The Spy (Maxim Gorki)

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The Spy ( Russian Жизнь ненужного человека , The Life of a Useless Man) is a story by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky , which was written in early 1907 on Capri and the first pages of which appeared in 1908 in the Saint Petersburg publishing group Snanije . Until 1917 the complete edition was banned by the Russian censors. The translation into German was published in 1910. While the German-language editions have the title Der Spitzel originally chosen by Gorki , all editions have been published in the original language with the title Das Leben eines Unworth Menschen , which Gorki changed in January 1908 . The National Socialists threw the book into the fire in 1933 .

The author sheds light on two historical events from the Russian Revolution in 1905 - the St. Petersburg Bloody Sunday of January 9, 1905 and the convocation of the Russian State Duma by Nicholas II on April 27, 1906. Gorky - who apparently appears in the story as the writer Mironov - braiding the confessions two okhrana a -Geheimpolizisten.

Gorky in 1889

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Yevsej Klimkov became an orphan at the age of seven . The father had been shot by the forest ranger three years earlier. Evsey is lucky in misfortune. Uncle Pyotr, the village blacksmith, takes him in. Jaschka, the blacksmith's son, always beats the kid once. On such occasions, Aunt Agafja always stands on the side of her son Jaschka. Yevsej befriends little Tanja, a girl who has gone blind after suffering from smallpox .

After 13-year-old Yevsej has finished school, Uncle Pyotr places him as an apprentice with the old stingy antiquarian Matvey Matveyich Raspopov in an unnamed city where the rest of the action takes place . Yevsej meets tall, silent, gentle Raissa Petrovna Fialkovskaya in the antiquarian's house. Over time Yevsej suspects what the old gentleman occasionally does at night with the handsome, voluptuous Raissa. The elderly bookseller explains the boy. Raissa is a whore who occasionally visits a brothel.

At Raspopov's command, Yevsej has to overhear the conversations of the customers and report back in the evening. For example, the watchmaker told the furrier skoch that they would accept stolen goods. And sometimes one of the customers asks about books that have appeared abroad or have been illegally printed in Russia .

When Yevsej turned fifteen, he confessed his love to Raisa. In return, she pours him pure wine through Raspopow. She hate Yevsey's teacher. Raspopow is an informant. When the antiquarian fell ill and grew weaker and weaker, he suspected Raissa was poisoning him. However, the single old man is dependent on the help of the young woman. He wants to leave everything to her. Raissa kills Raspopov. Yevsej, who becomes an ear witness in the next room, does not go to the police. Raissa moves in with her lover Dorimedont Lukitsch. This - as Yevsej is initiated by Raisa - is also a spy. Dorimedont Lukitsch places Yevsej as a clerk in the police administration's office. Dorimedont wants to “push Yevsej up”, as he puts it. Raissa doesn’t like it when Dorimedont Lukitsch beats up the boy. When the drunken Raissa wants to sleep with the boy and that doesn't work - Gorky calls the process “sad night rape”, her “love” turns into hate.

Jakow Sarubin, Yevsey's young friend in the above-mentioned office, wants to become a political informant. Yevsey learns from Yakov that Raisa stabbed himself. Yevsej is staying with his new superior, the police chancellor Kapiton Ivanovich Reussow - known as Flute. Reussow is visited at home by a certain tax officer Anton Drjagin. Yevsej has to make the acquaintance of Okhrana after telling Yakov about Reussov and Drjagin's criticism of the Tsar's rule. There at the secret police, Yevsej chats how Raissa strangled the antiquarian and confirms the talk of Reussow and Drjagin. After a week and a half in prison, Yevsej only wants to get out of prison and becomes an assistant to the Okhrana for twenty-five rubles a month. The tsar's secret police have the boy in their hands because, according to his own statements, he took part in “the murder of the antiquarian Raspopow”. Now Yevsej is a spy - "Agent" is the name of the Okhrana - and has to spy on suspicious people. The new job is not easy: "You have to watch all the people, but nobody should notice you," he is instructed by an experienced informant. Yakov entered the Okhrana ten days before Yevsey.

The secret police live dangerously: one of them was beaten to death by the revolutionaries , enemies of the tsar and God. The accomplished Okhrana man Maklakov gives the newcomer Yevsej supervision orders. One of the people under observation, the writer Mironov, who knows many Russian prisons from the inside and who is himself respected by Maklakov, immediately smells a fuse and embarrasses Yevsey.

After the lost Russo-Japanese War and after the St. Petersburg Bloody Sunday, the increasingly rebellious revolutionaries should go to the collar. Yevsej learns how to win the trust of revolutionaries. A spy who mingles with the revolutionaries without being recognized is considered something special and is respectfully dubbed “provocateur” in Ochrana circles. Leaflets with reports of hundreds of dead and injured in Petersburg are popping up in the city. The Ochrana has to find the print shop and dig it out. The beginner Evsey succeeds in doing this. By chance he meets his cousin Jaschka. Now Yevsej is taking revenge for the beating he received as an orphan from the blacksmith's son. Yet Jaschka's father, the blacksmith, was the only one who had supported the ungrateful Yevsej after his mother's death. Jaschka, who has meanwhile become a factory worker, talks about back home: The blacksmith has gone blind.

Yaschka introduced Yevsej to his circle. The latter are factory workers, more precisely socialists , who print those leaflets. Yevsej betrays seven people from the illegal print shop. Among them is the maid Olga.

Yevsej immediately spends his Judas wages together with Jakow Sarubin in a brothel. Katzenjammer follows the triumph. Yevsej suddenly doesn't understand each other anymore, because he had loved the revolutionary Olga. Yevsej takes out his anger on Sarubin; smashes a bottle on his head.

After the Reich Duma is convened, the secret police is disbanded. All political prisoners are released. The multiple traitor Yevsej has to fear for his life. Just before Maklakov goes abroad, he sends Yevsej to Mironov with a package. The life story of the refugee is recorded in it. Yevsej goes to Mironov and confesses his story to the attentive writer.

Yevsej regrets that when there was still time he did not confide in the maid Olga. Jakow Sarubin, who shoots wildly in public, is judged by the indignant crowd. Yevsey doesn't know what to do next. Hanging would be the solution. When this first suicide attempt fails, he steps on the railroad tracks and lets himself be run over by the next train.

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The extremely simple-minded Jewsej wants to be recognized by the experienced Okhrana men. He appears stupid and adopts the ideology of his superior superiors. The well-trained secret police treat Yevsej good-naturedly and occasionally laugh at him. Maklakov has no understanding for Yevsey's naive questions. Yevsej asks, for example: "Does he [the writer Mironov] also serve our enemies?" From Maklakov's reaction it follows that the experienced secret police no longer believes in the image of the enemy conveyed from above.

Self-testimony

  • In April 1908, Gorky wrote to the critic Vasily Lwowitsch Lwow-Rogachevsky: "My subject is the psyche of the informant, the ordinary psyche of an intimidated Russian who lives in fear."

reception

  • The Malik-Verlag (see below) and hot also call a text novel , although it has designed Gorky as a narrative.
  • The brief summary above mainly outlines the life and death of the spy Yevsej. But Gorky's performance can only be measured after reading the entire text. The author describes a “weak, fearless, willless” spy Yevsej, who is surrounded by a “whole crowd” of Okhrana employees - i.e. spies. Gorky gives everyone individual traits and thus offers "a kind of psychology of traitors to the people".
  • March 8, 2011, Armin Knigge: Section “DER SPITZEL” (Life of a Useless Man, published 1908) in Der unbekannte Gorki.

German-language editions

  • The informer. Novel. Only authorized translation from Russian by Fred M. Balte. Vol. 6 from: Maxim Gorki: Collected Works in Individual Editions. Malik-Verlag, Berlin 1926.

First edition

  • The informer. Novel. Only authorized translation by Fred M. Balte. J. Ladyschnikow , Berlin without a year (around 1910).

Used edition

  • The informer. German by Alfred Balte. With an afterword by Günter Warm. P. 5–240 in: Maxim Gorki: Der Spitzel. A confession . A summer . Vol. 6 from: Eva Kosing, Edel Mirowa-Florin (ed.): Maxim Gorki: Collected works in individual volumes. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1971.

literature

  • Nadeshda Ludwig: Maxim Gorki. Life and work. Series of Contemporary Writers. People and Knowledge, Berlin 1984.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Warm, p. 598 below and p. 609, 6. Zvo
  2. ^ Warm, p. 602, 1st Zvu
  3. ^ Warm, p. 606
  4. ^ Warm, p. 606, 15. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 188, 11. Zvu
  6. ^ Warm, p. 605, 6th Zvu
  7. ^ Warm, p. 599 above
  8. ↑ Ludwig, p. 154, 6. Zvo
  9. ↑ Russian Василий Львович Львов-Рогачевский
  10. ^ Gorki, quoted in Warm, p. 604, 11th Zvu
  11. ^ Warm, p. 604, middle
  12. ↑ Warm, p. 599, 18. Zvu
  13. ↑ Ludwig, p. 153, middle.