Dizionario delle parole russe che s'incontrano in Italiano by Giorgio Maria Nicolai (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.3, 2005 899 between their approaches are not defined sharply enough. Another more specific ex? ample is the chapter on Tennyson addressing the influence of Sappho in the forging of his poetic career, that does not work through its debt to the important earlier work by Linda Peterson, which is acknowledged only in the bibliography ('Sappho and the Making ofthe Tennysonian Lyric', ELH, 61 (1994), 121-37). Sometimes, too, the fragmentary and allusive style of argumentation makes the connections between ideas unclear and confusing, disappointing in a study so rich with responses to Sappho, such as the affinitybetween Emma Hamilton's 'Attitudes' and Mary Robinson's sonnets as negotiations of the feminine and the neo-classical through the figure of Sappho. Although written in chronological order, beginning with Sappho's poetry itself in the introduction, through to the concluding chapter on Virginia Woolf, the book finds two basic trajectories that interweave throughout the study: firstly,Sappho as a persona, with her life and reputation the object of fas? cination; secondly, the translations and rewritings of Sappho's poetry. For Reynolds, women poets are beguiled by the legend of Sappho as a seductive yet dangerous artis? tic precursor who suffered for fame and love. The second trajectory is followed by male writers and also by women poets who are more conscious of Sappho's fragments or able to read Greek, such as 'Michael Field' and H.D. The Sappho History unravels these lines of development, with the help of often very generous quotations, and tells the story of the profound attraction writers and artists of this period felt towards Sappho's poetry, legend, and body. University of Glasgow Alison Chapman Dizionario delle parole russe che s'incontrano in Italiano. By Giorgio Maria Nicolai. Rome: Bulzoni. 2003. 534 pp. ?30. ISBN 88-8319-858-1. In the last two decades Giorgio Maria Nicolai has published several books on Russian themes, particularly on the use of Russian words in ltalian. The present volume brings together his previous work, makes many new additions, and offers,in alphabetical order, over three hundred ltalian borrowings from Russian, giving for each item a historical presentation, an etymological section explaining the formation of the term in Russian, and a generous list of quotations from ltalian sources. The dictionary, which constitutes the bulk ofthe book (pp. 19-470), is preceded by a briefintroduction (pp. 7-15) and followed by an ample bibliography (pp. 471-503) and index (pp. 50529 ). The volume is useful not only as a reference work but also as a text which can be profitably read by people interested in cultural relations between Russia and Italy. From the introduction one gathers that most of the words analysed belong to the category called in Russian, apparently since the early 1950s, realii (plural of realija, feminine singular based on the Latin neuter plural realia). The term designates items belonging to everyday life, culture, society, ete. which are specific to individual countries or people and are generally thought to be untranslatable and therefore kept in their original form as loanwords. The author turns the Russian realii into the ltalian feminine plural realie, which seems to me rather infelicitous since the German term Realien has been long established in the history of foreign-language study, is well known to philologists who are familiar with works such as Pauly?Wissowa's Real-Encyclopddie and does not require an adaptation. Besides, among the words which are usually kept in the (more or less adapted) original Russian form,itwould have been useful to distinguish between Realien which refer to local objects, institutions, customs, ete. (for instance, balalaika, batjushka, matushka,vodka, zar, orpogrom, gulag, samizdat,glasnostf, nomenklatura,perestrojka, molotov, kalashnikov, ete.) and those words which have a more indefinite aura and seem 900 Reviews to embody national, cultural, or ethnic attitudes, such as nichevo, glossed as follows: '(allalettera, "niente"). Parola dai molteplicisignificatitra i quali si privilegiain genere quello di espressione tipica dell'atteggiamento fatalistico del popolo russo'. Words of this kind are likely to interest foreign readers even more than those which refer to specific individual objects and institutions, because they are assumed to embody certain foreign qualities which are thought not...