KOTLOVAN; pisat'sya na pokoi

[Robert Chandler]

Dear all,

Does anyone have any brilliant ideas for the following?

– Ты мне, товарищ главный, скажи на утеху: писаться мне в колхоз на покой,
иль обождать?  – Пишись конечно, а то в океан пошлю!

‘Put my mind at rest, comrade chief.  Shall I retire (enroll??) into the
collective farm, or shall I wait?’ (pisat'sya mne v kolkhoz na pokoi, ili
obozhdat’)

 ‘Enroll, of course, or I’ll be sending you off to the ocean.’

The problem  lies in the various meanings of ‘pokoi’.
Uiti v pokoi = to retire
Pokoi = peace
Vechnyi pokoi = eternal rest

It would also be good to preserve the way that the activist’s ‘pishis’’
echoes the peasant’s ‘pisat’sya’.  But we can’t do that if we use ‘retire’
because that word can only be used by the peasant; it is not how the
activist sees things.

Poka,

Robert

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