Do You Have to Read the Whole Book in Skyrim
Mary Hobson: It took me about two years [to read 'War and Peace']. I read it like a poem, a sentence at a time.
Yelena Bozhkova
English writer and translator Mary Hobson decided to learn Russian at the historic period of 56, graduating in her sixties and completing a PhD aged 74. Now fluent in Russian, Hobson has translated "Eugene Onegin" and other poems by Pushkin, "Woe from Wit" by Griboyedov, and has won the Griboyedov Prize and Pushkin Medal for her piece of work. RBTH visited Hobson at abode in London to inquire nearly her inspiring experience.
RBTH: Learning Russian is difficult at any historic period, and you were 56. How did the idea outset come to your listen?
Mary Hobson: I was having a foot operation, and I had to stay in bed for 2 weeks in infirmary. My girl Emma brought me a big fat translation of State of war and Peace. "Mum, y'all'll never go a better hazard to read it", she said.
I'd never read Russian literature before. I got absolutely hooked on information technology, I just got and then captivated! I read like a starving man eats. The paperback didn't take maps of the battle of Borodino, I was making maps trying to understand what was happening. This was the all-time novel ever written. Tolstoy creates the whole world, and while you read it, you believe in it.
I woke up in the infirmary three days subsequently I finished reading and suddenly realized: "I haven't read it at all. I've read a translation. I would take to learn Russian."
RBTH: Did you read War and Peace in the original linguistic communication eventually?
M.H.: Aye, it was the first thing I read in Russian. I bought a fat Russian lexicon and off I went. It took me about 2 years. I read information technology similar a poem, a sentence at a time. I learned such a lot, I still remember where I first found some words. "Between," for instance. Near a third of the way down the page.
RBTH: Do you think your first steps in learning Russian?
K.H.: I had a plan to study the Russian language in evening classes, merely my Russian friend said: "Don't practice that, I'll teach you." We saturday in the garden and she helped me to remember the Cyrillic script. I was 56 at this time, and I found it very tiring reading in Cyrillic. I couldn't do it in the evening because I but wouldn't exist able to sleep. And Russian grammar is fascinating.
RBTH: You became an undergraduate for the kickoff fourth dimension in your sixties. How did you experience about studying with young students?
Yard.H.: I demand to explain first why I didn't have any career before my fifties. My husband had a very serious illness, a cerebral abscess, and he became so disabled. I was just looking afterwards him. And nosotros had four children. After 28 years I could not do it any longer, I had break downs, depressions. I finally realized I would have to leave. Otherwise I would just go downwardly with him. There was a life out at that place I hadn't lived. Information technology was time to go out and to alive information technology.
I left him. I've been on my ain for three years in a limbo of quilt and low. Then I picked up a telephone and rang the number my friend had long since given me, that of the Schoolhouse of Slavonic and Due east European Studies, London University. "Do you accept mature students?" I asked. "Of 60-ii?" They did.
When the start day of term arrived, I was absolutely terrified. I went twice around Russel square before daring to go in. The merely thing that persuaded me to do information technology was that I got offered the place and if I didn't do it, the children would be so ashamed of me. My group mates looked a little chip surprised at showtime simply then we were very apace writing the aforementioned essays, reading the aforementioned stuff, having to do the same translations.
RBTH: Y'all spent 10 months in Moscow equally function of your course. How did you feel in Russia?
Yard.H.: I inappreciably dared open my oral cavity, because I thought I got information technology wrong. Information technology lasted well-nigh a week like this, hardly daring to speak. And then I idea – I'g hither only for 10 months. I shall die if I don't communicate. I just have to run a risk it. Then I started bumbling stuff. I said things I didn't at all mean. I just said anything. The most dangerous thing was to make jokes. People looked at me as I was mad.
I hate to say it, but in 1991 the Russian ruble absolutely collapsed and for the first and last time in my life I was a wealthy woman. I bought over 200 books in Russian, ten "Complete Collected Works" of my favorite 19th-century authors. Then information technology was a problem how to become them home. Seventy-five of them were brought to London past a visiting group of schoolchildren. They took three books each.
RBTH: You lot're jubilant your 90th birthday in July. What'south the hugger-mugger of your longevity?
M.H.: If I had not gone to university, if I had given upward and stopped learning Russian, I don't call up I'd have lived this long. It keeps your listen active, information technology keeps you physically active. Information technology affects everything. Learning Russian has given me a whole new life. A whole circle of friends, a whole new way of living. For me it was the near enormous opening out to a new life.
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Source: https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2016/04/22/learning-russian-has-given-me-a-whole-new-life_587093
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