We need children's drawings for the fairy tale Three Fat Men.

You return from work on black December evenings and dream that the long-awaited magic and fairy tale will appear through the darkness, as happens in Vladimir Konashevich’s drawings for “Three Fat Men” by Yuri Olesha.
Pre-war 1940. The darkness deepens. But in life there is still a place for nobility, kindness and courage.

I am very glad that buka_barabuka gave us the opportunity to see this truly “museum book”.

I wonder how you read Yuri Olesha’s book as a child? Like a revolutionary fairy tale? Or like the story of a doll? It seems to me that the plot was perceived then as a continuation of the usual children's game: for girls - with dolls, for boys - with heroic deeds. And therefore it is close to everyone.
But even with a puppet plot, not everything is simple to an adult eye.
The drawings of Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, the first illustrator of Yu. Olesha, are closer to the eccentric words of the author. And they resemble pictures of a “magic lantern” (this is how Dr. Gaspar Arneri sees everything around him).
But there is darkness in them too.
Take a closer look at the illustration. Who is dealing with the doll of Tutti's heir? Guardsmen who went over to the side of the people.

“An hour ago she knew how to sit, stand, smile, dance. Now she has become a simple stuffed animal, a rag. Somewhere in her throat and chest, under the pink silk, a broken spring wheezed, like an old clock wheezes before the time has struck.”

The death of a doll is similar to the death of a living child, and at the same time - to the death of time.
"...an old clock is a symbol of the old era. The metaphorical language of the fairy tale creates an image of a lost culture. The writer lets it shine as a farewell performance by a circus girl. Everyone's heart skips a beat when the "last doll" walks along the alleys of the park, whose steps were similar the rustle of falling rose petals." (M. Kostyukhina "Toy in children's literature").

P.S. I will leave you with this farewell note. In fact, Olesha’s book surprisingly combines the aesthetic ideals of “old-fashioned” symbolism and the latest avant-gardeism (according to Irina Arzamastseva). The City of Three Fat Men is a circus city and at the same time a game model of society. “The carnival of the revolution swept away the differences between closed arts, united the reality of life and the mysterious spectacle.” And the children’s fairy tale about the Three Fat Men is perceived as a “carnival” - “a kind of literary result of those revolutionary changes” that renewed the culture during the first decade of a different era.

I'm still wondering if the illustrations are really L.Vladimirsky to "Three Fat Men", published already in 1963 in the form of postcards, were published for the first time in a book only in 1981?

Yu. Olesha. "THREE FAT MEN" Set of postcards.
(“Soviet Artist”, 1963, ill. L.Vladimirsky)

How to fly from earth to the stars,
How to catch a fox by the tail
How to make steam from stone
Our doctor Gaspard knows.

It is unknown what Tibulus was thinking about at that moment. But, probably, he decided this: “I will cross the square along this wire, like I walked on a tightrope at the fair. I won’t fall... I will reach the opposite roof and be saved.”
And when he was halfway to the lantern, the officer’s voice was heard in complete silence:
- Now I'll shoot. One two Three!
The shot rang out.
Tibul continued to walk, but for some reason the officer fell...
He was killed.

In one place, due to the wind, a completely incredible incident happened: a seller of children's balloons was carried away by the balloons.
Dance teacher Razdvatris
I usually looked down.
The teacher squealed like a rat,
He had a long nose
And now to the bearer of Razdvatris
The straw shoe has grown!

The seller, with all his might, sat down in something soft and warm. He did not let go of the balls - he held the string tightly.
He sat in the kingdom of chocolate, oranges, pomegranates, cream, candied fruits... The throne was cake.
Three pastry chefs and twenty cooks attacked the seller...In one minute he was surrounded from all sides.
Six servants in blue livery lifted the huge platter on which he was sitting. They carried him away.

– You will sit in your cage until we catch the gymnast Tibul. We will execute you together. Prospero was silent.
-You forgot who you want to fight with. We, the Three Fat Men, are strong and powerful. I, the First Fat Man, own all the grain... The Second Fat Man owns all the coal, and the Third bought up all the iron. We are the richest!

The Negro climbed onto the stage.
The crowd froze. The black man was a head shorter than Lapitup and three times thinner than him. However, no one doubted that in the event of a fight the black man would win - he looked so decisive, stern and confident. The strong man disappeared.
- This is how the people of the Three Fat Men will drive away! - the black man said cheerfully.

Tomorrow morning you will bring the corrected, healthy doll to the Palace of Three Fat Men.
“Yes... but...” the doctor protested.
- No talking! The doll should be fixed by tomorrow morning. If you do this, you will be rewarded; if not, severe punishment.

“Su-ok...” the doctor repeated. – But you are the doll of Tutti’s heir!
- What a doll! I'm an ordinary girl...
– What?.. You are pretending!
The doll came out from behind the partition. The lamp illuminated her brightly. She smiled, tilting her disheveled head to the side.
- Is this really a living girl?
Here the doctor even clasped his hands. - This is simply an amazing similarity, or as they say in science, a phenomenon.

The dog fought with the man. The man won. He grabbed the prey and, clutching it to his chest, ran just in the direction from which the doctor was coming.
And when he met with the crew, Suok...saw something terrible. The strange man did not run, but rushed with graceful leaps, barely touching the ground, like a ballet dancer. The green tails of his coat flew behind him like the wings of a windmill. And in his arms... in his arms he held a girl with black wounds on her chest.
- It's me! – Suok shouted.

- Is that you, doll? – asked the heir Tutti... “What should I do? – Suok was scared. “Do dolls talk?”
But Dr. Gaspar came to the rescue.
“Mr. Heir,” he said solemnly, “I cured your doll! The doll undoubtedly became prettier, then she received a new, magnificent dress, and most importantly, I taught your doll to speak, compose songs and dance.”

The guard was sleeping and had an extraordinary dream. He dreamed that the doll of the heir Tutti came up to him. She was exactly like this morning, when Dr. Gaspar Arneri brought her... Only now, in a dream, she turned out to be a living girl.
...Sook, seeing that the guard was sleeping, took a lantern and, on tiptoe, carefully entered the fence.

From the menagerie, from behind the iron fence, a huge man walked calmly, with firm, wide steps.
With one hand he held a panther by the collar, twisted from a piece of iron chain... On the other hand this man carried a girl...
- Prospero! It's Prospero!
- Save yourself!

How to fly from earth to the stars,
How to catch a fox by the tail
How to make steam from stone
Our doctor Gaspard knows.

The trial is over. The verdict was:
“The imaginary doll... released the most important rebel and enemy of the Three Fat Men - the gunsmith Prospero. She will be torn to pieces by animals."
She lay motionless...
Then everyone saw that it was not a living girl, but a doll - a torn, old, worthless doll.

People were advancing from all sides. There were many of them. Bare heads, bloody foreheads, torn jackets, happy faces...
These were the people who won today.

The Three Fat Men were driven into the very cage in which the gunsmith Prospero was sitting.

M. – L., Land and Factory, 1928. 192 p. with color ill. autotypes - inserts. Circulation 7000 copies. In publishing carton. On the top cover color. drawing by M. Dobuzhinsky. 21x15 cm. One of the favorite children's books is a legend of Soviet book publishing. Very rare in good condition!

“Childhood is brilliant - it wants to dig deep and reach the very ends of the earth. If you were lucky enough to be born at the turn of two centuries, you are experiencing a second childhood - the childhood of a new world,” wrote the head of the formal school in literature, Viktor Shklovsky, about Yuri Olesha in the article “Deep Drilling”.

These words in many ways applied not only to Olesha, but to a whole galaxy of authors of that time - futurists and acmeists, members of the Serapion Brothers and LEF. The freshness of a child's view of the world, giving rise to unexpected metaphors and allusions, has become one of the principles of the new literary aesthetics. And Yuri Olesha became one of its most prominent representatives. “Olesha has laser vision. Plot metaphors - Olesha's vision system. He sees a dragonfly and that it looks like an airplane. An autumn tree looks like a gypsy - and you see both the tree and the gypsy. Olesha mastered the art of awakening freshness of perception, mastered the originality of sensations. Olesha’s boldest metaphors - when bridges look like cats - are read by children “with a squeal”, as they also see the world in a new way. The world of children is metaphorical, it is a world of bold visions and comparisons,” Shklovsky writes in the same article. It is obvious that the visual plasticity of the writer’s prose promised his books a long romance with illustrators. Moreover, this could be expected from the children's book “Three Fat Men”.

Fat men and weirdos

Written in 1924, the book became the first major work of Yuri Olesha and was published only in 1928: it was at this time that controversy began over the formal school, which delayed its publication. However, in 1927, Olesha’s novel “Envy” was published, which was a great success and helped the publication of the first book. The first illustrator of “Fat Men” was the graphic artist of the “World of Art” Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky: the famous theater artist drew pictures for the book in France, and it was published in the Moscow-Leningrad publishing house “Earth and Factory”. At that time, the author of numerous decorations, drawings for books by Korney Chukovsky and Andersen’s fairy tales, the artist carefully read “Three Fat Men” and drew the plots in almost detail: thus, the seller of balls, which Olesha compares with a teapot painted with daisies, is exactly how Dobuzhinsky portrays it. The publication became popular: Dobuzhinsky was awarded a diploma for his illustrations of “Three Fat Men” at the end of a large book exhibition of new products in Moscow, and in 1930 the book was republished.In the same year, 1930, in issue No. 26 of June 30, Literaturnaya Gazeta published a favorable review of “Fat Men and Eccentrics” by the venerable Soviet critic and public figure Anatoly Lunacharsky. It was written in the wake of the performance at the Moscow Art Theater and finally dispelled doubts about the closeness of the fairy tale to proletarian aesthetics: “Three Fat Men” is an extremely graceful work. It has a peculiar persuasiveness, since it gives the impression of the absence of violence against oneself. It flows like some kind of funny joke, carefree developing its bizarre and colorful pattern. Does this mean that the author of the play, Olesha, is already a new person, whose class consciousness and its individual “bowels” have been brought to complete unity? Or does this mean that he expressed the sentiment of philistinism? Neither one nor the other. The gracefulness of Olesha’s work is explained by the fact that he speaks on behalf of the “eccentrics,” on behalf of the best part of the scientific and artistic intelligentsia. Lunacharsky shows that the fairy-tale story about “fat men” and “eccentrics” contains the writer’s confession, “an apologetics for the artistic intelligentsia who wholeheartedly accepted the revolution.” Thus, the “formalist” fairy tale was given a ticket to a happy publishing life.

In 1924, Olesha wrote his first major prose work - the fairy tale novel “Three Fat Men” (published in 1928), dedicating it to Valentina Leontievna Grunzaid, whom he was courting at that time, but by the time the novel was published she had already become the wife of the writer Evgeniy Petrovich Petrova (Kataeva). Later he married Olga Gustavovna Suok. The entire work is imbued with a romantic revolutionary spirit. This is a fairy tale about the revolution, about how cheerfully and courageously poor and noble people fight against the domination of three greedy and insatiable fat rulers, how they save their adopted heir Tutti, who turned out to be the stolen brother of the main character - the circus girl Suok, and how the whole people an enslaved country becomes free. The book tells about the revolution raised by the poor, led by the armorer Prospero and the gymnast Tibulus, against the rich (“fat men”) in a fictional country. The fairy-tale novel “Three Fat Men” is the first prose work of Yu.K. Olesha. The fairy tale novel was written in 1924 and dedicated to the writer’s wife, Olga Suok. The name of the main character Suok is the maiden name of the writer’s wife, Olga Gustavovna, and her sister, Serafima Gustavovna, Olesha’s first lover. The book gives a special interpretation of the name: the name Suok means “all life” in the fictitious “language of the dispossessed.” In 1953, he left the family because his wife, Vasilisa Georgievna, behaved incorrectly. The writer Viktor Shklovsky was a very freedom-loving person and demanded freedom of action for himself. He had an affair with his typist Simochka Suok. Once she was the wife of Olesha, then Narbut, and then just a typist for famous writers - in order to acquire a husband, she was very interesting in appearance and an interesting person. But Viktor Borisovich did not intend to leave his family: he had a daughter, and he loved his Vasilisa all his life.

One day he came home at 12 o'clock and the door was not opened for him. And he went to Sima’s ten-meter room, leaving everything to his wife: the apartment, the library, the dacha. And he stayed in Sima’s room in a communal apartment. These are the parallels. The surname of Dr. Gaspard's housekeeper, Ganymede, is the name of a character in Greek mythology, the cupbearer on Olympus. Prospero is the name of the sorcerer from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. The surname of Captain Bonaventura is the pseudonym of the medieval theologian and philosopher Giovanni Fidanza. In fact, this work is the first fairy tale about revolution in Soviet literature, which reflected the author’s true belief that humanity will sooner or later take the path of renewal, which will affect both the natural world and the world of feelings. The true reason for the creation of the fairy tale is Olesha’s unrequited love for Suok, who breaks up with him during this period of his work.

The author carefully hides the personal drama behind the story about... the revolution. The world of a fairy tale is the author’s romantic world, which is why all the good characters will be happy in the end. The author himself staged “Three Fat Men” on stage. A hand-drawn cartoon appeared in 1963, a motion picture in 1966, and a musical puppet cartoon in 1980. The novel gives a special interpretation to many names. The name Suok means "all life" in the fictitious "language of the dispossessed." The surname of Dr. Gaspard's housekeeper is Ganymede, the name of a character in Greek mythology, a cupbearer on Olympus. Prospero is the name of the sorcerer from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. The surname of Captain Bonaventura is the pseudonym of the medieval theologian and philosopher Giovanni Fidanza. The book is filled with circus tricks and moves that are not often found in fairy tales, much less in novels. Behind this apparent ease of the attraction lies the struggle between good and evil - the eternal theme of life.

The atmosphere of the fabulous land of Three Fat Men is reminiscent of pre-revolutionary Odessa. Yura Olesha's native language was Polish. In 1902 the family moved to Odessa. Here Yuri entered the Richelieu gymnasium; Even during his studies he began to compose poetry. The poem “Clarimonda” (1915) was published in the newspaper “South Herald”. After graduating from high school, in 1917 Olesha entered Odessa University and studied law for two years. In Odessa, he, together with young writers Valentin Kataev, Eduard Bagritsky and Ilya Ilf, formed the group “Collective of Poets”. During the Civil War, Olesha remained in Odessa, and in 1921 he moved at the invitation of V. Narbut to work in Kharkov. He worked as a journalist and published poems in newspapers. In 1922, Olesha's parents emigrated to Poland. He did not go with them and stayed in Ukraine.

In the world of the story there is no magic as such, but some fantastic elements are still present. For example, a scientist named Tub created a doll capable of developing in appearance like a living girl, and refused to give Tutti’s heir an iron heart instead of a human one (the Fat Men needed an iron heart so that the boy would grow up cruel and ruthless). Tub, having spent eight years in a menagerie cage, turned into a creature resembling a wolf - completely overgrown with fur, his fangs lengthened. The country is ruled by Three Fat Men - monopolistic tycoons who have neither titles nor formal positions. It is unknown who ruled the country before them; they are rulers who have a minor heir, Tutti, to whom they are going to transfer power. The country's population is divided into “people” and “fat people” and those who sympathize with them, although clear criteria for such a division are not given. Fat people are generally presented as rich people, gluttons and slackers, people - as poor people, starving people, working people, but among the heroes of the novel there are many exceptions, for example Dr. Gaspard Arneri, who, with his modest income, cannot be classified as poor, but who nevertheless sympathizes with the revolutionaries , as well as nameless guardsmen shooting at their fellow soldiers, loyal to the oath of the Fat Men.

In the country of Three Fat Men, there is a revolutionary situation - discontent among the poor part of society, attempts to raise a rebellion. The ideological inspirers of the revolutionaries are the gunsmith Prospero and the gymnast Tibulus. One of the main characters of the story, the scientist Dr. Gaspar Arneri, sympathizes with the people, although he himself is a fairly wealthy man. Prospero is arrested and imprisoned in a menagerie cage, but the tightrope walker Tibulus remains free. Gaspar hides Tibul in his house and repaints him as a black man for disguise. The next day, the “Negro” learns about the underground passage from the palace of the Three Fat Men (this secret is revealed to Tibulu by the balloon seller, who was accidentally blown into the palace kitchen by the wind).

Meanwhile, the palace guards who have rebelled are stabbing with sabers the wonderful doll of the heir Tutti, similar in appearance to a living girl, and the doctor is ordered to repair the mechanism in one night under the threat of severe punishment. He cannot do this for objective reasons and takes the doll to the palace, but loses it on the way. In search of a doll, he finds a circus girl, Suok, in the van of traveling performers, who looks like two peas in a pod like a broken doll.

At the initiative of Tibulus, she agrees to replace the doll and help the revolutionaries: save Prospero from the palace menagerie. The girl succeeds: Prospero escapes from the palace through an underground passage. But Suok herself is sentenced to death. Nevertheless, everything turns out well for her and the revolutionaries: the guards, who went over to the side of the people, replace the girl with a found doll, the power of the Fat Men is overthrown, and Suok and Tutti (who turned out to be her brother) give performances together.

Lydia Chukovskaya criticized the novel: in her opinion, the world created by Olesha in “Three Fat Men” (and in many later works) is a world of things, and not a world of human feelings. But readers are people, and touching them, moving them, is given only to humans; a thing is interesting to us only when we can see a person more clearly through it. In “Three Fat Men,” things rule autocratically, slowing down the movement of the plot, focusing the reader’s attention on the secondary, to the detriment of the main thing. Reading “Three Fat Men,” you involuntarily recall the words of Flaubert in one of his letters: “Excessive comparisons should be crushed like lice.” And “Three Fat Men” seems to have been written specifically for this purpose, so that all things, all animals, all people can be compared with animals and with things. “Large roses, like swans, slowly swam in bowls”; “The lanterns looked like balls filled with dazzling boiling milk”; “The roses poured out like compote”; “His spurs were long, like runners”; “The panther, making its terrible journey through the park and the palace, appeared here. The wounds from the guards’ bullets bloomed like roses on her skin.” But about the people: “They fled to the city. They were running away. From a distance, people looked like multi-colored flags”; “Whole heaps of people fell along the road. It seemed as if multi-colored shreds were falling on the greenery”; “Now high under the glass dome, small, thin and striped, he looked like a wasp crawling along the white wall of a house.”

Visually, externally, all this is probably true: falling people look like rags, a man in a striped suit looks like a wasp. But these people fall, struck by the bullets of heroes, a person walking under the dome commits heroism - why does the author see them only from the outside? An exclusively picturesque point of view is hardly appropriate here. If wounded people seem to the author like multi-colored rags, then, apparently, their death does not particularly affect him; It is not surprising that the reader remains indifferent to their death. Here we come to the main source of the cold that emanates from the book. After all, the theme of “Three Fat Men” is the struggle of the working people against the oppressors, the struggle of the rebel people against the government. The trouble is not that this theme is taken as if it were a fairy tale; on the contrary, a fairy tale could provide enormous opportunities for social generalization and for the revelation of heroism. The trouble is that the main theme is drowned in the whims of the plot, the trouble is that the hazel-style roses do not bloom in its path. How and why the people managed to win, how and why the guards went over to the side of the people, how the rebels took the palace - we learn very little about all this - much less than about Suok's pink dress, about the sound of her name or about the shadow cast on the face of a sleeping person with balloons.

None of Olesha’s outstanding works could gain such popularity in Soviet Russia as “Three Fat Men.” His work remained unknown and closed to most of the country's readers. During the war, Olesha lived in evacuation in Ashgabat, then returned to Moscow. The situation created by the Stalinist regime in the country and in culture had a noticeable depressing effect on Olesha. In the 1930s, many of the writer’s friends and acquaintances were repressed; the main works of Olesha himself have not been published or officially mentioned since 1936 (the ban was lifted only in 1956).

As I promised, closer to the glorious date of November 7, three fat men returned to us from Latvia...
A very, very long-awaited (by us too) new product - it was already in the works in August...
So,

Yuri Olesha
Three fat men
Artist: Leonid Vladimirsky

Age group: 6+
Volume: 240 pages
Year of publication: 2014
Format: 170*230
Binding type: Hard with fabric spine
Circulation: 5000
ISBN: 978-5-9268-1535-8
Blind embossing on the binding, offset paper.
Series "Gift of Speech"
Publishing house "Rech"

“The time of wizards has passed. In all likelihood, they never really existed. These are all fictions and fairy tales for very young children”... This is how Yuri Olesha’s fairy tale novel “Three Fat Men” begins...

To the history of the issue
Yuri Olesha’s fairy tale can be said to occupy a special place in the artist’s work, because what we now see is the result of almost 30 years of work by the artist.

1958
The very first version of the drawings was published back in 1958 by the Ditvydav publishing house in Ukrainian. The illustrations were two-color (black and red) + several color inserts. Here, in the comments there is a link to scans of all the illustrations of the book.
If I'm not mistaken, this is one of the artist's first works in book graphics. In this book, the artist’s style is not yet very recognizable, however, if you look closely, you can see familiar plots.

1963
The publishing house "Soviet Artist" is releasing a set of postcards. This is not a repetition of the first edition, but completely different drawings. But here the artist’s style is already more familiar
Comparison: on the left is the original postcard, on the right is the original color book illustration (version 1981-1992).

1981
The Kaliningrad Book Publishing House is publishing the full version of the novel in Russian with color illustrations by Leonid Vladimirsky. These illustrations are similar to both the postcards and the Ukrainian edition, but they are still different.
Compare:

The publication was not very well printed, the paper was very thin and the font was very small, but they still remembered the publication. Even compared to all the other Three Fat Men (and the artists loved this fairy tale).

1992
This year, according to some sources, there was supposed to be a re-release of “Three Fat Men” again in the 1981 version. And especially for this edition, the artist makes changes to the originals. Please note: it does not draw a new version, but edits the existing one over the image (!!!).
There are quite a lot of edits, but in principle they are not fundamental: strokes and contours have been added, the shading behind the figures has been increased, faces have been slightly changed in some places, some details have been added and some, on the contrary, have been removed - painted over, pasted over. I would say that it is more likely that the artist is making the necessary adjustments based on the results of the not very successful printing of 1981.
It’s clearly visible here (at the top of the picture is the modified version, below is the “Kaliningrad version”). So, they corrected it a little, but the characters changed...

And here is the changed drawing: look, the girl looked a little bigger before, you can even see her dress...

This book was never published, but the illustrations for the novel looked exactly like this from then on...

year 2000
Bustard is releasing a new edition with a somewhat strange cover: in my opinion, it would look good, like a poster for a Hollywood horror movie

2010
A slightly strange edition of “Three Fat Men” is being published in Amphora. It’s strange, first of all, in the text: this is a short version of the novel, most likely not even an abbreviation, but simply a kind of synopsis, a very brief retelling, captions. To be honest, I have a hard time imagining why a simple text written for older preschoolers and primary schoolchildren needs to be shortened. For whom? For those in the cradle? And the illustrations - they were not included completely, they were cut off to fit the format. Well, as for the quality... you can immediately see the participation of the Tver "Pareto-print" - the main thing is brighter... everything is very burnt out...

year 2013
Well, the version of the publishing house "Rech". We decided to return to the original source - the 1981 edition. The text is complete, without abbreviations. Pictures - in full. Leonid Vladimirsky expressed one single wish: to return to the author's cover, offering a choice of either an option with two soldiers, or with two soldiers + a girl. We chose the second option.

The book fits perfectly into the "Gift of Speech" series: thick, slightly yellowish offset paper, large, clear font and a good typesetting page for independent reading, with a fabric spine.

The illustrations in the originals survived completely; we also managed not to “burn out” anything during printing and preserve the “watercolor” look, clarity and naturalness. And I’ll be honest, if the originals had not survived, then they could be considered lost for the reader: it would hardly have been possible to return them from the Kaliningrad edition - the losses there were too great.

Well, now the photos in comparison:
three covers (ours in the center, slightly smaller than Amphora)

by thickness (ours, as usual, is the thickest)

and here’s why it’s thicker - compare the font (this is especially for fans of reprints)

They kept a lot inside, but, sorry, it’s also not a reprint...

Well, now you can see what the artist corrected in the 1981 edition and what the drawings look like if you don’t burn them...
1 - Kaliningrad book publishing house, 1981;
2 - Speech, 2014;
3 - Amphora, 2010 - where available, not all illustrations are there...