Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 4 – Whatever their
substantive merits, philologist Mikhail Epshteyn says, the language Vladimir
Putin has used in his proposed constitutional amendments is “illiterate and
absurd” and would get “at best a C-Minus” if it were handed in by a pupil in a school
paper.
Epshteyn, who points out that he isn’t
a lawyer but rather a philologist, says he has been struck “by the illiteracy
and absurdity of the phrases personally proposed by the president as the main amendment.
If such a phrase were given to me a school composition, it would deserve in the
best case a C-Minus” (snob.ru/profile/27356/blog/165297/).
He focuses on Putin’s proposal that
the following language be introduced into the Constitution: “The Russian Federation
united by a thousand-year history and preserving the memory of ancestors who
have handed down to us ideals and faith in God and also the continuity of the
development of the Russian state recognizes its historically evolved state
unity.”
The most immediately striking
feature of this language is that it is “a complete tautology.” Russia is
unified because it is unified, in much the same way that “oil recognizes that
it is oily,” Epshteyn says. It lacks content because it does not give new information
about the term first introduced.
But there are other problems as
well, the philologist continues. “Continuity cannot be handed down because
continuity” is exactly what is described when one talks about something being “handed
down.” Similarly, the text is marked by
repetitions of variants of the word “history” that add nothing.
“This is frozen language and frozen
thought,” Epshteyn says, “and on the whole under the form of a constitutional basic
provision, a verbose absurdity. This absence of meaning and movement in the key
phrase can speak only about one thing: the state, which so ‘constitutes’
itself, has no development or dynamic in it.”
“By the very logic of language, it
is condemned to repeat itself again and again.”
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