Don't let the spark turn into flame

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Lev Tolstoy
portrayed by Ilya Repin in 1887

Don't let the spark turn into a flame , also watch out for fire! and Watch out for fire that you put it out early ( Russian Упустишь огонь - не потушишь , Upustisch ogon - ne Potuschisch ), is a story by Lev Tolstoy , which was written in 1885 and published in the same year by the St. Petersburg book publisher Posrednik . At the beginning the author directs the attention to his topic with a quote from the Gospel of Matthew - the duty to forgive .

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Ivan Shcherbakov and Gavrilo Chromoi argue before the judge. The fathers of the two neighbors had always lived close to each other and occasionally helped each other. This good neighborly relationship is abruptly ended when Ivan's daughter-in-law unceremoniously fetches an egg that her chicken laid on Gawrilo's farm.

Ivan's father is still alive. The old man, suffering from shortness of breath, has barely left his privileged sleeping place on the oven of the farmhouse for several years. When the quarrels got out of hand - Ivan, for example, had torn a tuft of whiskers from Gavrilo and the injured party had called the estate court - the father of the son Ivan asked for moderation. The son has no hearing. On the contrary - Ivan and Gavrilo take their bickering to the community meeting and to the justice of the peace. For six long years the old man preached from the stove: "You dear children, let go of the quarrel, do not miss your day's work ...". Ivan actually gets into a mess over time because he missed the right sowing date and court hearings against Gawrilo consume time and money. When Ivan's daughter-in-law in the seventh year of the neighborhood dispute at a wedding loudly scolds Gavrilo as a rustler, the drunken offended strikes. Hitting a pregnant woman in front of the village is too much for Ivan. The examining magistrate has his application on the table. After Gavrilo is sentenced to twenty strokes of the cane on the back, Ivan brings up witnesses who claim they heard Gavrilo was going to set Ivan's house on fire. The judge does not care about the applicable law, but tries to find an amicable settlement. Gavrilo should simply apologize to Ivan and everything should be forgotten. With the best will in the world, Gavrilo cannot ask forgiveness from Ivan. Because he will be fifty years old next and that will be his first flogging in life. He can't get over it.

The other side is no better. The old father speaks again to Ivan's conscience and falls on deaf ears. Even if Ivan wanted to forgive, how could he? Because Gawrilo shouts over the fence in the evening: "To hell with him and his clan, he has overfilled the measure, I should kill him like a head of cattle!"

Ivan checks that everything is in order in the dark. Gavrilo sets Ivan's house on fire. It burns like tinder with the prevailing drought and the sharp wind. Ivan could have put out the blazing fire at first. Instead, he had followed the arsonist furiously in his yard.

Gavrilo knocks Ivan down. Both farmhouses and most of the other neighboring houses in the village burn down. Ivan's father can be saved at the last minute by one of his grandchildren. Now the old man is dying in the village elder's house and wants to address his last word to Ivan. Ivan goes to his father's deathbed. This opened up a way for the son, in which everything can turn out well: Ivan, the only eyewitness to the arson, is supposed to guard his tongue; must not betray Gavrilo with any syllable.

That's how it happens. After the old man dies, the burned down houses in the village are rebuilt step by step at a greater distance. Ivan and Gawrilo remain the closest neighbors. The two families grew closer to each other.

German-language editions

  • Watch out for fire !. German by Arthur Luther . P. 32–50 in: Gisela Drohla (Ed.): Leo N. Tolstoj. All the stories. Fifth volume. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1961 (2nd edition of the edition in eight volumes 1982)
  • Watch out for fire! P. 30–60 in Leo Tolstoy: Where there is love, there is God. Stories. Translation into German Arthur Luther. Brunnen Verlag, Gießen 2007 (6th edition 2016, edition used), ISBN 978-3-7655-1956-7

Web links

annotation

  1. ^ The Posrednik publishing house was founded in 1884 on the initiative of Lev Tolstoy. WK Lebedev reports in his article The Posrednik Publishing House and the Censorship (Russian В.) about the bad experiences that the publishing house management had to make with the Petersburg and Moscow censorship in the years 1885–1889, even with submitted small folk tales - such as this one . К. Лебедев Книгоиздательство "Посредник" и цензура ) in 1968.

Individual evidence

  1. Russian Посредник (издательство), translated: Mediator
  2. On the duty to forgive ( Matthew 18 : 21-35  EU )
  3. Russian Иван Щербаков
  4. Russian Гаврило Хромой