Episode Details

Pushkin — The Fisherman and the Fish · The Golden Cockerel

An old fisherman who has lived thirty years and three in a dugout by the blue sea catches a golden fish that speaks — and lets her go without a ransom. His wife's scolding sends him back to the shore again and again, and each granted wish only feeds the next: a new trough, a cottage, a noblewoman's estate, a tsaritsa's palace — until she demands to be mistress of the sea itself, with the golden fish as her servant, and the fish answers at last with silence.

Tsar Dadon, fierce in his youth, longs in old age only for rest — and a sage gives him a golden cockerel for his spire, a faithful watchman that crows whenever danger nears, in exchange for one promised wish. The bird keeps the peace for two years; then it crows toward the east, and army after army vanishes, until Dadon rides out himself and finds a silken tent, his two sons dead by each other's swords, and the Queen of Shamakhan stepping out to meet him. Home again, the tsar breaks his sworn word to the old sage — and the golden cockerel keeps the account.

The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish (Сказка о рыбаке и рыбке) and The Tale of the Golden Cockerel (Сказка о золотом петушке) — by Alexander Pushkin, in new English verse translations made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.

Pushkin.

Intermission: "Winterstille 2" — instrumental.

KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.