Alexander Afanasyev
Encyclopedia
Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev (Afanasief or Afanasiev) (11 July 1826 – 23 October 1871) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n folklorist
Folkloristics
Folkloristics is the formal academic study of folklore. The term derives from a nineteenth century German designation of folkloristik to distinguish between folklore as the content and folkloristics as its study, much as language is distinguished from linguistics...

 who recorded and published over 600 Russian folktales and fairytales, by far the largest folktale collection by any one man in the world. His first collection was published in eight volumes from 1855–67, earning him the reputation of a Russian counterpart to the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...

.

Life

He was educated at a gymnasium in Voronezh
Voronezh
Voronezh is a city in southwestern Russia, the administrative center of Voronezh Oblast. It is located on both sides of the Voronezh River, away from where it flows into the Don. It is an operating center of the Southeastern Railway , as well as the center of the Don Highway...

 and studied law at the University of Moscow, in which he attended the lectures of Konstantin Kavelin
Konstantin Kavelin
Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin was a Russian historian, jurist, and sociologist, sometimes called the chief architect of early Russian liberalism.Born in Saint Petersburg into an old noble family, Kavelin graduated from the legal department of the Moscow University...

 and Timofey Granovsky
Timofey Granovsky
Timofey Nikolayevich Granovsky was a founder of mediaeval studies in the Russian Empire.Granovsky was born in Oryol, Russia. He studied at the universities of Moscow and Berlin, where he was profoundly influenced by Hegelian ideas of Leopold von Ranke and Friedrich Karl von Savigny...

. His burgeoning career as a professor of history was cut short by denunciation of his work on the part of Sergey Uvarov
Sergey Uvarov
Count Sergey Semionovich Uvarov was a Russian classical scholar best remembered as an influential imperial statesman....

. He then turned his attention to journalism and brought out a series of articles about leading personalities of the literary life of the previous century, including Nikolay Novikov
Nikolay Novikov
Nikolay Ivanovich Novikov was a Russian writer and philanthropist most representative of his country's Enlightenment. Frequently considered to be the first Russian journalist, he aimed at advancing the cultural and educational level of the Russian public....

, Denis Fonvizin
Denis Fonvizin
Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin was a playwright of the Russian Enlightenment, whose plays are still staged today. His main works are two satirical comedies which mock contemporary Russian gentry.-Life:...

, and Antiokh Kantemir.

Censured by the authorities for his contacts with Herzen and suffering from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

, Afanasyev ended his life in penury, forced to sell his library to enable himself to eat. He died in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 aged 45.

Work

Afanasyev collected many Russian folk tales throughout the course of his career. He is said to have become acquainted with folktales from local women in his home town of Bobrov
Bobrov, Russia
Bobrov is a town and the administrative center of Bobrovsky District in central Voronezh Oblast, Russia, located on the right bank of the Bityug River, southeast of Voronezh. Population:...

. He genuinely hoped that the revival of the native Russian fairy tales would promote the triumph of the Russian language over the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, which had been adopted by the Russian aristocracy.

It was in the 1850s that Afanasiev found his vocation in folklore studies. His first scholarly articles - The Wizards and Witches, Sorcery in the Ancient Rus, Pagan Legends about the Buyan
Buyan
In Slavic mythology, Buyan is described as a mysterious island in the ocean with an ability to appear and disappear. Three brothers – Northern, Western, and Eastern Winds – live there...

 Island
- drew heavily upon the so-called Mythological school that treated folklore as a mine of information for the study of more ancient pagan mythology. His definitive work on the subject - The Poetic Outlook on Nature by the Slavs - was published in three volumes between 1865 and 1869. In such an interpretation, he regarded the fairy tale Vasilissa the Beautiful
Vasilissa the Beautiful
Vasilisa the Beautiful , commonly known as Vasilisa's Doll, is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki....

as depicting the conflict between the sunlight (Vasilissa), the storm (her stepmother), and dark clouds (her stepsisters).

In the course of his studies of the Russian folklore Afanasyev amassed a collection of more than 600 Russian folktales - some of them contributed by Vladimir Dahl, others taken from the archives of the Russian Geographical Society
Russian Geographical Society
The Russian Geographical Society is a learned society, founded on 6 August 1845 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.-Imperial Geographical Society:Prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, it was known as the Imperial Russian Geographical Society....

 and grouped by Afanasiev according to their themes, imagery, and style. He owes his prominent place in the history of Slavonic philology chiefly to Narodnye russkie skazki
Narodnye russkie skazki
Russian Fairy Tales , is a collection of Russian fairy tales, collected by Alexander Afanasyev and published by him between 1855 and 1863. His work was explicitly modeled after the Brothers Grimm's work, Grimm's Fairy Tales....

(Russian Fairy Tales), eight volumes modelled on the famous collection of the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...

 and published between 1855 and 1863.

Afanasyev edited several other compilations which included: Russian Fairy Tales for Children comprising a set of animal, magic and humorous tales from his collection that were suitable to children; Russian Folk Legends which was banned due to the harsh censorship in Tsarist Russia (the church thought the collection was blasphemous); and Russian Forbidden Tales, an assortment of unprintable tales from Russia that had to be published in Switzerland anonymously. Their obscene and anticlerical subject matter made their publication in Imperial Russia unthinkable.

Significance

Prior to Afanasyev's works in the 1850s, only a few attempts had ever been made to record or study the folk beliefs of peasant Russia. Though a written Russian language (Church Slavonic) had existed since the 10th century, it was used almost solely by the church and only for parochial written works. It was not until the 18th and 19th centuries that a sizable body of secular literature developed in the vernacular Russian. Thus, Afanasyev's collections made a highly valuable contribution to the dissemination and legitimization of Russian culture and folk belief. The influence of these folk tales can be seen in the works of many writers and composers, notably Rimsky-Korsakov (Sadko
Sadko (opera)
Sadko is an opera in seven scenes by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The libretto was written by the composer, with assistance from Vladimir Belsky, Vladimir Stasov, and others. Rimsky-Korsakov was first inspired by the bylina of Sadko in 1867, when he completed a tone poem on the subject, his Op. 5...

, The Snow Maiden
The Snow Maiden
The Snow Maiden: A Spring Fairy Tale is an opera in four acts with a prologue by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, composed during 1880–1881. The Russian libretto, by the composer, is based on the like-named play by Alexander Ostrovsky .The first performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera took place at the...

) and Stravinsky (The Firebird
The Firebird
The Firebird is a 1910 ballet created by the composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Michel Fokine. The ballet is based on Russian folk tales of the magical glowing bird of the same name that is both a blessing and a curse to its captor....

, Petrushka, and L'Histoire du Soldat
).

External links

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