concept
White bone
white bone
also: белая кость, belaya kost
Russian idiom for hereditary aristocratic ('blue') blood, opposed to 'black bone' (the common people); the central term of Pavel Rashevich's pseudo-Darwinist monologue in 'At the Manor', where he insists on treating it as a literal, quasi-biological fact of inheritance rather than a figure of speech.
Reading notes
- At the Manor §2 white bone
See the headnote's translation-notes section: the Russian idiom "белая кость" for hereditary noble blood, kept literal here rather than replaced with "blue blood" because Rashevich insists on treating lineage as a literal biological inheritance.