The Tale of Tsar Saltan

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The Tale of Tsar Saltan
Ivanbilibin.jpg
The mythical island of Buyan.
Folk tale
NameThe Tale of Tsar Saltan
Data
Aarne–Thompson groupingATU 707 (The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird; The Bird of Truth, or The Three Golden Children, or The Three Golden Sons)
RegionRussia
Published inСказка о царе Салтане (1831), by Александр Сергеевич Пушкин (Alexander Pushkin)
RelatedThe Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird
For other uses, see The Tale of Tsar Saltan (disambiguation).
The Swan Princess
Illustration by Ivan Bilibin, 1905

The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of His Son the Renowned and Mighty Bogatyr Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the Beautiful Princess-Swan (Russian: «Сказка о царе Салтане, о сыне его славном и могучем богатыре князе Гвидоне Салтановиче и о прекрасной царевне Лебеди», tr. Skazka o tsare Saltane, o syne yevo slavnom i moguchem bogatyre knyaze Gvidone Saltanoviche i o prekrasnoy tsarevne Lebedi About this soundlisten (help·info)) is an 1831 fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin. As a folk tale it is classified as Aarne–Thompson type 707 for it being a variation of The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird.[1]

Synopsis[]

The story is about three sisters. The youngest is chosen by Tsar Saltan (Saltán) to be his wife. He orders the other two sisters to be his royal cook and weaver. They become jealous of their younger sister. When the tsar goes off to war, the tsaritsa gives birth to a son, Prince Gvidon (Gvidón.) The older sisters arrange to have the tsaritsa and the child sealed in a barrel and thrown into the sea.

The sea takes pity on them and casts them on the shore of a remote island, Buyan. The son, having quickly grown while in the barrel, goes hunting. He ends up saving an enchanted swan from a kite bird.

The swan creates a city for Prince Gvidon to rule, but he is homesick, so the swan turns him into a mosquito to help him. In this guise, he visits Tsar Saltan's court, where he stings his aunt in the eye and escapes. Back in his realm, the swan gives Gvidon a magical squirrel. But he continues to pine for home, so the swan transforms him again, this time into a fly. In this guise Prince Gvidon visits Saltan's court again and he stings his older aunt in the eye. The third time, the Prince is transformed into a bumblebee and stings the nose of his grandmother.

In the end, The Prince expresses a desire for a bride instead of his old home, at which point the swan is revealed to be a beautiful princess, whom he marries. He is visited by the Tsar, who is overjoyed to find his newly married son and daughter-in-law.

Translation[]

The tale was given in prose form by American journalist Post Wheeler, in his book Russian Wonder Tales.[2]

Analysis[]

Classification[]

The versified fairy tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children". It is also the default form by which the ATU 707 is known in Russian and Eastern European academia.[3]

Folklore scholar Christine Goldberg identifies three main forms of this tale type: a variation found "throughout Europe", with the quest for three magical items (as shown in The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird); "an East Slavic form", where mother and son are cast in a barrel and later the sons build a palace; and a third one, where the sons are buried and go through a transformation sequence, from trees to animals to humans again.[4]

French scholar Gédeon Huet considered this format as "the Slavic version" of Les soeurs jalouses and suggested that this format "penetrated into Siberia", brought by Russian migrants.[5]

In this "format", the mother is cast out with the babies into the sea in a box, after the king is tricked into thinking his wife did not deliver her promised wonder children. The box eventually washes ashore on the beaches of an island or another country. There, the child (or children) magically grows up in hours or days and builds an enchanted castle or house that attracts the attention of the common folk (or merchants, or travellers). Word reaches the ears of the despondent king, who hears about the mysterious owners of such fantastic abode, who just happen to look like the children he would have had.

Russian tale collections attest to the presence of Baba Yaga, the witch of Slavic folklore, as the antagonist in many of the stories.[6]

Russian scholar T. V. Zueva suggests that this format must have developed during the period of the Kievan Rus, a period where an intense fluvial trade network developed, since this "East Slavic format" emphasizes the presence of foreign merchants and traders. She also argues for the presence of the strange island full of marvels as another element.[7]

Rescue of brothers from transformation[]

In some variants of this format, the castaway boy sets a trap to rescue his brothers and release them from a transformation curse. For example, in Nád Péter ("Schilf-Peter"), a Hungarian variant,[8] when the hero of the tale sees a flock of eleven swans flying, he recognizes them as their brothers, who have been transformed into birds due to divine intervention by Christ and St. Peter.

In another format, the boy asks his mother to prepare a meal with her "breast milk" and prepares to invade his brothers' residence to confirm if they are indeed his siblings. This plot happens in a Finnish variant, from Ingermanland, collected in Finnische und Estnische Volksmärchen (Bruder und Schwester und die goldlockigen Königssöhne, or "Brother and Sister, and the golden-haired sons of the King").[9] The mother gives birth to six sons with special traits who are sold to a devil by the old midwife. Some time later, their youngest brother enters the devil's residence and succeeds in rescuing his siblings.

Russian scholar T. V. Zueva argues that the use of "mother's milk" or "breast milk" as the key to the reversal of the transformation can be explained by the ancient belief that it has curse-breaking properties.[10] Likewise, scholarship points to an old belief connecting breastmilk and "natal blood", as observed in the works of Aristotle and Galen. Thus, the use of mother's milk serves to reinforce the hero's blood relation with his brothers.[11]

Mythological parallels[]

This "Slavic" narrative (mother and child or children cast into a chest) recalls the motif of "The Floating Chest", which appears in narratives of Greek mythology about the legendary birth of heroes and gods.[12][13] The motif also appears in the Breton legend of saint Budoc and his mother Azénor: Azénor was still pregnant when cast into the sea in a box by her husband, but an angel led her to safety and she gave birth to future Breton saint Budoc.[14]

Central Asian parallels[]

Following professor Marat Nurmukhamedov's (ru) study on Pushkin's verse fairy tale,[15] professor Karl Reichl argues that the dastan (a type of Central Asian oral epic poetry) titled Šaryar, from the Turkic Karakalpaks, is "closely related" to the tale type of the Calumniated Wife, and more specifically to The Tale of Tsar Saltan.[16][17]

Adaptations[]

Gallery of Illustrations[]

Ivan Bilibin made the following illustrations for Pushkin's tale in 1905:

  • Tsar Saltan at the window

  • The Island of Buyan

  • Flight of the mosquito

  • The Merchants Visit Tsar Saltan

See also[]

This basic folktale has variants from many lands. Compare:

References[]

  1. ^ Johns, Andreas. Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. 2010. p. 244. ISBN 978-0-8204-6769-6
  2. ^ Wheeler, Post. Russian wonder tales: with a foreword on the Russian skazki. London: A. & C. Black. 1917. pp. 3-27.
  3. ^ Власов, С. В. (2013). Некоторые Французские И ИталЬянскиЕ Параллели К «Сказке о Царе Салтане» А. С. ПушКИНа Во «Всеобщей Библиотеке Романов» (Bibliothèque Universelle des Romans) (1775–1789). Мир русского слова, (3), 67–74.
  4. ^ Goldberg, Christine. "Review: The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev, Volume II. In: Journal of Folklore Research. Online publication: March 16, 2016.
  5. ^ Huet, Gédeon. "Le Conte des soeurs jalouses". In: Revue d'ethnographie et de sociologie. Deuxiême Volume. Paris: E. Leroux, 1910. Gr. in-8°, p. 195.
  6. ^ Johns, Andreas (2010). Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale. New York: Peter Lang. pp. 244–246. ISBN 978-0-8204-6769-6.
  7. ^ Зуева, Т. В. "Древнеславянская версия сказки "Чудесные дети" ("Перевоплощения светоносных близнецов")". In: Русская речь. 2000. № 3, pp. 99–100.
  8. ^ Róna-Sklarek, Elisabet (1909). "5: Schilf-Peter". Ungarische Volksmärchen [Hungarian folktales] (in German). 2 (Neue Folge ed.). Leipzig: Dieterich. pp. 53–65.
  9. ^ Löwis of Menar, August von. (1922). "15. Bruder und Schwester und die goldlockigen Königssöhne". Finnische und estnische Volksmärchen [Finnish and Estonian folktales] (in German). Jena: Eugen Diederichs. pp. 53–59.
  10. ^ Зуева, Т. В. "Древнеславянская версия сказки "Чудесные дети" ("Перевоплощения светоносных близнецов")". In: Русская речь. 2000. № 3, pp. 99–100.
  11. ^ Parkes, Peter. "Fosterage, Kinship, and Legend: When Milk Was Thicker than Blood?". In: Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, no. 3 (2004): 590 and footnote nr. 4. Accessed June 8, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3879474.
  12. ^ Holley, N. M. “The Floating Chest”. In: The Journal of Hellenic Studies 69 (1949): 39–47. doi:10.2307/629461.
  13. ^ Beaulieu, Marie-Claire. "The Floating Chest: Maidens, Marriage, and the Sea". In: The Sea in the Greek Imagination. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. pp. 90–118. Accessed May 15, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17xx5hc.7.
  14. ^ Milin, Gaël (1990). "La légende bretonne de Saint Azénor et les variantes medievales du conte de la femme calomniée: elements pour une archeologie du motif du bateau sans voiles et sans rames". In: Memoires de la Societé d'Histoire et d'Archeologie de Bretagne 67. pp. 303-320.
  15. ^ Нурмухамедов, Марат Коптлеуич. Сказки А. С. Пушкина и фольклор народов Средней Азии (сюжетные аналогии, перекличка образов). Ташкент. 1983.
  16. ^ Reichl, Karl. Turkic Oral Epic Poetry: Traditions, Forms, Poetic Structure. Routledge Revivals. Routledge. 1992. pp. 123, 235–249. ISBN 9780815357797.
  17. ^ Reichl, Karl. "Epos als Ereignis Bemerkungen zum Vortrag der zentralasiatischen Turkepen". In: Hesissig, W. (eds). Formen und Funktion mündlicher Tradition. Abhandlungen der Nordrhein-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol 95. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden. 1993. p. 162. ISBN 978-3-322-84033-2. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-84033-2_12
  18. ^ "Russian animation in letters and figures | Films | «THE TALE ABOUT TSAR SALTAN»". www.animator.ru.
  19. ^ "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" – via www.imdb.com.
  20. ^ "Russian animation in letters and figures | Films | «A TALE OF TSAR SALTAN»". www.animator.ru.

Further reading[]

  • Azadovsky, Mark, and McGavran, James. "The Sources of Pushkin’s Fairy Tales". In: Pushkin Review 20 (2018): 5-39. doi:10.1353/pnr.2018.0001.
  • Mazon, André. "Le Tsar Saltan". In: Revue des études slaves, tome 17, fascicule 1-2, 1937. pp. 5-17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/slave.1937.7637; [www.persee.fr/doc/slave_0080-2557_1937_num_17_1_7637 persee.fr]
  • Orlov, Janina. "Chapter 2. Orality and literacy, continued: Playful magic in Pushkin’s Tale of Tsar Saltan". In: Children's Literature as Communication: The ChiLPA project. Edited by Roger D. Sell [Studies in Narrative 2]. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002. pp. 39–53. https://doi.org/10.1075/sin.2.05orl
  • Wachtel, Michael. "Pushkin's Turn to Folklore". In: Pushkin Review 21 (2019): 107-154. doi:10.1353/pnr.2019.0006.

External links[]

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