Elusive

In his New Year's greetings, President Medvedev wished Russians to live in a happy, safe, prosperous country. Actually, he is true to himself here: he has said before that Russia should become the best country for a safe and comfortable life. But I thought about the word prosperous. No, of course, this is not a new word. I just thought that it would have been strange to hear it in such a context before. they said, for example, the successful completion of the trip - that means it turned out okay. Or a favorable geomagnetic situation - it doesn’t seem to have exploded anywhere and is not going to happen. But this is about situations and events. But they also said that he was a prosperous person. This is not just a person who is doing well, but he is also a person who is therefore somewhat boring, lacks strong passions and is not fully capable of empathy. There is something petty about such a person. Something deeply uninteresting. And in general, what can he understand in real life, a prosperous person?

Here are some typical examples from the Russian National Corpus ( ruscorpora.ru ): “The snow is still white in the fields, and the waters are already rustling in spring...” I don’t like Rachmaninov’s music for these poems. There is no bright spring sadness in this music. But it must be said that prosperous, so to speak, athletically healthy people in most cases are indifferent, do not notice, do not appreciate, and do not even suspect the great significance, the untold significance of the beauties of nature. Healthy people do not appreciate... This does not mean, of course, that every person, having acquired an acute or chronic disease, will begin to experience the reflection of clouds in a puddle. I am talking about those who can accommodate, to whom it is given. [B. V. Shergin. From diaries (1930-1960)]; Kiprensky persuaded Tamarinsky to go together to Thorvaldsen to see the bust of Byron and talk about the poet. <…> When I finished the bust, Byron glanced at it and said: “You did not make me, but a prosperous person. I don’t look like your bust.” - “What’s wrong if a person is happy?” - I asked. “Thorvaldsen,” he said, and his face turned pale with anger, “happiness and prosperity are as different as marble and clay. [TO. Paustovsky. Orest Kiprensky (1936)]; Prosperous, smart people! I immediately thought about my old fur coat, uncurled hair and unpainted gray hair. It turns out that not only will I be here with my memory and work, alone with the forest, sky and books, but I and strangers, and even those who are a little bored and want to have some fun [L. K. Chukovskaya. Descent (1949-1957)]

There was also such a word - well-fed. With an even more pronounced negative connotation. Well-fed - read indifferent, mentally callous, deaf to other people's experiences. That’s why Tsvetaeva’s soul was born winged, then

I have two enemies in the world,
Two twins, inextricably fused:
Hunger for the hungry and satiety for the well-fed!

The hunger of the hungry is hateful, because for a person with a soul, the suffering of others is painful, and the satiety of the well-fed is not at all because the winged soul is envious. It’s just that the well-fed do not understand the hungry, do not feel their suffering, their souls are not winged.

It was possible earlier that the combination of a prosperous country was, for example, Switzerland. He doesn’t take part in wars, doesn’t practice revolutions, keeps gold bars in banks - we won’t say whose; produces chocolate, cheese, watches, penknives. By the way, I really love Switzerland, we’re just talking about a certain cultural stereotype. As Lev Losev wrote,

In important Geneva, no, in tender Geneva,
in Switzerland, imposing and funny,
in Switzerland, with all of Europe adjacent,
in Geneva polite, in Switzerland with luxury,
filled with gold, cows, mountains,
layers of cheese with drops of dew.

And really, it would be bad if everything with us was just as clean and chocolatey. Quite a New Year's wish. The plot for a short Christmas story.

Why do I say: elusive? Here, it’s not the word prosperous itself that has changed in any particular way. Ideas about the world, values ​​and guidelines have changed, and therefore the word suddenly naturally appears in a context in which it could hardly have appeared before. Maybe a prosperous person, a prosperous country is not at all petty, not boring, but very good?

I also keep thinking about the word change. Now people often say: change the car, change the phone. had this meaning The word change before: it changes women like gloves. And yet in the phrases: I want to change my car, It’s time to change my phone - there is, as you please, something cutting-edge.

Because the very attitude towards things has changed. Previously, things had to last a long time. At our dacha we still have a ZVI washing machine (for those who don’t remember, ZVI is the “Vladimir Ilyich Plant”), which seems to be more than half a century old. It has two sections: in one (water must be poured into it with a hose) the laundry is washed, twisted into tight strands, for which something like a huge wooden tweezers is provided, the other is a centrifuge in which the laundry rotates at wild speed, wrung out almost dry and sometimes to holes. There was no concept of delicate machine washing back then. Items made from delicate fabrics were simply washed by hand. There is something written on the centrifuge that does not correspond to the standards of modern spelling. Every summer I pay attention, but then during the winter I forget. True, the Saratov refrigerator has been dead for about 10 years. Not so now. A friend asks: Nobody needs a dishwasher there, otherwise I’m going to change it? I say it the old fashioned way: So it doesn’t work well? Not really, He says it works great, just as much as possible.

With cars, it’s also clear: after a few years, operation becomes more expensive, insurance becomes less profitable, so in some cases it’s better to quickly sell the old car and buy a new one - fortunately there is no shortage. But with phones it’s a completely clean case. The phone is often changed only because a new model has appeared. It’s not that the old one doesn’t suit you in some way, but simply why the old one if there is a new one. Things become obsolete faster than they fail. Everything must be updated, because life does not stand still.

And here again the elusive thing: it seems that nothing special happened with the word change , but it sounded somehow different. The context has changed. Such things are forgotten: it is difficult after a few years to remember that some combination struck the ear or only slightly stopped attention, and even more so, what seemed strange about it. And then no corpus research, no statistics will be able to replace today’s living ear. Mine in particular. I know that whether I describe linguistic incidents well or poorly, but in any case, my notes are evidence that will be useful. And this is comforting.