Off he went towards the blue sea.
(The blue sea was not calm.)
He called out to the golden fish
and the fish swam up and asked him,
‘What is it, old man, what do you want?’
The old man bowed to the fish and said,
‘Have mercy on me, Sovereign Fish.
My old woman is shouting and swearing,
cursing me for all she is worth.
Though I am old, she gives me no peace.
She doesn’t want to be a lowly peasant.
She wants to be a noble lady.’
The golden fish replied straight away,
‘Take heart – and God be with you!’
Back went the old man to his old woman –
And what did he see? He saw a tall mansion.
His old woman was standing there in the porch.
She was wearing a splendid ‘soul-warmer’ –
a precious waistcoat trimmed with sable.
On her head was a brocade head-dress;
round her neck hung heavy pearls
and gold rings encircled her fingers.
On her feet were fine red boots
and before her stood zealous servants;
she was slapping them and pulling their hair.
The old man said to his old woman,
‘Good day, Lady Countess Baroness!
I hope you’ve got all you want now!’
The old woman flew at her husband
and packed him off to work in the stables.
A week passed, and another week.
The old woman grew madder than ever.
She sent her old man back to the fish:
‘Go back to the fish, bow low – and say
I don’t want to be a fine lady.
I want to be a mighty tsaritsa.’
The old man took fright. He implored her:
‘What’s got into you, woman? Are you crazy?
Have you been eating black henbane?
You don’t know how to walk like a tsaritsa.
You don’t know how to talk like a tsaritsa.
You’ll be the laughing stock of your tsardom.’
The old woman flew into a fury.
She struck her husband across the cheek:
‘How dare you, peasant, answer me back?
How dare you talk like that to a lady?
Back you go again to the sea – or, upon my word,
You’ll be dragged there against your will.’
Off he went towards the blue sea.
(The blue sea was blacker than black.)
He called out to the golden fish
and the fish swam up and asked him,
‘What is it, old man, what do you want?’
The old man bowed to the fish and said,
‘Have mercy on me, Sovereign Fish.
My old woman is raging again.
She doesn’t want to be a fine lady.
She wants to be a mighty tsaritsa.’
The golden fish replied straight away,
‘Take heart – and God be with you!
Your old woman shall be a tsaritsa.’
The old man went back to his old woman.
Before him stands a splendid palace
and his old woman is there in the hall.
She is a tsaritsa sitting at table.
Nobles are standing and waiting on her,
pouring her wines from across the seas
while she nibbles on honeycakes.
All around stand fierce-looking guards
with sharp axes poised on their shoulders …
The old man was frightened. He bowed to the ground
and said, ‘Greetings, O dread Tsaritsa –
and I hope you’ve got all you want now!’
The old woman didn’t look at him;
she just ordered him out of her sight,
and her nobles and courtiers came running
and shoved him out through the door;
and the guards ran up with their axes
and all but hacked him to pieces,
and everyone laughed at the old man:
‘Serves you right, you ignorant lout!
Let this be a lesson to you, bumpkin!
Don’t get too big for your boots
or sit in another man’s sleigh!’
A week passed, and another week.
The old woman grew madder than ever.
She sent her courtiers to fetch her husband.
They found him and brought him before her
and the old woman said to her old man,
‘Go back, bow down to the fish.
I don’t want to be a mighty tsaritsa,
I want to be a Sea Empress;
I want to live in the Ocean-Sea
with the golden fish as my servant
to bring me whatever I ask for.’
The old man did not dare say a word;
he was too frightened to open his mouth.
Off he went towards the blue sea.
Raging there was a black storm!
Waves were flinging up spray;
angry waves were crashing and howling.
He called out to the golden fish
and the fish swam up and asked him,
‘What is it, old man, what do you need?’
The old man bowed to the fish and said,
‘Have mercy on me, Sovereign Fish!
What am I to do with the wretched woman?
She no longer wants to be a tsaritsa,
she wants to be a Sea Empress.
She wants to live in the Ocean-Sea
with you as her faithful servant
to bring her whatever she asks for.’
Not a word did the fish reply.
She just slapped her tail on the water
and dived deep into the blue sea.
The old man waited and waited
but that was all the answer he got.
He went back – to a hut made of mud.
His old woman was sitting outside it;
and before her lay a broken washtub.
(1826–71)
The Brothers Grimm published their famous collection of German tales in 1812. The first person to suggest that Russian folktales might also be worth recording was the poet Vasily Zhukovsky; in 1816 he wrote to his three nieces Anna, Avdotiya and Yekaterina, asking, ‘Could you not collect for me Russian tales and Russian legends, which is to say, get our village storytellers to tell stories to you and write down their tales. Don’t laugh! This is our national poetry … I would like for you … each to take two notebooks and in one write down the tales (and with as many of the exact words of the storytellers as is possible) and in the other write down miscellaneous things: superstitions, legends, and the like.’
1
Anna, at least, appears to have acted on her uncle’s suggestion, but her notebooks have been lost. Over two decades later, Zhukovsky returned to this idea, suggesting that Anna and Avdotiya compile a collection to be titled ‘A Library of Folktales’. The prospective publisher went bankrupt, but the tales recorded by Avdotiya’s son Pyotr Kireyevsky were included in the collection of
Russian Folktales
published by Aleksandr Afanasyev – the most famous of all Russian folklorists – between 1855 and 1863. This collection, published in eight small books or ‘fascicles’, is usually seen as the Russian counterpart to the work of the Brothers Grimm.
Aleksandr Afanasyev was born in 1826 in a small town in the province of Voronezh, the ‘Black Earth’ region between Moscow and Ukraine. His mother died when he was very small; his father worked as a scrivener. Afanasyev first became interested in folktales as a child, and his interest seems to have remained constant. He went to school in the city of Voronezh
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 1849 until 1862 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 1847. 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
(1859), which was banned only in 1860, after it had already sold out, but the page proofs of the fifth and sixth fascicles of his
Russian Folktales
, which he received in 1861, 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 1858, Afanasyev founded the literary and historical journal
Bibliographical Notes.
When articles intended for this journal fell 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 Afanasyev later met while on a visit to London, and with whom he corresponded. His links with Herzen were probably the reason why, in 1862, Afanasyev’s apartment was subjected to a police search and he was forced to leave his post as an archivist. This may also have been connected to his completion, that year, of the collection of tales known in manuscript as
Russian Folk Tales – Not for Print
; some of these tales were unpublishable because of their obscenity, others because they were seen as anti-clerical. A selection from
Russian Folk Tales – Not for Print
was first published two years after Afanasyev’s death – anonymously and in Geneva. It was not until 1997 that the collection was published in full.
The last years of Afanasyev’s life were difficult. For four years he was unable to find work, and was reduced to selling most of his huge library. In an attempt to exclude draughts from his cold apartment, he used to tear up copies of his
Bibliographical Notes
and lay them in thick layers on the floor. Eventually he managed to make a living and support his family through poorly paid secretarial jobs. In spite of these hardships he continued with his work as a folklorist; between 1865 and 1869 he published the three volumes of what he himself saw as his most important work,
The Poetic Outlook of the Slavs on Nature
.
Serious folktale collecting had begun with the Romantic Movement, and both the Brothers Grimm and Aleksandr Afanasyev belonged to the then dominant ‘mythological school’ of folklorists. They tended to see folktales essentially as the remnants of ancient myths – often about the changing seasons, the movements of the sun and moon or other celestial phenomena. Although Afanasyev is now remembered primarily for his collection of folktales, his real ambition was to use these tales as a basis for the reconstruction of an archaic Slavic mythology, few written records of which had survived. The mysterious Balda, for example, appears in a large number of oral tales as well as
in Pushkin’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 1870 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 twentieth-century 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 1870 Afanasyev was diagnosed with tuberculosis – poverty had undermined his health – and he died in 1871. 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 often
includes not only Russian but also Ukrainian and/or Belarusian 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 with contempt; others insisted on the need for verbatim transcription. Some critics attacked Afanasyev for including too many vulgarisms, too many dialect words and too many repetitions; others attacked him for over-polishing his texts. And he himself criticized his younger contemporary Ivan Khudyakov both for using too many bookish words – i.e. over-editing – and for failing to clarify obscure passages – i.e. under-editing. This is interesting not so much for what it tells us about Khudyakov, who was very gifted, as for the light it casts on Afanasyev himself; a scrupulous scholar but a still more scrupulous artist.