How in the 18th century Russian mythology was invented in a Western manner, who needed it, and where did Lel, Yarilo and Zimtserla come from.
Cabinet mythology
In the 18th century, when Russian historians and writers felt they were equal participants in European history, they wanted to rewrite Russian history on the European model. The young empire needed, first of all, its own antiquity: legendary rulers, epics and mythological pantheon. Slavic paganism did not manage to develop to the level of antiquity: there was neither a host of gods, nor stable myths about their hierarchy, about deeds and family relationships. But historians of the 18th century thought that it was possible and important to prove that all this was. They bit by bit collected information, and where there were white spots, they did not hesitate to think out. “And isn't Venus Fidasova better with arms and legs forged in the taste of this famous ancient master than when only her torso would remain, and then, perhaps,in places still beaten out? - the poet, prose writer and translator Grigory Glinka wrote in 1804 in the preface to his mythological dictionary.
This is how the Russian "armchair mythology" appeared - a kaleidoscope of deities that never existed or were distorted beyond recognition, who were tailored according to Homeric style at the writing table.
The first books devoted to Russian and Slavic paganism were composed by writers and publicist historians. In 1767, Mikhail Chulkov's "Brief Mythological Lexicon" was published, in 1768 - "Description of an ancient Slavic pagan fable, collected from various writers, and provided with notes" by Mikhail Popov. In 1804, Grigory Glinka published "The Ancient Religion of the Slavs", in the same year, "Slavic and Russian Mythology" by the philologist and advocate of the abolition of serfdom Andrei Kaisarov was published. All of them are dictionaries, where, in alphabetical order, all information about the pagan deities that we managed to glean from sources is collected: the works of Tatishchev and Lomonosov, several chronicles, Latin chroniclers and Byzantine geographers, as well as living folklore. Baba Yaga turned under their feather into a "hellish goddess"demanding bloody sacrifices for her granddaughters, and brownies and goblin became "dreamy demigods." In one row stood the deities of the Western Slavs described in medieval sources, Kiev idols, Maslenitsa effigies, Boyan from "The Lay of Igor's Campaign", the sorcerer from the fake Joachim Chronicle and the fruits of countless mistakes of historians. Together they settled the Russian Olympus, descended from it into literature and ideology, and many are still alive. Here are some of them.and many are still alive. Here are some of them.and many are still alive. Here are some of them.
Delight
Promotional video:
This is how Grigory Glinka describes Delight: “Joy on the forehead, blush on the cheeks, smiling lips, crowned with flowers, dressed carelessly in a light robe, playing kobza
and dancing to the voice of one, there is a god of joy and pleasures of life …"
Baron Sigismund von Herberstein. Painting by Yuri Shubits on the ceiling of the National Museum of Slovenia. 1885 year.
The history of the origin of the Slavic Dionysus is as follows. The chronicle of the Tale of Bygone Years tells about the first religious reform of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich - an attempt to streamline and centralize the beliefs of his subjects (the first reform failed, and the second was the adoption of Christianity). The chronicler lists the idols installed by Vladimir on the banks of the Dnieper, and he was the first to name "Perun drevyana, and his head srebryana, and ys gold." In the 16th century, one of the copies of the Tale of Bygone Years fell into the hands of Baron Sigismund von Herberstein, diplomat, traveler and author of "Notes on Muscovite Affairs". Herberstein did not speak Russian, but knew Slovenian, but this was not enough to make out a passage from the Tale of Bygone Years: in his description of the pantheon of Vladimir, Perun's "us zlat" turned into a separate deity - Delight. So the name invented by the Austrian diplomat got to the Russian writers, and they already composed for him a biography of the patron saint of pleasures.
Zimcerla
Zimzerla was first mentioned in a translation of the work of the 17th century Dalmatian historian Mauro Orbini; in Russia he was known as Mavrurbin, and his "Book of the historiography of honoring the name, glory and expansion of the Slavic people" came to the Russian reader in 1722. Orbini also presents the plot of the Tale of Bygone Years about idols on the banks of the Dnieper - most likely, he rewrites Herberstein, because Delight is on his list of gods. Semargla Orbini records the next one as Simaergla. But here the translator makes a mistake: apparently, instead of the first "a" he sees "c", and removes "g" for the sake of euphony. This is how Zimtserla appears on the Slavic Olympus.
In 1768, Mikhail Popov, the author of one of the mythological dictionaries, wrote about Zimtserl: “The Goddess of Kiev; What qualities were attributed to her, nothing is known about that; unless its broken name be made from the name "winter" and the verb "to erase", so it will be called Zimsterloy and will resemble Aurora or Flora, the goddess of flowers."
Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. Engraving by Georgy Grachev from the original watercolors, presented to the editor of Russian Starina Mikhail Semevsky. 1889 year.
From this moment, the triumphal procession of the beautiful goddess through Russian literature begins: at Gabriel Kamenev
it “blooms like a ruddy rose” (“Thunderbolt”, 1804), at Nikolai Polevoy
"Zimtserla is burning in the sky with a shine of gold" ("Stenka Razin", 1832), Vasily Narezhny
“Zimtserla spread her crimson tent across the blue sky” (“Slavonic Evenings”, 1809), Gavrila Derzhavin likens the empress to her (“The Appearance of Apollo and Daphne on the Neva Bank”, 1801), Alexander Radishchev’s Zimtserla harnesses the horses into the carriage of Znich, the god of fire, light and warmth, and she herself is “feathery”, just like Homeric “pink-fingered” Eos (“Bova”, 1799-1802). And the romantic poet and future Decembrist Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky decides to call his almanac "Zimtserla" - in 1818, when Pushkin writes "To Chaadaev" and the dawn "stars of captivating happiness" look at many Russian free-thinkers. Bestuzhev did not receive permission to publish the almanac.
Lel
Lel, whom the mythologists of the 18th century dubbed "the god of love's inflammation", is found in Pushkin's poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila": at the prince's feast "… the sweet singer praises / Ludmila the charm, and Ruslana, / And Lel's wreath twisted by him." But his best role was played in the play "Snow Maiden" by Alexander Ostrovsky, where the golden-haired Slavic Eros shows all his insolence.
Lel appeared from wedding songs: in their choruses, "lel-polel", "oh-luli-lel" and similar combinations are repeated, researchers trace them to the exclamation "hallelujah" (for example, Nikita Tolstoy in the article "Hallelujah" in the dictionary " Slavic antiquities "). The first mentions of the deity Lele are contained in the works of Polish historiographers of the 15th – 16th centuries, including Jan Dlugosz and Matej Stryjkowski. They subtracted a whole family from the choruses of folk poetry: the god of love we know, Lel, his brother and patron saint of marriage, Polel (because love is followed by marriage) and their mother Lada. Already in the 18th century, Russian historians decided that Polish phantom gods deserve to enter the Russian mythological pantheon.
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Snow Maiden and Lel. Sketch by Viktor Vasnetsov for the opera "Snow Maiden" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Tsar Berendey. Sketch by Viktor Vasnetsov for the opera "Snow Maiden" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Spring is red. Sketch by Viktor Vasnetsov for the opera "Snow Maiden" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Santa Claus. Sketch by Viktor Vasnetsov for the opera "Snow Maiden" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Yarilo
In the play by Alexander Ostrovsky "The Snow Maiden" Yarilo is "the scorching god of lazy Berendei", omniscient and angry. After the death of Snegurochka and the restoration of world order, on the day of his celebration, Yarilo appears to people on the mountain dedicated to him in the form of "a young guy in white clothes, in his right hand a glowing human head, in his left - a sheaf of rye."
In reality, Yarilo (or Yarila) is the personification of the summer harvest festival, found in the folklore tradition of some, mainly southern regions of Russia. This was the name of a scarecrow, the same as Maslenitsa, Kostroma, Kostrubonka and others. Dolls were made for the holiday, they were decorated, given sexual characteristics, carried around the village with songs, and then buried or burned. In this ritual, the writers of the 18th – 19th centuries guessed the signs of a solar deity and conjectured all of its attributes. This is how he continues to be seen by modern neopagans.
Radegast
In the late 18th - early 19th centuries, the origin of the Slavs, the existence of Slavic runes and the mythical city of Retra were actively discussed. At the center of the discussion are Prilwitz idols, bronze figurines seen in 1768 by a doctor in the house of his patient in the village of Prilwitz in Mecklenburg, Germany. The patient's son said that his grandfather dug up the Slavic gods, speckled with runic writing in the garden, trying to plant a pear. Among the statuettes was the image of Radegast, a deity known from the testimony of medieval chroniclers: his chest is covered with a resemblance of a shield with a bull's head, on his helmet - an image of a bird. The finds were described, and engravings were made based on their motives. Radegast ended up not only in mythological dictionaries, but also, for example, in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera-ballet Mlada.
Radegast - Prilvitsky idol. Illustration from the book by Andres Gottlieb Masha and Daniel Voghe "Ancient Liturgical Objects Emboldened from the Temple in Retra on Lake Tollenzer." Berlin, 1771.
The figurines, of course, were quickly recognized as fake. In addition, modern science doubts that Radegast ever existed: there is a version that the source of the myth about him is the text of the German chronicler of the XI century Titmar, which speaks of the city of Radogoshche in the land of the Slavic tribe of Redars, where the deity Svarozhich is worshiped. The postfix -gost / -gosch is indeed characteristic of Slavic place names, and Svarozhich is a deity confirmed by many sources (Svarog in the Tale of Bygone Years). In the writings of later historians, this passage was distorted so much that Svarozhich disappeared, the name of the city turned into the name of a god, and the tribe into the mythical city of Retra.
Prepared by Kasya Denisevich
