Belarusian fantasy

Fantasy elements have been present in Belarusian culture since ancient times, since the genre is closely connected with folklore and mythology. Elements of mysticism and images of mythological creatures were used in his work by Adam Mickiewicz . While working on his ballads in 1819-21, Mickiewicz turned to the wealth of Belarusian folklore ^[1] . So, to the image of Svityazyanak (residents of Lake Svityaz , white-faced girls with long flowing hair, who turned into women of the city of Svityaz, flooded by gods at their request with water to avoid being captured by hostile Russian troops) and the legends associated with them, the poet turned in his ballads “Svityaz” (1820), “Svityazyanka” (1821), “Fish” (1822) ^[1] .

But Belarusian mythology is most clearly reflected in the works of Ian Borschevsky - “Shlyakhtich Zavalnya, or Belarus in science fiction stories” (1844-46), in which the author takes us to a fantastic, fictional Belarus, in which the reader will meet with werewolves and wolfhounds, with giants and dragons, monsters, magicians and warlocks. His characters came to the work from national mythology, inhabited by mermaids, aquatic, goblin, wolfhounds, but Borschevsky himself invented some characters - the Son of the Storm, the White Forty, the Lament. It is Jan Borschevsky who is considered the founder of the fantasy genre in Belarusian literature. He, like a real science fiction writer, looked forward, into the future, and as if foresaw the appearance - prose of horrors, fantasy, science fiction ^[2] . On the mythological basis of the works of Borschevsky, his work should be attributed to such a subgenre as Slavic fantasy, which is based on a combination of Slavic folklore (traditions, epics, myths) and standard fantasy canons.

At the presentation of his fantasy story to the question about the tradition of Belarusian fiction, the Belarusian poet and philologist Serge Minskevich said: “ We were the first to write fantasy, when we had not yet come up with a name for this genre. There was no Tolkien yet, and we already had Jan Borschevsky ... ” ^[3] .

In 1852, the romantic ballad “Demon” came out from the pen of the Belarusian poet and folklorist Alexander Rypinsky . The subtitle to the poem was “Belarusian ballad”, than the author noted not only the folklore basis of his ballad, but also the originality of the work, its harmony with the traditions of Belarusian poetry of the mid-19th century. In the preface to The Evil One, Alexander Rypinsky wrote that as a result of processing a folk song he had a long history and he, “ added something strange and hellish to it, made a peasant ballad from it ” ^[4] .

Mythological characters are present in the poetry of Yanka Kupala . Some researchers (eg: Ph.D. Phil. Sciences G. M. Metlitskaya) even use a term such as Kupalovsky mythologism. For some time, the mythological imagery in the poet's work was almost dominant. The “stocktakers”, to such mythical and pagan creatures as witches, ghouls, devils, aquatic, mermaids and others, dominate in his verses “Forever fight ...” (1912), “Mermaid” (1912), “Crest” (1911) , “Wherever you fly out of captivity ...” (1906), “Forgotten Tavern” (1907), “Bye, Bye, peasant!” (1905-1907), “Night by Night” (1909), in the poem “A Dream on the Barrow” "(1910). What is the passage from his poem “Forgotten Tavern” worth: “They marry the witch from the wolfhounds, woo the shinkar, the priest the rabbi, the witch the clerk, and the devil is the master. They play like that until a rooster cries somewhere ... everything dies, and the banquets are empty, boring around ” ^[5] .

In 1923, Vaclav Lastovsky published a riddle filled with riddles, “Labyrinths,” which probably has no genre analogues either in Belarusian or in world literature. The genre of the work occupies a boundary position between utopia and science fiction, in it there is a unity of historical and fantastic ^[6] . In the work we see the interweaving of several conscious author's hoaxes, the main of which is connected with the existence of the Polotsk labyrinth. And just as in ancient Greek mythology there was a myth about the Labyrinth on Crete and the Minotaur , which served as a theme for a number of literary works, so the Polotsk maze in the interpretation of Lastovsky became for him one of the central artifacts on which his Krevsky theory was based ^[6] .

In Belarusian drama, fantasy elements are present in a number of plays by Yevstigney Mirovich . Fantasy-historical plays became one of the most significant in his work: Masheka (1922), The Voivode Blacksmith (1924) ^[7] . His "Masheka" was the first play staged in the Belarusian language ^[8] .

In the context of creating new art worlds, the researcher Andrei Khadanovich conducted an association of Vladimir Korotkevich with Tolkin . According to Khadanovich, Belarus Korotkevich is an ideal country inhabited by noble knights, courageous patriots and nationally conscious aristocrats with poetic abilities. And the creators of Belarusian fantasy, Khodonovich considers it is Korotkevich ^[9] . And in fact, Korotkevich’s work is characterized not only by historicism, but also by giving it individual mythological features. The critic Aleksey Nenadovets in his article “Mythology in the Works of Vladimir Kratkevich” remarks “that the concepts of the sorcerer, wizard, sorcerer, fortuneteller almost do not differ in meaning in the writer's works, although there were, accordingly, their subtleties worked out by the centuries-old practical experience of the people” ^[10] .

According to the chairman of the Adventure and Fantasy section in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Kulichenko, Belarusian science fiction writers are more successful in the fantasy genre than in the science fiction genre, since fantasy and its subgenre are more accessible to the modern reader than the works of scientific »Fiction, and therefore more quickly find the response of readers ^[11] . Probably the most vivid in this genre is Olga Gromyko , whose books (published since 2003), which were created in the genre of humorous fantasy, are distinguished by irony, sometimes turning into sarcasm. The main characters of her books are characters in the traditional fantasy related to the negative: witches, vampires, werewolves, dragons, trolls and others ^[12] .

According to another fictitious country, this time based on the legends and traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , we can travel in the novel “The Pursuit” by writer Nika Rakitina (real name is Lyudmila Bogdanova). The heroes of the novel are real Belarusian characters. Also, when reading the novel, you can notice many similarities with Belarus. At the Eurocon-2008 Congress, established by the European Union of Science Fiction, experts recognized the Belarusian writer Nik Rakitin as the best young science fiction writer ^[13] .

Adventures are unfolding on Belarusian lands in the cycle of fairy tales by Pyotr Vasyuchenko “The Adventures of Messrs. Kublitsky and Zablotsky” (“The Adventures of Messrs. Kublitskaya and Zablotsky” (1997) and “Once upon a time there lived Kublitsky da Zablotsky” (2003)). These works are sometimes absurd, and comic, and philosophical in nature, and allow us to look from the side at the illogicality of human excessive desires. And all this is served with folk humor. This can be clearly seen, for example, in the passage where the pans give advice to Kure-Shchabyatura about what kind of chicken she should bring ("[Zablotsky] So that the fat on that chicken was palm-thick ... [Kublitsky] Yes, so that it was from a fair amount hog ... [Zablotsky] Not from a hog, but from a bull, so that it would be great! In! "). But instead of the desired gentlemen, they get an egg the size of a barrel, from which the Scarecrow hatches, which requires food. In 2003, Pyotr Vasyuchenko was awarded the Clay Veles Prize (for the best Belarusian-language art book of the year) for the book “Once upon a time Kublitsky da Zablotsky” ^[14] . And in 2013, the author turned to the mythology of ancient Greece, telling in his characteristic manner, fascinatingly and with humor, about the exploits of the famous strongman Hercules (“The Twelve Feats of Hercules”) ^[15] .

Since 2002, the co-authors Andrei Zhvalevsky and Igor Mytko have written a series of fantasy parody novels around the world-famous series of Harry Potter stories - “Porri Gatter” (“Porri Gutter and the Stone Philosopher”, “Personal file of Mergion or the Four Devil's dozens ”,“ Nine exploits of Sen Aesley ”). The parody is built on the “turning over” of the plot: almost every thing described in the original is turned inside out. Porri Gatter is an ordinary boy here, who appeared in a witching family, but to the chagrin of his parents, he does not possess magical abilities at all ^[16] . At the beginning of the parody, the resemblance to the original is clearly visible, even the correspondence of the plot lines is maintained. But after about a quarter of the book, the plot begins to deviate markedly from the original.

She writes fruitful stories for children in the science-fantasy genre Raisa Borovikova . Probably, her trilogy for secondary school children “From the Tales of the Old Astronaut” (2005) is especially notable. In this trilogy there are space adventures and an adventurous plot, the real world exists somewhere near the fictional. The book is noteworthy in that the author gives his fantastic work a national touch. For example, the spaceport in the work is located near Raubichi, and the astronaut crew is sad not on planet Earth, but according to Belarusian nature ^[17] .

Conventionally, the “novel-myth” by Ludmila Rublevskaya “Children of the Homunculus” (2000) can be attributed to the fantasy genre, which is based on the legend of the warlock Tvardovsky, the creator of the artificial man - the homunculus. At the same time, Rublevskaya’s creativity is more characteristic of a return to mythological heritage, as, for example, in her book Old World Myths of the City of B., in which the stories of ancient Roman and Greek myths are transferred to the realities of the inhabitants of an ordinary Belarusian town of the 19th century ^[18] . And to a certain extent, the author managed to create a world of historical Belarusian fantasy in a series of stories about Prantsish Vyrvich. Even in the language of the work there is an ancient, arrogantly baroque manner. This is very felt in the first part (“The Adventures of Prancisz Vyrvich, the Schoolboy and the Spy”, 2012), full of historical jokes. For example, a story that cannot be treated without humor is a story about a meeting between Karol Radziwill Panah Kahanku and a mermaid, and that “the result of the marriage was herrings”. During the adventures of Vyrvich, the world tree Yggdrasil , and the labyrinths with the Minotaur, and the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci are mentioned ^[19] .

The world of adventures is also in the cycle of fantasy and adventure chivalric novels “King and Judge” by Inna Sudareva, who begins the novel “Judge of the Royal House” (2006) ^[20] .

A series of novels by Natalia Novash, “Close to the genre of epic fantasy,” “Finding the past” (2009), in which, after the collision of a huge comet with the Earth, “doors” open between the world of people and the world of elves ^[21] .

The reader and Svetlana Ulasevich, also the author of a series of novels, but already about dragons - “Dragon Sagas”, which begins the novel “One and a half meters of misunderstanding, or Do not wake up sleeping,” takes the reader into the world of magic, elves, werewolves, cannibals, vampires, warriors and dragons. Dragon ”(2009) ^[22] .

Another book whose heroes are dragons is Elvira Vashkevich’s novel “The Road to Silver Waterfalls” (2014), in which a messenger is sent to our Earth from a distant planet where dragons live ^[23] .

The magical world of mythological creatures meets us in Gennady Avlasenko’s fantasy novel Prisoners of the Black Forest (2011). In the frightening and mysterious Black Forest lives a lot of the most diverse monsters, and the impenetrable Northern cliffs are inhabited by gnomes . And between the forest and the mountains, on a wide valley, human tribes live among themselves. In 2014, the publishing house "Fiction" published a collection of his mystical and fantastic stories "The Key, which unlocks nothing" ^{[24] [25]} .

The book by Serge Minskevich “The smile of the mourning queen, or the Secret of the magnetic castle” (2013) is already based on Belarusian mythology. The legendary Belarusian artist Yazep Drozdovich is easily recognized in the image of the hero of this fairy tale, the wanderer artist Drozdichy, who walks in red morocco boots, with a magic cane umbrella and depicts not smiles, but “smiles”, taking away the sadness of people. The main characters of the story are Aleola, “the future Yasnapanna,” and Artina, the future hero of the Light-Grained Country. “The Funeral Queen of Polyandra” abducted their parents, along with all the inhabitants of the town, and the children set off to defeat the evil sorceress ^[26] .

• Grushetski A., Gryshchuk N. Fantazy z zra_iny azeraў // Literature and mastastva : newspaper. - Mn. : St. Petersburg , RVU "Zvyazda" , April 24, 2015. - Issue. 4829 . - S. 6 . Archived March 4, 2016.
• Grushetsky A. Belarus - Pershaprahodtsy ў Fantasy : Journal. - Mn. : RVU "Zvyazda" , 2015. - Issue. 741 . - No. 8 . - S. 125-127 . Archived October 20, 2016.