by Unknown
Shostakovich himself wrote, ‘the screenplay … has succeeded in retaining satirical sharpness and the entire palette of Pushkin’s brilliant tale … The film is sustained at the level of a folk-farce. In it there is a mass of sharp, hyperbolic situations and grotesque characters … The tale sparkles with fervour, lightness and cheerfulness. And to compose music for it was likewise an easy and cheerful task.’ (http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/special/?ID=shostakovich-balda)
1. I have followed the many Russian illustrators who have depicted Balda as whirling a rope, but it is possible that Pushkin intended Balda to be twisting material together in order to make a rope. In Haney 661 (a version probably influenced by Pushkin’s) Balda says, ‘I’m weaving this rope out of sand and then I’m going to catch all the devils in the lake.’ (Haney, Complete, vol. 7, p. 7) The lines ‘where the sea, only a moment before, had been / flat, calm and on the level’ are largely my own addition. I needed a rhyme to prepare for the devil’s appearance – and the only word that came to mind was ‘level’. My hope is that Pushkin would have enjoyed the irony of the devil being, as it were, summoned by the phrase ‘on the level’.
2. Pushkin’s final version is Vyshiblo um u starika (‘Knocked out the old man’s mind’). What I have translated here – simply because I could make it work better in English – is Pushkin’s earlier, manuscript version: ‘Bryznul mozg do potolka (‘His brain showered up to the ceiling’).
Afanasyev sees Balda as related to Thor and Perun (the Slavic thunder god): ‘The terrible power of his fingers can be understood in relation to the mythical understanding of lightning as a divine hand, the hand with which the thunder god kills the celestial bulls and tears off their cloud-hides.’ (The Poetic Outlook of the Slavs on Nature [Moscow: 1994], vol. 2, pp. 746–53) In the penultimate episode of the similar Af. 151, the devillet challenges Shabarsha to throw the old devil’s iron club up into the clouds. The devillet then asks Shabarsha why he is waiting. Shabarsha replies, ‘I’m waiting for that storm cloud to draw near – then I’ll throw the club up onto it. My brother the blacksmith’s sitting up there, and some more iron’s just what he needs.’
A Tale about a Fisherman and a Fish
A-T 555; see also Af. 75. Pushkin follows a version recorded by the Brothers Grimm. His draft includes one more episode: tired of being a tsaritsa, the old woman becomes a ‘Roman pope’.
PART TWO
THE FIRST FOLKTALE COLLECTIONS
ALEKSANDR AFANASYEV
1. Haney, Intro., p. 26.
2. My knowledge of Afanasyev’s life is drawn mainly from Haney, Intro. and from Lise Gruel-Apert’s introduction to her French translation of his folktales (Afanassiev, Contes populaires russes [Paris: Imago, 2009]).
3. http://www.swarog-fond.ru/article/articles/afanasiev.htm
The Crane and the Heron
A-T 244A; Af. 72. Folklorists classify this not as a ‘magic tale’ but as an ‘animal tale’. Strictly speaking, it does not belong in this collection. We have included it because it is so perfectly told, and as a reminder that the magic tale is not the only genre of folktale. The animal tale is older and at least as widespread. The Sanskrit collection of animal fables known as the Panchatantra, probably composed in the third century BCE, derives from far older oral traditions.
The Little Brown Cow
A-T 511 + 403; Af. 101 (Haney 290). The earliest written version of this tale-type is in the Mahabharata.
1. A tsar (the word is derived from ‘Caesar’) is the Russian equivalent of an emperor. A tsar’s wife is a tsaritsa; their son is a tsarevich; their daughter is a tsarevna.
2. The name Yagishna sounds like a patronymic. This new wife may well be a daughter of Baba Yaga. See Appendix.
3. Haney makes the interesting suggestion that the wicked stepmother of so many magic tales may stand in for the mother-in-law:
There is little doubt that well into the nineteenth century the bride’s mother-in-law played a dominant and dominating role in her life. [ … ] the bride was expected to join her husband’s mother’s household. Here she would be treated as a very junior member of the kitchen staff, abused by her mother-in-law in far too many instances, and by her sisters-in-law as well. That was not her only concern. She had constantly to be alert for the predatory advances of her father-in-law, brothers-in-law and uncles. This is attested to by many folktales and folksongs. (Complete,vol. 3, p. xliv)
4. Ivan is the most common Russian name and Ivan Tsarevich is the archetypal hero of Russian folktales.
Vasilisa the Fair
A-T 480B*; Af. 104; see also Haney 270. Evidently a somewhat literary version, this is one of the seven tales republished in 1899–1902 with illustrations by Ivan Bilibin.
1. A common drink, lightly alcoholic, made from old bread.
Marya Morevna
A-T 552A + 4001 + 554 + 3022; Af. 159 (Haney 161). Another of the tales illustrated by Bilibin.
The Little White Duck
A-T 403; Af. 265. Another tale illustrated by Bilibin; also a somewhat literary version.
1. It was believed that thieves often took the hand of a corpse with them. As they went about their business, they would touch sleeping people with it. The sleeper would then remain in a ‘dead sleep’.
The Frog Princess
A-T 402 + 4001; Af. 269 (Haney 221). The slightly different version illustrated by Bilibin incorporates details from Af. 267. We have included a few of these – e.g. the account of the father’s reaction to the loaves and carpets brought by the elder brothers’ wives. This is the only time we have combined different variants of a tale.
1. Propp writes that the frog princess
is an animal, but at her wedding she dances. We can easily recognize the ritual dance of the times of totemism. She is the creator, the designer of the forest and waters. This is a very ancient, still totemic hunting stage of the princess. It is at this stage that the world is created through dance. Later the forest and the dance will disappear. The princess becomes the giver of water, sometimes she herself is water: ‘And he noticed that wherever the princess went, wherever her horses stepped, springs appeared, and [the hero] followed her by the trail of springs she had left.’ (Af. 271, variant) (Propp, Theory and History, p. 143)
2. These details are omitted from the version published with Bilibin’s illustrations.
Pig Skin
A-T 510B; Af. 290. In a version recorded by Karnaukhova (no. 15), the daughter is scheming and seductive. It is she, not her father, who makes the advances. Having aroused her father’s interest, she says she will marry him if he buys her a dress with stars on it. Then she asks for a dress with the moon on it, then for a dress with the sun on it. Having secured the dresses, she makes her escape.
The Tsarevna in an Underground Tsardom
A-T 313E; Af. 294.
The Tsarevna who would not Laugh
A-T 559; Af. 297; Haney 314. The earliest written version is in the Norse Eddas. See Introduction, p. xii.
Misery
A-T 735A; Af. 303; see also Haney 392–7.
The Wise Girl
A-T 875E; Af. 328; see also Haney 529. Marina Warner remembers Angela Carter saying that this was her favourite among all the tales she chose for her Virago Book of Fairy Tales. Warner goes on to say that ‘Angela liked it because it was as satisfying as “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, but “no one was humiliated and everybody gets the prizes” [ … ] its heroine is an essential Carter figure, never abashed, nothing daunted, sharp-eared as a vixen and possessed of dry good sense. It’s entirely characteristic of Angela’s spirit that she should delight in the tsar’s confounding, and yet not want him to be humiliated’ (Introduction to Angela Carter, The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales [London: Virago, 1992], p. xi).
IVAN KHUDYAKOV
1. http://www.livelib.ru/author/8576
2. Velikorusskie skazki v zapisyakh I. A. Khudyakova (Moscow/Leningrad: Nauka, 1964), p. 48. Milman Parry and Albert Lord drew similar conclusions, in
the twentieth century, from comparing Homeric and southern Slav epics.
The Brother
A-T 480A*; Khudyakov, op. cit., no. 53 (in 2001 edition); see also Af. 103, 113.
The Stepdaughter and the Stepmother’s Daughter
A-T 480; Khudyakov, op. cit., no. 14; see also Af. 95–7 and 99.
PART THREE
EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY COLLECTIONS
1. N. E. Onchukov, Severnye skazki, p. 14.
The Tsar Maiden
A-T 551; Zhivaya starina, 1897, vii, pp. 113–20; see also Af. 171–8 (also: A-T 4002 and Af. 232–3). Many versions of this have been recorded; Afanasyev includes eight under the title ‘The Bold Knight, the Apples of Youth and the Water of Life’. Often the tsar’s reason for sending his three sons on their quests is stated more explicitly. In Af. 171, the old, blind tsar hears of a garden with apples that restore youth and ‘water of life’ that restores sight; Af. 172 begins, ‘Once upon a time there was a tsar with three sons. He sent out his sons to search for his youth.’ The little-known version we have translated is remarkable for its inclusion both of archaic elements – e.g. the forthright words with which Ivan Tsarevich addresses the three baba yaga figures – and of such modernisms as the offers of ‘coffee and tea’.
1. Compare:
The folktale horse is a hybrid creature, combining a horse and a bird. He is winged. The cult role of the bird passed on to the horse when the horse was domesticated. Now it is no longer a bird that carries the souls of the dead, but a horse. But it must have wings in order to fly in the air. Along with that, its nature is fiery: smoke pours from its ears, sparks scatter from its nostrils, etc. It also reveals traits of a chthonic nature. Before it begins to serve, it is under the ground. It has a link with the world after death. There are tales in which the hero received the horse from his dead father. The horse’s functions are fairly various. The first is carrying the hero through the air, over thrice-nine lands, to another kingdom. Later he helps the hero vanquish a dragon. He is wise, prescient; he is the hero’s true friend and advisor. (Propp, The Russian Folktale, chapter 7)
2. In a version of this tale first published by the Sokolov brothers in 1915, the image of the horse and well is treated differently. When the hero is in the maiden’s chamber, the hero ‘watered his horse in her well, but he did not cover up the well. He left some clothing behind.’ The maiden then rides after the hero, catches up with him and says, ‘Please return. I am not sorry that you watered your horse. What is precious to me is that you did not cover the well’ (Mark Azadovsky, Russkaya skazka, p. 194).
Ivan Mareson
A-T 303 and A-T 301A; Zhivaya starina, 1912, II–IV, pp. 357–65; republished in Azadovsky, Russkaya skazka, vol. 1, pp. 224–36; see also Af. 155 and Haney 158. Recorded in 1896 by A. A. Makarenko from Yefim Maksimovich Kokorin, a Siberian peasant who lived on the bank of the Angara, 750 kilometres from its confluence with the Yenisey. Makarenko describes Kokorin – ‘Chima the Blind’ – as
An elderly peasant from a family who had settled there long ago. From the first years of his married life he had been entirely blind and had been supported by the labours of his wife and son. [ … ] He was a friendly and good-natured man, and his precise ability to remember the days of the calendar was a help to the people around him. He also had a rich store of sayings, riddles, songs, folktales and rhymes with which to introduce a tale (priskazki). Above all, he was endowed with a vivid imagination, an ardent fantasy and an unusual fluency of speech that enabled him to carry his listeners away.
Makarenko continues:
On a little shelf nailed into the wall stood a tiny oil lamp with no glass; there was barely any flame at all from its wick. Its feeble light was almost obscured by the blue-grey waves of makhorka smoke, the steam from all the human bodies and the soot from the lamp itself. Adults and children alike were crowded into the little hut. Sitting there in their clothes, in the warmth given off by the iron stove, and packed closely together, they were all sweating profusely. Some had dozed off. Others were listening with avid curiosity and extraordinary attentiveness.
Makarenko goes on to praise Chima’s skilful use of pauses and different tones of voice, and his fine understanding of his listeners’ psychology. I would add that this tale is remarkable not only for its emotional intensity but also for its scope. Not only does Chima include vivid details from Tungus everyday life but he also evokes both a sense of horizontal space – as the characters wander through the forest – and a sense of vertical space – as the hero battles with the fiery cloud above and the serpent below.
1. Now usually known as Evenks, the Tungus are one of the native peoples of the far north of Siberia and China.
2. The association between snakes and lightning is almost universal; a snake is often seen as an earthly embodiment of lightning.
3. Literally: ‘our way back to the upper tail’. Some indigenous peoples of Siberia referred to the upper layer of the universe as ‘the upper tail’. Though told in Russian, this skazka incorporates much non-Russian material.
4. Azadovsky writes, ‘Usually, in tales of this type, the wife or betrothed of the deceived and abandoned warrior gives in when threatened. [ … ] Chima completely breaks with this tradition and has his Siberian heroine remain faithful to her man, despite being brutally abused.’ Azadovsky considers the final recognition scene to be ‘among the finest pages of Russian folktale poetry’ (op. cit., pp. 221–2).
IVAN BILIBIN
1. ‘Out of Their Minds’, in Patty Wageman, Russian Legends (Groningen: Groninger Museum, 2007), p. 45.
Ivan Tsarevich, the Grey Wolf and the Firebird
A-T 550; see also Af. 168 and Haney 305.
1. Both this version and Afanasyev’s are based on an eighteenth-century chapbook. Propp considers this version exceptionally fine. But he notes that, at this point, ‘The hero reasons quite rationally, not at all in fairytale style. [ … ] This tale-teller, an eighteenth-century rationalist, ascribes his own views to the hero. A true hero always takes the road to death, meets mortal danger and overcomes it. In the given case the hero is thinking of his own life.’ Propp then cites another variant of the words on the pillar: ‘Whoever rides to the right will find happiness, whoever rides to the left will find two happinesses, but whoever rides straight ahead will find unhappiness.’ The youngest brother takes the road of unhappiness – which eventually, of course, leads him to happiness. Propp sees this treatment of the motif as canonical (The Russian Folk Tale, chapter 3).
2. This custom is still observed at Russian weddings. The guests shout, ‘Bitter!’, as if complaining that the wine is too bitter. In response, the bride and groom must kiss, as if the sweetness of their kiss will sweeten the bitter wine.
3. In a version collected by Khudyakov, the firebird, dulled by the lies of Ivan’s brothers, turns into a crow. But when Ivan at last returns to his father’s palace, the firebird once again becomes itself.
NIKOLAY ONCHUKOV
1. N. E. Onchukov, Severnye skazki, p. 70.
2. N. E. Onchukov, Zavetnye skazki, p. 14.
3. ibid., p. 31.
The Black Magician Tsar
A-T 329; Onchukov 2 (Haney 197); see also Af. 236–7. Told to Onchukov by Aleksey Chuprov, aged seventy and blind. He was equally gifted as a storyteller and as a singer of byliny.
1. In the original, this is a pun. The Russian buravchik means both ‘gimlet’ and ‘pizzle’ (the penis of a bull or boar). A boar’s pizzle is threaded like a gimlet. From this comes the idea of ‘screwing’ a woman.
2. The Magovey bird is mysterious, though she appears in a few other magic tales and byliny. Often the hero has to feed her a part of his own body. There are many variants of her name.
3. According to Marie-Louise von Franz, the hero succeeds because, instead of continuing to fight Evil on its own terms, he gives himself over to the Feminine. He receives help from three feminine figures – the tsarevna, the maid and the bird. Only when he entirely abandons hims
elf to the bird does he escape the tsar (Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, pp. 236–53).
Bronze Brow
A-T 566; Onchukov 249 (150 in first edition); Haney 325. One of seventeen stories in Onchukov’s collection recorded by the schoolteacher D. Georgievsky.
OLGA OZAROVSKAYA
1. O. E. Ozarovskaya, Pyatirechiye, p. 6.
2. ibid., p. 20.
The Luck of a Tsarevna
A-T 737B*; Ozarovskaya, Pyatirechiye, 27 (Haney 400). Recorded in 1925 from Tatyana Osipovna Kobeleva, who was seventy years old and blind. Ozarovskaya – who knew that she too was going blind – wrote, ‘I was struck by the astonishing joyfulness that emanated from everything she said, and I saw her as an instructive example, since I knew that I would have to endure a similar old age’ (op. cit., p. 20).
1. The brackets are in the original; they indicate a comment made by the teller.
DMITRY ZELENIN
1. Viktor Berdinskikh, ‘D. K. Zelenin’ in Novy Mir, 1995, no. 3: http://magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/1995/3/abook01.html See also: http://pagan.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=613
By the Pike’s Command
A-T 675; Zelenin, Vyat. 23; see also Af. 165–7 and Haney 368. Most oral versions of this widespread tale are similar; even illiterate tellers were evidently influenced by the many chapbook texts. Many versions begin with the fool (usually called Yemelya) being promised fine clothes. In Zelenin, Vyat. 138, Yemelya’s sisters-in-law bribe him to perform various necessary tasks (fetching water, gathering firewood, etc.) by promising that his father will bring him red mittens and red felt boots when he comes back from the city. In Af. 166 a similar promise makes Yemelya agree to go and see the tsar.
The editor of one of the chapbook versions (Af. 165, Haney 368), tries to excuse Yemelya’s brutality: ‘But he didn’t know that he ought to shout out some warning so that people wouldn’t be crushed by his sleigh; he rode along without shouting anything and so he crushed a whole lot of people.’ In Af. 166, however, Yemelya shows no qualms at all. Seized by an angry mob as he passes through the town a second time, he just says, ‘By the pike’s command, by my own request, go, stick, and sort out this mob for me!’