Alexander Afanasev and his collection of fairy tales Plan: Introduction

1.2.The role of Alexander Afanasev's fairy tales in children's lives
Afanasiev's democracy was most clearly expressed in the extensive, capital edition of folk tales prepared and carried out by him. Afanasiev himself understood the significance of the collection he had conceived back in the early 1950s. The work was carried out with a consciousness of the importance and enormity of the task. Wishing to complete the work he had begun at all costs, Afanasiev put aside other things for himself - he even stopped for a while the publication of his journal Bibliographic Notes, to which he devoted so much effort. In a letter to Yakushkin, he complains about the lack of leisure and says: “And if you wish, fairy tales must be ended: this will be my merit in Russian literature” (letter dated November 12, 1859).Fairy tales published by Afanasiev in 1855-1863 (in eight editions) with unprecedented completeness (and to this day there is no more complete collection ), with rare thoroughness and deliberation, immediately after their publication became an integral part of our national democratic culture . N. A. Dobrolyubov was deeply right when, in his review of the collection *01 , he noted (and this was said when the collection was only half published): world, it is gratifying after them to dwell on a work devoted to revealing the inner, spiritual life of the people and performed conscientiously and with love, although not without flaws. Afanasiev editiondeserved Dobrolyubov's praise already by the fact that the collection contains reliable material.Afanasiev extracted the fairy tales stored there from the archive of the Russian Geographical Society and added to them numerous entries by V. I. Dahl. The collection was compiled from fairy tales not from any one locality, this is all-Russian creativity. The collection includes fairy tales from Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan, Vladimir, Vologda, Voronezh, Yenisei, Kazan, Kaluga, Kostroma, Kursk, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Novgorod, Orenburg, Perm, Ryazan, Saratov, Simbirsk, Tambov, Tver, Tula and other fairy tales from different places and regions of Russia. In the collection, a huge country began to speak, stretching for thousands of miles from north to south and from west to east. A work of such magnitude would not have been possible if Afanasiev's plan- to collect all known fairy tales - was not supported by other figures of science and culture. In 1852, Afanasyev was elected a member of the Russian Geographical Society in the department of ethnography, and the Council of the Society, by its resolution of February 23 of this year, made available to the collector all the tales received in the archive of the Society. The idea to publish a collection of fairy tales became a significant fact in the conditions of the democratic movement that was gaining strength in Russia.

Afanasiev set to work at the right time. Without it, the treasures of fairy-tale folklore could be lost and perish. Folklore, which for many centuries, according to tradition, was orally transmitted from generation to generation, entered a crisis hole in the middle of the 19th century, when the creative thought of the people, disturbed by social novelty, rushed to new objects - and the full-fledged art of telling fairy tales began to occur less and less. Afanasiev, with his publication, saved the most valuable works of art of the people from oblivion for future generations. Fairy tales have retained all the depth of meaning, the richness of fiction, the freshness of the people's moral feeling expressed in them, the brilliance of the poetic style.Getting acquainted with the fairy tales published by Afanasyev, we notice with particular joy in them everything that is directly and closely connected with the work of the great Russian writers. As if the democratic roots of their creative work are exposed. In the fairy tale "Shabarsha" we recognize an old acquaintance - Pushkin's Balda. In another fairy tale (from the series “Don’t like it, don’t listen”), we will also meet with the nickname of the priest, which Pushkin used: “oatmeal forehead”. A comparison of Afanasiev's texts with Pushkin's fairy tale reveals not only similarities, but also differences: in each version, its traditional elements can be combined and modified in their own way, but undoubtedly, both Afanasiev's fairy tales and Pushkin's fairy tale go back to a common tradition.

Afanasiev's fairy tale "Knee-deep in gold, elbow-deep in silver" is close to another Pushkin's tale - about Tsar Saltan. Here is an episode with three girls whom the king overheard, and the motive of envy of older sisters, and their same evil deeds. In Pushkin's recording, made from memory or from the words of Arina Rodionovna, all these episodes, as well as details, are also preserved. Pushkin transformed the folk tale, but the connection with the fiction and style of the people is so clear, so obvious. From fairy tales of the same type, Pushkin also borrowed the image of the famous bayun cat.In the Afanasiev fairy tale “The Firebird and Vasilisa the Tsarevna”, we easily recognize Pyotr Ershov’s “Humpbacked Horse”: everything is familiar here - the discovery of the firebird’s feather, and the motif of the Horse’s miraculous help, and the hunt for the firebird that was lured scattered grain, and a trip for the princess to the ends of the world, where "the red sun comes out of the blue of the sea," and bathing in boiling water, which made the hero handsome, and killed the king. It is impossible to doubt that S. T. Aksakov's fairy tale "The Scarlet Flower" came out of folk tales, very close to the version that Afanasyev placed in his collection entitled "The Feather of Finist Yasna Falcon", it is impossible to doubt - coincidences at every turn. Or - it is enough to compare another fairy tale, "Dashingly one-eyed", with the fairy tale of the same name by K. D. Ushinsky, their textual connection will immediately become obvious. There are quite a few such meetings of writers' creativity and fairy tales of the people on the pages of the Afanasiev collection. The great contemporaries of Afanasiev, such as Leo Tolstoy, as well as the remarkable artists who came to literature decades later, among them: D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak, M. Gorky, I. A. Bunin, S. Ya. Marshak, kept in memory samples of fairy tales from the collection of Afanasiev. "Tales" by Afanasyev joined the general fund of the democratic artistic culture of Russia.The idea of ​​Afanasiev's collection is inseparable from a special scientific commentary to it. Getting to work, Afanasiev thought of his publication as a “scientist” - “on the model of the publication of bro. Grimmov. He considered it important to accompany the text of fairy tales with "necessary philological and mythological notes", to make comparisons of Russian fairy tales with fairy tales of other peoples (letter to A. A. Kraevsky dated August 14, 1851). The commentary is now omitted when reprinting the collection - there are reasons for this , but they are not at all in the fact that the explanations are found to be untenable in everything.
It is known that Afanasiev comprehended Russian fairy tales in terms of the so-called "mythological school". This direction in the science of folklore is characterized by a special method. Its adherents saw in the origin of folk poetic images a dependence on ancient myths and reduced the meaning of folklore works to the expression of a few concepts and ideas generated by the deification of nature - the sun (the so-called "solar" theory) and thunderstorms (the so-called "meteorological" theory). Modern science cannot agree with the views of Afanasiev as a follower of the theory that prevailed in his time, but without accepting the concept, one cannot pass by numerous and diverse, correct concrete interpretations of folklore that would do honor to any modern researcher today, not affected by extreme general conceptual considerations. Afanasiev's commentary on the tales, in the part that is not affected by general mythological considerations, remains correct in many respects and retains scientific value. The mythological explanation of fairy tales least of all affected the actual factual basis of the commentary. Another thing is when a scientist tried to build an integral system. Yes, fairy taleabout the three kingdoms in the book "Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature" turned out to be included in a general rather artificial construction based on the perceived dependence of its fiction on the myth of heavenly light: the brilliance of the underworld is close to the radiance of sunlight; and the fabulous maidens of these kingdoms were interpreted as “personifications of the divine forces of nature in human images,” Afanasyev was not embarrassed by the remoteness of the perceived similarity. The scientist himself was aware of the external nature of the comparisons made and more than once wrote, justifying his method of studying folklore, that the concepts “completely different” approach each other “for the sake of similarity of only some features” * Theoretical delusions did not close the direct poetry of the fairy tales themselves for Afanasyev . He subtly felt the charm and beauty of fairy-tale fiction. “... They have so much true poetry and so many touching scenes!” he exclaimed *2. Afanasiev also valued the fairy tale as an expression of the high moral ideal and nobility of the people: “... a fairy tale, as the creation of a whole people, does not tolerate the slightest intentional deviation from goodness and truth; it demands the punishment of all unrighteousness and represents good triumphant over evil.
The collection was compiled by Afanasiev with a firm belief in favor of its existence for the culture of Russia. And the collector was not mistaken in his expectations. Already at the very beginning of his enterprise, Afanasiev heard the praise of readers. The well-known linguist I. I. Sreznevsky wrote to Afanasiev (1855): “Which of the Russian lovers of his folk poetry will not thank you loudly or to himself sincerely for the beginning of your wonderful work on Russian fairy tales? You set off into this wide sea at a good hour and in a good boat, having stocked up, as for Constantinople, with tackle and a harness, and, surely, you will take out more than one expensive scarlet because of it. May God bless you all the best in your entire journey . Encouraged by the support, Afanasiev brought his work to the end, despite the cruel disasters that befell him after a search was carried out in his house in connection with suspicion of unreliability. Afanasyev was forbidden to serve in government institutions. For more than three years he made his way in search of employment. With great difficulty, he managed to take the place of secretary in the Duma, then he served as secretary of the world congress. A lawyer by education, Afanasiev harbored the hope that eventually he would run for justice of the peace, but neither this hope nor his other life plans were destined to come true. Life blows have done their job- Afanasiev fell seriously ill, with no hope of recovery. Shortly before his death, he wrote to his friend Yakushkin: “I keep coughing, coughing and spitting out of my pain, but I don’t know if I will be able to spit. To all these troubles, the chest begins to hurt. And the weather is such that there is nothing to think about health: mud, rain, slush and all sorts of abominations! (letter dated September 12, 1870). A year after this letter, on September 23, 1871, Afanasyev died. Shortly before his death, Afanasyev managed to fulfill his long-standing intention - he published a collection of fairy tales for children, selected from a large collection, Russian Children's Tales (Moscow, 1870). Here it would be appropriate to note that Afanasiev never considered his complete collection of fairy tales suitable for children's reading. The fairy tales included in it retained the peculiarities of local folk dialects, details that could hurt a child's soul with premature knowledge of reality. On the contrary, the children's edition was entirely adapted for the use of fairy tales as home reading. The release of "Children's Tales" was Afanasiev's last consolation. Tsarist censorship until the last days, as before, did not leave him alone. "Children's Talesare coming to an end in printing,” Afanasyev informed Yakushkina in the already quoted letter dated September 12, 1870, “and will probably be published next month. Censorship absolutely does not allow children to have concepts of the difference between the sexes in the animal kingdom ... ” The stupid censor everywhere blacked out the words: “stallion”, “mare”, “male” in the collection and replaced them with the words: “horse”, “dog”. “It's a pity,” Afanasiev ironically, “that the tale of the rooster and the hen did not fall under his pen; probably - he would have turned both of them into a bird. Just think, moral people!” At the time when the children's collection appeared on sale, the reactionary press, together with the authorities, was persecuting everything that bore the stamp of democracy. It came to the point that the folk tales were considered harmful, not meeting the requirements of education and upbringing. Afanasiev, not without bitterness, asked Yakushkin: “Shouldn’t I send you two or three dozen copies of Tales just in case; maybe in Yaroslavl there will be children whom their fathers and mothers will not be afraid to give fairy tales to read ”(letter dated October 3, 1870). Afanasiev's fears were not unfounded, but he believed that both his small, children's collection and the large collection of fairy tales would still serve Russia. Every year it moves further and further into the past nineteenth century. Afanasiev was a contemporary of II. V. Gogol and M. S. Shchepkin, A. I. Herzen and N. A. Dobrolyubov, N. A. Nekrasov and N. G. Chernyshevsky, those who went down in history under the name of people of the “forties” and “sixties” years. He himself belonged to this cohort of glorious figures who worked hard in the public arena in the struggle for the foundations of a democratic national culture and a way of life free from oppression and violence. This gave Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasiev enduring glory in the memory of generations.