The journey of the amateurs
The Journey of the Dilettanten ( Russian Путешествие дилетантов , Puteschestwije diletantow ) is a historical novel by the Soviet writer Bulat Okudschawa , which was written in Dubulty (district of Jūrmala ) from 1971 to 1977 , and was printed in 1977 in the December issue of the Moscow monthly Nauka i Moscow publisher Sowetski pissatel appeared.
Russia 1844 to 1855: In the text, a mixture of "historical novels, grotesques and fairy tales", the last decade of Nicholas I's reign is denounced. Programmatically resounds: “Long live freedom!” The call is always uttered once by the female protagonist Lavinia, a patronized subject of the emperor.
The escape
The journey of the amateurs - a pair of lovers - is to flee from the womanizer Nikolaus I. The widowed Prince Mjatlev flees with Lavinia, the very young wife of the real Councilor of State Ladimirowski. Towards the end of the 47th of the 90th chapter of the novel, the prince said of the tsar: "He kidnapped Aneta, tortured Alexandrina, forced me to marry Natalja ... He won't get the next one." By the next, the prince means his lover Lavinia. She has adored and loved the prince since she was eight years old. The Ladimirovsky couple accepted the emperor's invitation to a ball in the Anichkov Palace . During a dance in that palace, Prince Alexei Orlov had brought Mrs. Ladimirovskaya an unequivocal offer for a night for two with the Tsar in the Emperor's private chambers. Mr Ladimirowski was annoyed by his wife's negative attitude. Nicholas I had not given up; had recommended to Prince Orlov a little later that the young Ladimirovskaya be invited to court balls. Prince Mjatlew had asked Baroness Aneta Frederiks, his crush from distant youth, for help in kidnapping Lavinia from St. Petersburg . Aneta had actively participated - also because she knew from her own experience what a dance with Prince Orlov in the role of Cupid meant for a desirable young woman.
title
Why is the escape of the lonely widower Prince Mjatlev with the freedom-loving, married Lavinia Ladimirowskaya amateurish?
Schröder replies, “Myatlev ... does not understand that his striving for independence ... his open 'forbidden love' is a challenge for the Nicolaitan system and is therefore persecuted and punished by the tsar as a kind of rebellion. Myatlev believes that all of this is his private business and has nothing to do with politics. He's a dilettante at that! "
I guess that's true. Although the Tsar was in Warsaw with Prince Orlov at the time of the escape of the St. Petersburg lovers , Orlow's subordinate Leonti Dubelt immediately sent his secret service agents to different directions at the behest of the Emperor. Dubelt's two colleagues, Colonel Peter von Müfling and First Lieutenant Timofej Katakasi, who are hurrying south, actually catch up with the two refugees, but do not arrest them at first, but keep them on a long leash until they reach their destination Tbilisi . This is also easily possible because persecutors and persecuted people from Petersburg know each other. Mjatlew also divulged the travel destination in his innocence in an interview with von Müfling. In letters to Petersburg, and on the way in Pyatigorsk , Von Müfling mentions Myatlev as good-natured and indulgent. The prince did not kidnap the Ladimirovskaya out of self-interest, but wanted to redeem the beautiful woman from the tyranny of her husband in a night and fog action. The enchanting Lavinia Ladimirowskaja - noble, modest, impeccable appearance and silent - is a smart but naive creature in her urge for independence.
content
At the top of the article, Schröder's categorization of the text as a fairy tale was quoted. In Petersburg, for example, the military Koko Tetenborn and Captain Mischa Berg are fighting to make the tatters fly. In the Tbilisi apartment of the able Georgian Madame Maria Amilachwari, towards the end of the novel, Okudshawa suddenly brings the two into the turbulent events as tangible characters with the aside that they are out of the imagination. The fairy tale detail fits the protagonist Lavinia, who is always meant by the omnipresent Mr. van Schonhoven.
The 35-year-old Prince Sergej Wassiljewitsch Mjatlev has retired to his decaying wooden house right on the Neva bank on the outskirts of Petersburg. The park around the house grows over in summer. On December 14, 1844, he commemorates the Decembrists who are still languishing in Siberia . The tsar is still afraid of people like Hinkepot, the prince means his acquaintance, Prince Andrei Vladimirovich Priimkow. The Hinkepot has meanwhile been allowed to return to his Tula estate, but has to avoid Petersburg. Nevertheless, he sometimes sticks a fake beard on and seeks out Mjatlew in his wooden house. One talks about the Frederiks'. The Hinkepot scolds the baron as a parasite. Baroness Aneta Frederiks, around 30 years old, actually Anna Michailowna Frederiks, née Glebowa, married to Baron Frederiks, a gentleman aged 50 and a Kurlander , ensnared Prince Mjatlew; affectionately call him Serjosha. The Tsar's court minister receives an anonymous letter in which the baroness visits the wooden house on the Neva. Okudschawa later wrote about the separation of the lovers: "... she promptly forgot about the prince when she noticed the gossudar's signal, ..." preferred ".
Myatlev separates from Aneta and meets the beautiful 22-year-old Alexandrina Shilzowa, daughter of the Kaluga noble landowner Modest Viktorowitsch Shilzow. Shilzow, accidentally arrested in Petersburg on December 14, 1825, was taken to the Katorga Serentui in Transbaikalia as an innocent victim of the justice system and died there in Siberia in 1844. Alexandrina's mother had died years earlier. Alexandrina had got by among others with a widowed Moscow professor of medicine. She suffers from consumption . Improvement came in the summer of 1846. Alexandrina does not want to become a princess Mjatleva. One day she disappeared from the wooden house. The prince only knows that she ran down to the Neva. As quoted above, Mjatlev later named Alexandrina's fate: the tsar had tormented the young woman. This means the emperor's relentless treatment of his subject Modest Shilzow, who had been banished to Siberia. Alexandrina had written to Count von Benckendorff . The latter had replied that the father could not be pardoned because such an act could be viewed as injustice to the other criminals. After von Benckendorff's death, Alexandrina was able to get to his successor, Prince Orlov, mentioned above. During the audience she had not been able to listen to the prince's speech and only afterwards - outside on the street - had she realized that the news of death had been brought to her from Orlov's mouth.
Then Countess Natalja Rumjanzewa came to the wooden house and seduced Myatlev. The father-to-be wants to accept reason, applies to Count Nesselrode as a civil servant and marries Natalja at the behest of the emperor. Mjatlew was given a post by Baron Frederiks in the American department. Natalja dies with the child. The widower has a property from Natalja in the Smolensk governorate and is quitting diplomatic service at Nesselrode.
In the summer of 1850, Myatlev was looking for Lavinia in Petersburg. With Lavinia, born Brawura, daughter of a long-dead immigrant from Poland, everything is different. The resolute mother Lavinias locks up the daughter who loves her freedom. The pale Lavinia marries Mr Ladimirowski, "the owner of countless herds of cattle". After the wedding, the mother spreads the rumor of a love marriage. The prince, whom the Petersburgers consider “vicious and incorrigible”, wants to kidnap his beloved. At first, the young woman does not want to be saved. Myatlev continues to deal with his escape plans; buys travel guides through the Caucasus in his bookstore . The tsar keeps an eye on the prince; asks: "What is he doing after his wife's death?" When Lavinia can no longer stand her marriage, she asks Mjatlew for the proposed kidnapping. Mr. Ladimirowski is prepared for the future by his wife, Madame Ladimirowskaja: “I meet a man I love from time to time.” Shortly after fleeing in early May 1851, Lavinia's mother wrote to General Dubelt for help. His subordinate von Müfling immediately discovered that the escaping lovers had passed Ljuban on the way to Tver via Novgorod . Although not far enough away from Petersburg, the refugees stay longer with Ivan Evdokimowitsch Avrosimow , a landowner in the deep Russian province known to Okudschawa readers. In the second half of May, the couple reaches Khovrino . Lavinia gets used to her protector; cannot fall asleep without his presence. When the young woman had a fever in southern Russia in hot June, the two refugees had "nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no medication, no doctor". A Russian fortress in the northern Caucasus foothills brings salvation from the evil. Müfling does not stop the couple, but helps them. At the end of June the patient recovered. The house of 27-year-old Maria Amilachwari is reached in Tbilisi in mid-July via Pyatigorsk and Vladikavkaz . Petersburg friends, such as Captain Mischa Berg, who are settling in Maria's house, urgently advise the prince to flee abroad. Myatlev doesn't want to know anything about this. Then Lieutenant Katakasi appears and asks the refugees to take a drive to the government office to take a protocol. On July 28, the first lieutenant arrested the refugees and sent them to Petersburg in separate carriages, as expressly ordered by the Emperor.
On February 27, 1852, it is said that Mjatlev was sitting in the Alexei Ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress . Lavinia, forcibly brought to her husband, closes herself off from people. Maria Amilachwari's brother Amiran was kicked out of the guard. On May 5, 1852, exactly one year to the day after his escape, Myatlev was sentenced. Declared all possessions and the title of prince forfeited, he was sent to Tmutarakan as a simple soldier . At the end of April 1853 he was put in the company of his friend, Captain Berg, in the Caucasus. Lavinia writes him letters. The reading prince cries and laughs. During a battle against the Caucasian mountain people , the soldier Mjatlev was shot in both legs. Koko Tetenborn falls.
At home in Petersburg, Mr. Ladimirowski cannot calm down. On July 10th, he lost his wife again. In the distant Caucasus, Mjatlev, whose legs the doctor cut, is cared for by Ignatieva, a nurse. The doctor doesn't just want to drink tea with the young Ignatieva in his spare time. The cold-blooded nurse keeps the doctor at bay - with a pistol at the ready. Before the company moves out again, Captain Berg intimidates the medic. Ignatyeva was his bride. When the nurse is finally allowed to take the invalid Mjatlev for a walk, the fortress commander tells the doctor that Ignatyeva is a wanted criminal. A little later the nurse is picked up by an officer. He speaks to her with Ms. Ladimirovskaya.
In 1854, the invalid Mjatlew was trapped in a Russian border fortress near Odessa , waiting to be pardoned. The pardon did not arrive until 1855 after the tsar's death. Prince Mjatlev is again the landowner. Bitter: The "picture book beauty" Lavinia is in Italy. Everything will be fine. The lovers find each other again. Okudschawa concludes: "Rumor has it that Lavinia Ladimirovskaya, after burying Myatlev, left Russia forever."
reception
In July 1980, Schröder wrote in Berlin that Okudschawa had taken research by Pavel Jelissejewitsch Shchogolew from 1922 as the basis for the novel; tell the love story of Prince Sergei Trubezkoi and Lawinija Schadimirowskaja. However, the author invented some things - for example the secret police from Müfling and Katakasi. As a summary it can be stated: In the monarchy, a life of its own, that is, “in emotional and spiritual independence”, is almost impossible.
Used edition
- Bulat Okudshawa: The Journey of the Dilettantes. From the notes of retired lieutenant Amiran Amilachwari. Historical novel. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . With an afterword by Ralf Schröder . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1981.
Web links
- The text
- Reference in the laboratory of fantasy (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian Дубулты
- ↑ Russian Наука и жизнь - in German: Science and Life
- ↑ Russian Советский писатель - The Soviet writer
- ↑ Russian reference to the first Russian edition in book form
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 681, 12. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 292, 17th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 339
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 678, 6. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 492, 3rd Zvu
- ↑ Russian хромоножка - Hinkebein
- ↑ Russian Андрей Владимирович Приимков
- ↑ Russian Барон Фредерикс
- ↑ Russian Государь - monarch, tsar
- ↑ Edition used, p. 135, 10. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 310, 4th Zvu
- ↑ Russian Модест Викторович Жильцов
- ↑ Russian Горный Зерентуй
- ↑ Edition used, p. 326, 9. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 658, 11. Zvo
- ↑ Russian Павел Елисеевич Щёголев
- ↑ Russian Лавиния Жадимировская
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, pp. 663–690