Out of the Blue

In fact, this column didn’t come out of the blue (ни с того, ни с сего). It stems from the fact that 2012 is the Year of the Water Dragon (Водяной Дракон), and blue is one of its favorite colors.

Well, of course, there is also the fact that translating this color can cause headaches: “blue” in Russian can be either dark blue (синий) or light blue (голубой).

For its part, синий has a special place in Russian folklore and history, as the color is believed to have ominous properties. Ivan the Terrible harbored a mortal fear of blue-eyed people (смертельно боялся людей с синими глазами), believing that meeting such a person didn’t bode well, as they might сглазить (jinx) him. Meanwhile, голубой was historically believed to have mostly positive connotations.

But that is, well, just another ancient суеверие (superstition). With time, things have gotten messier. For example, in modern Russia голубой has become a widely used pejorative for male homosexuals. We also, as in English, say someone with noble roots (or someone who is simply a higher-up) is of “blue blood” (он – голубых кровей – typically used in the plural).

Meanwhile the cиняя птица (bluebird) is believed to be the bird of luck (птица удачи). This superstition comes from the 1909 children’s play L’Oiseau bleu (by the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck), in which the characters try to find a magic bluebird. This was only reinforced when, in the late 1970s, rock musician Andrei Makarevich wrote his famous song “Синяя птица,” with the lyrics: “Мы охотники за удачей, птицей цвета ультрамарин” – “we are hunting for luck, for the ultramarine colored bird.” Yet it is not all good: we do after all say посинеть от холода (“turn blue from cold”). The verb поголубеть also exists, sort of, being used to mean стать геем (to become gay).

Meanwhile, our wildest dreams are associated with light blue. The idiom голубая мечта refers to a wild, idyllic, often hard-to-attain dream. Linguists are split over its etymology. According to the most plausible version (etymologist Valery Mokienko), the figurative meaning of the word голубой appeared in Russian only early in the twentieth century, and not without the influence of Maeterlinck’s play. Meanwhile, in German, the expression die blaue Blume (literally, голубой цветок, “blue flower”) can mean “a wild dream.”

The idiom на блюдечке с голубой каёмкой is a derivative of sorts. It was coined by Ostap Bender, the smooth operator and protagonist of Ilf and Petrov’s The Little Golden Calf. He is explaining how he will receive his million from an underground Soviet millionaire: «Уж я так устрою, что он свои деньги мне сам принесёт, на блюдечке с голубой каёмкой». (“I’ll set it up so that he brings me the money himself, on a little saucer with blue trim.”)

After the novel was published, the expression was en vogue, and meant to obtain something easily, effortlessly – as Ostap did when he was cheating his victims of their money на голубом глазу (“with a blue eye,” i.e., without even flinching).

What else is out there in the blue spectrum? There is the beautiful adjective referring to the color deep black: иссиня-чёрный (literally, “black to the point of blue”). There is the banal синий воротничок – a direct borrowing from English (blue-collar worker). And there is the widely-known joke about the difference between a White Guard Russian officer and a Soviet officer: the White officer was до синевы выбрит, слегка пьян (“shaven blue [closely], barely drunk,”) while the Soviet officer was до синевы пьян, слегка выбрит (“blue from drunkenness and barely shaven”).

When I was studying at the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages we creatively reworked this joke into a bit of student wisdom: лучше закончить институт с синим дипломом и красной рожей, чем с красным дипломом и синей рожей (“better to graduate with a blue diploma and a red mug, than with a red diploma and a blue mug”). The explanation is simple: the red diploma was for special honors, and was given to top students who worked to the point of turning blue. The regular blue diploma was meant for “normal,” laid-back students who indulged in partying and beer binges (hence the healthy red mug), as if they expected to receive their diploma на блюдечке с голубой каёмкой.

I am proud to say I was in the former category, as I never really relished the prospect of becoming just a синий воротничок. But that didn’t stop my mug from looking a bit красная once the exams were behind us…