Sunset (Isaak Babel)
Sunset ( Russian Закат ) is a play in eight scenes by Isaac Babel . It was performed for the first time in Baku in 1927, the first printing followed in 1928. In the piece, Babel takes up motifs from his cycle of stories, Tales from Odessa (1923/1924).
content
The play takes place in the Moldavanka district of Odessa in 1913. The Jewish trucker Mendel Krik, 62 years old, decides to leave his company and his family behind. Without consulting his sons and his wife, he plans to sell the business and, in addition, to flee to Bessarabia with his 20-year-old lover Marusja .
When his two sons Benja and Lyowka get wind of it and fear for their inheritance, they turn in their father. First there is a fight between the younger son Lyovka and the father, which is then decided by Benjamin's brutal intervention, while "the sky is doused with the blood of the sunset", as the director says ("Небо залито кровью заката" ).
The mafia-like Benja Krik then takes over the family chairmanship and arranges, among other things, that his sister Dwojra - at the age of 30 already "overripe", as it says in the personal directory - finally receives a dowry that her father had always denied her before. The piece ends with the celebration of her association with Bobrinez. The badly battered father Mendel is brought up again to publicly demonstrate the change in power in the family and company.
The piece ends with the words of Rabbi Ben Zacharja: “Everything has its order. Let's have a vodka! "
reception
In his drawing “a genre image of work, struggle and love in pre-revolutionary Odessa in 1913”, Babel's sunset made the criticism reminiscent of plays by Maxim Gorki or Gerhart Hauptmann .
German-language editions
- Sunset. Acting in eight scenes. In: Isaak Babel: Maria. Sunset. Two pieces. Translated from the Russian by Heddy Pross-Weerth . Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1967. pp. 63–118 (originally in Sunset. Stories and Dramas , Walter Verlag, Olten and Freiburg i. Br. 1962)
Web links
- Sunset in the Russian original on Wikilivres / Bibliowiki
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gerhard Ebert: Longing for Love and Vodka , in: Neues Deutschland , May 16, 1994. ( online )