"The waves fell down with a swift jack" - a strange phrase, is not it? She has to do with one of the characters in The Twelve Chairs, a famous novel by Ilf and Petrov. Over time, the expression "rapid jack" has become a phraseological unit. When is it used and what is meant by it? This will be discussed in the article.
Demand for hack
Nikifor Lyapis-Trubetskoy is the character of the famous novel, the hack writer, who composes a poetic cycle dedicated to a certain Gavril. He sells it to various departmental publications. In one of his essays, this “artist of the word” describes waves that “fall by a rapid jack”. According to the researchers, he had real prototypes.
The editors of the publications described in the novel are naive and unpretentious people; they trustfully acquire Lyapis's verses. According to literary scholars, the ease in the implementation of his creations is explained not only by the fact that he had a lively character, but also by the existing demand for hack work.
Criticism of opportunism
Critics noted that, creating the image of the hack poet, who wrote about the waves that fell by the "rapid jack", the authors managed to rise to genuine satire. During one of the disputes, V. Mayakovsky spoke about the author of Gavriliada, noting that characters like Trubetskoy often nest in publications rarely visited by writers.
Literary scholars believe that, having described the author of the Gavriliada, satirists branded opportunism, which they hated and which they considered pseudo-revolutionary. However, in their opinion, the point here is not only Lyapis-Trubetskoy's resourcefulness. Behind his figure is seen what Saltykov-Shchedrin spoke of as "a whole psychological structure."
Prototype Versions
The question of the Lyapis-Trubetskoy prototype remains unclear today. There are many different versions.
Most likely, the hack-worker Lyapis is not only a caricature of one of the author’s acquaintances and fellow countrymen, it’s also a character depicting a Soviet poet who is ready for the immediate execution of each “social order”.
In the simple verses of Trubetskoy, contemporary writers also saw a parody of venerable authors, for example, V.V. Mayakovsky. And also on Osip Kolychev, who was his follower. The last name of the latter was Sirkes, in which some saw a consonance with Nicephorus Lyapis.
There is a version that, creating the image of the author of the Gavriliada, writers could use an article published in 1927 in the journal Smehach. It spoke of a famous poet who published verses united by a common theme at the same time in many publications.
It should be noted that there are other assumptions regarding the prototype of this hero.
Popular expression
Today, a "rapid jack" is called a characteristic flaw in the language of authors who do not have a broad outlook. Or they say so about the speech flaws inherent in self-confident and at the same time narrow-minded characters. They use a word, thinking that they are aware of what it means, but in reality this is not true.
About what a "jack" is, the dictionary says that this is a mechanism that serves to lift the load, weights to a small height. This word came to us from the Dutch language. An outdated version of it in the Russian language is “doomocrach”. In this form, it is mentioned, for example, in the Maritime Charter of 1720.
Can the jack be “swift”? Let's figure it out. If you take a hydraulic jack, then in it the oil is pumped from the small cylinder to the large one using the handle. From this, the latter slowly rises. After completion of work, it is necessary to open the check valve, then the large cylinder will quickly lower.
With a certain valve design and the weight of the object being lifted, the movement of the jack may very well be swift. At the time when Ilf and Petrov lived, there was also a Peugeot mechanical jack, called a sports jack. It could be lowered by pulling out the latch. And he certainly fell rapidly. Such a mechanism crippled a considerable number of athletes, as a result of which it was banned.
So with regard to the swiftness, Lyapis-Trubetskoy was right. But as for the waves, it is unlikely that they can fall by a "rapid jack", rather, by a cascade.
A few examples
It should be noted that in the literature "rapid jacks" are not so rare. Here are some examples:
- Zakhar Prilepin has a phrase that one of the heroes wriggled like nits in water. Nits are lice eggs that cannot wriggle in any way. Other blunders can be found at the same author, for example, blueberries harvested in the ground, or mountain ash in July.
- Here is another “biological” puncture. Often, pea fruits are called pods, while in fact they are beans.
- The expression "in native penates" is almost universally found both in everyday life and in literature. Correct will be "to the native penates," since the latter are not a house, but Roman deities who are the guardians of the hearth.
- The phrase "spiky tomatoes" is very common in journalistic circles. Now it’s hard to say where it came from, but it is used when they want to point out an overly pathos speech or text.
Unfortunately, such examples can be cited ad infinitum.