Volodya (Chekhov)
Volodja ( Russian Володя ), also his first love (Russian Его первая любовь), is a short story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared on June 1, 1887 in the Peterburgskaja Gazeta .
Wladimir Czumikow's translation into German was published in 1904 by Diederichs in Jena . Other translations: 1890 into Serbo-Croatian ( Волоћа ), 1899 into Swedish ( Volodja ), 1887 into Hungarian ( Vologya ), 1917 into English ( Volodya ) and 1922 into French ( Volôdia ).
Despite the presence of his mother, Volodya is basically alone. In the last minutes of his life he has to think twice about his beloved father - how both of them spent long lost days in Mentone .
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The 17-year-old high school student Volodja is described by the narrator as "an ugly, weak, shy young man". In addition, the half-orphan Volodja wants to avoid school exams - for example in mathematics - with a fictitious notification of illness. Together with his mother Marja Leontjewna, a born Baroness Kolb, the boy stays in the country with the distant relative Madame Lilli Schumichina. Lilli's husband, the late General Shumichin, and Volodja's late father were cousins. Lilli doesn't think highly of her visit. The reckless, spoiled Marja never pays her gambling debts and likes to use the property of others. Marja has already made two fortunes - her own and her husband's. So she now has to live in the city in modest conditions for rent. Although there are only two train stations, Volodya is extremely reluctant to accompany her mother to the Shumichins' country house twice a week. But on the day before this tiresome math exam, Volodya falls in love with Anna Feodorovna, who is around 30 years old - known as Nyuta - in the country. This loud, laughing married woman is Lilli's cousin. Volodya makes two declarations of love for Nyuta. With the first, the boy is allowed to clasp the waist of the healthy, strong, rosy woman, but with the second, Njuta puts the little one in his place: "But now I have to go ... How unpleasant, how pathetic you are ... Ugh , ugly duckling!"
Everything is ugly, thinks Volodya, and drives back to the city apartment with his mother. Several tenants live in it. In the room of the absent perfumer Avgustin Michailych, Volodya grabs the revolver, slips it into his mouth and pulls the trigger. The narrator said: "The shot went off ... Volodya was thrust into the neck with an uncanny violence, he fell facedown on the table, right into the bottles ..."
background
The version sketched above follows Anton Chekhov's text revision from 1890.
On December 30, 1887, Dmitri Grigorowitsch had expressed thoughts in a letter to the author that could have flowed into the final version (expanded to include the second declaration of love and the suicide). In his replies by letter of January 12 and February 5, 1888, Anton Chekhov dealt critically with the suicide variant.
German-language editions
Used edition
- Wolodja , pp. 427-441 in Gerhard Dick (ed.) And Wolf Düwel (ed.): Anton Chekhov: Das Schwedische Zündholz . Short stories and early narratives. German by Georg Schwarz. 668 pages. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1965 (1st edition)
Web links
- The text
- online in the Gutenberg-DE project , translator Alexander Eliasberg in 1920
- online at dtv.de as .pdf (excerpts)
- Volôdia (French, translator Denis Roche in 1922)
- Volodia (eng., Translator Marian Fell)
- Володя (Чехов) (Russian)
- online in FEB (Russian)
- online at litmir.co (Russian)
- Chekhov Bibliography, Entry Stories No. 485 (Russian)