In Russian Culture
The Russian oven was a major element of Russian life and consequently it often appears in folklore, in particular in Russian fairy tales. The legendary hero Ilya Muromets was able to walk after 33 years of incapacity after being laid on a Russian oven. Emelya, according to the legend, was so reluctant to leave it that he simply flew and rode on it. Baba Yaga according to the legend baked children that got lost in her oven. Often in those fairy tales the oven received human characteristics. For example in "The Magic Swan Geese" a girl meets a Russian oven, and asks it for directions. The oven offers the girl rye buns, and subsequently, on the girl's return, hides her from the swan geese.
Read more about this topic: Russian Oven
Famous quotes containing the words russian and/or culture:
“Annie: Dances like Pavaliver, that child.
George Grainger: Dances like who?
Annie: Pavaliver—the Russian dancer. Don’t be so ignorant.”
—Reginald Berkeley (1890–1935)
“... there are some who, believing that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds, and that to-morrow is necessarily better than to-day, may think that if culture is a good thing we shall infallibly be found to have more of it that we had a generation since; and that if we can be shown not to have more of it, it can be shown not to be worth seeking.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)