Паме́ла Ли́ндон Трэ́верс , или П. Л. Трэверс , настоящее имя Хе́лен Линдон Гофф — английская актриса и писательница, в основном известна как автор серии детских книг о Мэри Поппинс. Wikipedia
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Источник: Мэри Поппинс
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Источник: Всё о Мэри Поппинс (сборник)
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Источник: Московская экскурсия
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Источник: Мэри Поппинс
“Anon is my favorite literary character.”
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Контексте: You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there’s no such thing as creative writing. I’ve always agreed with that and always refuse to teach it when given the opportunity. He said there is, in fact, only one Creator and we mix. That’s our function, to mix the elements He has given us. See how wonderfully anonymous that leaves us? You can’t say, “I did this; this gross matrix of flesh and blood and sinews and nerves did this.” What nonsense! I’m given these things to make a pattern out of. Something gave it to me.
I’ve always loved the idea of the craftsman, the anonymous man. For instance, I’ve always wanted my books to be called the work of Anon, because Anon is my favorite literary character. If you look through an anthology of poems that go from the far past into the present time, you’ll see that all the poems signed “Anon” have a very specific flavor that is one flavor all the way through the centuries. I think, perhaps arrogantly, of myself as “Anon.” I would like to think that Mary Poppins and the other books could be called back to make that change. But I suppose it’s too late for that.
“She is either the Mother Goddess or one of her creatures”
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Контексте: I’ve always been interested in the Mother Goddess. Not long ago, a young person, whom I don’t know very well, sent a message to a mutual friend that said: “I’m an addict of Mary Poppins, and I want you to ask P. L. Travers if Mary Poppins is not really the Mother Goddess.” So, I sent back a message: “Well, I’ve only recently come to see that. She is either the Mother Goddess or one of her creatures — that is, if we’re going to look for mythological or fairy-tale origins of Mary Poppins.”
I’ve spent years thinking about it because the questions I’ve been asked, very perceptive questions by readers, have led me to examine what I wrote. The book was entirely spontaneous and not invented, not thought out. I never said, “Well, I’ll write a story about Mother Goddess and call it Mary Poppins.” It didn’t happen like that. I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.
Once, when I was in the United States, I went to see a psychologist. It was during the war when I was feeling very cut off. I thought, Well, these people in psychology always want to see the kinds of things you’ve done, so I took as many of my books as were then written. I went and met the man, and he gave me another appointment. And at the next appointment the books were handed back to me with the words: “You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books.”
That was so interesting to me. I began to see, thinking about it, that people who write spontaneously as I do, not with invention, never really read their own books to learn from them. And I set myself to reading them. Every now and then I found myself saying, “But this is true. How did she know?” And then I realized that she is me. Now I can say much more about Mary Poppins because what was known to me in my blood and instincts has now come up to the surface in my head.
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Контексте: My Zen master, because I’ve studied Zen for a long time, told me that every one (and all the stories weren’t written then) of the Mary Poppins stories is in essence a Zen story. And someone else, who is a bit of a Don Juan, told me that every one of the stories is a moment of tremendous sexual passion, because it begins with such tension and then it is reconciled and resolved in a way that is gloriously sensual. … A great friend of mine at the beginning of our friendship (he was himself a poet) said to me very defiantly, “I have to tell you that I loathe children’s books.” And I said to him, “Well, won’t you just read this just for my sake?” And he said grumpily, “Oh, very well, send it to me.” I did, and I got a letter back saying: “Why didn’t you tell me? Mary Poppins with her cool green core of sex has me enthralled forever.”
“Tonight the small are free from the great and the great protect the small.”
Hamadryad, the King Cobra in Ch. 10 "Full-Moon"
Mary Poppins (1934)
“What I want to know is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars?”
Jane in Ch. 8 "Mrs. Corry"
Mary Poppins (1934)
NOTE (on Guy Fawkes' Day, during World War II)
Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943)
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Контексте: I never wrote my books especially for children. … When I sat down to write Mary Poppins or any of the other books, I did not know children would read them. I’m sure there must be a field of “children’s literature” — I hear about it so often — but sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a label created by publishers and booksellers who also have the impossible presumption to put on books such notes as “from five to seven” or “from nine to twelve.” How can they know when a book will appeal to such and such an age?
If you look at other so-called children’s authors, you’ll see they never wrote directly for children. Though Lewis Carroll dedicated his book to Alice, I feel it was an afterthought once the whole was already committed to paper. Beatrix Potter declared, “I write to please myself!” And I think the same can be said of Milne or Tolkien or Laura Ingalls Wilder.
I certainly had no specific child in mind when I wrote Mary Poppins. How could I? If I were writing for the Japanese child who reads it in a land without staircases, how could I have written of a nanny who slides up the banister? If I were writing for the African child who reads the book in Swahili, how could I have written of umbrellas for a child who has never seen or used one?
But I suppose if there is something in my books that appeals to children, it is the result of my not having to go back to my childhood; I can, as it were, turn aside and consult it (James Joyce once wrote, “My childhood bends beside me”). If we’re completely honest, not sentimental or nostalgic, we have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is one unending thread, not a life chopped up into sections out of touch with one another.
Once, when Maurice Sendak was being interviewed on television a little after the success of Where the Wild Things Are, he was asked the usual questions: Do you have children? Do you like children? After a pause, he said with simple dignity: “I was a child.” That says it all.<!--
But don’t let me leave you with the impression that I am ungrateful to children. They have stolen much of the world’s treasure and magic in the literature they have appropriated for themselves. Think, for example, of the myths or Grimm’s fairy tales — none of which were written especially for them — this ancestral literature handed down by the folk. And so despite publishers’ labels and my own protestations about not writing especially for them, I am grateful that children have included my books in their treasure trove.
From a poem (c. 1920) in the Australian publication The Triad, as quoted in Out of the Sky She Came: The Life of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins (1999) by Valerie Lawson, ISBN 0733610722</small> [U.S. and U.K. title: Mary Poppins, She Wrote : The Life of P. L. Travers (2006) <small> ISBN 0743298160]
“You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I'll never talk about myself.”
As quoted by Valerie Lawson, in an interview: "The Mystic Life of P.L. Travers" (7 May 2003) http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/ark/stories/s844311.htm
“Mary Poppins herself had flown away, but the gifts she had brought would remain for always..”
Источник: Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Ch. 8 "The Other Door"
Источник: Mary Poppins (1934), Ch. 1 "East-Wind"
Hamadryad, the King Cobra in Ch. 10 "Full-Moon"
Mary Poppins (1934)
As quoted in No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People (2001) by Evan T. Pritchard
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Контексте: My Zen master, because I’ve studied Zen for a long time, told me that every one (and all the stories weren’t written then) of the Mary Poppins stories is in essence a Zen story. And someone else, who is a bit of a Don Juan, told me that every one of the stories is a moment of tremendous sexual passion, because it begins with such tension and then it is reconciled and resolved in a way that is gloriously sensual. … A great friend of mine at the beginning of our friendship (he was himself a poet) said to me very defiantly, “I have to tell you that I loathe children’s books.” And I said to him, “Well, won’t you just read this just for my sake?” And he said grumpily, “Oh, very well, send it to me.” I did, and I got a letter back saying: “Why didn’t you tell me? Mary Poppins with her cool green core of sex has me enthralled forever.”
"The World of the Hero" (1976)
"What the Bee Knows" in Parabola : The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, Vol. VI, No. 1 (February 1981); later published in What the Bee Knows : Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)
The Paris Review interview (1982)
“It is only through the ordinary that the extraordinary can make itself perceived.”
The Paris Review interview (1982)
As quoted in The New York Times (2 July 1978)
“We'll never forget you, Mary Poppins!”
Источник: Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Ch. 8 "The Other Door"
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Источник: Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins (2007), Ch. 2, p. 39
From "I Never Wrote for Children," by P. L. Travers, in the New York Times Magazine, July 2, 1978.
From "Personal View," by P. L. Travers, in the Sunday Times (London), issue 8575, December 11, 1988.