Olesya (Kuprin)
| Author | Alexander Kuprin |
|---|---|
| Original title | Олеся |
| Country | Russian Empire |
| Language | Russian |
| Publisher | Kievlyanin (1898) |
|
Publication date
|
1898 |
| Media type | print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Olesya (Russian: Олеся) is a novelette by Alexander Kuprin written in late 1897 – early 1898 and serialized in Kievlyanin newspaper in October 30 – November 17, 1898. Olesya, the most acclaimed piece of his Polesye cycle, did much to build Kuprin's literary reputation and warranted his move to Saint Petersburg.
According to the Kuprin scholar Nicholas Luker, "Olesya is the most charming of Kuprin's rural tales. Though meant at first to be only part of the Volhynia and Polesye cycle, this poetic story of the love between an urban intellectual and a beautiful country girl expanded into a full novelette of a significance far surpassing that of the other regional tales." The story was one of Kuprin's favorites. Referring once to both Olesya and his later work "The River of Life," he said: "There is life in it and freshness and... more of my soul than in my other tales."
In 1897 Kuprin went first to Volhynia Province in the northwest Ukraine, where he worked as an estate manager, and then to the Polesye area in southern Belarus. In the winter of 1897-1898 he moved to Ryazan Province, where Olesya was written. Kuprin considered several months spent in Volhynia and Polesye to be most beneficial of his life. "There I absorbed my most vigorous, noble, extensive, and fruitful impressions... and came to know the Russian language and landscape," he remembered.
The story is autobiographical. "All this has happened to me," Kuprin wrote mysteriously toward the end of his life.
Olesya was first published in Kiyevlyanin newspaper (Nos. 300, 301, 304, 305-308, 313-315, 318) in late 1898 (October 30 - November 17). This original version of the work, subtitled "From the Memories of Volhynia," came out with an introduction alleging that this was the story told to the author by an Ivan Timofeevich Poroshin, now an old man, as he recalled his youthful love for the "real Polesye sorceress" Olesya.
In 1905 the novel came out as a separate edition, published by M.O. Wolf's Publishing house in Saint Peterburg, as part of the Library of Russian and Foreign Authors series (Issues 18 and 19). For it Kuprin removed the introduction, but otherwise this second version bore no difference from the original one.
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