FAIRY TALE * *

 How much Pushkin loved Russian fairy tales! His genius was freed from infant slumber listening to stories of Arina Rodionovna (his nanny). His first youthful poem was ultimately based on fairytale images.

 People's philosophy, with national flavour, is better than anywhere else expressed in the fairy tale, where the provisions of this philosophy sounded once simple and straightforward, but now we often don't feel. Is it clear, for example, to a contemporary reader, the idea expressed in the tale of Ivan the Clay?

 The peculiarity of the folk genre is due to the characteristic of social life. A style dies together with the centuries-old way of life. Mastery of the storytellers disappears the same way as a professional skill disappears with the economic abolition of one or other occupations.

 The modern life of a fairy tale is almost entirely limited to the languishing in folklore texts. Even of such existence, integrity is continuously destroyed by the theatre, film, and television through the so-called "author" texts. Borrowing fantastic images and plots by modern playwrights and writers is very much smacks of plagiarism, using ready-made stories, characters and ideas. So should everyone who operates in his writings and folklore material be tried in criminal proceedings? This question sounds a bit radical. But it makes to think at least about the fact that Pushkin's Balda is one thing, and Balda, or Ivan the Fool today's inveterate TV people is quite another. Remember that even such great writers as Alexei Tolstoy did not confuse folklore material's literary writing (handling) with individual creativity.

 But let us leave on the conscience of literary critics a question of plagiarism and authentic creativity. Let's see what remains of the folk genre after "free-style borrowing," after the directors, writers and authors dragged off the folktale for the film screens, TV screens and on the scenes of children's puppet theatres.

 Surprisingly, Ivan the Fool, Emelya, and other heroes of folk tales don't feel about those borrowings, neither heat nor cold. They are themselves, even when thousands of fake, self-proclaimed Emelyas and Ivans are on the screens and the scenes. Only with the appearance of genuine Shukshin's Ivanushka, a real Ivan raised his eyebrows in surprise, as he said: "He seems to be me." So he said and then disappeared again. Where is he hiding? Maybe on the library shelves? Hardly ...

 Whatever you say, the first blow to the Russian folktale was not done now. And it was struck by the library shelf. The folktale on the screen or on stage is not a fairy tale printed, and read this is also just a half of a fairy tale. The real fairytale lives only with a trinity: the narrator, listener and artistic tradition. All three of these values are equal, and each is equally indispensable. And if a listener of folktales can be collective, then a similarity ends with the audience in the theatre, the TV viewers. On the other hand, a collective narrator (theatre) or an anonymous-conditioned (radio, television) cannot be in the life of the tale. It is generally contrary to the fairy tale nature.

 Only after WWII did the artistic organization of a people's life begin to fade. It started to disappear with the destruction of thousands of villages and farmsteads, with the devastation in WWII most vital activities of the population.

 A few nights during the war in Timonikha slept over Victor-beggar, a ten-year-old boy. He was an orphan, but someone might be a distant relative installed in him: he must tell tales when sleeping in a stranger's house. One will not profit but can manage to be fed. So a small repertoire had the boy, just one story... But how hard he tried!

 A fairytale hero betrayed by his siblings, thrown into an abyss, enters the realm of the kingdom of Far Far Away. Being homesick, he wanders along the barren seashore. A terrible storm rises, toppling the mighty oak sits the fly-away nest from the Fantastic bird. A young man rescues from a storm her petite chicks, and in gratitude, that bird agrees to get him out of the kingdom of Far Far Away. He agrees with the condition that he would feed her during the journey. And they fly higher and higher... He throws it to pieces of bovine meat, but the food ends when the edge of his world becomes already visible. The fantastic bird, exhausted, is ready to collapse. He tears off his left hand and throws it, but that's not enough, and then he tears in pieces his body and feeds the bird to give her strength.

 Fairytale ends happily: The Fantastic bird "hark out" human flesh, and the body grows together, sprinkled first with dead, then living water.

 Could this happen in reality?

 Vic's shoulders were too fragile to withstand the immense weight of the entire genre. To Timonikha, like in thousands of other villages, not a man returned from the war, not one man ...

 Fairy poetry is a natural need of all domestic and moral order. The creativity of a narrator was necessary to the environment, audience, the whole world. Arkhangelsk fishermen, leaving on a long, dangerous voyage in the Northern Sea, often took an outstanding storyteller, who enjoyed all the rights of a member of the team. The same can be seen in many carpenters' brigades: the ability to tell gave a tacit compensation to an old or disabled carpenter. In the winter, when there is no need to rush anywhere, in the evenings to listen to and tell stories, people did it for the purpose and even set up tournaments of storytellers. Here could be gained popularity and fame, emerged individual talents: tried their luck beginners, became obvious tongue-tied and worthlessness of vulgarity.

 As well as the ability to talk acquired some kind of binding, although no one would blame you if you do not know how to talk smooth (as one can be blamed for the fact that they do not know how to make a handle, and only lightly ridiculed if you are short-spoken). But still, it was better to be able to talk well than not to be able to.

 The poor and needy, so the bread did not stick in the throat, were telling particularly many stories, although no one denied them the alms.

 Some tales combine the properties of anecdotes as well as "true stories." Reluctance to follow the canon leads the narrator to confuse the fairytale stories with anecdotes, legends, "true stories," all sorts of exciting incidents. Here's how it begins "Tale about the hunt," recorded in Nikolsky District, Vologda region. "I am a poor man. I have nothing to sell and came out with a plan where get the money to pay the tax." "I asked comrades to go into the woods for a hundred miles in Vetluzhsky county to catch birds and animals ... The time was autumn, in October the seventeenth day."

 Total factuality and specific details, combined with the incredible events, cause a particular emotional effect. The listener does not know what to do, either wonder or laugh. This folklore can in no way be put in scientific classification.

 At home, the fairy tale is already hovering over the head of a baby. It is heard (whether poorly or well is another issue) throughout childhood. The baby first hears tales from his grandfather and grandmother, mother and father, the elder sisters and brothers. When he hears them, as they say from professional performance, and one day left to look after a younger brother, he begins to tell by himself.

 The listener, becoming a storyteller, immediately frees his abilities, which may vary from very meagre to such powerful, what they were, for example, for Krivopolenova (a famous storyteller). A natural talent, rare storyteller performing properties include artistic memory, a kind of undercurrent, even unintelligible ownership of traditional poetic treasures. This creative memory is complemented by the ability to improvise.

 Seldom, very seldom, had a natural storyteller repeated himself. Usually, the same story was played differently, but rarely did he tell the same fairy tale. Like a professional handyman, for example, a wood-carver, the narrator could not exactly repeat himself; each meeting with the listener was original, distinctive, and peculiar as each cornice or casing of a good cutter.

 Another matter when a narrator was mediocre. He knew a small number of fairy tales and told them always the same way. He also kept the tradition, but in his presentation, traditional images and scenes become boring hackneyed, the custom became stale and then altogether disappeared. And then even mimicry or gestures did not help, or the ability to compose a story in the current way of life and link the plot to real places and names, i.e. all those techniques used by talented storytellers.

 Relationships between talented and untalented storytellers were definite and straightforward: the less skilled went silent when they began to talk a good storyteller. But, if faced off equally gifted people, it could be a contest, a veritable and rare feast for the audience.

 The tale, like clothing and food, was either everyday or festive. Living without a fairy tale is equivalent to living without food or clothing. Tales partially quenched the thirst of the people for beauty.

 Classification tales by genre is not as tricky as it is unnecessary. Yet among the thousands of stories, a group was formed: children's fairy tales, particularly the stories about animals. Of course, nowhere animals are represented as widespread as in the children's tales. But even a children's story can be told in different ways. Here, for example, the fairy tale "About the Spotted Hen" as said to adults by Elizabeth Panteleyevna Chistyakova from Pokrov, Punem parish Kirillov County.

 "There were once an old man and an old woman. They had a spotted hen. She laid an egg near Cat Cateevitch's place under the window on a fur-coat rag. Look, a mouse jumped out, wiggled the tail, blinking the eye, kicked her leg, and the egg is in pieces. The old man is crying, the old woman is crying, a broom plows, the handle dances, the pestles pound. Priest's daughters went to the well for water and were told that the egg was broken. The girls broke the buckets out of annoyance. The priest's wife was told about that, so she unconsciously put her pies under the stove. The priest was told and ran to the bell tower and began ringing the bells. Laypeople gathered: "What's up here?" Here they started to fight from anger."

 Infant perception is not yet ready for such ambiguity, and grandmother would tell this tale differently for the children.

 In turn, an adult fairy tale can be for children and adults at once, depending on the narrator's circumstances, intuition, and sensitivity. Same Natalya Samsonova obscenity, present in some tales, masked sound distortion or skipped them at all. Her brother Avtonom Ryabkov eagerly told stories "with pictures," but only for the adult male company. When children and women were in the audience, he switched to the standard variants.