This interview comes out 3 years late. Irina Petrovna Tokmakova was always very reverent and demanding about the word, - so this time she wanted the text to have “correct intonation”. But when the time came for the final edits, Irina Petrovna's health began to fail, and we postponed the approval of the material for an indefinite period. Unfortunately, during the life of Irina Petrovna, we never returned to our conversation. And the day before yesterday, April 5, at the age of 89, she passed away.

After hesitating, we nevertheless decided to publish this interview in memory of the wonderful children's writer, poetess and translator, author of fairy tales “Maybe zero is not to blame?”, “Good luck”, “Alya, Klyaksich and the letter A”, “Happily, Ivushkin!”, poems and plays, translations of English and Swedish poetry and prose, including Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows, Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll and the Wizard’s Hat, Winnie the Pooh and his friends" by Alan Milne.

We very much hope that this conversation will become an occasion for all of us to open the books of Irina Petrovna Tokmakova together with the children and, at least for the evening, plunge into the fairy-tale world to which she devoted her whole life.

Irina Petrovna, why fairy tales?

But the children learned these songs and dances against the backdrop of a terrible hunger. You know, the wooden bowls in the canteens were full of holes, not because the dishes were old, but because the kids were scraping the bottom with spoons. And when my mother gave me some money, I would go to the market and buy sweets for them. What a joy it was for them! At that time, I helped my mother around the clock. Walked with them, put them to bed. I am very used to children, I love them. Then I began to compose fairy tales and tell them before going to bed. Children from early childhood entered my soul. I never had a desire to be an adult prose writer. And if I wrote lyrics, then rarely, for the soul.

Did you realize then that writing is your path?

Literature has always been easy for me. I wrote a cool essay for the lesson to myself and to my neighbor on the desk. She wrote poetry, of course. But then there was a breakdown. Lebedev-Kumach's daughter, Marina, studied with me. I asked her to show my poems to my father. He read and wrote an adult review, referring to me as an adult author. He did not like some of the images. He said that it could not be so and that I had to write narrative poems. But this is such an authority. I followed his advice and broke down. Then I didn't write anything for a long time.

It's good that there was a good English teacher in the evacuation. I became interested in a foreign language and began to prepare for the philological faculty. To enter without exams, I needed a gold medal. And I was doing it all the time. Mom drove me to go for a walk, but I set myself a goal - a medal. She entered without exams, but abandoned poetry completely.

And when did you return to fairy tales?

I returned to fairy tales through translations of English and Swedish poems. I am a linguist by profession, I graduated from the Romano-Germanic department. Studied at the graduate school of the Faculty of Philology at the Department of General and Comparative Linguistics. I had a small child, a tiny scholarship, and in parallel I worked part-time as a guide-translator. And in one of the international delegations of power engineers, Mr. Borkvist, very well-known in his circle, approached me. We got to talking and he was touched when I read him a poem by Gustav Fröding in Swedish (my second language).

When Mr. Borkvist returned to Stockholm, he sent me a volume of Freding's poems, and since I had a small son, he also included a book of children's folk songs. I really wanted to translate them. I translated, and my husband drew illustrations for them and took the songs to Detgiz (now this is the publishing house "Children's Literature"). And they were just thinking of publishing a series of folk songs. And they took everything from me. I really liked this business, and I decided to continue. Then in Leninka, where I was working on my dissertation, I found Scottish folk songs. They seemed lovely to me. I translated them, and they, too, were immediately taken.

The translation is actually a new work. Have you had to adapt texts for young readers?

English fairy tales are very different from ours. There is more absurdity in them, and in Russian - melodies, lulling, movements. They are dynamic, but not intricate, and in English folklore there is a lot of incomprehensible, it is viscous. What I translated - the Edith Nesbit trilogy - is the beginning of the 20th century. Nice fairy tales, but there is some protracted, old-fashioned. I had to adapt, but not interfere much.

Although sometimes the translation becomes more popular than the original. For example, the translation of the fairy tale "Winnie the Pooh" by Boris Zakhoder. He is very fond of children. But Zakhoder contributed a lot of his own, as he himself said, "added zakhodernosti". I made my own translation of "Winnie the Pooh", in terms of intonation it is closer to the author's. But this translation came out once, and it is impossible to republish it - all the rights have been bought, you won’t get close. What I translated word for word is "Mio, my Mio" by Astrid Lindgren. It is so wonderfully written, such wonderful language. But “Peter Pan” seemed to me complicated, drawn out, not childish, so there is a little intervention. Also translated by Tove Jansson. The widely published translation seemed rather dry to me. The translator knows the language, but he is a teacher and scientist more than a writer.

When did you start writing yourself?

At that time, I graduated from graduate school and began working as an English teacher at the Physics and Technology Institute in Dolgoprudny. The road took a lot of time, besides, I got sick. Then my husband insisted that I quit my job and start translating. And after these translations at the dacha in the summer, the poem “To the Apple Tree” suddenly appeared to me. And then I came up with the idea to write a whole children's series about trees. It didn't go smoothly right away, but with great effort it worked out. And my husband, in addition to being an artist, edited well. He illustrated and edited these poems. Now the book "Trees" is published constantly.

Do the ideas of all works appear “suddenly”?

I was asked to write a whole educational cycle of fairy tales in Murzilka. The request in the editorial office of the magazine was such that something about the Russian language appeared. I wrote a fairy tale "Alya, Klyaksich and the letter A" about the Russian alphabet. There all the letters are animated characters. Klyaksich drove away the letter I, and the girl Alya could not sign the letter to her mother. And here Alya with the letter A traveled through the alphabet.

Then there was the second book - "Alya, Klyaksich and Vrednyuga" - the basic rules of the Russian language for the first grade. Then "Alya, Anton and Pereput" is the second class. Another story about numbers. There, a character from the puzzle disappears, and it cannot be solved. And the last of Ali's series of adventures is about the English language. There, having got naked, I wrote some poems in English. By the way, the name of the heroine - Alya, an abbreviation for the full "Alexander" - came from Pakhmutova. We were well acquainted with their family.

How often did real people act as prototypes for your characters?

I take a lot from my life. For example, we had an Airedale Terrier. And so I wrote a fairy tale in which a dog understood the human language if a kind person spoke to it, and the unkind people only heard barking. I wrote the main character from my pet. Later there was a book “And a merry morning will come” - this is a fairy tale where a girl ends up in the post-war period in the city of Krutogorsk, the prototype of which was Penza during our evacuation. And in the fairy tale “Marusya will return again,” the main character lived in a dacha, which I copied from mine. The fairy tale features a talking house, whose name was Green Klim. We still call our country house that way. In "Happily, Ivushkin!" the house is also real, in this we lived in the Kostroma region. Almost everywhere where there is a description of the house, the interior of my dacha or places where I had to live appears. But the children's characters are fictional.

Did you write fairy tales for your son?

I didn’t write fairy tales for my son. True, one had to. As a child, he slept very badly. And I came up with “An Evening Tale”, in which the boy does not want to sleep, so the owls decided to drag him away and turn him into an owlet so that he would not sleep at night. According to this tale, the play "Zhenya the Owl" was even written.

Do you think over instructive elements in a fairy tale in advance, for example, now there will be a fairy tale about friendship or now about how useful it is to go to bed early?

I do not do it consciously: now I will write a moral. It comes from the subconscious, crawls out of the bins. For example, in the fairy tale "Happily, Ivushkin!" I did not think: it is necessary to write that children should not doubt their parents. It just happened.

I write without thinking through the whole story. This play is thought out action by action. When I write prose, I release the characters on the page and do not know what will happen next. They begin to live. I just watch them. I never know what they will do.

I highly appreciate Samuil Marshak. Recommendations vary by age. "Children and animals" - for the smallest, "How Grishka tore the books" - for schoolchildren. And I really love "Quiet Tale" - a very nice, kind poem about hedgehogs. I love the works of Lev Kassil. For example, for middle-aged children, The Great Confrontation is perfect. Vitaly Bianchi has a lot of good prose for preschoolers and the smallest - about nature, about animals. A witty and charming book "The Adventures of Captain Vrungel" by Andrey Nekrasov.

The secret of a good fairy tale is to always remember that a fairy tale is written for a child. When I watch some modern cartoons, I am annoyed that everything is there: the authors demonstrate themselves, their imagination and skill. There is only one thing - love for children.

What do you think is the secret to the success of your books?

First, love for children. As a children's writer, the first thing you need to do is love children. Secondly, knowledge of child psychology and a professional approach. Writing stories is a serious profession. Compared to Marshak, Barto, Mikhalkov, many things now look amateurish. And my personal secret is this: I was very strict with myself and worked hard. I wrote a short poem about pine trees for two months. The husband helped, was the editor, he always sorted out a lot of options, achieving perfection. And I could not afford fuzzy rhyme, interruption of rhythm. Demanding on yourself is very important for real, not momentary success.

Interviewed by Ekaterina Lyulchak

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about the author

She graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, defended her dissertation in political science and studied at VGIK as a screenwriter. She worked as a science journalist at RBC, wrote articles about unusual people for Ogonyok and social problems on Pravoslavie.ru. After 10 years of work in journalism, she officially confessed her love for psychology, becoming a student at the Faculty of Clinical Psychology of the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education. But a journalist is always a journalist. Therefore, at lectures, Ekaterina draws not only new knowledge, but also topics for future articles. The passion for clinical psychology is fully shared by Ekaterina's husband and her daughter, who recently solemnly renamed the plush hippo Hippo into the Hypothalamus.

Children's poet and prose writer, translator of children's poems, laureate of the State Prize of Russia for works for children and youth (for the book "Happy Journey!"). Irina Petrovna has always been an excellent student: she graduated from school with a gold medal, having special success in literature and English; having entered the philological faculty of Moscow State University without exams, she graduated with honors; She combined her postgraduate studies with work as a guide-translator. Listen to Tokmakova's works for schoolchildren and younger children.



Once I. Tokmakova accompanied foreign power engineers - there were only five of them, but they came from different countries, so the young translator had to speak English, French and Swedish at the same time! The Swedish power engineer was an elderly man - he was amazed that a young Muscovite not only spoke his native language, but also quoted lines from Swedish poets to him. Returning to Stockholm, he sent Irina Petrovna a collection of Swedish folk songs. This small book, taken out of the package, in fact, will drastically change the fate of I. Tokmakova, although no one has yet suspected this ...

Lev Tokmakov (he himself tried to write poetry) involuntarily heard Swedish lullabies performed by his wife, became interested and offered them to the editors of the Murzilka magazine, with which he collaborated. There appeared the first publication of I. Tokmakova. Then the verses-songs translated by her from the Swedish language were collected in a separate book “The bees lead a round dance”, but it was not L. Tokmakov who was assigned to illustrate it, but the already famous artist A.V. Kokorin. And here is the second book by I. Tokmakova: “Little Willy-Winky” (translated from Scottish folk songs) - already published in illustrations by L.A. Tokmakova. Willy Winky is a dwarf who looks like Ole Lukoye from G.Kh. Andersen. After "Baby" Irina Petrovna was accepted into the Writers' Union - on the recommendation of S.Ya. Marshak! So I. Tokmakova, abandoning the career of a scientist, philologist, teacher, became a children's poet and writer. But not only - the range of literary activities of Irina Petrovna is extremely wide.

The creative union of Irina and Lev Tokmakov developed successfully. The children's poet Irina Tokmakova, published in the 1960s, was illustrated by the artist Lev Tokmakov: "Trees" (1962), "Kukareku" (1965), "Carousel" (1967), "Evening Tale" (1968). Irina Petrovna is the author of not only poetry books, but also a significant number of fairy tales: such as “Alya, Klyaksich and the letter “A”, “Maybe zero is not to blame?”, “Happily, Ivushkin!”, “Rostik and Kesha” , "Marusya will not return" and others. They appeared in the illustrations of both L. Tokmakov and other artists (V. Dugin, B. Lapshin, G. Makaveeva, V. Chizhikov and others).

Irina Tokmakova, in turn, worked with the works of foreign children's authors as a translator. In the translations or retellings of Irina Petrovna, Russian-speaking children got acquainted with the famous heroes of John

M. Barry, Lewis Carroll, Pamela Travers and others. I.P. Tokmakova translated a huge number of poems from the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR and the world: Armenian, Bulgarian, Vietnamese, Hindi, Czech and others. As a poet-translator, Irina Petrovna often "visits" on the pages of the Cucumber magazine. According to I. Tokmakova: “As an integral part of beauty, poetry is called upon to save the world. Save from grief, pragmatism and acquisitiveness, which they are trying to elevate to virtue.

In 2004, the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin sent congratulations on the 75th anniversary of I.P. Tokmakova, who made a huge contribution to both domestic and world children's literature. Irina Petrovna is a long-standing authority in the pedagogical field as well. She is the author and co-author of many anthologies for children of preschool and primary school age. Together with his son Vasily (who once listened to Swedish folk songs performed by his mother in the cradle) I.P. Tokmakova wrote the book "Let's Read Together, Let's Play Together, or Adventures in Tutitamiya", designated as "a manual for a novice mother and an advanced baby." Tokmakov Sr. also left a mark in children's literature as a writer: in 1969, the book “Mishin Gem” was published, which Lev Alekseevich himself wrote and illustrated.

Children's poet, prose writer and translator of children's poems Irina Petrovna Tokmakova was born in Moscow on March 3, 1929 in the family of an electrical engineer and a pediatrician, head of the Foundling House.
Irina wrote poetry since childhood, but she believed that she did not have writing abilities. She graduated from school with a gold medal, entered the philological faculty of Moscow State University. In 1953, after graduating, she entered the graduate school in general and comparative linguistics, worked as a translator. She got married and had a son.
One day, the Swedish power engineer Borgqvist came to Russia, who, having met Irina, sent her a book of children's songs in Swedish as a gift. Irina translated these verses for her son. But her husband, illustrator Lev Tokmakov, took the translations to the publishing house, and soon they came out in the form of a book.
Soon a book of Irina Tokmakova's own poems for children, created jointly with her husband, "Trees", was published. It immediately became a classic of children's poetry. Then prose appeared: “Alya, Klyaksich and the letter “A”, “Maybe zero is not to blame?”, “Happily, Ivushkin”, “Pines rustle”, “And a merry morning will come” and many other stories and fairy tales. Irina Tokmakova also translates from many European languages, Tajik, Uzbek, Hindi.
Irina Tokmakova - laureate of the State Prize of Russia, laureate of the Alexander Grin Russian Literary Prize (2002).

I do not presume to claim that I know all the variants of Lev Tokmakov's illustrations for "An Evening Tale" by Irina Tokmakova. But today I wanted to re-read it and compare the drawings in at least those three books that were at hand.
Separate editions of "Evening Tale" were published in the series "My First Books" - in 1968 and 1983.

I met a slightly earlier version of the illustrations in the collection "Carousel" of 1967:

In the collection of 1967, on 8 pages reserved for a fairy tale, the main thing is rapid movement. First - a rush to him, which is already felt in the rapid inclination of the protagonist (a typical intellectual of the 60s). This slope is the diagonal on which the entire reversal composition is built:

On the following pages, the harbingers of movement and anxiety are the curtains flung up on the window:

On the third turn, everything is subject to movement. Owls frowning in flight and an absolutely stunning silhouette picture:

The movement ends with the slam of the open door and the impetuous gesture of the adult hero:

Bright, concise, finished.

The "Evening Tale" of 1968 has 16 pages and, despite the presence of only two colors - black and white, there are much more lyrical shades. A village evening, a walk through the woods... The book begins with such a quiet note:

And the main character is not an impetuous young intellectual, but a short-sighted eccentric in thick glasses, the lenses of which gleam in the evening light:

And the fairy tale almost does not look like a fairy tale, its situation is so real:

Pay attention to the boy Zhenya. In the editions of the 60s, he is an ordinary cheerful tomboy:

In the book of 1968, there was a place for the dialogue of an eccentric with a woodpecker, a mouse and a mole:

And here is his run from the dense evening forest to the lights of the village:

The last spread almost repeats the drawing from the "Carousel" collection, but how the movements of the eccentric are broken, they do not have the wholeness of the impulse that we saw before:

The book of 1983 is made in a completely different manner. The main character is a modern "tourist" in a baseball cap and with a camera. And Zhenya is no longer a tomboy, but a real capricious. And the fairy tale is real, so toy and warm.

was born Irina Petrovna Tokmakova March 3, 1929 in an intelligent family of electrical engineer Pyotr Karpovich Manukov and pediatrician Lidia Alexandrovna Diligentskaya.
From a young age, Tokmakova wrote poetry, but she did not take her hobby seriously and therefore chose the profession of a linguist. Irina Petrovna graduated from school with honors, with a gold medal. Entered the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University. In 1953 she graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, studied at the graduate school in general and comparative linguistics. At the same time she worked as a translator.
Husband, illustrator Lev Tokmakov, played an important role in the beginning of his creative path; he took the translations of Swedish poems to a publishing house, where they were accepted for publication.
A year later, the first book of his own poems, Trees, was published, made together with Lev Tokmakov.
Peru Tokmakova owns educational fairy tales for preschool children and classical translations of English and Swedish folklore poems.
Irina Petrovna Tokmakova, laureate of the State Prize of Russia for works for children and youth (for the book "Happy Journey!").
Later, a large number of works for children were released: “The Seasons”, “The Pines are Noisy”, “The Tale of the Sazanchik”, “Zhenka the Owl”, “In the Native Land: Tradition”, “Summer Downpour”, “Enchanted Hoof”, “