Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishwin

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Soviet postage stamp for the 100th birthday of Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishwin (1973)

Mikhail Prishvin ( Russian Михаил Михайлович Пришвин , scientific. Transliteration Mikhail Michajlovič Prišvin ; born January 23 . Jul / 4. February  1873 greg. In Chruschtschowo-Ljowschino , Oryol Governorate , † 16 January 1954 in Moscow ) was a Russian / Soviet Writer .

life and work

Michail Prishwin was born as the son of a businessman in Khrushchevo-Lyovschino (around 400 kilometers southeast of Moscow) and studied at the chemical-agronomic faculty of the Polytechnic in Riga . There he was arrested in 1897, imprisoned and later placed under house arrest for participating in the distribution of revolutionary writings. Between 1900 and 1902 he completed his studies in Leipzig and Jena . After a brief episode as an agronomist, Prishwin worked as a journalist and, during the civil war, as a village teacher, librarian and museum curator.

From 1905 he wrote his first literary texts, often on the basis of travel records. In addition to the much-vaunted stories, his autobiographical novel The Chain of Kastschej and the long story Shen-Shen established his reputation. In the revolutionary turmoil that began in 1917, Prishwin met a literary circle in Petrograd , where he lived in winter, while in summer he ran the family estate in Jelez . Prishwin corresponded with Trotsky during this revolutionary period , but got to know the Bolshevik legal system and prison through a critical article. For a long time it was unknown that Prishwin wrote works of a political and philosophical character from 1918 onwards, with a clear understanding of the censorship situation from the start for the drawer - such as The Earthly Chalice, a grotesque from the Russian Civil War. Also in secret he kept a diary for almost fifty years, for which he filled 120 notebooks with his sharp analyzes of the political and social present and of which he said he would be "shot for ten years for every line". Prishwin also left behind an extensive photographic work in which he captured impressions of nature, but also social changes.

After Prishwin's death in 1954, his widow and an estate administrator hid his written estate from the Stalinist public so as not to endanger them. Many notebooks were later transcribed . His work is already completely available in Russian, the Russian edition of the diaries, which has been running since 1991, was completed in 2018. The first volume of the diaries was published in 2019 with entries from 1917 to 1920 in German translation. His diaries show an enormous variety of forms: impressions, everyday sentences, dream notes, reports , aphorisms and also nature writing .

Prishwin was a member of the Russian Fraternitas Arctica in Riga .

Works in German translation

  • The black Arab and other stories , translated from Russian by Alexander Eliasberg , Munich: Georg Müller 1917 (abridged edition udT: Das Tier von Krutojar , ibid. 1927)
  • Ginseng. The root of life , translated from the Russian by Käthe Rosenberg, Berlin: Fischer 1935
  • Dschen-Schen and Jagdgeschichten , translated from the Russian by Irene Barth, Vienna: Scholle-Verlag 1947
  • The flute pans. Stories and sketches , from the Russian by Manfred von Busch, Berlin: Volk und Welt 1948
  • The golden meadow , from the Russian by Alice Wagner, Berlin: Kultur und progress 1949
  • The sun storage. Poetry and Truth , from the Russian by Nadeshda Ludwig, Berlin: SWA-Verlag 1949
  • Secrets of the forest. Stories from the Russian by Johann Dembowski, Berlin: Holz 1952
  • Gray owl , translated from the Russian by Herbert Koch, Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag 1954
  • Ginseng. Story , from the Russian by Ilse Mirus, Munich: Nymphenburger 1960
  • The sunken way. Roman, from the Russian by Hermann Asemissen, Stuttgart: Cotta 1961 (udT Der Zarenweg , translated by Albert Klöckner and Rainer Rosenberg, Berlin: Verlag der Nation 1962)
  • Nordwald-Legende, translated from the Russian by Gottfried J. Wojtek, Berlin: Publishing House Culture and Progress 1961
  • The chain of the Kastschej. Roman, from the Russian by Hartmut Herboth, Berlin: Verlag Kultur und Progress 1963
  • Shen-Schen, from the Russian by Manfred von Busch, revision of the translation by Joachim Barckhausen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1981
  • The Black Arab (The Miraculous Pancake; Sunny Nights; The Animal of Krutojar; The Cross in the Forest; Nikon Starokolenny; Adam and Eve; The Black Arab), short stories, from the Russian by Alexander Eliasberg and Hans-Joachim Grimm, Berlin: Verlag of the nation in 1984
  • In the land of undisturbed birds. Sketches from the Wyg area. Translated by Rainer Schwarz , with 17 watercolors by Konstantin Sokolow, Frankfurt am Main: Gutenberg Book Guild 1985
  • Master narratives (The animal by Krutojar; Phacelia; To the happy tambourine; The cemetery of birds; The black Arab), from the Russian by Ilma Rakusa , Zurich: Manesse 1988
  • The earthly chalice. The year nineteen of the twentieth century, translated from the Russian by Eveline Passet, Guggolz Verlag , Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-945370-02-5
  • Diaries. Volume 1. 1917 to 1920, from the Russian by Eveline Passet, Guggolz Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 9783945370230 .

Web links

Commons : Mikhail Prishvin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ books de IT and Production: Diaries. Volume 1. 1917 to 1920. Retrieved February 2, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Ulrich M. Schmid: "For every line I'll be shot for ten years." nzz.ch, January 24, 2020.
  3. ↑ Ilma Rakusa: Who Was Michail Prischwin ?, pp. 64-75, in: the same: From Heretics and Classics. Forays into Russian literature. Suhrkamp, ​​2003.
  4. ↑ Ilma Rakusa: Afterword, pp. 157–168, in: Michail Prischwin: Der irdische Kelch, Guggolz, 2015.
  5. ↑ Eveline Passet: "This tough, hasty, greedy being" - Russia 1918–1922, pp. 137–156 in: Michail Prischwin: Der irdische Kelch, Guggolz Verlag, 2015.
  6. ^ Andreas Platthaus: Beginnings of the Soviet Union: The revolution, an evil animal . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed February 2, 2020]).
  7. ↑ The Slavist Eveline Passet compiled a four-volume selection from 18 volumes (with 13,000 pages) of the Russian edition, translated and commented on it.
personal data
SURNAME Prishwin, Michail Michailowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Пришвин, Михаил Михайлович (Russian spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-Soviet writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Khrushchevo-Lyovshino , Oryol Governorate
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1954
Place of death Moscow , Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , Soviet Union