Wolverines, Elks and Amur Tigers Posted by yelena on Jan 27, 2012 in Culture
This post was going to be about Russian grammar. However, after having our regular чаепитие (tea time) with моя хорошая подруга (my good friend) earlier today, I radically changed my mind for two reasons:
She shared three beautiful LiveJournal blogs with me by Russian фотографы-натуралисты (nature photographers) and I want to share those with you. Besides, it’s Friday, a day when we should probably prepare to ease ourselves into the upcoming weekend.
First, a few words about the LiveJournal blogging platform. In Russia it is known as Живой Журнал (lit: Live Journal) or simply ЖЖ. It seems to be the most popular блог-платформа (blogging platform) in Russia. Thanks to its community sharing and following features it also acts as a popular социальная сеть (social network). In the last few months, it’s started getting upstaged in this role by Facebook, which наконец-то набрал обороты и в России (finally shifted into a high gear in Russia as well).
I will do a tour of ЖЖ some other time. Meanwhile, here’s the link to дайджест (a digest) of the Russian ЖЖ so you can start exploring, reading and learning some великий могучий русский блоггерский язык (the great and mighty Russian language of the bloggers).
And now for the wonderful nature blogs my friend shared with me:
The first blog is authored by Игорь Шпилёнок (Igor Shpilenok), a nature photographer who splits his time between государственный природный заповедник «Брянский лес» (State nature reserve “Bryansk Forest”) in the Western Russian and Кроноцкий заповедник (Kronotzky nature reserve) on Камчатка (Kamchatka), a peninsula in the Russian Far East.
It is mostly pictures accompanied by short stories explaining what’s going on or why the author chose to post each picture. That’s if you want to take it easy and just relax looking at the beautiful photos of Russian wildlife. For those wanting to dig deeper, there are Дальше… (Read more…; lit: beyond, further) links to more detailed stories and even more photos. Igor doesn’t limit himself to just the wildlife though as you can see from this poignant post about his tiny village of Чухраи (Chukhrai):
В одном из самых глухих уголков юга Брянской области, в десятке километров от границы с Украиной, рядом с заповедником «Брянский лес» затерялась деревенька в пятнадцать жителей – Чухраи…
(In one of the most remote corners of the south of the Bryansk region, a dozen (lit: ten) kilometers from the border with Ukraine, near the nature reserve “Bryansk Forest” is hiding a village of fifteen people – Chukhrai…)
The second blog is by Василий Солкин (Vasiliy Solkin). He blogs from Владивосток (Vladivostok), the administrative center and the largest city in Приморский край (Primorsky Krai) in the south corner of the Russian Far East. Plus he keeps up a fantastic website Зов тайги (Call of the Taiga) that is, in his own words, журнал для тех, кто не спешит на Гавайи (a magazine for those who are not in a hurry to get to Hawaii).
Before you start browsing through this blog, I strongly urge you to follow Vasily’s advice:
Дорогой ты мой новый читатель! Добро пожаловать в журнал, главные герои которого – амурский тигр и дальневосточный леопард. Чтобы понять, куда и к кому ты попал, необходимо и достаточно пробежать глазами два сериала: «Плюс радификация всех зверей» и «Леопарды, с которыми лично знаком».
(My dear new reader! Welcome to the magazine where the main characters are the Amur tiger and the Amur (lit. Far Eastern) leopard. To better understand where you are and whom you found, it is necessary and sufficient to skim through the two series of posts: “Plus the radio tagging of all animals” and “Leopards with whom I am personally acquainted”.)
The third and final blog is by Александр Левашов (Alexandr Levashov) whose LJ alias is lev_leshii. By the way, леший (wood goblin) in Russian folklore is хозяин леса (the master of the forest) who lives in the darkest and oldest part of it and keeps it safe. So a леший helps good folks and punishes those who are trying to do harm to its keep.
Alexandr is from Рыбинск (Ribinsk) in Ярославская область (Yaroslavl region). A couple of примечательные особенности (notable features) of the town’s location are that it is located at the northernmost point of Волга (the Volga river) and is situated on условная линия (an imaginary line) dividing зона смешанных лесов (broadleaf or mixed forest zone) from тайга (taiga).
In addition to photos, Alexandr also posts some moving short stories on his blog. After browsing just a bit, I found this one titled Барсучий городок (The Town of Badgers). Enjoy!
I hope you will enjoy these three blogs for both their stunning photography and their beautiful stories about Russian nature. If natural history and conservation appeal to you, this will be a very enjoyable way to improve your Russian language skills as well. Хороших вам выходных! (Have a good weekend!)
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Comments:
Richard:
There are some beautiful pictures on those blogs!
Very early in his writing career, Vladimir Nabokov wrote a short story entitled “The Wood-Sprite”. I have a book of his short stories and it states that the original Russian title of this story was “Нежит”. I wonder if this is the same as леший. I’ve checked three dictionaries and they all state that нежить, (the verb, no similar noun listed), means “to cuddle” or “to pamper”. I guess it doesn’t really matter, I just wonder if Nabokov was writing about a леший.
Sarahjane:
Richard, thanks for mentioning that story, I’ve now spent a happy afternoon translating it into English. ))
In the story, there is this line:
“Ну вот — вспомнил… Да, я — прежний Леший, задорная нежить… А вот и мне пришлось бежать…”
So it seems that they are virtually synonymous.
Beautiful words.
Richard:
Sarahjane,
The line in the story that you mention above is translated as follows in my book:
“There – you remember. Yes, I am a former Forest Elf, a mischievous sprite. And here I am, forced to flee like everyone else.”
The book I have ( http://www.amazon.ca/Stories-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0679729976/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327968470&sr=1-3 ) contain stories translated by Nabokov and his son, Dmitri.
Could I ask if you found “The Wood-Sprite” in the original Russian online or was it in a book? I couldn’t find the Russian version online.
I’m still confused about the word нежить, it seems to be a verb, not a noun. I’m probably mistaken, but that’s my impression. Any help gratefully accepted!
At any rate, here’s my favourite line from this story. The леший speaks:
“It was we, Rus’, who were your inspiration, your unfathomable beauty, your agelong enchantment! And we are all gone, gone, driven into exile by a crazed surveyor.”
Beautiful words, yes. Very poignant too.
Sarahjane:
Richard,
Thank you, I will look for that book- it would be very useful to compare the Nabokovs’ nuanced translation with my own attempts.
Нежить is indeed a noun, a feminine one, as you can see from the modifying adjective “задорная.”
The Oxford Russian dictionary, which is EXCELLENT for translating literary works, gives the following definitions:
лЕший, лешего (m.) – wood goblin
нЕжить, нежити – (f.) (collective) (in Russian folklore) the spirits (gnomes, goblins, etc.)
(As you point out, there is also a verb listed: нежить, нежу, нежишь, imperf. to pamper, coddle; to caress.)
See also here (in Russian- quite tricky, but interesting!)
– леший http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/biograf2/8043
– нежить
http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/ushakov/881794
The latter word seems to encompass all manner of spirits, ghosties, witches and whatnot. So I was quite wrong to suggest that the two words are synonyms.
The Nabokov story is available online here:
http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/nezhit.txt
There were one or two minor but obvious errors in the Russian. The online dictionary at http://www.multitran.ru has most of the words in it.
Cheers!
Sarahjane
Richard:
Sarahjane,
Thanks for the link to “Нежить”! I think it’s great that you were able to translate a story, especially a story by Nabokov who collected words and pinned them on the page as though they were exotic butterflies.
I find it very frustrating translating Russian to English as it’s been a number of years since I actively studied Russian. However, I’m stubborn if nothing else and I’ll keep trying.
Right now I’m reading “Мы” by Yevgeny Zamyatin, it was the forerunner to Orwell’s “1984” and to Huxley’s “Brave New World” (Orwell admitted his debt to Zamyatin, Huxley didn’t). I’ve read “We” in English, so I thought I’d try it in Russian; I find Zamyatin’s style of writing much easier to translate than Nabokov’s! LOL Here’s the link: http://az.lib.ru/z/zamjatin_e_i/text_0050.shtml
Thanks for the other links you’ve provided, that was very kind of you. I’ll return the favour with this link to a grammatical dictionary maintained by Cornell University: http://russian.dmll.cornell.edu/rdt/ It’s a very useful site for untangling the various connotations of words, it’s helped me a lot!
Cheers,
Richard
Sarahjane:
Thanks for the links. I had a look at Мы. It’s impressive you’re reading it- I haven’t yet tackled anything that long in Russian. 🙂
Prof Thomas Richardson:
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