the formula: He laid the cross in a written way, but he bowed in a learned way. There are beauty formulas Neither can I say it in a fairy tale, nor describe it with a pen. The command formulas are repeated: Stand before me like a leaf before the grass!
The definitions are repeated, the so-called constant epithets, which are inextricably linked with the word being defined. So, in Russian folklore the field is always clean, the month is clear, the maiden is red (krasna), etc.
Others also help with listening comprehension artistic techniques. For example, the so-called technique of stepwise narrowing of images. Here is the beginning of the folk song:
It was a glorious city in Cherkassk,
New stone tents were built there,
In the tents the tables are all oak,
A young widow is sitting at the table.
A hero can also stand out through contrast. At a feast at Prince Vladimir's:
And how everyone sits here, drinks, eats and brags,
But only one sits, does not drink, does not eat, does not eat...
In the fairy tale, two brothers are smart, and the third ( main character, winner) is a fool for the time being.
Certain folklore characters have stable qualities assigned to them. So, the fox is always cunning, the hare is cowardly, and the wolf is evil. There are certain symbols in folk poetry: nightingale joy, happiness; cuckoo grief, misfortune, etc.
According to researchers, from twenty to eighty percent of the text consists of ready-made material that does not need to be memorized.
Folklore, literature, science. Literature appeared much later than folklore, and has always, to one degree or another, used its experience: themes, genres, techniques - different in different eras. Thus, the plots of ancient literature are based on myths. Author's fairy tales, songs, and ballads appear in European and Russian literature. The literary language is constantly enriched by folklore. Indeed, in the works of oral folk art there are many ancient and dialect words. With the help of endearing suffixes and freely used prefixes, new expressive words are created. The girl is sad: You are my parents, my destroyers, my slaughterers.... The guy complains: You, my darling cool wheel, have spun my head!. Gradually, some words enter colloquial and then literary speech. It is no coincidence that Pushkin urged: “Read folk tales, young writers, in order to see the properties of the Russian language.”
Folklore techniques were especially widely used in works about the people and for the people. For example, in Nekrasov’s poem Who can live well in Rus'? numerous and varied repetitions (situations, phrases, words); diminutive suffixes.
At the same time, literary works penetrated folklore and influenced its development. The rubai of Hafiz and Omar Khayyam, some Russian stories of the 17th century, and some Russian stories of the 17th century were distributed as works of oral folk art (without the name of the author and in various versions). Prisoner And Black shawl Pushkin, beginning Korobeinikov Nekrasova ( Oh, the box is full, full, // There are chintz and brocade. // Have pity, my sweetheart, // Well done shoulder...) and much more. Including the beginning of Ershov's fairy tale The Little Humpbacked Horse, which became the origin of many folk tales:
Behind the mountains, behind the forests,
Beyond the wide seas
Against heaven on earth
There lived an old man in a village.
Poet M. Isakovsky and composer M. Blanter wrote a song Katyusha (Apple and pear trees were blooming...). The people sang it, and about a hundred different Katyusha. So, during the Great Patriotic War sang: Apple and pear trees don’t bloom here..., The Nazis burned apple and pear trees.... The girl Katyusha became a nurse in one song, a partisan in another, and a communications operator in a third.
In the late 1940s, three students A. Okhrimenko, S. Christie and V. Shreiberg composed a comic song:
In an old and noble family
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy lived
He ate neither fish nor meat,
I walked along the alleys barefoot.
It was impossible to print such poems at that time, and they were distributed orally. More and more new versions of this song began to be created:
Great Soviet writer
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy,
He didn't eat fish or meat
I walked along the alleys barefoot.
Under the influence of literature, rhyme appeared in folklore (all ditties rhymed, there is rhyme in later folk songs), division into stanzas. Under the direct influence of romantic poetry ( see also ROMANTICISM), in particular ballads, arose new genre urban romance.
Oral folk poetry is studied not only by literary scholars, but also by historians, ethnographers, and cultural experts. For ancient, pre-literate times, folklore is often the only source that has conveyed certain information to the present day (in a veiled form). So, in a fairy tale, the groom receives a wife for some merits and exploits, and most often he marries not in the kingdom where he was born, but in the one where his future wife is from. This detail of a fairy tale, born in ancient times, suggests that in those days a wife was taken (or kidnapped) from another family. Available in fairy tale and echoes of the ancient rite of initiation initiation of boys into men. This ritual usually took place in the forest, in a “men’s” house. Fairy tales often mention a house in the forest inhabited by men.
Folklore of late times is the most important source for studying the psychology, worldview, and aesthetics of a particular people.
In Russia at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. Interest in the folklore of the 20th century has increased, and those aspects of it that not so long ago remained outside the boundaries of official science. (political joke, some ditties, Gulag folklore). Without studying this folklore, the idea of the life of the people in the era of totalitarianism will inevitably be incomplete and distorted.
Lyudmila Polikovskaya
Azadovsky M.K. History of Russian folklore. vol., 12. M., 19581963
Azadovsky M.K. Articles about literature about folklore. M., 1960
Meletinsky E.M. Origin of the heroic epic(early forms and historical monuments). M., 1963
Bogatyrev P.G. Issues in the theory of folk art. M., 1971
Propp V.Ya. Folklore and reality. M., 1976
Bakhtin V.S. From epics to counting rhymes. Stories about folklore. L., 1988
Veselovsky A.N. Historical poetics. M., 1989
Buslaev F.I. Folk epic and mythology. M., 2003
Zhirmunsky V.M. Folklore of the West and East: Comparative and historical essays. M., 2004
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