Duma it is. Definition of Duma (genre) Who sang dumas

16-17 centuries, their main theme generated by the era of continuous national struggle against foreign invaders of Ukrainian lands. They tell about the exploits of the people or their individual representatives-heroes, who came out to defend their homeland from the invasion of foreign enslavers, and often glorify the heroic death of a warrior in this struggle.

Although dumas are defined as a lyric-epic genre, the epic element predominates in them. This is evidenced by the clear construction of the plot, the fable, and the narrative nature of the description of events, which, as a rule, is conducted in chronological order. However, the story is almost always presented in a lyrical light, which is revealed by the author’s broad digressions, landscape sketches, penetration into the inner world of the characters, and the glorification of their feelings and experiences. “In contrast to the smoothness and breadth of the stories of the Homeric epic,” notes G. Boredom, “there is a strong lyricism in the thoughts, which, together with the dramatic presentation, greatly touches the listener. In this respect, dumas are close to ballads and for some time European scientists called them Ukrainian ballads. However, peculiar, too original, only thoughts have a poetic form, a unique style, their poetics exclude such identification.”

Dumas are distinguished by their harmonious, unique poetic form, polished over centuries, different from all other verse forms of Ukrainian folklore. The dissimilarity of thoughts in other genres is determined primarily by the manner of execution. Thoughts were performed in recitative (long-drawn chanting pronunciations) - Italian. recitative, from lat. recitare - read aloud and pronounce. It was a unique form of recitation in a festive, upbeat style. The drama of the performance was enhanced by musical accompaniment - playing the harp (less often the bandura or lyre). Vershova and the musical form of the duma represent the highest stage of the recitative style, previously developed in lamentations. Long recitations of thoughts are available in a smooth, changeable form. Therefore, it is very difficult (or impossible) to learn them from memory verbatim. According to researchers, each kobzar adopted from his teacher the type of recitation (recitative performance) only in general terms, and then created his own version of the melody, to which he performed all the thoughts of his repertoire. That is, rather flexible and free in terms of verbal and musical expression, thought is always born anew, improvised. Not a single subsequent version of a duma, even if it is performed by the same performer, is identical to the previous one: during the playback, some elements are involuntarily omitted, others are added, therefore dumas are among the most improvisational types of folklore.

The vague, sad poetic form encourages this. Dumas do not have a stable stanza, which is usual for songs, ballads, koloma and other lyrical genres. The poem of the Duma is astrophic (without division into stanzas) through a change in the rhyme order, and also unequally complex, with intonation-semantic division into ledges. That is, lines in thoughts are distinguished by the end of a thought and are grouped into ledges, periods, tirades, which are original stanzas of thoughts. Lines do not have a certain stable number of lines (sometimes from 5-6 to 19-20 or more syllables per line), in turn, ledges do not have a constant number of lines (sometimes 2-3, and sometimes 9-12). The improvisation of thoughts is facilitated by free, unstable rhymes. Verbal rhyming predominates, which combines 2-3 lines, and sometimes more - up to 10 lines in a row with a consonant ending.

Despite the flexibility of the execution of thoughts, their composition is quite harmonious and stable, characterized by features inherent only to this genre. In the vast majority of texts, it retains the same constituent elements and genre structure.

Dumas begin with a poetic chorus, which kobzars often call “plachka.” This beginning is often built on the basis of artistic parallelism:

Not the gray eagles chirped,

And it was not the gray cuckoo that cuckooed;

Then the poor slaves, sitting in captivity, began to cry. ("Thought about Slaves")

It’s not a clear falcon moaning and nodding,

Like a son to his father, he sends Christian bows to his mother in the gardens. ("The Slave's Lament")

On Sunday I wounded the greyhound early, with the stars early Siva Zozulya flew, sat on the grave, pitifully crowed...

("The Cuckoo's Cry")

After the chorus comes the actual thought (the development of the plot with all the epic elements of the composition and lyrical digressions). Additional episodes may be introduced into the plot, but, as a rule, the story is not overly complicated: the plot unfolds linearly in chronological sequence, events are conveyed in nature without elements of fantasy and unexpected turns in the development of the action.

The thought ends with an ending called a doxology, because it praises the exploits, courage, and deeds of the hero who defeated the enemy or died for a just cause:

Forms of the heroic epic, which was previously performed by wanderers: lyre players, bandura players, kobza players in the Left Bank and Central Ukraine.

What is the structure of the Duma?

Duma in literature is slightly larger in volume than historical ballads, but it is closely related to the heroic epic. In the structure of this type of work, three structural elements can be distinguished: the chorus, the main part and the ending. The poetic form of the duma is astrophic, that is, without division into couplets, phrases that begin with exclamations “oh” and end with “gay-gay.”

Duma as a genre of literary work acts as the highest stage of recitative, which was previously developed in lamentations. Poetic images and motifs of thoughts are also partially borrowed from lamentations. Dumas most often had characteristic improvisations, that is, the singers had stories that they conveyed to the people with the help of dumas, but never had memorized text. Kobzars are blind elders who can masterfully play the kobza; they walked from village to village, sang thoughts to the villagers and for this they received a roof for the night and some food in gratitude. Kobzars, like lyre players and bandura players, were loved and waited just to hear new stories about the Cossacks.

Who sang the thoughts?

Duma in literature is that type of folk art in which there is no absolute accuracy. Singers, namely kobza players, lyre players and bandura players, adopted from their teacher the motives and variations of singing and playing melody. In order to perform this type of creativity, it was necessary to have a special talent - both for music and for words. The singers' singing technique must also be up to par. It is for this reason that only professional performers could preserve real thoughts.

The verbal component dominates in thoughts, while the melody comes as an addition. The text and rhymes are most often rhetorical, beautifully designed, full of epithets, tautologies, and cognate words. For example, expressions such as “Christian land”, “clear dawns”, “grievous bondage”, “damned Busurmans”, “bread and salt”, “Turk-Janissaries” were often used. Quite often, rhetorical questions, anaphors, repetitions, appeals, inversions and other speech embellishments occurred in the thoughts. Duma in literature is truly the most intense form of art, which has not yet been eclipsed by anything.

Themes of thoughts

Dumas are famous for being epic and solemn. The main themes of the thoughts revolved around the era during which they appeared: the Cossacks. The singers talked about the battles of the Cossacks with their enemies, about the exploits of hetmans and commanders. This type of creativity developed most of all during the period of struggle against the Poles, Turks and Tatars. In scientific terminology, such a term as “duma” appeared thanks to M. Maksimovich, who, following P. Lukashevich, P. Kulish and several other writers, published the first thoughts. The most substantiated scientific publication of thoughts is still the publication “Ukrainian People's Dumas” under the leadership of Ekaterina Grushevskaya, but for this the writer was repressed, and her book was removed from all libraries.

Duma

Duma

DUMA - Ukrainian historical songs of a special form (free in rhythm and devoid of strophic division), created in the Cossack environment of the 16th-17th centuries and recorded in the 19th century. from professional singers (kobzars); as a relic of the past, they have been preserved in the Ukrainian SSR to this day. The name “duma” is similar to the Great Russian “epic” - of later origin, although with a different meaning it is found among Polish writers when applied to Ukrainian songwriting back in the 16th century. (Sarnitsky in his chronicle of 1506 speaks, for example, about “elegies, which the Russians call dumas,” but probably means funeral lamentations). In the oldest records, stories are simply called “stories”; in kobzar usage - Cossack, knightly, valiant songs; for the first time in 1827, Maksimovich called (probably under Polish influence) dumas “heroic chants about epics (i.e., about events),” dating primarily to the times of the hetman before Skoropadsky (1709). Most songs in their genre are lyric-epic songs (that is, songs based on an epic motif, but in a lyrical emotional light: the type represented in literature by the ancient Spanish “romance” or Serbian songs about the battle of Kossovo field and etc.). However, D. differs quite clearly from other lyrical-epic and, in particular, historical songs in the method of transmission and form. Songs are sung, D. are performed in melodic recitative; the form of the song is more or less stable - the song (like an epic) is improvised, and even with repeated performances of the same song, the details of the text may change; D.'s verse is free, and the verses following each other are usually unequally complex; songs are divided into stanzas of equal number of verses; in D. there is no such division, and it is possible to notice only division into unequal periods or tirades that close a certain image or complete thought.
When and under what circumstances the form D. arose in Ukrainian literature is currently still difficult to say with complete certainty. There were attempts to connect it with the poetic forms of feudal Ukraine - Rus' of the 12th century, for example. with “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” where there are motifs and techniques similar to D.’s. In the publication of Ukrainian historical songs by Antonovich and Drahomanov (1874-1875), “The Lay” is called “D. XII century"; however, the “Word” is a product of individual creativity, a book work, while D. came to us through centuries-old oral transmission, and the moment of individual authorship does not stand out sharply in them. D. has no direct connection with the Great Russian epic, although in the themes of D. and the epics there are minor similarities; however, the very memory of the “Kyiv heroes” by the time of the emergence of D. in Ukraine had almost disappeared without a trace. It was suggested (Dashkevich, Sumtsov) about the emergence of D. under South Slavic influence, but the latter could not be proven. The closeness of the melodic recitative of D. to the recitatives of church services (research by F. Kolessa) was noted, and at the same time the connection of D., especially from the musical side, with funeral lamentations (“golosinnya”) - the lowest level of that “recitative style”, which is so developed magnificently in D. D.'s connection with these monuments of oral creativity is undeniable, but in D.'s style there are features that are absent in them. The most widespread theory of the origin of D. remains the theory (Zhitetsky), which considers D. as a kind of synthesis of the creativity of “folk” and bookish intellectuals and sees at the basis of D. a “folk song”, shaped by the influence of school syllabic verses of the 16th-17th centuries. The language of the Duma is replete with archaisms and Slavicisms; individual motifs and stylistic formulas of D. find a parallel in scholastic sermons, in panegyric (praise) verses, in ancient school drama, etc. The book element in the historical song could have been introduced by itinerant schoolchildren in the 17th century, who played the role of intermediaries between school culture and the masses (cf. a similar phenomenon in feudal and trade-capitalist Western Europe). Participants in Cossack campaigns, wandering schoolchildren, “mandarin guys” were close to the “poor brethren”, invalids of the Cossack wars, who were looked after in almshouses (in hospitals “for knightly people, crippled by enemies in various battles”), and to -raya, in turn, was the keeper of historical memories and traditions of the Cossacks. In the schools and “hospitals” of ancient Ukraine, a semi-folk, semi-bookish environment was concentrated, which for a time united the intellectual interests of the clergy, Cossacks and the “pospolitan” people (i.e. e. urban philistinism and villagers): it was from this environment that the creators of D. came. Over time, they developed into a special type of military kobzars or bandura players, who accompanied the Cossacks in their campaigns, and at the end of the campaigns they spread their fame throughout Ukraine , serving not only the aesthetic needs of a wide and diverse audience, but also the tasks of socio-political agitation and propaganda. Thus, the era of the final formation of the Duma is the era when the organized Cossacks, having grown into a major social force, become the leader of the urban philistinism and the rural masses in their struggle with the Polish large-owning pantry and strives to create their own Cossack state. D. were Cossack estate poetry, glorifying the glorious deeds of the Cossack elders, promoting the ideas of military camaraderie, and affirming the leading political role of the Cossacks in Ukraine.
Social stratification, which divided already in the middle of the 17th century. (especially sharply after the Cossack revolution of 1648-1654) the Cossacks into three groups (the Cossack elders, who were drawn to land ownership, the Cossack Sich, whose occupation was campaigns, trade, crafts, and the Cossack “dribnoti,” who rebelled against all privileges and sought social economic equation), was almost not reflected in D. - some echo of it can be seen only in “D. about Ganja Andyber." But it was this social stratification that stopped the further development of D. In the 18th-19th centuries. D. are no longer formed, being preserved in corporations of blind singers, kobza players and bandura players, mainly on the territory of the left bank of Ukraine. These singers are called kobzars - from the word “kobza” - a musical string instrument with a small body and a long neck, apparently borrowed from the Tatars; bandura players - from the word “bandura” - a similar type of instrument, but with a short neck and with yellow copper strings, numbering from 12 to 28 (currently the names bandura and kobza are attached to the same instrument) and lyre players - from “lyre” " - a string-keyboard-bowed instrument (in the repertoire of lyre players, D. are, however, less common). Among the kobzars of the 19th century. there were outstanding artists, such as Andriy Shut, Ostap Veresay, Ivan Kryukovsky, Khvedir Kholodny and others; We have rave reviews about them, but a detailed study of the life of professional singers began already in the era of the decline of their business. The experiments of such study (for example, the work of Academician M. N. Speransky on the kobzar Parkhomenka) revealed a picture of the life of singing societies formed by kobzars. Each association had a certain territory, into which it tried to prevent persons who did not belong to its composition; the partnership had its own center - usually a specific church in a given area; The unwritten charter provides for the work of an elected board and general meetings, as well as a general fund consisting of membership fees. The partnership gave the right to teach and controlled success with a special exam; The admission of a new member was conditional on the availability of professional knowledge, the ability to play the bandura or lyre, knowledge of a certain number of songs and a conventional professional language (“Lebian language”). The admission to membership itself was accompanied by a special ritual, somewhat reminiscent of the ritual of admission to ancient craft workshops.
The repertoire of professional singers, duma performers, covers a total of three to four dozen subjects (it is difficult to indicate the exact figure, since the genre delimitation of duma from other historical songs is a relatively new thing in science: in one of the new, popular collections, compiled by a prominent specialist on the subject, Ak. F. Kolessa (1920) contains 49 thoughts), each of which is represented by a considerable number of options. According to their topics, D. are usually divided into two large groups. The first, older in time, depicts the struggle of the Cossacks with the Turks and Tatars, in which the Cossacks are presented either in the active role of fighters, or in the passive role of sufferers in Turkish captivity. The latter themes predominate, which is why the entire group is sometimes called slave D. This also includes some D. of a didactic and everyday nature. Depicting the grave suffering of captives forced into slavery, sometimes turning from an epic song into a lyrical lament, D. thereby exalts the social and ethical value of the Cossacks, the height of their exploits and the suffering associated with them. It is to these thoughts that the newest theory of the origin of D. ak is most applicable. F. Kolessa, who claims that D. branched off from the poetry of funeral lamentations and, in particular, that D., describing the death of a Cossack, could be a kind of commemoration of unknown Cossacks who fell in battle. These same D. could also serve the purpose of agitating the population for the ransom of Ukrainian captives from Turkish captivity. The foundations of Cossack ethics in these D. are built on the close connection of each member of the military comradeship with the entire team, on respect for the family bond, on a unique “Christian faith”, again understood primarily as a means of distinguishing “ours” from “strangers”, on deep attachment to the homeland, the paradise from captivity is represented in especially gentle colors (“clear dawns, quiet waters, a land of joy, a world of baptisms”). The most popular of this group are stories about Marus Boguslavka, about Samuel Koshka, about the escape of three brothers from Azov, about Oleksiy Popovich, about a storm on the Black Sea.
The story about Marus Boguslavka opens with the image of a gloomy dungeon, where 700 slaves have been languishing for thirty years, not seeing either God's light or the righteous sun. Marusya, a priest from the city of Boguslav, also once taken prisoner, but denounced “for Turkish luxury, for the delicacy of the unfortunate,” comes to them, and reminds the slaves, who have forgotten the days, that today is “a great Saturday,” and tomorrow is a holy holiday, “ Great Day" (Easter). The Cossacks curse Marusya that by reminding her of the holiday she increased their suffering: but Marusya, the wife of the Turkish Pasha, brought the secretly taken keys to the prison and frees her fellow tribesmen. She herself will never return home “from the Busurmen faith,” and let her relatives not collect or send ransom. The image of Marusya Boguslavka, as historians point out, embodies what is typical of the 16th-17th centuries. phenomenon: a number of captive Ukrainian women are known who became the wives of Turkish sultans (one of the most famous is the so-called Roksolana, wife of Suleiman I) and thereby acquired power and influence. The thought about Marus is painted in a thick lyrical coloring. D. about Samuel Koshka (Samiylo Kishka), on the contrary, is distinguished by a developed epic-dramatic plot. Samiylo Kishka is a person who really existed: he was the Koshevoy Ataman of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It is known that at the beginning of the 17th century. he was in Turkish captivity, but nothing is known about his escape from captivity. Researchers managed to find an Italian story from 1642 about how a noble Rusyn officer named Simonovich, with the help of renegade fellow tribesmen, took possession of a Turkish galley and freed over two hundred slaves “from Polish Rus'.” This event apparently formed the basis of the thought. Its main action takes place on a large Turkish galley (its description is given), sailing from Trebizond to Kozlov (Evpatoria). Here, among three hundred and fifty slaves, who are tortured and tormented by Alkan Pasha, the captain of the galley, Samiylo Kishka, the Zaporozhye hetman, Marko Rudniy, the military judge, and Musiy Grach, the military trumpeter, are languishing, and the supervision of them is entrusted to the former Pereyaslav centurion, Lyakh Buturlak, -ry, unable to withstand the torment of captivity at one time, was denounced and became free. In a number of episodes with dramatically increasing action, D. tells how, having fraudulently stolen the keys to the chains from Buturlak in the absence of Alkan Pasha, who was feasting in Kozlov with his mistress “Devka Sanzhakivnya,” Samiylo freed his comrades, killed the Turks with them, leaving Only Buturlak is alive, when then, overcoming dangers, the galley comes to the Sich, where a cheerful division of the spoils begins: one part of it is donated to monasteries and churches, the other is kept for itself, and the third is drunk. D. ends with the hero's praise. There is a lot of action in it, a number of details characteristic of the era (the prophetic dream of Alkan Pasha, the cry of the abandoned Sanzhakivna) and the absence of individual traits in the depiction of the characters, characteristic of the epic. The story about the escape of three brothers from Azov is of a lyrical-dramatic nature: two brothers run away on horses, the third - the smaller one - did not have enough horse, he runs after the horsemen on foot, cuts his Cossack legs on roots and stones, covers his tracks with blood, begs the brothers to wait, give the horses a rest, take him to Christian cities. The middle brother, the softer one, is ready to give in, but the horror of persecution takes over: the brothers leave the youngest in the field, and he dies of hunger and fatigue in the deserted steppe, on the Savur-grave (mound), over which crows circle, blue-feathered eagles fly in , waiting for his prey. The end of D. is different in different versions: in some, the brothers die, overtaken by the Turks; in others, the brothers return home and the parents curse the heartless older brother.
The story of Oleksiy Popovich was considered by researchers as an illustration of the widespread ancient custom of making sacrifices to the sea during a storm dangerous for sailors and of the belief that the presence of a sinner on a ship causes a storm. This belief, reflected in a number of religious legends, lies, among other things, at the basis of one episode of the epic about Sadka, the rich Novgorod “guest”; with another epic hero, Alyosha Popovich, the hero of Ukrainian D. has only one name in common. On the Black Sea, the Cossacks were overtaken by a terrible storm (a landscape of raging elements is given, among the swarm a white stone rises, and on the stone a falcon “wails” plaintively, looking at the sea); the foreman orders all the Cossacks to repent in order to find out for whose sins the storm arose; everyone is silent, only Oleksiy Popovich, a Pyryatyn resident, repents; before leaving, he did not ask for blessings from his parents, did not respect his older brother and older sister, rode past forty churches, did not take off his hat, did not make the sign of the cross, did not remember the father-mother prayer, trampled three hundred souls of small children with his horse, etc. By At the end of the confession, the storm subsides, Oleksiy Popovich goes out onto the deck, takes the “holy letter” and teaches the Cossacks about the meaning of paternal and maternal prayer, which brings great help “from the merchant, and in the craft, and on the field, and on the sea.” The latest research, separating the D. about Oleksii Popovich from the similar D. about the storm on the Black Sea, indicates that while the D. about the storm expresses the traditional tribal worldview, the D. about Oleksiya reflects the views of professional sailors: the sins of Oleksiya are violation of the rules, on which happiness on the road depends.
The second large group of D. is dedicated to the era of Bogdan Khmelnitsky and the time closest to it - that is, the era of the alliance of the Cossacks with the urban philistinism and the “pospolitan” people to fight the Polish lordship. Most of the thoughts of this group are of a peasant nature: in the area of ​​​​purely Cossack and church interests are only D. about Khmelnitsky and Barabash (about how Khmelnitsky, having drunk Barabash, stole from him the charter of King Vladislav, which in 1646 returned the ancient privileges to the Cossacks), about the campaign in Moldova and the death of Khmelnitsky. These thoughts convey with great plausibility the mood of the Cossacks in the era of the highest rise of their forces: the researcher (I. Franko), comparing them with the evidence of contemporary chronicles, comes to the conclusion that they were compiled on the basis of Cossack chroniclers. It is curious that such a major historical fact as Khmelnitsky’s agreement with Moscow was not reflected in any D. (or in any song at all). But the song paid a lot of attention to the struggle that arose on national, class and religious grounds: the robbery of the Polish gentry and Jewish tenants, as well as the reprisal of the Cossacks against them, is depicted in bright colors. Duma about the Battle of Korsun, for example. talks about how the captured “Crown Hetman” Pototsky is given over by the Cossacks into captivity to the Crimean Tatars, how Jewish tenants flee, how Pan Yan is knitted like a ram, and Pan Yakub is hanged on an oak tree, etc. (cf. also another D. about the oppression of tenants and the Cossack uprising of 1648). In general, the era of the Cossack revolution was, apparently, an era of great growth in song creativity. However, growing quantitatively, the qualitatively new song epic no longer rose to the aesthetic level of the older slave thoughts, although in the D. of the younger group we will find new features, features of humor, sometimes turning into irony, sometimes bitter, sometimes evil. The collapse of Cossack unity begins and with it the decline of Cossack authority among the masses. In place of heroic images, shrouded in romantic antiquity, thoughts about Cossack life, for example. paints an image of a lazy Cossack (loser) spending peaceful time in a tavern: his hut is not covered with straw, there is not a log of firewood in the yard, the fence has fallen apart; The Cossack wife walks barefoot all winter, carries water in a pot and feeds the children from it with the only wooden spoon in the house. An even more expressive picture is given by D. about Ganja Andybera, discovered not so long ago by Ak. Wozniak in an ancient recording from the end of the 17th century, and in oral transmission known for a long time. A lazy Cossack appears in D. wearing a wind-blown hat, boots from which both heels and toes peek out, wearing a scroll made of the simplest cloth. He comes to the tavern, where the “sriblyaniki” are sitting - Voitenko, Zolotarenko and Dovgopolenko, representatives of the new land and trading aristocracy emerging in Ukraine; They try to kick him out, but it’s not so easy to do this with a stubborn man, and Dovgopolenko, softened, throws him some money: let the Cossack drink beer with it. The hostess orders the girl Nastya to bring a mug of the worst beer; Whether by mistake or intentionally, the girl pours the best one opposite her and carries it, pretending to turn away - “she’s open to hers, as if they stank of beer.” After drinking, the Cossack gets drunk and begins to go on a rampage. He is already shouting menacingly at the “Duks” (also called “Polyakhs”): “Hey you, Lyakhov, vrazki synove. Poke your nose at the threshold. Let me go, Cossack nemesis, in the middle of nowhere. - Proceed closely. It would be a shame for me, a Cossack-netzyak, where I sat down with my bast shoes.” The dukes made room: however, when the slacker, pulling out a valuable dagger, throws it to the mistress as a pawn for a bucket of honey, they express doubt whether the poor man will ever be able to buy it back. Then the Cossack takes off his belt and pours gold ducats out of it all over the table. The attitude towards him immediately changes: the hostess begins to look after him, the jokes fall silent; When the Cossack calls, his comrades come and put precious clothes on him. The Dukes, in embarrassment, realized that under the guise of a lazy Cossack, Fesko Ganja Andyber, the Zaporozhye hetman, was among them. They begin to vie with him to treat him with vodka and honey, and Ganja accepts the treat, but does not drink, but pours it all on his clothes: “hey, my shati, shati (rich clothes), drink and go for a walk: don’t bother me (revered), because they respect you - since I didn’t know you, I didn’t know the honor of dukiv-sriblyaniki.” He orders his Cossacks to reward the two “duks-sriblyaniki” with rods and spares only Dovgopolenko, who did not spare money for him. Whether Gandzha is a real historical person, whether one of the candidates for the hetman’s mace after the death of Khmelnytsky, Ivan Bryukhovetsky, is depicted in the person of the hero D. (the assumption of M. Grushevsky) is not so important: what is important is that D. is based on a certain social idea, and the very transformation of a lazy Cossack into a hetman is only a naive device for exalting the social value of the Cossack lower classes, by whom D. is inspired. It, if not historically, then psychologically closes the cycle of the Cossack epic of D.: new songs are composed amid other historical conditions, in a different social environment and do not take the form of D. Oral creativity did not respond to the destruction of the hetman in 1764 (“Oh woe betide - not the hetman, the enemy is not bothered by the gentry"); on the contrary, the destruction of the Zaporozhye Sich in 1775 by the “enemy mother”, Catherine II, caused an explosion of indignation and regret in the songs, but these songs are already outside the poetry of D. These are “songs about public affairs” (as Drahomanov called them in the 1881 collection). D.’s life ended along with the gradual transition of the Cossack elders to the position of “Little Russian nobles.” However, having ceased to exist as a fact of living oral creativity, D. continued to live in other social strata - as an object of ethnographic and aesthetic interest.
The history of collecting and studying D. is significant not only as a page from the history of Ukrainian science: D. became a subject of “national pride”, one of the cornerstones on which first the Ukrainian small nobility, and then the middle and petty bourgeoisie of Ukraine in the 19th-20th centuries . dreamed of founding a building of national culture. This social, scientific and artistic “experience” and awareness of the epic of D. in modern times can be divided into three eras. The first covers the early decades of the 19th century. and in the field of publishing texts is represented by the collections of M. Tsertelev “The experience of collecting ancient Little Russian songs” (St. Petersburg, 1819, the first printed collection of ten D.), publications by Maksimovich (“Little Russian songs”, 1827), P. Lukashevich (“Little Russian and Red Russian People's Dumas and Songs, 1836) and “Zaporozhye Antiquity” by Sreznevsky (1833-1838). Under the influence of the pan-European romantic interest in nationality and folk antiquity, and in particular under the influence of Kirsha Danilov’s “Ancient Russian Poems” published shortly before Tsertelev’s collection (the first publication of epic texts in 1818), collectors from the nobility dream of discovering a new Iliad or a second Word about Igor's regiment. D.'s singers appear to them in the form of Scandinavian skalds or minstrels. The results of collecting them are somewhat disappointing: “these are ugly ruins, testifying to the beauty of a destroyed building,” says Tsertelev in the preface to his collection; hence the desire to correct, supplement the lost pages from the great book of the kobza epic and the falsification of D., dictated by patriotic considerations. Sreznevsky’s “Zaporozhian Antiquity” especially tried in this regard. There were often cases when lovers of antiquity from the nobility taught kobzars D. of their own composition, trying to direct the creativity of professional singers in a certain direction. The results of these efforts were small. There is no need to talk about D.’s scientific research during this period: it is limited to Maksimovich’s comments when publishing texts, and in the field of analysis it does not go further than unfounded aesthetic assessments of such things as, for example. kind of: “The voices of the ancient D. Little Russia penetrate the soul with some inexplicably languid impression: they combine longing for their homeland and the indomitable revenge of a Slav when his misfortunes have exceeded the measure of human patience. These six-foot and even eight-meter songs come from the broad chest of Rusin so flexibly, so melodically, as if the most tender romances of Zhukovsky or Pushkin,” etc. d. (Lukashevich).
The second period begins in the 40s, as the trends of bourgeois romanticism penetrated Ukraine, caused by the presence of suitable socio-economic conditions: the intensified crisis of the landowner-serf economy, the growth of capitalism, etc. This period coincides with the growth of aesthetic interest in D ., whose influence is strikingly evident in the artistic work of writers of the 40-50s. It is enough to point out the widespread use of D. in Gogol’s “Taras Bulba”, in Grebenka’s historical novel “Tchaikovsky” (the hero of the novel is the Piryatinsky popovich Oleksiy, and the above retold D. is inserted into the text in the Russian translation), in the romantic poems of T. Shevchenko, in poems by P. Kulish: the latter even makes an attempt to summarize D. into a coherent whole (similar, for example, to the Finnish “Kalevala” by Lenrot) - in the poem “Ukraine. Ode to the cob of Ukraine to Father Khmelnitsky” (1842), an unsuccessful attempt, however. Another feature characteristic of the time, standing in connection with the general growth of individualism and interest in the human personality, is the awakening of interest in the personalities of professional kobza singers, enthusiastic attention to them: their names appear in literature for the first time (Andriy Shut, Ostap Veresai, etc. .), biographical and other information is given about them. The main figures in the field of collecting and publishing D. at this time were Metlinsky (Folk South Russian Songs, 1854) and Kulish (Notes on Southern Rus', 1856-1857). A great wealth of new variants of D. has been discovered; rules for their collection have been designed; the beginning of a scientific attitude towards D. was laid; The first steps towards the study of D. as a historical monument were made (in the works of Buslaev, 1850, and Kostomarov, “On the Historical Significance of Russian Folk Poetry,” 1843). Back in the 80s. the belated esthete hetmanophile V. Gorlenko, in his articles and collecting work, is a continuer of the trends and sentiments of this period in relation to D. The romantic passion for the epic of D., penetrating Ukrainian historical drama and tragedy (almost until the pre-October era), was created and nurtured again in this period. However, publications and studies of D., which still retain scientific significance, appeared only in the third period, from the 60-70s. XIX century, when the social group creating Ukrainian culture became the radical petty-bourgeois (raznochinsky) intelligentsia. The populist bias forced her to see in D. the products of national creativity, which still lives among the rural masses, which, from their point of view, should belong to the future. Hence the desire not to “renew”, and not only to preserve, but to support and revive original folk art. An event of the era was the publication of “Historical Songs of the Little Russian People” by V. Antonovich and M. Drahomanov (K., 1874-1875, 2 vols.) - a publication that aimed to demonstrate the history of the Ukrainian people, as it was told by them in poetic form, to prove that the Ukrainian people have preserved memories of all stages of their historical life, starting with Kievan Rus (and that, therefore, the Russian great powers were wrong in asserting the later formation of the Ukrainian nationality). Despite its tendentiousness, the publication was a major contribution to science: for the first time, forgeries were separated from the original texts, each work was represented by the presence of all the then known variants, and for the first time, a broad historical and comparative literary commentary was given to the texts of the work, valuable for students of literature. .and the historical song to this day. In the field of study of D., the same work that made the era was (summarized above mainly) “Thoughts about the Little Russian People D.” P. Zhitetsky (K., 1893). Beginning of the 20th century was marked by a new rise of interest in professional speakers of d. - bandura players, kobza players and lyre players - in connection with the XII Archaeological Congress in Kharkov (1902). The congress, which organized a musical “review” of kobzars, which was extremely successful among the public, inspired the idea of ​​organizing kobzar concerts in different cities of Ukraine: the famous Ukrainian writer and expert on folk music G. M. Khotkevich energetically took up the matter, but the administration, vigilantly and cautiously who followed all manifestations of “Ukrainophilism”, already in the 80s. which pursued the performances of kobzars at bazaars and fairs with D., also stopped this wave of passion for folk art. Almost illegally in 1908, with funds donated by Ch. arr. the famous poetess Lesya Ukrainka, a Galician scientist, Dr. F. Kolessa (now an academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences), made an expedition across Ukraine to record phonographs of D., the result of which was the establishment of formal signs of D. and research on the genesis of D., already indicated above . In parallel with this relatively new interest in the music of D., there was a study of the life of professional singers, which led to the idea of ​​territorial schools of singers and territorial repertoire, as well as the study of particular issues in the works of Dashkevich, Sumtsov, I. Frank, V. N. Peretz and others The culmination of all these works is the monumental publication of the corpus of D., now undertaken by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, the first volume of which, edited and with an extensive introductory article by K. Grushevskaya, was published in 1927. Aesthetic interest in D. did not die out among Ukrainian poets after the October Revolution: they more than once used the D. form as a shell for a new theme: in Valerian Polishchuk, for example, we find “D. about Barmashikha" (the unmarried woman), Pavel Tychyna's - "D. about the three winds" (on the topic of the "national" revolution of 1917) and a number of things in the collection "Wind from Ukraine", where many of D.'s techniques were repeated for the design of already new and alien D. content. "D. about Opanas” we will also find in the modern Russian poet Bagritsky. Obviously, D.'s artistic influence still lasts: D. continues to nourish Ukrainian music (a number of names could be mentioned here, from the famous Ukrainian composer Lysenko to B. Yanovsky, who wrote an opera based on D.'s story about Samuil Koshka in 1929) and Ukrainian historical drama - at least there will soon be no trace left of the former “romantic” attitude towards D. Bibliography:
I-II. a) Texts: Ukrainian National Thoughts, vol. I corpus, texts No. 1-13 and introductory article by K. Grushevskaya (Historical section of the Academy of Sciences, commission of historical songs), Holder. view. Ukraine, 1927; From previous publications it is important: Antonovich V. and Drahomanov M., Historical songs of the Little Russian people, 2 vols., Kyiv, 1874-1875. Popular collections suitable for initial acquaintance: Revutsky D., Ukrainian thoughts and historical songs, Kiev, 1919; Kolessa F., Ukrainian National Dumas, Lviv, 1920. In Russian. language Kozlenitskaya S., Old Ukraine, collection. D., songs, legends, P., 1916. b) General reviews and studies: Zhitetsky P., Thoughts on the Little Russian People's Dumas, Kyiv, 1893; Tkachenko-Petrenko, Duma in publications and research, journal. “Ukraine”, 1907, No. 7-8; Arabazhin K., Historical songs and thoughts of the Little Russian people (in the History of Russian Literature, ed. Sytin and the Mir Company, vol. I, Edited by E. Anichkov, M., 1908, pp. 301-334, well written popular essay); Erofeev I., Ukrainian thoughts and their editions, “Notes of the Ukrainian Scientific Partnership in Kiev”, 1909, No. 6-7; Kolessa F., Melodies of Ukrainian National Dumas, “Materials before Ukrainian ethnology, vol. XIII-XIV, Lviv, 1910-1913; His, Genesis of Ukrainian National Dumas, Lviv, 1921. c) About individual thoughts: Andrievsky M., Cossack Duma about the three Azov brothers in a retelling with explanation and analysis, Odessa, 1884; Sumtsov N., Duma about Alexei Popovich, “Kiev Antiquity”, 1894, No. 1; Naumenko V., The origin of the Little Russian Duma about Samuil Koshka, “Kiev Antiquity”, 1883, No. 4; Tomashivsky S., Marusya Boguslavka in Ukrainian literature, “Literary and Scientific Bulletin”, Lviv, 1901, book. 3-4; Franko I., Studies on Ukrainian folk songs, “Records of the scientific partnership named after Shevchenko in Lvov”, vol. 75-112 and separately: Lviv, 1913. About kobzars - in addition to old works - the work of M. N. Speransky, South Russian song and its modern carriers, “Sb. Historical and Philological Island at the Nizhyn Institute”, vol. V, Kyiv, 1904. A Marxist analysis of the epic of thought has not yet been made: some attempts are made by V. Koryak, Naris history of Ukrainian literature, vol. I; and Doroshkevich O., Handbook of the History of Ukrainian Literature, ed. 2nd, § 81.

III. Brodsky N. L. and Sidorov N. P., Russian oral literature, Historical and Literary Seminary, Leningrad, 1924 (text and bibliographic instructions).

Literary encyclopedia. - At 11 t.; M.: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Fritsche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .

Duma

1) Ukrainian folk historical songs, performed to the accompaniment of a bandura.
2) Genre Russian. poetry of the 19th century, reflections on philosophical and social topics. Works of this genre are few in number. “Thoughts” by K.F. Ryleeva(1821-23) named A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky“historical hymns”, with the goal of “exciting the valor of fellow citizens with the exploits of their ancestors.” “Duma” (1838) M. Yu. Lermontov contains a merciless analysis of the poet's contemporary generation. “Elegies and Thoughts” is the title of one of the sections of the collection of poems by A.A. Feta"Evening Lights" (1883).

Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Edited by prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .

THOUGHTS- Little Russian folk historical songs (see this word). In terms of the time of their origin, the Duma partly dates back to the 16th century, but the era of their special flowering was the 17th century. Currently, they are distributed by professional singers, mainly blind people, often united in special guild organizations (see Spiritual poems). The singing of dumas is accompanied by the accompaniment of folk string instruments “bandura” and “kobza”, which is why performers of dumas are often called “bandura players” and “kobzars”. The content of the thoughts is a description of historical events and everyday details, mainly from the era of the struggle of the Ukrainian Cossacks with Turkey and Poland. Many stories pay attention to the suffering of Cossack captives in Turkey, a description of the escape from there (see, for example, songs about Samoil Koshka, about the escape of three brothers from Azov, about the Russian captive Marusa Boguslavka). A number of thoughts glorify Bogdan Khmelnitsky. In other thoughts, they sing about the social struggle within the Cossacks (for example, the thought about the poor Cossack Ganzhe Andyber, who disgraced the “duk”, i.e., the rich Cossacks, and became the Kosh chieftain). Later Little Russian Dumas turn into Cossack, robbers, so-called Haidamak songs, in their mood reminiscent of similar brigand songs of the Great Russians (see the word “Historical songs”), with a particularly strong protest against social untruth. By their nature, Little Russian Dumas are a combination of traditional techniques of folk oral poetry and literary virsch (mainly school) creativity. Dumas consist of syllables of different sizes, verses ending in rhymes; their poetic language is a curious mixture of bookish, often church expressions with elements of folk poetic speech.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. The texts of Little Russian Dumas are published in the Collection B. B. Antonovich And M. I. Dragomanova. "Historical songs of the Little Russian people." Kyiv, 1874-5 The study of thoughts from the plot and formal side has been carried out P. I. Zhitetsky Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Duma is a Cossack epic. They developed most intensively during the struggle against the Turks, Tatars, Poles, etc.

• 1 Characteristic signs of thoughts
• 2 Musical and stylistic features of doom
• 3 Main themes of doom
• 4 Literature
• 5 Audio
• 6 Notes
• 7 Links

Characteristic signs of doom

In terms of volume, doom has more historical ballad songs, which, as with the old druzhina epic (“The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” ancient carols, epics), have a genetic connection. The structure of the duma consists of more or less pronounced three parts: the chorus (“patch”, as the kobzars called it), the main story, and the ending. The verse composition of the duma is unequally complex, astrophic (without division into stanzas-couplets due to the variability of the rhyme order), with intonation-semantic division into tirades, in singing it begins with shouts of “oh”, and ends with “gay-gay”.

With their poetic and musical form, the dumas represent the highest stage of the recitative style, previously developed in lamentations, from which the dumas adopted some motifs and poetic images. The nature of improvisation is also similar to the lamentations of the thought. Long recitations of thoughts transform into smooth, changing forms. Each kobzar adopted the general performance pattern from his teacher and created his own separate version of the melody, to which he performed all the dumas of his repertoire.

Singing dumas requires special talent and singing technique (therefore, dumas are preserved only among professional singers). The dominant element of duma is verbal, not musical, and it is formed to a certain extent improvisationally, so the rhymes are often rhetorical. Rhymes in thoughts are predominantly verbal. the poetics are characterized by extensive negative parallels (most often in the chorus), traditional epithets (Christian land, quiet waters, clear dawns, the world of baptisms, hard bondage), tautological statements (bread-sil, honey-wine, black-haired eagles, sriblyaniki-duks, wolves-Siromancians, Turks-Janichars, p"e-walks), rooted ones (walking-infantry, live-living, swearing-cursing, p"e-drinking, quelling-cursing), various figures of poetic syntax (rhetorical questions, appeals, repetitions, inversion, anaphora, etc.), traditional epic numbers (3, 7, 40, etc.). The style of the thoughts is solemn, sublime, which is facilitated by the use of archaisms, Old Slavonicisms and polonisms (golden domes, voice, ispadat, raznoshati, spies, finger, chapter). The epicness and solemnity of thoughts is enhanced by retardations - slowing down the story through the repetition of phrases and formulas.

Duma, unlike the ballads and epics of other peoples, has nothing fantastic. The oldest mention of the Duma is in the chronicle (“Annals”, 1587) of the Polish historian S. Sarnicki, the oldest text of the Duma was found in the Krakow archive by M. Wozniak in the 1920s in Kondratsky’s collection (1684) “Cossack Golota”. The scientific terminology for the name of the Duma was introduced by M. Maksimovich.

Musical and stylistic features of doom

Doom tunes consist of:

• recitative on one sound within a fourth;
• melodic recitative or semantically unambiguous recitative tunes;
• different durations of melodic cadences at the end of a tirade or its segments, the so-called. ending formulas;
• introductory melodic formula with the word “gay!”, the so-called. "patches".

Recitative melodies, initial and final melodic formulas are usually decorated with melismas. The modal basis of most dumas is the Dorian mode with a raised IV degree, with a lower introductory tone (VII) and a subquart (V). The raised IV degree is used as an introductory tone in the dominant, as a result of which the V stage serves as a temporary tonic. The increased second, which was formed between the III and IV steps, creates a specifically “oriental” flavor or conveys feelings of suffering (according to the kobzars, “gives pity”).

Main themes of doom

The main topics of the thoughts were:

• Turkish bondage (“Slaves”, “The Cry of a Slave”, “Marusya Boguslavka”, “Ivan Boguslavets”, “Falcon”, “The Flight of Three Brothers from Azov”)
• knightly death of a Cossack (“Ivan Konovchenko”, “Khvedir Bezrodny”, “Samara Brothers”, “Death of a Cossack in the Kodymsky Valley”, “The Widow of Sera Ivan”)
• liberation from captivity and a happy return to his native land (“Samoilo the Cat”, “Alexey Popovich”, “Ataman Matyash the Old”, “Conversation of the Dnieper with the Danube”)
• Cossack chivalry, family life and condemnation of the “rich men of silver” (“Cossack Golota”, “Cossack life”, “Ganzha Andybere”)
• liberation war of Khmelnitsky (“Khmelnitsky and Barabash”, “Battle of Korsun”, “March against Moldova”, “Uprising after the Peace of Belotserkov”, “The Death of Bogdan and the Choice of Yuri Khmelnitsky”)
• family life (“Widow and three sons”, “Sister and brother”, “Farewell of a Cossack to his family”).

Literature

• Dumas // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg, 1890-1907.
• Literary dictionary-dovidnik / R. T. Grom’yak, Yu.I. Kovaliv and in. - K.: VC "Academy", 1997. - p. 218-219
• Duma / V. L. Goshovsky // Gondoliera - Korsov. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia: Soviet Composer, 1974. - Stb. 329-330. - (Musical encyclopedia: / chief editor Yu. V. Keldysh; 1973-1982, vol. 2).
• Kolessa F., Melodies of Ukrainian National Dumas, series 1-2, Lviv, 1910-13 (“Materials before the Ukrainian ethnology of NTS”, vol. 13-14), 2 Kiev, 1969;
• Kolessa F., Variations of melodies of Ukrainian folk thoughts, their characteristics and grouping, "Notes of the Shevchenko Scientific Partnership, vol. 116, Lviv, 1913;
• Kolessa F., About the genesis of Ukrainian national dumas, in the same place, vol. 130-132, Lviv, 1920-22 (vid. okremo, Lviv, 1922);
• Kolessa F., Formulas of completion in Ukrainian national thoughts, “Notes of the Scientific Partnership named after. Shevchenko”, t. 154, Lviv, 1935;
• Kolessa F., Recitative forms in Ukrainian folk poetry, ch. II. Dumi, in his book: Musical Practices, Kiev, 1970, p. 311-51;
• Ukrainian national thoughts, vol. 1-2, texts 1-33, intro. K. Grushevskaya, Kiev, 1927-31;
• Grinchenko M. O., Ukrainian national thoughts, in his book: Vibran, Kshv, 1959;
• Kirdan B.P., Ukrainian People's Dumas (XV - early XVII centuries), M., 1962;
• Ukrainian People's Dumas, M., 1972.

Audio

• Mykola Budnik: thoughts about Marusya Boguslavka, Branka, Popivna. on YouTube (Ukrainian)

Notes

Links

• Ukrainian Dumas and Slovo
• Ukrainian "Dumas"

Duma of Lermontov, Duma of Kovpak, Duma of the Cossack Golota, Duma of the epic Manas

Since 1821, a new genre for Russian literature began to take shape in Ryleev’s work - duma, a lyric epic work similar to a ballad, based on real historical events and legends, however, devoid of fantasy. Ryleev especially drew the attention of his readers to the fact that duma is an invention of Slavic poetry, and that it existed as a folklore genre for a long time in Ukraine and Poland. In the preface to his collection “Dumas,” he wrote: “The Duma is an ancient heritage from our southern brothers, our Russian, native invention. The Poles took it from us. Even to this day, Ukrainians sing thoughts about their heroes: Doroshenko, Nechai, Sagaidachny, Paleya, and Mazepa himself is credited with composing one of them.” At the beginning of the 19th century. This genre of folk poetry has become widespread in literature. It was introduced into literature by the Polish poet Nemtsevich, to whom Ryleev referred in the same preface. However, not only folklore became the only tradition that influenced the literary genre of the Duma. In the Duma one can distinguish the signs of meditative and historical (epic) elegy, ode, hymn, etc.

The poet published his first duma - “Kurbsky” (1821) with the subtitle “elegy”, and only starting with “Artemon Matveev” a new genre definition appeared - duma. Many of his contemporaries saw similarities with elegy in Ryleev’s works. Thus, Belinsky wrote that “a thought is a funeral service for a historical event or simply a song of historical content. The Duma is almost the same as an epic elegy.” Critic P.A. Pletnev defined the new genre as “a lyrical story of some event.” Historical events are interpreted in Ryleev’s thoughts in a lyrical way: the poet is focused on expressing the internal state of a historical figure, as a rule, at some climactic moment in life.

Compositionally, the thought is divided into two parts - a biography into a moral lesson that follows from this biography. The Duma combines two principles - epic and lyrical, hagiographic and agitational. Of these, the main one is lyrical, propaganda, and biography (hagiography) plays a subordinate role.

Almost all thoughts, as Pushkin noted, are built according to the same plan: first, a landscape is given, local or historical, which prepares the appearance of the hero; then, with the help of a portrait, the hero is brought out and immediately makes a speech; from it the background of the hero and his current state of mind become known; What follows is a summary lesson. Since the composition of almost all thoughts is the same, Pushkin called Ryleev a “planner,” meaning the rationality and weakness of artistic invention. According to Pushkin, all thoughts come from the German word dumm (stupid).

Ryleev’s task was to give a broad panorama of historical life and create monumental images of historical heroes, but the poet solved it in a subjective, psychological, lyrical way. Its goal is to arouse the patriotism and love of freedom of his contemporaries through a high heroic example. A reliable depiction of the history and life of the heroes faded into the background.

In order to talk about the hero’s life, Ryleev turned to the sublime language of civil poetry of the 18th - early 19th centuries, and to convey the hero’s feelings - to the poetic style of Zhukovsky (see, for example, in the Duma “Natalya Dolgorukaya”: “Fate gave me joy In my sad exile...", "And into the soul, compressed by melancholy, Involuntarily shed sweetness").

The psychological state of the heroes, especially in a portrait, is almost always the same: the hero is depicted with nothing less than a thought on his forehead, he has the same poses and gestures. Ryleev's heroes most often sit, and even when they are brought to execution, they immediately sit down. The setting in which the hero is located is a dungeon or dungeon.

Since the poet portrayed historical figures in his thoughts, he was faced with the problem of embodying a national-historical character - one of the central ones both in romanticism and in the literature of that time in general. Subjectively, Ryleev had no intention of encroaching on the accuracy of historical facts and “correcting” the spirit of history. Moreover, he strove to respect historical truth and relied on Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State.” For historical credibility, he attracted the historian P.M. Stroev, who wrote most of the prefaces and comments to the thoughts. And yet this did not save Ryleev from a too free view of history, from a peculiar, albeit unintentional, romantic-Decembrist anti-historicism.

The Decembrists saw the purpose of their poetry “not in the pampering of feelings, but in the strengthening, nobility and elevation of our moral being.” They were deeply convinced that only those poems are worthy of recognition, the spirit and pathos of which directly enters life and participates in life-building.

For the same purpose, they turned to the historical past, trying to “excite the valor of their fellow citizens with the exploits of their ancestors.” In folklore, the Decembrists were not interested in lyrical folk songs or fairy tales, but in historical legends. In ancient Russian literature, they valued military stories, where, according to A. Bestuzhev, “the unyielding, glory-loving spirit of the people breathes in every line.” The most striking example of the historical poetry of the Decembrists was Ryleev’s “Dumas”. In the preface to them, the poet said: “Reminding youth of the exploits of their ancestors, acquainting them with the brightest eras of people’s history, uniting love for the fatherland with the first impressions of memory - this is a sure way to instill in the people a strong attachment to their homeland: these first impressions, these early concepts are not able to erase. They grow stronger with age and create warriors brave for battle, valiant men for council.”

Ryleev borrows the plots of his “thoughts” from folk legends and traditions, from N. M. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”. Heroes of thought are martyrs, sufferers who die for a just cause, entering into a decisive struggle with the bearers of social evil. In thoughts, unlike a classical ode or poem, the lyrical principle predominates; the key role in them is played by the monologues of the heroes, emotionally rich, sublime, filled with patriotic feelings. The heroes are surrounded by romantic landscapes - night, storm, rocks, dark clouds through which the moon breaks through, the howl of the wind and the flash of lightning (“The Death of Ermak”, “Olga at Igor’s Grave”, “Martha the Posadnitsa”).

However, Pushkin also drew attention to the lack of historicism in Ryleev’s thoughts: history for him is an illustration, a collection of positive or negative examples that have a direct propaganda meaning. Therefore, the heroes of thoughts speak the same, sublimely declamatory language. Only in individual works does Ryleev approach historical authenticity in the conveyance of characters and circumstances, which was, for example, already available to Pushkin in his “Song of the Prophetic Oleg.” It is no coincidence that Pushkin highly appreciated Ryleev’s thought “Ivan Susanin” and saw glimpses of mature talent in the poem “Voinarovsky”.

During the preparation for the uprising, Ryleev also grew as a poet. In 1825, his collection “Dumas” and the poem “Voinarovsky” were published as separate books. Ryleev worked on “Dumas” from 1821 to the beginning of 1823, publishing them in various magazines. “Voinarovsky” was written in 1823, when work on “Dumas” had already been abandoned. Despite their simultaneous publication, “Dumas” and “Voinarovsky” belong to different stages of Ryleev’s ideological and artistic development. The political direction of the Duma, which had developed under the direct influence of the Union of Welfare program, was moderate. On the contrary, “Voinarovsky” is already saturated with rebellious pathos, turning into militant calls for an uprising against despotism.

Ryleev’s task in “Dumas” was the artistic resurrection of historical images to educate “fellow citizens through the exploits of their ancestors.” Ryleev’s appeal to national history was connected with the understanding of Russia’s past, characteristic of the Decembrists, and with the question of the nationality of art. Ryleev’s “Dumas” provided portrait characteristics of a number of figures of Russian history, starting from legendary times (“Oleg the Prophet”, “Olga at Igor’s grave”, “Svyatoslav”, etc.) and ending with the 18th century (“Volynsky”, “Natalya Dolgorukova” and "Derzhavin"). The very selection of names was unusually indicative for the Decembrist poet. The heroes of Ryleev’s “Dumas” are brave denouncers of evil and injustice, people’s leaders who suffered for the love of their homeland. Here are the fighters for the liberation of the people from foreign invaders (“Dmitry Donskoy”, “Bogdan Khmelnitsky”), and the military leader (“Oleg the Prophet”, “Svyatoslav”, “Ermak”), and ardent patriots dying for their people (“Ivan Susanin ", "Mikhail Tverskoy"). All Dumas are imbued with a feeling of deep patriotism. Ryleev calls for a fight against tyrants and treats with hatred such figures who relied on foreign forces (“Dmitry the Pretender”).

Among the “Dumas” that remained unpublished during Ryleev’s lifetime, there are also “Dumas” associated with images of the Novgorod freemen. These are the thoughts about “Marfa the Posadnitsa” and about “Vadim,” the defender of the ancient rights of free Novgorod.

Ryleev took the very name of his “Dumas” from Ukrainian folk poetry - this was the name of folk songs of a historical nature. The thematic source for most of the thoughts was Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State” for Ryleev. It should be emphasized that there was no ideological dependence on Karamzin in the Dumas; the poet sharply disagreed with him politically, but he used Karamzin’s work as the only presentation of the history of Russia in the 20s.

Even before Ryleev’s “Dumas” were published as a separate book, an interesting discussion began in criticism devoted to clarifying the genre uniqueness of “Dumas”. In the article “A Look at Old and New Literature in Russia,” Ryleev’s friend and like-minded person A. Bestuzhev noted that “Ryleev, the writer of historical thoughts or hymns, broke a new path in Russian poetry, choosing the goal of inspiring the valor of his fellow citizens with the exploits of his ancestors.”

A critic of The Russian Invalid, objecting to Bestuzhev, expressed doubt about Ryleev’s originality and pointed out that the genre of the Duma was borrowed from Polish literature. The critic had in mind the “Historical Hymns” of the Polish poet Nemtsevich, whom Ryleev really appreciated very much and with whom he corresponded. However, in developing the national historical theme, Ryleev was not an imitator, but followed his own path. It is characteristic, therefore, that in the publication of the collection “Dumas,” Ryleev himself pointedly singled out one duma (“Oleg the Prophet”) as imitative and placed it in the collection with reference to Nemtsevich, in order to ward off further doubts about the originality of his work. A. Bestuzhev answered the doubts of the critic of “The Russian Invalid” about the national character of the doom genre itself in a special article. He insisted that “dumas are the common heritage of the Slavic tribes,” that they grew up on the soil of oral folk art, and that the very genre of dumas “should be placed in the category of pure romantic poetry.” The defining feature of the Duma, from Bestuzhev’s point of view, was the national-historical theme in the subjective-historical interpretation, which he especially emphasized: “... the Duma is not always the reflection of a historical person, but more the author’s recollection of some historical incident or person, and often a personified story about them.”

Indeed, in Ryleev's thoughts the most important principle of romantic art was implemented: the monologues of historical figures and the author were essentially the same. The image of the author in thoughts was an indispensable companion of historical heroes. The interest and significance of the thoughts lay mainly in the image of the author, poet and citizen who stands behind the poems, in the image that unites the entire cycle of thoughts into a single whole.
In the monologues of “Dmitry Donskoy,” speaking about the “former freedom of the forefathers,” or in the speeches of Volynsky, we hear the voice of the poet himself with his patriotic appeals, aspirations and hopes. All Ryleev’s historical heroes converge to one center, to one image of a person - the hero of the Decembrist era with all the features of his worldview, with the characteristic symbolism of his poetic language (“tyrant”, “citizen”, “public good”, “freedom”, etc. .). But the worldview of the Decembrist poet, expressed in “Dumas,” sometimes came into conflict with the objective essence of the hero into whose mouth certain thoughts and monologues of freedom-loving content were put (as, for example, in the “Volynsky” Duma). There is no doubt that this contradiction caused Pushkin’s remark in a letter to Zhukovsky in April 1825: “Ryleev’s thoughts are aimed, but everything is not hitting the target.” In a letter to Ryleev himself, Pushkin sympathetically singled out only two things: “Peter the Great in Ostrogozhsk” - the Duma, the “final stanzas” of which he found extremely original, and “Ivan Susanin”, “the first Duma, according to which he began to suspect” in Ryleev “the true talent".

In general, Pushkin’s unfavorable attitude towards Ryleev’s thoughts will become completely understandable if we take into account that Pushkin sought to eliminate autobiography when creating images of historical heroes (especially specific images that actually existed in history).

Already in the first half of the 20s, Pushkin, in his work, managed to reach an understanding of the objective regularity in the artistic reproduction of the historical process; This understanding gave him the opportunity to create “Eugene Onegin” and “Boris Godunov” - works that opened new paths in literature. Ryleev was then just embarking on these paths in his work. But, nevertheless, the “Dumas” played a significant role: they helped to strengthen interest in historical subjects in literature, and the ideas expressed in them corresponded to the goals of Decembrist propaganda.
Of great importance was Ryleev’s affirmation of the revolutionary role of the patriotic poet. In his poems, Ryleev developed the idea of ​​a poet as a progressive citizen whose mission is to transform reality. Ryleev formulated his understanding of the poet’s tasks in the following verses:

Oh so! there is nothing higher
Purposes of the Poet:
Holy truth is his duty;
The subject is to be useful for the light.
He is seething with enmity towards untruth,
The yoke of citizens worries him;
Like a free Slav at heart.
He cannot be servile.
Hard everywhere, no matter where he is -
In defiance of fate and Fate;
Everywhere honor is his law,
Everywhere he is a clear enemy of vice.
To thunder against evil
He honors as his holy law
With calm importance
On the scaffold and before the throne.
He knows no low fear,
Looks at death with contempt
And valor in young hearts
Lights up with free verse.

The idea of ​​the poet as a chosen one - a citizen, teacher and fighter, also determined the specific principles of Ryleev’s work. He abandoned the genres of chamber and salon poetry, to which he paid tribute during the period of his apprenticeship. Like Griboedov and Kuchelbecker, Ryleev turned to a high pathetic ode, to satire, to a message, i.e. to those genres that were cultivated by poets of the 18th century. Thus, Ryleev’s famous satire “To the Temporary Worker” is close in its language, metrical scheme and rhetorical structure to the satires of the 18th century, and the ode “Vision” in its themes and composition is connected with the traditions of Derzhavin’s classical odes. The characteristic features of the high classical style are also obvious in such odes by Ryleev as “Civil Courage” and “On the Death of Byron.” However, Ryleev’s “classicism” was by no means a simple restoration of ancient poetic genres. Already Radishchev updated and enriched the old classical traditions. Radishchev's work was of great importance for the fate of Russian civil poetry. Following Radishchev, civil poetry was cultivated by a group of poets of the Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science and the Arts (Pnin, Born, Popugaev, Ostolopov, etc.), N. I. Gnedich, V. F. Raevsky, F. N. Glinka, and finally young Pushkin . At the beginning of his poetic career, Pushkin turned to the high classical style both in the message “Licinius” and in the famous revolutionary ode “Liberty” - several years before the publication of Ryleev’s satire “To the Temporary Worker”.

The very genre of “doom,” associated with a peculiar rethinking of the historical past, also absorbed the norms of classical poetics. Not only in the features of language and composition, but also in the methods of approaching historical material - in elements of rhetoric and didactics - the Dumas largely continued the classical traditions.

Ryleev takes a new road in the poem “Voinarovsky”. Ryleev’s teacher in this poem was Pushkin: from him Ryleev, by his own admission, learned poetic language.

“Voinarovsky” is a poem from the historical past of Ukraine. The hero of the poem is Mazepa’s nephew and a close participant in his conspiracy against Peter I. After Mazepa’s death, Voinarovsky fled abroad, but was then handed over to the Russian government and exiled to the Yakut region. The poem is set in the 30s of the 18th century. The historian Miller, traveling through Siberia, meets the exiled Voinarovsky near Yakutsk, and he tells him about his life, about Mazepa and his participation in the conspiracy.

Ryleev himself called the traitor and traitor Mazepa “a great hypocrite, hiding his evil intentions under the desire for the good of his homeland.”2 The story of Voinarovsky, as depicted by Ryleev, is the story of a noble and ardent young man who sincerely believed Mazepa and was seduced by him into the path of treason.

Ryleev endowed his hero with the same love of freedom that he himself possessed. The poet was primarily interested in the possibility of using the plot he had chosen to fight the autocracy. Just as in “Thoughts,” the image of the author merges in the poem with the image of Voinarovsky. In Voinarovsky’s speeches we hear the voice of a tribune and a citizen fighting for “human freedom”, for his “free rights” against the “heavy yoke of autocracy.” As a romantic, Ryleev was least interested in recreating the true historical meaning of Mazepa's conspiracy against Peter I. Ryleev idealized the image of Mazepa here and presented it in contradiction with historical truth. It was precisely this circumstance that Pushkin later noted, who found in Ryleev’s image of Mazepa a willful distortion of a historical figure. Pushkin made critical remarks about “Voinarovsky” in the preface to “Poltava,” the idea of ​​which was formed partly in connection with the impressions of Ryleev’s poem.

Pushkin criticized and assessed “Voinarovsky” from a deeply realistic position. The romantic subjectivity of “Voinarovsky” was unacceptable to Pushkin both in 1825, at the time of his correspondence with Ryleev, and later, when creating “Poltava”. In Poltava, Pushkin gave, in contrast to Ryleev, a historically true image of Mazepa as a traitor to the motherland, removing the heroic aura from him. Differences with Ryleev did not prevent Pushkin, however, from considering Voinarovsky a serious artistic achievement of the Decembrist poet. “Ryleev’s “Voinarovsky,” Pushkin wrote to A. Bestuzhev on January 12, 1824, “is incomparably better than all his “Dums,” its style has matured and is becoming truly narrative, which we almost don’t yet have.” “I make peace with Ryleev - Voinarovsky is full of life,” he wrote to his brother in 1824.

As a romantic, Ryleev placed the personality of a freedom-loving patriot at the center of national history. History, from his point of view, is the struggle of freedom lovers against tyrants. The conflict between supporters of freedom and despots (tyrants) is the engine of history. The forces involved in a conflict never disappear or change. Ryleev and the Decembrists do not agree with Karamzin, who argued that the past century, having left history, never returns in the same forms. If this were so, the Decembrists, including Ryleev, decided, then the connection of times would have disintegrated, and patriotism and love of freedom would never have arisen again, because they would have lost their parental soil. As a result, love of freedom and patriotism as feelings are not only characteristic, for example, of the 12th and 19th centuries, but also identical. A historical figure of any past century is equated to a Decembrist in his thoughts and feelings (Princess Olga thinks like a Decembrist, talking about the “injustice of power,” Dimitri Donskoy’s soldiers are eager to fight “for freedom, truth and law,” Volynsky is the embodiment of civil courage). From here it is clear that, wanting to be faithful to history and historically accurate, Ryleev, regardless of personal intentions, violated historical truth. His historical heroes thought in Decembrist concepts and categories: the patriotism and love of freedom of the heroes and the author were no different. This means that he tried to make his heroes both as they were in history and as his contemporaries, thereby setting himself contradictory and, therefore, impossible tasks.

Ryleev's anti-historicism caused a strong objection from Pushkin. Regarding the anachronism committed by the Decembrist poet (in the Duma “Oleg the Prophet”, Ryleev’s hero hung his shield with the coat of arms of Russia on the gates of Constantinople), Pushkin, pointing out a historical mistake, wrote: “... during Oleg’s time there was no Russian coat of arms - but the double-headed eagle is the coat of arms Byzantine and means the division of the empire into Western and Eastern...” Pushkin understood Ryleev well, who wanted to highlight Oleg’s patriotism, but did not forgive the violation of historical accuracy.

Thus, the national-historical character was not artistically recreated in the thoughts. However, Ryleev’s development as a poet went in this direction: in the thoughts “Ivan Susanin” and “Peter the Great in Ostrogozhsk” the epic moment was noticeably strengthened. The poet improved the conveyance of national color, achieving greater accuracy in the description of the situation (“the window is askew” and other details), and his narrative style became stronger. And Pushkin immediately responded to these shifts in Ryleev’s poetry, noting the thoughts “Ivan Susanin”, “Peter the Great in Ostrogozhsk” and the poem “Voinarovsky”, in which he, not accepting the general plan and character of historical figures, especially Mazepa, appreciated the efforts Ryleev in the field of poetic storytelling.