I gave him a bit of bread, |
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Nikolai Nekrassov's "The Soup Song"(from Who Lives Happily in Russia?, transl. Avrahm Yarmolinsky, 1876)Like the Turgenev story about cabbage soup, where a poor Russian woman, bereft of her only son, nevertheless forces soup down her throat so as not to waste the precious salt in it, this poem defines an almost unbelievable poverty--where one of earth's most abundant minerals is beyond the means of the poor.There's nobody left but God.... Maybe He knows the cure: Not a mouthful my little one takes. Ah, he will die for sure.
I gave him a bit of bread,
There is no salt in the house,
The little one took a bite,
I floured the crust again,
She boasted of her ruse: |
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