On the time in Russian bylinas and its axiological nature

The subject matter of the given study is both the artistic time of Russian heroic epics and its relationship with the present continuous of traditional bylina narration. Based on the results of bylina axiological analysis, the author criticizes the existing stereotype (produced by M.M. Bakhtin, D.S. Likhachov, and other scholars) according to which the epic time should be described as ideal, sacral, and “insular” (an “original time”) - i.e., as separated from the ordinary time of the epic singer and his audience. According to the author, Russian folk epics do not imply any features of the sacral “original time”, but absorb traits of different historical epochs into themselves on the principle of identical “spiritual codes”, their temporality essentially open to the present and future of the epic singer and his audience. The convergence between the “ancient” epic time and the “familiar” time of the audience is due to the single system of value coordinates which, in turn, are equally applicable for the assessment of acts committed either by epic knights or listeners themselves. For this reason, the events belonging to different historical periods are rendered in Russian bylinas as subordinate to and comprehended by the universal logic of spiritual laws - the ones immanent to the consciousness of the hero and his traditional audience. The author concludes that the temporality of Russian folk epics is subjected to the law of “reverse perspective” according to which the past shouldn’t be represented as distant and vague, but, on the contrary, as realistic and near, placed in the foreground of the recipient’s perception, in the field of the present. At that, the necessary condition to “draw” the audience into the epic chronotope is the positioning of plotlines’ “vanishing point” “behind” the listener - i.e., in his or her personal space and personal time focused on individual future. As a result, the present time of the audience becomes an organic part of the epic continuum, while the “epic knights’ time” is perceived by the listener as a number of well-structured elements translating a certain axiological worldview. The transition from the “familiar” time to the «relevant epic» one is experienced by the listener precisely as a personal transition from one value system to another.