Is pic related what reading Goethe in translation is like...

Is pic related what reading Goethe in translation is like? Or do they Russians just have a low standard for 'masterpiece'?

pushkin was a nigger

_d

Pushkin is pointless to read in translation. His use of language is magnificent and this is the primary thing that he is admired and praised for.

What about all the Russian greats after him?
I'll never learn based cyka language

Tolstoi and Dosty are a must. Even if you csnt get arsed to learn russian

Obviously yes. Just don't do poetry. Le translation meme is absolutely correct for poetry. Pushkin's prose is actually not bad too - try his short stories and Queen of Spades.

>learning Russian
Why would you do that? It's not a beautiful language.

rrreeeeeeeee
It's an ugly language and that's the reason our poetry is beautiful - takes effort but the end result is worth it. It's the Gentoo of languages.

I read exactly that edition and had a great time. I’m sure the original is impossible to perfectly convey, but the translation is still well worth it. Some of my favorite passages:

But even friendships like our heroes’
Exist no more; for we’ve outgrown
All sentiments and deem men zeros—
Except of course ourselves alone.
We all take on Napoleon’s features,
And millions of our fellow creatures
Are nothing more to us than tools…
Since feelings are for freaks and fools.
Eugene, of course, had keen perceptions
And on the whole despised mankind.
Yet wasn’t, like so many, blind;
And since each rule permits exceptions,
He did respect a noble few,
And, cold himself, gave warmth its due.

Well, here’s my view of close relations:
They’re people whom we’re bound to prize,
To honour, love, and idolize,
And, following the old tradition,
To visit come the Christmas feast,
Or send a wish by mail at least;
All other days they’ve our permission
To quite forget us, if they please—
So grant them, God, long life and ease!

It may be he was born to fire
The world with good, or earn at least
A gloried name; his silenced lyre
Might well have raised, before it ceased,
A call to ring throughout the ages.
Perhaps, upon the world’s great stages,
He might have scaled a lofty height.
His martyred shade, condemned to night,
Perhaps has carried off forever
Some sacred truth, a living word,
Now doomed by death to pass unheard;
And in the tomb his shade shall never
Receive our race’s hymns of praise,
Nor hear the ages bless his days.
——
Or maybe he was merely fated
To live amid the common tide;
And as his years of youth abated,
The flame within him would have died.

B-but Russian is my native language. Currently learning Italian and it sounds far more pleasing. To each his own, I guess.

>Currently learning Italian
Mio negro, keep it up.

I'm trying, user. Do Italians care much for your pronunciation when you talk to them?

Urban Italians are so used to foreigners that they don't even notice accents anymore, rural Italians can't speak Italian themselves and will look you badly if you speak anything other that their particular local dialect. I'd say no, as long as you don't speak dindu you'll be fine. If you're Russian we'll probably mistake you for a Romanian.

>It's an ugly language
>implying
It's pretty nice actually. People just tend to compare everything with romance languages which is a skewed view.

It's not "ugly" at all, it just lacks melody and rhythm. It's also pretty useless if you are not going to live in Russia/Ukraine/Belarus. Learning it just for the sake of reading Russian classics must be tough, it's not the easiest language.

>rural Italians can't speak Italian themselves
i giggled

Isn't it kind of the lingua franca for Slavs tho? Or that's no longer true since the fall of the soviets?
Russian really can sound beautiful. Russian films are great.
Also, listen to some French, they are monotonous as hell

I've been to Calabria last year. People talked to me even though I couldn't understand a word.

does italy not have a standardized form of the language? in the netherlands we have various dialects as well, but in the rural areas it is mainly the accent that differs

Yes, it used to be lingua franca for Slavs and other soviet nations (Georgia, Azerbijan, Armenia and so on). Eastern Germans, Hungarians, Poles also used to learn it at school. Ukrainians and Belarussians still speak Russian as a first language, as for Bulgarians, Armenians, Poles etc., few people under 35 speak descent Russian.

I guess they do, it's not like Spanish with its many dialects. There are differences between north and south.

>listen to some French, they are monotonous as hell

>does italy not have a standardized form of the language?
Of course we do.
>There are differences between north and south
Nigga, there are differences between every single little town you can find. An example: the city I went to high school in had a different variation of the same dialect (ciociaro) of my hometown and they are 20 minutes away.

>Nigga
Stop. This is the worst meme to come out of america

ok sry just wanted the emphatic effect

Trust me that translation is already one of the best

riverrun, my asshole snapped forward with a sickening squelch. from it, a glistening, crimson, fleshy pipe oozing a brownish-green liquid, like watery sewage-paste, highlighted by the scarletness of my prolapsed rectum. my gay friend Rascario's tongue flicked up and down the floppy appendage, circling around the descended hole and lightly pushing the pink organ inside the extraordinarily loose orifice, sucking it with a slurping echo the salty runaway juices.