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Tsar Saltan history of creation. Who wrote the Tale of Tsar Saltan? Thirty-three heroes

Tsar Saltan history of creation. Who wrote the Tale of Tsar Saltan? Thirty-three heroes

04.03.2020

Which of us in childhood did not read the amazing melodious tales of A.S. Pushkin. One of them - . The tale was written in 1831 and appeared in the public press a year later.

In a letter to his brother in November 1824, Pushkin wrote:

“... In the evening I listen to fairy tales - and thereby reward the shortcomings of my damned upbringing. What a delight these stories are! Each is a poem!

Making an analysis of The Tale of Tsar Saltan, we see that it is written in the genre of a literary fairy tale, since it has an author. The genre features of the fairy tale include the following.

The presence of magic
Adventures of heroes (swimming in a barrel, transformations, flights across the sea to the kingdom of Saltan);
Help from outside. First, Prince Gvidon helps the princess, and then the princess Swan helps him.
Episodes are repeated 3 times. Trinity is generally characteristic of Russian fairy tales;
Victory of good over evil.

The tale begins with the fact that three young girls were sitting in a room, and, doing spinning, dreamed, as all girls dream, of a handsome prince. In dreams, the girls expressed their abilities. But it so happened that the king overheard their conversation. Seeing the younger one, who said that she would bear him a son, he chose her as his wife, and took the other two sisters to the palace. One as a weaver and the other as a cook. This part of the narrative in the composition serves as the beginning.

Those girls who did not become the wives of the king were terribly jealous of their sister and decided to slander her. After the wedding, the king immediately went to war. And the young queen bore the prince. And when the time came for the birth of the baby, the sisters and another of their accomplices, the mother-in-law Babaricha, slandered the young queen, writing to him that she had given birth to "an unknown little animal." They changed letters twice. And as a result, the boyars in the palace received an order written by envious accomplices to throw the queen with the baby into the sea. In this part of the tale, the basis of the conflict, which marks evil.

Next comes the magic. Fate took care of the young queen. By the power of maternal prayer they were thrown onto the island. The baby grew by leaps and bounds, and finally, he was able to squeeze the bottom out of the barrel in which they were thrown.

In search of game, he witnessed the attack of a kite on a white swan. He shot at the kite and thereby freed Lebedushka from death. She told him that the prince had killed the sorcerer and promised to thank him.

The swan kept her word. She gave him a small principality with monasteries, churches, and subordinates, an amazing squirrel that gnawed nuts with golden shells and emerald kernels, and forced her brothers to serve the prince.

And then she herself married Prince Guidon.

The envious sisters hoped, each in the depths of their souls, that the tsar would pay attention to one of them, and therefore hindered the desire of Tsar Saltan to visit the miracle island. But when the merchants told about the beautiful Swan Princess, and even more so, conveyed the invitation of Prince Gvidon and the reproach that the king did not keep his word, he decided not to listen to anyone else and ordered to equip the ships to go on a trip. On an amazing island, he met his wife, the queen, and his son. To celebrate, he forgave the envious, letting them go home. Thus good triumphed over evil, and justice prevailed.

The composition of the fairy tale is related to the threefold repetition of the plot, which is characteristic of folk tales. Pushkin used the pictorial folk language in creating the work. And tried to avoid borrowing. He was proud that in the work he used only one borrowed word - the fleet.

The work contains fairy-tale characters (the Swan Princess, Chernomor, a sorcerer hiding under the guise of a kite). From the folk tradition, the name of the island is borrowed - Buyan. The language of the poems is saturated with epithets (in blue, bitter, tight bow, green).

THE TALE OF TSAR SALTAN,

ABOUT HIS SON, THE GLORIOUS AND MIGHTY BOGATYR

PRINCE GUIDON SALTANOVICH AND

ABOUT THE BEAUTIFUL SWAN PRINCESS

Three maidens by the window

Were spinning late in the evening.

"If I were a queen, -

One girl says

That is for the whole baptized world

I'd make a feast."

- "If I were a queen, -

Her sister says

That would be one for the whole world

I wove canvases."

- "If I were a queen, -

The third sister said, -

I would be for the father-king

She gave birth to a rich man."

Just had time to say

The door creaked softly

And the king enters the room,

The sides of that sovereign.

During the entire conversation

He stood behind the fence;

Speech last throughout

Loved him.

"Hello, red girl, -

He says - be a queen

And give birth to a hero

Me by the end of September.

Well, you, dove sisters,

Get out of the lighthouse.

Ride after me

Following me and my sister:

Be one of you weaver

And another cook."

The tsar-father came out into the canopy.

Everyone went to the palace.

The king did not gather for a long time:

Got married the same evening.

Tsar Saltan for an honest feast

Sat down with the young queen;

And then honest guests

On an ivory bed

Laid young

And left alone.

The cook is angry in the kitchen

The weaver is crying at the loom -

And they envy

The sovereign's wife.

And the young queen

Do not put things off in the distance,

Got it from the first night.

At that time there was a war.

Tsar Saltan, saying goodbye to his wife,

Sitting on a good horse,

She punished herself

Save it, love it.

Meanwhile, how far away

Beats long and hard

The time of birth is coming;

God gave them a son in arshin,

And the queen over the child,

Like an eagle over an eagle;

She sends a letter with a messenger,

To please my father.

And the weaver and the cook,

With the matchmaker Babarikha

They want to let her know

They tell you to take over the messenger;

They themselves send another messenger

Here's what word for word:

"The queen gave birth in the night

Not a son, not a daughter;

Not a mouse, not a frog,

And an unknown little animal."

As the king-father heard,

What did the messenger bring him?

In anger he began to wonder

And he wanted to hang the messenger;

But softened this time

He gave the messenger the following order:

"Waiting for the return of the queen

For a legal solution."

A messenger rides with a diploma

And finally arrived.

And the weaver and the cook

With the matchmaker Babarikha

They tell him to rob him;

Drunk messenger drink

And in his empty bag

Shove another letter -

And brought a drunken messenger

On the same day, the order is:

"The tsar orders his boyars,

Wasting no time,

And the queen and the offspring

Secretly thrown into the abyss of waters."

There is nothing to do: the boyars,

Having mourned about the sovereign

And the young queen

A crowd came to her bedroom.

Declared the royal will -

She and her son have an evil fate,

Read the order aloud

And the queen at the same time

They put me in a barrel with my son,

Prayed, rolled

And they let me into Okiyan -

So ordered de Tsar Saltan.

The stars are shining in the blue sky

In the blue sea the waves are whipping;

A cloud is moving across the sky

The barrel floats on the sea.

Like a bitter widow

Cries, the queen beats in her;

And a child grows there

Not by days, but by hours.

The day has passed - the queen cries ...

And the child hurries the wave:

"You, my wave, wave?

You are playful and free;

You splash wherever you want

You sharpen sea stones

You drown the shore of the earth,

Raise the ships

Do not destroy our soul:

Throw us out on land!"

And the wave listened:

Right there on the shore

The barrel was taken out lightly

And she stepped back slowly.

The mother with the baby is saved;

She feels the earth.

But who will take them out of the barrel?

Will God leave them?

The son rose to his feet

He rested his head on the bottom,

Struggled a little:

"Like a window in the yard

Shall we do it?" he said.

Kick the bottom out and get out.

Mother and son are now free;

They see a hill in a wide field;

The blue sea all around

Oak green over the hill.

Son thought: good dinner

We would, however, need.

He breaks at the oak branch

And in tight bends the bow,

Silk cord from the cross

Pulled on an oak bow,

I broke a thin cane,

I sharpened it with a light arrow

And went to the edge of the valley

Look for game by the sea.

He only comes to the sea

So he hears like a groan ...

It can be seen that the sea is not quiet:

Looks - sees the matter famously:

The swan beats among the swells,

The kite rushes over her;

That poor thing is crying

The water around is muddy and whipping ...

He has spread his claws

The bloody nibble pricked up...

But just as the arrow sang -

I hit a kite in the neck -

The kite shed blood in the sea.

The prince lowered his bow;

Looks: the kite is drowning in the sea

And not a bird's cry groans,

The swan swims around

The evil kite pecks,

Death is near,

It beats with a wing and drowns in the sea -

And then to the prince

Says in Russian:

"You are the prince, my savior,

My mighty deliverer

Don't worry about me

You won't eat for three days

That the arrow was lost in the sea;

This grief is not grief.

I will repay you well

I will serve you later:

You did not deliver the swan,

Left the girl alive;

You didn't kill a kite

Shot the sorcerer.

I will never forget you:

You will find me everywhere

And now you come back

Don't worry and go to sleep."

The swan flew away

And the prince and the queen,

Spending the whole day like this

We decided to lie down on an empty stomach.

Here the prince opened his eyes;

Shaking the dreams of the night

And wondering in front of you

He sees a big city

Walls with frequent battlements,

And behind the white walls

Church tops gleam

and holy monasteries.

He soon wakes the queen;

She gasps! .. "Will it be? -

He says, I see:

My swan amuses itself."

Mother and son go to the city.

Just stepped on the fence

deafening chime

Rising from all sides

People are pouring towards them,

The church choir praises God;

In golden carts

A lush courtyard meets them;

Everyone praises them loudly

And the prince is crowned

Princely cap, and the head

They proclaim over themselves;

And in the midst of their capital,

With the permission of the queen,

On the same day he began to reign

And he called himself: Prince Guidon.

The wind is blowing on the sea

And the boat is urging;

He runs in waves

On swollen sails.

The sailors marvel

Crowding on the boat

On a familiar island

A miracle is seen in reality:

The new golden-domed city,

Pier with a strong outpost -

Cannons from the pier are firing,

The ship is ordered to stop.

Guests arrive at the outpost

Prince Gvidon invites them to visit,

He feeds and waters them

And he orders to keep the answer:

"What are you, guests, bargaining

And where are you going now?"

The sailors replied:

"We've traveled all over the world

traded sables,

Chornoburshi foxes;

And now we're out of time

We're going straight east

Past the island of Buyana,

To the realm of glorious Saltan..."

The prince then said to them:

"Good luck to you, gentlemen,

By sea by Okiya

To the glorious Tsar Saltan;

Kudos to him from me."

The guests are on their way, and Prince Gvidon

From the shore with a sad soul

Accompanies their long-distance run;

Look - over flowing waters

The white swan is swimming.

Why are you as quiet as a rainy day?

Saddened by what?"

She tells him.

The prince replies sadly:

"Sorrow-longing eats me,

Defeated the young man:

I would like to see my father."

Swan to the prince: "That's the grief!

Well listen: do you want to go to sea

Follow the ship?

Be, prince, you are a mosquito.

And waved its wings

Splashed water noisily

And splashed him

Everything from head to toe.

Here he has shrunk to a point.

Turned into a mosquito

Flew and squeaked

The ship overtook the sea,

Slowly went down

On the ship - and huddled in the gap.

The wind blows merrily

The ship runs merrily

Past the island of Buyana,

To the kingdom of the glorious Saltan,

And the desired country

It's visible from afar.

Here the guests came ashore;

Tsar Saltan calls them to visit,

And follow them to the palace

Our darling has flown.

He sees: all shining in gold,

Tsar Saltan sits in the chamber

On the throne and in the crown

With a sad thought on his face;

And the weaver and the cook,

With the matchmaker Babarikha

Sitting around the king

And look into his eyes.

Tsar Saltan planting guests

At your table and asks:

"Oh you gentlemen,

How long did you travel? Where?

Is it okay overseas or is it bad?

And what is the miracle in the world?

The sailors replied:

"We have traveled all over the world;

Life beyond the sea is bad,

In the light, what a miracle:

In the sea, the island was steep,

Not private, not residential;

It lay on an empty plain;

A single oak tree grew on it;

And now stands on it

New city with a palace

With golden-domed churches,

With towers and gardens,

And Prince Gvidon sits in it;

He sent you a bow."

Tsar Saltan marvels at the miracle;

He says: "If I live,

I will visit a wonderful island,

I'll stay at Guidon's."

And the weaver and the cook,

With the matchmaker Babarikha

They don't want to let him go

Wonderful island to visit.

"Already a curiosity, well, right, -

Winking at others slyly,

The cook says -

The city is by the sea!

Know that this is not a trifle:

Spruce in the forest, under the spruce squirrel,

Squirrel sings songs

And he gnaws all the nuts,

And nuts are not simple,

All shells are golden

The cores are pure emerald;

That's what they call a miracle."

Tsar Saltan marvels at the miracle,

And the mosquito is angry, angry -

And the mosquito got stuck

Aunt right in the right eye.

The cook turned pale

Died and crumpled.

Servants, in-laws and sister

With a cry they catch a mosquito.

"You damned moth!

We love you!.." And He is in the window

Yes, calmly in your lot

Flew across the sea.

Again the prince walks by the sea,

He does not take his eyes off the blue of the sea;

Look - over flowing waters

The white swan is swimming.

"Hello, my beautiful prince!

And Alexander Ptushko is not only the same age as the 20th century (the director was born on April 6, 1900), but also one of the most significant directors who devoted himself to the genre of film fairy tales. And in his, as it turned out, not at all close limits, the director managed to prove himself both as an innovator and as an inventor.

Ptushko's film is not the first time that Pushkin's fairy tale inspires other artists to create a separate work. The best-known examples are Rimsky-Korsakov's opera of the same name, first performed in 1900. There is a 1943 cartoon by Valentina and Zinaida Brumberg created during the war, shot using advanced rotoscoping technology, when all the scenes were first played by real actors and filmed, and then processed, outlined and painted by animators.

The screen version of Ptushko is thus the second screen version of Pushkin's fairy tale, but at the same time the first, solved by means of feature cinema.

And here all Ptushko's signature techniques are fully used. Rich, detailed and large-scale scenery and extras. Pushkin's poems . Picturesque landscapes and heroes, as if descended from the canvases of Vasnetsov. Humor, a childish, almost infantile view of things... and wisdom gleaned not only from one's own experience, but also from the historical memory of an entire people.

The same applies to artistic images. Ptushko actively uses combined shooting, creating with small means the effect of a large-scale naval battle of Prince Gvidon (one of the first truly stellar roles of Oleg Vidov). Or the feeling of uncle Chernomor and his troops being submerged under water. And it’s worth the tsar Saltan (Vladimir Andreev, the leading actor of the Yermolova Theater, who worked for many years as the main director in it) to get angry when he learns that the tsarina (Larisa Golubkina, Shurochka Azarova from the Hussar Ballad) gave birth in the night to a son, not then the daughter, like lions carved from stone, resting on the armrest of the throne, literally comes to life thanks to tricks with editing. They turn into well-made up poodles in order to gallop away in fear, and in the next frame they naturally shed a tear. It costs nothing for Birdie to make his heroes soar across the sky, just by running the film in the opposite direction. He can also achieve a fabulous effect by the simplest methods: by rewarding a white swan with the queen's thin voice, and a squirrel extracting a pure emerald from nuts, almost with an operatic contralto. And all this to the ironic music of the composer Gavriil Popov, known, among other things, for his work on the film Chapaev.

As always, in addition to a whole scattering of magnificent images, Ptushko's "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" exists outside of time and era. There is nothing in it from the new, radical and impetuous times of the 60s. Like the rest of Ptushko's tales, it remains at the same time advanced in terms of cinematography and through and through traditional, firmly lying on the foundation of folklore and thus completely in tune with both Pushkin's idea and his poetic style. "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" is the director's penultimate film, for which he received a prize at the All-Union Film Festival in 1968, held in Leningrad.

Media at Wikimedia Commons

"The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of his glorious son and mighty bogatyr Prince Gvidon Saltanovich and the beautiful Swan Princess" (a shortened version of the title - "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" ) - a fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin, written in 1831, and first published the following year in a collection of poems.

The tale is dedicated to the story of the marriage of Tsar Saltan and the birth of his son, Prince Gvidon, who, thanks to the intrigues of his aunts, ends up on a desert island, meets a sorceress there - the Swan Princess, with her help becomes a powerful ruler and reunites with his father.

Plot

Talking among themselves, the three sisters at the spinning wheel dream about what each of them would do if she suddenly became a queen. The first of them promises to arrange a feast for the whole world, the second - to weave canvases, and the third - "for the father-king" to give birth to a hero. At this moment, Tsar Saltan himself enters the room, who even before that had overheard the conversation of the sisters under the window. He proposed marriage to the third of them, and to the other two - the places of a weaver and a cook in the palace.

When the king fights in distant lands, the queen gives birth to a son - Tsarevich Guidon. However, out of envy, the sisters write to him that she gave birth to him "an unknown little animal" and, although the king orders to wait until his return, hiding behind a fake letter with an order, they dump the mother with the newborn into the sea inside the barrel. The barrel takes out to a desert island, and Gvidon comes out of it as an adult young man. To feed his mother, he makes a bow and arrow and goes to the sea to hunt. There he saves a white swan from a kite, and she promises to thank him. A city appears on an empty island, whose ruler Gvidon becomes (lines 1-222).

Merchants swim past the island. Upon arrival in the kingdom of Saltan, they tell him about the wonderful city and invite him on behalf of Prince Gvidon to visit. The prince himself, having turned (with the help of a swan) into a mosquito, sails with the merchants to his father and listens to this conversation. But one of the envious sisters, a cook, tells Saltan about a new wonder of the world: a singing squirrel that lives under a spruce and gnaws nuts with emeralds and golden shells. Hearing about a new miracle, the king refuses to go to Guidon. For this, the mosquito stings the cook in the right eye. Guidon tells the swans about the squirrel, and she moves it to his city. For the squirrel, the prince builds a crystal house.

The next time, the merchants tell Saltan about the squirrel and pass on a new invitation from Guidon. The prince in the form of a fly listens to this conversation. The weaver tells about 33 heroes emerging from the sea, led by uncle Chernomor. Saltan, having heard about a new miracle, again refuses to travel, for which the fly stings the weaver in the left eye. Prince Gvidon tells the swans about 33 heroes, and they appear on the island.

And again, the merchants tell Saltan about the miracles and convey a new invitation. Gvidon in the form of a bumblebee overhears. Svatya Baba Babarikha tells about the princess who eclipses "the light of God during the day", with a month under her scythe and a burning star in her forehead. Saltan, having heard about a new miracle, for the third time refuses to travel. For this, the bumblebee stings Babarikha in the nose, taking pity on her eyes. (lines 223-738).

After returning, Gvidon tells the swans about the beautiful princess and says that he wants to marry her. She again fulfills Gvidon's wish, because the princess with a star in her forehead is herself. As a result, Tsar Saltan sets off on his journey to Buyan Island. Upon arrival, he recognizes his wife in the queen, and his son and daughter-in-law in the young prince and princess. To celebrate, he forgives the evil sisters and the matchmaker. A merry feast is arranged for the whole world, and everyone lives happily and richly (lines 739-1004).

Bilibin's illustrations

This is a short schematic note, which is most likely a summary of a literary, probably Western European source (as evidenced by such details as “oracle”, “boat”, “storm”, declaration of war, etc.). It is difficult to understand this schematic record due to the confusion in the characters. (Azadovsky comments: “The king, dying childless, is undoubtedly the king of the country in which the exiled queen arrived with her son,“ The princess gives birth to a son ”is the new wife; the second time under the“ princess ”the first wife of the king is called, and under the“ queen ” - the mother of the prince).

Chisinau record

The king has no children. He listens to the three sisters: if I were a queen, then I would [build a palace] every day, etc. When I was a queen, I would start ... The next day, the wedding. Envy of the first wife; war, king at war; [the princess gives birth to a son], messenger etc. The king dies childless. Oracle, storm, boat. They elect him king - he rules in glory - a ship is sailing - Saltan is talking about a new sovereign. Saltan wants to send ambassadors, the princess sends her trusted messenger, who slanders. The king declares war, the queen recognizes him from the tower

The next brief record of the tale was made by Pushkin in 1824-1825, during his stay in Mikhailovsky. This entry goes back, as it is supposed, to the nanny Arina Rodionovna and is among the entries known under the conditional name “ Tales of Arina Rodionovna».

Synopsis of 1824

“A certain king planned to marry, but did not find anyone to his liking. He once overheard a conversation between three sisters. The eldest boasted that the state would feed with one grain, the second that she would dress with one piece of cloth, the third that from the first year she would give birth to 33 sons. The king married the younger one, and from the first night she suffered.

The king went to fight. His stepmother, jealous of her daughter-in-law, decided to destroy her. After three months, the queen successfully resolved 33 boys, and 34 was born by a miracle - silver legs knee-deep, golden arms to the elbows, a star on her forehead, a month in the clouds; sent to inform the king. The stepmother detained the messenger on the way, made him drunk, and replaced the letter in which she wrote that the queen had resolved not with a mouse, not with a frog - an unknown little animal. The king was very sad, but with the same messenger he ordered to wait for his arrival for permission. The stepmother again changed the order and wrote a command to prepare two barrels: one for 33 princes, and the other for the queen with a wonderful son - and throw them into the sea. That's how it's done.

The queen and the prince swam for a long time in a tarred barrel, and finally the sea threw them to the ground. The son noticed it. “You are my mother, bless me so that the hoops fall apart and we come out into the light.” “God bless you, baby.” - The hoops burst, they went to the island. The son chose a place and, with the blessing of his mother, suddenly built a city and began to live and rule in it. A ship is passing by. The prince stopped the shipbuilders, examined their pass, and, having learned that they were going to Sultan Sultanovich, the Turkish sovereign, turned into a fly and flew after them. The stepmother wants to catch him, he does not give in any way. The guests-shipmen tell the tsar about the new state and about the wonderful boy - silver legs and so on. “Ah,” says the king, “I will go to see this miracle.” “What a miracle,” the stepmother says, “this is a miracle: there is an oak tree by the sea of \u200b\u200blukomoriya, and there are golden chains on that oak tree, and a cat walks along those chains: it goes up - it tells fairy tales, it goes down - it sings songs." - The prince flew home and, with the blessing of his mother, moved a wonderful oak tree in front of the palace.

New ship. The same again. The same conversation with the Sultan. The king wants to go again. “What a miracle this is,” the stepmother says again, “this is what a miracle is: there is a mountain beyond the sea, and on the mountain there are two hogs, hogs are squabbling, and gold and silver are pouring between them,” and so on. Third ship and so on. Also. “What a miracle, but a miracle: 30 youths come out of the sea exactly equal in voice and hair, and in face and height, and they come out of the sea for only one hour.”

The princess grieves about her other children. The prince, with her blessing, undertakes to find them. “Pour your milk, mother, you knead 30 cakes.” - He goes to the sea, the sea stirred up, and 30 young men came out and an old man with them. And the prince hid himself and left one cake, and one of them ate it. “Ah, brothers,” he says, “until now we have not known mother's milk, but now we have.” - The old man drove them into the sea. The next day they went out again, and they all ate a cake, and they knew their brother. On the third day they went out without the old man, and the prince brought all his brothers to his mother. Fourth ship. The same. The stepmother has nothing else to do. Tsar Sultan goes to the island, recognizes his wife and children and returns home with them, and the stepmother dies.

Initially, in 1828, when writing the fairy tale, Pushkin may have wanted to alternate poetry with prose, but this idea was later abandoned. The original edition of the beginning (14 lines of poetry and a prose continuation) dates from this year. (Although there is a version that the prose fragment is material for further work. As a result, the tale was written in four-foot trochaic with paired rhyming (see below).

1828 entry

[Three maidens by the window]
Spinning late at night
If I were a queen
One girl says
That is one for all the people
I would wove canvases -
If I were a queen
Says her ses<трица>
That itself would be for the whole world
I prepared a feast -
If I were a queen
The third girl said
I am for the father of the king
I would give birth to a rich man.

As soon as they had time to utter these words, the door [of the room] opened - and the king entered without a report - the king had a habit of walking late around the city and eavesdropping on the speeches of his subjects. With a pleasant smile, he approached the younger sister, took her by the hand and said: be a queen and give birth to me a prince; then, turning to the eldest and middle, he said: you be a weaver at my court, and you a cook. With this word, not allowing them to come to their senses, the king whistled twice; the courtyard was filled with warriors and courtiers, and the silver carriage drove up to the very porch, the tsar got into it with the new queen, and the brother-in-law<иц>ordered them to be taken to the palace - they were put in carts and everyone galloped.

The tale was completed in the summer-autumn of 1831, when Pushkin lived in Tsarskoye Selo at the dacha of A. Kitaeva. During this period, he was in constant communication with Zhukovsky, with whom he entered into competition, working on the same "Russian folk" material. Zhukovsky suggested that each of them write a poetic adaptation of a folk tale. He then worked on fairy tales about the Sleeping Princess and Tsar Berendey, and Pushkin composed The Tale of Tsar Saltan and Baldu.

Several manuscripts have survived. The fairy tale was whitewashed (according to the note in the autograph "PBL" No. 27) on August 29, 1831. The draft for a revision of lines 725-728 was probably made in mid-September. And the clerk's copy of the tale was somewhat revised by Pletnev and Pushkin after reading it by Nicholas I in September - December 1831.

Publication

The tale was first published by Pushkin in the collection "Poems by A. Pushkin" (part III, 1832, pp. 130-181).

Some changes, probably of a censorial nature, have been introduced into the text of the first edition of 1832. They are sometimes restored in modern editions - from reading the clerk's copy, as amended by the author and Pletnev, in the censored manuscript.

The note at the end of the 1st edition is curious: “Amendment. IN Tale of Tsar Saltan and so on. instead of a word Okian erroneously printed everywhere Ocean"(that is, when printing, the fabulousness of this okiyan was mistakenly eliminated).

There was no single lifetime publication of this tale.

Text Feature

Perhaps, at first, Pushkin wanted to alternate poetry and prose, but in the end the tale was written in four-foot chorea with a pair of rhymes: in those days, “imitations” of folk poetry were often written in this way.

As Pushkinists note, in this tale “he takes a new approach to the problem of poetic form for the transmission of“ folk tales ”. If "The Bridegroom" (1825) was written in the form of a ballad verse, then "Saltan" was already written in four-foot chorea with adjacent rhymes - with alternation of male and female; size, which has since become firmly established in literary practice for the transmission of works of this kind.

The poem contains 996 lines and is divided typographically into 27 separate parts of unequal length (from 8 to 96 lines each).

The structure of the fairy tale “is distinguished by extreme genre richness. “Tsar Saltan” is a fairy tale doubly, and this duality acts as the main structure-forming principle: two folklore plots are merged, two versions of one of these plots are combined, characters are doubled, functions are paired, parallel motivations are introduced, realities are duplicated. In The Tale of Tsar Saltan, two fairy-tale plots that exist separately in folklore are superimposed on each other: one is about an innocently persecuted wife, the other is about a maiden who contributes to the victory of her betrothed. Pushkin's fairy tale tells about how Tsar Saltan lost and then found his wife and son, and about how young Gvidon met the swan princess, his betrothed. As a result, not just a sum - each of the heroes became happy both “horizontally” (the tsar, despite the machinations of ill-wishers, again finds his wife, Prince Gvidon finds his princess), and “vertically” (father and son find each other, the tsar and the queen gets a daughter-in-law). Joy multiplies with joy.” The principle of doubling used in the construction of the plot as a whole is also valid in the construction of individual images - the actions of the characters (for example, a messenger), mentions of a squirrel, etc.

Folklore and literary sources of the plot

The long title of the tale imitates the titles of lubok narratives common in the 18th century, perhaps primarily “The Tale of the Brave, Glorious and Mighty Knight and Bogatyr Bove”.

"The Tale of Tsar Saltan" - a free adaptation of the folk tale " ” (see below), which is believed to have been written down by Pushkin in various versions (see above). The poet did not follow exactly any of them, freely changed and supplemented the plot, while maintaining the folk character of the content. Bondy writes that Pushkin freed the fairy tale "from plot confusion (the result of spoiling the text in oral transmission), from coarse non-artistic details introduced by narrators." Also notice the influence of the fairy tale " " (see below). The first Russian publications of both used varieties of fairy tale plot date back to the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. The most interesting variants are in the collections of E. N. Onchukov (“Northern Tales” No. 5) and M. Azadovsky (“Tales of the Verkhnelensky Territory”, No. 2). Some of the recorded texts, in turn, reflect the acquaintance of storytellers with the text of Pushkin's fairy tale. The lubok text of this tale is also known, and the lubok “ The Tale of the Three Queen Sisters” was very popular already at the beginning of the 19th century. There is no doubt that Pushkin read printed texts of folk and book tales - their small collection of them was preserved in his library, and there is a mention that among them was a fairy tale "", which has the same plot.

Bondi points out that Pushkin used the theme of the fate of the slandered wife and the successful resolution of this fate, traditional in folk tales. The second theme introduced into the tale by Pushkin himself is the folk image of an ideal, happy maritime state. In addition, “the theme of a baby’s journey through the waves, in a basket, chest, box is one of the most common themes of folklore, including Russian. These wanderings are a metaphor for the "afterlife" wanderings of the setting sun in the other world. Another researcher writes that the poet combines the motifs of fairy tales about a slandered wife (wonderful son) and a wise (things) virgin. See above for the structure and doubling of plots.

As Pushkinists point out, the poet adheres very closely to the oral tradition, and only proper names ( Saltan, Guidon) are taken from other sources.

Knee-deep in gold, elbow-deep in silver

Russian folktale " Knee-deep in gold, elbow-deep in silver” was recorded by Alexander Afanasiev in 5 versions. In general, there are many versions of the story about wonderful children in European languages, there are also Indian, Turkish, African and recorded from American Indians. "Russian variants - 78, Ukrainian - 23, Belarusian - 30. The plot is often found in collections of fairy tales of non-Slavic peoples of the USSR in variants close to East Slavic". The fairy tale "" is similar to them.

4 entries of Afanasyev's fairy tale

In the first of these options, the sisters replace the first and second babies, wonderful in appearance (“there is a sun in the forehead, and a moon on the sides of the head”) with a kitten and a puppy, and only the third child turns out to be in the barrel with the mother. Moreover, the queen's eyes are gouged out, and her husband, whose name is Ivan Tsarevich, marries his older sister. The child also grows at an amazing speed, but he performs miracles, including the return of his mother's sight, by saying "at the command of a pike." The boy magically transports his brothers to the island and they live wonderfully. Beggar elders passers-by tell their father about wonderful young men, he jumps to visit them, reunites with his family, and rolls his new wife (insidious sister) into a barrel and throws him into the sea.

In another version, the spouses are called Ivan Tsarevich and Martha Tsarevna (she is also the daughter of the king), she gives birth to three wonderful sons (“knee-deep in gold, elbow-deep in silver”), but the villain in the tale is Baba Yaga, who pretends to be a midwife and replaces children with puppies, taking the boys to her. The next time, the queen gives birth to six sons at once, and manages to hide one from Baba Yaga. A mother with a hidden baby is thrown by her husband in a barrel into the sea; on a wonderful island, everything is arranged according to their desire. The poor old men tell their father-tsarevich about a wonderful island and a young man with golden legs, he wants to go to visit him. However, Baba Yaga says that she has many such youths, there is no need to go for such. Upon learning of this, the queen guesses that these are her sons, and the youngest son takes them from the dungeon of Baba Yaga. Hearing from the beggars that nine wonderful young men now live on the island, the father goes there and the family is reunited.

In the third version, the heroine is the youngest daughter of Tsar Dodon, Marya, who promises to give birth to sons (“knee-deep legs are in silver, but the elbow of the hand is in gold, the sun is red in the forehead, the moon is bright on the back of the head”). Twice she gives birth to three sons, her sister replaces them with puppies and throws them on a distant island. For the third time, the queen manages to hide the only boy, but she and her son are thrown into the sea in a barrel. The barrel sticks to that same island and the mother is reunited with her sons. After that, the family goes to their father and tells how he was deceived.

In the fourth version of three babies born in a row (“knee-deep in silver, chest-deep in gold, the moon is bright on the forehead, stars are frequent on the sides”), with the help of a midwife, the sister turns into doves and releases them into the open field. The fourth child is born without any miraculous signs, and for this the tsar, whose name is Prince Ivan, puts his wife and child in a barrel. They end up on an island where miraculous items (purse, steel, flint, hatchet and club) help them build a city. Merchants passing by tell their father about a wonderful island, but his sister distracts him with a story that somewhere there is “a mill - it grinds itself, it blows itself and throws dust for a hundred miles, a golden pillar stands near the mill, a golden cage hangs on it, and walks along To that pillar is a learned cat: he goes down - he sings songs, he rises up - he tells fairy tales. Thanks to wonderful helpers, this appears on the island. The merchants tell their father about a new miracle, but his sister distracts him with a story that somewhere there is a “golden pine, birds of paradise sit on it, they sing royal songs.” The prince, who has arrived in the form of a fly, stings his sister on the nose. Then the story repeats itself: the king is distracted by a story that somewhere there are “three brothers relatives - knee-deep in silver, chest-deep in gold, the moon was bright on the forehead, there are often stars on the sides”, and the insidious sister-narrator does not know that these are the older nephews she abducted. The prince in the form of a mosquito bites his aunt on the nose. He finds the brothers, takes them to his island, then the merchants tell the king about them, and as a result, the family is reunited. (The variant was recorded after the publication of Pushkin's fairy tale and bears traces of its influence, and not vice versa).

Singing tree, living water and bird talker

Fairy tale " Singing tree, living water and bird talker”(Aarne-Thompson No. 707) was recorded by Afanasiev in two versions. “The motif of imprisoning a slandered royal wife in a chapel (imprisonment in a tower, walling up in a wall) has a correspondence in Western, and in Belarusian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian versions. Just like the version of “Wonderful Children”, which is especially characteristic of East Slavic folklore - “Knee-deep in gold ...”, the version (variant) of “The Singing Tree and the Talking Bird” developed on the basis of the East Slavic fairy tale tradition, enriched with peculiar details.

2 posts by Afanasiev

In the first version, the king overhears the conversation of three sisters, marries the youngest. The sisters replace the queen's three children born in a row (two boys and a girl) with puppies, and put them in a pond in a box. The husband puts the queen on the porch to beg, having changed his mind about executing her. The children are raised by the royal gardener. The brothers, growing up, go, provoked by a certain old woman, to look for a talking bird for their sister, a melodious tree and living water, and die ("If blood appears on the knife, then I will not be alive!"). The sister goes to look for them and revives them. They plant a wonderful tree in the garden, then the king comes to visit them, the family is reunited, including the queen.

In the second version, the “guilty” queen is imprisoned in a stone pillar, and the children (“two sons - elbow-deep in gold, knee-deep in silver, the moon was bright in the back of the head, and the sun is red in the forehead, and one daughter, who smiles - pink flowers will fall, and when she cries, expensive pearls) is brought up by the general. The brothers are looking for living water, dead water and a talking bird for their sister. Then everything happens the same as in the first version, with the exception that the king arrives at the house of his children to marry a girl, a famous beauty, and the talking bird tells him that this is his daughter.

The same tale was published in Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane (see The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird .

Green Bird and Princess Belle-Etoile

This story about a “slandered mother” and “wonderful children” is extremely common throughout the world, and in Russian versions similar to the two described above.

The oldest recorded European texts are Italian. The fairy tale belongs to 1550-1553 "Lovely green bird» ( L'Augel Belverde Straparola's Pleasant Nights (night IV, tale 3), which played a significant role in the spread of fairy tales about wonderful children in Western Europe until the 18th century.

The Tale of Straparola

The king overhears the conversation of three sisters: one boasts to quench the thirst of the whole court with one glass of wine, the other - to weave shirts on the whole court, the third - to give birth to three wonderful children (two boys and one girl with golden braids, with a pearl necklace around her neck and a star in her forehead) . The king marries the youngest. In the absence of the king, she gives birth, but envious sisters replace the children with puppies. The king orders his wife to be imprisoned and the children to be thrown into the river. The abandoned children are saved by the miller. Having matured, they learn that the miller is not their father, they go to the capital, they get three miracles - dancing water, a singing apple and a green soothsayer bird. During the search for these items, misadventures await them - turning into stones, etc., but their sister saves them. The green bird she got later reveals the whole truth to the king.

The motives of the tale of Straparola are used in the courtly tale of the collection "Fairy Tales" ("Contes de fees") Baroness d'Onoy about Princess Belle Etoile 1688 ( "Princess Beautiful Star"), where the daughter with a wonderful star becomes the main character, as well as in the play by Carlo Gozzi “ green bird» (1765). In France, folk tales about this bird are known under names like "L'oiseau de vérité", "L'oiseau qui dit tout".

In 1712 a translation was printed in French «Thousand and one nights», made by Gallan, which contained a similar tale "The story of two sisters who were jealous of the youngest" (« Histoire des deux sœurs jalouses de leur cadette"). At the same time, there is no such text in the Arabic original, although some Asian analogues are found for it. Thanks to this French "translation", the fairy tale about wonderful children was published many times and became well known in Europe.

The motif of imprisoning heroes in a barrel appears in another tale by Straparola - “ Pietro the fool"(Night III, tale 1), as well as in the one belonging to the same type" Peruonto"- one of the fairy tales" Pentameron» (1634) Giambattista Basile (Peruonto, I-3).

The Canterbury Tales

It is also believed that the story resembles the second part "The Lawyer's Tale" ("The Man of Law's Tale") from " Canterbury Tales» (1387) Chaucer. Pushkin could only know it in a French translation.

Constanta, the daughter of the emperor of Rome, becomes the wife of the Syrian sultan, who, for the sake of this marriage, agrees to convert to Christianity. At the wedding feast, the Sultan's mother kills the entire Roman embassy and her own son, as well as all the recently baptized courtiers. Constanta is left alive, but is allowed in an empty boat at the behest of the waves. As a result, her ship docks at a castle in Northumberland, which is run by a butler and his wife, who give her shelter. A certain knight burns with passion for Constanza, but because she refuses him, he kills the butler's wife and puts a knife in Constanza's hands. The owner of the castle, King Allah, administers the court, and when the knight swears his innocence, he is struck by God's wrath. Alla is baptized and marries the beautiful Constance, although his mother Donegilda is against it. When Constanta gives birth to a son, Mauritius, the mother-in-law makes the messenger drunk and replaces the letter - they say, the queen gave birth to a monster. The king orders to wait until his return, but the mother-in-law again makes the messenger drunk, and in a false letter orders Constanza to be put with the child in the same boat. The returned king investigates, tortures the messenger, and executes his mother. Rook with Constance and a child, meanwhile, is found by a Roman senator who takes her to her homeland (moreover, the senator's wife is her own aunt, but she does not recognize her niece). Alla arrives in Rome for repentance, the senator takes a young boy to him for a feast, the resemblance to which catches Alla's eyes. The couple find each other and reconcile, then Constanta opens up to her father, the Roman emperor. Moreover, all the miracles in the story are carried out with the help of prayer.

The borrowing of this plot directly from Chaucer was proved in the work of E. Anichkova. She writes that Pushkin wrote his fairy tale on the basis of his acquaintance with the works of Russian and foreign folklore (Caucasian, Tatar), where there are many plots that are very similar to Chaucer's story of a lawyer, but that, having read it even before his own work was completed , Pushkin allegedly "recognized in it the plot of his fairy tale and finished it, bringing it closer to the English version of the story about Constance."

However, Anichkova's work caused negative criticism by M. K. Azadovsky and R. M. Volkov, who denied the direct borrowing of the plot from Chaucer, but noted the similarity with him of certain parts of Pushkin's fairy tale.

Sources of character images

Saltan and Gvidon

The name of another hero of Pushkin's fairy tale - Guidon- the author borrowed from the lubok cycle about Bova the King, which was a Russian interpretation of the French knightly romance. Bova's father is called Guidon there. In the same popular prints, the opponent of Bova, the father of the hero Lukaper, also appears - Saltan, Sometimes Saltan Saltanovich(as in the fairy tale written down by Pushkin). The Italian name "Guido" - cf. French guide - means "leader", "leader". “Pushkin could not help but pay attention to the meaning of this name, especially since in the popular prints about Bova, as in the French novel, the opposition of the “Western” Guidon to the “Eastern” Saltan is of significant importance.

Swan Princess

With the rescue of the girl, Pushkin enriched the plot of the slandered mother and the wonderful son described above - this detail is not found in any folklore or author's version of this tale.

Although in folk tales the story owes a happy ending to a bird - but it is a magical and sometimes green talking bird, and not a werewolf sorceress. The Swan Princess is entirely the author's image. He "absorbed, on the one hand, the features of the Russian Vasilisa the Wise, on the other, Sophia the Wise (the images, however, ascending to the same archetype)". “The Swan Princess possesses not only the divine or magical wisdom of the organizer of the world (Prov. 8-9), she also has ordinary worldly wisdom, an incredible motif for folklore.”

Pushkin could have taken the theme of the “Swans” proper from the well-known to him collection of Kirsha Danilov - in the epic about the hero Potyk there are lines:

And I saw a white swan
She was all gold through the pen,
And her little head is wrapped in red gold
And seated with pitched pearls (...)
And it was a little bit to lower the arrow -
A white swan will be prophesied to him,
Avdotyushka Likhovidievna:
“And you Potok Mikhailo Ivanovich,
Don't shoot me, white swan,
I won't be nice to you anytime."
She went out on a steep bank,
Turned into a soul red maiden

Pushkin conveyed to her appearance some of the features of a wonderful boy from a fairy tale he recorded (“the moon shines under a scythe, and a star burns in her forehead”) or a heroine from the fairy tale of Baroness d’Onois. In addition, he made her the sister of 33 sea heroes, who in the recording of the tale are the brothers of the hero (see below). The connection with the sea element can also be traced in the fact that in Russian folk tales Vasilisa the Wise is the daughter of the sea king.

"A maiden with a golden star on her forehead" is a favorite image of Western European folklore, which is also found among the Brothers Grimm. The fact that there is some influence of a Western source is evidenced by the fact that in the draft Pushkin uses the word “sorceress” about her.

Thirty-three heroes

Babarikha

The weaver and the cook are present in many tales of this typology, but Babarikha appears only in Pushkin. He took it from folklore: Babarikha is a pagan character in Russian conspiracies, who has some sunny features. “Babarikha holds a “hot hot frying pan”, which does not burn her body, does not take it.” Azadovsky points out that Pushkin took this name from the well-known to him collection of Kirsha Danilov, from a playful song about a fool: “ You are a good woman, / Baba-Babarikha, / Mother Lukerya / Sister Chernava!.

Her punishment is a bitten nose, as she turned up her nose, stuck it in other people's business. The weaver and the cook were twisted, “In the Russian language, the word ‘crooked’ not only means one-eyed, but is also opposed to the word ‘straight’, just like the truth is false; this opposition is archetypal. If blindness in myth is a ghost of wisdom (Themis has a bandage on her eyes so that she does not pay attention to the external, vain), good eyesight is a sign of intelligence, then one-eyedness is a sign of cunning and rapacity (one-eyed pirates, Cyclops, Likho are also one-eyed) " .

It is not clear what exactly her family relationship with Guidon is, although he regrets "his grandmother's eyes." Perhaps she is the mother of Tsar Saltan, then she is the mother-in-law of the two sisters of the queen.

Squirrel

In folk versions of the tale, the miracles that appear on the island are completely different. The motif of a squirrel gnawing golden nuts with emerald kernels is completely alien to Russian folklore, the source of its appearance is not clear.

In oral editions, there is usually a mention of a cat telling tales or singing songs: this detail is in Pushkin's recording, but he used it for the "Prologue" to "

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"" (a shortened version of the name - " The Tale of Tsar Saltan”) is a fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin, written in 1831 and first published the following year in a collection of poems.

The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of his glorious and mighty son Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the beautiful Swan Princess

The tale is dedicated to the story of the marriage of Tsar Saltan and the birth of his son, Prince Gvidon, who, due to the intrigues of his aunts, ends up on a desert island, meets a sorceress there - the Swan Princess, with her help becomes a powerful ruler and reunites with his father.

Talking among themselves, the three sisters at the spinning wheel dream about what each of them would do if she suddenly became a queen. The first of them promises to arrange a feast for the whole world, the second - to weave canvases, and the third - "for the father-king" to give birth to a hero. At this moment, Tsar Saltan himself enters the room, who even before that had overheard the conversation of the sisters under the window. He invited the third of them to become his wife, and the other two - a weaver and a cook at court.

While the king fought in distant lands, the queen gave birth to a son - Tsarevich Guidon. However, the sisters of the young mother, out of envy, wrote to the father of the newborn, as if the wife had given birth to "an unknown little animal." Contrary to the expectations of the deceivers, the king is in no hurry to deal with his wife, but orders to wait with the decision until his return. Women, however, do not let up: they replace the genuine message from the king with a fake one, which allegedly contains an order " and the queen and the offspring are secretly thrown into the abyss of water". The boyars, not suspecting deceit, place the mother and baby in a barrel and throw them into the sea. The barrel takes out to a desert island, and Gvidon comes out of it as an adult young man. To feed his mother, he makes a bow and arrow and goes to the sea to hunt. There he saves a white swan from a kite, and she promises to thank him. A city appears on an empty island, and Gvidon becomes its ruler.

Merchants swim past the island and are surprised to see on a previously uninhabited island "a new golden-domed city, a pier with a strong outpost." Gvidon receives the merchants as dear guests, and at the end of the conversation conveys his regards to Tsar Saltan. Upon arrival in the kingdom of Saltan, they tell him about the wonderful city and invite him on behalf of Prince Gvidon to visit.

The prince himself, having turned into a mosquito with the help of a swan, sails with the merchants to his father and listens to this conversation. But one of the envious sisters, a cook, tells Saltan about a new wonder of the world: a singing squirrel that lives under a spruce and gnaws nuts with emeralds and golden shells. Hearing about this, the king refuses to go to Guidon. For this, the mosquito stings the cook in the right eye.

After returning to his possessions, Gvidon tells the swans about the squirrel, and she moves her to his city. For the squirrel, the prince builds a crystal house.

And again, the merchants tell Tsar Saltan about miracles and convey a new invitation. Gvidon in the form of a bumblebee overhears. Svatya Baba Babarikha tells about the princess who eclipses "the light of God during the day", with a month under her scythe and a burning star in her forehead. Hearing about this miracle, Saltan for the third time refuses to travel. For this, the bumblebee stings Babarikha in the nose, taking pity on her eyes.

After returning, Gvidon tells the swans about the beautiful princess and says that he wants to marry her. She again fulfills Gvidon's wish, because the princess with a star in her forehead is herself. Merchants once again come to Tsar Saltan, tell him about all the changes on the island and again convey Gvidon's invitation with a reproach: "He promised to visit us, but has not yet gathered."

As a result, Tsar Saltan sets off on his journey to Buyan Island. Upon arrival, he recognizes his wife in the queen, and his son and daughter-in-law in the young prince and princess. To celebrate, he forgives the evil sisters and the matchmaker, after which he lets them go home. A merry feast is arranged for the whole world, and everyone lives happily and richly.

Basically, Pushkin used the folk tale " ”(see below), written by him concisely in two or three different versions (depending on whether the prose entry of 1828 is considered a draft or not). The work also used characters borrowed from other folk tales - for example, the magical image of the Swan Princess, which has a response in the image of Vasilisa the Wise (see below).

It is believed that Pushkin makes the first entry related to the plot of a future fairy tale in 1822 in Chisinau. (Although there is an opinion that this is a later (1824-1825 or 1828) insert in the Chisinau notebook).

This is a short schematic entry, which is most likely a summary of a literary, probably Western European source (as evidenced by such details as “oracle”, “boat”, “storm”, declaration of war, etc.). It is difficult to understand this schematic record due to the confusion in the characters. (Mark Azadovsky comments: “The tsar dying childless is undoubtedly the tsar of the country in which the exiled tsarina arrived with her son,“ the princess gives birth to a son ”is the new wife; the second time under the“ princess ”the first wife of the king is called, and under the“ “- the mother of the prince”).

Chisinau record

The king has no children. He listens to the three sisters: if I were a queen, I would [build a palace] every day, etc…. When I was a queen, I would start ... The next day, the wedding. Envy of the first wife; war, king at war; [the princess gives birth to a son], messenger etc. The king dies childless. Oracle, storm, boat. They elect him king - he rules in glory - a ship is sailing - Saltan is talking about a new sovereign. Saltan wants to send ambassadors, the princess sends her trusted messenger, who slanders. The king declares war, the queen recognizes him from the tower

The next brief record of the tale was made by Pushkin in 1824-1825, during his stay in Mikhailovsky. This record goes back, as it is supposed, to the nanny Arina Rodionovna and is among the records known under the conditional name " Tales of Arina Rodionovna».

“Some king planned to marry, but did not find anyone to his liking. He once overheard a conversation between three sisters. The eldest boasted that the state would feed with one grain, the second that she would dress with one piece of cloth, the third that from the first year she would give birth to 33 sons. The king married the younger one, and from the first night she suffered.

The queen and the prince swam for a long time in a tarred barrel, and finally the sea threw them to the ground. The son noticed it. “You are my mother, bless me so that the hoops fall apart and we come out into the light.” “God bless you, baby.” - The hoops burst, they went to the island. The son chose a place and, with the blessing of his mother, suddenly built a city and began to live and rule in it. A ship is passing by. The prince stopped the shipbuilders, examined their pass, and, having learned that they were going to Sultan Sultanovich, the Turkish sovereign, turned into a fly and flew after them. The stepmother wants to catch him, he does not give in any way. The guests-shipmen tell the tsar about the new state and about the wonderful boy - silver legs and so on. “Ah,” says the king, “I will go to see this miracle.” - “What a miracle,” the stepmother says, “this is a miracle: an oak tree stands by the sea of \u200b\u200blukomoriya, and there are golden chains on that oak tree, and a cat walks along those chains: it goes up - it tells fairy tales, it goes down - it sings songs." - The prince flew home and, with the blessing of his mother, moved a wonderful oak in front of the palace.

The princess grieves about her other children. The prince, with her blessing, undertakes to find them. “Pour your milk, mother, you knead 30 cakes.” - He goes to the sea, the sea stirred up, and 30 young men came out and an old man with them. And the prince hid and left one cake, and one of them ate it. “Ah, brothers,” he says, “until now we have not known mother's milk, but now we have.” - The old man drove them into the sea. The next day they went out again, and they all ate a cake, and they knew their brother. On the third day they went out without the old man, and the prince brought all his brothers to his mother. Fourth ship. The same. The stepmother has nothing else to do. Tsar Sultan goes to the island, recognizes his wife and children and returns home with them, and the stepmother dies.

The tale was completed in the summer-autumn of 1831, when Pushkin lived in Tsarskoye Selo at the dacha of A. Kitaeva. During this period, he was in constant communication with Zhukovsky, with whom he entered into competition, working on the same "Russian folk" material. Zhukovsky suggested that each of them write a poetic adaptation of a folk tale. He then worked on fairy tales and, and Pushkin composed The Tale of Tsar Saltan and Balda.

Several manuscripts have been preserved [K. 1] . The fairy tale was whitewashed (according to the note in the autograph "PBL" No. 27) on August 29, 1831. The draft for a revision of lines 725-728 was probably made in mid-September. And the clerk's copy of the tale was somewhat revised by Pletnev and Pushkin after reading it by Nicholas I in September - December 1831.

Title page of Pushkin's collection, in which the tale was first published (1832).

The tale was first published by Pushkin in the collection "Poems by A. Pushkin" (part III, 1832, pp. 130-181).

As Pushkinists note, in this tale “he takes a new approach to the problem of poetic form for the transmission of“ folk tales ”. If "Groom" (1825) was written in the form of a ballad verse, then "Saltan" was already written in four-foot chorea with adjacent rhymes - with alternation of male and female; size, which has since become firmly established in literary practice for the transmission of works of this kind.

The poem contains 1004 lines and is typographically divided into 27 separate stanzas of unequal length (from 8 to 96 lines each).

The long title of the tale imitates the titles of lubok narratives common in the 18th century, perhaps primarily “The Tale of the Brave, Glorious and Mighty Knight and Bogatyr Bove”.

"The Tale of Tsar Saltan" - a free adaptation of the folk tale " Knee-deep in gold, elbow-deep in silver”(see below), which is believed to have been written down by Pushkin in various versions (see above). The poet did not follow exactly any of them, freely changed and supplemented the plot, while maintaining the folk character of the content. Bondy writes that Pushkin freed the fairy tale "from plot confusion (the result of spoiling the text in oral transmission), from coarse non-artistic details introduced by narrators." Also notice the influence of the fairy tale " " (see below). The first Russian publications of both used varieties of fairy tale plot date back to the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. The most interesting variants are in the collections of E. N. Onchukov (“Northern Tales” No. 5) and M. Azadovsky (“Tales of the Verkhnelensky Territory”, No. 2). Some of the recorded texts, in turn, reflect the acquaintance of storytellers with the text of Pushkin's fairy tale. The lubok text of this tale is also known, and the lubok “ The Tale of the Three Queen Sisters” was very popular already at the beginning of the 19th century. There is no doubt that Pushkin read printed texts of folk and book tales - a small collection of them was preserved in his library, and there is a mention that among them was a fairy tale "", which has the same plot.

As Pushkinists point out, the poet adheres very closely to the oral tradition, and only proper names ( Saltan, Guidon) are taken from other sources.

Russian folktale " Knee-deep in gold, elbow-deep in silver"Recorded by Alexander Afanasiev in 5 versions. In general, there are many versions of the story about wonderful children in European languages, there are also Indian, Turkish, African and recorded from American Indians. "Russian variants - 78, Ukrainian - 23, Belarusian - 30. The plot is often found in collections of fairy tales of non-Slavic peoples of the USSR in variants close to East Slavic". The fairy tale "" is similar to them.

In the first of these options, the sisters replace the first and second babies, with wonderful appearance (“the sun is in the forehead, and the moon is on the back of the head, on the sides of the star”) with a kitten and a puppy, and only the third child turns out to be in the barrel with the mother. Moreover, the queen's eyes are gouged out, and her husband, whose name is Ivan Tsarevich, marries his older sister. The child also grows at an amazing speed, but he performs miracles, including the return of his mother's sight, by saying "at the command of a pike." The boy magically transports his brothers to the island and they live wonderfully. Beggar elders passers-by tell their father about wonderful young men, he jumps to visit them, reunites with his family, and rolls his new wife (insidious sister) into a barrel and throws him into the sea.

In the fourth version of three babies born in a row (“knee-deep in silver, chest-deep in gold, the moon was bright on the forehead, there are often stars on the sides”), with the help of a midwife, the sister turns into doves and releases them into an open field. The fourth child is born without any miraculous signs, and for this the tsar, whose name is Ivan Korolevich, puts his wife and child in a barrel. They end up on an island where miraculous items (purse, steel, flint, hatchet and club) help them build a city. Merchants passing by tell their father about a wonderful island, but his sister distracts him with a story that somewhere there is “a mill - it grinds itself, it blows itself and throws dust for a hundred miles, a golden pillar stands near the mill, a golden cage hangs on it, and walks along To that pillar, a learned cat: goes down - sings songs, rises up - tells fairy tales. Thanks to wonderful helpers, this appears on the island. The merchants tell their father about a new miracle, but his sister distracts him with a story that somewhere there is a “golden pine, birds of paradise sit on it, they sing royal songs.” The prince, who has arrived in the form of a fly, stings his sister on the nose. Then the story repeats itself: the king is distracted by a story that somewhere there are “three brothers relatives - knee-deep in silver, chest-deep in gold, the moon was bright on the forehead, there are often stars on the sides”, and the insidious sister-narrator does not know that these are the older nephews she abducted. The prince in the form of a mosquito bites his aunt on the nose. He finds the brothers, takes them to his island, then the merchants tell the king about them, and as a result, the family is reunited. (The variant was recorded after the publication of Pushkin's fairy tale and bears traces of its influence, and not vice versa).

Fairy tale " Singing tree, living water and a talking bird”(Aarne-Thompson No. 707) was recorded by Afanasiev in two versions. “The motif of imprisoning a slandered royal wife in a chapel (imprisonment in a tower, walling up in a wall) has a correspondence in Western, and in Belarusian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Estonian, and Lithuanian versions. Just like the version of “Wonderful Children”, which is especially characteristic of East Slavic folklore - “Knee-deep in gold ...”, the version (variant) of “The Singing Tree and the Talking Bird” developed on the basis of the East Slavic fairy tale tradition, enriched with peculiar details.

In the first version, the king overhears the conversation of three sisters, marries the youngest. The sisters replace the queen's three children born in a row (two boys and a girl) with puppies, and put them into a pond in a box. The husband puts the queen on the porch to beg, having changed his mind about executing her. The children are raised by the royal gardener. The brothers, growing up, go, provoked by a certain old woman, to look for a talking bird for their sister, a melodious tree and living water, and die ("If blood appears on the knife, then I will not be alive!"). The sister goes to look for them and revives them. They plant a wonderful tree in the garden, then the king comes to visit them, the family is reunited, including the queen.

This story about a “slandered mother” and “wonderful children” is extremely common throughout the world, and in Russian versions similar to the two described above.

The oldest recorded European texts are Italian. The fairy tale belongs to 1550-1553 "Beautiful green bird"(fr. "L'Augel Belverde") Straparola's collection "Pleasant Nights" (night IV, tale 3), which played a prominent role in the spread of fairy tales about wonderful children in Western Europe until the 18th century.

The king overhears the conversation of three sisters: one boasts of quenching the thirst of the whole court with one glass of wine, the other - to weave shirts on the whole court, the third - to give birth to three wonderful children (two boys and one girl with golden braids, with a pearl necklace around her neck and a star in her forehead) . The king marries the youngest. In the absence of the king, she gives birth, but envious sisters replace the children with puppies. The king orders his wife to be imprisoned and the children to be thrown into the river. The abandoned children are saved by the miller. Having matured, they learn that the miller is not their father, they go to the capital, they get three miracles - dancing water, a singing apple and a green soothsayer bird. During the search for these items, misadventures await them - turning into stones and so on, but their sister saves them. The green bird she got later reveals the whole truth to the king.

The motives of the tale of Straparola are used in the courtly tale of the collection "Fairy Tales"(French "Contes de fées") Baroness d'Onoy about the Princess of Belle-Etoile 1688 ( "Princess Beautiful Star"), where the daughter with a wonderful star becomes the main character, as well as in the play by Carlo Gozzi " green bird» (1765). In France, folk tales about this bird are known under names like "The bird that tells the truth" ("L'oiseau de vérité", "L'oiseau qui dit out"). Also, some similar motifs can be traced in the fairy tale of Baroness d'Onois "Dolphin" ( Le Dauphin), which in turn go back to the tale of Pietro the Fool from the collection of Straparola. A brief retelling of the fairy tale "Dolphin" is contained in the second part of the first volume of the "General Library of Novels" (Pushkin's library had a complete set - all 112 double volumes of this literary encyclopedia).

In 1712 a translation was printed in French "A Thousand and One Nights", made by A. Gallan, in which there was a similar tale "The story of two sisters who were jealous of the younger"(fr. "Histoire des deux sœurs jalouses de leur cadette"). At the same time, there is no such text in the Arabic original, although some Asian analogues are found for it. Thanks to this French "translation", the fairy tale about wonderful children was published many times and became well known in Europe. A. N. Afanasiev, V. V. Sipovsky and E. E. Anichkova have already paid attention to this parallel. The well-known folklorist M. K. Azadovsky even named Western European plots among the main literary sources of Pushkin’s work: “all these texts were, no doubt, well known to Pushkin, in whose library was Gallan’s translation of 1001 nights and the collection of d’Onois (fr. d 'Aulnoy)" .

Pushkin, according to researchers, was indisputably aware of the tales of Baroness d'Onois and " Thousand and one nights”, and the text of the prose entry of 1828 is very close to the last of them [K. 2]. The American fairy tale critic S. Thompson, the well-known compiler of the Aarne-Thompson Fairy Tale Index (AaTh), wrote that in general “this is one of the eight or ten most famous world stories. A cursory look at the available reference works reveals 414 versions, suggesting that a more thorough search could lead to the discovery of several hundred more versions.

Constanta, the daughter of the emperor of Rome, becomes the wife of the Syrian sultan, who, for the sake of this marriage, agrees to convert to Christianity. At the wedding feast, the Sultan's mother kills the entire Roman embassy and her own son, as well as all the recently baptized courtiers. Constanta is left alive, but is allowed in an empty boat at the behest of the waves. As a result, her ship docks at a castle in Northumberland, which is run by a butler and his wife, who give her shelter. A certain knight burns with passion for Constanza, but because she refuses him, he kills the butler's wife and puts a knife in Constanza's hands. The owner of the castle, King Alla, administers the court, and when the knight swears his innocence, he is struck by God's wrath. Alla is baptized and marries the beautiful Constance, although his mother Donegilda is against it. When Constanta gives birth to a son, Mauritius, the mother-in-law makes the messenger drunk and replaces the letter - they say, the queen gave birth to a monster. The king orders to wait until his return, but the mother-in-law again makes the messenger drunk and, in a false letter, orders Constanza to be put with the child in the same boat. The returned king investigates, tortures the messenger, and executes his mother. Meanwhile, a Roman senator finds a boat with Constance and a child, who takes her to her homeland (moreover, the senator's wife is her own aunt, but she does not recognize her niece). Alla arrives in Rome for repentance, the senator takes a young boy to him for a feast, the resemblance to which catches Alla's eyes. The couple find each other and reconcile, then Constanta opens up to her father, the Roman emperor. Moreover, all the miracles in the story are carried out with the help of prayer.

The borrowing of this plot directly from Chaucer was proved in the work of E. Anichkova. She writes that Pushkin wrote his fairy tale on the basis of his acquaintance with the works of Russian and foreign folklore (Caucasian, Tatar), where there are many plots that are very similar to Chaucer's story of a lawyer, but that, having read it even before his own work was completed , Pushkin allegedly "recognized in him the plot of his fairy tale and finished it, bringing it closer to the English version of the story about Constance."

Pushkin adheres very closely to the oral tradition, and only proper names ( Saltan, Guidon) are taken from other sources. In the preparatory notes of 1822 and 1824, the tsar already appears Saltan: there is a theory that this is the "Syrian Sultan" - the first husband of Chaucer's heroine. Outside the context of a proper name, “Tsar Saltan” is the official wording used in the diplomatic correspondence of Russian tsars and the then documentation of ambassadorial and other orders in relation to the sultans of Islamic countries (“Tursky Tsar Saltan” is the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire).

The name of another hero of Pushkin's fairy tale - Guidon- the author borrowed from the lubok cycle about Bova the King, which was a Russian interpretation of the French knightly romance. Bova's father is called Guidon there. In the same popular prints, the opponent of Bova, the father of the hero Lukaper, also appears - Saltan, Sometimes Saltan Saltanovich(as in the fairy tale written down by Pushkin). The Italian name "Guido" - cf. French guide - means "leader", "leader". “Pushkin could not help but pay attention to the meaning of this name, especially since in the popular prints about Bova, as well as in the French novel, the opposition of the “Western” Guidon to the “Eastern” Saltan is of significant importance.

With the rescue of the girl, Pushkin enriched the plot of the slandered mother and the wonderful son described above - this detail is not found in any folklore or author's version of this tale.

Although in folk tales the story owes a happy ending to the bird - but this is a magical and sometimes green talking bird, and not a werewolf sorceress. The Swan Princess is entirely the author's image. He "absorbed, on the one hand, the features of the Russian Vasilisa the Wise, on the other, Sophia the Wise (the images, however, ascending to the same archetype)." “The Swan Princess possesses not only the divine or magical wisdom of the organizer of the world (Prov. 8-9), she also has ordinary worldly wisdom, an incredible motif for folklore.”

Pushkin could have taken the theme of the “Swans” proper from the collection of Kirsha Danilov, well known to him - in the epic about the hero Potyk there are lines about the hero’s acquaintance with his future wife:

And I saw a white swan
She was all gold through the pen,
And her little head is wrapped in red gold
And seated with pitched pearls (...)
And it was a little bit to lower the arrow -
A white swan will be prophesied to him,
Avdotyushka Likhovidievna:
“And you Potok Mikhailo Ivanovich,
Don't shoot me, white swan,
I won't be nice to you anytime."
She went out on a steep bank,
Turned into a soul red maiden

Pushkin conveyed to her appearance some features of a wonderful boy from a fairy tale he recorded (“the moon shines under a scythe, and a star burns in her forehead”) or a heroine from the fairy tale of Baroness d’Onois. In addition, he made her the sister of 33 sea heroes, who in the recording of the tale are the brothers of the hero (see below). The connection with the sea element can also be traced in the fact that in Russian folk tales Vasilisa the Wise is the daughter of the sea king.

"A maiden with a golden star on her forehead" is a favorite image of Western European folklore, which is also found in the Brothers Grimm. The fact that there is some influence of a Western source is evidenced by the fact that in the draft Pushkin uses the word “sorceress” about her.

It is curious that in Scandinavia, among the Arabs, Persians and Hindus (as well as China, Japan), you can find a swan maiden - a character from a fairy tale from the other world. In Scandinavian mythology, there are swan maidens - Valkyries, who have the ability to take the form of swans.

33 heroes appear in the second synopsis of the folk tale written down by Pushkin, possibly from Arina Rodionovna. However, there they are the brothers of the main character, the prince, are kept under the supervision of a nameless uncle, and only after tasting mother's milk (mixed into bread) do they remember their relationship. For the first time they appear with him in 1828, in the famous preface “At Lukomorye there is a green oak” added to “Ruslan and Lyudmila”: “And thirty beautiful knights / A series of clear waters come out, / And with them their sea uncle.”

The weaver and the cook are present in many tales of this typology, but Babarikha appears only in Pushkin. He took it from folklore: Babarikha is a pagan character in Russian conspiracies, who has some sunny features. “Babarikha is holding a “hot hot frying pan”, which does not burn her body, does not take it.” Azadovsky points out that Pushkin took this name from the collection of Kirsha Danilov, well known to him, from a playful song about a fool: “ You are a good woman, / Baba-Babarikha, / Mother Lukerya / Sister Chernava!.

Her punishment is a bitten nose, as she turned her nose up, stuck it in other people's business. The weaver and the cook were twisted, “In the Russian language, the word ‘crooked’ not only means one-eyed, but is also opposed to the word ‘straight’, just like the truth is false; this opposition is archetypal. If blindness in myth is a sign of wisdom (Themis has a bandage on her eyes so that she does not pay attention to the external, vain), good eyesight is a sign of intelligence, then one-eyedness is a sign of cunning and rapacity (one-eyed pirates, Cyclops, Likho are also one-eyed) " .

In oral editions, there is usually a mention of a cat telling tales or singing songs: this detail is in Pushkin's note, but he used it for the "Prologue" to "Ruslan and Lyudmila" (1828).

The island on which the barrel was thrown is located in the west, in full accordance with numerous mythological traditions, according to which the setting sun was considered the lord of the country of sunset, the islands of the blessed, the wonderful islands of immortality and eternal youth were also placed in the west. “And again, on the archetypal basis, Pushkin imposes some other reality. The blessed islands of myths are located at the very end of the world, in the very west, and it is impossible for a mere mortal to return from there - meanwhile, merchant ships regularly cruise past our island, they visit this island on their way back, returning from even more western countries, and each time they report to the king Saltan that "life beyond the sea is not bad." But the island of Gvidon lies not just to the west of the kingdom of Saltan: in order to return home, guests should sail “past the island of Buyan With your flexible language and the magic of your chants!
Close your ears from praise and comparisons
good friends;
Sing as you sing, dear nightingale!
Byron's genius, or Goethe, Shakespeare,
The genius of their sky, their customs, their countries -
You, who comprehended the mystery of the Russian spirit and world,
Sing to us in your own way, Russian button accordion!
Inspired by the native sky,
Whether in Rus' you are an incomparable singer.

Handwritten book with poems by the best Russian poets. 1834. Fairy tale page.

The autograph of the message with the indicated date was sent to Pushkin and published by I. A. Shlyapkin in his book “From the unpublished papers of A. S. Pushkin”, 1903, p. 169. Pushkin wanted to answer Gnedich with a message that for some reason was not completed (“You talked alone with Homer for a long time”).

Many critics reacted coldly to the fairy tales, arguing that they are the downfall of Pushkin's talent. So, Polevoy considered "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" as an "imitation" of the folk model and found it below the folk one. Belinsky repeatedly repeated that fairy tales were "unsuccessful experiments to imitate the Russian people", called them "fake flowers". N. M. Yazykov wrote about "Saltan" and "Balda": "Pushkin's Tales ‹...› unlike anything written in this way by Zhukovsky." In October 1834, N.V. Stankevich wrote: “Pushkin invented this false kind when the poetic fire in his soul began to fade. But his first tale [“Saltan”] of this kind still has something poetic, while others, in which he began to simply tell, without indulging in any feeling, are simply rubbish. Zhukovsky still knows how to get along with such trifles - but what consolation is it for such a poet to be tolerable? N. I. Nadezhdin in 1832 writes about “Saltan”: “On the one hand, one cannot but agree that this new attempt by Pushkin reveals the closest acquaintance with the external forms of the ancient Russian people; but its meaning and spirit still remained a mystery, not unraveled by the poet. Hence, the whole work bears the stamp of a mechanical counterfeit of antiquity, and not of its living poetic picture. (…) What is the difference between “Ruslan and Lyudmila” and “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”! There, of course, there is less truth, less fidelity and resemblance to Russian antiquity in external forms, but what fire, what animation! (...) Here, on the contrary, there is one dry, dead work - old dust, from which skillful patterns are derived with special care! .. "Milder statements were also critical, for example, in 1832 E. A. Baratynsky wrote:" a fairy tale, and this, it seems to me, is its shortcoming. What kind of poetry - word for word to rhyme Yeruslan Lazarevich or the Firebird? (...) His fairy tale is equal in dignity to one of our old fairy tales - and nothing more. Baron Rosen, however, praised the fairy tale at the same time: “Separated from rubbish, impurity and retaining only its gold, the Russian fairy tale in his golden-sounding verses meanders through the wonderful realm of the folk-romantic” .

In the future, the tale received deservedly high praise. Mirsky at the beginning of the 20th century writes: “... and the best of all [his fairy tales] The Tale of Tsar Saltan. The longer you live in the world, the more you tend to count Tsar Saltan masterpiece of Russian poetry. This is the purest art, free from irrelevant emotions and symbols - "pure beauty", "eternal joy". It is also the most universal art, because it is equally pleasing to a six-year-old child and the most cultured reader of verses of sixty years. Understanding is not required, it is perceived directly, undoubtedly, directly. The tale is not frivolous, not witty, not humorous; she is light, she amuses, she cheers. And there is a high seriousness in it, for what can be more serious than the creation of a world of perfect beauty and freedom, open to all?