The painting (Daniil Granin)

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The painting ( Russian Картина / Kartina ) is a novel by the Russian writer Daniil Granin , which appeared in 1980 in issues 1 and 2 of the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir in Moscow. In the following year, Volk und Welt published the German translation of Lieselotte Remané in book form in Berlin .

Sergej Lossew, a very respected, “independent nachalnik ”, a daredevil, mayor of the inconspicuous fictional north-west Russian district town of Lykow, sits at the lever of power. His life is work. Lossew is - probably in the first half of the 1970s - on the side of a handful of environmental activists . The summer lively bank zone of the Pljaswa near the historic old town of this manageable town is to be saved from building with a factory.

Daniil Granin writes that it is said that the long past war fortunately passed at the scene of the action, that is, in the old small town of Lykow on the banks of the Pljasva. The Pljaswa - flowing through the Novgorod region south of Lake Ilmen - is just as fictional.

title

Lossew grew up in Lykow - a poor people's area. In Moscow, the 44-year-old stumbled upon a painting exhibition and stopped in front of the work “Am Fluß” by the internationally known Alexej Gavroliwitsch Astachow. Lossew immediately recognizes the Lycov house of the timber merchant Kislych on Shmurkin Bay on the Pljasva. The amazed thinks, looking from a very specific point of view, he sees himself as a little boy, swimming in the water of the painted river. The déjà vu experience associates images from the pre-school age in the viewer and determines the main actions of the protagonist Lossew in the novel.

content

Lossew goes to the exhibition a second time and also visits the painter's widow in Kunzewo . At his request, Olga Serafimovna gave him the work of art, although the Moscow art historian and restorer Badin, who was currently in the apartment, offered up to 2000 rubles - unaffordable by Lossev's standards.

At home in Lykow, Lossew was caught up with the everyday worries of a district natshalnik. There is, for example, “the damned housing problem” or the long overdue pay increase for city librarian Lyubov Vadimovna. At the same time, the mayor takes care of a place where the work of art could hang in a representative way. Lossew wants to set up an art school and hands the painting, wrapped in paper, to the two teachers Tatiana Tutschkowa and Stanislaw Roginsky. The drawing teacher Tatjana actually wanted to become a painter.

When Kislych's house on the Shmurkin Bay of the river is about to give way to a calculating machine factory, Lossew suddenly wants to change his own resolution and build the factory downstream to the Patriarch's grove. Lossev's predecessor in office Yuri Polivanov, slowly but inexorably dying to himself, has gathered material for a local museum with his loyal followers. Above all, the young worker and musician Konstantin Dmitrijewitsch Anissimov, known as Kostik, collects. Even a miraculous icon, supposedly from Feofan Grek's workshop, is said to be among the pieces. Polivanov, the old warrior from the Great Patriotic War , persuades the incumbent Natschalnik that Kislych's house is the right place for the painting and the collection. Polivanov is attached to the old house, also because at the age of 18 - that was before the revolution - he was in love with the 16-year-old Lisa, Kislych's youngest daughter. Lisa - as Jelisaveta Avdejewna Kislych was called - had emigrated to her French grandmother in Paris after the revolution. Astachow, “a rivet in the class struggle ” and another lover of Lisa, still a beautiful man in 1936, wanted to give his painting “On the River” to his lover. Polivanov had prevented the transfer to the white émigré.

Lossev's superior, the regional nachalnik Uvarov, wants to make the subordinate his first deputy. Lossew seized the opportunity in the relevant discussion and tried, albeit in vain, to push through the relocation of the construction site for the new Lykow factory.

While Losev is visiting his daughter Natasha in Leningrad , nails are being made in Lykov. Kislych's house is to be blown up by the military - i.e. by a pioneer unit. Lossew - returned - can just about thwart the commando operation by virtue of the power of command. However, he falls out of favor with Uvarow. The area nachalnik was also in the Pravda article Preserving Beauty! , which Tatjana talks about the art historian Dr. Badin had launched in the newspaper on the subject of the destruction of Russian cultural assets, got off badly. In parallel to Tatyana's advance, monument conservator Polivanov had unsuccessfully sawed Uvarov's chair by writing a few letters to high-ranking Moscow addresses.

Quotes

  • The action runs on a royal level, so to speak. The powerful communists among themselves: "In the future, try to have pity on those you are opposing."
  • A drinker gives Lossew the golden rule: "The less you do, the less you have to do."
  • “He who saws gets wounded”.
  • Mayakovsky is quoted accordingly. The artist is a factory that produces happiness.

Adaptations

shape

The “main story” - presented in chapters 1 to 29 - is followed in the last chapter by a subplot in which Moscow art historians get lost for a short time in Lykow, this Russian crow's corner . In that chapter 30 it is briefly reported how it continues after the actual action. Years after the "main story" was over, Dr. Badin is the eponymous painting in Lykow. At that point, a lot has happened. Losev built the factory and left. Kostik has given up the behavior of a young man. Because, for example, before the Kislych house was to be blown up, Kostik had resisted the sawing of a willow at the house in the martyr's way. Now over the years he has become a prudent director of the new Lykow Historical Museum.

Back to the "main story". The reader soon suspects that a love affair is developing between Tatiana Tutschkowa and Lossew. That’s what happens. This culminates in the 19th chapter in the description of a night of love in a hotel bed. The act is carried out on the way home to Lykow during an unavoidable bus stop. Tatiana, who is almost 40 years old, has her second admirer, the teacher colleague and monument curator Roginski, turned away.

Daniil Granin uses the element of repetition as a bracket for the novel construct. Lossew's déjà vu experience returns in the painting viewer Dr. Badin - who appears exactly twice, at the beginning and at the end of the novel - is easily recognizable at the end of the novel in a modified version. In the same breath Daniil Granin denies the reader the happy ending. Lossew is not promoted by Uvarow - although he was appointed ("proposed") - nor do Tatiana Tutschkowa and Lossew "get". For this the author compensates the reader with the wonderful repetition mentioned above. In this context, the answer is what is, what is art capable of? One of the answers: If the viewer waits patiently in front of the work of art and he has a good day, then the work of art - here the painting “Am Fluß” - can speak to him.

The narrator stays close to Lossew. In places the unfocused reader could assume the mayor is the first-person narrator. Only once does the omniscient narrator allow himself an exception. Polivanov's death and various sensitivities of the almost dead are described almost as if they were "experienced".

Daniil Granin's language appears both relentless and poetic. He describes the painter Astachow, for example, as a "ponderous old fat man with bulging Basedowa eyes" and raves about the Pljaswa, which flows quietly around the town: "... the river basked glistening in the sun". The book is - how could it be otherwise with the chosen topic - interspersed with communist jargon: Mrs. Tschistjakowa is department head in the city party committee, battalion commissioner Polivanov fought heroically in the war. The mayor is actually called the chairman of the city executive committee. Accordingly, his superior Uvarow is called in the oblast - that is, in the district or in the area - chairman of the area executive committee. At the same time, there are lessons in recent history. Lossew has several role models. One of them had even earlier objected to an interjection from Stalin at a consultation with building workers. Speaking of teaching. The self-image of the newer Soviet Union is reflected in the narrator's comment. The days of a roaring Polivanov are over. Nowadays, Lossew has to convince Uvarov with calculations and figures.

With the Siezen and Duzen it goes haywire. For example, Tatiana sucks her lover after sexual intercourse.

The novel is full of stories. For example, there is that of Lisa's third admirer. This is quickly told: Lossew's father, the ship mechanic Stepan Justinowitsch, a disguised leisure philosopher who only returned home from the war with a small medal, had also secretly loved Lisa in his youth. The matching side story: His son, the protagonist Sergei Lossew, was married to Antonina. The woman had willfully horned him. She does not show remorse. The former couple have a daughter together. Antonina and 12-year-old Natasha live in Leningrad. Not a word is said about this in the first third of the novel. Only towards the end of Chapter 10 does the weighty fact come up for discussion.

German-language editions

  • Daniil Granin: The painting. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Lieselotte Remané . Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1981 (first edition), 467 pages. ISBN 850222354 (edition used)
  • Daniil Granin: The painting. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Lieselotte Remané. Edition for the Federal Republic of Germany, West Berlin, Austria and Switzerland. Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag , Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-7609-7000-1
  • Daniil Granin: The painting. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Lieselotte Remané. Diogenes, Zurich 1990, 466 pages. ISBN 3-257-21853-2 (Licensor: Volk und Welt)

Remarks

  1. ↑ Sergej Lossew had completed a correspondence course as a hydrotechnician , then worked in his swampy homeland with melioration and in Lykow as a pipelayer before his natshalnik time . He is mocked as a "half-engineer" (Edition used p. 99 below). For years Lossew had been deployed in northern Russia, but had finally returned to Lykov (Edition used, p. 170 below).
  2. ↑ The text of the novel, published in 1980, was not written down until years after the plot, more precisely: after Badin's visit to Lykow (see under Form ). But the year 1976 must also be considered as possible. Because Polivanov (see under content ) remarks that the painting is forty years old (edition used p. 112, 14th Zvu) and the 15th chapter of the novel contains a letter from 1936, the midsummer in which the painting was created (used Edition p. 258).
  3. ↑ The Tuleblja mentioned in the tenth of the thirty chapters (Russian Тулебля , see edition used, p. 153, 1. Zvu) flows - at least in the novel - into the Pljaswa. But Daniil Granin leads the reader astray. The real Tuleblja flows into the Ilmensee. The name of Grigori Spiridow (Russian: Спиридов, Григорий Андреевич ), who is allegedly buried in Lykow, does not help either. It could be that Lykow is not too far from Pskow , Isborsk , Ostashkow and Kalinin (edition used, p. 135, 13th Zvu and p. 283, 3rd Zvu). The neighboring country of Estonia is mentioned. The Ljublino , a little further away, is also discussed (edition used, p. 399 above).
  4. ↑ A head of the city during the Tsarist era, the nobleman Iwan Shmurin, had fruitful contacts with the horticulturist Pückler at the time (edition used, p. 75 middle).
  5. ↑ Lisa Kislych had written a letter to Astachow from Paris in September 1954. The year can be determined from the burial of Bunin mentioned in the letter (edition used, p. 408 and p. 411).
  6. ↑ The 3rd edition from 1987 has ISBN 3-353-00262-6 .

Web links

Editions in Russian

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Новый мир
  2. ↑ Russian нача́льник
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 353, 3rd Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 121, below
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 118 middle
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 103, 15. Zvo
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 162, 1. Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 177, 14th Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 316 middle
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 175 below to p. 182 above
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 20 below
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 462 above
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 67 below