Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 139 h Diaghilev’s Scheherazade and Russian Orientalism story, ʿAntar saves the Queen of the Fairies ( pari ) Gulnazar from a malicious jinni and wins her love. However, in the finale, Gulnazar kills him during their last long and passionate kiss by breathing out his soul. She fulfils her promise as they had agreed in the beginning, as far as their love was so overwhelming they would not want to be together when their feelings cooled down. 15 So, the agreement was that she would kill him the moment she notices that he is losing his interest in her. Having breathed in his soul, eternally young and beautiful Gulnazar was embracing the deteriorating body of her dead lover until it turns to ashes, which crumble in her hands (see Pl. 14). Rimsky-Korsakov’s oriental suite is considered to have been inspired by Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842), and its Persian chorus in particular. How- ever, Glinka’s ‘Persian’ motif was borrowed from the Azeri folk song Qalanın dibində (‘At the Foot of the Fortress’), which he most likely heard and recorded 15 Сенковский О. Антар. Санкт-Петербург: Вдова Плюшар с сыном, 1833; Алексеев П. В. Источники восточной повести «Антар» О. И. Сенковского // Филология и человек. 3. С. 7–19. Pl. 11. Khusraw Discovers Shirin Bathing, From Pictorial Cycle of Eight Poetic Sub- jects , mid-18th century. Oil on canvas, 91.4 × 88.9 cm. Bequest of Irma B. Wilkinson in memory of her husband, Charles K. Wilkinson, 1997.108.7 © Brooklyn Museum