What is lamentation in folklore. Crying and wailing

Lamentation (lamentation, lamentation, lamentation) is an archaic genre of folklore, genetically related to the funeral rite. Evidence of Lamentation contains ancient Egyptian papyri, the Mahabharata, the Iliad, the Edda, monuments of ancient Russian literature (Yaroslavna's lament in the Tale of Igor's Campaign). In Russian folklore, laments associated with family rituals(funeral, wedding, recruiting); occasional laments that could be performed in connection with an accident (fire, famine, illness) and parodic lamentations that were included in the poetry of folk calendar rituals at parodic “burials” (Maslenitsa, Kostroma, Trinity birch). AT Slavic tradition, like most peoples, lamentations were performed by women (solo, alternately or solo with a choir of “voices”). From time immemorial, special connoisseurs of lamentations have stood out from the people's environment - yellers (also “mourners”, “weepers”, “clerks”), the performance of lamentations sometimes became their profession. The first collection of Russian lamentations largely consisted of the repertoire of the famous Zaonezhie captive I.A. Fedosova (Lamentations of the Northern Territory, collected by E.V. Barsov). Russian lamentations were also recorded in the 20th century.

The object of the image of lamentations is the tragic in life, therefore they have a strong lyrical beginning. Emotional tension determined the features of poetics: an abundance of exclamatory-interrogative constructions, exclamatory particles, synonymic repetitions, stringing similar syntactic structures, monotony, expressive word formations. The melody in the lamentation is weakly expressed, but big role Sobs, groans, bows, etc. played. Lamentations were created on behalf of the one to whom the ceremony is dedicated (bride, recruit), or on behalf of his relatives. In form, they represented a monologue or lyrical appeal. In central and southern Russia, lamentations had a lyrical character and were small in volume, performed in recitative. Northern lamentations were sung in a melodious, drawling manner and were distinguished by lyrical-epic character; they developed a descriptive, detailed account of what is happening. The structure of the lamentations was open, it contained the possibility of building lines.

Improvisation lay at the heart of the method of performing lamentations, since each time plea was addressed to certain person and was supposed to reveal in its content the specific features of his life. The composition of lamentations was formed in the course of the ceremony. Lamentations functioned as one-time texts, created anew at each performance, however, they actively used verbal formulas accumulated by tradition, individual lines or groups of lines. The content of lamentations could include a request, a command, a reproach, a spell, thanksgiving, and lamentation. Particularly important is the role of lamentations, which helped to pour out a sense of grief. AT the art world lamentations, along with images of real participants in the rite, personifications (illness, death, grief), symbols, and poetic comparisons arose. Lamentations tend to deploy a system of comparisons, pumping up the emotional impression they cause. An archaic feature is the system of metaphorical substitutions. For example, the widow called the deceased owner of the house “desired family”, “legitimate sovereign”, “lada dear”. The lamentations used epithets, hyperbole, words with diminutive suffixes, various poetic tautologies.

Russian writers introduced into their works literary processed texts of lamentations or their imitation (“About a Bear”, 1830, A.S. Pushkin; “Who Lives Well in Russia”, 1863-77, N.A. Nekrasova; “In the Forests”, 1875, P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky).

Although some peoples (Kurds, Serbs) had specific male cries.

In Russian folk tradition lamentations form a vast area of ​​“deplorable culture” (T. A. Bernshtam), genetically correlated with the rites of passage. The main context of lamentations is the funeral rite, which sets the main parameters of the genre and, above all, its poetic and sound symbolism - the most important property lamentations in that they are well audible to the world of the dead. From this point of view, “the fulfillment of lamentations in other rites and ritualized situations is always, to a certain extent, a reference to the funeral” (Bayburin 1985, p. 65).

AT folk culture there were stable prohibitions and regulations governing the execution of lamentations over the deceased. One of the most important is temporary: it was believed that one could lament only during daylight hours. Excessive crying for the dead was also limited, since inconsolable sobs “flood” the dead in the “other” world. It was forbidden to perform lamentations by children and unmarried girls(with the exception of the daughter of the deceased).

An important feature of lamentations is improvisation. Lamentations are always performed in different ways, and in this case It's not about the usual traditional culture variation of the stable text. Each lamentation is formed simultaneously in the process of performing the rite. Although the mourner actively uses the "common places" characteristic of local tradition lamentations, each cry generated by it is unique. The ceremonial context of funeral laments determined the specific nature of their poetic language. Lamentations had to simultaneously express a high degree emotional stress(inconsolable grief, intensity of mournful feelings), have the characteristic appearance of a spontaneous speech act and satisfy cruel ritual regulations.

Lamentations are usually classified according to the functional principle into three main categories: funeral and memorial, wedding and recruitment. Separately, the so-called everyday extra-ceremonial lamentations are singled out, which women could compose in difficult situations(e.g. after a fire, during hard work). Most often in culture there are funeral and everyday lamentations. Wedding lamentations are found only in those territories where the lamenting tradition is especially developed (for example, in the Russian North and among the Finno-Ugric peoples). In their poetic structure and system of images, funeral and memorial and wedding lamentations differ significantly from each other. In wedding lamentations, the bride not only expresses her feelings about the end of the "free" girl's life, but also performs a certain ritual role, as a result of which her laments are more conventional than funeral ones. On the contrary, funeral and recruit lamentations are very close to each other, both in tunes and in the system of poetic formulas. This is explained by the fact that a recruit leaving for the army is long years falls out of the peasant society, so that the separation of relatives from him is comprehended as "a funeral during his lifetime."

Notes

Publications and literature

• Lamentations of the Northern Territory, collected by E.V. Barsov. - St. Petersburg. , 1997. full text 1, 2 hours 1872 and 1882 and.
• Smirnov V.I. Folk funerals and lamentations in the Kostroma region. - Kostroma, 1920.
• Ritual Poetry of Pinezhye: Russian Traditional Folklore in Modern Recordings. - M., 1980.
• Konkka W.S. Poetry of sorrow. Karelian ritual laments. - Petrozavodsk, 1992.
• Alexiou M. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. - Cambridge, 1974.
• Honko L. Itkuvirsirunous // Kirjoittamaton kirjallisuus. - Helsinki, 1963. - S. 81-128.

Categories:

• Music history
• Poetic genres
• Folklore
• Folklore of Russia
• folk poetry
• folk music
• Folk art
• Russian rites

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Books

• Great Russian wedding songs. Lamentations recorded in the Saratov province. , Sokolov M.E.. The book is a reprint edition of 1898. Although serious work has been done to restore the original quality of the edition, some pages may…

Communication Theme life cycle body and musical instrument can be put more widely on the materials of the wedding ceremony, where a musician (male) could play a ritual role, being a representative of the groom’s clan or even in certain cases acting as his replacement. In the musical structure of the wedding ceremony, in its Western Russian variety, instrumental music , representing the family of the groom, is in relation to the addition to the vocal - songs and lamentations emanating from the bride's family. In Russia, weddings have been played for a long time. Each locality had its own set of wedding ritual actions, lamentations, songs, sentences. Depending on the specific circumstances, the wedding could be "rich" - "two tables" (both in the bride's house and the groom's house), "poor" - "one table" (only in the groom's house), "widow", "orphan “In a word, there could not be two identical weddings, and each one who married had his own, one of a kind, wedding in his memory. But with all the endless variety, weddings were played according to the same laws. Matchmaking, conspiracy, farewell of the bride to her parental home, wedding in the bride's house, wedding in the groom's house - these are the successive stages along which the wedding action developed. The wedding ceremony began with the matchmaking. The matchmaker or matchmaker sent from the groom with allegorical sentences, and then directly announced the purpose of their arrival. The parents had to consider the proposal, and if they agreed, then in collusion they fixed the marriage agreement with a “handshake”, discussed the wedding day and forthcoming efforts to perform the ceremony. The next week, the pre-wedding week, the bride's parents were preparing for the wedding, and the bride, wailing, said goodbye to her parents' house, to her girlish life, to her girlfriends. “washed away” her girlhood. The next morning, the wedding train with the groom arrived at the house. The guests were met, seated at the table, and treated. Soon the bride was taken out and solemnly, in full view of all those gathered, they handed it over to the groom. The father and mother blessed the young, after which the wedding train took them to the crown. After the wedding, the wedding train took the bride to the groom's house, where a long feast took place. A few days later, the young were supposed to visit relatives. On this wedding ceremony ended. Many wedding rituals during the wedding were “retold”, “commented”, “sung” in songs, lamentations, sentences. The whole complex wedding poetry created a special poetic reality, his own scenario of action. This poetic plot of the wedding, reflected in songs and lamentations, is presented in this section. Poetic wedding reality is different from what actually happened, so to speak, from real reality. It transforms the events that are taking place; a fantastically fabulous world arises. As in a fairy tale, all images are unambiguous, and the rite itself, poetically interpreted, appears as a kind of fairy tale. The wedding, being one of the most significant events in human life, required a festive and solemn frame. And if you read all the lamentations and songs in order, then, delving into the fantastic wedding world, you can feel the poignant beauty of this ritual. Colorful clothes, thundering a wedding train with bells, a polyphonic choir of “singers”, mournful melodies of lamentations, the sounds of accordions and balalaikas - but a poetic word resurrects the pain and high joy of that festive state of mind.

In addition to the bride's lamentations, wedding poetry also includes songs dedicated to different episodes of the wedding. Magnifications are a special genre of wedding songs, distinguished by their function and artistic specificity. Magnifications pursued the goal of endowing the magnified with all the qualities that, according to the peasant, he should have happy man. Undoubtedly ancient magical basis magnifications, in which the desired is passed off as real and is depicted in a colorful and idealized way. The majestic song has a descriptive character, it is a portrait song, a characteristic song, and not an individual one, but a typical one. A majestic song is characterized by richly developed and precise symbolism and parallelisms associated not only with the concept of wealth, prosperity, happiness, but also with the marital status of the magnified. In addition to glorious songs that create positive images, comic, parodic magnifications sounded at the wedding - reproachful songs. In terms of meaning and imagery, they parodied real greatness, created an unattractive, reduced, but also typical portrait - the owners, matchmakers, friends, etc. They were performed when the girls received little for the previous greatness and wanted to ridicule the "poverty" and stinginess of the guests and hosts.

Chapter 3 Lamentations as a Genre

Lamentations can be wedding, recruiting, funeral. The parables did not have a definite form and plot.

Lamentations - genre ritual folklore characteristic of many world cultures. Lamentations are one of the oldest types of folk poetry, they existed in Ancient Greece. As a rule, lamentations have a special lamentable melody; they express the grief of the performer about a particular event (death of a loved one, war, natural disaster, etc.). In most cultures, laments were performed only by women, although some peoples (Kurds, Serbs) had specific male laments.

In the Russian folk tradition, lamentations form a vast area of ​​"deplorable culture", genetically correlated with the rites of passage. The main context of lamentations is the funeral rite, which sets the main parameters of the genre and, above all, its poetic and sound symbolism - the most important property of lamentations is that they are well heard by the world of the dead. From this point of view, "the performance of lamentations in other rites and ritualized situations is always, to some extent, a reference to the funeral"

Recruitment rite- of a later origin than the wedding and funeral rites. It took shape at the beginning of the 18th century, after the introduction of universal recruitment duty by Peter the Great (1699). Sending off to the "service of the sovereign" for 25 years for a peasant family was tantamount to the death of a recruit; led to the ruin and decline of the economy. In the army itself, there were frequent cases of cruel reprisals against soldiers, so the relatives of the recruit lamented over him as if he were dead. This rite contained almost no magical and symbolic moments (sometimes a recruit was spoken of from illness, and especially from bullets).

Historical song.

There is no common understanding of the term "historical songs". This term combines works of many song genres that contain historical realities. In a narrower sense, a historical song is called epic and partly lyric-epic works dedicated to depicting historical events and episodes from the life of historical figures. The historical song is a continuation and development of the epic creativity of the people, embodied in epics in the era of the birth of feudalism and its early stages. Historical songs are epic or lyrical-epic works of the era of the developed Russian feudal state, the content of which is events or episodes from the life of historical persons, as a result of which the carriers of the song are interested, in some cases considering themselves involved in the depicted.

Crying and lamentations were performed by people who were called mourners. They were predominantly women, although among the Kurds and Serbs, laments were performed exclusively by men. They were specially invited to mourn a deceased relative or express grief over the outbreak of war, natural disaster (drought, flood, etc.). Crying and lamentations have existed since ancient times: they are mentioned in the Bible, they took place in Ancient Greece.

How did the rite of lamentation originate?

Mourning is a whole rite. The lamentable tradition was especially developed in the North of Russia. Allocate funeral and memorial, recruitment, wedding lamentations. Funeral-commemorative and recruit laments are close to each other in content. They mourn the deceased or the departing military service relative. At the same time, leaving for military service was analogous to the death of a person during his lifetime, because they were taken to the service for almost a lifetime. Funeral lamentations expressed the grief of relatives who have lost a deceased person.

In wedding lamentations, the bride laments her girlish will, which she loses when she gets married. These are conditional cries. It was believed that the bride must cry before the wedding: she buries her former unmarried life. The ceremony required the bride's tears.

There are also everyday cries and lamentations, in which, for example, a crop failure, the consequences of a fire, floods, etc. are lamented.

Examples of crying in literature

An example of lamentation is the lamentation of Yaroslavna on the walls of Putivl, described in The Tale of Igor's Campaign, where the princess mourns the dead soldiers who did not return from a military campaign. Crying is pagan tradition, in which ideas about death do not correspond to similar ideas in Christianity. The soul of a person after death turns into a “little bird”, a person rests in a coffin, soars in the clouds, etc. Dying is conveyed in images of a freezing tree or a sunset. That is why the church for a long time struggled with crying, trying to eradicate the habit of mourning the dead strongly among the people. However, it was not possible to eradicate crying at all.

Crying was first investigated by V.A. Dashkov. famous collection of laments is the collection of Rybnikov “Songs” (part III), Metlinsky “South Russian Songs”, 1854. However, the collection of E.V. Barsov "Wailings of the Northern Territory", 1872; “Funeral, tomb and grave laments”, 1882 and many others. E.V. Barsov wrote down laments and laments under the dictation of one of the most skillful "prisoners" of the Russian North, Irina Fedosova.