The ravine

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Ivan Goncharov,
portrayed by Pyotr Fyodorovich Borel in the 1860s

The gorge ( Russian Обрыв , Obryw ) is the last novel by the Russian writer Ivan Goncharov , which appeared in the first five issues (January to May) of the St. Petersburg monthly Westnik Jewropy in 1869 . This epically broad novel by Goncharov is one of the classics of Russian literature to this day .

The author turns away from nihilism in his text . For Goncharov, the gorge is not just a geographical place, but also stands for “the selfishness of sensual passion”, which is to be overcome on the way “from the depths ... up to the heights”.

action

The action in St. Petersburg and in the village of Malinowka on the Volga runs for about sixteen years, because in the first of the five parts of the novel, the two cousins ​​of the protagonist Raiski - the sisters Wera and Marfa - are seven and six years respectively, and by the end of the novel, Wera is 23 years old old. The novel is set before 1861, because serfdom has not yet been abolished in Russia. There is another reference to the narrated time. The third part of the novel alludes to the Treaty of Aigun (1858).

The Russian landowner Boris Pawlowitsch Raiski, who had lived carefree and carefree in St. Petersburg for ten years, was orphaned at an early age and was raised by the 50-year-old "aunt" Tatiana Markovna Bereshkowa on the Malinovka estate, inherited from her parents, initially served as an officer in a guard regiment then gave up civil service as college secretary. The unlucky person does not get anywhere in the Neva metropolis as a painter and writer. Raiski, already over thirty years ago, had lost his lover Natascha, a shy, noble, but colorless, terminally ill nature, and is now separating from his beautiful lover, the 25-year-old vain, cold widow Sofja Nikolaevna Belovodova. Raiski goes to his country estate; Located directly on a steep bank of the Volga. Most of all he would like to release his serfs. In the course of the plot, he unselfishly gives away parts of his property. Raiski, who thinks he is an artist, does not want to take on any responsibility or administrative work from "Auntie" while searching for his life's work. The estate is managed responsibly and traditionally by the aunt, a philanthropic, resolute woman who remained unmarried. The domineering aunt, incidentally, disciplined Raiski's orphaned cousins ​​Wera and Marfa at times rather adamantly. Wera has avoided the visitor Raiski; has sought out a “soul mate”, the wife of a priest, on the other side of the flat bank of the river for a long time. Both women were raised in the same boarding school. The painter Raiski approaches his busty, naive cousin Marfa, who is always present on his estate; portrays the plump, somewhat restricted girl with the white complexion. The simple Marfa would like to be the administrator; follow in “auntie's” footsteps. But the girl finds something better; becomes the bride of the young landowner Nikolai Andrejitsch Wikentjew from the village of Kolchino, also on the other side of the Volga.

When the little defiant Wera finally returns home, Raiski makes an unsuccessful approach to the well-read 23-year-old lady. Why is Wera, the pale beauty with the sharp-looking black eyes, fleeing from her cousin? Jealous and envious, Raiski desperately searches for the unknown rival; want to leave. But Wera storms the cousin, he should stay and save her from the disaster. After months of unsuccessful research, Raiski discovers the secret. It has to do with night gun shots that penetrate Raiski's ear from the nearby gorge that gave the same title. The intrepid pedestrian reaches the Volgaufer in the shortest possible way via that enchanted, eerie place that the superstitious farmers avoid. The path leads in the forest thicket of the gorge past the burial mound of a wife murderer and a dilapidated pavilion. The nearby Volga is unsafe. Rogues, escaped convicts and raftsmen are up to mischief. The 27-year-old Mark Ivanytsch Wolochow - the free spirit who occasionally rummages through Auntie's orchard as an apple thief - calls his lover Wera to the “Victory Festival of Love” with the rifle shots mentioned. more precisely, to the misstep . Marriage is out of the question for the young man. The nihilist Mark, a humorous officer of the fifteenth class, to whom nothing is sacred, was banished from St. Petersburg to the provincial capital neighboring the village of Malinowka and is under police supervision. Ultimately, the lovers express disrespect for their lover Raiski, who has had his teenage years. Wera calls the cousin her “teacher in matters of passion”, but he is actually nothing more than a “generous friend” and “knight”. The irascible, cynical Mark, this tramp, even despises the "gray-haired philosopher" Raiski. Gratitude is an absolute foreign word for the malicious Mark. Raiski had previously generously supported his friend, the “robber” and “enemy of the government” Mark, fed the ragged starving lover and even undertook less serious crimes by the exile. Modesty is another foreign word for the scornful Mark. He stands, he affirms, representative of the “new, coming power” and sees himself as modern Pugachev or Stenka Razin . After all, he calls the aunty "a very splendid old woman".

Wera, in a "state of moral dejection", thinks about it and goes to himself. The result: she can only confide in her cousin what happened between her and Mark in the past year. Wera actually wants to confess all of this to “Auntie”, but she lacks the strength. So Raiski has to serve and should make “Auntie” aware of Wera's mistakes. The reader is only hinted at the story that took place in detail between Mark and Wera, and Raiski for his part lacks the strength to inform his aunt. But besides Raiski, Wera has another admirer - the 38-year-old honest, honest forest owner Ivan Ivanovich Tuschin. The forester, as he is called by his friends, manages - also on the other side of the Volga - together with his farmers' cooperative and a German forester, like an idiosyncratic Robert Owen , successfully managing extensive forests - located around his Dymok forest estate. In any case, Wera assures the forester in private that everything is over between Mark and her. When Mark wants to meet again with Wera in the gorge in the pavilion and is ready for the comedy called the wedding, Raiski finds the courage to verbally pass on Wera's confession to the auntie and asks the tired lady for help. The auntie doesn't want to anymore.

Finally, the aunt turns back to her problem child Wera and confesses that she committed the same sin forty-five years ago with her friend of the same age, the landowner Tit Nikonytsch Watutin from the neighborhood. When the aunty has recovered from her confession and wants to go down into the pavilion instead of Wera, Wera steps in and sends Tuschin forward after she has made it clear that she is solely to blame, does not want to complain to Mark, does not want to accuse him Wish evil. Wera admires Tuschin, who has faithfully adored her for years: how he loves her! Mark and Tuschin meet near the burial mound, but the dilapidated pavilion cannot be found. The auntie had her peasants tear it down and take the wood away. In the conversation, which Tuschin can finally steer in a calm direction through reason, Mark refrains from his intention to marry and wants to leave soon - also because he has been allowed by the authorities.

Marfa marries her Nikolai Wikentjew. For reasons of age, the aunty retires to her Nowosselowo estate. Tuschin takes over the administration of Malinovka.

Raiski is writing a novel. In almost every situation in life the scribe analyzes a person primarily with regard to their suitability for his prose. The sentimental Raiski describes himself as the “pitiful slave” of Wera's beauty. Mark had badly predicted that Raiski would never finish the novel. Raisky leaves Russia and is dedicated to Rome of sculpture . Before that, when he said goodbye in Malinovka, he promised Tuschin that if this Wera married he would come and act as bride and groom. Tuschin's answer: That would be desirable, but "someone else must also want it."

Tit Nikonych Watutin

A landowner, “the last witness of a bygone era”, is selected from the supporting characters of the novel, who - scattered across the extensive text corpus - is named once with Tit Nikonytsch and other times with Watutin. This “worn-out old gentleman” had bravely served as an officer in the army at a young age and over the years acquired an incomplete education from books of political and scientific content. At a young age, older people said, he and the lively, pretty, slim, slightly affected Tatyana Markovna Bereshkova fell in love with each other. Both were not married because the parents had chosen unacceptable spouses.

Watutin treats his nearly three hundred serfs indulgently. He treats the governor, friends and strangers politely. This “born gentleman” does not take the most harmless confidentiality from a lady. Watutin's appearance at parties is simple, fresh, sparkling clean, and ironed out.

Self-testimony

In a letter from 1870, Goncharov refers to the harsh criticism from the previous year mentioned below: He had represented twenty years of this novel, which included the struggle of the old against the new, using the examples of people he knew and their stories. He wrote in the studbook of all the critics who wanted to resent him that he had written his own opinion of those struggles and was sticking to it - despite the fear of the critics and despite the loss of confidence in those writers.

role models

Representatives of Russian literary studies assume the following “prototypes” for some of the protagonists:

Protagonist possible role model
Raiski Ivan Goncharov or Vasily Botkin and Fyodor Tjuttschew
Wera Ekaterina Maikova
Tatiana Markovna Bereshkova Avdotja Matvejewna Goncharova (1785-1851, Russian Авдотья Матвеевна Гончарова) = the mother of Goncharov
Marfa Poor Lisa

Adaptations

theatre

Film adaptations

reception

What was handed down by contemporaries in the year of publication:

  • Saltykov-Shchedrin disguised as anonymous in the article “Ulitschnaja filosofija” in the June issue of the Otetschestvennye Sapiski : Goncharov throw the stone at the new people who are merely looking for new paths.
  • Nikolai Wassiljewitsch Schelgunow in the article Talantliwaja bestalannost in the August issue of the Delo magazine : The raising of an anachronistic topic, which Turgenev has long plowed deeply, is questionable.
  • Alexander Michailowitsch Skabitschewski accuses Goncharov in the article Staraya pravda in the October issue of the Otetschestvennye Sapiski completely wrong interpretation of the elementary laws of human creativity .
  • In 1869 the readership of Westnik Jewropy was waiting for a reply to the above three allegations. The editor had sent Yevgeny Utin to his distant relative. Utin had avoided any criticism of Goncharov and instead discussed the representatives of Russian old-school literature.

Recent judgments

  • Lokys wrote in 1965: As a retiree, dismissed from civil service in 1867 with a high level of civil servant, Goncharov had finally found time for the final revision of the great novel The Gorge . After the publication of the text and the negative statements by prominent Russian writers published in a few samples in the year of publication, the author, who still had 21 years of life, did not publish any further prose - with the exception of memoirs. What had upset the critics? Answer: The clearly recognizable change of Goncharov "from moderate liberal to conservative under the impression of the peasant uprisings and the growing revolutionary ferment among the young intelligentsia": Wera - looking inside the novel, next to Tatiana Markovna Bereshkova the actual protagonist of the novel - turns away the old, represented by the aunt, and the new, represented by Mark, clairvoyantly too. Then she returns, disgusted by Mark's nihilism, disappointed in the circle of her aunt, who still has serfs.

literature

Spends used

  • Ivan Alexandrowitsch Goncharov: The Gorge. Novel. First volume. Revised translation from Russian by August Scholz . 468 pages. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig 1981 (1st edition)
  • Ivan Alexandrowitsch Goncharov: The Gorge. Novel. Second volume. Revised translation from Russian by August Scholz. 544 pages. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig 1981 (1st edition)

Secondary literature

  • IA Goncharov: An everyday story . Novel. From the Russian by Ruth Fritze-Hanschmann. With an afterword by Dietrich Lokys. 494 pages. Dieterich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1965 (1st edition)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Biobibliografitscheskaja sprawka - Биобиблиографическая справка, bibliography
  2. ↑ Edition used, Vol. 2, p. 468, 1st Zvu and p. 469, 13th Zvu
  3. ↑ Edition used, second volume, pp. 21, 20. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, Vol. 2, p. 537, 6. Zvo
  5. ↑ Russian. The gorge. Ratings and reviews , last section.
  6. ↑ Russian. The gorge. Possible role models for some protagonists
  7. ↑ Russian ru: Боткин, Василий Петрович
  8. ↑ Russian ru: Майкова, Екатерина Павловна
  9. ↑ Russian ru: Театр Корша
  10. ↑ Russian ru: Шапиро, Адольф Яковлевич
  11. ↑ Russian ru: Гославская, Софья Евгеньевна
  12. ↑ Russian ru: Венгеров, Владимир Яковлевич
  13. ↑ Russian. The gorge. Ratings and reviews
  14. ↑ Russian Уличная философия - for example: Philosophy out of the gutter
  15. ↑ Russian ru: Шелгунов, Николай Васильевич
  16. ↑ Russian Талантливая бесталанность - about: talented mediocrity
  17. ↑ Russian ru: Дело (журнал XIX века) - The work
  18. ↑ Russian ru: Скабичевский, Александр Михайлович
  19. ↑ Russian Старая правда - The old truth (allusion to The New Truth , a term used by Russian nihilists (Edition used, Vol. 2, p. 393 below))
  20. ↑ Russian ru: Утин, ​​Евгений Исаакович
  21. ↑ Lokys in the epilogue of Eine everyday Geschichte , p. 472, 10th line vu to p. 474, 9th line vo