Folio Society Published Works Number 2013
Afanas'ev, Aleksandr - Myths and Legends of Russia
We buy and sell items like these, so please contact us if you have similar items for sale, and we will make you an offer if we are interested.
To check if we have this item, or similar items, in stock, please click the Check Stock link below. Alternatively, use the links on the left to search our large online database of items for sale, or to visit the rest of the site.
Check Stock
Afanas'ev, Aleksandr - Myths and Legends of Russia (Published in by The Folio Society in 2009. Quarter-bound in leather with cloth sides, printed and blocked with a design by Niroot Puttapipat. lIlustrated by Niroot Puttapipat. Frontispiece and 15 pen and ink illustrations. 10 x 6.75 ins, 512 pages. Tsars and maidens, witches and wizards, enchanted castles and vampire lairs, orphans and fools, sorceresses and talking animals: these are the stuff of Russian legend. Woe betide the treacherous wife, the greedy merchant or the jealous stepmother – for, like the best fairy tales, these are merciless fables of revenge and regret. But there is also love, honesty and beauty in plenty. Rich and glorious, these tales take us to the very heart of Russian culture. In the 6th century, migrants set out from Central Asia to settle on the western shores of the Black Sea and thence spread into Poland, the Baltic, Russia and the Ukraine. With them they took their gods, heroes, spirits and monsters, which became the uniquely Russian characters we know today. Here is the Firebird with its feathers of glowing embers (the inspiration for Stravinsky's Firebird Suite), the Snow Maiden and the ghoulish Baba Yaga the perennial terror of Russian children, with her chicken-legged house and garden full of bones. Aleksandr Afanas'ev collected and published over 600 Russian fairy tales and folktales, of which some 170 are gathered here in Norbert Guterman's lively translation, effortlessly demonstrating Afanas'ev's claim to be one of the greatest Russian folklorist of all time. As Roman Jakobson remarked: Without these tales a Russian child's bookshelf is incomplete. )
