No matter how many new products modern publishing houses produce, the eyes of the reader who chooses books both for himself and for the younger generation will always light up with joy at the sight of names and titles familiar from childhood. And publishers know this very well – the top sales for almost any year invariably include classics, both adult and children’s literature.
Today the editors of Theater To Go decided to talk about reimagined classics – with the help of illustrations, new translations or sudden sequels that readers have been waiting for for many years.
Necessary clarification – we have provided an age rating for each selected book, but since we are talking about stories that have been tested not just by time, but by centuries, we ask you to pay even less attention to it than ever.
“Brother Tiger and Brother Rabbit”Joel Chandler Harris (illustrated and translated from English by Jerzy Kim)
Aquilegia-M, 0+
“The Tales of Uncle Remus” will forever remain not only in the hearts of readers of several generations, but also in the field of scientific interest of dialectologists and folklorists – Joel Chandler Harris, a man of remarkable talents, not only wrote down the stories and tales that blacks told each other overheard on the plantations of the American South slaves, but was also able to convey in writing the features of their speech. Even during his lifetime, the tales he retold (the total number of which exceeds two hundred) were actively published and translated into other languages, and due to the above-mentioned features of speech, they caused a lot of trouble for translators. In 1936, 25 fairy tales were freely translated by Mikhail Gershenzon, and perhaps it was this freedom that made his translation a reference.
Almost a hundred years later, Gershenzon’s work was continued by illustrator and translator Jerzy Kim. The book “Brer Tiger and Br’er Rabbit” includes 25 more fairy tales that have not been previously translated into Russian, the main characters of which were the characters known from the previous collection of “The Tales of Uncle Remus” (Brer Fox, Br’er Rabbit and Uncle Remus himself and his nephew Joel) , and completely “new” brothers, and not typical of their habitat in the American South. But regardless of their biological species, they continued to be good neighbors and solve interpersonal problems characteristic of both the American village of the late 19th century and the Russian city of the 21st century. This recognition of oneself and patterns of behavior, of course, only confirms the star status of the classic of world literature “Fairy Tales” and allows us to hope that with this new collection the work on translations of the general body of Joel Chandler Harris’ legacy will not end.
Jerzy Kim not only continued the work of Mikhail Gershenzon, but also acted as the artist of the collection. As in the case of the translation, for which it was necessary to seek a compromise between an accurate translation and domestic fairy-tale traditions, so in the case of the illustrations, Kim found a balance between the anthropomorphism of the characters, dressing them in clothing typical of 19th-century planters and confronting them with solving typical everyday problems , and maintaining as close to the natural appearance as possible.
“The beauty and the Beast”Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (illustrated by Manuela Adreani, retelling by Olga Varshaver)
Young Mom, 0+
In almost ten years since the start of the series “Immortal Tales in Illustrations by Manuela Adreani,” the publishing house “Young Mother” could have compiled a separate book dedicated to reviews of the series. Readers simultaneously criticized and praised both non-canonical texts and even less canonical illustrations by Manuela Adreani, which were more reminiscent of members of a street theater troupe than images familiar from Disney or Soviet cartoons.
“Beauty and the Beast” also did not go unnoticed – and for several reasons. Firstly, this edition returned Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont to the cover – it is to her (by the way, Prospero’s grandmother Merimee) and her editorial work that we owe the final and most widely circulated text of the fairy tale. Secondly, Olga Varshaver worked on the Russian version of Beauty and the Beast, included in this edition, from whose translations we know such authors as David Almond, Elinor Farjeon, Gary D. Schmid and many, many others.
In the case of “Beauty and the Beast,” Olga Varshaver acted not as a translator, but as a reteller and included in the text some details from the original and more complete version of the tale published by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbeau de Villeneuve (for example, Beauty’s dreamlike gift and some features of her farewell to Monster) 17 years before Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. And thirdly, of course, you cannot ignore the illustrations of the Italian artist Manuela Adreani. By her own admission, her character is characterized by some shyness – and it is this trait that suits the main characters of this fairy tale better than anyone, who for the first time encounter such a powerful, but filled with light and good feeling of first love.
“Pinocchio”Carlo Collodi (illustrated by Jeremy Almanza, translated from Italian by C. Danini)
Metamorphoses, 6+
Carlo Collodi’s compatriots did not immediately become acquainted with the full version of “Pinocchio” – a moralizing tale about what it is to be human, was published in the format of a newspaper serial for two years, and, unlike the Russian-language adaptation by Alexei Tolstoy, did not include readers at all into a cycle of adventures, chases and searches for magical artifacts, and made their hearts tremble with anxiety for the main character. And this feeling of anxiety and fear of successive obstacles on the way to achieving the goal in many ways seemed to come from the life of Collodi himself – he took up Pinocchio only to pay off his gambling debts, and hardly expected that in the near future In time, his book will approach in its popularity and scope the Divine Comedy itself.
The newest edition of “Pinocchio” was published in Russian in the classic translation by Camilla Danini, which has stood the test of time for centuries. The illustrator was the French artist and writer Jeremy Almanza – and it is his work that in many ways distinguishes previous editions of Collodi’s fairy tale. While maintaining the core imagery of the story, he added a wealth of detail to each scene, all of which evoke a steampunk aesthetic not often seen in children’s picture books. However, this aesthetic suits Pinocchio like no other, because it is inspired precisely by the industrialization and technical discoveries of the 19th century, at the end of which the fairy tale was written. Almanza combines this visual aesthetic, which is quite difficult to perceive, with stylistic solutions suggested and observed by Tim Burton, Walt Disney and Alex Hirsch (author and artist of the animated series “Gravity Falls”). The result of his work was almost a hundred illustrations and a very special visual code of “Pinocchio”, which will be equally interesting for both young and older readers to solve.
“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”Rudyard Kipling (illustrated by Maria Leshchuk, translated from English by Maria Yamashevskaya)
Gorodets, 6+
Appearing for the first time in the Panchatantra, a Sanskrit work of narrative prose from around the 4th century, the story of the brave mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi became widely known thanks to Rudyard Kipling, who included his own literary reworking of this plot in The Jungle Book. The writer openly admitted in a letter to his American publisher that he literally “ripped” the story from the original because, according to his observations in a very colonial spirit, “most of the native hunters in India today think largely according to the animals,” which is most likely possible interpreted as the writer’s awareness of the enduring relevance of fairy tales about animals endowed with human virtues and vices.
The plot, familiar to the Russian-speaking reader, perhaps even more from the Soviet cartoon of 1965 than from its literary basis, tells about the young mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, who, after a tragic flood, finds himself in a “white” family and bravely protects the boy who saved him from cobra family The new translation, carried out by Maria Yamashevskaya, corrects some factual errors of its predecessors – it returns the male gender to the muskrat Chuchundra, more familiar as the musk rat Chuchundra. And, of course, never before have illustrations for a fairy tale seen such a bold artist as Maria Leshchuk – she returned “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” to the dynamics inherent in the story by the very conflict between the lightning-fast animals in their movements, and added many historical details to the images of the interiors and suits.
“Three Ghost Stories”Guy de Maupassant (ill. Camille Garoche, translated from France by S. Ivanchina-Pisareva, E. Ilyina, E. Verno)
Metamorphoses, 16+
During his lifetime, Guy de Maupassant published no less than twenty collections of short stories, the stories from which received wide recognition both collectively and individually – at the end of the 19th century, the enlightened European public turned from novels to more compact prose. Among the distinctive features of Maupassant’s style, researchers highlight the writer’s pessimism, which progressed in parallel with the course of the then incurable syphilis. Towards the end of his short life, signs of decadence began to appear more and more clearly in his prose, referring both to an attempt to find aesthetics in all manifestations of life, and to internal immoralism.
Three Ghost Stories contains stories written by Maupassant in the 1880s and originally published in French newspapers. All three stories are united not only by the theme of a meeting with something mystical and beyond reasonable analysis, but also by a general feeling of frailty. No, not peace, but rather efforts and efforts to fill your life with light, love and goodness – all these efforts do not justify themselves, and a simple and naive person is forced to walk in circles around a broken trough, taking on a variety of guises.
This oppressive atmosphere is complemented by illustrations by Kamiya Garosh, made in mixed media 3D collage. Instead of drawing light and shadow, she creates mini-scenes in which she anchors the characters and surrounding details, creating the type of volume that may be familiar from stop-motion cartoons – and in this case, the artist’s visual style greatly enhances the dark effect of the novels. it would seem that they do not need additional reinforcement of the mystical horror and suspense hidden in them.
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