translation of Dostoevsky's "Rasskazy Uspenskogo"

[Boris Dralyuk]

How about "a thought/lesson taught (or borne out) by real life"?

The verb is a problem, actually.  It seems to me that the "living" at its root isn't done by "real life" itself, but by "(one's/Uspensky's/our) real life".  You're all right: "drawn from real life" is too tame.  But semantically, that's exactly what's happening; one (or someone, or we) is (or are) drawing/deriving/extracting a lesson from his/her (or our) experience in real life.

Yours,
Boris

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Olga Meerson" <meersono at GEORGETOWN.EDU>
To: <SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 21, 2010 3:50 AM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] translation of Dostoevsky's "Rasskazy Uspenskogo"


> Re:
> 'wrung out of one by real life'
> 
> 'drawn from real life' has a slightly different meaning, I think.
> 
> Same problem with the latter: life is no longer the drawer of the conclusion, which it is, emphatically (perhaps as the sole purpose of the sentence), in Russian. 
> Opposite problem, in the former: life draws conclusions but no longer from itself. 
> Perhaps, "after all, this is the lesson life itself teaches us from our experience of it"? Sounds clumsy but at least the points of immediacy in empiricism and existentialism are both there.
> 
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