Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales is a collection of twenty-nine Russian folktales featuring Baba Yaga, arguably the most recognizable and enduring personage of Russian folklore. This richly illustrated hardcover volume printed on high quality stock offers readers Sibelan Forrester’s translations of folktales selected from two nineteenth-century collections—Afanas’ev’s and Khudiakov’s. The author has also provided a thirty-page introduction which offers the reader many interesting facts and cultural connections associated with Baba Yaga. The compelling images for this volume were selected by Martin Skoro and annotated by Helena Goscilo.
Although Baba Yaga figures in all of the tales selected for this volume, these tales are by no means repetitive, representing a variety of tale types. The new translations are refreshing—the author successfully updates the language to modern English yet preserves the charm of Russian story-telling. Moreover, the extensive endnotes complement the tales with additional explanations, interesting cultural information, and existing variations of some tales, thus giving readers a fuller understanding of what used to be a very rich oral tradition.
Ever since the Russian oral narratives were put to paper in the nineteenth century, they have inspired artists of every generation to create vivid artworks of the folktale personages. This volume is not only a collection of twenty-nine tales, but is at the same time a collection of over seventy images, which range from late-nineteenth century to contemporary book illustrations and which also include photographs of lacquer boxes, playing cards, a Baba Yaga nesting doll set, a Dungeons and Dragons game, and even canvas shoes imprinted with Bilibin’s vision of Baba Yaga. The variety of images is impressive and most of the accompanying notes are very informative, often providing additional commentary on Baba Yaga’s personage. Unfortunately, there is no consistency in the captions—for instance, sometimes the artists’ last names are presented after the name and patronymic, but occasionally before the name and patronymic, and some of the images lack even the most basic explanation.
Sibelan Forrester’s lengthy introduction suggests a well-organized and in-depth examination of Baba Yaga as a character and a cultural icon. The text, rich in observations about Baba Yaga, is subdivided into eight segments with evocative headings: The History of the Words, Other Names in the Tales, The Objects Around Baba Yaga, Baba Yaga in the Russian Pantheon, Deeper Meanings of Baba Yaga, Baba Yaga in Popular Culture, What Other Books Say About Baba Yaga, and Beyond Words: Baba Yaga in Illustrations, Films, Graphic Novels, Games, and Other Merchandise. Unfortunately, the interesting facts and rich observations do not offer the reader much in the way of cohesion or synthesis. For instance, the first segment, The History of the Words, undertakes the discussion of Baba Yaga’s name itself, but ends up devolving into a word-association exercise jumping from “witch” to “wit” to “wench,” with the most interesting, and important, suggestion for the topic at hand—that the term “baba yaga” may have been a euphemism for a cult figure—completely lost and undeveloped as an idea in a sea of word roots and their meanings.
Another segment that clearly suggests interpretation and analysis—Deeper Meanings of Baba Yaga—likewise leaves the reader wishing for more interpretation and analysis. The author provides descriptions of Baba Yaga and observations of her behavior, especially in her role as tester, but once again does not delve deeply into the most intriguing claim mentioned here—that in her role as tester, Baba Yaga hearkens back to ancient initiation rituals. Elsewhere in the introduction the text could have benefitted from some careful editing, such as fixing the confusion of mortar and pestle in the mention of Bilibin’s picture of Baba Yaga (“the pestle is a tall, relatively narrow tube, not shallow like a bowl”); or moving the discussion of translation choices to the Preface and Translator’s Note rather than having it mixed in with, and thus confusing, the discussion of character names and their meanings in tales. All in all, the introduction will leave specialists in the field unsatisfied and newcomers utterly confused.
Despite the difficulties with the introduction, Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales is an attractive book that many readers might find useful as a foray into the realm of Russian folktales and Russian culture.
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[Review length: 709 words • Review posted on January 22, 2014]