Lacki Is Epic.

Lacki Is Epic.
St. Petersburg: Lights. 1911 200 p. Enlarged format: 19 x 25 cm.

Introductory article by E. A. Lyatsky. First edition. The cover and vignettes are executed by A. Nikolsky on ancient samples. The condition of the block is excellent, there is no publishing cover, the book is in a modern artistic half-leather cover.

This elegant edition of epics about Russian heroes, which includes several epic cycles: o senior knights (the Band, the Volga and Mikula, Volkhov Vseslav'evich), the heroes of the Kiev Prince Vladimir (Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich, Dobrynya Nikitich, Duke Stepanovich, and the Nightingale Budimirovic, Churilov Plenkovic, Stavrou the Radinovich, Thread, Mikhaylo Ivanovich, the Ivanovich Danube); on the Novgorod knights (Basil Luslawice, the merchant Satko). The compiler of the collection, E. A. Lyatsky, found a living tradition of singing epics in the Russian North, in the Olonets and Arkhangelsk provinces. It echoes he recorded in the Urals, Siberia, the don and the North Caucasus - in areas of the borderland, where anciently ran a different kind of dissidents or went in search of a better life Cossacks, old believers, etc. the Book is a perfect reflection of their time: on the one hand, in society was formed a tendency towards a significant cultural phenomenon to associate with the upper crust, the aristocracy, the educated class and underestimate the creative power of the people. Such views were characteristic of many, including the authors of the collection Milestones, a number of representatives of symbolism, etc. But on the other hand, increased interest in folk culture and its medieval history. Thus, leading art critics at this time overestimate the place of iconography in art, seeing it as a completely amazing original phenomenon of national artistic creativity. Others turned to folk splints, folklore, showed hidden spiritual treasures externally mute and voiceless peasant culture. From this movement later grew futurists and Russian avant-garde.