The history of the creation of the story by Vasil Bykov
The story was written by the author in 1963. Fifteen years later, in his essay entitled “Once upon a time at the very end of the war,” Bykov spoke about a chance meeting at the front, which served as the reason for writing the story.
The author recalls how in 1945 his regiment went behind the lines of the German army and occupied a small town in the Alps. There Bykov saw a thin girl walking through the convoy and, stopping at each car, asking if anyone had seen Ivan. Vasily decided to help her and began asking about her name and what kind of Ivan she was looking for.
The girl called herself Julia and turned out to be an Italian refugee from a German concentration camp. Lost in the mountains, she met a young man named Ivan, who had also escaped from German captivity and was trying to get out to the Allied troops. Together they crossed the mountain range, but ran into a German raid. The girl managed to escape, but she knows nothing about Ivan’s fate. 18 years later, the author remembered this story and decided to immortalize the image of the lovers in his story “Alpine Ballad”.
About the product
The story “Alpine Ballad” by Bykov was written in 1963. The book tells the story of two prisoners who escaped from an Austrian concentration camp at the height of World War II. This is a story about a real, deep feeling that does not choose the time and conditions for its appearance.
To better prepare for a literature lesson, we recommend reading online a summary of “The Alpine Ballad” chapter by chapter. A retelling of the work will also be useful for working on a reader’s diary.
The material was prepared jointly with the highest category teacher Lyubov Alexandrovna Koroshchup.
Experience as a teacher of Russian language and literature - 30 years.
The main characters and their characteristics
Ivan Tereshko is a 25-year-old Belarusian guy, a simple peasant, hardened by work and life in the village. For all his shyness and modesty, he was accustomed to providing help to everyone who needed it. Once at the front, he did not stand out among the other infantrymen. In battle, Ivan shows nobility and dedication, for which he receives three medals “For Courage” and, being seriously wounded, is captured by the enemy army.
Giulia Novelli is an Italian girl who fled her country to meet her lover. Halfway to the goal, she is captured and ends up in the same concentration camp with Ivan. She is extraordinarily beautiful: thick black hair, expressive eyes and a ringing laugh make her image graceful and fragile, charming Ivan, who has sworn off loving anyone again.
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“Alpine Ballad” - summary of the story
The story tells about the events of the Great Patriotic War in the Austrian Alps. The plot centers on the Soviet soldier Ivan, who was captured by the German military. When the night bombing of the concentration camp begins, he flees, taking a pistol from a German officer. At the same time, an Italian prisoner of war named Julia escapes from another camp, whom Ivan meets in the mountains.
He understands that this reduces his chances of a successful escape and is not at all happy about such company, but he cannot afford to leave the girl to the mercy of death. The next day, they try to find a common language and develop a plan to cross the mountain range to detachments of Trieste partisans in order to continue the fight against the Germans. On the way, the fugitives meet a local resident and, threatening him with a pistol, take his bread. But, not having time to go far, they see motorcyclists approaching his house and the Austrian being overtaken by death from a bullet from a German shooter.
The fugitives realize that danger is very close and the risk of being recaptured is closer than ever. They quicken their pace, but it becomes increasingly difficult for Ivan to escape: the wound received during the escape makes itself felt. At a rest stop, Julia talks about her relationship with a Russian communist, whom she was in a hurry to meet before she was captured. Suddenly, feelings flare up between the fugitives and passion overwhelms them.
At this time, their pursuers overtake them. Trying to escape the chase, the lovers climb to the top of the hill. The Germans drive them into a corner, because there is nothing further but an abyss and the fugitives have nowhere to go. Then Ivan commits a heroic act and saves Julia at the cost of his life. He throws Julia into a large snowdrift below, and he himself is left to be torn apart by German soldiers, giving the girl the opportunity to escape. In the epilogue of the story, Julia writes a letter to Ivan’s native village, where she talks about the history of their acquaintance and that she had a son, whom she named after her father.
Ivan learned a little German during his year in captivity and understood what she said, but did not answer immediately. There was a splinter in his heel, which he tried to pull out, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not grab its tiny tip with his fingers.
- Meringue! If they bring it to you, you’ll end up with meringues! - he grumbled angrily and added kinder: - In general, I’m gutt.
- Gut?
She grinned, smoothed her wet, shiny hair with both hands and, wiping her palms on her pants, moved closer to him:
- Oh, give it!
He could not grasp the end of the splinter, but she lightly and surprisingly simply, with cold, thin fingers, grabbed his big foot, picked it there and, bending her head, painfully pinched the sole with her teeth. He hesitantly pulled his leg, but she held on, felt the tip, and when she straightened up, a small lint of splinter stuck out in her even teeth.
Ivan was not surprised and did not thank him, but, pulling his leg up, looked at the heel, rubbed it, tried to step on it - it seemed to become easier. Then, with more affection than before, he looked at the girl, at her wet, dark, prettier face. She did not look away from her smiling gaze, took the splinter from her teeth with her fingers and threw it into the wind.
“Cunning, yes,” he said with restraint, as if reluctantly acknowledging her merits.
“Lef-ka-ya,” she repeated and asked: “What does Lef-ka-ya eat?”
For what must have been the first time that day, he smiled slightly and rubbed his wet, cropped head with his fingers:
- How to say to you? Well, in general, gut.
- Gut?
- I am Gut.
“Dugut, ikh gut [3],” she said joyfully and laughed. And he, as if remembering something or appraising something, looked at her longer than before. She immediately came to her senses, shrugged her shoulders chillily, and then he thought: he had to go. He did not want to crawl out from under this dry, spreading pine, and yet he was forced to get up. The rain didn't stop. The forest rustled with dull monotony - apparently bad weather had thwarted the raid. It is unknown how many prisoners made it into the mountains, but maybe at least someone will be lucky enough to escape. Ivan remembered the third Geftling, who was running after them, and, before leaving from under the pine tree, he turned to the girl who was shaking out litter from her stocks.
- Who else was running after you?
- Run away, huh? Tama? Geftling. Tedesko Geftling [4].
- What, friend? Comrade?
- Non comrade. Krunk Geftling. Sick,” she touched her temple with a thin finger.
- Oh, crazy?
- I, I.
“Look, you can talk to her!” — Ivan thought with satisfaction and looked away. For some reason, it was still awkward to look into her black, deep, wide-open eyes, which so variedly reflected various feelings.
- OK. To hell with it. Went.
It seems they have already moved away from the camp. The Germans apparently missed them. The emotional tension subsided, and Ivan, as if from afar, for the first time mentally looked back at what had happened on this hellishly painful day.
4
In the morning, they, five prisoners of war, dug up an unexploded bomb in a workshop dilapidated during the night bombing.
They no longer had the slightest hope of surviving in this monstrous death factory, and today they decided to try for the last time to gain freedom, or, as the little dark-haired wit named Zhuk said, if you are going to leave this light, then first knock on the doors.
Their unsafe and difficult work was coming to an end.
Hanging the bomb with crowbars, they finally freed it from the rubble and, holding it by the crumpled stabilizer, carefully laid it on the bottom of the pit. What happened next was the riskiest and most important. While others stood around holding their breath, a long-armed prisoner in a striped jacket, like everyone else, with colored circles on the chest and back, a former Black Sea sailor Goloday, threw a key on the fuse and pressed it with his whole body. His muscular arms, bare to the elbows, bulged with veins, the veins in his neck stood out, and the fuse gave way slightly. Goloday turned the key with force two more times, and then squatted down and began to quickly unscrew the fuse with his hands. Having been severely deformed upon impact with the ground, the fuse, of course, was faulty and in this condition was not suitable for a bomb dropped last night from an American B-29 or an English Mosquito on this Austrian town sandwiched between the mountain ranges of the Alps. But with a defective fuse, the bomb was operational and continued to contain five hundred kilograms of TNT. This is what the five suicide bombers were counting on. As soon as the hole in the bomb was clear, Zhuk took out from under his jacket a new fuse, obtained yesterday from a damaged bomb with a broken stabilizer, and with his thin, nervous fingers began to screw it in instead of the old one.
return 3
you are good, I am good (German)
return 4
German prisoner (Italian-German)
The escape
Captive women worked nearby. Suddenly Ivan caught the contemptuous glance of one of them, as the story “Alpine Ballad” further tells. A summary is unlikely to accurately convey how Tereshka felt from this look at that moment. This look into his soul seemed to splash boiling water with the piercing pain of reproach. At that moment, the last thing that still allowed him to control himself suddenly broke off. He abruptly jumped up from his knees, after which he hit the German in the jaw. He pulled out a pistol, but suddenly there was an explosion, and the workshop became invisible in a cloud of dust. Ivan snatched the weapon from the officer’s hands and quickly ran. Miraculously missing the crater, he jumped over a fence studded with iron spikes and found himself in a potato field.
A little further on, a real dense forest could be seen, but Tereshka did not have time to reach it, because the dogs overtook him. But he shot one of them. The pistol jammed on the second shot. The dog jumped, but the man managed to grab him by the collar and break his spine. That's it, the path to the forest was clear.
The plot of the story
“The Alpine Ballad” begins with an episode of a night bombing of a prisoner camp. The next morning, the prisoners discover an unexploded bomb in the factory workshop where they come to work. This is their chance for freedom. They are replacing a damaged fuse, but they need to determine who will hit the firing pin.
It is obvious that this person will die. The lot falls on the prisoner, sick with consumption, but he does not have enough strength even for one blow. Then Ivan Tereshka takes the sledgehammer in his hands.
Suddenly, at this time, a German officer approaches them, although usually the Germans stay away from prisoners who are disarming unexploded shells. The officer calls Ivan over and orders him to polish his dusty boots.
There are captive women working nearby who begin to cast contemptuous glances in his direction. Then he loses control of himself, jumps up and knees the German in the jaw. He pulls out a pistol, but does not have time to use it, because the entire workshop is covered in smoke. Ivan snatches the pistol from the Fritz, overcomes the fence damaged by the explosion, and finds himself in a potato field.
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The Germans are behind
Julia climbs to the edge of a very steep scree and, with the last of her strength, drags Ivan onto it. Then they have to make their way through thorny thickets, and the Germans overtake them, getting closer and closer. Ivan tries to shoot back, but the girl asks him not to waste all the cartridges, leaving two as a last resort - for himself and her.
Finally, they reach the saddle. Only then do they notice that the pursuit has fallen behind. But Ivan is in no hurry to rejoice and turns out to be right. The whole point is that the Germans stopped the persecution only because the lovers had driven themselves into a trap. Their gorge ends in a deep abyss. When the fugitives find themselves on the edge of a cliff, dogs are unleashed on them.
Far below, Ivan notices a snowdrift of snow that has not yet melted. He picks up Julia and throws her towards the snowdrift, but he cannot jump himself - a wound on his leg prevents him. The dogs rush at Ivan. Pain shoots through his throat, the last thing he sees in front of him is the gloomy sky.
Crazy consumptive
Suddenly, in the meadow, they are again overtaken by a crazy consumptive, who again has to give up part of the bread supplies. The situation is aggravated by the fact that Ivan’s leg begins to bleed at the site of the dog bite, which does not heal.
A day later the madman returns, but this time he leads the Germans, repeating that they can give the Russian some bread. The Germans are scattered in a chain across the meadow, Ivan and Julia have to flee again.
At this moment the wound makes itself felt again. Ivan no longer moves by running, but by some clumsy leaps, dragging his heavy and swollen leg behind him. He is in danger of blood poisoning, but there is no time to stop and treat the wound; he needs to climb as high as possible into the mountains so that German bullets cannot reach them.
Blood poisoning
The wound made itself felt, and Tereshka could no longer run; he moved only in leaps and bounds, dragging his swollen and heavy leg behind him, as Bykov speaks about further in his book “Alpine Ballad”. Analysis of the work makes us understand how valuable, selfless and rare true love is. Ivan understood that he had developed blood poisoning from the wound. The fugitives tried to climb as high as possible, to where German bullets could not reach them. Julia crawled to the edge of the scree covered with dwarf trees and dragged Ivan with her with difficulty. Then we had to make our way through thorny thickets. They had to reach the saddle. The Nazis were catching up, and Tereshka began to shoot back. Julia asked not to waste all the cartridges, to leave at least 2: for him and for herself.
Having broken through the dwarf forest, the lovers reached the saddle. Here they saw that the pursuit was left behind, as if the Germans had decided to let them go. Ivan was in no hurry to rejoice. The Germans fell behind only because the young people ran into the trap themselves. The gorge where they found themselves ended in an abyss. The fugitives were already on the edge when the Nazis unleashed their dogs. Here Ivan saw a snowdrift on the slope far below. He grabbed the girl in his arms and threw him with all his might into a snowdrift. I couldn’t jump myself; my bad leg got in the way. He was attacked by dogs.
