Spring waves

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Ivan Turgenev in the 1870s

Spring waves , also spring floods ( Russian Вешние воды , Weschnije wody), is a novella by the Russian writer Ivan Turgenew , which was completed in Baden-Baden in 1871 and was published in 1873 in Westnik Evropy .

content

In 1870, the noble landowner Dimitri Pawlowitsch Sanin from the Tula governorate thinks back to the summer of 1840 in Frankfurt . After spending several months in Italy, on the return trip to Saint Petersburg , he had a look at the city on the Main and entered the Italian pastry shop Giovanni Roselli . The 25-year-old traveler had met 19-year-old Gemma Roselli in the pastry shop. He courageously saves the life of their 14-year-old brother Emilio - providing first aid - and thus finds access to the Roselli family from Vicenza .

Sanin missed the fully paid coach to Berlin and stayed with Gemma in Frankfurt. Gemma's groom Karl Klüber, wealthy manager of a Frankfurt cloth and silk shop, invites the lifesaver to take a trip to Soden am Taunus . The pleasure ends with a scandal in the excursion restaurant. The drunken officer Baron von Dönhof at the next table insults Gemma and is challenged by Sanin. The cloth merchant Klüber limited itself to strict treatment of the waiter who, in its opinion, was responsible for the incident.

The two opponents survive the duel near Hanau . Sanin missed by Dönhof and the latter intentionally missed. Gemma returns the engagement ring to Mr. Klüber. Sanin and Gemma admit their love. Gemma's mother, the Parma- born widow Leonora Roselli, is heartbroken. The pastry shop is bad. The wealthy Mr. Klüber would have been the anchor. Sanin, who belongs to the “real nobility”, has spent his money traveling and wants to sell his “small estate in the Tula governorate”. Finally, Gemma's mother takes pleasure in the prospect that the daughter would become noble by marrying a nobleman.

Sanin meets his school friend, the 25-year-old Ippolit Sidorych Polosow. Both were brought up in the same boarding school in Russia. Polosow buys big for his wife Marja Nikolajewna Polosowa, née Kolyshkina, who is in Wiesbaden for a cure . When the old friend found out about Sanin's financial worries, he took him to Wiesbaden to see his rich wife. Polosov knows that Sanin's estate, in the Jefremowski district , borders directly on one of his wife's estates. With the sale of the inherited property, Sanin would be free of financial worries.

Marja turns out to be a 22-year-old pretty lady. The farmer's daughter knows exactly what she wants and on closer inspection makes a plebeian impression on Sanin. It looks like Marja is going to buy the property, but asks for two days to think it over. Meanwhile this woman seduces Sanin; much more - Marja subjugates Sanin. Off we go - not to Gemma in Frankfurt, but three to Paris .

Turgenev holds out the prospect of a happy ending: Thirty years later, Sanin - long back in Russia - contacted Gemma, now married mother of five children, by letter. Gemma's answer from New York gives hope for reconciliation. It is said that Sanin wants to travel to the States .

shape

Turgenew deals narrative and consecutive two topics - Sanin's first love for Gemma and his seduction by Marja.

Topic one

The first love can be heard in the eponymous head verse:

Happy Days
And years flee
Rush like waves
Of spring gone.

Immediately before Gemma and Sanin want to confess their love in the summer of 1840, a summer cyclone rises in Frankfurt. He whips the trees and rages through the streets. When the time finally comes with the confession, Sanin not only looks Gemma in the face, but he sees happiness; even behold the deity. Everything is light. "The first love is a revolution," writes Turgenev and says: "All the miracles of love took place in you ... that neither of them came to their senses ..."

Topic two

Marja married the fat-bellied, lazy Polosov because she wanted to be free and she approaches Sanin. He is at the mercy of her "gray predator eyes". Marja doesn't have enough with one lover. The plebeian lady has known von Dönhof for a long time.

Film adaptations

German-language editions

Output used:

  • Spring waves. German by Ena von Baer , P. 127–299 in: Iwan Turgenew: First love and other short stories. With an afterword by Friedrich Schwarz. Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig 1968 (3rd edition)

Web links

annotation

  1. ↑ Gemma (ital.): Gemstone.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Ефремовский уезд
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 127, 2. Zvo
  3. ↑ Russian Поездка в Висбаден
  4. ↑ Russian Герасимов, Евгений Владимирович
  5. ↑ Russian Жигунов, Сергей Викторович