Query about film (Folklore in Film and Lit.)

[Marmeladov]

Dr. Kononenko,
  A book called Kalina krasnaia was published by Corvus (St. Petersburg) around 1994 and is available in the states. It has a precise transcription of all the dialog in Kalina krasnaia, together with an introduction about Yegor Prokudin and the folklore of St. George, with whom Shukshin's hero is associated. The book also contains detailed line-by-line notes on various folkloric, pseudo-folkloric and literary allusions in the tale. The film transcript is intended for 4th-year Russian classes, where students can consult the written text as they watch the movie. The book also contains the previously published kinopovest', which Shukshin actually cut into pieces and pasted back together as he made cuts and additions for the filmscript. The book is a stressed reader throughout. The St. George allusions, needless to say, eluded Brezhnev, who personally viewed and approved the movie. They also eluded most of the cast and crew.
  There is also a fictionalized documentary, available on VHS, about the Russian folkloric image of Elijah the Prophet in the works of Dostoevsky. Iliia-prorok pays a visit to the Russian Literature Institute back in Soviet times, arriving in a flaming antique car instead of his fiery chariot, which has been recycled. The film illustrates some of the Elijah themes with reenactments of scenes from Crime and Punishment, The Village of Stepanchikovo etc. It includes footage of the Church of Elijah the Prophet at the Powderworks in St. Petersburg, the folklore pertaining to it, and its role in Dostoevsky's fiction. (The fiery assistant superintendent of the police, Elijah Petrovich, to whom Raskol'nikov confesses, is nicknamed Gunpowder [Porokh], a detail that was drawn with an eye to the church at the powder factory. Raskol'nikov confesses on Elijah's Day, July 20.) The documentary was aired on Leningrad TV back in the early nineties, just as the church reopened. An oldtimer tells about what the Elijah's Day celebration was like in the early 1900's. It was a huge event. 
  The documentary deals in part with the research of Yuri Il'ich Marmeladov (Tainyi kod Dostoevskogo: Il'ia-prorok v russkoi literature, Leningradskoe Otdelenie AN SSSR, 1991). It deals with the folklore of Elijah in Dostoevsky, Goncharov, Ostrovsky and Bunin. 
  You might also take a look at an edition of Dostoevsky's early novella Khoziaika: The Landlady, published a couple years ago. The gruff, enigmatic old Il'ia Murin is a human emanation of Elijah, but this symbolism was never understood by critics. If they had understood, I think Dostoevsky's fiction whould have taken an even more imaginative turn. This edition (The Landlady, Birchbark Press) has an afterword dealing with the folkloric Elijah theme. 
  There is also The Brothers Karamazov: an Unorthodox Guide (Birchbark Press), which deals with the folklore of Elijah in Brothers K. It links the dying boy Ilyusha and his father with the Elijah theme. Dmitrii K. tries to find a timber dealer to get money, but, instead, he nearly gets asphyxiated in a peasant hut where the dealer is stone drunk. This is in or near Sukhoi poselok. Later, Dmitrii is arrested during a rainstorm at Mokroe. This sequence of events is related to the folkloric belief in Wet Elijah and Dry Elijah. 
  The Shukshin book, by the way, also deals with Boris Vasil'ev's Ne streliaite v belykh lebedei, which practically mirrors the St. George imagery that we find in a less obvious form in Kalina krasnaia. They were written almost simultaneously.
  There is also a novel about Y.I. Marmeladov and his folkloric investigations, called HOGTOWN in English (Master i Marmeladov in Russian).
  Gerald Mikkelson (Univ. of Kansas), I'm sure, can refer you to some other useful sources.
   -- Bob Mann
  
   


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