Listening to Pushkin...
Sep. 26th, 2008 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpOne of the telltales that eventually give me away when I speak Russian is a tendency to occasionally misplace the stress in a word, and there's really nothing you can do to correct that, short of really immersing yourself in the language.
Basically, my approach involves running one's mouth as much as possible (now there's an approach!) so that the mouth muscles develop a "memory," similar to the way one masters any physical skill, such as driving a car or playing a piano. I've noticed, in fact, that the longer I'm "in country," the better I speak (and conversely, the longer I don't speak, the more I backslide).
Which is why on the way home from Kazakhstan, I picked up a CD of Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin read out loud and sold as a set of MP3 files. What is particularly cool about Onegin (besides being one of the - if not the - most important works of the most famous name in Russian literature) is that it's a novel written in iambic tetrameter. Each stanza follows a rhyme scheme "patterned on a sonnet " (to quote Vladimir Nabokov) that goes “aBaBccDDeFFeGG,” where lower case letters represent "feminine" rhymes and upper case letters represent "masculine" rhymes.
That means one can read the text and figure out where the stresses are, because they pretty much have to follow the pattern, as in:
I could, I suppose, print out a copy of the text that can be found on the Internet, and follow along that way, but I think I'll wait until I get to New York and crack open one of the volumes of Pushkin there, and simply immerse myself in the music for now.
Cheers...
Background:
A feminine rhyme matches two or more syllables, as in:
Basically, my approach involves running one's mouth as much as possible (now there's an approach!) so that the mouth muscles develop a "memory," similar to the way one masters any physical skill, such as driving a car or playing a piano. I've noticed, in fact, that the longer I'm "in country," the better I speak (and conversely, the longer I don't speak, the more I backslide).
Which is why on the way home from Kazakhstan, I picked up a CD of Alexander Pushkin's Eugene Onegin read out loud and sold as a set of MP3 files. What is particularly cool about Onegin (besides being one of the - if not the - most important works of the most famous name in Russian literature) is that it's a novel written in iambic tetrameter. Each stanza follows a rhyme scheme "patterned on a sonnet " (to quote Vladimir Nabokov) that goes “aBaBccDDeFFeGG,” where lower case letters represent "feminine" rhymes and upper case letters represent "masculine" rhymes.
That means one can read the text and figure out where the stresses are, because they pretty much have to follow the pattern, as in:
«Мой дяда самых честных правил,If you don't speak Russian, this likely makes very little sense to you, but if you want to hear what I mean, listen to this mp3 that I recorded of myself reading this first stanza of Canto 1.
Когда не в шутку занемог
Он уважать себя заставил
И лучше выдумать не мог
Его пример другим наука;
Но, боже мой, какая скука
С больным сидеть и день и ночь,
Не отходя ни шагу прочь!
Какое низкое коварство
Полуживого забавлять,
Ему подушки поправлять,
Печально подносить лекарство,
Вздыхать и думать про себя:
Когда же черт возьмет тебя!»
I could, I suppose, print out a copy of the text that can be found on the Internet, and follow along that way, but I think I'll wait until I get to New York and crack open one of the volumes of Pushkin there, and simply immerse myself in the music for now.
Cheers...
Background:
A feminine rhyme matches two or more syllables, as in:
There once were two ladies from Birmingham,A masculine rhyme involves a single stressed syllable, as in:
And this is a story concerning 'em
- limerick
I find no peace in paint or type.Parker's lines, by the way, are also examples of iambic tetrameter!
My world is but a lot of tripe.
- D. Parker
