The contradictions between the abstractness of the general laws of science (including history) and the concrete life of ordinary people served as the basis for the search for new approaches in historical knowledge. History reflects the general, digressing from particulars, paying attention to the laws and general development trends. There was no place left for a simple person with his specific circumstances and details of life, with the peculiarities of his perception and experience of the world, he was absent. The individualized everyday life of a person, the sphere of his experiences, the concrete historical aspects of his being fell out of sight of historians.

Historians have turned to the study of everyday life as one of the possible ways to resolve the above contradiction. The current situation in history also contributes to this.

Modern historical science is undergoing a deep internal transformation, which manifests itself in a change in intellectual orientations, research paradigms, and the very language of history. The current situation in historical knowledge is increasingly characterized as postmodern. Having survived the "onset of structuralism", which became the "new scientism" in the 60s, the "linguistic turn" or "semiotic explosion" in the 80s of the twentieth century, historiography could not help but experience the impact of the postmodernist paradigm, which spread its influence to all areas of the humanities. The situation of the crisis, the peak of which Western historical science experienced in the 70s of the XX century, is being experienced by Russian science today.

The concept of “historical reality” itself is also being revised, and with it the historian’s own identity, his professional sovereignty, the criteria for the reliability of the source (the boundaries between fact and fiction are blurred), faith in the possibility of historical knowledge and the desire for objective truth. Trying to resolve the crisis, historians are developing new approaches and new ideas, including turning to the category of “everyday life” as one of the options for overcoming the crisis.

Modern historical science has identified ways to get closer to understanding the historical past through its subject and carrier - the person himself. A comprehensive analysis of the material and social forms of a person's everyday existence - his life microcosm, the stereotypes of his thinking and behavior - is considered as one of the possible approaches in this regard.

In the late 80s - early 90s of the 20th century, following Western and domestic historical science, there was a surge of interest in everyday life. The first works appear, where everyday life is mentioned. A series of articles is published in the almanac "Odysseus", where an attempt is made to theoretically comprehend everyday life. These are articles by G.S. Knabe, A.Ya. Gurevich, G.I. Zvereva. Interests are also the reasoning of S.V. Obolenskaya in the article "Someone Josef Schaefer, a soldier of the Nazi Wehrmacht" about methods for studying the history of everyday life using the example of considering individual biography a certain Josef Schaefer. A successful attempt at a comprehensive description of the everyday life of the population in the Weimar Republic is the work of I.Ya. Bisca. Using an extensive and diverse source base, he quite fully described the daily life of various segments of the population of Germany in the Weimar period: socio-economic life, customs, spiritual atmosphere. He gives convincing data, concrete examples, food, clothing, living conditions, etc. If in the articles of G.S. Knabe, A.Ya. Gurevich, G.I. Zvereva gives a theoretical understanding of the concept of "everyday life", then the articles by S.V. Obolenskaya and the monograph by I.Ya. Biska are historical works where the authors try to describe and define what “everyday life” is using specific examples.

The turn of attention of domestic historians to the study of everyday life, which had begun, has decreased in recent years, as there are not enough sources and a serious theoretical understanding of this problem. It should be remembered that one cannot ignore the experience of Western historiography - England, France, Italy and, of course, Germany.

In the 60-70s. 20th century there was an interest in research related to the study of man, and in this regard, German scientists were the first to begin to study the history of everyday life. The slogan was sounded: "From studying public policy and analysis of global social structures and processes, let's turn to small worlds of life, to the everyday life of ordinary people. The direction “history of everyday life” (Alltagsgeschichte) or “history from below” (Geschichte von unten) emerged. What is understood and understood by everyday life? How do scholars interpret it?

It makes sense to name the most important German historians of everyday life. The classic in this field, of course, is such a sociological historian as Norbert Elias with his works On the Concept of Everyday Life, On the Process of Civilization, Court Society; Peter Borscheid and his work "Conversations about the history of everyday life". I would definitely like to mention the historian who deals with the issues of modern times - Lutz Neuhammer, who works at the University of Hagen, and very early, already in 1980, in an article in the journal "Historical Didactics" ("Geschichtsdidaktik"), studied the history of everyday life. This article was called Notes on the History of Everyday Life. Known for his other work “Life experience and collective thinking. Practice "Oral History".

And such a historian as Klaus Tenfeld deals with both theoretical and practical issues of the history of everyday life. His theoretical work is called "Difficulties with everyday life" and is a critical discussion of the daily historical current with an excellent bibliography. The publication of Klaus Bergman and Rolf Scherker "History in everyday life - everyday life in history" consists of a number of works of a theoretical nature. Also, the problem of everyday life, both theoretically and practically, is dealt with by Dr. Peukert from Essen, who published a number of theoretical works. One of them is "A New History of Everyday Life and Historical Anthropology". The following works are known: Peter Steinbach "Daily life and the history of the village", Jürgen Kokka "Classes or cultures? Breakthroughs and dead ends in labor history, as well as Martin Broszat's remarks on the work of Jurgen Kokk, and her interesting work on the problems of the history of everyday life in the Third Reich. There is also a generalizing work by J. Kuscinski “History of everyday life of the German people. 16001945" in five volumes.

Such a work as "History in everyday life - everyday life in history" is a collection of works by various authors devoted to everyday life. The following problems are considered: everyday life of workers and servants, architecture as a source of the history of everyday life, historical consciousness in the everyday life of modernity, etc.

It is very important to note that a discussion was held in Berlin (October 3-6, 1984) on the problem of the history of everyday life, which on the final day was called "History from below - history from within". And under this title, under the editorship of Jürgen Kokk, the materials of the discussion were published.

The spokesmen for the latest needs and trends in historical knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century were representatives of the Annales school - these are Mark Blok, Lucien Febvre and, of course, Fernand Braudel. "Annals" in the 30s. 20th century turned to the study of a working man, the subject of their study becomes the "history of the masses" as opposed to the "history of the stars", history visible not "from above", but "from below". The "geography of man", the history of material culture, historical anthropology, social psychology and others, which had previously remained in the shadow of the direction of historical research, were developed.

Mark Blok was concerned with the problem of the contradiction between the inevitable schematism of historical knowledge and the living fabric of the real historical process. His work was aimed at resolving this contradiction. In particular, he emphasized that the focus of the historian's attention should be on a person, and he immediately hurried to correct himself - not a person, but people. In Blok's field of vision are typical, predominantly mass-like phenomena in which repeatability can be detected.

Comparative-typological approach is the most important in historical research, but in history the regular emerges through the particular, the individual. Generalization is associated with simplification, straightening, the living fabric of history is much more complex and contradictory, therefore Blok compares the generalized characteristics of a particular historical phenomenon with its variants, shows it in an individual manifestation, thereby enriching the study, making it saturated with specific variants. Thus, M. Blok writes that the picture of feudalism is not a collection of signs abstracted from living reality: it is confined to real space and historical time and is based on evidence from numerous sources.

One of Blok's methodological ideas was that the study of a historian does not begin at all with the collection of material, as is often imagined, but with the formulation of a problem, with the development of a preliminary list of questions that the researcher wishes to ask the sources. Not content with the fact that the society of the past, let's say the medieval one, took it into its head to announce itself through the mouths of chroniclers, philosophers, theologians, the historian, by analyzing the terminology and vocabulary of the surviving written sources, is able to make these monuments say much more. We pose new questions to a foreign culture, which it did not pose to itself, we look for answers to these questions in it, and a foreign culture answers us. During the dialogic meeting of cultures, each of them retains its integrity, but they are mutually enriched. Historical knowledge is such a dialogue of cultures.

The study of everyday life involves the search for fundamental structures in history that determine the order of human actions. This search begins with the historians of the Annales school. M. Blok understood that under the cover of phenomena understood by people, there are hidden layers of a deep social structure, which determines the changes taking place on the surface of social life. The task of the historian is to make the past “let it out,” that is, to say what it did not realize or did not intend to say.

Writing a story in which living people act is the motto of Blok and his followers. Collective psychology attracts their attention also because it expresses the socially determined behavior of people. A new question for historical science at that time was human sensitivity. You can't pretend to understand people without knowing how they felt. Explosions of despair and rage, reckless actions, sudden mental breaks - cause many difficulties for historians who are instinctively inclined to reconstruct the past according to the schemes of the mind. M. Blok and L. Febvre saw their "reserved grounds" in the history of feelings and ways of thinking and enthusiastically developed these topics.

M. Blok has outlines of the theory of "time of great duration", subsequently developed by Fernand Braudel. Representatives of the Annales school are mainly concerned with time of great length, that is, they study the structures of everyday life that change very slowly over time or actually do not change at all. At the same time, the study of such structures is the main task of any historian, since they show the essence of a person's daily existence, the stereotypes of his thinking and behavior that regulate his daily existence.

Direct thematization of the problem of everyday life in historical knowledge, as a rule, is associated with the name of Fernand Braudel. This is quite natural, because the first book of his famous work "Material Economy and Capitalism of the 18th-18th centuries." and is called: "The structures of everyday life: the possible and the impossible." He wrote about how everyday life can be known: “Material life is people and things, things and people. To study things - food, dwellings, clothing, luxury goods, tools, money, plans of villages and cities - in a word, everything that serves a person - this is the only way to experience his daily existence. And the conditions of everyday existence, the cultural and historical context against which a person's life unfolds, his history, have a decisive influence on the actions and behavior of people.

Fernand Braudel wrote about everyday life: “The starting point for me was,” he emphasized, “everyday life - that side of life in which we were involved, without even realizing it, a habit, or even a routine, these thousands of actions taking place and ending as if by themselves, the implementation of which does not require anyone's decision and which occur, in truth, almost without affecting our consciousness. I believe that humanity is more than half immersed in this kind of everyday life. Innumerable actions, inherited, cumulative without any order. Repeating ad infinitum before we came into this world, help us to live - and at the same time subdue us, deciding a lot for us during our existence. Here we are dealing with motives, impulses, stereotypes, methods and methods of action, as well as various types of obligations that force action, which sometimes, and more often than you might think, go back to the most immemorial times.

Further, he writes that this ancient past is merging into modernity and he wanted to see for himself and show others how this past, barely noticeable history - like a compacted mass of ordinary events - over the long centuries of previous history, entered the flesh of the people themselves, for whom experience and the delusions of the past have become commonplace and everyday necessity, eluding the attention of observers.

The works of Fernand Braudel contain philosophical and historical reflections on the routine of material life marked with a sign, on the complex interweaving of various levels of historical reality, on the dialectic of time and space. The reader of his works is faced with three different plans, three levels, in which the same reality is grasped in different ways, its content and spatio-temporal characteristics change. We are talking about fleeting event-political time at the highest level, much longer-term socio-economic processes at a deeper level, and almost timeless natural-geographical processes at the deepest level. Moreover, the distinction between these three levels (in fact, F. Braudel sees several more levels in each of these three) is not an artificial dissection of living reality, but its consideration in different refractions.

In the lowest layers of historical reality, as in the depths of the sea, constancy, stable structures dominate, the main elements of which are man, earth, space. Time passes here so slowly that it seems almost motionless. At the next level - the level of society, civilization, the level that studies socio-economic history, there is a time of medium duration. Finally, the most superficial layer of history: here events alternate like waves in the sea. They are measured by short chronological units - this is a political, diplomatic and similar "event" history.

For F. Braudel, the sphere of his personal interests is an almost immovable history of people in their close relationship with the land on which they walk and which feeds them; the story of man's ever-repeating dialogue with nature, so stubborn as if he were beyond the reach of the damage and blows of time. Until now, one of the problems of historical knowledge remains the attitude to the assertion that history as a whole can be understood only in comparison with this boundless space of almost immovable reality, in identifying long-term processes and phenomena.

So what is everyday life? How can it be defined? Attempts to give an unambiguous definition were not successful: everyday life is used by some scientists as a collective concept for the manifestation of all forms of private life, while others understand it as the daily repetitive actions of the so-called "gray everyday life" or the sphere of natural non-reflective thinking. The German sociologist Norbert Elias noted in 1978 that there is no exact, clear definition of everyday life. The way this concept is used in sociology today includes the most diverse scale of shades, but they still remain unidentified and incomprehensible to us.

N. Elias made an attempt to define the concept of "everyday life". He has long been interested in this topic. Sometimes he himself was ranked among those who dealt with this problem, since in his two works "Court Society" and "On the Process of Civilization" he considered issues that can easily be classified as problems of everyday life. But N. Elias himself did not consider himself a specialist in everyday life and decided to clarify this concept when he was invited to write an article on this topic. Norbert Elias has compiled tentative lists of some of the applications of the concept found in the scientific literature.

The novel by Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov "An Ordinary Story" was one of the first Russian realistic works that tells about the everyday life of ordinary people. The novel depicts pictures of Russian reality in the 40s of the 19th century, typical circumstances of a person's life of that time. The novel was published in 1847. It tells about the fate of the young provincial Alexander Aduev, who came to St. Petersburg to his uncle. On the pages of the book, an “ordinary story” takes place with him - the transformation of a romantic, pure young man into a prudent and cold businessman. But from the very beginning, this story is told, as it were, from two sides - from the point of view of Alexander himself and from the point of view of his uncle, Peter Aduev. Already from their first conversation it becomes clear how opposite natures they are. Alexander is characterized by a romantic view of the world, love for all mankind, inexperience and a naive belief in "eternal oaths" and "pledges of love and friendship." He is strange and unaccustomed to the cold and alienated world of the capital, where a huge number of people who are absolutely indifferent to each other coexist in a relatively small space. Even family relations in St. Petersburg are much drier than those to which he was accustomed in his village. Alexander's exaltation makes his uncle laugh. Aduev Sr. constantly, and even with some pleasure, plays the role of a "tub of cold water" when he moderates Alexander's enthusiasm: either he orders to paste over the walls of his office with poems, or he throws out the "material pledge of love" out the window. Petr Aduev himself is a successful industrialist, a man of a sober, practical mind, who considers any "sentiment" to be superfluous. And at the same time, he understands and appreciates beauty, knows a lot about literature, theatrical art. He opposes Alexander's convictions with his own, and it turns out that they are not deprived of their truth. Why should he love and respect a person just because this person is his brother or nephew? Why encourage the versification of a young man who clearly has no talent? Wouldn't it be better to show him another way in time? After all, raising Alexander in his own way, Peter Aduev tried to protect him from future disappointments. Three love stories that Alexander hits proves it. Each time, the romantic heat of love in him cools more and more, coming into contact with cruel reality. So, any words, actions, deeds of uncle and nephew are, as it were, in a constant dialogue. The reader compares, compares these characters, because it is impossible to evaluate one without looking at the other. But it also turns out to be impossible to choose which of them is right? It would seem that life itself helps Peter Aduev to prove his case to his nephew. After a few months of living in St. Petersburg, nothing remains of Aduev Jr.'s beautiful ideals - they are hopelessly broken. Returning to the village, he writes a bitter letter to his aunt, Peter's wife, where he sums up his experience, his disappointments. This is a letter from a mature man who has lost many illusions, but who has retained his heart and mind. Alexander learns a cruel but useful lesson. But is Pyotr Aduev himself happy? Having rationally organized his life, living according to the calculations and firm principles of a cold mind, he tries to subordinate his feelings to this order. Having chosen a lovely young woman as his wife (here it is, a taste for beauty!), He wants to raise her life partner according to his ideal: without “stupid” sensitivity, excessive impulses and unpredictable emotions. But Elizaveta Alexandrovna unexpectedly takes the side of her nephew, feeling a kindred spirit in Alexander. She cannot live without love, all these necessary “excesses”. And when she falls ill, Pyotr Aduev realizes that he cannot help her in any way: she is dear to him, he would give everything, but he has nothing to give. Only love can save her, and Aduev Sr. does not know how to love. And, as if to further prove the dramatic nature of the situation, Alexander Aduev appears in the epilogue - balding, plump. He, somewhat unexpectedly for the reader, has learned all his uncle's principles and makes a lot of money, even going to marry "for money." When his uncle reminds him of his past words. Alexander just laughs. At the moment when Aduev Sr. realizes the collapse of his harmonious life system, Aduev Jr. becomes the embodiment of this system, and not its best version. It's like they switched places. The trouble, even the tragedy of these heroes, is that they remained the poles of worldviews, they could not achieve harmony, the balance of those positive principles that were in both of them; they lost faith in high truths, because life and the surrounding reality did not need them. And, unfortunately, this is a common story. The novel made readers think about the sharp moral questions posed by the Russian life of that time. Why did the process of rebirth of a romantically minded young man into a bureaucrat and entrepreneur take place? Is it really necessary, having lost illusions, to get rid of sincere and noble human feelings? These questions are of concern to the reader today. I.A. Goncharov gives us answers to all these questions in his wonderful work

State educational institution

higher professional education

"Kuzbass State Pedagogical Academy"

Department of National History

"Daily life of medieval Russia

(based on moral literature)"

Performed

3rd year student of the 1st group

Faculty of History full-time

Morozova Kristina Andreevna

Supervisor -

Bambizova K.V., Ph.D. n,.

Departments of national history

Novokuznetsk, 2010

Introduction

Relevance The chosen research topic is due to the growing interest in society in studying the history of their people. Ordinary people, as a rule, are more interested in specific manifestations of human life, it is they who make history not a dry abstract discipline, but visible, understandable and close. Today we need to know our roots, to imagine how the everyday life of our ancestors went, to carefully preserve this knowledge for posterity. This continuity contributes to the formation national identity, educates the patriotism of the younger generation.

Consider the degree of knowledge of the problem everyday life and customs of medieval Russia in science. All literature devoted to everyday life can be divided into several groups: pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern.

Pre-revolutionary domestic historiography, first of all, is represented by the works of N.M. Karamzin, SV. Solovyov and V.O. Klyuchevsky, although it is not limited to these three big names. However, these venerable historians mainly showed the historical process, while, according to L.V. Belovinsky, "the historical process is, in a sense, an abstract thing, and the life of the people is concrete. This life takes place in its everyday life, in petty deeds, worries, interests, habits, tastes of a particular person who is a particle of society. It is highly diverse and complex. And the historian, trying to see the general, patterns, perspective, uses a large scale ". Therefore, this approach cannot be included in the mainstream of the history of everyday life.

In the middle of the 19th century, a book by the famous scientist A.V. Tereshchenko "Life of the Russian people" - the first attempt in Russia to scientifically develop ethnographic material. At one time, both specialists and laymen read it. The monograph contains a wealth of material describing dwellings, housekeeping rules, attire, music, games (amusements, round dances), pagan and Christian rites of our ancestors (weddings, funerals, commemorations, etc., common folk rites, such as the meeting of the Red Spring, celebration of the Red Hill, Ivan Kupala, etc., Christmas time, Shrovetide).

The book was met with great interest, but when major shortcomings were discovered that made Tereshchenko's material dubious, they began to treat it, perhaps more strictly than it deserves.

A significant contribution to the study of the life and customs of medieval Russia was made by I.E. Zabelin. It is his books that can be considered the first attempt to address a person in history, his inner world. He was the first to speak out against historians' enthusiasm for "loud, thundering wars, defeats, etc.", against reducing history to "external facts" only. Already in the middle of the century before last, he complained that "they forgot about man," and called for the main attention to be paid to the daily life of the people, from which, according to his concept, both religious institutions and political institutions of any society grew. The life of the people was to take the place of "government persons" and "government documents", which, according to Zabelin's description, are "pure paper, dead material."

He himself in his works, the main of which, undoubtedly, is "The Home Life of the Russian Tsars", created living picture Russian everyday life of the XVI-XVII centuries. Being a Westerner by conviction, he created an accurate and truthful, without idealization and discrediting, image of pre-Petrine Russia.

A contemporary of I.E. Zabelin was his St. Petersburg colleague Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov. The latter's book, An Outline of Domestic Life and Customs of the Great Russian People in the 16th-17th Centuries, was addressed not only and not so much to the scientific public as to a wide circle of readers. The historian himself explained in the introduction that the essay form was chosen by him in order to convey historical knowledge to people "immersed in their studies", who have neither the time nor the strength to master "scientific" articles and "raw materials" similar to the acts of the Archaeographic commissions. On the whole, Kostomarov's work is much easier to read than Zabelin's. Detail in it gives way to fluency and breadth of coverage of the material. It lacks the ponderous scrupulousness of Zabelin's text. Kostomarov pays more attention to the everyday life of the common people.

Thus, a review of classical historical literature on the topic of research leads us to the conclusion that the objects of observation of scientists are either major historical processes of the past, or ethnographic details of the contemporary folk life of the authors.

Soviet historiography on the subject of the study is presented, for example, by the works of B.A. Romanova, D.S. Likhachev and others.

Book B.A. Romanova "People and customs of Ancient Russia: historical and everyday essays of the XI-XIII centuries." was written in the late 1930s, when its author, a St. Petersburg historian, archivist and museologist, accused of participating in a "counter-revolutionary conspiracy", was released after several years in prison. Romanov had the talent of a historian: the ability to see behind dead texts, as he put it, "patterns of life." And yet, Ancient Russia was not a goal for him, but a means "to collect and put in order his own thoughts about the country and the people." At first, he really tried to recreate the daily life of pre-Mongol Russia, without leaving the circle of canonical sources and traditional methods of working with them. However, "the historian soon realized that this was impossible: such a 'historical canvas' would consist of continuous holes."

In the book by D.S. Likhachev "Man in the Literature of Ancient Russia" the features of the image of a human character in the works of ancient Russian literature, while Russian chronicles become the main material of the study. At the same time, the monumental style in the depiction of a person that dominated the literature of that time leaves the details of the life of ordinary Russians beyond the scope of the researcher's attention.

It can be concluded that there is no purposeful study of medieval everyday life in the books of Soviet historians.

Modern research presented by the works of V.B. Bezgina, L.V. Belovinsky, N.S. Borisov and others.

In the book of N.S. Borisov "Daily life of medieval Russia on the eve of the end of the world" takes 1492 as the main starting point - the year when the end of the world was expected (many ancient prophecies indicated this date for the beginning of the Last Judgment). Based on chronicle sources, works of ancient Russian literature, testimonies of foreign travelers, the author examines the key moments of the reign of Ivan III, describes some features of monastic life, as well as everyday life and customs of the Russian Middle Ages (wedding ceremony, behavior of a married woman, marital relations, divorce). However, the period under study is limited only to the 15th century.

Separately, it is worth highlighting the work of an emigrant historian, a student of V.O. Klyuchevsky, Eurasianist G.V. Vernadsky. Chapter X of his book "Kievan Rus" is completely devoted to the description of the life of our ancestors. Based on archaeological and ethnographic, as well as folklore and chronicle sources, the author describes the dwellings and furniture, clothes, food of different segments of the population, the main rituals associated with the life cycle of a Russian person. Confirming the put forward thesis that "there are many similarities between Kievan Rus and Tsarist Russia of the late period", the author of the monograph often draws conclusions about the existence of medieval Rus on the basis of analogies with the way of life and life of Russians at the end of the nineteenth century.

Thus, modern historians pay attention to the history of everyday life in Russia, however, the main object of study is either tsarist Russia, or the period under study is not fully covered, partially. In addition, it is obvious that none of the scientists uses moralistic sources as research material.

In general, it can be concluded that at present no scientific research has been undertaken in which the study of the history of everyday life in medieval Russia would be carried out on the basis of an analysis of the texts of moralizing sources.

Purpose of the study: on the material of medieval moralizing sources to analyze the daily life of a medieval person.

Research objectives:

To trace the origin and development of such a direction as the "history of everyday life", to highlight the main approaches.

Analyze historical literature on the topic of research and texts of moralizing sources and highlight the main areas of everyday life: weddings, funerals, meals, holidays and entertainment, and the role and place of women in medieval society.

Working methods. The course work is based on the principle of historicism, reliability, objectivity. Among the scientific and specific historical methods, the following are used: analysis, synthesis, typology, classification, systematization, as well as problem-chronological, historical-genetic, comparative-historical methods.

The historical and anthropological approach in studying the topic involves, firstly, fixing attention on micro-objects in order to give their detailed description; secondly, a shift in emphasis from the general to the special, individual. Thirdly, the key concept for historical anthropology is "culture" (and not "society" or "state"), respectively, an attempt will be made to comprehend its meaning, to decipher a certain cultural code underlying the words and actions of people. It is from here that there is an increased interest in the language and concepts of the era under study, in the symbolism of everyday life: rituals, manner of dressing, eating, communicating with each other, etc. The main tool for studying the chosen culture is interpretation, that is, "such a multi-layered description, when everything, even the smallest details, gleaned from sources, add up like pieces of smalt, forming a complete picture" .

Characteristics of sources. Our study is based on a complex of historical sources.

Moral literature is a kind of spiritual writing that has a practical, religious and moral purpose, associated with edification in useful rules, instruction in worldly affairs, teaching in life wisdom, denunciation of sins and vices, etc. In accordance with this, moralizing literature is as close as possible to real life situations. This finds its expression in such genres of moralistic literature as "Words", "Instructions", "Messages", "Instructions", "Sayings", etc.

Over time, the nature of moralizing literature changed: from simple moral sayings, it evolved to moralizing treatises. By the XV-XVI centuries. in the Words and Epistles, the author's position is increasingly visible, which is based on a certain philosophical foundation.

Moral teachings are distinguished by a peculiar property associated with the peculiarities of ancient Russian consciousness: maxims, maxims, proverbs, teachings are built on the basis of a sharp opposition of opposite moral concepts: good - evil, love - hate, truth - lies, happiness - misfortune, wealth - poverty, etc. . The teaching literature of Ancient Russia was a peculiar form of moral experience.

As a literary genre, moralizing literature, on the one hand, comes from the Old Testament wisdom, the Proverbs of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, the Gospel; on the other hand, from Greek philosophy in the form of short sayings with a pronounced ethical orientation.

In terms of the degree of use and prevalence in the Middle Ages and earlier in the New Age, moralistic literature took the second place, going right behind the liturgical literature. In addition to having an independent value of author's works with a moral and instructive orientation, didactic collections of the 11th-17th centuries, created by collective or unknown authors, had a significant distribution and influence on the formation of the national character and originality of spiritual culture.

Them common features(in addition to anonymity) - theocentrism, the handwritten nature of existence and distribution, traditionalism, etiquette, abstract generalized nature of moralizing. Even those of the collections that were translated were certainly supplemented by original Russian material, reflecting the worldview of the compiler and customers.

In our opinion, it is moralistic texts, on the one hand, that set moral standards, they manifest the ideal ideas of the people about how to behave, how to live, how to act in a given situation, on the other hand, they reflect the real existing traditions and customs, signs of everyday life of different strata of medieval society. It is these features that make moralistic sources indispensable material for the study of the history of everyday life.

The following sources were selected as moralizing sources for analysis:

Izbornik 1076;

"Word about hops" Cyril, Slovenian philosopher;

"The Tale of Akira the Wise";

"The Wisdom of the Wise Menander";

"Measure of the righteous";

"A word about evil wives";

"Domostroy";

"The Overseer".

"Izbornik 1076" is one of the oldest dated manuscripts of religious and ideological content, a monument of the so-called moral philosophy. The existing opinion that the Izbornik was compiled by order of the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav Yaroslavich seems unfounded to most scientists. The scribe John, who copied the Bulgarian collection for Prince Izyaslav, may have prepared the manuscript in question for himself, although he used materials from the prince's library for it. The Izbornik includes brief interpretations of St. Scriptures, articles about prayer, about fasting, about reading books, "Instructions for Children" by Xenophon and Theodora.

The "Word about hops" by Kirill, the Slovenian philosopher, is directed against drunkenness. One of the earliest lists of the work dates back to the 70s. 15th century and made by the monk of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery Euphrosyn. The text of the Lay is interesting not only for its content, but also for its form: it is written in rhythmic prose, sometimes turning into rhymed speech.

"The Tale of Akira the Wise" is an old Russian translated story. The original story took shape in Assyro-Babylonia in the 7th-5th centuries. BC. The Russian translation goes back either to the Syriac or to the Armenian prototype and, possibly, was carried out already in the 11th-12th centuries. The story tells the story of Akir, a wise adviser to the Assyrian king Sinagripp, who was slandered by his nephew, saved from execution by a friend and, thanks to his wisdom, saved the country from a humiliating tribute to the Egyptian pharaoh.

"The Wisdom of the Wise Menander" - collections of short sayings (monostichs) selected from the works of the famous ancient Greek playwright Menander (c.343 - c.291). The time of their Slavic translation and appearance in Russia cannot be precisely determined, but the nature of the relationship of texts in the older lists allows us to consider the date of translation of the XIV or even XIII century. The topics of sayings are varied: they are the glorification of kindness, temperance, intelligence, hard work, generosity, the condemnation of treacherous, envious, deceitful, stingy people, the theme of family life and the glorification of "good wives", etc.

"Bee" is a translated collection of sayings and short historical anecdotes (that is, short stories about the actions of famous people), known in ancient Russian literature. It occurs in three varieties. The most common contains 71 chapters, it was translated no later than the XII-XIII centuries. From the titles of the chapters ("On Wisdom", "On Teaching and Conversation", "On Wealth and Poverty", etc.), it is clear that the sayings were selected according to topics and mainly dealt with issues of morality, norms of behavior, Christian piety.

"Measure of the Righteous", a legal collection of Ancient Russia, created in the XII-XIII centuries, as a guide for judges. Preserved in manuscripts of the XIV-XVI centuries. Consists of two parts. The first part contains original and translated "words" and teachings about righteous and unrighteous courts and judges; in the second - ecclesiastical and secular laws of Byzantium, borrowed from Kormcha, as well as the oldest monuments of Slavic and Russian law: "Russian Truth", "The Law of Judgment by People", "The Rule is Legal about Church People".

"The Word about Evil Wives" is a complex of interconnected works on the same topic, common in ancient Russian manuscript collections. The texts of the "word" are mobile, which allowed the scribes to both separate them and combine them, supplement them with extracts of sayings from the Proverbs of Solomon, excerpts from the Bee, from the "Word" of Daniil the Sharpener. They are found in ancient Russian literature already from the 11th century; they are included in the Izbornik of 1073, Zlatostruy, Prologue, Izmaragd, and numerous collections. Among the texts with which the ancient Russian scribes supplemented their writings "about evil wives", noteworthy are peculiar "worldly parables" - small plot narratives (about a husband crying for an evil wife; ο selling children from an evil wife; ο an old woman looking in a mirror ; ο who married a rich widow; ο a husband who pretended to be sick; ο who flogged his first wife and asking for another for himself; ο a husband who was called to the spectacle of monkey games, etc.). The text of the Word "about evil wives" is published according to the list of the "Golden Mother", dated by watermarks from the second half of the 70s - early 80s. 15th century

"Domostroy", that is, "home arrangement", is a literary and journalistic monument of the 16th century. This is a chapter-by-chapter code of norms for religious and social behavior of a person, rules for the upbringing and life of a wealthy city dweller, a set of rules that every citizen should have been guided by. The narrative element in it is subject to edifying purposes, each position is argued here by references to the texts of Holy Scripture. But it differs from other medieval monuments in that the sayings of folk wisdom are cited to prove the truth of this or that position. Compiled by a famous figure from the inner circle of Ivan the Terrible, Archpriest Sylvester, "Domostroy" is not only an essay of a moralizing and family type, but also a kind of set of socio-economic norms of civil life in Russian society.

The "Nazir" goes back through Polish mediation to the Latin work of Peter Crescencius and is dated XVI century. The book gives practical advice on choosing a place for a house, describes the intricacies of preparing building materials, growing field, garden, vegetable crops, cultivating arable land, a vegetable garden, a garden, a vineyard, contains some medical advice, etc.

The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, a list of sources and references.

Chapter 1. The origin and development of the direction of the history of everyday life in Western and domestic historical science

The history of everyday life today is a very popular area of ​​historical and humanitarian knowledge in general. As a separate branch of historical knowledge, it was designated relatively recently. Although the main plots of the history of everyday life, such as life, clothing, work, recreation, customs, have been studied in some aspects for a long time, at present, an unprecedented interest in the problems of everyday life is noted in historical science. Everyday life is the subject of a whole complex of scientific disciplines: sociology, psychology, psychiatry, linguistics, art theory, literary theory and, finally, philosophy. This theme often dominates in philosophical treatises and scientific studies, the authors of which address certain aspects of life, history, culture and politics.

History of everyday life- a branch of historical knowledge, the subject of which is the sphere of human everyday life in its historical, cultural, political, eventful, ethnic and confessional contexts. In the center of attention is the history of everyday life, according to the modern researcher N.L. Pushkareva, a reality that is interpreted by people and has subjective significance for them as an integral life world, a comprehensive study of this reality (life world) of people of different social strata, their behavior and emotional reactions to events.

The history of everyday life originated in the middle of the 19th century, and as an independent branch of the study of the past in the humanities, it arose in the late 60s. 20th century During these years, there was an interest in research related to the study of man, and in connection with this, German scientists were the first to begin to study the history of everyday life. The slogan was sounded: "Let's turn from the study of state policy and the analysis of global social structures and processes to small worlds of life, to the everyday life of ordinary people." The direction "history of everyday life" or "history from below" arose.

It can also be noted that the surge of interest in the study of everyday life coincided with the so-called "anthropological revolution" in philosophy. M. Weber, E. Husserl, S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, A. Schopenhauer and others proved that it is impossible to describe many phenomena of the human world and nature, remaining on the positions of classical rationalism. For the first time, philosophers drew attention to the internal relationships between the various spheres of human life, which ensure the development of society, its integrity and originality at each time stage. Hence, studies of the diversity of consciousness, the inner experience of experiences, and various forms of everyday life are becoming increasingly important.

We are interested in what was and is understood by everyday life and how do scientists interpret it?

To do this, it makes sense to name the most important German historians of everyday life. Historian-sociologist Norbert Elias is considered a classic in this area with his works "On the Concept of Everyday Life", "On the Process of Civilization", "Court Society". N. Elias says that a person in the process of life absorbs social norms of behavior, thinking and as a result they become the mental image of his personality, as well as that how the form of human behavior changes in the course of social development.

Elias also tried to define the "history of everyday life". He noted that there is no exact, clear definition of everyday life, but he tried to give a certain concept through the opposition of non-everyday life. To do this, he compiled lists of some of the uses of this concept that are found in the scientific literature. The result of his work was the conclusion that in the early 80s. the history of everyday life is so far "neither fish nor fowl." .

Another scientist who worked in this direction was Edmund Husserl, a philosopher who formed a new attitude towards the "ordinary". He became the founder of the phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches in the study of everyday life and was the first to draw attention to the significance of the "sphere of human everyday life", everyday life, which he called the "life world". It was his approach that was the impetus for scientists from other areas of the humanities to study the problem of defining everyday life.

Among the followers of Husserl, one can pay attention to Alfred Schutz, who proposed to focus on the analysis of the "world of human immediacy", i.e. on those feelings, fantasies, desires, doubts and reactions to immediate private events.

From the point of view of social feminology, Schutz defines everyday life as "a sphere of human experience characterized by a special form of perception and understanding of the world that arises on the basis of labor activity, which has a number of characteristics, including confidence in the objectivity and self-evidence of the world and social interactions, which, in fact, and there is a natural setting.

Thus, the followers of social feminology come to the conclusion that everyday life is that sphere of human experience, orientations and actions, thanks to which a person carries out plans, deeds and interests.

The next step towards separating everyday life into a branch of science was the appearance in the 60s of the 20th century of modernist sociological concepts. For example, the theories of P. Berger and T. Lukman. The peculiarity of their views was that they called for studying "face-to-face meetings of people", believing that such meetings "(social interactions) are" the main content of everyday life.

In the future, within the framework of sociology, other theories began to appear, the authors of which tried to give an analysis of everyday life. Thus, this led to its transformation into an independent direction in the social sciences. This change, of course, was reflected in the historical sciences.

A huge contribution to the study of everyday life was made by the representatives of the Annales school - Mark Blok, Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel. "Annals" in the 30s. 20th century turned to the study of man-worker, the subject of their study becomes the "history of the masses" as opposed to the "history of the stars", a history that is visible not "from above", but "from below". According to N.L. Pushkareva, they proposed to see in the reconstruction of the "everyday" an element of recreating history and its integrity. They studied the peculiarities of consciousness not of outstanding historical figures, but of the mass "silent majority" and its influence on the development of history and society. Representatives of this trend explored the mentality of ordinary people, their experiences, and the material side of everyday life. AND I. Gurevich noted that this task was successfully carried out by their supporters and successors, grouped around the Annaly magazine created in the 1950s. The history of everyday life was part of their writings. macro context life of the past.

The representative of this trend, Mark Blok, turns to the history of culture, social psychology and studies it, based not on the analysis of the thoughts of individual individuals, but in direct mass manifestations. The focus of the historian is a person. Blok hurries to clarify: "not a person, but people - people organized into classes, social groups. In Blok's field of vision are typical, mostly mass-like phenomena in which repetition can be found."

One of Blok's main ideas was that the historian's research begins not with the collection of material, but with the formulation of a problem and questions to the source. He believed that "the historian, by analyzing the terminology and vocabulary of surviving written sources, is able to make these monuments say much more" .

The French historian Fernand Braudel studied the problem of everyday life. He wrote that it is possible to know everyday life through material life - "these are people and things, things and people." The only way to experience the daily existence of a person is to study things - food, dwellings, clothing, luxury goods, tools, money, plans of villages and cities - in a word, everything that serves a person.

The French historians of the second generation of the Annales School, who continued the "Braudel line", scrupulously studied the relationship between the way of life of people and their mentalities, everyday social psychology. The use of the Brodelian approach in the historiographies of a number of Central European countries (Poland, Hungary, Austria), which began in the mid-second half of the 70s, was comprehended as an integrative method of understanding a person in history and the "zeitgeist". According to N.L. Pushkareva, it has received the greatest recognition from medievalists and specialists in the history of the early modern period and is practiced to a lesser extent by specialists studying the recent past or the present.

Another approach to understanding the history of everyday life arose and to this day prevails in German and Italian historiography.

In the face of the German history of everyday life, for the first time, an attempt was made to define the history of everyday life as a kind of new research program. This is evidenced by the book "The History of Everyday Life. Reconstruction of Historical Experience and Way of Life", published in Germany in the late 1980s.

According to S.V. Obolenskaya, German researchers called for studying the "microhistory" of ordinary, ordinary, inconspicuous people. They believed that a detailed description of all the poor and destitute, as well as their emotional experiences, was important. For example, one of the most common research topics is the life of workers and the labor movement, as well as working families.

An extensive part of the history of everyday life is the study of everyday life of women. In Germany, many works are published on the women's issue, women's work, the role of women in public life in different historical eras. A center for research on women's issues has been established here. Particular attention is paid to the life of women in the post-war period.

In addition to the German "historians of everyday life", a number of researchers in Italy turned out to be inclined to interpret it as a synonym for "microhistory". In the 1970s, a small group of such scientists (K. Ginzburg, D. Levy, and others) rallied around the journal they created, starting the publication of the scientific series "Microhistory". These scientists made worthy of the attention of science not only the common, but also the only, accidental and particular in history, whether it be an individual, an event or an incident. The study of chance - argued supporters of the microhistorical approach - should be the starting point for the work of recreating multiple and flexible social identities that arise and collapse in the process of functioning of the network of relationships (competition, solidarity, association, etc.). In doing so, they sought to understand the relationship between individual rationality and collective identity.

The German-Italian school of microhistorians expanded in the 1980s and 1990s. It was supplemented by American researchers of the past, who a little later joined the study of the history of mentalities and unraveling the symbols and meanings of everyday life.

Common to the two approaches to the study of the history of everyday life - both outlined by F. Braudel and microhistorians - was a new understanding of the past as "history from below" or "from within", which gave voice to the "little man", the victim of modernization processes: both unusual and most ordinary . The two approaches in the study of everyday life are also connected with other sciences (sociology, psychology and ethnology). They have equally contributed to the recognition that the man of the past is not like no man. today, they equally recognize that the study of this "otherness" is the way to comprehend the mechanism of socio-psychological changes. In world science, both understandings of the history of everyday life continue to coexist - both as an event history reconstructing the mental macrocontext, and as an implementation of microhistorical analysis techniques.

In the late 80s - early 90s of the 20th century, following Western and domestic historical science, there was a surge of interest in everyday life. The first works appear, where everyday life is mentioned. A series of articles is published in the almanac "Odyssey", where an attempt is made to theoretically comprehend everyday life. These are articles by G.S. Knabe, A.Ya. Gurevich, G.I. Zvereva.

A significant contribution to the development of the history of everyday life was made by N.L. Pushkareva. The main result of Pushkareva's research work is the recognition of the direction of gender studies and the history of women (historical feminology) in the domestic humanities.

Most written by Pushkareva N.L. books and articles devoted to the history of women in Russia and Europe. The Association of American Slavists book Pushkareva N.L. recommended as a teaching aid in US universities. Works by N.L. Pushkareva have a high citation index among historians, sociologists, psychologists, culturologists.

The works of this researcher revealed and comprehensively analyzed a wide range of problems in the "history of women" both in pre-Petrine Russia (X-XVII centuries) and in Russia in the 18th-early 19th centuries.

N.L. Pushkareva pays direct attention to the study of the issues of private life and everyday life of representatives of various classes of Russian society in the 18th - early 19th centuries, including the nobility. She established, along with the universal features of the "female ethos", specific differences, for example, in the upbringing and lifestyle of provincial and metropolitan noblewomen. Paying special attention to the ratio of "general" and "individual" when studying the emotional world of Russian women, N.L. Pushkareva emphasizes the importance of the transition "to the study of private life as to the history of specific individuals, sometimes not at all eminent and not exceptional. This approach makes it possible to" get acquainted "with them through literature, office documents, correspondence.

The last decade has demonstrated the growing interest of Russian historians in everyday history. The main directions of scientific research are formed, well-known sources are analyzed from a new point of view, and new documents are introduced into scientific circulation. According to M.M. Krom, in Russia the history of everyday life is now experiencing a real boom. An example is the series "Living History. Everyday Life of Mankind" published by the Molodaya Gvardiya publishing house. Along with translations, this series includes books by A.I. Begunova, E.V. Romanenko, E.V. Lavrentieva, S.D. Okhlyabinin and other Russian authors. Many studies are based on memoirs and archival sources, they describe in detail the life and customs of the heroes of the story.

Entering a fundamentally new scientific level in the study of the everyday history of Russia, which has long been in demand by researchers and readers, is associated with the intensification of work on the preparation and publication of documentary collections, memoirs, the reprinting of previously published works with detailed scientific comments and reference apparatus.

Today we can talk about the formation of separate directions in the study of the daily history of Russia - this is the study of the everyday life of the period of the empire (XVIII - early XX centuries), the Russian nobility, peasants, townspeople, officers, students, the clergy, etc.

In the 1990s - early 2000s. The scientific problem of "everyday Russia" is gradually mastered by university historians, who have begun to use new knowledge in the process of teaching historical disciplines. Historians of Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov even prepared a textbook "Russian everyday life: from the origins to the middle of the 19th century", which, according to the authors, "allows you to supplement, expand and deepen knowledge about the real life of people in Russia" . Sections 4-5 of this edition are devoted to the daily life of Russian society in the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries. and cover a fairly wide range of issues of almost all segments of the population: from the urban lower classes to the secular society of the empire. One cannot but agree with the recommendation of the authors to use this edition as an addition to existing textbooks, which will expand the understanding of the world of Russian life.

The prospects for studying the historical past of Russia from the perspective of everyday life are obvious and promising. Evidence of this is the research activity of historians, philologists, sociologists, culturologists, and ethnologists. By virtue of its "global responsiveness" everyday life is recognized as a sphere of interdisciplinary research, but at the same time it requires methodological accuracy in approaches to the problem. As the culturologist I.A. Mankiewicz, "in the space of everyday life the "lines of life" of all spheres of human existence converge ..., everyday life is "everything of ours interspersed with not at all ours ... ".

Thus, I would like to emphasize that in the 21st century it is already recognized by everyone that the history of everyday life has become a noticeable and promising trend in historical science. Today, the history of everyday life is no longer called, as it used to be, "history from below", and it is separated from the writings of non-professionals. Its task is to analyze the life world of ordinary people, to study the history of everyday behavior and everyday experiences. The history of everyday life is interested, first of all, in repeatedly repeated events, the history of experience and observations, experiences and lifestyle. This is a history reconstructed "from below" and "from within", from the side of the man himself. Everyday life is the world of all people, in which not only material culture, food, housing, clothing, but also everyday behavior, thinking and experiences are explored. A special micro-historical direction of the "history of everyday life" is developing, concentrating on single societies, villages, families, and autobiographies. The interest is in the little people, men and women, their encounters with significant events such as industrialization, the formation of a state, or a revolution. Historians outlined the subject area of ​​everyday life of a person, pointed to the methodological significance of his research, since the development of civilization as a whole is reflected in the evolution of everyday life. Studies of everyday life help to reveal not only the objective sphere of human being, but also the sphere of his subjectivity. A picture is emerging of how the way of everyday life determines the actions of people that influence the course of history.

Chapter 2. Everyday life and customs of medieval Russia

It seems logical to organize the study of the daily life of our ancestors in accordance with the main milestones of the human life cycle. The cycle of human life is eternal in the sense in which it is predetermined by nature. A person is born, grows up, marries or gets married, gives birth to children and dies. And it is quite natural that he would like to properly mark the milestones of this cycle. In our day of urbanized and mechanized civilization, rituals related to each link in the life cycle are reduced to a minimum. This was not the case in antiquity, especially in the era of the tribal organization of society, when the main milestones in the life of an individual were considered part of the life of the clan. According to G.V. Vernadsky, the ancient Slavs, like other tribes, marked the milestones of the life cycle with complex rituals reflected in folklore. Immediately after the adoption of Christianity, the Church appropriated the organization of some ancient rites and introduced its own new rituals, such as the rite of baptism and the celebration of name days in honor of the patron saint of every man or woman.

Based on this, several areas of the daily life of a resident of Medieval Russia and the events accompanying them, such as love, weddings, funerals, meals, festivities and amusements, were singled out for analysis. It also seemed interesting to us to explore the attitude of our ancestors to alcohol and women.

2.1 Wedding

Wedding customs in the era of paganism were noted among different tribes. The groom had to kidnap the bride from the radmichi, vyatichi and northerners. Other tribes considered it normal to pay a ransom for her family. This custom probably developed from a kidnapping ransom. In the end, the frank payment was replaced by a gift to the bride from the groom or her parents (veno). There was a custom among the glades that required the parents or their representatives to bring the bride to the groom's house, and her dowry was to be delivered the next morning. Traces of all these ancient rites can be clearly seen in Russian folklore, especially in wedding rites of even later times.

After the conversion of Russia to Christianity, the engagement and marriage were sanctioned by the Church. However, at first only the prince and the boyars cared about the church blessing. The bulk of the population, especially in rural areas, were content with the recognition of marriage by the respective clans and communities. Cases of marriage avoidance in the church by ordinary people were frequent until the 15th century.

According to Byzantine legislation (Ekloga and Prokeiron), in accordance with the customs of the peoples of the south, the lowest age requirements for future married couples were established. The 8th century eclogue allows men to marry at the age of fifteen, and women at thirteen. In the Prokeiron of the ninth century, these requirements are even lower: fourteen years for the groom and twelve for the bride. It is known that Eclogue and Prokeiron existed in Slavic translation and the legitimacy of both manuals was recognized by Russian "jurists". In medieval Russia, even the Sami people did not always respect the low age requirements of the Prokeyron, especially in princely families, where marriages were most often concluded for diplomatic reasons. At least one case is known when the prince's son married at the age of eleven, and Vsevolod III gave his daughter Verkhuslav as a wife to Prince Rostislav when she was only eight years old. When the bride's parents saw her off, "they both wept because their beloved daughter was so young."

In medieval moralizing sources, there are two points of view on marriage. Don of them - the attitude towards marriage as a sacrament, a sacred rite, is expressed in the Izbornik of 1076. "Woe to the fornicator, for he defiles the groom's clothes: let him be expelled from the kingdom of marriage with disgrace," instructs Hesychius, presbyter of Jerusalem.

Jesus, the son of Sirach, writes: "Give your daughter in marriage - and you will do a great deed, but only give her to a wise husband."

We see that, in the opinion of these church fathers, marriage, marriage, is called a "kingdom," a "great deed," but with reservations. The groom's clothes are sacred, but only a worthy person can enter the "kingdom of marriage". Marriage can become a "great thing" only if a "wise man" marries.

The sage Menander, on the contrary, sees only evil in marriage: “From marriage to everyone there is great bitterness”, “If you decide to marry, ask your neighbor who is already married”, “Do not marry, and nothing bad will ever happen to you.”

In Domostroy, it is indicated that prudent parents ahead of time, from the birth of their daughter, began to prepare to marry her off with a good dowry: "If a daughter is born to someone, a prudent father<…>from any profit he saves for his daughter<…>: either they raise a little animal for her with offspring, or from her share, that God will send there, buy canvases and canvases, and pieces of fabric, and robes, and a shirt - and all these years they put her in a special chest or in a box and a dress, and headwear , and monist, and church utensils, and tin and copper and wooden dishes, always adding a little, every year ... ".

According to Sylvester, who is credited with the authorship of Domostroy, such an approach did not allow "at a loss" to gradually collect a good dowry, "and everything, God willing, will be full." In the event of the death of a girl, it was customary to commemorate "her dowry, according to her magpie, and alms are distributed."

In "Domostroy" the wedding ceremony itself is described in detail, or, as they called it then, the "wedding rite".

The wedding procedure was preceded by a conspiracy: the groom with his father or older brother came to his father-in-law in the yard, the guests were brought "the best wines in goblets", then "after blessing with a cross, they will begin to speak and write contractual records and an in-line letter, agreeing how much for the contract and what dowry", after which, "having secured everything with a signature, everyone takes a bowl of honey, congratulates each other and exchanges letters". Thus, the collusion was a normal transaction.

At the same time, gifts were brought: the son-in-law's father-in-law gave "the first blessing ~ an image, a goblet or a ladle, velvet, damask, forty sables". After that they went to the half of the mother of the bride, where "the mother-in-law asks the groom's father about his health and kisses through a scarf both with him and with the groom, and with everyone the same."

The next day, the groom's mother comes to see the bride, "here they give her damask and sables, and she will give the bride a ring."

The day of the wedding was appointed, the guests were "painted", the groom chose their roles: planted father and mother, invited boyars and boyars, thousand and travellers, friends, matchmakers.

On the day of the wedding itself, a friend with a retinue came in gold, followed by a bed "in a sleigh with a limber, and in the summer - with a headboard to the irradiation, covered with a blanket. And in the sleigh there are two gray horses, and near the sleigh boyar servants in an elegant dress, on the irradiation the elder in bed will become in gold, holding a holy image ". A matchmaker rode behind the bed, her outfit was prescribed by custom: “a yellow summer coat, a red fur coat, and also in a scarf and a beaver mantle. And if it’s winter, then in a fur hat.”

It is already clear from this episode alone that the wedding ceremony was strictly regulated by tradition, all other episodes of this ceremony (preparing the bed, the arrival of the groom, wedding, "resting" and "knowledge", etc.) were also strictly played out in accordance with the canon.

So the wedding was important event in the life of a medieval person, and the attitude to this event, judging by the moralistic sources, was ambiguous. On the one hand, the sacrament of marriage was exalted, on the other hand, the imperfection of human relations was reflected in an ironically negative attitude towards marriage (for example, the statements of the "wise Menander"). In fact, we are talking about two types of marriages: happy and unhappy marriages. It is generally accepted that a happy marriage is a marriage of love. In this regard, it seems interesting to consider how the question of love is reflected in moralizing sources.

Love (in the modern sense) as love between a man and a woman; "The basis of marriage, judging by the moralistic sources, did not exist in the minds of medieval authors. Indeed, marriages were made not out of love, but at the will of the parents. Therefore, in case of successful circumstances, for example, if a "good" wife is caught, the sages advise to appreciate and cherish this gift, otherwise - humble yourself and be on your guard: "Do not leave your wife wise and kind: her virtue is more precious than gold"; "if you have a wife to your liking, do not drive her away, but if she hates you, do not trust her." However, the word "love" is practically not used in these contexts (according to the results of the analysis of the texts of the sources, only two such cases were found.) During the "wedding rite", the father-in-law punishes the son-in-law: "By the fate of God, my daughter took the crown with you (name) and you should favor and love her in a lawful marriage, as the fathers and fathers of our fathers lived. "The use of the subjunctive mood is noteworthy ("you would favor her and love"). One of Menander's aphorisms says: "The great bond of love is the birth of a child."

In other cases, love between a man and a woman is interpreted as evil, a destructive temptation. Jesus, the son of Sirach, warns: "Do not look at the virgin, otherwise you will be tempted by her charms." "To avoid carnal and voluptuous deeds..." Saint Basil advises. "It is better to shun voluptuous thoughts," Hesychius echoes him.

In the "Tale of Akira the Wise" an instruction is given to his son: "... do not be seduced by the beauty of a woman and do not desire her with your heart: if you give all the wealth to her, and then you will not benefit from her, you will only sin more before God."

The word "love" on the pages of the moralizing sources of medieval Russia is mainly used in the contexts of love for God, gospel quotes, love for parents, love of others: "... the merciful Lord loves the righteous"; "I remembered the words of the Gospel:" Love your enemies ..., "Love strongly those who gave birth to you"; " Democritus. Wish to be loved during your lifetime, and not terrible: for whom everyone is afraid of, he himself is afraid of everyone.

At the same time, the positive, ennobling role of love is recognized: "Whoever loves a lot, he is a little angry," said Menander.

So, love in moralistic sources is interpreted in a positive sense in the context of love for one's neighbor and for the Lord. Love for a woman, according to the analyzed sources, is perceived by the consciousness of a medieval person as a sin, danger, temptation of unrighteousness.

Most likely, such an interpretation of this concept is due to the genre originality of the sources (instructions, moralizing prose).

2.2 Funeral

No less significant rite than a wedding in the life of medieval society was a funeral rite. The details of the descriptions of these rites make it possible to reveal the attitude of our ancestors towards death.

Funeral rites in pagan times included memorial feasts held at the burial site. A high mound (mound) was raised over the grave of a prince or some outstanding warrior, and professional mourners were hired to mourn his death. They continued to perform their duties at Christian funerals, although the form of crying changed according to Christian concepts. Christian funeral rites, like other church services, were, of course, borrowed from Byzantium. John of Damascus is the author of an Orthodox requiem ("funeral" service), and the Slavic translation is worthy of the original. Christian cemeteries were created near churches. The bodies of eminent princes were placed in sarcophagi and placed in the cathedrals of the princely capital.

Our ancestors perceived death as one of the inevitable links in

chain of births: "Do not strive to be merry in this world: for all the joys

this light ends in weeping. Yes, and that cry itself is also vain: today they cry, and tomorrow they feast.

You must always remember about death: "Death and exile, and troubles, and all visible misfortunes, let them stand before your eyes at all days and hours."

Death completes a person's earthly life, but for Christians, earthly life is only a preparation for the afterlife. Therefore, death is given special respect: "Child, if there is grief in someone's house, then, leaving them in trouble, do not go to a feast with others, but first visit those who are grieving, and then go feast and remember that you too doomed to death." The "Measure of the Righteous" regulates the norms of behavior at a funeral: "Do not cry loudly, but grieve with dignity, do not indulge in sorrow, but do mournful deeds."

However, at the same time, in the minds of medieval authors of moralistic literature, there is always the idea that the death or loss of a loved one is not the worst thing that can happen. Much worse is spiritual death: “Weep not over the dead, over the unreasonable: for that is a common path for all, and this one has its own will”; "Weep over the dead - he has lost the light, but mourn the fool - he has left his mind."

The existence of the soul in that future life must be secured by prayers. In order to secure the continuation of prayers, a wealthy person usually bequeathed part of his property to the monastery. If for some reason he was not able to do this, then his relatives should have taken care of it. Then the Christian name of the deceased will be included in the synodic - a list of commemorated names in prayers at every divine service, or at least on certain days established by the church for commemoration of the departed. The princely family usually kept their own synodik in the monastery, whose donors were traditionally princes of this kind.

So, death in the minds of medieval authors of moralistic literature is the inevitable end of human life, one must be prepared for it, but always remember it, but for Christians, death is the boundary of the transition to another, afterlife. Therefore, the grief of the funeral rite must be "worthy", and spiritual death is much worse than physical death.

2.3 Nutrition

Analyzing the statements of medieval sages about food, one can, firstly, draw a conclusion about the attitude of our ancestors to this issue, and secondly, find out what specific products they used and what dishes they prepared from them.

First of all, it can be concluded that in popular consciousness moderation, healthy minimalism is preached: "From many dishes, illness arises, and satiety will bring to grief; many have died from gluttony - remembering this will prolong your life."

On the other hand, the attitude towards food is reverent, food is a gift, a blessing sent from above and not to everyone: "When you sit at a plentiful table, remember the one who eats dry bread and cannot bring water in illness." "And to eat and drink with gratitude - it will be sweet."

The fact that the food was prepared at home and was varied is evidenced by the following entries in Domostroy: “And the food is meat and fish, and all sorts of pies and pancakes, various cereals and jelly, any dishes to bake and cook - all if the hostess herself knew how so that she could teach servants what she knows. The owners themselves carefully monitored the process of cooking and spending products. Every morning it is recommended that “husband and wife consult about household chores”, plan “when and what food and drink to prepare for guests and for themselves”, count the necessary products, after which “send to the cook what should be cooked, and to the baker, and for other blanks also send the goods ".

In "Domostroy" it is also described in detail what products on which days of the year, depending on the church calendar,

use, there are many recipes for cooking and drinks.

Reading this document, one can only admire the diligence and frugality of the Russian hosts and marvel at the richness, abundance and diversity of the Russian table.

Bread and meat were two staples in the diet of the Russian princes of Kievan Rus. In the south of Russia, bread was baked from wheat flour, in the north rye bread was more common.

The most common meats were beef, pork, and lamb, as well as geese, chickens, ducks, and pigeons. The meat of wild animals and birds was also consumed. Most often in "Domostroy" hare and swans are mentioned, as well as cranes, herons, ducks, black grouse, hazel grouse, etc.

The church encouraged the eating of fish. Wednesdays and Fridays were declared fast days and, in addition, three fasts were established, including Great Lent. Of course, fish was already in the diet of Russian people before the Baptism of Vladimir, and so was caviar. In "Domostroy" they mention white fish, sterlet, sturgeon, beluga, pike, loaches, herring, bream, minnows, crucians and other types of fish.

Lenten food included all dishes from cereals with hemp oil, "and flour, and all sorts of pies and pancakes, bakes and juicy, and makes rolls and different cereals, and pea noodles, and strained peas, and stews, and kundums, and boiled and sweet cereals and dishes - pies with pancakes and mushrooms, and mushrooms, and milk mushrooms, and poppy seeds, and porridge, and turnips, and with cabbage, or nuts in sugar, or rich pies with what God sent.

Of the legumes, the Rusichi grew and actively ate beans and peas. They also actively ate vegetables (this word meant all fruits and fruits). Domostroy lists radishes, watermelons, several varieties of apples, berries (blueberries, raspberries, currants, strawberries, lingonberries).

Meat was boiled or roasted on a spit, vegetables were eaten boiled or raw. Corned beef and stew are also mentioned in the sources. Stocks were stored "in the cellar, on the glacier and in the barn." The main type of preservation was pickles, they salted "both in barrels, and in tubs, and in merniks, and in vats, and in buckets"

They made jam from berries, made fruit drinks, and also prepared levashi (butter pies) and marshmallows.

The author of "Domostroy" devotes several chapters to describing how to properly "satiate all sorts of honey", prepare and store alcoholic beverages. Traditionally, in the era of Kievan Rus, they did not drive alcohol. Three types of drinks were consumed. Kvass, a non-alcoholic or slightly intoxicating drink, was made from rye bread. It was something like beer. Vernadsky points out that it was probably the traditional drink of the Slavs, since it is mentioned in the records of the journey of the Byzantine envoy to the leader of the Huns Attila at the beginning of the fifth century, along with honey. Honey was extremely popular in Kievan Rus. It was brewed and drunk by both laymen and monks. According to the chronicle, Prince Vladimir the Red Sun ordered three hundred cauldrons of honey on the occasion of the opening of the church in Vasilevo. In 1146 Prince Izyaslav II discovered five hundred barrels of honey and eighty barrels of wine in the cellars of his rival Svyatoslav 73 . Several varieties of honey were known: sweet, dry, with pepper, and so on.

Thus, the analysis of moralistic sources allows us to identify such trends in nutrition. On the one hand, moderation is recommended, a reminder that a good year may be followed by a hungry one. On the other hand, studying, for example, "Domostroy", one can draw conclusions about the diversity and richness of Russian cuisine, due to the natural wealth of Russian lands. Compared to today, Russian cuisine has not changed much. The main set of products remained the same, but their variety was significantly reduced.

Part of the moralizing statements is devoted to how to behave at a feast: "At a feast, do not scold your neighbor and do not interfere with him in his joy"; "... at the feast do not be foolish, be like one who knows, but is silent"; "When they call you to a feast, do not sit in a place of honor, suddenly from among those invited there will be someone more respectable than you, and the host will come up to you and say:" Give him a place! - And then you will have to go to the last place with shame " .

After the introduction of Christianity in Russia, the concept of "holiday" first of all acquires the meaning of "church holiday". The "Tale of Akira the Wise" says: "On a holiday, do not pass by the church."

From the same point of view, the church regulates aspects of the sexual life of parishioners. So, according to "Domostroy", a husband and wife were forbidden to cohabit on Saturdays and Sundays, and those who did this were not allowed to go to church.

So, we see that a lot of attention was paid to the holidays in moralizing literature. They were prepared for them in advance, but modest, respectful behavior, moderation in food were encouraged at the feast. The same principle of moderation prevails in moralistic statements "about hops."

In a number of similar works condemning drunkenness, the "Word about the hops of Cyril, the Slovenian philosopher" is widely distributed in ancient Russian manuscript collections. It warns readers against addiction to intoxicating drink, draws the misfortunes that threaten the drunkard - impoverishment, deprivation of a place in the social hierarchy, loss of health, excommunication from the church. The "Word" combines Khmel's own grotesque appeal to the reader with a traditional sermon against drunkenness.

This is how the drunkard is described in this work: “Need-poverty sits at his house, and illnesses lie on his shoulders, sadness and sorrow ring with hunger on his thighs, poverty has made a nest in his wallet, evil laziness has become attached to him, like a dear wife , and sleep is like a father, and groaning is like beloved children"; "From drunkenness, his legs hurt, and his hands tremble, the sight of his eyes fades"; "Drunkenness destroys the beauty of the face"; drunkenness "plunges good and equal people, and masters into slavery", "quarrels brother with brother, and excommunicates a husband from his wife."

Other moralistic sources also condemn drunkenness, calling for moderation. In "The Wisdom of the Wise Menander" it is noted that "wine, drunk in abundance, instructs little"; "an abundance of drunk wine also entails talkativeness."

The “Bee” monument contains the following historical anecdote attributed to Diogenes: “This was given a lot of wine at the feast, and he took it and spilled it. perished, I would perish from the wine."

Hesychius, presbyter of Jerusalem, advises: "Drink honey little by little, and the less, the better: you will not stumble"; "It is necessary to refrain from drunkenness, because groans and remorse follow sobering up."

Jesus, the son of Sirach, warns: "The drunkard worker will not get rich"; "Wine and women will corrupt even the sensible..." . Saint Basil echoes him: "Wine and women seduce the wise too..."; "Avoid and drunkenness and sorrows of this life, do not speak slyly, never talk about anyone behind their backs.

"When you are invited to a feast, do not get drunk to the point of terrible intoxication ...", the priest Sylvester, the author of Domostroy, instructs his son.

Especially terrible, according to the authors of moralizing prose, is the effect of hops on a woman: So says Hops: “If my wife, whatever she is, begins to get drunk, I will make her crazy, and she will be bitterer than all people.

And I will raise bodily lusts in her, and she will be a laughing stock between: people, and she is excommunicated from God and from the church of God, so it would be better for her not to be born ";" Yes, always beware of a drunken wife: a drunken husband: - bad, and the wife is drunk and the world is not pretty."

So, the analysis of the texts of moralistic prose shows that traditionally in Russia drunkenness was condemned, a drunk person was strictly condemned by the authors of the texts, and, consequently, by society as a whole.

2.5 The role and place of women in medieval society

Many statements of moralizing texts are devoted to a woman. Initially, a woman, according to the Christian tradition, is perceived as a source of danger, sinful temptation, death: "Wine and women will corrupt and reasonable, but he who sticks to harlots will become even more impudent."

A woman is an enemy of the human race, therefore the sages warn: "Do not reveal your soul to a woman, for she will destroy your firmness"; "But most of all, a man should refrain from talking to women..."; "Because of women, many get into trouble"; "Beware of the kiss of a beautiful woman, like the venom of a snake."

Entire separate treatises about "good" and "evil" wives appear. In one of them, dating from the 15th century, an evil wife is likened to the "eye of the devil", this is "a hellish marketplace, a queen of filth, a governor of lies, a satanic arrow that strikes the hearts of many" .

Among the texts with which the ancient Russian scribes supplemented their writings "about evil wives", attention is drawn to the peculiar "worldly parables" - small plot narratives (about a husband crying for an evil wife; about selling children from an evil wife; about an old woman looking in a mirror ; about the one who married a rich widow; about the husband who pretended to be sick; about the one who flogged his first wife and asking for another for himself; about the husband who was called to the spectacle of monkey games, etc.). All of them condemn the woman as a source of voluptuousness, unhappiness for a man.

Women are full of "feminine cunning", frivolous: "Women's thoughts are unstable, like a temple without a roof", false: "From a woman rarely know the truth" initially prone to vice and deceit: "Girls do not blush badly, while others are ashamed, but secretly they do worse."

The original depravity of a woman is in her beauty, and an ugly wife is also perceived as torment. So, one of the anecdotes of the "Bee", attributed to Solon, reads: "This one, asked by someone whether he advises marriage, said" No! If you take an ugly woman, you will be tormented; if you take a beauty, others will also want to admire her.

"It is better to live in the wilderness with a lion and a snake than with a lying and talkative wife," says Solomon.

Seeing the arguing women, Diogenes says: "Look! The snake asks the viper for poison!" .

"Domostroy" regulates the behavior of a woman: she must be a good housewife, take care of the house, be able to cook and take care of her husband, receive guests, please everyone and at the same time not cause complaints. Even the wife goes to church "in consultation with her husband." Here is how the norms of a woman's behavior in a public place - at a church service - are described: "In church, she should not talk to anyone, stand silently, listen to singing with attention and read Holy Scripture, without looking anywhere, do not lean against a wall or a pillar , and do not stand with a staff, do not step from foot to foot; stand with your hands crossed on your chest, unshakably and firmly, lowering your bodily eyes down, and your heart - to God; pray to God with fear and trembling, with sighs and tears. to leave the church until the end of the service, but to come to its very beginning"

Kipling P. The light went out: A novel; Brave Mariners: Adventure. story; stories; Mn.: Mast. lit., 1987. - 398 p. thelib. ru/books/samarin_r/redyard_kipling-read. html

For Soviet man Rudyard Kipling is the author of a number of stories, poems and, above all, fairy tales and the Jungle Books, which any of us remember well from childhood impressions.

"Kipling is very talented," Gorky also wrote, noting that "the Hindus cannot help but recognize his preaching of imperialism as harmful"4. And Kuprin in his article speaks of originality, of "the power artistic means"Kipling.

I. Bunin, who, like Kipling, was captivated by the exoticism of The Seven Seas, dropped a few very flattering words about him in his article Kuprin5. If we bring these statements together, we get a certain general conclusion: for all the negative features determined by the imperialist nature of his ideology, Kipling - great talent, and this brought his works a long and wide success not only in England, but also in other countries of the world, and even in our country - the homeland of such demanding and sensitive readers, brought up in the traditions of humanism of great Russian and great Soviet literature.

But his talent is a bunch of complex contradictions, in which the high and human are intertwined with the low and inhuman.

X x x

Kipling was born in 1865 to an Englishman serving in India. Like many "natives" like him, that is, Englishmen born in the colonies and treated as second-class people at home, Rudyard was sent to receive an education in the metropolis, from where he returned to India, where his young years were spent, mainly devoted to work in the colonial English press. In it appeared his first literary experiments. Kipling developed as a writer in a turbulent environment. It was heating up in India itself - the threat of large popular movements, wars and punitive expeditions; it was also restless because England was afraid of a blow to its colonial system from outside - from tsarist Russia, which had long been preparing to jump on India and came close to the borders of Afghanistan. A rivalry was unfolding with France, which was stopped by the British colonists in Africa (the so-called Fashoda incident). A rivalry began with Kaiser's Germany, which was already developing the "Berlin-Baghdad" plan, the implementation of which would have brought this power to the junction with the British eastern colonies. "Heroes of the day" in England were Joseph Chamberlain and Cecil Rhodes - the builders of the British colonial empire, approaching highest point of its development.

This tense political situation created in England, as in other countries of the capitalist world that was creeping into the era of imperialism, an atmosphere unusually favorable for the emergence of militant colonialist literature. More and more writers came out with propaganda of aggressive, expansionist slogans. Increasingly, the “historical mission” of the white man, who imposed his will on other races, was praised in every way.

The image of a strong personality was cultivated. humanistic morality writers of the 19th centuries, they declared it obsolete, but they sang the immorality of the "dared men" who subjugated the millions of beings of the "lower race" or "lower classes". The whole world heard a sermon by the English sociologist Herbert Spencer, who tried to transfer the theory of natural selection discovered by Darwin to social relations, but what was the great truth of the brilliant naturalist turned out to be a grave error in the books of the bourgeois sociologist, who used his reasoning to cover up the monstrous social and racial injustice of the capitalist building. Friedrich Nietzsche was already entering the glory, and his "Zarathustra" marched from one European country to another, everywhere finding those who wanted to become "blonde beasts", regardless of hair color and nationality.

But both Spencer and Nietzsche, and many of their admirers and followers, were abstract, too scientific; this made them accessible only to a relatively narrow circle of the bourgeois elite.

The stories and poems of Kipling, the colonial correspondent, who himself stood under bullets and rubbed himself among the soldiers, and did not disdain the society of the Indian colonial intelligentsia, were much clearer and clearer for wide readership. Kipling knew how the restless colonial border lived, separating the kingdom of the British lion - then still a formidable beast and full of strength - from the kingdom of the Russian bear, about which Kipling spoke in those years with hatred and shudder.

Kipling narrated about everyday life and work in the colonies, about the people of this world - English officials, soldiers and officers who create an empire far away from their native farms and cities, lying under the blessed sky of Old England. He sang about it in his "Departmental Songs" (1886) and "Barracks Ballads" (1892), mocking the old-fashioned tastes of lovers of classical English poetry, for whom highly poetic concepts like a song or a ballad did not fit in any way with the bureaucracy of the departments or with the smell of the barracks; and Kipling was able to prove that in such songs and in such ballads, written in the jargon of small colonial bureaucrats and long-suffering soldiers, genuine poetry can live.

Along with work on poems in which everything was new - vital material, a peculiar combination of heroism and rudeness, and an unusually free, bold treatment of the rules of English prosody, resulting in a unique Kiplingian version, sensitively conveying the thought and feeling of the author - Kipling acted as the author equally original stories, first associated with the tradition of newspaper or magazine narration, involuntarily compressed and full of interesting facts, and then already advanced as an independent Kipling genre, marked by successive closeness to the press. In 1888, a new collection of Kipling's short stories, Simple Tales from the Mountains, appeared. Daring to argue with the glory of Dumas' musketeers, Kipling then publishes the Three Soldiers series of stories, creating vividly outlined images of the three "empire builders", three privates of the colonial, so-called Anglo-Indian army - Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, in whose ingenuous chatter there is so much terrible and funny interspersed, so much life experience of Tommy Atkins - and, moreover, according to the correct remark of Kuprin, "not a word about his cruelty to the vanquished."

Having found many of the most characteristic features of his writing style already in the late 1880s - the harsh accuracy of prose, the bold rudeness and novelty of life material in verse, Kipling in the 1890s showed amazing diligence. It was during this decade that almost all the books that made him famous were written. These were collections of stories about life in India and the talented novel The Lights Out (1891), these are both The Jungle Books (1894 and 1895) and the collection of poems The Seven Seas (1896), fanned with cruel Kiplingian romance, glorifying the exploits Anglo-Saxon race. In 1899, the novel "Sinks and Campaign" was published, introducing the reader to the atmosphere of an English closed educational institution, where future officers and officials of the colonial empire are trained. During these years, Kipling lived for a long time in the United States, where he enthusiastically met the first glimpses of American imperialist ideology and became, along with President Theodore Roosevelt, one of its godfathers. Then he settled in England, where, together with the poets H. Newbolt and W. E. Henley, who had a strong influence on him, he led the imperialist trend in English literature, which was called "neo-romantic" in the then criticism. In those years when the young G. Wells expressed his dissatisfaction with the imperfection of the British system, when the young B. Shaw criticized it, when W. Morrissey and his fellow socialist writers predicted its imminent collapse, and even O. Wilde, far from politics, said a sonnet , which began with significant lines:

Empire on feet of clay - our island ... -

Kipling and writers who were close to him in general terms glorified this "island" as a mighty citadel, crowning the majestic panorama of the empire, as a great Mother, never tired of dispatching new and new generations of her sons over the distant seas. By the turn of the century, Kipling was one of the most popular English writers, having a strong influence on public opinion.

The children of his country - and not only his country - read the Jungle Books, young people listened to the emphatically masculine voice of his poems, which sharply and directly taught a difficult, dangerous life; the reader, accustomed to finding in "his" magazine or "his" newspaper a fascinating weekly story, found it signed by Kipling. I could not but like the unceremonious manner of Kipling's heroes in dealing with their superiors, the critical remarks thrown in the face of the administration and the rich, the witty mockery of stupid bureaucrats and bad servants of England, the well-thought-out flattery of the "little man".

By the end of the century, Kipling had finally developed his style of narration. Closely associated with the essay, with the newspaper and magazine genre of the "short story" characteristic of the English and American press, Kipling's artistic style at that time represented a complex mixture of descriptiveness, naturalism, sometimes replacing the essence of the depicted details, and, at the same time, realistic tendencies, which forced Kipling to utter bitter truths, to admire the humiliated and insulted Indians without a grimace of contempt and without haughty European alienation.

In the 1890s, Kipling's skill as a storyteller also strengthened. He showed himself to be a connoisseur of the art of plot; along with material and situations drawn really "from life", he turned to the genre of "terrible story", full of mysteries and exotic horrors ("Ghost Rickshaw"), and to a fairy tale-parable, and to an unpretentious essay, and to a complex psychological study ("Provincial comedy"). Under his pen, all this acquired "Kiplingian" contours, captivated the reader.

But no matter what Kipling wrote about, the subject of his particular interest - which is most clearly seen in his poetry of those years - remained the armed forces. british empire. He sang them in puritanical biblical imagery, reminiscent of the fact that Cromwell's cuirassiers went on the attack with the singing of David's psalms, in courageous, mocking rhythms, imitating the march, the dashing soldier's song. There was so much sincere admiration and pride in Kipling's poems about the English soldier that they sometimes rose above the level of official patriotism of the English bourgeoisie. None of the armies of the old world could find such a faithful and zealous praiser as Kipling was for the English army. He wrote about sappers and marines, about mountain artillery and the Irish Guards, about Her Majesty's engineers and colonial troops - Sikhs and Gurkhas, who later proved their tragic loyalty to the British Sahibs in the swamps of Flanders and the sands of El Alamein. Kipling expressed with particular fullness the beginning of a new world phenomenon - the beginning of that wholesale cult of the military, which was established in the world along with the era of imperialism. It manifested itself in everything, starting with hordes of tin soldiers who won the souls of future participants in countless wars of the 20th century, and ending with the cult of a soldier that was proclaimed in Germany by Nietzsche, in France by J. Psicari and P. Adam, in Italy by D "Annunzio and Marinetti.Earlier and more talented than all of them, Kipling expressed this ominous tendency to militarize the philistine consciousness.

The apogee of his life and career was the Anglo-Boer War (1899 - 1902), which stirred up the whole world and became a harbinger of the terrible wars of the beginning century.

Kipling took the side of British imperialism. Together with the young war correspondent W. Churchill, he was indignant at the perpetrators of the defeats that fell upon the British in the first year of the war, who stumbled upon the heroic resistance of an entire people. Kipling devoted a number of poems to individual battles of this war, to units of the English army and even to the Boers, "magnanimously" recognizing in them rivals equal to the British in spirit. In his autobiography, which he wrote later, he spoke, not without self-satisfaction, about the special role of a supporter of the war, which he, in his opinion, played in those years. During the Anglo-Boer War, the most gloomy period came in his work. In the novel "Kim" (1901), Kipling portrayed an English spy, a "native-born" boy who grew up among the Indians, skillfully imitating them and therefore invaluable for those who play the "big game" - for British military intelligence. With this, Kipling laid the foundation for the spy genre of imperialist literature of the 20th century, creating a model unattainable for Fleming and similar masters of "spy" literature. But the novel also shows the deepening of the writer's skill.

The mental world of Kim, who is increasingly getting used to the life and worldview of his Indian friends, is a complex psychological collision of a person in whom traditions are fighting European civilization, depicted very skeptically, and deeply philosophical, wise for centuries of social and cultural existence, the Eastern concept of reality, are revealed in its complex content. The psychological aspect of the novel cannot be forgotten in the general evaluation of this work. Kipling's collection of poems The Five Nations (1903), which sings of the old imperialist England and the new nations it spawned - the United States, South Africans, Canada, Australia, is replete with glorifications in honor of fighter cruisers and destroyers. Then, to these poems, in which there was still a strong feeling of love for the fleet and the army and for those who serve their hard service in them, without thinking about the question of who needs this service, later poems were added in honor of D. Chamberlain, S. Rhodes, H. Kitchener, F. Roberts and other figures in British imperialist politics. That's when he really became a bard of British imperialism - when, in smooth, no longer "Kiplingian" verses, he praised politicians, bankers, demagogues, patented murderers and executioners, the very top of English society, about which many heroes of his earlier works spoke with contempt and condemnation which contributed greatly to Kipling's success in the 1880s and 1890s. Yes, in those years when G. Wells, T. Hardy, even D. Galsworthy, who was far from politics, in one way or another condemned the policy of the British imperialists, Kipling found himself on the other side.

However, the climax of his creative development has already been passed. All the best has already been written. Ahead were only the adventurous novel Courageous Captains (1908), a cycle of stories from the history of the English people, uniting the epochs of their past within the framework of one work (Peck from the Pak Hills, 1906). Against this background, "Tales for Just So" (1902) stand out clearly.

Kipling lived for a long time. He survived the war of 1914-1918, to which he responded with official and pale verses, strikingly different from his temperamental style of early years. He met the October Revolution with fear, seeing in it the fall of one of the great kingdoms of the old world. Kipling anxiously asked the question - who is now the turn, which of the great states of Europe will collapse after Russia under the onslaught of the revolution? He predicted the collapse of British democracy, threatened her with the court of descendants. Kipling grew decrepit along with the British lion, fell into decline along with the growing decline of the empire, whose golden days he glorified and whose decline he no longer had time to mourn ...

He died in 1936.

X x x

Yes, but Gorky, Lunacharsky, Bunin, Kuprin... And the judgment of readers - Soviet readers - confirms that Kipling was a writer of great talent.

What was this talent?

Of course, there was talent in the way Kipling portrayed many situations and characters that are disgusting to us. His doxologies in honor of English soldiers and officers are often original both in style and in the manner of creating living images. In the warmth with which he speaks of a simple "little" man, suffering, perishing, but "building an empire" on his own and other people's foundations, deeply human sympathy sounds, unnaturally coexisting with insensitivity towards the victims of these people. Of course, Kipling's activity as a bold reformer of English verse, which opened up completely new possibilities, is talented. Of course, Kipling is talented as a tireless and amazingly diverse storyteller and as a deeply original artist.

But it is not these features of Kipling's talent that make him attractive to our reader.

And even more so not what was described above as Kipling's naturalism and which was rather a deviation, a perversion of his talent. The talent of a real, although deeply controversial artist, lies primarily in a greater or lesser degree of truthfulness. Although Kipling hid a lot from the terrible truth that he saw, although he hid from the blatant truth behind dry, businesslike descriptions, in a number of cases - and very important ones - he spoke this truth, although sometimes he did not finish it. In any case, he made her feel.

He told the truth about the terrible epidemics of famine and cholera, which became the lot of colonial India (the story "On the Hunger", the story "Without the blessing of the Church"), about rude and uncouth conquerors who imagined themselves to be masters over the ancient peoples who once had a great civilization. The secrets of the ancient East, so many times breaking into Kipling's stories and poems, rising like an insurmountable wall between the civilized white of the end of the 19th century and the illiterate fakir, is a forced recognition of the impotence that strikes the white man in the face of an ancient and incomprehensible culture for him, because he came to her as an enemy and a thief, because she withdrew from him in the soul of her creator - an enslaved, but not surrendered people ("Beyond the Line"). And in that feeling of anxiety that more than once seizes the white conqueror, the hero of Kipling, in the face of the East, does not the foreknowledge of defeat speak, the foreboding of the inevitable historical retribution that will fall upon the descendants of the "three soldiers", on Tommy Atkins and others? It will take decades for the people of the new generation to overcome these premonitions and fears. In Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American, an old English journalist secretly helps the struggling Vietnamese people in their war of liberation and so becomes human again; in A. Sillitow's novel "The Key to the Door" a young soldier from the occupying British troops fighting in Malaya feels a strong desire to get away from this "dirty work", spares the partisan who fell into his hands - and also becomes a man, gains maturity. This is how questions are resolved that once unconsciously tormented Kipling and his heroes.

When it comes to Kipling, it is customary to recall his poems:

The West is the West, and the East is the East, and they will not leave their places until Heaven and Earth stand before God's terrible judgment...

The quotation usually ends here. But Kipling's verse goes further:

But there is no East, and there is no West, which is a tribe, a homeland, a clan, if a strong one stands face to face at the edge of the earth.

Translation by E. Polonskaya

Yes, in life the strong converge with the strong. And not only in this poem, but also in many other works of Kipling, where the strength of a colored person is demonstrated as the same innate quality of him as the strength of a white one. "Strong" Indians are often Kipling's heroes, and this is also an important part of the truth that he showed in his works. No matter how jingoist Kipling may be, but his Indians are a great people with a great soul, and with such a characteristic they appeared in the literature of the late 19th century precisely in Kipling, depicted not in the prime of their statehood and strength, not under Ashak, Kalidas or Aurangzeb, but thrown into dust, trampled down by the colonialists - and yet irresistibly strong, invincible, only temporarily bearing his slavery. Too ancient not to outlive these gentlemen. The truth of Kipling's best pages lies in the sense of the temporality of that dominance won by bayonet and cannon, by the blood of Tommy Atkins. This sense of the doom of the great colonial powers is revealed in the poem "The Burden of the Whites", written back in 1890 and dedicated to the capture of the Philippines by America.

Of course, this is a tragic hymn to the imperialist forces. In Kipling, the bossing of conquerors and rapists is portrayed as the mission of cultural traders:

Bear the burden of the whites - be able to endure everything, be able to overcome even pride and shame; give the hardness of stone to all spoken words, give them everything that would serve you with benefit.

Translation by M. Froman

But Kipling warns that the colonialists will not wait for gratitude from those on whom they have imposed their civilization. From the enslaved peoples they will not make their friends. The colonial peoples feel like slaves in the ephemeral empires created by the whites, and will hasten to break out of them at the first opportunity. This poem tells the truth about the many tragic illusions inherent in those who, like the young Kipling, once believed in the civilizing mission of imperialism, in the educational character of the activity of the English colonial system, which dragged "savages" from their drowsy state to "culture" in British manners.

With great force, the foreboding of the doom of the seemingly mighty world of rapists and predators was expressed in the poem "Mary Gloucester", which to some extent puts the theme of generations in relation to the English social situation of the end of the century. Old Anthony Gloucester, millionaire and baronet, dies. And he suffers unspeakably before his death - there is no one to leave the accumulated wealth: his son Dick is a miserable offspring of British decadence, a refined esthete, an art lover. The old creators leave, leaving what they have created without a care, leaving their property to unreliable heirs, to a miserable generation that will destroy the good name of the robber dynasty of Gloucester ... Sometimes the cruel truth of great art broke through even where the poet speaks of himself: it sounds in a poem "galley slave". The hero sighs about his old bench, about his old oar - he was a galley slave, but how beautiful was this galley, with which he was connected by a convict's chain!

Even though the chains rubbed our legs, even though it was difficult for us to breathe, but there is no other such galley to be found on all the seas!

Friends, we were a gang of desperate people, we were servants of the oars, but the lords of the seas, we led our galley straight through the storms and darkness, warrior, maiden, god or devil - well, who were we afraid of?

Translation by M. Froman

The excitement of the accomplices of the "big game" - the same one that so amused the boy Kim - bitterly intoxicated Kipling as well, as this poem, written by him as if at the moment of sobering up, vividly speaks of. Yes, and he, the all-powerful, proud white man, incessantly repeating about his freedom and power, was only a galley, chained to the bench of a ship of pirates and merchants. But such is his lot; and, sighing about her, he consoles himself with the thought that whatever this galley was, it was his galley, no one else's. Through all European poetry - from Alcaeus to the present day - the image of a ship-state in distress, relying only on those who can serve it at this hour, passes; Kipling's galley is one of the mightiest images in this long poetic tradition.

The bitter truth of life, breaking through in the best poems and stories of Kipling, sounded with the greatest force in the novel "The Light went out". This is a sad tale of Dick Heldar, an English martial artist who gave all the strength of his talent to people who did not appreciate him and quickly forgot about him.

There is much discussion about art in the novel. Dick - and behind him Kipling - was an opponent of the new art that arose in Europe at the end of the century. Dick's quarrel with the girl he sincerely loves is largely due to the fact that she is a supporter of French impressionism, and Dick is his opponent. Dick is an adherent of laconic art, accurately reproducing reality. But this is not naturalism. "I'm not a fan of Vereshchagin," his friend, journalist Torpenhow, tells Dick after seeing his sketch of the dead on the battlefield. And there is a lot hidden in this judgment. The harsh truth of life - that's what Dick Heldar strives for, he fights for. Neither the refined girl nor the narrow-minded Torpenhow likes her. But she is liked by those for whom Heldar paints his paintings - the English soldiers. In the midst of another argument about art, Dick and the girl find themselves in front of an art shop window, where his painting is displayed, depicting a battery leaving for firing positions. Artillery soldiers are crowding in front of the window. They praise the artist for showing their hard work for what it really is. For Dick, this is a genuine confession, much more significant than the articles of critics from modernist magazines. And this, of course, is the dream of Kipling himself - to achieve recognition from Tommy Atkins!

But the writer showed not only the sweet moment of recognition, but also the bitter fate of the poor artist, forgotten by everyone and deprived of the opportunity to live that soldier's camp life, which seemed to him integral to his art. Therefore, it is impossible to read without excitement that page of the novel where the blinded Heldar hears on the street how a military unit is passing by him: he revels in the sound of soldiers' boots, the creak of ammunition, the smell of leather and cloth, the song that healthy young throats roar - and here Kipling too tells the truth about the feeling of blood connection of his hero with the soldiers, with the mass of ordinary people, deceived, like him, sacrificing themselves, as he will do it in a few months somewhere in the sands beyond Suez.

Kipling had the talent to find something exciting and significant in the events of an ordinary and even outwardly boring life, to capture in an ordinary person that great and lofty thing that makes him a representative of humanity and that is inherent at the same time to everyone. This peculiar poetry of the prose of life was especially widely revealed in Kipling's stories, in that area of ​​his work where he is truly inexhaustible as a master. Among them is the story "The Conference of the Powers", which expresses important features of the general poetry of Kipling the artist.

A friend of the author, the writer Cleaver, "an architect of style and a painter of the word," according to Kipling's sarcastic characterization, accidentally got into the company of young officers who had gathered in a London apartment near the person on whose behalf the narration is being conducted. Cleaver, who lives in a world of abstract ideas about the life and people of the British Empire, is shocked by the harsh truth of life, which is revealed to him in a conversation with young officers. Between him and these three youths, who have already gone through the hard school of war in the colonies, there is such an abyss that they speak completely different languages: Cleaver does not understand their military jargon, in which English words are mixed with Indian and Burmese and which is increasingly moving away from that refined style, which adheres to Cleaver. He listens with amazement to the conversation of young officers; he thought he knew them, but everything in them and in their stories was news to him; however, in reality, Cleaver treats them with insulting indifference, and Kipling emphasizes this by mocking the writer’s manner of expression: “Like many Englishmen living without a break in the metropolis, Cleaver was sincerely convinced that the stamped newspaper phrase he quoted the true way of life of the military, whose hard work allowed him to lead a quiet life, full of various interesting activities. Contrasting Cleaver with three young builders and defenders of the empire, Kipling seeks to oppose idleness - work, the harsh truth about a life full of dangers, the truth about those due to whose hardships and blood the Cleavers lead their elegant life. This motif of opposing lies about life and the truth about it runs through many of Kipling's stories, and the writer always finds himself on the side of the harsh truth. It is another matter whether he manages to achieve it himself, but he declares - and probably sincerely - about his desire for this. He writes differently than Cleaver, and not about what Cleaver writes about. His focus is on authentic life situations, his language is the one that is spoken simple people, and not mannered admirers of the English decadents.

Kipling's Stories is an encyclopedia of the story experiences of the remarkable English and American storytellers of the 19th century. Among them we will find "terrible" stories of mysterious content, all the more exciting because they are played out in an ordinary setting ("Ghost Rickshaw") - and, reading them, we remember Edgar Allan Poe; anecdotal short stories, attractive not only for their shades of humor, but also for the clarity of images ("Cupid's Arrows", "False Dawn"), original portrait stories in the tradition of an old English essay ("Resley from the Department of Foreign Affairs"), psychological love stories ( "beyond"). However, speaking of following certain traditions, one should not forget that Kipling acted as an innovative storyteller, not only fluent in the art of storytelling, but also opening up new possibilities in it, introducing new layers of life into English literature. This is especially felt in dozens of stories about life in India, about that "damned Anglo-Indian life" ("Rejected"), which he knew better than the life of the metropolis, and which he treated in the same way as one of his favorite heroes - a soldier Mulvaney, who returned to India after he lived in England, where he left after receiving a well-deserved retirement ("The Spooky Crew"). The stories "In the House of Sudhu", "Beyond the Line", "Lispet" and many others testify to the deep interest with which Kipling studied the life of the people of India, sought to capture the originality of their characters.

The depiction of Gurkhas, Afghans, Bengalis, Tamils, and other peoples in Kipling's stories is not just a tribute to the exotic; Kipling recreated a living variety of traditions, beliefs, characters. He caught and showed in his stories both disastrous caste strife and social differences between the Indian nobility serving the metropolis and the downtrodden, starving and overworking common people of Indian villages and cities. If Kipling often speaks of the peoples of India and Afghanistan in the words of English soldiers, rude and cruel, then on behalf of the same characters he pays tribute to the courage and implacable hatred of the invaders ("The Lost Legion", "On Guard"). Kipling boldly touched on the forbidden topics of love connecting a white man to an Indian woman, a feeling that breaks racial barriers ("Without the blessing of the church").

Kipling's innovation is most fully revealed in his stories about the colonial war in India. In The Lost Legion, Kipling sets out a characteristic "frontier" story - one can speak of a whole cycle of the writer's frontier stories, where East and West not only converge in constant battles and compete in courage, but also carry out relationships in a more peaceful way, exchanging not only blows , horses, weapons and booty, but also views: this is the story of the dead regiment of rebellious sepoys, destroyed by the Afghans in the border region, taken for granted not only by the highlanders, but also by the Anglo-Indian soldiers, and it unites both sides in a fit of a kind of soldier's superstition. The story "Discarded" is a psychological study, interesting not only as an analysis of the events that led a young man ill with colonial nostalgia to commit suicide, but also revealing the views of his comrades.

The stories from the cycle "Three Soldiers" are especially rich and varied. It must be remembered that by the time Kipling chose three ordinary English soldiers as his heroes and tried to tell about life in India, in English literature and in general in all world literature, except Russian, from the aspect of their perception, no one dared to write about a simple person in a soldier's uniform. Kipling did it. Moreover, he showed that his privates Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, despite their completely democratic origin, deserve no less interest than Dumas's vaunted musketeers. Yes, these are just simple soldiers, rude, full of national and religious prejudices, lovers of drink, sometimes cruel; their hands are covered in blood, they have more than one human life on their conscience. But behind the dirt imposed on these souls by the barracks and poverty, behind all the terrible and bloody that the colonial war brought to them, real human dignity lives. Kipling's soldiers faithful friends who will not leave a comrade in trouble. They are good soldiers, not because they are self-satisfied artisans of war, but because in battle you have to help out a comrade, and even not to yawn yourself. War is labor for them, with the help of which they are forced to earn their bread. Sometimes they rise to call their existence "a damned soldier's life" ("The Madness of Private Ortheris"), to realize that they are "lost drunken tommies" sent to die far from their homeland for the interests of others, people they despise - those who cashing in on soldiers' blood and suffering. Ortheris is not capable of more than a drunken rebellion, and his escape, in which he was ready to help and the author, who feels like a friend of Ortheris, did not take place. But even those pages depicting Ortheris's fit, evoking the author's sympathy and presented in such a way that it looks like an explosion of long-accumulating protest against humiliation and resentment, sounded extraordinarily bold and defiant against the general background of English literature of that time.

Sometimes Kipling's characters, especially in the "Three Soldiers" cycle, as happens in the works of truly talented artists, seem to break free from the author's control and begin to live their own lives, to say words that the reader will not hear from their creator: for example , Mulvaney, in the story of the massacre at the Silver Theater ("On Guard"), speaks with disgust of himself and his comrades - English soldiers, intoxicated by a terrible massacre - as butchers.

In the aspect in which this series of stories shows the life of the colonies, it is the soldiers and the few officers who can step over the barrier that separates them from the rank and file (like the old captain, nicknamed Hook), who turn out to be real people. A large society of careerists, officials and businessmen, which is guarded with bayonets from the fury of the enslaved population, is depicted through the perception of the ordinary as a crowd of arrogant and useless creatures, busy with their incomprehensible and, from the soldier's point of view, unnecessary deeds, causing contempt and ridicule in the soldier. There are exceptions - Strickland, the "empire builder", Kipling's ideal character ("Sais Miss Yol"), but even he is pale next to the full-blooded images of soldiers. To the masters of the country - the peoples of India - the soldiers are fierce if they encounter them on the battlefield - however, they are ready to respect the courage of the Indian and Afghan warriors and with full respect - about the Indian soldiers and officers serving next to the "red uniforms "- soldiers from the British units. The work of a peasant or coolie, who is overworked in the construction of bridges, railways and other benefits of civilization, introduced into Indian life, arouses sympathy and understanding in them - after all, they were once people of labor. Kipling does not hide the racial prejudices of his heroes - that's why they are simple, semi-literate guys. He speaks about them not without irony, emphasizing the extent to which soldiers repeat in such cases words and opinions that are not always clear to them, to what extent they are alien barbarians who do not understand the complex world of Asia that surrounds them. The repeated praise uttered by Kipling's heroes about the courage of the Indian peoples in defending their independence brings to mind some of Kipling's poems, in particular his poems about the courage of the Sudanese freedom fighters, written in the same soldier's slang used by the three soldiers.

And next to the stories about the hard life of a soldier, we find subtle and poetic examples of an animalistic story ("Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), attracting with a description of the life of the Indian fauna, or stories about old and new cars and their role in people's lives - "007" , an ode to the locomotive, in which there was a place for warm words about those who lead them; they are like three soldiers in their habits, and in their manner of expression. And how miserable and insignificant it looks next to their life, full of work and dangers, the life of English officials, high-ranking officers, rich people, nobles, the details of which are depicted in the stories "Cupid's Arrows", "On the Edge of the Abyss". The world of Kipling's stories is complex and rich, and his talent as an artist, who knows life and loves to write only about what he knows well, shines especially brightly in them.

A special place in Kipling's stories is occupied by the problem of the narrator - that "I" on behalf of whom the speech is being made. Sometimes this "I" is elusive, it is obscured by another narrator, who is given the floor by the author, who uttered only a certain beginning, a preface. Most often, this is Kipling himself, a participant in the daily events taking place in British settlements and military posts, his own man both in the officers' assembly and in the company of ordinary soldiers who value him for his cordiality and ease of treatment. Only occasionally is this not a double of Kipling, but someone else, but this is always an experienced person with a skeptical and at the same time stoic worldview, proud of his objectivity (in fact, it is far from flawless), his vigilant observation, his willingness to help and , if necessary, even help to desert Private Orteris, who was no longer able to bear the red uniform.

One could find many more examples of the veracity of Kipling's talent, breaking through his characteristic manner of laconic naturalistic writing.

Another side of Kipling's talent is his deep originality, his ability to make wonderful artistic discoveries. Of course, this ability to discover something new was already reflected in the fact that Kipling's heroes were ordinary soldiers and officials, in whom no one before him had seen heroes. But the real discovery was the life of the East, whose poet was Kipling. Who, before Kipling, among the writers of the West, felt and told about the colors, smells, sounds of the life of the ancient cities of India, their bazaars, their palaces, about the fate of the starving and yet proud Indian, about his beliefs and customs, about the nature of his country? All this was told by one of those who considered himself "bearing the burden of the white man," but the tone of superiority often gave way to a tone of admiration and respect. Without this, such gems of Kipling's poetry as "Mandale" and many others would not have been written. Without this artistic discovery of the East, there would be no wonderful "Jungle Books".

There is no doubt, and in many places in The Jungle Book Kipling's ideology breaks through - just remember his song "Law of the Jungle", which sounds more like a scout anthem than like a choir of free voices of the jungle population, and the good bear Baloo sometimes speaks completely in the spirit of those mentors who trained future officers of Her Majesty from the cadets of the military school where Stokes and Company studied. But, blocking these notes and tendencies, another voice sounds imperiously in the Jungle Books, the voice of Indian folklore and, more broadly, the folklore of the ancient East, the melodies of a folk tale, picked up and in their own way comprehended by Kipling.

Without this powerful influence of the Indian, Eastern elements on the English writer, there could not have been the Jungle Books, and without them there would have been no world fame for Kipling. In essence, we must evaluate what Kipling owes to the country where he was born. "The Jungle Book" is another reminder of the inseparable connection between the cultures of the West and the East, which has always enriched both interacting parties. Where does Kipling's conciseness, naturalistic descriptiveness go? In these books - especially in the first - everything shines with the colors and sounds of great poetry, in which the folk basis, combined with the talent of the master, created a unique artistic effect. That is why the poetic prose of these books is inextricably linked with those verse passages that so organically complement the individual chapters of the Jungle Books.

Everything changes in The Jungle Books. Their hero is not the predator Shere Khan, hated by the whole world of animals and birds, but the boy Mowgli, wise with the experience of a large wolf family and his good friends - the bear and the wise snake Kaa. The struggle with Shere Khan and his defeat - the defeat of the Strong and Lonely, it would seem, Kipling's favorite hero - becomes the center of the composition of the first "Jungle Book". The brave little mongoose Ricky, protector of the Big Man's home and his family, triumphs over the mighty cobra. The wisdom of the folk tale makes Kipling accept the law of the victory of good over force if this force is evil. No matter how close The Jungle Book is to the views of Kipling the imperialist, they diverge from these views more often than they express them. And this is also a manifestation of the artist's talent - to be able to obey the highest law of artistry, embodied in the folk fairy tale tradition, if you already become its follower and student, as Kipling, the author of The Jungle Books, became for a while.

In The Jungle, Kipling began to develop that amazing way of talking to children, the masterpiece of which was his later Fairy Tales. A conversation about Kipling's talent would be incomplete if he was not mentioned as remarkable. children's writer who knows how to speak to his audience with the confident tone of a storyteller who respects his listeners and knows that he is leading them towards interests and exciting events.

x x x

Rudyard Kipling died over thirty years ago. He did not live to see the collapse of the colonial British Empire, although the premonition of this tormented him as early as the 1890s. Increasingly, newspapers mention states in which the old "Union Jack" - the British royal flag - descends; frames and photos are increasingly flashing, which depict how the Tommy Atkins leave forever from foreign territories; more and more often, in the squares of the now free states of Asia and Africa, the equestrian monuments of the old British warriors who once flooded these countries with blood are being overthrown. Figuratively speaking, the Kipling monument was also overthrown. But Kipling's talent lives on. And it affects not only the work of D. Conrad, R. L. Stevenson, D. London, E. Hemingway, S. Maugham, but also in the works of some Soviet writers.

Soviet schoolchildren in the 1920s memorized the young N. Tikhonov's poem "Themselves", in which one can feel the influence of Kipling's vocabulary and metrics, a poem that predicted the worldwide triumph of Lenin's ideas. N. Tikhonov's stories about India contain a kind of polemic with Kipling. The poem "The Commandment" translated by M. Lozinsky is widely known, glorifying the courage and valor of a person and often performed by readers from the stage.

Who has not remembered Kipling while reading N. Tikhonov's "Twelve Ballads", and not because the poet could be reproached for imitating the rhythmic features of Kipling's poems. There was something else, much more complex. And don't some of the best poems by K. Simonov remind of Kipling, who, by the way, perfectly translated Kipling's poem "The Vampire"? There is something that allows us to say that our poets did not pass by the great creative experience contained in the volumes of his poems. This desire to be a modern poet, a keen sense of time, a sense of the romance of the current day, which is stronger than other Western European poets at the turn of the century, was expressed by Kipling in the poem "Queen".

This poem (translated by A. Onoshkovich-Yatsyn) expresses Kipling's peculiar poetic credo. The Queen is Romance; poets of all times complain that she left with yesterday - with a flint arrow, and then with knightly armor, and then - with the last sailboat and the last carriage. "We saw her yesterday," the romantic poet repeats, turning away from modernity.

Meanwhile, romance, says Kipling, is running another train, and running it right on time, and this is the new romance of the machine and space that man has mastered: one of the aspects of modern romance. The poet did not have time to add words to this poem about the romance of an airplane, about the romance of astronautics, about all the romance that our modern poetry breathes. But our romance is obedient to other feelings, to which it is impossible for Kipling to rise, for he was a genuine and talented singer of the departing old world, who only vaguely caught the rumble of the approaching great events in which his empire collapsed and in which the whole world of violence and lies, called capitalist, would fall. society.

R. Samarin

Notes.

1. Kuprin A. I. Sobr. cit.: In 6 t. M.: 1958. T. VI. S. 609

2. Gorky M. Sobr. cit.: V 30 t. M.: 1953. T. 24. S. 66.

3. Lunacharsky A. The history of Western European literature in its most important moments. Moscow: Gosizdat. 1924. Part II. S. 224.

4. Gorky M. Decree cit.: S. 155.

5. See Bunin I. A. Sobr. cit.: In 9 t. M.: Khudozh. lit. 1967. T. 9. S. 394.

6. The article was written in the late 60s.

The problem of everyday life of a person originated in antiquity - in fact, when a person made the first attempts to realize himself and his place in the world around him.

However, ideas about everyday life in antiquity and the Middle Ages were predominantly mythological and religious in color.

So, the everyday life of an ancient person is saturated with mythology, and mythology, in turn, is endowed with many features of people's everyday life. The gods are improved people living the same passions, only endowed with greater abilities and opportunities. The gods easily come into contact with people, and people, if necessary, turn to the gods. Good deeds are rewarded right there on earth, and bad deeds are immediately punished. Belief in retribution and fear of punishment form the mysticism of consciousness and, accordingly, the daily existence of a person, manifested both in elementary rituals and in the specifics of perception and comprehension of the surrounding world.

It can be argued that the everyday existence of an ancient person is two-fold: it is conceivable and empirically comprehended, that is, there is a division of being into the sensual-empirical world and the ideal world - the world of ideas. The predominance of one or another ideological attitude had a significant impact on the way of life of a person of antiquity. Everyday life is only beginning to be considered as an area for the manifestation of a person's abilities and capabilities.

It is conceived as an existence focused on self-improvement of the individual, implying the harmonious development of physical, intellectual and spiritual capabilities. At the same time, the material side of life is given a secondary place. One of the highest values ​​of the era of antiquity is moderation, which is manifested in a rather modest lifestyle.

At the same time, the daily life of an individual is not conceived outside of society and is almost completely determined by it. Knowing and fulfilling one's civic obligations is of paramount importance for a polis citizen.

The mystical nature of the everyday life of an ancient person, coupled with a person’s understanding of his unity with the surrounding world, nature and the Cosmos, makes the everyday life of an ancient person sufficiently ordered, giving him a sense of security and confidence.

In the Middle Ages, the world is seen through the prism of God, and religiosity becomes the dominant moment of life, manifesting itself in all spheres of human life. This leads to the formation of a peculiar worldview, in which everyday life appears as a chain of a person's religious experience, while religious rites, commandments, canons are intertwined in the individual's lifestyle. The whole range of emotions and feelings of a person is religious (faith in God, love for God, hope for salvation, fear of God's wrath, hatred of the devil-tempter, etc.).

Earthly life is saturated with spiritual content, due to which there is a fusion of spiritual and sensual-empirical being. Life provokes a person to commit sinful acts, “throwing” him all sorts of temptations, but it also makes it possible to atone for his sins by moral deeds.

In the Renaissance, ideas about the purpose of a person, about his way of life, undergo significant changes. During this period, both the person and his daily life appear in a new light. A person is presented as a creative person, a co-creator of God, who is able to change himself and his life, who has become less dependent on external circumstances, and much more on his own potential.

The term “everyday” itself appears in the era of the New Age thanks to M. Montaigne, who uses it to designate ordinary, standard, convenient moments of existence for a person, repeated at every moment of an everyday performance. As he rightly remarks, everyday troubles are never small. The will to live is the basis of wisdom. Life is given to us as something that does not depend on us. To dwell on its negative aspects (death, sorrows, illnesses) means to suppress and deny life. The sage must strive to suppress and reject any arguments against life and must say an unconditional yes to life and to all that life is - sorrow, sickness and death.

In the 19th century from an attempt to rationally comprehend everyday life, they move on to considering its irrational component: fears, hopes, deep human needs. Human suffering, according to S. Kierkegaard, is rooted in the constant fear that haunts him at every moment of his life. The one who is mired in sin is afraid of possible punishment, the one who is freed from sin is gnawed by the fear of a new fall into sin. However, man himself chooses his being.

A gloomy, pessimistic view of human life is presented in the works of A. Schopenhauer. The essence of human being is will, a blind onslaught that excites and reveals the universe. Man is driven by an insatiable thirst, accompanied by constant anxiety, want and suffering. According to Schopenhauer, six of the seven days of the week we suffer and lust, and on the seventh we die of boredom. In addition, a person is characterized by a narrow perception of the world around him. He notes that it is human nature to penetrate beyond the boundaries of the universe.

In the XX century. the main object of scientific knowledge is the man himself in his uniqueness and originality. W. Dilthey, M. Heidegger, N. A. Berdyaev and others point to the inconsistency and ambiguity of human nature.

During this period, the “ontological” problematics of human life fulfillment comes to the fore, and the phenomenological method becomes a special “prism” through which vision, comprehension and cognition of reality, including social reality, are carried out.

The philosophy of life (A. Bergson, W. Dilthey, G. Simmel) focuses on the irrational structures of consciousness in human life, takes into account his nature, instincts, that is, a person returns his right to spontaneity and naturalness. So, A. Bergson writes that of all things we are most sure and best of all know our own existence.

In the works of G. Simmel, there is a negative assessment of everyday life. For him, the routine of everyday life is opposed to adventure as a period of the highest exertion of strength and sharpness of experience, the moment of adventure exists, as it were, independently of everyday life, it is a separate fragment of space-time, where other laws and evaluation criteria apply.

Appeal to everyday life as an independent problem was carried out by E. Husserl within the framework of phenomenology. For him, the vital, everyday world becomes a universe of meanings. The everyday world has an internal orderliness, it has a peculiar cognitive meaning. Thanks to E. Husserl, everyday life acquired in the eyes of philosophers the status of an independent reality of fundamental importance. Everyday life of E. Husserl is distinguished by the simplicity of understanding what is "visible" to him. All people proceed from a natural attitude that unites objects and phenomena, things and living beings, factors of a socio-historical nature. Based on a natural attitude, a person perceives the world as the only true reality. The whole daily life of people is based on a natural attitude. The life world is given directly. This is an area known to all. The life world always refers to the subject. This is his own everyday world. It is subjective and presented in the form of practical goals, life practice.

M. Heidegger made a great contribution to the study of the problems of everyday life. He already categorically separates scientific being from everyday life. Everyday life is an extra-scientific space of its own existence. Everyday life of a person is filled with worries about reproducing oneself in the world as a living being, and not a thinking one. The world of everyday life requires the tireless repetition of the necessary worries (M. Heidegger called it an unworthy level of existence), which suppress the creative impulses of the individual. Heidegger's everyday life is presented in the form of the following modes: "chatter", "ambiguity", "curiosity", "preoccupied dispensation", etc. Thus, for example, "chatter" is presented in the form of empty groundless speech. These modes are far from genuine human, and therefore everyday life is somewhat negative, and the everyday world as a whole appears as a world of inauthenticity, groundlessness, loss and publicity. Heidegger notes that a person is constantly accompanied by preoccupation with the present, which turns human life into fearful chores, into the vegetative life of everyday life. This care is aimed at the objects at hand, at the transformation of the world. According to M. Heidegger, a person tries to give up his freedom, to become like everything, which leads to the averaging of individuality. Man no longer belongs to himself, others have taken away his being. However, despite these negative aspects of everyday life, a person constantly strives to stay in cash, to avoid death. He refuses to see death in his daily life, shielding himself from it by life itself.

This approach is aggravated and developed by pragmatists (C. Pierce, W. James), according to whom consciousness is the experience of a person being in the world. Most of the practical affairs of people are aimed at extracting personal benefits. According to W. James, everyday life is expressed in the elements of the individual's life pragmatics.

In D. Dewey's instrumentalism, the concept of experience, nature and existence is far from idyllic. The world is unstable, and existence is risky and unstable. The actions of living beings are unpredictable, and therefore the maximum responsibility and exertion of spiritual and intellectual forces are required from any person.

Psychoanalysis also pays sufficient attention to the problems of everyday life. So, Z. Freud writes about the neuroses of everyday life, that is, the factors that cause them. Sexuality and aggression, suppressed due to social norms, lead a person to neurosis, which in everyday life manifests itself in the form of obsessive actions, rituals, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, and dreams that are understandable only to the person himself. Z. Freud called this "the psychopathology of everyday life." The stronger a person is forced to suppress his desires, the more protection techniques he uses in everyday life. Freud considers repression, projection, substitution, rationalization, reactive formation, regression, sublimation, denial to be the means by which nervous tension can be extinguished. Culture, according to Freud, gave a lot to a person, but took away the most important thing from him - the ability to satisfy his needs.

According to A. Adler, life cannot be imagined without continuous movement in the direction of growth and development. A person's lifestyle includes a unique combination of traits, behaviors, habits, which, taken together, determine a unique picture of a person's existence. From Adler's point of view, lifestyle is firmly fixed at the age of four or five years and subsequently almost does not lend itself to total changes. This style becomes the main core of behavior in the future. It depends on him which aspects of life we ​​will pay attention to, and which we will ignore. Ultimately, only the person himself is responsible for his lifestyle.

Within the framework of postmodernism, it was shown that the life of a modern person has not become more stable and reliable. During this period, it became especially noticeable that human activity is carried out not so much on the basis of the principle of expediency, but on the randomness of expedient reactions in the context of specific changes. Within the framework of postmodernism (J.-F. Lyotard, J. Baudrillard, J. Bataille), an opinion is defended on the legitimacy of considering everyday life from any position in order to obtain a complete picture. Everyday life is not the subject of philosophical analysis of this direction, capturing only certain moments of human existence. The mosaic nature of the picture of everyday life in postmodernism testifies to the equivalence of the most diverse phenomena of human existence. Human behavior is largely determined by the function of consumption. At the same time, human needs are not the basis for the production of goods, but, on the contrary, the machine of production and consumption produces needs. Outside the system of exchange and consumption, there is neither a subject nor objects. The language of things classifies the world even before it is represented in ordinary language, the paradigmization of objects sets the paradigm of communication, interaction in the market serves as the basic matrix of linguistic interaction. There are no individual needs and desires, desires are produced. All-accessibility and permissiveness dull sensations, and a person can only reproduce ideals, values, etc., pretending that this has not happened yet.

However, there are also positives. A post-modern man is focused on communication and goal-setting aspiration, that is, the main task of a postmodern man, who is in a chaotic, inappropriate, sometimes dangerous world, is the need to reveal himself at all costs.

Existentialists believe that problems are born in the course of the daily life of each individual. Everyday life is not only a "knurled" existence, repeating stereotypical rituals, but also shocks, disappointments, passions. They exist in the everyday world. Death, shame, fear, love, the search for meaning, being the most important existential problems, are also problems of the existence of the individual. Among existentialists, the most common pessimistic view of everyday life.

So, J.P. Sartre put forward the idea of ​​absolute freedom and absolute loneliness of a person among other people. He believes that it is a person who is responsible for the fundamental project of his life. Any failure and failure is a consequence of a freely chosen path, and it is in vain to look for the guilty. Even if a man finds himself in a war, that war is his, since he could well have avoided it by suicide or desertion.

A. Camus endows everyday life with the following characteristics: absurdity, meaninglessness, disbelief in God and individual immortality, while placing enormous responsibility on the person himself for his life.

A more optimistic point of view was held by E. Fromm, who endowed human life with an unconditional meaning, A. Schweitzer and X. Ortega y Gasset, who wrote that life is cosmic altruism, it exists as a constant movement from the vital Self to the Other. These philosophers preached admiration for life and love for it, altruism as a life principle, emphasizing the brightest sides of human nature. E. Fromm also speaks of two main ways of human existence - possession and being. The principle of possession is a setting for the mastery of material objects, people, one's own Self, ideas and habits. Being is opposed to possession and means genuine involvement in the existing and the embodiment in reality of all one's abilities.

The implementation of the principles of being and possession is observed on the examples of everyday life: conversations, memory, power, faith, love, etc. Signs of possession are inertness, stereotyping, superficiality. E. Fromm refers to the signs of being activity, creativity, interest. For modern world a more possessive attitude. This is due to the existence of private property. Existence is not conceived outside of struggle and suffering, and a person never realizes himself in a perfect way.

The leading representative of hermeneutics, G. G. Gadamer, pays great attention to the life experience of a person. He believes that the natural desire of parents is the desire to pass on their experience to children in the hope of protecting them from their own mistakes. However, life experience is the experience that a person must acquire on his own. We constantly come up with new experiences by refuting old experiences, because they are, first of all, painful and unpleasant experiences that go against our expectations. Nevertheless, true experience prepares a person to realize his own limitations, that is, the limits of human existence. The conviction that everything can be redone, that there is a time for everything, and that everything repeats itself in one way or another, turns out to be just an appearance. Rather, the opposite is true: a living and acting person is constantly convinced by history from his own experience that nothing is repeated. All expectations and plans of finite beings are themselves finite and limited. Genuine experience is thus the experience of one's own historicity.

Historical and philosophical analysis of everyday life allows us to draw the following conclusions regarding the development of problems of everyday life. Firstly, the problem of everyday life is posed quite clearly, but a huge number of definitions does not give a holistic view of the essence of this phenomenon.

Second, most philosophers emphasize the negative aspects of everyday life. Thirdly, within the framework of modern science and in line with such disciplines as sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, etc., the studies of everyday life are primarily concerned with its applied aspects, while its essential content remains out of sight of most researchers.

It is the socio-philosophical approach that makes it possible to systematize the historical analysis of everyday life, to determine its essence, system-structural content and integrity. We note right away that all the basic concepts that reveal everyday life, its basic foundations, one way or another, in one form or another, are present in historical analysis in disparate versions, in various terms. We have only tried in the historical part to consider the essential, meaningful and integral being of everyday life. Without delving into the analysis of such a complex formation as the concept of life, we emphasize that the appeal to it as the initial one is dictated not only by philosophical directions such as pragmatism, philosophy of life, fundamental ontology, but also by the semantics of the words of everyday life themselves: for all days of life with its eternal and temporal features.

It is possible to single out the main areas of a person's life: his professional work, activities within the framework of everyday life and the sphere of recreation (unfortunately, often understood only as inactivity). Obviously, the essence of life is movement, activity. It is all the features of social and individual activity in a dialectical relationship that determine the essence of everyday life. But it is clear that the pace and nature of the activity, its effectiveness, success or failure are determined by inclinations, skills and, mainly, abilities (the everyday life of an artist, poet, scientist, musician, etc. varies significantly).

If activity is considered as a fundamental attribute of being from the point of view of self-movement of reality, then in each specific case we will deal with a relatively independent system functioning on the basis of self-regulation and self-government. But this presupposes, of course, not only the existence of methods of activity (capabilities), but also the necessity of sources of movement and activity. These sources are most often (and mainly) determined by contradictions between the subject and the object of activity. The subject can also act as an object of a particular activity. This contradiction boils down to the fact that the subject seeks to master the object or part of it that he needs. These contradictions are defined as needs: the need of an individual, a group of people or society as a whole. It is the needs in various altered, transformed forms (interests, motives, goals, etc.) that bring the subject into action. Self-organization and self-management of the system activity presupposes as necessary a sufficiently developed understanding, awareness, adequate knowledge (that is, the presence of consciousness and self-consciousness) of the activity itself, and abilities, and needs, and awareness of consciousness and self-consciousness itself. All this is transformed into adequate and definite ends, organizes the necessary means and enables the subject to foresee the corresponding results.

So, all this allows us to consider everyday life from these four positions (activity, need, consciousness, ability): the defining sphere of everyday life is professional activity; human activity in domestic conditions; recreation as a kind of sphere of activity in which these four elements are freely, spontaneously, intuitively outside of purely practical interests, effortlessly (based on gaming activity), movably combined.

We can draw some conclusion. It follows from the previous analysis that everyday life must be defined based on the concept of life, the essence of which (including everyday life) is hidden in activity, and the content of everyday life (for all days!) Is revealed in a detailed analysis of the specifics of the social and individual characteristics of the identified four elements. The integrity of everyday life is hidden in the harmonization, on the one hand, of all its spheres (professional activity, activities in everyday life and leisure), and on the other hand, within each of the spheres based on the originality of the four identified elements. And, finally, we note that all these four elements have been identified, singled out and are already present in the historical-social-philosophical analysis. The category of life is present among representatives of the philosophy of life (M. Montaigne, A. Schopenhauer, V. Dilthey, E. Husserl); the concept of "activity" is present in the currents of pragmatism, instrumentalism (by C. Pierce, W. James, D. Dewey); the concept of "need" dominates among K. Marx, Z. Freud, postmodernists, etc.; W. Dilthey, G. Simmel, K. Marx and others refer to the concept of “ability”, and, finally, we find consciousness as a synthesizing organ in K. Marx, E. Husserl, representatives of pragmatism and existentialism.

Thus, it is this approach that allows us to define the phenomenon of everyday life as a socio-philosophical category, to reveal the essence, content and integrity of this phenomenon.

Simmel, G. Selected Works. - M., 2006.

Sartre, J.P. Existentialism is humanism // Twilight of the Gods / ed. A. A. Yakovleva. - M., 1990.

Camus, A. A rebellious man / A. Camus // A rebellious man. Philosophy. Politics. Art. - M., 1990.