Episode 18: Russia's Last Troubadour. The Tale of Kirsha Danilov
About this episode
This episode explores the life and influence of Kirsha Danilov, a significant figure in Russian folklore and minstrelsy.
The 1804/1818 song collection of Kirsha Danilov introduced the Russian reading public, in many ways for the first time, to the people's immensely rich tradition of fairy tales, historical legends, and bawdy satires: these stories and their motifs have gone not only to influence great writers, poets, painters, and composers, but generation after generation of children. But who was Kirsha Danilov? In this episode, we follow the biography of this great bard to the Ural factories of the mid-eighteenth century and place him within the ancient tradition of Russian minstrels. Sources V. Baidin, Kirsha Danilov v Sibiri i na Urale. Istoriko-biographificheskie etiudy (Ekaterinburg: Izdatel’stvo Ural’skogo universiteta, 2015). Drevnie rossiiskie stikhotvoreniia, sobrannye Kirsheiu Danilovym (Moscow, 1818). R. Zguta, Russian Minstrels: A History of the Skomorokhi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978). N. K. Chadwick, Russian Heroic Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). S. N. Kopyrina, ‘Zavodskie poselki kazennykh predpriiatii Urala v 20-50-e gody XVIII v.’, Genesis: istoricheskie issledovanie, no. 1 (2023), pp. 11-25. S. Smirnov, ‘Gosudarstvennoe…
More episodes of Tales from Imperial Russia
- Episode 27: The Tsar of Thieves. The Tale of Van’ka Kain
- Episode 26: Spectres of Empire. The Tale of Father Ioann Solov’ev
- Episode 25: Defeating the Demon Drink. The Tale of Ivan Churikov
- Episode 24: City under Siege. The Tale of Rudolph Felix Bauer
- Episode 23: The Other Rasputin. The Tale of Iliodor (Trufanov)
- Episode 22: From Riches to Ruin. The Tale of Ivan Tolchenov
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Tales from Imperial Russia podcast page.