Kozma Prutkov
Kozma Petrovich Prutkov (Russian: Козьма́ Петро́вич Прутко́в) is a collective pen name used by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy and his cousins, three Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Alexei, Vladimir and Alexander to publish satires, aphorisms, fables, epigrams, and humorous and nonsense verses during Nicholas I of Russia's authoritarian reign in the 1850s–1860s, most notably in the literary magazine "Sovremennik" (The Contemporary).
Quotes
- И устрица имеет врагов!
- Even an oyster has enemies!
- Often quoted as "Even oysters have enemies", e.g. Barbara Heldt Monter: Kozma Prutkov - the Art of Parody. Mouton 1973. p. 58 or Jack Nicholson at the 2010 AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony for Mike Nichols (without attribution to Kozma Prutkov)[1]
- Плоды раздумья - Мысли и афоризмы I (Прутков), no. 86.
- Идут славянофилы и нигилисты, У тех и у других ногти не чисты
- Here come the Slavophiles and Nihilists, and none of them have clean fingernails.
- A. K. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v dvukh tomakh [Complete Works in two volumes] (Leningrad, 1984), 1:386.
