Crocodile (fairy tale)

Crocodile book cover, 1927

"Crocodile" (Russian: Крокодил) is a 1916-1917 fairy tale poem for children by Korney Chukovsky about a crocodile strolling along the streets of Petrograd (the contemporary name of St. Petersburg, Russia).

It quickly became very popular, due to its utter nonsense, previously unseen in print, and skillful wordplay. Chukovsky himself said:

I wrote twelve books and no one paid any attention to them. But as soon as I once wrote "Crocodile" as a joke, I became a famous writer. I'm afraid that the whole of Russia knows "Crocodile" by heart. I'm afraid that when I die, on my monument will have an inscription "Author of Crocodile"

In 1939 Yury Tynyanov wrote that "Crocodile" opened up a completely new avenue for the development of poetry for children, whose new sounds of "a quick verse, a change of meters, a rushing song, a chorus" were cancelling "the previous weak and motionless fairy tale of icicle candies, cotton snow, flowers on weak legs". Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature characterized "Crocodile", along with other Chukovsky's verse tales as follows, "clockwork rhythms and air of mischief and lightness in effect dispelled the plodding stodginess that had characterized pre-revolutionary children's poetry."

During the surge of the Soviet ideological censorship, known as Zhdanovshchina, Crocodile, was severely criticized along with other children's fantastic tales of Chukovsky in an ideological campaign known as "the struggle with Chukovshchina". "Crocodile" was accused of "propagating misconceptions about the animal world". It addition, the critics tried to find counter-revolutionary undertones in the poem. As Chukovsky wrote:

Why is the hero of "Crocodile" called Vanya Vasilchikov? Is he not a relative of a Prince Vasilchikov, who, it seems, held a important post under Alexander II? And isn’t the Crocodile Denikin in disguise?

"Crocodile" was translated into English in 1931 by Babette Deutsch in 1931 and by Richard Coe in 1964. The two authors gave substantially different renderings of the poem.

Russian original with line-by-line literal translation: