# Увидеть человека прекрасным (why Instrumental?)



## Krystmarodoren

Hello, 

In a speech given by Svetlana Aleksiyevich, the following sentence is used:
"Плакать от радости, что я увидела человека прекрасным, я тоже не раз хотела."

Now, according to my knowledge of the language the meaning of the phrase is something like: 
"Many times I have wanted to cry out of happiness, having seen the beauty of people".
But why прекрасным in the instrumental case? This I don't understand. I thought it proper to write "что я увидила человека прекрасного"
but something tells me the Nobel prize winner's grasp on Russian grammar is somewhat more reliable than mine own. 

Thanks for your help,

Regards
Alex


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## Q-cumber

Hi Alex,
Both variants are correct. "Увидеть человека прекрасным" means 'to see a man in condition of being beautiful /to see how a man becomes beautiful'. Прекрасный is temporary quality (condition) of a man here. That's why the instrumental case is being used. Увидеть -каким?- прекрасным.  In your option  - "увидеть человека прекрасного" - the adjective describes a permanent quality of a man (noun). This man is always beautiful. Увидеть какого человека? Прекрасного, высокого, лысого.


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## rusita preciosa

Hi Alex
Я увидела человека прекрасного = I saw a wonderful person (permanent quality)
Я увиделa человека прекрасным = I saw a person being wonderful (situational)

_Cross-posted_


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## Maroseika

Some previous threads about this construction:
*быть + instrumental*
*была девочка / девочкой*
*She was nervous - nominative or instrumental?*
*Разочарование действительно было огромным*


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## Rosett

Use of the instrumental in OP means that the author wants to see beauty in a person while the person may be not beautiful at all. Her entire speech is about that.


Krystmarodoren said:


> "Плакать от радости, что я увидела человека прекрасным, я тоже не раз хотела."


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## Q-cumber

Rosett said:


> Use of the instrumental in OP means that the author wants to see beauty in a person while the person may be not beautiful at all. Her entire speech is about that, on top of being


In that case she would rather say "Плакать от радости, что я увидела *в человеке прекрасное*, я тоже не раз хотела."


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## Krystmarodoren

What an interesting construction, I love that you can express niceties such as this one without adding more words. 
Thank you for all your quick responses, it's all much clearer now. Like Rosett said, there is an idea of finding beauty in an ugly world that runs through the speech(and much of her literature I'd say) and fits perfectly with the use of the situational construction.


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## Rosett

Q-cumber said:


> In that case she would rather say "Плакать от радости, что я увидела *в человеке прекрасное*, я тоже не раз хотела."


Then it would be "разглядела."

You may also want to compare the OP phrase with: "Я не прекрасен, может быть, наружно, Зато душой красив наверняка".
Большой словарь: Крылатые фразы отечественного кино


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## Q-cumber

Krystmarodoren said:


> What an interesting construction, I love that you can express niceties such as this one without adding more words.
> Thank you for all your quick responses, it's all much clearer now. Like Rosett said, there is an idea of finding beauty in an ugly world that runs through the speech(and much of her literature I'd say) and fits perfectly with the use of the situational construction.


Absolutely.


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## abracadabra!

I am going to be pedantic, and I hope to be pedantic enough. I am not a good writer, so being pedantic is necessary.

I disagree that the meaning of the construction is situational. One never says: "я увидел его тонущим", which would be possible in normal speech if the meaning of the construction was indeed situational. But in reality, such construction with the verb "видеть" is only used in "innormal" speech. What kind of? That innormal speech, as I see it, is such that it attributes someone's quality to my seeing someone, rather than to that person per se. Essentially, if I was talking of a situation, I would be talking of that person (я увидел, что он тонул: that's what happened to him), but the clumsy phrase "подошедши к пруду, я увидел его тонущим" means I am talking of myself, not of the person who is drowning. That's what I saw, not that's what happened to him. Actually, it does not matter what really happened to him as long as I could see that he was drowning. The same with the sentence of Alekseevich: she is talking of herself rather than of the situation. It does not matter whether the person is really beautiful, whether at the moment or always.

In the general case, what we have is the following: we have an attribute (expressed with a noun or an adjective) that denotes a quality, a verb that denotes an action, and a noun that denotes a thing: either the subject or the direct object of the clause. The construction assigns the quality to the thing for the time when the thing participates in the action:

я вышел из его дома дураком, ничего уже не понимал — when I walked out of his home, I was a fool, as I couldn't connect my thoughts together
я играла с вами девочкой — when I was a little girl, I played with you together
я хотела увидеть человека прекрасным — (not exactly) I wanted that when I would see a person, he would be beautiful.

My walking out is connected in time with my being a fool; my playing with you is connected in time with my being a little girl; and someone being beautiful is connected in time with my seeing that person. Only that time (or condition) is what I am talking of; I don't mean to say anything of the quality when the quality concerns a different time or a different condition.

So, the quality is connected in my thought with the action: you never mind the quality as long as you quit thinking of the action. What does that mean for the special case? It means that my first impression about the meaning of the sentence will be confirmed by the logic. In the special case, you never mind the human's quality that you actually see as long as you quit thinking about you seeing that human. That is, the quality per se does not matter for you; what you're trying to describe is what happens to you while you see someone, outside that condition you ignore someone's quality that you see. Which is exactly what I started with: you're talking of yourself, not of the situation at the moment. You don't care whether the person is beautiful outside of your seeing him.

In the other example, you never mind your quality of being a fool as long as you quit thinking of walking out of that home: that's not what you're talking about, as you're talking of that particular situation. I mean: I went out, I feel I am a fool. I don't mean to wonder whether I am a fool in the general case. Also, you don't mean to say anything about your childhood (being a little girl), not connected with your action of playing with me. In the sentence "я ходил перед ним заикой" you don't mean to specify whether you are actually a stutterer or you only perform like that in his presence.

So, Alekseevich's phrase is correct as much as it depends on you entirely whether someone you see is beautiful or not; a doubtful condition, but I can guess it may be the case. On the contrary, "увидеть человека бородатым" is impossible, unless you're talking about taking drugs. Под травой я этого человека увидел бородатым, that way. Otherwise, no: too clumsy. The sentence does not mean, as the others suggested, that at the moment when I saw that man he had a beard, while he may not have had that beard usually. The sentence means that I saw his bird, whether it was really present or not.

I have no opinion about the quality of the sentence that Alekseevich really used. A good newspaper text, probably; the main impression that I get from the sentence is that it is full of pathos, in the continental sense of the word.


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## Sobakus

While your interpretation is certainly insightful, it's nothing more than contextual. A simple rephrasing is enough to demonstrate this:

«Таким бородатым я тебя ещё никогда не видел! Когда успел отрастить?»
«Последнее время я постоянно вижу её невыспавшейся.»

In these, the adjective beyond any doubt refers to real, temporary condition of a real object and not to subjective perception inside the speaker's head.


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## abracadabra!

So, "увидеть человека бородатым" is possible, after all. So let's say, in these examples the adjective means both: 1) as I see him, he does have a beard; 2) he has a beard for the moment, and I see him (independently). The sentence says that he has a beard both because I see it and because now is the moment for him to have it. So the question is, which meaning is real, and which meaning is only acquired in the context, a product of silence. (Продукт умолчания.)

There is a difference between the two meanings that allows to tell them apart. In the first case, the sentence is silent on whether his beard is objective or not. It may be either. In the second case, the sentence reports the beard to be objective. If the second case was real, then I couldn't possibly interpret the words of Alekseevich in the non-objective sense. I would be told that people that she saw sometimes really started to be beautiful, and then maybe stopped to be. But I took her to mean that she only saw them beautiful, which was a fact of her emotional life. This interpretation strikes through the second meaning and leaves the first meaning intact. Your sentences leave both meanings intact.

Also, if the second meaning was real, then the sentence "я вчера [на вокзале] этого человека увидел бородатым" would be possible without any second thought, while actually it is only a feature of bad translations from English. Actually we say: "вчера я заметил, [когда был на вокзале,] что этот человек бороду себе отрастил". There would be no reason not to say such sentence in the most general cases. But somehow we say such phrases only in limited cases. When we say such things, we can't be freed from the question about the quality: why did I see it, why am I telling you that I saw it, was it for real or not etc, unless the answers for these questions are already obvious, we can answer them and then be freed. The fact of seeing may not be important by itself, it's only important in the connection to the quality; if the second meaning was real, that wouldn't be the case.

In the first sentence of yours, the answer for this question is I first met you after some time, so I should tell you what I feel about seeing you in such condition; the reason is that I have to continue my personal relationship, so it's important how what I see about you affects what I think about you. This answer does not work in my example, because the beard of that person has no connection with my relationship (знакомство), however official, with someone else whom I am talking with. In the second sentence, I have the impression of either a little doubt or a personal worry: both justify using the construction with the verb "видеть". If I am supposed to worry about her quality, then my seeing it is really important. If I didn't care or didn't doubt, then I would just have to say, "я вижу, что она часто не высыпается в последнее время". (Notice that you can't omit the emotional word "совершенно" from your sentence.) Only that way, in the connection, an objective fact is allowed to be told with this construction; therefore, objectivity is not the real meaning.


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## Sobakus

I'm really puzzled as to the purpose of your posts. Are you trying to prove that because a particular meaning requires special context, therefore it's "not real"? A meaning is real when it exists, it's unreal when it doesn't. I suppose when you're saying "real" and "not real", you mean "primary" and "secondary".

But what is the use of determining which meaning is primary? Every meaning is context-dependent – this is the basis of figures of speech, where _irony_ expresses the opposite of the literal meaning. That is why we ask the participants of this forum to provide context even for the simplest of words. Some meanings are special cases of a more general meaning, some are metaphoric or metonymic – that's the subject of semantics and is of no interest to a language learner. What _is_ of interest to them, however, is that the Instrumental case in Russian can express both temporal objective and subjective states and qualities. One _may _be a special case of the other: this changes nothing.

Your thoughts on the emotional involvement do make sense to me, but this is encompassed by the word "subjective" describing the meaning of the Instrumental and has nothing to do with having or not having a personal relationship – one may give a subjective description of a person they meet for the first time. The main reason we avoid sentences like «я вчера этого человека увидел бородатым» is because the adjective can in principle refer to either the subject (я) or the object (человека). There is no such ambiguity when the adjective is in the Nominative or Accusative, but then there's no temporal/subjective meaning either.

Finally, please keep in mind that adjectives aren't the only thing that can take the Instrumental in this meaning: the same also applies to every nominal part of speech, and I have a hard time seeing anyone say that «я знал его ребёнком» or «Коля был астронавтом» are anything but statements of objective reality.


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## abracadabra!

Sobakus said:


> Are you trying to prove that because a particular meaning requires special context, therefore it's "not real"?


Well, that's what I believe (not sure why you disagree, but we're not philosophers here, I just used a word that was at hand), but that's not what I am trying to prove. Yes, you may interpret it that I opposed the real to the accidental. Anyway. What I am trying to convey is that what helps understand and use the expression is the idea that you think about the action (seeing) and the quality (the word in the Instrumental case) at the same time.

You don't want to think of the quality without attributing it to the condition of the action: that is why that human is not beautiful _always_. The same line of thought works for all other uses of the construction, whether involving the verb "видеть" or not. This idea is clear, and it helps see why the usage as pointed out by rusita preciosa ("Я увиделa человека прекрасным = I saw a person being wonderful (situational)") is, first, not the only possible one in this context, and second, to say the least, irregular for the other contexts. (Your explanation of this irregularity that involves ambiguity looks far-fetched to me: in that example, I don't see any ambiguity, at least above the usual level. Usually people don't talk nonsense, so it's clear that the direct object has the beard, not the subject.)

I definitely don't interpret this sentence of Alekseevich like rusita preciosa does. Also, I have a certain feeling that her sentence is, if not clumsy, lightly puzzling for sure. "Я вас сегодня такой прелестной увидела" is absolutely impossible in rusita preciosa's meaning, and the sentence of Alekseevich has a drop of the same feeling, not sure how to define further... So, that was also what I was trying to convey. That was problematic, of course.

UPDATE:


Sobakus said:


> Finally, please keep in mind that adjectives aren't the only thing that can take the Instrumental in this meaning: the same also applies to every nominal part of speech, and I have a hard time seeing anyone say that «я знал его ребёнком» or «Коля был астронавтом» are anything but statements of objective reality.


Well, the argument about subjective/objective only related to the constructions where the verb was видеть or similar... I claimed that, because of the meaning of this verb, the relation of the quality to the objective world was not specified in the construction. "Я видел его ребёнком" is perfectly objective, though. Why? Because I wouldn't say this unless what I saw was reality... His being a child that I am talking of only refers to my past seeing him, though. Logical? I'd say it is...


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## Q-cumber

abracadabra! said:


> So, "увидеть человека бородатым" is possible, after all. So let's say, in these examples the adjective means both: 1) as I see him, he does have a beard; 2) he has a beard for the moment, and I see him (independently). The sentence says that he has a beard both because I see it and because now is the moment for him to have it. So the question is, which meaning is real, and which meaning is only acquired in the context, a product of silence. (Продукт умолчания.)
> .


This wording actually means that normally a beardless person now has a beard - either real or fake one. I can't suggest any other meanings.

.


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## abracadabra!

Well, let's see...
- Иннокентий Онуфриевич, я же не могу играть Ваську-столяра без телогрейки!
- Не бойтесь, Сережа: я вас вижу бородатым, тельняшка надета вечно криво, в зубах сигарета...
Как-то так.


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## Q-cumber

abracadabra! said:


> Well, let's see...
> - Иннокентий Онуфриевич, я же не могу играть Ваську-столяра без телогрейки!
> - Не бойтесь, Сережа: я вас вижу бородатым, тельняшка надета вечно криво, в зубах сигарета...
> Как-то так.


Та же самая ситуация, только режиссёр (?) "видит" (представляет) Сергея бородатым в своём воображении.


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## abracadabra!

I think the director actually imagines Serguey's character, who probably always has had a beard. That's what he's telling Serguey. So, that's not a situation. He might have just as well said: Ваську-столяра я вижу бородатым, and so on. It would be the same statement.


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## Sobakus

I think I _see_ what the confusion is all about: we mixed up different meanings of the word _видеть_. When the meaning is _представлять,_ it plainly deals with the imaginary as opposed to the real and in this meaning usually takes an indirect object in the Instrumental. When the meaning is _зреть,_ both an indirect object and a direct object modifier in the Accusative are possible, but this meaning still describes objective reality.


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## Q-cumber

abracadabra! said:


> I think the director actually imagines Serguey's character, who probably always has had a beard. That's what he's telling Serguey. So, that's not a situation. He might have just as well said: Ваську-столяра я вижу бородатым, and so on. It would be the same statement.


 The director obviously imagines Sergey with fake beard playing some particular role. So there's nothing special in this situation.


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## abracadabra!

So, I probably guessed from other sources, and that is where my interpretation started, that the author described her wish rather than her reality: without the further context, I took the sentence to mean that she wanted to have had that feeling of crying out of happiness because of seeing people beautiful, and she does not specify whether she really has had this feeling: maybe she has, maybe she has not, but she dreamed of having had, which is the matter. That's why I also have had the impression of selfishness from her words. So, I took the use of the verb "to see" from this guess: since the subject of her discussion is feelings, "seeing-for-internal-reasons" is at stake rather than "seeing-because-it-is". These impressions did not follow from the construction with the Instrumental case and the verb "to see", they probably followed from her statement that she "wanted to cry out of happiness": a very subjective wish. If "seeing-because-it-is" was at stake, then the meaning of the construction would be objective, what rusita preciosa said; yet, this meaning would still be due to the use of the verb "to see" and not to the meaning of the construction. As to the Instrumental case: я вижу радугу, я вижу мираж; but usually yes, the indirect object is probably present when the interpretation is subjective.

@Q-cumber: okay, my interpretation is as obvious to me as yours is to you. Anyway, if the director would mention only Vasily as I proposed later, then Serguey's fake beard would not enter the discussion at all, but Vasily probably has always had a beard.


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## Q-cumber

abracadabra! said:


> : okay, my interpretation is as obvious to me as yours is to you. Anyway, if the director would mention only Vasily as I proposed later, then Serguey's fake beard would not enter the discussion at all, but Vasily probably has always had a beard.


  Another option would be " Я уже вижу вас в образе бородатого Васьки-столяра. ".


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