A huge staff of proofreaders and copyists worked for the storyteller Andersen. The writer had very little knowledge of spelling and punctuation, and in order for his texts to appear in a decent form, he ordered multiple edits. Hans Christian hated being called a children's writer, and always said that his fairy tales were addressed to adults too. And shortly before his death, he strictly forbade the depiction of children on the monument dedicated to him.
Agatha Christie is revered by the people of Great Britain no less than the Queen. The writer is considered one of the symbols of the country and national treasure. And the circulation of her books in Britain is second only to the Holy Scriptures and the works of Shakespeare.
Many writers asked for more than strange fees for their work. When a Canadian film company invited the American Mencken to film his novel, he agreed. But not for cash payment, but for drinking. The filmmakers fulfilled the condition, and within for long years, until the end of the writer’s life, they sent him a couple of boxes of ale every month.
The most beloved American writer by filmmakers is Edgar Allan Poe. The plots of his works were included in 114 films.
Konstantin Simonov was given the name Kirill at birth. He had to become Constantine after an accident. As a boy, while playing with a razor, he cut his tongue, which made him unable to pronounce the letters R and L clearly. And later he chose a pseudonym that was easy for him to pronounce.
Rudyard Kipling could not stand multi-colored ink and wrote only in black.
When Charles Dickens worked, there was always a mug of hot water next to him. After every 50 lines, the writer took a sip from it.
At the end of his life, Victor Hugo was so popular that readers who sent him letters indicated “Avenue V. Hugo” as their destination, although the writer lived on a street with a very specific name. The messages always found the addressee.
In the 70s, American publishers had unspoken rule– publish no more than one book by one author per year. The young Stephen King, who wrote much more, wanted to be published without delay and, as a ploy, came up with a pseudonym for himself - Richard Bachman. The deception was discovered when one of the sellers discovered similarities in the styles of the writer King and the writer Bachman, after which he did not fail to “snitch” to the publishers. King had to show his cards. He gave an interview in which he said that Richard Bachman died from incurable disease- pseudonym cancer.
Stephen King's favorite state is Maine. It is there that the events of his most terrible novels unfold. Although, if you look at the statistics, it is in Maine that less crime compared to other US states.
Ernest Hemingway was a fanatical cat person. Several purrs always lived in his house, and admirers of his talent often gave him cats. Today, fifty of these pets walk around the writer’s museum and don’t need anything. Many tourists come there not to get acquainted with Hemingway’s work, but to look at “Vasek” with “Murki”.
Valentin Kataev received a C for an essay based on his own book. One day, a very puzzled friend came to visit his granddaughter: she was asked to reveal the image of Vanya from “Son of the Regiment.” The writer decided to help the girl and told how he himself sees this image. The schoolgirl wrote everything from his words, but received only “satisfactory” - with the note that Kataev’s Vanya is not at all like that.
Dumas was one of the first writers to resort to the help of " literary blacks" His assistants did dialogues, descriptions for him, and even made adjustments to the plot. For example, “The Count of Monte Cristo” was suggested to the writer by his biographer, Claude Schopp.
Chekhov was a great humorist not only in own stories, but also in life. He affectionately, and without any desire to humiliate, called his soulmate an actress, a snake, a dog, and even “the crocodile of my soul.”
Interesting facts about writers and poets who glorified Russian literature are of interest to everyone who is at least a little passionate about Russian literature. Their books can be found on the shelves of the home library of any educated person in our country, but do we know everything about their biography? Sometimes Russian classics simply amazed those around them with their unexpected and extravagant actions and antics. The most interesting stories you will find in this article.
Alexander Pushkin is considered the founder of Russian literary language, but there are enough interesting facts about this writer, although it seems that we know his biography thoroughly.
In fact, many may be surprised that the poet smoked a lot, and often shocked the surrounding ladies with transparent pantaloons, under which there was no underwear. Officially, Pushkin had four children, at least one child was illegitimate. This is the son of 19-year-old serf Olga Kalashnikova, Pavel, whom the poet seduced in 1824 during his exile in Mikhailovskoye. He sent her to Boldino to Vyazemsky to give birth. The child was born prematurely. By your destiny already ex-lover and Pushkin was not interested in her son, only learning about the boy’s death a few years later. Most likely, he had other illegitimate children, but nothing is known for certain about them.
Here is another interesting fact from the writer’s life. Despite his education, he believed fortune tellers and was sure that he would die by hand white man or a white horse. In general, Pushkin often thought about death - he himself chose the place for his grave, once gave a skull to his friend Delvig, had a hard time with the death of the English poet Byron, and even ordered a mass for the repose of the soul of God's servant George.
Pushkin received his education at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Moreover, he studied extremely poorly; he showed success only in literature. Throughout almost his entire life, he played cards a lot, often lost, and was constantly in debt with cards.
Fatal duel
It is worth recognizing that his opponent in the fatal duel in which he was killed was very unusual. was a relative of Pushkin. He was married to my own sister the poet's wife Ekaterina Goncharova. Before his death, the poet was very worried that he had violated the royal ban on participating in duels; he even said that he was waiting for forgiveness from the emperor in order to die peacefully.
In one of the last moments of enlightenment before his death, Pushkin asked for cloudberries, and finally said goodbye to his most faithful friends who were in the room, these were his books. Here's what Interesting Facts about literature and writers can open Pushkin for you in a new way.
Mikhail Lermontov became famous during the time of Pushkin, although he was much younger than him. If we talk about interesting facts about writers and poets of Russia, then there is something to tell about him. His appearance was frankly unprepossessing: he was broad-shouldered, vertically challenged, big-headed and stocky. At the same time, he limped on one leg, as some believe, to resemble Byron.
Most of all of his relatives he loved his grandmother, who reciprocated his feelings. Like Pushkin, he was an avid duelist. Once he took part in a duel with a Frenchman who supplied pistols for the fatal duel between Alexander Sergeevich and Dantes. For participating in duels he was exiled to the Caucasus, where he proved himself to be a brave officer. There he began to learn the Azerbaijani language.
He was amorous and changeable. Once he stole his friend’s bride, and when he got tired of the girl, he wrote an anonymous slander against himself. Friends noted that Lermontov was famous for his unpleasant character - he was vindictive, did not forgive people’s weaknesses, and treated everyone arrogantly.
heads or tails
For my short life(he lived only 26 years) took part in three duels. He managed to avoid four more only thanks to the efforts of his acquaintances. One of his pastimes was to upset upcoming marriages. He pretended to be an ardent young man in love with the bride, showed her signs of attention, sent poems and flowers. Sometimes he even went so far as to promise to commit suicide if she married someone else. When the girl succumbed to these advances, he admitted that it was a joke.
Surprisingly, Lermontov managed to lose in all the competitions and games in which he participated. Only the fall of his opponent saved him from death in the very first duel. Returning from exile in the Caucasus, he tossed a coin to determine where he should go - to work or to stop in Pyatigorsk. As a result, he had to go to Pyatigorsk, where he was killed by a retired cavalryman Martynov. As it turned out later, he had only fired a pistol three times before this duel.
You can find many interesting facts in the biography of the writer Chekhov. As a child, he worked in his father's shop. At his home lived a tame mongoose named Bastard, whom Anton Pavlovich brought from the island of Ceylon.
As a high school student, he often dressed up as a beggar, carefully put on make-up and begged for alms from his own uncle. He most often did not recognize him and gave him money. In general, Chekhov had a hooligan character. Once he handed the policeman pickle, wrapped in paper, saying it was a bomb.
There are many writers. For example, his plays and stories made Chekhov one of the most filmed authors in the world. On this moment directors made almost 300 films based on his works.
"Antonovka"
Followed him everywhere real army fangirls When Chekhov moved to Yalta in 1898, many of his fans immediately followed to Crimea. Local journalists wrote that the ladies were guarding the writer on the embankment, only to see their idol again, to try to somehow attract his attention. Newspapers even dubbed the girls the nickname "Antonovka".
An interesting fact about the writer Chekhov is that he often wrote under a pseudonym. In total, he had about 50 of them. For example, Antosha Chekhonte, Man without a Spleen, Nut No. 9, Champagne, Akaki Tarantulov and many others.
Chekhov's grandfather was a serf who managed to buy himself and his family freedom. The writer himself refused the title of nobility, which was awarded to him by Nicholas II in 1899. That's how many interesting factors there are about the biography of the writer, whose photo is in this article.
Leo Tolstoy also often shocked those around him. One day he dressed as a beggar and went to his serfs to find out about their problems. They recognized him and became afraid, never admitting to anything. Disillusioned with understanding the Russian soul, Tolstoy began making boots, which he gave to all his relatives and friends.
An interesting fact about the Russian writer is that Tolstoy was interested in religion so seriously that some contemporaries even believed that he had gone crazy. At the same time, the count himself explained his passion for mowing and plowing by his habit of being on the move all the time. If he never went for a walk all day, then by the evening he became irritable.
There is also an interesting fact about the writer’s books. His handwriting was very illegible, and in addition, his drafts contained a whole system of additions and signs that only his wife Sofya Andreevna could understand. His wife rewrote his novel War and Peace by hand several times. Surprisingly, when the famous Italian psychiatrist Lombroso saw Tolstoy’s handwriting, he said that only a prostitute with psychopathic tendencies could write like that.
The Last Journey
It is known that Tolstoy was a vegetarian, which in his time was considered strange and unnatural. At 82, Tolstoy decided to go wandering, leaving his wife and children on the estate. IN farewell letter he admitted to his wife that he was no longer able to live in luxury, he wanted to spend last days in silence. He went wandering without any purpose, accompanied only by his doctor Dušan Makovicki. Having stopped at Optina Pustyn, he went to his niece to the south, from where he intended to get to the Caucasus. He failed to complete the journey. Tolstoy caught a cold and died in the small house of his boss railway station called Astapovo.
Many interesting facts about writers can be gleaned by studying the biography of Dostoevsky. Fyodor Mikhailovich began to show strangeness since childhood. He had a reserved character, and his vivid imagination only alienated him from his peers. Classmates often called him a “fool”, and while studying at an engineering school, simply an “idiot”.
An interesting fact about the writer is that in adulthood he was prone to seizures and excessive excitability. As it turned out later, he suffered from epilepsy. Specific mental changes were manifested in his excessive pettiness, pedantry, irritability, resentment, numerous fears, attacks of melancholy and even angry mood.
As a child, the sadistic inclinations of the writer, who loved to whip frogs with a nut whip, still manifested themselves. Many prominent psychiatrists were interested in the Russian writer. Galant noted that his psychopathy was most strongly expressed in the area of psychosexual experiences, and Sigmund Freud argued that the desire for perversion could lead to crimes or sadomasochism.
Obsession with the game
Dostoevsky was obsessed with the game. He lost a lot of money at billiards and often met cheaters. Another oddity of his was his disturbing suspiciousness. For example, the writer never drank tea, preferring ordinary warm water, and the color of the tea leaves horrified him. Like Gogol, he was worried that he might plunge into Sopor and be buried alive. In this regard, he insisted that his funeral take place no earlier than five days after his alleged death.
It is noteworthy and surprising that Dostoevsky, who was actively treated for his numerous illnesses, never sought help for epilepsy. The writer sought help from doctors because of problems with the intestines, lungs, and somatic disorders, but did not consider epilepsy as a disease. At the same time, the attacks were very difficult for him to endure, but he believed that only thanks to these mental disorders his energy did not dry out. creative potential.
While telling interesting facts about writers and poets, we need to remember about the great fabulist Ivan Krylov. Besides literature, his main passion was food. Despite his obesity, he was the first to head to the dining room as soon as the footman announced that the table was set.
Krylov began dinner with a huge plate of pies, followed by three plates of fish soup, veal cutlets, fried turkey, cucumbers, plums and cloudberries. I ate it all with apples, and at the end I had a Strasbourg pate made from butter, goose liver and truffles. Having finished several plates, I drank kvass and finished the meal with two glasses of coffee with plenty of cream.
Many of his acquaintances recalled that the main bliss in life for Krylov lay precisely in food. At the same time, by the way, it is not true that the fabulist died from volvulus due to overeating. In reality, death was due to extensive pneumonia.
The prose writer Kuprin also surprised many. For example, few people know that he preferred to work completely naked. At the same time, he was famous for his incredible instincts. His friends even joked that he was more of an animal than a man. And ladies were often offended when Kuprin began to persistently sniff them. One day, the writer amazed a distinguished French perfumer with his flair by describing in detail all the components of the fragrance he had made.
They say that one of their most famous works(the story “The Duel”) it was no accident that the writer ended it so suddenly. Instead of a logical ending, the ending is a short report. His wife demanded that he hand over the manuscript and did not let him out of the office. Kuprin really wanted to drink, so he finished the piece in a hurry.
Russian poets and writers came up with many new words: substance, thermometer (Lomonosov),
industry (Karamzin),
bungling (Saltykov-Shchedrin),
to fade away (Dostoevsky),
mediocrity (Northerner),
exhausted (Khlebnikov).
Pushkin has more than 70 epigraphs, Gogol has no less than 20,
Turgenev has almost the same amount.
Korney Chukovsky's real name was Nikolai Vasilyevich Korneychukov.
Voltaire ridiculed Duke Rohan for his arrogance.
The Duke ordered his servants to beat Voltaire, which was done. Voltaire challenged the Duke to a duel, but the Duke refused because Voltaire was not a nobleman.
When starting to work on a new work, Balzac locked himself in a room for one or two months and closed the shutters tightly so that no light could penetrate through them. He wrote by candlelight, dressed in a robe, for 18 hours every day.
Mark Twain was born in 1835, when Halley's Comet flew close to the Earth. He predicted that he would die the next time she appeared. This is what happened in 1910.
Alexandre Dumas once took part in a duel where the participants drew lots, and the loser had to shoot himself. The lot went to Dumas, who retired to the next room. A shot rang out, and then Dumas returned to the participants with the words: “I shot, but missed.”
The writer Charles Dickens always slept with his head facing north. He also sat facing north when writing his great works.
French writer Guy de Maupassant was one of those who were annoyed by the Eiffel Tower. Nevertheless, he dined at her restaurant every day, explaining that this was the only place in Paris from which the tower could not be seen.
Beaumarchais, after performing his play The Marriage of Figaro, was arrested and imprisoned. Louis XVI, playing cards, wrote an arrest order on the seven of spades.
Jules Verne spent many hours a day studying scientific literature, writing down the facts that interest him on special cards. The card index he compiled could be the envy of the scientific community: it contained more than 20 thousand cards.
Hans Christian Andersen got angry when he was called a children's storyteller and said that he wrote fairy tales for both adults and adults. For the same reason, he ordered that there should not be a single child on his monument, where the storyteller was originally supposed to be surrounded by children.
In 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Bernard Shaw, who called the event "a token of gratitude for the relief he has given the world by not publishing anything this year."
American writer Emily Dickenson (1830-1886) wrote more than 900 poems during her life, only four of which were published during her lifetime.
Some biographies of Erich Maria Remarque indicate that his real name is Kramer (Remarque backwards). In fact, this is an invention of the Nazis, who, after his emigration from Germany, also spread the rumor that Remarque is the descendants of French Jews.
L.N. Tolstoy was anathematized. Once a year, anathema was solemnly proclaimed in all churches to three persons: Mazepa, Grishka Otrepiev and Tolstoy.
The Belarusian poet Adam Mickiewicz was also a science fiction writer. In the novel “The History of the Future,” he wrote about acoustic devices with the help of which, sitting by the fireplace, you can listen to concerts from the city, as well as about mechanisms that allow the inhabitants of the Earth to maintain contact with creatures inhabiting other planets.
Jules Verne never visited Russia, but, nevertheless, the action of 9 of his novels takes place in Russia (in whole or in part).
The American extravagant writer Timothy Dexter wrote a book in 1802 with very peculiar language and the absence of any punctuation. In response to reader outcry, in the second edition of the book he added a special page with punctuation marks, asking readers to arrange them in the text to their liking.
Lord Byron had four pet geese that followed him everywhere, even to social gatherings. Despite being overweight and having a rather severe clubfoot, Byron was considered one of the most energetic and attractive people of his time.
Alexandre Dumas, when writing his works, used the services of many assistants - the so-called “literary blacks”. Among them, the most famous is Auguste Macquet, who invented the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo and made significant contributions to The Three Musketeers.
The author of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, was sentenced to prison (in 1703) for a satirical article. He spent the day tied to pillory on the square. Those passing by were obliged to spit at him. Defoe was then forty-two years old.
Creator famous novel"The Gadfly" Ethel Lilian Voynich was a composer and considered her musical works even more significant than literary ones.
Famous Soviet writer and public figure Konstantin Simonov lisped, that is, did not pronounce the letters “r” and “l”. This happened in childhood when, while playing, he accidentally cut his tongue with a razor, and it became difficult for him to pronounce his name: Kirill. In 1934 he took the pseudonym Konstantin.
The expression “Balzac age” arose after the publication of Balzac’s novel “A Thirty-Year-Old Woman” and is acceptable for women no older than 40 years.
Ilf and Petrov are very in an original way they avoided cliché thoughts - they discarded ideas that came to both of their minds at once.
One of the most prolific writers of all times was the Spaniard Lope de Vega. In addition to “Dog in the Manger,” he wrote another thousand eight hundred plays, all of them in verse.
He never worked on a single play for more than three days. At the same time, his work was well paid, so Lope de Vega was practically a multimillionaire, which is extremely rare among writers.
The famous fabulist Aesop was so poor that he sold himself into slavery to pay off his debts. At that moment he was thirty years old.
Robinson Crusoe has a sequel. In it, Robinson again suffers a shipwreck and is forced to get to Europe through all of Russia. He waits out the winter in Tobolsk for eight months. The novel has not been published in Russia since 1935.
From American writers The works of Edgar Allan Poe were filmed the most - 114 times.
Once upon a time official reception Khrushchev called the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn Ivan Denisovich.
Chekhov sat down to write, dressed in full dress.
Kuprin, on the contrary, loved to work completely naked.
Spanish playwright Antonio Silva was burned at the stake on October 19, 1739. On the same day, his play “The Death of Phaeton” was performed at the theater.
Writer Ernest Vincent Wright has a novel called Gadsby, which is over 50,000 words long. There is not a single letter E (the most common letter in the English language) in the entire novel.
Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem wrote a collection of short stories called Absolute Emptiness. All the stories are united by the fact that they are reviews of non-existent books written by fictitious authors.
Brian Aldiss, an acquaintance of Agatha Christie, once spoke about her methods - “she finished the book before last chapter, then she chose the most unlikely of the suspects and, returning to the beginning, redid some points in order to frame him.”
Lewis Carroll loved to communicate and be friends with little girls, but was not a pedophile, as many of his biographers claim. Often his girlfriends underestimated their age, or he himself called older ladies girls. The reason was that the morality of that era in England strictly condemned communication with a young woman alone, and girls under 14 were considered asexual, and friendship with them was completely innocent.
When the writer Arkady Averchenko brought a story to one of the editorial offices during the First World War military theme, the censor deleted the phrase from it: “The sky was blue.” It turns out that from these words, enemy spies could guess that what was happening in the south.
Real name satirical writer Grigory Gorin was Ofshtein. When asked about the reason for choosing the pseudonym, Gorin replied that it was an abbreviation: “Grisha Ofshtein decided to change his nationality.”
If you read the works of writer Stephen King, you will notice that most of his stories take place in Maine. Paradoxically, this state has the lowest crime rate in the United States.
James Barrie created the character of Peter Pan - the boy who will never grow up - for a reason. This hero became a dedication to the author’s older brother, who died the day before he turned 14 years old, and forever remained young in the memory of his mother.
Initially, on Gogol’s grave in the monastery cemetery there was a stone nicknamed Golgotha because of its resemblance to Mount Jerusalem. When they decided to destroy the cemetery, during reburial in another place they decided to install a bust of Gogol on the grave. And that same stone was subsequently placed on Bulgakov’s grave by his wife.
In this regard, Bulgakov’s phrase, which he repeatedly addressed to Gogol during his lifetime, is noteworthy: “Teacher, cover me with your overcoat.”
After the outbreak of World War II, Marina Tsvetaeva was sent for evacuation to the city of Elabuga, in Tatarstan. Boris Pasternak helped her pack her things. He brought a rope to tie up the suitcase, and, assuring of its strength, joked: “The rope will withstand everything, even if you hang yourself.” Subsequently, he was told that it was on her that Tsvetaeva hanged herself in Yelabuga.
Daria Dontsova, whose father was Soviet writer Arkady Vasiliev, grew up surrounded by the creative intelligentsia.
Once at school she was asked to write an essay on the topic: “What was Valentin Petrovich Kataev thinking about when he wrote the story “The Lonely Sail Is White”?”, and Dontsova asked Kataev himself to help her. As a result, Daria received a bad mark, and the literature teacher wrote in her notebook: “Kataev didn’t think about this at all!”
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We recently published. Today we bring to your attention a continuation of everything that will be useful to know for a true book lover. As always, happy reading!
1. One of the most extraordinary books is “ The Divine Comedy"Dante, created by G. Celani on one sheet of paper measuring 800x600 mm. It contained 14 thousand poems, and you can read them without special magnifying equipment. If you look at the book from a distance, you get a map of Italy. Monk Gabriel spent 4 years creating it.
2. The poet Oppian received the largest fee of the Roman Empire. Marcus Aurelius paid him a gold coin for each line of the poem. For his work he received 20 thousand gold coins.
3. To make books as cheap as cigarettes, Penguin began using paperbacks. The first such books were distributed in churches.
4. A bibliokleptomaniac is a person who steals books. Stephen Bloomberg, the most famous book thief, stole more than 23 thousand rare specimens books. Now his collection is worth about $20 million.
5. B medieval Europe To prevent it from being taken out of the public library, the book was chained to the shelf. Their length made it possible to remove books from shelves and read them, but not to take them with them. This method of protection against theft was used until the 18th century, since books were very expensive at that time.
6. According to Google estimates, there are almost 130 million book titles in the world (this includes all artistic, journalistic and scientific works).
7. A book by the famous Dutch doctor Herman Boerhaave entitled “The Only and Deepest Secrets of the Medical Art” was sold for 10 thousand dollars. When the seal on it was opened, it turned out that its pages were blank. Only title page read: “Keep your head cold, your feet warm, and you will make the best doctor poor.”
8. The well-known and familiar “bookworm” appeared thanks to small insects that eat the spines of books.
9. In Shakespeare’s works, the word “love” appears almost 10 times more often than the word “hate” (2259 and 229 times, respectively).
10. Leonardo da Vinci's work on water, earth and celestial bodies entitled “The Codex Leicester” is considered one of the most expensive books in the world. To become its owner, Bill Gates spent more than $30 million. The book itself should only be read with a mirror, as it is written in mirror handwriting.
Which facts did you like best? Do you know anything else interesting about books? We are waiting for your answers in the comments!
- Because Mayakovsky wrote his poems using a ladder, fellow poets accused him of fraud, because at that time payments for poems were made based on the number of lines. Because of this arrangement, Mayakovsky’s poems were paid 2-3 times more.
- Oddly enough, Cuban Julian del Casal, who was the author of endlessly pessimistic poems, died of laughter. At a friendly dinner, a joke told by one of the guests caused him to burst into uncontrollable laughter. Unfortunately, this caused aortic dissection, bleeding and death.
- Russian writers and poets invented many words that have taken root in circulation: Lomonosov invented substance, Karamzin - industry, Saltykov-Shchedrin - bungling, Dostoevsky - disappear, Severyanin - mediocrity, Khlebnikov - pilot and exhausted.
- In China, under Emperor Qianlong, poets who wrote sad poems were executed.
- The poet Vostokov invented female name Svetlana, he first used it in the novel “Svetlana and Mstislav”. This name gained popularity after the publication of Zhukovsky’s ballad “Svetlana” in 1813.
- Pushkin owns at least 70 epigraphs, Gogol and Turgenev – more than 20.
- Sometimes Pushkin wrote poems to order, for example, poems in honor of the Prince of Orange or the ode “On the return of the Emperor from Paris.”
- In Ecuador there is a statue of local poet José Olmedo. However, not everyone knows that due to a tight budget, the Ecuadorian government decided to purchase a used sculpture of the poet Byron.
- At Lord Byron's homestead there lived four geese who loved to accompany him on his walks. They even went with him to public meetings.
- Byron was one of the attractive and energetic people of that time; this was not hindered by severe club feet and excess weight.
- The 18th century Russian poet and diplomat Khariton Mackentin wrote under the pseudonym Antioch Cantemir, which was an anagram of his name.
- There are no longer any living descendants of William Shakespeare left on Earth.
- Shakespeare came up with a few different ways pronouncing your own name.
- The line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, “Everything is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark,” has been translated in different ways. Somewhere it sounded like “I foresee disasters for the fatherland,” or “You know, something evil happened here.”