I'm almost finished with Veltman's Сердце и думка [Heart and head] (see this LH post), and I think I see why the young Dostoevsky liked it so much; not only does it show considerable psychological penetration, but this must have appealed to him: "из одного человека можно больше сделать, нежели из мильона голов; один в мильон раз лучше мильона" [you can do more with a single person than with a million; one person is a million times better than a million]. Of course, that is said by a demon to a witch, but that's Veltman for you. At any rate, he refers a couple of times to тинтере [tintere], a card game apparently equivalent to кончинка [konchinka], and (according to that Wikipedia article) also spelled тинтерей [tinterei] and тинтерет [tinteret]. I presume it's of French origin, given those spellings, and the stress is presumably therefore on the final syllable, but I've had no luck finding any mention of such a game outside of Russia. Anybody know what the origin might be?
↧