Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Die geheime Stadt
Für wen es gedacht ist
Readers who enjoy Russian settings seen through English eyes, tangled households, haunted cities and love stories set against great events. It suits anyone drawn to Petrograd, to the weeks of the 1917 revolution, and to character studies.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
The Secret City is a novel by Hugh Walpole, set in Petrograd during the winter of 1916 and the spring of 1917, when the Russian Empire is cracking apart. It is the sequel to an earlier book about the English witness Durward, who tells the story again here. He is a lame, solitary man who has come back from the Front and lives in a damp room on an island by the sea. Walpole himself served in Russia during the war, and the book carries that closeness to the place.
The story is told through one flat. In it live Vera Michailovna, her restless young sister Nina, and Vera's husband Nicolai Markovitch, an inventor whose later ideas fail. Two young Englishmen arrive from London: Henry Bohun, a poet full of borrowed ideas about Russia, and Jerry Lawrence, a silent rugby international who spent his boyhood there. Around them hovers Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov, Vera's cold, clever uncle, whom Durward knew at the Front. You get a love story, a family drama and a portrait of a city, all seen by an Englishman who admits he cannot fully understand what he sees.
The book gives you the winter streets, the bread queues, the murder of Rasputin and the week the old order falls, all told through the private lives of a few people. It begins on a station platform, where two travelling companions who have nothing to say to each other step into a country that will change them both.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1Two Englishmen arrive in a strange cityFree
- 2Durward and the house of the Markovitches
- 3A city under strain, and Vera's troubles
- 4Semyonov, the doctor with a plan
- 5Love comes to Lawrence and Vera
- 6The streets turn, and the revolution begins
- 7A policeman in the cupboard, and Markovitch's loss
- 8The flat fills with ghosts
- 9What the story is about, and how it is told
Punkt 1 von 9
Two Englishmen arrive in a strange city
The story opens with Henry Bohun and Jerry Lawrence standing on the platform of the Finland Station after a week of travel together. Bohun is twenty three, gassed in France, the editor of a Cambridge magazine and the author of a book of sonnets that critics have praised. He has studied Russian for years and is sure he understands the country before he has seen it.
Lawrence is his opposite. He is thirty two, a heavy man with a brick red face who captained the English rugby team and won the Military Cross in France. He spent the first fifteen years of his life in Russia, where his father managed a factory, and he has no wish to return. When Bohun lectures him on the mystical Russian peasant, Lawrence simply says nonsense.
The two part at the station with relief. Bohun takes a cab to the France hotel, where he is cheated over the fare, led down damp passages and left in a room with a hole in its armchair. He falls asleep and dreams of ants, rats and worms. The first chapters show how far an English head full of books is from the real city.
Bohun then walks into a great church on the Nevsky Prospect, where peasants pass candles from hand to hand through the crowd. He sees a tall bearded peasant standing apart, and imagines he sees wisdom in him. That figure will return again and again.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Questions about Die geheime Stadt
What is The Secret City about?
It follows a Russian family and two young Englishmen in Petrograd from the winter of 1916 through the revolution of 1917. A love story, a family drama and a portrait of a changing city are all seen through an English narrator.
Who is Semyonov in The Secret City?
Semyonov is Vera's uncle, a cold and clever army doctor who returns from the Front after losing a woman he loved. He moves into the flat and begins to work on the family, and especially on Markovitch.
Is The Secret City a true story?
It is a novel, but Walpole drew on his own time in Russia during the First World War. The narrator insists that the facts are true while admitting that his interpretations are his own.
What does the secret city mean in the book?
It refers to the hidden private life inside each person, a city whose gates no one else passes, and also to Petrograd itself, a city built on marsh with a secret life beneath its streets.
Is The Secret City easy to follow?
Yes, the story moves through clear scenes in one flat with a handful of vivid characters, and the narrator guides you gently. Short chapters, warm humour and strong images keep the pages turning.