A devilish act

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Mikhail Bulgakov around 1935

A Teufeliade also devilish , Diaboliade ( Russian Дьяволиада , Djawolijada ) is a fantastic tale of the Soviet writer Bulgakov , 1924 in the issue 4 of the Nedra appeared. The Moscow publishing cooperative of the same name published the text in book form in 1925 as part of the Teufeliaden collection .

content

Anno 1921 in Soviet Russia : On September 20, the office of Comrade Warfolomej Petrovich Korotkow “paid” wages in kind instead of money. The astonished Korotkow receives a pack of matches because he is employed as the secretary of the Streichmat. In the long form, Streichmat means the main central support point for matchstick materials . His apartment neighbor Alexandra Feodorovna feels the same way. Since this woman is employed by Gouvweinspeicher , she was stocked with a large number of bottles of communion wine .

When Korotkow entered his office the next morning, the base chief Comrade Chekushin was "fired". The secretary Korotkow "flies" behind on September 26th. The new boss Unterhoser fired him for sloppiness. The new one, a bald dwarf stature, follows Korotkow day and night. Unterhoser addresses Korotkow with Kolobkow and alternately appears with a clean-shaven face and a long beard. In addition, the devilish newcomer can turn into a black cat.

Good - the next day Unterhoser is fired. Korotkow continues to be pursued by the monster. In the overcrowded tram, two thieves steal Korotkov's wallet.

At night Korotkov is tormented by dreams. Underwear sits at his desk and mimes the base boss and the secretary in personal union. After another restless night, Korotkow had pumped himself full of the wine he had given him and vomited several times, Korotkow wants to remain sensible. Easily put, the former secretary can be arrested without papers; gets inexorably in a mess when the authorities ask for new papers. Korotkov rushes from one office to the next. Finally, only the terrible Dyrkin in the fifth division can help. Korotkow rushes over and, at the height of the conflict, kills the terrible Dyrkin, who is trying to arrest him, with a candelabra. The manslaughter manages to escape to the roof of a high-rise building. As the pursuers approach, the fugitive falls down. It crashes. A sun bursts in his head.

Remarks

  • Contemporary meetings
  • The story consists of eleven chapters. Also stimulated by the chapter headings The First Night (6th Chapter) and The Second Night (8th Chapter), the reader seeking meaning would - albeit largely in vain - differentiate between day (reality) and dream. Ralf Schröder's objection that he got it from Valentin Katajew doesn't help either : there is also a “ Trotsky parody”. What is certain is that Korotkow is a victim of the Soviet Russian bureaucracy. Schröder writes that the triggers for Korotkov's demise were the economic disruption after the world war , the intervention and civil wars and the war communist emergency methods.
  • A petty official fails because of the omnipotence of the authorities and loses his mind. This theme of the devilish has its models in Pushkin's young Yevgeny in the Iron Rider and in Dostoyevsky's shy official Jakow Golyadkin in the doppelganger . In particular, in his Petersburg novellas , Gogol addressed the needs of the little people who had got lost in the thicket of authorities.
  • In August 1923 a certain P. Krotow from the Moscow Nirnsee House is said to have thrown himself to his death.

German-language editions

  • Master tales. Translated from the Russian by Aggy Jais ( The Doom. House No. 13. The Devil's Spook . Chichikov's Adventure ). Goldmann, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-442-07030-9
  • Heiko Postma (Ed.): Michail A. Bulgakow: Diaboliade. 1923. From the almanac “Nedra”, No 4, 1924. Translated from the Russian by Joachim Britze. JMB Verlag, Hannover 2014, ISBN 978-3-944342-59-7

Output used:

  • A devilish act. How twins spoiled a manager. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . P. 33–78 in Ralf Schröder (Ed.): Bulgakow: Teufeliaden. Stories. Volk & Welt, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-353-00945-0 (= Vol. 6: Collected Works (13 Vols.))

Web links

annotation

  1. Mikhail Bulgakov tells the reader nothing about the tasks of this fifth department.

Individual evidence

  1. Russian Недра - the lap
  2. Russian Дьяволиада - Djawolijada
  3. Edition used, p. 70, 13. Zvu
  4. Note in the Bulgakov encyclopedia, paragraphs 6 to 8 (Russian)
  5. russ. Русский современник - Russian contemporary
  6. Russian Nussinow, Issaak Markowitsch
  7. Russian. Печать и революция - Press and Revolution
  8. Note on literary history in the afterword of the edition used, p. 347, 9. Zvo
  9. ^ Note on literary history in the afterword of the edition used, p. 309, 14. Zvo
  10. Note on literary history in the afterword of the edition used, p. 309, 4th Zvo
  11. Russian Дом Нирнзее - Nirnsee House
  12. Note in the Bulgakov encyclopedia, penultimate paragraph (Russian)