Egyptian eclipse (Bulgakow)

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Mikhail Bulgakov around 1935

Egyptian Darkness ( Russian Тьма египетская , Tma jegipetskaja ) is a short story by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov , which appeared in 1925 in issues 26 and 27 of the Moscow magazine Medizinski rabotnik . The author added the story to his collection of Young Doctor's Notes . The title is ambiguous. On the one hand he means the darkening effect of a late afternoon December snow storm and on the other the backwoods convictions of the Russian villagers of those war years.

December 17, 1917: The first-person narrator runs a village hospital as a doctor and, after his work is done , celebrates his 24th birthday with the staff, field police Demjan Lukitsch and midwives Anna Nikolajewna and Pelageja Ivanovna. The blizzard is howling outside the window. The lights are now flickering in the district town forty werst away. Here in the village there is Egyptian darkness, notes the field scorer. During the small celebration with a couple of glasses and smoked sprats from the city, a rosy lady of about thirty enters the consulting room and asks for the next bottle of tinct. Belladonnae . The surprised Feldscher can only explain it this way: The woman entertained the whole village with five drops each. The doctor prescribes valerian for the disappointed woman.

During the birthday party, one and the other similar case will be discussed. Leopold, the predecessor of the first-person narrator, once prescribed French mustard plasters for laryngitis to his friend Fjodor Kossoi from Dulzewo . The remedy remained ineffective. The patient had stuck the plaster not between his shoulder blades, but over it on the sheep's clothing.

Anna Nikolajewna contributes to the topic of Egyptian darkness , the women prefer to be delivered by the quack . In Dulzewo, the quack woman had pushed refined sugar into the birth canal for her customer ; wanted to lure the child with sweets. The quack woman also gives her a mouthful of hair a mouthful to chew on. And if the child were to turn around when the child was in the wrong position , the quack woman would hang the woman in pain from the ceiling with her feet. The quack of Korobowo have when puncturing the amniotic sac bruised the head of the child.

Finally the party is over and the doctor goes to bed. He is disturbed by the miller Chudow from Dulzewo. Every day at midnight this patient would get a headache. The doctor diagnoses malaria , takes the well-read Müller into his hospital and prescribes quinine ten times, one powder each time at midnight. The next morning, Pelageia Ivanovna reported to the doctor in horror that the miller had taken all ten powders at once at midnight. The doctor goes to the patient, who has made an educated impression, and asks how he is. The answer: "Egyptian darkness prevails before my eyes."

German-language editions

Output used:

  • Egyptian darkness. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . Pp. 61–72 in Ralf Schröder (Ed.): Bulgakow. The red crown. Autobiographical stories and diaries. Volk & Welt, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-353-00944-2 (= Vol. 5: Collected Works (13 Vols.))

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Medizinski rabotnik - about employees in the health service
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 71, 14. Zvu