Word document with Russian and English translation above.
I wish to thank Yuri Doykov for alerting me to this poem.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
July 2024
ГРЕШИТЬ (a poem by Alexander Blok)
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Monthly Archives: July 2024
pity
Blake, ‘How Sweet I Roamed from Field to Field’
See two Word documents, above.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
July 2024
William Blake, “Mrs Blake” (circa 1805)
the beauty of Russian syntax
Если окажутся, хоть некоторые, хоть слабые шансы на успех, было бы грешно их не использовать. (Yesli okazhutsya, khot’ nekotoryye, khot’ slabyye shansy na uspekh, bylo by greshno ikh ne ispol’zovat’.)
If there are at least some, even faint, chances of success, it would be a sin not to make use of them.
— Yuri Doykov, Pochemu molchal Pitirim Sorokin?; Ot Lubyanki do Garvarda (1918-1930) [Why was he silent?; Pitirim Sorokin? From the Lubyanka to Harvard (1918-1930]
The words are a quotation from Alexander Guchkov, a minister of war in Kerensky’s provisional government, in a letter to Sorokin.
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Russian is, indeed, an intricate and beautiful language.
The subjunctive is used here; and subtle wording to get the writer’s point across.
грешно: dative case of грех (sin)
грешно (dative), pronounced greshno
грех (nominative), pronounced grekh
The Russian letter х has no sound corresponding to any English letter. It is the first letter in the surname Khrushchev.
I love studying languages. French, for instance, in high school Learning the intricacies of verbs and conjugations. The passé composé; le subjonctif.
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иди и впредь не греши
idi i vpred’ ne greshi
go and sin no more
— John 8:11 (Old Church Slavonic)
— posted by Roger W. Smith
July 2024
“the want of genuine emotion”; Geoge Eliot on the poet Young
Posted here (Word document above) are excerpts from Georg Eliot’s essay:
“Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet Young.”
Westminster Review, LXVII (January 1857)
— posted by Roger W. Smith
July 2024
Blake and Wordsworth
dedications
Each man’s joy is joy to me
Each man’s grief is my own
— Joan Baez, “No Man Is an Island”
Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving.
And he answered:
You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
From a ceremony held at an LRY (Liberal Religious Youth) meeting in 1964, sixty years ago.
At the ceremony in my honor — I had served for a year as Chairman of the New England Regional Committee (NERC) — I was given two books with these dedications on the flyleaves.
The handwriting is that of either Ruth Wahtera or Sandi Mosher. They collaborated on choosing the books and passages to quote. The quotes are from the lyrics to the song “No Man Is an Island” and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.
Kind words. I feel — modesty aside — that they were true. They saw something in me; empathy, concern for others.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
July 2024