Ruslan and Lyudmila (poem)

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Ruslan and Lyudmila ( Руслан и Людмила ), also written as Ruslan and Ludmila , is a poem , a verse fairy tale by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin , published in Russia in the summer of 1820. It was the literary basis for the opera of the same name by Michail Iwanowitsch Glinka . The poem consists of a dedication, a prologue, six chants and an epilogue. The second to sixth songs are each introduced by an editorial comment by the poet. The comments create a meta level in the text in the sense of romantic irony . The fairy tale tells of the bride and groom Ruslan and Lyudmila. Lyudmila, daughter of the legendary Prince Vladimir of Kiev , is kidnapped by the evil magician Chernomor on the wedding night. The hero Ruslan is able to free her from Chernomor's castle after much confusion, with three rivals and a witch getting in his way.

Prologue and editorial notes

Frontispiece (cover sheet) of the first edition from 1820

In the prologue, Pushkin did not add the poem An oak tree protrudes from the beach until 1824/25. In it, with allusions to the Slavic folk tales about the character Baba Jaga and a fairy tale that he himself had processed in 1824 under the title Tale of Tsar Saltan , he conjures up an atmosphere of "old fairy tale miracle dream", in which he uses the following fairy tale as wants to embed what is supposedly the most beautiful. At the same time, Pushkin attests to his creative handling of folk tales.

In the introduction to the second song, the poet addresses the knights, criticizes their “lust for murder” and calls them: “ When it comes to questions of love, remain compatible / And agree on friendliness!” Further down he introduces the description of the duel between Rogdai and Ruslan by asking the battle painter Aleksander Orłowski to draw the scene. Pushkin introduces the fourth song with a thank you to the Creator, that “in our days / no longer so terrible / ghosts plague us and magicians”. Then he addresses the “genius of my poetry” personally, the poet Wassili Andrejewitsch Schukowski , and asks his forgiveness for “flying after him” and “dressing the cheerful fairy tale, the joy of the world / in a pretty lie”. He suggests that his story of the sleeping Lyudmila parodies a ballad of Zhukovsky.

action

First song: There was a celebration in Kiev: The old Prince Vladimir gave his beautiful daughter Ludmila to the young Prince Ruslan, a knight without fear and blame, as wife. Only three jealous men could not be happy: the knights Rogdai, Ratmir and Farlaf, who had also fallen in love with Ludmila. But when Ruslan and Ludmila were finally in each other's arms on their wedding night, a spell of lightning and smoke burst between them, stunned the groom and made the bride disappear. The next morning, Prince Vladimir was furious. He canceled the wedding and promised Ludmila whoever would bring it back to him, and all four applicants went out to find the beautiful woman again. The desperate Ruslan moved north and came across the cave of an old hermit, a Finn, who told him that the evil magician Tschernomor, a dwarf with a meter-long beard, had kidnapped Ludmila like many brides before. He prophesied to Ruslan that after heavy fighting he would overcome the magician and find Ludmila again. The Finn told Ruslan his story: As a young shepherd in Finland he fell in love with the beautiful Naïna, but she laughed and scorned him. Thereupon he had thrown himself into the war with some loyal followers and gained much warrior fame, but when he came home with it, the beautiful woman still scorned him. In desperation he had surrendered to magic and after many years learned the magic that was supposed to make Naïna weigh him. Naïna actually fell in love with him - but she was now a seventy-year-old witch. Now the Finn no longer wanted her and had fled into the distance from her revenge. The wicked witch Naïna, the Finn knew, was still up to mischief and was a danger to all lovers.

Second song: Indeed, Naïna immediately crossed the path of the knight Rogdai, who was an irascible and furious man, and showed him the way to the north, where he could kill his rival Ruslan. Rogdai followed her advice, but first came across Farlaf and almost killed him before he realized his mistake. Farlaf was a worthless reveler and boastful man. Naïna appeared to him too, and on her advice he retired to a house near Kiev to await further developments; he would still win Ludmila, she had said. - Meanwhile, the kidnapped bride Ludmila woke up in a splendid castle and was served by three compassionate servants; She was shown a beautiful garden inside the magic castle, but all around was a horrible ice desert. Inconsolable, Ludmila wandered the garden all day. During the night Chernomor came to her with a great din to woo her: dark-skinned servants carried his meter-long beard on pillows. Ludmila screamed so loudly that the servants rushed out; she grabbed the dwarf, tore his cap, and the spook was over. - On the banks of the Dnieper, Rogdai found his rival Ruslan and pounced on him. In their long duel, the two knights smashed all weapons and went on to fistfight. Rogdai finally became exhausted, and Ruslan threw the fainted man into the Dnieper, where he drowned.

Canto 3 : The witch Naïna appeared in Chernomor's castle and offered the magician an alliance to destroy the old Finn together. Chernomor revealed to her that his magic power was in his meter-long beard. When Chernomor went to Lyudmila's room again, the girl had disappeared. Because had when she tried out the hat of the magician in the morning before the mirror, discovers that she is a stealth was that if she turned the cap, they became invisible. So she could hide in the garden for days and escape the servants who were looking for her. - Ruslan, meanwhile, came across an old battlefield and got makeshift new weapons, but found no usable sword. As he rode on, he came across a snoring hill at night: it was the severed head of a giant that was still alive but asleep. Ruslan cheekily woke the giant's head by tickling its nose with the spear. The angry giant challenged him to fight; Ruslan managed to astonish him and hit him on the cheek so much that his head rolled to one side, revealing a warrior sword that had been hidden under him for many years. The giant asked Ruslan for mercy and told him his sad story: He was the brother of the magical dwarf Chernomor, once a giant of a beautiful figure, but simple-minded; However, from a young age he was an ugly gnome, cunning, jealous and vicious. His magic was in his long beard. Chernomor had told his brother about a warrior's sword that, according to an old prophecy, would bring harm to both of them. The giant had set out with Chernomor to find the sword. When they found it, Chernomor had cut off his own brother's head with cunning and sword and set the head, which lived on through a spell, as a guard over the sword.

Canto four: Ratmir, the fiery Khazar- Khan, came across a magic castle with twelve equally fiery virgins on his journey; he let himself be pampered by them and soon forgot Ludmila, Kiev and the search. - In the end, with a trick, Chernomor managed to capture Lyudmila in a net and put him into a magical sleep.

Fifth chant: At this moment Ruslan appeared with his horse in front of the castle and challenged Chernomor to fight. Chernomor, who could fly, attacked him from the air. Ruslan got hold of his beard, and Chernomor flew through the air for days while Ruslan hung in his beard, plucking out one hair after another. As a result, he lost strength and had to admit defeat. He returned to the castle, where Ruslan cut off his beard with his sword and put the twitching dwarf in the cross sack on his horse; he tied his beard to his helmet as a trophy. However, he initially looked in vain in the palace and garden for Ludmila, who had previously put the invisibility cap on Chernomor. Only when he accidentally pushed her cap off her head did he find the sleeping woman and ride back south with her and Chernomor. On the way he passed the head of Chernomor's brother again, and when he saw the bound and disempowered culprit, he could finally die. Later Ruslan met a fisherman who lived in solitude with his beautiful young wife: it was Ratmir who had traded the craft of war for love. Ruslan and Ratmir parted as friends. - Meanwhile, the witch Naïna had alerted Farlaf and put on Ruslan's trail. The unworthy competitor attacked the sleeping knight, pierced him with his sword and made off with the sleeping Ludmila.

Song six: When Farlaf and Lyudmila moved into Kiev, the cheers there were limited because nobody allowed him to catch the fish, and Prince Vladimir continued to fear for his daughter because she did not wake up. To make matters worse, the Pechenegs appeared at the gates and began to besiege the city. - The Finnish hermit had news of what had happened. From two secret springs he got himself a jug of the water of death and one of the water of life. With that he went to the fatally wounded Ruslan, healed his wounds and brought him back to life. He instructed him to free the besieged Kiev and to wake Ludmila with a magic ring. So it happened. Ruslan and the other knights drove the Pechenegs away; Ruslan woke Ludmila; the lovers had each other again at last; The new ruler generously pardoned his defeated opponents Farlaf and Tschernomor.

Emergence

Pushkin had begun the poem as early as 1817 in the Lyceum. It conceptually corresponded to the demand of the literary society of Arsamas , to which Pushkin belonged, for the creation of national Russian heroic epics. The poem was completed in May 1820 and immediately met with a strong and mixed response from criticism. Wassili Andrejewitsch Schukowski sent Pushkin a dedication: "To the victorious pupil from the defeated teacher". Critics revolted over the decline of the High Canon . In the poem, Pushkin succeeded in parodistically uniting the legendary and the historical, the comic and the heroic , thus overcoming the form of the classical epic . The work made Pushkin known throughout Russia.

Translations and reception

The first German translation of an excerpt by Ruslan and Lyudmila appeared in an anthology of Russian poetic works edited by Karl Friedrich von der Borg as early as 1823 . It was the first German Pushkin translation. In 1833 a German translation of the first two chants by Erhard Göring appeared , in 1922 the first complete German translation by Johannes von Guenther . The translation, published in 1985 by Aufbau-Verlag in Berlin , was provided by Martin Remané .

In his drama Three Sisters, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov quoted lines from Pushkin's prologue poem, which the main character Mascha recited there.

In his autobiographical novel Among Strangers , Maxim Gorki reports how much he was impressed by Pushkin's poems in his youth and how they influenced his aesthetics. The example verses he quotes are from Ruslan and Lyudmila .

Settings, films

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Alexander Sergejewitsch Pushkin: Poems and fairy tales . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / GDR 1985. Notes, p. 371f
  2. ↑ Puškin's biography on zeno.org. Retrieved June 15, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Among Strangers, Chapter X. Text in the Gutenberg project. Retrieved June 13, 2020 .