Chapter 5: Shipwreck ( Кораблекрушение )

Concept: SURVIVAL

1. Cambridge dictionary       

Survival - the fact of continuing to live or exist, especially after a difficult or dangerous situation.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-russian/survival

2. Collins dictionary

If you refer to the survival of something or someone, you mean that they manage to continue or exist in spite of difficult circumstances.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/search/?dictCode=english&q=survival

3. Wikipedia

Survival is the act of surviving; to stay living.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival

Компонентно-дефиниционный анализ языковой единицы:

- Counting to live

- Existence

- Difficult situation

- Danger

- Difficult circumstances

- The act of surviving

- To stay living

- Fear

SURVIVAL IN THE BOOK:

Examples: «The Medusa was a shipwreck, a news story and a painting; it was also a cause. Bonapartists attacked Monarchists. The behaviour of the frigate's captain illuminated a) the incompetence and corruption of the Royalist Navy; b) the general callousness of the ruling class towards those beneath them. Parallels with the ship of state running aground would have been both obvious and heavy-handed».

«What is this 'Father' doing? a) lamenting the dead man (his son? his chum?) on his lap; b) realizing they will never be rescued; c) reflecting that even if they are rescued it doesn't matter a damn because of the death he holds in his arms?».

«An extreme resource proved necessary to prolong their miserable existence. Some of those who had survived the night of the mutiny fell upon the corpses and hacked pieces from them, devouring the flesh on the instant. Most of the officers refused this meat; though one proposed that it should first be dried to make it more palatable».

«Once more, a terrible combat ensued, and blood washed over the fatal raft. When this third mutiny was finally suppressed, there remained no more than thirty on board, and the raft had risen yet again in the water. Barely a man lay without wounds, into which salt water constantly flowed, and piercing cries were heard».

Характеристики концепта SURVIVAL:

- Medusa

- Shipwreck

- Death

- Flesh

-  Miserable existence       

- Blood

- Cries

Article:

A raft of ideas. Medusa

When pictures become enormously famous they are less and less well attended to as paintings, more and more celebrated as emblems or narratives. Immobile behind the glass walls of their reputation, Leonardo's Mona Lisa and Constable's views of Suffolk have hardened into icons. Much the same goes for Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa. Its huddle of survivors, displayed in various poses of despair or desperate hopefulness, tell a story of such notorious misery that the artist's professional achievements are always threatening to sink beneath the weight of his subject. In one sense this is fine: Géricault meant to fix the tragedy of the raft in the mind of his audience; in another sense it is a form of diminishment: art-as-such plays second fiddle to incident-as-reproach - and warning.

Having said that, the greatest strength of Medusa lies in its recreation of the actual events in 1816 on which the painting is based - events which, when they filtered back to Europe, provoked an immediate and resonant scandal. The Medusa was en route to Senegal, carrying among others the governor-designate, the (amazingly named) Julien Schmaltz, who was due to take over the colony from the British. Shortly before reaching port, she was driven on to a sandbank by her inept captain, Hugues Duroy de Chaumereys - a relic of the ancien régime - and, during the attempt to flee the wreck, a party of lifeboats set off to the shore, towing an improvised raft that carried 147 survivors. In the ensuing panic and selfishness, the rope attached to the raft was deliberately cut, leaving the raft and its crew to their fate. After several days adrift, during which bad weather, rioting, murder, thirst and hunger did for all but 15 of those on board, it was eventually sighted by one of the Medusa's companion ships, the Argus. The death toll itself was bad enough, but when the survivors began telling their stories - of gross incompetence by senior officers, of infighting and even cannibalism - the episode was quickly reinterpreted as more than just a hideous accident. It was a means of indicting the Bourbon government as a whole and of investigating the baseline of human behaviour.

Andrew Motion's In the Blood: A Memoir of My Childhood is published by Faber

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/apr/14/art

Exercises:

1. Answer the following questions:

1) Who is the artist of this picture?

2) What is happening in the picture?

3) What kind of emotions does it evoke?

2. Explain the meaning of the words and phrases:

astern, ship of state running aground, monkey-up-a-stick, a drop in the ocean, the frigate…give a heel.

3. Translate into English:

1) Было также найдено тридцать зубчиков чеснока, из чего возникли дальнейшие споры. 2) Именно с этого дня все научились потреблять человеческую плоть. 3) На седьмой день двое солдат спрятались за последним бочонком вина. 4) От радости они впадали в уныние и печаль; они завидовали судьбе тех, кто умер до них. 5) Как и их предшественники, они были лишены весел и навигационного оборудования. 6) Он писал до тех пор, пока был свет… 7) Возможно, решение было чисто эстетическим - художник предпочел искореженные тела проклятых еще одному послушному изображению еще одного деревянного Ковчега.

Chapter 6 The mountain (Гора)

Concept: PILGRIMAGE

1. Cambridge dictionary

Pilgrimage is a journey to a place that has religious importance.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-russian/pilgrimage?q=PILGRIMAGE

2. Collins dictionary

A pilgrimage is a journey that someone makes to a place that is very important to them.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/search/?dictCode=english&q=Pilgrimage

3. Encyclopedia Britannica

Pilgrimage, a journey undertaken for a religious motive. Although some pilgrims have wandered continuously with no fixed destination, pilgrims more commonly seek a specific place that has been sanctified by association with a divinity or other holy personage. The institution of pilgrimage is evident in all world religions and was also important in the pagan religions of ancient Greece and Rome.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/pilgrimage-religion

4. Wikipedia

A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about the self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, after which the pilgrim returns to their daily life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage

Компонентно-дефиниционный анализ языковой единицы:

- A journey

- Religious motive

- Pilgrims

- Specific place

- A divinity

- Holy personage

- Foreign place

- The experience

- Personal transformation

- Search

PILGRIMAGE in the BOOK

Examples: «Miss Fergusson 's irritation over the incident in Erzerum began to calm. Passing the eastern spur of Mount Alageuz, they gazed intently as the broad bulk of Great Ararat slowly revealed itself. The summit was hidden, enfolded in a circle of white cloud which glittered brilliantly in the sun».

«It seems to me appropriate and just,' went on Miss Fergusson, `that the first traveller to ascend the mountain upon which the Ark rested should bear the name of an animal. No doubt part of the Lord's great design for us all».

«Water from the Arghuri brook, thought Miss Logan; or perhaps that sourish milk which they had already received many times on their travels from obliging shepherds».

«At least she evinced an interest in the natural landscape. As they rode inland from Trebizond, hunting-whips at the ready against the expected dog-packs, they viewed mohair goats on hillsides of dwarf oak, dull yellow vines, lush apple orchards; they heard grasshoppers whose ringing note seemed sharper and more insistent than that of their British cousins; and they witnessed sunsets of the rarest purple and rose. There were fields of corn, opium and cotton; bursts of rhododendron and yellow azalea; red-legged partridge, hoopoes and blue crows. In the Zirgana mountains large red deer softly returned their gaze from an apprehensive distance».

Характеристики концепта PILGRIMAGE:

- Mount Ararat

- Traveller

- Travel

- The Ark

- The natural landscape

Article: