The fateful eggs

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Mikhail Bulgakov around 1935

The fateful eggs , also The cursed eggs , The fateful ( Russian Роковые яйца , Rokowyje jaiza ), is a fantastic grotesque by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov , which - written in Moscow - appeared in 1925 in issue 6 of the Nedra . The Moscow publishing cooperative of the same name also published the text in book form in 1925 as part of the Teufeliaden collection .

content

From the perspective of the publication year 1925, the utopian plot runs in the future; more precisely from April 16, 1928 to spring 1929 in the Soviet Union between Moscow and Smolensk .

The 58-year-old zoologist Professor Vladimir Ipatyevich Persikov is mothered by his housekeeper Marja in Moscow. In 1919 three of their five rooms were taken away from them. That bad year, Marja had to heat with gilded chairs in winter. In 1922 Pankrat replaced the deceased institute guard. In 1923 Persikov lectured again. In 1925 he let dozens of students rattle off again. At the beginning of June of the same year the professor found the ray of life, also thanks to a shipment of German precision lenses ordered by the People's Commissariat for Popular Education. Irradiation of frog eggs worked wonders. The Izvestia is curious questions to incredibly gigantic organisms. What an opportunity to breed animals! The professor weighs it down. The GPU calls.

A terrible chicken disease plagues Russia. Professor Persikov - he is not an ornithologist - becomes a member of the Extraordinary Commission for the Fight Against Chicken Plague against his will . When this was renamed the Extraordinary Commission for the Revitalization and Raising of Chicken Breeding in the Republic , Alexander Semjonowitsch Schreck (in the Russian original Rokk ), the new head of the Red Ray pattern , appeared in August 1928 and left all three large housings to generate the red ray transport his sovkhos to Konzowka in the Smolensk region. There he irradiates a shipment of eggs from Germany in the housings.

When Schreck wants to go swimming with his wife Manja, the latter is devoured by a ten-meter-long snake, thick as a person. Two GPU agents, sent out to fight the monster, are attacked and killed in Konzowka from giant lizards and crocodiles never seen there. An ostrich appears in the Smolensk area .

Professor Persikow is delighted with a shipment of eggs from Germany. When his assistant, Privatdozent Ivanov, shows the extra sheet with the photos from Konzowka, the professor recognizes a water boa . In time it dawns. The two zoologists realize that Schreck raised snakes, crocodiles and ostriches instead of chickens. The egg shipments from Germany were swapped.

The reptiles are advancing towards Moscow from the direction of Smolensk. Persikov is killed by the mob in his institute. On the night of August 20, 1928, minus 18 ° C freezes the reptiles and their eggs.

In the spring of 1929 the events of last summer were forgotten in Moscow. Ivanov wants to create the red beam again. He doesn't succeed, evidently because he's not a Persikov.

Adaptations

theatre

  • Moscow
    • 1989 Sfera
    • 1990 Moscow Dramaturgical Yermolova Theater

Film adaptations

  • Italy
  • Russia
    • TV film by Pawel Romanowitsch Resnikow
    • 1992 Filming 1992 on YouTube (90 min, Russian)
    • 1995 film version in 1995 on YouTube (117 min Russian)
    • 2003 Choroscho sabytoje staroje

Self-testimony

  • Diary of October 18, 1924: "The end is not good, I wrote it in a hurry."

reception

  • On March 31, 1925, Gorky wrote to Michail Slonimski that he liked the text very much, but that it ended badly. In 1925, Gorky felt that General Winter, who stopped Napoleon in 1812 , was an inappropriate means of combating the plague of snakes. The snake invasion suggests a parallel to Faust's journey into hell .
  • The grotesque is a parody of Ilja Ehrenburg's 1923 novel Trust DE The History of the Destruction of Europe.
  • Ralf Schröder wrote in March 1994 that the zoology professor Persikow was a genius - to speak with Gorky - a child of the sun . The professor has his concerns. He does not want to release the red beam for use yet. But the one-day revolutionary Schreck, in the wrong post in the “Red Ray” state farm, snatched the discovery out of his hand and the catastrophe could hardly be stopped. Persikov must, however, submit to the Politburo . The Russian Faust Prof. Persikow would find a red ray of hellish origin, because the phenomenon is invisible in daylight. Accordingly, Persikov's assistant Ivanov to Bulgakov is the Mephisto . Ralf Schröder wants to recognize Lenin in Persikov and Trotsky in Ivanov . Ivanov-Trotsky tried in vain to renew the Soviet Union after Lenin-Persikov's death. The text is meant as a warning utopia. It deals with the question: What foreign intervention could the Soviet Union send on the next voyage to hell after 1917 ?
  • The idea that Lenin could have been the model for the figure of Prof. Persikov in Bulgakov also appears in Boris Sokolov's book Michail Bulgakow - Secrets of Creativity . However, Sokolov adds the model of Alexander Gurwitsch to Lenin .

German-language editions

  • Master tales. Translated from the Russian by Aggy Jais ( The Doom. House No. 13. The Devil's Spook . Chichikov's Adventure ). Goldmann, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-442-07030-9
  • The cursed eggs. Novel. Translated from Russian, commented on and with an afterword by Alexander Nitzberg . Verlag Galiani, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86971-092-1

Output used:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Note on literary history in the afterword of the edition used, p. 335, 15. Zvo
  2. ↑ March 6, 2006, Antonia Häfner in Gertrud Maria Rösch's seminar, University of Heidelberg : Hundeherz , p. 10
  3. ↑ Russian Недра - the lap
  4. ↑ Russian Дьяволиада - Djawolijada
  5. ↑ Russian Сфера
  6. ↑ Russian Московский драматический театр имени М. Н. Ермоловой
  7. ↑ Ital. Uova fatali
  8. ↑ Russian Павел Романович Резников
  9. ↑ Russian TV film 4th paragraph
  10. ↑ Russian Хорошо забытое старое
  11. ↑ Bulgakow, quoted by Ralf Schröder in the literary historical note in the afterword of the edition used, p. 338, 1. Zvo
  12. ↑ Note on literary history in the afterword of the edition used, p. 337 below
  13. ^ Note on literary history in the afterword of the edition used, p. 352 below
  14. ↑ Note on literary history in the afterword of the edition used, p. 340 middle
  15. ↑ Note on literary history in the afterword of the edition used, pp. 313–352
  16. ↑ Faust says: "There are twitching red rays"
  17. ↑ Russian Соколов Б. В. Михаил Булгаков: загадки творчества. М .: Вагриус, 2008. ISBN 978-5-9697-0626-2
  18. ↑ Russian Роковые яйца