Folklore how special kind art is a qualitatively unique component fiction. It integrates the culture of a society of a certain ethnicity on a special level historical development society.
Folklore is ambiguous: it also reveals limitless folk wisdom, and popular conservatism, inertia. In any case, folklore embodies the highest spiritual powers of the people and reflects elements of national artistic consciousness.
Geda highlights the magical role of folklore, especially lullabies, games and calculations, in children's environment. On empirical level poetry, even a child can notice the use of folklore chosen by the poet - quote. This method is not chosen by chance: to realize the magic of the text function, the text itself must be presented as accurately as possible without any changes, indicating maximum authenticity. The "folklore quotation" is always raised as a contradiction with the text surrounding it 9. Geda strives to make it even more obvious to her - she repeats it several times.
The term “folklore” itself (from English word folklore - folk wisdom) is a common name for folk art in international scientific terminology. The term was first coined in 1846 by the English archaeologist W. J. Thomson. As official scientific concept first adopted by the English Folklore Society, founded in 1878. In the years 1800-1990, the term came into scientific use in many countries of the world.
An example would be a poem at the request of a girl. The text of the author's poem is like a bad guy - so by imitating the rhetorical adult poetry, the child can be crowned. It is difficult to determine the semantics of the sun here, this is empirical heavenly body and an object attributed to spiritual reality, associated with life, light, eternity. Viru threw away the porridge. The repeated quotation in this verse sounds like a sacred phrase - the girl, you say, heals the sun. This way of processing a quotation allows for the tone, the sound of the sound, and most importantly, the movements performed by the singing of the game from which the quotation is being made to be spoken.
Folklore (English folklore - “folk wisdom”) - folk art, most often it is oral; artistic collective creative activity people, reflecting their life, views, ideals; created by the people and existing in the masses poetry (legends, songs, ditties, anecdotes, fairy tales, epics), folk music (songs, instrumental tunes and plays), theater (dramas, satirical plays, puppet theater), dance, architecture, fine and decorative arts.
The child's palm turns the wheels, which connect into a spiral. But the wheel was a sign of the sun, and the spiral ancient worldview Lithuanians reflected the processes of cyclicality, life, death and rebirth. Thus, permeating not only the text, but also the non-whites from the mentioned fragment of folklore, a hidden act of cosmic magic can be seen at the potential level of the poem. Gedy more or less noticeably updated the archives using tools for linguistic modeling of the world. Small child may be the subject of a game.
Folklore is creativity for which no material is required and where the means of embodiment artistic design is the man himself. Folklore has a clearly expressed didactic orientation. Much of it was created specifically for children and was dictated by the great national concern for young people - their future. “Folklore” serves the child from his very birth.
Geda is presented as the words of a child playing a word, which paradoxically coincides with some patterns of folklore thinking. However, such etymologization is no different from the etymologization of place names in dictionaries. Double - childish and mythical - motivation language games can be adapted to the poems about White Nothing, in which Nothing defiles the Pentagonal Hexagon. The dragon we can imagine still doesn't have the traditional multi-headed bastard look; Apparently we are faced with a very archaic form of chthonic perfection.
Folk poetry reveals the most essential connections and patterns of life, leaving aside the individual and special. Folklore gives them the most important and simple concepts about life and people. It reflects what is generally interesting and vital, what affects everyone: human work, his relationship with nature, life in a team.
The importance of folklore as an important part in education and development in modern world is generally known and generally accepted. Folklore always responds sensitively to people's needs, being a reflection of the collective mind and accumulated life experience.
Main features and properties of folklore:
1. Bifunctionality. Each folklore work is an organic part of human life and is determined by practical purpose. It is focused on a specific moment folk life. For example, Lullaby- it is sung to calm and put the child to sleep. When the child falls asleep, the song stops - it is no longer necessary. This is how the aesthetic, spiritual and practical function lullaby song. Everything is interconnected in a work; beauty cannot be separated from benefit, benefit from beauty.
2. Polyelement. Folklore is multi-elemental, since its internal diversity and numerous relationships of an artistic, cultural-historical and socio-cultural nature are obvious.
Not every folklore work includes all artistic and figurative elements. There are also genres in which they minimal amount. The performance of a folklore work is the integrity of the creative act. Among the many artistic and figurative elements of folklore, the main ones are verbal, musical, dance and facial expressions. Polyelementity manifests itself during an event, for example, “Burn, burn clearly so that it doesn’t go out!” or when studying a round dance - the game “Boyars”, where movements take place row by row. In this game all the main artistic and figurative elements interact. Verbal and musical are manifested in musical - poetic genre songs performed simultaneously with a choreographic movement (dance element). This reveals the polyelement nature of folklore, its original synthesis, called syncretism. Syncretism characterizes the relationship, integrity of the internal components and properties of folklore.
3.Collectivity. Absence of author. Collectivity is manifested both in the process of creating a work and in the nature of the content, which always objectively reflects the psychology of many people. Asking who composed a folk song is like asking who composed the language we speak. Collectivity is determined in the performance of folklore works. Some components of their forms, for example, the chorus, require the mandatory inclusion of all participants in the action in the performance.
4. Illiteration. The orality of the transmission of folklore material is manifested in the unwritten forms of transmission of folklore information. Artistic images and skills are transferred from the performer, the artist, to the listener and viewer, from the master to the student. Folklore is oral creativity. It lives only in the memory of people and is transmitted in live performance “from mouth to mouth.” Artistic images and skills are transferred from the performer, the artist, to the listener and viewer, from the master to the student.
5.Traditionality. The variety of creative manifestations in folklore only outwardly seems spontaneous. Over the course of a long time, objective ideals of creativity were formed. These ideals became those practical and aesthetic standards, deviations from which would be inappropriate.
6.Variability. Variation network is one of the stimuli of constant movement, the “breathing” of a folklore work, and each folklore work is always like a version of itself. The folklore text turns out to be unfinished, open to each subsequent performer. For example, in the round dance game “Boyars”, children move “row by row”, and the step may be different. In some places this is a common step with an emphasis on last syllable lines, in others there is a step with a stamp on the last two syllables, in others it is a variable step. It is important to convey the idea that in a folklore work creation - performance and performance - creation coexist. Variability can be thought of as changeability works of art, their uniqueness during performance or other form of reproduction. Each author or performer complemented traditional images or works with his own reading or vision.
7. Improvisation is a feature of folklore creativity. Each new performance of the work is enriched with new elements (textual, methodological, rhythmic, dynamic, harmonic). Which the performer brings. Any performer constantly contributes to famous work your own material, which contributes to the constant development and change of the work, during which the standard crystallizes artistic image. Thus, the folklore performance becomes the result of many years of collective creativity.
IN modern literature A broad interpretation of folklore as a set of folk traditions, customs, views, beliefs, and arts is widespread.
In particular, the famous folklorist V.E. Gusev in his book “Aesthetics of Folklore” examines this concept as an artistic reflection of reality, carried out in verbal - musical, choreographic and dramatic forms collective folk art, expressing the worldview of the working masses and inextricably linked with life and everyday life. Folklore is a complex, synthetic art. His works often combine elements various types arts - verbal, musical, theatrical. It is studied by various sciences - history, psychology, sociology, ethnography. It is closely connected with folk life and rituals. It is no coincidence that the first Russian scientists approached folklore broadly, recording not only works of verbal art, but also recording various ethnographic details and the realities of peasant life.
To the main aspects of the content folk culture can be attributed: the worldview of the people, people's experience, housing, costume, labor activity, leisure, crafts, family relationships, folk holidays and rituals, knowledge and skills, artistic creativity. It should be noted that like any other social phenomenon, folk culture has specific features, among which we should highlight: an inextricable connection with nature, with the habitat; openness, the educational nature of Russian folk culture, the ability to contact the culture of other peoples, dialogicality, originality, integrity, situationality, the presence of a targeted emotional charge, preservation of elements of pagan and Orthodox culture.
Traditions and folklore are a wealth developed by generations and transmitted in an emotional and figurative form historical experience, cultural heritage. In cultural and creative conscious activity the broad masses merge in a single direction folk traditions, folklore and artistic modernity.
The main functions of folklore include religious - mythological, ceremonial, ritual, artistic - aesthetic, pedagogical, communicative - informational, social - psychological.
Folklore is very diverse. There is traditional, modern, peasant and urban folklore.
Traditional folklore is those forms and mechanisms artistic culture, which are preserved, recorded and passed on from generation to generation. They capture the universal aesthetic values, which retain their significance outside of specific historical social changes.
Traditional folklore is divided into two groups – ritual and non-ritual.
Ritual folklore includes:
· calendar folklore (carols, Maslenitsa songs, freckles);
· family folklore (wedding, maternity, funeral rites, lullabies, etc.),
· occasional folklore (spells, chants, spells).
Non-ritual folklore is divided into four groups:
· folklore speech situations(proverbs, sayings, riddles, teasers, nicknames, curses);
Poetry (ditties, songs);
· folklore drama (Petrushka Theater, nativity scene drama);
· prose.
Folklore poetry includes: epic, historical song, spiritual verse, lyrical song, ballad, cruel romance, ditty, children's poetic songs (poetic parodies), sadistic rhymes. Folklore prose is again divided into two groups: fairy-tale and non-fairytale. Fairy-tale prose includes: fairy tale (which, in turn, happens four types: fairy tale, fairy tale about animals, everyday fairy tale, cumulative fairy tale) and anecdote. Non-fairy tale prose includes: tradition, legend, tale, mythological story, story about a dream. The folklore of speech situations includes: proverbs, sayings, well wishes, curses, nicknames, teasers, dialogue graffiti, riddles, tongue twisters and some others. There are also written forms folklore, such as chain letters, graffiti, albums (eg songbooks).
Ritual folklore is folklore genres performed as part of various rituals. Most successfully, in my opinion, the definition of the ritual was given by D.M. Ugrinovich: “Rite is a certain way of transmitting certain ideas, norms of behavior, values and feelings to new generations. The ritual is distinguished from other methods of such transmission by its symbolic nature. This is its specificity. Ritual actions always act as symbols that embody certain social ideas, perceptions, images and evoke corresponding feelings.” Works of calendar folklore are dedicated to folk annual holidays which had an agricultural character.
Calendar rituals were accompanied by special songs: carols, Maslenitsa songs, vesnyankas, Semitic songs, etc.
Vesnyanka (spring calls) are ritual songs of an incantatory nature that accompany the Slavic ritual of calling out spring.
Carols are New Year's songs. They were performed during Christmas time (from December 24 to January 6), when caroling was going on. Caroling - walking around the courtyards singing carols. For these songs, carolers were rewarded with gifts - a festive treat. The main meaning of the carol is glorification. Carolers give perfect description the house of the magnified one. It turns out that before us is not an ordinary peasant hut, but a tower, around which “stands an iron tyn”, “on each stamen there is a crown”, and on each crown “a golden crown”. The people living in it are a match for this tower. Pictures of wealth are not reality, but a wish: carols perform, to some extent, the functions of a magic spell.
Maslenitsa is a folk holiday cycle that has been preserved by the Slavs since pagan times. The ritual is associated with seeing off winter and welcoming spring, lasting a whole week. The celebration was carried out according to a strict schedule, which was reflected in the name of the days of Maslenitsa week: Monday - “meeting”, Tuesday - “flirt”, Wednesday - “gourmet”, Thursday - “revelry”, Friday - “mother-in-law’s evening”, Saturday - “mother-in-law’s gatherings” ", resurrection - "seeing off", the end of Maslenitsa fun.
Few Maslenitsa songs have arrived. According to theme and purpose, they are divided into two groups: one is associated with the rite of meeting, the other with the rite of seeing off (“funeral”) Maslenitsa. The songs of the first group are distinguished by a major, cheerful character. This is, first of all, a majestic song in honor of Maslenitsa. The songs accompanying the farewell to Maslenitsa are in a minor key. The “funeral” of Maslenitsa meant farewell to winter and a spell, welcoming the coming spring.
Family and household rituals are predetermined by the cycle human life. They are divided into maternity, wedding, recruiting and funeral.
Maternity rites sought to protect the newborn from hostile mystical forces, and also assumed the well-being of the baby in life. A ritual bath of the newborn was performed, and health was charmed with various sentences.
Wedding ceremony. It is a kind of folk performance, where all the roles are written and there are even directors - a matchmaker or a matchmaker. The particular scale and significance of this ritual should show the significance of the event, play out the meaning of the ongoing change in a person’s life.
The ritual cultivates the behavior of the bride in the future married life and educates all participants in the ceremony. It shows patriarchal character family life, her way of life.
Funeral rites. During the funeral, various rituals were performed, which were accompanied by special funeral lamentations. Funeral lamentations truthfully reflected the life, everyday consciousness of the peasant, love for the deceased and fear of the future, the tragic situation of the family in harsh conditions.
Occasional folklore (from the Latin occasionalis - random) - does not correspond to generally accepted use, and is of an individual nature.
A type of occasional folklore are conspiracies.
CONSPIRACIES - a folk-poetic incantatory verbal formula to which magical power is attributed.
CALLS - an appeal to the sun and other natural phenomena, as well as to animals and especially often to birds, which were considered the harbingers of spring. Moreover, the forces of nature were revered as living: they make requests for spring, wish for its speedy arrival, and complain about winter.
COUNTERS – view children's creativity, small poetic texts with a clear rhyme-rhythm structure in a humorous form.
The genres of non-ritual folklore developed under the influence of syncretism.
It includes folklore of speech situations: proverbs, fables, signs and sayings. They contain a person’s judgments about the way of life, about work, about higher natural forces, statements about human affairs. This is a vast area of moral assessments and judgments, how to live, how to raise children, how to honor ancestors, thoughts about the need to follow precepts and examples, these are everyday rules of behavior. In a word, their functionality covers almost all worldview areas.
RIDDLE - works with hidden meaning. They contain rich invention, wit, poetry, figurative structure colloquial speech. The people themselves aptly defined the riddle: “Without a face in a mask.” The object that is hidden, the “face,” is hidden under a “mask” - an allegory or allusion, a roundabout speech, a circumlocution. Whatever riddles you can come up with to test your attention, ingenuity, and intelligence. Some consist of simple question, others are similar to puzzles. Riddles are easily solved by those who have a good idea of the objects and phenomena they are talking about. we're talking about, and also knows how to solve words hidden meaning. If a child looks at the world with attentive, watchful eyes, noticing its beauty and wealth, then every tricky question and any allegory in the riddle will be solved.
PROVERB - as a genre, unlike a riddle, is not an allegory. In it, a specific action or deed is given an expanded meaning. In their form, folk riddles are close to proverbs: the same measured, coherent speech, the same frequent use of rhyme and consonance of words. But a proverb and a riddle differ in that a riddle needs to be guessed, and a proverb is a teaching.
Unlike a proverb, a PROVERB is not a complete judgment. This is a figurative expression used in an expanded sense.
Sayings, like proverbs, remain living folklore genres: they are constantly found in our everyday speech. The proverbs contain a capacious humorous definition of the inhabitants of a locality, city, living nearby or somewhere far away.
Folklore poetry is an epic, a historical song, a spiritual verse, a lyrical song, a ballad, a cruel romance, a ditty, and children's poetic songs.
EPIC is a folk epic song, a genre characteristic of the Russian tradition. Such epics are known as “Sadko”, “Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber”, “Volga and Mikula Selyaninovich” and others. The term “epic” was introduced into scientific use in the 40s of the 19th century. folklorist I.P. Sakharov. The basis of the plot of the epic is some heroic event, or a remarkable episode of Russian history (hence popular name epics - “old man”, “old woman”, implying that the action in question took place in the past).
FOLK SONGS are very diverse in composition. In addition to songs that are part of the calendar, wedding and funeral rites. These are round dances. Game and dance songs. Large group songs - lyrical non-ritual songs (love, family, Cossack, soldier, coachman, bandit and others).
A special genre of song creativity is historical songs. Such songs tell about famous events in Russian history. The heroes of historical songs are real personalities.
Round dance songs, like ritual songs, had a magical meaning. Round dance and game songs depicted scenes from wedding ceremony and family life.
LYRICAL SONGS are folk songs, expressing the personal feelings and moods of the singers. Lyrical songs are unique both in content and in artistic form. Their originality is determined by their genre nature and specific conditions of origin and development. Here we are dealing with a lyrical kind of poetry, different from epic in the principles of reflecting reality. ON THE. Dobrolyubov wrote that folk lyrical songs “express inner feeling, excited by phenomena ordinary life", and N.A. Radishchev saw in them a reflection of the people's soul, spiritual sorrow.
Lyrical songs are a vivid example of the artistic creativity of the people. They introduced a special artistic language and samples high poetry, reflected spiritual beauty, ideals and aspirations of the people, moral foundations of peasant life.
CHASTUSHKA is one of the youngest folklore genres. These are small poetic texts of rhymed verses. The first ditties were excerpts from songs big size. Chatushka is a comic genre. It contains a sharp thought, an apt observation. The topics are very diverse. The ditties often ridiculed what seemed wild, absurd, and disgusting.
CHILDREN'S FOLKLORE is usually called both works that are performed by adults for children, and those composed by the children themselves. Children's folklore includes lullabies, pesters, nursery rhymes, tongue twisters and chants, teasers, counting rhymes, nonsense, etc. Modern children's folklore enriched with new genres. These are horror stories, mischievous poems and songs (funny adaptations famous songs and poems), jokes.
Exist different connections folklore and literature. First of all, literature traces its origins to folklore. The main genres of dramaturgy that have developed in Ancient Greece, - tragedies and comedies - go back to religious rituals. Medieval romances of chivalry, telling of travels through imaginary lands, fights with monsters and the love of brave warriors, are based on the motifs of fairy tales. Literary songs originate from folk lyrical songs. lyrical works. The genre of small action-packed narratives - short stories - goes back to folk tales.
Very often writers deliberately turned to folklore traditions. Interest in oral folk art and passion for folklore awoke in the pre-romantic and romantic eras.
The tales of A.S. Pushkin go back to the plots of Russian fairy tales. Imitation of Russian folk historical songs - “Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich...” by M.Yu. Lermontov. Style features folk songs N.A. Nekrasov recreated in his poems about the difficult lot of peasants.
Folklore not only influences literature, but also experiences the opposite effect. Many original poems became folk songs. Most famous example- poem by I.Z. Surikov “Steppe and steppe all around..”
Folklore drama. These include: Parsley Theater, religious drama, nativity scene drama.
VERTEP DRAMA got its name from the nativity scene - a portable puppet theater in the shape of a two-story wooden box, whose architecture resembles a stage for performing medieval mysteries. In turn, the name, which came from the plot of the main play, in which the action developed in a cave - nativity scene. This type of theater was widespread in Western Europe, and he came to Russia with traveling puppeteers from Ukraine and Belarus. The repertoire consisted of plays with religious themes and satirical scenes - interludes that were improvisational in nature. The most popular play is “King Herod”.
PETRUSHKA THEATER – glove puppet theater. The main character of the play is the cheerful Petrushka with a large nose, a protruding chin, a cap on his head, with the participation of which a number of scenes are played out with various characters. The number of characters reached fifty, these are characters such as a soldier, a gentleman, a gypsy, a bride, a doctor and others. Such performances used techniques of folk comic speech, lively dialogues with play on words and contrasts, with elements of self-praise, using action and gestures.
The Petrushki Theater was created not only under the influence of Russian, Slavic, and Western European puppet traditions. It was a type of folk theater culture, part of the extremely developed entertainment folklore in Russia. Therefore, it has a lot in common with folk drama, with the performances of farce barkers, with the verdicts of the groomsmen at the wedding, with amusing popular prints, with the jokes of the raeshniks, etc.
The special atmosphere of the city's festive square explains, for example, Petrushka's familiarity, his unbridled gaiety and indiscriminateness in the object of ridicule and shame. After all, Petrushka beats not only class enemies, but everyone in a row - from his own fiancée to the policeman, often beats him for nothing (a blackamoor, an old beggar woman, a German clown, etc.), in the end he gets hit too: the dog mercilessly tugs at his nose. The puppeteer, like other participants in the fair, square fun, is attracted by the very opportunity to ridicule, parody, beat, and the more, louder, more unexpected, sharper, the better. Elements social protest, satires were very successfully and naturally superimposed on this ancient basis of laughter.
Like all folklore entertainments, “Petrushka” is filled with obscenities and curses. The original meaning of these elements has been studied quite fully, and how deeply they penetrated into the folk culture of laughter and what place swearing, verbal obscenity and demeaning, cynical gestures occupied in it, is fully shown by M.M. Bakhtin.
Performances were shown several times a day in different conditions (at fairs, in front of booths, on city streets, in the suburbs). "Walking" Parsley was the most common use of the doll.
For the mobile folk theater, a light screen, dolls, miniature backstage and a curtain were specially made. Petrushka ran around the stage, his gestures and movements creating the appearance of a living person.
The comic effect of the episodes was achieved using techniques characteristic of folk culture of laughter: fights, beatings, obscenities, the imaginary deafness of a partner, funny movements and gestures, mimicking, funny funerals, etc.
There are conflicting opinions about the reasons for the extraordinary popularity of the theater: topicality, satirical and social orientation, comic character, simple play that is understandable to all segments of the population, the charm of the main character, acting improvisation, freedom of choice of material, the sharp tongue of the puppet.
Parsley is a folk holiday joy.
Parsley is a manifestation of popular optimism, a mockery of the poor at the powerful and rich.
Folklore prose. It is divided into two groups: fairy tale (fairy tale, anecdote) and non-fairy tale (legend, tradition, tale).
TALE - the most famous genre folklore This is a type of folklore prose, distinctive feature which is fiction. Plots, events and characters in fairy tales are fictitious. Modern reader folklore works reveals fiction in other genres of oral folk art. Folk storytellers and listeners believed in the truth of tales (the name comes from the word “byl” - “truth”); the word “epic” was invented by folklorists; Popular epics were called “old times.” Russian peasants who told and listened to epics, believing in their truth, believed that the events depicted in them took place a long time ago - in the time of mighty heroes and fire-breathing snakes. They did not believe fairy tales, knowing that they told about something that did not happen, does not happen and cannot be.
It is customary to distinguish four types of fairy tales: magical, everyday (otherwise known as novelistic), cumulative (otherwise known as “chain-like”) and fairy tales about animals.
MAGIC TALES differ from other fairy tales in their complex, detailed plot, which consists of a number of unchanging motifs that necessarily follow each other in in a certain order. These are fantastic creatures (for example, Koschey the Immortal or Baba Yaga), and animated, human-like, a character denoting winter (Morozko), and wonderful objects (self-assembled tablecloth, walking boots, flying carpet, etc.).
IN fairy tales the memory of ideas and rituals that existed in deep, deep antiquity has been preserved. They reflect ancient relationships between people in a family or clan.
EVERYDAY TALES tell about people, about their family life, about the relationship between the owner and the farmhand, the gentleman and the peasant, the peasant and the priest, the soldier and the priest. A commoner - a farm laborer, a peasant, a soldier returning from service - is always more savvy than a priest or landowner, from whom, thanks to cunning, he takes money, things, and sometimes his wife. Usually at the center of the plots of everyday fairy tales is a certain unexpected event, an unexpected turning point that occurs thanks to the hero’s cunning.
Everyday tales often satirical. They ridicule the greed and stupidity of those in power. They do not talk about wonderful things and travels to the distant kingdom, but talk about things from peasant everyday life. But everyday fairy tales are no more believable than magical ones. Therefore, the description of wild, immoral, terrible deeds in everyday fairy tales causes not disgust or indignation, but cheerful laughter. After all, this is not life, but a fable.
Everyday fairy tales are a much younger genre than other types of fairy tales. IN modern folklore The heir to this genre was the anecdote (from gr.anekdotos - “unpublished”
CUMULATIVE TALES built on repeated repetition of the same actions or events. In cumulative (from Lat. Cumulatio - accumulation) fairy tales, several plot principles are distinguished: accumulation of characters in order to achieve necessary purpose; a heap of actions ending in disaster; a chain of human or animal bodies; escalation of episodes, causing unjustified experiences of the characters.
The accumulation of heroes helping in some important action is obvious in the fairy tale “Turnip”.
Cumulative tales are a very ancient type of fairy tale. They have not been studied enough.
TALES ABOUT ANIMALS preserve the memory of ancient ideas, according to which people descended from ancestors - animals. Animals in these fairy tales behave like people. Cunning and cunning animals deceive others - the gullible and the stupid, and this trickery is never condemned. The plots of fairy tales about animals are reminiscent of mythological stories about heroes - rogues and their tricks.
Non-fairy tale prose is stories and incidents from life that tell about a person’s meeting with characters of Russian demonology - sorcerers, witches, mermaids, etc. This also includes stories about saints, shrines and miracles - about the communication of a person who has accepted Christian faith, with forces of a higher order.
BYLICHKA is a folklore genre, a story about a miraculous event that supposedly happened in reality - mainly about a meeting with spirits, “ evil spirits» .
LEGEND (from Latin legenda “reading”, “readable”) is one of the varieties of non-fairy tale prose folklore. Written legend about some historical events or personalities. Legend is an approximate synonym for the concept of myth; an epic story about what happened in time immemorial; the main characters of the story are usually the heroes in in every sense words, often gods and others are directly involved in events supernatural powers. Events in the legend are often exaggerated, and a lot of fiction is added. Therefore, scientists do not consider the legends to be completely reliable. historical evidence, without denying, however, that most legends are based on real events. IN figuratively legends belong to those covered with glory, admirable events of the past, depicted in fairy tales, stories, etc. As a rule, they contain additional religious or social pathos.
Legends contain memories of ancient events, an explanation of some phenomenon, name or custom.
The words of Odoevsky V.F. sound surprisingly relevant. remarkable Russian, thinker, musician: “We must not forget that from an unnatural life, that is, one where human needs are not satisfied, - a painful state occurs... in the same way, idiocy can occur from inaction of thought..., - from an abnormal state of the nerve, a muscle is paralyzed, - in the same way, a lack of thinking distorts artistic feeling, and the lack of artistic feeling paralyzes thought.” In Odoevsky V.F. you can find thoughts about the aesthetic education of children based on folklore, consonant with what we would like to bring to life these days in the field children's education and education: “... in the field of human spiritual activity I will limit myself to the following remark: the soul expresses itself either through body movements, shapes, colors, or through a series of sounds that form singing or playing a musical instrument”
SPECIFICITY OF FOLKLORE
1. Social nature of folklore. Nowadays, the problems of folklore are becoming more and more relevant. Not a single humanities science - neither ethnography, nor history, nor linguistics, nor the history of literature - can do without folklore materials and research. We are gradually beginning to realize that the answer to many and very diverse phenomena of spiritual culture lies in folklore. Meanwhile, folkloristics itself has not yet defined itself, its tasks, the specificity of its material and its own specificity as a science. True, in our science there are a number of works of a general theoretical nature. However Life is going forward at such a rapid pace that the positions put forward in these works no longer satisfy, do not correspond to the extremely complex picture that gradually revealed itself to us as a result of persistent research work. It has become a matter of defining the subject and essence of our science, establishing its place among other related sciences, and determining the specifics of its material urgent need. From correct understanding The essence and task of science depends on the correctness of the methods, and, consequently, the conclusions. The formulation of general theoretical questions has not only general cognitive, philosophical meaning, but also helps to specifically resolve the research problems facing us.
In Western Europe there is also no shortage of general theoretical works. However, these works as a whole satisfy us even less than the earlier ones. Soviet works. Folkloristics is an ideological science. Its methods and attitudes are determined by the worldview of the era and reflect it. With the fall of the worldview, the principles of the science he created fall. We can't be guided scientific views created by romanticism or enlightenment or any other direction. Our task is to create science from the worldview of our era and our country.
Specifics of folklore 17
What is meant by “folklore” in modern Western European science? To answer this question, it is enough to open any monograph under the appropriate title. So, if we take the book of the famous German folklorist Jon Meyer “Deutsche Volkskunde” (1921, “German folklore”), we will see the following sections there: village, buildings, courtyards; plants; customs; superstitions; language; legends; fairy tales; folk songs; bibliography.
This picture is typical for all Western European science, mainly German and French, and to a lesser extent for English and American. The same picture, but with greater specialization, is given by magazines. Here, for example, the smallest details of buildings, platbands, shutters, princes, the construction of stoves, utensils, household items, vessels, cradles, spinning wheels, costumes, hats, etc., etc. are studied. Along with this, ritual life, weddings, holidays, as well as the entire area of poetic creativity: fairy tales, legends, songs, traditions, sayings, etc.
This picture is not accidental. It reflects a certain understanding of science about its tasks. The premises or provisions on which this science is built can be summarized as follows:
1) the culture of one layer of the population is studied, namely the peasantry;
2) the subject of science is both material and spiritual culture;
3) the subject of science is the peasantry of only one people, namely, in most cases, one’s own, the one to which the researcher himself belongs.
None of these provisions can be accepted by us. Our science is entirely built on different foundations.
We, first of all, separate the areas of material and spiritual creativity and make them the subject of different, albeit related, adjacent, mutually related and dependent on each other sciences. The view that the material and spiritual creativity of the peasantry can be studied by one science is essentially a lordly view. This is not done for the culture of the ruling classes. The history of technology and architecture, on the one hand, and the history of literature or music, etc., on the other, represent different sciences, because these are the highest strata of society. On the contrary, as far as the peasantry is concerned, the structure of ancient stoves and the rhythm of lyrical songs can be studied by the same science. We know very well that there is a very close connection between material and spiritual culture, and yet we separate
18 Specifics of folklore
the area of material and spiritual creativity in the same way > as is done for the culture of the upper classes. Folklore means only spiritual creativity, and even; already, only verbal, poetic creativity. Since I poetic creativity is almost always associated with music, we can talk about musical folklore and highlight it as a special folklore discipline.
This understanding of folklore has long been characteristic of Russian science. Thus, what we call folklore in the West is not called folklore at all. We call folklore what in the West is called traditions populaires, tradizioni populari, Volksdichtung, etc. and what is not the subject there independent science. On the contrary, we do not consider what in the West is called folklore to be science, but at best we recognize it as popular scientific studies of native land. But whose poetic work is being studied? As we see, in the West it is studied peasant creativity. To this we must add that the modern peasantry is being studied, but only insofar as this modernity has preserved the past. Its subject is “living antiquity” - an attitude that lasted for quite a long time in our country.
This point of view is unacceptable for us because we study every phenomenon as a process in its movement. Folklore existed before the peasantry even appeared on the historical scene. Approaching the matter historically, we will have to say that for pre-class peoples, folklore we will call the creativity of the entire totality of these peoples. All poetic creativity of primitive peoples is entirely folklore and serves as the subject of folkloristics. For peoples who have reached the stage of class development, we will call folklore the creativity of all segments of the population, except for the dominant one, whose creativity relates to literature. First of all, this includes the creativity of the oppressed classes, such as peasants and workers, but also the intermediate layers gravitating towards the lower social classes. So, you can still talk about bourgeois folklore, but it is no longer possible to talk, for example, about noble folklore.
Finally, we see that in the West, folklore is understood as the peasant culture of one people, namely, in most cases, our own. The selection principle here is quantitative and national. The culture of one people serves as the subject of one science, folklore, Volkskunde. The culture of all other peoples, including primitive ones, is the subject of another science, called very differently: anthropology.
Specifics of folklore 19
gy, ethnography, ethnology, folk studies - Volkerkun-de. There is no clear terminology.
Although we fully recognize the possibility scientific study national cultures, nevertheless, such a principle is completely unacceptable for us, and it can easily be taken to the point of absurdity. Indeed: if, suppose, a French scientist studies French songs, then this is folklore. If this scientist studies, for example, Albanian songs, then this is already ethnography. We must clearly contrast our point of view with this understanding: the science of folklore embraces the creativity of all peoples, no matter who studied them. Folklore is an international phenomenon.
All of the above allows us to summarize our positions and say: folklore refers to the creativity of the social lower classes of all peoples, no matter what stage of development they are at. For pre-class peoples, folklore is understood as the creativity of the totality of these peoples.
Here the question naturally arises: what is folklore in classless society, in the conditions of our socialist reality?
It would seem that as a class phenomenon it should die out. However, literature is a class phenomenon, but it does not die out. Under socialism, folklore loses its specific features as the creativity of the social lower classes, since we have neither upper classes nor lower classes, there are only people. Therefore, folklore in our society becomes national property in the full sense of the word. What is not in tune with the people in the new social situation is dying off. The rest is exposed to deep qualitative changes, approaching literature. What these changes are remains to be shown by research, but it is clear that the folklore of the era of capitalism and the era of socialism cannot be the same.
2. Folklore and literature. All of the above determines only one side of the matter: this determines the social nature of folklore, but this still does not say anything about all its other features.
The above characteristics are clearly not yet sufficient to distinguish folklore as a special type of creativity, and folklore studies as a special science. But they define a number of other features, already specifically folklore in essence.
First of all, let us establish that folklore is a product of a special type of poetic creativity. But literature is also poetic creativity. Indeed, there is a very close connection between folklore and literature, between folklore studies and literary studies.
20 Specifics of folklore
Literature and folklore, first of all, partially coincide in their poetic types and genres. There are, however, genres that are specific only to literature and impossible in folklore (for example, a novel) and, conversely, there are genres that are specific to folklore and impossible in literature (for example, a conspiracy). Nevertheless, the very fact of the existence of genres, the possibility of classification here and there according to genres, is a fact that belongs to the field of poetics. Hence the commonality of some tasks and methods of studying literary studies and folkloristics.
One of the tasks of folkloristics is the task of isolating and studying the category of genre and each genre separately, and this task is a literary one.
One of the most important and the most difficult tasks folkloristics is the study of the internal structure of works, in short, the study of composition, structure. Fairy tales, epics, riddles, songs, spells - all of this has little studied laws of addition and structure. In the field of epic genres, this includes the study of the plot, the course of action, the denouement, or, in other words, the laws of plot structure. The study shows that folklore and literary works are constructed differently, that folklore has its own specific structural laws. Literary criticism is unable to explain this specific pattern, but it can only be established using methods of literary analysis.
This area also includes the study of poetic language and style. Exploring Means poetic language- a purely literary task. Here again it turns out that folklore has means specific to it (parallelisms, repetitions, etc.) or that the usual means of poetic language (comparisons, metaphors, epithets) are filled with a completely different content than in literature. This can only be established through literary analysis.
In short, folklore has a completely special, specific poetics, different from the poetics of literary works. The study of this poetics will reveal extraordinary artistic beauty, embedded in folklore.
Thus, we see that not only is there a close connection between folklore and literature, but that folklore, as such, is a phenomenon literary order. It is one of the types of poetic creativity.
Folklore studies in the study of this side of folklore, in its descriptive elements, is a literary science. The connection between these sciences is so close that between
Specifics of folklore 21
We often equate folklore and literature and the corresponding sciences; the method of studying literature is transferred entirely to the study of folklore, and that is all there is to it. However literary analysis can, as we see, only establish the phenomenon and pattern of folk poetics, but he is unable to explain them.
To protect ourselves from such a mistake, we must establish not only the similarities between literature and folklore, their kinship and to some extent consubstantial, but also establish the specific difference between them, determine their differences. Indeed, folklore has a number of specific features that distinguish it so much from literature that literary research methods are not enough to resolve all problems related to folklore.
One of the most important differences is that literary works always and certainly have an author. Folklore works may not have an author, and this is one of the specific features folklore
The question must be posed with all possible clarity and clarity. Or do we recognize the existence of the folk; creativity as such, as a social and cultural phenomenon historical life peoples, or we do not recognize it, we assert that it is a poetic or scientific fiction and that only the creativity of individual individuals or groups exists.
We stand on the point of view that folk art is not a fiction, but exists precisely as such, and that studying it is the main task of folkloristics as a science. In this regard, we identify ourselves with our old scientists, like F. Buslaev or O. Miller. What the old science felt instinctively, expressed naively, ineptly, and not so much scientifically as emotionally, must now be cleared of romantic errors and raised to the proper height modern science with her thoughtful methods and precise techniques.
Brought up in the school of literary traditions, we often still cannot imagine that a poetic work could arise differently from the way a literary work arises during individual creativity. We all think that someone must have composed it or put it together first. Meanwhile, completely different ways of occurrence are possible. poetic works, and studying them is one of the main and very complex problems
22 Specifics of folklore
folkloristics. It is not possible here to enter into the full breadth of this problem. It is enough to point out here that folklore should be genetically related not to literature, but to a language that was also not invented by anyone and has neither an author nor authors. It arises and changes completely naturally and independently of the will of people, wherever appropriate conditions have been created for this in the historical development of peoples. The phenomenon of worldwide similarity does not pose a problem for us. The absence of such similarities would be inexplicable to us. Similarity indicates a pattern, and the similarity of folklore works is only special case historical pattern leading from identical shapes production of material culture to the same or similar social institutions, to similar instruments of production, and in the field of ideology - to the similarity of forms and categories of thinking, religious ideas, ritual life, languages and folklore. All this lives, is interdependent, changes, grows and dies.
Returning to the question of how to empirically imagine the emergence of folklore works, here it will be enough to at least point out that. folklore may initially form an integrating part of the ritual. With the degeneration or fall of the ritual, folklore becomes detached from it and begins to live independent life. This is just an illustration general situation. Proof can only be given by case studies. But the ritual origin of folklore was clear, for example, already to A. N. Veselovsky in last years his life.
The difference presented here is so fundamental that it alone forces us to distinguish folklore as a special type of creativity, and folklore studies as a special science. A literary historian, wanting to study the origins of a work, looks for its author. The folklorist, using broad comparative material, establishes the conditions that created the plot. But this difference does not limit the difference between literature and folklore. They differ not only in their origin, but also in the forms of their existence, their existence.
It has long been known that literature is spread by written means, folklore by oral means. This difference is still considered a purely technical difference. Meanwhile, this difference goes to the very essence of the matter. It marks the deeply different lives of these two types of poetic creativity. A literary work, once it has arisen, does not change. It operates in the presence of two quantities:
Specifics of folklore 23
it is the author, the creator of the work, and the reader. The mediating link between them is a book, manuscript or performance. If a literary work is unchanged, then the reader, on the contrary, always changes. Aristotle was read by the ancient Greeks, Arabs, humanists, and we read him too, but everyone reads and understands him differently. A true reader always reads creatively. A literary work can please, delight or outrage him. He would often like to intervene in the fate of the heroes, reward or punish them, change their tragic fate to a happy one, and put the triumphant villain to death. But the reader, no matter how deeply he is moved by a literary work, cannot and does not have the right to make any changes to it to please his personal tastes or the views of his era.
What is the situation with folklore in this regard? Folklore also exists in the presence of two quantities, but quantities different from what we have in literature. This is the performer and the listener, directly, or rather, indirectly opposed to each other.
Let's focus our attention first on the performer. As a rule, he performs a piece not created by him personally, but something he has heard before. In this case, the performer cannot in any way be compared with the poet reading his work. But he is not a reciter of other people’s works, nor a reciter who accurately conveys someone else’s work. This is a figure specific to folklore, full of the deepest interest for us and requiring the most careful historical study, from the primitive choir to the storyteller Kryukova and others. The performer does not repeat letter for letter what he heard, but makes his own changes to what he heard. Let these changes sometimes be quite insignificant (but they can also be very large), let the changes occurring with folklore texts sometimes occur slowly geological processes, the very fact of the changeability of folklore works in comparison with the immutability of literary works is important.
If the reader of a literary work is, as it were, a powerless censor and critic deprived of any powers, then every listener of folklore is a potential future performer, who, in turn, will consciously or unconsciously introduce new changes into the work. These changes are not made by chance, but by known laws. Everything that is inconsonant with the era, the system, new moods, new tastes, new ideology will be discarded.
24 Specifics of folklore
The consequences will be reflected not only in what is discarded, but also in what is processed and added. A significant (although not decisive) role is played by the personality of the storyteller, his individual tastes, outlook on life, talents, and creative abilities. Thus, a folklore work lives in constant movement and change. Therefore, it cannot be fully learned if it is written down only once. It must be recorded as many times as possible. We call each such entry a variant, and these variants represent a completely different phenomenon than, for example, editions of a literary work created by the same person.
Thus, folklore works circulate, changing all the time, and this circulation and changeability is one of specific signs folklore
But literary works can also be drawn into the orbit of this folklore circulation. It is told like a fairy tale, “The Prince and the Pauper” by Mark Twain, “The Sail” by Lermontov, “The Nightingale” by Delvig, etc., etc. are sung.
How are we going to qualify this case? What are we in in this case Do we have folklore or literature? The answer seems quite simple to us. If, for example, a popular book, or a life, etc., is recited by heart without any changes from the original, or “The Black Shawl” or from Nekrasov’s “Peddlers” is sung exactly according to Pushkin, then this case is fundamentally not much different from a performance from the stage or wherever. But as soon as such songs begin to change, to be sung differently, to create variants, they already become folklore, and the process of their change is subject to study by a folklorist.
Clearly, however, there is something else here. There is a significant difference between the folklore of the first kind, which often dates back to prehistoric times and has variants on an international scale, and the poems of poets, freely performed and passed on by ear. In the first case, we have pure folklore, that is, folklore both in origin and in circulation and circulation. In the second case, we have folklore of literary origin, including only one of its features, namely folklore only by circulation, but literature by origin.
This difference should always be kept in mind when studying folklore. A song that we consider purely folklore, in fact, may turn out to be original, literary in origin. So, such, it would seem, purely folklore,
Specifics of folklore 25
well-known songs like “Dubinushka” or “Because of the Island on the Rod” belong to little-known poets, one - to Trefolev, the other - to Sadovnikov. There are many such examples, and the study of these literary and folklore connections is one of most interesting tasks both literary history and folkloristics. In a broader aspect, this is a question about book sources of folklore in general.
But this case brings us back to the above-mentioned question of authorship in folklore. We took only two extreme cases. The first is folklore, individually not created by anyone, which arose back in prehistoric time in the system of some ritual or otherwise and has survived in oral transmission to this day. The second case is a clearly individual work of modern times, circulating as folklore. Between these two extreme points During the development of both folklore and literature, all forms of transition are possible, which can neither be foreseen nor analyzed here. This is a matter of specific consideration in each case separately.
It is obvious to any modern folklorist that questions of this kind are resolved, however, not descriptively, statistically, but in their development. Genetic study of folklore is only part historical study him, and this leads us to another question, to the question of folklore as a phenomenon not only literary, but also historical order, and about folkloristics as a historical, and not just a literary discipline.
3. Folklore and ethnography. Nowadays everything humanitarian sciences can only be historical. We consider every phenomenon in its movement, starting from its origin, tracing its development, flourishing and, perhaps, degeneration, fall, disappearance. This does not mean, however, that we take an evolutionary point of view. Evolutionary science, having established and traced the fact of development, is limited to this. Genuine historical science requires not only the establishment of the very fact of development, but also its explanation. Poetic creativity there is a phenomenon of a superstructural order. To explain means to trace a phenomenon to the causes that created it, and these causes lie in the field of economic and social life peoples
The science that studies the most early forms material life And social organization peoples, there is ethnography.. Therefore, historical folkloristics, which studies the origin of phenomena, their first link, is based on ethnography. Ta-
26 Specifics of folklore
some study is the first link of genuine historical study. Therefore, there is a very close connection between folkloristics and ethnography. Outside of ethnography there can be no materialistic study of folklore.
We still do not know exactly what exactly and to what extent originates in primitive society. In any case, fairy tales, epics, ritual poetry, conspiracies, riddles as genres cannot be explained without the use of ethnographic data. And not only genres, but also many motifs (for example, the motif of a magical assistant, marriage with an animal, the thirtieth kingdom, etc.) find their explanation in ideas and religious-magical practice at different stages of development human society. The use of ethnographic materials is important, however, not only for genetic studies in in the narrow sense words, but also for studying the initial development, because from forms of material and social life depends not only on the origin of genres, plots and motifs, but also on their future life and changeability.
The implementation of this principle is interesting and fruitful only if it is presented in the full breadth of the material, penetrating into the smallest details of both folklore and ethnographic materials. It is not enough to say that the motif of noble animals is of totemic origin, that the Edda was created at the stage of decomposition tribal system etc. This must be shown in such a way that there is no doubt about it, that is, on a very broad specific comparative material. So, for example, in order to study the hero’s marriage (and matchmaking is one of the most common motifs of myth, fairy tale and epic), it is necessary to study the forms of marriage that existed at various stages of the development of human society. Moreover, we need knowledge, and, if possible, detailed knowledge of marriage rituals and customs. We, for example, want and need to know exactly at what stages of development and among what peoples the groom is tested and what the nature of this test is. Only then will we properly understand the corresponding phenomena in folklore.
However, in implementing these principles it is easy to fall into the mistake of believing that folklore directly reflects social or everyday or other relationships. Folklore, especially at the early stages of its development, is not a description of everyday life. The matter is extremely complicated and complicated by the fact that reality is not conveyed directly, but through the prism of a certain thinking, and this thinking is so
Specifics of folklore 27
personally from ours that many folklore phenomena can be very difficult to compare with anything else. In the system of this thinking, cause-and-effect relationships do not yet exist; other forms of connection dominate here, and we often do not yet know which ones. There are still no generalizations, no abstractions, no concepts; the process of generalization here corresponds to some other, still little explored operations of thinking. Space and time are perceived differently than we perceive them. The categories of unity and plurality, the qualities of subject and object (identifying oneself with animals) play a completely different role than they play with us, in our thinking. What we never recognize as real is recognized as real, and vice versa. Primitive man sees the world of things differently than we do, and at different stages of development he sees it differently. Therefore, sometimes we will search in vain for everyday reality behind folklore reality.
In folklore they act this way and not otherwise, not because this was the case in reality, but because it was imagined this way according to the laws of primitive thinking. And therefore, this thinking and the entire system of the primitive worldview must be studied. Otherwise, neither the composition, nor the plots, nor individual motives can be understood, or we risk falling either into a kind of naive realism, or we will perceive the phenomena of folklore as grotesque, exotic, free play of unbridled fantasy.
There is no need to say here that one of the manifestations of this thinking is religious ideas, which have the closest connection with folklore.
Here, not only religious symbols and mental images are important, but religious-magical practice is important, the whole set of ritual and other actions by which primitive thinks to influence nature and protect himself from it. Folklore here itself turns out to be part of the system of religious and ritual practice.
From all that has been said, by the way, it is clear that the textual study of folklore, that is, the study of only texts taken without connection with the economic, social and ideological life of peoples, is a vicious method. Meanwhile in the West for the most part collections of texts only are published; scientific apparatus similar collections consists of indexes of motives, plots, and sometimes variants for them, but without any data about the people from whom it was collected, about the forms of existence and function of folklore, about the specific conditions of performance and recording. All the above considerations are enough to see how close the connection is between folklore and ethno-
28 Specifics of folklore
graphics. Ethnography is especially important for us when studying the genesis of folklore phenomena. Here, ethnography forms the basis for the study of folklore, and without this basis, the study of folklore hangs in the air.
4. Folklore studies as a historical discipline. It is quite obvious, however, that the study of folklore cannot be limited to genetic research and that not everything in folklore goes back to primitiveness or is explained by it. New formations occur throughout the historical development of peoples. Folklore is a phenomenon of historical order, and folklore is historical discipline. Ethnographic study is, as it were, the first stage of such historical study.
The task of historical study is to show, firstly, what happens to old folklore under new historical conditions, and, secondly, to study the emergence of new formations.
Here, of course, it is impossible to establish all the processes taking place in folklore during the transition to new forms of social system or even during development within a given system. These processes take place everywhere with amazing sameness. One of them is that inherited folklore comes into conflict with the old social system that created it and denies it. He denies it, of course, not directly, but denies the images he created, turning them into the opposite or giving them a reverse, condemning, negative connotation. What was once holy turns into hostile, great - into harmful, evil or monstrous. But at the same time, the old is sometimes preserved without any special changes, peacefully coexisting with New images and relationships. So folklore comes into conflict with itself, and there are always a lot of such contradictions in folklore. Thus, folklore formations are created not as a direct reflection of everyday life (this is a relatively rarer case), but from contradictions, from clashes between two eras or two ways of life and their ideologies.
But the old and the new can not only be in a state of uncoordinated contradictions, but also enter into hybrid connections. Both folklore and religious ideas are filled with such hybrid compounds. A dragon, a snake is a combination of a worm, a bird and other animals. Marr showed how, with the domestication of a horse, the cult role of a bird passes to it. The horse becomes winged. From here it becomes clear and flying ships, and winged chariots, etc. Study
Specifics of folklore 29
the cult role of fire will show why a horse combines with fire, becoming a fiery horse, and how the idea of a fiery chariot is created, etc. Such hybrid connections are possible not only in the field of visual images, they are deeply hidden in the field of a wide variety of ideas and relationships. By transferring the new onto the old, entire stories can be created. Thus, it can be shown that the plot of the hero killing his father and marrying his mother, i.e., the plot of Oedipus, was created as a result of transference hostile relationship to the daughter's fiancé, son-in-law, to the heir-son, and the role of the king's daughter, as the transmitter of the throne through marriage, to the king's widow. Such formation is not accidental or isolated; it is in the nature of folklore.
Finally, the old is simply rethought, and there are extremely many types of rethinking. Rethinking consists of changing the old according to new life, new ideas, new forms of consciousness. Strictly speaking, transformation into one's opposite is only one type of rethinking. Studying reinterpretations is not always an easy task, since changes can reach beyond recognition, and revealing the original forms is only possible if there is a very large comparative material on different peoples and stages of their development.
We call this type of study staged study. By arranging the material according to the stages of development of peoples, understanding by “stage” the degree of culture, determined by the totality of signs of material, social and spiritual culture, we will have to obtain “ historical poetics"in the true sense of the word, that historical poetics, the foundation of which was laid by Veselovsky.
The path indicated here is a historical path leading study from the bottom up, from the old to the new. It must be said that ethnography and history do not yet help us enough in this regard. We do not have a clear periodization of development stages. Morgan's scheme, supported by Engels, has not yet been developed by anyone based on broad material, not developed, not brought to completion.
Along with such a bottom-up study, our science has adopted the reverse top-down path, i.e., the reconstruction of early “mythological” foundations by analyzing later materials. Such paleontological study, shown by Marr for language, is fundamentally correct and quite possible for folklore. But this path is more risky and difficult. It is necessary and inevitable where there are no direct materials for the early stages. It may turn out that folklore
30 Specifics of folklore
for some peoples it will turn out to be a precious historical source, from which the ethnographer reconstructs both the social system and the ideas of the people. Folklore, which requires historical study, can thus itself turn out to be a precious historical and ethnographic source.
The path of study outlined here represents the conquest of our science. In the West, the principle of simple chronological study, rather than staged study, still prevails. Antique material will always be considered there older than the material, recorded today. Meanwhile, from the stadial point of view, ancient material may reflect a relatively late stage of the agricultural state, and modern text- much earlier totemic | relationship.
It is obvious that each stage must have its own social system, its own ideology, its own artistic creativity. But the fact is that folklore, as well as other phenomena of spiritual culture, does not immediately register the change that has taken place and retains old forms for a long time in new conditions. Since every nation always goes through several stages of its development, and all of them are reflected in folklore and settle in it, the folklore of any people is always multi-stage, and this is one of its characteristic phenomena. The task of science is to stratify this complex conglomerate, and thereby recognize and explain it.
