The fire of chans

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Mikhail Bulgakov around 1935

The fire of the chans ( Russian Ханский огонь , Chanski ogon ) is a short story by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov , which was written in 1924 and appeared in the same year in issue 2 of the Petrograd Krasny schurnal dlja wsech .

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The diseased Tatiana Mikhailovna, curator at the Museum headquarters of Chan in the Moscow suburb Oreschnewo, asks the elderly Iona Vasilyevich - former valet, now factotum - the arriving next group of tourists from Moscow through the mansion to lead. Prince Anton Ioannowitsch, the last landlord before the revolution , mingled with young people and adults . Iona does not recognize his former master during the tour. But when all - with one exception - left for Moscow again, the prince revealed himself and came out with his request. Right at the beginning of the revolution, when the prince fled hastily into exile in Paris with the now deceased princess , the couple had to leave behind deeds and other valuable papers. Anton Ioannowitsch wants to get hold of them and then quickly run away.

Iona, who thinks it is okay for peasants to use the prince's library, cannot deny the former valet and gives necessary useful advice. The returnees can therefore quickly sift through the papers and get what they are looking for. However, the slit-eyed Chan of the Little Horde Tugai-Beg, as Bulgakov still calls the prince, sets fire to his former property before his second and last escape. Neither a Bolshevik nor any of his peasants should take possession of the house.

background

The Slavists are divided on the material basis. Lidija Janovskaya suspects that Mikhail Bulgakov had the material from two stays that took him to the Arkhangelskoye manor in the summer of 1922 and 1923. On the other hand, I. Ovtschinnikow thinks that the author invented the story at the suggestion of Valentin Katajew , who was then working for the satirical magazine Die Pfeife .

According to the literary scholar Boris Sokolow , the model for the Tugai-Beg Sienkiewicz ' fictional character Azja , the son of Tuhaj Bejs , could be. On the other hand, there is the view of the literary scholar Viktor Losew: Bulgakov took Prince Golitsyn from Ilya Vasilevski's White Memoirs as a model for Tugai-Beg in 1923 .

On the subject of fire, Sokolov writes: In 1916/1917 Bulgakov worked as a doctor in the Smolensk Governorate . The Muravischnikowo manor is said to have burned down there during the February Revolution . The cause of the fire was not determined.

German-language editions

Output used:

  • The fire of chans. In: Ralf Schröder (Hrsg.): Michail Bulgakow: Gesammelte Werke. Volume 7.1: I killed. Stories and feature sections. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . Volk & Welt, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-353-00946-9 , pp. 30-52.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Красный журнал для всех Red Journal for Everyone , entry in the FEB
  2. ↑ Russian Janovskaya, Lidija Markovna
  3. ↑ Russian Archangelskoje (manor)
  4. ↑ Russian Овчинников, Иван Афанасьевич (1939-2016)
  5. ↑ Russian. The pipe
  6. ↑ Russian Wassilewski, Ilja Markowitsch
  7. ↑ Russian Golitsyn, Nikolai Dmitrijewitsch
  8. ↑ Russian Муравишниково