08 May 2009

Tolstoi

I thought I'd post something I can't read:

«Hу, — думают, — команда!
Здесь ногу сломит чёрт,
Es ist ja eine Schande,
Wir müssen wieder fort».

This stanza is from a poem written by Lev Nikolayevich, Count Tolstoy or, as someone claims, by the other Tolstoi, playwright and novelist Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi.

If anyone knows a translation into English, I would be very grateful. It is frustrating that I cannot read what most likely is a masterpiece by an acknowledged great writer or, if it was Aleksei, then at least an example of macaronic verse, by a similarly famous writer. Albert Casuga says that we might have to wait for our grandchildren to start a generation of truly multilingual readers. I guess I was born too early!

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