The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

Traditional narratives 71

everything, permitting their own hands to remain attractively soft and white. Onthe male sideofthe genre,Western Prince Charmingstend to beenterprising young men, whereas the Russian Ivan-Tsarevich is a bumbler not unlike Ivan the Fool, relying on helpers or miracles. The cosmopolitan Pushkin, barely out of his teens, burst into fame in 1820 with his first long narrative poem Ruslan and Lyudmila, a mock fairy-tale epic of unprecedented bawdiness. He provided four princely suitors for the abducted princess in hopes of getting one who could complete the job, even though (a wise sorcerer informs us early on) Lyudmila is in no serious danger: the evil dwarf Chernomor is impotent. In Chapter 8, we will see how the resilient, predetermined plot of the folk tale – both simple-minded and sly – was adjusted to the Stalinist stage.

Hybrids: folk epic and Faust tale

To complete this rudimentary literacy in Russian traditional narratives, it remains to consider two hybrids. The first is the bylina or “Russian folk epic.”13 A bylina was chanted rhythmically to a simple melody (often with spoken inserts) and featured the exploits of a bogatyr [warrior-hero]. Highly formulaic, these songs were governed not by plot suspense but by descriptive detail and texture. Like the folklore hero, epic heroes were external agents only, devoid of psychological motivation; for this reason, a bylina cycle was often organized around a historic city rather than a personality. Kiev played this anchoring role during the first wave of Mongol attacks in the thirteenth century. Later, the northern medieval city of Novgorod became home to an epic cycle built around the wealthy merchant Sadko and his dealings with the Sea Tsar.

Some of the earliest mythological byliny reflect a struggle between the bogatyr, the male hero-warrior mounted on a swift steed, and the immobile, invincible depths of Mother Earth. In one widespread variant, Earth gives birth to a hero, “Svyatogor” [Sacred Mountain], so huge that she cannot bear the weight of her son. Svyatogor is a swaggerer, a braggart, who tosses his mace to the sky and never fails to catch it on the way down. Among his claims is the curiously Archimedean boast, provocative considering the person of his Mother, that he could lift the entire earth if only he could find a point of support. One day, riding through the steppe, he finds a small skomorokh’s [minstrel’s] bag in the open field. It is too heavy to pick up from the saddle. Svyatogor dismounts, but still he cannot lift the bag; instead, he sinks up to his knees in the earth. In some variants his horse hauls him out, but at other times the giant bogatyr interprets this failure to attach a pouch (a womb) to his own belt as the beginning of his death.