What scenes from the ballads read. Artistic features and main features of the English folk ballad

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 did this particular genre attract Zhukovsky? A ballad is a short poetic story of predominantly heroic-historical or fantastic character

. 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. Early XIX century. Zhukovsky is disappointed in life, his soul suffers from unfulfilled happiness with his beloved girl, with early years he constantly feels the bitterness of social inequality. WITH social issues he faces it all the time. This 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 court person close to royal family . All this prompted Zhukovsky to take the path of ethical solutions to pressing problems. From the very beginning ballad creativity

Zhukovsky fought for a morally pure personality. The main theme of his ballads is crime and punishment, good and evil. Constant hero of ballads - strong personality

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 (ballad "

God's judgment

over 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.

Special place Among Zhukovsky’s works there are ballads dedicated to love: “Lyudmila”, “Svetlana”, “Aeolian 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. and the bitterness of the loss of her fiancé blinds 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,
Ardent wax was melted,
Into a bowl with 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 here

White color

, 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 dots

candle lights 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:
Best friend
to us in this life -
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

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.”

Features of the ballad genre in the works of V. A. Zhukovsky

In 1886, several parodies and ballads were written by Vl. Solovyov: “Vision”, “Mysterious Sexton”.

What is a ballad? And why did this particular 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.

According to Zhukovsky, crime is caused by individualistic passions: ambition, greed, jealousy, selfish self-affirmation.

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.

God's judgment

over the bishop").

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 Sau-ti ballad of the same name. Warwick seized the throne, killing his nephew, the rightful heir to the throne. And all because Warwick wants to reign.

This unfortunate Lyudmila is cruelly condemned because she indulges in passion, the desire to be happy at all costs with her beloved.

Coffin, open;
live fully;
Twice to the heart
not to love.

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 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:
The ardent wax was drowned,
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.

In a bowl of clean water

White color

Her feelings are extremely intense, her sensations are heightened, her heart responds to everything.

bright dots

candle lights 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,
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.
Best friend
to us in this life -
The blessing of the creator of the backwater:

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.

Thus, white snow, dark night and bright points of candlelight or eyes - this is a kind of romantic background in the ballad “Svetlana”.

“Our best friend in this life is 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). Ballad: history and features of the genre Ballad
The term “ballad” comes from a Provençal word and means “dance song.” Ballads arose in the Middle Ages. By origin, ballads are associated with traditions, folk legends, and combine the features of a story and a song. Many ballads about folk hero named Robin Hood existed in England in the 14th-15th centuries.

The ballad is one of the main genres in the poetry of sentimentalism and romanticism. The world in ballads appears mysterious and enigmatic. They feature bright heroes with clearly defined characters.

The creator of the literary ballad genre was Robert Burns (1759-1796). The basis of his poetry was oral folk art.

There is always a person at the center of literary ballads, but poets of the 19th century centuries who chose this genre knew that human strength does not always provide the opportunity to answer all questions, to become the absolute master of one’s destiny. Therefore, often literary ballads are a plot poem about fate, for example, the ballad “The Forest King” by the German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

The Russian ballad tradition was created by Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky, who wrote as original ballads("Svetlana", "Aeolian Harp", "Achilles" and others), and those who translated Burger, Schiller, Goethe, Uhland, Southey, Walter Scott. In total, Zhukovsky wrote more than 40 ballads.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin created such ballads as “The Song of the Prophetic Oleg”, “The Groom”, “The Drowned Man”, “The Raven Flies to the Raven”, “Once Upon a Time There Was a Poor Knight...”. His cycle “Songs of the Western Slavs” can also be classified as a ballad genre.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov has some ballads. This is the "Airship" from Seydlitz, "The Sea Princess".

Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy also used the ballad genre in his work. He calls his ballads on themes from his native antiquity epics ("Alyosha Popovich", "Ilya Muromets", "Sadko" and others).

Entire sections of their poems were called ballads, using this term more freely by A.A. Fet, K.K. Sluchevsky, V.Ya. Bryusov. In his “Experiments,” Bryusov, speaking about the ballad, points to only two of his ballads of the traditional lyric-epic type: “The Abduction of Bertha” and “Divination.”

A number of comic ballad parodies were left by Vl. Soloviev (“The Mysterious Sexton”, “The Autumn Walk of Knight Ralph” and others)

The events of the turbulent 20th century once again brought to life the genre of literary ballads. E. Bagritsky's ballad "Watermelon", although it does not tell the story of the turbulent events of the revolution, was born precisely of the revolution, the romance of that time.

Features of the ballad as a genre:

presence of a plot (there is a climax, beginning and denouement)

combination of the real and the fantastic

romantic (unusual) landscape

mystery motive

the plot can be replaced by dialogue

brevity

combination of lyrical and epic principles

In folklore, ballads are story songs that set out a series of events and involve several characters. The main theme of such songs is family or family relationships. Ballads usually have tragic ending, someone dies - usually a violent death. 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 a dialogue with the characters. This reflects ancient ideas about the unity of man with nature, about werewolves.

The ideas of the classicists about the ballad are reflected in Boileau’s “Poetic Art”, who does not distinguish the ballad as an independent genre; in his opinion, it is just one of the varieties of poetic form:

Whether in tragedy, in eclogue or in ballad,

But rhyme should not live in discord with meaning;

There is no quarrel and no struggle between them;

He is her master, she is his slave.

Every poem has special features

A stamp of her only inherent beauty:

We like the intricacy of the rhymes of the Ballad,

Rondo - naivety and simplicity of harmony,

Graceful, sincere love madrigal

I charmed my heart with the sublimity of my feelings.

Russian classicists also equated the ballad with a rondo, a “trifle.” Sumarokov wrote after Boileau in his work “Two Epistles”:

Sonnet, rondo, ballads - playing poetically,

But you have to play them wisely and quickly.

In the sonnet they demand that the warehouse be clean,

Rondo is a trifle, so are ballads,

But let him write them to whom they please,

Good inventions are also noble,

Their composition is cunning in vanity trinkets:

I like poetic simplicity.

A ballad is a poem belonging to newest poetry. Invention ballads attributed to the Italians. For them, it is nothing more than a dance song, which only has an appeal at the end to some present or absent person. Ballo in Italian language means dance, from there ballada or balata, called in diminutive ballatella, ballatteta, ballatina.

The French in the old days ballads called a certain kind of poem of a special form. Such ballads were written equal measure verses, consisted of three couplets of 8, 10 or 12 verses; had at the end appeal to the person for whom they were composed, or to some other person. It was required that one verse be repeated at the end of the verses, and that the verses corresponding to each other in number from the beginning of each verse had the same rhyme. The appeal contained half the number of verses contained in couplets, i.e. if the couplets were written in 12s, then the circulation should have been 6, etc. - the appeal had rhymes in the second half of the verses. Matter is like this ballads could be both humorous and important.

Ballad to given rhymes

Of mortals, everyone is given his own joy,

Some people like the pen, others build,

He is in love with Bacchus, he is captivated Lada,

And in a word, there are real passions and tastes here Roy!

They have long occupied our souls standing still

Ask why she did this nature

What's her answer? It's like darkness thick,

That's why we each have our own reward.

I swear this is not false; this hour before naloy!

After all, I don’t want to taste for a lie hell

And my conscience will stab me here, like needle,

But I really don’t mind my conscience hero.

Let them say what I look like freak,

This speech will make no sense to me, sound empty.

Like an incomprehensible solemn ode.

But then it appeared to my poems block!

My thought is covered with thickness bark!

I have to show you how to spell ballad,

And for me - from bitter herbs infusion,

Which you don’t always eat caviar!

And there are two rhymes here, oh horror! factory!

The ballad goes with my mind in the battle,

Like an incomprehensible solemn ode

Appeal

O Baviy! the poem that took ours peace!

Accept these verses, I have been to the bottom fashion!

They are written, to her, to her, to yours cut -

Like an incomprehensible solemn ode"

At the border of the 18th and 19th centuries, the relationships between genres in Russian poetry became more fluid than before, and the type of relationships also changed. Genres are isolated from common basis or even one from the other. This happened with the romance and ballad, genre forms that were perceived undifferentiated back in the mid-18th century. By the end of the century, inside these genre forms one’s point of view is determined in one’s view of the events and phenomena of life. At the same time, external genre indicators almost coincide.

The Russian literary ballad may not have had a wide enough tradition in oral folk art. The epicness of the epic and historical songs blurred the clarity and “momentariness” of the plot boundaries, did not allow the metaphorization of the idea to be realized - and all this is extremely important for the poetics of the emerging ballad genre. The genre system of romance could have been absorbed and transformed by the ballad much more organically. The ballad structure was matched in the romance by a well-developed and organized plot, the presence of a musical element (and even a choral element) in the structure, and the emerging psychologization of characters and landscape.

In the article “At the genre turning point from romance to ballad” L.N. Dushina traces the interpenetration of genres. Historical and literary facts of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. give reason to say that the national ballad genre at its time literary formation implements the folklore and literary tradition of Russian romance. This implementation goes in different directions. In Karamzin, for example, one can find a compositional mixture from romance to ballad. His “Alina” (1790) and “Raisa” (1791) act as phenomena of the transitional romance-ballad type.

Traditional system romance means resisted the demands of the new ballad poetics, and especially when recreating the atmosphere of the wonderful, mysterious, which were widely included in ballad plots. It was the “wonderful” that turned out to be one of those principles in which the Russian ballad of the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. discovered my new romantic content, features of the new romantic poetics. It is no coincidence that the authors theoretical research beginning of the 19th century (N. Grech, N. Ostolopov, A. Merzlyakov, I. Timaev) point to the miraculous as a force that leads the ballad away from the traditional “song” of romance to the “romantic” type of narration.

The preference for the ballad genre to the romance genre is quite understandable. In the ballad, thanks to the atmosphere of mystery, the plot is metaphorized. The romance type of narration turned out to be not entirely applicable to revealing the life of the metaphor. The nature of mystery always contains internal expression (one of its sources is the fundamental impenetrability of a detail, technique or image). She leads - and she herself is immediately realized in them - new aspect display, a new, compared to romance, type of imagery.

The “breath” of mystery gives birth to a special melody in the work, imparts greater tension to the rhythm, complicates the verse (a meaningful transfer, a rich, “lively” pause appears), enriches the lexical image with the contrasting use of the word. Moving relationships between the real and what seems to be imagined are outlined. The latter is extremely promising for the entire future fate of the Russian ballad. Thanks to these dynamic relationships, the image receives, as it were, new additional dimensions. It is no coincidence that Zhukovsky built his first ballad “Lyudmila” on the contrast of the real and what takes on meaning (endless meanings) in an atmosphere of mystery.

Already in the mid-1810s. the revision and breaking of the boundaries of the “wonderful” began. A more precise understanding of the “miraculous” was required, connecting it with a specific everyday basis.

According to the genre hierarchy of late classicism, the ballad genre was included in the area of so-called “light poetry”, the most susceptible to change and qualitative degeneration.

The artistic quests of Karamzin and his followers stand at the origins of the romantic ballad. The "sensitive" ballad, however, was not a sentimental genre. Sentimentalism, coloring the ballad with sensitivity, did not allow this genre to fully realize its specificity. The rejection of closed and intimate themes, the enrichment of poetry with new plots, characters and images was essentially an overcoming of sentimentalism, the movement of ballads in line with pre-romanticism

The appeal to the tradition of the German literary ballad accelerated the process of formation of the Russian ballad, enriching it with the experience of European poets in relation to the tasks that the first Russian balladeers solved or set for themselves.

When contacting domestic poets to the European ballad tradition, the selection of the names of Burger and Schiller itself was not, of course, accidental. The ballads of these poets represented the pinnacle, milestone phenomena in the development of the genre, directly preceding the activity of the romantics. Further destinies ballads like literary genre turned out to be directly related to the evolution of Russian romanticism.

Having emerged in the pre-Romantic era in the poetry of Goethe and Schiller, and in Russia - Zhukovsky, the ballad became a priority genre among the Romantics. The ballad most fully corresponded aesthetic principles romanticism, satisfying interests in history, folklore and fantasy. The ballads, which differ in content, are united by an appeal to the distant past. If the ballad contains historically real characters, then they act not as creators of history, but rather as its victims. This is explained by the fact that the main plot core of a romantic ballad is the inevitability of retribution for sins. Rock equalizes everyone, so the authors of ballads punish the historical deeds of rulers or their commanders.

The plots of all romantic ballads, with few exceptions, are drawn from folklore. Along with the appeals of ballad authors to their national heritage there is a tendency, coming from Goethe and Schiller, to borrow plots from foreign cultures. Appeal to the oral folk art other peoples clearly demonstrates the inherent distance from folklore of the ballad genre. The ballad is not adequate folklore source, since the romantic poet acts as its interpreter.

IN late XVIII century, at the time of pre-romanticism, the author's ballad appeared. The initiators of the creation of such ballads were primarily History of literature knows two types of ballads - French and German. "The French ballad is lyric poem with a certain alternation of repeatedly repeated rhymes. A German ballad is a small epic poem, written in a somewhat elevated and at the same time naive tone, with a plot borrowed from history, although the latter is not necessary” (Gumilyov).

The plots of ballads, dating back to ancient times, belong to the so-called “wandering plots”, which often had common Indo-European roots. Undoubtedly whole line The ballads recreate scenes dating back to the period when Christianity was establishing itself in European consciousness, fighting paganism. Religious consciousness in the ballad genre often determines the compositional structure of the poem, which successively includes moments of delusion - insight - repentance.

A notable stylistic feature of the ballad is that the supernatural and extraordinary appear quite ordinary, not in the abstract. hyperbolic formulas, but at the level of everyday consciousness, suddenly faced with some mystery of existence.

The authors of ballads, like the creators of elegies, prefer the twilight time of day, when the contours real world dissolve, deceptive night ghosts approach, which can disappear upon awakening. The plot of the ballad compresses time, because life passes quickly, events occur intermittently. At the same time, the scene of action narrows, because the characters overcome the vastness of space with incredible speed.

The Literary Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts gives us the following interpretation of the ballad: Ballad (French ballade, from Provence balada - dance song)

1. Solid form of French poetry of the 14th-15th centuries: 3 stanzas with the same rhymes (ababbcbc for 8-syllable, ababbccdcd for 10-syllable verse with a refrain and a final half-stanza - a “premise” addressing the addressee). It developed from the crossing of the Northern French dance “ballets” and the Provençal-Italian semi-canzone.
2. Lyric-epic genre of Anglo-Scottish folk poetry 14th-16th centuries on historical (later also fairy-tale and everyday) themes - about border wars, about folk legendary hero Robin Hood - usually with tragedy, mystery, abrupt narration, dramatic dialogue.

V.E. Khalizev in “Theory of Literature” also talks about the ballad belonging to the lyric epic. This definition of the concept of ballad gives scientific literature. To this we can add the characteristic of this genre given by T.I. Vorontsova in the article “Compositional and semantic structure of visual-narrative ballads of a lyrical nature”: “The ballad is small in size, describes events that have a beginning, a climax and an ending. This shows the epic nature of the ballad. Its plot is unreal, symbolic, and vaguely defined in space and time.” R.V. Jesuitova in her article “The Ballad in the Age of Romanticism” says that “the ballad also gravitates towards a philosophical interpretation of its plots, is characterized by the two-dimensionality of its construction, when behind the plot there are hints of the mysterious forces gravitating over a person.” According to this researcher, “the main structural trends of the ballad genre in the era of romanticism are expressed in the strengthening of the dramatic principle, in the choice of an acute conflict situation, in the use of contrasting character construction, in the concentration of ballad action on a relatively small space-time period. At the same time, the ballad intensively forms new principles of lyricism, abandoning didactics and moralizing."

V.V. Znamenshchikov, one of the scholars studying ballads, cites the main features of this genre in his article “On the Question of genre features Russian ballad". In his opinion, “in the study of the poetics of a literary ballad, one can use some provisions of folkloristics. For a literary ballad, certain genre features are indisputable. folk ballads, others are modified (for example, “single-conflict and compactness”); a literary ballad has only its own characteristics. The commonality is already revealed in aesthetic categories. It is based on the image of the “tragic” and “wonderful”.

The folk ballad, which is part of the system of epic genres of folklore, is subject to the laws of constructing an epic work. Epic setup complicates the path direct expression characters' feelings. A dialogic form of action development appears, in which the story of the event and its depiction are combined. In the dialogue, the leading role of one of the characters is felt. In the structure of a folk ballad, this is manifested in the variability of the statements of the second character while maintaining a single theme (“hidden” questioning; with the consistent implementation of this trend, direct questions appear).

The literary ballad also highlights the central character, whose efforts determine the development of the conflict. The second character may not appear. The motivation for the actions of the central character arises as a result of the use of new means: a dialogized monologue appears, hence the self-characterization of the characters. At this time, Zhukovsky reduces the author's characteristics of the heroes.

The work is clearly divided into two unequal segments: the development of the action and the finale (culmination and denouement). They are opposed in temporal and spatial terms. The ending forces you to rethink the previous course of the plot. Events that are initially perceived as insignificant acquire meaning and emotional intensity. This construction of the ballad apparently reflects the manifestation of the tragic orientation of ballad aesthetics. A folk ballad, devoid of an author, makes tragedy irreversible (as happens in dramatic works, where the intervention of the author is excluded). In a literary ballad, the author, through his participation, can relieve the tension of the action - sometimes Zhukovsky does this (“Svetlana”, “Alina and Alsim”).

In both literary and folk ballads, the conflict is often determined by the clash of “high” and “low” heroes. As a rule, the “low” character is especially mobile in the structure of the work. He is given the opportunity to enter into “familiar contact” with characters from another world. With the advent of science fiction, his mobility becomes even more obvious: only he experiences the influence of “higher” forces. The movements of the central character determine ballad space and time.

The ballad often assigns corresponding spatial localizations to plot situations. The denouement in folk ballads usually occurs “in public.” If the denouement is due to the intervention of fantasy, “otherworldly forces,” the action is transferred to where they are possible - in the field, in the forest.

At the same time, the plot is easily divided into separate segments - scenes. This division is reinforced by time shifts. The passage of time within each scene also changes. For example, in the denouement, time is compressed.

Ballad time is always unidirectional. In literary ballads there are parallel descriptions, but there is no return to the past. However, characters can talk about past events - as happens in the drama of classicism. This explains the state of the characters and motivates further actions: the ballad appears as the last link in the series of events remaining “behind the text.”

The ballad genre is characterized by the presence of a specific and poetic (so-called ballad) world, which has its own artistic laws, its own emotional atmosphere, and its own vision of the surrounding reality. It is based on history, heroics, fantasy, everyday life, refracted through the prism of legend, tradition, and belief.

The epic beginning is associated with the presence of a clearly defined event-narrative plot and an objective hero. The plot is usually one-conflict and one-event, in in this sense the ballad becomes closer to the story. At the same time, the originality of the ballad plot lies not only in its greater generalization compared to the plot in a prose work, but also in the special cult of the Event with capital letters. The fact is that the plot and compositional basis of the ballad is not an ordinary event, but exceptional case, an outstanding incident that takes ballad action beyond the boundaries everyday world reality - into the world of legend and fantasy. This event forms the core of the ballad action. In this sense, the plot is closer in nature to a mythological than to a novelistic narrative. Therefore, the ballad gravitates towards historical tales, folk legends and beliefs. The historicism in the ballad is conditional, that is, it is somewhat mythologized in nature.

Ballad action is characterized by a special conciseness, swiftness, dynamism of the unfolding of the event, fragmentation, manifested in the emphasis of the author's and reader's attention on individual, most often the most intense moments.

There is no lyrical hero in the ballad; the story comes from the perspective of an outside observer. The lyrical beginning of the genre structure of the ballad is associated with the emotional mood of the narrative, reflecting the author’s feeling of the depicted era and expressing the poet’s lyrical self-awareness. The artist's active attitude to the event is manifested in the entire emotional atmosphere of the ballad, but it usually appears most strongly in the beginning or at the end of the ballad.

The dramatic beginning of the genre structure of the ballad is associated with the tension of the action. In fact, every ballad is a little drama. The underlying conflict is always acutely dramatic. The denouement, being the plot conclusion of the ballad’s conflict, is not just unexpectedly effective, but often tragic. To a certain extent, the drama of ballads is also associated with that atmosphere of fear and horror, without which it is generally impossible to imagine artistic nature traditional romantic ballad.

Sometimes the dramatic beginning turns out to be so strongly expressed that because of this the author’s story is pushed aside or is completely replaced by a monological or even dialogic form of narration (“Lyudmila”, “The Forest King”, “Smalgolm Castle”).

Of the entire spectrum of problems, perhaps the most main problem is a confrontation between personality and fate. In the Russian romantic ballad, the idea of justice appears: if the hero does not follow the dictates of fate, he is punished. The ballad hero often deliberately challenges fate and resists it despite all predictions and premonitions.

In this article we will talk about such a literary genre as the ballad. What is a ballad? This literary work, written in the form of poetry or prose, which always has a pronounced plot. Most often, ballads have a historical connotation and in them you can learn about certain historical or mythical characters. Sometimes ballads are written to be sung in theatrical productions. People fell in love with this genre, first of all, because of the interesting plot, which always has a certain intrigue.

When creating a ballad, the author is guided by either historical event, which inspires him, or folklore. This genre rarely features specially invented characters. People like to recognize characters they previously liked.

The ballad as a literary genre has the following features:

The presence of a composition: introduction, main part, climax, denouement.
Having a storyline.
The author's attitude towards the characters is conveyed.
The emotions and feelings of the characters are shown.
A harmonious combination of real and fantastic plot points.
Description of landscapes.
The presence of secrets, riddles in the plot.
Availability of character dialogues.
A harmonious combination of lyricism and epic.

Thus, we figured out the specifics of this literary genre and gave a definition of what a ballad is.

From the history of the term

For the first time, the term “ballad” was used in ancient Provençal manuscripts back in the 13th century. In these manuscripts, the word "ballad" was used to describe dance movements. In those days, this word did not mean any genre in literature or other forms of art.

Like a poetic literary form, the ballad began to be understood in medieval France only at the end of the 13th century. One of the first poets who tried to write in this genre was a Frenchman named Jeannot de Lecurel. But, for those times, the ballad genre was not purely poetic. Such poems were written for musical productions. The musicians danced to the ballad, thereby amusing the audience.

In the 14th century, a poet named Guillaume fe Machaut wrote more than two hundred ballads, as a result of which he quickly became famous. He wrote love lyrics, completely depriving the genre of “danceability”. After his work, the ballad became a purely literary genre.

With the advent printing press, the first ballads published in newspapers began to appear in France. People really liked them. The French loved to gather with the whole family at the end of a difficult working day to enjoy everything together interesting story ballads.

In classical ballads from the time of Machaut, in one stanza of text, the number of verses did not exceed ten. A century later, the trend changed, and ballads began to be written in square stanza.

One of the most famous balladists of that time was Christina of Pisa, who, like Machaut, wrote ballads for print, and not for dancing. She became famous for her work “The Book of a Hundred Ballads.”

After some time, this genre found its place in the works of other European poets and writers. As for Russian literature, the ballad appeared in it only in the 19th century. This happened due to the fact that Russian poets were inspired by German romanticism, and since the Germans of that time described their lyrical experiences in ballads, this genre quickly spread here too. Among the most famous Russian poets who wrote ballads can be named Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Belinsky and others.

Among the world's most famous writers, whose ballads have undoubtedly gone down in history, one can name Goethe, Kamenev, Victor Hugo, Burger, Walter Scott and other outstanding writers.

IN modern world In addition to the classical literary genre, the ballad also found its primary musical roots. In the West there is a whole musical movement in rock music called “rock ballad”. The songs of this genre are sung mainly about love.