In the preface to the fairy tale "The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino" Alexei Tolstoy writes that when he was little, he read a book by Carlo Collodi, which was called "Pinocchio, or the Adventures of a Wooden Doll."
He told his comrades many times about the adventures of a wooden doll, and since the book was lost, he retells it in a new way every time. It is not true. "Pinocchio" was translated into Russian when Tolstoy was already 23 years old. He did not know Italian and could not read Pinocchio as a child. (I didn’t read it in translation either - by his own admission, they didn’t keep children's literature in the house.) He had read Pinocchio as an adult, and this tale touched his heart for a completely different reason.
The fact is that Alexei Tolstoy was not the beloved son of his father, Count Nikolai Tolstoy. He was not even his own son, in the opinion of many, and it was not by chance that he bore a different surname until the age of 16 - Bostrom. Alyosha was brought up not in his father's house, but with his uncle. Nikolai Tolstoy barely agreed to give young Alexei his surname and count's title.
That is why the story of a wooden doll who dreamed of becoming a man touched the writer's heart. After all, he himself was of "unknown origin" - like Pinocchio. And he also dreamed of “becoming a man” - the legitimate son of a noble father. And he rewrote this story in a different way, not because he forgot how it really was, but … However, more on that later …
It's just some kind of nightmare
In the tale of Carlo Collodi Malvina was not. There was a fairy with blue hair. But she did not become a fairy at once. In the beginning she was … a ghost. In the first version of the tale, Collodi was going to kill Pinocchio. The tale ended like this: Pinocchio runs away from the robbers through the forest, his strength leaves him, he sees a white house ahead and thinks: “If I have enough strength to run to this house, I’m probably saved.” He knocks on the door with all his might, they don't open it for a long time, and then …
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“A beautiful girl appeared in the window. She had sky-blue hair, a pale wax face, her eyes closed, and her arms crossed over her chest. Without even moving her lips, she said in a voice that seemed to come from the other world:
- There is no one in this house. Everybody died.
- Open me at least you! - pleaded Pinocchio, sobbing.
- I died too.
- She died? But then what are you doing here by the window?
“I’m waiting for the coffin to arrive to take me out of here,” and with these words the girl disappeared, and the window closed noiselessly.
After that, the robbers overtook Pinocchio and killed him. Wow fairy tale? In the old days, storytellers did not care very much about injuring children. Despite this, the story about the wooden boy was liked by the readers, the publishers demanded a continuation, and it was then that Collodi turned the ghost into a fairy and made her revive Pinocchio. And the blue hair, which was invented to emphasize the otherworldly pallor of the sinister girl, remained blue.
Winner of men
It is widely believed that the name Malvina means "tender". Nothing like this! The poet James MacPherson lived in the 18th century in Scotland. He composed a work called Poems of Ossian. Ossian is a legendary bard (like a Scandinavian skald) who lived in Britain in the 3rd century. Here MacPherson wrote poems on his behalf.
Ossian had a daughter-in-law (son's wife) named Malvina. Ossian's son died, and Malvina remained the closest person to him, like his own daughter. The Poems of Ossian were well known in Russia. From there the name of Malvin passed into the works of Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Pushkin. The origin of the name is debated.
Some believe that it comes from the ancient Germanic roots "male" (man) "win" (victory) - "winner of men." Is such a name suitable for the one who put Buratino in the closet? Perfect fit!
Hut, hut …
After the dead girl from the fairy tale "Pinocchio" turned into a fairy, she still had to die - again, out of chagrin that Pinocchio had left her. And resurrect again: next time Pinocchio meets the blue-haired fairy as an adult woman. Carlo Collodi generally loved to kill and resurrect characters. For example, the cricket that Pinocchio killed with a hammer. Or…
Come on. Well him. All these horrors are not in the tale about Buratino, however, if you look closely, you can also see something sinister in our Malvina. She lives alone in a house in the middle of the forest. Insects, birds and animals obey her, including such unpleasant ones as a frog and a toad. Does this remind you of anything?
Think about it. Lives in the forest … He commands frogs … By the way, the black poodle, which serves the girl with blue hair, is also not easy. Let us recall one of the greatest and most famous works of world literature - the drama Faust by the great Goethe. There, in the form of a black poodle, Mephistopheles appears to Faust - that is, Satan himself … So it turns out that Malvina is Baba Yaga in her youth! So after all, the fairy is the same witch, just pretty …
The secret of the golden key
Of course, when inventing his own Malvina, Aleksey Tolstoy was not inspired by Baba Yaga. But not a sorceress girl who, for some reason, dies endlessly. And by whom? Maybe the beautiful Columbine, with whom the trusting good-natured and muddler Pierrot is in love in old Italian and French comedies? Also no. After all, Columbine is a servant, and Malvina is a little mistress.
Columbine is a village simpleton, and Malvina is a strict girl "with upbringing." Where did she come from? To solve this riddle will help us … the key to it. Or rather, the golden key. There is no golden key in Carlo Collodi's tale. There is no door that he opens either. And for Alexey Tolstoy, this door was very important! And that's why.
He began work on a fairy tale when he lived in exile, but already dreamed of returning to Russia. In the fairy tale, the door lets the heroes out of the world of deception and violence into the just world, where the puppet theater will not belong to the exploiter Karabas-Barabas, but to the puppets themselves.
Simply put, through this door they enter Soviet Russia. To the world that Soviet Russia dreamed of building. Where Tolstoy himself dreamed of getting! But why do they get there with the help of a secret door and a golden key, and not in some other way? Oh, this is an interesting story!
Columbine, Pierrot and Harlequin.
Where did the golden key come from?
Before we tell you where the door and the golden key came from in the fairy tale, pay attention: Carlo Collodi's hearth in the closet of old man Geppetto is painted right on the wall. And in Tolstoy's fairy tale - on a piece of canvas. The door is, as it were, COVERED with this canvas. Let's remember this.
In 1909, Alexei Tolstoy regularly published stories for children in the children's magazine "Path". And in the same year in the magazine "Path" published the Russian translation of "Alice in Wonderland", made by Polixena Solovyova, daughter of the historian Sergei Solovyov and sister of the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. Here is an excerpt from this translation:
Did Alexei Tolstoy read "Alice" in the magazine in which he himself published? Sure! And if anyone still has doubts, here's more proof. Remember the cat's head cloud above Malvina's house? A cloud that looks so much like a cat's head that Artemon growls at it? Take a look at the artwork for Alice in Wonderland from The Path magazine.
Cat's head in the sky. Cheshire Cat. In that issue of the magazine, where the Cheshire cat appears on the pages of "Alice in Wonderland" for the first time, the story of Alexei Tolstoy "Polkan" was published. This is how the first meeting of a cat's head and a dog took place, described later in "The Adventures of Pinocchio".
Everything is more and more wonderful …
They are really similar. Alice is tired of the confusion that is happening in the wonderland, she is constantly trying to put things in order there - and Malvina also loves order, discipline and cleanliness. Alice is a diligent student, and Malvina teaches "silly Buratino". Alice participates in a crazy tea party, - Malvina arranges a tea party for Buratino …
That's how many things had to be combined in the writer's head to make the tale about Pinocchio appear! Memories of childhood, dreams of the future, a picture from a magazine read many years ago … But we have considered only one image.
Who is Karabas-Barabas and why is his name? Or why the nose grows from lies? Literature is such an amazing world, through which you travel many times, so many times you find something new …