Ему показалось...
Building full sentences with Pushkin's The Queen of Spades
We continue building a full sentence, starting small and adding words as we go. And again, as in two previous posts, we will use a sentence from The Queen of Spades by A. S. Pushkin.
Listen to it first, performed by Nikolai Marton:
В эту минуту ему показалось, что пиковая дама прищурилась и усмехнулась.
At The Gambling House by Alexandre Benois
Since this is a complex sentence, we will start with the independent clause.
Дама прищурилась - The queen narrowed her eyes
“Дама” is an old-fashioned, polite term for an adult woman, and it is also the name of the Queen card.
Пиковая дама прищурилась - The queen of spades narrowed her eyes
♠ “Пики” (literally “spears”) is the name of the spades suit in card games.
Queen of Spades (Пиковая дама, or Дама пик) is marked on the card as “Q♠.”
Пиковая дама прищурилась и усмехнулась -
The queen of spades narrowed her eyes and smirked
The verb “усмехнуться” is related to the noun “смех” (laughter) and the verb “смеяться” (to laugh). The prefix “у-” and the reflexive ending “-ся,” create a new meaning: “to smirk” or to give a short, restrained laugh.
See, for example, how new meanings are generated by adding prefixes and suffixes:
Смеяться — to laugh
Подсмеиваться — to make gentle fun of, to tease lightly
Посмеиваться — to chuckle, to smile to oneself
Насмеяться — to have mocked smb.; to have laughed enough
Насмехаться — to mock, to ridicule
Насмешник — a mocker, a scoffer
Photo by Nathan Rostanpour
Пересмешник — mockingbird
And now let’s build on the dependent clause.
Ему показалось - It seemed to him
The structure “Ему показалось” can be easily translated word for word as “to him (it) seemed,” with the “it” implied. But after zooming out, it becomes more obvious that this type of structure, with the subject in the dative case followed by a reflexive verb, is a typical form of expression that is directly related to the subject yet creates a degree of distance between the subject and the action.
See for yourself:
Ему послышалось — It seemed to him that he heard something / He thought he heard something
Ему привиделось — It seemed to him / He imagined he saw something
Ему захотелось — He felt like (doing something) / He suddenly wanted to
Ему понравилось — He liked it / It pleased him
В эту минуту ему показалось - At that moment, it seemed to him
The expression “в эту минуту” (literally: at this minute) is synonymous with “в этот момент.” Both can be translated as “at this moment.”
And finally, we are going to connect the two clauses with the conjunction “что” (“that”). But listen to these lines one more time:
В эту минуту ему показалось, что пиковая дама прищурилась и усмехнулась.
At that moment, it seemed to him that the queen of spades narrowed her eyes and smirked.
And lastly, a short scene from the film The Queen of Spades (Lenfilm, 1982).
Hermann appears in the gambling house after placing winning bets twice. This time, he bets on the Ace of Spades but appears to have dealt himself the Queen.
Characters:
Innokenty Smoktunovsky as Chekalinsky, the dealer
Victor Proskurin as Hermann
Alla Demidova reads Pushkin’s narrative
Чекалинский стал метать, руки его тряслись. Направо легла дама, налево туз.
– Туз выиграл! – сказал Германн и открыл свою карту.
– Дама ваша убита, – сказал ласково Чекалинский.
Германн вздрогнул: в самом деле, вместо туза у него стояла пиковая дама. Он не верил своим глазам, не понимая, как мог он обдернуться.
В эту минуту ему показалось, что пиковая дама прищурилась и усмехнулась.
А. С Пушкин. “Пиковая дама”Chekalinsky’s hands shook as he started to deal. On the right lay a queen, on the left an ace.
“My ace wins,” said Hermann, disclosing his card.
“Your queen loses,” said Chekalinsky gently.
Hermann gave a start: instead of an ace, the queen of spades was indeed lying there. He could not believe his eyes, unable to comprehend how he could have drawn the wrong card.
Just then it seemed to him that the queen of spades winked at him and grinned.
A. S. Pushkin, The Queen of Spades, translated by Alan Myers
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Please have a look at our earlier sentence-building posts based on The Queen of Spades. If you would like more practice of this type, based on the same or a different text, please let me know in the comments.
