Agafia
Agafja ( Russian Агафья ) is a short story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared on March 15, 1886 in the St. Petersburg newspaper Novoje wremja .
Alexander Eliasberg 's translation into German was published in 1920 by Musarion Verlag Munich . Translations into other languages: 1891 into Slovak ( Agafia ), 1897 into Czech ( Agafja ), 1900 into Serbo-Croatian ( Agafija ) and 1917 into English ( Agafya ).
overview
On quiet summer evenings, the first-person narrator likes to visit the gardener Sawwa Stukatsch, called Sawka, in the Dubowsk vegetable gardens. These are community gardens where Sawka keeps watch as a day laborer. You fish together. Sawka didn't invent work. His mother provides the bare essentials for survival - even when she has to beg. The first-person narrator has appeared unannounced. Sawka regrets: If he had known, he would not have appointed a young woman. “Someone asked if she could come today,” he explains the situation to the first-person narrator. The latter does not want to disturb. During the love game, he wants to lie down in the neighboring wood. Sawka occasionally receives one or the other woman. Each usually brings food with them "out of pity". In summer, the mother of the lazy, carefree Sawka has to beg less than at other times of the year.
During the night Agafja, called Agascha, who is around nineteen, comes to the rendezvous. This wife of the switchman Jakow shrinks when two men sit in front of the brushwood hut. Agasha remains; also doesn't work when the mail train has passed and Jakow is waiting for her at home. The first-person narrator soon disappears into the woods as a disturbing third party. Later he finds Agascha still there: “Agafja was lying on the ground next to him, drunk from vodka, from Sawka's contemptuous caresses and from the nightly sultriness, and clasped her face convulsively against his knee. She gave in to her feelings so senselessly that she did not even notice my return. ”She does not respond to Jakow's loud calls from afar. Agascha only leaves in bright morning light. The first-person narrator ends his story: “Agafja ... went up to her husband. You could see that she gathered all her strength and made up her mind. "
Contemporary reception
- March 25, 1886, Dmitri Grigorowitsch points to Anton Chekhov's "reliable feeling [in] the inner analysis, the mastery of description ... and the feeling of plasticity" and praises the description of nature.
- 1888: Korolenko, on the other hand, would have liked a deeper psychological analysis of Agasha and Sawka. It comes up against the "side perspective" favored by the author, so to speak. Still, Korolenko emphasizes the "truthfulness" of the story.
German-language editions
Used edition
- Agafja , pp. 68-80 in Gerhard Dick (ed.) And Wolf Düwel (ed.): Anton Chekhov: The Swedish match . Short stories and early narratives. German by Wolf Düwel. 668 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1965 (1st edition)
Web links
- The text
- online in the Gutenberg-DE project
- October 24, 2014, Bettina Reifschneider reads at Audible
- Агафья (Чехов) (Russian)
- online in the Komarow library (Russian)
- online in FEB (Russian)
- online at litmir.co (Russian)
- Chekhov Bibliography, Entry Stories No. 374 (Russian)