Skuka stoit v serdtse - Andrey Platonov's HAPPY MOSCOW

[Robert Chandler]

Dear Alina, Penny and John and all,

Thank you very much for these suggestions.  I especially like Penny's "died all by himself", a perfectly Platonovan ambiguity.  So, for that passage, I now have:
Soon afterwards Grunyakhin learned from Katya Bessonet that Arabov’s eleven-year-old son had shot himself with a neighbour’s gun, and had left a note just like a grown-up.  Grieving and in tears, Katya told how somewhere in a room a child had lost heart and had died all by himself – at a time when she was being intoxicated by happiness with his father.

Вскоре Груняхин  узнал  от  Кати  Бессонэ,  что  одиннадцатилетний сын Арабова застрелился из оружия  соседа  по  квартире  и  оставил записку  как  большой  человек. Катя, горюя, говорила в слезах,
что где-то в комнате заскучал и самостятельно умер ребенок -- в то время, когда она упивалась счастьем с  его  отцом.

And for the other passage:
“I’ve had enough of being the old kind of natural man all the time.  My heart’s bored to death of it.  Mother History’s made monsters of the lot of us!”
-- Пора  бы  уж,  Семен  Алексеевич,  --  указал Божко. --  Надоело как-то быть все время старым природным человеком: скука
стоит в сердце. Изуродовала нас история-матушка!

All the best,

Robert

> This may be a good solution. I've been long advocating that someone study the word "skuka" and its evolution in Russian literature. We tend to project our 20th century notions which are wrong. Consider this:
> 
> «Скучно жить на этом свете, господа» (Gogol)
> 
> Это меня ужас как расстроило, и вообще нервы у меня ходят, и я очень угрюм. Нет, Аня, скука не ничего. При скуке и работа мучение. Да и лучше каторга, нет, каторга лучше была!" {Письмо ко мне от 10 августа 1879 г. (Прим. А. Г. Достоевской) {232}}
> 
> Хотя Негров с двенадцати часов
>  утра и до двенадцати ночи не бывал дома, во все же скука мучила его; на
>  этот раз ему и в деревню не хотелось; (Герцен)
> 
> 
> Clearly, it's not boredom, but rather depression if not desperation.  Although Nekrasov's "Osennjaja skuka" is already more like boredom.
> 
> AI
> 
> 
> 
> On Dec 6, 2011, at 10:57 AM, Penelope Burt wrote:
> 
>> How about: "I'm sick at the heart" (cf. the old English ballad Lord Randall)?
>> And "a child was/got heartsick and died all by himself ("all by himself" sounds like "alone" but the locution is also used when a child first learns to walk "all by himself," without support).
>> 
>> Penny Burt
>> 
>> 
> 
> Alina Israeli
> Associate Professor of Russian
> LFS, American University
> 4400 Massachusetts Ave.
> Washington DC 20016
> (202) 885-2387 	fax (202) 885-1076
> aisrael at american.edu
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Robert Chandler, 42 Milson Road, London, W14 OLD

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