The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

68 The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

portrayed as a skeleton (his name is related either to the word for bone, kost, or to koshch'noe, the Slavic kingdom of the dead). Koshchey’s task is to thwart the hero in his pursuit of the reward (the princess). The only way to foil this immortal creature is to reunite him with his own death. The hero must find this death (usually hiding in a duck’s egg in an oak stump floating in the sea) and smash it against Koshchey’s forehead. Although stubborn, vain, and dangerous -his foul breath can turn a person to stone - Koshchey is not very intelligent and easily outwitted. His tactics suffer from his innate inability to sympathize with others. Consider Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s folk opera Koshchey the Deathless (1902). Unusually for folk tales but conventionally for opera (which requires, in addition to the romantic soprano, a mezzo or contralto as secondary love interest), the villain has a beautiful daughter, Koshcheyevna, who by various charms almost seduces Ivan-Tsarevich, thereby interrupting his quest to regain the captive princess. The princess, being human, can empathize with her rival. Out of compassion she kisses Koshcheyevna on the forehead. For the first time in her life, Koshchey’s daughter begins to weep - turning her into a willow tree. The Koshchey element can revert to plants or trees but cannot be fully humanized.

Baba Yaga, “Old Woman Yaga,” is a far more ambiguous and powerful figure.12 Witch, cannibal, earth goddess, Mistress of the Forest, she lives in a hut on chicken legs that rotates in expectation of the unwary visitor. This quasi-animate dwelling is surrounded by a fence made of stakes readied for human heads. Inside her hut, Yaga’s sprawling grotesque body cannot move; one leg is always of bone (or iron), the other often of excrement, her nose is hooked to the ceiling, her breasts hang over a rod, her genitals foam. Outside her hut, she travels in a mortar and pestle. (The famous ninth episode - or “picture” - in Musorgsky’s 1874 Pictures from an Exhibition, “The Hut on Hen’s Legs [Baba Yaga],” depicts her ferocious ride in this strange kitchen vessel.) Baba Yaga can be Koshchey’s consort or his sister, but she can also do battle with him. And significantly, she can be the “donor” or enabler of the hero, the one who insures his success against Koshchey in quest of his lost princess. But Baba Yaga extends her help to a hero only after he has been tested for manliness. First she announces that she will eat her visitor (his bones will be ground up in that mortar) - and waits to see how the guest responds. If he ignores her hideousness and demands proper hospitality, she will feed him and provide him with talismans and secrets for his journey. If he trembles and goes limp with fear, she will destroy him.

We will now consider two variants of the same exemplary tale. The first, “Faithful John,” was collected by the Brothers Grimm; the second, “Koshchey the Deathless,” by their Russian counterpart Aleksandr Afanasiev. Placed side