The meaning of psychological parallelism in the dictionary of literary terms. Psychological parallelism and its forms in reflections of poetic style

A.N. Veselovsky Psychological parallelism and its forms in the reflection of poetic style

A person assimilates images of the external world in the forms of his self-awareness; all the more so is primitive man, who has not yet developed the habit of abstract, non-figurative thinking, although the latter cannot do without a certain accompanying imagery. We involuntarily transfer to nature our self-awareness of life, expressed in movement, in the manifestation of force directed by the will; in those phenomena or objects in which movement was noticed, signs of energy, will, and life were once suspected. We call this worldview animistic; when applied to poetic style, and not to it alone, it would be more accurate to talk about parallelism. The point is not about identifying human life with natural life and not about comparison, which presupposes the consciousness of the separateness of the objects being compared, but about comparison on the basis of action (125), movement: a tree is frail, a girl bows, as in a Little Russian song. The idea of ​​movement, action underlies the one-sided definitions of our word: the same roots correspond to the idea of ​​intense movement, penetration of an arrow, sound and light; concepts of struggle, torment, destruction are expressed in words such as mors, mare<…>, German Mahlen.

So, parallelism rests on the comparison of subject and object in the category of movement, action, as a sign of volitional life activity. The subjects, naturally, were animals; they most closely resembled humans: here are the distant psychological foundations of the animal apologist; but the plants also pointed to the same similarity: they were born and bloomed, turned green and bowed from the force of the wind. The sun also seemed to move, rise, set; the wind drove the clouds, the lightning rushed, the fire engulfed, devoured the branches, etc. The inorganic, motionless world was involuntarily drawn into this string of parallelisms: it also lived.

The further step in development consisted of a series of transfers, attached to the main feature - movement. The sun moves and looks at the earth: among the Hindus, the sun and the moon are the eye<…>; the earth sprouts with grass, the forest with hair<…>; when Agni (fire), driven by the wind, spreads through the forest, it mows down the hair of the earth; the earth is Odin's bride, sang the skald Hallfredr<…>, the forest is her hair, she is the young, broad-faced, forest-covered daughter of Onar.<…>A tree has skin - bark (ind.), a mountain has a ridge (ind.) ... the tree drinks with its feet - roots (ind.), its branches - arms, paws<…>.

The basis of such definitions, which reflected a naive, syncretic view of nature, enslaved by language and belief, is the transfer of a characteristic characteristic of one member of the parallel to another. These are metaphors of language; our vocabulary is replete with them, but we operate many of them unconsciously, without ever feeling their fresh imagery; when “the sun sets,” we do not separately imagine the act itself, undoubtedly alive in the fantasy of ancient man (126): we need to renew it in order to feel it in relief. The language of poetry achieves this by defining or partially characterizing a general act, and here too in application to a person and his psyche. “The sun moves, rolls along the mountain” does not evoke an image in us; otherwise in the Serbian song by Karadzic:

That's all there is to it.

The following pictures of nature belong to the usual, once figurative, but giving us the impression of abstract formulas: the landscape spreads across the plains, sometimes suddenly rising into a steep slope; a rainbow spread across the clearing; lightning rushes, a mountain range stretches in the distance; the village lies in the valley; the hills reach towards the sky. To stagger, to rush, to strive - all this is figurative, in the sense of the application of a conscious act to an inanimate object, and all this has become for us an experience that poetic language will enliven, emphasizing the element of humanity, illuminating it in the main parallel (127).<…>

The man considered himself very young on earth because he was helpless. Where did he come from? This question was posed quite naturally, and the answers to it were obtained on the basis of those comparisons, the main motive of which was the transference of the principle of vitality to the external world (129).<…>And he imagined that his forefathers grew from stones (Greek myth), came from animals (beliefs widespread in Central Asia, among North American tribes, in Australia), and originated from trees and plants.

It is interesting to trace the expression and degeneration of this idea: it accompanies us from the depths of centuries to the modern folk poetic belief, which is deposited in the experiences of our poetic style. I will focus on people – trees – plants.

The Sioux, Damarov, Levi-Lenanov, Yurkasov, and Bazut tribes consider the tree to be their forefather; AmaZulu says that the first man came out of the reeds<…>A partial expression of this idea is a motif based on language (seed-embryo), familiar from myths and fairy tales, about the fertilizing power of a plant, flower, fruit (grain, apple, berry, pea, nut, rose, etc.), replacing the human seed .

On the contrary: a plant comes from a living being, especially from a person. Hence a whole series of identifications: people have names borrowed from trees and flowers; they turn into trees, continuing their old life in new forms, lamenting, remembering (130)<…>. Along the way of such identifications, the idea of ​​a close connection between this or that tree or plant and human life could arise.<…>. Thus, the wounded Tristan dies, strangling Isolde in his last embrace; from their graves a rose and a vine grow, intertwined with each other (Eilhard von Oberge), or a green thorn branch came out of the tomb of Tristan and spread across the chapel to the tomb of Isolde (French novel in prose); Later they began to say that these plants were planted by King Mark. The difference between these retellings is interesting: at first, and closer to the ancient idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe identity of human and natural life, trees - flowers grew from corpses; these are the same people living with the same emotions; when the consciousness of identity weakened, the image remained, but tree-flowers are already planted on the graves of lovers, and we ourselves suggest, updating his ancient idea, that the trees continue to feel and love out of sympathy, like those resting under them (131).

The legend of Abelard and Heloise already dispenses with this symbolism: when Heloise’s body was lowered to the body of Abelard, who had previously died, his skeleton took her into its arms in order to unite with her forever. The image of intertwining trees and flowers disappeared. He and others like him were destined to fade or fade with the weakening of the idea of ​​parallelism, identity, with the development of human self-awareness, with the isolation of man from that cosmic connection in which he himself disappeared as part of an immense, unknown whole. The more he got to know himself, the more the line between him and the surrounding nature became clear, and the idea of ​​identity gave way to the idea of ​​specialness. Ancient syncretism was removed before dismembering feats of knowledge: the equation lightning - bird, man - tree was replaced by comparisons: lightning is like a bird, a man is like a tree, etc., mors, mare, etc.<…>Further development of imagery took place in other ways.

The isolation of personality, the consciousness of its spiritual essence (in connection with the cult of ancestors) should have led to the fact that the vital forces of nature became isolated in fantasy, as something separate, life-like, personal; it is they who act, desire, influence in the waters, forests and phenomena of the sky; Each tree has its own hamadryad, its life is connected with it, it feels pain when the tree is cut down, and it dies with it. So it is with the Greeks; Bastian encountered the same idea among the Oschibwas tribe; it exists in India, Annam, etc.

At the center of each set of parallels that gave content to the ancient myth, a special force, a deity, became: the concept of life is transferred to it, the features of the myth were drawn to it, some characterize its activity, others become its (132) symbols. Having emerged from direct identity with nature, man reckons with the deity, developing its content to a level with his moral and aesthetic growth: religion takes possession of him, retarding this development in the stable conditions of a cult. But both the delaying moments of the cult and the anthropomorphic understanding of the deity are not capacious enough or too definite to respond to the progress of thought and the demands of growing introspection, yearning for consonance in the secrets of the macrocosm, and not only scientific revelations, but also sympathies. And there are consonances, because in nature there will always be answers to our demands for suggestibility.

These requirements are inherent in our consciousness; it lives in the sphere of convergences and parallels, figuratively assimilating the phenomena of the surrounding world, pouring its content into them and again perceiving them as humanized. The language of poetry continues the psychological process that began on prehistoric paths: it already uses the images of language and myth, their metaphors and symbols, but it also creates new ones in their likeness. The connection between myth, language and poetry is not so much in the unity of legend as in the unity of psychological technique<…>the ancient juxtaposition: sun = eye and groom = falcon of the folk song - all this appeared in different stages of the same parallelism.

I will take up a review of some of his poetic formulas.

I’ll start with the simplest, folk-poetic, with<…>binomial parallelism. Its general type is as follows: a picture of nature, next to it is the same from human life; they echo each other when there is a difference in objective content, consonances pass between them, clarifying what they have in common. This sharply separates the psychological parallel from repetitions explained by the mechanism of song performance (choric or amoebic), and those tautological formulas where the verse repeats in other words the content of the previous or previous ones.<…>To a certain degree of decomposition, the formulas of psychological parallelism, examples of which I give:

a Cherry blossomed

View from top to root,

b Bow down Marusya

through steel to my friend.

And don’t be frail, little green cheek,

b Don’t scold, little Cossack, you’re young (134).

We are heading towards formal parallelism. Let's consider its precedents.

One of them is the omission in one of the members of the parallel of a feature that logically follows from its content in accordance with some feature of the second member. I'm talking about silence - not about distortion: what was silent was suggested at first by itself, until it was forgotten.<…>

The internal logical development corresponds to the external one, which sometimes embraces both members of the parallel, with a formal, meaningless correspondence of the parts.<…>

Ay behind the threshing floor Asina,

Oh, the mother-in-law asked for her son-in-law.

The last parallel is not maintained, as if caused by assonance, the desire to preserve the cadence, the coincidence of stress, not of images.<…>Substantive parallelism turns into rhythmic, the musical element predominates while the intelligible relationships between the details of the parallels are weakened. The result is not an alternation of internally related images, but a series of rhythmic lines without meaningful correspondence (152).

<…>I will only touch upon the phenomenon in passing<…>polynomial parallelism, developed from two-term parallelism by one-sided accumulation of parallels, obtained not from one object, but from several, similar ones. In the two-term formula, there is only one explanation: the tree leans towards the tree, the young man clings to his sweetheart, this formula can vary in variations of the same (175) song: “The sun rolled out not red (or rather: rolled up) - My husband fell ill”; instead of: “As the oak tree staggers in the polepole, as my dear one struggles”; or: “Like a blue, flammable stone, it will flare up, And my dear friend will unwind.” A polynomial formula brings these parallels together in a row, multiplies explanations and together analysis materials, as if opening up the possibility of choice:

Don't let the grass tangle with the blade of grass,

Do not caress the dove with the dove,

Don't get used to the girl.

Not two, but three kinds of images, united by the concept of twisting, bringing together.<…>Such a one-sided multiplication of objects in one part of the parallel indicates greater freedom of movement in its composition: parallelism became a stylistic and analytical device, and this should have led to a decrease in its imagery, to mixtures and transfers of all kinds. In the following Serbian example, the rapprochement: cherry - oak: girl - young man is joined by a third: silk-bumbak, eliminating the images of cherry and oak at the end of the song.

If our explanation is correct, then polynomial parallelism belongs to the late phenomena of folk poetic stylistics; it allows choice, efficiency gives way to analysis; this is the same sign as the accumulation of epithets or comparisons in Homer's poems, like any pleonasm that dwells on the particulars of the situation. Only a calming feeling analyzes itself in this way; but here is the source (176) of song and art loci comunes. In one Northern Russian story, a recruit’s wife wants to go to the forest and mountains and to the blue sea in order to get rid of grief; Pictures of forests and mountains and the sea surround her, but everything is colored by her sadness: the sadness cannot be avoided, and the affect expands in the descriptions:

And I’d better go from the great steepness

I’m in the dark woods, grieving, and dense...

And I am sad, grieving, annoyed,

And now my sadness doesn’t go away...

And I should go from grief to the blue sea,

And to the blue one, to the glorious Onegushka...

And on the blue sea the water sways,

And the water was clouded with yellow sand,

And now the wave hits steeply and excessively,

And she hits this steep bank steeply,

And the wave crumbles over the pebbles,

And here my sadness doesn’t go away.

This is the epic Natureingang, a polynomial formula of parallelism, developed into a patch: the widow is sad, the tree is bowing, the sun is clouded, the widow is annoyed, the waves are diverging, the storm is diverging.

We said that polynomial parallelism tends to destroy imagery;<…>mononomial singles out and develops it, which determines its role in the isolation of certain stylistic formations. The simplest type of monomiality is the case when one of the terms of the parallel is silent, and the other is its indicator; this is pars pro toto; since in the parallel significant interest is given to the action of human life, which is illustrated by a rapprochement with some natural act, then the last member of the parallel stands for the whole.

The following Little Russian song represents a complete binary parallel: zorya (star) - month = girl - well done (bride - groom):

a Sala the dawn until the month:

Oh, month, comrade, (177)

Don’t come in to tyrannize me,

Let's leave both at once,

Let us illuminate heaven and earth...

b Slala Marya to Ivanka:

Oh, Ivanka, my contraction,

Don't sit in the squat,

Early for the landing, etc.

Let's discard the second part of the song (b), and the habit of well-known comparisons will suggest the bride and groom instead of the month and the star. So<…>in a Latvian song<…>linden (bends) to the oak (like a fellow to a girl):

Decorate the linden tree, mother,

Which is in the middle of your yard;

I saw in strangers

Painted oak.

In an Estonian wedding song, timed to coincide with the moment when the bride is hidden from the groom, and he is looking for her, it is sung about a bird, a duck that has gone into the bushes; but this duck “put on her shoes.”

Either: the sun has set: the husband has died; sl. Olonets lament:

A great wish rolled away

It is in the air, desire, in the deep,

In wild, dark forests, and in dense forests,

For the mountains it is, desire, for the crowd.

<…>All these are excerpts of abbreviated parallel formulas.

It was indicated above in what ways, from the convergences on which binary parallelism is built, those that we call symbols are selected and strengthened; their closest source were short one-term formulas in which the linden tree strives for the oak tree, the falcon leads the falcon with him, etc. They taught us to constant identification, brought up in the age-old song tradition; This element of legend distinguishes a symbol from an artificially selected allegorical image: the latter may be accurate, but is not extensible for new suggestiveness, because it does not rest on the basis of those consonances of nature and man on which folk-poetic parallelism is built. When these consonances appear or when the allegorical formula passes into the circulation of folk tradition, it can approach the life of the symbol: examples are offered by the history of Christian symbolism.

The symbol is extensible, just as the word is extensible for new revelations of thought. The falcon rushes at the bird and kidnaps it, but from another, silent member of the parallel, the rays of human relations fall onto the animal image, and the falcon leads the falcon to the wedding; in the Russian song the falcon is clear - the groom flies to the bride, sits on the window, “on the oak chin”; in the Moravian, he flew under the girl’s window, wounded, chopped up: this is her darling. The young falcon is groomed, cleaned up, and the parallelism is reflected in its fantastic decoration: in the Little Russian Duma the young falcon was taken into captivity; they entangled him there in silver shackles, and hung expensive pearls near his eyes. The old falcon found out about this, “he poured out on the city - the Tsar-City,” “howled and howled pitifully.” The little falcon spun, the Turks took off its fetters and pearls to disperse its melancholy, and the old falcon took it on its wings and raised it to a height: it is better for us to fly across the field than to live in captivity. Falcon - Cossack, Turkish bondage; the correspondence is not expressed, but it is implied; fetters were put on the falcon; they are silver, but you can’t fly away with them. A similar image is expressed in the double parallelism of one wedding song from the Pinsk region: “Why are you, falcon, flying low? “My wings are lined with silk, my legs are lined with gold.” - Why did you arrive late, Yasya? “The father is careless, he equipped his squad late” (179).

<…>The riddle built around switching off turns us to one more type of parallelism that remains for us to dissect: negative parallelism. “Strong is not a rock, roars is not a bull,” says the Vedas; this can serve as an example of the same construction of parallelism, especially popular in Slavic folk poetry. The principle is this: a binomial or polynomial formula is put forward, but one or some of them are eliminated in order to allow attention to focus on the one to which the negation does not extend. The formula begins with a negation or with a position, which is often introduced with a question mark.

It’s not the birch tree that is staggering,

Not curly curls,

How it staggers and twists,

Your young wife. (185)

Negative parallelism is found in Lithuanian and modern Greek songs, less often in German; in Little Russian it is less developed than in Great Russian. I distinguish from it those formulas where the negation falls not on the object or action, but on the quantitative or qualitative determinations accompanying them (187): not so much, not so, etc.

<…>One can imagine reducing a two- or polynomial negative formula into a single-term one, although the negation should have made it difficult to suggest the silent member of the parallel: the winds would not come, but the wind would blow (the boyars would not come, but they would come in large numbers); or in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: it was not the storm that brought the falcons across the wide fields (the galich herds to run to the great Don). We have seen examples of negative monomial formulas in riddles.

The popularity of this stylistic device in Slavic folk poetry gave rise to some generalizations that will have to be limited, if not eliminated. In negative parallelism they saw something folk or racial, Slavic, in which the special, elegiac cast of Slavic lyricism was typically expressed. The appearance of this formula in other folk lyrics brings this explanation within its proper boundaries; One can only talk about the wide spread of the formula on the basis of Slavic song, which together raises the question of the reasons for this popularity. Psychologically, a negative formula can be looked at as a way out of parallelism, the positive scheme of which it presupposes has been established. It brings actions and images closer together, limiting their pairing or accumulating comparisons: either the tree is sickly or the young man is sad; the negative formula emphasizes one of two possibilities: it is not the tree that is sick, but the fellow who is sad; it affirms by denying, it eliminates duality by singling out the individual. This is, as it were, a feat of consciousness emerging from the vagueness of floating impressions to the affirmation of the individual; that which previously burst into him as proportionate, contiguous, is highlighted, and if it attracts again, then as a reminder that does not imply unity, as a comparison. The process took place in the following sequence of formulas: man – tree; not a tree, but a person; man is like a tree. On the basis of negative parallelism, the last separation has not yet taken place completely: the adjacent image still hovers somewhere nearby, apparently eliminated, but still evoking consonances. It is clear that the elegiac feeling has found in the negative formula a means of expression that corresponds to it: you are amazed by something (188), unexpectedly, sadly, you don’t believe your eyes: it is not what it seems to you, but something else, you are ready to reassure yourself with the illusion of similarity, but reality hits you in the eye, self-delusion only intensified the blow, and you eliminate it with pain: now it’s not the birch tree that’s twisting, then your young wife is twisting, twisting!

I do not claim that the negative formula was developed in the sphere of such sentiments, but it could be nurtured and generalized in it. The alternation of positive parallelism, with its transparent duality, and negative, with its wavering, eliminating affirmation, gives folk lyricism a special, vague coloring. The comparison is not so suggestive, but it is positive.

On value<…>comparisons in the development of psychological parallelism were indicated above. This is already a prosaic act of consciousness that has dismembered nature; comparison is the same metaphor, but with the addition of (particles of comparison?), says Aristotle (Rhet. Ill, 10); it is more developed (in detail) and therefore less liked; does not say: this = this, and therefore the mind does not seek this either. An example from Chapter 6 can serve as an explanation: the lion (= Achilles) rushed - and Achilles rushed like a lion; in the latter case there is no equation (this = this) and the image of a lion (this) does not stop attention, does not force the imagination to work. In the Homeric epic, the gods have already emerged from nature onto bright Olympus, and parallelism appears in the forms of comparison. Whether it is possible to discern a chronological moment in the last phenomenon, I do not dare say.

Comparison has not only taken possession of the stock of connections and symbols developed by the previous history of parallelism, but also develops along the paths indicated by it; old material has merged into a new form, other parallels fit into the comparison, and vice versa, there are also transitional types. In the song about cherries, for example, to the parallel: cherry and oak = girl - well done, the third rapprochement is added as a comparison (Kat se privi]a - And twisted to the bumbak) (189).

<…>Metaphor and comparison gave content to some groups of epithets; with them we went around the entire circle of development of psychological parallelism, to the extent that it determined the material of our poetic vocabulary and its images. Not everything that was once alive and young has been preserved in its former brightness; our poetic language often gives the impression of detritus, phrases and epithets have faded, just as a word fades, the imagery of which is lost with an abstract understanding of its objective content. While the renewal of imagery and color remains among the pia desideria, the old forms still serve the poet, who seeks self-determination in the consonances or contradictions of nature; and the fuller his inner world, the subtler the echo, the more life the old forms tremble.

Goethe's "Mountain Peaks" are written in the forms of the folk binomial parallel.<…>

Other examples can be found in Heine, Lermontov (194), Verlaine and others; Lermontov’s “song” is a copy of the folk song, an imitation of its naive style:

A yellow leaf hits the stem

Before the storm

The poor heart is trembling

Before misfortune;

If the wind takes away my lonely leaf, will the siraya branch regret it? If fate destined a young man to fade away in a foreign land, will the fair maiden regret him?<…>

Such images, which isolate human feeling in the forms of extra-human life, are well known in artistic poetry. In this direction, she can sometimes achieve the concreteness of a myth.

(Sk. Fofanov, “Small Poems”: “Clouds float like thoughts, Thoughts rush in clouds”). This is almost an anthropomorphism of the “Dove Book”: “our thoughts are from the clouds of heaven,” but with the content of personal consciousness. The day tears the veils of the night: the bird of prey tears the veil with its claws; in Wolfram von Eschenbach, all this merged into a picture of clouds and the day, piercing their darkness with its claws: Sine klawen durch die wolken sint geslagen. An image reminiscent of a mythical bird - lightning, demolishing heavenly fire; All that is missing is the moment of belief.

The Sun - Helios belongs to his anthropomorphic pore; poetry knows him in a new light. In Shakespeare (sonnet 48) the sun is a king, a ruler; at sunrise he proudly sends his greetings to the mountain heights, but when low-lying clouds distort his face, he darkens, turns his gaze away from the lost world and hurries towards the sunset, shrouded in shame.<…>Let me also remind you of the image of the sun - the king in Korolenko’s excellent description of the sunrise (“Makar’s Dream”) (196).

Somewhere in the distance one can hear the naive cantilena of our verse about the “Dove Book”: “Our bones are strong from stone, our blood-ore from the black sea, the red sun from the face of God, our thoughts from the clouds of heaven.”

So: metaphorical new formations and - age-old metaphors, developed anew. The vitality of the latter or their renewal in the circulation of poetry depends on their capacity in relation to the new demands of feeling directed by broad educational and social trends. The era of romanticism was marked, as we know, by the same archaistic renovations that we see now. “Nature is filled with allegories and myths,” says Remi regarding modern symbolists; the fairies have returned; they seemed to have died, but they only hid, and then they appeared again” (197).

IN<…>the search for consonances, the search for man in nature, there is something passionate, pathetic that characterizes the poet and characterized, in different forms of expression, entire periods of social and poetic development (199).

To achieve vivid impressions and enhance the emotional impact, various techniques are used in fiction - phonetic, lexical, syntactic. One of these means is syntactic parallelism - an artistic technique in which elements of speech that carry a single idea follow in a certain sequence and create a single image.

This way of expression uses the principle of repetition and symmetry. Thus, the phenomenon of generality, homogeneity of syntactic structures and their location in a coordinating connection is syntactic parallelism.

There are several types of arrangement of speech elements. If the syntactic constructions are completely identical, this is full parallelism, if the analogy is partial – incomplete.When the structures are adjacent, we can talk about contact parallelism, if they are separated by others – oh distant.

Parallelism as an expressive means of language has been known since ancient times. It is enough to recall biblical texts, ancient epics, thoughts and tales, folk songs, as well as prayers, spells, and conspiracies. This technique can also be seen in riddles, sayings, and proverbs. Obviously, this phenomenon is typical for oral folk art, as well as for literary works stylized as antique.

The little bird sang and sang and fell silent;

The heart knew joy and forgot.

In this case, there is a comparison of one main action with another, secondary one, which is a characteristic feature of folklore.

Types of parallelism

In the Russian language, especially in fiction, different types of syntactic parallelism are used:

• binomial;
• polynomial;
• monomial;
• formal;
• negative;
• reverse (chiasmus).

The most commonly used is binomial parallelism. Usually this technique depicts natural phenomena, then describes some life situation.

The reeds rustled over the backwater.

The princess girl is crying by the river.

When using a polynomial option, the actor is compared with several images:

We are two trunks lit by a thunderstorm,

Two flames of the midnight forest,

We are two flying meteors in the night,

A two-stinged bee has the same fate.

In Russian literature, in particular, in folk art, one-term parallelism is also found. At the same time, human characters appear only in the images of plants, animals, birds, however, it is clear that the image of a “clear falcon” implies a young man - a groom, a lover. A girl, a bride, usually appears in the form of a “swan”, “peahen”, or a birch tree, rowan tree, etc.

In some ways, the formal version of this technique is similar to the monomial one. However, it is not immediately noticeable, since there is no obvious logical connection between the elements. To understand its meaning, you need to imagine the entire work or a certain period.

Syntactic parallelism is sometimes combined with other forms of this expressive means, for example, with phonetic, which is characterized by the use of the same words at the beginning of a line or the same ending of lines. This combination enhances the expressiveness of the text and gives it a special sound:

Your name is a bird in your hand,

Your name is like a piece of ice on the tongue,

Negative parallelism is widely used in oral folk art and works of fiction. This method of expressiveness is found in folk tales, songs, riddles, and authors also use it.

Not the wind blowing from above,

Touched the sheets on the moonlit night -

You touched my soul...

Speaking about this syntactic means of expression, it is impossible not to mention such a striking expressive device as its reverse form, chiasmus. Its essence is that the sequence of elements changes crosswise or mirror. An example of the so-called “purely syntactic” chiasmus is the saying: “Not the people for power, but power for the people.”

In an effort to achieve effect, sharpness, and persuasiveness in their public speeches, chiasmus has been used by orators since ancient times. This expressive means is found in the works of Russian writers and poets of the “golden” and “silver” ages, and modern authors cannot do without it.

Folklore and fiction are a reflection of reality; they are closely connected with the history of society, revealing the essence of phenomena and the inner world of a person with the help of numerous expressive techniques. As a way to enhance the emotional impact, syntactic parallelism often contains various types of artistic expressiveness.

In this article we will look at such a literary concept as psychological parallelism. Often this term causes some problems in interpreting its meaning and functions. In this article we will try to explain as clearly as possible what this concept is, how to apply it in artistic analysis of a text, and what you should pay special attention to.

Definition

Psychological parallelism in literature is one of its essence: the plot of a work is built on a consistent comparison of motives, pictures of nature, relationships, situations, and actions. Typically used in poetic folk texts.

As a rule, it consists of 2 parts. The first depicts a picture of nature, conventional and metaphorical, creating an emotional and psychological background. And in the second, the image of a hero already appears, whose state is compared with the natural one. For example: a falcon is a good fellow, a swan is a bride, a cuckoo is a yearning woman or a widow.

Story

However, it is necessary to delve a little deeper into the past in order to fully understand what psychological parallelism is. The definition in the literature, by the way, usually begins with a little historical background.

So, if this technique came into literature from folklore, then it has quite deep roots. Why did it occur to people to compare themselves with animals, plants or natural phenomena? This phenomenon is based on naive syncretic ideas that the world around us has its own will. This is confirmed by pagan beliefs that endowed all life phenomena with consciousness. For example, the sun is an eye, that is, the sun appears as an active living being.

Such parallels consisted of:

• Complex similarity of characteristic features to life or action.
• The relationship of these signs with our understanding of reality and the laws of the surrounding world.
• Adjacencies of various objects that could be similar based on identified characteristics.
• The vital value and completeness of the described object or phenomenon in relation to humanity.

That is, initially psychological parallelism was built on a person’s subjective idea of ​​the world.

Kinds

We continue to study psychological parallelism. We have already given the definition, now let’s talk about its types. There are several different approaches to the study of this stylistic phenomenon and, accordingly, several classifications. We will present here the most popular of them - the authorship of A. N. Veselovsky. According to her, psychological parallelism occurs:

• two-term;
• formal;
• polynomial;
• monomial;
• negative.

Parallelism binomial

It is characterized by the following construction method. First there is an image of a picture of nature, then a description of a similar episode from a person’s life. These two episodes seem to echo each other, although they differ in objective content. You can understand that they have something in common by certain consonances and motives. This feature is what distinguishes psychological parallels from simple repetitions.

For example: “When they want to pick roses, they must wait until spring; when they want to love girls, they must be sixteen years old” (Spanish folk song).

It is worth noting, however, that folklore parallelism, which most often happens to be two-term, is built mainly on the category of action. If you remove it, then all other elements will lose their meaning. The stability of this design is ensured by 2 factors:

• To the basic similarity are added bright similar details of the action category that will not be contradicted.
• The comparison was liked by native speakers, became part of the cult and remained there for a long time.

If both of these points are met, then parallelism will turn into a symbol and acquire a household name. However, this fate does not await all binomial parallelisms, even those constructed according to all the rules.

Formal parallelism

There are cases when psychological parallelism is not immediately clear and to understand it it is necessary to hear the entire text. For example: one of the folk songs begins with the following line: “The river flows, it will not stir,” then there is a description of the bride, to whom many guests came to her wedding, but no one can bless her, since she is an orphan; Thus, the similarity can be traced - the river does not stir, but the bride sits sad and silent.

Here we can talk about silence, and not about lack of similarity. The stylistic device becomes more complex, making it difficult to understand the work itself, but the structure acquires greater beauty and poetry.

Polynomial parallelism

The concept of “psychological parallelism,” despite its apparent complexity, is quite simple. It's another matter when we talk about the varieties of this stylistic device. Although, as far as polynomial parallelism is concerned, usually there are no problems with its detection.

This subtype is characterized by the one-sided accumulation of several parallels that come simultaneously from several objects. That is, one character is taken and compared with a number of images at once. For example: “Don’t caress, dove, with the dove; don’t get too fond, grass, with the blade of grass; don’t get used to the girl, well done.” That is, the reader already has three objects for comparison.

Such a one-sided increase in images suggests that parallelism gradually evolved, which gave the poet greater freedom of writing and the opportunity to demonstrate his analytical abilities.

That is why polynomial parallelism is called a relatively late phenomenon of folk poetic stylistics.

Single term parallelism

Single-term psychological parallelism is aimed at developing imagery and strengthening its role in the work. This technique looks like this: Imagine the usual two-term construction, where the first part talks about the stars and the month, and in the second they are compared to the bride and groom. Now let's remove the second part, leaving only the images of the stars and the month. Based on the content of the work, the reader will guess that we are talking about a girl and a boy, but there will be no mention of them in the text itself.

This omission is similar to formal parallelism, but unlike it, there will be no mention of the human characters who are meant. Therefore, here we can talk about the appearance of a symbol. Over the centuries, established allegorical images have appeared in folklore, which are identified with only one meaning. Such images are used in single-term parallelism.

For example, a falcon is identified with a young man, a groom. And often the works describe how a falcon fights with another bird, how he is kidnapped, how he leads the falcon down the aisle. There is no mention of people here, but we understand that we are talking about human relationships between a boy and a girl.

Parallelism negative

Let's proceed to the description of the last type, which can be psychological (given in the article). The negative constructions of our stylistic device are usually used to create riddles. For example: “It is roaring, not a bull, strong, not a rock.”

This construction is constructed as follows. First, the usual binomial or polynomial parallelism is created, and then the characterized image is removed from it and a negation is added. For example, instead of “roars like a bull” - “roars, not a bull.”

In Slavic folklore, this technique was especially popular and loved. Therefore, it can be found not only in riddles, but also in songs, fairy tales, etc. Later, it migrated into author’s literature, being used mainly in fairy tales and stylistic attempts to recreate folk poetry.

From a conceptual point of view, negative parallelism seems to distort the very formula of parallelism, which was created to bring images together, and not to separate them.

From folklore to author's literature

When did psychological parallelism migrate from folk poetry to classical literature?

This happened during the time of vagants, wandering musicians. Unlike their predecessors, they graduated from classical music and poetry schools, so they learned the basic image of a person, which was characterized by great abstraction. They lacked specificity and connection with reality. At the same time, like all traveling musicians, they were quite familiar with folklore. Therefore, they began to introduce its elements into their poetry. Comparisons with natural phenomena of the character’s character appeared, for example, winter and autumn - with sadness, and summer and spring - with fun. Of course, their experiments were rather primitive and far from perfect, but they laid the foundation for a new style, which later migrated to medieval literature.

Thus, in the 12th century, folk song techniques gradually began to intertwine with the classical tradition.

What is the function of similes, epithets and metaphors of psychological parallelism?

To begin with, it is worth saying that without metaphors and epithets there would be no parallelism itself, since this technique is completely based on them.

Both of these paths serve to transfer the attribute of one object to another. Actually, already in this function it is clear that without them it is impossible to compare nature with man. Metaphorical language is the writer’s main tool when creating parallelisms. And if we are talking about the function of these tropes, then it consists precisely in the transfer of characteristics.

Basic concepts (psychological parallelism) are associated with descriptions, so it is not surprising that metaphors and epithets occupy the main place among them. For example, let's take the epithet “the sun has set” and make parallelism out of it. We will succeed: just as the sun has set, so has the life of the clear falcon set. That is, the fading of the sun is compared to the fading of the life of a young man.

Psychological parallelism in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”

An excellent example of folk stylistic devices is the “Word”, since it itself is part of folklore. For example, let's take the main character Yaroslavna, since her image is associated with nature and is often compared with it. Let's take the episode of the heroine crying. One day she “at dawn calls with a lonely tap dance” - a parallelism between Yaroslavna and the bird.

Then you can remember the image of the narrator himself. His fingers, resting on the strings, are compared to ten falcons swooping down on doves.

And one more example: the retreat of the Galicians to the Don is described as “not a storm carried the falcons across the wide fields.” Here we see a pattern of negative parallelism.

A person assimilates images of the external world in the forms of his self-awareness; all the more so is primitive man, who has not yet developed the habit of abstract, non-figurative thinking, although the latter cannot do without a certain accompanying imagery. We involuntarily transfer to nature our self-awareness of life, expressed in movement, in the manifestation of force directed by the will; in those phenomena or objects in which movement was noticed, signs of energy, will, and life were once suspected. We call this worldview animistic; when applied to poetic style, and not to it alone, it would be more accurate to talk about parallelism. The point is not about identifying human life with natural life and not about comparison, which presupposes the consciousness of the separateness of the objects being compared, but about comparison on the basis of action, movement: a tree is frail, a girl bows, as in a Little Russian song.

<...>So parallelism rests on the comparison of subject and object in the category of movement, action, as a sign of volitional life activity. The subjects, naturally, were animals; they most closely resembled humans: here are the distant psychological foundations of the animal apologist; but the plants also pointed to the same similarity: they were born and bloomed, turned green and bowed from the force of the wind. The sun also seemed to move, rise, set, the wind drove the clouds, lightning rushed, the fire engulfed, devoured the branches, etc. The inorganic, motionless world was involuntarily drawn into this string of parallelisms: it also lived.

The further step in development consisted of a series of transfers attached to the main feature-movement. The sun moves and looks at the earth: the Hindus have the sun, the moon is an eye;<...>the earth grows into grass, forest into hair;<...>When Agni (fire), driven by the wind, spreads through the forest, it mows down the hair of the earth.<...>

The basis of such definitions, which reflected a naive, syncretic view of nature, enslaved by language and belief, is the transfer of a characteristic characteristic of one member of the parallel to another. These are metaphors of language; our vocabulary is replete with them, but we operate many of them unconsciously, without ever feeling their fresh imagery; when “the sun sets,” we do not separately imagine the act itself, undoubtedly alive in the imagination of ancient man: we need to renew it in order to feel it in relief. The language of poetry achieves this through definitions or partial characterization of a general act, here and here as applied to a person and his psyche.<...>

The accumulation of transferences as part of parallels depends 1) on the complex and nature of similar features that were matched to the main feature of movement and life; 2) from the correspondence of these signs with our understanding of life, manifesting will in action; 3) from contiguity with other objects that caused the same game of parallelism; 4) from the value and vitality of a phenomenon or object in relation to a person. The comparison, for example, the sun - the eye (Ind., Greek) suggests the sun as a living, active being; on this basis, transference is possible, based on the external similarity of the sun and the eye: both shine and see. The shape of the eye could give rise to other comparisons:<...>among the Malays, the sun is the eye of the day, the source is the eye of water; The Hindus have a blind well-well, covered with vegetation.<...>

When the analogy between the object that caused its play and a living subject was particularly pronounced, or several of them were established, causing a whole series of transfers, parallelism tended to the idea of ​​equation, if not identity. The bird moves, rushes across the sky, headlong descending to the ground; lightning rushes, falls, moves, lives: this is parallelism. In beliefs about the theft of heavenly fire (among the Hindus, in Australia, New Zealand, among North American savages, etc.), it is already heading towards identification: a bird brings fire to earth - lightning, lightning - a bird.

<...>The language of poetry continues the psychological process that began on prehistoric paths: it already uses the images of language and myth, their metaphors and symbols, but it also creates new ones in their likeness.

<...>I will take up the review of some of his poetic fort mules.

I’ll start with the simplest, folk poetic, with 1) binomial parallelism. Its general type is as follows: a picture of nature, next to it is the same from human life; they echo each other when there is a difference in objective content, consonances pass between them, clarifying what they have in common.<...>

<...>Oh, thin little hop

Hanged on the mud,

Young girl

I went into the Cossack.

<...>The apple was rolling from the bridge,

Katichka asked to leave the feast.

<...>Ay on the sea, on the blue, the wave breaks,

Ay to the field, to the clean, Arda is coming.

You can’t see the month because of a cloud, you can’t know the prince because of the boyars.

<...>The vegetable garden is blooming near our house, and grass is growing in the garden.

The fellow needs to mow the grass, the red maiden needs a fellow.

<...>A young, slender peach tree will bear a lot of fruit; the young wife goes to her future homeland, everything is well arranged in the house and chambers.

<...>A yellow lark lands on a marsh to drink the cool water;

a handsome fellow goes out at night to kiss beautiful girls.

<...>Before my door there is a wide steppe, There is no trace of the white hare;

My friends laughed and played with me, but now none of them are there.

We know the general scheme of psychological parallels: two motives are compared, one prompts the other, they clarify each other, and the advantage is on the side of the one that is filled with human content. Precisely intertwined variations of the same musical theme, mutually suggestive. Once you get used to this suggestiveness - and this will take centuries - and one topic will stand for another.

<...>The parallelism of a folk song rests mainly on the category of action; all other objective consonances remain only as part of the formula and often lose meaning outside of it. The stability of the entire parallel is achieved only in those cases: 1) when the main similarity, in the category of action, is matched with more or less striking features that support it or do not contradict it;

2) when the parallel caught your eye, became part of a custom or cult, was defined and strengthened for a long time. Then the parallel becomes a symbol, appearing independently in other combinations, as an indicator of a common noun. At the time of the dominance of marriage through abduction, the groom was represented in the features of a rapist, a kidnapper, obtaining a bride with a sword, a siege of a city, or a hunter, a bird of prey; in Latvian folk poetry, the bride and groom appear in paired images: an ax and a pine tree, a sable and an otter, a goat and a leaf, a wolf and a sheep. wind and rose, hunter and marten, or squirrel, hawk and partridge, etc. Our songs also belong to this category of performances: well done goat, cabbage girl, parsley; groom - archer, bride - marten, sable; matchmakers - merchants, catchers, bride - goods, white fish, or groom - falcon, bride - dove, swan, duck, quail; Serbian the groom is a catcher, the bride is a hitar catcher, etc. In this way, through selection and under the influence of everyday relationships that are difficult to follow, the parallel symbols of our wedding songs were deposited: the sun is the father, the month is the mother, or the month is the owner , the sun is the mistress, the stars are their children; either the month is the groom, the star is the bride; rue as a symbol of virginity; in Western folk poetry - a rose not removed from the stem, etc.; symbols are sometimes solid, sometimes wavering, gradually passing from the real meaning underlying them to a more general formula. In Russian wedding songs, viburnum is a girl, but the main meaning concerned the signs of virginity; the defining feature was the red color of its berries.

Viburnum colored the banks,

Alexandrinka made all her relatives happy,

The relatives are dancing, the mother is crying.

Yes, our Kalinka Machine,

I walked under the viburnum tree,

I trampled the viburnum with my feet,

I wiped my little feet with padol,

There she fell on Ivan too.

The red color of the viburnum evoked the image of heat: the viburnum is burning:

Neither frying nor burning viburnum, (var, torch)

I don’t feel sorry for Darychka’s crying.

Viburnum is the personified symbol of virginity.<...>Further; viburnum is a girl, the girl is taken, the viburnum is broken by the groom, which is in the spirit of the symbolism of trampling or breaking discussed above. So in one version: the viburnum boasts that no one will break it without the wind, without a storm, without scattered rain; the girls broke it; Dunichka boasted that no one would take her without beer, without honey, without a bitter burner; Vanichka took it.

So: viburnum - virginity, girl; it glows, and blooms, and makes noise, it is broken, it boasts. From the mass of alternating transfers and adaptations, something average is generalized, blurry in its contours, but more or less stable; Kalina is a girl.

Analysis of the previous song led us to the question of the development of folk-song parallelism; development, turning, in many cases, into distortion. Viburnum-girl: this follows in two terms of the parallel: wind, storm, rain-beer, honey, burner. The numerical correspondence is maintained, without an attempt to bring the two series into substantive correspondence. We are heading towards 2) formal parallelism. Let's consider its precedents.

One of them is the default in one of the members of the parallel of a feature that logically follows from its content in accordance with some feature of the second member. I’m talking about silence, not about distortion: what was silent was suggested at first by itself, until it was forgotten. Why don’t you, river, stir up and be indignant? is sung in one Russian song: there is no wind, no rain? Why, sister-friend, don’t you smile? I have nothing to be happy about, she replies, I don’t have a baby brother. (See the Latvian song: What’s the matter with you, river, why don’t you run? What’s the matter with you, girl, why don’t you sing? The river doesn’t flow, it’s clogged, the girl, orphan, doesn’t sing). The song then moves on to a common place, found in other combinations, and separately, to the motive that the father asks Christ to let him go to look at his daughter. Another song begins with the following chant: The river flows, it does not stir; further: the bride has many guests, but there is no one to bless her, she has neither father nor mother. The parallel is implied: the river does not stir, the bride sits silently, not cheerfully.

<...>A different result occurs when in one of the members of the parallel there was a formal-logical development of the image or concept expressed in it, while the other lagged behind. Young: green, strong; young and fun, and we still keep an eye on the equation; green-cheerful; but fun is also expressed by dancing - and next to the formula: in the forest the tree is not green, the mother’s son is not cheerful, another: in the forest the tree is without leaves, the mother has a daughter without dancing. We are already losing the guiding thread. Or: to frail (bend: about tree to tree): to love; instead of loving: getting married; or out of frailty - to bend over, and even in two: “The little hazel bent over in two, fell in love with the Cossack girl.”

Or another parallel: a thunderstorm, the phenomena of thunder and lightning evoked the idea of ​​a struggle, the roar of a thunderstorm-the roar of battle, threshing, where “sheaves are laid down with their heads,” or a feast at which the guests got drunk and died; from there the battle is a feast and, further, the brewing of beer.

<...>Content parallelism turns into rhythmic parallelism. the musical moment prevails, while intelligible relationships between the details of the parallels are weakened. The result is not an alternation of internally connected images, but a series of rhythmic lines without meaningful correspondence. The water is agitated to come ashore, the girl dresses up to please the groom, the forest grows to be tall, the friend grows to be big, she scratches her hair to be pretty (Chuvash).

Sometimes parallelism rests only on agreement or consonance of words in two parts of the parallel:

Beautiful Harasha,

Kalinka by the vine

Destroy him

Vanichka Zhanitsa is eating.<...>

<...>The language of folk poetry was filled with hieroglyphs, understandable not so much figuratively as musically, not so much representing as tuning; they must be remembered in order to understand the meaning.<...>This is decadence to the point of decadence; The decomposition of poetic language began a long time ago. But what is decomposition? After all, in language, the decomposition of sounds and inflections often leads to the victory of thought over the phonetic sign that connected it.<...>

The development of both members of the parallel could be varied, depending on the number of similar images and actions; it could stop at a few comparisons and develop into a whole series, into two parallel pictures, mutually supporting each other, suggesting one another. Thus, from the parallel of the chorus a song-variation on its main motive could emerge. When the hops climb along the tine, through the tree (the guy curls around the girl), when the hunter (groom, matchmaker) has tracked down the marten (bride), I imagine approximately how further development will go. Of course, it can also be directed in the sense of an antithesis: after all, the hunter may or may not overtake the marten. Several songs begin with a chorus: a pair of snow-white doves flies over a lake, a forest, a girl’s house, and she changes her mind: my betrothed dove will soon be with me! Or he won’t show up, and love will end; one option develops exactly this theme; the girl is in a sad mood; in the chorus of another variation, the pigeons are not even snow-white, but black, like coal. Development could have diversified in other ways. The river flows quietly and does not stir: the orphan bride has many guests, but there is no one to bless her; this motif, familiar to us, is analyzed as follows: the river became quiet because it was overgrown with vines, canoes floated on it; vines and canoes are “strangers,” the groom’s relatives. The song about rue, already mentioned by us, thus develops into a whole series of variations that emerge from one theme: removal, separation. This theme is given in the chorus: green rutonka, yellow color.<...>Either the girl herself wants to leave so as not to marry the disliked one, or the dear one asks her to leave with him, and this option develops into a rebuke: How can I go? After all, people will marvel. Or the bride won’t wait for the groom, the mother, she would write, but she doesn’t know how, she would go herself, but she doesn’t dare. Another development is adjacent to this: while waiting for the groom, the girl made wreaths for him at dawn, sewed khustkas by candlelight, and now she asks the dark night to help her, to illuminate the dawn. And the song goes within the previous one: I would write, but I don’t know how, I would send, but I don’t dare, I would go, but I’m afraid.

<...>The development of a song from the motive of the main parallel sometimes takes special forms. Portuguese double songs are known, actually one song performed by two choirs, each of which repeats verse by verse, only each with different rhymes.<...>

<...>The simplest form of binary parallelism gives me a reason to illuminate, and not only from the formal side, the structure and psychological foundations of the conspiracy.

Parallelism not only compares two actions, analyzing them mutually, but also suggests to one of them aspirations, fears, desires that extend to the other. The linden tree made noise all night and said to the leaf: there will be separation for us, there will be separation for our daughters and their womb.<...>; or: the cherry is dying at the root, so you, Marusya, bow to your mother, etc. The basic form of the conspiracy was the same two-fold, poetic or mixed with prose parts, and the psychological reasons were the same: a deity, a demonic force, was called upon to help a person; once upon a time this deity or demon performed a miraculous healing, saved or protected; some action of theirs was typified (as already in Sumerian spells), and in the second member of the parallel a person appeared, thirsting for the same miracle, salvation, repetition of the same supernatural act. Of course, this duality was subject to changes; in the second member, the epic outline gave way to the lyrical moment of prayer, but the imagery was supplemented by a ritual that accompanied the actual action of pronouncing the incantatory formula.<...>

<...>I will only touch upon in passing the phenomenon of 3) polynomial parallelism, developed from two-term parallelism by one-sided accumulation of parallels, obtained not from one object, but from several similar ones. In the two-term formula, there is only one explanation: the tree bends to the tree, the young man clings to his sweetheart, this formula can vary in variations of the same song: The sun rolled out not red (or rather, rolled up) - My husband fell ill;

instead of: How the oak tree staggers in the polepole, how my dear one struggles; or: How the blue, flammable stone flares up, and my dear friend is extinguished. - A numerous formula brings these parallels together, multiplies the explanations and, together, the materials of analysis, as if opening up the possibility of choice:

Don't let the grass tangle with the blade of grass,

Do not caress the dove with the dove,

Don't get used to the girl.

Not two, but three kinds of images, united by the concept of twisting, bringing together. So<...>The pine tree is frail from the wind, the jackdaw sitting on it is frail, and I am also frail, sad, because I am far from my family. Such a one-sided multiplication of objects in one part of the parallel indicates greater freedom of movement in its composition: parallelism became a stylistic and analytical device, and this should have led to a decrease in its imagery, to displacements and transfers of all kinds.

<...>If our explanation is correct, then numerous parallelism belongs to the late phenomena of folk poetic stylistics; it gives the opportunity to choose, affectivity gives way to analysis; this is the same sign as the accumulation of epithets or comparisons in Homer's poems, like any pleonasm that dwells on the particulars of the situation. Only a calmed feeling analyzes itself in this way; but here is also the source of song and artistic loces communis. In one Northern Russian story, a recruit’s wife wants to go to the forest and mountains and to the blue sea to get rid of the grief; pictures of forests, mountains, and seas surround her, but everything is colored by her sadness; There is no shortage of sadness, and the affect is expanding in the descriptions.

<…>We said that numerous parallelism tends to destroy imagery; 4) mononomial identifies and develops it, which determines its role in the isolation of certain stylistic formations. The simplest type of monomiality is the case when one of the terms of the parallel is silent, and the other is its indicator; in a parallel, significant interest is given to an action from human life, which is illustrated by a rapprochement with some natural act, then the last member of the parallel stands for the whole.

The following Little Russian song represents a complete binary parallel: zorya (star)-month = well done girl (bride - groom):

a) Sala the dawn until the month:

Oh, good-bye, comrade,

Don't come and rush me,

Let's get rid of both at once.

Let us sanctify heaven and earth...

b) Slala Marya to Ivanka;

Oh Ivanka, my narrowing,

Don't give in to the posad,

Rush me to the landing, etc.

Let's discard the second part of the song (b), and the habit of well-known comparisons will suggest the bride and groom instead of the month and the star. So in the following Serbian and Latvian songs, the peacock leads the peahen, the falcon leads the falcon (bride-groom), the linden tree (bends) to the oak tree (like a fellow to a girl):

<...>Decorate the linden tree, mother,

Which is in the middle of your yard;

I saw in strangers

Painted oak (Latvian).

In an Estonian wedding song, timed to coincide with the moment when the bride is hidden from the groom, and he is looking for her, it is sung about a bird, a duck that has gone into the bushes; but this duck “put on her shoes.” -Either: the sun has set: the husband has died; Wed Olonets lament:

The great desire rolled into the waters, desire, into the deep, into the wild dark forests, and into the dense forests, beyond the mountains it, desire, beyond the crowd.

In a Moravian song, a girl complains that they planted violets in the garden, sparrows flew in at night, boys came, pecked everything, trampled on it; the parallel to the familiar trampling symbol is silent. Particularly interesting in our sense are the songs from Annam; a one-term parallel, which is immediately understood allegorically: “I go to the betel plantations and ask absentmindedly: are the pomegranates, pears and brown apples ripe” (this means: ask the neighbors if there is a girl of marriageable age in such and such a house); “I would like to pick a fruit from this lemon tree, but I’m afraid of thorns” (implies a suitor who is afraid of refusal).

<...>It was indicated above in what ways, from the convergences on which binary parallelism is built, those that we call “symbols” are selected and strengthened; their closest source were short one-term formulas in which the linden tree sought to reach the oak tree, the falcon led the falcon with it, etc. They taught them to constant identification, brought up in the age-old song tradition; This element of legend distinguishes a symbol from an artificially selected allegorical image: the latter may be accurate, but is not extensible for new suggestiveness, because it does not rest on the basis of those consonances of nature and man on which folk-poetic parallelism is built. When these consonances appear, or when the allegorical formula passes into the circulation of folk legend, it can approach the life of the symbol; examples are offered by the history of Christian symbolism.

The symbol is extensible, just as the word is extensible for new revelations of thought. The falcon rushes at the bird and kidnaps it, but from another, silent member of the parallel, the rays of human relations fall onto the animal image, and the falcon leads the falcon to the wedding; in the Russian song the falcon is clear - the groom flies to the bride, sits on the window, “on the oak chin”; in the Moravian, he flew under the girl’s window, wounded, chopped up: this is her darling. The young falcon is groomed, cleaned up, and the parallelism is reflected in its fantastic decoration: in the Little Russian Duma the young falcon was taken into captivity; they entangled him there in silver shackles, and hung expensive pearls near his eyes. The old falcon found out about this, “the Tsar-City poured out upon the city,” “howled and howled pitifully.” The falcon began to twist, the Turks removed his fetters and pearls to disperse his melancholy; and the old falcon took him on his wings and raised him to a height: it is better for us to fly across the field than to live in captivity. Falcon - Cossack, captivity - Turkish; the correspondence is not expressed, but it is implied; fetters were put on the falcon; they are silver, but you can’t fly away with them. A similar image is expressed in the double parallelism of one wedding song from the Pinsk region: Why do you, falcon, fly low? - My wings are lined with silk, my legs are lined with gold. - Why did you arrive late, Yasya? - Father is careless, he equipped his squad late.

<...>The rose provides an even more striking example of the extensibility of the symbol, responding to the broadest demands of suggestiveness. The southern flower was in the classical world a symbol of spring and love and death, rising in the spring to new life; it was dedicated to Aphrodite, and it was also used to crown the tombs of the dead on funeral days.

In Christian Europe, the last relationships were forgotten, or survived in the form of fragments, superstitions, persecuted by the church: our mermaids (the souls of the dead, who were once remembered as a sacrifice of roses) and the name of Pentecost. But the rose, as a symbol of love, began to take root in Western folk poetry, penetrating in parts into Russian song, invading the cherished symbolism of rue and viburnum. But a new development took place, perhaps following in the footsteps of the classical myth about the rose that blossomed from the blood of Aphrodite’s favorite, Adonis: the rose became a symbol of martyrdom, the blood shed by the Savior on the cross; it begins to serve the allegories of Christian poetry and art, fills lives, blooms on the bodies of saints. The Virgin Mary is surrounded by roses, she herself was conceived from a rose, a rose bush from which a bird flew out - Christ. So in German, West Slavic and South Russian songs that came from them. The symbolism expands, and the symbol of Aphrodite blossoms in Dante into a giant heavenly rose, the petals of which are holy, the holy host of Christ.

Let us return once again to the fate of single-term parallelism. Standing out from the folk formula, he stands for the omitted parallel, sometimes mixing with it - is it under the influence of passion, the habit of paired, corresponding images, or out of oblivion? When the wedding song spoke about the yellow rue flower, a symbol of virginity, alienation, separation, and then about the path, the images were rallied into a syncretic formula: “a distant path, zhovtsh blossoms.”

But I mean a different kind of confusion, when the parallel formula is imbued not only with the personal content of the omitted one, but also with its everyday, real relationships. A falcon in captivity is a Cossack in captivity; he leads the falcon, the peacock leads the peacock to the wedding.

<...>A poetic symbol becomes a poetic metaphor; it explains the usual technique in folk songs, inherited by artistic poetry: they turn to a flower, a rose, a stream, but the development goes further in the ruts of human feeling, the rose blooms for you, it answers you or you wait for it to respond.

<...>The formula of the fable is included in the same historical perspective and is subject to the same assessment: it is based on the ancient animistic comparison of animal and human life, but there is no need to go back to the zoological fairy tale and myth in order to explain to ourselves the origin of the scheme, to which we also naturally suggest a human parallel, just as we do not require commentary on the image of a rose - a girl.

So: a poetic metaphor is a single-term parallel formula into which some images and relationships of the silent member of the parallel are transferred. This definition indicates its place in the chronology of poetic parallelism<...>. A well-known type of riddle rests on a single-term parallelism, and the images of a deliberately silent member of the parallel, which has to be guessed, are sometimes transferred to the one that constitutes the riddle.

The riddle built on switching off turns us to one more type of parallelism that remains for us to analyze: 4) negative parallelism. “Strong is not a rock, roars not a bull,” says the Vedas; this can serve as an example of the same construction of parallelism, especially popular in Slavic folk poetry. The principle is this: a binomial or polynomial formula is put forward, but one or some of them are eliminated in order to allow attention to focus on the one to which the negation does not extend. The formula begins with a negation, or with a position, which is often introduced with a question mark.

It is not the white birch tree that bends down,

The not-tottering aspen began to make noise,

The good fellow is killed by the pain.

Like a white birch tree intertwined with a linden tree,

How, at the age of fifteen, a girl got used to a young man.

It’s not the birch tree that is staggering,

Not curly curls,

How it staggers and twists,

Your young wife.

<...>Negative parallelism is found in Lithuanian and Modern Greek songs, less often in German; in Little Russian it is less developed than in Great Russian. I distinguish from it those formulas where the negation falls not on the object or action, but on the quantitative or qualitative determinations accompanying them: not so much, not so, etc. So in the Iliad, XIV, 394, but in the form of comparison: with such The wave raised on the sea by a strong blow of the north wind does not roar with rage, hitting the rocky shore; The flame does not howl like that, approaching with hissing tongues of fire; not a hurricane, ... how loudly the voices of the Trojans and Danae were heard when, with a terrible cry, they raged against each other. Or in the VII sestina of Petrarch:

“There are not so many animals hidden in the depths of the sea, not so many stars that a clear night sees above the circle of the month, not so many birds are found in the forest, not so many grains in a wet meadow, but how many thoughts come to me every evening,” etc.

One can imagine the reduction of a two- or numerous negative formula into a single-term one, although the negation should have made it difficult to suggest the silent member of the parallel: the winds would not come, but they would blow (-there would be no boyars, but they would come in large numbers); or in “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: it was not the storm that carried the falcons across the wide fields (the herds to flee to the Great Don). - We have seen examples of a negative one-term formula in riddles.

The popularity of this stylistic device in Slavic folk poetry gave rise to some generalizations that will have to be limited, if not eliminated. In negative parallelism they saw something folk or racial, Slavic, in which the special, elegiac cast of Slavic lyricism was typically expressed. The appearance of this formula in other folk lyrics brings this explanation within its proper boundaries; One can only talk about the greater spread of the formula on the basis of Slavic songs, which together raises the question of the reasons for this popularity. Psychologically, a negative formula can be looked at as a way out of parallelism, the positive scheme of which it presupposes has been established. It brings actions and images closer together, limiting themselves to their pairing or accumulating comparisons: either the tree is frail, or the young man is sad; the negative formula emphasizes one from two possibilities: it is not the tree that is sickly, but the young man who is sad; she affirms, denying, eliminating duality, isolating the individual. This is, as it were, a feat of consciousness emerging from the vagueness of floating impressions to the affirmation of the individual; , is highlighted, and if it is attracted again, then as a reminder that does not imply unity, as a comparison. The process took place in the following sequence of formulas: man: not a tree, but a man, like a tree. On the basis of negative parallelism, the last selection has not yet taken place. completely: the adjacent image still hovers somewhere nearby, apparently eliminated, but still evoking consonance. It is clear that the elegiac feeling has found a means of expression that corresponds to it in the negative formula; you are amazed by something, unexpectedly, sadly, you can’t believe your eyes: it’s not what it seems to you, but something else, you are ready to reassure yourself with the illusion of similarity, but reality hits your eyes, self-delusion only intensified the blow, and you eliminate it with pain : It’s not the birch tree that’s twisting, it’s your young wife that’s twisting and twisting!

I do not claim that the negative formula was developed in the sphere of such sentiments, but it could have been nurtured and generalized in it. The alternation of positive parallelism, with its transparent duality, and negative, with its wavering, eliminating affirmation, gives folk lyricism a special, vague coloring. The comparison is not so suggestive, but it is positive.

The importance of comparison in the development of psychological parallelism was indicated above.

<...>Comparison has not only taken possession of the stock of connections and symbols developed by the previous history of parallelism, but also develops along the paths indicated by it; old material has merged into a new form, other parallels fit into the comparison, and vice versa, there are also transitional types.

<...>Expression of our epics; “The bowstring sang” is nothing more than the deposition of a parallel: a man sings; the bowstring rings and sings. This image could also be expressed by comparison, for example in the Rig Veda: the bowstring whispers, speaks like a maiden; as if a goddess cooed from a bow string stretched on a bow (see ibid.: an arrow like a bird, its tooth like the tooth of a wild beast); the bows chirp like cranes in a nest.

<...>In the Olonets lamentation, the widow cries like a cuckoo, but the comparison is interspersed with an image that grew out of the parallel; widow - cuckoo.

How poor I am, a tough little head, I will yearn under the little window, I will grieve, grieving, under the window, Like an unfortunate coconut in a damp forest... I sit on a dry tree, I sit on a bitter tree and on an aspen tree.

Numerous parallelism corresponds to the same form of developed comparison (for example, in Homer, in the Anglo-Saxon epic, etc.), with the difference that, with the consciousness of the act itself, the development is more syntactically cohesive, and personal consciousness goes beyond the boundaries of the traditional material of parallels to new connections, to a new understanding of images and virtuosity of descriptions that are self-sufficient.<...>

Metaphor and comparison gave content to some groups of epithets; with them we went through the entire circle of development of psychological parallelism, to what extent it determined the material of our poetic vocabulary and its images. Not everything that was once alive and young has been preserved in its former brightness; our poetic language often gives the impression of detritus, phrases and epithets have faded, just as a word fades, the imagery of which is lost with an abstract understanding of its objective content.

<...>So: metaphorical new formations and age-old metaphors developed in a new way. The vitality of the latter, or their renewal in the circulation of poetry, depends on the capacity in relation to new surveys of feeling, directed by broad educational and social trends.<...>Such is the capacity of symbols: they are a form that serves to express the unknowable; they change insofar as positive sciences determine and develop our understanding of the mysterious, but they also die out, I will add, when living exchange ceases between one and the other.

<...>In such a search for consonances, the search for man in nature, there is something passionate, pathetic, which characterizes the poet and has characterized, in different forms of expression, entire periods of social and poetic development. An elegiac fascination with the beauties of nature has occurred more than once in history: at the border of the ancient and new worlds, among medieval mystics, among Petrarch, Rousseau and the romantics. Francis of Assisi seemed to see divine love spilled everywhere in nature; medieval allegorism, which expected in all creation correspondence and coincidence with the human world, gave a scholastic turn to the same system of thoughts; Petrarch was looking for the same consonances, but came across contradictions: they lay within himself. Such a mood is understandable in times of hesitation and doubt, when faith in the strength of the social and religious order has weakened and the thirst for something different, better is felt more strongly. Then scientific thought takes new paths, trying to establish a balance between faith and knowledge, but the old parallelism also plays out, looking in nature, in its images, for an answer to the shortcomings of spiritual life, for consonance with it.

In poetry, this leads to a renewal of imagery, the landscape - the scenery is filled with human content. This is the same mental process that once answered the first, timid requests of thought; the same attempt to become closer to nature, to project oneself in its hiding place, to move it into one’s consciousness; and often the same result: not knowledge, but poetry.

See parallelism (2)

• - Similar evolutionary development of different species after separation from a common ancestor, which had the rudiments of anatomical features that led to this...

  Physical Anthropology. Illustrated explanatory dictionary

• - ...

  Literary encyclopedia

• - PARALLELISM - such an arrangement of individual words or sentences in which one verbal group contains images, thoughts, etc., corresponding to another group, and both of these groups...

  Dictionary of literary terms

• - similar syntactic construction of two sentences or other text fragments. Category: language. Visual and expressive means Gender: repetition Example: The waves splash in the blue sea, The stars sparkle in the blue sky.....

  Terminological dictionary-thesaurus on literary criticism

• - 1) Identical or similar arrangement of speech elements in adjacent parts of the text, which, when correlated, create a single poetic image: Waves splash in the blue sea. The stars shine in the blue sky A.S. Pushkin...

  Dictionary of literary terms

• - PARALLELISM - a compositional technique that emphasizes the structural connection of two or three elements of style in a work of art...

  Poetic dictionary

• - English parallelism; German Parallelismus. 1. The constant relationship and concomitance of two phenomena, actions. 2. Complete match in parts; repetition, duplication...

  Encyclopedia of Sociology

• - - movement of two or more voices polyphonic polyphonic. or homophonic music. fabrics while maintaining the same interval or intervals between them, as well as certain forms of movement of voices in one direction...

  Music Encyclopedia

• - simultaneous performance of identical work or functions in relation to the same objects by different levels or levels of management...

  Large economic dictionary

• - I Parallelism paraphilia, parallel development, the principle of evolution of groups of organisms, which consists in their independent acquisition of similar structural features based on features inherited from common...

  Great Soviet Encyclopedia

• - in poetics, identical or similar arrangement of speech elements in adjacent parts of the text, which, when correlated, create a single poetic image...

  Modern encyclopedia

• - in poetics - identical or similar arrangement of speech elements in adjacent parts of the text, which, when correlated, create a single poetic image...

  Large encyclopedic dictionary

• - identical syntactic construction of neighboring sentences, statements or segments...

  Explanatory translation dictionary

• - Identical syntactic construction of adjacent sentences or segments of speech. Young people are treasured everywhere, old people are respected everywhere. Your mind is as deep as the sea. Your spirit is high, that thieves...

  Dictionary of linguistic terms

• - PARALLELISM, huh, husband. Concomitance of parallel phenomena, actions, parallelism. P. lines. P. at work...

  Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

• - PARALLELISM, parallelism, man. . 1. units only Equal spacing of lines and planes from each other throughout. 2. portable, units only The constant correlation and concomitance of two phenomena, actions...

  Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

"psychological parallelism" in books

Parallelism

Parallelism