Experience in the comparative study of Slavic legends and beliefs in connection with the mythical tales of other related peoples

Historian and folklorist Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev (1826–1871) is very widely known as the publisher of “Russian Folk Tales”. He was a deep researcher of Slavic legends, beliefs and customs. The result of his many years of research experience was “Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature” - a fundamental work devoted to the historical and philological analysis of the language and folklore of the Slavs in connection with the language and folklore of other Indo-European peoples. His work has not yet been surpassed in the world science of folklore. It is significantly inferior to the well-known “Golden Bough” by J. Frazer and “Primitive Culture” by E. Taylor. Afanasyev’s book reveals living connections between language and traditions, moreover, it resurrects the foundations of Russian thinking, which is especially important now, when the language and thinking of Russian people disfigured by newspaper stamps, criminal jargon and slang of all kinds, littered with foreign words. Various poets and writers turned to her: A. K. Tolstoy and Blok, Melnikov-Pechersky and Gorky, Bunin and Yesenin. Especially the last one. This edition consistently reproduces all three volumes of Poetic Views, published during the author’s lifetime in 1865–1869. They have been translated into a new spelling with some preservation of the features of the old spelling in order to give a taste and aroma of the verbiage of a bygone era.