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Based on Christian Motifs in Sergei Aksakov’s Fairy Tale “The Scarlet Flower”)
The Russian writer Sergei Timofeyevich Aksakov was the pride of the Simbirsk region and, although he was born in Ufa, the people there consider him one of their own. As a child, he visited the family estate, where his difficult childhood passed (the boy suffered from epilepsy). Sergei developed very quickly: he could read at the age of four, and at five he acted out and retold tales from “One Thousand and One Nights.” Fairy tales helped him regain his health. As a child, he hardly slept, and to lull him somehow, the housekeeper Pelageya told him fairy tales. She knew a great many of them.
Aksakov carefully polished and recorded “The Scarlet Flower” quite late in life, when he was already a grandfather, for his beloved granddaughter Olenka. It was later printed as an appendix to his “The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson.” Readers loved it so much that it has long been regarded as a Russian folk tale. It stirs the imagination with its mysteries, lures with its air of secrecy, enchants with the unusual love story of a beautiful merchant’s daughter and a forest monster, and delights with music that plays without pause throughout the tale. This fairy tale forever casts its spell with the vivid light of the scarlet flower.
If one reads it attentively, Christian motifs and meaning emerge. This gives the tale a special noble beauty and depth. Then a wondrous scarlet flower may take root in the reader’s heart, one that truly has no equal in the world.
The Western version contains the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast.” There too, there is a widowed merchant with three daughters, the youngest of whom is simply called Belle (French for “Beauty”). Belle asks him to bring her a rose (specifically naming a flower that does not grow where they live). Her father ends up in the forest and reaches the Beast’s castle. There he finds a rose and picks it, and the Beast demands payment for his life—his daughter Belle. The father makes an agreement with the Beast (almost a contract!) stipulating that if he dies, his daughters will receive gold and diamonds. When Belle arrives at the castle, she searches for the prince whom the Beast supposedly hides in his home. She does not know that the Beast is that very enchanted prince. The Beast insists that she marry him. Belle refuses. She also visits her father, and her sisters delay her, but the Beast waits for her (he does not die of sorrow!), becomes a prince, and marries her.
Aksakov’s “The Scarlet Flower” begins with a mystery that determines the entire plot. A merchant’s three beautiful daughters order exotic gifts from their father, each more interesting than the last. The eldest asks him to bring her “a golden crown made of precious gems, so that they give off a light like the full moon, like the red sun...” Most likely, such a crown is a man-made wonder created by Western craftsmen. The father knows where the crown is and who can obtain it, and naturally promises to bring it to his eldest daughter. The middle daughter asks her father for a more sophisticated gift: “a dressing table of Eastern crystal, whole and flawless, so that, looking into it, I might see all the beauty beneath the heavens, and so that, gazing into it, I would not grow old, and my maiden beauty would increase.” This object is clearly magical, created in the East, where there are so many sorcerers. The “dressing table” creates an optical illusion of eternal youth, and the middle daughter already believes that she will never lose her beauty if she possesses it. The father also knows where to find it and how to obtain it, and promises to fulfill his middle daughter’s wish.
By the way, he has a rich treasury and intends simply to buy these gifts. But the youngest daughter, the most beloved and beautiful, perplexes her father, for he does not know where such a wonder can be found or how to obtain it, and therefore does not even promise to bring it to her. The youngest daughter says she needs “a scarlet flower more beautiful than any other in the world.” And what flower could be called that? No one knows. Only the daughter knows what flower it is, because its color is scarlet and it is so beautiful that it cannot be described. She has already seen it, most likely in a dream. The scarlet flower is, of course, a symbol of something otherworldly, of a beauty that earthly flowers do not possess. To recognize it, one needs a mystical experience—an illumination.
The father finds and obtains the gifts for his eldest and middle daughters without much difficulty. But what is he to do about the gift for his youngest daughter? First, he encounters so many scarlet flowers that it is impossible to choose which is the most beautiful. Second, he suddenly loses even his treasury: robbers attack him, and he flees into a dark forest.
From this moment, the fairy tale seems to move us into another dimension. In the “dense, impassable forest,” a “well-trodden road” appears before him, and no forest creatures threaten him with their roaring and hissing. He walks for a long time in complete silence. Night has already fallen, yet the road is glowing! Ahead he sees a glow and fears it is a forest fire. He tries to turn off the road, but there is no other path. Finally, he comes out into a clearing where it is as light as day. He sees a wondrous, radiant royal palace, “but no fire could be seen... And harmonious music played within it, such as he had never heard.” In ordinary fairy tales, the forest signifies territory dangerous to the heroes’ lives, inhabited not only by wild animals and various crawling creatures but also by evil spirits. Wicked stepmothers send poor orphans there to perish. Only an Ivan Tsarevich, knowing Baba Yaga’s tricks, manages to escape death there. But no fairy tale has a father lost in the forest. And he is not lost at all; he is clearly being led where he needs to go.
The glowing palace made of precious stones somewhat resembles the image of the Heavenly City of Jerusalem from the Apocalypse of John the Theologian, the city created by God for faithful Christians.
Indeed, the merchant seems to find himself in paradise: indescribable beauty surrounds him, riches beyond words abound, and “music plays without ceasing.” He need only think of something for his wish to be fulfilled. Invisible servants attend him as though they were angels. In a dream, he sees his daughters: the first two are already preparing to marry, having forgotten their father. Only the youngest daughter grieves and waits for her dear father to return.
Then, unexpectedly, the merchant sees a scarlet flower “of beauty never seen or heard of before.” It dawns on him that he has found the scarlet flower, “more beautiful than any other in the world.”
But when he picks the flower, an indescribable monster, like the flower itself, appears before him. It roars in a human voice, demanding the merchant’s life for the flower he has picked. Paradise disappears, and evil forces approach him, threatening sudden death. The merchant then begs the monster not to destroy his Christian soul. The monster demands that he send one of his daughters in exchange for the flower. And if none of them agrees to save their father, he will return himself and pay for the flower with his life. How unlike this is the bargain between the merchant and the Beast in “Beauty and the Beast,” where the price of a rose is set in jewels. Our merchant is not thinking about the treasury, but about how to “prepare for death according to Christian duty.” And the monster does not object to letting him leave for this purpose, trusting his Christian word.
When he arrives home, the elder daughters “nearly lost their minds with joy” over the gifts, while the youngest daughter, seeing the scarlet flower, began to cry, “as though something had stung her heart.” Her heart sensed that the flower had come at a high price.
The elder daughters flatly refused to save their father, while the youngest immediately agreed to go to the monster in her parent’s place, asking for her father’s blessing. Both were willing to give their lives for each other, displaying the highest degree of Christian love. The father wept for her as though she were dead, but she would not let him mourn her and, placing her hope in God, set out on an unknown journey.
She found herself with the monster as though in her own home, “just as if she had lived there for a whole century. And the scarlet flower flew from her hands of its own accord, took root on its former stem, and bloomed more beautifully than before.” The monster communicated with her in a biblical manner: in letters of fire on a marble wall. The beast called her the forest mistress and himself her obedient servant. She called him her lord, thanking him for his kindness and mercy. Without seeing him, she came to love him for his good soul, realizing that “he loved her more than he loved himself.”
She wanted to hear his voice and pleaded with him, saying she would not fear his beastly roar. This was because she had come to know his soul and believed he would do her no harm. But when she heard the voice of the forest beast, she was frightened, though she did not show it. They began long conversations, and there was no end to them.
Then she began begging him to show himself as he truly was, not knowing that he was hideous. He told her that when she saw him, she would hate and drive him away, and he would die of sorrow. He even decided to let her return to her dear father if, after seeing him, she could not remain there. He would “die a sudden death.”
The beauty fainted from terror, for “the forest beast, the sea monster, was terrifying: crooked arms, beastly claws on his hands, horse’s legs, great camel-like humps front and back, completely covered in hair from top to bottom, boar’s tusks protruding from his mouth, a hooked nose like an eagle’s, and owl-like eyes.”
At first glance, it may seem that such a monster is a product of folk imagination, combining almost the entire animal kingdom in a single image. But this fairy tale is not so simple. This image is the quintessence of unimaginable ugliness, the absolute antithesis of the godlike human form. The only human feature he possesses is his silhouette (he has a head, arms, and legs). He is more terrifying than the Minotaur! After seeing such a monster, one could lose not only consciousness but also one’s life. Yet the “merchant’s daughter” regained consciousness and even asked him to show himself once more, for she had not forgotten his kindness and mercy. The beauty understood that a good soul was imprisoned in an ugly body. And her love banished all fear! From then on, they were never separated.
One day the monster allowed the beauty to visit her family, but warned her that if she did not return within three days and three nights, he would be unable to live without her. At home, her sisters went mad with envy and told her not to return, wishing that the monster would die of longing. An insatiable soul is worse than a beast’s; envy devours it from within, more terribly than a ferocious beast! The younger sister told them that if she did this, she “deserved to be given to wild beasts to tear apart.” However, the sisters did not come to their senses and decided to destroy their sister’s happiness: they set all the clocks in the house back by one hour.
But the wicked women did not know that their sister’s heart would show the true time, for it began to ache and throb. A minute before the appointed time, she found herself with the monster. Silence reigned everywhere; the wondrous music no longer played, and the birds no longer sang songs of paradise! She called for her lord but heard no answering voice. Her trembling heart showed her where to run: to the scarlet flower! There she found the poor, lifeless monster, his hideous paws wrapped around the flower. She realized that her lord had died of longing for her.
What is death? An endless sleep, yet even it is powerless before true love! Wrapping her arms around her good lord’s terrible head, she “cried out in a piercing voice: ‘Rise, awaken, my beloved friend, I love you as a longed-for bridegroom!’” and fainted. Her lord came back to life and was transformed into a young prince, a handsome man of extraordinary beauty.
Love conquers death! This Christian truth permeates the tale told by the housekeeper Pelageya and retold so masterfully by Sergei Aksakov, who poured his soul into it, making it so vivid and wondrous. So many years have passed since he recorded it for his readers, yet the beautiful scarlet flower still shines with its wondrous light, enticing us with its mystery to this day. It was more beautiful than all the flowers in the world and had no name in the tale because it was the
flower of immortality, a remnant of paradise on earth..
