The coward (Garschin)

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Ilya Repin 1884: Vsevolod Garschin

The coward ( Russian Трус , Trus ) is a short story by the Russian writer Vsevolod Garschin , which appeared in the March issue of the Otetschestvennye Sapiski in Saint Petersburg in 1879 .

Emergence

Garschin describes Kusjma Fomitsch's illness in detail. Behind the latter is Garschin's fellow student Semen Kuzmitsch Kwitko, with whom he had studied for a few semesters at the St. Petersburg Mining Academy . Garschin had broken off his studies and volunteered for military service .

The publication of the first version of the text failed due to Russian censorship . Taking into account the benevolent hints of Saltykov-Shchedrin , the author was able to publish this second version.

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Petersburg diary entries

Anno 1877: The first-person narrator is mocked good-naturedly as a pacifist. While telling the story, he always has to think of the dead in the battle of Plevna and imagines how these are shoulder to shoulder for a length of around eight kilometers. The narrator belongs to the Petersburg Landsturm and believes its men will be spared from being drafted. His friend Kusjma is burnt down . The “poor half-dead” budding medic is cared for by his girlfriend Marja. The narrator takes part in the elaborate care of the friend around the clock. If he had previously smiled at the love between Kusjma and Marja as a strange relationship, he now has to admit that the friend's illness makes Marja appear in a brighter light. In any case, the girl wants to prove herself in the field as a nurse. Marja wants to tolerate the narrator's pacifism, but she dislikes shirking.

The narrator, impressed by the word of the future nurse, does not want to be a coward, pulls himself up, follows the next call as a volunteer; puts on the uniform and can be drilled in the barracks. Although he is accommodated in a privileged way and is allowed to sleep in a bed, he visits his compatriots, Ukrainians from Markovka, who are vegetating on bunks in a former ring . None of them understand why the Bulgarians should soon die in the fight against the Turks .

The narrator has not touched his academic thesis, which has remained a fragment, for weeks. Disappointed, he realizes that only his physique is needed. When the train is ready to leave for the front, no family member waves to him on the platform. He doesn't want that. Nevertheless, two dear people rush over. But they only bring the news of death. Kusjma survived.

In the Balkans

A soldier addresses the narrator as "gracious sir". Balls whistle across the snow-covered field. A grenade bursts. The soldier lifts his head and notices that the gentleman remains lying in the snow. One of the arms is outstretched and the neck is excessively twisted. The soldier cannot overlook the bullet in the forehead of the Lord.

German-language editions

Used edition

  • The coward . P. 72–99 in Vsevolod M. Garschin: The stories. Transferred and with afterword by Valerian Tornius . 464 pages. Dieterich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1956 (Dieterich Collection, Vol. 177)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The narrator's brooding pacifism emerges in several passages in the text. He finds it surprising, for example, why the Russian public is overly excited about the fatalities in the railway accident on the Tiligul dam (edition used, p. 72, 2nd Zvu, Russian disaster of Tiligul ) and about the dead in outpost skirmishes during hardly takes any notice of the thematic Balkan war.
  2. ↑ In Ukraine , at least twelve villages are called Markowka (Russian Марковка ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Семен Кузьмич Квитко
  2. ^ Russian Mining Academy Saint Petersburg
  3. ^ Russian. Der Feigling , 15. Zvu
  4. ↑ Russian note , 17th Zvu