At Christmas time

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Anton Chekhov

At Christmas time , also Christmas ( Russian На святках , Na swjatkach ), is a short story by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov , which appeared on January 1, 1900 in the Peterburgskaja Gazeta . Ivan Bunin counted the text to be one of Chekhov's best stories. The German translation came onto the book market in Weimar in 1954 in the Chekhov reading book of the Thuringian Volksverlag .

During the Christmas season, Vasilissa goes to Yegor's village tavern. She pays him decently and he writes her a letter to her daughter Yefimja Petrovna for it. The daughter moved to Petersburg with her husband Andrej Chrissanfytsch four years ago and has not been heard from since then. Andrej works as a porter in a St. Petersburg hydropathic institute. If Vasilissa could write, she would report on the famine in the country last year. But this is how Yegor, a long-serving soldier, writes about the "dissipationary order", "Ziwilisazion", "Aufmärektiven" and the "war articles".

At Christmas Andrei interrupts his work in that hydropathic institute for a few minutes and gives the letter to his wife. Jefimja looks after her three small children, reads, is deeply touched and describes grandmother's life in the snow-covered village to the children through rose-colored glasses. As Andrei listens, he thinks of the three or four letters to his mother-in-law that Yefimja had given him a long time ago, but all of which he left lying somewhere.

Yefimja trembles when Andrej, who wants to take a smoke break, approaches later. The young woman wipes her eyes and, out of great fear of Andrei, doesn't dare to say a word.

German-language editions

Output used:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annotations in FEB under Christmas time , pp. 450–452 (Russian) and edition used, p. 600
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 485