The soul mass

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Anton Chekhov

The Soul Mass , also Die Totenmesse ( Russian Панихида , Panichida), is a little humoresque by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which was published on February 15, 1886 in the St. Petersburg newspaper Novoje wremja .

J. Treumann's translation was published by Reclam in Leipzig in 1897 . Other translations: 1891 into Serbo-Croatian ( Помен ), 1892 into Finnish ( Sielumessu ), 1897 into Romanian ( Parastasul ) and 1903 into Hungarian ( A gyászmise ).

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After the midday service in the Church of Our Lady of Odigitrijew (Russian Одигитрия - Odigitrija) in the village of Verkhniye Saprudy (Russian Верхниe Запруды), the faithful flock outside, but the shopkeeper Andrei Andreiich stays. He handed out a piece of paper in the service during the offertory . On it is written: "For the eternal rest of the wooer Marija, the servant of God." His daughter Marija, called Mascha, has died and the shopkeeper asks to read a soul mass for her .

Father Grigori is angry and impatiently calls the shopkeeper to him. The clergyman is offended by the word wooer . The shopkeeper blushes and stutters to justify the fact that he was thinking of Saint Mary of Egypt . It had been one too. And you have forgiven God in spite of all this.

Nonsense, replies Father Grigori and corrects: “Your daughter was a well-known actress. Even the newspapers have written about their end. ”At the order of the clergyman, the shopkeeper has to pay. The latter must bow to the ground ten times. Now Father Grigori and God forgive. Nothing stands in the way of the fair for Mascha.

During the subsequent soul mass, apart from the shopkeeper, only the sexton , a midwife and her one-armed son are present. It is true that the sexton sings badly, but the shopkeeper gradually becomes sad. He thinks back to the time when he was still a lackey in the rule of Verkhnye Saprudy, when he instructed Masha, the graceful creature with the curly hair, in biblical history and the rules of the church . Basically, he had taken far too little time for Mascha. When Andrei Andrejitsch bought the general store and Mascha was allowed to move to Moscow with the gentlemen , it had just as little effect on him as the time when his daughter had visited him in the village three years before her death. Her admission “I am an actress!” Seemed to him to be the height of cynicism at the time and he had also shown no sympathy for Mascha's flaring love for her closer home. In connection with the offering of incense towards the end of the soul mass, Anton Chekhov finds words for the grocer's grief: “The wisps of smoke, which look like the curls of a child, turn in circles ... and it is as if they rise above the pain and the pain Sorrows that fill the poor soul. "

Self-testimony

  • The text marks a turning point. In 1886 Dmitri Grigorowitsch wrote a letter to the author after reading it. In it, Grigorowitsch had recommended to keep away from such humores in the future and instead to keep such impressions for a more demanding work. Anton Chekhov was said to have been “struck like lightning” by the content of the letter and incited serious work as a writer.

German-language editions

Used edition

  • The soul mass , p. 42-48 in Gerhard Dick (ed.) And Wolf Düwel (ed.): Anton Chekhov: The Swedish match . Short stories and early narratives. German by Wolf Düwel. 668 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1965 (1st edition)

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian entry at fantlab.ru
  2. ↑ Russian references to translations
  3. ↑ Russian Панихида , see also engl. Memorial service (Orthodox)
  4. ↑ Boyd, pp. 146-164

Remarks

  1. ↑ At the request of the newspaper editors, the author had the signet “An. Chekhov “(Russian Ан. Чехов) for this his debut in the Novoje Vremja agreed. Afterwards he is said to have regretted that he had given up his pseudonym A. Chechonte (Russian А. Чехонте) too quickly. Because Anton Chekhov had always reserved the real name for possible publications in reputable medical journals (Russian remarks on The Soul Mass at chehov.niv.ru, 5th paragraph vu).
  2. ↑ It is not immediately clear to the reader why the shopkeeper, as a former lackey, despises the profession of actress so much. Perhaps "because the theater - the main place of acting - was strictly outlawed by the church" (see actors ).