The present study examines the formula and formal style in the oral tradition of Kazakh heroic singers of the 15th-18th centuries, notes the productivity of Perry-Lord's oral theory. The main goal of the article is to reveal the significance of the Parry-Lord oral theory for scientific developments by young scientists of Kazakhstan in the field of epic studies and folklore studies, linguistics and literary studies, etc
formula, Perry-Lord's oral theory, formula style, zhyr
When we ask ourselves what oral theory or oral tradition is, we inevitably turn to folklore, to oral folk art and, of course, to the epic, the greatest of the poetic arts. The Kazakh, Nogai, Crimean Tatar, Kumyk ancient epic tradition is based on two types of art – musical and verbal, which have been dominant among other types of art for hundreds of centuries.
There are five main types of mastering aesthetic reality by a person, from which national and universal culture grow. These are: auditory - the culture of hearing, oral-the culture of speech, visual-the culture of visual perception, tactile-the culture of doing, working with a thing, meditative-the culture of contemplation. Visual culture most of all characterizes the folk traditions of Europe, known for their sculpture, architecture, painting, etc. The meditative culture most of all characterizes the Eastern classical traditions, known for rich spiritual teachings and the arts of contemplation and imitation of nature. Kazakh and Turkic steppe culture in general is represented mainly by auditory-oral art, despite the fact that visual and tactile traditions are developed quite highly in it. Such a high art is considered the art of ornament, the art of decorating the Kazakh yurt, jewelry works of steppe masters, etc. The high art of nomad architecture is confirmed by the Memorial Complex in honor of the ancient Turkic kagan and commander Kul-tegin. Thus, the oral-auditory type was the predominant type of aesthetic development of the nomads ' reality. It presupposes the dominance of musical and verbal art over all other types of arts, the tradition of transmission and continuity of Steppe knowledge by oral and musical means. This is the oral tradition, or Oral Tradicion, as it was characterized by M. Parry and A. B. Lord, the authors of the oral theory. The outstanding orientalist G. N. Potanin, describing this type of culture of the Kazakh nomads, admiringly noted: "The whole steppe sings!". We are talking about the ubiquitous and most irreplaceable musical and verbal art for nomads, about the epic, or as Auezkhan Kodar designated it, total oral discourse. Oral theory, or Oral Tradicion is a term used to study the specific mechanisms of oral transmission of traditional Steppe knowledge, from the point of view of linguistics, cultural conditions and literary genre, an important part of this Steppe knowledge is the epic.
But the epic itself (zhyr) – the world, a representation structured in a special way from artistic images and cultural and linguistic phenomena - is a consequence of a centuries-old oral tradition. For example, the researcher of the ancient Turkic epic I. V. Stebleva convincingly connects the Orkhon poems with the Kyrgyz warrior epic, and the Yenisei monuments with the folklore – song and ritual tradition, that is, the methods of performing, memorizing, recreating, and continuity of the text. The epic itself acts as a hyperformula of poetic art, consisting of traditional images, permanent (stable) means of artistic expression and depiction, stylistically homogeneous structures, different types of repetitions, etc. All this makes up the so-called formula style of an oral work, or the singer's oral-style technique. The authors of this oral theory were M. Parry and A. B. Lord, who derived the epic style from the poetic technique of an oral work and who "did not doubt the mythological origin of the content of epic formulas" (E. M. Meletinsky). They show that the unit of an epic oral text is always a formula that carries special ideas ("themes") of a mythological, sacred order.
As applied to the Turkic (Kazakh) oral tradition, the formula is a word, or a stable combination of words, a combination of the same linguistic phenomena in the rigid structure of zhyr, a poetic epic meter of 7-8 syllables:
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1 |
3 |
3 |
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Jel, |
jel eser, |
jel eser… |
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Or, |
Or , |
Or qoıan… |
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Men, |
men edim, |
men edim... |
or:
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2 |
2 |
3 |
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Asqar, |
asqar, |
asqar tau... |
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Sere, |
sere, |
Sere qar... |
This syllable structure is very easy to remember and reproduce. Researchers Z. Akhmetov and M. O. Auezov write about this. Such a structure – zhyr – is very convenient for expressing any concept, idea. This is the basis of every Turkic epic formula and epic work. All the Turkic (Kazakh) epics known to us consist of zhyr-this poetic size, therefore the poems themselves are called zhyrs, and the singers who perform them are called zhyrau. In the performance of these zhyrs, the singers are helped by a special oral-stylistic technique, or formularity. As a linguistic universal and as a phenomenon of the oral-poetic language, it is of particular interest to researchers, it is characteristic of all genres of oral creativity, for many multilingual epic monuments.
Following M. Parry and A. Lord, such outstanding scientists as E. M. Meletinsky, V. M. Zhirmunsky, B. N. Putilov, P. A. Grinzer, I. Stahl, etc. turned to the study of formularity in the epic text.
The theory of the formularity of the epic text is well covered in the works of B. Sh.Abylkasimov, Zh. Zh. Bekturov, Sh. Ibraev. In Turkology, V. V. Radlov, M. O. Auezov, A. H. Margulan and I. V. Stebleva first spoke about the formula and about the formularity. The author of the oral theory himself, M. Parry, defined the formula as "a group of words regularly used in the same metric conditions to express some necessary concept". The formula, in his opinion, is the main structural unit of the text, and "oral poetry as a whole has a formulaic character".
Each oral tradition known to us (akyns, zhyrau, saly, sary, bucks) and each oral genre have their own strictly defined, clearly characterizing, limited set of formulas.
The method of comparative analysis of formulas of oral-poetic texts reveals: traditional schemes of formulas, their variants, the degree of their "density" and prevalence among different authors and in multilingual epics, "flexibility", the variability of the formula depending on the peculiarities of the language, national tradition, the manner of performing the singer's text. When comparing oral and poetic works of different peoples, the functional purpose and stylistic role of formulas, the commonality and difference of stylistic techniques of epic works are revealed. This, in turn, makes it possible to more fully represent the national identity of multi-ethnic folklore monuments.
After a comprehensive study of the oral-stylistic technique in the poetry of Zhyrau of the XV-XVIII centuries, the question naturally arises: is it possible to apply the terms "formula", "formula style", "formula grammar" to the ancient Turkic runic monuments? Is it possible for the structure of runic poems to identify those verbal expressions, the use of which would be associated with their rhythmic organization? Indicative in this respect are the location of numerals, adjectives that make up epithet blocks (members, binomials, trinomials in the epic line of zhyrau.
Kazakh scientists have also been influenced by the oral theory of Parry-Lord. The researcher B. Sh. Abylkasimov spoke about the formula and the formula style in the poetry of Zhyrau for the first time, who still did not differentiate the oral genres, as well as various carriers of the Kazakh poetic culture, which is of fundamental importance for understanding the original nature of the masters of epic art and solving the problems of authorship, around which discussions do not cease.
M. O. Auezov and O. A. Nurmagambetova were among the first to mention the formula in the epic, about the connection of the epic with the poetic form and folklore genres.
Deep knowledge of the theory of Parry-Lord is demonstrated by Zh. Zh. Bekturov, who studied the problems of semantics of the oral individual culture of the Kazakh people and the lexical and figurative-semantic fund of monuments of Kazakh poetry of the XV-XVIII centuries.
Of particular importance for the study of the Turkic (Kazakh) book epic are the works of Sh. Ibraev, who for the first time studied the formulaic language and style of the oldest Turkic monuments.
In the field of Turkology, it is necessary to note the works of I. V. Stebleva, who discovered the folklore connections of the ancient Turkic runic monuments with the druzhin epic and with the folk tradition. Of course, we also see real practical benefits from the formula theory in various fields of research: in Turkology and dialectology, pedagogy and psychology. At one time, E. M. Meletinsky conducted an analytical analysis of the most famous schools in Europe in the aspect of the theory of the origin of the epic: mythological (A. Kuhn, M. Muller), neo-mythological (Sh. Otran, E. Miro, R. Kerpenter), ritual and mythological (F. Raglan, Jan de Vries, J. Dumezil, G. R. Levy), the theory of oral-stylistic technique (M. Parry, A. B. Lord), psychoanalytic (J. Vedier, K. Jung, Z. Freud, S. Baudouin) and historical (K. and M. Chadwicki, Baura, K. Weiss). Today, the theory of oral-stylistic technique has justified itself in the field of poetic translation and the genesis of genres.
A formula is a combination or synthesis of a number of specific cultural cliches (stable words or word combinations) and more universal narrative forms or archetypes. An epic anaphoric formula is a formula that exactly repeats the previous scheme Margaska-Makhambet, Yeset bi-Makhambet, etc:
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Jel, jel eser, jel eser. Jel astynda qarasam... Shalkiyiz, XVI. |
Jel, jel eser, jel eser. Jel astynda qarasam... Zhiyembet, XVII. |
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Ket-Buǵadaı bılerden Keńes surar kún qaıda... Dospambet XVI |
Ket-Buǵadaı bılerden Keńes surar kún qaıda... Makhambet, XIX. |
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Kúmbir, kúmbir kisinetip Kúreńdi miner kún qaıda... Dospambet, XVI. |
Kúmbir, kúmbir kisinetip Kúreńdi miner kún qaıda... Akhtamberdy, XVII. |
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Asqar, asqar, asqar taý, Asqar taýdyń so búrkit Yldıdyń ańyn shalar ma? Shalkiyiz, XVI. |
Asqar, asqar, asqar taý, Asqar taýdyń so búrkit Yldıdyń ańyn shalar ma? Makhambet, XIX. |
Formality refers to the universal properties of the poetic language of folklore. Formality is a linguistic universal. Formality as a phenomenon of oral and poetic language is of considerable interest, since it is characteristic of all genres of folklore, for many multilingual epic monuments. TV channels: "Alpamys batyr":
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Keshegi ótken zamanda |
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Qaraqypshaq Qoblandy |
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Atasy munyń Toqtarbaı– |
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Halyqtyń asqan boldy baı... |
The theory of the formularity of the epic text was developed by the American scientist M. Parry, whose teaching was developed by Prof. Albert Lord of Harvard University. The merit of M. Parry is primarily that they gave the definition of a formula as "a group of words regularly used in the same metric conditions to express some necessary concept". The formula is the main structural unit of the text, and oral poetry as a whole has a formula character: kyzyl til, asyl tas, askar tau, asyl soz, sary bal. For example, each epic tradition has its own strictly defined, limited set of formulas. Therefore, when analyzing the linguistic phenomena of folklore, we will inevitably face the problem of typological universals: Compare the texts of Asan Kaiga and the texts of Birzhan-sala, the texts of Bukhara and the texts of Akhan-seri.
A comparative analysis of the formulas of oral-poetic works will reveal the traditional schemes of formulas, their variants, the degree of prevalence in multilingual epics, will allow us to consider the variability of the formula depending on the peculiarities of the language, national tradition, the manner of performance of the text by the narrator. When comparing oral and poetic works of different peoples, the functional purpose and stylistic role of formulas, the commonality and difference of stylistic techniques of epic works are revealed. This, in turn, makes it possible to more fully represent the national identity
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