Grossman VSE TECHET - chto oni perezhivali

[Melissa Smith]

In the previous paragraph there is a similar construction without an 
antecedent  Только что на себя взяли - постель, одежду. I think there 
is a kind of poetic parallelism with  ЧТО ОНИ ПЕРЕЖИВАЛИ, that there is 
some missing "ТО" uniting the things that they are taking with them - 
and would consider making it something conveying the idea of summation 
- ALL their experiences/EVERYTHING they had experienced and were now 
experiencing. 

Maybe this is unwieldy, but the capitalization seems to require some 
special emphasis.

Melissa Smith 

Elena Ostrovskaya wrote:


>Dear Robert,
>It seems to be the obvious "what they must have felt" or, as you put it,
>"must they have been going through". You are right, syntactically this
>'chto' is supposed to be connected to the warmth of their houses that is
>still with them, but it does not. I would think of using  a semicolon in
>this case rather than a comma, but once again, it is the way it is.
>And the phrase is more of an exclamation than a question, I'd say, but 
they
>are very close in this case, anyway.
>
>Hope it helps.
>Elena Ostrovskaya.
>
>2009/9/27 Robert Chandler <kcf19 at dial.pipex.com>
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I have suddenly felt deeply uncertain about my understanding of one
>> sentence.
>>
>> The narrator of this chapter is an intelligent, but not highly educated
>> woman.  She is telling someone she loves about her experiences during 
the
>> early 1930s.  Her syntax is casual, but not slangy.
>>
>> А из нашей деревни гнали раскулаченных пешком. Только что на
>> себя взяли - постель, одежду. Грязь была такая, что сапоги с ног
>> стаскивала.
>> Нехорошо было на них смотреть. Идут колонной, на избы оглядываются, от
>> своей
>> печки  тепло  еще  на  себе  несут, ЧТО ОНИ ПЕРЕЖИВАЛИ - ведь в этих 
домах
>> родились,   в  этих  домах  дочек  замуж  отдавали.
>>
>> It is the words in capitals that I don't understand.  Does the 'chto' 
refer
>> to 'teplo' - as if the peasants have so deeply experienced this warmth 
that
>> it has become a part of them?  Or could the phrase be a question -
>> something
>> like 'What on earth must they have been going through at this time?
>>
>> Vsego dobrogo,
>>
>> Robert
>>
>>
>
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------------------------------------
Melissa T. Smith, Professor
Department of Foreign Languages and 
Literatures  
Youngstown State University
Youngstown, OH 44555
Tel: (330)941-3462

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