90 years ago, October 14, 1926, at the London publishing house Methuen&Co A book was published that made the modest writer Alan Milne famous all over the world. These were the adventures of Winnie the Pooh, in the original version consisting of two books: "Winnie the Pooh" and "House on the Bear's Corner". In the Russian translation, the fairy tale came out in an incomplete version under the title "Winnie the Pooh and All-All-All" translated by Boris Zakhoder.
The prototype of Christopher Robin was the writer's son, Christopher Robin, and the restless teddy bear had two prototypes: Christopher's teddy bear Edward, who was given to the baby for his first birthday, and the Winnipeg bear from Canada, who ended up in the London Zoo, where the boy's favorite swan also lived. named Pooh. A piglet and a tailless donkey, a kangaroo with a plush cub in a bag, and a tiger were also Christopher's toys. Of all the characters invented by Alan Milne, only the Rabbit and the Owl were invented.
The tragedy of Alan Milne and Christopher Robin
What could be better than becoming the hero of a cult fairy tale, a full-fledged participant in the magical world! You may be surprised, but Christopher Robin said that it would be better if Winnie the Pooh did not exist at all. The book drew too much attention to the unhappy family, portraying a family idyll in front of journalists' cameras. In fact, there were big problems in the Milne household.
The root of these problems lay in the childhood of Alan Milne, an unloved child who felt himself in the shadow of his brothers. The boy tried his best to prove that he was no worse, and now, at the age of 24, he became a successful young writer and assistant editor in a satirical magazine. Punch. Shortly after this happy appointment, Milne met his future wife Dorothy de Selincourt (Daphne) at a social evening. This moment became fatal for the writer and predetermined the further tragic development of his fate. Dorothy came from an aristocratic French family, was known for her spoiledness and bad temper. In any case, so in his article "Alan Milne: Winnie the Pooh and Other Troubles" says journalist Barry Gun.
Dorothy longed for success and fame, and at the expense of her husband. Alan fell under her boundless influence, trying to fulfill all the ridiculous demands and the slightest wishes of the absurd Daphne. What is worth just going to war (the First World War was on):
“If Daphne, capriciously twisting her lips, demanded that Alan jump from the roof of London's St. Paul's Cathedral, he most likely would have done so. In any case, the 32-year-old Milne volunteered for the front of the First World War, which began a year after his marriage, solely because his wife really liked the officers in military uniform who flooded the city.
Dorothy wanted to see a famous playwright next to her, but fame came to Milne from the other side. To earn extra money, he secretly wrote "Winnie the Pooh" and sent it to the publisher, not expecting anything special. Overnight, Alan Milne became famous, journalists vying with each other wanted to interview, readers came to look at Christopher Robin and his famous teddy bear. And Daphne expressed contempt. Most likely, this is what influenced the author's attitude to his masterpiece - he began to be ashamed of the fairy tale, on which more than one generation of children around the world was later brought up.
The mother did not pay any attention to Christopher Robin, the father was depressed and self-absorbed, so the only close person for him was the nanny. It was a real torment to portray a happy boy from a baby book.
“Once Christopher compared his father to the donkey Eeyore: Alan was just as gloomy, thoughtful and suspicious, he was locked up in his office all day long - what was he doing there? writes Barry. “By the way, his wife often forgot about his birthdays, and it was Christopher who usually reproachfully reminded his mother about them. Recovering herself, Daphne rushed to her room and, returning, gave her husband something like an empty honey barrel - for example, some useless case for glasses or a bag lying around in her closet; once managed to present Alan with her own unpacked sweater, which he also gave her.
Dorothy and Christopher Robin Milne
In the end, Daphne left the family for some American singer, advising her husband to wait until she checked her feelings. Three years later, she returned, again breaking the life of her husband and son, which had just begun to improve. During this time, Alan became close to his brother Ken's widow and her four children. A large family lived together, but for the sake of Dorothy, Alan left Maud, and Christopher stayed. In 1951, Alan Milne suffered a stroke, became paralyzed and underwent a risky brain operation that turned him into a "plant" until his death in 1956. Christopher, at his father's funeral, said something to his mother, for which she hit him and threw a glass of water in his face.
Dorothy lived another 15 years, but mother and son never saw each other again. Christopher did not attend her funeral. You don't have to be a psychologist to understand how such a family history affected the worldview of Christopher Robin.
Alan Milne reading his book
The young man graduated from Cambridge with a bachelor's degree in English, and in 1948 married his own cousin Leslie Selincourt, which caused Alan Milne's concerns about heredity. In 1956, the couple had a daughter, Claire Milne. The girl was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
The couple's family business was their own bookstore, Harbour, which Christopher and Leslie opened in Dormouth. Christopher Milne died in his sleep on April 20, 1996, and six years later his wife organized a foundation to help children with cerebral palsy, which transfers a significant part of the funds from the use of the image of Winnie the Pooh. The store was closed in 2011 due to unprofitability, but Winnie the Pooh fans, having chipped in, bought all the equipment and opened it in another building.
Mythology Winnie the Pooh
Researcher Vadim Rudnev is probably wrong when he says that Alan Milne was a talented man, but narrow-minded - because he failed to appreciate the scale of the created work. In the book "Winnie the Pooh and the Philosophy of Ordinary Language" Rudnev analyzes the fairy tale, destroying the stereotype that "Winnie the Pooh" is a purely children's story.
The structure of the VP is determined by one of the most universal archaic mythologemes - the world tree, which embodies the archaic cosmos. Indeed, the tree is the central object of space, composition and plot of the VP: all the action takes place in the Forest, and most of the characters - Pooh, Piglet, Owl and Christopher Robin - live in trees. A number of specific plots of the VP are associated with the tree: on the tree, Pooh is saved from the flood (the Flood that ends the first book); Christopher Robin watches from the tree; friends-and-relatives of the Rabbit climb the tree to view the most important events from it<...>. The Owl's tree-house falls from the storm at the end of the second book, which serves as a symbol of the destruction of the archaic world and the departure of Christopher Robin to the big world.
The circle formed by trees (Geleon's Bosom) in the final of the VP personifies eternity and the indestructibility of the world of childhood. But the most universal plot, connected with the tree, directly opens the world of VP. Pooh climbs a tree in search of honey; he fails to take away the honey from the bees, but it is precisely when he climbs a tree that he begins to write poetry, which is certainly a reminiscence to the mythologem of the sacred honey of poetry, in search of which the god Odin climbs the World Tree in the "Younger Edda".
By the way, the Wonderful Forest (in the original “Hundred Acre Forest”) is the Ashdown forest in East Sussex, near which the Cochford farm bought in 1025 by Alan Milne was located. Little Christopher Robin was very fond of climbing into the hollows of trees and playing with his bear cub Edward.
Shepard's iconic illustrations
The canonical illustrations for the adventures of Winnie the Pooh are the drawings of the English artist Ernest Shepard. Like Milne, he worked for a magazine Punch(only much longer), in which he was one of the leading political cartoonists. The artist was famous for his elegant humor even on the darkest topics, such as war, and he also loved animals very much and tried to complement the composition with them wherever possible.
Shepard's candidacy was recommended to Milne by a colleague, and he successfully coped with " test task”- illustrated a collection of children's poems When We Were Very Young. Milne was delighted.
The artist began work on "Winnie the Pooh", using as a model not Edward Christopher Robin's teddy bear, but Grumpy ( Growler) - a toy of his son Graham. Unfortunately, this teddy bear was not preserved, it was torn to pieces by Shepard's dog.
And to create the home comfort of a forest fairy-tale world, Shepard was inspired by the atmosphere of his beloved Surrey, where he first lived on the estate Shamley Green and then in the big house Long Meadow.
The illustrations received excellent reviews, but in the last years of his life, Shepard tended to refer to Winnie the Pooh as a "stupid old bear" and resented the fact that everyone associated his name with a children's book. The artist was offended that "Winnie the Pooh" overshadowed all his other achievements. Ernest Shepard died at the age of 96, and after his death, the sketches for the fairy tale were sold for much more than the political cartoons to which he devoted his life and for which he risked his life.
Archivist Sharon Maxwell, who studied Shepard's wartime illustrations, said she had an impressive insight into life on the front lines: "While television gives the official version, they allow you to see the side that was lost: the stories that happened every day, he and his comrades, what they did, what happened."
For more on Ernest Shepard's work on Winnie the Pooh, see two of his autobiographies: Drawn from Memory and Drawn From Life..
About cartoons
The whole world knows two animated adaptations of the immortal fairy tale by Alan Milne: American and Russian. First came the American cartoon, created in 1961 at the studio Disney. Judging by the images of the characters, the artists were guided by Shepard's drawings.
The Soviet "Winnie the Pooh" was created from 1969 to 1972. It consists of three parts, and the creation of each of them lasted a year. The director of the domestic masterpiece was Fedor Khitruk.
The artist recalled that at first the team failed to approve the images of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet for a long time. The first version, presented by Vladimir Zuykov, was nicknamed "the enraged dandelion" - the bear cub was shaggy, and Piglet looked like a sausage. They decided to comb the bear cub, although they left the “chewed” left ear. Khitruk explained that Winnie the Pooh slept on it. As a result of a technical error, a characteristic gait of a bear cub appeared - when the upper and lower paws on one side move simultaneously. Piglet was "born" after Zuykov added a thin neck to the piglet - the image immediately became touching and complete.
“When Evgeny Leonov, who was not the only contender for dubbing, entered the studio, approached the microphone, somehow shyly turned his head away, smiled slyly, we all gasped: “Here he is, Pooh!”. Leonov became the prototype of our Winnie the Pooh. From it, the artist drew the final version of the character.
An inseparable part of the image of Winnie the Pooh was the actor Yevgeny Leonov, who was invited to voice the cartoon. At first, Khitruk did not really like the result of the voice acting, and the recording was sped up by 30% - as a result, the signature voice of the bear cub appeared. Piglet was voiced by Iya Savina, who, working on the voice of the piglet, parodied Bella Akhmadullina.
Photo: Pakhomova Lyudmila/TASS
If artists were closer to canonical illustrations Disney, then Soyuzmultfilm turned out to be closer to the text of the fairy tale. And in one of his interviews, Fyodor Khitruk said that during a meeting with American colleagues, the director of the American version, Woolly Reitherman, admitted his defeat:
“We came to America to the studio Disney to show our pictures to its then chief director Woolly Reitherman. Woolley, if you remember, just created the Disney “Winnie the Pooh,” Khitruk said. - So, we showed an incredible number of films, sat, smoked Cuban cigars, discussed. And then Reiterman suddenly admits: “You know, I like your Winnie the Pooh much more than my own.” On the one hand, it’s embarrassing to brag, but on the other hand, I’m still proud of such praise. ”
How Christopher Robin, Denis Dragunsky and Timur Gaidar didn't meet
Denis Dragunsky, the son of the famous children's writer Viktor Dragunsky, who wrote "Deniska's Stories", said that one day, in the late 80s, an English professor offered to arrange a meeting of three real characters in children's books with literary heroes - namesakes: Christopher Robin, Timur Gaidar and himself Dragunsky, the prototype of the hooligan Deniska Korablev. However, Denis Viktorovich refused.
“Now, of course, I regret it,” Dragunsky wrote in his article with the telling title “50 years with Deniska around his neck.” – And I refused because in those years any hint of my “prototype” was very unpleasant to me. Then I just had a long period of stagnation and failure. He gave up teaching, forgot science, and literary (more precisely, dramatic) experiments did not bring anything. Just money, and not much. But no success, no inner joy. During these years, I simply could not hear about Deniska's stories. Sometimes it seemed to me that this was my destiny - to be the hero of my father's book and no one else. Separate evil citizens who felt these experiences of mine and wanted to hurt me more painfully told me: “Well, who are you, to be honest? Denis from the stories! I was hurt. Then my life changed for the better, and now I am happy to talk about this book.
It seems that talented parents, giving the character the name of their own child, sometimes do not realize that all his life he will have to get out of the shadow of his famous hero.
Maria Al-Salkhani
On January 18, Winnie the Pooh Day is celebrated all over the world - a holiday in honor of the birthday of the author of the book about this cute teddy bear, Alan Alexander Milne. This year the world celebrates the 130th anniversary of the birth of the writer, and his creation pleases children and adults today. We have collected for our readers little-known and very fun facts about Winnie the Pooh.
1. Winnie-the-Pooh
Over time, the name of the bear has been somewhat transformed. When Milne's first book came out, the main character's name was Winnie-the-Pooh, but when Disney acquired the rights to animate the characters, the hyphen was dropped to keep the name shorter.
2. Stories about Winnie the Pooh - one of the best-selling books in the world
Stories about Winnie the Pooh are very popular all over the world. Teddy bear books have been published in dozens of languages, and a Latin translation in 1958 was the first book not in English. English language, which made it to the New York Times Best Selling Books list.
3. Winnipeg - Canadian black bear from the London Zoo
"Winnie the Pooh" may seem like a somewhat strange name for a teddy bear, but that's what the toy of Milne's son, Christopher Robin, was really called. The plush toy was named after Winnipeg, a Canadian black bear from the London Zoo, as well as a swan named Pooh, whom the family once met while on vacation. Before the toy got its famous name, it was originally sold at Harrods under the name "Edward the Bear". As for the swan Pooh, he also appeared in one of Milne's books.
4. Vinnie is not Sanders
Contrary to numerous rumors, Vinnie's last name is not Sanders. This opinion has become very common because there is a sign over the door of Pooh's house that says "Sanders". However, it is generally accepted that this is the name of the previous owner of the house, and Pooh was just always lazy to change the sign.
5. Gopher appeared only in 1977
Most of the other characters were also named after Christopher Robin's toys. At least, except for an owl, a rabbit and a gopher. The Owl and Bunny were created by Milne and illustrator Ernest Shepherd solely to add a little more variety to the character roster. Gopher was added only in 1977, when the animated series "The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" was filmed by Disney.
6. Kangaroo - Baby Roo
Now you can see all the real Christopher Robin plush toys in the New York Public Library. With one exception, Christopher Robin lost his plush kangaroo Baby Roo in the 1930s, so the collection is now incomplete.
7. Country house Milna
Also in real life you can visit most of the places from the stories. Dense Forest and most others iconic places, which can be found in Milne's books, have a real prototype - Ashdown Forest in southern England (Sussex), where Milne bought Vacation home in 1925.
8. Stolen good name and empty glory
Christopher Robin was not at all enthusiastic about the success of his father's stories. Apparently, his dissatisfaction arose in childhood, when children at school began to tease the boy. When Christopher Robin grew up, he accused his father of "successful climbing over my childish shoulders, that he stole my good name from me and left nothing but empty glory."
9. The Russian version of the cartoon is closest to the original
Disney actually changed quite a lot both the image of Winnie the Pooh and the plots of the stories when shooting cartoons. Interestingly, the Russian version of the animated films about the teddy bear is closest to the original. As for Disney, the company earns as much from the Winnie the Pooh brand as from Mickey Mouse, Donald, Goofy and Pluto - classic Disney cartoon characters.
10 Pooh And The Philosophers
Compared to others, Disney barely changed the original story. So, the image of a teddy bear was used by Benjamin Hoff in the book "The Tao of Winnie the Pooh", where the writer, with the help of Milne's heroes, popularly explains the philosophy of Taoism. J. T. Williams used the image of a bear in Pooh and the Philosophers to satire philosophy, including the works of Descartes, Pluto, and Nietzsche. Frederick Crews, using the image of Winnie in the books Winnie the Pooh's Dead End and Postmodern Winnie the Pooh, ridiculed postmodernism.
11. Annual World Trivia Championship
Winnie the Pooh left his mark on real world. There are streets in Warsaw and Budapest named after him. There is also now a sport that was taken from the books - the game of Poohsticks, in which players throw sticks into the river from a bridge and wait to see whose stick crosses the finish line first. There is even an annual world championship in Oxfordshire for Trivia.
By the way, very funny to hear.
Who wrote "Winnie the Pooh"? The man who wanted to make history English Literature as a serious writer, but entered and remained as the creator of the hero whom everyone has known since childhood - a plush bear with a head stuffed with sawdust. Alan Alexander Milne created the teddy bear series of stories and poems, writing stories for his son, Christopher Robin, who also became the subject of the book.
Many of Milne's characters got their names thanks to very real prototypes - his son's toys. Perhaps the most confusing is the story of Vinnie himself. Winnipeg is the name of a bear who lived in Christopher's pet. Milne brought his son to the zoo in 1924, and three years before that, the boy received a bear as a gift for his first birthday, before that epoch-making meeting of the nameless. He was called Teddy, as is customary in But after meeting a live bear, the toy was named Winnie in her honor. Gradually, Winnie made friends: a loving father bought new toys for his son, neighbors gave the boy Piglet a pig. Such characters as the Owl and the Rabbit, the author came up with in the course of events in the book.
The first chapter of the bear cub story appeared on Christmas Eve 1925. Winnie the Pooh and his friends stepped into a life that continues happily to this day. To be more precise, he wrote two prose books and two collections of poems about Winnie Milne. Prose collections are dedicated to the writer's wife.
But the answer to the question of who wrote Winnie the Pooh will be incomplete if you do not name one more name. Ernest Shepard, cartoonist for Punch magazine, as well as Milne, a World War I veteran. He became a real co-author of the writer, creating images of toy heroes as they are imagined by generations of children.
Why so about the teddy bear and his friends? Probably because for many, these stories, told one after another, resemble fairy tales that loving parents tell their children. Often such fairy tales are simply invented at night. Of course, not all parents have such a gift that Milne had, but this special family atmosphere, where the child is surrounded by love and care, is felt in every line of the book.
Another reason for such popularity is the amazing language of the fairy tale. The author of "Winnie the Pooh" plays and amuses himself with words: there are puns, and parodies, including advertising, and funny phraseological units, and other philological delights. Therefore, the book is loved not only by children, but also by adults.
But again, there is no definitive answer to the question of who wrote Winnie the Pooh. Because "Winnie the Pooh" is a magical book, it was translated by the best writers different countries, considering it an honor to help little fellow citizens get acquainted with funny ones. For example, on Polish language the book was translated by the sister of the poet Julian Tuvim Irena. There were several translations into Russian, but the text by Boris Zakhoder, which was published in 1960, became a classic, and millions of Soviet children began to repeat the yells and chants after Winnie the bear cub.
A separate story - a screen version of a fairy tale. In the West, the Disney studio series is known, which, by the way, the protagonist of the book did not really like - And the Soviet cartoon with amazing voice acting, where the characters speak in the voices of E. Leonov, I. Savina, E. Garin, is still much more popular in the post-Soviet space.
The one who wrote "Winnie the Pooh" could not free himself from the hugs of a teddy bear, but it was this book that brought him immortality.
More than one generation of our children has grown up on Soviet cartoons, and for the most part they have become quite worthy people. For those born in the sixties, Winnie the Pooh was “his own”, domestic, he talked, sang and reasoned like so many citizens. This work of the Soyuzmultfilm studio is still very popular today, although, of course, in terms of the brightness of the image and the intensity of the events taking place on the screen, it is inferior to foreign paintings created by computers and designers around the world. Somehow aside there were questions about who wrote "Winnie the Pooh", and how our bear cub differs from the Disney one.
Author and creator
A prominent playwright, a happy father, a wonderful family man and a wealthy man once lived in Great Britain, whose name was Alan Alexander Milne. In 1921, he gave his son a teddy bear for his first birthday. The most common event - both in England and in other countries, many dads give gifts to their children. But talented person will find a reason to create a work even looking at such an ordinary toy, and this happened in 1926, when his son grew up a little. Five years later, a book was published, which was a collection of previously told and later recorded short stories that my father composed on the go and used instead of fairy tales while raising little Christopher. Here is the answer to the question of who wrote "Winnie the Pooh". The author is the famous British writer A. A. Milne. Today, his other works are rarely remembered, but stories about the adventures of a teddy bear have survived decades.
Characters and images
Own name main character received in honor of the living symbol of the veterinary corps of the Canadian army, the Winnipeg bear, which originated from the province of the same name. Almost all the characters in the story existed in real life in the form of toys (Eeyore the donkey without a tail torn off somehow by Christopher, Piglet, Kanga, Baby Roo and Tiger), only the Rabbit and the Owl were invented. The forest (Wonderful, aka Hundred Acre) also exists, it was acquired by Milne in East Sussex, however, its area is not one hundred, but five hundred acres. In the twenties, the book immediately found its grateful readers, and their main question was not who wrote "Winnie the Pooh", but whether there would be sequels. In 1928, the next, second and, alas, the last book with these heroes, The House at the Pooh Edge, was published, just like the first, which consisted of ten chapters.
By the way, although Milne wrote stories for his son, he dedicated them to his mother and his wife Daphne. But the life of the beloved character did not end there, he is mentioned in two more poetry collections, but the real fame around the flying bear cub shone after the sale of the rights to the film adaptation of the Disney work in 1961. Animated stories went one after another, and had almost nothing to do with the original source. No one even remembered who wrote "Winnie the Pooh", why and for whom. The images of the characters were more important, and they were exploited in the best traditions of conveyor production.
Our Winnie
Soviet Winnie also does not quite match the image created by Milne. Moreover, it has significant differences from the teddy bear created by Boris Zakhoder, who translated the book from English in the late fifties, treated this work quite creatively, and made significant changes to the original text. Therefore, if we keep in mind the character of the Soviet three-part cartoon, then the question of who wrote "Winnie the Pooh" will not be superfluous at all. The Russian bear cub was "composed", as was customary in the USSR, collectively. Screenwriter B. Zakhoder, director F. Khitruk, artists and actors who voiced the sound track (E. Leonov, I. Savina, E. Garin) made their contribution. The creative team, unfortunately, did not have a unanimous opinion about the image being created, which led to the premature closure of the project (many series were planned). It turned out very well, and even in the USA, in the homeland of Walt Disney, there is an opinion that our cartoon is better than the American one, and the main character is livelier and more interesting.
Does it really matter today who wrote "Winnie the Pooh"? The main thing is that Alan Milne managed to create a certain image that became the basis for such diverse interpretations, inspired other masters and gives joy to children of the third millennium.
Dmitry Galkovsky 25.04.2016
Dmitry Galkovsky 25.04.2016
Like many children's writers, Alan Milne, author of the famous "Winnie the Pooh", did not consider himself a children's writer. During his life, he wrote a lot of "adult" novels, novellas, short stories and plays - mostly they were love stories, detective stories and humorous works. Like other English writers of the era of imperialism, Milne was a man of service, that is, he was a member of the local writers' organization, where state agitators read reports, adopted resolutions, and elected each other in all kinds of commissions and committees. Well, they knocked on each other - all the writers' unions and clubs in the United Kingdom were tightly supervised by the security agencies. Like Soviet Union Writers - in the image of English writers' organizations and created.
During the First World War, Milne was mobilized to the front, but then, through the efforts of friends in the literary workshop, he was transferred to Mi-7, a British secret police unit engaged in propaganda, censorship and surveillance of foreigners. What he did there is not entirely clear. Probably, the case was limited to writing anti-German propaganda (Milne was a member of the editorial board of the British "Crocodile" - the magazine "Punch"). In a series of similar notes, for example, it was proved that the Germans make soap from people - however, then not Jews yet, but their own soldiers who fell on the battlefield. What to do - military propaganda. Such a service gave Milne an officer's rank and, at the same time, a "booking" from the front line.
As an open scoundrel and paid informer, Milne established himself much later - during the Second World War. In 1940, after the occupation of France by the Germans, the English writer Pelam Grenville Woodhouse, who lived there, was interned. Woodhouse was sent to a displaced persons camp, where he made a series of radio broadcasts about local life - in a tone as skeptical of the Nazis as censorship made it possible. The Germans allowed these broadcasts to show how mild and tolerant the Nazi regime was compared to that of the English monarchy. The Nazi plan was a complete success. The broadcasts caused a storm of hatred in the ruling circles of Great Britain, and hired scribblers were ordered to portray Wodehouse as a traitor, a liar and a "Goebbels puppet". The company of persecution was headed by British intelligence captain Alan Milne. Woodhouse was soon released by the Germans and left for France, from where he moved to the United States after the war. The British authorities gradually abandoned their accusations, and then actually apologized to the undeservedly offended writer. In 1975, 93-year-old Woodhouse was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
Woodhouse, unlike Milne, was a really good writer. Let me remind you that he is the author of the famous series of novels about Jeeves and Woostor. But the main role in his rehabilitation was not played by this, and not by the fact that he enjoyed extraordinary popularity in America (of which he became a citizen in 1955), but by the fact that Woodhouse was a British aristocrat. Therefore, he was entrusted with poisoning him to a petty service woman, Milne, the neat son of the headmaster. At the same time, many writers were allowed to withdraw from the campaign and even come out with a moderate defense of Wodehouse.
As a result, by the end of the war, Milne's reputation among his colleagues was badly tarnished, and Woodhouse himself made the author of "Winnie the Pooh" the target of caustic literary parodies.
He had every reason for this. Milne is a slightly below average writer, and Winnie the Pooh is a self-sabotaging book.
For a children's book, it is very complex compositionally, for an adult - this complexity is not justified, not explained, and not agreed upon. As a result, adults do not read it, and in children, reading, despite interesting scenes, causes general bewilderment and headache. Let me remind you that in "Winnie the Pooh" the story is told on behalf of the boy's father, who tells his son stories with his toys, at the same time these toys, turned into characters, interact directly with the boy, and, finally, live outside of this communication in a special toy world. And to top it all off, Milne claims it's all a dream. Creating such a complex literary space is a good task for an adult book written by a master. But Winnie the Pooh is written for children and written by an English literary clerk. Milne did not even realize the scale of the task he set for himself, and all the "literary babylons" of the story are due to the elementary pettiness of the author.
This is not entirely clear to the Russian reader, since we are familiar with the talented translation of Boris Zakhoder, who shortened the book by removing absurdities and lengths, as well as introducing a number of successful jokes and puns. For example, Winnipukhov's "puffers-sniffers" are not Milne, but Zakhoder, Piglet's famous question "How does heffalump love piglets?" - too.
However, Milne himself has many such puns - this is the basis of the tedious humor of the English. Which has one drawback - the British joke all the time, so their humor often looks out of place. Or, to use a more accurate word, useless.
In general, for a foreign reader in the English-language "Winnie the Pooh" there are many discouraging details. For example, Winnie in the transcription of the author ("Winnie ») this is woman's name, like the Russian "Viki". Then the author constantly certifies Winnie as a "bear cub with a very small brain." For a child, this is an insult to a beloved character. And there are a lot of such mistakes in Milne's fairy tale.
Such flaws are caused by the writer's deafness of the author, which leads to primitive realism.
Why is Winnie the Pooh called Winnie? But because this is the name of a bear (more precisely, a bear) in the London Zoo, which Milne's son called a teddy bear. And why is the boy (completely NOT REQUIRED in the book) named Christopher Robin? But because this is again the real name of the only son of Milne.
This name, by the way, is wild for the English ear, sounding the same as for Russians the names "Menelaus" or "Sysy". Did Milne love his son? (Which at least humanly explained the introduction of an extra character in the fairy tale.) Good question, which I will try to answer a little later.
Let's ask another question first:
- Why did England become the country of CHILDREN'S classical literature?
Most likely, because England is a bone-breaking, repressive, prison country, and the child reader reads what they picked up. He does not have his own opinion or it is not articulated. What a child should read is determined by adults - and if children receive interesting children's books, it is only thanks to tact and understanding of child psychology on the part of adults. The nation of zoologists and travelers certainly has both. But the English also have many other things: for example, a tendency to torture and coercion, emotional coldness, idiocy, intellectual charlatanism.
A children's book is quite easy to push into bestsellers - children, as bonded beings, will diligently read anything, not really thinking about the true level of the author, "offered to their attention." Therefore, in the world adult literature of outstanding authors, the British have 10% percent, but in children's literature 50%.
For the same reason, English children's books benefit greatly when they are placed in a different cultural context and when translated into other languages. Flaws and inconsistencies are leveled by a high-quality translation, and in addition, foreign readers forgive a lot or take it personally:“probably we misunderstood something”, “English specifics should be taken into account” . In the case of adult literature, poor quality can be tested by the degree of reader interest. But in the case of children's literature, adult writers decide for unintelligent readers. And they make this decision, especially in the case of foreign literature, guided by criteria far from objectivity. For example, making an adjustment for the special “childishness” of his texts, allegedly imitated by the author. Or, mistakenly considering the popularity of a CHILDREN'S book in its homeland as a reliable sign of a high artistic level.
If you look at it, the extraordinary success of "Winnie the Pooh" is due not so much to the properties of the text as to three "accompanying circumstances".
Firstly, immediately after the publication, Milne managed, through connections in the "Writers' Union", to organize the reading of the book on the radio. Radio was to 1925 what television was to 1965—the book received wild publicity.
Secondly, five years later, the book, already promoted in England, was sold by Milne for commercial use to the Americans, and they released a series of performance records dubbed by professional actors on the colossal American market. (It must be said that in the format of an audio play, Milne's book, replete with dialogue, wins a lot).
Finally, thirdly, in the early 60s, Disney bought the rights to Winnie the Pooh and turned the fairy tale into a popular animated series - the rank of Tom and Jerry. Although there was little left of Milne's book (up to the introduction of new characters), this finally introduced the English bear cub into the pantheon of heroes of world children's classics.
As for Russia, the popularity of Winnie the Pooh in our country, even greater than in the West, is caused by other reasons (although essentially the same).
Due to the natural Anglophilia of Soviet children's literature, coming from Chukovsky and Marshak, the translation of fragments of Winnie the Pooh appeared even under Stalin. And in the late 50s, following the wave of popularity of Milne's book in Eastern Europe, Zakhoder's translation began to be published in mass editions in the USSR.
But Winnie the Pooh became a popular favorite after a series of short cartoons released by Fyodor Khitruk in 1969-1972. Khitruk threw out the ridiculous Christopher Robin and other nonsense from the book, and for 40 minutes did for Milne what he tried to write on 400 pages, but never wrote: a series of funny, ironic and at the same time not so simple stories, designed for children and adults. Milne's humor, undoubtedly present in the book, was preserved and enhanced by Khitruk, and the characters are clearly drawn. It was Khitruk who created the finished image of the Russian Winnie the Pooh, which is much better and more interesting than both the English and American versions. Khitruk himself described his character as follows:
“Winnie the Pooh is constantly filled with some kind of grandiose plans, too complex and cumbersome for those trifling things that he is going to undertake, so plans collapse when they come into contact with reality. He constantly gets into trouble, but not out of stupidity, but because his world does not coincide with reality. In this I see the comic of his character and actions. Of course, he loves to eat, but that's not the point."
Russian cartoons made an excellent children's work out of Milnov's remnant - with a clear plot, memorable characters and even excellent clumsy verses.
Zakhoder's poems, written for the cartoon and beautifully performed by Yevgeny Leonov, are much better than Milson's stupid nonsense, which is impossible to read in Russian under any sauce.
Compare perky:
Winnie the Pooh lives well in the world!
That is why he sings these Songs aloud!
And no matter what he's doing
If he doesn't get fat,
But he will not get fat,
And, on the contrary,
on-
hu-
deet!
And this is the Milnsian slur:
King,
His Majesty,
Her Majesty asked
To her majesty
I asked the dairymaid:
Is it possible to deliver oils
For breakfast to the king.
court milkmaid
She said: - Of course,
I'm going to tell the cow
Until I sleep!
It is hard to imagine a child (and even more so an adult) who would voluntarily, without trustee recommendations, memorize, and then read by heart the cutesy loyal nonsense of the captain of the British literary troops.
However, let's talk about the son of Milne, for whom the fairy tale about Winnie the Pooh was supposedly written.
The English torment of Christopher Robin (a person, not a character) began with the fact that he had the audacity to be born a boy, which caused the indignation of selfish parents. Both father and mother did not pay any attention to their son, going about their business, raising a child was the duty of a maid. In the end, the mother abandoned the family altogether. There are a number of staged photographs of little Christopher with loving parents and toys. In all these photographs, the boy looks sad or confused.
Christopher Robin was given a double name because his parents could not agree. At the same time, the selfish father believed that his name was more important, and the selfish mother believed that the situation was exactly the opposite. Therefore, among themselves, the child was called "Billy", but only at home, so that at school they would not think that someone had argued with someone.
Already from such a "philosophy of the name" it is clear that English parents the boy was deeply concerned. Christopher-Robin was bullied by classmates for being Christopher-Robin, and "Winnie the Pooh" turned the stay into English school(in essence, a military school with the clatter of youngsters and legalized beatings) to hell. Milne Sr. did not read his fairy tales to his son, Christopher Robin himself hated them, and read (listened to the record) at the age of 60.
Among other things, father Milne was a devout ideological Freemason, and forbade his son to be baptized. At the same time, the nanny, who alone took care of the child, was religious and taught Christopher to pray. The religiosity of the little boy became another reason for bullying by classmates. In the future, due to the lack of a normal upbringing, a mess formed in the head of poor Christopher, and he married his cousin. The consequence of this marriage was the birth of a daughter with serious genetic abnormalities.
Interestingly, his wife also hated "Winnie the Pooh" and in the bookstore that they both kept, this book was not for sale. Although it was in great demand and due to natural advertising, it could bring a big profit to the family.
In his declining years, Christopher Robin wrote a memoir, where he bitterly complained about his father's insensitivity and the fact that he turned him into a character in his ridiculous book.
Although the main character of Milne's fairy tale is the resilient sanguine Winnie the Pooh, the character of Christopher Robin, a neurotic child who was raised as a girl, is most similar to Piglet.
True, Piglets grow up in a fairy-tale life. It seems that Christopher Robin has grown into a decent pig, and his literary complaints about his father are largely dictated by envy of a writer who was inadvertently warmed by fame from a naturally insignificant writer.
The Russian-language Wikipedia is touched by the cultural hipster fairy tale "Made in England":
“The book recreates the atmosphere of universal love and care, a “normal”, protected childhood, without pretensions to solve adult problems, which greatly contributed to the later popularity of this book in the USSR, including the decision of Boris Zakhoder to translate this book. "Winnie the Pooh" reflects the family life of the British middle class in the 1920s, later resurrected by Christopher Robin in his memoirs to understand the context in which the tale arose.
This is the beautiful-hearted chatter of the feeble-minded children of perestroika. In reality, in accordance with the traditions of the "family life of the British middle class", 35-year-old Christopher Robin approached his 65-year-old mother, who came from America, at his father's funeral, and hissed:“When will you die, old b…” . She, again in the spirit of tradition, did not reach into her pocket for an answer, and gave her son a penny with her fist. An ugly scene ensued. Currently, the heirs of the deceased Christopher Robin are trying to sue billions from the Disney studio, using his paralyzed daughter as a battering ram. All this "Anglo-American cultural dialogue" takes place against the backdrop of teddy bears, runaways, and museums of Christopher Robin's childhood.
Speaking of runaways.
Winnie the bear, who gave the name to Christopher Robin's teddy bear, was a conspicuous element of chauvinistic British propaganda. According to official legend, the bear was brought to England in 1914 by Canadian "volunteers", who named her after the Canadian state of Winnipeg. The "volunteers" themselves went to die on the Western front, and the bear was left to the London Zoo - to the delight of the local kids. What children then 20 years old were talking about in the local October and pioneer press (let's not forget that England is the birthplace of the scout movement).
No less remarkable is the story of the teddy bear. The Teddy bear, which served as the prototype for the classic illustrations for Winnie the Pooh, was created in America and named after President Theodore Roosevelt, who, according to the loyal legend of the imperialist agitprop, allegedly refused to shoot the little bear cub while hunting. (In fact, on the contrary, he ordered to kill a half-dead bear tied to a tree).
We already know about the true biography of the great lovers of children of the "children's" writer Milne.
To complete the picture, it is worth adding that with Khitruk, too, not everything is simple. During the war, he worked in the NKVD as a radio interceptor, and after the war he served as a military translator in occupied Germany. And the mother of the merry fellow Zakhoder, when her son was 14 years old, committed suicide by drinking acetic acid.
In this context, "Winnipuhiad" certainly has its own charm. Given that WHAT was an adult alternative to children's literary nonsense.
"Winnie the Pooh" - a fairy tale of the militaristic era with margarine on cards and "trench truth". Yes, written by an informer who does not love his son and who is trying to hide in children's "children's literature" from the disgusting and vile reality: with the howling of sirens and bombings. Therefore, if you look closely, there is a hysterical strain in the Winnie-the-Pooh nonsense - when they plug their ears and do not want to know what everyone knows. Here is a fairy tale that sprouted on the meager Soviet soil, where this pan-European problem was elevated to an absolute. In this sense, the Russian-language encyclopedia, in general, is right. Only the wording needs to be slightly edited:
“Winnie the Pooh reflects fantasies about the illusory family life of the neurotic middle class Europeans of the 10-50s of the twentieth century”
In general, as the Soviet rhyme of the era of stagnation, quite worthy of Wodehouse's pen, said:
Winnie the Pooh lives well in the world
He has a wife and children - he is a burdock.
