The old house (Chekhov)

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Anton Chekhov

The old house ( Russian Старый дом , Stary dom) is a short story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared on October 29, 1887 in the Peterburgskaja Gazeta .

Frame narration

A St. Petersburg homeowner wants to tear down the tenement , with which he has made forty years of money, and have a new house built on the spot. Before that, he leads the contractor through the empty rooms and chats about two tenants. They crossed the room of a beggar musician who is said to have saved as much as twenty thousand rubles within ten years. The story of tenant Putochin, a clerk at a notary, is told in more detail in apartment No. 23.

Internal narration

Putochin could only support his mother, wife and four children by doing additional paperwork for other clients in his free time. This clerk even housed a subtenant in his apartment - the locksmith Yegorych. The latter did not particularly appreciate locksmith work. He preferred to repair musical instruments. Putochin's group of children considered the poor living environment to be an ideal world. After Putochin's wife died, the disaster took its course: One week after the death, Putochin lost his job at the notary. The unemployed numb his grief with alcohol, first pays half the rent and then no longer at all. The clerk immediately sends his mother to "pay the rent". The older woman earns a little money to support the family; scrubs the hallway of strangers, works as a laundress, appears as a courtship and begs .

Putochin drinks the coat of his eldest son Vasya. Vassja is now going to the city school, wrapped in grandmother's scarf. In front of the school gate he has to hide the scarf from his classmates. Putochin, who has secretly followed his son, sobs at the incident and asks the homeowner for work at home.

Putochin then picks up his son from school and promises him a nice fur coat and offers him the prospect of going to high school. Vassja is supposed to rise to the nobility once. The father seriously wants to give up drinking.

The following evening Putochin and Yegorych drink grandmother's scarf. Putochin remains missing after this pub crawl. The grandmother also surrenders to the drink and finally comes to the hospital. Vasja's siblings are taken in by relatives. The boy makes ends meet as a laborer.

German-language editions

  • The old house. Story of a house owner , pp. 546–552 in Gerhard Dick (ed.) And Wolf Düwel (ed.): Anton Chekhov: Das Swedish matchstick . Short stories and early narratives. German by Georg Schwarz. 668 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1965 (1st edition)

Used edition

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian reference to first publication