Reading this Song of A. S. Pushkin, I immediately remembered his Tale of Tsar Saltan, where there is a similar moment: when the king orders "Both the queen and the offspring to be secretly thrown into the abyss of waters …", which one-to-one resembles a moment from the ancient Greek legend about Danae, and thought: how could “Nashe Vse” not know the famous folk metaphor - to throw a maiden into a river or sea - which is found in peasant songs? Pushkin, in the Tale, in the Song, leads the line of drowning the princess as quite real. Moreover, in the Song, he gave reason for subsequent researchers of the legends about Razin to reflect on the "pagan character" of this act, on the "sacrifice of the Volga" of the Persian princess. So much noise has grown out of ordinary ignorance …
But the point is just poetry. And what can we hide, Razin was in many ways a mythical character, rather than a historical one. Read at least tales about his untold riches, treasures and escapes from prison with the help of magic … So is it worth discounting the version about the poetic origin of this episode of his life?
It is believed that already in 1676 J. Streis in his Three Voyages described the same moment, which, as it were, documents it unambiguously. However, Strace himself was not a witness and, like much in his book, he wrote "according to rumors." This passage itself from the Russian translation of his book looks like this:
That is, he exactly repeats Pushkin's motive, well, more precisely, on the contrary … One might say, the episode "canonical" in Razin's biography.
But if we turn to folk lyrics, it immediately becomes clear that the image of the sea and the river, in which the girl is drowning, symbolizes her connection with a “dear friend”. Examples of this image are widely presented in the two-volume work of E. V. Anichkov. “Spring ritual song in the West and among the Slavs” (1905). One of them:
In addition, the motive for drowning is known in two variations: 1 - marriage or "eating the forbidden fruit" leading to marriage (examples of such songs are given in the article "Mermaids without makeup"), 2 - divorce, which we observe in the same tale about Saltan … An example of such a song from Belarus:
Thus, we can conclude that the motive of how Razin "drowns" the princess is metaphorical, and did not happen in reality, and it certainly was not a sacrifice to the Volga (if only because in the Slavic, and in the entire old European world It was customary to sacrifice horses to the water spirit, which has very ancient roots, and certainly not people). This metaphor can mean three things:
1 - the divorce of Razin and the Princess (provided that he took her as a wife)
2 - the rape of the princess
3 - marriage to the princess.
Promotional video:
The second and third options are interconnected and are complemented by the fact that Razin "captivated" the Persian beauty, and the image of captivity is again a marriage motive, which still remains as a real or humorous abduction of the bride or at least her shoes. The image of a princess who must be rescued or stolen from the palace is a favorite plot of folk matchmaking games such as “the tsar walks around Nova-gorod…”.
So it's all to one, "sea devil" has nothing to do with it …
Author: peremyshlin