Contemporary poetics of byliny. Article 3

The article deals with the manifestation of the empirical principles in comments and remarks of the narrator. It is argued that the simplest and most obvious cases of realizing this principles are those in which the narrator expresses surprise or admiration for the features, actions or states of the characters that do not correspond to the explicit and evident facts of everyday empiricism, or, in other words, he emotionally responds to empiricism of violations in bylina, which he just have performed. It seems natural, that after describing some character action which is contrary to empiricism, the narrator not only admires it, but also finds an empirically valid or quasi-reliable explanation to it. There are cases when the narrator considers it necessary to give a completely empirical explanation of the bogatyr's failure, which he by his very nature should not allow. And the narrator have to search for an empirical explanation of the “Old Cossack’s” (Ilya Muromets) decision, inherent for the heroic value system (and understandable for the researcher), but completely inconsistent with the views of the narrator. The last can not ignore the fact that some actions may take a long time, that the distant object is seen worse than the close one, that, finally, the person has to adapt his plans and actions to "weather conditions". In the above mentioned cases, the personality of the narrator in fact stays in the shadows, but he is able to appeal to his life experience and opinion about the objective reality more openly.