Russian Magic Tales

from Pushkin to Platonov

Translated by ROBERT CHANDLER
and ELIZABETH CHANDLER
with SIBELAN FORRESTER, ANNA GUNIN
and OLGA MEERS ON
Introduced by
ROBERT

CHANDLER

with an Appendix by
SIBELAN

PENGUIN

FORRESTER

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Copyright for stories by Bazhov The Bazhov estate, 2012

Copyright for Stories by Plaronov The Plaronov estate, 2012
Copyright for stories by Teff Mme Szyolowski, 2012
Appendix and translation of stories by Khudyakov Sibelan Forrester, 2012
Translation of stories by Bazhov Anna Cunin, 2012
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Introduction

The hero has one clear, linear task. At the end of it lies his
reward, usually a princess. While accomplishing the task,
he encounters various helpers, whose gifts or services are
all palpably material. Helpers and obstacles appear from
nowhere and disappear without a trace; a dark void opens
up on either side of the narrow path of the plot. Whatever is
on that path, however, is lit up in brilliant primary colours:
metallic reds, golds, blues. Throughout his travails the hero
expresses no astonishment, curiosity, longing, or fear, and
apparently does not experience pain. He never reassesses his
goal or his reward.
Caryl Emerson, The Cambridge Introduction to
Russian Literature
Off he went towards the blue sea.
(The blue sea was blacker than black.)
He called out to the golden fish ...
Aleksandr Pushkin, from
'A Tale about a Fisherman and a Fish'
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted ...
Mae West

'llu- magic tale - also often called the 'wonder tale' or 'fairy
1111(' - is remarkably adaptable. Transformation is its central
!iI('111 ., and the tales themselves seem capable of almost infinite
I I II I IS formation. In one Russian version of the Cinderella story

INTRODUCTION

the heroine is helped by a doll; in another Russian version she

is helped by a cow; and in a written version from seventhcentury China she is helped by a fish. In different versions of
'Beauty and the Beast', the heroine marries a serpent, a white
bear, a falcon and - in an English version recorded in the
1890S - 'a great, foul, small-tooth dog'. And what is essentially
the same tale can find a home for itself in a Walt Disney film, in
a Russian peasant hut, within the sophisticated framework
of The Arabian Nights, or in the nurseries of well-brought-up
Victorian children.
This adaptability, however, has obscured our understanding
of these tales. What have become by far the best-known versions are those derived from Charles Perrault's Tales of Mother
Goose, which was first published in 1697. It was Perrault who
established the fairy tale as a literary genre and he intended his
versions for the children of the French upper and middle classes.
And in 1812 the Brothers Grimm chose to follow Perrault,
entitling their famous collection Children's and Household
Tales. The oral magic tale, however, is often violent, scatological and sexually explicit. It is probable that its origin lies in
archaic rituals, that it was seen as endowed with occult power
and that there were strict conditions as to when, where, how
and by whom it could be told. Such taboos survived longer in
Russia than in most European countries; according to the
American scholar Jack Haney, many storytellers in the far
north of European Russia observed strict taboos as late as the
1930S; tales could be told only by men, to male audiences, after
dark, and never during the main Orthodox fasts. The underlying reason for these taboos was the belief that spirits of all
kinds enjoyed listening to tales. At night and in winter, when a
peasant's animals were safely shut up, spirits presented less of
a danger. When the animals were out in the fields, however,
spirits might come and steal them - and in spring and early
summer they might steal the animals' young.' Haney's view is
that women storytellers first appeared in Russia only in the
early nineteenth century.' This is impossible to establish with
certainty, but Haney's broader point remains incontrovertible:
the tales were not to be told lightly.

INTRODUCTION

Xl

Magic tales are perhaps easier to recognize than to define.

Most involve some kind of quest - often into the underground
realm of a dangerous witch; this may be like a vestige of some
shamanic initiation rite. Often the hero is able to achieve his
goal only thanks to the wisdom and practical help provided by
birds, fish or other creatures whom he has helped earlier in the
tale; this, too, is reminiscent of a shaman calling on his spirit
helpers. Sometimes the hero is transformed from bird or animal to human, or vice versa; sometimes he is cut to pieces, then
put together again. Just as all initiation rites involve some kind
of transformation and/or symbolic dismemberment, so do all
magic tales.
One of the first scholars to articulate these understandings
was the Soviet folklorist Vladimir Propp, in his Historical
Roots of the Wonder Tale (first published as long ago as 1946
but still not translated into English in full)." Propp's view was
that participants were prepared for an initiation ritual by being
given some indication of what they were about to undergo. The
rituals eventually ceased to be practised, but the accounts - or
metaphorical accounts - of their content went on being told and
eventually took on a life of their own, as 'magic tales'." Propp's
theories may, of course, be too absolute, and there is no reason
to suppose that all magic tales have the same origin.' Nevertheless, it is not difficult to see that many magic tales do indeed
reflect traditional rites of passage. A clear example from the
present volume is 'Mishka the Bear and Myshka the Mouse'. A
girl is sent out into the forest by a cruel stepmother. She is
required to play blindman's bluff with a murderous bear; a
mouse, however, takes the girl's place, leaping around the hut
from bench to floor and back up onto the bench again. Eventually the bear admits defeat and rewards the girl. This motif is
reminiscent of the 'search for the bride' that, in some regions
of Russia, still remains a part of peasant weddings. It closely
parallels an anonymous account of a mid nineteenth-century
peasant wedding: 'The guests began to chant to the bride, "Do
not go, our child; do not go, our dear Annushka, along your
father's benches; do not leap, do not leap; don't play about
I ... ]; jump, jump into your [wedding] tunic." To which the

XII

INTRODUCTION

bride replied, "If I want to, I'll jump; if I don't, I won't." '6 And
in some parts of Russia the groom and bride were known as
'the he-bear' and 'the she-bear'.
'The Tsarevna who would not -Laugh' affords a still more
striking example of the link between the magic tale and archaic
rituals. Afanasyev's version (p. 70) begins with the tsarevna sitting miserably in her room, unable to laugh or take any joy in
life. Her father promises her in marriage to whoever first makes
her laugh. A peasant has been working hard for three years,
making his master's crops grow and his animals multiply even
in the most unpropitious conditions. While on his way to the
city, this peasant shows kindness to a mouse, a beetle and a catfish. He then falls down in the mud outside the tsar's palace.
The three creatures appear and express their gratitude to him
by cleaning him up. The tsarevna sees all this from her window
and laughs. A rival tries to take the credit for her laughter, but
the tsarevna points to the peasant and says that it was he who
made her laugh. The tsarevna then marries the peasant. Propp
relates this tale to the Eleusinian mysteries and the myth of
Demeter, one of whose titles was 'the unlaughing one' (agelastos). Citing evidence from many different cultures, he establishes
that laughter was once credited with the power to evoke life
and - after the beginning of agriculture - with the power to
bring fertility to crops. Then he summarizes the story of how
Demeter, in mourning for her lost daughter, subjected the earth
to months of famine. The famine ended only when an old
woman by the name of Baubo lifted her skirt and exposed herself to Demeter; this made Demeter laugh - and the earth then
regained her fertility. Demeter and Afanasyev's tsarevna are
evidently one and the same figure; the tsarevna must be made
to laugh in order for the crops to grow.
In the same context, Propp discusses another tale (not
included here) in which the tsar promises his daughter not to
whoever can make her laugh, but to whoever can say what
birthmarks she has on her body. A peasant with miraculous
power over animals (in a version published in 1915 by Dmitry
Zelenin he is accompanied by dancing pigs," while in 'The
Herder of Hares' (p. 304) he has power over hares) sells her three

NTRODUCTION

Xlll

of his animals on condition she expose herself to him. He then

t, .lls the tsar that his daughter has a golden hair to the right of
h r groin and a birthmark under her right breast. The peasant
di credits an aristocratic rival by tricking him into smearing
himself with his own shit, then marries the tsarevna. The Demctcr myth and the two Russian tales are evidently different
11 rrangements of the same constituent elements. The association
of hares with fertility is universal and, since Baubo was married
ro a swineherd, the dancing pigs are no less closely linked to the
I h me of Demeter and the earth's fertility," And there is, of
.ourse, no fertility without manure. In Afanasyev's tale it is the
h '1'0 who falls into the mud, while in Zelenin's it is the hero's
rival who ends up smeared with shit. As so often, what is
important in a magic tale is the presence of a particular motif;
which character is associated with it seems to be of only second:t ry importance.
In Russia, Propp is best known for his Historical Roots of
tlie Wonder Tale. In the English-speaking world, however, he is
h .st known for an earlier study, The Morphology of the Folktale. At first glance, this almost-mathematical analysis of the
srructure of magic tales may seem like the work of a different
writer. These two studies, however, were originally conceived
us a single book, and there is a clear link between them. In The
Morphology of the Folktale, Propp establishes that all magic
rules share a common structure; only then can he go on, in Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale, to show how this common
structure mirrors the structure of initiation rites. Propp himself
11:l provided the best summary of his understandings and how
h ' first came to them:
In a series of wonder tales about the persecuted stepdaughter I
noted an interesting fact: in 'Jack Frost' [p. 300] the old woman
sends her stepdaughter into the forest to Jack Frost. He tries to
freeze her to death, but she speaks to him so sweetly and so humbly that he spares her, gives her a reward, and lets her go. The old
woman's daughter, however, fails the test and perishes, In another
rale the stepdaughter encounters not Jack Frost but a forest spirit,
in still another, a bear. But surely it is the same tale! Jack Frost,

XIV

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION
XV

the forest spirit and the bear test the stepdaughter and reward her
each in his own way, but the plot does not change. [ ... J To Afanasyev, these were different tales because they contained different
characters. To me they were identical because the actions of the
characters were the same. [ ... J I devised a very simple method
of analyzing wonder tales in accordance with the characters'
actions - regardless of the shape these actions took. To designate
these actions I adopted the term 'functions'. [ ... J It turned out
[ ... J that all wonder tale plots consisted of identical functions
and had identical structures."

Soviet folklorists collected a vast number of tales and made

a still undervalued contribution to our historical understanding
of them, but they said little about why these tales should still
hold our interest. In Europe and the United States, however, a
great deal has been written about the psychological and moral
truths concealed in these seemingly primitive tales. Carl Jung
and his colleague Marie-Louise von Franz look on magic tales
as illustrations of universal patterns of psychological maturation and the obstacles that stand in its way. Often they see
these tales as expressing values, or giving a place to images,
that are compensatory to the dominant values and images of a
particular culture; they see the image of the folktale witch, for
example, as a necessary balance to the image of the Virgin
Mary. The Freudian analyst Bruno Bettelheim, in The Uses of
Enchantment, also sees magic tales as illustrating universal patterns, though he focuses more exclusively on the transitions of
childhood and adolescence. These psychological approaches to
the magic tale complement - but do not in any way contradictPropp's historical and structural analyses. Jung did not have
the opportunity to read Propp, but he would have valued
Propp's elaboration of the parallels between magic tales and
archaic rituals; he himself saw both tales and rituals - along
with dreams, alchemical texts and accounts of religious practices of every kind - as a guide to the innermost structure of the
psyche.
The magic tale usually says little or nothing about the emotions experienced by a hero or heroine; situations and actions

are left to speak for themselves. It is, no doubt, frightening to

be .approached in the forest by Jack Frost, but the storyteller's
reticence leaves the listener or reader free to sense this fear as
much or as little as they choose. This is part of what lends these
tales so universal an appeal. Every transition in life - from
childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to adulthood
from being single to being married - is frightening. The magic
tale speaks of these transitions succinctly, vividly and in a
language that can be understood by all of us.
It is generally thought that the magic tale did not fully acquire
Its present shape until the early medieval period. Nevertheless
omething similar to the European oral magic tale can be found
i~ many of the earliest works of written literature, and in many
different parts of the world. Versions of several of the tales in
this collection can be found in the Mahabharata, the Sanskrit
pic from ancient India. The earliest written version of 'Beauty
and the Beast' - the story of Amor and Psyche - is included in
Apuleius's The Golden Ass, written in Latin in the second century of the Common Era. In these and similar instances there
is little doubt that the written text draws on an earlier oral
v rsion. It is equally clear, however, that the written text then
illfluenced subsequent oral versions. Since literature was first
written down, there has always been interplay between written
md oral texts.
The magic tale, as we have seen, is remarkable both for its
,~1:1bility and for its fluidity. The central plots of most tales _
what folklorists refer to as 'the tale-type' - vary little from
c ountry to country. What changes are the surface details the
ways in which the tales reflect different social, climatic' and
!,,~oraphical realities. There are also differences of emphasis.
I h . magic tales of all European countries, for example, include
II IlIgCroUSwitches, but the image of Baba Yaga - the archeI pn I Russian witch - is especially vivid and well developed.
1\ il,;) Yaga appears in many of the stories in this collection and
IIii' American scholar Sibelan Forrester discusses her at length
iii nn article we have included as an appendix.'?
'I 'h Russian magic tale stands out in at least one other respect.

XVI

INTRODUCTION

Russia's vastness and her backwardness compared with other

European countries, meant that there was a much longer p~riod
during which it was possible for folklorists to study a relatively
intact peasant culture. In many European ~o~nt~Ies, scholars
began recording folklore only after industn.ahzatlOn was well
under way; in Russia, by contrast, an entire century passed
between Pushkin's first transcriptions of folktales and the
assault on the peasantry constituted by Stalin's collectivization
of agriculture. We cannot be certain how folktales were told
four or five hundred years ago, but we do know that they were
enjoyed by members of all social classes unti.l the late eighteenth century. And we have reliable and detailed accounts of
the social setting in which tales were told in the north of European Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen~uries.
Here, for example, is an account by the brothers Bons a~d
Yury Sokolov of what they call 'the local conditions of the life
of the tale' in the Belozersk region in 1908-9:
Here the tale lives a full life. [ ... 1 The development and life
of the tale in the places where we were collecting is greatly
influenced by the nature of the peasants' work. First, there is tree
felling: often an entire village - men, women and children - is
gathered together deep in the forest, in winter and far from any
habitation. The day is taken up by heavy work but, as soon as It
turns dark, everyone enjoys a well-earned rest by a blazing
hearth. There in the forest they have constructed a 'camp'; that is,
a spacious hut dug into the earth with a hearth in the middle.
Everyone crowds inside. And once they have warmed their frozen
limbs and satisfied their hunger and thirst, they begin to while
away the long winter evening. How glad they are then to see the
storyteller! Deep in the forest, amid trees letting out loud cracks
in the extreme cold, to the accompaniment of the howls of wolves
and beside a blazing fire - what more appropriate setting, what
richer soil could there be for a magic tale filled with every possible
terror! [ ... 1 Then comes the jester, the teller of funny stories.
Witticisms and mocking jibes pour out as if from a horn of plenty.
The entire audience is attuned to joy and merriment. An unbroken
stream of enthusiastic exclamations encourages the jester in his

INTRODUCTION

XVII

merry wit. Had it been possible to write down the tales with absolute stenographic exactitude, recording on paper every exclamation from the public, there is no doubt that our transcripts would
create a far livelier and fresher impression. [ ... 1
Just as 'collective' life in the forest camp creates supportive
conditions for the life of the folktale, so does fishing in the
region's lakes. The fishermen go out onto these lakes for long
periods of time. After they have cast their nets, or while they are
waiting for a following wind, they often have to sit through long
hours of forced inactivity - and this makes them particularly well
disposed towards storytellers. There was an occasion when the
fishermen took advantage of our presence. They joined us in the
hut where we were recording tales, listened to the different storytellers and then concluded a kind of bargain with the teller they
liked most, promising him a certain proportion of the catch if he
would go out onto the lake with them.
Yet another supportive environment for stories of every kind
is the mill- a peculiar kind of rural club. Large numbers of peasants gather there and sometimes they have to spend several days
there as they wait for their turn. Here too there is no better way
to while away the time than telling tales. The diffusion of tales is
also greatly helped by people who have to travel from place to
place in the course of their work, people who have the opportunity to see a great deal and to listen a great deal- people like 'icon
daubers', tailors, soldiers, beggars and other wanderers."

sian high culture, at least from the late eighteenth century,

been as sophisticated as that of any country in Europe.
Until recently, however, most of the inhabitants of Russia were
P .asants - and until the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 the
I',overnment's intermittent moves towards modernization had
luircly affected their way of life. The imperial capital, St PetersIll! rg, was an island of avowedly Western culture surrounded
h a world as Asian as it was European. Even the most Western()rj .nted of nineteenth-century
Russian writers could not help
hili' be more familiar with folk ways and folk literature than
I Ii .i r contemporaries in other parts of Europe. It is, indeed,
111'1 .n difficult to understand much of Russian literature without
RlI

11:15

xviii

INTRODUCTION

some knowledge of folklore.F Because, in Russia, there has

always been such a close link between the written and oral
traditions, we have included in this volume not only translations of anonymous magic tales, as recorded by a number of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century folklorists, but also versions
of these magic tales by four great Russian writers: Aleksandr
Pushkin, Nadezhda Teffi, Pavel Bazhov and Andrey Platonov.
Andrey Platonov once described Aleksandr Pushkin as being
one of a very few writers endowed with the ability 'to enrich
and inform a popular folktale with the power of [his] own creativity and endow it with the definitive, ideal combination of
meaning and form that will allow this tale to continue to exist
for a long time or forever'. My aim has been to include only
those literary retellings to which these words seem applicable.
Lev Tolstoy's versions are omitted because they are moral
fables rather than magic tales. Ihave omitted Aleksey Tolstoy's
well-known versions from the mid 1940S because they are
no more than competent paraphrases of Afanasyev; Aleksey
Tolstoy has not informed them 'with the power of his own creativity'. I hesitated for longer over Boris Shergin. The baroque
energy of his language is attractive, but in the endI came to feel
that it is a surface overlay; he has not, like Platonov, entered
deep into the heart of a tradition and then created afresh. I
have omitted Pyotr Yershov and Marina Tsvetaeva for a different reason; their-verse tales are so brilliant that they seem
all-but impossible to translate.P Lastly, I have excluded literary
fairy tales with little relation to the folk tradition; this meant
omitting Pogorelsky from the nineteenth century and many
important representatives of Russia's Silver Age.
As for the oral tales, reading all the published Russian collections might take five years, and reading all the archival
material - a lifetime. And the more one reads, the harder the
task of selection. An element of randomness seems inescapable.
All I can say is that I have listened out for the vivid image, the
flash of wit, or the compelling rhythmic structure that can
make one version of a well-known story more memorable than
another. Ihave tried to give a sense both of the variety of different
tale-types and of the no less remarkable variety that can often

INTRODUCTION

XIX

be found within a single tale-type. And Ihave included as much

material as possible that allows us a glimpse of the individuality of the storytellers.
To the best of our ability, my co-translators and I have translated accurately. When we have taken liberties with the meaning
in order to reproduce a rhyme, we have included a literal translation in the notes. We have kept the language clear, colloquial
and energetic, but we have not tried to reproduce the peasant
dialect of many of the originals; contemporary English is too
far removed from any peasant culture for this to be possible.
We have not ironed out the logical hiccups or sudden jumps
that are typical of oral storytelling. Nor have we imposed any
false stylistic consistency; the tales were told by many different
tellers to several different collectors, each of whom tried in his
or her own way to reproduce their tone and rhythms. And the
tales were recorded over a long period - from the early nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century - during
which two somewhat contradictory tendencies were at work;
folk traditions were dying out, but folklorists were being ever
more precise in their ways of recording them.
I am grateful to Sibelan Forrester for allowing me to include
an abridged version of her article about Baba Yaga. The complete version is included in Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the
East in Russian Folklore. And I am especially grateful to Jack
I Janey for his generous help and enlightening correspondence.
Readers in search of a more comprehensive collection of Russian oral folktales should turn at once to his seven-volume
Complete Russian Folktale.
Robert Chandler, July 201 I

NOTES
'I'hl' A-T numbers refer to the comprehensive index of folktales begun

h the Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne and further developed by Stith

'I'hompson. The standard Russian index, the Comparative Index of
'/~III 's: The East Slavic Tale (Barag et aI., I979), often referred to as
S IIS :1 her the initial letters of its Russian title, uses the same numbers.

ALEKSANDR
SERGEYEVICH

PUSHKIN

Aleksandr Push kin composed the first significant works in a

great variety of literary genres. He was also the first Russian
poet to pay serious attention to the folktale or skazka.
Our first clear evidence of Pushkin's interest in folklore is
from his period in exile in Mikhailovskoye, his mother's family
'state in northern Russia. The person he saw most during these
two years of isolation was Arina Rodionovna, a household serf
who had once been his nurse and who always remained something of a mother to him. In I824, in a letter to his brother Lev,
l'ushhin described how in the evenings he would listen to Arina
Rodionouna telling folktales: 'I thus compensate for the shortcomings in my cursed upbringing. How charming these tales
tire! Each one is a whole poem ... '1 According to Jack Haney,
the versions of these tales that Pushkin recorded-are 'the oldest
snruiuing versions of tales in Russian taken down from popular
storytellers in something akin to the popular language'? These
urrsions are concise summaries rather than transcripts, but
l'ushhin reproduces both the tales' rhythmic structure and the
uiuidness of the language. Push kin's grasp of the language of
jul/. poetry and folktale seems to have been nearly perfect; he
III/P gave Pyotr Kireyevsky (Vasily Zhukovsky's
great-nephew)
II (ile containing
his own imitations of folksongs together
"'ill, genuine folksongs that he had transcribed, challenging
f"r"yevsky to figure out which were which. Kireyevsky - an
"I/mowledged authority in this field - was unable to do this.
t'u hkin's attitude towards folk literature was respectful. He
I lid uot see it merely as a source of raw material to exploit, but
/1/' seems to have understood that a verbatim transcription is
7

ALEKSANDR

SERGEYEVICH

PUSHKIN

not always enough to convey its power and vitality. As if to

compensate for the loss of the immediacy of living speech, he
composed all his own skazki in verse, and their rhythmic energy
is one of their most striking features. Pushkin's skazki (the Russian word can be applied both to true folktales and to literary
adaptations) have always been popular with children, and
illustrated editions continue to be published in large prmtruns. They have also inspired paintings and provided librettos
for operas. Rimsky-Korsakov composed operas based on 'The
Tale of Tsar Saltan' and 'The Golden Cockerel', and Shostakovich wrote the music for a never-completed cartoon film based
on 'A Tale about a Priest and his Servant Balda'.
Push kin seldom, if ever, repeats himself, and his six skazki differ greatly from one another. For this collection I have chosen the
two that are most obviously Russian in both style and content. 'A
Tale about a Priest and his Servant Balda' is based on one of the
tales Push kin recorded from Arina Rodionovna. The deftness ,
with which he reproduces folktale rhythms, images and turns of
phrase is remarkable; many of his most brilliant inventions are
now often taken for genuine traditional sayings. Push kin wrote
this skazka in September I 830, during the first of his astonishingly creative 'Boldino autumns', when he was confined - because
of quarantine restrictions due to a cholera epidemic - to. his
father's remote estate in southeastern Russia. Only the prevlOu~
day he had written the short poem 'Demons' - the vision of euil
from which Dostoevsky took the title of one of his greatest novels. It is clear from Pushkin's manuscript that 'Demons' was first
conceived as something lighter and more comic; a darker vision of swarms of snowflakes as swarms of demons - seems to have
imposed itself on him almost against his will. 'A Tale about a
Priest and his Servant Balda' seems to have been Push kin's counterspell, an attempt to laugh off this dark vision, to ridicule these
terrifying demons. Some lines from the manuscript of 'Demons'
(e.g. the description of the 'devillet' as mewing like a hungry kttten) ended up almost unchanged in the skazka.:'
'A Tale about a Fisherman and a Fish' was written three
years later, in October I833, during the second of Pushkin's
'Boldino autumns'. Pushkin's immediate source was the Brothers

ALEKSANDR

SERGEYEVICH

PUSHKIN

lrimm, but this would be hard to guess. Not only do the

rhythms and images seem completely Russian, but the tale also
r flects Pushkin's concern with Russian history. Pushkin's greatest achievement of these months was the narrative poem 'The
Itronze Horseman', which is devoted to the figure of Peter the
Creat; but he also wrote several works relating to Catherine
Ille Great. As well as composing the whole of his short story
'The Queen of Spades', which includes reminiscences of her
rei n, he completed the final draft of 'A History of Pugachov', a
I j torical account of a peasant and Cossack rebellion that Cathrrine managed to suppress only with great difficulty. 'A Tale
about a Fisherman and a Fish' also - though less obviously brlongs to this cycle of works about Catherine the Great.
The tale's hidden meaning is revealed by what appears at first
III he no more than a careless slip. It seems odd that Pushkin's
/Ild woman should consider ruling over the sea as a higher desIII than that of being 'a mighty tsaritsa'. Catherine the Great,
hcuueuer, was eager to rule over the Black Sea; between I768
1/1It! I792 she fought two wars against Turkey in order to
III/Ii ve this ambition. And Catherine, like Pushkin's old woman,
"tit! usurped her husband's place, having deposed her husband
I'/'Il'r
III in I762, before these wars. In reality Catherine was
vrurrous to her favourite Prince Potyomkin and her subsequent
IIIIII'/'
, but Pushkin evidently saw her as having treated her male
IJI"(lllritesabusively - as the old woman does in this skazka. In
1'111' aptain's Daughter (most of which was written two to
IIr/l'l'years later) Pushkin presents a positive picture of Cather1/1", but in his historical works he is extremely critical."
II S 'ems likely that folktales and folk poetry were important
II I i'ushhin above all for their language. In his 'Refutations of
I 1/1 irism', for example, Pushkin wrote, 'The study of old
111f,1:S, tales, etc., is essential for a complete knowledge of the
11,1/ III'II/ar qualities of the Russian language. Our critics are
11'111/1,1:
to despise these works. '5 Pushkin's very greatest ere11111'1/ tuas that of a literary language capable of giving expression
(" ,//1 r 'alms of human thought and experience. Establishing a
{I 1/' 111Irt. easy relationship with the language of the peasantry
11''/
1111 important step toward~ this achievement.

ALEKSANDR

AFANASYEV

'I'f)e Brothers Grimm published their famous collection of

( : trrnan tales in t 8 I 2. The first person to suggest that Russian
[ultuales might also be worth recording was the poet Vasily
'/,1 ukovsky; in r8r6 he wrote to his three nieces Anna, AvdotIv I and Yekaterina, asking, 'Could you not collect for me
Rnssian tales and Russian legends, which is to say, get our vil'"M" storytellers to tell stories to you and write down their tales.
I uin't laugh! This is our national poetry ... I would like for
VUII ...
each to take two notebooks and in one write down the
IIi/I'" (and with as many of the exact words of the storytellers as
I IlIlssible) and in the other write down miscellaneous things:
"I,,'rstitions, legends, and the like. '1 Anna, at least, appears to
111/1/(' acted on her uncle's suggestion, but her notebooks have
11"1'11 lost. Over two decades later, Zhukovsky
returned to this
"/"11,
suggesting that Anna and Avdotiya compile a collection
II I /'" I itled 'A Library of Folktales'. The prospective publisher
11"'111 bankrupt, but the tales recorded by Avdotiya's son Pyotr
/ 1/ ,'Yf1vskywere included in the collection of Russian Folktales
fl/lf,/; ihed by Aleksandr Afanasyev - the most famous of all
/'11 ,I In folklorists - between I855 and r863. This collection,
fllllllished in eight small books or 'fascicles', is usually seen as
II", Russian. counterpart to the work of the Brothers Grimm.
slcksandr Afanasyev was born in r826 in a small town in
Ifll' prnuince of Voronezh, the 'Black Earth' region between
liI~'OlV and Ukraine. His mother died when he was very
1/11111: his father worked as a scrivener. Afanasyev first became
,111,'11'111 d in folktales as a child, and his interest seems to have
" uutlucd constant. He went to school in the city of Voronezh

ALEKSANDR

AFANASYEV

and then studied law at Moscow University. After completing

his studies, he worked briefly as a schoolteacher, but is said to
have been unable to enforce discipline. From I849 until I862
he worked as an archivist in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This allowed him enough leisure to write numerous articles
about Russian history and literature and - above all - Russian
folklore. He was evidently determined and energetic, and he
had an excellent knowledge
of a large number of European
languages. 2
Although Afanasyev himself collected only about ten tales
first-hand, he gradually built up a collection of well over a
thousand
Russian folktales.
Around a third of these were
passed on to him by the Russian Geographical Society, which
had been collecting folktales since I847. Other tales were contributed by the ethnologist and lexicographer
Vladimir Dal',
and still more - as we have seen - were given to him by Pyotr
Kireyevsky, the chief authority on Russian folklore during the
years when Afanasyev was first beginning to publish. Kireyevsky
had collected a large number of songs and tales but had published little himself
Like many subsequent
Russian folklorists,
Afanasyev
suffered at the hands of the authorities. The repressive nature of
Russian public life lent a particular urgency and even danger to
what in other countries might have been an apolitical enterprise. The main problem for Afanasyev was that most folktales
portray the clergy critically or even mockingly. Afanasyev was
relatively fortunate
with his Russian Folk Legends (I859),
which was banned only in I860, after it had already sold out,
but the page proofs of the fifth and sixth fascicles of his Russian
Folktales, which he received in I86I, were - in his words <slashed and crimsoned with red ink'. Afanasyev was combative
in his defence of his work. When Filaret, the Moscow Metropolitan, denounced his Russian Folk Legends as <thoroughly
blasphemous and immoral', Afanasyev replied publicly, 'There
is a million times more morality, truth and human love in my
folk legends than in the sanctimonious
sermons delivered by
Your Holiness.'
In I858, Afanasyev founded the literary and historical journal

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AFANASYEV

Bibliographical Notes. When articles intended for this journal

(ell foul of the censor, Afanasyev sent them abroad to be published in the Free Russian Press, a journal published by the
exiled writer and political thinker Aleksandr Herzen, whom
/lfanasyev later met while on a visit to London, and with whom
I corresponded.
His links with Herzen were probably the
reason why, in I862, Afanasyev's apartment was subjected to a
[uslice search and he was forced to leave his post as an archivist. This may also have been connected to his completion, that
vear, of the collection of tales known in manuscript as Russian
Folk Tales - Not for Print; some of these tales were unpublishub! because of their obscenity, others because they were seen
II' anti-clerical.
A selection from Russian Folk Tales - Not for
l'rint was first published two years after Afanasyev's death anonymously
and in Geneva. It was not until I997 that the
/'(illection was published in full.
The last years of Afanasyev's
life were difficult. For four
vrars he was unable to find work, and was reduced to selling
tuost of his huge library. In an attempt to exclude draughts
[rum his cold apartment, he used to tear up copies of his Bibliographical Notes and lay them in thick layers on the floor.
/';/1 mtually he managed to make a living and support his family
through poorly paid secretarial jobs. In spite of these hardships
Ill'
.ontinued with his work as a folklorist; between I 865 and
18 >9 he published the three volumes of what he himself saw as
IllS most important
work, The Poetic Outlook of the Slavs on
Nuture.
Serious folktale collecting had begun with the Romantic
"'lIvement, and both the Brothers Grimm and Aleksandr Afan,I, veu belonged to the then dominant <mythological school' of
[ulldorists. They tended to see folktales essentially as the remn.tuts of ancient myths - often about the changing seasons, the
11I1i1 ements of the sun and moon or other celestial phenomena.
II/hough Afanasyev is now remembered primarily for his col1,/ I ion of folktales, his real ambition was to use these tales as a
1"I,~i for the reconstruction of an archaic Slavic mythology, few
turltten records of which had survived. The mysterious Balda,
[ut example, appears in a large number of oral tales as well as

30

ALEKSANDR

AFANASYEV

in Push kin's well-known

version; Afanasyev makes a convincing case for Balda being an incarnation of an ancient thunder
god - a god half-preserved and half-forgotten
in the memory of
the people.
In I870 Afanasyev published a collection of sixty-one of his
folktales,
omitting
dialect words and material he thought
unsuitable for children, under the title Russian Children's Tales.
Though even this collection was criticized because of the supposed immorality of the tales' many trickster heroes, it has always
been popular. Many of the finest nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Russian artists have illustrated it, and it has been
reprinted many times. Afanasyev was also working at this time
on a second, annotated edition of his Russian Folktales, but
this was published only posthumously.
In I870 Afanasyev
was diagnosed
with tuberculosis
poverty had undermined his health - and he died in I 87 I. In a
letter to the poet Afanasy Fet, the novelist Ivan Turgenev wrote,
'Afanasyev died recently, from hunger, but his literary merits,
my dear friend, will be remembered long after both yours and
mine are covered by the dark of oblivion. '3
Afanasyev was a pioneer, and an editor of genius. Many
important collections of Russian folktales were published during the hundred years after his death, but none has won such
popularity. Afanasyev's particular gift was his blend of pragmatic good sense and an intuitive sympathy with his material,
a kind of literary tact. Little of his archive has survived, but it
is clear that, for the main part, he followed some kind of middle path. It would, in any case, have been difficult for Afanasyev
to adhere to any more rigorous methodology,
since the texts he
received came from a variety of different sources and had been
transcribed with varying degrees of fidelity. He also appears to
have recognized that much of the charm of folktales lies in their
variety; unlike the Brothers Grimm, he did not attempt to combine different variants into a single 'ideal' version. Often he
includes up to six or seven versions of a single tale. Sometimes
the differences between these versions are a matter of plot
details, sometimes
more a matter of language - Afanasyev

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AFANASYEV

3I

often includes not only Russian but also Ukrainian and/or

Ii larusian versions of a single tale.
Afanasyev was working in the first decades of folklore studies,
before any consensus had been reached as to how best to record
tales. Some scholars looked on the language of the peasantry
tuith contempt; others insisted on the need for verbatim transrription. Some critics attacked Afanasyev for including too
many vulgarisms, too many dialect words and too many repetilions; others attacked him for over-polishing his texts. And he
ltiinsel] criticized his younger contemporary
Ivan Khudyakov
ltoth for using too many bookish words - i.e. over-editing _
I/(/(I
for failing to clarify obscure passages - i.e. under-editing.
'This is interesting not so much for what it tells us about Khud\'I{/"OV, who was very gifted, as for the light it casts on Afanasyev
liirnsel], a scrupulous scholar but a still more scrupulous artist.