ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a framework for understanding Ingrian lyric poetry that brings into focus the artistry and agenda of the genre, conceived as broadly and encompassingly as possible. It uses the Ingrian material, and Larin Paraske’s songs in particular, as indicative of the Baltic-Finnic lyric tradition as a whole. Kaukonen estimates that approximately one-eighth of the forty thousand lines which Lonnrot had at his disposal for creating his epic belonged to lyric songs. The stylistic devices within the song appear akin to those of the epic poems examined so far, although with certain modifications. An interplay of groupings of two and three pervades both recorded versions, which, although precisely the same length, vary in deployment of significant groupings. The singularity of the moment, in turn, heightens our sense of a single point of view, managed by the song’s unseen speaker.
