Living with an idiot

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Life with an Idiot ( Russian Жизнь с идиотом / Schisn s idiotom ) is a surreal and shocking story by the Russian writer Viktor Erofejew from 1980, which was published in 1991 by Interbook in Moscow . The translation into German by Beate Rausch was also published by S. Fischer in 1991.

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The idiot Vova - also called Marej Marejitsch - has made the anonymous first-person narrator, a Moscow writer, a widower again. With a pair of secateurs, the madman has cut off the head of the unfortunate woman under the eyes of the husband in the shared apartment. Both men had made love naked just before the crime .

Masha, the writer's first wife, had died of scarlet fever . Both women had been passionate Proust readers during their lifetime .

Back to the point: how did the bestial murder come about? The first-person narrator had gone to the insane asylum without his second wife, exercised his right there and selected Vova from around a hundred idiots. Vova - the tall, red-haired idiot about thirty - looks like a fifty-year-old lecturer. The second woman at home insists in vain on exchanging the redhead for a more handsome idiot. With the “skull of a degenerate” the newcomer looks like a Bashkire .

Vova doesn't speak. At most he utters "Oh!" After the idiot tore up the whole Proust , the woman wants to tie him up. The writer wants to finish him off right away. Nothing will come of it.

The woman lets Vova get pregnant. The pregnant woman is jealous of her husband because Vova gives him flowers. First she wants to keep Wowa's child and then she lets it have an abortion . Back home from the abortion, the woman lets Vova beat her "like a devoted bitch" at night. When the chastised woman whines a little, the narrator feels sorry for her.

Vova turns away from the woman and turns to the writer. The two men love each other from now on. The war begins: in protest, the woman relieves herself on the carpet. To do this, it hits the laughing men. The writer says: “We were skinny, happy men with torn asses.” Because the woman wants her Vova back and wants to give birth to a son, the men beat her again. In addition, the writer poses as Wowa's son in the sense of subordination. The woman can finally be willingly killed by Vova.

Vova and the first-person narrator end up in the institution . There the writer is "chosen" by a strict Mr. Craig Benson, as the first-person narrator had previously chosen Vova. At home, Craig Benson beats up the writer. The corporal punishment is given to the first-person narrator. So he finds the typist again and presents the reader with the text "Living with an Idiot".

shape

The impetus of the above-mentioned surge of typist is unmistakable: The scribe loves a man - Vova. On the other hand, this writer doesn't care much for his two former wives. And the “shit reader” is also underestimated.

reception

In the afterword of the edition used, Zelinsky goes into the narrative. The résumé contained therein - in other words, such a text can come out if the author - freed from Soviet censorship - lets his pen run free. And: With his story, Viktor Erofejew is standing in an exposed position next to the other Russian authors of the 1980s, quite singular. Because it is customary to say truths that have been withheld for a long time in a conventional way.

Adaptations

Musical theater

Performances in Germany

Movie

  • In 1993, Alexander Rogoschkin made the film of the same name with Anatolij Romanzow and Viktor Bitschkow.

German-language editions

  • Viktor Erofejew: Living with an Idiot . Stories. Translated from the Russian by Beate Rausch and Rüdiger Wehling-Raspé (Life with an idiot. The white, neutered cat with the eyes of a beauty. The slurry pump. How we stabbed a Frenchman. The girl and death. Anna's body or The end of the Russian Avant-garde. The little parrot. Persian lilac. Berdyaev. Total collapse. Autumn in Boldino. Letter to mother. Three encounters. The cotton ball. Roast Satan. Mother. Friends. Pocket apocalypse). S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-10-037104-6 , 238 pages.
  • Viktor Erofejew: Living with an Idiot . In: Bodo Zelinsky (): Russian stories of the present . Reclam, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-15-008829-1 , pp. 292-317, RUB 8829 (edition used).

Web links

in Russian language

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Zelinsky in the edition used, p. 332, 15. Zvo
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 333 above as well as stories in S. Fischer 1991, p. 4, 4. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 315, 4. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 353, 10th Zvu to p. 355, 8th Zvu
  5. ↑ Klaus Umbach : Lenin walzert through the madhouse. About the premiere of the Schnittke opera . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1992 ( online ).
  6. ↑ Pitt Herrmann: Life with an Idiot . ( Memento of the original from August 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Sunday News Herne @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sn-herne.de
  7. ↑ Klaus Georg Koch: Everything in the world is foolishness . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 23, 2004
  8. ↑ Russian Анатолий Романцов
  9. ↑ Life with an Idiot in the Internet Movie Database (English)