The literary tale "Momo" by Michael Ende. Michael Ende: Momo Ende momo

Michael Ende

A little introduction from the translator

This translation is the first experience of this kind in my practice.

My whole life until the age of 53 was spent in Russia, and I belong to a little-known and a little strange nationality - Russian Germans. These are not German Germans occupying a powerful niche in the human community, but a part of the German people that arose in the process of long-term adaptation - first in Tsarist, then Soviet Russia, ousted from Germany after the seven-year war.

It is amazing that my ancestors for two and a half centuries were not assimilated by the mighty Russian mentality and Russian culture to the extent that one might expect. Their religious-sectarian upbringing and peasant origin formed the strongest immunity against such dissolution. And this despite all the social upheavals that befell the Russian state in the ill-fated 20th century - especially during the war with Nazi Germany, when Russian Germans were naturally but unfairly identified with the German fascists, so hated in the USSR.

My childhood and adolescence just fell on that period of history. But it was precisely after the second abolition of "serfdom" in 1955 (the release of collective farmers from registration to villages with the issuance of passports to them and the liquidation of the special commandant's office for Russian Germans) and the emergence of relative freedom, assimilation, quite voluntary, began to quickly change the mentality of Russian Germans towards Russian culture and Russian way of life.

From childhood I was drawn to learning, which did not at all correspond to the general mood of the conservative Russian German village, and at the age of 15 I escaped from the religious and peasant environment and plunged into civilization, settling in a hostel and enrolling in a technical school in the large Siberian city of Omsk (1952).

At that time I read a lot and, given the current trend of literature and the media, quickly moved away from religion, which in our home had the character of tedious and painful moralizing.

In general, if we discard the negative consequences of that “civilized” life that grinded up millions of destinies of village boys and girls who came to the city, one thing is certain: the German part of this great urban migration quickly “Russified”, losing its language and centuries-old family traditions.

I do not regret at all that the great, not rationalistic, to a certain extent mystified Russian culture has become my culture, my spiritual environment. I can’t and don’t want to compare it with German, which is alien to me, let me not judge her.

I stumbled upon M. Ende's book "Momo" quite by accident after moving with my family to Germany. A chapter from it was included in a manual for the study of the German language and the German way of life for immigrants and immediately made a strong impression on me with its humanistic orientation and the author's absolute rejection of the rationalistic, unspiritual construction of life in a capitalist society.

With reason, you well understand that an alternative to the life of today's West, which requires maximum realism, can be calm spiritual communication and contemplative peace, which require much less material consumption. What is closer to the ideal is a philosophical question. But that is another topic for another time. For now, I will only note that the ideas of Jesus the Nazarene at one time looked much more absurd and impossible. And today they are the core of life for most of humanity. One can, of course, object that even in Christian Europe life is still far from the proclaimed norms. Nevertheless, Christianity is a strong and unshakable foundation, and the building on it will continue to be built and improved in accordance with the changing life.

While reading "Momo" I was constantly haunted by the feeling that this is a narrative from the "silver" period of Russian literature of the 19th century, and not a modern bestseller.

Then I took up entrepreneurship for a long time, not spending all my time on it very successfully, but the idea that the book needed to be brought to the Russian reader did not leave me. This need has become especially acute in recent years, when the idea of God-seeking took possession of my consciousness.

And now about the book and its heroine - the little girl Momo, who had the moral strength and courage to resist the gray, all-absorbing power of Evil.

She appears in the vicinity of a big city, where people live slowly, rejoice and grieve, quarrel and make peace, but most importantly, they communicate with each other, and cannot live without it. They are not rich, although they are not lazy at all. They have enough time for everything, and it never occurs to anyone to save it.

Momo settles in an ancient amphitheater. No one knows where she comes from or what she wants. She doesn't seem to know it herself.

Soon it turns out that Molyu has a magical and rare gift to listen to people so that they become smarter and better, forget all the petty and absurd things that poison their lives.

But children especially love her, who, with her, become extraordinary dreamers and invent fascinating games.

Gradually, however, an evil force imperceptibly, invisibly and inaudibly intervenes in the lives of these people in the form of gray gentlemen who feed on human time. For their countless horde, a lot of it is required, and the gray gentlemen are talented and stubbornly creating an entire industry of stealing time from people. They must convince every person that it is necessary to rationalize one's life as much as possible, not to waste on such unpromising matters as communicating with friends, relatives, children, and even more so on “useless” old people and the disabled. Labor cannot serve as a source of joy, everything must be subordinated to a single goal - to produce the maximum product in the shortest possible time.

And now the former quiet city is turning into a huge industrial center, where everyone is in a terrible hurry, not noticing each other. Time is saved on everything, and it should become more and more, but, on the contrary, it is more and more lacking. Some kind of convulsive, extremely rationalized way of life is taking shape, in which every lost moment is a crime.

Where does the "saved time" go? It is quietly stolen by the gray gentlemen, putting it in their huge bank vaults.

Who are they - gray gentlemen? These are demons that incline people to evil in the name of a tempting goal. Tempting them with the charms of life, which can only be achieved with great effort by saving every second, the gray gentlemen, in fact, force people to sacrifice their entire meaningful life. This chain is false, it does not exist at all, but it beckons everyone until death.

And Momo has a lot of time, and she generously gives it to people. She is rich not in the time that can be materialized, but in the time she gives to others. Her time is spiritual wealth.

Naturally, Momo becomes for the gray gentlemen the embodiment of a worldview that is dangerous for them, hindering their plans for a total reorganization of the world. To remove this obstacle, they give the girl expensive mechanical toys, clothes and other things. All this should shock Momo and make her give up any further attempts to embarrass people. To do this, she herself needs to be drawn into a crazy race to save time.

When the gray gentlemen fail, they throw all their strength into eliminating the resistance they do not understand. In the process of this struggle, they learn that Momo can lead them to the place where people are given life time, which everyone must dispose of with dignity. To take possession of the primary source of all human time - rationalistic demons could not even imagine such luck!

There is a direct analogy with the Christian postulate here: each person is given a Soul - a particle of God, and he is also given the right to choose how to dispose of it. Earthly temptations and pride lead a person away from God, from spiritual union with Him, and he voluntarily impoverishes himself, his spiritual life.

The quintessence of the spiritual and religious content of the book is set out in chapter 12. Momo ends up in the place where the time of all people comes from. Here it is quite obviously identified with the human soul. Time is the soul given by God to man in his heart, and Master Hora distributes it. He is obliged to endow each person with the time that is intended for him.

However, thieves-demons steal it from people, and neither the Distributor nor the Creator can or, from higher considerations, do not want to prevent this. People themselves must manage the time allotted to them - their soul - and protect it themselves.

A watch is only an imperfect reflection of what each person has in his chest, in his heart - his soul. “...So you also have a heart to feel the time. And all the time that is not felt by the heart is lost, like the colors of the rainbow for the blind or the song of the nightingale for the deaf. Unfortunately, there are blind and deaf hearts that do not feel anything, although they beat. Deaf and blind hearts are hardened souls, deaf to the calls of God.

One evening Michael Ende arrived in Palermo and went out for a walk. On a large square, he saw a man who was telling stories to the listeners who surrounded him.

"One plot seemed familiar to me. When the narrator paused, I asked what kind of story it was. And the man replied that this was a book by Alexandre Dumas, which he inherited from his grandfather. The novel captivated him so much that he became "Look," I said to myself then, "this is the goal to strive for: so that even a hundred years after your death, the stories that you invented would sound on the streets of Palermo from the mouths of the storytellers."

After this fateful meeting, the novice writer Ende left dramaturgy and work on the radio, and began to write children's books. "The Neverending Story", "The Adventures of Jim Buttons", "The Magic Punch", "School of Wizardry" - this is an incomplete list of fairy tales for which you need to thank the storyteller from Palermo. Well, and Michael Ende, of course, too.

“All my books come into being in different ways. I wrote Jim Button in such a way that, having composed the first sentence, I did not know how the second would look like, and I myself was in suspense all the time, watching the action as if from the side ...

My creative method is rare for a writer. Probably the reason is that my father was a surrealist artist. I work not as a writer, but as an artist. The artist will often start from the brightest angle, gradually painting the rest. Of course, I have an internal idea, but it constantly changes during the work. So, the first sentence that begins "The Infinite Book" is now in the twelfth chapter ...

At first, I always write by hand. My manuscripts are full of corrections, transfers of pieces of text from one place to another, abbreviations. I can't remember if I had even one page that I didn't correct. Then I retype everything, watch how it reads and find new flaws ...

I write very slowly, sometimes I sit for a quarter of an hour on one sentence, thinking it over. Enjoying it - so that it can be twirled and viewed like a picture. But for me it is not only a picture, but also a melody. I care not only how it looks, but also how it sounds."

And despite the fact that Ende received the Andersen Prize, children can also read his books.

But I'm sure Ende called his books "children's" because that's the surest way to put them in the hands of adults. Reading them aloud to your child, the parent himself is magically transformed and becomes a little more adequate.

Story "Momo, or a strange story about thieves of time and about a child who returned stolen time to people", was written in 1972, with illustrations by the author. Since then, it has been translated into 30 languages and has won a bag of awards.

This tale tells about the most common phenomena for a normal city person: lack of time, depression, loss of interest in life.

All these things happen, according to Ende, because of the Gray masters. They, the employees of the savings bank of time, seduce people with false promises and steal time from them. Time for intimate conversations, playing with pets, catching up with children, admiring sunsets and sunrises, is stored by Gray gentlemen in gray concrete vaults, making people's lives gray empty and bleak.

And only a little tramp girl Momo can save the day. She goes in search of the Master of Time so that she can use him to cure her friends of their time-saving fever.

The conversations between Momo and the Master of Time are not childishly thoughtful, and therefore worthy of being recorded in a children's book:

“Can you make sure that the Gray Lords don’t steal people’s time?”
“No, I cannot do that,” the Master of Time replied. “People should decide for themselves what to do with their time. And they have to defend themselves too. I just give everyone what they have to.
Momo looked around.
“Is that why you have so many hours?” Every person has a watch, right?
"No, Momo," the Master of Time objected. All these watches are just my collection. They are just an imperfect copy of what is in the chest of every person. For just as eyes are given to see light and ears to hear sounds, so is the heart given to perceive time. Time, not perceived by the heart, disappears just as the colors of the rainbow disappear for the blind or for the deaf - the singing of birds. Unfortunately, there are many deaf and blind hearts in the world that do not feel anything, although they beat.

Yes, and Momo's friends, apparently, doctors of philosophy and professors of psychology.

Here, for example, is the janitor, Beppo the Sweeper, and his monologue about life:

“You see, Momo,” he said, for example, “it’s like this: here you see a very long street in front of you. And you think: how long is it! Never beat her, you think.
For some time he silently stared ahead of him, then continued:
“And then you start to hurry. And you're in a hurry. And looking ahead, you see that the path in front of you has not diminished at all. And then you tense even more - from fear, and in the end you are completely exhausted and cannot take a step. And the street still stretches ahead. But you can't do that.
For a while he thought. Then he continued:
“You can never think about the whole street at once, you understand? You have to think about the next step, the next breath, the next swing of the broom. All the time only about the following.
He thought again, pondering, before adding:
“Then it brings joy, it is important, then things go well. And that's the way it should be.
And he continued after a long pause:
“Suddenly you see that you have overcome the whole street step by step. And you didn’t notice how, and you didn’t get tired. He nodded to himself and finished, “That's what's important.