THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
The Firebird (zhar-ptitsa, "heat-bird") is the luminous marvel of the Russian wonder tale: its plumage is golden-red and burns like flame, and a single dropped feather carried indoors will light a whole dark room. It roosts in a golden cage in a kingdom beyond the thrice-ninth land, and by night it slips into the tsar's orchard to steal golden apples, which is how the quest begins.
The fullest telling is Afanasyev's "Prince Ivan, the Firebird and the Grey Wolf." The tsar sets his three sons to guard the orchard; the youngest, Ivan, plucks a fiery feather. Riding out to find the bird he loses his horse to a grey wolf, who in remorse becomes his mount and carries him through three kingdoms, winning in turn the Firebird, the golden-maned horse and the princess Elena. On the way home his elder brothers murder him and take the spoils, and the wolf has a raven fetch the waters of death and life to revive him. In Pyotr Yershov's verse tale The Little Humpbacked Horse (1834) the hero is likewise ordered by the tsar to capture a firebird.
In 1910 Stravinsky wrote The Firebird for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, choreographed by Fokine: the grateful bird gives Prince Ivan a feather, he shatters the great egg holding the demon Kashchei's life, and the petrified knights of the magic garden come back to life. The golden-red bird has since become a signature image of the "Russian style," recurring in Ivan Bilibin's illustrations and in stage design ever after.
