History of Russian literature X — XVII centuries. Study

ABC about a naked and poor man

A z esmi naked and barefoot, hungry and cold, eat infrequently.

God knows my soul that I don't have a penny for my soul.

Vsdait the whole world, that I have nowhere to take and there is nothing to buy.

Told me kind person in Moscow, he promised me a loan of money, and I came to him the next morning, and he refused me; but he laughed at me for no good reason, and I will cry that laugh to him: what was there to promise, if not.

If only he would remember his word and give me money, and I came to him, and he refused me.

There are a lot of things in people, but they won’t let us, but they themselves will die.

I live, good fellow, I haven’t eaten all day, and I have nothing to eat.

Yawning on my belly from the great malnourished, the walkers of the lips are dead, and I have nothing to eat.

My land is empty, all overgrown with grass;

And my belly wasted on the other sides of the ox-hour, and my poverty, Golenkov, was exhausted.

How can I, poor and tribal, live and where can I get away from dashing people, from unkind people?

Rich people drink and eat, but they don’t offer naked people, but they themselves don’t recognize that even the rich are dying.

With my mind, I would see a lot in my place, both colored dresses and money, but I have nowhere to take, to lie, to steal not a hochitsa.

Why is my stomach disgraced? Rays are strange, accept death, lowered to walk like a freak.

Woe to me! Rich people drink and eat, but they don’t know that they themselves will die, but they won’t give them to the naked.

I don’t find peace for myself, I don’t find my poverty, I break my bast shoes, but I won’t get any good.

My mind cannot be touched, my stomach cannot be found in its poverty, everyone has risen up against me, wanting to immerse me, a good fellow, but God will not give out - and the pig cannot be eaten.

I don’t know my hill how to live and how to earn my living.

My stomach is hard, and my heart has disappeared from the turmoil and cannot be touched.

A great misfortune has happened to me, I walk in poverty, not eating all day; and won't let me eat. Alas for me, poor, alas, without a tribe, where can I lay my head from a child’s dashing people?

Ferezis were kind to me, but people removed the lichia for debt.

He was buried from debtors, but he was not buried: bailiffs are sent, put on the right, put on the legs, but I have nowhere to take, and there is no one to buy the merchant.

My father and mother left me their estate, but dashing people took possession of everything. Oh my trouble!

My house was intact, but God did not order to live and own. I didn’t want to be someone else’s, it didn’t work out in my own way, how can I, the poor, hunt?

I would go to the city and run away to a single-row cloth, but I don’t have money, but I don’t believe in debt, what should I do?

I would flaunt and walk cleanly and well, but not in anything. Good for me!

I would fidget around the bench in the old row row.

Erychitsa on the belly from the great malnourished, would eat meat, but get stuck in the teeth. It was to go to visit, but nobody calls.

He's hitting his belly with the great undernourished, he doesn't want to play, he didn't have dinner in the evening, he didn't have breakfast in the morning, he didn't have dinner today.

Yuryl would have played, but I'm afraid of God, and behold the fear of sin and people litter. if he were rich, then he would not know people, and in evil days he would not know people either.

I would think well and dress up, but there’s nothing for me. People do not know how to stick to this poverty, and with it an identity. Dogs don’t bark at Milov, bite Postylov, drag him out of the yard. Foma-priest is stupid, he does not know sin, but he cannot tell people, thank him for that and God save him.

The text (in the list of 1663) is published according to the publication: Adrianov-Peretz V.P. Russian democratic satire of the 17th century. Ed. 2nd, add. M., 1977, p. 229-231 ("Additions" prepared by N. S. Demkova), 149-150, 175-181, 236-237 (comments).

Chapter 8. LITERATURE OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE 17TH CENTURY

6. Democratic satire and comic literature

In the 17th century a whole layer of works independent of official writing appeared, for which the term “democratic satire” was assigned in literary criticism (“The Tale of Yersh Ershovich”, “The Tale of Priest Sava”, “Kalyazinsky Petition”, “The ABC of a Naked and Poor Man”, “The Tale of about Thomas and Yerem", "Service to the tavern", "The Tale of the Hen and the Fox", "The Tale of Luxurious Life and Joy", etc.). These works are written both in prose, often rhythmized, and in verse. They are closely related to folklore both in terms of their artistic specificity and the way they exist. Monuments attributed to democratic satire are mostly anonymous. Their texts are mobile, variable, that is, they have many options. Their plots are mostly known both in writing and in oral tradition. "The Tale of Ersh Ershovich". Democratic satire is filled with the spirit of social protest. Many of the works of this circle directly denounce the feudal order and the church. "The Tale of Ersh Ershovich", which arose in the first decades of the 17th century. (in the first edition of the story, the action is dated to 1596), tells about the litigation of Ruff with Leshch and Golovl. Leshch and Golovl, “residents of Lake Rostov”, complain to the court about “Ruff against Ershov’s son, for a bristle, for a snitch, for a thief for a robber, for a sneak for a deceiver ... for a badly unkind person.” Ruff asked them to "live and feed for a short time" in Lake Rostov. The simple-hearted Bream and Golovl believed Ruff, let him into the lake, and he bred there and "took possession of the lake by violence." Further, in the form of a parody of the "court case", the tricks and lewdness of Ruff, the "age-old deceiver" and "guided thief", are narrated. In the end, the judges recognize that Bream is right "with comrades" and give them Ruff's head. But even here Ruff managed to avoid punishment: “she turned her tail to Bream, and he himself began to say: “If they gave me to you with my head, and you, Bream and comrade, swallow me from the tail.” And Bream, seeing Yershev's slyness, thought Ruff to swallow from his head, sometimes bony kind, and from his tail he set bristles that fierce horns or arrows cannot be swallowed in any way. And they set Ruff free.” Bream and Golovl call themselves "peasants", and Ruff, as it turns out in court, from "children of boyars, petty boyars called Vandyshevs" (vandyshi is the collective name for small fish). From the second half of the 16th century, that is, during the formation of the local system, the violence of landowners against peasants became the norm. It is this situation, when the “son of the boyars” deceives and takes land from the peasants by deceit and violence, that is reflected in the “Tale of Yersh Yershovich”. It also reflects the impunity of rapists, who are not afraid of even a guilty verdict. "The Tale of Priest Sava" . Church life in the 1640s-1650s depicted in the "Tale of the Priest Sava", in which the verse is used. At that time in Rus' there were no special schools for future priests. Peasants and townspeople chose candidates from among themselves, “proteges”, for “appointment” to church positions. For training and initiation into the clergy, they were sent to cities that were diocesan centers, and "attached" to local priests. Those, needless to say, pushed around the “proteges”, extorted money and other promises from them, often gave them a “delivered letter” without teaching, for a bribe. In the middle of the XVII century. Patriarch Joseph ordered to be "placed" only in Moscow. Thus, the Moscow priests received additional opportunities for enrichment. The title character of The Tale of Priest Sava is the parish priest of the Church of Kozma and Damian in Zamoskvoretskaya Kadashevskaya Sloboda. "He ... prowls the square, Looks for henchmen And talks a lot with them, Beckons to him across the river." It is unlikely that the real prototype of this character really bore the name Savva. This name is a kind of satirical, comic pseudonym, because in old Russian jokes, in proverbs and sayings, a constant rhyme was assigned to many names, which created a comic effect. Savva was accompanied by “bad fame”, “they drank at Fili, but they beat Fili”, the word “stealed” was consonant with the name Spirya, Fedos “loved bringing” (gifts). The sad life of the “proteges”, disenfranchised and downtrodden, is depicted in the “Tale” with the blackest colors: “In those places he keeps the proteges, How they will spend all the money, And sends others home And takes the handwriting on them, So that they again crawl to Moscow, And bring wine to Sava's ass. And although someone will bring him honey, He will gladly take it, And he loves to drink, but when he drinks everything, And he himself will growl at them: Don’t go for a walk with me, Go water the cabbage ... He sends proteges to serve Mass, And he lies in bed." One of these "proteges", driven to the extreme, took up the pen to take revenge on the hated priest. The satirical element is very strong in this work: laughter is directed primarily at the title character. However, the texts that make up the layer of democratic satire are characterized by another type of laughter, laughter directed “at oneself”. In accordance with the specifics of medieval laughter, not only the object, but also the subject of the narration is ridiculed, irony turns into auto-irony, it extends to both readers and the author himself, laughter is directed to the laughers themselves. A kind of aesthetic counterbalance to the official culture with its pious, deliberately serious "spiritual usefulness" is being created, a literary "world inside out", a comical "anti-world" is being created. "Kalyazinskaya petition". The characters inhabiting the laughter anti-world live according to special laws. If these are monks, then they “turn inside out” the strict monastic charter, which prescribed the steadfast observance of fasts and attendance at church services, labors and vigils. Such is the "Kalyazin petition", which is a ludicrous complaint of the monks of the Trinity Kalyazin Monastery (on the left bank of the Volga, against the city of Kalyazin), addressed to the Archbishop of Tver and Kashinsky Simeon (1676-1681). They complain about their Archimandrite Gabriel (1681), who "annoys" them. The archimandrite, they complain, “ordered ... to wake up our brother, orders to go to church often. And we, your pilgrims, at that time were sitting in our cells without trousers full of beer.” Further, a folklore picture of a “sorrowless monastery” is drawn, in which the blacks go out and devour themselves, instead of strictly fulfilling their monastic duties. Here, complainers-drunkards and the sanctimonious life of Russian monasteries are ridiculed. "A Tale of Luxurious Life and Joy". The utopian ideal of "the world inside out" has nothing to do with Christ's kingdom on earth or in heaven. This is a dream of an unprecedented country, where everything is plentiful and everything is available to everyone. Such a fabulous paradise of gluttons and drunkards is described in “The Tale of a Luxurious Life and Joy” (it was preserved in a single, moreover, rather late list): “Yes, there is a lake there, not good big, full of double wine. And whoever wants - drink, do not be afraid, although suddenly two cups. Yes, there is a honey pond right there. And then everyone, having come, although with a ladle or a stave (a deep wooden dish), a fit or bitterness, God help, get drunk. Yes, close to that whole swamp of beer. And that every one, having come, drink and pour on his head, my horse, and bathe himself, and he won’t slander them, he won’t say a word. In the European perspective, this layer of monuments represents the Russian version of the laughter culture of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque, to which Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, Erasmus of Rotterdam's Praise of Folly and Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus belong. It is the “Legend of a luxurious life and fun” that proves that there were connecting links between the European and Russian traditions. “And the direct road to tovo fun,” the Tale says, “from Krakow to Arshava and Mozovsha, and from there to Riga and Livland, from there to Kiev and Podolesk, from there to Stekolnya (Stockholm) and Korela, from there to Yuryev and to Brest, from there to Bykhov and Chernigov, to Pereyaslavl and Cherkasskaya, to Chigirin and Kafimskaya. As you can see, the path-fiction winds through Lesser and Greater Poland, through Sweden and Livonia, through many Ukrainian cities, etc., but does not enter Russia. This path begins in Krakow, and Krakow and Lesser Poland in general in the 17th century. were the focus of Polish comic literature: it was created there, it was printed there. Among the Polish and Ukrainian works of this era, we find many satirical "dystopias" similar to "The Tale of Luxurious Life and Fun", depicting the country of "fried pigeons", the longed-for kingdom of gluttons and drunkards. Characters of Russian laughter Literature XVII V. akin to German Eilenspiegel, Polish Sovizdzhal, Czech Frante, but at the same time very different from them. In the European tradition, the rule applies: “funny means not scary.” In Russian culture, laughter is inextricably linked with tears, "funny means scary." This is a bitter laugh. Russian characters are pessimists who have lost all hope for happiness. Such is the collective hero, a nameless fellow, who most accurately and fully expressed his attitude to the world in The ABC of a Naked and Poor Man. "The ABC of a Naked and Poor Man". This work, which arose no later than the middle of the 17th century, has come down to us in several editions that are very different from each other, but they are all built according to the same scheme: in alphabetical order, from “az” to “izhitsa”, replicas of the nameless hero are placed, which Together they form a kind of monologue. This form was not chosen by chance. Since ancient times, the alphabet has been considered a model of the world: individual letters reflected individual elements of the universe, and a set of letters - the whole world as a whole. "The ABC of a Naked and Poor Man" also offered the reader a brief but comprehensive picture of the world, but a picture of the "wrong side", caricature, both funny and bitter. The look of the hero of the "ABC" is the look of an outcast, offended by life. He has no place in ancient Russian society with its orderly class and isolation. “I am hungry and cold, and naked and barefoot ... I yawn with my mouth, don’t scratch all day, and my lips are dead ... People, I see that they live richly, but they don’t give us anything naked, the devil knows where and what money is being saved for.” The hero who utters this "alphabetical monologue" is pierced from the world of the well-fed and does not hope to penetrate there: "Nudity and barefoot - that is my beauty." "The Tale of Thomas and Yerema" . Hopelessness is permeated with the comic "The Tale of Thomas and Yerema", a fable about two brothers-losers. Here, the most common technique in medieval art, contrast, is parodied. When, for example, an ascetic was opposed to a sinner, they were depicted in only two colors, black and white, without transitions or halftones. Thomas and Yerema are also opposed to one another, but this is an imaginary opposition, a pseudo-contrast, a caricature of the contrast. The author uses the adversative union "a", but connects them not with antonyms, but with synonyms. Here he gives portraits of two brothers: "Yerema was crooked, and Thomas with a walleye, Yerema was bald, and Thomas was mangy." Here they go to mass: "Yerema sang, and Foma yelled." Here the sexton drives them out of the church: "Yerema left, and Foma ran away." It is famously for the brothers to live in this world, they have no luck in anything. They drove them out of the church, they are also driven out of the feast: "Yerema screams, and Thomas screeches." Ridiculously they lived, absurdly and died: "Yerema fell into the water, Thomas to the bottom." One of the lists of the story ends with a feigned accusatory exclamation: “To both stubborn fools, laughter and shame!” This maxim, this accusation of "stupidity" should by no means be taken at face value. It must be remembered that Old Russian laughter is universal, that in the culture of laughter the boundary between the author and the hero, between the narrator and the characters, between the mocker and the ridiculed is unsteady and arbitrary. Therefore, the recognition of Thomas and Yerema as "stubborn fools" is also the recognition of universal, including their own, "stupidity." Such confessions in comic texts of the 17th century. more than enough. “Your son beats with his forehead, given by God, and a fool of a long time ago,” the author of one heavenly message is recommended. This is a feigned self-disclosure and self-abasement, a “mask of stupidity”, a buffoonish grimace, because the “naked and poor” outcast of comic literature chooses the role of a jester. He turns his social “nudity” into jester's nakedness, and the poor man's rags into a masquerade, jester's costume. In the “ABC of a Naked and Poor Man” we read: “Ferizs (or feryazis, old clothes without a collar, with long sleeves) were good dressed, and the strings were long lace, and those dashing people pulled off a debt, and I was completely naked ". Bast and matting are the eternal signs of a clownish dress. Consequently, the hero here takes the pose of a jester. And it is no coincidence that this remark is placed under the letter "fert": "fert" was considered a kind of pictogram depicting a poseur, a dandy, a puffy, absurd person, standing sideways, as if showing off. In the language of the 17th century word fool, in particular, meant jester. In the palace staff of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich there were fools-jesters, and in Tsarina Maria Ilyinichna Miloslavskaya there were foolish jokers, dwarfs and dwarfs who amused the royal family. The basic paradox of the clownish philosophy says that the world is completely populated by fools, and among them the biggest fool is the one who does not realize that he is a fool. It follows from this that in the world of fools, the only genuine sage is the jester who plays the fool, pretends to be a fool. Therefore, ridicule of the world is a kind of worldview (and not just an artistic device) that has grown out of opposing one's own bitter experience to the "spiritual" official culture. Those in power insistently repeat that order prevails in the world. However, it is obvious to any unprejudiced observer that between state laws, between Christian commandments and everyday practice, there is an insurmountable, eternal discord, that not order, but absurdity reigns in the world. Having recognized reality as absurd, comic literature accordingly builds artistic reality according to the laws of the absurd. This is evident in the style of comic literature. Her favorite stylistic device is an oxymoron and an oxymoron combination of phrases (a combination of either words that are opposite in meaning or sentences with an opposite meaning). So, in laughter texts, the deaf are invited to “listen amusingly”, the armless - “jump into the harp”, the legless - “jump”. "Healer for foreigners". The combination of the incompatible is brought to deliberate absurdity, to "nonsense articles," as the author of the clownish "Medicine for Foreigners" put it. Medical books were called curative books (preserved from the 16th century). The Medical Book for Foreigners parodies these books. The title of this work says that it was "issued from the Russian people, how to treat foreigners." This is a laughable absurdity: “When someone has diarrhea, take 3 drops of girl’s milk, 16 thick bear’s roars, 4 arshins of thick eagle flying, 6 spools of large cat’s grunts, half a pound of chicken’s high voice, water jet ... grab it without water and divide ... with a long piece for half a tithe. Laughter literature does not invent new genres - it parodies ready-made compositions, tested in folklore and writing, turning them inside out. In order to perceive a parody, in order to appreciate it, the reader and listener need to know the parodied pattern well. Therefore, the most common genres that the ancient Russian people encountered day after day are taken as a model - the court case (“The Tale of Ersh Ershovich”), the petition (“Kalyazinsky petition”), the medical book, the message, the church service. "Service to the tavern". The scheme of the church service was used in the "Service to the tavern", oldest list which is dated 1666. Here we are talking about drunkards, regulars of the "circling". They have their own divine service, which is celebrated not in the church, but in a tavern, they compose stichera and canons not for saints, but for themselves, they ring not bells, but “small cups” and “half a bucket of beer”. Here are given "stupid", clownish variations of prayers from liturgical books. One of the most common prayers, "Holy God, holy strong, holy immortal, have mercy on us" is replaced by such an exclamation of taverns: "Bind hops, bind stronger, bind drunks and all drinkers, have mercy on us Golyansky." In this variation, the rhythm and sound signature of the original is remarkably subtly imitated. The prayer “Our Father” took on the following form in the “Service of the Tavern”: “Our Father, even if you sit at home now, may your name be glorified by us, come to us too, may your will be done as at home, taco and at the tavern, our bread will be in the oven. Give you, Lord, and this day, and leave, debtors, our debts, as we leave our bellies in a tavern, and do not lead naked to the right (debt collection with corporal punishment), there is nothing to give us, but deliver us from prisons." There is no need to think that "turning out" prayer texts is blasphemy, a mockery of faith. This was directly pointed out by the unknown author of the preface to one of the lists of the “Service to the Tavern”: “After amusement, someone will think of using blasphemy, and from this his conscience, being weak, is embarrassed, let such one not be forced to read, but let him leave the powerful one to read and crawl ". Medieval Europe knew countless similar parodies ("parodia sacra") both in Latin and in vernacular languages. Up until the 16th century. parodies of psalms, gospel readings, church hymns were part of the scenario of clownish festivals, "feasts of fools" that were played out at churches, and the Catholic Church allowed this. The fact is that medieval parody, including Old Russian parody, is a parody of a special type, which did not at all set itself the goal of ridiculing the parodied text. “Laughter in this case is directed not at another work, as in the parodies of modern times, but at the very one that is being read or listened to by the perceiver. This is typical for the Middle Ages “laughing at oneself”, including at the work that is currently being read. Laughter is immanent in the work itself. The reader laughs not at some other author, not at another work, but at what he is reading... That is why the "empty kathisma" is not a mockery of some other kathisma, but is an antikathisma, closed in itself, nonsense, nonsense." Faith, like the church as a whole, has not been discredited in comic literature. However, unworthy ministers of the church were ridiculed very often. Depicting how drunkards carry their belongings to the tavern, the author of the Service to the Kabak puts Balti and monks at the head of the tavern "ranks": blacks - manati, cassocks, hoods and scrolls and all things in the cell; deacons - books, and translations, and ink. These priests and deacons say: “Let's drink the dark green single-row and have fun, we will not spare the green caftan, we will pay off with forty-mouthed money. Sitse priests are thoughtfully drunk, who would tear a dead man from his teeth. This cynical “philosophy of light bread” is also familiar to European comic culture: Lazarillo of Tormes, the title character of the famous Spanish picaresque novel (1554), admits to the reader that he prayed to God that at least one person died every day, then he could treat himself at the memorial. "The Tale of the Chicken and the Fox". The anti-clerical sharpness is inherent in The Tale of the Chicken and the Fox. This monument, mentioned in the sources as early as 1640, has come down to us in prose and verse editions, as well as in mixed and fabulous versions. The most ancient is the prose edition. It parodies the plot scheme of a religious legend. The main plot knots of the religious legend (sinning, then repentance of the sinner, then salvation) are distorted here and become comical. The rooster turns out to be an imaginary sinner (he is accused of polygamy), and the “wise fox wife” is an imaginary righteous woman. Instead of salvation, the penitent will face death. The confessor in the "Tale" is replaced by a crafty confessor, who literally "hungry for someone to devour." The parodic plot is backed up by a parodic theological debate: a rooster and a fox, alternately quoting Scripture, compete in wit and theological casuistry. The laughter situation created by The Tale of the Chicken and the Fox is characteristic not only of Old Russian, but also of European culture. Early Middle Ages considered the fox to be the personification of the devil. The Russian “Physiologists” and the European “Bestiaries” explained this symbol in this way: a hungry fox pretends to be dead, but as soon as the hens and the rooster approach him, he tears them to shreds. Thomas Aquinas, interpreting the biblical phrase "Catch us foxes, fox cubs that spoil the vineyards, and our vineyards are in bloom" ( Song of Songs , II, 15), wrote that the foxes are Satan, and the vineyards are the church of Christ. Since the 12th century, after the appearance of the French "Roman Fox", another interpretation begins to prevail: the fox is considered the living embodiment of cunning, hypocrisy and hypocrisy. In the decorative decoration of Gothic temples, images of a fox preaching from the pulpit to chickens or geese appear. Sometimes the fox is dressed in a monastic dress, sometimes in a bishop's vestments. These scenes go back to the story of the son of the hero of the "Novel Fox", Renardin (Little Fox), who, having escaped from the monastery, lured geese by reading "spiritual" sermons. When gullible and curious listeners came close, Renardine devoured them. The Russian "Tale of the Chicken and the Fox" knows both of these symbolic interpretations. The first of them (the fox is the devil), however, is of secondary importance and was directly reflected in only one phrase: “The fox gnashes its teeth and, looking at him with an unmerciful eye, like the devil is unmerciful to Christians, remembers the sins of the chicken and rages at him. The echo of this interpretation can be seen in the fact that the fox is called "the wise woman." According to medieval Christian tradition, the devil may be hiding in the guise of a “wise wife” or “wise virgin”. The second interpretation (the fox is a hypocrite, a hypocritical and vicious confessor, a "false prophet") became a plot-forming moment, served to create a laughable situation. Who wrote the works of democratic satire? To what stratum did the anonymous authors of these works belong? It can be assumed that at least part of the comic compositions came from the environment of the lower clergy. The Kalyazinsky petition says that a Moscow priest served as a “model” for the merry brethren of this provincial monastery: Pokrovki without a letter of priest Kolotilu, and they hastily sent them to the Kolyazin Monastery for a sample. Who is a "priest without a diploma"? It is known that in Moscow at the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin in the XVII century. there was a patriarchal "priests' hut". Here, the unemployed priests, who did not have a letter of appointment, were distributed among the parishes. Sources note that these “priests without a letter”, gathering at the Spassky Bridge, started “great outrages”, spread “mean and ridiculous reproaches”. In this restless, half-drunk crowd, rumors and gossip were born, here from the hands, from under the floor, forbidden handwritten books were traded. At the turn of the 70-80s. at the Spassky Bridge it was easy to buy the writings of the Pustozero prisoners - Avvakum and his associates, containing "great blasphemy against the royal house". Here, "ridiculous reproaches" were also sold. Russian laughter culture was not born in the 17th century. Daniil Zatochnik, a writer of the pre-Mongol era, is also its representative. However, in the Middle Ages, the culture of laughter still rarely penetrated into writing, remaining within the oral tradition, and only with early XVII V. acquired some citizenship rights in literature. Then the number of comic texts grows rapidly. In the XVIII century. they are placed on popular prints and wall sheets. What is the reason for this late activity of the laughter culture? Time of Troubles It was a time of "freedom of speech". It created the conditions for the written fixation of comic and satirical works. Polish influence clearly accelerated this process, because in the first half of the 17th century. account for the flourishing of Polish comic literature. But the main reason for this late activity was the very reality of the Muscovite state. In the 17th century the masses of the people were impoverished to such an extent that the comical anti-world began to look too much like reality and could no longer be perceived only aesthetically, as an artistic "world inside out." The authorities literally drove the people into taverns, forbidding peasants and townspeople to smoke wine and brew beer. “Pitukhovs should not be driven away from the mug yards ... to seek before the former (more than the former) profit,” the royal charter of 1659 punished. Traditional laughter situations merged with everyday everyday practice. The tavern became a home for many, clownish nudity - real nudity, clownish mats - both everyday and festive dress. "Whoever is drunk, he is said to be rich," wrote the author of "Service to the Tavern." Indeed, only in drunkenness could a poor man imagine himself a rich man. “There is no place to live as a lover ... - the roosters sang in the Service of the Tavern. - Nag announcing, does not hurt, nor does a native shirt smolder, and the navel is bare. When rubbish, you close your finger. Thank you, Lord, it was and it swam away, there’s nothing to think about, don’t sleep, don’t stand, just keep the defense against bedbugs, otherwise it’s fun to live, but there’s nothing to eat. And this ridiculous situation in the 17th century. also turned into reality: “between the yards” through the towns and villages of Muscovite Rus' wandered crowds of walking people who had neither a home nor property, a ridiculous, absurd, wrong side world invaded life, became an ordinary, tragic world. Hence - a sober sense of hopelessness, which breaks through drunken laughter, hence - a bitter mockery of naive utopias. Recall the "Legend of a luxurious life and fun." The genre is dystopian. Hence, the genre of utopia is parodied here. In the XVI-XVII centuries. this genre was cultivated by such European thinkers as Campanella and Thomas More (the name of the genre comes from More's book "Utopia"). Russian literature of the XVI-XVII centuries. did not create and did not assimilate the developed "utopias". Until the time of Peter the Great, the reader continued to use the medieval legends about the earthly paradise, about the kingdom of Prester John, about the rahman-gymnosophists, preserved in book circulation. What, then, is the parodied object of The Tale of Luxurious Life and Joy on Russian soil? After all, parody in itself does not make sense, it always exists in tandem with the parodied construction. If Russian literature of the 17th century did not know the genre of utopia, then Russian oral culture knew it, and the point here is not in a fairy-tale kingdom with milky rivers and jelly banks. In the 17th century in Rus' there were many rumors about distant free countries - about Mangazeya, about "gold and silver islands", about Dauria, about a rich island "on the Eastern Ocean". There “there is bread, and horses, and cattle, and pigs, and chickens, and they smoke wine, and weave, and spin from all over the custom from the Russian”, there is a lot of unplowed land and no one takes taxes. Belief in these legends was so strong that in the second half of the 17th century. hundreds and thousands of poor people, entire villages and prisons were removed from their places and fled to no one knows where. The shoots took on such proportions that the government was seriously alarmed: beyond the Urals, special outposts took over the fugitives, and the Siberian governors forced the walking people turned into Cossacks to kiss the cross on the fact that they “shouldn’t move to the Daurian land and couldn’t get off without a vacation.” Against the background of these legends, The Tale of a Luxurious Life and Joy stands out especially sharply. The country described in it is a caricature of fictions about free land. The naive and ignorant people believe in such a kingdom, and the author of the Tale destroys this belief. The author is a hungry person, an outcast, a loser, offended by life, cast out of the world of the well-fed. He does not even try to penetrate this world, knowing that this is impossible, but takes revenge on him with laughter. Starting with a deliberately serious description of the fabulous abundance, he brings this description to the point of absurdity, and then shows that all this is a fiction: “And there they take small duties, for washing (duties for goods), for bridges and for transportation - from arcs on a horse , from a hat to a person and from an entire convoy to people. This is the same ghostly wealth that seemed to be in the hops of the taverns. Real poverty, inescapable "nakedness and barefootedness" is represented in the image of laughter wealth. Laughter literature of the 17th century. opposes itself not only to the official "untruth" about the world, but also to folklore with its utopian dreams. She speaks the "naked truth" - through the mouth of a "naked and poor" person.

Earlier, in the chapter devoted to the fictitious name of a literary hero, I have already touched upon the democratic literature of the seventeenth century. For a long time, in its main part, it did not attract much attention, it was then discovered by careful research and publications by V.P. Adrianov-Peretz *(( I will only mention the main works of V.P. Adrianov-Peretz: Essays on the history of Russian satirical literature XVII century. M.; L., 1937; Russian democratic satire of the 17th century; 2nd ed., add. M., 1977.)) and immediately took its rightful place in the historical and literary studies of Soviet literary critics.

This democratic literature includes "The Tale of Yersh Ershovich", "The Tale of Shemyakina Court", "The ABC of the Naked and Poor Man", "Message to the noble enemy", "The Tale of Luxurious Life and Joy", "The Tale of Thomas and Yerema" , "Service to a tavern", "Kalyazinskaya petition", "The Tale of Priest Savva", "The Tale of the Hen and the Fox", "The Tale of the Hawk Moth", "The Tale of the Peasant's Son", "The Tale of Karp Sutulov", "Healer for Foreigners ”, “Painting about the dowry”, “Word about jealous men”, “Poem about the life of the patriarchal singers” and, finally, such a significant work as “The Tale of Mount Misfortune”. In part, the autobiography of Archpriest Avvakum and the autobiography of Epiphanius adjoin the same circle.

This literature is distributed in common people: among artisans, small merchants, lower clergy, penetrates into the peasant environment, etc. It opposes official literature, the literature of the ruling class, partly continuing the old traditions.

Democratic literature is in opposition to the feudal class; it is literature that emphasizes the injustice that prevails in the world, reflecting dissatisfaction with reality, social orders. The union with the environment, so characteristic of the personality of the previous time, is destroyed in it. Dissatisfaction with one's fate, one's position, others - this is a feature of the new, not known to previous periods. Connected with this is the striving for satire and parody that prevails in democratic literature. It is these satirical and parodic genres that become the main ones in the democratic literature of the 17th century.

For democratic literature of the 17th century. the conflict of the individual with the environment is characteristic, the complaints of this individual about his lot, the challenge to social order, sometimes self-doubt, prayer, fear, fear of the world, a sense of his own defenselessness, faith in fate, in fate, the theme of death, suicide and the first attempts confront your fate, correct injustice.

In the democratic literature of the XVII century. a special style of portraying a person develops: a style that is sharply reduced, deliberately everyday, asserting the right of every person to public sympathy.

The conflict with the environment, with the rich and noble, with their "pure" literature demanded an accentuated simplicity, lack of literariness, deliberate vulgarity. The stylistic "arrangement" of the image of reality is destroyed by numerous parodies. Everything is parodied - up to church services. Democratic literature strives for the complete exposure and exposure of all the ulcers of reality. Rudeness helps her in this - rudeness in everything: the rudeness of the new literary language, half colloquial, half taken from business writing, the rudeness of the depicted life, the rudeness of eroticism, the corrosive irony in relation to everything in the world, including oneself. On this basis, a new stylistic unity is being created, a unity that at first glance seems to be a lack of unity.

The person depicted in the works of democratic literature does not occupy any official position, or his position is very low and "trivial". This is just a suffering person, suffering from hunger, cold, from social injustice, from the fact that he has nowhere to lay his head. At the same time, the new hero is surrounded by the ardent sympathy of the author and readers. His position is the same as that of any of his readers. He does not rise above the readers either by his official position, or by any role whatsoever in historical events, or by his moral height. He is deprived of everything that distinguished and exalted the characters in the previous literary development. This man is by no means idealized. Against!

If in all previous medieval styles of depicting a person, this latter was certainly somehow higher than his readers, was to a certain extent an abstract character, hovering in some kind of his own, special space, where the reader, in essence, did not penetrate, now the character appears quite equal to him, and sometimes even humiliated, demanding not admiration, but pity and indulgence.

This new character is devoid of any pose, any kind of halo. This is a simplification of the hero, taken to the limits of the possible: he is naked, if he is dressed, then in “ gunka tavern» *{{ The Tale of Mount Misfortune. Ed. prepared D. S. Likhachev and E. I. Vaneeva. L., 1984. S. 8.)) V " fired ferizas» with bast strings *(( “The ABC of a Naked and Poor Man”: Adrianov-Peretz V.P. Russian democratic satire of the 17th century. S. 31.}}.

He is hungry, he has nothing to eat, and no one gives", no one invites him to his place. He is not recognized by his family and is expelled from his friends. He is depicted in the most unattractive positions. Even complaints about disgusting diseases, about a dirty toilet * (( Likhachev D.S. Poem about the life of the patriarchal choristers. // TODRL. T. XIV. 1958, p. 425.)), reported in the first person, do not confuse the author. This is a simplification of the hero, taken to the limits of the possible. Naturalistic details make this person completely fallen, " low”, almost ugly. A person wanders somewhere on the earth - such as it is, without any embellishment. But it is remarkable that it is precisely in this way of depicting a person that the consciousness of value appears most of all. human personality by itself: naked, hungry, barefoot, sinful, without any hope for the future, without any signs of any position in society.

Take a look at a person - as if inviting the authors of these works. Look how hard it is for him on this earth! He is lost among the poverty of some and the wealth of others. Today he is rich, tomorrow he is poor; today he made his money, tomorrow he lived. He's wandering between the yard”, eats alms from time to time, wallowed in drunkenness, plays dice. He is powerless to overcome himself, to go out on " saved way". And yet he deserves sympathy.

Particularly striking is the image of the unknown young man in The Tale of Mount Misfortune. Here, the sympathy of readers is enjoyed by a person who has violated the worldly morality of society, deprived of parental blessings, weak-willed, acutely aware of his fall, mired in drunkenness and gambling, who has made friends with tavern roosters and bonfires, wandering who knows where, contemplating suicide.

The human personality was emancipated in Russia not in the clothes of conquistadors and wealthy adventurers, not in the pompous confessions of the artistic gift of Renaissance artists, but in “ gunka tavern”, at the last step of the fall, in search of death as liberation from all suffering. And this was a great harbinger of the humanistic character of nineteenth-century Russian literature. with her theme of the value of a small person, with her sympathy for everyone who suffers and who has not found his true place in life.

The new hero often appears in literature on his own behalf. Many of the works of this time are in the nature of "internal monologue". And in these speeches to his readers, the new hero is often ironic - he seems to be above his suffering, looks at them from the side and with a grin. At the lowest stage of his fall, he retains a sense of his right to a better position: And I want to live, like good people live»; « My mind was firm, but dashing in my heart I have a lot of every thought»; « I live, a kind and glorious man, but I have nothing to eat and no one gives»; « I would have washed Belenko, dressed up well, but nothing».

And some are now persecuting the burden-bearers.
God grants honor to Ovom, they redeem the barn,
Ovii laboring, Ovii entering into their labor.
Ovi jump, Ovi cry.
Ini having fun, ini always tearing up.
Why write a lot that they don’t like anyone from the poor.
It is better to love whom money beats.
What to take from the wretched - order him to shackle
*{{ABC about a naked and poor man. S. 30.}}.

It is remarkable that in the works of democratic literature of the 17th century. there is a teaching voice, but it is not the voice of a self-confident preacher, as in the works of the previous time. This is the voice of the author offended by life or the voice of life itself. Actors perceive the lessons of reality, under their influence they change and make decisions. This was not only an extremely important psychological discovery, but also a literary and plot discovery. The conflict with reality, the impact of reality on the hero made it possible to build a narrative differently than it had been built before. The hero made decisions not under the influence of the influx of Christian feelings or the prescriptions and norms of feudal behavior, but as a result of the blows of life, the blows of fate.

In The Tale of Grief of Misfortune, this influence of the surrounding world was personified in the form of friends-advisers and in the form of an unusually vivid image of Grief. At first, well done in "The Tale of Mount Misfortune" and " small and stupid, not full mind and imperfect mind". He doesn't listen to his parents. But then he listens, although not completely, to his random friends, asking them for advice himself. Finally, Grief itself appears. The advice of Grief is unkind: it is the embodiment of pessimism engendered by bad reality.

Originally Woe" dreamed"Well done in a dream to disturb him with terrible suspicions:

Refuse you, well done, to your beloved bride -
be spoiled for you by the bride,
you still have to be strangled by that wife,
from gold and silver to be killed!

Grief advises the young man to go to the king's tavern", drink your wealth, put on yourself" gunka tavern"- For the naked, Grief is not a chaser, but no one will bind to the naked.

The good fellow did not believe his dream, and Woe appears to him for the second time in a dream:

Ali you, well done, unknown
nakedness and barefoot immeasurable,
lightness, great bezprotoritsa?
What to buy for yourself, then it will break through,
and you, well done, and so you live.
Yes, they don’t beat, don’t torture the naked, barefoot,
and naked barefoot will not be kicked out of paradise,
and with that the world will not come out here,
no one will be attached to him
and barefoot to make noise with a row.

With amazing force, the story unfolds a picture of the spiritual drama of the young man, gradually growing, accelerating in pace, acquiring fantastic forms.

Born of nightmares, Grief soon appears to the young man and in reality, at the moment when the young man, driven to despair by poverty and hunger, tries to drown himself in the river. It requires the young man to bow to himself before " damp earth And from that moment on, he relentlessly follows the young man. Well done wants to return to his parents, but Woe " went ahead, met a young man on an open field', croaks over him, ' that an evil crow over a falcon»:

You stand, did not leave, good fellow!
Not for an hour, I am attached to you, ill-fated grief,
I'll torment myself with you until death.
I am not alone, Woe, still relatives,
and all our relatives are kind;
we are all smooth, sweet,
and who will join us in the seed,
otherwise he will be tormented between us,
such is our fate and lutchaya.
Although I throw myself at the birds of the air,
although you will go into the blue sea as a fish,
and I will go with you arm in arm under the right.

It is clear that the author of "The Tale of Woe of Misfortune" is not on the side of these "lessons of life", not on the side of Grief with his distrust of people and deep pessimism. In the dramatic conflict between the young man and Grief, who embodies evil reality, the author of The Tale is on the side of the young man. He deeply sympathizes with him.

Such a separation of the author's point of view from the moralizing presented in the work, the justification of a person who, from the church point of view, could not but be considered a "sinner", was a remarkable phenomenon in the literature of the 17th century. It meant the death of the medieval normative ideal and the gradual exit of literature onto a new path of inductive artistic generalization - a generalization based on reality, and not on a normative ideal.

In close connection with the general tendencies of the justification of the human person, so characteristic of democratic literature, is the entire work of Avvakum. The only difference is that in the work of Avvakum this justification of the individual is felt with greater force and carried out with incomparable subtlety.

The justification of man is combined in the work of Avvakum, as in all democratic literature, with the simplification art form, the desire for vernacular, the rejection of traditional ways of idealizing a person.

The value of feeling, immediacy, the inner, spiritual life of a person was proclaimed by Avvakum with exceptional passion. Sympathy or anger, scolding or affection - everything is in a hurry to pour out from under his pen. " Strike the soul before god» *{{ Hereinafter quoted from the publication: The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, written by himself // Monuments of the history of the Old Believers of the 17th century. Book. I. Pg., 1916 (italics mine.- D. L.). )) - that's the only thing he aspires to. No compositional harmony, no shadow " convolutions of words"in the depiction of a person, nor the usual in ancient Russian educational literature" red verbs"- nothing that would hamper his excessively hot feeling in everything that concerns a person and his inner life. Church rhetoric, which is not uncommon in the work of Avvakum, did not touch the image of a person. None of the writers of the Russian Middle Ages wrote as much about his feelings as Avvakum. He grieves, mourns, cries, is afraid, regrets, marvels, etc. In his speech, there are constant remarks about the moods he is experiencing: “ oh, woe to me!», « much sad», « I'm sorry..."And he himself, and those about whom he writes, now and then sigh and cry:" ... pretty little ones cry, looking at us, and we at them»; « for a smart person to look, but it’s less likely to cry, looking at them»; « weepingly rushed to my karbas»; « and everyone cries and bows". Avvakum notes in detail all the external manifestations of feelings: “ my heart was cold and my legs were trembling". He also describes bows, gestures, and prayers in detail: beats himself and groans, but he himself says»; « and he, bowing low to me, and he himself says: "God save"».

He seeks to arouse the sympathy of readers, complains about his sufferings and sorrows, asks for forgiveness for his sins, describes all his weaknesses, including the most everyday ones.

One must not think that this justification of man concerns only Habakkuk himself. Even enemies, even his personal tormentors, are portrayed by him with sympathy for their human suffering. Read only in wonderful picture the suffering of Avvakum on the Sparrow Hills: Then the tsar sent a half-head with archers, and they took me to the Sparrow Hills; right there - the priest Lazarus and the elder Epiphanius, cursed and shorn, as I was before. They put us in different yards; relentlessly 20 people of archers, yes half a head, and a centurion stood over us - they took care, complained, and at night they sat with fire, and escorted us to the yard with ... be. Have mercy on them Christ! straight good archers those people and children will not be tormented there, with fiddling with us; the need is what happens, and it’s different, cute, happy... Onet the goryuny drink until drunk, but swearing swearing, otherwise they would be equal with the martyrs ». « The devil is dashing before me, and people are all good before me,” Avvakum says elsewhere.

Sympathy for one's tormentors was completely incompatible with medieval methods of portraying a person in the 11th-16th centuries. This sympathy became possible thanks to the writer's penetration into the psychology of the persons depicted. Each person for Avvakum is not an abstract character, but a living one, closely familiar to him. Avvakum knows well those he writes about. They are surrounded by a very concrete life. He knows that his tormentors are only doing their archery service, and therefore does not get angry with them.

We have already seen that the image of a person is inserted into a everyday frame in other works of Russian literature of the 17th century - in the Life of Uliania Osorina, in the Tale of Martha and Mary. In democratic literature, the everyday environment is clearly felt in "The Tale of Yersh Ershovich", in "The Tale of Shemyakina Court", in "Service to the Tavern", in "The Tale of Priest Sava", in "The Tale of the Peasant's Son", in "A Poem about Life patriarchal choristers, etc. In all these works, everyday life serves as a means of simplifying a person, destroying his medieval idealization.

In contrast to all these works, Habakkuk's commitment to everyday life reaches a completely exceptional force. Outside of everyday life, he does not imagine his characters at all. He clothes in everyday forms quite general and abstract ideas.

Avvakum's artistic thinking is all permeated with everyday life. Like the Flemish artists, who transferred biblical events to their native environment, Avvakum even depicts the relationship between the characters of church history in the social categories of his time: “ I am like a beggar, walking the streets of the city and begging through the windows. Having finished that day and having nourished his household, in the morning he dragged again. Taco and az, dragging all day long, I also take it to you, church nurseries, I suggest: let us have fun and live. At rich man I will beg Christ from the gospel for a loaf of bread, from Paul the Apostle, from rich guest, and from the messengers of his bread I will beg, from Chrysostom, from trading man, I will receive a piece of his words, from David the king and from Isaiah the prophets, from townspeople, asked for a quarter of bread; having collected a purse, yes, and I give you residents in the house of my God».

It is clear that life here is heroized. And it is remarkable that in the works of Avvakum the personality is again elevated, full of special pathos. She is heroic in a new way, and this time life serves her heroization. Medieval idealization elevated the individual above everyday life, above reality - Avvakum, on the other hand, forces himself to fight this reality and heroizes himself as a fighter with it in all the little things of everyday life, even when he, " like a dog in a straw', lying when his back ' rot" And " there were a lot of fleas and lice when he ate all filth».

« It’s not for us to go to Persis the martyr- says Avvakum, - and then the houses of Babylon have amassed". In other words: you can become a martyr, a hero in the most everyday, homely environment.

The conflict of the individual with the surrounding reality, so characteristic of democratic literature, reaches terrible strength in his Life. Avvakum seeks to subdue reality, to master it, to populate it with his ideas. That is why it seems to Avvakum in a dream that his body is growing and filling the whole Universe with itself.

He dreams about this, but in reality he continues to fight. He does not agree to withdraw into himself, in his personal sorrows. He considers all the questions of the world order to be his own, and he is not excluded from any of them. He is painfully hurt by the ugliness of life, its sinfulness. Hence the passionate need for preaching. His "Life", like all his other works, is a continuous sermon, a sermon, sometimes reaching a frenzied cry. The preaching pathos is revived in a new way, in new forms in the works of Avvakum, along with it monumentality is revived in the depiction of a person, but the monumentality is completely different, devoid of the former impressiveness and former abstraction. This is the monumentality of the struggle, the titanic struggle, until death, martyrdom, but quite concrete and everyday. That is why life itself acquires some special shade of pathos in the works of Avvakum. The chains, the earthen prison, the hardships of poverty are the same as in other democratic works, but they are sanctified by his struggle, his martyrdom. The cabbage soup that Avvakum eats in the basement of the Andronikov Monastery is the same as in any peasant family of that time, but they are served to him by an angel. The same black hen, which he got himself in Siberia, but she carries Avvakum two eggs a day. And this is interpreted by Habakkuk as a miracle. Everything is sanctified by the halo of martyrdom for the faith. His whole literary position is consecrated by him.

In the face of martyrdom and death, he is a stranger to lies, pretense, cunning. " Hey, that's good!», « I don't lie!”- his writings are full of such passionate assurances of the veracity of his words. He " living Dead», « earthen user"- he should not cherish the external form of his works:" ... after all, God does not listen to the words of the Reds, but wants our deeds". That is why it is necessary to write without sophistication and embellishment: “ ... tell me, I suppose, keep your conscience strong».

Avvakum wrote his compositions at a time when the halo of martyrdom was already flickering over him, both in his own eyes and in the eyes of his adherents. That is why both his vernacular and his "bytovism" in describing his own life had a special, heroic character. The same heroism is felt in the image he created as a martyr for the faith.

All his writings, all literary details are permeated with the pathos of struggle: from the earthen pit and the gallows to the titanic landscape of Dauria with its high mountains and stone cliffs. He enters into an argument with Christ himself: “... why did you, Son of God, let me kill him so painfully? I have become a widow for your widows! Who will judge between me and You? When I stole, and You didn't insult me ​​like that; but now we do not know that we have sinned! »

In the works of Avvakum, in the special style developed by him, which could be called the style of the pathetic simplification of man, literature Ancient Rus' again rose to the monumentalism of the old art, to universal and "world" themes, but on a completely different basis. The power of the individual in itself, outside of any official position, the power of a person deprived of everything, plunged into an earthen pit, a person whose tongue has been cut out, takes away the ability to write and communicate with the outside world, whose body is rotting, who is seized by lice, who is threatened the most terrible tortures and death at the stake - this power appeared in the works of Avvakum with tremendous force and completely overshadowed the external power of the official position of the feudal lord, which was followed with such fidelity in many cases by Russian historical works of the 11th-16th centuries.

The discovery of the value of the human person in itself concerned in literature not only the style of depicting a person. It was also a discovery of the value of the author's personality. Hence the emergence of a new type of professional writer, the realization of the value of the author's text, the emergence of the concept of copyright, which does not allow a simple borrowing of the text from predecessors, and the abolition of compilability as a principle of creativity. From here, from this discovery of the value of the human person, comes the characteristic of the 17th century. interest in autobiographies (Avvakum, Epiphanius, Eleazar Anzersky, etc.), as well as personal notes about events (Andrey Matveev about the Streltsy rebellion).

IN fine arts the discovery of the value of the human personality manifests itself in a very diverse way: parsunas (portraits) appear, linear perspective, which provides for a single individual point of view on the image, illustrations appear for works of democratic literature depicting an “average” person, and splint is born.

O foolish man, that thou hast conceived, that thou hast exalted! Thou art, thou stink, thou art stinking. Where is your arrogance? Where is the arrogance? Where is your insane pride, and where is your gold and silver, where is your estate? Decay, rot. Where is your perishable wealth? Isn’t everything gone, isn’t everything dead, isn’t everything gone, hasn’t the earth taken everything?! Don’t judge this for yourself, foolishness, why are you tormented forever.

You see, as if from our wealth, (l. 30), except for a single shroud, we will take nothing. But everything will remain, wealth, friends and hearts, wife and children. But everyone will take on the case, the hedgehog has done it.

Come, weep diligently, let the dead hearken to your weeping and rise up. If he does not listen and rise up, then I do not demand your vain lamentation and will not return to you. And I, therefore, died to this corruptible world.

There are two lamentations: the cry saves, the other destroys.

Tell us, my beloved son, who weep for the soul

Weep over your sins. But I also rejoice in that cry of yours, and we also cry for that sinner (l. 30v.) in your prayers. It is written: “Bear each other burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ.”

Have you already ceased from your weeping and your mourning? Oh, my born mother, my dear wife! How can I entreat11 your immeasurable weeping, and what can we bring as consolation from the divine scripture? Let's stop now. How you, my mother, for the sake of a sinful person alone, cannot quench your weeping! Have relatives and sympathizers here. See how I am coming to an unknown land, leaving you, a born mother, and your beloved wife, clan and tribe, (l. 31) and friends, and all the red of this world. But leave it all for Christ's sake. But I don’t cry like that, as you know, as if I feel sorry for you for your sake. But Christ is dearer and more than all.

But I beg you, do not mourn for me in vain. If someone gives something as a gift to God and regrets that there is no recompense for him: so I also left you, but you regret me and cry. Thank God that the Lord God has plucked me from the nets of this flattering world, dragging our souls into the bottom of hell. But we weep for our sins, always remembering death before our eyes. That cry is very useful and pleasing to God. (L. 31v.).

And do not see me, brethren who, for the sake of vanity or praise of these writings, but see how my mother and my wife are crying. But I also pray that your generosity will quench their weeping and comfort them from the divine writings, if God is a gift to anyone.

But I beg you, my mother, listen to me, a sinner, and do not despise my order, which I command you. If you find despondency and sorrow, or some tightness, or you will remember me as a sinner at some time, do not complain. But instead of myself, I leave you to read this small charter to comfort your sorrows.

Expect news from me in the 170th year in the month of October, (l. 32). Our life is like a grass flower: today it blooms, but in the morning it dries up and is trampled under foot. Yes, do not worry about this either, as my bones will be laid in a foreign country. Before the terrible and unhypocritical judge at his second coming, we will all stand together, tortured by God, even if someone has done it, good or evil, so he will receive vengeance from Christ our God. Good or evil, whatever one sows, that shall he reap.

Grant to all of us, merciful God, not to sin your eternal blessings, and in this age (l. 32v.), together, see each other and be glad, and praise you, the Lord our God, and forever and ever. Amen. The end, (l. 33)

This holy and blessed Stefan was buried in Galich in the Church of the Epiphany. And at his burial, on the advice of the zealous, the real image was written off from all his likeness. And on that holy image, the inscription was made in Sitseva.

This Saint Stephen was born in the city of Galich from a father named Trofim, according to Nechaev's advertisement, and from mother Evdokia. Trofim is a merchant in that city. And when Saint Stephen reaches maturity, leave father and mother, and wife, and one of your children, you have been foolish for many years. And died in years from the creation of the world in 7175, and from the birth of Christ in 1667, Maya on the 13th day, in memory of the holy martyr Glyceria, on Monday of the sixth week after Pasca (l. 33v.) and at 14 (so\) hour days. The burial was Maya on the 14th day in memory of the holy martyr Isidore, even in the island of Chios, and holy Isidore Christ for the sake of the holy fool, Rostov miracle worker, at the 7th hour of the day. During the burial there were archimandrites from the Galician monasteries: Archimandrite Christopher of the Novoezersky Monastery of Avraamiev, Archimandrite Sergius of the Paisein Monastery, Archimandrite Sergius of the Galician Cathedral Church of the Spassky Archimandrite with the brethren, and the priests and deacons of the entire city of Galich. From the secular ranks - the Galician voivode Artemey Antonovich, the son of Musin-Pushkin, and the Galician formerly voivode, the stolnik Kondratei Afanasiev, the son of Zagryazskaya, the nobles: David Ne-plyuev, Ivan Larionov and other nobles, and boyar children, and many Posatsky and county people with wives and s children. His body was buried in Galich (fol. 34) in the settlement near the Church of the Epiphany under a meal on the left side behind the stove, where he himself was the coffin of the excavator.

This blessed Stefan was a poor man, and many eminent people flocked to his burial. And by the rumors carried by the old people4 it was certain (so \) that during their congress they were amazed at God's revelation about St. Stephen, and therefore more so because they called him a young youth for his burial, whom, according to their knowledge, no one sent, and considered him an angel of God . (l. 35)

Sovereign my uncle, Gavril Samsonovich, rejoice in the Lord. Your nephew Stefanko, crouching at your feet, I pray with tears and ask your compassion, honor my birth mother. And also honor my wife instead of me. Do not despise my wretched petition. If anyone honors the poor widows and orphans, it happens in abundance. If he turns his ears away from them, there will be poverty in many. Measure to the same measure, it will be measured to us. Why do I write a little, weigh more divine scripture. For me, pray to the sinful God. Be blessed with all your gracious "house, always and now and ever and forever and ever. Amen (l. 35v.)

In the same way, all Orthodoxy councils, eliko from the sacred and eliko from the monks, and eliko from the worldly, if they delve into this episto-lea, written by a sinful hand, you will find that it is faulty and simple, for God's sake, forgive me, and do not slander, as if you yourself you demand forgiveness from God and man. Forgetfulness and foolishness should be praised by all. Glory to God the doer. Amen.

A z esmi naked and barefoot, hungry and cold, eat infrequently.

God knows my soul that I don't have a penny for my soul.

Vsdait the whole world, that I have nowhere to take and there is nothing to buy.

A kind man in Moscow spoke to me, promised me a loan of money, and I came to him the next morning, and he refused me; but he laughed at me for no good reason, and I will cry that laugh to him: what was there to promise, if not.

If only he would remember his word and give me money, and I came to him, and he refused me.

There are a lot of things in people, but they won’t let us, but they themselves will die.

I live, good fellow, I haven’t eaten all day, and I have nothing to eat.

Yawning on my belly from the great malnourished, the walkers of the lips are dead, and I have nothing to eat.

My land is empty, all overgrown with grass;

And my belly wasted on the other sides of the ox-hour, and my poverty, Golenkov, was exhausted.

How can I, poor and tribal, live and where can I get away from dashing people, from unkind people?

Rich people drink and eat, but they don’t offer naked people, but they themselves don’t recognize that even the rich are dying.

With my mind, I would see a lot in my place, both colored dresses and money, but I have nowhere to take, to lie, to steal not a hochitsa.

Why is my stomach disgraced? Rays are strange, accept death, lowered to walk like a freak.

Of course, the essence of the funny remains the same in all ages, but the predominance of certain features in the "comic culture" makes it possible to distinguish national features and features of the era in laughter. Old Russian laughter belongs in its type to medieval laughter.

Medieval laughter is characterized by its focus on the most sensitive aspects of human existence. This laughter is most often directed against the very person of the laugher and against everything that is considered holy, pious, honorable.

The orientation of medieval laughter, in particular, against the laugher himself was noted and quite well shown by M. M. Bakhtin in his book "The Creativity of Francois Rabelais and folk culture Middle Ages and Renaissance". He writes: "Let's note an important feature of folk festive laughter: this laughter is also directed at the laughers themselves." a Naked and Poor Man", "Message of a Courtly Foe", "Service to a Tavern", "Kalyazinsky Petition", "A Poem about the Life of the Patriarchal Singers", etc. In all these works ridicule is made of oneself or at least of one's environment.

The authors of medieval and, in particular, ancient Russian works most often amuse readers with themselves. They present themselves as losers, naked or ill-dressed, poor, hungry, completely naked or baring the innermost places of their bodies. The reduction of one's image, self-disclosure are typical of medieval and, in particular, ancient Russian laughter. The authors pretend to be fools, "play the fool", make absurdities and pretend to be incomprehensible. In fact, they feel smart, they only pretend to be fools in order to be free in laughter. It's theirs " author's image", which is necessary for them for their "laughing work", which consists in "fooling" and "fooling" everything that exists. "In the songs of abominations, we exalt you," - this is how the author of "The Service of the Tavern" writes, referring to the latter. (2 )

Laughter directed at ourselves is also felt in the comic message of the late 1680s by archers Nikita Gladky (3) and Alexei Strizhov to Sylvester Medvedev.

In view of the fact that this "non-literary" laughter is extremely rare in documentary sources, I quote this letter in full; Gladky and Strizhov jokingly address Sylvester Medvedev:

“Honorable Father Selivestre! Wishing you salvation and health, Alyoshka Strizhov, Nikitka Gladkov beat your forehead with a lot. two hours before light, and stood in the morning at Catherine the Martyr, near the church, and went to their houses half an hour before light. And in our houses we slept for a long time, and ate little. I, Alyoshka, although I am bigger, but I also want from a fish, and me, Nikitka, a fish in Cherkasy. Feed me for Christ's sake, and do not refuse!

Wishing against this scripture, Alyoshka Strizhov beats with his forehead.

Gladkiy and Strizhov "play the fool": they demand delicious food under the guise of ordinary alms.

There is one mysterious circumstance in Old Russian laughter: it is not clear how in Ancient Rus' parodies of prayers, psalms, services, monastic orders, etc. could be tolerated on such a large scale. correct. The people of Ancient Rus' for the most part were, as you know, sufficiently religious, and we are talking about a mass phenomenon. In addition, most of these parodies were created among petty clerics.

A similar situation was in the West in the Middle Ages. Here are some quotations from M. Bakhtin's book on Rabelais. Here they are: “Not only scholars and petty clerics, but also high-ranking churchmen and learned theologians allowed themselves cheerful recreations, that is, rest from reverent seriousness, and “monastic jokes” (“Joca monacorum”), as one of the most popular works of the Middle Ages was called. In their cells, they created parodic and semi-parodic scholarly treatises and other comic works in Latin... In the further development of comic Latin literature, parodic doublets are created literally on all aspects of the church cult and dogma. parody", one of the most peculiar and still insufficiently understood phenomena of medieval literature. Quite numerous parodic liturgies have come down to us ("Liturgy of drunkards", "Liturgy of players", etc.), parodies of gospel readings, church hymns, psalms, the travesty of various gospel sayings, etc., also came to be. sla"), parodic epitaphs, parodic decrees of cathedrals, etc. This literature is almost boundless. And all of it was sanctified by tradition and to some extent tolerated by the church. Part of it was created and lived under the auspices of "Easter laughter" or "Christmas laughter", while part (parodic liturgies and prayers) was directly connected with the "Feast of Fools" and, perhaps, was performed during this holiday ... No less rich and more the humorous literature of the Middle Ages in vernacular languages ​​was more varied. And here we will find phenomena similar to "parodia sacra": parodic prayers, parodic sermons (the so-called "sermons joieux", that is, "jolly sermons" in France), Christmas songs, parodic hagiographic legends, etc. But secular parodies and travesty, giving a comical aspect of the feudal system and feudal heroism. Such are the parodic epics of the Middle Ages: animals, buffoonish, picaresque and foolish; elements of a parodic heroic epic among the cantastorians, the appearance of comic understudies of epic heroes (the comic Roland), etc. Parodic chivalric novels are created (The Mule Without a Bridle, Aucassin and Nicolet). Various genres of laughter rhetoric develop: all sorts of carnival-type "debates", disputes, dialogues, comic "eulogies" (or "glorifications"), and others. . 17-19).

A similar picture is presented by the Russian democratic satire of the 17th century: "Service to the tavern" and "Feast of the taverns," "Kalyazin petition", "The Tale of the Brazhnik". (4) In them we can find parodies of church hymns and prayers, even to such a sacred one as "Our Father". And there is no indication that these works were banned. On the contrary, some were supplied with prefaces to the "pious reader."

The point, in my opinion, is that ancient Russian parodies are not parodies in the modern sense at all. These are special parodies - medieval ones.

The Brief Literary Encyclopedia (Vol. 5, M., 1968) gives the following definition of parody: "The genre of literary and artistic imitation, imitation of the style of an individual work of the author, literary movement, genre in order to ridicule it" (p. 604). Meanwhile, ancient Russian literature, apparently, does not know at all this kind of parody with the aim of ridiculing a work, genre or author. The author of the article on parody in the Concise Literary Encyclopedia writes further: “Literary parody “mimics” not reality itself (real events, faces, etc.), but literary works"(ibid.). In ancient Russian satirical works, it is not something else that is ridiculed, but a comic situation is created within the work itself. Laughter is directed not at others, but at oneself and at the situation that is created within the work itself. It is not the individual author's style or the worldview inherent in this author, not the content of the works, but only the very genres of business, church or literary writing: petitions, messages, court documents, dowry paintings, travelers, medical doctors, certain church services, prayers, etc., etc. The parodied is the established, firmly established, ordered form, which has its own, only inherent features - a sign system.

As these signs, we take what in historical source studies is called the form of the document, i.e., the formulas in which the document is written, especially the initial and final ones, and the arrangement of the material - the sequence order.

By studying these ancient Russian parodies, one can get a fairly accurate idea of ​​what was considered mandatory in a particular document, what was a sign, a sign by which one or another business genre could be recognized.

However, these formulas-signs in Old Russian parodies did not serve at all just to "recognize" the genre, they were needed to give the work one more meaning that was absent in the parodied object - the meaning of laughter. Therefore, signs-signs were plentiful. The author did not limit their number, but sought to exhaust the features of the genre: the more, the better, i.e., "the funnier." As signs of the genre, they were given in excess, as signals for laughter, they had to saturate the text as densely as possible so that the laughter would not be interrupted.

Old Russian parodies date back to the time when individual style, with very rare exceptions, was not recognized as such (5). The style was realized only in its connection with a certain genre of literature or a certain form of business writing: there was a hagiographic and annalistic style, a solemn sermon style or a chronographic style, etc.

Starting to write this or that work, the author had to adapt to the style of the genre that he wanted to use. Style was in ancient Russian literature a sign of the genre, but not of the author.

In some cases, the parody could reproduce the formulas of this or that work (but not the author of this work): for example, the prayer "Our Father", this or that psalm. But such parodies were rare. There were few specific works parodied, as they had to be well known to readers in order to be easily recognized in parody.

Signs of a genre are certain recurring formulas, phraseological combinations, in business writing - a formulary. The signs of a parodied work are not stylistic "moves", but certain, remembered "individual" formulas.

On the whole, it was not the general character of the style in our sense of the word that was parodied, but only memorable expressions. Words, expressions, turns, rhythmic pattern and melody are parodied. There is a distortion of the text. In order to understand parody, one must know well either the text of the parodied work, or the "form" of the genre.

The parodied text is distorted. This is, as it were, a "false" reproduction of the parodied monument - a reproduction with errors, like false singing. It is characteristic that parodies of church services were indeed sung or pronounced in a singsong voice, just as the parodied text itself was sung and pronounced, but they were sung and pronounced deliberately out of tune. The "Service to the Kabaku" parodied not only the service, but the very performance of the service; not only the text was ridiculed, but also the one who served, so the performance of such a "service" most often had to be collective: a priest, a deacon, a sexton, a choir, etc.

In "The ABC of a Naked and Poor Man" there was also a parodied character - a student. "ABC" is written as if from the perspective of someone who is learning the alphabet, thinking about his failures. These characters, as it were, did not understand the real text and, distorting it, "blurred" about their needs, worries and troubles. Characters are not objects, but subjects of parody. It is not they who parody, but they themselves do not understand the text, they stupefy it, and they themselves make fools out of themselves, incapable students who think only of their own need.

Parodied mainly organized forms of writing, business and literary, organized forms of the word. At the same time, all signs and signs of organization become meaningless. There is a "unsystematic trouble".

The meaning of ancient Russian parodies is to destroy the meaning and orderliness of signs, to make them meaningless, to give them an unexpected and disordered meaning, to create an disordered world, a world without a system, an absurd, stupid world - and to do this in all respects and with the greatest completeness. The completeness of the destruction of the sign system, ordered by the signs of the world, and the completeness of the construction of the disordered world, the world of "anti-culture", (6) absurd in all respects, is one of the goals of parody.

Old Russian parodies are characterized by the following scheme for constructing the universe. The universe is divided into the real, organized world, the world of culture - and the world is not real, not organized, negative, the world of "anti-culture". In the first world, prosperity and orderliness of the sign system dominates, in the second - poverty, hunger, drunkenness and complete confusion of all meanings. People in the second are barefoot, naked, or dressed in birch bark helmets and bast shoes - bast shoes, bast-matted clothes, crowned with straw crowns, do not have a stable social position and generally no stability, "rummage between the yard", the tavern replaces them with a church, a prison courtyard - a monastery, drunkenness - ascetic exploits, etc. All signs mean something opposite to what they mean in the "normal world".

This is a pitch-black world - an invalid world. He is emphatically contrived. Therefore, at the beginning and end of the work, absurd, confusing addresses, an absurd calendar indication are given. In the "Dowry List" the offered wealth is calculated as follows: "Yes, 8 households of Bobyl, in them one and a half people and a quarter, - 3 people of business people, 4 people on the run and 2 people in trouble, one in prison, and the other in the water." (7) "And everything is revered from the Yauza to the Moskva River for six versts, and from place to place one finger" (Russian satire, p. 127). Before us is a fable, a fable, but a fable, in which life is unfavorable, and people exist "on the run" and "in trouble."

The author of the clownish petition says about himself: "He came out of the field, crawled out of the forest, wandered out of the swamp, but no one knows who" (Essays, p. 113). The image of the addressee, i.e. the person addressed by the author, is also deliberately unrealistic: “A complaint to us, gentlemen, is about the same person as you yourself. Eyes drooping, a star in the forehead, a beard of three hairs is wide and broad, kavtan ... noy, Tver buttons, beaten into three hammers "(ibid.). Time is also unrealistic: "It's in the month of Savras, on a gray Saturday, on a nightingale four, on a yellow heel ..." (ibid.). "The Month of Kitovras on an absurd day ...", - this is how the "Service to the Tavern" begins (ibid., p. 61). A heap of nonsense is created: "he kept his hands in his bosom, and ruled with his feet, and sat with his head in the saddle" (ibid., p. 113).

These “fables” are “turned up”, but not even those works and not those genres from which they take their form (petitions, court cases, dowry paintings, travelers, etc.), but the world itself, reality and create a kind of “fiction” , nonsense, the wrong side of the world, or, as they say now, "anti-world". In this "anti-world" its unreality, unimaginability, and illogicality are deliberately emphasized.

The anti-world, fables, the wrong world, which are created by the so-called ancient Russian "parodies", can sometimes "twist" even the works themselves. In the democratic satire "The Medicine Book, How to Treat Foreigners", the medical book is turned over - a kind of "anti-medical book" is created. These "shifters" are very close to modern "parodies", but with one significant difference. Modern parodies to some extent "discredit" parodied works: they make them and their authors funny. In "The Medical Doctor How to Treat Foreigners" there is no such discrediting of medical practitioners. It's just another medical book: upside down, overturned, turned inside out, funny in itself, turning laughter on itself. It gives recipes for unrealistic remedies - deliberate nonsense.

In The Medical Book on How to Treat Foreigners, it is proposed to materialize, weigh on an apothecary scales abstract concepts that cannot be weighed and used, and give them in the form of medicines to the patient: polite crane steps, sweet-sounding songs, daytime lordships, the thinnest flea lope, palm splashing, owls' laughter, dry Epiphany frost, etc. The world of sounds has been turned into real drugs: "Take a white pavement thud 16 spools, a small spring conago top 13 spools, a light cart creak 16 spools, a hard bell ringing 13 spools." Further in the "Healer" appear: a thick bear's roar, a large cat's grunt, a chicken's high voice, etc. (Essays, p. 247).

Characteristic from this point of view are the very names of Old Russian parodic works: "diabolical" songs (ibid., p. 72), "absurd" songs (ibid., p. 64), "empty" kathismas (ibid., p. 64); the depicted celebration is called "absurd" (ibid., p. 65), etc. Laughter in this case is directed not at another work, as in the parodies of modern times, but at the very one that the perceiver reads or listens to. This is typical for the Middle Ages "laughing at oneself" - including at the work that is currently being read. Laughter is immanent in the work itself. The reader does not laugh at some other author, not at another work, but at what he reads and at its author. The author "plays the fool", turns laughter on himself, and not on others. That is why the "empty kathisma" is not a mockery of some other kathisma, but is antikathisma, closed in itself, laughing at itself, a fable, nonsense.

Before us is the underside of the world. The world is upside down, really impossible, absurd, stupid.

The "inversion" can be emphasized by the fact that the action is transferred to the world of fish ("The Tale of Ruff Ershovich") or the world of poultry ("The Tale of the Hen"), etc. The transfer of human relations in "The Tale of Ruff" to the world of fish is so it is effective for itself as a method of destroying reality, that there is already relatively little other "nonsense" in The Tale of Ruff; she is not needed.

In this reverse, inverted world, a person is withdrawn from all the stable forms of his environment, transferred to an emphatically unreal environment.

All things in fiction do not receive their own, but some kind of someone else's, absurd purpose: "At the small vespers, let's say goodbye in small cups, and even call in half a bucket" (Essays, p. 60. Actors, readers, listeners are invited to do what they obviously they cannot do it: "The deaf listen amusingly, the naked rejoice, you will be cut with a belt, stupidity is approaching you" (ibid., p. 65).

Stupidity, stupidity is an important component of Old Russian laughter. The laugher, as I said, "plays the fool", turns the laughter on himself, plays the fool.

What is an old Russian fool? This is often a very smart person, but doing what is not supposed to, violating custom, decency, accepted behavior, exposing himself and the world from all ceremonial forms, showing his nakedness and the nakedness of the world - an unmasker and unmasked at the same time, a violator of the sign system, a person, misusing it. That is why nudity and exposure play such a big role in ancient Russian laughter.

The inventiveness in the depiction and statement of nudity in the works of democratic literature is striking. Tavern "anti-prayers" sing of nudity, nudity is depicted as liberation from worries, from sins, from the bustle of this world. This is a kind of holiness, the ideal of equality, "heavenly life." Here are some excerpts from the "Service to the Tavern": "the voice of the wasteland is like an all-day exposure"; "in three days he was cleansed to the naked" (Essays, p. 61); "rings, man, get in the way, it's harder to wear boots, trousers, and you change them for beer" (ibid., pp. 61-62); "and that (tavern) will save you to the naked from the whole dress" (ibid., p. 62); "because the color of nakedness is brought to us" (ibid., p. 52); "whether who, drunk to the naked, will not remember you, tavern" (ibid., p. 62); "the naked rejoice" (ibid., p. 63); "naked, it does not hurt, nor does a native shirt smolder, and the navel is bare: when rubbish, you cover yourself with your finger"; “thank you, Lord, it was, but it swam away, there’s nothing to think about, don’t sleep, don’t stand, just keep the defense against bedbugs, otherwise it’s fun to live, but there’s nothing to eat” (ibid., p. 67); "verse: a pianist like a naked body and prosperous misery" (ibid., p. 89).

A special role in this outcrop is played by the nudity of the guzna, which is also emphasized by the fact that the naked guzna is smeared in soot or feces, sweeps the floor, etc.; "with a bare goose, I soot from the blankets of revenge forever" (ibid., p. 62); "he recognized himself with the yaryzhny and rolled on the boards naked in the soot" (ibid., p. 64, cf. pp. 73, 88, etc.).

The function of laughter is to expose, reveal the truth, undress reality from the veils of etiquette, ceremoniality, artificial inequality, from the entire complex sign system of a given society. Exposure equalizes all people. "Brotherhood Golyanskaya" is equal to each other.

At the same time, stupidity is the same nakedness in its function (ibid., p. 69). Stupidity is the uncovering of the mind from all conventions, from all forms, habits. That is why fools speak and see the truth. They are honest, truthful, brave. They are merry, as people who have nothing are merry. They don't understand any conventions. They are truth-seekers, almost saints, but only inside out too.

Old Russian laughter is "undressing" laughter, revealing the truth, laughter of the naked, not appreciating anything. A fool is, first of all, a person who sees and speaks the "naked" truth.

In ancient Russian laughter, an important role was played by turning clothes inside out (sheepskins turned inside out with fur), hats worn backwards. Matting, bast, straw, birch bark, bast had a special role in funny disguises. These were, as it were, "false materials" - anti-materials favored by mummers and buffoons. All this marked the wrong side of the world, which lived the old Russian laughter.

Characteristically, when heretics were exposed, it was publicly demonstrated that heretics belonged to the anti-world, to the pitch (hellish) world, that they were "unreal". Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod in 1490 ordered that heretics be mounted on horses face to tail in turned-out dress, birch bark helmets with bast tails, crowns of hay and straw, with the inscription: "Behold the satanic army." It was a kind of undressing heretics - their inclusion in the wrong, demonic world. In this case, Gennady did not invent anything (8) - he "exposed" the heretics in a completely "Old Russian" way.

The underworld does not lose touch with the real world. Real things, concepts, ideas, prayers, ceremonies, genre forms, etc. are turned inside out. However, here's what is important: the "best" objects are subjected to turning inside out - the world of wealth, satiety, piety, nobility.

Nudity is, first of all, nakedness, hunger is opposed to satiety, loneliness is abandonment by friends, homelessness is the absence of parents, vagrancy is the absence of a settled place, the absence of one's home, relatives, a tavern is opposed to church, tavern fun is church service. Behind the ridiculed world, something positive looms all the time, the absence of which is the world in which a certain young man lives - the hero of the work. Behind the wrong world there is always a certain ideal, even the most trifling one - in the form of a feeling of satiety and contentment.

The antiworld of Ancient Rus' therefore opposes not ordinary reality, but some ideal reality, the best manifestations of this reality. The anti-world is opposed to holiness - therefore it is blasphemous, it is opposed to wealth - therefore it is poor, opposed to ceremonial and etiquette - therefore it is shameless, opposed to dressed and decent - therefore it is undressed, naked, barefoot, indecent; the anti-hero of this world opposes the well-born - therefore he is rootless, opposes the sedate - therefore he jumps, jumps, sings cheerful, by no means sedate songs.

In The ABC of the Naked and Poor Man, the negative position of the naked and poor man is constantly emphasized in the text: others have it, but the poor man does not; others have but do not lend; I want to eat, but there is nothing; I would go to visit, but there is nothing, they do not accept and do not invite; “People have a lot of everything, money and clothes, they don’t give me any sense”, “I live in Moscow (i.e., in a rich place, - D. L.), I don’t have anything to eat and buy not for nothing, but for nothing give"; “People, I see that they live richly, but they don’t give us anything, naked, the devil knows where they save their money” (ibid., pp. 30-31). The negativity of the world of the naked is emphasized by the fact that in the past, the naked had everything he needs now, could fulfill those desires that he cannot now: "my father left me his estate, I drank it all away and squandered"; "My house was whole, but God did not command me to live in my poverty"; "I would fidget after a wolf with sabaks, but there's nothing to do, but I won't be able to run"; "I would eat meat, but dashingly gets stuck in my teeth, and besides, there is nowhere to get it"; "Honor to me, well done, in the presence of my father, my relatives paid, and everyone drove me out of my mind, and now my relatives and friends mocked me" (ibid., pp. 31-33). Finally, the negativity is emphasized by a completely “buffoonish” technique - a rich cut of clothes that are completely poor in material: “I had good Ferizas - dressed, and the tie was a long lace, and those dashing people pulled off a debt, and I was completely naked” (ibid., p. 31). The naked, unborn and poor man of "Azbuka" is not just naked and poor, but once rich, once dressed in good clothes, once had respectable parents, once had friends, a bride.

He used to belong to a prosperous class, was well-fed and with money, had life "stability". He is deprived of all this now, and it is precisely this deprivation of everything that is important; the hero not only does not have, but is deprived: deprived of good looks, deprived of money, deprived of food, deprived of clothes, deprived of his wife and bride, deprived of relatives and friends, etc. The hero wanders, has no home, has no place to lay his head.

Therefore, poverty, nakedness, hunger are not permanent phenomena, but temporary. This is the lack of wealth, clothing, satiety. This is the underworld.

"The Tale of a Luxurious Life and Fun" demonstrates the general poverty of human existence in forms and in a sign system rich life. Poverty is ironically presented as wealth. "And that is his estate between rivers and the sea, near mountains and fields, between oaks and gardens and groves of the chosen ones, sweet-water lakes, many-fish rivers, fertile lands." treats (see: Izbornik, p. 592). There is also a lake of wine from which anyone can drink, a swamp of beer, a pond of honey. It is all a hungry fantasy, a wild fantasy of a beggar in need of food, drink, clothing, rest. Behind this whole picture of wealth and satiety is poverty, nakedness, hunger. This picture of unrealizable wealth is "revealed" by a description of an incredible, tangled path to a rich country - a path that looks like a labyrinth and ends in nothing: "And whoever is transported by the Danube, do not think home" (ibid., p. 593). On the way, you need to take with you all the eating utensils and weapons in order to "bounce" from the flies - there is so much sweet food there, for which the flies are so greedy and hungry. And duties on that way: "from the arc for a horse, from a hat for a person, and from the entire convoy for people" (ibid., p. 593).

A similar reminder that somewhere it’s good, somewhere they drink, eat and have fun, can also be seen in the playful postscripts on the Pskov manuscripts collected by A. A. Pokrovsky in his famous work “Ancient Pskov-Novgorod Written Heritage”: (10 ) “they drink through the tyn, but they don’t call us” (Shestodnev, XIV century, No. 67 (175, 1305) - Pokrovsky, p. 278); "God give health to this wealth, that kun, then everything is in the kalita, that the part, then everything is on itself, strangled wretchedly, looking at me" (Parimeinik, XVI century, No. 61 (167, 1232) -Pokrovsky, p. 273). But just as the devil, according to ancient Russian ideas, all the time retains his kinship with angels and is depicted with wings, so in this anti-world the ideal is constantly reminded. At the same time, the anti-world is opposed not just to the ordinary world, but to the ideal world, just as the devil is opposed not to man, but to God and angels.

Despite the remaining connections with the "real world", in this wrong world, the completeness of the inversion is very important. It is not just one thing that is turned upside down, but all human relations, all objects of the real world. Therefore, when constructing a picture of the purl, outer or oprichnina world, the authors usually take care of its greatest integrity and generalization. The meaning of "The ABC of a Naked and Poor Man" lies in the fact that everything in the world is bad: from beginning to end, from "Az" to "Izhitsa". "ABC about naked" - "encyclopedia" of the wrong side of the world.

In the sequence of describing the new Moscow order as a world turned inside out, there is the meaning of the well-known Yaroslavl chronicle joke about "Yaroslavl miracle workers": "In the summer of 971 (1463). In the city of Yaroslavl, under Prince Alexander Feodorovich Yaroslavsky, at the Holy Savior in the monasteries in the community -do-worker, Prince Theodore Rostislavich of Smolensk, and with children, with Prince Konstantin and David, and from their coffin to forgive a multitude of countless people: these miracle-workers appeared not for good to all Prince Yaroslavsky: they said goodbye to all their fathers for a century, served them to Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich, and the prince of the great against their fatherland gave them volosts and villages, and from the old days, Alexi Poluektovich, the clerk of the Grand Duke, mourned about them, so that the fatherland would not be his. the new miracle worker, John Ogofonovich Existence, contemplatives of the Yaroslavl land: from whom the village of good, he took away, and from whom the village of good, he took away and wrote to the Grand Duke I yu, and whoever is kind, a boarin or a son of a boyar, inscribed him himself; and many of his other miracles cannot be powerfully written down or exhausted, because in the flesh there are tsyashos. "(11)

The underworld is always bad. This is the world of evil. Proceeding from this, we can understand the words of Svyatoslav of Kiev in the "Tale of Igor's Campaign", which have not yet been sufficiently well understood in the context: "This is evil - the prince is inconvenience to me: you will turn back the year". The dictionary-reference book "Words about Igor's Campaign" quite clearly documents the meaning of the word "naniche" - "inside out". This word is quite clear in its meaning, but the meaning of the whole context of the "Word" with this "on nothing" was not clear enough. Therefore, the compiler of the Dictionary-Reference V. L. Vinogradova put this word under the heading "portatively". Meanwhile, "on the turn of the year" can be translated exactly: " bad times came", because the "front" world, the "front" years are always bad. And in the "Word" the "front" world opposes some ideal, it is remembered immediately before: the soldiers of Yaroslav win with the shoemakers with one of their cliques, with one of their glory, the old the falcon is getting younger, the falcon does not give offense to its nest. And now this whole world has turned "naniche". It is quite possible that the mysterious "other kingdom" in the epic "Vavilo and buffoons" is also a turned inside out, inverted world - a world of evil and unreality. There are hints of this in the fact that the king Dog, his son Peregud, his son-in-law Peresvet, his daughter Perekrosa, is at the head of the "endish kingdom".

The world of evil, as we have already said, is an ideal world, but turned inside out, and above all, turned out piety, all church virtues.

The church turned inside out is a tavern, a kind of "anti-paradise", where "everything is the other way around", where kissers correspond to angels, where life in paradise is without clothes, without worries, and where people do everything topsy-turvy, where "wise philosophers they change for stupidity”, service people “serve with their backbone on the stove”, where people “speak quickly, spit far away”, etc. (Essays, p. 90).

"Service to the tavern" depicts the tavern as a church, while "Kalyazin petition" depicts the church as a tavern. Both of these works are by no means anti-church, they do not mock the church as such. In any case, it is no more than in the Kiev-Pechersk patericon, where demons can appear either in the form of an angel, (13) or in the form of Christ himself (Abramovich, pp. 185-186). From the point of view of this "wrong world", there is no blasphemy in the parody of "Our Father": this is not a parody, but an anti-prayer. The word "parody" in this case is not suitable.

From this it is clear why such blasphemous works from our modern point of view as "Service to a tavern" or "Kalyazin petition" could in the 17th century. recommended to the pious reader and were considered "useful". However, the author of the preface to the "Service of the Tavern" in the list of the XVIII century. wrote that "Service to the tavern" is useful only to those who do not see blasphemy in it. If someone treats this work as blasphemy, then it should not be read to him: “If someone is entertaining and thinks to apply blasphemy, and from this his conscience, being weak in nature, is embarrassed, let him not be forced to read, but let him leave the mighty and read and use" (Russian satire, p. 205). 18th century preface clearly notes the difference that appeared in relation to "comic works" in the 18th century.

For old Russian humor, jokes are very characteristic, serving the same exposure, but the "exposing" of the word, which primarily makes it meaningless.

Jest is one of the national Russian forms of laughter, in which a significant proportion belongs to its "linguistic" side. Jokes destroy the meaning of words and distort their outward form. The joker reveals the absurdity in the structure of words, gives an incorrect etymology or inappropriately emphasizes the etymological meaning of a word, connects words that are outwardly similar in sound, etc.

Rhyme plays a significant role in jokes. Rhyme provokes juxtaposition different words, "stupefies" and "uncovers" the word. The rhyme (especially in raeshny or "skazka" verse) creates a comic effect. The rhyme "cuts" the story into monotonous pieces, thus showing the unreality of what is depicted. It's the same as if a person were walking, constantly dancing. Even in the most serious situations, his gait would cause laughter. "Fantastic" (raeshnye) (14) verses reduce their narratives to this comic effect. Rhyme combines different meanings with external similarity, stupefies phenomena, makes dissimilar things similar, deprives phenomena of individuality, removes the seriousness of what is being told, makes even hunger, nakedness, and bare feet funny. The rhyme emphasizes that we have before us a fiction, a joke. The monks in the "Kalyazinsky Petition" complain that they have "turnips and horseradish, and a black bowl of Ephraim" (Essays, p. 121). Ephraim is clearly a fable, idle talk. The rhyme confirms the clownish, frivolous conversation of the work; The "Kalyazin petition" ends: "And the original petition was written and composed by Luka Mozgov and Anton Drozdov, Kirill Melnik, and Roman Berdnik, and Foma Veretennik" (ibid., p. 115). These surnames are invented for the sake of rhyme, and the rhyme emphasizes their clearly invented character.

Proverbs and sayings also often represent humor, mockery: "I drink kvass, but if I see beer, I will not pass it by"; (15) "Arkan is not a cockroach: hosh has no teeth, but eats his neck" (Old collections, p. 75); "Galchen in the kitchen, thirsty in the brewery, and naked, barefoot in the soap shop" (ibid., p. 76); "Vlas searched for kvass to his liking" (ibid., p. 131); "Eroch's lament, not having sipped peas" (ibid., p. 133); "Tula's zipunas blew out, and she sheathed Koshira in rags" (ibid., p. 141); "They drank at Fili's, but they beat Fili" (ibid., p. 145); "Fedos loves to bring" (ibid., p. 148).

The function of syntactic and semantic parallelism of phrases in the jokes of "The Tale of Thomas and Erem" or farce grandfathers serves the same purpose of destroying reality. I mean constructions like the following: "Jerem in the neck, and Foma in jerks" (Russian satire, p. 44); “Yerema has a cage, Thomas has a hut”, “Yerema is in bast shoes, and Thomas is in pistons” (ibid., p. 43). In essence, the story emphasizes only the insignificance, poverty, senselessness and stupidity of the existence of Thomas and Yerema, and these heroes do not exist: their “pairing”, their brotherhood, their similarity depersonalize and stupefy both. The world in which Foma and Yerema live is a destroyed, "absent" world, and these heroes themselves are not real, they are dolls, meaninglessly and mechanically echoing each other. (16)

This technique is not uncommon for other humorous works. Wed in the "Dowry List": "the wife did not eat, and the husband did not dine" (Essays, p. 125).

In old Russian humor, one of the favorite comic tricks- oxymoron and oxymoron combinations of phrases. (17) P. G. Bogatyrev drew attention to the role of oxymoron in the art of farce grandfathers, in "The Tale of Thomas and Yerema" and in "The Dowry Painting". But here is what is especially important for our topic: those combinations of opposite meanings are taken for the most part, where wealth and poverty, clothing and nudity, satiety and hunger, beauty and ugliness, happiness and unhappiness, whole and broken, etc., are opposed to each other, etc. Cf. in the "Dowry Painting": "... a mansion building, two pillars driven into the ground, and covered with a third" (Essays, p. 126); "The mare does not have a single hoof, and even that is all broken" (ibid., p. 130).

The unreality of the underworld is emphasized by metathesis. (18) Metathesis is constant in the "Medicine for Foreigners" and in the "Dowry Painting": "A running mouse and a flying frog", "A pair of Galan chickens with horns and four pairs of geese with arms" (Russian satire, p. 130); "Canvas whistle and for dancing two pairs of cerebellum trousers" (ibid., p. 131).

How deep into the past go character traits ancient Russian laughter? It is impossible to establish this precisely, and not only because the formation of medieval national features of laughter is associated with traditions that go far into the depths of pre-class society, but also because the consolidation of all features in culture is a slow process. However, we still have one clear evidence of the presence of all the main features of Old Russian laughter already in the 12th-13th centuries. - this is "Prayer" and "Word" by Daniil Zatochnik.

These works, which can be considered as one, are built on the same principles of the ridiculous as the satirical literature of the 17th century. They have the same themes and motifs that later became traditional for Old Russian laughter. The sharpener makes me laugh with his miserable position. His main subject of self-mockery is poverty, disorder, exile from everywhere, he is a "prisoner" - in other words, an exiled or enslaved person. He is in an "inverted" position: what he wants is not there, what he achieves - he does not receive, he asks - they do not give, he strives to arouse respect for his mind - in vain. His real poverty is opposed to the prince's ideal wealth; there is a heart, but it is a face without eyes; there is a mind, but it is like a night raven in the ruins, nakedness covers it like the Red Sea of ​​the pharaoh.

The world of the prince and his court is a real world. The world of the Sharpener is opposite to it in everything: “But when you have fun with many brushes, remember me, eating bread is dry; or drink sweet drink, and remember me, lying under a single board and dying in winter, and piercing raindrops like arrows” (Izbornik, with .228).

Friends are just as unfaithful to him, as in the satirical works of the 17th century: “My friends and my neighbor, and they rejected me, for I did not put before them a meal of various brashens” (ibid., p. 220).

In the same way, worldly disappointments lead Daniel to "cheerful pessimism": "The same is not for them a friend of faith, nor rely on a brother" (ibid., p. 226).

The techniques of the comic are the same - jokes with its "revealing" rhymes, metatheses and oxymorons: "Zane, sir, to whom Bogolyubov, and to me a fierce grief; to whom the Lake is white, and to me it is blacker than tar; to whom Lache is a lake, and to me sitting on it weep bitterly ; and to whom is Novgorod, but the corners fell to me, for not a percentage of my part "(ibid.). And these are not simple puns, but the construction of an "anti-world" in which there is not exactly what is in reality.

Laughingly, Daniel makes various ridiculous suggestions about how he could get out of his distressed state. Among these buffoonish assumptions, he dwells most of all on this one: to marry an evil wife. Laughing at your ugly wife is one of the most "true" methods of medieval buffoonery.

"A marvelous diva, whoever has a wife to capture an evil profit by dividing." "Or say to me: marry a rich man for the sake of greatness; drink and eat." In response to these suggestions, Daniel describes an ugly wife leaning against a mirror, blushing in front of him and angry at her ugliness. He describes her disposition and his family life: “It’s better for me to lead an ox to my house, better understand a wife than an evil one: an ox would neither say nor think evil; and the evil wife is furious, and the meek rises (the tamed one is lifted up - D. L .), to accept pride in wealth, and to condemn others in squalor" (ibid., p. 228).

Laughing at one's wife - only supposed or actually existing - was a kind of laughter most common in the Middle Ages: laughter at oneself, the usual for Ancient Rus' "fooling", buffoonery.

Laughing at one's wife survived even the most ancient Rus', becoming one of the favorite methods of buffoonery among farce grandfathers of the 18th and 19th centuries. The farce grandfathers described their wedding, and their family life, and the manners of their wife, and her appearance, creating a comic character, which, however, they did not show off to the public, but only drew her to the imagination.

An evil and vicious wife is her petty and improvised domestic anti-world, familiar to many, and therefore very effective.

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1 Bakhtin M. The work of Francois Rabelais and the folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M., 1965, p. 15 (hereinafter referred to in the text: Bakhtin).

2 Adrianov-Perets V.P. Essays on the history of Russian satirical literature of the 17th century. M.-L., 1937, p. 80 (hereinafter referred to in the text: Essays).

3 Nikita Gladky was sentenced to death along with Sylvester Medvedev for blaspheming the patriarch. So, he, walking past the chambers of the patriarch, threatened: “If I go into the chamber to the patriarch and scream, he won’t find a place with me from fear.” On another occasion, Gladkiy boasted that he would "get" "to the motley robe." Subsequently, Gladky was pardoned. For the text of the letter, see: Investigation cases about Fyodor Shaklovit and his accomplices. T. I. SPb., 1884, column. 553-554.

4 About clownish prayers in the 18th and 19th centuries. see: Adrianov-Perets V.P. Samples of socio-political parody of the XVIII-beginning. 19th century - TODRL, 1936, vol. III.

5 See: Likhachev D.S. Poetics of Old Russian Literature. L., 1971, .". 203-209.

6 See: Lotman Yu. M. Articles on the typology of culture. Tartu, 1970 (see especially the article "The problem of the sign and the sign system and the typology of Russian culture of the 11th-19th centuries"). - I note that the ancient Russian opposition of the world to the antiworld, the "other kingdom" is not only the result of scientific research, but also a direct given, vividly felt in Ancient Rus' and to a certain extent realized.

7 Russian democratic satire of the 17th century. Preparation of texts, article and commentary. V. P. Adrianov-Peretz. M.-L., 1954, p. 124 (further references - in the text: Russian satire).

8 Ya. S. Lurie writes on this occasion: “Whether this ceremony was borrowed by Gennady from his Western teachers or it was the fruit of his own vengeful ingenuity, in any case, the Novgorod inquisitor did everything in his power not to yield to the “Spanish king "(Kazakova N. A., Lurie Y. S. Anti-feudal heretical movements in Russia of the XIV-beginning of the XVI century. M.-L., 1955, p. 130). I think that in the "ceremony" of the execution of heretics there was neither borrowing nor personal ingenuity, but to a large extent there was a tradition of the ancient Russian underworld (cf. completely Russian, and not Spanish "materials" of clothes: sheepskin, bast, birch bark).

9 "Izbornik". (Collection of works of literature of Ancient Rus') M., 1969, p. 591 (hereinafter referred to in the text: Izbornik).

10 Pokrovsky A. A. Ancient Pskov-Novgorod written heritage. Review of parchment manuscripts of the Printing and Patriarchal libraries in connection with the question of the time of formation of these book depositories. - In the book: Proceedings of the fifteenth archaeological congress in Novgorod in 1911. T. I. M., 1916, p. 215-494 (hereinafter referred to in the text: Pokrovsky).

11 Complete collection of Russian chronicles. T. XXIII. Yermolinskaya chronicle. SPb., 1910, p. 157-158. - "Tsyashos" - written in "upside down" letter - the devil.

12 See in the "Explanatory Dictionary" by V. Dahl: insh - different, in the meaning of another, not this one. Wed and another interpretation: ““Inish kingdom” is usually understood by researchers as foreign, alien; or "beggar" is interpreted as "beggar" (Epics. Preparing the text, introductory article and commentary by V. Ya. Propp and B. N. Putilov. T. 2. M., 1958, p. 471).

13 Abramovich D. Kiev-Pechersk Patericon (introduction, text, notes). U Kiev, 1931, p. 163 (hereinafter referred to in the text: Abramovich).

14 "Skazovy verse" - a term proposed by P. G. Bogatyrev. See: Bogatyrev P. G. Questions of theory folk art. M., 1971, p. 486.

15 Simony Paul. Ancient collections of Russian proverbs, sayings, riddles, etc. of the 17th-19th centuries. SPb., 1899, p. 75 (further references - in the text: Ancient collections).

16 See more about jokes: Bogatyrev P. G. Questions of the theory of folk art, p. 450-496 (article "Artistic means in humorous fair folklore").

17 P. G. Bogatyrev defines both in this way: “An oxymoron is a stylistic device consisting in combining words opposite in meaning into a certain phrase ... We call an oxymoron combination of phrases a combination of two or more sentences with an opposite meaning” (ibid., p. 453-454).

18 According to P. G. Bogatyrev, metathesis is “a stylistic figure where parts of nearby words move, such as suffixes, or whole words in one phrase or in adjacent phrases” (ibid., p. 460).

From the book. "Historical Poetics of Russian Literature", St. Petersburg, 1999