Cold autumn

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Ivan Bunin in 1901 in a photo of Maxim Dmitriev

Kalter Herbst ( Russian Холодная осень , Cholodnaja ossen ) is a short story by the Russian Nobel Prize winner for literature Ivan Bunin , which was completed on May 3, 1944 and was published on May 18, 1945 in the Paris newspaper Russkije novosti .

In 1944, looking back on 1914, a Russian woman tells about her life. On June 28 was Ferdinand assassinated. Germany declares war on Russia on August 1st . In September the fiancé of the narrator goes to the front. The wedding had been postponed until spring. In parting, the fiancé had quoted from Fet's poem from 1854:

How cold is autumn, how rough!

and said goodbye with the wish that the fiancée should live. If he falls, he'll wait for her over there. The narrator had cried. After a month the news of his death came from Galicia .

In the spring of 1918, the narrator's parents have since died, the noblewoman has to endure the mockery of a commoner in a basement apartment on Moscow's Smolensk Market, sells the little jewelry that has remained, and inevitably marries an elderly officer a. D. and follows him, disguised as a farmer's wife, in bast shoes to Ekaterinodar . At the Don and the Kuban , the pair alive until winter to the year 1920. Then both flee through Novorossiysk to Turkey . The husband dies already at sea. The narrator keeps her head above water as a worker in Constantinople , Bulgaria , Serbia , Czechoslovakia , Belgium , Paris and Nice and also brings through a child from her relatives by marriage. This girl blossomed into a neat adult Parisian in 1944 and no longer wants to hear from her savior. The narrator now lives in Nice. She had met the city in 1912. The narrator closes with a promise to the fallen fiancé: "... now I'll be coming soon."

German-language editions

Used edition
  • Cold autumn. German by Erich Ahrndt . P. 502–507 in: Karlheinz Kasper (Ed.): Iwan Bunin: Dunkle Alleen. Stories 1920–1953 . 580 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1985

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 501
  2. ↑ russ. Русские новости - Russian news
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 503, 4th Zvu, see also Russian. What a cold autumn!
  4. ^ Russian Smolensk Market in Moscow
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 507, 2nd Zvu