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Afanasyev — The Animals in the Pit · The Animals' Winter Quarters
Description
A pig sets out for Petersburg to pray, and gathers a wolf, a fox, a hare and a squirrel along the road — and one deep, wide pit gathers them all, where the fox's singing contests decide, one by one, who is eaten. This episode reads both of Afanasyev's tellings of The Animals in the Pit: that first, short telling, and the longer one, in which a boar jumps the pit four days running and leaves the wolf, the bear, the hare and the fox inside it, the fox cheats the bear out of his share and his life, and a thrush must feed her, water her and haul her out on thrown sticks — and then make her laugh, all the way into a rich peasant's yard. Then the winter tale: a bull, a ram, a pig, a goose and a rooster all go looking for summer away from the winter, only the bull will build a hut — and each of the others talks his way inside it, threat by threat, before the fox arrives with the bear and the wolf behind her.
The tales «Звери в яме» (№№ 29–30) and «Зимовье зверей» (№ 64) — from the collection of Alexander Afanasyev, in new English translations made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.
Afanasyev.
Intermission: "Convergence at Dusk" — instrumental.
KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.