I’ve barely started reading Entertaining Tsarist Russia: Tales, Songs, Plays, Movies, Jokes, Ads, and Images from Russian Urban Life 1779-1917
Gualikh goes on to marry an African princess named Refuda and have a son named Guak, who needless to say becomes a hero in his own right and has many adventures, including winning the heart of an Amazonian princess named Veleuma, but I’m not going to tell you about all that. Instead I’m going to mention the cognitive dissonance induced by seeing exotic names like Zilagon, Gualikh, and Guak associated with the homely (to me) place name Florida (and if anyone has any suggestion about where those names might have come from, by all means share it), and point out that the whole thing is manifestly a prediction of the victory of the Tampa Bay Rays in the playoffs. Of course, it would have been clearer if rather than Canada the Princedom of Florida had conquered the Duchy of Massachusetts (home of the Red Sox), but I submit that the 50,000-seat amphitheater with its “places for visiting magnates” is obviously Tropicana Field with its luxury suites.
Incidentally, the Guak story seems to have been utterly forgotten; in English Google finds only the book I’m quoting from, and in Russian, aside from references to the title, it seems to exist online only in a comedy “Говорят, будет воля!” [‘They say there will be freedom!’] by some guy named “N. Zinoviev” in an 1864 issue of the literary-political journal Sovremennik. A bunch of yokels think a book contains the freedom they’ve been promised, and they insist a literate deacon read it to them; on page 57 he starts reading it to them, and it turns out to be this very story: “Зилагон, владетельный князь американской Флориды, был тот великий и славный муж…” Unfortunately, he doesn’t get very far into it before the yokels grow impatient with the lack of freedom and move on to another plot element.
“Instead I’m going to mention the cognitive dissonance induced by seeing exotic names like Zilagon, Gualikh, and Guak associated with the homely (to me) place name Florida”
Hah! That was exactly my reaction when I first started reading Pratchett and came across moreporks everywhere. Although, these days, our native morepork is probably almost as fictional as Pratchett’s version.
Actually, Doak Campbell Stadium,where King Bobby Bowden has reigned yea these many years, while not directly across the street, is within walking distance of the state Capitol (15-20 minutes) in Tallahassee, and especially at this time of year, probably ranks higher in the estimation of locals.
In Chateaubriand’s “Atala and Rene” Florida is a mysterious exotic place where crocodiles sing to the setting sun, and so on. I want to reread it cometime, but at the moment it’s at the top of my list of overwritten books, immediately ahead of John Updike.
Fee fie foe fum! I smell the blood of a spambotman!
“Fee fie foe fum! I smell the blood of a spambotman!”
I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking for some time now that learning English might be a good idea. Maybe this revolutionary new tool will mean that it’s not too late for me to learn English after all.
Reading the plot summary made me very eager to see and hear the opera. Zilagon is definitely a bass-baritone rôle, I think, and Veleuma is a contralto.
if your interested its free
wouldn’t want to learn English from THAT bot
Hi there, have you tried out the new DD Code online toolbar to learn English – If not would you mind taking
a free 7 day trial and telling me what you think? its totally free for 7 days and will be well worth checking
out as this is a revolutionary new product that will change the way we all learn English online- go to
learn english at theddcode [spam link removed –LH]
to try it if your interested its free
“places for visiting magnates” reminds me of the visit I paid to DESY, the particle accelerator in Hamburg. It was on that occasion that I was introduced to my wife.
Those exotic American names obviously exercised a profound draw on European writers. There’s Brecht’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, in which a musical climax occurs with the mezzo apostrophizing Pensacola. It’s also the source of the Alabama and Benares (so not just American) songs; the heroine comes either from Oklahoma or Havana; and the hero spent seven years working as a lumberjack in the snow-white forests of Alaska.
And a couple of years later, his Seven Deadly Sins ballet opens with the lyric
Meine Schwester und ich stammen aus Louisiana,
Wo die Wasser des Mississippi unterm Monde fließen…
And the two sisters travel from Memphis to Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, before ending up back in Louisiana.
hjaelmer, please pardon the slight digression, but your mention of Brecht’s use of exotic American name put me in mind of Christian Morgenstern’s Der Lattenzaun. It seems even more apt since it features both an architect (as does this blog) and an “exotic” spelling of “Amerika”. The “punchline” of Der Lattenzaun also always reminds me of Emo Phillips’ “Most States”, but that’s a whole nother club of pudding.
By chance, the city of Nogales is almost a palindrome of Zilagon (selagon).
Reg Rebtre bor is a palindrome of Robert Berger. By chance, in Norwegian, it means “Reg Rebtree lives!” (Ok, the exclamation point is poetic license.) Now all we have to do is find Reg Rebtree and hide him…
I’m so busy today. Look Language, I’ve found you a really good Russian post-Revolution graphics and films site with lots of interesting links, too. Actually I got it off Conrad and his October 5 piece, Wer band dich in Schlummer so bang?.
Check out Обломок империи / A Fragment of Empire (1929) at the top of the page.
There are indeed crocodiles(Crocodylus acutus) in Florida. Perhaps 2,000 of them live in the swamps of extreme southern Florida.
Chateaubriand would not have known about them. They were not described until 1875.
They do not sing.
I remember an episode of Space 1999 set on the planet “Luton”. They tried to disguise the joke by having the cast pronounce it in a cod-Chinese way (“Loo Ton”) but it was pretty funny if you came from the UK.
Check out Обломок империи / A Fragment of Empire (1929) at the top of the page.
As it happens, I have a beloved T-shirt with that image on it. (MOMA once showed a series of early Russian films.)
T shirts are like pets, you get very attached to them and then they die in the washing machine (microwave, whatever).
J’ai huerte, savez-vous, d’incroyables Florides
Melant aux fleurs des yeux de pantheres a peaux
d’hommes….
[Plus one circumflex, one acute, and two graves].
Rimbaud, “Bateau Ivre”
Well, I knew that there have once been an Iberia and an Albania in the Caucasus, but… 😉
What’s a morepork? Is that something to eat?
“What is a Morepork?”
Morepork
That’s a very nice owl, Stuart.
Something for us middle-aged men that I heard on the BBC, a quote from a newspaper headline: ‘New Non-Invasive Prostate Test Gets Thumbs Up’.
“That’s a very nice owl”
Indeed. I was saddened to learn a few years ago that these islands were once home not only to the largest eagle yet knownd, but also to a much larger owl than the morepork.
largest eagle yet known
I think you didn’t put in the link, or it vanished. I love owls even though I suspect that one ate our parrot, Kiri (named after a New Zealander).
Yeah, someone should eat Ms Te Kanawa too. Well past her best, if not yet as extinct as the Haast eagle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haast_Eagle
AJP Crown: It was on that occasion that I was introduced to my wife.
Up until that point, conversation around the Crown breakfast table had been perforce somewhat stilted.
Yes. You see, I’m English.
Young Mencius was such a prig that some other Confucian had to explain to him that it was OK if his wife sometimes comported herself in an undignified and indiscreet manner in his presence.
In the other Confucian’s presence? I think he was a player, and young Mencius was getting played.
Not that there’s anything wrong with politeness, but the Taoists were a lot nicer than the Confucians.
Yes. You see, I’m English.
These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast,
Upon a desert island were eventually cast.
They hunted for their meals, as ALEXANDER SELKIRK used,
But they couldn’t chat together — they had not been introduced…
http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/bab_ballads/html/etiquette.html
Or:
http://www.xkcd.com/302/
There’s a joke about two Danes, two Swedes and two Norwegians being cast away on a desert island that ends, ‘and the Swedes were still waiting to be introduced’, but I can’t remember the middle.
There’s a joke about the Norwegian who went on a cruise and found himself on a slave galley ship instead. The guy rowing next to him was a Swede who said something like “and they did the same thing last year too,” but I can’t remember the setup. It seems the Swedes don’t do too well in these jokes.
This Florida reminds me of Wallace Stevens’s, which is mythic even though the poet visited the actual Florida.
As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life . . .
Or:
Foam and cloud are one,
Sultry moon-monsters
Are dissolving.
I’m reading Bunin’s Деревня [The Village], and I can’t tell you how delighted I was when I got to the start of section 2, when the bookish Kuzma is remembering his youth and how he had a hard time reading in Matorin’s store: “Маторин очень часто кричал: «Я тебе ухи оболтаю за твоих Гуаков, дьяволенок ты этакий!»” [Matorin would often yell at him: “I’ll pull your ears on account of your Guaks, you little devil!”] Which shows that kids were still reading the adventures of Zilagon, Gualikh, and Guak in the late 19th century.
Matorin
No doubt related to Doctor Maturin, FRS
Huh. I had completely forgotten about all of this, including my own comment.
Well, nobody has heard them sing and lived to tell the tale.
Alligators do make noise in mating season.
Probably comparable to the cognitive dissonance I experienced on learning that there’s a science-fiction heroine named Killashandra, Killeshandra being a tiny town in Co. Cavan. And according to the blurb on Amazon, she spends time on the “deadly beautiful world of Ballybran”. There doesn’t seem to be an actual Ballybran, but Bally-anything evokes rusticity rather than beauty or deadliness (“Bally-go-backwards” is the type of the benighted provincial town). But maybe not for non-Irish readers?
No coincidence at all (and WP says that both Killashandra and Killeshandra are in use as the name of the town). Anne McCaffrey, author of both Crystal Singer (in which Killashandra Ree first appears) and the later Killashandra, was not only of Irish origin but moved to Ireland in 1970 for tax reasons, became an Irish citizen, and lived there until her death in 2011.
In particular, she lived in Co. Wicklow, and Dr. Google informs me that there is somewhat of a traditional rivalry between Wicklow and Cavan, despite not being adjacent (were they once?). Perhaps this was a sly hit at the hated rivals? Of course, looking at a map of Ireland is just as reasonable an idea.
@Breffni: “Killeshandra” doesn’t sound that exotic to me either, since I am used to hearing it in the lyrics for “Come Out, Ye Black and Tans.”
As an American, I am aware of the rustic connotations of a Bally- place name, although they are not that prominent. I imagine that the BBC expected their viewers to have at least some notion of what the name implied when they chose to call their fictional Irish village “Ballykissangel” in 1996.
Sometime after the war, exotic sounding foreign names were in vogue in Russia and quite a few people got “exotic” names like Robert or Victoria.
It’s always amazing what people abroad can find exotic about your culture.
@JC: yes, I first heard of McCaffrey and Killashandra more than 20 years ago when an American aquaintance asked me to send her a copy of Red Star Rising, which was appearing over here first. I’ve never read her though. I can see how Killashandra works as a fantasy/SF name, Ballybran not so much. As SFReader says, it’s hard to see the exotic in your own culture, but I thought even to US readers Bally- might be as much of an Irish (and therefore kind of homely) signifier as an O’ – surname.
I wasn’t aware of a Wicklow-Cavan rivalry, but it’s presumably a GAA (Gaelic games) thing, which I’m not very tuned into. I should know more about these things, my grandmother was a very proud Cavan woman, plus my name is an old toponym that links me to Cavan (and Leitrim and Roscommon).
@Brett: How on earth do you know Come Out Ye Black and Tans? I’m intrigued.
@Breffni: I listen to a lot of folk music, including Irish rebel songs. However, I do try to avoid versions that call for explicit terroristic violence against civilians (for example, the original version of “The Patriot Game,” which speaks gleefully of shooting Republic of Ireland policemen). For “Come Out, Ye Black and Tans,” I am particularly fond of the folk rock version by the Irish Descendants (who, in spite of the name, are actually a Newfie band).