# δυό δάχτυλα πάνω απ' το νερό



## OssianX

Is this a familiar expression?  It follows the statement, "όλοι είμαστε περίπου στο ίδιο μπόι."

That in turn follows some strange dream-stuff about the moon as a bad bird wearing the silver cap of the murdered juvenile prince, in whose larynx our voice is caught ... In short, context doesn't seem very helpful here.

But this last line, and especially the last phrase, doesn't feel strange to me in the same way.  It feels as though he's saying something he means to be recognizable.  But "all about the same height, two fingers above the water"--it's not that I can't make any sense of it (we're all drowning in the cosmos, only two fingers left above water, etc.), but I'm fantasizing.  Tell me it's an old saying!


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## elliest_5

OssianX said:


> Is this a familiar expression?  It follows the statement, "όλοι είμαστε περίπου στο ίδιο μπόι."
> 
> That in turn follows some strange dream-stuff about the moon as a bad bird wearing the silver cap of the murdered juvenile prince, in whose larynx our voice is caught ... In short, context doesn't seem very helpful here.
> 
> But this last line, and especially the last phrase, doesn't feel strange to me in the same way.  It feels as though he's saying something he means to be recognizable.  But "all about the same height, two fingers above the water"--it's not that I can't make any sense of it (we're all drowning in the cosmos, only two fingers left above water, etc.), but I'm fantasizing.  Tell me it's an old saying!


Hmm..No, it's not Ι m afraid! 
But the sense it gives me is the same as it gave you: that we (humans) are all in the same state, which is similar to being just as tall as not to be completely submerged under water - which would lead us to drowning. Like a comment about the fragility or the vanity or the constraints of human life. 

The only set expression that this expression could allude to is the expression "δυο μέτρα κάτω απ το χώμα" (six feet under ). Appart from the fact that the two expressions have a similar structure they could be considered as symmetric in the sense that "when you're dead you're δυο μέτρα κάτω απ' το χώμα but  you're alive you re (just) δυο δάχτυλα πάνω απ το νερό" . But this is just a "wild" speculation of mine, so don't count on it


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## OssianX

Your speculation is no wilder than mine.  And I'm encouraged to see that it's in the same direction.

In cases like this, I'm inclined to translate pretty literally, and let the reader confront it just as unarmed as I.  What I _don't_ want to do, of course, is take that approach when there's an idiomatic meaning available.  Ezra Pound somewhere gives a great example, the Japanese student of English who translated "out of sight, out of mind" as "invisible and insane."  Brilliant, but demonstrably wrong.

You've reassured me that whatever I do in this case, I'm not likely to be demonstrably wrong.  Many thanks.


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## Δημήτρης

Couldn't it actually been used literally here?


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## OssianX

Sure!  But what does "all about the same height, two fingers above the water" _mean_, literally?  Maybe "two fingers" is like the English expression "two fingers of whiskey," 3-4 centimeters in a glass.  Is our total height the height (depth) of the water, plus two fingers (a few centimeters)?  Or the other way around, we're taller than the water is deep, by the thickness of two fingers?  

Or is our height "above the water" in the sense that we're standing on the water?  Or are we all underwater, holding up two fingers each, and what with irregularities in the bottom which don't matter in the long run, all the same height, which is to say, not tall enough to escape drowning?  Or (depending on exactly what μπόι, a somewhat unusual word I gather, "literally" means) are we all at about the same few centimeters of _altitude_ above the water, a tiny margin of safety which gravity will inevitably erase?  And is the last part of the line a simple apposition to the first part, so that "two fingers above the water" is a definition of our "height," or is it really a kind of dependent clause, so that we're all the same height when (or in so far as) we're two fingers above the water?

I know all this can get silly -- but if I can't _see_ what the poem's image is, I don't feel I understand it.  In this case, I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to see.


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## elliest_5

OssianX said:


> Sure!  But what does "all about the same height, two fingers above the water" _mean_, literally?  Maybe "two fingers" is like the English expression "two fingers of whiskey," 3-4 centimeters in a glass.


Just to confirm this: in Greek we do use "fingers" for measuring (length/height/depth) and especially for liquids - "δυο δάχτυλα κρασί" is a very common expression, for example. 

As I said before, I agree more with this explanation: 





OssianX said:


> we're taller than the water is deep, by the thickness of two fingers



Oh, and as for "μπόι", it means the same as ύψος, with a difference in style/register: "μπόι" only refers to humans and it is more informal/colloquial. I also think that the default value for μπόι is "tall": we can see that in expressions "κρίμα το μπόι σου" ("it 's a shame <that you re stupid> although you have such a *tall* height), "θα ρίξω μπόι" (I'll become tall), "πρώτο μπόι" ("first class" *tall* height) etc. On the contrary something like "κοντό μπόι" would not sound acceptable, since μπόι entails the feature of being tall...Then, it is also used ironically/in a teasing manner such as in "για το μπόι του καλός είναι" (for this kind of *short* height, he is OK)


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## Δημήτρης

> Sure!  But what does "all about the same height, two fingers above the water" _mean_, literally? Maybe "two fingers" is like the English expression "two fingers of whiskey," 3-4 centimeters in a glass. Is our total height the height (depth) of the water, plus two fingers (a few centimeters)? Or the other way around, we're taller than the water is deep, by the thickness of two fingers?


I'm understanding this sentence is "we are about at the same hight *+* we are a bit taller than the water is deep".
Then again, I'm not good when it cames to understanding _what the poet want to say_ (τι θέλει να πει ο ποιητής ). Is there any large body of water referenced somewhere in the poem or something?


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## OssianX

Thanks, elliest_5, for the helpful information on δάχτυλα and μπόι.  This kind of thing is very difficult to find out with print and online sources.  One needs, as linguists say, a native informant.

Δ., no, nothing about it in the poem.  Not really surprising.  Poems often seem to work exactly by taking things (words, phrases, descriptions) out of the context in which they would seem normal and sensible in order to show them (and the world) as stranger than we think.  I suppose that's what's going on here.

Guided by you both, now I guess I feel as though I understand the line.  How I'm going to translate it, I'll have to think for a while.

Thanks!


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## cougr

OssianX said:


> How I'm going to translate it, I'll have to think for a while.



This might be totally inadequate, in which case simply ignore but what spontaneously came to me was:

"With our heads above the waterline, by a mere two fingerwidths."

Edit: or alternatively, "With our heads above the waterline, but only just/by a mere smidgeon."


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## OssianX

It's not inadequate -- it's very nicely clear -- but it's too long for the second half of the line.  "Waterline" is nice.  What I'm using at the moment, though I'm not entirely happy with it, is

"we were all about the same height, two fingers above water level."


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