Some conspiracies and spells, proverbs and sayings, riddles, often containing traces of ancient magical ideas, ritual songs associated with the pagan agricultural calendar, wedding songs and funeral laments have survived to this day. The origin of fairy tales is also connected with the distant pagan past, because fairy tales are echoes of myths, where, for example, numerous mandatory tests of heroes are traces of ancient initiation rites. And such a famous image of Russian fairy tales as Baba Yaga is a character of the most ancient beliefs in the natural feminine principle, which, on the one hand, is a good assistant in the earthly affairs of fairy-tale heroes (hence the help that they receive fairy tale characters from Baba Yaga), and on the other - an evil witch trying to harm people.

A special place in folklore was occupied by epics created by the entire people. Passing from mouth to mouth, they were subject to reinterpretation and were often understood differently by different people. The most famous are the epics of the Kyiv cycle, associated with Kiev, with Prince Vladimir the Red Sun, and the three heroes. They began to take shape in the 10th-11th centuries, and they very well reflected the phenomenon of dual faith, the combination of old pagan ideas with new Christian forms. The images and plots of epics continued to nourish Russian literature for many subsequent centuries.

By the end of the pagan period, the level of development of ancient Russian culture was so high that it could no longer exist without writing. Until now, it was believed that the Slavs did not know writing before the advent of the Cyrillic alphabet. However, today some historians and linguists believe that in addition to Greek, the Slavs had their own original writing system: the so-called knotted writing. Its signs were not written down, but were transmitted using knots tied on threads that were wrapped in ball books. The memory of this knotted letter has been preserved in our language and folklore. We are still tying “knots for memory”, talking about the “thread of the narrative”, “the intricacies of the plot”.

In the ancient cultures of other peoples, knotted writing was quite widespread. Knotted writing was used by the ancient Incas and Iroquois; it was also known in Ancient China. Finns, Ugrians, Karelians, who from ancient times lived together with the Slavs in the northern territories of Rus', had a knotted script, the mention of which was preserved in the Karelian-Finnish epic “Kalevala”. In ancient Slavic culture, traces of knotted writing can be found on the walls of temples from the era of “dual faith,” when Christian sanctuaries were decorated not only with the faces of saints, but also with ornamental patterns.

If knotted pagan writing existed among the ancient Slavs, then it was very complex. Accessible only to a select few - priests and high nobility, it was a sacred letter. As Christianity spread and the ancient culture of the Slavs faded, knotted writing also perished along with the priest-magi. Obviously, the knotted writing could not compete with the simpler and more logically perfect writing system based on the Cyrillic alphabet.

Religious buildings are distinguished by the plasticity of their forms; there is a sense of peace and inviolability in them. The scale of the buildings is commensurate with the size of a person. IN Ancient Rus' Wood was widely used as a building material. Old Russian architecture developed over eight centuries, until the end of the 17th century. In works created in different historical periods, the evolution of artistic techniques and features can be traced. The most common forms of wooden religious structures in Ancient Rus' were cage and tent churches. Cage churches are in many ways similar to residential buildings. They consist of several cages connected to each other. The church had: an altar, a prayer hall, a refectory, a chapel, a vestibule, a porch and a bell tower. Temples, as a rule, were built on high sub-churches, so special attention was paid to the porches and galleries, which were decorated with carvings and painted different colors. Kletsky churches with fancy domes stood out among other buildings in cities and villages with their decorations and picturesqueness.

Since the 11th century, stone has been used in construction, which was actively used in the following centuries. Cubic-type temples will be built in stone religious architecture. Inside the temple there are parallel naves (oblong rectangular rooms covered with vaults) with pillars on which the vaults and domes rest. The number of domes in churches varied from one to five. Despite the fact that the designs of religious buildings are very similar, the sizes, volumes of shapes and decorative designs of the churches differ. Buildings created before the 14th century are distinguished by the correspondence of internal structures and external forms

The visible embodiment of church symbolism is the Orthodox church, which represents the most “open”, conscious, thoughtful system of meanings. An Orthodox church contains a complex symbol, inexhaustible in its visibility. Researchers V. Bobkov and E. Shevtsov believe that since “the experience of religious consciousness, in essence, is an act of revelation, coming not from below (from the subject), but given from above - from God, that is, completely unknowable and indescribable, therefore the ontological foundation Orthodoxy is symbolism." Therefore, speaking about Christian symbolism, it should be noted that understanding it outside the Church is impossible in principle.

Accordingly, a person who wants to become more closely involved with ancient legend and traditions must, looking at the earthly in the construction of the temple, try to see the heavenly in it. For this, a person has many opportunities.

Architecture, like every type of art, has its own professional language - the language of architectural forms, inextricably linked with a person’s worldview, with his spiritual structure. That is why the meaning and significance of the architectural forms of a Christian temple can be understood by considering the temple in its idea - as the fruit of God’s economy based on tradition, carefully preserved by the Church.

As noted above, the Christian temple is a complex symbol, under the guise of the earthly, revealing to us the unknown Heavenly. The location of the temple, its architecture, decoration, and painting system symbolically express what is impossible to depict directly.

Thus, being in the temple is the most important aspect of complex spiritual work, it is a form of spiritual development, it is a path through the visible to the invisible. In the temple everything is subordinated to a single goal, the temple is the path to deification, it is sacred place, where members of the Church partake of Divine life in the sacraments. Therefore, the temple is a particle of the coming Kingdom of God, anticipating His coming. At the same time, the temple is an image of the entire Divine Kingdom, to which the Church leads the whole world. And finally, the temple is the world, the universe, the meaning of which is given by participation in the work of Salvation.

The symbolism of the temple, therefore, is an expression of the liturgical life of the Church, the most important aspect of church tradition. Communion with God, rebirth for a new life, a “new heaven” and a “new earth”, is carried out, first of all, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, which takes place in the temple. That is why the temple - “the house of the Lord” - is different from any other building.

The basic principles of the architecture of the temple, its internal structure and paintings are conveyed in church tradition, which goes back not only to the apostles, but also to the law of the Old Testament. Already from the 4th century. the symbolism of the temple begins to be explained in detail (see “History of the Church” by Eusebius). The symbolism of the temple was revealed in detail in the 4th–8th centuries. in the works of the holy fathers - the creators of the canons: Maximus the Confessor, Sophronius, Herman, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus, Simeon of Thessalonica.

The symbolism of the Christian temple was revealed gradually. The Old Testament tabernacle, a prototype of the Christian temple, embodied in its structure the idea of ​​the whole world. It was built in the image seen by Moses on Mount Sinai. God, as it were, gave not only its general plan, but also determined its entire structure. Here is the description of the tabernacle made by Josephus: “The interior of the tabernacle was divided lengthwise into three parts. This three-part division of the tabernacle represented in some way the view of the whole world: for the third part, located between the four pillars and inaccessible to the priests themselves, meant in some way Heaven, dedicated to God; a space of twenty cubits, as if representing the earth and sea, over which people have a free path, was determined for the priests alone” (Jewish Antiquities, book III, chapter 6). The third part corresponded to the underworld, Sheol - the region of the dead. The symbolism of the Old Testament Church expressed the anticipation of the coming of the Savior, therefore neither the tabernacle nor the Temple of Solomon, which was built in its image, could express the idea of ​​the Church in its entirety. The temple acquires holistic significance only with the coming of the Savior into the world, with the advent of the Christian era.

Little is known about the symbolism of early Christian churches. With the advent of heresies, the need arises to theoretically formulate the dogmatic truths of religious doctrine and the symbolic side of worship.

Question 21The oldest icons in Rus' were preserved in Veliky Novgorod.

Several huge icons that were part of the ancient decoration of the temple come from the St. Sophia Cathedral. The icon “The Golden Robe of the Savior,” depicting Christ on the throne in golden robes, is currently in the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow, but only 17th-century painting has survived on it. The icon of the apostles Peter and Paul, kept in Novgorod Museum along with his ancient salary. Unusual for Byzantine art is the gigantic size of the icons intended for the huge temple. Another icon located in the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow is double-sided, with the image of the Mother of God Hodegetria and the Great Martyr George (see St. George (icon of the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin)). It could have been brought from Novgorod (or from Kyiv). The image of George, which has the features of the ascetic style of the 11th century, is perfectly preserved (the image of the Mother of God was renewed in the 14th century).

The iconography of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality stands out. The flourishing of its culture is associated with Andrei Bogolyubsky.

In 1155, Andrei Bogolyubsky left Vyshgorod, taking with him the revered icon of the Mother of God, and settled in Vladimir on the Klyazma. The icon he brought, called the Vladimir icon, became the palladium of the principality, and subsequently of all of Russia. The Byzantine image, beautiful in its insight and classicism, served as a kind of measure of artistic quality for the icon painters who worked here.

The luxurious white stone churches of Andrei Bogolyubsky and his brother Vsevolod, who ruled after him, were painted by the best masters. Perhaps, artists were invited from Thessalonica, where Vsevolod spent his youth, to paint the Assumption Cathedral and the Dmitrovsky Cathedral, built not far from it, consecrated in honor of Vsevolod’s heavenly patron, the Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica. The brought tombstone of St. Demetrius, on which his icon was painted, was kept here (currently in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin with paintings from the 17th century).

The icon of the Mother of God of Bogolyubovo was commissioned by Prince Andrei for his palace church in Bogolyubovo. On it, the Virgin Mary is presented full-length in a spread, praying to Christ. The painting of the icon suffered greatly during its existence. Currently, the icon is kept in the Cathedral of the Princess Monastery in Vladimir.

Vladimir icon painting includes two icons kept in the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow.

The first depicts the appearance of the Archangel Michael to Joshua. Tradition connects the icon with the Moscow prince Mikhail Khorobrit (1238-1248), but the style of the icon dates back to the turn of the 12th-13th centuries.

The second icon is “Savior with Golden Hair” - a shoulder-length image of the Savior. The icon was also painted at the turn of the century and belongs to the princely court culture. Its author, a classically oriented icon painter, simultaneously surrounded the face of Christ with gold jewelry. Gold hair enhances decorative motif in the icon.

Two horizontal icons were originally part of the altar barriers of unknown churches (located in the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow, now in the State Tretyakov Gallery).

Emmanuel saved with the angels. End of the 12th century. Tretyakov Gallery

One of them shows the shoulder of the Savior Emmanuel with two archangels. The image of the young Christ is full of Divine grandeur and power. Here He is depicted as a Sacrifice, prepared from eternity for the salvation of people. The faces of the worshiping archangels express quiet sorrow. The deep, concentrated structure of images with subtle shades of feelings is perfectly conveyed by the means of late Comnenian style .

The second icon represents the mantle deesis. In the images of Christ, the Mother of God and John the Baptist, features characteristic of the beginning of the 13th century appeared - the rhythm was enlarged, the details were generalized, the silhouettes acquired smoothness, and the images became especially sincere.

Question 22The most important distinctive feature The philosophy of the Renaissance turns out to be its focus on man. If the focus of ancient philosophers was the life-giving Cosmos, in the Middle Ages it was God, and in the Renaissance it was man.

New philosophical directions also emerged - deism and pantheism. Deism rejected the idea of ​​a personal God and his daily intervention in the life of nature and society. Deism considered God only as the first cause, as the creator of the world, that is, an impersonal principle that informed the world of its laws, which after creation act independently. Many of the deists based their ideas about the world on new branches of natural science and defended the independence of science from religion. Deism made it possible, under the guise of recognizing God, to consider the laws of nature and society outside of Divine predestination.

In pantheism, God and the world were identified. Nikolai Kuzansky was one of the first to approach pantheism. Considering God as an infinite maximum and bringing him closer to nature as a limited maximum, he formulated the idea of ​​​​the infinity of the Universe. Pantheism formed the basis of most natural philosophical teachings that oppose the religious teaching about the creation of the world by God out of nothing. In the teachings of pantheists, God, remaining the infinite and invisible Absolute, increasingly merged with nature until he essentially became its pseudonym. J. Bruno has a thesis: “... nature... is nothing other than God in things.” All this indicates that by the 17th century. a consciousness was formed that was significantly different from the ancient one. If for ancient Greek philosophy the completed and the whole are more beautiful than the incomplete, then for the Renaissance philosopher movement and formation are preferable to motionless, unchanging existence.

This allowed man, as never before, to feel the strength and power of all things, to improve and develop; he no longer needs the mercy of God, without which, according to the teachings of the church, he could not exist. He is now the creator himself. Therefore, in the Renaissance, all activities were perceived differently than in the early Middle Ages, and even in antiquity.

An engineer and artist is no longer just a “technician” and an “artist”, as he was in antiquity and the Middle Ages, now he is a real creator. In the creations of God, that is, natural things, he strives to see the law of their construction, to express it in scientific knowledge. Thus, Nicolaus Copernicus destroyed the most important principle of Aristotelian physics and cosmology, substantiating the heliocentric system of the world, according to which, firstly, the Earth rotates around its axis, which explains the change of day and night, as well as the movement of the starry sky; secondly, the Earth revolves around the Sun, placed by N. Copernicus at the center of the world; thirdly, Space is infinite, unchanging and limitless.

Thus, having originated 2500 years ago, philosophical thought is constantly developing and improving, experiencing periods of ups and downs, and strives to develop knowledge about general principles existence and knowledge, about man’s relationship to the world and man’s place in it. Being conditioned by social reality, philosophy actively influences social life and contributes to the formation of new ideals and cultural values. XVII century opens the next period in the development of philosophy, which is commonly called the philosophy of modern times.

Question 23C XV century. a transition in history begins Western Europe era - the Renaissance, which created its own brilliant culture. The most important condition The flourishing of culture during the Renaissance brought about the breaking of the dictatorship of the church.

Anthropocentrism- the doctrine according to which man is the center of the Universe and the goal of all events occurring in the world.

Humanism – a type of anthropocentrism, a view that recognizes the value of man as an individual, his right to freedom and happiness.

Secular interests, a full-blooded earthly life of a person were opposed to feudal asceticism:

– Petrarch, who collected ancient manuscripts, calls to “heal the bloody wounds” of his native Italy, trampled under the boots of foreign soldiers and torn by the enmity of feudal tyrants;

– Boccaccio in his “Decameron” he ridicules the depraved clergy, the parasitic nobility and glorifies the inquisitive mind, the desire for pleasure and the seething energy of the townspeople;

– Erasmus of Rotterdam in the satire “In Praise of Stupidity” and Rabelais in the novel "Gargantua and Pantagruel" they express humanism and the unacceptability of the old medieval ideology.

The following also had a huge influence on the development of humanist ideas: Leonardo da Vinci(his works of painting, sculpture and architecture, works on mathematics, biology, geology, anatomy are dedicated to man and his greatness); Michelangelo Buonarroti(in his canvas “Lamentation of Christ”, in the painting of the vault Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, the statue of “David” affirms the physical and spiritual beauty of man, his limitless creative possibilities).

The philosophy of the Renaissance is filled with recognition of the value of man as an individual, his right to free development and manifestation of his abilities.

Stages of development humanism:

– secular freethinking, which opposes medieval scholasticism and the spiritual domination of the church;

– value-moral emphasis of philosophy and literature.

Appeared new culture and philosophy in Italy, then covering a number of European countries: France, Germany, etc.

The main features of Renaissance philosophy:

– denial of “book wisdom” and scholastic word debates based on the study of nature itself;

– use of materialistic works of ancient philosophers (Democritus, Epicurus);

– close connection with natural science;

– study of the problem of man, the transformation of philosophy into anthropocentric in its orientation.

Niccolo Machiavelli(1469–1527) - one of the first social philosophers of the Renaissance to reject the theocratic concept of the state.

He substantiated the need for a secular state, proving that the motivation for people's activities is selfishness and material interest. The evil of human nature, the desire to get rich by any means, reveal the need to curb human instincts with the help of a special force - the state.

The necessary order in society is created legal worldview people who cannot be educated by the church, but only by the state, this is the main idea of ​​Niccolo Machiavelli.

Questions that Machiavelli considers:

- “What is better: to inspire love or fear?”

- “How should sovereigns keep their word?”

- “How to avoid hatred and contempt?”

- “What should a sovereign do to be revered?”

- “How to avoid flatterers?” etc.

The prestige of the Renaissance is associated with the concept of humanism. From about the 19th century to the present day, humanism is one of the most common terms used to designate various moral and social characteristics of humanity. But this word itself and the main phenomena it generalizes again go back to this era (the Italian words “humanista”, “manista” were first recorded in documents of the late 15th century). Moreover, Italian humanists borrowed the word “humanitas” (humanity) from Cicero (1st century BC), who at one time sought to emphasize that the concept of humanity, as the most important result of the culture developed in the ancient Greek city-states, took root on Roman soil.

In improving the spiritual nature of man, the main role was given to a complex of disciplines consisting of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and ethics. It was these disciplines that became the theoretical basis of Renaissance culture and were called “studia humanitatis” (humanitarian disciplines). The poet and philosopher Francesca Petrarch (1304-1374) is unanimously considered the founder of humanism. His work marks the beginning of many paths along which the development of Renaissance culture took place in Italy. In the treatise “On the Ignorance of His Own and Many Others,” he decisively rejects the scholastic scholarship inherent in the Middle Ages, in relation to which he demonstratively proclaims his supposed ignorance, because he considers such scholarship to be completely useless for the day of the man of his time.

The aforementioned treatise reveals a fundamentally new approach to the assessment of ancient heritage. According to Petrarch, it is not blind imitation of the thoughts of remarkable predecessors that will allow us to achieve a new flowering of literature, art, and science, but the desire to rise to the heights ancient culture and at the same time rethink and surpass it in some way. This line, outlined by Petrarch, became the leading one in relation to humanism towards the ancient heritage. The first humanist believed that the content of true philosophy should be the sciences about man, and throughout his work there is a call to reorient philosophy towards this worthy object of knowledge.

With his reasoning, Petrarch laid the foundation for the formation of personal self-awareness of the Renaissance. In different eras, a person perceives himself differently. A medieval person was perceived as more valuable as an individual, the more his behavior corresponded to the norms accepted in the corporation. He asserted himself through the most active involvement in social group, into a corporation, into a divinely established order - such is the social valor required of the individual. The Renaissance man gradually abandoned universal medieval concepts, turning to the specific, individual. Humanists are developing a new approach to understanding man, in which the concept of activity plays a huge role. The value of a human person for them is determined not by origin or social affiliation, but by personal merit and the fruitfulness of its activities. A striking embodiment of this approach can be, for example, the versatile activities of the famous humanist Leon Baptiste Albert (1404-1472). He was an architect, painter, author of treatises on art, and formulated the principles of pictorial composition - balance and symmetry of color, gestures and poses of characters. According to Albert, a person is able to overcome the vicissitudes of fate only through his own activity. “He who does not want to be defeated easily wins. He who is accustomed to obey endures the yoke of fate.”

Question 24 Social reality was perceived by man as something unstable, unfair, hopeless, changeable. This sense of time, changeability, fluidity constitutes a very characteristic feature of the worldview of the coming era. “The whole world is an eternal swing,” Michel Montaigne now says. “Even stability is nothing more than a weakened and slow swing.” All this contributes to the formation of a tragic perception of life and the world, which permeates the ideas of B. Pascal with unprecedented acuteness , the famous French philosopher and physicist. In his work, one of the main themes of sad thoughts is the theme of life and death. He paints a tragic picture of human life, in which prisoners in chains, condemned to death, are killed one after another every day in front of others waiting. your turn.

The economy and culture of medieval Europe in the first stages of the development of feudalism lagged behind the early blooming powerful cultures of the East (Byzantium, the Arab East, China, India, Central Asia). Subsequently, however, it was in Europe that the prerequisites for the transition from feudalism to capitalism, that is, to a new, higher socio-historical formation, first matured. These new public relations formed in the depths of European feudal society in trade and craft cities - urban communes.

It was the fact that in some of the most economically developed areas of medieval Europe cities acquired political independence that facilitated the emergence of early capitalist relations in them. On this basis, a new culture, openly hostile to the old feudal culture, arose, called the culture of the Renaissance (Rinascimento - in Italian, Renaissance - in French). Thus, the first anti-feudal culture in the history of mankind arose in independent city-states that had taken the path of capitalist development, sporadically interspersed with the massif of the European continent, which was generally still at the stage of feudalism.

The Renaissance transmitted to the 17th century the “spirit of freethinking,” which was developed in a wide variety of forms. In secular circles there were many “admirers” of Epicurean ethics as opposed to religious moral standards. Religious indifference was also widespread. The learned monk M. Mersen complained about the “great multitude of atheists” in Paris. In the fierce struggle against the Reformation, the Catholic Church made extensive use of the Inquisition, and also contributed to the creation of a special Order of Jesus (Jesuits) to oversee the “purity of faith” and combat heresy. The beginning of the 17th century was ominously illuminated by the bonfire in the Piazzale Flores in Rome, where Giordano Bruno was burned. In Toulouse, the philosopher-pantheist and freethinker Giulio Vanini died at the stake. Later, the Jesuits organized a shameful trial of the elderly Galileo. Catholics burned dissidents, Protestants did the same. Thus, by order of Calvin, the Spanish thinker and physician Miguel Servet was burned at the stake. Bonfires burned throughout Europe. With their help they tried to destroy freedom of thought, secular culture, and scientific progress.

The 17th century adopted the ideals of humanism from the Renaissance. But the “optimistic humanism” of the Renaissance has now turned rather into “tragic humanism.” The discord between the ideals of humanism and the harsh laws of society, little dependent on the will of the individual, became obvious.

Question 25 XVIII century is a time of rapid development science. During this period, the scientific revolution that began earlier ends, and science - meaning natural science - reaches its classical form. The main features and criteria of such a science come down to the following: the objectivity of knowledge, the experience of its origin, the exclusion of everything subjective from it. Science is acquiring unprecedented social prestige. Together with philosophy, Oma appears as the only adequate embodiment of reason.

The unusually increased authority of science leads to the fact that already in the 18th century. the first forms appear scientism. which puts science in the place of religion, absolutizes and deifies the role and significance of science. On its basis, the so-called scientistic utopianism is also formed, according to which the laws of society can become completely “transparent”, fully cognizable; and politics is based on a system of scientific laws that are no different from the laws of nature. In particular, Diderot, who looked at society and man through the prism of natural science and the laws of nature, was inclined towards such views. With this approach, a person ceases to be a subject of cognition and action, is deprived of freedom and is identified with an ordinary object or machine.

It is also developing very successfully artistic culture, where there is much more continuity. 18th century art acts in many ways as a direct continuation of the previous century. The main styles are still classicism and baroque. At the same time, there is an internal differentiation of art, its fragmentation into a growing number of trends and directions that do not look very clear, blurred. New styles are emerging, in particular rococo And sentimentalism.

In general, the art of the 18th century. - compared to the previous one - seems less deep and sublime, it appears lighter, airier and more superficial. It demonstrates an ironic and skeptical attitude towards what was previously considered noble, chosen and sublime. The Epicurean principle, the craving for hedonism, the spirit of pleasure and enjoyment are noticeably strengthened in him. At the same time, art becomes more natural, closer to reality. Moreover, it is increasingly invading social life, struggle and politics, becomes biased.

Classicism represents primarily a French artist J.-L. David (1748-1825). His work reflects major historical events and the theme of civic duty. His famous painting “The Oath of the Horatii” sounds like a call to fight against absolutism. This work is distinguished by its strict composition, clear rhythm, bright and rich color. Another of his canvases, “The Death of Marat,” is dedicated to the Great french revolution, in which David took an active part. Here, on the contrary, emphasized laconicism and asceticism of pictorial means prevail. The painting “The Coronation of Napoleon I” became a grandiose canvas on a historical theme.

Baroque XVIII century did not produce figures equal in scale and significance to Rubens. Being the “great style” of the era of absolutism, it gradually lost its influence, and by the middle of the 18th century. it is increasingly being squeezed by the Rococo style, which is sometimes called degenerate Baroque.

Most widespread rococo received in France. One of its most famous representatives is the artist O. Fragonard (1732-1806). He continues the line of Rubens, which is manifested in his sensual perception of color and special attention to the beauty of female flesh and exciting bodily forms. A striking example in this regard is the painting "Bathers" expressing the real apotheosis of life, sensual joy and pleasure. At the same time, the flesh and forms depicted by Fragonard appear as if incorporeal, airy and even ephemeral. In his works, virtuosity, grace, sophistication, light and air effects come to the fore. It is in this spirit that the painting “Swing” was painted.

Sentimentalism, which arose in the second half of the 18th century, was the first opposition to the Enlightenment deification of reason. He contrasted reason with the cult of natural feeling. One of the founders and main figures of sentimentalism was J.-J. Rousseau. He owns the famous saying: “The mind can make mistakes. feeling - never! In his works - “Julia, or New Heloise”, “Confession”, etc. - he depicts life and worries ordinary people, their feelings and thoughts, glorifies nature, critically evaluates city life, idealizes patriarchal peasant life.

The greatest artists of the 18th century. go beyond stylistic boundaries. These include primarily the French artist A. Watteau (1684-1721) and Spanish painter F. Goya (1746-1828).

Watteau's work is closest to the Rococo style. Therefore, he is sometimes called the genius of the Rococo era. At the same time, the influence of Rubens and Van Dyck, Poussin and Titian is felt in his works. He is rightfully considered the forerunner of romanticism and the first great romantic in painting. J. Ko who compares Watgos to Mozart. All this makes the work of the French artist extremely complex and multi-valued.

The main themes of his works are nature and woman, love and music. Watteau became one of the greatest painters of the human soul, its immeasurable depths and subtle tints. He created an amazingly musical painting, as if vibrating and pulsating. It is marked by vivid theatricality. It combines the real and the imaginary, the serious and the funny, joy and sadness. In the film " Morning toilet" Watteau depicted a wonderful naked girl. The canvas “Pierrot” is dedicated to the Italian comedian. The most famous work the artist's painting is considered " Pilgrimage to the island of Cythera."

It is especially necessary to highlight musical art experiencing in the 18th century. unprecedented rise and prosperity. If the 17th century is considered the century of theater, then the 18th century. can rightfully be called the century of music. Its social prestige increases so much that it takes first place among the arts, displacing painting.

Music XVIII V. represented by such names as F. Haydn, K. Gluck, G. Handel. Among the great composers, I.S. deserve close attention. Bach (1685-1750) and V.A. Mozart (1756-1791).

The oral poetic creativity (folklore) of the ancient Slavs must largely be judged tentatively, since its main works have come down to us in the records of modern times (XVIII-XX centuries).

One might think that the folklore of the pagan Slavs was associated primarily with labor rituals and processes. Mythology emerged at a fairly high stage of development of the Slavic peoples and was a complex system of views based on animism and anthropomorphism.

The Slavs apparently did not have a single higher pantheon like the Greek or Roman, but we know evidence of the Pomeranian (on the island of Rügen) pantheon with the god Svyatovid and the Kiev pantheon.

The main gods in it were considered Svarog - the god of sky and fire, Dazhdbog - the sun god, the giver of blessings, Perun - the god of lightning and thunder, and Veles - the patron of the economy and livestock. The Slavs made sacrifices to them. The spirits of nature among the Slavs were anthropomorphic or zoomorphic, or mixed anthropomorphic-zoomorphic in the images of mermaids, divas, samodivas - goblins, water creatures, brownies.

Mythology began to influence the oral poetry of the Slavs and significantly enriched it. Songs, fairy tales and legends began to explain the origin of the world, humans, animals and plants. They featured wonderful, human-speaking animals - a winged horse, a fiery serpent, a prophetic raven, and man was depicted in his relationships with monsters and spirits.

In the preliterate period, the culture of the artistic word of the Slavs was expressed in works of folklore, which reflected social relations, life and ideas of the communal-tribal system.

An important part of folklore was work songs, which often had magical meaning: they accompanied rituals associated with agricultural work and the change of seasons, as well as the most important events human life (birth, marriage, death).

Ritual songs are based on requests to the sun, earth, wind, rivers, plants for help - for the harvest, for the offspring of livestock, for luck in the hunt. The beginnings of drama arose in ritual songs and games.

The most ancient folklore of the Slavs was diverse in genres. Fairy tales, proverbs and riddles were widely used. There were also toponymic legends, tales about the origin of spirits, inspired by both oral tradition and later traditions - biblical and apocryphal. The most ancient chronicles have preserved the echoes of these legends for us.

Apparently, heroic songs also arose early among the Slavic peoples, which reflected the Slavs’ struggle for independence and clashes with other peoples (when moving, for example, to the Balkans). These were songs in praise of heroes, outstanding princes and ancestors. But the heroic epic was still only in its infancy.

The ancient Slavs had musical instruments, to the accompaniment of which they sang songs. South Slavic and West Slavic written sources mention harp, whistles, pipes, and trumpets.

The oldest oral poetry of the Slavs largely influenced further development their artistic culture, but also itself underwent historical changes.

With the formation of states, the adoption of Christianity and the emergence of writing, new elements entered folklore. Songs, fairy tales and especially legends began to combine old pagan mythology and Christian ideas. Christ, the Mother of God, angels, saints appear next to the witches and divas, and events take place not only on earth, but also in heaven or hell.

On the basis of the worship of Veles, the cult of Saint Blaise arose, and Elijah the prophet took possession of the thunders of Perun. New Year and summer rituals and songs were Christianized. New Year's rituals were attached to the Nativity of Christ, and summer rituals to the Feast of John the Baptist (Ivan Kupala).

The creativity of peasants and townspeople was somewhat influenced by the culture of feudal circles and the church. Among the people, Christian literary legends were reworked and used to expose social injustice. Rhyme and strophic division gradually penetrated into folk poetic works.

The spread of legendary and fairy-tale stories from Byzantine literature, literature of Western European and Middle Eastern countries in the Bulgarian, Serbian, and Croatian lands was of great importance.

Slovenian folk art already in the 9th-10th centuries. learned not only literary subjects, but also poetic forms, for example the ballad - a genre of Romanesque origin. So, in the 10th century. In the Slovenian lands, a ballad with a tragic plot about the beautiful Vida became popular.

A song about her originated in Byzantium in the 7th-8th centuries. and then through Italy it came to the Slovenians. This ballad tells how an Arab merchant lured the beautiful Vida onto his ship, promising her medicine for a sick child, and then sold her into slavery. But gradually the songs became stronger in terms of motives reflecting reality and social relations (ballads “The Imaginary Dead”, “The Young Groom”).

Songs about a girl’s meeting with overseas knights and the fight against the “infidels” were popular, which was obviously a reflection of the Crusades. The songs also contain traces of anti-feudal satire.

New and important phenomenon Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian folk art in the XII-XIV centuries. there was the emergence and development of epic songs. This process went through two stages: first, songs of everyday content arose, reflecting the uniqueness of social relations and life of early feudal society, and almost simultaneously with them, heroic songs also emerged.

Subsequently, with the creation and strengthening of the state, with the beginning of the struggle against Byzantium and the Turks, youth heroic songs began to be created and gradually took first place in the epic. They were created by folk singers shortly after the events sung in them.

The South Slavic epic was created with the creative cooperation of all Balkan Slavs, as well as with the participation of individual non-Slavic peoples. The epic songs of the southern Slavs are characterized by common plots, which are based on the events of the struggle with neighboring peoples, common heroes, common means of expression and verse forms (the so-called ten-syllable). At the same time, the epic of each nation has its own distinctive features.

The Serbo-Croatian epic is historical at its core. Despite the presence of anachronisms, fantasy and hyperbolization, the texts that have reached us also contain historically correct information. The songs reflected the features of early feudal relations, the political system and culture of that time. In one of the songs Stefan Dusan says:

I curbed the obstinate commander,

Subjected them to our royal power.

The songs express thoughts about the need to maintain state unity and the attention of feudal lords to the people. Stefan Dečanski, dying, bequeaths to his son: “Take care of the people as you would your own head.”

The songs vividly depict feudal life, the relationship between the prince and his squads, campaigns, battles and duels, and military competitions.

The earliest songs, the so-called Dokosovo cycle, are dedicated to the events of the reign of the Serbian princely (from 1159) and then royal (from 1217) Nemanjić dynasty. They have a religious overtones and talk about the “holy deeds” and “righteous life” of the Serbian rulers, many of whom were canonized by the church as saints: the songs condemn feudal strife and civil strife.

Many songs are dedicated to Sava, the founder of the Serbian church. These earliest songs are a valuable cultural monument. They give a vivid artistic summary of destinies native land, are distinguished by great content of plots and images, remarkable mastery of the poetic word.

Unlike the folklore of the Eastern and Southern Slavs, the Western Slavs - Czechs, Slovaks and Poles, apparently did not have a heroic epic in such developed forms. However, certain circumstances suggest that heroic songs probably also existed among the Western Slavs. Historical songs were widespread among the Czechs and Poles, and the predecessor of this genre is usually the heroic epic.

In a number of genres of Czech and Polish folklore, especially in fairy tales, one can find plots and motifs typical of other peoples’ heroic epics (combat-duel, getting a bride): certain Western Slavic historical figures became heroes of South Slavic heroic songs, such as Vladislav Varnenchik.

In the historical chronicles of Poland and the Czech Republic (Gall Anonymous, Kozma of Prague, etc.) there are plots and motifs, apparently of epic origin (legends about Libusz, Krak, about the sword of Boleslav the Bold, about the siege of cities). Historiographer Kozma Prazhsky and others testify that they drew some materials from folk legends.

The formation of a feudal state, the idea of ​​the unity of Polish lands and patriotic goals in the fight against foreign invaders determined the popularity of historical legends, the appeal to them by chroniclers, thanks to whom these legends are known to us.

Gall Anonymous indicated that he used the stories of old people; Abbot Peter, the author of the “Book of Henryk” (XIII century), named the peasant Kwerik, nicknamed Kika, who knew many legends about the past of the Polish land, which were used by the author of this book.

Finally, these legends themselves are recorded or retold in the chronicles, for example, about Krak, the legendary ruler of Poland, who is considered the founder of Krakow. He freed his people from a cannibal monster who lived in a hole. Although this motif is international, it has a clear Polish connotation.

Krak dies in the fight with his brothers, but the throne is inherited by his daughter Wanda. The legend about her tells how the German ruler, captivated by her beauty, tried to persuade her to marry with gifts and requests. Having failed to achieve his goal, he started a war against her. From the shame of defeat, he commits suicide, throwing himself on his sword and cursing his compatriots for succumbing to female charms (“Greater Polish Chronicle”).

The winner Wanda, not wanting to marry a foreigner, rushes into the Vistula. The legend about Wanda was one of the most popular among the people. Both its patriotic meaning and the romantic nature of the plot played a role in this. Dynastic legends also include legends about Popel and Piast.

Popel, the Prince of Gniezno, according to legend, died in a tower in Kruszwice, where he was killed by mice; a similar motif is common in medieval literature and folklore. Piast, the founder of the Polish royal dynasty, according to legend, was a peasant charioteer.

The chronicles mention songs in praise of princes and kings, songs about victories, chronicler Vincent Kadlubek talks about “heroic” songs. The “Greater Poland Chronicle” retells the legend about the knight Walter and the beautiful Helgund, which indicates the penetration of the German epic into Poland.

The story about Walter (Valgezh the Udal) from the Popel family tells how he brought the beautiful Helgunda from France, whose heart he won by singing and playing the lute.

On the way to Poland, Walter killed the German prince who was in love with her. Arriving in Poland, he imprisoned Wieslaw, who was plotting against him. But when Walter went on a two-year campaign, Helgunda freed Wieslaw and fled with him to his castle.

Walter, upon returning from the campaign, was put in prison. He was saved by his sister Wieslawa, who brought him a sword, and Walter took revenge on Helgunda and Wieslawa by cutting them into pieces. Literary historians suggest that the legend about Walter and Helgund goes back to the poem about Walter of Aquitaine, which was brought to Poland by the Shpilmans, participants in the Crusades.

However, in Polish folklore there were tales that were original works in plot, type of characters and form.

Chronicles and other sources attest to the existence of songs about historical heroes and events. These are songs about the funeral of Boleslav the Bold, songs about Casimir the Renovator, about Boleslav Crooked-mouth, about the latter’s battle with the Pomeranians, songs from the time of Boleslav Crooked-mouth about the attack of the Tatars, songs about the battle of the Poles with the Galician prince Vladimir, songs about Polish knights who fought the pagan Prussians. The report of a 15th century chronicler is extremely valuable.

Jan Dlugosz about the songs about the battle of Zavikhost (1205): “the glades sang of this victory [...] in various kinds of songs that we hear to this day.”

The chronicler noted the emergence of songs shortly after the historical event. At the same time, historical ballads, or thoughts, began to appear. An example would be the thought of Ludgard, the wife of Prince Przemysław II, who ordered her to be strangled in Poznań Castle because of her infertility.

Dlugosz notes that even then a “song in Polish” was composed about this. Thus, Polish folklore is characterized not by heroic songs such as epics and South Slavic youth songs, but historical legends and historical songs.

History of world literature: in 9 volumes / Edited by I.S. Braginsky and others - M., 1983-1984.

Folk art Eastern Slavs represents a huge and special field of study. Within the framework of the general course, we can touch only on its most basic phenomena. The variety of forms of folk art of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and the high artistic perfection of many of their works are such that only a few other peoples Soviet Union can argue with them in this regard.

Oral folk art (folklore, folk literature) of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians reveals a complex combination of old, traditional and new forms. Previous folklorists considered oral folk art exclusively as a monument of antiquity, believing that in the modern era, starting with the penetration of capitalism into the countryside, it is doomed to decline and disappearance. But Soviet folklorists have established that this is not true: folk art does not dry out even today; moreover, in the Soviet era, some traditional genres of folklore are revived, imbued with new content, and completely new ones are developed. “Folklore,” says one of the prominent Soviet folklorists, Yu. M. Sokolov, “is an echo of the past, but at the same time the loud voice of the present.”

The traditional genres of East Slavic folklore include: ritual songs, lyrical songs, folk theater, fairy tales, proverbs, sayings and riddles, epic poetry - epics and historical songs, spiritual poems.

Ritual songs - perhaps oldest species folk poetry. They accompanied various rituals from the calendar cycle, from Christmas to stubble. Together with these rituals, they arose in a distant era on the basis of the spontaneously materialistic labor attitude of the farmer to the natural environment, but they were also colored by magical ideas. Other ritual songs were associated with family rituals - these are wedding songs, funeral lamentations (lamentations, lamentations); Of the latter, the northern ones are especially interesting. Nowadays, with a few exceptions, this ritual poetry is a thing of the past.

Lyrical folk poetry is extremely diverse. It is dominated by sad motives generated by the difficult lot of the working people in the past. Love and family songs are distinguished, then songs about conscription and soldiering, about serfdom, barge haulers, coachmen, prison songs, comic-satirical songs and others. In addition to songs of peasant origin, from the 18th century. Factory worker poetry also began to emerge, which, however, retained close ties with village poetry.

Folk theater was once quite widespread. Among the Eastern Slavs this is mainly a puppet theater,
known in several forms. Among the Russians, the most famous theater is “Petrushki” (puppets worn and moved on the fingers); main character performances - Petrushka, a brave, resourceful, witty hero who enters into a fight with a merchant, a policeman, a doctor and overcomes everyone; in this image the spontaneous protest of the people against social oppression found expression. Ukrainians and Belarusians were better known for another type of theater - the “nativity scene”, where dolls moved through slits in the floor of the stage; The content of the performances were partly church subjects, partly everyday satirical scenes. The third type of theater is “rayok” among the Russians: these are different pictures that were shown to the audience by rewinding between two rollers, and the rayoshnik gave humorous rhyming explanations.

Much less widespread was the theater of live actors. Only a few plays of this folk theater are known, which arose around the 18th century: these are “Tsar Maximilian”, “The Boat”, “The Naked Master”, etc.

In the old days in Rus' there were wandering professional actors - the so-called buffoons. But the government and the church persecuted them for satirical speeches against those in power, and already in the 18th century. The buffoons are gone.

The fabulous epic of the Eastern Slavs is extremely rich. It is customary to share folk tales into types: fairy tales about animals, fairy tales, fairy tales, legends, everyday tales, fairy tales, anecdotes, fairy tales and short stories. Fairy tales with an element of the miraculous are generally more ancient. But the opinion of previous researchers, especially supporters of the mythological school, is erroneous, that at the heart of every fairy tale, and above all, is a myth or religious idea. Soviet folklorists and ethnographers came to the conclusion that the fairy-tale creativity of the people from the very beginning existed independently of religious and mythological ideas, although, of course, there was mutual crossing of both. It is noted that (P.G. Bogatyrev), images of fairy tales among the Eastern Slavs - such as Baba Yaga, Koschey the Immortal, the Firebird - are not found at all in folk beliefs (i.e., the people do not believe in their existence) and, on the contrary, objects of popular belief - goblin, water goblin, brownie, etc. - almost never appear in fairy tales. Fairy tales of everyday content are associated with social themes, often have a satirical overtones and contain almost no elements of fantasy: here there are stories about a priest and his worker (a priest is always depicted with negative traits), about a stupid gentleman and lady, about a soldier, etc. In these In fairy tales, people captured their hostility towards the exploiters and sympathy for the disadvantaged.

Proverbs and sayings are extremely numerous. They also express folk wisdom, popular ideas about morality, a critical attitude towards the exploitative system. It is known how widely classics of literature used and continue to use folk proverbs, and how often politicians use them in their speeches.

One of the most specific types of Russian folklore is the heroic epic, the so-called epics. Unlike other types of folklore, their distribution is limited: they are preserved almost exclusively in the north - in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Arkhangelsk, Vologda regions, Pechora, and in some places in Siberia. But by their origin, epics are associated with the ancient centers of Rus' - mainly with Kiev, Novgorod, and less with Moscow. They were created, according to most experts, between the 12th and 17th centuries. Soviet folklorists have established that epics, like other types of folk poetry, are not half-forgotten fragments of antiquity, but still live a full-blooded life, change, and are even enriched with new details. However, the main content of the epics is the exploits of ancient heroes. Of these, the most beloved is the peasant hero Ilya Muromets, next to him stand Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, Volga Svyatoslavich, Mikula Selyaninovich and others. These are the heroes of the Kyiv cycle. From Novgorod cycle Sadko and Vasily Buslaevich especially stand out. The word “epics” is not popular; it was introduced by folklorists, the first of whom was I. I. Sakharov. People often call these works “antiques.” They are performed by special specialists - “storytellers”, talented singers, possessing enormous memory, because you need to remember thousands of lines of text in a row. The most famous Storytellers are the Ryabinin family, the Kryukov family (Marfa Kryukova, who died in 1954, was an order bearer and a member of the Union of Soviet Writers). Epic poems are sung, and their motifs are often heard in works of Russian classical music.

“Historical songs” are close to epics. They are dedicated to historical figures - Ivan the Terrible, Stepan Razin, Pugachev, etc., and convey historical events more closely. They are usually shorter in size.

Ukrainians also have historical songs. But they got it great value special genre folk historical poetry - the so-called “dumas”. In terms of content, most thoughts are devoted to historical events, the struggle of the Ukrainian people with the Tatars, Turks, Poles; but there are also thoughts of everyday content. A characteristic feature of thoughts is the presence in them, along with purely folk art, of elements of bookish and intellectual writing. Dumas were usually sung by blind lyricists, kobza players, and bandura players.

Spiritual poetry is an obsolete form of folk poetry. In the Middle Ages, they reflected the sentiments of dissatisfied sections of the population who adhered to various “heresies”; but subsequently this “heretical” spirit of theirs disappeared. Spiritual poems were sung by various wanderers, blind beggars, and pilgrims who stayed near monasteries. It was a type of religious propaganda that stupefied the consciousness of the people.

But the bulk of the works of traditional East Slavic folklore are of great ideological value. V.I. Lenin treated them with interest. Having familiarized himself with the records of Russian folklore texts, he once said to one of his interlocutors: “What interesting material... I quickly looked through all these books and see that, obviously, there are not enough hands or the desire to generalize all this, to look at all this from a socio-political angle . After all, this material could be used to write an excellent study about the aspirations and expectations of the people. Look... in Onchukov’s fairy tales, which I leafed through, there are wonderful places here. This is what our literary historians should pay attention to. This is genuine folk art, so necessary and important for the study of folk psychology in our days."

It was bad with evil spirits in Rus'. Bogatyrev in lately There were so many that the number of Gorynychs fell sharply. Only once did a ray of hope flash for Ivan: an elderly man who called himself Susanin promised to lead him to the very lair of Likh One-Eyed... But he only came across a rickety ancient hut with broken windows and a broken door. On the wall was scratched: “Checked. Likh no. Bogatyr Popovich."

Sergey Lukyanenko, Yuliy Burkin, “Rus Island”

“Slavic monsters” - you must agree, it sounds a bit wild. Mermaids, goblins, water creatures - they are all familiar to us from childhood and make us remember fairy tales. That is why the fauna of “Slavic fantasy” is still undeservedly considered something naive, frivolous and even slightly stupid. Nowadays, when it comes to magical monsters, we more often think of zombies or dragons, although in our mythology there are such ancient creatures, in comparison with which Lovecraft’s monsters may seem like petty dirty tricks.

The inhabitants of Slavic pagan legends are not the joyful brownie Kuzya or the sentimental monster with a scarlet flower. Our ancestors seriously believed in those evil spirits that we now consider worthy only of children's horror stories.

Almost no original source describing fictional creatures from Slavic mythology. Something was covered in the darkness of history, something was destroyed during the baptism of Rus'. What do we have except vague, contradictory and often dissimilar legends of different Slavic peoples? A few mentions in the works of the Danish historian Saxo Grammar (1150-1220) - once. “Chronica Slavorum” by the German historian Helmold (1125-1177) - two. And finally, we should remember the collection “Veda Slovena” - a compilation of ancient Bulgarian ritual songs, from which one can also draw conclusions about the pagan beliefs of the ancient Slavs. For obvious reasons, the objectivity of church sources and chronicles is in great doubt.

Book of Veles

The “Book of Veles” (“Veles Book”, Isenbek tablets) has long been passed off as a unique monument of ancient Slavic mythology and history, dating from the 7th century BC - 9th century AD.

Its text was allegedly carved (or burned) onto small wooden strips, some of the “pages” were partially rotten. According to legend, the “Book of Veles” was discovered in 1919 near Kharkov by white colonel Fyodor Izenbek, who took it to Brussels and handed it over to the Slavist Mirolyubov for study. He made several copies, and in August 1941, during the German offensive, the tablets were lost. Versions have been put forward that they were hidden by the Nazis in the “archive of the Aryan past” under Annenerbe, or taken after the war to the USA).

Alas, the authenticity of the book initially raised great doubts, and recently it was finally proven that the entire text of the book was a falsification, carried out in the mid-20th century. The language of this fake is a mixture of different Slavic dialects. Despite the exposure, some writers still use the “Book of Veles” as a source of knowledge.

The only available image of one of the boards of the “Book of Veles”, beginning with the words “We dedicate this book to Veles.”

The history of Slavic fairy-tale creatures may be the envy of other European monsters. The age of pagan legends is impressive: according to some estimates, it reaches 3000 years, and its roots go back to the Neolithic or even Mesolithic - that is, about 9000 BC.

The common Slavic fairy-tale “menagerie” was absent - in different areas they spoke of completely different creatures. The Slavs did not have sea or mountain monsters, but forest and river evil spirits were abundant. There was no gigantomania either: our ancestors very rarely thought about evil giants like the Greek Cyclops or Scandinavian Jotuns. Some wonderful creatures appeared among the Slavs relatively late, during the period of their Christianization - most often they were borrowed from Greek legends and introduced into national mythology, thus creating a bizarre mixture of beliefs.

Alkonost

According to the ancient Greek myth, Alcyone, the wife of the Thessalian king Keik, upon learning of the death of her husband, threw herself into the sea and was turned into a bird, named after her alkyon (kingfisher). The word “Alkonost” entered the Russian language as a result of a distortion of the ancient saying “alkion is a bird.”

Slavic Alkonost is a bird of paradise with a surprisingly sweet, euphonious voice. She lays her eggs on the seashore, then plunges them into the sea - and the waves calm down for a week. When the eggs hatch, a storm begins. IN Orthodox tradition Alkonost is considered a divine messenger - she lives in heaven and comes down to convey the highest will to people.

Aspid

A winged snake with two trunks and a bird's beak. Lives high in the mountains and periodically makes devastating raids on villages. He gravitates towards rocks so much that he cannot even sit on damp ground - only on a stone. The asp is invulnerable to conventional weapons; it cannot be killed with a sword or arrow, but can only be burned. The name comes from the Greek aspis - poisonous snake.

Auca

A type of mischievous forest spirit, small, pot-bellied, with round cheeks. Doesn't sleep in winter or summer. He likes to fool people in the forest, responding to their cry of “Aw!” from all sides. Leads travelers into a remote thicket and abandons them there.

Baba Yaga

Slavic witch, popular folklore character. Usually depicted as a nasty old woman with disheveled hair, a hooked nose, a "bone leg", long claws and several teeth in her mouth. Baba Yaga is an ambiguous character. Most often, she acts as a pest, with pronounced tendencies towards cannibalism, but on occasion, this witch can voluntarily help a brave hero by questioning him, steaming him in a bathhouse and giving him magical gifts (or providing valuable information).

It is known that Baba Yaga lives in a deep forest. There stands her hut on chicken legs, surrounded by a palisade of human bones and skulls. Sometimes it was said that on the gate to Yaga's house there are hands instead of locks, and a small toothy mouth serves as a keyhole. Baba Yaga's house is enchanted - you can enter it only by saying: “Hut-hut, turn your front to me and your back to the forest.”
Like Western European witches, Baba Yaga can fly. To do this, she needs a large wooden mortar and a magic broom. With Baba Yaga you can often meet animals (familiars): a black cat or a crow, helping her in her witchcraft.

The origin of the Baba Yaga estate is unclear. Perhaps it came from Turkic languages, or perhaps it was formed from the Old Serbian “ega” - disease.

Baba Yaga, bone leg. A witch, an ogress and the first female pilot. Paintings by Viktor Vasnetsov and Ivan Bilibin.

Hut on kurnogi

A forest hut on chicken legs, where there are no windows or doors, is not fiction. This is exactly how hunters from the Urals, Siberia and Finno-Ugric tribes built temporary dwellings. Houses with blank walls and an entrance through a hatch in the floor, raised 2-3 meters above the ground, protected both from rodents hungry for supplies and from large predators. Siberian pagans kept stone idols in similar structures. It can be assumed that the figurine of some female deity, placed in a small house “on chicken legs,” gave rise to the myth of Baba Yaga, who can hardly fit in her house: her legs are in one corner, her head is in the other, and her nose rests into the ceiling.

Bannik

The spirit living in the baths was usually represented as a small old man with a long beard. Like all Slavic spirits, he is mischievous. If people in the bathhouse slip, get burned, faint from the heat, get scalded by boiling water, hear the cracking of stones in the stove or knocking on the wall - all these are the tricks of the bathhouse.

The bannik rarely causes any serious harm, only when people behave incorrectly (wash on holidays or late at night). Much more often he helps them. The Slavs associated the bathhouse with mystical, life-giving powers - they often gave birth here or told fortunes (it was believed that the bannik could predict the future).

Like other spirits, they fed the bannik - they left him black bread with salt or buried a strangled black chicken under the threshold of the bathhouse. There was also a female version of the bannik - bannitsa, or obderiha. A shishiga also lived in the baths - an evil spirit that appears only to those who go to the baths without praying. Shishiga takes the form of a friend or relative, invites a person to steam with her and can steam to death.

Bas Celik (Man of Steel)

A popular character in Serbian folklore, a demon or evil sorcerer. According to legend, the king bequeathed to his three sons to marry their sisters to the first one to ask for their hand. One night, someone with a thunderous voice came to the palace and demanded the youngest princess as his wife. The sons fulfilled the will of their father, and soon lost their middle and older sister in a similar way.

Soon the brothers came to their senses and went in search of them. The younger brother met a beautiful princess and took her as his wife. Looking out of curiosity into the forbidden room, the prince saw a man chained. He introduced himself as Bash Celik and asked for three glasses of water. The naive young man gave the stranger a drink, he regained his strength, broke the chains, released his wings, grabbed the princess and flew away. Saddened, the prince went in search. He found out that the thunderous voices that demanded his sisters as wives belonged to the lords of dragons, falcons and eagles. They agreed to help him, and together they defeated the evil Bash Celik.

This is what Bash Celik looks like as imagined by W. Tauber.

Ghouls

The living dead rising from their graves. Like any other vampires, ghouls drink blood and can devastate entire villages. First of all, they kill relatives and friends.

Gamayun

Like Alkonost, a divine female bird whose main function is to carry out predictions. The saying “Gamayun is a prophetic bird” is well known. She also knew how to control the weather. It was believed that when Gamayun flies from the direction of sunrise, a storm comes after her.

Gamayun-Gamayun, how long do I have left to live? - Ku. - Why so ma...?

Divya people

Demi-humans with one eye, one leg and one arm. To move, they had to fold in half. They live somewhere on the edge of the world, reproduce artificially, forging their own kind from iron. The smoke of their forges brings with it pestilence, smallpox and fevers.

Brownie

In the most generalized representation - a house spirit, the patron of the hearth, a little old man with a beard (or completely covered with hair). It was believed that every house had its own brownie. In their homes they were rarely called “brownies,” preferring the affectionate “grandfather.”

If people established normal relations with him, fed him (they left a saucer of milk, bread and salt on the floor) and considered him a member of their family, then the brownie helped them do minor housework, looked after the livestock, guarded the household, and warned them of danger.

On the other hand, an angry brownie could be very dangerous - at night he pinched people until they were bruised, strangled them, killed horses and cows, made noise, broke dishes and even set fire to a house. It was believed that the brownie lived behind the stove or in the stable.

Drekavac (drekavac)

A half-forgotten creature from the folklore of the southern Slavs. There is no exact description of it - some consider it an animal, others a bird, and in central Serbia there is a belief that the drekavak is soul of the dead unbaptized baby. They agree on only one thing - the drekavak can scream terribly.

Usually the drekavak is the hero of children's horror stories, but in remote areas (for example, the mountainous Zlatibor in Serbia) even adults believe in this creature. Residents of the village of Tometino Polie from time to time report strange attacks on their livestock - it is difficult to determine from the nature of the wounds what kind of predator it was. The peasants claim to have heard eerie screams, so a Drekavak is probably involved.

Firebird

An image familiar to us from childhood, a beautiful bird with bright, dazzling fiery feathers (“they burn like heat”). A traditional test for fairy-tale heroes is to get a feather from the tail of this feathered creature. For the Slavs, the firebird was more of a metaphor than a real creature. She personified fire, light, sun, and possibly knowledge. Its closest relative is the medieval bird Phoenix, known both in the West and in Rus'.

One cannot help but recall such an inhabitant of Slavic mythology as the bird Rarog (probably distorted from Svarog - the blacksmith god). A fiery falcon that can also look like a whirlwind of flame, Rarog is depicted on the coat of arms of the Rurikovichs ("Rarogs" in German) - the first dynasty of Russian rulers. The highly stylized diving Rarog eventually began to resemble a trident - this is how the modern coat of arms of Ukraine appeared.

Kikimora (shishimora, mara)

An evil spirit (sometimes the brownie's wife), appearing in the form of a small, ugly old woman. If a kikimora lives in a house behind the stove or in the attic, then it constantly harms people: it makes noise, knocks on walls, interferes with sleep, tears yarn, breaks dishes, poisons livestock. Sometimes it was believed that infants who died without baptism became kikimoras, or kikimoras could be unleashed on a house under construction by evil carpenters or stove makers. A kikimora that lives in a swamp or forest does much less harm - it mainly just scares lost travelers.

Koschey the Immortal (Kashchei)

One of the well-known Old Slavic negative characters, usually represented as a thin, skeletal old man with a repulsive appearance. Aggressive, vengeful, greedy and stingy. It is difficult to say whether he was the personification of the external enemies of the Slavs, an evil spirit, a powerful wizard, or a unique variety of undead.

It is indisputable that Koschey possessed very strong magic, avoided people and often engaged in the favorite activity of all villains in the world - kidnapping girls. In Russian science fiction, the image of Koshchei is quite popular, and he is presented in different ways: in a comic light (“Island of Rus'” by Lukyanenko and Burkin), or, for example, as a cyborg (“The Fate of Koshchei in the Cyberozoic Era” by Alexander Tyurin).

Koshchei’s “signature” feature was immortality, and far from absolute. As we all probably remember, on the magical island of Buyan (capable of suddenly disappearing and appearing before travelers) there is a large old oak tree on which a chest hangs. There is a hare in the chest, in the hare there is a duck, in the duck there is an egg, and in the egg there is a magic needle where Koshchei’s death is hidden. He can be killed by breaking this needle (according to some versions, by breaking an egg on Koshchei’s head).

Koschey as imagined by Vasnetsov and Bilibin.

Georgy Millyar is the best performer of the roles of Koshchei and Baba Yaga in Soviet fairy tales.

Goblin

Forest spirit, protector of animals. He looks like a tall man with a long beard and hair all over his body. Essentially not evil - he walks through the forest, protects it from people, occasionally shows himself, for which he can take on any form - a plant, a mushroom (a giant talking fly agaric), an animal or even a person. The goblin can be distinguished from other people by two signs - his eyes glow with magical fire, and his shoes are put on backwards.

Sometimes a meeting with a goblin can end in failure - he will lead a person into the forest and throw him to be devoured by animals. However, those who respect nature can even become friends with this creature and receive help from it.

Dashingly one-eyed

Spirit of evil, failure, symbol of grief. There is no certainty regarding Likh’s appearance - he is either a one-eyed giant or a tall, thin woman with one eye in the middle of his forehead. Dashingly is often compared to the Cyclopes, although apart from one eye and tall stature, they have nothing in common.

The saying has reached our time: “Don’t wake up Dashing while it’s quiet.” In a literal and allegorical sense, Likho meant trouble - it became attached to a person, sat on his neck (in some legends, the unfortunate person tried to drown Likho by throwing himself into the water, and drowned himself) and prevented him from living.
Likh, however, could be gotten rid of - deceived, driven away by force of will, or, as is occasionally mentioned, given to another person along with some gift. According to very dark superstitions, Likho could come and devour you.

Mermaid

In Slavic mythology, mermaids are a type of mischievous evil spirits. They were drowned women, girls who died near a pond, or people swimming at inopportune times. Mermaids were sometimes identified with “mavkas” (from the Old Slavonic “nav” - dead man) - children who died without baptism or were strangled by their mothers.

The eyes of such mermaids glow with green fire. By their nature, they are nasty and evil creatures, they grab bathing people by the legs, pull them under the water, or lure them from the shore, wrap their arms around them and drown them. There was a belief that a mermaid's laughter could cause death (this makes them look like Irish banshees).

Some beliefs called mermaids the lower spirits of nature (for example, good “beregins”), who have nothing in common with drowned people and willingly save drowning people.

There were also “tree mermaids” living in tree branches. Some researchers classify mermaids as mermaids (in Poland - lakanits) - lower spirits who take the form of girls in transparent white clothes, living in the fields and helping the field. The latter is also a natural spirit - it is believed that he looks like a little old man with a white beard. The field dwells in cultivated fields and usually patronizes peasants - except when they work at noon. For this, he sends midday warriors to the peasants so that they will deprive them of their minds with their magic.

It is also worth mentioning the crowfish - a type of mermaid, a baptized drowned woman, who does not belong to the category of evil spirits, and therefore is relatively kind. Waterworts love deep pools, but most often they settle under mill wheels, ride on them, spoil millstones, muddy the water, wash out holes, and tear nets.

It was believed that waterwomen were the wives of mermen - spirits who appeared in the guise of old men with a long green beard made of algae and (rarely) fish scales instead of skin. Bug-eyed, fat, creepy, the merman lives at great depths in whirlpools, commands mermaids and other underwater inhabitants. It was believed that he rode around his underwater kingdom riding a catfish, for which this fish was sometimes called “devil’s horse” among the people.

The merman is not malicious by nature and even acts as a patron of sailors, fishermen or millers, but from time to time he likes to play pranks, dragging a gaping (or offended) bather under the water. Sometimes the merman was endowed with the ability to shapeshift - transform into fish, animals or even logs.

Over time, the image of the merman as the patron of rivers and lakes changed - he began to be seen as powerful " sea ​​king"living underwater in a luxurious palace. From the spirit of nature, the merman turned into a kind of magical tyrant, with whom the heroes of the folk epic (for example, Sadko) could communicate, enter into agreements and even defeat him with cunning.

Mermen as presented by Bilibin and V. Vladimirov.

Sirin

Another creature with the head of a woman and the body of an owl (owl), with a charming voice. Unlike Alkonost and Gamayun, Sirin is not a messenger from above, but a direct threat to life. It is believed that these birds live in the “Indian lands near paradise,” or on the Euphrates River, and sing such songs for the saints in heaven, upon hearing which people completely lose their memory and will, and their ships are wrecked.

It's not hard to guess that Sirin is a mythological adaptation of the Greek Sirens. However, unlike them, the bird Sirin is not a negative character, but rather a metaphor for the temptation of a person with various kinds of temptations.

Nightingale the Robber (Nightingale Odikhmantievich)

A character in late Slavic legends, a complex image combining the features of a bird, an evil wizard and a hero. The Nightingale the Robber lived in the forests near Chernigov near the Smorodina River and for 30 years guarded the road to Kyiv, not letting anyone through, deafening travelers with a monstrous whistle and roar.

The Robber Nightingale had a nest on seven oak trees, but the legend also says that he had a mansion and three daughters. The epic hero Ilya Muromets was not afraid of the adversary and knocked out his eye with an arrow from a bow, and during their battle, the whistle of the Nightingale the Robber knocked down the entire forest in the area. The hero brought the captive villain to Kyiv, where Prince Vladimir, out of curiosity, asked the Nightingale the Robber to whistle - to check whether the rumor about the super-abilities of this villain was true. The nightingale, of course, whistled so loudly that he almost destroyed half the city. After this, Ilya Muromets took him to the forest and cut off his head so that such an outrage would not happen again (according to another version, Nightingale the Robber later acted as Ilya Muromets’ assistant in battle).

For his first novels and poems, Vladimir Nabokov used the pseudonym "Sirin".

In 2004, the village of Kukoboi (Pervomaisky district of the Yaroslavl region) was declared the “homeland” of Baba Yaga. Her “birthday” is celebrated on July 26th. The Orthodox Church sharply condemned the “worship of Baba Yaga.”

Ilya Muromets is the only one epic hero, canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Baba Yaga is found even in Western comics, for example, “Hellboy” by Mike Mignola. In the first episode of the computer game "Quest for Glory" Baba Yaga is the main plot villain. IN role-playing game“Vampire: The Masquerade” Baba Yaga is a vampire of the Nosferatu clan (distinguished by ugliness and secrecy). After Gorbachev left the political arena, she came out of hiding and killed all the vampires of the Brujah clan who controlled the Soviet Union.

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It is very difficult to list all the fabulous creatures of the Slavs: most of them have been studied very poorly and represent local varieties of spirits - forest, water or domestic, and some of them were very similar to each other. In general, the abundance of immaterial beings greatly distinguishes Slavic bestiary from more mundane gatherings of monsters from other cultures
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Among the Slavic “monsters” there are very few monsters as such. Our ancestors led a calm, measured life, and therefore the creatures they invented for themselves were associated with the elementary elements, neutral in their essence. If they opposed people, then, for the most part, they were only protecting Mother Nature and ancestral traditions. Stories of Russian folklore teach us to be kinder, more tolerant, to love nature and respect the ancient heritage of our ancestors.

The latter is especially important, because ancient legends are quickly forgotten, and instead of mysterious and mischievous Russian mermaids, Disney fish-maidens with shells on their breasts come to us. Do not be ashamed to study Slavic legends - especially in their original versions, not adapted for children's books. Our bestiary is archaic and in some sense even naive, but we can be proud of it, because it is one of the most ancient in Europe.