Live like life read the summary. Korney Chukovsky - alive as life. Korney Chukovsky live like life stories about the Russian language

In him(In russian language) all tones and shades, all transitions of sounds from the hardest to the most tender and soft; it is boundless and can, living like life, be enriched every minute.

Anatoly Fedorovich Koni, an honorary academician, a famous lawyer, was, as you know, a man of great kindness. He willingly forgave those around him for all sorts of mistakes and weaknesses. But woe was to the one who, while talking with him, distorted or mutilated the Russian language. Koni attacked him with passionate hatred. His passion delighted me. And yet, in his struggle for the purity of the language, he often went overboard.

He, for example, demanded that the word Necessarily meant only kindly, helpfully.

But this meaning of the word is already dead. Now, both in living speech and in literature, the word Necessarily came to mean certainly. It was this that revolted Academician Koni.

Imagine,” he said, clutching his heart, “today I’m walking along Spasskaya and I hear: “He Necessarily punch you in the face!" How do you like it? A person informs another that someone kindly beat him up!

But the word Necessarily no longer means kindly - I tried to object, but Anatoly Fyodorovich stood his ground.

Meanwhile, today in the whole Soviet Union you will no longer find a person for whom Necessarily would mean kindly.

Today, not everyone will understand what Aksakov meant when he spoke of a certain provincial doctor:

“In relation to us, he acted Necessarily" [S.T. Aksakov, Memories (1855). Sobr. cit., vol. II. M., 1955, p. 52.]

But no one seems strange to such, for example, Isakovsky's couplet:

And where do you want

Necessarily you will reach.

Much is explained by the fact that Koni was old at that time. He acted like most old people: he defended the norms of Russian speech that existed during his childhood and youth. Old people almost always imagined (and still imagine) that their children and grandchildren (especially grandchildren) mutilate the correct Russian speech.

I can easily imagine that gray-haired old man who, in 1803 or 1805, angrily banged his fist on the table when his grandchildren began to talk among themselves about the development of mind and character.

Where did you get this insufferable mind development? Must speak vegetation"[Proceedings of Ya.K. Grotto, vol. II. Philological investigations (1852-1892). SPB. 1899, pp. 69, 82].

It cost, for example, young man say in conversation that now he must go, well, at least to the shoemaker, and the old men angrily shouted to him:

Not necessary, A need! Why are you distorting the Russian language? [In the Dictionary of the Russian Academy (St. Petersburg, 1806-1822) there is only necessary.]

Has come new era. Former young men became fathers and grandfathers. And it was their turn to be indignant at such words that the youth introduced into everyday life: gifted, distinct, voting, humane, public, dude[Neither in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy, nor in the Dictionary of the Pushkin Language (M., 1956-1959) the words gifted No. It appears only in the Dictionary of Church Slavonic and Russian, compiled by the second department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, 1847). Words distinct not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy. Words vote not in any dictionary before Dahl, 1882. The word dude created by Ivan Panaev (along with the word hanger) in the middle of the 19th century. See also Proceedings of Ya.K. Grotto, vol. II, pp. 14, 69, 83.].

Now it seems to us that these words have existed in Rus' since time immemorial and that we could never do without them, but meanwhile, in the 30s and 40s of the last century, these were newcomer words with which the then zealots of the purity of the language could not come to terms for a long time. .

Now it’s even hard to believe what words seemed at that time, for example, to Prince Vyazemsky base, street. These words: mediocrity And talented.“Mediocrity, talented,” Prince Vyazemsky was indignant, “new areal expressions in our literary language. Dmitriev told the truth that "our new writers learn the language from the labazniks" [ P. Vyazemsky, Old notebook. L., 1929, p. 264.]

If the youth of that time happened to use in a conversation such words, unknown to past generations, as: fact, result, nonsense, solidarity[Not a word fact, not a word result, not a word solidarity not in the Dictionary of the Russian Academy.] representatives of these former generations declared that Russian speech suffers considerable damage from such an influx of the most vulgar words.

“Where did this fact? - resented, for example, Thaddeus Bulgarin in 1847. - What is this word? Distorted” [“Northern Bee”, 1847, No. 93 of April 26. Journal stuff.].

Jacob Grotto already at the end of the 60s declared the newly appeared word ugly inspire[Proceedings of Ya.K. Grota, vol. II, p. 14.]

Even a word like scientific, and that had to overcome a great deal of resistance from the Old Testament purists before entering our speech as a full-fledged word. Let us recall how this word struck Gogol in 1851. Until then, he had not heard of him ["Gogol in the memoirs of his contemporaries". M. p. 511.].

The old people demanded that instead of scientific only spoke scientist: scientist book, scientist treatise. Word scientific seemed to them unacceptable vulgarity. However, there was a time when even a word vulgar they were ready to be considered illegal. Pushkin, not foreseeing that it would become Russified, retained in Onegin its foreign form. Let us recall the famous poems about Tatyana:

No one could have her beautiful

name; but head to toe

Nobody could find it

(In terms of certainly) are felt by everyone, both young and old, as the most legitimate, root words of Russian speech, and who can do without these words!

Now it seems strange to everyone that Nekrasov, having written in one of his stories nonsense, should have explained in a note: “The lackey word, equivalent to the word - rubbish" [Cm. “Petersburg corners” in the Nekrasov almanac “Physiology of Petersburg”, part 1. St. Petersburg, 1845, p. 290, and in the Complete Works of N.A. Nekrasov, vol. VI. M, 1950, p. 120.], and the Literary Newspaper of those years, talking about someone virtuoso soul, felt compelled to immediately add that masterly-“newfangled word” [“Literary Gazette”, 1841, p. 94: “The soul is visible in the game and in the techniques virtuoso to flaunt a newfangled word”.].

The first and almost the most important ailment of the modern Russian language is currently considered to be its attraction to foreign words.

According to popular opinion, this is where the main trouble of our speech lies.

Indeed, these words can cause an unfortunate feeling when they are used in vain, stupidly, without any reason for this. And may Lomonosov be blessed, thanks to whom the foreign perpendicular And kula became pendulum from outline became drawing, from oxygenium- oxygen, from hydrogenium - hydrogen, A bergwerk turned into mine,

And, of course, it is excellent that such a Russification of words is taking place in our days, that

airplane replaced by us by plane,

helicopter - by helicopter,

G cargo car- by truck,

mitraleza - machine gun,

dumpcar - dump truck,

goalkeeper - goalkeeper,

chauffeur - driver(although not everywhere yet).

And, of course, I fully sympathize with the protest of the writer Boris Timofeev against the official-foreign phrase roll over, which really gives off the office.

And how not to rejoice that the German frystick, once so popular in the everyday life of metropolitan (and provincial) officials, everywhere was replaced by Russian breakfast and would have completely disappeared from our memory if it had not been preserved in The Inspector General, as well as in Dostoevsky’s Bad Anecdote:

"Let's see how things go after frishtika yes bottles of fat belly!” ("Inspector").

“Petersburg Russian will never use the word “breakfast”, but always says: fryshtik, especially emphasizing the sound of “fra” (“Bad joke”).

In the same way, I cannot but rejoice that the French indigestion, meaning indigestion, is now preserved only in Nekrasov's humorous couplet:

Yes, on some pages of Belinsky. For example:

“Well, high society must be excused for this: it is undoubtedly delicate and afraid Indiestia" .

And who does not share Gorky's indignation at the sheer foreignness, which, until recently, other speakers often flaunted, such as, for example, "the tendency to apoliticize the discussion," which, translated into Russian, means the simplest thing: "the intention to eliminate politics from our disputes" .

Mayakovsky, back in 1923, spoke out against clogging peasant newspapers with such words as apogee And fiasco. In his poem “On fiascos, apogees and other unknown things,” he says that the peasants of the village of Akulovka, having read the phrase in the newspaper: “Poincaré fails, they decided that Fiasco is a big person, it’s not for nothing that even the French president “tolerates” him:

What about apogee the Red Army thought it was the name of a German village. They began to search on a geographical map:

But does this mean that foreign words, foreign terms that have entered Russian speech are always, in all cases, bad? What and apogee And fiasco, since they are not understood in the village of Akulovka, should they be expelled from our books and articles Forever? And along with them, an innumerable number of foreign language phrases and words that our ancestors have long since mastered?

Do we have the right to resolve this issue in a Shishkovian way: to hell with any foreignness, whatever it may be, and long live the chemically pure, unalloyed, Slavic-Russian language, free from Latinisms, Gallicisms, Anglicisms and other blasphemous isms?

Such Shishkovism, it seems to me, is simply unthinkable, because as soon as we set foot on this road, we will have to throw overboard such words, inherited by Russian culture from ancient rome and Greece as republic, dictatorship, amnesty, militia, hero, adversary, propaganda. space, atom, grammar, mechanics, notebook, lamp, laboratory etc., etc., etc.

As well as words formed at a later time from Greek and Latin roots: geometry, physics, zoology, international, industrialization, politics, economics, stratosphere, thermometer, telephone, telegraph, television.

And the words that came to the ladies from the Arabs: algebra, almanac, alcohol.

And the words that came from Turkic peoples: irmyak, artel, arshin, farce, groceries, bazaar, shoe, blockhead, guard, commotion, closet, stocking.

And the words that came from Italy: mail, dome, office, bulletin, scarlet fever, newspaper, symphony, sonata, box office, cashier, gallery, balcony, opera, oratorio, tenor, soprano, script and etc.

And the words that came from England: rally, boycott, club, champion, rails, steering wheel, agitator, leader, sports, station, roast beef, steak, hooligan etc.

And the words that came from France: naive, serious, solid, massive, elastic, repression, depression, partisan, decree, battery, session, sabotage, adventure, avant-garde, nightmare, blouse, bronze, meter, centimeter, decade, parliament, bracelet, powder, cologne, veil, cutlet etc.

And the words that came from Germany: sandwich, barrier, brotherhood, accountant, bill, fine, flute, uniform .

I don’t think that there was an eccentric who would demand that we give up these most necessary and most useful words, which we naturally feel as Russians.

Why, then, in a country where all the people accepted and perfectly mastered such foreign words as revolution, socialism, communism, proletarian, capitalism, bourgeois, sabotage, international, agitation, demonstration, mandate, committee, militia, imperialism, colonialism, Marxism, and not only learned, but made them Russian, native, there are still people who literally tremble with fear, as if in the richest, original Russian speech, God forbid, another word with the ending ation, ist or rev.

Such fears are meaningless, if only because at present the endings ation, change And ist we feel like Russians: they began to combine very easily and freely with purely Russian root words - with such as, for example, truth, service, essay, connection, recall and others, which made possible the following - previously unthinkable - Russian forms: pravdist, signalman, essayist, deviationist, otzovist, serviceman, badgeist .

From which it follows that Russian people gradually got used to counting the suffix ist not strangers, but their own, the same as Tel or chik in words driver, attendant etc.

Even ancient Russian word accordion and then the people received the suffix ist: accordionist.

This is the extent to which the ending “no” became more active, how alive and understandable for the Russian ear it was filled with content. I was finally convinced of this by a five-year-old boy who, seeing the cabman for the first time, said to his father with delight:

Look, horseman went!

The boy knew that there were tractor drivers, tank drivers, taxi drivers, cyclists in the world, but the words cab never heard of it and created my own: horseman .

And who after that can say that the suffix ist not Russified us completely! Its meaning is felt even by children, and it is not surprising that it is becoming more and more productive.

Russified the suffix rev. Let's remember: Bolshevism, Leninism. In the works of V.I. Lenin: militancy. Academician V.V. Vinogradov points out that in the modern language this suffix is “widely used in combination with Russian stems, sometimes even with bright colloquial coloring: tailism, naivety" .

These words can be attached philistinism, became a stable linguistic term. AND tsarism.

Or remember, for example, a foreign suffix tory (me) in words like oratory, laboratory, conservatory, observatory etc. etc. Isn't it wonderful that even this suffix, firmly soldered to foreign roots, has become so Russified in recent times that it has become easy to combine with native Russian, Slavic roots. By at least Alexander Tvardovsky in the famous "Ant" quite naturally sounded a peasant word bustle.

The end is foreseen but no
All this fuss?

Suffix aci(i) also completely Russified: the Russian ear got used to such words as vernalization, militarization, sovietization, bolshevization etc. L. M. Kopenkina writes to me from the city of Verkhnyaya Salda (Sverdlovsk region) that her son, five-year-old Seryozha, having heard from her that it was time to cut his hair, immediately asked her:

We are in trimming let's go to? Yes?

Russification of the suffix aci(i) occurs simultaneously with the Russification of the suffix already (yazh).

Recently, while rehearsing a new play, a certain director suggested to his troupe:

And now for reviving- dance.

And no one was surprised by this strange word. Obviously, it is on par with reagent has become so firmly established in the professional terminology of the theater that it no longer raises objections.

In The Twelve Chairs, Bender's reproachful exclamation addressed to old Vorobyaninov sounded very Russian: “We found time for kobelyazh. At your age maleate just bad."

male is in line with such forms as hypocrisy, fawning and etc. . From which it follows that the expression of a foreign suffix already (yazh) completely mastered by the linguistic consciousness of the Russian people.

A modern Soviet linguist says very correctly:

“If we leave aside scientific and technical terms and, in general, bookish “foreign” words, as well as random and fleeting buzzwords, then we can safely say that our “borrowings” in the majority are not at all passively learned, ready-made words, but independently, creatively mastered or even newly created formations.”

This is the true power of language. For it is not the language that is truly strong, original, rich, which timidly shies away from every alien word, but the one that, having taken this alien word, creatively transforms it, autocratically subordinating it to its own will, its own aesthetic tastes and requirements, thanks to which the word acquires a new expressive form, which it did not have in the native language.

Let me remind you at least a newly appeared word dude. After all, how was this word created in our language? They took the ancient Greek, long Russified style and added to it one of the most expressive Russian suffixes: yag(a). This suffix does not always convey in Russian speech the expression of moral condemnation, contempt. Except vagabonds, vagabonds, There is dear, hard worker And poor fellow. But here this suffix becomes in line with the disapproving yuga, south, uh etc., which brings dude with words like rogue, rogue, thief, thief, swindler .

This Russian character is further emphasized by the fact that in your speech there are also such purely Russian national forms as stylish, stylish, stylish etc., etc., etc.

Here you are achieved!- the irritated father said to his dapper son, when he ended up in the police station for some shameful act.

Or a word intelligentsia. It would seem that its Latin origin is indisputable. Meanwhile, it was invented by the Russians (in the 70s) to designate a purely Russian social stratum, completely unknown to the West, because in those ancient years not every mental worker was called an intellectual, but only one whose life and convictions were colored by the idea of serving the people. And, of course, only pedants who are unfamiliar with the history of Russian culture can classify this word as a foreign, borrowed word.

Foreign authors, when they write about it, are forced to translate it from Russian: "intelligentsia". “Intelligence,” say the English, who took this word from us. We, the true creators of this word, dispose of it as our own, with the help of Russian endings and suffixes: intelligent, intelligent, intelligent, intelligent, semi-intelligent *.

* Journalist I. Smirnov came up with a funny word to designate a particularly zealous "democratic" stratum - prostilligence. - V.V.

Or a word chief- how foreign! It doesn’t even get along too well with our Russian phonetics. But is it possible to say that we have passively introduced it into our lexicon, if we have created such purely Russian forms as patronage, patronage, patronage, patronage etc.?

The Russian language is so capricious, strong and tireless in its creativity that it will turn any foreign word in its own way, equip it with its own, ingeniously expressive prefixes, endings, suffixes, subordinate it to its own tastes, and sometimes whims. Ilya Selvinsky speaks very rightly “about the rare ability of the Russian population to quickly perceive foreign speech and in a businesslike manner adapt it to their everyday life.”

“This revision,” the poet continues, “made a foreign word domestic to such an extent that it is now difficult to believe in its foreign origin. For example, German words rem(bear) and goof(hole) formed such a seemingly condo Russian word as den. This further emphasizes the power of the Russian language.

Indeed, sometimes it is impossible to recognize the foreign word that has fallen into circulation: from the Greek kyrie eleison(God have mercy!) he made a verb play tricks, Greek cat A bass(a special order of church hymns) turned into mess, that is, with church “holy” words, he designated tomfoolery, mischief, confusion. From Latin cartularia(monastic custodian of sacred books) Russian made hack- unscrupulous, bad worker. From Scandinavian embete- purebred Russian sneak, from English ring dy dell! - ryndu bey, from German kringel- pretzel.

The language is a miracle worker, a strong man, a ruler, it so abruptly alters any foreign language form at its own discretion that it loses the traits of primogeniture in the shortest possible time - isn’t it funny to tremble and be afraid that some stray alien word would damage it!

There have already been epochs in the history of Russian culture when the question of foreign words became as relevant and burning as it is now.

Such, for example, was the era of Belinsky - the 30s and especially the 40s of the last century, when many new concepts and words burst into the Russian language from abroad. The controversy about these words was carried on with fierce passion. Belinsky wholeheartedly participated in it and introduced many broad and wise ideas into it, which even now can direct everyone who thinks about their native language on the true path. (See, for example, his articles “Voice in Defense of the “Voice in Defense of the Russian Language””, “Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words”, “Grammatic Research”, op. V.A. Vasiliev”, ““ Northern Bee "- defender of the truth and purity of the Russian language”, “A look at Russian literature in 1847” and many others.)

Unfortunately, Belinsky's complex position on this complex issue is portrayed in most cases in an extremely simplified way. I don't know what motives those who write about him often stick out some of his thoughts and hide others from readers.

It turns out a malicious lie about Belinsky, distorting the true essence his thoughts.

In order to understand these thoughts in their entirety, we must first of all clearly imagine what extraordinary shifts were taking place then in the language and, in particular, how enormous was the number of foreign phrases and words that invaded the then Russian speech.

Their intrusion alarmed and frightened the reactionary purists, who from week to week, from month to month expressed their fierce hatred of them in verse and prose. These words were mocked even on the stage.

Here, for example, is a wild mosaic of them that some enraged purist snatched from magazine articles of the time:

“Absolute Principles our reflections brought us to phrenetic states, illustrating ordinary substantiality and simple reality by force reactive idealization with the elimination isolation items. Humane elements petty analysis, so to speak, being closed in grandiosity world phenomena life, focus on individual singularity. Detachment from their subjective interests, our personality aspires to the world objective facts And ideas and here doctrine great minds, universal, here somewhere virtuosity creation achieves its high results.”

“And this is the Russian language of the half of the 19th century! - the guardian of the purity of Russian speech was horrified. - We read - and do not believe our eyes. What would they say if they lived, A.S. Shishkov and other champions of the Russian word, what would Karamzin say!” .

Of course, such meaningless phraseology in journalism of that time did not exist and could not exist, but the very words that are reproduced here are conveyed correctly and accurately: in almost every book of Otechestvennye Zapiski they really met at that time principles, subjects, elements, humanity, progress, universal, virtuoso, talented, doctrine, reflection etc.

It was against this foreignness that the author of the above “mosaic” protested.

The modern reader will be greatly amazed when he learns that this champion of the Russian word was the notorious obscurantist Thaddeus Bulgarin, the most reactionary journalist of that era, who himself spoke Russian very poorly and constantly distorted it in his novels and countless newspaper articles.

And the writer, from whose “barbarisms” Thaddeus Bulgarin defended this speech, was the brilliant stylist Belinsky, one of the strongest masters of the Russian word.

At that time, Belinsky, out of a fiery love for Russian speech, stubbornly introduced philosophical and scientific foreign terms into it, since he saw here one of the last tasks of his service to the interests of the people.

It was this task that forced Belinsky to express regret in his articles that such words as concept, association, chance, attribute, exploit, revenge, repair etc.

Why does the great critic have such a stubborn attraction to foreign words, against which, together with Faddey Bulgarin, at that time the whole pack of reactionary hacks madly rebelled?

The answer to this question is very simple: such an enrichment of the vocabulary fund fully met the urgent needs of the raznochintsy intelligentsia of the 30s and 40s of the 19th century.

After all, it was then, under the mighty influence peasant uprisings in Russia and popular upheavals in the West, Russian advanced raznochintsy, in spite of any obstacles, passionately joined the ideas of revolutionary Europe, and they needed a huge number of words to express these new ideas.

Next to Belinsky, such revolutionaries as Petrashevsky and Herzen worked to enrich the national vocabulary. Petrashevsky in his famous “Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words” (1845) approved the words in Russian literary usage: socialism, communism, terrorism, materialism, fourierism etc. .

Herzen accustomed the reader to such not yet established terms as empiricism, nationalism, polytheism, feudalism etc.

Without this colossal expansion of Russian vocabulary, the propaganda work of Belinsky, Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev would have been impossible. Arming Russian publicism, Russian philosophy and criticism with these most important terms, Belinsky, Petrashevsky and Herzen accomplished a great patriotic feat, because thanks to them the “people's defenders” of the 1940s and 1960s could most fully express their aspirations and aspirations.

Here was the immortal merit of Belinsky. Less than twenty years have passed since Pushkin wrote with chagrin that "scholarship, politics, philosophy have not yet been expressed in Russian" - and now they finally spoke Russian, with inspiration and vividly.

This was urgently demanded by the leading figures of Russian culture. The Decembrist Alexander Bestuzhev wrote with chagrin back in 1821: “Is it possible to find physical or philosophical terms in Nestorova’s Chronicle?.. We don’t have a philosophical language, we don’t have a scientific nomenclature.”

And finally, the long-awaited language appeared. Has this caused even the slightest damage to Russian national feeling? Against. A modern Soviet researcher rightly says:

“A stranger to servility to the West, a true and passionate patriot who believed in the mighty forces and greatness of the Russian people, Belinsky understood that foreign words, in which there is an urgent need, could not weaken the originality of the Russian language and belittle the dignity of the Russian people. He understood that the “guardians of the word”, raging against foreign words, are showing false patriotism.

“Poor is that nationality,” wrote Belinsky in 1844, “which trembles for its independence at every contact with another nationality.”

“Our self-proclaimed patriots,” he insisted, “do not see in the simplicity of their minds and hearts that, constantly fearing for the Russian nationality, they thereby cruelly insult it ...” “Is it a natural thing that the Russian people ... could lose their national identity?.. Yes, this is the absurdity of absurdities! You can't think of anything worse than that."

Meanwhile, I repeat, our latest purists, disregarding the real facts, demagogically inspire gullible readers that Belinsky did nothing but protest against the “foreignization” of Russian literary speech.

It wasn't. It was, as we see, quite the opposite.

Representatives of the blackest reaction protested against foreign sayings, as evidenced, for example, by such a document as a secret note by the chief of gendarmes, Count Alexei Orlov, presented to the tsar in 1848.

This note about Belinsky and the writers of his direction says that

“...introducing into the Russian language without any need (!) new foreign words, for example, principles, progress, doctrine, humanity etc., they spoil our language and at the same time write obscurely and ambiguously; they talk about modern questions of the West, about “progressive education”, meaning by progress a gradual acquaintance with those ideas that govern the modern life of civilized societies ... but in the younger generation they can settle the thought of the political questions of the West and communism.

Fear of the “political questions” of the revolutionary West, and especially of the “ghost of communism,” which had already begun to “roam Europe,” inspired this defender of the soul-destroying monarchy with a feigned concern for the purity of the language.

There can be no doubt that Bulgarin and his entire clique, all those Grechs, Mezheviches, Brants, screamed in dozens of articles about polluting the language with foreigners on the direct and indirect instructions of the Okhrana.

Belinsky was fully aware of what class interests were hidden under their concern for the purity of the language, and, despite censorship slingshots, he loudly denounced the hypocrites.

“There is still,” he wrote, “a special kind of enemies of “progress” - these are people who feel the stronger hatred for this word, the better they understand its meaning and meaning. Here hatred is not actually for the word, but for the idea that it expresses.

And also to the people of that social formation, which is the bearer of this idea.

Therefore, one cannot say that foreign words are always, in all cases, bad or always, in all cases, good. The question of them cannot be resolved in isolation, in isolation from history, from the circumstances of place and time, since much here is determined primarily by the political tendencies of a given era.

At one time, Belinsky even allowed great excesses in this area, he was so impatient to introduce the educated part of Russian society as soon as possible to the advanced philosophical and journalistic vocabulary.

He himself admitted more than once that his predilection for foreign words was sometimes too great. Back in 1840, in a letter to Botkin, he argued that “concreteness And reflections, (highlighted by me. - K.Ch.) are excluded (from his journal.- K.Ch. ) decisively, except for scholarly articles” .

But he could not stand the vow for a long time and again returned to the same vocabulary, consoling himself with the fact that "the reading public" is already getting used to the news (that is, to his favorite philosophical and political terms. - K.Ch. ), and what seemed wild to her becomes already ordinary ”(that is, it is introduced into the consciousness of progressive youth, is part of its vocabulary. - K.Ch. ) .

Here it would be appropriate for a moment to return to the verdict that, as we saw, Prince Peter Vyazemsky pronounced two very good words: talented And mediocre.

Prince Vyazemsky called these words areal, borrowed from the jargon of the labazniks.

Meanwhile, it is even impossible to imagine that in the warehouses, where they talked most of all about money, goods, poods and bags, such concepts as talent And mediocrity, Petersburg and Moscow squares, with their janitors, cab drivers, soldiers, and watchmen, also did not have the need to divide their passers-by and travelers into talented And mediocre.

But the thought of Prince Vyazemsky is still understandable. He wanted to say that these words are grassroots, plebeian, that they entered literature, so to speak, from the back door, from the hated by him, Prince Vyazemsky, democratic, raznochinki milieu.

For the protector of the noble monarchy, these words are disgusting precisely because they arose in the enemy camp. For this reason, and only for this reason, they seem to him slang, street, unworthy to enter the literary language. The enemy camp for Prince Vyazemsky was the literary school, headed at that time by Belinsky, to whom he treated with unquenchable malice until the end of his life, quite rightly considering him a “barricade”.

“Belinsky,” he later said, “was nothing more than a literary rebel who, for lack of space for us to rebel in the square, rebelled in magazines.”

This was the main reason for Vyazemsky's hatred of the great critic's neologisms.

Our current purists like to quote Belinsky's lines, written by him shortly before his death:

“There is no doubt that the desire to dazzle Russian speech with foreign words without need, without sufficient reason, is contrary to common sense and common taste...”. “To use a foreign word when there is a Russian word equivalent to it means to insult both common sense and common taste.”

At the same time, it is constantly pointed out that Belinsky ardently condemned the use of a foreign word exaggerate and demanded that instead of this the words should be used Russian- exaggerate.

But for some reason, lovers of such quotations are silent about the fact that these quotations were borrowed by them from the very text where Belinsky scoffs at the unsuccessful attempts of the then guardians of the language to Russify foreign words, replacing the pavement is a trample, egoism is a quality, a fact is a way of life, an instinct is a wake-up call etc.

These falsifiers of Belinsky's opinions equally prefer to hide how caustically he ridiculed those zealots of the Russian word who demanded that diamonds be called sparkling, billiards - ball-ball, archipelago - multi-island, figure - convoluted, individual - indivisible, philosophy - wisdom .

Belinsky was well aware of the uselessness and hopelessness of such attempts to Russify these familiar words, which had long since become Russian.

“Whatever the word,” he repeated more than once, “his own or someone else’s, as long as it expresses the thought contained in it, and if someone else’s expresses it better than his own, give someone else’s, and take yours to the pantry of old trash.”

As you can see, this is in no way similar to those narrow, one-sided thoughts that other modern authors attribute to Belinsky.

Since writers from the reactionary camp constantly shouted that foreign vocabulary was allegedly inaccessible to ordinary people, Belinsky, in a brilliant polemic with them, dispelled their hypocritical arguments, recalling that even dark serfs perfectly understand such alien, alien words as passport, apartment, soldier, coachman, painter, banknote, receipt, province, factory, which have become so Russified that they are felt as more Russian than purely Russian words. For example, Belinsky pointed out, the original Russian word driver seems to the Russian commoner much more alien than foreign coachman.

"What's happened diamond or diamond, - every glazier knows this, almost every peasant, but what is sparklers- not a single Russian person knows this. Belinsky's remark about foreign words that seem to us more Russian than Russian words with the same meaning would sound like a paradox to me if I had not had to observe such cases more than once.

Take a word water jet. I read a story in one school where this word occurs twice. Other schoolchildren did not understand what it meant (two even mixed it with a machine gun), but one hastened to explain:

- Water cannon - it is in Russian to say: fountain. They mistook the fountain for a Russian word, and water cannon for someone else.

Or another word: architect. A root old Russian word, tightly fused with a whole family of the same: building, creator, creator, builder etc. .

But (this was in the 1920s) I was walking along the street of Architect Rossi in Leningrad and I heard how one of the young seasonal workers asked another, older: what kind of architect?

- Architect, - he thought, - this is in Russian to say: architect.

It was clear that the Russian architect sounds foreign to both of them, and foreign (with a Greek root, with a Latin ending) architect perceived as Russian.

And then I remembered that in childhood I explained the word to myself in exactly the same way sculptor: I was sure that it was foreign and that in translation into Russian it means sculptor.

This would not have upset the great critic in the least, for he did not tire of repeating:

“What a deed, what and whose word, if only it faithfully conveyed the concept contained in it! Of two similar words, foreign and native, the best is the one that more accurately expresses uplift. “It’s good,” he explained, “when a foreign concept is itself translated by a Russian word, and this word, so to speak, is accepted by itself: then it would be absurd to introduce a foreign word. But the creator and ruler of the language is the people, society: what is accepted by them is certainly good.

Thus, to say that Belinsky always and everywhere advocated the expulsion of foreign words from Russian speech means knowingly lying, because both in theory and in his own writing practice He most often he acted as an ardent supporter of expanding the vocabulary of Russian science, journalism, philosophy, criticism with new terms, among which there were many foreign ones.

But to portray him as a reckless adherent of the “Western” vocabulary is also in no way possible.

That would be an even worse lie, because with all its attraction to international words, without which it would be unthinkable for our young democracy to join the cutting edge ideas European culture, Belinsky lovingly and carefully guarded the Russian language from borrowings alien to popular taste.

In his penetrating linguistics, developed by him with amazing subtlety, which is a harmonious system of ideas, what is most striking is the “unity of opposites”, the unity of two seemingly incompatible tendencies, which constitutes the very essence of his dialectical thought.

Belinsky never allowed any one-sided limitations in his works on Russian philology.

That is why the wide hospitality extended by him to foreign words is valuable to us, because he himself was, in all his mental make-up, one of the “most Russian people” that the history of our literature has ever known. No wonder Turgenev, remembering him, so strongly emphasizes this trait in him.

“His whole habit,” Turgenev reports, “was purely Russian, Moscow ... He stood close to the core of his people with his whole being ... Yes, he felt the Russian essence like no one else. No one had a more sensitive ear; no one felt more vividly the harmony and beauty of our language.”

Further, Turgenev speaks of that “Russian stream” that beat in the whole being of the famous critic, about how great “understanding and flair for everything Russian” was in him, and then after a few pages he repeats again and again that Belinsky was “completely Russian man”, that “the good of the motherland, its greatness, its glory aroused deep and strong responses in his heart”.

Let all this serve as a lesson to our modern purists, who, even in the most moderate attraction to foreign words, see almost a betrayal of Russia and in their hearty simplicity believe that Russian Soviet patriotism is incompatible with the adoption of foreign words.

In addition, we must constantly take into account which reader this or that literary speech is addressed to, what is his mental level, what is the degree of his development, education, and erudition. This - to a large extent - solves the question of the admissibility of foreign speeches in a particular era.

Petrashevsky, Belinsky and Herzen (in the 1940s) turned exclusively to the intelligentsia: to young people of various ranks, to advanced noblemen, students, officers, and officials. Dreaming of the times when a man

Nekrasov was well aware that this “desired time” would not come very soon. And Belinsky, in his wildest dreams, of course, did not even dare to hope that he would have the good fortune to address the people directly.

If he had lived to this happiness, he would certainly have expelled many foreign terms from his dictionary and would have spoken in that clear, simple, understandable language for everyone, which was owned with such unsurpassed skill by the greatest people's tribune - V.I. Lenin.

Of course, V.I. Lenin would not have been the leader of millions if he had not possessed the genius ability to address the masses with the simplest speech. But Lenin, in those theoretical, scientific and philosophical works that were addressed not to the general readership, but to educated, enlightened readers, used special scientific and philosophical terms that were accessible at that time only to a narrow circle of people.

Such, for example, is his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, which is directed against the reactionary theory of the Russian Machists.

True, some of the terms that occur in it were alien to his vocabulary, and he had to deal with them only because they were adopted by the enemy camp: such empiriomonism, panpsychism, panmaterialism, transcenius etc. But even where V.I. Lenin speaks for himself, he does not avoid such expressions as subjective idealism, epistemological scholasticism, immanent school etc. . This vocabulary was quite accessible to the qualified circle of readers to whom Lenin addressed with his philosophical work.

Here, I repeat, the whole point is precisely to whom, to what audience the author is addressing.

In the famous pamphlet “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”, Lenin already on the first pages uses such words as discredit, sovereign, announcement, prevail, qualify, euphemistically, hypertrophy of centralism, etc. .

Since the article was intended mainly for a reader with a high educational qualification, Lenin abundantly introduced into its text, without any translation into Russian, even such words as quasi, a priori, credo, versumpft, pruderie, Zwischenruf, ipso facto.

If Lenin's audience was a million-strong - at that time dark, backward, illiterate (or semi-literate) - rural Rus', the vocabulary of Lenin's language was completely different, although the language itself remained the same - Lenin's "alarm" language. Of course, all obscure words were expelled from it, it became the highest example of simplicity and transparency, ideally accessible to all - even bypassed by culture - minds. Hence the incessant demands of Vladimir Ilyich to "propagandists and agitators":

to say “without book words, simply, humanly”,
to speak with the peasants "not in a bookish way, but in a language understandable to a peasant",
“It is necessary to write for the masses,” he repeated, “without such new terms that require special explanation,” and so on. etc.
“The use of foreign words unnecessarily embitters (because it makes it difficult for us to influence the masses).”

It was precisely for the sake of the greatest influence on the masses that Lenin tirelessly, persistently demanded that in all appeals to the peasants, the Red Army soldiers, the “city, factory “street” sound artless, free from any pompous frills, the correct Russian language.

In the first State Duma, a peasant deputy used the foreign word "prerogatives", mistakenly believing that it meant "slingshots". Lenin reacted to this mistake without any anger. “The mistake was all the more forgivable,” he remarked, “that various “prerogatives” ... are in fact slingshots for Russian life.” But with the greatest indignation, Vladimir Ilyich ridiculed the Duma Octobrist Lutz, who, wanting to show off a foreign phrase, illiterately used the verb wake up. wake up(from French bude) means to sulk, to be angry. But Lutz (like many ignoramuses) imagined that it meant to excite, stir up, wake up, and blurted out in front of all the deputies that the Bolsheviks were striving wake up(!) the feelings of the workers.

This was in 1913. Lenin then rebelled against this flagrant illiteracy. And again I remembered it already in Soviet times - in the article “On the Cleansing of the Russian Language”.

“To adopt French-Nizhny Novgorod usage means to adopt the worst from the worst representatives of the Russian landlord class, who studied French, but, firstly, did not finish their studies, and, secondly, distorted the Russian language.”

Finding in one of the articles the expression sensationalist phenomenalism, Lenin wrote in the margin: "Ek him!" .

And when on the next page Lenin met "metaphenomenalistic" he wrote in the margin: “Ugh!” . In a detailed article by B.V. Yakovlev “Classics of Marxism-Leninism on Language and Style” provides numerous examples of the magnificent resourcefulness of V.I. Lenin replaced in his own and other people's manuscripts foreign words and expressions with Russian ones.

For example, brottering he replaced equestrianism, projecting - idle thought, flirting - flirting, a characteristic incident - an instructive incident.

Instead of: the crowd improvised - the crowd composed without any preparation.

Instead of: does not make illusions - is not afraid to face the truth.

Instead of: quasi parliamentary-toy parliamentary.

Sometimes he translated one foreign word into three or four Russians: writing the word liquidate, he put in brackets: e. dissolve, destroy, cancel, stop” .

“Why say “defects,” he was indignant, “when you can say shortcomings, or shortcomings, or gaps.”

The French proverb: "Les beaux esprits se rencontrent" was transmitted by the literalists as follows: "Smart people often meet with thoughts." Lenin, having reproduced this proverb in the original, immediately gave it a Russian national character:

- "Your reluctant brother."

And again, in another essay:

- "Birds of a feather flock together" .

Another French proverb: "A la guerre comme a la guerre" - was often conveyed by a phrase meaningless to the Russian ear: "In war as in war." And it was necessary to be imbued with the spirit of one's own language to such an extent, as Vladimir Ilyich was imbued with, in order, preserving the wingedness of the French text, to give the following translation of this phrase:

- "If there is a war, then in a military way."

Or. in the other place:

- “If you fight, then in a military way!” .

Severely condemning unnecessary foreign vocabulary, inaccessible to a wide section of readers, Lenin, naturally, sought to establish in the everyday life of the working masses the Russian party terms created by the Russian folk tradition.

More than once he expressed his joy that the purely Russian word "Council", which had become part of the world vocabulary, had become the main defining term for the new system.

“Everywhere in the world,” he wrote, “the word “Soviet” has become not only understandable, has become popular, has become a favorite for workers, for all working people.”

Russian word cell introduced as a party term by Lenin in 1911.

“A word that expresses well the idea that external conditions prescribe small, very flexible groups, circles and organizations.”

Now this primordially Russian word has entered, precisely as a party term, into Tatar, Tajik, Mari, Bashkir, and many other languages of the multilingual Soviet people.

When in 1917 one of the Petrograd newspapers applied the old Russian word to bankers and other exploiters parasites, Lenin met him very sympathetically:

“A surprisingly good word fell under the pen - as an exception - to the editors of Izvestia,” he wrote.

With ardent approval he reacted to such truly Russian words as devastation, devastation, each time noting their expressiveness, clarity and accuracy.

Even in his scientific and philosophical works, replete with foreign language terms, you all the time feel the Russian language element, which now and then breaks through with these words: “Wise it would be...”, “Mach on this point crazy...”, “Read, read and rewrite - rewrote, but what’s what, they didn’t understand”, “A well-known case: what you want, you believe it” etc. (Italics mine. - K.Ch. ).

There are many such examples, and it would never occur to anyone to ask which of these two is so various styles more valuable, more expedient, higher, because both are excellent.

Everyone who, without any prejudice, studies the typical features of Lenin's vocabulary, will certainly come to the conclusion that Lenin strictly divided the foreign words that make up Russian speech into appropriate and inappropriate, depending on who, to what audience, this speech was addressed. .

In some cases, his vocabulary quite allowed such, for example, expressions as analysis of fundamental trends in orthodoxy- four foreign words in a row! - and in others it is even a word flirting replaced by a lighter word and considered it necessary to rebel against the word defects, demanding that speakers addressing the masses replace it with the Russian synonym .

In general, this is an important topic for language learners V.I. Lenin: four varieties of Lenin's style, in accordance with the four categories of readers (or listeners) to whom he addressed with his articles, speeches and books. At first

1) a relatively small group of party intellectuals, then
2) the broadest masses of Russia, then
3) all the peoples of the world.

Of course, “first” and “later” are very conditional, since there were years when V.I. Lenin addressed all three addressees in turn, depending on which the stylistic shades of his oral and printed speeches changed each time.

There was also a fourth addressee - himself. I mean those cases when he wrote for himself (see, for example, the so-called "Philosophical Notebooks"). There he freely used foreign vocabulary: “discrete reality” (58), “Hegel... antiquated"(226), etc. (italics mine. - K.Ch. ).

“Language is like clothes,” says an English linguist. And indeed, they don’t go skiing in a tailcoat. No one will show up to a formal ball dressed in a filthy jacket, which is quite good for menial work in the garden.

From which, again, it follows that we never have the right to judge the value of this or that word, this or that turnover chokh and unfounded, without connection with other elements of this text. Pushkin very rightly says about this:

“True taste does not consist in the unconscious rejection of such and such a word, such and such a turn, but in a sense of proportion and conformity.”

People, however, deprived of taste and linguistic sense, always imagine that they can judge individual words in all cases, regardless of the role that these words are called upon to play in a given text. It seems to them, for example, that the struggle for the purity of the language consists in the “unaccountable rejection” of all foreign speeches just because they are foreign. IN AND. Such an "unaccountable rejection" was, as we can see, unusual for Lenin.

Those who claim that he always and everywhere, resolutely under all circumstances, expelled from his books and articles words borrowed from foreign languages, deliberately deviate from the truth in favor of previously invented schemes.

And should we really forget that, speaking about the undesirability of tricky terms and incomprehensible sayings, V.I. Lenin used an optimistic word more.

“Social] democrats,” he wrote, “should be able to speak simply and clearly, in a language accessible to the masses, decisively throwing away the heavy artillery of tricky terms, foreign words, memorized, ready, but incomprehensible more (underlined by me. - K.Ch. ) mass, unfamiliar to her slogans, definitions, conclusions.

If it says: more, means there is confidence that this phenomenon is temporary, that more the incomprehensible will someday become understandable.

Since this more more than half a century has passed: the lines quoted were written in 1906. Five generations have already changed, and today's youth - the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those to whom Lenin addressed - how different it is from before!

The current one cannot even imagine in what a terrible, hopeless darkness the Russian people were then.

Universal literacy, compulsory, free education in schools - they did not even dare to dream about it then. And thousands of universities, and cinema, and television, and radio, and millions of copies of central, republican, regional newspapers, and palaces of culture, and libraries, and reading huts, and foreign languages in every school, and institutes of foreign languages - no, This "more" left far behind, and the modern reader, on whose education the state spends innumerable sums, does not even have the right to claim to be spoken to like a minor, in some kind of simplified, facilitated, impoverished language, free from any accretions of the world culture.

The terms that were “tricky” for the broad masses of the people at that distant time have now entered into the everyday life of each of the Soviet people who have reached the average cultural level, it is not for nothing that in all universities the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism are studied in such detail, requiring from the reader not a passing acquaintance with foreign words and “tricky” terms.

Dogmatists, however, in quoting this quotation, are constantly silent about the fact that it refers to an ancient era, and apply it to the current generation of Soviet people. And involuntarily, the words of E. Kazakevich are recalled:

“There is nothing more contradictory and insidious if the quoting person is unable to take into account the changeability of the times when this or that quotation appeared in the light of day ... Quote! What kind of troubles are you capable of doing as an instrument of the dogmatic mind.

So, none of us can say that he is for or against these words. In other cases for, in other cases against. You can't ignore the context. It all depends on where, when, under what circumstances and with what interlocutor our literary conversation is being conducted.

Of course, I am not talking about ignorant people who use foreign words at random, at random, without any sense, without any need. They are worthy of ridicule and contempt, but it is impossible to take them into account. Our judgments about foreign words cannot be influenced by such deformities:

Comrade Ivanov with apogee told.

He spoke with impromptu.

He abstracted from the Komsomol environment.

He bred here metaphysics that the plan is unrealistic.

Since I started working, the club has been brought to the highest vacuum.

Not figure documents!

I don't touch her, but she touches me ignores And ignores.

She has a husband, you know. alligator with more experience (instead of irrigator) .

This, of course, is not about these anecdotal ignoramuses, worthy heirs of that deputy who disgraced himself with the word wake up. Here we are talking about truly cultured, educated people, about their right to widely and freely use all the resources of the language, depending on the circumstances of the place and time.

"Yes, the word analogy,- says an authoritative Soviet scientist, - it is used legally in science, but it is bad if we introduce it into such, for example, a phrase: “Ivan Ivanovich’s apartment has analogy with Pyotr Petrovich’s apartment...” It would hardly occur to anyone to say: “Petya’s voice vibrated from excitement”, although in some areas of science and technology the word vibration, vibrate necessary.

So the question of the lexical norms of the use of foreign words is associated with the question of the stylistic norms of their use, that is, with the question of in which particular style of the literary language it is expedient and necessary to apply this or that “barbarism”.

Those readers who are at least partially familiar with my works on the history and theory of literature could not (I hope) fail to notice that I have never loaded a single article of mine with the ponderous ballast of professorial pseudo-scholarship. Whatever their shortcomings, they all have free breathing, simple spoken language. And as a writer of nursery rhymes, by my very profession, I gravitate towards purism.

But the strongest indignation arouses in me those tartuffes of both sexes who, playing on the patriotic feelings of the reader, stubbornly inspire him with the help of juggling quotations, as if the whole trouble of the Russian language is in a foreign language, as if Lenin and Belinsky, and all our great people at all times always harbored nothing but hatred for her. Even Peter I, who planted in Russia such words as battle, victoria, fortecia, politeness, assembly, imperium etc., they even depict him, on the basis of some random quote, as a severe enemy of this vocabulary!

And they have a special technique with which they win many cheap victories. Should someone say or write, well, at least french press, and they angrily ask: why do we need this foreign word, if it exists domestic word seal? And for what fraud, if exists trick? All those angry “why?” designed for the simpletons and the ignorant. For here, too, everything depends on the circumstances of place and time. Only simpletons and ignoramuses can be forced to think that the Russian language suffers even the slightest damage because, along with the word Universe it exists space, along with dancing - dancing, along with muscles, muscles along with sympathy - sympathy, along with questions, problems along with imagination, fantasy along with conjecture-hypothesis, along with stripe - zone, along with dispute - dispute, along with price index.-price list .

One must be a hopeless prude to demand the expulsion of such synonyms, which enrich our language.

It is remarkable that the Russian people, guided by their subtle sense of language, often reject the existing Russian word and replace it with a foreign one. At one time, for example, it seemed that the word film reel. But three years passed, and this word was supplanted by the term movie .

And I don’t grieve in the least about what we are saying (contrary to Shishkov and Dahl): camp, but not camp, egoist, but not nurse, midwife, but not midwife, watercolor, but not water paint, ecliptic, but not sunway route, but not travel guide, proofreader, but not editor, etc.

The question of which of the synonyms should be introduced into our speech is decided each time in a different way: as the sense of style, the flair of the language, will tell us. It's all about "proportionality and conformity."

It would be another matter if the Russian people were enslaved by foreigners. Defending his national identity, he would boycott every foreign word imposed on him by the oppressors, as did, for example, the Hungarian people, who experienced the severity of the Austrian yoke. There would be great political sense in this boycott. Here would be one of the forms of struggle with the hated rapist. But after all, our mighty country is not conquered by foreigners. Our national pride does not suffer any infringement because cosmonauts are called cosmonauts in our country, especially since it was in our country that for the first time in the history of the world this word began to denote not a dream, but a living reality.

A. F. Efremov, which means price).

68. The last example is borrowed from the article by V. F. Altaiskaya “Transitional phenomena in the vocabulary of the Russian language of the post-October period”. “Russian language at school”, 1960, No. 5, p. 18.