Lord and Servant (Tolstoy)
Herr und Knecht ( Russian Хозяин и работник ) is a short story by Leo Tolstoy that appeared in the magazine Severny Westnik (Northern Messenger) in 1895 . The translation into German by Hermann Roskoschny came out in the same year at Neufeld & Henius in Berlin .
content
In this short story, the wealthy property owner Wassilij Andrejewitsch Brechunov travels through the steppe with his humble and obedient servant Nikita in a snowstorm . Wassilij is impatient and wants to reach the city quickly in order to buy a piece of forest there in front of other interested parties. The blizzard had increased in severity and it was imperative to pause, but the Lord wants to keep going in his business acumen. So they get lost and soon threaten to die of hypothermia . In this awareness and the equality that results from it, class differences become increasingly unimportant.
The master abandons his servant in an attempt to save himself and approves of his death. As before three times, he gets lost a fourth time and by chance and the cleverness of his horse comes back to the farmhand. He comes to the realization that Tolstoy addressed several times: The only and true happiness in life is to have lived for others. The master lies down on his servant, knowing that he must die, to at least keep him warm through the cold night.
"He understood that his end was near, but that didn't make him sad or angry in the least ... Nikita is alive, he told himself ... so I'm alive too."
Vasily place that night the death , however, Nikitas life can be saved, it loses some of his toes through frostbite .
Web links
- Vladimir Jakowlewitsch Linkow: Commentary on the text at RVB.ru (Russian)
literature
- Leo Tolstoy: master and servant. Folk tales (= Diogenes-Taschenbuch . Volume 21362 ). German by Erich Böhme. Diogenes, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-257-21362-X .
- Leo Tolstoy: master and servant . German by Hermann Roskoschny . Neufeld & Henius, Berlin 1895 (German first edition).
- Master and servant; Novella by LN Tolstoy; translated into German by H. Röhl ; Insel-Verlag Leipzig 1916; Island Library No. 85
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian В. Я. Линков