Il mondo subacqueo tra letteratura e musica nell'Ottocento russo: Il lago dei cigni di Cajkovskij

Ancient Russian literature saw the depths of the sea as a place to be feared: they were always described as dark and terrible because they were believed to be inhabited only by evil spirits and rusalki (fish –women). Here those hapless women who had suffered a violent death continued to suffer. Only in the bylina Sadko does the protagonist, thanks to his astuteness, manage to return ti the surface unharmed; this also happens in the fables in the cycle by Vassilisa Premudraja. But these rare exceptions can do nothing to erase the fear which Russian feel about the sea. Only in the poetry of Žukovskij, influenced by French romanticism, is the myth of Undine revisited. Undine is a nymph who wants to live and be happy in our world but who is condemned to eternal unhappiness. Tchaikovsky reworks this figure in his famous ballet Swan Lake, where the main characters allow themselves to be swept away by the waters of the lake in order to escape the terrible iniquity of evil.