This little smidge from The Defense by ol' VN made me think anew:
"'Being born in this world is hardly to be borne,'" Luzhin senior dictated steadily, strolling back and forth about the classroom. "Being born in this
world is hardly to be borne." And this his son wrote, practically lying on
the table and baring his teeth in their metallic scaffolding, and simply left
blanks for the words "born" and "borne."
See, this is from one of the translated-from-Russian early Nabokov books.
So, answer me: are we to believe that the Cyrillic words for born and borne are also so similar that one letter makes the difference in meaning exactly? HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? This is the same problem I have with translated poetry...all foreign words also match rhymes and meanings exactly with their translated English versions? Goddammit!
I was ruminating over this when I had a revelation: my concern with this was of the exact same intensity as my concern with how comic book artists can make the same character recognizable from any position, no matter what he/she is doing...
To recap: I feel the same confused way about these two things, to the exact same degree. Runners-up include: how printing presses really work, how I've never seen photos of cassettes being manufactured, what the hell The Good Wife is about, etc.
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