NATASHA

by Orlando Figes

  This oriental element was one of the hallmarks of the Russian music school developed by the kucbkists - the 'Mighty Handful' (kuchka) of nationalist composers which included Balakirev, Musorgsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Many of the kuchkists' quintessential 'Russian' works - from Balakirev's fantasy for piano Islamei (a cornerstone of the Russian piano school and a 'must perform' at the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition) to Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade - were composed in this oriental style. As the founding father of the school, Balakirev had encouraged the use of Eastern themes and harmonies to distinguish this self-conscious 'Russian' music from the German symphonism of Anton Rubinstein and the Conservatory. The 'First Russian Symphony' of Rimsky-Korsakov -which was in fact composed more than twelve years after the Ocean Symphony of Rubinstein - earned its nickname because of its use of Russian folk and oriental melodies, which Rimsky's teacher, Balakirev, had transcribed in the Caucasus. 'The symphony is good', wrote the composer Cesar Cui to Rimsky in 1863. 'We performed it a few days ago at Balakirev's - to the great pleasure of Stasov. It is really Russian. Only a Russian could have composed it, because it lacks the slightest trace of any stagnant Germanness [nemetschina].'78

  Along with Balakirev, Stasov was the major influence on the devel-opment of a Russian-oriental musical style. Many of the pioneering kuchkist works which shaped that style, including Prince Igor and Scheherazade, were dedicated to the nationalist critic. In 1882 Stasov wrote an article on 'Twenty five Years of Russian Art', in which he

  tried to account for the profound influence of the Orient on Russian composers:

  Some of them personally saw the Orient. Others, although they had not travelled to the East, had been surrounded with Orienral impressions all their lives. Therefore, they expressed them vividly and strikingly. In this they shared a general Russian sympathy with everything Oriental. Its influence has pervaded Russian life and given to its arts a distinctive colouring… To see in this only a strange whim and capriciousness of Russian composers… would be absurd.79

  For Stasov the significance of the Eastern trace in Russian art went far beyond exotic decoration. It was a testimony to the historical fact of Russia's descent from the ancient cultures of the Orient. Stasov believed that the influence of Asia was 'manifest in all the fields of Russian culture: in language, clothing, customs, buildings, furniture and items of daily use, in ornaments, in melodies and harmonies, and in all our fairy tales'.80

  Stasov had first outlined the argument in his thesis on the origins of Russian ornament during the 1860s.81Analysing medieval Russian Church manuscripts, he had linked the ornamentation of the lettering to similar motifs (rhomboids, rosettes, swastikas and chequered patterns, and certain types of floral and animal design) from Persia and Mongolia. Comparable designs were found in other cultures of Byzantium where the Persian influence was also marked; but whereas the Byzantines had borrowed only some of the Persian ornaments, the Russians had adopted nearly all of them, and to Stasov this suggested that the Russians had imported them directly from Persia. Such an argument is difficult to prove - for simple motifs like these are found all over the world. But Stasov focused on some striking similarities. There was, for example, a remarkable resemblance in the ornamental image of the tree, which Stasov thought was linked to the fact that both the Persians and the pagan Russians had 'idealized the tree as a sacred cult'.82 In both traditions the tree had a conic base, a spiral round the trunk, and bare branches tipped with magnoliaceous flowers. The image appeared frequently in pagan rituals of the tree cult, which, as Kandinsky had discovered, was still in evidence among the Komi

  25. Vladimir Stasov: study of the Russian letter 'B' from a fourteenth-century manuscript of Novgorod

  people in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Stasov even found it as the calligraphic trunk of the letter 'B' in a fourteenth-century Gospel from Novgorod, where a man kneels in prayer at the base of the tree. Here is a perfect illustration of the complex mix of Asian, pagan and Christian elements which make up the main strands of Russian folk culture.

  Stasov turned next to the study of the byliny, the epic songs which contained Russia's oldest folk myths and legends, claiming that these too were from Asia. In his Origins of the Russian Byliny (1868) he agued that the byliny were Russified derivatives of Hindu, Buddhist or Sanskrit myths and tales, which had been brought to Russia by armies, merchants and nomadic immigrants from Persia, India and Mongolia. Stasov's argument was based upon the theory of cultural

  borrowing - at that time just recently advanced by the German philologist Theodor Benfey. During the last decades of the nineteenth century Benfey's theory was increasingly accepted by those folklorists in the West (Godeke and Kohler, Clouston and Liebrecht) who maintained that European folk tales were secondary versions of oriental originals. Stasov was the first to make a detailed argument for Benfey's case. His argument was based on a comparative analysis of the byliny with the texts of various Asian tales - especially the ancient Indian stories of the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Panchantra, which had been translated into German by Benfey in 1859.

  Stasov paid particular attention to the narrative details, the symbols and the motifs of these ancient tales (not perhaps the strongest basis from which to infer a cultural influence, for basic similarities of plot and character can easily be found in folk tales from around the world). * Stasov concluded, for example, that the Russian legend of Sadko (where a merchant goes to an underwater kingdom in search of wealth) was derived from the Brahmin story of the Harivansa (where the flight to the underworld is a spiritual journey in search of truth). According to Stasov, it was only in the later versions of the Russian tale (those that date from after the fifteenth century) that the religious element was supplanted by the motif of commercial wealth. It was at this time that the legend was transposed on to the historical figure of Sadko - a wealthy member of a seafaring guild in Novgorod who had endowed a church of St Boris and St Gleb in the twelfth century.83

  Similarly, Stasov argued that the folk heroes (bogatyrs) of the byliny were really the descendants of the oriental gods. The most famous of these bogatyrs was Ilia Muromets - a brave and honest warrior who championed the people's cause against such enemies as Solovei Raz-boinik, the 'Nightingale Robber', who was usually recast with Tatar features in the later versions of this Russian tale. Stasov drew attention to the supernatural age of Ilia Muromets - several hundred years by logical deduction from the details of the tale. This suggested that

  * There is some historical evidence to support Stasov's thesis, however. Indian tales were certainly transported by migrants to South-east Asia, where these tales are widely known today; and the Ramayana tale was known from translations in Tibet from at least the thirteenth century (see J. W. de Jong, The Story of Rama in Tibet: Text and Translation of the Tun-huang Manuscripts (Stuttgart, 1989)).

  Muromets was descended from the mythic kings who reigned over India for centuries, or from the oriental gods who transcended human time.84 The word 'bogatyr' was itself derived from the Mongol term for 'warrior' (bagadur), according to Stasov. He drew on evidence from European philologists, who had traced the word's etymological relatives to all those countries that had once been occupied by the Mongol hordes: bahadir (in Persian), behader (in Turkish), bohater (in Polish), bator (in Magyar), etc.85

  Finally, Stasov analysed the ethnographic details of the texts - their place names, number systems, scenery and buildings, household items and furniture, clothing, games and customs - all of which suggested that the byliny had come, not from the northern Russian forests, but rather from the steppe.

  If the byliny really did grow out of our native soil in ancient times, then, however much they were later altered by the princes and the Tsars, they should still contain the traces of our Russian land. So we should read in them about our Russian winters, our snow and frozen lakes. We should read about our Russian fields and meadows; about the agricultural nature of our people; about our peasant huts
and generally about the native, always wooden buildings and uten-sils; about our Russian hearth and the spiritual beliefs that surround it; about the songs and rituals of the village chorus; about the way we worship our ancestors; about our belief in mermaids, goblins, house spirits and various other superstitions of pagan Rus'. Everything, in short, should breathe the spirit of our country life. But none of this is in the byliny. There is no winter, no snow or ice, as if these tales are not set in the Russian land at all but in some hot climate of Asia or the East. There are no lakes or mossy river banks in the byliny. Agricultural life is never seen in them. There are no wooden buildings. None of our peasant customs is described. There is nothing to suggest the Russian way of life - and what we see instead is the arid Asian steppe.86

  Stasov caused considerable outrage among the Slavophiles and other nationalists with his Asiatic theory of the byliny. He was accused of nothing less than 'slandering Russia'; his book was denounced as a 'source of national shame', its general conclusions as 'unworthy of a Russian patriot'." It was not just that Stasov's critics took offence at his 'oriental fantasy' that 'our culture might have been descended from the

  barbarous nomads of the Asian steppe'.88 As they perceived it, Stasov's theory represented a fundamental challenge to the nation's identity. The whole philosophy of the Slavophiles had been built on the assumption that the nation's culture grew from its native soil. For over thirty years they had lavished their attentions on the byliny, going round the villages and writing down these tales in the firm belief that they were true expressions of the Russian folk. Tales such as Sadko and Ilia Muromets were sacred treasures of the people's history, the Slavophiles maintained, a fact which was suggested by the very word bylina, which was, they said, derived from the past tense of 'to be' (byl).89

  One of the strongholds of the Slavophiles was the 'mythological school' of folklorists and literary scholarship which had its origins in the European Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. Stasov's fiercest critics belonged to the school, which numbered the most venerable folklorists, such as Buslaev and Afanasiev, among its followers. The exponents of the mythological theory worked on the rather questionable assumption that the ancient beliefs of the Russian people could be reconstructed through their contemporary life and art. For Buslaev, the songs about Sadko were 'the finest living relics of our people's poetry which have been preserved in all their purity and without the slightest trace of outside influence'. Ilia Muromets was a real folk hero of the ancient past 'who embodies, in their purest form, the spiritual ideals of the people'.90 In the early 1860s the byliny had suddenly become a new and vital piece of evidence for the mythological school. For it had been revealed by Pavel Rybnikov that they were still a living and evolving form. Rybnikov was a former civil servant who had been exiled to the countryside of Olonets, 200 kilometres to the north-east of Petersburg, as a punishment for his involvement in a revolutionary group. Like so many of the Tsar's internal exiles, Rybnikov became a folklorist. Travelling around the villages of Olonets, he recorded over thirty different singers of the byliny, each with his own versions of the major tales such as Ilia Muromets. The publication of these Songs, in four volumes between 1861 and 1867, sparked a huge debate about the character and origins of Russia's folk culture which, if one is to judge from Turgenev's novel Smoke (1867), even engulfed the emigre community in Germany. Suddenly the origins of the byliny had become the battleground for opposing views of Russia and its cultural

  destiny. On the one side there was Stasov, who argued that the pulse of ancient Asia was still beating in the Russian villages; and on the other the Slavophiles, who saw the byliny as living proof that Russia's Christian culture had remained there undisturbed for many centuries.

  This was the background to the intellectual conflicts over the conception of Sadko (1897), the opera by Rimsky-Korsakov. The evolution of the opera was typical of the collectivist traditions of the kuchkist school. The original idea had been given by Stasov to Balakirev as early as 1867; Balakirev passed it on to Musorgsky; and Musorgsky handed it to Rimsky-Korsakov. It is easy to see why Rimsky should have been attracted to the story of the opera. Like Sadko, Rimsky was a sailor (a former naval officer, to be precise) and musician who came from Novgorod. Moreover, as Stasov wrote to him with his draft scenario in 1894, the subject would allow the composer to explore 'the magic elements of Russian pagan culture which are so strongly felt in your artistic character'.91 In the standard versions of the bylina Sadko is a humble minstrel (skomorokh) who plays the gusli and sings of setting sail for distant lands in search of new markets for the town. None of the merchant elites will back him, so Sadko sings his songs to Lake Ilmen, where the Sea Princess appears and declares her love for him. Sadko journeys to the underwater world, where the Sea King, delighted by the minstrel's singing, rewards him with his daughter's hand in marriage. At their wedding there is such wild dancing to the tunes played by Sadko that it causes hurricanes and a violent sea storm, which sinks all the ships from Novgorod. When the storm subsides, Sadko is washed up, with a net of golden fish, on the shores of lake Ilmen. He returns to Novgorod, gives away his money to the merchants ruined by the storm, and endows the church of St Boris and St Gleb.

  For Stasov this bylina was the perfect vehicle for his cultural politics. The spirit of rebellion which Sadko showed against the Novgorod elites symbolized the struggle of the Russian school against the musical establishment. But more importantly, as Stasov hoped, the opera was a chance to draw attention to the Eastern elements of the Sadko tale. As Stasov explained in his draft scenario for Rimsky-Korsakov, Sadko was full of shamanistic magic, and this pointed to its Asian provenance, in particular to the Brahmin Hariuansa tale. The skomorokh, in

  Stasov's view, was a Russian descendant of the Asian shamans (a view, incidentally, which many modern scholars share).92 Like a shaman, the skomorokh was known to wear a bearskin and a mask, to bang his gusli like a drum, and to sing and dance himself into a trance-like frenzy, chanting magic charms to call upon the spirits of the magic world.93 In the draft scenario Stasov underlined these shamanistic powers by having Sadko's music serve as the main agency of transcendental flight to the underwater world and back again; and, as he emphasized to Rimsky-Korsakov, it was the 'magic effect of his music that should be seen to cause the sea-storm, which sinks all the ships'.* Sadko's odyssey was to be portrayed as a shamanistic flight to a dreamworld, a 'spiritual voyage into his own being', as Stasov mapped it out for the composer, and the hero of the opera should return to Novgorod 'as if waking from a dream'.94

  There was good reason for Stasov to look to Rimsky as the ideal composer for the opera. Rimsky had in the past been interested in Stasov's Eastern version of Sadko. In 1867 he had composed the symphonic suite Sadko, a work whose debt to Balakirev's Tamara ('far from completed at the time but already well-known to me from the fragments played by the composer') was candidly acknowledged by Rimsky in his Reminiscences.95Sadko's whirling dance is practically identical to the Tamara theme, and, like Balakirev, Rimsky used the pentatonic scale to create an authentic oriental feel.+ However, by the time of his Sadko opera, Rimsky had become a professor at the Conservatory and, like many professors, was rather too conformist to experiment again with pentatonic harmonies or oriental programmes for the plot. Besides, Rimsky by this stage was much more interested in the Christian motifs of the bylina. It was an interest which reflected his increasing preoccupation with the Christian ideal of Russia - an ideal he expressed in his last great opera, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya (1907). Rimsky rejected the draft scenario which Stasov, in his usual cajoling manner, had insisted

  * According to A. N. Afanasiev, the great nineteenth-century scholar of mythology, Sadko was the pagan god of wind and storms among the ancient Slavs (see his Poeticheskie vozzreniia slavian na prirodu, 3 vols. (Moscow,1865-9), vol. 2., p. 214). + Sadko's dance is even written in Balakirev's favourite key of D flat major,

  he adopt
(the only place where Rimsky gave way to Stasov was in the opening civic scene: it enabled him to begin Sadko with the large set-piece for orchestra and chorus that had become an almost mandatory feature for Russian nationalist opera). There was nothing in the music to re-create the Eastern feel of the symphonic suite - other than the common stock of ornamental features which composers in the past had used to evoke the 'exotic Orient' (Rimsky used it here to summon up the other-worldly Sea Kingdom). With the help of the Slavophile folklorists who had criticized Stasov, Rimsky made Sadko a 'Russian opera', with a civic Christian message for the public at the end. At the height of the wedding scene the Sea King calls upon the seas to overflow and 'destroy the Orthodox people!' But just then a Russian pilgrim (St Nicholas of Mozhaisk in the bylina) appears on the scene to break the Sea King's spell and send Sadko back to Novgorod. By a miracle the Sea Princess is transformed into the river Volkhova, providing Novgorod with an outlet to the sea. Her disappearance is meant to represent the demise of paganism and the triumph of the Christian spirit in Russia - a spirit symbolized by the building of the church of St Boris and St Gleb. In the end, it seems, the conception of Sadko as a story linking Russia to the Asian steppe was far too controversial to produce on stage. Sadko, after all, was a national myth - as important to the Russians as Beowulf is to the English or the Kalevala to the Finns. The only place where Asia left its imprint on the opera was in Stasov's design for the title page of the score. Stasov used the motifs of medieval manuscripts which he identified as clearly oriental in origin. The middle letter 'D' is formed into the shape of a skomorokh with his gusli. He sits there like an idol or a buddha of the East. The rosette underneath the letter 'S' was taken from a portal in the palace of Isphahan.96 The opera's Christian message was subtly undermined by its very first utterance.