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February 7, 2006
Baba Yaga Portal
Orson Scott Card notes in Enchantment, "Russian fairy tales were the only ones he'd read that were so grim, even the princess sometimes died." This ties in neatly to one of the traditional Russian fairy tale endings, used in lieu of the more optimistic, "...and they all lived happily after..." In Russia, tales conclude with the sentiment that "they all lived as happily as they could, until they died." In a world with Baba Yaga in it, it seems an apt enough attitude to take.
(Pretty sentiment, but can anyone verify - or quash - this for me?)
(click to enlarge)
A gateway to all (well, a few) things Baba Yaga:
Sur La Lune's modest collection of Ivan Bilibin's unforgettable illustrations - where Art Nouveau meets folk art lacquerware meets the Rider-Waite tarot deck - to Vasilissa the Beautiful, starring Baba Yaga. I read this edition when I was very young and Mr. Bilibin (more on his life and work here) set the impossibly high standards by which I judge and judged children's books.
Helen Pilinovsky gives a wonderful, beautifully-presented two-part study of differences in Russian and Western fairytale conventions (from which my opening quote was taken). Part One is an overview; Part Two ventures into the domain of Baba Yaga.
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Oh! My mother always talked about wanting to bite my flesh when I was a little girl. Of what deep-down primal urge can Baba Yaga be the personification?
My daughter when you were smallHow I wanted to eat you.
Cast off flesh of my flesh
I wanted to keep you in me,
Digest my fear of losing you as I swallowed
You whole, plumped and roasted.
Can you forgive the way I fretted over the oven
And took the measure of your
Wrists with my worried fingers?
A poet's response to the Baba Yaga myth.
Posted by michele at February 7, 2006 5:51 PM