Table of contents:
- Why did it happen?
- Reason 1: Everyone's done this before
- Reason 2: The pieces are still different
- Reason 3: Our Russian version of The Magician has been translated into other languages many times and is known all over the world
Video: Volkov's fairy tale "The Wizard of the Emerald City": Plagiarism or borrowing a plot?
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
For several generations of children on the vast territory of the former Soviet Union, they grew up on Volkov's fairy tales. For many years, in principle, no one remembered the existence of a very similar primary source, until in the 90s Russian translations of Lyman Frank Baum's fairy tales appeared on the bookshelves. Since then, the controversy about the two works has not subsided.
Why did it happen?
Alexander Melent'evich Volkov was, it seems, a very versatile talented person: he taught humanitarian subjects - literature and history at school, then seriously took up mathematics and graduated from the external physics and mathematics of Moscow University. He knew 4 languages. He just met the fairy tale “Wonderful Wizard of Oz” for the first time in English courses and undertook to translate it for training. He liked the story so much that he began to retell it in Russian to his children, and then decided to record this translation. In 1937 he showed the manuscript to S. Marshak and he highly appreciated it. The first edition of the book was published in 1939 and contained a directive. However, during the further triumphal procession of the book, almost no one remembered this moment. Therefore, for many people the very fact of borrowing came as a surprise.
At first, many even with irritation perceived some kind of incorrect interpretation of the beloved "Magician" (by the way, a very similar situation arose at first with our perception of imported Winnie the Pooh), however, an elementary comparison of the texts of the two works and the dates of their writing makes us think about what is plagiarism in essence and how it differs from creative borrowing. This delicate question in relation to Volkov's fairy tales can be considered open today. Everyone involved in the discussion, of course, love and know from childhood our, dear Ellie, with whom no one in any case intends to part. However, copyright today is already accepted to value and protect. Therefore, the disputes turn out to be especially hot.
Reason 1: Everyone's done this before
Borrowing plots is a really normal creative process. Our literature knows a lot of such examples. You can also remember La Fontaine, Krylov with their fables, Alexei Tolstoy (Buratino), Lazar Lagin (Old Man Hottabych) and Nikolai Nosov (Dunno). However, it should be noted that in none of these examples, not only the storyline and the main events, but also practically all the characters were borrowed so completely. To say that Pinocchio is the same character as Pinocchio can only be those who have never read the tale of Carlo Collodi.
Reason 2: The pieces are still different
The list of plot differences is really long. But upon reading it, the validity of this argument becomes more and more questionable. Whether Totoshka talked or not and whether Ellie (Dorothy) was an orphan - this, of course, is very important. But for a new work somehow does not pull, and in fact it is these differences that are usually indicated as the main ones (well, except for the names of the characters, the "color scheme" of the magical land and a couple of chapters added). Further, the list begins to "shrink" even more:, well, and so on. By the way, Volkov three times, with each reprint, markedly changed the tale, and most of the differences appeared only later. Nevertheless, many believe that the Russian author was able to create a work that was new not so much in content as in spirit and style:
Reason 3: Our Russian version of The Magician has been translated into other languages many times and is known all over the world
Here, really, you can not argue. The book was translated into 13 languages and was loved in all socialist countries. camp. It has been published in Germany since the 60s and has already gone through more than 10 reprints. Interestingly, after changing the design of the 11th edition in 2005, German readers began to actively demand a return to the original version. And now the book is being printed in Germany completely in the old design and even with an afterword about the shortcomings of the capitalist system.
In general, this is probably the most important argument: in fact, we all really love our "Magician" with illustrations by Leonid Vladimirsky. Therefore, "we have read and will read." And now - already to their children. So the question of authorship is more of an academic discourse. Further in this dispute, everyone is free to choose their position. So far, official sources use the term “written on the basis of an American writer’s fairy tale” to describe Volkov's book.
It turns out that friendly borrowing is a common phenomenon in painting. Read about it in the article "Everything new is well stolen old: Plagiarism, imitation, coincidences, clones in the history of painting"
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