Ten things you didn't know about Russia

[Tom Nicholson]

Agreed, the term is archaic and implies derision.

Was just forwarding along the PBS quote for discussion.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/pushkingenealogy.html


-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of Sarah Hurst
Sent: Tue 3/18/2008 3:36 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Ten things you didn't know about Russia
 
Can I just add that calculating fractions of blood percentages and using
terms like "octoroon" sounds very racist and it would make a lot more sense
just to say that Pushkin was descended from an African slave.

Sarah Hurst

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
[mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Alina Israeli
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 11:27 AM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Ten things you didn't know about Russia

This is a convoluted non-logic, which would not be accepted in an  
undergraduate paper.

The fact that Nadezhda Osipovna Gannibal was related to Pushkins on  
her mother side does not diminish the fact that she was a grand- 
daughter of Abram Petrovich Gannibal on her father's side, one does  
not negate the other. See the chart: http://www.as-pushkin.ru/ 
index.php?cnt=4 and also: http://www.genery.com/ru/drevo/images/ 
pushkin_big.gif

It's Pushkin's blood that got infused into him twice but it does not  
additionally dilute the Gannibal's blood. Someone has to learn to  
count fractions there. (There was recently a report that Americans do  
not understand fractions.)


On Mar 18, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Tom Nicholson wrote:

> "Considering that the defining line in a family's history was its  
> patrilineal descent as it was just about anywhere else in the  
> western world, Pushkin's preoccupation with his African ancestry is  
> all the more telling since Ibrahim Gannibal was his maternal great- 
> grandfather. Furthermore, Nadja, his mother, was through her own  
> mother, a descendant of the same Pushkin forbear from whom her  
> husband Serge descended. This is genetically interesting since it  
> explains why the poet, who is generally but mistakenly accepted as  
> an octoroon, looks perceptibly blacker."
>
> From PBS/WGBH's Frontline, "The Blurred Racial Lines of Famous  
> Families"
>
>

Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387 	
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu




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