New territory (Turgenew)

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Alexei Kharlamov 1875:
Ivan Turgenev

Neuland ( Russian: Новь , Now) is the sixth and last novel by the Russian writer Ivan Turgenew , written from 1870 to 1876 and published in the January and February issues of Westnik Evropy in 1877 . The translation into German was also published in 1877 by E. Behre in Mitau as a book printed in Rudolstadt .

The impoverished student Alexei Neshdanow, illegitimate son of a nobleman, turns his back on the historical-philological faculty of the St. Petersburg University and wants to stir up the utterly submissive peasants in the Russian provinces who are loyal to the tsar . The occasional republican and esthete Neshdanov fails in his hopeless attempt.

background

The novel's plot is in the spring of 1868, and runs until winter to the year 1870. Already in late winter 1861 was Russia the serfdom was abolished. The populists sought a way to socialism in the country, which should spare the peasants the arduous detour via capitalism . Turgenev not only followed this revolutionary movement with interest from France , but also maintained personal contacts with two of its heads - Lopatin and Lavrov . Turgenew supported their mouthpiece Vorwärts financially and in Neuland , his last extensive work, brought the tricky situation of the clumsy Russian peasant closer to his international readership.

action

St. Petersburg

While Alexei Neshdanov, around 23 years old, is busy in the St. year-old lame businessman Sila Samsonytsch Paklin. The three waiting talk about the raging famine in Russia and the arrest of a presumably betrayed co-conspirator.

The conspirators receive their written orders from a secret operator Vasily Nikolayevich. Neshdanow applied as a private tutor in a newspaper advertisement and is hired by Privy Councilor Boris Andrejitsch Sipjagin as a Russian and history teacher for his son Kolja. The high-ranking Saint Petersburg civil servant Chamberlain Sipjagin, a prospective minister, is liberal and owns the village of Arshanoje, only five miles from the capital of the S. Governorate.

S.

The advances made by Sipjagin's wife, the Arshanoj landlady Valentina Mikhailovna Sipjania, ricochet off the new head of house. Neshdanow falls in love with the orphan Marianna Wikentjewa Sinezkaja - daughter of the deceased sister of the host. Sipjagina overhears the young couple and sees the future village school teacher Marianna as a nihilist and slanderer. The noble Fraulein Marianna stated that she “suffered for all the oppressed, poor and miserable in Russia, ... rebelled” for them and was “ready to give up her life for them”. Aunt Valentina has chosen the "hideous Kallomejzew" as a good match for Marianna. In the vicinity of the Sipjagins, the wealthy chamberlain Semyon Petrovich Kallomejzew spends a two-month vacation on his estate. The Monarchist Kallomejzew suspected, the new tutor and Valentina Sipjanias brother Markelov were red .

The artillery lieutenant Sergei Mikhailovich Markelov received a basket from Marianna. Neshdanov accepts Markelow's invitation to his run-down estate in Borsjonkowo. Markelow, "stubborn and fearless to the point of recklessness", is one of the conspirators who received written orders from Vasily Nikolayevich. Two conspirators from Petersburg known to the reader are waiting in Markelov's house: Ostrodumov and Maschurina. The latter should continue to another conspiratorial meeting. Ostrodumoff to S. farmers in the province agitate . Markelow calls the peasantry ignorant. Instruction is necessary. Because: “The poverty is great, and nobody explains where this poverty comes from.” Turgenev portrays the Russian peasant of 1868, that is, the peasant who has been freed from serfdom for years, as a stupid fool. No farmer wants to understand the principle of the peasant cooperative. More precisely: the farmer does not want to understand the Russian word “participation”. Turgenev, however, excludes the clever pawns from this rule. These are those who became usurers after 1861.

Neshdanov has to realize that he is not called to be a propagandist . He cannot manage a dialogue with the drinking, scolding farmers. Among the workers in Sipjagin's writing paper factory - quick-witted, harsh fellows - Neshdanov speaks against a wall.

Of course, Neshdanov cannot hide from Vasily Nikolayevich in the province. The next command will soon reach him. Neshdanow is supposed to contact two colleagues nearby - the chief mechanic Solomin in a large cotton mill owned by the merchant Faleev and the merchant Golushkin in the provincial capital S.

Wassili Fedodytsch Solomin, the only son of a little clergyman, had successfully been an apprentice to the English for two years and is proving to be a sober and clear-headed practitioner. Solomin apparently smiles a little at the Petersburg revolutionaries and in any case does not believe in the rapid revolution.

In the vicinity of Kapiton Andrejitsch Goluschkin, who is around forty years old, Neshdanov meets Sila Paklin to his astonishment. The Petersburg friend has aristocratic relatives in S. Golushkin and is generously donating money for the planned coup.

Solomin accepts Sipjagin's invitation to Arshanoje. The mechanic gets to know and appreciate Marianna there. Sipjagin takes Solomin's beard because he needs a capable manager for his own ailing factory. Solomin refuses the lucrative offer and tells Sipjagin the reason: he prefers to stay in the factory of the Moscow merchant Faleev. Because nobles are like officials in one respect - both are useless as factory owners.

When Sipjagin finally stamps Neshdanov as red and forbids him to leave the house, Marianna runs away with the resigned head of house. The couple take shelter at Solomin's factory. The chief mechanic has a priest by hand - his cousin Sossima - who could churchly trust the refugees on the spot. Neshdanov is not looking for marital happiness, but wants to fight first. Solomin forbids him to distribute his brochures in the factory. Neshdanov goes to the country. It is true that all of the farmers with whom Neshdanov speaks are dissatisfied. But nobody wants to know a way out of dissatisfaction. Neshdanov resigned. The esthete has found no point of contact with real life.

Markelow can't wait and tries to overthrow the neighboring district of T. The peasants incapacitate the lieutenant. Neshdanov was recognized in Babi Klyuchi while being stirred up. Sila Paklin, who scolds an informant, betrays Goluschkin and Neshdanow. Markelow blames himself for the failure: "I should have given orders, and if someone ... had stood upright, a bullet in the head." Kallomejzew considers Solomin to be the "chief ringleader".

Neshdanov wants to go to death with Marianna. The future revolutionary confesses to the tired of life: “I believe in it [in the necessity of an overthrow] with all the strength of my heart and dedicate my whole life to this cause. Until the last breath! ”Neshdanov kills himself with a revolver shot.

epilogue

Solomin and Marianna get married by the priest Sossima.

Markelow is put on trial. He regrets nothing and does not name anybody.

The agitator Pimen Ostrodumow is murdered by a petty bourgeois . Golushkin regrets and gets away with it almost unscathed. Paklin squirms out. Solomin is acquitted for lack of evidence and runs his own factory in Perm on a cooperative basis. Marianna doesn't have to appear in court at all.

The circle closes. The midwife Fjokla Maschurina is in hiding, doing assignments for Vasily Nikolajewitsch in other Western European countries and appears as Contessa Rocco di Santo-Fiume in Paklin's modest apartment in Petersburg. Turgenev works out in short lines: The ugly, aging woman had loved the young Neshdanov.

Sipjagin and Kallomejzew climb the highest possible peak of power for Russian officials.

shape

The narrator is almost omniscient. In addition to the protagonist Alexej Neshdanow, other, essential plot-bearing characters are allowed to think.

Some things remain hidden and others are "explained". Vasily Nikolajewitsch, who was in charge of the conspirators' orders, does not emerge from the dark. Neshdanov pours the heart out to his best friend, his schoolmate Wladimir Silin, who lives in the province, and thus gives the reader an insight into himself.

Sometimes Turgenew tells with a twinkle in his eye. For example, it means the chamber play-like encounter / rediscovery of the initially introduced partly Hanswurst- like characters around Nesdanow, i.e. Ostrodumow, the Maschurina and Paklin in the Russian province, more than a thousand kilometers from Petersburg. Turgenew depicts the Russian spring / early summer with devotion and paints pictures of the Russian landed nobility, who died out in the 19th century - such as Paklin's relatives - the old couple Fomuschka and Fimuschka.

The dominant social problem areas highlighted in the article, which surround the term revolution, are presented cautiously by Turgenev. In contrast, the narrative portrayal of the triangular relationship between Neshdamov, Marianna and Solomin comes to the fore.

The plot is more closely woven than sketched above. For example, psychologically speaking, most of it is related to Marianna and her four lovers Markelow, Neshdanow, Solomin and Kallomejzew. When the conspirators cheered at Golushkin's table, first lieutenant Markelov was deeply offended because Neshdanov had won the race with Marianna. Valentina Sipjania had not withheld the news from her brother. The two friends Markelow and Neshdanow, united in the common struggle for the final peasant liberation, ultimately put their social struggle goal above the favor of the woman. Second, when Marianna gradually turned away from Neshdanov and turned to Solomin, this did not remain hidden from the extremely sensitive Neshdanov. He renounces and shoots himself out of self-loathing: he is out of place anywhere. Thirdly, Kallomeezev's verbal attacks against Marianna's three other lovers, which are difficult to bear for outsiders, have the same root - spurned love.

Testimonials

  • With Neshdanov, the son of a nobleman fails as a revolutionary. In December 1876 - towards the end of his literary career - Turgenev suspected that literary figures of future Russian revolutionaries could emerge from the lower strata of the population in the decades after him: should have been outlined more clearly. But that's too big a guy; in time - not under my pen, of course - he will become the central figure of a new novel. "
  • Turgenev on Putting Neuland on the part of Russian literary criticism: "I was never so unanimously condemned in the magazines."

reception

  • On September 3, 1883, the anniversary of Turgenev's death, the Petersburg Volkstümler write: "The deepest feeling of heartache, which penetrates new territory and is in places masked by fine irony, does not diminish our love for Turgenev."
  • Vasily Nikolayevich could mean the nihilist Nechayev .

literature

Output used:

  • New territory. Translated from the Russian by Wilhelm Plackmeyer , pp. 239–589 in: Iwan Turgenew: Rauch. New territory. Afterword by Klaus Dornacher. 635 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1974 (1st edition).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Lavrov published the magazine Vorwärts (Russian Вперёд , Vperjod) 1873–1877.
  2. ↑ Arshanoje is located in the Russian black earth belt (edition used, p. 289, 3rd Zvu, see also Russian Чернозёмы ). The government could therefore S. maybe in the Ukraine or in the Volga region ( Samara Governorate , Saratov province are).
  3. ↑ Dornacher (in the afterword of the edition used, p. 608, 17. Zvo) refers to the literary figure of Pawel Vlasow in Gorki's mother from 1906.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Харламов, Алексей Алексеевич
  2. ↑ Dornacher in the edition used, p. 601, 11. Zvu
  3. ↑ German Alexandrowitsch Lopatin (1845–1918), Russian Лопатин, Герман Александрович
  4. ↑ Dornacher in the afterword of the edition used, p. 601, 14. Zvo
  5. ↑ today Russian Улица Декабристов (Санкт-Петербург)
  6. ↑ Russian Аржаное
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 345, 4th Zvu
  8. ↑ Russian Борзенково
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 320, 13. Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 315, 8th Zvu
  11. ↑ Russian Бабьи ключи
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 554, 11. Zvu
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 565, 2nd Zvo
  14. ↑ Turgenew, quoted in Dornacher in the edition used, p. 608, 8. Zvo
  15. ↑ Turgenew, quoted in Dornacher in the edition used, p. 608, 10th Zvu
  16. ↑ Quoted in Dornacher in the edition used, p. 609, 7. Zvo
  17. ↑ Dornacher in the afterword of the edition used, p. 607, 4th Zvu
  18. ↑ see also Neu-Land