I Won't Grow Up!

A HUNDRED YEARS OF CHILDHOOD:
AN ANTHOLOGY OF RUSSIAN WRITING FOR CHILDREN, 1917-2017

Edited by Olga Bukhina, Kelly Herold and Andrea Lanoux
Cherry Orchard Books; 270 pp.; $49

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Anthologies are always too long or too short; if they’re just right, they’re too short. Better to exhaust the reader, I say, than mislead them into feeling as if they now have a fair idea of the topic or authors. I was sure this anthology, with the selections’ original target audience being early readers (I’m guessing ages 5-9), was too skimpy in its inclusions - some of the 29 authors have only a couple of skinny poems - but after a while, maybe halfway through, I began to enjoy the arrangement: no full meals, but plenty of zakuski.

The editors have been savvy about allowing a loose thematic structure and in granting some of the excellent translators their own preferences of particular authors and works. There is a pleasing variety, unlimited by a solo-anthologizer’s special taste (I have been guilty of that in anthologies I’ve compiled).

The renowned Daniel Kharms (1905-1942), whose comic sensibility is so vast that it doesn’t exclude anybody (most importantly, not children), has several dandy pieces here. His work seems to inspire clever translations. Ilya Bernstein’s version of  “Mr. Golden Samovar” is among the highlights (here’s just one lovely lively stanza of it):

Boiling water was inside,
Splish-and-splashing was inside,
Swish-and-swooshing was inside!
All a-steaming and a-huffing,
All a-huffing and a-puffing,
Boiling water coming out,
Coming out—
Through the spout!

Kharms’ short story “Why Don’t We Write a Story?”—also translated by Bernstein--would have tickled Anton Chekhov:

“Why don’t we write a story?” said Vanya, taking out his notebook and putting it on the table.

“All right,” said Lenochka, sitting down next to him.

Vanya picked up a pencil and wrote, “Once upon a time, there was a king.”

Then Vanya stopped writing and started thinking. In the meantime Lenochka peeked into his notebook and read what he had written.

“Hold on,” said Lenochka. “Everyone knows THAT story.”

“What story?” asked Vanya.

“You know,” said Lenochka, “the one about the king who was in the middle of eating dessert, when he suddenly choked on a cookie. So the queen started hitting the king on the back to see if the cookie would budge. Only the king thought she was fighting, so he hit her on the head with a cup. So, the queen became furious and hit the king with a plate. So, the king hit the queen with a pot. So, the queen hit the king with a chair. So, the king jumped up and pushed over the table on top of her. But the queen crawled out from under the table and pushed the cupboard on top of him. But the king crawled out from under the cupboard and threw his crown at the queen. But the queen grabbed the king by his beard and threw him out the window. But the king came right back through a different window and pushed the queen into the oven. But the queen crawled up through the chimney, climbed out onto the roof, shimmied down a drainpipe, and came in again through the window.  Meanwhile, the king was busy trying to light the oven. The queen sneaked up behind the king—and pushed the king into the oven. And the king fell right in and got burned to a crisp. That’s the whole story.”

“What a silly story!” said Vanya. “I wanted to write something totally different.”

“So?” said Lenochka. “Write!”

Whether this volume will help cohere a representation of a century’s Russian literature for young children is doubtful, but many of the authors (among them, Artur Givargizov, Mikhail Esenovsky, Narine Abgaryan) will intrigue. The academic introduction is too long and overstates what the book accomplishes (“the cultural specificity of place and time shines through these texts”); there seems to me nothing particularly Soviet or “Russian” about the most delightful pieces. Anastasia Orlova’s “This Is Truck, and This Is Trailer,” which, although it was written perhaps for pre-readers, is so clever it’s almost worth half the cost of this pricey book. Here is one episode from it:

Truck braces himself and starts climbing. But Trailer does not want to go up the hill—he would rather roll down it.

Truck pulls Trailer up, up, up.

Trailer drags Truck down, down, down.

Truck huffs and puffs. Truck is annoyed, but Truck keeps going.

Phew! They made it up the hill.

But now …

time to go down the hill.

Trailer is excited, “Now I’ll get to roll down!”

But Truck drives down slowly, carefully.

Trailer pushes Truck, “Faster! Faster!”

Trailer shoves Truck, “Quicker! Quicker!”

Trailer laughs, bouncing up and down, “Go, go, go!”

Truck barely holds himself back—he does not want to get angry, does not want to go too fast.

Phew! They made it down the hill!

They keep driving.

Until …

another hill.

Truck braces himself, revs his engine.

Truck climbs up, up, up.

And up, and up, and up.

And up some more.

And Trailer …

Where is Trailer? He’s gone! He got unhitched!

[Translation by Jane Bugaeva]

Some of the less effective pieces are purposeful, unironically moralizing or, at least in translation, dull and unremarkable. Sergei Mikhailov (1913-2009), known for the trite and nationalistic “Uncle Styopa” verse tales and whose author note testifies to his having received awards from everyone from Stalin to Putin, should have been excluded just on the basis of such demon-won honors. (But that’s moralizing of me.)

Anyway, I recommend A Hundred Years of Childhood, even if it’s definitely too short; it should be double its length by simply including the Russian originals. Without them on hand, it’s hard to appreciate the tricky feats of punning, nonsense and sentiment that the translators have had to perform. The 15 reproductions from the Russian publications are first-rate.

– Bob Blaisdell