Three days in the country
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Three Days in the Country ( Russian Три дня в деревне , Tri dnja w derewne ) is a story by Lev Tolstoy that was written in 1909, completed in mid-January 1910 and published in the September issue of St. Petersburg's Westnik Jewropy that same year . In 1983 the text in Vol. 14 Powesti and Tales of the 22-volume Tolstoy edition was published by Verlag für Künstlerische Literatur in Moscow .
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Tolstoy reveals himself as the first-person narrator. He - as one of the haves - accuses the Russian government and prophesies: The next popular uprising will be just as much to blame for the rulers as the last revolution was to be caused by them. Tolstoy disapproves of the police attacks, senseless exiles, incarceration, convictions of forced labor and the daily executions. In Tolstoy's view, the people will take revenge for this.
It's not about poverty in Russian cities. Tolstoy speaks of the hundreds of thousands of unhappy, homeless vagrants who are not accommodated and fed for one night in the village by the landlord, priest, deacon or merchant, but only by the Russian peasant, who - mostly living with his family in cramped conditions - continues nothing but fulfilling his Christian duty. In addition, the Russian peasant is ruthlessly robbed of his property by tax collectors. Tolstoy goes through the hierarchy of tax collectors from bottom to top and finds no official in this row who feels guilty.
To come back to the tramps - they are not beggars, but young, healthy unemployed people or returnees from exile. Tolstoy usually gives such a beggar, who after a clarifying questioning is not at all, five kopecks. One of the more obtrusive tramps squeezes from Tolstoy twenty kopecks with the aside that he can hang himself for five kopecks.
Tolstoy points out the difference between the beggar and the new generation of tramps. In the past, the beggar saw someone in the giver who would have been concerned about his soul's salvation. On the other hand, the more recent tramp we are talking about regards the giver as a criminal who sucks the blood of the working population.
Tolstoy despises the well-being of the wealthy. At the end of the depressing text, the reader comes to the conclusion that Tolstoy, as a possessor, can describe the omnipresent misery in a memorable way, but can do almost nothing against it.
German-language editions
- Three days in the country. Translated from the Russian by Hermann Asemissen . Pp. 419–444 in: Eberhard Dieckmann (Ed.): Lew Tolstoi. Haji Murat. Late narratives . Vol. 13 by Eberhard Dieckmann (ed.), Gerhard Dudek (ed.): Lew Tolstoi. Collected works in twenty volumes . Rütten and Loening, Berlin 1986 (edition used)
Web links
- The text
- Wikisource Три дня в деревне (Толстой) (Russian)
- online at tolstoy-lit.ru (Russian)
- online at RVB.ru (Russian)
- Entry in the list of works Late Stories (1888–1910)
- Entry at fantlab.ru (Russian)
- Marietta Boiko : Commentary on the text (Russian)