Past people

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Past people , also past people or the past ( Russian Бывшие люди, Bywschije ljudi ) is a story by the Russian writer Maxim Gorki , which appeared in the magazine Novoje slowo in the autumn of 1897 . The author collected the material during his stay in Kazan from 1885–1886.

Gorky in 1889

A translation into German by Michael Feofanow came out in Leipzig in 1902.

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Aristid Fomitsch Kuwalda, around fifty years old, retired captain and former printer owner, had a placement office for domestic staff. Now he is taking in vagabonds in a night asylum - a shabby hostel - in the suburbs inhabited by poor people . The Rittmeister calls the sleeping guests , who pay two kopecks per night, with good-natured mockery “been people”, outcasts. Those habitual drinkers had all had proper jobs in the past - for example that of a wealthy farmer, a forester, a prison guard, a mechanic or a deacon . The inn, the long two-story house, an abandoned property, had been bought by the merchant Ivan Andreevich Petunnikov senior from the city and reluctantly leased to Kuwalda for five rubles a month. The merchant had often wanted to resign the hated "commander in chief of this tramp column". Kuwalda, for his part, considers the merchant to be a fraud who enriches himself with the poor. That is why the Rittmeister wants to teach the merchant to fear. Kuwalda sees himself as "coming". The gentlemen like Petunnikov are said to "feel a cold shiver in their bowels when he approaches"

The Rittmeister and his guests frequent the neighboring bar owned by the old sergeant Yegor Terentjewitsch Vawilow. Gorky writes: “... the past ones were ... somewhat feared as thieves and thugs and not exactly popular as drunkards, but because of their intelligence and their life experience they enjoyed quite an authority. The pub in Wawilow was the club on the suburban street , and the past was the intelligence of this club. ”Kuwalda finds out that the factory that the merchant Petunnikow senior is building in the immediate vicinity of the pub for 150 workers protrudes a little bit into the land of the landlord Wawilow inside. The Rittmeister, who knows the code of civil procedure, wants to knock out two thousand rubles for the landlord and claims ten percent of the profit for his services. Kuwalda's bosom friend, the goatee-bearded teacher Philipp Titow, sets up the lawsuit. The "past" Titov had been dismissed as a teacher from a teacher training college and is now making his way as a correspondent for local newspapers.

Nothing will come of the Rittmeister's two thousand ruble haul. The cunning businessman Petunnikow junior persuades the landlord to settle in private. Vawilow can be fobbed off with a hundred rubles. Kuwalda charges much more than ten rubles for his services. It is just enough for a drink and a bite to eat for those who have “been”. During the binge, the dying teacher Titov is brought to the night asylum. Kuwalda had already worried about his friend, who had been absent for an unusually long time. Titov doesn't say a single word and dies. Since there is presumably a crime, the state authorities are called in. The district police lieutenant appears with the examining magistrate and a doctor. The house owner, businessman Petunnikow senior, comes along, smiles gleefully and asks: “What happened here? Hasn't one of them been murdered? ”The merchant wants to have the night shelter torn down. When he hypocritically pays his last respects to the dead, the Rittmeister loses his temper and loses out: Kuwalda is taken away tied up. The body is taken away and everyone else leaves, but the merchant stays. Gorky ends his story with a moral: The triumphant businessman Petunnikov senior winces. He is haunted by a terrifying apparition. The pointed-bearded dead man appears to him and even speaks; does not call the deeply frightened man his murderer, but a very bad person.

Quotes

  • Gorky writes about the children in that suburb mentioned above: “Children are the living flowers of the earth; but in this area they looked withered as before. "
  • The text is full of strange moral sermons. When the teacher Titov teaches someone, for example the painter Jaschka Tyurin, who beats his wife, he is usually surrounded by a larger, listening group of listeners to whom he preaches: "In general, pregnant women must never ... be beaten on the body - give her one ... on the bum! "
  • "When you die, you get to do with God ... Here we have to deal with people."

German-language editions

  • Maxim Gorky. Stories ( The old Isergil . Malwa . Twenty-six and one . The tramp. Past people). Translated from the Russian by Arthur Luther . Construction Verlag, Berlin 1962. 315 pages
  • The past. German by Georg Schwarz. Pp. 250–326 in: Maxim Gorki: Stories. With a foreword by Edel Mirowa-Florin. Vol. 1 from: Eva Kosing, Edel Mirowa-Florin (Hrsg.): Maxim Gorki: Works in four volumes. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1977.

First edition

  • Maxim Gorki: Past people. Collected short stories from Russian by Michael Feofanow. Book decorations by Otto Ubbelohde . Diederichs, Leipzig 1902. 232 pages

Used edition

  • The past. German by Felix Loesch. P. 191-259 in: Maxim Gorki: Erzählungen. Third volume. 535 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1954

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 530, last entry
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 230, 24. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 213, 3rd Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 254, 11. Zvu
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 199, 10th Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 218, 17. Zvo
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 252, 6th Zvu