Posted on 04/01/2009 1:09:40 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Russia's keenness to keep the writer out of Ukrainian hands has been ridiculed – but such chauvinism is hardly unique
News that the Ukrainians are claiming the great 19th century writer Nikolai Gogol as their own because he was born and bred in their territory has been reported with evident amusement – not least because it has so irritated Russian spokespersons. Yet is it so foolish? Nations care very much about the esteem in which they are held by other nations, and a literary pantheon confers more prestige than any Olympic medal table. "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors," wrote Dr Johnson, and he is right. If the Ukrainians could snaffle Gogol it would do more for their national pride than Andrei Shevcenko could ever manage.
Look at the Irish, who have proved particularly skilful at this. They have effortlessly reclaimed all the great authors who fled the country of their birth – Goldsmith, Joyce, Beckett – even though the latter wrote some of his greatest work in French, the language of his adopted country. They have managed to persuade many that Laurence Sterne (born in Ireland because his father was a British soldier stationed there) and William Congreve (born in Yorkshire, but educated partly in Ireland because his father was another British officer) were really Irish. (The fact that both these writers were witty somehow confirms their essential Irishness.) And, their biggest triumph, they have taken possession of Jonathan Swift, perhaps the greatest of all satirists. In fact Swift called himself "English", spoke of his residence in Dublin as an "exile" in "a land I hate", and did not even have an Irish accent. But he has long become a great Irish patriot, adorning banknotes and tourist brochures.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Sounds like a lot of my ancestors, only they called themselves "Irish" and spoke with an Irish accent.
Hmmm. I dunno about all that, but Taylor Swift is American.
Rules, man, rules.
At the time, landholders were taxed based on the number of serfs they had according to the last, infrequent census. If you've been following the mortgage crisis, as mortgages were sold and resold, they have obtained the same bizarre standing as "dead souls".
"Chichikov's macabre mission to acquire "dead souls" is actually just another complicated scheme to inflate his social standing (essentially a 19th century Russian version of the ever popular "get rich quick" scheme).
He hopes to collect the legal ownership rights to dead serfs as a way of inflating his apparent wealth and power. Once he acquires enough dead souls, he will retire to a large farm and take out an enormous loan against them, finally acquiring the great wealth he desires."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.