This is the tale of the wooden eagle.

In a certain kingdom, in a certain land, there lived a tsar, and this tsar had many servants. These were not simply servants, such as any tsar might have. No, this tsar collected craftsmen as others collect trinkets. Carpenters, potters, tailors, you name it. The tsar loved for his clothing to be sewn better than all others, for his dishes to be more cunningly painted, and for the palace to be decorated with the most elaborate carvings. The number of master craftsmen in the royal palace was just ridiculous. In the mornings, they all gathered for a special royal audience, and every morning they awaited the king's command. For every day he would give them a new task.

It so happened that a goldsmith and a carpenter bumped into one another in front of the royal palace on one of these mornings. They bumped into one another and, well, they started arguing which of them knows his craft better and whose work is more difficult. The goldsmith said, "Your skill is not great. You sit over wood and cut wooden things, but I—I make everything from pure gold. It's a pleasure just to look at it."

The carpenter replied, "There's no real skill in making an expensive thing out of gold. Gold itself is valuable. Now, make something from simple wood that will amaze everyone, then—then I believe you are a master."

They argued. They argued so much that they nearly came to blows. At that moment the tsar himself entered. He overheard this conversation. He grinned, and then gave them an order. "Both of you will make me some sort of curiosity, one of gold and one of wood. I will look at them and decide which of you is the better master." Now, one shouldn't argue with tsars, for life is precious. The masters went from the palace, each to his own workshop, both deeply in thought about how to surpass the other in skill. The tsar gave them one week.

A week later, both artisans came to the palace, stood in line with all the others, and waited for the tsar to arrive. Each held a bundle in his hands. The tsar came out and said, "Well? Go on and show your craft." With a grin stretched out all across his bushy beard, he ordered his tsaritsa and the young prince also to be called into the chamber. "Let them take a look at your work." The tsar and tsaritsa sat down on a bench, and the prince stood next to them.

The goldsmith stepped forward first. "Tsar-father, please order a large vat of water to be brought." A large vat was brought and filled with water. The master untied his bundle, took out a golden duck and put it into the water, and the duck swam as if it were alive, turning its head, quacking, and cleaning its feathers with its beak.

The tsar opened his mouth in utter surprise, and the tsaritsa shouted, "Oh, but this is a live duck, not a golden one! He just took a live duck and covered it with gold paint!"

The master was quite offended. "Of course it's not alive. Order me to take it apart, piece by piece, and put it back together again." He took the duck out of the tub, unscrewed its wings, then its head, then took it all apart. He laid out all the pieces on the table, and then screwed it all back together again. Having wound it up, he put it back onto the water, and the duck swam, even better than before.

All the courtiers clapped their hands. "Oh, you are quite the craftsman! What a miracle you have created! I have not seen such a thing in all my years!"

The tsar turned to the carpenter. "Now, show us your craft."

The carpenter bowed. "Your royal majesty, if you please, order a window be opened in this room." And so a window was opened. The carpenter unfolded his bundle, took hold of a wooden eagle out of it. The eagle was so well-made that it was practically indistinguishable from a living one. And the carpenter said, "A golden duck only swims on water, but my eagle rises up into the clouds." The carpenter sat on the eagle and turned a clockwork mechanism. The eagle picked him up and instantly flew into the air and out of the royal chamber.

Everyone rushed to the window, looking on with their mouths agape as the carpenter flew above the royal court, making circles in the air. He turned the screw to the left, and the eagle flew down; turned it to the right, and the eagle flew up into the air. The tsar was so surprised and in such awe that his crown slid down to the back of his head! He looked out the window and couldn't tear himself away from that thing he was seeing. Everyone seemed to be frozen. No one had ever seen the like.

The carpenter circled through the air and flew right back into the room. Setting the eagle aside, he approached the king. "Well, tsar-father? Are you pleased with my craft?"

"Well, I am at a loss for words, I am so pleased!" the tsar answered. "How did you manage to do that? How did you attach the screw to him?"

As the carpenter began to explain to the king, the tsaritsa gasped and screamed, "Where are you going? Where? Catch him! Stop him!" Everyone turned around and saw, while the tsar was speaking with the carpenter, the young prince had jumped onto the eagle, turned the screw, and out he was, out the window and into the courtyard.

"Come back this instant! Where are you going? You will get yourself killed!" the tsar and the tsaritsa shouted out after him. But the prince waved his hand at them and flew over the silver fence that surrounded the palace. He turned the screw to the right, and the eagle rose up beyond the clouds, and disappeared from sight.

The tsaritsa lay there, unconscious. The tsar was… Well, he was angry, but he had no one to direct his anger at, so he chose the poor carpenter. "This thing!" he said. "You made up this thing on purpose to kill our son! Guards! Seize him! Throw him into the dungeon! If the prince does not return in two weeks, hang the carpenter on the gallows." The guards grabbed the carpenter and threw him into the darkest dungeon of that kingdom.

All the while, the prince flew further and further on his wooden eagle. The prince marveled how spacious, how empty, how free it was all around him. How the wind whistled in his ears, how his curls fluttered, how the clouds rushed under his feet. And the prince himself was like a winged bird: wherever he wanted, there he flew. By evening, he had flown to an unknown kingdom and descended to the very edge of a city. Here he spotted a small hut. The prince knocked on the door, and an old woman looked out.

"Let me in, granny, to spend the night. I'm a stranger here. I don't know anyone, and I have no one to stay with."

"Why not? Come in. There's plenty of room. I live alone."

The prince turned the eagle off, tied it into a bundle, and walked into the old woman's hut. The old woman fed him dinner, and the prince asked, "What sort of city is this? Who lives here? What curiosities does it contain?"

The old lady responded, "We have but one miracle in this land, my son. The royal palace stands in the middle of the city, and near the palace there's a high tower. The tower is locked with 30 locks, and its gates are guarded by 30 watchmen. No one is allowed into that tower. The king's daughter lives there. As soon as she was born, they locked her up in that tower with her nanny so that no one could see her. The tsar and tsaritsa are afraid that the princess will fall in love with someone, and they will have to give her away in marriage, and they don't want to part with her. She is their only child. So the girl lives in the tower as if in a dungeon."

"Is this true? Is it true that the princess is that beautiful?" the prince asked.

"Oh, I don't know, my son. I have never seen her myself, but people say that such beauty cannot be found in the whole world."

And just like that the prince decided to get into the forbidden tower. He lay down to sleep, but all he could think about was the princess. The next day, as soon as it got dark, he sat on his wooden eagle, soared into the clouds, and flew to the tower, to the side where the lone window was. He flew up to the window and knocked on the glass.

The princess was quite surprised at the sight of such a handsome young man at her window. "Who are you, kind youth?" she asked.

"Open the window. I'll tell you everything this very moment." The girl opened the window, and the wooden eagle flew into the room. The prince got down from the eagle, greeted the princess as was proper, and told her who he was and how he got here. Then they sat, looking at one another. They were unable to take their eyes off each other. In fact, the prince just went out and asked it: "Will you become my wife?"

The princess sat there, thought about it for a little bit, but then she said, "Very well, but I'm afraid that my father and mother will not release me."

All the while, the evil nanny who kept watch over the princess had seen everything. She ran to the palace and reported that a youth had come, flew to the princess, and now this young man, even at this moment, was hiding at an old woman's house on the edge of town. The guards came running. They grabbed the prince and dragged him to the palace.

There the tsar sat on his throne, red with anger, and knocked on the floor with his club. "How did you, some common robber, dare to violate my royal ban? Tomorrow, I order you to be executed!" They took the prince to the dungeon and locked him up in his own cell with strong locks.

In the morning, all the people were driven to the square. It was announced that the impudent youth who had entered the tower would be executed publicly. The executioner had come, the gallows were set up, and the tsar himself and the tsaritsa came to watch it. They took the prince to the square. He turned to the tsar and said, "Your majesty, allow me to make my last request."

The tsar frowned, but it was impossible for him to refuse. "Well, speak up, then."

"Order the messenger to run to the house, to the old woman where I have lived, and to bring my bundle." The tsar was unable to refuse. It was a last request, after all. So he sent a messenger, who brought the package. But by then, the prince was already up on the gallows. He was already standing on the ladder. The messenger gave him the package. The prince unwrapped it, jumped on the wooden eagle, and that was that. He soared over the gallows, over the king, over the whole crowd!

The tsar gasped, "Catch him! Seize him! He will fly away!"

The prince directed the eagle to the tower, flew to that familiar window, picked up the princess, and sat her on the eagle right in front of him. "Well," he said, "no one will be able to catch us now. We have nothing to fear." And the eagle rushed them away to the kingdom of the prince's father.

There the poor carpenter was sitting in the dungeon, his eyes screwed up at the ceiling where he imagined the sky to be. "Is the prince flying back tomorrow?" Tomorrow would be two weeks since the prince flew away, and the carpenter will hang on a rope if the king's son does not return. If only he could see the wooden eagle—there it is—flying across the sky, and on it is the prince. But he is not alone! He is with a beautiful girl.

The eagle descended in the middle of the royal court. The prince took his bride down from the eagle and brought her to his father and mother. He told them where he had been for the past two weeks. In their great joy, they forgave him the anxiety he had caused them. And while the carpenter was also released from the dungeon, the tsar arranged a great feast. As for the wedding, it was celebrated for three whole months, not a day less.

***

This is a wonderful story. As I said before, I always approach the interpretation of such stories with a bit of trepidation, because it is our tendency in our modern, post-modern, world to break things apart to see how they work. But recently I was listening to a hero of mine, Dr. Martin Shaw, who is a folklorist and storyteller. I'm subscribed to his wonderful SubStack, which I do recommend that you subscribe to as well if you can. He recently released a story that he was telling. Usually he just tells the stories and that's that, but this time around he gave it a symbolic interpretation, full on. He went into all the details and gave it a full-on interpretation. So if Martin Shaw, who is one of the great storytellers of our time, if he thinks it's okay to do it occasionally, I will attempt to do it in my own small way as well. And I realize perhaps I'm complaining a little too much about this, but anyway here we go.

I've talked a little bit about this whole story with a young man named Mikhail Moibenko, who is helping me translate these stories so that I can get them to you faster, and he had a lot of wonderful thoughts, some of which I will share here. Basically what I'm talking about here is the result of a conversation between me and him.

The story is very much about the value of craftsmanship, on the one hand. What is craftsmanship? Ask that question. Is it making something that is already beautiful even more beautiful? Is it taking out or rather raising the level of something that is universally acknowledged as being precious and making it even more precious? Or is it making something mundane into something sublime? Because those are not the same thing; those are two different approaches, I suppose you could say, to your art.

I think the story suggests that it actually might be both, and that's really interesting. Most of the time, stories, they don't provide you with the kind of level of nuance that allows for two things to be simultaneously true. Stories are, after all, archetypal, so you don't have sort of gray heroes that tend toward evil or have the possibility of being both. A hero's a hero and a villain is a villain, for the most part. But here we have the suggestion that both the duck and the eagle are quite excellent examples of true craftsmanship.

However, one of them is not merely an example of good craftsmanship, but it has something that's transcendent. And the reason that we know that that's the case is because it acts as an inciting incident for the hero's journey. This is a really interesting element to this story, because it seems to be two different stories happening at the same time, which is unusual for this kind of story. The first story is from the perspective of the common people. These kinds of stories are numerous in Russian fairy tales, where you have the main character as a peasant. The rhythms of those stories are quite different from the rhythms of stories where the main character is a Ivan the prince or some other royal figure, because if we're talking about royalty we're usually in a more exalted kind of storytelling space. We have less to do with the mundane details of everyday life and we're talking more about archetypes; we're talking about the great ideas of love and truth and sin and redemption.

But here we have both. We start out on the level of the mundane, of the everyday, the concerns of common people, even if those common people are artisans, so they're not at all common. But then the story switches into a version of Prince Ivan and the gray wolf, that kind of story. And then suddenly we have the appearance of a Rapunzel somewhere in the middle. What is going on here?

Well, as I talked about it in the conversation I had with my translator, we came to the conclusion that the eagle has a kind of quality of transfiguration. It becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Something about the creative act, something about accessing the transcendence of the creative act as done by the carpenter—I don't think it's accidental that the carpenter is the one who creates something that is transcendent—the resonances between Jesus the carpenter and carpentry in general is definitely here. But there's something about this eagle that has the quality of transfiguration. It awakens you to beauty. It awakens you to the possibility of love, also the possibility of freedom beyond the borders of the silver fence that surrounds the kingdom.

So what does the prince then do? It seems like initially that he goes on a joyride, but really, if you're paying attention, I think you will agree that it's more of an escape from imprisonment than a selfish desire. We don't really know what the prince's life has been like before this, but there are subtle clues in the story that suggest that the prince has been just as sheltered as the princess in the tower. For one, he stands while his mother and father sit. It's a subtle thing, but I don't think it's accidental. And of course, the mention of a silver fence around the royal court is important. Naturally, there will be a fence, so it's almost not necessary to mention that there is one. The fact that they mention it seems to suggest that we're supposed to empathize with the prince as a sheltered kind of character.

How do we know then that his escape from imprisonment is more than simply a joyride but it's something a little more transcendent? Well, it's because immediately after he goes and enjoys the transcendence of flying above the clouds, what does he do? He goes from that very high place down to a very low place, and instead of going to that tsar's house in that unknown kingdom, he finds the wisdom of an old woman first. He doesn't go to the castle of the tsar; he goes to the hut of an old woman. He goes very far down in order to find the wisdom that will help him take advantage of his newly transfigured self, because she's the one who knows about the presence of beauty unattainable in that tower.

But, interestingly, instead of the princess being kind of silent representation of archetypal beauty, like Iliana the beautiful is in the Prince Ivan stories, I think it's a kind of pleasant thing to see a kind of equal partner to the prince. She's equally imprisoned as he is by her parents and equally ready to be carried up by the transformation of beauty into the happiness that is only possible in an equal conjugal union.

Now there's a lot more that could be said about this story. We could talk about the necessity of suffering before the attainment of happiness, which happens to both the carpenter and the prince, as indeed about the princess—we assume that she has suffered a lot, being sheltered in this tower. But I do want to leave things to your imagination. As you know, too much explanation can kill your enjoyment of the story. So let's let the mystery persist for a bit, and let's just think about— I think what the thought I really want to leave you with is how the mundane actions that we do to create beauty out of simple things like wood can not simply give us the joy of creating something beautiful—and this is not only the case for craftsmen, but this is also the case for parents; it's the case for anyone who does deep work to create something harmonious out of chaotic substrate, if you want to put it that way. The beauty of that is not simply the creation process, which results in the creation of a beautiful thing, but that it also can then influence others to go and undertake the kind of journey that leads them to beauty, joy, and happiness.

Until next time, my friends.