The youth
Der Jüngling (also: Ein green boy , Junge Nachwuchs , Werdejahre , Ein Werdender ; Russian : Подросток, Podrostok ) is a novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky published in Russia in 1875 . In addition to Guilt and Atonement , The Idiot , The Demons and The Karamazov Brothers, the work is one of the five “great” novels that are at the center of Dostoyevsky's literary work. Of these five, however, it is the least read.
content
characters
As in other novels (The Karamazov Brothers, The Demons), Dostoyevsky also addresses the father-son conflict and the question of the true and the false fathers in "The Young Man".
Arkadij Makarowitsch Dolgurukij:
The protagonist, 19 at the time of the narration, is the illegitimate son of the noble landlord Andrei Verilov with the maid Sofia. For reasons of supply, she is married to the much older, former serf Makar Dolgorukij, who gives his wife away to her lover and goes on a pilgrimage. As a child and teenager, Arkadij lived separately from his parents in Moscow pensions and attended a grammar school. The blemish he felt of his “low” birth and thus his social outsider role and his family isolation lead to humiliations by his classmates and teachers, some of which he himself provoked by revealing his situation. Although he is intelligent and could study at the university, he rejects this option because he is pursuing an "idea": Since he is disturbed by dealing with other people due to his development and longing for loneliness, he believes that he can only achieve this through power and wealth can and is convinced that he can become “rich like Rothschild ” if he tries his will hard enough and saves kopeck for kopeck. For him, money is only a means to an end: for him, it is primarily about autonomy and freedom and not about the commercial aspect or the use of money for a high standard of living. He is actually not interested in wealth and power as such. After achieving the goal, he would give away his fortune:
“I don't need the money, or should we say more correctly, I don't need the money, and I don't even need the power; I only need what is acquired through power and what cannot be acquired in any way without power; and that is the lonely and calm consciousness of power. This is the most exhaustive term for what is called 'freedom' and which the whole world torments about. ,Freedom!' Finally I wrote it out, this big word ... "
After returning to his family in Petersburg, he finds himself in a private and social field of tension and his ideas about life change through a learning and maturing process that he depicts in his notes.
Andrei Petrovich Versilov:
Arkadij's and Lisa's father is an impoverished nobleman who falls in love with Sofia as a 25-year-old widower. He has two children from his marriage (Anna, Andrei). He has spent half his life in another European country, where he appropriated the “Geneva ideas”. H. the thoughts of Voltaire and the Enlightenment , which put human reason in the place of God. These ideas made Wersilow a lonely person.
For Arkadij Verilov has so far been a mysterious, interesting personality whom he has always idealized. In his notes he describes the discovery of the ambivalent character of his father: in addition to the sensible one, he has an uncontrolled, passion-obsessed "doppelganger", which is evident in his love-hate relationship with Katerina Akhmakov and his relationship with Sofia, which fluctuates between separation and return. On the one hand he is loving and generous to his illegal family, on the other hand he keeps forgetting them, goes his own way and pursues his interests.
In the search for a father figure, Arkadij encounters a whole spectrum of different personalities who stand in character and ideologically in contrast to Verilov:
Nikolai Semyonovich:
The high school student lived with him, his fatherly friend, and his wife Marja when he was in Moscow. He gives him his notes to read and asks for his opinion, which the latter gives him in the excerpts of the letters printed in the last section of the novel, in a way the closing words. In Arkadij's "accidental" family he does not see an isolated case, but a type of his time of the dissolving order and false progress through "stupid and ridiculous utopias".
Prince Nikolai Sokolsky:
Arkadij initially worked for him as a private secretary, but actually as a conversation partner and young friend. He represents the generous aristocratic patronage by z. B. provides young girls with dowries so that they can marry appropriately. At times, the generosity leads him into wasteful borderline situations, which lead to his daughter considering having him declared underage.
Makar Dolgorukiy:
After a long pilgrimage, Sofia's husband returns to her family terminally ill and impresses Arkadij with his orthodox Christianity of charity, forgiveness and needlessness, which is free from the material external demands and norms of society. He influenced Arkadij to revise his idea of achieving autonomy and freedom through wealth.
The increasingly differentiated father-son relationship over the course of the novel is influenced by the spectrum of women involved, which is typical of Dostoyevsky's novels:
Sofia Dolgorukiy and her daughter Lisa:
Sofia is a representative of the service staff class, whose ancestors were serfs. She and, in repetition of their fate, Lisa have marriage-like relationships with nobles and are not recognized as equals in their circles. As a Dostoevsky type of woman, on the other hand, they are among the most morally standing people, because they embody the form of agape as self-sacrificing, all-understanding and forgiving lovers . Sofia endures all humiliations and is even ready to agree to a marriage between Verilov and Katerina or her sick stepdaughter Lydia. In a similar way, even after his arrest, Lisa stands by her lover, the young Prince Serjosha Sokolsky, who is indicted for his gambling addiction and accused of fraud, and takes care of his child from the affair with Lydia Akhmakova.
Katerina:
The daughter of the old Prince Sokolsky and the young widow of General Akhmakov represents the category of eros as an elegant society lady. She enjoys the forms of the noble life in keeping with her rank and for a long time she was viewed by Arkadij, under the influence of his father, without knowing his motives, on the one hand as insubstantial, interested in the father's money, on the other hand, loved because of her noble appearance. She rejects the unbridled passionate love of Wersilow in a rational way as destructive and life-threatening for both. She also recognizes the financial interests behind Baron Bjoring's advertising and regrets her letter to her friend Andronikow, in which she asked for advice on a possible incapacitation of her then mentally confused father.
Anna:
Versilov's legitimate daughter remains a mystery to Arkady for a long time. He sees her, like Katerina, as predominantly materially oriented and suspects, albeit wrongly, that she, together with her brother Andrei and the deceiver Lambert, is aiming for a care marriage with the old prince in a purposeful and intriguing way. The background to their attempts to obtain the document from Arkadij, however, is the fear that Sokolskij will be isolated and incapacitated by his daughter, who was influenced by Baron Bjoring, in a nursing home.
action
The main story told by Arkadij in his notes, which lasted about three months, begins with the return of the 19-year-old high school student, who has previously been living in Moscow, to his family, who is permanently financially supported by her benefactor and distant relative Tatiana Prutkova, in Sankt Petersburg. Versilov wants to get to know his son, Arkadij meets him with a mixture of rejection and admiration.
The youth is not only looking for his father, whom he remembers through a unique encounter in his childhood as a radiant fairy tale figure who could redeem him, but also for his life goal. During this time of disorientation he came into contact with various social and ideological groups: a circle of supporters of the revolution (Wassin, Dergachev, Krafft), cocky spendthrifts and gamblers (Prince Serjosha), noble benefactors (Prince Sokolsky, Tatiana Prutkowa) Landlords (Pyotr Ippolitowitsch) and impoverished widows (Darja) and their children (Olga), Lambert's gang. V. a. Arkadij's mixed family is a reflection of the various social and personal areas of conflict and social structures.
Arkadij is interested in the reason-oriented, enlightened ideas of the father, which are in contrast to his lavish lifestyle and the neglect of his family. He is currently litigating an inheritance against distant relatives of his former friend Prince Sokolskij, with whose daughter Katerina he has a love-hate relationship. Arkadij is drawn into both conflicts by two letters handed over to him. He hands over the one document that supports the claims of the opponents of Verilov's trial to the father, whereupon the latter, despite his financial hardships, renounces the money that has meanwhile been awarded to him by the court and thereby achieves the admiration of the idealistic son. On the other hand, he withholds the other letter, which burdens Katerina with having her old and wasteful father declared to be insane, and is unsure whether he should use it as a weapon because of the personal relationships that he cannot understand. Both Versilov and his legal daughter Anna are interested in this letter because if Nicolai Sokolsky found out about his daughter's thoughts, he could disinherit her in his disappointment and anger. In possession of the letter Anna can threaten Katerina not to oppose her marriage to the old prince, and the jealous Wersilow would be able to prevent Katerina from marrying Baron Bjoring.
The decision to whom to hand over the document is now entirely up to Arkadij. He feels connected to Anna because she is his half-sister, but he falls in love with Katerina. This punctual freedom and power, which he has so unexpectedly come to enjoy, puts him in ecstasy: This is exactly the state he wanted to achieve with his "idea" (which is thus obsolete for him). In the society in which he now lives, however, money turns out to be a danger that corrupts people. Arkadij is infected by it in his development phase, borrows money (Serjosha), lives beyond his means (clothes, rental coach), gets caught up in crooks (Stebeljkow, Lambert) and indulges in gambling.
In the end Arkadij loses the document to the thief Lambert, who first offers it to Anna and then Katerina for sale. In a turbulent finale, however, the intrigue is exposed and the general catastrophe is stopped: Lambert and his helpers have to flee, Arkadij prevents the insane Versilov from killing Katerina, Katerina is injured during his suicide attempt and is killed by his wife Sonja and his daughter Lisa, who lost both her boyfriend Serjosha and their child. After the prince's death, Anna and Katerina show themselves to be noble people in generosity and renunciation. Arkadij finds himself with the help of his notes, begins studying at the university and is more likely to orientate himself on the ideas of his namesake Makar Dolgoruky than on those of his biological father, Verilov.
Subplots
In the complex novel structure, motifs connect, e.g. B. of madness, the challenge of a duel, suicide out of honor and despair, main and subplots. Examples of this are people Arkadij encounters in the course of the plot: the suicidal Kraft, who shoots himself to prove his obsessive idea that the Russian is a secondary being, or the young Olja (Olaa, stranded with her mother Darya in Petersburg) ), who desperately seeks to finance her life through tutoring and hangs herself out of a sense of honor after the compassionate Wersilow gave her money, which she, in a misunderstanding, takes for an advance on love services.
Narrative situation
The protagonist Arkadij tells in the first person the story of his development from a naive youth to a new person purified by his mistakes and misjudgments of the social structures and thus gives self-critical account. This process from a self-overestimating, erratic and in its immature conceptions (its "idea" and its realization) and judgments of the people (e.g. Versilovs, Serjoshas, Lamberts and his cronies) contradicting adolescents to a solid personality with one The ethical and self-responsible goal in life (studies, religion) is also reflected in the different language levels of the records. But that is only one aspect of his attempts to properly grasp the situation. The other side is his struggle with abundance of material. Again and again he interrupts the plot to tell the reader about biographies, network of relationships and connections that were not known to him at the time (e.g. Lisa's relationship with Serjosha and her pregnancy, Versilov's ambivalent passion for Katharina Akhmakov and his various marriage plans) to inform. Like Prince Myshkin, the main character in the novel “ The Idiot ”, Arkadij gets entangled in the main story in Petersburg, which lasts about three months, in an unmanageable labyrinthine world with processes that are difficult to understand and fateful developments that cannot be influenced, but after analyzing the situation he finds a future aspect, the Nikolai, his pensioner from high school in Moscow, encouraged him to realize it in his letter printed in the final section of the novel.
interpretation
The central theme of the novel is a disturbed communication situation, which is to be understood as the cause, symptom and consequence of a society sliding into chaos. It finds its expression in the silence of the characters (between Versilov and Sonja, for example) as well as in Arkady's aimless talkativeness. Contemporary society is in a state of fundamental disorder and decay, and the novel shows the young generation being drawn into the vortex of chaos. All social ties dissolve, most obviously the family institution : Arkadij has a biological and a legal father, but no social father; Father (Wersilow) and son (Arkadij) are courting the same woman (Katharina); Versilov's daughter wants to marry Katharina's father and thereby potentially becomes her own father's mother-in-law. All characters in the plot are isolated.
Like all five great novels, a high degree of intertextuality is also characteristic of the youth . The confessional character that the story has in parts relates, for example, to Rousseau's Confessions .
Creation and publication
Dostoyevsky wrote the novel in Saint Petersburg following The Demons and the short story Bobok . He had been preparing it since February 1874 and, in order to be able to concentrate fully on this work, resigned the editor of the newspaper Graschdanin in April . The youth appeared in sequels, i. H. as a feature novel , from January 1875 in the liberal monthly magazine Otetschestwennye Sapiski . Dostoyevsky completed the work at the end of 1875 and at the beginning of 1876 turned back to his “ diary ”.
The first translation of the novel into German was done by W. Stein ( Junge Nachwuchs , 1886).
expenditure
- Young offspring . Wilhelm Friedrich, Leipzig 1886 (3 volumes. Translated by W. Stein).
- The youth . Piper, Munich 1922 (translated by EK Rahsin ).
- A growing one . Martin Maschler, Berlin, p. 423 (no year around 1925, translated by C. Hartz).
- The youth . 2nd Edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-538-05049-X (first edition: 1979, translated by Marion Gras-Racić).
- The youth . 1st edition. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-458-33590-0 (translated by Hermann Röhl ).
- A green boy . Amman Verlag, Zurich 2006 (translated by Swetlana Geier ).
filming
- Podrostok (TV series, USSR 1983), directed by Ewgeni Iwanowitsch Taschkow, with Andrei Ewgenjewitsch Tashkow in the leading role
literature
- Horst-Jürgen Gerigk : Attempt on Dostoevskij's »youth« . Heidelberg 1964 (doctoral thesis).
- Rudolf Neuhäuser: Afterword . In: Fyodor M. Dostojewski: The young man . 2nd Edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-538-05049-X , p. 747-772 .
Web links
- Fyodor M. Dostojewski: Der Jüngling Detailed table of contents
Individual evidence
- ↑ Paul Ingendaay: Tormented Heart on a Large Scale . The Dostoevsky feeling: “A green boy” in Swetlana Geier's new translation, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 8, 2006.
- ^ Dtv edition, 1981
- ↑ Neuhäuser, p. 747 f.
- ↑ Neuhäuser, p. 748.
- ↑ Neuhäuser, pp. 748–750.
- ^ Neuhäuser, p. 753.
- ^ Fyodor M. Dostojewski: The youth. Retrieved January 15, 2014 .
- ^ Kenneth A. Lantz: The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia . Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut 2004, ISBN 0-313-30384-3 , pp. xxixf, 139 . ( limited online version in Google Book Search)
- ^ Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Raw Youth (= Starbooks Classics Collection ). S. 544 ( restricted online version in Google Book Search - USA - About the novel [Appendix]).