Improvisers (Nikolai Leskow)
Improvisatoren , also Die Improvisatoren ( Russian Импровизаторы , Improwisatory ), is a story by the Russian writer Nikolai Leskow , which appeared in the December 1892 edition of the literary supplement to Knischki Nedeli (weekly booklet).
The author targets the rumor mill that broke up during the cholera epidemic in Russia in the summer of 1892 ; writes about those improvisers who succeeded in bending the truth in the ignorant Russian population of those years.
content
Since the narrator fell ill that summer on the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic resort of Schmezk, he can only report what he has heard; works as a cook in the rumor mill himself. Consequently, Leskov's appearance in this story of the comma is a humorous one. With the comma, the irritated Russian population means the cholera pathogen Vibrio cholerae, curved in the shape of a comma .
One of the anecdotes that Leskow passes on: When a doctor in Schmezk takes a sample in a test tube from a contaminated body of water in order to later identify the pathogen in the laboratory, he is beaten up by the agitated population and is just able to flee.
This comma, the narrator tells us in the next story, can only be seen under the microscope. Since the use of such optical precision device technology is not widespread in the Russian population, a prankster, a Schmezker journalist, put a Japanese insect on the newspaper as an "enlarged and dried comma".
Who can be blamed for rampant cholera is asked more or less profoundly in each of these stories. Is that the dwarf guy's fault? This guy is a twenty to fifty years diminutive imbecile , who was expelled from St. Petersburg and studied in Narva work.
We owe the improviser dwarf guy in some impromptu articulated embellishments - that improvisation - the message from the last incident that is worth of mentioning from that Schmezker summer: A general had a loyal valet. After a cup of tea in the company of a prostitute , the latter has a stomachache and is hospitalized with suspected cholera. The general penetrates to the senior physician and has the now "dead" servant shown in the morgue. The military, a man of practice, revives his faithful servant with a candle flame on the sole of his bare foot and takes him home. He then invited three hospital doctors to visit him. He shoots two of them through the chest and the third, that is the senior doctor, he kicks and slaps until he has to let go, exhausted.
reception
- According to Setschkareff, the stupidity of the people is thematized: The people invent and spread fairy tales about "how the doctors poison the people". In addition, Leskov's concern with “ Schopenhauer's pessism ” can be read from the text.
literature
German-language editions
Output used:
- Improvisers. A picture after nature. German by Wilhelm Plackmeyer. P. 266–286 in Eberhard Reissner (Ed.): Nikolai Leskow: Collected works in individual volumes. The valley of tears. 587 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1973 (1st edition)
Secondary literature
- Vsevolod Sechkareff : NS Leskov. His life and his work. 170 pages. Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1959
Web links
- The text
- Entry in the Laboratory of Fantastics (Russian)
- Entry in WorldCat
See also
- Improvisatori - poets in the Trecento who declaimed off the cuff.
annotation
- ↑ Edition used, p. 278, 3rd Zvu: Schmezk (Russian Шмецк) - a village in the Estonia governorate between Hungerburg and the seaside resort of Merrekül (Russian Меррекюль) near Narva .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian Книжки Недели , monthly literature supplement to the Sankt Petersburg weekly newspaper Неделя ( The Week , 1866–1901)
- ^ Reissner in the follow-up to the edition used, p. 562, 4th Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 267, 2nd Zvu
- ↑ Setschkareff, p. 138, 8. Zvu to p. 139, 16. Zvo
- ↑ Setschkareff, p. 138, 5th Zvu
- ↑ Setschkareff, p. 139, 11. Zvo
- ↑ eng. Improvisatori