Thirst (Trifonow)
Thirst ( Russian Утоление жажды , Utolenije schaschdy - literally: The quenching of thirst ) is a novel by the Soviet writer Yuri Trifonov , which was written between 1959 and 1962 and was published in 1963 in the April issue of the Moscow literary magazine Snamja . The text came out in German two years later in Berlin .
Bulat Mansurov Bogautdinowitsch filmed the novel in 1966 with Leonid Moissejewitsch Satanowski as a newspaper correspondent Pyotr Koryschew in the existing since 1926 Aschchabader Studio Turkmenfilm . Trifonov wrote the scenario.
History of origin
In the early 1950s, Trifonov wanted to write a real production novel. So in 1952 he had Nowy Mir magazine send him to Central Asia on the “ Stalin construction site” of the Turkmen main channel . In March 1953, almost half of the novel was in manuscript. When Trifonov wanted to go into the desert again, he was refused the trip. The work on this large communist construction site, based on an idea of Stalin, was stopped immediately after the dictator's death because of its inefficiency. The subject had become completely uninteresting overnight. In the mid-1950s, construction of a new route - the Karakum Canal - began in Turkmenistan . Trifonov continued to write based on his material.
Social novel
The text can be used as a contribution to the description of the state of the Soviet society after the XX. Congress that was held in Moscow in February 1956. The confessions of the first-person narrator, the independent newspaper correspondent Pyotr Koryschew, read in parts like an autobiography of Trifonov. Koryschew from Moscow is the son of an old communist who fell victim to the Stalinist purges, and was harassed by the Soviet authorities . Of course, 21st century readers need strong nerves. Construction workers and newspaper people talk to each other in the book with comrade, the population in Ashkhabad extensively celebrates the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution for days and actors mostly identify with the noble goals of Soviet communism. Trifonow describes the celebrations as a natural occurrence without any wink. However, the Stalinist personality cult is history. Already some bright minds no longer believe that “Stalin was the father and friend of all peoples”. This is worked out in several places in the text - packed in action - and makes you sit up and take notice. In addition to the directly lower action-oriented level, which is called the thirst of the Turkmens in the Karakum for water , the novel offers the wakeful reader a second, higher level, which is titled with a philosophical touch with "thirst ... for the restoration of justice".
overview
Turkestan in 1957/1958: The Karakum Canal is supposed to channel water from the Amu Darya westward through the lifeless silence of the Karakum towards Ashkhabad to the Caspian Sea . Trifonov describes the last year of the construction of the first section of the canal in Turkmenistan from Kerki to Mary in the Murgab as a struggle between the Russians and Turkmens against all possible hardships in the sandy desert .
Places of action are the route with the canal builders and Ashkhabad with the newspaper people and the crowd of Soviet officials. The reader learns about the devastating earthquake in October 1948 in the prehistory of some of the characters. In addition, some Soviet citizens were resettled to Ashkhabad during the war or were mentally damaged by experiences of war.
The work is cleverly structured in terms of personal conflicts: It doesn't really matter which newspaper in the large Soviet Union hires the correspondent Pyotr Koryschew, born in 1926, called Petya. So he just goes, leaving his hometown Moscow behind, to Ashkhabad, the southernmost Soviet republic , because his friend Sascha Zurabow writes there as a journalist for the local newspaper. The friend had a child with 30-year-old wife Valerija Nikolajewna Surabowa, called Lera. The couple's love has long since grown cold. Hydrogeologist Lera neglects her six-year-old son while intensively studying the desert on week-long expeditions and turned to the 27-year-old unmarried Aljoscha, actually Alexej Michailowitsch Karabasch, head of the pioneering department in canal construction, with all scorching love. Lera feels guilty. She thinks that her husband Sascha took revenge on his rival Karabasch when he - supported by the chief engineer Khorev, who was forever yesterday - published a defamatory newspaper article against the other leading sewer engineers who were charging forward. Sascha Zurabov's pamphlet is about the practices of Karabash, the production director engineer Gochberg and the construction site manager Stepan Ivanovich Yermassow, disregarding state panic. With the deputy editor-in-chief Lusgin - an old Stalinist who always wants to please the authorities - the cunning Sascha, taking advantage of the temporary absence of the editor-in-chief Diomidov, got the newspaper article through.
So Lera asks the newcomer from Moscow for help for his lover. Koryschew, on the one hand a relentless advocate of the fresh wind after 1953 , on the other hand connected to his friend Sascha, speaks out in the decisive meeting - the top leadership of the Turkmen Soviet Republic is present - against his friend Sascha Zurabow and for progress, i.e. for Karabash, as he says in the face of the assembled heads of the Soviet republic: “... this conflict is a consequence of the twentieth party congress ... The result ... is also the liberation of thought, ... of creativity! People try ... risk something - for the sake of the cause. ”Incidentally: Koryschew is only a person who loves the football game and woos the petite, quickly insulted Katja, an unsuccessful little actress. The unequal couple loves and falls out.
Most of this takes place in Ashkhabad. From the numerous conflicts that have been stirred up, only two examples should be mentioned. These relate to the location of the canal route. First, the 40-year-old stubborn best worker Semyon Nagayev, an excavator operator who is highly praised in the Turkmen media, earns a lot of money as an advocate of the barrel ideology per high-performance shift on the line. The egoist, abandoned by his wife, father of a 17-year-old, dredges in the heat out of sheer greed to the point of collapse. After recovering, he fishes for the 20-year-old Komsomolite Marina Marjutina, impregnates her and cannot marry the young woman because of his marital status. When it is necessary to switch from the excavator to the bulldozer , Marina is taken to the machine as an apprentice by Nagayev. Nagayev is later chased from the construction site by the other workers - all men of honor. At the end of the novel, Nagajew appears again and is allowed to prove himself. Second, the tragic story of the young Turkmen excavator operator Bjaschim Muradov is to be sketched. Bjashim is found with his throat cut. He fell victim to a tribal dispute; could not raise the bride money for his beloved Oguldshan quickly enough. Oguldshan's family, the Chaldurdys, could not muster up any sympathy for such dishonorable behavior by the new son-in-law. Trifonov immediately has potential perpetrators on hand. The Farsers kill in the manner described. A certain Atanijas, who works on the route, speaks in his Aul , in which Oguldshan also lives with her family, about the real cause of the bloody act; presumed "war of the desert against the canal." These opponents of the canal, that is, the murderer or murderers, rejected the other life that the canal would bring along with the water.
Other things
Trifonow knows his trade. From the unmistakable abundance of figures, he sculpts a few people - and not just by imaginable action -. In addition to the imaginable action mentioned, the development process of certain pairings of figures is a further aid to reader support. For example, near the beginning of the novel, Pyotr Koryschew stumbles upon granite with a harsh logician Diomidov, the aloof editor-in-chief. Koryshev accepts it. The employment relationship improves over time. At the end of the novel, the reader thinks - the two could become friends.
Despite all of Trifonov's turn to the critical Soviet communism of the late 1950s, the text has a certain entertainment value. Koryshev, who wants to get to know the Karakum, visits the ruins of Merw - the capital of Margiana - takes the train to Kisyl-Arwat, by car to the Toutly fountain, to Kazanjik and by plane to the heart of the Karakum to Serny Zavod. The journalist succeeds in publishing a small piece of work on the Tekinzen ornament , which is translated into Turkmen and can be heard on the radio. Koryschew investigate the early Parthian capital Nisa on.
The reader learns practical things. If a person gets lost in the desert, he waits for the night, lights a fire and is sometimes - from an airplane - located and found the next day.
literature
German-language editions
- Yuri Trifonov: Thirst. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Christa Schubert-Consbruch Verlag Kultur und progress, Berlin 1965 (edition used)
Secondary literature
- Juri Trifonov's “novel with history” , pp. 201–236 in Ralf Schröder : novel of the soul, novel of history. On the aesthetic self-discovery of Tynjanow, Ehrenburg, Bulgakow, Aitmatow, Trifonow, Okudshawa. Reclam, Leipzig 1986
Remarks
- ↑ Turkmenistan since 1991
- ↑ For example, Koryschew is always harassed by the screenwriter Chmyrov with a request for funding for a project. When Koryshev finally bursts his collar, he pours the filmmaker pure wine. It would be five years late (the year 1957, as stated in this article). The times of whitewashing are over.
- ↑ On the map , in the middle right, the course of the Amu Darya at Kerki and Mary (roughly in the middle between Kerki and Aschchabad) and the canal route (a solid, thin green line, vertically half- dashed , labeled Garagum Kanaly ) are drawn. The first construction phase is around 300 km long. The next phase of construction - towards the end of the novel briefly and concisely the subject of the novel - leads to Tedshen , then on to Ashkhabad, later to Kazanjik and perhaps once to Tscheleken (en: Cheleken Peninsula) or even to Krasnovodsk . Then the ship connection would be from the Baltic States to Afghanistan .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ ru: Знамя (журнал), flag
- ↑ Olga Jurjewna Tangjan ( philologist , born 1951): Date of first publication at magazines.russ.ru (Russian)
- ↑ ru: Мансуров, Булат Богаутдинович
- ↑ ru: Утоление жажды
- ↑ ru: Сатановский, Леонид Моисеевич
- ↑ ru: Туркменфильм
- ↑ ru: Главный Туркменский канал
- ↑ Klaus Gestwa : The large Stalin buildings of communism. Soviet technical and environmental history, 1948–1967. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 2012
- ↑ Schröder, p. 211
- ↑ Edition used, p. 291, 19. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 291, 5th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 353, 12th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 333 above
- ↑ Edition used, p. 334
- ↑ en: Margiana
- ↑ Kisyl Arwat
- ↑ Toutly
- ↑ Kazanjik
- ↑ Alfons Gabriel : The deserts of the earth and their exploration. Springer, Berlin 1961. p. 125