I've taken to reading a page or two of Gogol every morning, marveling at how readily I can read it and how much I'm enjoying it--why, I keep asking myself, couldn't I read this way when I was actually studying for my Ph.D.? Oh well.
In any case, I had the thought that since I'm looking up only one or two words every morning (and that looking them up on Google Translate is a lot less laborious than leafing through a dictionary), I would keep a record of the words I enjoy the most... Will this be a one-time thing? Will I actually stick with it? Time will tell. I never thought I would stick to posting poems, so perhaps, perhaps...
From Gogol's "Nevsky Prospect"
мишурный (MeeSHOORnyi) - tawdry, vain, meretricious, gimcrack, gingerbread (I imagine in the sense of a gingerbread Victorian)
Боже, куда зашел он! Сначала он не хотел верить и начал пристальнее всматриваться в предметы, наполнявшие комнату; но голые стены и окна без занавес не показывали никакого присутствия заботливой хозяйки; изношенные лица этих жалких созданий, из которых одна села почти перед его носом и так же спокойно его рассматривала, как пятно на чужом платье, — все это уверило его, что он зашел в тот отвратительный приют, где основал свое жилище жалкий разврат, порожденный мишурною образованностию и страшным многолюдством столицы.
God, where had he come! At first he refused to believe it and began studying the objects that filled the room more attentively; but the bare walls and curtainless windows showed no presence of a thoughtful housewife; the worn faces of these pathetic creatures, one of whom sat down almost in front of his nose and gazed at him as calmly as at a spot on someone’s clothes—all this convinced him that he had come to one of those revolting havens where pathetic depravity makes its abode, born of tawdry education and the terrible populousness of the capital.
THE COLLECTED TALES OF NIKOLAI GOGOL, trans. RICHARD PEVEAR and LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY (1998), p. 255.
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