The Clear case: where Finist's roots come from
What do the Bylinas about the Bogatyrs, the ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, the medieval legend of Lohengrin and the fairy tale of the scarlet flower have in common? All of them are in one way or another connected with different incarnations of the same character. January 1 in the Russian rental comes out the film "Finist. The First Bogatyr." Its plot is original, the action unfolds in the East. On how the image of Finist more than once up to unrecognizable transformed in works of art, music and literature - in the material "Izvestia".
Cupid from antiquity
The main character of the future movie "Finist. The first bogatyr" (at the box office from January 1) tells about the adventures of a bogatyr, a good young man Finist. The plot is a completely new, in many ways unexpected story, but involves the characters of folk tales - Baba Yaga and, in fact, Finist. But if with Baba-Yaga any Russian person is familiar from early childhood, Finist is not so popular. Where does he come from and why is he called the Clear Falcon?
"Feather Finist - Yasna Falcon" appears in two major collections of folk tales - Alexander Afanasyev and Ivan Khudyakov. Both of themwere published in the middle of the 19th century, but, understandably, the stories included in them had been in oral retelling for many centuries before that. There are many variants of the tale: researchers distinguish about two dozen. But in all cases in the center of the story is a magical young man, in the form of a falcon flying to the girl, and secretly.
This motif is in the folklore of many countries, and it goes back to antiquity, to the myth of Cupid and Psyche: a beautiful girl every night visited the invisible suitor (Cupid, otherwise - Eros), but she should not recognize who he is. Until one day her jealous sisters encouraged her to break the ban, after which Cupid disappeared, and in order to get him back, Psyche had to undergo a series of difficult trials.
This myth, set out by the ancient Roman writer Apuleius in "Metamorphoses", inspired artists of different eras: the obvious eroticism and at the same time the dramatic history, the opportunity to please the customer with the image of beautiful lovers made the legend of Cupid and Psyche especially favorite painters XVII-XVIII centuries. However, even later it remained in demand. A striking example, directly related to our country: the great collector Ivan Morozov, who collected impressionists and modernists, ordered for his musical living room in the mansion on Prechistenka a series of panels on the theme of this myth to the Frenchman Maurice Denis. The entire interior of the room was decorated in Denis's favorite greenish and blue tones, and the canvases were created specifically to fit the size of the walls allotted for them.
Music salon of Ivan Morozov's mansion
Already during the Soviet period Denis' works were transferred to Leningrad, and the living room was rebuilt. But today we can see a reconstruction of this space (with the original paintings) in the Hermitage's Main Staff.
From Bilibin and Wagner to Disney
Morozov's living room was created in the early 20th century. This is the Art Nouveau era, the Silver Age - a time when ancient myths suddenly became relevant again, in demand among cultural figures (although at the end of the 19th century art was dominated by realism, and all sorts of "Greek fictions" seemed horrible vulgarity and the legacy of outmoded academism). But exactly in the same period began a new surge of interest in national folklore. In painting, the forerunner of the trend was the storyteller Viktor Vasnetsov, and he had already passed the baton to the Miriskusniki, primarily Ivan Bilibin.
It was Bilibin who turned out to be the first illustrator of the Finist fairy tale. In his drawings we see the key moments of the plot: the departure of the father of the three daughters to the city (recall that the youngest asked him to bring Finist's feather), the wanderings of the girl, when because of the envy of her sisters, the falcon is injured flying into the window and disappears ("Look for me in three faraway lands!"). And finally, the denouement: seeing Finiste sleeping, drugged with a potion, she began to cry, and her tears made him wake up.
Bilibinskiye illustrations refer to the Russian lubok, but at the same time demonstrate the features of conventionality, decorativeness, characteristic of Art Nouveau. But even brighter trends of the era with its desire for decadence, visual excess manifested themselves in Mikhail Vrubel, who, although he did not write directly Finist, but, however, more than once embodied in his paintings images of a beautiful flying young man. In some cases it is the Six-winged Seraphim, in others - the romantic Demon (both have the same face). "The sad Demon, the spirit of exile, flew over the sinful earth..." With all the external distance between Lermontov's poem, which inspired Vrubel, and the tale of Finist, one cannot help but see common features between the images: the love of a magical, unearthly beautiful winged creature for an earthly girl is a metaphor for the conflict between reality and dreams.
The painting "The Seated Demon"
We see a similar motif in the medieval legend of the beautiful knight Lohengrin. He arrives on a boat drawn by a white swan (we recall the falcon) at the call of the innocent girl Elsa, who is in danger. After protecting the oppressed, he becomes her husband, but - demands not to be asked who he is. When Elsa, like Psyche with Cupid, does break the ban, Lohengrin disappears forever.
This plot formed the basis for one of the greatest operas of the 19th century, Richard Wagner's Lohengrin. Later, the composer also wrote "Parsifal" - about Lohengrin's father, the guardian of the Holy Grail. Thus, we can speak here of the connection between the story of Lohengrin and the Christian theme.
Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin.
Well, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, in love with Wagnerian aesthetics and especially with the opera "Lohengrin", erected his famous Gothic castle Neuschwantain, where he arranged a pond with white swans. Follies and ignoring the pressing problems of the state eventually cost Ludwig II the throne, and Bavaria - independence, but today Germany has a magnet for tourists. And by the way, the look of Neuschwantain became the basis for the famous Disney studio logo. This is how the fairy tales of the world intertwine.
A feather and a scarlet flower.
But back to the Finist. Not the most famous aspect of this story is its kinship with the fairy tale of the scarlet flower. In one of the variants, the youngest daughter asks her father to bring not a feather (although even here a parallel can be drawn), but exactly the scarlet flower. And it is with the help of this flower that she then summons the falcon. In turn, the canonical account of Sergei Aksakov's "The Scarlet Flower", where the heroine finds herself married to a monster, is nothing but a variant of the well-known European fairy tale about the Beauty and the Beast.
And it is to it that the 1975 Soviet movie "Finist - The Bright Falcon" appeals, where an evil sorcerer turns a hero into a monster, but Finist's bride Alyonushka saves him. Here, however, magic is as if separated from the hero himself: Finist does not become a falcon himself, he is a simple plowman. But he has a bird, which warns him about the raids of enemies. And this makes the young man rather a comrade of Ilya Muromets, Dobryni Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich, the fabled knights who guarded the frontiers of the state, than the folkloric Finist.
Soon we will know what image is closer to the new movie incarnation of Finist. The creators of the picture are sure to prepare us a lot of surprises, so that the fairy-tale character, who has undergone so many wonderful metamorphoses in the culture of past centuries, will acquire new features. We are waiting for January 1!
