The forest rustles
The forest rushes ( Russian Лес шумит , Les schumit) is a short story by the Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko , which appeared in the January 1886 issue of the Russian literary magazine Russkaya Mysl in Moscow .
content
Arthur Luther adds a small afterword to his translation in the edition used. In it he writes that the story takes place in the poet's Volhyn homeland. Three people commit a crime in the forest wilderness, although they are actually not criminals at all.
An old man lives in the house of the young forest rangers Sachar and Maxim. The two young people are grandsons of the long deceased forest ranger Roman.
The first-person narrator rides in, spends the night in the hut and has his grandfather, as he calls the old man, tell him a story from his childhood: After he lost his parents, he was told by the forest ranger Roman as a little boy with the consent of the Landlord raised in the same hut. Since then, the now old man had spent his entire life in the forest. Whenever Roman went into the woods, he always locked the little boy in so he wouldn't be eaten.
The landlord - called Pan - gives Roman the handsome young Oksana as his wife. The pan had made the maiden pregnant. The forest ranger Roman does not want to marry her, but is beaten at Pan's behest until he says yes. Roman had held out for a while until yes. During the chastisement, the Cossack Opanas Schwidkij, one of the hunters in the pan's servants, came home. The naturally very freedom-loving Cossack had fallen at his master's feet and asked in vain for mercy for Roman.
Oksana's child dies the day he is born. The Pan visits their hut with his hunters Roman and Oksana and wishes the young couple luck. Opanas is in the wake. The reader has to assume that Roman learns from Opanas, by whom Oksana was impregnated, because the two men forge a murder plot against their Pan. So by the three people above, Arthur Luther meant Roman, Opanas and Oksana. They are killing their master, the Pan. Before that, the Pan sends his hunters and Roman out to hunt in the evening forest.
When Pan was alone in the hut with Oksana, he had offended the young woman once again. The Cossack Opanas cannot get over the fact that the Pan has trampled him like a dog. So each of the three murderers has a good reason for the act: humiliation .
German-language editions
- The forest rustles. On Easter vigil. Two stories. Transferred by Michael Feofanow. Insel-Bücherei No. 282, Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1951. 48 pages
- The forest rustles. German by Cornelius Bergmann . Pp. 5-35 in Vladimir Korolenko: Makar's Dream and Other Stories. With an afterword by Herbert Krempien . 275 pages. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1980 (1st edition)
Used edition
- The forest rustles. German translation from Russian by Arthur Luther . Hermann Hübener Verlag, Berlin and Buxtehude 1947. Kleine Drei Birken Bücherei Vol. 23, 48 pages
Web links
- The text
- «Лес шумит» (Короленко) (Russian)
- online at litmir.info (Russian)
- online at Lib.ru (Russian)
- Entry at fantlab.ru (Russian)