"Hunger is not my aunt": literary analogies and the everyday meaning of expression

Someone is lucky with relatives, but someone is not. Those who are fortunate will understand the popular aphorism "hunger is not an aunt." People who are not familiar with good relations with relatives do not realize the whole depth of the proverb considered by us. In any case, for those and for others, we will do a little research. In it, we will disclose the meaning and meaning of the connection of good relatives with hunger.

Knut Hamsun, The Hunger

Hunger is a terrible condition if he is sharpening a person long enough. In order not to starve, people steal, sometimes they kill. A person needs to eat three times a day or at least at least two times. Some manage to eat once a day, but that's when circumstances force.

Literature provides vivid examples of the fact that hunger is not an aunt. First of all, this is Knut Hamsun's novel The Hunger. The ending of the novel is quickly erased from memory, but the workshops describing a person who has not eaten more than one day, remain with the reader forever.

The most interesting thing is that the character of Hamsun is a journalist. He needs to write to eat, but he can not create any article, because he is hungry. The letters merge. Rezi and abdominal pain interfere with work. Hamsun is not in vain called the "Norwegian Dostoevsky", for he delivers the hero's ordeals with amazing psychological accuracy, bordering on meticulousness. A man in a classic novel would agree without thinking that hunger is not his aunt.

Charles Bukowski

Creator of autobiographical novels Charles Bukowski also knew what a famine is, not by hearsay, for the hero of most of his novels, Henry Chinaski, constantly wants to eat, but as soon as he has money, they immediately go down in the nearest bar. Nonetheless, Buk (as the friends of the father of "dirty realism" was lovingly called) argues in his writings with two common truths: first, the artist must be hungry all the time to create something out of the ordinary; Second, "well-fed belly to the teachings of the deaf." Responding to both arguments at once, he concludes: a) hunger is not an aunt; B) he personally works better when he eats a good portion of boiled potatoes with meat or sausages.

Sergey Dovlatov

Sergey Dovlatov does not lag behind foreign authors. Somewhere in the vastness of his not very impressive, but sparkling prose, the image of a hungry journalist who, while sitting in the park, stares dreamily at the swans swimming in the pond, is already trying to figure out how to catch them better.

But everything ends well: the hero meets a rich middle-aged lady, who takes care of his food supply. You will say: "Alphonse!" And what to do, the proverb "hunger is not my aunt" says the truth.

By the way, Dovlatov asserts in his notebooks that this story had a real prototype and everything was exactly as described. However, we promised to talk about relatives and hunger, so let's take a direct linguistic interpretation.

Relatives and hunger

The saying "hunger is not an aunt" implies that a person has good relatives, and they will certainly feed him and caress him if necessary. What can not be said about hunger is that it is ruthless and tortures a person inexorably until he sates his womb. Such a blessed picture, probably, was where the proverb came from. The situation is pleasant because the person has relatives who will not give him a precipice just like that.

Now, when a person is engulfed in the spirit of competition and the desire for profit, all family relations fly into the tartar. "A man is a wolf to man," the Roman sage said, and was absolutely right. Apparently, in ancient Rome, relations between people were not very pleasant.

In other words, we are very happy for those who have, where to go. With each turn of capitalism (especially in Russia), a person is rapidly dehumanized and individualized. Communication between people breaks off. People turn into islands in the ocean of life, drifting on their own. Watching such a bleak picture, one involuntarily thinks: what will happen if suddenly aunts, uncles, parents disappear from the world? Who will go to the starving wanderer?