Koziołek Matołek (Matołek the Billy-Goat) is a

fictional character In fiction, a character (or speaker, in poetry) is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life perso ...

created by

Kornel Makuszyński Kornel Makuszyński (; 8 January 1884 – 31 July 1953) was a Polish writer of children's and youth literature. Dorota Piasecka. ''Proza Kornela Makuszyńskiego dla młodego odbiorcy: zarys problematyki''. PWN. 1984. pp. 11, 34. He was an elected ...

(story) and

Marian Walentynowicz Marian Walentynowicz (born 20 January 1896 in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, died 26 August 1967 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish graphic artist, architect, teacher, writer and a precursor to the comic book in Poland. He is probably best know ...

(art) in one of the first and most famous Polish comics back in 1933. It became a

cult classic A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...

, popular since its creation till today, and becoming an important part of the

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

of Polish

children's literature Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader. Children's ...

History

Makuszyński and Walentynowicz created four books: ''120 przygód Koziołka Matołka'' ("120 adventures of Koziołek Matołek"), ''Druga księga przygód Koziołka Matołka'' ("second book of adventures of Koziołek Matołek"), ''Trzecia księga przygód Koziołka Matołka'' ("third book of adventures of Koziołek Matołek") and ''Czwarta księga przygód Koziołka Matołka'' ("fourth book of adventures of Koziołek Matołek").

Pacanów Pacanów , sometimes referred to as the European Capital of Fable, is a town in Busko County, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship in south-central Poland. It is the seat of Gmina Pacanów. It had a population of 1137 in 2003. In modern times the vill ...

, the setting of the comic, is a real town in Poland. Once when Makuszyński and Walentynowicz were sitting in a coffee house in

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

, they spotted a sad looking man sipping a drink at a nearby table. They asked him why he looked so gloomy, and he told them that he came from the small town of Pacanów and was wondering how to help the town prosper. Makuszyński and Walentynowicz decided then to help him by popularizing the small town in their books.

Story

The stories center around the quest that Matołek, an anthropomorphic

goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the a ...

, undertakes: to find

, a town where it is rumoured they make shoes for goats. Matołek's adventures are amusing if sometimes surreal. The titular hero is nice, naive, clumsy, laughable and not very bright — in many regards similar to another famous children's story character,

Winnie the Pooh Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh, is a fictional Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. The first collection of stories about the character w ...

by A.A. Milne. As an adventure comic strip the stories are roughly contemporaneous with characters such as

Rupert Bear Rupert Bear is a British children's comic strip character and franchise created by artist Mary Tourtel and first appearing in the ''Daily Express'' newspaper on 8 November 1920. Rupert's initial purpose was to win sales from the rival ''D ...

and Tintin and Milou. Matołek's search for Pacanów takes him to many corners of the Earth, from

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

to the

Wild West The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...

. The stories have visible

patriotic Patriotism is the feeling of love, devotion, and sense of attachment to one's country. This attachment can be a combination of many different feelings, language relating to one's own homeland, including ethnic, cultural, political or histor ...

undertones, from Matołek's colors (white fur and red shorts, evoking the

flag of Poland The national flag of Poland ( pl, flaga Polski) consists of two horizontal stripes of equal width, the upper one white and the lower one red. The two colours are defined in the Polish constitution as the national colours. A variant of the flag ...

) to his homesick feelings for Poland, which appear when he finds himself in far-away places.

Form

The comic has a specific format: each page is divided into regular, rectangular frames with each illustration accompanied by a

rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...

ical 8-syllabical quatrain. The most popular illustrations come from the third edition, the first two had a different style of art.

Influence

The comic has influenced many generations of Poles, and some of its phrases have penetrated into the

Polish language Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In a ...

itself, with expressions like 'w Pacanowie kozy kują' (In Pacanów, they shoe goats), 'pacan' and 'matoł' (slowpoke, dummy). From 1969 to 1971 an

animated series An animated series is a set of animated works with a common series title, usually related to one another. These episodes should typically share the same main characters, some different secondary characters and a basic theme. Series can have eith ...

''Dziwne przygody Koziołka Matołka'' (Strange adventures of Koziołek Matołek) was made by Studio Miniatur Filmowych. The animated version was released in a series on 3

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

s in 2002 and is available internationally; although there are no

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...

subtitles, the amount of dialogue is very limited. The original comic book has not been translated. Currently Studio Miniatur Filmowych has started work on a full-length animated film about Koziołek Matołek. There are also four educational games for small children, 'Koziołek Matołek idzie do szkoły' (Koziołek Matołek goes to school), 'Koziołek Matołek wynalazca' (Koziołek Matołek the inventor), 'Szkoła Koziołka Matołka' (The school of Koziołek Matołek) and 'Wesołe przedszkole Koziołka Matołka' (The happy kindergarten of Koziołek Matołek) The series has also been adopted into a

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

production for a younger audience. In 2003 Polish minister of culture Waldemar Dąbrowski organized the celebrations of Koziołek Matołek's 70th

birthday A birthday is the anniversary of the birth of a person, or figuratively of an institution. Birthdays of people are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with birthday gifts, birthday cards, a birthday party, or a rite of passage. Many re ...

References

Koziołek Matołek wraca na ekranyAdventures of Koziołek Matołek on Rotten TomatoesReally Getting Your Goat
Warsaw Voice, 12 June 2003
Kidsville
Warsaw Voice, 29 May 2003

External links