Light breath

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Ivan Bunin in 1901 in a photo of Maxim Dmitriev

Light Breath ( Russian Лёгкое дыхание , Lyogkoje dychanije ) is a short story by the Russian Nobel Prize winner for literature Ivan Bunin , which appeared on April 10, 1916 in the Moscow newspaper Russkoje slowo .

content

Fifteen-year-old Olya Meshcherskaya was considered a beauty at her high school and was not on the lips. The headmistress called Olja to her and during her lecture she couldn't get beyond the reproach of this quick-witted high school student. When the director complained about Olja's hairstyle and expensive shoes on the grounds that she was after all a girl and not yet a woman, the devastating contradiction followed. The 56-year-old Alexej Michajlowitsch Malyutin - that is the director's brother - made her a wife last summer vacation in the country.

Four weeks after this discussion, Olya was shot dead by a Cossack officer on a crowded platform. The shooter defends himself in court that he could not have done otherwise, because Olja had made a fool of him with her marriage promise. She found men abhorrent. To corroborate his statement, the officer can show a diary sheet to Oljas on which she documented sexual abuse during Malyutin's lifetime .

Now, as the third and final sequence, the narrator brings Olja's little class teacher, previously not mentioned, into play. Once a week the elderly maid visits Olja's grave, lingers for hours in the cemetery and recalls the apparition of the dead, a radiant beauty during their lifetime. During the break in the school yard of a classmate - actually not intended for the ears of the class teacher - Olja had listed what a beautiful woman must have. The most important thing is a light breath. And she did.

filming

  • 1994, Russia , 5th channel: love passion . 77-min TV film from Lew Zuzulkowski's St. Petersburg studio with Alexandra Florinskaya-Budanova as Olja.

Self-testimony

Borowsky wrote in 1995 that Bunin had preferred to investigate the behavior of a woman by writing, and that he went “to the› limit of her innermost being ‹”. The subject of investigation in the present text was that easy breathing.

reception

  • In April 1916 Paustowski bought the newspaper with the text in Jelez and after reading it “learned for the first time how the eternal power of art lifts the reader”. In addition, statements by the literary critic Alexander Gisetti and the writers Jelena Koltonowskaja and Galina Kuznetsova have become known.

German-language editions

Used edition
  • Light breath . P. 86–93 in: Iwan Bunin: Der Sonnenstich. Stories. Translated and edited by Kay Borowsky . 150 pages. Reclam, Stuttgart 1995 ( RUB 9343), ISBN 3-15-009343-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ russ. Русское слово (газета) - The Russian word
  2. ↑ Russian Пятый канал (Россия)
  3. ↑ Russian. Посвящение в любовь
  4. ↑ Russian Цуцульковский, Лев Израилевич
  5. ↑ Russian Флоринская-Буданова, Александра Евгеньевна
  6. ↑ Borowsky quotes Iwan Bunin in the afterword of the edition used, p. 145, 18. Zvu
  7. ↑ Translation of the literature listed below in Russian Лёгкое дыхание
  8. ↑ Russian Гизетти, Александр Алексеевич
  9. ↑ Russian Колтоновская, Елена Александровна
  10. ↑ Russian Кузнецова, Галина Николаевна
  11. ↑ russ. Лёгкое дыхание Comments and reviews