Love in bast shoes

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Nikolai Leskov in 1872

Love in bast shoes , including Nastja and The Vita of a Peasant Woman ( Russian Житие одной бабы , Schitije odnoi baby - The life of a peasant woman ), is a story by the Russian writer Nikolai Leskow , which the author wrote in 1863 in the July and August issues of the St. Petersburg magazine Biblioteka dlja tschtenija published under the pseudonym M. Stebnitski.

The author "composed his story ... as an anti-idyll". The love of the farmer Nastassja Prokudina, called Nastja, and the farmer Stepan Lyabichow, called Stjopka, ends in misery.

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The first-person narrator, a collegiate secretary, lives in Saint Petersburg, but visits his closer home - the area around Oryol - every few years and learns one or the other story from his fellow countrymen.

The action ran for several years in the Gostomel district on the Gostomlja river and ended after serfdom was abolished , i.e. after the late winter of 1861.

Eighteen farmers, including Konstantin - called Kostik, work for the landlord Ryumin. When Kostik's father Antonovich died, Kostik's younger sister Nastja came to live with the landlady as a chambermaid. Kostik married at the age of 26. The enterprising brother Kostik, head of the family after the death of his father, couples 18-year-old Nastja with 20-year-old clumsy, ugly Grigori Prokudin - known as Grischka. Grischka is the son of Kostik's business friend, the oil miller Prokudin. The farmers give themselves nicknames. Because the fool is nibbling Grischka, he is called Grischka Maulaffe . After the landlady has received forty rubles for her maid, she can go and marry. The wedding in the middle of winter is lavishly celebrated, but without the usual cheerfulness. Nastja complains to Kostik about Grischka: “He is repulsive to me; repugnant to death! ”The marriage is not consummated. The young wife runs away in front of her wife and is gone.

The relative of the oil miller Prokudin, the mail smith Saweli, knocked in the snow and reported that the runaway had fled to him. Kostik brings the sister back. Nastja reacts hysterically and then melancholy .

The old alternative practitioner Sila Ivanytsch Kryluschkin treats the sick in his house. After a good six months, Nastja returns to the house of the Procudins healed. Grishka works in Ukraine ; lives in Kharkov with a widow who runs a hostel.

In the summer evenings, a beautiful young singer rides past Nastya's open window - Stjopka Lyabichow. He is married and has two young children. Nastja and Stjopka fall in love; sleep in the grain after working in the fields.

Stjopka impregnates Nastja. The oil miller Prokudin quotes his son Grischka from the Ukraine. When the husband arrives, Nastja fled to Stjopka. The pair of lovers flees via Dmitrowka in the direction of Sevsk and wants to go to Nikolayev . On the way they are picked up, separated and imprisoned as tramps. Nastja had a premature birth in prison. The newborn boy dies. Nastja gets nervous fever .

Six weeks later, Nastja and Stjopka were punished with forty and sixty lashes, respectively, and deported to their home district. Stjopka dies of typhus in Dmitrovka prison . Nastja arrives at the Prokudins mentally disturbed. Kryluschkin heals the patient over the course of a year. He is accused of quacking by the health authorities. Nastja is monitored by the police together with mentally disturbed people in the medical administration. In autumn she is brought back to the Prokudins and fled into the fields. It feeds on fish in shallow places on the Gostomlja. The blacksmith Saweli and his wife are the only people Nastja seeks out; but only in one go. Then it escapes into the open again. In the next winter, Nastja did not survive a heavy snow storm in the forest.

Grischka marries a soldier's widow, leaves her and from then on lives with the Charkow hostess. The squire Ryumin and the naturopath Kryluschkin die.

Social criticism

Leskov puts his finger on Russian wounds of that time.

  • The Ryumin peasants are worse off than serfs. You live in cramped conditions at the manor and receive a deputation.
  • Beat representatives of the Russian patriarchate: Kostik drives his escaped sister Nastja back to the marriage sponsor with nodding and thumping.

reception

  • 1959: Setschkareff states: “An idealization of the people is far from him [Leskow] here as in Schafochs . The farmers are dominated by greed for money, alcohol and sex. "
  • 1967: Reissner writes: "The writer sees the Russian village without any illusion ... Leskov thus became a forerunner of Chekhov , who thirty years later confronted the folk with similar harsh descriptions of the Russian village ."
  • 1988: Dieckmann says: " Love in bast shoes shows, in the style of an old vita, the vitality and the downfall of a Russian peasant woman."

literature

German-language editions

  • Love in bast shoes. Life story of a peasant girl. German by Günter Dalitz. P. 125–280 in Eberhard Reissner (Ed.): Nikolai Leskow: Collected works in individual volumes. Love in bast shoes. With a comment from the editor. 747 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1967 (1st edition)

Output used:

  • Love in bast shoes. Life story of a peasant girl. German by Günter Dalitz. P. 138–290 in Eberhard Dieckmann (Ed.): Nikolai Leskow: Collected works in individual volumes . Vol. 1: The Lady Macbeth from the Mtsensk district. Stories. 632 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1988 (1st edition), ISBN 3-352-00252-5

Secondary literature

  • Vsevolod Sechkareff : NS Leskov. His life and his work. 170 pages. Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1959

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Neighboring places of Gostomel mentioned in the text: Pusejewo (Russian Пузеево) and Lomowez (Russian Ломовец) in today 's Oryol Oblast .
  2. ↑ Dmitrowka: Village in today's Orjol Rajon (Russian Орловский район (Орловская область )).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Setschkareff, p. 44, 15. Zvo
  2. ↑ Russian М. Стебницкий in genesis and publication history
  3. ↑ Russian reference to first publication
  4. ↑ Dieckmann in the follow-up to the edition used, p. 614, 15. Zvu
  5. ↑ Russian Коллежский секретарь
  6. ↑ Russian Гостомльское сельское поселение (near the Kromy district )
  7. ↑ Russian Гостомля
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 156, 13. Zvu
  9. ↑ Setschkareff, p. 45, 13th Zvu
  10. ^ Reissner in the follow-up to the 1967 edition, p. 727, 15. Zvo
  11. ^ Dieckmann in the follow-up to the edition used, p. 614, 11. Zvo