You're reading: Lifestyle Blog: Lindgren’s fans celebrate 105th anniversary of Pippi’s ‘mother’

When my brother and I got a kitten, after a long fight with our dad who didn't fancy having cats, we decided its bright red color would determine its name – Pippilotta, or Pippi for short.

This red-haired
girl from Astrid Lindgren’s book was living a life I would have
wished for every creature in the world, even for a cat.

She was only 9,
but strong enough to lift a horse and rich enough to buy 100 kilos
of lollipops
for
all the town’s children. She was brave enough to fight thieves
who tried to rob
her and policemen who wanted to take her to the orphanage.
And she was generous
enough to later feed her offenders with fresh buns and make friends
with them.

Not that the cat
had any of these noble qualities. But it was red, and apparently
male, and it was too late to give him another name. So Pippi he
stayed – a lively reminder of our happy childhood for more than 12
years.

I think it
was the good children’s literature, and Lindgren’s stories in
particular, that made my childhood so happy. Pippi,
Karlsson-on-the-Roof and the Six Bullerby children were my childhood
friends, just as they were the friends of many other Ukrainian
children ever since the first translation by Olga Seniuk in mid
50s.
Now Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking has been translated into more than
60 languages, with
last illustrated Ukrainian edition to come out this year,
and keeps inspiring children and adults all over the planet.

I never wanted
to know about the biographies of my favorite writers, but it was
Lindgren again who changed my mind. She was as dreamy as each and
every one of her books – somehow filled with the flavor of fresh
pastries, sweets and adventures. Lindgren’s daughter Karin Nyman,
translator, would always say that her mother remained a child all
her life.

“Her books
were all based on her experiences as a child. She was able to
preserve the mind of a child all her life, and she always maintained
that she wrote books for pleasure and nothing else, her own pleasure
writing them and the readers’ pleasure reading them. No
educational aim,” she said.

Nonetheless,
Lindgren has taught hundreds of thousands valuable life lessons and
gathered a cult following of the years. Here below are excerpts of recent interviews with her daughter Karin Nyman by Oksana
Lushchevska, a Ukrainian children’s book writer and a PhD student at the University of Georgia, and
Ivan Ryabchiy, Ukrainian journalist, writer and translator,
to give you a glimpse into the fairy-tale.

A picture dated February 1968 shows Inger Nilsson dressed as Pippi Longstocking with her monkey “Mr Nilsson” on her shoulder.

Lushchevska:
Do you still save the manuscript that your mother gave you for your
birthday? It’s well known that Pippi
Longstocking

is your creation, isn’t it?

Nyman:
We still have the manuscript of Pippi
Longstoking

that I once got as a present.
No,
Pippi is not my creation, just her name. That is to say, the name
just popped up in my mind, when I was impatient to make my mother go
on telling me stories, when I was seven years old and ill in bed,
and she, weary of telling stories, asked: But what more can I tell
you? I just blurted out “Tell me about Pippi Longstocking,” and
she probably found the name inspiring and started a story about a
girl who was so strong she could lift a horse. The name was my
only
contribution.

Lushchevska:
Karin, have you ever read Pippi
Longstocking

translated into other languages? If yes, what is your opinion on
those translations: do you see any losses, things found, or
interesting details? How much, in your opinion, does a translation
change an original text?

Nyman:
I’ve certainly read Pippi
Longstocking

in translations, and I agree that much of my mother’s special
verbal play gets lost, perhaps that’s inevitable.
The first
French translation, long ago, was a complete revision, things left
out, other things put in to make Pippi an obedient, well-behaved
girl. Astrid did not know about that; she didn’t read the
translations carefully at that time; the only thing she was told
about was the editor’s plan to change the horse for a pony. “You
see,”
he wrote to her, “maybe
Swedish children can believe that a little girl can lift a horse,
but French children, who have experienced the war

(it was not so many years after World War II), will
never believe such a thing
.”
It was then that Astrid asked him for a picture of a girl lifting a
pony.

No, I don’t
try to adapt a text to another culture in translations. I try to
avoid doing that as much as possible!

Lushchevska:
Not
so long ago, I virtually traveled around Astrid Lindgren’s
apartment on a web-site http://www.astridlindgren.se.
Would you please tell us who takes care of it? Also, whose was this
idea of creating an Internet tour for Astrid Lindgren’s fans?

Nyman:
Astrid Lindgren’s apartment in Stockholm is kept in its original
form as it was when she lived there. It’s meant to remain
unchanged, until it may, perhaps, be possible in the future to show
it to more people. It is we, her family, who maintain it and
continue to rent it. The website tour is intended to give those who
are interested, but not in a position to visit, a look of what it’s
like.

Ryabchiy:
Your
mother became famous and even more — became a symbol of Swedish
literature for children during her life. How did this world-wide
fame influence her and what did she think of her own “cult”?

Nyman: My
mother became more famous than she could ever understand. She could
suddenly, when we read her readers’ mail together, look up at me and
say: But isn´t all this extraordinary? She received so many
letters, from children and grown-ups who had read her books when
they were children. And that was what made the deepest impression on
her, not her fame, not being so well-known, but the fact that so
many children from all over the world told her that her books had
been very important to them, even “life-saving” to some of
them. That never ceased to amaze her.

And how did it influence her, well,
it didn’t change her character or her day-to-day-life in any way. It
made her see more of the world, since she was invited to places
abroad, and she could afford traveling.

Kyiv
Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at
[email protected]