Folklore Articulation of Different Shades of Loneliness in the Belarusian Tradition

The article is devoted to semantic and pragmatic parameters of solitude articulation (as an element of the opposition «loneliness-unity») and related ideas and feelings in different kinds and genres of Belarusian folklore. Loneliness is considered in interpersonal, socio-cultural and metaphysical dimensions. The given material demonstrates that folklore texts describing these dimensions of loneliness differ in genre, thematically, by the set of plots and the scale of the described events (from everyday incidents, more serious family misfortunes and traditionally prescribed rituals of «transition» of one of the collective members to emergency situations of local character and even cataclysms of ecumenical scale). But all of them, painting the possible experience of loneliness in certain tones and modeling it as an unnatural, forced modus of human existence under certain conditions or in the course of events that arose independently of the will of the person (destiny), in one way or another serve not only as an interpretative prism, but also as a «moral regulator» and a way to objectify the value attitude, codify, present and argue for moral and ethical norms that are significant for the stability of the rural (basically patriarchal) community and its culture. In this we see the main functional and pragmatic modus of the texts under consideration.