The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

stories in 1872, especially his brief prose tale, “A Prisoner of the Caucasus.” “If you try to say anything superfluous, bombastic, or morbid, the [common people’s] language won’t permit it,” he wrote his friend Nikolai Strakhov in Marchof that year.11 Tolstoy was certainly not surrendering his right to instruct his readership. But he suspected what Lu¨thi noticed above, that neutrality inspires trust whereas narrative exhortation does not – and Tolstoy wished to be trusted.

Among the distinctive features Lu¨thi findsin European folk-tale language are one-dimensionality, lack of depth, and an abstract, detached style. Recasting Tolstoy’s auto-critique in Lu¨thi’s terms, what is “not permitted” in folk narration is thick description and a conflicted inner life marked by doubt or self-pity. What is it like to live in a depthless world? 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 colors: 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.

Many of these pan-European traits are common to the Russian skazka as well. Conventionally it is divided into three types. “Tales about animals” address human behavior but with animal or vegetable actors – all greedy, sneaky, self-serving, duplicitous, for whom the prime value is survival at any cost. More edifying are the “wondertales” that test and transform a hero, usually by dispatching him on a quest and always by relying on supernatural help. Finally there are “tales of everyday life,” focused around the home or hut (center of the peasant cosmos) and featuring a sexual or financial plot – in which a devil might be outwitted, but without any transfiguration of the heroes. As a rule, sexual themes are not treated erotically or chivalrously. Russian folk tales are not incipient love stories, as they frequently were in Western cultures. The Russian fairy-tale princess is often mute, unwilling or passive in the beginning. Once moved to act, however, she is matter-of-fact, inventive, alert to what it takes to survive trial and temptation, and far less sentimental than her Tsarevich Ivan. The skazka is a dual-faith narrative, mixing pagan and Christian motifs. The villain controls major celestial and geophysical forces (frost, wind, thunder, water), but the hero or heroine can always win the services of small animals by acts of kindness. Many Russian folk tales are linked to incantations, spells, and nature worship.

The most famous Russian folklore villains are Koshchey the Deathless and Baba Yaga.Koshchey, the simpler of the two, is an archaic figure,a sorcerer, often

68 The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

portrayed as a skeleton (his name is related either to the word for bone, kost, or to koshch'noe, the Slavic kingdom of the dead). Koshchey’s task is to thwart the hero in his pursuit of the reward (the princess). The only way to foil this immortal creature is to reunite him with his own death. The hero must find this death (usually hiding in a duck’s egg in an oak stump floating in the sea) and smash it against Koshchey’s forehead. Although stubborn, vain, and dangerous -his foul breath can turn a person to stone - Koshchey is not very intelligent and easily outwitted. His tactics suffer from his innate inability to sympathize with others. Consider Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s folk opera Koshchey the Deathless (1902). Unusually for folk tales but conventionally for opera (which requires, in addition to the romantic soprano, a mezzo or contralto as secondary love interest), the villain has a beautiful daughter, Koshcheyevna, who by various charms almost seduces Ivan-Tsarevich, thereby interrupting his quest to regain the captive princess. The princess, being human, can empathize with her rival. Out of compassion she kisses Koshcheyevna on the forehead. For the first time in her life, Koshchey’s daughter begins to weep - turning her into a willow tree. The Koshchey element can revert to plants or trees but cannot be fully humanized.