Fortochka/Was ist das?

[R. M. Cleminson]

On 2/2/2011 5:43 AM, John Dunn wrote:
> Aleksandrov's 1885 dictionary gives 'vasistas', which, although implausible and probably inaccurate,  should, at least, please the Pushkinisty among us.
>
> John Dunn.
>
Indeed.  And the Pushkinisty will recall that it comes in Evgenij Onegin 1.xxxv:

И хлебник, немец аккуратный,
В бумажном колпаке, не раз
Уж отворял свой васисдас.

In my edition, at least, the word васисдас is set in italics.  Assuming that this follows Pushkin's instructions, and not some Soviet editor's (can anyone consult a first edition?), it implies that the word was not yet fully accepted as a Russian one (though Pushkin and his readers would have been familiar with it from French), and it seems to appear here as a curiosity in reference to the baker's nationality.

Aber was war das, eigentlich?  The man can hardly have been opening and shutting the spyhole in his door -- he was running a bakery, not a speakeasy, after all.  Was he selling his wares through a hatch rather than over the counter?  I'm not at all sure that the word is attested in this sense, though it was used later in the 19th century for the little window through which tickets, &c., may be sold.  Or is it a metaphor for the door of his oven (the same shape)?  In this case the passage would mean that he had already baked more than one batch of bread, which makes perfect sense in the context.

Does anyone know enough about the German bakers of Petersburg to say whether he would have worn his paper cap when baking the bread or selling it?  Or would he have sold the bread at all?  In England, at least, traditionally (I can remember this myself) the baker baked the bread and his wife sold it: we never saw him in the shop.

Perhaps the Pushkinisty can elucidate.

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