A summer

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A Summer ( Russian Лето ) is a novel by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky , the writing of which was completed in Capri in the summer of 1909 .

Although Gorky knew life in the city better than that in the country, he nevertheless uses the example of a Russian village with thirty-two farms to thematize the changes among the village poor, kulaks and landowners after the Stolypin agrarian reform from the perspective of a industriously agitating profession revolutionary , the Is a member of a party. Gorky means the RSDLP .

Gorky in 1889

overview

The widowed first-person narrator - his papers are made out to Yegor Petrovich Trofimov, Moscow merchant third guild - is sent by an acquaintance as a summer visitor in 1908 to the small, cozy village , mostly inhabited by Raskolniki, Vysokye Gnjosda in the densely wooded Tumanovo district. The narrator is not a summer visitor. But what is he then? Only in the second half of the novel does Trofimov pour pure wine for the reader: "I am a person who has drawn his lessons from the suppression of the popular uprising and has resolved to unite people ... [who] has clearly recognized that that it is impossible to continue to live in the old order, which is perishable for people. I had only started reading socialist brochures a year before the change ... Before the suppression of the uprising, I had known members of both parties ... ”In plain language, my popular uprising and uprising, the Russian Revolution of 1905 and Trofimov agitating on behalf of me the SDLP at the named place of action the farmers. But there is hardly any plot in the novel. Trofimov only tells a “fairy tale from last summer”. Gorky, following in the footsteps of Russian realists , means by fairy tales “pictures from real life”.

Although the reader does not learn much about Trofimov, he does at least highlight representatives of three groups in the village. First there is the secret circle of the revolutionary Dossekin - young men who are already addressing Trofimov with comrade, who are being agitated by the "summer visitor" based on Marxist brochures:

  • The strong, robust 26-year-old Yegor Dossekin, son of the village elder,
  • the unemployed Avdej Nikin,
  • Ivan (also Vanya) Malyshev - treasurer of the comrades and
  • Alexej (also Aljoscha) Schipigusew - an unskilled worker from the city.

The second group consists of three older gentlemen:

  • The forest ranger Danilo Yakovlevich Kozyakov sends messages to Trofimov through his son from a fellow soldier who is in prison.
  • Veteran Michailo Gnedoi, an anarchist , was a formerly wealthy farmer who took part in peasant revolts and the Russo-Japanese War .
  • The old, truth-seeking, propertyless farmer Pyotr Wassiljitsch Kusin, a reader in the church, is said to be distantly related to Ivan Malyshev. Kusin tells how the gentlemen had the farmers whipped to the blood in 1885 and 1893. Young peasant girls were raped by soldiers in those years. All the peasants were beaten; the peasant women were also lashed. This rebel Kusin, known to the authorities, had already appeared as a speaker in a wealthy village years ago and clearly recognized the signs of the times after the revolution of 1905; is at one with the impoverished farmers. In the worst case, Kusin is ready to even join the socialists .

Group three is made up of the possessors and their accomplices - among them

  • the mill and forest owner Skornjakow,
  • the rich farmer Astakhov and
  • the village policeman Semyon.

Summary

Trofimov is a tireless party worker. Together with his circle leader Dossekin, he explains to the farmers - also outside the village - about the machinations of some Duma delegates.

Even if the above-mentioned first two groups ultimately revolt against the third in vain, Gorky lets an upward trend shine through: While only four villagers took part in a conspiratorial meeting in the logging hut of the woodcutters in Skornjakov's forest at the beginning of the novel, it is at the end of the novel forty after all. During this great novel final meeting, the question will be determined: “ What should we do? "

Self-testimony

  • Before Gorky wanted to tackle the novel under the working title “The Story of Kuznetschicha”, he had stated: “... I'll put everything I know about the village ... and what I can write down without going against the inner one To trespass the truth ... Such a book is absolutely necessary ... but to write it I have to read an awful lot ... ”But when Ignatij Timofeyev's diary was sent to him afterwards, he took the authentic notes of this propagandist as Text basis.

reception

German-language editions

  • A summer. Pp. 281–466 in: Eine Beichte . A summer. Two novels. The only authorized translation from Russian by August Scholz . 468 pages. Vol. 7 from: Maxim Gorki: Collected Works in Individual Editions. Malik-Verlag, Berlin 1926
  • A summer. Novel. Construction. Berlin 1958, bb series No. 15, 177 pages
  • A summer. The town of Okurow. Matvey Koshemjakin. Novels. Translated from Russian by Dieter Pommerenke and others. With an afterword by Helene Imendörffer. 882 pages. Winkler, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-538-05088-0

Used edition

  • A summer. German by Dieter Pommerenke. With an afterword by Günter Warm. P. 449–596 in: Maxim Gorki: Der Spitzel . A confession. A summer. 637 pages. Vol. 6 from: Eva Kosing (ed.), Edel Mirowa-Florin (ed.): Maxim Gorki: Collected works in individual volumes. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1971

literature

  • Nadeshda Ludwig: Maxim Gorki. Life and work. Series of Contemporary Writers. People and Knowledge, Berlin 1984.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Even after serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861, the Russian peasant was not really released, but often fell into debt. In the novel, ten years before the October Revolution, Gorky took up one of the reasons for the success of this Bolshevik uprising against the tsar .
  2. ↑ It seems that Gorky invented the name of the village Vysokye Gnjosda. Brief explanation: Comment on Tumanowo district (Russian Тумановский уезд): Although there is a Tumanowo stop on the Moscow-Minsk railway line (Russian Туманово ), the geographical information is contradictory overall. Because the specified river Waga (edition used, p. 453, 8. Zvo) refers to the Arkhangelsk Oblast and the also mentioned navigable river Kosulja (Russian Косуля) (edition used, p. 453, 13. Zvo), in which the Waga flows out, cannot be found.
  3. ↑ Trofimov has no relatives and falls in love with a straw widow in the village - the beautiful soldier's wife Varvara Kirillowna.
  4. ↑ Alexei Schipigusew is the great-nephew of the landlady Trofimov.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Warm, p. 598, 3rd Zvu
  2. ^ Warm, p. 631, 21. Zvo
  3. ^ Ludwig, p. 160, 1. Zvo
  4. ^ Warm, p. 628, 18. Zvu and p. 630, 16. Zvu
  5. ^ Ludwig, p. 159, 16. Zvo and p. 161, 2. Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 479, 1. Zvo
  7. ↑ Warm, p. 628, 18. Zvu
  8. ↑ Russian Высокие Гнезда
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 539, 7th Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 451, 6. Zvo
  11. ↑ Gorki, quoted in Warm, p. 628, 3. Zvo
  12. ^ Warm, p. 628, 19. Zvo
  13. ↑ Ludwig, p. 160, 7. Zvo
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 455, 11. Zvo
  15. ↑ Ludwig, p. 160, 10. Zvo
  16. ↑ Ludwig, p. 160, 15. Zvo
  17. ↑ Russian Семён
  18. ↑ Gorky in a letter to Pyatnitskij in May 1908, quoted in Warm, p. 632, 6. Zvo
  19. ↑ Russian Игнатий Тимофеев
  20. ↑ Ludwig, p. 160, 3. Zvo
  21. ^ Warm, p. 632, 15. Zvo
  22. ↑ Ludwig, p. 161, middle
  23. ^ Warm p. 633