Bylina as a literary genre

The bylina is a Russian epic song about the bogatyrs. Different genre transformations of bylinas are known in folklore: prosaic narrations [ pobyval'shchiny ], bogatyr tales, legends about the bogatyrs, lubok tales about the feats of the bogatyrs and knights. In the early 19th century, Russian literature was actively absorbing epic images and motives: the bogatyrs were turning into characters of novellas, literary tales, poems, novels, operas. Some poets and writers were attempting to develop the bylina as a literary genre. Their genre search was a creative imitation of The Tale of Igor's Campaign [“Slovo o polku Igoreve”] published in 1800 and in some cases of the Collection of Kirsha Danilov (1804). One of the first attempts was Gavrila R. Derzhavin's work Dobrynya, Dramatic Musical Performance in Five Acts [“Dobrynya, teatral'noe predstavlenie s muzykoyu, v pyati deystviyakh”, 1804]. Glorifying the idea of the state, the poet composes a work where epic and literary characters act and the plot is derived not only from bylinas and tales, but also from chivalric novels. In Stepan S. Andreev's poem Levsil, a Russian Bogatyr [“Levsil, russkiy bogatyr'”, 1807] the hero is not only a folkloric (epic and fabulous) character, but also a literary one. Alexander F. Veltman's novel Koshchei the Immortal. A Bylina of the Old Times [“Koshchey bessmertnyy. Bylina starogo vremeni”, 1833] was an ingenious genre experiment. The word ‘bylina' was used in its title in the literary genre meaning for the first time ever. The genre of Easter novella Ilya Muromets. A Tale from the Rus' of the Bogatyrs [“Il'ya Muromets. Skazka Rusi bogatyrskoy”, 1836] by Vladimir I. Dahl emerged from a complicated interaction of the tale, the bylina, the Old Russian novella and the hagiography. The literary transformations of folkloric genre stemmed from the authors' imaginative need to create a national and historical myth, conjecture the ‘fabulous' history and imagine what happened in the old preliterate times.