Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (Penguin Classics) Read Online Free Page A

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 previous day he had written the short poem ‘Demons’ – the vision of evil 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 Pushkin’s counter-spell, 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 kitten) ended up almost unchanged in the
skazka. 3
    ‘A Tale about a Fisherman and a Fish’ was written three years later, in October 1833, during the second of Pushkin’s ‘Boldino autumns’. Pushkin’s immediate source was the BrothersGrimm, but this would be hard to guess. Not only do the rhythms and images seem completely Russian, but the tale also reflects Pushkin’s concern with Russian history. Pushkin’s greatest achievement of these months was the narrative poem ‘The Bronze Horseman’, which is devoted to the figure of Peter the Great; but he also wrote several works relating to Catherine the Great. As well as composing the whole of his short story ‘The Queen of Spades’, which includes reminiscences of her reign, he completed the final draft of ‘A History of Pugachov’, a historical account of a peasant and Cossack rebellion that Catherine managed to suppress only with great difficulty. ‘A Tale about a Fisherman and a Fish’ also – though less obviously – belongs to this cycle of works about Catherine the Great.
    The tale’s hidden meaning is revealed by what appears at first to be no more than a careless slip. It seems odd that Pushkin’s old woman should consider ruling over the sea as a higher destiny than that of being ‘a mighty tsaritsa’. Catherine the Great, however, was eager to rule over the Black Sea; between 1768 and 1792 she fought two wars against Turkey in order to achieve this ambition. And Catherine, like Pushkin’s old woman, had usurped her husband’s place, having deposed her husband Peter III in 1762, before these wars. In reality Catherine was generous to her favourite Prince Potyomkin and her subsequent lovers, but Pushkin evidently saw her as having treated her male favourites abusively – as the old woman does in this
skazka
. In
The Captain’s Daughter
(most of which was written two to three years later) Pushkin presents a positive picture of Catherine, but in his historical works he is extremely critical.
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    It seems likely that folktales and folk poetry were important to Pushkin above all for their language. In his ‘Refutations of Criticism’, for example, Pushkin wrote, ‘The study of old songs, tales, etc., is essential for a complete knowledge of the particular qualities of the Russian language. Our critics are wrong to despise these works.’
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Pushkin’s very greatest creation was that of a literary language capable of giving expression to all realms of human thought and experience. Establishing a free and easy relationship with the language of the peasantry was an important step towards this achievement.

A Tale about a Priest and his Servant Balda
A priest, thick
    as a brick,
    was wandering about the fair
    when he met Balda.
    ‘Father, what’s brought
you
here
    so bright and early?’
    ‘I need a servant, a burly
    carpenter, a sterling
    cook, an able
    stable-boy.
    I can’t offer much
    in the way
    of pay.
    Where should I look?’
    ‘No further, Father!
    I’ll do all you ask,
    whatever you wish,
    in return for a daily dish
    of wheaten porridge
    and three flicks,
    when the year’s up,
    on your priestly