Traditional Russian fairytales
February 23, 2005 10:57 PM   Subscribe

Traditional Russian fairytales with beautiful illustrations depicting scenes from the stories.
posted by gregb1007 (9 comments total)
 
Awesome stuff! Thanks!
posted by Panfilo at 11:06 PM on February 23, 2005


This is good!
posted by hopeless romantique at 11:09 PM on February 23, 2005


I love this stuff, thank you.
posted by quiet at 2:53 AM on February 24, 2005


Sweet. I've got to share this site too. (Goats!)
posted by Wolfdog at 2:57 AM on February 24, 2005


Thanks wolfdog.. Unfortunately, there's no english version so that readers can follow along with the stories..

Also I should mention that comparing the stories from your link and mine is kinda educational

From your link you get the more disney-like stories with cute sweet illustrations that wont frighten any children

But the stories from my link are more frightening - canibalism, walking skeletons... etc and so are their illustrations..
posted by gregb1007 at 3:06 AM on February 24, 2005


Pretty interesting, and gruesome, stuff here.
posted by caddis at 4:31 AM on February 24, 2005


To me, one of the most intriguing recurring characters in Russian folk tales is Baba Yaga (more and wiki), who shows up in gregb1007's link in the Vasilissa and Frog Princess (and other) stories. She has her iron teeth, her hut on chicken legs (!), her bone fence topped with skulls, and her three horsemen: "My Bright Dawn, my Red Sun and my Dark Midnight." Here's a nice Baba Yaga Russian lacquer.

Also, this page of images for a course in Slavic Folklore has some great illustrations. The .jpgs are resized on the pages, so to see them at their proper sizes you must view the images themselves (in FF, right-click: "view image"). The fifth image for Vasilissa the Beautiful is a larger version of the image of her with the "skull lamp" from the original post link.
posted by taz at 6:39 AM on February 24, 2005


Baba Yaga thread (with some good links and quotes). If anyone's interested, the stress in Russian is on the last syllable of "Yaga": BAH-ba ya-GAH.
posted by languagehat at 7:34 AM on February 24, 2005


I did my part for glasnost back in the '80s by buying some of these illustrated folktales for my daughter as paperbacks from an outfit that imported Russian literature and English translations from the USSR. They were ridiculously inexpensive.
posted by Creosote at 10:23 AM on February 24, 2005


« Older The life of a Japanese gigolo   |   They have a Plan Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments