Perpetual motion machine (Chekhov)
Perpetuum mobile ( Russian Перпетуум-мобиле ) is a short story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared on March 17, 1884 in the weekly Oskolki . A reviewer of the Odessa newspaper discussed the text on October 4, 1900 and criticized certain implausible passages of this caricature. During Chekhov's lifetime the text was translated into Serbo-Croatian and Czech.
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The 67-year-old examining magistrate Agej Alexejitsch Grischutkin and the young, unmarried doctor Timofej Wassiljitsch Swistizki go to an autopsy on the corpse of a sergeant. With the best will in the world, the destination cannot be reached in the rainy weather. To spend the night, the local coachman Mishka turns to the property of Major General a. D. Ivan Ivanytsch Yeshov, chairman of the College of Justice of the Peace. A company is dining at the table. Grischutkin and Swistizki are just right. Whist is played after the meal . But Svetitsky is talking to Nadezhda Ivanovna, the daughter of the house , next to the piano . The young widow expresses respect for the medical profession and complains about her boredom. When the little light next to her door burns at night, she lies sleepless.
At two o'clock in the night, Jeshow thinks about his due morning trip to the meeting and sends the guests to bed. Grischutkin and Swistizki are assigned a room with two feather beds. When the examining magistrate learns about the little lamp, he forces the young doctor to go see the lonely widow. When that fails, the 67-year-old drunk Grischutkin wants to leave himself and Swistizki can only stop him with difficulty. Mishka is woken up and has to drive the two fighters home in the middle of the night.
Grischutkin went to Svistitsky three days later and apologized. The doctor accepts the apology. The examining magistrate urges the doctor to perform an autopsy on the NCO, which is long overdue.
When both are on the road - it has snowed in the meantime - the business travelers stop in Alimonowo next to the Troika Jeshows. An attractive waitress in the tavern lets Jeshow miss the meeting for the second time, as does Grischutkin and Swistizki the autopsy. Grischutkin remarks in the tavern with resignation: “We're still going to the autopsy, but we can't get there at all. We have gotten into a vicious circle, ”which describes the moral of the story hidden in the title: If you let yourself be distracted, you will never get there.
filming
- 1998, Russia , VID-TV and Chekhov Art Theater Moscow : Chekhov and Company , Season 5 (Russian) by Sinowi Roisman, Dmitri Brusnikin and Alexander Feklistow with Stanislaw Lyubschin as examining magistrate Grischutkin, Alexei Suijew as doctor Svistitsky, Vyacheslav Scholobow as major general a. D. Ivan Yeshov and Natalja Rogoschkina as his daughter Nadezhda Ivanovna.
Used edition
- Gerhard Dick (Hrsg.), Wolf Düwel (Hrsg.): Anton Chekhov: Collected works in single volumes : Perpetuum mobile. S. 177–187 in: Gerhard Dick (ed.): Anton Chekhov: From rain to eaves. Short stories. Translated from Russian by Ada Knipper and Gerhard Dick. With a foreword by Wolf Düwel. 630 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1964 (1st edition)
Web links
- The text
- Wikisource: Perpetuum mobile (Чехов) (Russian)
- online in Lib.ru (Russian)
- online in FEB (Russian)
- Chekhov Bibliography, Entry Stories No. 172 (Russian)
- Reference to first appearance in the Laboratory of Fantastics (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian Одесский листок
- ↑ Note under Perpetuum mobile (Russian) in the FEB, pp. 545-546
- ↑ Russian Алимоново
- ↑ Edition used, p. 186, 2nd Zvu
- ↑ Russian ВИD
- ↑ Russian Чехов и Ко
- ↑ Russian Ройзман, Зиновий Александрович
- ↑ Russian Брусникин, Дмитрий Владимирович
- ↑ Russian Зуев, Алексей Владимирович
- ↑ Russian Жолобов, Вячеслав Иванович
- ↑ Russian Рогожкина, Наталья Сергеевна
- ↑ Entry in WorldCat