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A structural and psychoanalytic analysis of the symbolic ritual process in three sets of Russian folk tales

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A structural and psychoanalytic analysis of the symbolic ritual process in three sets of Russian folk tales

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Content A STRUCTURAL AND PSYCHOANALYTIC ANALYSIS
OF THE SYMBOLIC RITUAL PROCESS IN THREE
SETS OF RUSSIAN FOLK TALES
by
'Z /
Dasha Dragica Culic
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Comparative Literature)
September 198 2
UMI Number: DP71521
All rights reserved
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a note will indicate the deletion.
UMI
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Published by ProQuest LLC (2015). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
U N IV E R S ITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
^ /
Dasha Dragica Culic
under the direction of Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H IL O S O P H Y
Dean
D^z/^...5EmMBER..ia^..l9 .aZ..
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Q /7 /7 / O ( J Chairman
11
This dis sert at ion is
dedicated
to my mother
and to my sisters
Ill
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank the members of my Dissertation
Committee, Professors Caldwell and Rorlich, for their sug
gestions and support. My special thanks go to the Chairman
of this Committee, Professor Farenga, whose patience and
invaluable help with the manuscript made the completion of
this work possible. I would also like to thank my family
and especially my husband for his reading and rereading of
each chapter. Last, but not least, I would like to thank
Mrs. Marie Watson for accepting the job of typing at a
short notice and then doing a beautiful job in such a short
period of time.
IV
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
Transliteration of the Cyrillic alphabet conforms to
the international scholarly system (System III) outlined in
J. Thomas Shaw's The Transliteration of Modern Russian for
Eng1ish-Language Publications, originally published by the
University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, in 1967
and reprinted by The Modern Language Association of
America, New York, New York, in 1979.
V
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
iii '
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
iv
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION
1
II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND ANALYTICAL
APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF RUSSIAN
FOLK TALES
6
Russian Formalism and the Analysis of
Narrative
6
Structural Linguistics and thej..Analysis
of Narrative: From Propp to Lévi-
Strauss
15
Freud and the Psychoanalytic Analysis
of Narrative
25
III. PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND RITUAL SYMBOLIC
PROCESS IN THREE SETS OF RUSSIAN FOLK TALES
47
IV. THE FIRST SET OF TALES ENTITLED "THE THREE
KINGDOMS: THE COPPER, THE SILVER AND THE
GOLDEN"
78
V. THE SECOND SET OF TALES ENTITLED "KO&CEJ
WITHOUT DEATH"
108
VI. THE THIRD SET OF TALES ENTITLED "FOOTLESS
AND BLIND BOGATYRI"
138
VII. CONCLUSION
168
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
178
APPENDIXES
184
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The impetus that moved the French anthropologist Claude
Lévi-Strauss to further his studies of man was the notion
that the human mind, whether it be that of primitive man
or that of modern man, functions essentially in the same
manner. What Lévi-Strauss sought to confirm was that there
are universal laws which govern man's thinking, laws which
are independent of man and which thus transcend the bar
riers of time and place. The solutions to human problems
arrived at by the primitive or modern mind, then, are very
similar.
Let us take for example the incorporation of a young
man as an adult into a primitive society and the incorpo
ration of a modern college student into a fraternity.
Trite as such a comparison may at first seem, we can
nevertheless notice several common principles of struc
turation that define a similar ritual process for both.
There are certain prerequisites that each of these young
people must satisfy before he becomes an acknowledged
member of that group. In primitive societies, and we are
concerned with early Russian society, admittance to the
2
adult community required that each individual perform
certain tasks that were administered publicly in the form
of a ritual. Similarly, through "hazing," a college
freshman also performs a series of tasks before the rest
of the fraternal community as a kind of ritual. In both
instances the period during which the tasks are being per
formed marks the interval in the candidate's life during
which he belongs neither to the group of unincorporated or
incorporated individuals of the clan or club. During this
transitional period, the candidate on the one hand has no
group ties because he has not earned them and, on the other
hand, he seems to be tied to everyone because everybody
else has gone through the same process and can identify
with him. The novice in isolation experiences the emo
tions which all other men in their situations have experi
enced and is thus united in community with them. More
over, as each candidate passes through the transitional
phase, the rest of the members simultaneously remind
themselves of their ties and reaffirm their own commitment
to the group.
The practice of hazing among college fraternities is
well known, ^^owever, documentation pertaining to prac
tices of incorporation into adulthood among early Slavs is
scarce. Very little is available in the original Slavic
languages and even less in translation. The following
study is intended in part to fill this void and was
prompted by a belief that the Russian folk tales are d
imbued with remnants of important social and personal
integrative processes.^ The main goal of the study is
therefore to examine a group of Russian folk tales, "The
Three Kingdoms: the Copper, the Silver and the Golden,"
"Ko^cej Without Death," and "Footless and Blind Bogatyri"
in light of their psychological, social and ritual
I
components. j
(This study begins with a brief overview of the
Russian Formalist critical movement from the early part of
this century, with special attention especially to
Vladimir Propp, whose Morphology of the Folktale intro
duced a number of structural principles to narrative
analysis, including the significance of constant and
CR
variant elements of folk narrative. The work of the
Russian Formalists was subsequently enriched by scholars
in the fields of linguistics, anthropology and psychology
such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss and
Sigmund Freud, all of whose theories will contribute to
the present studyIn particular, this study will benefit
from Claude Lévi-Strauss's elucidation of the symbolic
relations occurtrirg beneath the tale narrative; we shall,
in Chapter II, examine his analytic model based on the
grouping of oppositions and contradictions that are not
4
immediately apparent but which nevertheless underlie the
linguistic structure of mythological narrative. Sigmund
Freud's technique of dream interpretation will also pro
vide us with a model for understanding the nature of the
psychological conflicts in the tales.
{in using Lévi-Strauss's and Freud's models for the
analysis of Russian tale narrative, we shall point out
how through the rites of passage socially acceptable and
unacceptable behaviors are filtered through the tale
narrative (or myth) to meet at once the standards of
conventionality and the appetites of archaic desires that
members of the community seem to experience with particu
lar intensity as they are processed from one social
stratum to another^ Thus, by appreciating the interactive
mechanism between the three components (the psychological,
the sociological and the ritual) we will in effect examine
the nature of the symbolic process evidenced by these
tales.
Having examined the tales in this manner, we hope to
see them more clearly as remnants of Slavic myths and
rituals associated with a definite sociological function,
the incorporation of adolescents into adulthood, and a
psychological function, the reintegration of individual
personality, both of which are communicated through the
symbolic language of the tales. Language, as the carrier
5
in the symbolic process, ties, binds, reveals, heals,
teaches, ameliorates and reintegrates as it reveals the
individual to himself and to the community.
From the analysis of the tales, we conclude that they
are closely related, and what can be said of the first
set can hold for the second and the third sets of this
study. Thus, as Lévi-Strauss has pointed out from his
study of a basic South American Indian myth, the tales
(myths) examined here also stand for variants of a basic
ritual that once functioned as an integrative element on
the sociological and psychological levels.
CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND ANALYTICAL APPROACH
TO THE ANALYSIS OF RUSSIAN FOLK TALES
Russian Formalism and the Analysis of Narrative.
At the turn of the century, a new approach to
literary analysis was originated by a group of Russian
philologists. The members of this group, who in 1914
organized themselves into the Society for the Study of
Poetic Language (Opojaz), included such subsequently
prominent scholars as Boris Ejxenbaum, Viktor ^klovskij,
Jurij Tynjanov, Roman Jakobson, Osip Brik and Boris
Toma^evskij.^ These men concerned themselves with a
method of analysis which isolates the text from all extra-
textual phenomena and gives the text itself the role of
the referent. Such an approach to literary study allowed
these scholars to occupy themselves with the question of
textual "literariness," or with those elements and
2
"devices" that make a given work specifically literary.
The "literariness" of a work is derived from the
dynamic relationship among the elements comprising the
surface layers of the text, i.e., the text's lexical,
metrical, phonetic, morphological, rhythmic, syntactic and
motif-oriented elements. Consequently, the men involved
in the study of these various elements are today referred
to as the "Russian Formalists." By their undertaking, they
freed the text from its traditional historico-biographical,
socio-moral ties and, in the process, opened a Pandora's
box containing a multiplicity of textual elements and
structures in constant motion and evolution.
One of the major proponents of the formalist approach
V
to literary analysis was Viktor Sklovskij. In his studies
he sought out the narrative "devices" of the surface
elements such as parallel tropes, patterns of repetition,
and unusual acoustic arrangements, which organize the
3 ^
whole plot within the text. Because Sklovskij questioned
precisely how a work of art is made, he required that the
meaning of the text be pushed temporarily into the back
ground. Thus, his concern with the surface structures
and his lack of concern, if you will, with the context,
V
marks Sklovskij as a precursor of Vladimir Propp. In 1928
Propp formalized the syntagmatic analysis, or sequential
study of elements of discourse, of Russian folk narrative
in a work entitled Morphology of the Folktale.^
In this seminal work, Propp established that all
Russian folk tales are of a single structure and have an
identical sequence of "functions." A "function" is an act
of the dramatis persona and is defined "from the point of
view of its significance for the course of the action."
8
Thus, the functions appearing in a particular tale con
stitute the narrative plot and vary from tale to tale.
5
Their sequential order, however, is constant. Propp
further asserted that while the number of these functions
is limited, the personages to whom they are attributed may
be many. In the variant of a particular tale, the dramatis
persohae often change their names and attributes but they
always maintain their underlying functions.^ Propp's
study of the chronological order of the linear sequences
of actions is known today as the "syntagmatic" type of
structural analysis, and the combinations of elements
supported by linearity are referred to as "syntagms."
Even before the publication of the Morphology, how
ever, sequential motifs such as sound repetition were
studied by the Formalists. A motif, by its very nature, is
repetitive, but it was not until Propp exploited this
repetitive aspect of narrative that the syntagmatic line
of narrative crystallized. It is important to note that
the terms "constant" and "transformation" were first used
in Propp's Morphology. As mentioned above, functions
represent the "constant" and the most important element in
the tale. As an act of the dramatis personae, a function
is further defined by its consequence or its significance
for the progress of the action. According to Propp, all
tales do not include all of the functions of the possible
9
thirty-one. The lack of certain functions in any one tale
does not, however, change the sequential order of the rest
of them. Thus, the linear syntagmatic sequence of functions
is the dominant one. We can see that in Propp's analyses
of tales the what of a tale, i.e., the function, takes
precedence over the who, i.e., the character who carries
o
it out. The characters or the dramatis personae are
limited to seven, according to Propp. In one tale a par
ticular function can be fulfilled by one persona and in the
9
other by another. The dramatis personae then afford a
rich substitution of personages, leading to numerous vari
ations of the dominant tale or myth. Propp's formulation
of the concepts of the constant and of transformation, or
of a variant and invariant, are not exclusive to Russian
folk narrative. These very concepts can be traced in the
post-Formalist study of narrative, as we shall shortly
point out.
Taking a closer look at Propp's morphological founda
tion of folk tales/ we can see that the tale begins with
the description of a family unit. Usually a family and a
future hero are introduced. The hero's status within the
family unit is also presented here. Next comes the ini
tial function representing a lack or an absence of someone
from the family unit. The following functions represent
the hero’s quest for the lost member and the various
10
obstacles and tricks he must overcome in order to recapture
the missing object. These functions develop one out of
another in a sequential manner. No function excludes
another and they often appear in pairs of opposites.
The functions are performed by various dramatis personae,
such as the "villain," "donor," "helper," "princess,"
"dispatcher," the "hero" or the "false hero," who can per
form any one of the functions in the tale.^^ We can see
here that the law of transformation touches upon the
dramatis personae while the functions are subject to the
law of transformation only in so far as the dramatis
persona associated with that particular function changes.
Thus, any one persona can perform any one of the functions,
with the only restriction being that a strict sequential
order of these functions be kept. The dramatis personae
are defined by the deeds they perform and by such attrib
utes as external appearance, nomenclature, dwelling place
and motivation.
In looking at the elements of a tale, then, both the
functions and the dramatis personae are presented with an
element of repetition or trebling. Among the functions,
which are constant, repetition occurs as a uniform dis
tribution of three trials, three attempts or quests, of
which it is usually the third that is the hardest but the
most successful. Strings of notification, overhearing, or
perceiving occur and link the various functions together.
11
As far as the dramatis persohae are concerned, the trebling
that occurs is usually associated with their attributes.
Thus we have three-headed dragons, three brothers and/or
three sisters. The motivations of the dramatis personae,
i.e., the reasons and aims which cause them to commit
various acts, are the most inconstant or unstable elements
of the tale. They appear less precise than either
12
functions or their connections.
The Formalists agreed that the simplest unit of nar
rative consists of a motif. Motif was therefore seen as
an indivisible unit, combinations of which formed the
thematic thread running through a work. In one important
way Propp deviated from this view. He rejected the
irreducible characteristic of motifs and pointed out that
13
in Russian folk tales elements of a motif can vary.
Thus, the fact that a motif is not irreducible leads to
variations of that motif and, consequently, if more ele
ments of a motif can vary, the motif can be said to
decompose. This is obvious in Russian folk tales in which
a villain-dragon may be replaced by a whirlwind, a devil,
a sorcerer or a falcon. The numerous variants of a
Russian folk tale, or the transformations of a tale,
represent the process of this decomposition of motifs.
These transformations of a motif basically characterize
not the static but the dynamic character of folk tales in
general.
12
By assuming that one transformation of a folk tale
implies a previous transformation, we can postulate that
one could by investigating these transformations ultimately
arrive at the original tale or, better yet, a myth. Folk
tales might thus be seen as myths which have become attenu
ated through successive transformations. In his own exten
sive studies of myths, Claude Lévi-Strauss has pointed out
that the way myths are preserved is precisely through
transformations.^^ Therefore, the adaptation of myths by
the medieval Russian peasant to suit an acceptable form
has led not to the disappearance but to the attenuation
and preservation of the original myth. Lévi-Strauss has
also indicated that "les contes sont des mythes en
miniature. We may thereby hope to explain the similar
ity between the structure of archaic Slavic myths and that
of the various Russian folk tales.
It was in his study of the transformation of Russian
folk tales that Vladimir Propp referred to a direct genetic
dependency between folk tales and religion. He stated that
the basic forms of the tale "are linked with religious con
cepts of the remote past."^^ In his text. The Historical
Roots of a Fairy Tale, he points out that there exists a
relationship between ritual and tale and that elements of
a ritual can, in fact, be replaced by tale narrative. Most
significant to our analysis of tales is Propp's reference
13
to the ritual of initiation reflected in Russian tales, at
17
the center of which stands circumcision.
It seems then that myths belong somewhere between
rituals and tales. There is an evolutionary process in
operation through which a ritual dies out while a myth
continues and persists, widening the gap between itself
and the ancient rite. In the course of this widening gap,
a myth is freed from its ritual origins, allowing it to
undergo transformation by acquiring new terms, or offering
a myth an opportunity to attach itself to a historical
event or person. The evolutionary process further attenu
ates myths, remnants of which can be found today in folk
tales.
This ritual theory of myth, or the view that myth
arises out of rite and that it is a spoken correlative of
the acted rite, is supported by the "ritualists" or the
"Cambridge" school. The views of the "Cambridge” school,
based upon the work of a British anthropologist E. B. Tylor
and a Cambridge classicist James Frazer, crystallized in
1912 with Jane Ellen Harrison's publication of Themis,
a work which represents a summary of her studies in Greek
mythology, Greek tragedy and the Olympic games and which
outlines her thesis that myth arises out of or together
1 8
with a ritual.
Today, there are basically two camps of thought
14
regarding the relationship between myth and ritual. One
is the camp supporting the "ritual theory" of myth and
whose best known scholars include such men as Lord Raglan
and Stanley Hyman. In the other camp are those scholars
who find no direct correspondence between a ritual and the
myth associated with it. Clyde Kluckhohn, for example,
affirms that myths and rituals may have their origins in
19
dreams and visions, while, much like Wilhelm Wundt,
Claude Lévi-Strauss finds that neither is every ritual
related to a myth, nor does each myth correspond to a
particular ritual; he proposes that there exists a dia-
20
lectical relationship between myth and ritual. We shall
in this study accept Lévi-Strauss's notion of such a
dialectical relationship between myth and ritual— a dia
lectic claiming that, when myth and ritual are associated,
they affect one another and form an interrelationship of
tension between their static and dynamic aspects.
Our study will focus on Russian folk tales which will
be explored in view of their psychological, social and
ritual components. The question we are going to address
is how precisely these tales were accepted and understood
by the medieval Russian audience. Here, of course, we
shall consider the nature of the symbolic process as it
pertains to the meaning and signification of the various
elements of tale narrative. We shall in the process point
15
out the constant and variant elements of the psychological
operations of mythical structures which have filtered down
into the medieval Russian tales dealing with initiation
and the acquisition of a bride. Our interest lies in
pointing out these elements by utilizing the methodology
of the post-Formalist or "structuralist" anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss and by applying the traditional
psychoanalytic method of interpretation as outlined by
Freud. Utilizing these two methods of analysis, we shall
point out those aspects of medieval social structure and
individual psychic development which can be discerned in
three sets of tales. By no means is our approach intended
to demonstrate how these methods of analysis are applied
to folk narrative. Rather, our interest is in using these
techniques in order to understand better not only the tales
themselves but their acceptance and function in a particu
lar cultural environment.
Structural Linguistics and the Analysis of Narrative ;
From Propp to Levi-StrausT
Before we begin our discussion of the post-Formalist
period in literary analyses, we must point put the impact
that studies in the field of linguistics have made in the
area of narrative analysis. Major methodological contri
butions adopted by structuralists were made by Ferdinand de
Saussure in Geneva and Paris during the early years of this
16
century and then in 1916 in his posthumous text entitled
Course in General Linguistics.
The pivotal concept outlined by Ferdinand de Saussure
is his distinction between the system of language (la
langue) and the act of speech (]^ parole). ^ langue
represents a system of language rules, while 1^ parole
represents a spoken or written manifestation of that
22
system. La langue as a system of signs represents a
self-contained totality at a particular time, i.e., it is
based on an anti-historical principle. Elements within
this totality are considered in their synchronic soli-
2 3
darity. But a succession of changes occurring among the
elements in their respective synchronic solidarities is
based on a historical principle in which relations between
successive terms of each element are considered in their
diachronic evolution.
The next distinction made by Saussure is the notion
that the elements within a language state are engaged in
syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. If we take a
sentence, for example, the elements are arranged in a
linear sequential manner. A combination of two or more of
these elements forms a syntagm, which fixes the process of
speaking or reading and acquires value through its opposi
tion to what precedes or follows it. Thus, in discourse
the elements are arranged in a syntagmatic relationship.
17
Outside discourse, however, elements are grouped by
mnemonic, associative relations into a paradigm. Para
digmatic grouping may be established on the grounds of the
similarity of concepts signified or by the similarity of
sound images. These associative relationships are termed
paradigmatic. Perhaps the major difference is that
syntagmatic relations join elements present in the dis
course while paradigmatic relations join elements that are
present and absent.
Ferdinand de Saussure also carefully defines the
linguistic sign, by which he means virtually all signify
ing elements used by members of a community. The lin
guistic sign, he notes, has a bipartite structure resulting
from an arbitrary union of a "sound-image" and a
25
"concept." It is simultaneously a name or form and the
object to which it refers. For example, the name or form
is represented by the linguistic sign "tree"; the object
the linguistic sign refers to is the concept of the "the
tree." The form of the linguistic sign is referred to as
the signifier (signifiant), and the object it refers to is
the signified (signifie) Thus, there is a discontinuity
here between the name of an object and the object itself.
There is nothing inherent in the word "tree” that leads us
to the notion of a tree. This arbitrary relationship
between the signifier and the signified can be extended
18
to the arbitrary relationship existing between all linguis
tic signs and the reality to which they point.
The above-mentioned concepts expounded by Saussure
regarding linguistic relationships and the nature of the
linguistic sign led Lévi-Strauss to relate and incorporate
these linguistic concepts in the analysis of anthropolo
gical material. He applied the linguistic methodology to
the study of myths and arrived at a structural view of
myth. In his analysis of the Oedipus myth, which first
appeared in the Journal of American Folklore, 2 70 (1955),
Lévi-Strauss incorporated a method similar to Propp's in
that he, instead of outlining sequential functions, out
lined syntagmatic "mythemes" of discourse and then lined
up the binary opposites of these "mythemes" to infer an
underlying thematic contrast belonging to a particualr
cultural context. Prior to this study he had applied the
linguistic model in his study of kinship, social struc
tures and language and thus established a link between the
linguistic system and another discipline, anthropology.
Although Lévi-Strauss' was the first formal description of
its kind, links between linguistic methodology and other
disciplines as mathematics, logic, and physics have long
existed and are examined in more detail by Jean Piaget in
2 8
his text Structuralism.
19
The affiliation between linguistics and literary
studies has been marked by the incorporation of linguistic
terminology into certain analytic procedures. Thus, the
Saussurian notion of the discontinuity of the sign, or the
arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign, revealed that
there is no natural connection between the signifier and
the signified. In literary studies this has led to the
transformation of a literary work into a quasi-spatial
structure diagrammed by linguistic categories. As we
advance from Propp to Lévi-Strauss in the analysis of nar
rative, the initial focus upon the syntagmatic approach
(more in line with the early Formalists) has shifted toward
the paradigmatic, or what Levi-Strauss terms the "struc
tural" approach. He defines "structuralism" as follows:
"A 1'inverse du formalisme, le structuralisme refuse
d'opposer le concret a l'abstrait, et de reconnaitre au
second une valeur privilégiée. La forme se définit par
opposition à un contenu qui lui est extérieur; mais la
structure n'a pas de contenu: elle est le contenu même,
appréhendé dans une organisation logique conçue comme
9 Q
propriété du réel."
Thus, if the form and content are to be examined as
a unit in a work of art, then neither form nor content
should be allocated to a privileged position. The struc
ture of a work is a part of its content and, even though
20
it is not immediately apparent to the reader, it merits
consideration of equal footing with all other aspects of
narrative. The emphasis Levi-Strauss has placed upon the
paradigmatic relations in his study of myths is not as the
expense of the syntagmatic relations. He has attempted to
do for the paradigmatic relations what the Formalists have
done for the syntagmatic relations in their study of nar
rative. Therefore, it would certainly be incorrect to
separate Levi-Strauss‘s approach to narrative analysis
from that of Propp. Contributions made by these two men
should be regarded as two parts of a single step forward
in the analysis of prose. In short, here is how Levi-
Strauss analyzed the Oedipus myth, arranging the mythemes
on both syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of narrative.
The "mythemes" or gross constituent units, as Levi-
I
Strauss calls them, are found at the sentence level of %
myth narrative. To isolate them one finds in a sentence a
certain function that is linked to a given subject. There
is a relation between that function and the subject and
it is precisely this relation or bundles of such rela
tions that constitute a gross constituent unit in Levi-
Strauss ' s analyses. What is important here is not the
unit or units in themselves, but the combination of these
units. The meaning of the myth lies precisely in these
bundles of relations. Levi-Strauss breaks down the
21
Oedipus myth into eleven segments and arranges them into
rows and columns. In reading the myth one would follow
the sequential order, reading row by row from left to
right across the four columns. In understanding the myth,
however, one would have to look at all the units in a
single column, reading from top to bottom and then pro
ceeding to the next column and again reading from top to
bottom, and so on.
Levi-Strauss points out that in each column there are
gross constituent units with a specific feature. Looking
at them he established that the units in the first column
relate to overrating of blood relations, or that they
relate to relations that are closer than is acceptable.
In his analysis of the Oedipus myth these refer to incest.
In the second column, Levi-Strauss finds the specific
feature to be the opposite of that in the first column—
underrating of blood relations as in fratricide or parri
cide. The binary opposites in the next two columns include
affirmation of the autochthonous origin of man and denial
of such autochthonous origin. It is through this arrange
ment of the mythemes that Levi-Strauss was able to point
out an underlying thematic contrast that is not otherwise
apparent in myth narrative.
It was left, however, for A. J. Greimas to combine the
Proppian method of study of the surface elements of
22
narrative with Levi-Strauss's concern for the deeper struc
tures of meaning in narrative and to construct an independ
ent model for the structural analysis of narrative.
Greimas's model separates the analysis into two parts: the
surface or manifest narrative, and the deep and immanent
narrative.The narrative structures of the deep, imma
nent level are distinct from the linguistic structures of
the manifest level in that they can be revealed by a
language other than the natural language— such as film or
32
dream. Furthermore, narrative structures present us with
certain characteristics which are recurrent and regular and
which form the narrative grammar. The narrative grammar
itself consists of two levels, the "fundamental grammar"
of logical operations within the narrative structures and
the "surface grammar," which is the linguistic representa
tion of these operations. There is an existing hierarchy
between the two; the former imposes itself upon the latter,
creating an outward movement within the model.
33
In his article "Le conte populaire russe," Greimas
reduces Propp's list of seven dramatis personae in Russian
tales to three pairs of opposing actants whose functions
appear in the tale in succession and form the syntagmatic
end of narrative. These opposing couples include:
1) Destinateur, Destinataire
2) Adjuvant, Opposant
3) Object, Subject
23
The order of these couples in narrative cannot be reversed.
In a syntagmatic sequence, then, the succession of these
couples (pairs) of functions points to a sequence in which
#1 and #2 imply #3. Greimas then arrives at a definition
of narrative which is based on two orders or two struc
tures ; the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic order of nar
rative. The syntagmatic sequence (e.g., a trial in a tale)
is manifested in the discourse through an actantial model
whose principal attribute is the anthropomorphism of
significations (investment of terms in human or personi
fied actors) and which presents itself as a succession of
human behavior (functions in Proppian terms). The order of
these successive behaviors is irreversible.
The paradigmatic structure, on the other hand, reveals
structures which result by placing in correlation two pairs
of functions. These pairs of functions represent binary
opposites or semiotic structures which are not present in
the discourse as are the sequential syntagmatic semes.
And because they are found at the deep, immanent level,
they are not readily apparent. These structures, formed
by a correlation of two pairs of functions, are understood
and manifest a certain order among the significations— an
order that exists prior to the realization of the struc
tures in the narrative.
Greimas further explains that a trial in the tale, at
24
the syntagmatic level of narrative, results in a conse
quence or sème-consequence. This sème-consequehee of the
syntagmatic order is an outcome, a positive one, that
already belongs to the paradigmatic order of the tale but
is different in that, at its earlier manifestation in the
paradigmatic order, it appeared as a negative seme. The
negative seme, then, is anterior or prior to its sequen
tial positive seme in narrative. Greimas concludes that
the relation between the syntagmatic and paradigmatic
structures is established only through a historization of
the paradigmatic structure and only if the correlation
which it defines transforms into a double relation of
implication. Thus, in a tale, the syntagmatic structure
transforms correlations #1 and #2 to implications #3 (see
the list of opposing couples on if' preceding page), while
the paradigmatic structure transforms negative functions
into positive ones.
As we can see, Greimas has further elaborated upon
the syntagmatic and paradigmatic orders of narrative but
he has not, however, deviated dramatically from the basic
approach outlined by Levi-Strauss in his analysis of the
Oedipus myth. We shall, therefore, in our study of
Russian tales rely more on Levi-Strauss method of analysis
in pointing out the underlying thematic contrast in these
tales and we shall only refer to Greimas for additional
elucidation.
25
Freud and the Psychoanalytic Analysis of Narrative
Ever since the Formalists, the focus in narrative
analysis has been on the relationship between what is
apparent and what is hidden. In our analysis of narrative
we too are interested in elements of the narrative that
comprise the latent content of the tale. The use of the
psychoanalytic model will be made to achieve in part these
ends and to enlarge our sense of the possibilities of
meaning in folk tales. Our interest in the psychoanalytic
model immediately calls our attention to the question of
meaning and signification, a question that cannot be
answered unless we consider the symbolic process and the
mediating role that language plays in psychoanalysis. Let
us here consider some of the basic concepts as outlined
by Sigmund Freud.
As early as 1900, with the publication of the
Interpretation of Dreams, Freud presented some of his
most important concepts in the theory of psychoanalysis.
Most of these, though revised and elaborated, have re
mained as they were postulated in that major work. The
most striking revelation made in the Interprêtation of
Dreams was the correlation drawn by Freud between the
structure of one of his own dreams and that of Sophocles's
play, Oedipus the King. It was only after a long and
careful self-analysis that Freud came upon the universal
26
invariant represented by the Oedipal myth. The Oedipus
Complex, as an invariant structure, was seen by Freud as a
pivotal psychic representation in his own personal dream.
A transformation of this structure appears in the Sopho-
clean drama. Thus a transformation of a psychic structure
can be seen in a dream, a myth, and a play. The structural
invariant then is nothing other than the cross-reference
from one variant to another, be it dream, symptom, myth,
play or tale.
According to Freud, the locus for the preservation of
the invariant structure, in its original form or in dis
torted form, is the dream-work. In his tripartite scheme
consisting of the unconscious, preconscious and the con
scious, the dream-work functions in the preconscious and is
akin to a censorial grid. When in a "lifted" position, it
allows the original invariant structures to pass into the
dream narrative. When lowered, however, the dream-work
allows the psychic structural invariant to filter through
disguised in different invariants. Thus, the invariant in
dream thoughts passes through the dream-work where it
undergoes change; then, transformed or in a disguised form,
35
it appears in the manifest narrative of a dream. The
dream-work then represents an area of reduction, distortion
or selection of meanings and supports a possibility of
multiplicity of meanings and significations.
27
At closer examination, the unconscious represents a
system that is filled with unfulfilled desires which can
not make themselves present to consciousness. They are
repressed wishes, parts of which may filter through the
preconscious into consciousness but not before they have
been altered and made acceptable to the conscious system.
Here the unconscious, then, is a repository or a receptacle
of non-realized, anti-social, yet powerful infantile
desires always on the alert to find their way to
expression. In the Freudian scheme the meaningful
structures can be seen to move outwardly, as logical
thoughts are transmitted from the unconscious through the
dream-work into consciousness. During the course of this
journey, the structures undergo transformation and dis
tortion but their original meaning is never completely
lost. Let us explore how the dream-work operates upon the
dream material.
During sleep man regresses to a primitive or infantile
mode of thinking that is characterized by lack of clarity,
rationality and logic. This mode of thinking is referred
to as the primary process during which infantile drives
37
seek and achieve release in a modified form. It is this
modified form that constitutes an individual’s dream-
3 8
content or manifest dream. The manifest dream itself,
then, represents material from the individual's past
28
infantile experiences that have been triggered, brought to
the surface, and are accompanied by the individual's more
39
recent experiences. In a psychoanalytic situation, a
person reveals his dreams by repeating the same story
(latent thoughts) differently, i.e., revealing the same
story under a different veil in the manifest dream. By
analyzing the variations among the patient's translations
of that story (a result of the secondary process), a hidden
story can be retrieved. This is accomplished by decipher
ing the distorting mechanisms of the dream-work which are
responsible for altering the latent thoughts into an
acceptable form in the manifest dream. The two main
mechanisms employed by the dream-work are condensation and
displacement.
Condensation is a method of distorting hidden thoughts
by compression. It can be achieved by combining features
of two or more people into a single dream image.Dis
placement is accomplished by replacing a particular idea
42
with another that is closely related to it. On the one
hand, a particular element of low value may in displacement
be overdetermined and be given a new higher value; on the
other hand, an element of high value may be reduced to an
4 3
element of low value.
Besides these two methods employed by the dream-work
to distort hidden thoughts, there are two more processes
29
that should be mentioned. One is symbolization in dreams
and the other is the secondary process. The first relates
to transformation of hidden thoughts into pictures that
appear in the manifest dream;the other refers to the
tendency of the individual in the process of relating the
dream to mould it into more rational and less absurd
4 = 45
form.
Since in this study we shall not be working with
dreams but with tales, different versions of the tales also
appear to be repetitions of the same story. All the vari
ant elements represent transformational elements. In our
tales, for example, these substitutions occur within a
family unit in the categories of the mother and the father.
The object of desire also varies in these tales; it appears
to be either the mother or a bride. As far as the father
figure is concerned, he appears in transformational forms
as the villain figure of the raven and the whirlwind.
The variant points in these tales function precisely
to differentiate one tale from another, so that the story
is and is not always the same (just as is the case with
the retelling of a dream), except that in a psychoanalytic
situation, it is the patient who retells his dream in
variant forms while in our tales the variants are pre
sented by the teller of the tales. Each version of the
tale hides the invariant form under the veil of a variant.
30
While the purpose of each tale is to relate the full mean
ing of the tale, that meaning with each tale becomes
deferred by another version or translation of that tale
and then still another, a^ infinitum. In the analysis of
these tales we shall then arrive at a meaning of the tales
by combining the psychological operations of the mind with
the flow of narrative, for the meaning of the tale (and
ultimately of the ritual behind it) is not only in the nar
rative itself but in the combination of narrative (or
ritual) and mental processes.
Dream symbolism that supplements the mechanisms of
condensation and displacement further obscures latent
thoughts. If condensation and displacement are parts of
the primary process, the mechanisms involved in the indi
vidual's regression to an infantile form of thinking,
symbolization likewise assumes an infantile way of thinking
characterized by preference for specific and physical
material over the abstract. Thus, the child's perception
of such important events to him as birth, death, body
functions and his relations with family members are repre
sented by symbols.There is a list of universally
recognized symbols which represent events, people and
objects most important in the child's Weltanschauung. We
shall in this study point out only those symbolic elements
that appear repeatedly and in isolation in our tales and
31
which contribute to a better understanding of these tales.
In order for us to comprehend the unconscious in light
of the symbolic process, we must turn to the concept of the
symbolic as it is explored by the structural anthropologist
Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss differentiates not be
tween the unconscious and the preconscious as in the
Freudian model, but between the unconscious and the "sub
conscious." Thus, the unconscious for Levi-Strauss does
not represent a repository of individual or personal
memories, some of which have access to the preconscious
and other memories that never leave the unconscious. For
Levi-Strauss the unconscious is basically empty of memo
ries and representations and instead stores what he calls
the "symbolic function," a function exercised in all men
47
according to the same laws. These laws, which are
therefore communal, impose order and meaningful structure
on the individual's memories and present experience. Now
our personal memories are stored in what Levi-Strauss calls
the subconscious. Here memories and images are stored but
are not communicable or meaningful by themselves. These
subconscious memories, representations and emotions acquire
significance for the subject and for others only when
ordered by the unconscious. Thus, Levi-Strauss's un
conscious imposes structure upon the material of the sub
conscious. And as the unconscious reactivates the dormant
32
personal experiences of the subconscious, it fuses these
past experiences and memories with the present conscious
experience.
As to how precisely the symbolic process functions,
we can turn to Levi-Strauss's article on "The Effectiveness
of Symbols" in which he outlines a shaman's cure of a dif-
4 8
ficult childbirth. Among the Cuna Indians of the Panama
Republic of Central America there is a ritual song to
facilitate difficult deliveries. In short, the Cuna
believe that in a difficult childbirth, the soul of the
uterus has gone astray and with it the souls of all the
other bodily organs. The cure of the difficult childbirth
occurs during the incantation of the song in the process
of which the body reclaims the soul of the uterus and with
it the souls of all the other organs.
Since there is actually no direct physical manipula
tion of the sick woman's body, the cure (or the reclaiming
of the souls) obtained during the incantation of the song
is actually a psychological manipulation of the sick
woman's organ (the uterus). It is the shaman here who
throughout the incantation of the song first acts out the
struggle between the good and evil spirits and then acts
out the conquest of the soul of the uterus. As the shaman
continues with the incantation and acts out the myth througl
narrative, the real experience is being acted out. The
33
pains the woman experiences in the delivery are personi
fied (they are named and described in the form of animals),
and suddenly the woman understands why there is pain in
her delivery. As the narrative then presents the patient
with a meaning for these pains, they appear to the woman's
conscious and unconscious in an understandable form. The
pains become acceptable to her only because, as Levi-
Strauss point out, she believes in the myth (in the nar
rative of the incantation of the song). She accepts the
pains insofar as these pains are meaningfully related in
the narrative (myth). As soon as she accepts the pain
(i.e., the pain has a meaningful role in the delivery), she
is able to be cured.
What actually happens during the incantation of the
song is the creation of a language by means of which the
unexpressed or inexpressible psychic states are being ex
pressed. Thus, it is through language, a particular lan
guage, that these once meaningless pains suddenly acquire
a purpose, are explained and can be conquered. The lan
guage that the shaman offers to the patient is the language
shared by the community so that the woman, as a member of
that community, can find meaning in her present experience.
During the delivery, the woman, with the help of the
shaman, frees herself from these unbearable pains by
externalizing them. Then, as soon as these are externalized
34
(i.e., they are attributed to other subjects and/or
objects), she is able to assume her recovery. The most
important thing is that there be a language and, if there
is such a language, we can only attribute it to the
symbolic process.
We can note here that the role of ritual in primitive
societies may be one that involves learning about the
tribal lore and/or participating in a communal experience
of that lore. Levi-Strauss points out that, as the shaman
aids in the woman's delivery, he calls upon the members
of the village to participate and aid in the whole experi
ence of childbearing. In addition to learning about the
experience of birth and participating in it, the ritual
may at the same time give the audience a vicarious
experience of delivery, a need that in "primitive" socie
ties is demonstrated in men as well as women. Thus they
both partake in the release of their unconscious desires
to be a part of this life-creating process.
The unconscious in Levi-Strauss's terms carries the
symbolic function and is seen as a repository of the
structuring process. The material that passes through the
unconscious is acted upon or reordered by the structuring
capacity of the unconscious. And it is precisely upon
this concept of structuring and ordering of the experiences
and archaic images that Jacques Lacan, a structural psy
choanalyst and an interpreter of Freud, based his order of
35
the Symbolic in his own model consisting of three orders:
The Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic. Here is how he
sees the function of the symbolic in his tripartite model.
The content in Lacan's Imaginary is basically one of
static or rigid perceptions limited to images and rep
resentations of an earlier stage in human development which
deals with identification and is related to the "mirror
phase." Lacan's "mirror phase" refers to the child's
experience of looking in the mirror "to discover his 'self'
by a mirror-like identification with the image of another."
This is the child's first discovery of difference between
49
self and world. These images in the Imaginary are
therefore archaic and lack a meaningful and communicative
quality for the individual and the community. In opposi
tion to these incommunicable archaic images and represen
tations is the order of the Real which embraces the
ongoing and current experiences of the individual. These
are also insignificant for the individual until they are
rendered into structure and meaning by the Symbolic order.
An important point as far as the content of the Real is
concerned is Lacan's notion that the experiences of the
Real order are not the experiences of objective reality
but are very much the experiences and representations as
perceived by the subject. Once these experiences of the
Real order are structured, or once these experiences
36
undergo the symbolic function imposed by the Symbolic order
they still do not represent reality but a portion of the
total reality or the individual's subjective reality. In
the course of this structuration of subjective reality,
the order of the Symbolic may fuse representations or
images in the Real order with similar memories or rep
resentations grounded in the Imaginary. In such cases, it
can be said that the Symbolic is able to reactivate or
restructure the incommunicable representations of the
Imaginary order and fuse them with the current experience
of the Real order.
Thus, the present experience of the Real order is
made meaningful by its regressive association with the
Imaginary order, which we may refer to as a mythic, a
communal or a personal reservoir of memories and images.
What is important is that this order, i.e., the Imaginary,
is a vaguely familiar one which becomes refamiliarized
in the Real only via the Symbolic. The content of the
Real is then made meaningful when it identifies with the
structure of the psychic analog rooted in the Imaginary.
What occurs is basically the triggering of the forgotten
or repressed invariant structures which were in the past
imposed by the Symbolic and forgotten. Once revived,
these structures in the Imaginary form a meaningful link
with the experiences of the Real, and they continue to
37
serve as paradigms for all subsequent experiences or
situations encountered in the Real. The function of the
Symbolic order is, therefore, continuously to illuminate
and link the initial perceptions with the representations
in the Real, while simultaneously filtering these into
the repository of the Imaginary order. One can see a
similarity between the functions of Lacan's Imaginary and
Symbolic orders and the functions of Levi-Strauss's sub
conscious and unconscious.
The tales under examination reflect a psychological
mechanism of repetition compulsion. Freud's concept of
the repetition compulsion is treated in his work Beyond
the Pleasure Principle. H e points out that a patient in
a psychoanalytic experience must abandon resistances and,
within the framework of transference, repeat the repressed
material of his unconscious. The patient, however, cannot
remember the whole of what is repressed in him and, if he
does, he cannot remember it as something belonging to the
past. He repeats the repressed material only as a con
temporary experience. Thus, the physician aids the
patient in re-experiencing some portion of this forgotten
life which is usually related to some portion of infertile
sexual life— that is, to the Oedipus.Complex and its
derivatives. While the patient thus re-experiences a
part of his forgotten life, the psychoanalyst helps him
38
to filter as much of this experience as possible into the
channel of memory.
The best example of the repetition compulsion of
mental structure in its various forms can be seen in one
of Freud's own analyses, the famous case of the Wolf Man.^^
If we recall the analysis, the original repressed structure
of the primal scene appeared in transformational form in
a number of the patient's subsequent screen-memories. The
first is his link of the primal scene with Grusha, then
the yellow-striped butterfly setting on a flower, then an
upright wolf, and finally the servant girl engaged in
scrubbing the floor. All these screen memories are the
offshoot of the compulsion emanating from the primal
scene.
As we can see from this particular case, the invariant
structure, i.e., the primal scene, once repressed, appeared
in disguised form under the pressure of the repetition
compulsion mechanism. This leads us to conclude that the
original repressed structure is never lost and reappears
under the pressure of compulsion in another form.
Just as the physician aids the patient to re-experi
ence a repressed portion of his early life, the shaman too
helps the patient rechannel the present, often misunder
stood experience into a meaningful one. He accomplishes
this by himself offering a meaningful narrative to the
39
patient. The narrative itself or the real experience
(difficult childbirth) confronted by an individual con
nects, via the symbolic function of the elements of nar
rative, the perceptions and forgotten communal interpreta
tion of that narrative (experience). In this regard, the
shaman re-integrates the patient and rehearses the others
in a communal understanding of the event. By reiterating
the narrative, which the patient and the community accept,
the patient is reminded once again of the true meaning of
what at the moment may seem to be a threatening experience.
But how is all this related to our study of Russian
folk tales? We can postulate that the repetition com
pulsion mechanism is an invariant part of the psychic
mechanism, whether it is considered as part of the mental
process among the ancient Slavs or of modern man. We can
point out in addition that the tale, as an attenuated myth,
fulfilled a certain communal role in medieval society. We
can postulate that while reciting or listening to a tale,
the communal and/or personal censorial grid is temporarily
lifted. Subsequently, certain repressed and long-dormant
instinctual impulses filter through the grid and become
reflected in the tale itself. We can refer here to the
bond that is established between the reader and the text
or the bond between the teller and the listener. We might
speak of this bond in terms of Coleridge's "suspension
40
of disbelief" that allows the reader for a limited time to
transport himself to another world— to the world of the
text or tale narrative with supernatural characters— a
world in which the reader or the listener has complete
faith,
In psychoanalytic terms, as Elizabeth Dalton points
out, the "suspension of disbelief" allows the reader to
experience the things that he would not otherwise be able
52
to experience. As far as our tale narrative is con
cerned, the listener, as well as the teller of the tale,
regresses to an earlier childhood stage. Then, as the
censorial grid is being lifted, the primary process that
operates in dreams for the fulfillment of desires takes
command. It is only once the censorial grid is lifted
that we can claim that certain invariable mental struc
tures are reflected and actually may form the structural
pattern of the tale itself. Dreams have been extensively
examined in this manner. In this regard, we can infer
that Russian tales, as attenuated Slavic myths, reflect
the same mental structures as found in dreams. We there
fore propose to take three sets of Russian tales and
illuminate those aspects of the tales which comprise the
invariable structure and its transformations. Along with
the individual mental structures, an attempt will be made
to illuminate the social structure as well. Ancient
41
tribal customs will be explored since very often in these
tales basic events, associated with the socialization of
an individual, precipitate long dormant individual and
communal fears and desires. We also hope to show how the
mental structures of these ancient peoples do not differ
greatly from the mental structures of modern man. The
structures of man's desires and fears have remained, while
the form in which they appear continually changes and will
continue to change as long as man functions within the
familial social unit.
42
Notes
^No attempt will be made to separate the members of
the Moscow Linguistic Circle from those of Petersburg
Opojaz.
2
The best anthologies on the theoretical and practical
work of the Russian Formalists available in English include
Krystina Pomorska, Russian Formalist Theory and Its Poetic
Ambiance (The Hague: Mouton, 1968) and Victor Erlich,
Twentieth-Century Russian Literary Criticism (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1975).
3 ^
For details of Sklovskij's studies, refer to the
following essays available in English, "Art as Technique"
and "Sterne's Tristram Shandy: Stylistic Commentary" in
Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, trans. Lee T.
Lemon and Marion J. Reis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1965); "The Resurrection of the Word" and "On the
Connection between Devices of Syuzhet Constructions and
General Stylistic Devices" in Russian Formalism: A
Collection of Articles and Texts in Translation, eds.
Stephen Bann and John È. Bowlt (Edinburgh^ Scottish
Academic Press, 1973). In addition, see Sklovskij's
"Pushkin and Sterne: Eugene Onegin” and "Parallels in
Tolstoy" in Victor Erlich's Twentieth-Century Russian
Literary Criticism mentioned in note #2 and comments on
Russian Formalism by Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna
Pomorska, eds.. Readings in Russian Poetics : Formalist
and Structuralist Views (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press,
1971).
^Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Austin,
Texas: University of Texas Press, 1968) . Vladimir Propp's
contribution to narrative analysis has been assessed by
several recent scholars, among whom are Tzvetan Todorov,
The Poetics of Prose (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1977) and Robert Scholes, Structuralism in
Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).
^Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, pp. 21-23.
^Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, p. 20.
43
7
Propp, Morphology of the Folktale,
p.
64.
0
Propp, Morphology of the Folktale,
PP
. 20-22.
9
Propp, Morphology of the Folktale,
p.
80.
lOn
Propp, Morphology of the Folktale,
p.
64.
Propp, Morphology of the Folktale,
PP
. 78—80.
12
Propp, Morphology of the Folktale,
PP
. 74-75.
Propp, Morphology of the Folktale,
PP
. 12-13.
14
Claude Levi-Strauss, "How Myths Die New Literary
History, 5 (1974), 269-281.
1 5 ^
Claude Levi-Strauss, "L'analyse morphologique des
contes russes," International Journal of Slavic Linguistics
and Poetics, 3 (1960), 136.
Vladimir Propp, "Fairy Tale Transformations," in
Readings in Russian Poetics ; Formalist and Structuralist
Views, eds. Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska
(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1971), pp. 96-97.
1 7
Vladimir la. Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi
Skazki (Leningrad: State Univ. of Lenin, 194 6),
pp. 12-13, 74.
18
Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis (London: Cambridge
University Press, 1912), p. 13. For details on the ascent
of the "Cambridge" school of thought see Stanley Hyman's
informative article "The Ritual View of Myth and the
Mythic" in Myth: A Symposium, ed. Thomas A. Sebok
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958), pp. 84-94.
^^Clyde Kluckhohn, "Myths and Rituals: A General
Theory," Harvard Theological Review, 35 (1942), 45-79.
44
^^Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans.
Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York:
Basic Books, Inc., 1963), pp. 232-241.
21
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics,
trans. Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966). An
excellent review of Saussure's contributions and his long-
range impact in the development of literary theory is made
by Marie-Laure Ryan, "Is There Life for Saussure After
Structuralism?" Diacritics, 9 (1979), 22-44, in which she
reviews Johathan Culler's recent book Ferdinand de Saussure
(New York: Penguin Books, 1977).
22
Saussure, pp. 9-13.
23
Saussure, p. 87.
^^Saussure, pp. 8 0-81.
25
Saussure, p. 66.
^^Saussure, p. 67.
^^This study is included in Claude Lévi-Strauss*s
Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke
Grundfest Schoeph (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1963),
pp. 206-231.
2 8
Jean Piaget, Structuralism (New York: Basic Books,
Inc., 1970). In addition to relating the various dis
ciplines to linguistics, Piaget's concept of the structure
as a system of constants and transformations, based on the
principles of self regulation, is of special interest to
our study of narrative systems.
29 ^
Claude Lévi-Strauss, "L'analyse morphologique des
contes russes," p. 122. "Unlike formalism, structuralism
refuses to oppose the concrete to the abstract and to
recognize a privileged value in the latter. The form is
defined by its opposition to the content which is its
exterior; but the structure does not have content: it is
the content itself, apprehended in a logical organization
conceived as a property of the real."
45
30
For Lévi-Strauss's analysis of the Oedipus myth see
his "The Structural Study of Myth" in Structural
Anthropology, pp. 206-231.
^^A. J. Greimas, Sémantique Structurale (Paris:
Librairie Larousse, 1966), pp. 103-107.
32
A. J. Greimas, "Elements of a Narrative Grammar,"
Diacritics, 7 (1977), 23.
3 3
A. J. Greimas, "Le conte populaire russe,"
International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, 9
(1965) 152-175.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans.
and ed. James Strachey (New York: Avon, 1965).
35
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 311-546.
^^Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 591.
37
Leon L. Altman, M.D., The Dream in Psychoanalysis
York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1975),
^^Freud, The Interpretation of Drearns, pp. 311-312.
39
Altman
/ p.
11
^^Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 343.
^^Freud, The interpretation of Dreams, p. 327.
^^Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 374.
^^Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 342-343.
44
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 379-380.
^^Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 526-528.
46
^^Altman, pp. 21-2 3.
^^Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Effectiveness of Symbols,"
in his Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, Inc
1963), p. 203.
4 8 ^
See Lévi-Strauss's complete article "The Effective
ness of Symbols" mentioned above, pp. 18 6-205.
4 9 y
Jacques Lacan, Ecrits : A Selection, (New York:
W. W. Norton and Co. Inc., 1977), pp. 1-7. For interpreta
tion of Lacan see Anthony Wilden's System and Structure :
Essays in Communication and Exchange (New York: Harper and
Row Publishers, Inc., 1972).
50
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans.
and ed. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton and Co.
Inc., 1961.
51
Sigmund Freud, Three Case Histories, ed. Philip
Rieff (New York: Collier Books, 1979), pp. 187-316.
52
Elizabeth Dalton, Unconscious Structure in The
Idiot: A Study in Literature and Psychoanalysis (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 35.
47
CHAPTER III
Psychological, Social and Ritual Symbolic
Process in Three Sets of Russian Folk Tales
It will soon become apparent as we look at the three
sets of Russian Tales that these tales are imbued with rich
psychological elements which readily lend themselves to a
traditional psychoanalytic interpretation. However, the
psychoanalytic (or the psychological) reconstruction of the
individual's situation in these tales combines readily with
the group's situation (or the sociological) and the
cultural context that permeates these three sets. Thus, as
we examine the tales in more detail, we shall reconstruct
the individual's (that is, the novice's) psychological con
text as well as the group's (that is, the social context)
and link these two components via the symbolic process to
the cultural practice behind these tales which, we propose,
represents the ritual of initiation. It is the symbolic
process, then, that regulates and integrates these three
components of tale narrative.
Since we are interested in neither the relationship
between the psychiatrist and the patient, nor the shaman
and the patient, but in a relationship between the tale
48
teller (text) and the listener (reader), we must establish
a relationship between the tale narrative (text) and the
listener (reader) or, as far as the ritual is concerned,
between the person carrying out the ritual and the novice.
The listener, much like the shaman's patient, is in a
passive role; the tale teller, like the shaman himself,
however, is the active member in this discourse. And, as
far as the novice in a ritual is concerned, we can compare
him to the novice listening to the tale narrative or the
song of the ritual. Before we discuss the significance of
the tales at the individual and social levels, we must look
at the structure of tale narrative and of ritual.
Earlier in this study, we mentioned that we shall
accept Levi-Strauss's notion of the dialectical relation
ship between myth (tale) and ritual. We shall also accept
Lévi-Strauss *s proposal that every ritual is not necessari
ly related to a myth, and that each myth does not neces
sarily correspond to a particular ritual, although many
rituals have expressed myths. Only the most significant
myths, those relating to the origins of man and those
dealing with man's place and role in society, found expres
sion in ritual. Such myths dealt with birth, initiation,
marriage and burial. Rituals dealing with such important
events translated the individual's questions regarding
life crises and life deeds into classical, impersonal
49
forms. They disclosed man to himself not as an individual
personality, but in such roles as the suitor, the bride,
the priest, the widow, the mother, etc.^ Rituals, then,
taught man how to respond to crises at the essential stages
of life, and at the same time they rehearsed the rest of
the community for such responses in renewed experiences.
For the most part, rituals included a ritual song or
dance that was performed publicly and collectively. This
is how each individual of the society received a body of
knowledge which accompanied and consoled him during the
frightening, uncertain journey from birth to death. When
the subject of the myth ceases to correspond to the beliefs
and customs of the community, myths die. Over the course
of time, mythological beliefs, having lost their original
function, are replaced by new myths. Rituals are similarly
replaced by new ones. As we shall see, old Slavic rituals
have been lost and ritual song forgotten, but the remains
of pagan mythological beliefs associated with these rituals
can be found in the folk tales that have been preserved.
In his work. The Raw and the Cooked, Claude Levi-
Strauss interprets myths from various regions and com
munities of South America and relates them to what he sees
as the basic single myth of the Bororo Indians of Central
Brazil, To this end, he draws upon materials ranging from
folk tales, legends,‘ ceremonies.and rites that reflect
2
mental and social activities of a community.
50
Levi-Strauss contends that mythological stories are trans
mitted orally, and that only after a period of time are
they written down. In this process the stories become
completely divorced from their original religious context.
Thus, as we already pointed out, for Levi-Strauss a tale
is an attenuated myth. And it is precisely this definition
of tale that interests us in our study of Russian tales or,
should we say, Russian myths.
In analysis, Russian tales break naturally into three
parts. The first part is usually short and restricted.
The hero of the tale is introduced, and an account of his
4
departure from the family is given. The second and most
important part of the tale deals with the hero's transition
from childhood to maturity. In this part, the hero
journeys from his home (usually a "kingdom") into a dream
like world in which he must undergo a series of trials.
Psychologically, this part of the tale is geared to aid
the novice in overcoming fears and apprehensions in pre
paration for adulthood. Here, past, present and future
merge into a single ahistorical moment. These two points
suggest a comparison of tales to dreams since in dreams
similarly man's fears and apprehensions are also being
worked out while time is suspended.
The third part of the tale relates the hero's return
to his community with newly acquired knowledge and a change
51
in status.^ No longer does he represent the weakest member
of the family; as a matter of fact, he has mastered the
world outside the community and is now ready to accept the
responsibility of gaining a bride and a family of his own.
Such is essentially the pattern of the tales under con
sideration.
Let us see how this external structure of tale nar
rative relates to the structure of ritual. In his seminal
text. The Rites of Passage, Arnold van Gennep analyzes
ritual behavior in relation to the dynamics of individual
and group life.^ In this work he has extensively analyzed
ceremonies connected with an individual's "life crises,"
which he defines as birth, puberty, marriage and death.
In these ceremonies van Gennep distinguishes three phases;
separation, transition and incorporation. This three part
schema represents the pattern of the rites de passage
in which the novice separates from his group, undergoes
transition and then, in the new state, is reincorporated
in the life of the group.
Van Gennep points out that not all three of the above
phases are developed equally in a set of ceremonies. He
stresses that the separation phase is prominent in funeral
ceremonies, the transition phase in initiation or betrothal
rites, and the incorporation phase in marriage rituals.^
The bulk of the tale develops the transitional phase.
52
Since neither the separation nor the incorporation parts
of the tale are fully developed, we postulate that our
three sets of tales deal mainly with the transitional peri
od incorporating the initiation ritual that may or may not
be associated with circumcision.
Initiation rites, as indicated by van Gennep, relate
to an individual's social puberty and not necessarily to
his philological puberty.^ Bruno Bettelheim has also
pointed out that among male initiates it is very difficult
to pinpoint the actual physiological transition from an
asexual to a sexual phase, or from an adolescent to an
adult stage. He finds, however, that among girls such a
transition is more physical and thus more obvious. It is
perhaps just because of this difficulty in pinpointing the
moment of maturity among males that most elaborate initia
tion rites intended to punctuate or define such a moment
of transition usually deal with the initiation of male
9
novices. This view seems to be supported by the elaborate
transitional phase treated in the tales.
Since our tale material deals with the transition
period, we can elaborate here upon van Gennep's definition
of the transition period in the rites de passage. A
novice who undergoes a transition from one socially
defined position to another passes through a relatively
undefined phase or "liminal" period. This "liminal"
53
period lies between the novice's past fixed position (that
of a child) and his future fixed position (that of an
adult). During this transitional "liminal" period the
novice is stripped of old childhood ties and behaviors, and
is clad with the attributes that are usually associated
with sexually mature adults.The "liminal" period is
undefined in that during this period the novice is not
expected to exhibit any particular behavioral patterns,
attributes, and characteristics. Because of this, socially
accepted and unaccepted behaviors and attributes merge
during the course of this phase, as the novice loses one
set of characteristics and dons another. At any one moment
during the transition phase, the novice can be a child or
an adult; he can be a male or a female, young or old,
passive or active. The novices in this stage then represent
not only themselves but all the other members of the group.
In other words, they find themselves at one with the rest
of the community. A novice is at the same time every one
and no one as his old prescribed behaviors are being
stripped and he is being instructed in the new ones. He is
and is not; it is in this sense that the initiate is
undefined, and that he transcends the conventional behavior
of his group members.
Victor Turner, elaborating upon van Gennep's concept
of liminality, calls it a state during which the novices
54
are between conventional positions within a group. Thus,
people in this phase are outside, beyond and above the
conventional norms. This quality links these novices to
death (their old self dies), to being in the womb (they are
yet to be born), to invisibility (they are unclassifiable
by socially accepted norms) and to bisexuality (they are
neither males nor females).
This idea corresponds to Bruno Bettelheim's concept
12
of the initiation ritual as a process of rebirth. The
novice, during the course of initiation, goes to a hut
("the womb") to which he returns to be reborn. If, during
the liminal stage the novice is neither a male nor a
female, then the procedure of circumcision takes place in
the hut, or the womb, establishing a definite sexual role
^ . 1 3
for the novice.
In addition to a passive behavior of the novices
during the transition phase, another important feature of
the liminal period is the submissiveness of the novice to
an authority figure such as the father, an elder, or a
priest,Once the novice emerges from the liminal stage,
he has assumed new characteristics and is, upon "reaggrega
tion" into the community or group, able to act again as a
member in a socially defined position.
The transitional, undefined position that the novices
assume is examined further by Turner. He points out that
55
these personages possess certain powers, powers of the meek,
and that such figures appear in abundance especially in folk
literature. (The symbolic figures to which Turner points
include holy beggars and third sons, which are important in
Russian literature.) These characters appear as simpletons
who through their actions strip off the pretensions of
holders of high rank and reduce them to the level of common
15
humanity. As we shall shortly see, this certainly seems
to be what the third sons in our sets of tales accomplish.
Besides reflecting rituals of initiation and rebirth,
these tales also reveal certain constant instinctual
impulses of the mind that are triggered and brought to
surface during the ritual, are allowed full expression, and
are subsequently neutralized as the novice assumes a new
role within the community. The teller of the tale, we
propose, has a function similar to that of the shaman (see
Chapter II) in that he too offers a narrative to the novice
By listening, the novice neutralizes his infantile feelings
of aggression and fear, and, through the symbolic process
of the tale narrative, passes from the adolescent stage to
one of adult sexuality. Since the transition from ado
lescence to adulthood is an anxiety-causing period, the
tale narrative offers a way for the novice to understand
his own feelings toward his parents, siblings and the
future bride. It also helps him to deal with these feeling^
56
and recycle them. The tale thus represents a different
outlet for the anti-social tendencies that surface during
the period of social transition.
Before we reconstruct the psychological component of
the symbolic process in these tales, we must comment upon
the relationship between myths (tales) and dreams.
In his study of symbolism in dreams, Sigmund Freud
makes the connection between myths and dreams precisely
via symbolic imagery. He postulates that symbolism is not
peculiar to dreams but is found in popular myths and
legends.(The Oedipus complex, of course, takes its
name from a Greek legend.) A longer study of the relation
ship between folklore and psychoanalysis, a long unpub
lished manuscript written by Freud in 1911 in collaboration
with a mythologist and a literary man. Professor Ernst
Gppenheim, appeared in 1958. It is entitled Dreams in
Folklore. In the conclusion of this work, Freud writes
that "folklore interprets dream symbols in the same way as
psychoanalysis." Freud also points out that folklore does
not represent the common man's entertainment to satisfy
his primitive desires, but that it conceals "mental
reactions to impressions of life which are to be taken
17
seriously."
Men who followed Freud in applying psychoanalysis to
the interpretation of folklore include such writers as
57
Karl Abraham, Carl G. Jung and Ernest Jones. Each of these
men has his own view of the relationship that he believes
exists between folklore and psychoanalysis. For Abraham
myth represents a fragment of the total mental state of a
18
people, while the dream represents the individual myth.
A heretic of the Freudian school, Jung did not apply the
elements of individual psychology to myths but sought to
find universal mythological formulae in the contents of the
dream. He developed the idea of the collective uncon
scious, which represents the unconscious as a repository
19
of ancestral imagery and archetypes. Jones's study of
folklore, once again, is rigidly Freudian. He is in large
part responsible for introducing psychoanalysis in the
early part of this century to England, Canada and the Unitec^
States. Dr. Jones attributed the origin of devils, vam-
20
pires and medieval superstitions to nightmares.
If, then, an association does exist between myths and
dreams, and if we apply the methods of dream analysis to
attenuated myths (tales), we can hope to decipher the
psychic reactions and social organization which are mani
fested in these tales. Looking back now at the psycho
logical mechanisms of the novice's preparation for adult
hood, we see that the state of separation from the family,
which is related in the second part of our tale narrative,
is comparable in modern psychological theory to the child’s
58
emergence from the latency period into adolescent sexual
maturity. Described by Freud as a diphasic process, this
is the period during which the individual's childhood
object-choice is repressed and a new sexual object-choice
21
emerges. In our tales, the initiate leaves his family
environment and returns, having acquired sexual maturity
and a bride. His departure from the family, then, and his
eventual mastery of the world outside his community do in
fact constitute a physiological and a psychological
maturity. The diphasic process that takes the individual
from the latency period into sexual maturity revives intra
psychic processes which are rich in incestuous phantasies
and the fear of castration--anxieties associated with the
law prohibiting incest. During this diphasic process,
then, the Oedipal situation is revived and successfully
resolved as the individual assumes sexual maturity through
the symbolic process of the ritual of initiation.
We said earlier that the liminal stage encompasses
several stages of ontogenetic development. These include
symbiosis/separation-individuation, the Oedipal complex
and sexual reawakening. During the liminal stage, the
novice incorporates psychologically moments of these stages
and finds himself in a symbiotic union with his mother.
The state of the union with the mother is marked by a
lack of desire and fear, and is the state most desired by
59
man. The separation-individuation stage, that is, the
stage of the separation from the mother and the realiza
tion of a separate self, gives rise to the first loss of
the love object (the mother) and the origin of desire for
the lost object. The young man's strivings for the mother
are thwarted by the father who, during the Oedipal stage,
compounds the situation for the child by threatening
castration and demanding that the son relinquish his love
for the mother. The father represents the law prohibiting
incest. This law, upheld by the symbolic father from
Freud's Totem and Taboo, is related to the murder of the
primal father who interferes with the child's sexual
desires for the mother. Hatred for the father leads to
this murder and the son's subsequent guilt, admiration of
22
and identification with, the dead father. According to
Freud, then, the symbolic representation of the father
threatens castration, causing the child to repress his
primal desires for the mother and exchange his mother for
some other sexual object. The law prohibiting incest
therefore plays a major role in the child's successful
ascendency to sexual maturity.
In addition to being taxed psychologically to meet
the social demands of acquiring a bride and incorporating
himself into the accepted social norm, the novice in our
tales is faced with sibling rivalry and the need to prove
60
himself sexually before the family and the community.
The above three stages of ontogenetic development are
intensified during the liminal stage and are projected in
the narrative of our tales. The figure of the symbolic
father appears in our tales in the form of the ancient
pagan gods or totem animals, in the figure of a tsar, a
whirlwind, a raven or Koscej. And during the course of
the tale, the meek figure of the third and youngest son in
the family, a simpleton, successfully decapitates the
symbolic father and assumes for himself this powerful role.
Thus the intensification of conflicts, which overburden
the initiate during the liminal stage, are given vent
through their full expression in the tale. They are
assigned to subjects and objects, and are given roles much
as the shaman gives roles to patient's fears and pains.
By giving these feelings expression in the tale narrative,
these socially unacceptable strivings and feelings are
neutralized and forgotten. We see that the intensification
of these socially undesirable feelings during one liminal
stage desensitizes the initiate until another transitional
stage in a person's life when a "booster" of this kind will
again take place.
Just as we have reconstructed the psychological con
text of the initiate in a ritual process, we must now con
sider the third and final component in our analysis, the
------------------ ------------— — --------- 6TT
socio-cultural context of these tales. Of special interest
is the religious outlook of the Medieval Slavs, as well as
their social (familial) organization, as it pertains to our
better understanding of the novice's preparation for a
change in his social status.
Earlier in this study we pointed out that the tale
narrative is not bound by traditional myths and that there
are without a doubt tales that represent a rich source of
mythological material. Objects of worship, for example,
have been transferred into characters in some tales. We
know that ancient Slavs worshiped the dead, and that the
cult of ancestors played an important part in their reli
gious system. The Slavs paid reverence to the forces of
nature and the spirits of the dead. They worshiped not
only in temples but out in the woods under a tree, usually
23
an oak tree, and near running water. The most important
gods in their pantheon were Svarog and Perun, the god of
Sun and the god of Fire. Svarog was the source of life,
and Perun was the god of lightning and justice.Perun,
the thunder god, was associated with spring rains and the
health giving myth of the Water of Life. Old Slavs buried
their dead near a body of water thinking the water to be a
precious liquid brought by the thunder god. The myth of
the water of life among the Slavs survived over a long
period of time— hence reference in many Russian tales to the
62
healing or life-giving water which is harbored by a raven,
^ V
a dragon, Koscej or Baba Jaga. Two less important mytho
logical figures, also associated with the cult of water,
2 5
are Vodanoj, an old man, and Rusalka, a water nymph.
The worship of Perun reached its apex in the ninth and
tenth centuries, just before the Christianization of the
Slavs. Perun statues were made out of oak and oak trees
were thought to be sacred. An additional point to be made
here regarding the oak tree is that the creation myth among
the Slavs relates a story of how the god of the heavens,
Svarog, and his wife, Vida (equivalent to Uranos and Gala
in Greek mythology) came down to observe their creation,
the earth. Vida fell asleep and had a dream about people
inhabiting the earth. She asked Svarog about it and he had
the same thought, so he turned the first two trees nearby—
an oak and a linden tree— into a man and woman, respec
tively.^^ These two were then to procreate. Thus, in the
eyes of the Slavs, the trees represent their ancestors.
Ralston pointed out that sacrifices among the Slavs
were made under an oak tree near running water and were
done by elders. Elders were also instrumental during the
27
rituals, especially those dealing with initiation.
When Vladimir of Russia accepted Christianity in the
tenth century, it is known that he threw a wooden statue
of Perun into a river to demonstrate the death of the old
63
god and the acceptance of the new one. However, for the
pagan Russian population, the acceptance of the new reli
gion was slow in coming. For a long time the ancient
Russians practiced what is today called a "dual religion"
characterized by a mixture of old and new religious beliefs,
and in which the characteristics of ancient gods have been
directly attributed to the newly accepted Christian God and
2 8
saints. An example of this is the Christian holiday of
Easter which coincides with the pagan ritual of rebirth
and regeneration. It is possible that the very rituals
described in these tales took place during that time of
the year. The worship of the dual religion among Russian
Slavs was present for a long time, and remnants remain still,
today.
The organization of the pagan Slavs' pantheon was
based on strict hierarchical order, so that from the most
important gods, Svarog and Perun, there existed a whole
line of lesser gods that were arranged in a descending
order of importance. The spirits of worship which had only
local influence and were closest to man were the house
spirits which were worshiped among pagan Slavs and are
important even today among peasants. The worship of the
house spirits can be linked with the worship of ancestors,
the mythical grandfather, a concept that was well developed
among the Slavs in general and among Russians in particu-
lar.29
64
We cannot continue without mentioning here the an
cient Slavic association between the mother and the earth.
Just as the mother nourishes a child, the earth as the
Earth Mother provides man with the necessary nourishment.
We see Earth Mother as a prominent female deity. The fer
tility she possesses is caused by the rain which impregnate^
her, resulting in ample production of crops. The Earth
Mother is thus the source of nourishment, power and might.
A good example of the physical power that is to be obtained
from earth is reflected in old Russian byliny, in which a
hero who is crushed to the ground suddenly absorbs the
power of the Earth Mother and becomes twice, thrice, as
strong as before. This is especially true of the bogatyr'
Mikula, a plowman, who has a special relationship with the
Earth Mother.It is not surprising, then, that the
Earth Mother represents the most important female deity
and is the primary source of physiological,psychological
and spiritual nourishment.
Another interesting reference to the Earth Mother
can be detected in a custom practiced by the agricultural
Chuvashes. When a particular field has lost its fertility,
these people carry out a ceremony, giving the Earth Mother
a suitor. A village bachelor is chosen for the role and
is taken to seek his bride in the silence of the night.
There he is married to the Earth Mother and in the act of
55
31
urination during the ceremony accomplishes fertilization.
In addition to the objects of worship in the tales,
the fears and desires of the community expressed in their
beliefs have filtered into the tales in a personified form.
Thus, one can find in the tales an abundance of benevolent
and malevolent characters. We can therefore say that
mythological remnants which represent primitive man's
psychic mechanisms have been preserved in folklore. In
the case of Russian folklore, mythological structures have
been poorly preserved. The oldest of the oral traditions
are the byliny, which have now disappeared. This folk
poetry dealt with historical figures and events, and it is
precisely the historical element that distinguishes them
32
from tales. Tales differ from byliny in their psy
chological element but are following the same course as
the byliny in that the oral tales have now been transcribed
into the written form and are disappearing. In the 1920's,
following the Russian Revolution, the first report of the
disappearance of this folk genre occurred, and in the
1930's intensive collection and study of the tales was
launched. These efforts were interrupted by the war, but
the study of the disappearance of this genre, or trans
formation of this genre, persists in the Soviet Union
^ . 33
today.
66
Russian folk tales flourished in the medieval period.
It is no surprise then that certain social and cultural
medieval characteristics will be found in the most well-
preserved tales; the social structure of most folk tales,
for example, is basically that of the Medieval Age. In
them we find tsars, tsars, tsarevnas, bogatyri, merchants,
artisans and soldiers.But the Medieval Age in Russia
does not correspond to the Medieval Age of Western Europe.
The Middle Ages began in Europe in the fifth century and
in Russia they began as late as the ninth century. And
only about 988 A.D., after the Christianization of Russia
35
by Vladimir, eastern Slavic culture began to emerge.
In Europe the medieval agrarian revolution introduced
a system in which a supreme Seigneur (King) appointed
feudal lords as his vassals and bestowed upon them land.
The land was not given for possession, but was handed over
for management only. In addition to maintaining sole pos
session of the land, a Seigneur flaunted his superiority
by enforcing the right of selecting the bride for each
of his vassals. The resulting system of subordination of
both the vassal and his bride reached an extreme in the
Seigneur's ultimate right to sleep with the bride of any
one of his subjects. This law was known in Europe as
ius primae noctis or droit du seigneur, but it was never
established as part of the Russian seigniorial law.^^
67
Dues were often paid by the vassal to avoid the enforcement:
of this custom.
In Russia the attitude of the landowner as the tyrant
has its roots in medieval social structure where the power
was vested in the local leader.or the father in the family.
The father's privileged position and the strict subordina
tion of the family members, however, was established from
37
the beginning of Russian history. Thus in medieval
Russia, as in many primitive societies, ius primae noctis
was a prevailing custom performed by the head of the tribe.
As an act of initiation it was seen more as a duty than a
right. Over the years the custom has been handed down
from the head of a tribe, to a priest, to the head of
family, the father. The practice of this custom was noted
among pagan Slavs and is reflected in the tales here under
consideration.
The religious system among pagan Slavs was organized
on hierarchical grounds, as was the order of the various
Slavic clans and members within a tribe. In the same
manner the family unit, once it had become more important
than the clan or the tribe, was based again on paternal
authority, subordination of all to the father and strict
obedience of the younger to the older members within the
family unit. Such an authoritative position carried great
power: the father acted as a priest or judge in the family.
68
Using this power, the father, once his sons married, could
exercise ius primae noctis as the father-in-law's right to
sleep with his daughter-in-law whenever he wished and
39
especially when the son was away. In ancient Rus'
ius primae noctis was invoked even when the son was working
long hours in the fields, and later in Russia this practice
was noticed when the sons were away from home due to lengthy
conscriptions.
The family unit operated on the principle of sen
iority, with the father at the head and the oldest son in
domination of his younger siblings. There was little
emotion shown to the children by their father; that role
was strictly reserved for the mother. Such an environment
provided a good base for the antagonistic attitudes against
the father to develop fully. We can see that the strong
desire for the father's death and the consequent feeling
of guilt were rooted in the old Russian family structure
and can be detected in the tale narratives preserved.
The familial atmosphere led to the fear of the
father and respect for the mother. Priority of male
members in the family was a part of the whole principle of
seniority, and was evident in the patriarchal weddings and
the obligations of the oldest son to be the one who
marries first. (The male priority is also evident among
old Slavic gods, with most important gods being males
69
and the minor gods being female.)
In addition to ius primae hoctis, pre-Christian Slavs
abducted their brides and are known to have practiced
fraternal polyandry, or group marriage. Any male member of
the family had access to the bride when she was brought
into the family. In a study of the Gilyak people who
inhabited the area of lower Amur river, Dr. Leo Y.Sternberg
of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology indicates
that the Gilyak women had several husbands. The rules of
group marriage are such that all tribal brothers have
4 0
marital rights over all the wives.
In a number of our tales we note that the hero in
search of a bride is often accompanied by a father-sub-
stitute who acts as an intermediary in establishing a
liason between the hero and his bride. This figure is
needed to counter the anxiety precipitated at the onset
of initiation into marriage. Let us explore for a moment
the nature of this anxiety. It is really a two-fold
apprehension: first, the child in the Oedipal stage fears
being unable to fulfill the mother's desires, and, second,
he fears being castrated by the father. These fears now
become associated with the defloration of the bride, which
is itself associated, as is castration, with the loss of
blood. To rechannel these fears, the actual defloration
is performed by the son's surrogate, the father, or
70
father-substitute as represented in our myths by an uncle.
These unconscious fears were projected into the social
myths. In primitive societies blood, and especially
virginal blood, was characterized as a toxin from which the
groom was to be protected.The explanation was a belief
that a virgin preserved her virginity for God, to whom she
42
bestowed the right of the first sexual act. Later,
priests, as reincarnations of the deity, assumed this
symbolic role which subsequently filtered down to the
father or the father-substitute. The danger that was
attached to defloration did not threaten a priest, a
father-in-law or a stranger, however.On the personal
level, then,the surrogage father alleviated the son's
castration anxiety and at the same time, on the social
level, functioned as an agent of defloration.
As is represented in our tales, by asserting his
right to first own the bride for himself, the father-in-law
or the father-substitute brings the son into the relation
ship with the bride. The son appears as the subordiante
figure (as he should be in a relation to the father, the
priest, the tsar) with an unconscious fear of inadequacy
in relation to the bride. The father or surrogate father
figure, however, asserts his supremacy which is demonstrat
ed in his first owning the bride as he owns the mother in
relation to the son. At the same time, the surrogate
71
initiates the groom and "gives him permission to perform
an act tinged with the infantile incestuous motive by first
44
himself having intercourse with the virgin bride." This
is so because it is only after the bride belongs to another
(the father) that she can belong to her husband (the son).
In this relation, the husband is always the second best
for the bride, much as the bride for the son is not the
original object of desire but the second or the trans
formational form of the inaccessible original mother.
The three components we have reconstructed are united
through the symbolic process that operates in the ritual
language, the symbolic acts of the tale narrative and the
symbolic working out of psychological conflicts. It is
through the tale narrative that the religious, social and
psychological conflicts are brought together, are intensi
fied and then resolved. It is possible that the chanting
and story-telling that precede and continue throughout
the ritual ceremony allow the novice to experience the
search for his object of desire on a psychological level.
It is in the chanting of the songs and the performing of
certain actions that the novice is bound to the world of
his community. The same binding that is obtained through
ritual is also obtained through language, for what is
ritual after all than a form of language? Ritual and
language are systems of communication, and what is of
------------------------
72
interest is that members of a community are born into these
systems which are then absorbed unconsciously by the
individual members. Thus, in listening to the tales being
told, the listener reinforces the ties that bind him to
his community. We are very close here to equating the
stories of a Russian teller with the chanting of the shanan
The function of the shaman, as pointed out by Lévi-Strauss,
is to cure the patient by taking the patient's sickness
upon himself. He does this by orally referring to col
lective myths and, in a symbolic fashion, driving the evil
out of a sick organ.The story teller in a similar
fashion symbolically takes the listening novice through
the ritual of initiation/circumcision. It is possible
that the shaman is the earlier representation of the
story-teller, a role which has remained unchanged in the
remote areas of the northern part of Russia.
And how does the tale teller accomplish this task?
The tale teller himself is probably responsible for adding
or eliminating certain material in his retelling of the
myth. The patient in psychoanalysis may not be satisfied
with the distortion of the hidden thoughts by the pro
cesses of condensation, displacement and symbolization,
and thus he proceeds, as he tells his dream, to fill in
the gaps, to mould the dream and to add material in order
to create an intelligible whole. The teller's fantasies.
73
desires and wishes may also filter into the manifest tale
in a disguised form as he retells the myth. Thus, the
words added or deleted by a teller may represent the
function of the teller's ego as it attempts to produce a
more "logical" representation of the events of the tale.
The words usually omitted or added represent those impor
tant points in the dream thoughts which the ego cannot
confront or deal with directly, and, therefore, will not
allow to appear in the manifest tale (dream) without
additional modification. The mechanism of the secondary
process is thus further responsible for the variant
elements which appear in our three sets of tales. As a
result of the symbolic process the tale narrative functions
to resolve personal hidden conflicts of the individual
story teller, the ritual performer, and the individual
listener (reader).
74
Notes
^Joseph Cambell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
(Princeton, N.J.; Princeton University Press, 1968), p383.
^Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the COoked (New
York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 4.
3 f . ^
Edmund Leach, Claude Levi-Strauss (Harmondsworth,
England: Penguin Books, 1976), pp. 59-60.
4
Maria-Gabriele Wosien, The Russian Folk-Tale: Some
Structural and Thematic Aspects (München : Verlag Otto
Sagner, 1969), p. 44.
Wosien, The Russian Folk-Tale, p. 49.
^The text appeared in 1908 in French under the title
Les Rites de passage.
^Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans.
Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1960, p. 11.
o
Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, p. 65.
^Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds : Puberty Rites and
the Envious Male (New York: Collier Books, 1962), pp.
133-34.
^^Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, p. 21.
^^Victor Turner, The Ritual Process : Structure and
Anti-Structure (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1977), p. 95.
1 2
Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds, p. 113.
^^Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds, pp. 115-117.
Victor Turner, The Ritual Procèss, pp. 95 and 103.
75
15
Victor Turner, The Ritual Process, p. 110
^^Sigmund Freud, The interpretation of Dreams, trans.
and ed. James Strachey (New York: Avon, 1965), p. 386.
17
Sigmund Freud and D. E. Oppenheim, Dreams in Folk-
Lore (New York: International Universities Press, Inc.,
1958), p. 65.
18
Karl Abraham, Dreams and Myths (New York: Journal
of Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co., 1913), p. 36
^^Carl G. Jung, Freud and Psychoanalysis (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1961), p. 330.
20
Ernest Jones, M.D. Psycho-Myth, Psycho-History:
Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis (New York: Hillstone,
1974, Vol II, 110-113.
21
Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York:
Basic Books, Inc., 1962), p. 66.
22
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (New York: W. W.
Norton and Co., 1950), pp. 14 0-14 6.
R. S. Ralston, The Songs of Russian People
(London: Ellis and Green, 1872), p. 83.
24
Franjo Ledic, Mitologija Slavena (Zagreb: Ledic,
1969), I. 25-46, 47-70.
^^Ledic, Mitologija Slavena, I. 85-104.
^^Ledic, Mitologija Slavena, I, 117-126.
2 7
Ralston, The Songs of Russian People, p. 83.
2 8
Ralston, The Songs of Russian People, p. 94.
^^Elaine Elnett, Historic Origin and Social Develop
ment of Family Life in Russia (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1926), pp. 3-4.
76
^^See Aleksander Pronin's Byliny (Frankfurt: Possev-
Verlag, 1971) in English.
31
Canon John Arnott Mac Culloch, ed.. The Mythology
of All Races (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc.,
1964), IV, 461.
^^Pronin, Byliny, p. 9.
33 ' *
See E V. Pomerantseva, 0 russkom fol'klore (Moskva:
"Nauka," 1977), pp. 55-77.
^^Wosien, The Russian Folk-Tale, p. 59.
35
For development of early Russian state see
"Introduction" in Serge A. Zenkovsky's Medieval Russia's
Epics, Chronicles, and Tales (New York: E.P. Dutton and
Co., 1974), pp. 1-40.
Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 437.
3 7
Evgenia Lineva, A Russian Peasant Wedding, p. 14.
Human Relations Area File #RF-1, 7. Published as Russian
folk-songs as Sung by the People . . . and . . . Peasant
Wedding Ceremonies Customary in Northern and Central
Russia (Chicago; Clayton F. Summy, 1893).
3 8
For an eyewitness account of life in the early part
of the tenth century among Norsemen who dwelled as far as
the shores of the Volga, see the manuscript of Ibn Fadlan
relating his experiences in Michael Crichton's Eaters of
the Dead (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976).
39
Elaine Elnett, Historic Origin, p. 133. In addition
see the section on matrimonial customs in Maxime
Kovalevsky's text Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of
Russia (London:' David Nutt, 1891), pp. 1-31/ ~
40
Robert Briffault. The Mothers (New York; Johnson
Reprint Corp., 1969), II 630.
41
Robert Briffault. The Mothers, III, 317.
77
^^Sybille L, Yates, "An Investigation of the Psy
chological Factors in Virginity and Ritual Defloration,"
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 11 (1930),
172, 175.
^^Briffault, The Mothers, III, 318.
44
Yates, "An Investigation," p. 177.
^^See Sigmund Freud's "Taboo of Virginity" in The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychologica1 Works of
Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey (London:
The Hogarth Press, 1966) , XI, 193-208.
^^See Chapter II of this study in which we refer to
Lévi-Strauss’s article "The Effectiveness of Symbols."
78
CHAPTER IV
The First Set of Tales Entitled "The Three Kingdoms ;
the Copper, the Silver and the Golden."
Up to now we have been dealing with the historical and
theoretical aspects of this study. We shall now embark
upon the practical application of our theoretical view to
Russian folk narrative. The tales that have been selected
for this study come from Aleksandr N. Afanas'ev's col
lection of tales, which were collected in the mid-nine
teenth century and which appeared in three volumes in the
last Soviet edition of 1957.^ The choice of tales was
based upon the availability of one or more variants of the
same tale. In the above-mentioned collection, the variants
appear in groups and are numbered consecutively. The three
sets chosen include: first set, tales numbered 128 to 130;
second set, tales numbered 156 to 158; third set, tales
numbered 198 to 200. Following is a synopsis of the first
set, tales numbered 128 to 130 entitled "The Three
2
Kingdoms: the Copper, the Silver and the Golden."
In the shortest version of this set, tale 128,
elderly parents send their sons off to find themselves a
bride. All three are aided in their search by a dragon.
79
but only the youngest son, Ivasko, is able to turn over a
heavy stone that is covering a hole. Following the
dragon's instructions, Ivasko descends into the hole and
comes upon a Copper and a Silver kingdom; in each he woos
a maiden and is refused. In the third, the Golden king
dom, the golden maiden accepts his proposal and along with
the other two maidens they prepare to ascend above ground.
Ivasko's elder brothers help to pull the girls from the
hole, but they refuse to lift Ivasko.
Back in the hole, Ivasko comes across an old man on a
stump who sends him to an old and extremely long man who
V
is able to tell Ivasko how to return home. He sends
Ivasko to Baba Jaga who has a bird that can fly Ivasko
home. Ivasko is instructed to feed the eagle in flight
with pieces of beef. Before the flight is over, however,
Ivasko runs out of beef and the eagle eats from Ivasko's
withers. Upon arrival, the eagle spits the flesh out and
Ivasko's withers heal. Ivasko is then ready to marry his
golden maiden, while the elder two brothers marry the
other two maidens.
In the other two versions, tales 129 and 130, the
sons search not for a wife, but for their lost mother. In
both of these tales," an evil spirit Vixr ' , the Whirlwind,
in tale 129 and Voron, the Raven, in tale 130 abduct the
mother. Again, only the youngest brother, Ivan, succeeds
80
in finding her. The helper in tale 129 is an uncle who
gives Ivan a ball to follow to a cave and tells him to put
on claws to climb a mountain; in tale 130 it is a maiden
who tells Ivan to follow a bird to an underground cave.
The youngest son descends into the cave. There he enters
the Copper and the Silver kingdoms, he is given gifts by
the maidens there and is told to go further toward the
Golden kingdom. In both versions, the youngest son falls
in love with the golden maiden. In tale 129, the golden
maiden sends him on to the Diamond kingdom where his
mother dwells. Once Ivan reaches his mother she tells him
to drink of the water of strength and to hide under her
robe, and she instructs him that when Vixr' returns he
should grab the spirit's club and then cut his head off
in one stroke with a sword.
In version 130, it is the golden maiden who helps
Ivan, instructing him to drink aged wine and the strength-
giving water in order to overcome the Voron. Once Ivan
reaches the kingdom where his mother dwells (this time,
the Pearl kingdom), he attacks the Voron and demands his
feather staff. The Voron submits to Ivan's demands and
relinquishes the feather staff, whereupon he turns into an
ordinary raven and disappears.
In both versions, having rescued the mother and the
three maidens, Ivan returns to the opening of the cave.
81
Again, the brothers aid in lifting out the mother and the
maidens, but they abandon Ivan. Back in the cave Ivan
is helped by the Lame and the Crooked (tale 129) and
returns to his kingdom. He then informs his father, Tsar
Bel, of his own rescue of the mother and the maidens and
of his brothers' deceit; Ivan then asks his father to
forgive the elder sons. After this, Ivan marries his
golden maiden and the elder brothers each take one of the
other two maidens.
There is a reversal in the ending of tale 130. Ivan
remains six months back in the cave. He then receives
help from the feather staff and returns home. In the
meantime, the father has ordered that the mother be
killed because of her impure connections with evil spirits,
while the other two brothers marry the copper and silver
maidens. The father. Tsar Gorox, himself has intentions
toward the golden maiden, Ivan's betrothed. She, however,
forestalls the marriage and makes several demands, one
of which is to have Ivan boiled in milk. The old father
attempts to fulfill her wish, but when Ivan is dropped in
milk, he turns into a breathtakingly handsome lad. The
maiden then refuses to marry the old man. Hoping that
he too would turn into a handsome creature, the old
father jumps into the milk barrel and dies.
Setting aside for the moment the structural
82
differences among the variants, let us stress the simi
larities. There appears in this and other sets of tales
an interesting arrangement of paradigmatic groupings
which, as we mentioned in our earlier discussions, are
not readily apparent. If we employ the technique of
myth analysis outlined by Lévi-Strauss in his "The
Structural Study of Myth," (see Chapter II), the
hidden paradigmatic groupings reveal basic oppositions
and contradictions that underlie the myth (tale) nar
rative. LeVi-Strauss's type of four-column structure
can be detected not only in individual tales or in each
set of tales, but can appear if we consider all nine
tales (or the three sets) as mere variants of a basic
myth or tale.
There are two oppositions underlying the tale(s):
the opposition between the loss (lack) of an object of
desire and its recuperation and that between the inabil
ity and the ability to perform an act of strength. Here
is how the four-column structure would look if we
isolated bundles of relations in Levi-Straussian terms
in tale 128, and if we were to arrange these relations
into four columns based on binary opposition.
The first column contains units that deal with the
loss of a desired object; the second column is the
opposite of column I, i.e., recuperation of the lost
83
( 0 x: 0 ) ( C T 3 en en
w x :
C U - l
w
H C L ,
en c
( 0 >1 ÎT> en (0
U-IiHCQ HU-ICU W H Hx:
-p -p
c -p
w Q j
PI «
H w
P 3 eu
c -H
o -C
H -p IP
( 0 o k M
O O i
2 W
O W
< C k
« O
M - l
W w
r ) p e
P 3 H
o w
w p
> I —I
84
object. The binary opposites of the next two colums
involve inability to perform an act of strength and ability
to do so. These binary opposites themselves comprise the
underlying thematic contrast of these tales.
Now, these underlying oppositions echo a state of
having and not having, and a state of acting (being strong)
and not acting (not being strong). These states in turn
reveal two axes: the axis of castration and the axis of
strength. We can see this if we correlate the axis of
castration with the state of having and not having, and the
axis of strength with the inability to perform and ability
to do so. These axes are, in fact, also those about which
revolve the principles of psychological development.
Just as in Lévi-Strauss's four-column paradigmatic
groupings of the Oedipus myth, in this four-column analysis
there are also constituent units which are related. One
can look at the first column with units that reveal a loss
(lack) and the third column that relates to inability to
perform. These two columns, interestingly enough, cor
respond to our understanding first of the hero's physical
separation from the mother and second of his inability to
satisfy her demands. This is due in part to the social
restrictions (prohibition of incest) and to his own psy
chological fear of being unable to meet mother's demands.
The other two columns reveal that in column four the hero
85
first receives help and guidance from some masculine or
feminine figure and, having received it, he acquires the
necessary strength and is able to marry (column two). The
tale ends when he actually unites with his object of desire
which, by this time, is represented by the primal object
substitute, the maiden.
We have stated earlier that the ritual of initiation,
whether accompanied by circumcision or not, underlies the
tale narrative. The period of initiation inflicts certain
demands upon the novice: he must prove his manhood and
acquire a social license for sexual activity. This of
course leads to marriage. The sexual awakening that occurs
amounts to a physiological ability to perform the sexual
act followed by a temporary inability to do so. At the
psychological level, this correlates with the child's
earlier notions of inability to perform and meet the
demands of the mother and his desire to win her love. The
father who intervenes between the child and the mother of
course serves as the castrating agent, hence, a threat to
the child's sexuality. Basically the novice must prove
his manhood. Since he cannot prove himself before the
mother, because of the castrating effect of the father, he
must do so elsewhere, i.e., he must go outside the family
unit. Having ventured outside the family (or away from
home), the novice basically comes out from under the
86
shadow of the castrating father and is able to perform the
act of strength successfully.
That young men in primitive tribes did not engage in
sexual activity before ritual circumcision indicates that
this practice was a means of prohibiting incest, because it
posed a psychological threat of castration and forced the
male child to engage in exogamous marriage.^ In our dis
cussion of the liminal stage, we mentioned that during the
ritual a novice separates from the family and breaks his
childhood ties with his mother. This break can be tied
to the young man's loss of his mother in the beginning
of our tales. It is a loss that is experienced during the
actual removal of the novices from the rest of the family,
and it is also a psychological loss in that this separa
tion triggers anxiety associated with archaic infantile
loss/separation from the mother. In the two tales of this
set, the sons are in search of the mother. However,
although the quest is for the lost mother, this quest ends
only when the son finds a bride and then assumes himself
the place of the father. We can say that the initial
search for the mother is actually a quest for usurpation
of the position of the father, who in tale 129 is repre
sented by the Whirlwind. As we follow Ivan in his explora
tion of the cave, he descends deeper and deeper into the
unconscious. From the Copper kingdom to the Silver and
87
then the Golden kingdom, he finally reaches the fourth,
the Diamond kingdom, domain of that most forbidden and
attractive jewel, the incestuous desire to unite with the
lost mother. He reaches the forbidden domain of the
Oedipal stage, his goal being to reclaim the mother and
get rid of the father. This is precisely what Ivan accom
plishes. The club which he seizes from the Whirlwind, a
phallic symbol, is the weapon of usurpation. When Ivan
has accomplished this, the mother undergoes transformation
so that Ivan's desire is transferred to the mother sub
stitute, the golden maiden.
In addition, in this tale it is the mother who aids
the son in his direct confrontation with the symbolic
father. She instructs the son to drink the water of
strength normally consumed by the Whirlwind, hide under
her robe and then ambush the Whirlwind. We learn that,
upon his return, the Whirlwind turns into a young man
before he bends down to kiss Ivan's mother. And in Ivan's
attack upon the Whirlwind, we see that the son's strength
is used in direct confrontation with the father. However,
since the Whirlwind is transformed into a young man, it is
actually the son who here unites with the mother, i.e., he
"kisses her." Ultimately, the son proves to be of the
same stature as the father. Only then can Ivan assume the
father's role and marry the maiden who lived in a kingdom
88
closest to his mother's.
As we have pointed out, the underlying structural
principle in each of our tales is the same. However, their
manifest narrative realizes this underlying structure with
an array of constant and variant elements. These elements
make the tales appear different, though in essence they
are the same. The three variants of the first set of
tales are basically different ways of relating the experi
ence of initiation. Now let us look closer at the constant
and variant elements of these tales.
In each tale the hero leaves his own kingdom in search
of the object of desire. On his way he is aided in this
search by benevolent figures and hindered by the malevo
lent ones. He finds the object of his desire and with
additional help overcomes the malevolent figure and returns
home to marry. As a result of this venture, he acquires
a new status and assumes new responsibilities. The con
stants in our tales include the parent (father) who sends
the sons in search of the object of value (mother, maiden).
The hero is always represented by the youngest son in the
family who is never sent but himself wants to go and who,
by the end of the tale, achieves recognition and admira
tion by the parent and his siblings.
To complete his venture successfully, the son must
overcome the villain (Vixr' in tale 12 9, Voron in tale
89
This threatening symbolic father figure must be overcome
so that the son himself can assume the position of the
father and marry one of the maidens rescued in his search.
In overcoming the symbolic figure, the hero in effect
assumes that very role himself, as he rescues the mother
and the three maidens. The hero spends an additional
period acquiring strength (or sexual maturity), and only
after that period does he return to his kingdom to marry
one of the maidens. In tale number 12 8, the threatening
father figure is absent, but in the person of Baba Jaga
there is a figure who possesses the phallus and who can
help the hero return home; she possesses the eagle that
will fly Ivan home.
The women in these tales, the mother. Baba Jaga and
the maiden, have a single basic function: to assist the
hero in removing the castrating agent, the father. The
mother figure helps the son in tale 129 and the golden
maiden instructs the hero in how to overcome the symbolic
father figure, the Raven, in tale 130. In tale 128,
Baba Jaga helps Ivan return home on her eagle. The assist
ance given by these women is of a sexual nature and so,
once helped by the mother, the maiden and Baba Jaga in his
acquisition of the functional phallus (the club and the
feather staff), the hero is able to choose a bride of his
own. This is the point when the son usurps the role of
90
the father (overcomes the symbolic Raven and the Whirlwind),
gives up the mother and takes his bride.
In tale 12 8, the hero loses flesh to the eagle. This
loss of flesh symbolizes circumcision, the method by which
primitive man neutralized his fear of sexual union; the
flesh removed from the body is seen as an offering and
appeasement to a deity.^ Circumcision is also seen as
another form of castration which again reinforces the
demands upon the son to renounce the mother and seek another
sexual object.^
As the novice experiences the threat of castration
during the circumcision procedure, he identifies with the
tribe's ancestors. Their chief ancestor is usually their
totem, a totem that is actually a primitive symbol of the
father.^ By sacrificing a part of himself to it, Ivan
achieves a union with the ancestor(s) and, as he identifies
with the eagle, he acquires its power of strength. In the
flight home, then, Ivan exchanges his small penis for a new
one. Through the ritual or rebirth, Ivan returns home
ready to join the mature ranks of his community.
For another interpretation of this loss of flesh, we
can turn to the work of Propp. His ethnographic material
relates that during the ritual of initiation all initiates
undergo symbolic death. This temporary death is character
ized by breaking up or cutting of the novices into pieces—
91
an act symbolizing the death of their previous status. The
novices die as they are symbolically devoured by an animal
that normally represents the ancestors of the particular
tribe. These animals dwell in caves, huts or isolated
areas in the forest. At the close of the rite, the novices
are spat out by the animal, i.e., they emerge from a cave
or a hut reborn with a new social status. Ivan's feeding
the eagle with his own flesh and then the eagle's spitting
that flesh out in the tale may certainly represent remnants
7
of that ritual practice.
It is not difficult to see circumcision at the center
of this ritual of initiation, because circumcision, as
practiced by primitive people, meant that those undergoing
8
the procedure were taking an oath to the tribe.
In tale 129, the Whirlwind is the totem, representing
the symbolic father. But in this tale he is castrated;
Ivan cuts the Whirlwind's head off with the sword. Here
the son acts out the primordial retaliation against the
father. In an interesting variation in tale 129, the
symbolic father is killed and the hero's real father is
spared, while in tale 130, the Raven (totem) is not
killed— he is merely reduced in status— and the real
father boils himself to death. What is important in these
tales is the psychological makeup behind the hero's deeds.
He hoards aggressive tendencies toward his father and fear
92
of union with the bride (mother). As these deeds are
symbolically performed by a novice, or as the listener
hears the tales, the censorial grid suppressing forbidden
desires lifts up. And so in the symbolic expression of
the ritual narrative, the performer and the listener absorb
the social norms (i.e., the acceptable and unacceptable
behavior) and, along with the teller, vicariously release
their own aggressive/passive tendencies toward their
parents, thereby neutralizing them.
Such actions as the loss of flesh and the cutting off
the Whirlwind's head are secondary, being related in a
single line in these tales. They represent, however, the
most important parts of the ritual. The reason why the
main focus is shifted (displaced) in the tale narrative
is perhaps due only to the anxiety generating nature of
these actions. As such, they comprise what we call in
dream analysis the "nodal points," the points which very
frequently undergo transformation. Let us now consider
the variant nodal points.
For our purposes, different versions of the tales
appear to be repetitions of the same story, much as when
in psychoanalysis a person reveals his dreams by repeating
the same story with differences. These differences occur
at the points where most anxiety occurs, points where the
ego bars the primitive wishes of the id to reveal them
selves .
93
The variant points in these tales serve to differenti
ate one tale from another; each version hides the invariant
form under the veil of a variant. While the purpose of
each tale is to relate the full meaning of the ritual, the
full meaning becomes deferred by another version or trans
lation of that tale and then still another, ab infinitum.
We can, however, arrive at a single meaning of the tale by
seeking the psychological conflicts which are reflected in
the narrative. For example, common to all these tales is
the situation in which the novice finds himself during the
course of initiation. The rite of passage opens the door
for the novice to new social and personal demands, while
at the same time stimulating anxieties associated with
early familial relationships. In the initiation process,
involving symbolic death and rebirth, these revived anxie
ties merge with those associated with the ritual of circum
cision .
We may posit a dialectical relationship between the
development of (ritual) narrative and the psychological
integration of individual's suppressed and forbidden
desires toward other members of the family. The dialecti
cal relationship of which we speak here may be symbolized
by a movement which is not linear but spiral and cumula
tive. We can say that it is cumulative in that no infan
tile mental construct is ever lost or buried to the point
94
that it cannot be revived or reactivated at some later
point in the development of the individual.
The most obvious variant element is that two out of
three tales are set in a "kingdom" with a tsar and a
s
tsaritsa, while the third tale deals with an ordinary
family with an old father, mother and three sons. The
second variant element is in the object of search in these
tales. In two of the three versions, the sons seek a lost
mother and in the third they seek wives.
The next and most significant variant relates to the
helper/donor in the various tales. Maidens help the
youngest son in all the versions, while an uncle and an
old man help in two of the three versions. Baba Jaga helps
the youngest son in one version; the lame and the crooked
help him in another; twelve youths help him in the third
version. Also, as mentioned earlier, the castrating agent
— the father— appears in form of a symbolic evil spirit,
the Whirlwind and the Raven. Eventually the youngest son
rescues the mother and marries his maiden in two of the
three versions; in the third, however, the mother is killed
at the end. The father figure is killed in one version
and the Raven is dethroned, while the symbolic father— the
Whirlwind— is killed in another version.
How can we account for all these helpers/donors?
First of all, according to Propp, Jaga is the classical
------------------------------- — 95
form of the donor. Propp also warns us to be weary of the
nomenclature in the tales because Jaga can often play the
role of an old woman, an old man, a stepmother, and she can
9
even play the role of an animal. We can see, then, how
Jaga can represent in the tales either one of the parents
and can carry qualities that are both benevolent and malev
olent in nature. Baba Jaga actually appears in the tales
as a collective figure, one that, according to Freud, is
10
produced by combining the features of two or more people
and is thus a good example of the mechanism of condensation.
Now if we keep in mind Jaga's ability to change and
look back at the Levi-Straussian four-column structure, we
see that in column four, Ivan's helpers/donors include
Baba Jaga, a dragon, an old man and an eagle. All these,
then, are transformations of this classical donor. Baba
Jaga. The question is: how is it that Jaga and her trans
formational characters aid the hero in his quest? To
answer this question, we must consider first the symbolic
meaning of some of these transformational characters.
Freud's analysis of mental life includes an explan%ion
of symbols. He describes a phallic symbol as anything that
physically resembles the phallus. The most obvious phallic
symbols in the tales are pursued by the heroes— for example
the club and the feather staff. These symbolic phalli, at
the social level, are actual instruments of power (punish
ment) which identify and secure the power of tribal chiefs
96
and fathers. If we consider that there is also a symbolic
association between the phallus and animals,then the
dragon that appears early in the tales and the serpents
which guard the Copper, the Silver and the Golden kingdoms
are also phallic symbols, as are the birds. Here again
Baba Jaga demands our attention, for the dragon and the
snake can be one of her transformational forms.
Besides the dragon and the snakes, birds too seem to
be associated with Jaga and appear in a couple of the
tales in this set. We can, therefore, establish a relation
ship between birds and Jaga— a relationship underlined by
her ability to fly. In the first tale of this set, she
possesses a bird that flies our hero from his own kingdom
to another and back. Let us look a little closer at the
role of the birds in the tales.
The birds play an important part. The hero in one
tale (130) follows the flight of a bird in order to reach
the underground cave; in another tale (128) he is brought
home from the cave by a bird (eagle). It is difficult to
avoid understanding the reference to the bird in flight as
a reference to an erect phallus. As a matter of fact, our
hero confronts a bird in the tales before he reaches the
cave, that is, before he experiences and acquires the
know-how of sexual activity, then again when he enters
the cave and threatens the Raven, and again as he leaves
97
the cave region to fly Baba Jaga's eagle. The hero's
flight on the eagle may thus easily be interpreted as a
12
sexual flight of a phallus (bird, flight, erection),
and it is through his association with the bird that he
gains sexual potency.
In the beginning of tale 130, Ivan follows a bird to
the underground cave, this at the suggestions of a maiden
who is one of the thirty-three spoonbills that change into
maidens at a seashore. Her suggestion comes only after
Ivan claims her girdle and refuses to give it up until
she tells him how to find his lost mother. This is a
hero's feat similar to that of the Greek hero Heracles
who, in the ninth labor, claimed the girdle of the
Amazonian queen, Hippolyte, in order to claim her sexually.
This act is Ivan's demonstration that he is capable of
following through with his objective to reclaim the .
13
mother.
The association of birds with Jaga is further sup
ported by Propp. In his text Propp mentions that the hero
in the tales prepares for a road to the land of the
dead,^^ This view corresponds to van Gennep's analysis
of the ritual process in which he understands the novice
to undergo symbolic death, following which he is reborn
as a new member in the community of adults. If the hero,
as Propp indicates, does in fact embark on the road to the
98
land of the dead, he reaches that land by following a bird
and then descends into a cave or an underground. Jaga is
not only associated here with the birds but with the cave
and the land of the dead. Let us explore for a moment this
land of the dead and the cave.
References to sexual activity or the locus of phallic
objects is suggested by the repeated appearance in these
tales of a cave with iron doors and a hole into which our
hero descends before he finds his object of desire. This
imagery suggests the female genitals, the place of origin
15
or birth— the uterus. Very closely associated with the
cave is the mountain (cave-mountain as the life-vessel),
the inaccessible or inapproachable elevation where the
hero's mother dwells.So that he can climb the mountain,
the hero is given the proper gear (the claws) to put on his
hands and feet. The claws too fit our phallic imagery
while the ascent and descent symbolize the sexual act.^^
The hole or the underground cave with iron doors, according
18
to Propp, represents the abode of the dead. As the hero
prepares for the road, he dons good footwear necessary
for his trip. The claws refer to the footwear but also to
the claws of a bird. This phallic imagery again calls to
mind Jaga and the phallic imagery that is associated with
her own physical characteristics. Jaga is herself thin,
bony, emaciated and with a large nose. She basically
99
represents an ancestral spirit in skeletal form. But even
more important, she represents the phallic mother.
In his travels to another world, our hero actually
calls to mind the Levi-Straussian shaman who, in reiter
ating his narrative to cure the ailing patient, conquers
the evil spirits of the other world. The tale hero, just
like the shaman, ventures into the land of the dead to
claim the spirits of his ancestors and to acquire their
strength. And just as the hero-shaman is successful in
gaining the necessary strength, so is the novice in under-
19
going the ritual of initiation.
The notion that the tale-hero functions like a
shaman can be further supported by material on birds in
Siberian mythology. We know that in the process of curing
the disease of a patient, the shaman travels to the land
of his tribal ancestors. He knows the difficult path and
often encounters many problems on the way. He is, however,
protected in his travels by the thunder bird, while the
animals associated with him serve as his means of trans-
2 0
portation to the land of the dead. In Siberian mythology,
god sent down an eagle to heal men's disease. The eagle
is therefore the first and mightiest shaman for these
people and has the power to heal. One often finds in
Siberian tales animals that transform themselves into men
and back, suggesting the origin of ancestors from certain
100
21
animals. Such transformations occur in a couple of cases
in this set of tales, as was already pointed out; further
more, on several occasions the birds too have aided the
hero in his travels to and from another kingdom.
Another point of interest is that in Siberian mythology
22
the eagle gave the power to heal to a woman. The woman
thus became the first shaman, a point that brings us back
to Baba Jaga and her own therapeutic qualities which will
be further explored in our next set of tales. But for the
time being, we can see that Baga Jaga and her transforma
tional forms aid our hero in acquiring the strength and
the ability to emerge from the liminal stage in the rites
of passage and assume incorporation into the adult world.
Before we examine the remaining symbols in these
tales, we should mention here Charles Ducey's study on
initiation rites that establish a person as a shaman in
23
community. Ducey reveals that the initiatory dreams of
a future shaman involve dismemberment and restoration,
descent into the underworld for instruction and then
ascent. He also points out that among the Yakuts, a
Siberian tribe, there is a famous tale of initiation that
explains that "each shaman has a Bird-of-Prey-Mother, which
is like a great bird with an iron beak (and feathers),
hooked claws, and a long tail . . . this bird takes the
initiate's soul and carries it to the underworld. . . .
101
When the soul has reached maturity the bird carries it back
24
to earth." Among these people the female shamans out
number the males and, though there are now male shamans,
they wear feminine garb. These points all further support
our comments that establish a relationship at the narrative
level between the tale-hero (a shaman) and Baba Jaba (a
bird) and, at the psychological level, between the initiate
and the mother.
There are numerous symbolic gifts given to the hero
in these tales with the help of which he is able in his
travels to reach his destination. Through these objects
(the ring and the ball in this set), the hero is able to
keep in touch with the spirits and acquire the necessary
strength and the knowledge in the course of his travels.
Propp refers to these objects as fetishes, amulets and
25
talismans. Let us look a little closer at the object of
the ball that is given to the hero.
The ball that the hero obtains rolls toward his
mother's dwelling place. There, by the cave, appear more
symbols, straps or ropes which, by association with the
snake, are phallic symbols. These objects are used by
the hero to descend into the cave, and they represent the
connection between the hero and the mother at the umbili
cus. Via these "strings" the son descends into the cave
(uterus) and ascends from it (rebirth) later. It is
102
possible that the ancient Slavs buried their dead by lower-
2 7
ing them down into a cave using such straps or strings.
We can also explain the symbolism of the cave by
referring to early Greek religion and the thought that the
spirits of the dead and of the children all abide in the
2 8
Earth Mother. Earlier in the study we referred to the
Slavic notion of Earth Mother and her strength-giving
qualities. In the tales, the hero descends into the cave,
the abode of the Earth Mother, where he finds the strength
and the healing power of her waters.
Water commonly appears in dreams and Freud has
29
referred to such dreams in detail as "birth dreams."
In our tales the healing water, water of life, or water of
strength is extremely important as the hero attempts to
wrest the phallus— the club and the feather staff (tales
129 and 130)— away from the symbolic father. Only by
having access to the water normally consumed by the
symbolic figures of the Whirlwind and the Raven does the
hero acquire the strength necessary to accomplish this
feat. In other words, only when the son unites with the
mother in the tale narrative, i.e., he no longer fears
the father since he is himself capable of sexual activity,
does the son actually wrest the phallus from the father.
The mother figure. Baba Jaga, or a maiden in these tales
holds the key to the water of life, which is associated
103
here with fertility. And so in the cave, in the hole, or
an underground, the son is given access to the water of
strength or the water of life.
The water symbol may also refer to the original elixir
consumed by the child, i.e., the mother's milk, or, in the
rebirth of the hero (during the initiation period), to the
water of fertility or semen. In tales, as in dreams,such
human secretions as tears, urine and semen very often
replace each other.The rejuvenating effect of milk in
tale 128, for example, may be attributed to the sexual
secretions which on the one hand beautify the young man
(Ivan becomes sexually attractive) and on the other hand
destroy the old man (the old father dies from sexual
excitation), Even here, as in the ritual of initiation,
the novice undergoes a symbolic death. In this death he
is symbolically cut up, cooked, boiled, or roasted and
then, at the end of the ritual, he arises as a new person.
We see the remnants of this practice here as Ivan boils in
a barrel of milk and jumps out a new man.
Why, if there is a similar underlying meaning in
these tales, does it appear disguised in different
versions? In a psychoanalytic situation, the patient may
not be satisfied with the distortion of the hidden thoughts
which he has wrought by the means of the processes' of
condensation, displacement and symbolization. He thus
104
proceeds, as he tells his dream, to fill in the gaps, to
mould the dream and to add material in order to create an
all-intelligible whole.
105
Notes
1
Aleksandr N. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki
(Moskva: GINL, 1957), I-III ed. V. Ja. Propp. For an
English translation of most of Afanas'ev's tales see
Russian Fairy Tales trans. Norbert Guterman (New York :
Pantheon Books, 1945).
2
The three sets in the Russian collection appear as
follows : Set I, tales 128-130, Afanas'ev vol. I, pp.
228-243; Set II, tales 156-158, Afanas'ev vol. I,
pp. 358-375; Set III, tales 198-200, Afanas'ev vol II,
pp. 72-89. For at least two versions in English
translation, see Jeremiah Curtin's Myths and Folk-Tales
of the Russians, Western Slavs and Magyars (Boston! Little,
Brown and Co., 1890) . Matching the translations to the
original tales, we find the following translations to
correspond to the original tales:
Afanas'ev's Set I - tale 129, see Curtin's text pp. 1-19.
Afanas'ev's Set I - tale 130, see Curtin's text pp. 97-105.
Afanas'ev's Set II - tale 157, see Curtin's text pp. 106-123
Afanas'ev's Set II - tale 158, see Curtin's text pp.165-178
Afanas'ev's Set III -tale 198, see Curtin's text pp. 82-96.
Afanas'ev's Set III -tale 199, see Curtin's text pp. 149-164.
^Bruno Bettelheim mentions in his text Symbolic
Wounds ; Puberty Rites and the Envious Male (New York:
Collier BookSj 1962), p. 99, that in some primitive socie
ties women refused to engage in sexual activity with men
who have not been circumcised.
^See Ernest Crawley's discussion on the dangers of
union between the sexes in his The Mystic Rose; A Study
of Primitive Marriage (Ann Arbor: Gryphon Books, 1971),
vol. II, 34, 49-50.
^Theodor Reik, Ritual: Psycho-Analytic Studies,
trans. from second German edition by Douglas Bryan (New
York; International Universities Press, Inc., 1946),
p. 105.
^Reik, Ritual: Psycho-Analytic Studies, pp. 100
and 120.
106
7
Vladimir la. Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi
skazki (Leningrad; State Univ. of Lenin, 1946), pp. 43-44.
g
For detailed information regarding the necessity of
circumcision before marriage and circumcision as an act
of heroism and reaffirmation of allegiance to the novice's
group, see a recent study by Karen Ericksen Paige and
Jeffrey M. Paige, The Politics of Reproductive Ritual
(Berkeley; Univ. of Ca. Press, 1981), pp. 150-151. Also,
Propp mentions that at the center of the initiation rite
was obrezanie (cutting, trimming) which in itself represent
ed the smallest portion of the acts performed upon the
initiates; see Propp, p. 74.
9
Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki,
p. 40.
^^Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans.
and ed. James Strachey (New York: Avon, 1965), p. 327.
^^Freud, The interpretation of Dreams, p. 392.
12
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 428-430.
13
Propp, by the way, affirms that tales of Heracles
are very close to Russian tales and that the main dif
ference between them lies in that Heracles was a god with
appropriate cult, while the hero in the tales appears to
be of artistic creation. Propp, p. 16.
^^Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki, p. 41.
15
Leon L. Altman, M.D., The Dream in Psychoanalysis
(New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1975),
p. 24.
^^Wolfgang Lederer, M.D., The Fear of Women (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), p. 117.
17
Altman, The Dream in Psychoanalysis, p. 28.
18
Propp, Is tori cheski e korni volshebnoi skazki,
pp. 44-46.
107
19
Propp himself refers to the hero of the tale as
a shaman who wants to enter the kingdom of the dead. See
Propp, p. 48.
20
Uno Holmberg, Finno-Ugric, Siberian, Vol. IV of
The Mythology of All Races, ed. Canon John Arnott Mac
Culloch (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., 1964),
p. 439.
21
Holmberg, The Mythology of All Races, pp. 500-504.
22
Holmberg, The Mythology of All Races, p. 505.
2 3
Charles Ducey, "The Life History and Creative
Psychopathology of the Shaman," in PsyChoanalytic Study of
Society, Vol. VII eds. Werner Muensterberger, Aaron H.
Esman and L. Bryce Boyer (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1976).
24
Ducey, "The Life History and Creative Psychopathe^^
logy," pp. 195-6.
25
Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki, p. 177.
Altman, The Dream in Psychoanalysis, p. 26.
2 7
Propp notes that there was a custom of tying the
dead into a skin of a cow or horse before the burial of
the bodies. See Propp, p. 13.
2 8
Lederer, The Fear of Women, p. 22.
2 9
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 4 36.
3 0
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 394.
108
CHAPTER V
The Second Set of Tales Entitled "Koscej Without Death."
The second set of tales appears in Afanas'ev's
collection under the numbers 156 to 158 and is entitled
"Koscej Without Death.In the first tale of this set,
number 156, Ivan's mother is abducted by Koscej. After
the two elder sons have tried to find her and failed, the
youngest son Ivan sets out on his own. He meets an old
woman on the road who tells him how to find a good horse.
She sends Ivan to a mountain and tells him to dig up the
earth. There, Ivan finds a real bogatyr' horse. He then
sets out to find his mother.
On the way Ivan meets his unsuccessful brothers and
together they make their way to a mountain. Next to the
mountain they find a rock on which is an inscription which
says that whoever can throw the rock on the mountain will
make himself a path. Ivan is successful; he leaves the
brothers and begins his ascent. He comes to a house
inhabited by a tsar's daughter who has been abducted by
Koscej. She tells him to put his little finger into the
crack on the gate and open the door. Then she gives him
food and drink and warns him that Koscej will kill him.
She tests Ivan's strength by having him lift Koscej's
109
sword. Ivan lifts it and then sets out to find his mother.
Ivan comes to another house and, having learned how
to open the door, enters. There he findshis mother who
tests his strength by asking him to throw a heavy ball.
Ivan does as he is told. Just before Koscej returns, the
mother hides Ivan and asks Koscej where his death resides.
He replies that somewhere there is an oak under which is a
chest. In the chest is a rabbit and in the rabbit is a
duck. There is an egg in the duck and in it lies his
V V
death. Koscej leaves and Ivan sets out to find the egg.
On the way he becomes hungry but spares the lives of a
pleading wolf, a crow and a pike who all in turn help him
secure the egg. With the egg in hand, Ivan returns to his
V V
mother and when Koscej appears he begins to press and
twist the egg with his hands. As he does so, Koscej twists
and jolts. He pleads for his life and promises to live in
peace with Ivan, but Ivan doesn't listen and crushes the
V V
egg. Koscej dies.
Ivan takes his mother and the tsar's daughter and
prepares to descend the mountain. His brothers, who
waited by the mountain, help the women, and just before
Ivan descends, the maiden asks Ivan to fetch her clothes,
a ring and shoes. By the time Ivan returns with these
goods, the brothers have cut off the means of descent
from the mountain and left Ivan behind. As Ivan begins
110
to play with the ring, twelve youths appear and help him
return home. Ivan inquires of an old woman about the
recent events in the kingdom and is told that his elder
brother wants to marry the maiden. The maiden postpones
the day by asking first for a special ring to be made, then
clothes, then shoes. Ivan tells the old woman to tell the
tsar that she can make these three things. Ivan gives the
goods to the old woman who then informs him of the wedding
day. Ivan dresses and appears in church before his brother
and marries the girl. Thereupon the tsar, finding out
about the brothers' conniving, makes Ivan his sole heir.
The next two versions involve Ivan's search for a
wife. In tale 157, Ivan, the only son in the family, hears
while in the cradle his father sing of a Peerless Beauty.
After sleeping nine days and nights, Ivan sets out to
find her. On his way he meets an old man who tells him
the maiden is far away and that to reach her he will need
a good horse. Ivan chooses the best among his father's
horses and sets on his way.
He arrives at a court and asks the seventy-year-old
woman there to put him up for the night. The woman feeds
him and gives him drink but is not able to tell him of
the Peerless Beauty. She sends him to her eighty-year-old
sister who likewise is unable to help but thinks that
their ninety-year-old sister, who has connections with
Ill
certain helpers, might be of help. Ivan goes to her, but
she too hasn't heard Of the maiden.
The next morning the eldest sister calls on all the
water beasts and asks if they have heard of the Peerless
Beauty. They reply that they haven't. She then asks the
forest beasts. They too have not heard of her. Then, as
the old woman returns to her house, the Mogol' bird
arrives and says she is late because she has just escorted
the Peerless Beauty to mass. The old woman requests that
the bird take Ivan to the girl. The bird consents but
demands subsistence for the trip: much beef and a tub of
water. Ivan prepares everything, sits on the Mogol' bird,
and they take off. Before they reach their destination
Ivan runs out of beef and cuts a piece of flesh from each
of his calves to feed the bird. When they arrive, the
bird drops Ivan down and sees him limp on both legs. The
bird coughs up the flesh and puts it back on Ivan's legs.
The flesh heals.
Ivan arrives at a big town. He rests at the house
of an old woman who promises to wake him when the maiden
goes to daily mass. For three days Ivan visits the church
where the maiden attends the mass, and each time a group
of bbgatyri comes to court the maiden and to mock Ivan.
Each day Ivan is able to slay all of them, and on the third
day the maiden accepts Ivan as her bridegroom. On their
112
way to Ivan's kingdom they make camp, and Ivan falls
asleep for nine days and nights. During that time Koscej
appears and abducts the Peerless Beauty. When Ivan
awakens he goes immediately to look for her. He finds
Koscej's kingdom and tells the maiden to find out where
Koscej's death is. Koscej first tells her it is in a
broom, then that it is in the oak fence and, finally, he
says .that it is in an egg which is in a duck which is in
a stump that floats in the sea. Having heard this, Ivan
sets out to find the egg. On the way he spares a hawk, a
bear and a pike. These animals in turn help Ivan secure
the egg. With the egg in hand, Ivan returns to Koscej's
kingdom and begins to roll the egg from hand to hand,
faster and faster. As he does so, Koscej moves from
corner to corner, faster and faster until he falls down
and dies. Ivan takes_the maiden and returns home to
marry.
The final version, tale 158, opens with Ivan again as
the only son and a baby lulled to sleep with the story of
a most beautiful maiden, Vasilisa. Time passes, and at
the age of fifteen, Ivan decides it is time to find her.
When he arrives in a town, he finds an old man being
beaten for a debt in the main square. If anyone bails
the old man out, he runs the risk of losing his wife.
Since Ivan has no wife, he decides it is safe to bail out
113
the old man, Bulat the Brave. In return Bulat offers to
help Ivan find Vasilisa.
They travel to tsar Kirbit's kingdom, there finding
Vasilisa in a tower. Three times Bulat goes to see her
with a plate on which there is first a wing of a hen, then
of a duck and then of a goose to offer Vasilisa. Finally,
she lets him in. Bulat grabs her and takes her to Ivan.
Tsar Kirbit immediately sends pursuers after them. Bulat
stays behind the fleeing Ivan and Vasilisa on the pretense
that he has to find a ring and then a kerchief. He
actually slays their pursuers. Then, during the night,
when they set up camp, Bulat tells Ivan to stay awake and
guard while he and Vasilisa sleep. Ivan, however, falls
asleep, and during the night Koscej appears and takes
Vasilisa away.
In the morning Bulat and Ivan depart to find Koscej's
kingdom. Near the kingdom they notice shepherds herding
Koscej's flock. They take the shepherds' clothes and
bring in the flock themselves. Once in the pen, Ivan gives
the ring Vasilisa had given him to Bulat who drops it in
the goat's milk which Vasilisa will use to wash her face,
as she does every morning. When Vasilisa sees the ring,
she calls the "impostor shepherds" to come and see her.
Bulat tells her to find out where Koscej's death is. She
questions Koscej who first tells her that his death is in
114
the broom, and then that it is in the goat. Then he tells
her that it can be found on an island. On the island there
is an oak tree, and under it, a trunk in which there is a
rabbit. In the rabbit is a duck, and in the duck an egg
in which resides his death.
Vasilisa passes this information on to Bulat and Ivan,
who go to find the egg. On the way they become hungry, but
they spare a dog, and eagle and a lobster and, in turn,
these animals help them secure the egg. Now Bulat and Ivan
return with the egg and hit Koscej on the head with it.
Koscej dies.
On their way back to Ivan's kingdom Bulat, Ivan and
Vasilisa camp three nights. This time Ivan sleeps and
Bulat guards. Each night twelve doves appear and turn into
maidens. The first night they tell Bulat that when Ivan
returns to his kingdom, his dog will tear him apart; on
the second night, that his dearest horse will kill him; on
the third night, that Ivan's cow will turn against him.
If Bulat says a word of this to Ivan, they warn, he will
turn to stone.
When they arrive at Ivan's kingdom, Ivan marries
Vasilisa. After a couple of days Ivan wants to show
Vasilisa his favorite animals, but Bulat kills each one
of them. Ivan is ready to punish Bulat, but Bulat reveals
the truth. As he does so he is, according to the
115
prophecy, turned to stone. Years pass. Ivan has two
children, but he still misses Bulat. One day Bulat,
speaking from the stone, says that if Ivan wants to see
him again he must sacrifice his children and pour their
blood over the stone. Ivan and Vasilisa do just that,
freeing Bulat. But afterwards they feel sorry for their
children. Then, Bulat takes them to their children's room
where they find the children unharmed and well.
The first impression one draws from this set of tales
is that it complements the previous set. This is espe
cially evident if we consider that the hero in the process
of obtaining the object of value (mother, maiden) must
overcome Koscej Without Death in all tales of this set,
just as he had to overcome the Whirlwind and the Raven in
the previous set. Ivan usurps the position of these
symbolic figures in the first set by taking from them the
club and the feather staff, in this set by locating and
crushing the repository of Koscej's death, the egg. In so
doing, Ivan crushes the symbol of fertility and sexual
power possessed by Koscej and claims it for himself.
Let us now explore the underlying oppositions in this
set: the loss and recuperation of the object of desire and
the inability and ability to perform an act of strength.
Here is the four-column structure of the first tale in
this set, tale 156, that reveals these thematic contrasts:
116
•w
o ro
x : >1 Cn
>1 C
H 4 - 1 S
-P -n
fO -H
P -P
O J -H
m
I—I
I — I
• H
I — I
- H
m
f O t3 S
> X!
f O +j
117
As in the previous Set, we see two axes: the axis of
castration and the axis of strength. The axis of castra
tion reveals the hero's loss of the mother to Koscej— the
symbolic father is the agent of loss and separation— in
all three tales and in tale 156 to the elder brothers as
V
well. The elder brothers, like Koscej represent the
agents of loss and separation because, in the absence of
the father among the ancient Slavs, the next eldest male
is the most powerful figure in the family. Thus the elder
brother competes with the younger for the women and so
serves as the agent of loss and separation.
Under the axis of strength, we see that the novice
aspires to the power exercised by the symbolic father, a
power that the novice is not yet capable of exercising.
In undergoing the initiation procedure, however, the
knowledge and the key to fertility (the egg) become
available to the novice with the help of the mother, the
maiden and a couple of old women. Ivan, in obtaining this
knowledge, is able to overcome the father. As the
father's sexual potency degenerates (Ivan kills Koscej
with the egg), his own increases, and his social status
in the community rises; he becomes marriageable.
Again, in this set of tales, the son, in the process
of looking for the mother, finds a wife, and while in the
process of looking for a wife, he must overcome the father
118
who is symbolically represented in the figure of Koscej
Without Death. And, just as in the earlier set of tales,
these tales reflect the initiation procedures accompanied
by the psychological objectification of the desires, fears
and hopes normally associated with the process of matura
tion.
In tale 156, the mother's disappearance may refer to
either the real loss of the mother, i.e., the death of a
parent, or the son's infantile view of his loss of the
mother in the presence of the father who represents a
threat to the son's union with the mother. To a young
child the mother is the primal object which he believes
belongs to him forever. However, as the father intrudes,
the male child finds himself in competition with the
father for the love of the mother. We can see in these
tales that the son's maturation involves two steps : the
son's realization as he approaches initiation that he can
no longer claim the mother as his own, and the awareness
of the demand placed upon him to develop strength in order
to be able to overcome the father and choose for himself
a bride. In the child's resulting process of maturation,
sexual power is transferred from the father to the son.
In this study we are applying the techniques of the
analysis of dreams to the tale narrative. We often find
that in two consecutive dreams one takes as its central
119
2
point something that is peripheral to the other. This
is also the case with tales. Of the two sets of tales
discussed so far, in the first set Ivan's direct confron
tation with the Whirlwind and the Raven, from which he
claims a club and a feather staff, indeed appears at the
periphery of the narrative in a sentence or two. In the
second set, however, the confrontation between Ivan and
Koscej (symbolized in the previous set by the Whirlwind
and the Raven) is neither at the periphery nor is it
referred to briefly in the tales. It is, in fact, the main
portion of the tale which focuses on Ivan's quest to find
where exactly Koscej's death lies, followed by an elabora
tion of their confrontation. The focus in this set is on
Ivan's search for the egg and his full realization of the
significance of obtaining and destroying it. Ivan's desire
to acquire sexual potency is thus fully objectified in the
narrative, as he crushes the father's potency and assures
himself of no other threats to him and his chosen bride.
In addition to this variability concerning the
element in consecutive dreams or tales that will occupy
the central point, we are drawn in our analyses of tales
to the expressions that differentiate one tale narrative
from the other in the same set of tales or in the different
sets. In the three tales at hand we find that there is no
reference to sacrifice (loss of flesh) in tale 156, while
120
there are such references in tales 157 and 158. These
differences in the tales perhaps result from oral trans
mission when, in reciting a tale, the storyteller, groping
for a more precise or acceptable expression, breaks the
connection in the tales between the process of initiation
and the acquisition of sexual strength.
In the analysis of his own dreams, Freud pointed out
that the most trivial elements of a dream are indispensable
3
to its interpretation. This seems to hold true for the
tales too. Let us here look at one such trivial element.
Interestingly, the son in tale 156 before he reaches his
object of search, the mother, first finds a tsar's
daughter. She teaches Ivan to come into her house without
a door by inserting his little finger into a crack on the
gate. Later, when Ivan finds his mother he knows how to
open the house and enters. A sexual meaning may be easily
attributed to these actions. A Freudian interpretation
leads us to conclude that the maiden's house (or for that
matter the mother's) represents the female genitals, while
Ivan's little finger can be attributed to Ivan's little
penis. This point represents a good example of what Freud
means by inconspicuous material that in fact hides rich
sexual symbolism.^
Since the youngest son's ultimate goal in all of these
tales is sexual in nature, it is only through the acquisi
tion of the symbolic phallus that the goal is realized.
121
The hero in our tales must acquire a club, a staff or an
egg. The phallus thus obtained by the end of the tale
(and the end of the initiation) is, in fact, the phallus
once possessed by the father. Having thus acquired the
paternal phallus, the son is now sexually equal to the
father; he finally possesses the phallus that can meet the
demands of the mother. Only then does the son's interest
become directed toward the transformational form of the
mother, his bride.
Besides reflecting the ongoing psychological mecha
nisms during the initiation procedure, the tales also
represent, through their ritual structure, a microscopic
view of the socialization process among the ancient Slavs.
Let us examine some of these ancient Slavic practices.
We know from the studies of Frazer, Turner and van
Gennep that young members in a primitive society undergo
a series of pubertic rites during the course of which the
novices are isolated and exposed to certain physical
deprivations. Propp points out in his text, Istoricheskie
korni volshebnoi skazki, that such practices were also
known among ancient Slavs. A marriage ceremony or burial
rites, for example, are known to have been practiced in
public, while the rites of passage associated with sexual
maturity were normally carried out in isolated places
where men were separated from the women and from their
122
families. Thus, in an ancient Slavic community, as the
young child reaches the age when a mate is to be sought,
his childhood ties with the mother and the family are
severed.^ At this point, the child enters the transitional
phase, a time when he is no longer at home with his mother
and the family, nor is he yet recognized as a sexually
mature member of the community.
During the transitional stage the novice must fulfill
a number of difficult tasks, he must be exposed to physical
deprivation, acquire a bride and marry. Only after suc
cessfully accomplishing this is he reincorporated into his
clan. And so from the time a young child leaves his home
until he returns to claim a new status, he must venture
outside the community to test his skills, cunning and
strength. In the process he often claims a bride by force;
such practices were not uncommon in ancient Rus'.^
All of the aforementioned practices are reflected in
the tale narratives under discussion. For example, the
disappearance of the mother in the first tale of this set
may be linked to the fact that Slavic initiation practices
involved the child's removal at puberty from his mother.
If we recall, in each tale the youngest son leaves his
father's kingdom in search of a bride or mother. In tale
158, Ivan and his helper, Bulat the Brave, abduct Vasilisa
from her father's kingdom. In another tale, number 156,
123
Koscej abducts the mother and later Ivan's elder brothers
claim her and the maiden. In the other two versions (157
and 158) Koscej abducts Ivan's bride. Finding a bride is
only one task; the rest of the tasks are demanded by the
bride. The novice must demonstrate his dexterity in
handling weapons and he must show his physical strength
and cunning. To accomplish all this he receives aid from
various helpers.
The separation from the community, experienced by the
youngest son, Ivan, during his search for the bride
(mother) in the tales, represents the isolation of the
initiate among the ancient Slavs during the period immedi
ately before and after circumcision. (The feminine novice
herself undergoes a similar isolation during pubertic
rites among ancient Slavs. Such a situation appears most
explicitly in tale 158 in which tsar Kirbit's daughter,
7
Vasilisa, is isolated in a tower within her own kingdom.)
This separation depicted in the tale and supported by
actual practice among the Slavs has a parallel dimension in
terms of the psyche. Bruno Bettelheim points out that the
initiation rites (during which the novices are isolated)
may function as an occasion for the novice to release the
accumulated aggressive tendencies against his parents and
8
siblings. Thus the separation, maturity and the return
of the novice in the rite (or of Ivan in the tales)—
124
whether physical and/or phychological— are important
insofar as the novice (as Ivan) comes to a new understand
ing of his own position and that of other members within
the family unit and the community.
What of the functions of the helpers in these tales?
Often they undergo transformations, just as do the objects
of the initiate's search. In tale 156, the helper at the
beginning of the tale is an old woman who instructs Ivan
in digging the earth to find a bogatyr' horse. This old
woman is the transformation of Baba Yaga who also functions
in the tales as the phallic mother. Since the horse is
located beneath the earth (hidden within the Earth
Mother), it can be interpreted as a phallic symbol pos
sessed by the mother, which is then taken from her by the
son. It is from the old woman that Ivan learns how to
acquire the phallus.
In addition, digging the earth may represent the
desire to re-enter the womb. Such a desire may particular
ly surface when the young man is exposed to the anxiety-
producing circumstances of initiation and seeks safety.
Also, since the novice during the initiation in a sense
dies and is reborn, the digging of the earth or descent
into the underground represents a symbolic regression into
the womb in order to be reborn again.
In tale 157, an old man advises Ivan to cull the best
125
among his father's horses for his journey. Later in the
tale, Ivan is given nourishment by three old sisters
analogous to the three maidens who help Ivan in the first
set of tales entitled "The Three Kingdoms." In the final
version, tale 158, Bulat the Brave, a figure that can in
this context represent the surrogate father, is the
helper. We shall speak of the surrogate figure at length
in the next set of tales. For now, as we look at these
helpers and surrogate figures, it becomes apparent that
the older men provide the novice with advice and know-how
in order to help him accomplish tasks that require a
demonstration of physical strength and cunning. The
feminine figures, however, serve as stepping stones which,
during Ivan's journey, supply the information necessary
for him to reach and obtain his object of desire and offer
him nourishment and objects of magical power. Actually
they are all transformations of the donor par excellence.
Baba Jaga.
As an ancestral spirit, Koscej Without Death is the
possessor of eternal life. In this capacity he is akin
to the figure of Baba Jaga (from our earlier set of tales)
who has access to the healing water and the water of life.
Koscej is also linked with the Eagle, the Whirlwind and
the Raven from the previous set in that these three figures
represent a manifestation of exceptional strength and
power equated with the power possessed by the father.
126
Ivan wrests the power and the strength from each of these
figures; in the first set of tales Ivan takes the feather
staff from the Raven and the club from Vixr; in this set
he finds the secret to eternal life in the egg, which in
the tales represents the repository of Koscej's sexual
strength. Koscej then is not only associated in these
tales with Baba Jaga but with the Raven and the Whirlwind
who, as we said earlier, represent the ancestral spirits or
totem animals. And Koscej with his characteristics (he
is emaciated and bony as a skeleton) represents a likely
9
image of a dead ancestor.
It seems that a novice in the initiation rites
establishes an association with the ancestral clan and
from it obtains strength to become himself a member of
the clan. In the first set, we see that Ivan before the
Eagle represents a sacrificial figure; the Eagle takes a
piece of Ivan's flesh and devours it to complete the flight
In the second set, tale 157, Ivan cuts flesh from his own
calves and offers it to the Mogol' bird so that it too can
complete the flight. In both sets, then, Ivan offers a
part of himself as a demonstration of his loyalty to the
clan. Both versions contain remnants of circumcision, a
procedure which no doubt was practiced in public and
which not only affirmed the novices' loyalty to the father
(clan), but demonstrated the willingness of the son and
the father to vest the reproductive power into the hands
127
of surrogate clan chiefs who usually performed this pro
cedure and thereby admitted the novice into the covenent
of the community. In the ritual of circumcision, the
novice dies (he is offered to the totem) and then is
reborn again as if from the totem, possessing the very
characteristics of that clan's totem. The sacrifice of
flesh to the ancestral totem (here Eagle and Mogol' bird)
establishes this bond between the young men and the
ancestral spirits.
Again, these seemingly unimportant details (cutting
of flesh and giving it to the Eagle and Mogol' bird) are
symbolic remants of circumcision. These details in fact
represent the crux of the tale, or the climax in the
initiation process. (To support this view we can link the
giving up of flesh with the removal of the foreskin, and
the resulting phallic potency easily links up here with
the symbol of birds in flight.) It is as if the anxiety
associated with circumcision hides behind the veil of the
superficial or manifest tale narrative. The act of
cutting the flesh appears at a point that is given a low
value in the tale, whereas, in fact, it is the point of
highest value in the suppressed thoughts of the novice.
There is yet another connection to be made among the
helpers: the Mogol' bird, the eagle, the lame and the
crooked and the twelve youths (tales 129, 156, 157). The
128
bird represents the erect phallus; the lame and the crooked
represents the injured phallus after circumcision. In
fact, the figure of the lame and the crooked actually
represents Ivan's objectified trait of post-circumcisional
lameness and crookedness. Recall that Ivan rescues the
mother and the maiden but must himself remain in the cave
(or underground) for an additional period of time. It can
be argued that the post-circumcisional healing or the pro
cess of rebirth is not yet over, so that when in fact,
Ivan is really reborn again, he assumes the limping stage
or the lame and the crooked stage that represents not only
the post-circumcisional novice but a reborn individual who
has difficulty in walking.
The twelve youths in tale 156 are to be taken as a
composite figure representing the collective strength
(sexual strength) acquired by the novice through initia
tion which he utilizes in returning home. What we are
actually seeing in these tales is the proliferation of
figures that results from the reversal of the condensation
process described earlier. In such a reversal of condensa
tion, traits of a particular member of a family assume the
forms of separate figures. In effect the figure splits
into its components, traits that become personified in
multiple figures. For example, the hero views the male
parent in several forms. The benevolent father figures
129
are the Eagle and the Mogol' bird, as well as the helpful
old men and Bulat the Brave. The feared father figures, on
the other hand, are represented by the Raven, the Whirlwind
and, of course, Koscej Without Death.
The mother, too, can appear as a benevolent or malevo
lent figure since the childhood memories of her are both
good and bad and appear in several components. In our tales
the old helpful women and young maidens represent a caring,
benevolent mother, while Baba Jaga and the sexually
threatening maidens represent the demanding and mavelolent
mother. It is not difficult to see how Bruno Bettelheim
describes castration anxiety as occurring not only between
the son and the father, but also between the son and the
mother.
Of course the most everpresent of the helpers is the
figure of Baba Jaga discussed in connection with the first
set of tales. She is considered a guardian of the foun-
12
tain of living water, the water that restores life.
Paradoxically, she is a personification of an evil spirit,
the spirit of the storm, and as a transformation of the
mother figure, she also can appear as a benefactor. In a
number of tales her special water heals and rejuvenates.
She also steals male children and is thought to eat them,
A counterpart of Baba Jaga is the old bony and
bearded, emaciated man, Koscej Without Death, He abducts
130
13
maidens and knows the secret of eternal life. He is also
thought to be a personification of an evil spirit and, as
V V
mentioned earlier, is akin to Baba Jaga. Koscej not only
represents a transformational form of the father figure,
but he also represents the grotesquely transformed figure
V V
of an all powerful ancient pagan god. Koscej, in addition,
holds the key to eternity and it is this which relates to
his death. His death is in an egg that is in a trunk under
an oak tree on an island in the sea. One can immediately
note here the reference to a worship site of pagan Slavs—
14
an oak tree near a body of water.
We have been referring to the initiation procedures
reflected in these tales which we can now link with the
sacrificial acts of cutting and tearing off flesh that
appear in both sets of tales. In the first set there is a
cutting of flesh from withers, and in this set there is a
cutting of flesh from calves and a tearing of wings from
several fowl. There is no doubt that sacrifices were made
by pagan Slavs to their gods, but in these tales the
sacrifices are represented by the dismemberment of the
novice. The dismemberment in the tales refers as much to
cutting of the flesh from the calf as to blinding of the
eyes and amputating of the feet which we shall encounter
in the next and final set of tales.
131
We have, it is hoped, shown that the tales reflect an
ancient ritual of initiation. And because this ritual
involves a temporary death for the novice, we also have
15
in the tales remnants of the death ritual. The temporary
death of the novice takes place in "another kingdom,”
away from the novices' immediate family and the community.
This "other kingdom" is the kingdom of the dead where the
novice undergoes a symbolic death and acquires magical
strength from a donor, usually Baba Jaga. However, as it
appears in the first and second tales of this set, a trans
formation of Baba Jaga in the form of an old woman helps
Ivan in acquiring the necessary means to obtain his goal,
a bride.
Since the bride (mother) is the object of desire, the
ending in these tales is, not surprisingly, marriage. If
we consider, then, that after having spent a period of time
in "another kingdom" Ivan is able to and does marry, his
association with the bride is of special interest. In
referring back to the tales of this set, we note that Ivan
does in fact acquire a bride in the "other kingdom."
However, before he unites with her in his own kingdom, the
bride is either taken by Ivan's brothers or she is abducted
by Koscej. In addition, as shown in the last tale, the
bride seems to be closer to Ivan's surrogate, Bulat the
Brave, than she is to Ivan. Let us then explore a little
132
closer this association of the bride with someone other
than her groom.
In tale 157, the novice is finally accepted by the
Peerless Beauty when, on the way back to Ivan's kingdom,
Ivan falls asleep and Koscej Without Death abducts his
maiden. In the next version, tale 158, Bulat the Brave
helps Ivan abduct Vasilisa. Again, on the way back to
y V
their kingdom, Ivan falls asleep and Koscej takes the girl.
There are two interesting points here. First of all in
both tales Ivan somehow fails to exercise caution and
falls asleep. As a consequence he loses his maiden to
Koscej. Secondly, when Ivan awakens what ensues is not
his search for the girl, but his search for the repository
of Koscej's fertility, the egg.
Sleep can have several meanings here. First, sleep
symbolizes a period of growth and maturity. We note that
in tale 157 Ivan as an infant sleeps nine days and nights,
following which he arises and immediately goes out in
search of a bride. The healing and growing effect of
sleep is obvious in this instance. Secondly, sleep sym
bolizes a temporary state of death that is required of
novices in completing the ritual of rebirth. Then, having
acquired a bride (Peerless Beauty), Ivan on returning to
his kingdom again falls asleep and loses his maiden to
Y V
the evil spirit, Koscej Without Death. Here sleep
133
represents an escape from the anxiety generated by the
oncoming union with the bride. During this time Ivan
matures from a pubertic child into an adult.
We know from ethnographic material that sleep during
the ritual of initiation was forbidden, especially before
circumcision.^^ Ancient Slavs forced the novices to keep
a vigil during the ritual so that, since they were particu
larly vulnerable at this time, they could make sure that
evil ancestral spirits be kept at bay. It can be argued
that the initial reference to sleep in the tales is of an
infantile nature and is necessary for the infant to grow
into a pubertic child. The latter reference to sleep is
post-circumcisional and pre-nuptial because it appears
that in the tales the novice, after having acquired a bride
loses her just before he unites with her in marriage.
The novice undergoing initiation experiences an
amount of anxiety associated with Baba Jaga, who of course
represents the figure of the mother. We have even
referred to the mother or Baba Jaga as the phallic mother.
It is the fear associated with the phallic mother that is
here being projected onto the bride. The fear associated
with the phallic mother reemerges during the ritual of
preparation for marriage and is transferred onto the
novice's bride. There are several levels of fear associ
ated with the union of the two sexes. First of all there
134
is the social or cultural fear associated with defloration
and the ensuing blood. In addition, since the bride is
the transformation of the mother, she is a sexually
threatening figure to him. The mother is desired, yet she
is forbidden; the mother is desired, yet she is feared
because the son may not be able to satisfy her demands.
Even more important than the sleep in the tales is
V V
the maiden's abduction by what we said Koscej to be, an
ancestral spirit. She, in fact, is abducted by Koscej in
the same manner that she was taken from her father by
Bulat and Ivan. It appears that she spends some time with
V V
Koscej just prior to marrying Ivan. The liaison between
the spirit and the maiden, or a liaison that is between a
maiden and a man other than her future husband, seems ever
so tentatively to lurk behind the narrative of these tales.
We can ask ourselves: why would it be that the maiden
spends some time with another man (or spirit) before she
unites with her husband? Here not only ethnographic
material can help us, but also a psychoanalytic view of
this particular element in the tales.
What we are leading to here is the practice of
defloration of the bride by someone other than her hus
band. Not long ago this practice was not uncommon in
Russia and elsewhere among the Slavs. We should dif
ferentiate, however, the cultural and religious
135
explanation of the demand that the bride belong to someone
else before she belongs to her groom from the practice,
at a much later period, of ius primae noctis that has been
unofficially practiced in autocratic Russia according to
the whims of tyrannical landowners. But because the
remnants of such practices appear more explicitly in the
next group of tales, we shall postpone our discussion on
this point until the next chapter.
136
Notes
^Aleksandr N. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki
(Moskva: GINL, 1957), Vol. I, 358-375.
2
See Freud's comments on this in his The interpre
tation of Dreams, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York:
Avon, 1965), p. 563.
3
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 552.
^Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Drearns, p. 382.
5
Vladimir Propp refers to a forest as such an
isolated place. See his comments in Is tor i Che ski e korni
volshebnoi skazki (Leningrad: Leningrad State University,
1946), pp. 44-46. Also see Sir Frazer's The New Golden
Bough, ed. Theodor H. Gaster (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor
Books, 1961) in which accounts of worship and nuptial
union in sacred groves are given in Part I, "The Magic
of Kings," Sections 98 and 137.
^W. R. S. Ralston points out that at times these
abductions were done with the consent of the maiden. See
his The songs of Russian People (London: Ellis and Green,
1872), p. 283.
7
Propp refers to this isolation in a tower as pre
paration for marriage. See his text Istoricheskie korni
volshebnoi skazki (Leningrad: Leningrad State University,
1946), pp. 31-32.
^Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds : Puberty Rites and
the Envibus Male (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 69.
^His name is derived from the Russian word kost'
which means bone.
^^That the Mogol' bird represents the ancestral
spirits worshiped by the Slavs can be explained by one of
the tales of creation mentioned by Mac Culloch in his
study of the Siberian mythology. He mentions that in the
Vogul creation tale, a bird dives into the primordial
137
ocean and fetches the earth from it. It is possible that
the Mogol bird in our tales represents a sound equivalent
of the Vogul bird in this creation myth. See Canon John
Arnott Mac Culloch, ed. The Mythology of All Races.
Vol. IV Finno-Ugric, Siberian Mythology (New York: Cooper
Square Publishers, Inc., 1964), 322-323.
^^Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds, pp. 41-42.
12
Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki,
pp. 179-181.
13
See Propp*s references to the abduction of maidens
in Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki, pp. 232-233,
^^W. R. S. Ralston, The Songs of Russian People,
p. 83.
^^Vladimir Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi
skazki, p. 41.
^^Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki,
pp. 67-68.
138
CHAPTER VI
The Third Set of Tales Entitled
"Footless and Blind BOgatyri."
The third and final set of tales to be discussed in
this study is, once more, from Afanas'ev's collection of
tales. A synopsis of this set, tales 198 to 200,
follows.^
In the introduction to tale 198, an elder tsar ap
points a knowledgeable man, uncle Katoma of the Oaken cap,
to serve as his son Ivan's mentor. Before the old tsar
and tsaritsa die, the tsar instructs Ivan to consult his
mentor in all his future affairs. The old parents die
and Tsarevich Ivan after a while grows dreary alone and
tells Katoma of his desire to marry. He chooses Princess
Anna the Beautiful among the many portraits of all the
Tsars' and Kings' daughters. To win her hand, however, he
has to present her with a riddle which she will not be
able to solve. Ivan asks uncle Katoma to help him. They
set out on the road and suddenly uncle Katoma sees a purse
of gold lying on the road. He picks it up and pours the
money from it into his own purse. This inspires him to
make up a riddle for the maiden: We were going down the
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road and saw a good thing lying on the road. We took the
good thing with good and put it in our own good thing.
Once in Anna's kingdom, Ivan succeeds in stumping her with
uncle Katoma's riddle, and the wedding date is set. In the
meantime, Anna decides to test Ivan's strength, tests
which uncle Katoma successfully performs* Katoma cuts an
iron pillar and then rides and subdues a powerful steed.
And then, as Anna and Ivan leave the church after the
ceremony, she decides to test her bridegroom one more
time. She presses his hand with such force that he can
not endure it. Anna becomes disheartened by Ivan's weak
ness. She feels deceived and decides to seek revenge upon
uncle Katoma. On their way to Ivan's kingdom Anna orders
that uncle Katoma's feet be amputated and that he be left
in a forest on a stump. She makes Ivan a herdsman in her
own kingdom. We also learn that another man before Katoma
had been blinded in a similar attempt to deceive her. In
the forest the footless Katoma and the blind man meet and
combine their assets--the footless Katoma sits on top of
the blind man and guides him on the road. They abduct a
merchant's daughter and bring her to a hut in the forest
inhabited by the Baba Jaga. Over a period of time the
maiden grows thin. The men finally persuade her to tell
them what is troubling her. She tells them that as soon
as they are away. Baba Jaga appears and makes her search
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in her head, as she sucks the maiden's breasts. Next time,
the two men catch the old woman and try to kill her. In
her defense. Baba Jaga offers to take them to a well of
living and healing water. First, however, she takes them
to a fiery well, but the men do not fall for her trick.
Then she takes them to the well of the living and healing
water, and the two men have their eyes and feet restored.
Then they take Baba Jaga and throw her into the fiery well.
Uncle Katoma marries the merchant's daughter and all three
return to Anna's kingdom. There uncle Katoma exchanges
clothes with Ivan, the herdsman, and appears before Anna
the Beautiful. Katoma grabs one of the cows by the tail,
pulls and thus removes the skin. Impressed by the re
covered strength and courage of uncle Katoma, Anna decides
not to play any more tricks and promises to henceforth
obey Ivan. These are the events of the first tale in
this set.
Here are the transformational points in the two
variants of this tale. In the second variant of this set,
tale 199, it is the tsar, referred to as the terrible
tsar, who seeks the most beautiful bride, Elena the
Beautiful, for himself. A peasant, Nikita Kaltoma, aids
the tsar in his search. On their way to find Elena,
Nikita stops at different forges and orders first a
15-pood iron staff which breaks, then a 25-pood staff
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which also breaks, and finally at the third forge he
orders a 50-pood iron staff. Here Nikita notices an old
man being tormented because of an old debt. Before he
leaves, Nikita pays the old man's debt and in turn receives
from the old man a cap of invisibility. Thus, armed with
this cap and a 50-pood unbreakable iron staff, Nikita
joins the tsar. When they reach the kingdom where the
beautiful Elena resides, Elena sends her best bogatyri
to fight them off. Nikita strikes all but one with his
rod. The one soldier returns to Elena and tells her what
happened, Elena invites the terrible tsar to come to the
castle and orders a sharp arrow to be prepared. Nikita
notices the arrow, puts on his cap of invisibility, draws
the bow, and knocks off the whole top of Elena's castle.
Elena is reluctant but must marry the tsar.
After the wedding, Elena tests the tsar by applying
pressure to his chest, but each time Nikita replaces the
tsar and endures the test. After some time, Elena real
izes that she has been tricked. Fearing that the people
of the kingdom may laugh at her and her weak husband, she
decides to seek revenge. On the road back to the terrible
tsar's kingdom, Nikita falls into a long sleep. Elena,
seizing the moment, orders that his feet be cut off and
that he be left in a boat at sea. Once in the tsar's
kingdom, she seeks all of Nikita's relatives. She finds
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Nikita's brother, Timofey, blinds him and banishes him.
Timofey walks through a forest and arrives at the sea
where his brother in a boat has drifted to the shore.
Nikita sits on top of Timofey and they begin their travels
through the forest. They come upon a hut in which lives
Baba Jaga. They want to get rid of her and so Timofey
grabs her and squeezes her hard. She pleads for mercy and
offers to lead them to the spring of the healing water and
the water of life. Timofey's eyes and Nikita's feet are
restored by the magic water, and they let the old woman go.
The two men then set out to rescue the tsar who has been
all this time herding pigs in his own kingdom. Nikita
rescues the tsar who then orders Elena shot and in turn
makes Nikita the First Minister.
In the third variant, tale 200, a young Tsarevich, as
in the first tale, seeks a wife. A poor peasant called
Ivan the Naked, acting as his helper, demands that the
prince listen to him, and together they find a princess
whom the Tsarevich marries. Determined to test her groom,
she demands that he shoot her gun, show his skill with the
bow and arrow and ride her zealous horse, Ivan, taking
over the tasks for the Tsarevich, checks the weapons, finds
them inferior, and then performs the tasks. During a bow
and arrow contest he removes the arms of bogatyr' Marko.
He then takes the zealous horse by the tail and pulls— and
143
stripsrf— the skin off. The princess can no longer protest
and marries him the next day. After the wedding she again
tests her husband by pressing her hand onto his chest. The
Tsarevich can not bear her hand's pressure, and she, feel
ing cheated, decides to seek revenge. In a month they
depart for the prince's kingdom. While Ivan is asleep on
the road, the princess obtains her revenge by cutting
Ivan's feet off with an ax. She leaves him in a forest
where, upon awakening, Ivan meets the maimed Marko. Marko
puts Ivan on his shoulders and the two men set off through
the forest. They abduct a maiden, this time a priest's
daughter. They take her to be their sister and she cares
for them. In a hut where they live, the maiden grows
thinner and thinner because every time the men are away,
a dragon flies to her and changes into a young man. Learn
ing from the maiden about the dragon's visits, Ivan and
Marko decide to catch him and kill him. But the dragon
offers to show them where the water of life and death is.
He first takes the men to a fiery lake, but the men sus
pect a trick. They make the dragon take them to the right
lake where Ivan's feet and Marko's arms are healed. On
the way back the two men throw the dragon into the fiery
lake. Marko then goes to the priest's home to live with
the priest's daughter while Ivan goes to look for the
prince who is now herding pigs in his own kingdom. Ivan
144
exchanges clothes with the prince. He then goes to grab
the princess by the hair, and spins her around the court
until she agrees to listen to her husband. After this
they all live in peace.
The paradigmatic relations, which underline the tale
narrative and are based on binary opposition, are revealed
in the following four column structure. The axes of
castration and strength show the opposition of loss and
recuperation of the object of value, and inability and
ability to perform an act of strength. Here is the
outline of this underlying structure as it is revealed
in tale 19 8.
145
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146
We see that the paradigmatic goupings correspond to
those of the previous tales. However, in this last set,
the process of recuperation of the lost object and the
ability to perform an act of strength are even more pro
nounced than in the previous two sets. Each tale involves
the search for a wife by the hero who is accompanied by
another figure. This other figure functions not only as
a guide and a helper but also performs the various tasks
demanded of the hero by the future bride.
In two of the tales this helper is an older, more
experienced man: in tale 198, uncle Katoma and in tale
200, Ivan the Naked. In tale 199, he is the somewhat
younger Nikita Kaltoma. In these tales, unlike in the
previous two sets, it is this surrogate who acquires the
symbolic object of strength. For example, in tale 199
Nikita Kaltoma acquires a 50-pood rod which symbolizes the
phallus, as the feather staff and the club had in the
previous tales. Nikita also obtains a cap of invisibility
from an old man whose debt he has paid up. To Freud the
2
hat was a symbol of a man (or of male genitals). Nikita
pays the debt for the old man (a debt of sexual nature)
receiving in return the cap of invisibility— the cap
(male genitals) now possessed by Nikita without anyone
knowing or being able to see his private possession.
With the rod and the cap Nikita, "invisible" to
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others, demonstrates his strength, that is, sexual
strength to Elena. He proves himself stronger than any
one of Elena's men and, "invisible," directs the red-hot
arrow prepared for him and the tsar toward Elena's tower.
The feats of the surrogate are imbued with sexual innu
endos; a red-hot arrow, obviously a phallic symbol, is
aimed at Elena's tower, a secluded chamber in the kingdom.
Nikita thus invades Elena's private "chamber," a symbolic
act of defloration, preparing her for subsequent marriage
to the terrible tsar. The cap in this instance and the
name which Katoma in tale 198 carries-— Katoma of the
Oaken cap— are good examples of displacement as the focus
here shifts away from the genitals and onto the head, when
in fact Katoma is known for his sexual strength (Oaken cap)
and Kaltoma's cap of invisibility (tale 199) refers to his
"invisibility" or ability to remove Elena's tower with
the arrow.
Tale 198 takes a novel twist in that uncle Katoma
makes use of a riddle instead of a phallic symbol to
"overpower" or outwit the maiden. The riddle refers to a
purse and money, expressed as "good" found and taken with
"good" and put with a "good" thing. The riddle suggests
copulation, or a proposal that the purse found with money
be combined with the other "good" thing. The purse is a
symbol for the maiden found or abducted, as was sometimes
148
the case, and the "our good thing" stands for money,
property or male genitals. The riddle thus suggests the
overall meaning of the tale which is finding a bride and
bringing her back to one's own kingdom. The references to
money (money, purse and debt) in both of these tales is
important because it suggests that an exchange of value
(in the form of a riddle) takes place as the hero acquires
himself a bride.
In tale 200 there are no apparent objects acquired by
the surrogate. He must, however, perform several dif
ficult tasks that involve shooting from hunting weapons--a
gun and a bow and arrow— and riding a zealous horse,
objects which have a clear sexual meaning. The two
weapons and a horse are phallic symbols and Ivan's ability
to manipulate them refers to his own sexual capacity. Ivan
also proves his own sexual strength by removing the arms
of a bbgatyr' Marko. Freud points out that any part of
the body may stand for genitals, in this case the arms.
This is especially true of such body parts as a hand or
a foot.^
At the end of last chapter, we briefly pointed out
that the maiden in those tales spends a period of time
with a man other than her husband: in the first set of
tales she is held in captivity by a Whirlwind and a Raven;
in the second set she is captured before her union with
149
her husband by Koscej Without Death; in the final set she
is accosted by the surrogate figure and outwitted into
marrying the tale hero. In each of the three versions of
this set the surrogate figure finds her, "courts" her,
"overpowers" her and "impresses" her by his own strength.
After all the tasks are accomplished by the hero's
helper, the maiden in each tale agrees to marry, but
always with reluctance and resistance. This is most
evident in the first and second tales. Once the maiden
succumbs to the marriage and the ceremony is carried out,
she then retests her groom. The bride's testing is now
of a different nature. In tale 198 for example, she
squeezes her husband's hand and in tales 199 and 200 she
applies pressure with her hand on his chest. We can again
infer a sexual meaning from these references to body parts
that stand for male genitals (the hand) and the pressure
that the maiden exerts upon it and the chest can easily
refer to her testing of the phallic firmness and potency
of these body parts. The new husband can not bear these
tests and the bride becomes disheartened. A slight vari
ation occurs in tale 199, in which Nikita warns the tsar
that Elena will test him three nights immediately following
the marriage ceremony. During these nights Nikita ex
changes places with the tsar, and Elena is successfully
deceived. However, she later realizes that she has been
duped and seeks revenge.
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Her revenge, however, is not carried out on the
husband but on the surrogate who led her in the first place
to believe that her future husband would be able to perform
all acts of strength, i.e., that he would be potent. This
revenge is always obtained en route to the kingdom of the
husband after the marriage has taken place in the woman's
kingdom. In tale 198 Anna orders that uncle Katoma's feet
be amputated and that he be left on a tree stump in a
forest. In tale 199, as they are returning to tsar Gorox's
kingdom by ship, Elena orders that Nikita's feet be cut off
at the knees while he was asleep. Then she orders that he
be put in a boat and set adrift. As if this isn't enough,
the bride's revenge then extends beyond the surrogate figure
and includes all members of his family or some others who
may have failed in the same attempt to deceive her. Thus
in tale 199, Elena finds Nikita's brother, Timofey, and
orders that he be blinded. In tale 198 another man is
blinded and in tale 200 Marko's arms are removed by the
arrow that Ivan the Naked shot in order to demonstrate his
own strength. So far, therefore, we see that the surrogate
figure functions in the tales as a mediator between the
maiden and the hero. He is responsible for finding her and
accomplishing all the tasks necessary in order that the
maiden agree to the marriage. In this capacity he serves as
a liaison between a prospective bride and a prospective
groom.
151
In addition, if the maiden finds complaint with the
arranged union, she directs her displeasure toward the
surrogate, as is apparent from the tale narrative. Let us
look at how she prepares for the revenge. First she
succeeds in convincing her husband of the surrogate's
wrongdoing (tale 198) or chooses the most convenient
moment for revenge— usually a time when the surrogate is
asleep (tales 199 and 200). Now sleep is a time during
which the hero loses his object of desire (as shown in the
previous set) and a time during which the surrogate figure
in this set loses his feet. The loss of the feet is re
lated to the loss of the object of desire; in order to
possess the object of desire, the hero must have complete
control of his "limbs." These two points relate directly
to the paradigmatic structure outlined earlier in which
Column I (the loss of the object of desire) links with
Column III (the inability to perform an act of strength).
Sleep in addition suggests weakness, flaccidity and a time
when the hero in the tales is most vulnerable.
The surrogate, from the psychoanalytic point of view,
stands for the various aspects of the hero. He represents
the manifestation or wish-fulfilling aspects of Ivan's
aspirations and desires. At the same time he stands for
the visual representation of Ivan's thoughts and fears.
Thus the groom's qualities of strength are actually
152
personified in the form of the surrogate figure, while his
fears of union with the bride and inability to fulfill the
acts of strength demanded by her are multiplied and objecti
fied into the footless and blind bogatyri. The new hus
band's fears are thus projected onto the tale narrative in
form of these maimed men.
In the first version, Ivan fails (is unprepared, or
fears) to fulfill the sexual demands and as a result his
surrogate suffers amputation of the feet. Another man is
blinded. In the context of these tales we can equate
amputation with lameness. Psychologically, as we have
already seen, lameness is associated with impotence
(incapacity of inability to perform).^ Blindness is asso
ciated with forbidden sexual knowledge. We note that in
Sophocles's play Oedipus blinds himself once he realizes
the woman he married is his mother. This act of self-
blinding is almost universally interpreted by psychologists
as castration.^
In Greek mythology it is said that Teiresias saw
Athene bathing and/or that he witnessed the coupling of
snakes and was punished for this by blindness and homo
sexuality.^ The snake as a phallic symbol is a link with
the knowledge of the other, the mother or the womb. Because
of its link with the womb, the serpent is thus viewed as a
source of knowledge, the knowledge that is often defined in
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phallic terms.^ And to acquire special knowledge and the
power associated with it, a young man who is to achieve
adulthood (as Ivan or the prince in our tales) must master
this mystery through genital sexuality just as the father
g
or father-surrogate has done.
The surrogate's lameness in this set of tales can be
linked with the Lame and the Crooked of the first set
(tale 129). We said then that the Lame and the Crooked
represent the objectification of a post-circumcisional
trait. In the ritual context if circumcision were in fact
performed during pubertic rites, during which a young man
seeks and acquires a bride, the novice is unable or
incapable of performing the sexual act for a period of time
before and after circumcision.
He, therefore, needs a surrogate figure who will per
form the act for him. Not only is the novice unable to
perform the act because he is undergoing preparation, but
the maiden herself must undergo certain preparation before
she is able to unite with the husband.
We can infer from these tales the following character
istics of the maiden. She is beautiful, clever and proud.
Most prominent among her characteristics, however, is the
demonic strength that she seems to be endowed with,
strength which is suggestive of the mythological qualities
of the Amazonian woman. Her resistance to marry is also
154
embellished in this set; she refuses to renounce her strong
self-will and independence. The only force which can cause
her to relent is a groom who is beautiful and is able to
demonstrate that in fact he is stronger than she is. Her
sexual power seems to equal her beauty and both of these
qualities play an important role throughout the three sets
of tales we examined.^
The maiden appears especially self-willed and demand
ing in her own kingdom. Her resistance to marriage, which
intensifies the groom's own forcefulness, is a test which
the maiden must pass herself, because her resistance proves
her chastity.Let us reconstruct here the psychological
state in a pre-marital male and female novice.
The male novice, having acquired a wife and married,
faces the first night of marriage with a certain appre
hension and anxiety. Freud points out in his "The Taboo
of Virginity" that the anxiety in the primitive man is
aggravated first of all by the primitive man's horror of
blood (associated with defloration and prohibition against
murder) and his fear of first occurrences, which in this
case would be the first intercourse in marriage.The
fear of first occurrences can further be explained in that
during the transitional phase that a novice undergoes ; : v
acts in a submissive or passive role while his surrogate
figure retains the active role. By assuming the passive
155
role, the novice himself avoids the threat of engaging in
first occurrences and thereby neutralizes his anxiety
associated with the first sexual act.
Also expressed in the tales is the fear of engaging
in a first sexual act and the threat of being deprived by
a woman of his strength. The fear of being weakened by a
12
woman or the fear of flaccidity following coitus (which
may be the prototype of everything man fears) is objecti
fied in the tale in the amputated and the blinded surrogate
figures. In fact, these men represent the symbolic
imposition of flaccidity or castration incurred by them in
their association with a woman. Thus, in the tale, the
hero's internal fears are projected onto objects or other
persons. The amputation of the feet and the blindness
reflect the psychological trauma experienced by the novice
in light of the oncoming new situation of marital union.
And as far as the bride is concerned, let us explore what
Freud says of the first sexual act for her.
In primitive societies the act of defloration was
reserved for a person other than her husband and the rite
of defloration might take two steps: first, the deflora
tion by mechanical means and, second, a ceremonial or
symbolic intercourse, again performed by representatives
of the husband or some other figure assigned to the task
13
of fulfilling this ritual function. The explanation
156
given by Freud for this practice is that the maiden's first
infantile sexual wishes are directed toward the father or
the brother. Whoever then engages with her in the initial
coitus takes a chance of incurring the maiden's hatred
toward the one who has taken the place of her father or
brother. The husband is always the substitute for these
primal objects of desire and, therefore, occupies a
14
secondary place. In the tales the husband does indeed
take the secondary role.
The primitive practice of preserving the right of
defloration for the father-in-law, elders or a priest (a
surrogate figure in our tales) indicates an unconscious
acknowledgement of the psychological mechanisms just dis
cussed and functions as a means of alleviating all threats
and anxieties to insure a fortuitous union between the
sexes. In fact, the fear of young men associated with the
initial act of coitus and the girl's desire to preserve
her virginity for her primal object of desire are equally
satisfied and ameliorated in the tales by the figure of the
surrogate who acts in place of the hero. And it is he who
is castrated and at the same time hated by the maiden
because of his initial association with her. And because
of the surrogate's function as it is, the husband may be
spared. The fearful anxieties of the male and the hostile
attitude of the female are absorbed by just these surrogate
157
figures— uncle Katoma, Nikita Kaltoma and Ivan the Naked.
We can now resume our discussion of the second half
of the tale narrative and see how the sexual potency in
the male is restored in the tales and a peaceful union
between the husband and bride achieved.
Recall that the maimed men in all three tales are
abandoned; in tale 198 uncle Katoma is left on a tree stump
in a forest; in tale 199 Nikita Kaltoma is left in a boat;
and in tale 2 00 Ivan the Naked is left in a forest. In
each tale the surrogate meets the other maimed man and
together they spend a period of time in seclusion, usually
in a hut in the forest. This isolation of the surrogate is
like that of Ivan in the first set of tales when, in the
"Three Kingdoms," Ivan is abandoned by his brothers and
left either in a cave or underground; it is suggestive of
a part of the socialization process in ancient Russian
tribal life, during which the novice passes through the
transitional stage as he advances from childhood to
puberty and adulthood.
During this period there appears, in two of the three
tales, a maiden who serves the surrogage but who is herself
ultimately ministered to by Baba Jaga. In one version
Baba Jaga has the girl pick through her hair while she
sucks the girl's breasts. Through these activities Baba
Jaga prepares the girl for sexual activity and marriage.
158
The hair is a familiar symbol for adult sexuality and
therefore represents the old woman's sexual power.The
head of hair is a displacement for the pubic hair, as the
hat was for the male genitals in our earlier discussion.
The sucking of the breasts refers to another pre
paration of the maiden as she approaches puberty and an
age for marriage. We know that in Central African tribes
a girl is ripe for initiation when her breasts begin to
form, and in Australian tribes the breasts of maidens are
rubbed in order to facilitate their growth, especially at
the time when the girls are to become sexually active.
Baba Jaga then prepares the maiden in activities that are
to be associated with her future sexual encounters with
the husband and with her future role as a nursing mother.
In this regard Baba Jaga is a phallic figure, and in this
set of tales her masculine characteristics are exhibited.
Baba Jaga's activity seems to mimic that of the
surrogate in the first half of these tales in that, just
as the surrogate assisted Ivan by performing all the tasks
demanded by the future bride, so does Baba Jaga perform
in the second half of the tales the tasks necessary to
ready the abducted merchant's daughter for marriage to
the surrogate. Recall that the surrogate has an active
role in the first half of the tale, while Ivan is in the
passive role; in the second half of the tale the surrogate
159
assumes the passive role and Baba Jaga the active. The
surrogate then appears as a mirror image of Ivan as he
prepares for union with the opposite sex. The surrogate
marries the merchant's daughter after Baba Jaga prepares
the girl by performing the necessary tasks, just as Ivan
marries Anna the Beautiful after Katoma has performed
several preliminary tasks. Note, however, that in the
first half of the tale the focus is on Ivan's (the groom's)
performance and preparation (mediated by the surrogate),
while the second half focuses on the maiden and her pre
paration (here mediated by Baba Jaga or the dragon). The
association between Baba Jaga, the merchant's daughter and
the surrogate (uncle Katoma) mirrors the association
between uncle Katoma, Ivan and Anna the Beautiful. Thus,
there is a triad in the second half of the tale between
Baba Jaga, the surrogate and the merchant's daughter
analogous to the earlier triad composed of the surrogate,
Ivan and Anna. In each triad there is a mediator; in the
first it is uncle Katoma (in tale 198, and it is Ivan the
Naked in tale 200) and in the second it is Baba Jaga (in
tale 198, and it is the dragon in tale 200) . The role of
the mediator is basically one of preparing the initiate
physically and psychologically for the forthcoming union
with the opposite sex in marriage.
Although the previous two sets of tales seem to focus
160
on the sexual preparation of the male, the focus in our
last set of tales also includes the element of the sexual
preparation of the maiden and her association with another
male figure before she unites with her husband. Tale 200
further supports this notion. The dragon (a transforma
tion of Baba Jaga) here represents a masculine figure; he
changes into a young male when he arrives before the
priest's daughter to torment her. The "torments" are
necessary to prepare the maiden for sexual activity. There
is no clear and direct statement to that effect, but if we
take the activities in the context of the tales, we can
infer that included among these "torments" is the act of
deflowering of the maiden, which is, like circumcision,
associated with the loss of blood and it is implied here
by the fact that in tales 198 and 200 the maidens grow
"thinner and thinner" from the "torments" inflicted by the
dragon and the phallic Baba Jaga.
As the priest's and the merchant's daughter are being
"tormented," the surrogates— one still without his feet and
the other without his eyes— catch the phallic Baba Jaga and
the dragon and want to kill them. At this point, having
"tormented" the girls, the dragon and Baba Jaga offer to
heal the surrogates, i.e., reveal to them the source of
the healing and living water. We know from earlier tales
that the dragon and Baba Jaga are the possessors of the
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water of strength and weakness. In this set, the water is
referred to as the living and the dead water, representing
17
a transformational form of these waters. In addition,
the weak and strong waters and the living and dead waters
are not in opposition; they complement each other, as do
the experiences of weakness and strength and death and
rebirth in the pubertic rites.
The sexual implication of the men restoring their
"eyes" and "limbs" with the healing and living water becomes
clear if we recall that healing and living water and water
of weakness and strength are fluids which stand for any
one of the human secretions. Water as a symbol refers,
among other fluids, to the uterine fluid, water of
18
fertility and semen. In our tales the novices undergo
death and, in order to be reborn again (sexually), acquire
the healing and living water possessed by Baba Jaga and
the dragon. This water represents such uteral fluid, the
reproductive fluid necessary to accomplish this. (The
water and Baba Jaga may stand here for the maternal image.)
What we find, then, is that through the surrogate's
(hero’s or Ivan's) association with the dragon or Baga Jaga,
the men acquire that semen (sexual knowledge or potency)
that basically restores their "limbs" and "eyes."
But before the dragon and Baba Jaga heal the maimed
men, they lure them to the fiery lake and, once healed, the
162
men drop the dragon and Baba Jaga into this same fiery lake
If we take the fire to represent the male principle and
water to represent the female principle, the combination of
the water and fire indeed is associated with the symbolic
19
sexual union, a union or knowledge through which in fact,
the surrogates restore parts of their bodies.
An interesting variant occurs in tale 199. Once the
two maimed men are healed by Baba Jaga's water, they do
not kill the old woman but instead release her. At the
end of the tale, however, the maiden is killed by the
terrible tsar. This variant relates at the psychological
level to the loss or removal of the object of desire. If
Baba Jaga functions as the transformational form of the
mother/bride, then the release of Baba Jaga represents the
fulfillment of the infantile wish of retaining the good
and giving mother, while in fact getting rid of the
sexually powerful and threatening aspect of the mother
that is represented by the future bride, Elena. The fact
that Baba Jaga remains alive at the end of the tale also
suggests the psychological inability of the male to
resolve his conflict regarding the mother, that is, to
give up the mother for the bride.
The unusual turn that takes place at the end of this
variant supports the sociological implications of the
tales. The surrogate, having recovered from the revenge
163
taken upon him by the future bride, marries the merchant's
daughter (tale 198) or the priest's daughter (tale 200)
and then returns to the bride's kingdom to demonstrate to
her that he has recovered his strength and is now even
stronger than before. He exchanges places with the herds
man (the groom, husband) and then takes a cow and pulls its
tail, taking the skin off (tale 198). In tale 200 he grabs
the princess by the hair and pulls her about the yard.
These acts performed by the newly recovered surrogate
(husband) are very similar. In the first example, a cow's
tail is pulled and the skin is taken off; in the second
example the maiden's hair is pulled. The cow seems to refer
to the maiden, and taking the cow's tail and removing the
skin may signify the removal of those masculine aspects of
the bride which the husband, now strong enough, must con-
20
front. The skin may mean here the hymen, as in our
earlier tales the withers referred to the foreskin of the
penis. In tale 200 the pulling of the hair, as earlier the
tail, suggests that the cow's tail is the maiden's hair
which, once again, may refer to the pubic hair. By remov
ing the skin, the surrogate deflowers the bride, and as he
drags her by the hair, he teaches her the subordinate role
that she must play now that she is married.
There is no doubt that the aim of these tales is
didactic, not only for the male but for the female as well.
164
The maiden in tale 199 who refuses to give up her self-
willed independence must pay the consequences for not
learning this lesson; she is killed. And as we look at the
endings of these tales we can see that the maiden, once
unsatisfied, proud and strong, ultimately has been subdued
to accept the subordinate role she must adopt toward her
husband, as she had previously toward her father.
The male has also learned that he too must be sub
ordinate to his elder, his surrogate or his father. And
only once he acquires the sexual knowhow and strength can
he marry and demand that the bride listen to him as he has
listened to his own helpers and surrogates. These lessons
are not learned in Ivan's kingdom or in Anna's or Elena's.
They are learned in the forest in isolation where in a
mock marriage between the groom (Ivan, surrogate) and the
"sister" (merchant's daughter or priest's daughter) the
pre-marital sexual preparation takes place. Following this
trial or symbolic marriage in the forest (as the surrogate
exchanges clothes with the groom and subdues the bride) a
peaceful relationship between the groom and the bride can
take place. Thus, we can conclude that, in fact, it is
the tale hero who actually passes the tests demanded by
the future bride, and it is the hero who is isolated in the
forest, castrated and who marries or engages in sexual
activity with someone else before he unites with his bride.
165
just as the bride, before uniting with her husband, spends
a period of time with a male other than her own husband.
By grounding in this process their fears, anxieties, and
aggressive and hostile impulses, the newly married couple,
purged of these tendencies and reconciled to the social
roles that they are expected to fulfill, can finally enjoy
a peaceful union in marriage.
166
Notes
^Aleksandr N. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki
(Moskva: GINL, 1957), Vol. II, 72-89.
2
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans.
and ed. James Strachey (New York: Avon, 1965), pp. 395-97.
^Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 394 .
^Ernest Jones, M.D., Psycho-Myth, Psycho-History :
Essay in Applied Psychoanalysis (New York; Hillstone,
1974), II, 47.
5
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths; II (Harmondsworth;
Penguin Books, I960), p. 14.
^Robert Graves, The Greek Myths : II, pp. 10-11.
7
Philip E. Slater, The Glory Of Hera (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1971), pp. 95-97.
^Philip E. Slater, The Glory of Hera, p. 99.
9
Recall that the hero is always in search of the most
beautiful wormen: Anna the Beautiful, Elena the Beautiful,
The Peerless Beauty, Anastasia the Beautiful, etc.
^^See comments on the practices of the Samoyeds and the
Koryak people in Ernest Crawley's The Mystic Rose :
A Study of Primitive Marriage (Ann Arbor; Gryphon Books,
1971), vol. II, 82-83.
^^Sigmund Freud, "The Taboo of Virginity," in The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychologica1 Works of
Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey (London:
The Hogarth Press, 1964), vol. XI, 197-198.
12
See Freud's comments on flaccidity following coitus
that may be the prototype of what man fears, in his "The
Taboo of Virginity," pp. 198-199.
167
13
Sigmund Freud, "The Taboo of Virginity," p. 202.
^^Sigmund Freud, "The Taboo of Virginity," p. 203.
15
Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds ; Puberty Rites
and the Envious Male (New York: Collier Books, 1962),
p. 126.
^^Bruno Bettleheim, Symbolic Wounds, pp. 134-143.
17
Vladimir la. Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi
skazki (Leningrad: State Univ. of Lenin, 1946), pp. 179-
181.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Drearns,
pp. 435-437.
19
See Paulo de Carvalho-Neto's comments on water and
coal in his Folklore and PsychOanalysi s', trans. Jacques
M.P. Wilson (Coral Gables, Fla.: Univ. of Miami Press,
1972), pp. 154-155.
20
According to Freud, the names of animals in general
are used as invectives. See his The Interpretation of
Dreams, p. 441.
168
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSION
The six variants we have examined in this study
represent a partial narrative of a dominant Slavic ritual
involving the transition of young members of a community
from a sociological and psychological state of dependency
to one of adulthood. Let us then summarize the socio
logical function of ancient Slavic ritual practices.
During puberty the novice in ancient Slavic society
passes through the "liminal" period during which he rids
himself of all previous ties to infantile objects and
begins to form new ties outside the family. Genital
dominance is established as he undergoes circumcision.
During the course of these events the youth's libido
begins to focus on objects of the opposite sex outside the
family. In addition, during the "liminal" period the nov
ice sheds his previous behaviors and like a sponge
passively absorbs the conventional social behaviors com
mensurate to a member approaching sexual maturity.
As he passes through the "liminal" period, the
novice chooses a bride and marries her by proving himself
physically strong, deft in hunting and clever in mind.
169
Upon marrying her, he returns home, but, just before he
arrives home as a mature individual, he sidesteps and
undergoes one more experience which we can term "mock
marriage," during which he is tested sexually. The ritual
of circumcision which takes, place about this time is a
license then not only for sexual activity but for marriage
as well.
It seems that our tales, although richly embellished,
in essence reflect this dominant rite in a number of ways.
There are significant references in the three sets to cut
ting (loss) of flesh and healing (gain) of flesh, clear
references to circumcision of the males as well as deflora
tion of the females. Often there is the association of the
young male with a female other than his wife, and a similar
association of the young maiden with a male other than her
husband immediately after the marriage, but before it is
consummated in the husband's community. This association
would seem to alleviate the anxieties of mating by allow
ing the novice to experience the first negative aspects
of the union with the opposite sex with a partner other
than the mate.
The process of symbolic death and rebirth of the
novice as he passes into adulthood is reflected in the
basic narrative of the tales. At the end of these tales
he invariably emerges as an aggressive, self-assured
170
individual. The maiden, ironically, is presented as being
aggressive and self-willed at the outset of the tales and
resists at first all suitors who come to claim her. After
her association with the elder member of the community
(for example uncle Katoma in our tales), her transforma
tion is opposite to that of the male novice; she emerges
as a submissive young woman amenable to the wishes of her
husband.
These changes undergone by the main characters are
essential if they are to function in the society, the
norms of which have been programmed into the world of
the myth. And the preserver of these norms in the tales is
invariably an older, more experienced figure or "helper"
who teaches the young what they must know. The situation
in the tales is exactly parallel to that of the young
Slavic initiate; he too must learn society’s rules of
behavior and, when these rules are transferred through the
process of ritual, he too generally has a "helper," an
older person to guide him through. The tales serve then
as a kind of mirror to the listener, both of the format
of how society will transfer its values to him/her and of
the content through the specific counsel and actions of
the helper.
It becomes clear then that while the tales reflect
sociological practices among the Slavs, they are also
171
intended to serve a didactic function in the society.
These tales in effect help the young members of the com
munity learn their roles as they pass from one stage to
another and become integrated into the social fibre. They
also fulfill another, if not more important then surely
more mysterious, role--that of psychologically integrating
the individual. Let us here summarize this aspect of the
tales.
Besides meeting the social demands, the novice must
also meet his own psychological demands that surface just
as he is about to undergo the maturing process. These
demands are associated with the individual's search for
identity as he passes from one stage to the next. No
doubt the very mystery associated with circumcision, the
fearful anticipation of pain and loss, the fear of union
with the opposite sex, and accompanying fear of sexual
inadequacy, accumulate in the novice's mind. The novice
must deal not only with these fears and anxieties but also
with his long standing infantile fears and desires regard
ing his parents that have all surfaced at this crucial
period of transition. Such is the magnitude of the task
before the novice's personality may rest relatively con
flict free.
What can help to relieve these psychological pres
sures? As the novice listens to the myth narrative (or
172
participates in the ritual), he is allowed to give his
feelings and anxieties full reign. And as he does so, he
slowly begins to feel absorbed into the action of the myth
narrative because his unconscious conflicts are in fact
being objectified and given life in the myth. Thus,
within the myth, archaic and incommunicable images and
largely unconscious fears and anxieties acquire a concrete
form, thereby allowing the novice to deal with them, albeit
indirectly and vicariously, and neutralize them.
Implications of these psychological conflicts are
treated in each tale. For example, the youngest son Ivan
confronts his father (the Raven) and then unites with his
mother, thus allowing him to actually satisfy his deep
"Oedipal" desires. The maiden too satisfies her desire of
preserving her first sexual act for the father (Koscej or
a dragon in the tales) and by satisfying her "Oedipal"
desires, she is free to unite sexually with her husband.
A dynamic relationship between the sociological and
psychological elements throughout the ritual of initation
as reflected in the tales may be proposed. The socio
logical function of the ritual practice (and the tale
narrative) is to communicate social norms and integrate
new members of the community into the social fibre. In
addition, the ritual and the tale restructure incommunica
ble representations and through the symbolic function
17 3
give meaning to complex psychological mechanisms that
require such restructuring during the transitional period.
Thus, the psychological needs force social recognition of
them, so that they too can be satisfied and so that an
equilibrium between personal and social needs can be
established.
The interaction between the sociological and psycho
logical function of these tales can be better appreciated
if we point to our paradigmatic structure of binary
opposites. The four columns depict the psychological and
sociological structure as it is reflected in the tales.
For example, the loss of the object of desire and inability
to perform reflect the socially unacceptable behavior for
the young male, since in columns I and III the loss of
object of desire and inability to act are correlations
which reflect, at the psychological level, the child's
infantile reasoning of being unable to fulfill the
demands of the mother and, at the sociological level, the
social interdiction against incest. The loss of the
maiden later on in the tale, and again the hero's inability
to act, refer to the original fear of the mother which is
now transferred to the bride. At the same time the youth
is unable to perform because he must not engage in sexual
activity before circumcision and during the first several
days of marriage, when in fact circumcision takes place
174
and his wounds are healing. Again, the loss/inability
correlation relates here to social instruction in that the
maiden, as the mother earlier, is inaccessible to him, i.e.
she is forbidden. We see by this example how through the
symbolic function the archaic perceptions relating to the
mother are linked with the current real perceptions re
lating to the bride.
The other correlation relates to recuperation of the
object of desire and ability to perform (columns II and
IV). The novice first of all must satisfy his unconscious
desire to get rid of the father (kill Koscej )_ and then
unite with the mother (maiden). In the tale, the youngest
son, in fact finds his mother or maiden (recuperation of
the lost object) and gets rid of the father (he is able
to perform and outperform the father sexually). Then, once
he has gotten rid of the father, the mother reveals to the
son the secret of the healing waters. By finding out the
secret through symbolic copulation, the son is consequently
healed and fit to perform the sexual act with his bride.
The son's association with Baba CTaga (mother) then leads
to his regeneration of limbs and ability to perform, where
upon we can assume that libido is transferred to the sexual
object outside the family, the bride. Thus, by performing
the various tasks to meet the social demands implicit in
the transitional period, the novice resolves the uncon
scious psychological conflicts and absorbs the socially
175
acceptable behaviors. We notej that by symbolically per
forming tasks in a ritual or vicariously participating
in these acts through the tale narrative, the members of
the community in effect commit what, if carried out in
reality, would be a social transgression. By symbolically
satisfying their repressed instinctual desires, the novices
consumate incest, a transgression which in ancient Slavic
community was symbolically encouraged during the "liminal"
stage of the rites of passage. By acting out or symbol
ically participating in this transgression, the infantile
desires and feelings are satisfied and neutralized for a
time, allowing the novice to focus his or her attention on
matters of future life within the community. In fact,
following the ritual, the novice is at peace; he or she
gives up the parent (surrogate) and begins the life of a
husband or a wife.
This "liminal" stage during which we said the novice
can do anything to satisfy his desires and fears is a
period that we can say is akin to modern man's dreams,
during which man also is able to accomplish and do any
thing— a period when socially unacceptable behavior still
takes place. The only difference is that in ancient
societies the community shared in the communal dream
(ritual), while today, although our individual dreams may
be very similar to those of primitive man, we experience
176
and satisfy our needs alone through our own personal
dreams.
When we relate all of the above material to Greimas's
study of Russian tales, his definition of two orders of
narrative becomes clearer. We note that in fact the
syntagmatic order entails a sequence of pairs : destinateur,
destinataire (the father and the hero in the tales),
adjuvant, opposant (the helper and the villain in the
tales), and object, subject (the maiden and the hero in
the tales). As the tale narrative is historicized, i.e.,
as we follow the sequential line of narrative, these pairs
undergo transformation, so that the father assumes at
times the role of the helper or a villain and finally, at
the end of the tale, as the son acquires sexual power he
assumes the role previously held by the father. In this
regard the irreversible succession of behaviors in the
tales is just as irreversible in the social structure of
ancient Slavs.
As far as the paradigmatic structure is concerned,
as the transformation of the couples continues, the par
adigmatic semes in fact turn from negative ones into
positive ones. The sème cbnsequehce and its antecedent
include, respectively, recuperation of the lost object and
ability to perform. These functions are the direct
opposites of their earlier manifestation in the tales when
Ill
they appear as negative functions: loss of the object of
love and inability to perform. Thus, with the progression
of the tales we see a continuous transformation not only
of the pairs of dramatis personae, but also of trans
formation of negative functions into positive ones.
We can conclude then that the loss and inability re
flected in the tales relate to social demands, the demands
that the son relinquish the mother and avoid incest and
at the same time refrain from uniting with his bride
before an appropriate time interval. The recuperation of
the object and ability to perform, on the other hand, are
enforced and encouraged once the necessary tasks and
events have taken place.
178
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APPENDIXES
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Culic, Dasha Dragica (author)

Core Title A structural and psychoanalytic analysis of the symbolic ritual process in three sets of Russian folk tales

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,Social Sciences

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c37-66677

Unique identifier UC11633290

Identifier DP71521.pdf (filename),usctheses-c37-66677 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier DP71521.pdf

Dmrecord 66677

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Culic, Dasha Dragica

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA