The namesake

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The namesake ( Russian Однофамилец / Odnofamiljez ) is a short story by the Russian writer Daniil Granin , which was published in 1975 by the Sovetsky Pisatel publishing house in Moscow. In 1977 Volk und Welt published the German translation of Lieselotte Remané in Berlin .

The former mathematician and current assembly engineer Pawel Vitalievich Kuzmin, known as Pawlik, no longer wants to know anything about the theory and remains in the practical application of his science. The story was filmed in 1978 in the Soviet Union with Georgi Schschonow as Kuzmin .

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Coincidence leads Kuzmin, the experienced electrical engineer from the assembly trust, to an international mathematicians' congress in Leningrad . The encounter there with the well-respected, even beloved old professor Alexej Vladimytsch Laptev, the patron of the congress, turns into an excursion into Kuzmin's childhood days. At that time, as a talented young mathematician, Kuzmin, Professor Lazarev's student, had presented a work on the theory of optimal controls , which was then disproved by Professor Laptev as mathematically unprovable, disqualified as inapplicable and even rejected as nonsense, illogical nonsense . After Laptev had "turned the newbie Kuzmin through the mangle", the student's career was over. As a result, Kuzmin's bride Nadja had persuaded the failed mathematician to make his fortune in the disdainful practice as an engineer. The young family had spent years in the Arkhangelsk region on the Arctic Circle .

At the congress, Kusmin listens to a lecture by a young mathematician in which the Kusmin equation is raised to the sky and the Kusmin method is spoken of. Kuzmin wonders who the namesake could have been. A Russian congress participant said that this gifted mathematician had long since succumbed to leukemia .

But it turns out that namesake and engineer Kuzmin have the same initials; even more, are one and the same person. With the demonization of the Kuzmin equation, Professor Laptev had deeply hit his colleague and bitter enemy Professor Lazarev. Lazarev had not survived the thrust of the senior Laptev - carried out "in front of everyone". Mathematician Alja Lasarewa suits Kuzmin's presence. The lecturer Alja, a plump, beautiful blonde who is married for the second time, wants to rehabilitate Prof. Lazarev, her beloved father, and use Kuzmin's appearance at the congress as the developer of the equation of the same name to deal the hated Laptev the professional deathblow. Kuzmin does not allow himself to be harnessed to the cart of his still provocatively seductive childhood sweetheart Alja - the only daughter of Lasarev - prefers to continue handling his commutators and goes home - back to his aged, not so pretty, but beloved wife Nadja. He had previously lied to Alja: Alja's father had forgiven the fanatic Laptev. The claim only applies to Kuzmin himself.

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The reader does not find out what Lazarev did wrong; so why he was suspended from Laptev. Although Kuzmin's story is being told, the narrator allows himself the opportunity to present internal monologues by selected other protagonists. For example, Kuzmin's counterpart Laptev philosophizes about the “harmfulness” of the “slanderer” Lazarev, but reveals neither such damage nor any slander. Old Laptev secretly admits that he underestimated Kuzmin's work at the time. The cunning fox naturally keeps such thoughts to himself.

Daniil Granin doesn't skimp on big names: Euler , Gauß , Riemann , Bertrand Russell , Hadamard , Bourbaki , Chebyshev and his pupil Markov as well as Lyapunov and his pupil Steklow . However, these famous people are only mentioned. The repeated parable of praise for practice fits in with the grand gesture : Diocletian renounces his imperial dignity in old age and grows vegetables in his Dalmatian homeland .

In the novella published in Brezhnev's time, Soviet society is criticized - for example, Daniil Granin writes about Kuzmin's vital electrical installation work in the Arctic Circle: “In the north, the cities were still on hunger rations, without electrical energy.” Meandering and undeclared work in Kusmin's sphere of material production are denounced.

Alja is married to the "Pipe Wassja" - actually to Mr. Korolkow, a doctor of mathematical sciences. The confrontation between two “careers”, that of the untalented Korolkov and that of the talented Kuzmin, turns into a caricature in academic circles. The urbane apparatchik Korolkow - constantly driven by Alja - prevails over time and Laptev deliberately and maliciously misjudges Kuzmin's talent.

German-language editions

  • Daniil Granin: The namesake. Novella. People and world. Spektrum 106 series, Berlin 1977, 200 pages (used edition)

Web links

annotation

  1. ↑ As a result, the front cover of the edition used shows the black and white photo of half a head of red cabbage on a pillar.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Сове́тский писа́тель
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 4
  3. ↑ Russian Однофамилец (фильм)
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 166, 10th line v. u.
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 26, 8th line v. u.
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 110, 14th line v. u.