OLONKHO
the Yakut Heroic Epos

(Detailed description as it was written in candidate application for the 3rd proclamation of masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of the humanity)

Linguistic Description
(Genre, authenticity and style)

Olonkho as heroic epos consisting of numerous legends about the deeds of ancient booturs (warriors) is considered the top amalgamation of the Yakut oral poetry. The researchers refer Olonkho to the most archaic types of epos. Some folklorists and epos researchers are of other opinion on the typology of Olonkho: "Epos of some Siberian and Far Eastern peoples is archaic only chronologically. As for the stage of development, Olonkho genre is not archa ic, and in many respects it is the most developed epos, which left behind the stages at which folklore-collectors found, for example, the epos of Eastern Europe or the Balkan region".

First of all, Olonkho is an art of word, word painting in direct meaning. It was the linguistic aspect of Olonkho that has been underlined by all Olonkho researchers, Olonkho lovers and linguists as the decisive factor since the time of Academician A.F. Middendorf (1840s).

The language and style of Olonkho (the epic language and grammar) can be described schematically as concentrated circles, with epic formulas pol ished and blessed by old tradition, commonplaces, and the epic language it self in the center. The general tendency of Olonkho language and style devel opment is the movement towards broadening this central part by dissolving and mobilizing new formulas and formula-like expressions from the peripher al parts of the general language fund. Olonkho performers and the perceptive epic environment consider this process as Olonkho ideal in its language ex pression. The epic language is enriched with alliterative sounds and assonanc es, synonymous and syntactic parrallelisms that ensure the poetic rhythm of Olonkho. In its best examples, Olonkho has minimal prosaic passages. Such are Olonkho aesthetic and communicative standards and Olonkho performers try to meet them. Here lies their honor and fame. But in the most cases of its oral tradition, the epic language does not reach its ideal glamour and perfection due to the immanent features of the speech formation process, spontaneity of performance, the necessity to observe the rapid tempo and other objec tive and subjective requirements. In reference to Olonkho written fixation, the famous Yakut folklore researcher G.M. Zakharov openly expressed the opin ion later widely accepted by many scholars: "The whole seemingly immense fund of Olonkho written texts presents only a part of Olonkho tradition as it existed among people, at least in the repertories of prominent Olonkho per formers. Regretfully, not a single complete written text was left behind them". In 1928 the same opinion was expressed by P. A. Oiunskyi, and he set a goal: "to describe the true language of Olonkho performer (olonhkohut tyla surulla ilik)". "Folklore songs and epos are the first stage of development of any nation.. .The Yakut Olonkho is broad and deep, its language is highly artistic. The Yakut Olonkho is an ancient, extremely rich and strong epos that has absorbed century - long thoughts, life experience and eposes of many peoples... The most valuable in Olonkho song is the power of its language, its figurativeness and colorfulness.. ."

Currently, we have the most complete written text of Olonkho "Juluruiar Nurgun Bootur" ("Nurgun Bootur the Impetuous") in 35000 lines, fixed by P.A. Oiunskyi. According to famous Yakut epos researchers, in Olonkho by Oiunskyi the poetics, style, traditional devices, archaic language, mythology and images are given unchanged as they are used traditionally. P.A. Oiunskyi fixed his version of Olonkho about Nurgun Bootur as it was practiced in live performance. This Olonkho belongs to the epic tradition and is a version of the traditional Olonkho. The following characteristics corroborate this:

•  There is nothing in Olonkho version by P.A. Oiunskyi that does not
occur in the traditional epos.

•  The ideal language form of Olonkho is a verse form that is the goal
every Olonkho performer tries to achieve.

It should be noted here that against the background of a mass and sophisti cated development of the song genre by people, in principle it is possible to give an Olonkho text a verse form. In oral performance Olonkho performers can allow prosaic passages that are not noticed by the performer and the public, as the poetics and artistic devices and other expressive means compensate for the prose "faults".

We may hypothesize that the traditional epic text "Juluruiar Nurgun Boo- tur" (Nurgun Bootur the Impetuous) by Oiunskyi by all parameters can be identified as authentic in its typical and natural expression.

Folklorists are confident that due to the ups and downs of the historical development, the pre-revolutionary mode of life of the Yakut "love for word art became the major passion of the Yakut", they "made folklore their nature, the main feature of their everyday life" (G.M. Vasiliev). The language of Yakut folklore admired by such folklore specialists as S.V. Yastremsky, E.K. Pekar- sky, A.E. Kulakovskyi, P.A. Oiunskyi stimulated a sort of live word cult, ad miration for a poetic work, interest in and love for poetry among people. "In Olonkho we enter the charming realm full of poetry and powerful colors. Olonkho can be strikingly powerful and passionate".

The folklore language was a sort of acknowledged standard, an ideal norm. Yakut folklorists (G.U. Ergis, G.M. Vasiliev) and linguists (L.N. Kharitonov, E.I. Ubryatova, N.E. Petrov) admit that the folklore language and first of all Olonkho language was the highly developed oral literary language of the Yakut. Such a status of Olonkho language determines its tremendous impact on the Yakut conversational language, its uniformity and the specific process of its norm formation. This impact implies the free use of numerous language devices versions, including the developed synonymy, aphoristic and formulaic elements, that were introduced into the general conversational language. Another pecu liarity of the Yakut conversational language is its broad range of emotional and expressive means, notably descriptive words inspired by folklore.

As it is accepted, the language and style of Olonkho texts present the per fect form of the developed, polished, and artistically arranged oral poetic speech of the Yakut people. We shall try to give brief general characteristics of Olonkho language, paying a special attention to the issues that shed light to its major features as a structural and functioning system.

From the linguistic point of view, the extensive use of lexical and phraseo logical resources and descriptive semantics of the Yakut language underlies the artistic means of Olonkho poetics. This is determined by the most ancient "accumulative" and descriptive way of the epic world and epic event description. The "accumulative" style, numerical incrementation of various attributes, epithets, simile chains, adjacent homogeneous constructions are perceived by the epic environment as aesthetic phenomenon of art with its own content and qual ity. In this respect, the epos epithet is of great interest for folklore linguistics. Attributive constructions make a predominant type of the semantic and syntac tic links of words in the Yakut folklore, notably in Olonkho. In Olonkho texts, almost all objects, including household goods, are given epithets, thus they are included in the epic environment and epic world. Epithets in Olonkhos have not only the most important descriptive function, but also the compositional one - they contribute to the genre formation. Olonkho epithets are extremely rich and diverse. In Olonkho "Nurgun Bootur" the Impetuous by Oiunskyi the epic sky is given more than 130 epithets ranging from one-word epithets to complex epithets including up to 17 elements, and more than 150 words contribute to the epithet formation. Due to such a description, the sky becomes one of the key epic objects. And the sky layers, visible and invisible, have their own epithet system. These epithets are not only simply descriptive, characterizing and poet ic, but also are full of mythological and symbolic implications.

In Olonkho language, the descriptive vocabulary is especially dense and it functions as one of the key descriptive means. The figurative semantics is so customary for Olonkho performers and the folklore environment that "vague places" in Olonkho texts are understood as sound complexes bearing the charge of definite images.

A spontaneous desire to most effectively use the artistic and descriptive potential of an ethnic language is realized in its epos. And an Olonkho per former obviously tries to meet aesthetic requirements and taste of his public. All this eventually contributes to fixation of the archaic type of the world vision based on visual images.

Let us now take a closer look at Olonkho language specific features:

•  Olonkho language formulas. Stereotype and typical formulaic elements
are justly believed to be the major and most universal feature of the oral folklore language. Thus, the whole tissue of narration in Olonkhos "Nurgun Boo tur" and "Kulun Kullustuur" is made of variations of epic formulas and for mula - like elements. It is characteristic that the main bulk of the formulas is used once, sometimes twice in the texts. Only individual key formulas such as "aiyy aimakhtara" ("relatives of the deities"), "kyun uluustara" ("the sun ul uses") are repeated several times. This shows an extremely rich fund of Olonkho formulas in general and a great lexical and phraseological diversity of Olonkho language.

•  Olonkho archaic words. Olonkho as the earliest epos form with its marked
mythological backbone is archaic in reference to its expressive and descrip tive means at all the language levels. But it would be an exaggeration to think that these archaisms are numerous and complicate perception by the public. Even nowadays, Olonkho performances arise a lively interest and reaction of the public. At the pre-revolutionary time Olonkho was perceived as a vivid, topical poetics. The issues of Olonkho archaic words, their function, role, and specific usage in a text are decisive in determination of Olonkho genesis and status. The so called "vague places" that have been identified since A.F. Middendorf and that are not clear, as many scholars believe, to Olonkho perform ers themselves make the main bulk of Olonkho archaic words in the strict sense.

Thorough and detailed study of archaisms, the so called "vague places" including proper names, would be of extreme importance not only for research of Olonkho genesis but also for the history of the Yakut language. On these "vague places" are reflected the ancient stages of the Yakut language and epos history.

The whole system of Olonkho expressive means is aimed at creation of "the elevated style of the heroic epos" (G.U. Ergis). Within this system, the "vague places" have the important and vividly-expressed function. G.U. Ergis calling Olonkho language "magnificent and majestic" linked this property with saturation of the text with "a great number of archaic words and expressions having fallen out of everyday use now and hardly comprehensible by Olonkho performers themselves".

3. Variability of Olonkho. The intrinsic feature of the folklore language is
its variability resulted from the variability of folklore works themselves as a
form of their existence. A great number of Olonkho words form a specific
class of folklore word versions that has not become the subject of a detailed
and specific research yet. So, the real nature and function of Olonkho have not
been specified yet. This sort of synonymous variability mostly defines the
specific semantics of the epos language. In a folklore text, within rhythmical -
syntactic parallelisms and long metric periods many words and word combinations become semantically similar and form a closely interconnected com plex semantic unities giving complete and comprehensive characteristics (im age) of the epic object.

It is believed that together with developed synonym systems of Olonkho language different versions of one and the same word are widely used and this process is caused by the laws of epic prosody. But in some Olonkho texts, contrary to expectations, the phonetic variants of the same word are rarely used to meet the requirements of rhythmic-syntactical and lexical parallel isms.

In Olonkhos, the so-called full pronunciation is used. In modern audio taped Olonkhos the reduced and contracted sounds common in everyday speech are very rare.

4. Dialectal Words in Olonkho Language. To assess dialectal words in
Olonkho language as the specific genre of the Yakut folklore, Olonkho texts taped in the dialect of the Kolyma group of the Yakut are representative. It is important to note here that the Kolyma Olonkhos are full of dialectal words, but their language is not identical to the Kolyma dialect, as the traditional Olonkho usually contains a lot of general folklore and epic formulas and also a number of words and expressions typical of the Central regions, but not characteristic of the conversational language of the Kolyma Yakuts. Some Olonkhos contain so many such words and forms that they may be taken for Olonkhos of the Central regions while their content is of the Northern origin.

Olonkho as the most valuable achievement of the Yakut culture that has the fundamental significance for development of all forms of professional arts of the Yakut people is currently winning the national recognition.

Olonkho genre is not only the national heritage of the Yakut people, but also one of the unique and original masterpieces of the world epics. Nowadays, this specific field of the world epic research - Olonkho studies has admittedly been developed by the efforts of several generations of folklore researchers starting with the early folklore -collectors and publishers (early XIX century).

At the beginning of the XXI century, the important tasks that can be achieved only by the united efforts of the world community of epos researchers and primarily by the new generations of highly professional Yakut epos-research ers are lying in front of us. The most urgent and important tasks of epos re search have been formulated by the prominent epos-researcher B.N. Putilov: "We should speak about epos as a specific system characterized by the pecu liar structure and language, i.e. by its own laws and means of expression of the artistic content, as well as its own poetic ideas and concepts. Any epic text can be read and comprehended in its real meaning only on the condition that the reader possesses a key to the epos, i.e. he or she knows the laws of the epic language, its structural principles, meanings of the repeated structural ele ments, etc. The epic language... includes the whole system of elements containing and expressing the epic meaning".

Unfortunately, such a fundamental task cannot be undertaken by the Yakut folklore researchers alone, united efforts of epos researchers from other coun tries are required. Schematic picture of Olonkho language and style (the epic language) in their interrelations with the everyday conversational language.

Thus, Olonkho as epic linguistic phenomenon has its own specific system, which is necessary not only for study, but for mastering it for reproduction of the epic language by young performers. It is impossible to render the oral narrative tradition without a mastering of a structural system of the epic poetic language. To master all arsenals of the epic poetic language it is necessary for young performers to discover the neurolinguistic channels in their brains as universal and peculiar linguistic modules, i.e. peculiar codes, connected with brain and memory of Olonkho performers. In the past epic Olonkho perform er was able to have this unique gift of language and singing. In this aspect there will be a lot of linguistic folkloristic researches with use of the modern technologies, working out the epic linguistic modules from the neurolinguis tic, psychological and methodical points of views in the future. Researches of the same level are necessary from the musicological point of view as well to study the phenomenon of the epic guttural singing kylyhakh in medical and biophysical aspects. Such researches can be done only with support of the experts of the world standards.

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