Е-mail: tkhlybova@yandex.ru
Moscow, Russian Federation
PhD in Philology, Independent Researcher
The concept of “envy” in spiritual poetry — a special genre system of Russian folklore — has some peculiarities of function which becomes obvious when comparing this poetry with other folk-art creations, everyday speech recorded in dictionaries, and bookish literature. Thus the written and oral versions of the spiritual verse about Boris and Gleb have a different perspective on the motif of envy as the reason for Svyatopolk’s killing of the holy brothers. The written ones use the vocabulary and phraseology of envy (“envy,” “filled with envy,” “vulnerable to envy”), while the oral versions replace it with “evil,” “malice,” “anger.” The reasons for this discrepancy are сlarified in the article. The author sees them, firstly, as influenced by historical songs and ballads, that either dispose of their characters’ motivations or reiterating the political reasons for their actions. Secondly, the reason relates to the specifics of the use of lexemes “to envy,” and “envy” in Russian folk culture, which have retained an archaic connection with the ideas of imitation and diligence. The latter circumstance influenced their representation in the entire corpus of folk spiritual poetry. The positive semantics of words with this root prevented their active use to denote negativity in folklore texts and provoked the use of other words for this purpose, thus labeling unambiguously destructive emotions “anger” and “greed.”
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