Libmonster ID: U.S.-1592
Author(s) of the publication: Er. KHAN-PIRA

The stable phrase living corpse is very unlucky in lexicography. It's not in any of the explanatory dictionaries: neither in the article Alive, nor in the article Dead. There is a synonym-living relics. In the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language" edited by D. N. Ushakov (hereinafter TSU), in the article Relics about the second meaning of the word relics, it is said: "peren. About a very emaciated man (razg., shutl.)", and the living relics are accompanied by a mark razg. and explained: "the same as the relics in 2 digits."

"Dictionary of modern Russian literary language "(hereinafter BAS) the second meaning of the word power is accompanied by the mark peren. and he interprets as follows:" About a very emaciated, emaciated person", and in the phraseological zone of the dictionary article he gives living relics without interpretation, obviously based on the obvious coincidence of the meaning of the phrase with the meaning of the word relics in a figurative sense. So does the "Big Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language" (hereinafter BTS), adding walking relics.

"Dictionary of the Russian Language in four volumes "(hereinafter MAC), following the TSU, refers to the 2nd meaning of the word power, but removes the peren mark here. and he says, " About a very thin, haggard man." At the same time, MAC is the first of the explanatory dictionaries that leads to the dictionary page.-

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tew walking relics and does it like this: "living (or walking) relics". "Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian language" by S. I. Ozhegov and N. Yu. Shvedova (hereinafter referred to as Secondary School) does not note the second meaning of the word power, but interprets the combination of living power, accompanied by a mark of razg., as in TSU.

Did the metaphorical meaning of power arise as a result of the ellipsis of the stable combination of the word power, or, on the contrary, is the combination itself generated by the appearance of the second meaning of the word power? Any answer to this question cannot shake the conclusion that the living relics have long been a linguistic metaphor and a linguistic oxymoron (i.e., the metaphor and oxymoron are erased or almost erased, as opposed to speech metaphors and oxymorons). And this, of course, is a phraseology (phraseological unity), the integrity of the meaning of which allowed Chekhov in" The Black Monk "to say about one of the characters:"[Tanya] turned into walking living relics." And, of course, there are living relics in the " Phraseological Dictionary of the Russian Literary Language "(hereinafter referred to as the FSRL), compiled by A. I. Fedorov and certified in the "Preface" as a "complete phraseological dictionary". Here are two dictionary entries Living Relics and Walking Relics (i.e. these combinations are considered not as variants, but as synonyms, which coincides with the understanding in the later BTS): "Living relics. Express. About an extremely emaciated, emaciated person", " Walking relics. Razg. Express. The same as living relics."

So, sensible dictionaries have passed by the combination of a living corpse. Neither Pushkin, in whom it occurs twice, nor Tolstoy, who named his drama so, helped them. Perhaps the living relics owe their appearance in explanatory dictionaries to the title of Turgenev's story.

A living corpse is also absent from phraseological dictionaries of the Russian language. But there is a living (walking) dead man and a walking corpse in the FSRL. About the first combination we read: "Razg. Express. About a man who is physically decrepit and spiritually drained. A suffering shadow, a fragment of the old life. I experience myself, a living dead man (Vyazemsky...) - And now I live like a walking dead man: it's disgusting to live, I don't have the strength to put myself to death (A. V. Vyazemsky). Ertel...)". The second combination is referred to as " Contempt. About a person who is spiritually and morally dead, devastated. Look at us: we're gluttons, we're walking corpses, we're coffins. Embezzlers, folk thieves. Oppressors, cowards, slaves (Nekrasov...)". The word "despicable" and the interpretation itself seem to be inspired by the Nekrasov context. The absence of other exculpatory quotations allows us to doubt the linguistics of this metaphor-an oxymoron, as, indeed, the combinations of the living dead, the walking dead. In my opinion, all this is the result of the desire of Vyazemsky, Ertel, and Nekrasov to get away from the common phraseological units living relics, living corpse, and to revive the metaphorical and oxymoronic combinations.

A living corpse is noted in the "Winged Words" of N. S. Ashukin and M. G. Ashukina, where it is said: "This expression has become widely accepted-

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denia after the appearance of the drama "Living Corpse"... However, the expression "living corpse" is found in the literature before, initially in the meaning: a sick, emaciated person. For example: [further quote from Pushkin's "Poltava". - E. H.]. Then the expression began to be applied not only to a sick person, but also to a person who had suffered a moral shock. For example: "He came to the village as a living corpse; his moral life was completely paralyzed; his very appearance changed greatly, his mother barely recognized him" (V. G. Belinsky...). Now the expression "living corpse" is used in the meaning: a person who has fallen, morally devastated, or in general something dead, obsolete".

In the "Experience of the Etymological Dictionary of Russian Phraseology" by N. M. Shansky, V. I. Zimin, A.V. Filippov, we read about this combination, which was not noticed by explanatory dictionaries :" About a person who has fallen, who has lost all interest in life. Own property. Russian. The turnover became widespread after the appearance of the drama... "The living corpse".., where the main character Fyodor Protasov imitates suicide, passes away in his own circle. From the first floor. XIX century. the expression is known in the sign. "a seriously ill, emaciated person."

Pushkin's living corpse is found in " Poltava "(1828-1829) and in the poem" Hero "(1830): "And the day has come. Rises from his bed/Mazeppa, this sickly sufferer, / This living corpse, yesterday / Moaning weakly over the grave", " [P o e t]... Not the picture before me! / I see a long line of beds, / A living corpse lies on each, / Branded with a powerful plague, / the Queen of diseases...". "The Dictionary of the Pushkin language" explains the meaning of this phrase in the Pushkin text as follows:"about a terminally ill, dying person." Pushkin's context, without changing, as it seems, the meaning of the combination of a living corpse ("seriously ill, emaciated person"), only clarifies the severity, danger of the disease, the degree of emaciation. Pushkin's living corpse does not go beyond the meaning of this combination in the language of that time, and ours too. And with this meaning, a living corpse stands in the same synonym row with the phraseological units living relics, walking relics.

Tolstoy's living corpse has a different meaning. If the hitherto Tolstoyan living corpse (as well as living relics) owes its origin to a metaphorical transference, which gave rise to an oxymoron, then Tolstoyan living corpse does not compare the physical state, appearance, appearance of a living person with a corpse, i.e., in my opinion, there is no metaphor here, but there is an oxymoron generated by the opposite of the "civil states" of the object itself naming conventions. Leaning towards the idea that in the text of Tolstoy's drama, the combination of a living corpse denotes exactly this incident. My wife is married. [Petushkov] How so? Divorce? [Fedya] No. (Smiles.) I left her a widow. [P e t u s -k o v] That is, how? [F e d I] And also: a widow. I'm not here. [P e -

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t u w k o v] How not? [Fedya] No. I'm dead.Yes." And the second time mentioned is the body of Fedya in the cell of a forensic investigator: "I am not afraid of anyone, because I am a corpse and nothing can be done to me; there is no situation that is worse than mine."

Tolstoy's living corpse is a de facto living person, but a de jure deceased one. Perhaps Tolstoy's living corpse also received a second meaning, figurative (not metaphorical, but metonymic, in this case according to the model: the transfer of the name of the content to the content - to the character's state of mind, to the confusion of his feelings, to the loss of interest and will to live). If this second meaning is really deducted from the sad fate and behavior of Fyodor Protasov, then it is not only figurative, but also abstract.

The living corpse, which existed in the language before Tolstoy, and the living corpse in Tolstoy, apparently, are phrases-homonyms.

Let's move on to the phrase dead corpses in Pushkin. It occurs at the very end of "Boris Godunov: "" [Mosalsky] People! Maria Godunova and her son Theodore poisoned themselves with poison. We saw their dead bodies."

Both in Pushkin's time and now dead corpses are a screaming pleonasm, an obvious tautology. Did Pushkin really overlook this, and so did those who listened to him read Boris Godunov? Unfortunately, the "Dictionary of the Pushkin Language" in the article Corpse, giving the explanation "dead body", simply gives the combination of a dead corpse and a quote from"Boris Godunov". So, according to the dictionary, this is pleonasm. I can't believe it. And I want to exclaim after Chekhov's character: "This can't be, because this can never be!" And here the work of V. V. Vinogradov "The Language of Pushkin" comes to the rescue. There Viktor Vladimirovich wrote about the "methods of stylistic association" in "Boris Godunov" of "Church Slavonisms and Old Russianisms with the norms of literary expression of the 20s". He noted: "Church Slavonisms, along with words and phrases of the Old Russian chronicle language, serve as forms of projecting persons and events into the everyday context of the reproduced era." To the place where Viktor Vladimirovich spoke about "digressions" that "stylize the speech life of antiquity," he made the following note:: "The fact that Pushkin used many monuments of Russian medieval literature for Boris Godunov only to the extent of quotations from them in the notes to Karamzin's History of the Russian State does not change the essence of the matter. It is important that the language material of the Old Russian script is transferred from the Notes to the text of the drama itself."

If the phrase "dead corpses" put in the character's mouth is not a pleonasm, then it means a corpse in a meaning that was absent in Pushkin's time. Let's turn to dictionaries. In the" Historical and Etymological Dictionary of the Modern Russian Language " by P. Ya. Chernykh, after pointing to

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the modern meaning of this word is found: "Wed. bolg. corpse - "corpse", as well as "torso", "body (of a person or animal) without head and limbs" (...) S.-horv. corpse - "body", "body" (e.g., ship), "deck", "block" (...) Slovene. trup - "torso"," hull " (for example, ship) (...) Czech and Slovakian. trup - "body", "body", " fuselage "("corpse" - mrtvola, mrtve telo) ( ... ) Etc. - Rus. (from the XI century) trup - "dead body", "corpse", and also "stump" ... St. - sl. trop - "dead body"".

In M. Fasmer's Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language, we read that " other-Russian. trup 'tree trunk, corpse, carnage'". In the Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language by N. M. Shansky and T. A. Bobrova, it is reported that trup is a common Slavic word and that in Proto-Slavic it meant "stump, trunk, tree", and then - " trunk "and"corpse". "Complete Church Slavonic dictionary" G. Dyachenko in the article Trupie, trupia cites the phrase trutya is dead and explains: "dead bodies". And in the article the Corpse indicates the meaning of this word: "belly, belly; body stan".

In "Materials for the Dictionary of the Old Russian language" by I. I. Sreznevsky, among the examples of using the word corpse, there is also the following: "Having seen your own naked and beaten lying down, so is the Novgorodian corpse 1 dead, and you will soon escape" (An example from the Pskov chronicle). The volume of the Dictionary of the Russian Language of the XI-XVII centuries with the letter t has not yet been published, but in the volume on m, in the article Dead, we find: "M e r t v y trup, trupie-trup, corpses (1380): And many... fall of the corpses of the dead of both and many are beaten by Christians from the Tatars, and the Tatars from the Christians. Moscow. years. And the corpses of the dead of their own ships will be marked out and sunk in mori. The life of Al. Nevsky Prospekt".

There is a story about how the king ordered the peasant to divide the chicken between the king, queen and their children and how the peasant did it: "The peasant scratched the back of his head and said to the king:" You are the head of everything - you have a chicken's head. Your stay - at-home queen gives her a chicken tail. The daughters will marry and fly away - they have a wing each. My sons won't be sitting at home either - they'll have chicken legs. And I'm a stupid man - I need a sheepskin coat." There is a variant of the ending: "And I am a stupid man - I have a whole corpse". M. Fasmer in his dictionary in the article Torso cites the Old Russian torso, Ukrainian sheepskin coat, Bulgarian sheepskin coat, tulob1shche, Polish tulow, tulub, and in the article Sheepskin Coat writes:

"It is difficult to detach from the words given on the body: Ukr. sheepskin coat, Blr. sheepskin coat ("body, skin")... In view of the fam. Tulubyev Sobolevsky... it considers the form na-b - to be more ancient and connects it as iskonnoslav. with a torso... Others see the name of a fur coat or sheepskin coat as borrowing. from the Turks. .. "The fairy tale calls the body a sheepskin coat. And the version of the fairy tale also calls a corpse a torso, i.e. a body without a head and limbs.

Dead bodies in Boris Godunov are dead bodies. Pushkin stylizes the character's speech, archaizes it. Here it is appropriate to refer again to V. V. Vinogradov:"...it is necessary to distinguish between neutral

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the system of the verse language of "Boris Godunov", which is like a background for the characteristic stratification of dramatic speech styles, from individual features of speaking assigned to individual characters of the drama. This" neutral "system of dramatic language in" Boris Godunov " determines the author's manner of reproducing historical reality, introduces the listener and viewer to the style of the depicted era." And even if we assume that Pushkin did not know about the polysemy of the word corpse and perceived dead corpses as pleonasm, he understood the archaism of this imaginary (as I believe) pleonasm and its archaizing ability in the text.

We also meet this phrase in Tolstoy's diary of Pierre Bezukhov. Pierre describes his dream: "I saw that I was in Moscow, in my house, in a large sofa room, and Joseph Alekseevich was coming out of the living room. It was as if I knew at once that the process of rebirth had already taken place with him, and I rushed to meet him. I feel like I'm kissing him, and his hands, and he says: "Did you notice that my face is different?" I looked at him... and it was as if I could see that his face was young, but there was no hair on his head, and his features were completely different... And suddenly I saw that he was lying like a dead corpse; he gradually came to himself and came with me into a large study, holding a large book written in the Alexandrian leaf." Here, in my opinion, there are two possible understandings. First. This is a comparison. It is especially clearly visible if you make a permutation: it lies dead, like a corpse... One minute he was alive, talking , and then he was lying down. The second understanding is the archaic, Biblical, Church Slavonic dead body.

I consider it my duty to express my deep gratitude to Vera Aleksandrovna Robinson (Plotnikova) and Mikhail Nikolaevich Lukashev, who supported me in suggesting the alleged pleonasticity of the combination of dead corpses and gave me some practical advice.


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