Loop ears
Sling ears ( Russian уши Петлистые , Petlistyje uschi ) is a short story by Russian Nobel laureate for literature Ivan Bunin , which was written in 1916 and 1917 in the seventh volume of the anthology Slovo ( The Word ) in Moscow appeared.
Winter in Saint Petersburg : The murderer Adam Sokolowitsch strikes.
content
The text is simple. First comes the theory and then the practice.
- Theory:
Sokolowitsch, a tall, lean, lanky worker with a massive lower jaw, pretends to be a former seaman in Petersburg bars. At least he is known as a regular in taverns between Kronstadt and Montevideo . In a conversation with two sailors in Petersburg, Sokolowitsch ironically said that villains can be recognized by their ears: "Murderers have loop ears, ears that look like nooses, just like those on which they are tied." The murderer's suffering after the crime provides Sokolovitch as an invention of the " Boulevard Roman writer Dostoevsky towards" debt there is, however, atonement not. When one of the two sailors tells of a woman murderer from his relatives, Sokolowitsch throws in one of his inhuman thoughts about the female body: "... the lower sex that gives birth to us and gives itself only to coarse and strong men with true lust ..."
- Practice:
Sokolowitsch leaves the Dominique restaurant in St. Petersburg , catches the prostitute golden cockerel on the street, sleeps with her in the suburbs in an overheated room in a dump and suffocates the woman with two pillows. In the morning the murderer escapes unmolested.
Social criticism
The text was written down during the First World War . The genocide, which was current at the time, is addressed on the subject of guilt. The Germans are not excluded from the list concerned as perpetrators: "... if you read that ... the Germans polluted wells ..."
reception
- 1983. Kasper writes, “Ivan Bunin was unable to develop Dostoyevsky's idea of the victory of good over evil. He assumed that the history of mankind was a chain of crimes, all of which went unpunished. ”Accordingly, Bunin chose the working title“ Without punishment ”. The material basis of the story was a trial against a Petersburg murderer in 1912.
German-language editions
- Used edition
- Loop ears. German by Erich Ahrndt . P. 566–580 in: Iwan Bunin: The cup of life. Stories 1911–1919. Editing and epilogue: Karlheinz Kasper . 640 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1983 (1st edition)
Web links
- The text
- Notice of first publication in the Labor der Fantastik (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian Слово - The word
- ↑ eng. Loopy ears
- ↑ Edition used, p. 570, 1. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 572, 9. Zvu
- ^ Restaurant Dominik on St. Petersburg Nevsky Prospect 63
- ↑ Edition used, p. 571, 1. Zvu
- ↑ Kasper in the afterword of the edition used, p. 635, 16. Zvo
- ↑ Kasper in the afterword of the edition used, p. 634, 12. Zvo