L. Publishing house "Science". LO. 1976. 204 p. Circulation 10,000. Price 1 rub.

More than 10 years ago, a book was published that revealed the most ancient roots of medieval folk culture and persistently called for the continuation of the study of folk laughter culture in different countries and in different epochs1 . Even the first reviewers of M. M. Bakhtin's book insisted on the need to expand the analyzed material, in particular, on the importance of studying the facts of Russian medieval culture .2 This task of describing the" laughing world " of Ancient Russia was undertaken by the authors of the book under review, who dedicated it to the memory of M. M. Bakhtin.

The purpose of the book, says the preface, is to determine the national and epochal features of the" laughter world " of Ancient Russia (p. 4). The peculiarity of the study lies in the fact that it does not just repeat the work of M. M. Bakhtin on new material, but goes further, especially in the interpretation of the people as the guardian of laughter culture. M. M. Bakhtin believed that the bearer of the latter were commoners, peasants, and urban artisans, and denied this role to the clergy, the city patriciate, the nobility, and even more so to the royal court. Criticism has already pointed out the one-sidedness of this interpretation. 3 Acad. D. S. Likhachev and A. M. Panchenko in this regard know-

1 M. M. Bakhtin. Creativity of Francois Rabelais and folk culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Moscow, 1965.

2 See, for example, L. M. Batkin. Panurge's laughter and the philosophy of culture. Voprosy Filosofii, 1967, No. 12, p. 123.

3 A. Gurevich. Laughter in the folk culture of the Middle Ages. Voprosy literatury, 1966, No. 6, p. 208.

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D. S. Likhachev devoted a special essay to the analysis of Ivan the Terrible's" acting " and the laughing style of his works. In general, the authors give a broad picture of the laughter culture of Ancient Russia-from chicken huts to royal chambers, from the" Life "of Protopop Avvakum to" The Word of Daniel the Sharpener", highlighting such phenomena of ancient Russian life as foolishness, which occupies an intermediate place between the" laughing world " and the world of church culture.

The book is divided into two sections: laughter as a "worldview" (author D. S. Likhachev) and laughter as a spectacle (author A.M. Panchenko). The first section provides a general interpretation of the" laughing world " of Ancient Russia as medieval laughter with all its features, in particular the focus of laughter on the personality of the laughing person. D. S. Likhachev pays special attention to joking - one of the Russian national forms of laughter, emphasizing the linguistic side of joking (rhyme, incorrect etymology of words, external similarity of words in sound, etc.). He refers to examples of folk language pranks from the works of democratic posadsky literature and from handwritten collections of proverbs of the XVII century. The range of these examples can be easily expanded, primarily due to the proverbs common in handwritten collections, in which the sound of Russian names was played out: "Levka is not a spit: he will become a different person in the throat", " Evo's name is Thomas, but he lives by himself: he does not go to people, but does not call to himself", "Our Grishka does not take extra money", "Our Ulyan is drunk in spirit", "Okul babu shod, and Okula baba shod" and many others 4 .

Among the accurate observations made by D. S. Likhachev, there is one that deserves special consideration. We are talking about the laughing element "Words of Daniel Zatochnik", about a pun laughing at his own wife, "evil", ugly. Many scholars, beginning with F. I. Buslaev, have written about the evil wife in ancient Russian literature, and all these researchers did not doubt that Old Russian scribes and preachers seriously warned their readers and listeners against the machinations of evil wives. D. S. Likhachev rightly points out that not all these philippics should be taken at face value, that laughing at your wife is one of the varieties of medieval laughter at yourself, a common joke for Ancient Russia. An evil (or" evil") wife is her own small, handy, home-made "anti-world", familiar to many, and therefore very effective. Angry (but powerless!) curses about evil wives in ancient Russian literature are also often a kind of farce, a desire to make your listeners (or readers) laugh with an exaggerated image of facts and people that are close and understandable to many. In general, the chapter devoted to the characteristics of Old Russian laughter5, is among the best in the book both in the depth of the problems posed in it and in the originality of their solution.

The first section ends with a convincingly reasoned analysis of Habakkuk's humor. D. S. Likhachev shows the originality of the author's style of the ognepal protopop and concludes that the latter's" laughing world " is closely connected with his theological ideas and can be described quite fully only when Habakkuk's worldview as a whole is studied. So far, however, only the first steps in this area can be pointed out .6 Concluding the description of the first section of the book, we emphasize its methodological nature, the prospects of applying the research techniques identified by the author to the most diverse facts of the history of ancient Russian culture.

The second section should, as it seems to us, tell first of all about the old Russian buffoons (the image of which, by the way, is taken out on the dust jacket of the book!) - it was they who first of all embodied the spectacular side of Old Russian laughter. However, the buffoons generally fell out of the author's field of view. Unfortunately, they are mentioned only in passing, when analyzing other material. Meanwhile, it is the study of buffoonish techniques in the game of word and gesture that would make it possible to emphasize the originality of laughter as a spectacle. No wonder a seventeenth-century proverb says: "Everyone will dance, but not like skomo-

4 Examples are taken from the collection of the XVII century (see P. K. Simoni. Old collections of Russian proverbs, sayings, riddles and so on. XVII-XIX centuries. Issue 1. St. Petersburg, 1899, collection 1, NN 1419, 1143, 1726, 1770, 1856).

5 It was already published earlier (see D. S. Likhachev: Old Russian Laughter. "Problems of poetics and literary history". Saransk. 1973).

6 See A. I. Klibanov. Archpriest Habakkuk as a cultural and historical phenomenon. "History of the USSR", 1973, N 1.

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pox!"7 . It is difficult to explain why the authors decided to abandon the analysis of old Russian buffoonery, and preferred it to foolishness - a phenomenon only partially inherent in the" laughing world " of Ancient Russia, which goes beyond laughter as a spectacle, a phenomenon that is more terrible than funny. Of course, the authors are free to limit and define the subject of their research. However, in the introduction or in the conclusion, it would be possible to fully and reasonably motivate your choice.

For the first time in Soviet literature, A. M. Panchenko described Old Russian foolishness, drew on the richest manuscript material, fully and correctly analyzed both Russian and foreign literature, and created an original study about this unique and diverse phenomenon of Russian spiritual culture. The appendix to the work contains the letters of a holy fool of the 17th century discovered by N. V. Ponyrko - a unique monument that explains much in the very origin of foolishness as a psychological phenomenon. Foolishness is a complex phenomenon of a socio-psychological nature, in which elements of entertainment are organically intertwined with religious exaltation; foolishness (and partly klikushestvo) is also associated with a certain violation of mental balance, which cannot be discounted in the analysis of this phenomenon.

In general, the author successfully coped with difficult tasks. In comparison with his predecessors, who studied foolishness mainly from the standpoint of church-historical studies , A. M. Panchenko considers fools as a kind of actors who sought to influence the public and cause public protest; in other words, the work reveals the social, social side of foolishness.

The main conclusions reached by the author are beyond doubt. We will make only two comments. The first of them concerns sources: A. M. Panchenko, along with the lives of Russian holy fools, widely uses the lives of Byzantine (Tsaregrad) holy fools. This, of course, is hardly justified. The author rightly says that in the XV-XVII centuries foolishness became a Russian national phenomenon (p. 94), so the Byzantine hagiographies can give little to the researcher. It is impossible, for example (from the point of view of source studies), to characterize certain aspects of Old Russian foolishness by referring to the life of the Byzantine fool Andrew of Tsaregrad (see p. 165 and others). The second remark concerns the issue of foolishness as a public protest. The author gave many interesting and little-known facts confirming this idea, but among them he mentioned the foolishness of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Bishop Pavel of Kolomna, and Patriarch Nikon. There is no reason to deny the presence of elements of foolishness in their behavior, but it is not clear why this material is placed in the chapter "Foolishness as a public protest". What kind of public protest did Nikon express when he defiantly left the Patriarchal throne? The author did not approach the selection of factual material correctly enough, and as a result, apparently unwittingly, he mixed up phenomena of a different nature.

What are the prospects for studying the problems posed by the authors in their talented, in many ways innovative book? Is the old Russian "laughing world" sufficiently fully and exhaustively described? Of course not. It has already been said above that the Russian skomoroshestvo 9 is still waiting for its researcher . Ancient Russian theater, in particular handwritten interludes of the XVIII century, also requires analysis from this point of view10 . A special place should be given to the consideration of the 18th-century popular print, which is closely connected with the Old Russian manuscript tradition and continues to develop the same traditions.

7 P. K. Simoni. Edict. soch. Sat. 1, N 488.

8 The only exception is the still insufficiently evaluated works of I. G. Pryzhov (see I. G. Pryzhov. Twenty-six Moscow false prophets, false cousins, fools and fools. M. 1864; his. The life of Ivan Yakovlevich, a famous prophet in Moscow, St. Petersburg, 1860; see also J. Goritsky. Protest of Ivan Yakovlevich against Mr. Pryzhov for calling him a false prophet. M. 1861; "The Legend of the death and burial of the Moscow holy fools Semyon Mitrich and Ivan Yakovlevich". M. 1862).

9 A. A. Belkin's recently published book "Russian Buffoons" (Moscow, 1975) examines the origin of buffoons, their position in Russian society, and gives a general overview of the art of buffoons. But there is no description of laughter as a spectacle in the book; the author set himself mainly historical and theatrical tasks.

10 In this regard, the work has not lost its significance: L. S. Sheptaev. Russian raeshnik of the XVII century. "Scientific Notes" of the A. I. Herzen Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, vol. 87, vol. 1949; see also V. D. Kuzmina's work, which is important for the characterization of democratic interludes of the XVIII century. Russian Democratic Theater of the XVIII century, Moscow, 1958.

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ideas, but not in verbal, but in visual form. Ancient Russian iconography, as well as miniatures and frescoes that have preserved images of buffoons and holy fools require more detailed and close attention. The analysis of Russian folk laughter culture cannot be limited to the study of only monuments of ancient Russian writing and art. The next step is to study Russian folk art from this point of view. The authors have already partially touched upon this area of Russian culture and used collections of Russian proverbs of the XVII century for analysis, but this, of course, is not enough. It is the duty of Soviet folklorists to show the originality of folk laughter in its entirety. A huge number of funny fairy tales, humorous songs, folk jokes, annoying fables, mocking jokes, playful ditties, ironic proverbs - fertile material for work in this field. Finally, a broad study of foolishness in historical and cultural terms could explain a lot about the behavior, motivating impulses and root causes of the actions of various historical figures.

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