On Feb 14, 2005, at 15:15, Noelene Lafferty wrote:
Was it Animal Farm the saying came from "All people are created equal, though some are more equal than others."
Yup, except that, as I remember it, it was: "Everyone's equal, but some are more equal than others". Given that none of the characters were people, it makes sense <g>
Animal Farm was the first book that I read in English... I was 19, in my second year at the U and, although I was *supposed* to read most of the stuff (not the European lit) in the original, my English wasn't up to speed. So, it was translations or, when those weren't available, I'd invite a "kujon" (a broad-beamed person who spent most of her/his time studying) to a lunch or a movie, in exchange for her telling me the story. I'd follow it up by reading a couple of randomly selected pages, and it was always enough to pass an exam :)
Animal Farm was *not* on the compulsory reading list of the English dept; in fact, it was black-listed for all of the countries under the USSR's "umbrella" of influence... :) But, somehow, someone with a warped sense of humour (I really, really, don't think it was ignorance, though I've met some censors who were as dim as some of the authorities I'd encountered here <g>) got the book (in the original) into the - single - foreign language bookstore in Warsaw. As a *childrens book*, because of its subtitle (a fairy tale? a fable?) I don't know how many copies there were; couldn't have been more than 200-300 hundred, because that was the maximum "run" the bookstore would carry of any title. But someone spotted it, and the phones started ringing, and in 48 hrs all the copies were gone... :) I gave mine away, once I had a ticket for the US-bound boat; figured I could buy it here, if I wanted to (never did, though)
One thing I was always sorry about was that, although I was able to read it, my English still wasn't good enough at the time to translate it properly; my Mother would have enjoyed it, I'm sure. She did enjoy the bits I did translate (roughly) for her, and provided the "key"; by early 70ties, my knowledge of modern history (esp of our own system) was already riddled with holes, due to prejudicial and constantly changing teaching. But she still *remembered* it, and would recognize the characters immediately - "that's Stalin, that's Trotski" etc...
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Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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