Subject: Re: Vasalisa Project
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 13:45:09 -0700
From: Caroline Hamilton

Dear Joellyn,

thank you for your reply, I found it very, very useful.
I also found the name Vasalisa from Women Who Run With The Wolves, but
thought there must be more available - after all, whilst well researched, it
is still an interpretation of a very old story - but where to start on old
stories?
I have polish heritage and clearly remember my grandmother telling me a
similar story whilst i was a young girl, but she has long since passed away,
so i can't really ask her about it...
although, it has spurred me on to look at some polish geneaology sites and
polish cooking sites (there are some great tidbits of info you can glean)
one woman has dedicated her cooking site to her 'Bapcia' (polish for
grandmother) and has a lot more info on it than just the recipes.

I will definitely look up these other spellings of the name that you
mentioned.

Look, I'd love to submit some work to your project, I just don't know if it
would be suitable because it breaks away from the traditional Vasalisa story
and uses it instead to ...er... 'flavour' (pardon the pun) my story, yet I'm
sure that chunks of the writing might be appropriate....

seeing as it's an online project (am I right?) then I could certainly adapt
some of it and make a short flash animation or hypertext style piece for
you, which concentrates on one part of the Vasalisa idea if you're
interested.
Hmm.... let me think about this one....

Again,
thank you so much for your reply, you've given me some great starting points
for my research - invaluable!

Caroline

on 8/9/01 3:04 pm, joellyn rock at jrock@cpinternet.com wrote:

> Dear Caroline,
>
> The Vasalisa Project was the working title for my Master of Fine Arts
> thesis in Graphic Design/new Media.
> The work was largely based on the Russian Fairy tale: Vasalisa and the
> Baba Yaga.
>
> I rewrote the fairy tale in my own words, as a narrative poem that will
> be published later this year in an academic journal called Marvels and
> Tales. (you can find them on the web).
>
> But the intent of the project (overly ambitious for my timeline last
> year...) was to put the tale on the web as an interactive fairy tale
> that people would contribute to. I still plan to do this, but it may
> take a year or more to develop the collaborative website.
>
> Vasalisa is the spelling that I first encountered of the name,
> as used by the jungian analyst and storyteller,
> Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her book Women who Run with the Wolves.
> I found the spelling to vary with nearly every version of the fairy tale
> i found:
> Vasilisa, Vassilissa, Wassilisa.
>
> A recent novel by a Minnesota Author, titled Summit Avenue
> integrates the fairy tale of Wassilissa
> i think.
>
> In Russian fairy tales it is an extremely common character in tales
> (The feminine for Vasil I believe, like Jack and Jill, it may mean
> anyone/everyone.)
>
> I'd contact a few Russian scholars for your answer!!
>
> Good Luck!!! and send me info on your project as you move along.
>
> By the way: (perhaps you know this...) a big part of the fairy tale
> locates Vasalisa in the hut of Baba Yaga
> where she must COOK and clean for the hag. It's certainly a tale about
> cuisine inheritance and the training of a young girl.
>
> ALSO: let me know if you would like to contribute to MY project, which
> will ask artists and writers to
> submit their own versions of small chunks of the fairy tale for online
> viewing.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joellyn Rock