King Stakh’s Wild hunt by Uladzimir Karatkevich

King Stakh’s Wild hunt by Uladzimir Karatkevich

Belarusian fiction

Original title – Дзікае паляванне караля Стаха

Translator – Mary Mintz

Source – review copy

I move further east and to another new country for the blog a second, this month with the first book from Belarus Uladzimir Karatkevich was one of the leading figures in Belarusian literature. He learned to read at an early age and was always interested in Belarusian history and folklore. He went on to study literature but always had the history in his homelands past. He started this book whilst at university but then spent a number of years working at it. This was considered his greatest novel. It was also made into a film although it seems the film only used part of the plot.

“What family is this?” I asked imprudently.”Where am I ?”

The old woman’s eyes blazed with anger.

“You are in the castle of March firs. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself no to know the owners. They are the Yanovskys. You understand the Yanovskys! You must have heard of them!”

I answered that I had, of course, heard of them. This statment of mine must have reassured the old woman.

With a gestiure worthy of a queen, she pointed to the armchair, approximately as queens do in thetheatre when they point to the executioner’s block ready for their unlucky lover. “There’s your place, you ill fated ine”. Then left me alone.

The creepy nature of the place is clear when Andrey ask where he is on arrival at the Marsh Firs.

This uses a classic myth of the Wild Hunt which is a myth about a group of riders on a Black horse and black dogs that hunt. The story starts when a young man that is a folklorist ends up at the castle of Marsh firs. Andrey Belaretsky is stuck there in a storm. He meets a young woman there Hope Yanovsky she is from an old aristocratic. He father has died due to the hunt and she has struggled after this and is sleepwalking. So stays in the castle. The young man falls for this young woman and tries to find out what has happened to her and her family. Why have they fallen foul of the wild hunt? A relative Gregory isn’t all he seems he has more to do with her father’s death than Andrey first knows. Another claimant on the title employed the midget to scare Hope. Then there is the midget an oddly shaped man like a character from a Herzog film that has strange features. He is there to maybe aid the mistress of the house descends into Madness Can Andrey help her find out what is really happening and work out why the hunt has targeted this castle.

“I saw him theree times and each time from afar. Once it was just before the death of my father. The other two, not long ago. I’ve also heard hom perhaps a hundred times. Nor was I ever frightened, except perhaps the last time ..just a litle, a very little.I went up to him, but he disappeared. It is really a very little man, he reaches up to my chest, skinny, and reminds one of a starved child. his eyes are sad, his hands are very long, and his head is unnaturally long. He dresssed as people used to dress 200 years ago, only in a westen manner. His clothes are green

The Midget brought in by another heir to scare Hope decribed by Hope.

 

This is a classic piece of folklore it has echoes of many myths from Dracula with a woman going mad and a man getting stuck in a castle. The wild hunt is a myth that is common in Belarus and Germany. The piece to first mention of this myth was written by the Grimm’s in the folk tales. I see why the film version of this book which I watched briefly on youtube as it had no subtitles but had a real feel of Hammer horro about this and I kept picturing those eerie castles in the hammer films and strangers end up in them like Andrey does. There is a romance as the young man tries to help Hope a cursed woman as she sees it but he starts to unravel it. He was called the master of historical detective novels and this is in a way a detective novel he tries to find out what the truth is behind what has happened to the Yanovsky family. I was also reminded of the moor scenes in Hound of the Baskervilles sometimes the places in this book at to the scary feeling of Hope the marshes near the castle reminded me of the Grimpen mire of Hound of the Baskervilles. I love that Glagoslav can publish writers like Karatkevich to us in English.His wiki page in Belarusia a long one says when roughly translated said he had a twenty-five vol collection of his works published he was a major writer.