Harap Alb

She dopes the bear's watering fountain with a sleep-inducing infusion of herbs, honey, and milk, and Harap Alb wrapped in bearskin gathers the salad before the beast awakes.

At the festivities, an enchanted bird-like creature, Pasărea măiastră [ro] makes a surprise visit and announces: "You are eating, drinking and enjoying yourselves, but you fail to think about the Red Emperor's daughter!"

They are joined by Flămânzilă (from flămând, "hungry"; translated as "Eat-All"),[3] who can consume huge amounts without satisfying his appetite and Setilă (from sete, "thirst"; also "Drink-All") with the bottomless drinking ability,[3] Ochilă (from ochi, "eye"), a sharp-eyed man whose sight reaches far distances, and Păsări-Lăți-Lungilă (from pasăre, "bird", a se lăți, "to widen oneself" and a se lungi, "to lengthen oneself"), who can grow in any direction at will, and reach heights only accessible to birds.

The emperor then demands a test: they must sort a mierță (some 200 liters) of poppy seed from an equivalent quantity of fine sand in the space of one night, but this is accomplished with assistance from the ants.

At midnight, the princess turns into a bird and escapes the palace, but, even though she takes refuge in the most inaccessible places, from "the shadow of the rabbit" to the far side of the Moon, she is tracked down by Ochilă and eventually grabbed by Păsări-Lăţi-Lungilă.

George Bădărău, who calls the story in its recorded form a "cultured fairy tale", discusses it as a "concise adventure novel [...] which has an accentuated ethical, didactic character".

[18] According to literary historian George Călinescu, the work also serves to illustrate Ion Creangă's interest in structuring each of his narratives around a distinctive moral, in this case: "that the gifted man will earn a reputation under any guise".

[14] The definitive version, which localizes dialectical patterns and bases the interactions between characters on the hierarchies of a village, allows critics to identify the setting as being the writer's native region of Moldavia, and probably even the rural area around Târgu Neamț.

[21] George Călinescu makes special note of the manner in which Creangă's narrative relies on peasant speech, and how its nuances serve to distinguish individual characters, all of which, he believes, exists within the framework of "playful realism".

[23] Among the generic stylistic traits identified by Bădărău is the story's repeated and diverse use of "Homeric" hyperbole, from the presence of supernatural beings to the happy ending's transformation into an eternal feast.

[7] Another defining element of the account is the pause for effect, visually marked by the ellipsis and possibly originating from oral tradition, where it may also have allowed narrators to rest their voices.

[1] Among the elements which localize the narrative landscape, the collection of objects handled by the destitute prince throughout his quest is seen by Bădărău as an essence of "archaic civilization" and "forgotten tradition", culminating in the grant of a backsword, the "symbol of knightly valor".

[16] Basing himself on previous studies, Braga also concludes that the bearing of hunting-related symbolism on both the quests and the objects serving to overcome them is a clue to the ancient origin of the tale.

Thus, the objects inherited from the king are supposed to symbolize "nature" and "the father's virtues: intelligence (the horse), beauty (the clothes), virility (the weapons) and self-restraint (the bridle)".

[7] According to Liliana Vernică, the process of reaching "spiritual maturity" is a complex one, involving three stages and, respectively, three narrative levels: the "suffering" Harap Alb evidences after being shamed by his brothers, the symbolic "death" which comes with giving in to the Bald Man's ruse, and the "rebirth" illustrated by his exploits.

[7] Creangă's aim of rendering the prince as a familiar and sympathetic figure, the critic notes, is outlined by several elements in the story: "The protagonist sobs when he is scolded by his father, covers his mouth [in disbelief], falls victim all too easily to the Bald Man".

[32] Vernică, who notes that the king disguised as a bear guards "the threshold between the familial and social spaces", also observed that the prince's acceptance of his original quest, as depicted by Creangă's narrative, "is not out of his own will [...], but more so in order to alleviate his father's grief".

[14] He sees this as being especially true for the prince's "five fabulous friends" (Ochilă, Setilă, Gerilă, Flămânzilă, Păsări-Lăți-Lungilă), whose choice of names, "defining the character trait which individualizes them", is "a particularity of Creangă's fairy tale [Bădărău's italics]".

[14] Braga underlines the serendipitous nature of these characters' presence within the story, which he also believes is relevant for Holy Sunday and Harap Alb's horse: "[they all] are nothing but 'helpers', with more or less unnatural powers, they appear to us as forces whose exercise is invoked by the very development of the 'ordeal'".

[35] Critic Simona Brânzaru places the representations of Flămânzilă and Setilă, both of whom "seem somewhat content to have gotten their friend out of trouble", in connection with the ideas of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin on the "philosophy of the Gaster" (that is, belly), while noting: "As in any fairy-tale, be it in its cultivated variant, nothing is accidental".

[38] According to linguist Lazăr Şăineanu, the monarch designated as "red" is portrayed by such accounts as "the cruelest tyrant of his time", and a common theme involves him forcing the hero to solve "enigmas" on the pain of death.

[38] In Creangă's version, George Călinescu notes, such attributes are accompanied by the character's manner of expressing himself with "crass vulgarity" (the critic cites him invoking the devil and commenting on his daughter's sexual availability in dialogues with the prince).

[40] Building on an earlier comment by George Călinescu, Constantinescu sees the monarch figure, his association with the color green and his appreciation of lettuce, as epitomizing a healthy lifestyle and the preservation of vitality in old age.

[50] Several ideological interpretations of the narrative surfaced after World War II, in both Romania and the Soviet Moldavian SSR (a part of the Bassarabian areas, later independent as Moldova).

Partly replicating official Marxist-Leninist interpretations in the latter region, literary historian Vasile Coroban described Harap Alb the character as an exponent of class struggle, seeing his victory over the Red Emperor as premonitory for "the fall of the bourgeois-landowning regime".

[56] Igor Vieru, one of the Moldavian SSR's leading visual artists, was also noted for his illustrations to the story, which his disciples later turned into murals for Guguţă Coffee House in Chişinău.

In a 2004 essay later included in his Despre minciună ("On Lies") volume, philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu used a sequence of the story, that in which the Bald Man succeeds in convincing everyone that he is the king's son, to construct a critical metaphor of Romania's own post-communist history.

[60] The metaphor also drew a parallel between the fairy tale protagonist and Niccolò Machiavelli's theories about the ideal prince, both taken as symbols of men capable to act against public perception for the greater good (see Machiavellianism).

He evidences the manner in which the protagonist and his fellowship cooperate, and choosing "Harap Alb" as "one of the best metaphors" for interdisciplinarity, notes: "while each participant played his role at the right time, the awareness of the mission belonged always to the hero".

[62] A new stage adaptation of the original tale, directed by Cornel Todea [ro] to the music of Nicu Alifantis, premiered in 2005 at Bucharest's Ion Creangă Children's Theater.