The most amazing sentence I have ever read.
Granted, stream of consciousness style was to create some pretty
impressive sentences 70 years later. But that style often involved what
were essentially multiple sentences put together in a string. Gogol’s
sentence here, taken from his short story “The Overcoat,” is a single
sentence working within all the grammatical rules to create an amazing
structure built of — in this translation — 283 words.
But moving beyond the linguistics a bit, the sentence presents brief and
foreshortened glimpses into people’s lives. What humans do, even if we
could go on forever trying to describe it, is only a fragment of a larger
reality. It is as if our human existence is become lost in a sea of
dependent clauses.
Omnivident. And magnificent.
I only wish I could read Russian. Because I would very much like to
follow Gogol’s own rhythmic flow in this.
This Insubstantial Pageant Faded 
It's hard to imagine as the perceive of his works in English, especially his novel "The Nose" 🙄 :p
Oh, Edward, you don't stop to amaze me! Such knowledge of Russian literature. Yes, Gogol wrote amazing works, thanks to the direct perception of reality. The paradox is that he didn't invent, but simply described what he saw.Look it's a monument to Gogol on Nevsky Prospect.http://palmernw.ru/mir-piter/malaya_konushennaya/malaya_konushennaya.htmlHe said "… Oh, do not trust this Nevsky Prospect, I always wraps his cloak tighter, when I go on it, and try not to look at the found subjects.All the hype, all a dream, all is not what it seems! .. "(NV Gogol. Nevsky Prospect).
From what I have read just on Wikipedia I guess Gogol went a little bit nuts at the end of his life. A good warning to myself to keep looking in the mirror now and then. :whistle:I want to attempt Dead Souls, but I don't have the time right now. So I might do another of his short stories. BTW I was suppose to read The Overcoat in one of my classes in high school. But I was busy with other reading and didn't read it. So I guess it caught up with me — like the corpse wanting its coat!
You must keep your copy of that book hidden behind loose bricks in the wall lest Putin's monks catch you with it!:D
Originally posted by edwardpiercy:
Interesting line of thought 😮 :p I will read Aldous Huxley's Brave New WorldOne must be aware of plans of the General Staff! 😆
What a sentence. Made me a little breathless just trying to read it.:lol:
Originally posted by edwardpiercy:
Oh! Thinly noticed. Exactly – a big is seen at a distance!:yes:
Originally posted by Stardancer:
For me it brought back memories of the cross-country train trips I took as a kid. :):heart:
The longest sentence I ever wrote was in my only published story, called appropriately enough "The Sentence.""Thinking to preserve these pages, these pages that I address only to you, Miss Walls, I began taping them up in my cell, or my half of it at least — which, in all honesty, to speak for once honestly to you, and to myself as well, well, I will admit here that putting up my pages in my cell is perfectly appropriate, and is where I have been heading all along in fact, it has been just a little trick of mine to keep myself amused, to keep these pages going, to keep writing — as if you were being covered with a veil, one of those many veils, and at the end of it there was no more room."On the way to print the story was edited by a schoolmate, a woman with no writing experience, and no editing experience, who put punctuation into that sentence to divide it up, even though the two extra sentences created were not even really sentences.I was furious. But it was already in print. And you know there was not even any excuse for it given that I submitted a disk with the story in generic TXT format that I had already gone over with a fine tooth comb. All they needed do was hand the printer the disk. But no, that little shit had to tamper with my work. I suppose that was one of the reasons that I started blogging my fiction years later — at least the mistakes made are my own.
You're right – that is an amazing sentence! I wonder how it reads in Russian?
Originally posted by musickna:
Maybe I could get Valentina to read the sentence to me someday. While I am laying on a couch. Being fed dates and having wine poured into my silver goblet. :p
That sentence is too long for me ! :faint
@ Darko. I hear the Serbian translation of that is twice as long.:p
Hmm, I will have to try to find that one first. Give me a couple of days, I am very busy at the moment, though.As for a reading in Russian. It is easy. Just need to know cyrillic and few more Russian letters 😛
:lol:Ah, if it were only the cyrillic! I took two semesters of Russian my last year in college 2003-2004. The sentence structure is different. And if I remember correctly it is an inflected language. And the strange thing is they have a tendency to leave out the indefinite articles — "I went to store" etc.But it was the most fun language I've ever studied. Don't remember any of it but a few words alas.
When I was in primary school, I spoke Russian very well, but then I've lost interest and wanted to improve English. I remember a little bit of it and I still can read. I was always good with languages :happy:
Originally posted by gdare:
That is apparent! For the most part your English is excellent.:D
Thanks :happy: