The steppe (Chekhov)

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The Steppe ( Russian Степь. Исто́рия одно́й пое́здки , Step. Istorija odnoi pojesdki) is a short story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , written in the winter of 1888 and published in the March 1888 issue of the Russian magazine Sewerny Westnik in Saint Petersburg .

The text describes a journey and can be read as a piece of autobiography. In the spring of 1887 the revised and sick author undertook a trip along the Donets to relatives in the area around his birthplace Taganrog on the Azov Sea .

Anton Chekhov

overview

In Chekhov's Russia towards the end of the 19th century, there were masters and servants. The latter are the carters in the story and the former will one day include the young protagonist Yegoruschka.

Ivan Ivanytsch Kuzmichev, a merchant with heart and soul, trades in wool. Looking for his wealthy Russian business partner Semyon Alexandrytsch Varlamow, he travels in a calash across the steppe on the Donets in July . Kuzmichev has taken his nephew Georgi - called Yegorushka in the text - on the trip, because the boy is supposed to attend high school near the port, which is the destination of the trip. Egorushka's mother, the widow Olga Ivanovna, lives on a pension. She had asked her brother Ivan Ivanych to have her only child at school. The childless merchant represents the father of the boy.

In the fourth of the eight chapters Kusmitschow meets his wagon train, filled with wool bales . The merchant wants the nephew to take the route directly to the destination. So Jegoruschka needs from Uncle separate and in convoy on the chariot of the old coachman Pantelei from Tim rise. Finally, uncle and nephew meet again at their destination. Kuzmichev has sold his goods at a profit and is accommodating the nephew near the high school.

action

1.2

The 20-year-old coachman Deniska will soon play with Jegoruschka like a child when his carriage stops in the steppe.

3,4,5

In the rest yard of the Jew Moissei Moissejitsch, the travelers are punished with contempt by his brother Solomon. Solomon burned his paternal inheritance - six thousand rubles - in the oven. The search for the mighty Varlamov turns out to be difficult. Only the manager Grigori Yegorych passed the rest area. Varlamov owns "a few tens of thousands of Dessiatin lands, around a hundred thousand sheep and a lot of money".

The train to which Yegoruschka had to change at his uncle's bidding consisted of twenty wagons . A driver comes on three loads. Jegoruschka thinks that the wagoner Nikola Dymow must be an evil person, just because he killed a snake. The servant Yemeljan from Lugansk , a great singer, lost his voice after bathing in Donets. The men in the entourage - Kirjucha, Wassja, Stjopka, Jemeljan, Pantelei and Dymow - all have wonderful pasts, but live in an unpleasant present. Yegoruschka learns from them, "Russian people love to remember, they don't love to live."

6.7.8

On the way to the Armenian Vorwerk , the entourage meets the imperious Varlamov. Pantelei is submissive. The journey continues. Jegoruschka feels left alone by his uncle, especially during a thunderstorm. Ill, probably caught cold during the thunderstorm, the boy meets his uncle at the port of destination.

shape

The text is not a mere travel description, but lives from the poetic descriptions of nature on the journey through the summer steppe. Anton Chekhov writes: “Only on the sea can one talk about the unfathomable depth and boundlessness of the sky and also in the steppe at night when the moon is shining. This sky is terrible, it is beautiful and tender, it looks longingly down and lures up to itself ... "Or when someone sleeps next to a grave:" A lonely grave always has something sad and dreamy and to a great extent poetic ... In a sense, one hears how it is silent, and in this silence one feels the presence of the soul of the unknown who lies under the cross. "

A second poetic element are the tales of the old coachman Pantelei during the nightly rest of the convoy in the steppe. The old man has been through a lot. Wife and children were burned. There is no question of that. Pantelei prefers to tell “made up” horror stories in which rich merchants are assassinated by robbers with “long knives” in the steppe at night. The social critic Anton Chekhov puts the excuse in the mouth of one of the murderers: "... we only do it out of necessity". Jegoruschka believes the storyteller's word for it. On top of that. The almost 30-year-old straw widower Konstantin Swonyk from nearby Rovno appears at the night campfire of the coachmen in the entourage. After the tall little Russian , "a lover ..., happy to the point of sadness", has told travelers about his young wife long enough, all listeners become thoughtful, sad and then wistful. Another narrator, important for Chekhov's writing, is sitting in Kuzmichev's carriage. This is the 75-year-old clergy father Christofor Siriski - “a soft, careless person who likes to laugh”. The stories from his life are addressed to Jegoruschka and want to warn: Graduating from high school and then studying does not have to lead to the right path in life. The decision of my uncle Ivan Ivanytsch fits well: his nephew has to get out of the carriage and over to the train. There on the wagon train through the steppe he should get to know and endure the rough customs of the coachmen.

reception

Film adaptations

  • 1962, Italy, La steppa by Alberto Lattuada with Daniele Spallone as Jegoruschka and Pavle Vuisic as his uncle Iwan Iwanytsch Kuzmichev. The film was released in West German cinemas on May 14, 1963 .
  • 1978, Soviet Union , The Steppe , feature film by Sergei Bondarchuk with Oleg Kuznetsov (Russian Олег Кузнецов) as Yegorushka and Vladimir Alexejewitsch Sedov as his uncle Ivan Ivanytsch.
  • 1982, France, La steppe , TV movie by Jean-Jacques Goron with Mathieu Gain as Jegoruschka and Raymond Jourdan as his uncle Ivan Ivanytsch.

German-language editions

  • The steppe. Stories 1887–1888. Translated from the Russian by Gerhard Dick. Edited by Peter Urban . 418 pages, Diogenes, Zurich 1994 (Licensor: Winkler, Munich). ISBN 3-257-20263-6 .

Used edition

  • The steppe. Description of a trip. Translated from the Russian by Johannes von Guenther . 158 pages. Reclam, Leipzig 1958 (1st edition, based on an edition by the Slowo publishing company from 1921), without ISBN

Secondary literature

  • Peter Urban (Ed.): About Čechov . 487 pages. Diogenes, Zurich 1988 (Diogenes-Taschenbuch 21244). ISBN 3-257-21244-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 91, 16. Zvo
  2. ↑ Russian Хомутовская степь , see also photos
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 60, 6. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 97, 8. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 105, 12. Zvu
  6. ↑ Urban anno 1988, p. 224, 6. Zvo
  7. ↑ engl. Pavle Vuisic
  8. ↑ Entry in the IMDb
  9. ↑ Russian Степь (фильм)
  10. ↑ Russian Седов, Владимир Алексеевич
  11. ↑ The steppe in the IMDb
  12. ^ French Jean-Jacques Goron
  13. ^ French Raymond Jourdan
  14. ↑ Entry in the IMDb
  15. ↑ Note on the seat of the Berlin Slowo publishing house in 1920
  16. ↑ engl. Constance Garnett , 1919

annotation

  1. ↑ Jegoruschka - diminutive of Jegor (used edition, p. 61, 3rd Zvu).