Tale
The Foundling Prince and Other Tales
Legende sau basmele românilor
Petre Ispirescu · 1872
Synopsis
The collection brings together Romanian wonder tales that the collector had heard and rewrote. It includes Tinerețe fără bătrânețe și viață fără de moarte, in which an emperor's son, to whom his father promised before his birth youth without old age and life without death, sets out at fifteen to seek them; Prâslea the brave and the golden apples; Făt-Frumos with the golden hair; the Enchanted Pig; Greuceanu. Alecsandri saw in it a world of dragons, magic horses and marvellous birds, of giants who twist trees or crush stones, and of emperors' daughters with golden braids.
Context
The first edition appeared in Bucharest in 1872, under the title Legende și basmele românilor, ghicitori și proverburi, signed “un culegător-tipograf”; that of 1882 opens with a letter from Vasile Alecsandri, who praised the collector for having kept the poetic naivety of the storytellers' speech. Mircea Anghelescu, cited by the publisher Cartier, judges that these tales express not the letter of folklore but its spirit, and Constantin Noica regarded the tale of the prince in search of eternity as the first that the collector had noted down. A selection translated into English appeared in Boston in 1917, another in French in Bucharest in 1979.
Who it is for
Short tales, to be read aloud; they are rewritings by the collector, not transcriptions of storytellers.
Prizes and reception
For Alecsandri, in 1882, a rediscovered treasure, a book that ought to be found in every Romanian home.