babushkas, baba yaga, ivan bilibin, etc.

Ivan Bilibin's Vasilisa Carries a Flaming Skull...

I miss my grandmother, my baba. As of the end of November, she's been gone 5 years now, and I still miss her so much, still wish I could be coming home to her this winter to tell her what I've been up to, to show her pictures and tell her stories, to bring her beautiful silver Sakha jewelery and sing songs with her after we finish dinner. I know I will always miss her, but I've been thinking of her especially often lately. Meeting Sakha ebeler (grannies) here -- especially a friend's ebe, who reminds me of my own babusya -- fills me with such a longing.

I've also been thinking about grannies in fairytales and mythology... grannies often play important roles in Sakha tales, & grandmothers in general here are especially revered. The Sakha often do not refer to places by name, rather, in deference and respect they call them 'ebe', or 'ehe'. Rivers, lakes, and places on the land are ebe, grandmother; bears and fires are ehe. If you catch a fish in a lake, that's not a 'fish', or balyk, that's a gift from ebe. And snowy owls, those are khaar ebe, snow grandmothers...

Being in Russia--even though I am in the far East, the non-Slavic part-- has also led me to re-read the fairytales illustrated by Ivan Bilibin (see Vasilisa up there). They are intricate and breathtaking, and just... right, I always feel that sort of rightness and satisfaction when I look at them, as if this is exactly the way something is supposed to be. (I also feel that when I look at the illustrations of Tin Can Forest) They strike some deep aesthetic sensibility in me that never fails to comfort and delight me. Look at them!

Ivan Bilibin's Baba Yaga in her Mortar and Pestle

But grandmothers! Baba Yaga. The grandmother of all the grandmothers. Sometimes (especially in contemporary retellings) she is portrayed as malignant (a child-devouring, cranky old hag), but at her root, she is neither good nor evil. She's not concerned with such things; she simply is. She helps those who need help, even if that 'help' isn't what they're expecting; she gives you what you need, what you've got coming to you, whether you like it or not.

She dwells on her chicken-legged hut, & flies around in her mortar and pestle... These accoutrements are often said to betray her mixed Slavic-Ugric (Western Siberian, from the Mansi and Khanty people) roots, as huts on similar stilts are used from Eastern Europe to beyond the Urals as storehouses, homes for wooden ancestral idols, and cremation chambers. Often depicted as pointy and bony, with her own avian limbs, she is sometimes seen as the bird-mistress (esp. of magpies!), and an intermediary between worlds. Flying about in a mortar also links her to shamans who travel between the worlds; in many Ukrainian stories I've heard she dwells in a dark wood on the other side of a river of fire (the underworld) but flies up to the treetops to see what's happening, thereby reaching the world of the living. She is associated with both birthing and dying, and she spins (like any good baba!) and weaves lives and fates together; she's an ancestor, warrior, adviser, provider, and caretaker of her forest, She protects those she favours, and is basically not someone you might want to mess with.

Sometimes people have to travel to the underworld for her assistance; this is where my favourite tale comes in. I knew the story first as 'Vasylyna the Wise', but it's also called 'Vasylysa the Beautiful'.Anyway, for a number of reasons, I prefer the 'wise'; so few heroines are ever described as wise or clever, but they are always vaguely referred to as lovely, beautiful, etc. I resent this, and so would Baba Yaga, who is not so concerned with appearances (in fact, in the brilliant book by Dubravka Ugresic 'Baba Yaga Laid an Egg', Baba Yaga is the antithesis of all the sad old women fretting about aging) so my Vasylyna is Wise. Mudra. And here is her story, with illustrations by Bilibin. (please substitute 'beautiful' with 'wise' throughout).

It's not a perfect story, and not how I first heard it, because in it Baba Yaga is pretty crochety and threatening in it, as opposed to simply strict and ambiguous. However, besides including the illustrations of Ivan Bilibin (go & look at more of his pictures!), I like it for the role of the doll Vasilisa's mother gives to her at her death, the doll Vasilisa feeds (much like the treatment of idols in Siberia). Thus, her wisdom comes to her from her ancestors, the spirit of her mother who is always with her, & gives her the bravery and intuition to seek out Baba Yaga (who in this story is pretty cranky, but that's to be expected from the popular tellings). Baba Yaga gets snarky and unfriendly, but Vasilisa persists through her trials and gains knowledge. & there is really nothing better than the illustration of Vasilisa carrying a skull-lantern--the knowledge she earned in Baba Yaga's service--through the forest and using this light (given to her by her mother and Baba Yaga) against her detractors. Baba Yaga and Vasylysa are tough, resilient ladies, & the skull lantern is a potent image for me, one that I come back to in my thoughts especially when dealing with difficult people, especially those of the misogynist variety. Baba Yaga wouldn't put up with that shit, & neither would my own babusya, who is pretty much the toughest person I've known.

Ivan Bilibin's Vasilisa Enters the Forest, Sees the White Rider

Looking at the portrayal of Baba Yaga in the newer tales (as in the last hundred or so years -- not ancient!) as cranky and awful, I am reminded about a difficult truth that I have been noticing in contemporary Ukrainian and Russian society. In short, it seems sometimes as if women are not fully respected unless they are mothers; women who do not have children are seen as extraordinarily pitiful and incomplete even more so than in other countries I've lived in, and a woman who does not want children tends to be seen as particularly suspect, and potentially unstable. So yes, Baba Yaga is a babushka, but she is childless. Thus, she cannot quite be trusted! Also, she's kind of homely. Strike two! Therefore, she must be evil. Sigh.

As thus as a (quite contentedly) homely woman who (very, very happily) intends not to breed, Baba Yaga is especially my friend.