The white steamer

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Kyrgyz postage stamp with a motif from "The White Steamer"

The White Steamer is a tragic novel by Tschingis Aitmatow from 1970.

content

At the center of the story is a seven-year-old, nameless boy. He lives with his grandfather Momun, his step-grandmother, his uncle Oroskul, the forester, aunt Bekej and the forest worker Sejdachmat and his wife Güldschamal in a lonely, remote small forest settlement in a nature reserve in the Tianschan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan . He was abandoned by his parents when they separated. His mother lives in the city and has a new family. His father is said to be a sailor on a white steamer on the nearby (but for the boy far away) Lake Issyk-Kul . At least that's what grandfather Momun, who looks after the boy, says. Uncle Oroskul is a tyrannical, evil person who is dissatisfied with his life and bullies everyone else. He is also frustrated because his wife Bekej, Momun's daughter, is not giving him a child.

When he is drunk, he beats her. He takes advantage of his position of power as the owner of the forestry and employer of others and everyone has to suffer from him. The boy is without a playmate and lives in his fantasy world. He believes in the horned deer mother from the Kyrgyz fairy tale world, who once protected the Kyrgyz tribes and saved them from extinction. His companions are stones, plants, his grandfather's binoculars and his school bag, which his grandfather gave him because he went to school in late summer. The boy often observes the white steamer on Lake Issyk Kul with binoculars and dreams of transforming himself into a fish in order to get to his father, whom he has never seen. In summer he also practices diving and breathing in the river near the forestry.

School is finally starting, which the boy has been looking forward to for a long time. Grandfather brings him there on his horse and picks him up again, because the school is in a distant village. The boy loves school. This is how time goes by. There comes the lonely mountain winter, then another summer in which shepherds often stop with their flocks near the forest settlement. Uncle Oroskul, the forester, then does crooked business - he trades meat and vodka for lumber, although he is forbidden to fell the protected, rare mountain pines in the nature reserve. In autumn it will be that time again: Oroskul has to deliver. The timber harvest is hard work due to the lack of technology. After almost an accident happened on the steep slope, there was an argument between the otherwise very tolerant old Momun and his son-in-law.

Instead of struggling with the tribe, Momun leaves Oroskul to first pick up the boy from school. That is already too much for the choleric oroskul. Suddenly dip the exterminated actually in this area Maralhirsche the descendants of on, horned doe . Presumably they immigrated from a nature reserve in neighboring Kazakhstan . Oroskul don't care about the rare animals. He is angry with his father-in-law, threatens him with dismissal and throws his wife Bekej out of the house again that evening after a beating orgy. The residents of the forestry cuddle. Momun tells his grandson about the Maralen on the way back from school. This is enthusiastic. He believes the Horned Doe herself has returned to finally help Oroskul have a child, from which everyone expects an improvement.

He also meets the animals that show no fear, as they have never met a person. In the evening the boy becomes ill and has to go to bed alone with a fever and chills, since everyone else is busy trying to appease the tyrant Oroskul. When the customer comes the next day and wants to pick up his trunk, all the men have to go to the river, because the trunk got wedged there and was left lying after the argument between the two men. The marals reappear and everyone is amazed and moved. Instead of enjoying the animals, as one would expect from a forest ranger in the nature reserve, one is already planning the roast. If you are already logging illegally ... Momun is outraged. Yet he is forced to shoot the doe: a triumph for Oruskul.

Momun is finished. Although not his style, he gets drunk in the evening while everyone else prepares the feast. The boy comes out of his grandfather's house, although he is still bad. He doesn't understand what is happening and wonders about his drunken grandfather. Then he notices the severed maral skull and sees how the remains of the animal he admires are cannibalized by his uncle and his guest. The world is collapsing for the boy. While people are drinking, laughing, eating and making fun of Momun, he leaves the forester's lodge in a maddened fever to throw up. He sees his grandfather lying helplessly in the courtyard. Then the boy runs madly to the river. He wants to become a fish again and escape this world that repels him so much. It is autumn when the sick boy climbs into the ice-cold water from the mountains.

With the vision “I will become a fish. Grandfather, tell the others that I've become a fish ”he dies in the water.

filming

The story was in 1976 by bolotbek shamshiyev filmed .

expenditure

  • Белый пароход. Leningrad 1981. (Russian original edition)
  • The white steamer. translated by Hans-Joachim Lambrecht, afterword by Ralf Schröder . ( Spectrum Volume 32), Volk und Welt publishing house, Berlin 1971. (German first edition)
  • The white steamer. After a fairy tale. translated by Charlotte Kossuth. Unionsverlag. Zurich 1992, ISBN 3-293-20025-7 . (New translation)
  • The white steamer. translated by Uwe Groth, with an afterword by the author. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-518-40525-X . (New translation)
  • The white steamer , spoken by Dieter Wien , Jumbo Neue Medien & Verlag, Hamburg 2007, 4 CDs, ISBN 978-3-8337-1884-7 (edited audio book version based on the translation by Charlotte Kossuth)

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