concept
"Almost a streetwalker"
almost a streetwalker
also: почти кокотка
Svetlovidov's bitter self-description of an actor's social standing with the public that adores his performances but would never accept him into its own family -- comparing his own position, not any individual, to that of a кокотка (a kept woman/courtesan): publicly consumed and admired, privately déclassé and unmarriageable into respectable society.
Reading notes
- Swan Song (Calchas) §36 almost a streetwalker
"Почти кокотка" -- Svetlovidov's bitter comparison is a piece of class self-deprecation about the actor's peculiar social position, not a slur directed at any person: like a кокотка (a kept woman or courtesan), he is publicly consumed, applauded, and admired by a public that pays to look at him, yet privately regarded as unfit to be received into respectable family life -- the public will buy his photograph for a rouble but will not "lower himself" to give a sister or daughter in marriage to an actor. The translation preserves the actor's own frank, self-lacerating comparison rather than softening it, consistent with the monologue's larger indictment of the gap between an artist's public glamour and private worth.