Three deaths

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Three Deaths ( Russian Три смерти , Tri smerti ), also The Three Deaths , is a short story by Lev Tolstoy , which was written in January 1858 and published a year later in the Biblioteka dlja tschtenija .

The deaths of three living beings are discussed. The consumptive landlady from Schirkino, the sick coachman Uncle Fyodor and a young tree have to die.

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The landlady travels from Russia to Italy believing that there in the sunny south she will get well. The doctor makes it clear to the landlord Vasily Dmitritsch who is accompanying her that his wife's lungs are "gone" and that all she needs is a confessor. Before the inevitable death, the landlady does not accept her death, but reluctantly reproaches the landlord: the doctor is out of place. A healer could certainly have helped her.

Tolstoy now takes Serjoga, the landlady's young coachman, as a link to the other deaths:

In the next break , the terminally ill coachman Uncle Fyodor lies coughing forever on the stove, accepts his fate and dies. Before that, his nephew, the coachman Serjoga, asks him for the new boots. The dying man hands them over to the young man on one condition: Serjoga should buy his uncle a tombstone. The boy promises and puts on the new boots.

Time flies. Serjoga doesn't buy a tombstone. He's always finding an excuse. When he made the promise to the dying man, a witness had been present. It is hard on him. After all, Serjoga can't help it. A cross made from a young ash tree is needed. If the reader thinks that Uncle Fjodor’s relentless death cannot be surpassed in unpretentiousness, he is wrong. One early morning the young ash falls without complaint under Serjoga's strong ax blows in the forest.

German-language editions

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adopted from Russian. Three deaths
  2. ↑ Russian Ширкино
  3. ↑ engl. Nathan Haskell Dole
  4. ↑ Russian Владимир Яковлевич Линков, entry at istina.msu.ru in 2016