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Mary Hobson: It took Maine about two years [to study 'War and Peacefulness']. I read it like a poem, a conviction at a metre.

Yelena Bozhkova

English people writer and translator Mary Hobson decided to learn Russian at the age of 56, graduating in her sixties and completing a PhD aged 74. Now fluent in Land, Hobson has translated "Eugene Onegin" and else poems aside Pushkin, "Woe from Wit" away Griboyedov, and has won the Griboyedov Swag and Pushkin Decoration for her work. RBTH visited Hobson at home in London to ask about her inspiring experience.

RBTH: Erudition Russian is difficult at any age, and you were 56. How did the idea first fall to your beware?

Mary Hobson: I was having a infantry cognitive process, and I had to stay in bed for 2 weeks in infirmary. My girl Emma brought me a big fat translation of War and Peace. "Mum, you'll never get a better chance to register IT", she same.

I'd never learn Russian literature before. I got absolutely hooked on information technology, I clean got so absorbed! I read like a starving man chuck. The paperback didn't ingest maps of the battle of Borodino, I was making maps trying to understand what was occurrent. This was the best fresh ever written. Tolstoy creates the whole world, and while you read it, you believe in information technology.

I woke up in the hospital three days afterward I finished reading and dead realized: "I haven't read IT at all. I've read a translation. I would have to learn Russian."

RBTH: Did you say War and Ataraxis in the germinal linguistic communication eventually?

M.H.: Yes, it was the first thing I read in Russian. I bought a fat Russian dictionary and unsatisfactory I went. It took me about deuce years. I read IT like a poem, a doom at a time. I learned such a lot, I still recall where I first ground approximately words. "Between," for illustrate. Well-nig a third of the way down the page.

RBTH: Do you remember your first steps in eruditeness Russian?

M.H.: I had a plan to study the Russian language in evening classes, merely my Russian friend said: "Don't do that, I'll teach you." We sat in the garden and she helped me to remember the Cyrillic script. I was 56 at this time, and I found it precise tiring reading in Cyrillic. I couldn't exercise it in the even because I simply wouldn't be capable to sleep. And Russian grammar is fascinating.

RBTH: You became an undergraduate for the first time in your sixties. How did you feel or so perusing with vernal students?

M.H.: I need to explain first wherefore I didn't have any career before my fifties. My husband had a very serious unwellness, a cerebral abscess, and he became indeed disabled. I was just looking after him. And we had 4 children. After 28 years I could not get laid anymore, I had bump off downs, depressions. I finally accomplished I would have to leave. Differently I would just go down with him. At that place was a life out in that respect I hadn't lived. It was meter to cristal out and to alive it.

I left him. I've been on my own for three years in a limbo of quilt and depression. Then I picked up a phone and rang the number my friend had long since given Pine Tree State, that of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London University. "Do you accept mature students?" I asked. "Of 60-two?" They did.

When the first day of term arrived, I was absolutely terrified. I went twice around Russel square before audacious to go in. The solitary matter that persuaded Pine Tree State to do it was that I got offered the place and if I didn't get it on, the children would be so ashamed of me. My group mates looked a little spot surprised at first only past we were precise quickly writing the Same essays, reading the equivalent farce, having to do the very translations.

RBTH: You spent 10 months in Moscow every bit part of your course. How did you feel in Russia?

M.H.: I barely dared unfastened my mouth, because I thought I got it wrong. It lasted active a week like this, just dare to speak. Then I thought – I'm here only for 10 months. I shall die if I don't put across. I just consume to risk it. Then I started bumbling stuff. I said things I didn't at whol mean. I just aforementioned anything. The most dangerous thing was to make jokes. People looked at me as I was mad.

I hate to say it, but in 1991 the Russian ruble absolutely collapsed and for the first and last time in my aliveness I was a wealthy woman. I bought over 200 books in Russian, 10 "Complete Collected Works" of my deary 19th-century authors. Then it was a problem how to get them home. Cardinal of them were brought to London past a visiting group of schoolchildren. They took three books each.

RBTH: You're celebrating your 90th birthday in July. What's the secret of your longevity?

M.H.: If I had not gone to university, if I had given up and stopped learning Russian, I don't think I'd have lived this long. It keeps your mind operational, it keeps you physically active agent. It affects everything. Learning Russian has given me a whole new life. A whole circle of friends, a completely new right smart of living. For me it was the just about enormous opening out to a new spirit.

All rights bookable by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

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Where to Buy I Live My Faith Medal

Source: https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2016/04/22/learning-russian-has-given-me-a-whole-new-life_587093

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