The fat one and the thin one

Anton Chekhov

The fat and the thin ( Russian Толстый и тонкий , Tolsty i tonki) is a satirical short story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , written in 1883 and published on October 1 of the same year in the St. Petersburg joke paper Oskolki . The short story is counted among the humorous early work of the author. In 1886, Chekhov transformed it into a miniature with few resources, in which the construction principle of his prose is just as clear as the genesis of meaning.

Wladimir Czumikow's translation into German was published by Diederichs in Leipzig in 1901 . During Anton Chekhov's lifetime, the text was translated into Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Finnish and Czech.

action

By chance, fat Mischa and thin Porfiri meet at the Nikolai railway station. The thin man travels with his gaunt wife and tall son. The two old school friends greet each other exuberantly and informally. The conversation revolves around both civil servant careers. The thin one receives a low salary as a college assessor and office manager. He keeps himself afloat with after work; makes cigar cases and sells the piece for one ruble. His wife gives music lessons.

The fat man has become a privy councilor and has one more medal than the thin one. The thin man turns pale, shrinks and suddenly addresses his school friend with “Your Excellency”. The fat man rejects “this respect”. The thin man continues to greet his old friend and continues to address his excellence . So much submission makes the privy councilor sick. He shakes hands with the thin man in parting and runs away.

Interpretation and style

The thin person embodies an ascetic Westerner who is shaped by Protestantism and capitalism , the fat person is a personification of Russia. Linguistically, a 'thick' and a 'thin' world is brought out through the use of concatenation of sounds and metonymies (for example, after the initial “ha-ha”, the thin person only utters a “hi-hi”, but the fat person a “ho” -ho-ho «). As "Tonkij" the thin is anagrammatically included in "Kartonki", while the thick, "Tolstyj" is represented aloud in to and l chains. The thin wants to compensate for its difference to the thick with cardboard boxes and suitcases . His inflatedness is suggested by the empty cigar boxes he produces, from the air in a grotesque realization of the metaphor can only escape pinched as "hi-hi" as soon as he begins to crawl in front of the fat one.

The fat man is portrayed as the more likeable because for him the commonality counts, while the thin man creates distance in his own way. In Russian literature there is traditionally a tendency to show solidarity with the ›petty official‹, but Chekhov wanted to show how the tsarist administration psychologically deformed these lower-ranking officials (the thin ones) because they internalized the system, says Matthias Freise in his entry for Kindlers Literatur Lexikon on this short story.

reception

Matthias Freise regards the version from 1886 as masterful. It was "transformed into a masterful miniature with a few but decisive changes, which exemplarily demonstrates the construction principle and the genesis of his prose."

Film adaptations

1955, Soviet Union , TV movie. Yuri Wassiljewitsch Jakowlew played the thin one.
1961, short film by Roman Polański
1977, Soviet Union, Mosfilm : Strange People! (Russian) - episode film by Michail Schweitzer with Viktor Sergachev as the fat one and Vyacheslav Newinny as the thin one.

Chekhov commemoration

2011, in Taganrog in front of the Chekhov Museum, there is a sculpture The Fat and the Thin by Dawid Begalov.

German-language editions

Anton Čechov: Kashtanka and other children's stories. Selected and translated by Peter Urban (ed.). With drawings by Tatjana Hauptmann . 156 pages. Diogenes, Zurich 2004. ISBN 978-3-257-01107-4 (also contains: Children . Strange case. The pale . Grischa. The refugee . Sorrow . Boys. Something about horses. Oysters. The bad boy. The cook is getting married. Wanjka . The fat and the thin)

Used edition

The fat and the thin . German by Ada Knipper and Gerhard Dick. Pp. 5-9, in: Anton Chekhov: Anna am Neck . Narratives . Selected and given a comment by Horst Roatsch. 212 pages. Eulenspiegel Verlag, Berlin 1978 (2nd ed. 1981), without ISBN (still contains: The death of the civil servant . From the rain to the eaves. Reading. Sergeant Prishibeev. A joke. Conversation between a drunk and a sober devil. The speaker. Intrigues The Order of Lions and the Sun. The Avenger. On the estate . The gooseberries . Hearts ).

literature

Wolf Schmid (Ed.): P. 43 in: Ornamental storytelling in Russian modernism: Čechov - Babel ' - Zamjatin . 200 pages. In: Slavic literatures. Texts and treatises, Vol. 2. Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1992. ISBN 3-631-44242-4