Finding Folklore in Russia

by Jack McKeon

          

  We’re back after two weeks in Russia, five days in St.Petersburg, five days cruising through reservoirs, canals and a small part of the Volga, and four days in Moscow. The trip was fascinating in many respects. Insight into Russian folklore wasn’t, in general, one of them.

            I had anticipated catching some feeling for the forests and wildness that fed Russian folklore and fantasy, but we were too far west for it.  On the cruise part of the trip we often floated past banks of birch and pine forest, dense enough to present the illusion of what I was looking for, but I think that was mostly a wish projection.

            The overt appearances of folklore were inevitably commercial. On the boat there was a lecture billed as Russian Fairy Tales which I attended with a notebook and pen.  It was given, however, by the young woman in charge of the gift shop who had brought with her relevant merchandise.  She read (my heart sank) three tales, “King Frost”, a truncated and unadorned version of “The Firebird, the Princess Vasilissa, and the Horse of Power”, and an audience participation version (with funny hats) of “The Turnip”, all stories I have told.  The audience loved it but it lacked any real information and really needed a storyteller.

           

 In the merchandise stalls in the various stops, amongst the Matryoshka nesting dolls, I could sometimes find stuffed cloth representations of Baba Yaga.  She was presented as clearly a witch with the big hooked nose and pointed chin, but she was dressed like a babushka in the kitchen, nice friendly clothes, no black cape and pointed hat.  She was comforting rather than frightening.  To my disappointment, however, every doll carried the stereotypical broom.  At one stop, in a shop selling “registered, authentic” lacquered boxes, one very elaborate box was in the form of Baba Yaga’s shack on its chicken feet, covered with beautiful scenes from the stories.  It was impressive and tempting but too expensive for a tchotchke.  I settled for a smaller box with a painting of Baba Yaga, Vasilissa, skulls and, maybe, Koshkei the Deathless, looking very much like a devil, lurking in the background.  I bought it, though Baba Yaga is still riding the damn broom, not a mortar and pestle to be found anywhere.  I also bought a nice book of Russian Fairy Tales illustrated in a similar fashion.  Since I already own a similar book of Pushkin’s tales (on sale at the same stall), I think I now have a complete set.

            There were, however, unexpected parts of the trip that did deepen my feeling for Russian tales and fairy tales in general. In place after place, Catherine’s Palace, the Hermitage, the Tretyakov museum and the Armory in the Kremlin there was on display a jaw-dropping abundance of wealth. The onion domes on the cathedrals are often surfaced in gold.  Rooms were decorated with it.  Gold and silver appeared on and in everything.  Carriages, furniture, gowns, fur crowns and Tsars’ robes were encrusted with rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls. I can’t even get into the Faberge eggs made for Tsar Nicholas. I’ve been accustomed to take the descriptions of the wealth of kings in tales as gross exaggeration for effect.  Here I discovered that they are true.  When the Tsar in “The Firebird” receives the golden feather and demands the whole bird, I now understand that lust and entitlement. When the soldier goes in search of Vasilissa, the Tsar’s intended fiancee, and finds her in a golden boat with silver oars and invites her to his silver tent with golden decoration, it no longer seems like a fantasy.  The vastness of the luxury of the Tsars is mind-boggling.  No wonder there was a revolution.

            Finally, in one painting in the Tretyakov museum of three guardsmen, I could see in the animals what might have been referred to as a “horse of power.”  They were astonishing, heroic creatures, shaggy and beautiful.

            Perhaps I expected too much.  Russian folklore was there, alright, but it wasn’t for sale.