What does the word "walking" mean, and when did it first appear. History and lexical meanings are covered in this article.
History of occurrence
The word "walking" came into the Russian language from the Old Slavonic - the first written language in Russia. This is evidenced by the alternation of -zh- and -zhd- in the root (the Russian word "I go"). And since there were borrowings from church books - the first known literature of Russia - then stylistically they correspond with the class of high vocabulary.
An example of a word with a bright stylistic coloring is the Old Slavonic "milk", which can be found more in spiritual literature than in ordinary life. Russian "milk", on the contrary, spread in colloquial speech and, after the reforms of the Russian language, established itself in its literary version.
Another situation happened with the word considered in the article. “What is walking” is a question not only for the sensible, but also for the dictionary of literary concepts.
Meaning of the word in modern Russian
The lexical meaning of the word "walking" in the general sense, like any word in Russianlanguage, displayed in its root. In this case, this is the root hod- with alternating consonant sounds (khozh- / hod-). Such a variety of variants of the root of cognate words is due to historical reasons: some words existed in the pre-literate period, that is, in the Russian language itself, and some came from Old Church Slavonic.
If you build a word-building nest of the word "walking", then the generating basis will be the root of the word "walk", and the lexical meaning will be an action or a person that reflects the semantic load of this verb. Thus, the definition of the word "walking" in modern language: it is a noun denoting the process from the verb "to walk".
Since the word came from the language of Church Slavonic books, it had a religious connotation, like the single-root word "walker". Walkers are those who made walking, that is, traveling on foot. What could be the first walks of people, mainly tied to daily work on earth? The most common "tramps" are seekers of truth, that is, pilgrims. Thus, the original meaning of the word in question is associated with the search for spiritual knowledge, insight, through a long walk through unfamiliar lands.
However, there is another meaning of the word "walking" in ancient Russian literature, as a section of literary disciplines.
Genre originality of the walks of Ancient Russia
"Walking" or "walking" is an epic genre of the literature of AncientRus, which describes travel. Great merit was made in the study of these works, from the point of view of literary criticism, by Nikolai Ivanovich Prokofiev, a Soviet medievalist. He also classified walks by type, depending on their semantic load. There are five of them: wayfarers, tales, non-fiction essays, article lists and legendary stories.
The first group (travelers) are short guides with practical advice on how to get to a place. The article lists are of a business nature, since they describe the foreign trips of ambassadors to diplomatic missions. Legendary or fictional stories are works of the journalistic genre that could contain retellings of Scripture stories and apocryphal stories.
A group of walks, which has the common name "skaski", is the stories of Russian people who visited other countries, or strangers who came to Russia. Such stories were written down by the narrator, who reproduced them orally. The personal impressions of the narrator reflect the essence of the fifth group of walks, documentary works of art. They are the most interesting from the point of view of literary criticism, since, to a greater extent than other types of walking, they meet the requirements of artistic expression.
Interest in literary criticism
What is walking in ancient Russian literature? For historians and linguists, all categories of this genre are of interest, while forliterary criticism is not particularly interested in the practical notes of travelers or the businesslike tone of article lists. The main interest is concentrated on documentary works containing the impressions of the narrator. Personal emotions in the text of a work are the key to the presence of expressive vocabulary, an important component of the literary and artistic language.
Monuments of ancient Russian literature
The most famous and oldest of the surviving literary works of a traveling nature is “The Life and Walking of Hegumen Daniel from the Russian Land”, which, like the Tale of Bygone Years, dates back to the 12th century. The work is dedicated to the difficult journey of the Russian hegumen through the territory of the newly formed State of Jerusalem (Palestine) during the period of the Crusades. The author also describes meetings with the local king, who honored the hegumen with his attention.
Understand that such a walk can also be found in such monuments of ancient Russian and medieval literature as “Walking to Constantinople” by Dobrynya Yadreykovich, “Walking” by Trifon Korobeinikov, merchant Vasily Poznyakov or monks Iona Malyny and Arseniy Sukhanov.
The 15th century work "Journey Beyond Three Seas" by Athanasius Nikitin was recognized as the best example of walking. It tells about the journey of a Tver merchant to India, however, unlike the previous examples of the genre, it is devoid of a religious orientation. This is perhaps one of the most famous examples of this genre of medieval literature, answering the question of what walking is in literary criticism.
