Having gotten back to reading Dead Souls, I hit another mysterious word, гальбик [gal’bik], which is not in any of my dictionaries. From the context (Этот, братец, и в гальбик, и в банчишку, и во все что хочешь [That guy will play galbik, bank, whatever you want], a few pages into Chapter 4) it’s obviously a game of chance, but which? (I’m not the only one who wonders; Vasili Utkin, a soccer broadcaster with a passion for literature, says in an interview: “моя самая любимая книга – “Мертвые души”… Если бы я нашел описание игры в “гальбик”, думаю, что один из интересов студенческой поры для меня был бы удовлетворен.” [My favorite book is Dead Souls… If I could find a description of the game of “galbik,” I think my curiosity of student days would be satisfied.]) Both Andrew MacAndrew, whose translation I have at hand, and D.J. Hogarth, whose version is online [no longer, as of 2012], give up and render it “faro,” which provides only a vague equivalent (the Russian word for that is faraon). The only hint I found by googling (and Yandexing) was that the same Russian word was used to translate passe-dix in Chapter 32, “Un diner de procureur,” of Dumas’s Les Trois mousquetaires: “plumer quelque peu les jeunes clercs en leur apprenant la bassette, le passe-dix et le lansquenet dans leurs plus fines pratiques”—as this translation has it, “to pluck the clerks a little by teaching them bassette, passedix, and lansquenet.” According to the OED the corresponding English word is “passage”:

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I have reported on politically inspired place-name changing in India; now it’s the turn of South Africa and Ireland. It seems the former country’s capital, Pretoria, is being renamed Tshwane, adding to a list of similar changes that includes, for instance, Pietersburg changing to Polokwane a few years ago. While I understand the desire to eliminate names associated with the apartheid government, in this case it seems like there must be better ways to spend the billion-plus rand the change is expected to cost. Of linguistic interest is the fact that the -h- represents aspiration, so the new name is basically pronounced “Tswane,” although I’m sure most English-speakers will use the /sh/ sound because of the spelling. Also, it’s not at all clear what the meaning of the new name is. The Hindustan Times story says:

Pretoria was named after Andries Pretorius, who settled here with the so-called “Voortrekkers” (front trekkers) a vanguard of Boers who left the Cape colony with ox-wagons in the 1830s and the second group to live in the area.
The first were Nguni-speakers, known as the Ndebele who named the place Tshwane, which means “Little Ape”. The word Tshwane is said to symbolise the chief’s motto — “we are the same.”

So that’s two possible meanings right there (though I’m not clear on what “symbolizing the motto” means); the page “Meanings of place names in South Africa” quotes a government website as saying:

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The much-loved folklorist and teacher Alan Dundes died this week; the San Francisco Chronicle obit says:

Renowned UC Berkeley folklorist Alan Dundes died Wednesday from an apparent heart attack suffered while teaching a graduate seminar on campus.
Dundes, 70, an internationally known figure whose enthusiasm and rigorous scholarship established folklore as a full-fledged academic discipline, died on the way to the Alta Bates-Summit Medical Center in Berkeley, campus officials said.
“Everybody’s in shock,” said the head archivist at Cal’s Folklore Archive, Kelly Revak, her voice breaking as she passed the phone to a colleague.
He collapsed shortly before 4:30 p.m. while conducting a graduate seminar on folklore theory and techniques in Giannini Hall, campus officials said. Ten students are enrolled in the class.

(Here is the UC Berkeley press release, with more details about his life and career and a good picture of him smiling behind a monstrous pile of papers, and here is the MetaFilter thread about him.) Renee, who was in his seminar, asked me to post this because she’s taken Glosses.net offline; my deepest sympathies to her and to everyone who knew Dundes, and I hope she will forgive my expressing the hope that at some point she revives Glosses, which has always been one of my favorite blogs and was an inspiration for this one.

A table of Simpsons characters with the versions of their names used in Latin America and Spain—which are often completely different. (Examples: Sideshow Bob is Bob Patiño in the Americas and Actor Secundario Bob in Iberia; Itchy and Scratchy are Tommy y Daly and Rasca y Pica respectively.) A major exception: Apu Nahasapeemapetilon is the same wherever you go. (The list is provided by Interlens en sus manos, where you will also find a tribute to Hatt Baby.)

Update (Sept. 2025). I could only find one capture of Interlens en sus manos, apparently showing an “I’m outta here” post (you can’t click through to the post or read the comments, and all the archives have been deleted), and the tribute to Hatt Baby seems to be gone for good.

This interview with Dmitri Gorbuntsov, the editor of a new edition of Dostoevsky, more complete and accurate than any previous (according to him), reminded me of a question that’s been plaguing me for some years, ever since I saw a previous more-accurate-than-ever edition of Dostoevsky (or it may have been a volume of this one). But first let me quote an interesting passage, Gorbuntsov’s response to a question about differences from an earlier edition:

The Academy’s complete edition of the works of Dostoevsky, of which Soviet literary criticism was so proud, left something to be desired in terms of completeness. It contains many kon”yunkturnye [politically motivated] emendations that conflict with shades of meaning of the author’s orthography and punctuation. It’s only fair to say that they started correcting Dostoyevsky even before Soviet times, [in fact] right after his death. During his life that was almost impossible to do. When Dostoyevsky discovered interference with his text, he handed out tongue-lashings that the proofreaders and make-up men who dealt with him remembered for the rest of their lives. If in defending some correction or other they mentioned grammar, Dostoyevsky took sharp exception—every author (he’d say) has his own style and grammar, and other people’s rules have nothing to do with him.

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A couple of interesting stories from the New York Times. I can’t get a blogsafe link for the first, so it may disappear in a few days:
Composing the Work an Ill-Fated Poet Never Began, by Alan Riding, describes a new book about (and by) Marina Tsvetayeva:

Now, in a new book published [in Paris], Tzvetan Todorov, a Bulgarian-born French philosopher and literary critic, believes he has found a way of introducing Tsvetayeva to a larger public outside Russia. In “Vivre Dans le Feu: Confessions” (Éditions Robert Laffont), or “Living in Fire: Confessions,” Mr. Todorov has organized extracts from nine volumes of her letters, notes and diaries into what he calls the autobiography she never wrote.

“When I first read the material in Russian, I thought it was amazing, but also a bit difficult to follow,” Mr. Todorov said in an interview, “because when you take all this writing, it’s not a finished work. So I decided to carry out a labor of love, to compose a book that Marina had already written so that anyone could read the confessions of one of the great writers of the past century.”

That’s a book I’d like to read. The other story is about the new breed of young, hip lexicographers: In Land of Lexicons, Having the Last Word, by Strawberry Saroyan (no, that’s not an April Fool’s joke, it’s her name). It focuses on Erin McKean, 33, editor in chief of the Oxford American Dictionary, but features others as well:

They include Steve Kleinedler, 38, who is second in command at American Heritage and has a phonetic vowel chart tattooed across his back; Grant Barrett, 34, project editor of The Historical Dictionary of American Slang, whom Ms. McKean describes as looking as if he’d just as soon fix a car as edit a dictionary; and Peter Sokolowski, 35, an associate editor at Merriam-Webster and a professional trumpet player. Jesse Sheidlower, 36, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary, is best known among the group so far, partly because he is also editor of “The F-Word,” a history of that vulgar term’s use in English. He is known for his bespoke English suits, too…

Sidney I. Landau, a former editor of Cambridge Dictionaries and the author of “Dictionaries: The Art And Craft of Lexicography” (and at 71, a member of an older generation), said a shift in people’s interests had also played a part. “In the early part of the 20th century, science and technology were very big in terms of marketing dictionaries, and they’d make claims about having 8,000 words dealing with electricity or mechanics,” he explained. But now, he added, “I think there has been a shift in terms of recognizing the importance of youth culture and slang.” In other words, people like Mr. Barrett, who marvels at a term like “ghetto pass,” which refers to street credibility for nonblacks, are in demand. He can trace its mainstream usage back to the hip-hop artist Ice Cube in 1991.
John Morse, the publisher and president of Merriam-Webster, said many young lexicographers had a natural social aptitude that helped them rise in the field. “I think if you go back 20 or 30 years, dictionary editors kind of sat in their office, did what they were supposed to do,” he said. “But what we realized – at least what I realized about 10 years ago – is that we needed to put a public face on dictionaries. Editors needed to be engaging with the public. And I think that activity is something younger editors stepped up to.” Ms. McKean often appears on public radio talking about words, and she has been dubbed “America’s lexicographical sweetheart” by National Public Radio’s program “Talk of the Nation.”

The whole article is interesting, and it’s always good to see Grant Barrett getting some press.

The Valve “is a literary weblog dedicated to the proposition that the function of the little magazine can follow this form. We mean to foster debate and circulation of ideas in literary studies and contiguous academic areas.” All that’s up right now is John Holbo‘s introductory post, but it’s long and meaty and deserving of your attention. After a fine blast of Trilling:

From the democratic point of view, we must say that in a true democracy nothing should be done for the people. The writer who defines his audience by its limitations is indulging in the unforgivable arrogance. The writer must define his audience by its abilities, by its perfections, so far as he is gifted to conceive them. He does well, if he cannot see his right audience within immediate reach of his voice, to direct his words to his spiritual ancestors, or to posterity, or even, if need be, to a coterie. The writer serves his daemon and his subject. And the democracy that does not know that the daemon and the subject must be served is not, in any ideal sense of the word, a democracy at all.

and an encomium to the “little magazine,” he digs into the depressing subject of the publishing crisis in the humanities, and specifically the problem of too many academic monographs chasing too few readers. His prognosis is both plausible and heartening:

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I don’t usually do the meme thing, but I’ve succumbed before, and when Cassandra beckons, who am I to decline? So here goes.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Nabokov’s Speak, Memory.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Don’t think so. When I was at the age to have crushes, I was reading mainly science fiction, which back then wasn’t in the crushworthy-character business.

The last book you bought is?
Alien Tongues: Bilingual Russian Writers of the “First” Emigration, by Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour (and I thank naxosaxur for bringing it to my attention in the comments to this post; I can’t wait to read it!).

What are you currently reading?
A bunch of books about Russia in the exciting years before the 1917 revolution(s): Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia, 1880-1918, by Melissa Kirschke Stockdale (Milyukov knew fourteen modern languages in addition to Latin and Greek); A Revolution of the Spirit: Crisis of Value in Russia, 1890-1924, edited by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal and Martha Bohachevsky Chomiak; Blok’s fiery essays of 1907-08 (collected in my handsome OLMA-Press edition of Blok); Voline‘s The Unknown Revolution—incidentally, I created the Wikipedia page for Volin (or Voline, in the French transliteration he used), an important figure who’s been almost forgotten; Orlando Figes’s A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924; and memoirs by Milyukov, Nina Berberova and her first husband Vladislav Khodasevich, and others.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
I could actually be content with Beth’s list:
1. The Iliad
2. Collected Poems, Czeslaw Milosz
3. Oxford Book of American Verse
4. Collected Works of William Shakespeare (we’re going for length and re-readability here)
5. A Bible (maybe) or The Book of Common Prayer
But I’d probably replace the Bible with a collected Pushkin, and the other selections would vary depending on my mood at the time of choosing. Also, I’d want an OED.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
I’m not. Let them get their own stick.

I regret to report that Robert Creeley died this morning; I found out via Steve Silberman‘s MeFi post. I’ll quote the poem that made such an impression on me when I first read it that I had to buy his Selected Poems:

Kore

As I was walking
  I came upon
chance walking
  the same road upon.

As I sat down
  by chance to move
later
  if and as I might,

light the wood was,
  light and green,
and what I saw
  before I had not seen.

It was a lady
  accompanied
by goat men
  leading her.

Her hair held earth.
  Her eyes were dark.
A double flute
  made her move.

“O love,
  where are you
leading
  me now?”

I expect wood s lot will have a memorial selection of links; look for it.

First, a story (from this Times piece by Ben Macintyre, which I found at Barista):

But there is one Roman delicacy even Jamie Oliver, our own Apicius, could not bring back to life. Laserpithium was a North African herb of indescribable deliciousness, akin to garlic, but far more tasty. The root, and its juice, was much favoured by Roman chefs; so much so that by around AD50, according to Patrick Faas, the culinary historian, it had been eaten to extinction and was thought to have disappeared altogether.

Then, in the time of Nero, a single plant was found deep in the Cyrenaic desert. If this lone seedling had been cultivated, then today we might still be enjoying Laserpithium with everything. Nero had other plans. The last surviving plant was dug up, shipped to Rome, and eaten by the emperor.

I don’t know (though I’m sure one of my readers will) how much truth there is in the story, but I zeroed in on the word “Laserpithium,” an ungainly word (made more ungainly by being pointlessly capitalized) that I had to investigate.

I pulled out my trusty Oxford Latin Dictionary and found this entry (omitting the citations):

lāserpīcium ~i(ī), n. lāserpītium. [app. from lac sirpicium, see LASER]
  1 Asafoetida.
  2 The plant which produces this, silphium.

Aha, good old silphium! Silphium, as the OED says, was

A plant of the Mediterranean region, yielding a gum-resin or juice much valued by the ancients as a condiment or medicine; the juice obtained from this plant, also called LASER¹.

The plant has been variously identified as Thapsia garganica or silphion, and Narthex silphium. It was largely cultivated for export at Cyrene on the north coast of Africa.

Now my attention turned to this mysterious “laser,” which both the OLD and the OED wanted me to see. The OED calls it “A gum-resin mentioned by Roman writers; obtained from an umbelliferous plant called lāserpīcium or silphium“; the OLD entry is (again omitting citations):

lāser ~eris, n. lāsar. [app. altered and abbreviated from lac sirpicium (see LAC and SIRPE) owing to wrong analysis (piceus) and influenced by piper, siser, etc.]
  1 A strong-smelling resinous gum produced by the silphium plant, asafoetida.
  2 The plant which produces this, silphium.

So that clears everything up (and provides us with a bit of Latin folk etymology—piceus means ‘pitchy, resinous’), except for the asafetida business. Is lāser/silphium simply asafetida? If so, 1) why is it said to have disappeared? and 2) why is it said to be “of indescribable deliciousness, akin to garlic, but far more tasty”? Have you ever been around asafetida? Believe me, the “fetid” isn’t there by accident.