- This article is about the music genre. About the film, see Cruel Romance (film)
Cruel romance - a kind of philistine romance with the brightness of the characters, the contrast of feelings, melodramatism, the severity of the situation, reaching the extreme [1] . It arose approximately in the middle of the 19th century in an urban and suburban environment where “petty bourgeois” lived: peasants, workers, poor merchants, artisans. Common plots of violent romance: domestic tragedy that ends mainly with murder, suicide, death from grief or unrequited love, etc. Its heyday falls on the last quarter of the 19th - early 20th centuries.
Content
Origin
The place of birth of the cruel romance is considered to be the urban and suburban environment, where mainly the lower and middle sections of the population (" petty bourgeois ") lived - peasants who came to work , workers , artisans, and poor merchants. Their environment began to create their own subculture , lining up from the elements of urban and rural cultures. Collected from heterogeneous elements, the philistine, or, as it is sometimes called, the third, culture included poetry and music ( ditty , romance ), dance (for example, quadrille ), theater ( booth ), painting ( popular pub ), decorative and applied art and even architecture. Having strengthened, the “third culture” began to influence the traditional village culture [2] .
The main source of borrowing and stylization for the cruel romance was the poems of the secondary, now forgotten poets. Decreasing from the best poets to imitators, from them to semi-literate writers, the romantic style changed greatly. The “universal grief” characteristic of romanticism turned into tearful sentimentality, and then tearfulness, and exceptional characters and events were transformed respectively into heroes and plots of a cruel romance [3] . As noted by Boris Yagubov, a cruel romance originates, as a rule, from a specific literary composition, then subjected to increased folklore when assimilated by the audience. Yagubov also notes the influence of the " gypsy romance " on the formation of this genre [4] .
In the XX century, a cruel romance gradually supplanted an old song from folk poetry and became a favorite rural genre [5] .
With the onset of the Soviet era, the genre of violent romance fell into disgrace. There have not even been serious attempts at a scientific study of this genre. Nevertheless, “cruel romances” continued to exist among the people [3] , influencing, for example, the emergence of urban romance . According to Boris Yagubov, the genre of cruel romance turned out to be in demand not only by a poorly educated audience: “Clumsy”, “kitsch”, which switched from a “gypsy” romance to a “cruel” romance and urban ballad, were picked up, ironically rethought by sixties performers, aesthetized, as a result, the “cruel” romance and the urban ballad acquired such a quality as aesthetic ambivalence - some of the public could take them seriously, while the other enjoyed these absurdities and absurdities diy " [4] .
Only in the 1980s did the scientific attitude toward a violent romance begin to change. They began to study and collect it, and in 1996 in St. Petersburg the first collection of cruel romances with scientific commentaries was published [3] .
Feature
In modern folklore, there is no single universally accepted definition of the genre of violent romance [4] .
The originality of this genre lies in the harmonious synthesis of the genre principles of ballad , lyric song, romance. But he also has his own, special features, according to which a cruel romance can be singled out from an extensive layer of Russian songs. As Marina Trostina notes, “The cruel romance developed on the basis of the traditional Russian ballad , it is characterized by a narrow family and everyday theme. In solving the conflict and developing the plot, the cruel romance is characterized by exoticism, a desire to relish cruelty, melodramatism and a tragic ending ” [2] . A cruel romance is characterized by a certain narrative, an orientation toward book poetry, however passions are excessive here [4]
In cruel romances there are such folklore images as “raspberry berry”, “red maiden”, “dear friend”, “blue sea”. In its form, the cruel romance is closer to urban literature: it is characterized by syllabonic-tonic versification , exact rhyme, division into stanzas. The language is largely of literary origin . Words overwhelming a cruel romance like “fatal”, “horrible”, “nightmare”, “crazy” are unusual for a traditional folk song [3] .
The texts of cruel romances may include: murder , treason , betrayal , forced marriage , fleeing with a loved one or abduction of a girl , adultery , incest , suicide , separation, crime , court , penal servitude , prison [4] . In a cruel romance, a little more than a dozen main stories can be distinguished. They differ from each other mainly in the causes of the tragedy, and the choice of endings is completely small: murder, suicide, the hero’s death from grief or mortal grief [2] . There are many cruel romances in which the story is conducted on behalf of the dead heroes [3] . The favorite plot of a cruel romance is the seduction of a girl by an insidious seducer. Deceived remains either to die with longing, or to settle accounts with life, or revenge, or suffer until the end of life [2] .
In 1996, the first collection of violent romances with scientific commentaries was published in St. Petersburg.
See also
- Fado
- Russian romance
Notes
- ↑ Vardugin V. Legends and the Life of Lydia Ruslanova - S. 132.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 Troostina M. A. “Cruel romance: genre signs, plots and images” // New approaches in humanitarian research: law, philosophy, history, linguistics (Interuniversity collection of scientific tr.). - Vol. IV. Saransk, 2003, p.197-202.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 “Russian literature”. Encyclopedia for children. M., Avanta +, 1998
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 Yagubov B. A. “Cruel” romance and urban ballad: genesis and functioning // Philological Sciences. Questions of theory and practice. Tambov: Diploma, 2013. No. 3 (21): in the 2nd part of Ch. IC 215–219. ISSN 1997-2911.
- ↑ Disc "Cruel Romance" / Folklore and Ethnographic Theater (Unavailable link) . Date of treatment January 27, 2016. Archived February 2, 2016.