Lamentation (literary genre). B

Lamentation (literary genre)

Cry- one of the ancient literary genres, characterized by lyrical-dramatic improvisation on the themes of misfortune, death, etc. It can be written in both poetry and prose. The style of lamentation is used, in particular, in some texts of the Bible - one of the books of the Old Testament is entirely an example of the genre (“Lamentations of Jeremiah”), as well as in Homer’s poems.

Lamentation has become widespread in traditional Russian ritual and everyday folk poetry. Examples of lamentations in ancient Russian literature are the famous lamentation of Yaroslavna in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, the lamentation of the Moscow princess Evdokia over the body of Dmitry Donskoy. In “The Life of the Zyryan Enlightener Stefan of Perm”, written by Epiphanius the Wise, there are a number of texts that fall into this category by genre: “The Lament of the Perm People”, “The Lament of the Perm Church” and “The Lament and Praise of the Monk Copying”. Laments written by Russian authors of the 17th century are known, in particular the anonymous “Lament for the Captivity and Final Ruin of the Moscow State” () and “Lament and Consolation” regarding the death of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich, written by the poet Sylvester Medvedev.

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Lamentations (lamentation, lamentation, lamentation, howling, howling, screaming, golosba, golosba) is a genre of ritual folklore consisting of complaints and laments, which were considered traditionally obligatory elements of some family rituals, mainly associated with tragic circumstances.
Lamentations express grief over a specific event (the death of a loved one, war, natural disaster, etc.). The lamentations reflected the ritual itself, during which lamentations were performed and expressed the emotional state of its participants. The content of lamentations could include a request, a command, a reproach, an incantation, a thanksgiving, an apology, a lament. The role of lamentation, which helped to vent feelings of grief, was especially important.
In most cultures, lamentations were performed only by women (solo or alternately), although some peoples (Kurds, Serbs) had specific male laments. From time immemorial, special experts in chanting have stood out from among the people - voplenitsy (other names: mourners, lamenters, chanters, chanters, poets). Performing lamentations became their profession.
In the Russian folk tradition, lamentations form a vast area of ​​“weeping culture” (T. A. Bernshtam), genetically correlated with rites of passage.

Emergence

Object of lamentation

Types of lamentations

Wedding lamentations
Wedding lamentations are texts sung by the bride, her parents and relatives, covering a range of topics close to her (during betrothal, sewing a dowry, at gatherings, while unbraiding her braids, especially just before the wedding), describing her experiences and feelings.
Wedding lamentations are more diverse in theme (themes of separation, memories of girlhood, sadness about the future) and are strongly associated with song lyrics. They are distinguished from funeral ones by the greater convention and variability of stereotypical formulas and themes within the same text and ritual. This is due to the fact that they were not only a natural expression of tragic experiences, but also a way of expressing a certain ritual role. Focusing on the ritual side of the ritual, K.V. Chistov subdivided the first type of lament into conspiratorial lamentation, guest lamentation, bath lamentation, wedding lamentation itself, and lamentation of farewell to “beauty.”

Recruit, soldier's lamentations, i.e. lamentations for a husband, son, or brother being given up as a soldier. Russian recruitment lamentations, created by the terrible conditions first of Peter the Great, and later of the 25-year Nicholas military service, are a continuous groan, expressing the horror of the peasants at the recruitment, cruel treatment of the soldier, shackles - a frequent companion of the soldiery - bars, judges, people's assessors and everything apparatus of the tsarist regime. In this regard, recruit laments are expressions of sharp social protest.

Everyday extra-ritual lamentations, which could have been formed by women in difficult situations (for example, after a fire, during hard work).

Method of performing lamentations

Contrary to the opinion of some researchers, lamentations are not free improvisation, although they allow for a large share of individual creativity among the lamenters.
They are built from two or three parts (“conception” and “offensive verses”, according to the terminology of the lamenters themselves), are rich in general cliched formulas, use comparison and inversion as the predominant methods, and are always composed of verses. The lamentations are performed in a drawn-out, recitative monotonous melody with a long fermato at the end of each verse, and the end of the verse ends with a sob, natural or skillfully imitated.

An important feature of lamentations is improvisation. Lamentations are always performed differently, and in this case we are not talking about the usual variation of a stable text in traditional culture. Each lament is formed simultaneously during the ritual. Although the mourner actively uses “commonplaces” characteristic of the local tradition of lamentations, each cry she generates is unique. The ritual context of funeral laments determined the specific nature of their poetic language. Lamentations had to simultaneously express a high degree of emotional stress (inconsolable grief, intensity of mournful feelings), have the characteristic appearance of a spontaneous speech act, and satisfy cruel ritual regulations.

Lamentations (weeping, lamenting, crying) - an ancient genre of folklore genetically associated with funeral rites.
The object of the depiction of lamentations is the tragic in life, therefore the lyrical principle is strongly expressed in them. Emotional tension determined the features of the poetics: the abundance of exclamatory-interrogative constructions, exclamatory particles, synonymous repetitions, stringing of similar syntactic structures, unity of beginnings, expressive word formations, etc. The melody in lamentations is poorly expressed, but sobs, groans, bows, etc. played a big role. Lamentations were created on behalf of the person to whom the ceremony is dedicated (bride, recruit), or on behalf of his relatives. In form they were a monologue or a lyrical address.
In central and southern Russia, lamentations were lyrical in nature and were small in volume; they were performed in recitative. Northern lamentations were sung melodiously, drawlingly, and were distinguished by their lyric epic quality. They developed descriptiveness, a detailed story about what was happening. Even a minor detail could be developed.
For example, the bride asks rhetorical questions brick whitecookie: “Who was the blower of fire. Who was the giver of splinters,Who was the igniter?" She herself knows the answer: mother blew out the fire, brother gave the torch. A splinter appears in the screamer’s field of view, and a microplot develops:

How with my dear brother

There was this splinter

^ She was cut off in the swamp.

In three years there was changed,

It was split into pieces,

It was often torn apart.

The dog is sent home.

Smoky on three beds,

Dried in three cookies,

For this wedding!
Such detailing led to the complexity of the text and slowed down its artistic development over time. The structure of the lamentations was open and contained the possibility of increasing lines.

The method of performing lamentations was based on improvisation, since each time the lamentation was addressed to a specific person and was supposed to reveal specific features of his life in its content. Lamentations functioned as one-time texts, created anew with each performance. However, they actively used verbal formulas accumulated by tradition, individual lines or groups of lines. Traditional images of oral poetry, stable stereotypes passed from one work to another, reflected the mental mood of a person in moments of grief and sadness. Lamentation is an improvisation using stable, traditional forms and under the influence of content that is homogeneous in idea, once cast into these forms.

The composition of lamentations was formed during the ritual.
For example, at the beginning of the 20th century. In the Ustyuzhensky district of the Novgorod province, a daughter’s lamentation for her deceased father was recorded. “All this is arranged in the following picture order: having learned, of course, in advance about the death of her father, the daughter, who lived in different villages with the deceased, goes outside the village into the field to meet the sad news and addresses the announcer with the following words:
^ I meet, bitter orphan,

I greet the news with displeasure,

The news is sad, sad...
Then, together with the sad messenger or messenger, he goes to the village where the house of the deceased parent is located. Approaching the house, the daughter stops and cries in a chant:
^ I'm coming, bitter orphan,

I'm going to the house of grace,

Co. the breadwinner to the priest.

The young and clear moon does not shine.

Not warmed by the red sun.

The red sun does not meet,

My breadwinner, sir-father.

I am a sad guest,

Sad and gloomy.

She fits To house doors with the words:
Open up, solid door,

The guest is not happy,

Not cheerful, not happy!

I go with burning tears.
Entering the house, crossing herself at the icon and making a bow from the waist, the daughter turns to her mother:
^ Allow me, red sun,

Thank you my mother

Come closer to me

To my breadwinner-father.

Bow low,

Should I ask yes the sun is red,

Should I ask the breadwinner, father,

Where to go, breadwinner-father...

Addressing the relatives gathered around the deceased:

^ Just give the order, my dear,

Above the forest in the sky.

To all the stray, free birds...

Again turning to the mother:
^ My red sunshine...
Let's go find the faithful coachman

Go to the city, to the capital

Send sad news to your brother...

The mother replies that the news of her father’s death was sent to the eldest son in the capital city, and the daughter thanks her mother:
^ Thank you, red sun,

Thank you my mother!

Soon you were worried

Send sad news.

After a short silence, the daughter addresses everyone present. After some thought, the daughter begins to wail again: she complains about herself: she’s not smart, she’s not rich... She quickly comes to her senses and turns again to her family:
^ Don’t prophesy, my dear,

What did she blame, the orphan is bitter.<...>

That stones do not float on water.

How can the dead not walk on the earth!

Having finished her reckoning over the corpse, the daughter modestly steps aside and, if among those present there is one who still knows how to cry with her voice, then she comes out and begins to compete in her art with the daughter of the deceased who has just fulfilled her duty..." 1.
As we can see, the lamentations reflected the ritual itself and expressed the emotional state of its participants. The content of lamentations could include a request, a command, a reproach, a spell, thanksgiving, an apology, a lament. The role of lamentation, which helped to vent feelings of grief, was especially important. In the lament “The Lament of the Svyatozersk Peasant Woman for a Recruit” (see Reader), lamentations occur three times, and each time they receive an epic development.
The lamentation begins with the beginning (You goodbye, my darling motherfuckerbaby...), then comes the reproach (How they imprisoned you for the wrong reason and the wrong time...) further - lamentation (You come on, my favorite swashbuckling little head... - depicts the long journey of a recruit), request (You remember your favorite peasant farmer...), lamentation again (And how will the honorable annual Sunday feasts of the lord come... - his friends will go to the game, his mother will grieve, sitting under the window), then the spell (You God forbid, Lord...), third complaint (And how to eat, I feel sick... - the mother imagines future pictures of peasant labor without a son-assistant), please inform about yourself at least in writing (And you are my favorite daring little head...), apology (And you don’t remember, my dear, All my everyday rudeness), order (And remember, motherfucker. My kind words!), spell (And how I, the multi-victorious one, I, the bitter, grief-stricken one, will ask the King of Heaven...).
In the artistic world of lamentations, the system of images played an important role. In addition to the images of real participants in the ritual, personification images, symbolic images, poetic comparisons and metaphorical substitutions arose in the lamentations.
Personifications are the personification of illness, death, grief, similar to the mythological and poetic personification in the ritual itself (e.g. maiden beauty). Personification is an essential style-forming device. Thus, in Northern Russian wedding lamentations the stove and hut were personified:
^ Everything has changed in the house!

The window was sad for me.

All the glass became foggy:

No white light to be seen

Under the crooked little window!
Even the voice of the wailing bride was personified: he must run with a mouth and a gray fluff, with an ermine steel from the tonguecom... The bride asks him not to stay late at river crossings,By the streams behind the fords, By the fields behind the vegetable gardens, and head straight to the church to the cathedral and hit there to the big bell- so that the ringing goes through Russia.

The symbolic images had a general folklore character (white lepoor thing, red sun). Unlike wedding songs, lamentations used symbolic images to a lesser extent, but more deeply developed poetic comparisons related to the real participants in the ceremony. The comparisons reached extraordinary artistic expressiveness:
^ It was as if crows were flying in,

And there two matchmakers came together.

Lamentations tend to deploy a system of comparisons, intensifying the emotional impression they cause. This is how the death of a daughter is conveyed:

",G\
^ Once, like rain, they disappear into the damp earth,

It’s like snowballs are melting around the lights.

It seems like the sun is lost behind a cloud,

Let the child hide from us in the same way;

How bright the moon sets in the morning,

How often has a star disappeared from heaven?

My white swan has flown away

To another, unknown living creature!
Other psychological parallels also emerged. Sympathizing with the grief of the bride,
^ The apple trees in the garden have withered,

The cherries in the garden have faded.

The little birds choked,

Wondering about the nightingales!
An archaic feature is the system of metaphorical substitutions. There was once a ban on pronouncing a person’s name out loud and revealing his family connections, as a result of which his designations appeared through allegory. For example, the widow called the deceased owner of the house a desirable family woman, a legal holderdarling, okay dear. Over time, metaphorical substitutions became a poetic device.
The lamentations used epithets, hyperboles, words of endearment (with diminutive suffixes), and various poetic tautologies.
The lamentations were performed, as a rule, by women (solo or alternately). Wedding lamentations could be performed by the bride herself or together with a choir of her friends, and when she was brought to the wedding table - under-vocal From the people's environment, special experts in narration have long stood out - screamers(other names: mourners, lamenters, chanters, poets, under-voices). Performing lamentations became their profession.
One of the remarkable professional prisoners of the second half of the 19th century. - I. A. Fedosova, who from the age of thirteen was already known throughout Zaonezhie. In 1867, seminary teacher E.V. Barsov met her in Petrozavodsk. He recorded funeral, recruiting and wedding lamentations from her, which formed the basis of a three-volume edition. This publication brought Fedosova wide fame. Subsequently, the screamer performed her art in Petrozavodsk, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan - and everywhere she aroused admiration. In the essay “Voplenitsa” dedicated to her, M. Gorky wrote: “Fedosova is completely imbued with Russian moaning, for about seventy years she lived with it, singing out the grief of others in her improvisations and singing out the grief of her life in old Russian songs.<...>Russian song is Russian history, and the illiterate old woman Fedosova, having stored 30,000 poems in her memory, understands this much better than many very literate people."

^ LITERATURE ON THE TOPIC
Texts.

Lamentations of the Northern Territory, collected by E.V. Barsov: In 3 parts - M., 1872 (part 1: Funeral laments, tombstones and gravestones); 1882 (part 2: Laments of the conquered, recruits and soldiers); 1886 (Part 3: Wedding laments, bridal laments, guest laments, bath laments and pre-wedding laments).

Great Russian in his songs, rituals, customs, beliefs, fairy tales, legends, etc. Materials collected and put in order by P. V. Shein. - T. I. - St. Petersburg, 1898 (issue 1); 1900 (issue 2).

Lamentations / Intro. Art. and note. K. V. Chistova. - L., 1960.

Cherdyn wedding. Recorded and compiled by I. Zyryanov. - Perm, 1969.

Poetry of peasant holidays / Intro. art., comp., prepared. text and notes I. I. Zemtsovsky. - L., 1970.

Lyrics of a Russian wedding / Ed. prepared N. P. Kolpakova. - L., 1973.

Novikova A. M., Pushkina S. I. Wedding songs of the Tula region. - Tula, 1981.

Fedosova I. A. Favorites / Comp., intro. Art. and comment. K. V. Chistova; Prepare texts by B. E. Chistova and K. V. Chistov. - Petrozavodsk, 1981.

Russian folk poetry: Ritual poetry / Comp. and preparation text by K. Chistov and B. Chistova; Entry art., preface to sections and comments. K. Chistova. - L., 1984.

All year round: Russian agricultural calendar / Comp., intro. Art. and note. in the text by A.F. Nekrylova. - M., 1991.

Folk wisdom: Human life in Russian folklore. - Vol. I: Infancy. Childhood / Comp., prepared. texts, intro. Art. and comment. V. P. Anikina. - M., 1991.

Folk wisdom: Human life in Russian folklore. - Vol. II: Childhood. Adolescence. Tales about animals, magical, everyday, humorous, boring, fables. Riddles / Comp., prepared. texts, intro. Art. and comment. V. P. Anikina. - M., 1994.

Folk wisdom: Human life in Russian folklore. -
Vol. III: Youth and love. Girlhood / Comp., prepared. texts, intro.
Art. and comment. L. Astafieva and V. Bakhtina. - M., 1994. ";;

Ritual poetry. - Book 1. Calendar folklore / Comp., intro. Art., prepared. texts and comments. Yu. G. Kruglova. - M., 1997.

Rituals and ritual folklore / Intro. Art., comp., comment. T. M. Ananicheva, E. A. Samodelova. - M., 1997. - (Folklore treasures of the Moscow land. - T. 1).

Research.

Kotlyarevsky A. About the funeral customs of the pagan Slavs. - M., 1868.

Chicherov V.I. Winter period of the Russian folk agricultural calendar of the 16th-19th centuries. (Essays on the history of folk beliefs

niy). - M., 1957. [AS USSR. Proceedings of the Institute of Ethnography named after. N. N. Mik
Lukho-Maclay. - New series. - T. XL]. ,^,„

Propp V. Ya. Russian agricultural holidays: Experience of historical and ethnographic research. - L., 1963.

Anikin V. P. Calendar and wedding poetry: Textbook. allowance. -

Beletskaya N. N. Pagan symbolism of Slavic archaic rituals. - M., 1978.

Krugloe Yu. G. Russian wedding songs: Textbook. allowance. - M., 1978.

Russian folk wedding ceremony: Research and materials / Ed. K. V. Chistova and T. A. Bernshtam. - L., 1978.

Sokolova V.K. Spring-summer calendar rituals of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. XIX - early XX centuries - M., 1979.

Zhirnova G.V. Marriage and weddings of Russian townspeople in the past and present (based on materials from the cities of the central zone of the RSFSR). - M., 1980.

Vinogradova L.N. Winter calendar poetry of Western and Eastern Slavs: Genesis and typology of caroling. - M., 1982.

Kruglov Yu. G. Russian ritual songs: Textbook. allowance. - M., 1982.

Ethnography of the Eastern Slavs: Essays on traditional culture / Rep. ed. K. V. Chistov. - M., 1987.

Bernshtam T. A. Youth in the ritual life of the Russian community of the 19th - early 20th centuries: The gender and age aspect of traditional culture. - L., 1988.

Chistov K.V. Irina Andreevna Fedosova: Historical and cultural essay. - Petrozavodsk, 1988.

Poetry and ritual: Interuniversity. Sat. scientific works / Rep. ed. B. P. Kir-dan. - M., 1989.

Research in the field of Balto-Slavic culture: Funeral rite / Rep. ed. V. V. Ivanov, L. G. Nevskaya. - M., 1990.

Eremina V. I. Ritual and folklore. - L., 1991.

Samodelova E. A. Ryazan wedding: Study of local ritual folklore. - Ryazan, 1993. (Ryazan ethnographic bulletin).

Karpukhin I. E. Wedding of Russians of Bashkortostan in interethnic interactions. - Sterlitamak, 1997.

Fedorova V. P. Wedding in the system of calendar and family customs of the Old Believers of the Southern Trans-Urals. - Kurgan, 1997.

Cries and lamentations were performed by people who were called mourners. These were predominantly women, although among the Kurds and Serbs the cries were performed exclusively by men. They were specifically invited to mourn a deceased relative or express grief over the outbreak of a war or natural disaster (drought, flood, etc.). Crying and lamentation have existed since ancient times: they are mentioned in the Bible and took place in Ancient Greece.

How did the ritual of crying originate?

Mourning is a whole ritual. The mourning tradition was especially developed in the North of Rus'. There are funeral lamentations, recruitment lamentations, and wedding lamentations. Funeral and memorial laments and recruitment laments are close to each other in content. They mourn a relative who has died or is leaving for military service. At the same time, leaving for military service was analogous to the death of a person during his lifetime, because they were taken into service for almost their entire life. Funeral lamentations expressed the grief of relatives who had lost a deceased person.

In wedding lamentations, the bride mourns her maiden will, which she is deprived of when she gets married. These are conditional laments. It was believed that the bride must cry before the wedding: she was burying her former unmarried life. The ceremony required the tears of the bride.

There are also everyday laments and lamentations, in which one laments, for example, a crop failure, the consequences of a fire, flood, etc.

Examples of crying in literature

An example of crying is Yaroslavna’s crying on the walls of Putivl, described in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” where the princess mourns the dead soldiers who did not return from a military campaign. Lamentations are a pagan tradition in which ideas about death do not correspond to similar ideas in Christianity. After death, the soul of a person turns into a “little bird”, the person rests in a coffin, soars in the clouds, etc. Dying is conveyed in the images of a freezing tree or a sunset. That is why the church has been struggling with mourning for a long time, trying to eradicate among the people the habit of greatly mourning the dead. However, it was not possible to eradicate the crying at all.

Plachi first began to study V.A. Dashkov. A well-known collection of laments is the collection of Rybnikov “Songs” (part III), Metlinsky “South Russian Songs”, 1854. However, the collection of E.V. is recognized as the most complete collection of lamentations. Barsova “Lamentations of the Northern Region”, 1872; “Funeral, funerary and gravestone laments”, 1882 and many others. E.V. Barsov recorded cries and lamentations from the dictation of one of the most skilled “prisoners” of the Russian North, Irina Fedosova.

If we say that crying is not only one of the oldest genres, but also one of the most difficult to define, this would not be an exaggeration. Oral lament (or lament in works of folklore) left its mark not only in lamentations of secular literature, but also in semi-church princely lives, and we can find echoes even in modern lyrics.

Genre: crying

Appearance time: The starting point is considered to be the 2nd millennium BC. -

Spreading: folklore and world literature

Peculiarities: funeral lament still exists today

Origins: where and when?

Dear reader, let's be honest with you. There is simply no exact answer to the question of when this genre arose. The fact is that crying is closely related to the reaction of the human psyche to a certain situation, that is, it is an uncontrolled psychomotor reaction. As a folklore (oral) phenomenon, it arises already at an early stage of human development as a result of its socialization and ritualization.

Different peoples gradually develop ideas about whether crying is appropriate in a given situation. Usually, crying (or lamentation) accompanies transitional (funeral, wedding) and memorial rites. For example, transitional rites in the Northern Russian tradition are typically characterized by the inclusion of verbal texts of a rhythmic nature. All of them are based on the fact of overcoming the boundaries of the living world and the “other” world. So the mourner asks the dead to return at least for a minute, to “look” at his family and relatives one last time before the long journey between the world of the dead and the living.

Stand up, rise up, be born and dear sconce<тенька>!

Oh, open up yours and it’s very clear,

Ay, swing your little white hands,

And stand on your frisky and white little legs...

Crying as an element is included in the rite of seeing off Maslenitsa, and many peoples in the world use it as part of a greeting (“greeting with tears”).

The crying is filled with exclamations and spells asking for protection from otherworldly forces.

Lamentation in the Russian folklore tradition: features

The first thing that researchers usually pay attention to when studying the poetics of chanting, especially those accompanying funeral and wedding rites, is the metaphorization of speech, which affects not only such concepts as life-death, joy-sorrow, but also the realities of everyday life. A wailing woman does not call herself by name, does not indicate her social status, she calls herself a “miserable woman,” a “cuckoo girl,” a “wretched little head,” and her husband, the owner of the house, a “semyushka,” a “born heart,” and her children “pearls.” ", "bitter orphans." The girl-bride will be called, as a rule, “white swan”; neighbors and relatives - “white swans”. The last path is often called the “paved path”, and the remembrance is called “birthday”.

Ramosa's tomb. Mourners.

Another noticeable feature of folklore crying is the abundance of epithets. Almost every concept, everyday reality, and person is given a definition that defines the state of the mourner or contains an expressive assessment. Many of the epithets are well known to you and me from Russian folk tales. Here is “daring good fellow”, and “overseas wine”, and “white swan”:

My dear friends,

Don't unravel my russian scarf,

Don’t you feel sorry for unraveling my russian scarf...

It seems that the meaning seems to elude the mourner when using such combinations as “steep mountain and high”, “along the way and along the road.” Folklorists who have recorded funeral rites note the meditative quality of the improvisational text, which is clearly felt by the listener.

Lamentation in world literatures

The starting point for the existence of lamentation in literature (that is, in written sources) is considered to be the emergence of the Sumerian documents “Lamentation for Uruinimgin” and “Lamentation for Ur” (around 2000 BC), lamentation about the destruction of the city of Lagash (performed during worship ). The creation of similar laments was very common in Sumer, which influenced other cultures in subsequent eras that emerged in the same and adjacent territories:

Bitter water flowed in the rivers of Sumer,

the fields were overgrown with weeds, the grass withered in the pastures.

... all the gods left Uruk,

they stayed away from him

they took refuge in the mountains,

they fled to the distant plains.

Such lamentation is very similar to the Hebrew genre of “kinah” (plural - “kinot”), which is closely associated with liturgical literature. The kinots were recorded, and their reading was entrusted to the mourners and mourners. A collection of kinots on the destruction of the Temple and the collapse of the Jewish state is the Lamentation of Jeremiah, which has become one of the models for religious church laments in Christian literature.

The oldest surviving example of a European lament is the “Lament for the Death of Charlemagne” (10th century). In the 12th-13th centuries in Europe, lamentation took its place among other musical and poetic genres of liturgical drama; “The Lamentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary” was also widespread throughout Western Europe.

Funeral procession of John II.

In the late Middle Ages, texts of lamentations also appeared in modern European languages. The fact is that a generally obligatory liturgical canon for the liturgical service did not exist until the 16th century, so the local church could make inserts at its own discretion. Around these hymns (inserts) were grouped texts written on the model of hymns (but not performed in churches) - satirical texts, reflections, teachings, but laments were especially popular. In them, the lyrical feeling found a freer outlet, maneuvering between repeating images and motifs.

Lamentation in ancient Russian literature

The folklore genre by origin is widely represented in literature - written monuments. If at first the ancient Russian chroniclers mentioned the fact of lamentation that took place for the murdered prince, then later they tried to convey a “summary” - key points and even introduced elements of lamentation into the text of military tales of the 11th-16th centuries. For example, this is how Yaropolk Izyaslavich’s cry over his murdered father is depicted in the Ipatiev Chronicle: “Father, my father, that you, the devil of sadness, lived in the world for seven, received many misfortunes from people and from his brothers. Behold, you did not perish because of your brother, but lay down your head for your brother.” Such lamentations include real historical events with an assessment in the light of which the figure of the lamented is given. This gives the chronicle laments a touch of journalisticism, however, in general, such laments are well conveyed by oral elements representing stereotypical oral formulas (including metaphors, repeated epithets).

Since the 15th century, in Russian literature there has been an increase in the psychological principle and interest in human experiences, so crying is widely developed in secular stories, semi-secular princely lives, and is now given more space. The Life of Stephen of Perm, written by Epiphanius the Wise, ends with a rhetorical epilogue in the form of a lament, which is called: “The Lament of the Perm People”, “The Lament of the Perm Church” and “The Lament and Praise of the Monk Copied” (the lament of the author of the life).

Since the 15th century, in Russian literature there has been an increase in the psychological principle and interest in human experiences, so crying is widely developed in secular stories, semi-secular princely lives, and is now given more space.

L. Bakst. Vase, 1906.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the anonymous “Lament for the Captivity and Final Ruin of the Moscow State” appeared, and at the end of the same century, the poet Sylvester Medvedev wrote “Lament and Consolation” on the occasion of the death of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich.

Elements of crying in poetic creativity

Along with the existence of crying in the rituals of the Old Believers in the 19th-20th (and even in the 21st) centuries, we can find its elements in the poetry of authors well known to us (who knows, maybe this element gives the work such depth). Excellent examples of lamentations and cries were created by N. Nekrasov, N. Klyuev, A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva.

The Silver Age poet Nikolai Klyuev is known, in particular, for his stylization - the poem “Lament for Sergei Yesenin,” written immediately after the latter’s death:

I sculpted your darling like a killer whale’s nest,

I strengthened thoughts with saliva, words with tears,

Yes, the dawn candle, my forest lamp, went out,

You left me along robber paths!

During the First World War, Anna Akhmatova created a cycle of poems (“July 1914”, “Consolation”, “Prayer”), taking the form of laments and prayers. No wonder Marina Tsvetaeva calls Anna Akhmatova “The Muse of Lamentation.” Akhmatova often uses folkloric elements of funeral lament in her later poems (“Behind were the Narva gates...”, 1944):

This is what books will be written about you:

“Your life is for your friends,”

Unpretentious boys -

Vanka, Vaska, Alyoshka, Grishka, -

Grandchildren, brothers, sons!

Elements of male and female crying underlie the poem "Requiem".

The long life of the elements of crying in poetic creativity is ensured by the psychophysiological origin of this phenomenon, supported by the traditions of book crying, which came into many literary traditions through the books of the Holy Scriptures. This genre will be reflected even in bard poetry of the 1960s and 70s. It is worth remembering “On the Rivers of Babylon...”, which leads into the cycle “Russian Laments” by A. Galich:

Every year is a hard time,

Whatever the liar, it’s the Messiah!

The millennium is crying

In Russia - Russia!

Centuries follow centuries, new themes come to the attention of the authors, but the elements of lament surprisingly turn out to be a suitable tool for creating a lyrical experience.■

Natalya Drovaleva