Figurative language

The devices

The standing epithets

Folk poetry uses a fixed stock of adjective-noun pairs, and a reader recognises them the way an English reader recognises the deep blue sea: сыра зямля, цёмны лес, чыстае поле, буйны вецер, гаротная доля. They are not chosen for accuracy; they are chosen because they are the pair.

What the imagery is made of

The recurring material of Belarusian writing is landscape and season:

• The forest as shelter, danger and memory - the Pushcha above all.
• The field and the harvest as the measure of a year and of a life.
• The river - Nioman, Dniapro, Prypiac - as the road and the boundary.
• The road, шлях, сцяжына, for a fate.
• The хата as the whole of belonging: свая хата is never only a building.

A metaphor built from this material reads as native. One built from the sea or the mountains reads as imported, and that is worth knowing before you write.

Colour

Сіні and блакітны divide the blues; сівы is the grey of hair, mist and antiquity together, which is why сівая даўніна works and a plain шэры would not.

The caution

A trope translated from another literature is the fastest way to sound foreign, even when every word is correct. If an image does not sit in the material above, it is worth asking whether a Belarusian writer would have reached for it.