|
|
|
Reprinted from the Russian Language
Journal, XLIV, Nos. 147-149 (1990):135-50
TOLSTOJ
AND FOLKLORE: The
Case of "Chem ljudi
zhivy?" Gary
R. Jahn
Following his "crisis" of
the mid-1870's, Lev Tolstoj temporarily abandoned literature and turned his
attention to what he considered at that time to be more significant work. His
return to fiction--after several years of theology, ethics, religious tracts,
and social criticism--was initiated by and mainly devoted to the creation of a
group of brief narratives (some 20 in all) to which he referred as the narodnye
rasskazy.1
These stories are part of
"popular literature," a category which subsumes folklore, facsimiles
of folklore (folklore stylizations),2 fictional narratives about the common people (usually produced by and for the educated
upper classes of society),3 and, finally, works written for the people by the
educated sector of society. It is this last category of popular literature
that is most often thought relevant to a discussion of Tolstoj's "Stories
for the People," but, as will be shown, there are also significant points
of contact between them and the literature of and about the people.
In this paper I discuss the complex
relationship between the "Stories for the People" and "popular
literature," especially works of actual folklore and folklore
stylizations. My remarks are based on the analysis of an exemplary work, the
tale “Chem ljudi zhivy?.”4 This is the first of Tolstoj's "stories
for the people," and it illustrates with special and documentable clarity
the relationship among the folklore sources (both general and specific),
Tolstoj's stylistic and thematic intentions, and the finished text that has
come down to us.
The story of the fallen angel who
had to learn the answer to a question posed to him by God in order to regain
paradise is found in Talmudic writings, the Koran, and the Arabian Nights. Among the recorded Russian sources for the story are
the Prolog account (November 21)
"O Sudex Bozhiix ne ispytaemyx," the story of Kitovras, and the
legend "Angel," recorded by A. N. Afanas'ev in his collection Narodnye
russkie legendy.5 Tolstoj was acquainted
135 with all of these--especially
well with Afanas'ev's collection--but there is no direct evidence that any of
them influenced him in writing “Chem ljudi zhivy?.” On the contrary, the
immediate source of “Chem ljudi zhivy?” was a story the folk narrator,
V.P. Shchegelenok, performed for Tolstoj in July, 1879.6 Vasilij
Petrovich Shchegelenok, whose name at birth was Shevelev, was born in 1805. A
North Russian (from Olonec), he was well known to contemporary collectors of
folklore (Gil’ferding and Rybnikov, among others). Shchegelenok was
remarkable for his interest in religious themes, collecting much of his
legendary material during frequent visits to monasteries and other holy
places. The religious and "bookish" character of many of his legends
also carried over into his epic songs. Between 1860 and 1886 fourteen of
Shchegelenok's tales were recorded in thirty‑one variants. Tolstoj
met Shchegelenok in Moscow, at the home of a mutual acquaintance. Impressed
both by his ability as a storyteller and by his piety, he invited Shchgelenok
to visit him at Jasnaja Poljana. There, Tolstoj prevailed upon him to recite
several of the stories in his repertory. Tolstoj showed greatest interest in
the religious legends.7 The exact form of the legend Tolstoj later used as the
basis for “Chem ljudi zhivy?” may never be known. A version of the story
taken down from Shchegelenok's recitation by a priest of the 0lonec region,
however, has been preserved:
136 137
Although
the transcription is evidently defective,10 this version, at least in general
content, is presumably quite close to that heard by Tolstoj. Tolstoj
himself made impromptu notes of Shchegelenok's recitation of the story. They
are rather brief and are cited here in full.
138
It
is obvious that Tolstoj was not concerned with taking down the events of
Shchegelenok's story in detail. Comparison with the priest's summary shows
that he has caught the order of events quite accurately, but his main interest
seems clearly to have been to capture striking turns of phrase.12 Comparison
of the published text of “Chem ljudi zhivy?” with Tolstoj's notes of 1879,
shows that many of Shchegelenok's more striking expressions found their way
into Tolstoj's final version relatively unchanged
139 Thus,
a great deal of Shchegelenok's version was simply incorporated by Tolstoj
into his own, especially the general storyline and certain expressions. In
this respect, the story may be said to be an (imperfect) record of actual
folklore. However, Tolstoj also changed much. In particular, he added depth to
the characters, giving them names and characteristic traits: for example,
the wealthy man's bluster, Matrena's wicked tongue, and Semen's susceptibility
to drink. The desire for verisimilitude, which is also suggested by the
addition of details of dress, the house, and the cobbler's trade, indicates
that the story also belongs to the category of works about the common people. Furthermore,
Tolstoj abandoned Shchegelenok's naively straightforward, chronological
narrative for a more complex, partially inverted structure. Shchegelenok's
version (as reflected in Tolstoj's notes) contained only the episodes of the
wealthy man's shoes and the two girls and has the angel smiling his mysterious
smile only twice. Tolstoj added considerable detail to the episode of the two
girls and a third episode involving the cobbler's wife. In effect, some of the
material he adds to the actual folk narrative serves to strengthen the folk
flavor of the work‑‑to make it more classically or conventionally
folkloric. Thus, the story is also in some ways a folkloric stylization. Finally,
in Tolstoj's abandonment of the references to churchgoing and transference
of the scene of the angel's ascension from a church to the cobbler's shop, it
is clear that he also intended that the story should be instructive to the
folk readers for whom it was written. He also removed the legendary element
by excluding the connection Shchegelenok had made between the story and the
naming of the city of Arxangel'sk. He increased the didactic burden of the
story by including the motif (not present in Shchegelenok's version) of God's
questions and the angel's explanation of the answers. Such deletions and
additions suggest that the story needs also to be regarded as belonging to
the category of literature for the common people. Tolstoj
was heavily influenced by a specific folklore source as well as general
patterns of folk narrative and style in the creation of “Chem
ljudi
zhivy?.” Since all of the
scholarship on the story holds that Tolstoj's language in “Chem ljudi zhivy?”
represents a masterful adaptation of the folk source,13 the linguistic
texture of the story offers a convenient starting point for further analysis
of this relationship. The
basic pattern encountered in the language of the stories for the people in
general and of “Chem ljudi zhivy?”
in particular combines
140
a grammatical basis of the
simple sentence (subordinate clauses and other complex syntagmas reduced to a
minimum) with a native Russian lexical basis (words of foreign origin
are pointedly excluded). To these bases are added stylistic colorations
ranging from popular to Biblical, but in any case avoiding the standard
literary norm. In “Chem ljudi zhivy?,”
both Biblical and popular colorings of the language not only have a place, but
each dominates a section of the story. These
two elements in the story's language were noted by Tolstoj's contemporaries,
one of whom averred that the language of Tolstoj's art had distinctively
improved thanks to its new-found "forceful and Biblical" simplicity.
The same reviewer continues: "Listening to the language of Count Tolstoj,
one necessarily feels that he has assimilated the popular speech and that it
has become his personal property. He does not copy the peasant phrase, but he
is deeply conscious of its spirit and its internal structure. He not only
speaks, but even thinks, in the popular way."14 While the presence of
Biblical and popular language has been noted, no demonstration of their
function and interaction within the story has yet been offered, nor have the
implications for the relationship of the story with its folklore source been
explored. With
the exception of the epigraph (quotations from the New Testament), all of the
language in the story is attributable to one of three sources: the human
characters, the narrator, and the angel Mixail. The most popular colorization
of language in the story is most evident in the reported speech and thoughts
of the human characters of the story, as opposed to the angel Mixail. Semen
the cobbler, Matrena his wife, the wealthy man, and the merchant's wife all
speak in approximately the same way. Their speech is laconic and marked by a
non‑literary lexicon and syntax; it frequently employs proverbial or
quasi‑proverbial expressions. The laconic quality of the speech of these
characters is present throughout the story and is characteristic also of the
language of the narrator and of the angel. This laconicism depends upon
continuous use of the basic pattern of the simple sentence. Subordinate
clauses are avoided when possible; strings of independent clauses joined by
conjunctions are quite common. Adjectives and adjectival expressions are rare.
A good example from the dialogue is the following speech of Semen: "Da,
ja skazyvaju tebe: idu, u chasovni sidit ètot razdemshi, zastyl sovsem"
(25:13). Colloquial
vocabulary and even prostorech'e abound in the speech of these characters. One
example that occurs rather frequently, is the locution da i, as in
the following two speeches of
141
Semen: "Da i cheloveku zachem
tut byt’?"; "...razdeli da i brosili tut" (25: 8). Another
non-standard connective is ali, as in the phrase spoken by
Matrena, "... na xoru ali na pech"', (25:14). Ali is marked
"folkloric" or prostorech'e ; da i is colloquial. Another
example of prostorech'e is the verb vozzhat'sja , which means "to
become entangled with an unpleasant person or situation." Semen says:
"Podojdesh’, a on vskochit da zadushit, a ne ujdesh’ ot nego. A ne
zadushit, tak podi vozzhajsja s nim" (25: 9). Ozhegov marks as
"regional" the word djuzhe, as
in the sentence: "... djuzhe razbogatel?" (25: 9). Grammatical
formations that were part of the idiom of folklore are also common in the
speech of these characters, such as the repetition of a preposition: "s
nim s golym,” “za samoj za chasovnej," and "v kurtushke v odnoj
" (25: 9, 8, 7, 11). Popular
colorization is achieved in the speech of these characters by the inclusion
of proverbs, proverb-like locutions, and popular expressions. The
following are a small sampling of the plenty supplied in the story:
In
contrast to the popular idiom of the human characters, the speech of the angel
Mixail is, through most of the story, laconic, correct, neutral, and unmarked
as to "dialectical" register, there is evidence neither of popular
nor of Biblical coloration. We may compare Mixail's replies with the popularly
colored questions of Semen in the following passage. Semen speaks first: 142 This
manner of speaking is characteristic of Mixail until the final three
chapters of the story. Chapters ten through twelve contain his explanation of
his stay on earth and the description of his ascension. In these chapters,
Mixail's speech loses its neutral, clipped tone and takes on considerable
rhetorical force. It is in these chapters that the use of sentence initial i
with anaphoric effect becomes quite common. The following example is from
chapter eleven:
The
tone of the angel's explanation has a history of development visible in the
manuscripts. Originally Tolstoj made the angel speak in a much less formal
vein, closer to the speech of the other characters. In one of the manuscripts
he gives his name as Mixaila (i.e. the folkish equivalent of the name) instead
of Mixail (25: 559). In the published version, however, the tone of formality
in the angel's explanation appears as a contrast to the language which had
preceded it in the story. The popular language of Semen, Matrena, and the
other characters is appropriate to the "real" world of which they
are a part; just so is Mixail's language appropriate to his position as a
part of a world of the spirit distinct from that "real world." The
distinction between the real and spiritual worlds, however, is only a partial
explanation of the contrasting language styles in the story, for there is yet
a third element that needs to be considered in the linguistic scheme of the
story: the voice of the narrator. This voice partakes of the distinctive
features of both of the other two linguistic strains.
143 In
the first part of the story, the narrator shares the popular tones of the
human characters. His speech is marked by the same qualities which marked
theirs. The gnomic quality is to be seen in such phrases as: "...chto
zarabotaet, to i proest" (25: 7) and 'Den' ko knju, nedelja k nedele,
vskruzhilsja i god" (25:15). Irregular grammatical forms are also to be
discovered in his speech. He uses na plus
the accusative case, for instance, to replace the simple dative of the
literary norm in the phrase "... govorit barin na Mixailu" (25:17).
This same construction is used later to replace the normal o plus the
prepositional case in the sentence: "Snjal Semen merku i govorit na
xromen'kuju ..." (25: 20). The narrator's speech contains several
examples of the colloquial lexicon, such as den'zhonki
and divuetsja (25: 7, 15). In
the final part of the story, however, the narrator's voice undergoes a
pronounced change and merges in tone with the voice of the angel. The
following excerpt juxtaposes the narrator's voice with that of Mixail. The
narrate speaks first:
144 Thus,
the Biblical tone of the final three chapters is not confined to the angel
alone, but characterizes this entire portion of the story. It would seem
that something more than a simple distinction between the angelic world of
Mixail and the "real" world of the other characters is being
developed. If one infers from the peculiarities of the story's language that
two separate planes exist within the
real world, then the union of the spiritual plane of Mixail (the Biblical
style) with the material plane of the other characters (the folkish style) is
accomplished through the combination of these styles. This union occurs just
at that point in the story (Mixail's ascension to the spiritual from the
material world) when these two planes seem most distinct from one another.
Such a reading would certainly accord very well with the later Tolstoj's main
thematic concerns. It
is clear that Tolstoj, for his own artistic purposes, departed both
considerably and deliberately from the language of his folklore source, which
lacks the linguistic sophistication of his narrative. The effects he achieved,
however, were not purchased with the loss of the generally folkloric
appearance of the story. Besides retaining many of the striking expressions
present in his source, Tolstoj was at some pains to give his story a folkloric
structure. It
is apparent that Tolstoj showed great care and concern for the maintenance of
balance and regularity in the organization of “Chem ljudi zhivy?.”
The story falls naturally into three parts consisting of chapters one through
three, chapters four through nine, and chapters ten through twelve
‑‑ with each part performing a particular function. 17
The story
thus consists of three groups of three: the first section with three chapters,
the second section with three episodes, and the final section with three
chapters. This structure emphasizes Tolstoj's general debt to folklore and his
intention to create a generally folkloric atmosphere in the story. . As has
been mentioned, he even embellished the narrative he heard from 96egelenok in
order to achieve this typically folklorish triplication. Tolstoj's debt to folklore is also evident in his choice of the riddle form as the artistic base on which he balanced the three-part structure of the story. Elements of mystery and riddle appear in the story on many levels--from the broadest to the most detailed, most 145 obviously in the title itself, “Chem
ljudi zhivy?.” This
question, the very first element of the story to be encountered, is resolved
only in the final chapter. This, this riddle and its answer gives the story
its general shape. In addition, there is the mystery surrounding Mixail,
especially his perplexing smiles and puzzling behavior, and many lesser
examples, including Semen's inability to distinguish at first the nature of
the object he sees leaning against the chapel and Mixail's secrecy about
himself--his exceptional development as a craftsman--and
the foreknowledge he seems to possess in the episode of the wealthy man's
shoes (25: 8, 10, 15, 18). The
riddle suggested by the title involves three separate parts. Before an answer
may be given to the question "chem ljudi zhivy?" the answers to
"chto est' v ljudjax?" and "chego ne dano ljudjam?" must
be known. The answers to these three questions form the thematic center of the
story. They are answered through Mixail's explanation of himself. Thus, at the
end of the story the two elements of mystery are united through their common
explanation. Unity is achieved, and, as with the story's language, the union
suggests the coexistence of two planes in meaning. By
using the riddle as the primary principle of the story's organization,
Tolstoj made a marked departure from his folklore source which both in his own
notes and in those those of the priest of Olonec, begins with the relation of
the angel's disobedience to God in the matter of the mother of the two girls.
Such a change of the natural temporal order, although a logical necessity for
the riddle, is uncommon in folklore narratives. Thus, when the twentieth
century folk narrator Kuprijanixa related her version of the story, which was based on Tolsoj's, she restored the original ordering of
the presentation of events as found in Stegelenok's version, even though she
was apparently unaware of the folk version.18 Thus, Tolstoj's structural
departures from his specific folklore source are yet within the spirit of
folklore generally. He has simply abandoned one general folk model for
another, evidently to some artistic purpose. The riddle structure was not adopted at once. The earliest manuscripts recount the story in the same order as kegelenok had, beginning with the death of the father, the birth of the twin girls, and the disobedience of the angel (25: 544-45).19 Only in the fifth manuscript does Tolstoj begin the story with the meeting of the cobbler and the naked stranger (25: 551). This departure from the source may have been the result of attempting to match the structure of the story to the theme. As the theme was conceived as a question 146
requiring an answer, that is, as
riddle or mystery, so the structure of the story which Tolstoj obtained from
kegelenok was altered to suit. The essential knowledge that Mixail is an angel
is withheld from the reader until the end of the story. The change indicates a
basic difference between the purposes of the folklore document and Tolstoj's
version. In the former the center of interest is the naive narration of the
doings of an angel on earth. In Afanas'ev's collection the story .has the
title "Angel." In Tolstoj's notes it is titled "Arxangel,"
presumably because Sbegelenok so named it. In an early manuscript it is called
"Angel na zemle" (25: 545). In Tolstoj's final version, the focus of
interest is the question "By what are men alive" and the ethical
considerations attendant thereupon. Clearly, the structure of the story was
redesigned to complement Tolstoj's thematic concerns.
The
view presented here has shown that “Chem ljudi zhivy?” is more than a
fine stylization of the folklore genre of the religious legend. It is an
example of Tolstoj's adaptation of an existing folk story to the end of an
effective presentation of his newly‑elaborated religious views. In the
process of adaptation, Tolstoj often departed from his specific folklore
source, but I have shown that these departures tended either to enhance the
general folkloric atmosphere of the story or 'to substitute one convention of
folklore for another. Tolstoj's motives in turning to folklore for his model
were various. Certainly the presumed accessibility of the folkloric narrative
to the popular audience (which Tolstoj was especially concerned to reach in
the 1880's) was a primary consideration, as was Tolstoj's wellknown sympathy
with the common people. Beyond that, however, it seems clear that Tolstoj was
motivated also by the profound artistic power that he sensed in folklore, in
its language, and in the general congruence of many of the themes of
"folk wisdom" with his own philosophical and ethical preoccupations.
In terms of the category of "popular literature," this story
enjoys a particular status. Not only was it created for the people, it was
also derived (but not without significant modifications) directly from
artistic products of the people and written about the people whom it was meant
to enlighten.
147 NOTES 1. See further in Gary R. Jahn, "LN. Tolstoj's Narodnye rasskazy, " Russian Language Journal, vol. 31, No. 109 (1977), 67-78.
2. Well-known examples are A.S.
Pulkin's Skazka o rybake
i rybke, V.F.Odoevskij's Moroz
Ivanovich, S.T. Aksakov's Alen'kij
cvetochek,
and P.P.Ershov's Konek-gorbunok.
3. As, for example, the writings of the "Natural
School," a group of writers in the 1840s who, inter alla. devised a genre known as the "physiological
sketch," the purpose of which was to render a verbal "snapshot"
of an individual person or, more commonly, a social type.
4. Usually translated as "What Men Live By" but more
accurately, if less elegantly, as "By What Are People Alive."
5. A. Maude, The Life of
Tolstoy: Later Years, in Tolstoy Centenary Edition (London, 1930),
II,
77. Gaston Paris, La Poesie du Moyen
Age: leçons
et lectures (n. p., 1887). See
also N. Suchkov, "Literaturnaja rodnja rasskaza Tolstogo 'Chem ljudi zzhivy?'" (Xar'kov, 1896). All
of these are listed by A. Mazon, "Ce qui fait vivre les hommes: Chem
ljudi zhivy," Revue des Etudes
Slaves. XXV (1949), 27. The first and third versions of the story are
given by N. N. Gusev, L.
N. Tolstoj: Materialy k biograhii
s 1881 po 1885 g. (Moskva, 1970),
89. The exact references are: Prolog (Moskva, 1895-96); F. Buslaev, Istoricheskaja
xrestomatija cerkovnoslavjanskogo
i drevne-russkogo
jazykov (Moskva, 1861), 715-717;
A.N. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie legendy
(Kazan', 1914), 156.
6. Ju. M. Sokolov, "Lev Tolstoj i skazitel' Shchegelenok,"
in Letopisi gos. lit.
muzeja, XII (Moskva, 1948), pt.
B, 201.
8. Sokolov, 201. Shchegelenok is connected with the
"stories for the people" other than by being the source for several
of them. Tolstoj considered him a model of piety and many of the figures of
old men in the stories far the people are probably drawn from Tolstoj's
recollection of him. (The figure of Platon Karataev [from War
and Peace ] also served him as a model.) Also, Shchegelenok was by trade a
cobbler, and this trade has an especially positive significance for Tolstoj in
the stories for the people. Finally, Shchegelenok's real name, Shevelev, is
given to one of the two old men in the story of that name.
148
9. Pamjatnik drevne-russkoj cerkovno-uchitel'noj literatury (St. Peterburg, 1896),
215-16.
10.
The expression god vskruzhilsja, which
Tolstoj found interesting enough to make a special note of, is absent from the
priest's account of the story, as is the proverbial "Bez otca, materi,
vyrostut, bez Bozh'ej milosti ne vyrosti." These and other
discrepancies--and the frequent lapses into the literary standard--are
quite possibly due to the priest recorder's casual approach to notation.
11. L. N. Tolstoj, Polnoe sobranie
sochinenij v 90 tomax (Moscow-Leningrad: GIXL.,1928-58), 25: 666. Further
references to this edition are given parenthetically in the main body of the
paper.
12. It is known that in the late 1870's and early 1880's
Tolstoj was in the habit of concealing himself at the edge of the highway that
passed close by Jasnaja Poljana in order to eavesdrop on the conversations of
passersby in search of choice examples of popular speech.
13. See e.g., N.P. Giljarov-Platonov, Russkij
arxiv, 1899, no. 11, 425-28. Gusev has speculated that Giljarov-Platonov's
article was written in direct response to that of K. Leont'ev ["Strax
bozhij i ljubov' k chelovechestvu." Grazhdanin (1882). nos.
54-55.] [Gusev, 98). See also N.N. Straxov, Kriticheskie
stat'i ob I. S. Turgeneve i L. N. Tolstom (Kiev, 1908), 332.
14. "Novoe proizvedenie L.N. Tolstogo “Chem ljudi zhivy”
Russkaia mysl', (1882), no. 5, 334. André Mazon has also drawn
attention to the pronounced popular stamp of much of the language in the
story: "C'etait la sa premiere oevre pour le people, en one langue
marquee de fempreinte paysanne, a la fois sobre et forte, sans la moindre
touche de vernis litteraire.. "
15. R.R. Gel’gardt, "K izucheniju jazyka i stilia
narodnyx rasskazov L.N. Tolstogo." Izvestija
Tverskogo ped. in-ta
5 (1929):104.
17. Part I (chapters 1-3): Introduces the characters and
settings of the story and establishes a relationship among those characters;
Mixail's entrance into the world of the story. Part II (chapters 4-9): Presents
three different episodes from Mixail's life with Semen and Matrena. chaps.
4-5: Matrena's relations with Mixail chaps. 6-7: episode of the wealthy
man's shoes chaps. 8-9: episode of the two
girls and the merchant's wife.
Part III (chapters 10-12): The
conclusion of the story, the explanation of the puzzling features of Mixail's
life: Mixail's departure from the world of the stay.
149
18.
S. Minc, "Skazochnica Kuprijanixa." Literaturnyj
kritik, (1936), no. 4, 208. Tolstoj himself knew that his story had become
a part of folklore. In 1886 he met a pilgrim who told it to him. P.I. Birjukov,
L.N. Tolstoj: Biografija (Berlin,
1921), 2:112. 19.
Gusev makes the very perceptive point that one of Tolstojs changes from
Shchegelenok's version, the inclusion of a fisherman drowned at sea as the
husband of the mother of the two girls, was quite probably due to the
influence of Victor Hugo's poem "Les pauvres gens." The poem was a
favorite with Tolstoj, and he wrote a prose version of it which he included in
Krug chtenija under the title
"Bednye ljudi." [Gusev, 90]. The idea of the fisherman was
eventually abandoned for 'Chem ljudi zhivy?"
150 |
