«Воспой гласом, воспой духом». Духовная лирика старообрядческих поморских общин Верхокамья

Abstract

«Воспой гласом, воспой духом». Spiritual lyric poetry of Old Believers Pomors communities inhabiting Upper Kama River

The article contains broad discussion of well-preserved traditional Christian culture in the community of Priestless Old-Believers of the ‘Pomortsy-Vygovtsy’ faction located at the springhead of Kama River. The community of the Kama Old-Believers is situated on a small area (60 x 60 kilometers) where numerous oral and written relics of spiritual culture were found by the Moscow State University archaeographers. Unique richness and good preserving of a spiritual poem results from the division of the community in the middle of the 19th century into two groups – ‘dyomintsy’ and ‘maximovtsy’ for personal and geographical and not doctrinal reasons. Each group despite unity of faith tried to be more religious and better preserve their tradition. The introductory part contains general description of the lyrics which are the result of spiritual life of the Old-Believers community as well as detailed discussion of the research work and publications devoted to Kama Old-Believers. What follows is a deep analysis showing the character, depth of faith and preserving traditions which are included in the spiritual poetry of people working the soil who are directly connected with nature. Significant space devoted to quoting the proems and discussing the essence of numerous spiritual lyrics in the analytical frame proposed by the author.