In a famous scene from A Fish Called Wanda (1988), John Cleese (as Archie Leach) speaks some Italian words. “But it’s such an ugly language.” Co-star Jamie Lee Curtis (as Wanda Gershwitz) has a different opinion. Archie doesn’t see it and suggests something better. “How about… Russian?”
Lermontov
The words he speaks are from Молитва (Prayer), a short poem (1839) by Mikhail Lermontov. He starts (at 0:29) with the second stanza (Есть сила благодатная, в созвучьи слов живых) and continues with the first one – which Wanda cannot know, and apparently, it doesn’t matter much either.
“Archie? Are you rich?”
Молитва
More about the film and the poem in this article from 2013. Analysis (RU) of the poem here and here.
В минуту жизни трудную
Теснится ль в сердце грусть:
Одну молитву чудную
Твержу я наизусть.
Есть сила благодатная
В созвучьи слов живых,
И дышит непонятная,
Святая прелесть в них.
С души как бремя скатится,
Сомненье далеко –
И верится, и плачется,
И так легко, легко…
Церква євангельських християн Благодать (2013)
Учи стихи легко / Караоке (2019)
Ефимыч (2021)
Лыково Храм (2013)
More
- John Cleese Discusses Creativity, Political Correctness, Monty Python, and Artichokes (The New Yorker, 2020)
- “Just a Concoction of Nonsense”: The Oral History of A Fish Called Wanda (Vanity Fair, 2018)
- 11 Fun Facts About A Fish Called Wanda (Mental Floss, 2018)
- Did You Know That John Cleese can Speak Russian? (Monty Palin, Wattpad 2015)
- IMDb Trivia
- John Cleese on Twitter
More recitations at Живое Слово (2020). Michael Langerman (2017), Стих и Я (2017), and Стихи тут (2014).
More
Language
Amsterdam, November 4. In the queue of people waiting in front of the doors of AFAS. Where Zemfira will soon be performing. Left, right, front and back: Russian everywhere. My company almost feels at home.
Verbs work for those who want to make sentences. There - work and make, there you already have two. And try to make Russian out of that sentence if you if you don’t know работать or делать. So work, also on your vocabulary.
Even with bad news there is good news: there is a lot to learn from it. Russian news articles are excellent teaching material, even for the more advanced student.
The sixth noun, in Russian предложный падеж, is for most students the first one they learn. The reason is simple: the sixth grammatical case itself is.
And then it became war. Or should we say began the special military operation. On February 24 2022 Russian troops entered Ukraine. It was allowed neither war nor invasion be called, but it was akin to both.
This often comes as a setback for students of Russian: of (almost) every Russian verb there are two. Which do mean approximately the same thing, but express very different things. So you need to know both, and of both learn the conjugations.
