The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

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The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk or The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk District (Original: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда (Ledi Makbet Mcenskogo uezda)) is a novella by the Russian writer Nikolai Leskov from 1865.

Emergence

Nikolaj S. Leskow started writing when he was around thirty. The novella The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk District (1864) fell into the early creative phase . In 1865 it was published in the journal Epocha , the editor of which was FM Dostoevsky . This “dark story”, as Leskow called it, appeared there under the title Ledi Makbet našego uezda (The Lady Macbeth of our district). In 1867, Leskow gave the story the title it is today for an anthology.

During his travels through Russia, Leskov came into contact with many people and thus gained an insight into life in the province with its everyday problems. His Ledi Makbet based on a court case to Leskov in the criminal records of the city over the Oryol had informed (Orël). Leskov's literary elaboration was intended to be the start of a series of character studies of Russian women. However, he did not complete the rest of the work because he had lost the publication platform through the discontinuation of the Ėpocha . In addition, Leskow had just made himself rather unpopular in the cultural scene, as he had incurred the ire of liberals and committed democrats who insulted him as a reactionary through an article. His Lady Macbeth therefore lacked both publicity and the appreciation of literary criticism.

Shostakovich's setting to music in the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1934), when a critic of Pravda discredited the opera as “chaos instead of music”, contributed to the fame of the story . In 1989 the Ukrainian-Armenian director Roman Balajan made the first film adaptation.

characters

"With us you sometimes meet people who you never think of without inner movement, even if many years have passed since you met them."
  • Katerina L'vovna Izmajlova: wife of the merchant Izmajlov, around 23 years old; despite the desire to have children without offspring; gets bored in provincial isolation
  • Zinovij Borisytsch Izmajlov: wealthy merchant from a respected family in Tuskar, Kursk Governorate; over 50 years old, unable to child
  • Boris Timofeitsch Izmajlov: father of Zinovij, father-in-law of Katerina; 80 years old
  • Sergej Filipytsch (Serjoscha): camp assistant at Izmajlovs; well-known philanderer
  • Aksin'ja: cook at Izmajlovs
  • Fëdor Zacharov Ljamin (Fedja): Boris Timofeitsch's great-nephew, still underage; is entitled to part of the inheritance

title

The title of the novella refers to Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth . However, it is not clear whether Leskov designed his protagonist parallel to Macbeth's wife or whether the Russian murderess was publicly referred to as the novella suggests in the first chapter: “These people include the businessman Katerina Lvovna Ismajlowa, who after her entanglement in a terrible drama our nobles called Lady Macbeth from Mtsensk County “. It is also possible that the writer, based on Gottfried Keller's Romeo and Juliet, moved a Shakespeare drama into the countryside in the village , using the ruthlessness of his protagonist as the most prominent commonality with Shakespeare's female figure. Most literary scholars see a common characteristic in the strong will of the two female figures alone. On the other hand, further parallels can be suggested:

Both women appear resolute. You are responsible for the murders, Macbeth's wife through instigation (Duncan), Leskov's merchant wife through her own act (poisoning her father-in-law). The first bloody acts require further killing, at least the inhibition falls. In this context one can interpret the motto at the beginning of Ledi Makbet : "The first song is not easy to sing" stands for the fact that the first murder evokes scruples, while the following crimes are committed more freely.

Both in Shakespeare's Macbeth and in the novella, the family members are killed: Banquo and Fedja. What the two works have in common is that the protagonist also commits the murders (or instigates them) in order to raise the rank of her husband or lover.

Gradually, Lady Macbeth is plagued by remorse after Duncan's murder. She suffers from nightmares, delirious, ultimately loses her mind and kills herself. Likewise, Katerina is soon no longer the master of her senses, in the end she rushes to her death with her rival.

The characters differ not only in the reasons for the madness (regret - madness in love), but also in the motivations that drive them: Lady Macbeth acts out of lust for power, Katerina out of exaggerated passion for Sergei.

content

Katerina L'vovna is married to the much older Zinovij Borisytsch. Her poor situation does not allow her to freely consent to the marriage, but the new position as a merchant's wife offers her just as little freedom. She soon gets bored on the estate of her husband, who is often out and about overseeing his business. Her main occupation is wandering around the house and indulging her thoughts. Even on the first pages it becomes clear how unfulfilled her existence is: She yawns again and again. The few visits that she makes with her husband bring no change because they usually follow a strict ritual. Although she can read, she does not touch books because she does not believe in reading; there are also only a few books in the house (mostly saints legends).

Fate also denies her children, since her husband is sterile, but he blames her. The father-in-law also accuses her of this, which is why her marriage is close and the circumstances are unbearable. In her simple circumstances, she was at least used to her freedom, which consisted of open-minded interaction with other people. Her current position forbids her to be carefree with one another. The isolation on the marital property, made clear by high fences, makes it appear like a “canary in a cage” (kanarejka v kletke), as Sergej puts it.

The camp helper Sergei Filipytsch knows how to take advantage of Katerina's husband's long absence and her depressed situation. He flatters her with words, stimulates her femininity, whereupon she lets herself into him without resistance. The warnings from the cook Asin'ja that Sergei was a womanizer and that he was chased from the court of the Koptschonovs a few months ago because he had an affair with the mistress there did not prevent Katerina from giving herself passionately to the servant.

A little later, Boris Timofeitsch's father-in-law discovers adultery, locks Sergei Filipytsch in a shed and sends for his son Zinovij. As a result, Katerina poisons Boris and frees her lover. The crime goes unnoticed because food poisoning from a mushroom dish could well be the cause of death. In the dream, the daughter-in-law soon appears a tomcat who speaks to her in the voice of Boris Timofeitsch. Nevertheless, she is not deterred by a lustful relationship with Sergei. She spends a passionate night with him under an apple tree in the garden.

When her husband returns and there is a confrontation, she kills him too with the help of her lover, and they bury him in the basement of the house. Her subsequent pregnancy discredits her impotent husband retrospectively because it is now clear that the childlessness came from him.

After the murderous lovers acted like married couples and were happy about the inheritance, they learn that the money is not theirs alone, but that the underage Fëdor (Fedja), a great-nephew of Boris Timofeitsch, is entitled to the main part of the inheritance. He arrives at the estate with his great-aunt. Sergei, spurred on by the prospect of leading a life as an independent, rich businessman, sees his ideas threatened and repeatedly before Katerina that Fedya must be eliminated. His persistence ultimately leads to the third murder: On the evening before Mary , when the villagers go to evening and night mass, they smother the sick boy in his bed with a pillow. However, a machinist watches them and shortly afterwards all the residents of the village are standing in front of the house. The perpetrators are arrested and sentenced. After the flogging, they are said to do forced labor on their way to Siberia. While Sergei genuinely suffers, which elicits pity from the audience, Katerina accepts her fate indifferently. Obsessed with her love for Sergei, she thinks that she will find happiness anywhere as long as he is with her. He, on the other hand, is no longer interested in her, mocks and humiliates her in front of the other prisoners and vies for other female convicts. In a fit of rage, Katerina pounces on her rival and takes her to death in the cold waves of the Volga.

construction

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The novella is divided into fifteen chapters of different lengths, with the plot increasing to the third murder (Fedja; 11th chapter). After this climax, the narrative becomes a little calm until, towards the end, the story picks up speed again and ends in the catastrophe when crossing the Volga. That Katerina is heading for a bad end becomes apparent after the first few chapters. The first chapter acts like an exposition in which the people are introduced and it is already mentioned that Katerina plays a role in a "terrible drama". However, the novella cannot be based on a classic drama classification. Leskow introduces Katerina L. Izmajlova to the reader almost like a wanted letter: The information on the person (age, appearance) and the marriage circumstances are laconic and end with: "That was all". Katerina's boredom and her frequent yawns make the start.

The second chapter portrays her life, above all her marriage, as monotonous and restrictive. Sergej's handshake symbolizes this, and Katerina cries out: “Ouch, let go of the ring, you're hurting me!” At the same time, adultery is evident because the handle is aimed at the wedding ring.

Up to the first climax in chapter eleventh, chapters five and six stand out. The fifth chapter is the shortest of the whole text and, significantly, the one in which the first murder is described. The scope reflects the content insofar as the father-in-law is eliminated with little effort and also without scruples, as if it were a pesky rat on the attic. Accordingly, no reservations of conscience are addressed, but the death of Boris Timofeitsch is described in the most concise manner and with a simple choice of words. It is only mentioned in a subordinate clause that Katerina is responsible for the rat poison in the house; there is no mention of whether and how she mixed the poison into the food. The connection is immediately apparent to the reader, the characters in the text can be concealed from the violent death: One could die of a mushroom dish at any time.

The sixth chapter contrasts with the laconic fifth not only in length, but also in the presentation of events. The sensual intoxication of a night of love is portrayed. On a hot afternoon, Katerina and Sergej are still in their marriage bed. Suddenly, a tomcat walks around the business woman, whom she has never seen before. She is hardly surprised, but rather wonders whether it is a hangover at all, but does not question its appearance as such. Even when she tries to grab him and he disappears as quickly as he appeared, she is not surprised. She prefers to follow the call of the cook who has set up the samovar in the garden. She spends the rest of the day and night with Sergej under an apple tree in the garden that seems like a paradise to her. In fact, she does not notice that her lover shows less and less interest in her, begins to get bored. Although the conversation between them is quite serious, "[she] almost went insane with happiness." Her loss of reality is hinted at for the first time. The idiom is not an exaggerated expression of their affection, but anticipates their mania for love. Even Sergei's relentless statement that he dominates her whole body doesn't shake her up. The spring garden transfigures your impressions and ignites an erotic play of senses of delicate but deafening scents, bizarre spots of light and noises from animals (a warbling nightingale, longingly neighing horses, dogs chasing each other, meowing cats). The night ends in a passionate intoxication in which the apple tree mixes its falling petals.

Sergej does not leave Katerina despite his beginning disinclination for her. The prospect of becoming master of the estate and living a respected life as a merchant keeps him with his former mistress. The chapter on sensual pleasure is followed by the explanations about the murder of Zinovij Borisytsch, who is buried in the cellar.

The eleventh and twelfth chapters include child murder and the discovery of the perpetrator. The sick Fedja lies in bed and reads the stories of saints, mainly those of his namesake Theodor Stratelates , who died a martyr's death as a soldier and military leader. He is intimidated when Katerina comes to his bedside; his mother is at mass. Mercilessly, Katerina and Sergei, who has joined them, press the pillow onto the child's face. Suddenly the house seems to come to life, it wobbles, "as if unearthly forces were shaking the sin-laden house down to its foundations." Sergej then runs up and down the house in shock and thinks he has seen the ghost of Zinovij Borisytsch. Katerina, on the other hand, is more cold-blooded and notices that it is not the house that has developed a life of its own, but that a crowd of people has gathered in front of the building, banging on the door and shutter. A farmer watched the process and got the other people out of the church.

The criminals must confess and face the punishment. The sight of Sergej evokes pity during the flogging, Katerina's demeanor is cold and unmoved. She also takes the journey to Siberia indifferently because her bright spots are the arranged meetings with her Serjoscha. She devotedly saves food for her lover, who increasingly mocks her in front of the other prisoners and makes her look ridiculous. He is finally tired of their love and courted other women among the prisoners. Only gradually does Katerina suffer from the mockery, but increasingly also from jealousy. When crossing the Volga, she throws herself in a frenzy at her rival Sonetka and drowns with her in the waves.

subjects

Although Leskow “cared less about souls than about actions”, so he did not illuminate his characters psychologically and did not comment on their actions, there are ethically relevant topics in the story.

The first chapters already deal with the “existential boredom” ( skuka ) from which Katerina suffers and which is referred to in the second chapter as the notorious “Russian boredom”. A few decades later, Čechov played through countless variations on this theme. The skuka captures people in their entire existence and is in no way due to an external situation of monotony . Rather, it concerns a person's moral inability to face life. He is unable to break his daily grind by giving meaning to his life. Katerina also fails because of this boredom, although she is ashamed of it. Visiting neighbors does not give her pleasure, and her position forbids her to interact freely with subordinates. Reading is just as little a change for her, she neither thinks much of it nor does she own books. Almost a decade earlier (1856) , Flaubert had created a female figure in the figure of Emma Bovary , who was broken by the romantic ideas she obtained from her reading of a novel. She too was bored in her civil marriage and thought to find her fulfillment in affairs.

Katerina L'vovna feels her femininity recognized and satisfied for the first time through Sergej. Adultery is thus complete, even if Leskow does not explicitly address it like Flaubert. Her husband's impotence, childlessness and boredom make her susceptible to Sergei's words. Your passion does not dull; on the contrary, it increases from time to time. Katerina becomes driven by desire. Her supposed liberation through her love for Sergej makes her a prisoner of her instincts and passion.

Leskov inevitably raises the question of guilt, which he in turn leaves uncommented. Is Katerina a victim of her instincts or is she to blame? Has she been seduced or was she ready for adultery and murder? Her husband cannot satisfy her, but reproaches her, the desire to have children remains unfulfilled. Sergei takes advantage of her situation, seduces her. She hardly offers any resistance, she feels her femininity awakened for the first time. The monotony of her life encourages her thirst for adventure. Leskov discusses the question of guilt neither psychologically nor socially, but deliberately omits a discussion. He sees himself as a recorder of life, not as a moral authority. Katerina has a moment when she addresses her guilt. At the same time, however, she sees Sergej's guilt on an equal footing with her: "Our relationship goes back to your seduction skills, and you cannot deny that the ruse you used was at least as great as my inclination to give in to you."

style

Leskow is next to Goncharov , Turgenew , Dostojewski u. a. assigned to the so-called Russian Pleiad and thus belongs to critical realism . He saw himself more as a recorder than an inventor because he had too little imagination. For this he has a power of observation and a certain ability to analyze. As an author, he does not interfere, but only describes the events.

His style is concise, at times cool and distant, without any moral comment. Nevertheless, his texts are dense and dynamic, which he often achieves through hints and cutouts. The first chapter gives the impression of a profile, only provided with the most basic information (“That was all.”). Leskow describes the death of his father-in-law in comparison with a rat: merciless and denotative.

Leskov sets sharp contrasts to such laconic chapters. Lauer describes the primacy of the action, refined by contrast and collision, as a "Russian novella" (russkaja novella). The fifth chapter (death) is in contrast to the following chapter (full of life), which is characterized by sensual spring impressions: animal sounds, scents, play of light.

In order to make his stories as close as possible to human life, Leskow uses popular expressions and dialects. The so-called skaz is the dialect, folklore coloring in literature. Stender-Petersen describes the skaz as “the narrative breaking through the prism of a certain language world”. Leskov writes not only about the province, but in the language of the province.

Realism does not exclude certain fantastic elements. Katerina's hallucinations of the hangover are the first moment of her blurring of reality and fantasy. The eerie, trembling house after the murder of Fedja has no supernatural, but rather a profane cause: the villagers stand in front of the house and shake the door and windows. Only to the murderers does it seem as if the house had suddenly developed a life of its own.

expenditure

  • The Lady Macbeth from Mtsensk District. Russian and German. Translator and epilogue Bodo Zelinsky. Stuttgart: Reclam 1980. ISBN 978-3-15-007619-4
  • The Lady Macbeth from Mtsensk District. In: Margit Bräuer (ed.): Russian love stories. Berlin: construction publ. 2003. (Structure TB. 1136.) ISBN 3-7466-1136-9

literature

  • Dmitrij Tschižewskij: Russian literary history of the 19th century. Volume 2: Realism. Munich: Fink Munich 1967. (Forum Slavicum. 1)
  • Bodo Zelinsky: Nikolaj Leskow - The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk district, in the latter: The Russian novella. Düsseldorf: Bagel 1982. pp. 103-111
  • Andrea Zink: How farmers became Russians. Zurich: Pano 2009. (Basler Studies on the Cultural History of Eastern Europe. 18.) ISBN 978-3-29022002-0
  • Martina Fuchs: 'Ledi Makbet Mcenskogo uezda'. Comparative analysis of Leskov's story and the opera of the same name by DD Šostakovič. Heidelberg: Groos 1992. Diss. University of Mannheim 1991. (Groos collection. 45.) (Mannheimer contributions to Slavic philology. 4.) ISBN 3-87276-661-9

Film adaptations

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Leskow, N .: The Lady Macbeth from the Mzensk district, Russian / German, Stuttgart: Reclam 1980, p. 5.
  2. ^ Leskow, N .: The Lady Macbeth from the Mzensk district, Russian / German, Stuttgart: Reclam 1980, p. 23.
  3. ↑ Leskow, N .: The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk district. German, Stuttgart: Reclam 1980, p. 7.
  4. ↑ Leskow, N .: The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk district. Stuttgart: Reclam 1980, p. 15.
  5. ↑ Leskow, N .: The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk district. Stuttgart: Reclam 1980. p. 49.
  6. ↑ Leskow, N .: The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk district. Stuttgart: Reclam 1980, p. 38.
  7. ↑ Leskow, N .: The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk district. Stuttgart: Reclam 1980, p. 95.
  8. ↑ Stender-Petersen, A .: History of Russian Literature, Munich: Beck 1978, p. 449.
  9. ↑ Leskow, N .: The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk district. Stuttgart: Reclam 1980, p. 11.
  10. ↑ Leskow, N .: The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk district. Stuttgart: Reclam 1980, p. 45.
  11. ↑ Lauer, R .: History of Russian Literature. From 1700 to the present, Munich: Beck 2009, p. 361.
  12. ↑ Stender-Petersen, A .: History of Russian Literature, Munich: Beck 1978, p. 450.