In this article, the author reveals the main features of the creation and performance of works in Ashik poetry, which is the oral work of Turkish poets and singers, formed into an original powerful tradition by the XVII century. The analysis of these processes reveals the complex nature of this type of creativity, in which elements of two forms of literature - folklore and literature-are intertwined. The author defines the typology of Ashik art, highlighting such fundamental categories as variability and improvisationality, on the one hand, and authorship, on the other. This synthesis of heterogeneous features determines, in the author's opinion, the uniqueness of Ashik poetry.

Keywords: ashyk, Ashyk poetry, folklore, individual author's creativity.

Ashik art is an oral individual author's creativity of Turkish poets who perform songs to the accompaniment of the stringed musical instrument saza. Ashik poetry, the genetic source of which, like the art of Meddakh storytellers, should be considered the Turkic heroic epic performed by ozon singers, originated in the XV-XIV centuries, and by the XVII century it had turned into a powerful original tradition with a stable range of poetic motifs and images, a genre system and stylistic features. Born in the bosom of folklore and without interrupting the artistic roll call with it, Ashik creativity throughout its development closely interacted with divan literature and Tekke1 The presence of many different roots in the" genealogy " of the Ashik tradition determines the complex nature of this cultural phenomenon, which manifests itself both at the level of creation and at the level of existence of songs. This article is devoted to the peculiarities of these processes.

The repertoire of each ashyk included both foreign songs belonging to other poets and his own works. The songs sung by ashik from his fellow artists formed the " golden fund "of the Ashik tradition, and at the initial stage of training, Ashik had to memorize a certain number of samples that became" classics " of Ashik poetry. Ashyk memorized other people's songs according to a certain method. According to the Turkish scholar U. Gunay, the memory of the poet-singer who memorized the song did not contain a" stable " text, verified to the smallest detail, but a stencil, a diagram of the work; ashyk had "a clear idea of how the song should sound" [Gunay, 2008, p. 56-57]. The poet-singer memorized the genre in which

1 Tekke literature is a term used in Turkish literary studies to denote the poetic work of adherents of numerous fraternities, mainly of the Sufi persuasion (Alevi, Bektashi, Kalenderi, Naqshibendi, Halveti, etc.).

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a song was created, the main motifs and ayak-a rhyme beginning in the second line of the song and continuing in the last line of the first quatrain, which was often accompanied by a redif2.

Due to the fact that the Ashik song was played by its performer from memory, it was characterized by variability. "The above-described process of memorizing other people's songs in the Ashik tradition often led to the fact that asyks, performing a song of their colleague, without realizing it, created more refined, refined, and skillful versions of works" [Günay, 2008, p. 56-57]. Variability is an important typological feature of Ashik art, which connects it with folklore, but it manifests itself specifically in the framework of Ashik poetry. The fact is that the folklore work does not exist in any "author's" canonical edition. As the Russian folklorist B. N. Putilov notes, for the theory of folklore variability, the general meaning is that " individual instances... we are not raised to a certain primary, once made, open sample - the "primary source", but to a certain general type." It is not the "first" object that varies, but the type, a set of traditional, well-established features of objects and phenomena. In folklore, it is not a set of individual samples that is important, but knowledge of typology; texts in it do not act as individual samples to be memorized, but as representatives of types [Putilov, 1992, p. 191-192]. In Ashik poetry, it is the knowledge and memorization of individual poetic texts that plays an important role, since each of these samples forms the core of the tradition. Tradition for ashik is not a set of abstract motifs and plots, its knowledge is carried out through concrete poetic creations, which serve as a kind of textbook for the young ashik, an example of how a song is built from the elements of tradition passed through the filter of individual creative perception. In contrast to folklore, the concept of "primary source" is relevant in Ashik art - it is a text transmitted from teacher to student, the most accurate reproduction of which is sought by a young ashik. Each Ashik song has a starting point, the moment of creation of which, due to the oral tradition, is difficult to record.

I believe that when transmitting other people's songs, ashik consciously did not vary the text, for ashik the performer, the song of his colleague never lost the status of "someone else's text", did not cease to be an example of individual creativity of another poet-singer, but was thought of as given for temporary use; the main thing that ashik aspired to, although he did not achieve it in full measure — - perform the song in its more or less unchanged form. In this case, ashyk was not required to creatively rework the text, and the changes that took place can be considered as inevitable "errors" in the conditions of oral transmission, which often turned into creative finds.

Careful storage and transfer of the songs of their colleagues was an important task for the poet-singer as a representative of the tradition, but at the same time, each ashik tried to create an original work, develop an individual poetic handwriting, and contribute to the enrichment of the song and poetry treasury of Ashik art, making his own sample worthy of repeated performance.

Ashik's own repertoire included two types of works that were different in terms of creation and performance. Some of the songs were born as a result of improvisation directly at various poetic meetings and competitions called fasyls, which were arranged at weddings, fairs, in city coffee shops, janissary buildings, mansions and palaces, in villages, etc. At such meetings, usually either the audience, or the jury, or one of the ashiks asked the theme and ayak of the song, which the other singer took up to compose the song. Listeners ' reactions could influence Ashyk's intentions to a certain extent, as a result of which the poet-singer sometimes modified the song in terms of content and / or structure. Thus, composed in

Redif -a word or group of words repeated after the rhyme at the end of each quatrain of the song.

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in such circumstances, the song represented a kind of creative compromise between the singer's intention and the audience's expectations.

The main way to create a song on fasylah was improvisation in its purest form, when the birth of the idea and its artistic implementation took place quickly, without prior preparation. This way of creating a work typologically connects Ashyk art and folklore. In Ashik art, as in folklore, two types of improvisation can be distinguished: forced and deliberate, and it is sometimes difficult to find a sharp boundary between them. The famous Russian folklorist P. G. Bogatyrev notes the following: "In folklore, the singer resorts to forced improvisation, when he forgets the text or is forced to enter new words, phrases and create new texts into the song (for example, in funeral songs or funeral lamentations), deliberate entirely and mainly depended on the intention of the performer" [Bogatyrev, 1971, p.398]. If forced improvisation in the Ashik tradition took place when ashik performed other people's songs and rather served as a "safety net" when ashik's memory failed, then ashik resorted to deliberate improvisation on fasylah. I would also like to point out that deliberate improvisation was also the main way to create a work when Ashik's works became part of some ritual, such as a wedding or a Turkish national wrestling competition. Wedding destan and koshma-salavatlama are genres of Ashik poetry, in which the poetic style was subordinated to their pragmatic function: in wedding destans, ashik always mentioned the names and titles of those present, described how great the celebration was, named the number of guests, listed treats. In songs in the genre of koshma-salavatlama, Ashik sang about the wrestlers and the sport itself, encouraged the participants of the competition to fight and wished them victory.

Improvisation played a big role in Ashik creativity. Ashik's mastery of improvisational techniques was one of the main indicators of Ashik's skill level. However, songs created by pure improvisation, which have come down to us in small numbers, rarely occupied an important place in the permanent repertoire of ashik. Created only with the aim of surpassing the enemy, to give an immediate response to his challenge, such works for the most part did not have a high aesthetic value. At such events, according to Turkish scholars (M. Oguz, U. Gunay), poetic works were created that were weak from an artistic point of view, and ashyk often made mistakes in size or rhyme [Turk Halk Edebiyati, 2008, p. 260]. Thus, in Ashik art, unlike folklore, improvisation was not the main mechanism for updating the tradition.

Updating and enriching the tradition in Ashik poetry was carried out at the expense of songs that were composed by Ashik not during public performances, but in moments of solitude, which allowed him to carefully work on the song, hone its style, creatively vary the motives, engage in motive-making, search for new images, invent interesting rhymes. Such songs formed the main part of the repertoire baggage of the poet-singer. Compared to songs composed during competitions, the process of creating inspired or custom-made pieces took quite a long time. Moreover, as the Turkish researcher E. Artun points out, the song was refined even after the performance - ashik was constantly looking for new ways to improve his creation [Artun, 2008, p. 57].

Ashyk memorized the song he created by heart and tried to present it to the public in an unchanged form, regardless of the volume of the work. For example, the Turkish researcher of Ashik art O. Chobanoglu suggests that even destans are the most voluminous genre of Ashik art, especially those in which ashik narrated in full detail about a historical event, like the work "Pazvandoglu" by the poet-singer of the XVII century. Deruni, " although performed orally, in most cases were thought out by ashyk to the smallest detail, the poet-singer wrote down the work or

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I learned it by heart" [Cobanoglu, 2000, p. 182]. If ashyk used structural, content, and stylistic deviations in the performance of his song, they were mostly insignificant and did not result from a conscious desire of Ashyk to change the text, i.e. the role of improvisation in the performance of this kind of song was minimal.

Mostly such songs were recorded by fans of the Ashik art, less often by the poets themselves, in junks, which serve as the main source for compiling modern anthologies of Ashik songs. Junks usually consisted of medium-sized notebooks wrapped in a black cover (from 10 to 300 pages), which were kept by one (or several) compiler, whose name in most cases is unknown to us. The author of the notebook-S/son/si, apparently, also had an indication of the genre of the performed work (turkyu, koshma, sharky, ghazal, etc.), determined with varying degrees of accuracy (often erroneously). Each ashik tried to get his songs into the junks, as for the poet-singer, this meant recognition of his creative talent. As noted by the Turkish researcher D. Dilchin, at the fair of Chankyry, which in the XIX - early XX century was held a lot of performances of ashiks, merchants coming from all over the country not only sold goods, but also, writing in the form of a list of their own names.junks who liked Ashik songs passed them on to fans of Ashik art in other regions of the country, thereby multiplying the fame of ashik, who could then be invited to perform in different cities and villages [Dilcin, 1933, s. 9].

U. Gunay, E. Artun and others point out that the aesthetic significance of the Ashik song created in the "individual creative laboratory" is quite comparable to the best examples of sofa literature [Artun, 2008, p. 72; Gunay, 2008, p. 56]. "Ashik works created to a certain extent in the same way as works of written literature, that is, as a result of the solitude of the poet-singer, and presented to the audience in a complete form... They are distinguished by high aesthetic significance, originality and, in most cases, conveying feelings inherent in many, eventually become widely known and are included in the national song repertoire " [Günay, 2008, p. 57].

Indeed, the creation of a work of both divan and Ashik literature was due to the author's inspiration, supported by an impeccable knowledge of the previous Ashik and/or Divan traditions. Creativity and the "traditional element" interacted in Ashik and Divan literature in a similar way. Like divan literature, the specifics of the artistic system of which were determined by tradition and canonicity, Ashyk creativity with its inherent cult of predecessor masters, regular reference to samples of their work, constancy of themes, genres, plots, and stylistic means was a traditional art. Each ashyk aspired to individual isolation, which he could achieve by finding new combinations of elements of the tradition.

First of all, ashyk paid great attention to working with motives. All ashyks had at their disposal a common fund of motives and rules for their implementation. But only the most talented ashiks were able to offer new creative treatments of motifs, ways of decorating them. As in sofa poetry, in the art of ashyks, not the motive itself, but the method of its implementation, not the theme, but its verbal organization determined the singer's personality. For example, ashyk could "expand" the motif inside a quatrain or add another one to update the motif he liked, could compress the motif to one line, or completely exclude it from the song. The weak causal relationships between the hane quatrains in the songs allowed Ashyk to easily sort through the motifs that moved along a kaleidoscopic trajectory within the song. Ashik, wanting to focus on the favorite motif, could put it in the last two lines of the quatrains, which in the Ashik tradition carried the main semantic load, while the first two lines were used by him for " under-

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hoda " to the main idea. Giving a new interpretation of common motifs and images, ashyk offered the public a new model and consolidated his "copyright" by putting in the last quatrain, called the "sealing quatrain" (mühürhane), his pseudonym-mahlyas, like the divan poets who placed tahallus-a literary name - in the last "signature" bayt.

Poets and singers were subjected to creative processing not only individual motifs and images, but also entire works of their colleagues. As in divan literature, where the practice of writing nazire - "response verses" - became widespread, Ashik art also created "imitations" of other Ashik songs. The poet-singer acted not as a copyist of the text, but as a rival of another poet-singer. "Response songs" were composed during competitions between two ashiks in front of the public, as well as at the moment of creative solitude of the ashik, who thus entered into a timeless competition with his colleagues.

The fact that Ashyk's understanding of his own work and the work of other poets was expressed openly also indicates a highly developed individual author's beginning. In the works dedicated to other poets-singers, ashiks admired their work, for example, Ashik Kuloglu (XVII century), who called the gift of the poets-singers Kayykchy Kul Mustafa, Kyatibi and ashyk of the XVI century who worked with him at the same time" divine". Geda Muslu:

I am always ready to give my soul for you,
You raise a prayer to heaven, may heaven forgive my sins,
Kuloglu, Kayikchi, Kyatibi and Geda
They found the gift of speech at the behest of God [Ozdemir, 2011, p. 133].

In a number of Ashik villages, we encounter Ashik's attempts to comprehend his craft. For example, the 18th-century poet-singer Ashik Kamil in his song conveys to the audience that only the broken mizrab 3 during the saz game helped him realize the complexity of Ashik art:

I thought it would be easier to compose an Ashik song,
I thought it was so easy to play and sing,
I thought it was a very simple art,
But suddenly, when I was playing saz, my mizrab broke
[Ozdemir, 2011, s. 132].

Around the end of the 17th century, the ashyks critically interpreted the style of other ashyks, poets of Tekke literature (Sayyid Nesimi, Shah Khatai, Shemseddin Sivasi, etc.), as well as Divan Turkish (Fusuli, Nefi, Nejati, etc.) and Iranian masters of the word (Hafiz, Jami, Saadi, etc.) within the genre of sha'irnameh ("a treatise on poets"). Such works were created, for example, by Ashyk Omer (XVII century) , poets of the XIX century Bosnavi, Gubari, Suni, Shemi, Noxani, etc. Turkish researcher D. Kaya notes: "The sha'irnamahs are of great importance to us, because from them, even if not in the same volume as from the typologically close divan genre of shuar tezkiresi, we can get information about the poet, his homeland, the tariqa4 to which he belonged, physical and spiritual data, but most importantly, we can see how another poet evaluated his colleague" [Kaua, 1990, p. 6]. Ashyk Omer, for example, gives the following assessment of the work of two ashyks-Oxuz Dede (XVII c.) and Karadzhaoglan (XVI c.):

The words of Oxuz Ashyk are as sweet as honey.
And Karadjaoghlan is a poet of the old generation,
Its melodies are dull and sluggish,
We do not consider him a poet [Kaua, 1990, p. 7].

Mizrab is a type of plectrum used for playing a number of Azerbaijani, Iranian, and Indian stringed musical instruments. It is a ring with a "claw" protrusion for plucking the string.

Tariqa is a Sufi brotherhood.

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Ashik Bosnavi (XIX century) in his song makes the following remarks about the language of the songs of two famous poets-singers: "Ashik Omer became the Sultan of Egypt", "Gevheri is known as a master of eloquence", etc. According to D. Kaya, ashiks composed shirnam with different goals, for example, ashiks addressed the work to the next generations with the hope that the names of poets would not be forgotten, eased the soul in a difficult moment, remembering the unsweetened fate of their colleagues, or fulfilled someone's order [Kaua, 1990, p. 5]. Taking into account the position of the Turkish scholar, I believe that the Ashiks, while evaluating the work of their colleagues, comprehending various poetic traditions, still primarily sought to find their place in this way not only in the Ashik tradition, but also in poetry as a whole.

So, in the mechanism of creation and performance of songs by the ashyks, elements of two forms of literature - folklore and literature-are intertwined in a complex way. The deep internal connection of Ashik creativity with folklore is evidenced by the presence of such features as variability and improvisational nature. At the same time, each of these features, synthesized with the literary category of authorship, is modified and gets a specific, original expression. The complex combination of these heterogeneous elements gives rise to a qualitatively new cultural phenomenon, typologically different from both folklore and literature - Ashik poetry, which for almost seven centuries remained at the center of medieval Turkish culture, and having experienced a second birth at the beginning of the XX century, managed to occupy its niche in the cultural space of modern Turkey.

list of literature

Bogatyrev, P. G., the theory of folk art. M.: Iskusstvo, 1971.

Putilov B. N. Folklore and folk culture. St. Petersburg: Nauka Publ., 1994.

Artun Е. Asiklik Gelencgi ve Astk Edebiyati. Istanbul: Kitabcvi, 2008.

Çobanoglu Ö. Asik Tarzi Kültürü ve Destan Türü. Ankara: Akçag, 2000.

Dilçin D. Asik Tokath Nuri. Çankiri: Çankiri Matbaasi, 1933.

Günay U. Türkiye 'de Asik Tarzi Siir Gelenegi ve Rüya Molifi. Ankara: Akçag, 2008.

Kaya D. Sairnameler. Ankara: Halk Kültürünü Arastirma Daircsi Yayinlan, 1990.

Özdemir С. Asiklarin Dilinden Asiklik Gelenegi // Uluslararasi Sosyal Arastirmalar Dergisi. 2011. № 17.

Türk Halk Edebiyati. El Kitabi. Ankara: Grafiker Yayincilik, 2008.

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