Visiting Grandma Ulyana

Blue with scarlet hat hat. Corners of cheerful eyes, ruddy cheeks, small, slightly crushed nose. The salary beard, flatly laid blue and red strands. Cool shoulders, epolutes on them. High breasts are intercepted, the legs are widely placed, the focusing hand is pulled. Wailed whether the colonel in front of me, General Leered? Only he has no boots with spurs, but hooves, and a torso, like a horse, and even the radiant sun shines on the chest! - Who is it? - To try to master. Polcan, she answers. - And who he is Polcu? - Who is Polcan? - she asks as perplexity. - I have long lived Polcan-Bogatyr. Bread helped to raise, to protect the Russian land from enemies ... - So, this is the epic hero of the Polkan? He is the most, with hardness nods Ulyana Ivanovna. Like the famous Northern Square of Maria Dmitrievna Krivoopolenova, who has retained for the descendants for a long time forgotten the epics about Vavil, Ulyana Babkin brought to this day an ancient folk image of Polkana-hero. Today, this amazing toy is familiar with many lovers of Russian folk art. Brave Ulyanin Polcan is also with me. And every time I look at him, I unwittingly remember how I first met, and then became friends with the craftswoman. Our friendship lasted for many years, until the last day of her life. It all started at the end of the sixties, when I visited the May Day at a visit to the young artist-northerner. Crossed the threshold of his little cozy room, and the first thing that rushed into the eyes is toys. I saw a lot of different clay figures: Tula and Vyatskiy, Penza and Orlovsky, Bryansk and Ryazan, but such - for the first time. I am struck in them primarily simplicity and vitality. It was seen that the man was talented and kindness of an extraordinary person. So I learned about Ulyana Ivanovna Babkina. He began to ask his interlocutor about her live Yes, about how she did her toys. And arriving in Moscow, bought sweets, paints, tassels and sent Ulyana Ivanovna. Once I get from the craftswoman the cherished parcel, and in it, in the scented hay, like flowers, dulls, aolel, grathers, greener her wondrous toys. And among them - Polcan-Bogatyr. So began our correspondence. From subsequent Ulyanin, now I learned the long-awaited news, I learned that a wonderful master alone, her many years old - the eighth dozen on the outcome, the very illiterate, and the letters write her schoolgirl girls from the neighboring village. From a distant northern village, not only letters came to me - I gave me Ulyana Ivanovna than could: then the oil kalachs of their shabby, then the famous cargopol salty rims. And I invited everything to visit: Come, let me make her grass to be mushroom to wear, and it will be good. But I all slowed with the trip, and from Ulyana Ivanovna came a new letter: "There are a lot of guests, but all are not those. What do you not come to visit something? " One day, when February stood on the courtyard, I received a letter with such words: "All summer I was looking at the guests, I don"t know if I wait ... I almost on the same day I gathered everything you needed on the road, I bought a train ticket and went on the road . At that first time I stayed at Ulyana Ivanovna just a few days, and all the time did not leave me the thought that in this one, it seemed, the everyday simplicity opens a big, vivid, distinctive phenomenon in the modern folk art of Russia. I"ll just go to Ulyana Ivanovna Babkina to be alone with the craftswoman. I will then review hundreds of her toys in museums and private collections and only then take it for the manuscript of the book. And it will take place for more than two decades ... Compiler Gennady Petrovich Durassov