"Where is the house, and where is the street"

[Evgeny Steiner]

Did anybody mention that it should be 'sharf' (scarf), not 'shar'?
The oldest version is possibly the Yiddish one  - "Vi iz dus gesele" (first
published in Yuda-Leib Cahan. Yiddishe Folkslider mit Melodies. NY, 1912. -
Reprinted by YIVO in 1957). There is also a Polish text of early 20th c.
**In Russia there are theories that it was composed by KR (Const. Romanov)
or/and goes back to the romance 'Sharf Goluboi' of the first half of the
19th c.

Eugenio de Lisboa (I'll ask here about a Fado version ;-))


On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Olga Meerson <meersono at georgetown.edu>wrote:

> Re:
> "Где эта улица, где этот дом, где эта барышня, в что я влюблен? Вот эта
> улица, вот этот дом, вот эта барышня, в что я влюблен".
> Here is a grammatical mistake or a mistake made by purpose. It should be -
>  в которую я влюблен, but it is very long and does not fit in poetry rhyme
> or maybe a girl is not a human being as it always was in Russia (курица - не
> птица, баба - не человек) , so it is " в что", а не "в которую"?
>
> Nothing ungrammatical--just stylistically clumsy, to make things sound like
> a parody. In the slightly archaic Russian (even as late as almost
> contemporary with "Maxim's Youth"), using chto instead of kotoryj would be
> accepted, as long as not following a preposition: ta, chto liubliu, or even
> "devishka, chto menia plenila" -- just like the parody song in Pushkin's
> Captain's Daughter ", "no glaza, chto mia plenili, vseminutno predo mnoj" --
> would be normal, even lyrically tinted more than the correct and non-archaic
> "kotoryj constructions. Whatever the stylistic tint of archaism may be
> there, none of that has anything to do with hens or any misogyny. But some
> elements of Yiddish and self-irony are obviously audible in this "v chto".
> o.m.o.m.
>
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-- 
Professor Evgeny Steiner
Senior Research Associate
Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures
SOAS, University of London
Brunei Gallery, B401
Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom

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