Tolstoy question 5

[William Ryan]

  Hugh, on your first point, not necessarily so - a summer lineika was a 
horse-bus but a winter lineika was a sledge - see this from the internet:

Линейка - первый вид городского общественного транспорта в Москве. 
Учреждён в сентябре 1847. Летние и зимние экипажи для 6—10 пассажиров с 
сиденьями по бокам (лицом к тротуару) были крытыми [летние — с колёсами 
и рессорами, зимние («общественные сани») — с полозьями]. В линейку 
запрягали 2 или 3 лошадей, в каждой линейке были кучер и кондуктор. 
Городские линейки курсировали от центра Москвы до застав 
Камер-Коллежского вала. Первая стоянка линеек была на Красной площади, 
затем перенесена к Ильинским воротам. В летнее время маршруты линейки 
продлевались до Останкина, Сокольников, Петровского парка, Серебряного 
бора и использовались для загородных прогулок. С 1870-х гг. линейки 
стали вытесняться конками.

However, I offer this clarification only for the lexicographically 
inclined - it does nothing, alas, to explain what Tolstoy was talking 
about. Since Tolstoy was born in 1828, and his childhood was not spent 
in Moscow anyway, a lineika in the sense of a vehicle (assuming the 
information above is correct) can hardly have been one of his 'prosaic 
memories of childhood' - he was 19 when it was introduced.

Sorry if I started a hare, but Judson did ask for alternative meanings, 
and I was unaware when I posted my earlier response that lineika, in the 
second sense given by Dal', was so precisely limited in time. A pity 
though - I quite liked Svetlana's image of the child Tolstoy having 
tantrums in a sledge. Now I would rather agree with the earlier point by 
Gasan that both rulers and wet towels are means of inflicting pain. 
Tolstoy's use of the word 'prosaic' here would then presumably be ironic.

Will

On 28/08/2010 17:55, Hugh McLean wrote:
> That is also ingenious and seemingly attractive. However, Dal''s 
> alternate definition of  prostynia  had attached the adjective 
> sannaja, i.e.,  for a sleigh, designed to keep the snow off. It seems 
> to me dubious to move it from there to a linejka, now become not a 
> ruler, but one of the innumerable varieties of horse-drawn vehicle 
> with wheels, not runners.
> I also think it is a mistake to read back the extreme views on 
> sexuality voiced in The Kreutzer Sonata back to the 1850s, when 
> Tolstoy was was a young blade very fond of encounters with "devki."
>
>
>
>

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