- Project Runeberg -  Impressions of Russia /
187

(1889) [MARC] Author: Georg Brandes Translator: Samuel Coffin Eastman - Tema: Russia
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Vesná; and Morana, the god of death and of winter.
The souls of the dead were called Rusalki. In Russia,
as everywhere else, on the introduction of Christianity,
the heathen forms and ceremonies were not rooted out,
but named anew, and consolidated with the festivals of
the Church. Thus, for instance, the holy Elias, with his
chariot of fire, appears in place of the thunder-god
Perun. There are many songs, which it is the custom
and usage to sing on anniversaries, over the whole of
Russia, which have a mythical origin.[1]

But an entirely different, copious and valuable source
of knowledge of the old Slavic intellectual life is to be
found at the present time in the bîlinî, which were first
collected and published in this century, — that is to say,
the old Russian epic poems. The first collection of these
appeared in 1804, consisting of songs which had been
collected among the iron-workmen in the department of
Perm. In 1818 a new edition of the collection was
published, with sixty numbers in place of twenty-five. It
was then found out that there were a large number of
epic songs in circulation among the peasants in Northern
Russia. From 1852 to 1856, Sreznevski published bîlinî,
which were recited in these northern departments; yet
it was only in 1859 that the investigations of Rybnikof,
in the regions about the Onéga Lake, made it plain that
Russia had an enormously large unknown national literature
in the form of popular poems, which it was simply
necessary to collect from the lips of the people. The
isolation caused by the severe climate about the Onéga
Lake, the simple manner of life and naïve mode of
thought of the inhabitants, the superstition and
ignorance, the inability to read and write, have made these


[1] See Alexander von Reinholdt: Geschichte der Russischen
Litteratur
, bk. 1.

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