Lovely adventures

The author himself describes the story of the story in the preface to its first edition. When in the spring of 1968 he lived for some time in Yalta, he wrote letters to his young son describing fantastic adventures. Once he showed these letters to Bella Akhmadulina , who said after reading them: “Yes, this is a ready story!”. Then Okudzhava decided to prepare the manuscript for publication ^{[1] [2]} .

Some of the characters in the tale had real “ prototypes ”: the figurines of Kutheney's Ram and Sitting Leo were on the bookshelves, and the rubber Kind Snake was located on the lampshade of the old lamp that stood on the desk ^[1] . Craig - Kutheney Baran got his name from the novel of the same name Seton-Thompson ( eng. Krag, The Kootenay Ram ).

The main character lives on the beach in anticipation of adventure. Over time, he is made up of the company Craig Kootensey Baran, who settles on the closet, and the Good Snake, which is based on a lampshade lamp shade . One day, they all simultaneously see in their dream the terrible "fearsome" of the Sea Gridig, and decide to catch him. However, Sea Gridig turns out to be timid and safe, most of all he loves the semolina and dreams of meeting with his Gridiana. He settles with friends and lives in the sink.

Gridig talks about how he sewed up the mouth of Medusa-Gorgon , who wanted to eat him, Craig — about how he had taught the Lone Sinister Wolf, and the Good Snake — about how she had bitten the Prepossessing Karuda (the story hints that this name it is necessary to read the opposite), who said that she shouldn’t want what she herself wants, but we should want what everyone wants.

Finally, friends decided to go on a voyage in search of real adventures. But their ship falls into a storm, Gridig and Snake disappear into the abyss, and the hurricane throws the main character and Crag onto a mysterious island. There they want to roast on the fire two nasty giants, but they are saved by Griedig and the Serpent. Everyone goes to the seashore, ants help them along the way, and then the heroes fly on the dragonfly. In the air they are pursued by a robber-Bumblebee with a machine gun, and when they reach the coast, the Iron Beetles rush in pursuit of them. Having overcome all obstacles, the heroes set sail on the ship, encountering on the way on one of the islands the Unbearable Prisazučeshy Karuda, who unsuccessfully tries to combine them into a single and equally thinking body.

The Sitting Faience Lion, who escaped from Karuda, joins friends, and soon they all return home. Gridig floats to the Gridian sea, Craig returns to the Koutenay Mountains, and Snake and Leo remain with the main character.

For the first time “Adorable Adventures” were published in Georgia in 1971 - although not with the author’s drawings, but with the wording “the drawings were invented by the author; improved artists Eristavi and Mirzashvili " ^[3] .

In 1974 a fairy tale is published in Poland in the translation of Irena Lewandowski with illustrations by Elzbety Gaudassinska. In 1975, Boris Gass publishes a book in Tel Aviv with drawings by the author; later this text will be reproduced in Gass's book “Blow a Candle in Me” ^[4] . In 1989, the story with illustrations from the Georgian edition of 1971 was published in the children's magazine Kolobok (No. 3-7).

In 1993, “Beautiful Adventures” are published in Russia with illustrations by I. Volkova ^[5] .

In 1997, the book is published in Japanese translation, and in 1999 the Polish reissue of the book with “songs” was published, written specially for the new edition by a friend of the author, the poet Witold Dambrovsky.

In 2005, “Adorable Adventures” were first published in Russia with drawings by the author ^[6] . These drawings, as well as the handwritten introduction of the author, are unique in that Okudzhava as a whole left very few texts written by hand (as a rule, he typed all works on a typewriter) ^[7] . To mark the release of the book, the Bulat Okudzhava Foundation on October 8, 2005, held a festival of children's drawings in front of the Moscow House of Books on Novy Arbat ^[8] .

The new edition was undertaken at the end of 2015 ^[9] : the expanded text of the tale (reproducing the audio version) was supplemented with illustrations by Yevgeny Antonenkov, and the artist gave the main character narrator the portrait resemblance to Okudzhava himself ^[10] .

In 1996 (a year before his death) Bulat Okudzhava received an offer to release “Lovely Adventures” in the form of an audiobook in the author's version. For this recording, the text of the tale was reworked so that the content was well understood and in the absence of pictures.

The recording took place in the same year, in one day. It was released only in 2009 by ContentMedia in the musical design of Alexei Yarkin ^[11] .

In the biography of the writer, Dmitry Bykov notes that the story is “a clear illustration of the Okudzhava method” ^[12] :

• Adventure "Lovely Adventures" (history of the book)
• Information about the book on the website of the publishing house "Time"
• Review of the 2015 edition on Beebiblog
• Review of the 2015 edition in the video blog of Dmitry Gasin
• Audiobook Information