One night (Garschin)

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Ilya Repin 1884: Vsevolod Garschin

One night , also Die Nacht ( Russian Ночь , Notsch ), is a short story by the Russian writer Vsevolod Garschin , which appeared in the June issue of the Otetschestwennye Sapiski in Saint Petersburg in 1880 .

The narrator wants to reassure the more or less depraved adult reader with an irrefutable fact: as a child everyone was good, is his message.

content

Alexei Petrovich shot himself with a Smith & Wesson army revolver in his St. Petersburg apartment on November 28, 1870s . When his body is found, the dead man's expression appears peaceful and happy. The narrator makes this last gesture, frozen in death, as it were:

Before the act, Alexei puts the revolver down again and sends his farewell letter to the address of those people he thought he loved. None of these people could encourage him to go on living because everyone had become discouraged themselves. In any case, he has lost interest in such "grimacing monkeys". Alexej himself has nothing to blame, but he despises himself just as much as he disregards those "monkeys". As an adult, he long forgotten how to cry. When did he forget? Alexej has to remember back to childhood. As a six-year-old he could still cry over wrongdoing. What was that like? A defenseless man was beaten up at the time. Life had been good in childhood up to the age of twelve. Then he was sent to high school.

Alexej says a sentence from times that have fallen down: "... unless you turn around and become like children ..." ( Matthew 18 : 3  EU ). When Alexej turns the gun on himself, he understands the well-known sentence as follows: "You have to deny yourself, you have to kill your ego, leave it by the way."

reception

After Turgenev , Garschin dismisses a perplexed reader. The cause is the unclear end of the text.

German-language editions

Output used:

  • One night . P. 169–192 in Vsevolod M. Garschin: The stories. Transferred and with afterword by Valerian Tornius . 464 pages. Dieterich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1956 (Dieterich Collection, Vol. 177)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Issue used 192, 2nd Zvu
  2. ↑ Issue used 181, 12. Zvo
  3. ↑ Issue used 189, 4th Zvu
  4. ↑ Issue used 191, 16. Zvo
  5. ↑ One night , notes (Russian Примечания)

Web links