The life belongs to ancient Russian literature. General characteristics of the genre of hagiography in ancient Russian literature. Genres of religious literature

* This work is not a scientific work, is not a final qualification work and is the result of processing, structuring and formatting the collected information intended for use as a source of material for independent preparation of educational works.

Introduction

Every nation remembers and knows its history. In stories, legends, and songs, information and memories of the past were preserved and passed on from generation to generation.

The general rise of Rus' in the 11th century, the creation of centers of writing and literacy, the emergence of a whole galaxy of educated people of their time in the princely-boyar, church-monastic environment determined the development of ancient Russian literature.

“Russian literature is almost a thousand years old. This is one of the most ancient literatures in Europe. It is older than French, English, and German literature. Its beginning dates back to the second half of the 10th century. Of this great millennium, more than seven hundred years belong to the period that is commonly called “ancient Russian literature”<…>

Old Russian literature can be considered as literature of one theme and one plot. This plot is world history, and this theme is the meaning of human life,” writes D. S. Likhachev. Old Russian literature up to the 17th century. does not know or hardly knows the conventional characters. The names of the characters are historical:

Boris and Gleb, Theodosius of Pechersky, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Sergius of Radonezh, Stefan of Perm...

Just as we talk about the epic in folk art, we can talk about the epic in ancient Russian literature. An epic is not a simple sum of epics and historical songs. The epics are plot-related. They paint us a whole epic era in the life of the Russian people. The era is fantastic, but at the same time historical. This era is the time of the reign of Vladimir the Red Sun. The action of many plots is transferred here, which obviously existed before, and in some cases arose later. Another epic time is the time of independence of Novgorod. Historical songs depict to us, if not a single era, then, in any case, a single course of events: the 16th and 17th centuries. predominantly.

Ancient Russian literature is an epic telling the history of the universe and the history of Rus'.

None of the works of Ancient Rus' - translated or original - stands alone. They all complement each other in the picture of the world they create. Each story is a complete whole, and at the same time it is connected with others. This is only one chapter of the history of the world.

The works were built according to the “enfilade principle”. The life was supplemented over the centuries with services to the saint and descriptions of his posthumous miracles. It could grow with additional stories about the saint. Several lives of the same saint could be combined into a new single work.

Such a fate is not uncommon for literary works of Ancient Rus': many of the stories over time begin to be perceived as historical, as documents or narratives about Russian history.

Russian scribes also appear in the hagiographic genre: in the 11th - early 12th centuries. the lives of Anthony of Pechersk (it has not survived), Theodosius of Pechersk, and two versions of the lives of Boris and Gleb were written. In these lives, Russian authors, undoubtedly familiar with the hagiographic canon and with the best examples of Byzantine hagiography, show, as we will see later, enviable independence and display high literary skill.

Life as a genre of ancient Russian literature.

At this time, the Russian princes persistently sought from the Patriarch of Constantinople the rights to canonize their own Russian saints, which would significantly increase the authority of the Russian Church. The creation of a life was an indispensable condition for the canonization of a saint.

We will look here at one of the lives of Boris and Gleb - “Reading about the life and destruction” of Boris and Gleb and “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk”. Both lives were written by Nestor. Comparing them is especially interesting since they represent two hagiographic types - hagiography-martyria(the story of the martyrdom of the saint) and monastic life, which tells about the entire life path of the righteous man, his piety, asceticism, the miracles he performed, etc. Nestor, of course, took into account the requirements of the Byzantinehagiographic canon. There is no doubt that he knew translated Byzantine Lives. But at the same time, he showed such artistic independence, such extraordinary talent that the creation of these two masterpieces makes him one of the outstanding ancient Russian writers.

Features of the genre of the lives of the first Russian saints.

The introduction to life corresponds to the ideas about the unity of the world historical process: the events that took place in Rus' are only a special case of the eternal struggle between God and the devil, and for every situation, for every action, Nestor looks for an analogy, a prototype in past history. Therefore, Vladimir’s decision to baptize Rus' leads to a comparison of him with Eustathius Placis (the Byzantine saint, whose life was discussed above) on the basis that Vladimir, as the “ancient Placis,” God “had no way of inducing spon (in this case, illness)” after which the prince decided to be baptized. Vladimir is also compared with Constantine the Great, whom Christian historiography revered as the emperor who proclaimed Christianity the state religion of Byzantium. Nestor compares Boris with the biblical Joseph, who suffered because of the envy of his brothers, etc.

The features of the genre of hagiography can be judged by comparing it with the chronicle.

The characters are traditional. The chronicle says nothing about the childhood and youth of Boris and Gleb. Nestor, in accordance with the requirements of the hagiographical canon, narrates how, as a youth, Boris constantly read “the lives and torments of the saints” and dreamed of being awarded the same martyrdom.

The chronicle does not mention Boris's marriage. Nestor has ittraditional motive - the future saint seeks to avoid marriage and marries only at the insistence of his father: “not for the sake of bodily lust,” but “for the sake of the king’s law and the obedience of his father.”

Further, the plots of the life and the chronicle coincide. But how different both monuments are in their interpretation of events! The chronicle says that Vladimir sends Boris with his warriors against the Pechenegs, the “Reading” speaks abstractly about certain “military” (that is, enemies, adversary), in the chronicle Boris returns to Kiev, since he did not “find” (did not meet) enemy army, in “Reading” the enemies take flight, since they do not dare to “stand against the blessed one.”

Living human relationships are visible in the chronicle: Svyatopolk attracts the people of Kiev to his side by giving them gifts (“estate”), they are taken reluctantly, since in Boris’s army there are the same people of Kiev (“their brothers”) and - as is completely natural in the real conditions of that time, the people of Kiev feared a fratricidal war: Svyatopolk could rouse the people of Kiev against their relatives who had gone on a campaign with Boris. Finally, let us remember the nature of Svyatopolk’s promises (“I will give you to the fire”) or his negotiations with"high-city boyars." All these episodes in the chronicle story look very lifelike; in “Reading” they are completely absent. This reveals the tendency, dictated by the canon of literary etiquette, to abstraction.

The hagiographer strives to avoid specificity, lively dialogue, names (remember - the chronicle mentions the Alta River, Vyshgorod, Putsha - apparently the elder of the Vyshgorod residents, etc.) and even lively intonations in dialogues and monologues.

When the murder of Boris, and then Gleb, is described, the doomed princes only pray, and they pray ritually: either quoting psalms, or - contrary to any plausibility in life - they hurry the killers to “finish their work.”

Using the example of "Reading" we can judge the characteristic features of the hagiographic canon - this is cold rationality, conscious detachment from specific facts, names, realities, theatricality and artificial pathos of dramatic episodes, the presence (and inevitable formal construction) of such elements of the life of the saint, about which the hagiographer did not have the slightest information: an example of this is the description of the childhood years of Boris and Gleb in “Reading”.

In addition to the life written by Nestor, the anonymous life of the same saints is also known - “The Legend and Passion and Praise of Boris and Gleb.”

Gleb, in the face of the murderers, “suffering his body” (trembling, weakening), asks for mercy. He asks, as children ask: “Don’t let me... Don’t let me!” (here “actions” means touch). He does not understand what and why he must die... Gleb's defenseless youth is, in its way, very elegant and touching. This is one of the most “watercolor” images of ancient Russian literature.” In “Reading” the same Gleb does not express his emotions in any way - he thinks (he hopes that he will be taken to his brother and that, having seen Gleb’s innocence, he will not “destroy” him), he prays, and at the same time rather dispassionately. Even when the murderer “took Saint Gleb as an honest head,” he “silently, like a lamb, kindly, with his whole mind in the name of God and looking up to the sky, praying.” However, this is by no means evidence of Nestor’s inability to convey living feelings: in the same scene he describes, for example, the experiences of Gleb’s soldiers and servants. When the prince orders him to be left in a boat in the middle of the river, the warriors “sting at the saint and often look around, wanting to see what the saint wants to be,” and the youths in his ship, at the sight of the murderers, “lay down their oars, sadly lamenting and crying for the saint.” As we see, their behavior is much more natural, and, therefore, the dispassion with which Gleb prepares to accept death is just a tribute to literary etiquette.

"The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk"

After “Reading about Boris and Gleb,” Nestor writes “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk,” a monk and then abbot of the famous Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. This life is very different from the one discussed above in the great psychologism of the characters, the abundance of living realistic details, the verisimilitude and naturalness of the lines and dialogues. If in the lives of Boris and Gleb (especially in the “Reading”) the canon triumphs over the vitality of the situations described, then in the “Life of Theodosius,” on the contrary, miracles and fantastic visions are described so clearly and convincingly that the reader seems to see with his own eyes what is happening and cannot don't "believe" him.

It is unlikely that these differences are only the result of Nestor’s increased literary skill or a consequence of a change in his attitude towards the hagiographic canon.

The reasons here are probably different. Firstly, these are different types of lives. Life of Boris and Gleb - hagiography-martyrium, that is, the story of the martyrdom of the saint; this main theme determined the artistic structure of such a life, the sharp contrast between good and evil, the martyr and his tormentors, dictated the special tension and “poster-like” directness of the climactic murder scene: it should be painfully long and untilmoralizing limit. Therefore, in martyrdoms, as a rule, the torture of the martyr is described in detail, and death occurs as if in several stages, so that the reader empathizes with the hero longer. At the same time, the hero addresses lengthy prayers to God, which reveal his steadfastness and humility and expose the full gravity of the crime of his killers.

“The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk” is typical monastic life, a story about a pious, meek, hardworking righteous man, whose whole life is a continuous feat. It contains many everyday collisions: scenes of communication between the saint and monks, laymen, princes, sinners; In addition, in the lives of this type, an obligatory component is the miracles that the saint performs - and this introduces an element of plot entertainment into the life, requiring considerable skill from the author so that the miracle is described effectively and believably. Medieval hagiographers were well aware that the effect of a miracle is especially well achieved by combining purely realistic everyday details with a description of the action of otherworldly forces - the appearance of angels, dirty tricks perpetrated by demons, visions, etc.

The composition of the “Life” is traditional: there is a lengthy introduction and a story about the saint’s childhood. But already in this story about the birth, childhood and adolescence of Theodosius, an involuntary clash of traditional cliches and life’s truth occurs. Traditionally, the piety of Theodosius’s parents is mentioned; the scene of naming the baby is significant: the priest names him “Theodosius” (which means “given to God”), since he foresaw with the “eyes of his heart” that he “wants to be given to God from childhood.” It is traditional to mention how the boy Feodosia “went to the Church of God all day long” and did not approach his peers playing on the street. However, the image of Theodosius’s mother is completely unconventional, full of undeniable individuality. She was physically strong, with a rough, masculine voice; passionately loving her son, she nevertheless cannot come to terms with the fact that he, a youth from a very wealthy family, does not think of inheriting her villages and “slaves”, that he wears shabby clothes, flatly refusing to put on “light” and clean ones, and thereby brings reproach to the family by spending time in prayer or baking prosphora. The mother stops at nothing to break her son’s exalted piety (this is the paradox - Theodosius’s parents are presented by the hagiographer as pious and God-fearing people!), she brutally beats him, puts him on a chain, and tears off the chains from the boy’s body. When Theodosius manages to go to Kyiv in the hope of taking monastic vows in one of the monasteries there, the mother announces a large reward to anyone who will show her the whereabouts of her son. She finally discovers him in a cave, where he labors together with Anthony and Nikon (from this abode of hermits the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery later grows). And here she resorts to cunning: she demands that Anthony show her his son, threatening that otherwise she will “destroy” herself “before the doors of the oven.” But, seeing Theodosius, whose face “has changed from his much work and self-restraint,” the woman can no longer be angry: she, hugging her son, “crying bitterly,” begs him to return home and do whatever he wants there (“according to her will”). . Theodosius is adamant, and at his insistence the mother takes monastic vows in one of the nunneries. However, we understand that this is not so much the result of conviction in the correctness of his chosen path to God, but rather the act of a desperate woman who realized that only by becoming a nun would she be able to at least occasionally see her son.

The character of Theodosius himself is also complex. He possesses all the traditional virtues of an ascetic: meek, hardworking, adamant in the mortification of the flesh, full of mercy, but when a princely feud occurs in Kiev (Svyatoslav drives his brother from the princely throne -Izyaslav Yaroslavich), Feodosia is actively involved in a purely mundane political struggle and boldly denounces Svyatoslav.

“I speak the truth to you, father, for I am the very dung of the bitch, and there is nothing in it, unless it is a small cut in one coal.” But Theodosius, recalling the omnipotence of God and citing a similar example from the Bible, sends the baker again to see if there is flour in the bottom. He goes to the pantry, approaches the bottom and sees that the bottom, previously empty, is full of flour.

Everything in this episode is artistically convincing: both the liveliness of the dialogue and the effect of a miracle, enhanced precisely thanks to skillfully found details: the baker remembers that there are three or four handfuls of bran left - this is a concrete visible image and an equally visible image of a bottom filled with flour: there is so much of it that it even spills over the wall onto the ground.

“Blacker! Because you are apart all day, and I am hard [you are idle all the days, and I am working]. I can't ride a horse. But let’s do this [let’s do this]: yes, I will lie down on a cart, but you can ride a horse.” Feodosia agrees. But as you get closer to the monastery, you increasingly meet people who know Theodosius. They respectfully bow to him, and the boy gradually begins to worry: who is this well-known monk, although in shabby clothes? He is completely horrified when he sees with what honor Theodosius is greeted by the monastery brethren. However, the abbot does not reproach the driver and even orders him to be fed and paid.

Let us not guess whether such a case happened with Theodosius himself. Undoubtedly, another thing is that Nestor could and was able to describe such collisions, he was a writer of great talent, and the convention that we encounter in the works of ancient Russian literature is not a consequence of inability or special medieval thinking. When we talk about the very understanding of the phenomena of reality, we should only talk about special artistic thinking, that is, about ideas about how this reality should be depicted in monuments of certain literary genres.

Over the next centuries, many dozens of different lives will be written - eloquent and simply primitive and formal or, on the contrary, vital and sincere. We will have to talk about some of them later. Nestor was one of the first Russian hagiographers, and the traditions of his work will be continued and developed in the works of his followers.

Genre of hagiographic literature in XIV- XVIcenturies.

Epiphanius the Wise (died in 1420) entered the history of literature primarily as the author of two extensive lives - “The Life of Stephen of Perm” (the bishop of Perm, who baptized the Komi and created an alphabet for them in their native language), written at the end of the 14th century, and "The Life of Sergius of Radonezh", created in 1417-1418.

The basic principle from which Epiphanius the Wise proceeds in his work is that the hagiographer, describing the life of a saint, must by all means show the exclusivity of his hero, the greatness of his feat, the detachment of his actions from everything ordinary and earthly. Hence the desire for an emotional, bright, decorated language that differs from everyday speech. The Lives of Epiphanius are filled with quotations from the Holy Scriptures, for the feat of his heroes should find analogies in biblical history. They are characterized by the author's demonstrative desire to declare his creative impotence, the futility of his attempts to find the necessary verbal equivalent of the high phenomenon depicted. But it is precisely this imitation that allows Epiphanius to demonstrate all his literary skill, to stun the reader with an endless series of epithets or synonymous metaphors, or, by creating long chains of cognate words, to force him to think about the erased meaning of the concepts they denote. This technique is called “weaving words.”

Illustrating the writing style of Epiphanius the Wise, researchers most often turn to his “Life of Stephen of Perm”, and within this life - to the famous praise of Stephen, in which the art of “weaving words” (by the way, this is exactly what it is called here) finds, perhaps, the most striking expression. Let us cite a fragment from this praise, paying attention to the play on the word “word”, and to a series of parallel grammatical constructions: “And I, many sinners and foolish, following the words of your praises, weave the word and multiply the word, and honor with the word, and from the words Collecting praise, and acquiring, and weaving in, I again say: what will I call you: guide (leader) for the lost, finder for the lost, mentor for the deceived, guide for the blinded mind, cleanser for the defiled, seeker for the wasteful, guardian for the military, comforter for the sad, feeder for the hungry, giver for the needy. .."

Epiphanius strings together a long garland of epithets, as if trying to characterize the saint more fully and accurately. However, this accuracy is by no means the accuracy of concreteness, but a search for metaphorical, symbolic equivalents to determine, in essence, the only quality of a saint - his absolute perfection in everything.

In hagiography of the XIV-XV centuries. The principle of abstraction is also becoming widespread, when from the work “everyday, political, military, economic terminology, job titles, specific natural phenomena of a given country are expelled whenever possible...” The writer resorts to periphrases, using expressions such as “a certain nobleman”, “sovereign to that city”, etc. The names of episodic characters are also eliminated, they are referred to simply as “a certain husband”, “a certain wife”, while the additions “certain”, “certain”, “one” serve to remove the phenomenon from the surrounding everyday environment, from a specific historical environment."

The hagiographic principles of Epiphanius found their continuation in the works of Pachomius Logothetes. Pachomius Logothetes. Pachomius, a Serb by origin, came to Rus' no later than 1438. In the 40s-80s. XV century and his work accounts for: he owns no less than ten lives, many words of praise, services to the saints and other works. Pachomius, according to V. O. Klyuchevsky, “nowhere did he discover significant literary talent... but he... gave Russian hagiography many examples of that even, somewhat cold and monotonous style, which was easier to imitate with the most limited degree of reading.”

This rhetorical style of writing by Pachomius, his plot simplification and traditionalism can be illustrated with at least this example. Nestor very vividly and naturally described the circumstances of the tonsure of Theodosius of Pechersk, how Anthony dissuaded him, reminding the young man of the difficulties awaiting him on the path of monastic asceticism, how his mother was trying in every way to return Theodosius to worldly life. A similar situation exists in the “Life of Cyril Belozersky”, written by Pachomius. The young man Kozma is brought up by his uncle, a rich and eminent man (he is a okolnik of the Grand Duke). The uncle wants to make Kozma treasurer, but the young man longs to become a monk. And so “if it happened that Abbot Stefan of Makhrishchi came, a man who was accomplished in virtue, we all know great things for the sake of life. Having seen this coming, Kozma flows with joy to him... and falls at his honest feet, shedding tears from his eyes and tells him his thoughts, and at the same time begs him to place the monastic image on her. “For thee, oh sacred head, I have longed for a long time, but now God vouchsafe me to see this venerable shrine, but I pray for God’s sake, do not reject me, a sinner and indecent...” The elder is “touched,” consoles Kozma and tonsures him as a monk (giving him the name Cyril). The scene is formal and cold: Stefan’s virtues are glorified, Kozma pathetically begs him, the abbot willingly meets his request. Then Stefan goes to Timofey, Kozma-Kirill’s uncle, to inform him about his nephew’s tonsure. But here, too, the conflict is only barely outlined, not depicted. Timothy, having heard about what had happened, “heavily listened to the word, and was filled with sorrow and some annoying utterance to Stephen.” He leaves offended, but Timothy, ashamed of his pious wife, immediately repents “about the words spoken to Stephen,” returns him and asks for forgiveness.

In a word, in “standard” eloquent expressions a standard situation is depicted, which is in no way correlated with the specific characters of a given life. We will not find here any attempts to evoke the reader’s empathy with the help of any vital details, subtly noticed nuances (and not general forms of expression) of human feelings. Attention to feelings, emotions, which require an appropriate style for their expression, the emotions of the characters and, no less, the emotions of the author himself, is undeniable.

But this, as mentioned above, is not yet a genuine penetration intohuman character is only a declared attention to it, a kind of “abstract psychologism” (the term of D. S. Likhachev). And at the same time, the very fact of increased interest in human spiritual life is in itself significant. The style of the second South Slavic influence, which found its embodiment initially in the lives (and only later in the historical narrative), D. S. Likhachev proposed to call"expressive-emotional style."

At the beginning of the 15th century. under the pen of Pachomius Logothetes, as we remember,a new hagiographic canon was created - eloquent, “ornamented” lives, in which lively “realistic” features gave way to beautiful, but dry periphrases. But along with this, lives of a completely different type appear, boldly breaking traditions, touching with their sincerity and ease.

This is, for example, “The Life of Mikhail Klopsky.” "The Life of Mikhail Klopsky." The very beginning of this life is unusual. Instead of the traditional beginning, the hagiographer’s story about the birth, childhood and tonsure of the future saint, this life begins, as it were, from the middle, and from an unexpected and mysterious scene. The monks of the Trinity on Klopa (near Novgorod) monastery were in the church at prayer. Priest Macarius, returning to his cell, discovers that the cell is unlocked, and an old man unknown to him is sitting in it, rewriting the book of the apostolic acts. The priest, “alarmed,” returned to the church, called the abbot and the brethren, and together with them returned to the cell. But the cell is already locked from the inside, and the unknown elder continues to write. When they start questioning him, he answers very strangely: he repeats word for word every question asked of him. The monks could not even find out his name. The elder visits church with the rest of the monks, prays with them, and the abbot decides: “Be an elder with us, live with us.” The rest of the life is a description of the miracles performed by Michael (his name is reported by the prince who visited the monastery). Even the story about the “repose” of Michael is surprisingly simple, with everyday details; there is no traditional praise for the saint.

The unusual nature of the “Life of Michael Klopsky,” created in the century of the works of Pachomius Logofet, should not, however, surprise us. The point here is not only the original talent of its author, but also the fact that the author of the life is a Novgorodian, he continues in his work the traditions of Novgorod hagiography, which, like all the literature of Novgorod, was distinguished by greater spontaneity, unpretentiousness, simplicity (in the good sense of this words), compared, for example, with the literature of Moscow or Vladimir-Suzdal Rus'.

However, the “realism” of the life, its entertaining plot, the liveliness of the scenes and dialogues - all this was so contrary to the hagiographic canon that already in the next century the life had to be reworked. Let us compare only one episode - the description of the death of Michael in the original version of the 15th century. and in the alteration of the 16th century.

In the original edition we read: “And Michael fell ill in the month of December on Savin’s day, going to church. And he stood on the right side of the church, in the courtyard, opposite Theodosius’s tomb. And the abbot and the elders began to say to him: “Why, Mikhail, are you not standing in the church, but standing in the courtyard?” And he said to them: “I want to lie down.” ... Yes, he took with him the censer and the temyan [incense - incense], and went to the cell. And the abbot sent him nets and threads from the meal. And they opened the door, Azhio Temyan Xia is smoking [Temyan is still smoking], but he is not in his stomach [he has died]. And they began to look for places, the ground was frozen, where to put it. And remembermonks to the abbot - test the place where Michael stood. When I looked at it from that place, the earth was already melting. And they buried him honestly.”

This casual, lively story has undergone a drastic revision. So, to the question of the abbot and the brethren why he prays in the courtyard, Mikhail now answers like this: “Behold my peace for ever and ever, for the imam will dwell here.” The episode when he goes to his cell is also revised: “And he burns the censer, and having put incense on the coals, he goes into his cell, and the brethren are amazed, having seen the saint so exhausted, and again receiving so much strength. The abbot goes to the meal and sends food to the saint, commanding him to eat.

She came from the abbot and went into the saint’s cell, and having seen him go to the Lord, her hand bent in the shape of a cross, and in the image of one sleeping and emitting a lot of fragrance.” The following describes the crying at the burial of Michael; Moreover, he is mourned not only by the monks and the archbishop “with the entire sacred cathedral,” but also by the entire people: people rush to the funeral, “like river rapids, tears flowing incessantly.” In a word, the life takes on, under the pen of the new editor Vasily Tuchkov, exactly the form in which, for example, Pachomius Logofet would have created it.

These attempts to move away from the canons, to let the breath of life into literature, to decide on literary fiction, to renounce straightforward didactics were manifested not only in hagiographies.

The genre of hagiographic literature continued to develop in the 17th - 18th centuries: “The Tale of Luxurious Life and Joy”, “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum” 1672, “The Life of Patriarch Joachim Savelov” 1690, “The Life of Simon Volomsky”, the end of the 17th century, “The Life of Alexander Nevsky »The autobiographical moment is consolidated in different ways in the 17th century: here is the life of a mother, compiled by her son (“The Tale of Uliani Osorgina”), and “The ABC,” compiled on behalf of a “naked and poor man,” and “A Noble Message to an Enemy,” and the actual autobiographies are Avvakum and Epiphany, written simultaneously in the same earthen prison in Pustozersk and representing a kind of diptych. “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum” is the first autobiographical work of Russian literature, in which Archpriest Avvakum himself spoke about himself and his long-suffering life. Speaking about the work of Archpriest Avvakum, A. N. Tolstoy wrote: “These were the brilliant “life” and “epistles” of the rebel, frantic Archpriest Avvakum, who ended his literary career with terrible torture and execution in Pustozersk. Avvakum’s speech is all about gesture, the canon is destroyed to smithereens, you physically feel the presence of the narrator, his gestures, his voice.”

The moment of miracle, revelation (the ability to teach is a gift from God) is very important for the genre of monastic life. It is a miracle that brings movement and development to the biography of a saint.

The genre of hagiography is gradually undergoing changes. The authors depart from the canons, letting the breath of life into literature, decide on literary fiction (“The Lives of Mikhail Klopsky”), and speak a simple “peasant” language (“The Life of Archpriest Avvakum”).

Test on ancient Russian literature

Topic: The originality of the genre of Russian hagiography and its evolution (development) in the works of ancient Russian literature. Genre of life.

1927 group 3rd year students

correspondence department

Faculty of Education

Perepechina Irina Dmitrievna.

Test plan

1. Introduction

2. Life - as a genre of ancient Russian literature

3. The genre of hagiographic literature in the 14th-16th centuries

4. Conclusion

5. Literature

1. Introduction

Every nation remembers and knows its history.

In stories, legends, and songs, memories of the past of their homeland were preserved and passed on from one generation to another.

The general rise of Rus' in the 9th century, the creation of centers of writing and literacy, the emergence of a number of educated people of their time in the princely-boyar, church-monastic environment determined the development of Old Russian literature.

“Russian literature goes back a thousand years. It is the oldest literature in the world, older than French, English, and German.

It originated in the second half of the 10th century. And of this huge millennium, more than seven hundred years belong to the period called “Old Russian literature.” And this literature is considered as literature of one theme and one plot. D.S. Likhachev wrote about this period: “This plot is world history, and this theme is the meaning of human life.”

The main feature of Old Russian literature is that there are no conventional characters in it. The names of the characters are all historical: Boris and Gleb, Theodosius of Pechorsky, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Sergius of Radonezh, Stefan of Perm...

Just as the epic exists in folk art, we can say that it also exists in ancient Russian literature. Epic is the entire work of ancient Russian writers, interconnected in plot. The works of this period show us a whole epic era in the life of the Russian people. The era is fantastic and historical at the same time. The era is the time of the reign of Vladimir the Red Sun. Many works were written at this time. Another epic time was the independence of Novgorod.

Historical songs depict to us a single course of events: the 16th and 17th centuries.

Ancient Russian literature is an epic that talks about the history of Rus'. None of the works of Ancient Rus' - translated or original - stands apart. All of them organically complement each other in the created picture of the world. Each story is a complete whole, and at the same time, it is connected with others. All ancient Russian works were built according to the “enfilade principle”.

The life was supplemented over time with services to the saint and descriptions of his posthumous miracles. It necessarily contained additional stories about the saint. Sometimes several lives of the same saint were combined into a new single work.

Many of the stories of Ancient Rus' began to be perceived as historical, as a documentary narrative of Russian history.

The hagiographic genre is the genre of writing the lives of saints. In the 11th and early 12th centuries, the lives of Anthony of Pechersk, which has not survived, Theodosius of Pechersk, and 2 versions of the lives of Boris and Gleb were written. In these lives, the authors demonstrate independence and high literary skill.

2. Life as a genre of ancient Russian literature

In the 11th and early 12th centuries, the first lives were created: 2 lives of Boris and Gleb, the Life of Theodosius of Pechersk, Anthony of Pechersk (not preserved to this day).

Their writing was an important step in the ideological policy of the Russian state.

At the time when these lives were created, the Russian princes persistently sought from the Patriarch of Constantinople the right to canonize their own Russian saints, as this would increase the authority of the Russian Church.

The first and important condition for the canonization of a saint was the creation of a life of this saint.

Here we give an example of the lives of Boris and Gleb, Theodosius of Pechersk.

Both lives were written by Nestor.

These lives belong to 2 hagiographic types - the martyrium life (the story of the martyrdom of the saint) and the monastic life, which tells about the entire life path of the righteous man, his piety, asceticism, the miracles he performed, etc.

When writing his life, Nestor took into account all the requirements that apply to the hagiographic canon. Of course, he was familiar with translated Byzantine lives, but he showed such artistic independence that he became one of the outstanding ancient Russian writers.

Features of the genre of the lives of the first Russian saints.

"Reading about Boris and Gleb" begins with an introduction to the history of the entire human race: the creation of Adam and Eve, their fall, the denunciation of the “idolatry” of people, the recollection of the teaching and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, who came to save the entire human race, how the apostles began to preach the new teaching and how a new faith triumphed.

Nestor spoke about the details of the baptism of Rus' by Prince Vladimir. And he described this act as the most joyful and solemn: all Russian people are in a hurry to accept Christianity, and not one of them resists or even speaks against the will of the prince himself, and Vladimir himself rejoices, as he sees the “new faith” of newly converted Christians. So, this is how the events that occurred before the villainous murder of Boris and Gleb by Svyatopolk are described. Nestor showed that Svyatopolk was acting according to the machinations of the devil.

A historical introduction to the life is necessary in order to show the unity of the world historical process: the events that took place in Russia are only a special case of the struggle between God and the devil, and for any act that Nestor talks about, he looks for an analogy, a prototype in past history.

Nestor compares Boris with the biblical Joseph, who also suffered due to the envy of his brothers.

If you compare the life with the chronicle, you can see that the chronicle says nothing about the childhood and youth of Boris and Gleb.

In his life, according to the rule of the hagiographical genre, Nestor tells how, as a youth, Boris constantly read the lives and torments of the saints and dreamed of being awarded the same martyrdom. In the chronicle there is no mention of Boris's marriage, and in his life Boris seeks to avoid marriage, but marries only at the insistence of his father. Living human relationships are visible in the chronicle: Svyatopolk attracts the people of Kiev to his side by giving them gifts (“estate”), they are taken reluctantly, because the same Kievans are in Boris’s army, and they are afraid of a fratricidal war: Svyatopolk can raise the people of Kiev against their relatives who went on a campaign with Boris. All these episodes in the chronicle look vivid and vital, but in “Reading” they are completely absent.

The life shows that Gleb does not understand why he must die. Gleb's defenseless youth is very graceful and touching. Even when the murderer “took Saint Gleb as an honest head,” he “was silent, like a lamb, kindly, with his whole mind in the name of God and looking up to the sky in prayer.”

Here is another feature of the hagiographic genre - abstraction, avoidance of concreteness, live dialogue, names, even live intonations in dialogues and monologues.

The description of the murder of Boris and Gleb also lacks bright colors; only prayer is shown, and a ritual one at that; they rush the killers to “finish their job.”

So, let's summarize: The hagiographic genre is characterized by cold rationality, conscious detachment from specific facts, names, realities, theatricality and artificial pathos of dramatic episodes. The presence of such elements in describing the life of the saint as his childhood, youth, piety, the severity in which he kept himself, asceticism, fasting, constant reading of psalms, prayers to the Almighty.

Life of Theodosius of Pechersk.

This life was written by Nestor after the life of Boris and Gleb.

Who is Theodosius of Pechersk? This is a monk, and then he becomes the abbot of the famous Kiev-Pechersk monastery.

This life differs from the one we discussed above in the greater psychologism of the characters, the abundance of living realistic details, the verisimilitude and naturalness of the lines and dialogues.

If in the previous life the canon triumphs over the vitality of the situations described, then in this work miracles and fantastic visions are described very clearly and so convincingly that when the reader reads what happens on these pages, he cannot help but believe what he is reading about . Moreover, it seems to him that he saw everything described in the work with his own eyes. It can be said that these differences are not only the result of Nestor's increased skill. The reason is probably that these are different types of lives. 1 life, which we considered, is the life-martyrium, that is, the story of the martyrdom of a saint. This main theme determined the artistic structure of the life, the opposition of good and evil, and dictated special tension in the description of the martyrs and his tormentors, since the climax scene should be painfully long and moralizing to the extreme. Therefore, in this type of hagiography-martyrium, as a rule, the torture of the martyr is described, and his death occurs, as it were, in several stages, so that the reader empathizes with the hero longer.

At the same time, the hero always turns to God with prayers, which reveal such qualities as his steadfastness and humility and expose the crimes of his killers. “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk” is a typical monastic life, a story about a pious, meek, hardworking righteous man, whose whole life is a continuous feat. It contains many everyday descriptions of scenes of communication between the saint and monks, laymen, princes, and sinners. In hagiographies of this type, a prerequisite is the miracles that the saint performs, and this introduces an element of plot entertainment into the hagiography and requires special skill from the author so that the miracle is described effectively and believably.

Medieval hagiographers were well aware that the effect of a miracle is well achieved by combining only realistic everyday details with a description of the action of otherworldly forces - the appearance of angels, mischief perpetrated by demons, visions, etc.

VOLGOGRAD STATE INSTITUTE

ARTS AND CULTURE

DEPARTMENT OF LIBRARY STUDIES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Literature abstract on the topic:

“Life as a genre of ancient Russian literature”

Volgograd 2002

Introduction

Every nation remembers and knows its history. In stories, legends, and songs, information and memories of the past were preserved and passed on from generation to generation.

Old Russian literature can be considered as literature of one theme and one plot. This plot is world history, and this theme is the meaning of human life,” writes D. S. Likhachev.1

Old Russian literature up to the 17th century. does not know or hardly knows the conventional characters. The names of the characters are historical:
Boris and Gleb, Feodosia Pechersky, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy,
Sergius of Radonezh, Stefan of Perm...

Just as we talk about the epic in folk art, we can talk about the epic in ancient Russian literature. An epic is not a simple sum of epics and historical songs. The epics are plot-related. They paint us a whole epic era in the life of the Russian people. The era is fantastic, but at the same time historical. This era is the time of the reign of Vladimir Krasnoe
Sun. The action of many plots is transferred here, which obviously existed before, and in some cases arose later. Another epic time is the time of independence of Novgorod. Historical songs depict to us, if not a single era, then, in any case, a single course of events: the 16th and 17th centuries. predominantly.

Ancient Russian literature is an epic telling the history of the universe and the history of Rus'.

None of the works of Ancient Rus' - translated or original - stands apart. They all complement each other in the picture of the world they create. Each story is a complete whole, and at the same time it is connected with others. This is only one chapter of the history of the world.

Such a fate is not uncommon for literary works of Ancient Rus': many of the stories over time begin to be perceived as historical, as documents or narratives about Russian history.

Russian scribes also act in the hagiographic genre: in the 11th - early 12th centuries. the lives of Anthony of Pechersk were written (it has not survived), Theodosius
Pechersky, two versions of the lives of Boris and Gleb. In these lives, Russian authors, undoubtedly familiar with the hagiographic canon and with the best examples of Byzantine hagiography, show, as we will see later, enviable independence and display high literary skill.
Life as a genre of ancient Russian literature.

We will look here at one of the lives of Boris and Gleb - “Reading about the life and destruction” of Boris and Gleb and “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk”. Both lives were written by Nestor. A comparison of them is especially interesting, since they represent two hagiographic types - the life-martyria (the story of the martyrdom of the saint) and the monastic life, which tells about the entire life path of the righteous man, his piety, asceticism, the miracles he performed, etc. Nestor, Of course, he took into account the requirements of the Byzantine hagiographic canon. There is no doubt that he knew translated Byzantine Lives. But at the same time, he showed such artistic independence, such extraordinary talent that the creation of these two masterpieces makes him one of the outstanding ancient Russian writers.
Features of the genre of the lives of the first Russian saints.

The features of the genre of hagiography can be judged by comparing it with the chronicle.

The characters are traditional. The chronicle says nothing about the childhood and youth of Boris and Gleb. Nestor, in accordance with the requirements of the hagiographic canon, narrates how, as a youth, Boris constantly read
“the lives and torments of the saints” and dreamed of being worthy of the same martyrdom.

The chronicle does not mention Boris's marriage. Nestor has a traditional motive - the future saint seeks to avoid marriage and marries only at the insistence of his father: “not for the sake of bodily lust,” but “for the sake of the king’s law and the obedience of his father.”

Further, the plots of the life and the chronicle coincide. But how different both monuments are in their interpretation of events! The chronicle says that Vladimir sends Boris with his warriors against the Pechenegs, the “Reading” speaks abstractly about certain “military” (that is, enemies, adversary), in the chronicle Boris returns to Kiev, since he did not “find” (did not meet) enemy army,
During the “reading,” the enemies take flight, since they do not dare to “stand against the blessed one.”

Living human relationships are visible in the chronicle: Svyatopolk attracts the people of Kiev to his side by giving them gifts (“estate”), they are taken reluctantly, since in Boris’s army there are the same people of Kiev (“their brothers”) and - as is completely natural in the real conditions of that time, the people of Kiev feared a fratricidal war: Svyatopolk could rouse the people of Kiev against their relatives who had gone on a campaign with Boris. Finally, let us remember the nature of Svyatopolk’s promises (“I will give you to the fire”) or his negotiations with
"high-city boyars." All these episodes in the chronicle story look very lifelike; in “Reading” they are completely absent. This reveals the tendency toward abstraction dictated by the canon of literary etiquette.

The hagiographer strives to avoid specificity, live dialogue, names
(remember - the chronicle mentions the Alta River, Vyshgorod, Putsha - apparently the elder of the Vyshgorod residents, etc.) and even lively intonations in dialogues and monologues.

When the murder of Boris and then Gleb is described, the doomed princes only pray, and pray ritually: either quoting psalms, or
- contrary to any real plausibility - they rush the killers
“finish your business.”

In addition to the life written by Nestor, the anonymous life of the same saints is also known - “The Legend and Passion and Praise of Boris and Gleb.”

Gleb, in the face of the murderers, “suffering his body” (trembling, weakening), asks for mercy. He asks, as children ask: “Don’t let me... Don’t let me!” (Here
“actions” - touch). He doesn't understand why and why he has to die...
Gleb's defenseless youth is in its way very elegant and touching. This is one of the most “watercolor” images of ancient Russian literature.” In "Reading" the same
Gleb does not express his emotions in any way - he thinks (he hopes that he will be taken to his brother and that, having seen Gleb’s innocence, he will not “destroy” him), he prays, and rather dispassionately. Even when the murderer “took Saint Gleb as an honest head,” he “silently, like a lamb, kindly, with his whole mind in the name of God and looking up to the sky, praying.” However, this is by no means evidence of Nestor’s inability to convey living feelings: in the same scene he describes, for example, the experiences of Gleb’s soldiers and servants. When the prince orders him to be left in a boat in the middle of the river, the warriors “sting at the saint and often look around, wanting to see what the saint wants to be,” and the youths in his ship, at the sight of the murderers, “lay down their oars, sadly lamenting and crying for the saint.” As we see, their behavior is much more natural, and, therefore, the dispassion with which Gleb prepares to accept death is just a tribute to literary etiquette.
"The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk"

After “Reading about Boris and Gleb” Nestor writes “The Life of Theodosius
Pechersky" - a monk and then abbot of the famous Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. This life is very different from the one discussed above in the great psychologism of the characters, the abundance of living realistic details, the verisimilitude and naturalness of the lines and dialogues. If in the lives of Boris and
Gleb (especially in “Reading”) the canon triumphs over the vitality of the situations described, while in “The Life of Theodosius,” on the contrary, miracles and fantastic visions are described so clearly and convincingly that the reader seems to see with his own eyes what is happening and cannot help but “believe” it .

It is unlikely that these differences are only the result of Nestor’s increased literary skill or a consequence of a change in his attitude towards the hagiographic canon.

The reasons here are probably different. Firstly, these are different types of lives.
The Life of Boris and Gleb is a life-martyrium, that is, a story about the martyrdom of a saint; This main theme also determined the artistic structure of such a life, the sharp contrast of good and evil, the martyr and his tormentors, dictated the special tension and “poster-like” directness of the climactic murder scene: it should be painfully long and moralizing to the extreme. Therefore, in martyrdoms, as a rule, the torture of the martyr is described in detail, and death occurs as if in several stages, so that the reader empathizes with the hero longer. At the same time, the hero addresses lengthy prayers to God, which reveal his steadfastness and humility and expose the full gravity of the crime of his killers.

“The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk” is a typical monastic life, a story about a pious, meek, hardworking righteous man, whose whole life is a continuous feat. It contains many everyday collisions: scenes of communication between the saint and monks, laymen, princes, sinners; In addition, in the lives of this type, an obligatory component is the miracles that the saint performs - and this introduces an element of plot entertainment into the life, requiring considerable skill from the author so that the miracle is described effectively and believably.
Medieval hagiographers were well aware that the effect of a miracle is especially well achieved by combining purely realistic everyday details with a description of the action of otherworldly forces - the appearance of angels, dirty tricks perpetrated by demons, visions, etc.

The composition of the “Life” is traditional: there is a lengthy introduction and a story about the saint’s childhood. But already in this story about the birth, childhood and adolescence of Theodosius, an involuntary clash of traditional cliches and life’s truth occurs. It is traditional to mention the piety of parents
Theodosius, the scene of naming the baby is significant: the priest names him “Theodosius” (which means “given to God”), since “with the eyes of his heart” he foresaw that he “wants to be given to God from childhood.” It is traditional to mention how the boy Feodosia “went to the Church of God all day long” and did not approach his peers playing on the street. However, the image of Theodosius’s mother is completely unconventional, full of undeniable individuality. She was physically strong, with a rough, masculine voice; passionately loving her son, she nevertheless cannot come to terms with the fact that he, a youth from a very wealthy family, does not think of inheriting her villages and “slaves”, that he wears shabby clothes, flatly refusing to put on “light” and clean ones, and thereby brings reproach to the family by spending time in prayer or baking prosphora. The mother stops at nothing to break her son’s exalted piety (this is the paradox - parents
Theodosius is presented by the hagiographer as pious and God-fearing people!), she brutally beats him, puts him on a chain, and tears off the chains from the boy’s body.
When Theodosius manages to go to Kyiv in the hope of taking monastic vows in one of the monasteries there, the mother announces a large reward to anyone who will show her the whereabouts of her son. She finally discovers him in a cave, where he labors together with Anthony and Nikon (from this abode of hermits the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery later grows). And here she resorts to cunning: she demands that Anthony show her his son, threatening that otherwise she will “destroy” herself “before the doors of the oven.” But, seeing Theodosius, whose face “has changed from his much work and self-restraint,” the woman can no longer be angry: she, hugging her son, “crying bitterly,” begs him to return home and do whatever he wants there (“according to her will”). . Theodosius is adamant, and at his insistence the mother takes monastic vows in one of the nunneries. However, we understand that this is not so much the result of conviction in the correctness of his chosen path to God, but rather the act of a desperate woman who realized that only by becoming a nun would she be able to at least occasionally see her son.

The character of Theodosius himself is also complex. He possesses all the traditional virtues of an ascetic: meek, hardworking, adamant in mortification of the flesh, full of mercy, but when a princely feud occurs in Kiev (Svyatoslav expels his brother from the grand-ducal throne -

Izyaslav Yaroslavich), Feodosia is actively involved in a purely mundane political struggle and boldly denounces Svyatoslav.

But the most remarkable thing in the “Life” is the description of monastic life and especially the miracles performed by Theodosius. It was here that the “charm of simplicity and fiction” of the legends about the Kyiv miracle workers, which I admired so much, manifested itself
A. S. Pushkin1.

The next episode is very picturesque. Feodosia was delayed on some business with the prince and must return to the monastery. The prince orders that
Theodosius was given a lift by a certain youth in a cart. The same, seeing the monk in “wretched clothes” (Theodosius, and being abbot, dressed so modestly that those who did not know him took him for a monastery cook), boldly addresses him:

“Blacker! You're apart all day, and it's difficult
[here you are idle all day, and I work]. I can't ride a horse. But let’s do this [let’s do this]: yes, I will lie down on a cart, but you can ride a horse.” Feodosia agrees. But as you get closer to the monastery, you increasingly meet people who know Theodosius. They respectfully bow to him, and the boy gradually begins to worry: who is this well-known monk, although in shabby clothes? He is completely horrified when he sees with what honor Theodosius is greeted by the monastery brethren. However, the abbot does not reproach the driver and even orders him to be fed and paid.

The genre of hagiographic literature in the 14th – 16th centuries.

The genre of hagiographic literature became widespread in ancient Russian literature. “The Life of Tsarevich Peter of Ordynsky, Rostov (XIII century)”,
“The Life of Procopius of Ustyug” (XIV).
Epiphanius the Wise (died in 1420) entered the history of literature primarily as the author of two extensive lives - “The Life of Stephen of Perm” (the bishop of Perm, who baptized the Komi and created an alphabet for them in their native language), written at the end of the 14th century, and "The Life of Sergius of Radonezh", created in 1417-1418.

The basic principle from which Epiphanius proceeds in his work
The wise thing is that the hagiographer, describing the life of a saint, must by all means show the exclusivity of his hero, the greatness of his feat, the detachment of his actions from everything ordinary, earthly. Hence the desire for an emotional, bright, decorated language that differs from everyday speech. The Lives of Epiphanius are filled with quotations from the Holy Scriptures, for the feat of his heroes should find analogies in biblical history. They are characterized by the author's demonstrative desire to declare his creative impotence, the futility of his attempts to find the necessary verbal equivalent of the high phenomenon depicted. But it is precisely this imitation that allows Epiphanius to demonstrate all his literary skill, to stun the reader with an endless series of epithets or synonymous metaphors, or, by creating long chains of cognate words, to force him to think about the erased meaning of the concepts they denote. This technique is called “weaving words.”

Illustrating the writing style of Epiphanius the Wise, researchers most often turn to his “Life of Stephen of Perm”, and within this life - to the famous praise of Stephen, in which the art of “weaving words”
(by the way, this is exactly what it is called here) finds, perhaps, its most vivid expression. Let us cite a fragment from this praise, paying attention to the play on the word “word”, and to a series of parallel grammatical constructions: “And I, many sinners and foolish, following the words of your praises, weave the word and multiply the word, and honor with the word, and from the words Collecting praise, and acquiring, and weaving in, I again say: what will I call you: guide (leader) for the lost, finder for the lost, mentor for the deceived, guide for the blinded mind, cleanser for the defiled, seeker for the wasteful, guardian for the military, comforter for the sad, feeder for the hungry, giver for the needy. .."

Epiphanius strings together a long garland of epithets, as if trying to characterize the saint more fully and accurately. However, this accuracy is by no means the accuracy of concreteness, but a search for metaphorical, symbolic equivalents to essentially determine the only quality of a saint - his absolute perfection in everything.

In hagiography of the XIV-XV centuries. The principle of abstraction is also becoming widespread, when from the work “everyday, political, military, economic terminology, job titles, specific natural phenomena of a given country are expelled whenever possible...” The writer resorts to periphrases, using expressions like “a certain nobleman”,
“ruler of that city”, etc. The names of episodic characters are also eliminated, they are simply referred to as “someone’s husband”, “someone’s wife”, while the additions “someone”, “someone”, “one” serve to remove the phenomenon from the surrounding everyday life situation, from a specific historical environment"1.

The hagiographic principles of Epiphanius found their continuation in his work
Pachomia Logotheta. Pachomius Logothetes. Pachomius, a Serb by origin, came to Rus' no later than 1438. In the 40s-80s. XV century and his work accounts for: he owns no less than ten lives, many words of praise, services to the saints and other works. Pachomius, according to V.O.
Klyuchevsky, “nowhere did he discover significant literary talent... but he... gave Russian hagiography many examples of that even, somewhat cold and monotonous style, which was easier to imitate with the most limited degree of reading”2.

This rhetorical style of writing by Pachomius, his plot simplification and traditionalism can be illustrated with at least this example. Nestor very vividly and naturally described the circumstances of Theodosius’s tonsure
Pechersky, as Anthony dissuaded him, reminding the young man of the difficulties awaiting him on the path of monastic asceticism, as his mother was trying in every way to return Theodosius to worldly life. A similar situation exists in the “Life of Cyril Belozersky”, written by Pachomius. The young man Kozma is brought up by his uncle, a rich and eminent man (he is a okolnik of the Grand Duke). The uncle wants to make Kozma treasurer, but the young man longs to become a monk. And so “if it happened that Abbot Stefan of Makhrishchi came, a man who was accomplished in virtue, we all know great things for the sake of life. Having seen this coming, Kozma flows with joy to him... and falls at his honest feet, shedding tears from his eyes and tells him his thoughts, and at the same time begs him to place the monastic image on her. “For thee, oh sacred head, I have longed for a long time, but now God vouchsafe me to see your venerable shrine, but I pray for the Lord’s sake, do not reject me, a sinner and indecent...”
The elder is “touched,” consoles Kozma and tonsures him as a monk (giving him the name Kirill). The scene is label and cold: virtues are glorified
Stefan, Kozma pathetically begs him, the abbot willingly meets his request. Then Stefan goes to Timofey, Kozma-Kirill’s uncle, to inform him about his nephew’s tonsure. But here, too, the conflict is only barely outlined, not depicted. Timothy, having heard about what had happened, “heavily listened to the word, and was filled with sorrow and some annoying utterance to Stephen.” He leaves offended, but Timothy, ashamed of his pious wife, immediately repents “about the words spoken to Stephen,” returns him and asks for forgiveness.

But this, as mentioned above, is not yet a genuine insight into human character, it is only declared attention to it, a kind of
“abstract psychologism” (term by D. S. Likhachev). And at the same time, the very fact of increased interest in human spiritual life is in itself significant. The style of the second South Slavic influence, which found its embodiment initially in the lives (and only later in the historical narrative), D. S. Likhachev proposed to call
“expressive-emotional style”1.

At the beginning of the 15th century. under the pen of Pachomius Logothetes, as we remember, a new hagiographic canon was created - eloquent, “ornamented” lives, in which lively “realistic” features gave way to beautiful, but dry periphrases. But along with this, lives of a completely different type appear, boldly breaking traditions, touching with their sincerity and ease.

This is, for example, “The Life of Mikhail Klopsky.” "Life of Michael
Klopsky." The very beginning of this life is unusual. Instead of the traditional beginning, the hagiographer’s story about the birth, childhood and tonsure of the future saint, this life begins, as it were, from the middle, and from an unexpected and mysterious scene. The monks of the Trinity on Klopa (near Novgorod) monastery were in the church at prayer. Priest Macarius, returning to his cell, discovers that the cell is unlocked, and an old man unknown to him is sitting in it, rewriting the book of the apostolic acts. The priest, “alarmed,” returned to the church, called the abbot and the brethren, and together with them returned to the cell. But the cell is already locked from the inside, and the unknown elder continues to write. When they start questioning him, he answers very strangely: he repeats word for word every question asked of him. The monks could not even find out his name. The elder visits church with the rest of the monks, prays with them, and the abbot decides: “Be an elder with us, live with us.” The rest of the life is a description of the miracles performed by Michael (his name is reported by the prince who visited the monastery). Even the story about the “repose” of Michael is surprisingly simple, with everyday details; there is no traditional praise for the saint.

The unusualness of the “Life of Mikhail Klopsky”, created in the age of creations
Pachomia Logothetes, however, should not surprise us. The point here is not only the original talent of its author, but also the fact that the author of the life is a Novgorodian, he continues in his work the traditions of Novgorod hagiography, which, like all the literature of Novgorod, was distinguished by greater spontaneity, unpretentiousness, simplicity (in the good sense of this words), compared, for example, with the literature of Moscow or Vladimir-Suzdal
Rus'.

In the original edition we read: “And Michael fell ill in the month of December on Savin’s day, going to church. And he stood on the right side of the church, in the courtyard, opposite Theodosius’s tomb. And the abbot and the elders began to say to him: “Why,
Mikhail, are you not standing in the church, but standing in the courtyard?” And he said to them: “I want to lie down.” ... Yes, he took with him a censer and temyan [incense - incense], and went to his cell. And the abbot sent him nets and threads from the meal. And they opened the door, Azhio Temyan Xia is smoking [Temyan is still smoking], but he is not in his stomach [he has died]. And they began to look for places, the ground was frozen, where to put it. And remembering the mob to the abbot, try the place where Mikhail stood. When I looked at it from that place, the earth was already melting. And they buried him honestly.”

This casual, lively story has undergone a drastic revision.
So, to the question of the abbot and the brethren why he prays in the courtyard, Mikhail now answers like this: “Behold my peace for ever and ever, for the imam will dwell here.” The episode when he goes to his cell is also revised: “And he burns the censer, and having put incense on the coals, he goes into his cell, and the brethren are amazed, having seen the saint so exhausted, and again receiving so much strength. The abbot goes to the meal and sends food to the saint, commanding him to eat.

She came from the abbot and went into the saint’s cell, and having seen him go to the Lord, her hand bent in the shape of a cross, and in the image of one sleeping and emitting a lot of fragrance.” The following describes the crying at the burial
Mikhail; Moreover, he is mourned not only by the monks and the archbishop “with the entire sacred cathedral,” but also by the entire people: people rush to the funeral, “like river rapids, tears flowing incessantly.” In a word, the life takes on, under the pen of the new editor Vasily Tuchkov, exactly the form in which, for example, Pachomius Logofet would have created it.

These attempts to move away from the canons, to let the breath of life into literature, to decide on literary fiction, to renounce straightforward didactics were manifested not only in hagiographies.

The genre of hagiographic literature continued to develop in the 17th – 18th centuries:
“The Tale of a Luxurious Life and Fun”, “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum” 1672,
“The Life of Patriarch Joachim Savelov” 1690, “The Life of Simon Volomsky”, end
XVII century, “Life of Alexander Nevsky”

The autobiographical moment is consolidated in different ways in the 17th century: here is the life of the mother, compiled by her son (“The Tale of Uliani Osorgina”), and
“The ABC”, compiled on behalf of a “naked and poor man”, and “A Noble Message to an Enemy”, and the autobiographies themselves - Avvakum and Epiphany, written simultaneously in the same earthen prison in Pustozersk and representing a kind of diptych. “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum” is the first autobiographical work of Russian literature, in which Archpriest Avvakum himself spoke about himself and his long-suffering life.
Speaking about the work of Archpriest Avvakum, A. N. Tolstoy wrote: “These were the brilliant “life” and “epistles” of the rebel, frantic Archpriest Avvakum, who ended his literary career with terrible torture and execution in
Pustozersk. Avvakum’s speech is all about gesture, the canon is shattered, you physically feel the presence of the narrator, his gestures, his voice.”

Conclusion:
Having studied the poetics of individual works of ancient Russian literature, we came to a conclusion about the features of the genre of hagiography.
Life is a genre of ancient Russian literature that describes the life of a saint.
There are different hagiographic types in this genre:
. hagiography-martyria (story of the martyrdom of a saint)
. monastic life (story about the entire life path of a righteous man, his piety, asceticism, miracles he performed, etc.)

The characteristic features of the hagiographic canon are cold rationality, conscious detachment from specific facts, names, realities, theatricality and artificial pathos of dramatic episodes, the presence of elements of the saint’s life about which the hagiographer did not have the slightest information.

The moment of miracle, revelation is very important for the genre of monastic life
(the ability to learn is a gift from God). It is a miracle that brings movement and development to the biography of a saint.

The genre of hagiography is gradually undergoing changes. The authors depart from the canons, letting the breath of life into literature, decide on literary fiction (“The Lives of Mikhail Klopsky”), speak a simple “peasant” language
(“The Life of Archpriest Avvakum”).

Bibliography:
1. Likhachev D. S. Great Heritage. Classic works of literature
2. Eremin I. P. Literature of Ancient Rus' (studies and characteristics). M.-L.,
1966, p. 132-143.
3. Likhachev D. S. Human literature of Ancient Rus'. M., 1970, p. 65.
4.Eremin I.P. Literature of Ancient Rus' (studies and characteristics). M.-L.,
1966, p. 21-22.
5. Pushkin A. S. Complete. collection op. M., 1941, vol. XIV, p. 163.
6. Likhachev D. S. Culture of Rus' during the time of Andrei Rublev and Epiphany
The Wise. M.-L., 1962, p. 53-54.
7. Klyuchevsky V.O. Old Russian lives of saints as a historical source. M.,
1871, p. 166.

1 Likhachev D.S. Great Heritage. Classic works of literature
Ancient Rus'. M., 1975, p. 19.
1 Pushkin A. S. Complete. collection op. M., 1941, vol. XIV, p. 163.
1 Likhachev D.S. Culture of Rus' during the time of Andrei Rublev and Epiphanius the Wise.
M.-L., 1962, p. 53-54.
2 Klyuchevsky V.O. Old Russian lives of saints as a historical source. M.,
1871, p. 166.

1 Likhachev D.S. Man in the literature of Ancient Rus'. M., 1970, p. 65

Tutoring

Need help studying a topic?

Our specialists will advise or provide tutoring services on topics that interest you.
Submit your application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.

The originality of the genres of ancient Russian literature. Life

Introduction

Every nation remembers and knows its history. In stories, legends, and songs, information and memories of the past were preserved and passed on from generation to generation.The general rise of Rus' in XI century, the creation of centers of writing and literacy, the emergence of a whole galaxy of educated people of their time in the princely-boyar, church-monastic environment determined the development of ancient Russian literature. “Russian literature is almost a thousand years old. This is one of the most ancient literatures in Europe. It is older than French, English, and German literature. Its beginning dates back to the second half of the 10th century. Of this great millennium, more than seven hundred years belong to the period that is commonly called “ancient Russian literature.”<…>Old Russian literature can be considered as literature of one theme and one plot. This plot is world history, and this theme is the meaning of human life,” writes D. S. Likhachev. Old Russian literature up to the 17th century. does not know or hardly knows the conventional characters. The names of the characters are historical: Boris and Gleb, Theodosius of Pechersky, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Sergius of Radonezh, Stefan of Perm... Just as we talk about the epic in folk art, we can talk about the epic of ancient Russian literature. An epic is not a simple sum of epics and historical songs. The epics are plot-related. They paint us a whole epic era in the life of the Russian people. The era is fantastic, but at the same time historical. This era is the time of the reign of Vladimir the Red Sun. The action of many plots is transferred here, which obviously existed before, and in some cases arose later. Another epic time is the time of independence of Novgorod. Historical songs depict to us, if not a single era, then, in any case, a single course of events: the 16th and 17th centuries. predominantly. Ancient Russian literature is an epic telling the history of the universe and the history of Rus'. None of the works of Ancient Rus' - translated or original - stands apart. They all complement each other in the picture of the world they create. Each story is a complete whole, and at the same time, it is connected with others. This is only one chapter of the history of the world. The works were built according to the “enfilade principle”. The life was supplemented over the centuries with services to the saint and descriptions of his posthumous miracles. It could grow with additional stories about the saint. Several lives of the same saint could be combined into a new single work. Such a fate is not uncommon for literary works of Ancient Rus': many of the stories over time begin to be perceived as historical, as documents or narratives about Russian history. Russian scribes also appear in the hagiographic genre: in the 11th – early 12th centuries. the lives of Anthony of Pechersk (it has not survived), Theodosius of Pechersk, and two versions of the lives of Boris and Gleb were written. In these lives, Russian authors, undoubtedly familiar with the hagiographic canon and with the best examples of Byzantine hagiography, show, as we will see later, enviable independence and display high literary skill.

Life as a genre of ancient Russian literature

In the XI - early XII centuries. the first Russian lives were created: two lives of Boris and Gleb, “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk”, “The Life of Anthony of Pechersk” (not preserved until modern times). Their writing was not only a literary fact, but also an important link in the ideological policy of the Russian state. At this time, the Russian princes persistently sought from the Patriarch of Constantinople the rights to canonize their own Russian saints, which would significantly increase the authority of the Russian Church. The creation of a life was an indispensable condition for the canonization of a saint. We will look here at one of the lives of Boris and Gleb - “Reading about the life and destruction” of Boris and Gleb and “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk”. Both lives were written by Nestor. A comparison of them is especially interesting, since they represent two hagiographic types - the life-martyria (the story of the martyrdom of the saint) and the monastic life, which tells about the entire life path of the righteous man, his piety, asceticism, the miracles he performed, etc. Nestor, Of course, he took into account the requirements of the Byzantine hagiographic canon. There is no doubt that he knew translated Byzantine Lives. But at the same time, he showed such artistic independence, such extraordinary talent that the creation of these two masterpieces makes him one of the outstanding ancient Russian writers.

Features of the genre of the lives of the first Russian saints

“Reading about Boris and Gleb” opens with a lengthy introduction, which sets out the entire history of the human race: the creation of Adam and Eve, their fall, the “idolatry” of people is exposed, we remember how Christ, who came to save the human race, taught and was crucified, how they began to preach the new teaching of the apostles and the new faith triumphed. Only Rus' remained “in the first (former) idolatrous charm (remained pagan).” Vladimir baptized Rus', and this act is depicted as a general triumph and joy: people rushing to accept Christianity rejoice, and not one of them resists or even “verbs” “contrary” to the will of the prince, Vladimir himself rejoices, seeing the “warm faith” newly converted Christians. This is the background story of the villainous murder of Boris and Gleb by Svyatopolk. Svyatopolk thinks and acts according to the machinations of the devil. The “historiographical” introduction to life corresponds to the ideas about the unity of the world historical process: the events that took place in Rus' are only a special case of the eternal struggle between God and the devil, and for every situation, for every action, Nestor looks for an analogy, a prototype in past history. Therefore, Vladimir’s decision to baptize Rus' leads to a comparison of him with Eustathius Placis (the Byzantine saint, whose life was discussed above) on the basis that Vladimir, as the “ancient Placis,” God “had no way of inducing spon (in this case, illness),” after which the prince decided to be baptized. Vladimir is also compared with Constantine the Great, whom Christian historiography revered as the emperor who proclaimed Christianity the state religion of Byzantium. Nestor compares Boris with the biblical Joseph, who suffered because of the envy of his brothers, etc. The peculiarities of the genre of life can be judged by comparing it with the chronicle. The characters are traditional. The chronicle says nothing about the childhood and youth of Boris and Gleb. Nestor, in accordance with the requirements of the hagiographical canon, narrates how, as a youth, Boris constantly read “the lives and torments of the saints” and dreamed of being awarded the same martyrdom. The chronicle does not mention Boris's marriage. Nestor has a traditional motive - the future saint seeks to avoid marriage and marries only at the insistence of his father: “not for the sake of bodily lust,” but “for the sake of the king’s law and the obedience of his father.” Further, the plots of the life and the chronicle coincide. But how different both monuments are in their interpretation of events! The chronicle says that Vladimir sends Boris with his warriors against the Pechenegs; the “Reading” speaks abstractly about certain “military” (that is, enemies, adversary); in the chronicle, Boris returns to Kyiv, since he did not “find” (did not meet) the enemy army; in “Reading” the enemies take flight, since they do not dare to “stand against the blessed one.” Living human relationships are visible in the chronicle: Svyatopolk attracts the people of Kiev to his side by giving them gifts (“estate”), they are taken reluctantly, since in Boris’s army there are the same people of Kiev (“their brothers”) and - as is completely natural in the real conditions of that time, the people of Kiev feared a fratricidal war: Svyatopolk could rouse the people of Kiev against their relatives who had gone on a campaign with Boris. Finally, let us remember the nature of Svyatopolk’s promises (“I’ll put you to the fire”) or his negotiations with the “Vyshegorod boyars.” All these episodes in the chronicle story look very lifelike; in “Reading” they are completely absent. This reveals the tendency toward abstraction dictated by the canon of literary etiquette. The hagiographer strives to avoid specificity, lively dialogue, names (remember - the chronicle mentions the Alta River, Vyshgorod, Putsha - apparently the elder of the Vyshgorod residents, etc.) and even lively intonations in dialogues and monologues. When the murder of Boris, and then Gleb, is described, the doomed princes only pray, and they pray ritually: either by quoting psalms, or - contrary to any plausibility in life - they rush the killers to “finish their work.”Using the example of “Reading”, we can judge the characteristic features of the hagiographic canon - this is cold rationality, conscious detachment from specific facts, names, realities, theatricality and artificial pathos of dramatic episodes, the presence (and inevitable formal construction) of such elements of the life of the saint, about which The hagiographer did not have the slightest information: an example of this is the description of the childhood years of Boris and Gleb in “Reading”. In addition to the life written by Nestor, the anonymous life of the same saints is also known - “The Legend and Passion and Praise of Boris and Gleb.” The position of those researchers who see in the anonymous “The Tale of Boris and Gleb” a monument created after the “Reading” seems very convincing; in their opinion, the author of the “Tale” is trying to overcome the schematic and conventional nature of traditional life, to fill it with living details, drawing them, in particular, from the original hagiography version, which has come down to us as part of the chronicle. The emotionality in “The Tale” is subtler and sincere, despite all the conventionality of the situation: Boris and Gleb here too resignedly surrender themselves into the hands of the killers, and here they manage to pray for a long time, literally at the moment when the killer’s sword is already raised over them, etc. , but at the same time their replicas are warmed with some kind of sincere warmth and seem more natural. Analyzing the “Tale,” the famous researcher of ancient Russian literature I. P. Eremin drew attention to the following line: Gleb, in the face of the murderers, “suffering his body” (trembling, weakening), asks for mercy. He asks, as children ask: “Don’t let me... Don’t let me!” (here “actions” means touch).

Keywords of the page: how, download, free, without, registration, SMS, abstract, diploma, coursework, essay, Unified State Examination, State Examination, State Examination, State Examination

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Volgograd State Institute of Arts and Culture

Department of Library Science and Bibliography

on literature

“Life as a genre of ancient Russian literature”

Volgograd, 2002

Introduction

Every nation remembers and knows its history. In stories, legends, and songs, information and memories of the past were preserved and passed on from generation to generation.

Old Russian literature can be considered as literature of one theme and one plot. This plot is world history, and this theme is the meaning of human life,” writes D. S. Likhachev.1 1 Likhachev D. S. Great Heritage. Classic works of literature of Ancient Rus'. M., 1975, p. 19.

Old Russian literature up to the 17th century. does not know or hardly knows the conventional characters. The names of the characters are historical: Boris and Gleb, Theodosius of Pechersk, Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Sergius of Radonezh, Stefan of Perm...

Ancient Russian literature is an epic telling the history of the universe and the history of Rus'.

Such a fate is not uncommon for literary works of Ancient Rus': many of the stories over time begin to be perceived as historical, as documents or narratives about Russian history.

Life of Kato the genre of ancient Russian literature

We will look here at one of the lives of Boris and Gleb - “Reading about the life and destruction” of Boris and Gleb and “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk”. Both lives were written by Nestor. A comparison of them is especially interesting, since they represent two hagiographic types - the life-martyria (the story of the martyrdom of the saint) and the monastic life, which tells about the entire life path of the righteous man, his piety, asceticism, the miracles he performed, etc. Nestor , of course, took into account the requirements of the Byzantine hagiographic canon. There is no doubt that he knew translated Byzantine Lives. But at the same time, he showed such artistic independence, such extraordinary talent that the creation of these two masterpieces makes him one of the outstanding ancient Russian writers.

Features of the genre of the lives of the first Russian saints

The features of the genre of hagiography can be judged by comparing it with the chronicle.

Living human relationships are visible in the chronicle: Svyatopolk attracts the people of Kiev to his side by giving them gifts (“estate”), they are taken reluctantly, since in Boris’s army there are the same people of Kiev (“their brothers”) and - how completely Naturally, in the real conditions of that time, the people of Kiev feared a fratricidal war: Svyatopolk could rouse the people of Kiev against their relatives who had gone on a campaign with Boris. Finally, let us remember the nature of Svyatopolk’s promises (“I’ll put you to the fire”) or his negotiations with the “Vyshegorod boyars.” All these episodes in the chronicle story look very lifelike; in “Reading” they are completely absent. This reveals the tendency toward abstraction dictated by the canon of literary etiquette.

The hagiographer strives to avoid specificity, live dialogue, names (remember - the chronicle mentions the Alta River, Vyshgorod, Putsha - apparently the elder of the Vyshgorod residents, etc.) and even lively intonations in dialogues and monologues.

When the murder of Boris, and then Gleb, is described, the doomed princes only pray, and they pray ritually: either by quoting psalms, or - contrary to any plausibility in life - they rush the killers to “finish their work.”

In addition to the life written by Nestor, the anonymous life of the same saints is also known - “The Legend and Passion and Praise of Boris and Gleb.”

The position of those researchers who see in the anonymous “The Tale of Boris and Gleb” a monument created after the “Reading” seems very convincing; in their opinion, the author of the “Tale” is trying to overcome the schematic and conventional nature of traditional life, to fill it with living details, drawing them, in particular, from the original hagiography version, which has come down to us as part of the chronicle. The emotionality in “The Tale” is subtler and sincere, despite the conventionality of the situation: Boris and Gleb here too resignedly surrender themselves into the hands of the killers and here they manage to pray for a long time, literally at the moment when the killer’s sword is already raised over them, etc., but at the same time, their remarks are warmed by some sincere warmth and seem more natural. Analyzing the “Legend”, the famous researcher of ancient Russian literature I.P. Eremin drew attention to the following line: Gleb, in the face of the murderers, “suffering his body” (trembling, weakening), asks for mercy. He asks, as children ask: “Don’t let me... Don’t let me!” (here “actions” means touch). He does not understand what and why he must die... Gleb's defenseless youth is, in its way, very elegant and touching. This is one of the most “watercolor” images of ancient Russian literature.” In “Reading” the same Gleb does not express his emotions in any way - he thinks (he hopes that he will be taken to his brother and that, having seen Gleb’s innocence, he will not “destroy” him), he prays, and at the same time rather dispassionately. Even when the murderer “took Saint Gleb as an honest head,” he “silently, like a lamb, kindly, with his whole mind in the name of God and looking up to the sky, praying.” However, this is by no means evidence of Nestor’s inability to convey living feelings: in the same scene he describes, for example, the experiences of Gleb’s soldiers and servants. When the prince orders him to be left in a boat in the middle of the river, the warriors “sting at the saint and often look around, wanting to see what the saint wants to be,” and the youths in his ship, at the sight of the murderers, “lay down their oars, sadly lamenting and crying for the saint.” As we see, their behavior is much more natural, and, therefore, the dispassion with which Gleb prepares to accept death is just a tribute to literary etiquette.

"The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk"

After “Reading about Boris and Gleb,” Nestor writes “The Life of Theodosius of the Pechersk,” a monk and then abbot of the famous Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. This life is very different from the one discussed above in the great psychologism of the characters, the abundance of living realistic details, the verisimilitude and naturalness of the lines and dialogues. If in the lives of Boris and Gleb (especially in the “Reading”) the canon triumphs over the vitality of the situations described, then in the “Life of Theodosius,” on the contrary, miracles and fantastic visions are described so clearly and convincingly that the reader seems to see with his own eyes what is happening and cannot don't "believe" him.

It is unlikely that these differences are only the result of Nestor’s increased literary skill or a consequence of a change in his attitude towards the hagiographic canon.

The reasons here are probably different. Firstly, these are different types of lives. The Life of Boris and Gleb is a life-martyrium, that is, a story about the martyrdom of a saint; This main theme also determined the artistic structure of such a life, the sharp contrast of good and evil, the martyr and his tormentors, dictated the special tension and “poster-like” directness of the climactic murder scene: it should be painfully long and moralizing to the extreme. Therefore, in the lives of martyriums, as a rule, the torture of the martyr is described in detail, and his death occurs, as it were, in several stages, so that the reader empathizes with the hero longer. At the same time, the hero addresses lengthy prayers to God, which reveal his steadfastness and humility and expose the full gravity of the crime of his killers.

“The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk” is a typical monastic life, a story about a pious, meek, hardworking righteous man, whose whole life is a continuous feat. It contains many everyday collisions: scenes of communication between the saint and monks, laymen, princes, sinners; In addition, in the lives of this type, an obligatory component is the miracles that the saint performs - and this introduces an element of plot entertainment into the life, requiring considerable skill from the author so that the miracle is described effectively and believably. Medieval hagiographers were well aware that the effect of a miracle is especially well achieved by combining purely realistic everyday details with a description of the action of otherworldly forces - the appearance of angels, dirty tricks perpetrated by demons, visions, etc.

The composition of the “Life” is traditional: there is a lengthy introduction and a story about the saint’s childhood. But already in this story about the birth, childhood and adolescence of Theodosius, an involuntary clash of traditional cliches and life’s truth occurs. Traditionally, the piety of Theodosius’s parents is mentioned; the scene of naming the baby is significant: the priest names him “Theodosius” (which means “given to God”), since he foresaw with the “eyes of his heart” that he “wants to be given to God from childhood.” It is traditional to mention how the boy Feodosia “went to the Church of God all day long” and did not approach his peers playing on the street. However, the image of Theodosius’s mother is completely unconventional, full of undeniable individuality. She was physically strong, with a rough, masculine voice; passionately loving her son, she, nevertheless, cannot come to terms with the fact that he - a youth from a very wealthy family - does not think of inheriting her villages and “slaves”, that he wears shabby clothes, flatly refusing to wear “light ”and pure, and thus brings reproach to the family by spending time in prayer or baking prosphora. The mother stops at nothing to break her son’s exalted piety (this is the paradox - Theodosius’s parents are presented by the hagiographer as pious and God-fearing people!), she brutally beats him, puts him on a chain, and tears off the chains from the boy’s body. When Theodosius manages to go to Kyiv in the hope of taking monastic vows in one of the monasteries there, the mother announces a large reward to anyone who will show her the whereabouts of her son. She finally discovers him in a cave, where he labors together with Anthony and Nikon (from this abode of hermits the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery later grows). And here she resorts to cunning: she demands that Anthony show her his son, threatening that otherwise she will “destroy” herself “before the doors of the oven.” But, seeing Theodosius, whose face “has changed from his much work and self-restraint,” the woman can no longer be angry: she, hugging her son, “crying bitterly,” begs him to return home and do whatever he wants there (“according to her will”). . Theodosius is adamant, and at his insistence the mother takes monastic vows in one of the nunneries. However, we understand that this is not so much the result of conviction in the correctness of his chosen path to God, but rather the act of a desperate woman who realized that only by becoming a nun would she be able to at least occasionally see her son.

The character of Theodosius himself is also complex. He possesses all the traditional virtues of an ascetic: meek, hardworking, adamant in the mortification of the flesh, full of mercy, but when a princely feud occurs in Kiev (Svyatoslav expels his brother Izyaslav Yaroslavich from the grand-ducal throne), Feodosia is actively involved in a purely worldly political struggle and boldly denounces Svyatoslav.

But the most remarkable thing in the “Life” is the description of monastic life and especially the miracles performed by Theodosius. It was here that the “charm of simplicity and fiction” of the legends about the Kyiv miracle workers, which A. S. Pushkin so admired, manifested itself. 1 1 Pushkin A. S. Full. collection op. M., 1941, vol. XIV, p. 163.

Here is one of these miracles performed by Theodosius. The elder of the bakers comes to him, then already the abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, and reports that there is no flour left and there is nothing to bake bread for the brothers. Theodosius sends the baker: “Go, look in the stump, how little flour you will find in it...” But the baker remembers that he swept the stump and swept into the corner a small pile of bran - about three or four handfuls, and therefore answers Theodosius with conviction : “I tell you the truth, father, for I myself have cut down that dung, and there is nothing in it, except a small cut in the coal.” But Theodosius, recalling the omnipotence of God and citing a similar example from the Bible, sends the baker again to see if there is flour in the bottom. He goes to the pantry, approaches the bottom and sees that the bottom, previously empty, is full of flour.

In this episode, everything is artistically convincing: the liveliness of the dialogue, and the effect of a miracle, enhanced precisely thanks to skillfully found details: the baker remembers that there are three or four handfuls of bran left - this is a concrete visible image and an equally visible image of a bottom filled with flour: she is so so much that it even spills over the wall onto the ground.

The next episode is very picturesque. Feodosia was delayed on some business with the prince and must return to the monastery. The prince orders that Theodosius be given a lift by a certain youth in a cart. The same one, seeing the monk in “wretched clothes” (of Feodosia, and being abbot, dressed so modestly that those who did not know him took him for a monastery cook), boldly addresses him: “Chrnorizche! Because you are apart all day, and I am hard [you are idle all the days, and I am working]. I can't ride a horse. But let’s do this [let’s do this]: yes, I will lie down on a cart, but you can ride a horse.” Feodosia agrees. But as you get closer to the monastery, you increasingly meet people who know Theodosius. They respectfully bow to him, and the boy gradually begins to worry: who is this well-known monk, although in shabby clothes? He is completely horrified when he sees with what honor Theodosius is greeted by the monastery brethren. However, the abbot does not reproach the driver and even orders him to be fed and paid.

Over the next centuries, many dozens of different lives will be written - eloquent and simple, primitive and formal, or, on the contrary, vital and sincere. We will have to talk about some of them later. Nestor was one of the first Russian hagiographers, and the traditions of his work will be continued and developed in the works of his followers.

The genre of hagiographic literature in the 14th century- XVIcenturies

Epiphanius the Wise (died in 1420) entered the history of literature, first of all, as the author of two extensive lives - “The Life of Stephen of Perm” (Bishop of Perm, who baptized the Komi and created an alphabet for them in their native language), written at the end of the 14th century ., and “The Life of Sergius of Radonezh”, created in 1417-1418.

Illustrating the writing style of Epiphanius the Wise, researchers most often turn to his “Life of Stephen of Perm”, and within this life - to the famous praise of Stephen, in which the art of “weaving words” (by the way, this is exactly what it is called here) is perhaps found , the most striking expression. Let us cite a fragment from this praise, paying attention to the play on the word “word”, and to a series of parallel grammatical constructions: “And I, many sinners and foolish, following the words of your praises, weave the word and multiply the word, and honor with the word, and from the words Collecting praise, and acquiring, and weaving in, I again say: what will I call you: guide (leader) for the lost, finder for the lost, mentor for the deceived, guide for the blinded mind, cleanser for the defiled, seeker for the wasteful, guardian for the military, comforter for the sad, feeder for the hungry, giver for the needy. .."

But this, as mentioned above, is not yet a genuine insight into human character, it is only declared attention to it, a kind of “abstract psychologism” (the term of D. S. Likhachev). And at the same time, the very fact of increased interest in human spiritual life is in itself significant. The style of the second South Slavic influence, which found its embodiment initially in the lives (and only later in the historical narrative), D. S. Likhachev proposed to call the “expressive-emotional style.”1 1 Likhachev D. S. Man in the literature of Ancient Rus'. M., 1970, p. 65.

At the beginning of the 15th century. under the pen of Pachomius Logothetes, as we remember, a new canon of hagiography was created - eloquent, “ornamented” lives, in which lively “realistic” features gave way to beautiful, but dry periphrases. But along with this, lives of a completely different type appear, boldly breaking traditions, touching with their sincerity and ease.

The unusual nature of the “Life of Michael Klopsky,” created in the century of the works of Pachomius Logofet, should not, however, surprise us. The point here is not only the original talent of its author, but also the fact that the author of the life is a Novgorodian, he continues in his work the traditions of Novgorod hagiography, which, like all the literature of Novgorod, was distinguished by greater spontaneity, unpretentiousness, simplicity (in the good sense this word), compared, for example, with the literature of Moscow or Vladimir-Suzdal Rus'.

In the original edition we read: “And Michael fell ill in the month of December on Savin’s day, going to church. And he stood on the right side of the church, in the courtyard, opposite Theodosius’s tomb. And the abbot and the elders began to say to him: “Why, Mikhail, are you not standing in the church, but standing in the courtyard?” And he said to them: “I want to lie down.” ... Yes, he took with him the censer and the temyan [incense - incense], and went to the cell. And the abbot sent him nets and threads from the meal. And they opened the door, Azhio Temyan Xia is smoking [Temyan is still smoking], but he is not in his stomach [he has died]. And they began to look for places, the ground was frozen, where to put it. And remember the mob to the abbot - test the place where Mikhail stood. When I looked at it from that place, the earth was already melting. And they buried him honestly.”

These attempts to move away from the canons, to let the breath of life into literature, to decide on literary fiction, to renounce straightforward didactics were manifested not only in hagiographies.

The autobiographical moment is consolidated in different ways in the 17th century: here is the life of a mother, compiled by her son (“The Tale of Uliani Osorgina”), and “The ABC,” compiled on behalf of a “naked and poor man,” and “A Noble Message to an Enemy,” and the actual autobiographies - Avvakum and Epiphany, written simultaneously in the same earthen prison in Pustozersk and representing a kind of diptych. “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum” is the first autobiographical work of Russian literature, in which Archpriest Avvakum himself spoke about himself and his long-suffering life. Speaking about the work of Archpriest Avvakum, A. N. Tolstoy wrote: “These were the brilliant “life” and “epistles” of the rebel, frantic Archpriest Avvakum, who ended his literary career with terrible torture and execution in Pustozersk. Avvakum’s speech is all about gesture, the canon is destroyed to smithereens, you physically feel the presence of the narrator, his gestures, his voice.”

Conclusion

Having studied the poetics of individual works of ancient Russian literature, we came to a conclusion about the features of the genre of hagiography.

Life is a genre of ancient Russian literature that describes the life of a saint.

There are different hagiographic types in this genre:

hagiography-martyria (story of the martyrdom of a saint)

monastic life (a story about the entire life path of a righteous man, his piety, asceticism, the miracles he performed, etc.)

Bibliography

1. Likhachev D.S. Great legacy. Classic works of literature of Ancient Rus'. M., 1975, p. 19.

2. Eremin I.P. Literature of Ancient Rus' (studies and characteristics). M.-L., 1966, p. 132-143.

3. Likhachev D.S. Human literature of Ancient Rus'. M., 1970, p. 65.

4. Eremin I.P. Literature of Ancient Rus' (studies and characteristics). M.-L., 1966, p. 21-22.

5. Pushkin A.S. Full collection op. M., 1941, vol. XIV, p. 163.

6. Likhachev D.S. The culture of Rus' in the time of Andrei Rublev and Epiphanius the Wise. M.-L., 1962, p. 53-54.

7. Klyuchevsky V.O. Old Russian lives of saints as a historical source. M., 1871, p. 166.

The life belongs to ancient Russian literature. General characteristics of the genre of hagiography in ancient Russian literature. Genres of religious literature

Tutoring

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Similar documents