The Stepanchikovo estate and its inhabitants

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The Stepanchikovo its inhabitants ( Russian Село Степанчиково и его обитатели , Selo Stepanchikovo i JEWO Obitateli ) is a 1858 incurred short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky , the first time in November and December 1859 in the journal "The OZ" ( Otetschestwennye Zapiski appeared).

action

The main character of the novel is the 40-year-old, early widowed Colonel Yegor Rostanev. He lives on the Stepantschikowo estate he inherited with his two children and his mother, who is also widowed. Also on Rostanev's estate lives a certain Foma Opiskin, formerly an insignificant civil servant, later secretary to the late husband of Rostanev's mother, now a completely untalented writer, who, however, attaches great importance to his work and his own completely trivial personality in a narcissistic way. Rostanev's uneducated, stupid mother adores Foma, who is allowed to live as a boarder in Stepanchikowo and is respected there from all sides, even if he repeatedly attracts attention for his pseudo-intellectual know-it-all and despotism towards the servants. Rostanev's mother does not like her son, at whose expense she lives, because he got married at the time without getting her blessing. When Rostanev's secret love for the much younger governess Nastenka becomes more or less apparent, his mother, who allows herself to be influenced by old-fashioned moral views of Foma, wants to prevent the possible marriage of the two and insists that her son marry the aging millionaire heiress Tatiana Ivanovna instead . The characterless and good-natured Rostanev, for whom his mother's will seems to be sacred, insisted on writing his nephew Sergei, a student living in St. Petersburg , to come to Stepanchikovo and ask the pretty but penniless Nastenka for her hand. Sergei, who as the first-person narrator describes the plot from the perspective of an eyewitness, goes there soon afterwards. The obvious hypocrisy of Foma and the personality cult that ruled him disgust him, but he can initially do nothing against the supposed superiority of Rostanev's mother and Foma. When Foma spied on Rostanev and caught him in the garden at a secret rendezvous with Nastenka (which also made it clear to Sergei that Nastenka only loves Rostanev and that his letter was probably written only reluctantly), he exposed the two of them in front of all the residents on the following day . Rostanev throws him out of the house in a fit of rage, but has to give in to his mother, who begs him crying to bring Foma back. After doing this, Foma presents himself generously and gives Rostanev and Nastenka his blessing, which gives him even more respect from the residents of Stepanchikovo, which Rostanev pays him too. After Foma dies a few years later (the reader learns about this in the summary description of the final chapter) and Rostanew and Sergei inspect the manuscripts he had left behind, the nullity of Foma as a writer and artist finally becomes clear (“they [the manuscripts] all presented themselves as the wretched rubbish out ”).

background

After its completion, the short novel was published in the journal Otetschestvennyje Sapiski in 1859 and first printed as a book in 1860. At that time the book met with a cold response from the criticism, it was only after Dostoyevsky's death that the portrayal of the character of the hypocritical hypocrite Foma Opiskin became extremely popular. Occasionally, literary critics saw this figure as borrowing from the Molièreschen Tartuffe or the writer Nikolai Gogol . Some other characters in the book also seem very funny with their unconditional bow to Foma; The servant Widopljassow should be mentioned, for example, who repeatedly tried unsuccessfully as a poet (he himself titled his verses as Widopljassows Lamentations (Russian: Вопли Видоплясова ); this was the name given to the Ukrainian rock band Vopli Vidopliassova in 1987 ).

Adaptation

The Chekhov Art Theater in Moscow brought the story to the stage in a dramatic adaptation in 1917.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ivan Moskwin's biography at kino-teatr.ru (Russian), accessed on July 10, 2020