Poetry of Fact in the Tale and Story… How Did God Get Rid of Evil and Fierce Heretic Grishka Otrepev from the manuscript compilation of T. F. Bolshakov Collection

Abstract

The article examines the fragment Tale and Story… How Did God Get Rid of Evil and Fierce Heretic Grishka Otrepev from the manuscript narrative compilation of T. F. Bolshakov collection. The widespread edition of the monument was already known to N. M. Karamzin and published in Readings in the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities, a brief edition, allegedly authored by clerk Vasily Sukov, published in the 13th volume of Russian Historical Library. In the handwritten collection, the text under study is an unfinished fragment and covers the events from 1584 to 1603. The main attention is paid to the deeds of Boris Godunov. The specificity of presentation of historical material in the Tale ... testifies to the author’s inclination towards the style of chronicle weather records. The absence of transcendental explanations of the causes of what is happening in the world of people, laconism in the presentation of events, documentary protocol, minimal use of figurative and expressive means indicate that the author deliberately abandoned the artistic techniques traditional for Russian medieval literature, putting the poetry of fact at the head. Many contemporaries of the events of Time of Troubles, declaring the principle of plausibility, sought to fit contemporary events into the context of world history in traditional literary ways. In the text, we are dealing with other principles for creating a historical narrative, when the facts speak for itselves, and its selection (in the absence of commentary) indirectly indicates the author’s assessment of an event or period in the country’s history. Perhaps the non-standard presentation of historical events and persons was one of the reasons why the text was not completed in the collection under consideration.