Griasti

[Lee Croft]

Colleague SEELANGers,
   I apologize for putting this back from another subject (griasti) instead of the proper (the dog commands), but I had just wiped out my discard file.  It's a historical insight, perhaps, that Russian hunters with dogs used, in the eighteenth century, German dog commands, but changed to French dog commands in the nineteenth century.  I encountered this in the memoirs relation of young Fyodor Ivanovich "The Americanets" Tolstoy's throwing a metal nail overboard from the circumnavigating Nadezhda (1804) and with the command "PIL'" (here contextually "Fetch") causing a visiting onboard Nuku Hiva chieftain to dive overboard, stay underwater for four minutes or more, to retrieve it...this for Tolstoy's amusement.  On this I recommend Thomas P. Hodges' "The 'Hunter in Terror of Hunters': A Cynegetic Reading of Turgenev's FATHERS AND CHILDREN" in SEEJ, 51:3 (2007), pp. 453-473, especially note 7 on pp. 455 where a list of the commands adapted from French are given, including "Pill!
 e!" as "Seize!."  The question is: do Russian hunters with dogs, pointers, setters, etc, still use these commands?

                 Lee Croft, Lee.Croft at ASU.EDU   Arizona State U    

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Hugh Olmsted
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 11:51 AM
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Griasti

Paul--
My apologies!
I shall suspend my earnest efforts to flail a dead venerable quadruped.
Hugh

On May 12, 2009, at 1:47 PM, Paul B. Gallagher wrote:

> Hugh Olmsted wrote:
>
> [fascinating backgrounder snipped]
>
>> ...
>> Back to our original context: "griasti" for dog-walking (Paul   
>> Gallagher's May 11 ""To invite the pack to go for a walk --   
>> Пойдем грясти!").  Does anybody know how this meaning was  perceived 
>> in the language of the time?  Was it really a neutral kind  of  
>> walking?  Or was it grandeliquent, mock-serious talk for Man's  Best  
>> Friend, the Venerable Quadruped?
>
> As I've said several times by now, this was a missed guess as I tried 
> to interpret the horrendous transliteration "gryachi" for гулять on a 
> web site whose author's first language proved to be Japanese. Maria 
> Dmytriyeva kindly pointed out the error, and I would greatly 
> appreciate if the rest of you would STOP repeating it as if it were 
> legitimate and trying to explain it. I've already apologized, and my 
> horse is dead, so you can stop beating it.
>
> Thank you.
>
> --
> War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
> --
> Paul B. Gallagher
> pbg translations, inc.
> "Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
> http://pbg-translations.com
>
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