The grammar of love
The Grammar of Love ( Russian Грамматика любви , Grammatika ljubwi ) is a short story by the Russian Nobel Prize winner for literature Ivan Bunin , which appeared in the Moscow Almanac Klitsch in February 1915 .
The library of the late landlord Khvoshchinsky contains a copy of Hippolyte-Jules Demolière's grammar of love .
content
On a warm June day when Mr Iwlew wanted to see the remote areas of his home district again, which he had ridden through at a young age, he was finally surprised by a thunderstorm. The horses need a break. So it is held on the Kvoshchinskoye estate. Ivlev, who wants to motivate his visit in front of the young landlord Khvoshchinsky, pretends to be interested in buying the library of old Khvoshchinsky, who died last winter. The young Khvoshchinsky, who apparently smells a shop, is not averse and allows the drenched visitor access to his father's library.
It is said that the old landowner Chwoschtschinskij, "a man of rare intellectual gifts", was in love with his not very pretty maid Luschka during his lifetime. After the girl died young - rumor has it that Luschka drowned himself in a pond known to Ivlev - old Khvoshchinsky sat on the deceased's bed for over twenty years.
When Ivlev, lost in the inspection of the library, cautiously points out old Chwoschtschinskij's insanity, the son has to object. In his last years the father had simply withdrawn from the world and kept reading in his library. The library turns out to be manageable; it is housed in two birch bookcases. Before Iwlew leafed through the title-giving book, which outwardly resembled a prayer book, he was allowed to open a box. Inside is a primitive necklace with light blue beads. Iwlew gets excited when looking at the simple jewelry. While the young Khwoschtschinsky is putting the light on - that is only jewelry from his deceased mother - the narrator later talks about Luschka's necklace. When Ivlev finally turned to the little book, the young Khvoschtschinsky interjected that it was not for sale. Iwlev is the only book to buy from the library at a high price. On the last page of the little book old Chwoschtschinsky wrote a quatrain with his own hand in which he recommends the message of the little book to his descendants. For the deceased, as he had put it, the memory of love was so sweet.
Adaptation
- 1988 Soviet Union , 5th channel of Leningrad TV: The TV feature film The Grammar of Love by Lev Zuzulkowski with Anna Dubrowskaya and Vasily Mishchenko contains, among other things, motifs from Bunin's text.
reception
Borowsky wrote in 1995 that Bunin sang “the song of praise for loyalty to love until after death”. Borowsky emphasizes the coherence of the narrow text in all its nuances and notes that the author of the book "The Grammar of Love or the Art of Loving and Being Loved again" was only identified in 1979.
German-language editions
- Used edition
- The grammar of love . P. 29–41 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
- Entry in the Laboratory of Fantastics (Russian)
- Entry in WorldCat
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian Клич - The call
- ↑ Borowsky in the afterword of the edition used, p. 139, 13. Zvu
- ^ French Hippolyte-Jules Demolière
- ↑ Russian Хвощинское
- ↑ Russian Хвощинский
- ↑ Edition used, p. 32, 14. Zvo
- ↑ Russian Пятый канал (Россия)
- ↑ Russian Грамматика любви
- ↑ Russian Цуцульковский, Лев Израилевич
- ↑ Russian Дубровская, Анна Леонардовна
- ↑ Russian Мищенко, Василий Константинович
- ↑ Borowsky in the afterword of the edition used, p. 144, 6. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 40, 2. Zvo
- ↑ Borowsky in the afterword of the edition used, p. 140 above