Hold on until morning!

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Wassil Bykau in 1944

Hold on until morning! ( Belarusian Дажыць да світання, Russian Дожить до рассвета ) is a novella by the Belarusian writer Wassil Bykau , which was written in 1972 and translated into Russian by the author a year later . The text was printed in 1973 in issue 24 of the Roman newspaper, which appears twice a month in Moscow .

In 1974 Wassil Bykau received for his two novels The Obelisk and Hang Out Until Morning! the State Prize of the USSR . Viktor Fjodorowitsch Sokolow and Michail Iwanowitsch Jerschow created the film of the same name in 1975 with Alexander Michailow as lieutenant Igor Iwanowski and Alexei Goryachev as soldier Pyotr Piwawarou

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The 22-year-old lieutenant Igor Iwanowski, who grew up as the son of a veterinarian in Kublitschi on the Polish border, graduated from military school, is allowed to drive a train and has been ordered to Grodno on business . On the ride there, he forgets his good education and speaks in Baranovichi , the young Miss Grodno Janinka on. You get closer. The pretty girl does it, forgetting the good nursery, like the lieutenant. Both spend the night of June 22, 1941 together in a Grodno park above the peacefully flowing Memel . From now on Igor cannot imagine a life without Janinka. The following morning, German planes dropped bombs on Grodno - the German attack on the Soviet Union began .

Ivanovsky's regiment is wiped out in a night battle near Krupzy. With twelve men, the lieutenant can slip out of a cauldron and wanders through Belarus in search of his unit . Ivanovsky fights with Captain Wolach and his soldiers in the Belarusian forests as a partisan. The captain died in the late autumn of 1941 while scouting a German replenishment camp. Ivanovsky makes his way to the Red Army . He wants to overcome the front at night and blow up the camp sixty kilometers away on the territory of Belarus occupied by the Germans. In the bar of the front portion, in which the lieutenant reported that he is not listened to. He was told that he had to go to Dolzewo first. He will be checked there at the assembly point of those who were previously encircled. Ivanovsky can escape from him and advance to the commanding general. The general sends the lieutenant out with ten men, as well as incendiary bottles and explosives. During the night when the front line broke through in snow and cold, the soldier Shaludsjak caught fire and was shot by the enemy. Ivanovsky hides a graze wound on the hip from the subordinates. Of the eleven men, seven get through. The supply warehouse has since been relocated by the Germans. Ivanovsky sent his people back with a seriously wounded man on November 29, 1941 and went to look for the missing camp with the soldier Pyotr Piwawarou, who came from Porchow . In a Belarusian village, Ivanovsky, having become careless, runs into Germans and is seriously wounded. With the help of Piwawarou, he finds shelter on the outskirts of the next village with a lung wound. The lieutenant suspects a German staff in the first of the two villages and sends Piwawarou as a scout. When the soldier stays away too long, Iwanowski drags himself back at night, following Piwawarou's trail in the snow, and finds the dead man's body. The lieutenant sent Piwawarou to his death. With the last of his strength, Ivanovsky reached the driveway, remained lying in a ruts and wanted to “only hold out until morning” until the first vehicle with Germans arrived. Two Germans approach on a horse-drawn vehicle and stop. One of them dismounts and shoots the dying man. When the shooter wants to look, Ivanovsky unlocks the safety of the last hand grenade and pulls the enemy with him to death.

reception

In May 1975 Lola Debüser took a brief look at the philosophical basis of this novella. The dying lieutenant questions the meaning of life and leaves this world with one conviction: he could not have acted otherwise; had to give up his life.

German-language editions

  • Hold on until morning! From the Russian by Ruprecht Willnow . P. 267-427 in Wassil Bykau: Novellen. Volume 2. With an afterword by Lola Debüser. Publishing house Volk und Welt. Berlin 1976 (1st edition, edition used)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian: Роман-газета
  2. ↑ Russian: Виктор Фёдорович Соколов
  3. ↑ Russian: Михаил Иванович Ершов
  4. ↑ Russian Алексей Горячев, geb. March 28, 1956 in Moscow
  5. ↑ Entry at kino-teatr.ru
  6. ↑ English: Entry IMDb
  7. ↑ Russian: Кубличи (агрогородок)
  8. ↑ Belarusian: Крупцы
  9. ↑ Russian: Дольцево
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 421, 1. Zvu
  11. ↑ Debüser in the afterword of the edition used, p. 598