How is a myth different from a fairy tale? How does a myth differ from a fairy tale: features and differences Fairy tale and myth as eternal sources of art

Are you here: For the service sector

MUSIC AND OTHER ARTS

Lesson 7

Topic: Myths and fairy tales - an eternal source of art.

Lesson objectives: to develop the ability to find interactions between music and literature and express them in reflection; Analyze and summarize the variety of connections between music and literature.

During the classes:

Organizing time.

The music of P. I. Tchaikovsky sounds: Pas de deux from the ballet “The Nutcracker”.

Read the epigraph to the lesson. How do you understand it?

Write on the board:

“The world is like a fairy tale. Tales of the people
Their wisdom is dark, but doubly sweet,
Like this ancient mighty nature,
From infancy they sank into my soul...”
(N. Zabolotsky)

Lesson topic message.

Tell me, what did the music we listened to sound like? (She sounded magical, gentle, incredibly beautiful. When you listen to her, it seems as if you are in a fairy tale.)

Yes, of course, this is true. It is no coincidence that we started this lesson with the wonderful music of Tchaikovsky, this wonderful composer and storyteller. Today we will go on a distant musical journey through time.

Work on the topic of the lesson.

1. Music in myths, tales and legends.

There are a great many musical events, the beginning of which is so far from us that even the magic telescope of time could not clearly bring them closer. However, let's not be upset. Our memory will come to our rescue more than once; the common memory of humanity is a magical “time machine” capable of moving us in time and space.

The most wonderful, most interesting guides to the distant past for people have always been old tales, myths, legends about music and musicians.

From the depths of centuries came ancient myths created by folk imagination. The ancient Greeks believed that with the onset of warmth, beautiful girls, nine sisters, nine daughters of the lord of the gods, Zeus, gathered for festivities on the top of Mount Parnassus. They were called the muses of life - the goddesses of singing. They patronized the arts and sciences.

The young goddess-muses are the daughters of 3eus and the goddess of memory Mnemosyne. There are nine of them in total, and each of them patronizes a certain type of art and science. So, four of them are the patroness of musical and poetic art: Euterpe - muse lyric poetry and songs, Calliope - muse epic poetry, ancient legends, Polyhymnia - the muse of sacred hymns, Erato - the muse of love poetry. Terpsichore is the patron of dance, Thalia is the patron of comedy, Melpomene is the patron of tragedy. The eighth muse is Clio, the patroness of history; ninth - Urania - patroness of astronomy.

Drawing water from the Castilian spring or from the source of Hippocrene, the muses gifted it to the chosen ones. Those, having drunk the life-giving moisture, became artists, poets, dancers and actors, musicians and scientists.

Standing in a circle, the muses danced and sang to the sounds of the golden cithara, played by the patron of the arts, the god Apollo. And when their divine voices sing hymns to the accompaniment of Apollo’s golden cithara, the whole world reverently listens to their harmonious singing. The voices of the girls merged into a harmonious choir, and all nature, as if enchanted, listened to the sweet melodies. People became kinder, and the gods became more merciful.

What is the meaning of myths, fairy tales and stories? (Myths, fairy tales, legends are the eternal source of art. This applies not only to music, but also to literature and painting. All these sources have opened up new facets of the creativity of great authors of various works of art. Art does not copy real life, but lives its own life, not subject to vanity ordinary life.)

2. Listening to a piece of music

The charm of fairy tales and myths is so great that their influence can be found in many works related to images of nature.

Now we will listen to Anatoly Konstantinovich Lyadov’s play “The Magic Lake”.

If you look at the water for a long time, be it the huge waves of the sea or the small ripples of the lake, it begins to seem that someone is painting on the water with their invisible brush. This drawing is impossible to catch and remember; it changes all the time. There you can see anything - the mysterious faces of otherworldly creatures, the curly hair of girls or a fish eye peeping at you right from the depths.

A person cannot live in water, but sitting on the shore, especially at dusk, one really believes that there, at the bottom, there is also a life of its own. And she is as beautiful as among people. Only the legendary Sadko dared to go down to the bottom to the King of the Sea, and even then it turned out that he had simply dreamed everything...

Perhaps, in the same way, sitting on the shore at dusk, Anatoly Lyadov dreamed magical life lakes. His sketch preserved a drawing of a forest lake in the vicinity of the village of Polynovka, with reeds and spruce trees on the shore, which probably served as a prototype for writing music. If he were an artist, he would have applied these magnificent colors to the canvas. But the composer has his own palette. He paints with sounds – voices and instruments, and it was the orchestra’s palette that perfectly embodied this fabulous idea. When he played this piece, it was in such a way that in every sound of the piano one could hear the timbres different instruments. (Listening to the work).

What can you tell us about the piece you listened to? Maybe you noticed some peculiarity in this play. (The music sounded calm, peaceful, fabulous, magical, there was no excitement or tension in it.)

It’s true, the music conveyed a state of complete calm and fabulous beauty, and besides this, as you quite correctly noted, there was no dramatic tension and development in the music, the image of the magical lake is contemplative in nature, which is the peculiarity of this work, since there are very few such works where there is no climax, tension, development. At the conclusion of the play, the image gradually disappears, the sonority subsides, and the lake plunges into silence. All the charm of Russian folk tales, all the magical charm of fabulous forest landscapes inhabited by mysterious creatures, found its musical expression in this play.

Not only images of various folk legends, but the plots and characters of all world mythologies were embodied in music in their own way, giving it a huge semantic originality. Let's remember some of them. (The student reads the prepared material).

- One day, as the legend tells, the god of the forests Pan met beautiful nymph Syrinx and fell in love with her at first sight. Pan, whose head was crowned with horns and whose legs had hooves, did not like Syrinx. She rushed away from him.

The loving Pan pursued her, but a dense forest hid the girl rushing away from him. Pan had already overtaken her and extended his hand forward. He thought that he had caught up with her and was holding her by the hair, but it turned out that it was not the girl’s hair, but the foliage of the reed. They say that the earth hid the maiden from him, and instead gave birth to a reed. Out of anger and resentment, Pan cut the reed, believing that it hid his beloved. But even after that I could not find her. Then he realized that the girl had turned into a reed, and was very sad that he himself killed her. Pan collected all the reeds like parts of a body, connected them together, took them in his hands and began to kiss the fresh cuts. His breath penetrated through the holes in the reeds, and the Syrinx began to sound. Sad Pan carved a melodious pipe from a reed and has not parted with it since then.

In Ancient Greece, a multi-barreled flute was common - the Pan flute, or Syrinx. The syrinx consists of several tubes, each of them is a reed. Just as the flute flows under the fingers of Athena, Syrinx sings in the mouth of Pan. (Listening to the work “Run Away From Wordly Celebration” by M. Zamfir).

Imitating the sound of mythical musical instruments, composers improved timbres, looked for new combinations of them, and introduced the voices of birds, the sound of wind, and the murmur of water jets into the orchestral score. The musical space was filled with living sounds, the figurative characteristics acquired extraordinary artistic authenticity.

Listen to an excerpt from a piano piece by Maurice Ravel. I won’t tell you the name of this work, try to name it yourself. (Listening to music).

What is this music like, what is depicted in sounds famous composer? (Children’s answers are heard and conclusions are drawn regarding this section).

This music depicts the sounds of waves, and this piece is called “The Play of Water.” You can clearly hear the shimmer of jets sparkling in the sun.

As the epigraph to this work, Ravel took lines from a poem by Henri de Regnier: “The river god laughing at the streams that tickle him.” And it outlines it so visibly that we can imagine a beautiful sunny day, crystal clean body of water and the laughter of the river god, which merges with the laughter of quickly rushing water.

Visibility reveals itself even in musical notation. In the musical example below, this visibility is quite obvious. Wide floods of river waves are literally depicted in the upper layer of musical sound.

Lesson summary.

Nowadays it is difficult to name a literary genre that music would not try to translate into its language. A variety of poetic genres - elegies and odes, ballads and hymns, poetic forms - rondo, sonnet, octave - all this, in addition to the traditional forms of song and romance, sounded in music, enriching it with new intonations, new means of expression.

Becoming a part of music, literary images entered into cantatas, oratorios, operas and even covered the field of instrumental music. The anthem sounds in the final chorus from M. Glinka’s opera “A Life for the Tsar”, F. Schiller’s ode “To Joy” - in the finale of the last, Ninth Symphony of L. Beethoven. “Elegy” by J. Massenet, ballads by F. Chopin are valuable musical genres that have moved away from their poetic prototype, but have retained the figurative structure and spiritual lyricism of these poetic genres.

This is how literature gives life to a huge area musical art. And these are such significant parts of it as:

vocal music: opera, oratorio, romance, song;
stage music: ballet, dramatic play with music, musical;
program music created on a literary plot, including instrumental music: symphony, concert, play.

Without the influence of the word, the structure of a musical work, musical speech, which became expressive and meaningful thanks to the collaboration with poetry, would probably be completely different. This partnership continues to this day. Despite the fact that both poetry and music have long acquired independence, the ability to conquer enormous art spaces, they sometimes meet again, and such meetings again and again lead to new discoveries. And this is not surprising: after all, it is impossible to forcibly tear apart something that for many centuries has grown together not only with branches, but also with roots.

Literature and music: their union is forever marked with the stamp of a noble influence on each other. Because both music learned from literature and literature learned only the best from music.

Questions and tasks:

Is there a great influence of literature on music? How does it manifest itself?
What types of literature are used by composers when creating musical works?
Name the types of music that arose under the influence of literature.
In the “Diary of Musical Observations”, write down a poem that you could offer to a composer to create a song. Try to explain your choice.

Lesson development by I.V. Koneva and N.V. Terentyeva.

Presentation:

Included:
1. Presentation - 26 slides, ppsx;
2. Sounds of music:
Chaikovsky. Pas de deux from the ballet “The Nutcracker”, mp3;
Lyadov. Magic Lake, mp3;
Ravel. Play of water, mp3;
Run Away From Wordly Celebration (pan flute), mp3;
3. Accompanying article - lesson notes, docx.

Photos by Liliya Babayan, Alexey Chernikov and Anna Benu Costumes by Ekaterina and Svetlana Miroshnichenko, Anna Benu and Valentina Meshcheryakova

Makeup by Anastasia Dudina

Cover design by Alexander Smolov and Anna Benu

Introduction
What do myths and fairy tales talk about?

Common to all fairy tales are the remnants of a belief dating back to ancient times, which expresses itself through a figurative understanding of supersensible things. This mythical belief is like small pieces of broken gemstone that lie scattered on the ground overgrown with grass and flowers and can only be discovered by a keen eye. Its meaning has long been lost, but it is still perceived and fills the fairy tale with content, while simultaneously satisfying the natural desire for miracles; fairy tales are never an empty play of colors, devoid of fantasy content.

Wilhelm Grimm

To create a myth, so to speak, to dare to seek a higher reality behind the reality of common sense is the clearest sign of the greatness of the human soul and proof of its capacity for endless growth and development.

Louis-Auguste Sabatier, French theologian

Life is a myth, a fairy tale, with its positive and negative heroes, magical secrets leading to self-knowledge, ups and downs, struggle and liberation of your soul from the captivity of illusions. Therefore, everything that comes along the way is a riddle given to us by fate in the form of Medusa, a gorgon or a dragon, a labyrinth or a flying carpet, on the solution of which the further mythological outline of our existence depends. In fairy tales, the scenarios of our lives beat with a pulsating rhythm, where wisdom is the Firebird, the king is reason, Koschey is the veil of delusions, Vasilisa the Beautiful is the soul...

Man is a myth. The fairy tale is you...

Why are fairy tales and myths immortal? Civilizations die, peoples disappear, and their stories, the wisdom of myths and legends come to life again and again and excite us. What is the attractive power hidden in the depths of their narrative?

Why do myths and fairy tales not lose their relevance in our reality?

What is the most real thing in the world to you, reader?

For every person, the most real thing in the world is himself, his inner world, his hopes and discoveries, his pain, defeats, victories and achievements. Does anything worry us more than what is happening to us now, in this period of life?

In this book, I consider fairy tales and myths as scripts for the lives of each of us. It is about our firebirds of wisdom and the Serpents of Gorynych's illusions that ancient stories tell. Ancient myths tell about our victory over the chaos of everyday obstacles. Therefore, fairy tales are immortal and dear to us, they take us on new journeys, encourage us to new discoveries of their secrets and ourselves.

This book examines one of the many facets of the interpretation of ancient myths and fairy tales of different peoples, fairy-tale-mythological thinking and its symbolism.

Many researchers of fairy tales and myths identify their various aspects, various methods of interpretation, mutually enriching each other. Vladimir Propp examines fairy tales from the point of view of folk beliefs, rites, and rituals.

K.G. Jung and his followers - from the point of view of the archetypal experience of humanity. Jung argued that it is through fairy tales that one can best study comparative anatomy human psyche. “Myth is a natural and necessary step between unconscious and conscious thinking”(K.G Jung).

American myth researcher Joseph Campbell considers myths a source of development, information and inspiration for humanity: “Myth is a secret gate through which the inexhaustible energy of the cosmos pours into cultural achievements person. Religions, philosophies, art, social institutions of primitive and modern people, the basic discoveries of science and technology, even the dreams that fill our sleep - all these are drops from the magical boiling cup of myth.”

The 20th century Indian philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy speaks of myth: “Myth embodies the closest rapprochement with absolute truth, which can only be expressed in words."

John Francis Birline, an American mythologist, writes in his book “Parallel Mythology”: "Myths– the oldest form of science, speculation about how the universe came into being... Myths, taken on their own, show surprising similarities between cultures various peoples separated by vast distances. And this commonality helps us to see the beauty of the unity of humanity behind all the differences... A myth is a kind of unique language, describing realities beyond our five senses. It fills the gap between the images of the subconscious and the language of conscious logic.”

A.N. Afanasyev sees with amazing constancy in all myths and fairy tales natural phenomena: sun, clouds, thunder and lightning. Prometheus is the fire of lightning chained to a rock-cloud; the evil Locky of German mythology - clouds and thunder; the god Agni of Indian mythology - “winged lightning”; “the poker is the emblem of the lightning club of the god Agni, the broom is the whirlwind fanning the thunderstorm flames”; winged horse - whirlwind; Baba Yaga flying on a whirlwind broom is a cloud; crystal and golden mountain - sky; Buyan Island – spring sky; the mighty oak of Buyan Island, like the wonderful tree of Valhalla, is a cloud; all the dragons and snakes that the heroes fight are also clouds; the beauty maiden is the red sun, abducted by the serpent, a symbol of winter fogs, lead clouds, and the maiden’s liberator is the lightning hero, breaking the clouds; miracle-yudo fish-whale, goldfish and pike Emelya, fulfilling wishes - a cloud filled with the fruitful moisture of life-giving rain, etc. etc.

Afanasyev in his book “Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature” examines in great detail and volume one of the facets of the interpretation of fairy tales and myths.

Of course, a person living surrounded by nature and its elements cannot help but reflect it in his poetic comparisons. But as a microcosm, a person carries within himself a reflection of the macrocosm - the entire surrounding world, therefore we can consider the fairy-tale-mythological thinking of humanity as a reflection on the meaning and purpose of one’s existence in this vast, amazing world full of hints and clues.

“A myth is a symbolic story that reveals inner meaning the universe and human life"(Alan Watts, English writer and Western commentator on Zen Buddhist texts).

The most objective study of the fairy-tale-mythological thinking of ancient peoples can be accomplished by synthesizing the experience of many authors.

Mircea Eliade calls for the study of symbolic systems, which constitute one of the areas of human self-knowledge, combining the diverse experience of professionals: “...such a study will be truly useful only if there is cooperation between scientists of different specialties. Literary studies, psychology and philosophical anthropology must take into account the results of work carried out in the field of history of religion, ethnography and folkloristics.”

This study does not claim absolute objectivity. And who can claim it, even if they want to? Truth, hidden by many veils, suddenly for a moment lifts one of its curtains to those who carefully peer into its elusive face, gives the joy of meeting the one who loves it, and again slips away under the ghostly veils of endless secrets. But we still have the joy of meeting and its aroma, its breath...

So once upon a time, starting to think about the meaning of myths and fairy tales, trying to penetrate their essence, I experienced the joy of discovery, analyzing them first in lessons with children, then with students. It seemed to me - eureka! I opened! And a few years later, when I received my diploma at the Waldorf school, I read a book by a German researcher of European folk tale Friedel Lenz, having discovered many of his discoveries, but made much earlier. Well, at least this indicates greater objectivity of these discoveries. And the joy of encountering a fairy tale in one’s life, the myth-making of one’s existence always remains with us.

Let's start with an excursion into history.

“The word “myth” comes from the Greek mythos, which in ancient times meant “word”, “statement”, “history”... Myth usually explains customs, traditions, faith, social institutions, various cultural phenomena or natural phenomena, based on supposedly factual events. Myths tell, for example, about the beginning of the world, how people and animals were created, where and how some customs, gestures, norms, etc. originated.

Myths are often classified by their themes. The most common are cosmogonic myths, myths about cultural heroes, myths about birth and resurrection, and myths about the founding of cities.

Myth-making is a property of human consciousness in general. Myth is formed in its original forms in the subconscious and consciousness of a person; it is close to his biological nature.” (Laletin D.A., Parkhomenko I.T.)

Fairy tales and myths created in different parts of the world are equally interesting, understandable and attractive to people of all nationalities, ages and professions. Consequently, the symbols and images embedded in them are universal, characteristic of all humanity.

The purpose of this study is not to argue about the differences between myth and fairy tale, but to analyze similar symbols and phenomena that exist in them. To do this, let us think that there is symbolic thinking.

Symbolic thinking has been inherent in man since the beginning of time. Let's look around: the letters of the alphabet are symbols; books are a set of symbols that we understand; words are a set of sounds that we have conventionally accepted as a standard and therefore understand each other. When mentioning only these two concepts - words and letters, it becomes clear that without symbols and symbolic thinking, human development is impossible. We can list further: symbols of religions, medical designations, monetary units, road signs, ornamental symbols in art, designations of chemical elements, designations and symbols used in the computer world, etc. And the further civilization develops, the more it requires conventional signs, symbols to designate certain phenomena that open before it.

“...thanks to symbols, the World becomes “transparent”, capable of showing the Almighty”(Mircea Eliade).

How did ancient peoples understand the world? What does a fairy tale and myth convey in its essence, besides what lies on the “surface” of the text?

“The symbolic way of thinking is not only inherent in children, poets and madmen,” writes the historian of religions Mircea Eliade, “it is integral to the nature of the human being, it precedes language and descriptive thinking. The symbol reflects some of the deepest aspects of reality that are not amenable to other ways of understanding. Images, symbols, myths cannot be considered arbitrary inventions psyche-souls, their role is to reveal the most hidden modalities of the human being. Their study will allow us to better understand man in the future...” (Mircea Eliade. “The Myth of Eternal Return”).

A symbolic analysis of fairy-tale and mythological representations of ancient civilizations can reveal a lot to us. The study of symbols is an endless and attractive journey through time and space, leading to the timeless, to an understanding of ourselves.

Historical and symbolic approach to the analysis of fairy tales

Famous fairy tale researcher V.Ya. Propp, who studied the historical roots of fairy tales, draws connections between fairy tales and the social system, rite, and ritual.

Nine
Far Away Kingdom, Thirtieth State

V.Ya. Propp gives an example of how the hero is looking for a bride far away, in the thirtieth kingdom, and not in his own kingdom, believing that the phenomena of exogamy could be reflected here: for some reason the bride cannot be taken from one’s own environment. This phenomenon can be viewed not only from a historical point of view, but also from a symbolic one. To do this, you need to turn to the symbolism of numbers. The distant kingdom is three times nine. We see here three - a mystical number highlighted in all ancient cultures (see “Symbolism of numbers in fairy tales”). The ancients imagined the world as a kind of triune principle, as we will see later, analyzing cosmogonic myths. The trinity of idea, energy and matter; worlds - heavenly, earthly and underground, afterlife. Nine is the last number from one to ten - then the numbers are repeated in interaction. When you multiply nine by any number, the result of adding the digits of the resulting sum will always be nine. For example, 2x9 = 18, 1+8 = 9, 3x9 = 27, 2+7 = 9, 9x9= 81, 8+1 = 9, etc. Thus, 9 embodies the completeness of all numbers and is a symbol of infinity. It can be assumed that the distant kingdom is a symbol of the completeness of the trinity of the world, which is looking for main character, wants to find and conclude an alliance with him by marrying a beautiful maiden and often reigning in him without returning back. Mircea Eliade believes that the tree growing far away is actually in another world - not physical reality, but transcendental reality.

IN German fairy tale(Afanasyev, volume 2) a shepherd boy climbs a huge tree three times for nine days. Having passed the first nine days, he finds himself in the copper kingdom with a copper source, having passed the next nine days - in silver kingdom with a silver source. Rising for another nine days, he enters the golden kingdom with a spring gushing with gold. Here we see the evolution of consciousness, vertical movement from copper - less precious to gold. Gold is also a symbol of the sun, its rays and truth. Those. here we observe the journey of consciousness to the truth hidden at the top of the world tree - the top of the cosmos. Nine days is a complete cycle. (It is no coincidence that pregnancy lasts exactly nine months.) That is. a boy learns the world according to the stages of knowledge from one - initial, elementary knowledge, to nine - the completeness of a certain area of being, because then the numbers are just repeated. This can be compared to school from the first to the ninth grade - knowledge of the kingdom of copper - collecting the necessary basic knowledge. The next nine steps of ascent to the silver kingdom are studying at a university, acquiring more in-depth, more precious experience and knowledge. What follows is an ascent of nine steps into the golden kingdom - the kingdom of maturity of golden true fruitful experience accumulated over the years of ascent.

A visit to the copper, silver and golden kingdoms and immersion in their sources speaks of the path of knowledge from earthly knowledge to the heights of heavenly knowledge to the gold of truth, to transcendental experience and transformation in it.

Ten
Thirtieth kingdom-state

Ten is one and zero. Unit is the starting point. Pythagoras said: “One is the father of everything,” meaning by this figure the Logos, the original idea that creates the world, that from which everything is born. Zero precedes one, this is that non-existence, the primordial ocean from which the Logos is born - one and where everything, having passed its path of development, returns. Zero is a certain infinite timeless state. One and zero are an idea and its full implementation and completion, up to the return to its original source, the full realization of this idea.

The thirtieth kingdom is three times ten. This is the complete realization of three worlds: the world of ideas - heavenly, spiritual, the world of emotions - the sphere of earthly existence and the world of actions or experience of ancestors - the region of the afterlife (in one of the contexts).

Another example from Propp. He draws analogies between the custom of sewing a dead person into the skin and a fairy-tale motif where the hero sews himself up, for example, into the skin of a cow, then he is picked up by a bird and carried to a mountain or to the distant kingdom. Here you can also apply not only a historical, but also a symbolic approach based on historical roots. Thus, in many archaic cultures there was a cult of the mother, and in agricultural cultures the cow carried the maternal life-giving principle and was a symbol of fertility. To sew oneself into the skin of a cow means to be symbolically reborn in the womb. Next, the bird carries out the hero. The bird is an inhabitant of the celestial sphere, which for most peoples was a symbol of the spiritual sphere; the sky was the abode of higher beings, gods. The bird takes the hero to the distant tenth kingdom, i.e. being reborn in the skin of a cow, the hero gains the fullness of being with the help of the bird - his aspiration for knowledge.

Propp also believes that some fairy tale plots arose as a result of a rethinking of the ritual and disagreement with it. Thus, “there was a custom to sacrifice a girl to the river, on which fertility depended. This was done at the beginning of sowing and was supposed to promote plant growth. But in the fairy tale, the hero appears and frees the girl from the monster to whom she was brought to be devoured. In fact, in the era of the ritual, such a “liberator” would have been torn to pieces as the greatest wicked person, endangering the well-being of the people, endangering the harvest. These facts show that the plot sometimes arises from a negative attitude towards the once former historical reality.”

And this plot is subject to symbolic analysis. The motif of “beauty and the beast” was first encountered by the ancient Roman philosopher and writer Apuleius in his novel “The Golden Ass,” in which he included a fairy tale called “Cupid and Psyche.” The name of the main character suggests that the action takes place in the sphere of anima - the soul, the emotional sphere of a person. Analyzing the fairy tales further, we will see that the feminine is the sphere of emotions, the soul, and the masculine is the sphere of logos, reason. A monster, a snake, a dragon is a symbol of chaos, unconscious aggression, instincts that seek to absorb the unreasonable maiden - emotions, soul, but the sphere of reason defeats this negative principle and is freed from it. If we use Freud's terminology, then the Hero is the human I, the conscious, rational core of the personality. Knowledge of how to defeat chaos and by what means, how to defeat the monster and free the maiden - the psycho-emotional sphere - is given to the hero by the Super-ego. The monster itself - It is a “boiling cauldron of instincts.”

Thus, fairy tales have historical roots that turn into an objective symbol that is understandable to every person. In Rus' there was a ritual of overbaking a baby if he was born premature or sickly. The child was coated with dough - symbolizing Sun rays, was laid on a grip and placed in a warm oven, and when he was taken out, it was believed that he was born again. Here we can draw analogies with the plot where Baba Yaga, taking away the children, strives to burn them in the oven, i.e. symbolically reborn.

Propp also comes to the conclusion that not everything in fairy tales can be explained by historical reality, tradition and ritual. Thus, “if Baba Yaga threatens to eat the hero, this does not mean that here we certainly have a remnant of cannibalism. The image of the cannibal yaga could have arisen in another way, as a reflection of some mental, rather than real, everyday images... In the fairy tale there are images and situations that clearly do not go back to any reality. Such images include, for example, a winged serpent and a winged horse, a hut on chicken legs, Koschey, etc.”

Propp attributed these symbols to mental reality.

Mircea Eliade considers the heroes of fairy-tale and mythological worlds to be born in the sphere of the subconscious. “The subconscious, as it is called, is much more poetic and philosophical, more mystical than conscious life... The subconscious is inhabited not only by monsters: gods, goddesses, heroes and fairies also hide there; and the monsters of the subconscious are also mythological, they continue to perform the same functions that are assigned to them in all myths: ultimately, they help a person to completely free himself, to complete his initiation.”

If fairy tales related only to historical reality, and the history, traditions and rituals of all nations are different, then they would not become universal.

Swiss psychoanalyst, Jung's student, Marie-Louise von Franz argues that fairy tales are outside culture, outside racial differences, and are an international language for all humanity, for people of all ages and all nationalities. Marie-Louise von Franz rejects the theory of the origin of fairy tales from ritual, rite, considering the archetypal experience of humanity to be the basis of fairy tales. She considers the origin of both fairy tales and ritual to be from archetypal experience. (Example: “autobiography of Black Deer, shaman of the tribe American Indians Oglala Sioux"). She compares the characters’ bewitchment to mental illness and liberation from witchcraft to liberation from illness. “From a psychological point of view, the enchanted hero of a fairy tale could be compared with a person whose unified structural organization of the psyche has been damaged and therefore is unable to function normally... If, for example, the anima of a man is characterized by neurotic properties, then even if he himself this man is not neurotic, he will still feel bewitched to some extent... to be bewitched means that some particular structure of the mental complex is damaged or has become unsuitable for functioning, and the entire psyche suffers from this, since the complexes live, so to speak, within a certain social order, given by the integrity of the psyche, and this is the reason why we are interested in the motive of bewitchment and the means to cure it.”

M. Eliade speaks about the imagination, which gives rise to myths and fairy tales, as an integral part of the mental health of a person and the nation as a whole. "That essential an integral part of the human soul, which is called imagination, is washed by the waters of symbolism and continues to live on archaic myths and theological systems... Popular wisdom invariably insists on the importance of imagination for the spiritual health of the individual, for the balance and richness of his inner life... Psychologists, and first of all K.-G. Jung, showed to what extent all the dramas modern world depend on the deep discord of the soul-psyche, both individual and collective - a discord caused primarily by the ever-increasing sterility of the imagination. To have imagination means to use all your inner wealth, the continuous and spontaneous ebullience of images.”

M. Eliade considers the ability to create myths, dreams, daydreams as forces that elevate a conditioned human being into a spiritual world, much richer than the closed little world of his "historical moment".

Unlike Marie-Louise von Franz and V.Ya. Propp, German researcher and psychoanalyst Friedel Lenz considers a fairy tale as the internal story of the life of each of us, where all the characters are different qualities and principles of a person. “Fairy tales are the inner destinies and paths of development of an individual person expressed in images.” Friedel Lenz, having analyzed many European fairy tales, gives an interpretation of the symbols found in them. It gives symbolism of landscapes, services and professions, clothing, jewelry, weapons, plants, fairy-tale and mythological creatures, etc. Friedel Lenz argues that a fairy tale is like a small drama that plays out on our inner stage, where human characters are soul-spiritual forces, animal characters are drives and instincts, and landscapes are the inner scene of action. It also views man in terms of the threefold division of body, soul and spirit, the so-called trichotomy, which was in force in Europe until the ninth century. The creators of fairy tales based them on the doctrine of a three-membered man, conceptually formulated already by Aristotle. "Spirit man, his eternal entelechy, his “I” appear in male image, and all forces subordinate to him are presented as masculine. Soul reveals itself in the figurative language of all peoples as a female being, and all spiritual qualities appear in female images. Body, as a protective shell, it manifests itself in the form of a house, castle, hut, tower.”

Thus, by being able to interpret fairy tales and myths, we receive the keys to solving mental problems. In addition to liberation from the “spell of illness,” fairy tales provide the correct model, an archetypal model of behavior. They also contain the meaning of existence, both in the global sense - the goal of an individual’s life, and the chain of meanings of each current moment. In every moment of our lives, we make a choice that determines whether we will be bewitched by its error - and then we will need to look for the magical means of thought, willpower, patience and perseverance on the path to liberation. Or, by doing initially right choice, we reap the joy of discovery, creativity, happiness. But in any case, you shouldn’t be upset about a mistake - let’s look at myths and fairy tales: heroes, before performing feats, go “to the left”, and then, correcting what they have done, become winners. And on the way to victory, we, like the heroes of a fairy tale, receive magical objects - a magical experience, precious knowledge of our path, our life and ourselves.

There are many peoples on Earth, and they are all different from each other: they have different skin colors, lifestyles, and each has its own mythology. And although the myths of different peoples have their own, very special gods and heroes, they are united by the fact that in these short or long, funny or cruel, but always poetic stories, the beliefs of ancient people, their initial knowledge about the world around them, about life, about the man himself.

Thousands of years ago, people (and some tribes and nationalities even today) not only firmly believed in the events reflected in myths, but also lived and died, constantly communicating with gods, heroes and other mythical creatures.

Fairy tales are a completely different matter. They, too, can be cheerful and sad, heroic and everyday, but when reading or listening to them, we always know that this is not true, fiction, although no less beautiful and poetic than myths. Everyone loves fairy tales - both children and adults, because they make us kinder, more tolerant, wiser.

But my little sister still doesn’t know how to distinguish a fairy tale from reality and believes that Baba Yaga, the little mermaids and Cheburashka really exist. Maybe fairy tales are the real myth for her today?

Folk art of words - heroic epic, fairy tales, myths, legends, songs, proverbs, riddles - are called folklore, which means wisdom, knowledge. Indeed, in all these literary genres, folk wisdom is contained in a simple, concise and clear form. Oral works that arose in ancient times folk art accompany us even now, in Everyday life. Both children and adults know folk songs, fairy tales, riddles and proverbs.

Myths are a type of folklore, old folk tales about gods, fantastic creatures, heroes, demigods, miracles, conveying the ideas of ancient peoples about the origin of the world and natural phenomena.

The tales of the ancient Greeks - myths, which also belong to folk art - are particularly rich and diverse in artistic imagination. In the imagination of the ancient Greeks, gods inhabited not only the earth, but also the air, water and even underworld. Ancient Greek myths not only told about the lives of gods and titans, but also glorified the names of the most worthy people who courageously fought for justice, freedom and honor. The gods are perfect people: with enormous physical strength, amazingly beautiful and immortal, able to perform miraculous and inexplicable actions from the point of view of ordinary people. Here is the man who brought fire to people - Prometheus. Here is a man of extraordinary strength, who has just accomplished another feat, defeating the terrible hydra - Hercules. But the handsome young man, bending over the mirror surface of the lake, admires his beauty - this is Narcissus. From the following myth you can find out what led to Trojan War. Reading the myths of Ancient Greece, you travel to distant countries and learn a lot of unusual things. But often the gods are no different from ordinary people: they also love, suffer, have fun, quarrel with each other, eat and drink, tell legends and stories.

If fairy tales are fictional, invented for a specific purpose, then myths are valid, real ideas of people about the world around them. Our distant ancestors sacredly believed in everything that is said in the myths, hence their deification of all living things, the worship of the gods. Myths are older than fairy tales. They combine people’s beliefs, their initial knowledge about the world around them, about life, as well as religion, science and art.

We are all in early childhood listened to fairy tales that mothers and grandmothers told us. Fairy tales appeared a long time ago and for many centuries they played the same important role in human life as books play now. Fairy tales are a big section ancient literature, folklore narrative works about fictitious persons and events, mainly involving magical, fantastic forces. Fairy tales often feature animals with human characters. Fairy tales are full of life and humor, they ridicule the greed, cowardice and deceit of the rich and praise the hard work, generosity and truthfulness of the common people.

Fairy tales are very diverse: they are both stories about animals and educational ones. short stories social stories about lazy, stubborn or stupid people, and fairy tales - entertaining stories about the wonderful adventures of heroes. Each type of fairy tale has a special content, images, and style.

Tales about animals arose in ancient times. For many peoples they are similar in character, content, and there are traces of primitive beliefs and human ideas. Nowadays, fairy tales about animals are most often perceived as allegorical stories about people: people are hidden behind the images of animals. A cunning fox, a cowardly hare, a stupid and greedy wolf, a royal lion, and a strong bear are constant heroes of fairy tales.

Fairy tales are also very ancient; in my opinion, they are the most interesting. Their action can take place in the wonderful distant kingdom, the thirtieth state, the heroes in them have magical qualities - they fly on flying carpets, walk in walking boots, hide under an invisible hat and miraculously extraordinary palaces and cities are built overnight.

The Russian people created a lot of satirical (social and everyday) tales about stupid, evil or stubborn people, about cruel rich people and greedy priests, ridiculing them negative qualities. All fairy tales reflect the people's dream of a better life; in them, good always triumphs over evil, truth and justice triumph over lies.

If homework on the topic of: » MYTH AND FAIRY TALE If you find it useful, we will be grateful if you post a link to this message on your page on your social network.

Latest news

Categories

News

Essays on the topic
- Professional games. Part 2

Myth– a multi-valued concept, interpreted in the range from “fiction” to “sacred” tradition, original revelation; a legend that conveys people’s idea of the world, man’s place in it, the origin of all things, gods and heroes; closed symbolic system; a certain idea of the world, embodied in individual plots and images. It is of the nature of faith and belief. Reflects a person’s desire to comprehend the laws and meaning of existence. The shape resembles a fairy tale.

Myth - from Greek. - legend, legend.

They put it together not for entertainment, but to explain, to understand what was happening in the world. At first, the myth was not just told, but performed.

Gradually, the myth was stratified into fairy tale, religion and history. So the Trojan War was perceived as a historical event.

Myths have many meanings. Therefore, different evaluations were given for the same act. So the myth of Oedipus could be presented either as a model of humility before fate, or as a challenge to the gods. Different from fairy tales.

Fairy tale – a narrative, usually folk-poetic work about fictional persons and events, mainly involving magical, fantastic forces.

In fairy tales, heroes are not gods, but people. Events are repeated once, and in myths every day ( “Every day Ra sails along the heavenly Nile on the day boat Mangeto”).

Legend- poetic legend about something historical event; fiction, something incredible.

Gradually, the word legend spread to other stories of a religious nature. The content of such stories was always very serious and edifying. Although it was allowed to joke.

Legends generally maintain historical and geographical accuracy. The names of the heroes are not similar to the names of fairy-tale heroes.

Yegory - Saint Yegory

Sergey - Sergey

Feats are performed with the name of God on their lips, the heroes are Orthodox. Legends were told among the same people as fairy tales. And therefore fairy tales and legends were constantly mixed.

THUS, myths and legends, fairy tales, completely different in essence, in the time of their origin, in the role they played, are closely related.

The word mythology, literally translated from Greek, means “statement of legend,” and indeed, many believe that myths are ancient fairy tales, entertaining stories about gods and heroes, created in ancient times. But from the point of view of scientists, mythology is, first of all, an expression of a special form of social consciousness, a way of understanding the world around us.

Myths tried to explain everything: why it rains, how the world came into being, where people came from, why they get sick and die. The myth included the beginnings of religion.

The myths of the peoples of the world are very diverse. However, upon careful study, you can notice some similar features, themes, and motives. The largest group consists of myths about animals. Other groups are astral myths (stars, planets, sun). There are myths about the origin of man, about the end of the world, about the origin of cultural goods, and calendar myths.

Mythological consciousness was a certain stage in the development of human knowledge. It can be argued that every nation has its own mythology. Of course, not every people had such extensive and developed mythological systems as the ancient Greeks. But still, all peoples, including the Slavs, had their own myths.

Those who replaced the tribal and national religions world religions sought to supplant folk religious and mythological ideas. Myths are partially lost, partially assimilated by world religion, and partially coexist with it, forming a level of superstition. Writing contributed to the preservation of myths. This is why we know more about Greek or Egyptian mythology than about Baltic or Slavic mythology.

Slavic mythological texts have not survived, firstly, due to the lack of writing of the Slavs in the pagan era, and secondly, due to the decisive struggle christian church against Slavic paganism. The reconstruction of Slavic mythology is carried out on the basis of secondary written data, folklore and material sources.

Ancient literature

Ancient literature is the literature of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, which originated several thousand years ago. The earliest literature in Europe. Greek literature did not emerge until the 8th century BC. It was preceded by enormous oral creativity of the Greek people.

Homer"Iliad", "Odyssey"

Sophocles“Ajax the Scourgebearer”, “Philocteus”

Euripides"Andromache", "Hecuba"

Ovid"Metamorphoses", "Heroines"

Virgil"Aeneid"

The heyday of Greek literature is the 5th century BC. Subsequently, especially when Greece became part of the Roman Empire, Greek literature lost its independence and purity, experiencing various foreign influences.

The first literary monuments in Rome date back to the 3rd century BC. The heyday is the 1st century BC. The story ends with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century BC.

Thus, ancient literature covers 1200 years, from the 8th century BC to the 5th century BC.

Greek literature attracted people with its heroism and lofty humanistic ideas.

Greek literature grew out of mythology.

It was until the 8th century BC that the Greeks lived in a communal-tribal system. The whole world seemed like a huge clan, which had its own families, children, etc.

The Greeks were imaginative. They saw fantastic creatures everywhere. They were the ones who held human life in their hands. They were all demons or gods.

Sky full of gods: Sun – Helios, moon – Selena, dawn – Eos, m ore – Poseidon,forest- God Pan,dungeon- God Hades and goddess Persephone meet and guard the dead. Three-headed dog Cerberus guards the entrance to kingdom of the dead.

A snowy mountain rises above the whole world Olympus, where he lives surrounded by immortal gods Zeus, father and ruler of the universe.

Hera – wife of Zeus, Hephaestus- god of fire, god of the blacksmith, Apollo- god of arts and sciences, Athena – Pallas- daughter of Zeus, always ready for battle.

Hercules- son of Zeus and Alklina, the Theban queen. All his life he was pursued by Hera, forcing him to serve the insignificant king Ephrisei. But Hercules, fulfilling his instructions, at the same time served Greece and the people. He accomplished 12 major feats, not counting minor ones.

Hercules kills the Nemean lion.

“For a long time, the inhabitants of Nemea complained that it was impossible to graze cattle in the meadows near the forest, that one could neither walk nor drive in the forest, and even in houses one could not sleep peacefully: a huge lion lived in the middle of the Nemean forest, and every day there was either a sheep from the herd, or a child, then the peaceful traveler disappeared from the road without a trace.”

Hercules destroys the Lernaean Hydra.

“Not far from Argos there was a vast Lernaean swamp.

A clean and fresh spring flowed out of the ground here, but a weak stream could not make its way to the river or to the sea and spread around in the lowlands. The water stagnated, became overgrown with moss and marsh grasses, and the huge valley turned into a swamp. The bright greenery that always covered the swamp beckoned the tired traveler, but as soon as he stepped onto the green lawn, a nine-headed monster, a hydra, crawled out of the swamp with a hiss and a retinue. She wrapped her snake’s tail around a person, pulled him into the swamp and devoured him.”

Hercules rids the earth of the Erymanthian boar.

“People said that in an oak grove on the mountain slopes there lived a wild boar, which at night came down from the mountains and devastated the fields. But his fangs and hooves were so terrible that no one dared to go into the forest and kill the evil predator.”

Hercules frees Prometheus.

Prometheus- the son of Themis, the goddess of justice, and the Titan Iapetus, from whom the male race began on earth.

“Once upon a time, in ancient times, there were few people on earth. They wandered like animals, chasing prey through the forests, eating raw meat, wild fruits and roots, covering themselves with animal skins and hiding from the weather in caves and tree hollows. Their minds were like those of small children: they were helpless in organizing their lives and defenseless against predatory animals and the formidable forces of nature.”

Prometheus took pity on the people and wanted to help them.

“Prometheus went to Hephaestus’s forge, caught the sacred spark and hid it in an empty reed that he held in his hands.” People got fire. Zeus was angry. Prometheus was chained to the mountain.

“Centuries have passed. Much has changed on earth. But Prometheus’s torment did not stop. The sun burned his withered body, the icy wind showered him with prickly snow. Every day at the appointed hour a huge eagle flew in, tore apart the titan’s body with its claws and pecked at his liver. And at night the wounds healed again.

But it was not for nothing that he bore the name “Prometheus,” which means “foreseeing”: he knew that the time would come and a great hero would appear among people on earth, who would perform many feats to cleanse the earth of evil and free him.”

In Athens there were special festivals - “Prometheus”. He was glorified as the god who brought people crafts, literacy, and culture, or he was condemned as the cause of all the troubles and misfortunes that plague the human race. Prometheus became a symbol of self-sacrifice, an example of a fighter for the good of people, for their right to think freely and live with dignity. The image of Prometheus is immortalized not only in literature, but also in music (Liszt, Beethoven, Scriabin).

Orpheus – famous singer Thrace (northern Greece). He had a wonderful gift, and his fame spread throughout the land of the Greeks.

The beauty also fell in love with him for his songs Eurydice . But the happiness was short-lived. Eurydice dies from a snake bite. Orpheus' songs became sad; he did not want to live anymore and went to the kingdom of the dead. He persuaded the ferryman Charon to take him with him on the boat. “The singer approached the throne of the gloomy ruler and sang even more inspired: he sang about his love for Eurydice.

Persephone listened to the song without breathing, and tears rolled from her beautiful eyes. Hades agreed to return Eurydice, but Orpheus had to not look back the entire way. I couldn’t resist and looked back. Eurydice's shadow disappeared.

Achilles- son of Themis. Themis immersed the baby Achilles into the underground river of the kingdom of Hades, and held him by the heel; this made his body invulnerable and hard as iron, but the water of the Styx did not touch his heel. Hence the expression “Achilles heel”, i.e. a vulnerable spot. Achilles, the hero of the Trojan War, died from Apollo's arrow shot into his heel.

In mythology, we find among the Greeks wonderful tales about the battles of ancient and new gods, as well as about the exploits of heroes who cleared the earth of monsters generated by the earth.

The ancient gods TITANS, personifying the gloomy, elemental forces of the earth, entered into battle with the young, so-called Olympian gods, led by Zeus, who established the power of law and order in the world.

The enemies fought continuously for ten years, until Zeus called the Hundred-Handed giants to help.

The Titans were subdued and thrown into Tartarus, the deep bowels of the earth, fenced with a copper wall, the darkness of the night and entwined with the roots of the earth.

Homeric epic

All stages of mythology are represented in the heroic songs of the Greeks, the so-called Homeric epic.

Epic – a word about exploits (in Greek “epic” is a word), songs performed by wandering singers. They were sung either by an aed - a songwriter, or by a rhapsod - a performer and collector.

Tradition considers the creator of the ancient Greek epic to be Homer, a blind wandering aed, a beggar singer. In antiquity, the “wise blind man” Homer enjoyed unquestioned authority as the best poet and “teacher” of Greece.

The time of creation dates back to the 8th century. BC, recorded in the 6th century. BC e.

The plots of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” are initially connected with a single mythological circle of legends about the Trojan War. The action of the Iliad is centered around central theme poem, stated in the first lines of the poem: “Wrath, goddess, sing to Achilles, son of Peleus...” At first, anger is Achilles’s resentment towards the Greek leader Agamneno, who took away the hero’s beautiful concubine Briseis, a resentment that prompts Achilles to withdraw from the battle as punishment for the Greeks. This resentment is nevertheless resolved when the hero accepts Briseis returned by Agamemnon and the pacifying gifts offered by the leader of the Greeks. However, by this moment the theme of anger takes on a new interpretation: Achilles’s closest friend Patroclus dies at the hands of the Trojan leader Hector, and the main character returns to the battle, driven by the desire for revenge. This new “anger” can only be satisfied by the death of Hector, who dies at the hands of Achilles.

The Iliad, essentially describing several moments of the battle, provides a panorama of the course of the war, including foreshadowing its final conclusion.

The technique of “inserted episodes” is used, describing numerous previous events, including those lying outside the Trojan myth. Trojan myth is essentially a story about " last battle", in which, by the will of the gods, a generation of heroes must die. The so-called “divine apparatus” largely organizes the action of the poem, and all events in the human world are reflected in the divine world. The two heroic camps correspond to two “parties” of gods, respectively standing for the Greeks and the Trojans. Moreover, in the divine confrontation, the main role is played by the motive of insult and the anger caused by it: Hera and Athena are offended by the choice made at one time by Paris. Poseidon - dishonor caused to him, etc. The position of the highest judges is occupied by Zeus. The principle of supreme balance is embodied in the scene of weighing the heroes' lots before the duel between Hector and Achilles.

The Odyssey is similar to the Iliad not only because of its large number of characters. But also obvious parallels of the main themes and motives. If the action of the first poem develops under the sign of “the wrath of Achilles,” then in the return of Odysseus home and his revenge on the suitors who sought marriage with his wife Penelope, there is also a motive for insulting the hero and restoring his own honor. The desire of “Odysseus” to “reunite” with his wife contains not so much the idea of unbreakable love as the desire to return to his homeland and regain his former status as a husband and king. It is no coincidence that the reproach for the suitors in the poem is not so much the fact of their harassment of Penelope, but the fact that they do it in an unworthy manner, not bringing gifts to the bride and, on the contrary, constantly destroying Odysseus’s goods. By destroying Odysseus's wealth, the suitors encroach on his royal dignity, a sign of which is his marriage to Penelope. As a result, the murder of the suitors becomes retribution for this assassination attempt and proof that Ithaca has again found its king. It is significant that despite all the seemingly negative role of the suitors in the narrative, their death is interpreted as the extermination of the “best youth”: these are the words that Achilles and Agamemnon greet their shadows in the underground kingdom. This continues the theme of the death of heroes.

The world of the gods is mainly represented by Athena, who acts as an assistant to the protagonist. The main opponent is Poseidon, whose anger is dictated by the insult inflicted on God: Odysseus blinded his son the Cyclops Polyphemus. Zeus again appears as a kind of embodiment of the highest fair balance, but it is characteristic that this balance is achieved through certain agreements between him and other deities.

So he partially satisfies the anger of Poseidon, allowing him to punish the Phaeacians who helped Odysseus, and with his permission, Athena pacifies the discord between Odysseus and the relatives of the dead suitors.

Subsequently, the plots of the Iliad and Odyssey were reinterpreted by many writers; the entire set of ancient and medieval interpretations influenced their images in European literature.

Told for children, The Iliad and Odyssey give young readers an insight into life in Ancient Greece. The gods are diverse and interesting, just like people. People are punished for what they have done. Every thing made by human hands is good and is a work of art. The shield of Achilles is described in detail, etc. Man not only fights and destroys, but strives to create something necessary and beautiful.

Pagan myth

Not every people had such extensive and developed mythological systems as the ancient Greeks, but still all peoples, including the Slavs, had their own myths.

The ancient Slavs had people whose functions included preserving and transmitting “koshchny” (i.e. sacred, mythological) knowledge - blasphemers and accordions.

Of the animals, the most revered was the bear. Other forest animals were also revered: wolves, wild boars, hares, moose, and lynxes. The image of the goat (goat) in Slavic mythology is noteworthy. This animal is strongly associated with the idea of fertility and productivity. In one old Belarusian song it is sung:

Dze kaza hodzits, there zhyta rodzits,

Dze kaza boasts, there is a bush,

Dze kaza is naked, there is life with kappa,

Dze kaza rogam, there is zhyta haystacks.

The goat was an indispensable character in carol and butter rituals.

In Russian villages, a goat was considered a chaser.

The Slavs revered plants no less than animals. Both individual trees that stood out for something (a large hollow, for example, or struck by lightning) and entire groves were revered. Of the trees, oak and birch were most revered, which can be explained by their prevalence and economic importance.

The attitude towards aspen was different. Aspen has long been considered a strangled tree.

According to one of the Christian apocrypha circulating in Rus', Judas hanged himself on an aspen tree, and since then its leaves have been trembling. Witches also use aspen for their witchcraft: hitting a sleeping person’s chest with an aspen branch, the witch inflicts an invisible wound on him and drinks his blood. At the same time, aspen was considered a surefire means of fighting ghouls. To destroy a ghoul, you need to drive an aspen stake into its back or heart. Aspen also served as a magical means of protecting crops from evil forces.

Other plants, especially cereals, were also revered. The bread was clothed with holiness.

The universe of our ancestors, according to their legends, consisted of three tiers: the highest gods lived in the sky (Perun, Belbog, Khors, Svarog, etc.); the earth was given to the spirits of nature (brownies, goblins, mermaids); Evil demons (demons, devils) lived underground.

Myth cannot exist separately from ritual. A ritual, a holiday, a carnival - all this is the essence of the revival of a myth, its transmission through a magical act.

Holidays in Rus' were associated with certain traditions and mythological legends, which spoke of the struggle between heat and cold, spring and winter, sun and darkness.

For example, inviting and feeding Frost was considered important. The more porridge was sacrificed, the better the harvest was expected.

The fertility of the soil was also influenced by special spells - carols. At the same time, Kolyada (Ovsen, Tausen, Bausen) not only personifies the holiday, but is also directly related to the winter rebirth of the sun.

Maslenitsa was one of the noisiest and happy Holidays. It was a farewell to winter, a welcome to spring. Gluttony had ritual significance and was supposed to affect the harvest.

The holiday of Ivan Kupala was celebrated on July 7. Kupala personified the highest flowering of nature. The ritual is based on the cult of the sun, water and fire, associated with the myth of Yaril. Swimming in water, jumping over a fire, ritual orgies and mischief - all this had a purifying meaning and reflected the desire to preserve and increase the harvest. On the night of Ivan Kupala, all sorts of miracles happened: ferns bloomed, sorcerers turned into dogs, witches spoiled other people's livestock, etc.

Thus, myths, legends, traditions, tales are very instructive. Writers from many countries, philosophers, and teachers turned to them.

"THE THINGS OF DAYS LONG PAST"

"What is more characteristic of a person- respect for generally accepted rules or disregard for them?- This question has worried people since ancient times. One of the possible answers is given in the myth “Five Ages”, which is outlined by the Russian historian N.A. Kuhn based on the work of the ancient Greek poet Hesiod "Works and Days"".

ON THE. Kun

"Five Centuries"

Based on Hesiod's poem "Works and Days".

The immortal gods living on Olympus created the first human race happy; it was a golden age. God Kron ruled then in heaven. Like blessed gods, people lived in those days, knowing neither care, nor labor, nor sadness. They also did not know frail old age; Their legs and arms were always strong and strong.

Painless and happy life theirs was an eternal feast. Death, which came after a long life, was like a calm, quiet sleep.

During their lifetime they had everything in abundance. The land itself gave them rich fruits, and they did not have to waste labor on cultivating fields and gardens. Their herds were numerous, and they grazed calmly on rich pastures. The people of the golden age lived serenely. The gods themselves came to them for advice. But the golden age on earth ended, and none of the people of this generation remained. After death, people of the golden age became spirits, patrons of people of new generations. Shrouded in fog, they rush across the earth, defending truth and punishing evil. This is how Zeus rewarded them after their death.

The second human race and the second century were no longer as happy as the first. It was the Silver Age. The people of the Silver Age were not equal in strength or intelligence to the people of the Golden Age. For a hundred years they grew up foolish in the houses of their mothers, only when they matured did they leave them. Their life in adulthood was short, and since they were unreasonable, they saw a lot of misfortune and grief in life. The son of Cronus, Zeus, destroyed their race on earth. He was angry with the people of the Silver Age because they did not obey the gods living on Olympus. Zeus settled them in the underground dark kingdom. There they live, knowing neither joys nor sorrows; people also pay homage to them.

Zeus created the third generation and the third age - the Copper Age. It doesn't look like silver. From the shaft of the spear Zeus created people - terrible and powerful. The people of the Copper Age loved pride and war, abundant in groans. They did not know agriculture and did not eat the fruits of the earth that gardens and arable land provide. Zeus gave them enormous growth and indestructible strength. Their hearts were indomitable and courageous and their hands irresistible. Their weapons were forged from copper, their houses were made of copper, and they worked with copper tools. They didn’t know dark iron back in those days. The people of the Copper Age destroyed each other. They quickly descended into the dark kingdom of the terrible Hades. No matter how strong they were, yet the black death kidnapped them, and they left the clear light of the sun.

As soon as this race descended into the kingdom of shadows, Zeus immediately created the fourth age on earth and a new human race, more noble, more just, equal to the gods a race of demigods - heroes. And they all died in evil wars and terrible bloody battles. Some died at the seven-gate Thebes, in the country of Cadmus, fighting for the legacy of Oedipus. Others fell at Troy, where they came for the beautiful-haired Helen, having sailed across the wide sea in ships. When death snatched them all away, Zeus the Thunderer settled them on the edge of the earth, far from living people. Heroes live on the islands of the blessed rough waters Ocean with a happy, carefree life. There, the fertile land gives them fruits three times a year, sweet as honey.

The last, fifth century and the human race is iron. It continues now on earth. Night and day, without ceasing, sorrow and exhausting work destroy people. The gods send people difficult worries. True, gods and good are mixed with evil, but still there is more evil, it reigns everywhere. Children do not honor their parents; a friend is not faithful to a friend; the guest does not find hospitality; there is no love between brothers. People do not observe this oath, they do not value truth and goodness. People destroy each other's cities. Violence reigns everywhere. Only pride and strength are valued.

The goddesses Conscience and Justice left people. In their white robes they flew up to high Olympus to the immortal gods, but people were left with only grave troubles, and they had no protection from evil.

&Questions and tasks

1 Find in the text epithets that characterize each century as a whole, and words that characterize the lives of people in each century.

2 In the lives of people in almost every century that Hesiod spoke about, there were light and dark sides, joy and sorrow. Which of the centuries is assessed by Hesiod as the most cloudless, the happiest for the people living in it? Why?

3 In what centuries, created, according to the worldview of the ancient Greeks, by the gods of Olympus, did people have the opportunity to choose one or another line of behavior? What choices did they make? What were the consequences of this choice?

CHRISTIAN MYTH
IN LITERARY GENRES

Christian myth. Bible. The Myth of the Divine Child. The basis of children's literature is the image of a child performing a miracle. Biblical stories in the works of writers.
The image of Christ in fiction.

Adoption of Christianity in Rus' - the most important stage in spiritual history Eastern Slavs, as a result of which old pagan beliefs give way to a new religion.

From historical sources it is known that Christianity penetrated into Rus' gradually, even before official baptism Kievan Rus Vladimir.

And yet, baptism could not erase the previous tradition of paganism. Christianity acquired its own specific features on Russian soil.

The population of Rus' adopted Christianity under pressure from the official authorities, but in the event of disasters, which were explained by the people as the anger of the gods for disrespecting them, they returned to paganism.

But over time, faith in the old gods is forgotten. There is a displacement of pagan characters into the category of “devilishness”, unclean forces.

Christian saints became substitutes for pagan deities in the popular consciousness. Gradually, the cycle of life of Russian people became closely connected with the circle of Christian Orthodox holidays - milestones in the life of Christ, the life of the Mother of God, the prophets, apostles, and the most important saints. These dates were associated with many signs, events, and rituals that internally regulated everyday life, work activity, and the agricultural cycle. Holidays determined the time of weddings, days of remembrance of the dead, days of fun and festivities.

In the ninth century, the Bible was translated into a language understandable to the inhabitants of ancient Rus'. It was translated by two monks and missionaries Cyril and Methodius. Your translation of the Bible into Slavic language they did it using the Slavic alphabet they developed. This alphabet, called “Cyrillic” after one of its creators, marked the beginning of Russian writing. However, a lot of time passed before the Bible was translated into Russian (attempts had been made since the 16th century).

Finally, in 1876, the complete Russian Bible came out of print for the first time. The publication of the Russian Bible was an important event in the history of Russian Christianity and Russian culture. They knew the Bible very well, many of its images, sayings and teachings were familiar to everyone, so they easily entered into everyday life.

It contains the richest moral and spiritual experience that has developed over many centuries. It is enough to recall the Ten Commandments, recorded first by Moses, and then, in their own way, but in the same sense, sounded in the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ and in his numerous parables and teachings.

Much of what seemed implausible, mythological, fictitious, fabulous in the Bible was confirmed as a result of archaeological, philological and other research.

The Bible as a religious and literary monument has been translated into 1800 languages of the world. Its influence on the development of world artistic culture is great. Everyone needs to know the basic Bible stories. cultured person: without it it is impossible to deeply comprehend the content of world-famous works.

And first of all, this applies to stories about the Divine child. The myth about the Divine Child was formed in ancient cultures along with the Myths about the Mother, about the Father, about the World Tree, about the creation of the world, about paradise lost, about the cleansing of the earth and sea, the theft of fire from the gods and others, no less significant. It is part of the system of mythological ideas of different peoples, manifesting itself in fairy tales, beliefs, maternal poetry and children's games. Plots and motifs are closely related to the mythology of the Divine Child children's folklore and children's literature.

The central character of children's literature is the child, and the child's “I” can be embodied both in the image of the immediate child and in the images of a giant, dwarf, monster or animals. The main function of the central character of children's literature is to do the extraordinary, i.e. be a miracle. From ancient literature, the image of a child is inseparable from the miracles that he performs.

The mythology of the Divine Child has a number of structure-forming motifs, and each of them is reflected in children's literature.

The birth of a child is often preceded by misfortune - married couple experiences his childlessness, like the parents of Samson according to the Old Testament or the parents of the Virgin Mary - Joachim and Anna - according to the Proto-Gospel of Jacob.

The divine child is clearly raised above the other heroes, the scale of his image is increased. In the story of Moses, this increase is emphasized as physical: Josephus writes about Moses that even at three years old he was surprisingly tall, so that when he passed, everyone involuntarily stopped to look at him.

Often the Divine Child has some physical difference that makes him beautiful or terrible. This is the Old Testament story about the miraculous birth of the savior of the people of Israel - Samson. Samson was the son of childless Manoah and his wife. His birth was announced by an angel who announced to Manoah’s wife “that she will conceive and bear a son, and no razor will touch him, because from the very womb this child will be a Nazarene of God, and he will begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines, the main enemies of those times.” Jews Manoah himself heard the same news from the angel rising in the flames of the altar. And indeed, a son was born to them and was named Samson. He grew up to be a strong man and a lover of life; his beauty was enhanced by his beautiful hair. One day he fell asleep, and the woman cunningly cut off strands of his hair: then his strength left him, and he could not fight and protect his people from enemies - until his hair grew back.

The childhood of Jesus Christ is depicted as the era of the first miraculous acts. There are many miracles of healing: with one touch little Jesus heals the foot of a young woodcutter cut with an ax. And there may be miracles of pranks, full of hidden meaning. On Saturday, when according to Jewish law all work is prohibited, Baby Jesus sculpts sparrows from clay by a stream, and when the scribe Anna complained to Father James and he went to stop Jesus’ studies, then by the will of Jesus, twelve sparrows scattered away.

So, the basis of children's literature is the image of a child performing a miracle. The plots of children's literature largely consist of “good deeds,” exploits, pranks and revelations of the child’s soul. Poet O.E. Grigoriev created a comic portrait of a little troublemaker - a miracle worker, wittingly or unwittingly likening him to a meaningful portrait of Jesus with sparrows:

Petrov led the war

With twos and ones

I tore out the sheets

Deftly folded

And they flew out the window like birds.

According to ancient book traditions, childhood is the time allotted for people to feel respect for the divine essence of the child. The child amazes adults not only with miracles, but also with wisdom. The child's mind is perceived as a miracle.

The ancient scribes emphasized that the boy Moses was “beautiful before God” and “taught in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” “he was strong in words and deeds.” The Gospel of Thomas tells how difficult it was for teachers to teach little Jesus to read and write: he understood the philosophy of letters more deeply than they did.

Respect for the wisdom and divinity of a child is associated not only with respect from adults, but also with their fear of them. In the twentieth century, this topic became more relevant than ever. World fame received novels about children - cruel monsters, for example, “Lord of the Flies” by W. Golding, “Children of the Corn” by S. King, etc.

In ancient texts, as in new ones, the child deity is depicted in a system of oppositions. The plots are based on conflicts: child and parents, child and government.

Along with the characters - children, as if hovering above ordinary mortals, from early times "undivine" children appear. One parable in Old Testament as if folded in a spiral as a lesson to little urchins.

The prophet Elisha was walking along the road, mischievous children surrounded him and began to mock his bald head: “Go, bald one! Go, bald man! Elisha looked at his little pursuers and cursed them in the name of the god Yahweh. And then two she-bears jumped out of the forest and tore to pieces forty-two children.

People have probably been telling scary cautionary tales for a long time. M.Yu. Lermontov created the image of a ridiculed prophet (the poem “Prophet”), Sasha Cherny reinterpreted the image of Elisha in one of his short stories for children. F.M. Dostoevsky included a plot about the persecution of a poor official by children in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. An echo of this plot in the tragedy of A.S. Pushkin's "Boris Godunov", when the holy fool Mikolka asks Tsar Boris to kill the boys who offended him. VC. Zheleznyakov in the story “Scarecrow” painted a picture of the persecution of the “wonderful” Lena Bessoltseva and her grandfather by cruel children (he continued this theme in the work “Scarecrow-2”).

The Old Testament story about the twins Esau and Jacob also tells about “undivine” children. He recreates the everyday situation when there is no equality between equals. One of the twins, Esau, will grow up to be a skilled trapper, a man of the fields, and Jacob will be a meek “man of tents.”

Similar “duets” appear in famous children’s books (Mark Twain, A. Gaidar, L. Panteleev, N. Nosov, etc.).

Mark Twain noted that biblical texts not only formed the reading circle for children, but played the role of real children's literature, because in them, in these texts, there are specific properties - freedom of fiction with complete seriousness, “realness” of the purpose of the story. For this ancient literature places the child at the center of the world, declaring him the main miracle of this world, the guarantee of its salvation.

If you choose one of the four New Testament gospels for children's reading or an adapted retelling, then most likely you should choose the Gospel of Luke: it is the most saturated with beautiful details, colored with fabulous fiction. The mystery of Christmas, especially beloved by children, is only there.

Studying long-vanished cultures, examining monuments of folk art that have come down to us, scientists noticed that all the peoples of the globe have stories about certain fantastic characters and all sorts of miracles. But since these stories were considered fiction, artistic fantasy, they began to be called mythology, and each individual such story was called a myth, which translated from Greek means nothing more than a word.

It has now been reliably established that a mythological stage existed in the cultural development of every people. After all, myths replaced literature and history, and also served as an example to the younger generation, and imitation of a certain mythology gave a person a sense of unity with other people.

It was the myths that told about gods and other divine heroes gave people models of behavior. Models that have stood the test of time have helped many nations survive and then become moral standards.

Philologists back in the 19th century began to compare the myths that peoples had different countries and came to the clear conclusion that their topics were not very diverse. For example, almost all peoples have mythical stories about the origin of the earth and sky, about cultural ancestors and about various natural disasters. This could mean that people who belonged to different cultures, thought about the world and about themselves very much in a similar way, which in turn pointed to common prerequisites for mutual understanding and communication.

General concepts about fairy tales

Scientists interpret the fairy tale in different ways. Some of them characterize fairy-tale fiction as out of touch with reality, others are trying to understand how fairy-tale fantasy refracts the attitude of storytellers to the reality that surrounds them. The fairy tale has not only many interpretations, but also many definitions. So a number of scientists involved in folklore called each fairy tale oral history. Others believed that the fairy tale contained an entertaining, but not devoid of fantasy, fiction. But one thing is certain: a fairy tale is a wonderful creation of art, since with unusual generosity the treasures of the colloquial speech of the common people are embodied in fairy tales.

Present in fairy tales boundless imagination and invention, which inspires confidence in victory over evil forces. Fairy tales do not know irreparable misfortunes and troubles. They advise not to put up with evil, but to fight it, condemn profit, self-interest and greed, teach goodness and justice. Fairy tales are filled with miracles, especially fairy tales.

Thus, fairy tales are oral artistic narratives of a prosaic nature with content that requires fantastic techniques when depicting reality.

Fantasy fairy tales

Fantasy fairy tales are created by the collective efforts of the people. His life is reflected in her, like in a mirror. It is thanks to fairy tales that the centuries-old history of the people is revealed.

Fairy-tale fiction has a real basis, since any change in the life of the people necessarily leads to a change in the fantastic images present in a particular fairy tale. Fairy-tale fiction, having arisen once, develops in connection with the existing ideas of the people and their concepts, then undergoing new processing, and changes over the centuries explain the features of this or that fiction, which is the basis of fairy tales.

Types of fairy tales

There are fairy tales about animals, fairy tales and short stories. Each of these varieties has not only its own characteristics, but also a number of very specific features, which distinguish each type of fairy tale from one another. These features were formed as a result of the creativity of the people, their artistic practice, developing over several centuries.

The meaning of fairy tales

Fairy tales have never been distinguished by unfounded fantasy. The reproduction of reality in fairy tales has always been combined with the thoughts of its authors. Therefore, today, in the age of technological progress, people still need a fairy tale. After all, the human soul, as in ancient times, is open to charms and the more stunning the technical discoveries, the stronger human feelings, which confirm people in the greatness of life and the infinity of its beauty.

Similarities between fairy tale and myth

So, what unites a fairy tale and a myth? Philological scientists, when comparing fairy tales and myths, came to the conclusion that both fairy tales and myths created by the people, both have some kind of plot with a fantastic slant and fictional characters. But that's probably where the similarities end.

The difference between a fairy tale and a myth

Along with the similarities, there are also differences between fairy tales and myths, which are as follows:

A fairy tale is fiction, and a myth is reality. In other words, myth animates everything and strives to find magic in every human practice.
A fairy tale tells about a story from the point of view of an individual or individuals, but a myth deals with events on a global scale. For example, about the origin of the earth and sky, about cultural ancestors and about various natural disasters.
A fairy tale teaches how to act in a given situation, and a myth tells about the structure of the whole world.
Only a fairy tale can be considered the art of literary expression. Myth does not relate entirely to art; it is interesting only in its transmission of reality.
A fairy tale, unlike myths, can have an authorship.

Editor's Choice

Why do you dream of a blooming apple tree: interpretation options according to dream books Seeing a blooming apple tree in a dream

An apple tree with apples is a predominantly positive symbol. It most often promises new plans, pleasant news, interesting...

Where does Nikita Mikhalkov live?

In 2017, Nikita Mikhalkov was recognized as the largest real estate owner among cultural representatives. He declared an apartment in...

Why do you dream about a ghost?

Why do you dream of a ghost at night? The dream book states: such a sign warns of the machinations of enemies, troubles, deterioration in well-being....

Nikita Mikhalkov built an estate for $15 million

Nikita Mikhalkov is a People's Artist, actor, director, producer and screenwriter. In recent years, he has been actively involved in entrepreneurship. Born in...

Why do you dream about a witch, dream book, interpretation of dreams online

Dream Interpretation by S. Karatov If a woman dreamed of a witch, then she had a strong and dangerous rival. If a man dreamed of a witch, then...

Planting something in a dream - what could it mean?

Green spaces in dreams are a wonderful symbol denoting a person’s spiritual world, the flourishing of his creative powers. The sign promises health,...