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The Mystery of the Russian Soul
By Michele A. Berdy

Çàãàäêà ðóññêîé äóøè: the mystery of the Russian soul

The Russian soul is a mystery indeed. You start with a few soulful expressions of love and intimacy, and before you know it, you've moved into the realm of economics and murder.That is to say, äóøà (soul) has many shadings of meaning and is the source of a great many idiomatic expressions. When you love someone profoundly, you can say: ß ëþáèëà åãî äóøîé è òåëîì. (I loved him body and soul.)

When you want to express your heartfelt generosity, you can say, Åøü ñêîëüêî äóøå óãîäíî. (Eat to your heart's content, literally, eat as much as your soul wishes.) Äóøà can also be a stand-in for "conscience": ß ïîêðèâèëà äóøîé (I went against my conscience, or I went against my heart.) If you are feeling anxious and ill at ease, you can say, Ó ìåíÿ íà äóøå êîøêè ñêðåáóò, literally, "cats are scratching at my soul." And if you are terrified, you can say, Äóøà â ïÿòêè óøëà! Out of fear, the soul departs the body through its homophone: The expression is literally "my soul left my body through the soles of my feet." In English we usually say, "I was scared to death!" or "I was scared stiff!"When you want to describe a tear-jerker, "a weepie," or "a three-hankie movie," you call it äóøåùèïàòåëüíûé ôèëüì.

When something is heartrending, in Russian it's "äóøåðàçäèðàþùèé" as in the phrase, Èõ ïðîùàíèå áûëî äóøåðàçäèðàþùèì. (Their parting was heartrending; their parting tore at my heartstrings.) Someone who is mentally ill in Russian is äóøåâíîáîëüíîé, literally, "ailing in his soul," which has always seemed to me to be a profound and compassionate way to describe a troubled individual. However, when you say, áîëèò äóøà, (literally "my soul aches"), you mean that you are very disturbed by something, or, with the phrase áîëèò äóøà çà íåãî, you feel deep compassion ("my heart goes out to him").Äóøà also means "a soul" in the sense of "a living being." Òàì íå áûëî íè æèâîé äóøè. (There wasn't a soul there.) It can also be used in the economic sense of "per head" or "per capita": Äîõîäû íà äóøó íàñåëåíèÿ ðàñòóò. (Per capita income is growing.) In the old days, before the great emancipation, äóøà could also refer to a serf.

Gogol's ̸ðòâûå Äóøè (Dead Souls) referred to a good old Russian scam of buying up dead serfs and somehow making a profit on the deal. (And once again I maintain that you needn't blame the Wicked West for post-Soviet scams and cons; all you have to do is open a few Russian classics to see where people got their ideas.)If we go back even further in time, to when the Russian language was being codified, äóøà and äóõ (spirit) were one word that conveyed the sense of "spirit," "breath," or "life's breath."

Over time, many concepts of breathing evolved along the äóõ line, but some still remain in the äóøà branch. Äóøèòü is "to strangle" (to squeeze the breath out of someone), although it can also be translated as "smother" in the lovely phrase Îí äóøèë ìåíÿ â îáúÿòèÿõ. (He smothered me with hugs.) Or it can have a more sinister meaning in the phrase Åãî äóøèë ãíåâ (he was choked with rage). Perfume in Russian is äóõè, but to wear perfume is äóøèòüñÿ. Ìîÿ ìàòü âñåãäà äóøèëàñü äóõàìè "Êðàñíàÿ Ìîñêâà." (My mother always wore Red Moscow perfume.) Äóøíî means "stifling" or "stuffy" (i.e., when you can't breathe): Â òðàìâàå áûëî òàê äóøíî, ÷òî ÿ ÷óòü íå óïàëà â îáìîðîê. (It was so stuffy in the tram, I almost fainted.) Äóøîê can be a bad smell or a "tinge" of something in the figurative sense: Îí ïèøåò äëÿ ãàçåòû ñ ïðàâûì äóøêîì. (He writes for a right-wing newspaper.)

Jumping from love to serfs to economics to asphyxiation can be wearying to us poor foreign souls, trying to make sense of Russia and Russians. Whenever you are totally at a loss, you can always say, Ýòî çàãàäêà ðóññêîé äóøè! (It's the mystery of the Russian soul.)

Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator.

... in response to The Mystery of the Russian Soul, posted by Cold Warrior on Aug 23, 2003

Its my feeling that when a Russian talks about their "Russian soul" it's more along the line of us guys saying "It's a guy thing".  In other words, it is an excuse for them to do or say something that doesn't make sense, but they do it anyway...