In what year did Winnie the Pooh come out? How the cartoon "Winnie the Pooh" was created
The most famous bear cub in the world turns 85 today: Winnie-the-Pooh, Winnie de Poeh, Pu der Bär, Medvídek Pú, Winnie l "ourson, Kubuś Puchatek, Micimackó, Peter Plys, Ole Brumm and the more familiar Winnie the Pooh - it's all him.
His "official" birthday is August 21, 1921, the day Alan Alexander Milne gave his son the toy that became famous throughout the world. True, not right away - at first the name Winnie belonged to the Winnipeg bear, an “acquaintance” of little Christopher Robin, and only three years later it was “gifted” to the bear cub.
There were other options: Vinnie could become Edward. Edward Bear, from the diminutive Teddy Bear, as all teddy bears in England are called - “Teddy Bear”. Sometimes it is mistakenly believed that Winnie the Pooh there is a third name - Mr. Sanders. But this is not at all true: according to the book, he literally lived under this name, this is just an inscription on Vinnie’s house. Perhaps this is his older relative or just some kind of bear about which we know nothing.
Pooh also had many titles: Piglet's Friend, Rabbit's Companion, Discoverer of the Pole, Eeyore's Comforter and Tail Finder, Bear with a Very Low IQ and Christopher Robin's First Mate on the Ship, Bear with Pleasant Manners. By the way, in the last chapter, Winnie becomes a knight, so he can rightfully be called Sir Pooh de Bear, that is, Sir Pooh Bear, write the creators of the official website about Winnie the Pooh.
Christopher Robin's real-life toys also included Piglet, Eeyore without a Tail, Kanga, Roo and Tigger. Milne invented the Owl and the Rabbit himself, and in Shepard’s illustrations they look not like toys, but like real animals.
The prefix Pooh in the bear cub's name appeared thanks to a swan that lived with Miln's friends; he appears in the collection "When We Were Very Little." By the way, it should be pronounced correctly as “Pu,” but in the Russian language “pooh” has also taken root because it hints at the plumpness and fluffiness of the main character. However, in the book by Boris Zakhoder there is another explanation: “If a fly landed on his nose, he had to blow it away: “Pooh!” Pooh!" And maybe - although I'm not sure about it - maybe that's when they called him Pooh."
Winnie the Pooh - main character Milne's two books: Winnie-the-Pooh (the first chapter published in the newspaper before Christmas, December 24, 1925, the first separate edition was published on October 14, 1926 by the London publishing house Methuen & Co) and The House at Pooh Corner (House on Pooh Corner, 1928). In addition, Milne's two collections of children's poems, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six, contain several poems about Winnie the Pooh.
The Pooh books take place in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England, known in the book as The Hundred Acre Wood.
If you ask anyone, be it a child or an adult, who Winnie the Pooh is, everyone will remember the cute teddy bear with sawdust in his head from the favorite children's cartoon. Funny phrases characters are often quoted, and songs are remembered by heart. The cartoon character was actually created on the basis of a cycle of two works, which were written primarily for an adult audience. Many even think that the creator of Vinnie is some Soviet writer, and are surprised to learn that in fact the cheerful, harmless bear came to us from good old England. So who came up with this extraordinary character?
Author of "Winnie the Pooh"
The creator of the world famous teddy bear was the English writer Alan Alexander Milne. Scottish by birth, he was born in London in 1882 into the family of a teacher. Creativity was encouraged in the family, and he made early attempts at writing in his youth. Milne had an influence on the formation of personality famous writer H.G. Wells, who was Alan's teacher and friend. Young Milne was also drawn to the exact sciences, so after graduating from college he entered Cambridge to study mathematics. But the calling to be closer to literature won: everything student years he worked on the editorial staff of Grant magazine, and later helped editor of the London humor publication Punch. It was there that Alan first began publishing his stories, which were successful. After nine years of work in publishing, Milne went to the front as the First World War began. After being wounded, he returned home to normal life. Even before the war began, he married Dorothy de Selincourt, and seven years later family life they had a long-awaited son, Christopher Robin, partly thanks to whom the fairy tale “Winnie the Pooh” appeared.
History of the creation of the work
When his son was still a three-year-old baby, Alan Milne began writing children's fairy tales. Little Bear first appears in one of two collections of poems for Christopher, also by Milne. Winnie the Pooh did not get his name right away; at first he was just a nameless bear. Later, in 1926, the book “Winnie the Pooh” was published, and two years later - its sequel, which was called “The House on Pooh Edge”. Almost all the characters were based on real Christopher Robin toys. Now they are kept in the museum, and among them there is a donkey, a pig, and, naturally, a teddy bear. The bear's name was really Vinnie. It was given to him when Robin was 1 year old, and since then it has become the boy's favorite toy. The bear is named after the Winnipeg bear, with whom Christopher became very close. Amazingly, Alan Milne never read his fairy tales to his son; instead, he preferred the works of another author. But this was more likely because the author addressed his books primarily to adults, in whose souls a child still lives. But still, the fairy tale “Winnie the Pooh” found hundreds of grateful young readers for whom the image of the mischievous bear cub was close and understandable.
The book not only brought Milne a significant income of two and a half thousand pounds sterling, but also enormous popularity. The author of "Winnie the Pooh" has become a favorite children's writer for several generations right up to the present day. Although Alan Alexander Milne wrote novels, essays and plays, few people read them now. But, according to one survey conducted in 1996, it was the story about Winnie the Pooh that took 17th place in the list of the most significant works of the past century. It has been translated into 25 languages.
Many researchers find a lot of autobiographical details in the book. For example, Milne “copied” some characters from real people. Also, the description of the forest coincides with the landscape of the area where the author of “Winnie the Pooh” himself and his family loved to walk. Among other things, Christopher Robin is one of the main characters
It is impossible not to mention English artist Shepard, who drew illustrations for Milne's book. It was based on his sketches that the Disney cartoon was filmed in 1966. Many more film adaptations followed. Below are the characters of the most famous of them, created in 1988.
The Soviet reader became acquainted with the “bear with only sawdust in his head” in 1960, when Boris Zakhoder’s translation of Milne’s book was published. In 1969, the first of three Pooh cartoons was released, and the next ones were released in 1971 and 1972. Fyodor Khitruk worked on them together with the author of the translation into Russian. For more than 40 years, the carefree cartoon bear has been entertaining both adults and children.
Conclusion
Many people 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 man who created the story wanted to go down in history as a serious writer. He created a series 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 fairy tale
He gave the world the story of the adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The English writer composed the 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 had names similar to those of the bear and his friends.
The main character of the story is named after a female bear who lived on the grounds of a zoo in London in 1924. Three years before the father and son visited the zoo, the baby received a stuffed animal as a birthday present. Before the epoch-making meeting, Christopher Robin could not find a suitable name for him.
The plush bear was called, 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 delighted his son with new toys. This is how Winnie the Pooh made friends. The piglet, who was named Piglet, was brought to the boy by neighbors. Only the Rabbit and the Owl have no real prototypes. Milne invented them to develop the course of events in history.
The beginning of the book - the writing of the first chapter - occurred in 1925 around Christmas. This is where it started happy life teddy bear Winnie and his loyal friends. It continues to this day.
The English writer created two collections of poems and 2 prose books about the bear. Milne dedicated the latter to his own wife.
When discussing who wrote Winnie the Pooh, one cannot ignore one more person who plays an important role. This is an artist who worked in the editorial office of Punch magazine. Ernest Shepard acted as co-writer. The cartoonist created the images of the toy characters of the story as modern children and adults see them.
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 his mother and father when he goes to bed.
In the Milne family, their son was surrounded with care and love; he grew up in a special atmosphere. Every page of the book is imbued 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 replete with 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. Best Writers they translated it from different parts of the world so that their fellow citizens could get acquainted with the teddy bear and plunge into the wonderful world.
For the first time, a story about a bear cub and his friends translated into Russian appeared in Lithuania. An event occurred in 1958. Two years later I translated the story. It was his translation that gained enormous popularity.
One day in the library the writer was looking through an English encyclopedia. In the book I saw an image of a plush hero from Milne's fairy tale. The story about the adventures of Winnie the bear and his friends interested the Soviet writer, so much so that he decided to retell the fairy tale created by an Englishman.
Zakhoder constantly said that he did not strive to make the translation literal. Rather, the story is a free retelling, a reimagining of the original version. It was Zakhoder who added various nozzles, noisemakers, puffs, howls and chants, thanks to which Soviet audiences fell in love with the famous Pooh.
How is the original Winnie the Pooh different from 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 cheerfully sang a song about how his head contained sawdust;
- The name of the main character is slightly changed by Zakhoder. In the original version, the character was called Winnie-the-Pooh. When translated literally from in English it means Winnie-Foo. The hero's silent name did not catch on in the translated version; Boris Zakhoder called the bear Winnie the Pooh. The name is similar to the transliteration. Christopher Robin called the swans to him by saying "pooh." Therefore, this name fits perfectly into history;
- The names of other cartoon characters also sounded different in the original version. Piglet in the English version is Piglet, Milne's donkey Eeyore was called Eeyore. Other characters in the story retained the names given by the author.
- Fundamental 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 bear cub is an independent character.
- In the Soviet cartoon, Pooh does not wear clothes, but in the original version he wears a blouse.
- The number of heroes also varies. Milne's story features Tigger, Kanga and her baby Roo. These characters are absent from Soviet cartoons.
There are many differences between Zakhoder's and Milne's versions. But despite this, children and adults equally love cartoons created by Disney and Khitruk.
The number 18 is symbolic for the teddy bear. His birthday is celebrated annually on January 18th. The date is not accidental - it coincides with the name day English writer, who came up with this story for his son. The original version of the story has exactly 18 chapters.
More Interesting Facts about Winnie the Pooh:
- The work created by Milne went down in the history of English literature. In 2017, the book telling 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 that says "Mr. Sanders." In fact, this is not the surname of the main character of Milne's story. According to the story, the bear cub is too lazy to change the sign left by the previous owner of the house.
- The author did not immediately add the gopher to the story. This is the first time this hero has been mentioned 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.”
The 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 real prototype– a forest located near the English writer’s country house.
- By going to the public library located in New York, you can see with your own eyes the real toys of Alan Alexander Milne's son. The collection contains all the characters from the story, except for little Ru. In 1930, Christopher Robin lost his toy.
- The Soviet version of the cartoon reveals the meaning of the original version of the story as much as possible. Disney's film adaptation of the English book greatly changed the story of Winnie the Pooh. The teddy bear brand is also popular like Mickey Mouse or Pluto.
- Every year the Trivia Championship takes place in Oxfordshire. 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 caught on.
Winnie the Pooh is an interesting and unique character. When creating stories for his own son, Milne did not imagine that his tales would be retold not only by many writers, but also by ordinary parents.
When Christopher Robin was 4 years old, he and his father came to the zoo for the first time, where the boy met a bear. After this event, the teddy bear given to Christopher for his first birthday was also named Winnie. Subsequently, the bear was Christopher’s constant companion: “every child has a favorite toy, and a child who grows up as the only one in the family especially needs it.”
The Winnie the Pooh books were created by Milne from oral stories and games with Christopher Robin; oral origin is also typical for many other famous literary fairy tales. “Actually, 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 Pal), O.P. (Pole Discoverer), W.I.-I. (Comforter Eeyore) and N.H. (Tail Finder) - naive, good-natured and modest Bear with Very Little Brains (English Bear of Very Little Brain); in Zakhoder's translation, Vinnie repeatedly says that there is sawdust in his head, although in the original (the English word pulp) this is mentioned only once. Pooh's favorite things are writing poetry and honey. Pooh is “scared by long words”, he is forgetful, but often brilliant ideas come into his head. The character of Pooh, suffering from a “lack of reason”, but at the same time a “great naive sage”, is considered by a number of researchers to be an archetype of world literature. So, Boris Zakhoder compares him with the images of Don Quixote and Schweik. Liliana Lungina thinks that Pooh resembles Dickens's Mr. Pickwick. His traits are a love of food, an interest in the weather, an umbrella, and a “disinterested passion for travel.” She sees in him “a child who knows nothing, but wants to know everything.” In English-language literature, the Scarecrow the Wise from the story “The Wizard of Oz” by Lyman Baum is also close to him.
Pooh combines several images at once - a teddy bear, a living bear cub and the formidable Bear that he wants to appear to be. The character of Pooh is independent and at the same time dependent on the character of Christopher Robin. Pooh is the way the little owner wants him to be.
The image of Pooh is central to all twenty stories. In a number of initial stories (the story with the hole, the search for Beech, the capture of the Heffalump), Pooh finds himself in one or another “Despair” 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” ones. Very often the plot twist in a story is one or another unexpected decision by Pooh. The climax of the image of Pooh as a hero occurs in chapter 9 of the first book, when Pooh, proposing to use Christopher Robin's umbrella as vehicle(“We’ll sail on your umbrella”), saves Piglet from imminent death; The entire tenth chapter is dedicated to the great feast in honor of Pooh. In the second book, Pooh's feat is compositionally matched by Piglet's Great Feat, which saves the heroes locked in a collapsed 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. He says about his inspiration: “After all, Poetry, Shouts are not things that you find when you want, these are things that find you.” Thanks to the image of Pooh, one more thing is included in the fairy tale. actor- Poetry, and the text takes on a new dimension.
Cycle "Winnie the Pooh"
In total, Alan Milne wrote two prose books featuring the bear: “Winnie-the-Pooh” (1926) and “The House at Pooh Corner” (1928). Both books were dedicated to "Her". The collections of poems When We Were Very Young (1924) and Now We Are Six (1927) also contain several poems about a bear cub, although in 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 his neighbors, Eeyore, a donkey given by his parents, Kanga with Little Roo in his bag, and Tigger, also given to his son by his parents, especially for developing the plots of bedtime stories. In the stories, these characters appear in this order. Milne came up with the Owl and the Rabbit himself; in Ernest Shepard's first illustrations, they look not like toys, but like real animals. The Rabbit says to the 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 Grahame's story “The Wind in the Willows,” which he admired and which Shepard had previously illustrated, and there may also be a hidden polemic with Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.”
The prose books form a duology, but each of Milne's books contains 10 stories with their own plots, which 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 and found himself in a hopeless situation).
- 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 Little Roo appear in the forest and Piglet takes a bath).
- Christopher Robin Leads An Exposure To The North Pole(...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 throws a ceremonial Feast Day and we say Goodbye to Everyone, Everyone).
- 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 Pooh Edge).
- Tigger Comes to the Forest and Has Breakfast(...in which Tigger comes into the forest and has breakfast).
- A Search is Organized, and Piglet Nearly Meets the Heffalump Again(...in which a search is organized, and Piglet again almost got caught by the Heffalump).
- It Is Shown That Tiggers Don't Climb Trees(...in which it turns out 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 Spotted Sasvirnus for the first time).
- Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In(...in which Pooh invents a new game and Eeyore gets involved).
- Tigger Is Unbounced(...in which the Tiger is tamed).
- Piglet Does a Very Grand Thing(...in which Piglet accomplishes a great feat).
- Eeyore Finds the Wolery and Owl Moves Into It(...in which Eeyore finds his comrade, 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 books about Pooh, a whole series of publications appeared: “Stories about Christopher Robin”, “Book for reading about Christopher Robin”, “Birthday stories about Christopher Robin”, “Christopher Robin Primer” and a number of picture books. These editions did not contain new works, but included reprints from previous books.
The world of the work
The action of the books about Pooh takes place in the Hundred Acre Wood (English: The Hundred Acre Wood, translated by Zakhoder - Wonderful Forest). The prototype is believed to be Ashdown Forest, near the Cochford farm bought by the Milnes in 1925 in East Sussex. The stories also feature Real Six Pines and the stream where the North Pole was found, as well as the vegetation mentioned in the text, including prickly gorse (English gorse-bush, in Zakhoder’s translation - thistle). Little Christopher Robin climbs into hollow trees and plays there with Pooh, and many book characters live in hollows. Much of the action takes place in such dwellings or on tree branches.
Pooh's best friend is Piglet. Other characters:
The action unfolds simultaneously in three planes - this is the world of toys in the nursery, the world of animals “on their territory” in the Hundred Acre Wood, and the world of characters in the stories of a father to his son (this is most clearly shown at the very beginning). Subsequently, the narrator disappears from the narrative (small dialogues between father and son appear at the end of the sixth and tenth chapters), and fairy world begins its own existence, growing from chapter to chapter. The similarity of the space and world of the characters in “Winnie the Pooh” with classical ancient and medieval epic was noted. Promising epic undertakings of the characters (travels, exploits, hunts, games) turn out to be comically insignificant, while real events take place in the inner world of the heroes (help in trouble, hospitality, friendship).
The book recreates the atmosphere of universal love and care, “normal”, protected childhood, without pretensions to solving adult problems, which largely contributed to the later popularity of this book in the USSR, including influencing Boris Zakhoder’s decision to translate this book. Reflected in "Winnie the Pooh" 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 tale originated.
Language
Milne's books are imbued with numerous puns and other types of language games; they are typically characterized by the play on and distortion of “adult” words (explicitly shown in the scene of the Owl’s dialogue with Pooh), expressions borrowed from advertising, educational texts, etc. (numerous specific examples have been collected in the commentary of A.I. Poltoratsky). A sophisticated play on phraseology and linguistic ambiguity (sometimes more than two meanings of a word) is not always accessible to children, but is highly valued by adults.
Typical techniques of Milne’s dilogy include the technique of “significant emptiness” and playing with various fictions: in “Contradiction” (the preface to the second part) it is stated that the reader dreamed of the upcoming events; Pooh comes to mind “great thoughts about nothing”, 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 intended for an adult audience.
Both books are filled with poems put into the mouth of Pooh; These poems are written in the English tradition of children's absurd poems - nonsense, continuing the experience of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Samuel Marshak, the first translator of Milne's children's poems, in a letter to Galina Zinchenko, called Milne "the last<…>heir apparent to Edward Lear."
Place in Milne's work
The series about Winnie the Pooh eclipsed all of Milne’s quite diverse and popular adult works of his time: “he cut off his path back to “adult” literature. All his attempts to escape from the clutches of the toy bear were unsuccessful." Milne himself had a hard time with this set of circumstances, did not consider himself a children's writer and argued that he writes for children with the same responsibility as for adults.
Philosophy
These English-language works influenced the book of semiotician and philosopher V. P. Rudnev, “Winnie the Pooh and the Philosophy of Ordinary Language.” Milne's text is dissected in this book using 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 always float in the air... VP appeared during the period of the most powerful flowering of prose of the 20th century, which could not but influence the structure of this work, could not, so to speak, not cast its rays on it.” This book also contains complete translations of both Milne's Pooh books (see above, in the "New Translations" section).
Publications
The first chapter of Winnie the Pooh was published on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1925, in the London Evening News, and the sixth in August 1928, in the Royal Magazine. The first separate edition was published on October 14, 1926 in London. The overall series has no name, but is usually called "Winnie the Pooh", after the first book.
All four books were illustrated by Ernest Shepherd, a cartoonist and Punch colleague of Alan Milne. Shepard's graphic illustrations are closely related to the internal logic of the narrative and largely complement the text, which, for example, does not say that the Heffalump is like an elephant; Shepard is often referred to as Milne's "co-author". Sometimes Shepard's illustrations correspond to significant placements of text on the page. The boy was copied directly from Christopher Robin, and the image of the boy - in a loose blouse over short pants, repeating Christopher's actual clothes - became fashionable.
In 1983, edited and with notes by the English philologist A.I. Poltoratsky, all four prose and poetic books about Pooh and, in the appendix to them, six essays by Milne were published in one volume in the Raduga publishing house in Moscow. 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 Milnovsky cycle in Russia. Poltoratsky’s (the initiator of the publication) interest 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 proposed to analyze the English text of “Winnie the Pooh” during classes at a special course.
Continuation
In 2009, a continuation of the books about Winnie the Pooh, Return to the Enchanted Forest, was released in the UK, approved by the organization Pooh Properties Trust. The author, David Benedictus, sought to imitate the style and composition of the original. The book's illustrations also focus on maintaining Shepard's style. "Return to the Enchanted Forest" has been translated into several languages.
Abroad
Books about Winnie the Pooh, despite difficulties with translation into other languages, have been repeatedly published abroad. In most translations, the “feminine” semantics of the name Winnie is not conveyed, however, in the 1986 translation by Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska into Polish, the bear wears female name Fredzia Phi-Phi(however, he is still masculine). But this translation did not win universal recognition, and in Poland the translation of the 1930s by Irena Tuwim, where the name of the bear is clearly masculine, is considered classic. Kubuś 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 ( Winy-dar-Poo), almost the same - lat. Winnie ille Pu. Sometimes the bear cub is called by one of his two names. For example, “Bear Pooh” (German Pu der Bär, Czech Medvídek Pú, Bulgarian Sword Pooh, “Pu a-Dov” (Hebrew פו הדוב)) or “Bear Winnie” (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, dated. Peter Plys, Norwegian Ole Brumm or Teddy Bear in the original version of the translation by Zakhoder (1958).
In German, Czech, Latin and Esperanto, the name Pooh is rendered as Pu, consistent with the English pronunciation. Nevertheless, thanks to Zakhoder, the natural-sounding name very successfully entered the Russian (and then Ukrainian, Ukrainian Winnie-the-Pooh) tradition Pooh(playing on Slavic words fluff, plump obvious in the Polish name Puchatek). In the Belarusian translation by 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 Winnie-Poo the bear and the bees” and “About how Winnie-Poo went to visit and got into trouble” translated by A. Koltynina and O. Galanina. The author's name was not indicated; the subtitle was "English Fairy Tale". This translation uses the names Winnie-Poo, Pigglet and Christopher Robin. The illustrator of the first publication was the graphic artist Alexey Laptev, the chapter in No. 9 for 1939 was illustrated by Mikhail Khrapkovsky.
The first complete translation of “Winnie the Pooh” in the USSR was published in 1958 in Lithuania (lit. Mikė Pūkuotukas), it was carried out by 20-year-old Lithuanian writer Virgilius 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 reprinted several times in Lithuania.
In the same year, Boris Vladimirovich Zakhoder became acquainted with the book. The acquaintance began with an encyclopedic article. This is how he himself talked about it:
Our meeting took place in the library, where I was looking through the English children's encyclopedia. It was love at first sight: I saw a picture of a cute bear cub, read several poetic quotes - and rushed to look for a book. Thus began one of the happiest moments of my life: the days of working on Pooh.
In issue No. 8 of the magazine “Murzilka” for 1958, one of the chapters was published in a retelling by Boris Zakhoder: “How Mishka-Plyukh went to visit and found himself in a hopeless situation.” The publishing house "Detgiz" rejected the manuscript of the book (it was considered "American"), but on July 13, 1960, "Winnie the Pooh and the rest" was signed for publication by the new publishing house "Children's World". Circulation of 215 thousand copies with illustrations by Alice Poret. The artist illustrated a number of subsequent publications in the Malysh publishing house. Along with small black and white pictures, Poret also created color multi-figure compositions (“The Rescue of Little Ru,” “Saveshnik,” etc.), as well as the first map of the Hundred Acre Wood in Russian. Over time, the name of the book was established - “Winnie the Pooh and Everything-All-Everything”. In 1965, the book, which had already become popular, was published in Detgiz. The imprint of the first few editions erroneously listed the author as "Arthur Milne". Although in 1957, the Art Publishing House already published one book by Alan Alexander Milne (“Mr. Pym Passes By”), and during the author’s lifetime his poems were published in translation by Samuel Marshak. 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 toys were kept at that time.
Winnie the Pooh Song (from Chapter 13)
Winnie the Pooh lives well in the world!
That is why he sings these Songs out loud!
And it doesn't matter what he's doing,
If he doesn't get fat,
But he won’t get fat,
And, on the contrary,
By-
xy-
works!
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 several paragraphs added to the end of the ninth). Only in 1990, for 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 magazine “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,” which was published in the same year and subsequently reprinted several times. In this edition, as in the first, there are no prefaces or dedications, although the division into two books (“Winnie the Pooh” and “The House on Pooh Edge”) has been restored, and the continuous numbering of chapters has been replaced with 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 the 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 entered the culture in an abbreviated form.
Zakhoder always emphasized that his book is not a translation, but retelling, the fruit of Milne’s co-creation and “re-creation” in Russian. Indeed, his text does not always literally follow the original. A number of finds not found in Milne (for example, the various names of Pooh’s songs - Noisemakers, Screamers, Vopilki, Sopelki, Pyhtelki - or Piglet’s question: “Does the Heffalump like piglets? And How does he love them?”), fits well into the context of the work. Milne also does not have a complete parallel in the widespread use of capital letters (Unknown Who, Rabbit's Relatives and Friends), frequent personification of inanimate objects (Pooh approaches a “familiar puddle”), a larger amount of “fairy-tale” vocabulary, not to mention the few hidden references to Soviet reality. Korney Chukovsky ambiguously perceived the style of Zakhoder’s “Pooh”: “His translation of Winnie the Pooh will be a success, although the translation style is shaky (in the English fairy tale, priests, piglet, etc.).” ().
At the same time, a number of researchers, including E. G. Etkind, still classify this work as a translation. Zakhoder’s text also preserves the language play and humor of the original, “the intonation and spirit of the original” and “with pinpoint accuracy” conveys many important details. The advantages of the translation also include the absence of excessive Russification of the fairy tale world and compliance with the paradoxical English mentality.
The book, as retold by Zakhoder, has been extremely popular since the 1960s-1970s not only as 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 Boris Zakhoder’s retelling, and not from the English original, some translations of “Winnie the Pooh” were made into the languages of the peoples of the USSR: Georgian (1988), Armenian (1981), one of Ukrainian versions(A. Kostetsky).
Viktor Chizhikov took part 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 series of color Diodorov illustrations was created in 1986-1989 and appeared in several publications. 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 Antonenkov; Boris Diodorov continued his series of illustrations for the expanded 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 is no longer the only one. Victor Weber's translation became the most famous of the alternative versions to Zakhoderov's and was published several times by the EKSMO publishing house; in addition, it was published parallel to the original in a bilingual commentary 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, and all 20 chapters are fully translated. However, 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 conveys the original too literally, neglecting the language game; the translator consistently strives to avoid Zakhoder's decisions, even where they are indisputable. Translations of poetry (done not by Weber, but by Natalia Rein) were also criticized. In Weber, Piglet is Oink, Heffalump is Proboscis, and Tigger is 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, Tigger, Eeyore were invented by Zakhoder, these names were changed to others (Piglet, Tigger, Ushastik).
In 1996, the Moimpex publishing house published a parallel English text, “for the convenience of learning languages,” a translation by T. Vorogushin and L. Lisitskaya, which, according to A. Borisenko, “fully meets” the task of interlinear translation, but, according to M Eliferova, “is full of unmotivated deviations from the original, as well as such errors against Russian stylistics that are not justified by reference to the tasks of interlinear translation.” The names are the same as those of Zakhoder, but Owl, in accordance with the original, is made a male character, which with such a name in Russian looks like a mistake.
Film adaptations
USA
In 1929, Milne sold the merchandising rights to 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, which were very popular in the USA [ ] . In 1961, these rights were purchased from Schlesinger's widow by the Disney studio [ ] . The Disney company also acquired the copyright to Shepard's drawings; his image of the bear is called "Classic Pooh". Based on 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 Care Day, Winnie the Pooh, and with him Tigger! 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. Since the 1970s, the Disney studio has been producing cartoons based on newly invented plots that are no longer related to Milne's books. Many fans of Milne's works believe that the plots and style of Disney films have little in common with the spirit of the books about Winnie. The Milne family, in particular Christopher Robin, spoke sharply negatively about Disney products.
American researcher of Milne's creativity, Paola Connolly, states: “"Promoted", parodied and modified in commercial production, the characters of the fairy tale have become a cultural myth, but a myth very distant from the author. This process of alienation especially intensified after Milne’s death.” The appearance of the cartoon characters generally stems from Shepard's illustrations, but the drawings are simplified and some memorable features are exaggerated. Shepard's Winnie the Pooh wears a short red blouse only in winter (Buki's quest), 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 Oscar 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 Care Day, Winnie the Pooh, and with him Tigger! And Winnie the Pooh and a holiday for Eeyore), as well as a television puppet show ( Welcome to Pukhova 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 Suslik). The fact is that the gopher animal is found only in North America. The appearance of Suslik became programmatic - he exclaims: “Of course, I’m not in the book!”
The 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 it concerns literary characters. Now the Disney company earns $1 billion a year from the sale of videos and other products related to Pooh - as much as from the famous images of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto created by Disney itself, combined. According to the results of a survey of the population of Hong Kong in 2004, Winnie was the favorite Disney cartoon character of all time. In 2005, similar sociological results were obtained in
Winnie the Pooh is a character from Alan Milne's book, a teddy bear that has become incredibly popular all over the world. In the USSR, Winnie the Pooh won the hearts of children after the release of stories about a restless bear cub retold by Boris Zakhoder, and then after the release of the cartoon “Winnie the Pooh and All-All-All.” Today, Winnie the Pooh has long gone beyond the pages of books and screens - Winnie the Pooh has become a unique brand, one of the best-selling plush toys in the world and simply a favorite of children and their parents.
Winnie-the-Pooh is a figment of the imagination of the English writer Alan A. Milne. The children's book about the bear was inspired by his little son Christopher Robin and his favorite toys - a teddy bear named Winnie the Pooh, a pig and a donkey with a torn off tail. By the way, the somewhat strange name for the bear cub was made up of two names - the Winnipeg bear (Winnie) from the London Zoo and a swan named Pooh, who lived with the writer’s friends.
Surprisingly, in the book the story about the bear cub is told to the boy by his father, while in real life Christopher Robin read his father’s books when he was almost an adult, although Milne wrote them when his son was 5-7 years old. This happened because Milne himself never considered himself a great writer and preferred to raise his son on the books of other, in his opinion, more deserving children's writers. The irony was that at the same time the “greats” were raising their children on Milne’s books.
Be that as it may, Winnie the Pooh quickly won the hearts of the children. He was a naive and good-natured bear, quite modest and even shy. By the way, the original book does not say that “there is sawdust in his head” - this already appeared in Zakhoder’s translation. By the way, in the book Milna hara
The character of Winnie the Pooh depended entirely on how his owner wanted him to be. Winnie the Pooh's birthday is either August 21, 1921 (the day Milne's son turned one year old), or October 14, 1926, when the first book about Winnie the Pooh was published.
By the way, today a teddy bear that belonged to Christopher Robin, the same “original” Winnie the Pooh, is exhibited in the children's room of the New York Library.
A huge boost to the popularity of Winnie the Pooh, without a doubt, was given by Disney cartoons, the first of which came out in the early 1960s.
In the USSR, the first cartoon about a bear named Winnie the Pooh was released in 1969. It’s strange, but this already established and completely formed character suddenly acquired a completely new image in a distant Soviet country, and the image is strong, unique in its own way and, on the whole, very far from the original. By the way, Boris Zakhoder always insisted that he did not translate, but retold Alan Milne’s book, which is why the image of “our” Winnie the Pooh is so far from English.
So, “our” Winnie the Pooh doesn’t even look like “their” Winnie the Pooh. Small, plump, even round, the “Soviet” Winnie the Pooh looks completely different from the original, which was more reminiscent of an ordinary teddy bear. By the way, very strong
The image of “our” Winnie the Pooh was strengthened by Evgeniy Leonov, who voiced him, whose voice forever became “the voice of Winnie the Pooh” for all of us. The cartoon was created by the wonderful cartoon director Fyodor Khitruk (he later received the State Prize for this work).
Speaking about the character of “our” Winnie the Pooh, we can immediately say that Winnie the Pooh is a bear-poet, a bear-thinker. He easily accepted the fact that there was sawdust in his head, was not at all puzzled by this and continued to do what he loved most. And he loves to eat. It seems that Winnie the Pooh is slow-witted, this is especially noticeable in some dialogues, when he openly “freezes” and answers abruptly and out of place. In fact, Winnie the Pooh constantly has an internal thought process that is known only to him. There is reason to believe that all his time he thinks deeply about where he can get honey or something tasty.
He never reveals his emotions, Winnie the Pooh's face is impenetrable, his thoughts are inaccessible. At the same time, we see that he is an ignorant, but a charming ignoramus. Winnie the Pooh is not burdened with any good manners - this is especially noticeable when he smells nearby food. Winnie the Pooh in the “Soviet” version turned out to be surprisingly stylish and complete. Etc
This cartoon itself is quite simple in animation.
It remains a mystery - why exactly did Soviet children and their parents fall in love with Winnie the Pooh? After all, Winnie the Pooh was not a “hero” at all - he did not save his friends, did not defeat evil, and in general “hanged out” on the screen quite uselessly, trying to find something tasty. However, he was and is loved by several generations of Russians. Literally every phrase from cartoons ended up in quotation books. The popularity of Winnie the Pooh can be judged by the number of jokes about him.
So, Winnie the Pooh, as we, Russian readers and viewers know him, is a rather selfish but cute fat bear. He is not burdened with good manners, but he definitely has charisma - all animals willingly make contact with him. On occasion, he can help someone, but only if it does not interfere with his plans. A lover of food, especially sweets, he spends his days most likely thinking about food. And although he is hardly capable of serious discoveries, he lives as a poet and thinker - in his “head full of sawdust” there is a constant thought process, invisible to the audience, but occupying him entirely.
We can only guess whether Winnie the Pooh is happy, because in general he is almost autistic, completely incomprehensible, but incredibly cute and attractive