Tel.: +7 (499) 973-43-54; +7 (499) 956-96-47
Grand PhD, Full Professor (Philology), scientific curator, Center for Typological and Semiotic
Folklore Studies, Russian State University for Humanities: 15–7, Chayanova str., Moscow, 125047,
Russian Federation; chief researcher, Laboratory of Theoretical Folkloristics, Presidential Academy
of National Economy and Public Administration: 84, Vernadskogo av., Moscow, 119571,
Russian Federation
This paper is financially supported by the grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research project No. 6-06-00286 “Monitoring of current folklore: database and corpus analysis”.
Urban song is one of the most popular forms of post-folklore tradition of the 20th century. It arises from philistine (~ urban) romance of the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries. Period of Revolution and civil war period served as a turning point in its formation process. The most active period of text generation, emphasized with formation of the main genre models continued at least until the early 1930s. Following bright flashes of folk song creation of this type occurred during the Great Patriotic war (WW II) and again during the “post-Stalinist” era, when urban traditions received an additional impulse for development due to penetrating labor camp folklore. The genre began to extinct in the 1970s with the appearance of portable tape recorders, when playing “active” music-making (singing) got replaced with “passive” (listening).
From genre-thematic point of view “Marusya poisoned herself ” — the song forms an intermediate segment between older philistine romance and urban song of the 20th century. It was extremely popular, as has been evidenced by numerous references and quotations in memoir and fiction literature. Primary text of “Marusya” is formed on the basis of the earlier pettybourgeois romance, which exploit the theme of disastrous romantic love, with (often but not necessarily) attendant motifs of separation and infidelity. Such romances are exemplified with songs as “Cornflowers”, “Gypsy maiden”, but especially “Grave” and “Loved Marusya…”, which was probably used by the author of the printed first version of “Marusya” Ya. F. Prigozhiy. This primary text has been preserved accurately by the oral tradition up to the end of the 20th century. Processed versions, which highlighted biographical circumstances of the heroine or explained causes of her suicide, were spread more rarely. However, folklore and authorized (Mayakovskiy, Demyan Bednyy) parodies from the late 1920s clearly didn’t repel the “classic” oral versions, but rather emphasized additional plot circumstances, as presence of a competitress or another means of committing suicide, obtained from alternative cruel romances.
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