concept
"Pindos" (пиндос) -- ethnic slur
pindos slur
also: пиндос, пиндосов, пиндоса, pindos-fellow
Renders the Russian "пиндос" (pindos), a period pejorative used in Black Sea coastal towns for Greek tradesmen and small merchants, current in the mixed Greek-Russian port culture of the region. Ananyev uses it twice in his narration of "Lights" (1888): first in a passing, contemptuous thought about a schoolgirl's future marriage to "some, God forgive me, Greek pindos-fellow" (section 42), then in Kisochka's own complaint that educated local women, lacking better prospects, end up married to "various brokers and pindos-fellows, who know how to do nothing but drink and make scenes at the club" (section 80). The term is folded into the narrator's broader, unexamined contempt -- for tradesmen, for the women who marry them, for the provincial town itself -- rather than singled out as exceptional; preserved in translation as "pindos-fellow" per Hermitsh Press policy rather than softened or generalized to a neutral term.
Reading notes
- Lights §42 marry some, God forgive me, Greek pindos-fellow
The Russian "пиндос" (pindos) was a period ethnic slur for Greek tradesmen and small merchants in Black Sea port towns, current in the region's mixed Greek-Russian commercial culture. Here it surfaces inside Ananyev's contemptuous private musing about a schoolgirl he is ogling: he imagines her future marriage to "some, God forgive me, Greek pindos-fellow" as proof that her life will be pointless. The slur is folded into, and inseparable from, the surrounding sexual and social contempt -- it marks the imagined husband as beneath notice in the same stroke that marks the girl's whole future as beneath notice. Preserved in translation as "pindos-fellow" per Hermitsh Press policy rather than softened or generalized; see for the term's fuller history in this corpus, including its second occurrence at loc 80.
- Lights §80 various brokers and pindos-fellows, who know how to do nothing but drink and make scenes at the club
The slur's second occurrence, this time in Kisochka's own voice rather than Ananyev's private thoughts: explaining why so many local women end up in unhappy marriages, she says educated girls, lacking better prospects, are forced to marry "various brokers and pindos-fellows." Chekhov gives the term to a sympathetic character here, not only to the self-regarding narrator, which underscores how unremarkable and load-bearing the slur was in the ordinary speech of the setting -- it is simply how a decent, unhappy woman names the class of men she considers beneath the educated women trapped into marrying them. Preserved as "pindos-fellows" per Hermitsh Press policy; see for the fuller entry and the first occurrence at loc 42.