Russian Magic Tales

7/26/2019 Russian Magic Tales

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Russian Magic Talesfrom Pushkin to Platonov

Tra nslat ed by R OBE RT CHAND LERan d ELIZABE T H C H ANDLE R

with SIBE L AN FOR R ESTER , ANNA GUN IN

and OLGA MEE R S ON

Introduce d byRO B ER T CHAN D LER

with an A ppendi x by

S IB E L AN FO RRE STER


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PEN GUIN C LASSICS

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This collection first published in Penguin Classics ~OI 2

OO

Copyright for s tor ies by Bazhov The Bazhov estate, 2 01 2Copy right for S to ri es by Plaronov The Plaronov estate, 20 1 2

Cop yright for stories by Teff Mme Sz yolowski, 20 1 2Appendix and translation of stories by Khudya kov Sibelan Forres ter, 2 01 2


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In tr oduction

The hero has o ne clear, linear task. At t he end o f it lies hisrewar d, usually a prin cess. W hile acco mpli shing the t ask,he encounters variou s helpers, w hose g ifts or services areall palpably ma teri al. Helpers and obstacles appe ar fromnowhere a nd di sapp ear without a trace; a dark void opens

up on ei ther s ide of the narrow pa th of the plot. Whatever ison th at path, h owe ver, is lit u p in brilliant primary c olours:metallic reds, go lds, blue s. Throughout his trava ils th e hero


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x IN TROD UCT IO N IN TR O D UC T ION X l

the heroine is help ed by a doll ; in another Russian ver sion sheis helped by a cow; and in a wr itten vers ion from seventh-century C hina she is helped by a fis h. In different vers ions of'Bea uty and the Beast', the heroine marries a ser pent, a w hitebea r, a fal con and - in an English versio n recorded in t he189 0 S - 'a great, foul , small-to oth dog'. And w hat i s esse ntiallythe same tale can find a hom e fo r itse lf in a Wa lt Di sney fi lm, ina Russian peasa nt hut , with in the sop histicated frameworkof The Ara bian N ights , or in the nurseries o f well-br ought-u pVictorian c hildren .

This adaptabilit y, however, has o bscured o ur und erstandin gof these ta les. W hat h ave beco me by fa r the be st-known ver -sions are those derived from C harles Pe rrault 's Tales of MotherGoose, whic h was first published in 1697. It was Perrau lt whoestablished the fairy tal e as a literary genre an d he intended hisversions for the children of t he French uppe r and middl e classes.And in 181 2 the Brother s Gr imm chose to follow Perrault,entitling their fam ous collection Childr en's a nd H ouseholdTale s. The o ral magic t ale, however, is often violent, scato -logica l and sex ually explicit. It is pro bable tha t its ori gin l ies inarchaic rituals, that it was see n as endowe d with occult powerand that there wer e strict conditions as to w hen , where, howand by whom it could b e told . Such taboos s urvived longer inRussia than in most European cou ntries; according to theAmer ican sc holar Jac k Haney, many story tellers in the farnorth of E uropean Russia observed s trict taboos as late as the193 0 S; tales co uld be told only by men, to male a udiences , afterdark, and never durin g the main Or thodox fas ts. The under -lying reaso n for these taboos was t he be lief that spirits of al lkinds en joyed listenin g to tales. A t night a nd in wi nter, w hen apeasant 's an imals were safe ly sh ut up , spirits prese nted less ofa danger. W hen the anim als were o ut in the fields, however ,spiri ts might co me an d steal the m - and in spring and ear lysummer they m ight steal the animals' yo ung.' H aney's v iew isthat wome n storyte llers f irst appeared in Russ ia only in theear ly nineteent h cent u ry. This is impossib le to establish withcertainty, but Han ey's broader po int remai ns incontrove rtibl e:the tales were not to be told lightly .

Mag ic ta les are pe rhaps eas ier to recognize than to define .Mos t invo lve so me kind of qu est - often into the undergroundrealm of a dangero us witch; this may be like a ves tige of someshamanic ini tiation rite. Of ten the hero is a ble to achieve hisgoa l only thanks to the wisdom and p ract ical help pr ovided bybirds, f ish or o ther cre ature s whom he has helped ear lier in the

tale; this, too, is re mini scent of a shaman ca lling on h is sp irithelpers. So metimes t he hero is tra nsforme d from bird or ani -mal to hum an, or vice v ersa; sometimes he is c ut to pieces, thenput to gether again . Just as a ll initiat ion rites invo lve some kindof transfo rmation and/or symbolic d isme mberment, so do a llmagic tales.

One o f the first scholars to art iculate t hese u nderstandingswas t he Sovie t folklorist Vladimir Prop p, in his His toricalRoots of the Wo nder T ale (fir st publ ished as long ag o as 19 4 6but still n ot translated into Engli sh in full). Propp's view wasthat p articipants were prepa red for an initi ation ritual by beinggiven so me indication of what th ey were a bout to underg o. Theritual s eve ntually ceased to be p rac tised, but the accoun ts - ormetaphorical accou nts - of their content went on being told an deve ntually took on a life o f their ow n, as 'mag ic tales'. Pro pp'stheo ries may, of co urse, be too absolute, a nd th ere is no reasonto suppose that all magic tale s have t he same orig in . Neverthe -less, it is not diffic ult to see that ma ny magic tales do in deedreflect tra ditiona l rites o f passage . A clear examp le from thepresen t volume is 'Mis hka the Bear a nd Mys hka the Mo use'. Agirl is sent out i nto the forest by a cr uel stepmother. S he isrequired to play blindman's bluff w ith a mur derous bear; amouse, howe ver, ta kes the girl's place, leaping aro und the hutfrom benc h to floor a nd b ack up on to the benc h agai n. Eve ntu-a lly the bear adm its defeat and rewards the girl . This motif isreminiscent of t he 'searc h for the bride' t hat, in som e regionsof Russia, st ill remains a part of peasant wedd ings. It c lose lyparallels an a nony mous account of a mid nineteent h-centu rypeasant we dding: 'The guests began to chant to the br ide, Donot go, o ur child ; do not go, our dear Ann ushka, along yourfather's be nches; do not leap, do not leap; don 't play a boutI . .. ]; jump, ju mp in to your [wedding ] tuni c. To whi ch the


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X II INTROD UC TIO N t NTROD U CT IO N X l ll

bride replied , If I want to, I' ll jump; if I don't, I won't . 6 Andin some par ts of Russia the groom a nd bride were k nown as'the he -bear' and 'the she -bear'.

'The Tsarevna w ho wo uld n ot -Laugh' affords a st ill morestriki ng examp le of t he link between the mag ic ta le and arc haicritua ls. A fanasyev's version (p. 70 begins w ith the t sarevna s it-ting miserably in her ro om, u nable to l augh or take any joy inlife. H er father p romises her in m arria ge to whoeve r first makesher laugh. A peasa nt has been wor king hard for thr ee years,maki ng his master's crops grow a nd his an imals multi ply eve nin the most unprop itious con ditions . Whi le on his way to thecity, this peasan t shows kindness to a mo use, a beetle and a ca t-fish. H e then fal ls down in t he mud outside t he tsar 's pa lace .The t hree creat ures app ear a nd express their gratitu de to himby cleaning him up. The tsarevn a sees a ll thi s from her w indowand laugh s. A r ival tries to take the c redit for her laughter, b utthe tsarevna points to th e peas ant and says that it was he whomade he r laugh. The t sarevna then marri es the peasant. Pro pprelates thi s ta le to the Eleusinian m ysteries and th e myth ofDemet er, one of w hose titles was ' the unlaughing one' (age las-tos). Citing evide nce from many di fferent cultures , he es tablishestha t laughter was o nce credi ted with the power to evoke lifeand - after the beginnin g of agr icultu re - with th e power tobrin g fertil ity to c rops. Then he summ arizes the story of howDeme ter, in mo urnin g for her lost daughter , subjected the ear th

to months o f famine. The fam ine e nded only w hen an oldwoman by the name of Baubo lifted h er sk irt and e xpose d her-self to Deme ter; this made Deme ter lau gh - and th e ear th th enregai ned h er fer tility. Deme ter and Afanasyev's tsarev na areevidentl y one and the same figure ; the tsarev na must be madeto laugh in order fo r the crops t o grow.

In th e same c onte xt, Propp di scusses a nother tale (notincl uded here) in which the tsar promises his daughter not towho ever can make her laugh, but to whoeve r can say w hatbirthmar ks she has on her body. A peasa nt with m irac ulous

power over animals (in a ver sion publi shed in 1 9 15 by D mitryZelenin he is accompanied by da ncing pigs, while in 'TheHerder of Hares' (p. 304) he has power over hares ) sells her three

of his animal s on condi tion she ex pose her self to him. He thent .lls the tsar that his da ughter has a go lden hair to the right ofh r groin and a birt hmark un der her rig ht breas t. The peasan tdi credits an a ristocratic rival by tr icking him in to smear inghimself with h is own s hit, then marr ies the tsarevna. T he Dem -ctcr myth and th e two Russia n tales are evidently diff erent11 rrangement s of th e same co nstituent elemen ts. The asso ciationof hares w ith fertility is univ ersal and, since Baubo w as marriedro a swineherd , the dancing pi gs are no less c lose ly linked to the h me o f Demet er and the earth 's fertil ity, And there i s, of.ourse, no fertili ty w ithout m anure. In Afanasyev's tale it is theh 1 0 who fa lls into the mud , wh ile in Z elenin's it is the hero'srival who ends up smeared wit h shit. As so often , what isimpor tant in a magic tale is the presen ce of a part icular motif;which characte r is ass ociated with it seem s to be of o nly seco nd-:t ry importance .

In R ussia, Propp is best k now n for his Historical Ro ots oftlie Wo nder Tal e. In the English-spea king world, how ever , he ish .st known for an earlier study, The Morpho logy o f the Folk-ta le. At first gla nce, this almos t-mathemati cal analysis of thesrructure of ma gic tales may see m like the work o f a differentwriter. These two st udies, howeve r, were originally conc eivedus a single book , and there is a clear link betwee n them. In TheMorp holog y of the Fo lktale, Propp establishes that all m agicru le s share a comm on structure ; only then can he go on, in His-tor ica l Roots of th e Wonder Ta le, to show h ow this commonstruc ture mirror s the s tructure of in itia tion rites. Pro pp him self11:l prov ided the best s umm ary of his und erstandings and howh ' firs t came to them :

In a series of won der tales about th e pe rsecut ed stepdaught er Inoted an interesting fa ct: in 'Jack Fros t' [p. 300 ] the old womansends he r stepd aughter into th e fores t to Jack Frost . He tries tofreeze her to death, but she speaks to him so sweet ly an d so hu m-bly that he spares her, gives her a reward, and l ets her go . The oldwoman's daughter, however, f ails the test and p erishes, In ano therrale the stepdaught er enco unters not Jack Frost but a forest sp irit,in still another , a bear. But sur ely it is the same tale Jack F rost,


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X IV INTRODUCT ION

the forest sp irit an d the bear test the stepdaughter and rewar d hereach in his own way, b ut the plot does not c hange. [ ... J To Afa-nasyev, these were diffe rent tales because they con tained di ffe rentcharacters. To me they we re identical because the ac tions of t hecharacters were the same. [ ... J I devised a very simpl e methodof analyzing wond er tales in accordance w ith th e characters'actions - regar dless of the shap e these a ctions took. To des ignatethese actions I adopted the term 'function s'. [ ... J I t turned out[ Jthat all wonder ta le plots co nsisted of identical functionsand had id entical structure s.

Soviet folklorists co llected a vast number of tales and m adea sti ll und erva lued con tributi on to our historical understandi ngof them, but they said l ittle abo ut why these tales should stillhold our i nteres t. In Europe an d the Un ited Sta tes, however, agreat dea l has been w ritten about th e psycho logical and m ora ltruths concea led in these se emingly pri mit ive tales. Car l Jungand h is co lleag ue Mar ie-Lou ise von Fra nz look on m agic talesas i llustratio ns of universal patterns of psycho logical ma tur-ation and the obstac les that stand in its way. O ften they seethese t ales a s expr essing values, o r giv ing a place to i mages,that are c ompensa tory to the dom inant values an d imag es of aparticular culture; they see the image of the fo lktale witch, forexamp le, as a necessa ry balance to the image of the VirginMary. T he Freudian analyst Bruno Bettel heim, in The U ses o fEnchantmen t, also sees magic tales as illu strat ing uni versal pat-terns, tho ugh he foc uses more ex clusive ly on the transitions ofchildhoo d and adolesce nce. These psy cholog ical approac hes tothe magic ta le comp lemen t - but do not i n any way con trad ict-Propp 's historical and structural analyses. J ung did n ot havethe opportunity to read Propp, b ut he wou ld have val uedPropp's e labora tion of the pa rallels betwee n m agic tales andarchaic ri tuals; he himself saw both tales a nd ritua ls - alongwith dreams, alc hemical texts and acco unts of re ligious prac -tices o f every kind - as a g uide to t he innermos t structure of th epsyche.

The magic ta le usua lly says little or nothing about the e mo-tions exp erienced by a hero or heroine; s ituations and actions

INT R O D UCT IONX V

are left to speak for themselves. It is, no do ubt, frightening tobe .app roac hed in the forest by Jack Fros t, but the storyte ller'sre ti cence leaves t he liste ner or reade r free to sense this fear asmuch or as little as t hey choose . This is part of w hat lends thesetales so universal an appea l. Eve ry tra nsition in life - fromchildho od to ado lescence, from ad olescence to adultho odfrom being single to being married - i s frigh tenin g. T he magictale speaks of the se transitions succin ctly, v ividly and in alang uage t hat can be unders tood by a ll of us.

It is ge nera lly thought that the magic tale d id not f ully acqu ireIts prese nt shape until the early m edieva l period. Never thelessomething si mila r to t he European oral magic tale can be found

i~ many of the ear liest works o f written literat ure, and i n manydifferent p arts of the wor ld. Versi ons o f sever al of the ta les inthis co llection can be found in the Ma habharata, the Sanskri tpic from ancient In dia. The ear liest wri tten vers ion o f 'Bea uty

and the Beast' - the s tory of Amo r and Psyche - is included inApuleius's The Go lden Ass, written in Latin in the second cen-tury of the Com mon Era. In these and s imilar ins tances t hereis little doubt that the writ ten tex t draws on an earlier oralv rsio n. It is eq ually clear, however, that the wri tten text t henillf luenced s ubsequent oral vers ions . Since literature was firstwrit ten dow n, there has a lways been interplay between writtenmd ora l tex ts.

The magic tale, as we have see n, is re mar kab le both for its,~1:1bility a nd for its fluidit y. T he ce ntral plots of most tales _what fo lklorists re fer to as 't he tale-type' - vary li ttle fromc ountry to country. What changes ar e the surface details theways in whic h th e tales reflect differe nt social, climatic' and ,,~oraphical rea lities. There are also differences of emphasis.I h . mag ic tales of a ll European countr ies, for example, inc ludeII IlIgCroUSwitches, b ut the image of Baba Yaga - the arc he-I pn I Russian w itch - is espec ially vivid and wel l deve loped .1\ il, ; ) Yaga appears in many of the s tories in t his co llectio n andIIii Amer ican sc holar Sibe lan F orrester d iscusses her at lengthiii nn article we have included as an appendix. '?

I h Russian magic ta le stands ou t in at least one o ther respect.


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XV IIN TR ODUCT IO N

Russia's vast ness and h er backwardn ess co mpar ed with otherEuropean countries, meant th at the re was a m uch longer p~ri odduring which it was possible fo r folkl oris ts to study a re lativelyintac t peasant culture . In many E uropean ~o~nt~I es, sc holarsbegan recordin g folklore only after indu stn.ahzatlOn was we llunder way ; in Russia , by contrast, an ent ire centur y passedbetween Pu shkin's f irst tran scription s of folktal es and theassault on th e peasantr y constituted b y Stalin 's collec tivizat ionof agricult ure. We cann ot be ce rtain h ow folktale s were t oldfour o r five hundred years ago, but we do know that they w ereenjoyed by me mber s of a ll socia l classes unti .l the late eight-eenth centu ry. And we have r eliabl e and deta iled acco unts o fthe social setting in which tales we re told in the north of E uro-pean Russia in the late nineteenth and ear ly twentieth c en~u ries.Here, for exa mpl e, is an acco unt b y the brother s Bo ns a~dYur y Sokolov of what th ey c all 'the lo cal condition s of the lifeof the tale' i n the Belo zers k region in 19 0 8 -9:

Here th e tale lives a full life. [ . .. The deve lopment and lifeof th e tale in the places w here we were co llectin g is great lyinflu ence d by t he natur e of the peasa nts' work. F irst, there is treefellin g: o ften a n entir e vi llage - men , women a nd child ren - isgathered toget her deep in the for est, in winter a nd far from anyhabit ation. T he day is taken up b y heavy wo rk b ut, as soon as Itturns dark, eve ryone enjoys a well- earned rest by a blazinghearth . There in the fores t they have constructed a 'cam p'; that is,a spa cious hut d ug int o the earth wi th a heart h in th e middle.Everyone crow ds inside. And once the y have wa rmed th eir froz enlimb s and sat isfied th eir hun ger and thirst, they begin to w hileaway the long winter eve nin g. How g lad they a re th en to see thestoryte ller Deep i n th e forest, a mid trees letting out loud cracksin th e ext reme co ld, to the accom panim ent of the howls of wo lvesand beside a blazing fire - w hat more appro priate se tting, whatricher soi l cou ld there be for a magic tale fi lled with ever y poss ibleterror [ ... 1 Then comes the jester, the teller of fu nny stories.

Witticisms and mock ing jibes pour out as if from a horn of p lenty.The entire a udience is attuned to joy an d merr iment. An unb rokenstream of enthu siastic exclamation s enco urages the jester in his

IN TRODUCT IO N XV II

merr y wit. Had it been possib le to write down the ta les wi th abso -lute stenog raphic exac titu de, recor ding on p aper every exclam-ation from th e publ ic, there is no do ubt that o ur transc ript s wou ldcreate a far livelier and fr esher impr ess ion. [ ... 1

Just as 'col lective ' life in th e fores t camp creates s uppor tivecon diti ons for th e life of the f olktal e, so do es fis hing in th eregion's lakes. The fis hermen go ou t onto the se lakes for longperiods of t im e. Af ter they h ave cas t their nets, or whi le the y arewaiting for a f ollowing w ind , they of ten h ave to sit through longhours of f orced i nact ivity - and th is makes them par ticularly we lldisposed towards stor ytellers. There was an occas ion wh en th efishermen took advantage of our p rese nce. They joined us in th ehut where w e were reco rdin g tales, listen ed to the differe nt story-tellers and th en concluded a kind of bargain with th e telle r theyliked mo st, promi sing him a certain proportion of the ca tch if h ewould g o out onto the lake with th em.

Yet ano ther sup por tive envi ronment for st ories o f every kin dis the mill- a peculiar kind of rur al club. L arge numb ers of pea s-ants ga ther there and sometim es they have to spe nd se veral da ysthere as they wa it for their tu rn. Here too there is no b etter wayto while away the t ime than telling tales . The d iffusion of tales isalso great ly helped b y people who have to trave l from place toplace in the cou rse of their work , peop le who have the op portu n-ity to see a g reat deal and to li sten a gre at deal- peop le like 'icondaubers ', tailors, so ldiers, begga rs and o ther wanderers .

R lI sian high culture, at lea st from the late eighteent h century,11:15 been as sophistica ted as that of any c ountry i n Europe .Until rece ntly, however, most of the in habita nts of Russia wereP .asants - and until the ema ncipation o f the se rfs in 1861 theI',overnment's intermittent mo ves towards mod erniza tion hadluircly affec ted the ir way of life. T he impe rial capita l, St Peter s-I l l rg, was an island of avowedly Wes tern culture s urroundedh a wor ld as Asia n as it was E uropean . Eve n the most Western - rj .nted of nineteent h-cen tury Russian wr iters coul d not helphil i ' be more fami liar w ith folk ways and fo lk literat ure thanI Ii ir contemporar ies in ot her parts of E urope. It is, indeed,111 1 .n difficult to understand much of Russian literature without


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xv iii INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION XI X

some kno wledge of folklore. F Because, in Russia, there hasa lways been such a cl ose link between the written and o raltra d it ions, we have inclu d ed in this volume not only trans la -t ions of anonymous magic tales, as recorded by a number ofnineteenth- and twentieth -century folklorists, but a lso vers ionsof t h ese mag ic tales by fo u r great Russian w riters : Aleksandr

P ush k in, Nadezh d a T eff i, Pavel Bazhov and Andrey P latonov .Andrey Pl atonov once described A leksandr Pushki n as being

one of a very few writers endowed wi th the ab ili ty to en richand i n for m a popular folkta le w ith the power of [his] own cre-a tivity and e n d o w it w ith the def initive , i dea l combination ofmeaning and form tha t wil l a llow this tale to cont inue to e x istfor a long time or forever . My aim has bee n to in c lude o n lythose lite rary rete ll ings to which these words seem appl icable .Lev T o lstoy s ver s ions are omitted because they are moralfables rather than magic tales . have omitted Ale k sey T ols toy swe ll -know n ve rsions from the mid 194 0 S because they aren o mo re t h a n com p ete n t paraphrases of A fanasyev; AlekseyTolstoy h a s not informed them w ith the powe r of his own c re -a tivity . hesitated fo r longer over Boris Shergin . T he baroqueene rgy of h is language is attractive, but in the endI came to feelthat it is a surface over lay ; he has not, like Platonov, ente redd eep i n to t h e hear t of a t raditio n an d t h en c reated afre sh.

have omitte d P yotr Yershov and M arina Tsvetaeva fo r a d iffer -ent reason ; thei r-verse tales are so brilliant that they seem

all -but imposs ible to transl a te .P L astly ,

have exclude d litera ryfairy tales with l itt le r e lation to the folk tradit ion ; th is meantomitting P ogorel sky from the nineteenth cen tury and manyim p ortan t representatives o f R ussia s Silver Age .

As for the oral tales, reading a ll th e p u blishe d R ussian col -lectio ns mig h t take fi v e years, a nd r eadi ng a ll th e ar ch ivalm aterial - a life ti me. And the more one reads, t h e harder thetas k of selection . An element of ra n domness seems inescapab le .All can say is th a t have list en ed out for the vivid image , thef lash of wit , o r the compel li ng rhythmic structure tha t can

make one vers ion of a well -known story more memora b le thananother . havetried to g ivea s enseboth of thevari e ty of differenttale - types and of the no less remarkable var iety that can often

befound w ithin a s ingle ta le -type . And h ave inc luded as muchmaterial as poss ib le that a ll ows us a glim p se of t h e in d ividual -ity of the storyte ll ers .

To the be st of our a b il ity, m y co -tran sla tors and h ave trans -lated accurately . W h en wehavetaken liber ties w ith the m eaningin order to re p ro d uce a rhyme , we h ave i n cluded a literal trans -la tio n in th e n otes . W ehave kept the l anguage clear, co lloqu ia land ene rgetic, but we have n o t tr ied to repro du ce the p easantdialect of many of t h e o rig in a ls ; conte mp or a ry En g lish is toofa r remove d from any p easant culture fo r th is to be po ss ible .W e have not irone d o u t the logical h icc up s o r su dden jum psth a t are typ ica l o f oral s to rytelling . No r have we i m p o se d a n yfa lse stylistic c o n s is te n cy ; th e ta le s w ere to ld by m an y di ffere n ttel ler s to several different co llectors , each of who m tri ed in hi so r her own w a y to reproduce th e ir tone a nd r hy thms . An d the

tal es were recorded o ver a lo ng pe r io d - fro m th e ea r ly n ine -teen th centu ry to the m iddle of t h e twentiet h ce n tu ry - d ur ingwh ic h two somewhat con tradictory tenden ci es were at work ;fol k tradition s were dying out , b ut fo lkl orists were b ei n g evermo re p recise in their ways o f recording th em.

am gratefu l to Si be lan F o rr es ter for all o w ing m e to inclu d ean ab ridged versio n o f her a rtic le about B ab a Ya ga . T he c om -pl e te ve rsion i s inc lud ed in Baba Yaga : The Wild Witch of theEast in Russian Folklore . And am especia lly g ra teful t o J ackI Jane y for h is generous h e lp and en lightening c o rrespondence .

R ea d ers in sea rch of a mor e comprehens ive collectio n o f R u s-s ian o ra l fo lktales s h ould tu rn at o nc e to his seven -vo lumeCo mplete Russian Folktale .

R o b ert Chand ler , J uly 2 0 1I

NOTES

I h l A-T numbers re fer to the comp rehensive index of folkta les begunh the Finnish f olklorist Antti Aarn e and fur ther developed by Stit h

'I'homps on. The standar d Russian i ndex, the Comparative In dex of /~III 's: The Ea st Slav ic Tale (Bar ag et aI ., I979 , often referr ed to asS I IS :1 her the initial le tters o f its R ussian t itle, us es the same numbers.


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L EK S ND R

SERGEYEVI H PUSHKIN

Aleksandr Push kin composed the firs t significant works in a

great variety o f literary genres. He was also the first Russianpoet to pay serious attention to the folktale or skazka .

Ou r first clear e vidence of Pushk in's interest in folklore isfrom his per iod in exil e in Mikhai lovskoye, his mother's family's tate in nort hern Russia . The person he saw m ost during these

two years o f isolation was Arina Rodionovna, a household ser fwho had on ce be en his nu rs e and who always remained some -thing of a mother to him In I82 4 in a let ter to his broth er Lev


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6 ALEKSANDR SE RGEYEV ICH PUSHKIN

not a lways en ough to convey its power and v ita lity. As if tocompensate for the loss of the immediacy o f living speech, hecomposed al l his own skazki in verse, and their rhythmic energyis one o f their mos t striking fea tures. Pu shkin' s skazk i (the Rus -sian word can be a ppli ed both to true folkta les and to literaryadapta tions) ha ve a lways been popu lar w ith children , andillustrated edi tions continue to be pub lished in large prmt -runs. They have a lso i nspi red paintings and pr ovided libre ttosfor operas. Rims ky-Korsakov composed operas based on 'TheTale o f Tsar Sal tan' and 'The Go lden Cockerel' , and Shost ako-vich wrote the mu sic for a never-completed car toon film basedon 'A Tale about a Priest and his Servant Balda' .

Pushkin seldom, i f ever , rep eats himse lf, and his six skazk i dif-fer greatly from one another. For this col lection I have chosen thetwo tha t are mo st obv ious ly Russian in both sty le and content. 'ATal e about a P riest and his Servant Balda' i s ba sed on one o f thetales Pu shkin recorded from Arina Rodionovn a. The de ftne ss ,with which he re pro duces folktale rhythm s, ima ges and turns ofphrase is remarkable; many of hi s most brillian t inventions ar enow o ften taken for genuine traditional sayings . Pu shkin wrot ethis skazka in September 830 , during the fir st of his astonish -ingly creative 'Boldino autumns ', when he was con fined - becauseof quarantine re str ictions due to a cho ler a epidemic - to. hisfather 's remote estate in southeas tern Russia. Only the prevlOu~day he had wr itten the short poem 'Demons ' - the vision o f euil

from which Dostoevs ky took the ti tle of one o f his greatest nov -els. It is clear from Pushkin's manuscript th a t 'Demons ' was firstconceived a s someth ing lighter and more comic; a da rker v ision -of swarms of snow flakes as swarms o f demons - seems to hav eimpo sed itself on him almost against his will . 'A Ta le about aPriestand hisServant Balda ' seems to have been Pushkin 's counter -spell , an attempt to laugh o ff this dark vision, to ridicu le theseterri fying demons. S ome lines from the manu script o f 'Demons '(e.g. the des crip tion of the 'devil let' as mewing like a hungry ktt -ten ) ended up a lmost unchanged in the skazka.:'

'A Tale ab out a Fi sherman and a F ish' was written threeyear s later, in O ctober I833 during the secon d of Pu shkin's'Boldino autumn s'. Pu shkin's immediate sourc e was the Brothers

ALEKSANDR SERGEYEVICH PU SHKIN 7

lrimm but this would be hard to gue ss. Not only do therhythm s and images seem com pletely Russian , but the ta le al sor flec ts Pushkin's concern wi th Russian hi story. Pushkin 's gr eat -est achievement o f these month s wa s the narra tive poem ' TheItro nze Horseman' , which i s devo ted to the figure o f Pe ter theCre a t; but he a lso wrote severa l works re lating to Cat herineIlle Great. A s well as compo sing the whole o f his short s tory'The Queen o f Spades' , whic h inc lude s reminiscences o f herre i n, he comp leted the fina l dra ft of 'A History o f Pugachov' , aI j torical account of a peasan t and Cossack rebe llion that Cath -rrine managed to suppress on ly with grea t difficulty . 'A Taleabout a Fisherman and a Fi sh' also - though less obviou sly -br longs to this cy cle of works about Catherine the G reat.

The tale 's hidd en meani ng is revealed by what appear s a t firs tIII he no more than a care less sl ip. It seem s odd that Pus hkin's

/Ild woman should co nsider r uling over the sea as a higher des -III t han t hat o f being 'a m igh ty tsar itsa' . Catherine t he G rea t,hcuueuer, wa s eag er to rule over the Black Sea ; betwe en I 7 681/1It I 792 she fought two w ars against Turkey in o rder toIII/Ii ve this ambition . And Cat herine , like Pu shkin 's old woma n, tit usurped her husband's p lace, having deposed her husbandI / Il r III in I 7 62 before the se wars. In rea lity Catherine wasvrurr ous to her favourite Prince Pot yomkin and her subsequentIIIIII / but Pushkin eviden tly saw her as having treated her maleIJ I (lllr itesabusive ly - as t he old woman doe s in this skazka . In

1 111 aptain 's Daughter (most o f which was written tw o toIIr /l'l'ye a rs later) Pushkin presen ts a positive pic ture o f Cather -1 / 1 , but in his historic a l works he is extreme ly critical.

II S 'ems like ly that folkta les and folk poetry were im por tan tII I i'u shhin above al l for their languag e. In his 'Refutation s ofI 1/1 ir ism', for example, Pu shkin wrote , 'The study o f old

11 1f,1:S, ta les, etc ., is essentia l for a complete know ledge o f the11,1 /III'II/a r qualities o f the Ru ssian language . Our c r itic s a re11 111 /1,1: to despise these work s. 5 Pushkin's very greate st ere -11 1 1 1 1/ tuas that o f a literary languag e capable of giving exp ressi on( ,//1 r 'a lms of human though t and experi ence. E sta blishing a{I 1 / 111Irt. ea sy relationship with the l anguage of the pe asantry11 / 1111 important step toward~ this ach ievement.


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LEKS NDR F N SYEV

'I'f)e Bro thers Grim m published their famou s co llection o f

( : trrnan ta les in 8 I 2 . The first person to sugges t tha t Russian[ultu ales migh t a lso b e wor th recor ding was the po et Vasi ly / ,1 ukovsky; in r8 r6 he wr ote to his three nieces Anna, Avdot -Iv an d Yekat er ina, ask ing, 'Cou ld you not collec t for meRnssian ta les and Russian le gend s, which is to say , get o ur vi l-

M storyt ellers to tell stori es to you an d write down their t a les.I uin t laug h T his is our natio na l poe try ... would lik e forVUII ea ch to t ake two not ebooks and in one write d own the


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ALEK SANDR AFANAS YEV

and then studied law a t Moscow Univer sity. After completinghis studies, he w orked brie fly as a schoolteac her , bu t is said tohave been unable to enforce discip line. From I849 un til I862he worked as an arc hivist in the Minis try o f F oreign A ffairs.This a llowed h im enoug h leisure to wri te numerou s artic lesabout Russian history and literature and - above a ll - Russian

folklore . He was eviden tly determined and energe tic, and hehad an exce llent know ledge of a large number o f European

languages . 2

Although Afanasyev himsel f collected only about ten ta lesfirst -hand, he gradua lly built up a co llection o f wel l over athousand Russian folktales. Around a third o f these werepassed on to him by t he Russian Geographical Society, whichhad been collect ing folkta les since I8 47. Ot her t al es were con -tributed by the ethnolo gist and lexicographer V lad imir Dal',and still mo re - as we h ave seen - were g iven to him by PyotrKireyevsky, the c hief au thorit y on Rus sian folklore d ur ing theyears when Afan as yev was firs t beginning to pu blish . Kireyev skyhad collected a larg e number of songs and tale s but had pub -

lished li ttle himselfLike many subsequent Russian folklori sts, Afana syev suf -

fered at the hands o f the authorities . The repressive nature ofRussian pub lic li fe lent a particular urgency and even danger towhat in other countries might have been an apolitica l enter -prise. The main problem for Afanasyev was that most fo lktales

portray the clergy critically or even mockingly . Afanasyev wasrelatively fortunate with his Russian Folk Legends ( I859) ,which was banned only in I860, a fter it had already so ld out ,but the page proo fs of the fifth and sixth fa scic les o f his Russia nFolktales, which he received in I86I , were - in his words -


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30 ALEK SANDR AFA NAS YEV

in Pu sh ki n's well -known v ers ion; A fanasy ev makes a conv in-cing case for Ba lda being an incarna tion o f an an cient thund ergod - a god ha lf-pres erved and h a lf-for go tten in the memor y ofthe people.

In I870 A fanasyev pub lished a col lect ion o f sixty-one of hisfolkt a les, omitting di a lect words and m ateri a l he thought

unsuit able for children, und er th e title Russian Children 's Tale s.Though ev en this coll ec tion was crit ic i zed b ecaus e of the sup -posed i mmorality o f the tale s' many tr ickster h eroes , it has a lway sbeen pop ular . Ma ny of the finest nin eteenth- and tw entieth -cen tury Russian ar tists have illustra ted i t, and it has beenre printed ma ny times. Afana syev wa s a lso w or king a t thi s timeon a sec ond, ann otated edition o f his Russian Folktal es, butthis was published o nly post humou sly.

In I8 70 Afana syev wa s diagno sed with tubercu los is -poverty had undermined his hea lth - an d he died in 87 In a

lette r to the poet Afanas y Fet , the novelist Ivan Turge nev wrot e,'Afanasyev d ied recent ly, from hunger , but his li terary meri ts,my dear friend , will be remem bered long aft er b oth yours andmine ar e covered by the dark o f ob livion.

Afana syev was a pio neer, and an editor of genius. Manyimportant co llect ions o f Russian folkta les were publi shed dur -ing th e hundred years a fter his d ea th, but none has won su chpopular ity. Afana syev's particu lar gi ft was h is blend of prag -matic good sense an d a n intuitiv e sympathy with his ma ter ial ,a kind o f lite rary tact. Little of his arc hive has surv ived, but itis clear that, for the ma in par t, he followed some kind o f mid-dle path. It wou ld, in any ca se, have been difficult for Afana syevto a dhere t o any mor e rigor ous method ology, since the tex ts hereceived came from a var iety of differ en t sour ces and h ad b eentra nscri bed w ith varying degrees o f fide lity. He a lso appears t ohave re cogn ized th at mu ch of the c harm of folkta les lies in theirvari ety; unlike the Brothers Grimm, he did not att empt to com-bine di ffere nt var iants into a sing le 'idea l' ve rsion. O ften heinc ludes up to s ix or seven ve rsions o f a sing le ta le. Some timesthe differences be tween these vers ions a re a mat ter o f plotde ta ils , sometim es mo re a mat ter of lan guage - Afana syev

A L EKS ANDR A FA NA SYE V3

often in cludes not only Russian but a lso U krainian and/orIi larusian ver sions of a single ta le.

Afanasyev was wor king in t he fir st de cades of folklore stud ies,be fore any consensus had b een reache d as to how best to recor dtales. Some schol a rs look ed on the langu age of th e pe as ant rytuith co ntempt; oth er s insi sted on the need for ver ba tim tr an-

sr ription. Some cri tics at tacked Afana syev for includin g toomany vulga ris ms, too man y dia lect wor ds an d too many r epeti-lions; oth ers attack ed him for over-polish ing hi s texts. And heltiinse l] cri ticize d his young er con temp or ary Ivan K hudyakovltoth for us ing t oo ma ny bookish word s - i .e. ov er-editing _I/( /(I for fai ling to clarify obscure passag es - i.e. under -editing.'This is interesting not so much for wha t it tells us ab ou t Khu d-\ I{/ OV, who was ver y gifted, a s for the light it ca sts on Afanasye vliirnsel], a scrupu lous sch olar but a still more scr upulous art ist .

Documents

Russian Magic Tales