There were two literary languages in ancient Russia: Church Slavonic and Old Russian literary language. It is only in the latter that different types and styles can be distinguished. Church Slavonic was the common literary language of the Eastern and Southern Slavs. They had not only different stylistic functions, but were in different conditions of existence. Church Slavonic was the common language for many Slavic countries, with which ancient Russia was in constant book communication. It was the language of traditional worship, traditional church books.
The Russian literary language was associated with the living, oral language of offices, judicial institutions, official political and public life. The business language changed much faster than Church Slavonic.
In terms of its types, the Russian literary language was much more diverse than the Church Slavonic language, less stable, less closed. It did not have that immovable base of "examples" that the Church Slavonic language possessed.
Both literary languages of ancient Russia - Russian and Church Slavonic - were in constant interaction. Literary etiquette required sometimes rapid transitions from one language to another. These transitions were sometimes made at the shortest distances: within the limits of one work. That. the use of the Church Slavonic language in the Middle Ages was clearly subject to some of its own rules and etiquette, church plots required the church language, secular ones - Russian.
The requirements of literary etiquette give rise to the desire to distinguish between the use of the Church Slavonic language and Russian in all its varieties. However, literary etiquette cannot be limited to the phenomena of verbal expression. Not everything verbal is only a verbal phenomenon. Certain expressions and a certain style of presentation are matched to the appropriate situations. These situations are created by writers exactly as they are necessary according to etiquette requirements.
It can be concluded that the literary etiquette of a medieval writer consists of:
1.
ideas about how this or that should be done course of events,
2.
ideas about how the actor should behave in accordance with his position,
3.
ideas about what words the writer should describe what is happening.
Before us, therefore, is the etiquette of the world order, the etiquette of behavior and the etiquette of words.
Literary etiquette caused a special traditional character of literature, the appearance of stable stylistic formulas, the transfer of entire passages from one work to another, the stability of images, comparisons, etc.
The system of literary etiquette and the literary canons associated with it, which can in no way be equated with cliches, lasted several centuries in ancient Russian literature. After all, this system hindered the development of literature.????? In the 16th century, the destruction of literary etiquette begins. It is noteworthy that at this time there is a magnificent development of etiquette in real life.
Summarizing, we can say that the phenomena of literary etiquette in the 16-17 centuries tend to increase, to increase and go into a state of mixing and merging with the surrounding forms. Etiquette becomes more magnificent and at the same time vague, and gradually dissolves into new literary phenomena of the 16th-17th centuries. From the phenomenon of coercion, etiquette became a phenomenon of the design of state life. The process of the fall of literary etiquette, therefore, takes place in another way: the etiquette rite exists, but it breaks away from the situation that requires it; etiquette rules and formulas remain and even grow, but they are observed extremely ineptly, they are used “out of place”, not in those cases when it is necessary. Etiquette formulas are applied without that strict analysis that was characteristic of previous centuries. Formulas describing the actions of enemies are applied to Russians, and formulas intended for Russians are applied to enemies. The etiquette of the situation is also loosened. Russians and enemies behave in the same way, utter the same speeches, the actions of both are described in the same way, their emotional experiences.
Thus, the destruction of the system of literary etiquette began as early as the 16th century, but this system was not completely resolved either in the 16th or 17th centuries, and in the 18th century it was partially replaced by another. The destruction of etiquette took place primarily in the secular part of literature. In the sphere of church literary etiquette was more needed, and here it lasted longer.
chronicle time
literary genre, which for the first time entered into a sharp conflict with the isolation of plot time, is a chronicle.
Time in the annals is not uniform. In different chronicles, in different parts of chronicles throughout their centuries-old existence, diverse systems of time are reflected. The Russian chronicles are a grandiose arena of struggle between two diametrically opposed ideas about time: one is the old, pre-literate, epic, torn into separate time series, and the other is newer, more complex, uniting everything that happens into some kind of historical unity and developing under the influence of new ideas about Russian and world history that appeared with the formation of a single Russian state, aware of its place in world history, among the countries of the world.
Epic time is combined with this newer, "historical" conception of time in much the same way that in feudal society the remnants of old social formations are combined with a new - feudal one, just as elements of the natural - communal-patriarchal are preserved in the feudal economy.
Epic time and time in new historical ideas are in the annals in a relentless struggle lasting several centuries. Only in the 16th century clear signs of the victory of the new consciousness of time are determined as a single stream that captures the entire Russian land and the entire world history.
Let us dwell on the two types of conceptions of time and on the struggle between them in somewhat more detail.
The most ancient ideas about time, attested by the Russian language, were not as egocentric as our modern ideas are. Now we imagine the future ahead of us, the past behind us, the present somewhere near us, as if surrounding us. In Ancient Russia, time seemed to exist independently of us. The chroniclers talked about the "front" princes - about the princes of the distant past. The past was somewhere ahead, at the beginning of events, a number of which did not correlate with the subject perceiving it. "Rear" events were events of the present or future. "Back" - this is the legacy remaining from the deceased, this is the "last" that connected him with us. "Front glory" is the glory of the distant past, the "first" times; “rear glory” is the glory of the last deeds. This notion of "front" and "back" was possible because time was not oriented towards the subject perceiving this time. It was conceived as objectively and independently existing.
(1) It is curious that M. Guyot (The Origin of the Idea of Time. St. Petersburg, 1899. P. 39) believes that the future was initially, always considered as lying in front of a person, what he strives for, and the past behind, from which he left and to which it does not return.
At the same time, the time stream was not one, there were many temporal, causal series, and each series had its own “before”, its own beginning, and its own end, its own “rear” edge. To some extent, these ancient ideas about time were reflected in the artistic time of epics. Here, too, there were closed time series closely related to the plot. Combining the time of different epics into a single time and the creation of contaminated epics, epic vaults is a relatively recent phenomenon.
In Russian epics, time is “unidirectional”. We saw this in the chapter on the artistic time of folklore. The action of epics never comes back. The story of the epic, as it were, seeks to reproduce the sequence in which the events actually took place. At the same time, the epic only talks about what happened or what has changed, but not about what seems to be unchanged. Therefore, a purely descriptive moment, addressed to static phenomena, is extremely insignificant in epics. Epic narration avoids stops, static moments, preferring action. It tells only about what is directly necessary for understanding the action, but not reality - dynamics, but not statics.
(2) See: Skaftymov A.P. Poetics… S. 90.
In the section "Artistic time in folklore" we have already seen that the epic time of epics is, as it were, closed by a plot. The time line develops predominantly within a single and usually one plot of the epic. The connection with historical time is established through a general indication of the era: the action of the epic takes place in some conventional Russian antiquity - under the epic Prince Vladimir, at the time of the invasion of the Mongol-Tatars, in the era of independence of Novgorod. The time depicted by epics is a conditional era, located somewhere in the distant past and very inaccurately connected with the present - without any transitions. This epic era is a kind of "island" in time, in "old times". This epic time is no longer in the historical songs of the 16th-17th centuries. Historical songs reflect in stages the newer historical consciousness. They already have an idea not only about antiquity, but also about history, about its movement. The closedness of folklore time begins to collapse in them.
The events in them continue into the present.
Compared with the epic epic and even historical songs, the chronicle marks a later stage in the development of ideas about historical time. The chronicle is younger than epics and historical songs. In the annals, the isolation of time is destroyed even more than in historical songs.
In fact, the chronicler, on the one hand, seems to be striving for the isolation of time. Russian history (especially in the most ancient chronicles) has its beginning (and the beginning is already some element of the limitation of time). The chronicler is looking for this beginning either in the calling of the Varangians, who laid the foundation of the princely dynasty, or in the first accurately dated event, from which he could begin the exposition and “put numbers”. The histories of principalities and cities have their beginning (however, subsequently they very often dissolve this beginning in Russian history, with which they are associated in their introductory part).
However, on the other hand, having a clearly defined beginning, chronicles often do not have an end, an “ending”, since the end is, as it were, constantly destroyed by the present, new events advancing on it. Modernity is growing and "running away" from the narrator. However, the narrative about the native country, principality, city tends to end in the chronicle with some significant event: the death of one prince and the reign of another, victory, annexation of another principality, the emergence of a new metropolitan, obtaining a title, etc. This event ending the chronicle remains effective in the annals only as long as it is effective in reality itself. Then the chronicle narration continues to a new frontier, which for some time again seems to be final. The inertia of the closure of time also affects the chronicle, despite the fact that the chronicle as a whole can be regarded as one of the most "open" works.
The chronicle records only a part of the events, creating the impression of the immensity of the historical movement. The chronicle is not limited to one plot (for example, in a story about a war or battle, a biography of a prince, etc.). The theme of the narrative of the chronicle is the history of the principality, Russian history as a whole. But Russian history in the annals is not closed, but is connected by its beginning with the history of the "world" in its medieval understanding. World history usually precedes Russian history in the annals. At the beginning of many Russian chronicles there are abbreviations from chronicles and chronographs.
Tearing out this or that fact from the general stream of numerous events and fixing it in their records, the chronicle creates the impression of an overwhelming abundance of events in human history, its incomprehensibility, its greatness and God-directedness.
However, the chronicle tells not about this or that country, land, principality, and not about humanity, not about the people, but only about what happened to this country and these people. She tells not even a story, but the events of this story. Much remains outside the annalistic presentation, and this transcendent course of history in the chronicle makes itself known to the reader in one way or another. The chronicler, as it were, realizes the incomprehensibility of everything that happens.
The flow of history is only partially captured by the chronicler, who is humbly aware of his impotence to tell about everything.
In the annals, only the most “official” events are noted, only what obviously changes, what needs to be remembered, what happens and happens.
The chronicle does not describe life, does not dwell on the social structure, does not fix the political system of the country: all this seems to the chronicler unchanged, as if eternally established, and therefore unworthy of attention. The chronicler talks only about the dynamics, and not about the statics of life.
And he understands this dynamic with medieval narrow-mindedness.
The monotonous and limited selection of events noted by the chronicler emphasizes the repetition of history, the “unimportance” of its individual events from the point of view of the timeless meaning of being, and the simultaneous importance of the eternal. The only exception, when the annalistic presentation leaves the dynamism of the story, is the death of a historical person - a prince or a church hierarch. Here the flow of events seems to be interrupted. The chronicler stops the description of the flow of events in order, stopping the story, to honor the memory of the deceased in an obituary article, sum up his activities, characterize him from the point of view of eternal values, list his virtues and good deeds, and in other cases, describe his appearance. Death itself is static. It interrupts life, stops the course of events.
This stop, as it were, calls to think about the meaning of the past, to characterize the departed person.
Every event has its inner and outer side. The inner side of events for the chronicler consists in the divine will manifested in them. The chronicler sometimes consciously avoids going deep into this one. the inner side of events, from their theological explanations. He retreats from his "thoughtless statement" of events only when he can explain them by supernatural causes, when he sees in them the "finger of God", the divine will, or in those rare cases when he digresses from the presentation of events in order to read to his readers admonition: “About falling in love, Russian princes, do not be deceived by the wasteland and charming glory of this world, even if there are worse cobwebs and it’s like a wall to go by; don’t bring anything into this world, you can bring it lower. ”
(1) Simeonovskaya chronicle under 6778 PSRL. T. XVIII, 1913. S. 73.
Consequently, the chronicler does not establish a pragmatic connection between the individual historical events recorded by him, not because he allegedly does not notice it, but because his own point of view rises above it. The chronicler seeks to see events from the height of their "eternal" and not real meaning. Often the lack of motivations, attempts to establish a causal relationship of events, the rejection of real explanations of events emphasize the highest predetermination of the course of history, its "eternal" meaning. The chronicler is a visionary of higher connections. He sometimes "speaks" more with his silence than with his story. His silence is significant and wise.
But reverently silent in the significant, he is eloquent in the insignificant. The chronicle is cluttered with separate facts. The composition of chronicle articles is often so ragged and fragmentary that it seems chaotic. We can easily be deceived and think that the clutter of the annals with individual facts is a sign of its “factuality”, attachment to everything earthly, everyday, to gray historical reality, to descriptions of the strife of princes, their struggle among themselves, to wars, to the troubles of feudal life. The chronicler writes about the reigns of princes and their deaths, about journeys, campaigns, marriages, intrigues... But it is in these descriptions of seemingly random events that his religious rise above life is reflected. This rise allows the chronicler to show the illusory nature of life, the transient nature of everything that exists. The chronicler, as it were, equalizes all events, does not see much difference between major and minor historical events. He is not indifferent to good and evil, but he looks at everything that happens from his high, leveling all points of view. He monotonously introduces more and more news with the help of the words “of the same summer”, “of the same spring” or “of the same summer”: “In the summer of 6691. The church of St. The same summer, Vsevolod went on the Bulgar with his entire region, and killed the Bulgar Prince Glebovits Izyaslav. For the same winter, the Plskovites were with Lithuania, and the Plskovites were a lot of evil. “In the summer of 6666. Ide Rostislav Smolsk and with the princess, and put your son Svyatoslav on the table in Novgorod, and Davyd on Novem targa. In the same summer, according to our sins, there were many pests in people, and the multitude of horses died, as if it were impossible to get to the targu through the city, neither by rowing nor into the field to go out; so also the horned cattle will die. In the same summer, go to Arkad Kiev to be made a bishop, and was appointed by Metropolitan Kostyantyn, and come to Novgorod, on the 13th day of September, to the canon of the Holy Ascension. In the same summer, defeat Mstislav Izyaslavits Davydovitsya Izyaslav, and drive out of Kiev, and call Rostislav, throwing his own, to Kiev on the table. The same autumn, and placed Dionysius hegumen at St. George "
(1) [-?-]Novgorod first chronicle of the senior and junior editions. M.; L., 1950. S. 37.
(2) Ibid. S. 30. 544
The chronicler looks at historical life from such a height, from which the differences between big and small are no longer significant - everything seems to be equalized and moving equally slowly and "epic".
Life is brought to one religious denominator. The pragmatic connection is not described, and not because the chronicler is unable to notice it, but because the chronicler hints at the existence of another, more important connection. The pragmatic connection does not contradict, but it interferes with the perception of this serious, religious connection of events - a connection that is under the sign of eternity. That is why in the annals there is no plot depiction of events, there is no intrigue, there is no generally coherent story about history. There are only separate facts and separate stories about separate events. A coherent narrative changes its function in the composition of the annals. A coherent story, with a plot and a pragmatic explanation of what is happening, is included in the chronicle as an organic part of its narrative, remains the same as a statement of the event, as well as short articles fixing historical fact. The chronicler sees a special historical truth standing above private events.
The chronicler's system of depicting the course of historical events is a consequence not of "special thinking", but of a special philosophy of history. It depicts the whole course of history, and not the correlation of events. He describes the movement of facts in their mass. He tries not to notice the pragmatic connection of facts, since for him their common dependence on the divine will is more important. Facts and events arise by will from above, but not because some of them cause others in the "earthly" sphere.
Capricious discontinuity, incompleteness of practical, real explanations emphasizes the consciousness that life is controlled by deeper, otherworldly forces. Much may seem to the reader of the chronicle senseless, vain, "trifle." This is the purpose of the chronicler. It shows the "vanity" of history. “Let’s start saying countless armies, and great labors, and frequent wars, and many seditions, and frequent uprisings, and many rebellions ...” - the chronicler writes.
In the annals, we can also find such statements of the chronicler: “I hear from the ancient writings that tell stories, but more than those known, they respect the old chronicler, who was in Veliky Novgorod in ancient years, how much the former bridge structure was uprooted by the multitude of water and the disturbance of the waves; and the fir-tree is such that all that writing has acquired a number, and some other sign happens, a fir-tree to our punishment has seen in the writings and sayings of the wisest men, who love to read the ancient writings, and hearing from them: as Solomon said.
(1) Ipatiev Chronicle under 1227; Chronicle according to the Ipat list. SPb., 1871. S. 501.
(2) Annals of Abraham // PSRL. T. XVI, part I. 1889. Column. 173.
Comparisons with the sacred history of the Old and New Testaments help the chronicler to explain the recurrence of events and their meaning. Sometimes the chronicler more briefly states the purpose of his records: "Yes, and this will not be forgotten in the last generations."
These rare statements of the chronicler confirm his desire to fix events for memory and extract them for memory from other writings: not to tell a story, but to fix historical facts in the mind. In this consolidation of events for memory, the chronicler sees the moralizing meaning of his work.
When events, as in the life of a saint, or in "Alexandria", or in any historical story, are connected in one storyline, the vanity of human history has to be reminded. It must be explained to the reader.
There is no special need for such explanations in the annals. They are rare. The vanity of history is emphasized in the annals by the very artistic, historical method by which the presentation is conducted.
The eternal in the annals is given in the aspect of the temporal. The more the temporality of events is emphasized, the more their eternal and timeless meaning is revealed. The more often the chronicler recalls the transience and transience of being, the slower and more epic the chronicle is.
Time is subject to eternity. Tamed by eternity, it flows slowly. In the annals, all events are subject to an even and measured flow of time. Time does not speed up in the narration of the personal destinies of historical persons and does not slow down on significant events. It flows epically calmly, follows not the hours of events, but years, rarely numbers. The chronicler creates an "equalized" course of events following one after another in a measured rhythm of numbers and years, does not recognize the uneven rhythm of a cause-and-effect relationship.
The majestic flow of time equalizes small and large, strong and weak, significant events and insignificant, meaningful moments of history and non-substantial ones. The action is not in a hurry and does not lag behind, it is above reality. It is quite different in plot literature, where attention is focused on the climax points and, as it were, lingers on them, forcing time to flow unevenly and intermittently.
In historical stories, time moves more slowly in some cases and faster in others.
The strict sequence of chronology, the slowness of the story give the impression of the "inexorability" of history, its irreversibility, fatal character. Each record is independent to a certain extent, but between them one can still feel a missed connection, the possibility of other records about other events. The absence of narrative transitions in a number of cases creates the impression not only of the inevitability of the course of history, but also of its well-known monotony. The rhythmic alternation of events is the steps of history, the chiming of the clock on the city "clock", the "pulsation" of time, the blows beaten off by fate.
This chronicle way of depicting events is applied in the annals only to Russian history. "Sacred history", the history of the world is depicted in the annals (mainly in their initial parts) in more general and significant terms. Chronicle and chronographic ways of depicting history, existing simultaneously, are profoundly different. The events of the Old and New Testaments cannot be depicted with such epic contempt for them as in the annals. Each event of the Old and New Testaments has its own symbolic, theological meaning. Sacred history as a whole therefore has an "eternal" meaning. There is no fuss of history. Time in sacred history flows differently: what happened does not disappear, it continues to be remembered by the church, reproduced in church services. There is more "eternal" in the "temporal" sacred history. From this there is such a difference in the narration of the chronograph and palea, on the one hand, and the annals, on the other.
Much in this view of the chronicler at the time is the result of his artistic, historical method, and much arises in the annals spontaneously, under the influence of the ways in which the annals were kept.
The ways of keeping a chronicle are organically connected with her artistic method and enhance the artistic effect of her method. Let's dwell on this in more detail.
In the annals, as we have already seen, the record of events prevails over the story of events. The chronicler is not so much a narrator as a "protocolist". He records and fixes. The hidden meaning of his notes is their relative contemporaneity with events. That is why the chronicler seeks to preserve the records of his predecessors in the form in which they are made, and not to retell them. For the chronicler, the preceding text of the chronicle or the historical story used by him is a document, a document about the past, made in this past. His own text is also a document, but a document of the present, made in this present. To fix the event, not to let it be forgotten, to disappear from the memory of subsequent generations is the main goal of the chronicler, who keeps chronicle records; he captures the vain ... . Annalistic record stands at the transition of the present to the past. This process of transition is extremely significant in the chronicle. The chronicler "without deceit", in fact, writes down the events of the present - what was in his memory and then, accumulating new records, during subsequent rewriting of chronicle texts, thereby pushes these records into the past. An annalistic record, which at the time of its compilation referred to an event of the present or only recently happened, gradually turns into a record of the past - more and more distant. The remarks, exclamations and comments of the chronicler, which, when written, were the result of the chronicler's agitation, his "empathy", his political interest in them, then become impassive documents. They do not disturb either the temporal sequence or the epic calmness of the chronicler. From this point of view, it is clear that the artistic image of the chronicler, invisibly present in the annalistic presentation, appears in the mind of the reader in the form of a contemporary writing down what is happening, and not in the image of a “scientific and inquisitive historian” creating chronicle vaults, as he appears in the studies of Russian annals. literary image the chronicler disagrees with the real.
The chronicler reacts vividly to the events of the present, but the subsequent compiler, mechanically combining the news of different chronicles, gives them a dispassionate character.
The vanity of history appears more and more in chronicles as their number increases, as the diversity of these records, created by their mechanical combination, increases. The more the chronicle is rewritten, the more complex and voluminous it becomes, acquiring the character of extensive chronicle vaults, the more calm and "indifferent" the presentation becomes.
The real chronicler and his artistic image, as I said, are different. Real chroniclers are young people (Lavrenty - the compiler of the Laurentian Chronicle) and old people, monks and representatives of the white clergy (Novgorodian Herman Voyata), and princes (Monomakh and his son Mstislav), and employees of the posadnik hut (in Pskov), but artistically - the image of the chronicler is one. This is an old man, indifferently listening to good and evil. This image is brilliantly reproduced by Pushkin in Pimen's monologue.
So, the artistic image of the chronicler largely depends on the way the chronicle was written, and on his artistic method. Not the last role in the creation of this image was played by the "aging" of chronicles described above. The “antiquity” of chronicle records “aged” the chronicler himself, made him even more indifferent to life than he really was, made him rise above time, even more recognize the vanity of everything that happens. The epic image of the chronicler, common for all chronicles, was created by the very method of compiling chronicles, the tasks that were set for chronicle writing. This image became more and more definite and integral in the course of the subsequent work of the compilers and editors of chronicles, deepening the diversity, mechanicalness and "calmness" of chronicles.
Let us now turn to how epic time was gradually defeated by historical time as a result of the struggle within the described system.
The story of events is their internally ordered transmission. Recording events requires only external ordering. Documents need to be filed. Such a "filing" of annalistic records - documents was the external form of annals: strict chronological confinement, breakdown of all records by year. The chronicler seeks to create a "chain of events", to string records in their strict chronological sequence by an external device.
In this chronicle form of presentation, there is some external opposition to the epic consciousness of history that still continued to operate. The epic uses a special, epic method of depicting time: time develops within the plot, plot events determine time. If there are many events - “a lot”, that is, for a long time, is represented and artistic time. If there are no events, artistic time passes instantly, conditionally reflected only in the epic formula "thirty years and three years", etc.
Consequently, the time of the epic is compressed depending on the saturation of its events. This method of compressing time in the epic is directly opposite to the “spreading out” of time in the annals with the help of annual entries. The weather way of presenting in the annals, recording by years is a kind of “shovel”, with the help of which the chronicler seeks to objectively reflect the even course of time, independent of its saturation with events. This aspiration extends so far that for those years for which he has no records of events, he nevertheless leaves the date: “In the summer of 6775 there is nothing,” or writes; “There was silence,” that is, it notes that there was still something. Consequently, unlike epics, in the annals there is an idea of a single objectively existing time, independent of its saturation with events, and an attempt to reflect this objective time by creating a rigid chronological network that rhythmically divides and connects the presentation.
From the point of view of the development of ideas about time, this was a huge step forward. The progress was even greater than the consciousness of many chroniclers, and especially their readers, would allow, and this contradiction was constantly reflected in the chronicle. We often meet in the annals a return to the old ideas about time. One form of such a return was local time constraints. In order to understand the essence of this "local limitation" of the annalistic sense of time, we need to return to the principle of the integrity of the image, which we have already mentioned, which affects both the epic and ancient Russian literature.
The principle of the integrity of the image operates in the epic consciousness. It leads to the fact that one series of events is depicted in the epic, one plot unfolds. We know in epics the connection of plots, but by stringing them on a more general plot, which allows us not to violate the chronological "unidirectionality" of the presentation. On the basis of various stories about the exploits of the hero in the epic, his “biography” can be created: the stories can be located in chronological order- from his birth and childhood to death. So, in the records of epics there are several cases of combining several epics about Ilya Muromets into one consolidated epic-poem. There are records of epics covering the entire cycle of stories about Ilya Muromets, and the stories are always connected to each other chronologically. Before us is the enfilade principle of connecting various epics.
(1) Simeon Chronicle ... S. 72.
(2) See: Astakhova A.M. Ilya Muromets in the Russian epic // Ilya Muromets. Prep. texts, articles and comments. A. M. Astakhova. M.; L., 1958. S. 393.
In the annals, the primacy of records over the story seems to be striving to destroy this integrity and unity of artistic vision. In it, as we have already said, more than one action develops, not a whole plot is transmitted, but many fragmented impressions are given. However, at the same time, the chronicle is subject to the same principle of image integrity.
The Russian chronicles strive to present the history of the principality on the basis of their records, to unite the history of the principalities into the history of the Russian land as a whole, and to connect the history of the Russian land with the history of the world through special chronographic introductions compiled on the basis of translated Byzantine chronicles.
As a rule, the most significant Russian chronicles begin from the creation of the world, from the flood or from the Babylonian pandemonium, from which, according to the Bible, the peoples of the world got their start. From the Babylonian pandemonium, a fan of events in the Tale of Bygone Years diverges. From here the Slavs originate. The beginning of the Slavs turns into a message of information about the division of the Slavs, the division of the Slavs turns into a story about Russian tribes, then a chain of events in Russian history is built. This unifying knot of events in Russian history forms the basis of local chronicles. "The Tale of Bygone Years" or the "Initial Code" preceding it, with its world-historical introduction, form the basis of most Russian chronicles.
This means that chronicle records are united not only by the annual network of chronicles, but also by their common beginning in world history, which collects Russian lands. The desire for completeness of information, for the image of the majestic, finds its magnificent embodiment in Russian chronicles. The majestic flow of history, as it were, is opposed to the vanity and insignificance of the individual events that create this flow.
A single principle of chronological sequence is also the desire for completeness of the image. The stringing of events in chronological order is reflected in the style of presentation of the chronicle, in the typical monotony of turns, emphasizing the measured “step of history”, its pace, rhythm. Even the syntax of the annalistic language is indicative, in which syntactic composition prevails over syntactic subordination. The syntax of the annals is the construction of a complex sentence, characteristic of the ancient times of the Old Russian language: the simple following of one sentence after another, in which the whole is held together by the fact that the sentences are united by the unity of content.
(1) See: Obnorsky S.P. Essays on the history of the Russian literary language of the older period. M.; L., 1946. S. 175-176.
The unity of content for chronicle records was also determined by the territorial feature. Chronicle time is also "local time". Time, as it were, is torn apart between the territories of the principalities. But just as in feudal Russia centripetal tendencies met in political life with centralizing aspirations, in the annals "local time" constantly struggled with a single time, externally introduced and superimposed on everything in the chronicles by the annual network.
Let's take a closer look at this "local time".
The coexistence of different time series is just as possible in a medieval literary work as the coexistence of different perspective projections is possible in an icon. Some architectural detail is depicted in the projection on the right, but on the same icon next to it, another detail is depicted in the projection on the left. The third projection depicts a table and a chair standing in the foreground (see, for example, Rublev's Trinity).
Similar differences in the projection of time are possible in a literary work with two or more plots. In the annals, these different systems of time are also present (until the 16th century), but they are overcome by the desire to subordinate them to a single annual network, which includes everything described.
However, this desire is not always fully realized. "Seams" between different chronological systems up to the 16th century. are constantly visible in the annals. Different chronological systems are not caused by different plots, as in a sequential narrative (the chronicle does not know through plots), but by the fact that events take place in different principalities and in different cities of Russia.
The connection between time and place in Ancient Russia was constantly manifested. It existed, of course, not in every place, but only in those that had their own history: therefore, it is especially intensified in historical, revered places, surrounded by a halo of holiness. Bishop Simon, in his letter to Polycarp, included in the Kiev Caves Patericon, says that it is better to live one day in the Kiev Caves Monastery than a thousand years in the villages of sinners; further he illustrates his idea with a story about the Pechersk monastery, its beginning and its ascetics. The sanctity of a place is in its history. History is attached to the locality, inseparable from geographical points. Russian history is the history of the Russian land - territories, cities, principalities, monasteries, churches.
(1) “One day in the house of the Mother of God more than a thousand years, and in it they would have stayed more than living in the villages of sinners” (Abramovich D. Kiev-Pechersky Paterik. Kiev, 1931, p. 103).
Chronicle records were in Russian chronicles mainly of local origin. The chronicles of these records are, to one degree or another, centralized.
In certain areas of Russia during the period of feudal fragmentation, there was their own time, their own ideas about time. The calendars of individual principalities, as is well shown by historians of Russian chronicles, could differ significantly - sometimes for a year or two.
In Ancient Russia, the March, Ultra-March and September chronologies coexisted. Sometimes in the same principality in different centers of chronicle writing there were different systems of chronology, which partly, of course, indicates that the Christian chronology was taken into account only by the educated elite of feudal society and was not at all universal. So, for example, individual chronological inconsistencies in the Laurentian Chronicle were explained by A. A. Shakhmatov as a result of the fact that in the annals of the princes and in the annals of the bishops of the same principality - Pereyaslavl-South - there were different reckonings.
Investigating the origin of the ultra-March chronology, N. G. Berezhkov determined that it was not the result of errors, distortions, but was a special style of chronology that existed along with the March one. In the XV century. September joins these two styles. The Ultramart year is “clearly outlined in time: from the second decade of the 12th century. to the first years of the 14th century; then they almost disappear.
(1) See: Berezhkov N. G. Chronology of Russian chronicle writing. M., 1963. S. 28 et seq.
(2) Ibid. S. 29.
The existence of several chronology systems is, in the end, only an indicator, but not the very essence of the feeling of "local time", its territorial confinement. Consciousness could not yet embrace time as a kind of unity for the entire Russian land. It would still be very difficult for a chronicler to chronologically link the events of his principality with the events of another principality. He tried to do this by compiling vaults, putting all events into a single chronological network, but this was far from an easy task. Hence the well-known mechanicalness and "violence" of the annual network of chronicles.
If we take a closer look at the chronological calculations of the annals, we will notice in it the remains of separate and independent lines, closely connected with local events. The general history of Russia, by combining local chronicles into codes, was created on the basis of an artificial, mechanical connection of various time lines, but the bundles of these lines were not always connected correctly: from here, the same event could sometimes be told twice or thrice. All-Russian chroniclers - compilers of all-Russian chronicle codes made great efforts to bring these various time lines into a single trunk. There were several methods of such reduction to unity. But even these methods and mistakes that arose with this kind of information about the unity of all the time series of Russian chronicle, testify to the fact that a single historical time was still difficult to carry out. We notice in the annals the struggle between local and general historical ideas about time.
The idea of the unity of historical time was sharply expressed, centralized. The local chronicle, with its local conception of time, could also be a private matter (cf. in Novgorod the annals of individual churches), but the all-Russian chronicle with its ideas about the unity of historical time was always a state enterprise.
Local news was subjected to forced centralization in the all-Russian codes, forced unification in a single annual network for the entire Russian land. Chronicles were sorted out by separate news and again mechanically collected in enlarged annual articles.
Synchronization of private manifestations of time, individual local timelines in order to create a common, unified "centralized" time was necessary for public and state actions. The fact that during the period of feudal fragmentation, time in the all-Russian chronicle was nevertheless connected mechanically, “forcibly”, sometimes with errors, reflected the internal inconsistency of the feudal statehood of the period of feudal fragmentation with its centrifugal and centripetal tendencies.
Along with the mechanical "filing" of individual documents-information in chronicles, in other genres of historical narrative, there has always been a coherent historical story. The ability for a historical story was already well manifested in the epic. In ancient literature, it is reflected in translated historical works: chronicles, paleyas, books of sacred history, etc. A coherent historical narrative is presented in translated “novels”: in “Alexandria”, in “The Tale of the Devastation of Jerusalem”, etc. Original Russian historical stories and lives testify to the same. But here is what is characteristic: in all the genres listed above, a connected story is characterized by a greater or lesser limitation, the isolation of time by the limits of the story. Being included in the annals, these connected and closed historical narratives received a new artistic function: their isolation was destroyed, the story became a record, the plot turned into an event. If coherent narratives about certain events were part of the chronicle, they were not divided into annual articles and were presented to the reader under one or another year of one of the events of the narrative. Thus, they were not put in close connection with the rest of the local events recorded in the annals. This connection was more mechanical than organic. The existence of several closed time series is evident.
Already in The Tale of Bygone Years, the chronological connection of events is now and then broken by the chronicler by introducing plot narratives: either about Olga’s revenge on the Drevlyans, or about the Belozersky magi, or about the campaigns of Vladimir Monomakh in his “Instruction”, etc.
For the XIII and XIV centuries. we have in the annals an example of a coherent historical narrative - this is that part of the Ipatiev Chronicle, which goes back to the Galician-Volyn annals. The Galician-Volyn chronicle, as researchers have repeatedly noted, did not originally have a weather chronological network. But this exception only emphasizes the rule upon closer examination: the Galicia-Volyn chronicle is devoted to the history of only one region of Russia, and it is natural that this region had its own unity of time for the historian.
The historian of this region did not arrange his story according to the annual network - there was no need for this, since it was a story about one region of Russia. The annual network was introduced into the Galicia-Volyn chronicle later, when it was included in a larger collection. However, one of the lists of the Ipatiev Chronicle, the so-called Khlebnikovsky, in its Galician-Volyn part, does not have a breakdown by annual articles, as in the archetype.
Coherent narratives continue to be introduced into the chronicle network in the all-Russian annalistic collections of the 15th and 16th centuries. An example of this is "The Journey of Afanasy Nikitin Over the Three Seas." It was included in the chronicle under one year - 1475, but united the events of six years. The compiler of the compendium did not scatter them according to annual articles, because the time of Indian events, events that took place in distant countries, did not synchronize in the mind of the chronicler with the time of Russian history. They were far away "beyond the three seas", and there, in those countries, there was their time. The same should be said about other inclusions in the chronicle associated with events that are territorially far from the Russian land.
Coherent narratives about Russian events were divided and sorted into cells of the chronological network much more easily than stories about events that happened far from the Russian land. Fragmentary insertions from the lives of Russian saints were easily made, but not easily from Russian travels outside the borders of the Russian land. Thus, time and territory were united in the mind of the chronicler.
The overcoming of the annalistic way of presenting Russian history and the transition to a coherent narrative of the history of Russia took place with the formation of a single Russian centralized state in the 16th century. on the basis of an intermediate stage of coherent narratives about more limited plot topics: about the history of the Kazan kingdom and its annexation to Moscow (Kazan history), about the history of the family of Moscow sovereigns (The Power Book of the Royal Genealogy), about the history of Grozny (Royal Chronicler and the History of the Grand Duke of Moscow Kurbsky).
Historical narratives decomposed the annalistic way of depicting time both from within the annals and from outside it. Literature overcame the document. Instead of documents about the past, collected in huge chronicles, the tendency to reconstruct the past in coherent literary stories, but stories not with closed time, as in the epic, but with open time - historical time, is increasingly affecting. Events from a simple chronological sequence "line up" in a causal sequence. Time, which could never be perceived alone, in its pure form, abstracting from the phenomena accompanying it, from events, passes from the local series and its narrowly territorial perception
In a series of cause and effect. Both series, as we have already seen, always existed, but they existed for different lengths of history; now the chronicle ceases to be a monopoly on the history of a wide coverage - the history of all-Russian.
The history of chronicle time is significant. The earth and the time flowing on it were something whole in the minds of people. The history of the forms of chronicle writing and the history of chronicle time were therefore closely connected with the history of the collection of the Russian land. This is the special significance of chronicle writing, its greatness and its connection with the history of the people to whom it was dedicated.
The "transpersonal" beginning in chronicle writing was especially strong. Therefore, the artistic nature of chronicle writing is largely contradictory. This inconsistency was created, destroyed and restored constantly. The conscious will of the chronicler came into constant conflict with how the chronicle was actually kept. Therefore, aspirations and results often did not coincide. The artistic image of the chronicler, which arose unconsciously in the reader, did not coincide with the image of the real chronicler - as he really was. The image of time created by chronicle writing did not coincide in many respects with those real ideas about time that the chronicler possessed. The hand of an individual chronicler was controlled by worldly passions and religious convictions, but the entire course of chronicling was controlled not only by individual chroniclers, but to some extent the entire historical course of the unification of the country.
(1) Basically, the text of this chapter is a report submitted for publication in 1962. See: Slavic Literature. Reports of the Soviet delegation. V International Congress of Slavists (Sofia, September, 1963). M., 1963; and separately. S. Wolman wrote about the system of genres before me, but as applied to theatrical and dramatic genres; for references to these works by S. Wolman, see his article: The System of Genres as a Problem of Comparative Historical Literature (Problems of Modern Philology. M., 1965, p. 344). In Soviet literary criticism and folklore literature, the concept of a "system of genres" spread after my report at the Fifth International Congress of Slavists in 1963.
Recently, the genre system has been open and has begun to be successfully studied in ancient Russian art. A remarkable book by G. K. Wagner, The Problem of Genres in Ancient Russian Art, appeared on this subject (Moscow, 1974). In it, the genres of ancient Russian art are studied in the same way as the system, and this system is compared with the one that existed in ancient Russian literature, and very important similarities and differences are revealed. Referring those interested to this book, we will only note that in ancient Russian art both the functional principle of genre formation (p. 30), and their subordination to aesthetic etiquette (p. 36), and much more, confirming and deepening our ideas about the aesthetics of Ancient Russia, are found.
II POETICS OF ARTISTIC GENERALIZATION
LITERARY ETIQUETTE
Feudalism of the time of its emergence and flourishing, with its extremely complex ladder of relations of vassalage-suzerainty, created a developed ritual: church and secular. The relationship of people among themselves and their relationship to God were subject to etiquette, tradition, custom, ceremonial, developed and despotic to such an extent that they permeated themselves and to a certain extent mastered the worldview and thinking of a person. From social life, the tendency to etiquette penetrates into art. The images of saints in painting are to some extent subject to etiquette: icon-painting originals prescribe the depiction of each saint in strictly defined positions, with all the attributes inherent in him. The depiction of events from the life of saints or events of sacred history was also subject to etiquette.
Iconographic plots Byzantine painting largely dependent on the etiquette of the feudal court. The entire third part of A. Grabar's work "The Emperor in Byzantine Art" is devoted to the influence of the court ritual on the addition of the main iconographic types - such as the entrance of the Lord into Jerusalem, the deesis, the descent into hell, the almighty seated on the throne, etc.
In addition to painting, etiquette can be revealed in the building art of the Middle Ages and in applied art, in dress and in theology, in relation to nature and in political life. It was one of the main forms of ideological coercion in the Middle Ages. Etiquette is inherent in feudalism, life is permeated with it. Art is subject to this form of feudal coercion. Art not only depicts life, but also gives it etiquette forms.
If we turn to the literature and literary language of the epoch of early and developed feudalism, then here too we find the same inclination towards etiquette. Literary etiquette and the literary canons developed by it are the most typical medieval conditionally normative connection between content and form.
In fact, V. O. Klyuchevsky picked up quite a few formulas, allegedly specially inherent in the hagiographic genre. AS Orlov did the same for the military story genre. There is no need to enumerate these formulas; they are well known to every specialist: “holding hands with a slash”, “blood flows through the lands, like a river”, “knock and noise is terrible, like thunder”, “beating hard and mercilessly, like the earth is postonati”, “and poidosha Poltsi, like a hog, etc. However, neither A. S. Orlov nor V. O. Klyuchevsky attached importance to the fact that both hagiographic formulas and military formulas are constantly found outside the lives and outside military stories, for example, in the annals , in the chronograph, in historical stories, even in oratorical works and in messages. And this is very important, because it is not the genre of the work that determines the choice of expressions, the choice of formulas, but the subject in question. It is the subject in question that requires certain stencil formulas for its image. Since we are talking about a saint, hagiographic formulas are obligatory, whether it will be spoken about in a life, in an annals or in a chronograph.
(1) Grabar A. L "Art imperial et l" art chretien / U In: Qrabar A. L "Empereur dans l" art byzantin. Paris, 1936.
(2) See: V. O. Klyuchevsky, Old Russian Lives of the Saints as a Historical Source. M., 1871.
(3) See: A. S. Orlov: 1) On the peculiarities of the form of Russian military stories (ending in the 17th century) Ts CHOIDR. 1902, book. IV, pp. 1-50; 2) On some features of the style of Great Russian historical fiction of the 16th-18th centuries. // Izv. ORAS. 1908. Vol. XIII, book. 4 etc.
These formulas are selected depending on what is said about the saint, what kind of events the author narrates. In the same way, military formulas are obligatory when telling about military events - regardless of whether it is in a military story or in an annals, in a sermon or in a life. There are formulas applied to the campaign of one's prince, others - in relation to the enemy, formulas that determine various moments of the battle, victory, defeat, returning with victory to one's city, etc. Military formulas can be found in hagiography, hagiographic formulas - in military story, both of them - in the annals or in teaching. It is easy to verify this by reviewing any chronicle: Ipatievskaya, Lavrentievskaya, one of the Novgorod ones, etc. The same chronicler not only uses various formulas - hagiographic, military, obituary, etc., but also changes the whole manner several times, the style of his presentation, depending on whether he writes about the battle of the prince or about his death, whether he conveys the content of his contract or talks about his marriage.
But not only the choice of stable stylistic formulas is determined by literary etiquette - the very language in which the author writes also changes. It is easy to notice the differences in the language of the same writer: while philosophizing and reflecting on the frailty of human existence, he resorts to Church Slavonicisms, talking about everyday affairs - to folk-Russianisms. The literary language is by no means alone. It is not difficult to be convinced of this by re-reading Monomakh's "Instruction": the language of this work is "three-layered" - it contains both Church Slavonic elements, and business, and folk poetic (the latter, however, in smaller sizes than the first two). If we judged the authorship of this work only by style, it might happen that we would attribute it to three authors. But the fact is that each manner, each of the styles of the literary language, and even each of the languages (for Monomakh writes both in Church Slavonic and in Russian) is used by him, from a medieval point of view, quite appropriately, depending on what concerns whether Monomakh church stories, or his campaigns, or the state of mind of his young daughter-in-law.
For the question of etiquette, the position of L.P. Yakubinsky is extremely important, that “the Church Slavonic language of Kievan Rus of the X-XI centuries. was delimited, differed from the Old Russian folk language, not only in reality ... but also in the minds of people. In fact, along with the unconscious desire to assimilate the Church Slavonic and Old Russian languages, one should also note the opposite trend - towards dissimilation. This explains the fact that the Church Slavonic language, despite all the assimilation processes, survived until the 20th century. The Church Slavonic language was constantly perceived as a high language, bookish and ecclesiastical. The writer's choice of the Church Slavonic language or Church Slavonic words and forms for some cases, Old Russian for others, and folk poetic speech for still others was always a conscious choice and was subject to a certain literary etiquette. The Church Slavonic language is inseparable from the church content, folk poetic speech - from folk poetic plots, business speech - from business ones. The Church Slavonic language was constantly separated in the minds of writers and readers from the vernacular and from the business language. It is thanks to the consciousness that the Church Slavonic language is a “special” language that the very difference between the Church Slavonic language and Old Russian could be preserved.
1. To the main prerequisites for the emergence of Old Russian literature scientists attribute the following prerequisites:
Formation of the ancient Russian state. The development of writing.
Baptism of Russia. (988, baptized by Vladimir the Red Sun). The adoption of Christian culture required many literate people, book business is developing.
Using the experience of Byzantium and Bulgarian cultures. Bulgaria was the nearest Christian country. (Old Slavonic is a written language, the ancient language is oral).
The presence of oral folk art.
Periodization of Old Russian literature. Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev identified 3 major periods:
Literature of Kievan Rus. XI - the middle of the XII century.
Literature of the period of feudal fragmentation and the subsequent unification of North-Eastern Russia. End of XII-XV centuries.
Literature of the period of creation and development of the central Russian state. XVI-XVII centuries.
The main features of Old Russian literature.
The nature of life. Old Russian literature handwritten. The building work was great. Special respect for the book. In the 11th-14th centuries, the material for the manuscript was parchment, made from calfskin. Paper appeared only in the 14th century. Manuscripts were written in ink and cinnabar.
The main type of Old Russian book is a voluminous manuscript. Almost never, Old Russian works were published alone, but were included in some collections.
Mutedness (darkening) of the author's beginning. One of the main problems of the literature of this period is the problem of authorship. The ancient scribe almost never sought to claim his authorship. The vast majority of works were anonymous.
The composition of Russian literature of this period was applied in nature. The works of ancient Russian literature were either part of the divine service in the temple or were used for edification, instruction, enlightenment, that is, they were published for some practical use.
2. The problem of the artistic method of ancient Russian literature.
The artistic method is a figurative reflection of reality. This issue has not been fully resolved in science. D.S. Likhachev, I.P. Eremin, A.N. Robinson, A.A. Chess.
There are 4 principles of reality reflection in total: 1. Religious symbolism.
2. Medieval historicism.
3. Traditional.
4. Didacticism.
1. Religious symbolism.
The basis of the worldview of the ancient Russian person is righteous Christianity, the ancient Russian person saw the world as follows:
The whole world was presented as a struggle between God and the devil, good and evil. The epicenter of this struggle was the human soul.
Old Russian literature is the literature of the wide use of a religious symbol. The symbol formed the basis of the state of a religious person.
The world of ancient Russian people is a binary world, consisting of two spheres:
The world is visible, earthly
Invisible, ideal, high (highest).
Both of these worlds are, in the opinion of the ancient people, God's creation, and not one of the events of the daily life of the visible world occurs without the will of the invisible.
Everything around was perceived as some kind of signs, symbols of the higher world. Nature was perceived by the ancient Russians as a single holistic symbol. The changing seasons were perceived as a symbol of sacred history.
2. medieval historicism.
Old Russian literature is deeply historical. In the center of the description are real facts, a real phenomenon of reality. Works of ancient Russian literature were created according to hot places of events. Hence such properties: truthfulness, historicity, publicism. From the point of view of the veracity of the image in the ancient Russian work, history acquires a providential coloring, a retrospective into the future. The course of historical events is explained, as a rule, from a religious point of view. All events that take place are considered as a manifestation of God's plan for the world and man.
3. Traditionalism.
The fundamental concepts of the XI-XVII centuries are the concept of the tradition of the norm. The Old Russian writer tried to show himself as exemplary and traditional as possible. They sought to create an exemplary essay. Within the framework of this method, the concept of literary etiquette was key.
Literary etiquette is a special principle of ancient Russian literature, indicating what and how to depict. It has 3 components:
Etiquette of the world order (composed of the ancient scribe's idea of how the course of events should take place).
Etiquette of behavior (composed of ideas about how this or that actor should behave).
Verbal etiquette (it consists of ideas about how the scribe should describe everything that happens).
4. Didacticism.
Didacticism, moralizing (this is the most soulful and instructive literature). It is extremely serious, it reflected the choice between salvation and death of a person. Learned to choose.
3. Genre system of Old Russian literature
Old Russian literature had a peculiar and rather complex genre system. Drama did not exist until the 12th century. The theater appears with the birth of Peter I. Lyric poetry also did not exist; it appears in the 18th century. This appearance is associated with Simeon of Polotsk.
The epic was the most developed form. Epic genres in ancient Russian literature were divided into groups:
Hagiographic literature (from the Greek agiossaint) is a biography of a person who has been canonized by the church as a saint. (“I describe the lives of the saints”).
The formation and development of hagiographic literature dates back to the first centuries of Christianity.
V.V. Kuskov believes that this literature incorporates elements of different genres:
1. Antique, historical biography.
2. Hellenistic novel.
3. Funeral speech.
In the VIII-IX centuries in Byzantium, the canonical structure of life and the basic principles of the hagiographic hero were developed. At the same time, there is a hierarchical division of lives according to the types of heroes and the nature of their exploits, this classification was fully accepted in Russia.
Lives classification
1. Lives of the monks who left the world. (The first venerable "Life
2. Theodosius of the Caves).
3. Lives of martyrdom. ("The Life of Boris and Gleb").
4. Equally Apostolic Life (Life of Princess Olga and Life of Vladimir the Baptist).
5. Lives of the saints of the XIV-XV centuries. (Life of Stephen of Perm).
6. Lives of princes-warriors. (Life of Alexander Nevsky. Life of Dmitry Donskoy).
7. Lives of Christ for the sake of the holy fools. (Life of St. Basil the Blessed).
8. Lives of the holy ascetics (hermits, cave dwellers).
At the center of life was an ideal Christian hero, following Christ in his life; a person who has reached Christian perfection. Life, as a rule, combines the entertaining nature of a narrative narrative with edification and panegyric (glorification). The compilers of the lives show in all their grandeur the beauty of the Christian ideal, the nature of this ideal leaves a mark on the compositional and stylistic structure of the life. It had 3 parts:
1. It explains the importance and purpose of living. Self-deprecation is required. In the center of the work is the image of only the saint. The description of the life path of a saint usually begins with an indication of his origin, as a rule, he came from pious parents. This fact is connected with the next stage, in childhood the hero shuns games, did not upset anyone, is secluded.
2. The hero refuses marriage. Leaves the parental home, he runs, removed from the world. He works hard, becomes a monk, and fights hard against the devil's temptations. As a rule, the brethren flocked to the saint. He usually founded a monastery. The hero predicted the day and hour of his death. The body, after his death, turned out to be incorruptible, and emitted a wondrous fragrance - this was one of the evidence of the holiness of the deceased. Miracles happened at his imperishable relics (for example, candles lit up).
3. The autobiography ended with a brief praise to the saint or a prayer. Thus, a generalized radiant image of a saint was created, adorned with virtues, estranged from everything accidental.
In Russia, with the adoption of Christianity, lives began to spread in 2 forms: in short, prologues (as part of prologues or synaxaries) were used during worship, and in a lengthy form they were called linear - these are monthly readings for every day.
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Feudalism of the time of its emergence and flourishing, with its extremely complex ladder of relations of vassalage-suzerainty, created a developed ritual: church and secular. The relationship of people among themselves and their relationship to God were subject to etiquette, tradition, custom, ceremonial, developed and despotic to such an extent that they permeated themselves and to a certain extent mastered the worldview and thinking of a person.
From social life, the tendency to etiquette penetrates into art. The images of saints in painting are to some extent subject to etiquette: icon-painting originals prescribe the depiction of each saint in strictly defined positions, with all the attributes inherent in him. The depiction of events from the life of saints or events of sacred history was also subject to etiquette.
The iconographic subjects of Byzantine painting largely depended on the etiquette of the feudal court. The entire third part of A. Grabar's work "The Emperor in Byzantine Art" is devoted to the influence of the court ritual on the addition of the main iconographic types - such as the Lord's entry into Jerusalem, the deesis, the descent into hell, the Almighty sitting on the throne, etc. The beginning of the form
End of form
In addition to painting, etiquette can be revealed in the building art of the Middle Ages and in applied art, in dress and in theology, in relation to nature and in political life. It was one of the main forms of ideological coercion in the Middle Ages. Etiquette is inherent in feudalism, life is permeated with it. Art is subject to this form of feudal coercion. Art not only depicts life, but also gives it etiquette forms.
If we turn to the literature and literary language of the epoch of early and developed feudalism, then here too we find the same inclination towards etiquette. Literary etiquette and the literary canons developed by it are the most typical medieval conditionally normative connection between content and form.
In fact, V. O. Klyuchevsky picked up quite a few formulas, allegedly specially inherent in the hagiographic genre. AS Orlov did the same for the military story genre. There is no need to enumerate these formulas; they are well known to every specialist: “holding hands with a slash”, “blood flows through the lands, like a river”, “knock and noise is terrible, like thunder”, “beating hard and mercilessly, like the earth is postonati”, “and poidosha half, like a hog, "etc.
However, neither A. S. Orlov nor V. O. Klyuchevsky attached importance to the fact that both hagiographic formulas and military formulas are constantly found outside lives and outside military stories, for example, in the annals, in the chronograph, in historical stories, even in oratory and in epistles. And this is very important, because it is not the genre of the work that determines the choice of expressions, the choice of formulas, but the subject in question.
It is the subject in question that requires certain stencil formulas for its image. Since we are talking about a saint, hagiographic formulas are obligatory, whether it will be spoken about in a life, in an annals or in a chronograph.
These formulas are selected depending on what is said about the saint, what kind of events the author narrates. In the same way, military formulas are obligatory when telling about military events - regardless of whether it is in a military story or in an annals, in a sermon or in a life. There are formulas applied to the campaign of one's prince, others - in relation to the enemy, formulas that determine various moments of the battle, victory, defeat, returning with victory to one's city, etc. Military formulas can be found in hagiography, hagiographic formulas - in military story, both of them - in the annals or in teaching. It is easy to be convinced of this by reviewing any chronicle: the Ipatiev PS, the Lavrentiev PS, one of the Novgorod PSs, etc. The same chronicler not only uses various formulas - hagiographic, military, obituary, etc., but also according to several times he changes the whole manner, the style of his presentation, depending on whether he writes about the battle of the prince or about his death, whether he conveys the content of his contract or talks about his marriage.
But not only the choice of stable stylistic formulas is determined by literary etiquette - the very language in which the author writes also changes.
It is easy to notice the differences in the language of the same writer: while philosophizing and reflecting on the frailty of human existence, he resorts to Church Slavonicisms, talking about everyday affairs - to folk-Russianisms. The literary language is by no means alone. It is not difficult to be convinced of this by re-reading Monomakh's "Instruction" S P: the language of this work is "three-layered" - it contains both Church Slavonic elements, and business, and folk poetic (the latter, however, in smaller sizes than the first two).
If we judged the authorship of this work only by style, it might happen that we would attribute it to three authors. But the fact is that each manner, each of the styles of the literary language, and even each of the languages (for Monomakh writes both in Church Slavonic and in Russian) is used by him, from a medieval point of view, quite appropriately, depending on what concerns whether Monomakh church stories, or his campaigns, or the state of mind of his young daughter-in-law.
For the question of etiquette, the position of L.P. Yakubinsky is extremely important, that “the Church Slavonic language of Kievan Rus of the X-XI centuries. was delimited, differed from the Old Russian folk language, not only in reality ... but also in the minds of people.
In fact, along with the unconscious desire to assimilate the Church Slavonic and Old Russian languages, one should also note the opposite trend - towards dissimilation. This explains the fact that the Church Slavonic language, despite all the assimilation processes, survived until the 20th century. The Church Slavonic language was constantly perceived as a high language, bookish and ecclesiastical. The writer's choice of the Church Slavonic language or Church Slavonic words and forms for some cases, Old Russian for others, and folk poetic speech for still others was always a conscious choice and was subject to a certain literary etiquette.
The Church Slavonic language is inseparable from the church content, folk poetic speech - from folk poetic plots, business speech - from business ones. The Church Slavonic language was constantly separated in the minds of writers and readers from the vernacular and from the business language. It is thanks to the consciousness that the Church Slavonic language is a “special” language that the very difference between the Church Slavonic language and Old Russian could be preserved.
It seems to me wrong to talk about a single literary language of Ancient Russia, highlighting in this literary language the church-book style or, more cautiously, the book-Slovenian type (V. V. Vinogradov).
The literary language of Ancient Russia was not only not unified, but it was not one either.
There were two literary languages in Ancient Russia: Church Slavonic (as Latin in the west, and Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Wen-Yang in the east) and Old Russian literary language. It is only in the latter that different types and styles can be distinguished.
The Church Slavonic language, which arose on the basis of Old Church Slavonic, was the common literary language of the Eastern and Southern Slavs (as well as Romanians). One cannot think that in the literary languages - Old Russian, Old Serbian, Old Bulgarian, as well as in Middle Serbian and Middle Bulgarian there were "styles" and "types" of church books.
But it is easy to see that in a single Church Slavonic language, which had a single base of literary monuments among the Eastern and Southern Slavs (for the commonality of this literary base, see above, pp. 262-270), there were various national versions. Only the awareness that the Church Slavonic language is a special language in the presence of monuments common to all southern and eastern Slavs, the lists of which passed from country to country, can explain the commonality and stability of this language with all its national versions.
The fates of both literary languages of Ancient Russia were completely different. They not only had different stylistic functions, but also were in different conditions of existence.
The Church Slavonic language, which was ancient Bulgarian in origin, was the common language for many Slavic countries with which Ancient Russia was in constant book communication. We can talk about the Russian review (version) of the Church Slavonic language, reviews of the Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian and consider their changes over the centuries. However, one must not lose sight of the fact that the Church Slavonic language as a whole was in constant internal intensive interaction both vertically and horizontally: the influence of the language of monuments of past eras constantly affected the language of new monuments; works written in Church Slavonic in one of the Slavic countries were moved to other countries. Separate, especially authoritative works retained their language for many centuries. They were equal in language and new works in all countries. This is the originality of the history of the Church Slavonic language, traditional, stable, inactive. It was the language of traditional worship, traditional church books.
Liturgical and ecclesiastical books of the first centuries Slavic writing were the same samples as traces and chips in icon painting.
The Russian literary language, on the contrary, did not have such patterns. It was associated with the living, oral language of chanceries, judicial institutions, official political and public life. The business language changed much faster than Church Slavonic.
The question is of great interest: what was stronger in this Russian literary language - the written tradition or the oral tradition with which it was associated.
In terms of its types (in different spheres of use, in different areas, in their chronological differences), the Russian literary language was much more diverse than the Church Slavonic language, less stable, less closed. It did not have that immovable base of "examples" that the Church Slavonic language possessed. There was no desire for "self-purification" from alien forms in him. He was not to such an extent realized as a phenomenon of a certain, high style. On the contrary, the styles in the Russian literary language could be different: it is enough to compare the language of the first Novgorod chronicle with the language of Russkaya Pravda P, the Galician-Volyn chronicle with the language of Daniil Zatochnik’s Prayer C P. However, with all the variety of their styles, according to their system (grammatical , phonetic, lexical) it was still one language, different from the language of Church Slavonic.
Both literary languages of Ancient Russia - Russian and Church Slavonic - were in constant interaction. Literary etiquette required sometimes rapid transitions from one language to another. These transitions were sometimes made at the shortest distances - within the limits of one work. But the interaction of literary languages was not equal. Church Slavonic forms and words passed into the Russian literary language “forever”, they received here stylistic shades and semantic nuances (the movement here took place from style to meaning), they constantly enriched the Russian literary language. The reverse effect was different. Separate penetrations of the Russian literary language into Church Slavonic were systematically expelled from the latter.
Medieval scribes sharply felt the difference between the written language and the oral one. Therefore, it is impossible to imagine the written Russian literary language as a simple written fixation of Koine, the common language of various administrative centers. It was some kind of little clear transformation for us spoken language- transformation, in which there were some rules and mine etiquette. However, culture oral speech in written literary Russian clearly made itself felt. At one time, I tried to uncover the oral foundations of the Russian literary language of the 11th-12th centuries.
The written literary Russian language was associated not only with the Koine of the most important administrative centers of Russia. In one of his varieties, he transformed and transferred into writing the language of oral folk poetry, which had a special stylistic function and owned its own poetic formulas and poetic vocabulary. In this variety, the Russian literary language, like the Church Slavonic language, was poetically elevated above the ordinary language. This variety of the Russian literary language did not have a “continuous” development from the 11th century to the 11th century. until the 17th century inclusive. This variety made itself felt either in Monomakh's "Teachings", then in the Ipatiev Chronicle, then in "The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land", then in "The Tale of the Devastation of Ryazan by Batu", but most of all it is represented in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", reflected through the latter in "Zadonshchina". In the 17th century the language of oral folk poetry entered literature through the "Tale of Azov", "The Tale of Sukhan", "The Tale of Mount Misfortune" and other poetic works of democratic literature.
All of the above led to the extreme complexity of the development of the language of literature in Ancient Russia with its two literary languages - Church Slavonic and Russian, of which the latter had several more types.
It is curious that for all the stability of the consciousness of the "peculiarities" of the Church Slavonic language, the content of this consciousness changed. Until the 17th century Church Slavonic was primarily a church language, but in the 18th and 19th centuries. individual Church Slavonicisms "secularized", they became a sign of a high, poetic language in general. Until the 18th century every solemn style was to a certain extent tinged with ecclesiasticism. Therefore, even secular solemn plots set forth in the monuments of ancient Russian literature in Church Slavonic acquired this church character. In the XVIII century. Church Slavonic could already be used for purely secular subjects, without coloring them with churchliness. In the same way, the idea of the "features" of the business language was changing. It would be extremely important to study in the future the historical variability of the content of this consciousness of the "peculiarities" of this or that language.
So, the use of the Church Slavonic language was clearly subject to etiquette in the Middle Ages, church plots required the church language, secular ones - Russian.
This medieval etiquette in the use of the corresponding language or style of language was observed not only in Russia. It is even more significant in the medieval literatures of many other countries. That is why, following L.P. Yakubinsky, the following position of A.A. Shakhmatov, which occupies a central place in his concept of the origin and development of the Russian literary language, seems incorrect to us: that the Church Slavonic language from the very first years of its existence on Russian soil became “ irresistibly assimilate into the folk language, for the Russian people who spoke it could not distinguish in their speech either their pronunciation, or their word usage and inflection from the church language they had learned. There is no need to give examples of a conscious desire to distinguish between the Church Slavonic and Russian languages, Church Slavonic and Russian forms, the desire to delay assimilation. At the basis of all these aspirations are the requirements of literary ritualism, subordinating considerations of a stylistic order.
So, the requirements of literary etiquette give rise to the desire to distinguish between the use of the Church Slavonic language and Russian in all its varieties; these same requirements cause the appearance of various formulas - military, hagiographic, etc. However, literary etiquette cannot be limited to the phenomena of verbal expression. In fact, not all of what was noted by A. S. Orlov as verbal formulas is really only a verbal phenomenon. So, for example, among the various "military formulas" A. S. Orlov mentions "help from heavenly power" to the Russian army, this help can be carried out in different ways: the enemies are either "driven by the wrath of God", then "the wrath of God and the Holy Mother of God"; sometimes God "puts fear" into the hearts of enemies; sometimes enemies are driven by an "invisible force", and sometimes by angels, etc. This is a stencil of the situation, not its verbal expression. The verbal expression of this stencil can be different, just like the situations of various other stencils in the description of the gathering, the appearance of the army and the attack, in the description of the life of the saint - his birth from pious parents, removal to the desert, exploits, the founding of the monastery, pious death and posthumous miracles.
The point, therefore, is not only that certain expressions and a certain style of presentation are selected for the corresponding situations, but also that these situations themselves are created by writers exactly as they are necessary according to etiquette requirements: the prince prays before going on a campaign, his squad usually small in number, while the enemy army is huge and the enemy comes out "in heavy strength", "puffing with the spirit of war", etc.
Literary canons of situations can be demonstrated at least in the “Reading about the life and destruction of Boris and Gleb” by S. P. Like most literary works of the Middle Ages, “Reading” is permeated from beginning to end with a heightened sense of etiquette. Describing the life of Boris and Gleb, the author seeks to make them behave as saints should behave. He puts lengthy expressions of meekness and piety into their mouths, describes their obedience to their elder brother, Svyatopolk, their refusal to resist the murderers, explains those of their actions that are somewhat at odds with the generally accepted idea of holiness (for example, the marriage of Boris). Distributing the roles among the actors, the author is concerned about finding a model in the past: Vladimir is the second Konstantin, Boris is Joseph the Beautiful, Gleb is David, Svyatopolk is Cain, etc.
Etiquette requires a certain "education". Literary etiquette and "good manners" in life are closely interdependent. The people of Kiev behave quite "decently" at baptism. Everyone goes to be baptized, and "not a single one resists, but like they have long been taught, so I flow, rejoicing, to baptism." These words are significant: people behave as if they had been taught "long ago" - after all, good manners are given precisely by teaching and education. They "rejoice" - this is also required by good breeding. Boris, as soon as he becomes "in the mind", is looking for role models. He turns to God with a prayer: "My Lord, Jesus Christ, vouchsafe me as one of those saints, and grant me to walk in their footsteps." This is a prayer about etiquette, and it was put into Boris's mouth also according to etiquette - life. Etiquette, therefore, even the very request for etiquette!
Where does this etiquette of situations come from? Many searches are to be made here: some of the etiquette rules are taken from everyday life, from real rituals, some were created in literature. Examples of life-real etiquette are numerous. Here, basically, the etiquette of the church and princely (the tops of feudal society). So, for example, in the “Reading about the life and destruction of Boris and Gleb”, which we have already quoted, when Vladimir sends Boris against the Pechenegs, Boris says goodbye to his father according to the etiquette of his time: “Blessed pad bow to your father and kiss his honest nose, and Rising up again, we hug his neck, kissing him with tears. Hagiograph of the end of the 11th century. was not a witness to this farewell and could not find a description of it in previous oral and written materials: he composed this scene based on ideas about how it should have happened, taking into account the good manners and ideality of both characters.
Most of the "distributions" of previous editions are of this kind. A typical example: the appearance of a description of the funeral of Evpatiy Kolovrat in one of the editions of the 16th century. "The Tale of Nikol Zarazsky". This description was not in the first editions; it was created on the basis of ritual and custom in the 16th century, when, for a number of reasons, it became necessary to honor the protagonist of the Tale with a magnificent funeral.
It should be especially noted that only the behavior of ideal heroes was subject to etiquette norms taken from life, from real customs. The behavior of villains, negative actors, did not obey this etiquette. It obeyed only the etiquette of the situation - purely literary in origin. Therefore, the behavior of villains did not lend itself to etiquette concretization to the same extent as the behavior of ideal heroes. Fictitious speeches are rarely put into their mouths. The villains go roaring, "like the beast of a divya, swallow up the righteous if you want." They are compared with animals and, like animals, do not obey real etiquette, but the very comparison of them with animals is a literary canon, it is a repetitive literary formula. Here, literary etiquette is entirely born in literature and is not borrowed from real life.
The desire to subordinate the presentation to etiquette, to create literary canons, can also explain the usual transfer of individual descriptions, speeches, formulas from one work to another in medieval literature. In these transfers there is no conscious desire to deceive the reader, to pass off as a historical fact what is actually taken from another literary work. The point is simply that, first of all, what was related to etiquette was transferred from work to work: speeches that should have been delivered in a given situation, actions that should have been performed by actors under given circumstances, the author's interpretation what is happening, befitting the occasion, etc. The proper and the existent are mixed. The writer believes that etiquette completely determined the behavior of the ideal hero, and he recreates this behavior by analogy. This is how, for example, borrowings in the life of Dovmont P from the life of Alexander Nevsky S. P. are justified. These borrowings go primarily in the line of observing etiquette. Charges for enemies are an etiquette moment, and Dovmont goes on a campaign in the same way as Alexander Nevsky. Dovmont falls on his knee before the altar, like Alexander; prays like Alexander; receives a blessing from the abbot, just as Alexander receives it from the archbishop; goes to the enemies "with a small squad", like Alexander. Transferring all these etiquette moments from the life of Alexander into his work, the author of the life of Dovmont did not at all assume that he was committing a literary theft, sinning against the truth, inventing.
Defining the artistic method of ancient Russian literature, it is not enough to say that it tended to idealization. There are different forms of idealization in literature. Medieval idealization is largely subordinated to etiquette. Etiquette in it becomes the form and essence of idealization. Etiquette, on the other hand, explains borrowing from one work to another, the stability of formulas and situations, the ways in which “common” editions of works are formed, partly the interpretation of the facts that formed the basis of the works, and much more.
The Old Russian writer, with invincible confidence, put everything that had happened historically into appropriate ceremonial forms and created various literary canons. Life, military and other formulas, etiquette self-recommendations of the authors, etiquette formulas for the introduction of heroes, befitting the occasion ~ prayer, speeches, reflections, formulas of obituary characteristics and numerous actions and situations required by etiquette are repeated from work to work. The authors strive to bring everything into known norms, classify everything, compare it with known cases from sacred history, provide appropriate quotations from scripture, etc. actions, thoughts, feelings and speeches of actors and their own language to a predetermined "rank". If the writer describes the actions of the prince, he subordinates them to the princely ideals of behavior; if his pen depicts a saint, he follows the etiquette of the church; if he describes the Campaign of the enemy of Russia, he subordinates him to the ideas of his time about the enemy of Russia. He subordinates military episodes to military ideas, hagiographic episodes to hagiographic ones, episodes of the peaceful life of a prince to the etiquette of his court, etc.
The writer longs to introduce his work into the framework of literary canons, strives to write about everything “as it should be”, strives to subordinate everything he writes about to literary canons, but borrows these etiquette norms from different areas: from church ideas, from the ideas of a combatant-warrior, from the notions of a courtier, from the notions of a theologian, etc. There is no unity of etiquette in ancient Russian literature, just as there are no requirements for the unity of style. Everything obeys its own point of view. Military episodes are described by the writer according to the ideas of a warrior about an ideal warrior, hagiographic episodes - according to the ideas of a hagiographer. He can pass from one conception to another, striving everywhere to write according to the conceptions "befitting the occasion", in words "befitting the occasion".
We see something similar in ancient Russian painting: there, each object is depicted from the point of view from which it can be best shown. There is no single point of view of the artist - there are many points of view, specific to each subject of the image or group of objects.
What does this literary etiquette of a medieval writer consist of? It is made up of ideas about how this or that course of events should have taken place; from ideas about how the actor should have behaved in accordance with his position; from ideas about what words the writer should describe what is happening. Before us, therefore, is the etiquette of the world order, the etiquette of behavior and the etiquette of words. Everything together merges into a single normative system, as if pre-established, standing above the author and not distinguished by internal integrity, since it is determined from the outside - by the objects of the image, and not by the internal requirements of a literary work.
It would be wrong to see in the literary etiquette of the Russian Middle Ages only a set of mechanically repeating patterns and stencils, a lack of creative invention, the “ossification” of creativity, and to confuse this literary etiquette with the patterns of individual mediocre works of the 19th century. The whole point is that all these verbal formulas, stylistic features, certain recurring situations, etc., are not applied mechanically by medieval writers, but precisely where they are required. The writer chooses, reflects, is preoccupied with the general "beautifulness" of the presentation. The most literary canons vary by him, change depending on his ideas about "literary propriety".
It is these ideas that are the main ones in his work. That is why we prefer to talk about literary etiquette, and not just about literary stencils and patterns, which, by the way, can not only creatively change, but even be completely absent in the narrative of a particular complex event. A military formula or a repetitive situation is only a part of literary etiquette, and sometimes not the most important one.
Repetitive formulas and situations are caused by the requirements of literary etiquette, but in themselves are not yet patterns. Before us is creativity, and not a mechanical selection of stencils - creativity in which the writer seeks to express his ideas about what should be and befits, not so much inventing the new as combining the old.
The literary etiquette of the Russian Middle Ages needs to be studied primarily as a phenomenon of ideology, worldview, idealizing ideas about the world and society. If we begin to study literary canons - all these military formulas, hagiographical formulas, etiquette provisions, etc. - outside the literary etiquette and worldview that embraces them, we will not go beyond the elementary compilation of a card file of literary canons and will not understand the changes undergone by these literary canons, we will not we will also understand the aesthetic value of the literature associated with them.
So, the study of the literary canons of the Russian Middle Ages, begun by the works of V. O. Klyuchevsky and A. S. Orlov, should, firstly, be significantly expanded (in addition to verbal formulas, one should study the norms for choosing a language and style, literary canons in plot construction, individual situations, the nature of the characters, etc.), and secondly, the most literary canons must be considered as a consequence of the etiquette of the medieval worldview and explained in connection with medieval ideas about what should be.
Literary etiquette, as we have already said, caused a special traditional character of literature, the appearance of stable stylistic formulas, the transfer of entire passages from one work to another, the stability of images, metaphoric symbols, comparisons, etc.
To some researchers, this traditionalism seemed to be the result of the inertia of the “Old Russian consciousness”, its inability to be inspired by the new, that is, the result of a simple lack of creativity. Meanwhile, the traditional nature of ancient Russian literature is a fact of a certain artistic system, a fact closely connected with many phenomena of the poetics of ancient Russian literary works, a phenomenon of the artistic method. The desire for novelty, for renewal artistic means, to the approximation of artistic means to the depicted - a principle that has been fully developed in the new literature. Therefore, the desire for "estrangement", for surprise, for the renewal of one's perception of the world is by no means an eternal property of literary creativity, as it seemed and continues to seem to many literary critics.
In particular, B. V. Tomashevsky distinguishes between tangible (noticeable) and imperceptible (imperceptible) devices in any literary work. B. V. Tomashevsky writes the following about tangible techniques: “The reason for the tangibility of a technique can be twofold: their excessive old age and their excessive novelty. Obsolete, old, archaic methods are palpable as an annoying relic, as a phenomenon that has lost its meaning, continues to exist due to inertia, like a dead body among living beings. On the contrary, new techniques are striking in their unfamiliarity, especially if they are taken from a repertoire that is still prohibited (for example, vulgarisms in high poetry).
From the point of view of B. V. Tomashevsky, literature always seeks to free itself from traditional methods, hiding them or, on the contrary, exposing them. Receptions are born, live, grow old, die. However, even for the literary consciousness of modern times, traditionalism plays its positive role in the poetic systems of classicism and romanticism. It is known that many trends in art obliged writers to obey certain canons. Thus, Boileau ordered writers to follow classical patterns. Here is what L. Ya. Ginzburg rightly writes in the book “On Lyrics”: “French classicism was the culmination of literary thinking in the canons. He pushed to the limit the unmistakable efficacy of a poetic form instantly recognizable to the reader.
Classicism built its developed genre-stylistic hierarchy on an exact hierarchy of religious, state, and ethical values.
In the Middle Ages, the attitude to the literary device is different: the traditional character of the device is not perceived as its drawback. Therefore, there is no tendency, specific to the literature of modern times, to hide the device or expose it. Reception is normal. It relies on the depiction of events and phenomena. It is required by literary etiquette. It evokes a certain reflex in the reader, serves as a signal to create a certain mood in the reader.
The effect of surprise was not of great importance in an ancient Russian literary work: the work was reread many times, its content was known in advance. The Old Russian reader embraced the work as a whole: reading its beginning, he knew how it would end. The work unfolded in front of him not in time, but existed as a single, known whole in advance. In any case, literature was less of a "temporary" art than in modern times, when the reader, while reading, waits for the end of the work. Accordingly, the dynamic elements of literature, which Yu. Tynyanov so emphasized, played a noticeably smaller role in medieval literature than in modern literature.
The medieval reader, while reading a work, participates, as it were, in a certain ceremony, includes himself in this ceremony, is present at a certain “action”, a kind of “worship service”. The writer of the Middle Ages does not so much depict life as he transforms and “dresses up” it, makes it ceremonial, festive. The writer is the master of ceremonies. He uses his formulas as signs, coats of arms. He hangs out flags, gives life to parade uniforms, directs "decencies". Individual impressions of a literary work are not provided. A literary work is not designed for an individual, individual reader, although the work is not only read aloud to many listeners, but also by individual readers.
For us, the work "comes to life" in reading. The work exists in its reproduction by the reader - aloud or silently. On the contrary, the medieval scribe, creating or rewriting a work, creates a well-known literary "act", "chief". This rank exists by itself. Therefore, the work must be beautifully rewritten, bound in an expensive binding. This is the point of view of medieval "realism" (philosophical trend opposite to nominalism) - the point of view is entirely idealistic, assuming the reality of the existence of ideas. A literary work lives an “ideal” and completely independent life. The reader does not "reproduce" this work in his reading, he only "participates" in the reading, as a worshiper participates in a divine service, present at a certain solemn ceremony. Solemnity, a certain pomp, ceremoniality of literature is an integral quality of literature, it is inseparable from its etiquette, the use of the same ceremonial techniques.
We will repeatedly return to this question of cliché, associated with the idealism of the artistic methods of ancient Russian literature. Running a little ahead, it should nevertheless be noted that this is only one side of literature. Along with it, there is also an opposite to it, as if a kind of counterbalance - this is the desire for concreteness, for overcoming the canons, for a realistic depiction of reality. We will also dwell on this issue in the future (see the section "Elements of realism").
One of the most interesting tasks of poetics is to clarify the reasons why certain poetic formulas, images, metaphors, etc. were developed in literature. In the lecture “On the Method and Tasks of the History of Literature as a Science,” A. N. Veselovsky wrote: known certain formulas, stable motifs that one generation adopted from the previous one, and this from the third, whose prototypes we will inevitably meet in epic antiquity and further, at the level of myth, in concrete definitions of the primitive word? Doesn’t each new poetic epoch work on images long since bequeathed, necessarily revolving within their boundaries, allowing itself only new combinations of old ones and only filling them with that new understanding of life, which actually constitutes its progress over the past?
As can be seen from the above passage, A. N. Veselovsky believed that the traditional nature of formulas, motifs, images, and other things depended on the well-known inertia of literary creativity. I think that this is not a matter of inertia, but of a certain aesthetic system. And this system needs to be studied in the same way as the reasons why this system gradually died out, being replaced by another system. Here you need to remember some features literary development in the Middle Ages.
Yu. Tynyanov in the article “On the literary fact” put forward a special principle of literary development - the fight against automation: “... in the analysis of literary evolution, we come across the following stages: 1) in relation to the automated principle of construction, the opposite constructive principle is outlined dialectically; 2) its application is in progress - the constructive principle is looking for the easiest application; 3) it extends to the largest mass of phenomena; 4) it automates and evokes opposite design principles.” The principle of automation and struggle with it in literature suggests a good sense of modernity in the readers of literature. This was not the case in ancient Russia. There works lived for many centuries. Old works were sometimes even more interesting than newly created ones (interested in the "authority" of a work as a historical document, as a work of significant ecclesiastical significance, etc.). Therefore, the change of literary phenomena was not realized either. In writing, everything that was written now or in the past was "simultaneously", or rather, timeless. There was no clear consciousness of the movement of history, the movement of literature, there were no concepts of progress and modernity, therefore, there were no ideas about the obsolescence of this or that literary device, genre, ideology, etc.
Literature developed not because something in it "became obsolete" for the reader, "automated", was looking for "estrangement", "exposing the device", etc., but because life itself, reality and, above all, the social ideas of the era demanded introduction of new topics, creation of new works.
Even less than in modern times, literature obeyed the internal laws of development.
In the Middle Ages, the liberation from the old pictorial means proceeds not through their discovery and subsequent extinction, for the discovery of a traditional device, formula, or motive in itself does not in any way require their removal, but through their excessive “formalization”, excessive external development due to loss of internal content, weakening of significance in the new historical and historical-literary conditions.
In the new literature, in the traditional formula or in the traditional motif, first of all, the very external side of the formula and motif dies off, ceases to be effective; in ancient Russian literature, the content dies off, the formula and motif "petrify". The formula and motive can be filled with other content, in connection with which their etiquette dies off, the severity of their use in certain cases. The function of etiquette formulas and motives disappears before these formulas and motives themselves disappear. There is a filling of literary works with "homeless" formulas and traditional motifs that have lost their traditional "moorings" that stabilize them.
The system of literary etiquette and the literary canons associated with it, which can in no way be equated with cliches, lasted several centuries in ancient Russian literature. In the end, despite the fact that this system contributed to the "fertility" of literature, facilitated the emergence of new works, it led to a certain slowdown in literary development as a whole, although it never completely subordinated it. In particular, the so-called elements of realism in ancient Russian literature, the presence of which is seen in a number of ancient Russian stories about feudal crimes (in the stories about the blinding of Vasilko Terebovlsky, the murder of Igor Olgovich, the crime of Vladimirka Galitsky, the murder of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the death of Vladimir Vasilyevich Volynsky, the blinding of Vasily II Dmitrievich, the death of Dmitry Krasny, etc.), are a violation of literary canons. These violations are gradually increasing. Forces gradually develop in literature that fought against literary etiquette, against literary canons, and led to their destruction.
How did the system of literary canons fall? This process is very interesting. With the formation of the Russian centralized state, literary etiquette, it would seem, not only does not weaken, but, on the contrary, becomes unusually magnificent. Let us take, for example, the military formulas of the Kazan History, the Chronicler of the Beginning of the Reign, the Book of Powers, or the Tale of Stefan Batory's Finding in Pskov. They are much longer and pretentious than in the Ipatiev Chronicle. The authors are not content with their short stable form. They introduce various kinds of "distribution", strive to combine pomp with visibility, etc. But as a result of this kind of expansion of literary canons, their stability is lost.
At the same time, attention should be paid to the following circumstance: the destruction of literary canons took place simultaneously with the magnificent development of etiquette in real life. The study of the dependence of the decline in the role of literary canons on the rise in the importance of etiquette in state practice is of great interest for literary criticism.
In fact, the ritual side of the life of the Russian state reached a high degree of development in the 16th century. Literature was forced to reproduce the content of books in the category, the ceremony of crowning the kingdom, to describe complex ceremonies. Literature as an art was in serious danger. At the same time, writers therefore strive to enliven the ceremonial side of their descriptions with actually observed details. The complication of etiquette meets with the growth of realistic elements in literature, the reasons for which we will discuss later. This paradoxical combination of the complication of literary etiquette with the strengthening of elements of realism is clearly visible, for example, in S.'s Kazan History. This is how the opening of the meeting of the boyar duma is described in it. The boyars take their places according to local traditions and make appropriate speeches for the occasion. Before the performance of the Russian troops, their review is arranged, the soldiers are “dressed in their brightest robes and with all their youths, so are their good horses in red utensils”, and it is especially emphasized that everything was just like that, “ like life is worthy of the governors at the ratech”, that is, that everything was done according to etiquette. But here is the fact that there were so many troops gathered in Moscow that there was no place in the city either along the streets or "in people's houses" and had to be placed near the settlements "in the field and in the meadow in their tents", and the tsar watched the passage of the troops, standing "on their ladders" - these are already details, vitally observed and not provided for by any etiquette.
In the same way, the development of etiquette clashes with the development of a tendency to concretize the presentation in direct speech. Ivan the Terrible's speech to his commanders in the Kazan History exactly reproduces individual formulas from the appeal of Russian princes to combatants before battles, but, unlike the brief princely encouragements of the 12th-13th centuries, Grozny's speech is magnificent and lengthy, individual formulas are concretized, comparisons are developed , they are given visibility, their meaning is explained.
the same way goes and renewal of etiquette formulas. So, for example, the formula “like in the depths of mother-in-law’s blood” acquires visually representable features: “... like great puddles of rainwater, blood standing in low places and outlined on the ground.”
Summarizing, we can say that the phenomena of literary etiquette tend in the XVI-XVII centuries. to increase, to increase, and thus from a state of organization and differentiation they pass into a state of mixing and merging with surrounding forms. Steady, short and compact at the beginning, etiquette then becomes more and more magnificent and at the same time vague and gradually dissolves into new literary phenomena of the 16th and 17th centuries. And this is by no means due to the "internal laws" of the development of literature and the literary language. There is a collapse of etiquette in general, associated with changes in the essence of feudalism that gives rise to it. The fact is that with the formation of a centralized state, the splendor of etiquette increases, but etiquette ceases to be a form of ideological coercion that is vital for feudalism: in a centralized state, the forms of external, direct coercion are quite diverse and reliable. The splendor of etiquette is needed, but its coercion is not very necessary. From the phenomenon of ideological coercion, etiquette has become a phenomenon of the design of state life. The process of the decline of literary etiquette, therefore, takes place in another way: the etiquette rite exists, but it breaks away from the situation that requires it; etiquette rules, etiquette formulas remain and even grow, but they are observed extremely clumsily, they are used "out of place", not in those cases when they are needed. Etiquette formulas are applied without that strict analysis that was characteristic of previous centuries. Formulas describing the actions of enemies are applied to Russians, and formulas intended for Russians are applied to enemies. The etiquette of the situation is also loosened.
Russians and enemies behave in the same way, utter the same speeches, the actions of both are described in the same way, their emotional experiences.
Vivid examples of these mixtures of literary etiquette are given by one of the best literary works of the 16th century, Kazan History. A striking violation of literary etiquette is in the "Kazan History" a description of the performance of the Russian troops from Kolomna. The author of the Kazan History speaks of the Russian army in images that could previously only be applied to the army of the enemy: there were as many Russian soldiers as the Babylonian king had when he advanced on Jerusalem: the prophetic Jeremiah: from the eating, speech, the thunders of his chariots, and from the retreat of his horses and elephants, the earth will shake, it was here. And the tsar, the great prince, went through the open field of the great Kazan with many tongues serving him, with Russia, and with the Tatars, and with the Cherkasy, and with the Mordovians, and with the friag, and with the Germans, and with the Poles, in great and heavy strength green, three ways, on chariots and horses, the fourth way by rivers, in boats, leading with them a howl wider than the Kazan land. Before us is a description of the performance of the enemy of the Russian land with "twelve languages", but by no means the Grand Duke of Russia with the Russian army. Elements of this description are taken from the description of Batu's location on Kyiv in the Ipatiev Chronicle. PS.
Tsar Ivan the Terrible approaches Kazan “not worse than Antiochus who was revealed when Jerusalem came to captivate.” True, the author of the Kazan History makes a reservation: “... but he (Antioch. - D. L.) is unfaithful and filthy, and you want to consume the law of the Jews, and desecrate and ruin the Church of God, now (Ivan the Terrible. - D. L. .) faithful both to the infidels and for their lawlessness towards him and for their atrocity, come and destroy them, ”but this reservation does not save awkwardness, and the further description of the arrival of Russian troops near Kazan directly resembles the usual approaches of the enemy army to Russia: “And fill (Terrible. -D. L.) the whole Kazan land with their howls, horsemen and pawns; and covered with an army of fields and mountains and skirts, and scattered like a bird throughout that land, and fought, and captivated the Kazan land and region everywhere, walking unhindered and all over the country near Kazan and to the end of it. And the human slaughter was great, and the barbarian land shed blood; blata and wilds, and lakes and rivers lined with Cheremis bones. The land of Kazan was flooded with rivers, and lakes, and blat velmi. For the sin to the god of the Kazan people of that summer, not a single drop of rain fell from heaven to earth: from the sun’s heat, impassable places, wilds, and blat, and speech is all over; and regiments of Rustia all over the earth with impassable paths needlessly yazdyahu, whoever you like, and a herd of cattle to the pre-killer. This peculiar lamentation for the Kazan land is an unheard-of violation of etiquette, and this violation is not the only one; such violations are encountered at every step: military formulas are preserved, but they are applied both to one's own and to the enemy indiscriminately. The literary "education" of the author of "Kazan History" is limited to a few reservations emphasizing his sympathy for the Russians, and nothing more.
The resemblance of Ivan the Terrible to the enemy increases because, approaching Kazan, Ivan marvels at its beauty, just as Mengu Khan marveled at the beauty of Kyiv: ". As in "The Tale of the Devastation of Ryazan by Batu", the Kazanians fight on sorties against the Russians: "one Kazanian beats with a hundred Rusyns, and two with two hundred."
The description of the attack of the Russian troops on Kazan is reminiscent of the description of the siege of Ryazan by Batu: the Russians proceed to Kazan day and night for forty days, “not letting them sleep like a Kazanian from labor, and they are plotting many wall-beating intrigues, and working a lot, ovo taco, it is different, and what success and nothing hail harm; but like a great mountain of stone, the city stands firm and motionless, nowhere, from the strong beating of the cannon, neither staggering nor shaking. And the wall-beating fighters do not think what to create hail.
The speeches of Kazanians are unusual for enemies. They are full of military prowess and courage, loyalty to their homeland, its customs and religion. Kazanians say to each other, strengthening themselves to scold: “Let us not be afraid, O brave Kazanians, of the fear and prohibition of the Moscow ugaubi (so! -D. L.) and many of its Russian forces, like the sea beating against the stone with waves and like the great forest rustling in vain , the village of our property is strong and great, it has high walls and iron gates and the people in it are daring, and the supply is many and satisfied with the article for ten years to feed us. May we not mark our good faith in Sratsyn and do not spare the shedding of our blood, but let us not go into captivity to work as infidels in foreign lands, Christians who are smaller than us and steal the blessing. The formulas of lamentation by Ingvar Ingorevich from “The Tale of the Devastation of Ryazan by Batu” S. P. are put into the mouths of Kazanians. The despair of Kazanians is described in the way that only the despair of Russians would have been described before. Kazanians say: “Where there is now we are hiding from evil Russia. And when the merciless guests come to us, they pour us a bitter cup of death to drink. True, the awkwardness of such a lyrical attitude to the emotional experiences of the enemies is softened by the subsequent words about the “bitter cup”, which, in turn, the Kazan people once forced to drink “evil Russia”: “... with it (that is, with this cup. - D. L .) we sometimes often take a tortoise to them, but now we ourselves drink the same bitter drink of death without will. Violations of etiquette extend to such an extent that the enemies of Russia pray to the Orthodox god and see divine visions, and the Russians commit atrocities as enemies and apostates.
These strange violations of etiquette could be explained by the fact that the author of the "Kazan History" was a prisoner in Kazan and, perhaps, even a secret supporter of the Kazan people, but it is appropriate to recall that the author of "The Tale of the Capture of Tsargrad" from the P of the XV century. Nestor Iskander was also a prisoner of the Turks, but it is impossible to observe a single case of violation of literary etiquette among the latter. The sympathy of the author of Kazan History for the Russians and Grozny is beyond doubt. And the sheer number of lists of "Kazan History" circulating among Russian readers indicates that we have before us a work that is by no means hostile to Russians.
Violations of literary etiquette in the "Kazan History" are similar to violations of the unity of point of view on the characters in the Chronograph of 1617. The author of the "Kazan History" mixes etiquette in relation to Russians and their enemies, just as the author of the Chronograph of 1617 combines bad and good qualities in the persons they describe. Here and there the primitive moralizing attitude towards the object of the narration is destroyed, with the only difference that in the Chronograph of 1617. this destruction is carried out deeper and more consistently.
In his recent study of Kazan History, Edward Keenan continued my observations on the destruction of literary etiquette and suggested that along with the process of degradation of the old etiquette in Kazan History, there is an attempt to build a new literary etiquette - the etiquette characteristic of the chivalric romance in the West. Characters in a chivalric romance, they behave regardless of which camp, country, or religion they belong to. They are praised for chivalrous qualities - for loyalty, nobility, courage - as such. The examples he cites from the Kazan History are curious and deserve serious attention, especially because they mark the beginning of the liberation of literature from medieval didacticism. The internal laws of the development of the plot take possession of literature and create a new "red and sweet story" - "Kazan History", a step forward in the genre development of literature.
However, E. Keenan's observations require continuation and development.
Thus, the destruction of the system of literary etiquette began as early as the 16th century, but this system was not completely destroyed either in the 16th or in the 17th centuries, but in the 18th century. partially replaced by another. We note in particular that the destruction of etiquette took place primarily in the secular part of literature. In the sphere of church, literary etiquette was more needed, and here it lasted longer, although Avvakum staged a real rebellion against him - however, more like self-immolation, because the literary effect of this rebellion against etiquette could exist only as long as he himself continued to exist. literary etiquette, which nourished the work of Avvakum in this respect. And in fact, the actively destructive style of Awakum, despite all its attractive power, had no continuation ...
The literary etiquette of Ancient Russia and the literary canons associated with it need a careful and exhaustive description and "catalogization". It would be possible to compile a curious and useful dictionary of etiquette formulas and provisions. Many questions of literary form can be explained as a result of a full study of this phenomenon specific to the Middle Ages. In this chapter, we have limited ourselves to the most preliminary formulation of the question, by no means having exhausted all the problems that arise in connection with this topic.
There is still a lot of private and general research to be done before this question becomes more or less clear as a subject of study. In particular, it is extremely important to carefully study the phenomena that oppose literary etiquette and destroy literary canons, because the artistic methods of the Middle Ages are extremely diverse and cannot be reduced only to idealization, only to normative requirements, and even more so to literary etiquette and literary canons. Any kind of categorical and limiting judgments would only be harmful here. One should strive to see the phenomena of literary etiquette and literary canons in all their breadth and diversity, but not to exaggerate their significance in medieval literature. At the same time, it is necessary to see in literary etiquette a system of creativity, and not its simple standardization. In no case can canon and template be identified. Before us is the originality of literature, and not its poverty.