For some reason,
many classic children's books that our grandparents read were
considered harmful by the Soviet educators, such as Little
Women, Little Lord Fauntleroy and
Daddy-Long-Legs,
of which I had only heard or read in other children's books. Perhaps
they were considered sentimental. Mark Twain on the other hand was
welcome, and we all read The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer and The
Prince and the Pauper. Much of the wit
of both books was lost on me, both because of my age and because of
my cultural ignorance. For instance, when Tom says in Sunday school
that the first two apostles' names were David and Goliath, I didn't
get it.
I didn't get much of
Alice in Wonderland
either, especially because the translation I had was extremely poor.
When I eventually read the original I realised that all the strange
things the characters said were jokes and puns. But it didn't matter.
I loved Alice
and read it over and over again, and still today I remember some of
the poor translation better than the original. I don't know why Alice
was acceptable for the Soviet pedagogy when so much other
nineteenth-century children's literature wasn't, and fairy tales were
considered particularly dangerous.
Selma Lagerlöf's
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
was popular already in my grandmother's childhood, but
in the early '50s is was published as a retelling, rather a clumsy
one as I discovered when I studied the subject academically, with
lots of historical and geographical inaccuracies, but as a child I
didn't know and didn't care. The miniature perspective was something
I was familiar with from Dunno
and Thumbelina: the wonderful world of animals was reminiscent of my
favourite nature stories, and there was just the right touch of
magic. When I moved to Sweden, names and facts from Nils
echoed in my explorations.
The book was part of
a larger venture, when suddenly lots of foreign classics were
translated: Winnie-the-Pooh, The Little
Prince, which of course were read by
grownups as much as children. Today it is called crossover, then it
was just a common acknowledgment that the best children's books are
good for everyone. Yet I believe that the status of Western classics
contributed to their popularity among adults. Karlsson-on-the-Roof
came about the same time, and I have already explained why it was “the best-loved” of Astrid
Lindgren's books in Russia.
Some of these
translated books were very odd. Again, I have written about Muffin the Mule; but there was also The
Adventures of Chunky, by Leila Berg,
who actually died just a couple of years ago. If I had known that she
was alive when I moved to the UK, I would have contacted her to tell
her how passionately I loved her book. But to a child, all authors
are by definition dead, so it didn't even occur to me that the author
of my childhood favourite could be alive. Why was this book
translated? Why this book, of all English books? By all standards, it
was obsolete already. I remember I was puzzled that one of Chunky's
friends didn't know what a refrigerator was. I was also puzzled that
Chunky's parents went to meet the king. Kings didn't fit into a
realistic story. Chunky's parents went to meet the king because, as I
realise now, they worked on a super-secret military project, but it
wasn't spelled out, and for a dislocated reader like myself it didn't
say anything. Yet I loved this book for its nice everyday adventures
and pranks, and without reference frames, without the background of
Swallows and Amazons
or Just William,
I didn't see its flaws. Maybe they aren't flaws, maybe it is just one
of many average books that come and go, but for me it was one of the
Great Books, an indispensible book from which I still remember long
passages by heart.
Not least, there
were books by Gianni Rodari. Some children's literature scholars may
know his book The Grammar of Fantasy,
but only one of his children's books is translated into English, The
Befana's Toy Shop, which in Russian was
closer to its original title, The Blue Train, but more imaginative:
The Travels of the Blue Arrow. For me, this book had everything I
wanted from a good story. There was the miniature perspective of the
animated toys and the eternal quest plot. There was the vague
boundary between real and magic. There was the misery of poverty.
There was the tragedy of parting and the joy of reunion. I wasn't
quite happy with the ending because the Blue Arrow crew never found
the boy they were looking for, as a true happy ending should be.
Maybe it was exactly why I liked this book so much.
I liked Rodari's
other books as well, the satirical Gelsomino
in the Land of Liars and Cippolino
the Onion Boy. I didn't care about
their political messages: Rodari was a convinced Communist, which
explains wy his books were translated in the Soviet Union and sold
millions of copies. In Cippolino,
some fruits and vegetables are rich and oppress other fruits and
vegetables, who finally revolt and establish a better society. It was
fine by me, because it was just like other stories about the
underprivileged who revolt. What puzzled me was the allocation of
roles. I would understand if all fruit were rich and all vegetables
poor, but there was no logic in the construction of this world.
Gelsomino
was a very transparent satire on the Communist regime, a 1984
for kiddies, but again, I didn't care, but enjoyed the wordplay and
the absurdity. If the grownups ever saw the satire, they kept it to
themselves.
Was I then a tremendously
naïve and uncritical reader who didn't understand books beyond the
superficial plot? From my clever scholarly perspective today, what
attracted me? Did I engage with the characters? Did I share their
joys and sorrows? Did I ever ask myself the Important Question: what
were these books really about? What did the authors want to say?
Neither my parent nor school teachers ever asked such questions, and
unless prompted, I don't think a child can ever think of them. Yet
these books were obviously important and formative, and I kept
re-reading them and remember them as if I read them yesterday. Again,
from my scholarly viewpoint, I engaged with the characters
emotionally, but never asking myself whether I liked them or wanted
to be like them. Possibly, all these characters were far too strange.
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