Fairy tale is a legacy people love fairy tales.
VALERY GERGIEV Conductor People love something where they can travel with their minds,
with their fantasies, with their hopes, in a way.
This film is about tales and storytelling
and how their influence is present even today throughout Russian culture.
Woven into Russia's literary heritage,
they have become part of the whole way that Russians see the world.
Every Russian child learns by heart words by the great poet Pushkin.
His tale of 'Ruslan and Lyudmila' is told not by a human but by a cat.
By the sea stands a green oak.
There's a golden chain around that oak and, day and night,
a wise cat keeps walking around and around the tree on the end of the chain.
He walks to the right and starts a song, he walks to the left and tells a fairy tale.
Fairy tales are based on many, many factors.
You read them, read them several times when you are 10 years old
and you are full of, you know, pictures, full of stories, you remember them.
Fairy tales are everywhere in a Russian childhood
not only told by parents and by grandparents
but found in literature and painting and in the world of music, dance and theatre.
Tchaikovsky, who often wrote music for children and about their lives,
described the theatre as a place of fairy-tale enchantment.
He said that 'the theatre is a place where we come not just to listen but to see'.
He observed that theatre music must be like scene-painting
simple, clear and colourful.
TCHAIKOVSKY The Nutcracker
VERA PROCHOROVA Teacher Childhood and the world of magic go together.
My childhood was like a fairy tale and we are all the products of our childhood.
NINA ZARKHI Film Critic For me childhood means something different.
They're like a virtual reality a parallel world.
The theatre takes you away from reality, especially from the boring side of reality.
In the theatre you can imagine that there are no borders,
there are no limits, only your belief in the beauty,
or belief in the depth, belief in the colour and the movement,
you know, because movement always means that you can do so many things,
that's why ballet is so attractive.
MUSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition - Tuileries
Pushkin wrote, in his verse drama 'Evgeny Onegin',
The dancer stands she brushing the floor with one foot,
turns slowly on the other one
and suddenly she jumps, and flies as suddenly, flies like thistledown on the lips of the wind.
She coils and uncoils and clicks one foot against the other.
And they set out into the big wide world.
And they walked and walked and walked...
In the contemporary classroom,
myth and fairy tale are still as resonant as they were
when Pushkin wrote in his prelude to 'Ruslan'
We received from our forefathers a small legacy of folktales and songs.
What can we say of them?
If we treasure even the poorest of old coins,
should we not preserve the literary remains of our ancestors?
My sword is made of damask steel. And it will cut off your head.
MUSORGSKY Pictures at an Exhibition - Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
These friends are all active in Moscow's cultural life.
ALEXANDER TIVOFEYEVSKY Animator There was a tradition where the adults sat at the table and read Gogol
and I, a 4 year old child was allowed to sit and listen.
What an honour to sit for me.
Only later did I understand that it was done especially for me,
I thought it was they needed me to sit and read Gogol's fairy tales
and if I behaved properly I would be allowed to listen.
The roots of Russian fairy tale as a modern work of art are here,
deep in the Russian countryside,
in the little village of Mikhailovskoye where Alexander Pushkin spend much of his childhood.
Here he first heard the traditional village fairy tales,
which he would later transform into his own poetry.
Pushkin is very good, it's the best spiritual support
it's the best mental and, I would say,
brain training, brain sharpening and also brain empowering, friend you can find.
'Pushkin is our everything' said the 19th century poet Appollon Grigoriev
There would have been no Russian literature without Pushkin.
ALEXANDRE BUKOVSKY Director Puskhin House You see his nanny Arianna Rodionova was illiterate
but she knew many old talesegends, sayings and songs
and Pushkin studied the oral form.
Nanny Arianna, began each one of her tales with:
In a cove by the sea stood an oak,
and around the oak a gold chain and on the end of it a cat.
In 1828 in 'Ruslan and Lyudmilla', there appeared the famous prologue
'ln a sea cove, a green oak, etc.'
Pushkin wrote: Nanny my only female friend
and only with her am I not bored.
Or again this: In the evening I listen to nanny's tales.
I am amused about the holes in my damned upbringing.
How wonderful are these tales, each one is a poem.
Russia owes this woman a lot.
Pushkin owed her his deep knowledge of folklore
and he made her name immortal.
You remember the poem:
True friend in all my time of trouble, dear frail little dove of mine all alone
languishing in a woodl and hovel awaiting my return.
And that little house of ours with the slope down to the pond,
surrounded by lilacs and ponds which froze in winter
and where we played on our sledges.
And then the full spring with the cherry orchard and the lilacs,
first the violet then the blue and last the white.
And such a feeling of happiness and joy and sunlight.
No doubt there were rainy days but for me each season was equally lovely.
And when winter came we knew we'd go sledging again.
They could learn from their nurses,
hey could hear from their parents wonderful stories
and you would always have this very beautiful image,
of course, of Russian fairytale world.
GLINKA Ruslan and Lyudmila
The flower of love and springtime will be resplendent at dawn
with a magnificent beauty...
In ancient, legendary times, tales were told by the bard or 'bayan'.
As Pushkin wrote: Suddenly a pleasant sound rang out.
At the sonorous running sound of the dulcimer all fell silent, listened to the bard.
And the sweet singer gave glory to the enchanting Lyudmila and Ruslan,
...The leaves are all scattered.
You can always hear about wonderful costumes, miraculous transformations,
there would be always a danger,
there would be always, most probably, happy end.
...in answer to love's call,
But fate, coming to meet him,
prepares for him an evil contest with destruction...
It provokes your own imagination, even if you are a child 5, 7, 10 years old,
to work on many more scenarios of your own,
the fantasy is awakened and you become,
even without knowledge that it happened to you,
you become small but important Russian artist.
Making young children into artists
is something Russians traditionally take very seriously.
The rigorous and sometimes harsh discipline of schools like the Gnessin
and the Petersburg's Vaganova ballet academy has produced virtuosi for over a century.
Rachmaninov wrote:
Now began a life of discipline and serious study.
Zverev's sister supervised us with the utmost severity.
Woe to him who began practice five minutes late
or finished five minutes early. He would be treated without mercy.
I was 10 years old when I realised that
I had a very, very strong link to my piano teacher.
He put such high goals, such incredible horizons in front of me
and told me 'Go there' and I knew I can't
but he always would tell me: 'This is what you have to do! '
We shouldn't forget the tradition goes at least hundred and fifty years ago
and the rules didn't change very much.
There are very many schools in Russia, it was, in a way, a fashion,
at least I remember it extremely well,
it was still the feeling of importance that a boy or girl would go to normal school
but it would be very nice and would be a matter of even pride for the family
that it would be a combination with lessons in a music school,
maybe learn something about paintings.
They would also think of, maybe, giving you a chance to attend dancing lessons,
which was a very good thing.
You cannot by command, giving the orders,
find another Tolstoy or Pushkin, certainly not,
but you can give a certain degree of acceleration.
In this specialist children's world from which future artists grow,
the teacher is not merely a master and a severe disciplinarian,
but a magician, a sorcerer and a guide, a pied piper,
someone whose own example asa performer awakens the fantasy in children.
This is Mark Pekarsky.
In Stravinsky's 'Petrushka',
the puppet theatre becomes a world of transformation
and the artist, the magician, is the puppet master who brings the toys to life.
STRAVINSKY Petrushka
And life was like a fairy tale, for example,
we lived in the state institute for theatrical art
it was a splendid communal flat Professor Mikhailov lived there,
the famous expert in Russian Literature.
He was separated from our family by a curtain
and behind the partition lived a policeman.
On Sundays he got drunk and started shooting
And I lived with my step brother and my grandmother
and she used to shout 'Hit the deck! '
KABALEVSKY Nash Krai
The system allowed that much space that the media,
so to say in a modern language, would allow again
culture, literature, museums, symphonic or opera or ballet,
live activities locally or nationwide to be reported
and to be always in the conscience of people that
this is what the best society in the world will bring to the whole world one day.
And this is what, again, our great leader Vladimir Lenin wanted everyone to share.
When I was 7 or 8 or 10 years old, I was attending a normal school
in Vladikavkaz in Northern Ossetia in Caucasus, which is part of Soviet Union.
There was a normal teacher or teachers who would tell us,
without much pressure on the kids,
that Lenin was a very, very good boy
and after he was grown and became a very good young man,
after he was grown and became a very important revolutionary,
he transformed our country to the better.
That he tried to build the best society ever built, that he wanted everyone to be equal,
certainly everyone to be happy and not only Lenin but also smaller people.
PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 7
That was structurally the way for us to live in the Soviet Union,
at least this is what some people thought was the best scenario
for this 220, 230 million people who lived in the Soviet Union.
Then it looked like a land of paradise, dreams, equality, brotherhood, freedom,
freedom, freedom and freedom and peace, and peace.
You have to understand the duality of this world.
For example, I found myself in the siege of Leningrad
and once again the siege is for me one of the happiest memories of my life
because I was surrounded by wonderful people
who in dreadful conditions tried to ensure
that a child's life remained wonderful and so it was.
I was full of love for everyone.
Over time it revealed itself. Because of that beginning and that love,
the Russian fairy tale and Russian poetry entered my life.
I've given 40 years to poetry and cartoons for children.
One monster familiar to every Russian is a tsar who never dies,
Kashchei the lmmortal.
RIMSKY KORSAKOV Kashchei the lmmortal
it contains my death forever.
The effects of her love are all-powerful,
and many knights
seeking my death have perished
in her enchanted realm!
Princess! Come back to the castle.
Come and sit beside me, and sing me a lullaby.
SHOSTAKOVICH Silly Little Mouse
Goodnight children, goodnight, goodnight...
It's time to sleep, time to go to bed.
Night is often presented not just as a time of fears and fantasies,
but also of dreams and freedom.
In Pushkin's famous lines it was a night-time animal,
the cat, who created fairy tales by walking round and round a tree.
And Pushkin's cat can take you anywhere you want,
free from the logic of the grey realities of day
GUBAIDULINA The Cat Who Walked by ltself
The cat is free.
She is by herself.
She went through the trees.
Sounds, echoes, sighs...
In his song cycle 'The Nursery',
the composer Mussorgsky shows a petulant child rejecting the scary side of fairy-tale
in favour of absurdity and slapstick.
Nursey dear! Wait a moment!
I would rather hear about the King and Queen,
MUSSORGSKY The Nursery
who beside the sea dwelt in a lovely palace. He was lame and hobbled as he walked,
when he stumbled down, up a mushroom came!
The Queen had such a nasty cold, and in sneezing cracked all window panes.
Yes, oh Nursey dear, I don't want to hear about the wolf again.
Let us leave him! Let me hear the other, yes! That funny tale!
It was Glinka who first chose to make fairytale and fantasy the seed bed
for a national operatic style.
The princess with whom every Russian girl can identify is Pushkin's beautiful Lyudmila.
The young princess quietly bloomed, and grew and grew, rose up and flowered,
white of face and black of eyebrow, meek and mild
and a suitor came to seek her hand.
GLINKA Ruslan and Lyudmila
Radiant Lel, be for ever with us, give us days brimming with happiness!
Shield our fate with your emerald wings! By your mighty will preserve her from sorrows!
Every heroine needs a hero.
Glinka celebrates the noble knight Prince Ruslan,
Borodin conjures up Prince lgor.
The Soviet composer Gliere chose llya Murometz,
whose horse covered half a mile in one leap and who announced his presence with the words:
'A strong and mighty hero rode by here llya Murometz.'
You can defend your motherland, you can find a hero,
there will be always someone who can save your country
and I think not very different it looked for the children of 19th century
with what I can remember as years of my own childhood.
We came to believe that heroes are important
and national treasures are of complete importance,
never forgetting that you belong to something.
BORODIN Symphony No. 2
Borodin was very attracted to the opportunity simply
to write something about what he himself described 'bogary bogartista'
which means, actually, like 'mighty knights',
'mighty', makes you feel, feel somebody with a huge sword
with, maybe, with a beard, dressed as a warrior but mighty.
The mainspring of such heroic stories comes from the threat of supernatural powers
omnipotent wizards like Chernobor the dark god, who may strike at any time.
And then, of course,
in a Russian fairytale scenario everyone should wake up
and there would be two or three or maybe more men, young men,
most of them brave men, they should rescue Lyudmilla.
It was such a masterful end and such an unbelievable fantasy of Pushkin
would immediately make you believe in all of that
and would transport you, you know, from realities of your class,
realities of your, just small, apartment where you live with your parents,
you would really be totally taken away.
To the Russian composer,
the greatest imaginative challenge is the quest
the hero's journey to win treasure or to release the captured heroine
or conquer the forces of darkness.
And the vast territory of Russia offers endless possibilities.
Russians in general understand even subconsciously
that they live in a very big Country.
So there is a vast, enormous, huge space for fantasies, for folklore, as we say,
for miraculous transformations, for incredible trips.
You would be prepared to believe in it completely.
RIMSKY KORSAKOV Sheherazade
The earliest known Russian story of all
is the twelfth-century epic 'The Lay of Prince lgor's Host'.
It describes the archetypal legendary quest:
My men are renowned warriors, swaddled to the sound of trumpets,
nursed beneath helmets, fed from the point of a spear.
The roads are known to them, the ravines familiar to them,
their bows are strung, their quivers open, their sabres whetted.
They race across the steppe like grey wolves,
seeking honour for themselves and glory for their prince.
In 'Ruslan', the climax to the archetypal quest
comes in a confrontation with a monstrous severed head.
GLINKA Ruslan and Lyudmila
The eternal sleep of decomposing knights.
I guard them from uninvited guests!
I am slain!
The sword which I so desired!
But who are you? And whose is this sword?
TCHAIKOVSKY The Sleeping Beauty
The language of fairy tales and fantasy
even finds its way into Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya'.
His dream of a better world at the end of the play
inspired Rachmaninov's song 'We Shall Rest'.
The dream is equally resonant in today's very different Russia.
RACHMANINOV We Shall Rest
We shall rest we shall hear the angels
We shall see all the heavens
Covered with stars like diamonds
All our sufferings swept away by the grace
which will fill the whole world
And our life will become peaceful, gentle...
and sweet as a caress
I believe it, I believe it
We shall rest...
I just want to say that we are small people
and we are lucky to have big ones as our predecessors, you know,
giving us such a gift
and since some people do not believe in the future of Russia.
I think that it's very simple to find the reasons
for enthusiasm, for optimism and for the hope
and for confidence for people of my country.
They just have to look here,
they shouldn't look in the over Atlantic anymore,
they shouldn't look they always have to find it
I don't mean literally in this room I mean here, within yourself.
It's people to people, person to person, person to persons,
and I give it to 10, 10 give it to 100, 100 give it to a million.
In this case you say tradition is living.
There is no other way for my country to stay important to the world
then through culture.