The whimsical one

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Vladimir Korolenko

Die Wunderliche , also called The Strange Miss ( Russian Чудная , Tschudnaja ), is a short story by the Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko , which was written in March 1880 in the Vyshny Volotschok transit prison and in 1905 in the September issue of the Russkoye Bogatstvo magazine in Saint Petersburg .

The young guard Gavrilov's love for a prisoner-girl remains unrequited. However, Korolenko offers a conciliatory ending to his story.

Origin and edition

Towards the end of 1879, Korolenko and the 20-year-old terrorist Ewelina Lyudwigowna Ulanowskaja met in exile in the village of Berezovsky Pochinki in the Glazov district - in the Vyatka governorate . Korolenko used a chapter from the odyssey of the student and medical assistant Ewelina in his narrative.

Alexandra Nikitichna Annenskaya smuggled Korolenko's text out of Vyshny Volochok prison in 1880. Uspenski , who liked the story, arranged for its illegal publication. Various illegal prints followed - also abroad - for example in Issaak Gurwitsch's New York Progress in 1892 and in London in 1893. Legal publication - that is, to overcome Russian censorship - did not come about until half a year after St. Petersburg's Bloody Sunday .

content

In 1874, the young farmer Stepan Petrovich Gavrilow joined a squadron as a recruit . As an auxiliary in an escort unit, he has to bring “a political woman”, a blond, red-cheeked young lady from the Morozov boyar family, from the fortress to a distant, unnamed Russian district town. The young lady looks so pale the whole trip and seems to Gavrilov like a child. The young lady cries out when the drunken sergeant Ivanov - Morowsov's immediate superior during the "trip" - tries to search her before setting off. A guard finds out that the young lady is not carrying anything.

Yaroslavl is reached.

On the way on, Gavrilov starts a conversation with the young lady - asks whether she has relatives or acquaintances in that district town, i.e. at the destination of the trip. The young lady denied and added that she would certainly meet other exiles and comrades there. Shortly before the destination, Gavrilov lays the young woman's head on his arm during a bumpy ride. She rejects him: “Away! Don't touch me! ”Then the young lady gives in to care; her face no longer looks angry.

The young lady coughs, spits blood; is terminally ill.

When Gavrilov once again had to accompany an exile to that district town, he asked about the young lady. After her arrival, the girl went straight to the apartment of an exile she knew and was never seen again. Gavrilov goes there. Again he starts a conversation and is angrily rejected by the young lady. “Am I your enemy?” He wonders. The young lady said yes and Gavrilov said: “… her face was so lovely that you couldn't get enough of it.” Gavrilov suspects that the young lady will soon die and asks her forgiveness. The young lady replied that she would soon die, but that she would never forgive.

Later, shortly before the young lady died, she did forgive the guard Gavrilov. The girl's death affects Gavrilov so closely that he cannot eat for days. He gets moody. Finally he meets the young woman's mother.

Gavrilov wants to become a non-commissioned officer. When he goes to the Eskadron boss about the matter, this plan is thwarted. Because twice - once on the road with a colonel in Kostroma and the other time with the district police chief in the place of exile - he had campaigned for the young lady. Apparently this advocacy had been reported.

Gavrilov concludes his story: "... I have never again been able to forget this angry lady, and even today it is so that sometimes she stands before my eyes quite vividly."

German-language editions

Used edition

  • The whimsical one. German by Eckehard Jäkel . Pp. 198–223 in Vladimir Korolenko: Makar's Dream and Other Stories. With an afterword by Herbert Krempien . 275 pages. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1980 (1st edition)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Улановская, Эвелина Людвиговна
  2. ↑ Russian Березовские Починки
  3. ↑ Russian Анненская, Александра Никитична
  4. ↑ Russian Гурвич, Исаак Аронович
  5. ↑ Publication by the publishing house Фонда вольной русской прессы, Foundation Free Russian Press without Korolenko's knowledge
  6. ↑ Russian Чудная
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 202, 19. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 208, 13. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 213, 19. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 218, 1. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 218, 5. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 223, 10th Zvu