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p The economic and political development of the principalities of Murom and Ryazan already in the fourteenth century leaned toward Moscow. In the late fourteenth century, Murom entered the Muscovite principality; Ryazan lost its independence in 1520.

Both principalities had their own local chronicles which unfortunately have not survived.  [210•1  They also composed works of literature.

The Tale of Peter and Fevronia

p One of the finest examples of Murom-Ryazan literature was the Tale of Peter and Fevronia, although it lacks local regional features. With extraordinary power and beauty, the tale glorifies the love of a woman capable of overcoming all obstacles and adversities of life in order to triumph over death itself.

p The heroes are historical figures. Peter and Fevronia ruled over Murom in the early thirteenth century and died in 1228. But in the tale, only their names are 211 historical and the plot is woven around a series of folk legends which sprang up around them. As M.O. Skripil has shown, two fairy-tale plots are combined in the tale: that of the fiery dragon and that of the wise maiden.   [211•1  After Peter and Fevronia were canonised at the Moscow Church Council of 1547, a vita was composed on the basis of folk legends; it is extant in 150 sixteenth century copies, bearing witness to its popularity.

p The image of the heroine, Fevronia, is connected to oral folk traditions. This daughter of a peasant shows her moral and mental superiority to Prince Peter; her wisdom is put in the foreground. Peter’s servant finds her in her izba at her loom, dressed simply. She meets the royal servant with strange words: “It is not fitting that a home have no ear and a shrine no eye.” When the youth asks her if any of the male inhabitants of the hut are at home, she answers: “My father and mother went off to mourn in loan. My brother went to gaze on death through his legs.”

p The servant cannot understand Fevronia’s parables and asks her to explain her words. Fevronia does this gladly. The ears of a home are a dog, the eyes of the shrine or home are a child. She has neither one nor the other and so no one has warned her of the approach of the stranger, who found her unprepared to meet him properly. Her father and mother went to a funeral, to weep and they are giving a loan, since when they die other people will weep for them. Her father and brother are “treeclimbers”, gathering wild honey, and today her brother went out for that purpose. When he climbs the tree and looks down through his legs, he always thinks how to avoid falling from such a height and not be dashed to death.

p Fevronia also triumphs over Peter in a test of wits. In an attempt to check the girl’s wits, Peter sends her a skein of flax, asking her to make him a shirt, trousers and towel while he bathes. In answer Fevronia asks Peter to make a loom from a chip of wood, while she 212 spins the flax. The prince is obliged to admit that this is impossible. “And is it possible for a man to take one skein of flax, and during the time he is taking a bath to make a shirt and trousers and a towel? " asks Fevronia. Peter is obliged to admit that she is right.

p Fevronia agrees to heal Peter’s sores with one condition, that he marry her. She understands that it is not so easy for a prince to wed a peasant girl. When the prince is cured, he ceases to think of his promise: “and did not want to marry her because of her low birth”. Fevronia was quite aware of such a possibility and for that very reason she had told him not to spread ointment on all of his sores. The prince’s body once again is covered with sores and he is obliged to return to ask her help once again. She agrees to heal him after he gives her his firm promise to marry her. Thus the daughter of a Ryzan peasant forces Peter to keep his royal word. Like the heroines of Russian folk tales Fevronia fights for her love and happiness. To the end of her days she continues to love and revere her husband. When the boyars of Murom order her to quit the city she takes her dearest possession—her husband. For her he is more precious than power, honours or wealth.

p On the ship Fevronia perceives that a married man is gazing upon her with lust in his heart. She forces him to taste the water from either side of the ship and asks: “Is it the same, or is one side sweeter? " He answers, “The water is all the same, my lady.” Fevronia replies: “And women too are of one substance. Why, then do you abandon your wife and think of a woman who belongs to another? "

p Fevronia dies at the same time as her husband for she cannot conceive of life without him. After death their bodies are found lying in one coffin. Twice attempts are made to rebury them in separate graves, and each time they are found together.

p Fevronia is a complex character. This daughter of a Ryazan peasant has dignity, womanly pride and extraordinary intelligence and will. She has a sensitive, tender heart and is able to love constantly and faithfully, and to fight for her love. Her marvellously attractive image overshadows the weak, passive figure of 213 Prince Peter. Only in the beginning of the tale does Peter fight for the defiled honour of his brother Pavel. With the help of Agrik’s sword he kills the dragon that has been visiting Pavel’s wife. But with this his active role in the development of the plot ceases and Fevronia takes the initiative.

p There is a theme of social inequalitv in the tale. Prince Peter does not marry the daughter of a treeclimber right away. When the personal conflict is resolved due to Fevronia’s wisdom, a political conflict arises. After the death of his brother Pavel, Peter becomes the ruler of the city. But the boyars do not love him because of his wife and because she was made princess of Murom, not through her descent, but due to her good deeds. She was accused by the boyars of not observing decorum and of behaving in a manner unbefitting a princess at the table. After eating Fevronia gathered up crumbs of bread from the table as though she was starving, in the manner of a peasant. Here we see a striking detail—the peasant girl is well aware of the value of bread!

p Supporting the idea of an autocratic prince, the tale harshly condemns the boyars’ willfulness. With rage, they tell the prince that they do not want Fevronia to rule over their wives. They give a feast and “barking like dogs in their shameless voices”, the boyars demand that Fevronia quit the city. When Fevronia consents and takes her husband with her, each boyar thinks about his own chances for becoming prince. But after the “autocrat” Peter leaves, many died by the sword. Each wanted to rule and they killed each other. The remaining nobles and people beg the prince to return to Murom and rule as he did before. The political conflict between the prince and the boyars is resolved by life itself.

p The tale has certain details of peasant and princely life: the description of a peasant hut, Fevronia’s behaviour at the table. This attention to people’s personal and daily life was new in literature and bore witness to changes which, already in the late fifteenth century, could be seen in the artistic reflection of reality.

p Hagiographical elements do not play an important 214 role in the tale. In accordance with the traditions of hagiography, Peter and Fevronia are called “pious”, “blessed”. Peter is wont to go off alone to church. His servant shows him the miraculous sword of Agrik in the sanctuary wall of the Ascension Monastery. The tale does not have typical hagiographical descriptions of the pious descent of the heroes, their youth and feats of piety. Fevronia’s miracles are rather curious themselves: the crumbs of bread that she gathers from the table are transformed into fragrant incense, and the wooden poles on which the cook hung the pots when he prepared dinner turn into great trees in the morning with branches and foliage, because Fevronia blesses them.

p The first miracle is an everyday one and justifies Fevronia’s behaviour; the accusations of the boyars that the princess is a bumpkin are invalidated by this miracle. The second miracle is a symbol of life-giving strength of Fevronia’s love and marital faithfulness. An affirmation of this power and a negation of the monastic ascetic ideal is the posthumous miracle: the coffin with Peter’s body is placed inside the city in the Church of the Mother of God and Fevronia’s coffin outside the city in the Ascension Monastery. In the morning both graves are found empty, and the bodies are found in one coffin.

p An aureole of holiness surrounds, not the ascetic monastic life, but the ideal marriage in the world and the wise autocratic rule of the kingdom; Peter and Fevronia rule theirs like a loving father and mother, with truth and humility and not by force.

p Here the Tale of Peter and Fevronia overlaps with the Life of Dmitry Ivanovich, and anticipates the appearance of the Tale of Juliania Lazarevskaya in the early seventeenth century.

p Thus the Tale of Peter and Fevronia belongs to the category of Old Russian original fictional works, posing burning social, political and moral questions. It is a genuine hymn to Russian womanhood, its intelligence, self-sacrificing and active love.

p The extended, interesting plot is not related to any concrete historical events, but reflects the growing interest of society in personal lives of individuals. The 215 main character of the tale is unusual. Fevronia, a peasant girl, becomes a princess, not by Divine Providence, but due to her own good qualities. She undergoes various trials. The genre of this tale corresponds to neither the historical tale nor the vita. Its poetic conception, going back to the folk tale tradition, and the author’s ability to artistically generalise various phenomena from life allow us to view it as the first stage of development of the genre known as the secular, everyday tale.

p The Tale of Peter and Fevronia influenced the legend of Kitezh, greatly popular among Old Believers. This legend is retold in P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky’s novel In the Woods, in the essays of V. G. Korolenko, and it also entranced Rimsky-Korsakov who used it for the basis of his opera, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia.

p Thus after examining several characteristic phenomena of regional literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we should above all note the primary significance of Muscovite literature, with its basic theme of the creation of one, sovereign, centralised Russian state, affirming the moral ideal of a man wholly giving himself to the service of society.

p Reflecting the growth of national awareness related to the struggle against foreign enslavers, the literature of this period resurrects the finest traditions of eleventh and twelfth century Old Russian literature (its civic, patriotic and heroic spirit, its epic, monumental, historical and expressive-emotional styles), and likewise uses the experience of the development of South Slavic literature in Serbia and Bulgaria.

p The feudal lords of Novgorod and Tver tried to incorporate separatist, regional tendencies in the development of regional literatures. However the idea of the unity of the land of Rus opposed these tendencies, and was widely propounded among the masses, particularly among the tradesmen and craftsmen of the cities. This class gave birth to a new type of secular writer, above all, the unknown author of the democratic redaction of the Tale of how King Tokhtamysh Took Moscow, and Nestor-Iskander, forced to convert to 216 Islam, and, finally, the author of the Tale of Peter and Fevronia.

p The emergence and development of the rationalist heretical movement in Novgorod, Pskov and Moscow show the shifts in the mentality of the tradesmen and craftsmen of the cities, the intensification of their activity both in the sphere of ideology and art, and in the sphere of politics.

p Apparently, already in this period a new type of writer and reader had begun to appear; society began to take an interest in purely secular narrative with extended, interesting plots. This leads to the change in artistic structure of traditional genres like the historical tale and hagiography. In literature, as in the fine arts, there is a growing interest in man, his inner world and psychological state. The monumental, static depiction of the world was replaced by a dynamic one. Both the talented writer of hagiography Epifany and the master of the “psychological portrait" Theophanes the Greek tried to convey and express this dynamic play of emotions. At the same time, both literature and the fine arts of the period embody the beauty of man’s spiritual harmony, his readiness to selflessly give himself to the service of the idea of fraternity and peace (Epifany the Wise and Andrei Rublev). Thus, for example, Epifany combines the tense drama of Theophanes’ heroes and the psychological harmony of Rub lev’s subjects.

p In connection with the formation of a centralised state, the genre of historical-legendary narrative is developed, preaching the idea of continuity of imperial power or that of the clergy. Chronicles and tales have increasing elements of polemic.

p In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, regional literatures developed the traditions of literature from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, working out their own styles. While Soviet scholars have made many discoveries in the fields of the fine arts and architecture about the specific features of local schools, literary scholars have yet to work out these features. One can only speak in very general terms of the laconicism of Novgorodian style and its tendency toward interesting legendary folk plots, of the development of the rhetorical-panegyric 217 style in Muscovite and Tver literature, and of the special nature of the tale written in the principality of MuromRyazan.

We should particularly stress the emergence and development of democratic, secular tendencies in narrative literature of this period, the intensification of attention to man and his psychological state. In this connection scholars are treating the question of the “ Prerenaissance" in Russian culture of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.   [217•1 

Sources

p 1. L. A. Dmitriev, Zhitiyniye povesti russkogo severa kak pamyatniki literatury XIII-XVH vv. Evolyutsia zhanra legendarno-biograficheskikh skazaniy (Hagiographical Tales of the Russian North as Literature in the Thirteenth to Seventeenth Centuries: The Evolution of Legendary-Biographical Narrative), L., 1973.

p 2. R. P. Dmitrieva, “O strukture povesti o Petre i Fevronii" (“The Structure of the Tale of Peter and Fevronia”), TODRL, vol. 31,1976.

p 3. Ya. S. Lurye, Ideologicheskaya borba v russkoi publitsistike kontsa XV^nachala XVIveka (The Ideological Struggle in Russian Polemical Literature of the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries), M.-L., 1960.

p 4. Russkie povesti XV-XVI vv. (Russian Tales of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries). Compiled by M. O. Skripil, M., 1958.

p 5. M. O. Skripil, “Povest o Petre i Fevronii Muromskikh i eye otnoshenie k russkoi skazke" (“The ’Tale of Peter and Fevronia of Murom’ and Its Relation to Russian Fairy Tales”), TODRL, vol. 7,1949.

6. Khrestomatiya po drevnei russkoi literatury (Anthology of Old Russian Literature). Compiled by N. K. Gudzy, M., 1973.

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