When Christopher Robin was 4 years old, he and his father first came to the zoo, where the boy met a bear. After this event, the teddy bear given to Christopher for his first birthday was also named Winnie. In the future, the bear was Christopher's constant companion: "every child has a favorite toy, and especially a child who grows up as the only one in the family needs it."
Winnie the Pooh books were created by Milne from word of mouth and games with Christopher Robin; oral origin is also characteristic of many other famous literary tales. “I didn’t invent anything, I just had to write it down,” Milne later said.
Name
Character
Winnie the Pooh, aka D.P. (Piglet's Friend), P.K. (Rabbit's Friend), O.P. (Pole Discoverer), U.I.-I. (Comforter Eeyore) and N. H. (Finder of the Tail) - a naive, good-natured and modest Bear with Very Little Brains (eng. Bear of Very Little Brain); in Zakhoder's translation, Winnie repeatedly says that there are sawdust in his head, although in the original (the word eng. pulp) this is mentioned only once. Pooh's favorite things are writing poetry and honey. Pooh is "frightened by long words", he is forgetful, but often brilliant ideas come to his head. The character of Pooh, who suffers from a "lack of reason", but at the same time a "great naive sage", is attributed by a number of researchers to the archetypes of world literature. So, Boris Zakhoder compares him with the images of Don Quixote and Schweik. Liliana Lungina believes that Pooh resembles the Dickensian Mr. Pickwick. His traits are a love of food, an interest in the weather, an umbrella, "an unselfish wanderlust". She sees in him "a child who knows nothing, but wants to know everything." In English literature, the Scarecrow The Wise from the story The Wizard of Oz by Lyman Baum is also close to him.
In Pooh, several images are combined at once - a teddy bear, a live bear cub and a formidable Bear, which he wants to appear. The character of Pooh is independent and at the same time depends on the character of Christopher Robin. The fluff is what the little owner wants to see it.
The image of Pooh is central in all twenty stories. In a number of initial stories (the story with the hole, the search for Buka, the capture of the Heffalump), Pooh gets into one or another "Kind of no way" and often gets out of it only with the help of Christopher Robin. In the future, the comic features in the image of Pooh recede into the background before the "heroic". Very often, a plot twist in a story is one or another unexpected decision by Pooh. The culmination of the image of Pooh the hero falls on the 9th chapter of the first book, when Pooh, having offered to use Christopher Robin's umbrella as a vehicle ("We'll sail on your umbrella"), saves Piglet from inevitable death; the whole tenth chapter is devoted to the great feast in honor of Pooh. In the second book, Pooh's feat compositionally corresponds to Piglet's Great Feat, which saves the heroes locked in a fallen tree where the Owl lived.
In addition, Pooh is the creator, the main poet of the Wonderful Forest. He constantly composes poems from the noise that sounds in his head. About his inspiration, he says: “After all, Poetry, Chants are not things that you find when you want, these are things that find you.” Thanks to the image of Pooh, another character enters the fairy tale - Poetry, and the text takes on a new dimension.
Cycle "Winnie the Pooh"
In total, Alan Milne wrote two prose books with the participation of a bear: "Winnie the Pooh" (1926) ("Winnie-the-Pooh") and "The House at Pooh Corner" (1928) ("The House at Pooh Corner"). Both books were dedicated to "Her". The collections of poems "When We Were Very Young" (1924) ("When We Were Very Young") and "Now We Are Six" (1927) ("Now We Are Six") also contain several poems about a bear cub, although the first of he is not yet called by name. In the preface to the first prose book, Milne calls the collection "another Christopher Robin book".
Among Christopher Robin's toys there was also Piglet, which was given to the boy by neighbors, Eeyore donkey, presented by parents, Kanga with Tiny Ru in a bag, and Tigger, also presented to his son by parents, especially for the development of plots of bedtime stories. In the stories, these characters appear in that order. Owl and Rabbit Milne invented himself; in the first illustrations by Ernest Shepard, they do not look like toys, but like real animals. Rabbit says to Owl: “Only you and I have brains. The rest have sawdust.” During the game, all these characters received individual habits, habits and manner of speaking. The world of animals created by Milne was influenced by Kenneth Graham's story "The Wind in the Willows", which he admired and which Shepard had previously illustrated, and a hidden polemic with Kipling's "Jungle Book" is also possible.
The prose books make up a dilogy, but each of these Milne books contains 10 stories with their own plots that exist almost independently of each other:
- First book - Winnie the Pooh:
- We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees and the Stories Begin(...in which we meet Winnie the Pooh and some bees).
- Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place(... in which Winnie the Pooh went to visit, but ended up in a stalemate).
- Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a Woozle(... in which Pooh and Piglet went hunting and almost caught Buka).
- Eeyore Loses A Tail and Pooh Finds One(... in which Eeyore loses his tail, and Pooh finds it).
- Piglet Meets a Heffalump(... in which Piglet meets the Heffalump).
- Eeyore Has A Birthday And Gets Two Presents(... in which Eeyore had a birthday, and Piglet almost flew to the moon).
- Kanga And Baby Roo Come To The Forest And Piglet Has A Bath(... in which Kanga and Baby Roo appear in the forest, and Piglet takes a bath).
- Christopher Robin Leads An Expotition To The North Field(... in which Christopher Robin organizes an "expedition" to the North Pole).
- Piglet Is Entirely Surrounded By Water(... in which Piglet is completely surrounded by water).
- Christopher Robin Gives Pooh A Party and We Say Goodbye(... in which Christopher Robin arranges a solemn Pyrgoroy, and we say Goodbye to All-All-All).
- Second book - The House at Pooh Corner:
- A House Is Built At Pooh Corner For Eeyore(... in which a house is being built for Eeyore at the Pooh Edge).
- Tigger Comes to the Forest and Has Breakfast(... in which Tigger comes to the forest and has breakfast).
- A Search is Organized, and Piglet Nearly Meets the Heffalump Again(... in which searches are organized, and Piglet again almost got caught by the Heffalump).
- It Is Shown That Tiggers Don't Climb Trees(...which reveals that Tigers don't climb trees).
- Rabbit Has a Busy Day, and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings(...in which the Rabbit is very busy, and we meet for the first time with Spotted Swirnus).
- Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In(... in which Pooh invents a new game, and Eeyore is included in it).
- Tiger Is Unbounced(... in which the Tigger is tamed).
- Piglet Does a Very Grand Thing(... in which Piglet performs a great feat).
- Eeyore Finds the Wolery and Owl Moves Into It(... in which Eeyore finds a co-worker, and Owl moves in).
- Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There(...in which we leave Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh in an enchanted place).
In the wake of the great success of the Pooh books, a whole series of publications appeared: Christopher Robin Stories, Christopher Robin Reading Book, Christopher Robin Birthday Stories, Christopher Robin Primer and a number of picture books. These editions did not contain new works, but included reprints from previous books.
World of work
The action of the Pooh books takes place in the Hundred Acre Wood (eng. The Hundred Acre Wood, translated by Zakhoder - the Wonderful Forest). It is believed that the prototype is Ashdown Forest, near the Cochford Farm bought by the Milnes in 1925 in East Sussex. In the stories, Six pines and a stream, near which the North Pole was found, as well as the vegetation mentioned in the text, including prickly gorse (English gorse-bush, translated by Zakhoder - thistle) are also presented as Real. Little Christopher Robin climbs into the hollows of trees and plays with Pooh there, and many characters in books live in hollows. Much of the action takes place in such dwellings or on the branches of trees.
Pooh's best friend is the Piglet piglet (eng. Piglet). Other characters:
The action unfolds simultaneously in three plans - this is the world of toys in the nursery, the world of animals "on their own territory" in the Hundred Acre Forest and the world of characters in the stories of father to son (this is most clearly shown at the very beginning). In the future, the narrator disappears from the story (small dialogues between father and son appear at the end of the sixth and tenth chapters), and the fairy-tale world begins its own existence, growing from chapter to chapter. The similarity of the space and world of the Winnie the Pooh characters with the classical antique and medieval epic was noted. The promising epic undertakings of the characters (travels, exploits, hunting, games) turn out to be comically insignificant, while the real events take place in the inner world of the characters (help in trouble, hospitality, friendship).
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 of the 1920s, later resurrected by Christopher Robin in his memoirs to understand the context in which the fairy tale arose.
Language
Milne's books are imbued with numerous puns and other types of language games, they are typically played with and distorted "adult" words (explicitly shown in the scene of the Owl's dialogue with Pooh), expressions borrowed from advertising, educational texts, etc. (numerous specific examples are collected in the commentary of A.I. Poltoratsky). A sophisticated play on phraseology, linguistic ambiguity (sometimes more than two meanings of a word) is not always available to a children's audience, but is highly appreciated by adults.
Among the typical techniques of Milne's dilogy is the technique of "significant emptiness" and playing with various fictions: in "Contradiction" (preface to the second part) it is stated that the upcoming events were dreamed of by the reader; "Great thoughts about nothing" come to Pooh's mind, Rabbit answers him that there is "no one at all" at home, Piglet describes the Heffalump - "a big thing, like a huge nothing." Such games are also designed for an adult audience.
Both books are full of poems put into the mouth of Pooh; these poems are written in the English tradition of children's absurd nonsense - continuing the experience of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Samuil Marshak, the first translator of Milne's children's poems, in a letter to Galina Zinchenko, called Miln "the last<…>Edward Lear's direct heir.
Place in the work of Milne
The cycle about Winnie the Pooh overshadowed all the quite diverse and popular adult works of Milne at the time: “he cut off the way back to“ adult ”literature. All his attempts to escape from the clutches of a toy bear were unsuccessful. Milne himself was very upset by such a combination of circumstances, did not consider himself a children's writer and claimed that he writes for children with the same responsibility as for adults.
Philosophy
These English-language works influenced the book of the semiotician and philosopher V.P.Rudnev "Winnie the Pooh and the Philosophy of Everyday Language". Milne's text is dissected in this book with the help of structuralism, the ideas of Bakhtin, the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and a number of other ideas of the 1920s, including psychoanalysis. According to Rudnev, "aesthetic and philosophical ideas are always in the air ... VP appeared during the period of the most powerful flowering of prose of the 20th century, which could not but affect the structure of this work, could not, so to speak, cast its rays on it" . This book also contains a complete translation of both of Milne's books on Pooh (see above under "New Translations").
Publications
The first chapter of "Winnie the Pooh" was published on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1925 in the London newspaper "Landan Invning News" ("London Evening News"), the sixth - in August 1928 in the magazine "Royal Shop" ("Royal Magazine"). The first stand-alone edition appeared on 14 October 1926 in London. The general cycle has no name, but is usually called "Winnie the Pooh", according to the first book.
All four of these books were illustrated by Ernest Shepard, cartoonist and colleague of Alan Milne's Punch magazine. Shepard's graphic illustrations are closely related to the internal logic of the narrative and largely complement the text, which, for example, does not report that the Heffalump looks like an elephant; Shepard is often referred to as Milne's "collaborator". Sometimes Shepard's illustrations correspond to a meaningful arrangement of text on the page. The boy was drawn directly from Christopher Robin, and the image of the boy - in a loose blouse over short pants - repeating Christopher's actual clothes - came into vogue.
In 1983, under the editorship and with notes of the philologist-Anglist A.I. Poltoratsky in Moscow, the Raduga publishing house published in one volume all four prose and verse books about Pooh and, in addition to them, six essays by Milne. The preface to the book was written by the Soviet literary critic D. M. Urnov: this work contained one of the first serious analyzes of the text of the Milnov cycle in Russia. The interest of Poltoratsky (the initiator of the publication) in Winnie the Pooh was aroused by students of the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics (OSiPL) of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, who offered to parse the English text of Winnie the Pooh during classes on a special course.
Continuation
In 2009, the sequel to the Winnie the Pooh books, Return to the Enchanted Forest, was published in the UK, approved by the organization Pooh Properties Trust. The author, David Benedictus, sought to emulate the style and composition of the original. The illustrations for the book are also focused on maintaining Shepard's style. "Return to the Enchanted Forest" has been translated into several languages.
Abroad
Books about Winnie the Pooh, despite the difficulties with translation into other languages, have been repeatedly published abroad. In most translations, the "female" semantics of the name Winnie is not conveyed, however, in the 1986 translation of Monika Adamczyk-Harbowska into Polish, the bear bears a female name Fredzia Phi-Phi(but it's still masculine). But this translation did not win universal recognition, and in Poland the translation of the 1930s by Irena Tuwim is considered a classic, where the name of the bear is clearly masculine - Kubus Puchatek. In the Russian translation by Rudnev and Mikhailova, the name Winnie is used in the original spelling; according to the translators, this should hint at the gender ambiguity of this name.
Just like the original name (with an article in the middle), translated, for example, niderl. Winnie de Poeh, esper. Winnie la Pu and Yiddish װיני-דער-פּו ( Vini-der-pu), almost the same - lat. Winnie ille Pu. Sometimes the bear cub is called one of his two names. For example, “Bear Pooh” (German Pu der Bär, Czech Medvídek Pú, Bulgarian Sword Pooh, “Pu a-Dov” (Heb. פו הדוב )) or “Winnie the Bear” (French Winnie l' ourson); the mentioned Polish name Kubuś Puchatek belongs to the same category. There are also names where there are no original names, for example, Hung. Micimackó, dat. Peter Plys, Norwegian Ole Brumm or Mishka-Pluh in the original version of Zakhoder's translation (1958).
In German, Czech, Latin and Esperanto, the name Pooh is rendered as Pu, in accordance with the English pronunciation. Nevertheless, thanks to Zakhoder, the natural-sounding name very successfully entered the Russian (and then Ukrainian, Ukrainian, Vinni-Pukh) tradition fluff(playing on Slavic words fluff, plump obvious in Polish name too Puchatek). In the Belarusian translation of Vital Voronov - Belarusian. Vinya-Pykh, the second part of the name is translated as "Pykh", which is consonant with Belarusian words puff(arrogance and pride) and out of breath .
In the USSR and Russia
For the first time, the Russian translation of "Winnie the Pooh" was published in the magazine "Murzilka", No. 1 for 1939, in which two chapters were published: "About the bear Winnie the Poo and the bees" and "How Winnie the Poo went to visit and got into trouble” translated by A. Koltynina and O. Galanina. The author's name was not given, it was subtitled "An English Fairy Tale". This translation uses the names Winnie-Poo, Piglet, and Christopher Robin. The illustrator of the first publication was the graphic artist Aleksey Laptev, the chapter in No. 9 for 1939 was illustrated by Mikhail Khrapkovsky.
The first complete translation of "Winnie the Pooh" in the USSR came out in 1958 in Lithuania (lit. Mikė Pūkuotukas), it was made by the 20-year-old Lithuanian writer Virgilijus Chepaitis, who used the Polish translation by Irena Tuvim. Subsequently, Chepaitis, having become acquainted with the English original, significantly revised his translation, which was then repeatedly reprinted in Lithuania.
In the same year, Boris Vladimirovich Zakhoder got acquainted with the book. Acquaintance began with an encyclopedic article. Here is what he himself said about it:
Our meeting took place in the library, where I looked through the English children's encyclopedia. It was love at first sight: I saw a picture of a cute bear cub, read a few poetic quotes - and rushed to look for a book. Thus came one of the happiest moments of my life: the days of work on Pooh.
In No. 8 of the Murzilka magazine for 1958, one of the chapters was published in the retelling of Boris Zakhoder: “How Mishka-Plyukh went to visit and ended up in a hopeless situation.” The Detgiz publishing house rejected the manuscript of the book (it was considered "American"), but on July 13, 1960, "Winnie the Pooh and Everyone Else" was signed for printing by the new Detsky Mir publishing house. Circulation of 215 thousand copies with illustrations by Alice Poret. The artist also illustrated a number of subsequent publications in the publishing house "Kid". Along with small black-and-white pictures, Poret also created color multi-figure compositions (“Saving Little Roo”, “Saveshnik”, etc.), as well as the first map of the Hundred-Acre Forest in Russian. Over time, the name of the book was established - "Winnie the Pooh and All-All-All." In 1965, the already popular book was also published in Detgiz. The imprint of several early editions erroneously listed "Arthur Milne" as the author. Although in 1957 the publishing house "Iskusstvo" already published one book by Alan Alexander Milne ("Mr. In 1967, the Russian Winnie the Pooh was published by the American publishing house Dutton, where most of the books about Pooh were published and in whose building Christopher Robin's toys were stored at that time.
Song of Winnie the Pooh (from chapter 13)
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!
Boris Zakhoder
The composition and composition of the original in Zakhoder's retelling were not fully respected. In the 1960 edition, only 18 chapters are present, the tenth from the first book and the third from the second are omitted (more precisely, the ninth chapter is reduced to a few paragraphs added at the end of the ninth). Only in 1990, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Russian Winnie the Pooh, Zakhoder translated both missing chapters. The third chapter of the second book was published separately in the journal Tram, in the February 1990 issue. Both chapters were included in the final edition of Zakhoder's translation as part of the collection "Winnie the Pooh and Much More", published in the same year and subsequently reprinted several times. In this edition, as in the first one, there are no prefaces and dedications, although the division into two books (“Winnie the Pooh” and “The House at the Pooh Edge”) is restored, and the through numbering of chapters is replaced by a separate one for each book. The fragment at the end of the ninth chapter about the holiday in honor of Winnie the Pooh, now actually duplicating the text of the tenth chapter, has been preserved in full text. The very fact of the existence of a more complete edition of Zakhoder's translation is relatively little known; the text has already managed to enter the culture in an abbreviated form.
Zakhoder always emphasized that his book is not a translation, but paraphrase, the fruit of co-creation and "re-creation" of Milne in Russian. Indeed, his text does not always literally follow the original. A number of finds missing from Milne (for example, the various names of Pooh's songs - Noise Makers, Chants, Howlers, Nozzles, Puffers - or Piglet's question: “Does Heffalump love piglets? And how does he love them?"), fits well into the context of the work. Milne does not have a complete parallel and the widespread use of capital letters (Unknown Who, Relatives and Friends of the Rabbit), the frequent personification of inanimate objects (Pooh approaches the "familiar puddle"), more "fabulous" vocabulary, not to mention a few hidden references to Soviet reality. He ambiguously perceived the style of Zakhoder’s “Pooh” Korney Chukovsky: “His translation of Winnie the Pooh will be successful, although the translation style is shaky (in the English fairy tale, fathers, piglet, etc.)”. ().
At the same time, a number of researchers, including E. G. Etkind, still attribute this work to translations. Zakhoder's text also retains the language game and humor of the original, "the intonation and spirit of the original" and "with jewelry precision" conveys many important details. The advantages of the translation also include the absence of excessive Russification of the world of the fairy tale, the observance of the paradoxical English mentality.
The book in the retelling of Zakhoder from the 1960s-1970s was extremely popular not only as a children's reading, but also among adults, including the scientific intelligentsia. In the post-Soviet period, the tradition of the presence of Zakhoder's "Winnie the Pooh" in a stable circle of family reading continues.
From the first, abridged version of the retelling by Boris Zakhoder, and not from the English original, some translations of "Winnie the Pooh" into the languages of the peoples of the USSR were made: Georgian (1988), Armenian (1981), one of the Ukrainian versions (A. Kostetsky).
Viktor Chizhikov participated in illustrating Soviet publications. More than 200 color illustrations, screensavers and hand-drawn titles for "Winnie the Pooh" belong to Boris Diodorov. B. Diodorov and G. Kalinovsky are the authors of black-and-white illustrations and color inserts in the 1969 edition of Children's Literature; a cycle of colored Diodorov illustrations was created in 1986-1989 and appeared in several editions. The first edition of the Ukrainian translation by Leonid Solonko was illustrated by Valentin Chernukha.
In the 1990s - 2000s, new series of illustrations continued to appear in Russia: Evgenia Antonenkova; Boris Diodorov continued his series of illustrations for the extended edition of Zakhoder's translation.
The 1990s became the time for the creation of new translations of Winnie the Pooh into Russian. Zakhoder's retelling has ceased to be the only one. Victor Weber's translation became the most famous of the alternatives to Zakhoder's and was published several times by the EKSMO publishing house; in addition, it was printed parallel to the original in a bilingual annotated edition published in 2001 by the Raduga publishing house. Weber's version retains the division into two parts, as well as the prefaces and poetic dedications in each of them, all 20 chapters are fully translated. Nevertheless, according to a number of critics, L. Bruni), this translation is not as valuable from an artistic point of view as Zakhoder's, and in a number of places it overly literalizes the original, neglecting the language game; the translator consistently strives to avoid Zakhoder's decisions, even where they are indisputable. Translations of poetry (performed not by Weber, but by Natalia Rein) were also criticized. Weber has Piglet - Piglet, Heffalump - Hobotun, and Tiger - Tiger.
There was a transformation of the names of the characters in the translations of Disney cartoons, although this has nothing to do with the translation of Milne's text. Since the names Piglet, Tiger, Eeyore were invented by Zakhoder, these names were changed to others ( Piglet, Tigrulya, Ushastik).
In 1996, the Moimpeks publishing house published a parallel English text, "for the convenience of learning languages", the translation of T. Vorogushin and L. Lisitskaya, which, according to A. Borisenko, "quite corresponds" to the task of interlinear, but, according to M Yeliferova, "is full of unmotivated deviations from the original, as well as such errors against Russian style that are not justified by referring to the tasks of the interlinear" . The names are the same as those of Zakhoder, however, the Owl, in accordance with the original, is made a male character, which with such a name in Russian looks like a mistake.
Screen adaptations
USA
In 1929, Milne sold the rights to commercial exploitation (eng. merchandising right) of the image of Winnie the Pooh to American producer Stephen Schlesinger. During this period, in particular, several performance records based on Milne's books were released, very popular in the USA [ ] . In 1961, these rights were bought from Schlesinger's widow by Disney Studios [ ] . The Disney Company has also acquired the copyright for Shepard's drawings, his teddy bear image is referred to as "Classic Pooh". According to the plot of some chapters of the first book, the studio released short cartoons ( Winnie the Pooh and the honey tree, winnie the pooh and worries day, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger with him! And ). In Disney films and publications, the character's name, unlike Milne's books, is written without hyphens ( Winnie the Pooh), which may reflect American punctuation as opposed to British punctuation. Since the 1970s, Disney has been releasing cartoons based on newly invented plots that are no longer associated with Milne's books. Many fans of Milne's works feel that the plots and style of Disney films have little to do with the spirit of the Vinnie books. The Milne family, in particular, Christopher Robin, spoke sharply negatively about Disney products.
The American researcher of creativity Milne Paola Connolly states: ““Unrolled”, parodied and modified in commercial production, the characters of the fairy tale have become a cultural myth, but a myth very far from the author. Especially this process of alienation intensified after the death of Milne. The appearance of the cartoon characters, in general, goes back to Shepard's illustrations, but the drawing is simplified, and some memorable features are exaggerated. Shepard's Winnie the Pooh wears a short red blouse only in winter (search for Buka), while Disney's wears it all year round.
The second cartoon about Winnie the Pooh called Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject. In total, in the 1960s, Disney released 4 short films about Winnie the Pooh: ( Winnie the Pooh and the honey tree, winnie the pooh and worries day, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger with him! And Winnie the Pooh and a holiday for Eeyore), as well as a television puppet show ( Welcome to Pooh's Edge).
A distinctive feature of the Americanization of the plot was the appearance in the full-length film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), which includes, along with new scenes, three previously released short cartoons, a new character named Gopher (in Russian translations, he is referred to as Gopher). The fact is that the gopher animal is found only in North America. Gopher's appearance has become programmatic - he exclaims: "Of course, I'm not in the book!".
Copyright for the image of Winnie the Pooh and his friends is one of the most profitable in the world, at least as far as literary characters are concerned. The Disney company now earns $1 billion a year from sales of videos and other products related to Pooh - the same amount as from the famous images of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto created by Disney themselves, combined. In a 2004 Hong Kong survey, Winnie was the favorite Disney cartoon character of all time. In 2005, similar sociological results were obtained at
Many watched a cartoon or read a fairy tale in a teddy bear. But not everyone knows who was the first to write a story known to children and adults.
The person who created the story wanted to go down in history as a serious writer. He created a cycle of poems and stories, but every person associates his name with a cute plush bear, whose head is stuffed with sawdust.
The history of the creation of a fairy tale
Gave the world a story about the adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The English writer wrote a fairy tale for his own son, who also became one of the main characters - Christopher Robin.
Almost all the characters in the story had prototypes in the real world. The boy's plush toys bore names similar to those of the bear cub and his friends.
The protagonist of the story is named after a bear who lived in 1924 on the territory of the zoo in London. Three years before the visit of the father and son to the zoo, the baby received a plush animal as a birthday present. Before the epochal meeting, Christopher Robin could not find a suitable name for him.
They called the plush bear, as is customary in England, simply Teddy. Having met the London bear, Christopher Robin decided to name his toy friend Winnie.
A loving dad regularly pleased his son with new toys. So Winnie the Pooh made friends. The piglet, which was named Piglet, was brought to the boy by the neighbors. Only Rabbit and Owl have no real prototypes. Milne invented them in order to develop the course of events in history.
The beginning of the book - the writing of the first chapter - took place in 1925 around Christmas. This is how the happy life of Winnie the teddy bear and his faithful friends began. It continues at the present time.
The English writer created two collections of poems and 2 prose books about the bear. Milne dedicated the last to his wife.
When talking about who wrote Winnie the Pooh, one more person who plays an important role cannot be ignored. This is an artist who worked in the editorial office of Punch magazine. Ernest Shepard acted as co-author. The cartoonist created images of the toy characters of the story as they are seen by modern children and adults.
The book about the adventures of a bear cub and his friends is very popular because the story is reminiscent of the stories that a child hears from mom and dad, going to bed.
In the Milne family, the son was surrounded by care and love, he grew up in a special atmosphere. Every page of the book is saturated with it.
Illustration for the first edition of "Winnie the Pooh" One of the main reasons for the popularity of the story about the bear is the style of presentation. The book is full of puns, funny phraseological units and parodies. The story appeals to adults and children all over the world.
The book about Winnie the Pooh is unique. The best writers from different parts of the world translated it so that their fellow citizens could get to know the teddy bear and plunge into the wonderful world.
For the first time, the story about a bear cub and his friends translated into Russian appeared in Lithuania. The event took place in 1958. He translated the story two years later. It was his translation that gained immense popularity.
Once in the library, the writer looked through the English encyclopedia. In the book I saw an image of the plush hero of the fairy tale Milne. The story about the adventures of Winnie the bear and his friends interested the Soviet writer, so he decided to retell the fairy tale created by the Englishman.
Zakhoder constantly said that he did not seek to make the translation literal. Rather, the story is a free retelling, a rethinking of the original version. It was Zakhoder who added various nozzles, noisemakers, puffers, screamers and chants, thanks to which the Soviet audience fell in love with the famous Pooh so much.
What is the difference between the original Winnie the Pooh and the Soviet one? Boris Zakhoder approached the translation of history differently. The main differences between the two stories are as follows:
- According to Milne, the plush bear had "little brains", and the Soviet Winnie the Pooh merrily sang a song about having sawdust in his head;
- The name of the protagonist Zakhoder has been somewhat changed. In the original version, the character was called Winnie-the-Pooh. When literally translated from English, this means Winnie-Fu. The silent name of the hero did not take root in the translated version, Boris Zakhoder called the bear cub Winnie the Pooh. The name is similar to transliteration. Christopher Robin called the swans to him, saying "fluff". Therefore, such a name fits perfectly into history;
- The names of other cartoon characters in the original version also sounded different. Piglet in the English version - Piglet, Eeyore's donkey was called Eeyore by Milne. Other characters in the story retained the names given by the author.
- Cardinal differences are observed between the Soviet cartoon and the English book. According to the creator, Winnie the Pooh is Christopher Robin's toy. And in the television version, the teddy bear is an independent character.
- In the Soviet cartoon, Pooh does not wear clothes, but in the original version he is dressed in a blouse.
- The number of heroes also varies. Milne has Tigra, Kanga and her baby Roo in the story. In the Soviet cartoon, these heroes are absent.
There are many differences between the version of Zakhoder and Milne. But despite this, children and adults equally love cartoons created by Disney and Khitruk.
The number 18 is symbolic for a teddy bear. Every year on January 18, his birthday is celebrated. The date is not accidental - it coincides with the name day of the English writer who invented this story for his son. There are exactly 18 chapters in the original version of the story.
More interesting facts about Winnie the Pooh:
- The work created by Milne entered the history of English literature. In 2017, the book about the adventures of Winnie the Pooh and his friends became the best-selling book in the world. It has been translated into dozens of languages and printed in each of them.
- In the Disney cartoon, you can see a sign above the door of Winnie the Pooh's house, which says "Mr. Sanders." In fact, this is not the name of the protagonist of Milne's story. According to the story, the teddy bear is too lazy to change the sign left from the previous owner of the house.
- The author did not immediately add the gopher to the story. This hero has been mentioned for the first time since 1977. The character does not exist in the original version of the book. The creators of the Disney cartoon added a gopher. He became one of the heroes of the animated series called The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
Gopher is absent from the book, but is present in the cartoon "Winnie the Pooh" - The places mentioned in the book can be visited in real life. The famous Dense Forest has a real prototype - a forest located near the country house of an English writer.
- Going to the public library located in New York, you can see with your own eyes the real toys of Alan's son Alexander Milne. The collection contains all the characters of the story, except for Roo. In 1930, Christopher Robin lost his toy.
- The Soviet version of the cartoon maximally reveals the meaning of the original version of the story. The film adaptation of the English book by Disney greatly changed the story of Winnie the Pooh. The teddy bear brand is also popular as Mickey Mouse or Pluto.
- Every year Oxfordshire hosts the Trivia Championship. This game is taken from the original version of the story. The hero of the book threw sticks into the water and watched which one would get to a certain point faster. The entertainment took off.
Winnie the Pooh is an interesting and unique character. Creating stories for his own son, Milne did not expect that his tales would be retold not only by many writers, but also by ordinary parents.
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 a talented person will find a reason to create a work even looking at such an ordinary toy, and this happened in 1926, when the 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
The main character got his name in honor of the living symbol of the veterinary corps of the Canadian army, the Winnipeg bear, which came 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 created image, 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.
Although the versions differ from each other, they are united by one thing - the friendship of a boy and a bear. This was the reason for writing the story.
Interesting Facts
Everyone who has ever read a book about Winnie or watched a cartoon knows that the bear does not like honey in the soul. Actually this is not true. The real Winnipeg didn't like honey, but she simply adored condensed milk. Growing up, Christopher told how he constantly treated her to condensed milk.
No one knows why the author added Pooh to the name of Winnie. Opinions vary. Some say that the bear got this nickname thanks to a swan named Pooh, who lived with friends of the Milns. Others were sure that all this was due to the pen with which the author wrote. The company that produced the pen of which the author wrote the work was called Swan Pen, which in translation sounds like “Swan Pen”.
forest life
The Milns did not live in London all their lives. In 1925, the whole family successfully moved to an estate near the city of Hartfield. The estate was located near Ashdown Forest, which became a favorite vacation spot for the whole family.
The emergence of Winnie the Pooh
Unlike other stories, shrouded in mysteries and myths, the story of the emergence of Winnie the Pooh himself is simple and understandable. Christopher Robin had a toy teddy bear called Winnie the Pooh. The child also had other toys, which later became the prototypes of the characters. Among them were: a piglet, whose donkey really had its tail torn off, a tiger cub and a kangaroo with a kangaroo cub. Milne has already invented the owl and the rabbit himself.
Conclusion
Although the story of Winnie the Pooh himself sometimes seems a little gloomy, the fairy tale itself has fallen in love with many generations. The story of friendship between a little boy and a teddy bear with sawdust in his head has stuck in the hearts of millions of children around the world, and perhaps even outlive us.
1. The story of one of the most famous fairy tale characters of the 20th century winnie the pooh began on August 21, 1921, when the writer Alan Alexander Milne gave his son Christopher Robin a teddy bear for his birthday. Christopher Robin is one year old today.
In fairness, it must be said that this day is a very conditional birthday of Winnie the Pooh. The teddy bear found its name only a few years later, when Christopher Robin grew up. Therefore, Winnie the Pooh also has a second birthday - October 14, 1926, when the first separate book about a teddy bear and his friends was released.
2. The history of the name Winnie the Pooh is described in some detail in Milne's book. However, about the bear Winnipeg, who gave the first part of the name to the beloved bear cub, should be said especially. Kept at the London Zoo in the early 1920s, the bear had previously been the mascot (living symbol) of the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps, based in the vicinity of Winnipeg. Winnipeg entered the army as a bear cub when 27-year-old regimental veterinarian Lieutenant Harry Colborne bought her out for $20.
During the First World War, along with her unit, Winnipeg ended up in London, but, of course, no one sent her to the battlefield - the beast was left in the London Zoo. The bear was so fond of the English children that Winnipeg was left in London even after the war. In 1924, Alan Alexander Milne brought his son Christopher Robin to see Winnipeg for the first time. The boy liked the bear so much that on the same day his teddy bear was named Winnie.
In 1981, 61-year-old Christopher Robin Milne unveiled a monument to his friend, the Winnipeg bear, at the London Zoo.
At the same time, Winnie the Pooh has another name - Edward, which is the full form of the traditional English nickname for all teddy bears - Teddy.
3. Alan Alexander Milne's books grew out of oral histories that the writer told his son. However, most of the characters and locations in the Winnie the Pooh stories are genuine.
The well-known Hundred-Acre Forest, or Fairy Forest, was actually the 500-acre Ashdown Forest near the Cochford farm in East Sussex, bought in 1925 by the Milne family. In the book about Winnie the Pooh, you can read a completely realistic description of the forest, in which the real Christopher Robin Milne really loved to play.
Piglet was actually Christopher Robin's toy given to him by his neighbors, and Eeyore, like Winnie himself, was a gift from his parents. This toy was deprived of a tail by Christopher Robin himself during the games, which was the reason for Milne Sr. to make the donkey the most gloomy and dull hero.
Kanga with Baby Roo and Tigger, which appear somewhat later in the Winnie the Pooh stories, were bought by Christopher Robin's parents on purpose to diversify the stories.
The only ones that Christopher Robin didn't have were the Owl and the Rabbit, which is why they appear in the stories as real animals, not toys.
4. In total, Alan Alexander Milne wrote two books about the adventures of Winnie the Pooh - "Winnie the Pooh", published in 1926, and "The House at Pooh Corner", which was released in 1928. The author dedicated both books to his wife and mother. son of Daphne Selincourt.
Each of the books consists of 10 chapters, each of which, in turn, is a separate complete story. In addition, Winnie the Pooh appears in two books of Milne's children's poems, published in 1924 and 1927.
5. The story of Alan Alexander Milne is similar to that of other English writer -Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle did not consider the story of Sherlock Holmes the most successful in his work, and the incredible popularity of the detective over time began to be perceived with frank hostility.
Alan Alexander Milne, before the appearance of books about Winnie the Pooh, collaborated with the English humor magazine Punch, and was considered a fairly well-known playwright who wrote serious plays for adults. However, after Winnie the Pooh, Milne began to be perceived solely as a children's writer, which the author himself considered insulting and unfair. However, Milne Sr. could not do anything about this - today only Winnie the Pooh is known from his creative heritage.
6. In 1929, Alan Alexander Milne sold the commercial rights to exploit the image of Winnie the Pooh. producer Steven Slesinger. The producer released several popular performances about Winnie the Pooh. The bear came to the big screen after Slesinger's widow resold the rights to Winnie the Pooh to the studio in 1961. Disney. After releasing several cartoons directly from the book, Disney masters later began to invent their own stories. It is interesting that the Milne family and, first of all, Christopher Robin Milne, who believed that the style and plots of the film had nothing to do with the spirit of his father's book, were extremely negative towards the work of American animators.
7. The history of "Winnie the Pooh" in the USSR began in 1958, when a 20-year-old Lithuanian writer Virgilijus Chepaitis published his own translation based on the Polish translation Irena Tuwim.
In the same 1958, he met Winnie the Pooh Boris Zakhoder, who was to create the canonical Russian version of the adventures of Winnie the Pooh. It is interesting that the book was treated with suspicion: the main children's publishing house of the USSR, Detgiz, refused it, and the newly created publishing house Detsky Mir risked publishing Zakhoder's translation.
In the canonical Russian version, unlike the original, there are only 18 chapters. Zakhoder himself did not hide the fact that his translation of Milne is very free. For example, in the original, Winnie the Pooh is not as creative a person as Zakhoder's - Chrychalka, Howlers, Noise Makers, Puffers were invented by a Soviet writer.
8. The first and classic for the British illustrations for books about Winnie the Pooh created artist Ernest Shepard, a former colleague of Alan Alexander Milne in Punch magazine and his army colleague during the First World War.
It is curious that Shepard drew Christopher Robin from the real son of Milne, but the teddy bear of the artist's son became the prototype of Winnie the Pooh.
Shepard, like Milne Sr., was soon disappointed - the teddy bear's insane popularity overshadowed all his other works.
The first illustrations for the Russian translation by Zakhoder were created by artist Alisa Poret, student of the greatest Petrova-Vodkina. The illustrations are also well known. Edward Nazarov- the artist who created the Soviet animated Winnie the Pooh.
Another famous illustrator of domestic Winnie artist Viktor Chizhikov, which is the "father" of another bear - the mascot of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
9. Work on the Soviet animated film adaptation of Winnie the Pooh began in the late 1960s. Boris Zakhoder became the screenwriter of cartoons, and the famous Fedor Khitruk. In total, three cartoons were released, although initially it was supposed to make films for all the chapters of the book. The reason for abandoning this idea was the conflicts between Zakhoder and Khitruk - each of these extraordinarily talented people turned out to have their own vision of what Winnie the Pooh should be, and they failed to agree among themselves.
Nevertheless, the filmed three cartoons gained incredible popularity. Not least, this was due to the actors who were invited to voice the characters. Winnie the Pooh was entrusted Evgeny Leonov, which after this cartoon became for Soviet citizens "the honored Winnie the Pooh of the USSR", Piglet - inimitable Ie Savvina, and Eeyore was voiced by the patriarch of Russian cinema Erast Garin. For Erast Garin, who once brilliantly played the King in Cinderella, Eeyore became one of the last and one of the most memorable works in his career.
It is estimated that at least 20 phrases from the Soviet film adaptation of Winnie the Pooh entered the colloquial speech of Russians, and the cartoon characters themselves became heroes of jokes on a par with Stirlitz And Vasily Ivanovich.
10. The popularity of Winnie the Pooh in the world knows no bounds: in Poland, at least three cities have streets named after him, and the image of a teddy bear is imprinted on stamps from at least 18 countries around the world. In 1958, the book about Winnie the Pooh was translated into Latin, and in 1982 composer Olga Petrova based on the plot, Milna wrote an opera about Winnie the Pooh. Authentic Christopher Robin toys are among the most prized possessions in the New York Public Library's children's section today. In the UK itself, many of the presence of these toys in the US is considered a loss of cultural heritage and from time to time they campaign for the return of Winnie the Pooh to his homeland. In 1998, the question of the return of Winnie the Pooh was discussed even in the English Parliament.
