Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich(real name Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov) (1882 - 1969), Russian writer.
Chukovsky spent his childhood and youth in Odessa. He graduated from only five classes of the gymnasium and spent his entire life educating himself. He began publishing in 1901 in the newspaper Odessa News. In 1903, as a correspondent for this newspaper, he lived in London, where he studied English and became interested in English literature. Subsequently he translated W. Whitman, R. Kipling, D. Defoe, O. Henry, M. Twain and others.
Already at the beginning of his career, Chukovsky wrote literary critical works: “From Chekhov to the present day,” “Nat Pinkerton and modern literature,” “Critical stories,” “Faces and masks,” “Book about modern writers.” In the 1920s, together with E.I. Zamyatin heads the Anglo-American department of the World Literature collection. Chukovsky gained popularity thanks to children's fairy tales in verse “Crocodile” (1917), “Moidodyr”, “Cockroach” (1923), “Fly Tsokotukha”, “Miracle Tree” (1924), “Barmaley” (1925), “Fedorino” grief", "Telephone" (1926), "Aibolit" (1929), "Stolen Sun" (1934), "The Adventures of Bibigon" (1946). Chukovsky is the author of a large number of articles about the work of N.A. Nekrasov, books “Stories about Nekrasov” (1930), “The Mastery of Nekrasov” (1952). An important part of Chukovsky's creative heritage is his work on language. In the book “Alive as Life” (1962), Chukovsky introduced the word “office worker” into everyday use, meaning the unjustified use of official business expressions in colloquial speech, artistic and journalistic texts. In the book “From Two to Five” (originally titled “Little Children”, 1928), Chukovsky described his observations of the language of children mastering their native speech. The book “High Art” (original title “Principles of Literary Translation”, 1919) is devoted to the theory of translation. Chukovsky is the author of memoirs about I.E. Repine, M. Gorky, V.Ya. Bryusov, V.G. Korolenko. The writer kept a diary all his life. The handwritten almanac “Chukokalla” (1979) is a collection of autographs and drawings of writers and artists, acquaintances and friends of Chukovsky.
The fairy tale "Crocodile" was written in 1916-1917. First published under the title “Vanya and the Crocodile” in the supplement to the Niva magazine “For Children”. In 1919, under the title “The Adventures of Crocodile Krokodilovich,” the book was published in large quantities by the publishing house of the Petrosovet with illustrations by the artist Re-Mi, and was distributed free of charge. The work reflected the events of the Revolution of 1905-1907. It was later published with the subtitle “An Old, Old Tale,” since the realities of Petrograd during the First World War were not entirely clear to children already in the 1920s.
In 1923, Chukovsky was offered to make the main character Vanya Vasilchikov a pioneer, and replace the policeman with a policeman, but the author categorically refused, answering that Vanya was a boy from a bourgeois family and a bourgeois home and would remain so. The cartoon “Vanya and the Crocodile” was based on the fairy tale.
Once upon a time there was a Crocodile...
(Chapters from M. Petrovsky’s book “Books of Our Childhood”)
The year one thousand nine hundred and nineteen was difficult and full of events, but the second from the revolution. How could he care about children's books, shuddering from storms and anxieties! And yet the publication of this book was not lost among the enormous events of the year.
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In 1919, the publishing house of the Petrosovet (in Smolny) published a “poem for small children” by Korney Chukovsky “The Adventures of Crocodile Krokodilovich” with drawings by the artist Re-Mi (N.V. Remizov). The book, published in album format, still amazes with its combination of sophistication - and democracy, design generosity - and taste, mischievous looseness - and almost mathematical calculation, the whimsicality of fairy-tale images - and an inexplicably emerging, but convex and reliable image of time. Moreover, it amazed the contemporaries of that ascetic, military-strapped era - “a torn coat, an Austrian gun” - when “our guys went to serve in the Red Guard,” as it is said in “The Twelve” by Alexander Blok, this “Night Watch” of the October Revolution. The book must have seemed like a migratory bird from another time.
The full significance of this book will become clear only in historical retrospect - later, when, looking back, they begin to look for and find the origins of a new culture. Then Yuri Tynyanov, an outstanding scientist with a keen sense of history, will write: “I clearly remember the change, the change that took place in children’s literature, the revolution in it. Lilliputian poetry with the monotonous walks of the heroes, with their ordered games, with the story about them in the correct trochees and iambic was suddenly replaced, children's poetry appeared, and it was a real event.
Chukovsky's fairy tale completely abolished the previous weak and motionless fairy tale of icicle candies, cotton wool, flowers on weak legs. Children's poetry has opened up. A path was found for further development" (Tynyanov Yu. Korney Chukovsky // Det. lit. 1939. - pp. 24-25.).
A.M. Kalmykova, an experienced teacher who has long been associated with the Social Democratic movement, joyfully welcomed the “wonderful poem for young children” by K. Chukovsky... which was distributed throughout Russia in a huge number of copies... enjoying unprecedented popularity among children who, despite the dissatisfaction of some teachers and parents, choking, recite it by heart in all corners of our vast homeland" (Kalmykova A. What to read to children // New Book. 1923. e7/8. P. 18.).
The success of "Crocodile" among all children - regardless of social origin, position and even age - was amazing and mysterious. Written, as the title indicated, “for small children,” it, strangely, turned out to be a favorite reading for schoolchildren, teenagers and young adults. Dedicated to the author's children, who grew up in a highly cultured, intelligent artistic environment, it reached the lower social classes - the numerous street children at that time.
Chukovsky, it seems, was himself amazed at the success of his fairy tale and was jealous of his other works.
When the collector of writer's autographs M.A. Stakle turned to Chukovsky with a request to make a contribution to her album, the author of the famous fairy tale gave vent to his feelings in the following sadly ironic letter:
“I wrote twelve books, and no one paid any attention to them. But once I jokingly wrote “Crocodile,” and I became a famous writer. I’m afraid that the whole of Russia knows “Crocodile” by heart. I’m afraid that on my monument when I die , “Author of “Crocodile” will be inscribed.
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The author's dislike for his creation is a serious and almost absurd case. But Chukovsky did not pretend - in this letter, as always, he exaggerated his real thoughts, played out his sincere feelings. He was really jealous, although his jealousy was based on a misunderstanding: “Crocodile” is not at all opposed to Chukovsky’s works performed in other genres. Thousands of threads are stretched from "Crocodile" to Chukovsky's other works. The fairy tale absorbed the experience of these works and continued them - by other means.
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky told the story of the concept of “Crocodile” more than once, each time a little differently.
There was no intentionality in this. It’s just that human memory, even a rich one, is a very capricious device, and the earliest of these stories was taken more than twenty years after the events. Chukovsky's stories complement each other and can be combined into one, especially since the main points of the tale's history are stable and repeated in all versions.
Chukovsky always associated the idea of "Crocodile" with the name of Gorky. “...One day, in September 1916, the artist Zinovy Grzhebin, who worked at the Parus publishing house, came to me from him and said that Alexey Maksimovich intended to establish a children’s department at this publishing house with a very wide program and wanted to involve me. It was decided that we would meet at the Finlyandsky station and go together to Kuokkala, to see Repin, and on the way we would talk about “children’s affairs” (Chukovsky K. Collected works: In 6 vols. M., 1965. T. 2 163).
“The first minutes of our acquaintance were difficult for me. Gorky sat by the window, at a small table, sullenly resting his chin on his big fists, and occasionally, as if reluctantly, he threw out two or three phrases to Zinovy Grzhebin... I felt sad with resentment...
But suddenly, in an instant, he threw off all his gloominess, brought his warming blue eyes closer to me (I was sitting at the same window on the opposite side) and said in a cheerful voice with a strong emphasis on o:
Let's talk about children" (Chukovsky K. Collected works. T. 2. P. 163).
And the conversation began about children - about the glorious immortal tribe of children, about the prototypes of Gorky’s childhood images, about the children of Zinovy Grzhebin - “I also knew these talented girls - Kapa, Buba and Lyalya,” Chukovsky adds in parentheses, this time keeping silent about the fact that that one of the girls - Lyalya - will become the heroine of his fairy tale about the Crocodile. Then Gorky allegedly said: “You scold the hypocrites and scoundrels who create books for children. But cursing will not help the matter. Imagine that these hypocrites and scoundrels have already been destroyed by you - what will you give the child in return? Now there is only one good children's book will do more good than a dozen polemical articles... Write a long fairy tale, if possible, in verse, like “The Little Humpbacked Horse,” only, of course, from modern life” (Chukovsky K. About this book: Poems. M. , 1961. P. 7).
According to another story by Chukovsky, the proposal to write a fairy tale was made a little later - when Korney Ivanovich, together with the artist Alexander Benois, began to visit Gorky (in his apartment on Kronverksky Prospekt) to jointly develop a program for the children's department of the Parus publishing house: "... then Alexey Maksimovich said: “For such collections we need some kind of poem, a big epic thing that would interest children.” And he offered to write this thing for me” (Chukovsky K. How I became a writer // Life and work of Korney Chukovsky. M., 1978. P. 151).
For us, it is not so important where Gorky’s idea about the need for a large poetic form for children and Chukovsky’s proposal to create such a thing were expressed - in a carriage of the Finnish Railway or in an apartment on Kronverksky Prospekt. And of course, it would be naive to think that Chukovsky quotes Gorky’s original words. He certainly conveys his thoughts accurately, but these stories need to be supplemented with an important consideration: Chukovsky accepted Gorky’s thought because there (in the carriage or in the apartment) like-minded people were talking about the problems of children’s literature. Two people were talking, convinced that things were going very badly with children’s literature and that something urgently needed to be done. Moreover, children's literature was perhaps the only topic on which the then Gorky could achieve serious mutual understanding with the then Chukovsky. That’s why their conversation was slow at first, that’s why Gorky turned it around on the wheels of his Nizhny Novgorod “o”: “We’re talking about children...”
Gorky invited Chukovsky for this conversation because he knew the critic’s almost ten-year fierce struggle for the good quality of children’s literature. It is difficult to discern in Gorky’s words (according to all Chukovsky’s stories) the intention of “The Crocodile” - the fairy tale that we know. The intention of the work is not there. Something else was assumed: a transition from criticism to poetic creativity, from analysis to synthesis, from a just denial of the “anti-values” of children’s literature to the creation of unconditionally positive values. In a word, we were talking about another literary genre, about a _change of genre_: “a great poem”, “an epic piece”, “like “The Little Humpbacked Horse”. Only one place seems to be directly related to the concept of “The Crocodile”: “from the modern everyday life."
And another circumstance, unspoken, was clearly implied: the fairy tale was needed for a collection published by Gorky’s Parus publishing house, which was created primarily to publish anti-war literature. The common hatred of militarism and war became a serious platform for the carriage conversation between Gorky and Chukovsky - in this sense, they were indeed traveling on the same train.
All attempts to compose a fairy tale at a desk ended in the most miserable failure - “the verses turned out clumsy and very banal.” Chukovsky despaired and cursed his incompetence.
“But it happened,” he recalled, “that my little son got sick, and I had to tell him a fairy tale. He got sick in the city of Helsinki, I took him home on the train, he was capricious, crying, moaning. To somehow calm down his pain , I began to tell him, accompanied by the rhythmic roar of a running train:
Once upon a time there was
Crocodile.
He walked the streets...
The poems spoke by themselves. I didn't care about their shape at all. And in general I didn’t think for a minute that they had anything to do with art. My only concern was to distract the child’s attention from the attacks of illness that tormented him. Therefore, I was in a terrible hurry: there was no time to think, select epithets, look for rhymes, it was impossible to stop for a moment. The whole emphasis was on speed, on the fastest alternation of events and images, so that the sick boy did not have time to moan or cry. That’s why I chattered like a shaman..." (Chukovsky K. Poems. P. 7-8).
Despite the fact that this episode is not confirmed by Chukovsky’s diary entries and even partly contradicts them, one thing about it is certain: the author’s testimony about the improvisational origin of the “crocodile” poems. The improvisational origin of the “matter of the song” (to use the words of Heinrich Heine), the oral nature of the verse “matter” of the tale predetermined much in it and gave a kind of musical key to those parts of “Crocodile” that were created later, already at the table, with a pen in hand .
The unpremeditation of improvisation opened the way to such deep-seated features of Chukovsky's creative personality that the fairy tale - an epic and children's thing - took on lyrical colors. The lyrical meaning of "Crocodile" becomes clear if we consider the fairy tale together with all of Chukovsky's works, in their context.
"Crocodile" opened a long list of fairy tale poems. Chukovsky's fairy tales - "my crocodiles", as the author called them - represent a translation into "children's" language of the great tradition of Russian poetry from Pushkin to the present day. Chukovsky’s fairy tales seem to “popularize” this tradition - and in a reincarnated form (“re-synthesis”) they return to the people, their children.
And, of course, even the shortest story about the reflections of popular culture in “Crocodile” cannot do without mentioning cinema. Chukovsky began to transfer into literature what makes cinema unique and irresistibly impresses viewers: a dynamic image of dynamics, a moving image of movement, speed of action, alternation of images. This is especially noticeable in the first part of the tale: there the rapidity of events causes an almost physical sensation of ripples in the eyes. Episode follows episode, like one frame after another. In later editions of the tale, the author numbered these frames - in the first part of the tale there were more than twenty of them, and the text began to resemble a poetic script. Chukovsky will subtitle one of his next "crocodiles" - "Moidodyr": "Cinematography for Children."
And since the fairy tale turned out to be akin to cinema, a scene that was strikingly similar to the one that Chukovsky had recently seen on the screen, in the film “The Mother-in-Law’s Run,” easily fit into it. In "Crocodile" there is also a "run" - the pursuit of a monster on Nevsky:
And behind him are the people
And he sings and shouts:
"He's such a freak, he's such a freak!
What a nose, what a mouth!
And where does such a monster come from?"
The schoolchildren are behind him,
The chimney sweeps are behind him...
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"Crocodile" was published for the first time in the magazine "For Children", in all twelve issues of 1917. Magazine publication of the fairy tale formed a bridge from the old world to the new: it began under the autocratic system, continued between February and October, and ended under Soviet rule. The magazine "For Children", it seems, was created for the sake of "Crocodile": 1917 remained the only year of its publication. By the end of 1916, Chukovsky had the first part of the tale ready and, presumably, some fragments of the second - more or less close to completion. The almanac of the Parus publishing house, for which the fairy tale was intended, was already completed, but was published only in 1918 and under a different name: “Yolka” instead of “Rainbow”. "Crocodile" was not included in this almanac. It would be reckless to hope for the release of a second almanac when the first one is unpublished. Chukovsky went to the children and began to read them a fairy tale.
“I wrote twelve books, and no one paid any attention to them. But as soon as I once wrote a joke “Crocodile”, I became a famous writer” (Korney Chukovsky). Chukovsky's first children's fairy tale celebrates its anniversary. We will learn the history of the appearance of the Crocodile in children's literature with Natalya Letnikova.
Birth of a crocodile
Vladimir Suteev. Illustration for the fairy tale “Crocodile” by Korney Chukovsky (“The Old, Old Fairy Tale”)
Vladimir Suteev. Illustration for the fairy tale “Crocodile” by Korney Chukovsky (“The Old, Old Fairy Tale”)
The poetic tale about the reptile is inspired by the sound of wheels. Chukovsky’s little son, Kolya, fell ill. It was in Helsinki. And as Korney Ivanovich himself recalled, on the way home, on the train, it was necessary to distract the child from his whims and pain. “That’s why I chattered like a shaman...” This is how the famous lines were born: “Once upon a time there was a Crocodile. He walked the streets"...And the publicist, literary critic, translator, and journalist also became “Grandfather Korney.” The author of bestselling children's books about the life of the animal world - although he himself did not imagine that these lines would be related to art.
Having recovered, the boy asked the story to be repeated. And Maxim Gorky ordered a fairy tale for the almanac “Yolka” - in the spirit of “The Little Humpbacked Horse”. Then Chukovsky remembered “Crocodile”. The illustrations were made by Re-Mi, aka Nikolai Remizov. The artist introduced the image of the author into the story, thanks to which the children knew “Grandfather Korney” by sight. While the collection was being prepared for publication, the fairy tale had already been published by the magazine “For Children”.
Crocodile originally spoke German, but censorship changed the language to Turkish. A story called “Vanya and the Crocodile” was published in a children’s supplement to the Niva magazine. It was published in large quantities in 1919 as “The Adventure of Crocodile Krokodilovich.” They gave out the book almost free of charge. “The old, old fairy tale” was the name given to the children’s poem during its next reprint after the 1920s, when Petrograd during the First World War was a thing of the past - along with the pre-revolutionary policemen and policemen.
"My crocodiles"
Vladimir Vinokur. Illustration for the fairy tale “Telephone” by Korney Chukovsky
Vladimir Suteev. Illustration for the fairy tale “Moidodyr” by Korney Chukovsky
Yuri Vasnetsov. Illustration for the fairy tale “The Stolen Sun” by Korney Chukovsky
“My crocodiles” - Chukovsky called his large set of children's fairy-tale poems. The crocodile runs like a red thread through the writer’s children’s work: he walks along the alley in “Moidodyr” - already in the story told for his daughter Murochka; in “Telephone” he asks the author for galoshes; nobly helps Aibolit in the fairy tale “Barmaley”; swallows the luminary in "The Stolen Sun".
These tales became so popular among children that they became overgrown with stories. Allegedly, at Chukovsky’s birthday, Nikita Khrushchev approached the hero of the day with the words: “That's who I hate! You come home from work tired, and your grandchildren with your books: “Grandfather, read!” And so the whole country read it.
“I’m secretly jealous of my adult books for children’s books. I am sure that my book about Gorky is better than “Moidodyr” and the book about Nekrasov is better than “Crocodile”. But no one believes this", - the writer lamented. After its publication, “Crocodile” was bought by the parents of 250 thousand boys and girls, and “Nekrasov” barely sold out two thousand books.
Bonfires of “Grandfather Korney”
Chukovsky Children's Literature Festival
Chukovsky Children's Literature Festival
Having found himself with the honorary status of “grandfather Korney,” Chukovsky started a tradition in Peredelkino - he organized holidays for local children and summer residents. Bonfire "Hello, summer!" and “Goodbye summer!” People gather for them at the Peredelkino dacha-museum to this day. Eduard Uspensky, Yuri Entin, Andrei Usachev come to throw logs into the literary fire... The Chukovsky Children's Literature Festival is held by successors and colleagues, continuers of the glorious work of “grandfather Korney”.
“We are trying to preserve the traditions of Chukovsky, but they rather say that this is cheerful poetry - it is a game of words, a game of letters, a game of poetry, that is, this is playful poetry, where balance is important, where laughter is important, where certain things are important. then eccentric circumstances that are available to almost everyone who participates in our festival", says Sergei Belorusets, chairman of the organizing committee of the Korney Chukovsky Children's Literature Festival.
The Chukovsky Poetry Festival has been held for ten years. Essentially, this is a great game for those aged between two and five, and those who occasionally look at the world through children's eyes. As the Writers' Union noted, literature for children has been increasing in number in recent years with female authors. Mothers join in life according to children's rules - dances, songs, and sometimes poetry.
“Children see everything in bright colors, and I want to support and not disappoint the child, for whom everything in the poem should be clear, interesting, exciting and not boring - this is the main thing!”- poetess Galina Balebanova is sure.
In general, everything is like in a child’s life, about which Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky wrote, where the washbasin is the “commander’s washcloth”, a chanterelle’s match can set the sea on fire and a “miracle tree” will grow at any opportune moment.
“A quick verse, a change of meters, a defiant song, a chorus - these were the new sounds. It was Korney Chukovsky’s “Crocodile” that appeared, arousing noise, interest, and surprise, as happens with a new phenomenon in literature... Chukovsky’s fairy tale completely abolished the previous weak and motionless fairy tale of icicle candies, cotton wool, flowers on weak legs.”
Once upon a time there was
Crocodile.
He walked the streets
I smoked cigarettes
He spoke in Turkish -
Crocodile, Crocodile Crocodilovich!
And behind him are the people
And he sings and shouts:
"Here, you freak, you're such a freak!
What a nose, what a mouth!
And where does such a monster come from?"
The schoolchildren are behind him,
The chimney sweeps are behind him,
And they push him
They offend him;
And some kid
Showed him the shish
And some kind of watchdog
Bit him on the nose -
Bad watchdog, ill-mannered.
The Crocodile looked back
And he swallowed the watchdog,
Swallowed it along with the collar.
The people got angry
And he calls and shouts:
"Hey, hold it,
Yes, tie him up
Take him to the police quickly!"
He runs into the tram
Everyone shouts: "Ay-ay-ay!"
Somersault,
Home,
At the corners:
"Help! Save! Have mercy!"
The policeman ran up:
"What's that noise? What's that howl?
How dare you walk here,
Speak Turkish?
Crocodiles are not allowed to roam here."
Crocodile grinned
And he swallowed the poor guy,
Swallowed it with boots and a saber.
Everyone is trembling with fear,
Everyone is screaming in fear.
Only one
Citizen
Didn't squeal
Didn't tremble -
He walks the streets without a nanny.
He said: "You are a villain,
You eat people
So for this my sword -
Your head off your shoulders!" -
And he waved his toy saber.
And the Crocodile said:
"You defeated me!
Don't destroy me, Vanya Vasilchikov!
Have pity on my crocodiles!
Crocodiles are splashing in the Nile,
They are waiting for me with tears,
Let me go to the kids, Vanechka,
I’ll give you gingerbread for that.”
Vanya Vasilchikov answered him:
"Although I feel sorry for your crocodiles,
But you, bloodthirsty reptile,
I'll chop it up like beef.
I, glutton, have nothing to feel sorry for you:
You have eaten a lot of human flesh."
And the Crocodile said:
"Everything I swallowed
I'll give it back to you gladly!"
And here is a living Gorodov
Appeared instantly in front of the crowd:
Womb of the Crocodile
It didn't hurt him.
In one jump
From the mouth of the Crocodile
Well, dance for joy,
Lick Vanina's cheeks.
The trumpets sounded!
The guns are lit!
Petrograd is very happy -
Everyone rejoices and dances
They kiss dear Vanya,
And from every yard
A loud "hurray" is heard.
The entire capital was decorated with flags.
Savior of Petrograd
From a furious reptile,
Long live Vanya Vasilchikov!
And give him as a reward
A hundred pounds of grapes
A hundred pounds of marmalade
A hundred pounds of chocolate
And a thousand servings of ice cream!
And the furious bastard
Out of Petrograd!
Let him go to his crocodiles!
He jumped into the airplane
Flew like a hurricane
And never looked back
And rushed away like an arrow
To the dear side,
On which it is written: "Africa".
Jumped into the Nile
Crocodile,
Straight into the mud
Where did his wife, the Crocodile, live?
His children's wet nurse.
Part two
The sad wife tells him:
“I suffered alone with the kids:
Then Kokoshenka stinks Lelyoshenka,
Then Lelyoshenka is bothering Kokoshenka.
And Totoshenka was naughty today:
I drank a whole bottle of ink.
I brought him to his knees
And she left him without sweets.
Kokoshenka had a high fever all night:
He swallowed the samovar by mistake, -
Yes, thank you, our pharmacist Behemoth
I put a frog on his stomach."
The unfortunate Crocodile was sad
And he dropped a tear on his belly:
“How will we live without a samovar?
How can we drink tea without a samovar?”
But then the doors opened
Animals appeared at the door:
Hyenas, boas, elephants,
And ostriches and wild boars,
And the Elephant,
Goldfinch,
Stopudovaya merchant's wife,
And the Giraffe is an important count,
As tall as a telegraph, -
All are friends,
All relatives and godfathers.
Well, hug your neighbor,
Well, kiss your neighbor:
"Give us gifts from overseas,
Treat us with unprecedented gifts!"
Crocodile answers:
"I haven't forgotten anyone,
And for each of you
I've got some gifts!
Monkey -
Rugs,
Hippopotamus -
For a buffalo - a fishing rod,
A pipe for the ostrich,
The elephant - sweets,
And for the Elephant - a pistol..."
Only Totoshenka,
Only Kokoshenka
Didn't give it
Crocodile
Nothing at all.
Totosha and Kokosha are crying:
"Daddy, you're no good!
Even for a stupid Sheep
Do you have any candy?
We are not strangers to you,
We are your dear children,
So why, why
You didn’t bring us anything?”
The Crocodile smiled and laughed:
"No, kids, I haven't forgotten you:
Here's a fragrant, green Christmas tree for you,
Brought from distant Russia,
All hung with wonderful toys,
Gilded nuts, crackers.
That’s why we’ll light candles on the Christmas tree,
So we’ll sing songs to the Christmas tree:
"You served the little ones as humans,
Now serve us, and us, and us!”
How did the elephants hear about the Christmas tree?
Jaguars, baboons, wild boars,
Hold hands immediately
To celebrate we took it
And around the Christmas trees
They started squatting.
It doesn’t matter that, having danced, Hippopotamus
He knocked a chest of drawers onto the Crocodile,
And with a running start the steep-horned Rhinoceros
Horn, horn caught on the threshold.
Oh, how fun, how fun Jackal
Played a dance song on the guitar!
Even the butterflies rested on their sides,
Trepaka danced with the mosquitoes.
Siskins and bunnies are dancing in the forests,
Crayfish are dancing, perches are dancing in the seas,
Worms and spiders are dancing in the field,
Ladybugs and bugs dance.
Part three
Dear girl Lyalechka!
She was walking with a doll
And on Tavricheskaya street
Suddenly I saw an Elephant.
God, what a monster!
Lyalya runs and screams.
Look, in front of her from under the bridge
Keith poked his head out.
Lyalechka cries and backs away,
Lyalechka is calling her mother...
And in the gateway on a bench
Scary sitting Hippopotamus.
Snakes, jackals and buffalos
There are hisses and growls everywhere.
Poor, poor Lyalechka!
Run without looking back!
Lyalechka climbs a tree,
She pressed the doll to her chest.
Poor, poor Lyalechka!
What's that up ahead?
Ugly stuffed monster
Bares its fanged mouth,
Reaches, reaches out to Lyalechka,
He wants to steal Lyalechka.
Lyalechka jumped from the tree,
The monster jumped towards her
Got poor Lyalechka
And she ran away quickly.
And on Tavricheskaya street
Mommy is waiting for Lyalechka:
"Where is my dear Lyalechka?
Why isn’t she coming?”
Ugly Gorilla
Lyalya was dragged away
And along the sidewalk
She ran at a gallop.
Higher, higher, higher,
There she is on the roof
On the seventh floor
Bounces like a ball.
She flew up onto the pipe,
Scooped up soot
I smeared Lyalya,
She sat down on the ledge.
She sat down, trembled,
shook Lyalya
And with a terrible cry
She rushed down.
Where can you find one like this?
The hero is daring,
What will beat the crocodile horde?
Which of the fierce claws
Angry beasts
Will he rescue our poor Lyalechka?
Everyone sits and is silent,
And like hares they tremble,
And they won’t stick their nose out into the street!
Only one citizen
Doesn't run, doesn't tremble -
This is the valiant Vanya Vasilchikov.
He is neither lions nor elephants,
No wild boars
Not the least bit afraid, of course!
They growl, they scream,
They want to devour him
But Vanya boldly goes to them
And he takes out a pistol.
Bang Bang! - and the furious Jackal
He galloped away faster than a doe.
Bang bang - and the Buffalo ran away,
Rhinoceros is behind him in fear.
Bang Bang! - and the Hippopotamus himself
He runs after them.
And soon a wild horde
Disappeared in the distance without a trace.
And Vanya is happy that he’s in front of him
The enemies disappeared like smoke.
He's a winner! He's a hero!
He saved his native land again.
And again from every yard
"Hurray" comes to him.
And again cheerful Petrograd
She brings him chocolate.
But where is Lyalya? Lyalya no!
There is no trace of the girl!
What if the greedy Crocodile
He grabbed her and swallowed her?
Vanya rushed after the evil animals:
“Beasts, give me Lyalya back!”
The animals' eyes sparkle madly,
They don’t want to give Lyalya away.
“How dare you,” cried the Tigress,
Come to us for your sister,
If my dear sister
It languishes in a cage among you, among people!
No, you break these nasty cages,
Where for the amusement of two-legged children
Our dear furry children,
It’s like they’re in prison, sitting behind bars!
Every menagerie has iron doors
Open it for the captive animals,
So that from there the unfortunate animals
They could have been released as soon as possible!
If our beloved guys
They will return to our family,
If the tiger cubs return from captivity,
Lion cubs with fox cubs and bear cubs -
We will give you your Lyalya."
And Vanyusha cried:
"Rejoice, beasts!
To your people
I give freedom
I give you freedom!
I'll break the cells
I'll scatter the chains
Iron bars
I'll break it forever!
Live in Petrograd,
In comfort and coolness,
But only, for God's sake,
Don't eat any:
Not a bird, not a kitten,
Not a small child
Neither Lyalechka’s mother,
Not my dad!
"Walk along the boulevards,
Through the shops and bazaars,
Walk wherever you want
Nobody bother you!
Live with us
And we will be friends:
We've fought long enough
And blood was shed!
We'll break the guns
We'll bury the bullets
And you cut yourself down
Hooves and horns!
Bulls and rhinoceroses,
Elephants and octopuses,
Let's hug each other
Let's go dance!"
And then grace came:
There is no one else to kick and butt.
Feel free to meet the Rhinoceros -
He will give way to even a bug.
The Rhinoceros is now polite and meek:
Where is his old scary horn!
There's a tigress walking along the boulevard -
Lyalya is not afraid of her at all:
What is there to be afraid of when animals
Now there are no horns or claws!
Vanya sits astride the Panther
And, triumphant, he rushes down the street.
Or he will take it and ride the Eagle
And it flies into the sky like an arrow.
The animals love Vanyusha so tenderly,
The animals pamper him and give him pigeons.
The wolves bake pies for Vanyusha,
Rabbits clean his boots.
In the evenings the quick-eyed Chamois
Jules Verne reads to Vanya and Lyalya.
And at night young Hippopotamus
He sings lullabies to them.
There are children crowded around the Bear
Mishka gives each one a piece of candy.
Look, along the Neva river,
A wolf and a lamb are sailing in a shuttle.
Happy people, and animals, and reptiles,
The camels are glad, and the buffaloes are glad.
Today he came to visit me -
Who do you think? - the Crocodile himself.
I sat the old man down on the sofa,
I gave him a glass of sweet tea.
Then suddenly Vanya ran in
And he kissed him like his own.
Here comes the holidays! Glorious Christmas tree
The Gray Wolf will have it today.
There will be many cheerful guests there.
Let's go there quickly, children!
The history of the creation of famous children's fairy tales
Korney Chukovsky's first children's book, “Crocodile,” was published in 1916. Little readers immediately fell in love with her. Following “Crocodile” appeared “Moidodyr”, “Cockroach”, “Tsokotukha Fly” and other fairy tales. Korney Ivanovich wrote about how these fairy tales were created in the article “Confessions of an Old Storyteller”: “Fairy tales and songs with a sad ending are disgusting for a child. Living with the illusion of an eternal holiday, children stubbornly replace the sad endings of our fairy tales and songs with prosperous, joyful ones. ... For small children do not tolerate that in the information about life that literature, theater, painting gives them, there is at least a hint of the final victory of misfortune and evil ... After all, happiness for children is the norm of life, the natural state of the soul ... "
“For a long time it never occurred to me that I would become a poet for children...” wrote Chukovsky. But life takes different turns.
Chukovsky's real name is Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov.
He was born into a poor family - his mother was a peasant, and his father was a St. Petersburg student; he left the family when Kolya was about three years old. To help his family, Nikolai tried many professions: he helped fishermen repair nets, put up posters, helped painters paint roofs. And every free minute he ran to the library and read “voraciously and without any order...” He passed the exams for the gymnasium course as an external student. With the help of a tattered book “English Self-Teacher”, bought at a flea market, I learned English on my own. Since 1901, he has been published in the Odessa News newspaper, where he writes about paintings, books, and makes translations from English. From his long surname, he came up with the literary pseudonym “Korney Chukovsky,” which he later made his name and passed on this name to his children.
Chukovsky married early. The eldest son Kolya fell ill, and it was necessary to take him to Petrograd. The boy was capricious, and his father began to tell him a fairy tale about Crocodile :
Once upon a time there lived a Crocodile,
He walked the streets
I smoked cigarettes
He spoke Turkish
Crocodile, Crocodile, Crocodilovich!
This has happened more than once in literature for children: a fairy tale invented for one’s own child then became a literary work. The boy calmed down, but then asked to tell the story again. When Gorky ordered Chukovsky a fairy tale in the spirit of “The Little Humpbacked Horse” for the future almanac “Yolka”, it turned out that Chukovsky had a similar fairy tale. This is how K.I.’s first children’s fairy tale appeared. Chukovsky "Crocodile". Illustrations for it were made by the artist Re-Mi (N. Remizov)
With the second fairy tale "Moidodyr" history almost repeated itself. In 1920, a daughter, Murochka (Maria), was born into the Chukovsky family. Being little, she did not want to wash herself. And dad came up with these lines:
I need to wash my face
In the mornings and evenings,
And the unclean chimney sweeps
Shame and shame, shame and shame.
The fairy tale was written in 1922.
"Tap-fly" he composed it for his granddaughter Marina. As the author himself recalled, this was the only fairy tale he wrote in one day, in the heat of the moment. “I really like to remember how this thing was written,” Chukovsky said in the article “How I Was a Writer.” “I had such sudden bursts of happiness, based on absolutely nothing... I was in such a mood on August 29, 1923, when I... suddenly felt that what is called inspiration washed over me:
Fly, Fly-Tsokotuha,
Gilded belly!
A fly walked across the field,
The fly found the money.
I barely had time to write on scraps of paper, with some stub of a pencil. And then, to my shame, I must say that when it came to dancing in the fairy tale, I, a 42-year-old, already graying man, began to dance myself ... "
But the story with Aibolit is not at all so simple. Korney Ivanovich had long dreamed of writing a fairy tale about a healer of animals, but the lines were difficult to come by. Once in the Caucasus he swam far from the shore. Suddenly the lines appeared:
Oh if I drown
If I go down...
But the fairy tale had no beginning or end. Then the options appeared:
And the goat came to Aibolit:
My eyes hurt!
An owl flew to him:
Oh, my head hurts!
And only a few days later the lines appeared:
And the fox came to Aibolit:
Oops, I was bitten by a wasp!
And the watchdog came to Aibolit:
A chicken pecked me on the nose.
Chukovsky, Korney Ivanovich (Material from Wikipedia)The very appearance of children's poetry in Russia and its further flourishing in the USSR are inextricably linked with the name of Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. Even against the backdrop of such talents as S. Marshak and A. Barto, he still continues to rise like a huge nugget. I think any of you can easily continue lines like:
“The bears were driving ——“;
“How glad I am, how glad I am that ——“;
“Who's talking? - Elephant. - Where? ———«;
“And the pillow is like ——“;
“Fly, Fly-Tsokotukha ——“;
“Little children, no way in the world ——“;
“Oh, this is not an easy job ——“.
If you can’t, then it means you grew up at some other time in some other country.
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky (1882-1969).
Chukovsky criticizes
“We feel sorry for grandfather Korney:
Compared to us, he lagged behind,
Because in childhood "Barmaleya"
And I haven’t read “Crocodile”
Didn't admire "Telephone"
And I didn’t delve into “Cockroach.”
How did he grow up to be such a scientist?
Without knowing the most important books?
(V. Berestov)
The fame of an exclusively children's writer sometimes irritated Chukovsky.
K. Chukovsky:
“I wrote twelve books, and no one paid any attention to them. But as soon as I once wrote a joke “Crocodile”, I became a famous writer. I'm afraid that the whole of Russia knows "Crocodile" by heart. I'm afraid that when I die, my monument will bear the inscription “Author of Crocodile.” And how diligently, with what difficulty I wrote my other books, for example, “Nekrasov as an Artist”, “The Poet’s Wife”, “Walt Whitman”, “Futurists” and so on. There are so many worries about style, composition and many other things that critics usually don’t worry about! Every critical article for me is a work of art (maybe bad, but art!), and when I wrote, for example, my article “Nat Pinkerton,” it seemed to me that I was writing a poem. But who remembers and knows such articles! Another thing is “Crocodile”. Miserere."
“People... when they met me, they were friendly, but no one knew that, besides children’s books and “From 2 to 5,” I wrote anything else. “Aren’t you just a children’s writer?” It turns out that in all 70 years of literary work I have written only five or six Moidodyrovs. Moreover, the book “From 2 to 5” was perceived as a collection of anecdotes about funny children’s speech.”
Once A. Voznesensky very aptly expressed himself about Chukovsky: “He lived, as it seemed to us, always - L. Andreev, Vrubel, Merezhkovsky said goodbye to him...”. And indeed, when you first get acquainted with the biography of the “storyteller,” you are invariably amazed that by the turning point of 1917, he was already an accomplished 35-year-old father of a family and a famous literary critic. This career was not easy for him.
Born on March 31, 1882 out of wedlock (his father’s name is still unknown), Kolya Korneychukov will suffer all his life from the stigma of being “illegitimate” and at the first opportunity he will turn his mother’s surname into the sonorous pseudonym “Korney-Chuk”<овский>" Poverty will be added to this, and in the 5th grade the boy will also be expelled from the Odessa gymnasium under the so-called. the “law on cooks’ children”, designed to clear educational institutions of children of “low origin”. Kolya will learn English on his own, from an old textbook, where pages with pronunciation will be torn out. Therefore, when, after a while, the promising journalist Chukovsky is sent as a correspondent to England, at first he will not understand a word of colloquial speech.
Chukovsky's interests were not limited to criticism. He translated “Tom Sawyer” and “The Prince and the Pauper” by M. Twain, many fairy tales by R. Kipling, short stories by O. Henry, stories by A. Conan Doyle, plays by O. Wilde, poems by W. Whitman and English folklore. It was in his retellings that we became acquainted with “Robinson Crusoe” and “Baron Munchausen” in childhood. It was Chukovsky who forced the literary community to see in Nekrasov’s poems not just civil journalism, but also high poetry, and prepared and edited the first complete collection of this poet’s works.
K. Chukovsky in his office in Finnish Kuokkala (1910s). Photo by K. Bull.
But if not everyone pays attention to critical articles and the names of translators, then everyone listens to fairy tales, one way or another, because everyone is a child. Let's talk about fairy tales.
Of course, one cannot literally say that there was no children’s poetry at all before the revolution. At the same time, let’s immediately make a reservation that neither Pushkin’s fairy tales nor Ershov’s “The Little Humpbacked Horse” were addressed to children, although they were loved by them. The rest, if I may say so, “creativity” is perfectly illustrated by Sasha Cherny’s satirical poem from 1910:
"A lady swinging on a branch,
Pikala: “Dear children!
The sun kissed the bush,
The bird straightened her bust
And, hugging the daisy,
Eating semolina porridge..."
All these lifeless, refined poems by children's poetesses were mercilessly destroyed at that time by Chukovsky (whose criticism in general was often very harsh, caustic and even poisonous). He later recalled how, after one of the articles about the idol of pre-revolutionary girls, Lydia Charskaya, the shopkeeper’s daughter refused to sell him a box of matches. But Chukovsky was convinced: children consume this squalor only because of the lack of high-quality children's poetry. But it can only be of high quality when it is approached with the standards of adult poetry. With only one important caveat - children's poems must take into account the characteristics of the child's psyche and perception.
Chukovsky's criticism was good, but no good children's poems ever appeared from it. In 1913-14 Korney Ivanovich was even offered to head a magazine for children, but then he was completely captivated by the work on Nekrasov and refused. And two years later, as if out of nowhere, “Crocodile” appeared.
“And behind him there are people
And he sings and shouts:
- What a freak, such a freak!
What a nose, what a mouth!
And where does such a monster come from?
(Fig. F. Lemkul. “Murzilka” 1966)
"Crocodile" goes to Nevsky...
“You judged Charskaya strictly.
But then “Crocodile” was born,
Perky, noisy, energetic, -
Not a pampered, hothouse fruit, -
And this fierce crocodile
Swallowed all the angels
In our children's library,
Where it often smelled like semolina porridge..."
(S. Marshak)
The history of the creation of this fairy tale is quite complicated and confusing, not without the help of the author himself. I refer those who are especially curious to the wonderful work of M. Petrovsky “Crocodile in Petrograd”. I will retell this story briefly.
So, according to one of Chukovsky’s recollections, he read the first drafts of “Crocodile” back in 1915 “at the Bestuzhev courses.” According to others, the idea of writing a work for children was given to him by M. Gorky in the fall of 1916, saying:
“Here you are scolding the bigots and scoundrels who create books for children. But cursing won't help matters. Imagine that these hypocrites and scoundrels have already been destroyed by you - what will you give the child in return? Nowadays, one good children’s book will do more good than a dozen polemical articles... Now write a long fairy tale, if possible in verse, like “The Little Humpbacked Horse,” but, of course, from modern life.”
This version is confirmed by the following statement by Chukovsky:
“They said, for example, that here (in “Crocodile - S.K.”) the campaign of General Kornilov is depicted with open sympathy, although I wrote this fairy tale in 1916 (for the Gorky publishing house “Parus”). And there are still people alive who remember how I read it to Gorky - long before the Kornilov revolt.”
And finally, according to the third version, it all started with an impromptu poem for a small sick son.
K. Chukovsky:
“...it happened that my little son got sick, and I had to tell him a fairy tale. He fell ill in the city of Helsinki, I took him home on the train, he was capricious, crying, moaning. To somehow calm his pain, I began to tell him, accompanied by the rhythmic roar of a running train:
Once upon a time there was
Crocodile.
He walked the streets...The poems spoke by themselves. I didn't care about their shape at all. And in general I didn’t think for a minute that they had anything to do with art. My only concern was to distract the child’s attention from the attacks of illness that tormented him. Therefore, I was in a terrible hurry: there was no time to think, select epithets, look for rhymes, it was impossible to stop for a moment. The whole emphasis was on speed, on the fastest alternation of events and images, so that the sick boy did not have time to moan or cry. That’s why I chattered like a shaman...”
Be that as it may, it is reliably known that the first part of “Crocodile” was already completed by the end of 1916. And, although the fairy tale did not carry any propaganda or political meaning, the realities of the time were still woven into it - the First World War and the last years of the bourgeois world.
Ill. V. Konashevich.
The very “appearance” of the Crocodile on the streets of the city did not particularly surprise anyone then - songs like “A big crocodile walked along the street…” and “Once upon a time there was a surprisingly sweet crocodile…” had long been popular among the people. Petrovsky argued that the image of an all-swallowing reptile could have been influenced by F. Dostoevsky’s story “The Crocodile, or an Incident in the Passage,” which Chukovsky heard read by his friend I. Repin.
The indignation of the people over the fact that the Crocodile spoke German did not raise any questions among the readers of that time. During World War I, anti-German sentiment was so strong that even St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd, and “It is forbidden to speak German” posters actually hung in the city. Policemen still walk the streets, and “valiant Vanya Vasilchikov” is proud that he “walks the streets without a nanny.”
For the first time, the central character of a children's poem becomes a heroic child who, by waving “his toy saber,” forces the monster to return those swallowed. Having begged for mercy, the Crocodile returns to Africa, where he tells King Hippo about the torment of their “brothers” imprisoned in menageries. Outraged animals go to war against Petrograd, and the gorilla kidnaps the girl Lyalya (whose prototype was the daughter of the artist Z. Grzhebin - “a very graceful girl, like a doll”).
It’s funny, like lines from Chukovsky’s fairy tale:
“...flew onto the pipe,
Scooped up soot
I smeared Lyalya,
She sat down on the ledge.She sat down, dozed off,
shook Lyalya
And with a terrible cry
She rushed down"
after a while they will respond in the popular song of S. Krylov:
“...The girl, worried, sat down on the ledge
And with a terrible cry she rushed down,
Children's hearts united there,
That’s how my father’s mother found out.”
Ill. V. Konashevich.
Of course, Vanya Vasilchikov again wins an easy victory, and the fairy tale ends with a call for peace that was so close to the people of Russia in 1916:
"Live with us,
And we will be friends:
We've fought long enough
And blood was shed!We'll break the guns
We'll bury the bullets
And you cut yourself down
Hooves and horns!
A bright, dynamic plot with a continuous cascade of adventures and a hero-peer was in itself a breakthrough in the musty swamp of children's poetry. But another innovation of Chukovsky turned out to be no less (or rather more) important - the unusual poetic form of a fairy tale. The writer was one of the first to begin to take a closer look at such a phenomenon as mass culture, which was replacing old folklore. Hating it for its vulgarity, primitiveness and calculated cheap clichés, Chukovsky nevertheless tried to understand why it attracts the masses and how it is possible, on the one hand, to “ennoble” some of its techniques, and on the other, to introduce these techniques into high-quality “high” poetry . The same idea occupied Alexander Blok. It is not without reason that many researchers rightly point out the similarity of poetic techniques in the poem “The Twelve” (1918) and “Crocodile”. This is a constant change of rhythm, and the use in the text of the poem of the language of a poster, colloquial speech, ditty, nursery rhyme, urban romance.
S. Marshak:
“The first who merged the literary line with the popular print was Korney Ivanovich. In "Crocodile" literature spoke this language for the first time. One had to be a person of high culture to grasp this simple-minded and fruitful line. “Crocodile”, especially the beginning, is the first Russian “Rhymes”.
A. Block “12”:“Revolutionary, keep your step!
The restless enemy never sleeps!”K. Chukovsky “Crocodile”:
“...And the furious bastard
Get out of Petrograd!
A. Block “12”:“That’s how Vanka is - he’s broad-shouldered!
That’s how Vanka is - he’s talkative!
hugs Katya the Fool,
Speaks...She threw her face back
Teeth sparkle like pearls...
Oh you, Katya, my Katya,
Thick-faced..."K. Chukovsky “Crocodile”:
"The people got angry
And he calls and shouts:
- Hey, hold him
Yes, tie him up
Take him to the police quickly!He runs into the tram
Everyone shouts: - Ay-ay-ay! —
And run
Somersault,
Home,
At the corners:
- Help! Save! Have mercy!”
During the Blok readings in 1920, at which Chukovsky gave the opening speech, a note came from the audience asking the authors to read the poem “12” and ... “Crocodile”.
(photo - M. Nappelbaum, 04/25/1921.)
This is how the famous “root stanza” appears, which ends with a line that does not rhyme with the previous ones and is written in a different meter.
Changes in rhythm in Chukovsky’s poems occur constantly in close connection with what is happening. Here and there you can hear echoes of Russian classics. So the monologue of the Crocodile -
“Oh, this garden, a terrible garden!
I would be glad to forget him.
There under the scourge of the watchmen
Many animals suffer..."
resembles the rhythms of “Mtsyri” by Yu. Lermontov, and
“Dear girl Lyalechka!
She was walking with a doll
And on Tavricheskaya street
Suddenly I saw an Elephant.God, what a monster!
Lyalya runs and screams.
Look, in front of her from under the bridge
Keith poked his head out..." –
“The Ballad of Great Sinners” by N. Nekrasov. Well, the string of African animals could well have been inspired by the “African” poem “Mick” by N. Gumilyov. True, according to Chukovsky, Gumilyov himself did not like “Crocodile,” seeing in it “a mockery of animals.”
As for rhythmic diversity and poetic “hyperlinks,” Chukovsky believed that this is how children’s poems should prepare a child’s ear to perceive the full richness of the Russian poetic language. It is not for nothing that Yu. Tynyanov, half-jokingly and half-seriously, dedicated the following poem to Korney Ivanovich:
"Bye
I studied the problem of language
You allowed it
In "Crocodile".
And although the author’s irony is present in “Crocodile”, this does not turn the fairy tale into a parody - this is precisely why all kinds of children - from nobles to street children - will madly love it. There was no adult cooing or boring moralizing here, so Vanya Vasilchikov was perceived as “one of our own,” a real hero.
Chukovsky himself pointed this out more than once:
“...Unfortunately, Re-Mi’s drawings, for all their great merits, somewhat distorted the trend of my poem. They depicted in a comic form what I treat with reverence in poetry.
...This is a heroic poem, encouraging one to perform heroic deeds. A brave boy saves the entire city from wild animals, frees a little girl from captivity, fights monsters, and so on. We need to bring to the fore the serious meaning of this thing. Let it remain light and playful, but underneath it there should be a strong moral foundation. Vanya, for example, does not need to be made a comic character. He is handsome, noble, brave. In the same way, the girl he saves should not be a caricature... she should be sweet, gentle.”
In general, Chukovsky’s goal – “to create a street, non-salon item, in order to radically destroy that sugary candy-like affectation that was inherent in the then poems for children” – was one hundred percent successful.
True, the adult bourgeois public perceived “Crocodile” ambiguously. Devrien's publishing house returned the manuscript, accompanied by a dismissive note: “This is for street urchins.”
K. Chukovsky:
“I was advised for a long time not to put my last name, to remain a critic. When my son was asked at school: “Is it your dad who composes Crocodiles?”, he said: “No,” because it was embarrassing, it was a very undignified activity...”
When, in 1917, a fairy tale called “Vanya and the Crocodile” began to be published in the magazine “For Children” (a supplement to the magazine “Niva”), adults again began to be indignant and after the 3rd issue the publication was almost closed. But the onslaught of children demanding continuation overpowered. “Crocodile” was published in all 12 issues of the magazine, covering both the fall of the monarchy and the fall of the Provisional Government (it was not for nothing that there was a humorous note to the tale: “Many people still don’t know that the lion is no longer the king of beasts. The beasts overthrew him from the throne...").
The young Soviet government reacted to Chukovsky’s fairy tale quite unexpectedly. In 1919, the publishing house of the Petrosovet, located right in Smolny, decided not only to publish “Crocodile”, but to publish it in album format with illustrations by Re-Mi (N. Remizov) and a circulation of 50 thousand copies. Moreover, for some time the book was distributed free of charge!
In most sources, the Petro-Soviet publication dates back to 1919, although the writer himself in the article “In Defense of the Crocodile” indicates 1918.
This edition and the reissue in Novonikolaevsk (present-day Novosibirsk) sold out instantly.
On the cover there were two, previously unthinkable for children's literature, the inscription “POEM for young children” and a dedication “to my DEEPLY RESPECTED children – Bob, Lida, Kolya”.
K. Chukovsky:
“...it seems to me that, as the longest of all my epics, it will have its own special appeal for a child, which neither “The Cluttering Fly” nor “Confusion” have. Length is also an important quality in this matter. If, say, “Moidodyr” is a story, then “Crocodile” is a novel, and let six-year-old children, along with the stories, enjoy reading the novel!”
Thus, children's poetry entered Russian literature with full rights, a literary critic unexpectedly turned into a storyteller, and Crocodile Krokodilovich became a constant character in most of his fairy tales.
The author of “Crocodile” himself appears in Re-Mi’s pictures.
How to become a midget
“...Children live in the fourth dimension, they are crazy in their own way,
for solid and stable phenomena are shaky, unsteady, and fluid for them...
The purpose of a children's magazine is not at all to treat children from
children's madness - they will be cured in due time and without us - but the fact is,
to enter this madness... and speak to children in the language of this
another world, adopt its images and its unique logic...
If we, like Gullivers, want to enter the Lilliputians, we
We must not bend down to them, but become them ourselves.”
(K. Chukovsky)
Rice. M. Miturich to “Bibigon”.
Those who imagine the author of “Moidodyr” and “Aibolit” as a kind of sweet and benign “Grandfather Korney” are somewhat mistaken. Chukovsky’s character was far from sugar. Just read his letters and diaries. Or the rather harsh memoirs (titled “White Wolf”) of another “storyteller” - Evgeny Schwartz, who for some time worked as Korney Ivanovich’s secretary. Constant suspiciousness, causticity, suspicion, often turning into misanthropy (even to the point of self-deprecation) pretty much spoiled the blood of those around him (and the writer himself).
But let’s leave the analysis of the negative qualities to the “yellow press” and turn to the “bright” side of Chukovsky’s personality, without which the appearance of such wonderful fairy tales would have been impossible. Many people remember how at ease the writer felt with children, how he transformed with them into a cheerful playmate and an entertaining storyteller. It is not for nothing that the moments of “return to childhood”, these bursts of happiness were the main sources of inspiration for him.
At one of the “bonfires” A. Barto invited the children to read “Moidodyr”.
- Who knows this fairy tale best? she asked.
- I! - Korney Chukovsky screamed heart-rendingly.
(in the photo of M. Ozersky - K. Chukovsky among the children of Peredelkino. 1947)
K. Chukovsky:
“...by the grace of a generous fate, I was lucky enough to live almost my entire life in continuous friendly communication with my own and other people’s children. Without a thorough knowledge of their psyche, their thinking, their reading requirements, I could hardly find the right path to their hearts.”
The writer experienced the most powerful surge of happiness in Petrograd on August 29, 1923, when the famous “Tsokotukha Fly” appeared to him almost entirely. Chukovsky’s own story is probably one of the best descriptions of such an irrational state as inspiration.
Rice. V. Konashevich.
“...feeling like a person who can work miracles, I didn’t run up, but took off, as if on wings, into our empty apartment on Kirochnaya (my family had not yet moved from the dacha) and, grabbing some dusty piece of paper and with difficulty finding pencil, began to sketch line by line (unexpectedly for himself) a cheerful poem about a fly’s wedding, and he felt like a groom at this wedding.
I thought about the poem a long time ago and started working on it ten times, but I couldn’t compose more than two lines. Tortured, anemic, stillborn lines came out, coming from the head, but not from the heart. And now, without the slightest effort, I wrote down the entire sheet of paper on both sides and, not finding clean paper in the room, tore off a large strip of loose wallpaper in the corridor and with the same feeling of thoughtless happiness, I wrote recklessly line after line, as if under someone’s dictation.
When it came to depicting dance in my fairy tale, I, ashamed to say, jumped up and began rushing along the corridor from the room to the kitchen, feeling great discomfort, since it is difficult to dance and write at the same time.
Anyone who, upon entering my apartment, would be very surprised to see me, the father of the family, 42 years old, gray-haired, burdened with many years of daily labor, as I rush around the apartment in a wild shamanic dance and shout out sonorous words and write them down on a clumsy and dusty a strip of wallpaper torn from the wall.
There are two holidays in this fairy tale: name day and wedding. I celebrated both with all my heart. But as soon as I wrote down all the paper and composed the last words of my fairy tale, the unconsciousness of happiness instantly left me, and I turned into an immensely tired and very hungry country husband, who came to the city for small and painful matters.”
And this is how another fairy tale was born.
K. Chukovsky “Confessions of an old storyteller”:
“... one day at a dacha near Luga I wandered far from home and spent three hours in an unfamiliar wilderness with children who were fussing around a forest stream. The day was windless and hot. We sculpted little men and hares out of clay, threw fir cones into the water, went somewhere to tease the turkey, and parted only in the evening, when the menacing parents found the children and took them home with reproaches.
My soul felt lighter. I walked briskly through the alleys among vegetable gardens and dachas. In those years, every summer until late autumn I walked barefoot. And now it was especially pleasant for me to walk through the soft and warm dust, which had not yet cooled down after a hot day. It did not even upset me that passers-by looked at me with disgust, for the children, engrossed in modeling with clay, diligently wiped their dirty hands on my canvas trousers, which because of this became stained and became so heavy that they had to be supported. And yet I felt great. This three-hour freedom from adult worries and anxieties, this introduction to contagious childish happiness, this sweet dust under bare feet, this evening kind sky - all this awakened in me a long-forgotten ecstasy of life, and I, as if I were in smeared pants, ran up to my room. into the room and at some hour he jotted down the poems that he had been unsuccessfully trying to write since the summer before last. That musical feeling, which all this time I had been completely deprived of and was strenuously trying to revive in myself, suddenly sharpened my hearing to such an extent that I felt and tried to convey on paper, with the rhythmic sound of a verse, the movement of every even tiniest thing running across my page.
In front of me suddenly appeared a cascade of rebellious, stunned things, breaking free from a long captivity - a great many forks, glasses, teapots, buckets, troughs, irons and knives, running after each other in panic..."
Rice. V. Konashevich.
Each such surge of happiness gave us one of the fairy tales. The reasons could be different - swimming in the sea (“Aibolit”), an attempt to convince my daughter to wash herself (“Moidodyr”), experiments in a literary studio (“Cockroach”), consoling a sick son (“Crocodile”), or even the desire to “comfort” oneself (“Miracle Tree”).
K. Chukovsky:
I wrote “The Miracle Tree” to console myself. As a father with a large family, I have always felt extremely strongly about buying shoes for my children. Every month someone certainly needs shoes, galoshes, or boots. And so I came up with a utopia about shoes growing on trees.”
Picture by V. Konashevich from “Murkina’s Book”, depicting K. Chukovsky with his daughter Mura at the Miracle Tree.
But, unlike “The Fly Tsokotukha,” only individual lines and stanzas were born inspired. Chukovsky worked painfully and painstakingly on the rest. So about the work on the third part of “Crocodile” in the summer of 1917, he wrote in his diary: “I spend whole days on “Crocodile”, and sometimes the result is 2-3 lines.” The writer's drafts were written up and down with many crossed outs and edits. For example, there were more than a dozen versions of “Bibigon”!
I will give just a few impressive excerpts about how Chukovsky fought with himself for quality lines.
K. Chukovsky “The story of my “Aibolit”:
“On the first pages it was necessary to tell about the animals that came to their favorite doctor, and about the diseases from which he cured them. And then, upon returning home to Leningrad, my long search for truly poetic lines began. I couldn’t again hope for blind luck, for a festive surge of inspiration. I had to force the necessary lines out of myself through painstaking, persistent work. I needed four verses, and for them I covered two school notebooks in small handwriting.
The notebooks that I still have by chance are filled with the following couplets:First:
And the goat came to Aibolit:
“My eyes hurt!”
Second:
And the fox came to Aibolit:
“Oh, my lower back hurts!”
Third:
An owl flew to him:
“Oh, my head hurts!”
Fourth:
And a canary flew to him:
“My neck is scratched.”
Fifth:
And a tap dance flew towards him:
“I have consumption,” he says.
Sixth:
A partridge flew to him:
“I have a fever,” he says.
Seventh:
And the platypus trudged towards him:
“I have diarrhea,” he says.And the eighth, and the tenth, and the hundredth - they were all of the same kind. This is not to say that they are no good. Each one was carefully crafted and, it would seem, could safely fit into my fairy tale.
And yet I felt disgusted with them. I was ashamed that my poor head was producing such dummies. Mechanically rhyming the name of a patient with the designation of the disease that torments him is too easy a craft work, accessible to any scribbler. And I sought a living image, lively intonation and hated the banal lines that my meager pen wrote without any participation of the heart.
After the hippopotamus had hiccups, and the rhinoceros had heartburn, and the cobra complained to me about its sore ribs (which, by the way, it never had), and the whale complained about meningitis, and the monkey about shortness of breath, and the dog about sclerosis, In desperation I tried to resort to more complex syntactic forms:And the giraffes are so hoarse,
We're afraid it's the flu.The rhyme “hoarse” and “flu” was both new and fresh, but even the most intricate rhymes could not save the rather poor rhymes. In pursuit of smart harmonies, I ended up writing such empty couplets:
The wagtails have arrived
And they sang in French:
“Oh, our baby has -
Influenza."This verse seemed even worse to me than the others. It was necessary to throw him out of my soul and stubbornly continue my search. This search took four days, no less. But what immense happiness I felt when on the fifth day, after many attempts that tormented me with their futility, I finally wrote:
And the fox came to Aibolit:
“Oh, I was bitten by a wasp!”
And the watchdog came to Aibolit:
“A chicken pecked me on the nose!”These couplets, I immediately felt, were stronger and richer than all the previous ones. Then this feeling was unaccountable to me, but now I think that I understand it - if not completely, then partly: after all, compared to all the previous lines, here, in these new verses, the number of visual images has been doubled and the dynamism of the story has been significantly enhanced - both qualities so attractive to the child's mind. This last quality is outwardly expressed by an abundance of verbs: not only “came,” but also “bited” and “pecked.”
And most importantly: in each of them there is an offender and an offended person. A victim of evil who needs to be helped.
... I obtained these couplets at the cost of many days of labor, which I do not regret at all, for if I had not gone through a long streak of failures, I would never have achieved success....If I had decided to publish for public information the lousy lines I wrote in the first draft of “Moidodyr,” I think even the paper intended for printing them would have blushed with shame and resentment.
Here are the most beautiful of these shamefully helpless lines, depicting the flight of things from the boy they hate:Knickers like crows
They flew to the balcony.
Turn around, pantaloons.
I can't go without pantaloons!Sluggish doggerel with fake dynamics! In addition, the prim word trousers has long been supplanted in the living language by trousers, trousers, etc.
Backpack, backpack, where is my backpack!
Dear backpack, wait!
Why did you start dancing!
Wait, don't go!The rhyme “dance” and “satchel” is too cheap a rhyme, and it’s not such a disaster for a lazy schoolchild - the loss of a backpack with educational books. I crossed out the entire verse and replaced it with the same wretched couplet:
And a box from a chair,
Like a butterfly, it fluttered!And these beggarly lines were rejected by me with the same contempt, since, firstly, they are devoid of any intonation and gestures, and secondly, what kind of boxes are these that are kept on chairs near children's beds?
...Even from “The Tsokotukha Fly,” written, as they say, out of the blue, by inspiration, impromptu, without drafts, in a whitewash, and even then, when sending it to the press, I had to throw out such seemingly neat lines about insects feasting on a fly’s name day :
The guests are important, furry,
Striped, mustachioed,
They sit at the table
They eat pies
They snack on sweet raspberries.In themselves, these lines are no worse than others, but upon final reading I suddenly discovered that it was very easy to do without them, and, of course, this immediately deprived them of the right to further literary life.
The following lines were subjected to the same ostracism during the final reading:The fly is happy with both guests and gifts.
He greets everyone with bows.
He treats everyone to pancakes.For these lines, again, with all their beauty, turned out to be completely unnecessary.”
A special feature of Chukovsky was the harmonious combination in one person of an inspired creator and a critic - a scrupulous analyst of not only other people's, but also his own creativity. As he himself wrote: “Scientific calculations must be translated into emotions.” Not every critic is able to create a work of art, and not every poet is able to explain the secrets of his craft. However, Chukovsky not only wrote brilliant fairy tales, but also recorded the principles of his approach to creativity - the so-called. commandments for children's poets, set out in the book “From 2 to 5”.
He considered dynamism to be one of the main qualities of children's poems. The wealth of images in itself will not attract a child if these images are not in constant motion and are not involved in a continuous chain of events. In each stanza of Chukovsky's fairy tales, something happens; each stanza can be easily illustrated. It is not for nothing that “vortex” ringing drawings first appear in his books, and the first edition of “Moidodyr” was accompanied by the eloquent subtitle “cinema for children.” An indignant crowd chases the Crocodile, and “Cockroach” opens with a cortege of riding and flying animals. Things are running from Baba Fedora. Things are running away from the dirty ones from "Moidodyr" ( “Everything is spinning, / Everything is spinning / And rushing head over heels...”). But Chukovsky does not recommend cluttering children’s poems with epithets - long descriptions of the target audience are not yet interesting.
For a modern child, in “Moidodyr” there may be a lot of incomprehensible words - “blacking wax”, “poker”, “chimney sweep”, and even the pre-revolutionary “mother’s bedroom”, which was the subject of a well-known joke.
(Fig. V. Suteev)
At the same time, different images and events must have their own special rhythm. Reading “The Stolen Sun” aloud, with each line, like the Bear, we deal crushing blows to the Crocodile:
“I couldn’t stand it
Bear,
Roared
Bear,
And against the evil enemy
swooped in
Bear",
And then we think it's coming from our mouth
“...The sun has fallen,
You rolled into the sky!” (my breakdown – S.K.)
Rice. — Yu. Vasnetsova.
In “Telephone” we also perfectly hear the slowness and laconicism of the elephant’s speech, as opposed to the impatient monorhythmic chatter of the gazelles:
“- Really
Indeed
Everyone got burned
Carousels?
Rice. V. Konashevich.
K. Chukovsky about “Fedora’s Mountain” (from “The History of My “Aibolit”):
“...during this desperately fast flight, each plate sounded completely different than, say, a frying pan or a cup. The lively and lightweight saucepan rushed past the iron that had lagged behind it in a dashing tetrameter trochee.
And the pan is on the run
IronGU shouted:
"I'm running, running, running,
I can’t resist!”As I understand now, six GUs on four lines are designed to phonetically convey the swiftness and ease of flight. And since irons are heavier than nimble saucepans, I equipped my lines about them with viscous super-dactylic rhymes:
The irons run and quack,
They jump over puddles, over puddles.Po-quack-ki-va-yut, per-re-ska-ki-va-yut - leisurely drawn-out words with emphasis on the fourth syllable from the end. With this rhythmic pattern I tried to express the cast-iron rigidity of the irons.
The teapot has a different “gait” - noisy, fussy and choppy. In it I thought I heard a six-foot trochee:So the kettle runs after the coffee pot,
Chatting, chattering, rattling...But then glassy, subtly ringing sounds were heard, again returning the tale to its original melody:
And behind them are saucers, saucers -
Ding-la-la! Ding-la-la!
They rush along the street -
Ding-la-la! Ding-la-la!
They bump into glasses - ding! -
And the glasses - ding! - break.Of course, I did not at all strive for such a diverse and changeable rhythm. But somehow it happened naturally that, as soon as various kitchen trifles flashed in front of me, the tetrameter trochee instantly transformed into a trimeter:
And behind her are forks,
Glasses and bottles
Cups and spoons
They jump along the path.Nor did I care that the gait of the table, clumsily waddling along with the dishes, was conveyed by another variation of the rhythm, completely different from the one that depicted the movement of other things:
A table fell out of the window
And he went, he went, he went, he went, he went...
And on it, and on it,
Like riding a horse,
The samovar sits
And he shouts to his comrades:
“Go away, run, save yourself!”Of course, such variations in poetic rhythm, depicting each subject in its musical dynamics, cannot be achieved by any external technical tricks. But in those hours when you experience that nervous upsurge that I tried to describe in the essay about “The Cluttering Fly,” this varied sound design, breaking the tedious monotony of poetic speech, is not worth any effort: on the contrary, it would be much more difficult to do without it.”
Chukovsky could not tolerate monotony at all, so all his life he considered his monologue from the 2nd part of “Crocodile” to be his mistake. It is precisely in order not to delay the course of events that the writer throws out excellent lines from Aibolit about a burnt moth (later he will nevertheless include them in a prosaic retelling of Aibolit).
The sound of poetry should also be comfortable for children's perception. Of the sizes, trochee is desirable, where the stress is already on the first syllable. No cacophony should be allowed - for example, a cluster of consonants at the junction of words.
K. Chukovsky about “Moidodyr” (from “The History of My “Aibolit”):
“...I had to write down a lot of paper before I found the final version of the first lines:
Blanket
Ran away.
The sheet flew away.
And the pillow,
LIKE A FROG
She CROPPED away from me.The first word “blanket” attracted me because it has four vowels for every two consonants. This is what provides the word with the greatest euphony. In the line “the sheet flew away” - both words are united by the sound T, which contributes to their expressiveness, and the last three lines in the same way acquired authenticity thanks to the fivefold CA: the pillow, LIKE a frog, ROCKED, conveying the intermittent movement of the object.”
K. Chukovsky, January 1929:
“Something strange happened with my report at GIZ. The report was clearly entitled: “On the technique of writing children's poems,” and it was clear to everyone in advance that it would only talk about technique. Meanwhile, as soon as I finished, from the second word they asked me: “What about the theme?” - “What about the topic?” - “Why didn’t you say about the topic?” - “What theme should children’s poems have?” It’s as if we all already have an excellent command of the poetic form and now all we need is a theme.
... Meanwhile, it is precisely in the interests of the topic that we must think about the form, so as not to spoil the paper any more with all sorts of hackwork.”
Of course, a necessary element of children's fairy tales should be a happy ending and the absence of cruelty. The people and animals swallowed by the Crocodile jump back unharmed, and Barmaley is corrected. In Chukovsky's diaries you can find an alternative ending to "Crocodile", where the animals win, lock people in cages and tickle them through the bars with canes. But he refused it.
Just as he refused the following lines in “Crocodile” and “Telephone”:
“...Bang-bang from a pistol -
And the giraffe falls dead.
Bang Bang! - and the deer falls!
Bang bang - and the seal falls!
Bang bang and headless lions
They lie on the banks of the Neva.""And then on the phone
The crocodile called:
- I am a crow, yes, a crow,
I swallowed a crow!
- There is nothing to do, my friend,
Take the iron
Yes, heat it up
Hot,
Yes, rather on your stomach
Let the crow sing
Let the crow have a good time
It will bake
And then she takes a moment
Will not remain in the stomach:
So it will jump out
So it will fly out!
But poor crocodile
Howled louder than ever..."
True, the writer did not always follow this principle, and we will talk about this later.
Otherwise, children's poetry should be in no way inferior in quality to adult poetry. In other words, it should appeal not only to children but also to adult readers. And you can’t rely on inspiration alone here. Chukovsky wrote: “His (children’s poet – S.K.) “returns to childhood” are worthless if he did not stock up in advance with a thorough knowledge of native and foreign literature and was not imbued with its powerful aesthetics.” It is not for nothing that the writer believed that children's poetry should be based on all the achievements of world poetry - both original and folklore. Hence “Confusion”, which refers us to English nonsense and Russian fables, and “Cockroach” - a kind of children’s “The Government Inspector” by Gogol, and “Crocodile” - a “novel” about war and peace, and “Barmaley” - an adventurous story, and “ The Stolen Sun,” an original resurrection of mythological stories about monsters devouring the heavenly bodies. "And the chanterelles
We took matches
Let's go to the blue sea,
They lit the blue sea..."
(Fig. V. Konashevich)
I have already noted how in Chukovsky’s fairy tales, here and there, references to the works of other poets slip through. So “And now, maiden soul, / I want to marry you!” from “Mukha-Tsokotukha” refer us to Pushkin, and the rhythm of the verse from “Barmaley”:
"We are shark Karakula
Never mind, never mind
We are the Shark Karakul
Brick, brick..."
to the poem by V. Ivanov:
“The Maenad rushed violently,
Like a doe
Like a doe -
With a heart scared out of my chest,
Like a doe
Like a doe..."
And finally, the main thing.
K. Chukovsky “How “The Tsokotukha Fly” was written:
“...to all these commandments we should add one more, perhaps the most important: a writer for small children must certainly be happy. Happy, like those for whom he creates.
I sometimes felt so lucky when I happened to write poetic children's fairy tales.
Of course, I cannot boast that happiness is the dominant feature of my life. ...But from my youth I had - and still have - one precious quality: in spite of all the troubles and squabbles, suddenly, for no apparent reason, for no apparent reason, you feel a strong surge of some kind of crazy happiness. Especially during such periods when you should be whining and complaining, you suddenly jump out of bed with such an insane feeling of joy, as if you were a five-year-old boy who was given a whistle.”
NOTES:
1 - Of Chukovsky’s other remarkable works, it is worth noting the books “Alive as Life” (about language) and “High Art” (about the art of translation).
2 - see Petrovsky, Miron “Books of our childhood” - M.: “Book”, 1986
3 - In most sources, the Petro-Soviet publication dates back to 1919, although the writer himself in the article “In Defense of the Crocodile” indicates 1918.
4 — By the way, not every great poet is capable of writing poetry for children. They say that when the poet O. Mandelstam published a collection of children's poems “Kitchen”, the children he knew sympathetically told him: “It’s okay, Uncle Osya, you can redraw it to “Mukhu-Tsokotukha.”
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