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Study 114 - Vasilisa the Fair (Patreon)

Published:
2024-12-05 20:02:37
Edited:
2025-02-06 17:41:48
Imported:
2024-12
Tags:

Content

It's time for some weird fairy tales, starting with the Russian classic Vasilisa the Fair as presented by Alexander Afanasyev!

Special thanks to reader Kristyna Baczynski! Check out her amazing Baba Yaga print!

Here's that site featuring Russian Secret Tales.

Check out these Baba Yaga Lubki prints (and a lot of other information) from fairy-tale blog A dark rainbow.

Have a look at this Soviet-era animated film, Vasilisa the Beautiful.

Place your eyes on Vasilisa at the Hut of Baba Yaga, by Ivan Bilibin!

This episode features arrangements of Prelude No. 4 of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, Opus 87, as well as Nocturne No. 19 in E Minor, Op. 72, No. 1 by Frédéric Chopin.

Next up: Teig O'Kane and the Corpse

Files

Comments

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

I am very interested in learning a little more about Slavic folklore. For my part, while Baba Yaga gets the limelight, it's always been Koschei the Deathless that drew my love. I first learned of him by looking up what a "Koschei" was after reading Stross' "A Colder War," with its "Project Koschei" being the Soviet program to research and try to weaponize...well. Koschei is also such a wonderfully dramatic figure; a Dracula-esque villainous penchant for trying to steal wives coupled with an actual folkloric basis for the AD&D lich—ol' Koschei is Koschei the Deathless because he hid his death in a needle, which he placed in an egg, which he concealed in a duck, which he stuffed in a hare, which he locked in a chest and buried on a hill on a magical isle nobody can find. I also named my grey cat Koschei, because Koschei the Deathless has grey skin. I'm still early in the episode, but a side note on ritual blasphemy: a tradition of assorted pre-Conquest Central American cultures which is thankfully still quite alive today is cursing out owls to ward off ill omens. Owls are often shapechanging witches who, if they cry out while resting upon your roof, will cause someone's death—but cursing them out drives them away! The Florentine Codex records original Nahuatl ritual curses that direct the owls to do things like...well, get to know their own mothers a little *too* well, among other things.

Micah Champion

Why didn't the doll help the mom avoid evil?

Aaron La Vene

I really love Slavic folklore. I think I may have mentioned this last year but I highly recommend checking out some of the Koschei the Deathless. Also the frog princess story is great, lol I actually made a dnd campaign that started inspired by that and had baba yaga in it, as well as her two sisters… which are also Baba Yaga…. The rules of three…. Very prevalent in Slavic folklore Also yes disembodied hands I believe

Sam Harris

Great episode, guys. "Morning is wiser than evening" (утро вечера мудренее / utra vechera mudrenyee) is indeed a Russian proverb, and I think it predates Afanasyev.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

"Vasilisa" is ultimately a Greek name that means "queen," so it's a good name for the fairy-tale princesses (or eventual royalty, anyway) in "Vasilisa the Beautiful" and "Vasilisa the Wise" (aka "The Frog Princess").

Jim Cannon

I'm sure by now Chris is well aware of how Baba Yaga is often described as sleeping ON or IN her oven. That his dream so prominently featured an oven is merely more proof that it was a visitation and not a dream at all.

Anne Ominous

That Bilibin print is awesome! It's inspiring my yard for Halloween next year. Art Nouveau indeed. Mr Bilibin had another Baba Yaga print on the site depicting the chicken shack. Hope that Chad's Vasalisa character makes another cameo. Hilarious!

Runninghead

Great episode! Bilibin is a fantastic artist. I found his work in a charity shop book when I was a Greetings Card artist and it provided so much useful inspiration. Vasalisa is also a story covered by one of my favourite bands, "The Bookshop Band"! They read stories then write music based on the story. Just like my listening habits with Strange Studies, I listen to their songs on repeat far more than is probably healthy! 😅 Their "Vasilisa the Beautiful" is slow, magical and spooky, flirting with flats and rich with cello throughout. Not sure if I'm allowed to share a link in a Patreon post but just search for " The Bookshop Band" on YouTube. https://youtube.com/@thebookshopband

It's a Ghost.

I once ate at a restaurant in Tel Aviv called Baba Yaga, which I thought was a strange name for a restaurant, but it was just a regular restaurant. I had the whole sea bream (fish) with grilled vegetables, and it was really good.

It's a Ghost.

Vasilisa's relationship with Baba Yaga reminded me of the relationship between Chihiro and Yubaba in the movie Spirited Away, especially when Vasilisa calls Baba Yaga grandmother, and apparently I'm not the only one. Here's a quote from a Studio Ghibli wiki. "The premise of Spirited Away, wherein Yubaba enslaves a girl to do menial tasks for her, is not dissimilar from that of the Russian tale Vasilissa the Beautiful, wherein Baba Yaga subjects the titular character to a similar fate." - https://ghibli.fandom.com/wiki/Yubaba

Raymond Hill

I love that you’re going through this book. My wife got it for me this past Father’s Day and my son and I sat reading it all morning. It was at then end of one of the stories about an old man who was being tortured by witches that my darling, cherubic 5-year-old looked up at me. I could see in his eyes that he was scared but trying to be brave, and in the most darling little voice he said to me, “Daddy … these stories are all bullshit, right?”

Haylen Brenagh

Gotta say, my spoken Russian skills have been enhanced immeasurably by my studied review of the Russian Secret Tales. Now I can talk about the agricultural husbandry of enthusiastic crops of self-actualized penises with the best of 'em. Chris and Chad, you fellas are always widening my horizons. I highly recommend the story Посев хуёв ("Po-sev khu-yev") to your readers. As an aside, way back when I was learning Russian for the US Defense Department, our class got our hands on a large list of Russian slang and profanity, including the type of lingo used by prisoners and guards at gulags. Wow those guys were imaginative!

Steve

If you want Russian folk tales slightly more acceptable to the powers that be, Googol wrote a terrific collection which you read here: https://archive.org/details/completetalesofn0001gogo/mode/2up (vol1, 2 also available) or in paper inexpensively here: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780226300689/Complete-Tales-Nikolai-Gogol-Volume-0226300684/plp. Volume 1 has some shorter stories but volume 2 has Viy. There was a terrific series of Russian films from 2018 on these stories but they are no longer easily available (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogol_(film_series)).

Erik Steiner

The idea of the "hut with chicken legs" probably comes from the practice of putting huts on a set of tree trunks - often four - cut off at the roots, which seems to have been common in northeastern Europe. For example, Sámi storehouses were built this way to prevent animals from getting into the food. You can find pictures of such huts on the internet, and they really do look like they're on chicken legs. Some of these kinds of huts also had the entrance in the floor of the hut, requiring the use of a ladder to access it, thus giving the outward appearance of a hut with no entrance, which may have influenced the myth as well. I also saw a painting of such a hut by Nicholas Roerich - he of the Himalaya paintings - called "The Hut of Death", supposedly depicting old Slavic burial customs (which would make sense with the difficulties of digging graves in the frozen ground you'd expect in a Russian winter).

Shadavid

I have some of these tales, including Vasilisa the Beautiful in the Gillian Avery translation from 1995. It has colour illustrations by Bilibin, but unfortunately these are on the small side. Much more gorgeous is the Methuen edition of The Tale of Tsar Saltan from 1974, which has beautiful reproductions of Bilibin's art. I look for these. Lastly, there are interesting variations on these stories in the two volume Gamayun Tales, by Alexander Utkin. These were published in paperback by Nobrow Press in 2020. These are adapted in comics form. There are painted in a bold style with wonderful colour.