#matopoeia

[deadpanwalking]

hello do you mind if I ask you a question about Russian! You can in fact say yes I do mind. Then please stop reading. I’m reading Katz’s translation of the brothers karamazov and I’m curious about the word nadryv — is it a word that people often/conversationally use as “violent expression of emotion” in a sort of derogatory way, or is that use fairly unique to Dostoyevsky? How often do people used it to mean a physical tear? What do you think about the word “laceration” as the translation? (I’m a little taken aback by it bc nobody has ever used it to mean how Dostoyevsky means it in front of me … but I am not an expert. I know what he MEANS but probably there’s no English word for it.)

Ana, your questions are always so fucking good.  I was at an arcade with my coworkers last night, and after I read it, I thrice fumbled easy skill shots on the Aerosmith pinball machine because I was thinking about how to answer it.

The reason why надрыв always makes the “untranslatable Russian words” lists is specific to its usage within the context of Russian literature—outside of that, it's fairly unremarkable.  I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty of the derivational morphology, but it’s worthwhile to consider the mechanics.

So you know how Russian has 200,000 words, but English has over a million? It's because Russian is a fusional synthetic language with a high morpheme-to-word ratio. We "synthesize" words by taking a root and slapping prefixes, suffixes, inflections, and endings to it to alter their specific semantic and emotional connotations. You can imagine how something like that can be challenging (and insanely fun) for translators to work with.

On its own, над is a word that means “over, on, at, or above”, but it's also one of the most commonly used prefixes.  Its English equivalent works the same way—consider the differences between see and oversee or coat and overcoat.  

IIRC, the suffix -рыв is from the Proto-Balto-Slavic word for “dig”, though in Russian, it’s come to mean “tear or rupture”—here’s a list of ways that it is used with various prefixes.  As a deverbal, надрыв is used to describe a tear on the surface of something, but also–significantly– something that’s strained unto breaking.  I’ll give you some non-Dostoevskian examples from everyday life:

«Хватит этого надрыва! Пинбол-автомат не насмехается над тобой», – сказал мой раздражённый коллега.

(“Enough with the drama. The [Aerosmith] pinball machine is not mocking you,” said my annoyed colleague.)

«Зачем этот надрыв? Никто не заставляет тебя играть на пинбол-автомате по двадцать часов в сутки. И что ты пытаешься этим доказать?» – сказала моя жена, видя, что я буквально изматываю себя игрой.»

(“Why are you putting so much effort into this? Nobody's forcing you you to play the [Aerosmith] pinball machine twenty hours a day.  What are you trying to prove?” my wife said, seeing that I was literally exhausting myself with the game.”)

Доктор сказал, что из-за чрезмерной игры на пинбол-автомате у меня произошёл надрыв карпальной связки, и теперь ему придётся ампутировать мне руку.

(The doctor said that, because of excessive playing on the [Aerosmith] pinball machine, I sustained a tear in my carpal ligament, and now he’ll have to amputate my arm.)

The Dostoevskian надрыв is its own thing. He first used the word in The Demons, but you could also say that what it describes is a recurring theme in the majority of his work—the plate tectonics of moral and existential schisms that rend individuals, dividing children from their innocence, intellectuals from reason, hedonists from the pleasure of their unexamined lives, willful men from free will, virtuous men from faith, sinners from salvation, etc. 

Translators always approach it carefully—I’ve seen “laceration”, “heartache”, “strain”, “fracture”. Pevear of P&V explained their choice (“strain”) by talking about 'translator's drift", which is "when the translator decides, 'Well, I know what that means and it means this.'" Drifting is dangerous for “there are 20,000 ways to say anything, but the author wrote it only one way.” They chose “strain” to amplify the aspect of the word that evokes the tension of the skin just before it splits open into a wound, rather than the more visually-evocative image of the wound itself.

“Laceration” is a perfectly cromulent choice, and the translation you have is excellent, but I prefer the P&V because, historically, translators have smoothed over the peculiarities of Dostoevsky's writing to make his language “read like a classic”. “Strain” is unbeautiful, but as a native Russian speaker, I find that it superimposes nicely over надрыв, and it respects the deliberate choice Dostoevsky made to synthesize that specific word—does that make sense?

[iirulancorrino]

Nine books I’m excited to read in 2025, tagged by @glintglimmergleam

Many of my cherished mutuals have already been tagged in this, tagging @thebestoftragedy, @returnoftheobradinn, @matopoeia and anyone else who wants to participate

[janhooks]

tagged by @medievalcat to share 9 books i'm looking to read in 2025... all books that i have sprawled around my room right now

tagging @matopoeia @salomeapologist @comfortcomes @shirkers2018dirsanditan

[pilot-doodles]

Stop by my artfight to see the rest I've done, or maybe drop my one if my lovely pals' pages?

Some artfight pieces! In order they are for:

@not-a-matopoeia

@slab-bannanaburger

@karla-kaye

@daisyblogging

[emmathompsonegot]

Thanks @theseventhveil1945 for tagging me!!

So I’ve been on a 72 hour Dune score lockdown lately lol

I’m tagging @boundingfeather @carbomcoco @matopoeia @uncahier

[tom-at-the-farm]

last time I asked you a question it was a mistake. Tell me about mushroom foraging! How did you get started? Do you eat them? What’s the coolest looking mushroom? Were you into Dark fairy tales as a kid too or is this separate? What’s specifically weird about the mushroom community

It was a reasonable mistake.

Mushrooms! I don’t know why exactly I got intensely into fungus, like I was always into nature and flowers and then in the beginning of quarantine the governor closed down state parks and forests for a few weeks and I was like, insane until they opened up again, and I have never left since. I am typing this from the forest floor. But seriously, I may have been reading stuff about mushrooms at the time and being in the forest all the time, I just started fixating on them. I used to go foraging with my parents in Russia and that was the last time I actually ate what I found. Now I’m too paranoid.

The “coolest” looking is a relative description because like, I think Mutinus caninus (dog stinkhorn) is cool looking, but everyone hates me when I post it because it basically looks like a carrot covered in feces:

Old man of the woods is cool in a non-gross way:

Tolypocladium sp. is gross and cool, like it’s a parasite that just grows out of earth balls or truffles subterraneously and you have to dig it out:

Xylaria polymorpha, or dead man’s fingers - my picture just looks like goose poop but if you google it you can find examples where it really fucking looks like cadaver fingers! Why would nature even do that!

And then like, Destroying Angel species of Amanita are pretty unremarkable looking, which makes them cool because it’s just like, a white mushroom but it contains enough toxins in like half a cap to shut down your whole stupid liver:

Many things are weird about the mycology community but there’s the good weird, like for example yesterday on IG someone posted a lovely macro of some tiny fungus and then you swipe and it’s growing out of rabbit poop, like they found rabbit shit in the forest and then hovered over it with their expensive camera to get this amazing tiny mushroom picture, and I think that’s beautiful and should be rewarded.

The weird I don’t get is people’s enthusiasm for eating shit that clearly just should not be eaten. Like the eggs of the dog stinkhorn above are allegedly edible but why???? Are you in a famine?? Or when people eat Amanitas. Like there’s no way an Amanita rubescens tastes good enough that you should risk eating a mushroom from the same genus that contains species called Death Cap or Destroying Angel.

[leguin]

8,11,12,23

8. what is your biggest musical guilty pleasure?

hm i don’t really think about music like that - if i feel guilty about listening to something it’s usually because i’m listening to it over and over again, and i know i’m ruining my own enjoyment by overplaying it, but that doesn’t stop me...

in terms of music that probably should be a guilty pleasure though, the lonely island and 1 trait danger...satirical/parody music in general.

11. what music have you pretended to listen to to fit in or sound cool?

my first instinct was to say none, bc i enjoy being a contrarian who could only recognize one person on the top 40 at any given time, but i definitely pretended to be more familiar with steely dan than i am when i was in high school.

12. what was the first artist you remember being pretentious about?

elliott smith, 100%.

23. what artist can you absolutely not stand?

didn’t have an answer for this earlier, but i guess i can safely say i really hate 98% of the music on any given cw show soundtrack.

[nontrivialproof]

state of grace and betty/august as one song. and cruel summer

Thank you Ana!

State of Grace

Classic:

Love is a ruthless game Unless you play it good and right

Betty/August:

Tempted by "to go fuck myself” for being the most fun to sing, but I think it’s this:

Your back beneath the sun Wishin' I could write my name on it

Cruel Summer:

I mean it’s not even a question:

And I scream, "For whatever it's worth, I love you, ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?"

[kyrstin]

hey! is it just me or does almost none of the pop culture criticism of the movie of call me by your name... understand... the book? like everyone is talking about how it's a lushly romantic story about a gay romance in which no one is punished, which is kiiiiinda true, but also in my mind it was very romantic and very beautiful and about a relationship that was clearly doomed and also slightly toxic. that toxicity came from their total like hegelian blah blah, which was romantic, but not IDEAL

so i’m not going to pretend my read is Correct, especially bc i’m a hetero, nor am i going to pretend that i’ve ever read hegel, but

the critique i see most often is that oliver and elio have “an unhealthy relationship”. and people are right, it is an unhealthy relationship. but the thing is, that’s not actually a valid critique, because that’s a central plot point of the fucking book. like did y’all not notice that elio and oliver (spoiler) don’t end up together?

andre aciman isn’t saying “this is what the platonic ideal of relationships should be!”, he’s just telling a story (a story that i’m convinced actually happened to him, by the way, look up his bio) that explores themes of love, loss, etc etc. it’s not a treatise on what relationships should or should not look like, it’s just - like any good story - a bunch of stuff that happens.

people complain that it romanticizes their relationship, especially through its language,, but a) that’s what books do about everything like have you ever read a book before and b) the romanticism is completely realistic to elio’s character. we’re in his head, not aciman’s, and if elio was real, that’s exactly how he’d feel about oliver. that’s what being a teenager is likefor the type of person aciman’s writing about. 

and people think that romanticization means that aciman’s endorsing it, but frankly that’s not an issue with aciman’s writing, it’s an issue with people’s inability to read things critically. it’s the same argument people used for why lolita should be banned. y’all have got to learn that just because a character does a thing doesn’t mean the author wants you to think it’s good. you have to take your own lessons away from stuff.

idk if that answered your question. i feel like i only skimmed the surface. but hmu with your take

[thealogie]

@ana-matopoeia right she was literally like “so PhD candidates from our own real world keep fucking stumbling on a non-Christian narnia during the course of their doctoral studies...NO I will NOT accept any questions at this time...”

[deadpanwalking]

okay feel free to be annoyed by this question but: do you know where one would start if one wanted to read Anna Akhamatova? I do not speak Russian

Listen, I fucking love Akhmatova...I can't recommend her enough, I literally cannot, I would die trying! Somebody just asked me about the best translation, but since you are reading Applebaum's book about the GULAG system, I'd direct you straight to her Requiem (along with everything else she wrote during the 20s and 30s) and Poem Without a Hero, which she wrote during the seige of Leningrad. My only advice is to read a little about Akhmatova's life before cracking into her poetry—understanding what she and her family were forced to endure during several particularly nightmarish chapters of Russian history is crucial to appreciating the beauty and unimaginable bravery of her work (and why her literary legacy is second only to Pushkin's in the dusha, the secular collective Russian soul). If you are interested in a more in-depth biography, Elaine Feinstein's Anna of All The Russias is the best one I know of.

[janhooks]

sorry your brand is never not going to be that text post when you were like “I’m actually the funniest person I’ve ever met” but you’re doing some really cool science shit in rural California. That’s your brand

i don't remember that post but it is true however i was only doing cool science shit for 6 weeks this summer now i am unemployed

[iirulancorrino]

@ana-matopoeia’s tag game is always excellent but she’s really been coming in clutch the last few days and this made me scream. I am the Martin Luther of tumblr circa 2020.

[emmathompsonegot]

tagged by - @gregorytheeggory ty!! (my answers are weirdly similar to yours lol)

last song - Hog by The Lemon Twigs

last film - I watched the first half of Death of Stalin a few weeks ago. I really haven’t watched that many movies lately. I really want to see Emma, but I have to finish the book first

currently watching - The Mandalorian interspersed with New Girl. I’m coming off a Riverdale rewatch, and I think I’m going to try to finish the Thick of It soon which I stopped in early s4 because shit got intense

currently reading - I... really don’t read that much these days though not for lack of trying or books I want to read. Planning on maybe doing a buddy read of The Name of the Rose soon. Last thing I read was Uprooted by Naomi Novik a couple months ago which kicked ass.

currently craving - a hug from my friends :(

tag 9 people you want to know better/catch up with: @nontrivialproof @yaidaidai @midnight-the-cat @boundingfeather @ana-matopoeia @thealogie @therepublicofletters

[shownumetal]

@ana-matopoeia this is all your cousins

[nontrivialproof]

[image description: posters for Little Women, Emma 2020, High School Musical 3, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Pitch Perfect, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, The Handmaiden, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. End id.]

Nine movies tagged by @moonshinecybins and @bethecowgirl. Thank you <3 !!

Tagging: @emmathompsonegot @woman-respecter @lichfucker @ana-matopoeia @paradigmsofbrittaperry @ambientwitch @kendallroy