Sleep!

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Anton Chekhov

Sleep! also sleep, just sleep ( Russian Спать хочется , Spat chotschetsja ) is a short story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared on January 25, 1888 in the daily newspaper Peterburgskaja Gazeta . Alexei Pleschtschejew , who also worked for this newspaper, asked the author for shorter texts than Die Steppe . Anton Chekhov provided sleeping! According to the literary critic Alexander Izmailov, the author processed impressions from his Taganrog high school days. The boy had to work in his father's shop in addition to attending school. During Anton Chekhov's lifetime, the story was translated into Bulgarian, German, Finnish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian and Czech.

content

The crying toddler of the snoring shoemaker keeps the 13-year-old nanny Warka busy. Warka fears the shoemaker's blows and is not allowed to fall asleep. The young girl is half asleep back in time - to her parents' gloomy hut. The sick father Jefim has to endure severe pain. The mother Pelagea has the father taken to the hospital. The operation is too late. The father dies. At her mother's behest, Warka has to work in town.

The shoemaker pulls the dreaming Warka by the ears. The shoemaker's wife, called by the screaming of her child, stills it. Warka has to rock the screaming child in its cradle and then heat the stove and shine shoes in the morning. Catching up on missing sleep is out of the question. During the day Warka has to wash, iron, serve at the table, heat the samovar and go shopping. When the girl is again not allowed to sleep the next night, his anger is directed against the crying cradle child. Warka suffocates the child and laughs because she is finally allowed to sleep. Anton Chekhov concludes: "After a minute she was sleeping soundly like a dead person."

reception

Controversial views have come down to us from Nikolai Michailowitsch Jeschow (1862–1942), Alexander Lasarew-Grusinsky (1861–1927), Alexander Ertel and Iwan Gorbunow-Posadow. Nonetheless, Tolstoy appreciated the text.

Presumably, Katherine Mansfield's short story The Child-Who-What-Tired (1910) on Chekhov's idea.

German-language editions

  • Sleep, just sleep. In Peter Urban (Hrsg.): Anton Chekhov: The narrative work in ten volumes. Part of the flutter spirit. Stories 1888-1892. Translated from the Russian by Gerhard Dick. Diogenes, Zurich 1976, ISBN 978-3-257-20264-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry at Kritiker.de
  2. ↑ Russian Ismailow, Alexander Alexejewitsch
  3. ↑ Entry under sleep! (Russian) in FEB on pp. 624–626
  4. ↑ Russian Ежов, Николай Михайлович at rulex.ru
  5. ↑ Russian Александр Семенович Лазарев-Грузинский at my-chekhov.ru
  6. ↑ Russian Ertel, Alexander Iwanowitsch
  7. ↑ Russian Gorbunow-Possadow, Iwan Iwanowitsch
  8. ↑ eng. The Child-Who-Was-Tired online at the Katherine Mansfield Society
  9. ↑ Russian Спать хочется