Michael Ende “Momo, or the Amazing Story of the Time Robbers and the Girl who returned the stolen time to people. Michael Ende “Momo Ende momo read

Michael Ende

In the darkness, light is visible, like a miracle. I can see the light, but I don’t know where it’s coming from. Sometimes it’s far away, sometimes it’s like it’s right here... I don’t know what that light is called. Only - whoever you are, star, - You, as before, always shine for me! Irish nursery rhyme

Part one. MOMO AND HER FRIENDS

Chapter first. BIG CITY AND LITTLE GIRL

In ancient times, when people still spoke languages ​​that are now completely forgotten, large and beautiful cities already existed in warm countries. The palaces of kings and emperors rose there; wide streets stretched from end to end; narrow alleys and dead ends twisted; there were magnificent temples with gold and marble statues of gods; colorful bazaars were noisy, offering goods from all over the world; there were wide squares where people discussed news, made or simply listened to speeches. But above all, these cities were famous for their theaters.

These theaters were similar to the modern circus, only built entirely of stone. The rows for spectators were arranged in steps one above the other, like in a huge funnel. And if you look from above, some of these buildings were round, others formed an oval or half a circle. They were called amphitheaters.

Some of them were as huge as a football stadium, others could seat no more than two hundred spectators. Some were luxurious, with columns and statues, others were modest, without any decorations. The amphitheaters had no roofs; all performances were given under open air. However, in richer theaters, gold-woven carpets were stretched over the rows to protect the audience from the heat of the sun or sudden rain. In poorer theaters, reed or straw mats served the same purpose. In short, there were theaters for the rich and theaters for the poor. Everyone attended them because everyone was a passionate listener and spectator.

And when people, with bated breath, watched the funny or sad events that took place on stage, it seemed to them that this only imaginable life in some mysterious way seemed more truthful, true and much more interesting than their own, everyday life. And they loved to listen to this different reality.

Millennia have passed since then. Cities disappeared, palaces and temples collapsed. Wind and rain, heat and cold polished and weathered the stones, leaving the large theaters in ruins. In the old, cracked walls, now only cicadas sing their monotonous song, similar to the breath of the sleeping earth.

But some of these ancient cities have survived to this day. Of course, their lives have changed. People travel in cars and trains, they have telephones and electricity. But sometimes among new buildings you can still see ancient columns, an arch, a piece of a fortress wall or an amphitheater from those distant days.

This story happened in one of these cities.

On the southern outskirts big city, where the fields begin, and the houses and buildings become poorer, the ruins of a small amphitheater are hidden in a pine forest. Even in ancient times it did not seem luxurious; it was a theater for the poor. And these days. that is, in those days when this story with Momo began, almost no one remembered the ruins. Only experts in antiquity knew about this theater, but it was of no interest to them either, because there was nothing left to study there. Sometimes two or three tourists wandered in, climbed the stone steps overgrown with grass, talked, clicked their cameras, and left. Silence returned to the stone funnel, the cicadas began the next stanza of their endless song, exactly the same as the previous ones.

Most often, local residents who had known this place for a long time visited here. They left their goats to graze here, and the children played ball on a round platform in the middle of the amphitheater. Sometimes couples in love met here in the evenings.

One day there was a rumor that someone was living in the ruins. They said it was a child, a little girl, but no one really knew anything. I think her name was Momo.

Momo looked a little strange. It had a frightening effect on people who valued neatness and cleanliness. She was small and thin, and it was difficult to guess how old she was - eight or twelve. She had wild, blue-black curls, which, obviously, had never been touched by a comb or scissors, large, amazingly beautiful eyes, also black, and legs of the same color, because she always ran barefoot. In winter, she occasionally wore boots, but they were too big for her, and also different. After all, Momo either found her things somewhere or received them as a gift. Her long, ankle-length skirt was made from colored pieces. On top, Momo wore an old men's jacket that was too loose for her, the sleeves of which she always rolled up. Momo didn’t want to cut them off, she thought that she would soon grow up and who knows if she would ever come across such a wonderful jacket with so many pockets again.

Under the theater stage, which was overgrown with weeds, there were several half-collapsed closets, which could be entered through a hole in the wall. This is where Momo made her home. One day at lunchtime, people came to Momo, several men and women. They wanted to talk to her. Momo stood and looked at them in fear, afraid that they would drive her away from here. But she soon realized that these were kind people. They themselves were poor and knew life well.

“So,” said one of them, “so you like it here?”

“Yes,” Momo answered.

– And would you like to stay here?

- Yes very.

– Isn’t anyone waiting for you anywhere?

“I want to say: don’t you want to go home?”

“My home is here,” Momo answered quickly.

- But where are you from?

Momo waved her hand in an indefinite direction: somewhere into the distance.

- Who are your parents? – the man continued to inquire.

Raising her shoulders slightly, Momo looked at the questioner in confusion. People looked at each other and sighed.

“Don’t be afraid,” the man continued. “We’re not driving you out of here at all.” We want to help you. Momo nodded timidly.

Why is the reader, content with 1984, Brave New World, 451 degrees, not looking for new dystopias that would be based not on totalitarian management of society, but on something else? For me, who read these books, it was interesting to look at the structure of the state from the inside, to look for errors, shortcomings, and I was ready for some time to become the hero of such a book, to whom the author, perhaps, left the opportunity to raise a rebellion and rebellion, at least within himself and fight the enemy. The clear consciousness that all the desperate attempts of the hero who challenged the state are doomed to failure, because any system that rules thousands must, no matter how difficult it is, be able to subjugate a few, did not prevent me from hoping for success, but the enemies of Momo, depriving her comrades seemed to rob me of all the enthusiasm with which I would rush into battle against them, and I could only wait and hope that Momo would cope with them alone.

The worst thing the Gray gentlemen did was deprive people of time. Yes, they did it technically, and it looks less like a dystopia and more like a fairy tale, but still the attempts to lure free and hardworking people to their side and the success, which I was not at all surprised by, look less like a fairy tale and more like a dystopia. Everyone who used to find pleasure in their work, which brought great benefit to others, as, for example, in the case of Beppo the Sweeper, for whom any swing of a broom was something like a ritual, if not more, so, each of these respected by me gentlemen, now deprived of time, devoted pitiful crumbs of attention and love to all his affairs, justifying it like this: “times have changed,” “I don’t have time,” “I’m in a hurry,” “we’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” And all these excuses, the entire style of behavior of people who have changed so rapidly are still very clear today.

The lack of time has also led to the fact that people now become exclusively interested in surrogates produced in haste. Gigi, a former friend of Momo, churned out his previously amazing stories that attracted many listeners, which fools now read avidly, without penetrating in depth and without realizing the main thing. Nino, the innkeeper, was now counting the money and rejoicing at the money, the reputation of his establishment for lightning-fast service, and the gloomy customers. Tasteless food only created the appearance of satiety, but in fact only filled a rumbling stomach without satisfying hunger; This was noticed only by little Momo, who still valued the unity of business and time as others valued it before. Gray gentlemen, having created special institutions, they also took care of the children, who with their games brought unnecessary problems into their “life”, because the future of humanity depends on the children, the Gray gentlemen were going to beat the crap out of them.

Yes, in some ways this book is scary, probably in the fact that Ende, who wrote it forty-odd years ago, guessed how a person will gradually find something for himself that, being worthless, will turn himself into an idol.

Rating: 10

It’s good where we are not, the apples are tastier, the sun is brighter, and the cats are fatter; But what about our work, it eats up all our time, if it weren’t for her, wow, what a life would begin! Real! Something luxurious and significant, as in the ideas of the modest hairdresser Mr. Fuzi (“Well, I’m a hairdresser - no one needs me”). And here is the dilemma: favorite activities, close people, or extreme savings in time, savings on everything - from direct responsibilities at work to reading, visiting relatives and feeding the parrot. Work, work, work, and by the time you retire, so many hours will have accumulated in the Time Savings Bank that real life will begin. But city residents understand what happiness is only when they deprive themselves of the opportunity to dream, fool around, swear and make peace, that is, to do things that have no direct material value, but without them life becomes dreary (“... but I stopped loving he finally And the scolding, and the saber, and the lead"), turns into a routine, and the person falls ill with Mortal Boredom.

This opposition of “feeling and reason” was embodied in the confrontation between little Momo and the Gray gentlemen. After all, who but a child needs friends - big and small, needs stories, dreams, needs time.

It’s strange, but when I read “Momo”, I remembered Shukshin’s weirdos - kind, open, out of the routine, prose of life, somewhat naive and therefore misunderstood by others. So Momo is the same weirdo with her ridiculous jacket and closet under the stage. Momo also had a remarkable property: she, like a litmus test, revealed what a person refused, was afraid of, did not want to notice, or understand. Next to her, he felt real. And here it is - real life, in every minute, in every moment.

It seems to me that any reader will find something of his own in Momo, and will probably recognize himself in the characters. But in any case, this is a classically true fairy tale, in the sense that it is beautifully written for children, but no less beautifully written for adults. The book was created in 1973, but it feels like our contemporary wrote it about us today; truly “I told you everything as if it happened a long time ago. But I could tell it as if it would still happen.”

Rating: 10

In children's literature, the temptation is probably especially great (and the consequences are especially catastrophic) to slip into teaching. Shamelessly use literature to proclaim one's views on the world, and construct a plot, no matter how skillfully, solely to prove its truth. The temptation is great, because parents who buy a book are expecting that the book will teach their child something good. However, what if the author's instructions turn out to be wrong?

All these thoughts, in general, have little to do with this wonderful book. This is an exciting, immeasurably good story-tale by the brilliant Michael Ende about the importance human communication and community. About the fact that in the race for the ever-elusive profit, social status and influence, we forget about what really captivates us, and, even more often, about ordinary humanity, kindness, ties of kinship and friendship.

At the center of the story is Momo, a little magical tramp girl with a pet turtle. What sets her apart from so many children's and young adult works is that her magic is both much more ordinary and much more incredible: she is simply a very kind and sensitive person - so much so that her presence can unite people with the incredible power of a living metaphor . The antagonists are the Gray People, insidious powerful creatures who, almost like the Devil, playing on the weaknesses and strongest desires of people, take away their most valuable thing - their Time. Makes their lives Gray and lifeless. They force you to live day after day on autopilot.

And yet, what was written at the beginning has some relevance to this book. Her description of the psychological difficulties of life in modern capitalist society is very accurate, vivid and imaginative. And yet, a certain one-sidedness of view, the incompleteness of the picture being described is detected while reading out of the corner of the eye and sometimes interferes with enjoying the story. Of course, everything that the author describes as bad is bad. But the book's emphasis on Time makes precise observations somewhat less accurate and even fair. After reading the book superficially, it is easy to think that the only way to do your job responsibly, well and with a sense of personal satisfaction is to do it slowly. And for all the seductiveness of such a point of view for a lazy person like me, I cannot help but call it controversial. And if you considered the previous conclusion to be a clear distortion of the idea of ​​​​the work, then how will you react to the statement that the excessively fast pace modern life is determined not only by negative, but also by many positive factors - such as the achievements of scientific and technological progress, not all of which are useless - and, consequently, the presentation of the turtle (she, of course, turns out to be a powerful magic turtle, but nevertheless the usual trail of associations weaves behind it) as a positive role model smells a bit reactionary to the reader? In the end, you begin to doubt whether a child today will be happy to read a book where fast food is presented as not the least of the evils of civilization.

This is all the more disturbing the more excellent, compelling and beautifully written the book is, and in terms of style, pace, tension and other characteristics of the narrative, it is what many fiction writers should strive for. The Gray Men are really written out to be as unpleasant and threatening as possible. The scenes in the abode of the Lord of Time (perhaps his name was something else) amaze with their scale and beauty - not everyone can convey the feeling of the indescribable so well. The everyday details for the images of the main characters are also incomparable - descriptions of children's games led by Momo or stories invented by the Guide, I would read again and again. On this the highest level letters, a certain simplification of the concept stands out more strongly.

All criticism, of course, would be obvious nitpicking and re-analysis if the book had belonged to the pen of almost any other author, but Michael Ende has repeatedly shown that he is able to write for children without any discounts - wisely, deeply and avoiding the pitfall of unnecessary didactics. And so, although the book aroused delight more than once while reading, and it would be a gross lie to say that it was not exciting or not written excellently, the aftertaste was not impeccable, as if from an inspired lecture, where in a couple of places mistakes were made in the evidence inaccuracies.

Rating: 9

A wonderful tale by Michael Ende. Kind, magical, with interesting characters, very sweet the main character And amazing world time.

The author wrote a wonderful fairy tale, but I think it was written not for children, but for adults. After all, children never suffer from lack of time. But for adults, this fairy tale-parable will make them think about many things. Besides work and money, there is something else in our life that is more important, for example: communicating with friends, reading books, walking in the park - things that give us joy.

I really liked the fairy tale, but there was still something missing for me. The middle, about the Master of the Chorus, is simply bewitching and magical; Michael Ende is great at describing inexplicable things. But the ending came out too quickly, in my opinion, and Momo had to do almost nothing to defeat the Gray Masters. And she herself, throughout the entire fairy tale, having experienced so many adventures, does not change internally.

Overall my rating is 9 out of 10.

Rating: 9

The beginning is almost everyday - on the outskirts of a big city, a homeless orphan girl named Momo settles in the ruins of an ancient amphitheater. Local residents, who are not rich people themselves, help her settle down. The girl makes her first friends, and their circle then only expands. Among them are not only children, but also adults. Among her two best friends is one generally old man, the silent Beppo, nicknamed the sweeper (and by profession too), and the other is the quick-tongued young man Girolamo “Gigi” “Tour Guide”. Momo, it would seem, is the most ordinary child, but she knows how to listen to others surprisingly carefully. People who share their misfortunes and problems with her suddenly clear their heads about what needs to be done. Children in the presence of Momo become inventive in their games and never get bored.

But then the fairy tale becomes magical. Gray Lords appear who incite people to deposit them in their Savings Bank free time, which they will then supposedly be able to receive with interest, like money in a real savings bank. In fact, the Gray Lords appropriate other people's time and live off it. Only no one knows about this and no one would know - if not for Momo, a girl in whose presence even a secretive thief of time can open up.

Michael Ende

A short introduction from the translator

This translation is the first experience of this kind in my practice.

My whole life up to the age of 53 was spent in Russia, and I belong to a little-known and slightly strange nationality - Russian Germans. These are not the German Germans, who occupy a powerful niche in the human community, but a part of the German people that emerged in the process of long adaptation - first in Tsarist, then Soviet Russia - and was forced out of Germany after the seven-year war.

It is surprising that my ancestors, over the course of two and a half centuries, were not assimilated by the powerful Russian mentality and Russian culture to the extent that one might have expected. Their religious-sectarian upbringing and peasant origin formed a strong immunity against such dissolution. And this despite all the social upheavals that befell the Russian state in the ill-fated 20th century - especially during the war with Nazi Germany, when Russian Germans were naturally, but unfairly identified with the German fascists, so hated in the USSR.

My childhood and adolescence coincided with that period of history. But it was precisely after the second abolition of “serfdom” in 1955 (the liberation of collective farmers from registration in villages with the issuance of passports and the liquidation of the special commandant’s office for Russian Germans) and the emergence of relative freedom, assimilation, completely voluntary, began to quickly change the mentality of Russian Germans towards Russian culture and Russian way of life.

Since childhood, I was drawn to learning, which did not at all correspond to the general mood of the conservative Russian German village, and at the age of 15 I broke out of my religious-peasant environment and plunged into civilization, settling in a hostel and entering a technical school in the large Siberian city of Omsk (1952).

At that time, I read a lot and, given the direction of literature and the media at that time, I quickly moved away from religion, which in our home had the character of tedious and painful moralizing.

In general, if we put aside the negative consequences of that “civilized” life, which crushed millions of destinies of village boys and girls who came to the city, one thing is certain: the German part of this great urban migration quickly “Russified”, losing its language and centuries-old family traditions.

I do not regret at all that the great, non-rationalistic, to a certain extent mystified Russian culture became my culture, my spiritual environment. I cannot and do not want to compare it with the German language, which is alien to me; let me not judge it.

I came across M. Ende’s book “Momo” quite by accident after moving to Germany with my family. A chapter from it was included in the study guide German language and the German way of life for immigrants and immediately made a strong impression on me with its humanistic orientation and the author’s absolute rejection of the rationalistic, unspiritual construction of life in a capitalist society.

With your mind you understand well that an alternative to the life of today’s West, which requires maximum realism, can be calm spiritual communication and contemplative peace, which require much less material consumption. What is closer to the ideal is a philosophical question. But this is another topic for another time. For now, I will only note that the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth in their time looked much more absurd and impossible. And today they are the core of life for most of humanity. One can, of course, argue that even in Christian Europe, life is still far from the proclaimed norms. Nevertheless, Christianity is a strong and unshakable foundation, and the building on it will continue to be built and improved in accordance with changing life.

When reading "Momo" I was constantly haunted by the feeling that this story was from the "silver" period of Russian literature of the 19th century century, not a modern bestseller.

Then I took up entrepreneurship for a long time, not very successfully spending all my time on it, but the thought that the book needed to be brought to the Russian reader did not leave me. This need has become especially acute in last years, when the idea of ​​God-seeking took possession of my consciousness.

And now about the book and its heroine - the little girl Momo, who had enough moral strength and courage to resist the gray, all-consuming power of Evil.

It appears in the vicinity of a big city, where people live leisurely, rejoice and are sad, quarrel and make peace, but the most important thing is that they communicate with each other, and cannot live without it. They are not rich, although they are not lazy at all. They have enough time for everything, and no one thinks of saving it.

Momo takes up residence in an ancient amphitheater. Nobody knows where she comes from or what she wants. It looks like she doesn't even know it herself.

It soon turns out that Mol has a magical and rare gift of listening to people in such a way that they become smarter and better, forgetting everything petty and absurd that poisons their lives.

But she is especially loved by children, who with her help become extraordinary dreamers and invent the most exciting games.

However, gradually an evil force in the form of gray gentlemen who feed on human time gradually intervenes in the lives of these people. Their countless hordes require a lot of it, and the gray gentlemen are talented and persistent in creating an entire industry of stealing time from people. They must convince every person that they need to rationalize their life as much as possible, and not waste themselves on such unpromising things as communicating with friends, relatives, children, and especially on “useless” old people and disabled people. Labor cannot serve as a source of joy; everything must be subordinated to a single goal - to produce the maximum amount of goods in the shortest possible time.

And now the former quiet city is turning into a huge industrial center, where everyone is in a terrible hurry, not noticing each other. Time is saved on everything, and there should be more and more of it, but, on the contrary, it is increasingly lacking. A kind of convulsive, extremely rationalized way of life develops, in which every lost moment is a crime.

Where does the “time saved” go? The gray gentlemen quietly steal it, storing it in their huge bank vaults.

Who are they - gray gentlemen? These are demons who persuade people to evil in the name of a tempting goal. By seducing them with the delights of life, which can only be achieved with great effort by saving every second, the gray gentlemen, in fact, force people to sacrifice their entire meaningful lives. This chain is false, it does not exist at all, but it attracts everyone until their death.

"Momo" is a touching and very instructive fairy tale by German children's writer Michael Ende. It was published in 1973 with the subtitle "The Strange Tale of Time Thieves and the Child Who Bringed Time Back to People." Momo was subsequently awarded the German Children's Literature Prize and translated into 30 languages.

Before becoming a storyteller, Michael Ende sought himself in the field of playwright and novelist. However, his works did not resonate with the public. One day, while walking around Palermo, Ende witnessed an unusual event - a man was enthusiastically telling a story. A crowd of townspeople gathered around him. They all listened with bated breath. When Ende asked what this story was, the speaker replied that many years ago he first became acquainted with the book by Alexandre Dumas. The work delighted him so much that he learned the text by heart, and over time became a professional storyteller.

After this meeting on the street of Palermo, Michael Ende realized that you need to write in such a way that your works will be told on the streets in a hundred years. He was done with drama, but did not want to give up writing. “Something is wrong here,” Ende thought. “There must be some other way, I just don’t see it.” The right path was found completely by accident.

A friend of Michael Ende suggested that he write a short children's story for an illustrated book that he was publishing. To unwind a little, Ende accepted the offer and began composing. Thus, the famous Jim Button was born. The story about him was published in 1960, at that time Michael Ende was 31 years old.

Young readers and their parents liked Ende’s fantasy so much that the book was literally swept off store shelves. A year later, the author of “Jim Buttons” was already awarded two honorary prizes - the Berlin Literary Prize for the Young Generation and the German Book Prize for Children. Encouraged, Ende sat down to continue. Now he was firmly convinced that his calling was children's literature.

"Momo" - a fairy tale for adults

Following the successful Jim Button, another character appeared in the fairy-tale collection of Michael Ende - the tramp girl Momo with a turtle under her arm. The fairy tale was published in 1973. Later it was filmed several times. Thus, in 1986, Germany released the full-length film “Momo,” directed by Johannes Schaaf.

"Momo" is not just a children's fairy tale, it, like Ende's other works, is a deep philosophical work, dressed in a lightweight form literary fairy tale.

Chronic employment
At the center of Momo’s problematic is the theme of time and its depreciation as a result of total globalization. Trying to save every second, modern man actually steals time from your own life. Stopping and admiring the beauty of a blooming flower or the sunset over the roofs of houses is an unaffordable luxury for a city dweller who is always in a hurry. But this is precisely what life is.

Michael Ende admitted that “Momo” was written primarily for adults; children already know everything that is written there. But the book is addressed to children, because this way it will definitely fall into the hands of their parents.

Ende's cunning plan worked - the book's readership has no boundaries. Even in a hundred years it will be relevant, and it will be told on the streets, unless by then we, of course, have forgotten how to just talk. Let's remember the plot of this amazing story about stolen time.

Once upon a time there were beautiful cities on earth with elegant doors, wide streets and cozy alleys, colorful bazaars, majestic temples and amphitheaters. Now these cities do not exist, only ruins remind of them. In one of these dilapidated ancient amphitheatres, which is occasionally visited by inquisitive tourists, a little girl named Momo settled.

Nobody knew whose she was, where she was from or how old she was. According to Momo, she is one hundred and two years old and has no one in the world except herself. True, Momo looks no more than twelve. She is very small and thin, she has blue-black curly hair, the same dark huge eyes and no less black legs, because Momo always runs barefoot. Only in the winter does the girl wear boots that are disproportionately large for her thin legs. Momo's skirt is made of multi-colored scraps, and the jacket is no less long than the skirt. Momo thought about cutting off his sleeves, but then she decided that over time she would grow up, and such a wonderful jacket might not be found.

Once upon a time Momo was in orphanage. She doesn’t like to remember this period of her life. She and many other unfortunate children were brutally beaten, scolded and forced to do things that they absolutely did not want to do. One day Momo climbed over the fence and ran away. Since then, she has lived in a room under the stage of the ancient amphitheater.

The families who lived in the neighborhood found out about the appearance of a street girl. They helped Momo settle into his new home. The mason laid out the stove and made a chimney, the carpenter carved chairs and a table, someone brought a wrought-iron bed, someone brought bedspreads and a mattress, a painter painted flowers on the wall, and the abandoned closet under the stage turned into a cozy room where Momo now lived.

Her house was always full of guests different ages and different professions. If someone was in trouble, the locals would always say, “Visit Momo.” What was it about this homeless little girl? Nothing special... She just knew how to listen. She did this in such a way that the disillusioned found hope, the unsure - confidence in their own abilities, the oppressed raised themselves above their heads, and the abandoned realized that they were not alone.

One day, in the city where Momo and her friends lived, the Gray gentlemen appeared. In fact, their organization had existed for a long time, they acted slowly, carefully and quietly, entangling people and establishing themselves in the life of the city. the main objective Gray gentlemen - to take over human time.

Time is the biggest secret and the most valuable treasure that everyone has, but knows almost nothing about it. People have recorded time in calendars and clocks, but real time lives in the heart. It is life.

The insidious plan of the Gray gentlemen was based on depriving people of the present time. For example, an IKS agent with code number 384-b comes to an ordinary hairdresser, Mr. Fouquet, and invites him to make a contribution to the Savings Bank of Time. Having carried out intricate mathematical calculations, the ICS agent proves that by making daily deposits at interest, you can multiply your precious time tenfold. To do this, you just need to learn how to spend it rationally.

How much does Mr. Fouquet spend on servicing each client? Half an hour? A visit can be shortened to 15 minutes by eliminating unnecessary conversations with visitors. How long does Mr. Fouquet talk with the old mother? A whole hour?! But she is paralyzed and practically does not understand him. The mother can be placed in a cheap nursing home, thereby gaining precious 60 minutes. The green parrot, which Fouquet spends an average of 30 minutes a day caring for, should also be gotten rid of. Gatherings with friends in a cafe, going to the movies, visiting Fraulein Daria, thinking near the window - eliminate all this as unnecessary!

Soon the Savings Bank of Time had many investors. They dressed better, lived richer, and looked more respectable than those who lived in the part of the city near the amphitheater. The investors settled in the same type of multi-story box houses, were constantly in a hurry, never smiled, and more than anything else they were afraid of silence, because in silence it became obvious that the time saved was rushing by at an unimaginable speed. Monotonous days turn into weeks, months, years. They can't be stopped. I can't even remember them. It's as if they don't exist at all.

None of the Sberkassa depositors know about little Momo who lives in a room under the stage of the amphitheater. But she knows about them and wants to help them.

To save the city from the Gray Masters, Momo goes to the man who controls time - this is the Master of Time, aka the Master of Chorus, aka Secundus Minutus Chora. The Master lives in the House of Nowhere. For a long time he watched little Momo, having learned that the Gray gentlemen wanted to get rid of the girl, Master Hora sent the fortuneteller turtle Cassiopeia for her. It was she who brought Momo to the Master’s magical abode.

From the House of Nowhere, all universal time is distributed among people. Everyone has their own internal clock in their heart. “The heart is given to man to perceive time. Time that is not perceived by the heart disappears in the same way that colors disappear for the blind or the singing of birds disappears for the deaf. Unfortunately, there are a lot of blind and deaf hearts in the world that don’t feel anything, although they beat.”

The Gray Lords are not people at all. They only took on human form. They are NOTHING, coming from NOWHERE. They feed on human time and will disappear without a trace as soon as people stop giving them their time. Unfortunately, today the influence of the Gray Masters on people is very great; they have a lot of minions among the inhabitants of our planet.

We invite you to read - a famous German writer who created many popular children's works, some of which were awarded literary prizes.

The story or “The Endless Book” is considered the writer’s most successful work, and a film was even made based on this book.

The Master of Time is unable to stop the Gray Masters; people themselves are responsible for their time. Watching Momo with the help of All-Seeing Glasses, the Time Master realized that this girl should become the bearer of truth. Only she can save the world.

Returning from Nowhere House, Momo knew everything. She fearlessly carried the teaching about Time around the city, exposed the Gray gentlemen and returned the stolen time to people.

The German writer Michael Ende is known to domestic readers mainly as the author of "". But he also has other kind and wise fairy tales that are worthy of attention. One of them is a fairy tale " Momo».

The main character of the story is a little girl named Momo. She lives alone in a small town, no one has ever seen her parents, no one knows who she is or where she came from. The town's residents love Momo because she has a rare gift: the ability to listen to others. Talking to Momo, a timid person becomes brave, a shy person becomes confident, and the unfortunate person forgets about his sorrows. That's why Momo has many friends.

But one day the peace of the city is disturbed. They come to it Gray gentlemen- time thieves. They act secretly and carefully, deceiving people and luring them into their networks. Posing as employees Savings Banks of Time, they encourage people to open an account to save time. In fact, they simply steal this time from people, with no intention of returning it back, especially with interest.

Gradually, more and more people are becoming obsessed with the idea of ​​saving time. They try to finish any task as quickly as possible, but they have no time left for simple human joys at all. Her friends stop visiting Momo - they now consider conversations a waste of time. Then she decides to go looking for them. Now only Momo can save people from the Gray gentlemen and give them back their lost time. Will it be possible to do this?

Like any good children's book, Momo will be interesting not only for children, but also for adults. The issues raised by the author are still relevant today, because in modern hectic life we ​​try to do everything, but in the end we do not have time for truly important things: for conversations with friends, for leisurely walks, and finally, for ourselves.

This is a book about how a child can be no less wise than an adult, because it’s not a matter of age. About the fact that wonderful abilities lie on the surface, and no diplomas or merits can replace such a simple skill at first glance - listen and hear the other person.

And even though during the course of the story it may seem to the reader that everything is hopeless, and the Gray gentlemen will inevitably win, the story “Momo”, like all fairy tales, will certainly end well. After all, "Momo", like all the works of Michael Ende, is filled endless love for people. People who are by nature imperfect, who can make mistakes. But true love often happens in spite of.

If you love " Neverending story", be sure to take the time to read Momo: you'll love it. And if you haven’t read any of Michael Ende’s works, it’s time to get acquainted with them: the world of fairy tales is always open to children and adults, you just need to take a step into it.

Quotes from the book

“There is one important, but completely everyday secret in the world. All people are involved in it, everyone knows it; but only a few think about it. Many simply take note of it, without being surprised at all. This secret is time.
Calendars and clocks were created to measure time, but they are of little use, because everyone knows that one hour can seem like an eternity and at the same time flash by like an instant - depending on what is experienced during that hour.
After all, time is life. And life lives in the heart"

“No one seemed to notice that by saving time, he was actually saving something completely different. No one wanted to admit that his life was becoming poorer, more monotonous and colder.
Only the children clearly felt this, because no one had any more time for children.
But time is life. And life lives in the heart.
And what more people saved, the poorer they became"