Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe

City of masters. Plays of a fairy tale

CITY OF MASTERS

CHARACTERS

Duke de Malicorn is the viceroy of a foreign king who has captured the City of Masters.

Guillaume Gottschalk, nicknamed Big Guillaume, is the Duke's advisor.

Nanass Musheron the Elder - foreman of the workshop of jewelers and watchmakers, burgomaster of the city.

Nanass Musheron the Younger, nicknamed "Klik-Klyak", is his son.

Master Firen the Elder - foreman of the gold sewing workshop.

Firen the Younger is his son.

Veronica is his daughter.

Master Martin, nicknamed "Little Martin", is the foreman of the arms shop.

Master Timolle - foreman of the cutting shop.

Timolle the Lesser is his grandson.

Master Ninosh is the foreman of the cake shop.

Gilbert, nicknamed "Caracol", is a sweeper.

Grandma Tafaro is an old fortune teller.

Traders:

Mother Marley ‚

Auntie Mimil

Veronica's friends:

Margarita.

One-eyed man.

Cutters, gunsmiths, shoemakers and other residents of the City of Craftsmen.

Soldiers and bodyguards of the governor.

The curtain is down. It depicts the coat of arms of the fabulous city. In the middle of the shield, on a silver field, a maned lion clutches the snake that has entangled it in its claws. In the upper corners of the shield are the heads of a hare and a bear. Below, under the feet of the lion, is a snail, sticking out its horns from its shell.

A lion and a bear emerge from behind the curtain on the right. A hare and a snail appear on the left.

BEAR. Do you know what will be presented today?

ZAYATSZ. I'll take a look. I have a poster with me. Well, what is written there? “The City of Masters, or the Tale of Two Hunchbacks”.

BEAR. About two hunchbacks? So, about people. Why, then, were we called here?

A LION. Dear bear, you think like a three-month-old bear! Well, what's so surprising? It's a fairy tale, isn't it? And what kind of fairy tale can do without us animals? Take me: I've been in so many fairy tales in my time that it's hard to count them - at least in a thousand and one. It’s true, and today there is a role for me, even the smallest, and for you too. No wonder they painted us all on the curtain! Look for yourself: this is me, this is you, and this is a snail and a hare. Maybe we are not very similar here, but even more beautiful than the grandfather himself. And this is worth something!

HARE. You're right. Here, one cannot demand complete similarity. The drawing on the coat of arms is not a portrait, and certainly not a photograph. For example, it doesn't bother me in the least that in this image I have one gold ear and the other silver. I even like it. I'm proud of that. Agree yourself - not every hare manages to get on the city coat of arms.

BEAR. Not everyone. In all my life, it seems, I have never seen any hares or snails on the emblems. Eagles, leopards, deer, bears - that is why sometimes such an honor falls. And there is nothing to say about the lion - for him this is a familiar thing. That's why he is a lion!

A LION. Well, be that as it may, we all occupy a worthy place on this shield, and I hope that we will find a place in today's performance.

BEAR. There is only one thing I cannot understand: what will the snail do on stage? In the theater they sing, play, dance, talk, and as far as I know, the snail can neither dance, nor sing, nor speak.

SNAIL (sticks his head out of the sink). Everyone speaks in their own way. Only know how to listen.

BEAR. Be merciful - she spoke! Why have you been silent for so long?

SNAIL. I was waiting for the right opportunity. In today's performance, I have the biggest role.

HARE. More of my role?

SNAIL. More.

BEAR. And longer than mine?

SNAIL. Much longer.

A LION. And more important than mine?

SNAIL. Perhaps. I can say without false modesty - in this performance I have the main role, although I will not participate in it at all and will never even appear on stage.

BEAR. How can this be?

Snail (leisurely and calmly). Very simple. I'll explain to you now, the fact is that in our area the snail is called "Karakol". And from us this nickname passed to those people who, like us, carry a heavy burden on their shoulders for a century. Just count how many times this word "Karakol" will be repeated today, then you will see who got the most honorable place in today's performance.

A LION. Why do you have so much honor?

SNAIL. And for the fact that I, so small, can lift more weight than myself. Just try, you big animals, to carry on your back a house that is larger than you, and at the same time do your own thing, and not complain to anyone, and maintain peace of mind.

A LION. Yes, until now it has not occurred to me.

SNAIL. This is always the case. You live, you live, and suddenly you learn something new.

BEAR. Well, now it is completely impossible to understand what kind of idea it will be, what this fairy tale is about! That is, I understand, I am an old theatrical bear, but the audience probably does not understand anything.

SNAIL. Well, we will tell her, and then show her. Listen, dear guests!

We got off today
From the city coat of arms,
To tell you about
As in our city
The struggle was in full swing
Like two hunchbacks
Fate judged
But the first hunchback
There was a hunchback without a hump,
And the second was a hunchback
With a hump.

When it was?
Which way?

It's tricky to say about this:
And numbers and letters
On our wall
They have been erased from time long ago.

But if from time to time
The thread has worn off
The years could not erase
A story where there is both love and struggle
Where people and animals from the coat of arms met -
And a hare, and a lion, and a bear.

ACTION ONE

Scene one

Early morning. The area of \u200b\u200bthe ancient city. All windows and doors are still closed. The inhabitants are not visible, but by the guild's emblems and signs you can guess who lives here: a pretzel flaunts above the window of the shoemaker in a huge shoe, above the door of the pastry; a skein of golden yarn and a huge needle indicate the home of the gold seamstress. In the depths of the square is the castle gate. Before them stands motionless a soldier with a halberd. In front of the castle there is an old statue depicting the founder of the city and the first foreman of the arms shop - Big Martin. Martin has a sword on his belt and a blacksmith's hammer in his hands. On the square, besides the sentry, there is only one person. This is the hunchback Gilbert, nicknamed "Caracol" - the sweeper. He is young, moves easily and swiftly, despite his hump. His face is cheerful and beautiful. He copes with the hump as if it is a familiar burden that does not bother him much. Several variegated feathers are stuck into his hat. The jacket is decorated with a branch of a blossoming apple tree. Karakol sweeps the square and sings.

Karakol.

My broom grew in the forest,
She grew up in a green forest.
Yesterday she was
Aspen or maple.

There was dew on it yesterday
Birds sat on it
She heard voices
Cuckoos and tits.

My broom grew in the forest
Above the talkative river.
Yesterday she was
Birch or willow ...

As if picking up his song, a bird chirps on the tree. Caracol looks up and listens.

How is it? You say you know this willow? Was there the nest you grew up in? There and now there is a nest, and in the nest there are chicks, it must be your younger brothers and sisters ... Well, yes, I saw them myself - they are alive, well! ... What? Okay! Tomorrow I will be in the forest again and I will tell them everything. I will say so. (Flooded whistles)

The sentry angrily strikes the ground with his halberd.

Angry ... Apparently, now we are not only with people - we cannot talk heart to heart with a bird. It can't be helped, sister! You and I were free birds, and now we are caught in the net. (He takes up the broom again. Sweeping, he reaches the foot of the statue) Hello, Big Martin! How are you? Oh, how much litter has accumulated at your feet! You won't know the square since these foreigners came here! ... Well, nothing! We will sweep all this, sweep it out ... And it will be clean again, well ... But for now, here's greetings to you from the forest, from the mountains. (Strengthens the flowering branch above Martin's shield)

The sentry strikes the ground with a halberd even more formidable.

And this is not possible? (He jumps off the pedestal to the ground and again takes revenge on the square. Step by step he gets to the sentry and sweeps at his very feet) Would you like to step aside a bit, respectable stranger?

The sentry swings his halberd at him.

Yesterday, March 2, was the day of memory of Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe - 48 years from the date of her death. L.K. Chukovskaya, S. Ya. Marshak and many others.

At first I thought to give a few short quotes and poems, but it didn't work out briefly.

Recently, S. Ya. Marshak flashed two passages about Tamara Gabba, which I read and then reread several times.

So, from S. Ya. Marshak G.I. Zinchenko of March 29, 1960:

“Dear Galina Ilyinichna!
Forgive me for answering you so late. I had very difficult weeks - before my very eyes, my best friend, a wonderful person, was dying. With this person I was connected with thirty years of common work, a community of thoughts and feelings. I don’t know if you have ever read the plays, critical articles or fairy tales of Tamara G. Gabbe? All this was very talented, deep and at the same time unusually elegant. But most of all the talent, depth, grace was in this man himself, completely devoid of any ambition and self-interest. Perhaps her main talent was kindness, especially precious and effective, combined with a sharp mind and rare observation. She knew the shortcomings of the people she loved, and this did not prevent her from loving them invariably and generously.
At the same time, she was proud, independent and courageous.
An easy, cheerful person, to whom both nature and the city street spoke so much - she patiently endured the illness that confined her to bed, did not complain, did not show fear and despair.
A few days before her death, she said that one must live right and die right.
After several months of the most intense struggle for Tamara Grigorievna's life and after losing her, I can hardly come to my senses ... "

“The kind of person the writer Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe was can be judged by at least a small excerpt from her short autobiography.
“The first years of the war,” she writes, “I spent in Leningrad. I did what other Leningraders did — I worked in the fire brigade, was on duty in attics, cleared the streets. The Writers' Union involved me in editing a collection about the Kirov plant. as for the radio ... "
So - simply and restrained - says T.G. Gabbe about the long months of hunger, cold, artillery shelling and air raids she experienced together with all Leningraders.
But we read further:
"My work in the field of children's literature took a kind of oral form at that time: I gathered children of all ages in a bomb shelter and told them everything I could remember or think of in order to entertain and cheer them up in these difficult times ..."
According to eyewitnesses, the oral stories of Tamara Grigorievna so captivated the listeners that they reluctantly left the bomb shelter after the radio announced the long-awaited retreat.
The guys did not even suspect how much courage and resilience a kind storyteller needed to occupy them with intricate stories at a time when flocks of enemy bombers circled over the city, threatening both her house and all her relatives who were in different parts of the city.
Tamara Grigorievna knew her readers and listeners well and found a way to their hearts, not at all accommodating them.
And there is no doubt that her fairy tales, invented in the troubled moments of air raids, did not bear the slightest trace of haste and excitement, did not look like a crude, confused draft. For everything that Tamara Grigorievna did not, she brought to the utmost harmony and completeness.
Her handwriting was elegant. The style of her letters is elegant. She loved order in her surroundings. Her self-esteem so naturally combined with a friendly and respectful attitude towards people, whatever their rank, position, position.
It is difficult to find an editor more subtle and sensitive than Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe. Many young writers owed their first successes to her heartfelt concern, her clever and kind advice.
After graduating from a higher educational institution (the Leningrad Institute of Art History), she hesitated for some time what kind of activity she should choose - literary or pedagogical. She became a writer, but all her life she never stopped thinking about the education of young generations.
And, in essence, her literary and editorial work was the work of the teacher in the best and highest sense of the word.
She could teach a lot to young writers, because she herself did not stop learning. Possessing a rare memory, she perfectly knew Russian and world literature, classical and new. For many years she studied folklore and left behind many fairy tales, collected by her and processed with the skill that returns folk poetry, which often loses a lot in recording, its original liveliness and freshness.
She worked with special love on Russian fairy tales. And along with them she translated, retold and presented to our children carefully selected fairy tales of different peoples, preserving the poetic originality of each language, each nation in the Russian text. If, when publishing them, it was not indicated to which people this or that tale belongs, then even then it would not be difficult to distinguish a French tale from a German one by language and style, and a Czech one from a Bulgarian one.
Much more could be said about her brilliant and profound articles on literature for and about children.
But, perhaps, the best work of Tamara Grigorievna was her own life.
She was never pleased with herself, often complained that she was doing little.
Probably, indeed, she would have managed to write even more in her lifetime if she had not given so much effort, time, serious and thoughtful concern to others. But that was also her calling.
She walked through her short-lived life with a light step.
Her patience and courage were especially shown during a serious and long illness.
Until the last days, she managed to maintain all her friendliness, delicacy, attention to others.
As if preparing herself in advance for future difficult trials, she wrote to her friend L. Chukovskaya in the fall of 1942:
"That winter (we are talking about the Leningrad winter of the forty-first - forty-second years), I understood with some extraordinary clarity what inner spiritual resources mean for a person." Inflexibility and patience "can prolong a person's life, can make him walk when legs no longer walk, work when they no longer take hands, smile, speak in a kind, gentle voice even in the last minutes of death - cruel in their ugliness ... "
So, as it is written in this letter, Tamara Grigorievna met her last days.
Rereading the plays written by her at different times, you catch the traits of the author himself in the images of her fairy-tale heroines. Tamara Grigorievna had something in common with her kind and truthful Alele, her generous fairy Melusina and, perhaps most of all, with the adamant and selfless Avdotya Ryazanochka. "

And the last excerpt - from the preface to the publication of L. Chukovskaya's book "In memory of Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe" in the magazine "Znamya":

"Contemporaries highly appreciated the literary and human talents of Tamara Grigorievna. Soon after her funeral on May 5, 1960, Korney Chukovsky wrote to S. Marshak:

"Dear Samuil Yakovlevich.

I felt a little better, and I hasten to write at least a few words. Because of my stupid shyness, I could never say to Tamara Grigorievna at the top of my voice how I, an old literary rat who has seen hundreds of talents, semi-talent, celebrities of all kinds, admire the beauty of her personality, her unerring taste, her talent, her humor, her erudition and - above all - her heroic nobility, her ingenious ability to love. And how many patented celebrities immediately fade in my memory, retreat into the back rows, as soon as I remember her image - the tragic image of Failure, which in spite of everything was happy precisely with her ability to love life, literature, friends. "

To this letter S. Marshak replied:

"My dear Korney Ivanovich. Thank you for the kind letter in which I hear the best that is in your voice and heart.

Everything that was written by Tamara Grigorievna (and she wrote wonderful things) should be supplemented by pages dedicated to herself, her personality, so complete and special.

She walked through life with a light gait, maintaining grace until the very last minutes of consciousness. There was not even a shadow of hypocrisy in her. She was a secular and free person, condescending to the weaknesses of others, and she herself obeyed some strict and immutable internal charter. And how much patience, endurance, courage there was in her - only those who were with her in her last weeks and days really know.

And, of course, you are right: her main talent, surpassing all other human talents, was love. Love is kind and strict, without any admixture of self-interest, jealousy, dependence on another person. She was alien to admiration for a big name or high position in society. And she herself never looked for popularity and thought little about her material affairs.

She liked and in character Milton's poems (sonnet "On Blindness"):
But maybe that one serves no less
High will, who stands and waits.
She was outwardly motionless and inwardly active. I'm talking about immobility only in the sense that it cost her a lot of effort to go to editorial offices or theaters, where there was talk about staging her plays, but on the other hand, she could wander around the city or out of town all day, all alone, or rather, alone with her thoughts. She was keen-sighted - she saw and knew a lot in nature, she was very fond of architecture. On Aeroportovskaya, her small apartment was furnished with incomparably greater taste than any other apartment on which so much money had been spent.

If Shakespeare talks about his poetry

And it seems to call by name
Anyone can say me in poetry, -

then in her rooms every shelf, lamp or bookcase could name its mistress by name. In all this was her lightness, her affability, her taste and feminine grace.

It’s sad to think that now these bright, cozy rooms, not cluttered with furniture and always open for friends and students, will go to someone outside. It is bitter to realize that we, who knew the value of it, cannot convince the housing cooperative and the Writers' Union that these few meters of the square should be kept intact, where a remarkable writer lived and died, a friend and advisor of many young and old writers. "

And I will finish with three poems by S.Ya. Marshak, dedicated to Tamara Grigorievna. The first is a humorous inscription on the book "Cat's House", the other two were written after her death.

TAMARE GRIGORIEVNA GABBE

<> The inscription on the book "Cat's House"<>

I'm not writing in an album -
At the "Cat's House", -
And this I am very shy.
Try it, lyricist,
Write eulogy
To the echoing firefighter ringing!

There is no more difficult task
(Impromptu even more so!)
Write a compliment in verse
Under this feline,
Goat, pig,
Chicken accompaniment.

Couldn't Shelley
Neither Keats nor Shengeli,
Neither Goethe, nor Heine, nor Fet,
Not even Firdusi
Come up for Tusi
At the "Cat's House" sonnet.

People write and time erases
Everything erases what it can erase.
But tell me - if the rumor dies,
Should the sound die too?

It gets softer and quieter
He is ready to mingle with silence.
And not by hearing, but by heart, I hear
This laugh, this chest voice.

THE LAST SONNET

Inspiration has its own courage
Its fearlessness, even daring.
Without it, poetry is paper
And the subtlest skill is dead.

But if you are at the battle banner
You will see a creature of poetry
Which is not a cloak and a sword to face,
And the scarf and the fan are above all.

That being, whose courage and strength
So merged with kindness, simple and sweet,
And kindness, like the sun, warms the light, -

You can be proud of such a meeting
And before we say goodbye forever
Dedicate your last sonnet to her.

I don’t remember if I told, but I’ll tell you again.
I have a friend Tina. She is American and the great-niece of Tamara Gabbe. Remember - "City of Masters", "Rings of Almanzora"?
Today she picked me up, took me to her place and showed me the Tamara Gabbe museum, which occupies a room on the second floor of her villa.
The family has an interesting history. Two sisters, daughters of the physician Gabbe, who converted to Christianity for the sake of study, grew up under the tsar. Both graduated from high school in Vyborg, and then the eldest (Tina's grandmother) fell in love with a Finn and went with him to Finland. And Tamara moved to St. Petersburg. Tamara was arrested as a member of a Trotskyist group, and her sister and her husband left Finland, first to Switzerland, then to America. She had children who speak Finnish, English, but not Russian.
Remembering her Jewish roots, Tina came to Israel. Her son is now in the Golani division. And Tina collects a museum for her grand-aunt.
I saw there the documents about my father's graduation from the medical academy, the verdict of the Trotskyists' trial, old bureaus, secretaire, piano, family photos on the walls. All of these things have traveled all over the world. Tina even showed me the plates that Marshak gave Tamara.
I took pictures and promised to tell about the museum.
Here, I’m telling you.

Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe (1903-1960) - Russian Soviet writer, translator, folklorist, playwright, editor and literary critic. The author of popular fairy-tale plays for children ("The City of Masters, or the Tale of Two Hunchbacks", "Avdotya-Ryazanochka", "Crystal Slipper", "Tin Rings" ("The Magic Rings of Almanzora"), etc.).

Biography

Tamara Gabbe was born on March 16, 1903 in the family of a military doctor Grigory Mikhailovich and his wife Yevgenia Samoilovna. In the late 1920s she lived in Leningrad and worked as the editor of the children's department of the State Publishing House, which was headed by S. Ya. Marshak.

In 1937, the editorial office of the Leningrad Detizdat was destroyed and ceased to exist. Some employees (including L.K. Chukovskaya) were dismissed, others, including Tamara Gabbe, were arrested. She was released in 1938.

During the Great Patriotic War, she remained in besieged Leningrad, lost her home and loved ones there. For seven years she was a nurse at the bedside of a hopelessly ill mother.

After the war she lived in Moscow. In recent years, she was terminally ill. She died on March 2, 1960.

She was buried in Moscow, at the Novodevichy cemetery (plot number 5), together with her mother E. S. Gabbe-Gurevich and her stepfather S. M. Gurevich (the author of the monument on the grave is M. R. Gabbe).

Creation

She was engaged in folklore studies, the most significant work in this area is the book “Bylar and Fiction. Russian folk tales, legends, parables ”, which was published posthumously in 1966 in Novosibirsk with two afterwords - S. Marshak and V. Smirnova. Earlier (also posthumously) there was a collection "On the roads of fairy tales" (co-authored with A. Lyubarskaya, Moscow, 1962). During Tamara Grigorievna's lifetime, French folk tales, Perrault's tales, Andersen's tales, the Grimm brothers, as well as Gulliver's Travels by J. Swift were repeatedly published in her translations and retellings.

Editor of the novel "Students" by Yuri Trifonov, for which the latter received the Stalin Prize of the 3rd degree.

Plays

• 1941 - "The Crystal Slipper", a dramatic tale in four acts
• 1943 - "The City of Masters, or the Tale of Two Hunchbacks", performance in four acts
• 1946 - "Avdotya Ryazanochka", a dramatic tale in four acts and six scenes
• 1946 - "The Crystal Slipper" (option for amateur performances)
• 1948 - "Long Distance", a comedy in one act
• 1950 - "The City of Masters, or the Tale of Two Hunchbacks" (option for amateur performances)
• 1953 - "Tin Rings" ("The Magic Rings of Almanzora"), a comedy tale in four acts.
• 1953 - "Piper from Strakonice" (I.K. Tyl. A fairy tale play in three acts. Translation from Czech and a new stage version by T. Gabbe, F. Daniel, B. Metalnikov)
• 1958 - "The Tale of the Soldier and the Snake", performance in four acts and eleven scenes

Screenplays

• 1958 - "Fulfillment of Desires" (based on the fairy tale "Zerbino-Inhuman" by E. Laboulay)

Memory

A chapter from E. L. Schwartz's essay "The Telephone Book", an article by S. Ya. Marshak "How old is a fairy tale?" ("Theater". 1961. No. 12), prepared by E. Ts. Chukovskaya, publication of excerpts from the diaries of L. K. Chukovskaya "In memory of Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe" ("Banner". 2001. No. 5).

In 2010, the Kultura TV channel aired a program about Tamara Gabba “The Sorceress from the City of Masters” in the author's cycle “Writers of Childhood” by Sergei Dmitrenko (directed by Andrey Sudilovsky).

Some productions

• 1944 - "City of Masters", Central Children's Theater (staged by L. A. Volkov, V. S. Kolesaev) (Stalin Prize of the Second Degree for 1943-1944. In 1946, the stage directors, performer of the role of I. D Voronov, the performer of the role of Duke de Malicorn, M. S. Neumann; T. G. Gabbe was mentioned in the decision on awarding prizes as the author of the play, but was not awarded).
• 1951 - "City of Masters" (Latvian. "Meistaru pilsta") was staged at the Riga Youth Theater in Latvian - (dir. Vavere A .; scene. Mikelsons R.)
• 1959 - The Magic Rings of Almanzor, Moscow Academic Theater of Satire (production by O. Solus).
• 1959 - The Crystal Slipper (Cinderella), Kaluga Regional Drama Theater (starring P. G. Vaneev, L. M. Filyakin, E. P. Khavrichev).
• 1960 - "The Tale of the Soldier and the Snake", Oryol Regional Drama Theater (starring V. M. Avdeev, V. S. Burkhart).
• 2006 - "The Magic Rings of Almanzora", Saratov Academic Theater for Young Spectators named after Yu. P. Kiselev (staged by A. Ya. Solovyov).
• 2012 - "The Magic Rings of Almanzora", Theater of Youth Creativity (staged by D. V. Lavrov)

Screen adaptations

• 1965 - City of Masters (Belarusfilm, directed by Vladimir Bychkov)
• 1977 - Rings of Almanzor (film studio named after M. Gorky, directed by Igor Voznesensky)
• 1983 - Tin Rings (Leningrad Television, directed by Gleb Selyanin)

Scripts

• 1957 - Fulfillment of desires (Soyuzmultfilm, dir. V. and Z. Brumberg) - the script of the cartoon based on the tale of Edouard Laboulay "Zerbino-unsociable".

On March 16, 1903, Tamara Gabbe was born in St. Petersburg, a girl with a surprisingly tragic fate and incredibly bright fairy tales.

1903 year. Anton Chekhov publishes the play "The Cherry Orchard", Maxim Gorky publishes the poem "Man", Romain Rolland publishes the book "The People's Theater". In the same year, little Tamara Grigorievna Gabbe was born in a simple Petersburg family. A difficult and rather short life, unbearable trials and terrible events await her. Each of these stages Tamara Grigorievna continued to be a bright and kind person. She wrote and wrote her cute children's stories, which have become classic for many Soviet children.

Tamara's childhood passed under the banner of the revolution. Of course, the child could not fully feel the difficulty of that period, but such things hardly go unnoticed.

Gabbe's first place of work was the Leningrad State Publishing House, the children's literature department. Here she got a huge editorial experience and met her mentor - Samuil Marshak. Already in 1937, the editorial office was closed, half of the employees were fired, the second was arrested. Gabbe was also among those arrested. She was released a year later.

Only three years passed, and war broke out in the Soviet Union. During the Great Patriotic War, the writer was in besieged Leningrad, where she lost all her relatives and friends. With her, only her hopelessly ill mother, Evgenia Samoilovna, remained with her, whom Gabbe took care of for seven years. Of the close friends and colleagues, only Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya survived. After the war, both moved to Moscow. Only thanks to Chukovsky's daughter do we have at least some idea of \u200b\u200bTamara Grigorievna. She made a lot of efforts to keep the memory of her friend.

Tamara Gabbe is an editor, translator, playwright and folklorist. The most popular were her plays for children. Starting in the 40s, she began to dabble in the role of an author and began to write fascinating picture books. The plots of her fabulous works were based on classical legends and traditions of world folklore. The first of these was the story of The Crystal Slipper, a dramatic tale in four acts written in 1941. Then Avdotya Ryazanochka joined the list of rethought traditional plots.

Later, the legendary play "The City of Masters, or the Tale of Two Hunchbacks", the first original work of Gabbe, was born. It was read not only by children, but also by adults. And each identified himself with fairy-tale characters. The beautiful and cozy medieval city is attacked by the terrible knight Molykorn. He is trying to subjugate local residents - freedom-loving and creative townspeople who, as it should be, never give up. But Molykorn is also in no hurry to retreat and with the help of his spies and local informers takes the life of the city under strict control. In addition, the scoundrel also encroaches on the heart of the first beauty Veronica. The hunchback Karakol acts against the evil tyrant, who gathers his squad and declares war on the invader. Readers who had just survived the war instantly fell in love with Gabbe's fairy tale, which gave them hope, faith and hope again. The book has gone through two copyright edits, having been both a play and a so-called composition for amateur performances.

Gabbe's next independent text was the comedy fairy tale "Tin Rings", or "The Magic Rings of Almanzora". Although it is based on the fairy tale “Zerbin-Biryuk” by Edouard Laboulay, it is still referred to as the original works of the writer.

Read also:

Tamara Gabbe's literary talent was highly appreciated, admired, she was read. For example, here is what Korney Chukovsky wrote to Samuil Marshak:

“Because of my stupid shyness, I could never say to Tamara Grigorievna at the top of my voice how I, an old literary rat who has seen hundreds of talents, semi-talent, celebrities of all kinds, admire the beauty of her personality, her unerring taste, her talent, her humor, her erudition and - above all - her heroic nobility, her ingenious ability to love. And how many patented celebrities immediately disappear in my memory, retreat into the back rows, as soon as I remember her image - the tragic image of Failure, which in spite of everything was happy precisely with her ability to love life, literature, friends. "

Literary critic Vera Smirnova described her as follows:

"She was a gifted person, with great charm, with perfect pitch in art, with various abilities in literature: in addition to plays for the theater, she wrote critical articles and lyric poems that, in terms of the depth of feeling and musicality of the verse, would have done honor to the great poet."

"Courage, steadfastness in beliefs and relationships, an extraordinary mind, amazing tact, kindness, sensitivity to people - these are the qualities with which she has always attracted hearts."

In addition to her own plays, Tamara Gabbe became famous thanks to the translations of French folk tales, the works of the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Anderson and Jonathan Swift. She also edited topical prose - for example, "Students" by Yuri Trifonov. The outstanding research work “Fiction and Fiction. Russian folk tales, legends, parables ”.

The last years of her life Tamara Grigorievna was terminally ill. She died in Moscow on March 2, 1960. She was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.