9

Chronological Boundaries
of Old Russian
Literature and Its
Specific Features

p “...Only a precise knowledge and transformation of the culture created by the entire development of mankind will enable us to create a proletarian culture,” said V. I. Lenin in his speech at the Third All-Russia Congress of the Young Communist League.   [9•1  He stressed the necessity for critical assimilation of the cultural heritage of the past and the need for a partisan evaluation of it from the perspective of the most progressive, most revolutionarilyminded class, the proletariat.

p “You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind,"  [9•2  Lenin continues.

p Lenin’s premises on the role of cultural heritage in the creation and development of proletarian culture were further amplified in the resolutions of the Communist Party on ideological questions. The role of progressive national traditions in the development of a new socialist culture, in particular literature, is 10 consistently stressed in these resolutions and literature is viewed as an important means for the communist education of the Soviet people.

p Medieval Russian literature can be most instructive and is of profound educational value as the natural historical point of departure for Russian literary development. Its origins are closely tied to the process through which the early feudal state was shaped. Despite its position of subordinance to the political task of consolidating the feudal system, the literature reflects successive periods in the development of social relations in Rus from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries.

p Soviet scholars have not finally resolved the problem of defining the chronological boundaries of Old Russian literature. We view it as the literature of the period from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries closely linked to the historical processes of the state’s development, the literature of the developing Great Russian people who were gradually uniting to become a nation.

p Our conception of Old Russian literature is still far from a complete one. We know only a fraction of the works written in Rus during this period.

p Many manuscripts perished in the frequent fires or during the devastating raids of nomads from the steppes, the invasions of Tatars, the intervention of Poles and Swedes.

p As recently as 1737 the remains of the library belonging to the Moscow tsars were destroyed by a blaze that flared up in the Grand Kremlin Palace. A fire demolished the Kiev library in 1777. The war of 1812 saw the demise of the manuscript collections of Musin- Pushkin, Buturlin, Bauze, Demidov and the Society for the Advancement of Russian Literature in Moscow.

p Old Russian books were stored and copied primarily by monks; naturally they were less interested in preserving or duplicating secular texts. This no doubt helps to explain the fact that the overwhelming majority of surviving Old Russian works are religious in character. Of the 1,500 parchment manuscripts extant dating from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries only twenty do not deal with religious concerns. We must remember that “this supremacy of theology in the entire realm of 11 intellectual activity was at the same time an inevitable consequence of the fact that the church was the allembracing synthesis and the most general sanctions of the existing feudal order".  [11•1 

p The medieval scholar recognised two categories of writing: profane and sacred. The latter conveyed what the church viewed as unsurpassed treasures: religious dogma, philosophy and ethics. Naturally these sort of writings were encouraged and circulated as much as possible. Profane texts, with the exception of official legal or historical documents, were dismissed as vanities. As a result Old Russian literature appears more ecclesiastical than it may, in fact, have been.

p In our study of Old Russian literature we should always remember certain factors which distinguish it from more modern literature.

p One such factor is that Old Russian literature existed and was disseminated in manuscript form. As a rule the text was not issued as an individual manuscript, but as one component of an anthology or collection; these collections were designed to pursue specific goals, and each had its purpose. “Whatever serves no purpose but that of adornment,” writes St. Basil the Great, “shall be subject to condemnation as vanity.” His words in many respects characterise the attitudes of Old Russian feudal society toward written works. A manuscript book was evaluated in terms of a practical purpose, its usefulness. In his entry for the year 1037, the chronicler teaches:

p “The study of books is of great benefit for books reveal and teach the path to repentance, and we learn wisdom and temperance from books; these are the rivers that water the world, the founts of wisdom, their depth cannot be measured; they console us in time of grief and are the bridles of intemperance.... If you seek wisdom zealously in books your soul shall derive great benefits.”

p Another factor to be reckoned with is the impersonal nature of Old Russian works which are frequently anonymous. This was due to medieval Christian 12 attitudes held in feudal society regarding the individual and in particular, the work of writers, artists and architects. At best we know of individual authors or scribes who modestly included their names at the end of a manuscript, in its margins, or very infrequently in the title of a work; invariably the name was followed by such subjective epithets as “humble”, “unworthy”, and “sinful”. In most cases the author preferred to remain unknown; at times he hid his identity behind the authority of a Church Father like St. John Chrysostom or St. Basil the Great.

p Biographical data on known Old Russian writers and information regarding the volume of their works and their social functions are extremely sparse. Scholars dealing with eighteenth, nineteenth or twentieth century literature are able to present extensive biographical material and to trace an author’s political, philosophical and aesthetic views; by investigating manuscripts they can reconstruct the creative history of a work and draw a creative profile of a writer; in dealing with Old Russian texts another approach must be taken.

p Medieval society had no conception of copyright and the writer’s personality was far less obtrusive than in modern literature. The only vehicle for a text’s dissemination was the manuscript. Scribes often did not merely copy texts, but edited and rewrote them altering the original viewpoint, making stylistic changes and abbreviating or expanding the text according to the tastes and needs of the times. Often this resulted in new redactions of the text being copied; even when the scribe intended only to copy the text the new manuscript always differed in some way from the original. Mistakes crept into the copies; letters and words were inadvertently left out; the scribe’s native dialect inevitably was reflected in his work. This obliges scholars to distinguish recensions (a given manuscript may belong to the Pskov-Novgorod, or Moscow recension, or it may be part of a broader Bulgarian or Serbian recension).

p As a rule the original texts of these works are not extant. Only later copies have been preserved, and these may be separated by two hundred or more years from 13 the original. The primary chronicle known as The Tale of Bygone Years (Povest vremennykh let), for example, was written by Nestor between 1111 and 1113. The earliest surviving version, however, is Silvestr’s redaction of 1116 as incorporated in the Laurentian Chronicle of 1377. The Lay of Igor’s Host written in the late 1 ISO’s was discovered in a sixteenth century manuscript.

p The Old Russian specialist is accordingly obliged to perform painstaking textological labours; he must study all existing copies of a given text and establish the time and place of their writing. This is accomplished by comparing various redactions or variants of manuscripts and by determining which manuscript of a given redaction is closest to the original text as composed by the author. The branch of philology dealing with such problems is known as textology.   [13•1 

p Paleography is another branch of historical philology that helps to answer difficult questions involved in dating a work or a given manuscript. By studying the forms of letters, handwriting, the writing material, watermarks on paper, illuminations, ornaments and miniatures the paleographer is able to derive a relatively precise date for the manuscript being studied and to determine the number of scribes who worked on it.

p From the llth century to the first half of the fourteenth century the basic writing material was parchment made from the hide of young animals, primarily calves and lambs. In Old Rus parchment was often called telyatina or kharatya. This expensive writing material was naturally accessible only to the propertied classes; craftsmen and tradesmen used cheaper materials for their business correspondence—nature’s gift of birchbark. Birchbark was also used for learning the alphabet as is evidenced by the remarkable documents of birchbark found by archeologists in the Novgorod area.  [13•2 

14

p In order to save space words were not separated; each new paragraph was usually marked by a large cinnabar rubric—initials, headings and paragraphs. The most commonly encountered words were abbreviated; this was indicated by a- tilde -above the line (titlo in Russian). The word glagolet (“speaks”) would be written glet; the word Bog (“God”) was shortened to Bg and Bogoroditsa (“Theotokos”) to Btsa.

p The scribe first marked lines on the parchment by means of a special ruler with a chain; he then placed the book on his lap and began to carefully copy each letter. Writing with well-formed, almost squared letters is called uncial (ustav). Work on a manuscript was laborious and time-consuming and required great skill. When a scribe finished his labours he would record it with joy and relief.

p The finished leaves were then sewn into quires and bound with wooden boards (which is why Russians still speak of reading a book from “board to board”). Leather was then stretched over the boards and at times a special case would be crafted of silver or gold for the book. Such casings (called oklads in Russian) are in themselves magnificent examples of Old Russian applied art. The superbly crafted oklad of the Mstislav Gospels, for example, was created early in the twelfth century.

p Parchment was replaced in the fourteenth century by a cheaper and more convenient writing materialpaper. The use of paper accelerated the copying process and lowered the cost of books. Uncial writing gave way to a more slanted, rounded type of script known as semi-uncial. More words were abbreviated and individual letters stretched above the line. Official texts came to be written in a cursive hand which gradually took precedence over semi-uncial script and finally became the predominant style in seventeenth century manuscripts.   [14•1 

p The invention of the printing press in the mid- sixteenth century played a tremendous part in the development of Russian culture. But up to the early eighteenth century printed books were predominately liturgical or 15 religious in content; secular literature and fiction continued to be put out in manuscript form.

p There is one final important factor to be dealt with in the study of Old Russian literature. Medieval fiction was not accorded a separate place in society’s mentality but was inseparably bound to medieval philosophy, science and religion.

p We cannot therefore mechanically apply the artistic criteria used to evaluate modern literature to Old Russian texts.

p The historical development of Old Russian literature involved the gradual crystallisation of fiction, its gradual separation from the stream of written texts, democratisation and secularisation, that is, the process of freeing itself from the wardship of the church.

Another special feature of Old Russian literature is its ties with ecclesiastical or official writings, on the one hand, and with oral folk poetry on the other. At each stage of development of Russian literature and in each text these ties differ, but broader and pro founder exploitation of folk art led to a clearer reflection of reality and to a larger sphere of conceptual and artistic influence.

Basic Themes in Old
Russian Literature

p The literature of Old Rus is inseparably linked to the history of the development of a Russian state and to the Russian national character; it was composed in a spirit of profound patriotism and a desire to immortalise heroic deeds. One of its central themes is that of the beauty and grandeur of the Russian motherland “ brightly shining and beautifully adorned”, the Russian land “known” and “renowned” all over the world. It glorifies the constructive labours of forefathers who selflessly defended the great Russian land from foreign invasions and consolidated a mighty sovereign state, “great and spacious”, and shining brightly “as the sun doth in the heavens".

p The voice of Old Russian writers rings with harsh 16 condemnation of princes whose politics sowed bloody feudal strife that undermined the political and military power of the state.

p Old Russian literature likewise celebrates the moral code of the Russian, people who were prepared to sacrifice their dearest possession, their lives, for the common good. It expresses profound faith in the power and triumph of goodness and in man’s capacity to elevate his spirit and vanquish evil.

p The Old Russian writer was not inclined to give a dispassionate presentation of facts “to good and evil equally indifferent”. Any genre of Old Russian literature, whether a historical tale, vita or sermon, had some elements of polemic.

p Primarily concerned with political or ethical problems, the writer believed in the power of the word and of conviction. He addressed not only his contemporaries, but posterity in his concern that the glorious deeds of their ancestors be remembered by succeeding generations and that the heirs of Rus not repeat the grievous mistakes of their fathers and grandfathers.

p Old Russian literature is steeped in history; its heroes are historical figures; it demands that the facts be adhered to and almost excludes invention. Even the many tales of miracles that belonged for medieval man to the realm of the supernatural were not invented by writers, but rather represented records of accounts by witnesses or those who experienced the miracle.

p For six centuries Old Russian literature was primarily concerned with historical genres. Only in the seventeenth century did these become secondary in relation to the increasingly popular fictional genres.

p The historicity of Old Russian literature is medieval in character. The course and development of historical events are explained in terms of Providence from a religious perspective; its heroes are princes, men who rule the state and stand at the top of the hierarchy of feudal society. By discarding the religious casing, however, the modern reader will easily discern the living historical essence of Old Russian literature whose true creator was the Russian people.

p The literature of Old Rus expressed and defended 17 the interests of the feudal ruling class. But it could not overlook the cruel class struggle that took the form of spontaneous uprisings or the various religious heresies typical of the Middle Ages. Literature gave a vivid picture of the struggle between progressive and reactionary groups within the ruling class as each sought support from the people.

Insofar as the progressive forces of feudal society reflected the interests of the state and these interests coincided with the interests of the people, we can speak of Old Russian literature’s affinity with the people.

Artistic Method

p The question of artistic method in Old Russian literature was first raised by Soviet scholars I. P. Eremin, V. P. A’drianova-Peretz, D. S. Likhachev and S. N. Azbelev.

p Likhachev believes that there was a variety of methods used even by one writer as, for example, Vladimir Monomakh. “Any artistic method,” he writes, “is a system of primary and secondary means for attaining specific artistic ends."  [17•1  Accordingly, he continues, each artistic method has many features which interrelate in a given way. Artistic methods differ according to the individual writer, the epoch, the genre, and the nature of their connection to official or non-literary writings. It is obvious that such a broad concept of “artistic method" strips the term of its concrete meaning and prevents us from speaking of it as a principle for the figurative reflection of reality.  [17•2  If we examine the term as a principle for the figurative reflection of reality then we must agree with those scholars who contend that Old Russian 18 literature had one artistic method. S. N. Azbelev defined this as a syncretistic method and I, P. Eremin as a “ pre-realistic" method. These are by no means exhaustive definitions. Eremin did, however, very astutely distinguish two basic aspects of Old Russian literature’s artistic method: the reproduction of isolated facts and attention to concrete details, on the one hand, and the presentation of life transformed in accordance with an ideal, on the other.  [18•1 

p If we are to understand and define the artistic method of Old Russian literature we will have to discuss medieval man’s outlook on the world.   [18•2 

p It was an integral view of the world and far more complex than that of the tribal system. It included both a religious conception of the world and man, and a concrete image of reality derived from daily labours performed by the members of a feudal society.

p Each day man confronted the realities of nature, economics, politics and social relations. Christianity declared that the world around him was temporal and fleeting; it placed that world in striking opposition to an invisible, ideal, eternal world. Man himself combined the temporal and eternal principles. Thus in the Miscellany (Izbornik) of 1073 one writer speaks of the merging of flesh and spirit in one human being. Spirit is the higher principle which gives life to the flesh and inspires it. The flesh is a burden to the spirit, coarsening the mind and conveying earthly passions and the resulting diseases to the spirit.

p “The light of a rational spirit,” writes St. John Damascenus in The Fount of Knowledge (translated in twelfth century Rus under the title A Sermon on the True Faith), “is knowledge, and ignorance is darkness. Just as the absence of light is darkness, so the absence of knowledge is the obscuring of reason.”

p Man learns about the world around him with the 19 help of five senses; this is the sensual cognition of the external, visible, material world. The invisible, spiritual, ideal world can be understood, or rather grasped only through the mind, “the eyes of the spirit”. The mysterious veils obscuring the ideal world are lifted only with the aid of inner spiritual vision which is the result of Divine revelation.

p The binary thought of the Middle Ages, based on the opposition of material to ideal, temporal to eternal, flesh to spirit, evil to good and darkness to light, to a great extent determined the nature of Old Russian literature’s artistic method and its leading principle: symbolism.  [19•1 

p The visible, material world is only a sign, a symbol of the ideal world. The visible, material, medieval symbol conveyed the essence of the invisible and ideal. The word as such was viewed as the “only-begotten son of God”, logos, by means of which God created the world. Just as the signs of the world around man have many meanings, the word is polysemantic; it can be interpreted literally or figuratively. This determines the nature of symbolic metaphors and similes in Old Russian literature.  [19•2 

p We should note that for a man of Old Rus Christian symbolism was closely bound with the symbolism of folk poetry. Both had one source: man’s environment. While the life of the peasant lent this symbolism an earthly concreteness, Christianity contributed an element of the abstract.

p The Holy Scriptures were understood and interpreted, not only as history, but as allegory, trope, and analogue in the Middle Ages. The Old and New Testaments did not, in other words, merely tell of historical events; 20 each fact was an analogue of another event, a model of moral behaviour; at the same time each contained a hidden sacred truth.

p This explains why the overwhelming majority of Old Russian literary works abound with references to the Scriptures. To the medieval scribes and writers the Bible was an incontrovertible authority, a source of analogues to the events being described and a means of bolstering his moral evaluation of a character’s actions.

p The authoritarian nature of the medieval writer’s thought is inseparably bound to the concept of Providence. All events of a man’s life are seen as manifestations of God’s will. God sends heavenly signs such as solar or lunar eclipses to warn men of His wrath or of misfortunes that threaten them if they do not cease their transgressions and repent. God calls forth foreign hosts “because of our sins”, and sends a country a merciless ruler or grants it a victory as a reward for piety. Demons incite men to perform evil deeds; God is the source of good thoughts and actions. Demons create all sorts of stumbling blocks and abominations to turn man away from the straight and narrow path and urge him down the path of sin. But medieval literature did not divest man of his responsibility for his own actions. Just Measure (Merilo pravednoe) stresses the special responsibility of a king or prince before God. They must answer for the welfare of their country and people.

p Ethical and aesthetic categories were fused in the mind of the medieval writer. Goodness was always beautiful and filled with light; evil was bound to darkness and the obscuring of reason. An evil man was like a wild beast and even worse than a demon, for a demon feared the cross while an evil man committed foul deeds but feared no man or thing.

p Medieval works were usually structured around the opposition of good to evil, of ideal characters to villains. The writer demonstrated that high moral standards came from constant, stubborn labours, good deeds, a “lofty life”. He was convinced that “glory and renown are of greater merit to a man than beauty, for glory endures unto the ages while a face withers after death”.

p The supremacy of the corporate principle in feudal 21 society left its mark on medieval literature. Writers composed their works according to a certain hierarchy: only members of the ruling classes, ecclesiastical and worldly feudal lords, could function as heroes. They are depicted strictly in accordance with their official position. The prince is endowed with the traits of an ideal warrior and pious Christian; a church hierarch is distinguished by his learnedness and wisdom.

p Decorum (chinnost) and custom or rank (uryadstvo) were characteristic of medieval life, both for society as a whole and for the individual. A man’s daily and community life were strictly governed by “the order of things”, by rules and rituals. This “order” began from the moment that a man appeared on earth and accompanied him to his dying day. Medieval man, like every thing, was obliged to take his assigned place in the great “chain”, in the order of society. Ugliness was the violation of order a’nd decorum; beauty and awe were based on their maintenance. The Old Russian word for decorum (chin) corresponds to the Greek ritmos. The strict observance of rhythm, of an established order is, in fact, the actual foundation for the etiquette that informs the entire corpus of Old Russian literature.   [21•1 

p The Old Russian writer was primarily concerned with composing his works according to a specific, strict order: to tell it in the proper order (skazat po ryadu) , to put things in the proper way (polozhit po ryadu). This also led him to transform facts.

p Ritual and symbol, Gurevich observes, functioned as forms into which feudal life was poured.  [21•2  Ritual and symbol were the primary principles of the reflection of reality in medieval literature.

p As he composed the Old Russian writer always filled a sort of social order; his works were meant to be didactic. He spoke for the edification of listeners and readers, often viewing his works as “medicine for the soul”. He was convinced that his discourse would be understood and would be of moral and social benefit.

22

Thus symbolism, ritual or etiquette, and didacticism are the main principles of Old Russian literature’s artistic method. This method has two aspects: strict attention to facts and the idealistic transformation of reality. Although this is the sole artistic method of medieval Russian literature it is manifested differently in various works. The correlation of these principles and their stylistic expression depends on a work’s genre, the date of its composition and the author’s talents. Historically Old Russian literature developed by gradually destroying the integrality of its method and freeing itself from etiquette, didacticism and Christian symbolism. In the seventeenth century literature widened its range of themes and began to embrace new aspects of life. Didacticism was replaced by the desire to entertain, etiquette by zhivstvo— the depiction of every day re alia; sumbolism gave way to the realism of typage.

The System of Genres

p The concept of a system of genres was introduced to literary scholarship by D. S. Likhachev. “Genres,” writes Likhachev, “are a sort of system in that they are generated by a common aggregate of reasons and because they interact, support each other’s existence and simultaneously compete with each other.   [22•1 

p Old Russian literature worked out a system of genres which did not, however, remain constant throughout its historical development.

p Until the seventeenth century medieval Russian literary genres remained closely bound to their practical function. But in the seventeenth century they begin to take on purely literary functions.

p In the eleventh and twelfth centuries a system of literary genres takes shape. Ecclesiastical genres are more conservative than worldly genres and interact the least with forms of official writing and folk genres.

p The Holy Scriptures occupy the highest rung in the hierarchy of medieval genres. These are followed by 23 hymnology and various types of sermons—exegeses of Scripture and encomia in celebration of various Christian feast days. Such sermons were usually collected in anthologies known as torzhestvenniki (festal collections), the Festal Triodion and the Lenten Triodion. Next in the hierarchy are vitae and tales of great deeds performed by ascetic monks. Vitae are collected in prologues (sinaksaria) and menologies (Chetyi-Minei); tales of monks are found in patericons. Between ecclesiastical and secular genres is the “journey”, a description of pilgrimages made to holy places.

p Historical genres are most prominent in secular literature; historical tales and legends were collected in chronicles (the letopis dealing primarily with Russian history and the khronograf dealing with the history of the world—7>.). These genres intermixed with official writing, folklore and ecclesiastical genres, but were less consistent than the latter.

p The epos predominated in both religious and secular literature. There were neither lyrical, nor dramatic works until the second half of the seventeenth century, although one must note that epic genres contain elements of drama and lyricism. Hymnology, for example, has a unique lyrical quality and the worship service is highly dramatic.

p Ecclesiastical genres were tied to religious ritual and historical genres bound up in the social and political life of the feudal state which exerted a constant influence on their development.

p Each Old Russian literary genre had a set inner compositional structure, its own canons and, as A. S. Orlov observed, “its own stylistic cliches".

p The most important works of Old Russian literature however, departed from the established canons and stylistic cliches. This facilitated the development and alteration of genres’ structure and style.

p By the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries the system of genres underwent great changes. These affected the structure and style of historical genres. In addition new genres of a purely fictional nature were formed; syllabic verse was introduced, as were court theatres and mystery plays. Another genre that came to 24 prominence was democratic satire.

p Old Russian literaty genres also entailed stylistic considerations. D. S. Likhachev has made a thorough study of the historical development of style in this period  [24•1  and concluded that the eleventh and twelfth centuries are dominated by a monumental, historicallyoriented style as well as by the style characteristic of folk epics; the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries lean towards emotional, expressive language and the sixteenth century witnesses the style of idealised biography or, as Likhachev calls it, a second surge of monumentalism.

p We find, however, that Likhachev’s conception is somewhat schematised and therefore cannot totally reflect the complex development of Old Russian literature.

p In the eleventh and twelfth centuries monumentalism predominates in historical genres; epic folk elements may be observed in certain works as well. At the same time we can speak of the development of an expressive, emotional style in the sermons of llarion and Kirill of Turov, and in the anonymous Tale of SS Boris and Gleb. Such works as Vladimir Monomzkh’s Instruction and Daniil the Exile’s Supplication are different in style.

p During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries at first only hagiographical literature manifests an expressive, emotional style while historical tales are written in a “documentary” sort of style. One might also mention the problem of the development of local styles in Novgorod, Tver, Murom and Ryazan, and Moscow.

p In the sixteenth century local styles begin to merge into one common Russian style of official literature which Likhachev calls a second monumentalism. At the same time various polemics give rise to their own styles which make extensive use of allegory, depict everyday life and allow increasing use of artistic invention.

Influenced by the general secularisation of culture in the seventeenth century literature abandons its 25 monumental, historically-oriented style and develops a fictional style. Tradesmen and craftsmen begin to develop a more democratic style; court literature becomes more bookish, artificial and refined.

Stages in the Study of
Old Russian Literature

p The collection of Old Russian texts began in the eighteenth century. Historians Tatishchev, Schletzer and Miller devoted much attention to their study. Tatishchev’s superb Russian History from Ancient Times is still consulted by modern scholars for it was based on material later irrevocably lost. In the late eighteenth century Old Russian texts began to be published. Novikov’s Old Russian Bibliotheka (the first edition of 1773-1774 issued in 10 parts, the second of 1788-1791 in 20 parts) contained many works of Old Russian literature. An Historical Dictionary of Russian Writers, also by Novikov, was published in 1772 and contained entries on the lives and works of over 300 writers from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries.

p One of the great events in the history of the study of Old Russian literature was the publication of The Lay of Igor’s Host in 1800. This led the Russian public to take an increasing interest in the past.

p Poet Alexander Pushkin called writer N. M. Karamzin “the Columbus of Medieval Russia”. Karamzin’s History of the Russian State was based on manuscripts, many of which later were lost (including the Trinity Chronicle); the history’s commentary contains many precious quotations from these sources.

p Count Rumyantsev’s circle played a great part in the collection, publication and study of Old Russian manuscripts in the early nineteenth century. Many invaluable scholarly works were published by Rumyantsev’s colleagues. In 1818 K. Kalaidovich issued Kirsha Danilov’s Medieval Russian Verse, in 1821 Twelfth Century Russian Texts, and in 1824 the study John, Exarch to Bulgaria. With the publication of the Annals of St. Sophia (Sofiysky vremennik) in 1820 P. Stroev established a 26 model for the scholarly publication of chronicles. From 1829 to 1835 he headed a series of archeographical expeditions to the norhern regions of Russia.

p Evgeny Bolkhovitinov took on the colossal burden of compiling bibliographical references. Based on his study of manuscript materials in 1818 he published a Historical Dictionary of Orthodox Clerics Who Lived and Wrote in Russia in two volumes and including 238 writers; the dictionary was reprinted in 1827. His second work, a Dictionary of Russian Secular Writers: Russians and Foreigners Who Lived and Wrote in Russia, was issued posthumously. The first part came out in 1838 and the entire work in 1845 under the editorship of M. P. Pogodin.

p Alexander Vostokov’s Description of Russian and Slavonic Manuscripts in the Rumyantsev Museum, published in 1842, was the first scholarly attempt to classify and describe Old Russian manuscripts.

p At the end of the 1830’s scholars and enthusiasts had gathered an enormous collection of manuscripts. A special Archeographical Commission was created in 1834 under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the study, processing and publication of these materials. This commission began the publication of the most important texts: the complete Russian chronicles (beginning in the 1840’s and still proceeding to make at present total of 32 volumes), legal works, hagiography and in particular the publication of Metropolitan Makary’s Grand Chetyi-Minei, among others.

p Announcements of newly discovered manuscripts and materials and the progress of research in the area were published in the Chronicles of the Proceedings of the Archeographical Commission.

p At Moscow University in the 1840’s the Society of Russian History and Antiquities was formed; its materials were published in special Readings. In St. Petersburg the Society for the Advancement of Old Writings was formed and in turn issued its own series: Old Russian Literary Texts (Pamyatniki drevnei pismennosti) and A Russian Historical Library (Russkaya istoricheskaya biblioteka).

p The first attempt to systematise this historical 27 literature was made in 1822 by N. I. Grech in A Short History of Russian Literature.

p Prof. M. A. Maksimovich of Kiev University took a great step forward with his History of Old Russian Literature, published in 1838. He divided the literature into periods that corresponded to historical periods and the bulk of his book dealt with bibliographical information on the writings of each period.

p The first major attempt to popularise Old Russian literary works was made in the late 1830’s and early 1840’s by I. P. Sakharov in a series entitled Tales of the Russian People. Belinsky gives a detailed review of the nature of this edition in Otechestvennye zapiski.   [27•1 

p A special course was taught at Moscow University by Prof. S. P. Shevyrev and subsequently published under the titled History of Russian Literature, Primarily Medieval in the late 1840’s; a second edition was published from 1858 to 1860 and a third in 1887. This course gave an overview of oral folk works and covered Old Russian literature up to the early sixteenth century. Shevyrev gathered a great number of facts, but approached literature from the perspective of a Slavophile. Still his course gave a good idea of the mass of materials that had been collected by the 1840’s. Shevyrev’s student N. S. Tikhonravov regarded this as the book’s chief virtue.

p The systematic study of Old Russian literature began in the mid-nineteenth century. Russian literary scholarship was represented at this time by F. I. Buslaev, A. N. Pypin, N. S. Tikhonravov and A. N. Veselovsky, each distinguished in his own right.

p Buslaev’s most important works on Old Russian literature are his Historical Chrestomathy of the Church Slavonic and Old Russian Languages (1861) and Historical Essays on Russian Literature and Art in two volumes (1861).

Buslaev’s chrestomathy was a remarkable work, and not only for its time. It contained texts of many Old Russian works based on manuscripts with variants given.

28 The scholar strove to represent the variety of genres in Old Russian literature, including not only literary works, but official and ecclesiastical writings as well.

p Historical Essays dealt with oral folk texts (volume 1) and Old Russian literature and art (volume 2). A follower of the historical school of the Grimm brothers and Franz Bopp, Buslaev sought to go beyond the work of his teachers. In his investigations of folklore and literature he not only looked for the historical, mythological basis of each work, but explored its ties to Russian life, customs and geography.

p He was one of the first Russian scholars to point out the need for aesthetic studies of Old Russian literature, treating the nature of its poetic images and the important role of symbols. Some of his most interesting observations concern the interrelationship of medieval literature and folklore, and of literature and the fine arts. He attempted a new interpretation of Old Russian literature’s affinity with the people.

p In the 1870’s Buslaev turned away from the historical school and came to share the theories of those who investigated influences and borrowings; many of these theories were worked out in Theodor Benfey’s Pancha Tantra. Buslaev’s new approach was expressed in his article “Migrating Tales" (1874) which dealt with the historical process of literature in terms of borrowed plots, and motifs which migrated from one people to another.

p His most important works were later collected in three volumes published from 1908 to 1930 and in the collection My Leisure Hours (Moi dosugi).

p A. N. Pypin began his scholarly career with the study of Old Russian literature. In 1858 the twentyfour-year-old Pypin published his master’s dissertation A Literary History of Old Russian Tales and Folk Tales; this dealt primarily with Old Russian translated literature.

p Then Pypin turned to the study of apocrypha. He was the first to treat this fascinating area of Old Russian letters in scholarly fashion, writing a series of articles on the subject and publishing a collection entitled Apocryphal and Forbidden Books of Old Rus (in the third issue 29 of Kushelev-Bezborodko’s anthology Old Russian Literary Texts).

p Pypin summed up his many years’ study of Russian literature in a four volume History of Russian Literature, first issued from 1898 to 1899. The first two volumes dealt with Old Russian literature.

p A proponent of the cultural-historical school of literary scholarship, Pypin did not distinguish literature from culture as a whole. He refused to organise texts according to chronology, insisting that “due to the conditions under which our literature developed it is virtual ly independent of chronology”. In classifying texts Pypin tried to unite works that were of one type regardless of temporal discrepancies.

p Pypin’s book provides a wealth of facts and of historical, cultural and literary material. His interpretation is based on a. liberal bourgeois philosophy of culture, however, and the “artistic specifics" of Old Russian texts remain outside of his perspective.

p Significant in the development of scholarly textology in both Old and Modern Russian literature are the works of Academician N. S. Tikhonravov, a professor of Moscow University. From 1859 to 1863 he published seven installments of the Chronicle of Russian Literature and Antiquities containing many texts. In 1863 Tikhonravov edited a two volume set: Russian Literary Apocryphal Texts. It contained a more complete selection and the texts were prepared with greater care than those published by Pypin. Tikhonravov also began a study of the history of Russian theatre and dramaturgy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century; this led to the publication in 1874 of two volumes of Russian plays dating from 1672 to 1725.

p His review (written in 1878) of A. D. Galakhov’s History of Russian Literature (first put out in the early 1860’s) was extremely important with regard to methodology. Tikhonravov criticised Galakhov’s basic conception of the history of literature as the history of exemplary writings. In contrast to the subjective approach that emphasised “aesthetic” evaluation of literature, Tikhonravov proposed a historical approach and maintained that this was the only way to arrive at a true 30 picture of literary development. His works were issued posthumously in 1898: three volumes in four installments.

p A tremendous contribution to the development of Russian literary scholarship was made by Academician A. N. Veselovsky.

p Developing the principles of a comparative, historical approach to literature in the first period of his career, Veselovsky published his doctoral dissertation, Slavic Tales of Solomon and Kitovras and Western Legends of Morolf and Merlin, in 1872. Here he established ties between the Oriental apocryphal story of King Solomon and Western European tales of chivalry that dealt with King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.

p Veselovsky was particularly interested in the relations between literature and folklore. Among his works on this topic are A History of the Development of Christian Legend (1875-1877) and Exploring the Realm of Russian Religious Verse (1879-1891). In the latter study Veselovsky applies sociological principles to literature; these subsequently dominated his most important theoretical works.

p Naturally Veselovsky’s general conception of literature was idealistic in nature; but it contained many valuable observations which were subsequently adopted by Soviet scholars.

p In discussing the study of Old Russian literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries we are obliged to mention the remarkable Russian literary scholar and historian, Academician A. A. Shakhmatov. A vast store of knowledge, a gift for literary criticism and an insistance on scrupulous textological analysis allowed him to make great strides in the study of Old Russian chronicles.

p At the turn of this century the achievements of Russian literary scholarship in the study of Old Russian texts were consolidated in the following literary histories: P. Vladimirov’s Old Russian Literature in the Kievan Period (Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries) (Kiev, 1901); A. S. Arkhangelsky’s Lectures on the History of Russian Literature (vol. 1, 1916); E. V. Petukhov’s 31 Russian Literature: the Medieval Period (3rd edition, Petrograd, 1916); and M. N. Speransky’sT/zstory of Old Russian Literature (3rd edition, Moscow, 1920). We should not fail to mention V. N. Perets’s A Concise Methodological History of Russian Literature last published in 1922.

p While all these books contained a wealth of factual material their conception of Old Russian literature was rather static. They viewed it as a succession of influences: Byzantine, first and second South Slavic, and Western European (primarily Polish). They did not apply principles of class analysis to literary phenomena and failed to examine such vital facts in the development of democratic literature of the seventeenth century as satire.

p After the Great October Socialist Revolution Soviet literary scholarship was confronted with a difficult essential task: the creation of a Marxist course in the history of Old Russian literature.

p Among the most interesting efforts in this area was the work of Academician P. N. Sakulin in two parts entitled Russian Literature (1929). The first part dealt with the literature from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries.

p P. N. Sakulin concentrated on style; he divided all literary styles into two groups: realistic and irrealistic. He examined the literature of the Middle Ages as the expression of the cultural content and style of the epoch. Advancing the proposition that style was conditioned by the psychology and ideology of the ruling classes Sakulin distinguished two major styles in Old Russian literature: religious (primarily irreal) and secular (primarily real). Within the category of religious style he distinguished apocryphal and hagiographical styles, each having corresponding genres and typical images that determined the artistic teleology of that style.

p Thus insofar as the “artistic specifics" of Old Russian literature was concerned Sakulin’s book was a great stride forward, although his conceptions did tend tc schematise the historical-literary process. Many phenomena turned out to be more complex and could not be jammed into the Procrustean beds of one or 32 the other style.

p Also of great significance in the creation of a scholarly Marxist history of Old Russian literature were the works of Academicians A. S. Orlov and N. K. Gudzy. Orlov’s Old Russian Literature from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries. A Course of Lectures ( supplemented and reissued in 1945 as Old Russian Literature from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Centuries) and Gudzy’s History of Old Russian Literature (published in seven editions from 1938 to 1966) combined a historical approach to literary phenomena with their class and sociological analysis; they also dealt with the “artistic specifics" of texts, particularly A. S. Orlov. Gudzy gave valuable bibliographical material for each section of his book and continued to systematically update it.

p The publication of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ ten volume history of Russian literature summed up the achievements of Soviet scholarship during the twentyfive years’ existence of the Soviet state. The first two volumes dealt with the history of literature from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries.

p During the last thirty years Soviet literary scholarship has been extremely successful. Its success is a result of the important work of the Old Russian Literary Section of the USSR Academy of Sciences Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinsky dom); the head of this section is presently D. S. Likhachev, and the Old Russian literature study group affiliated with the Gorky Institute of World Literature is led by A. N. Robinson.

p Regular archeographic expeditions are sent to various regions throughout the country. These help to add new valuable manuscripts and books printed before the eighteenth century to the archives, Dr. V. I. Malyshev’s enthusiasm and labours have been crucial to the organisation of this work.

p Since the 1930’s Old Russian Literary Section has published the series Transactions of the Department of Old Russian Literature (TODRL) which in 1977 put out its thirty-first volume; here new texts are published and manuscripts are issued in scholarly form. The series also contains important articles.

p In recent years the problem of studying the “artistic 33 specifics" of Old Russian literature has come to the foreground: its method, style, system of genres and relation to the fine arts. Among the most prominent contributors have been V. P. Adrianova-Peretz, N. K. Gudzy, I. P. Eremin, V. D. Kuzmina and V. F. Rzhiga.

p D. S. Likhachev’s books Man in Old Russian Literature, The Poetics of Old Russian Literature, and The Development of Russian Literature from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Centuries are important as postulates in raising and resolving theoretical, historical and literary questions related to both ancient and modern literatures.

The works of Soviet scholars A. N. Robinson, L. A. Dmitriev, O. A. Derzhavina, Ya. S. Lurye, N. I. Prokofiev, A. V. Pozdeyev, O. V. Tvorogov and A. M. Panchenko afford a more profound, broader notion of the nature and artistic features of literature from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. These achievements in many respects simplify the task of organising a course for the study of Old Russian literature.

Periodisation

p The specific features of Old Russian literature determine the relation of its development of fundamental stages in the historical path taken by the Russian state.

p Traditionally we distinguish three basic periods in the development of Old Russian literature:

p I. Literature of the medieval Russian state from the eleventh to the twelfth centuries (also known as the literature of Kievan Rus);

p II. Literature of the period of feudal sectionalism and the struggle for the unification of Northeast Rus (from the thirteenth to the early fifteenth centuries);

p III. Literature of the period when a centralised Russian state was being created and in the process of its development (from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries).

p The first period was undoubtedly preceded by a long process of the conception and formation of literature in close connection with the emergence of the early 34 feudal state and the appearance of a written language. In the mid-eleventh and early twelfth centuries Old Russian literature already manifested systems of genres both secular and religious. Literature itself was largely located in two cultural centres—Kiev and Novgorod. The division of the Kievan state into various feudal principalities, beginning in the late eleventh century, resulted in the formation of new cultural and political centres to the southwest, west and northeast of Kiev. Literary texts of this period are primarily connected with Kiev and the southern Russian states closest to it, where the most important secular and religious genres were composed: the chronicle, the historical tale, vitae, sermons (both homilies and panegyrics), the journey, and The Lay of Igor’s Host.

p The literature of this period has many ties to oral folk poetry which lends it epic elements and heroic themes. At the same time it makes extensive use of Byzantine and Bulgarian literature in order to develop its own sophisticated artistic forms on their example.

p The inexorable process of feudal division whereby the empire of the Rurik dynasty disintegrated into feudal states resulted in various local literary schools, which sprang up in the late twelfth century. Among them were the school of Vladimir-Suzdal, Galicia-Volhynia and Novgorod. This already indicated the beginning of a transition to the next period of Old Russian literature.

p We should stress that the literature of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was the basis for the subsequent formation and development of three closely related literatures: Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian.

p The second period of Old Russian literature’s development, from the thirteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, was marked by the efforts of the feudal leadership to isolate regional literatures. But progressive members of the population and the people maintained an awareness of the unity of the Russian land, language and culture which grew stronger in the struggle with foreign oppressors—the Mongol-Tatar hordes. It also led to a renewal of the heroic, epic traditions of eleventh and twelfth century literature and to the realisation of Northeast Rus’s vital ties to Kiev.

35

p The formation of the Great Russian people in this period was reflected in the culture and literature of Vladimir, Moscow, Tver, Murom, Ryazan, Novgorod and Pskov.

p In order to consolidate the progressive forces of society in the struggle with the foreign oppressors, each man had to maintain high moral standards. Accordingly the art and literature of the period worked out a moral ideal of an individual able to triumph over the animosities of the time, the main obstacle to the unification of all forces in the struggle with the hated Mongol-Tatar yoke.

p Epifany the Wise revived the emotional, expressive style developed in Kievan hagiographical literature and the rhetorical writings of Met. Ilarion and Kirill of Turov and developed it, reaching a new level of artistic perfection. The development of this style was conditioned by the historical demands made by life itself and not by the second South Slavic influence although the experience of Bulgarian and Serbian literatures was taken stock of and used by writers in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

p Historical narratives were further developed in this period, their style influenced by democratically-minded craftsmen and tradespeople, on the one hand, and by ecclesiastical circles, on the other. Fantasy and the concern with entertainment began to infiltrate historical narratives, and the first elements of artistic generalisation began to appear.

p The third period of Old Russian literature is related to the creation and consolidation of a centralised Russian state. Two stages can be clearly distinguished: from the late fifteenth up to the late sixteenth centuries and the seventeenth century.

p The first stage is marked by the process of the merging of regional literatures into one Russian literature and also by an unparalleled development of polemical literature born of bitter domestic political strife linked to the consolidation of an absolute rule, first by the great prince and then by the tsar of Muscovy and All Rus.

p The official style of this period was the 36 representative, elaborate, uplifted prose of Met. Makary’s literary school. Polemic literature gave rise to freer, vivid forms close to those of official writing and reflecting the tenor of daily life. Literature’s concern with history changes with the appearance of fictional tales perceived as genuinely historical; such pseudo-historical works include the Dracula Tale, the Tale of the Georgian Empress Dinara and historical allegories.

p Two tendencies can be traced in the literature of this period: the observance of strict rules and canons in writing, religious ritual and daily life and the violation of these rules, the destruction of traditional canons. The second tendency prepared the way for the triumph of new principles which in turn give rise to seventeenth century literature.

p The seventeenth century was a period marked by the beginning of an accelerating process of the differentiation of fiction, the literature of the young Russian nation. This process was connected to the secularisation of culture, its democratisation and liberation from the ideology and morality of the church. It was conditioned by the growing role of city tradesmen and craftsmen in the social, political and cultural life of the country. A new popular audience began to demand literature. Literature responded by greater attention to reality and by changing its system of genres. Above all traditional hagiographical and historical genres changed, becoming more democratic in form and content. History was gradually crowded out of the literary scene by fiction, the depiction of individuals’ daily life and interrelations. Vitae began to describe, not only daily life, but the passionate confessions of rebellious hearts.

p Traditional ecclesiastical and official genres became the objects of literary parodies: the worship service was parodied as a tavern service, saints’ lives in the vita of a drunkard, petitions and legal proceedings in the Petition of Kalyazin Monastery and the Tale of Ruff Ruff son.

p The awakening consciousness of personal elements was reflected in a new genre, the tale of daily life which prefigured the picaresque novel. Translated literature also underwent major changes.

p Folklore became an integral part of literature with 37 the advent of such genres as the satirical social tale and the lyrical song.

p But the ruling classes encountered the processes of literature’s democratisation with a reactionary response. To counterbalance democratic tendencies court circles fostered an artificially archaic baroque style, counterposing the living folk lyric with artificial syllabic poetry, the vivid humour of the democratic satire with abstract didactic satires on morality in general, and folk drama with mystery plays and court “comedies”.

p Syllabic poetry, mystery plays and court theatres were also, it is true, signs of the times for they bore witness to the triumph of new social principles.

Thus the seventeenth century ended and the eighteenth century began in a struggle between two trends: democratic tendencies and those of aristocratic, court circles.

Sources

p 1. A. Y. Gurevich. Kategorii srednevekovoi kultury [ Categories of Medieval Culture], M., 1972.

p 2. I. P. Eremin. Literatura Drevnei Rusi [The Literature of Old Rus], M.-L., 1966.

p 3. D. S. Likhachev. Chelovek v literature Drevnei Rusi [Man in Old Russian Literature], M., 1970.

p 4. D. S. Likhachev. Poetika drevnerusskoi literatury [The Poetics of Old Russian Literature], L., 1971.

5. D. S. Likhachev. Razvitie russkoi literatury X-XVII vv. [The Development of Russian Literature from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Centuries], L., 1973.