Another translation comparison! This one, by David Isaacson, is of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, and it’s a good one — not, for the most part, focused on how the Russian is rendered, but on what makes Chekhov work in English. Some snippets:
I can think of no other drama that has so many interpreters. Big name playwrights (David Mamet! Heidi Schreck! Conor McPherson! Annie Baker!) are eager to try their hand at it. Correct me if I’m wrong, dear reader, but I don’t think that’s generally the case with other playwrights presented in translation. Companies doing Moliere’s Tartuffe are usually content to go with the Richard Wilbur or Ranjit Bolt versions. Since playwright Amy Herzog started adapting Henrik Ibsen a few years ago, directors have coalesced on her versions of An Enemy of the People and A Doll’s House. So my query really should be phrased: With so many published English versions of Uncle Vanya available, why so many freakin’ translations and adaptations?
The American Players Theater’s Nate Burger says
“The reason people think they don’t like Chekhov is because they haven’t experienced Chekhov through someone else’s lens that makes it contemporary or makes it approachable. And so I was, like, I bet I can do that.”
Burger proposes that what draws people to adapt Uncle Vanya is the lack of approachability in previous incarnations. I think it’s the opposite: Playwrights are not overcoming some innate textual difficulty; rather they are reveling in the sensation that Chekhov is our soul brother. In fact, Annie Baker says, “If you just literally translate exactly what [Chekhov] wrote, it sounds super contemporary.” It’s that inherent sense of contemporaneity that makes modern playwrights’ palms start to itch with the need to open their inkpads and put their stamps on the proceedings. […]
The reason I haven’t rushed out to see any of these current Vanyas is that back in January 2025, I saw a production of from The New Theatre Project that was so completely satisfying, I probably won’t have the urge to see another for quite some time. The cast were all outstanding. (In the photo above, that’s Rae Gray as Yelena and Larry Grimm as Vanya.) It was an intimate staging, performed in a corner of a small titanium-parts factory in Chicago. There were scenes lit entirely by candlelight.
Chris Jones, the Chicago Tribune’s chief theater critic, gave it a lukewarm review, however. And one line from that review sparked my curiosity and has stuck with me ever since:
“Part of the issue is the Annie Baker translation, which is not my favorite, perhaps because Baker and Chekhov are too similar; the best Chekhov translations tend to be more counterintuitive efforts from maverick writers.”
It was a surprising notion, one I viewed with suspicion; I had always taken it as a given that a foreign-language work would be best-served by a translator/adaptor who was temperamentally and artistically simpatico with the original author. But I found Jones’ premise to be intriguing, so I decided I’d compare a bunch of Vanya translations, and figure out which I preferred. […]
What’s my criteria? What do I want — as an audience member — from my Chekhov? I desire the conversational; text in a simple vernacular; text that speaks to me. I want the translator to (as Baker says in her preface) “create a version that sounds to our contemporary American ears the way the play sounded to Russian ears during the play’s first productions in the provinces in 1898.”
For my little survey, I left out all the older, more “literary” translations that Columbus hates. I looked at Jean-Claude van Itallie’s (1980), David Mamet’s (1989), Brian Friel’s (1998), Columbus’s (2002), Baker’s (2014), one co-translated by Richard Nelson, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky (2018), Conor McPherson’s (2020), and Heidi Schreck’s recent script for Lincoln Center (2024).
Brian Friel is best known for his play Translations, in which visiting English translators make a hash out of the native Irish language. Ironically, Friel makes a hash of his “translation” here; he extemporizes on Chekhov’s work, cutting lines and making up dialogue out of whole cloth. And Conor McPherson does the same. Do they think they’re better playwrights than Chekhov? Is it an Irish playwright thing? Admittedly, both their printed texts calls themselves “versions” of the play… so at least there is truth in advertising. Let us shove these “versions” aside, and speak of them no more.
In general, I like Isaacson’s judgments (I agree that “Look at his success with women! Don Juan never had it so good!” is better than “And what success with women! No Don Juan ever had such complete success!”); here’s the bit that deals with Russian:
Nelson said in an interview that there is a single word that will tell you what kind of Uncle Vanya you are getting.
There’s one word in Uncle Vanya that in a sense makes the whole play untranslatable, and it’s a word that’s used maybe six or seven times in the play. Ástrov at one point says something like, “You come into a country and the people here are all…” and then the word, chudak… And then at the very end of the play he says, “You know, I think we’re all chudaki.” Now, that word is so important, and it’s been translated so many different ways: creep or crackpot or old fart! But the original Russian word is not a criticism or a judgment. And it’s a very common word. We couldn’t really find the right word to do all that. So the word we chose is misfit. So, “We are all misfits.” And that goes to the very heart of what the play is all about, what these people are feeling and what they’re trying to sort out about their lives. I think that shows you how complicated it is to translate Chekhov, when you can go from one translation that says, “We’re all creeps,” to another that concludes, “We’re all misfits.” Two different plays.
Who is Nelson taking aim at here? Annie Baker, who renders the word as “creeps.”
Yeah, “creeps” doesn’t work for me. Anyway, click through and see what you think; thanks, Steve!
I’ve heard people say “Вот чудо!” in a sarcastic manner to express mild disapproval of something and I think there must be an etymological connection between “чудо” and “Чудак”. So the translation would probably have to be something mild like just calling the person a “character”.
“Creeps” comes across as being a bit strong to describe idiosyncratically passionate individuals navigating unfulfilled lives.
“Misfit” has carried sympathetic overtones for a long time. Did it already potentially have these overtones when A Good Man Is Hard to Find was written?
Yeah, “creeps” is for people who don’t understand Chekhov and have a poor grasp of English idiom. Apart from that, it’s perfect.
It never ceases to amaze me how very poor some actually-published translations are. I still feel aggrieved by the truly abominable English version of Die Zauberflöte foisted on the innocent public by the Welsh National Opera a couple of years ago. Engineered by someone with a tin ear for English, quite apart from their dubious grasp of German.
In the immortal words of David Jones: “Oh God, I could do better than that.”
Does creep(y) have two rather contrary meanings?
a) somebody whose interpersonal interaction seems immediately repulsive; vs
b) somebody who seems engaging/personable even, but is using that for some underhand exploitation (often sexual).
a) seems more aligned with the ‘creepy’ senses at wikt.
b) seems more like ‘creep’ senses 5, 7.
Somebody who’s creepy a) wouldn’t get so far at insinuating themselves b)/5. I guess the target of servility 7 might not feel so creeped-upon as others observing, who’ll feel the discomfort.
I’m thinking particularly of a specific Youtuber doing psyche analysis of lurid legal cases. Often describes some confidence trickster, who you’d think wouldn’t get anywhere if personally repulsive. And yet the concluding assessment is often ‘creepy’ — which must be based on their subsequent underhand actions.
Epstein was a creep but seems to have ‘befriended’ large numbers of people who you’d think would have sharp judgment(?)
Also Trump’s press conference/’cabinet meetings’. Apparently he doesn’t notice how fawning (‘creepy’ to me) everybody has to be.
LH must understand the overtones of чудак in 1897 better than me.
What I find confusing about this word in the 20th and 21st century is that on the one hand colloquially it’s a mildly critical characteristic and on the other hand in literature the abstract quality (abstract chudaks) is praised and the characters described (the narrator’s voice) as chudaki are likeable. Rather like Paganel, some are less strange than me and my friends.
____
But: IF those literary chudaki were based on the colloquial “critical characteristic” (rather than likeable), they would not be “creepy” or repellent. Rather they would be like the characters of Wonderland as seen by Alice. Strange, irrational. Eyebrow-raising.
Translating either as creeps is eyebrow-raising too, etymologically, as noted above it is from “wonder” (perhaps deverbal from chudít’).
1. Astrov is creepy. Since he is the one who uses the word chudak, I understand why the translator could make this choice–EDIT: maybe weirdo would be better.
2. А какой успех у женщин! Ни один Дон-Жуан не знал такого полного успеха!
I think, taking into account Vanya is speaking about someone he himself had worshipped but come to understand has feet of clay, this is something like “Look at how successful he is with women! Not even Don Juan enjoyed this kind of absolute success.”; “Don Juan never had it so good” for the second sentence is for me not the way Vanya is declaiming here.
Perhaps Friel did not do a good translation, but I think characters in his plays are often similar to these characters: articulate, solid, well-intentioned but unable or unwilling to obtain or provide satisfaction, because they are self-deceiving in ways that ensure their words, actions or inaction have unsatisfactory results.
@Y: “Misfit” has carried sympathetic overtones for a long time. Did it already potentially have these overtones when A Good Man Is Hard to Find was written?
Are you referring to O’Connor’s short story ? If so, I don’t quite see why. The character himself, speaking to the grandmother:
#
I call myself The Misfit,” he said, “because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.”
#
His accomplice fugitives have just killed three members of the family, the other three will soon follow. The weak-sauce word “sympathetic” does not impose itself here.
The idea of translating a (!!!) Don Juan (“womaniser”) as “Don Juan” (de Molina’s character) is slightly odd though.
“Not one Don Juan has ever had such complete success!”
@dm
I don’t think ni odin = “not one”. But who cares? Go for it!
I may have overdone the emphasis; “no Don Juan has ever” may be closer. But один is definitely not ornamental.
(In German, it’s more Casanova who has become genericized.)
I like PP’s weirdo for чудак.
By people who have never read L’Histoire de ma vie.
DM, Casanova too (in Russian).
( «Казанова» is also a rare Russian rock song about sex. The musicians didn’t expect it to be successful: something more serious, perhaps “anti-totalitarian” seemed a much better idea to them.
It’s is nevertheless thoughtful:)).
I was amused by the fact that the duo of Pevear and Volokhonsky can be a trio, with Nelson.
I think I knew that, I read their WP page, but I didn’t remember.
Logically (Russian logic) you need the third when a piece can’t be translated without vodka (cf. без бутылки не разберёшься).
@ulr: By people who have never read L’Histoire de ma vie. [in reply to it’s more Casanova who has become genericized]
I don’t know what “genericized” might mean here. Possibly the notion of C being just another fuck-boy in history.
Reading L’histoire will disabuse anyone of such a notion. But he’s not another Rousseau either, thank goodness, one was quite enough.
The book contains thousands of pages, I didn’t finish it back then. Now I’ve started again. [paid € 1.99 for it on Kobo, and € 2.99 for the Mémoires of Saint-Simon]
According to the French WiPe, F.A. Brockhaus bought the manuscript from C’s family and published the very first edition around 1822 – in German.
The textual history is complicated…
Until the 1960s, all editions were bowdlerized. The “complete” text published in the 1960s was based on a hasty and often faulty copy of the original manuscripts. It was only in 2010 that the manuscripts were acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale and became the basis for more accurate editions published by Robert Laffont and Pléiade.
Since Casanova has come up, I feel compelled to recommend Marcello Mastroianni’s wonderfully rueful performance as the Chevalier de Seingalt (or, if you prefer a different self-awarded title, Count of Farussi) in the splendid, and virtually unknown, That Night in Varennes (Il mondo nuovo; La Nuit de Varennes), which also features Jean-Louis Barrault as Restif de la Bretonne, Hanna Schygulla as Countess Sophie de la Borde, and Harvey Keitel as Tom Paine, all of them terrific. (It also has Jean-Claude Brialy as Monsieur Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintignant as Monsieur Sauce, and Michel Piccoli as King Louis XVI — what a cast!)
Thanks for the tip. I’ve now paid € 23 for the ebook of vol 1 published by Éditions Robert Laffont in 2013.
Is there a suitable character from the Antiquity or Greek mythology (or Indian mythology, or Persian or Arabic folklore) other than Zeus*, or are seducers a modern European invention?
*screwed many a good girl from good family.
@hat
I agree with you about Mastroianni’s performance in that film. Some would prefer Donald Sutherland’s in the Fellini film, but I am not one of those.
La Nuit de Varennes
The plot summary sounds familiar. I may have seen it years ago on German tv. It was on Amazon Prime for a time, I now read, but no longer.
“Genericized” as in having a Wiktionary entry for “successful male seducer of women”; now I see, unsurprisingly, that Don Juan also has one.
The idiomatic Russian for this is стало нарицательным (where имя нарицательное is “common noun”).
Sadly, the idiomatic English translation of стало нарицательным is “became a household [name, word]”:
I think if I say “[a] Don Juan[s]” is a count common noun some may object that it is not, because it’s capitalised and is a name of a character (even if metaphorically it refers to something else).
Thank you for excerpting my essay, and thank you to everyone who has commented. (For the record, I liked Donald Sutherland in Fellini’s “Casanova,” but also liked Heath Ledger in Lasse Hallström’s “Casanova”… two completely different depictions.)
Tracking patterns and shifts over time in positive v negative v neutral valence of “misfit(s)” in various contexts would be a good corpus-mining project for those “digital humanities” types and their fancy software. Maybe someone’s already done it? See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RagtagBunchOfMisfits
Or for something more culturally elevated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misfits_(The_Kinks_song)
CHUDAK: A possibility that hasn’t been mentioned is “odd duck”. Not as strong as “weirdo” and not pejorative in the way that “creep” is.
True, but the problem is that it’s not a term you can use repeatedly.
Apparently he doesn’t notice how fawning (‘creepy’ to me) everybody has to be
I’m sure he does notice. He reacts immediately to any lowering of the obsequiousness level with personal abuse. (He’s evil, not stupid.)
@LanguageHat: It’s true that you cannot use “odd duck” repeatedly, but is it necessary to translate chudak the same way every time? When I was translating Japanese, I often had to change the English translation of the same Japanese word to suit the context.
So “oddball” rather than “odd duck”.
We are all oddballs.
The both very and extremely stable genius is stupid beyond most people’s imagination, but that’s a byproduct of his narcissism, the same thing that makes him hold loyalty tests such as “cabinet meetings”.
@LanguageHat: It’s true that you cannot use “odd duck” repeatedly, but is it necessary to translate chudak the same way every time? When I was translating Japanese, I often had to change the English translation of the same Japanese word to suit the context.
Sure, but my preference is to render a term the same way each time if it’s important to the original, as is the case here.
So “oddball” rather than “odd duck”.
I think that would work; it’s more repeatable, less ostentatious.
@LanguageHat: It’s strange that nobody said “Why a duck?” (Sorry, I’ll go to my room now.)
Why a no chicken?
Yeah, why a no chicken? I catch ona why a horse, but why-a no chicken?
And slightly off topic:
Two ducks were sitting in a pond. One of the ducks said: “Quack”. The other duck said: “I was going to say that!”
Ugly frogling, who grew up in a beautiful toad.
(also quack is what frogs say in Russian.
Or rather frogs say qua, derived words have stem quak. English k in quack (and English t in tweet) is same formant. Ducks say krya)
Ducks say krya
And pigs say khryu, right? Why the palatalization?
In one Japanese kids’ song that I know, frogs say “kero-kero” and “kuak-kuak” (Kaeru no Uta).
“Why the palatalization?”
A good question:/
Logically in the pair of rʲV and rV one can better suit for imitation of a specific sound than the other: most speakers don’t roll soft rʲ (say grammar books), also ʲV and V differ in timbre (I hear ʲV as a half-way vowel between ʲ and V).
But can we say that ducks don’t roll r’s? Possibly. Can we say their calls are more similar in timbre to rʲa than ra? I’d say krʲa is as bad as kra🙂
But-2, etymologically vowels palatalise consonants. ʲa must be either <*ja or <*nasal <*en or *in
*krja would be odd, while *kren makes sense.
[checked Vasmer, he too thinks it is nasal]
As for xrʲu, I don’t know.
There are some onomatopoeias and expressive formations with rʲu or Cʲu.
stúkatʲ ‘to knock, rap’, stúkatʲ-grʲúkatʲ expressive rhyme (or reduplication) for loud (and undesirable) noise produced by moving furniture, dropping heavy things etc.
brʲuzžátʲ ‘to grouch’
tʲúkatʲ – to strike [hard surface] with a not too large hammer or something similar (say, with a bird bill)’
Or tʲú – the famous interjection of Kharkiv.
Re tjuk–when is this not tuk (is tuk southern?)? Or is this s-mobile stukat’ > tukat’?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iF29qBpm1n4
Is there a suitable character from the Antiquity or Greek mythology (or Indian mythology, or Persian or Arabic folklore) other than Zeus*, or are seducers a modern European invention?
the social valences (and definitional boundaries) of seduction are of course gonna be different in the different contexts (and in their afterlives in the euro/colonial sphere), but it’s a more interesting question the more i think about it!
i think there’s an argument for homer’s paris, and for odysseus; for gopinath/krishna (and maybe gopala krishna too), perhaps for some versions of shiva; for dovid hamelekh (and maybe shloyme hamelekh, though i think it’s a stretch); and to my mind abu nuwas (he’s folkloric enough to be in the Alf Laylah waLaylah, after all).
but i’d guess there are better parallels in a lot of those cultural contexts that are rooted in early modern celebrity and fiction, the way don juan and casanova – and let’s not forget lothario!* – are in christian europe (and the zones it colonized). abu nuwas seems closer to that model (perhaps because of the modernist revolution in poetry that he was an early contributor to), though he may or may not make sense to think of as in a different mode because the others are so relentlessly heterosexual.
.
* or monsieur alfonse, i suppose, though he’s more eponymous in yiddish and polish (and elsewhere?) than english. dumas fils should get more credit for him, i think!
Coyote was fond of seducing women (especially those I once saw translated as “star maidens”).
* or monsieur alfonse, i suppose, though he’s more eponymous in yiddish and polish (and elsewhere?)
In contemporary Russian, Альфонс is the male equivalent of a “gold digger”, entering romantic relationships with women in order to live off their money. So, not necessarily a serial seducer, as long as he is successful in living off one romantic partner.
in yiddish, אַלפֿאָנס is the standard word for “pimp”; i think it’s the same in polish, though i don’t know whether it’s similarly dominant. so, interestingly different from the russian (refoyl doesn’t have a yiddish word for “gigolo”; the Comprehensive has only what look like neologisms (including זשיגאָלאָ)), but certainly not a synonym for the list. it came to mind because i was thinking about the different tonalities of “a don juan”, “a casanova”, and “a lothario”.
and i shoulda remembered coyote! more preternaturally gifted than even gopinath or zeus (at least to me – in this context, one extraordinary body being more impressive in my eyes than multiplication or transformation), though more realistically vulnerable because of it.
Coyote is a horndog, but in each individual story he seldom goes after more than one woman. A collector of conquests like Don Juan needs a novel to show the pattern, and novels came in to the world late.
No Lothario and no Alfonse in German, FWTW.
Asumbul the Kusaasi trickster doesn’t seem to get up to a lot of fornication, despite being a rabbit. (Well, hare.) On the other hand, in the Hausa version of the Tar Baby story, it’s the, um, allure of the Tar Baby which leads to Bre’r Rabbit’s entrapment, so maybe he is known to have certain proclivities.
There’s an elaborate Akan story about Asumbul’s opposite number Anansi the Spider and how he got his wife (who was originally married to someone else), but it’s not very casanovelic.
Prince Genji?
On the other hand, you eventually realise that a major reason Murasaki evidently thinks that Genji is the Ideal Man is that he doesn’t treat all his exes like crap. In his milieu, he’s not really exceptional in terms of sheer numbers …
in yiddish, אַלפֿאָנס is the standard word for “pimp”; i think it’s the same in polish, though i don’t know whether it’s similarly dominant. so, interestingly different from the russian (refoyl doesn’t have a yiddish word for “gigolo”
I think I have seen альфонс also used in the meaning “pimp” in Russian. In my understanding, the word doesn’t mean “gigolo” – an альфонс is in a steady relationship with the woman he mooches off, not in a series of short-term monetary transactions with different women. But maybe our native Russian speakers can weigh in here.
an альфонс is in a steady relationship with the woman he mooches off
A gold digger, sponge or moocher.
Жиголо is probably less familiar word than альфонс, but when precision is needed… None of them of course is pimp. The latter is сутенёр, an obvious borrowing from French.
@Hans, I confirm, but it is not a word you hear often.
Some see such unequal alliances (richier, older woman) as immoral, even if based on romantic love or mutual attraction. Many see them as immoral when based on something else.
And in the context of this second immorality you may think of альфонс (and жиголо too).
But the problem is scarcity of referents. Logically for this either (a) the man needs to think that he is dating a woman [partly] because of her money or (b) both need to conceptualise their romance as exchange or have such an agreement (which won’t necessarily mean they don’t love each other:)).
And he or they must tell me about it.
I haven’t met or heard of a male prostitute, I once met some vaguely alfonsoid young man (he was 22 or 24 and wanted to find – and date – a woman in 30s with a flat in the centre of Moscow – the dream is amusing, but he very well could like or prefer women in 30s and a conveniently located flat is not money).
So most contexts are hypothetical, like imagining yourself in either role. Hypothetically, I’ll call male prostitute male prostitute rather than gigolo.
___
Thinking of this, there are also male escorts in China: handsome boys who accompany single girls on New Year (so the girls would not feel embarrassed by their solitude).
i haven’t known kept men in heterosexual relationships myself, but they’re certainly out there; i’ve known a few otherwise, some situations were very happy, others purely transactional on at least one side (and generally less long-lasting, though not necesarily short-term).
to me, “gigolo” doesn’t necessarily imply high-turnover, just transactional (with or without a possible interest in more) – but english doesn’t really have the vocabulary for that альфонс / жиголо distinction, so consider me sapir-whorfed.
For those looking to marry primarily to get their hands on spousal money, there is fortune hunters.
I think “kept (wo)man” requires certain economical, social and moral context.
1. (S)he must seriously depend on her or his lover(s) economically. More than when (s)he can have same if she choose to work instead, but work is boring.
2. They are not married.
3. (2) is believed to be Important.
4. They don’t live together.
1. is “economical”, 3 is “moral”. The “social” context must make 1, 2, 3, 4 likely enough.
___
As we (I, my friends) don’t think marriage is anyhow important, perhaps in modern context I can say (2-3) “don’t think of their relationship as a ‘family'”)
There was (apparently) a public information poster in the UK during WW2, warning the patriotic populace against gossip, that went “Be like Dad! Keep Mum!”
I think what I mean is that these words are largely historical for me.
Note the disruption between tsar Russia and USSR: first French words like gigolo were borrowed in Russia, second such concepts won’t work in USSR without modification (access to certain necessities (flat in Moscow) depended not on money but on something else, and whether you were kept or not, you’d have a job anyway).
And modern Russia… likely many women who date rich businessmen here are attracted by their social circle and shiny things owned by people in that circle if not by money of their lovers. I can’t even say I am different: I too can be attracted by “social circles” (not by rich ones though).
But girls who want this are at least talked about and joked about! Even so, less often in my circle of people with different interests.
“Alfonses” are fully abstract. There must be some, but I don’t meet them and people I know don’t talk about them. Thus “historical”.
I know some househusbands (who were “houselovers” before they married thier wives, that is, before they begot a baby) but for me that’s different.
“Alfonses” are fully abstract. There must be some, but I don’t meet them and people I know don’t talk about them. Thus “historical”.
Similar statements can be made about bedbugs. But bedbugs are not “historical”. They thrive outside the charmed circles of genteel living. Like rent boys and many another outrageous phenomenon.
David E.: “Be like Dad! Keep Mum!”
En svensk tiger.
@drasvi
What Stu said:
Гоген Солнцев
Роман Архипов
Прохор Шаляпин
Дмитрий Иванов
Андрей Сорока
https://life.ru/p/1641367
Bedbugs are historical in a lot of places. The only ones I’ve ever encountered were in one room of a remarkably cheap place in Paris in 2018 – and when I finally recognized them and complained, I eventually got another room that didn’t have any. I’ve stayed in unusually cheap places elsewhere in Europe and in the US, so that alone is not the whole story.
@dm
I can just see what the French hotelier was thinking: “these Austrians are so exigent. Let’s give this one something to complain about…”
Since Casanova has come up, I feel compelled to recommend Marcello Mastroianni’s wonderfully rueful performance as the Chevalier de Seingalt… in the splendid, and virtually unknown, That Night in Varennes…
Strangely, one of those movies wheeled out for us on a rainy afternoon when our French teacher didn’t feel like teaching. I don’t remember if it was high school or college – the latter sounds more plausible, but the high school instructor also pulled out stuff like Tous les matins du monde and the college instructor was more likely to reach for La Haine, so…
@PP, do you mean I ever heard of those? I said there must be some in Russia. But I don’t talk and I don’t hear about them. I also said “largely historical for me“.
@Stu, names of social roles are not same as names of bugs. And I hear about bedbugs much more often:)
How do we call a man who doesn’t know why he dates this specific woman? Or a man who dates her because she is smart? Or a man who dates her because she speaks a language he’s learning? We don’t have names for these and we don’t feel the need (even though one may distinguish between prostitutes, normal people who take money for sex and, say, temporary marriage).
Once we feel such a need, we associate the named role with other things (his and her background, availability of other partners and sources of income for him, availability of other partners and things to spend money on for her).
Unlike bedbugs, the result won’t necessarily make sense in a different society.
And even the fact that we need this name tells something about us – and our attitude to this role.
Or a man who dates her because she is smart?
Encephalophile. Or just, “smart.”
Say, encounters between teenage boys and 40 y.o. women were not uncommon in the brothel of Tunis (there are well-known local reasons why boys can’t find partners elsewhere, there are reasons why the women in brothel are not of same age). It were the boys who paid. Relationships between female Russian tourists (this time those can be young) and local hotel workers are also not unheard about. Here the (rich) ladies are more likely to support their (poor) male acquaintances. If I call them “alphonses” or “gigolo” I will be understood (by Russians), but the image the words evoke is different and tells more about Russia.
drasvi: Or a man who dates her because she speaks a language he’s learning?
Apparently, in several languages, that is a sleeping dictionary.
Yeah! Give me access to your syntactic structures, baby!
Locus classicus:
CLXIII
And now, by dint of fingers and of eyes,
And words repeated after her, he took
A lesson in her tongue; but by surmise,
No doubt, less of her language than her look:
As he who studies fervently the skies
Turns oftener to the stars than to his book,
Thus Juan learn’d his alpha beta better
From Haidée’s glance than any graven letter.
CLXIV
‘T is pleasing to be school’d in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes—that is, I mean,
When both the teacher and the taught are young,
As was the case, at least, where I have been;
They smile so when one’s right, and when one’s wrong
They smile still more, and then there intervene
Pressure of hands, perhaps even a chaste kiss;—
I learn’d the little that I know by this:
CLXV
That is, some words of Spanish, Turk, and Greek,
Italian not at all, having no teachers;
Much English I cannot pretend to speak,
Learning that language chiefly from its preachers,
Barrow, South, Tillotson, whom every week
I study, also Blair, the highest reachers
Of eloquence in piety and prose—
I hate your poets, so read none of those.
—Byron, Don Juan, Canto II
Brett: Apparently, in several languages, that is a sleeping dictionary.
Oh, so that’s what those dic pics are about!
@drasvi
Thanks for clarifying. It is a little difficult for me to visualise a person who is acquainted with the brothels of Tunis but who does not have examples ready to mind of people that would be labeled alphons in his native Russia. But I am learning. Rereading your post, I see that you said
—
“Alfonses” are fully abstract. There must be some, but I don’t meet them and people I know don’t talk about them.
—
I suppose you mean by this that you and the people you know have managed to prevent the kind of mass-media material I linked to from polluting their consciousness. Respect!
@PP, the brothel. Or brothel quarter, but it has a single entrance (door). Also it ceased operations several years ago: Saied didn’t like it, you may find news about it if you google brothel Tunis. I’m not acquainted with it but my friend spent a night there when she was 19 – I think about the time when she graduated from school and came to Tunis to study in university. She wrote a novel and thought it is better to talk with her characters (prostitutes) if she is going to write about them. I wanted to go there too some day (not for sex:)) but see above.
Thanks to this thread, I learned cicisbeo.
A wonderful word (which Wiktionary says is of onomatopoeic origin).
“Respect!” (PP) – Not so fast. I read this (about the first wife in your list) and found it entertaining. But rather brutal.
(and I chose not to watch “‘She raped me’: Gogen remembered how [what from] his romance with [an, the] elderly [lit. retired] woman began” and “he took away my appartment” )
@drasvi
Unfortunately some images remain in the memory, even if we try to erase them. You and your friends are wise to avoid this kind of “news”.
I read some books and articles by Lila Abu-Lughod, mostly written in 80s (1989 too).
I noticed in LH’s LibraryThing Janeth Abu-Lughod’s Before European Hegemony (1989) and reading it.
A weird feeling.
I think I need to read some article by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, from 1989.
(also in my head I keep thinking of Lughod as Breton logod “mice” (collective, singulative logodenn)
Apollo and Dionysos are typically depicted as inveterate horndogs
I’m not sure I would call any of these “seducers”, though. Zeus and Apollo’s myths often involve outright rape, while Dionysos is more of a party animal than a pick-up artist
Alon, the similarity between Don Juan and Zeus is the cultural context: numerous people don’t want a certain doña or princess to sleep with them.
It’s different for us (sex can be important for: development of one’s personality, for self-image, for her lover, her spouse or another lover, her children. And they won’t arm themselves to prevent her from having it if she wants that).
Seduction in this context is different as well – but I agree that Zeus is a force.
He doesn’t ask the women’s opinion, he doesn’t need her to fool those “numerous people” (he will do it), what he needs from her is… taking interest in a cute swan or bull. He treats her like some treat children.
(in 80s Soviet children told each other Horrible stories about planes dropping bombs shaped as marker pens and other cool things of interest to Soviet children and urged each other not to pick one if you find it on the road.)
@drasvi
Re bombs in pens to kill children:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths