The simulators
The Simulants ( Russian Симулянты , Simuljanty ) is a short story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared on June 29, 1885 in No. 26 of the St. Petersburg humorous weekly Oskolki . During the author's lifetime, the text was translated into Bulgarian, German, Polish, Serbo-Croatian and Czech. The German translation by E. Roth was brought to the book market by the Berlin-based Hugo Steinitz publishing house in 1903 as part of the Chekhov collection A Happy and Other Stories .
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The landlady Marfa Pechonkina despises conventional medicine. Every Tuesday the mistress receives sick farmers in the manor house in her village and heals them with the homeopathic medicine cabinet. The mistress already treated ten farmers on the Tuesday of which we are talking. When she tries to call in the eleventh, her elderly neighbor, the impoverished landowner Kuzma Kuzmich Samuchrishin, pushes forward. The man extensively praises the healing arts of Pechonkina. The self-proclaimed homeopath is delighted. With three grains of scrofulosum, given last Tuesday, she cured his rheumatism, which had been dragged on for eight years, in a very short time .
The happily cured complains of what use is health if the money for the seeds is lacking. The Pechonkina gives the neighbor oats. Samuchrischin seizes the opportunity and picks up boards from the neighbor for his leaky roof, a cow and a letter of recommendation for his daughter. The girl is supposed to attend an institute. Overwhelmed by so much benefit, the patient has to blow his nose with emotion. With the handkerchief, a piece of paper falls out of the malicious old man's pocket. After Samuchrishin's farewell, the Pechonkina looks familiar with the paper on the floor. She realizes it contains those three grains of remedies from last Tuesday.
Having grown suspicious, the landlady takes a critical look at her next patient. See there, each of their peasants asks for something; for arable land, firewood or for hunting rights in the manorial grove et cetera.
Adaptations
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Amateur play
- April 2015, Studio Theater Kawardak in Tambov : short film (14 min) on YouTube (Russian)
- State School No. 319 in Moscow : short film (9 min) on YouTube (Russian)
German-language editions
Output used:
- Gerhard Dick (Hrsg.), Wolf Düwel (Hrsg.): Anton Chekhov: Collected works in individual volumes : The simulants. P. 321–325 in: Gerhard Dick (Ed.): Anton Chekhov: From the rain to the eaves. Short stories. Translated from Russian by Ada Knipper and Gerhard Dick. With a foreword by Wolf Düwel. 630 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1964 (1st edition)
Web links
- The text
- Wikisource: Симулянты (Чехов) (Russian)
- online at Lib.ru (Russian)
- online in FEB (Russian)
- Chekhov Bibliography, Entry Stories No. 283 (Russian)
- Reference to first appearance in the Laboratory of Fantastics (Russian)