Relatives and Families of the Rabbit

In the translation of Boris Zakhoder, the communicative status of Relatives and Acquaintances of Rabbit has been increased, in particular, he distinguishes “a very small Relative and Acquaintance” ( English one of Rabbit's relations ) ^[2] .

Viktor Weber , in his ambitious attempt to present the “real Winnie the Pooh” to the public, completely lost recognition of the Relatives and Acquaintances as a collective character in the book, turning them into a “faceless mass of friends and relatives, relatives and acquaintances, acquaintances and relatives, friends and relatives of Rabbit” ^{[ 3]} .

Relatives and Friends are the animals that fall to Rabbit's nephews and grand-nephews. Milne doesn’t describe them exactly, but it is said that they "were of all sorts and sizes (starting from those that you sometimes accidentally step on, and ending with those that sometimes accidentally fly into your eye)." No one knows for sure how many there are.

The absence of names for these characters probably reflects the snobbery and egocentrism of Milne's main characters, who look down on small animals ^[4] . In addition, the ideal, pastoral world of Milne is characterized by the absence of family and family responsibilities: Rabbit can calmly ignore these impersonal creatures and his grandfather living in another forest ^[5] .

According to the interpretation of V.P. Rudnev , the innumerable friends and acquaintances of Rabbit (as well as references to "grandfathers", "uncles", "aunts", often clearly fictitious, like Uncle Piglet named "Outsider V.") serve as a kind of confirmation the reality of Miln’s fictional world, which is characterized by the limitations characteristic of children's consciousness: all the inhabitants of the can be counted on the fingers, even the appearance of Kanga and Kroshka Roux causes a stir. This limitation is opposed by the existence of Relatives and Families of the Rabbit. “They naturally breed like rabbits, and therefore are not quantifiable. There are many of them indefinitely ... there are so many of them that they cannot be said that they are definitely there or they are definitely not - one more, one less, they, like particles in quantum mechanics, appear and annihilate incessantly ” ^{[6] [7 ] ]} .

Sashka the Bug

Almost nobody is named by name from the Relatives and Families, except the smallest Relative and Familiar, whose name is Zashka-Bukashka in the translation (born by Alexander Beetle , Alex Weberle at W. Weber, Alexander Rudnev has literal translation at Alexander P. Rudnev Beetle ). “Beetle Alexander” was featured in Milne’s earlier poem “Forgiveness” about a boy who kept a beetle in a matchbox, but was accidentally released by a nanny ^{[8] [9]} . Judging by Milne’s description, “Alexander” was a scorer beetle ^[10] . This character gained a certain fame thanks to both "Winnie the Pooh", and became a textbook poem.

• The song Alexander Beetle on verses by Milne was written by American singer Melanie and was included in the album Candles in the Rain (1970).
• The blue-red “Alexander Beetle” also appeared in one of the episodes of the “ Muppet Show ”.

Relatives and acquaintances do not appear in either the Soviet or Disney cartoon, so almost no one knows how they look. Ernest Shepard's illustrations show bunnies and rabbits of different sizes. These characters are also depicted in the illustrations of Boris Diodorov in the form of a crowd of rabbits. Initially, scenes with the participation of Relatives and Friends were planned in the Disney cartoon Winnie the Bear and his friends (2011), but then cut out. An excerpt from these scenes was included on DVD and Blu-ray: Disney artists portrayed three rabbits, two mice, a hedgehog, a squirrel and a moth. In the cartoon, Rabbit speaks of them as intelligent and well-mannered people, although in the book he treated them casually and contemptuously.

The phrase “relatives and friends of the rabbit” (along with a number of other quotes from “Winnie the Pooh”) became a winged expression ^[11] .