проклятый вопрос
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Russian[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From прокля́тый m (prokljátyj, “cursed, damned”) + вопро́с m (voprós, “question”). The phrase appeared in an 1858 translation by Mikhail Larionovitch Mikhailov of a German-language poem by Heinrich Heine and saw use in Russian literary and academic circles subsequently.[1]
Noun[edit]
прокля́тый вопро́с • (prokljátyj voprós)
- an intractable question which defies solution; an issue which is difficult to investigate or inquire into
- 1858, Mikhail Larionovitch Mikhailov, quoting Heinrich Heine, “Zum Lazarus”, in Sovremennik, number 3, page 125:
- Брось свои иносказанья
И гипотезы святые!
На проклятые вопросы
Дай ответы нам прямые!- Brosʹ svoi inoskazanʹja
I gipotezy svjatyje!
Na prokljatyje voprosy
Daj otvety nam prjamyje! - (please add an English translation of this quotation)
- Brosʹ svoi inoskazanʹja
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see проклятый (prokljatyj), вопрос (vopros).
References[edit]
- ^ Taruskin, Richard (2020) “Introduction”, in Cursed Questions (Musicology), University of California Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 1:
- Heine's ironic quatrain, in the instantly famous translation by the poet and underground revolutionary Mikhail Larionovich Mikhailov, bequeathed a meme to the Russian language. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the words “cursed questions” (proklyatïye voprosï) have stood in Russian for all the relentless imponderables, be they social, political, aesthetic or eschatological, that, as Mikhail Epstein puts it, “baffle the mind and torment the heart.”