Galja Ganskaya
Galja Ganskaja ( Russian Галя Ганская ) is a short story by the Russian Nobel Prize winner for literature Ivan Bunin , which was completed on October 28, 1940 and was published in 1946 in Volume 13 of the New York edition of the Russian magazine Nowy Schurnal . A young girl takes her own life when her lover leaves her.
The first-person narrator, a young Russian painter, commutes between Paris and Odessa every year . The teenage girl Galja lives with her father, the painter Ganski, in a house on Odessa beach Otrada. The first-person narrator met her there when she was 13 years old. Galja's mother left her father long ago. When the narrator returned to Odessa from Paris two years later, the little girl had become a slim lady. Galja accepts the invitation to the young painter's studio. He pulls her onto his lap, pulls her dress up by the hem of her skirt, loosens one of the suspenders and kisses her thigh and "the half-open mouth". After another year of absence of the narrator, the young lady has become "a little young woman". The narrator, who has again traveled to Odessa, repeats his violations more violently, but does not take the last step, although he suspects that Galja might have gone with him. After half a year the next meeting will take place. Galja finds an excuse; wants to see the work in the young painter's studio. The unexpected visitor does not offer any major resistance to his powerful offensive. On the contrary, Galja hastily helps the already purposeful man when he undresses her. The violence he then violently inflicts on Galja on the wide sofa bed, she apparently approves of. A fortnight later, she forbids the extreme traveler to leave. When he prevails, Galja is poisoned. The young painter can hardly get over the death of his beloved and almost loses his mind - but only almost.
German-language editions
- Used edition
- Galja Ganskaya. German by Erich Ahrndt . P. 409-418 in: Karlheinz Kasper (Ed.): Iwan Bunin: Dunkle Alleen. Stories 1920–1953 . 580 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1985
Web links
- The text
- online (third from last text in part 2) at Lib.ru (Russian)
- online at bunin.niv.ru (Russian)
- online in the Komarow library (Russian)
- Reference to first appearance in the Laboratory of Fantastics (Russian)