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Deathless
Catherynne M. Valente
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Deathless spoiler thread 1: Prologue and Part I (chapters 1-5)
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In the prologue we meet Marya Morevna for the first time.Chapter 1 is prefaced by a poem by Anna Akhmatova.
There is a nice collection of Anna's work here: http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets...
Since Anna is quoted quite a few times throughout the novel, I can't help wondering if, although she is not a writer, our protagonist Maria Morevna was to some extent modeled on Akhmatova, because of her links to the old Russia; she was born in the old Russia, but grew up through the period of revolution.
According to this source : "In her lifetime Akhmatova experienced two different kinds of Russia, prerevolutionary and Soviet, yet her verse protected the traditions of classical Russian culture from the onslaught of avant-garde radicalism and formal experimentation, as well as from the suffocating ideological strictures of socialist realism.
For all the restraint, femininity, and ostensible apoliticism of her verse, her poetic persona perfectly embodied the tragic spirit of twentieth-century Russia. In many respects she shared the archetypal poetic fate that befell many of her brilliant contemporaries... "
Akhmatova's first husband, Nikolai Gumilev was executed by the Soviet secret police, and her son Lev Gumilev and her common-law husband Nikolay Punin spent many years in the Gulag, where Punin died.
According to this source : " Her son, Lev, was arrested in 1949 and held in jail until 1956.
To try to win his release, Akhmatova wrote poems in praise of Stalin and the government, but it was of no use. Later she requested that these poems not appear in her collected works.
She began writing and publishing again in 1958, but with heavy censorship. Young poets like Joseph Brodsky flocked to her. To them, she represented a link with the pre-Revolutionary past which had been destroyed by the Communists.
===
Then we move on to Chapter 1: 'Three Husbands Come to Gorokhovaya Street '
and the long thin house and the bird husbands. :)
What do our readers feel about the burds, are these transformations only taking place in Marya's head?
Can't wait to join the discussion this weekend (because all I do during the week when I work night shifts is work and sleep)!
I've been crossing fingers tightly that more people will turn up, so thanks very much for clocking in, Nataliya. I think you could very much enrich my experience of the book, but how sad we don't have a bit of a wider circle of interest in this ode to Mother Russia.
Let's hope more people decide to come in tonight, after work, hopefully...
Thanks again, Nataliya!
In my reading of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, I was incredulous at how quickly a society can change from one order, which has existed for generations, to another entirely different one seemingly overnight. It feels unreal when you read such things in fiction, but it does happen in reality (albeit perhaps not overnight), and the string of husbands who pass Maria by are a good illustration of this. Most of the change in society is driven by the government (the partitoning of large houses, the renaming of streets, rationing, youth groups), but others, like the changing character of the gifts the sisters' husbands give them, are an adaptation to the times, and of course the domovoi committee occurred spontaneously, wilfully. Yet, not everything is cast aside. Maria still calls her street by its old name, at least in her heart, and she read literature of the old order, and prizes her red scarf as a personal posession. The domovoi also still appreciate new boots even if they'd abandoned many old traditions.
At what point, though, does it become automatic to think in the new way, to regard the old ways as something belonging to another life? That's always fascinated me. Groups can, through collective will, rewrite their own minds and spirits quite effectively it seems to me.
What a nightmare revolutions must be, for those simply caught in the middle.
I will have thoughts/comments soon!
What excellent observations, J! I especially liked: the string of husbands who pass Maria by are a good illustration of this. Yes, absolutely; I don't know how far you have read, but you'll see later how this theme is even more strongly brought out- that each bird husband represented a different facet of the to-and-fro that took place during the Russian revolution, culminating of course with the Bolsheviks coming out on top and birthing the Soviet Union.
..and then there is also the theme of that you can burn all the books and you can burn the churches; but you can't kill what is in people's minds, the spirit- in this case, the spirit of the domovoi and of the other folkloric figures that represent the spirit and 'feel' of old Russia. Will the spirit of the Old Russia die when the next generation born under the Soviets arises, or will folklore live on via the oral tradition.
..but as we see, there is an adaptation. The domovoi comrades are now divided into domovoi communes with a domovoi soviet and so forth...
Joseph wrote: "I will have thoughts/comments soon!"I am very glad to hear that, Joseph, I was wondering if your attention was focused elsewhere and had led you away from us. ;)
Looking forward; at least, 3 is a crowd, so they say, so with 4 around, we're looking good! :D
Right, so the first husband was with the Tsar's guard, who was deposed in 1917- and he came in the year that Marya turned 6. So, Marya was born sometime before 1911.If we bring in the next two husbands, we could work her age out more precisely, but I've run out of time for today. More later.
As J refers to the changing husbands and their gifts ... I was quite taken with that section mostly because of the beautiful writing. Storytelling really. Loved the birds falling "thump, bash" then "bouncing" back up, and the sincere "I just thought that was the way the world worked" attitude of Marya. But the letters her sisters sent back intrigued me most - letters "in which her verbs built castles and her datives spring up like well-tended roses." Gotta love that tip of that hat to the writing craft and using great verbs, then she changes it for each sister - verbs danced in square patterns, and verbs distributed fairly among the nouns - in tune with the feelings or society's consciousness of that sister's time. The husbands' gifts mirrored politics, the sisters' letters society.Then, beyond the hidden or not so hidden meanings and on to the magic and domovoi, it's just fantastic writing. Felt like I was listening to the author, sitting in front of the fireplace, telling her family's time-honored story. I'm hooked!
Allen, you're here too! *happy dance*.Oh, yes, absolutely. This is fiction like I've never quite seen it before. I've read some magic realism, in which the beliefs of indigenous people is interwoven in the narrative, for instance, Native Americans believe in dream omens, Chinese believe in good luck/bad luck symbols, Westerners believe in miracles and angels and portents; and these beliefs would be given significance as if they were fact in a Magical Realism text.
So at first I sort of tried to fit this writing into that genre; but I think we have more levels here than just that. On one level, I thought that Marya was having difficulty coping with things and that these mythical beings and happenings was her way of coping. But there's more to it even than that, I think. As you'll find when you read more about Ana Akhamatova and, for instance, the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, that because of Soviet censorship and persecution, if writers wanted to criticize the system without getting into trouble, they had to do so covertly under cover of symbolic parables.
So, I suspect that on a certain level, not only is this text a sort of ode to Russian folklore, and the political and historical commentary genuine, but I suspect it is also a tip of the hat to those Russian authors who had to sort of hide what they were saying under a few layers.
Anyway, so the long thin house became home to 12 families and Marya ended up with 12 mothers. Interesting that inside the commune, each family still kept to themselves and the fathers, it seems, didn't quite become communal fathers as much as the mothers became communal mothers...?
I have highlighted so much of the beginning of this book already!"Her sisters had been rescued from the city as beautiful girls are often rescued from unpleasant things, but they did not know what their husbands really were. They were missing vital information. Marya saw right away that this made a tilted kind of marriage, and she wanted no part of that. I will never be without information, she determined. I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love. For this was how Marya Morevna surmised that love was shaped: an agreement, a treaty between two nations that one could either sign or not as they pleased.”
Nice, Joseph! Yes, in a way, I suppose she is seeing things in their essence, because folktales tend to be archetypal. Heh, it seems so naive of her to think one can choose to fall in love or not, and with whom or not. What a happier world we would live in if it were only that easy!
Btw, oops! I see the end of Part one is actually at the end of Chapter 5, not Chapter 6; silly me...
I am so excited about this discussion and an excuse it gave me to start 'Deathless' reread!This was the second Valente book that I've read, right after 'The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland...' and I was still completely unprepared for Valente's trademark flourishing writing style, so overly descriptive and vivid, so imaginative and whimsical, so frequently seeming to border on nonsensical and absurdist and yet strangely captivating and engrossing.
I was prepared for the fairytale-like narration given my first exposure to Valente, but in no way was I ready for the much darker, much edgier, much more uncomfortable undertones that ultimately made it unforgettable.
The first part is so grounded in folklore that it was almost worrying me - a non-Russian taking on such a feat. She did succeed for the most part, however, capturing the unmistakable tone of fairytales, the magical reality, the repetitions, the folk characters (even though it did make me wonder why so many Russian words were thrown in without explanations - like the names of Marya's sisters' husbands that are just the names of their respective birds in Russian, for instance).
The first part, despite its strangeness and the inclusion of less-than-appealing early Soviet Russian reality (which is still made magical and fascinating by, for instance, creating a strange family of 12 mothers out of the grim reality of Soviet communal housing) is perhaps the most 'magical', gentlest, naive and young part of the story, paralleling the naive innocence of Marya whose biggest disappointment was the loss of the red Pioneer scarf, whose hunger was still satisfied with the bread rations, whose inspired by Pushkin soul was longing for something more than the drab reality, who has not yet understood the power struggles of marriage and life, who is still hoping for the difference between the magical world she so carelessly glimpsed a few times in her young life and the cold cruel bureaucratic burden of reality. The shattering of this innocence, the blurring of the lines between the fairytale existence and the real world, the ever-pervasiveness of the things ailing the real dog-eat-dog world - all those are yet to come, they are only hinted at by Widow Likho, and explicitly stated by Koschei himself in one of my favorite quotes:
"The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way."
Oh, I'm so glad to see you posting here, Nataliya! I must admit that this novel totally threw me for a loop. I'm not sure what to make of it in the sense of: I don't know which parts are supposed to depict reality and which not! I realize that part of it is that she is writing in the style of Soviet critics who wrote from within the system who had to camouflage their criticism to avoid persecution; but in many parts of the story especially later on (In Parts II and III, for example), I'm not sure if we've moved completely into the realm of the fairy-tale, or if Marya is still living some parallel to it in her 'real' life. So I look forward to when we get to those next threads and we can discuss some of those aspects with you.
Oh, and you've just reminded me that I wanted to read some Pushkin.
Nataliya wrote: "...the naive innocence of Marya whose biggest disappointment was the loss of the red Pioneer scarf, whose hunger was still satisfied with the bread rations, whose inspired by Pushkin soul was longing for something more than the drab reality, who has not yet understood the power struggles of marriage and life, who is still hoping for the difference between the magical world she so carelessly glimpsed a few times in her young life and the cold cruel bureaucratic burden of reality...."Nataliya, your insight really helped me get into the latter half of this section, and on into the next part. Thanks! And I love your description "still hoping for the difference." I can really feel that from her, especially when she's afraid of what will happen if she keeps seeing or staying in the magical world - like in the Likho chapter - but really she's more afraid of what will happen if she loses sight of the magical world.
Aside from all the vivid (agree) and whimsical (double agree) storytelling, which quickly kept me glued to this book, the Koschei chapters are just breathtaking. He is a superbly drawn "master" and let's just say he's turning out to be not at all what I thought, having no knowledge of this particular folklore. Probably have to leave it there for now until Chapter 6 discussion opens.
I have a couple of questions ... you mention early Soviet Russian reality which she made magical through the 12-mother house. Could you share some highlights of that period of Russian reality? I think I latched onto the fairytale aspects like the domoviye more than trying to understanding the real world life. Admittedly trying to pronounce streets and names in my head played a part :)
Still loving this book. And I suspect it's going to dovetail quite nicely into the fact I've just now finished Iron Council. Either that or I'm imagining parallels with the working classes versus capitalism because of the proximity of my reads.
Joseph wrote: "I have highlighted so much of the beginning of this book already!"Her sisters had been rescued from the city as beautiful girls are often rescued from unpleasant things, but they did not know wha..."
Me too! Some of my favorites are found in the way she describes things using everyday things as examples but in truly different and lyrical ways, like:
Meeting the domovoi ... "so quiet she had to stretch her ears around it, a tiny sound, a faucet hissing in a thunderstorm." and "Her heart tripped over her breath."
Likho ... "Her voice was deep and rough, like black heels dragged over stone."
The car: "It sniffed at the bone-bright birch trees and blared its low, moaning horn, as if calling out to fellow beasts within the pine-slashed shadows."
Allen wrote: "Still loving this book. And I suspect it's going to dovetail quite nicely into the fact I've just now finished Iron Council. Either that or I'm imagining parallels with the working classes versus capitalism because of the proximity of my reads.."
You know, now that you mention that, I had the same thing. I don't know if I'd mentioned this in the IC discussion, because I had meant to go back there and say how much I've realized, reading up a bit of background on the Russian revolution to help me with this book, it made me think of IC and the parallels you see in it with the Russian revolution. At the time we were discussing it, I thought the parallel was with a more modern war, but of course, it's pretty much similar to Russia while WWI was going on.
Thread 2 is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Allen wrote: "I have a couple of questions ... you mention early Soviet Russian reality which she made magical through the 12-mother house. Could you share some highlights of that period of Russian reality? I think I latched onto the fairytale aspects like the domoviye more than trying to understanding the real world life."Sorry about the late reply, Allen. Yes, Valente made a choice to take one of the most depressing aspects of mundane Soviet reality and turn it into a magical thing, giving Marya an unusual communal family.
Communal apartments became reality for the Soviet people very shortly after the October Socialist revolution and remained so for the next several decades. Given extreme poverty and deplorable living conditions as well as the influx of formerly rural population into the major cities, especially St Petersburg (later to become Leningrad), the authorities forcibly consolidated the living arrangements of the richer part of the population, postulating that it's quite unfair for a person to be owning a spacious 10-bedroom apartment while an entire family somewhere else had to be huddled in a basement, and therefore split formerly privately owned residencies I to the places of communal living where each family was given one room, and there were common areas to share - hallway, kitchen, bathroom, telephone. As a result, complete strangers were forced together into the shared living spaces and had to find ways to cope with the resultant situation (which admittedly was still better than shelters or dormitories). From the 1920s to the 1960s, many of the Soviet satirical or comedic works have death with the phenomenon of communal apartments - as you can imagine, tensions over mundane things were running high in such cramped quarters, and eventually by the time of Stalin's purges living so close to others who were taught by the Party to distrust you and spy on your activities (as well as likely coveting the too your family had in the apartment) many people were denounced and sent to GULAGs or forever disappeared because of the 'helpful' activities of their neighbors.
Yes, Soviet reality was a far cry from the magical world Valente paints.
Allen wrote: "Still loving this book. And I suspect it's going to dovetail quite nicely into the fact I've just now finished Iron Council. Either that or I'm imagining parallels with the working classes versus capitalism because of the proximity of my reads."Well, as a Marxist, China Mieville is quite attuned to the struggles between the masses and the ruling class.
'Iron Council' to me seemed to parallel the late 19th century tensions between workers/ intellectuals and capitalism; Russia of the 1910s is a direct result of such clashes.
Hi everybody! I've finally made it through this section, while trying at the same time to make it through Foucault's Pendulum (who was it that said a faster pace for the discussion was better, Trav? Oh, right, that was me…)I can't say I'm terribly interested in delving into the Soviet background of the story, and rather hope that it's going far more to fantasy than history. Nataliya says "Soviet reality was a far cry from the magical world Valente paints", but I don't see that—there's a Soviet reality (part of that reality, I expect, is one reason the twelve fathers don't seem as communal as the twelve mothers—there almost certainly aren't twelve of them in the house), and a separate magical world. Marya's at their intersection, but I rather expect that, if Koschei doesn't take her away from the Soviet reality, he's going to show her a different one: the reality of the "strong and cruel".
I love how Valente overturns our notions about Life and Death. We always think of Life as good and Death as bad, but to this point the only mention of Death describes a pretty jolly hedonism, while the Tsar of Life is a very frightening force.
And for the mythological and etymological record, I note that "domovoi" is the same word as "dobbie" (yes, the house elf in Harry Potter).
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "And for the mythological and etymological record, I note that "domovoi" is the same word as "dobbie" (yes, the house elf in Harry Potter)."In that case, I will point out that the resemblance between Dobby the house elf/domovoi and Russian leader V. V. Putin is uncanny.
Hmm, while we're still on this thread, what did you guys think of Likho? I thought both the "summoning with a comb" aspect (as it apparently happens in the actual fairy tales as well) and the "bad luck/omen/inescapable fate" aspect of Likho was quite frightening.Derek, yeah, I suppose I should go and give the FP discussion a bit of a kick under the pants. I admit that I'd got myself sidetracked by another book, so I fell a bit behind schedule with that... :P
As far as Deathless is concerned, I'm done and waiting for you all... :)
Nataliya, thanks for your background input.
Derek (and J. with whom I entered into a discussion about it in thread 2), I personally don't feel she's painting Death as good and Life as 'bad', as much as Valente is painting life as "hard", which I think it was in that period in Russia. I think that with the hunger and the cold and the political strife, 'life' was a constant struggle against death.
Btw, you can go to the next thread even if you've only read a chapter or two in that section, because J. and I have been quite careful with keeping spoilers only to the first chapter or two while we wait for the rest of you to catch up.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
For what it's worth I wasn't suggesting that Valente paints life as bad, but rather that common wisdom sees life as good and death as bad, and that Valente challenges the basic assumption of their polar natures. But I'll comment in the other thread soon.
Traveller wrote: "Hmm, while we're still on this thread, what did you guys think of Likho? I thought both the "summoning with a comb" aspect (as it apparently happens in the actual fairy tales as well) and the "bad..."I have to admit, I know little about Likho except for a transparent 'misfortune' or I guess 'bad luck' meaning of the name. The sound of the name itself in Russian is quite ominous, which the simple translation of 'bad luck' is unable to convey.
Knowing the rest of the events in this book, I especially love this quote from Likho that never stops being true for Marya:
“There is no better teacher of rough necessity than bad luck, and you will have great use of me, I promise. Keep your bread. Keep your tears. Neither will help you, and you will work hard to outgrow need of them."
Nataliya wrote: "Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "And for the mythological and etymological record, I note that "domovoi" is the same word as "dobbie" (yes, the house elf in Harry Potter)."In that case, I will point out that the resemblance between Dobby the house elf/do ovoid and Russian leader V. V. Putin is uncanny.
"
I wonder if JKR did the name on purpose, and LOL re the Putin, Nataliya! :D
J. wrote: "For what it's worth I wasn't suggesting that Valente paints life as bad, but rather that common wisdom sees life as good and death as bad, and that Valente challenges the basic assumption of their ..."Yeah, that's exactly how I see it.
Nataliya wrote: "In that case, I will point out that the resemblance between Dobby the house elf/domovoi and Russian leader V. V. Putin is uncanny. "
I do hope you're not planning a trip to Russia in the near future. I'm pretty certain they still have laws against insulting the Dear Leader.
I'm sure Rowling knew that Dobbie is a generic name for a house elf. After all, if Shakespeare can take a generic name, Puck, and give it to a specific character, it seems like fair game for anybody else.
Nataliya wrote: "Allen wrote: "I have a couple of questions ... you mention early Soviet Russian reality which she made magical through the 12-mother house. Could you share some highlights of that period of Russian..."Thanks. That opened my eyes a bit. Interesting that she glossed over the forced nature of it and just launched right in, like everyone would know what was going on. I've always like Mieville for that reason too - that we learn as we go. Still, I think she references that history in the more dire stories the domovoi tell.
I love the social aspects of history, rather than the political. I'm not doing so well grasping all that even with Trav's historical lessons :) So I'm just letting myself get lost in the fantastical weird fiction part.
Derek wrote: "I love how Valente overturns our notions about Life and Death."
Agreed! New meanings for life, force of life, etc., are brewing in my head. And a nof to J. on "polar natures," especially as it relates to the fairtale we're entering.
Traveller wrote: "Nataliya wrote: "Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "And for the mythological and etymological record, I note that "domovoi" is the same word as "dobbie" (yes, the house elf in Harry Potter)."..."
You know, it's interesting at least in my perspective that here in the U.S. very very few of the old stories or references to the fairy world exists. Or maybe its just my part of the country. Why is it that these stories can exist in their own countries so long but they disappear - or at least severely diminish - when people leave for new shores? These stories are all knew to me, even the house elves, but really fascinating!
Allen wrote: "Why is it that these stories can exist in their own countries so long but they disappear - or at least severely diminish - when people leave for new shores?"Much as I disliked American Gods, that—and numerous other books that plowed the same field—explain it pretty well, and I think it's very much like Comrade Zvonok, the house-elf/domovoi who is tied to the house. We brought our gods across the ocean, but the fae folk are very much tied to place.
Nataliya: can you possibly explain Russian diminutives to us? Or are they even explainable?Marya is Masha, or Marusha, or I think even Maroushka.
But Alexandra/Alexei is Sasha (surely if Masha is Marya, then Sasha should be—and I get the feeling, probably is—Sara), and when we're introduced much later to Vladimir, I was nearly a chapter further on when I realized that all the references to Vova were the same person!
"I betcha I can make a rhyme out of anybody's name
The first letter of the name, I treat it like it wasn't there
But a B or an F or an M will appear
And then I say bo add a B then I say the name and Bonana fanna and a fo
And then I say the name again with an F very plain
and a fee fy and a mo
And then I say the name again with an M this time
and there isn't any name that I can't rhyme"
All together now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1xleh...@Allen: Allen, have you seen the film Dr Zhivago? A love story on the surface, but it does give a nice feel of the social aspects of what was going on. I highly recommend it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059113/
I have to watch that movie again. I haven't seen it since I was a young teenager, and I don't imagine I really understood the revolutionary background at the time, even though it has colored my understanding of the historical period ever since.
It comes in a nice pack with two other old classics, let's see, I think it was Gone with the Wind and Fiddler on the Roof, for a very good price.
I've never actually seen the movie of Fiddler on the Roof: nothing could compare to seeing my father and brother perform it on stage (with my father in a beard, which practically drove my mother to apoplexy!)
I think I saw it sometime as a child, but I can't remember the story at all, so I'll have to watch it again sometime!
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Nataliya: can you possibly explain Russian diminutives to us? Or are they even explainable?Marya is Masha, or Marusha, or I think even Maroushka.
But Alexandra/Alexei is Sasha (surely if Masha i..."
Ah, Russian diminutives. In short, the trend in unexplainable. In Russsian, there are so many suffixes and regional variations to make it quite frustrating to a non-native (even stii, Naganya --> Nasha feels wrong; sorry, Cat Valente!).
Fir instance, the most common diminutive of my name is, of course, Natasha, which in turn can be changed to Natashka, Natashenka, Tasha, etc. Sasha derived from Alexander has always given my friends a headache. Another diminutive of Alexander - wait for it, wait for it! - is Shura or Shurik. And in no way ever does Sasha ever serve as a diminutive for Alexei --> that would be Alyosha or Lyosha.
Vladimir and Vova are another example of such a headache (and Volodya is another diminutive there, too). Nadya Konstantinovna irked me because Nadya is not a proper name, it's a diminutive of Nadezhda (beautiful name, by the way, meaning Hope), and so it can only ever be Nadezhda Konstantinovna.
Anastasia, for example, becomes Asya or Nastya (but not Ana, as many Enhlish speakers assume). Grisha is the short for Grigoriy. Tanya will grow up to become Tatyana, Kostya will become Konstantin (luckily, not Koschei!), and Zhenya will become Evgeniya or Evgeniy. Mitya and Dima will both grow up to be Dmitriy, and Sonya will become Sofiya, and Kolya will be Nikolai.
Lyova is Lev (or Leon, to all the Trotskyists out there), Zhora is Georgiy (which to me makes more sense to an English speaker if you think of Georgiy as George).
Does it help at all? I assume it doesn't, because that's just how. Russian works. Not that different than arriving at Bob from Robert or Billy from William, I suppose.
Allen wrote: "You know, it's interesting at least in my perspective that here in the U.S. very very few of the old stories or references to the fairy world exists. Or maybe its just my part of the country. Why is it that these stories can exist in their own countries so long but they disappear - or at least severely diminish - when people leave for new shores? These stories are all knew to me, even the house elves, but really fascinating!"Very ethnic fairytales sadly die away from the cultures and communities that nourish them. And at least in America it would seem that the old idea of a 'melting pot' really supported everyone molding into an 'American' embracing the Anglo-German culture of the settlers, leaving their cultural identities behind together with the languages they used to speak prior to emigrating and the formerly multisyllabic surnames that were shortened on arrival to be easier on the 'American' ear. The domovoi was left behind.
Nataliya wrote: "Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Nataliya: can you possibly explain Russian diminutives to us? Or are they even explainable?"Thanks. I was really afraid there was no real answer. I can figure out diminutives in multiple western European languages that I don't speak, but Russian defeats me.
I didn't see the Alexei/Sasha correspondence in this book, but I could have sworn Baryshnikov used it in White Nights. Probably just my mistake.
"Anastasia, for example, becomes Asya or Nastya (but not Ana, as many English speakers assume)."
— but Anya, here.
Sigh. At least I know other Anglophones are as mystified as I am, bec I have seen them give the following names : Tanya (and even Tonia, the latter which I liked very much when I still thought it was a proper first name) and Sonia and Sonya and Natasha as first names. :)
Traveller wrote: "Sigh. At least I know other Anglophones are as mystified as I am, bec I have seen them give the following names : Tanya (and even Tonia, the latter which I liked very much when I still thought it ..."Tonia is short for Antonina, by the way. Many Russian diminutives have ended up as proper first names in other languages.
I have given up on explaining to people that when people call me Natasha they actually DO know my first name and that 'Natasha' to me is the same as 'Nataliya' and not in any way a different name.
Apologies for arriving late to this party... but I want to thank you for introducing me to such a great combination of intelligent and imaginative folklore, beautifully written. I'm hooked :)
Not too late yet, Sarah, the discussion is still ongoing, and you're welcome to still join in! But if you feel it's too late for you to join in on this discussion, you're welcome to make suggestions as to which "other author" to read next, in our "other authors" thread. ..and we've already decided that we may want to sneak in some more Valente at some point. :)
Miévillians
Books mentioned in this topic
American Gods (other topics)Foucault’s Pendulum (other topics)
If you're afraid of reading spoilers bec. you haven't read this far yet, but want to share your first impressions, please feel free to share non-spoilerific impressions on our clock-in thread here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...