TWO VIEWS ON MONEY, POVERTY AND WEALTH: THE CENTURY WISDOM OF PROVERBS AND THE SKEPTICAL WIT OF ANTI-PROBERS

The paper deals with two chronological layers of Russian folk aphorisms — “classi cal” folklore proverbs of oral anonymous origin, known from records of the 19th century, and “post-folklore” aphorisms of written origin, which are parodic transformations of famous proverbs, catchwords or phraseological units, published mainly without indicat ing the author and called “anti-proverbs”. The characteristic features of the proverbial interpretation of the concepts ‘money’, ‘poverty’ and ‘wealth’ are as follows: 1) proverbs about money are didactic and, with rare exceptions, quite serious; they are like a chapter from a textbook of life, written from the standpoint of peasant common sense; 2) in the corpus of classical proverbs, the topic of money occupies a more modest place than in anti-proverbs, and the problems of poverty and wealth are not reduced to money; 3) the most clearly expressed idea of Russian proverbs about poverty-wealth, presented in se veral dozen proverbs, agrees with the Gospel parable about the talents: “... for to every one who has, more will be given and he will have abundance, but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away” (Matthew 25: 29). Unlike classical pro verbs, post-folklore aphorisms are mocking, skeptical and designed to elicit a knowing chuckle from a contemporary. The non-folklore comedy of anti-proverbs about money (grotesque, oxymoron, pun, alogism including absurdity, parody of clichéd phrases and phrases, etc.), as well as the common wit of anti-proverbs, help authors and readers find a balance between skepticism and an optimistic perception of the world.