This is not the fate of our historical literature in the Middle Ages. We received ready-made writing in a related language. Serving the same purposes as the Latin language served in the West, the Church Slavonic dialect protected our writing from the invasion of pagan folk elements. But it was easier for the popular current to penetrate the pages written in a language so close to the folk one. Chronicles served as the point of contact between the two elements of Church Slavonic and Old Russian.
But our chronicles turned into a tale of the past then,
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
when the spirit of Christian and monastic humility dominated literary Skoda. Internal wars with all their actions and invasions of barbarian tribes supported the severity of the ascetic view. The clash between the living folk element and the church element in the West was decided in favor of the former, and in Rusn - in favor of the latter. Eavesdropping on folk legends, our chronicler, as much as he could, incorporated them into his bookish worldview, never descending to everyday features, never going into vivid details about the personality of himself or even his hero. Modest, sinful. thin, thin - he asks for forgiveness if he made a mistake;, name. He rarely puts his own on the pages of the chronicle, and even then only so that he will be remembered in prayers. Most often, he does not consider it necessary not only to talk about himself, but even to declare his existence. G. Pogodin recalls that Shdetser gave preference to our chronicles over Western ones because there was nothing deliberate or incorrect in them, that they were written simply, clearly, without decoration. But if so, then they would be naive, not subordinate to the guiding idea and therefore highly poetic, poetic as an unartificial epic, but this is not the case: our chronicles are distinguished by simplicity, but at the same time by artificiality from the earliest times. The Novgorod Chronicles are distinguished by their clarity and natural artifice, but they are already alien to poetry. These are some kind of businesslike, albeit simple-minded, but extremely prosaic notes. Without artificiality, without school, writing does not arise, and without a guiding idea it is not possible to develop creativity toward it. Poetry penetrates into our chronicles during the flourishing Kyiv era, and this chronicle literature replaces for us everything that has survived from ancient folk legends. She conveys to us the ideals of the Jewish educated part of society.
People's life penetrated into the chronicle to the extent that the chroniclers remained faithful to the interests of their city and land, or even party. In their verdicts, one can notice their predilection for one or another prince, sympathy and lack of sympathy for Russian cities and regional lands. With text from Holy Scripture, the author supports his personal view of the event. The invocation of God's blessing and the appeal to his righteous judgment is often in connection with the personal and biased view of the chronicler.
THE LEGISLATION OF CANONFLOWER ROSTIOLAVICH®.
Thus, the ancient Russian chronicler sometimes stepped into the realm of the ideal Christian worldview and plunged into the passionate waves of the worldly sea. Such heterogeneous properties make our chronicles an echo of people imbued with spiritual views on the events of the sinful world, on the other hand, an echo of observers of the real life and interests of the city ■ the land where the writer lived and acted. The Russian chronicler was not always a recluse who did not leave his cell; Often in his lively story it is clear that he was present at a veche gathering, during a dispute between the prince and his squad and citizens; he took part in the campaign, witnessed the battle, the siege of the city, and rejoiced with the winner. lamented with the vanquished, listened to the princes negotiate peace and was present at the usual kissing of the cross. A prince's confessor, or a sexton, or a secular person, who was used by the prince to write letters of the cross, judgments and deeds of gift, he wrote his notes mostly at his leisure, and, taking up the pen, he still tried to renounce his armored interests and assimilate for himself the role of an impartial judge of the Prince, as required by the literary trend.
Tales recorded by eyewitnesses, persons who experienced the direct impression of the event, constitute an essential and most creative part of our chronicles.