Lomonosov is one of the greatest Russian scientists who made a great contribution to science. The article describes the theory of "three calm" by Mikhail Vasilyevich.
What is Lomonosov’s “Three Calm” Theory?
A very significant contribution to the science of our language was made by Lomonosov. Important to this day remains its role in the formation of the literary language. The name of this great linguist is associated with a long period of formation of the Russian-language speech culture. He was also very concerned about verbal aesthetics. The Russian language, according to Mikhail Vasilievich, contains unlimited possibilities that successfully help him exert influence on all spheres of the national culture, such as, for example, art, science, literature. Nevertheless, paying tribute to the charm of his native language, the great linguist most soberly singled out those circumstances which, in his opinion, favored the formation of literary speech.
With his usual stubbornness, he also developed the idea of ​​the need to root in the literary language the values ​​acquired by him through a long historical development. The constant polemic with opponents of Church Slavism, who in every possible way denied the need for their integration in colloquial speech, prompted him to write the work “On the Use of Church Books in the Russian Language,” where he detailed the importance of using these words. This treatise, like Lomonosov’s “three calm” theory, was written in order to most clearly and fully convey to the people the need for these Church Slavonic sayings in the language of the great-power people, as well as to indicate their primordially close and kindred relationship to each other. And these works are relevant even after several centuries and are required to study.
On the theory of "three calm" in general terms
The essence of the theory of the three "calm" Lomonosov is impossible to explain in a nutshell. According to Mikhail Vasilyevich, each "calm" absorbed the already organized basis of speech means of expression, which, in turn, recorded a certain circle of fiction genres. Simply put, the genre in Lomonosov’s terminology turned out to be in such relation to “calm” in which there is a species in biology in relation to the genus. High "calm", for example, were written odes, poems about heroism, in which the exploits of the great Russian people, various solemn speeches, public speeches were sung. Moreover, this selection in three styles was carried out due to not only their ideological and thematic design, but also linguistic and stylistic, since, for example, for solemn sayings, speech means were selected in accordance with the content of the upcoming event.
Lomonosov’s “three calm” theory has a broader meaning than is considered in the contemporary style of the Russian language.
Consequently, literary genres for Mikhail Vasilievich carried a derivative of "calm" meaning and were assigned to each of them. In accordance with the foregoing, all established genres were concluded by him in three "calm" of oral and written creativity: high, medium (or, in other words, mediocre) and low. Below we consider in more detail what the meaning of the theory of “three calm” Lomonosov.
High calm
The high "calm" of Lomonosov was likened to the words and expressions with which ancient letters were written at one time. These words, surrounded by a halo of antiquity and elevation, contributed to the creation of a "magnificent" and noble syllable.
Lomonosov advocated the purity of Russian speech, trying to exclude from the language "dilapidated" words that lost their original significance. Therefore, when introducing the people of the Russian literary language, he tried to incorporate as many elevated elements of church-book culture into it as possible. In addition, along with Church Slavonic utterances, some archaisms used in Old Russian writing were also included in the high style. Lomonosov’s “three-calm” theory reveals just such a high, sublime literary style of the Russian language.
Low calm
The above “calm” Lomonosov exempts from Church Slavonic sayings, characterizing it by the use of already familiar common words. He writes songs, comedies, friendly letters, scripts and other literary genres.
Using the components of direct colloquial speech, Lomonosov created the “three calm” theory and thereby significantly expanded the boundaries of the literary language, enriching its stylistic order. At the same time, he focused on the fact that the use of “medium, mediocre sayings” is also characteristic of the low “calm”, thereby indicating the need to integrate vernacular with conventional means of speech.
Average (mediocre) "calm"
Lomonosov approached the formation of the middle "calm" quite loyally. In it, he allowed the use of the most diverse speech means, starting from highly solemn sayings and ending with the so-called "low-grade" words.
Its uniqueness lies primarily in the freedom and breadth of the use of words that are different in origin and stylistic design. Of the Church Slavonic sayings, only a few were admitted to it.
Relying on the skill of writers with respect to proper selection and combination of words, Mikhail Vasilyevich did not consider it necessary to leave any specific instructions regarding the vocabulary of the average "calm".
He only pointed out the importance of distinguishing between the words of Church Slavonic and common people.
The average "calm", characterized by a variety of speech means and the nature of the genres assigned to it, was subsequently recognized as very universal. Such appears before us the theory of "three calm", justified by Mikhail Vasilyevich.
"Three kinds of sayings"
Lomonosov M.V. He singled out “three kinds of sayings” in Russian, that is, three stylistically colored, speech layers that are not similar to each other.
The linguist referred to the first widely used and well-known words to the Slavic people.
The second layer of speech was literature, which was little used in everyday speech, but widely known to fiction writers and connoisseurs of archaic writing. Here mainly church words are found.
From this we can conclude that the theory of "three calm" Lomonosov was not ready to include in the literary language indiscriminately all the words found in church books.
A completely different lexical composition was confined to him by sayings of the third kind. Here, Church Slavonicism was no longer observed, but only words and expressions that have been known to the Russian people for centuries have been met.
Grammatical forms of "calm"
In addition to the lexical, the theory of "three calm" M.V. Lomonosov included for each of them grammatical forms already mentioned by him in the discussion of “Russian grammar”.
The complete and accurate picture of them is given by the works of M.V. Lomonosov, executed both high and low, and medium "calm".
The grammatical differentiation of their species was based primarily on the correlation of grammatical forms. In high, for example, few outdated forms of numerals have been preserved.
A distinctive feature of the high "calm" are also the participial forms, transformed mostly from book words.
Interjection verbs were the hallmark of the low.
High was also characterized by the use of a comparative degree of adjectives and a large number of exclamation sentences. That’s how the future of the language was seen by Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov, whose three-calm theory is still very popular to this day and sometimes causes controversy.
Finally
This concept entailed all kinds of friction, discussion and debate regarding the subsequent formation of Russian fiction. The theory of three "calm" Lomonosov prescribed a solution to the problems of the use of Slavism, prescribed in church books, as well as words originally known to the Russian people. In addition, Lomonosov created this theory in evidence that it is impossible to completely abandon the words of Old Slavic origin, because they are a valuable cultural heritage of the people.