Unconditional Love of The Witch Olesya - Part 2

Today we continue to look inside the relations of the novella's main heroes.
How the protagonist finally meets witch is somehow a folklore theme. While hunting a hare in the woods with Yarmola, the hero looses the way and proceeds walking inside the forest. The barrier is a swamp he has to cross. He sees the walls of a woodman's house among the trees and, struggling to go through the marsh, he approaches it. The main hero opens the hut's door and sees only the hut's dark premises... After he calls out for some live soul, he notices an old woman sitting on the floor with a pile of chicken feathers in front of her.

Baba Yaga's hut, as pictured in the Russian fairy tales

Of note note that the main hero's thinking regarding witches is not free from "standard" beliefs. He, not knowingly, feeds his mind with superstitions. When seeing  Manuilikha, he compares her at once with  Baba Yaga, a Russian folklore character. The hero, himself, is just like Ivan from the Russian fairy tales, who stumbles upon Baba Yaga's hut and then asks her to help him.The old witch Manuilikha is not happy at all to see a stranger in her house, moreover, a young man... All because she is accustomed to live out of reach of people and she has a 25 years old granddaughter. The main hero then tries to soften her offering a coin but she has to make a spread for him  in return. While this the hero hears a woman's voice singing a song... and this is how the meeting with Manuilikha's granddaughter Olesya occurs. The protagonist asks Olesya to show him a path out of the woods and they get into a small conversation. The young man of the story gets to know that Olesya and her grandmother were indeed driven away to the forest, and she says herself the people call "Grandmother a 'witch,' a 'shedevil,' a 'jail-bird'". Would you be friendly to others after such accusations in your address?
 Furthermore, the relations between Olesya and the master develop during frequent visits of the latter to the hut. First, the conversations of the young people remind "teacher-pupil" talks, when the hero tries to educate Olesya... Nevertheless, he considers her to be very intelligent for a girl who doesn't even know how to read and has been living in the woods whole her life.

 I guess that the "witchiness", secrets, surrounding Olesya, charm the main hero more that her wit. He tries to convince himself that magic and witchcraft and witches after all, don't exist, while Olesya's belief in her curse of being able to know secrets of life and. actually, do magic, never fades away.  Oleays shows few tricks to her lover and he tries to explain it by some laws of physics...She throws herself in the embrace of love though she knows that this won't lead to any good. Olesya's ability to give her whole entity to the person she loves and never ask for same in return, is her main strength as well as weakness. In order to please her beloved she, in spite of anything, decides to go to the village church, and this is where she meets peasants' enmity towards her witch's nature. They beat and abuse her, and while she manages to escape, she curses everyone around, singing a sentence to flee this place forever.
  The main hero hurries to see Olesya after this incident and finds her covered in bruises and wounds  She explains him that now she and her grandmother have to  leave... Olesya however is happy anyway, because she was able to love...unconditionally. She only regrets that she didn't have a baby with her beloved...
The main hero can't do anything: neither stop nor follow her. He is the one who is weak and can sacrifice his love to his social status. Olesya leaves the place suddenly and all is what the main hero left is her coral necklace... May be he will now start believing in supernatural because Olesya predicted that their love won't have a happy ending...
I can't  not to make analogy with Margarita, a woman, who sacrificed her entity  and Olesya, who stayed true to her witchy nature. Both had to persuade their lovers to believe in love and both physically suffered for standing their ground. Do Russian writers consider women to be stronger than the men? Or more dedicated... or do women simply BELIEVE in the power of love? 

Unconditional Love of The Witch Olesya - Part 1

 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). It's a little strange to start a post about a witch from the Bible's quote.. However these three lines is the foundation of the romantic stories by Russian writer Kuprin A.I.  These stories is another favorite read of mine I got from home this summer.

One of the most touching and beautiful of them is the one called "Olesya". I read it three days back, again. It always boosts my imagination and I walk half dreaming about it for few more days.

The protagonist, from whose side the story is narrated, is an official, sent to the "God-forsaken village in the Volhynian borderland of Polesye" as he says about the place. He tries to keep himself busy by game-shooting, giving medical help to locals, and noting the area's legends and tales. He doesn't like the place much and calls it "out-of-the-way corner... - simple manners, primitive characters". The relations with the peasants "never went beyond the fact that, on seeing me from a distance, they would take off their caps and, as they came alongside, would mutter sullenly "Speedjue," which was supposed to mean "God speed you." The locals would also start kissing the hands - "an old custom from the time of Polish serfdom". The main character is placed in such environment which doesn't relate his vision of the world. He underlines throughout the story the wildness of the local beliefs...

Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898), The hut in the Forest

The rationalism of the main character is opposed to the superstitions which fill the minds of the peasants. One winter day the main hero, which is called master by his helper Yarmola, sat in his room, while the severe storm was blowing outside...
"Where do you think this horrible wind comes from, Yarmola?"
"The wind?" Yarmola looked up lazily. "Why, don't you know, master?"
"Of course not. How could I know such a thing?"
"Don't you, really!" Yarmola was roused. "I'll tell you," he went on, a shade mysteriously. "Either a witch has been born, or a wizard's making merry." I pounced eagerly on this. "Who knows," I thought, "perhaps I may worm out of him some interesting story of magic, hidden treasures, or werewolves."
"Have you got any witches here in Polesye?" I asked..." This is how the main hero started getting involved in the world of witchcraft and... love. Yarmola then tells the master the tale that there was a witch but "the lads drove her away" to the forests, burning her house "so that not a chip would be left of her accursed nest".
Here we can see that the attitude towards witches is completely negative, moreover, the witch is blamed in whatever bad happens in the village. Thus the witch was driven away because she was believed to do loads of harm like casting spells, plait the stalks in the sheaves...and of course to cause serious illness in the family and furthermore a death of one woman's child!
The curiosity of the master rises as he gets to know that the witch is now living in the forest with her daughter or granddaughter. He intends to see her as soon as the days get warmer. Yarmola tells that the witch's name is Manuilikha...
I am going to cover the rest of the story in the next post, as this one gets too long to read at once. I am going to tell about the relations which tie up between the main hero and  the witch's granddaughter...Do you think it's going to be as successful as the mystic venture of the Master and Margarita?
P.S. the citations are from the  book "Olesya" translated from the Russian by Stepan Apresyan. The book is available here.