The unsolved mystery of "The Little Humpbacked Horse": What hidden knowledge the author could encrypt in a fairy tale

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When Pyotr Ershov wrote The Little Humpbacked Horse, he was only 18 years old. The genius of this tale, which has not lost its popularity until now, as well as the fact that after it the writer could no longer create anything outstanding (the rest of the works were clearly weaker), never ceases to amaze readers and literary critics. But lovers of mysticism and hidden meanings find a lot of encrypted information in The Little Humpbacked Horse. They believe that in this way the author wanted to pass on some secret knowledge to the descendants.

Ershov with the participation of Pushkin

This ingenious work, translated into dozens of languages and published in our country at least 150 times, is shrouded in a veil of mystery. To begin with, the authorship itself has long been questioned by some literary skeptics. Since it is known that Pushkin, a contemporary of Ershov, having familiarized himself with the tale, appreciated it very highly and allegedly personally made some corrections to it, a version was put forward that Alexander Sergeevich himself could have written The Hunchback. A number of facts are given as arguments. Firstly, the fairy tale about the Little Horse is written in a syllable very similar to Pushkin's, secondly, for some reason, Ershov destroyed the copy with edits made by the hand of the great poet, and thirdly, neither before nor after the "Little Humpbacked Horse" the author did not write a single work of such a high level.

However, there is still no direct evidence that it was Pushkin who wrote the tale, for some reason attributing the authorship to a more modest colleague. Ershov is officially considered the author of the text, and the overwhelming majority of literary critics adhere to this traditional version.

But if everything is more or less clear with the authorship, then the unusual plot of the fairy tale itself has long haunted the lovers of riddles.

Parallel with Christian plots

Peter Ershov himself explained that the story of the adventures of Ivan and the Little Humpbacked Horse is not his fantasy at all, but only a literary reworking of old folk tales that he heard from Siberian residents. However, analyzing the events taking place in the fairy tale and the images of its heroes, supporters of the version about a certain cipher see many parallels with biblical characters.

According to this hypothesis, the wise Tsar Maiden, whose father (the Sun) sits in Heaven, is the Mother of God. Well, the marriage of a girl to Ivan is not a marriage in the literal sense, but a symbol of the patronage of the Mother of God over Russia.

They also support this version by the fact that the area called Okunevsky Ark, located in Western Siberia near Omsk, where Ershov allegedly drew plots from the people, enjoys the special patronage of the Abalatskaya Mother of God. They say that her image often appeared in a dream to local residents.

The Whale Fish is also considered a peculiar symbol. Since in the fairy tale the author calls the whale Sovereign, this gives rise to associations with our state, Russia, or even with civilization in general. And the fact that Ivan warns the peasants living on fish about the impending flood (when the whale is about to plunge into the depths of the sea), allegedly refers the reader to the events of the Flood and Noah, announcing the approach of a catastrophe on a planetary scale.

Supporters of the cipher version also see a certain symbol in the fact that the hero of the fairy tale must get the ring. Like, this is the key to secret Christian knowledge, and Ruff, who helps Ivan to get the chest with a ring, is none other than Peter Ershov himself. “He walks in all the seas, so, surely, he knows the ring,” the author wrote, hinting that he had the key to unraveling this cipher.

Are boilers lakes?

The Okunevsky Ark itself, by the way, is considered an anomalous place. Christians and Buddhists recognize him as a saint, and lovers of extrasensory perception - mystical. And it is with this area that three fairytale cauldrons are associated, which became decisive in the happy ending of this plot.

The miraculous transformation of Ivan into a handsome handsome man, which speaks of the extraordinary properties of the liquid in the cauldrons, is supposedly a hint of three healing lakes in the Okunevsky Ark region on the border of the Omsk and Novosibirsk regions. In fact, there are even more such unusual lakes here, but Linevo, Danilovo and Shaitan-Ozero are considered to be the prototypes of the boilers. It is believed that bathing in them gives strength, heals chronic and even fatal diseases, and also rejuvenates. Near the famous lakes, by the way, there is a settlement of Buddhists who spend long hours on the shore in meditation.

But, in addition to this, each of the lakes, like the contents of the cauldrons in the fairy tale, has its own characteristics. For example, at Danilov, according to the results of research by Novosibirsk scientists, not only water is curative, but also blue clay, which the locals call “mud”. And the water itself is saturated with silver ions, minerals, iodine.

And on Lake Linevo (in the old way - Lenevo), also rich in medicinal substances, it was even decided to build a balneological complex.

As for the Shaitan Lake, the water in it is considered dead, but it is called the most mysterious of all, because, as the locals say, it is bottomless. Presumably, at great depths, it passes into an underground channel, which connects it with the rest of the "mystical" lakes.

For a long time, the inhabitants of Okunevsky Ark had a belief that the healing effect can be fully experienced only if you swim in three (according to another version - in five) local lakes in turn and in a certain sequence. And this is exactly how Ivan plunged into the cauldrons from a fairy tale! Unfortunately, the exact "recipe" has already been lost, so now those who want to be healed are immersed in water bodies without observing any rules. But they say that swimming even in one lake is beneficial.

It is assumed that these lakes were formed as a result of the fall of one or more meteorites.

Political subtext

Mysticism is mysticism, but the state authorities in different years saw another "cipher" in Ershov's fairy tale - a political one. For example, from 1843 to 1856, it was banned from publication, since the censorship saw in its text a caustic satire on the royal power and the church.

After the revolution, in 1922, the Soviet censors banned the publication of the fairy tale because of the lines: "… everyone here fell to their knees and" Hurray! " they shouted to the king. And in 1934, the fairy tale was banned, because the censors saw in the plot an allusion to the fact that the son of a village kulak was capable of climbing the career ladder to the post of head of state in the Soviet country, which seemed unacceptable. However, such stupid prohibitions were immediately canceled, and the mysterious tale still takes pride of place in the school curriculum.

And in continuation of the theme of Pushkin's influence on the works of other writers - the history of creation "Dead Souls".