igenlode | Entries tagged with russian

The towel-tomatoes have now reached the mystic state of Setting the Second Truss, which means I switch from feeding them with ordinary liquid fertiliser (although I haven't been doing so of late, because they had brand new compost a couple of weeks ago) to specialised tomato feed. I also gave the same dose to the single Roma tomato, although that has only set a single truss level as yet.

(In fact, on a renewed reading of the instructions on the tomato food bottle, I observe that I have actually been doing it wrong for the last few years: the instructions about 'after the setting of the second truss' only state that you should feed at a more frequent interval after that point, not that you should delay feeding until then! You are actually supposed to start to apply the feed after the *first* fruit has set...)

An unexpected connection: while I was listening in a desultory way to a recent TV interview with Venjiamin Smekhov ('Soviet Athos') a name familiar in another context suddenly caught my attention. Smekhov was being asked about his involvement with a rock musical recorded by the group Korol' i Shut, whose (unrelated) "Three Musketeers" song I translated :-)
( Read more... )

( Oliver Reed's careless fencing )

On my second expedition I successfully managed to purchase a new slide buckle of the right size to fit my secondary clothes line, thanks to a very helpful Indian lady whose haberdashery stall turned out to be well-stocked with all sorts of components as well as the glittering sari fabrics and accessories. I tested it out this afternoon on a batch of washing, and it seems to function exactly as effectively as its predecessor (which is to say that it is no longer bar-taut after a few hours when you take the washing down again, but doesn't sag enough to cause a discernable problem while the weight is on it).

( New cycle computer )

( Documentaries in Russian )

What I *haven't* done, having been submerged in documentaries, or at least having had them playing in the background while engaged in other things, is actually finish watching "Twenty Years After", which I have already encountered 'spoilers' for in places ranging from TV Tropes (yes, the Soviet Musketeers have their own TV Tropes page...) to random Aramis fanvids and AU fan-fiction. Although I did, on my first (pedestrian) expedition to try to buy buckles, manage to start that third "Twenty Years After" Porthos-fic of my own...

Apart from anything else I got caught up in rereading the earlier parts of the book in the French version to see what else was missing in terms of detail, which turns out to include little scenes like the one in which d'Artagnan gives Raoul a fencing-lesson during his visit and praises Athos on the boy's swordsmanship (C’est déjà votre main, mon cher Athos, et si c’est votre sang-froid, je n’aurai que des compliments à lui faire) -- this entire conversation being omitted from the English edition, which cuts straight to Mazarin's recall message!

A filk/translation of the ballad that has nothing whatsoever to do with the 'Soviet Musketeers' film, but which has a very catchy chorus that went round and round in my head while I was cycling until it had practically translated itself ;-)
And after that, of course, I had to put sweat and tears into actually translating the verses to go with it...

( Read more... )

YouTube just bestowed upon me a recording of the poem by Venjiamin Smekhov (who played Athos) that showed up in the background soundtrack to one of the many, many Russian-language documentaries I have been watching recently about the making of "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers", the actors involved, and various other subjects ;-) I remember being impressed at the time because it only very gradually started to dawn on me that the voiceover at that point was in poetry: there are precious few people who can 'speak verse' and make it sound so entirely natural that you only realise they are doing it when things keep starting to rhyme! Smekhov in particular really does have a beautiful stage-trained voice, as all the fans (and in Russia there are still a lot of them) kept saying. It's what you would describe as 'Shakespearian' training when talking about English actors, but I don't know what the Russian equivalent would be; whether they actually have classical verse plays, as the French do (Pushkin maybe?)

Anyway, I heard this poem drifting past in the middle of a half-hour documentary and couldn't make out much of it apart from the fact that it probably wasn't entirely serious (and was likely to have been written by Smekhov himself, whom I had heard writes verses), and involved a lot of things 'flying' in all directions, musketeers included :-D And then a couple of weeks later YouTube suddenly decided to bestow on me unprompted a video of Smekhov actually reading it out to his fellow cast-members... *with* on-screen subtitles, so that I could actually interpret what it said.

https://youtube.com/shorts/XYlxuqXFaMY

I finally bit the bullet and decided I really ought to look up the cursive Cyrillic alphabet again so that I can actually write things down in Russian (even if I can't type them). I used to be able to write long essays in this stuff -- I never did get terribly fluent in blind touch-typing in Russian, an absolute requirement since you could switch the computer keyboard layout you were using but not the physical keycaps, but handwriting was rather faster.

Anyway, I found a calligraphy chart and copied it out onto a bit of paper, and apart from a bit of remaining confusion between the cursive 'd' and 'b' (looks rather like an English 'd') and uncertainty about how to form the 'f' (a pretty rare letter, which is probably why it doesn't seem to join or write fluently) -- and an ongoing mental blank as to which way to loop the pen to form the little hitches at the bottom of the 'ts' and 'shch' -- it has mostly come back very quickly :-)

Capitals might be another story, as there are just a few that differ from their minuscule versions, and one doesn't get a lot of practice in them. And of course there is the ancient problem of differentiating the 'i', 'm' and 'l' (exactly the same issue that you get when writing 'm', 'n' and 'u' in a strict italic hand in English calligraphy, and the reason why I was taught to put dashes on my Ms and Ws in German... and still for my own benefit try to do so for the 'T' and 'SH' in Russian!)

( Cyrillic calligraphic chart )
My own handwriting with an ordinary (i.e. non-italic) nib; I can see I'm having trouble joining the 'o' and 'm', and the 'i' and 'ch', while nothing ever does join to a 'b'. Actually, apparently it does in the calligraphic example given, explicitly entitled 'Azbuka' (alphabet) :-p

The actual practice text *blush* consists of what I was reading/looking at last night, which is the YouTube hashtag "trimushkyetyora" (misspelt!), a quotation from a transcript of an interview with the actor who played Soviet Porthos (Valentin Smirnitsky), "I don't like to watch my own films because all I can see is the mistakes", a pretty common sentiment among actors, I think, and (upside down in pencil) an earlier attempt at transcribing a snatch of lyrics from the song I've been translating ;-)

Current Music: Goodnight, Sweetheart

After getting distracted by "Aramis no Bouken" I plunged into the final part of the Soviet "Twenty Years After" with a certain trepidation (oh no, it's going to come to an end) and no idea what to expect, having no memory of this part of the novel at all.
(It does strike me as being slightly worrying that I have now managed to write two fanfics for it without actually having finished the story myself, but unless further big chunks of backstory appear in the remaining section it shouldn't invalidate anything in what I have already written, all of which takes place at an earlier point in the plot than this!)

It looks as if the last part of the serial is going to be all about how the protagonists back in France get themselves out of the political consequences of their actions in England. We saw d'Artagnan and Porthos get arrested at the end of the last episode, and now Aramis and Athos are wondering what became of them. ( Read more... )

Edit: well, that turns out to be almost *all* the remaining chapters of the book (the duel of Aramis and Athos being mixed up with a vast chunk of armies and political manoeuvring in canon). But the book does at least explain why Mazarin is apparently walking around in a greenhouse; d'Artagnan and Porthos are shut up not in a mediaeval tower as shown on screen, but in a pavilion wing in an orangery, and not for months but for a grand total, according to d'Artagnan, of eighty-three hours of frustration ;-)
(And I am also touched to find out that in the book it is Aramis who is outside the walls with horses, whereas I was beginning to fear in the film that he had simply gone to ground to save his own neck as the final survivor...)

Courtesy of Porthos, who reminded me of the Bastion Saint-Gervais, I have found, I think, a better ending for my new Athos-fic -- which, by the by, will have to find a filename, the first one having already been saved under the name of its protagonist as tends to be my habit (my first LND fic is still saved simply as "Raoul" ;-)

Due to having been started on a long coach journey it is written in what is probably my tiniest notebook yet: a little ring-bound pocket pad that is smaller even, I think, than the pocket diary that I took away with me on a Norfolk Broads holiday in July 2016 and in which I wrote "There is no Phantom of the Opera" and "If I were Vicomte" while variously propped up in the polished mahogany of my pre-war berth and writing by the light of the cabin oil-lamps, and wandering up and down the staithe! (With hindsight, that was probably one of my last ever summer holidays...)

I definitely did find that the very small page size made it harder to avoid inadvertent repetition of words and phrases that I'd only just used -- being only able to see one or two sentences back is more of a pain that I had realised, even with constant leafing backwards and forwards through the text, and I can't imagine how people manage on mobile phones. The limited page size may turn out to have had unexpected effects on my paragraph construction, as well, but we shall see once I get a better view of the whole thing. My very rough estimate is that this notepad runs about 100 words/page, which means that the whole story is around 2000-2500 words; neither too short nor too long for a one-shot, which means, I hope, that it's not quite so waffly as I was starting to fear at one point.

( Extremely self-indulgent and not quite canonical )

( Differing characterisation between the two fics set at different dates )

It very belatedly dawned upon me also what Athos means when in the Soviet musical he says to Milady ( d'Artagnan is an honourable gentleman and will yield precedence to a lady )

Oh horror, Mordaunt is still alive... (not -- surely not -- canonical?)

And there is a Part Four to this series, which I had not anticipated, assuming it was only three episodes like the others. Makes sense, as we are very far from being anywhere near the end of the book, although I have absolutely no idea what happens next. The Fronde, presumably.

The book appears to follow Athos and Aramis, while the screen version instead follows the fate of Porthos and d'Artagnan (captured by Jussac, which again is probably not strictly as in the original!), so I can't read up to clarify those events without spoiling myself for future scenes. The comedy stuff with Mazarin and the pigeon post is probably not in there anyway :-p

( Discovered details of the duel with Mordaunt )

( Confusion over Athos' role beneath the scaffold )

Otherwise I got a few more scraps of dialogue, including bits that weren't in the subtitles, or even the novel -- Porthos' reference to being attacked by 400 men at the bastion at La Rochelle -- but I had basically picked up all the plot-important bits on the first time through, and couldn't make out the obscure sections even on repeat.

( The small boat sequence )

Oof -- now compared to that first half, that was intense... ( Read more... )
I do remember the final line from the book: "I have a son, and therefore I wished to live"...

(And the episode is still not over, apparently -- but that's about as much as I can take in one chunk!)

I embarked upon the final episode of "Twenty Years After" (it has just dawned on me that the elegaic title/theme music is in fact a slowed-down version of Nasha chest', which is effectively appropriate!) Again, this section proved unexpectedly easy to understand, even at three a.m. without subtitles or dictionary -- but I'm not sure I would have been able to follow where we'd got to without prior knowledge of the plot, because it did feel very compressed and chunky. ( Oddly lacking dynamic of friendship )

I think what has happened here is that the director has made the decision to focus on Mordaunt's activities -- and that part is effective. The scene where he casually shoots his uncle in the back of the head has a shock value that nothing else does (slightly undermined by the fact that we never see Lord Winter's face and so have no idea of the prisoner's identity until the dialogue reveals it; again, probably a conscious choice to make the act more bewilderingly random). This section is very much about Mordaunt finally discovering the identities of the men he has been hunting, and the resulting threat to their lives....

I think I have finished† my "Three Musketeers"/"Twenty years After" one-shot, after a vast amount of struggle with the end; the final paragraph or two are constituted of about 70% crossing-out, after every sentence I carefully and laboriously formulated in my head turned out to be all wrong when I set it down on the page :-( I think I may still have a rhythm problem with this section, where I seem to have kept repeatedly coming out with similar sentence structures; too many aphorisms, I suspect.

I also appear to have managed to write my first-ever M-rated fan-fiction, in that it goes that little bit further than I think I'd be comfortable giving to a thirteen-year-old, which is the definition of the "Teen" rating. ( The episode of Athos and Madame de Chevreuse )

Possibly the silliest Russian Musketeers ever... (actually made by a Ukrainian studio using Russian actors, in the days before that was considered a significant difference)

Watch on YouTube

Young d'Artagnan comes to Paris to join the Musketeers, only to discover that there is a problem: in this universe, it is well known that the Musketeer regiment only recruits women! But of course he soon runs into three of the best blades in the regiment, and ends up acquiring three cheerfully patronising big sisters (they actually pat him on the head at one point).
Meanwhile there is a problem in the shape of the formidable Madam Richelieu, who intercepts his letters home, criticises their grammar and spelling, and manages to win the diamonds from Buckingham via a game of strip poker :-p Buckingham, meanwhile, appears to spend all his time in the basement experimenting with alchemy...

( Basically a panto version ) Being able to make fun of something without disrespecting it (the three Musketeers are extremely feminine —hence humour when d'Artagnan instinctively attempts to adopt their hip-swinging walk!— but also know exactly how to handle themselves) is a surprisingly rare quality.

I happened to notice another odd inconsistency between the final pages of the English and French versions of "The Three Musketeers". The French version states that à la suite d'un voyage qu'il fit en Touraine, [Athos] quitta aussi la service sous prétexte qu'il venait de recueillir un petit héritage en Rousillon, but my English translation renders this as "after a journey to Rousillon, [Athos] also left the service, under pretext of having succeeded to a small patrimony in the Blaisois". Which is basically the opposite -- and Rousillon is situated nowhere near the Touraine region, so where was Athos going at the time?

( Contradictory texts )

I had always assumed the 'pretext' was the claim of an inheritance and that he was actually returning to take up his true identity in his ancestral estates, but from what is said in "Twenty Years After" (je lui ai substitué la terre de Bragelonne, que je tiens d’héritage, laquelle lui donne le titre de vicomte et dix mille livres de rente), Athos genuinely did inherit this land -- presumably at this date -- and the title belonging to it. Even though he still uses his former title of La Fère, he apparently never returned there.

But while looking (in vain) for clarification on this point I happened to stumble across somebody else's fanfiction page. This turned out to be about a convoluted and ambitious -- although it failed to enthuse me -- epic that I had already seen on AO3, but I was tickled to discover that the authors shared my views on Oliver Reed (although not on Van Heflin, whom I remember finding a conscious disappointment). And not only that, but had actually *heard* of (and loved) the Russian version :-)

( Read more... )

I was amused (and full of admiration) to find this; a fully-rhymed -- and apparently sung by the translator in person -- English translation of the 'Soviet Musketeers theme song'.

( Read more... )

( French version )

( A Russian folk-rock ballad )

I acquired a new 'large water-carrier' to replace the broken one, from the usual source (other people's recycling put out for collection). ( Read more... )

Finished watching (for the first time, without subtitles) the rest of the second episode of "Twenty Years Later", after watching the beginning of this episode for the second time.

Mordaunt *bombs* Athos's *house*? (with a barrel of gunpowder delivered as wine) :-O
I do not remember that...

I strongly suspect that the scene between Porthos, d'Artagnan and Jussac (see, I guessed they were going to bring him back :-p) is not going to be found anywhere in the book, which is unfortunate, since the repartee there was one of the bits I found very hard to follow. Part of the problem is that Boyarsky's voice has become hoarse over the course of twenty years -- twenty years' heavy smoking and drinking, by the sounds of it! -- and the character tends to get worked up and speak quickly and violently, all of which make comprehension a lot harder, just as I always struggled with the gruff 'character' voices in "Sous le signe des Mousquetaires" (Rochefort, Treville). ( Read more... )

I'm still struggling with "Twenty Years After": the film managed to cover a vast chunk of the book in a few scenes, although the adaptation must have been made slightly more tricky by the fact that they had decided to omit both Planchet and Grimaud from the first film and therefore could not use them here, at a point where in the book their roles are actually rather significant! Sadly this means we also miss out on Rochefort escaping and being rescued by Planchet after being wrongfully imprisoned by the Queen -- quite a turn-around for the characters, and a point at which we get to appreciate the reality of the throwaway comment at the end of "The Three Musketeers" about Rochefort and d'Artagnan eventually becoming genuine friends. ( Read more... )

What I did, however, manage to find was the lyrics to the two songs which occur in these first couple of episodes, which enables me finally to understand the context to the intriguing lines of the chorus that I did succeed in catching by ear alone :-)
https://textys.ru/lyrics/12/Mushketery/tekst-pesni-Nasha-chest
(Always tricky, because my keyboard won't let me *type* Cyrillic -- hence the need for a 'real' dictionary! -- but only cut and paste it, which makes searching online very awkward indeed.)

The song about honour (Наша честь) was so catchy that I thought it must be a repeat from the first film, and spent some time going through the various war and friendship songs there trying to identify it in the hopes of locating the lyrics in the subtitled copy! But it isn't; it seems to be a genuine original for this film, and I managed to track it down online.
The translation here is pretty awful so far as I can tell, but it's enough to prompt me through the important bits of vocabulary so that I can more or less parse it on sight myself without the use of the dictionary.( Read more... )
And the other chorus that struck me was the oddly optimistic one that plays as d'Artagnan is saddling up and preparing to ride out in search of his long-lost friends: "И кончится все хорошо". It turns out to be about a guardian angel, and very poetical -- it's not surprising I couldn't make out the context.
"И кони ржут, и кровь рекою льется" -- the horses, of course, are not laughing but neighing, and the blood flows in rivers... but in the end all will be well. The angel does not sleep, and all this will pass -- and in the end all will be well.

( Your top genres were: 24% 'Russian pop', 23% 'Russian chanson', 5% 'classical music', 5% 'New Age music' and 5% 'Russian rock' )

I managed to find a copy of "Twenty Years After" on Project Gutenberg, as I had expected, and read through the first thirteen chapters, which takes us up to the departure from Porthos' house, where the first part of the film leaves off. It turns out that the opening scenes are in fact very much more book-accurate than I had had any idea (I clearly had no recollection of any of that material, including d'Artagnan's relations with his landlady!) -- minus the obligatory tavern brawl, that is, which may not be in the book but is used to set up various elements which are.

I actively recognised a lot of the events and lines of dialogue in the book, even in the middle of the scene with Aramis which was the most obscure (probably because both characters are not only talking politics but being deliberately cagey in what they say to one another...) Which suggests at the least that I was understanding a lot more than I had given myself credit for, even if I couldn't make out at the time what was going on. Rewatching the same material after having read the 'crib' might offer a better chance of making out the actual conversation -- ( Should I read first or watch first? )

( In French or in English )

So what is probably going to happen is that I shall go ahead and watch the next episode 'unspoiled' and struggle to follow the dialogue, then go back and skim-read the online text to establish what I failed to pick up on initially... and then probably go back and watch the Russian version again to try to identify the relevant material. At least for this one there *is* a reasonably close 'crib', unlike the totally off-the-wall and non-canonical antics of "Cardinal Mazarin's Treasure", in which absolutely anything could (and did) transpire :-D

NB Mordaunt (the son of Milady by her second husband) in Twenty Years After is played by the Count of Monte Cristo :-D
(a.k.a. Viktor Avilov, evidently making the most of his sinister looks)
I recognised him almost immediately, whereas I'm not sure I should necessarily have recognised d'Artagnan playing Fernand (a.k.a. Mikhail Boyarsky) if I hadn't been primed to await his appearance!

I had yet another go at the 1920s rhubarb pie that I keep optimistically attempting, and this time I made a full-size one with three sticks of rhubarb and a whole egg, but only the juice of a tiny bargain lemon (about the size of a lime: they were on special offer, and since I mainly use them for salad dressing it seemed a good home for fruit that would otherwise be wasted due to being 'sub-standard'). But I really do think the baking instructions on this one must be wrong.

( Accidental success )

(It wasn't actually pure butter this time round, which might or might not have been significant; in my periodic check on the margarine shelves I discovered that there actually *was* a margarine product that was made of local vegetable oil instead of the ubiquitous cheap (and destructive) imported palm oil, just as they all used to be back before palm oil got pushed as the next big industry ingredient. Flora has rebranded itself as "now free from palm oil" and "made with natural ingredients" (the two are not in any way synonymous; palm oil *is* natural, just as organic food contains 'minerals'!) and I felt it deserved to be rewarded for the effort, so I bought some. ( Read more... )

I was smitten by a sudden active desire to attempt the Soviet Twenty Years After sequel during a spare half-hour, and found to my great relief that I can actually understand it -- I can't make out all the dialogue, and certainly not the song lyrics, but I can understand what is going on in every scene

Unfortunately this isn't the case in the second half of the episode, where I can barely make out anything of d'Artagnan's encounters with Aramis and then Porthos (and if I hadn't managed to catch and recognise the word "Fronde" I should have been even more at sea; I had forgotten that part of the novel altogether). I really do not remember how the book begins, but only that it ends(?) with the execution of Charles I -- and while I know that I have read it and assume that I possess or have inherited that copy, I can't seem to lay my hands on it anywhere. Although during my search I did manage to re-locate the missing copy of "The Vicomte de Bragelonne", which to my annoyance had become detached from "Louise de la Vallière" and "The Man in the Iron Mask" at some point...

I suppose I shall have to find an electronic copy of "Twenty Years After" somewhere on the Internet in order to have any chance of understanding the discussions taking place, which I assume to be political.( Read more... )

I was smitten by a sudden active desire to attempt the Soviet Twenty Years After sequel during a spare half-hour, and found to my great relief that I can actually understand it -- I can't make out all the dialogue, and certainly not the song lyrics, but I can understand what is going on in every scene, and in fact rather more clearly than I could in the case of my first hearing of the fourth sequel :-)
Possibly because there hasn't been quite so much uncanonical activity in between, and there are fewer characters to deal with -- but I frankly can't remember what canonically happens at the start of Dumas "Twenty Years After", save that I'm pretty sure it doesn't involve d'Artagnan getting into a tavern brawl after overhearing talk of someone wanting to kill "d'Herblay" (upon which he conveniently ejaculates "Aramis!" for the benefit of the audience, since that name was not mentioned anywhere in the original film ;-)( Read more... )

( Swede and Apple Bake )

( Brown Bread Mist )

I finished watching The prisoner of the Chateau d'If, and did finally feel something (and there were a couple of songs that I actually liked, though I'm not sure why there were any songs in it at all, as this isn't a musical and there were only a handful of random songs at wide intervals throughout). The reason why there seemed to be "an awful lot of plot to be covered in the final episode" turns out to be that it is much longer than the other two, which are about 65 minutes each while this one runs about ninety minutes...

Even so it still seems quite rushed, and I don't see the point of including such characters as Valentine de Villefort and Maximilian Morrel when the subplot involving them has been entirely removed (also an issue, as I recall, with the Robert Donat version!) I was able to follow more of what was going on in this episode thanks mainly to my familiarity with the original plot, although where departures from this took place I was quickly confused. ( Read more... )

( Soviet Musketeers music )

I watched the first episode of the BBC's new drama "This City is Ours", mainly because it *was* the first episode and I often miss the beginnings of things and then have no interest in watching the remainder. But I shan't be bothering with any further episodes, I'm afraid. ( Read more... )

The second half/series of Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires was actually very intriguing as a set-up, because since they had (like the BBC "Musketeers") abandoned canon and were apparently writing their own material using the established characters and setting, pretty much anything was up for grabs and you couldn't tell which way the story was going to come out. ( Read more... )
At least d'Artagnan has finally confessed to lying to his friends about Milady's supposed death (although Athos nobly points out that, having, as I had suspected, guessed the truth some time previously, the fault was as much his in not speaking out earlier; even though he doesn't share the background of Dumas' character, this animated version of Athos is actually one of the few who looks and feels 'right' to me)

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Igenlode Wordsmith

Entries tagged with russian

The second truss / Sweeney Todd

New acquisitions

Song of the Musketeers (Korol' i Shut)

Soviet Athos verses

Relearning my handwritten Cyrillic

Twenty Years After: it really is the beginning of the final episode this time

Very small pages

Twenty Years After, Episode Three, conclusion

Twenty Years After, Episode Three, still not finished

Approaching the end

Possibly the silliest Russian Musketeers ever

Rival versions

The Musketeers' Song (Soviet Songs in English)

New material acquired

Song texts

Using a Crib

Rhubarb pie -- and Mordaunt

...or not.

I Can Do It!

Screen update