Dunno in a hostel, an adult girl Ellie, a beard in Karabas's pocket: What explains the oddities in popular children's books

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Some of the books of our childhood read very differently when viewed through the eyes of a modern parent. For example, three series of stories raise big questions: about Dunno, about Buratino and about Ellie in a fairy land. Yes, there are two different books about Pinocchio, and they have different authors, and nevertheless, one story continues the other. But this fact is not at all surprising.

All three stories are written based on other people's ideas

The idea of the Flower City, where the little ones live, was taken by Nosov from the Canadian comics about brownie crumbs living in the forest. In Russia, Anna Khvolson translated them, and she, I must say, from time to time made very arbitrary changes and additions to the plot. On her book "The Kingdom of Babies", where the brownies acquired Russian names like Dunno or Murzilka, Nosov grew up.

Paying tribute to the writer - he never hid where he got the idea of his stories about Dunno and the very name of the protagonist. But over time, this was forgotten, and now many readers, having learned about the original brownie crumbs, remain with the feeling that Nosov had secretly kidnapped them.

By the way, Nosov moved the little ones from the forest to the kingdom of flowers in memory of his childhood games - he often imagined in his childhood that in a flowerbed in the courtyard, tiny people lived, like in a city.

The prototype of Pinocchio Tolstoy became the character Pinocchio, popular all over the world. But the writer made a number of changes both in the images of the characters and in the plot in order … to turn the book into a collection of satirical images of many of his contemporaries. Moreover, Alexei Nikolaevich flirted and pretended that he just vaguely remembers the fairy tale, which he retells: they say, he read it in his distant childhood. But "The Adventures of Pinocchio" was translated into Russian when Tolstoy was already an adult!

The most famous of the parodies in The Golden Key is Pierrot. He combines the images of Blok and Vertinsky, representatives of poetic movements that Tolstoy considered stupid and could not stand. Less obvious is the reference of the image of Karabas Barabas to Meyerhold. It is not the management of the theater that betrays him, but the manner of tucking his beard into his pocket - this is what Meyerhold constantly did with his long scarf.

In Soviet times, the "Golden Key" had two sequels from different authors: "Defeated Karabas" and "The Second Secret of the Golden Key". By the way, the very image of the golden key seems to be taken from the Tolstoy family coat of arms.

"The Wizard of the Emerald City" actually retells the plot of "The Amazing Wizard of Oz" in its own way. Just as in the American original, the Russian book has a whole series of sequels - but these series are no longer connected with each other in the plot. Why it was necessary to rewrite foreign fairy tales, if it was possible to compose one's own (as it turned out, Volkov is quite capable of this) is still unclear.

Shorty have no homes and families

The short ones - like the brownies from which they are "copied" - are either born in an unusual way, or were created once and for all, but they have no families. They do not know the concepts of parents and children, and "brother" is no more than an appeal to another short man.

More interesting is how the life of the short ones is arranged. All short ones have professions: mechanic, artist, doctor, and so on. True, the doctor has only green and castor oil from the medicines (that is, remedies for scratches and poisoning). The little ones sleep in large dorms, like in a pioneer camp, kindergarten or hospital. They eat in public canteens, and during the harvest they quit their business and help harvest it.

It seems that Dunno reflected the idea of an ideal city of the future, such as it was described by the dreamers and propagandists of the twenties. From the individual future of people, only clothes and talents were assumed, and space and household items were seen only as general, social. Women were supposed to be freed from kitchen slavery, making cooking exclusively associated with the profession of a cook - which, perhaps, women would choose, but certainly not every one.

Some dreamers were sure that the peasantry as a class would significantly decrease, because during the largest works it would always be possible to attract townspeople (what was embodied in the USSR as "trips to potatoes"), and very few hands would be needed for weeding.

But what is especially interesting is that Nosov gladly mentions food in his books about Dunno. This is the simplest food (it is understandable, for the author who survived the Civil War famine and semolina is a delight). But it also looks like a vegetarian meal. In the series about Dunno, nowhere is a meat-producing farm mentioned, and the barely mentioned cutlets are not described in composition. Does this mean that the short ones themselves do not need meat, or that in the utopian future, according to Nosov, humanism will reach such heights that animals will stop killing at all? Even fleshy worms?

And Dr. Pillkin's set of medicines, by the way, is also related to the future. It was assumed that normal care in childhood and gymnastics in the morning would make the builder of socialism insensitive to disease, and only the question of injuries and poisoning would remain.

Pinocchio punishes anyone

Even children from the eighties - a generation in which physical punishment was not as common as at the beginning of the century - were still not shocked by the mention of spanking or punching. In the twenty-first century, the treatment of Pinocchio almost every first comer is seriously shocking.

Yes, of course, Buratino is a doll, but he behaves like an ordinary child. But the policeman grabs him by the nose, a stranger Karabas Barabas threatens with a whip and murder (burning in the fireplace), Malvina locks a barely known boy in a closet, and not at all because he is something dangerous to her - she just feels entitled to punish strangers by and large children.

The only scene of cruelty that is really understandable is when the robbers hang Pinocchio by the legs. They are robbers, not normal people accepted in society.

Alas, these are not attempts by the author to portray some particular cruelty of capitalist society. At the time when the book was being written, it was still okay to physically punish strangers, and the parents of the children were not in the least indignant at this. Got a belt over your legs? So, let's get down to business. The right to punish was not exclusively parental; it belonged to the entire society.

Nobody wants to treat Ellie like a child

Ellie finds herself in a magical land just around the corner and discovers that, aside from some individual characters, she is the size of an adult. Nevertheless, she behaves like a child, she has childish body proportions and a childish face, and she does not forget to announce that she is only a girl.

And nevertheless, adults constantly expect from the child that it is she who will rule the situation, protect them, and so on. Moreover, they themselves do not try to take care of the child at the most basic level - they do not think about how and what she will eat, whether she is cold at night, and so on. This could be called a feature only of the inhabitants of the fairy land, but the wizard Goodwin, originally from the ordinary human world, also treats Ellie as an adult rival (and then an ally).

Of course, a child enjoys reading about another child who can show heroic qualities, but shouldn't adults take care of even the most heroic children? Yes, in the past, children were perceived by adults primarily as little helpers with a bunch of responsibilities, but nevertheless, in the twentieth century, it was already accepted to take care of a child at least a little. There is nothing to explain this feature of Volkov's book.

There are other oddities in the series as well. For example, the evil Oorfene Deuce, obsessed with creating a huge army, seems to many to be a caricature of the Jews and the state of Israel itself (by the way, later Oorfene repents and begins to work for the good of the people), as well as the warlike Marranos (I must say that exactly this nickname was worn by the Jews). Christians of Spain). The author has never commented on this.

See also: Where the police are looking and whether you feel sorry for the cat: What surprises modern children in the books that their parents read in childhood.