On May 3, 2018, Ivan Mikhailovich Steblin-Kamensky died. When such a personality, absolutely legendary for St. Petersburg culture, passes away, everyone remembers their own. Someone will remember his participation in the Leningrad underground poetry of the 70s, someone will talk about his participation in archaeological expeditions, someone will list his scientific achievements. I have three episodes connected with Steblin, each of which played a significant role in my life.
In 1995, as soon as he became the dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Ivan Mikhailovich came up with new units, courses and special courses that updated the faculty program. In particular, he came up with a department of Egyptian history, in which students were simultaneously expected to become both Egyptologists and experts in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic. A sort of diachronic Egypt. From the point of view of a scientist, such an idea could only have occurred to a poet, because in practice you are either an Egyptologist or an Arabist, and there is no third option. But Steblin actively promoted this idea, and there were several graduations with the diploma “Historian of Egypt.” Another idea of ​​the new dean was to teach historians of the ancient East the history and culture of synchronous civilizations. Assyriologists had to study the history of ancient Egypt in their senior courses, and Egyptologists, on the contrary, the history of Mesopotamia. So, for this last purpose he wooed me, who was then working at the Faculty of Philosophy. Shouldn't you read the history of Mesopotamian culture for 4th year Egyptologists? I answered: why not read it. And for a whole year I educated three Egyptologists, gaining experience in lecturing in the East. By the way, this latest initiative has caught on, and at the department of the ancient East they still read to specialists the history of parallel civilizations, as Steblin intended.
In 1998, Steblin invited me to read the philosophy of culture to Africanists. And the next year I read it to a group of Arabists and Iranianists. The dean's personnel choice was determined by the fact that I was not a philosopher by training, but an orientalist, and therefore I would illustrate the theory with examples from well-known disciplines. And so it happened. The Easterners who studied with me during these two years subsequently began to combine historical and philological methods of studying sources with their cultural understanding. And this initiative of Steblin still lives on at the faculty. I still read philosophy of culture to a large stream of 2nd year students.
In 2005, the fate of my publication of an anthology of translations by V.K. Shileiko was being decided. The editorial board of Litpamyatnikov gathered, but there was not a single classical ancient Eastern scholar (Egyptologist or Assyriologist) on it. However, the ancient Iranian scholar Steblin-Kamensky was a member of it. Ivan Mikhailovich took the floor and proposed, firstly, to support the publication, and secondly, to appoint him as the executive editor of the book. After I learned about the decision, Steblin told me that all responsibility for the book, of course, was on me, but he would provide me with “cover.” He did not interfere in the work process itself, did not look at the final version, but at all stages he reminded the publishing house and editors of Nauka that he was watching the process and would like to see the result. Two years later, when the book came out, I brought a fresh copy to the Institute of Linguistic Research, where Ivan Mikhailovich was already working at that time. He looked and appreciated the beauty of the dust jacket and the contents of the book. Congratulated me on the publication. And then he gave me a book of his translations from the Avesta.

In his attitude to life, to people, to science, Ivan Steblin-Kamensky was a poet. Even in his position as dean, he remained a lover of performances. On the Day of Philologist and Orientalist, he always came in a robe and skullcap and read poetry in Farsi. From Steblin, in addition to his scientific works and poems, there will remain works of a unique genre - collections of anecdotes about orientalists. In full accordance with the Muslim tradition of isnad, he always indicated the transmitters of the anecdotal tradition. What the poet Steblin did best was not lyrical poems about life, not plays, but comic poems for the anniversaries of his colleagues. Each time it was a fireworks display of wit, an exquisite play on words. Often these dedications were made in the form of an acrostic with the surname (or even the first and last name) of the hero of the day. Most of all, Steblin looked like a dervish who, unknown how, had wandered into a meeting of bureaucrats. He also read his scientific reports like a Sufi wit - always with a grin, with strong gestures, with examples from poetry and with indispensable witticisms between every two ideas of the report. As a dean, he was absent-minded, did not always notice the person he was passing by, was constantly hovering somewhere, often did not even walk, but fluttered a little over the corridors of the faculty (he had a strange way of walking in half-jumps). There was something mystical in this too - a sharp upward pull. Steblin's Orthodox faith had a certain touch of performance. Faculty members still remember how he invited a priest to sprinkle the dean’s office with holy water and fan him with a censer. Of course, it was supposed to look like a serious ritual, but it turned out to be a real performance.
Steblin-Kamensky's achievements in science are very serious and lasting. He was the greatest expert on the Avesta and the Wakhan language in Russia, one of the most talented linguists and ethnographers. But even here there are some oddities. Steblin was constantly drawn to talk and write about plants. V.N. Toporov really appreciated this in him, because he was a great lover of trees and various shrubs. No matter what Ivan Mikhailovich gave a report on, he could turn to the etymology of some spikelet, bush or flower in Iranian or, more broadly, in all Indo-European languages. It is no coincidence that his only monograph is devoted specifically to cultivated plants in the languages ​​of the Pamirs. Often during his speeches I caught myself thinking that I was waiting for him to notice some flower in the text and start talking about it. Apparently, this multi-talented man also had a strong talent as a botanist. Although he was never a “nerd” in life.

The scientist was 72 years old. He is known as a specialist in the field of Iranian studies, the history of Iranian languages, etymology, folklore and ethnography of the Iranian peoples, and a translator of the Avesta. His death was reported on Facebook by his colleagues at the Eastern Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. Ivan Mikhailovich Steblin-Kamensky was born on November 5, 1945 in Leningrad, in the family of philologist Mikhail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamensky.

Academician Ivan Steblin-Kamensky. Photo: https://s0tnik.livejournal.com/44138.html

In 1967 he worked as a Russian language teacher in a rural school in the Pamirs. Since 1964, he has participated in archaeological and ethnolinguistic expeditions in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the Pamirs, Tuva, the Southern Urals, Xinjiang, Kyrgyzstan, and Iran. He conducted ethnolinguistic and ethnobotanical research there. In 1968 he graduated from the Department of Iranian Philology of the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad State University with a degree in Iranian Philology. He studied Persian, Ossetian, Khorezmian, Avestan, Afghani, Middle Persian, Old Persian, Sogdian, Tajik, Arabic, Ancient Greek and Latin languages. He also studied Persian literature and the material culture of Iran.

In 1968, he entered graduate school at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences and in 1971 defended his thesis on the topic “Historical phonetics of the Wakhan language.” Since 1971, he worked as a junior researcher at the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since September 1981 he worked as a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Oriental Studies. In 1984, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Agricultural vocabulary of the Pamir languages ​​in comparative historical light” at the Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

Since 1984 - Associate Professor of the Department of Iranian Philology of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, since 1987 - Professor, from November 1991 to November 2006 - Head of the Department of Iranian Philology. Since September 1994, he served as acting dean of the Eastern Faculty of St. Petersburg State University, in June 1995 he was elected dean, and in 2000 he was re-elected for a second term, leaving the post of dean in August 2005. In 1997 he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Department of Language and Literature, and in 2003 - a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since December 2005, he worked as a chief researcher at the Institute of Linguistic Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Author of more than 150 published works, including the books: "Cultivated plants in the Pamir languages. Essays on the history of the vocabulary of the Pamir languages. Names of cultivated plants" (1982), "Etymological dictionary of the Wakhan language" (1999), "Steblin-Kamensky (Steblinsky, Steblin-Kaminsky). Experience in historical and genealogical research" (2005; together with V.V. Korotenko, A.A. Shumkov). He prepared many collections for publication, including: “Tales of the Peoples of the Pamirs” (1976), “Languages ​​of the Eastern Hindu Kush. Wakhan language. Texts, dictionary, grammatical essay” (1976), “Tales and Legends of Sistan” (1981), “Avesta. Selected Hymns" (1990), "Gata of Zarathushtra" (2009), etc.

Steblin-Kamensky Ivan Mikhailovich.

Chief Researcher, Full Member (Academician) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Born on November 5, 1945 in Leningrad. In 1968 he graduated from the Department of Iranian Philology of the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) State University with a degree in Iranian philology. He studied Persian, Ossetian, Khorezmian and Avestan languages ​​from Associate Professor S.N. Sokolov (1923-1985), Afghan, Middle Persian, Old Persian and Sogdian - from Academician M.N. Bogolyubov, Tajik - from Professor A.Z. Rosenfeld (1910- 1990), Arabic - from Professor A.T. Tagirdzhanov (1908-1983), Ancient Greek - from Professor A.I. Dovatur (1897-1982), Latin - from Associate Professor N.V. Shebalin. He listened to lectures on Persian literature by Professor A.N. Boldyrev (1909-1993), on the material culture of Iran - by Associate Professor L.T. Guzalyan (1901-1994). He attended classes on Gothic and Old Icelandic languages ​​and lectures on diachronic phonology by his father, Scandinavian philologist, professor Mikhail Ivanovich Steblin-Kamensky (1903-1981). In 1967, he worked as a Russian language teacher in a rural school in the Pamirs in Wakhan (the village of Zmudg, Ishkashim district, Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan) and collected materials on the Wakhan language and ethnography, which formed the basis for subsequent research.

Since 1964, he annually participates in archaeological and ethnolinguistic expeditions in Tajikistan (Penjikent, the upper reaches of Zeravshan, Matcha and Yagnob: 1964-1975, 1984, 1996, 1997, 2000), in the Pamirs (1965-1969, 1972, 1976, 2002), in Turkmenistan (1975, 1976), in Tuva (1978-1983), in the Southern Urals (Arkaim: 1995), in Xinjiang (Sarykol: 1998), in Kyrgyzstan (2004), in Iran (2006). Conducted ethnolinguistic and ethnobotanical research in Falgar, Matcha, Yagnob, Darvaz, Vanj, Rushan, Bartang, Roshorv, Shugnan, Goron, Ishkashim, Wakhan, the Eastern Pamirs, Tuva, Iranian Azerbaijan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Gurgan.

Since 1968, he collaborated (went on joint expeditions, co-authored works) with Professor Alexander Leonovich Grunberg (1930-1995). In 1968, he entered graduate school with Professor V.A. Livshits at the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences. In 1971, at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, he defended his thesis on the topic “Historical phonetics of the Wakhan language.”

Since 1971, he worked as a junior researcher at the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences. In September 1981, he moved to a permanent position as a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, where he taught individual courses since 1972. In 1984, at the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Agricultural vocabulary of the Pamir languages ​​in comparative historical light” (the official opponents were professors V.I. Abaev, D.K. Karamshoev, A.L. Khromov).

Since 1984 - Associate Professor of the Department of Iranian Philology of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, since 1987 - Professor, from November 1991 to November 2006 - Head of the Department of Iranian Philology. Since September 1994, he served as acting dean of the Eastern Faculty of St. Petersburg State University, in June 1995 he was elected dean and in 2000 re-elected for a second term, leaving the post of dean in August 2005.

He gives courses in classical Persian, Middle and Old Persian, Avestan languages, lectures on “Introduction to Iranian philology,” and conducts special courses on Pamir languages ​​and folklore. Participant of many conferences in Russia and abroad. Gave lectures at universities and scientific institutions in France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Iran, USA, Kyrgyzstan, Norway, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Ukraine, Kalmykia, Udmurtia...

In 1997 he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Department of Language and Literature, and in 2003 - a full member (academician) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Since December 2005 - Chief Researcher at the Institute of Linguistic Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Member of scientific societies and organizations: Russian Geographical Society (1966); Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (1973); Editorial Board of the series "Literary Monuments" (1989); International Committee "Corpus of Iranian-language inscriptions" (1989); Iranian Society of Europe (1990); Editorial Board of the series "Myths, Epic, Religions of the East" (1993); St. Petersburg Literary Society (1996); Tajik Society of Cultural Relations with Compatriots Abroad "Payvand" (1987); Russian Society of Orientalists (vice-president, 1997-2002); Council of the regional public movement "Congress of the St. Petersburg Intelligentsia" (1999). founding member of the Russian Belman Society (February 2001); member of the Joint Scientific Council on Humanitarian Problems and Historical and Cultural Heritage of the St. Petersburg Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2002).

Awarded the badge “Honorary Worker of Higher Professional Education of Russia” (order of the Ministry of Postgraduate Education of the Russian Federation 01/28/1999, No. 08-11). By order of the President of the Republic of Tajikistan dated April 14, 1999 (No. 1188), he was awarded the Order of “Dusti” (“Friendship”) (No. 0021) “for fruitful work and outstanding achievements in the study of the history, language, literature and culture of the Tajik people, the preparation of scientific teaching staff, specialists with higher education for Tajikistan...". Awarded the "Honorary Award" from Soka Gakkai University (Japan, January 6, 2000). Laureate of the University Prize for the best scientific works (January 2001). Scholarship holder named after S.A. Novgorodov for his contribution to the organization and development of research work of students from the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) (October 2002, certificate No. 13). Awarded the medal "In memory of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg" (November 3, 2003, No. 210423). Medal "In memory of the 1000th anniversary of Kazan" (No. 199357, decree of the President of the Russian Federation of June 30, 2005). Selected among " Chehrekha-ye mandegar"Islamic Republic of Iran ("Worthy Individuals", English "Lasting Figures", November 2005).

Main published works:

Folklore of Vakhan // "Folklore and ethnography". L., 1970, pp. 212-219.

Ethnolinguistic characteristics of the Eastern Hindu Kush // "Problems of mapping in linguistics and ethnography." L., 1974, pp. 276 - 283 (Together with A.L. Grunberg).

Flora of the Iranian ancestral home. Etymological note // "Etymology. 1972". M., 1974, pp. 138-140.

Everyday and ritual food of the Vakhans // "Countries and Peoples of the East". Vol. XVI. Pamir. M., 1975, pp. 192-209.

Two Wakhan toponyms. - Iranian linguistics. History, etymology, typology (to the 75th anniversary of Prof. V.I. Abaev). M., 1976, pp. 182-185.

Tales of the peoples of the Pamirs. Translation from Pamir languages. M., 1976. 536 p. (Compilation and comments jointly with A.L. Grunberg).

Languages ​​of the Eastern Hindu Kush. Wakhan language. Texts, dictionary, grammatical essay. M., 1976. 670 p. (Together with A.L. Grunberg).

River of the Iranian ancestral home. - Onomastics of Central Asia. M., 1978, pp. 72-74.

"Knees" and "elbows" of the Pamir substrate // "Near-Asian collection. III. History and philology of the countries of the Ancient East." M., 1979, pp. 212-214 (Summary in English, p. 276).

Pamir languages ​​about the mythology of ancient Iranians // Ethnic problems of the history of Central Asia in antiquity (2nd millennium BC). M., 1981, pp. 238-241 (Summary in English, p. 241).

Tales and legends of Sistan. Translation from Persian, compilation and comments. M., 1981. 271 p. (Together with A.L. Grunberg).

Bactrian language. - Fundamentals of Iranian linguistics. Central Iranian languages. M., 1981, pp. 314-346.

Historical classification of Wakhan verbs // "Iranian linguistics. Yearbook 1980". M., 1981, pp. 57-66.

New materials on Wakhan vocabulary // "Iranian linguistics. Yearbook 1980". M., 1981, pp. 178-185.

Cultivated plants in the Pamir languages. Essays on the history of the vocabulary of the Pamir languages. Names of cultivated plants. M., 1982. 168 p.

Wreath from Vakhan. - Monumentum Georg Morgenstierne. II. "Acta Iranica", vol. 22.

Leiden, 1982, p.227-249.

Names of arable tools in Pamir languages ​​// "Iranian linguistics. Yearbook 1981". M., 1985, pp. 154-170.

Irrigation terms in Pamir languages ​​// "Iranian linguistics. Yearbook 1982". M., 1987, pp. 132-157.

La langue wakhi. T.1: Corpus de litterature orale. T.2: Essai grammatical et dictionnaire wakhi-francais. Edite et traduit par Dominique Indjoudjian. Paris, "Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme", 1988. 290 p. + 376 p. + 7 pl., ill., carte (Translation into French of a book published jointly with A.L. Grunberg).

Avesta. Selected hymns. Translation from Avestan and commentary. Dushanbe, "Adib", 1990. 176 p.

Iranian languages ​​// Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. by E. Yarshater. Vol. V, fasc.2, p.223a - fasc.3, p.226a, New York, 1990.

Pardeh "Karbala" // Traditional worldview among the peoples of Western Asia. Sat. articles edited by M.A. Rodionova, M.N. Serebryakova. M., 1992, pp. 170 - 181, Notes: pp. 218-21.

I.I. Zarubin’s first trip to the Pamirs in the summer of 1914 // “Questions of Pamir Philology”. Issue 4. Dushanbe, 1992, pp. 21-36; - "Kunstkamera. Ethnographic notebooks." Issue 1. St. Petersburg, 1993, pp. 139-150.

Avesta. Selected hymns. From Videvdat. Translation from Avestan by Ivan Steblin-Kamensky. M., "Friendship of Peoples", 1993, 208 p.

Who did Afanasy Nikitin pray to and what did he drink in India // "Russian Literature", 1995, No. 3, pp. 86-93.

In memory of Amnun Davydov (1935-1993) // "Kunstkamera. Ethnographic notebooks". Vol. 8-9. St. Petersburg, 1995, pp. 435-442.

Avestan kəmčiţ paiti čaqrušanąm- "East and West". Vol.45, Nos.1-4 (December 1995), p.307-310.

Vocabulary of field work in Pamir languages ​​// "Petersburg Oriental Studies", vol. 9. Center "Petersburg Oriental Studies", St. Petersburg, 1997, pp. 208-226.

About A.N. Boldyrev and his “Siege Record”. - [Preface to the book:] A.N. Boldyrev. Siege Record (Siege Diary). Prepared for publication by V.S. Garbuzova and I.M. Steblin-Kamensky. St. Petersburg, 1998, pp. 7-13.

Eškāš(e)mī. - "Encyclopaedia Iranica", ed. by E. Yarshater. Vol. VIII, fasc. 6 (Mazda Publishers, Cosa Mesa, California, 1998), p.614b-615b.

Alexander Leonovich Grunberg-Tsvetinovich (March 1, 1930 - March 3, 1995) // "Countries and Peoples of the East." Issue XXX: Central Asia. Eastern Hindu Kush. St. Petersburg, 1998, pp. 5-29.

Tādjīkī. Language // The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New ed. Vol.X. T-U. Leiden - Brill, 2000, p. 64b - 65a.

Etymological dictionary of the Wakhan language. St. Petersburg, 1999. 480 p. (30 p.l.).

Persian words ending in -dar, -tar. - "Oriental Studies. 21". St. Petersburg, 1999, pp. 75 - 100.

Gathas of Zarathushtra. Introduction, poetic translation from Avestan and comments by I.M. Steblin-Kamensky // "Bulletin of Ancient History", 2000, No. 2 (233), pp. 290-300 (Appendix).

Anecdotes about Orientalists // Scripta Gregoriana. Collection in honor of the seventieth birthday of Academician G.M. Bongard-Levin. M., Publishing company "Oriental Literature" RAS. 2003, p. 470-486.

Mikhail, son of Boris // Scripta Yemenica. Research on South Arabia. Collection of scientific articles in honor of the 60th anniversary of M.B. Piotrovsky. M., 2004, p.5-14.

Sonnets, translations of sonnets and 14-line ghazals. 14-line acrostics // About the East, about love. Poems by Orientalists and Orientalists for the 150th anniversary of the Faculty of Oriental Studies. St. Petersburg, 2005, pp. 137-145.

Philosophy of Muallim // Central Asia from the Achaemenids to the Timurids. Archaeology, history, ethnology, culture. Materials of the international

conference dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alexander

Markovich Belenitsky. St. Petersburg, 2005, pp. 31-35 (Appendix: Poems dedicated to Muallim, pp. 35-37).

Steblin-Kaminsky (Steblinsky, Steblin-Kaminsky). Experience in historical and genealogical research. St. Petersburg, VIRD Publishing House, 2005. 312 p. Pech.l. 21.25 (Together with V.V. Korotenko, A.A. Shumkov).

Avesta and Zoroastrianism: antiquity and modernity (religion and occultism) // Proceedings of the United Scientific Council on Humanitarian Problems and Historical and Cultural Heritage. 2004. St. Petersburg, 2005, pp. 139-150.

Anecdotes about orientalists (second series) // Turcica et ottomanica. Collection of articles in honor of the 70th anniversary of M.S. Meyer. M., Publishing company "Oriental Literature" RAS, 2006, pp. 30-48.

On the poetry of Arabic studies (for the 60th anniversary of Mikhail Anatolyevich Rodionov) // Culture of Arabia in the Asian context. Collection of articles for the 60th anniversary of M.A. Rodionov. St. Petersburg, "Petersburg Oriental Studies", 2006, pp. 5-13.

Aryan-Ural connections of the myth of Yima // Aryan civilization in the context of Euro-Asian cultures. Dushanbe, 2006, pp. 100-101.

Alexander Leonovich Grunberg (March 1, 1930 - March 3, 1995) // Indo-Iranian linguistics and typology of linguistic situations. Collection of articles for the 75th anniversary of Professor A.L. Grunberg (1930-1995). Rep. ed. M.N. Bogolyubov. St. Petersburg, 2006, pp. 7-22.

List of works of Alexander Leonovich Grunberg // Ibid., pp. 23-31.

Anecdotes about orientalists - 3 (third series) // Problems of general and regional ethnography (To the 75th anniversary of A.M. Reshetov). MAE RAS, St. Petersburg, 2007, pp. 353-372.

Contacts:

St. Petersburg 199034 St. Petersburg 199053

Universitetskaya embankment, 11, Tuchkov lane, 9, Institute

Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg State University of Linguistic Studies RAS

Legends and myths  Usually they are written about heroes of bygone times. But there are personalities who become legendary during their lifetime.  One of them -  Ivan Mikhailovich Steblin-Kamensky. 

At the Eastern Faculty of Leningrad State University they repeated year after year that he and only he knew the recipe for khaoma, the magical drink of the Zoroastrians. A legend circulated in Oxford that he was not a Christian at all, as he claims, but a real Zoroastrian.

You may not believe me, but this is the true truth. The venerable Oxford doctor, an Iranian named Shahin Behraniye, according to a British passport, Charlotte Beckford, an isoroastrian by faith, who adored Ivan Mikhailovich (are there places where he was not adored?) never tired of repeating to everyone who wanted to listen and hear her: “Ivan only says that he is an Orthodox Christian. In fact, he is definitely a Zoroastrian!”

And what? The Zoroastrian ethical triad “good thought, good word, good deed” is about him. Just like a person’s personal choice between evil and good.

By the way, about Haoma, it’s also quite reliable. Could someone who doesn’t know the recipe for the drink write in such detail and casually:

“The cult drink of the Aryans was not at all intoxicating, but rather exciting or inspiring military exploits and poetic prophecies. It is quite possible that he was once preparing, according to the ingenious hypothesis of R.G. Wasson (R.G. Wasson), and from fly agarics. The northern neighbors of the Aryans were forest hunters and fishermen; their descendants, the Ugro-Finns, still use fly agarics in shamanic practice. At the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennia and later, the raw material for the preparation of the cult drink was ephedra (ephedra, Ephedrasp.), many varieties of which are rich in the alkaloid ephedrine, which is now used by athletes as a doping. From ephedra, but purely symbolically, having lost the original recipes, they prepare an imitation of the cult drink Haomai and modern followers of the ancient Aryan religion, called Zoroastrians, the Gebrev of Iran and the Parsis in India (the latter import sprigs of ephedra from Iran).”

After reading these lines, can anyone guarantee that their author really does not know the ancient secret?

With the light hand of Friedrich Engels, the epithet “titans of the Renaissance” came into literature and journalism. In “Dialectics of Nature,” Engels described in a revolutionary way “... the greatest progressive revolution of all that humanity had experienced up to that time, an era that needed titans and which gave birth to titans in strength of thought, passion and character, in versatility and learning.”

Later it became fashionable to complain that the world has changed, is overflowing with scientific and other information, and it is no longer possible to find titans equal to the titans of the Renaissance in power of thought, passion and character, in versatility and learning. Nowadays, narrow specialists are in fashion, which, as you know, are like gumboil.

Skeptics are wrong. Titans of the Renaissance are generated by any era, as long as there is a personality.

They live and create in one era or another, not in spite of the era, but above the era.

Steblin-Kamensky was a man above his era. A true titan of the Renaissance, soaring above time, space and circumstances.

He was above the era when, together with his friend and comrade Alexander Grunberg, in the Serakh district of the Ashgabat region, he recorded on tape the hereditary storyteller of Sistan, Ismail Yarmamedov, whose illiterate ancestors moved from Sistan and kept the oral memory of ancient Iranian legends. Well, what does the XXIII Congress of the CPSU have to do with it, if you can hear and write down thousand-year-old legends about Rustam, which the great Ferdowsi did not hear?

He was above the era when, in a formal review of his candidate’s dissertation, he easily bridged the gap from the elder Abu Said to Tyutchev: “... a Sufi mystic cannot be a pragmatist, unless, of course, he is an outright charlatan and has not received his own religious experience at all, has no faith . Faith, as Elder Abu Said taught, either exists - then it is a gift from God, or it must be begged from God. Let us remember from Tyutchev: “... My God! Come to the aid of my disbelief...”” An elegant bridge from Sufism to Tyutchev, and outside the windows is what was dubbed gangster Petersburg.

Ivan Mikhailovich soared above the era when, in a completely academic Scripta Gregoriana, he published personally collected anecdotes about orientalists. Then the bearded elders came to life, frowning at the students from the portraits and explaining something in thick volumes about mazars, madhhabs and Persian aorists. You read “Orbeli complained to his colleagues about his wife...”, “Bertels translated Nizami and could not understand some line...”, and you immediately understand that such people could not engage in nonsense. Must read.

He was above the era when he translated “From the Avesta”, “From Shelley”, “From Rimbaud”, when on expeditions to the Pamirs he asked local residents about the names of all kinds of blades of grass and objects of rural use, in order to later publish “Essays on the history of Pamir vocabulary languages. Names of cultivated plants."

He was above the era when, as the dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, he came up with new orientalist specialties, for example, the historian of Egypt, with knowledge of ancient Egyptian and Arabic, and when in the same position, on Oriental Day, he went to the students on a donkey in a Dervish robe and a completely Dervish beard.

Of course, not everyone liked such ease of creativity and existence. Someone wanted to knock him off the wing, force him to land and be silent. But the Titan of the Renaissance can only be wounded, sometimes very painfully, but it cannot be forced not to fly, forced to remain silent.

He was above the era when he composed his own poems and plays. Let's be honest, sometimes obscene or very satirical. The same “Crows”, this is just an anti-feminist lampoon. Again, let's be frank, Ivan Mikhailovich Steblin-Kamensky was absolutely convinced that the main calling of a woman is to give birth to children. Well, sometimes I also devote myself to the arts, of course, in my free time from motherhood. I was convinced of this when in 1996 I accidentally ran into Ivan Mikhailovich on Zagorodny Prospekt. I had a baby hanging in my kangaroo, which made the former teacher very happy. He congratulated me as follows: “Well, finally, we got down to business!” By that time, Aya was already a fully established journalist. In modern times, such sexism is a mortal sin of political correctness. But the Titans of the Renaissance have the right to any judgment...

It is difficult to answer the question of where a Renaissance titan suddenly emerged in the second half of the 20th century in Soviet Leningrad. This is a strange chemistry from post-war Leningrad (I.M. Steblin-Kamensky was born on November 5, 1945), the philological hobbies of his father, the famous Scandinavian scholar, and much more. It’s impossible to list everything.

The Petrograd side, gaping with gaps of destroyed houses, where behind piles of bricks boys play toss, and in the pubs yesterday's front-line soldiers are quiet for the present, and an apartment on Podkovyrov Street, where skaldic poems and fragments from the “Prose Edda” are heard, where the term “structuralism” is ridiculed . There are brilliant teachers here, like Sergei Nikolaevich Sokolov. Here is a father who even walked with his children on the beach in a suit and tie, and noble blood. And later - “Saigon”, where hippie poets and underground musicians, friends of the future titan, met...

By the way, about Steblin’s nobility. Both he and his father, who also worked at Leningrad State University, wrote the standard “from the employees” on all forms. But everyone knew that he was “from the nobility” and of a rather old family. Ivan Mikhailovich revered his family, once proudly showed me an icon that his daughter painted after one of his relatives was canonized as a holy martyr; this is already in 2000. At the same time, there is no pathos, vanity, snobbery or other “pseudo-aristocratic manners.” Steblin viewed his origins according to the behests of Saadi:

...Having musk in his pocket 

doesn't shout about it in the streets. 

The smell of musk speaks for him. 

His noble roots did not prevent him from going on expeditions almost every year - from the Pamirs to Tuva, from Xinjiang to Iran - and admonishingly repeating to newcomers: “In order not to suffer from stomach diseases in Central Asia, you should drink vodka and green tea.”

He knew how to be absolutely down to earth when he was conjuring pilaf or picking mushrooms. By the way, his pilaf was recognized as the best in St. Petersburg by the most fastidious experts. It's true, I had the honor of trying it.

And then soar over the era and see in Arkaime a model of that Var-shelter that the great Yima built. He could hear Zarathushtra speaking. The translation of “GatZaratushtra” into Russian is an indisputable, but not the only scientific and cultural contribution of Steblin to the progress of world civilization.

It would be worth listing the awards and regalia of the Titan of the Renaissance, world recognition, etc. The special article on Viran's Wikipedia is no joke. But I remembered Steblin’s signature grin and someone’s story about how he claimed that you should write the obituary yourself so that they don’t write any nonsense, and decided to end the way I think he would have liked:

Ivan Mikhailovich Steblin-Kamensky knew exactly the recipes of the cult drinks. Otherwise, how could he himself, everyone who studied with him, and everyone who knew him, be inspired to exploits, no matter military or scientific, and to poetic and other prophecies and insights?..

Steblin-Kamensky M. I. Elder Edda

The Elder Edda is not only a monument in which very diverse styles are presented - solemnly upbeat and purely prosaic, playful and elegiac, the style of bickering and the style of incantation - but it is also a monument that, like any outstanding work of art, reveals itself to the reader with its different sides depending on the point of view from which it is viewed, and is never revealed all at once and to the end. Therefore, about the Elder Edda, as about any outstanding work of art, directly opposite statements may be true.

On the one hand, the Elder Edda is a world of bright fantasy, a world where Valkyries gallop across the sky amid lightning, dragons guard treasures, gods intervene in the fate of people - a world that arose from the body of a slain giant and will die during the last battle of the gods with monsters, when the stars fall from the sky and a huge wolf swallows the sun.

On the other hand, the "Elder Edda" is a world of very concrete reality, a world of clear and sharp outlines, where experiences are expressed only through actions or laconic statements, people are assessed critically and even gods are endowed with all the weaknesses and vices of people - a world of sober and pessimistic morality, not sanctified by any supernatural authorities.

The Elder Edda is a literary monument that has its roots in ancient times. It reflected not only the so-called Viking Age, i.e. the era when the Scandinavian peoples and states were formed and the Scandinavian language - still common to all of Scandinavia - was, due to the Viking conquests, one of the most widespread languages ​​in Europe, but also many events names, customs, legends and myths of that much more ancient era, when barbarian Germanic tribes encountered Rome and founded their first states on its ruins. The Elder Edda reflected some myths from that much more ancient era when the Indo-European linguistic community was taking shape, that is, the linguistic community of the majority of European peoples.

At the same time, the Elder Edda is a purely Icelandic monument, the flesh of the Icelandic people, understandable only in the context of the living Icelandic language, Icelandic poetry in general and the nature of Iceland. If the Icelandic language - it has hardly changed since the era to which the manuscript of the Elder Edda dates back to - was not still a living language, much in this monument would remain completely incomprehensible. Very rich synonymy, concrete meanings and laconic expression are still characteristic of the Icelandic language. The structure of verse has also changed relatively little in Iceland: to this day Icelandic poets cannot do without regular alliteration. Finally, the world of the Elder Edda, with its fantastic and sharp contours, is the world of Icelandic nature with its bare basalt mountains, lava fields, desert rocky plateaus, its craters and waterfalls.

"The Elder Edda" is a very simple and intelligible literary monument; it contains only facts and events or statements of characters participating in these events; there is no reasoning or philosophizing in it.

However, despite all the outward artlessness and simplicity, in world literature it is difficult to find a monument more controversial and mysterious than the “Elder Edda” - a monument that would be studied more, would be a greater subject of dispute between scientists and would therefore contain more obscure things. Hundreds of scholars around the world have studied the Elder Edda from a wide variety of perspectives. Works about her could already form an extensive library. But there is no end in sight to her research.

Yet, despite the work of hundreds of scientists, something is known about the Elder Edda.

TITLE, MANUSCRIPT, TEXT

The word “Edda” now means something completely different from what it once meant, and what it originally meant is not known at all. In the Middle Ages, this was the name of a book written in 1222-1225. the famous Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1178-1241). On one of the manuscripts of his work there is an inscription: “This book is called Edda, it was compiled by Snorri Sturluson.” It is possible that it was named so by the author himself. This book is a textbook of poetic art and contains an overview of pagan mythology (to the extent to which this mythology was the basis of poetic phraseology), an overview of poetic phraseology with numerous illustrations from old Icelandic authors, and samples of poetic meters composed by Snorri Sturluson and together forming a whole poem . This book was a textbook of that type of poetic art that has long flourished in Iceland and is called “skald poetry”, or “skaldic poetry”. The main features of this poetry are, firstly, conscious authorship: all skaldic poems have authors, and these authors are called “skalds”; secondly, an extremely elaborate form; thirdly, the actual content: the poetry of the skalds is songs of praise, defamatory poems, or poems for the occasion. The poetry of the skalds is not at all similar to the poetry that is now always associated with the name "Edda"; one might even say that the poetry of the skalds is the opposite of it. However, in the Middle Ages in Iceland it was the poetry of the skalds and its pretentious and dark phraseology that was called “the art of the Edda.”

It is unclear why Snorri Sturluson's book was called the Edda. There are three etymologies of this word. Some consider it to be a derivative of "Oddi", the name of the farm where Snorri was brought up and, perhaps, found materials for his book. "Edda" in this case means "book of Oddi". Others derive the word "Edda" from óðr, a word that sometimes meant "poetry." "Edda" in this case means "poetics". Still others identify the title of Snorri’s book with the word “edda,” which appears in an Old Norse song and apparently means “great-grandmother.” In this case, Snorri's book was called "great-grandmother" for some reason. All three etymologies were put forward long ago and are in turn put forward and rejected again.

In the 17th century - the era of the Scandinavian “scientific renaissance” - interest in ancient monuments arose in Denmark and Sweden, and in Iceland - then a Danish colony - ancient manuscripts began to be intensively collected. But the ideas of scientists of that time about ancient literature were often fantastic. In particular, they had exaggerated ideas about the activities of the Icelandic scientist Samund Sigfusson (1056-1113), who in the Middle Ages was known among the people as a powerful warlock who managed to outwit the devil himself. Universal wisdom was attributed to him, and it was believed that Snorri Sturluson in his Edda was based on the work of Sæmund. Thus, one of the Icelandic scientists and lovers of antiquities, Bishop Brynjolf Sveinsson, wrote to his colleague in the winter of 1641-1642: “Where are the huge treasures of all human wisdom, recorded by Samund the Wise, and above all the famous Edda, from which we now have, except name, barely a thousandth part and which would not have been preserved at all if the extracts of Snorri Sturluson had not left us rather a shadow and a trace than the true composition of the ancient Edda? It is not surprising that, having found in 1643 an ancient parchment codex containing a number of songs about gods and heroes - the same gods and heroes that are mentioned in Snorri's book - Brynjolf decided that he had found the work of Sæmund himself, which served as the basis for Snorri, and wrote on the list from the codex he found: “Edda Saemundi mulliscii,” that is, “Edda Saemund the Wise.” From that moment on, the word "Edda" acquired a completely new meaning. In this new meaning it was soon used in print, and although it was subsequently established that the songs found by Brynjolf had nothing to do with either Samunda or the name "Edda", this name stuck with them, and they began to be called "Edda Samunda" , "Song Edda", songs "Edda", simply "Edda" or "Elder Edda", while Snorri Sturluson's book became known as "Snorri's Edda", "Prose Edda" or "Younger Edda".

The parchment codex found by Brynjolv, one of the most famous manuscripts in the world, soon found its way to Copenhagen. Most of the ancient manuscripts found in Iceland ended up in Copenhagen, a minority in Stockholm and Uppsala. There is not one left in Iceland. The codex found by Brynjolv is kept in the Royal Library in Copenhagen and is called Codex Regius ("royal code") 2365, or CR 2365 for short. Its history before it was found by Brynjolv is unknown. But according to orthographic and paleographic data, it is established that it was written in Iceland in the second half of the 13th century. From the nature of the errors in the codex it is obvious that it is a copy from a somewhat older manuscript. Nothing is known about this older manuscript.

The Royal Codex consists of 45 sheets measuring about 19 X 13 cm. There are six notebooks in it: five of 8 sheets each and one, the last one, of 5 sheets. There is a gap between the fourth and fifth notebooks of the codex: apparently, a whole notebook, 8 sheets, is missing. This lacuna caused a lot of trouble for researchers. Based on the headings and paragraphs in the codex, the contents are usually divided into 29 songs - 10 mythological and 19 heroic. Between individual songs, and sometimes between stanzas of one song, there is prose that connects, explains or complements the text of the songs. Some of the songs are preserved (partially or entirely) in other manuscripts, namely: 6 songs (2 whole and 4 partially) are preserved in an early 14th-century manuscript kept in the Aria Magnusson collection in the library of the University of Copenhagen (abbreviated as AM 748); a version of one song, namely “The Divination of the Völva,” was preserved in another manuscript from the early 14th century. (it's called Hauksbók); fragments and retellings of a number of songs are in the manuscripts of Snorri Sturluson's Edda, the Saga of the Volsungs and the Tale of Norna-Gest - Icelandic prose works of the 13th century. Comparison of the manuscript material, and especially CR 2365 and the manuscripts of Snorri Sturluson's book, shows that the records go back to various oral versions and existed before the recording in the oral tradition.

The name "Edda" subsequently underwent some further expansion! The fact is that songs similar in style, versification and content to those presented in CR 2365 are found in some other Old Icelandic manuscripts. All such songs, together with the songs of the main manuscript, came to be called "Eddic poetry", or poetry of the "Eddic style". Eddic poetry differs from skaldic poetry in that its authors are unknown, its form is relatively artless, and its content is ancient tales about gods and heroes or rules of worldly wisdom. All Old Icelandic poetry is divided into these two types of poetic art - skaldic poetry and Eddic poetry. However, there are, of course, works of an intermediate nature. In addition to the songs of the main manuscript, it is customary to include in editions of the Elder Edda some of the other Eddic songs, namely those that are closest in content to the songs of the main manuscript. But the number of such additional songs varies from edition to edition. Most often they were “Dreams of Balder”, “Song of Hyndla”, “Song of Riga” and “Song of Svipdag”. Our edition also includes the “Song of Hlod” and the “Song of the Valkyries”, but does not include the “Song of Svipdag” (it was preserved only in later paper copies and, apparently, is an imitation of the songs of the Edda). There are many other Eddic style songs in Old Norse literature. Thus, the German translation of F. Genzmer's Edda includes 26 songs that are not in CR 2365.

However, only those songs that are in CR 2365 or directly adjacent to the songs of this manuscript have become famous. Their text was published over thirty times, not counting partial editions, and in translation (into 16 different European languages) over one hundred and fifty times. Their glory can only be compared with the glory of the Iliad and Odyssey. They were published by major Germanic philologists, starting with Jacob Grimm and Rasmus Rask. Preparing their publication required painstaking textual work. Suffice it to say that the first complete edition of the Elder Edda - the Copenhagen edition with Latin interlinear translation - was published within 41 years (1787-1828), and the edition equipped with the most complete introduction, glossary and commentary - the edition of Seymons and Goering - within 43 years (1888-1931) and was out of date before its last volume was published. The publication of the outstanding Norwegian philologist Sufys Bygge (1867), which for the first time provided an accurate and complete picture of the manuscript material, remains a classic edition. Our translation gives the numbering of the stanzas of Bügge's edition, as is customary in modern editions of the text of the Elder Edda. But our translation was made according to the edition of John Helgason (1952-1954) and partly according to the first edition of Neckel.

In the text of the "Elder Edda" there are many morphological and syntactic archaisms, many words that are not found anywhere else and, apparently, became outdated already in the 13th century. But the archaisms did not remain untouched in the songs. They were updated or replaced, probably in the oral tradition. This can be seen from their phonetic form. Therefore, the language of the manuscript is still the language of the second half of the 13th century. Previously, it was customary to restore the so-called original language form of songs and put older language forms in place of those presented in the manuscript (for example, vas in place of var, bláan in place of blán, etc.). Seymons and Hering often did this. That is why their edition became out of date before its last volume came out. Now this is done less and less: it becomes obvious that it is impossible to restore the original linguistic form songs are impossible.

The same is true with the order of stanzas and lines in songs. Previously, it was customary to look for later insertions (interpolations) and the original form in songs. By removing supposed inserts, all sorts of rearrangements and even additional compositions, they achieved smoothing out all the contradictions and absolute logic in the composition of the song. As a result of such “higher criticism of the text,” as German philologists called it, sometimes literally less than a quarter remained of the dogs (see, for example, the commentary on the “Speeches of Grimnir”). The translators did the same. Thus, in the German translation of the Edda, carried out by F. Genzmer under the editorship of A. Häusler, a prominent German specialist in ancient Germanic poetry, a translation that is rightly considered exemplary in terms of style and versification, the stanzas in the songs are shuffled, shortened or expanded, from one several songs were made, etc., in accordance with Heusler's ideas about the original form of the songs. But the fact is that different researchers restore the original form of songs in completely different ways, depending on their tastes and views. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly clear that it is impossible to restore it. In our publication, the attempts of researchers to restore the original form of the songs are reflected only in the comments.

There are quite significant stylistic differences between the individual songs of the Elder Edda: the Song of Thrym is stylistically similar to the folk ballad, the Song of Hymir is similar to the poetry of the skalds, the Song of Harbard is very prosaic, in the Speeches of Atli there are many epic Variations , etc. These stylistic features of individual songs are discussed in our comments. Nevertheless, the songs of the Edda have some common stylistic features that distinguish them from the poetry of the skalds, on the one hand, and West Germanic (Old English and Old German) epic poetry, on the other, and provide them with a special place among the monuments of ancient Germanic poetry.

All ancient Germanic epic poetry is characterized by the so-called camping, i.e., the replacement of a noun in ordinary speech with a periphrasis, at least two-term, such as “whale road” (sea), “sea horse” (ship), “gold distributor” (prince). In the poetry of the skalds, kennings reach a monstrous development. There are not only three-membered, but also four-, five-, six- and seven-membered kennings: “the one who dulls the hunger of the seagull with the ringing brilliance of the beast Heiti” - this turns out to be a “warrior”, since the “beast Heiti” is “ ship", "shine of the ship" is "shield", "ringing of the shield" is "battle", "seagull of battle" is "raven", and "he who dulls the raven's hunger" is "warrior". Many skald kennings are riddle-like and require knowledge of mythology, heroic tales and skaldic poetics. Often they are completely conventional and express not the image of the object, but its idea. Kennings in the Elder Edda are incomparably simpler. However, they are less simple and transparent than the kennings in the epic poetry of the West Germans. Along with kennings such as “son of Odin” (Thor), “father Magni” (also Thor), kennings such as “surf boar” (whale), “lava whale” (giant), “blood snake” are also found in the Elder Edda " (sword), "Valkyrie goslings" (crows), "battle ash" (warrior), "battle stick" (sword), "land of necklaces" (woman), etc., which are hardly understandable to the uninitiated. However, kennings like “Father Magni” also require special knowledge, namely knowledge of mythological names.

The Edda style is generally characterized by an abundance of proper names. It gives the style concreteness, but at the same time it often makes it difficult to understand. The meaning of many of these names is completely unknown. Some of them, apparently, arose along with the song and were its stylistic decoration (see, for example, the commentary on the songs about Helgi). Others were drawn from tradition and often go back to ancient times. Sometimes proper names are accumulated into entire lists, the so-called tula (see, for example, “Divination of the Völva”). The abundance of proper names in the Edda is obviously due to the fact that in Old Icelandic poetry the ancient syncretic tradition was still making itself felt - the combination of poetry with the communication of all kinds of knowledge (mythological, etc.). But love for proper names has also become a trait characteristic of Icelanders in general.

Although the songs of the Edda contain a lot of traditional expression characteristic of folklore - repeating formulas, verbal clichés, etc. - their style, precisely due to the presence of kennings and the abundance of proper names, is not similar to the style of folk poetry of later eras. It seems less simple, less immediate. From here the conclusion is usually drawn that the songs of the Edda are not folklore, but “literature,” and at the same time, significant stylistic differences between individual songs are pointed out, as if their own style in individual songs. This conclusion is an example of underestimating the specifics of ancient poetry and conditions of its existence.But prejudices in this area will be discussed below.

Very rich synonymy and concrete meanings are specific features of the Edda style. Such important words for heroic poetry as “king”, “battle”, “sword”, etc., have many poetic synonyms in the language of the Edda, dozens of them. But there are no words with abstract meaning in the language of the Edda at all. Abstract concepts, if they find expression in the Edda, do so through words that at the same time have a very specific meaning. Thus, the Old Icelandic word, which means “need” and “coercion”, at the same time means “fetters”, “bonds”. These archaic stylistic features cannot be conveyed in modern European languages. These features, to a greater or lesser extent, were also characteristic of the epic poetry of the West Germans, but they have long since become obsolete. In Iceland, on the contrary, these features were further developed: they are characteristic not only of all Icelandic poetry, but also of the Icelandic language in general. In modern Icelandic, in a number of cases it is necessary to choose between several words with specific meanings where other European languages ​​make do with one word with a more general meaning. On the other hand, due to some features of the Icelandic language, it is still being replenished not by borrowings from other languages ​​(there are still almost no such borrowings in it), but by rethinking old words or combining them into new words. Therefore, his dictionary not only retained the specificity of its meanings, but even developed it. In the modern Icelandic language there are not those inexpressive and devoid of national color words that are so abundant in all other modern European languages, especially in the language of science. So, for example, the words “system”, “vitamin”, “sterilization”, “dinosaur” in Icelandic correspond, in literal translation, to the words “sheaf” (kerfi), “stuff of life” (fjörefni), “death purge” (dau ðhreinsun ), "troll-lizard" (trölleðla).

Finally, a specifically Icelandic feature in the Edda style is compactness, laconicism, and swiftness. It is this feature that most distinguishes the Elder Edda from the epic poetry of the West Germans. It is no coincidence that such a favorite device of ancient Germanic poetry as epic variation, i.e. repetition in other words of the same thing (usually a concept that can be expressed by a noun or its equivalent), is represented much less in the songs of the Edda than in monuments to the epic poetry of the West Germans. Perhaps laconicism is the most significant in the style of the Edda and the most Icelandic. The fact is that laconicism is largely the result of the development of the Icelandic language. Due to the fact that in the Icelandic language Prefixes have completely disappeared and the endings of unstressed syllables have been significantly reduced became small, the stress was concentrated in the root syllable and the words acquired exceptional compactness. The laconicism of the Edda songs is to a large extent a reflection of the rhythmic compactness of the Icelandic language itself. But the rhythm of the Icelandic language will be discussed below.

VERSIFICATION

The Edda verse is an alliterative verse, a form of versification that arose among the Germans in ancient times, probably even before our era, and survived longest in Iceland. Among the West Germans it is represented only in their ancient literature, and in other Scandinavian countries - only in runic inscriptions.

The essence of this form of versification is alliteration, the regular repetition of the initial sound of a word. Alliteration is also found in Russian verse as an occasional decoration or a means of enhancing its expressiveness. For example:

A cauldron bubbling and swirling...

(A.S. Pushkin).

The function of alliteration in alliterative verse is quite different. It is there - not a decoration of the verse and not a means of enhancing its expressiveness, but its basis. It is used there not occasionally, but in strictly defined places and only in syllables that carry semantic stress. It connects two adjacent lines and determines the rhythm, highlighting syllables that carry semantic stress. The random alliteration in this verse is not alliteration. The role of alliteration in this verse is somewhat similar to the role of end rhyme in our verse. But the role of alliteration is narrower: it can only connect two adjacent lines. And broader: it not only connects the lines, but also determines the rhythm. Therefore, poems without end rhyme are quite possible for us. Poems without alliteration among the Icelanders, and earlier among the Germans in general, were absolutely impossible.

Alliteration could be formed by identical consonants (for example: meiri - minni, sandr - sær, gap - ginnunga) or vowels, and different vowels were preferred and yot was also considered a vowel. For example: alda - Ymir, ormr - unnir, jörð - æva. The combinations sp, st, sk could only alliterate with these combinations. For example: steins - stendr, spöll - spaklig, Skuld - skildi.

The rhythm of alliterative verse is very varied. Each line must have two stresses that coincide with the semantic stresses. The number of unstressed syllables and their distribution in a line are arbitrary. Or rather, they are not arbitrary, but determined only by the rhythm of the language. Therefore, the rhythm of the Edda songs is very different from the rhythm of Old English and Old German alliterative verse: the Germanic languages ​​diverged significantly already in the era of the most ancient monuments. The rhythm of the Edda songs is more compact and faster than the rhythm of West German alliterative monuments. Probably the rhythm of the Edda differs even more from the rhythm of German alliterative verse of the beginning of our era.

In the songs of the Edda, the number of syllables per line varies from two to ten (but, of course, there are favorite rhythms determined by the structure of the language). Consequently, in the verse of the Edda there is nothing similar to our syllabic-tonic verse with its equal number of syllables per line and the regular sequence of the same poetic feet - iambics, trochees, dactyls, etc. The rhythm of the Eddic verse is much more variable and mobile, and it does not smooth out the contrasts of stress in words, as our syllabic-tonic verse smooths them out with its repeating metrical pattern, but, on the contrary, enhances these contrasts, stylizing speech in the direction of greater emphasis, greater solemnity. This nature of the rhythm is probably due to the fact that this verse, apparently, was not sung or performed with musical accompaniment.

In the songs of the Edda there are two variants of alliterative verse. The first of these can be called "epic size" (in Icelandic it is called fornyrðislag). In this meter, every two lines are connected in pairs by alliteration, and there are three possibilities for its placement in these youths. 1) It can appear in the first stressed syllable of an odd line and in the first stressed syllable of an even line, for example:

Austri ok Vestri

Aljofr, Dvalinn

Austri and Vestri

Altiov, Dvalin...1

2) It can appear in the second stressed syllable of an odd line and in the first stressed syllable of an even line, for example:

Þar var Draupnir

ok Dolgþrasir...

It was Draupnir

and Dolgtrasir...

3) It can appear in the first and second stressed syllable of an odd line and in the first stressed syllable of an even line, for example:

Norðri ok Suðri...

Nii and Needy

Nordri and Sudri...

Thus, alliteration always occurs on the first stressed syllable of an even line. In alliterative verse, the ear waits for alliteration at this point, just as in rhymed verse the ear waits for rhyme. In Icelandic, the alliteration at this point is called "main", and the remaining alliterations are called "supports". The absence of alliteration in the first stressed syllable of an even line is a rare exception in the Elder Edda and is usually explained by corruption of the text. The two lines are so closely linked by alliteration that they form a kind of unity and are often called together a “long line,” and individual lines called “half lines.” In editions of the Elder Edda, two lines connected by alliteration were often printed on one line. But this was never practiced where alliterative verse is still alive, that is, in Iceland, and recently it has not been done outside Iceland either.

Epic meter is the meter of most of the Edda's songs and all of its narrative songs. This is also the meter of alliterative poetry of the West Germans. However, among the West Germans, lines of epic size are combined only in pairs (to form “long lines”), while in the songs of the Edda lines of this size are grouped into stanzas, usually eight lines. In addition, in the songs of the Edda in epic meter there are fewer unstressed syllables than in the alliterative poetry of the West Germans, and the syntactic boundaries usually coincide with the metric ones, whereas in West German alliterative poetry these boundaries often do not coincide, i.e. syntactic transfer takes place from line to line. The tendency of Eddic verse to be strophic and to limit the number of syllables per line is usually explained by the influence of skaldic poetry, which is characterized by counting syllables per line and strict strophic composition.

The second meter found in the Edda can be called “dialogic” or “gnomic.” In Icelandic it is called ljóðaháttr. It differs from the first in a clearer strophic composition. The stanza in it consists of two half-stanzas, each of which has three lines. Of these, the first two are linked by alliteration in exactly the same way as lines of epic meter, but the third is unpaired, and in it the alliteration is therefore limited to the boundaries of the line: its two stressed syllables alliterate with each other. Here is an example of a half-stanza of this size:

Glaðr ok Gyllir,

Gler ok Skeiðbrimir,

Silfrintoppr ok Sinir...

Glyad and Gyullir,

Gler and Skeidbrimnr,

Silvrintopp and Sinyir...

This meter is found only in songs whose content is teachings, sayings or speeches of characters. The number of unstressed syllables in this meter is even more variable than in the epic meter. It contains lines of both two and eight to ten syllables. The latter occurs especially often in unpaired lines, and this explains the fact that some researchers find not two, but three metric stresses in these lines. This size also has some stylistic features. So, there are no kennings in it. This size is not attested outside Iceland.

There is also a special Eddic meter, a variety of epic meter, distinguished by a larger than usual number of unstressed syllables (at least five). But the difference between this meter - in Icelandic it is called the "meter of speeches" (málaháttr) - from the epic is very unclear. In the Elder Edda, this meter is more or less consistently carried out only in the Greenland Speeches of Atli. The difference between the so-called “spell meter” (galdralag) and the dialogic meter is more clear: it has an additional unpaired line. But it is found only in some stanzas of songs composed in dialogic meter.

At one time it was believed that the versification of the songs of the Edda was based on the counting of syllables in a line to the same extent as the poetry of the skalds, and this forced publishers (for example, Seymons and Goering) to “restore” the text in their editions, that is, to shorten or lengthen lines. The strophic composition of the songs was also “restored,” which in epic size is far from being as strict as previously thought. The supposed original integrity of the stanzas was usually “restored” by the translators of the Elder Edda.

Alliteration can play the role that it plays in alliterative verse only in a language in which the stress, as a rule, falls on the initial syllable of the word and this syllable at the same time is the main meaningful element of the word (its root). This was the emphasis in the ancient Germanic languages, and in Icelandic it was most consistently this way and has remained so to this day. It is no coincidence that alliterative verse survived into modern times (although in modern times usually in combination with end rhyme) only in Iceland.

Translations of the Elder Edda into modern Germanic languages ​​(German, English, Swedish, etc.) usually revive alliterative verse. But such a revival of alliterative verse is more or less difficult: in modern Germanic languages, many words do not have an initial stress and, therefore, cannot bear alliteration. In Russian, initial stress has never been a rule, and there are relatively few words with initial stress. Therefore, in it alliteration cannot at all play the role that it plays in the songs of the Edda.

True, in the only poetic translation of the "Elder Edda" into Russian - the translation by S. Sviridenko - it is indicated on the title page that it is made "in the size of the original", and in the preface the possibility and necessity of observing alliteration in translating the songs of the "Edda" into Russian is extensively proven language2. It should be said right away: Sviridenko’s translation was done quite conscientiously and was quite accurate for its time. If in many places there are discrepancies between our translation and hers, this is usually explained not by the fact that the meaning of the original was not understood by her, but by the fact that this place was previously interpreted differently, and even more often by the fact that this place is interpreted differently and we did not choose the interpretation that Sviridenko chose (it did not seem appropriate to us to stipulate all such controversial places, but in some places this was done in our notes). The situation is worse in Sviridenko’s translation in terms of conveying the size and style of the original.

Sviridenko's argument in favor of observing alliteration is based on a misunderstanding of the essence of alliterative verse, and her translation practice is a clear example of this misunderstanding. The fact is that the alliteration in her translation is completely different from the alliteration in the songs of the Edda. Firstly, alliteration in Sviridenko’s translation often occurs in a non-initial syllable of the word. For example:

It turns green forever, the key of Urdr overshadows.

Grimr with a shield advances from the east...

Such alliteration is naturally much less audible than alliteration at the beginning of a word. And is it even audible to the Russian reader? Secondly, and this is worse, in Sviridenko’s translation the alliteration very often does not stand where it should stand according to the laws of alliterative verse, and Sviridenko herself admits this. But verse with alliteration like this is not alliterative verse. In the very first two stanzas of Sviridenko’s translation, only in one of the eight “long lines” the main alliteration is in the first stressed syllable of the second “half-line” (where it certainly should be!). This line:

Great children of Heimdallr and small ones!

But this was also achieved at the cost of incorrect emphasis in the name “Heimdallr”. In the vast majority of cases, Sviridenko has no alliteration at this place or no alliteration at all in the even “half-line”, that is, there is no core of alliterative verse, no alliteration as a connection between “half-lines”. Yes, as a matter of fact, there are no “half-lines” themselves: paired “half-lines” are merged into one undivided and cumbersome line of regular tetrameter dactyl, amphibrachium or anapest (in unpaired lines in dialogic meters - the same trimeter). These long and monotonously chanting syllabic-tonic lines are completely unlike the Eddic two-stressed lines with a variable number of syllables.

But the worst thing is that, trying to somehow fill these long and cumbersome lines and at the same time give alliteration (incorrect and inaudible!), Sviridenko was forced to dilute her translation with various “beautiful” epithets and simply unnecessary words and thus reduce to there is no magnificent laconicism of the Edda songs. For example, stanza 21 of “The Speeches of Vafthrudnir” in a literal prose translation reads: “From the flesh of Ymir the earth was created, and from the bones - the mountains, the sky - from the skull of a giant as cold as frost, and from the blood - the sea.” Sviridenko translates:

From Ymir's body the earth was molded;

And the mountains are made of thick bones;

The radiant sky is made from a skull,

From hot blood - the sea.

There are no italicized epithets in the original. There is only the epithet “cold as frost”. But this very epithet is not in the translation. And so on in almost every stanza. In the same song, the giant Vafthrudnir is sometimes “old”, sometimes “knowledgeable”, the gods are “immortal” (and they are all mortal), the waters are “light”, the horse Grimfaxi is “dark”, the sky is “daytime”, Dellingr - “kind” (but only Sviridenko knows about his kindness), the wings of the eagle Grasvelgr - “huge”, Niflheim - “gloomy”, etc. None of these epithets are in the original.

It is impossible to translate the songs of the Edda into Russian in “original size”. Poetic meter is not a uniform that can be put on any language, regardless of whether the language is adapted to this meter or not. The meter that arose in a given language is usually the crystallized rhythm of the language itself. It is inappropriate to try to give alliteration in the Russian translation of the songs of the Edda: it cannot be in Russian verse what it was in German alliterative verse. But one can strive to convey the changeable and free rhythms of the Edda songs and their stylistic compactness using Russian poetic means. The Russian two-stressed dolnik, with its unequal number of unstressed syllables in a line and moving stresses, seems to us to better convey the rhythm of the Edda than the correct three-syllable syllabic-tonic meters.

SONGS ABOUT THE GODS

None of the Germanic peoples, except Icelandic, has preserved pagan literature. Paganism was the ideology of a tribal society - a society in which there was neither division into classes nor a state. With the destruction of this society, its ideology also disappeared. Only in Iceland, due to very special historical conditions3, despite the destruction of clan society, its ideology was preserved for a long time and, in particular, the folk literary tradition reflecting paganism was preserved. Therefore, the mythological songs of the Elder Edda are a monument, one of a kind. Together with the Younger Edda, they are the main source of our information about Germanic paganism.

However, the manuscript of the Elder Edda dates back to the 13th century, and Christianity became the official religion in Iceland back in 1000. True, the Christianization of Iceland took place under very peculiar conditions: Christianity was declared the official religion as a result of an amicable agreement between pagans and Christians, and the adoption Christianity did not entail the eradication of pagan tradition. Christianity and paganism did not oppose each other as the ideologies of the fighting classes, and in the early days after the adoption of Christianity, the ideology of the Catholic Church - and, in particular, its intolerance - did not gain any currency in Iceland. Icelandic Christianity was, in essence, a compromise between paganism and Christianity, and the songs of the Edda are one of the reflections of this compromise. Yet the pagan tradition was probably not preserved intact in the songs of the Elder Edda: during the existence of songs in the oral tradition they could some of its distortions, replacements, elimination of purely cult elements, etc. may occur. But it is usually very difficult or impossible to establish whether such distortions actually occurred and what they consisted of.

On the other hand, a long path of development separates the myths of the Elder Edda, that is, the paganism of the Viking Age, or the 9th-10th centuries, from the Germanic paganism of the beginning of our era. Changes in living conditions and the structure of society should have caused changes in beliefs and myths. And although much in the myths of the Elder Edda has correspondences among the Germans and the English, and even more among the Norwegians, Danes and Swedes, these correspondences are reflected only in the names. Nothing but names has been preserved from paganism among any Germanic people, with the exception of Icelandic.

A much longer path of development separates the myths of the “Elder Edda” from the Indo-European proto-myths restored by modern science, that is, from the supposed myths of the era of the Indo-European community, and here there are only some more or less close plot similarities and almost no correspondence in names.

Thus, in the myths of the Elder Edda, layers of many eras were deposited. It is unlikely that it will ever be possible to remove the layers one by one and restore the entire path of development of these myths. As to what is common in them, what is common in them, what is common in Germany, and what is common in Do-European, one can only make assumptions. In the form in which these myths have been preserved, they are Icelandic, and this is the only thing that can be said about them with complete certainty.

It is not known, in particular, whether other Germanic peoples had mythological poetry similar to Eddic poetry. Unlike the heroic songs of the Elder Edda, its mythological songs have no correspondence among other Germanic peoples. But since these songs are very diverse in genre terms, it can be assumed that they are the result of a long literary development. The Eddic mythological songs present a purely narrative genre ("The Song of Thrym" and "The Song of Hymir") and teachings in worldly wisdom ("Speeches of the High One"), a purely dramatic genre ("Skirnir's Ride") and a genre of wise conversation ("Speeches of Vafthrudnir ", "The Speeches of Grimnir", "The Speeches of Alvis", "The Song of Hyndl"), a kind of domestic comedy ("The Song of Harbard" and "Loki's Quarrel") and a work song ("The Song of the Valkyries" and "The Song of Grotti"). But among them there are also songs that cannot be subsumed under any of these genres ("Divination of the Völva", "Song of Riga"). For more information about all these genres, see the individual song comments. As for the content of the songs of the "Elder Edda", they contain prophetic pathos, a cheerful joke, cold observation, a naive fairy tale, and evil mockery. The only thing common to all of them is that their world is the real world, the world of human practice, a world in which, in essence, there is nothing otherworldly.

The pantheon of the "Elder Edda" is a primitive human society, a wild tribe that fights with a neighboring tribe, using force or cunning, makes campaigns, takes prisoners or hostages, steals property or women from a neighboring tribe, but above all fights with scarlet forces, with everything that threatens his life and life values. The evil forces in the mythological songs of the Elder Edda are giants (jotuns, thurs) and giantesses, and the latter also includes Hel - death.

The gods of the Elder Edda are the same people. They are not idealized, not abstract, and in no way better than humans. They are not even immortal and are so humanized that their images are more diverse, complex and concrete than the images of epic heroes in heroic songs. Vanirs, Aesir and Asinya are generously endowed with human weaknesses and vices and in their moral level are significantly inferior to epic heroes. However, with the exception of the “Divination of the Völva,” in the mythological songs of the Elder Edda there is no condemnation of vice from the point of view of high morality. In the mythological songs of the Elder Edda, morality is generally more primitive than in its heroic songs. Perhaps this is explained by the fact that myths (but not mythological poetry!) are older than tales about heroes. However, the lack of moral assessment in the mythological songs of the Elder Edda can also be explained by the fact that the attitude of people towards the gods is not covered in them at all. Is this why the nature of this relationship is often interpreted so differently by researchers?

The realistic depiction of the gods in the Elder Edda is still, of course, not realism in the modern sense. Considering Odin and Thor as personifications of two opposing classes - the military aristocracy and farmers - is the same simplification as reducing everything in myths to a sentimental personification of natural phenomena. Odin and Thor cannot be personifications of antagonist classes simply because myths about them arose in a pre-class society. The mythology of pre-class society is not a rationalistic system, not an ideal office" in which each god is in charge of affairs of a strictly defined nature: thunder or the sun, water or air, workers or aristocrats. There are a lot of contradictions and inconsistencies in the mythology of the "Elder Edda". can be identical to a living being and a specific process, the past and the future can coexist, just as the countries of the world coexist, and time can begin again and again. In the mythology of the Elder Edda, Hel is simultaneously death, and the kingdom of death, and a giantess, and a process decomposition of the corpse, its blue-black color. Hild is the name of one of the Valkyrie maidens, the goddesses of battle, and at the same time the battle itself. The Norns are the goddesses of fate and the fates themselves. But Skuld is the name of one of the Norns and one of the Valkyries , and, apparently, the Norns and Valkyries are different aspects of the same female deities who, in their less defined and more ancient aspect associated with the cult of fertility, were called "dis". But the word "dis" is found in the Elder Edda and in the erased meaning of "woman" or "noble woman." Mythological names and titles in general are often found in the Elder Edda with such erased meanings. So, alvas (etymologically the same as elves) are, apparently, originally the spirits of the dead. But in many songs of the Edda, the alvas are the same as the aces, or gods in general.

The most complex and contradictory image is Odin, the head and father of the family of gods. He is the god of war. The Valkyries bring to Valhalla - its palace - heroes struck to death on the battlefield, and the heroes who end up there (the so-called Einherjar) fight there every day with each other and then feast. But he is also the god of poetry and wisdom. He obtained the honey of poetry from the giants and acquired knowledge of runes by hanging himself on the world tree and piercing himself with a spear. He is therefore the god of the hanged, that is, those executed or sacrificed. He revives them and converses with them, like the god of witchcraft and spells. In the myths about him one can find reflections of shamanic rituals and remnants of shamanism. But many of Odin’s names reflect his primordial connection with the wind; it was customary for sailors to ask him for a fair wind. Previously, they looked for a reflection of the Viking Age in his cult. But it is becoming increasingly clear that this cult is much older than the Viking Age. The fact that the leader of the gods is at the same time the god of war, poetry, wisdom and witchcraft is most likely a reflection of that ancient era when the leader of the tribe had to be the leader in all these areas.

Odin is the patron saint of heroes. He leads them to victory, gives them his spear Gungnir, makes them invulnerable. But he helps his favorites achieve victory through cunning rather than force, and he himself kills his favorites. He is a sower of strife and discord. In many myths, he cunningly seduces women. "Villain" is one of his names, "terrible" is another. He actually has many names. He loves to take on different names and change his appearance. He was usually imagined as an old man with a long beard, a hat pulled low over his forehead, and a blue cloak. "Disguised" or "disguised" is one of his names. Judging by some of his names, he also took the form of a hawk, eagle, snake, bear, horse; it is possible that these are remnants of totemistic ideas. The raven and the wolf were dedicated to him, since both are associated with the battlefield. But the two ravens that always accompany him are called Hugin and Munin - “thought” and “memory”. Odin is usually thought of as having one eye, and his partial physical vision is, of course, a symbol of his spiritual vision: he is the god of inspiration, and his very name comes from a word that means "spirit", "frenzy", "poetry".

The image of Thor is in many ways the opposite of the image of Odin, and above all, it is as simple as the image of Odin is complex. Thor is the god of thunder and lightning. But thunderstorm and thunder are rather symbols of his qualities. Thor was imagined as tall and strong, hot-tempered and simple-minded, with a red beard and a loud voice. In a chariot drawn by goats, and accompanied by his servant Thialvi, he travels to the east, to the land of the giants, and there he fights with them. If he had not exterminated them, they would have become so numerous that life would have become impossible for people. It usually happens that when he is on a campaign against the giants, the gods just need his help. Thor wins with strength, not with his mind. His sons are Magni and Modi, meaning "strength" and "courage" - obviously. Personifications of his qualities. His attribute is the famous stone hammer Mjollnir, with which he destroys giants and giantesses. The world serpent Ermungand is also Thor’s original enemy, and when the death of the gods comes, Thor will defeat him and die himself. Thor was revered in the Viking Age both as a god of fertility and as a protector against witchcraft, disease and all evil. He was also considered the protector of warriors and was greatly revered by the Vikings. Therefore, there is no reason to recognize him as the god of farmers, and Odin as the god of warriors.

The strangest image of Eddic mythology is Loki. He is the insidious instigator of all evil. He is the cause of the death of the bright god Balder, Whom the whole world mourned. When the death of the gods comes, Loki will fight against them on the side of evil forces. Therefore, he is naturally Thor's opponent. But Loki appears in myths not only as an opponent of Thor, but also as his companion and assistant. In this case, Loki's cunning sets off Thor's innocence. In relation to both Thor and Odin, Loki plays a dual role. He sometimes acts like a joker who himself does not understand what consequences his joke can have. And he plots not only against the gods, but also against giants, that is, evil forces. The interpretation of the image of Loki has caused a lot of trouble for scientists: this image is very contradictory. In one of the last two books dedicated to him, Loki is interpreted as “a mind without a sense of responsibility” and is associated with the image of Sirdon, the hero of the Ossetian epic, and in the other - as a hypostasis of Odin, as a deity identical to Odin, but reflecting only one side of him.

Odin, Thor and Loki belong to the Aesir - the genus to which most gods belong. But there is another kind of gods - the Vanir, with whom the Aesir initially fought. The Vanir are fertility deities and may be older than the Aesir. The Vanir include Njord and his children, Frey and Freya. Frey grants peace and wealth. He has the power of rain and sun. He is called upon at weddings, he gives happiness to girls, and frees prisoners. In the myths about him, his marriage to Gerd, the daughter of the giant Gymir, plays an important role. His attributes are the wonderful ship Skidbladnir and the golden boar Gullinbursti. Traces of an ancient phallic cult found in Scandinavia are associated with the cult of Freyr. His sister Freya is also the goddess of fertility and childbirth. But she is called upon not only at birth, but also in the event of death. In myths, she is unfaithful to her husband Od, and the giants covet her. She is said to be as slutty as a goat. She was even the lover of her brother Frey. But incest - probably a relic of group marriage and matriarchy - is also attributed to her father Njord.

The Elder Edda mentions many other gods and goddesses, but their images are less clear, and in some cases it is difficult to say whether we are talking about different deities or hypostases of one deity, its properties or names that have acquired independent existence.

A special place in Eddic poetry is occupied by gnomic stanzas, that is, stanzas whose content is the rules of worldly wisdom, proverbs and sayings. Most of them have been preserved in "Speeches of the High". By all accounts, these stanzas are the most ancient in the Elder Edda. Their cultural and historical significance is enormous. More than anywhere else in the Elder Edda, they reflected everyday life and customs. It is curious that in these stanzas there are no traces of religious ideas, neither pagan nor Christian. The morality presented in these stanzas is devoid of any sublimity. They say, for example, that one must pay for deception by deception, not trust anyone, seduce women with flattery and gifts, etc. Researchers argue about the environment in which such cynical morality could arise (cf. comments to “Speeches Tall"). But the fact is that the content of these verses are purely practical rules. They say nothing about what an ideal person should be like. On the contrary, they speak only of what rules the average person actually follows in his relations with other people. Apart from the will of those who composed or collected them, these rules provide an objective picture of the behavior of the average person and sometimes a satire on his behavior. Therefore, it is no coincidence that gnomic stanzas are included in one of the mythological songs. They have this in common with mythological songs, that the images that emerge from them are not ideal, but, on the contrary, rather satirical. Such images are alien to heroic songs.

SONGS ABOUT HEROES

The uniqueness of the heroic songs of the Elder Edda is that they, both in form and content, reflect a relatively very archaic stage in the development of heroic poetry. First of all, they are “songs” and not “epics”. After Heusler, developing the thought of the English scientist Coeur, came up with his theory of the development of heroic poetry, it became generally accepted that its more archaic stage is a “song,” a short narrative work that exhausts its plot and is intended for oral performance, and the later its level is “epic” (“epic poem”, or simply “epic”, also “book epic”), i.e. a lengthy narrative work that arose from a separate heroic song through its stylistic “swelling” and was no longer intended for oral performance, but for reading. Among a number of peoples (Greeks, Persians, French, etc.) heroic poetry was preserved only in the form of epics. Among the Germanic peoples, the Germans and English also preserved it only in the form of epics (except for two fragments of heroic songs), among the Danes only in Latin retellings of songs, and only among the Icelanders it is richly and variedly represented in heroic songs.

The songs of the "Elder Edda" are much more archaic in content than the heroic poetry of other Germanic peoples. Due to the special social conditions mentioned above, in these songs, although they were collected and recorded in the 13th century, when more than two centuries had passed after the introduction of Christianity, the influence of feudal ideology is very insignificant, and in many songs it is completely absent On the contrary, the ideology of tribal society, its highest level, is richly represented in them.

In view of all this, it is not surprising that the heroic songs of the Elder Edda are often taken as examples of “ancient Germanic” or “all-Germanic” heroic poetry. However, these songs are still Icelandic. It is impossible to distract from the specifically Icelandic in them without distracting from their artistic essence.

In heroic poetry, it is necessary to distinguish not only its different genre forms - "song", "epic", etc. - but also the work as such and its plot, i.e., "legend". Most of the tales presented in the heroic songs of the Elder Edda are of South Germanic rather than Scandinavian origin; a minority are of Scandinavian origin. There are no tales of Icelandic origin in the heroic songs of the Elder Edda. The Icelandic in these songs is the interpretation of the legends, individual motives, their combination, etc. But separating the Icelandic from the non-Icelandic in these tales is very difficult and often impossible.

Apparently, of the heroic tales of South Germanic origin, the most popular in Iceland were the tales of Sigurd and Brynhild, of Sigurd's wife Gudrun, her brothers Gunnar and Högni and her second husband Atli, of Hamdir and Sørli, their sister Svanhild and Jörmunrekka; from legends of Scandinavian origin - the tale of Helgi. The historical basis of these legends - in those cases where it is more or less clearly palpable - is the events of the 4th-5th centuries. n. e., i.e., the era of the “great migration of peoples,” in which the German tribes reached the highest degree of development of tribal society and founded their most ancient “barbarian” states. These events are the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom on the Rhine by the Huns in 437, the death of the Hun leader Attila (Atli) in 453 and the death of the Ostrogothic king Ermanaric (Jormunrekk) in 375. For more information about these events, see the comments to the "Greenland Song of Atli" and "Speeches of Hamdir".

Since the oldest historical basis palpable in Germanic heroic tales dates back to the history of the Goths in the 4th century, it is widely believed that heroic poetry arose among the Goths earlier than among other Germanic tribes, namely in the 4th century, during their stay in the Black Sea region , from them spread north and eventually reached Norway, from where it was brought to Iceland. Another possibility was pointed out by the Swedish scholar Askeberg: heroic poetry could have originated in Scandinavia, from where the Goths eventually came, as well as the Burgundians (who played an important role in the development of heroic poetry), and spread among the southern Germanic tribes. The fact is that the South German tribes lagged behind the Scandinavian tribes in their development at the beginning of our era. This is evidenced, in particular, by the earlier appearance and wider distribution of writing (runic inscriptions) in Scandinavia compared to the continent, as well as the rich and distinctive tradition of personal poetry (skald poetry) in Scandinavia.

According to Heusler's teaching, which at one time was a dogma for all researchers of ancient Germanic poetry, the heroic legend arises and spreads only in the form of a song. Therefore, Heusler considered it possible to restore, as it were, a family tree of songs interpreting a certain plot, from their supposed root of the 5th century. before their Icelandic escapes in the 12th century. Objections were raised against this theory by Askeberg and especially by Hans Kuhn, who argued that a heroic song can arise and be understood by listeners only if there is prose material interpreting this legend. One way or another, the spread of the legend was hardly as straightforward as Heusler and his followers imagined it.

The historical basis of the heroic tales presented in the Elder Edda is very meager, and often not felt at all (for example, in the tale of Sigurd). But in principle it seems to always be present in heroic poetry. This is explained by the fact that heroic poetry arises in an era when literature has not yet freed itself from the obligation to report only what is considered true in the society in which it exists. In heroic poetry, the artistic function has not yet been separated from the historical function. But, of course, while continuing to be known as reality, heroic poetry at the same time transforms the facts of reality - idealizes and condenses them - and, moreover, transforms them very radically. The heroic songs of the Elder Edda, in contrast to its mythological songs, tell about people and even historical characters. However, the heroes of these songs are more idealized images than the gods in mythological songs. As a result of the idealization and condensation of the facts of historical reality in heroic poetry, nothing remains of them except some elementary tragic conflict in the life of the hero.

The era when heroic poetry arose determines its content. This was an era when friendly relations developed and war became the main industry of barbarian tribes. Therefore, the main character in heroic poetry is always a warrior. The social system characteristic of this era is the so-called military democracy. People were then valued in accordance with their actual merits, and not in accordance with their wealth, position in society or rank, as they are valued in a class society. In particular, the leader of the tribe had to be stronger and braver than those around him, otherwise he would not be a leader. Therefore, the hero of the poetry of such a society is always an ideal hero. He is endowed with strength and courage greater than all those around him, and he is always a leader.

But manifestations of strength and courage, numerous victories over enemies are just external attributes of heroism in heroic poetry and are not necessary in it. The essence of heroism is in the boundless power of spirit, in a person’s victory over himself, that is, in his doing something tragic for himself, often such that it leads him to death. Therefore, the content of the heroic song is not a panegyric, but a tragedy, a story not about joy and glory, but about grief and death.

The hero gains victory over himself in the name of what seemed to people the highest duty. But from a modern point of view, such a victory usually seems barbaric and senseless cruelty: modern man has completely different ideas about duty. For the people of that society, the highest duty was to maintain the heroic honor of the family or their own heroic honor. And maintaining heroic honor consisted primarily in killing for revenge. Killing for revenge was not a shameful thing, on the contrary, it was the most glorious. For the sake of revenge, the hero goes to any lengths. Hamdir and Sörli go to their deaths to avenge their sister Svanhild. Brynhild seeks the murder of Sigurd, whom she loves, in order to avenge her insulted heroic honor - for the fact that he forced her to break her vow to marry only the most fearless. Gudrun kills her sons and her husband to avenge her blood brothers Gunnar and Hogni. Thus, the need for revenge for relatives or for a blood grievance was not a personal feeling that should be suppressed in oneself, but on the contrary, it was the highest duty, for the sake of which it was necessary to suppress all the strongest personal feelings in oneself: both the fear of death and love , and maternal feeling.

But romantic and maternal love in archaic heroic poetry are by no means feelings whose power is exalted and which can be the springs of heroic deeds. It is not they who are exalted, but the fulfillment of heroic duty. They are simply feelings that the hero kills in himself, just as he can kill himself. There is no glorification of love for one’s people or homeland in this poetry, just as there is no interest at all in national and state issues. This is understandable: heroic poetry arose in a society in which neither nationalities nor states had yet emerged.

In heroic poetry, every hero dies in the end. But, in accordance with the fatalistic ideas of the era, he knows in advance what is destined for him, and therefore, dying, he knows that he is doomed to death. It is thanks to this that he can, dying, rejoice that he has fulfilled his heroic duty to the limit.

We fought steadfastly, -

on the corpses of enemies

we are like eagles

on tree branches!

We will die with glory

Today or tomorrow -

no one will escape

norn of judgment!

This jubilation is thus expressed, precisely and succinctly, in the last words of Hamdir at the end of the last song of the Elder Edda.

This is the moral of the most archaic layer of the heroic songs of the Elder Edda. It is best represented in the Speeches of Hamdir and the Greenland Song of Atli. But in the morality of the heroic songs of the "Elder Edda" there are also later layers: the feeling of love comes to the fore, the power of this feeling begins to be exalted, suffering acquires a romantic aura, and a spirit of reconciliation appears. This later, romantic morality is best represented in Oddrun's Lament, but is felt here and there in many other songs. It is even more richly represented in folk ballads, a genre of folk poetry that dominated Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. With their love, novelistic themes, melodious style and rhymed verse, ballads differ sharply from heroic songs.

In the heroic songs of the "Elder Edda" there are undoubtedly layers of not only different morals, but also styles and genres of different eras. The study of these layers in the "Elder Edda" is helped, firstly, by the fact that it contains a number of songs that interpret the same heroic legend in different ways (compare, for example, the "Greenland Song of Atli" and "Greenland Speeches of Atli" or different songs about Sigurd), and secondly, the fact that in a number of cases the heroic tales presented in the Elder Edda are at the same time the plots of works of completely different styles and genres. For a comparative typological analysis of the heroic songs of the Elder Edda, it is most important to compare them with the Icelandic Saga of the Volsungs, the German Song of the Nibelungs, the Norwegian Saga of Thidrek and the Younger Edda. "The Saga of the Volsungs" (Russian translation by B. Yarho was published in 1934 by the publishing house "Academia") is a prose retelling of a collection of heroic songs, completely similar to the "Elder Edda". This saga arose around 1260. “The Song of the Nibelungs” is a work that arose even somewhat earlier (about 1200), but in the conditions of a developed feudal society. In it, the tales of Siegfried (Sigurd) and the deaths of Gunther and Hagen (Gunnar and Högni) are processed in the spirit of a chivalric romance. The Thidrek Saga, which arose in the mid-13th century, retells in prose various Low German heroic songs, including songs based on stories presented in the Elder Edda. The Younger Edda also contains a short prose retelling of the heroic songs of the Elder Edda. Scandinavian (Danish and Faroese) folk ballads on the same subjects, a German folk ballad about “Horned Seyfried,” and a German folk book of the 17th century have also been preserved. There are also some other works about him in which these subjects are interpreted. Danish heroic tales presented in Eddic poetry - the tale of Helgi and Frodi - are retold in Latin verse in Saxo Grammar's book "The Acts of the Danes", written around 1200. On the basis of this work, some unsurvived Danish heroic songs are restored.

A comparative typological analysis of all this material allows us to draw some conclusions about the various layers in the Elder Edda. The most famous comparative typological classification of the heroic songs of the Elder Edda is Heusler's classification. The most ancient type of song, according to Heusler, is characterized by a small volume and a limited number of characters and scenes. The narration in such a song alternates with the speeches of the heroes - dialogues, addresses and short monologues - and these speeches also move the action, which develops in leaps and bounds, from one important, “peak” scene to another, with the omission of intermediate scenes, so that there is often little in the song communications. The most ancient type, which Häusler called “two-sided narrative song”, includes the “Speeches of Hamdir”, “Song of Völund”, “Greenland Song of Atli”, “Song of Hlöd”. Heusler considered this type to be all-German. According to Heusler, “one-sided narrative songs” belong to a less archaic type. Here the action is revealed exclusively in the speeches of the characters, and there are no narrative poems at all. This type includes the “Speeches of Regin”, “Speeches of Fafnir”, the final part of the “Second Song of Helga the Slayer of Hunding”. The next type is an approximation to the “epic breadth”, to the “book epic” and is an intermediate link between the “song” and the “epic”. Compared to the oldest type of heroic song, the number of characters and scenes is increased, the pace of action is slowed down due to descriptions and static meditative speeches. The "Short Song of Sigurd" and the "Greenland Speeches of Atli" belong to this type. Finally, the last type is the “heroic elegy”. There is no action at all in songs of this type. He was driven out by the situation. Events are assumed to be known. The main content of such songs is the experiences of the heroine (not the hero!). Her experiences are revealed in a lyrical monologue, in which memories and an elegiac review of the past play a large role. The latter type is represented in its purest form in the First Song of Gudrun, Gudrun's Incitement, Brynhild's Journey to Hel, and Oddrun's Lament. Häusler considered this type to be specifically Icelandic.

The attribution of “heroic elegies” to the most recent layer has now become generally accepted. In other respects, Häusler's classification was justified. The type of “one-sided narrative song” is characterized by signs so external that it is hardly possible to judge from them the greater or lesser antiquity of the song. In addition, this type does not occur in its pure form. The signs of the previous type - “two-sided narrative song” - also hardly allow us to judge the antiquity of the song. These external signs are also characteristic of medieval ballads - works that, in their internal characteristics, differ sharply from archaic heroic songs. It is no coincidence that the “Excerpt of the Song of Sigurd,” which Heusler called the “Ancient Song of Sigurd” and considered an example of the most archaic type of heroic songs, is attributed by modern researchers, on the basis of internal similarities with folk ballads, to the latest layer in the “Elder Edda.”

Finally, apparently, in general the type of “song” is not necessarily more archaic than the “epic”. It is known that the heroic poetry of other peoples - for example, the Serbian youth songs and Russian epics recorded in modern times - remained "songs" for many centuries, although they underwent great changes in terms of ideology and style. In this case, they are, however, usually were subject to one or another cyclization, a peculiar concentration of the narrative around the personality of the legendary ruler or hero, his biography, his ancestors and descendants. However, such cyclization is also evident in the heroic songs of the Elder Edda. All of them are connected into one whole by the fact that their heroes are included to the family of the Volsungs, of which Sigurd was the most illustrious representative, or to the family of the Gjukungs, with whom Sigurd became related by his marriage to Gudrun. Helgi, who originally belonged to the Danish family of Skjoldungs, is made in the songs of the Elder Edda the son of Sigmund and the grandson of Volsung, and therefore the brother Sigurd. Gudrun, sister of Gunnar and Hogni, is the wife of Sigurd. Hamdir and Sörli are the children of Gudrun and the brothers of Svanhild, daughters of Gudrun and Sigurd. Thus all heroic songs tell of persons related to Sigurd.

TIME AND PLACE OF COMPOSITION OF THE SONGS OF THE "ELDER EDDA"

It is not difficult to date the manuscript. Thus, it is indisputable that the manuscript of the Elder Edda dates back to the second half of the 13th century. In some cases, it is not difficult to date a legend: if its historical basis is felt in a legend, then this basis is the upper limit of the origin of this legend. Thus, for the origin of the legend about Jörmunrekk (see “Speeches of Hamdir”), the upper limit is the death of the Ostrogothic king Ermanaric (375). It is much more difficult to date a song that existed in oral tradition before recording.

The history of attempts to date the songs of the Elder Edda is a whole epic. All scientists who have studied the songs of the Elder Edda - and hundreds of scientists have studied them over the last century - have tried to date them. An enormous amount of ingenuity and labor has been expended by numerous researchers. The entire history of philological science over the past hundred years, with its successes and disappointments, is reflected in their contradictory evidence. It is not surprising, therefore, that in works dedicated to the Elder Edda there is always a section that tells the story of these attempts. But it is characteristic that recently the consideration of the songs of the “Elder Edda” has been preferred not to begin with such a section, but to end: too little is definite in this section and too much has to be said in it about illusions, prejudices and wasted labor.

Until the 70s of the 19th century, it was generally accepted that since the songs of the “Elder Edda” are impersonal creativity reflecting paganism, they must be older than personal poetry, that is, the poetry of the skalds (and the oldest surviving skaldic poems date back to the first half of the 9th century). c.), and belong to the deepest pagan antiquity. The songs of the Elder Edda were therefore dated approximately to the 5th-8th centuries. - the period preceding the settlement of Iceland and the separation of individual Scandinavian peoples. Danish philologist Edwin Jessen was the first to express doubts about the correctness of this dating of the songs. In the 70s of the 19th century, mainly thanks to the work of Sufüs Bügge, the romantic idea of ​​​​the antiquity of the songs of the Elder Edda was undermined. There was a reaction against the idea of ​​their antiquity, impersonality and artlessness. The prevailing opinion has become that they are not older than the beginning of the Viking Age (c. 800) and thus not older than the poetry of the skalds. This opinion still prevails, although in recent decades some scientists have admitted the possibility of greater antiquity of individual songs (until the 6th century). The question is where exactly between the 9th and 13th centuries. whether certain songs of the Elder Edda originated remains controversial (although some scientists thought that they were able to establish the antiquity of certain songs with an accuracy of one decade!). Regarding the antiquity of individual songs, fluctuations reach three to four centuries. Thus, “Hamdir’s Speeches” was dated by Poske to the 8th century, Jonsson - to the 10th century, Mogk - to the 11th century, Neckel - to the 12th century; Jonsson dated the “Song of Riga” to the 10th century, Häusler to the 12th century, Neckel to the 13th century, etc., etc. No absolute and generally accepted criterion for the antiquity of the songs was ever found, and the very possibility of them dating remains unproven.

Since it is unknown when the songs originated, it is also unknown where they originated. If they arose before the end of the 9th century, when the settlement of Iceland began, then, therefore, they did not originate in Iceland. But they could have been brought to Iceland even after its settlement: the language was present in Iceland and Norway back in the 13th century. almost the same, and until the 9th century. it was almost the same throughout Scandinavia. The Dane Essen believed that all the songs of the Elder Edda originated in Iceland, but the Icelander Jonsson argued that most of them originated in Norway, some in the Norwegian colony in Greenland and only two in Iceland, and the Norwegian S. Bygge (and before him Icelander G. Vigfusson) believed that they originated in the Norwegian colonies in the British Isles, etc. The place of origin of individual songs was also determined differently. Where did the "Greenland Atli Speeches" originate? In Greenland, Norway or Iceland? Where did "Song of Riga" originate? In Iceland, Denmark, Norway or the British Isles? Similar questions arose about many other songs, as described in our comments to them. All assumptions about the place of origin of the songs of the Elder Edda are controversial. But it is indisputable that they existed in Iceland and were recorded there (however, see below).

In the last quarter of the 19th century, when the study of sound changes in language flourished and the belief in the infallibility of the laws of these changes prevailed, it was believed that these laws could provide an absolute criterion for the antiquity of the songs of the Edda. In particular, the idea has developed that none of these songs can be older than the disappearance of unstressed vowels in the Scandinavian languages, i.e., the beginning of the 9th century, as this sound change was then dated. It was believed that the lines of the Edda songs would have too many syllables if they were substituted with forms that existed in the language before the disappearance of unstressed vowels. In other words, the metrical form of the songs was thought to indicate that they arose after the loss of unstressed vowels. However, in the 20th century. Runic inscriptions were found that shook the dating of the disappearance of unstressed vowels in the Scandinavian languages. It turned out that it could have happened long before the 9th century. On the other hand, the idea of ​​the metrical form of songs has changed, and some scientists (E. Nuren, Neckel, Poske) began to doubt that the metrical form of songs excludes the possibility of their origin before the loss of unstressed vowels.

Many believed that the style of the song and the peculiarities of phraseology could be a criterion of its antiquity. Thus, Essen argued that the antiquity of the songs of the “Elder Edda” is contradicted by their stylistic “unprimitiveness” and the presence of kennnngs - figures characteristic of such pretentious poetry as the poetry of skalds. However, the stylistic tradition of skaldic poetry has been known since the 9th century, and, apparently, it had already been formed for a long time. Naturally, since skaldic poetry and Eddic poetry existed simultaneously in the same society, they could not help but interact with each other. Essen is considered the great destroyer of prejudices in Scandinavian philology, but he himself was dominated by the prejudice that the style of poetry is simpler the older it is. This prejudice is refuted by the existence of skaldic poetry, which, despite its archaic nature, is more elaborate than any later poetry.

Many considered it possible to date the songs of the Elder Edda on the basis of verbal matches between a given song and a skaldic work, the time of composition of which is precisely known (and it must be said that the time of origin of the vast majority of skaldic works is precisely known). For example, in the work of the skald Arnor Thordarson, composed around 1065, there is a verbal coincidence with the “Divination of the Völva”. Does this mean that Arnor was influenced by the said song, which, therefore, arose immediately before 1065? In the work of the skald Gisl Illugason, composed by him at the beginning of the 12th century, there are verbal coincidences with the “First Song of Helgi”. Does this mean that the latter arose no later than 1100? This kind of coincidence can be interpreted in at least three ways: 1) the skald borrowed from the song of the “Elder Edda” - and, therefore, this song arose before the skald’s work was composed; 2) the author of the song “Elder Edda” borrowed from the work of the skald - and, therefore, this song was composed after the work of the skald; 3) the matching place has a common source that has not been preserved - and, therefore, no conclusion can be drawn. In addition - and this is especially significant - there is no guarantee that this passage is originally in the songs of the Elder Edda.

One of the most persistent prejudices common among scholars of the Elder Edda is that the composition and preservation of the song in the oral tradition seems to take place under the conditions of authorial self-awareness and copyright that characterize our time. This idea is a reaction against the romantic understanding of ancient poetry as a direct expression of the “people's soul.” But it is difficult to say which understanding of ancient poetry is more erroneous: the romantic or the positivist-modernizer. From the fact that the songs of the "Elder Edda" are not similar to the folklore of later eras and that some songs have a unique manner, a conclusion is drawn about the impossibility of renewal and innovation in them. However, the fact remains undeniable that the songs of the Elder Edda, in contrast to the verses of the skalds, were never attributed to specific authors. These songs, of course, were not “folklore” in the modern sense, just as the poetry of the skalds was not “literature” in the modern sense, since in the society in which they arose, the very opposition of “folklore” to “literature” was different, less distinct and sharper than in later eras. But could it be possible that in the works that exist in the oral tradition under conditions of unconscious authorship, the renewal of the old, the discarding of the obsolete and the addition of the new did not occur?

Therefore, although it is indisputable that the folk ballad is a later type of poetic creativity than heroic songs, individual coincidences with the style of ballads in the Eddic song also do not prove the later origin of a particular song as a whole. Apparently, the influence of folk ballads made itself felt in Iceland, even when the songs of the Elder Edda existed in the oral tradition, and therefore it is natural that these songs could undergo a certain modernization in accordance with new poetic trends. However, the stylistic similarity with ballads found in some of the heroic songs of the Elder Edda should hardly be explained, as the German scholar Wolfgang Mohr did, by the fact that these songs are translations from Danish and, ultimately, Low German ballads. The existence of Danish and Low German ballads, which served as prototypes for the songs of the Elder Edda, is hypothetical. Meanwhile, the presence of something specifically Icelandic in these songs, and above all the presence in them of alliterative verse, which has long been obsolete on the continent, contradicts the possibility of their “translation.”

According to the research of another German scientist, Hans Kuhn, there are well-known rhythmic similarities between the heroic songs of the Elder Edda based on plots from South German legends and German alliterative poetry (of which, however, almost nothing has survived). Kuhn explains these similarities by the fact that the corresponding songs of the Elder Edda were allegedly translated from hypothetical German originals that penetrated Scandinavia, as he suggests, in two waves - in the second half of the 9th century. and at the beginning of the 12th century. - along with the South German legends themselves. Kuhn also finds well-known rhythmic similarities between the other songs of the Elder Edda and the English alliterative epic. But in this case it does not involve "translation" (from hypothetical English originals into Icelandic or vice versa).

The tendency to, in one way or another, reduce Iceland's share in the creation of the Elder Edda in favor of South German (primarily German) creativity has always been strong in German science. However, even Scandinavian researchers were sometimes not free from nationalistic prejudice. Jessen, in his famous article, ironized that not only the Germans strive to exaggerate the common Germanic in the Elder Edda and thus draw it over to Germany, but also the Danes and Swedes seek to exaggerate the common Scandinavian in it and thus draw it over to them to the south or east of Scandinavia, and the Norwegians tend to exaggerate what is Western Scandinavian or specifically Norwegian in it. True, alliterative poetry, which existed in Scandinavia outside Iceland and was not preserved at all, should have been much closer in language to the Elder Edda than German alliterative poetry, but still it was not Icelandic.

Data from archeology, a science that was widely developed in Sweden, was also used to date the songs of the Elder Edda. Swedish archaeologist Birger Nerman dates the songs of the "Elder Edda" by objects mentioned in these songs and known from archaeological finds: glass cups, swords with a ring in the hilt, shields with a gold rim, etc. Since these objects are not found later than the "migration era" peoples", Nerman accordingly dates the songs in which these items are mentioned. With such a dating (V-VII centuries), the songs, naturally, turn out to be no longer Icelandic, but common Scandinavian and, perhaps, even Swedish. But philologists are not convinced by such datings: the objects mentioned in the song may be a poetic tradition no less ancient than the tales themselves.Ancient objects may be mentioned in songs that, in the form in which they survive, are not ancient at all.

A cultural-historical criterion was also applied to the dating of the songs of the Elder Edda, and first of all, attempts were made to find in the song a reflection of the “worldview of the era” and thus determine whether a given song was composed before the introduction of Christianity in Iceland (1000) or after. However, it was not possible to come to any indisputable results in this area. The treatment of pagan gods and myths in mythological songs can usually be interpreted differently. In particular, the comic interpretation of the pagan gods can be interpreted both as the familiarity of a believing pagan, and as the disdain of a newly converted Christian, and as the absence of any religious tendency (see comments on the "Song of Harbard" and "Loki's Quarrel"). The presence or absence of traces of the influence of Christianity is also not proof. Christianity could have had a known influence in Iceland before the year 1000. Despite the fact that in the “Divination of the Völva” there are undeniable traces of the influence of Christianity, the vast majority of researchers attribute this song to the pagan era. On the contrary, although there is no trace of Christian influence in the "Song of Thrym", it has recently been generally accepted that this song originated about two hundred years after the introduction of Christianity in Iceland. The “worldview of the era” is generally difficult to grasp in the songs of the Elder Edda.

A comparative typological criterion was also applied to the dating of the songs of the Elder Edda. The most famous was the comparative typological classification of songs developed by Heusler (see above). The shortcomings of this classification in relation to heroic songs have already been mentioned earlier. It remains only to say how Heusler dated the mythological songs. Heusler considered most of them “scientific poetry,” that is, the works of ancient collectors and archaic aesthetes, who in the 11th-13th centuries. imitated ancient pagan forms in a kind of philological game. Thus, Heusler, on the one hand, attributed modern aestheticism and modern archaism to the people of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, he was under the rule of a prejudice that has always been very widespread among researchers of ancient poetry - the prejudice that the “better” a work is, the more it satisfies the aesthetic requirements of the researcher, the more ancient it must be, and vice versa - the more The less it satisfies the aesthetic requirements of the researcher, in particular, the more mythological and genealogical information and “learning” in general it contains, the more epigonic it should be, the later. Meanwhile, in reality, the situation may be just the opposite: the older the work, the further it may be from the aesthetic requirements of the researcher, “worse” from his point of view. The prejudice “the better, the more ancient” (or “the worse, the later”) is best debunked by the history of the dating of the “Song of the Hold”. This song was long considered the oldest in the Edda because it seemed “better” than other songs. But now it is obvious that it seemed “better” due to its proximity to the ballad, that is, the predominance of features characteristic of later songs!

As the criteria for dating the songs of the Elder Edda turned out to be untenable, various prejudices associated with these songs collapsed one by one. The main significance of attempts to date these songs was that thanks to them, science was gradually freed from false ideas and prejudices. It is also a prejudice to believe that it is possible to date songs that existed in the oral tradition under conditions of unconscious authorship and, therefore, the fluidity of the text.

Although there is no doubt that the songs of the Elder Edda contain many elements - in language, style, plots, and ideology - much older than the time of their recording, the only firm date for these songs remains nevertheless, the time of their recording, i.e. the 13th century. It was a century in many ways significant for Iceland: a century of extraordinary, unique flowering of writing, a century during which all those works that constitute the glory and pride of the Icelandic people were recorded or written, but also a century of cruel civil strife, the collapse of democracy and subjugation to foreign dominion.

However, recently it has been questioned that the songs of the Elder Edda were recorded in Iceland. The prominent Norwegian linguist and paleographer D. A. Seip in a number of works claims that the manuscripts of the Elder Edda go back to the Norwegian originals of the 12th century. If this were to be true, the history of Old Norse literature would have to be re-written. But other researchers (not Norwegians) believe that Norwegianisms in the Elder Edda manuscripts can be explained by the general influence of Norwegian writing on Icelandic, and perhaps they are Icelandicisms to the same extent as Norwegianisms. Since the Icelandic manuscripts have been studied less than the Norwegian ones, it is not yet possible to definitively decide whether Seip is right or not. Thus, new difficulties complicate the solution to the question of the time and place of origin of the songs of the Elder Edda.

BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY

The number of works on the Elder Edda is very large. But it is impossible to give a complete bibliography of them here, not only because such a bibliography would require hundreds of pages, but also because the related areas (ancient Germanic mythology, the etymology of names found in the Edda, etc.) are very vast and the boundaries with these areas are vague. The most complete bibliography of works on the Elder Edda is in the publications:

Halldör Hermannsson. Bibliography of the Eddas. Ithaca. N.Y., 1920 (= Islandica, 13).

Jόhan Hannesson. Bibliography of the Eddas A supplement to Bibliography of the Eddas by Halldόr Hermannsson. Ithaca N.Y.f 1955 (= Islandica, 37).

Let us name several of the most significant works devoted to general issues, as well as the most important generalizing works (most of the latter also have bibliographies):

Edwin Jessen. Über die Eddalieder. Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie, 3, 1871, 1-64.

Sophus Bugge. Studier over de nordiske Gude- og Heltesagns Oprindelse, 1. Christiania, 1881-1889.

Karl Mullenhoff. Deutsche Altertumskunde, 5. Berlin, 1883-1891.

Björn Magnússon Olsen. Hvar eru Eddukvæðin til orðin? Timarit hins íslenzka bόkmenntafélags, 15, 1894, 1-133.

William Paton Ker. Epic and romance. Essays on medieval literature. London, 1897 (2nd edition, 1908).

Eugen Mogk. Geschichte der norwegisch-isländischen Literatur. 2. Auflage, Strassburt, 1904 (= Grundriss der germanischen Philologie herausgegeben von H. Paul, 2. Auflage, 2).

Andreas Heusler. Lied und Epos in germanischer Sagendichtung. Dortmund, 1905 (2. Ausgabe, 1955; Russian translation in the book: Andreas Heusler. The German heroic epic and the tale of the Nibelungs. M., 1960).

Andreas Heusler. Heimat und Alter der eddischen Gedichte. Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 116, 1906, 249-281.

Barent Sijmons. Einleitung zu den Liedern der Edda. Die Lieder der Edda herausgegeben von B. Sijmons und H. Gering, 1, Halle, 1906, 1-375.

Gustav Neckel. Beiträge zur Eddaforschung. Dortmund, 1908.

Finnur Jönsson. Den oldnorske og oldislandske Litteraturs Historie. 2. Udgave. 1, København, 1920.

Erik Noreen. Eddastudier. Språkvetenekapliga sälbkapets i Uppsala förhandlingar, 1919-1921, 1-44 (= Uppsala universitets årsskrift, 1921, 5).

Frederik Paasche. Norges og Islands litteratur indtil utgangen av middelalderan. Kristiania, 1924 (= F. Bull og F. Paasche. Norsk litteraturhistorie, 1) (Ny utgave ved Anne Holtsmark, Oslo, 1957).

Erik Noreen. Den norsk-isländska poesien. Stockholm, 1926.

Hugo Gering. Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, 1-2. Halle, 1927-1931 (= Die Lieder der Edda herausgegeben von B. Sijmons und H. Gering, 3).

Birger Nerman. The Poetic Edda in the light of archaeology. The Viking Society for Northern Research, Coventry, 1931.

Bertha S. Philpotts. Edda and saga. London, 1931.

Jan de Vries. Über die Datierung der Eddalieder. Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift. 22, 1934. 253-263.

Wolfgang Mohr. Entstehungsgeschichte und Heimat der jüngeren Eddalieder südgermanischen Stoffes. Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 75, 1938-1939, 217-280.

Wolfgang Mohr. Wortschatz und Motive der jüngeren Eddalieder mit südgermanischem Stoff. Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 76, 1939-1940, 147-217.

Hans Kuhn. Westgermanisches in der altnordischen Verskunst. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 63, 1939, 178-236.

Andreas Heusler. Die altgermanische Dichtung. 2. Ausgabe, Potsdam, 1941.

Jan de Vries. Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, 1-2. Berlin und Leipzig. 1941-1942 (= Grundriss der germanischen Philologie begründet von H. Paul, 15-16).

Fritz Askeberg. Norden och kontinenten i gammal tid. Uppsala, 1944.

Hans Kuhn. Heldensage vor und ausserhalb der Dichtung. "Edda, Skalden, Saga". Festschrift... F. Genzmer, Heidelberg 1952, 262-278.

Jόn Helgason. Norges og Islands digtning. Nordisk Kultur, 7, B, Stockholm, Oslo, København, 1952.

Didrik Arup Seip. Om et norsk skriftlig grunnlag for Eddadiktningen eller deler av den. Mål og minne, 1957, 81-207.

NOTES

1. The reader of the Translation of the Elder Edda must remember that all Icelandic names are read with the stress on the first syllable. Complex names can be read with two accents. For example: Dolgtrasir. Those who try to read the Old Norse examples should keep in mind that the accent mark (") in Old Norse spelling did not mean stress, but the length of the vowel.

2. Edda. Scandinavian epic, vol. I. Translation, introduction, preface and comments by S. Sviridenko. Ed. M. and S. Sobashnikov, M., 1917, p. 54 et seq. - Only the volume containing mythological songs was published, that is, a third of the entire Elder Edda. The earlier translations were essentially not translations, but retellings, and mostly prose retellings. They are listed and analyzed in the preface to Sviridenko’s translation (page 35 et seq.).

3. See about them in the book: Einar Olgeirsson. From the past of the Icelandic people. Tribal system and state in Iceland. M., 1957. - Brief information on the history of ancient Icelandic society is in my introductory article to the book “Icelandic Sagas” (M., 1956).

Steblin-Kamensky M.I. Elder Edda (from the 1963 edition)