Russian Fairy Tales (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) (Paperback)

~ Aleksandr Afanasev (Author) "ONCE THERE WAS a wealthy merchant who traded in rare and precious goods, traveling with his wares every year to foreign lands..." (more)
Key Phrases: leaf before grass, thrice tenth kingdom, hazelwood bridge, Prince Ivan, Baba Yaga, Elena the Fair (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A beautiful book. I recommend it to all readers, young and old, who are interested in the folktale and its unique qualities." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer, The New York Times Book Review

"Luckily someone garnered these jewels before they were lost, bound them into one volume before they disappeared...it is filled with action, magic, and humanity...." -- St. Louis Globe-Democrat

"The oral folk tradition in Russia was truly a magic spring. As in the fairy tale, it flowed inexhaustibly, reviving, consoling, and enlightening all who partook of it... these stories have an ingenuity that marks them as uniquely Russian." -- Review

Review

"A beautiful book. I recommend it to all readers, young and old, who are interested in the folktale and its unique qualities." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer, The New York Times Book Review

"Luckily someone garnered these jewels before they were lost, bound them into one volume before they disappeared...it is filled with action, magic, and humanity...." -- St. Louis Globe-Democrat

"The oral folk tradition in Russia was truly a magic spring. As in the fairy tale, it flowed inexhaustibly, reviving, consoling, and enlightening all who partook of it... these stories have an ingenuity that marks them as uniquely Russian."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (September 12, 1976)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394730909
• ISBN-13: 978-0394730905
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #12,951 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #11 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Russian

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A huge collection, June 16, 2000

By	Stephen Arkanell "cjm" (United States) - See all my reviews

What the Grimm Brothers did for fairy tales in Germany, Afanas'ev did for Russia. Over the course of his lifetime(1826-1871), he collected countless of these wonderful little stories from common folk, just as the Grimms did. This collection contains stories of adventure and enchantment, animal fables and more. Included are stories of Vasilissa and Baba Yaga, the witch whose house was built on chicken feet, and the famous story of the giant turnip. There's even some stories about vampires. But be prepared, this book is huge! And every bit of it distinctly Russian.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What a fun book!, October 15, 2002

By	Kendal B. Hunter (Provo, UT United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Fairy tales get us into the psyche of a culture. Americans see themselves as Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appelseed, conquoring the frontier. This book introduces us to the Russian psyche. It shows us how they look at things--the world, society, life, family, and government.

Some of the stroies are charming, such as the fabel of the Turnip and the Honey-pot. Other stories made absolutley no sense. But I had fun trying to crack these weird nuts.

I enjoyed the translation. It is not as energetic as Seamus Heaney, or J. B. Phillipws, but it is readable, athough you realize that you are reading a translation.

C. S. Lewis, in his preface to "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," mentions that as children we read fairy tales, then we outgow them. Then, as adults, we come back to these stories and read them with different eyes. I had that experince with this book.

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ian Myles Slater on: Classic Tales, Enduring Translation, April 1, 2004

By	Ian M. Slater "aylchanan" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I have owned since 1975 a copy of an earlier, hardcover, Pantheon reprint edition of this superb collection, which was originally published in 1945. I have used it for both light reading and for serious study (while in courses on Baltic and Slavic Folklore and Folktale Studies). The selection and translation of stories both seem first-rate. (For the latter, I have had to rely on the opinions of those who actually read Russian, instead of just having studied it in school.) The accompanying illustrations are properly enchanting -- and only occasionally are placed where they give away the point of the story.

The only real drawback is that it is still merely a selection from about three volumes (depending on the edition you prefer) of "skazki." This is the Russian term for oral tales of marvels, adventures, and misadventures, equivalent to the German "Maerchen." In both cases, the English term "Fairy Tale" is the conventional, but not really adequate, translation. (As usual in large collections, only a handful of tales concern anything like fairies.) One of the requirements for the selection seems to have been that the tales chosen should be acceptable to American parents in the 1940s, but otherwise the considerable variety of the original seems to have been largely preserved. The suggested reader age of "9 to 12" conceals the pleasure that adult readers with interests in folklore or Russian culture will derive from the volume. Fortunately, they may be lead to it by the fine supplementary material at the end, although this is now half a century old.

Afanas'ev (various transliterations) was one of the many nineteenth-century collectors inspired by the Grimms,. By most accounts he was one of the most responsible, even though his practices of recording and documenting texts are hardly up to modern standards. (Neither were those of the Grimms, for that matter.) The main collection from which this was excerpted was the sourcebook for Vladimir Propp's "Morphology of the Folktale," a key work in modern folktale studies, but as Roman Jakobson (yes, the Structural Linguist) points out in his commentary to this collection, the book had already established itself as a gem of Russian literature, an inspiration and resource for poets.