THE STORY “THE WILD DOG DINGO, OR THE STORY” IS 75 YEARS OLD
ABOUT FIRST LOVE" 1939
Reuben Isaevich Fraerman- Soviet children's writer. Born into a poor Jewish family. Graduated in 1915 real school. He studied at the Kharkov Technological Institute (1916). He worked as an accountant, fisherman, draftsman, and teacher. Participated in Civil War on Far East(in a partisan detachment). Member of the Great Patriotic War. In January 1942 he was seriously wounded in battle and demobilized in May.
He knew Konstantin Paustovsky and Arkady Gaidar.
Most of all, Fraerman is known to the reader as the author of the story “ wild dog Dingo, or the Tale of First Love" (1939).
Published during difficult years for the country Stalin's repressions and the pre-war tension of the international situation, it captured the depth of its lyrical-romantic tone in its depiction of the freshness and purity of first love, complex world“adolescent age” - parting with childhood and entering the rebellious world of youth. I was attracted by the author's conviction in the enduring value of simple and natural human feelings - attachment to home, family, nature, loyalty in love and friendship, and interethnic community.
History of writing
Fraerman usually wrote slowly, laboriously, polishing each phrase. But he wrote “The Wild Dog Dingo” surprisingly quickly - in just one month. This was in Solotch, Ryazan region in December 1938. It was a cold, frosty day. Reuben Isaevich worked with great effort, taking short breaks in the frosty air.
The story turned out to be very poetic; it was, as they say, written in “one breath,” although the idea for the book had been incubated for many years. The story is rightfully recognized best book Fraerman, translated into many languages of the peoples of our country and abroad - in Switzerland, Austria, West Germany. In the Paris edition it is called “Tanya’s First Love”. Based on the book, a film of the same name was created, which at the Venice International Film Festival in 1962 was awarded the first prize - the Golden Lion of St. Mark.
Childhood friends and classmates Tanya Sabaneeva and Filka vacationed at a children's camp in Siberia and now they are returning home. A girl is welcomed home old dog Tiger and old nanny (mother is at work, and father has not lived with them since Tanya was 8 months old). The girl dreams of a wild Australian dog, Dingo; later the children will call her that because she is isolated from the group.
Filka shares his happiness with Tanya - his father-hunter gave him a husky. Theme of fatherhood: Filka is proud of her father, Tanya tells her friend that her father lives on Maroseyka - the boy opens the map and looks for an island with that name for a long time, but does not find it and tells Tanya about it, who runs away crying. Tanya hates her father and reacts aggressively to these conversations with Filka.
One day, Tanya found a letter under her mother’s pillow in which her father announced the move of his new family (his wife Nadezhda Petrovna and her nephew Kolya, the adopted son of Tanya’s father) to their city. The girl is filled with a feeling of jealousy and hatred towards those who stole her father from her. The mother is trying to set Tanya up positively towards her father.
On the morning when her father was supposed to arrive, the girl picked flowers and went to the port to meet him, but not finding him among those who arrived, she gives flowers to a sick boy on a stretcher (she still does not know that this is Kolya).
School begins, Tanya tries to forget about everything, but she fails. Filka tries to cheer her up (the word comrade on the board is written with b and explains this by saying that it is a second-person verb).
Tanya is lying with her mother in the garden bed. She feels good. For the first time, she thought not only about herself, but also about her mother. At the gate the colonel is the father. A difficult meeting (after 14 years). Tanya addresses her father as “you.”
Kolya ends up in the same class as Tanya and sits with Filka. Kolya found himself in a new, unfamiliar world for him. It's very difficult for him.
Tanya and Kolya constantly quarrel, and on Tanya’s initiative, there is a struggle for her father’s attention. Kolya is smart, loving son, he treats Tanya with irony and mockery.
Kolya talks about his meeting with Gorky in Crimea. Tanya basically doesn’t listen, this results in conflict.
Zhenya (classmate) decides that Tanya is in love with Kolya. Filka takes revenge on Zhenya for this and treats her with a mouse instead of Velcro (resin). A little mouse lies alone in the snow - Tanya warms him up.
A writer has arrived in town. The children decide who will give him flowers, Tanya or Zhenya. They chose Tanya, she is proud of such an honor (“to shake the famous writer’s hand”). Tanya unwrapped the inkwell and poured it on her hand; Kolya noticed her. This scene demonstrates that relations between the enemies have become warmer. Some time later, Kolya invited Tanya to dance with her on the Christmas tree.
New Year. Preparations. “Will he come?” Guests, but Kolya is not there. “But just recently, how many bitter and sweet feelings crowded into her heart at the mere thought of her father: What’s wrong with her? She thinks about Kolya all the time.” Filka has a hard time experiencing Tanya’s love, since he himself is in love with Tanya. Kolya gave her an aquarium with a goldfish, and Tanya asked her to fry this fish.
Dancing. Intrigue: Filka tells Tanya that Kolya is going to the skating rink with Zhenya tomorrow, and Kolya says that tomorrow he and Tanya will go to a play at school. Filka is jealous, but tries to hide it. Tanya goes to the skating rink, but hides her skates because she meets Kolya and Zhenya. Tanya decides to forget Kolya and goes to school for the play. A storm suddenly begins. Tanya runs to the skating rink to warn the guys. Zhenya got scared and quickly went home. Kolya fell on his leg and cannot walk. Tanya runs to Filka’s house and gets into the dog sled. She is fearless and determined. The dogs suddenly stopped obeying her, then the girl threw her beloved Tiger to them to be torn to pieces (it was a very big sacrifice). Kolya and Tanya fell from the sled, but, despite their fear, they continue to fight for life. The storm is intensifying. Tanya, risking her life, pulls Kolya on the sled. Filka warned the border guards and they went out in search of the children, among them was their father.
Holidays. Tanya and Filka visit Kolya, who has frozen his cheeks and ears.
School. Rumors that Tanya wanted to destroy Kolya by dragging him to the skating rink. Everyone is against Tanya, except Filka. The question is raised about Tanya's exclusion from the pioneers. The girl hides and cries in the pioneer room, then falls asleep. She was found. Everyone will learn the truth from Kolya.
Tanya, waking up, returns home. They talk with their mother about trust, about life. Tanya understands that her mother still loves her father; her mother offers to leave.
Meeting with Filka, he learns that Tanya is going to meet Kolya at dawn. Filka, out of jealousy, tells their father about this.
Forest. Kolya's explanation of love. Father arrives. Tanya leaves. Farewell to Filka. Leaves. End of the story.
Quotes from the book
It's good if you have friends on the right. It's good if they are on the left. It's good if they are both here and here.
Russian word, whimsical, rebellious, magnificent and magical, is the greatest means of bringing people together.
- You are very thoughtful.
- What does this mean? – asked Tanya. - Smart?
- Yes, not smart, but you think a lot, which is why you come out like a fool.
... people live together as long as they love each other, and when they don’t love, they don’t live together - they separate. Man is always free. This is our law forever.
She sat motionless on a stone, and the river washed over her with noise. Her eyes were cast downwards. But their gaze, tired of the shine scattered everywhere over the water, was not intent. She often took him aside and directed him into the distance, where steep mountains, shaded by the forest, stood above the river itself.
Wide with open eyes She watched the ever-flowing water, trying to imagine in her imagination those unexplored lands where and from where the river ran. She wanted to see other countries, another world, for example the Australian dingo. Then she also wanted to be a pilot and sing a little at the same time.
How often does she find her in Lately and sad and absent-minded, and yet every step of her is filled with beauty. Maybe, in fact, love slid its quiet breath across her face.
The thin line was lowered into the water under a thick root that moved with every movement of the wave.
The girl was catching trout.
She sat motionless on a stone, and the river washed over her with noise. Her eyes were cast downwards. But their gaze, tired of the shine scattered everywhere over the water, was not intent. She often took him aside and directed him into the distance, where steep mountains, shaded by forest, stood above the river itself.
The air was still light, and the sky, constrained by the mountains, seemed like a plain among them, slightly illuminated by the sunset.
But neither this air, familiar to her from the first days of her life, nor this sky attracted her now.
With wide open eyes she watched the ever-flowing water, trying to imagine in her imagination those uncharted lands where and from where the river ran. She wanted to see other countries, another world, for example the Australian dingo. Then she also wanted to be a pilot and sing a little at the same time.
And she began to sing. Quiet at first, then louder.
She had a voice that was pleasant to the ear. But it was empty all around. Only the water rat, frightened by the sounds of her song, splashed close to the root and swam to the reeds, dragging a green reed into the hole. The reed was long, and the rat worked in vain, unable to pull it through the thick river grass.
The girl looked at the rat with pity and stopped singing. Then she stood up, pulling the line out of the water.
With a wave of her hand, the rat darted into the reeds, and the dark, spotted trout, which had previously been standing motionless on the light stream, jumped and went into the depths.
The girl was left alone. She looked at the sun, which was already close to sunset and was sloping towards the top of the spruce mountain. And, although it was already late, the girl was in no hurry to leave. She slowly turned on the stone and leisurely walked up the path, where a tall forest descended towards her along the gentle slope of the mountain.
She entered it boldly.
The sound of water running between the rows of stones remained behind her, and silence opened before her.
And in this age-old silence she suddenly heard the sound of a pioneer bugle. He walked along the clearing where old fir trees stood without moving their branches, and blew a trumpet in her ears, reminding her that she had to hurry.
However, the girl did not increase her pace. Having gone around a round swamp where yellow locusts grew, she bent down and with a sharp twig dug out of the ground along with the roots several pale flowers. Her hands were already full when behind her came the quiet noise of footsteps and a voice loudly calling her name:
She turned around. In the clearing, near a high heap of ants, the Nanai boy Filka stood and beckoned her to him with his hand. She approached, looking at him friendly.
Near Filka, on a wide stump, she saw a pot full of lingonberries. And Filka himself, using a narrow hunting knife made of Yakut steel, cleared the bark of a fresh birch twig.
Didn't you hear the bugle? - he asked. - Why aren’t you in a hurry?
She answered:
Today is parents' day. My mother cannot come - she is at the hospital at work - and no one is waiting for me at the camp. Why aren't you in a hurry? - she added with a smile.
“Today is parent’s day,” he answered in the same way as she, “and my father came to me from the camp, I went to accompany him to the spruce hill.”
Have you already done it? It's far away.
No,” Filka answered with dignity. - Why would I accompany him if he stays overnight near our camp by the river! I took a bath behind the Big Stones and went to look for you. I heard you singing loudly.
The girl looked at him and laughed. And Filka’s dark face darkened even more.
But if you’re not in a hurry,” he said, “then we’ll stay here for a while.” I'll treat you to ant juice.
You already treated me to raw fish this morning.
Yes, but it was a fish, and this is completely different. Try! - said Filka and stuck his rod into the very middle of the ant heap.
And, bending over it together, they waited a little until the thin branch, cleared of bark, was completely covered with ants. Then Filka shook them off, lightly hitting the cedar with a branch, and showed it to Tanya. Drops of formic acid were visible on the shiny sapwood. He licked it and gave it to Tanya to try. She also licked and said:
This is delicious. I've always loved ant juice.
They were silent. Tanya - because she loved to think a little about everything and remain silent every time she entered this silent forest. And Filka also didn’t want to talk about such a pure trifle as ant juice. Still, it was only juice that she could extract herself.
So they walked the entire clearing without saying a word to each other, and came out to the opposite slope of the mountain. And here, very close, under a stone cliff, all by the same river, tirelessly rushing to the sea, they saw their camp - spacious tents standing in a clearing in a row.
There was noise coming from the camp. The adults must have already gone home, and only the children were making noise. But their voices were so strong that here, above, among the silence of the gray wrinkled stones, it seemed to Tanya that somewhere far away a forest was humming and swaying.
But, no way, they are already building a line,” she said. “You should, Filka, come to camp before me, because won’t they laugh at us for coming together so often?”
“She really shouldn’t have talked about this,” Filka thought with bitter resentment.
And, grabbing a tenacious layer sticking out over the cliff, he jumped down onto the path so far that Tanya became scared.
But he didn't hurt himself. And Tanya rushed to run along another path, between low pines growing crookedly on the stones...
The path led her to the road, which, like a river, ran out of the forest and, like a river, flashed its stones and rubble in her eyes and made the sound of a long bus, full of people. It was the adults leaving the camp for the city.
The bus passed by. But the girl did not follow its wheels, did not look out of its windows; she did not expect to see any of her relatives in him.
She crossed the road and ran into the camp, easily jumping over ditches and hummocks, as she was agile.
The children greeted her with screams. The flag on the pole flapped right in her face. She stood in her row, placing flowers on the ground.
Counselor Kostya shook his eyes at her and said:
Tanya Sabaneeva, you have to get to the line on time. Attention! Be equal! Feel your neighbor's elbow.
Tanya spread her elbows wider, thinking: “It’s good if you have friends on the right. It's good if they are on the left. It’s good if they are both here and there.”
Turning her head to the right, Tanya saw Filka. After swimming, his face shone like stone, and his tie was dark with water.
And the counselor said to him:
Filka, what kind of a pioneer are you if every time you make swimming trunks out of a tie!.. Don’t lie, don’t lie, please! I know everything myself. Wait, I'll talk to your father seriously.
“Poor Filka,” Tanya thought, “he’s unlucky today.”
She looked to the right all the time. She didn't look to the left. Firstly, because it was not according to the rules, and secondly, because standing there was a fat girl, Zhenya, whom she did not prefer to others.
Ah, this camp, where she has spent her summer for the fifth year in a row! For some reason, today he seemed to her not as cheerful as before. But she always loved waking up in the tent at dawn, when dew dripped onto the ground from the thin thorns of the blackberries! I loved the sound of a bugle in the forest, roaring like a wapiti, and the knocking drumsticks, and sour ant juice, and songs around the fire, which she knew how to light better than anyone in the squad.
There are works that from a young age go hand in hand with you through life, firmly entering your heart. They make you happy, sad, console and make you empathize. This is exactly the book I want to tell you about now. " Wild Dog Dingo, or the Tale of First Love“is a whole world of beautiful and noble feelings, a world of kind and brave people.
Reading this story, with some inner feeling, you understand that he wrote it very good man and a talented writer. Therefore, such works leave a bright mark on the soul; they evoke in us an explosion of feelings, thoughts, emotions, dreams and tenderness. A happy and subtle book was written by Reuben Isaevich Fraerman about the girl Tanya, a girl who dreams of distant unknown countries, the Australian dog Dingo. Strange dreams and fantasies disturb her. And this is a story about the boys Filka and Kolka, the smart and courageous Colonel Sabaneev, Tanya’s sad mother and the sensitive teacher Alexandra Ivanovna. In general, this is a poetic and kind book about good and noble people. And let them not have an easy and simple life. Sorrow and happiness, sadness and joy alternate in their lives. They are brave and responsive, both when they are sad and when they are happy. They always behave with dignity, are attentive to people and take care of their family and friends. Tanya considers Filka her best and most devoted friend. He is kind and simple-minded, but he has a brave and warm heart. And friendship with Tanya is not just friendship. This is Love. Timid, pure, naive, first...
Reuben Fraerman V " The Wild Dog Dingo, or Tales of First Love"very accurately and soulfully depicts the sensual world of a teenager, the transformation of a girl into a girl, a boy into a young man. Psychologically accurately describes the age when the soul of a teenager rushes about in search of something incomprehensible and unknown. And yesterday’s children understand that the time has come to grow up, and the most beautiful, most unique feeling has come into their world - first love. And it’s a pity that for Filka, she, the purest, most sublime, first love for Tanya, turned out to be unrequited. But the writer found the right words to evoke in his reader feelings of compassion for Filka and joy for him. Yes, Tanya sees him only as a friend, but pure and young love for this girl elevates Filka, he feels and senses the surrounding reality in a new way. And Tanya fell in love with Kolya. That's right folk wisdom- "From love to hate one step". Long before Kolya’s arrival, Tanya hated her father, his wife and a boy she did not know. It was to them that Tanya believed that her father left the family, leaving his wife and very young daughter. And although Tanya didn’t remember him at all, she really missed her dad. And so, many years later, Tanya’s father and his new family come to the town where Tanya and her mother live. The girl is confused. She both wants and doesn't want to see her father. But Tanya’s mother really hopes that her daughter will get closer to her father and insists on their meetings. Tanya began to visit the Sabaneevs. She was very envious to look at family life father, how he looks at his wife, Nadezhda Petrovna, jokes with Kolya, Nadezhda Petrovna’s nephew, the boy to whom Tanya’s dad replaced his father. Tanya thinks that her father won’t look at her like that, and he won’t joke with her like that. And her heart ached with resentment. But despite this, she was very much drawn to the cozy atmosphere of this family. And she was also very offended that Kolya did not pay attention to her. He studies in the same class with her, sits next to her at family dinners, and plays billiards. But it seems to Tanya that she does not occupy his thoughts as much as he occupies hers. Tanya does not yet understand that she has fallen in love with Kolya; she cannot recognize love in her rebellious actions. She constantly quarrels with Kolya, mocks Filka, cries and laughs out of place. It’s not easy at 15 years old to understand what is happening to you. And only teacher Anna Ivanovna guesses what happened to her student. Anna Ivanovna noticed that Tanya had become somewhat depressed. “How often lately she finds her sad and absent-minded, and yet every step of her is filled with beauty. Maybe, in fact, love slid its quiet breath across her face? How beautifully said! Sincerely and sincerely! We hear the music of the word. And I want to take a deep breath and smile, and for some vague and captivating dreams, like Tanya Sabaneeva’s, to come to us. Even if it’s about the wild dog Dingo. Such is the power of art and the power of words.
Happy reading!
Fraerman R.I. Wild dog Dingo, or the Tale of First Love. - M.: Onyx, 2011. - 192 pp. - (Library of a Russian schoolchild). - ISBN 978-5-488-02537-0
Perhaps the most popular Soviet book about teenagers became so not immediately after its first publication in 1939, but much later - in the 1960s and 70s. This was partly due to the release of the film (in leading role- Galina Polskikh), but much more - with the properties of the story itself. It is still regularly republished, and in 2013 it was included in the list of one hundred books recommended for schoolchildren by the Ministry of Education and Science.
Psychologism and psychoanalysis
Cover of Reuben Fraerman's story “The Wild Dog Dingo, or the Tale of First Love.” Moscow, 1940
"Children's Publishing House of the Komsomol Central Committee"; Russian State Children's Library
The action covers six months in the life of fourteen-year-old Tanya from a small Far Eastern town. Tanya grows up in a single-parent family: her parents separated when she was eight months old. Mom is a doctor constantly at work, father lives in Moscow with his new family. A school, a pioneer camp, a vegetable garden, an old nanny - this would be the limit of life if it were not for first love. The Nanai boy Filka, the son of a hunter, is in love with Tanya, but Tanya does not reciprocate his feelings. Soon Tanya’s father comes to the city with his family - his second wife and adopted son Kolya. The story describes Tanya's complex relationship with her father and stepbrother - she gradually moves from hostility to love and self-sacrifice.
For Soviet and many post-Soviet readers, “The Wild Dog Dingo” remained the standard of a complex, problematic work about the lives of teenagers and their coming of age. There were no schematic plots of socialist realist children's literature - reforming losers or incorrigible egoists, struggles with external enemies or glorification of the spirit of collectivism. The book described the emotional story of growing up, finding and realizing one's own self.
"Lenfilm"
IN different years critics called main feature The story is a detailed depiction of teenage psychology: the heroine’s contradictory emotions and rash actions, her joys, sorrows, falling in love and loneliness. Konstantin Paustovsky argued that “such a story could only have been written by a good psychologist.” But was “The Wild Dog Dingo” a book about the love of the girl Tanya for the boy Kolya? [ At first Tanya does not like Kolya, but then she gradually realizes how dear he is to her. Tanya’s relationship with Kolya is asymmetrical until the last moment: Kolya confesses his love to Tanya, and Tanya in response is ready to say only that she wants “Kolya to be happy.” The real catharsis in the scene of Tanya and Kolya’s love explanation occurs not when Kolya talks about his feelings and kisses Tanya, but after his father appears in the pre-dawn forest and it is to him, and not Kolya, that Tanya says words of love and forgiveness.] Rather, this is a story of difficult acceptance of the very fact of divorce of parents and a father figure. At the same time as her father, Tanya begins to better understand—and accept—her own mother.
The further the story goes, the more noticeable is the author's familiarity with the ideas of psychoanalysis. In fact, Tanya’s feelings for Kolya can be interpreted as transference, or transference, which is what psychoanalysts call the phenomenon in which a person unconsciously transfers his feelings and attitude towards one person to another. The initial figure with whom the transfer can be carried out is most often the closest relatives.
The climax of the story, when Tanya saves Kolya, literally pulling him out of a deadly snowstorm in her arms, immobilized by a dislocation, is marked by an even more obvious influence of psychoanalytic theory. In almost pitch darkness, Tanya pulls the sledge with Kolya - “for a long time, not knowing where the city is, where the shore is, where the sky is” - and, having almost lost hope, suddenly buries her face in the overcoat of her father, who went out with his soldiers in search of his daughter and adopted son: “... with her warm heart, which had been looking for her father in the whole world for so long, she felt his closeness, recognized him here, in the cold, death-threatening desert, in complete darkness.”
Still from the film “Wild Dog Dingo”, directed by Yuli Karasik. 1962
"Lenfilm"
The very scene of a mortal test, in which a child or teenager, overcoming his own weakness, commits a heroic act, was very characteristic of socialist realist literature and for that branch of modernist literature that was focused on the depiction of courageous and selfless heroes, alone resisting the elements [ for example, in the prose of Jack London or James Aldridge’s favorite story in the USSR, “The Last Inch,” although written much later than Fraerman’s story]. However, the outcome of this test—Tanya’s cathartic reconciliation with her father—turned going through the storm into a strange analogue of a psychoanalytic session.
In addition to the parallel “Kolya is the father,” there is another, no less important, parallel in the story: Tanya’s self-identification with her mother. Almost until the very last moment, Tanya does not know that her mother still loves her father, but she feels and unconsciously accepts her pain and tension. After the first sincere explanation, the daughter begins to realize the depth of the mother’s personal tragedy and for her sake peace of mind decides to make a sacrifice - leaving his hometown [ in the scene of Kolya and Tanya’s explanation, this identification is depicted completely openly: when going to the forest on a date, Tanya puts on her mother’s white medical coat, and her father says to her: “How much you look like your mother in this white coat!”].
Still from the film “Wild Dog Dingo”, directed by Yuli Karasik. 1962
"Lenfilm"
It is not known exactly how and where Fraerman became acquainted with the ideas of psychoanalysis: perhaps he independently read Freud’s works in the 1910s, while studying at the Kharkov Institute of Technology, or already in the 1920s, when he became a journalist and writer. It is possible that there were also indirect sources here - primarily Russian modernist prose, influenced by psychoanalysis [Fraerman was clearly inspired by Boris Pasternak's story "Childhood Eyelets"]. Judging by some features of “The Wild Dog Dingo” - for example, the leitmotif of the river and flowing water, which largely structures the action (the first and last scenes of the story take place on the river bank) - Fraerman was influenced by the prose of Andrei Bely, who was critical of Freudianism, but he himself constantly returned in his writings to “Oedipal” problems (this was noted by Vladislav Khodasevich in his memoir essay about Bely).
"Wild Dog Dingo" was an attempt to describe the inner biography of a teenage girl as a story of psychological overcoming - first of all, Tanya overcomes alienation from her father. This experiment had a distinct autobiographical component: Fraerman was having a hard time being separated from his daughter from his first marriage, Nora Kovarskaya. It turned out to be possible to defeat alienation only in extreme circumstances, on the verge of physical death. It is no coincidence that Fraerman calls the miraculous rescue from the snowstorm Tanya’s battle “for her living soul, which in the end, without any road, her father found and warmed with his own hands.” Overcoming death and the fear of death is here clearly identified with finding a father. One thing remains unclear: how the Soviet publishing and magazine system could allow a work based on the ideas of psychoanalysis, which was banned in the USSR, to be published.
Order for a school story
Still from the film “Wild Dog Dingo”, directed by Yuli Karasik. 1962
"Lenfilm"
The theme of parental divorce, loneliness, the depiction of illogical and strange teenage actions - all this was completely out of the standard of children's and teenage prose of the 1930s. The publication can be partly explained by the fact that Fraerman was fulfilling a government order: in 1938, he was assigned to write a school story. From a formal point of view, he fulfilled this order: the book contains a school, teachers, and a pioneer detachment. Fraerman also fulfilled another publishing requirement formulated at the editorial meeting of Detgiz in January 1938 - to depict children's friendship and the altruistic potential inherent in this feeling. And yet this does not explain how and why a text was published that went beyond the scope of a traditional school story to such an extent.
Scene
Still from the film “Wild Dog Dingo”, directed by Yuli Karasik. 1962
"Lenfilm"
The story takes place in the Far East, presumably in the Khabarovsk Territory, on the border with China. In 1938-1939, these territories were the focus of attention of the Soviet press: first because of the armed conflict on Lake Khasan (July - September 1938), then, after the publication of the story, because of the battles near the Khalkhin Gol River, on the border with Mongolia. In both operations, the Red Army came into military conflict with the Japanese, and human losses were high.
In the same 1939, the Far East became the theme of the famous film comedy “Girl with Character”, as well as the popular song “Brown Button” based on the poems of Evgeniy Dolmatovsky. Both works are united by the episode of searching for and exposing a Japanese spy. In one case this is done by a young girl, in another by teenagers. Fraerman did not use the same plot device: border guards are mentioned in the story; Tanya's father, a colonel, comes to the Far East from Moscow for official purposes, but the military-strategic status of the location is no longer exploited. At the same time, the story contains many descriptions of the taiga and natural landscapes: Fraerman fought in the Far East during the Civil War and knew these places well, and in 1934 he traveled to the Far East as part of a writing delegation. It is possible that for editors and censors the geographical aspect could have been a powerful argument in favor of publishing this story, which was unformatted from the point of view of socialist realist canons.
Moscow writer
Alexander Fadeev in Berlin. Photo of Roger and Renata Rössing. 1952
Deutsche Fotothek
The story was first published not as a separate publication in Detgiz, but in the venerable adult magazine Krasnaya Nov. From the beginning of the 1930s, the magazine was headed by Alexander Fadeev, with whom Fraerman was on friendly terms. Five years before the release of “The Wild Dog Dingo,” in 1934, Fadeev and Fraerman found themselves together on the same writing trip to the Khabarovsk Territory. In the episode of the Moscow writer’s arrival [ A writer from Moscow comes to the city, and his creative evening is held at the school. Tanya is tasked with presenting flowers to the writer. Wanting to check if she is really as pretty as they say at school, she goes to the locker room to look in the mirror, but, carried away by looking at her own face, she knocks over a bottle of ink and heavily stains her palm. It seems that disaster and public shame are inevitable. On the way to the hall, Tanya meets the writer and asks him not to shake hands with her, without explaining the reason. The writer plays out the scene of giving flowers in such a way that no one in the audience notices Tanya’s embarrassment and her stained palm.] it is tempting to see an autobiographical background, that is, a depiction of Fraerman himself, but this would be a mistake. As the story says, the Moscow writer “was born in this city and even studied at this very school.” Fraerman was born and raised in Mogilev. But Fadeev really grew up in the Far East and graduated from school there. In addition, the Moscow writer spoke in a “high voice” and laughed in an even thinner voice - judging by the memoirs of contemporaries, this is exactly the voice Fadeev had.
Arriving at Tanya’s school, the writer not only helps the girl in her difficulty with her hand stained with ink, but also soulfully reads a fragment of one of his works about a son’s farewell to his father, and in his high voice Tanya hears “copper, the ringing of a trumpet, to which the stones respond " Both chapters of “The Wild Dog Dingo”, dedicated to the arrival of the Moscow writer, can thus be regarded as a kind of homage to Fadeev, after which the editor-in-chief of “Krasnaya Novy” and one of the most influential officials of the Union of Soviet Writers should have reacted with particular sympathy to Fraerman’s new story .
Great Terror
Still from the film “Wild Dog Dingo”, directed by Yuli Karasik. 1962
"Lenfilm"
The theme of the Great Terror is quite distinct in the book. The boy Kolya, nephew of Tanya’s father’s second wife, came into their family through unknown reasons- he is called an orphan, but at the same time he never talks about the death of his parents. Kolya is excellently educated, knows foreign languages: it can be assumed that his parents not only took care of his education, but were also very educated people themselves.
But that's not even the main thing. Fraerman takes a much bolder step by describing psychological mechanisms exclusion of a person rejected and punished by the authorities from the team, where he was previously warmly received. According to a complaint from one of school teachers a notice is published in the district newspaper that turns it 180 degrees real facts: Tanya is accused of taking her classmate Kolya ice skating just for fun, despite the snowstorm, after which Kolya was sick for a long time. After reading the article, all the students, except Kolya and Filka, turn away from Tanya, and it takes a lot of effort to justify the girl and change public opinion. It is difficult to imagine a work of Soviet adult literature from 1939 in which such an episode would appear:
“Tanya was used to always feeling her friends next to her, seeing their faces, and seeing their backs now, she was amazed.<…>...He didn’t see anything good in the locker room either. In the darkness, children were still crowding around the newspaper hangers. Tanya's books were thrown from the mirror cabinet onto the floor. And right there, on the floor, lay her baby [ doshka, or dokha, is a fur coat with fur in and out.], given to her recently by her father. They walked along it. And no one paid attention to the cloth and beads with which it was trimmed, to its edging of badger fur, which shone underfoot like silk.<…>...Filka knelt down in the dust among the crowd, and many stepped on his toes. But still, he collected Tanya’s books and, grabbing Tanya’s little book, tried with all his might to snatch it from under his feet.”
So Tanya begins to understand that school - and society - are not ideally structured and the only thing that can protect against herd feelings is friendship and loyalty of the closest, trusted people.
Still from the film “Wild Dog Dingo”, directed by Yuli Karasik. 1962
"Lenfilm"
This discovery was completely unexpected for children's literature in 1939. The orientation of the story to the Russian literary tradition of works about teenagers, associated with the culture of modernism and literature of the 1900s - early 1920s, was also unexpected.
Adolescent literature, as a rule, talks about initiation - the test that transitions a child into adulthood. Soviet literature of the late 1920s and 1930s typically depicted such initiation in the form of heroic deeds involving participation in the revolution, Civil War, collectivization, or dispossession. Fraerman chose a different path: his heroine, like the teenage heroes of Russian modernist literature, goes through an internal psychological revolution associated with the awareness and re-creation of her own personality, finding herself.
“The Wild Dog Dingo, or the Tale of First Love” is the most famous work of the Soviet writer R.I. Fraerman. The main characters of the story are children, and it was written, in fact, for children, but the problems posed by the author are distinguished by their seriousness and depth.
ContentWhen the reader opens the work “The Wild Dog Dingo, or the Tale of First Love,” the plot captures him from the first pages. main character, schoolgirl Tanya Sabaneeva, at first glance looks like all girls her age and lives the ordinary life of a Soviet pioneer. The only thing that distinguishes her from her friends is her passionate dream. An Australian dingo dog is what the girl dreams about. Tanya is raised by her mother; her father left them when her daughter was just eight months old. Returning from children's camp, the girl discovers a letter addressed to her mother: her father says that he intends to move to their city, but with a new family: his wife and adopted son. The girl is filled with pain, rage, and resentment towards her stepbrother, because, in her opinion, it was he who deprived her of her dad. On the day of her father’s arrival, she goes to meet him, but does not find him in the bustle of the port and gives a bouquet of flowers to a sick boy lying on a stretcher (later Tanya will learn that this is Kolya, her new relative).
Developments
The story about the dingo dog continues with a description of the school group: Kolya ends up in the same class where Tanya and her friend Filka study. A kind of rivalry for their father’s attention begins between the half-brother and sister; they constantly quarrel, and Tanya, as a rule, is the initiator of the conflicts. However, gradually the girl realizes that she is in love with Kolya: she constantly thinks about him, is painfully shy in his presence, and with a sinking heart awaits his arrival at New Year's celebration. Filka is very dissatisfied with this love: he treats his old friend with great warmth and does not want to share her with anyone. The work “The Wild Dog Dingo, or the Tale of First Love” depicts the path that every teenager goes through: first love, misunderstanding, betrayal, the need to make difficult choices and, ultimately, growing up. This statement can be applied to all the characters in the work, but most of all to Tanya Sabaneeva.
The image of the main character
Tanya is the “dingo dog”, that’s what the team called her for her isolation. Her experiences, thoughts, and tossing allow the writer to emphasize the girl’s main features: feeling self-esteem, compassion, understanding. She wholeheartedly sympathizes with her mother, who continues to love her ex-husband; She struggles to understand who is to blame for the family discord, and comes to unexpectedly mature, sensible conclusions. Seemingly a simple schoolgirl, Tanya differs from her peers in her ability to feel subtly and in her desire for beauty, truth, and justice. Her dreams of uncharted lands and a dingo dog emphasize her impetuosity, ardor, and poetic nature. Tanya’s character is most clearly revealed in her love for Kolya, to which she devotes herself with all her heart, but at the same time does not lose herself, but tries to realize and comprehend everything that is happening.
Loading...