Your shopping cart is empty.
Log in

The means to characterise heroes and to understand events in “The reading of Boris and Gleb” by Nestor the chronicler

A.A. Shaykin
$2.50

 

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.5-17.055

 

Shaykin Aleksandr A.,

Doctor of Philology, Professor

Of the Department of the History of Russian Literature

of XI – XIX Centuries

Turgenev Orel State University

e-mail: ashaikin@yandex.ru 

 

The article is devoted to studying the means of characterizing the heroes and understanding events in the narrative of life of saints type. The attention is focused on the “Reading of Boris and Gleb” written by Nestor, but comparisons with other texts about Boris and Gleb – e.g., “Story of Boris and Gleb” and a chronicle article dated by 6523/1015 year – are made where necessary. The images created by Nestor in his “Reading” clearly show the author's intents: fondness of “this world” is devastating for the man, the rejection of “this world” can lean to a death in the earthly life, but opens an opportunity to act in the life eternal. The two ends of existence are interconnected in the Nestor's text: people and events of modern times are identified with their prototypes in the initial times depicted in the Holy Scriptures.

Keywords: God, saint, Satan, initial events, identifications, glory of this world.

 

References

 

1.  Chtenie o zhitii i o pogublenii blazhenuyu strastoterptsyu Borisa i Gleba. In: Svyatye knyaz'ya-mucheniki Boris i Gleb. N.I. Milyutenko (Researcher). St. Petersburg, 2006.

2.  Revelli, G. Monumenti letterari su Boris e Gleb. Literaturnye pa-myatniki o Borise i Glebe. Genova, 1993. P. 601–692.

3.  Toporov, V.N. Svyatost' i svyatye v russkoy dukhovnoy kul'ture. Vol. 1 “Pervyy vek khristianstva na Rusi”. Moscow, 1995, pp. 266–350.

4.  Povest' vremennykh let. Part. 1. D.S. Likhachev i B.A. Romanov (textology), V.P. Adrianova-Peretts (Ed.). Moscow – Leningrad, 1950.

5.  Skazanie o Borise i Glebe. In: Biblioteka literatury Drevney Rusi. Vol. 1 “XI – XII veka”. St. Petersburg, 1997.

6.  Kirillin, V.M. “Povest' o novgorodskom belom klobuke”: vremya proiskhozhdeniya i sootnoshenie pervykh redaktsiy. In: Kirillin, V.M. “Ocherki o literature Drevney Rusi. Materialy dlya istorii russkoy patrologii i agiografii”. Sergiev Posad: Publ. Moscow Theological Academy, 2012.

7.  Bilenkin, V. “Chtenie” prep. Nestora kak pamyatnik “glebobori-sovskogo” kul'ta. In: Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoy literatury. St. Petersburg, 1993. Vol. 47.

8.  Eremin, I.P. “Povest' vremennykh let” kak pamyatnik literatury. In: Eremin, I.P. Literatura Drevney Rusi (etyudy i kharakteristiki). Moscow – Leningrad, 1966.

9.  Zhitie Savvy Osvyashchennogo. In: Velikie Minei Chetii, sobrannye Vserossiyskim mitropolitom Makariem. December, days 1–5. Iss. 10. St. Petersburg, 1901.