Sevastopol cycle
In the so-called Sevastopol cycle , or more correctly the Sevastopol stories ( Russian Севастопольские рассказы , scientific transliteration: Sevastopol'skie rasskazy ), Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy published three narrative reports about his participation in the Crimean War in 1855 and 1856, initially enthusiastic .
Sevastopol in December 1854 , Sevastopol in May 1855 and Sevastopol in August 1855 were published in the magazine Sovremennik (The Contemporary) , which Alexander Pushkin co-founded . In them Tolstoy drastically confronted the patriotic ideals of the defenders of the city with the cruel reality of war.
In this narrative cycle, Tolstoy always addresses the reader directly and speaks to him, so that the reader has the impression that he is taking Tolstoy for a "walk" through the hotly contested city. In the first part, Sevastopol in December 1854 , for example, the reader has just arrived in the city, accompanied by Tolstoy, then visits the former aristocratic assembly , which has been converted into a temporary hospital . There the reader has conversations with the wounded, experiences first hand the suffering and agony of the war and witnesses amputations. Then he visits a tavern with Tolstoy in which officers and soldiers have lunch and hears fantastic stories about the fourth bastion, which make the reader want to visit this bastion himself. Tolstoy then leads the reader to the positions and the fourth bastion, where the reader - in conversation with the officer in command there and only a few meters away from the positions of the enemy - is caught in a hail of cannons and mortars . Convinced of the impregnability of the city, the love of the soldiers for the fatherland and their unbreakable will to fight, the reader leaves the positions and returns to the city.
The Sevastopol trilogy marked a turning point in the Russian war narrative, as Tolstoy used in it for the first time a new and for the time unusual way of reporting the war: profound knowledge of the military field combined with a relentless portrayal of itself. One can therefore assert that Lev Nikolaevič was the first Russian war correspondent. What connects all three stories with one another is not only their subject matter, but above all the will par force to reproduce the truth, which is why it is not for nothing that the last words of the third part of Sevastopol in May 1855 say: “The hero of my story, whom I am love with all the strength of my soul […] is the truth. ”But if Tolstoy were not himself, he would not also pay great attention to detailed descriptions and psychologically realistic representations of individual feelings in the Sevastopol tales.
In the last narrative of the Sevastopol cycle, Sevastopol in August 1855 , Tolstoy's transformation into a war critic is particularly evident. After the writer asked for his transfer, he returned in 1856 as a courier from Sevastopol to Saint Petersburg . The Sevastopol tales, together with tales such as The Raid ( Nabeg , 1852), Holzschlag ( Rubka lesa , 1855) and the novel The Cossacks ( Kazaki , 1863), form a unified theme in which Tolstoy processed the impressions of his military life.
Excerpts from Sevastopol in December
"The strange mixing of the urban hustle and bustle with camp life, the pretty town with the bivouac, is not only ugly, it also seems a repulsive disorder; it even seems to you as if everyone was very intimidated, rushing back and forth without a head and not knowing what to do. But if you take a closer look at the faces of these people moving around you, you will come to a completely different point of view. "
"You are entering the great hall of the aristocratic assembly. You have just opened the door, and the sight and smell of forty or fifty amputated and seriously wounded patients, the minority of whom are in beds, but mostly on the floor, are affecting you . Do not follow the emotion that makes your foot falter on the threshold of the hall - it is a bad impulse - go on confidently [...] "
"You will see terrifying, soul-shaking images here, not seeing the war in its well-ordered, beautiful and shiny form, with music and drum rolls, with waving banners and generals proudly sitting on horseback, but in its real form - in blood , Agony and death ... "
"You have just worked your way up a bit when bullets begin to whiz past to your right and left, and you may be wondering whether you would do better to go through the ditch that runs parallel to the path; but the ditch is knee-high with yellow , filled with liquid dirt, which also stinks so much that you will most certainly choose the path leading over the mountain, [...] "
"With these noises you get a strange feeling of pleasure and fear at the same time. At the moment when the projectile, as you well know, is flying towards you, the thought surely crosses your mind that it will kill you; Feelings of pride keep you going and no one notices the knife cutting into your heart, but when the bullet flew past without hurting you, you come to life and feel a comforting, indescribably pleasant sensation, if only for possession of you for a moment, so that you are in danger of finding a special charm in this game of life and death; "
"So you would have seen the defenders of Sevastopol right at the place of defense and are now on your way back. [...] - You return calmly and cheerfully. The most important and most gratifying conviction that you have gained is that it is It is impossible to take Sevastopol, just as it is impossible to shake the strength of the Russian people wherever, and it was not the multitude of traverses […] that made them believe, but the expression in the eyes of those sailors , their speeches and their behavior, everything that is called the spirit of the defenders of Sevastopol. "
German-language editions
- Sevastopol in December 1854, Sevastopol in May 1855, Sevastopol in August 1855. Based on the translation by Hermann Röhl . Pp. 136–294 in: Gisela Drohla (Ed.): Leo N. Tolstoj. All the stories. First volume. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1961 (2nd edition of the edition in eight volumes 1982)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christine Müller-Scholle, epilogue, in: Leo Tolstoi (translated by Barbara Heitkam), Erzählungen, Stuttgart 2002, pp. 451-455.
- ↑ Klaus Städtke, Realismus und Zwischenzeit. The age of the realistic novel, in: Klaus Städtke (ed.), Russische Literaturgeschichte, Stuttgart 2002, p. 206.
- ↑ Leo Tolstoi, Sevastopol in December, in: Leo Tolstoi (translated by Barbara Heitkam), Erzählungen, Stuttgart 2002 (published by Reclam-Verlag), p. 8th.
- ↑ Tolstoy 2002, 9.
- ↑ Tolstoy 2002, 13.
- ↑ Tolstoy 2002, 18.
- ↑ Tolstoy 2002, 22.
- ↑ Tolstoy 2002, 24.