An encounter (Garschin)

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Ilya Repin 1884: Vsevolod Garschin

An Encounter ( Russian Встреча , Wstretscha ) is a short story by the Russian writer Vsevolod Garschin , which appeared in the April issue of Otetschestwennye Sapiski in Saint Petersburg in 1879 .

content

Vasily Petrovich has found a job as a high school teacher in a Russian port city. After his arrival, while strolling through town for the first time, he met his old school friend Nikolai Konstantinowitsch Kudrjaschow by chance. As beggarly poor students, both of them had to make ends meet earlier, and in times of need ate sausage made from dog meat against hunger.

The friend takes the newcomer to his comfortable rental apartment. Nikolai, now an engineer and government secretary, lives in luxury. Vasily is horrified. His old friend confesses to him in private that he is a fraud: a new port is being built. In the first construction phase, Kudrjaschow and two other fraudsters - Knobloch and Puitzikowski - build a pier . But only on paper. More precisely, in the very first step the three “builders” simulate the successive filling of the pier bed on the bottom of the lake. According to her, however, the bed is washed away every winter - a daring claim for a marginal sea that has apparently been accepted unchecked for years. Although there is no construction at all, Nikolai hopes for further fair compensation for services not provided - God willing until the end of the current century.

Vasily does not recognize the friend. Nikolai laughs at the integrity of his guest and has the photo of Wassili's bride show him. She waits, stayed behind in Petersburg, until the bridegroom has saved a thousand rubles. Then the wedding should be. Nikolai predicts a bleak future for the two of them, given their honesty: Lisa - the bride's name - will probably sit at home some time in a number of years, married to Vasily, surrounded by a crowd of children. And she will not know - with the modest earnings of her husband - where the money for the food and equipment of the children will come from.

Self-testimony

In a letter to his mother in 1879, Garschin wrote that Saltykov-Shchedrin had praised the text.

reception

  • Tornius wrote in 1956: In contrast to the narrator Wassili, his former fellow student Nikolai had thrown all earlier ideals overboard and lived as a idiot.
  • Garschin sharply condemns the excesses of the capitalism that was spreading in Russia at the time . In particular, the author denounces “orgies” of selfish officials and intellectuals; geißele industrial companies, represented by their leading engineers. Garschin disapproves of that component of social Darwinism that approves of the struggle for survival of the strong characters.

German-language editions

Output used:

  • An encounter . P. 100–124 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

annotation

  1. Garschin tells neither the city nor the sea. Since the city is not located on an ocean (edition used, p. 115, 10. Zvo), the Baltic Sea or the Black Sea could be meant.

Individual evidence

  1. An Encounter , 17th Zvu (Russian)
  2. ^ Tornius in the afterword of the edition used, p. 454, middle
  3. An encounter , notes (Russian Примечания)