The bear hunt
The bear hunt ( Russian Охота пуще неволи , Ochota pushche newoli = proverb. The will of man is his heaven ) is a short story by Lev Tolstoy , which appeared in 1875 in the 4th Russian reader of the anthology Rasskasy is «Novoi asbuki» in Saint Petersburg .
History of origin
In his youth, Tolstoy was a passionate hunter for birds, rabbits, wolves and bears . In December 1858 he was attacked by a shot bear with the hunter NN Ostawschkow in the forest near Vyshny Volotschok and bitten in the face. Tolstoy wrote the incident down in 1875.
content
The first-person narrator, a landlord - that is, a nobleman who rules over serf peasants - is hunting a bear with a friend in the deep snow in the Russian winter cold. After the animal has been frightened up, the two hunters consult with two bear hunters about the next step. Should the bear be circled? The old bear hunter and the narrator's friend say no. The animal initially needs a few days of rest. The young bear hunter Demjan disagrees. And so the narrator and Demjan follow the bear on skis through the loose powder snow. The fleeing animal is clever. It takes the highway. The trail is gone. According to the tracks in the snow, the narrator judges that it cannot be otherwise: A second bear entered the street from the forest. Demjan is more experienced in his field than the narrator. Demjan follows the trail towards the forest. The young bear hunter doesn't have to go far before he realizes: The bear is only a little bit in reverse gear and then back on the road in forward gear. The two hunters circle the bear until dusk and spend the night in the village, twelve werst away. The next ice-cold, foggy morning - frost falls - the narrator orders farmers with clubs to go into the circle described. These thirty drivers scare away the resting bear. Demjan drives him forward. The narrator gets his two rifles ready to fire and checks that his dagger can be reached quickly. The bear breaks out of the fir thicket with fear in his eyes and runs, snorting audibly, directly towards the narrator. The latter shoots and only hits the lower jaw of the animal. The narrator thinks that the last hour has struck when he feels his nose and then half the head in the bear's mouth. Demjan, armed only with a stick, yells at the bear: “… you crazy! What you are doing! Leave it! ”The animal leaves the narrator and runs away bleeding from the many roaring people.
The narrator can be driven into town and the wounds sewn up by the doctor. He closes his story: “Demjan put an end to him [the bear] ... This bear was very big and had a beautiful, black fur. I had it stuffed and the hide lies with me in the room. The wounds on my forehead have healed and have left only faint marks. "
literature
The bear hunt in Leo Tolstoy: Selected stories for the young (contains What people live on . The pilgrims . My dogs . The prisoner in the Caucasus . Yermak and the conquest of Siberia ). OC Recht Verlag, Munich 1922
Web links
- The text
- Entry in the list of works of folk tales (1872–1887), alphabet (1875)
- Entry at fantlab.ru (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ on p. 303, right column under неволя in Edmund Daum, Werner Schenk: Langenscheidt hand dictionary Russian: Russian-German, German-Russian . Langenscheidt Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-468-07292-5
- ↑ Russian Рассказы из "Новой азбуки", in German stories from the New Alphabet
- ↑ Russian Н. Н. Оставшков
- ↑ Russian online at chtooznachaet.ru