Stalinist equivalent of "Lieutenant Kije"?
Prof Steven P Hill
s-hill4 at UIUC.EDU
Sat Jun 3 08:48:43 UTC 2006
Dear colleagues:
Around 1950 the Soviet film industry released a famous (or infamous)
farm musical comedy entitled "Kubanskie kazaki" ("Cossacks of the
Kuban"), directed by Pyr'ev, written by Pogodin, and starring Ladynina
(one of the director's sequential wives). Everybody has taken a turn
at subjecting that old Stalinist opus to criticism, so let us not add
to the heap.
For something different, I raise a trivial little linguistic question,
perhaps reminiscent of Tynianov's "Lieutenant Kije" (Podporuchik
"Kizhe," misintrerpreted from "Podporuchiki zhe"). Far down in
the list of actors appearing in "Kubanskie kazaki," I notice one
curiously-named performer, listed in one reference book** as
"S. IL'D," and in one data base**** as "S. IL'IA." Perhaps even
the monolithic Stalinists were plagued by typo gremlins.
But, have any of you good folks out there ever heard of a surname
"IL'D"? If it exists, it must be rare... On the other hand, might
I ask, how common as a SURNAME is "IL'IA," in one or another
part of the former USSR?
When I think of famous creative people like " EL' " Lisitskii and
" VIL " Lipatov, whose intialisms may be derived from less exotic
names like Lazar' and Vladimir Il'ich Lenin, I wonder whether
our mysterious friend "IL'D" (if not a stupid typo!) might even
be a similar initialism, for whatever reason. Or an in-joke,
such as a nickname for a family member of Pyr'ev's or Pogodin's
clan, who slipped on-camera for a moment of fame...
Maybe one of these decades a new Tynianov will appear, who
could utilize our mysterious friend "IL'D" as the basis for another
witty satire like "KIZHE"...
_ ___ _ __ ___ __
** "Sovetskie khudozhestvennnye fil'my 1918-57 gg.," v 3 tt.
**** "HTTP://US.IMDB.COM"
_ ___ _ __ __ __ _
Best wishes to all,
Steven P Hill,
University of Illinois.
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
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