What is the difference between childhood and adolescence? They differ in many things, but there is no clear division: all the changes are gradual, and other period features overlap and grow into each other.
Conditionally, the boundary between childhood and adolescence can be defined as when a person shows a meaningful interest in the opposite sex. For example, one day, when the bathhouse is heated up, the mother, grandmother or sister prepares a boy to wash, and he suddenly begins to act up, hang back and throw out the "tricks." -"Well, now you're going to wash with your father!" - calmly said grandma.
And, all at once, it falls into place. Sister, and sometimes the mother, did not know what was going on, why the brother or son began to mutter something under his nose and elbowing. The overall moral atmosphere did not require any special sex education. It spared fledgling adolescent self-esteem, encouraging modesty and chastity. Observing the lives of farm animals, people have gradually learned about basic physiology in their childhood.
There was no need to explain how and why a child was born, what occupied the bride and groom on the wedding night, etc. This was not mentioned because everything that goes without saying and talking about it is unnecessary, indecent, and unacceptable.
Such modesty from adolescence passes into youth, often maintained for a lifetime. It gave the stability of romantic feelings, which arranges not only sexual but also social relations. In adolescence comes a man's first and most often not the last infatuation, the first love with all its psychological bouquet. Before that, boys or girls were "rehearsing" their first real love by the previous enthusiasm for adult "objects" of the opposite sex. And if such a frivolous infatuation is ridiculed, make fun of both. The first true love is usually spared, and the family tries not to notice. Moreover, a teenager could keep his fiery secret not worse than an adult. The mystery is often revealed only in youth when the feeling is legalized by public opinion.
The circumstances surrounding the first love explain all the behavioural features at this age. If previously, as kids, people were open, and now they become insulated, the frankness with family and friends has been replaced by silence and sometimes rudeness.
Streetlife is also imperceptibly transformed. In childhood, boys and girls played the same games together. In adolescence, they often play separately and make fun of each other.
Building a boy's character largely depended on the teenager's games. Relationships in these games were particular. For adults, they sometimes seemed simply cruel.
If the family was allowed leniency for a teenager, even tenderness, then a Spartan spirit reined in the peer relationship (especially in games). No allowances for age or physical handicaps existed.
Often, testing his physical endurance or being provoked, the teenager enters the game unprepared. As a result, he would "hounded" without pity the whole evening, and if he did not recoup, they moved the game to the next day. It is difficult to imagine the state of a loser, but even more, he would have suffered if peers felt pity for him and left the situation as it was. (This is only about sports and physical competitions, not intellectual endeavours.)
Adults reluctantly tried not to interfere. But nevertheless, it was absolutely fundamental: to break out, win, and win himself without assistance. One such victory while still in adolescence turns a boy into a man.
Games for the girls did not have a similar focus; they differed by calm, lyrical playing relationship. Of course, a young person's life is allowed to have time to engage freely in games. But they have already been supplanted by more serious business, not excluding elements of the game.
First, the teenager is increasingly drawn into the work process. Secondly, games are increasingly replaced by entertainment, peculiar to youth. Finally, adolescents of both sexes may have to mow the grass, harrow, pull, cart, hang flax, cut pine twigs, and tear bark.
Of course, all this was done under the adults' invisible guidance and close supervision. Competition, or working, gaming and other rivalries are especially characteristic of youth. An adolescent sometimes had to hold back because he wanted to learn to plow before his peers, so all the girls, big and small, have seen it. He wants to cut wood more than a neighbour so that no one calls him a little boy or lazy. He wants to catch fish for mother's pies and gather a few berries to treat younger kids.
Fantastic combination of a child's privileges and the responsibilities of adults observed in this period of life! But no matter how good childhood privileges are, youth were already ashamed of them, and if they used them, then with caution. So, he could still complain and beg his mother for a tasty treat at home, in the family, among his younger siblings. But if in the house turned out to be peers or just strangers, being "a little one" was shameful.
Consequently, for adolescents, an unwritten code of conduct existed. The boy at this age should have been able to (tried, anyway) make a handle, tie fishnets, harness a horse, cut pine twigs, tear bark, herd the cattle to graze, and fish. But, instead, he was ashamed to cry. He knew that fallen is not beaten, and two do not attack one, that, if made a bet, the word must be kept.
Girls at age twelve spun a the lot and well learned to weave, sew, helped to mow, knew how to knead bread and cakes, although they were not trusted with this, as the boys were not charged with such tasks as grinding an axe, killing a cock or a sheep, ride without adults to the mill.
Adolescents have the right to invite their relatives or friends of the same age; visitors could sit at a table like adults, but they could only drink non-alcoholic drinks. They imitated more senior guys who were "having fun" for real at youth gatherings. Time existed to exit the excess energy and meet the needs for self-indulgence and deliberate valour - the Yuletide. Public opinion was not exactly encouraging then, but it condescended to teenage pranks. Have fun for Christmas week, and then please behave like decent people all year. A year is a great deal. So, get used to the festive antics. There wasn't enough time. They are approaching a different time of life.
«An unbecoming girl laughs and talks with everybody, runs around the suspicious places and streets, baring breasts, sits down close to the strangers, elbows and not sitting quietly, but sings profane songs, and gets drunk. Then, gallops on tables and benches, let her be dragged to all corners like a bitch. For where there is no shame, there is no humility. Of which questioning said Lyukretsiya the truth: if a girl loses shame and honour, what else is left?" -" Youth honest Mirror" manuscript from the XVI century.
Friday, 1 November 2019
Wednesday, 30 October 2019
* YOUTH *
"We obeyed our elders, - says Anfisa Ivanovna," who never read "Youth Honest Mirror," - you cannot visit a nearby village without permission." So you'd say: "But I want to go." My mother and grandmother answered: "Eat yours want with bread!" Or: "Everyone claims to know the girl, but not everybody saw her." And if you go out, you are given an order: "Try to keep your mouth more closed than open." Do not laugh, then.
Shame is one of the significant moral categories if we talk about people's understanding of morality. This concept is on a par with the honour and conscience, of which Alexander Yashin said:
" In the myriad of riches, our words are precious: Fatherland, Loyalty, and Brotherhood." And there is Conscience, Honour... "
There was a natural reticence (let's not confuse it with shyness) as an acquired one. At any age, from the earliest, reticence adorned a person and helped to resist the pressure of temptations. It is vital at the time of physical maturation. Lust was quietly restrained by usual shame, leaving the moral purity of even a spiritually immature young man.
For this, the people did not need a unique rule printed in the printing house like "Youth Mirror." Instead, solid suggestions are interspersed throughout that book with such advice: "And this is a great deal of infamy, often when someone blows his nose, like trumpets into the tube ..." "Obscenely at a wedding to wear boots and bot-forts, so that those boots strip clothes from the female sex, and they to cause great noise, so men are not so hasty in his boots than without them."
Clearly, the book is not of peasant origin since the peasants did not wear "bot-forts» and did folk dance at weddings, not ballroom dancing. More reveals the basis of "Mirror" advice: "Youths should always speak with each other in foreign languages to get used to it, and especially when they happen to say that the secret is so the servants and maids could not understand and that they can be distinct from blockheads ... " Here, it turns out, for what were functional foreign languages to honourable dudes multiplied under cover of the Tsar Peter's reforms. Possession of "manners" and foreign languages completely separated the upper classes from the people.
Adolescence grew into youth in a few years. A boy finally developed physically and comprehended traditional agricultural, forest, and household labour skills.
Only professional skills (carpentry, blacksmithing, and women's "linen" art) required further development. Others mastered these skills their whole lives and could only learn them at the end.
But is it a disadvantage to him and his close ones because of such a desire? If the guy does not learn how to build dom churches, he will make a house with no problem. If a girl could not understand how to weave in "nine nooks," she would weave a simple canvas.
Youth is full of fresh energy and creative thirst, and whether in a house, a village, or the country, everything is okay; this time of life is beautiful in itself, and everything in it is happy and harmonious. The girl or guy has time to talk, walk, and work in such circumstances.
But even in the worst times, household responsibilities and age requirements rarely contradict each other. On the contrary, they are mutually supportive.
For example, everyday work for guys and girls has never been a burden. Even the hardships of logging, which began in the late '20s and lasted for about thirty years, people have suffered relatively quickly thanks to this circumstance. Haymaking time, walking to the fence, the spring sowing, carting, and many community help events give young people a unique opportunity to meet and communicate, significantly affecting the quality and quantity of work made. Who wants to pass for a lazy, slob, or ignorant?
After all, everyone in his youth dreams that someone will fall in love with him thinks about getting married and marriage and tends not to disgrace his family and people.
Labour and festivities seemed to tame each other. One does not allow the other to transform into ugly forms. You cannot stay up all night until morning if you need to get up before sunrise and go to the pasture with the horses, but you cannot plow till dusk because of the evening festivities at the church. However, it also happens that sleepy bachelors would go into the forest and purposely not find the horses, flop in the shepherd's hut. But those guys were left with the untilled plot that day, and it threatened more severe consequences than the one referred to in the maiden limerick:
"My dear, it is hard to walk around mocked. Every my sweetheart has a non-sown pasture."
Non-spoiled maidens also had to get up early, especially in summer. "In the morning, my mother wakes me up, and I continue to sleep in a hurry." The parents rarely played the same tune. If the father was strict, the mother always guarded her daughter against too hard work. And vice versa. If both parents are excessively hard-working, then the defendant was represented by a grandfather, or older brothers always somehow silently guarded the sisters. The strictness in the family is balanced with kindness and humour.
Most acquaintances occurred in childhood and adolescence, mainly during visits, because people visited even the most distant relatives. They say " seventh water of a ninth of porridge" but still know each other and walk miles for fifteen or twenty to visit. Practically, if not in every village, then in every parish, there were close or distant relatives. Many would befriend strangers if there were no relatives in the remote town.
Collective walking to other villages for festivities further enhanced chances for singles. To go for a walk for 10-15 km in the summer was nothing to talk about, especially if the weather permits. The return was the same night if went as guests - in a day or two, depending on the household circumstances.
In the relations of boys and girls, there was no kind of patriarchal pedantry, as they say, if you take a walk with someone, then take walks till you get married. Not at all…
From adolescence, acquaintances and interests have changed; young people kind of "grind" to each other, looking for a pair of soul and character. This does not exclude, of course, cases of the first and only love. Evidence of spiritual freedom and freedom of choice in youth's relationships are thousands (if not millions) of love songs and limericks.
The feminine side does not look passive and dependent. Betrayal, love, break-ups, and interruptions are showered in these often improvised and always heartfelt ditties. Parents and elders were not strict about the behaviour of young people, but only up to the wedding. The newlyweds were deprived of this freedom and the ease of making new friends forever and ever. At that time, an entirely different life began.
Therefore, the wedding can be a sharp and well-defined boundary between adolescence and adulthood. But even before the wedding, freedom and lightness of new acquaintances, infatuations, and "loves" do not mean sexual freedom and frivolous behaviour. You can go for a walk, get to know, but ... Maiden honour is above all. There were apparent boundaries of what was permitted. They transgressed very seldom. Both sides, both male and female, tried to observe chastity.
It is easy to fall into a gross error if the judge of public morality on separate cases is easily mistaken!
Here are just two: a drunk, a deranged reveller, off all the brakes, starts to sing during the obscene dance limericks, and the audience approves and, most surprisingly, truly supports him. But later, no one will treat him seriously ...
Latest marvels like the circus and fairground ride with invisible women everyone would perceive with naive, almost childlike delight approving. But overall, the prevalent global attitude to all of this was, for some reason, definitely sarcastic.
But in some questions of morality, public opinion was cruel, unyielding, and merciless. Bad maiden reputation rolled away very far. It wasn't stopped by any forest or swamp. A sin committed before the wedding could not be whitewashed by anything. But after the birth of an illegitimate child, as a girl would be forgiven her mistake, humanity prevailed over moral principles. Mother or grandmother of out wedlock mother to any attack responded with a proverb: "Whose steer would be jumping, but the calf is ours." It is an erroneous view that the need for chastity applies only to the women's side. A guy who had physical intimacy with a woman before the marriage, too, was considered tainted. A tarnished reputation harmed him, and he was called not a lad but a "dude."
Of course, each of the two who conspired against chastity counted on secrecy, especially the girl. The secret, however, would come out eventually. The initiative of the sin usually comes from a guy. In itself, it depends on his moral level, which in turn depends on the moral status of his family (village, parish, society). An immoral family did not teach an individual how to spare others and keep the word. The heart of such a dude usually burns a desire to boast, and the secret is gone. A girl's bad reputation also impacted the perpetrator; he would be accused by the same measure.
Moreover, if they were real, all his feelings toward the girl would rapidly disappear, and he would switch to another "object" and eventually get married, somehow, not in a proper way.
With a tarnished reputation, the girl also had difficulty finding a partner. Now, it was not about love, but just getting somebody. Even a guy from a good family, but with the stigma of sin, lost his "prince charming" title, and proud girls avoided such candidates.
The veritable drama of love relationships experienced by most physically and morally healthy people, after even a happy love, does not exclude some drama. The beauty of relations between young people sometimes fed such mutually exclusive properties that coexist within one person as glibness and chastity, modesty and mischief.
Love meant the same thing as pity; love could be "hot" or "cold." High poetry of the marital relationship is vividly reflected in a folk song:
"Do not sing, sing the little lark. You sing the spring on a thawed trail.
You send your voice through the dark forest, the pine forest, Moscow stone-walled, and a strong fortress!
There was imprisoned a Good Fellow. He had been sitting there not for a year or two years. He sat there for precisely nine years.
In the tenth year, he started writing a letter. He began to write a letter to his father and mother. Father and mother refused: "Because we never have had thieves in the family. He also wrote to his young wife. Young wife got into tears..."
But marriage is not only moral or spiritual but a material and economic necessity. Young years were marked by expectation and preparation for this significant life event. It stood on a par with birth and death. The too-late or too-early marriage appeared to people as a misfortune. The big difference in the bride and groom's age also ruled out a whole and beautiful relationship. Unequal and repeating marriages among the peasants were regarded as unhappy and economically disadvantageous from the economic point of view. Such marriages were cruelly mocked by widespread rumours. Beauty and anomaly exclude each other. There was often not only age but also income inequality. But it could not seriously affect the moral code built over the centuries. Pity (love as we call it now) overrode everything else.
* COMING OF AGE *
Life in reminiscences of old people is invariably divided into two halves: before and after marriage. And indeed, not yet subsided the songs and not got the wedding cake staled as the entire way, all way of life is changing dramatically. In which direction? Such a question would have sounded naive and inappropriate.
In such cases, "bad" and "good" categories retreat to the background. Marriage is not fun (although it is, too). It is not a personal whim but a vital natural necessity connected with the new responsibility to the world and with fresh, not yet experienced joys of life. It's as inevitable as, for example, the sunrise or the onset of autumn.
There was no freedom of choice. Only a physical deformity and mental illness released people from the moral duty to marry. But even a moral obligation is not perceived as a duty if a person is morally sane. It may be the duty only for an immoral person. Because to prescribe genuine people's morality, it did not require any written codes of the said "Mirror" or "Flower Garden," where the monastic rules of conduct are collected.
Finally, the dramatized wedding ritual, which lasted several weeks, was completed. Time has come of age. Time to mature is the biggest time span of human life.
Time after the wedding is the most exciting and hazardous for a new family. The terms "evil eye" or "spell" are considered in the civilized world to belong to superstitions. But it's not a matter of "black magic." The first threads of weak conjugal relationships are easily broken by one unkind word or an angry, contemptuous gaze.
The psychological adaption of a bride to the world of no longer a stranger's family is not always quick and smooth. Though based on a common tradition, habits, especially the rules, are different in all families and houses. In some, such customs as pancakes to bake thin; in others, they like them thick; in this house, they saw firewood to one length; in another, they do different because there are different stoves, and the stoves are other because the masters who built them are not the same.
It is difficult for a young woman accustomed to the girl's freedom, parental care, and affection to enter a new life in a new family. About this, the people have composed countless songs:
"You'll come beyond the irrecoverable line, and from that place, you will never come back. Never put on girl's clothes again. Because flowers don't bloom after fall, don't grow grass in winter's snow. Never will you be a maiden again."
A dramatic change of life state, evident in folk songs, is often taken as evidence of Russian women's terrible family situation, of their inequality and oppression. However, the legend of this inequality is fading away from the light touch of folk and literary monuments.
"Do not worry, dear ones, I will not stay alone;
That point is that the people to no one had not occurred to oppose a woman to a man, the family to the head of the family, children to parents.
Neither Avdotya from Ryazan from the epic or historic Martha-Governor's Wife nor Alena (Nekrasov's and Lermontov's) resembles the downtrodden, unequal, or degraded. A historian, Kostomarov, speaking of the "Russian Truth" (the first known set of Russian laws), wrote: "A married woman enjoyed the same legal rights as men. However, for her murder or insult to her, the pay was the equal amount."
Literacy or illiteracy Rights in Ancient Russia also did not depend on sex. "Princess of Chernihiv Euphrosynia, the daughter of Michael Vsevolodovich, started in Suzdal a school for girls, where they were taught to read, write, and church singing," - said the same Kostomarov, based on the chronicles. Equality and sometimes the superiority of women in the family were due to the economic and moral needs of the Russian national life.
What is the point for the head of the household to beat his wife or keep at bay the entire family? Only a spoiled, stupid man without a king in the head allowed such actions. And if natural stupidity though with a smile but was forgiven, then acquired stupidity (tyranny) was mercilessly derided. A bad reputation of the family tyrant, like the glory of a girl's dishonour, ran "in front of the sled."
The authority of the head of the family was kept not on fear but on the conscience of the whole family. To maintain this credibility, you must be respected rather than feared. Such respect could be gained only by personal example: hard work, fairness, kindness, and consistency.
If you remember more about kinship and parent-child love, it becomes clear why younger children "feared" elders. That "fear" for children did not come from fear of physical harm or even punishment but from shame, from the pangs of conscience.
In a good family, one condemning look of a father forced family members to tremble, while in the other, the rod, belt or just his fists were perceived quite indifferently. Moreover, the dominance of brute force and fear of physical pain flourished in deception, the secret mockery of elders and other vices.
Headship from father to eldest son passes not at once but with the aging of father and son and the accumulation of life experience. So leadership kind of slips bit by bit and is poured down from generation to generation because the nominal head of the family is the grandfather, father of the father. But, still, to all, including the grandfather, it is clear that he is not the head anymore.
Traditionally, the grandfather still has the first word at the family councils, but it is consultative rather than decisive, and he does not see this as an offence. The owner's father and son clearly show how to share the essence of seniority: one provides a form of rule, the other content. All this is gradually shifted.
The same goes for the female "half" of the house. Young housewives, with the passing years, become the main hand "at the oven," and hence, "the big one." It happened naturally because the mother-in-law grew old and could not always carry buckets of fodder to the cattle to knead the bread. Once you start to bake bread, you have the key from the flour chest. If you milk cows, you pour milk and churn butter, and the loan must be given out not by the in-laws but by yourself. So, the one who makes better pies will obtain seniority.
For unmarried sisters to stay at home for too long was unnatural. It turns out that marrying younger sons was also necessary, if only because of a crowded house. But is it only a cramped house that shaped this need? Before marrying, the second son's father, grandfather, and eldest son began to think about building a new place for him, but the end of construction would often coincide with the wedding. The two married brothers lived with their families under his father's or grandfather's roof for some time. Women's quarrels, common in such cases, hurried construction.
After gathering help (sometimes double or triple), the father and sons quickly finished building the house for a younger son. The same happened with the marriage of the third and fourth sons unless war or some other scrape with all his impudence was bursting into people's lives.
Conjugal fidelity was the basis of marital love and the well-being of the whole family. The peasants' wives cried when their husbands were jealous because jealousy meant distrust. It was believed that if a man does not trust, then there is no love. They cried that he did not love, but not because he was jealous.
In such cases, "bad" and "good" categories retreat to the background. Marriage is not fun (although it is, too). It is not a personal whim but a vital natural necessity connected with the new responsibility to the world and with fresh, not yet experienced joys of life. It's as inevitable as, for example, the sunrise or the onset of autumn.
There was no freedom of choice. Only a physical deformity and mental illness released people from the moral duty to marry. But even a moral obligation is not perceived as a duty if a person is morally sane. It may be the duty only for an immoral person. Because to prescribe genuine people's morality, it did not require any written codes of the said "Mirror" or "Flower Garden," where the monastic rules of conduct are collected.
Finally, the dramatized wedding ritual, which lasted several weeks, was completed. Time has come of age. Time to mature is the biggest time span of human life.
Time after the wedding is the most exciting and hazardous for a new family. The terms "evil eye" or "spell" are considered in the civilized world to belong to superstitions. But it's not a matter of "black magic." The first threads of weak conjugal relationships are easily broken by one unkind word or an angry, contemptuous gaze.
The psychological adaption of a bride to the world of no longer a stranger's family is not always quick and smooth. Though based on a common tradition, habits, especially the rules, are different in all families and houses. In some, such customs as pancakes to bake thin; in others, they like them thick; in this house, they saw firewood to one length; in another, they do different because there are different stoves, and the stoves are other because the masters who built them are not the same.
It is difficult for a young woman accustomed to the girl's freedom, parental care, and affection to enter a new life in a new family. About this, the people have composed countless songs:
"You'll come beyond the irrecoverable line, and from that place, you will never come back. Never put on girl's clothes again. Because flowers don't bloom after fall, don't grow grass in winter's snow. Never will you be a maiden again."
A dramatic change of life state, evident in folk songs, is often taken as evidence of Russian women's terrible family situation, of their inequality and oppression. However, the legend of this inequality is fading away from the light touch of folk and literary monuments.
"Do not worry, dear ones, I will not stay alone;
if not you, then your friend will belong to me," - publicly and loudly sings a girl at the gathering if the guy starts to think too highly of himself.
On a failed marriage, there was such a song:
"Whatever she was, but got married to such a young man but a boor.
He does not know how to treat me; he goes to a party without saying goodbye.
And coming back to the gates, ignorant, screaming, and yelling:
"Unlock wife, wide gate! "
Oh, how I, young wife guessed, quietly got up, bare feet shoes put on,
I have locked the gates tight: "Oh, you go sleep, boor, but outside the gates, your soft bed is yes, white snow, your high pillow is the gateway, your warm blanket is the winds of violent, you coloured curtain are the stars countless, yes you strong guards are gray wolves."
On a failed marriage, there was such a song:
"Whatever she was, but got married to such a young man but a boor.
He does not know how to treat me; he goes to a party without saying goodbye.
And coming back to the gates, ignorant, screaming, and yelling:
"Unlock wife, wide gate! "
Oh, how I, young wife guessed, quietly got up, bare feet shoes put on,
I have locked the gates tight: "Oh, you go sleep, boor, but outside the gates, your soft bed is yes, white snow, your high pillow is the gateway, your warm blanket is the winds of violent, you coloured curtain are the stars countless, yes you strong guards are gray wolves."
That point is that the people to no one had not occurred to oppose a woman to a man, the family to the head of the family, children to parents.
Neither Avdotya from Ryazan from the epic or historic Martha-Governor's Wife nor Alena (Nekrasov's and Lermontov's) resembles the downtrodden, unequal, or degraded. A historian, Kostomarov, speaking of the "Russian Truth" (the first known set of Russian laws), wrote: "A married woman enjoyed the same legal rights as men. However, for her murder or insult to her, the pay was the equal amount."
Literacy or illiteracy Rights in Ancient Russia also did not depend on sex. "Princess of Chernihiv Euphrosynia, the daughter of Michael Vsevolodovich, started in Suzdal a school for girls, where they were taught to read, write, and church singing," - said the same Kostomarov, based on the chronicles. Equality and sometimes the superiority of women in the family were due to the economic and moral needs of the Russian national life.
What is the point for the head of the household to beat his wife or keep at bay the entire family? Only a spoiled, stupid man without a king in the head allowed such actions. And if natural stupidity though with a smile but was forgiven, then acquired stupidity (tyranny) was mercilessly derided. A bad reputation of the family tyrant, like the glory of a girl's dishonour, ran "in front of the sled."
The authority of the head of the family was kept not on fear but on the conscience of the whole family. To maintain this credibility, you must be respected rather than feared. Such respect could be gained only by personal example: hard work, fairness, kindness, and consistency.
If you remember more about kinship and parent-child love, it becomes clear why younger children "feared" elders. That "fear" for children did not come from fear of physical harm or even punishment but from shame, from the pangs of conscience.
In a good family, one condemning look of a father forced family members to tremble, while in the other, the rod, belt or just his fists were perceived quite indifferently. Moreover, the dominance of brute force and fear of physical pain flourished in deception, the secret mockery of elders and other vices.
Headship from father to eldest son passes not at once but with the aging of father and son and the accumulation of life experience. So leadership kind of slips bit by bit and is poured down from generation to generation because the nominal head of the family is the grandfather, father of the father. But, still, to all, including the grandfather, it is clear that he is not the head anymore.
Traditionally, the grandfather still has the first word at the family councils, but it is consultative rather than decisive, and he does not see this as an offence. The owner's father and son clearly show how to share the essence of seniority: one provides a form of rule, the other content. All this is gradually shifted.
The same goes for the female "half" of the house. Young housewives, with the passing years, become the main hand "at the oven," and hence, "the big one." It happened naturally because the mother-in-law grew old and could not always carry buckets of fodder to the cattle to knead the bread. Once you start to bake bread, you have the key from the flour chest. If you milk cows, you pour milk and churn butter, and the loan must be given out not by the in-laws but by yourself. So, the one who makes better pies will obtain seniority.
For unmarried sisters to stay at home for too long was unnatural. It turns out that marrying younger sons was also necessary, if only because of a crowded house. But is it only a cramped house that shaped this need? Before marrying, the second son's father, grandfather, and eldest son began to think about building a new place for him, but the end of construction would often coincide with the wedding. The two married brothers lived with their families under his father's or grandfather's roof for some time. Women's quarrels, common in such cases, hurried construction.
After gathering help (sometimes double or triple), the father and sons quickly finished building the house for a younger son. The same happened with the marriage of the third and fourth sons unless war or some other scrape with all his impudence was bursting into people's lives.
Conjugal fidelity was the basis of marital love and the well-being of the whole family. The peasants' wives cried when their husbands were jealous because jealousy meant distrust. It was believed that if a man does not trust, then there is no love. They cried that he did not love, but not because he was jealous.
* OLD AGE *
Sometimes, there is no sharp boundary between the time of the blooming of all forces of man and old age. Smoothly, slowly, and quietly, a man approaches his old age. Time moves at different speeds in all seven periods of life. Years of maturity are most numerous, but they fly faster than years of childhood or old age. How can this be explained?
"Life is not only for youth, but death is also not only by old age"—as the saying goes, but it is not entirely comprehensive to a modern man. So much can be said to decipher this proverb. For example, youth cannot be considered a period of monopoly with the possession of happiness and joy unless you see happiness as something fixed and unchanging throughout life…
People believe the essence of happiness is different in different periods of life.
"Sasha sat down on the sleigh, flying like an arrow fast, full of happiness, from the mountain of ice," wrote N.A. Nekrasov about childhood. But how can you experience the same happiness, sliding from the mountain, for example, at an age when Sasha or Masha says, "She will pass by and like the sun shines on! She will look at you, and you feel like a million rubles!"
And at the time of old age, not any peasant woman in her right mind would dream of going to the rye and seriously expect from the fate of ... "the whole piece of calico, a scarlet ribbon to braid, belt, white shirt, belted in the hayfield." All of that, she wishes no longer for herself but for her daughter. Her daughter's happiness is the happiness of her own.
Does this mean the daughter's happiness is greater than the mother's? A question again needs to be corrected. You cannot compare the joy of youth with happiness in old age. It is quite different both in form and content. The same can be said about love or "pity." A child loves his mother and other relatives. A boy suddenly begins to feel sympathy toward a stranger of the other sex. Finally, the sympathy goes into either an incomparable feeling of love or an irresistible desire into something sublimely tragic. The complexity and drama of this moment are in a fierce conflict between the spiritual and physical, high romance and mundane reality. This contradiction is resolved with a long, almost ritualistic premarital period and the wedding ceremony.
After the wedding, love (compassion) is reborn naturally and becomes qualitatively different, less vulnerable and more thorough. From unfathomable celestial heights, the romantic feeling was tearing down, falling on hard ground, but the marriage bed, prudently stockpiled by life, softened the blow.
The birth of children has almost always completely dispelled a sublimely romantic haze. Compassion (love) between the spouses of each other became rougher and more profound. It was fastened to the overall responsibility for children and universal love for them.
After the birth of children, the couple sometimes kept some of an adolescent's lofty attitude that was not condemned but not very much encouraged by public opinion. Families without children are no families. Life without children is no life. If one year after the wedding, in the house does not yet creak the crib and slatted swinging cradle, the house is considered unlucky. The wedding, in such circumstances, remembered with some bitterness and then tried to quickly forget about it. Childlessness is the greatest misfortune, entailing humiliation of women, fake relationships, rudeness of men, and adultery. Childlessness upsets life harmony and throws off the rhythm. One unnatural causes another, and the house gradually becomes a scourge.
Nevertheless, childless families are only sometimes destroyed. On the contrary, spouses honouring the sanctity of marriage either adopting children (orphans or from large distant relatives) or bravely bearing "the cross," getting used to the grave and single lobe.
In a typical peasant family, all children were born primarily in the first ten or fifteen years of married life. "Pogodki" were called children to be taken with a year difference. Thus, even in a large family with ten or twelve children when the last was born, the eldest has yet to emerge from adolescence. This was important because pregnancy, when an adult child is still at home, was not very appropriate. And while no one directly blamed parents for the birth of a sudden "late child," spouses with the maturation of their first child and getting older, the rest of the children were not in such a hurry to enjoy the marriage bed ... They both have gradually returned to youthful chastity. Old age marked not only that.
Even the songs sung at adulthood and maturity were replaced by other, more appropriate meanings and forms. If, during a visit, joining the ring, the mother of an adult son sings about "boyfriend" or "betrayal," no one will take it seriously. Human behaviour is changing with the maturation of children, but physical aging is still very far away. Even a mature woman gets a girl's cheeks to blush during the holiday feast, but she cannot dance the old way when looking at her daughter-bride. Father, who just turned forty, still wants to compete or play dice seriously, but he never will because his sons should do it for real.
Under cover of futility, to defend them by a semblance of a joke, and in old age, he can still go to games, go fish perch, and buy his wife fairground candy. But marital status has moved you to the other cases and brings different, diverse entertainment. Love (compassion) for the wife or husband loses something appropriate or needed in their youth but becomes something new and unexpected for both spouses: tenderness, affection, and fear of losing each other. All this is carefully clapping for external roughness and feigned indifference. The couple even slightly criticized each other, and outsiders sometimes need to understand the essence of their genuine relationship.
Only the most talkative and straightforward laid out in conversations all the ins and outs of the family. They often ratted their "half," but it was generally innocuous. Self-irony and a joke rescued people this age, protecting their family affairs from unwary influences. "We sleep together, but money keeps separate" - with a severe look told a man about his relationship with his wife. Of course, everything is just the opposite.
"Life is not only for youth, but death is also not only by old age"—as the saying goes, but it is not entirely comprehensive to a modern man. So much can be said to decipher this proverb. For example, youth cannot be considered a period of monopoly with the possession of happiness and joy unless you see happiness as something fixed and unchanging throughout life…
People believe the essence of happiness is different in different periods of life.
"Sasha sat down on the sleigh, flying like an arrow fast, full of happiness, from the mountain of ice," wrote N.A. Nekrasov about childhood. But how can you experience the same happiness, sliding from the mountain, for example, at an age when Sasha or Masha says, "She will pass by and like the sun shines on! She will look at you, and you feel like a million rubles!"
And at the time of old age, not any peasant woman in her right mind would dream of going to the rye and seriously expect from the fate of ... "the whole piece of calico, a scarlet ribbon to braid, belt, white shirt, belted in the hayfield." All of that, she wishes no longer for herself but for her daughter. Her daughter's happiness is the happiness of her own.
Does this mean the daughter's happiness is greater than the mother's? A question again needs to be corrected. You cannot compare the joy of youth with happiness in old age. It is quite different both in form and content. The same can be said about love or "pity." A child loves his mother and other relatives. A boy suddenly begins to feel sympathy toward a stranger of the other sex. Finally, the sympathy goes into either an incomparable feeling of love or an irresistible desire into something sublimely tragic. The complexity and drama of this moment are in a fierce conflict between the spiritual and physical, high romance and mundane reality. This contradiction is resolved with a long, almost ritualistic premarital period and the wedding ceremony.
After the wedding, love (compassion) is reborn naturally and becomes qualitatively different, less vulnerable and more thorough. From unfathomable celestial heights, the romantic feeling was tearing down, falling on hard ground, but the marriage bed, prudently stockpiled by life, softened the blow.
The birth of children has almost always completely dispelled a sublimely romantic haze. Compassion (love) between the spouses of each other became rougher and more profound. It was fastened to the overall responsibility for children and universal love for them.
After the birth of children, the couple sometimes kept some of an adolescent's lofty attitude that was not condemned but not very much encouraged by public opinion. Families without children are no families. Life without children is no life. If one year after the wedding, in the house does not yet creak the crib and slatted swinging cradle, the house is considered unlucky. The wedding, in such circumstances, remembered with some bitterness and then tried to quickly forget about it. Childlessness is the greatest misfortune, entailing humiliation of women, fake relationships, rudeness of men, and adultery. Childlessness upsets life harmony and throws off the rhythm. One unnatural causes another, and the house gradually becomes a scourge.
Nevertheless, childless families are only sometimes destroyed. On the contrary, spouses honouring the sanctity of marriage either adopting children (orphans or from large distant relatives) or bravely bearing "the cross," getting used to the grave and single lobe.
In a typical peasant family, all children were born primarily in the first ten or fifteen years of married life. "Pogodki" were called children to be taken with a year difference. Thus, even in a large family with ten or twelve children when the last was born, the eldest has yet to emerge from adolescence. This was important because pregnancy, when an adult child is still at home, was not very appropriate. And while no one directly blamed parents for the birth of a sudden "late child," spouses with the maturation of their first child and getting older, the rest of the children were not in such a hurry to enjoy the marriage bed ... They both have gradually returned to youthful chastity. Old age marked not only that.
Even the songs sung at adulthood and maturity were replaced by other, more appropriate meanings and forms. If, during a visit, joining the ring, the mother of an adult son sings about "boyfriend" or "betrayal," no one will take it seriously. Human behaviour is changing with the maturation of children, but physical aging is still very far away. Even a mature woman gets a girl's cheeks to blush during the holiday feast, but she cannot dance the old way when looking at her daughter-bride. Father, who just turned forty, still wants to compete or play dice seriously, but he never will because his sons should do it for real.
Under cover of futility, to defend them by a semblance of a joke, and in old age, he can still go to games, go fish perch, and buy his wife fairground candy. But marital status has moved you to the other cases and brings different, diverse entertainment. Love (compassion) for the wife or husband loses something appropriate or needed in their youth but becomes something new and unexpected for both spouses: tenderness, affection, and fear of losing each other. All this is carefully clapping for external roughness and feigned indifference. The couple even slightly criticized each other, and outsiders sometimes need to understand the essence of their genuine relationship.
Only the most talkative and straightforward laid out in conversations all the ins and outs of the family. They often ratted their "half," but it was generally innocuous. Self-irony and a joke rescued people this age, protecting their family affairs from unwary influences. "We sleep together, but money keeps separate" - with a severe look told a man about his relationship with his wife. Of course, everything is just the opposite.
Tuesday, 29 October 2019
* REALLY OLD AGE *
Physical and mental stress also gradually declines in old age, steadily increasing in childhood and adolescence. However, this does not mean the economic, productive uselessness of the elderly.
Rich morals and working experience gave them equal rights in the family and society. If you cannot plow, nobody can do better sowing than you. Previously, he was chopping massive logs. Now, there is even more to do in the woods for him. It was simply a disgrace to hew pine needles, bark, and birch bark for mature men.
If the grandmother could no longer weave canvas, she would again be called to the rescue when spinning. Without the old folks, a large family couldn't survive. If the family did not have a grandmother or grandfather, they would be invited to live with a lonely or disabled old woman, and she babysat the children.
An old person in a typical family did not feel a burden and did not suffer from boredom. He always had something to do; he was needed by each one separately and all together. He would lie on the stove and tell a grandson tales because telling or singing is no less entertaining than listening. To another grandson, he will make a pacifier from clay. Adolescent girls carve a spindle for a lady of the house, fix the kitchen tools, bring twigs for brooms, and then weave the shoes; daughter-in-law makes a brick-brack box, cuts spoon out of linden tree wood for everybody. It does take a lot of work to please everyone!
A really old man and a child are equally helpless and equally vulnerable. To an insensitive, thick-skinned man accustomed to the moral authority of parents, to their high standards, and spiritual and physical cleanliness, it will be hard to understand why grandmother over-salted cabbage and grandfather, always so careful, accurate, suddenly forgot to close the well or soaked his shirt. In such cases, to refrain from a reproach or rebuke could only men of high moral standing.
And it was precisely at such moments that his responsibility for the family matured, for its strength and prosperity, and not when he plowed a pen or cut down a new house. Of course, the attitude towards children and the elderly has always depended on society's moral level. This relation can probably almost accurately determine which way a nation goes and what awaits them soon. Another ethical and philosophical principle to judge people is the attitude toward death.
Death to a Russian peasant seemed as natural as birth, but a solemn and menacing (and for many believers and even joyful) event, relieving from the physical suffering associated with senile decay and the moral anguish caused by the inability to continue working. Lacking their physical strength, old men did not lose their spiritual forces. Some called for the death, while others waited patiently for her. But as the saying goes: "Without death, one will not die." Suicide was considered a disgrace, a crime against themselves and others.
To the Northern Russian peasant, death did not cause fear or despair. On the contrary, it was the equivalent of the secret mystery of birth. Since you have already been born, death is as necessary as life. A natural and normal sequence in the changing age characteristics led to a philosophical, religious, and spiritual balance, a calm self-perception of the end of the road ... Namely, the sequence, the gradualism.
While still of sound mind and strength, the old folks were quietly and with a certain solemnity preparing themselves for death. But meeting her calmly could only be someone who lived with dignity, sought not to do evil, and those who were not lonely had a family. According to popular understanding, the greater the sins are, the more difficult it is to die. Of course, there are no totally sinless people, and everyone felt the value of the degree of his own sins, their crimes before the people and the world. Pangs of conscience conform to the weight of this sin, so the religious rite of Communion and confession alleviated suffering from the dying.
Many people in old age look young. A Young, almost youthful face is a sign of kindness and a lack of evil. To some extent, longevity is dependent on kindness and health. Anger causes the disease, at least through our ancestors. From the contemporary point of view, it is naive. But naiveté is not necessarily stupid or absent of high inner culture.
Human life lies between two great mysteries: the secret of our appearance and the mystery of disappearance. Birth and death protect us from the horror of infinity. Both are associated with brief physical suffering. The child has it just as hard during childbirth as a mother, but the first pain is better than the last as the first battle. A man meets the labour of death, being prepared by life and overcoming physical suffering. Therefore, despite all the diversity of attitudes to end ("How many people, so many deaths…"), there was all the same/widespread/ attitude towards it - calm and wise.
It was believed that non-existence after death is the same as non-existence before birth, that earthly life is given to man as an award, and that something important is obscured from him by the secrets of those two mysteries. The logic and timeliness of all that inevitably being accomplished between birth and death affected all the features of traditional aesthetics.
Rich morals and working experience gave them equal rights in the family and society. If you cannot plow, nobody can do better sowing than you. Previously, he was chopping massive logs. Now, there is even more to do in the woods for him. It was simply a disgrace to hew pine needles, bark, and birch bark for mature men.
If the grandmother could no longer weave canvas, she would again be called to the rescue when spinning. Without the old folks, a large family couldn't survive. If the family did not have a grandmother or grandfather, they would be invited to live with a lonely or disabled old woman, and she babysat the children.
An old person in a typical family did not feel a burden and did not suffer from boredom. He always had something to do; he was needed by each one separately and all together. He would lie on the stove and tell a grandson tales because telling or singing is no less entertaining than listening. To another grandson, he will make a pacifier from clay. Adolescent girls carve a spindle for a lady of the house, fix the kitchen tools, bring twigs for brooms, and then weave the shoes; daughter-in-law makes a brick-brack box, cuts spoon out of linden tree wood for everybody. It does take a lot of work to please everyone!
A really old man and a child are equally helpless and equally vulnerable. To an insensitive, thick-skinned man accustomed to the moral authority of parents, to their high standards, and spiritual and physical cleanliness, it will be hard to understand why grandmother over-salted cabbage and grandfather, always so careful, accurate, suddenly forgot to close the well or soaked his shirt. In such cases, to refrain from a reproach or rebuke could only men of high moral standing.
And it was precisely at such moments that his responsibility for the family matured, for its strength and prosperity, and not when he plowed a pen or cut down a new house. Of course, the attitude towards children and the elderly has always depended on society's moral level. This relation can probably almost accurately determine which way a nation goes and what awaits them soon. Another ethical and philosophical principle to judge people is the attitude toward death.
Death to a Russian peasant seemed as natural as birth, but a solemn and menacing (and for many believers and even joyful) event, relieving from the physical suffering associated with senile decay and the moral anguish caused by the inability to continue working. Lacking their physical strength, old men did not lose their spiritual forces. Some called for the death, while others waited patiently for her. But as the saying goes: "Without death, one will not die." Suicide was considered a disgrace, a crime against themselves and others.
To the Northern Russian peasant, death did not cause fear or despair. On the contrary, it was the equivalent of the secret mystery of birth. Since you have already been born, death is as necessary as life. A natural and normal sequence in the changing age characteristics led to a philosophical, religious, and spiritual balance, a calm self-perception of the end of the road ... Namely, the sequence, the gradualism.
While still of sound mind and strength, the old folks were quietly and with a certain solemnity preparing themselves for death. But meeting her calmly could only be someone who lived with dignity, sought not to do evil, and those who were not lonely had a family. According to popular understanding, the greater the sins are, the more difficult it is to die. Of course, there are no totally sinless people, and everyone felt the value of the degree of his own sins, their crimes before the people and the world. Pangs of conscience conform to the weight of this sin, so the religious rite of Communion and confession alleviated suffering from the dying.
Many people in old age look young. A Young, almost youthful face is a sign of kindness and a lack of evil. To some extent, longevity is dependent on kindness and health. Anger causes the disease, at least through our ancestors. From the contemporary point of view, it is naive. But naiveté is not necessarily stupid or absent of high inner culture.
Human life lies between two great mysteries: the secret of our appearance and the mystery of disappearance. Birth and death protect us from the horror of infinity. Both are associated with brief physical suffering. The child has it just as hard during childbirth as a mother, but the first pain is better than the last as the first battle. A man meets the labour of death, being prepared by life and overcoming physical suffering. Therefore, despite all the diversity of attitudes to end ("How many people, so many deaths…"), there was all the same/widespread/ attitude towards it - calm and wise.
It was believed that non-existence after death is the same as non-existence before birth, that earthly life is given to man as an award, and that something important is obscured from him by the secrets of those two mysteries. The logic and timeliness of all that inevitably being accomplished between birth and death affected all the features of traditional aesthetics.
**NATIVE NEST *
Place, landscape, neighbourhood, and all the land, water, and sky were called a generic word - Nature. Yet, who needs to understand that beauty is different in different places? There is the spread of a bog with stunted pines; over there are surging hills, overgrown with magnificent pine trees. In one place, there is not even a tiny stream; the water is used from the wells, and in another, there is a river and a lake, and more than one, and also at different levels, like in Ferapontovo.
The natural beauty of one or another parish positively affects ordinary people's feelings. But never and nowhere had it influenced their sense of homeland. Impressions of the native nest and the enthusiasm of infant, child and adolescent experiences are born spontaneously.
Local nature, like a mother, exists only in the singular. The world's wonders and beauty cannot replace some nondescript hill with a river bend where a birch or willow tree grows. The saying on this occasion says succinctly: "It is not lovely because it is good, but it is good because it is lovely."
Homeplace will become even closer when men put their hands to it when every inch of the surrounding land is familiar to the touch and connected with clear household memories.
The homestead and inside of the home, the hearth and the red corner were the focus of economic life, the center of the peasant world. This world is in the material, and moral sense was consistently expanding circles, which included the dwelling first, then the whole house. Then, finally, the farm, field, pasture, the long-burning and forest meadows located from the village for ten or fifteen miles.
Nature begins immediately behind the gate. But the farther from home, the more independent it becomes and the wilder it grows. In remote, inaccessible places, the most subtle traces of human hosts received special significance: score, barely beaten path, just a stone in a stream or perceptible place where people rest. A forest's unspoiled wilderness, combined with such rare details and various incidents (for example, an encounter with a bear), becomes an exciting and unique experience with a strange intimacy. Such forest frightened, soothed, tortured, caressed, oppressed, and cheered. The man has the same way as urge to communicate and an inherent desire for solitude. These centripetal and centrifugal forces (if you speak the language of physicists) are balanced in the peasant household by the same opportunities. Needs for both communication and solitude manifested themselves from very early years.
In childhood, the desire for solitude is noticeable, for example, in the game "in a cage" when the child plays in a small but still his own "house." The need for privacy, mainly girlish, burns even brighter in youth. It is very noticeable in old age, not to mention the period of married life. The forest gives a person an excellent opportunity to be alone, philosophize, calm down, and reflect on their relationships with people. Such thoughts, however, were never an end in themselves. They have invariably accompanied some work.
The most challenging thing in the woods - is stubbing for arable land. The easiest is picking mushrooms and berries. Mikhail I. Kuznetsov, a great connoisseur of material and consumer culture of the Russian North, wrote: "A rare case where a resident of the North, who lives in the surrounding woods, will not find opportunities to replace the metal with wood. What's missing in the fir grove, in the riverside willow and elderberry bushes, he invariably found in a birch grove. This is a vast storehouse for him, where it was all he needed: blades, pitchfork, rake, handle, shaft, rocker and any size, slender, not yet had time to turn white birch. From birch twigs were woven rope belts to the plow. Rings were made from a jeweller's small size to half-meter diameter. These intertwined, coiled birch twigs tie logs in the rafting timber. The rings were required very often and a lot ...»
The land reclaimed from the forest is called differently: burning, hooked, clearing.
All of this also had their own names, sometimes quite poetic. A wild and distant forest landscape, ennobled by mowing, a cozy bridge across the creek, lava through the bright and rocky, then calmly-sedge river, became very dear, like all places close to home. A lateral dike through the swaps in the faraway yielded a feeling of security and sustainability of life. A fire pit or firewood pile in the woods can be calming if one gets lost. A morsel of willow bark, a mark on a young birch tree, a familiar stump or an old log has strengthened the invisible connection between man and nature. But nothing has so ennobled the environment as the cut-out shed, the primary element of this ancient architecture and the whole economic system.
* FOREST HAYLOFT*
After a long walk, after a shaking and vicious drive in the impenetrable forest, through marches, hills, and dense bushes, suddenly opens a clean, mowed, or all in bloom meadow and in the clearing, there is a forest hayloft. And immediately disappears fatigue from the long, dangerous journey.
The spirit of your distant ancestors, materialized for you by their tireless work, reflects in these finished, silvery from time logs. However, in the old days, nobody noticed that silver hue. It was all taken for granted and therefore was invisible. The forest haylofts initially were built from the same firs, pines, and sometimes the aspens, which grew at the site of the future meadow. Expanding meadows, a peasant cut down more trees, of which, if desired, can be made one or more haylofts.
The logs were placed on each other without the moss but closely, without large gaps. In summer, there a cool breeze seeps through the cracks. The barn ventilates with hay, the moisture does not stick, and logs do not rot for a long time.
The roof was made of one slope; the runner covered the top, rarely with the shingles. The structure was built with two pitches also. Under the roof gutters often nested forest birds. Under the same roof, wasps spun and glued their laminated gray nest, similar to the salt-away. Instead of the usual plank floor, were used firwood logs.
To build a barn takes a few days for two guys. Nobody bothered with the gates. Hay was taken away during winter when the swamp froze. The frosted blizzard mingled with the smell of snow and still stood apart from the scent of summer flowers. Such contrasts have met in peasant life very often. They have underlined the connection of the seasons emphasized the uniqueness of labour, tradition and general life experiences.
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