The Sunstroke (Iwan Bunin)
The sunstroke ( Russian Солнечный удар , Solnetschny udar ) is a short story by the Russian Nobel Prize winner for literature Ivan Bunin , which was written in the Maritime Alps in 1925 and published in 1926 in the Paris Sovremennyje sapiski .
content
Midsummer in southern Russia : that little young woman with the strong, tanned body does not reveal her name. Coming from Anapa , she finally took a steamer up the Volga and drove it back to the city a few hours ago to meet her three-year-old daughter and her husband Samara . There in Samara the young lieutenant - the one with the "mustache bleached by the sun and the bluish white of the eyes" - whose insistence she gave in to it, got in. Without much persuasion, the military, who is a complete stranger to the travelers, succeeds in persuading them to take an evening break at the next stop in a small district town on the Volga. The couple's physical encounter in the stuffy hotel room begins, so to speak, with a violent clash between the two bodies and then continues into a night of love, the description of which Iwan Bunin ignores. The next morning the young woman - “fresh as a seventeen year old” - continues on the next steamer. The woman finds an explanation for the break in the journey. Most likely, both of them had sunstroke on deck the day before. The lieutenant wants to go with you. The young, cheerful and sensible lady prevails. The lieutenant must take the next ship at her behest. He brings her on board, kisses the northbound traveler on the mouth in front of everyone, and remains well-behaved for the day before his onward journey in that district town. Whatever he does on this one day - the deeply unhappy person does not want to get into the head that he is no longer allowed to see this beautiful stranger. Should the unexpected, oversized love be over forever and ever? He knows the name of their place of residence; but nothing more. The luck was too great after the sunstroke. In the evening on the deck of his steamer, on the onward journey upstream, he feels ten years older.
reception
- 1995 Borowsky quotes a Russian critic who exuberantly praised the text while emigrating to Paris, whether it was “filled with lights” or whether it described “love happiness and sorrow”. Borowsky also thinks that the blame for the violation of civil morality is not assigned to the adulterous couple, but to the southern sun. And while this offense was nothing more than a quickly forgotten affair for the woman, Iwan Bunin actually addresses the deep desolation of the lonely lieutenant.
German-language editions
- The sunstroke. German by Ilse Tschörtner . P. 183–192 in: Karlheinz Kasper (Ed.): Iwan Bunin: Dunkle Alleen. Stories 1920–1953 . 580 pages. Montage-Verlag, Berlin 198
- Output used:
- The sunstroke . P. 116–126 in: Iwan Bunin: Der Sonnenstich. Stories. Translated and edited by Kay Borowsky . 150 pages. Reclam, Stuttgart 1995 ( RUB 9343), ISBN 3-15-009343-0
Web links
- The text
- online at Lib.ru (Russian)
- online at bunin.niv.ru (Russian)
- online in the Komarow library (Russian)
- Entry in the Labor der Fantastik (mentioning the first publication, in Russian)
- Entries in WorldCat