The Cossacks

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Illustration for "Die Kosaken" - Jeroschka near Olenin, 1936

The novella Die Kosaken ( Russian Казаки , transliteration : Kazaki ) by the Russian author Lev Nikolajewitsch Tolstoy was published in 1863 as a sequel in the magazine Der Russland Bote ( Russian : Русский вестник , transliteration: Russkij vestnik ). Thematically, the novella marks the end of Tolstoy's literary processing of his time as an officer and impressions of the war, which were preceded by stories such as the Sevastopol tales (1855/56). In addition, this novella contains a topos typical of Tolstoy's work , which also appears in the story Familienglück (1859): the noble idea of ​​self-sacrifice - to live solely for another person, not for yourself.

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Moscow during the 1840s: the wealthy orphan Dmitrij Andrejewitsch Olenin spends one last evening with his friends over supper at the Chevalier restaurant . The morning is already dawning when he finally leaves the city with his servant Vanyusha on a horse-drawn sleigh towards the Caucasus . Unhappy and dissatisfied with his previous life, in which love - of which he was convinced that it did not exist - Olenin had failed, he set out to start a new life as a Junker in the Caucasus. So far, it has not held him anywhere for long, neither in society nor in civil service, not even in music and certainly not in agriculture, but from now on everything should be different - he wants to subordinate his life to a certain plan, with the big one Aim to achieve happiness and contentment in the end. During his trip to the Caucasus, he thinks back to his time in Moscow, thinks of the inappropriate relationship with that rich lady whom one of his friends loved, adding up how many debts he owes to whom.

Olenin's troops are eventually transferred to a Cossack village on the border with Chechnya , the Chechen territory. He and his servant Wanyusha stay with the ensign Ilya Vasilyevich, with whose daughter Marjanka he falls in love. Marjanka, who seems to be promised to the young and dashing Cossack Lukaschka, represents true love for Olenin, the ideal image of a woman. In said village, Olenin becomes friends with Uncle Jeroschka, a formerly notorious and feared hero of the Cossacks. Olenin wants to learn from him to become a true Cossack and so he spends long evenings with him and accompanies him on the hunt. One day when Olenin goes on a stalking alone, he realizes how very hapless his previous life has been and he states for himself that he can only achieve true happiness through unconditional love and self-sacrifice, because "happiness lies in that you don't live for yourself, but for others. ”For this reason, Olenin Lukaschka, whom he considers a brave lad, gives his second horse, which, however, arouses discomfort and suspicion.

After a while in the village, Olenin meets an old friend from Moscow, Prince Bjelezki. He begins to spend the evenings with him and visits various events organized by the village girls, where he also gets to know Marjanka better and, above all, learns to love. In order to complete his happiness, he finally decides to marry her and offer her a better life, but in the village and not in Moscow. Although she actually loves Lukaschka, Marjanka does not seem to be averse to Olenin's advances, and Olenin's advances, whether it be Bjelezki's influence or simply out of habit, are increasingly falling into old behavior patterns. However, Olenin's efforts come to an abrupt end when Lukaschka is badly wounded by a Chechen man at the border guard one day. Marjanka turns away from Olenin, pushes him away, whereupon Olenin, recalling the request of a commander - a distant relative of his, whom he had seen on a campaign - asks for his transfer to the staff and leaves the village.

Excerpts

“You have to live and be happy, and I only wish one happiness, no matter what I am, an animal like the others, over which only grass grows and nothing else, or a frame that encloses part of the one deity . You have to live as best you can. But how do you have to live in order to be happy, and why have I not been happy so far? ”[…]“ What claims have I made, what have I not come up with and finally only reaped shame and grief! And how little you need to be happy! "He said," it is very clear that happiness lies in the fact that you do not live for yourself but for others. [...] "

“I now know how things are with me, and I no longer fear my feelings will humiliate me, I am not ashamed of my love, but rather I am proud of it. [...] I wanted to flee from her, wanted to sacrifice myself [...], but my love and jealousy only grew even more. It is not that heavenly love that I thought I had felt earlier […], but it is even less the desire for pleasure […]. Maybe I love nature in her, the embodiment of everything beautiful in her [...]. "

"Olenin read so much contempt, anger and disgust in her features that it immediately became clear to him that he had nothing to hope for and that this girl was as aloof as he had previously estimated."

interpretation

Audio book

  • Die Kosaken , read in full by André Beyer , Edition Apollon, Königs Wusterhausen 2011, 408 min., 6 CD

German-language editions

  • The Cossacks. German by August Scholz . 1923 B. Cassirer, Berlin
  • The Cossacks. German by Gisela Drohla . P. 5–205 in: Gisela Drohla (Ed.): Leo N. Tolstoj. All the stories. Third volume. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1961 (2nd edition of the edition in eight volumes 1982)
  • The Cossacks. Caucasian story from 1852. pp. 97–316 in: Lew Tolstoi. War in the Caucasus. The Caucasian prose, newly translated and commented on by Rosemarie Tietze. Berlin 2018

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Städtke : Realism and Interim. The age of the realistic novel, in: Klaus Städtke (ed.), Russische Literaturgeschichte, Stuttgart 2002, p. 206.
  2. ^ Leo N. Tolstoj (translated by Georgia Seemann), Die Kosaken, Klagenfurt s. a. (published by Eduard Kaiser-Verlag), p. 127.
  3. ↑ Tolstoy s. a., pp. 126-127.
  4. ↑ Tolstoy s. a., p. 203.
  5. ↑ Tolstoy s. a., p. 242.