"stroinyi kak topol'" and other arboreal epithetry

[Deborah Hoffman]

I thought I remembered a line from Ethan Frome, "Ethan
Frome was a great big oak of a man,"  but now I'm not
finding it in the novel.  I remember years ago having
a discussion with a Russian translator who felt it was
difficult to render this into Russian without making
Mr. Frome sound like an utter oaf.  But if people do
say moguchii kak dub, I'm not sure what the issue
was...

Further on trees, I remember how striking I thought
some of Pasternak's metaphors were when I first read
him in English.  There's a scene in Dr. Zhivago where
he's been captured by the Whites (or the Reds, I
forget) and buries his face in some snow-covered tree
branches murmuring something like "I'll return to you,
my slender rowan tree...," obviously making the
tree-Lara comparison.  However if this type of
metaphor is not as striking in Russian then perhaps on
a metatextual level one could argue it should have
been rendered more mundanely (albeit less beautifully)
in English.

-------------------------------------------------------
Date:    Wed, 12 Apr 2006 13:08:41 -0400
From:    Inna Caron <caron.4 at OSU.EDU>
Subject: "stroinyi kak topol'" and other arboreal
epithetry

It seems the visual comparison of people to trees is a
Slavic thing, 
and
not really found in English. Or am I mistaken? Is
there an English
equivalent to "moguchii kak dub," or "gibkaia kak
iva"?

Inna Caron
Ohio State

Deborah Hoffman
Finance Chair, Graduate Student Senate
Modern and Classical Language Studies
Kent State University
http://users.ameritech.net/lino59/index.htm

Stop the Genocide in Darfur: 
http://www.savedarfur.org/

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