Russian Halloween – Reading the School of Horrors Posted by yelena on Nov 1, 2012 in language
I wasn’t going to do a Halloween post this year. Instead, Rob was going to talk about Russian verbs that can come quite handy around Halloween time. But it looks like, thanks to Hurricane Sandy, Rob was left without electricity and Internet access and was not able to post yesterday. Hopefully him and his family are safe and Rob will be back online very shortly.
But today (and I’m actually writing this on Halloween night) my son asked me to read him a book by Григорий Остер (Grigoriy Oster) titled Школа ужасов (School of Horrors). Действующие лица (characters) in this collection of very short stories are somewhat sinister школьники (school children), their clueless родители (parents), strange учителя (teachers), long-suffering директора школ (school principals) and a few oddballs – скелеты (skeletons), охранник (security guard), уборщица (janitor).
Note: Unlike in American lore, in Russian stories a janitor is almost always a woman or, more typically, an old lady thus старушка-уборщица. On the other hand, дворник (a yard-keeper) is usually a man; if it’s a woman, then it’s дворничиха.
Now, of course, some of the characters turn out to be вампиры (vampires), людоеды (cannibals), маньяки (serial killers), ведьмы (witches), призраки (ghosts), and зомби (zombies). And there are all sort of причиндалы (paraphernalia) of good страшилки (scary stories), such as книга в чёрной обложке (a book with black cover), mysterious карты (maps), мумия кошки (a mummified cat), ржавые железные двери (rusty metal doors), волосатые пальцы (hairy fingers), girls with freaky оранжевые глаза (orange eyes) and unnaturally well-behaved little schoolboys.
And, of course, there are plenty of excellent phrases that can come in handy not just around Halloween, but throughout the year.
For example, in one of the stories the security guard who is also a serial killer rips off heads of опаздывающие (tardy) students and teachers. You might be familiar with a colloquial phrase я ему/ей голову оторву! (I will rip his/her head off!) Not meant to be taken literally, it indicates that you are very upset with someone and some sort of punishment is forthcoming.
Another story is about a girl who loved to tell blood-curdling stories. The Russian equivalent of “blood-curdling” is леденящий кровь (literally: blood-freezing). For example:
Она описала сцену нападения в леденящих кровь деталях (She described the scene of an assault in blood-freezing details)
Alternatively, one might say леденящий душу (literally: soul-freezing) as in он услышал леденящий душу крик (He heard a soul-chilling cry).
In the story of the vampire first-grader, the little boy выпивает кровь (drinks blood) of all his teachers and even the school principal who are, by the way, cannibals. The phrase пить кровь (to drink blood) is also used в переносном смысле (metaphorically) to mean to frazzle or to exhaust someone as in
Ваш младший сын просто всю кровь у меня выпил, душу вымотал (Your youngest son just about sucked all my blood, frazzled my soul) – if you find this phrase an unlikely example, it’s an actual complaint from a teacher to the parents of a particularly непослушный ребёнок (misbehaving child).
Note: The Russian word кровопийца (lit: blood sucker) can be used to describe a wide range of beings, from комар (mosquito) to Count Dracula to Tzar Ivan the Terrible.
Another useful phrase is горя хлебнуть (lit: to drink one’s fill of sorrow) as in Мы не знали, сколько горя пришлось ему хлебнуть в жизни (We didn’t know the kind of hell he went through in his life).
Sometimes, when parents or teachers deal with particularly troublesome kids, they might say ты меня в могилу сведёшь (you will send me to my grave) or ты меня в гроб вгонишь (you will send me to my coffin).
One of the best stories in the book is about unruly boys who go to school and disappear forever. Apparently, one of the teachers turns them all into stone statues of well-behaved boys and sends the statues to the school museum. There are a couple of phrases in Russian that come to mind here. One is стоять как каменный meaning to stand motionless, unflinching, steadfast. Another phase is стоять с каменным видом (lit: to stand with a stone look) which means to be expressionless, emotionless. Of course, the boys turned statues in the story were both motionless and emotionless, truly окаменелые (turned to stone).
Finally, Halloween is not supposed to be really scary. And nor are the stories in the School of Horrors book. After reading them, you will, at most, отделаться лёгким испугом (get off with nothing more than a fright). And speaking of легко отделаться (to get off lightly), let’s hope that it’s exactly what Rob will report about getting through the hurricane once he comes back online in the next few days.
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Comments:
Rob:
Okay, this brings up a few vocabulary questions for me:
(1) I’ve seen маньяк used in Russian news stories with the meaning “(serial) rapist” rather than “murderer” — but I guess both meanings are possible? Hmmm, ru.wikipedia seems to suggest that убийца (“murderer”) is the default meaning, unless изнасилование (“rape”) is mentioned specifically… is that right?
(2) I’m curious to know whether native Russians consider ведьма, колдунья, and волшебница to be essentially interchangeable synonyms, or if they have different connotations? (Like, consider the difference between Hermione Granger and Bellatrix Lestrange…)
(3) Similarly, is there any difference between призрак and приведение? In English, a “ghost” is understood to be the spirit of a dead person, but “phantom” isn’t necessarily a dead soul — it’s any supernatural being without a physical body. So all ghosts are phantoms, but not all phantoms are ghosts, IMHO.
Yelena:
Yay, excellent questions! Ok, let’s see if I can answer:
1. Маньяк is usually assumed to be a serial killer unless it’s otherwise very clear from the context. If it’s not very clear, then we say сексуальный маньяк to distinguish from serial killers.
2. I’d say that Bellarix was definitely ведьма. That’s usually the word reserved for evil witches. Although, remember Margarita from Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita? She was also ведьма even though she was quite kind. The key here is that she was in the service of the devil. Cinderella’s fairy godmother and Hermione Granger would be волшебницы, from the singular волшебница (a sorceress). The stereotype of колдунья is usually an older and rather unattractive woman whose magic is evil or dark (even though some of her magic can be good and useful). So Baba Yaga is колдунья. All this being said, there are always exceptions to the rules 🙂 For example, in the Russian version of the Wizard of Oz all the witches are волшебницы and the Wizard himself is волшебник.
3. I’m not sure. I don’t think there’s a difference. Although the two words are not always interchangeable as in the phrase призрак коммунизма (the specter of communism) or Призрак оперы (Phantom of the Opera).
Rob McGee:
Ah, good example. I specifically recall that at one point she even applies the word to herself when she physically attacks a man who had filed a totally false complaint against the Master to the secret police: “Знай ведьму, знай!” (basically, “Now you’ll know a witch’s power!”). Of course, she was very pissed off, and acting a bit out of her usual character.
Hmmm, that makes sense, because I think that “Koshchei the Deathless” is usually referred to by the masculine колдун, and he’s definitely evil. I’m also reminded that Мелкий Бес (The Petty Demon) by Fyodor Sologub begins with the epigraph:
Я сжечь её хотел, колдунью злую!
“I wanted to burn her, the wicked witch!”
(There’s no literal witch — or literal demon — in the novel, and as to whom the сжечь её refers is a matter of interpretation. Unfortunately there’s not even an English wikipedia page for this excellent novel.)
Rob:
P.S. Out of curiosity, I looked up the etymologies on Vikislovar’:
ведьма, unsurprisingly, is cognate with the archaic verb ведать, which = знать. (This is actually appropriate for Baba Yaga, because she knows all sorts of stuff, and when she’s not behaving like an evil cannibal, she’s occasionally very helpful and gives the hero[ine] essential advice for completing their quest.)
колдун(ья) and the corresponding verb колдовать are ultimately of non-Slavic origin, but they’re cognate with various IE verbs that mean звать or призывать.
волшебник/-ница apparently come from a root that signified “doing magic” all the way back to proto-Slavic, and the further etymology isn’t known.
Alex:
“””(3) Similarly, is there any difference between призрак and приведение? In English, a “ghost” is understood to be the spirit of a dead person, but “phantom” isn’t necessarily a dead soul — it’s any supernatural being without a physical body. So all ghosts are phantoms, but not all phantoms are ghosts, IMHO.”””
—
First, привИдение. Absolutely different word. When you read russian, carefully watch for stem(root) of word, because it provides meaning. Two words: приВИДение and приЗРак. Stems are ВИД and ЗР. Вид = видеть = to see. ЗР = зрить, зрение = to watch or to see or to look. Both of these words contain prefix: ПРИ. Consider another word: привидеться. It means “seem to see”. When you thought you saw something, but now you see you were wrong, you say: мне привиделось, мне показалось. You can guess привидение means something that you thought you saw. Same with призрак. Nowadays both of these mean ghost.
yelena:
@Alex Alex, you are absolutely correct – it should to be привидение, not приведение. Thank you for catching this typo.