Back to the Classics #2

I read this book for Back to the Classics ReadingChallenge 2022.

A Classic Short Story Collection. I hope this collection of wonder stories counts for the category - the stories range from about a page and half to 25 pages so these are longer than the tales in Bulfinch's Age of Fables, which was the other choice on my TBR shelf. Also, many of the stories are original stories based on traditional tales. 

Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov – tr. by Robert Chandler et al

Reading fairy tales can prepare us for the world of work. Guy at work, I love him not like a brother but as a guy at work, though I’m one of the few people so patient that he doesn’t drive a little nuts. But this guy, he often complains that people can’t follow simple directions.

And I think to myself, if he read fairy tales he would know that one of the hardest things to do in life is follow simple directions.  The wonder stories in this collection often feature characters that break straightforward taboos or can’t follow the plainest directions to the letter. They are told clearly, “Don’t look in the barn,” and what’s the first thing they do when the boogie-man goes to the market? 

They look in the damn barn.

Thus overly curious characters fall into trouble deep with hurtful witches, cranky bears, and wicked stepmothers. They might be plucky heroines and stalwart heroes. They might be assisted by helpful birch trees and obliging snakes. But they are still pretty damn incapable of following simple directions. 

Just like people at work.

So on the surface the main take-away in fairy tales is a conservative one: Do as you’re told. But another reading shows that the tellers of the stories are wise and tolerant enough to assume that people are not going to do what they are told. That gives us hope that inch by inch we make progress to wisdom and kindness, often guided by wayward, fallible, incorrigible people not doing what they are told. Some of the lessons are a little more subtle, however. For example, the continuance of your life demands being economical with the truth sometimes so be careful doling out the whole truth and nothing but the truth and beware who hears the truth too.

Anyway, to review the actual book here, this is a large collection of Russian fairy tales that have been gathered from the plain folks in the last two centuries or so. They have been collected not only by ethnologists, philologists, and linguists but by famous writers such as Pushkin and Nadezhda Teffi (whose original tales here are wonderfully mordant). Also contributing great stories based on wonder tales is Andrei Platonov, an author who died in obscurity in 1951.  Translator Robert Chandler argues that Platonov may be the greatest Russian writer of the last century. I never heard of him either.

On the down side, it’s undeniable that post-modern sensibilities will be singed by harsh misogyny and gory violence that we can but expect in pre-modern cultures. The more traditional the culture, the tougher ordinary people are on women, children, old people, the afflicted and anybody who can’t help being different. However, making allowances for backward attitudes, the reader can understand better the difficulties of life – the risks and hazards that come with the territory of being alive on this planet - as perceived by slaves, peons, serfs and other powerless vulnerable people.