The Primorye Arts and Crafts Museum houses a portrait of the famous Pomor storyteller Marfa Kryukova. The artist V. Antonovsky created an oil painting in 2001 by order of the Department of Culture and Library Services of the Primorsky District. The storyteller is depicted against the background of a northern landscape. She wears a traditional festive outfit of Pomor women — a sundress with a white shirt and a high headdress embroidered with pearls and beads.
The hereditary storyteller Marfa Kryukova was born in the Arkhangelsk governorate, in the village of Nizhnyaya Zolotitsa. Her mother and grandfather told and sang many ancient epics, legends, songs, and spiritual verses from memory. With their help, Krukova learned her first works, at the age of 14, was famous in her native village as a talented storyteller.
Some of the texts Marfa Krukova learned not from her relatives but from hired sailors, who helped her father, a fisherman, ‘when he sailed to Norway for cod.’ Many sailors were from the coast of the Mezen River, so Marfa Krukova performed epics and songs in different ways: in the ‘Mezen’ manner, which she had adopted from the visitors, and in the local ‘Zolotitsk’ manner.
The ethnographer Alexey Markov paid a visit to Marfa Kryukova several times. He recorded the texts of the works performed by the storyteller, and even created several audio recordings on phonographic cylinders, but they were soon lost.
In her youth, Marfa Kryukova became famous as a creator of songs. It was believed that only experienced elderly storytellers could perform epics. But with age, Kryukova achieved success in this type of folk art. In total, ethnographers wrote down more than 150 epic stories from her words: their heroes were Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, Solovey Budimirovich and other Russian folk heroes.
Marfa Kryukova made up some of the songs herself. At the same time, she adhered to the canons of an old epic story. She was commissioned by the ‘Pravda’ newspaper to compose works in which she glorified the Soviet government. Several more of her epic stories were dedicated to the military leaders Vasily Chapaev and Kliment Voroshilov, the writer Maxim Gorky, and the scientist Mikhail Lomonosov.
The hereditary storyteller Marfa Kryukova was born in the Arkhangelsk governorate, in the village of Nizhnyaya Zolotitsa. Her mother and grandfather told and sang many ancient epics, legends, songs, and spiritual verses from memory. With their help, Krukova learned her first works, at the age of 14, was famous in her native village as a talented storyteller.
Some of the texts Marfa Krukova learned not from her relatives but from hired sailors, who helped her father, a fisherman, ‘when he sailed to Norway for cod.’ Many sailors were from the coast of the Mezen River, so Marfa Krukova performed epics and songs in different ways: in the ‘Mezen’ manner, which she had adopted from the visitors, and in the local ‘Zolotitsk’ manner.
The ethnographer Alexey Markov paid a visit to Marfa Kryukova several times. He recorded the texts of the works performed by the storyteller, and even created several audio recordings on phonographic cylinders, but they were soon lost.
In her youth, Marfa Kryukova became famous as a creator of songs. It was believed that only experienced elderly storytellers could perform epics. But with age, Kryukova achieved success in this type of folk art. In total, ethnographers wrote down more than 150 epic stories from her words: their heroes were Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, Solovey Budimirovich and other Russian folk heroes.
Marfa Kryukova made up some of the songs herself. At the same time, she adhered to the canons of an old epic story. She was commissioned by the ‘Pravda’ newspaper to compose works in which she glorified the Soviet government. Several more of her epic stories were dedicated to the military leaders Vasily Chapaev and Kliment Voroshilov, the writer Maxim Gorky, and the scientist Mikhail Lomonosov.
