On the business trip

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anton Chekhov

On the business trip ( Russian По делам службы , Po delam sluschby ) is a story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared in the January edition of the literary supplement to Knischki Nedeli ( weekly booklet ) in 1899 . The text was translated into Serbo-Croatian and Czech during the author's lifetime. The story came on the book market in German in 1949.

Russia , a thousand weres from Moscow , in a winter around 1896: The 26-year-old examining magistrate Lyshin and the district doctor Dr. Startschenko, a middle-aged man, got stuck in a snowdrift en route to Syrnja and arrived so late in the village that the autopsy of the suicide Sergei Sergejitsch Lesnitski - an insurance agent in Zemstvo during his lifetime - had to be postponed until the next day . Lesnizki shot himself in the village courthouse, of all places. His body is still there. Dr. Startschenko decided to go on to his friend, the former assistant public prosecutor from Taunitz, on his estate, which is only three weres away from the village, because he needed a decent dinner and a feather bed for the night. Investigating magistrate Lyshin, on the other hand, made do with a modest room, only separated from the crime scene by a partition, as quarters. The cockroaches rustle. There is a haystack in the corner of the room. At least Lyshin learns a few details about the deceased from the mouth of the 60-year-old police assistant Loschadin: Loschadin and Lesnizki come from the neighboring village of Nedostschotowo. Lesnitski's wealthy father had sent his son Sergei to school while he was alive, but the boy had not gotten to grips with the sciences. Sergei's uncle, for example, put the student in the Zemstvo administration as an agent after his father's death. Sergei, who was still aiming high, was ashamed of himself when he was talking to the farmers, whom he was supposed to talk to about an insurance policy, and kept looking down while talking. He finally took his own life out of melancholy.

Dr. Startschenko drives back to Syrnja through the snowstorm and brings examining magistrate Lyshin to the hospitable house of the widowed Herr von Taunitz. During dinner, the doctor informed Startschenko that the neurasthenic Lesnitski had left his wife and children. In the opinion of the doctor, such sick people should be forbidden from putting children into the world. Von Taunitz regrets the unhappy young Lesnizki, who certainly did not make his decision to commit suicide easy. Examining magistrate Lyshin feels compelled to make a speech and only speaks briefly of "unpleasant appearance". Then there is joking and dancing. The examining magistrate is also given a freshly made white feather bed at night. While the blizzard howls unabated outside the window, he falls asleep and dreams restlessly of the elderly police assistant Loschadin and the young suicide Lesnitski: Both sway through the blizzard, supporting each other, swaying and singing in the operatic tone “... we walk ... You are in the warm, you have it light, you have it soft, but we go through the frost ... through the deep snow ... We know no rest, we know no joy ... We bear all the heaviness of this life , ours as well as yours ... ".

When the snowstorm is over the next day, the police assistant Loschadin is waiting for the two gentlemen from the city by the horse-drawn sleigh in front of the von Taunitz property, freezing.

German-language editions

Used edition

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Книжки Недели , monthly literature supplement to the Sankt Petersburg weekly newspaper Неделя ( The Week , 1866–1901)
  2. ↑ Notes in the FEB under Auf der Dienstreise , pp. 396–404 (Russian) as well as Edition used, p. 599
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 451, 2nd Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 446, 2nd Zvu
  5. ↑ Mokschan : Сырня
  6. ↑ Russian Недощотово
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 458, 20. Zvo