Quote Originally Posted by Lampada View Post
По щучьему велению
По щучьему веленью

Емеля сидит на печи:

OMG, "По щучьему велению" ("By will of the pike-fish") has to be one of the strangest сказки I've ever read. I mean, it almost seems like a subversive parody of fairytales, because it seems to have no moral lesson whatsoever! Emelya starts out a complete lazybones who snores on the лежанка (the big warm shelf/ledge on top of the oven) while his two older brothers (who are nice guys and don't mistreat Emelya in any way) go out and work... and at the end of the story, he's still a lazybones and hasn't learned a thing -- only now he's the Tsar, and married to the former Tsar's beautiful daughter.

And all this is because once, by pure dumb luck, Emelya happened to catch a talking щука (pike) who's got more magic powers than Dumbledore and Voldemort combined but seems to possess all the moral and ethical insights of -- well, a fish. So, unlike Pushkin's золотая рыбка, this fish isn't a didactic allegorical figure who offers добрым молодцам a cautionary урок about hubris and greed! No, she just keeps granting wish after wish, giving Emelya whatever the f*ck he asks for.

So, Emelya almost runs over some innocent villagers with his fish-provided magical sleigh, and when they (not unreasonably) try to pull him off the sleigh and give him a richly deserved butt-kicking, he wishes for some magical oaken cudgels that fly around by themselves, beating everyone into a half-coma while Emelya gleefully rides homeward in the sleigh. In other words, he's not only lazy, but is kind of an asshole... and he never gets his "comeuppance", doesn't end up as a sadder-but-wiser Emelya -- he gets the princess, gets the wealth, gets the kingdom, gets a magical facelift/makeover so he'll look more handsome, gets the magical weapons, etc. -- and yet he's still lazy!