Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky

"Cockroach"

The bears were driving
By bike.
And behind them is a cat
Backwards.
And behind him are mosquitoes
On a hot air balloon.
And behind them are crayfish
On a lame dog.
Wolves on a mare
Lions in a car.
Bunnies on a tram
Toad on a broom...

They are driving and laughing, when suddenly a terrible giant, the Cockroach, crawls out of the gateway. He threatens the animals that he will eat them. The animals are in a panic - the wolves ate each other, the crocodile swallowed the toad, and the elephant sat on the hedgehog. Only crayfish are not afraid - although they back away, they fearlessly shout to the mustachioed monster that they themselves can move their mustache - no worse than a Cockroach. And the Hippopotamus promises to give the one who is not afraid of the monster and fight him two frogs and a fir cone. The animals have become brave and rush in a crowd towards the barbel. But when they see him, the poor fellows are so frightened that they immediately run away. The Hippopotamus calls on the animals to go and raise the Cockroach on its horns, but the animals are afraid:

You can only hear your teeth chattering,
All you can see is how your ears are trembling.

And so the Cockroach became the ruler of the fields and forests, and all the animals submitted to him. He orders the animals to bring him their children for dinner. All the animals cry and say goodbye to their children forever, cursing the evil master. Poor mothers cry the most bitterly: what mother would agree to give her sweet child for dinner to an insatiable scarecrow? But then one day a Kangaroo galloped up. Seeing the barbel, the guest laughs:

Is this a giant?<…>
It's just a cockroach!<…>
Cockroach, cockroach, cockroach.
A thin-legged little booger-bug.

The kangaroo shames its toothy and fanged acquaintances - they submitted to the booger, the cockroach. The hippos get scared and shush the Kangaroo, but then a Sparrow flies out of nowhere and swallows the Cockroach. So the giant is gone! The entire animal family thanks and praises their savior. Everyone rejoices so wildly and dances so wildly that the moon, trembling in the sky, falls on the elephant and rolls into the swamp. But the moon is soon restored to its place, and peace and joy return to the forest dwellers.

“The Cockroach” by Korney Chukovsky tells the young reader about different animals that travel on: a bicycle, a car, hot-air balloon, tram, on top of each other, etc. The friends are riding happily and laughing together, but a terrible giant, the Cockroach, appears before them and begins to threaten the animals. Animals do different things out of fear, but some challenge the enemy to fight. Seeing the scary mustache of a cockroach, they run away again.

The cockroach becomes the ruler and conquers the local residents. He orders the animals to bring him little children to eat. Mothers suffer and shed tears.

Suddenly a Kangaroo appears and makes fun of the evil barbel. At the same time, he scolds his fanged friends and toothy acquaintances. How could they be afraid of such an absurd and pathetic creature? And then Sparrow appears. He swallows the monster. Everyone is happy and thanks the savior. The holiday begins. Everyone is dancing and cheering. The moon trembles from the noise and falls down right on the elephant, and then rolls into the swamp. The animals get her, and peace returns to the earth.

One day eight animals were traveling, each in their own vehicle.

And as they drive along, they laugh and suddenly a huge cockroach comes out to meet them. And he says that I will eat you. And then a big panic began. Who does what, and only crayfish, of all animals, are not afraid. The hippopotamus says, “Whoever fights a cockroach will give two frogs and a fir cone.” And everyone attacked the cockroach.

Then the animals order the hippopotamuses to pick him up, but everyone is afraid. After that, the cockroach became the ruler. And his first order was dinner. Moreover, he said that dinner should be from your children. And then a huge panic began, everyone was surprised how anyone could give their own child to a giant for dinner. Everyone around is crying, how difficult it is to part with your children. Then the Kangaroo galloped up. And she started being rude and laughing about the cockroach. Some time has passed. And then, luckily, a sparrow flies in and swallows the mustachioed one. Everyone around began to rejoice. And they are sure that everything will be fine with their children.

Tchaikovsky admires life about our little brothers. After all, without them there would be no life on earth.

Read the summary of Chukovsky Cockroach

The fairy tale “The Cockroach” is one of the most popular and famous works of Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky.

In a magical land, various animals, birds and insects lived and did not grieve. And their whole life was like one holiday. No one ever offended the little ones, did not quarrel or fight.

But one day the evil and terribly scary Cockroach entered this happy country and instantly intimidated all its inhabitants. All the animals huddled in their holes and began to tremble with fear, but the Cockroach did not let up, he began to demand small children for dinner. And no one could go and drive out the evil Cockroach; even the big animals were afraid of the red mustache of the villain. And most likely this would have continued for a very long time. for a long time if only a kangaroo had not galloped into a magical land and began to open everyone’s eyes that the cockroach was not scary at all, but rather small and simply disgusting. The animals, of course, did not believe the kangaroo and continued to hide and be afraid. However, a simple gray sparrow flew in, and without even talking to anyone, he picked up and pecked the evil and terrible cockroach.

And that sparrow became the winner and savior of the entire magical land. All the animals began to sing songs to him, give him food and rejoice at his freedom. This is where the fairy tale ends, and the animals of the magical land again began to have fun, sing and dance.

Picture or drawing of a cockroach

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L.-M., Raduga, 1923. 16 p. with ill. Circulation 7000 copies. In publisher's chromolithographed cover. 28.2x22 cm. Rare first edition!

Who doesn't remember the legendary lines:

The bears were driving

By bike.

And behind them is a cat

Backwards.

And behind him are mosquitoes

On a hot air balloon.

And behind them are crayfish

On a lame dog.

Wolves on a mare.

Lions in a car.

Bunnies

On a tram.

Toad on a broom...

They drive and laugh

They are chewing gingerbread.

Suddenly from the gateway

Scary giant

Red-haired and mustachioed

Cockroach!

Cockroach, Cockroach, Cockroach!

He growls and screams

And he moves his mustache:

"Wait, don't rush,

I'll swallow you up in no time!

I’ll swallow it, I’ll swallow it, I won’t have mercy.”

The animals trembled

They fainted.

Wolves from fright

They ate each other.

Poor crocodile

Swallowed the toad.

And the elephant, trembling all over,

So she sat on the hedgehog.

“The Cockroach” is a fairy tale for children by Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky. He talks about how all the animals were afraid of the cockroach, for completely unknown reasons. He seemed to them huge, mustachioed and, well, very scary. One day a sparrow flew to those places and ate a cockroach. That was the joy the animals had...

Every time Chukovsky seems to be completely destroyed, crushed, crushed by a boot and thrown into the dustbin of history, he finds the strength to rise and sit down desk. And the restless Chukovsky muse - either having taken pity, or condescending, or simply having run around and played enough with the ball somewhere over the rainbow - appears, and a miracle occurs, which in the language of writers is denoted by the modest word “is written.” Half-sick, half-starved, K.I. sits in Holguin in the summer of 1922 - and it is written to him: “Rhymes are knocking in my brain all day long. Today I sat all day from 8 o'clock in the morning until half past 8 in the evening - and it seemed that I wrote with inspiration, but now at night I crossed out almost everything. However, in general, “Cockroach” has made a lot of progress.” Then there will be disappointments, as usual: “I didn’t like Cockroach. At all. It seems wooden and dead nonsense - and that’s why I want to get down to “language.” And again, painstaking work on each phrase. The final version of “Cockroach” is five pages of text. Chukovsky worked on them for a very long time, composing (and then rejecting) many options - seemingly good and strong - but unnecessary: ​​“I’ll cuddle, kill, strangle and crush”, “and behind them fallow deer on an airplane”, “and behind them chimpanzees on a goat,” “and behind him are seals on a rotten log, and behind them is a tarantass, in the tarantass is a porcupine. And behind them, on a calf, two lap-dog Amazons galloped in a race: beware...", "the poor elephants shit their pants" (this, it seems, should have followed "the wolves ate each other out of fright"). “The cockroach got scared and climbed under the sofa - I was joking, I was joking, you didn’t understand.” The last option is truly a pity. There were no-go options for a completely different reason:

And the grasshoppers are newspapers

We galloped through the fields,

They shouted to the cranes,

What fun do they have in Tarakanikha,

It’s not their life today, but Maslenitsa,

What from morning until morning

And in every ravine

Flags...

(Remember – “make happy faces”?)

The siskin answers:

I'm going to Paris.

And the jaguar said:

I'm now a commissioner

Commissioner, commissioner, commissioner.

And I ask you to obey, comrades.

Get in line, comrades.

"Cockroach" began in 1921 with literary games in the Studio, which Elizaveta Polonskaya described in detail in her memoirs. The author, hiding behind the pseudonym “M. Tsokotukha”, reports the story of the appearance of “Cockroach” in Ex Libris-NG: “Looking through the half-disassembled archive of Korney Chukovsky, an employee of the writer’s museum discovered among the manuscripts sent to him for viewing a 20-page story from the life of a pre-revolutionary village (with a retrograde priest and a smart a man who shouldn’t put his finger in his mouth), signed “N. S. Katkov." The name is in modern encyclopedias could not be found. The author rather boringly and monotonously repeated truths that “have long been known to everyone” to “progressively minded” liberal readers of the beginning of the century... On one side of the manuscript there was a pencil note made by Chukovsky: “N.S. has policemen for the second day.” They don’t let anyone in or let anyone out.” And then followed what only Chukovsky could write: “But there are small children in the house...” We turn the manuscript over - and on the back, near the right margin, we find a studio impromptu written in Chukovsky’s small, clear handwriting: “Bears were driving... gingerbread chewing,” with which now “The Cockroach” begins, and then, “unexpectedly for himself,” sweepingly and unevenly, like any draft, Chukovsky writes: “And behind them is a giant / Scary and terrible / Cockroach / With long mustache / With scary eyes / Wait / Don’t rush / Long mustache / Two-length / I want / I’ll swallow.” And inside the pencil sketch is a formula, a direct focus of intersecting rays, a deafening “Red Cockroach!” The genesis of "Cockroach" is a long story that deserves separate consideration. Any more or less well-read person will instantly establish intertextual connections between Chukovsky’s hero and the numerous cockroaches of Russian literature, certainly focusing on the work of Captain Lebyadkin (that’s right, “Crocodile” is also a reference to Dostoevsky!). You can also find a lot of cockroaches in Chukovsky’s diaries and articles (“A small fish is better than a big cockroach,” etc.), you can discuss the image of a cockroach in Russian literature and even devote a separate study to it, but we will leave these games to those who they are interesting. “The Cockroach” aroused and continues to arouse in readers research aspirations of a completely different kind: this fairy tale - more than any other work of children's literature - is usually interpreted as a political satire. We have already talked about the long-standing tradition of looking for topical lining in innocent fairy tales above, in the chapter “Intellectuals and Revolution,” and we will talk below - where we talk about the fight against “Chukovism.” Who and when first discovered Stalin’s resemblance to the Cockroach is unknown. Several literary scholars, without saying a word, point to the identity of the “cockroach mustache” of Mandelstam’s Stalin and the “cockroach mustache” of the fairy tale hero. By the time the cult of personality was debunked, the myth of anti-Stalinism in Chukovsky’s fairy tale was already in full bloom, as there is an entry in K.I.’s diary (Kazakevich proves to him that the Cockroach is Stalin, and Chukovsky denies it). Elena Tsesarevna Chukovskaya even dedicated an article to this myth, “Shadow of the Future,” where she wrote: “It is unlikely that in those years Chukovsky, far from party affairs, even heard about Stalin, whose name began to sound loudly only after Lenin’s death and rumbled in everyone’s minds at the end 20s. “Cockroach” is the same Stalin as any other dictator in the world... Obviously, the future casts a shadow on the present. And art knows how to reveal this shadow before the one who casts it appears.” Stalin became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) very shortly before the publication of “Cockroach” - April 3, 1922 - and indeed remained in the shadows for quite a long time. Truly talent is able to grasp the subtlest vibrations of the atmosphere, and therefore is able to predict and predict; This is not the first and not the last case of such foresight in Chukovsky. By the way, even the atmosphere of horror and terror in “Cockroach” is conveyed perfectly:

“And they sit and tremble under the bushes

They hide behind the swamp hummocks

Crocodiles huddled in nettles

The elephants hid themselves in the ditch.

You can only hear your teeth chattering,

All you can see is how your ears are trembling.”

The tale also contains signs of the post-revolutionary years:

"And the dashing monkeys

Picked up the suitcases

And quickly as fast as you can

Run away..."

“I have a physiological disgust for Trotsky,” Chukovsky later wrote in his diary. “It’s remarkable that he feels the same way about me: in his articles “Revolution and Literature” he scolds me with the same contempt that I feel for him.”

Kondakov notes that Trotsky “directly mocks the critic”:

“But since Chukovsky’s roots are still entirely in the past, and this past, in turn, rested on a moss-covered peasant overgrown with superstitions, Chukovsky puts between himself and the revolution the old iconic national cockroach as a reconciling principle. Shame and disgrace! Shame and disgrace! We studied from books (at the same man’s neck), practiced in magazines, lived through different “eras,” created “trends,” and when the revolution came in earnest, a refuge for the national spirit was opened in the darkest cockroach corner of a peasant’s hut.”

Kondakov sees hidden attacks against Trotsky in K.I.’s fairy tales: “In the same year, 1923, Chukovsky responded to the all-powerful Trotsky with two “fairy tales for children” - “Moidodyr” and “Cockroach”. In the first of them, in the words:

"And the unclean

Chimney sweeps -

Shame and disgrace!

Shame and disgrace!"

(almost literally repeating Trotsky’s reproaches) the monster Moidodyr preaches “purity,” whose very name contains a grotesque order to “wash” something “to the holes,” that is, to the point of destruction, damage to the object that is being washed. Not every reader, understandably, guessed that we were talking about “ideological purity” and, accordingly, about party-political purges in literature and culture as a whole; Moreover, few could read Chukovsky’s very sophisticated intertext.” The version is extremely seductive. Boris Paramonov also noticed the coincidence of “shame-and-disgrace,” and who wouldn’t? However, intertextual research does not necessarily lead to the truth, although it helps to build very beautiful hypotheses. Paramonov also mentions “that Moidodyr, according to the latest research, - a satire on Mayakovsky, with whom Chukovsky also had enough difficult relationships..." I.V. Kondakov suggests that Moidodyr is a caricature portrait of Trotsky, the boss’s washbasins and the commander’s washcloths: as soon as he stamps his foot, they will fly at the unfortunate dirty writer, and bark, and howl, and knock with their feet... “Political “washbasins”, barking and howling after the slightest signal from the Bolshevik “bosses” was full in all the editorial offices and publishing houses of Petrograd, with which, alas, the “unclean” writer Chukovsky dealt, this researcher further says. - A whole pack of frenzied dogs. And everywhere the writer was greeted with teachings in the form of the most vulgar copybooks, like the simplest morality:

“We must, we must wash ourselves.”

In the mornings and evenings...”

or

“The little mice wash themselves,

and kittens, and ducklings, and bugs, and spiders."

Everything is fair, everything is beautiful, every bast fits into line. But Chukovsky himself mentioned “vulgar writings” about washing mice (in a letter to Shklovsky, 1938) among his most affectionate and touching lines, saying that in his books there is not only humor, but also kindness and humanity, and tenderness... But Moidodyr, depicted by Annenkov, bears a portrait resemblance not to Mayakovsky or Trotsky, but to Korney Ivanovich himself (as Vladimir Glotser pointed out a long time ago) - and probably with the knowledge of the author; it is known how demanding Chukovsky was with illustrations... But both “Moidodyr” and “Cockroach” were published much earlier than Trotsky’s book... True, it is difficult to establish what happened before and what then: “Literature and Revolution” - 1923, and the fairy tales are from December 1922, but Trotsky’s articles in Pravda are from the autumn of 1922, but “The Cockroach” was conceived in 1921... And is it necessary to establish who was the first to say “e”... And is there really the dialogue between the storyteller and the people's commissar, and whether to accept the witty hypothesis about Trotsky-Moidodyr on faith - everyone is free to decide for themselves. It remains for us to follow Umberto Eco and remind us that a work gives rise to many interpretations for which its creator is in no way responsible. Chukovsky talks about the history of the creation of “Cockroach” quite simply (in the preface to the 1961 collection): “Once in 1921, when I was living (and starving) in Leningrad, the famous historian P. E. Shchegolev invited me to write for the magazine “ The Past" article about Nekrasov's satire "Contemporaries". most interesting topic... and began to study the era when the satire was created. I wrote all day long with ecstasy, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, poetry “came upon me”... and it went, and it went... In the margins of my scientific article I wrote, so to speak, smuggled:

So the cockroach became the winner,

And the ruler of forests and fields.

The animals submitted to the mustachioed one,

(May he fail, damned one!)."

The history of the creation of "Moidodyr" is almost unknown. Perhaps Chukovsky himself in “Confessions of an Old Storyteller” talked about how long he worked on each line, how he crossed out sluggish and helpless couplets, how long it took to achieve a good sound. “The other day I leafed through my old manuscripts and, reading them, became convinced that the clearest phraseology of a fairy tale was possible for me only after I had first composed so many weak poems that would be enough for several fairy tales,” he admitted. – After hundreds of different-sized lines had accumulated in my notebooks, I had to select the fifty or forty that most corresponded to the style and concept of the fairy tale. Between them there was, so to speak, a struggle for existence, with the strongest surviving, while the rest died ingloriously.” What about inspiration? Indeed, extraordinary joy and creative passion, and the amazing state of “writing” when everything turns out as it should - this was familiar to Chukovsky and, perhaps, helped him out in the worst moments, giving him faith in himself, his rightness, his destiny. “But in most cases, that joyful nervous upsurge, in which one writes with extraordinary ease, as if from someone’s dictation, did not last so long for me - most often ten to fifteen minutes,” he shared his introspection. “During these short moments, it was possible to put on paper only a small fraction of the poetic text, after which an endless search began for a definitive, clear imagery, a clear syntactic structure and the most powerful dynamics.” In a word, work, work and work – versification and editorial. This fairy tale was published with the subtitle “Cinematography for Children” (cinematography meant episodes that quickly succeeded each other; let’s remember the “cinema” of Leva Lunts in the Studio - rapid funny scenes). The dedication was as follows: “To Murka, to wash herself. K. Chukovsky. - Irushka and Dymka - to brush their teeth. Yu. Annenkov.” “Cockroach” was illustrated by Sergei Chekhonin. Both fairy tales were published simultaneously, before the new year, 1923, in the Raduga publishing house of Lev Klyachko. Critics focused on the shelling of Moidodyr, which was blamed for disrespect for chimney sweeps, treating children as idiots, and the seditious exclamation in the era of anti-religious propaganda: “God, God, what happened?” (in the end, Chukovsky was forced to replace it with “What is it, what happened,” sacrificing the internal rhyme to the next line “why is everything going around…”). Almost no complaints were made against “Cockroach”, which was much more unreliable from our point of view. One can notice how often and consciously Chukovsky uses dactylic endings in the tale, about which he thought and wrote a lot at that time in relation to Nekrasov’s work. “Cockroach” is replete with them: “Cockroach, Cockroach, Cockroach”, “I’ll swallow, I’ll swallow, I won’t have mercy”, “And they backed away even further...”, “Mosquitoes - on a ball”, “in bushes - hummocks”, “huddled - buried” , “the winner is the ruler”... Chukovsky’s thoughts on dactylic rhymes are most fully formulated in the book “Nekrasov as an Artist,” which was published a little earlier than “Cockroach.” “In general, dactylic endings of words and poems are one of main features our common folk poetry, for at least 90% of all our folk songs, laments, epics have just such an ending,” writes Chukovsky. He also notes that “these endings in Russian speech give the impression of soul-weary whining.” Whining is, first of all, of course, about cries, lamentations and Nekrasov’s related lyrics; but in “The Cockroach” dactylic rhymes are used primarily in the poems in scenes of fear and horror. K.I.’s observations of children’s speech (the publishing house “Polar Star” was going to publish them in 1922 as a separate book “On Children’s Language” - it was announced in “Oscar Wilde”, but was never published) result in a rapid whirlwind of trochees in “Moidodyr” ", theoretical discoveries in the field of metrics of folk poetry are found practical use in “Cockroach”, Nekrasov’s biographical studies echo his own misfortune. Everything that Chukovsky writes is always interconnected and fit into a broad cultural context; nowhere is he limited to the mainstream of a highly specialized topic. That is why he moves so easily from one activity to another; therefore, he manages to notice what others do not see - and let it pass through himself, express it excitedly, inspiredly and simply. This year laid the foundation for his fame as a critic and children's writer. And yet, Chukovsky wrote on the night of January 1, 1923: “1922 was a terrible year for me, a year of all kinds of bankruptcies, failures, humiliations, insults and illnesses. I felt that I was growing callous, I stopped believing in life, and that my only salvation is work. And how I worked! What I didn’t do! With sadness, almost with tears, I wrote “The Beaten Man” - I completely remade my Nekrasov books, “The Futurists.” Wilde”, “Whitman”. Founded “Modern West” - he wrote almost the entire Chronicle of the 1st issue with his own hand, got newspapers and magazines for him - translated “Kings and Cabbage”, translated Synge - oh, how much wasted energy, without a goal, without a plan! And not a single friend! There were claws, teeth, fangs, horns everywhere! And yet for some reason I became attached to Murka this year, I was not so tormented by insomnia. , I began to work with greater ease - thanks to the old year!"

A wonderful story by Korney Chukovsky about how big powerful animals were afraid of a tiny cockroach. The nasty bug conquered Africa and even became its ruler.

Who doesn’t know the fairy tale “The Cockroach”, which was written by grandfather Korney? Watching his children, the author noticed that the insects that were then found in every apartment caused horror and disgust in the children. A recognized master of combating childish fears, Chukovsky decided to show the comical nature of the situation in which the strong are afraid of the weak and arrogant.

Chukovsky’s fairy tale “The Cockroach” tells how one fine day African animals happily went about their business. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a cockroach appears. All the animals hid in horror. And even the hippopotamus could not inspire them to defeat the cockroach. Believing the cunning and self-confident insect, the animals agreed to give their children to be eaten. They drove away the truthful kangaroo who dared to laugh at the bug. An ordinary sparrow came to the rescue of the cowards - he saw a beetle and pecked it.

In a fairy tale “Cockroach. Chukovsky K.I.” ironically from the heart. Huge elephants, rhinoceroses, hippos and crocodiles chickened out when they saw a tiny harmless cockroach. And all just because he moved his mustache terribly. And the modest little bird dealt with him without hesitation.

Publishing house: Children's literature
The year of publishing: 1979
Author: Korney Chukovsky
Format: PDF
Number of pages: 16
Language: Russian

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