Russya
Russja ( Russian Руся ) is a short story by the Russian Nobel Prize winner for literature Ivan Bunin , which was completed on September 27, 1940 and appeared in the April 1942 issue of the New York edition of the Russian magazine Nowy schurnal .
Frame narration
One summer evening, a couple travels south in a first-class sleeper on the Moscow - Sevastopol night express . Already after Podolsk you have to wait for the train from the opposite direction. The gentleman tells the lady about his summer stay at a dacha near the breakpoint - back when he had earned a few rubles during the holidays with private lessons. When the express train finally gets free travel, the curious wife wants to know more about the revealed love for the skinny, tall Marussja - called Russja. The master does not have to tell his wife everything because she is going to sleep. In this way, only the reader experiences the love story in the internal narrative (see below). The next day behind Kursk in the dining car, the lady starts again at breakfast with her husband's "bony" love. He admits his childhood love with the exclamation: "The dacha girl ... Amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla!" The wife understands that it could be Latin, but nothing more.
Internal narration
On a warm and humid summer's day, Russja lets the above mentioned instructor paddle across the lake. He kisses her on the laughing mouth. She promptly hugs him and returns the kiss - awkwardly kisses him on the cheek. The boat tour is repeated a few times. Once Russja takes a blanket with her and lets herself be paddled to the lonely bank opposite the mother's dacha. Over there by the forest Russja wants to be kissed gently and hugged "everywhere". He does so, then throws her into the boat and attacks her. Then Russja states that now both are man and woman. Only that the mother was strictly against her marriage.
A week later the assistant teacher was thrown out of the dacha by Russja's mother. At the height of the conflict, Russia had had to make a decision at her mother's behest - either her lover or her mother. Russja had chosen the mother.
German-language editions
- Used edition
- Russya. German by Erich Ahrndt . P. 342–353 in: Karlheinz Kasper (Ed.): Iwan Bunin: Dunkle Alleen. Stories 1920–1953 . 580 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1985
Web links
- The text
- First text in part 2: online at Lib.ru (Russian)
- online at bunin.niv.ru (Russian)
- online in the Komarow library (Russian)
- Reference to first appearance in the Laboratory of Fantastics (Russian)