Bleeding rail ties and 'Ya chuvstvuyu"
Olga Meerson
meersono at GEORGETOWN.EDU
Wed May 23 12:52:10 UTC 2007
Hurray for Tim Sergay!
Olga
> Dear Seelangers,
>
> To venture that Platonov's character Fyodorov "bleeds rail ties"
> may well be
> an inventive, accurate and idiomatic way of describing his
> intuitive passion
> for his profession, but I can't agree that "I bleed rail ties" is
> a valid
> translation of what Fyodorov actually says of himself in his
> dialogue: "no
> ia chuvstvuiu..." And that's not because I'm a literalist ninny,
> although
> sometimes I suppose I am. That's because Fyodorov is not uttering
> an utterly
> idiomatic, slogan-like, quite finished and readily comprehensible
> thought
> about himself. If you google for "I bleed" you find Cardinals
> baseball fans
> cheerfully confessing "I bleed Cardinals red" and so on. Fyodorov
> shouldn't
> say "I eat this railroads stuff for breakfast," or "My middle name
> is
> rolling stock," either. He is not pronouncing a well-formulated
> slogan about
> himself. He is groping toward an articulation. As mentioned many
> times, what
> he says is significantly incomplete. I think the translations
> proposed here
> that come closest to that quality are Robert's "I work by feeling"
> (which
> might be even better, less finished, less determinate, as "I go by
> feeling),
> and someone else's very fine suggestion "I feel things" ("WHAT
> things?").
> Best to all,
>
> Tim Sergay
>
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