Features of the ballad genre and its development in European literature of the 18th–19th centuries. Features of the literary ballad genre
The lyric-epic genres, in particular the ballad, a genre directly related to the historical life of the people, underwent the same decisive restructuring as the lyrical genres.
The Romantics were deeply interested in folk culture and its national identity. Among the ballads, there were French folk ballads with a special stanza and rhyme system, with a dance rhythm, English Scottish and German folk historical songs. In Russian folklore, historical songs are closest to ballads, but they are devoid of fantasy and mystery.
The European folk ballad usually contains an epic and lyrical beginning. The plot of the ballad is based on a legend, an exceptional, terrible, extraordinary event, to which the characters and popular opinion express their emotional attitude.
Romantics immediately paid attention to the ballad genre. It was convenient to rely on the history that happened in the Middle Ages and reveal the psychological motives of the behavior of the characters, determined not only by the personal logic of the characters, but also by external laws independent of them. The ballad provided the poet with a wide opportunity to express the inner world of the individual. In addition, in the classicist genre hierarchy, the ballad was considered “medium” heat. And romanticism, like any artistic movement, sought to master not only small lyrical genres, but also medium-sized and monumental ones. The ballad was a genre that seemed specially prepared by ancient folk poetry for romanticism. With their adaptations of folk ballads, the romantics created a literary ballad with an obligatory fantastic or mythological plot, emphasizing the dominance of higher powers or Fate over man.
Zhukovsky has three types of ballads - “Russian” (he gives such a subtitle to some ballads; among them are “Lyudmila”, “Svetlana”, “Twelve Sleeping Maidens”; following Zhukovsky, other domestic authors gave their ballads the same subtitles), “antique” (“Achilles”, “Cassandra”, “The Cranes of Ibyk”, “The Complaints of Ceres”, “The Eleusinian Feast”, “The Triumph of the Winners”; an ancient, mythological plot - the acquisition of a literary ballad, since a folk ballad is based on a medieval legend) and “medieval” (“Smalholm Castle, or Midsummer’s Evening”, “The Ballad of the Old Lady...”, “Polycrates’ Ring”, “Knight Rollon”, etc.).
All names of ballads are conditional and are related to the plot that develops in the ballad. The subtitle “Russian ballad” also emphasized the reworking of a medieval ballad in the national spirit. In “Russian ballads” Zhukovsky resurrects an old motif of folk historical and lyrical songs: a girl is waiting for a dear friend from the war. The plot of the separation of lovers is extremely important because folk morality lives in it, often taking a naive religious form. All ballads are united by a humane worldview, common to the genre as a whole.
In a literary ballad, any historical or legendary legend can become a plot, including a modern one (for example, “Night View” by Zhukovsky and “Airship” by Lermontov). The historical time and historical location in the ballad are conventional. Such events that occurred, for example, in the Middle Ages, could be timed in a literary ballad and attributed to antiquity, to Greece or Rome, to modern Russia and, in general, to a fictitious, unprecedented country. In fact, all action takes place outside of history and outside of a specific space. The time and space of a ballad is eternity, living according to a constant schedule: morning, day, evening, night. Everything temporary, historically transient, recedes into the background. In the same way, the space of a ballad is the whole world, the whole universe, which also has its own permanent places - mountains, hills, rivers, plains, sky, forests. They are again not tied to any one country. The action of the ballad unfolds in full view of the entire universe, both in time and space. The man in the ballad is brought face to face with eternity, with all fate. In such a comparison, the main role is played not by his social or material position, whether he is noble or ignorant, rich or poor, but by his fundamental properties and universal feelings. These include experiences of love, death, fear, hope, death, salvation. All people are dissatisfied, and from time to time a murmur is heard from their lips, everyone hopes for something, fears something, experiences fear from time to time, and everyone knows that sooner or later they will die. In most of Zhukovsky's ballads, the hero, heroine, or both characters are dissatisfied with fate and enter into an argument with it. The man in the ballad rejects his fate, and fate, becoming even more ferocious, overtakes him and appears in an even more terrible form.
Zhukovsky started with Russian ballads. They were dominated by a tone of melancholic love and enjoyment of sadness, which later spread to ancient and medieval ballads. Gradually, the theme of love gave way to moral, civil, moral motives, presented, however, in a lyrical vein. Then, in the second half of the 1830s, Zhukovsky’s ballad creativity dried up, and the poet moved on to large epic forms - poems, stories, fairy tales.
If you like stories about mysterious events, about the destinies of fearless heroes, the protected world of spirits, if you are able to appreciate noble knightly feelings, female devotion, then, of course, you will love literary ballads.
In literature classes this school year we were introduced to several ballads. I was amazed by this genre.
These poems, which combine elements of lyric, epic and drama, are a kind of “universal” poetry, according to the famous 19th century poet Wordsworth.
The poet “choosing events and situations from the very everyday life of people, tries to describe them, if possible, in the language in which these people actually speak; but at the same time, with the help of imagination, give it color, thanks to which ordinary things appear in an unusual light. "
The topic “Features of the literary ballad genre” seemed interesting to me, I continue to work on it for the second year.
The topic is undoubtedly relevant, as it allows you to show independence and develop the abilities of a critic.
2. Literary ballad: the emergence of the genre and its features.
The term “ballad” itself comes from a Provençal word meaning “mysterious song”; ballads arose during the harsh times of the Middle Ages. They were created by folk storytellers, transmitted orally, and in the process of oral transmission were greatly modified, becoming the fruit of collective creativity. The plot of the ballads were Christian legends, chivalric romances, ancient myths, works of ancient authors in medieval retelling, the so-called “eternal” or “wandering” plots.
The plot of the ballad is often structured as a revelation, the recognition of a certain secret that keeps the listener in suspense, makes him worry, worry about the hero. Sometimes the plot breaks down and is essentially replaced by dialogue. It is the plot that becomes the feature that distinguishes the ballad from other lyrical genres and begins its rapprochement with the epic. It is in this sense that it is customary to talk about the ballad as a lyrical genre of poetry.
In ballads there is no boundary between the world of people and nature. A person can turn into a bird, a tree, a flower. Nature enters into dialogue with the characters. This reflects the ancient idea of the unity of man with nature, the ability of people to turn into animals and plants and vice versa.
The literary ballad owes its birth to the German poet Gottfried August Burger. The literary ballad was very similar to the folk ballad, since the first literary ballads were created as an imitation of folk ballads. Thus, at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the folk ballad was replaced by a literary ballad, that is, an author's ballad.
The first literary ballads arose on the basis of stylization, and therefore very often they are difficult to distinguish from genuine folk ballads. Let's turn to table No. 1.
A literary ballad is a lyric-epic genre, which is based on a plot narrative with dialogue included in it. Like the folk ballad, its literary sister often opens with a landscape opening and closes with a landscape ending. But the main thing in a literary ballad is the author’s voice, his emotional lyrical assessment of the events described.
And now we can note the features of the difference between a literary ballad and a folk ballad. Already in the first literary ballads, the author’s lyrical position is manifested more clearly than in folk works.
The reason for this is clear - folklore is oriented towards a national ideal, and a literary ballad contains the author’s personal attitude towards the national ideal itself.
At first, the creators of literary ballads tried not to go beyond the themes and motifs of folk sources, but then they more and more often began to turn to their favorite genre, filling the traditional form with new content. Fairy-tale ballads, satirical, philosophical, fantastic, historical, heroic ballads began to appear, along with family, “scary”, etc. A broader theme distinguished the literary ballad from the folk ballad.
There were also changes in the form of the literary ballad. This primarily concerned the use of dialogue. A literary ballad much more often resorts to hidden dialogue, when one of the interlocutors is either silent or takes part in the conversation in short remarks.
3. Literary ballads of V. A. Zhukovsky and M. Yu. Lermontov.
The Russian reader discovered the wide poetic possibilities of the Russian ballad thanks to the literary activity of V. A. Zhukovsky, who worked at the beginning of the 19th century. It was the ballad that became the main genre in his poetry, and it was it that brought him literary fame.
Zhukovsky's ballads were usually based on Western European sources. But the ballads of V. A. Zhukovsky are also a major phenomenon of Russian national poetry. The fact is that, translating English and German literary ballads, he used artistic techniques and images of Russian folklore and Russian poetry. Sometimes the poet went very far from the original source, creating an independent literary work.
For example, an excellent translation of the literary ballad of the great German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe “The King of the Elves”, written on the basis of German folklore, conveys the internal tension of a fantastic ballad and the lyrical attitude of the author (J.V. Goethe) to the events described. At the same time, Zhukovsky in his ballad “The Forest Tsar” describes a forest that is surprisingly similar to Russian, and if you don’t know that this is a translation, you can easily mistake this work for being created in the Russian tradition. “The Forest King” is a ballad about fate, in which the eternal dispute between life and death, hope and despair, hidden by an ominous plot, takes place. The author uses various artistic techniques.
Let's turn to table No. 2.
1. In the center is not an event, not an episode, but a human personality acting against one or another background - this is a colorful landscape of the forest kingdom and the oppressive reality of reality.
2. Division into two worlds: earthly and fantastic.
3. The author uses the image of the narrator to convey the atmosphere of what is happening, the tonality of what is being depicted: a lyrically terrible tonality at the beginning with an increasing feeling of anxiety and a hopelessly tragic one at the end.
4. Images of the real world and an alien from the “other” world.
5. The characteristic rhythm of the ballad is the stomping of a horse, associated with a chase.
6. Use of epithets.
There are many bright colors and expressive details in Zhukovsky’s ballads. The words of A. S. Pushkin about Zhukovsky are applicable to them: “No one has had or will have a syllable equal in its power and diversity to his syllable.”
“God's Judgment on the Bishop” is a translation of the work of the English romantic poet Robert Southey, a contemporary of V. A. Zhukovsky. “God's Judgment on the Bishop” - written in March 1831. Published for the first time in the publication “Ballads and Tales” in 1831. in two parts. A translation of the ballad of the same name by R. Southey, based on medieval legends about the stingy Bishop Gatton of Metz. As legend has it, during the famine of 914, Gatton insidiously invited the starving people to a “feast” and burned them in the barn; For this he was eaten by mice.
This time the Russian poet very closely follows the original “terrible” ballad, describing the cruelty of a foreign bishop and his punishment.
1. You will not find such a beginning in a folk ballad: not only a certain lyrical mood is created here, but through the description of a natural disaster, a picture of the people's grief is briefly and vividly created.
2. There is no dialogue in R. Southey's ballad. The poet introduces only lines into the narrative, but the characters do not address each other. The people are surprised by Gatton's generosity, but the bishop does not hear people's exclamations. Gatton talks to himself about his atrocities, but only God can know his thoughts.
3. This ballad of retribution and redemption. In it, the Middle Ages appear as a world of opposition between earthly and heavenly forces.
The tragic tone remains unchanged in this ballad; only the images and the narrator’s assessment of their situation change.
4. The ballad is built on an antithesis:
“There was a famine, the people were dying.
But the bishop, by the grace of heaven,
Huge barns are full of bread"
The general misfortune does not touch the bishop, but in the end the bishop “calls on God in a wild frenzy,” “the criminal howls.”
5. In order to evoke sympathy from the reader, the author uses unity of command.
“Both summer and autumn were rainy;
Pastures and fields were drowned"
Zhukovsky always chose works for translation that were internally consonant with him. Good and evil appear in sharp opposition in all ballads. Their source is always the human heart and the otherworldly mysterious forces that control it.
“Smalholm Castle, or Midsummer’s Eve” - translation of Walter Scott’s ballad “St. John’s Eve.” The castle was located in the south of Scotland. Belongs to one of Walter Scott's relatives. The poem was written in July 1822. This ballad has a long history of censorship. Zhukovsky was accused of “blasphemously combining the love theme with the theme of Midsummer’s Eve. Midsummer's Eve is the eve of the national holiday of Kupala, reinterpreted by the church as a celebration of the birth of John the Baptist. Censorship demanded a radical reworking of the ending. Zhukovsky filed a complaint with the censorship committee, the chief prosecutor of the synod and the Ministry of Public Education, Prince A. N. Golitsyn. They managed to publish the ballad by changing “Midsummer’s Day” to “Duncan’s Day.”
Of the ballads I have read, I would like to especially highlight the ballads of M. Yu. Lermontov.
The ballad “The Glove” is a translation of a knightly ballad by the German writer Friedrich Schiller. Lermontov, the translator, relies on Zhukovsky’s experience, so he strives to convey not so much the form of the work as his emotional attitude towards the treacherous woman who, for the sake of fun, subjects her knight to a mortal test.
1. The landscape opening depicts a crowd in a circus, gathered in anticipation of a spectacle, dangerous fun - a fight between a tiger and a lion.
2. There is a dialogue in the ballad: there is Cunegonde’s appeal to the knight, and there is also his response to the lady. But the dialogue is broken: between two replicas the most important event occurs.
3. A tragic tone gives way to general joy.
4. An important element of the composition is its brevity: it is like a spring compressed between the beginning and the end.
5. In the field of artistic speech, the generosity of metaphors is noted: “The choir of beautiful ladies shone,” “but the slave grumbles and gets angry in vain before his master,” “cruel annoyance blazing in the fire”
The heroic ballad, glorifying feat and intransigence towards enemies, was widespread in Russia.
One of the best patriotic poems created by Russian poets is M. Yu. Lermontov’s ballad “Borodino”.
1. 1. The entire ballad is built on an extensive dialogue. Here the element of the landscape opening (“Moscow, burned by fire”) is included in the question of the young soldier with whom the ballad begins. Then follows the answer - the story of a participant in the Battle of Borodino, in which replicas of the participants in the battle are heard. It is these remarks, as well as the speech of the narrator himself, that allow the poet to convey a truly popular attitude towards the Motherland and its enemies.
2. This ballad is characterized by polyphony - many voices sound. For the first time in Russian poetry, true images of Russian soldiers, heroes of the famous battle appeared. The soldier begins the story of the day of the Battle of Borodino with a call, which is addressed by the commander-colonel, his eyes sparkling. This is the speech of an officer, a nobleman. He easily calls old, honored soldiers “guys,” but is ready to go into battle together and die like their “brother.”
3. The ballad depicts combat beautifully. Lermontov did everything so that the reader could see the battle with his own eyes.
The poet gave a great picture of the Borodino battle using sound writing:
“The damask steel sounded, the buckshot screeched”
“I prevented the cannonballs from flying
Mountain of bloody bodies"
Belinsky extremely highly appreciated the language and style of this poem. He wrote: “In every word one hears the language of a soldier who, without ceasing to be rudely simple-minded, is strong and full of poetry!”
In the 20th century, the ballad genre was in demand by many poets. Their childhood and youth passed through a difficult time of great historical upheaval: revolution, civil war, and the Great Patriotic War brought with them blood, death, suffering, and devastation. Overcoming hardships, people remade their lives anew, dreaming of a happy, fair future. This time, swift as the wind, was difficult and cruel, but it promised to make the wildest dreams come true. You will not find fantastic, family or “scary” ballads from the poets of this time; in their time, heroic, philosophical, historical, satirical, and social ballads were in demand.
Even if the work tells about an event from ancient times, it is experienced as today’s in D. Kedrin’s ballad “Architects”.
K. Simonov’s ballad “The Old Song of a Soldier” (“How a Soldier Served”) is tragic.
“The Ballad of Poaching” by E. Yevtushenko is preceded by a newspaper excerpt, which gives the work a journalistic feel. Its text includes a monologue of salmon appealing to human reason.
Noble solemnity and severity distinguish V. Vysotsky’s “Ballad of Struggle”; the lines come to mind:
If, cutting the path with my father's sword,
You wrapped salty tears around your mustache,
If in a hot battle you experienced what it cost, -
This means you read the right books as a child!
The ballad "Architects" by D. Kedrin is a source of pride for Russian poetry in the first half of the 20th century, written in 1938.
“The Architects” showed Kedrin’s understanding of Russian history, admiration for the talent of the Russian people, and faith in the all-conquering power of beauty and art.
At the center of the poem is the story of the creation of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Red Square in Moscow, known as St. Basil's Cathedral.
The temple was built in 1555 - 1561 in honor of the victory over the Kazan Khanate. The skillful architects Postnik and Barma conceived and implemented an unprecedented thing: they united eight churches into one whole - according to the number of victories won near Kazan. They are grouped around the central ninth tent camp.
There is a legend about the blinding of the builders of St. Basil's Cathedral. The crime was allegedly committed at the behest of Tsar Ivan IV, who did not want a cathedral like this to appear anywhere. There is no documentary evidence of the legend. But the important thing is that the legend arose, that it was passed down from generation to generation, the very fact of its existence indicating that in the popular consciousness such cruelty of the autocrat was possible. Kedrin gave the topic a general meaning.
1. This poem talks about an important historical event. There is a plot, and we see here a typical technique of a ballad - “repetition with increasing intensity.” The king twice addresses the architects: “And the benefactor asked.” This technique enhances the speed of action and thickens the tension.
2. Dialogue is used, which drives the plot in ballads. The characters' characters are depicted in bold relief.
3. The composition is based on an antithesis. The poem is clearly divided into 2 parts, which are opposed to each other.
4. The story is told as if from the perspective of a chronicler. And the chronicle style requires dispassion and objectivity in depicting events.
5. There are very few epithets at the beginning of the text. Kedrin is stingy with paints; he is more concerned about the tragic nature of the fate of the masters. Speaking about the talent of Russian people, the poet emphasizes their moral health and independence with epithets:
And two people came to him
Unknown Vladimir architects,
Two Russian builders
When the “chronicler” comes to describe the “terrible royal mercy,” his voice suddenly trembles:
Falcon eyes
Stab them with an iron awl
So that the white light
They couldn't see.
They were branded with a brand,
They were flogged with batogs, sick ones,
And they threw them
To the frozen bosom of the earth.
The form of folk crying is emphasized here by folklore “permanent” epithets.
The poem contains several comparisons emphasizing the beauty and purity of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
and, marveling, as if at a fairy tale,
I looked at that beauty.
That church was
Like a bride!
It’s like I was dreaming!
There is only one metaphor here (they are inappropriate in the chronicle):
And at the feet of the building
The shopping area was buzzing
6. The rhythm is suggested by the phrase “the chronicler’s tale says”: the measured, impressive voice of history itself. But the rhythm in the poem changes: the stanzas associated with the presence of the sovereign sound solemn and majestic. When we talk about the unfortunate blinded architects, emotional tension dictates a sharp change in intonation and rhythm: instead of solemnity, there is the sound of one piercingly sharp note in the whole line:
And in the gluttonous row,
Where the tavern barrage sang,
Where it smelled of fusel,
Where it was steamy dark,
Where the clerks shouted:
“The sovereign's word and deed!”
Master for Christ's sake
They asked for bread and wine.
The tension of the rhythm is also created by anaphora (where, where, where), increasing tension.
7. Archaisms and historicisms are included in the work organically; they are always understandable in context.
Tat - thief, kruzhalo - tavern, torovato - generously, pravezh - punishment, lepota - beauty, zelo - very, velmi - very, smerd - peasant, zane - because
Kedrin ends with the expression “popular opinion”:
And the forbidden song
About the terrible royal mercy
Sang in secret places
Across wide Rus', guslars.
August 29, 1926 "Komsomolskaya Pravda" published "Grenada" - and Svetlov overnight became the most popular Soviet poet. V. Mayakovsky, having read "Grenada", learned it by heart and recited it at his creative evenings. For some reason, everyone thinks that this ballad is about the Spanish Civil War. In fact, the war began a few years after the poem appeared. The lyrical hero simply dreams of starting a world fire.
The poem “Grenada” “grew” from one word. What fascinated the poet with this word? Why did it become the song of a Ukrainian lad, a soldier - a cavalryman who died in the civil war? Of course, Mikhail Svetlov first of all liked the sound of the word Grenada. He has so much energy, and there is no aggression or rudeness at all; in its sound there is simultaneously strength, tenderness, clarity of reality, fragility of dreams, swiftness of impulse, and calmness of the end of the path. In the mouth of a young fighter, this beautiful name becomes a sound symbol of his dream of a new life for everyone.
1. The landscape opening depicts the wide expanse of the Ukrainian steppes. The ballad tells about the fate and heroic death of a young fighter.
3. M. Svetlov sharpens the rhythm of the ballad, breaking the quatrains into eight lines. In this rhythm one can clearly hear the rhythm of the movement of the equestrian detachment:
He sang, looking around
Native lands:
"Grenada, Grenada,
Grenada is mine!
The word Grenada itself reproduces the meter of a ballad: it has three syllables and the stress falls on the second syllable.
4. The tragic tonality is replaced by the ringing melody of the resurrection of a dream.
Over the corpse
The moon has bowed
Only the sky is quiet
Slipped down after a while
On the velvet of sunset
A teardrop of rain
Personification and metaphor indicate that no matter how great the event, its meaning cannot ease the pain of loss.
Vysotsky wrote 6 ballads - “The Ballad of Time” (“The castle is torn down by time”), “The Ballad of Hatred”, “The Ballad of Free Shooters”, “The Ballad of Love” (“When the Water of the Flood”), “The Ballad of Two Dead swans”, “Ballad of Struggle” (“Among the melting candles and evening prayers”) for Sergei Tarasov’s film “Robin Hood’s Arrows”.
“I wanted to write several songs for the youth who will watch this picture. And I wrote ballads about struggle, about love, about hatred - in total six rather serious ballads, not at all similar to what I did before,” the author writes.
Finally, he expressed himself in direct speech - as they say, without posture or mask. Only “Song of Free Shooters” is conventional, role-playing, or something. And the rest - without game dichotomy, without hints and subtexts. There is some kind of anti-irony here: brave directness, like a blow of a sword, destroys ironic grins, cuts off the head of any cynicism
But ballads were banned and Tarasov later used Vysotsky’s recordings in the film “The Ballad of the Valiant Knight Ivanhoe.”
1. The beginning of “The Ballad of Time” is interesting: not only a certain lyrical mood is created here, but through the description of an ancient castle, “hidden by time and wrapped in a delicate blanket of green shoots,” a picture of the past with campaigns, battles and victories is created.
2. In V. Vysotsky’s ballad the dialogue is hidden. The form of dramatic monologue is used. The poet introduces only his own remarks into the narrative - addresses to descendants, but the characters do not address each other; tournaments, sieges, and battles take place before us as if on a screen.
3. This ballad is of eternal values. In it, the Middle Ages appear as a world built on an antithesis:
Enemies fell into the mud, screaming for mercy
But not all, remaining alive,
They kept their hearts in kindness,
Protecting your good name
From the deliberate lies of a scoundrel
4. The solemn tonality remains unchanged in this ballad. The author uses unity of command:
And the price is the price, and the wines are the wines,
And it's always good if honor is saved
“These six ballads set out the poet’s life position. It's deeper than meets the eye. This is like his insight, his testament,” wrote one of V. Vysotsky’s friends.
“Ballad” is a word that came into the Russian lexicon from the Italian language. It is translated as “dance”, from the word “ballare”. Thus, a ballad is a dance song. Such works were written in poetic form, and there were many couplets. It is worth noting that they were performed only to some kind of musical accompaniment. But over time they stopped dancing to ballads. Then they completely transformed. Ballad poems began to have an epic and very serious meaning.
Foundation of the genre
In literature? Firstly, this is one of the most important poetic genres of romanticism and sentimentalism. The world that poets painted in their ballads is mysterious and mysterious. It features extraordinary heroes with definite and clearly defined characters.
It is impossible not to mention such a person as Robert Burns, who became the founder of this genre. At the center of these works there was always a person, but the poets who worked in the 19th century, who chose this genre, knew that human forces cannot always provide the opportunity to answer every question and become the rightful master of their own destiny. That is why a ballad is often a narrative poem that talks about rock. Similar works include “The Forest King”. It was written by the poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
Centuries-old traditions
It is worth noting that the ballad is a genre that has undergone changes and continues to endure them. In the Middle Ages, these works became songs with everyday themes. They talked about the raids of robbers, the courageous exploits of knights, historical warriors, as well as any other events that affected people's lives. It should be noted that conflict has always been at the heart of any ballad. It could have unfolded between anyone - children and parents, a young man and a girl, due to the invasion of enemies or But the fact remains - there was a conflict. And there was one more moment. Then the emotional impact of the data was based on the fact that the dramatic conflict between death and life helped to begin to appreciate the meaning of essence and being.
Disappearance of a literary genre
How does the ballad develop further? This is an interesting story, because in the 17th and 18th centuries it ceases to exist as a character. During this period, plays of a mythological nature or those that told about the heroes of ancient history were staged on theater stages. And all this was very far from the life of the people. And a little earlier it was said that the center of the ballad is the people.
But in the next century, in the 19th century, the ballad again appeared in literary as well as musical art. Now it has turned into a poetic genre, receiving a completely different sound in the works of such authors as Lermontov, Pushkin, Heine, Goethe and Mickiewicz. It appeared in Russian literature at the very beginning of the 19th century, when in Europe it returned to its existence again. In Russia at that time, the traditions of pseudo-classicism were quickly falling due to romantic German poetry. The first Russian ballad was a work called “Gromval” (author - G.P. Kamenev). But the main representative of this literary genre is V.A. Zhukovsky. He was even given the appropriate nickname - “balladeer”.
Ballad in England and Germany
It should be noted that the German and English ballads were extremely gloomy. Previously, people assumed that these poems were brought by Norman conquerors. English nature inspired a mood that was reflected in the depiction of terrible storms and bloody battles. And bards sang in ballads about Odin’s feasts and battles.
It is worth mentioning that in Germany such a word as ballad is used as a term denoting poems that are written in the character of Scottish and English old songs. The action in them, as a rule, develops very episodicly. In this country, the ballad was especially popular at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the next, when romanticism flourished and works of such great authors as Goethe, Heine, Burger, and Uhland appeared.
Ballad as a literary genre
The characteristics of the ballad genre are very different from those inherent in works written in another form. So, there must be a plot with a plot, climax and denouement. Much attention is paid to the feelings of the characters and the emotions of the author himself. The works combine the fantastic with the real. There is an unusual (romantic) landscape. The entire ballad is necessarily filled with mystery and intrigue - this is one of the key features. Sometimes the plot was replaced by dialogue. And, of course, the works of this genre combined the epic and lyrical principles. In addition, the authors who wrote ballads knew how to compose the work as succinctly as possible, which did not in the least affect the meaning.
Features of the ballad genre in the works of V. A. Zhukovsky
V. A. Zhukovsky introduced the Russian reader to one of the most beloved genres of Western European romantics - the ballad. And although the ballad genre appeared in Russian literature long before Zhukovsky, it was he who gave it poetic charm and made it popular. Moreover, he merged the poetics of the ballad genre with the aesthetics of romanticism, and as a result, the ballad genre turned into the most characteristic sign of romanticism.
What is a ballad? And why exactly did this genre attract Zhukovsky? A ballad is a short poetic story of a predominantly heroic-historical or fantastic nature. The presentation of a pronounced plot in the ballad is lyrically colored. Zhukovsky wrote 39 ballads, of which only five are original, the rest are translations and adaptations.
Beginning of the 19th century. Zhukovsky is disappointed in life, his soul suffers from unfulfilled happiness with his beloved girl, and from an early age he constantly feels the bitterness of social inequality. He constantly faces social issues. This is the Decembrist movement, which he is forced to perceive from two points of view: both as a friend of many Decembrists and people from their circle, and as a courtier close to the royal family. All this prompted Zhukovsky to take the path of ethical solutions to pressing problems. From the very beginning of his ballad work, Zhukovsky fought for a morally pure personality.
The main theme of his ballads is crime and punishment, good and evil. The constant hero of ballads is a strong personality who has thrown off moral restrictions and fulfills his personal will aimed at achieving a purely selfish goal. Let us remember the ballad “Warwick” - the original translation of the ballad of the same name by Sau-ti. Warwick seized the throne, killing his nephew, the rightful heir to the throne. And all because Warwick wants to reign.
According to Zhukovsky, crime is caused by individualistic passions: ambition, greed, jealousy, selfish self-affirmation. The man failed to control himself, succumbed to passions, and his moral consciousness turned out to be weakened. Under the influence of passions, a person forgets his moral duty. But the main thing in ballads is not the act of crime, but its consequences - the punishment of a person. The criminal in Zhukovsky’s ballads is, as a rule, not punished by people. Punishment comes from a person's conscience. Thus, in the ballad “Castle Smalholm,” no one punished the murderer of the baron and his wife; they voluntarily go to monasteries because their conscience torments them. But monastic life does not bring them moral relief and consolation: the wife is sad, the world is not dear to her, and the baron “is shy of people and is silent.” By committing a crime, they deprive themselves of the happiness and joys of life.
But even when a criminal’s conscience does not awaken, punishment still comes to him. According to Zhukovsky, it comes as if from the very depths of life. The conscience is silent in the greedy Bishop Gatton, who burned a barn with hungry poor people and thought with cynical satisfaction that he had rid the hungry region of greedy mice (the ballad “God’s Judgment on the Bishop”).
“Nature in Zhukovsky’s ballads is fair, and she herself takes on the function of revenge - for a crime: the Avon River, in which the little heir to the throne was drowned, overflowed its banks, overflowed, and the criminal Warwick drowned in the furious waves. The mice began a war against Bishop Gatton and killed him.
In the ballad world, nature does not want to absorb evil into itself, to preserve it, it destroys it, takes it away forever from the world of existence. The ballad world of Zhukovsky asserts: in life there is often a duel between good and evil. In the end, goodness, a high moral principle, always wins), Zhukovsky’s JjbcV pp is fair retribution. The poet firmly believes that a vicious act will definitely be punished. And the main thing in Zhukovsky’s ballads is the triumph of the moral law.
A special place among Zhukovsky’s works is occupied by ballads dedicated to love: “Lyudmila”, “Svetlana”, “Eolian Harp” and others. The main thing here for the poet is to calm down and guide a person in love who has experienced a tragedy in love on the true path. Zhukovsky here also demands the curbing of selfish desires and passions.
This unfortunate Lyudmila is cruelly condemned because she indulges in passion, the desire to be happy at all costs with her beloved. The passion of love and the bitterness of losing her fiancé blind her so much that she forgets about her moral duties towards other people. Zhukovsky, using romantic means, seeks to prove how unreasonable and even dangerous for a person this selfish desire for his own happiness in spite of everything:
Coffin, open;
live fully;
Twice to the heart
not to love.
This is how Lyudmila, distraught with grief, exclaims. The coffin opens and the dead man takes Lyudmila into his arms. The heroine’s horror is terrible: her eyes turn to stone, her eyes fade, her blood runs cold. And it is no longer possible to regain the life that she so unreasonably rejected. But Zhukovsky’s terrible ballad is life-loving. The poet gives preference to real life, despite the fact that it sends a person severe trials.
The ballad "Svetlana" is close in plot to "Lyudmila", but also deeply different. This ballad is a free arrangement of the ballad of the German poet G. A. Burger “Lenora”. It tells how a girl wonders about her groom: he has gone far away and has not sent news for a long time. And suddenly he appears in a charming dream inspired by fortune telling. The darling calls the bride to get married, they gallop through the blizzard on mad horses. But the groom suddenly turns into a dead man and almost drags the bride to the grave. However, everything ends well: awakening occurs, the groom appears in reality, alive, and the desired, joyful wedding takes place. Zhukovsky goes far from the original, introducing national Russian flavor into the ballad: he includes a description of fortune-telling in the “Epiphany evening”, signs and customs:
Once on Epiphany evening
The girls wondered:
A shoe behind the gate.
They took it off their feet and threw it,
Snow was shoveled under the window
Listened, fed
Counting chicken grains,
The ardent wax was drowned,
In a bowl of clean water
They laid a gold ring,
Emerald earrings,
White boards spread out
And over the bowl they sang in harmony
The songs are amazing.
The poet reproduces an attractive and graceful girl’s world, in which a shoe, emerald earrings, and a gold ring are significant.
The ballad not only told about an episode from the life of a young creature, but presented her inner world. The whole ballad is full of life, movement, both internal and external, some kind of girlish bustle. Svetlana's spiritual world is also full of movement. She either refuses the baptismal games, or agrees to join the fortune-tellers; she is both afraid and hopes to receive the desired news, and in a dream she is overcome by the same feelings: fear, hope, anxiety, trust... in the groom. Her feelings are extremely intense, her sensations are heightened, her heart responds to everything. The ballad is written in a rapid rhythm: the ballad horses are racing, the girl and her groom are rushing towards them, and her heart is breaking.
The color scheme in the ballad “Svetlana” is also interesting. The entire text is permeated with white color: it is, first of all, snow, the image of which appears immediately, from the first lines, the snow that Svetlana dreams about, the blizzard over the sleigh, the blizzard all around. Next is a white scarf used during fortune telling, a table covered with a white tablecloth, a snow-white dove and even a snow sheet with which the dead man is covered. The color white is associated with the name of the heroine: Svetlana, light, and: to the like - white light. Zhukovsky uses white here, undoubtedly a symbol of purity and innocence.
The second contrasting color in the ballad is not black, but rather dark: dark in the mirror, dark is the distance of the road along which the horses are racing. The black color of the terrible ballad night, the night of crimes and punishments, is softened and brightened in this ballad.
Thus, white snow, dark night and bright points of candlelight or eyes - this is a kind of romantic background in the ballad “Svetlana”.
And yet the charm of the ballad is in the image of the young lover Svetlana. Her fears were dispelled; she was not guilty of anything. But the poet, true to his ethical principles, warned the young creature about the vice of the sagas of prayer. Faith in providence turns into faith in life:
Smile, my beauty,
To my ballad
There are great miracles in it,
Very little stock.
Here are my sense of ballads:
“Our best friend in this life is
The blessing of the creator of the backwater:
Here misfortune is a false dream;
Happiness is awakening.”
So, using the example of the best and main ballads of V. A. Zhukovsky, we tried to analyze the basic principles of the ballad genre. It must be said that, after Zhukovsky, Russian writers actively turned to this genre: this is A. S. Pushkin’s “Song of the Prophetic Oleg” (1822), and M. Yu. Lermontov “Airship” (1828), “Mermaid” (1836), and A. Tolstoy “Vasily Shibanem” (1840).
Over time, the genre became overgrown with cliches, which gave rise to numerous parodies: “The German Ballad” by Kozma Prutkov (1854) is a parody of Schiller’s ballad in Zhukovsky’s translation “The Knight of Togenvurg.” In 1886, several parodies and ballads were written by Vl. Soloviev: “Vision”, “Mysterious Sexton”.
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Ballad. History of the genre. “The poet has a legal right to everything created by his ancestors and contemporaries.” Goethe
What is a ballad? This is a literary work, written in the form of poetry or prose, which always has a clearly defined plot. Initially, the ballad arose as a lyrical round dance song with an obligatory refrain. But by the XIV - XV centuries. it, having lost its musical elements, becomes a narrative poem with dramatic content, mainly on historical themes. Interest in folk ballads in the era of pre-romanticism and romanticism gave rise to the genre of literary ballads. This is explained by the fact that the desire of the romantics to create “universal poetry” was combined with the primordial inclination of the ballad to synthesize epic, lyrical and dramatic elements. Ballad (from Provence ballade “to dance”) is a literary genre born in the Middle Ages. Thus, medieval European ballads reveal a connection with spring round dance songs of love. The word balada means "dance song". From the very beginning, music, singing and dance appeared in the ballad as independent arts, giving this type of ballad a special artistic completeness. At the same time, among many peoples of Europe, the ballad already in the early stages lost connections with dance or did not even have them in the first place.
The ballad genre has an interesting fate. It has existed for eight centuries, gradually changing. "Everything is flowering! Spring is all around!..” (unknown author) Everything is blooming! Spring is around! - Eya - The Queen is in love. - Eya - And, depriving the jealous man of sleep, - Eya - She came here to us, shining like April itself. And we give the order to the jealous: Get away from us, get away from us! We started a playful dance. She gave the letter, - Eya - To be drawn into the circle, - Eya - The whole country danced - Eya - To the border, where the sea wave hits the shore. And we give the order to the jealous: Get away from us, get away from us! We started a playful dance! In the 12th century, the ballad was associated with spring rituals - with the election of the most beautiful of the girls as the “Queen of Spring” and with dancing around the May (April in Provence) tree. Queen - spring. She comes with April. The jealous king is winter.
The ballad, as a literary genre, has the following features: -The presence of a composition: introduction, main part, climax, denouement. -Presence of a storyline. -The author’s attitude towards the characters is conveyed. -Showing the emotions and feelings of the characters. -Harmonious combination of real and fantastic plot points. -Description of landscapes. -The presence of secrets, riddles in the plot. -Presence of character dialogues. -Harmonious combination of lyrics and epic.
At the very end of the Middle Ages, in the 15th century, one of the most famous poets in Europe, François Villon (1431 - after 1463), writes “The Ballad of a Poetry Competition in Blois.” I’m dying of thirst over a stream. I laugh through my tears and work hard while playing. Wherever I go, my home is everywhere, a foreign land is my native country. I know everything, I know nothing. Of all the people, I understand best the one who calls the swan a raven. I doubt the obvious, I believe in a miracle. Naked like a worm, more magnificent than all the masters, I am accepted by everyone, expelled from everywhere. I am stingy and wasteful in everything. I wait and expect nothing. I am poor, and I boast of my goods. The frost is crackling - I see the roses of May. The valley of tears is more joyful to me than paradise. They light a fire and it makes me tremble. Only ice will warm my heart. I’ll remember a joke and suddenly forget it, And for me contempt is an honor. I am accepted by everyone, expelled from everywhere. I don’t see who is wandering under the window, But I can clearly distinguish the stars in the sky. I am alert at night and fall asleep during the day. I walk on the earth with caution, I trust not the milestones, but the fog. The deaf will hear and understand me, And for me wormwood is bitterer than honey. But how to understand where the truth is and where the whim is? And how many truths? I’ve lost count of them, I’m accepted by everyone, expelled from everywhere. I don’t know what’s longer – an hour or a year. Are they wading a stream or a sea? I will leave heaven, I will be in hell. Despair gives me faith. I am accepted by everyone, expelled from everywhere. (Translated by I. Ehrenburg) By the time of François Villon, the ballad had already ceased to be a ritual song and acquired a complex lyrical form, reflecting a very difficult state of mind. It consisted of three stanzas with a final shorter message; the stanzas contained an obligatory refrain and strict rhyme.
Let's fast forward another four centuries and see what happened to this genre at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. At this time, many European poets turned to the ballad genre. One of the most famous is the German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). It tells about a real incident that took place at the court of the French king Francis (1515-1547). In this story, the characters of the characters, their feelings and actions are important. And the narrator evaluates all this. Consequently, the ballad becomes a lyric-epic genre. Before his menagerie, With the barons, with the crown prince, King Francis sat; From a high balcony he looked at the field, expecting a battle; Behind the king, enchanting the eye with blooming beauty, a magnificent row of court ladies appeared. The king gave a sign with his hand - The door opened with a knock, and a formidable beast with a huge head, a shaggy lion, comes out; He rolls his eyes around sullenly; And so, having looked at everything, he wrinkled his forehead with a proud posture, moved his thick mane, and stretched, and yawned, and lay down. The king waved his hand again - The shutter of the iron door banged, And the brave tiger lunged from behind the bars; But he sees a lion, becomes timid and roars, hits himself in the ribs with his tail, and sneaks away, looking sideways, and licks the muzzle with his tongue, and, having walked around the lion, roars and lies down next to him. And for the third time the king waved his hand - Two leopards, a friendly couple, In one leap they found themselves above the tiger; But he gave them a blow with a heavy paw, And the lion stood up with a roar... They resigned themselves, Baring their teeth, walked away, And growled, and lay down. ... Friedrich Schiller "The Glove"
Italian ballad Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) Dante Alighieri (1266-1321)
English ballad The English ballad is not like either the French or the Italian. This is a plot-based lyric-epic poem of strictly strophic form (usually consisting of quatrains). An English ballad is based on fantastic, legendary, historical or everyday material. These are the ballads about the folk hero Robin Hood.
Russian ballad In Russian poetry, the founder of the ballad as a genre was V.A. Zhukovsky (1783 - 1852)
Ballad in other forms of art The ballad genre emerged from musical works - from round dance dance songs, songs of troubadours and minstrels. Therefore, the ballad is close to music and is organic in it. The ballad is represented in the romantic music of Germany and Austria - in the works of F. Schubert, R. Schumann, J. Brahms, G. Wolf. The first Russian ballads are associated with romantic poetry - “Svetlana” by A. A. Pleshcheev to the words of V. A. Zhukovsky, ballads by A. N. Verstovsky, A. E. Varlamov, M. I. Glinka (“Night View”). The ballad genre received a unique implementation from A. P. Borodin, M. P. Mussorgsky, N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, F. Schubert, F. Chopin, E. Grieg and other composers
The ballad has become one of the main objects of attention for artists who express their own feelings, moods, and thoughts in their paintings. The Italian artist Sandro Botticelli (1445 -1510) was the first to paint dramatic scenes from ballads.
Ancient and unfading, archaic and eternally youthful, gravitating towards a rigid form and endlessly changeable, the popularly rough and artistically refined genre of ballad is actively developing in our time, creatively processing traditional conflicts, reviving frozen forms and proving the unfading beauty of eternal themes and plots.