Are These E-Mails From My Boss? Or Lines From A Famous Russian Novel?
By Hilal Isler
My boss, Mike, is currently on holiday, in Istanbul.
We’ve been e-mailing.
Some of the words below are his.
Some are lines from the nineteenth centry-novel Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol.
Can you tell who wrote what?
Good luck.
- The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors.
- I just heard a foghorn. Childhood once more.
- How can you vegetate in the country?
- I see the sources of your face among the many facing me.
- So many greens! A mad green palate: from the water, to the hills, and to the sky.
- True, the doorway may be blocked up with a wardrobe.
- You can’t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.
- Hot, cranky, annoyed, and ready for an afternoon nap.
- I love this city; its neighborhoods, places of my childhood and youth, of small, even tiny, shops with exhausted fathers feeding their at-home family, needing a shave and bath, working into the night for a few more shekels.
- He had nothing to him except his bushy eyebrows.
- My mother would be so happy: her eldest son may yet amount to something!
- The salads in their texture, color, and taste, begin and close my days.
- An early walk showed the city imprisoned by its protective grates, hiding its personalities.
- Keep not money, but keep good people’s company.
- I have said twenty times already: ‘Don’t bring any more!’ I have so much material already, that I don’t know where to put it.
- I turned down the tea, but did drink two small bottles of water.
Scroll down for the answers!
Gogol: 1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15
Mike: 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16
Thank you for sharing/recommending this. Mike approves (He’s 75. And still on vacation. Hi Mike!).