Modern Portrayals
Baba Yaga is a favorite subject of literature, films and cartoons. The film Vasilisa the Beautiful by Aleksandr Rou, featuring Baba Yaga, was the first feature with fantasy elements in the Soviet Union. Georgy Milliar, a male actor, portrayed Baba Yaga in numerous movies from the 1930s to 1960s, including Vasilissa the Beautiful, Morozko and others.
The Russian animated film Bartok the Magnificent features Baba Yaga as a difficult main character, but not an antagonist. Baba Jaga, a.k.a. ciocia Agnieszka (aunt Agnes) appears as a minor antagonist in Andrzej Pilipiuk's short story collection Wieszać każdy może. Main protagonist, Jakub Wędrowycz, mentions fighting her as a child and gets rid of her permanently when she tries to eat his great-grandson Piotruś.
Baba Yaga is a major character in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s children story Joseph & Koza, where she is described as having a face like a pitch, a red turned-up nose with broad nostrils, eyes burning like live coals, thistles instead of hair and a beard. Singer also mentions that the Mazovians believed in “many lesser babas” and “little imps called dziads.” In his novel The King of the Fields, Baba Yaga was a goddess to whom the prehistoric Poles made sacrifices.
Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite for piano composed in 1874, features "The Hut on Bird's Legs (Baba Yaga)" as its penultimate movement. This suite was inspired by an exhibition of paintings by the Russian artist Viktor Hartmann held in his memory, a year after his death. This specific movement was inspired by the painting "The hut on hen's legs–clock in the Russian Style". Mussorgsky's suite has since been set in whole or in part for a variety of instruments. The most famous version for orchestra was made in 1922 by Ravel. The progressive rock group Emerson, Lake & Palmer adapted Mussorgsky's suite for an album in 1971 that included the original Baba Yaga movement along with an original track entitled "The Curse of Baba Yaga".
Baba Yaga is featured in Andrey Belyanin's cycle Secret service of Tsar Pea. The childhood and youth of Baba Yaga were described for the first time in the A. Aliverdiev's tale "Creek" ("Lukomorie").
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Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or portrayals:
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