Otsebiatina

[David Powelstock]

I've learned from this exchange, too.  I don't about what, exactly, Tom is
writing, but in some contexts it might be worth noting the aesthetic
implications of applying this word to any work of art.  According to Dal',
it refers to painting, as Brullov would have coined it (painting that is
insufficiently naturalistic, i.e. impressionistic avant la lettre).  20th-c.
dictionaries refer to *speech* in which the speaker's own words intrude
inappropriately in reported speech.  In either case, the pejorative use of
this term in reference to a work of art is special and stands quite apart
from its common usage, although there is semantic overlap.  The aesthetic
position, in its continuity and modification from Brullov to Nabokov is an
interesting one, although I don't know whether Tom has any reason to point
this out in *his* text.
Cheers,
David Powelstock

> -----Original Message-----

>
> Re: Nabokov and "otsebyatina":
>
> Dennis Akhapkine, Dean Worth and Christina Sperrle have swiftly put me
> straight. "Otsebyatina" is in Ushakov and even in Dal': "V.I.Dal'
> otmechaet
> slovo _otseb'atina_ kak pridumannoe K. Brullovym."
>
> So I can delete my reference to Nabokov as the coiner of the word - which
> is what I once read somewhere. Of course, he is probably deserving of
> credit for encouraging the use of the word, which is a very handy one.

>

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