We (novel)

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We ( Russian Мы , wis. Transliteration My ) is a dystopian novel by the Russian author Evgeny Zamyatin, completed in 1920 .

content

We play in the "United State", a structure that emerged after a 200-year war and the "very last revolution". This state consists of a city protected by a wall, the houses in this city have walls made of glass. Hosts of “protectors” watch over the “well-being” of the residents, whose lives are regulated down to the tiniest hand, and over all there is an overwhelming “benefactor”. "Numbers" - people are meant - who resist this "welfare" are publicly executed. The individual does not count, what counts is the collective . In the course of the story, a brain operation is discovered that removes the fantasy center and thus makes thoughts of resistance impossible.

The novel describes the events in the form of a diary from D-503. D-503 is the designer of the Integral rocket , a spaceship that is supposed to conquer space and export the achievements of the “last revolution”. D-503 glorifies his state - until he meets the public enemy I-330 and other rebels. The name Taylor appears again and again in the novel , who is revered by the regime for his "scientific management" .

"United State"

"United State" is the usual translation of the original Russian name " Единое государство " (transliteration: Edinoe gosudarstvo ), which is not precise. The more precise translation of the Russian adjective " единый " ( edinyj ) would probably be "united" in the sense of "unitary".

characters

D-503 (first-person narrator)

As the designer of the Integral , he is jointly responsible for exporting the revolution to other worlds. In order to be able to present the testimonies of the single state to the foreigners, tracts , poemes , manifestos , odes and other works should go on the journey with the integral . This is also the reason for the diary of D.

We don't know much about D.'s appearance. He is thirty-two years old. He sees his hairy hands as a flaw. He's ashamed of her. Still, the protagonist seems to be handsome or at least has a certain charm. Through the events that he describes himself in his diary, he develops from a functioning part of a collective to a person with feelings, sensations and his own thoughts. But at the beginning, D-503 is still a scientist and mathematician through and through. Equations determine his life. Its constant is the only state.

That all changes when he meets I-330 on a walk. D-503 himself writes that only two things can unbalance logic : love and hunger. And even in the Single State the final solution to the problem of happiness has not yet been found. So something is still moving in the larger WE. D finds out about this mainly from I. She shows him the old house, offers him alcohol and later he also has sex with her - without government permission. The clear, orderly world of D-503 gets mixed up. Actually, the protagonist has a subscription to O-90 and feels for her, if not love, at least deeply affectionate. Together with her and R-13, whom he has known since childhood, they form a kind of family . All of this breaks up through D's love for I.

The imaginary number has always scared D - because it is completely illogical and should not exist, but it still does - and this fear is growing ever greater. He begins to see himself as sick. U, the controller, cannot help him either. She has to keep handing D painful letters. The relationship between I and D is characterized by constant ups and downs. I is allowed to have sex with D, but does not appear. Then the two meet again in the old house; after the meeting she disappears without a trace. Now nothing seems to be clear (D's favorite word). More and more often, D no longer finds headings for his diary entries. He begins to develop fantasies . Dreams plague him. The doctor diagnoses him with a soul .

D becomes more and more of the self and isolates himself from the collective . He's also afraid that his records will be found - that would be his death sentence . Perhaps D suspects that I is working against the single state. In any case, he finds out when he is driven underground by an elevator, disguised as a wardrobe, in the old house. There is the camp of the underground fighters, to which I belongs.

The events come thick and fast. With the election of the dictator (benefactor) on the day of unanimity, the rebellion breaks out. D agrees to participate in the uprising. The sabotage of the integral fails and I blames D for it. Now operations are supposed to eliminate the fantasy of numbers. D struggles with himself. He doesn't want to dream anymore. Thanks to I, however, he decides against an operation . D is betrayed by U. He is on the verge of slaying the controller when she reveals herself to him and confesses her love to him. D is arrested but is able to flee. Ultimately, he is caught again and, like all other acts, operated on. In his last recording he seems "cured". D is part of the WE again. He betrayed his love, I.

O-90

She is subscribed to D-503 and R-13. Their appearance is described as rounded, "consisting only of circles and curves". O-90 sleeps alternately with D-503 and R-13. She leaves D-503 after learning of its relationship with I-330. O loves D - that is why she has to leave him, because "love leads to a turning away from logic" . Nevertheless, O has one last request to D, which she will also fulfill: She would like a child from him, although she knows very well that it will be death. D asks her to flee, I should help her. O-90 finally reluctantly agrees.

I-330

She meets D-503 on a walk. He realizes that he has a deep affection for her. He falls in love with her. Whether I will reciprocate his love in equal measure remains unclear. I-330 is a member of MEPHI, an underground organization that fights against the One State. She knows that D-503 is one of the designers of the Integral . When D speaks to the benefactor, he says that I-330 only used him to get the integral. U sees it the same way. The fact is that I-330 drops it after the sabotage of the integral fail - they suspected him of being responsible for the failure. At first I seem to trust him for no apparent reason. This is how she knows that D will not go to the protectors to report them. Nevertheless, she does not initiate him, only after the day of unanimity does she show D the world outside the green wall.

I-330 believes in two forces: in entropy and in energy . One creates blissful rest and happy equilibrium, the other leads to the destruction of equilibrium, to painful, infinite movement. The MEPHI see themselves as descendants of the Antichrists . I-330 believes in the old world, in emotions, in the imagination and in people. It most closely represents a person who comes close to us. She is believed to be executed after being betrayed by the operated D-503.

benefactor

Little is said about the benefactor, he does not appear in practice. The parallels to later dictators such as Stalin and Orwell's big brother are striking : a godlike figure who watches over the “well-being” of the subjects and is repeatedly confirmed by the people in “elections”. The novel thus becomes a prophetic vision of the time of Stalinism .

More characters

  • R-13: the "snub-nosed" poet with the "negro lips"
  • S-4711: a "protector"
  • U ( "I would rather not give your number" ): the inspector with her "hanging jaws"
  • the little doctor

Narrative style / language

The work belongs to the epic genre . We tell the story from the main character's first-person perspective , i.e. from a personal perspective. The plot is told linearly and is limited to just one storyline. The narrated time can be well limited by the fact that it is a diary: The narration takes place over a period of at least nine months (at the beginning is spring and at the end of autumn). The characters involved in the event have their say in direct speech, with a large part of the event taking place in the narrator's head, resulting in an inner monologue often several pages long . It is noticeable that the first-person narrator addresses the reader, which often seems like an appeal . As an example, take the opening sentence of entry 32: "Can you imagine that you will die?"

The style is mainly characterized by the strong contrast between many technical / mathematical terms (numbers, equation) and those from the emotional world (such as love, freedom). It reflects the content, especially the inner struggle of the protagonist.

Editions in German

  • Yevgeny Zamyatin: We. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Gisela Drohla . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1958; ibid. 1984, ISBN 3-462-01607-5 (afterword by Jürgen Rühle)
  • Yevgeny Zamyatin: We. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Marga and Roland Erb. Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1991, ISBN 3-378-00461-4
  • Yevgeny Zamyatin: We. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . Arnold and Geitner, Chemnitz 1994, ISBN 3-926409-92-4
  • Evgenij Zamyatin: We. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Josef Meinolf Opfermann. European Literature Publishing House, Bremen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86267-770-2

filming

The book was filmed in 1981 by director Vojtěch Jasný with Dieter Laser as D-503 and Sabine von Maydell as I-330.

radio play

A first radio play version was produced in 1979 by Südwestfunk , Bayerischer Rundfunk and RIAS after an adaptation by Hans-Gerd Krogmann. In the main roles played u. a. Dieter Borsche , Christian Brückner and Eva Garg.

In 1985, another version was produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk .

In 2014, Wir was set to music by Ben Neumann from SWR . Among others with Hanns Zischler , Andreas Pietschmann and Jana Schulz . Musically this is radio play from the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra , conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer accompanied.

In 2015 Wir was published as an audio book by speak low Verlag, read by Heikko Deutschmann .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ We in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  2. ↑ We (Part 1: The Only State) . In: ARD radio play database , accessed on April 4, 2019.
  3. ↑ We . In: ARD radio play database , accessed on April 4, 2019.
  4. ↑ We: Based on the novel of the same name by Evgeny Zamyatin . In: BenNeumann.de , accessed on July 15, 2015.
  5. ^ Yevgeny Zamyatin: We. In: speaklow.de. Retrieved November 30, 2017 .