Afanasyev's works for children. Russian folk tales. From the collection of A.N. Afanasiev. folk demonology. Bylichki

"Russian cherished tales" by A.N. Afanasyev were printed in Geneva more than a hundred years ago. They appeared without a publisher's name, sine anno. On title page, under the title, it was only indicated: “Valaam. Typarian art of the monastic brethren. Year of darkness. And on the countertitle there was a note: "Printed solely for archaeologists and bibliophiles in a small number of copies."

Exceptionally rare already in the last century, Afanasiev's book has now become almost a phantom. Judging by the works of Soviet folklorists, only two or three copies of the Treasured Tales have been preserved in the special departments of the largest libraries in Leningrad and Moscow. The manuscript of Afanasiev's book is in the Leningrad Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR ("Folk Russian Tales Not for Printing", Archive, No. P-1, inventory 1, No. 112). The only copy of "Tales", owned by the Parisian National Library disappeared before the First World War. The book is not listed in the catalogs of the British Museum Library.

By republishing Afanasiev’s “Treasured Tales”, we hope to acquaint the Western and Russian reader with a little-known facet of the Russian imagination - “shameful”, obscene tales, in which, according to the folklorist, “genuine folk speech beats with a living key, sparkling with all the brilliant and witty sides of the common man” .

Obscene? Afanasiev did not consider them to be such. “They can’t understand,” he said, “that in these folk stories a million times more morality than in sermons full of school rhetoric.

"Russian cherished fairy tales" are organically connected with the collection of fairy tales by Afanasyev, which has become a classic. Fairy tales of immodest content, like the tales of a well-known collection, were delivered to Afanasyev by the same collectors-contributors: V.I. Dalem, P.I. Yakushkin, Voronezh local historian N.I. Vtorov. In both collections we find the same themes, motifs, plots, with the only difference that the satirical arrows of the Treasured Tales are more poisonous, and the language is rather rude in places. There is even a case when the first, quite “decent” half of the story is placed in the classic collection, while the other, less modest, is in “Cherished Tales”. We are talking about the story "A man, a bear, a fox and a horsefly."

There is no need to dwell on why Afanasiev, when publishing Folk Russian Tales (issues 1–8, 1855–1863), was forced to refuse to include the part that would be published a decade later under the title Russian Folk Tales Not for Print. (the epithet "cherished" appears only in the title of the second, last edition of "Fairy Tales"). The Soviet scientist V.P. Anikin explains this refusal in this way: “It was impossible to print the anti-pope and anti-bar tales in Russia.” And is it possible to publish - in an uncut and uncleaned form - "Cherished Tales" in the homeland of Afanasyev today? We do not find an answer to this from V.P. Anikin.

The question remains open how immodest fairy tales got abroad. Mark Azadovsky suggests that in the summer of 1860, during his trip to Western Europe, Afanasiev handed them over to Herzen or another emigrant. It is possible that the publisher of Kolokola contributed to the publication of Skazok. Subsequent searches, perhaps, will help to shed light on the history of the publication of "Russian cherished fairy tales" - a book that stumbled over the obstacles of not only tsarist, but also Soviet censorship.

FOREWORD A.N.AFANASIEV A TO THE 2nd EDITION

The publication of our cherished fairy tales ... is almost the only phenomenon of its kind. It may easily be that this is precisely why our publication will give rise to all sorts of complaints and exclamations, not only against the impudent publisher, but also against the people who created such fairy tales in which folk fantasy, in vivid pictures and not at all embarrassed by expressions, unfolded all the strength and all the wealth his humour. Leaving aside all possible reproaches against us, we must say that any exclamation against the people would be not only an injustice, but also an expression of utter ignorance, which, by the way, is for the most part one of the essential characteristics of a flashy pruderie. Our cherished tales are a unique phenomenon, as we said, especially because we do not know of any other edition in which genuine folk speech would beat in such a living key in a fabulous form, sparkling with all the brilliant and witty sides of a commoner.

The literatures of other peoples present many similar cherished stories, and have long been ahead of us in this respect as well. If not in the form of fairy tales, then in the form of songs, conversations, short stories, farces, sottises, moralites, dictons, etc., other peoples have a huge number of works in which the folk mind, just as little embarrassed by expressions and pictures, marked with humor, hooked with satire and sharply exposed to ridicule different sides life. Who doubts that the playful stories of Boccaccio are not gleaned from folk life that the innumerable French novellas and faceties of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are not from the same source as the satirical works of the Spaniards, Spottliede and Schmahschriften of the Germans, this mass of lampoons and various flyers in all languages, which appeared on the occasion of all kinds of private and public events life, - not folk works? In Russian literature, however, there is still a whole section of folk expressions that are not printed, not for printing. In the literatures of other peoples, such barriers to popular speech have not existed for a long time.

... So, the accusation of the Russian people of gross cynicism would be equal to the accusation of the same and all other peoples, in other words, it itself reduces to zero. The erotic content of the cherished Russian fairy tales, without saying anything for or against the morality of the Russian people, simply points only to that side of life that most of all gives revelry to humor, satire and irony. Our tales are transmitted in that artless form, as they came out of the mouths of the people and recorded from the words of the storytellers. This is what makes them special: nothing is touched in them, there are no embellishments or additions. We will not expand on the fact that in different stripes of wide Rus' the same tale is told differently. There are, of course, many such variants, and most of them, no doubt, pass from mouth to mouth without being either overheard or recorded by collectors. The options given by us are taken from among the most famous or the most characteristic for some reason.

Note ... that the part of the fairy tales where characters animals, as well as possible, draws all the sharpness and all the power of observation of our commoner. Far from the cities, working in the field, forest, on the river, everywhere he deeply understands the nature he loves, faithfully peeps and subtly studies the life around him. The vividly grasped aspects of this mute, but eloquent for him life, are themselves transferred to his fellows - and full of life and light humor the story is ready. The section of fairy tales about the so-called “foal breed” by the people, of which we have so far given only a small part, brightly illuminates both the attitude of our peasant towards his spiritual shepherds, and their correct understanding.

Our cherished tales are curious in addition to many aspects in the following respect. For an important scholar, a thoughtful researcher of the Russian nationality, they provide an extensive field for comparing the content of some of them with stories of almost the same content by foreign writers, with the works of other peoples. How did the stories of Boccaccio (see, for example, the fairy tale "The Merchant's Wife and the Clerk"), the satires and farces of the French of the 16th century, penetrated into the Russian backwoods, how did the Western short story degenerate into a Russian fairy tale, what is their social side, where and, perhaps, even from whose side there are traces of influence, what kind of doubts and conclusions from the evidence of such an identity, etc., etc.

Propp sees in folk tales a reminder of totemic initiation rituals. The tale does not describe the ritual system of any particular stage of culture, but its initiation scenario expresses the ahistorical archetypal behavior of the psyche. Fairy tales do not have an exact reference to any culture: different historical cycles and cultural styles mix and collide with each other. Only patterns of behavior that could exist in many cultural cycles and at different historical moments have been preserved here.

The typological correspondence between the fairy tale and the rite of initiation, established by Propp in the book of 1946, will only begin to develop in the mid-70s in studies comparing folklore narratives and rites of "transition".

29. Folk demonology. Bylichki.

Demonological stories are one of the types of non-fairytale prose, including bylichki and byvalschny; stories about supernatural beings and phenomena. The bylichki expressed ideas and concepts about supernatural forces, about the intervention of creatures from the lower folk demonology. Bylichki - oral stories about goblin, brownies, water, mermaids, kikimore, bannik, ovinnik, fiery snake, resurrected dead / devils and, in general, about interference in human life by creatures from the world of folk religion. They are characterized by the narrator's firm confidence in the existence of such forces, but, unlike past events, the performer's doubts are possible. Bylichki reflect the everyday likes and dislikes of their storytellers. The division is made according to the characters: about brownies, about goblin, etc.

30. Types of collections of fairy tales. Collection of Afanasiev.

The classification of fairy tales is given based on the research of the Finnish school and, in particular, A. Aarne, who divided fairy tales into three types - about animals, fairy tales proper (magic) and anecdotes. Later, jokes were replaced by social fairy tales. Tales about animals originated in ancient times. They reflected human attempts to comprehend the laws of the animal world based on life experience. Propp, in the preface to Afanasiev's collection of fairy tales, divides fairy tales about animals into 1) fairy tales about wild ones ("The Wolf and the Ice Hole") 2) about wild and domestic ones ("Once upon a time there was a dog") 3) about a man and wild ones ("A Man and a Bear" ) 4) about domestic ones (“About the peeled goat”) 5) about birds and fish (“The Fox and the Crane”) 6) tales about other animals and plants (“Gingerbread Man”). The most important features: animism, anthropomorphism, totemism. In the depiction of animals, there is a tendency towards typification: the fox is always gray, the hare is cowardly, and so on. - all this is the result of anthropomorphism in the explanation of nature. The main purpose of fairy tales about animals is explanatory and educational. They may explain why pets are domesticated or why a hare changes its skin. On the other hand, in fairy tales, moralizing is frequent (“The wolf and the seven kids”). There are also so-called. allegorical satirical tales ("The Fox and the Black Grouse", in which, before eating the black grouse, the fox makes him confess). In fairy tales about animals, convention is important, not fantasy. There is no magic in them - otherwise they pass into the category of magic. The most important compositional feature of the SOJ is the stringing of episodes in them - all meetings and actions are repeated many times - these tales are cumulative, i.e. have a chain structure ("Kolobok", "Teremok"). Dialogues are more pronounced than in a fairy tale - various songs, sayings, etc.

Otisk. mythol. Russian roots. fairy tales. Integrity of options. Most of his amendments relate to the language and style of fairy tales. For the first time folklore texts are presented in variants; some dialect features of the performers' speech have been preserved; extensive commentary prepared; where it was possible, passport news about published texts was introduced. Note that from the point of view of modern requirements, not everything in the collection can satisfy us: Afanasiev did not see anything reprehensible in the correct stylistic editing, in the creation of consolidated texts.

The collection "Folk Russian Tales" was compiled by A. N. Afanasyev in 1855-1864. For publication, 75 texts were extracted from the archive of the Russian Geographical Society. The rest of the materials are collected from various sources. Afanasiev himself wrote down no more than 10 fairy tales, mainly from his homeland - the Voronezh province. The largest number of texts belongs to the collection of V. I. Dahl. Fairy tales account for the largest number of tales: animal tales (1-299), fairy tales (300-749), legendary tales (750-849) and novelistic tales (850-999).

Afanasiev's collection has some shortcomings. He depended on his correspondents, and therefore the quality of the recordings is uneven and varied. The places of existence of each fairy tale are not indicated.

Folk Russian fairy tales

* * *

V. Vasnetsov. Princess at the window

From the publisher

A fairy tale is an amazing creation of the people, it elevates a person, entertains him, gives faith in his own strength and in miracles. We get acquainted with this genre of literature, perhaps the most popular and beloved, in childhood, therefore, in the minds of many people, fairy tales are associated with something simple, even primitive, understandable and little child. However, this is a profound misunderstanding. Folk tales are not as simple as it might seem at first glance. This is a multifaceted, deep layer of folk art, which carries the wisdom of generations, enclosed in a concise and unusually imaginative form.

The Russian fairy tale is a special genre of folklore, it has not only an entertaining plot and magical characters, but also an amazing poetry of the language that opens the reader to the world of human feelings and relationships; it affirms kindness and justice, and also introduces to Russian culture, to the wise folk experience, to the native language.

Fairy tales belong to folk art, they do not have an author, but we know the names of fairy tale researchers who carefully collected and recorded them. One of the most famous and outstanding collectors of fairy tales was the ethnographer, historian and literary critic A. N. Afanasyev. In 1855–1864 he compiled the most complete collection of fairy tales - "Russian Folk Tales", which included about 600 texts recorded in different corners Russia. This book has become a model of fairy tale literature and a source of inspiration for many Russian writers and poets.

The heterogeneity of fairy tales, the wide range of themes and plots, the variety of motives, characters and ways of resolving conflicts make the task of genre definition of a fairy tale very difficult. However, there is a common feature inherent in all fairy tales - a combination of fiction and truth.

Today, the classification of fairy tales is generally accepted, in which several groups are distinguished: fairy tales, fairy tales about animals, social (or novelistic) and tiresome fairy tales. A. N. Afanasiev also singled out the so-called "cherished" fairy tales, known for their erotic content and profanity.

In our collection, we have included fairy tales about animals and fairy tales - as the most common, vivid and loved by everyone. folk tales.

In fairy tales about animals, fish, animals, birds and even insects act, they talk to each other, quarrel, make peace and get married. However, there are almost no miracles in these fairy tales, their heroes are quite real inhabitants of the forests.

Man has long been a particle of nature, constantly fighting with her, he at the same time sought protection from her, which was reflected in folklore. Depicting animals, the people gave these characters human features, while at the same time preserving their real habits and "way of life". Subsequently, a fable, parable meaning was introduced into many fairy tales about animals.

There are relatively few tales about animals: they occupy a tenth of the fairy tale epic. The main characters: a fox, a wolf, a bear, a hare, a goat, a horse, a raven, a rooster. The most common characters in fairy tales about animals are the fox and the wolf, which have constant signs: the fox is cunning and treacherous, and the wolf is angry, greedy and stupid. In other animal characters, the characteristics are not so sharply defined, they vary from tale to tale.

The animal epic reflects human life with all its passions, as well as a realistic depiction of human, in particular, peasant life. Most of the tales about animals are distinguished by their unpretentious plot and conciseness, but at the same time, the plots themselves are unusually diverse. Tales about animals necessarily contain morality, which, as a rule, is not expressed directly, but follows from the content.

The main part of Russian folklore is made up of fairy tales - a kind of adventure oral literature. In these fairy tales we meet with the most incredible inventions, with the spiritualization of objects and phenomena of the surrounding world. These features are characteristic of fairy tales of all peoples of the world. Their heroes perform amazing feats, kill monsters, get living and dead water, free from captivity and save the innocent from death; they are endowed with miraculous qualities: they turn into animals, walk along the bottom of the sea, fly through the air. From all dangers and trials, they emerge victorious and always achieve what they have in mind. Fantastic, unique heroes of fairy tales are well known to everyone since childhood: Baba Yaga, Koschey, Serpent Gorynych, the Frog Princess ... And who among us sometimes does not dream of having a flying carpet, a self-assembled tablecloth or a magic ring that fulfills everything wishes!

In a Russian fairy tale, the image of a positive hero is central, the entire interest of the story is focused on his fate. He embodies the folk ideal of beauty, moral strength, kindness, folk ideas about justice. Numerous dangers, miracles, unexpected trials await the hero, often he is threatened with death. But everything ends well - this is the main principle fairy tale, which reflected folk ideas about good and evil, and the heroes became the embodiment of fighters for age-old folk ideals.

In the fantastic, magical form of Russian fairy tales, descriptions of national life, psychology and folk customs which gives the fairy tales additional cultural value. And the abundance of well-aimed comparisons, epithets, figurative expressions, songs and rhythmic repetitions makes the reader, forgetting about everything, plunge headlong into magical reality.

Fairy tales have all the peoples of the world. It seemed interesting to us to compare the fairy-tale plots that are found in world folklore, to trace their national features, differences and similarities, and compositional features. Based on the work of well-known researchers of fairy tales and our own observations, we have included in this book comments on some fairy tales with so-called "wandering" plots.

Before you is not just a collection of fairy tales, but a real chest with gems of folk wisdom, the colors and brilliance of which you can admire endlessly. These imperishable jewels have been teaching us to love good and hate evil for centuries, inspire us with heroism and perseverance of heroes, and can serve as a real consolation and entertainment in any life situation.

Birds of the Sirin. Lubok illustration

Animal Tales

cat and fox

Once upon a time there was a man; he had a cat, only so mischievous, what a disaster! He's tired of the man. Here the man thought and thought, took the cat, put it in a bag, tied it up and carried it into the forest. He brought it and threw it in the forest: let it disappear! The cat walked and walked and came across the hut in which the forester lived; he climbed into the attic and lies down for himself, but if he wants to eat, he will go through the forest to catch birds and mice, eat his fill and go back to the attic, and grief is not enough for him!

A fairy tale is an amazing creation of the people, it elevates a person, entertains him, gives faith in his own strength and in miracles. We get acquainted with this genre of literature, perhaps the most popular and beloved, in childhood, therefore, in the minds of many people, fairy tales are associated with something simple, even primitive, understandable even to a small child. However, this is a profound misunderstanding. Folk tales are not as simple as it might seem at first glance. This is a multifaceted, deep layer of folk art, which carries the wisdom of generations, enclosed in a concise and unusually imaginative form.

Fairy tales belong to folk art, they do not have an author, but we know the names of fairy tale researchers who carefully collected and recorded them. One of the most famous and outstanding collectors of fairy tales was the ethnographer, historian and literary critic A. N. Afanasyev. In 1855–1864 he compiled the most complete collection of fairy tales - "Russian Folk Tales", which included about 600 texts recorded in different parts of Russia. This book has become a model of fairy tale literature and a source of inspiration for many Russian writers and poets.

In our collection we have included fairy tales about animals and fairy tales - as the most common, bright and beloved folk tales.

In a Russian fairy tale, the image of a positive hero is central, the entire interest of the story is focused on his fate. He embodies the folk ideal of beauty, moral strength, kindness, folk ideas about justice. Numerous dangers, miracles, unexpected trials await the hero, often he is threatened with death. But everything ends happily - this is the main principle of a fairy tale, which reflected folk ideas about good and evil, and the heroes became the embodiment of fighters for age-old folk ideals.

Descriptions of national life, psychology and folk customs are reflected in the fantastic, magical form of Russian fairy tales, which gives the fairy tales additional cultural value. And the abundance of well-aimed comparisons, epithets, figurative expressions, songs and rhythmic repetitions makes the reader, forgetting about everything, plunge headlong into magical reality.

Birds of the Sirin. Lubok illustration

Animal Tales

cat and fox

Once a cat went for a walk, and a fox met him, saw a cat and marvels:

- How many years I live in the forest, but I have never seen such an animal.

She bowed to the cat and asked:

- Tell me, good fellow, who are you, how did you come here - and how to call you by name?

And the cat threw up his fur and said:

- I was sent to you from the Siberian forests as a steward, and my name is Kotofey Ivanovich.

“Ah, Kotofey Ivanovich,” says the fox, “I didn’t know about you, I didn’t know; Well, come visit me.

The cat went to the fox; she led him to her hole and began to regale him with various game, and she herself asks:

- What, Kotofey Ivanovich, are you married or single?

“Single,” says the cat.

- And I, the fox, - the girl, take me in marriage.

The cat agreed, and they began to feast and have fun.

The next day, the fox went to get supplies, so that there would be something to live with her young husband; and the cat stayed at home.

Eh, I don't like "foreign" used books. Keyword- "foreign". I somehow disdain to buy books that it is not clear where they stood, lived and read. The book is alive. She absorbs the energy of the one who turns the pages...
As a child, I had a book that made me fall in love with reading. For the current younger generation this is the book "Harry Potter" (as a rule, it is from it that children are imbued with reading as a process), but for me it was Afanasyev's fairy tales with illustrations by Mavrina. But somewhere this book got lost and, unfortunately, disappeared ..
I have been looking for an alternative for a long time, a reissue, but unfortunately I did not find it.
There are a lot of fairy tale books on the book market!
But, that's just Afanasyev's collection, in my opinion, the most accurate, most consistent and most correct. Fairy tales are arranged in "ascending" order - from simple fairy tales to more complex ones. Fairy tales are amazing and Russian!
In search of my book, from new editions I bought:

Compiled by: Alexander Afanasiev, O. Sklyarova
Languages: Russian
Publisher: Olma Media Group
Series: Classics in illustrations
ISBN 978-5-373-05338-9; 2013

A good edition, excellent cover, paper, chic print quality, but not that ... That's not it at all .. There is no integrity in the book, there is no fabulousness. The illustrations are all different, sometimes even off topic. The content is very truncated. There are 45 stories in the book. The book is very flawed.

Illustrator: Nina Babarkina
Editor: Natalya Morozova
Languages: Russian
Publisher: Bright City
ISBN 978-5-9663-0141-5; 2009

I knew that it was not Afanasyev. But I bought it anyway. You know what you didn't like? The book is very pathos and museum. Inanimate. Fairy tales shouldn't be like that.

This edition is more or less close to the original.
But in terms of content - only 59.3% (slightly more than half) of the tales from the old edition.
This collection contains only 70 fairy tales out of 118 fairy tales contained in the Soviet edition.
Everything is processed by Afanasiev. The illustrations are black and white, but that's not a bad thing.
Cons: large format, division of the text into two horizontal parts (some kind of nonsense, AST probably hired some lover of dividing the text into two parts - several books have already been laid out in this way, including "The Lord of the Rings").
And the illustrations are varied. It feels like everything that was up to the heap was piled up.
Here, for example, a photo of spreads (I didn’t take pictures, I took a photo from the Labyrinth):

Overall, I didn't like it.

Without thinking twice (in such and such a situation), I still ordered a second-hand book edition of the "good old" Afanasyev with his fairy tales)

secondhand edition
Publisher: Fiction
Safety: good
ISBN 5-280-01040-5; 1990

The edition is old, not the 90th, but the 89th year. The book is supported.
You can’t say that, but after I flipped through this book, I wanted to wash my hands ... ((Well, I don’t know who held this book in my hands! I can’t help myself .. Probably this will pass and the book will become MINE!
And the book itself is amazing! And as if she came from a fairy tale. I don't understand why I feel like this? Of course this is personal and very subjective)

There are ALL 118 fairy tales in the book! They are arranged in a special way: as I said above - from simple to complex. Here is Baba Yaga, and Koschei, and "you will go to the right .." - in general, everything!) Such a self-sufficient book in content.

And these are page spreads with wonderful illustrations by T. Mavrina:

And what cool "Boring fairy tales" at the end !!!)))

Just a fairy tale, not a book!)

P.S.: summing up what has been said, I have a question for experts: tell me please good alternative the above edition from the newly published one. Surely I missed something. I will be very grateful!
And I really hope that some publishing house will decide and take on this particular book. And make it just as fabulous, readable and bookish. Let it be not just another soulless "fairy tale", but let it be fairy tales)