Once more on “there have been worse times, but…”

Five years ago I tried to trace a popular quote from its two 1870s literary appearances, to its becoming so hackneyed it was a punchline for Il’f and Petrov in the 1920s, to its later life in twenty-first century political rhetoric. The gist of the old post was that everyone today attributes it to Nikolai Nekrasov but should attribute it to Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya. Nekrasov did come up with the popular phrasing byvali khuzhe vremena, no ne bylo podlei for Contemporaries (Современники, 1875–76). The poet emphasizes that he is quoting someone else (ia knigu vzial, vosstav ot sna, i prochital ia v nei: I woke up and picked up a book, and in it I read…). His modified quotation was from a recent prose piece by Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya, “Lucky People” (Счастливые люди, 1874), where she had a character say byli vremena khuzhe — podlee ne byvalo!, which Jehanne Gheith translates as “there have been worse times than this, but none more vulgarly banal.” The other day I realized that…