the reluctant voyage: an analysis of the theme of passivity in sadko

Russian Literature XVII (1985) 127-142 North-Holland

THE RELUCTANT VOYAGE

AN ANALYSIS OF THE THEME OF PASSIVITY IN SADKO

ADELE BARKER

It has long been acknowledged that epic poetry con- tains the motif of spiritual quest wherein the here's voyage to distant lands becomes at the same time a spiritual journey into the previously unexplored re- gions of his own being. In the Babylonian epic, Gil- gamesh, the hero's journey to the far ends of the world, mourning his deceased companion Enkidu, is at the same time an account of the process by which Gilgamesh comes to realize that though descended from the gods, he, like Enkidu, is doomed to die. A similar case can, and has been made, I for Odysseus' journey back to Itha- ca wherein the monsters he battles and the temptations he encounters are, in fact, symbolic expressions of forces within Odysseus himself. In the story of Sadko, the wealthy Novgorod merchant who makes un unwilling journey to the realm of the Sea Tsar, early Russia produced its own variant of the spiritual journey from which the hero returns with new insight. In the case of Sadko, he must learn to temper his competitive instincts by experiencing that psychological state most antithetical to his merchant mentality. Like the early epics of Creece and Babylonia, Sadko deals recur- rently and under many different guises with the con- cepts of spiritual death and rebirth. Like its prede- cessors it objectifies the psychological state of its hero, thereby perpetuating a tradition in which the hero's physical voyage out was but the expression of his spiritual journey within.

It was no accident that journeys of spiritual quest were often undertaken by warriors. The warrior class as defined by Georges Dum~zil in his classic study The Destiny of the Warrior was governed solely by the principles of force and action. Insofar as its focus was on sheer physical courage, its ethic was also anti-intellectual. Clearly this kind of ethic had its

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128 Adele Barker

pitfalls, for its code of behavior could frequently spill over into reckless action and self-destruction, thus making the warriors what Dum~zil calls "the trium- phant victims" of their own code of ethics. 2 In Greek myth the career of Heracles is, in fact, the tragic account of what happens when the warrior instinct overextends itself. Likewise the character of Odysseus, though perhaps overly victimized by Poseidon's fury, nevertheless invites many of his own near disasters through his recklessness. He taunts and baits the Cyclops, Polyphemos, from the sea and barely escapes death by drowning as a result. Through the spiritual journey these early heroes learned to temper the principle of action with insight and self-restraint. Al- though they return home and reacquire their former po- sitions of power as warriors and rulers, they do so with a changed heart.

Unlike his Homeric counterpart, Odysseus, or the early Russian bogatyri (epic heroes) who fought for the Russian land farther to the south in Kiev, Sadko was not a warrior, but a merchant whose roots lay in the prosperous commercial center of Novgorod. It is important to recognize, however, that the ethic of the merchant class had historically been governed by many of the same principles as that of the warrior class. Dum~zil points out that early Indo-European peoples were united by a common ideology which expressed itself in three functions: sovereignty, force, and fe- cundity. Although it was only in India that an actual class structure solidified around the principle of the three functions, all three were reflected in Indo-Eu- ropean society. The second function, force, was a pro- perty of the warriors whose ethic with the decline of the heroic age was taken over and perpetuated by the merchants. Homer's Odysseus functions as a transitio- nal figure in this re~ard, in the sense that he, unlike the pure warrior Achilles, is warrior, merchant, and explorer combined. 3 The link between the warrior and the merchant mentality is strongly reflected in early Russian society as well. Sadko's assertion that his wealth is sufficient to buy up all the merchandise in Novgorod reverberates with the same kind of competitive ring as does the Kievan bogatyr' Dobrynja Niki- ti~'s vow that he can kill the serpent in the Po~aj River, or Ii'ja Muromec's boast that he alone can van- quish the Tatar hordes laying siege to the city of Cernigov. The fact that Sadko possesses these same highly volatile and potentially self-destructive instincts is what provides the motivation for his journey.

The Reluctant Voyage 129

Sadko's sojourn in the tsar's underwater realm is contained within part III of his adventures. Parts I and II of the poem deal with his rise from a poor psaltery player (gusljar) to a wealthy merchant in reward for the music with which he charms the Sea Tsar (morskoj car'). Fart II chronicles his wager with his fellow merchants that he can buy up all the merchandise in Novgorod, while part III, the subject of the present study, provides an account of Sadko's adventures in the underwater kingdom of the Tsar. Of the 24 versions of this tale, 14 contain part III, and only ii of these are complete versions. This is largely due to the fact that each of the three parts consists of a separate adventure which can be sung as an independent unit. 4

The story itself, which dates back to at least the 12th century, has been the subject of numerous criti- cal studies. However, the character of Sadko per se has been little studied, a fact which is not surprising, considering that the tale was long viewed as a nature myth in which Sadko functioned as the personification of the god of wind and storm. 5 Subsequently, the historical school sought in Sadko and in other Russian byliny evidence linking them to actual historical events. 6 Perhaps in response to the highly speculative theories of Afanas'ev and his mythological school and to the tendency of the historical school to look out- side the text itself, the formalist school began in the 1920's to focus on the bylina's structure itself. Notable among their representatives is Vladimir Propp, who showed that Part III of Sadko's adventures was structurally analogous to early Russian courtship poems. 7 Going one step beyond Propp's investigations, we can also see that the structure of Sadko recreates a pattern common to the poetry of spiritual quest. From epic traditions as diverse as those of India, China, and ancient Greece, critics such as Joseph Campbell have broken the journey motif down into the following stages: like Sadko, the epic hero of Camp- bell's system initially receives a summons from the otherworld which he refuses, either because he chooses to ignore it, or because he misinterprets it; once he perceives, however, that the journey to the otherworld is unavoidable, he crosses over into a hitherto un- known realm where, like Sadko, he must pass through a series of ordeals; he emerges intact, due to supernatural aids provided him by a protective figure, usually female, and once again regains his former world, having resisted the offer to remain in the otherworld, where,

130 Adele Barker

by implication, he would reside forever. 8 Campbell be- lieves that this cross-cultural journey motif, far from being a product of direct borrowing, is rather a poetic analogy, reflecting the process by which a cul- ture works through man's gradual recognition of his mortality and his relationship to the external world. Sadko, though later in date than the epics which form the subject of Campbell's study, can be linked to tales from Sumerian, Indian, or even Eskimo mythology in that the journey becomes symbolic of something more than the mere crossing over into a fantasy realm.

Thematically the story of Sadko proceeds as fol- lows: at the outset, he finds his ships halted upon the waves in consequence of his failure to pay tribute to the Sea Tsar; he initially resists his summons to the deep by refusing to acknowledge what the lots clearly tell him, namely that it is he who must journey to the Tsar's underwater kingdom; once he has reached his destination, he must pass through a series of tests, which include those of music and marriage; finally, aided by a supernatural figure, he is given the formula which will set him free from the Tsar's realm. Obeying these instructions, he arrives safely back in Novgorod.

Sadko is propelled into his adventures beneath the waves, because he has transgressed the unwritten law of the merchant class, namely that a percentage of his wealth be sacrificed as tribute to the Sea Tsar. He has committed the same transgression as the early Greek heroes who overextended the warriQr ethic into their relations with the gods, thereby committing hubris. The custom of ceding a portion of one's wealth to the Sea Tsar was widespread in Sadko's day and has been retained as a ritualistic practice by the northern fishermen of Russia up to the present. 9 There is thus every reason to believe that the omission was a con- scious one on Sadko's part. When his ships mysterious- ly come to a halt upon the waves, he immediately realizes the cause of his misfortune:

Hme KO~DKH HO CHHD MopD xamHBan~

H MopBcKoNy ~apm ~aHH--HO~HH~ He nnaHHBa~.

So long have I traversed the blue sea And never paid tribute or duty to the Tsar of the Sea.

(Markov, 21)

The consciousness of one's transgression was characte-


ristic of the warrior ethic, states Dum~zil, and their intentional acts of destruction or violence paved the way for their own purification through punishment. In On~ukov (1904: 75 ff.) it is Saint Nicolas, instead of the Sea Tsar, whom Sadko has offended by failing to erect in Novgorod the church promised to him. That the two figures should be used here interchangeably is not surprising, since Nicolas, or Mikola as he is sometimes called, took over many of the functions of the pre- Christian Sea Tsar. As the protector of seafarers and merchants, Nicolas' cult was widespread in Novgorod. Sadko's membership in the powerful commercial brother- hood bearing Saint Nicolas' name creates an even stronger obligation on his part to pay homage to the saint who serves as his protector. Regardless of whom Sadko has offended, he has committed a form of hubris by attempting to apply the same competitive ethic to his relations with the gods as with his fellow merchants in part II. Such transgressions, as we know from the ancient Greeks, were untenable, and Sadko must suffer the consequences.

The characters and situations within this tale are but objectifications of forces within the hero himself. What then does this sea voyage down into the deep represent? Sadko himself perceives it as something quite different from what it actually is. He views it as his own physical death and thus prepares for it as he would his own funeral. The preparations undertaken by Sadko and his celoval'niki (sworn companions) reflect many of the pre-Christian burial rites so vividly described by the 10th century Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan in his account of the Rus along the Vol~a. I0 In accordance with this burial practice, Sadko is equipped for the next world with his various material possessions such as his psaltery (gusli), a chessboard, a damask, and in a Christian addition, an icon of Saint Nicolas. Sadko, in believing that his punishment for non-compliance with the Tsar's demands is death, fails to recognize the real nature of what is happening to him. He must experience not death, but that psychological state closest to it, which is passivity. This is the state most totally antithetical to that which caused him to commit hubris in the first place. For aggressiveness he must pay with passivity wherein he will learn to temper his reckless self-as- surance. He will enter this state through the realm of sleep. It will be remembered that sleep functions similarly in the Odyssey, as Odysseus passes from the protective existence on the isle of 5cheria back to

132 Adele Barker

the responsibilities that his kingship on Ithaca entails while in a somnolent state.

The physical backdrop to Sadko's adventures is of immense importance in defining the symbolic nature of his journey. His adventures will take place beneath the waves of the sea, a fact reminiscent of the geography of Beowulf, where the hero must journey to the bottom of a lake to confront Grendel's mother, or of the Odyssey, where Odysseus at the beginning of his wanderings over the sea enters the cave of the Cy- clops. According to Joseph Fontenrose, whose study Python examines the combat myth in ancient Greek and Near Eastern literature, a cave or an underwater realm is the symbolic representation of the state of chaos. II The ancient Creeks identified chaos not only with death's realm, but more particularly with that form of death which precedes creation, when the world was yet in a state of disorder and inactivity. Odys- seus' sojourn on Calypso's island and in her cave is but the application of this cosmological notion of chaos on a personal level. If, prior to its own creation, the world existed in a state of chaos, Odys- seus, by entering Calypso's cave, regresses back into an analogous pre-natal state in which he is rendered passive, unable to gather the momentum to initiate his voyage back to Ithaca. The Cyclops' cave bears similar symbolic connotations. Odysseus, entering the world of the barbarous giant, temporarily forsakes his identity and becomes "Nobody" It is important to remember that in both cases the cave represents not death, but the condition of pre-existence, when one's human identity is less than completely formed. While in the geographical realm of the cave, Odysseus will temporarily forsake his identity. Sadko, by descend- ing into the waves, will also lose somethinq of his personality, namely his will. He enters a world, whose spatial geography, like that of Polyphemos' cave, is tantamount to the condition of pre-existence, an ap- propriate space within which to pay for his overasser- tion of his personality.

While in this state, Sadko will become a pawn in the hands of the Tsar and his consort, the Tsarina (variously replaced by the Mother of God, an old man, or Saint Nicolas), who represent conflicting tenden- cies within Sadko himself. Traditionally in epic poetry, a woman figure encountered in the otherworld aids the hero in his search to return home again. We are reminded of Arete, consort to Alkinoos, in the land of the Phaiakians, whose blessing is needed to


guarantee Odysseus safe passage home. Women helpers frequently possess magical properties, as in the case of Circe, who provides Odysseus with the formula he needs in order to reach Hades and aids him in his homeward journey. The figure of the Tsarina is the personification of Sadko's best instincts to be born again, to propel himself out of the passive pre-natal state into which he has descended. Likewise, the con- comitant desire to remain passive and thus unborn is given objective form through the image of the Sea Tsar. Sadko's passivity will make him equally vulne- rable to the Claims of both forces acting within him. The two forces vie for control over Sadko's being through the two tests of music and marriage. In the first, that of music, Sadko is ordered by the Tsar to play his gusli. The Tsar's dancing to the strains of Sadko's music stirs up the waves of the sea, caus- ing death to those who sail upon it in the mortal world. Only when Sadko is ordered by the Tsarina to break the strings of the gusli does the Tsar cease dancing and the resulting havoc is brought to an end.

The significance of this first test can best be understood if seen in the light of the music with which Sadko first charmed the Sea Tsar in part I. Here the strains of his gusli enticed the Tsar out of his watery abode and led to his bestowal of wealth upon this lowly musician. Compare the lyrical effect of Sadko's playing upon the Tsar in part I to that described in part III of the same version, as the Tsar dances to Sadko's music:

Part I AH ~e TBI, Ca~Ke HOBFOpO~CKH~! He sHaD, q~M 6y~e Ho~aJ~OBaTB 3a TBOH yTeXH sa Be~HKH~

3a TBOm--TO Hrpy H~Hy}0:

Ho then Sadko of Novgorod: How then shall I reward you For these enormous pleasures And the sweet strains of your song?

(Rybnikov, I, 134)

Part III A Bce nnHmeT~ uapb MOpCKO~ BO CHHeM~ MOp~ BO CHHeM~ MOp~ BO~a BCKO~6a~ac~, Co ~enTblM% nCKOM% BO~a CMyTM~Iac~, CTaJIO paS6HBaTb MHOFO Kopa6ne~ Ha CHHeM~ Mop%.

All the while the tsar danced in the blue sea,

134 Adele Barker

And the water was troubled, And stirred up with yellow sand, And upon the blue sea began the wreckage of many

ships.

(Rybnikov, I, 134)

The Tsar surely is not adverse to music. He is as responsive to it in part III as he was in part I. From Orpheus on up through Sadko, early heroes played upon their lyres to assuage the gods. Orpheus leads Eurydi- ce out from the underworld by charming Hades upon his lyre. The bylina of Sadko itself was sung by the northern fishermen up through the 20th century in order to calm the seas. The force of the song with its rhythmical repetitions, characteristic of oral art, was felt to bring about concord upon the waves. Why then the havoc, caused by the Tsar's dancing in part III? Keeping in mind that the Tsar and Tsarina are but extensions of forces acting within Sadko himself, the Tsar's varying responses to Sadko's playing are mani- festations of the changing psychological state within the hero himself. Sadko, master of his own will in part I, is thus also master of his own creativity. That he is able to lure the Tsar out of the sea is, in fact, the symbolic expression of his ability to impose order and harmony on his environment through the creative process. The notion of creation as the fashioning of order upon the universe is an old one, found as far back as Near Eastern cosmology, which perceived the world's creation in precisely these terms. Sadko's enticement of the Sea Tsar in part I is nothing more than the reapplication of this old myth on a personal level. In part III the Tsar is no longer the manifestation of Sadko's own creative instincts, but has become, to use Fontenrose's phrase, his "chaos demon", the symbol of his descent into the psychological state wherein he lacks his former personality and will. Sadko himself states: "My will is not my own in the blue sea" (Y MeH~ BOn~ He CBO~ BO CHHeM Mope, Rybnikov, I, 134). In early myth and epic the chaos demon took the form of a monster, who re- presented not only primeval disorder, but all the evil forces that remain in the world. Odysseus meets him in the form of Polyphemos, the personification of the uncivilized and barbaric forces that lurk within man. The Sea Tsar is the destructiveness which emanates from Sadko's lapse into the passive state, when he becomes literally unborn again. Lapsing back into a


state symbolic of pre-birth, he must forsake those very traits which enabled him previously to impose order on the world about him. Chaos thus reigns. That Sadko's adventures are set against the backdrop of the sea, whose waters symbolize the flux of pre-creation, lends strong support to the claim that his struggle is, in fact, between the conflicting desires to be spiritually reborn or to remain forever passive. His passivity is in many ways as destructive as the overly competitive impulse which propelled him into the Tsar's realm to begin with. Clearly, he must learn to harness his competitive instincts, but just as clearly, the answer to his dilemma is not to be found in total spiritual withdrawal which breeds its own kind of death.

Sadko's acquiescence to the Tsar's demands is his subconscious desire to remain passive. Simultaneously, however, a dichotomous urge back towards the reacqui- sition of his former will and power is also at work within him and is personified through the Tsarina. Calypso, it will be remembered, kept Odysseus impri- soned on her island for seven years, but was also the creative force that released him, sending him on his journey back towards his own world again. Likewise, the Tsar's consort is the creative principle within Sadko which yearns to escape from this passivity. She instructs Sadko to break the strings of his gusli, thereby forcing the Tsar to cease his dancing. Once this is done the havoc ceases, and the birth impulse within Sadko emerges victorious. Although in most versions of the Sadko story, the impetus to resist the Tsar's demands comes from without, in On~ukov (1904:75 ff.) the motivation comes from within Sad- ko himself, thus supporting the notion that the female figure is, in fact, Sadko's best instinct to resist the claims of the Tsar's realm. Sadko himself realizes that by continuing to play, he will sink the ships, and thus breaks his gusli:

~a nO~yMa~--TO Ca~Ko Kyne$~ 6oraTbI~p Bo cBoeM~--TO yM%, ~a Kp~nKoM~ pasyM~: II~--TO MHOFO HOTOH~ Kapa6ne~ KyneqecKMx~ iT.

0H posopBSJq% CBOM ~a Fyc~M BBOH~HT~.

And Sadko the rich merchant Reasoned in his mind and strong intellect: "I will sink these many merchant ships". And he broke his resounding gusli into pieces.

(On~ukov, 75)

136 Adele Barker

Sadko's passive state is the source of both his destruction and his salvation. It leaves him open to the helpful interference of the Tsarina and simultaneously involves him more deeply in his ordeal. In his second test, that of marriage, the Tsar offers Sadko a bride, ostensibly in reward for the music upon his gusli with which Sadko has charmed him. There is a good deal of cunning involved in this 'reward', for there is the clear implication that by marrying one of the maidens of the Tsar's court, Sad- ko would remain in the watery realm forever. Moreover, the offer of a bride comes immediately on the heels of Sadko's act of disobedience, thus strongly sugges- ting that it is, indeed, intended as punishment for Sadko's failure to continue his music:

A~ me TSI, Ca~Ke HoBropo~c~H~! qTO ~e He ~rpaemb B ~ rycenKH HpoBqaTSI? "Y NeHg cTpyHoqKH BO Fyce~Kax~ BBI~epHynHcB~

A ~HeHeqKH BO HpoBqaTHX~ HOBS~OMa~Hcb~

A cTpyHoqeK% saHacHMX~ He c~yqMJIOCH,

A mneHeqKoB% He HpNFo~M~OCH".

FOBOpHT% ~apb TaKoB~ C~OBa:

"He xoqemD AM ~eHHTBCH BO CHHeM% Mop~

Ha ~ymeqK~ Ha KpacHsIH ~BymK~?"

Ho, Sadko of Novgorod: Why do you not play your gusli of sycamore? "The strings of my gusli have come asunder, The pegs in the wood have broken, There were no spare strings, And the pegs didn't fit". And the tsar says: "Wouldn't you like to marry here in the blue sea A beautiful darling maiden?"

(Rybnikov, I, 134)

In early epic and tales of spiritual quest, the pre- sence of a young maiden from another world often represents the hero's suppressed desire for easy surren- der, to lay down the warrior ethic for a life of ease. In what is perhaps one of the most compelling scenes of the Odyssey, Homer presents us with a portrait of Nausikaa, princess of Scheria an island favored by the gods, and Nausikaa herself the favorite of her father Alkinoos. Homer hints at the possibility of a match between Odysseus and Nausikaa, as does her fa-


ther. Beautiful and tempting, she is given more than a passing thought by Odysseus, who ultimately resists the appeal of the easy and comfortable life of this sequestered isle in favor of the responsibilities his kingship on Ithaca entails. The young maidens of the Tsar's court are Sadko's counterpart to Odysseus' Nausikaa. They are the seductiveness which this state of non-being represents. Like Nausikaa, they do not possess the ability to cross over into the other world. Even in Markov (1901: 21), where the young maiden Nastas'ja begs her father, the Sea Tsar, to provide her with a dowry to enable her to journey back to Novgorod with Sadko, she is unable to cross over into his world, and Sadko awakens the next morning on the banks of the Volchov, alone, with the dowry beside him. That Sadko is unable to have the maiden and regain his former world points up the striking dichotomy of the choice he must make; he must choose, subconsciously though it may be, to either be reborn or to remain in the passive state. He cannot have both. Interestingly enough, Sadko does not initially refuse such an offer, because he fails to view it as punishment. The Tsar's offer is the objectification of how little effort on Sadko's part it requires to succumb to this seductive state he is in. However, his suppressed inclination to reacquire his former will and personality is given form through the Tsarina, who provides him with the formula he needs in order to re-enter the mortal world. She instructs him to choose the lowliest of the maidens of the court, referred to as a devu~ka ~ernavu~- ka (a kitchen wench) and to refrain from consummating the marriage. By doing so, he will awaken the following morning to find himself back in the city of Nov- gorod. Paradoxically, the state of being which Sadko rejects by accepting the Tsarina's advice, is one whose surface is extremely tempting. It will be remembered that the island of the Cyclops, when seen from afar, lured Odysseus and its crew with its fer- tile fields and lush vegetation. From afar both the island and the offer of marriage mask the entry into an uncivilized world, where both heroes suffer loss of identity.

Invariably in the poetry of spiritual quest, the hero returns back to his own world, deeply changed by his experience. Though he has been taxed physical- ly by his adventures, the lessons which he extracts from them are nevertheless spiritual. Odysseus is able to deal in a much more resDonsible wav with

138 Adele Barker

his role as ruler, husband and father, precisely because, on an intuitive level, he has symbolically experienced various forms of death in his successive encounters with Calypso, Polyphemos, Circe, etc. Ha- ving experienced the same kind of spiritual death as his Homeric counterpart, Sadko's goal then is to find the mean between these two states of being.

That Sadko returns back to Novgorod at all is sign enough that the impulse within him to be spiritually reborn has triumphed. He has made the choice to re- ject passivity, to act on his life instead of being acted upon by it. This is most emphatically expressed as he reacquires his former place of importance among his companions. As he awakens upon the shore of the Volchov river, he sees his shipmates arriving home, their ships laden with merchandise. Their greeting to Sadko implies that they hold him in even higher esteem for his ability to survive his ordeal and ar- rive back in Novgorod prior to their own return:

A KaK TyT yBH~a ~py~HHymKa,

~TO CTOHT Ca~Ke Ha KpyTOM Kps~y ~a o BOnXOBO,

A~ KaK TyT ~py)KHHymKa BC~ OHa pocqy~oBanace~

All KaK ToMy qy~y Be~b C~HBOBa~ace~

qTO OCTaBNJIH M5! Ca~Ka ~a Ha CHHeM Mope~ A Ca~Ke Bnepe~H HaC ~a BO CBOeM BO Fopo~H.

When the dru~ina caught sight of Sadko, Standing on the steep banks of the Volchov, How they all wondered and marvelled, We left Sadko on the blue sea, Yet before us here he stands in his native city.

(Gil'ferding, I, 70)

Like Odysseus, Sadko must bring back with him some spiritual lessons from his sojourn in the realm of passivity. The necessity to incorporate this lesson into the business of everyday life is eloquently expressed through the physical evidence of the adventure. In Rybnikov II (107), he awakens on the banks of the Volchov with a cask of gold and silver at his feet, the dowry from the marriage that was never con- sum~ated. His arrival home is similar to that of Odys- seus, who was brought to his island by the Phaiakians while asleep, and left on Ithaca with gifts of bronze and gold. In Rybnikov II (134) Sadko finds himself on a bank overlooking the Cernava river, whose name re-


sembles that of the devu~ka 3ernavu~ka, whom Sadko had chosen as his intended. Although the etymological tie between the river and the name of Sadko's bride has been used by Afanas'ev in support of his theory that the tale was originally a nature myth, 12 it seems more likely that the two are meant to suggest that Sadko must assimilate the lessons of this passive state in order to make his return complete. This lesson is articulated and made explicit through Sadko's wife, who says to her husband:

A~e TSI~ ~m6MMaS ceMemmKal ~OnHO Te6~ %S~HTB no CHHm MOpm,

TOCKOBaT5 Moe peTnHBoe cep~eqymKo

~o TBoe~ HO 6y~HO~ no ronoBymK~:

Y Hac MHOFO eCTB HM~eHBMHa--6oFaqecTBa~

H paCTeT~ y HaC Manoe ~THme.

Enough have you sailed the blue sea, Enough has my zealous heart Grieved over your turbulent head: Much have we of material possessions and wealth, And our child is growing up.

(Rybnikov, I, 54)

His wife's rejoinders and his compliance with them provide clear evidence that he has tempered the ag- gressive impulse within himself that had brought destruction to warriors from Heracles, to Achilles, and almost to Odysseus. Sadko no longer needs to prove his own worth through action and the competitive instinct. Both he and Odysseus retire to their domain to take up their former roles as husband and father. The old prophet Teiresias had foretold a peaceful death from the sea for Odysseus. One may thus conclude that, when Odysseus journeyed out to sea again, he did so as a man tempered by his former adventures. Even in those versions where Sadko sets sail again after arriving home, we may assume from Rybnikov's version that he does so as a man altered by his ex- periences.

Out of these spiritual quests clearly emerged a new kind of hero, one who understood how to temper the violent creed of action with a more internal philosophy. In Book II of the Odyssey, Odysseus' son, Telemachos, calls the Achaians to assembly and speaks of Odysseus as a man who ruled, mild as a father. It

140 Adele Barker

is also a telling comment that the loyal noblemen, mourning their deceased king at the end of Beowulf, remark that, in addition to his eagerness for fame, he was "the mildest and gentlest of men, the kindest to his people", 13 as if in recognition of the fact that the instinct to win and achieve alone could not make a great leader. Homer certainly saw it, and Sad- ko's adventures seem to objectify it. The heroes of both epics come to recognize that the measure of one's worth transcends mere action. It was a timely lesson. 14

University of Arizona


NOTES

i. See Charles Paul Segal, "The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus' Return", Arion, Vol. I, ~ 4, 1962, 17-64, and Charles H.Taylor, Jr., "The Obstacles to Odysseus' Return", The Yale Review, L, Summer, 1961, 569-580.

2 Georges Dum6zil, The Destiny of the Warrior, transl. Alf Hiltebeitel, Chicago, 1970, 106.

3. For further discussion of the warrior function and its fate in the modern world, see Ren6 Gu@non, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, transl. Marco Pallis, London, 1945.

4. The most complete renditions of Sadko's adventures in the kingdom of the Sea Tsar, and those which will be used in our analysis here, are found in: A.M.Astaehova, ed. Byliny Pe~ory i Zimnego Berega: novye zapisi, Moskva-Leningrad, 1961, + 85; Kir~a Danilov, comp., Drevnie rossijskie sti- chotvorenija, 3rd ed., Moskva, glavnyj archiv, 1878, + 47; A.F.Gil'ferding, comp., One~skie byliny, 4th ed., Moskva- Leningrad, 1938-1949, I + 70, II + 174; P.V.Kireevskij, comp., Pesni, sobrannye P.V. Kireevskim, Moskva, Ob~estvo ljubitelej rossijskoj slovesnosti, 1863, V, 34-53; A.V.Mar- kov, comp., Belomorskie byliny, Moskva, Etnog. otdel imper. ob~estva ljubitelej estestvoznanija, antropologii, i ~tno- grafii, 1901, + 21; N.E.On~ukov, ed., Pe~orskie byliny, Sankt-Peterburg, Imp. russkogo geograf, ob~estva, 1904,

75; and P.N.Rybnikov, comp., Pesnij sobrannye P.N.Rybni- kovym, 2nd ed., I, ~ 54, II + 107, 134, Moskva, Sotrudnik ~kol, 1909-1910.

5. A.N.Afanas'ev, Po~ti~eskie vozzrenija slavjan na prirodu, II, 1868, reprint The Hague 1969, 214.

6. See Vsevolod Miller, O~erki russkoj narodnoj slovesnosti, I, Moskva, Sytin, 1897.

7. V.Ja.Propp, Russkij geroi~eskij ~pos, Leningrad, 1955, 83-104. 8. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Bollingen

Series, XVII, Princeton, 1949. 9. Afanas'ev II, 229 and E.V.Pomeranceva, "Narodnye verovanija

i ustnoe po~ti~eskoe tvor~estvo", Fol'klor i ~tnografija, ed. B.N.Putilov, Leningrad, 1970, 158-168.

i0. "Ibn Fadlan's Account of the Scandinavian Merchants on the Volga in 922", transl. Albert Cook, JEGP, 22, 1923, 60.

ii. Joseph Fontenrose, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins, Berkeley, 1959, 224-225.

12. Afanas'ev, II, 225. 13. Cf. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Fr.Klaeber, 3rd

ed., Lexington, 1950, ii. 3181-3182. 14. My thanks to my friend and colleague Dr. Norman Austin, who

provided many valuable insights on the Homeric parallels to Sadko.

the reluctant voyage: an analysis of the theme of passivity in sadko

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