I just finished Master and Margarita, by Bulgakov.  I visited Patriarchy Ponds and imagined the devil’s unsettling appearance, imagined the hand-over of documents (what an odd accent he has), the crisp speech of a simple Russian sentence, ^[1] the absence of prepositions and articles abetting its precision, making for perfect punch lines that do get lost in translation.  Perhaps I’ll read it again in Russian.

Russian is rich.  Each word packs the grammar, the direction, the meaning of the end of the sentence slipped into the beginning, the order rearranging to realign your mind to precisely that which the author means to say.  Of course, not everyone is an author.  Most just speak.  And spoken Russian moves quickly, without flourish, with just and barely what we mean.  In French : Mademoiselle est-ce que je peux vous aider ? In English: Can I help you?  In Russian: Miss, help?

Or how about, [I don’t smoke but I like this example], French: Est-ce que vous avez une cigarette?  English: Do you have a cigarette?  Russian:  Cig, have?

It’s a subtle language, too.  It happens in the mouth.  Sounds pop and change on the tip of the tongue, it flicks and curves pushing sounds out and never back in.  It speaks casually, almost effortlessly, but I speak carefully.  My mouth is getting used to new rules; new ways to move, curve sound into speech, precisely and intentionally.  A vowel too soft and you will not be understood; one word too many and you expose yourself as foreign.

I really love this place.  I think it’s the sense of humor.  It bites in the books I’ve been reading for years, that brilliant wit masterminded by the likes of Gogol and Tolstoy, Bulgakov and Turgenev, as they skewer society on a stick, hold it up to the light and watch it writhe in ridiculous embarrassment.  The greed of the rich and the pride of the poor – they say, this is who we are.  Our wealth grows from one thousand dead serfs.  We fear God and the devil saves us.  We enforce the rules while we break them, and we say what we don’t mean; we mean what we don’t say.  But the geniuses of Russian literature never speak so plainly.  The joke is between the lines.

There’s a delightfully dark children’s cartoon about a hedgehog lost in fog ^[2] – I’m sure this is relevant.  Anyway, he’s lost in the fog.  He doesn’t know where he is, where he’s going, or why he’s here.  It’s hard to see how this is meant for children; only in Russia.  There’s not much color.  You can’t see anything.  It’s too true.  I love it.

Meanwhile, Gogol graces avenues with his presence, his statue watching traffic stream by.  Streets, squares and boulevards bare the namesakes of Russian greats: Gogol, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin.  They are the heroes of Russia; they are her voice, hanging answers in the fog.  The subtle truths that flick from their pens say more than I can hear.  You have to know what to listen for.

[1] Да, человек смертен, но это было бы ещё полбеды. Плохо то, что он иногда внезапно смертен, вот в чём фокус!

[2] Ёжик в тумане: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jZ2G–y1hw