Dmitri: Tushé! On nas pogubit!
(He’ll be the ruin of us!)
On a linguistic point: although only the plural ruini [fem.] survives in everyday Russian (presumably meaning both ruin and ruins in context), there’s a real case to be made for an original, archaic singular ruina, quite capable of being resurrected by a playful POET such as Derzhavin. We must not be slaves to the slovar’? Most languages have singular [peculiar!] plurals: trousers, scissors ... KUDOS (as in “kudos *were not abundant in the Nemser article.” * one kudo, two kudos! Some insist on two kudoi, others kudea)
Who will now claim PRIORITY in discovering this NON-acrostic?
“As I was scanning Derzhavin’s verse, I met an acrostic that wasn’t there.
“It wasn’t there again today; I wish to God it would go away.”
CTaH
On 26/02/2009 19:28, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
Subject:
Re: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS: Derzhavin's acrostic (was "New Republic" etc)
From:
Dmitri Nabokov
Date:
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:33:55 +0100
To:
Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu> <mailto:NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.edu>
"Accidential acrostrich", whether sharp, flat, honored, read, or ruined must have been doubtful nightingale even to Derzhavin's ear. Sorry, DN
On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@utk.edu> wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] (corrected version of previous mail)
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:14:39 +0100 (CET)
From: soloviev@irit.fr
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
I should notice (for all our "amateurs" of acrostichs etc) that
in this case the acrostich is not perfect from the point of view
of a russian reader - it looks doubtful even that Derzhavin was
conscious that it is there. "Ruinu chti" would be more convincing. 1)
"Ruina" is not russian word; 2)in the expression "ruina chti"
it means rather "ruin read this"; 3) "chtit" ("pochitat") may mean also
"honor", and "ruinU chti" may mean "honor the destruction",
but then actual "ruina" is not right declination; 4) eight lines
is very short poem, and an approximative acrostich with doubtful
meaning may very well be accidential.