Grossman - Mama - teryat' v vese

[Robert Chandler]

Dear all,

Thanks to the many people who have made valuable contributions to this
thread!

It goes without saying that weight loss was indeed seen as bad news (and
yes, Max, it sounds as if Він поправився/Вона поправилася is an exact
equivalent of the Russian поправиться). But it also seems that "teryat' v
vese" is a somewhat bureaucratic-sounding, somewhat euphemistic way of
hinting at other, perhaps sexual, kinds of misbehaviour. So my final (?)
version is intentionally vague:

"It was said that some girls had been behaving too freely in the houses of
recreation, staying out late at night and failing to take due care of their
own well-being, and that the young men had been gambling and getting drunk,
and getting up to no good during the rest hour after lunch."

  Говорили, что в домах отдыха  некоторые  девушки позволяют  себе  лишнее,
гуляют по ночам,  теряют в весе,  а в мужских комнатах народ пьянствует,  не
соблюдает мертвый час, режется в карты.

Vsego dobrogo,

Robert



> On Fri, Jan 01, 2010 at 05:28:01PM -0500, greniers at GEORGETOWN.EDU wrote:
>> Paul Gallagher wrote:
>> 
>> As a cultural value, however, some communities think all weight gain is
>> positive and all weight loss is negative. Probably a relic from the
>> times when famine was much more likely to kill you than heart disease,
>> diabetes, etc. in middle age.
>> 
>> Indeed.  The word "khudoi", of course, has both the meaning of low weight and
>> of poverty/badness (plokhoi-khuzhe; sdelat' chto-to khudo-bedno,
>> "'khudozhnik' ot slova 'khudo'", etc.)
> 
> I don't know if the same occurs in Russian, but in Ukrainian weight-gain is
> oftentimes described as an "improvement," of sorts; sometimes literally,
> sometimes ironically.
> 
> e.g. Він поправився/Вона поправилася
>  
>> Svetlana Grenier
> 
> 
> Max Pyziur
> pyz at brama.com
> 
> p.s. Thanks to Robert Chandler for continuing to engage us in his work w/
> Vasily Grossman.
> 
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