Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Myths S.)

by Dubravka Ugrešic

  The banya (bath, spa, sauna) has a special place in Slavic folklore, for the Russians above all. The bath is in principle a dirty place, but also a site of purification: you soak in the hot water, letting it chase away illnesses, spells, the thoughts of evil people and so forth. The spirit called Bannik lives there (also known as Bajnik, Bajennik, Bajnushko, Laz’nik). He is either invisible or takes the appearance of a naked, dirty, long-haired old man whose body is caked with mud and leaves. A female spirit lives in the baths as well: Obderiha is a frightful hairy old woman who appears naked or in the shape of a cat, and lives under a little wooden bench. Shishiga is a female demon that takes the shape of a relative or acquaintance, luring people into the baths where they suffocate in the steam.

  A proportion of nuptial, birth and funerary rites belong to the bath. Pre-nuptial rituals involving the bride are very similar to those for funerals, for the bride’s departure from the home where she grew up marks her ritual death to her family.

  Sensing that a passing traveller is before her, Baba Yaga furiously threatens to eat him up. The hero, as we have already mentioned, tames Baba Yaga with his insolence, and asks her to heat his bath, to begin with, and to prepare him something to eat, and only then will he tell her where he is going and what he seeks.

  I.P. Davidov argues that the steam-bath in Baba Yaga’s household is equivalent to the funerary rite that is linked to the site of the bath. 27 The bath is a place of transformation, of ritual ‘deadening’. The principal hero gets ready to travel to the world of the dead, and the ritual steam-bath and the meal are necessary preparations for this journey. The half- blind Baba Yaga recognises the hero by his scent: he smells of ‘living human’ (russkim duhom pahnet, russkoj koskoj), and as a living man he cannot survive in the world of the dead. Baba Yaga herself lives on the frontier between the worlds of the living and the dead. She is the ‘customs officer’, and her hut is the ‘customs house’. It follows that Baba Yaga is ‘bilingual’, fluent in the language of the dead and that of the living. This is why she alone can give the hero his symbolic visa to enter the world of the dead. The ritual steaming is intended to ‘deaden’ the hero (so they won’t recognise him by smell in the world of the dead), to modify or adapt him (so that he can see and talk in the kingdom of the dead). Vladimir Propp argues that ritual food serves the purpose of releasing a dead man’s mouth in the other world. If he is to descend into the kingdom of the dead, the principal hero of the tale must learn a number of other tricks as well: how not to fall asleep there, how not to laugh, how to talk and see like a dead man. Baba Yaga will give the hero a horse for the road to the kingdom of the dead and a ball of thread that will lead him where he wants to go. Baba Yaga herself only rarely leaves her (sentry) post.

  The hero’s return to the world of the living is accompanied by new rituals in which water once again plays a key part: dead and alive. Dead water heals wounds and amputated parts of the body, while living water restores the soul to the body.

  Remarks

  I think your author’s choice of a spa as the setting for the second part of her fictional diptych is unusually successful. Spas are an important literary topos: a significant portion of Russian literature originated in spas (to mention just one: famous Baden Baden), or take place in or around spas, or even – like Mikhail Zoshchenko’s classic, Scenes from the Bathhouse – take as their theme the comic-absurd communist customs linked to the popular Russian banya. Milan Kundera chose a Czech spa for the settings of his novel The Farewell Party and his story Dr Havel After 20 Years. The topos of the spa succeeds in folkloristic terms, for merely by choosing it as her setting, the author brings together a whole series of ancient legends connected with healing springs, legends about water that heals and apples that restore youth, about living and dead water, and water that gives strength and takes it away (voda sil’naja i bezsil’naja). Baba Yaga’s steam-bath, where the hero ritually steams himself before setting off on his long journey, and the heroines bathe (because Baba Yaga treats them as so many potential tasty morsels), belongs to this series. (‘Go and heat the bath to bathe my niece, and be sure to bathe her well: I want to eat her for breakfast!’)

  FEET, LEGS

  Demonic beings have feet that give away their demonic nature: they might be hooves, or birds’, ducks’, geese or hen’s legs, or they might have too many toes on their feet (six instead of five), or even have a single solitary foot.

  In old China, as also in the Buddhist, Islamic and Christian worlds, it was believed that erosion marks on rocks were the footprints of gods, heroes, prophets and saints. The mother of the founder of the Chou dynasty, for example, became pregnant when she stood in a god’s footprint. The beliefs about footprints in stone – which were left by gods, saints and prophets, but also by beings such as fairies, witches, giants and devils – are scattered all over the place. They have survived down to the present day, with the pavement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, where movie stars – our modern gods and goddesses – leave their foot and hand prints.

  Some psychoanalysts prefer the interpretation that men see the female foot as a ‘missing penis’, whence, allegedly, stems the male fetish for women’s feet and shoes. And this, we could say, is where the traditional Chinese practice of binding women’s feet (to keep them smaller and ‘more beautiful’) belongs, along with the belief that witches and other female demons have big feet or birds’ feet.

  Baba Yaga is perceived as one-legged, even though she isn’t: ‘Ah, you, Baba Yaga, peg-leg!’ (Ah, ty, Babushka Jaga, odna ty noga!). In the fairytale Ivan the Fool, Baba Yaga appears before three brothers and hops around them on one leg.

  Baba Yaga’s most frequently mentioned feature is her skeleton leg (Baba Yaga, bony leg!). This leg most often turns up in the singular, and in different guises: made of wood, gold and (most often) bone. Although it is easiest to suppose that the reason for this lack of precision lies in errors that crept into the retelling of the story, some commentators have latched onto this detail, seeking a deeper reason.

  In one tale, Baba Yaga turns into a snake before she dies, leading some commentators (such as K. D. Laušin) to find evolutionary characteristics in the figure of Baba Yaga. In other words, first she was a snake (embodying death), then she evolved into the one-legged goddess of death and then she migrated from myth into fairytale, becoming a character: Baba Yaga, bony leg. Her mortar also has its evolutionary aspect: originally, Baba Yaga jumps into the mortar – ‘the mortar runs along the road, and Baba Yaga sitting inside’ (bezhit stupapo doroge, a v nej sidit Baba-Jaga) – but later she flies in it, too. One of the supporting arguments for this ‘evolutionary’ interpretation lies in Baba Yaga’s name: Yaga supposedly derives from the Sanskrit word ahi, meaning ‘dragon’.

  (In Serbia, by the way, Baba Yaga appears as an old woman with a hen’s leg – Baba Jaga, kokošja noga!)

  Vladimir Propp explains this by reference to certain archaic forms of the Russian tale, where a billy-goat, bear or magpie lies in the hut instead of Baba Yaga. The frontier between animal and human is a person with an animal leg. In the case of Baba Yaga, who according to Propp guards the entrance to the world of the dead, this leg is replaced with the skeleton leg. The Empusa, who guards the anteroom of Hades, has one leg of iron and the other of donkey excrement.

  Remarks

  The wheelchair that Pupa uses or the walker, a metal walking- frame that the author’s mother uses, are modern technical equivalents of Baba Yaga’s bony (golden, wooden or hen’s) leg. The description of the dead Pupa’s leg, which has the ghastly colour of rotten meat, might be an allusion to Empusa. And Kukla’s big feet too associate her discreetly with all those female mythical creatures with animal legs.

  CLAWS

  Baba Yaga’s hut stands on either one or two hen’s legs. These legs have prominent claws. The three-digit hands that can be seen on European vases of the early Neolithic are really birds’ feet. The mythic importance of birds’ claws dates from the Pal
aeolithic, when prints of birds’ feet were put on cave walls in northern Spain. Later the same three-toed prints appeared on vases, urns and figurines with female shapes. According to Maria Gimbutas, the bird-claw prints testify to the exist ence of the Great Goddess, half-woman and half-bird. Let’s remind ourselves once again that, in some Slavic versions, Baba Yaga herself, not only her hut, is described as an old woman with a hen’s leg.

  Remarks

  Women’s fingernails are seemingly the only strong connection with the great goddesses from the era of matriarchy that has lasted down to our own time. Women’s nails take various forms: there are fashions for trimming them, false nails with different shapes and lengths that can be glued onto the real ones underneath, then there are different coloured varnishes for nails and – most recently – a fashion for decorating fingernails with miniature designs. Men still feel that long, pampered nails have an erotic appeal. Only femmes with long, painted nails can be fatales. Long (usually scarlet) nails and shoes with ostentatiously high, tapering heels (which are nothing more than exaggerated substitutes for those dangerous toenails) belong to the stubbornly imperishable attributes of seductive women.

  Mevludin experiences Pupa’s outstretched hand as a claw (and her raised hand as a hen’s wing). It is interesting that even in the swimming pool Pupa insists on covering her legs, so they dress her in knee-socks!

  NOSE

  A long pointed nose is one of Baba Yaga’s most striking features. Her nose was once a bird’s beak which did not manage to turn itself into a regular nose. In other words, all the evidence suggests that Baba Yaga used to be a bird (the Great Goddess) before she turned herself into a humanoid of the female gender and a caricature of her former divinity.

  Besides, the nose is a symbol of intelligence. Many tribes, in their ritual invocations of spirits, ancestors and other invisible forces, make use of dust mixed with ground-up, dried animal snouts. The peoples of Siberia – Yakuts, Tungus and others – preserve the snouts of foxes and reindeer, believing as they do that an animal’s spirit dwells in its snout, while the Chukchi utilise the snouts of wild animals as household spirits, guardians of their homes. The Lapps use the snout of the polar bear so that its perfect sense of smell will pass into them.

  Psychoanalytically minded researchers will say that Baba Yaga’s nose is a phallic symbol, which fits with the thesis that she herself is a phallic mother.

  Remarks

  By assenting to plastic surgery on their noses – and rhinoplasty was the first massively popular cosmetic procedure – women consciously disown their (own) symbolic power and submit to a male concept of beauty. The folk saying ‘My nose – my pride’ expresses the judgement that someone’s nose is an inalienable part of their human identity, one that may not be changed, no matter what it is like. In other words, by disowning their noses, women disown their pride and power. If we adopt this point of view, the whole of women’s history can be read as the history of female self-castration, the deliberate disowning of power. This process of self-castration accelerated with the development of plastic surgery, of its ‘populist’ element, meaning the encouraging of women to kowtow to a particular (male) stereotype of beauty. In women’s history, which proceeds from ugly Baba Yaga towards the beautiful Virgin Mary (or ‘from Beast to Blonde’, as Marina Warner would put it), the Virgin has achieved total victory. Thanks to this victory, many women today look like the cheap plastic Virgins in village churches, or in other words like Paris Hilton!

  GUYS

  The guys in Russian fairytales are mostly called Ivan: Prince Ivan, Ivan the Knight, Ivan the Peasant’s Son, Ivan the Soldier’s Son, Ivan the Robber, Ivan the Bean, Ivan the White Shirt (Ivashka-belaja rubashka) and so on. If the mother or father conceived the child with an animal, then the Ivans have a ‘bestial’ surname: Ivan the Bull’s Calf, Ivan the Cow’s Son (Ivan Korovij’ syn), Ivan the Mare’s Son (Ivan Kobylij’ syn), Ivan the Bear (Ivashko medvedko) and suchlike. Ivan is usually the youngest of three brothers, and he is in a more difficult position than the other two. The parents punish Ivan, throwing him out of the house, or he gets punished for his own misdeeds. This initial affliction is the motor that drives the plot. Ivan has to solve the problem, defeating the foe and surmounting obstacles, if he is to be rewarded at the end with the throne and the beautiful princess’s hand in marriage.

  The most popular Ivan of them all is Ivan the Fool (Ivan- Durak, Ivanushka-Durachek), a passive hero, a fool who whiles away the time stretched out on the stove (Ivan Zapechnyj, Zapechnik), catching flies and spitting at the ceiling. Ivan the Fool is nondescript and grubby, because he spends his days digging around in the ashes (Ivan Popjalov), and his nose is always runny. The two older brothers, busy with practical matters, ignore Ivan the Fool, they play jokes and tricks on him, they often beat him, they try to drown him in the river and so on. When their mother sends him to his older brothers with dumplings for their lunch, Ivan the Fool feeds the dumplings to his own shadow, thinking that it’s a living man. When they leave him tending the sheep, Ivan the Fool blinds them all so that they won’t run away. When they send him to town to buy things for the house, he puts the new table on the road to make its own way home, seeing as how it has four legs like a horse. When he sees scorched tree stumps along the roadside, he thinks they will freeze and he puts cauldrons over them to keep them warm. When the horse reaches the river and refuses to drink, Ivan the Fool pours a whole sack of salt into the water. When the horse still refuses to drink, he kills it.

  Emelya the Simpleton is cut from the same cloth, except that he has a powerful helper: a pike-fish that has been given its freedom. It is enough simply to say ‘By the pike’s command…’ – and his wishes are granted straightaway. One day he has had enough of being stupid and ugly, and he orders the pike-fish to turn him into a very handsome young man who is gifted with great intelligence. He duly marries the king’s daughter. Ivan the Bear – human above the waist, bear below it – being tasked by his stepfather to guard the barn door, lifts the door off its hinges, carries it into the house and guards it, while thieves steal all the grain. To get rid of him, the stepfather sends him to the lake with the task of making a rope out of sand on the shore. He is hoping that fiends will catch Ivan and drag him down to the bottom of the lake. But Ivan uses his cunning to trick the fiends, and he returns home with a wagon full of gold.

  * * *

  Ivan the Fool’s most senseless and stupid actions turn out later to have been sensible and clever. For example, he accepts a bag of sand instead of money from a gentleman that he has worked for, but later he meets a beautiful girl who is trapped in a fire, and saves her by pouring his bag of sand over her. The girl is, of course, none other than the emperor’s daughter, and she becomes his wife.

  In overcoming his obstacles, Ivan gets help from many quarters: animals (horses, pike-fish, birds, cats and dogs, bears, snakes, frogs, etc.), people, Baba Yaga, magical objects (a ring, a magic flute, etc.). Ivans are ‘chosen ones’ who, thanks to their own wrong choices, magical objects or unusual relatives (sisters that marry powerful bird-emperors), overcome all hardships and finally become heroes: they vanquish their foes, marry the emperor’s daughter, secure great wealth and eventually become emperors themselves.

  In their Slavic Mythology, V.V. Ivanov and V.N. Toporov distinguish between two kinds of hero: Ivan the Fool and Ivan the Prince. While Ivan the Fool belongs to the ranks of ‘holy fools’ (yurodivi), who are deeply rooted in the Russian spiritual tradition, Ivan the Prince is a true mythic hero, for he passes the ultimate test, the most difficult of all: the encounter with death. By following the rules, Ivan the Prince finds the way out of the world of the dead and returns to life transformed, which we connect with the ancient mythical motifs of death and resurrection.

  Remarks

  The character of Mevludin is undoubtedly analogous to the character of Ivan the Fool. (I’m a fool, love. And once a fool, always a fool – says Mevludin). Pupa, Kukla and Beba – like the thr
ee Baba Yagas in the fairytales – indirectly help to make Mevludin’s dream come true, and it is precisely here that the correspond ence between your author’s literary exercise and the myth of Baba Yaga is strongest. The character of Mr Shaker can be identified with the character of the capricious emperor in Russian fairytales, whose rival is Ivan (the Fool or the Prince) and who will try to destroy Ivan before giving him his daughter’s hand. The sexual dimension is more explicit in your author’s text, because Mr Shaker is the king of protein-enriched beverages, with added hormones that turn out to cause impotence. Mr Shaker will end up dead, just like emperors in the Russian tales. One of the ‘Baba Yagas’, namely Kukla, will bring about his death. Dr Topolanek and David, Pupa’s grandson, are minor characters and do not show any particular connection with the Russian fairytale, yet they too are ‘fabulous’ in their own way: David as a deus ex machina (or, as Kukla says, a nepos ex machina), and Dr Topolanek as some kind of contemporary wizard or trickster. Arnoš Kozeny has, of course, the potential to become like Koshchey the Deathless, Baba Yaga’s one and only true rival (and the relationship between Beba and Arnoš Kozeny could be revealing in this context), but even so, this motif remains undeveloped in your author’s text.