The White Ship (Aitmatov novel)

The White Ship is a tragic novel by Chingiz Aitmatov from the year 1970.

Content

In the center of the story is a seven year old nameless boy. He lives with his grandfather Momun, his step-grandmother, his uncle Oroskul, the forester, Aunt Bekej and the forest workers Sejdachmat and his wife Güldschamal in a lonely, secluded little forest settlement in a conservation area of Tianchan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan. He was left by his parents in the lurch when they parted. His mother lives in town and has a new family. His father is supposed to be a sailor on a white steamer on the near (but for the boy distant ) Issyk -Kul Lake. At least that Momun grandfather, who cares about the boy. The uncle Oroskul is a tyrannical, evil person who is dissatisfied with his life and bullied everyone else. He is also frustrated because his wife Bekej, the daughter Momuns, no child gives.

In a drunken stupor he beats her. He uses his position of power as a post holder of the forester and the employer of the other and all must suffer from it. The boy has no playmates and lives in his fantasy world. He believes in the horned deer mother of the Kyrgyz fairytale world, which once shielded the Kyrgyz tribes and kept from extinction. His companions are stones, plants, the binoculars of the grandfather and his school bag, he gets paid by the grandfather, as he comes in late summer to school. The boy watching with binoculars often the white steamer on Lake Issyk -Kul Lake and dreams of turning into a fish in order to reach his father, whom he has never seen. In the summer he practices diligently to diving and breath holding in the river near the forester.

Finally, the school to which the boy was happy for a long time begins. The grandfather takes him to the horse back and pick it up again, because the school is located in a remote village. The boy loves the school. How time flies. There comes a lonely mountain winter, then another summer in which often make shepherds with their flocks near the forest settlement rest. Uncle Oroskul, the forester, then makes shady dealings - exchange meat and vodka against timber, although it is forbidden to make the protected rare mountain pines in the nature reserve. In the fall it 's that time again: Oroskul must deliver. Timber harvesting is hard work for lack of technology. It comes after it on the steep slope happens almost a disaster, the battle between the otherwise very tolerant Momun old and his son.

Rather than continue to toil with the stem, leaves Momun Oroskul to first pick up the boys from school. This is already too much for the choleric Oroskul. Then suddenly dive to the extinct actually in this area Maralhirsche, the descendants of the horned doe. They probably migrated from a nature reserve in neighboring Kazakhstan. Oroskul the rare animals are the same. He is angry at his father, threatening him with dismissal and throws the evening after a spanking orgy again Bekej his wife out of the house. The inhabitants of the forester's knuckle. Momun tells his grandson on the way back from the school of the Maralen. This is very enthusiastic. He thinks the Horned Doe himself had returned to finally help Oroskul to a child, of which all promise an improvement.

It also applies to the animals that show no fear, because they have never met a person. In the evening, the boy is sick and needs with fever and chills to bed alone, since all others are busy trying to appease the tyrants Oroskul somehow. The next day the customer comes and wants to pick up his master, all men to the river, because there the tribe has wedged and had remained after the dispute between the two men. The Morale appear again and all are surprised and taken. Instead of enjoying the animals, as one would expect from a forester in the nature reserve, it is already planning the celebration roast. If you already illegal wood suggests ... Momun is outraged. However, just he is forced to shoot the doe: A triumph for Oruskul.

Momun is at the end. Although not equivalent to its kind, he gets drunk in the evening, while everyone else prepare the feast. The boy comes from the grandfather's house, although it is still badly off. He does not understand what is happening and wonders about his drunken grandfather. Then he noticed the severed Maralschädel and sees the remains of the revered animal are cannibalized by his uncle and his guest. For boys, the world collapses. While people drink, laugh, eat and make fun of Momun, he leaves delirious the forester's house to vomit. He sees his grandfather helpless in the courtyard lie. As the boy runs delirious to the river. He wants to again become the fish and get away from this world, so much repels him. It is autumn, when the sick boy rises from the mountains in the freezing water.

With the vision of " I'll be a fish. Grandpa, tell the others that I have become a fish ", he dies in the water.

Filming

The story was filmed by Bolotbek Schamschijew 1976.

Expenditure

• Белый пароход. Leningrad 1981. ( Original Russian edition )
• The white steamer. translated by Hans -Joachim Lambrecht, afterword by Ralf Schröder. (Spectrum band 32), Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1971. ( German edition )
• The white steamer. After a fairy tale. translated by Charlotte Kossuth. Unionsverlag. Zurich 1992, ISBN 3-293-20025-7. ( Re-translation )
• The white steamer. translated by Uwe Groth, with an afterword by the author. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3- 518-40525 -X. ( Re-translation )
• The White Ship, spoken by Dieter Vienna, Jumbo Neue Medien & Verlag, Hamburg 2007, 4 CDs, ISBN 978-3-8337-1884-7 ( edited audiobook version after translation by Charlotte Kossuth )