Mio, my Mio
Mio, mein Mio is a children's book by Astrid Lindgren .
The original edition of Mio, My Son appeared in 1954 in Sweden under the title Mio, min Mio . It was illustrated by Ilon Wikland and later translated into German by Karl Kurt Peters.
Mio, my Mio is told in a fairytale style and is considered a small literary work of art. Lindgren achieves a particularly haunting effect on the linguistic level through the fact that she often uses recurring formulations. Thus, Mio always speaks of "my father, the king", and this in turn always speaks of "Mio, my Mio"; and on the journey through the country outside , the children are always "afraid, great, great fear".
action
Bo Wilhelm Olsson alias Bosse is a nine-year-old Stockholm orphan boy who is badly treated by his foster parents. He longs for a father, like his friend Benka, who could build model airplanes with him. Bosses mother died giving birth, and nobody knows anything about his birth father. One day his foster mother sends him to go shopping. As he passed the fruit shop, the saleswoman gave Bosse an apple and a postcard to put in the mailbox at the end of the street. The card says: “ He is on the way, the one you have been looking for for so long. He travels day and night and holds the symbol, the golden apple, in his hand. "
Bosse finds the text strange, but when he looks at the apple, it is made of gold. He sits down on a park bench and discovers a bottle in which something is stirring. When he removes the plug, a ghost emerges. This one comes from the land of a distance. He asks the boy what he would like as a reward for being released from the bottle. Bosse gives only one answer: “ Take me with you! Oh, take me to the land of afar There is someone there waiting for me. “The ghost doubts at first, but when it sees the golden apple, it calls out:“ You are the one I'm supposed to get. “Together they set off for the land of afar.
They fly past the stars until Bosse discovers a green island far below: the "Land of Distant". Down on the beach is his father, the king of the country. Together with his friend Jum-Jum, an embodiment of his friend Benka, Bosse as Prince Mio liberates the father's kingdom from the ruler of the "Land Outside", the evil knight Kato with the stone heart, who has many children from the paradisiacal "Land of Afar" “Kidnapped. Mio and Jum-Jum manage to redeem the people and the land from knight Kato.
background
Astrid Lindgren was in terms of Mio, My Son greatly on the story Prince Florestan or the story of the giant Bam Bam and the fairy Viribunda inspired. In the book about her parents, Samuel August från Sevedstorp och Hanna i Hult , Lindgren tells how she got the story from the neighborhood girl Edit. Elsewhere she wrote: “ This edit - praised be it now and always - read the story of the giant Bam-Bam and the fairy Viribunda for me and set my child's soul in vibrations that still haven't really subsided. In a long-gone small workers' kitchen it was as if a miracle was happening, and since that day there has been no other kitchen in the world. “The similarities between the two stories are numerous - fatherly love, the castle garden, the boy on the wall, the pipe and the song of the bird in the garden were reflected in Mio, my Mio almost 50 years later .
Prince Florestan was written by Anna Maria Roos and first published in the Christmas newspaper Silvervit in 1908 . The story is about the land of Pamfylien and King Basil, who loves his son, Prince Florestan, above all else. The prince is not allowed to leave the palace garden because the king is afraid that he will be played badly by the common giant Bam-Bam. Florestan befriends the boy Toto, who lives on the other side of the fence, and learns from him to play beautiful melodies on the pipe. The king's fear was well founded, one day the prince is kidnapped from the garden by a large vulture and taken to the giant Bam-Bam, where he has to work as his slave. Thanks to his art of playing the pipe, the prince can enchant the giant and later be freed by his friend Toto and the fairy Viribunda.
In her anthology "My Inventions" ( Mina påhitt ), Astrid Lindgren reports how she got the final idea for the book when, while walking, she " passed a boy who was sitting on a bench, a little worried. It was a dark autumn evening and he looked so lonely and sad. I decided that he (Bosse) lives in Upplandsgatan 13B, that was because I saw the boy disappear into this entrance. I never saw him after that. Isn't that a bit strange? "
Astrid Lindgren published the first chapter of Mio, my Mio, in the Idun newspaper in 1950 , before publishing the entire story in 1954. At this point she was already known internationally as a successful author.
Awards and reviews
When Mio, mein Mio was published, Astrid Lindgren was equated with the greatest inventors of fairy tales in literature. The reviewer of the newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet , Daniel Hjort Lindgren, compared it with Zacharias Topelius under the heading “A masterpiece” and continued: “ The verses are slightly archaic, with an almost evangelical tone, the landscape is stylized fresh every day and everything fits into million , my Mio together in such a way that it becomes a masterpiece, not only for children's literature, but for poetry in general ”.
The American Chicago Tribune described the book as " a poetic fairy tale that is empathetic and true " and continued: " an outstanding contribution to the fairy tale genre ".
This Astrid Lindgren work was awarded the German Youth Literature Prize in 1956 .
Theater and opera
The stage version in German by Anna-Liese Kornitzky was premiered in 1979 by the Theater für Kinder, Hamburg.
Torsten Wille set the children's book to music. The opera's premiere took place in 1999 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin , directed by Martina Pfaff .
filming
The book was made into a film in 1987 as a Swedish-Norwegian-Soviet co-production. Directed by Wladimir Grammatikow . The main adult roles were: Timothy Bottoms , Susannah York and Christopher Lee . The Mio was played by Nicholas Pickard , his best friend Jum-Jum Christian Bale .
Individual evidence
- ↑ from Astrid Lindgren och sagans makt , by Vivi Edström, Stockholm 1997, pages 40–42, editors: Rabén & Sjögren, ISBN 912964044X
- ^ Sydsvenska Dagbladet , December 9, 1954
- ^ Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1957
- ↑ The Deutsche Oper shows Astrid Lindgren's classic children's book set to music by Torsten Wille. Retrieved November 18, 2019 .