What is a ballad? Ballad Genre in Russian Literature Read short ballads in Russian.

ballad it lyric-epic folklore and literary genre.

1. In French poetry, a poetic form of three stanzas with the same rhyme scheme and refrain at the end;
2. A song or instrumental piece with a dramatic plot.

The plot of the ballad, which often contains tragic events, is based on folklore: it is associated with legends, folk beliefs, fairy tales and legends; the genre combines the features of a story and a song, which caused the spread of musical ballads. The ballad in the period of sentimentalism and romanticism is one of the main genres of poetry.

The emergence and development of the ballad

The ballad appeared in medieval France at the end of the 13th century., her term is first applied to Provençal poetry. Originally a ballad in the Middle Ages - a folk dance song, common troubadours and trouvers; later in the culture of Western Europe - a narrative song or poem of a social, historical, mythical or heroic nature with an element of fantasy.

The classical literary form of the ballad is defined towards the end of the French Middle Ages and is a lyric poem of three stanzas, each of which consists of eight 8-syllable or ten 10-syllable verses, with the same three or four rhymes in a certain sequence, repeated from stanza to stanza. Examples of the ballad genre in the XIV century. left the French poet and composer, author of about two hundred ballads Guillaume de Machaux.

Ballad example

In the fifteenth century The French poet Francois Villon significantly expanded the theme of ballads, often touching on historical, political and patriotic topics:
Prince, let the mighty Eol carry away
The one who betrays his native land,
Shame the sanctity of friendly unions,
And forever be damned
Who will encroach on the homeland of the French!
(excerpt from "The Ballad of Damnations to the Enemies of France", translated by F. Mendelssohn)

In the sixteenth century the French ballad is less and less used, in the 17th century the famous French fabulist Lafontaine wrote simple and witty ballads, but the ballad genre finally returned to French poetry in the 18th-19th centuries. thanks to the romantic poets J. de Nerval, V. Hugo and others, it established itself as one of the main genres of poetry of romanticism and sentimentalism.

Ballad in Italy

The medieval ballad penetrated Italy and served as a lyric poem in the 13th-14th centuries. Unlike the original French ballad, the Italian ballad was not associated with a folk dance song, its form changed somewhat, including a change in the stanza and the elimination of the refrain. Such ballads take place in the works of D. Alighieri, F. Petrarch and others.

Ballad in England, Scotland

In the 18th century, recordings of the ballads of the peoples of England and Scotland first appeared. In a special lyrical genre of Anglo-Scottish poetry, the ballad was formed in the XIV-XVI centuries. A whole cycle of folk ballads of more than forty works has developed around the kind and brave defender, folk hero Robin Hood, who embodied the strength and invincibility of the English people, their love of freedom and determination, their readiness to always help, sympathy for someone else's grief. For example:
“I remember you and your sons.
I have been indebted to them for a long time.
I swear on my head, said Robin Hood,
I will help you in trouble!
(excerpt from the ballad "Robin Hood and the Sheriff", translated by S. Marshak)

During the period of romanticism, the Anglo-Scottish literary tradition of the ballad, reproducing old legends, was continued by R. Burns, W. Scott, T. Campbell and others. (1765) by the English writer, priest T. Percy and represent a valuable Anglo-Scottish cultural heritage.

Ballad in Germany

The meaning of the ballad in Germany corresponded to its origin: a poem written in the spirit of long-standing English and Scottish folk songs.
The development of the ballad in German literature took place in the 18th-19th centuries, the heyday of romanticism, when the ballads of F. Schiller, G.A. the most famous of which is the tragic ballad by I. V. Goethe "The Forest King" (1782).

Ballad in Russia

Due to the influence of German romanticism at the beginning of the 19th century, the ballad genre began to develop in Russia. Its main representative was the outstanding Russian poet, “ballade player” V. A. Zhukovsky, whose translation included ballads by Austro-German, Scottish and English authors. The most famous ballad by V. A. Zhukovsky “Svetlana” (1813) is a free arrangement of the ballad “Lenora” by G. Burger. The work is written in the form of a dream, it is dominated by tragic motifs:
O! do not know these terrible dreams
You, my Svetlana...
Be, the creator, cover her!
No sadness wound
(excerpt from the ballad "Svetlana")

In Russian poetry, the ballad genre is also represented in A. S. Pushkin (“The Song of the Prophetic Oleg”), M. Yu. Lermontov (“Airship”), A. K. Tolstoy (“Ilya Muromets”), A. A. Fetom ("Hero and Leander"), etc.

The word ballad comes from French ballade, and from the Provencal balada, which means dance song.

The ballad genre in Russian literature

Ballad- one of the favorite lyric-epic genres of Russian romantics, which allowed you to completely move away from reality, create your own fantasy world, opposed to the world of reality. Such great poets as Zhukovsky, Pushkin and Lermontov turned to this genre.

V. A. Zhukovsky, who is rightfully considered the founder of Russian contemplative romanticism, was the first to turn to the ballad. The development of this genre was very important for the self-determination of Russian romanticism. Most of the poet's ballads are translated ("Lyudmila", "The Forest Tsar", "Ivikov Cranes" and others), but they give the impression of being original.

Many of Zhukovsky's ballads are characterized by the poetics of the terrible, the atmosphere of mystery. In this regard, permanent images arise: the moon, crows, owls, coffins, shrouds, the dead.

The moon shines dimly In the dusk of fog ...

"Svetlana"
Your house is a coffin; the groom is dead.

"Lyudmila"
Raven croaks: sadness!
"Svetlana"

The action of ballads often takes place from midnight. Heroes are constantly in a state of horror and fear.

The world of ballads is built on the antithesis: good - evil.

Ak, in "Svetlana" good triumphs over the forces of evil, all horrors and nightmares turn out to be just a dream. And the heroine of another ballad, Lyudmila, is punished for murmuring at fate. It should be noted here that there is a certain moralistic element in Zhukovsky's ballads, but didacticism does not reduce their romantic pathos.

Important is the motive of rock, passing through all the work, the poet. So, in ballads, life is shown as a constant opposition to fate, as a duel between a person and circumstances, we see the inevitability of retribution. The basis of the ballad plot is overcoming the barrier between the real and the other world.

Zhukovsky often turned to the images of the feudal Middle Ages and antiquity. They allowed him to rise above the surrounding reality and be transported to the world of fantasy, in this way he fled from reality, like all romantics.

translating ballads, Zhukovsky retained many features of the original, but focused his attention on the most important stages of the plot. So, in the ballad "Lyudmila" Zhukovsky conveys a greater degree of thoughtfulness, enhances the moralistic element, affirms the idea of ​​humility before fate. And in "Svetlana" he is even further away, departs from the original ("Lenora" by Burger), the national flavor is enhanced, which is created by the details of everyday life, pictures of Russian nature. In the ballad "The Forest King" we see a different image than Goethe's, the image of the king: "He is in a dark crown, with a thick beard."

A characteristic feature of translation ballad Zhukovsky is that they are Russified. For example, "Lyudmila" is a translation of "Lenora" by Burger, but the action is transferred to the Moscow kingdom of the 16th-17th centuries, and the main character is Lyudmila, a Russian girl. In the ballad "Svetlana" we see even more Russian features: a description of divination "on Epiphany evening", signs and customs, there are elements of folklore ("board gates", "borzoi horses"). Later (in 1831) Zhukovsky would again turn to this ballad and write the ballad of the same name ("Lenora"), but this time close enough to the original.

So, for Zhukovsky's ballad creativity, it is characteristic that most of his works of this genre are translated. But he brings national Russian features to them. In Zhukovsky's ballads, it is not the plot that is important, but the mood that events evoke.

Pushkin at a certain stage of his work, like Zhukovsky, was a romantic. It was during this period that he wrote the ballad "The Song of the Prophetic Oleg" (1822). The material for the work was an event taken from medieval history, as well as many plots ballad Zhukovsky. The main motive is also similar - the motive of predetermination of fate. But there are also important differences between the ballads of Pushkin and Zhukovsky. First of all, the poems of Alexander Sergeevich are written on a Russian historical plot, while the material ballad Zhukovsky is, as a rule, the European Middle Ages. An important role is played by the fact that the plot of "The Song of the Prophetic Oleg" is based on a chronicle story, and Pushkin tries to be historically reliable. To do this, he introduces historical realities:

Your shield on the gates of Tsaregrad...

The poet shows ancient customs and traditions, which gives Pushkin's ballad an air of authenticity. Compared to historical Ballads of Zhukovsky"The Song of the Prophetic Oleg" seems more national and more popular.

In connection with the theme of inevitable fate, such images arise as a skull, bones, a coffin snake:
From the dead head, the grave snake, Hissing, meanwhile crawled out ...

So, Pushkin's ballad historically reliable, that is, we can say that, compared with Zhukovsky's ballads, it is closest to reality. The main thing in this work is that a person is not able to change what is destined for him.

Continuing the tradition Zhukovsky, Lermontov Also refers to Genre ballad("Airship", "Glove" and others). Lermontov rarely refers to the subjects of the Middle Ages. Ballad"Air-
New Ship” is dedicated to Napoleon. The main motive is the motive of loneliness:
But in the color of hope and strength, his royal son died, And for a long time, waiting for him, The emperor stands alone ...

Just like in Zhukovsky's ballads, we see a mystical landscape: night, stars, rocks - romantic images appear, loved by both poets (grave, coffin, dead man), we find ourselves in a fantasy world far from reality.

Like most balladZhukovsky, "Airship" is a translation (from Zeidlid).

ballads they are mostly written on the plots taken from the past, and various means are used to convey the appropriate mood. The language of ballads is also subject to this. Poets use various epithets and metaphors, and in Ballads of Zhukovsky and Pushkin there are archaisms, folklore, fairy-tale elements.

Thus, most of the ballads of Russian literature of the early 19th century were translations of the ballads of Western European romantics, but on Russian soil they acquired a number of features. The ballad genre plays an important role in the development of Russian romanticism and occupies a significant place in the work of V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin and M. Yu. Lermontov.

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

When creating a ballad, the author is guided either by the historical event that inspires him, or by folklore. In this genre, specially fictional characters are rarely present. People like to recognize the characters they liked before.

The ballad as a literary genre has the following features:

• The presence of the composition: introduction, main part, climax, denouement.
• Having a storyline.
• The attitude of the author to the characters is conveyed.
• The emotions and feelings of the characters are shown.
• A harmonious combination of real and fantastic moments of the plot.
• Description of landscapes.
• The presence of mystery, riddles in the plot.
• Character dialogues.
• A harmonious combination of lyrics and epic.

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

From the history of the term

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

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

In the 14th century, a poet named Guillaume fe Machaux wrote more than two hundred ballads and quickly became famous as a result. He wrote love lyrics, completely depriving the genre of "dancing". After his work, the ballad became a purely literary genre.

With the advent of the printing press, the first ballads printed in newspapers began to appear in France. People really liked them. The French loved to gather with the whole family at the end of a hard day's work in order to enjoy the interesting plot of the ballad together.

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

One of the most famous balladists of that time was Christina Pisanskaya, who, like Masho, wrote ballads for print, and not for dances and dances. She became famous for her work The Book of a Hundred Ballads.

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

Among the most famous world writers, whose ballads, no doubt, went down in history, one can name Goethe, Kamenev, Victor Hugo, Burger, Walter Scott and other outstanding writers.

In the modern world, in addition to the classical literary genre, the ballad has also acquired its primary musical roots. In the West, there is a whole musical direction in rock music, which is called "rock ballad". The songs of this genre sing mainly about love.

Among the genres of world literature, ballads stand out, which romantic poets loved to turn to. Initially, the genre originated in the poetry of the Middle Ages, but was later rethought and acquired a new sound and meaning. We offer you to get acquainted with the key features of the ballad, which will help distinguish it from other poetic works.

Distinctive features

The creator of the literary ballad is considered to be Robert Burns, who actively turned to folk stories, but clothed them in a more correct poetic form. In his works, the features of the song itself and a fascinating story with a plot are harmoniously intertwined. What are the main features of a ballad distinguished by literary critics?

• Author's feelings or sensations of characters are expressed brightly and expressively.
• A plot is required, but in some cases it can be replaced by a dialogue in which there is some action.
• An element of mystery, mysticism, something unknown is often used, this gives the text a special sound. Examples of such a construction of the text can be found in Zhukovsky (for example, "Svetlana", "Lenora" - the author's translation of the work of the same name by Burger).
• Often the action takes place against the backdrop of a striking landscape: incredibly beautiful or fantastic.

It is equally important to note that the hallmark of the ballad as a literary genre is the combination in a single text, often small in volume, of epic and lyrical principles.

Difference from other genres

Consider how a ballad differs from similar genres, epics and fairy tales. For convenience, the material is presented in the form of a table.

Using the table, you can understand the signs of a ballad and quickly distinguish works of this genre from any others.

Texts by Zhukovsky

This romantic poet was so fond of the genre in question that he was jokingly nicknamed the "ballade". He wrote a huge number of translations and his own texts, which are still interesting to the reader due to their uncomplicated style and fascinating plot. What are the main features of Zhukovsky's ballads?

• In many tests, the motif of the struggle between evil and good sounds, and the author's sympathies are on the side of the latter, but the victory often goes to negative characters (the girl Lyudmila in the work of the same name died only because she wanted to stay with her lover forever).
• The presence of otherworldly power, a mystical component (fortune-telling, ghosts, fantastic creatures - all this makes the texts interesting for the modern reader).
• A large number of dialogues that make the perception of the text even easier.
• A special role is played by the description of nature, sometimes the landscape becomes a kind of character.

A sign of love-themed ballads is the deep penetration and expression in the poetic text of the finest shades of feelings.

Here is an example from Svetlana:

How can I, girlfriends, sing?

Dear friend far away;

I am destined to die

In lonely sadness.

The year has flown by - there is no news;

He does not write to me;

Oh! and they only have a red light,

They only breathe in the heart ...

Will you not remember me?

Where, which side are you?

Where is your abode?

I pray and shed tears!

Assuage my sadness

Comforting angel.

The text conveys all the experiences of Svetlana, her longing, doubts and the hope that her beloved will still return to her.

"Forest King"

Let us consider the features of a ballad in Zhukovsky's The Forest Tsar, a short work built in the form of a dialogue. What features make it possible to attribute the text to ballads?

• The presence of a plot that has a certain dynamics.
• Big role of dialogues.
• Expression of feelings: reading a ballad, one begins to experience the horror that a child and his father feel from the presence of the Forest King.
• The mystical component is the king himself, the death of a baby.

Finally, despite the fact that the work is complete in meaning, it retains an element of mystery. Such signs of a ballad can be found in Zhukovsky's The Forest Tsar.

The ballad is an amazing genre that has now undeservedly lost its popularity. These poetic texts allow both to tell about an unusual event and to express one's attitude towards the heroes of the story.

The term "ballad" comes from the Provencal word and means "dance song". Ballads originated in the Middle Ages. By origin, ballads are associated with legends, folk legends, they combine the features of a story and a song. Many ballads about a folk hero named Robin Hood existed in England in the 14th-15th centuries.

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

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

A person is always at the center of literary ballads, but the poets of the 19th century who chose this genre knew that human strength does not always make it possible to answer all questions, to become the sovereign master of one's own destiny. Therefore, often literary ballads are a plot poem about a fateful fate, for example, the ballad "Forest King" by the German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

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

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin created such ballads as "The Song of the Prophetic Oleg", "The Bridegroom", "The Drowned Man", "The Raven Flies to the Raven", "There Lived a Poor Knight...". Also, his cycle of "Songs of the Western Slavs" can be attributed to the ballad genre.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov has separate ballads. This is the Airship from Seydlitz, the Sea Princess.

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

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

A number of comic ballads-parodies were left by Vl. Soloviev ("The Mysterious Sexton", "Knight Ralph's Autumn Walk" and others)

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

Features of the ballad as a genre:

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

combination of real and fantastic

romantic (unusual) landscape

mystery motif

plot can be replaced by dialogue

conciseness

combination of lyrical and epic beginnings