Faina Ranevskaya on Film
Posted on December 12, 2007
Filed Under Aphorisms |
I have to confess that I doubted it at first, but now I am convinced: YouTube really does have a video of absolutely everything, including a clip from a film starring the great Russian aphorist Faina Ranevskaya (see p. 53 in Geary’s Guide). I spotted this clip, of Faina playing the piano and singing with a cigarette dangling from her lips, on Ein Hod, a blog of “rare, medium-rare and well-done books stoneware pottery ein hod village and silly things.” Ein Hod also has a link to a Wikepedia entry on Faina, which I never knew existed and which sports several pictures of the great woman herself. She even made it onto a Russian postage stamp! There is also, I learned, a Wikiquote page dedicated to Ranevskaya’s sayings, several of which do not appear in my book, including these zingers:
Success is the only unforgivable sin against your neighbor.
Family can replace everything. So, before starting a family, one should think what’s more important—family or everything.
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“Success is the only unforgivable sin against your neighbour” certainly turns “Keeping up with the Joneses” on its head. Also in Faina Rainavskaya’s aphorism the sin against the Holy Ghost, the unforgivable one, metamorphoses into success. It is richly allusive.