Epos is a literary genre, the sameindependent, as a lyric and drama, narrating about the distant past. It is always voluminous, long-stretched in space and time, and extremely eventful. "Kalevala" is Karelo-Finnish epic poetry. During the fifty folk songs (runes) the heroes of "Kalevala" are sung. The historical basis in these songs is missing. The adventures of the heroes are of a purely fairy-tale character. A single story, as in the Iliad, also does not have an epic, but a short summary of Kalevala will be presented here.
Karelian folk epic began to process andrecord only in the nineteenth century. A well-known Finnish physician and linguist Elias Lönnrot engaged in collecting various versions of epic songs, made selections, trying to plot the individual parts with each other. The first edition of "Kalevala" was published in 1835, and only after almost fifteen years - the second. In Russian, the Finnish epic was translated in 1888 and published in the Pantheon of Literature by the poet LP Belsky. Public opinion was unanimous: "Kalevala" - literature and a clean source of new information about religious pre-Christian representations of the nationalities of Karelians and Finns.
The name of the epic was given by Lönnrot himself.Kalevala - the name of the country in which people's heroes live and perform feats. Only the name of the country is slightly shorter - Kaleva, because the suffix la in the language means just the place of residence: those living in Kaleva. It was there that the people settled their warriors: Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen, Lemminkäinen - all three were sung as sons of this fertile land.
The poem of fifty runes was made up of separatea variety of songs - there were lyrical, and epic, and even magical content. Lönnrot wrote most of it directly from the peasant's lips, and some were already written down by collectors of folklore. The most song lands were found in Russian Karelia, in the Olonets province and in the Arkhangelsk Territories, on the shores of Ladoga and in Finnish Karelia, where the people's memory has preserved very much.
Runes do not show us historical realities, norone war with other peoples there is not reflected. Moreover, neither the people, nor society, nor the state are shown, as in the Russian epics. In the runes, the family rules everything, but even family relations do not set targets for the heroes to accomplish feats.
The ancient pagan views of the Karelians give heroesepic not only physical strength and even not so much it, as magical powers, the ability to conjure, to talk, to make magical artifacts. The heroes have the gift of werewolves, can turn anyone into anything, travel, instantly moving to any distance, and control weather and atmospheric phenomena. Even the short content of "Kalevala" will not do without fairy-tale events.
The songs of the Karelian-Finnish epos are diverse, andto fit them into a single plot is impossible. Opens "Kalevala", like many other epics, the creation of the world. The sun, the stars, the moon, the sun, the earth appear. The daughter of the wind gives birth to Väinämöinen, it will be the protagonist of the epic, who will equip the land and sow the barley. Among the many and varied adventures of the hero there is also one that can claim a string of the main, albeit thread-like plot.
Väinämöinen is found by chance with a virgin of the North,beautiful as a day. In response to the offer to become his wife, she agrees, provided that the hero from the spindle fragments will build for her a magic boat. The inspired hero so zealously began to work, that the ax could not hold and injured himself. The blood did not stop, I had to visit the healer. It tells about how the iron happened.
The wizard helped, but the hero did not return to work.He spelled his grandfather, the wind, to find and deliver the most skilled blacksmith - Ilmarinen to Pohjola, the country of the North. The blacksmith obediently forged for the virgin of the north the magic mill of Sampo, bringing happiness and wealth. These events contain the first ten runes of the epic.
In the eleventh rune appears a new heroiccharacter - Lemminkäinen, completely replacing the previous events from the songs. This warrior is belligerent, a real magician and a great lover of women. Having acquainted listeners with the new hero, the narrative returned to Väinämöinen. What only did not have to go through the lover of the hero in order to achieve the goal: he even went down to the underworld, gave himself to swallow Giant Viipunen, but still got the magic words that were needed to build a boat from the spindle, on which he sailed to Pohjola to marry.
It was not there.During the absence of the hero, the northern maiden had time to fall in love with the skilled blacksmith Ilmarinen and married him, refusing to fulfill his word given to Väinämöinen. There are many and detailed descriptions not only of the wedding, with all its customs and traditions, but even songs that are sung there, which clarify the duty and duty of the husband to his wife and wife before the husband. This line ends only in the twenty-fifth song. Unfortunately, the very short content of "Kalevala" does not contain only the sweet and numerous details of these chapters.
Next six runes narrate about the remote adventuresLemminkainen in the northern region - in Pohjola, where the North reigns, is no longer only a virgin, but also spoiled spiritually, with a character unkind, greedy and selfish. From the thirty-first rune begins one of the most piercing and deeply sensual stories, one of the best parts of the whole epic.
For five songs, thethe sad fate of the beautiful warrior Kullervo, who, through ignorance, seduced his own sister. When the whole situation revealed itself to the heroes, the hero himself and his sister could not endure the committed sin and died. This is a very sad story, written (and, apparently, translated) exquisitely, heartfeltly, with a great sense of sympathy for the characters so severely punished by fate. Epos "Kalevala" gives many such scenes, where the love of parents, children, and native nature is sung.
The following runes describe howunited three heroes (including the unlucky blacksmith) in order to take away from the evil Northern Virgin a magical treasure - Sampo. The heroes of "Kalevala" did not give up. Here the battle did not solve anything, and it was decided, as always, to resort to sorcery. Väinämöinen, like our Novgorod guslar Sadko, built himself a musical instrument - a kantele, fascinated by the play of nature and lulled all the northerners. Thus the heroes shut Sampo.
The mistress of the North pursued them and plotted themuntil Sampo fell into the sea. She sent monsters, sea, all kinds of calamities to Kalev, and Vainlymoyenen meanwhile made a new instrument, on which he played even more magically, than returned the sun and moon, stolen by the mistress of Pohjola. Collecting fragments of Sampa, the hero did a lot of good for the people of his country, a lot of good deeds. Here, a fairly long joint adventure of the three heroes almost ends "Kalevala." The retelling of this narrative in no way can replace the reading of a work that inspired many artists to create great works. It needs to be read completely to get real pleasure.
So, the epic came to its last rune, quitesymbolic. This is almost apocrypha for the birth of the Savior. The virgin from Kaleva - Maryatta - gave birth to a divinely wonderful son. Väinämöinen was even frightened of the power that this two-week-old child possessed, and advised him to kill him at once. On which the infant of the hero was shamed, reproached with injustice. The hero heeded. He sang a magic song at last, got into a wonderful shuttle and left Karelia to a new and more worthy ruler. Thus ends the epic "Kalevala".
The poetic fabric of "Kalevala" does not contain anyone common thread, all the episodes linking into one whole. Although, according to reviews, literary critics have always searched for it and continue to look for it. Hypotheses exist diverse. E. Aspelin considered that this is the idea of changing the seasons on the northern lands. Lönnrot, the collector of the epic, believed that the evidence of the seizure of the northern Finnish lands by persistent Karelians was being clarified. And indeed - Caleb won, the heroes manage to subdue Pohjola. However, there are many opinions, and they sometimes differ in polarity from each other. Even the short content of "Kalevala" can give an idea of the greatness of the folk epic.
