2022-10-27 23:15:32
Author’s fairy tales are good just impromptu, jazz improvisation. Evening, lamp, bed. The child is already in pajamas and under the covers, but is determined to persevere to the last. What’s left for the parent? Read or compose “soporific” stories on the go. Among other things, this is how John R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lewis Carroll’s Alice appeared. And so, apparently, the writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya appeared – later the winner of the Russian Booker and the Big Book, the author of the novels Kukotsky’s Case, Daniel Stein, Translator, Jacob’s Ladder. The published collection “It’s Hard to Be Kind” is made up of stories that Ulitskaya once wrote for her sons. Then the grandchildren read them. And other people’s children and other people’s grandchildren will read it only now – previously, for the most part, these works have not been published anywhere.
The Ulitskaya we know and love comes from the late 1980s, when her stories and short stories began to appear in thick magazines, and then the films Liberty Sisters (1990) and A Woman for All (1991) were released, based on her scripts. But Ulitskaya began precisely as a children’s writer. The first publications were books for kids: the story “A Boring Fur Coat” (1982), as well as the collection “One Hundred Buttons” (1983). It was there that the program text was first published, which gave the name to the new book, “It’s hard to be kind”, though in an abridged edition and with a different title – “I want to be kind!” (with an exclamation point characteristic of the era). In the new, obviously original version, the story became more philosophical than didactic, but still remained the most “Soviet” and the most “mundane” in the entire collection. No animals talking to you or things coming to life. Just a six-year-old boy who wants to convince his mother that he is a kind person.
Even the first film adaptations of Ulitskaya are cartoons for the little ones: a puppet miniature “One Hundred Buttons” by Sergei Olifirenko from the 13th issue of the almanac “Merry Carousel” (1983) and Rosalia Zelma’s drawn dilogy “Lazy Dress” and “The Secret of Toys” (both – 1987 ). Which, in general, is not surprising, because the only literary education of Ulitskaya is precisely the seminar of screenwriters-animators at the Cinema House. The classics of Soyuzmultfilm were taught there – Vladimir Golovanov (author of Fyodor Khitruk’s hit “Film, Film, Film”), directors Andrei Khrzhanovsky (“The House That Jack Built”) and Yuri Norshtein (“Hedgehog in the Fog”). And Ulitskaya clearly wrote more scripts than was eventually implemented – two of these were published in the collection: “Biography of the Cabinet”, where the entire history of the 20th century was reflected in the cabinet mirror, and “Great Zaitsev” – about a tireless engineer who, having conquered the mountains and oceans, went to space distances.
Book cover /Individuum
In total, there are 13 stories in the 110-page book, grouped into three blocks: about animals, about people, and about (living) things. It seems that it was the “animal” tales that came out best of all, and those of them that develop the theme that is the main theme for Ulitskaya’s “adult” books – that fate is not a decree for us. Karasik and Tadpole were friends, friends, and then the Tadpole turned into a Frog, but he did not leave his friend – he began to live either on land or in water. Spider number 18 decided that he did not want to weave traps and catch flies – and did not. He eats strawberries, patches the wings of friends with cobwebs, and makes a swing for ladybugs. One Snail lives here in the forest, but no one is happy with her. A sticky trail interferes with everyone, and she can’t do anything with it – it’s written in her family to leave a trace. She crawled away wherever her eyes looked, ended up in a small town, and there she fell into the right hands. Now she works at the post office – she seals envelopes. And everyone is happy with her. “And that the Snail is nasty – who invented it?”
Of the “human” stories, the most curious is again with animals: “The Tale of the Hunter, Rose, Gerald and the impudent Hare.” And it is not even the plot, not the language and not the moral that surprises, but the rules of the world. The Hunter has two talking dogs, and every Sunday he goes to the Hare, but the main thing in this hunt is not to accidentally shoot the Hare. And who then to hunt? And the Hare knows that nothing will happen to him, and constantly climbs on the rampage. Hamit, arranges tricks, runs into a thrashing. As expected, the fairy tale has a happy ending – the brat was re-educated. Now he occasionally shows either a tail or an ear. Just enough so that the game continues and the hunters are hunters, and he is a hare. Like any good story like “Alice” or “The Hobbit”, such a fairy tale not only teaches, but awakens thought and imagination. And not only in children.
The illustrations deserve a special mention. At least one is on every page. Polina Kalashnikova, a laureate of international competitions (as they announced in Soviet times), perfectly imitates the style of clumsy children’s drawings. It is believed that it seems that the children themselves do not really like such scribbles. Maybe so, but the inner child of an adult is unlikely to remain indifferent at the sight of Spider number 18 or Snail – touching, funny and a little heroic.
#hard #kind #fairy #tales #Ulitskaya