The foster child
The foster child ( Russian Приемыш , Prijemysch) is a story of the Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko was born in the mid 1890 and in the same year in the Russkiye Vedomosti as the third post in the row over travel to the Vetluga and the Kerzhenets River appeared.
content
From Nizhny Novgorod , the narrator hikes to the left of the Volga on lonely forest paths and in the evening looks for a place to sleep in a village next to red-brown swamps. Marjuschka, around eight years old, helps the tired wanderer; calls her foster father, the fisherman Stepan. The narrator can stay with Marjuschka's foster mother, the friendly 42-year-old Darja - that is Stepan's wife, and learns from her the story of Marjuschka's adoption:
The death of their only son Mischenka was twenty years ago. The couple has not had children since then. Five years after Mischenka's death, Darja the little boy appeared in a dream and spoke to her. The mother understood the words of her dead child as: 'You are supposed to adopt a child.' Stepan really wanted a boy again. But a very young mother from the neighboring village, who had been cast out of her own family with her illegitimate child named Marjuschka, had with a heavy heart entrusted her with the care of her little daughter. Darja had laboriously nursed Marjuschka, who was ailing at first. Stepan had coped with his grief in a different way. He had leased a fish pond in the village.
Lately, despite fishing around the clock, hardly any fish had been caught in the net. The next morning, just before the narrator walks on, the miracle happens. Stepan catches tench and crucian carp . Darja and Marjuschka carry the catch home so that the father can finally sleep in.
German-language editions
Used edition
- The foster child. German by Arthur Luther . Pp. 177–188 in Vladimir Korolenko: Makar's Dream and Other Tales. With an afterword by Herbert Krempien . 275 pages. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1980 (1st edition)
Web links
annotation
- ↑ The author can be accepted as the narrator, as Korolenko lived in Nizhny Novgorod in 1890.