The poet and the muse
The poet and the muse ( Russian Поэт и муза / Poet i muza ) is a short story by the Russian writer Tatjana Tolstaja , which appeared in 1986 in issue 12 of the Soviet literary magazine Nowy Mir .
If someone is a real artist, then he does not allow his wife to educate himself according to society.
content
With the 35-year-old doctor Nina, whom Tatjana Tolstaja presents to the reader as a beautiful and, above all, completely normal woman, everything is fine - except for one small thing. The divorcee needs a man. My colleague Arkady Borisych is not the right person. This dermatologist, who has two wives besides Nina, is a scared man. He fears contagious diseases. Nina is lucky. During the next flu epidemic, she falls in love with the depressed and then recovering Grischa, a poet and caretaker with blue eyes and a thin beard.
Grischa turns out to be a “soft person” who has “nothing but stupidities on his mind”. His first volume of poetry is never published. The strict editor, Comrade Makuschkin, is against this “luscious creative cake”, even after Nina has worked hard for the poet. The stubborn Grischa does not cut the almost inedible work of art into more wholesome bites. Nina steers the poet into the marriage port and says: “Don't you dare to write something like that!” After two years of marriage, the now sheltered Grischa, whose former dissolute life in the midst of dubious existences was directed in a calm and orderly way by his wife Nina, sees the end of his life sew. Before he dies, he has a brilliant idea. He bequeathed his skeleton to the Academy of Sciences for a fee of sixty rubles and twenty-five kopecks. At first Nina is appalled by this, but finally calms down again when Grischa is among well-behaved, talkative people at the academy after his death - at least during the day. In the end, the double widow is even in a happy mood, because she can do whatever she likes at home.
shape
Although the title suggests an equal grisha, the narrator's comment swings more in Nina's direction: The members of the lousy, rotten society from which the doctor “frees” the poet, come off badly. A painter whom Grischa “adores tenderly” with “shining eyes” is “a goofy smear”. Before marrying Nina, Grischa is ready to “accommodate any unhygienic rascal”.
In any case, the reader is amused. Grisha's verses are "complex ... how expensive pre-ordered pies ... triumphant meringue towers, ... filled with fat Sprachkrem ...".
German-language editions
- Tatjana Tolstaja: The poet and the muse , p. 99–114 in: Rendezvous with a bird. Stories. From the Russian by Ilse Tschörtner (still contains Liebe Schura. Peters. Sleep well, my little son . The river Okkerwil. Sonja. "Sitting on the golden podium in the courtyard ...". The fakir. Fire and dust ). Volk und Welt, Berlin 1989 (Spektrum series, vol. 253). 172 pages, ISBN 3-353-00504-8
Web links
in Russian language
- The text
- Bibliographical entry at fantlab.ru