The expression Hamburg account appeared to me. “Hamburg account”: meaning of phraseology and origin

Unified State Examination - 2017 “HAMBURG ACCOUNT” AND IN THE BIG SCORE

(1) The expression “Hamburg account” came to me like this.
(2) In the 20s, the Writers' Union in its old composition, as one of the writers' organizations, was located in the Herzen House according to Tverskoy Boulevard. (3) It was summer. (4) A large awning opened onto the first floor directly into the garden: under the awning there was a restaurant, and the entire first floor was also a restaurant.
(5) The cook of the restaurant was a man whose last name I forgot; I know that by his previous profession he was a circus wrestler.
(6) Large, elderly people came to him, they sat heavily on chairs and, as I remember, sometimes deliberately broke them.
(7) The chef prepared a vinaigrette for his friends; portions were served in large, specially purchased wash basins. (8) After such a snack, people ate lunch.
(9) Once a man came, less heavy than the others, but larger than everyone else. (10) A retinue immediately formed around him, arranged according to rank: this was Ivan Poddubny. (11) He came from a fight: they fought in the Chapiteau circus. (12) Poddubny was then 70 years old. (13) He was asked to come out to fight. (14) He spoke about this calmly:
“It’s impossible to fight at 70 years old,” said Poddubny, “but you can show how they fight.” (15) And everyone knew that I couldn’t be put down based on my rank. (16) It’s not good to suddenly take a 70-year-old man and put him on his shoulder.
(17) - I’m demonstrating a roll and suddenly I feel that my young partner wants to squeeze me, instead of letting me show the classic bridge.
(18) Then I tell you exactly:

(19) - You can’t wrestle at 70 years old, but for two minutes or one minute I can be as strong as another wrestler. (20) But I never pushed. (21) If we had pushed, there would have been no survivors. (22) And then I pushed him; he was carried away on a board.
(23) To which the chef said calmly:
- Let him remember the Hamburg score!
(24) I asked what the Hamburg score was, and they explained to me that it is a score without conventions, without playing. (25) In the old days it was installed in Hamburg in closed competitions - without an audience.
(26) I wrote about Poddubny and the Hamburg account and, when publishing the book, included this story there. (27) The publishing house advised me to put this title on the cover. (28) It was in 1924.
(29) 25 years later, Konstantin Simonov, during the fight against cosmopolitanism, recalled this story of mine and pinned me down for many years.
(30) As Alexander Fadeev told me, I “should not have been mentioned” in the discussion.

(31) I’m not going to push myself now, but I will say that Simonov’s speech was published by the central newspaper Pravda in 1949. (32) Since then, no magazine has accepted my stories.

(33) And a year later, in one of the essays about the life of the village, in a conversation between collective farmers, I read: “But now we’ll give him a Hamburg score.” (34) This was said, as far as I remember, about a neighbor who lived dishonestly and was engaged in showing off.
(35) So these people read my story simple people, if they remember both the expression itself and its meaning.
(36) In sports there is an Olympic score, which, due to the significance of the competition, is a true score because it has indicators that can be verified.
(370In art, the rules of counting are sometimes violated and a person declared a champion suddenly appears on a tray of discounted books. (38) So, it means that the Hamburg counting, without show, without deception, is also in literature.

(According to V. Shklovsky)

Essay by a student of class 11 “A” Byankina Natalia

Is it really possible to observe the triumph of justice in life? This is the question that V. Shklovsky discusses.

I guess, that this problem always relevant. Unfortunately, human morality is imperfect. In small and large actions we are sometimes dishonest and selfish. A sense of justice is the norm to which a person should strive.

Reflecting on this problem, the author starts from real story with Ivan Poddubny, who was a very authoritative person at the beginning of the 20th century, so his words and actions carried great weight. Shklovsky relies on the wrestler’s statement about the “Hamburg score”, main idea which is justice in all actions.

The story about Ivan Poddubny became fateful for the critic. The second part of the text is devoted not only to dramatic events from the writer’s life, but also to serious conclusions about justice in art.

The text is written in the form of memories. The first-person narration gives it a confidential intonation. The narrator’s emotionality is conveyed to the reader.

It is impossible to disagree with the author's position. Both in life and in literature one can find many examples of injustice. For example, in M.A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita,” envious writers and critics “mixed with mud” the Master’s novel about Pontius Pilate. The dishonest and unfair accusations rained down on the main character deprived his life of meaning. This led to him burning his work, breaking off relations with Margarita and hiding from reality in a madhouse.

If in the time of V.B. Shklovsky sport was fair, and the “Olympic score” was the “true score,” then in our time the situation is different. Unfortunately, we know from the means mass media that the results of the Olympiads are not always fair.

There is a well-known story about doping, which was fabricated by the enemies of our country. Everyone was very offended by the fact that Russian Paralympians were banned from participating in the Winter Olympics. But we believe that justice will definitely prevail and our athletes will be the best.

Shklovsky's text is very interesting in content. He allowed us to think about the fact that most often justice is better known through injustice. And that a person needs to establish the truth.

Linguists classify the expression “Hamburg count”, or “according to Hamburg count”, as phraseological units whose meaning is not equal to the sum of the meanings of the words. In other words, knowing what a “Hamburg” is and what a “count” is will not shed any light on the meaning of this phrase.

Intuitive understanding of expression based on context

However, the expression “Hamburg account”, or “according to the Hamburg account”, is usually intuitive from the context and is often equated with the phraseological unit “by and large”. In general, this is true, but only an intuitive understanding of a phraseological unit usually does not make it possible to freely use it in one’s own speech, since the boundaries of the meaning are not entirely clear, and secondly, there is always doubt about whether it is understood correctly and what it has relation to the city of Hamburg.

Knowledge of what a “Hamburg count” is, as well as the history of the origin of the phraseological unit, will help you understand the nuances of meaning and the specifics of using this expression.

Viktor Shklovsky on the etymology of the expression “Hamburg score”

The origin of phraseological units is closely connected with the name of the famous literary scholar and critic Viktor Shklovsky. His book is called “The Hamburg Account”. The meaning of the phraseological unit becomes clear after getting acquainted with the parable told by Shklovsky and explaining the title of the book.

The parable says that professional sports wrestlers never fight honestly, their task is to perform as ordered. They must lose (lie down) when the entrepreneur tells them to. This scam is for making money. However, every year in one of the taverns in Hamburg, wrestlers gather for a fair fight. Their fight takes place without spectators, from whom both the fight itself and how long, unaesthetic and difficult it really is for the wrestlers are hidden. At this non-spectacular event, it becomes clear which of the wrestlers is stronger and which is weaker.

This is done in order to find out the real value of each wrestler, regardless of where he occupies in the open arena.

"Hamburg Account" in literature

It is this struggle, hidden from everyone, in which official titles and titles are not important, that Shklovsky calls the “Hamburg score.” important in relation to literature, or more precisely, to what place a particular writer occupies in the literary arena. What the phraseological unit “Hamburg account” means for Viktor Shklovsky becomes clear from the use of the expression “according to the Hamburg account” in the text of his short article. “According to the Hamburg account, Serafi-movich and Veresa-ev are not there. They don’t make it to the city,” the author writes and then continues his allegory, saying that in Hamburg, that is, at hidden competitions where the true strength of a wrestler is revealed, Bulgakov would have found himself at the mat, Isaac Babel would act as a lightweight wrestler, the strength of Maxim Gorky would be questionable, since this “athlete” is not always in shape, but Velimir Khlebnikov would be a champion.

One of the areas where the expression “Hamburg account” is used is economic. The etymology and meaning of the phraseological unit are such that it can be used in the sense that they are built on honest, open principles, when all parties to the contract are equal both formally and in essence.

"The Hamburg Account" in literary criticism

As can be seen from the retelling of Shklovsky’s short article, the Hamburg score is important in literature, as in sports. The meaning of phraseological units in context literary criticism is that in literature, as in wrestling, any figure can be evaluated according to two systems. For the first, the official “alignment” of forces is important, and for the second, the real one. In the first case, formal indicators of the success of the author and work are important in literature, and in the second, his real scale of talent is important.

Of course, in literature it is much more difficult to find out which writers “don’t make it to the city” and who is the champion than in sports. Ultimately, according to the Hamburg account, only time can evaluate a writer and a work, but what is meant is that when evaluating a literary phenomenon, it is important not to follow momentary criteria, but to look at it as if it existed outside of time.

"Hamburg Account" in various fields of culture and art

Since the time of Shklovsky (and his book was written in 1928), in many spheres of culture it has become familiar expression"Hamburg account" The meaning of phraseological units has expanded. Most often, an assessment “according to the Hamburg account” means an assessment cultural phenomenon or a cultural figure, regardless of any opinions, official recognition, awards, prizes awarded, popularity and fame.

Thus, a scientist, by coincidence of circumstances, may not have a high scientific title - not be an academician, or even a professor, but just an associate professor, not occupy leadership positions, not participate in official events, but “according to the Hamburg account,” that is, in reality , to be an interesting scientist, whose thoughts, works and achievements are truly important for science.

This approach to evaluation is possible not only in relation to a person, but also, for example, to a book. One book can be published by a major publishing house with a circulation of ten thousand copies, widely known among readers, have a lot of fans, and a TV series can be made based on it, but according to the Hamburg account, this is just a commercial project or a temporary, momentary phenomenon. Another book may be published in a small provincial publishing house with a circulation of five hundred copies and known only to a small circle of readers, receiving negative reviews from critics, but by Hamburg standards it may turn out to be a truly talented work.

Allegorical meaning of the expression “Hamburg score”

However, these are not all possible meanings of the expression “Hamburg score”. The meaning of phraseological units in modern language even wider. It is used when they want to talk about the real, honest price of something, about true position of things. You can judge and evaluate according to the Hamburg score not only phenomena and cultural figures, but also your actions, relationships in the family, relationships between people, events in the country, etc. - in a word, everything that can have a formal, official side and an actual, true.

Examples of the use of the expression “Hamburg bill”

The specificity of a phraseological unit is such that even with a clear understanding of its meaning, its use can cause problems, since examples of grammatical “fitting” of an expression into a phrase are needed. There really aren’t many grammatical and syntactic options:

  • Pelevin is a strong satirist and a very successful commercial project, a successful writer, but, according to the Hamburg account, then this is emptiness, like all the phenomena of postmodernism.
  • He is very willing to talk in the most different topics, but in front of Ivan Ivanovich he becomes silent: he understands that, according to the Hamburg account, all his knowledge is superficial.
  • I trust this vet. He will never say too much or give advice if he does not understand the situation. He works according to the Hamburg account, his goal is not to pretend that he understands everything, but to save the animal and not harm it.
  • Of course, they won this match. But, according to the Hamburg account, they played poorly. They were just lucky. This was their day.

Appropriate and inappropriate contexts

A phraseological unit is one that, if its meaning is transparent, is used freely and promptly in its use. The same thing happens with the expression “Hamburg score”: the origin and meaning of the words are transparent. This means that you can safely experiment. However, in in this case you should beware of using the expression even in cases where it is well understood what a Hamburg account is.

The fact is that this expression itself is intended for conversation “according to the Hamburg account” and resists ordinary, everyday, unimportant topics and contexts. It will be inappropriate when talking about whether the birthday party went well, whether the cake was a success, or what level of service was in the cafe. In these situations, the expression “Hamburg score” is not redundant only if everyday events for some reason are important in someone’s life or are significant for the life of a city or country.

The concept " Hamburg account", which has become widespread in the Russian language, means identifying the real, and not the official, place of an individual in the status hierarchy. The expression "pay the Hamburg bill" means "pay fairly."

The Hamburg Account" is the title of a collection of literary critical articles by Viktor Shklovsky, published in 1928. In the brief programmatic article that opens the collection, the author himself explains the meaning of the book's title: "The Hamburg Account is an extremely important concept. All wrestlers, when they fight, cheat and lie down on their shoulder blades on the orders of the entrepreneur. Once a year, wrestlers gather in a Hamburg tavern. They fight behind closed doors and curtained windows. Long, ugly and hard. Here the true classes of fighters are established, so as not to go astray." According to A.P. Chudakov, commentator modern edition books, real basis this plot became for Shklovsky oral history circus wrestler Ivan Poddubny. However, it is much more likely that the author of the expression “Hamburg score” belongs to Shklovsky himself. Immediately became catchphrase, especially fashionable in the literary community, the expression “Hamburg account” serves as the equivalent of an impartial assessment of something without discounts or concessions, with the utmost demands. It is possible that no less popular phraseological unit“by and large,” which has the same meaning, is nothing more than a transformation of Shklovsky’s idea. For the first time in literature, the phrase “by and large” is found in the novel “Fulfillment of Desires” (1935), created by Veniamin Kaverin, a writer close to Shklovsky’s circle. And today, more and more often in our speech we hear the expression “according to the Hamburg account” - a contamination of two phraseological units invented by writers.
Critic Irina Rodnyanskaya in the article “The Hamburg Hedgehog in the Fog” (New World. - 2001. - No. 3), dedicated to the problems of literary strategies today, notes: “Shklovsky could have been pleased - almost like Dostoevsky, who was proud of enriching the Russian language with the verb “to shy away.” The expression “Hamburg account” separated from the parable he told in the 20s and went around the world in an undoubted and generally understood meaning. so long ago, even the most colorful Duma deputy publicly threatened to judge someone “on the big Hamburg score." They laughed at the deputy in unison. But in vain. It is useful to listen to people's understandings. Our character innocently contaminated the "Hamburg score" and the "big score", believing that It’s lying somewhere nearby, and he’s not the only one who’s imagined it for a long time.

The “Hamburg account” (it has become commonly understood) is a great aesthetic account in literature and art. Identification of the first, second and last places on the scale of the genuine, the present. “Big” - because it opposes “small” accounts maintained by officialdom, groups, parties in the interests of their situational needs. “Big” - because it appeals to the “big time”, in whose epochal contours the fog will dissipate and burst bubble and everything will fall into place. A connoisseur who attracts the “Hamburg score” acts as a guesser, an oracle, listening to the noise of great time, comparing signals from there with his aesthetic instrument.”

"The Hamburg Account" is the name of a collection of literary critical articles by Viktor Shklovsky published in 1928. In the brief programmatic article that opens the collection, the author himself explains the meaning of the book's title: " The Hamburg count is an extremely important concept. All wrestlers, when they fight, cheat and lie down on their shoulder blades on the orders of the entrepreneur. Once a year, wrestlers gather in a Hamburg tavern. They fight behind closed doors and curtained windows. Long, ugly and hard. Here the true classes of fighters are established - so as not to be wasted". According to A.P. Chudakov, a commentator on the modern edition of the book, the real basis for this plot was for Shklovsky the oral story of the circus wrestler Ivan Poddubny. However, it is much more likely that the authorship of the expression “Hamburg score” belongs to Shklovsky himself. It immediately became a catchphrase, especially fashionable in literary circles, the expression " Hamburg account " serves as the equivalent of an impartial assessment of something without discounts or concessions, with extreme demands. It is possible that the no less popular phraseological unit " by and large", which has the same meaning, is nothing more than a transformation of Shklovsky's idea. For the first time in literature, the phrase "by and large" is found in the novel "Fulfillment of Desires" (1935), created by Veniamin Kaverin, a writer close to Shklovsky's circle. And Today, more and more often in our speech we hear the expression " according to Hamburg account" is a contamination of two phraseological units invented by writers.

Critic Irina Rodnyanskaya in the article “Hamburg hedgehog in the fog” ( New world.- 2001.- No. 3), dedicated to the problems of literary strategies of today, notes: “Shklovsky could have been pleased - almost like Dostoevsky, who was proud of enriching the Russian language with the verb “to be obscured.” The expression “Hamburg account” separated from the parable he told in the 20s and went for a walk around to the world in an undoubted and generally understandable meaning. Not so long ago, even the most colorful Duma deputy publicly threatened to judge someone “on the big Hamburg score.” They laughed at the deputy in unison. But in vain. It is useful to listen to popular understandings. Our character innocently contaminated the “Hamburg score” and "a big score", believing that it lies somewhere nearby. Yes, he is not the only one who has imagined this for a long time.

"Hamburg account"(has become commonly understood) is a large aesthetic account in literature and art. Identification of the first, second, and last places on the scale of the genuine, the present. "Big" - because it opposes the "small" accounts conducted by officialdom, groups, parties in the interests of their situational needs. "Big" - because it appeals to the "big time", in whose epochal contours the fog will clear, soap bubbles will burst and everything will fall into place. The connoisseur who attracts the "Hamburg score" acts as a guesser, an oracle, listening to the noise of the big time , comparing signals from there with his aesthetic instrument."

To attract the reader's attention to this issue, the author talks about amazing story Ivan Poddubny, it was from him that Viktor Borisovich heard a phrase that was destined to become an idiom: “And then I pushed him; they carried him away on the board. To which the chef said calmly: “Let him remember the Hamburg score.” Shklovsky also writes about how I met the above-mentioned expression twenty-six years after the publication of his book “The Hamburg Account: “And a year later, in one of the essays about the life of the village, in a conversation among collective farmers, I read: “But now we will arrange a Hamburg account for him...”

Idioms are far from the best important element works, but they give it a curtained look, clothe it in a beautiful shell, just as an artist highlights certain details in a painting and performs the finishing touches. Similar expressions take root in colloquial use ordinary people, and therefore serve as a bridge to understanding the meaning of the text, one short idiom can replace many sentences. They make it accessible.

In colloquial use, such idioms as “famus society”, molchalins”, “khlestakovshchina”, “plyushkin”, “mephestopheles”, “faust”, “Oblomovshchina” have taken root. The source of these expressions were the works: “Woe from Wit” by Griboyedov, “ Inspector", " Dead Souls"Gogol, "Faust" by Hugo, "Oblomov" by Goncharov.

These lists can be continued. As we see, literature replenishes our reserve of stable expressions. It plays a huge role in the formation of idioms and their consolidation in people's memory.

Idioms are very often used by journalists. They help, firstly, to make the article accessible, and this is one of the most important criteria that a journalist must follow. After all, the article is addressed to the masses; people of different strata and statuses will read it. Thus, the journalist, as it were, creates cozy atmosphere around the reader, attracts him to himself. Secondly, the use of idioms allows you to shorten the article, make it more capacious and informative. For example, the expression “famous society” means a society of people for whom the priority is high ranks, money, balls, but they have no moral categories special significance. So I replaced an entire sentence with two words.

Option 2

As a second argument, I would like to give an example from the work of A.N. Ostrovsky “The Thunderstorm”. In this story, Ostrovsky talks about Kabanikha’s unfair attitude towards his daughter-in-law Katerina. Kabanikha sharply and venomously cuts off Katerina at every word, with malicious irony condemns her for her affectionate treatment of her husband, whom, in her opinion, she should not love, but fear.

In conclusion, I want to say that we must do what is right and fair. All the same, time will put everything in its place.

Option 3

After reading the Russian text Soviet writer V.B. Shklovsky, I can say with confidence that central problem is a problem of justice.

In the proposed text we can see the story of the famous strongman Ivan Poddubny. He shared a story that happened to him at the age of seventy, when he had a fight with a young man who thought that he could assert himself at his expense. But as it turned out, he failed.

The author also talks about an unjust incident that influenced his entire life. Once the writer Simonov undeservedly accused Shklovsky and this led to the fact that he was no longer published, but he still deserved love, having once heard famous phrase from the people.

I find confirmation of my position in works of Russian literature. Great writer F.M. Dostoevsky in the novel “Crime and Punishment” tells Raskolnikov’s theory about superiors and inferiors, but in the end this theory led to a crime. Raskolnikov thought that he had the right to control people's lives, since he considered himself extraordinary. Main character acted unfairly towards the old woman whom he killed, thereby killing himself and rejecting his theory.