On January 12, 1628, childbirth began in Puckett Le Clerk. The Perrault couple had already raised four sons and this time they were expecting a girl. However, twins were born. The father decided to name them after the French kings - Charles and François. But six months later, François died. The death of one of the twins, even in early childhood, becomes a deep trauma for the other. Charles grew up withdrawn, he was afraid of everything, he was alien to people. But his father still decided to give him an education, and 8-year-old Charles entered the College of Beauvais.
Studying turned out to be a real nightmare. Teachers considered the guy an idiot, and classmates shunned. They were afraid to offend, because his older brothers studied with him. But his friend got it. He was a fat man, they mocked and mocked him. Once, three teenagers pushed the guy into a puddle and began to beat him. Charles broke down and rushed at them. He bit, scratched, and pulled out his hair. The guys were confused. They belonged to the noblest families in France and were not used to being rebuffed like that. The next morning, for the first time in five years, Charles raised his hand in class. To the surprise of the teacher and classmates, he answered the lesson in brilliant Latin. And got the highest score. Perrault became so emboldened that later he even began to argue with the teacher. And when he was forbidden to take part in disputes, he and a friend dropped out of college and continued to study on their own.
Charles successfully graduated from the university, became a lawyer. But he did not practice for long. “I would gladly burn all court cases,” he said. - There is nothing better in the world how to reduce the number of lawsuits. Perrault began writing poems. Some dedicated to the queen. The 25-year-old lawyer was spotted at court, and Finance Minister Nicola Fouquet invited Perrault to work. Charles collected taxes and wrote poems. In 1653 they were printed. He met politicians and writers, attended points and secular salons. He wrote light comedies, poems and tragedies. A few years later, he was already a famous writer. But later his patron fell out of favor. Fouquet was accused of conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison.
Charles managed to stay at court. The new minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, liked him, and he made him his first secretary. Colbert knew perfectly well the whims and weaknesses of his monarch. He created a special "bureau", which was supposed to glorify Louis XIV, and Charles appointed him chairman. Perrault became the head of the royal building and tapestry workshops. Sometimes he himself developed projects and came up with mottos and slogans for triumphal arches. The king was pleased, and even sometimes consulted with Charles. Perrault became rich, became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He got his own apartments in the Louvre and Versailles, eight houses in Paris, and the Rosier castle.
In 1672, 44-year-old Charles married the 19-year-old daughter of the royal treasurer, Marie Guichon. Until then, he avoided women because of his innate bashfulness. But a good dowry was given for the girl, and he was tempted to pool his capital. Charles fell in love with his wife after the wedding. “You are my fairy princess,” he liked to tell her. Marie bore him three sons. But in October 1678, she fell ill with smallpox and died. Perrault grieved at the loss. He left the yard and decided to devote himself to children. Charles himself took up their upbringing and education.
At 67, he decided to write for them several fairy tales with moral admonitions. Usually he did not invent it himself: he remembered some from childhood, others were assembled by his 15-year-old son Pierre. He was the first to publish the fairy tales "Griselda", "Ridiculous desires" and "Donkey skin". And in 1697 he published the collection "Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Past Times with Moral Admonitions". It includes "Sleeping Beauty", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Bluebeard", "Puss in Boots", "Cinderella", "Rikke with a Tufted" and "Boy-with-Thumb". Claude Barbin's Parisian store sold up to 50 books every day! During the year, the publisher repeated the circulation three times.
The first editions were signed with Pierre's name. Everyone knew Charles as a serious writer, and he was afraid that now he would be laughed at. In addition, he wanted to glorify his beloved son and help him make a career at court. 19-year-old Pierre received a title of nobility and entered the circle of close friends of the princess. However, six months later, in a street fight, he stabbed a peer, the son of a carpenter. Pierre was arrested, and the mother of the murdered man began a lawsuit against him. Perrault barely managed to get his son out of prison. He paid the woman 2,079 livres, and Pierre was released. His father bought him the rank of lieutenant in the royal regiment, and he went to the front. On May 2, 1700, he died in battle. Charles was very upset by the tragedy. He died on May 16, 1703.
The World Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales calls Perrault the kindest storyteller in history. Apparently, he was the first to create real children's fairy tales - kind and with a happy ending. After all, the folk stories that he used were quite cruel. In "Cinderella", for example, the stepmother cuts off the girl's legs so that she does not run to the ball. And the Sleeping Beauty wakes up not from a kiss, but from the birth of two children, whom the handsome prince “gave” her and went to himself. “Little Red Riding Hood” also ends tragically, and the brothers Grimm added the happy ending to her. The authors of the site “European Society for the Conservation of Wolves from Little Red Riding Hood” claim that because of this tale, these predators were exterminated in Europe.
I.S.TurgenevPerrault's Fairy Tales (1867)
Perrault's tales are especially popular throughout Europe; they are comparatively less known to Russian children, which is probably due to the lack of good translations and publications. Indeed, despite its somewhat scrupulous Old French grace, Perrault's tales deserve a place of honor in children's literature. They are cheerful, entertaining, laid-back, not burdened with either excessive morality or copyright claims; they still feel the spirit of folk poetry, which once created them; in them there is precisely that mixture of the incomprehensible-miraculous and the ordinary-ordinary, the sublime and the funny, which is the hallmark of a real fairy-tale fiction. Our positive and enlightened time begins to abound in positive and enlightened people who do not like this particular admixture of the miraculous: raising a child, according to their concepts, should be not only important, but also serious, and instead of fairy tales, he should be given small geological and physiological treatises. Be that as it may, it seems to us very difficult and hardly useful for the time being to banish everything magic and miraculous, to leave the young imagination without food, to replace a fairy tale with a story. The child undoubtedly needs a teacher, and he also needs a nanny.
The witty publisher of Perrault's fairy tales, J. Getzel, known in literature under the pseudonym P. Stahl, in his preface remarks very rightly that one should not be afraid of the miraculous for children. Not to mention the fact that many of them do not completely deceive themselves and, amusing themselves with the beauty and cuteness of their toys, in fact they know very well that this never happened (remember, gentlemen, how you rode on sticks, after all, you they knew that it was not horses under you, but the case still came out completely believable and the pleasure was excellent); but even those children (and these are for the most part the most gifted and intelligent heads) who unconditionally believe in all the miracles of the fairy tale, are very good at immediately renouncing this belief as soon as the time comes. Children, like adults, take in books only what they need and for as long as they need it. Getzel is right: this is not the direction in which the dangers and difficulties of child education lie. We have just said that we believe that one of the reasons for the relative obscurity of Perrault's tales is the lack of good translations and publications. The public is left to judge how satisfactory our translation is; as for the present edition, there has never been anything like it, not only here in Russia, but also abroad; and the name of the brilliant draftsman Gustave Dorey has become too loud and does not need any praise.
Carl Perrault was born in Paris in 1628 and died there in 1697.
In 1693, being sixty-five years old, he published the first edition of his tales, Contes de ma me`re L'Oie, under the name of his eleven-year-old son and written for him.
Carl Perrault should not be confused with his brother, Claudius, physician and architect, author of the Louvre Colonnade. The article was written by I.S. Turgenev for the publication: "Perrot's Fairy Tales. Translated from French by Ivan Turgenev. Drawings by Gustav Dore. St. Petersburg, publishing house of MO Wolf, 1866".
The writer worked on the translation for about two years and was dissatisfied with it, as evidenced by one of his letters. Nevertheless, it was most likely the best translation of Perrault's Tales into Russian for the entire time of their publication in Russia (almost a hundred years). And the magnificent illustrations by G. Dore, first seen by our readers, gave the publication a special charm. Over the past one hundred and forty years, literary historians have clarified the dates of the life and work of the great storyteller - Charles Perrot died in 1703, and the first edition of his Tales was published in 1697.
But the thoughts of IS Turgenev about the fabulous fiction, about the attitude of children towards him and about the "Tales of Mother Goose", which have survived the centuries, are not at all outdated. The warning also remains relevant: not to confuse Carl Perrault with his brother Claudius, a physician and architect. Unfortunately, in several editions of 1993-2006, which published articles about Charles Perrault, he is credited with knowledge in medicine and construction. Only in the Illustrated Encyclopedia "Russica. (History. 16-18 centuries)" there are a few words about the storyteller's brothers. Claude Perrault was a physician, mathematician, physicist and famous architect, and Nicolas was a doctor of theology.
Charles Perrault (1628-1703) - French storyteller, critic and poet, was a member of the French Academy.
Childhood
On January 12, 1628, twin boys were born in Paris to the family of Pierre Perrault. They were named François and Charles. The head of the family worked as a judge in the Parliament of Paris. His wife was engaged in housekeeping and raising children, who were already four before the birth of the twins. After 6 months, little Francois fell ill with pneumonia and died, and his twin brother Charles became a favorite in the family and in the future, with his famous fairy tales, glorified the Perrault family all over the world. In addition to Charles, his elder brother Claude was also famous - a great architect, author of the eastern facade of the Louvre and the Paris Observatory.
The family was well-to-do and intelligent. Charles' paternal grandfather was a wealthy merchant. Mom came from a noble family, before marriage she lived in the village estate of Viri. As a child, Charles often visited there and, most likely, from there he later scooped stories for his fairy tales.
Training
Parents have made every effort to ensure that their children receive a decent education. While the boys were young, their mother worked with them, taught them to read and write. My father was very busy at work, but in his free time he always helped his wife. The Perrault brothers all studied at the University College of Beauvais, and dad sometimes tested their knowledge. All the boys showed themselves excellently in their studies, during the entire period of study there were no whips with rods, at that time it was a great rarity.
When Charles was 13 years old, he was kicked out of class for arguing with a teacher. The guy dropped out because he disagreed with the teachers in many ways.
He received further education on his own with his best friend Boren. For three years they themselves learned Latin, French history, Greek and ancient literature. Later, Charles said that all the knowledge that came in handy in his life was obtained precisely during the period of self-study with a friend.
Upon reaching the age of majority, Perrault studied law with a private teacher. In 1651 he was awarded a law degree.
Career and creativity
While still in college, Perrault wrote his first poems, comedies and poems.
In 1653, his first work was published - a poetic parody "The Walls of Troy, or the Origin of Burlesque". But Perrault perceived literature as a hobby, he built his career in a completely different direction.
As his father wanted, having received a law degree, Charles worked as a lawyer for some time, but this kind of activity soon seemed not interesting to him. He went to work as a clerk to his older brother, who by that time maintained an architectural department. It should be noted that Charles Perrault built his career successfully, rose to the position of adviser to the King, chief inspector of buildings, then headed the Committee of Writers and the Department of the King's Glory.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, statesman and chief controller of finance, who actually ruled France during the time of Louis XIV, patronized Charles. Thanks to such a patron, in 1663, when creating the Academy of Inscriptions and Fine Arts, Perrault received the post of secretary. He achieved wealth and influence. Along with his main occupation, Charles successfully continued to write poetry and engage in literary criticism.
But in 1683, Colbert died, and Perrault became unmerciful at court, at first he was deprived of his due pension, and then the post of secretary.
This period saw the writing of the very first fairy tale about a shepherdess called "Griselle". The author did not pay special attention to this work and continued to engage in criticism, writing a large four-volume collection of dialogues "Comparison of ancient and modern authors", as well as publishing the book "Famous People of France of the 17th Century".
When, in 1694, his next two works, "Donkey's Skin" and "Funny Desires," were published, it became clear that a new era had come for the storyteller Charles Perrault.
In 1696, The Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, published in the Gallant Mercury magazine, became popular in an instant. And a year later, the success of the published book "Tales of Mother Goose, or Histories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings" turned out to be incredible. The plots of the nine fairy tales included in this book, Perrault heard when the nurse of his son told them to the baby before bedtime. He took folk tales as a basis and gave artistic treatment, thereby opening the way for them to high literature.
He managed to tie perennial folk works to modernity, his fairy tales were written so accessible that they were read by people from high society and from simple classes. More than three centuries have passed, and all over the world, mothers and fathers read to their children before going to bed:
- "Cinderella" and "Thumb-boy";
- "Puss in Boots" and "Little Red Riding Hood";
- "Gingerbread House" and "Bluebeard".
Ballets have been staged and operas written in the best theaters of the world based on the plots of Perrot's fairy tales.
Perrault's tales were first translated into Russian in 1768. By the number of published works in the USSR, Charles became the fourth among foreign writers after Jack London, Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm brothers.
Personal life
Charles Perrault got married quite late, at 44. His chosen one was a young, 19-year-old girl, Marie Guchon. They had four children. But the marriage did not last long, Marie died at the age of 25 from smallpox. Charles never married again and raised a daughter and three sons himself.
In the Chevreuse Valley, not far from Paris, there is the "Estate of Puss in Boots" - the castle-museum of Charles Perrault, where wax figures of characters from his fairy tales are found at every corner.
A literary tale is a whole trend in fiction. Over the long years of its formation and development, this genre has become a universal genre, covering all the phenomena of the surrounding life and nature, the achievements of science and technology.
Just as a folk tale, constantly changing, absorbed the features of a new reality, a literary tale has always been and is inextricably linked with socio-historical events and literary-aesthetic trends. A literary tale did not grow out of nowhere. It was based on a folk tale, which became famous thanks to the notes of folklorists.
The first in the field of literary fairy tales was the French writer Ch. Perrot.
The great merit of Perrault is that he chose several stories from the mass of folk tales and gave them a tone, climate, and reproduced the style of his time. At the end of the 17th century, during the period of the domination of classicism, when the tale was revered as a "low genre", he published the collection "The Tales of My Mother Goose" (1697). Thanks to Perrault, the reading public recognized Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, Little Boy, Donkey's Skin and other wonderful heroes. Of the eight tales included in the collection, seven were clearly folk tales with a pronounced national flavor. Nevertheless, they were already the prototype of a literary fairy tale.
We now call Charles Perrault a storyteller, but in general, during his lifetime, Perrault was a venerable poet of his time, an academician of the French Academy, the author of famous scientific works. But world fame and recognition of his descendants brought him not his thick, serious books, but the wonderful fairy tales "Cinderella", "Puss in Boots", "Bluebeard".
Perrault's tales are based on the well-known folklore plot, which he presented with his inherent talent and humor, omitting some details and adding new ones, "ennobling" the language. Most of all these tales were suitable for children. And it is Perrault who can be considered the ancestor of children's world literature and literary pedagogy.
His first tales in verse were "Griselda", "Amusing Desires" and "Donkey Skin" (1694), which were later included in the collection "Tales of Mother Goose, or Histories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings" (1697). Not daring to speak openly as the creator of works of the "low" genre, he signed the first edition with the name of his son - Perrault d "Armankourt - and, on his behalf, addressed a dedication to the young niece of Louis XIV, Elizabeth-Charlotte of Orleans. The author of" The Tales of Mother Goose "retold they are so entertaining and witty that even the refined courtiers of King Louis XIV liked it.
Many teachings in fairy tales flow from the "education program" for girls - future ladies of the court, as well as boys - future gentlemen of the court. Focusing on the vagrant plots of French folklore, Perrault gave them aristocratic gallantry and bourgeois practicality. The most important element for him was morality, so he ended each tale with poetic morality. The prose part can be addressed to children, morality - only to adults.
Despite the long, lush and boring title, the book turned out to be very interesting. And soon after the princess, many, many children and adults learned amazing and instructive stories about the hardworking Cinderella and the cunning Puss in Boots, the resourceful Boy with the thumb and the cruel man nicknamed Bluebeard, the unfortunate princess who was pricked with a spindle and fell asleep whole a hundred years. In Russia, seven fairy tales from this collection are especially known: "Little Red Riding Hood", "Puss in Boots", "Cinderella", "Boy with a Thumb", "Donkey Skin", "Sleeping Beauty", "Blue Beard".
About the tales of C. Perrault, I.S. Turgenev: “They are cheerful, entertaining, unconstrained, not burdened with either excessive morality or author's claims; they still feel the spirit of folk poetry, which once created them; in them there is precisely that mixture of the incomprehensible-miraculous and the ordinary-ordinary, the sublime and the amusing, which constitutes the hallmark of a real fabulous fiction ”.
Bluebeard is a character in the fairy tale by Charles Perrault "Bluebeard" (1697), the owner of houses in the city and countryside, great wealth. He got the nickname for the blue beard that disfigured him. His wives disappeared without a trace. He marries one of the two daughters of a noble lady, his neighbor. Leaving for a long time to the village on business, Bluebeard gives his wife the keys to all the rooms, forbidding to open only one of them (in which the bodies of former wives killed by him were hanging on the walls). Returning, he, following the traces of blood on the key from this room, realized that his wife had entered there, and announced her the sentence for disobedience: death. At the last minute, her brothers - the dragoon and the musketeer, save her, impaling Bluebeard with swords. This is followed by two poetic "Morals", in the first woman's curiosity is condemned, in the second it is argued that such husbands are found only in fairy tales: “There are no fierce men in the world today: / There are no such prohibitions in sight. / The current husband, though he is jealously familiar, / Julit is like a loving cockerel around his wife, / And even if his beard is piebald, / You cannot tell - she is in whose power? ”.
Perhaps the most famous fairy tale by Perrault "Little Red Riding Hood" is based on a folklore plot that has not been previously subjected to literary processing. Folklore knows three versions of the tale. In one of the variants, the girl flees. The brothers Grimm took advantage of the variant with a happy ending (hunters come, kill the wolf and remove the grandmother and granddaughter from its belly). Perrault ends the story by saying that "the evil wolf rushed at Little Red Riding Hood and ate her."
They are also associated with folklore and are original, put at the service of the tasks of the century, pursue the goal of introducing folk stories and other tales of Perrault into the reading circle of the aristocratic salons of Paris: "Monsieur Cat, or Puss in Boots", "Cinderella, or Crystal Shoe", "Boy with a finger ".
The writer sought to correlate each plot with a certain virtue: patience, diligence, intelligence, which in general constituted a set of ethical norms close to folk ethics. But the most valuable virtue, according to Charles Perrault, is good manners: it is they who open the doors to all palaces, to all hearts. Sandrillona (Cinderella), Puss in Boots, Rikke with a Tufted and his other heroes win thanks to courtesy, grace and appropriate dress. A cat without boots is just a cat, and in boots is a pleasant companion and a dexterous helper, who for his services to the owner deserves peace and contentment.
“Puss in Boots” by Ch. Perrault is a tale about how a cat - a rogue and a rogue - made his master, a poor country boy, a rich man and a nobleman, the son-in-law of the king himself. It all started pretty ordinary. The cat cunningly caught the rabbit and brought it to the king: "Here, sir, a rabbit from the cage of Mr. Marquis de Carabas." Intelligence and resourcefulness, agility and practicality under all circumstances are good traits. The main idea of \u200b\u200bthis tale: nobility and hard work are the path to happiness. Charles Perrault, one of the creators of the literary tale in France, continues in his work the tradition of folk tales, where the mind prevails in the fight against injustice. In folk tales, disadvantaged heroes are bound to become happy. Such is the fate of the miller's son from Puss in Boots.
Having become a world literary myth, the fairy tale "Cinderella" differs from its folk basis and stands out among other Perrault tales by its pronounced secular character. The story is significantly combed, the elegance of the presentation draws attention to itself. Cinderella's father is a "nobleman"; her stepmother's daughters - "noble girls"; the rooms have parquet floors, the most fashionable beds and mirrors; ladies are busy choosing outfits and hairstyles. The description of how the fairy godmother dresses up Cinderella and gives her a carriage and servants is based on folklore material, but is given in much more detail and "refined".
The tale "The Sleeping Beauty" (the exact translation is "Beauty in the Sleeping Forest") for the first time embodied the main features of a new type of fairy tale. The tale is based on a folklore story known among many peoples of Europe, written in prose, and poetic morality added to it.
Perrault combines traditional fairy-tale elements with the realities of modern life. Thus, in The Sleeping Beauty, a regal childless couple goes to the water for treatment and makes various vows, and the young man who awakened the princess “was careful not to tell her that her dress was like that of his grandmother ...”.
The hard work, generosity, resourcefulness of the representatives of the common people, Perrault tried to establish as the values \u200b\u200bof his circle. Poeticization of these qualities makes his fairy tales important for the modern child.
In Russia, Perrault's tales appeared in 1768 under the title "Tales of Sorceresses with Moralities." In 1866, under the editorship of I.S. Turgenev, a new edition of fairy tales was published, already without moralizing. In this form, with some abbreviations and adaptations, the collection began to appear for the young reader in the future.
Probably, you cannot find a person who would not know the tale about Little Red Riding Hood and the gray wolf, about a boy with a thumb or other equally memorable characters, colorful and so close not only to a child, but also to an adult. But all of them owe their appearance to the wonderful writer Charles Perrault. Each of his fairy-tale stories is a folk epic, its writer processed and developed the plot, having received such delightful works, read today with great admiration. A short biography of Charles Perrault is an assistant to understanding all the talent of the writer.
Charles Perrault was born in the 17th century in France: in January 1628 in Paris, two children were born to the family of a famous judge. They were twins. Six months later, one of them - François - dies. So, Charles became the sixth child in the family. Parents all their lives strived to raise not only well-bred children, but also, most importantly, educated ones. So, already at the age of eight, Charles is torn away from home and sent to study at a college, where his older brothers are already studying. Teachers and all the students of this institution of that time remember that Charles and all his brothers were diligent and disciplined students. Rods were never used against them, which at that time was an exceptional phenomenon.
But after finishing his studies at the college, Charles decided to continue his education. He took private lessons for three years, studying law, and still received the long-awaited law degree. Only after that, Charles was able to return to Paris to his family and parents. He starts working as a lawyer, but this work is given to him hard. Therefore, very soon he moved to work for his brother Claude Perrault, the famous architect who created the eastern part of the Louvre. Very soon he becomes acquainted with the approach of King Louis and finds a patron for himself. He is even appointed as the secretary of the created lettering and fine literature. All Charles' affairs begin to prosper, but only until the time when his patron Jean Colbert dies. He immediately loses his place, but he is charged a literary pension.
In the creative life of Charles, everything develops in a completely different way and, of course, there are many mysterious and incomprehensible phenomena in his history. At 23, he returns to Paris, where fairy tale fashion flourishes. Trying to follow fashionable literary tendencies, he also publishes a fairy-tale collection - "Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings". This book brought great fame to Charles. After that, poetry, and other literary works, and even scientific works were also written, but all of them did not receive such a calling and such fame.
Fearing to publish fairy tales under his own name, Charles used the name of his son - P .. Darmancourt as a pseudonym for fairy tales. Charles Perrault also took part in the compilation of the dictionary "The General Dictionary of the French Language". The tragedy of Charles' entire life is the death of his son in 1699.
Four years after the death of his son, Charles Perrault lived in sorrow and grief in his castle, located on the outskirts of Paris. And on May 16, 1703, he died, leaving behind his literary legacy and his memoirs, written in the last years of his lonely life.
THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES PERRO
a venerable academician, once the right hand of the powerful Minister of Finance Zh.B. Colbert - Charles Perrault.
Now few people remember about his poems and epigrams, about his multivolume work "On the old and the new", about his service at the court of Louis XIV, but the fairy tales, which, according to some researchers, he even hesitated to sign with his own name, made him immortal ... Thanks to them, he entered the world history of literature.
Charles Perrault's name is one of the most popular names for storytellers in Russia, along with the names of Andersen, the Grimm brothers, Hoffmann, Carlo Collodi and Astrid Lindgren.
The total circulation of Perrault's tales over the past two hundred years has exceeded tens of millions of copies alone. Nevertheless, until now the Russian public did not know the biography of Charles Perrault.
This gap was filled with a wonderful book (series ZhZL)about the life of Charles Perrault (1628-1703), lawyer, academician, poet and writer, favorite of the legendary Sun King Louis XIV, written in beautiful laconic language, full of facts unknown in Russia.
Monument to Charles Perrault in Paris, Tuileries Garden.
Probably, it was not installed here by chance ... When, during the time of Louis XIV, some nobles wanted to close the Tuileries Garden to everyone except the king, Charles Perrault argued that it should be open to the public - and it is open to this day.
The story of the writing of this book is unusual.
The author of the biography was the Russian writer-philologist Sergei Boyko, and the inspirer and, in fact, the organizer of the idea was a Frenchman, one of the largest specialists in Perrot's work, Marc Soriano.
But here we enter into the shadow of mystery ...
It turns out that in philological science there is still no exact answer to the elementary question: who wrote the famous fairy tales?
The fact is that when the book of fairy tales of Mother Goose first appeared, and it happened in Paris on October 28, 1696, a certain Pierre de Armcourt was designated the author of the book.
frontispiece of Perrault's book, published in England in 1763
However, in Paris they quickly learned the truth. Under the pompous pseudonym de Armankourt hid none other than the youngest and beloved son of Charles Perrault, nineteen-year-old Pierre. For a long time it was believed that the writer’s father took this trick only in order to introduce the young man into the high society, into the circle of the young princess of Orleans, the niece of King Louis-Sun. After all, the book was dedicated to her. But later it turned out that young Perrault, on the advice of his father, was recording some folk tales, and there are documentary references to this fact.
In the end, the situation was completely confused by Charles Perrault himself.
And yet he had every reason to put this book in the register of victories. The book of fairy tales was an unprecedented success among the Parisians of 1696, every day in the shop of Claude Barben there were sold 20-30, and sometimes 50 books a day! This - on the scale of one store - was never dreamed of today, perhaps even in the bestseller about Harry Potter.
During the year, the publisher repeated the circulation three times. This was unheard of. First, France, then the whole of Europe fell in love with the magical stories about Cinderella, her evil sisters and a crystal slipper, re-read the terrible tale about the knight Bluebeard, who killed his wives, supported the courteous Little Red Riding Hood, which was swallowed by the evil wolf. (Only in Russia did the translators correct the ending of the tale, in our country the woodcutters kill the wolf, and in the French original the wolf ate both the grandmother and the granddaughter).
In fact, the fairy tales of Mother Goose became the first book in the world written for children. Before that, no one specially wrote books for children ...
Charles Perrault's inexplicable silence has given rise to two main scientific versions about the authorship of fairy tales.
First, the book was written by Perrault himself, but on principle he decided to consolidate the glory of fairy tales for his beloved son. The second version - the tales were really written by the youngest son of Perrault, the brilliant young man Pierre Perrault, and the writer father only literally processed the works of his son.
The fate of Pierre himself was terrible.
After the triumphant success of the book, he immediately entered the close circle of the Princess of Orleans, but unfortunately, six months later, in a vulgar street fight, he stabbed his weatherman Guillaume Coll, the son of a certain Marie Fourier, a carpenter's widow, with a sword. The murder of a commoner with a noble sword was at that time an absolutely immoral act. There could be no question of any closeness to the royal court now. Pierre ended up in prison, and the widow started a multi-stage trial against the culprit. After all, the father of the murderer, the favorite of the palace, the president of the French academy Charles Perrault was very rich and recently acquired the ancient castle of Rosier near the city of Troyes on the banks of the Seine. Calling on all his connections and money for help, the father barely rescued his son from prison and urgently bought him the rank of lieutenant in the royal regiment. Pierre went to the front of the next French battle, where he died at lightning speed.
The death of first his son, and then of Charles Perrault himself, forever took the secret of authorship to the grave of centuries. For some time, the fairy tales of Mother Goose, by inertia, were still published under the name of Pierre D Armandour, but in 1724, 10 years after the death of the writer, the general opinion prevailed that the fairy tales were still written by Charles Perrault Sr. They are still published under this name.
The operas Cinderella by G. Rossini, The Castle of the Duke Bluebeard by B. Bartok, the ballets The Sleeping Beauty by P. Tchaikovsky, Cinderella by S. Prokofiev and others have been created based on the themes of Perrault's fairy tales.
"The influence of Charles Perrault ... is so great that if you ask someone today to tell you a typical fairy tale, he will probably tell you one of the French: "Puss in Boots", "Cinderella" or "Little Red Riding Hood"". (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Charles Perrault came from a wealthy Parisian family. His grandfather was a merchant in Turin. His father Pierre received an excellent education and was a lawyer for the Paris Parliament. He met his wife Puckett Leclerc in his parish, in the church of Saint-Etienne du Mont. Puckett came from a noble family and brought her husband a good dowry, including the village of Viry (now the city of Viry-Chatillon), where the family left in those days when the plague was raging in Paris.
Charles was the youngest child in the family. He had a twin brother, François, who lived only six months, and thus Charles became not the sixth, but the fifth son of the Perrault family. The rest of the brothers lived quite long and eventful lives at that time: Jean was a lawyer, Pierre was the general tax collector of Paris, Claude was a physician and architect, the author of the project of the famous Louvre gallery, Nicolas was a doctor of divinity at the Sorbonne.
It should be noted that the Perrault family was very religious. They were close to Jansenism, maintained an acquaintance with Blaise Pascal (although in many ways Charles's views did not coincide with him), defended representatives of this trend in court. And Charles Perrault, already in his mature years, published two poetic works on biblical themes: "Creation of the world and Adam" and "Saint Paul".
Portrait of Louis XIV with his family
Charles collected taxes and wrote poetry. In 1653 they already appeared in print. In addition, his older brothers introduced him to a high-society salon, whose visitors were eminent authors.
But "... all the talents will not decorate you in the least, since there is no godmother in stock to thunder."
Such a "godmother" for Charles Perrault for many years was the powerful Minister of Finance J.-B. Colbert .
Jean-Baptiste Colbert - statesman under Louis XIV, chief intendant of finance, royal buildings, fine arts and factories. He worked 15 hours a day, did not pay attention to the court world, the opinions of the world, walked to the king ...
Under him, Charles took up the post of general secretary in the Intendants of the royal buildings and oversaw the work of the tapestry workshop, and even made drawings for them himself;
Another reason for the French academician to turn to fairy tales was the dispute "about the old and the new", the instigator of which was Perrault himself. He opposed the dominance of ancient images in literature and art, the tales he published were supposed to be a confirmation that folk wisdom is in no way inferior to antique book samples. However, he never put his signature under the fairy tales ...
This is, in short, the story of Charles Perrault. And what about his tales?
His first poetic tale "Griselda" was published in 1691 and the members of the French Academy were the first to hear it. So the fairy tale begins to make its way into the upper world. Not a courtly gallant story, not a love joke, but a fairy tale in the sense of the word that readers of later times are used to investing in it.
"Tales of Mother Goose" appears four years later, on October 28, 1696. The full title of the collection: "The Tales of My Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Bygone Times with Teachings." The book was inexpensively published, with simple illustrations, and sold out in 20, 30, and sometimes 50 copies a day. The reason for this was not only the fact that these magical stories were well known to both commoners and nobles, but also the fact that these tales were as modernized as possible and reflected not only ancient legends, but also modern customs and mores of the writer.
So, Sleeping Beauty. We all remember well the story of how three fairies came to the christening of a young princess, one of whom lacked a gold device. It is interesting that modern researchers indicate a specific place where these fabulous events could take place. This is the Yousset castle located on the banks of the Loire
The differences between the French and German canons do not end there. For example, in Grimm's version, after the unfortunate prick of the princess, all the inhabitants of the kingdom fall asleep, while at Perrault, the king and queen, as befits responsible reigning persons, continue to be awake, although, of course, they do not live to see their daughter awake.
In addition, the goal of Monsieur Charles was a kind of promotion of folklore plots among the nobility, so he diligently cleansed them of everything coarse and vulgar, stylized them as courtly literature and filled them with signs of his time. The heroes' manners, clothing and meals perfectly reflected the nobility of the 17th century.
So, in "Sleeping Beauty" the cannibal demands to serve her children's meat invariably "with Robber sauce"; the prince, who woke the beauty, notices that she is dressed old-fashioned ("her collar is upright"), and the woken herself turns to the prince in the tone of a languid capricious lady ("Oh, is that you, prince? You kept yourself waiting").
By the way, few people remember that prince Perrault did not rush to kiss vulgarly... Finding the princess, he "approached her with awe and admiration and knelt down beside her." And even after awakening, our heroine and her gallant gentleman did nothing reprehensible, and talked about love for four hours, until they woke up the whole castle
The very origins of the plot of The Sleeping Beauty are lost in the depths of the Middle Ages. One of the oldest adaptations belongs to the Italian Giambattista Basile, who published in 1636 one of the first (although not as epochal as "The Tales of Mother Goose ...") collections of "Pentameron" fairy tales (apparently, as a response to the famous "Decameron"). Basile's heroine is called Thalia.
The tale begins quite traditionally - with the evil curse of the witch and the sleeping pill of the spindle. True, they don't bother much with the princess, they put her on the throne and put her in an abandoned forest hut. After a while, as it should be, a hunting foreign king stumbles upon the hut, but finding a sleeping beauty, he does not behave at all courteously ... In fact, the tale says - "he gathered the fruits of love" and ... drove away. The beauty quietly became pregnant and after the due date gave birth to twins. The magic "anesthesia" was so strong that she woke up not from childbirth, but only when the baby mistakenly began to suck her thumb and the poisoned tip of the spindle popped out. And then the king decided to visit again for the "fruits of love".
Seeing Talia with children, he finally ... fell in love, and began to visit them more often. And since our hero was a married man, his wife, suspecting treason, caught Talia with the children and ordered to make meat cutlets from the kids for hubby, and throw his mistress into the fire. Obviously, the chef took pity on the kids, slipped the lamb, and as a result, instead of Thalia, they burned an evil wife over a low fire. Next - moral: "Some are always lucky - even when they sleep."
Now it is clear how much Charles Perrault has ennobled the tale. The image of an eternally young maiden in a lethargic dream, waiting for her beloved, turned out to be so attractive that he constantly wandered around literature in different guises.
Suffice it to recall the folk tale "Snow White", "The Sleeping Princess" by V. Zhukovsky, "The Dead Princess and the Seven Bogatyrs" by A. Pushkin, the song of the NAUTILUS group "Polina's Morning" and much, much more.
There is a dark entrance under the mountain.
He goes there quickly.
Before him in the gloom of sadness,
The crystal coffin is swinging
And in a crystal coffin that
The princess sleeps in eternal sleep. "
(A. Pushkin "The Tale of the Dead Princess ...")
"... Sleepy eyes are waiting for the one who enters and turns on the light in them, Polina's morning lasts a hundred billion years ... And all these years I can hear her chest swaying, And from her breath the glass fogged up in the windows, And I do not regret that this is my path is endless - In her crystal bedroom it is constantly light ... ". (I. Kormiltsev "Polina's Morning")
Cinderella
The famous shoes in the Grimm version are gold. However, at Perrault they were at first far from crystal, but trimmed with fur. Some believe that this fur was the famous Russian sable, and in translations they write "sable shoes". However, it so happened that over time, the word "vair" ("fur for the edging"), according to the principle of a damaged phone, was transformed into "verre" ("glass"). As a result, comfortable and soft shoes turned into exquisite by ear, but completely sadistic in practice "crystal shoes". Gold ones, however, are not much more convenient.
But for Grimm, the motive of Cinderella's escape from the ball looks much more logical. The beauty here was frightened not by the striking of the clock, but by the prince's attempts to find out whose daughter she was. When a messenger with shoes comes to the Cinderella family, mischievous sisters manage to try them on, for which one of them ... chops off her finger, and the second chops off her heel! However, the deceivers are exposed by two doves singing:
"Look, look,
And the slipper is covered in blood ... ".
The misadventures of the sisters do not end there. If in Perrault's courtly narration Cinderella not only forgives them, but also suits their personal life ("... married two noble courtiers"), then the "populists" Grimm reprisals against the heroine's oppressors is inevitable.
"And when it came time to celebrate the wedding, the treacherous sisters also appeared - they wanted to flatter her and share her happiness with her. And when the wedding procession went to church, the eldest was on the right hand of the bride, and the youngest on the left; and the pigeons pecked at each of And then, when they were returning back from the church, the eldest walked on the left hand, and the youngest on the right; and the pigeons of each of them pecked out one more eye "...
By the way, in recent years, information has been circulating in the media that the most ancient version of Cinderella appeared from the pen of the 9th century Chinese writer Chuan Chengshi. Like, he has a stepmother, and fur shoes, and a husband-emperor as a reward. Here and the heroine's miniature leg (one of the Chinese canons of female beauty) is very welcome.
Be that as it may, "Cinderella" will still invariably be associated with Charles Perrault, as "Snow White" - with the Grimm brothers. And for more than three centuries this seemingly simple plot has been a source of inspiration and consolation to millions of women on planet Earth. In the depths of their souls, each of them has the hope that they will find their "prince", despite all the troubles in life.
