In Siberia
In Siberia ( Russian Из Сибири , Is Sibiri) is a travelogue by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared in the St. Petersburg daily Novoje wremja from June to August 1890 .
Itinerary
On April 21, 1890, Chekhov boarded the train to Yaroslavl in Moscow . On the drive to Sakhalin Island, continue to Perm by water . Chekhov goes to Yekaterinburg by train . The traveler leaves this city on May 1st and reaches Tyumen by train on May 3rd . On May 4th Chekhov passed Ishim .
The period from May 6th to June 20th is documented in this travel report.
From June 21st it goes down the Amur . Its mouth at Nikolayevsk is reached on July 5th. Chekhov lands on Sakhalin on July 10th .
content
While the nightingales beat in early May in European Russia and the lilacs bloom at home in the south, the forests on the way from Tyumen to Tomsk are bare and the lakes are still frozen. Chekhov's traveling sleigh overtook a group of peasants - resettlers from the Kursk governorate and later a prisoner transport. On their march around 35 prisoners in chains are guarded by soldiers.
Cursing farmhands row the travelers on a ferry across a wide river. According to the coachman, Sterlete , salmon trout , eel tadpoles and pike should live there undisturbed by anglers.
- May 6th to 8th
On the night of May 6th, Chekhov left the village of Abatskoye in a two-horse carriage . The doctor Chekhov diagnosed that the coachman, who was around 60 years old, probably had vertebral syndrome , but was still fairly mobile. Five postal troikas dash towards one another at full gallop . There is a clash with one of the troikas. Chekhov remains unharmed. His luggage is scattered along the way. The drawbar is broken and the two horses are badly damaged. Chekhov knows the cause of the crash. According to the regulations, Post Troiks must go step. The coachmen on the last four troikas had slept. The driver on the first troika had driven his three horses to gallop out of boredom. The other horses had followed unbridled. In spite of their obvious guilt, the awakened accident perpetrators cut Chekhov's old coachman down with foul language. The old man mends the drawbar with ropes and suitcase straps - also from Chekhov's luggage. The next village is reached with great difficulty. "Somewhere courting capercaillie ." With an intact team continues with a free driver.
- May 9
There is a lot of game on the almost 1600 km long way from Tyumen to Tomsk. But the hunters, with their often failing rifles, only kill a few ducks. The successful hunter must personally fetch the prey from the water. There are no hunting dogs. There is a rest in the cabin of the free coachman. A woman traveling solo from Omsk left her toddler behind. The housewife has grown fond of little Sascha and is afraid that her birth mother might come and take the darling away from her. Chekhov, who is addressed as “businessman”, advises an exchange of letters with the birth mother to clarify. This is not possible. Their family name and postal address are unknown.
- 12th of May
Shortly before the Irtysh , Chekhov has to take a flood break. The perplexed locals recommend the traveler to turn to God when answering the question "What next?" Chekhov writes: “... the steep bank of the Irtysh stretches out, black-brown and gloomy, and heavy gray clouds hang over it; here and there it shimmers white with snow on the bank. ”The traveler jokes that, given the extraordinary width of the Irtysh, Yermak would have drowned without his chain mail while swimming through the river . Local free ferrymen take Chekhov to the east bank in a boat.
- May 13th
Before the Ob then the same game. The meadows on the west bank of the river are flooded. Chekhov has in Kolyvan endure. A fat, rich farmer philosophizes in detail with the waiting people about the uneducated, unhappy Siberian people: “They send him half-furs, calico, crockery and nails from Russia, but he doesn't know how to make anything himself. He only plows the field and does free haulage ... “Chekhov passes the time reading and writing.
- May 14th and 15th
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Finally, a boat trip across the Ob from the neighboring Krasny Jar succeeds. Again the same game before Tomsk. The meadows in front of the Tom are flooded. Crossing in a rowboat is dangerous. The helmsman commands the rowers. After a gust, the helmsman waits in the willow thicket.
- May 18
Chekhov asks: What happens to a member of the Russian intelligentsia if he is exiled to Siberia? And he replies: Over time, he degenerates clumsily and dependently.
- May 27th
Behind Tomsk, the Siberian post road to Irkutsk dips into the taiga . Chekhov suspects that the Siberian post road is the longest in the world. But he is certain that she is the ugliest. An oncoming traveler complains that his carriage has overturned four times. It is said that a member of the Geographical Society had to spend the night with his wife twice in the forest and a lady hit her head bloodied in the swing. A tax collector gave peasants a princely reward for pulling him out of the mud after sixteen hours. And if the bridge over the Katscha collapses again and post horses almost drown in the process, it is hardly anything special.
- 20th June
Chekhov finds the journey through Siberia to the Yenisei boring . Then “the original, sublime, wonderful nature” begins. Chekhov has never seen a more magnificent river than the “mighty, impetuous warrior” Yenisei. Krasnoyarsk on the bank of the river is the best and most beautiful of all Siberian cities. Chekhov writes about the forests behind Krasnoyarsk: "The power and the magic of the taiga do not lie in gigantic trees and not in a grave silence, but in the fact that perhaps only the migratory birds know where it ends."
reception
- 1969, Dick writes:
- Regarding the trip on the Amur: "Only the last part of the journey ... was an unadulterated pleasure for the poet."
- "While driving through Siberia, Chekhov kept sending travel reports to Suvorin , who published them in his newspaper Novoje wremja ."
- 1982 Graßhoff names two forerunners of such literature in his afterword: Pushkin's poem Sendschreiben nach Sibirien (1827) and Maria Volkonskaja's memories .
- 2012, Thöns quotes from the 4th chapter of May 12, 1890 on the subject of traveling through Siberia before the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway .
German-language editions
Used edition
- In Siberia. Translated from Russian by a collective of translators led by Gerhard Dick. P. 7–48 in Gerhard Dick (ed.): Anton Chekhov: The island of Sakhalin. Travel reports, feature pages, literary notebooks. 604 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1969 (1st edition)
literature
- Gerhard Dick (ed.): Anton Chekhov: The island of Sakhalin. Travel reports, feature pages, literary notebooks. 604 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1969 (1st edition)
- Sakhalin Island. Translated from Russian by a collective of translators led by Gerhard Dick. Wilhelm Plackmeyer translated the footnotes. With an afterword by Helmut Graßhoff . With 16 photographs 510 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1982 (1st edition)
- Bodo Thöns: Siberia. Cities and landscapes between the Urals and the Pacific. 475 pages. Trescher Verlag, Berlin 2012 (5th edition), ISBN 978-3-89794-200-4 , table of contents
Web links
- The text
- Chekhov Bibliography, Documentary Entry No. 1 (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian entry at fantlab.ru
- ↑ Chronicle ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the trip at bibl.ngonb.ru (Russian)
- ↑ Russian Курская губерния
- ^ Distance from Tyumen to Tomsk
- ↑ Edition used, p. 22, 17. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, pp. 27, 20. Zvo
- ↑ Russian Красный Яр (Колыванский район)
- ↑ Distance Tomsk-Irkutsk
- ↑ Edition used, p. 44, 3. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 45, 19. Zvo
- ↑ Dick in the follow-up to "Die Insel Sachalin" (1969), p. 582, 16. Zvo
- ↑ Dick in the follow-up to “Die Insel Sachalin” (1969), p. 583, 3rd Zvu
- ^ Graßhoff in the afterword in "Die Insel Sachalin" (1982), p. 485 below
- ↑ Letter to Siberia ( Memento from May 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Thöns, p. 399
Remarks
- ↑ Free coachman means that the man was not exiled to Siberia.
- ↑ After Chekhov has passed Irkutsk, we continue to Chita , Nerchinsk (June 19), Sretensk and on the Amur via Blagoveschensk , Khabarovsk to Nikolayevsk ( map sketch ( memento from January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) in the top right of the chronicle of Travel at bibl.ngonb.ru (Russian)).