Who Shall Judge the Judges?

Well-educated Russians can’t help quoting literary classics once in a while to spruce up their speech. Foreigners who can follow suit will score points on the культурный index.

The list of such allusions is endless, so we will focus on the most famous and frequent ones. One such allusion is in the headline above: “А судьи кто?” This comes from Alexander Griboyedov’s famous play Горе от ума (Woe from Wit), whose hero, Alexander Chatsky, at odds with Moscow’s conservative beau-monde, utters these words, meaning “who are they, to judge me?!” Griboyedov’s play alone is a wealth of literary allusions – no other Russian literary work has given us so many tidbits, clichés and set-phrases. Regulars of this feature will remember his tobacco-related cliché, Но дым отечества нам сладок и приятен (see page 118).

Actually, the title of the comedy Woe from Wit has become a literary cliché as well – it refers to someone who is way too intelligent, a perfectionist too particular about details, who therefore suffers too much in life. Today it is also applicable in humorous terms to someone who worries too much, knows too much and therefore cannot be happy.

Another idiom, borrowed from a famous Chatsky monologue is “с корабля на бал” (“from the ship to a ball”), which means someone found himself in a completely different situation/entourage overnight – often after a long and tiresome trip or just after doing something different. E.g., if your flight arrives in Moscow at 1 p.m. and you have a meeting at, say, 5:30 p.m. the same day, you could well excuse yourself with style by saying: “Я сегодня прямо с корабля – на бал.” If your trip to Moscow does not come out quite the way you expected, you can quote Chatsky with: “I am leaving Moscow and will never come here again.” (“Вон из Москвы, сюда я больше не ездок”). And then, on top of that, you can quote Chatsky’s famous final phrase – “Карету мне, карету!” (“My chariot, my chariot!”) which means today “That’s it for me.” Yet, before you engage in these literary allusions, make sure the educational level of your Russian business counterparts is adequate – not all бизнесмены read Griboyedov these days.

The words of Chatsky’s would be father-in-law, Famusov, also survive in modern usage with his phrase: “Что станет говорить княгиня Марья Алексеевна?” (“What will countess Mariya Alexeevna say?” meaning “What will the neighbors think?”) But, being a father of a daughter, I like this one better: “Что за комиссия, Создатель, быть взрослой дочери отцом!?” (“Why is it so tough, oh Creator, to be the father of a grown-up daughter?!”) Famusov’s daughter Sofia, who spurned Chatsky’s offer, pronounces in her own famous phrase: “Счастливые часов не наблюдают” (“Happy people pay no attention to the time”). Today this is often said to someone who is late and does not bother looking at his watch.

The merits of Leo Tolstoy in the development of the Russian language are undeniable. He was also a pacifist, hence the noun “толстовщина,” used by the Bolsheviks (the perjorative suffix “shch” underlined the Bolsheviks’ negative attitude to pacifism). Yet, strange as it may seem, there are not that many modern idiomatic phrases to be culled from Tolstoy’s works. This is probably because he was not so good at short, cut-in-stone phrases. Yet some of his shortest quotations are famous: Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему (All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way – the opening line of Anna Karenina); Мы любим людей за то добро, которое им делаем и ненавидим их за то зло, которое им причиняем (We love people for the good we do to them and hate them for the evil we do to them).

Yet, Tolstoy’s contemporary, Anton Chekhov, was very good at literary bon mots. You may already know his remark about “tainted sturgeon”: а осетрина- то с душком (to indicate a non-sequitor). And what about his famous краткость – сестра таланта (brevity is the sister of talent)? You can use this Chekh-ovian phrase as an apt excuse for writing too short an essay in high school, or when, say, proposing a very short toast. The title of Chekhov’s short story Человек в футляре (A Man in a Case) became an epithet for someone who lives only by strict regulations, never does anything on his own, and is afraid of showing initiative.

The title of Nikolai Gogol’s famous novel Мёртвые души (Dead Souls) is still used today to characterize different types of illegal schemes, e.g. whenever someone registers a firm under a non-existent name. A character in the novel, Manilov, loved to devise unrealistic projects which never came to fruition, hence the modern name for such schemes – маниловщина. In the play Ревизор (The Inspector General), one of Gogol’s heroes excuses himself for his corruption with the phrase: “Я беру взятки, но борзыми щенками” (“I take bribes, but in Borzoi puppies”). Today it is still said about corrupt apparatchiks who are embarrassed to take cash that they take bribes борзыми щенками, i.e. in kind.

In the Soviet era, they used to take food packages, bottles of cognac or perfumes in lieu of puppies. Today’s equivalent of борзые щенки would be gorgeous apartments and dachas, cars or stocks. To rephrase the famous saying, corruption is the mother of invention – witness the recent case of the “Union of Writers,” which drew the attention of Russia’s Prosecutor General for receiving sizeable “literary honorariums,” paid as advances, for a book on privatization that few expect to ever be written. And ex-St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak stands accused of having secured apartments for his relatives.

But, frankly, for all the brouhaha around such scandals, none among Russia’s rulers seems ready to prosecute the “writers” or St. Petersburg’s ex-mayor. First, because, as Gogol used to say, bribes in puppies is a whole different ball game. But, most importantly, because any schemes to put an end to corruption in Russia, unfortunately, look at best like маниловщина. Who would be fit to judge such things anyway?