Likely it's only if you really love words this article will appeal as Anthony Burgess had the most marvelous love of words of anyone I ever read. He was an actual linguist but I don't know if it was at the doctoral level. Regardless, he had a superlative knowledge of Russian and that's a prominent component of Nadsat, the language he invented for "A Clockwork Orange."
Nadsat isn't a full language but it supplied a great deal of the color as that's what came from being inside a clockwork orange. It may intrigue you to see the precise relationships between Nadsat and the origins of each word. Many are Russian or derivations of Russian but Burgess drew on other sources as well. (WIKI: Nadsat)
See also for the entire lexicon in detail in Appendix: A Clockwork Orange (WIKI).
Note: yes, I have contributed to WIKI. It wasn't very much but it was what I could. I hope you will as well.
None of this is revealed in the movie as Nadsat comes over as a novel slang but the depth of it isn't revealed and that's one of the most intriguing aspects. When the novel is set in a seemingly-English future, why is it there is such a Russian influence.
There was no mention of some previous catastrophic war in which the Russians had won and the culture was correspondingly influenced. Therefore, I conclude the use of Russian in this way was strictly as a literary device to paint the clockwork orange as Soviet Russia, a country which was portrayed aggressively as a mechanistic society comprised of tiny cogs spinning in their prescribed ways but none concerned whether anything was accomplished by it or if it even worked.
If the above were Burgess' sole purpose then presumably it would have been better to set the story in Moscow but the country really isn't clear. The conclusion comes out the same as perhaps the clockwork orange insofar as it represents the mechanistic Soviet society is actually the larger machine culture in general. The result came out the same as the overseeing authority thought it was so clever in re-programming his behavior ... but it didn't work.
All the while Ludwig van played on.
Something which may be revealing is pursuing which pieces were played in the movie and taking a look at what Beethoven said about each one, what they were supposed to mean, etc. I don't recall if Burgess mentioned by name which pieces and that may have been something Kubrick added. It was handled beautifully but, just as the slang was more than slang, the music was likely more than it seemed as well.
Nadsat isn't a full language but it supplied a great deal of the color as that's what came from being inside a clockwork orange. It may intrigue you to see the precise relationships between Nadsat and the origins of each word. Many are Russian or derivations of Russian but Burgess drew on other sources as well. (WIKI: Nadsat)
See also for the entire lexicon in detail in Appendix: A Clockwork Orange (WIKI).
Note: yes, I have contributed to WIKI. It wasn't very much but it was what I could. I hope you will as well.
None of this is revealed in the movie as Nadsat comes over as a novel slang but the depth of it isn't revealed and that's one of the most intriguing aspects. When the novel is set in a seemingly-English future, why is it there is such a Russian influence.
There was no mention of some previous catastrophic war in which the Russians had won and the culture was correspondingly influenced. Therefore, I conclude the use of Russian in this way was strictly as a literary device to paint the clockwork orange as Soviet Russia, a country which was portrayed aggressively as a mechanistic society comprised of tiny cogs spinning in their prescribed ways but none concerned whether anything was accomplished by it or if it even worked.
If the above were Burgess' sole purpose then presumably it would have been better to set the story in Moscow but the country really isn't clear. The conclusion comes out the same as perhaps the clockwork orange insofar as it represents the mechanistic Soviet society is actually the larger machine culture in general. The result came out the same as the overseeing authority thought it was so clever in re-programming his behavior ... but it didn't work.
All the while Ludwig van played on.
Something which may be revealing is pursuing which pieces were played in the movie and taking a look at what Beethoven said about each one, what they were supposed to mean, etc. I don't recall if Burgess mentioned by name which pieces and that may have been something Kubrick added. It was handled beautifully but, just as the slang was more than slang, the music was likely more than it seemed as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment