Prince Myshkin's "Tak nel'zia postupat'"

[Georges Adassovsky]

Ljubeznye druzja! Dorogie silangtsy!

At 7:19 AM 19/05/97, B.Sher wrote:

>Who can forget Prince Myshkin's unforgettable "Tak nel'zia postupat'"
>("No human being ought to act like that" -- I tried in vain for hours
>late into the night to find the quote. I know it's there some place)
>What a magnificently simple indictment of the evil that lurks in us
>all. Yet why "postupat'" (imperfective, i.e. transcendental) and not
> "postupit'"? What's the reason for Dostoevsky's aspectual choice? We
>know that "Tak nel'zia postupit'" is impossible here, but why?

It seems to me that:
Tak nel'zja postupat' = never, opinion about a general case.
Tak nel'zja postupit' = once, opinion about a possible further occurrence .

The second example seems grammatical, and may be a part of the quoted by M.
Sher : "habitual" as opposed to "single occurrence"..

I wouldn't translate "Tak nel'zja postupat'" as "No human being ought to
act like that" but "one can't act like that". The proposed translation
seems to correspond to "lucshe tak ne postupat'" ( if I understand well
enough English modal nuances!).

Tak nel'zja postupit' = you (ou we) can't do that.
May be in the Russian sentence there is some eluded "mne", "nam" ou "vam" etc.





Georges Adassovsky
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