Cruel romance: genre features, plots and images. The Cruel Romance of a Dowry, or Why Women Prefer Immoral Men

"Cruel romance"has lyricism and melodiousness in its inception, flowing into a story about the future fate of the heroes.

There, far beyond the river, the lights were lit,

The dawn was burning in the clear sky.

A hundred young fighters from the Budenovsk troops

I galloped into the fields for reconnaissance.

"Passion, expression, a surge of emotions and feelings - for example, death due to someone's betrayal, is a plot traditional for a" cruel "romance"

Already from the beginning of the narration of the romance, one can readily assume that the hero is in for a mortal sad fate.

Subject civil war are placed in the work as the main storyline. There is a certain transfer of emotions to the listener, which envelop him like a train. As stated in the song itself:

"These are White Guard chains."

ballad cruel romance folklore

As a predicted outcome in the plot, suggests military action, participation in the fighting battles of the hero, with an emphasis on the fact that avoiding death is inevitable here.

And fearlessly the detachment rode against the enemy,

A bloody battle ensued

And the young fighter suddenly drooped his head -

The Komsomol heart is pierced ... "

All components of the "cruel romance" and ballad plots in this work are present.

Conclusion

The similarities between the genres of the ballad and the "cruel romance" are quite palpable. Especially ballad plots are observed in the description of the surrounding reality, as well as pathos storyline, tragedy and realism. An unexpected plot and conflict with a tragic ending. Psychologism and similar lyricism, or rather lyrical-epic. These facts point to the assumption that the ballad merged with the urban romance, which resulted in the emergence of the genre - "cruel romance". The differences between the genres are negligible, but they exist. Not always the climax of the ballad is death, or another fatal outcome corresponding to the "cruel romance" genre. But tragedy is present in both genres. The similarities and differences of the genres described above indicate that the ballad plot in a cruel romance is located as the basis.

According to F.M. Selivanov's line of difference between the urban ballad and the "cruel romance" as such does not exist, moreover, he singles out these types of folklore according to a characteristic storyline: "cruel" stories telling about reprisals, murders, etc., are the latest transformation of the traditional ballad.

Recently I watched on TV a wonderful film by Nikita Mikhalkov "Cruel Romance" with a magnificent young Larisa Guzeeva, and somehow I saw everything in a new light. We are used to considering Larisa an unfortunate victim, mourning her bitter fate, hating the handsome Paratov and despising the pitiful Karandyshev. However, let's look at this story from the side of positive psychology, which claims that everything in our life depends on ourselves - both the circumstances that develop in our lives and the people who surround us - all this is not at all accidental.

This story is also interesting from the point of view of male and female life strategies. Main character- Sergey Sergeevich Paratov, a life-burner, wants to live cheerfully, carefree, always achieve his own. If you look closely, he, in fact, always achieves everything he wants. This is sober male logic. A person, first of all, knows what he wants, and gives himself an account of how he is ready to pay for it. Man looks at objective circumstances open eyes. What does Paratov want? A cheerful, riotous, carefree life, so that everyone knows him, everyone loves him. What does he do for this? He buys this glory, generously gives tips, squanders money, it is always fun with him, those who share the views of the protagonist are drawn to him. We will not analyze here the moral aspect of his behavior - everyone is free to build his life the way he wants, and sooner or later everyone will reap the fruits of what he has sown. What else does he want? To fall in love with the beautiful Larisa, to achieve her. He beautifully looks after her, seduces, seduces, using knowledge of female psychology. He again knows what he wants and what needs to be done to get it.

Further, a carefree lifestyle leads to the ruin of Paratov, and in order to improve his affairs and not lose such a lifestyle, he marries favorably. He again understands what he is doing, and how he must pay for it. "True, I take a rich dowry, he tells his friends, gold mines. But it’s not cheap for me either, I say goodbye to my cheerful life. This male strategy. Not surprisingly, men tend to achieve their goals more often.

Everything is very simple. The result depends on the actions. If you want to get this and that, do this and that. Life is ingeniously simple. What is Larissa doing? First, she feels doomed and unhappy in advance. This is with her enchanting beauty! She chooses herself as a victim. And who is the victim couple? Executioner! Again, everything is very simple. First, she herself does not understand what she wants. Love? Which? With whom? Does she consider herself worthy of a successful marriage in all respects? Does she even consider such a marriage possible for herself? How can you get what you consider impossible for yourself? So the actions of Larisa are full of the same ambiguity that reigns in her soul. Paratov clearly tells her that he is leaving tomorrow. Larissa hears this? He does not offer her his hand, he invites her to go for a ride with him. Does she imagine her line of conduct? Does she want to marry Paratov? Does she need such a man? If not, don't waste your time on it. If yes, then you should think about how you can achieve a man like him. After all, he is passionate, Larisa is beautiful, full of all sorts of talents and spiritual treasures, she has something to attract, something to keep. But after all, she chose herself as a victim, and therefore she behaves accordingly: she brings herself to the slaughter. And everything would be fine, because in the depths of her soul she hopes that, perhaps, she will stay with him and marry him. What are these beliefs based on? Larisa does not understand what she wants, she does not understand what she is doing, she does not analyze the situation, she is guided only by her feelings and vague desires. The situation is clear as day, but Larisa does not want to soberly face the facts and clearly define the line of her behavior.

Instead, Larisa banishes all logic from herself and denies the obvious. This is comparable to seeing thunderclouds, feeling gusts of wind and flashing lightning, to deny that a thunderstorm is about to begin. No wonder what all this leads the heroine to. In this regard, I recall the scene that Pavel Rakov showed in his program "My beautiful ..." He took water, flour and an egg to make dough and explained that for happiness, for relationships, for choosing a chosen one, you need a union of body, mind and feelings , not just one. "Try, girls, Pavel suggested. do good dough only from flour, or only from an egg, or from flour and an egg, but without water? Will it work?"

Back to "Cruel Romance". In the morning, Larisa suddenly asks if she is now Paratov's wife after what happened. Paratov sincerely replies that she is unlikely to have the right to demand such a thing from him. What he wanted, he got it. Did he promise Larisa something? He just offered her a ride in last night before her departure, and what Larisa came up with for herself is just her fantasies, and why should he be responsible for them? Yes, Paratov took advantage of the heroine's love, affection for him, but she herself allowed him to take advantage of all these!

This reminds me of another similar story from once popular song Irina Allegrova about a toy. Remember the words? "We dream about different things, and with a bouquet of flowers I wander aimlessly in the labyrinths of words." A beautiful motive, we sing along and do not think about what it is here? A woman wanders, not knowing what she wants, she builds a "vicious circle with the envy of her friends" for herself, and someone else is to blame for this. But the one who made a toy out of it perfectly understands what he wants and what needs to be done for this. Do you want to be a toy? Do not be!!! Were you driven into this "vicious circle" at gunpoint?

Knurov and Vozhevatov also know what they want. They would like to see Larisa as their mistress. They see that it is difficult to achieve this right off the bat. They really want this and agree to wait for the right moment. Knurov is ready to pay for Larisa's expenses, receiving nothing in return in the hope that one day the right moment will present itself. And that moment is coming! The moment always comes for those who know how to wait. When, as a result of the toss, Larisa "goes" to Knurov, Vozhevatov also thinks quite soberly: "Well, well, I'm not at a loss either - there are fewer expenses." What does Larissa do? She does not want any relationship with Knurov, but she accepts his patronage, his money. From her hated fiance Karandyshev, she also accepts luxury dress. I say, it’s possible, they’re not people, what difference does it make what they feel and what they want, but with me, oh, it’s impossible! "It's godless!"

Karandyshev understands that such a woman is worth a lot, he makes plans for the future, cares, gives gifts, he has some kind of incentive in life. Larisa, on the other hand, is completely indifferent to the feelings of her fiancé, leaves him alone, not at all caring about his feelings and reputation, and after a few hours Paratov does the same with her. As it comes around, it will respond ... Probably, Larisa did not draw such a parallel. Larisa does not accept men's world in general, does not know, does not understand him. Therefore, she seems to be wandering in the dark, not understanding the road. Maybe you should at least study the route a little first?

But this "cruel" unjust world is only strictly subject to certain completely fair and simple laws: what we believe in is embodied in our life, what we give is what we receive, how we think about ourselves is how others perceive us ...

From Wikipedia:

Cruel romance is a genre of Russian song. Occurred at about mid-nineteenth century. Its heyday falls on the last quarter XIX— the beginning of the 20th century. The birthplace of a cruel romance is considered to be the urban and suburban environment, where mainly the lower and middle strata of the population ("philistines") lived - peasants who came to work, workers, artisans, poor merchants. The townspeople began to create their own subculture, building it from elements of urban and rural cultures. Collected from heterogeneous elements, bourgeois, or, as it is sometimes called, the third, culture included poetry and music (chastushka, romance), dance (for example, quadrille), theater (Balagan), painting (lubok), arts and crafts and even architecture. Having become stronger, the "third culture" began to influence the already traditional village culture. In the 20th century, cruel romance gradually replaced folk poetry old song and became a favorite village genre.
IN contemporary folklore there is no single definition of the genre of violent romance. originality this genre and lies in the harmonious synthesis of the genre principles of the ballad, lyric song, romance. But he also has his own special features, according to which a cruel romance can be isolated from a vast layer of Russian lyrical songs or ballads. A little more than a dozen main plots can be distinguished in a cruel romance. They differ from each other mainly in the causes of the tragedy, and the choice of endings is not at all large: murder, suicide, death of the hero from grief, or mortal grief.
M. A. Trostina

Cruel romance: genre features, plots and images

New Approaches in Humanitarian Studies: Law, Philosophy, History, Linguistics
(Interuniversity collection of scientific papers). - Issue. IV. Saransk, 2003, p.197-202.

http://www.ec-dejavu.net/c/Cruel_romance.html
In modern folklore there is no single definition for the genre of cruel romance. Moreover, none of the literary encyclopedias, none of the dictionaries literary terms we did not even find any mention of this genre. Meanwhile, this genre exists and develops, replenishing with new works.

IN teaching aids and textbooks present only the most general genre features of a cruel romance, which often include features of a ballad and features of a non-ritual lyrical song. In principle, the originality of this genre lies in the harmonious synthesis of the genre principles of the ballad, lyrical song, and romance. But he also has his own special features, according to which a cruel romance can be isolated from a vast layer of Russian lyrical songs or ballads. Let us consider the views available in science on genre nature cruel romance.
197

According to D. Balashov, the cruel romance develops on the basis of the ballad genre. The term "cruel romance" itself does not appear in the works of D. Balashov. He considers the works of this genre as part of “the latest semi-literary (in its well-known part of the bourgeois) ballad, which is most closely connected with another song and folklore phenomenon, also semi literary origin- romance".

Defining substantive, ideological and genre features new ballad, scientist - along with traditional stories ballads, reworked and abridged - draws attention to the newly emerged works on Russian soil. He refers to them as "independent, folk compositions, where the romantic country, far from the usual, everyday reality, is the sea, where the life of fishermen and sailors is poeticized”, as well as “romances”, which, unlike ballads, were created “not for reading, but for singing”. “In the popular environment, ballads, partly for the same reason, received chants that were very close to romance ones (for example, the ballad “The Fisherman and the Hunter’s Wife” is sung to the motive of the well-known petty-bourgeois romance “Three pine trees stood on the Murom path ...”). The interweaving of the new ballad with the romance was very strong due to the lyricism inherent in the new ballad. Sometimes the line between a romance and a ballad is very relative.

Indeed, it is precisely the certain fragility of the boundaries between the ballad and the cruel romance that is the reason for its not being singled out as a separate section in the collections of Russian ballads. Errors with the definition genre affiliation occur even in cases where it is very easy to draw a line between genres. V.Ya. Propp, exploring the genre features of the Russian ballad based on the collection " Folk ballads”under the general editorship of L.M. Astakhova, finds among the texts works related, but in his opinion, to a cruel romance. He states his remarks as follows: “The ballad of Ilya-kum is dark (276). Prince Semyon invites the first person he meets to be godfather. This is a robber. Despite all measures, at night he cuts the prince, princess and godson. He has an invisibility hat. After that, he goes blind, he is captured and executed. On the verge of cruel romance... Ballad. One of the Cossacks, a dashing rider (350). The Cossack leaves for the war. Wife is cheating. On his return he kills. Jealousy murder. Cruel romance... Ballad. Murder of a merchant's daughter (351). The merchant's daughter is growing up. She is found murdered in a bathhouse on a shelf. The killer is right there under the window. He is put behind bars. The murder of a girl. Ballad - Cruel Romance".

V.Ya. Propp singles out the main distinguishing feature of the genre we are researching: “In terms of plot, it can coincide with a ballad. It differs from it in melodramatism.

The authors of the textbook "Russian Folklore" T.V. Zueva and B.P. Kirdan considers a cruel romance as part of a new ballad, that is, they do not single out this genre in particular. Nevertheless, they emphasize its features: “The conflicts of the new ballad sometimes resemble the already known ones, but their artistic interpretation becomes smaller. There is a heightened interest in violent dramas on the basis of love and jealousy (the old ballad hardly knew the theme of jealousy). The plot becomes melodramatic, lyricism is replaced by cheap pastorality, miserable naturalism is allowed (“How a father stabbed his daughter to death in the Mitrofanovsky cemetery ...”)”.
198

Thus, the opinion that the cruel romance arose on the basis of the traditional genre of the Russian ballad has a right to exist. Between a ballad and a cruel romance there really is a lot in common. The ballads also tell a story from a personal and family life, in which a craving for unusual events, mostly tragic ones, is found. Often, an element of cruelty is woven into these stories:

A falcon mates with a quail,
Well done fell in love with a red girl
Paved a sweet path - did not go poi,
I missed the worst glory - I did not love yoi!
You laughed at me - I'll laugh at you.
Like mine. young, there are two brothers relatives,
My brothers have a damask knife.
I'll make a bed from my hands and from my feet,
I bake from the meat of his pies.
And I'll smoke wine from his blood...

A weighty argument for the similarity of the ballad and the cruel romance is the commonality of plots and, accordingly, the titles of the works. Let's pay attention to the ballads: “Deceived girl”, “Brother married sister”. "The death of a deceived girl", "Slandered wife". They correspond to the names of cruel romances; "Sister poisoned brother." “The murder of a girl by her betrothed”, “How a brother invited his sister for a walk”, etc.

And yet, compared with the cruel romance, the plots of the ballads are much richer and more diverse. family stories, which the traditional ballad offers listeners, often end happily, for a cruel romance this is almost impossible. In ballads there is absolutely no anguish and savoring of cruelty. Exoticism is also absent in it: the action takes place in a native, recognizable environment and is described in traditional folklore language, using images traditional for folk poetry.

Drawing a conclusion from the above, we will attempt to give our own definition of the genre of cruel romance. So, cruel romance - lyrical-epic genre urban folklore, which was formed in the second half of the 19th century in the middle class environment, absorbing the features of its culture and way of life. The cruel romance developed on the basis of the traditional Russian ballad, it is characterized by a narrow family and everyday theme. In resolving the conflict and developing the plot, cruel romance is characterized by exoticism, the desire to savor cruelty, melodrama and a tragic ending (murder, suicide, death from grief, etc.)

A little more than a dozen plots can be distinguished in a cruel romance. They differ from each other mainly in the causes of the tragedy, and the choice of endings is not at all large: murder, suicide, death from grief or mortal grief.
199

The favorite plot of a cruel romance is the seduction of a girl by an insidious seducer. The deceived remains either to die of anguish, or to settle accounts with life, or to take revenge. The variant of the first outcome is presented in the romance "My mother loved me, respected me ...". The girl literally dries from unrequited love. Her life no longer makes her happy, the voice of her “dear friend” is heard everywhere, with whom she now lives apart. Turning to her friends, the sufferer bequeaths after death to dress her in yellow dress, since the white (bride's dress) turned out to be "not at all to her face." Death is perceived by her as an inevitability and salvation from hopeless longing:

Friends, come to me
I will lie on the table
I ask you to. don't judge me
Bury my corpse in silence.

The heroine of the cruel romance "Quietly the willows sway over the river" does not want to resist fate. Her lover cheated on her, and "deep jealousy" filled her soul with despair and longing. Pride and despair do not allow the girl to seek another ending, except for a voluntary departure from life. Description of her last minutes full of deep drama

Jealousy deep
hid for a long time,
But I'm tired of suffering.
Got on the beach.
Swayed slightly.
She just waved her hand.

The rejected girl from the romance “Once I was sitting on the piano...” describes the story of her love with deep sincerity. She does not hide the fact that she was beautiful and enjoyed success with the guys (“The boys were chasing me”). However, the one to whom she gave her heart and not only betrayed her and married another. Feelings of wounded pride and jealousy spilled over into a terrible crime: the heroine first kills her rival with a pistol shot, and then stabs her former lover with a dagger.

It happens that a girl is forced to marry a rich old man or a freak. Then her lover is certainly present in the church at the wedding, and when she sees the desired handsome man, the bride immediately dies of grief. Or another ending: the bride evokes sympathy and empathy among those around her and witnesses, since her fate is sealed. Examples for this story include folklore works we could not find it, but vivid evidence of this is the cruel romances of literary origin (“There was a carriage at the church ...”):

I heard the crowd say:
“The groom is unprepossessing!
In vain the beauty was ruined. -
And I followed the crowd.

If the heroine of the romance nevertheless marries for love, then such horrors await her and her children in family life that it would be better for her to remain in girls. Over time, the husband will surely fall in love with another and either kill his wife or bring her to the grave. And then evil stepmother will surely take care of the children. The weak-willed father will surely follow her lead - and what will happen is what is told in the romances “Like at the Mitrofanovsky cemetery ...”, “In the city of Petrov”, etc.
200

The motive of a family murder is rooted in an old Russian ballad (see, “Brother dies by mistake”, etc.). The anonymous authors of the cruel romance were attracted to plots with the murder of relatives, apparently because such cases were not uncommon in a narrow middle class environment. An example of a cruel romance this topic is the song "Sister Poisoned Brother". The work closely echoes the ballad "Brother's Sister Wants Lime", but there are a number of significant differences.

In a cruel romance, the problem is solved differently, according to the requirements of the genre. The posthumous words of a brother sound like a testament. There is no malice in them, only sadness and last desires. About the villainous sister, he only says that, passing by his grave, she will “cry in tears.” That is good fellow and so it remains. And the retribution of the heroine, however, cannot be avoided. And it will be done by none other than her "dear friend", for whom she poisoned sibling because he prevented her from meeting her lover (brother - "enemy"). But, having reasonably judged, the beloved leaves her forever:

If you knew how to lime brother,
Take me out too, young man.
Stay alone now!

IN this text we found a connection between the plots of two ballads ("Brother's sister wants lime" and "The girl poisoned the young man"). The cruel romance selected the most necessary of them, deepening the content, introducing the motivation of the crime and a new, more vital, denouement.

The figurative system of the cruel romance is not rich. There are a small number of characters in it, sharply opposed to each other in their spiritual qualities, intentions, life position. In the romance, thus, the division of heroes into positive and negative, traditional for folklore works, is preserved. On the strip of evil are the father-killer, the blind executor of the will of the young wife (“Like in the cemetery of Mitrofanovsky ...”), the evil stepmother (“In the city of Petrov”), the fratricidal sister (“The sister poisoned the brother”), the beloved-traitor ( “At a stormy night”), a seductive brother (“Brother invited his sister for a walk”), an ungrateful daughter (“About one nightmarish incident”). They are opposed by innocently suffering children ("In the city of Petrov"), abandoned suicidal lovers ("Quietly over the river willows sway"). But the main place among the heroes of a cruel romance is occupied by the so-called "innocently guilty", "justified criminals", heroes who committed a crime, as it were, against their will. This is the unfortunate lover who stabbed Olya because of her frivolous behavior, hypocrisy and coquetry (“Cornflowers”), a deceived and abandoned girl who shot dead in despair new girlfriend her beloved and stabbed him with a dagger (“Once I was sitting on the piano”). The confession of their soul set forth in the work inclines the listener towards the justification of the heroes: they evoke sympathy,
201

Compassion, and the cruel sentence concluded at the end of the romance is perceived as an undeserved punishment. The emotional intensity of passions often ends for the performer and listener with tears of empathy for the characters. In this one more characteristic works of this genre.

---------------------
1 Balashov D.M. The history of the development of the Russian ballad. - Petrozavodsk, 1966.
2 Zueva T.V., Kirdan B.P. Russian folklore: A textbook for higher education. manager M.: Nauka, 2002.
3 historical songs. Ballads / Comp., prepared. texts by S.N. Azbelev. M., 1986
4 Propp V.Ya. Poetics of folklore. M., 1998.

Cruel romance - Russia, Russia http://russia.rin.ru/guides/6892.html
It is difficult to find another genre of Russian folklore, so loved by the people among the people and so despised by experts. Cruel romance until recently remained an outcast for folklorists. Sometimes direct prohibitions were imposed on cruel romance.

Meanwhile, the people were singing these "pseudo-folk" songs with might and main. Over time, the cruel romance so “littered the valuable song repertoire", which simply ousted it from the memory of the people and in the 19th century, along with the ditty, became the main, most common genre of song folklore.

Only in the last two decades of the XX century. in scientific circles, attitudes towards cruel romance began to change. They began to study and collect it, and in 1996 the first (but, undoubtedly, not the last) collection of cruel romances with scientific comments was published in St. Petersburg.

bourgeois culture

Cruel romance arose somewhere in the middle of the 19th century, and its heyday falls on the last quarter of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The city is considered the birthplace of a cruel romance. But to be more precise, the cradle of this genre was the suburbs or suburbs, where mainly the lower and middle strata of the population lived, the so-called petty bourgeois - peasants who came to work, workers, artisans, servants, poor merchants.

The townspeople began to create their own culture, building it from elements of urban and rural cultures. This culture borrowed all the most superficial, the easiest to assimilate. Collected from heterogeneous elements, the petty-bourgeois, or, as it is sometimes called, "third" culture turned out to be quite complete and surprisingly viable.

It included poetry and music (chastushka, romance), dance (for example, quadrille), theater (Balagan), painting (lubok), arts and crafts, and even architecture. A little stronger, the "third" culture began to invade the village and conquered it in a few decades.

Than a cruel cruel romance

In a cruel romance, the features of the "third" culture are clearly manifested. In it, one can find both similarities and differences, both with folklore and with literature.
In cruel romances there are such folklore images like "raspberry", "beautiful girl", "dear friend", "blue sea". On the other hand, the cruel romance is closer in form to urban literature: it is characterized by syllabo-tonic versification, precise rhyme, and division into stanzas. The language is also largely of literary origin. Words like "fatal", "terrible", "nightmare", "insane" for the traditional folk song unusual.

A little more than a dozen main plots can be distinguished in a cruel romance. They differ from each other mainly in the causes of the tragedy, and the choice of endings is not at all large: murder, suicide, death of the hero from grief, or mortal grief.
The favorite plot of a cruel romance is the seduction of a girl by an insidious seducer. The deceived remains either to die of anguish, or to settle accounts with life, or to take revenge.

Art world cruel romance is a super-stressed, painful world, on the verge of life and death.
There are many cruel romances in which the story is told from the perspective of dead heroes.

There is no otherworldly world in the cruel romance. Everywhere there is only villainy and reciprocal suffering of the heroes. Such a worldview reflected profound shifts in people's consciousness. Influenced by primitively interpreted fragments scientific knowledge traditional religious and mythological representations collapsed, and people experienced sharp feeling hostility of the surrounding world, spiritual insecurity and life collapse.

Apparently, such a break in the petty-bourgeois consciousness gave rise to that special hysterical tone that distinguishes the cruel romance from all the traditional genres of Russian folklore.

Cruel romance often talks about incest.
Another important feature of the cruel romance is its "exoticism", i.e. craving for everything unusual, out of the ordinary. There are romances, the action of which takes place in distant countries - for example, in South America.

The exoticism of the cruel romance is also manifested in the predilection of its authors for "lofty" words and phrases. For a tradesman who sought to assert his belonging to a high urban culture, these words had a special attraction.
A cruel romance is prone to moralizing and moralizing, loves to learn a lesson and give advice.

The Romance of a Cruel Romance

Cruel romance is in many ways profoundly different from traditional folklore. The artistic world of cruel romance was formed on the basis of romanticism. Cruel romance and romantic poetry are interconnected as the lowest and highest manifestations of one literary movement.

The poems of great Russian poets that have gone into folklore became cruel romances: for example, Pushkin's "Romance", Lermontov's "Reed" and others. These romances are still sung to this day. Nevertheless, the main source of borrowing and stylization for the cruel romance was the verses of secondary, now forgotten poets.

The first songbooks appeared in Russia in the middle of the 18th century. In the first thirds of XIX V. More than two hundred songbook titles have been published. In 1911 alone, 180 songbook titles saw the light of day. The books were instantly snapped up, they were read to the holes.

Coming down from best poets to imitators, from them to semi-literate writers, romantic style changed greatly. The "universal grief" characteristic of romanticism turned into tearful sentimentality, and then hysteria, and exceptional characters and events were transformed into heroes and plots of a cruel romance, respectively. The craving for everything unusual was preserved in the exoticism of the latter. Finally, it is from romantic poetry bourgeois genre borrowed beautiful words and turns that have become clichés in the work of minor poets.

Cruel romance in Soviet time

The genre of violent romance turned out to be very viable. New works continued to be created during the Soviet era.
There were many stories associated with the Great patriotic war 1941-1945 Usually this tragic stories about crippled soldiers who returned home to "traitor" wives.

The cruel romance has been sung both in the village and in the city for almost two centuries. They took root in the army, prisons. It happens that they are sung even among the intelligentsia - however, usually with a smile, amused by their pretentious plots and touchingly clumsy language. Many examples of the genre have become firmly established in children's folklore. What attracts people so much in a cruel romance? Suffering? Sensitivity? Cruelty? Or, perhaps, the desire to push cruelty out of life into literature?

"Russian literature". Encyclopedia for children. M., Avanta +, 1998

Cruel romance

M. A. Trostin

Cruel Romance: Genre Features, Plots and Images

New Approaches in Humanitarian Studies: Law, Philosophy, History, Linguistics

(Interuniversity collection of scientific papers). - Issue. IV. Saransk, 2003, p.197-202.

In modern folklore there is no single definition for genre of violent romance. Moreover, none of the literaryencyclopedias, in none of the dictionaries of literary terms we found even mentions of this genre. Meanwhile, this genre exists and develops, replenishing with new works.

Teaching aids and textbooks present only the most general genre features of a cruel romance, which often includefeatures of a ballad, and features of a non-ritual lyrical song. In principle, the originality of this genre lies in the harmonious synthesis of the genre principles of the ballad, lyrical song, and romance. But he also has his own special features by which a cruel romance can be isolated from a vast layer Russian lyrical songs or ballads. Consider the available in scienceviews on the genre nature of the cruel romance.
197

According to D. Balashov, cruel romance develops on the basis of the genre ballads. The term "cruel romance" itself does not appear in the heaps of D. Balashov. He considers the works of this genre as part of the "latest P semi-literature (in its well-known part of the bourgeois) ballads, most closelyinterlocking with another non-folklore phenomenon, also of semi-literary origin - the romance.

Defining the content, ideological and genre features of the new ballads, the scientist - along with the traditional plots of ballads, revised and abridged - draws attention to the newly emerged in Russianground of the work. He refers to them as “independent, folk compositions, where the romantic country, far from the usual, everyday reality, is the sea, where the life of fishermen and sailors is poeticized”, andalso "romances", which, unlike ballads, were created "not for reading, but for singing. “In the popular environment, ballads, partly for the same reason, received chants very close to romance ones (for example, the ballad “Fisherman andthe hunter's wife" is sung to the motive of the well-known philistine romance " H and there were three pines on the Murom path ...”). weave n new ballad with a romance was very strong and due to the lyricism inherent in new ballad. Sometimes the line between a romance and a ballad is very relative.

Indeed, it is precisely a certain fragility of the boundaries between the ballad anda cruel romance no the reason for it is not isolated And I'm in a separate section in collections of Russian ballads. Errors with the definition of genre affiliation occur even in cases where the line between genres is drawn very easy. V.Ya.Propp, exploring the genre features of the Russian ballad based on collection "Folk Ballads" under the general editorship of L.M. Astakhova, finds among the texts works related, but in his opinion, specifically to cruel romance. He states his remarks as follows: “The ballad of Ilya-kum is dark (276). Prince Semyon invites the first person he meets to be godfather. This is a robber. Despite n and all measures, at night less often T prince, princess and godson. At him w invisible app. After that, he goes blind, they seize him andexecuted. On the verge of cruel romance... Ballad. One of the Cossacks, a riderdashing (350). The Cossack leaves for the war. Wife is cheating. On his return he kills. Jealousy murder. Cruel romance... Ballad. Daughter murdermerchant (351). The merchant's daughter is growing up. She is found murdered in a bathhouse on a shelf.The killer is right there under the window. He is put behind bars. The murder of a girl. Ballad - Cruel romance" .

V.Ya. Propp singles out the main distinguishing feature of the genre: “The plot may coincide with the ballad. It differs from it in melodramatism.

The authors of the textbook "Russian Folklore" T.V. Zueva and B.P. Kirdan consider a cruel romance as part of a new ballad, that is, they do not single out this genre especially. However, they emphasize its features: “Conflicts new ballads are sometimes reminiscent of already known ones, but their artistic interpretation becomes smaller. There is a heightened interest in violent dramas on the basis of love and jealousy (the old ballad hardly knew the theme of jealousy). syu same t becomes melodramatic, lyricism is replaced by cheap pastorality , wretched naturalism is allowed (“As in the Mitrofanovsky cemetery father stabbed his daughter to death...”)”.
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Thus, the opinion that the cruel romance arose on the basis of the traditional genre of the Russian ballad has a right to exist. Between a ballad and a cruel romance there really is a lot in common. In ballads too tells a story from personal and family life, which reveals a craving for unusual events, mostly tragic. Often inthese stories are intertwined with an element of cruelty:

A weighty argument for the similarity between a ballad and a cruel romance is commonality of plots and, accordingly, the titles of works. Let's pay attention to the ballads: “Deceived girl”, “Brother married sister”. "The death of a deceived girl", "Slandered wife". They correspond to the names cruel romances; "Sister poisoned brother." "The murder of a girl by her betrothed", “How a brother invited his sister for a walk,” etc.

And yet, compared with the cruel romance, the plots of the ballads are much richer and more diverse. Family stories that offers listenersa traditional ballad, often ends happily, for a cruel romance this is almost impossible. There is absolutely no anguish and savoring in ballads cruelty. There is also no exoticism in it: the action takes place in a native, recognizable environment and is described in traditional folklore language, with the help of images traditional for folk poetry.

Drawing a conclusion from the above, we will attempt to give our own definition of the genre of cruel romance. So, a cruel romance is a lyrical-epic genre of urban folklore, which was formed in the second half of the 19th century in a middle-class environment, absorbing the features of its culture and life. Cruel romance developed on the basis of traditional Russianballads, it is characterized by a narrow family and household theme. In resolving the conflict and developing the plot, cruel romance is characterized by exoticism, the desireto savor cruelty, melodrama and a tragic ending (murder,suicide, death from grief, etc.)

A little more than a dozen plots can be distinguished in a cruel romance. They differ from each other mainly in the causes of the tragedy, and the choice endings and is not at all large: murder, suicide, death from grief or deadly grief.
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The favorite plot of a cruel romance is the seduction of a girl by an insidious seducer. The deceived remains either to die of longing, or to reduce scores with life, or revenge. The variant of the first outcome is presented in the romance "My mother loved me, respected me ...". The girl literally dries from unrequited love. Her life no longer pleases, everywhere one can hear the voice of "dearfriend," with whom she now lives apart. Turning to your girlfriendsthe sufferer bequeaths after death to dress her in a yellow dress, as white (the bride's dress) turned out to be "not at all to her face." Death is perceived by her as inevitability and salvation from hopeless longing:

Friends, come to me
I will lie on the table
I ask you to. don't judge me
Bury my corpse in silence.

The heroine of the cruel romance "Quietly the willows sway over the river" does not want toresist fate. Her lover cheated on her, and "deep jealousy" filled her soul with despair and longing. Pride and despair do not allow the girl to seek another ending, except for a voluntary departure from life. The description of her last minutes is filled with deep drama:

Jealousy deep
hid for a long time,
But I'm tired of suffering.
Got on the beach.
Swayed slightly.
She just waved her hand.

The rejected girl from the romance “Once I was sitting on the piano...” describes the story of her love with deep sincerity. She does not hide that was beautiful and was a success with the guys (“The boys were chasingme"). However, the one to whom she gave her heart and not only betrayed her and marriedanother. Feelings of wounded pride and jealousy spilled out into terrible crime: the heroine first kills her opponent with a shot from pistol, and then stabs his former lover with a dagger.

It happens that a girl is forced to marry a rich old man or a freak.Then her lover is certainly present in the church at the wedding, and, seeing the desired handsome man, the bride immediately dies of grief. Or another ending: the bride evokes sympathy and empathy among those around her and witnesses, since her fate is sealed. Examples for this story includewe could not find folklore works, but vivid evidenceto this - cruel romances of literary origin ("At the church stood coach..."):

I heard the crowd say:
“The groom is unprepossessing!
In vain the beauty was ruined. -
And I followed the crowd.

If the heroine of the romance nevertheless marries for love, then such horrors await her and her children in family life that it would be better for her to stayin girls. Over time, the husband will surely fall in love with another and either kill his wife or bring her to the grave. And then "the evil stepmother will surely take overchildren. The weak-willed father will surely follow her lead - and it will happen, ohwhat is told in the romances “As in the Mitrofanovsky cemetery ...”, “In the cityPetrov" and others.
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The motive of a family murder is rooted in an old Russian ballad(see, "Brother dies by mistake", etc.). Anonymous authors of cruel romance plots with the murder of relatives were attracted, apparently, because such cases were not uncommon in a narrow middle class environment. An example of a cruel romance on this topic is the song "Sister Poisoned Brother". The work closely echoes the ballad "Brother's sister wants lime", howeverthere are also a number of significant differences.

In a cruel romance, the problem is solved differently, according to the requirements of the genre. The posthumous words of a brother sound like a testament. They have no malice, only sadness and last wishes. About the villainous sister, he says only that, passing by his grave, she "weeps in tears." That is, a good fellow remains so. And the retribution of the heroine, however, cannot be avoided. And it will be done by none other than her "dear friend", for whom she poisoned brother, because he prevented her from meeting her lover (brother - "enemy"). But, having reasonably judged, the beloved leaves her forever:

If you knew how to lime brother,
Take me out too, young man.
Stay alone now!

In this text, we found a combination of the plots of two ballads (“Brother's sister wants lime” and “The girl poisoned the young man”). Cruel romanceselected the most necessary of them, deepening the content, introducing motivationcrimes and a new, more vital, denouement.

The figurative system of the cruel romance is not rich. There are a small number of characters in it, sharply opposed to each other in theirspiritual qualities, intentions, life position. In the romance, thus, the division of heroes into positive and negative, traditional for folklore works, is preserved. On the strip of evil are the father-killer, the blind executor of the will of the young wife (“Like in the cemetery of Mitrofanovsky ...”), the evil stepmother (“In the city of Petrov”), the fratricidal sister (“The sister poisoned the brother”), the beloved-traitor ( "At a stormy night"), seductive brother (“Brother invited his sister for a walk”), ungrateful daughter (“About one nightmarish incident”). They are opposed by innocently suffering children (“In the city of Petrov”), abandoned suicidal lovers (“Quietly over willows sway like a river. But the main place among the heroes of a cruel romance are occupied by the so-called "innocently guilty", "justified criminals", heroes who committed a crime, as it were, against their will. This is the unfortunate lover who stabbed Olya because of her frivolous behavior,hypocrisy and coquetry (“Cornflowers”), a deceived and abandoned girl who, in desperation, shot the new girlfriend of her beloved and stabbed him with a dagger (“Once I was sitting on the piano”). Confession set forth in the work their souls incline the listener towards the justification of heroes: they evoke feeling,

compassion, and the cruel sentence concluded at the end of the romance is perceived as an undeserved punishment. The emotional intensity of passions often ends for the performer and listener with tears of empathy for the characters. This is another characteristic feature of the works of this genre.

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1 Balashov D.M. The history of the development of the Russian ballad. - Petrozavodsk, 1966.

2 Zueva T.V., Kirdan B.P. Russian folklore: A textbook for higher education. manager M.: Nauka, 2002.

3 Historical songs. Ballads / Comp., prepared. texts by S.N. Azbelev. M., 1986

4 Propp V.Ya. Poetics of folklore. M., 1998.

It is difficult to find another genre of Russian folklore, so loved by the people among the people and so despised by experts. Cruel romance until recently remained an outcast for folklorists. Sometimes direct prohibitions were imposed on cruel romance.

Meanwhile, the people sang these "pseudo-folk" songs with might and main. Over time, the cruel romance so “littered the valuable song repertoire” that it simply ousted it from the memory of the people in the 19th century. along with the ditty, it became the main, most common genre of song folklore.

bourgeois culture

Than a cruel cruel romance

In a cruel romance, the features of the "third" culture are clearly manifested. In it, one can find both similarities and differences, both with folklore and with literature.

In cruel romances there are such folklore images as "raspberry", "beautiful girl", "dear friend", "blue sea". On the other hand, the cruel romance is closer in form to urban literature: it is characterized by syllabo-tonic versification, precise rhyme, and division into stanzas. The language is also largely of literary origin. Words such as "fatal", "horrible", "nightmarish", "crazy" overflowing with a cruel romance are unusual for a traditional folk song.

The favorite plot of a cruel romance is the seduction of a girl by an insidious seducer. The deceived remains either to die of anguish, or to settle accounts with life, or to take revenge.

The artistic world of a cruel romance is a super-tense, painful world, on the verge of life and death.

There are many cruel romances in which the story is told from the perspective of dead heroes.

There is no otherworldly world in the cruel romance. Everywhere there is only villainy and reciprocal suffering of the heroes. Such a worldview reflected profound shifts in people's consciousness. Under the influence of primitively interpreted fragments of scientific knowledge, traditional religious and mythological ideas collapsed, and people experienced a keen sense of hostility of the surrounding world, spiritual insecurity and life collapse.

Apparently, such a break in the petty-bourgeois consciousness gave rise to that special hysterical tone that distinguishes the cruel romance from all the traditional genres of Russian folklore.

Cruel romance often talks about incest.

Another important feature of the cruel romance is its "exoticism", i.e. craving for everything unusual, out of the ordinary. There are romances, the action of which takes place in distant countries - for example, in South America.

A cruel romance is prone to moralizing and moralizing, loves to learn a lesson and give advice.

The Romance of a Cruel Romance

The first songbooks appeared in Russia in the middle of the 18th century. In the first third of the XIX century. More than two hundred songbook titles have been published. In 1911 alone, 180 songbook titles saw the light of day. The books were instantly snapped up, they were read to the holes.

Declining from the best poets to imitators, from them to semi-literate writers, the romantic style changed greatly. The "universal grief" characteristic of romanticism turned into tearful sentimentality, and then hysteria, and exceptional characters and events were transformed into heroes and plots of a cruel romance, respectively. The craving for everything unusual was preserved in the exoticism of the latter. Finally, it was from romantic poetry that the petty-bourgeois genre borrowed “beautiful” words and phrases, which turned into clichés even in the work of minor poets.

Cruel romance in Soviet times

The genre of violent romance turned out to be very viable. New works continued to be created during the Soviet era.

There were many stories related to the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Usually these are tragic stories about crippled soldiers who returned home to "traitor" wives.