Sonja (Tatjana Tolstaja)

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Sonja ( Russian Соня ) is a story by the Russian writer Tatjana Tolstaja from 1984, which was published in 1987 in На золотом крыльце сидели ... (German: "Sat on golden podium in the courtyard ...") - an anthology of shorter works by the author - im Moscow publishing house Junge Garde ( Russian Молодая гвардия / Molodaja gwardija ) appeared.

Tatyana Tolstaya recalls in this dead commemoration of the suffering that the Germans of Leningrad civilians during their blockade did to the city.

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The setting is Leningrad from 1930 to around 1942. Sonja, born around 1901 and remaining single, is an example of good people in themselves. The woman with the horse's face, long ivory-yellow teeth, flat chest and thick legs had been employed as a scientific curator in one of the Leningrad museums. In her circle of friends and acquaintances, Sonja was valued with her “sewing skills” and as a talented cook. The acquaintances like to hold up their children Sonja. Some even let her have children and an apartment in the summer and took a carefree vacation in distant Kislovodsk . Of course, Sonja was - with all her love for children, prudence and care - not exactly an intellectual giant. Ungrateful acquaintances - intelligence beasts across the board - occasionally used the dumb Sonja as the target of their mockery. Ada Adolfowna, a mercurial young woman with many admirers, allowed herself even more than these little jokes. Ada, who lived far away - at the opposite end of Leningrad - from Sonja, faked an exchange of letters throughout the 1930s; pretended to be an imaginary Nikolai in love letters to Sonja. Of course Sonja fell for the bad joke.

Macabre - Ada writes one last letter in the "black December" 1941 when she lies dying, exhausted, starving and half-dead, wrapped in blankets in her freezing apartment. Sonja takes her last can - practically her iron reserve - marches through the whole of Leningrad and instills life-giving food into the supposed Nikolai - the letter writer Ada. Because of this, too, Ada survived the blockade. After the visit, Sonja dies on the way home during a German bombing.

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The narrow text has the effect of the terrible that - vaguely indicated - lurks in the background. For example, the word blockage is mentioned only once. Neither Ada nor Sonja had allowed themselves to be evacuated at the beginning of the war. Ada, worried about her evacuated son, a kindergarten child, dug trenches during the blockade, “fed” herself on boiled leather shoes and wallpaper paste, heated with Dickens and carried her relatives to the grave.

Tatjana Tolstaja, born in 1951, admits that her text contains “vague assumptions, attempts at deciphering”. In addition, the surviving Ada was understandably - probably because of her bad conscience - not very talkative.

German-language editions

Web links

in Russian language

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 4 (Russian Молодая гвардия )