An incident

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ilya Repin 1884: Vsevolod Garschin

An incident ( Russian Происшествие , Proisschestwije ) is a short story by the Russian writer Vsevolod Garschin , which appeared in 1878 in the March issue of the Otetschestwennye Sapiski in Saint Petersburg .

content

Winter in Northern Russia: The 17-year-old Saint Petersburg prostitute Nadezhda Nikolajewna, called Eugenie by the suitors , is desired as a wife by the 25-year-old Ivan Ivanovich. The rotten Ivan, degenerated into a drinker, knows exactly who he is looking at. But he believes in the good in Nadezhda because he loves her. Although the tipsy Ivan humiliated himself during the advertisement in front of Nadezhda, she gave him a basket. The reader learns why, because the two protagonists alternately reveal their innermost being in their respective first-person narrator passages. Nadezhda admits, for example, that in her job she has to sell herself to men and that any customer who has paid can also beat her, among other things. After getting married it wouldn't get any better, it would get worse. No, she will not allow this Ivan to assault her in camera! The young woman sees a way out: to drown herself in one of the Neva ice holes.

Ivan does not give up and asks Nadezhda to come to him. She goes there. Ivan, this time sober, makes another attempt at advances. Nadezhda roughly rejects his displayed, inappropriate, middle-class behavior and leaves. Because she fears on the way that he could shoot himself with his revolver, she hurries back and - torn between two - wants to accept his attention. It doesn't come to that. Nadeschda rushes to the apartment door and grabs the handle. A shot is fired inside. Ivan shot Nadezhda through the door of his apartment.

German-language editions

Output used:

  • An incident . P. 50-71, in Vsevolod M. Garschin: The stories. Transferred and with afterword by Valerian Tornius . 464 pages. Dieterich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1956 (Dieterich Collection, Vol. 177)

Web links