Hi, Rachel,
Thank you very much for mentioning Antonio Damasio whose books make really
a very interesting reading. I also haven't read his last one, but I read
many refferences to it and they are very contrudictory. his understanding
of many things is close to mine and I'm looking forward to read his new
book.
I don't think that Americans have no "dusha", but I agree that they have a
different "sense of self". And I think everybody has a peculiar sence of
self to some extend, only cultural differences make this differencies much
deeper.
Anna Wierzbicka in her article gives a linguistic semantic analisys of
those notions and she refers much to literature and high poetry. This is
only one side of the moon. And the back side is what psycholinguists would
study as an individual meaning of the word/ here dusha will be paralleled
with character, personality and in some contexts will nave even negative
implications: in real life situations a man is supposed to have no dusha
when he is at work ( in the meaning that one should be deprived of
emotions) and etc.
Funny enough that Mike's wife calls Russian thongs she is displeased with.
Tatiana
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От: Rachel Heckert <heckertkrs@juno.com>
Кому: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Тема: Re: Tutchev in English
Дата: 2 марта 2000 г. 6:32
Tatiana,
You are absolutely right about "dusha - soul" (Russian) and "mind"
(English) not being the same thing. Anna Wierzbicka wrote a very
revealing piece about how our ideas about "person" are socially
constructed, and points out that the Anglo-American idea of "mind" is not
only peculiar to English-speakers, but is basically a development of the
last two centuries. (She also talks about French "ame" and German "seele
(mistranslation of which she says has created an inaccurate idea of what
Freud was really saying).
She also quotes extensively the Russian immigrant poet Tsvetayeva, and
particularly relevant here: "There are things which cannot be thought in
another language." (Being bilingual/cultural myself, I can give my own
anecdotal evidence that this is true.)
"The original article is in "American Anthropologist" vol. 91-1989 and
she later expnanded it into a book chapter in "Semantics, Culture and
Cognition" (Oxford, 1992) which examines various concepts in European
languages, how they differ, and the hazards posed by translating
directly.
One of the less complimentary things I have heard about Americans from
Russian friends is the puzzled (and sometimes dismissive) statement that
"They have no dusha" - i.e. Americans have a very different "sense of
self" than other nationalities. Another interesting phenomenon - to me,
anyway - is the whole "the brain is a computer" business, which is based
on the idea that being human is a matter of ratiocination and
logic-chopping, divorced from emotion and volition. Russian (and classic
Hebrew/Yiddish usage) has a separate term for this activity of the human
mind.
An interesting take on this from a neuropsychologist is Antonio Damasio's
"Descartes' Error" which examines the hypothesis that emotion is
necessary for even reasoning to function. (He just published another
book, which I haven't read yet, but I have it from him via e-mail that
it's an extension of the earlier one).
Comments from Eugene, Tatiana, other Russian-speakers?
Rachel Heckert
BTW Will you guys please quit flaming each other? I'm just catching up
after several days away, and the last round of posts has left me
wondering just what's gotten into everybody.
On Wed, 1 Mar 2000 09:30:47 +0300 "sazonova" <sazon@kursknet.ru> writes:
> Mike, you are absolutly wright. And its not a coincidence.
> In my translation I ment "soul' first of all and the word "mind" was
> introduced specially for xmca-readers.
> And now I'm struggling with the translation of the expression "body
> - mind
> problem" (I want to make a reveiw in my book) which somehow
> corresponds to
> what is known in Russian philosophical tradition as the problem of
> body and
> soul. When I say "somehow correspods" because English word "mind" is
> not
> the same as Russian word "soul". And I recall the XMCA discussion on
> the
> differences between Westen and Easten tradition in science.
> Tatiana
>
> ----------
> > От: Mike Cole <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Кому: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > Тема: Tutchev in English
> > Дата: 1 марта 2000 г. 3:37
> >
> >
> > Look at the title of this talk! I had just written Eugene about the
> > problems of translation from russian-english where the word, soul,
> > is a fine example. And then this appeared on the screen!
> > mike
> >
> > >GARY T. MARX
> > >Emeritus Professor
> > >Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> > >"Windows into the Soul: Surveillance and Society
> > >in an Age of High Technology"
> >
> > sure, its a coincidence.
> > mike
>
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