Nightingale echo

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Nightingale Echo ( Russian Соловьиное эхо / Solowjinoje echo ) is a narrative of the Soviet writer Anatoly Kim from 1976, in the literary magazine in 1977 Peoples' Friendship ( Russian Дружба народов / Druzhba Narodow been previously printed) and 1978 in the collection Четыре исповеди (Tschetyre ispowedi / Four Confessions) was published by the Moscow publishing house Soviet writers ( Russian Советский писатель / Sowetski pissatel ). Hartmut Herboth's translation into German was published in 1986 by Volk und Welt in Berlin.

title

The first-person narrator Mesner, an art historian of Korean descent born in 1941 , author of the book “The Pencil Sketches of the Masters of Late Impressionism ”, reports on his German grandfather, who disappeared without a trace on the Volga in the summer of 1914 when the First World War broke out . Of course, sacristan can not know a lot about his ancestor Otto Meißner, master of philosophy at the University of Königsberg - also because the Koreans living on the Amur were forcibly relocated to the Tschimkenter area in Kazakhstan shortly before the Second World War . So Mesner fills some gaps in the flow of time by means of the power of his imagination . Speaking of the “flow of time” - Mesner breaks this continuum of time, which is actually always strictly consecutive, carefree and even extrapolates it beyond his own death. Here are two examples. At the beginning of the story, the young grandfather speaks to the unborn sacristan. According to the author's will, the reader should initially imagine the latter as a star in the night sky at the early narrative point. When the narrator later vigorously steps on the stage and changes the subject - he tries to cope with his broken marriage for the best - he simultaneously grapples with his German grandfather in a narrative jumble. Mesner has learned German and looks through the yellowed notes of Otto Meißner. It says: “A nightingale struck, and every sound sounded like a kiss drunk with bliss. I felt as if the little bird was kissing the face of the rising sun. And in this resounding caress ... I discovered ... something eternal ... "Mesner has died, continues to tell in spite of everything and takes up the nightingale theme of my grandfather:" I am alive and I have long ceased to exist in the world. .. only the nightingale echo ... flies on the crest of the Maierblühens, and the sweeping waves of time run into the distance ... "

content

The story of Mesner's Korean grandmother Mesner-Olga-ame, Otto Meißner's wife, runs from the summer of 1912 to 1927. The young Otto, from his energetic grandfather Friedrich Meißner, a descendant of the active Hanse merchants, is on a business trip to the Detached from the Far East , is on his way back to Germany. He took a closer look at the Indian hemp , the Japanese cultured pearls and the bear seals on the beach of the Commodor Islands. Now Otto has to find the production and transport options for opium on the Russian bank of the Amur . In addition, Otto cures the terminally ill very young Korean Olga with a cup of coffee. Since then, Olga and her German lifesaver have been fleeing their Korean relatives to the west. Getting married on the way. The couple stays longer in Chita . On the Baikal , Otto has to investigate questions of the Omul catch on behalf of his grandfather . Olga and Otto have a boy in Irkutsk . Towards the end of 1913 Otto had to take a little detour via Tuwa on the instructions of his grandfather . The asbestos there deserves attention. The bumpy path leads over the Sajan through the Khakassian steppe. In the Tuvinian winter Otto has to fight off an attacking pack of white wolves on a sleigh ride through the steppe. Otto shoots three large beasts. Then the pack of the small family of the unerring academic shooter leaves. Until the spring of 1914, the three travelers enjoyed the hospitality of the English industrialist Mr. Josua Stubbs in the area in which the Tuvin city of Ak ... k is located today . The first-person narrator Meisner creates the subsequent aerial journey from Ak to the city of W. on the Volga in a phantasmagorical manner . Those three strong white wolves that were shot pull the boat-like vehicle through the West Siberian skies. As soon as the wolves flag, the coachman spreads his three pairs of white swan wings and the wolf team strives further west towards the Volga.

After the outbreak of war, foreigners - like the German Meissner - are placed under police supervision in W. Olga is pregnant again. He never returns from going to the police, where Otto wants to hand over his revolver. In winter, Olga gives birth to a second boy. In 1927 she returned with her two boys to her family on the Amur. The sons grow up in Kazakhstan, marry Koreans there and father a total of eleven children.

From the seventh of the ten chapters onwards, Meisner weaves in the report of his misfortune. After two years of military service as an officer in Kamchatka , his ambitious wife at home in Moscow has now obtained a doctorate in the physiology of the brain and has caught a tall chemical engineer. There is no more space for Meisner in the cramped Moscow apartment. He got divorced, bent the nose of the weak chemist and voluntarily moved to Tataro-Krapivenskoye. There he works as a teacher in the village school. There are only sixty-five students.

reception

Debüser revolves around Anatoly Kim's writing philosophy by specifying the term “we”. This term encompasses all souls who have entered eternity . Meisner looked through grandfather Otto Meißner's papers because he wanted to overcome his own divorce. He found that while grandfather Otto had probably despaired, grandmother Olga had followed her path unswervingly.

German-language editions

  • Anatoli Kim: Nightingale echo, pp. 115–209 in: The nephrite belt - nightingale echo - lotus . Three little novels. Translated from the Russian by Hartmut Herboth and Irene Strobel. With an afterword by Lola Debüser. Volk und Welt, Berlin 1986. 343 pages (used edition)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Anatoly Kim could mean Volgograd , which was then called Tsaritsyn.
  2. ↑ Meisner does not disclose which of the two sons Olga is his father.
  3. ↑ Anatoly Kim could mean a place in Tatarstan .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 209
  2. ↑ Russian Дружба народов , 1977, issue 1, pp. 151-203
  3. ↑ Russian Четыре исповеди
  4. ↑ Russian Советский писатель
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 193, 4th Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 187, 18. Zvo
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 163, 1. Zvo and p. 187, 4. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 206, 17. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 208, 16. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 187, 3rd Zvo
  11. ↑ Debüser in the afterword of the edition used, pp. 337–342