The logging

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Lev Tolstoy in 1856

The logging , also forest battle ( Russian Рубка леса , Rubka lessa ), is a story by Lev Tolstoy , the writing of which began in 1853 and was completed on June 15, 1855. In 1855 the text appeared in issue 9 of Nikolai Nekrasov's Petersburg Sovremennik . Nekrasov wrote to the author on September 2, 1855 that although the subject reminded him of Turgenev , everything in terms of content was interesting, new, honest, closely observed and therefore absolutely worth communicating. Eugen Diederichs brought Raphael Löwenfeld's translation onto the German-language book market in Leipzig in 1901 . This short story fits - because it deals with the war - also in the Sevastopol cycle .

overview

In the Caucasus War , the year 1852 is over: The narrator, that is the Russian Junker Nikolai Petrovich, leads a platoon of artillerymen in the Great Chechenya in mid-February 1853 on behalf of an officer . The move out to cut firewood in the vicinity of the enemy was ordered. The narrator's battery is supposed to protect the work of the logging Russian soldiers from enemy fire. The opponents are Tatars who ride past quite a distance and at whom one of the Russian gun crews fired a grenade out of sheer arrogance . The shot misses. When the enemy rifle fire from the neighboring bushes grows stronger, the passing commanding general orders the retreat. Shortly afterwards, the artilleryman Velenchuk was hit by a Tatar bullet. Velenchuk, a native of Little Russian, who has already served for sixteen years and whom the narrator got to know as extraordinarily honest, loyal, good-natured and extremely eager, dies from being shot in the stomach. Shortly before the soldier dies, he has the narrator called to the first aid station and gives him a small sum of money. The supervisor would like to hand it over to a customer to whom the dying person still owes the money. Welentschuk had taught tailoring years ago and even with skill among the superiors of the Division set up a customer base.

The text is only marginally about the eponymous logging in the Caucasus. Mainly, the various characters among the crews and also among the officers of the Russian Army are shown to the reader. There is a young, recently called up recruit. He takes the matchstick under his arm and follows the wagon on which the wounded Velenchuk is transported to the first aid station. The narrator first has to have the boy brought back and make it clear to him that the gun will be held out until the next order. There are soldiers on the narrator's train who have been with us longer than Welenchuk. Uncle Zhdanov has already served twenty-five years of service. The veteran rejects home leave. Because when he got home, his two brothers in the Russian lowlands would have another eater at the table. Zhdanov lovingly mothers his comrades on the train. It was the same Shdanov who had helped the self-taught tailor Velenchuk when he lost the fabric for a new coat. In general, reports dominate in the text about the modest, simple nature of the simple Russian soldier in the high mountain war: When the detonator of a real bomb caught fire, the fireworker in his laboratory ordered two soldiers to throw the bomb straight into the abyss next door. But because the Colonel was sleeping peacefully in his tent at the edge of the abyss - precisely at the nearest possible dropping point - the two bomb carriers hurried a little further with their burning load, always along the abyss until they were both torn to pieces.

According to the narrator, the officers are of a completely different caliber. The wealthy, French-speaking guardsman, Company Commander Bolchow, admitted to his own admission - in private with the narrator - he could not bear any danger; is just cowardly. The captain has already been “fighting” in the Caucasus for two years and only dares to go home to Russia as a major , decorated with orders of Anne and Vladimir . However, the captain is passed over on every promotion and award round.

German-language editions

  • The logging. German by Gisela Drohla . Pp. 87–135 in: Gisela Drohla (Ed.): Leo N. Tolstoj. All the stories. First volume. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1961 (2nd edition of the edition in eight volumes 1982)
  • The logging. Tale of a Junker. From the Russian. Translation by Hermann Asemissen . P. 56–99 in: Lew Nikolajewitsch Tolstoi. Early narratives. 459 pages, Verlag Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig 1986 ( RUB 735, 3rd edition, licensor: Rütten and Loening, Berlin, edition used)

Web links

annotation

  1. ↑ More precisely: in one of the years 1853 or (less likely) 1854 or 1855.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian letter of September 2, 1855: Nekrasov to Tolstoy at litmir.me, part 2, p. 97, works from 1852–1856 in the section "Рубка леса"
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 94 below
  3. ↑ Russian Бурнашева Н.В.