"Na miru i smert' krasna"

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

Dear Bob,
Excellent points.  I would only add that both sides of the story  
illustrate traditional Russian collectivism (as opposed to Western  
individualism).  Already "na miru" tells us we are dealing with old  
material, that beloved "mir" of the Slavophiles.  Have a look at the  
abundance of proverbs about the "mir" in Dal' (or in my Slave Soul of  
Russia, 215 ff.).

Lev Tolstoy admired the Slavophiles, and was quite the advocate of  
Russian collectivism in his later works.  But he could be equally  
emphatic - in agreement with Pascal - that each of us must in fact die  
alone.

Cheers to the collective -

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere



On Jun 5, 2008, at 5:01 PM, Robert A. Rothstein wrote:

> It's not unusual for a proverb to be understood in more than one  
> way, with different native speakers fully convinced that their  
> interpretation is _the_ correct one. Sometimes they are not even  
> aware that another interpretation exists. The English proverb "A  
> rolling stone gathers no moss," for example, is understood  
> positively by some speakers (i.e., if you keep moving/being active,  
> you don't get tied down/stale etc.) and negatively by others (i.e.,  
> if you don't settle down, you won't acquire anything - a home,  
> family, savings, etc.). Since I am not a native speaker of Russian,  
> when I ventured to answer Lily Alexander's question about an English  
> equivalent for the Russian proverb, I had recourse to published  
> sources:
>
> 1. the phraseological dictionary compiled by Sophia Lubensky, who is  
> a native speaker and also a careful scholar, and whose dictionary -  
> as other colleagues have pointed out - is an extraordinarily useful  
> reference work;
>
> 2. a small book by B. Tougan-Baranovskaia, "Proverbes et dictons  
> russes avec leur équivalents français," published in Moscow sometime  
> after 1960 judging by the bibliography;
>
> to which I can now add:
>
> 3. V. P. Zhukov, "Slovar' russkikh poslovits i pogovorok," izd. 4-e,  
> ispravlennoe i dopolnennoe (M.: Russkii iazyk, 1991).
>
>   Zhukov explains the proverb "na miru (na liudiakh, s liud'mi) i  
> smert' krasna" as follows: "Kogda chelovek ne odin, vse mozhno  
> perezhit', dazhe umeret' ne strashno." His entry includes several  
> literary examples ranging from the 18th to the 20th century, the  
> first of which is from Lev Tolstoy's "Metel': "Vidno bylo, chto  
> nesmotria na to, chto on byl ochen' trusovat, - na miru i smert'  
> krasna; on sovershenno stal spokoen s tekh por, kak nas bylo mnogo."  
> Zhukov compares this proverb with another, "S mirom i beda ne  
> ubytok," which he calls "ustarelaia" and explains as, "Sredi liudei,  
> kotorye vsegda pomogut, ne tak oshchutimy beda, neschast'e i t.p."
>
> None of this proves that the alternative interpretations, such as  
> the one provided most recently by Gasan Gusejnov, are wrong. It may  
> suggest, however, that there is a majority interpretation (or a  
> traditional one) and a minority interpretation (or a newer one).
>
> Bob Rothstein
>
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