The wizard of the emerald city
The Wizard of the Emerald City ( Russian Волшебник Изумрудного города / Wolschebnik Isumrudnogo goroda ) is a children's book by the Russian writer Alexander Melentjewitsch Volkov . The story first appeared in the Soviet Union in 1939 and is a adaptation of the American children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (i.e. The Wizard of Oz ). For a new edition in 1959, Leonid Wladimirski re- illustrated the story. The translator of the long-used German version is Lazar Steinmetz . In the following years the book appeared in almost all Eastern Bloc countries and many other countries. Especially in the GDR , numerous readers enjoyed this book and its sequels.
action
The main characters of the story
The main characters in the fairy tale are Elli, a young girl from Kansas, her little dog Totoschka, Scheuch, a scarecrow who would like to have some brains, the iron lumberjack, who has no heart, and the cowardly lion. The opponents of Elli and her companions are numerous. Among them are an ogre and Bastinda, the wicked witch of the Violet Land, who also commands the flying monkeys, among other things. The wizard of the emerald city himself and Stella, a fairy godmother, are further characters in the story.
The history
It tells the story of the girl Elli, who was thrown into a magical land by a storm and has to assert herself there against numerous dangers and horrors in order to get back home. At first glance, the paradisiacal land with eternal summer and funny creatures turns out to be a gloomy and extremely dangerous place where evil wizards, ogre-eaters and saber-toothed tigers lurk. During her adventures in the exciting realm, Elli meets strange peoples, green, blue, yellow and pink lands and mysterious palaces and makes three loyal friends: a scarecrow filled with straw, an iron woodcutter and a cowardly lion. Each of the four companions has a special problem, but together they master the difficult situations they encounter.
Differences from The Wizard of Oz (selection)
The differences between Alexander Volkov's The Wizard of the Emerald City and L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz are more diverse than they appear at first glance. Volkov has completely retold Baum's story. This list is therefore only a selection.
- The main character is called Elli and lives with her parents in Kansas. The original character Dorothy is an orphan and lives with uncle and aunt.
- In Volkov, the introduction is followed by an insert in which the evil witch Gingema, in the faraway magical land, is brewing a storm with which she wants to destroy all people.
- The dog Totoschka can speak in the magic land like all other animals.
- The names of the peoples and witches differ in both books, and Wolkow does not fall back on the theory of colors for the national colors, because Baum adhered exactly to the arrangement of primary and secondary colors.
- Baum is called Land and Wizard Oz. Wolkow avoided the associated ambiguity by naming the wizard Goodwin and calling the land the Magic Land or Goodwin's Land.
- Elli is also told that she must help three creatures fulfill their dearest wishes if she wants to go home.
- The woodcutter is made of iron, not sheet metal.
- Between the encounter with the woodcutter and the one with the cowardly lion, Volkov added an additional chapter to the plot: while the Scheuch and the Iron Lumberjack are discussing again whether a brain or a heart is better, Elli is kidnapped by an ogre. The Scheuch and the woodcutter finally manage to free Elli and kill the ogre.
- At Baum live in the forest between the two trenches Kalidahs, terrible hybrids with bear bodies and tiger heads. - At Volkov it's saber-toothed tigers.
- At Wolkow the queen of the field mice introduces herself by name: Ramina. As a farewell, Elli receives a whistle from her, with which she can call the mouse queen at any time. - At Baum she also says that Dorothy has to go to a field and whistle to summon her.
- In Volkov's Emerald City, the magician only orders Elli and her companions to drive the wicked witch Bastinda out of the Violet Land, while Oz orders Dorothy to kill the wicked western witch at Baum.
- The throne room scenes are described slightly differently in both books. The same applies to the scenes in which the wicked witch fights her friends using her animals. So the magic with which the flying monkeys are called is different. Like all spells, this one in Volkov is much more melodic.
- With Volkov, the flying monkeys do nothing to Elli because she wears the silver shoes. They don't do anything to Baum, because Dorothy wears the mark of the northern witch on her forehead, the western witch, in addition to her fear of the silver shoes, is surprised at the mark on Dorothy's forehead. - With Wolkow, Elli has not this time and Bastinda is surprised that Elli has the silver shoes and talks to her about them. Bastinda tells that Gingema was her sister, and she is very surprised that she is dead.
- In Volkov, the chapter in the captivity of the wicked witch is enriched by the figure of the winking girl Fregosa.
- At Baum, Toto is startled when the lion roars loudly in the throne room to intimidate Oz. The dog jumps aside, knocking over a screen behind which Oz is. - Totoschka is not frightened by Wolkow, he sniffs out Goodwin and drives him barking out from behind a screen. - The following scenes up to the departure of the respective magician differ in various little things.
- After the departure of Goodwin, Totoschka reprimands the somewhat arrogant Scheuch and reminds him that he owes his current life only to Elli. The other friends also agree. Wolkow develops the figure further here than Baum does by showing that good qualities are sometimes hidden behind bad ones.
- At Baum, the new departure from the emerald city (this time to Glinda) is followed by the crossing of a forest with fighting trees and then the crossing of the porcelain country. - Wolkow has deleted this adventure without replacement and replaced it with a new chapter of its own, in which Elli and her friends end up on an island while crossing a river and are exposed to a terrible storm.
- At Baum a little later you meet people who are described as hammer heads. They have no arms and can let their heads snap forward on long necks at lightning speed. - With Wolkow it is small men with big heads and strong fists who call themselves jumpers because they can jump like rubber balls. (Only in The Fire God of the Marranas is it mentioned that only the others call them Springer, while they call themselves Marranas.)
- The end of the game in Kansas is considerably longer for Wolkow than for Baum.
In addition to these differences, there are a number of many other mostly small scenes in which the books differ. Some of these are longer dialogues or additional descriptions, but sometimes also small descriptions of actions, which are not always serious. Sometimes individual dialog blocks are just arranged in a different order without any notable differences.
Edition history
The German first edition appeared in 1964 in the GDR and West Germany. For 40 years the book appeared almost unchanged in eastern Germany, only the external appearance and some illustrations were modified. From the 11th edition, in 2005, the volume appeared in a new text version and with a different layout.
After massive protests, the publisher decided to use the original version again from the 13th edition, and the afterword that had been omitted since the 6th edition in 1982 was added again.
Radio plays / audio books
There are three German-language radio play productions for this book:
- The magician of the emerald city , director: Maritta Hübner, adaptation: Ernst Röhl , 54 minutes, Rundfunk der DDR, 1974
- The magician of the emerald city , directed by Dieter Scharfenberg, LITERA junior 1991, MC.
- The Magician of the Emerald City , directed by Paul Hartmann, Deutsche Grammophon - Junior 1994, MC.
An audio book version was published in May 2006:
- The magician of the emerald city , read by Katharina Thalbach , Jumbo Neue Medien, 2CD, ISBN 3-8337-1533-2 .
The sequels
Wolkow did not limit himself to retelling the first story about Elli and her three friends, but developed the plot further and created five new fantastic adventures around the magical land. For these sequels he also resorted to the subsequent volumes of the Oz cycle, but developed the individual motifs that were adopted with a delight in telling stories that surpassed the originals. With the figure of Urfin Juice , for example, Wolkow succeeded in creating an opponent for the well-known "heroes" who, due to his characterization, was quite equal to them.
Wolkow also used Baum's works for his sequels, but no longer adapted them as clearly as in “The Magician”. One of the most serious differences between the sequels of Baum and Wolkow is that Volkov's characters age outside of the magical land and lead an independent life. With Baum, life outside of Oz remains colorless.
The successful Zauberland series was continued by several authors in fluctuating quality, of which Nikolai Bachnow , who also resorted to "new" Oz motifs, wrote most of the volumes. Hans-Eberhard Ernst is now responsible as the new illustrator .
Remarks
Literature / Documentation
- Michael Patrick Hearn (Ed.): All About the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Europa Verlag, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-203-75550-5 (also contains material relevant to the Emerald City)
- Thomas Gaevert : Paths to Oz , radio feature about Lyman Frank Baum, Alexander Wolkow and Leonid Wladimirsky, production: Südwestrundfunk (55 min.), First broadcast: June 21, 2009 on SWR 2