English storytellers

"Let’s start with a riddle
(Even Alice may not answer):
What remains of the fairy tale
After being told? "
(V. Vysotsky)
 

We all came from childhood and once loved fairy tales. But there is a time for everything: to live in the charm of beautiful and strange illusions and to part with them. One day you get too old and forget old friends until it's time to take Tom Sawyer or Blue Bird, Pinocchio or Pippi Longstocking off the shelf again and introduce them to your own children. But there are books that grow up with us, revealing more and more new meanings, parallels and subtexts over time. Therefore, we wonder how some writers manage to discover the secret of immortality?

Let's go on a journey through the pages of such immortal fairy tales, and they will surely reveal their secrets to us.

January 3, 2022 marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien – the father of "high fantasy" and the creator of books about Middle-earth beloved by many generations of readers, from the cozy children's "The Hobbit" to the formidable, militant and wise "The Lord of the Rings". An Oxford professor of philology, he invented the prehistory of mankind based on his own new linguistic reality – in fact, the first Old Testament books were rethought. It is continued by the story of the journey of magical creatures for the stolen treasures of the dwarves. This children's tale of adventure in the world of sword and magic is a prologue to "The Lord of the Rings", based on a synthesis of scientific and poetic analysis of mythology.

Tolkien preferred to speak of his own mythological system as discovering the hidden rather than inventing something new. His books made the previously marginal fantasy genre one of the most popular, gave rise to an interest in the romance of battles and wanderings, fairy tales and the early Middle Ages, made several generations of readers fight with swords and be called by fictitious names.

In terms of influence on culture and literature, The Lord of the Rings is recognized as one of the greatest works of the 20th century. The secret of Tolkien is in the word, for the sake of which the world of the wonderful captain Eärendil was created, whose ship moves among the stars and gives people hope. For the sake of the word, his living flesh and blood, the elves created the wonderful Silmarils at the dawn of time, five Istari Wizards once arrived at the Council of the Wise, discussing the question of Sauron, and Frodo went from the Shire to the sinister Mordor. This Word will live for centuries and acquaint many generations of readers with the history of the battle of the free creatures of Middle-earth with the forces of darkness.

The paths of Mirkwood call us further, to the pages of another storyteller. Carefully! TRESPASSERS W.! Oh, it's too late, you've already entered the Dark Forest. Then the road leads only forward. But it doesn't matter: if you get lost in the thicket, fall into the sleepy waters of the River, or find yourself in a Very Deep Pit with the Heffalump, the advice of a teddy bear with sawdust in his head will help you! He, of course, will not lead you to the main road leading to the Outer World (he himself has never been there, as you never know what toothy Tigers are hiding around the corner). But he will willingly share a couple of his sawdust wisdom, which will give much more – help you not to get lost in yourself. You will learn that the best recipe for not being alone is to keep your loved one in your heart, and the best way to write poetry is to let things go where they want to.

January 18 marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of Alan Milne, who once allowed the poetry of his childhood heart to develop into wonderful tales of Winnie the Pooh and his friends. Between the two world wars, when empires collapsed and families fell apart, he created a fairy tale free from politics and personal trauma. A fairy tale in which it is warm and cozy, like in a children's room, and that is why readers all over the world love it so much.

What colors to use to draw an illogical world, free from all frames and conventions, the world of the most unpredictable element – a child's fantasy? Perhaps the best answer to this question was one entangled in the web of everyday life Victorian priest, who fled from pedagogical despondency into the world of enlightened madness. His palette is absurdity, confusion, paradoxes, puzzles and shifters. His credo is "curiosier and curiosier", ringing laughter and open-eyed children. He gave one of his little friends a whole country – a mysterious, incomprehensible Country where everything is turned upside down, where truth is free from common sense, and logic is brought to the point of absurdity, where the world is twisted into a tangle of bizarre games and strange transformations.

Of course, you already know who we are talking about – the children of the whole world know by heart theatrical characters of Lewis Carroll. He is in everything – in the disappearing smile of the Cheshire Cat and in the stuttering of the fossilized Dodo, in the verbal confusion of the Mad Hatter and in Alice herself, in her inquisitive mind, pure heart and vivid, free fantasy. His fairy tales are the transformation of everyday life into a miracle, a world on the eyelashes of a sleeping man, where the tinkle of a sheep's bell is actually the clanging of dishes that the Duchess beats, the cry of the shepherd is the shrill voice of the Queen, and the mooing of cows is the lamentations of the Quasi Turtle. January 27 marks the 190th anniversary of the birth of this paradoxical storyteller. From the pages of the dilogy about Alice, we are called to carry fantasy through the years and give it to other children. Listen to him, and we will discover the secret of Carroll's immortality – the crystal of childhood, which he kept in his.

Text A. D. Kulikova, fiction lending library

Decoration: O. V. Koshevaya