American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Russian Fairy Tales by Aleksandr Afanas'ev; Norbert GutermanReview by: G. Koolemans BeynenThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Winter, 1976), pp. 466-468Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/305896 .

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466 Slavic and East European Journal

signals, it would seem to me, a shortcoming of Klein's approach, for I found myself wondering by the end of the book whether all the theoretical nomenclature-at times a veritable Etikettslust on Klein's part-was necessary. Chapters 3 through 9 address themselves to a systematic segmentation of the Tale, to examinations of individual problems posed by t'mnye mesta in the text, and to articulating the data coded into the Tale's elaborate structure. This work is solid, but Klein's jargon occasionally gets in the way; ready comprehension of a point is sacrificed for exaggerated terminological precision. Consider for example the following sentences:

Emotive Motive (z.B. "Gliick") konnen Konnotate von kognitiven Inhalten sein (z.B. "Erbschaft"), die ihrerseits-z.B. sinnbildlich durch ein Fiillhorn-implizit dargestellt sind. Die uneigentliche Darstellungsweise des kognitiven Inhalts ist immer implikativ; dagegen kinnen emotive Motive nie implikativ, sondern nur konnotativ realisiert sein. (52)

Such prose is not impossible to understand, but it certainly demands more attention and effort than a work of objective criticism might rightly expect from its reader.

This heaviness of style notwithstanding, Klein makes some excellent points in these last seven chapters: the linking of the introduction of the poem to the body of the work (Chapter 3); the elucidation of seemingly irrelevant passages as important bearers of the poem's meaning (Chapter 4); the stress on the non-temporal organiza- tion of the Tale throughout his work; the extensive discussion of the theme of political divisions (Chapter 8); the breakdown of the poem into coherent segments (isolated complexes and integrated motifs); the clarification of the imagery (e.g., that the Don and Kajala may be one and the same river; the negative connotations of the Don); and many other points. While reading the book I asked myself several times if the effort was worth the result. With hindsight I can affirm that it was.

Reading Klein's book, one could have wished for a concluding chapter in which he might have summed up his numerous insights into the structure of the Igor Tale, a conclusion that eschewed jargon and cherished simplicity. In any event, the virtue of the book lies in its providing us with a breakdown of the poem into manageable, comparable bits, without sacrificing the sense of the overall unity of the work. Together with Riccardo Picchio's excellent study of the prosodic structure of the Igor Tale, which also appeared in 1972 and to which Klein did not have access as he worked, Zur Struktur des Igorlieds represents both a valuable advance in the knowledge of this masterpiece of Old East Slavic literature and a further confirmation of the usefulness of the structuralist approach in criticism.

Henry R. Cooper, Jr., Northwestern University

Aleksandr Afanas'ev. Russian Fairy Tales. Reprint of the 1945 ed. Tr. Norbert Guter- man. Commentary by Roman Jakobson. New York: Pantheon Books, 1975. 662 pp., $12.95.

Little children and hoary scholars alike will rejoice at the news of the reprint of Guter- man's translation. The book, which has been out of print for several years, has a handsome appearance, but the price is a bit stiff-despite illustrations which remind this reviewer of Mesopotamian clay tablets rather than Russian folk tales. Jakobson's commentary, however, has lost none of its value and makes the book indispensable for Russian folklore courses.

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Reviews 467

The translations are faithful to the original, though it is a pity that the raciness of the Russian texts with their coordinate and conjunctionless compound sentences has been replaced by a more neutral style based largely on subordinate sentences. The translation of the diminutive suffix by "little," e.g. "little grandfather" for "dedu'ka," is not fortunate-"dear" would be better and not translating it would perhaps be best. The edition could have been improved if the notes of the 1957 Russian edition (Narod- nye russkie skazki A.N. Afanas'eva, [3 vols.; M.: Goslitizdat, 1957] had been added, along with the classification numbers of the tales according to Andreev (N.P. Andreev, Ukazatel' skazocnyx sju'etov po sisteme Aarne [L., 1927]) or Aarne and Thompson (Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale [Folklore Fellows Communications no. 184; Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961]).

The reprint leads to two questions: (1) what is the purpose for telling a tale, and (2) what are the significant elements in a tale. In his discussion of the first ques- tion Jakobson, quoting Lenin among others, sees wish fulfillment as its purpose: what is unobtainable in reality the peasant enjoys in his imagination (RFT 650). This is basically a Freudian interpretation, and indeed, the folktale abounds with elements which are absent from the daily life of most of its audience. However, the tales were equally popular with the rich (RFT 635) and deal not only with wealth but with poverty, two facts that point to purposes other than wish fulfillment. Moreover, many tales, for example, "Danilo the Luckless" (RFT 255, NRS 313) have endings one would wish only for enemies.

Claude Levi-Strauss has pointed out that the opposition between what is and what is not need not be limited to food or riches, but can also be found in such tales as those about the sun or the waters (The Raw and the Cooked; Introduction to a Science of Mythology, Vol. 1 [New York: Harper and Row, 1970], 291-99). For instance, the sun is now at the correct distance from earth, a tale would tell us, but once it was too far or too close; or we now have a fair division between land and water, but at one time all was either water or land. The opposition need not be be- tween an actual situation and one that is not actual, i.e. remembered or imagined. It can also occur between situations which from a logical point of view should exclude each other, but which in reality do not. For example, relatives love but also hate each other. (Claude Levi-Strauss, "La Structure des Mythes," Anthropologie structurale [Paris: Plon, 1958], 239.) Another such opposition is that some have too much money while others have not enough, and the hero bridges the gap between the opposites by going from rags to riches.

Myths and folktales, according to such an approach, contain analyses of one or more actual situations by organizing them in contrasting pairs where one of the pair of situations may be non-actual, that is, remembered, imagined, or wished-for. The greater adequacy of this approach becomes clear in an analysis of "The Duck with Golden Eggs," (RFT 541, NRS 195), which Jakobson mentions as his first example of wish fulfillment. NRS 196, a variation of NRS 195, presents an even more clear case. A peasant gathers his family for a meal consisting of a bread crust. Suddenly Sorrow jumps from behind the stove, grabs the crust, and hides again. She refuses to give it back but promises instead a duck that lays golden eggs. But when hungry, one needs food, not golden eggs. The episode thereby illustrates a contradiction: one cannot eat gold, yet it relieves hunger. The tale of King Midas, who starved when all he touched turned into gold, treats the same problem, as does in many proverbs and locutions the equation of money with faeces. The derivation of this equation is roughly as follows: Money=not (Food); hence, Money=not (What goes in at the

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468 Slavic and East European Journal

top); hence, Money=What goes out at the bottom. RFT 541 contains a variation: spittle turns into gold.

Clearly, then, the structure of NRS 195 and 196 points to analysis, rather than wish fulfillment, as the purpose of the tale. But it may not be as simple as this. The tale "The Miraculous Pipe" (RFT 425, NRS 244) is at first sight an expression of sibling rivalry: a girl wants to go and pick berries, when forced to take her younger brother along she kills him. Closer analysis reveals, however, a veritable inventory of relations between home and the outside world, from the point of view of both pleasure and profit. For example, berries (to be brought home for pleasure or profit), lice (to be removed from home for pleasure), reeds (to be brought home for pleasure, i.e. to make music), cattle (to be returned home for profit), the little brother (to be returned home neither for pleasure nor for profit). Significantly, after confessing her crime the girl is expelled from home (removed for non-pleasure), hardly the usual punishment for fratricide. The tale is then an exploration of various attitudes towards home and the outside world, and seems to say that while it is legitimate to derive profit or pleasure from the outside world, duty prevails at home. Sibling rivalry is among the attitudes dealt with, but it is treated in the framework of an analysis that deals not only with wishes. Wish fulfillment is here merely a device to generate a situation that serves as a contrast to the situation analyzed in the tale.

The second question-what are the significant elements in a tale-has of course been treated in V. Ja. Propp, Morfologija skazki (L., 1928; rpt. M.: Nauka, 1969). L6vi-Strauss has pointed out also that not only persons and objects, but their attri- butes as well form a structure in the tale. ("L'Analyse morphologique des contes russes," International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, III, 122-49.) The appropriateness of his criticism becomes clear in an analysis of "The Magic Swan- Geese," (RFT 349, NRS 113). In the first part of the tale three donors appear in decreasing order of domesticity-oven, apple yard, river-but their attributes appear in increasing order-rye as opposed to wheat, for example: "Matu'ka roy' kormit vsex durakov splos', a p'enicka-po vyboru" (Tolkovyj slovar' zyvogo velikorusskago jazyka Vladimira Dalja [SPb., M.: M.O. Vol'f, 1904], s.v. "rol'"). The effect is that the heroine of the tale while running from one donor to the next runs away from home in one dimension, the dimension of the objects, but returns in the dimension of the attributes.

This Pantheon reprint is especially valuable for its large variety of tales-not only the smoothly constructed tales with their conventional happy endings are repre- sented (they can be found in many anthologies as well), but also anecdotes and tales with an uncommon ending. The quality, quantity, and diversity make the collection a basic tool for students and scholars alike.

G. Koolemans Beynen, Ohio State University

H 3. CepmaH. ((PyccKHIN ICJaccnHaMM>. IeHHHrpaA: Hayica, 1973. 284 CTp., 1 p. 19ic.

For over three decades, I. Z. Serman, one of the Soviet Union's leading literary scholars, has written about and edited the works of writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. His writings are characterized by broad erudition and deep sensitivity to the nuances of the literary text. These qualities are also present in

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