Koziołek Matołek ( Silly the Billy-Goat) is a fictional character created by

Kornel Makuszyński Kornel Makuszyński (; 8 January 1884 – 31 July 1953) was a Polish writer of children's literature, children's and Young adult literature, youth literature. Dorota Piasecka. ''Proza Kornela Makuszyńskiego dla młodego odbiorcy: zarys problematyk ...

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

cult classic A cult following is a group of Fan (person), fans who are highly dedicated to a person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some List of art media, medium. The latter is often cal ...

, 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 material accepted as officially written by an author or an ascribed author * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western canon, th ...

of Polish

children's literature Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern children's literature is classified by the intended age of the reade ...

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 southern Poland. It is the seat of Gmina Pacanów. It had a population of 1137 in 2003. In modern times the town is par ...

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

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

, 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 A quest is a journey toward a specific mission or a goal. It serves as a plot device in mythology and fiction: a difficult journey towards a goal, often symbolic or allegorical. Tales of quests figure prominently in the folklore of every nat ...

that Matołek, an

anthropomorphic Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to ...

goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a species of Caprinae, goat-antelope that is mostly 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 ...

, 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 known as Edward Bear, Pooh Bear or simply Pooh) is a fictional Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by ...

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

Rupert Bear Rupert Bear is an English children's comic strip character and franchise created by Herbert Tourtel and illustrated by his wife, the artist Mary Tourtel, first appearing in the ''Daily Express'' newspaper on 8 November 1920. Rupert's initi ...

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. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

to the

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

. The stories have visible

patriotic Patriotism is the feeling of love, devotion, and a sense of attachment to one's country or state. This attachment can be a combination of different feelings for things such as the language of one's homeland, and its ethnic, cultural, politic ...

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

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

) 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 r ...

ical 8-syllabical

quatrain A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four Line (poetry), lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India ...

. 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 (, , or simply , ) is a West Slavic languages, West Slavic language of the Lechitic languages, Lechitic subgroup, within the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, and is written in the Latin script. It is primarily spo ...

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, or a cartoon series, is a set of Animation, animated films with a common title, usually related to one another. These episodes typically share the same main heroes, some different secondary characters and a basic theme. Series ...

''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 ki ...

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

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

subtitles Subtitles are texts representing the contents of the audio in a film, television show, opera or other audiovisual media. Subtitles might provide a transcription or translation of spoken dialogue. Although naming conventions can vary, caption ...

, the amount of

dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American and British English spelling differences, American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literature, literary and theatrical form that depicts suc ...

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 to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communi ...

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 religion ...

References

Koziołek Matołek wraca na ekranyAdventures of Koziołek Matołek on Rotten TomatoesReally Getting Your Goat

Warsaw Voice ''Warsaw Voice: Polish and Central European Review'', commonly shortened to ''The Warsaw Voice'', is an English-language newspaper printed in Poland, concentrating on news about Poland and its neighbours. First released in October 1988, it is a ge ...

, 12 June 2003
Kidsville

, 29 May 2003

External links