The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda
Encyclopedia
The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda is a fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

 in verse by Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin wrote the tale on September 13, 1830 while staying at Boldino. It is based on a Russian folk tale which Pushkin collected in Mikhailovskoe early on. The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda consists of 189 extremely varied lines that range from three to fourteen syllables but made to rhyme in couplets.
In the summer of 1831, Pushkin read the tale to Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

 who liked it a great deal. The Tale was first published posthumously by Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...

 in 1840 with considerable alterations due to censorship; the Priest character was replaced by a merchant.

Plot summary

The poem tells of a lazy priest who is wandering around a market looking for a cheap worker. There he meets Balda (Балда in Russian means a stupid or not very serious person) who agrees to work for a year without pay except that he be allowed to hit the priest three times on his forehead and have cooked spelt
Spelt
Spelt is a hexaploid species of wheat. Spelt was an important staple in parts of Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times; it now survives as a relict crop in Central Europe and northern Spain and has found a new market as a health food. Spelt is sometimes considered a subspecies of the...

 for food. The priest, being a cheapskate, agrees. But then, after he gets a chance to observe Balda at work, he sees that he is not only very patient and careful, but also very strong. That worries the priest greatly and he starts giving Balda impossible missions to accomplish.

The Priest asks Balda to collect a fabricated debt from sea devils. Balda troubles the sea with rope and forces the leader of the devils, an "old Bies
Bies
Bies or bes was an evil spirit or demon in Slavic mythology. The word is synonymous with chort.After the acceptance of Christianity the bies became identified with the devil, corresponding to the being referred to in Ancient Greek, as either daimon , daimónion or pneuma...

", to come out. He agrees to pay the debt if Balda will defeat his grandson at running and weight carrying. Balda tricks the "little Bies", first by getting a hare, whom he proclaims his "younger brother" to run in his stead, and then by "carrying" a horse between his two legs by riding on it.

The story ends when Balda gives the priest three blows to the forehead which results in the priest losing his mind. The final line is, "You shouldn't have gone rushing off after cheapness."

Adaptations

  • 1933-1936 - The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda
    The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda (film)
    The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda is an extant Soviet animation feature film by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky based on the eponymous fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin. The only surviving episode is called Bazar ....

    , USSR, animated
    Animation
    Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

     film by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, and the surviving film score by Dmitri Shostakovich
    Dmitri Shostakovich
    Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

  • 1940 - The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda, USSR, traditionally-animated
    Traditional animation
    Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...

     film by Panteleymon Sazonov. http://animator.ru/db/?p=show_film&fid=2923
  • 1956 - The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda, USSR, stop motion
    Stop motion
    Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...

    -animated film by Anatoly Karanovich. http://animator.ru/db/?p=show_film&fid=3084
  • 1973 - The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda, USSR, traditionally-animated
    Traditional animation
    Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...

     film by Inessa Kovalevskaya. http://animator.ru/db/?p=show_film&fid=2664


Portrayal of priest protested

On October 5, 2006 Sophia Kishkovsky reported in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

that "In the northern city of Syktyvkar
Syktyvkar
-Twin towns/sister cities:Syktyvkar is twinned with the following sister cities: Cullera, Spain Debrecen, Hungary Los Altos, United States Lovech, Bulgaria Taiyuan, China-External links:* * * *...

, the State Theater of Opera and Ballet of the Republic of Komi
Komi Republic
The Komi Republic is a federal subject of Russia .-Geography:The republic is situated to the west of the Ural mountains, in the north-east of the East European Plain...

, a region once notorious as a center of the prison camp system, or Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

, recently bowderlized
a commemorative performance of 'The Tale of Priest and his Workman Balda' ...after the local diocese
Diocese
A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...

 objected to the portrayal of the priest in the work." The resulting production was "reduced to a series of numbers..., none of which included the priest." http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B17FC3E540C768CDDA90994DE404482&n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fRussia%20and%20the%20Former%20Soviet%20Union

Conflict over similar matters had also arisen in Dnepropetrovsk Opera and Ballet Theatre on Christmas & New Year Season of 2006/2007. Read about this in Russian at http://orthodoxy.org.ua/uk/tochka_zoru/2006/12/25/4800.html http://www.eizvestia.com/soc/full/10241

External links

Сказка о попе и о его работнике Балде available at Lib.ru
Lib.ru
Lib.ru, also known as Maksim Moshkow's Library is the oldest electronic library in the Russian Internet segment.Founded and supported by Maksim Moshkow, it receives contributions mainly from users who send texts they scanned and processed...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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