A Russian Proverb

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

6 September 05

Dear colleagues,
I thank you all for your suggestions on how to translate Dahl's proverb 
Бог жив, жива душа моя ("Bog zhiv, zhiva dusha moia").

Now, the reason I asked the question was that I needed to decide whether 
the proverb would make an appropriate epigraph for a chapter of my book 
in progress titled _Tolstoy's Quest for God_.  In Tolstoy's _Confession_ 
(1879-1882), you may recall, Lev Nikolaevich cannot make up his mind 
about whether God exists or not.  It seems that, when he is feeling very 
good, God does exist; but when he is feeling depressed and suicidal, God 
does not exist.  In other words, the question of the existence of God is 
framed in terms of Lev Nikolaevich's alternation of (hypo)manic and 
depressive states (in DSM IV this is termed  Bipolar II Disorder).

Since there is some disagreement on how to translate the proverb, and 
since this disagreement is connected with the unresolved question of 
whether God's existence (and the soul's existence) is finite or not, 
then I conclude that the proverb will make a perfect epigraph for a 
chapter on the unresolved question of God's infinite existence in 
_Confession_.

By the way, the question was eventually resolved in favor of God's 
infinite existence as Tolstoy grew older and came to believe in a 
pantheistic God.

And I welcome any comments on these conclusions.

Best regards to the list,


Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
Emeritus Professor of Russian
University of California, Davis


Sarah E Dunn (dunn at Princeton.EDU) wrote:

>Isn't that the point?  It's a proverb, not a simple declarative sentence.  There may be irony: "As long as God lives" (and we all know he lives forever), "so lives my soul" (which also must live forever, if it depends on the eternal existence of God). Besides, grammatically speaking, a short-form adjective implies  that the state of the subject which it describes is temporary.
>
>sd
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: pjs <pscotto at MTHOLYOKE.EDU>
>Date: Friday, September 2, 2005 12:36 pm
>Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] A Russian Proverb
>
>  
>
>>>As long as God lives, so lives my soul.
>>>      
>>>
>>The problem with this is that it implies that both God's existence 
>>and, by 
>>the extension, the existence of one's mortal soul could be finite.
>>
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