Research|Bethink Yourselves! — alignment notes

bethink-yourselves

Bethink Yourselves! — alignment notes

Last modified 24 October 2026 · view source

How the three versions in this bundle share one paragraph coordinate (paragraph N in any version points to the same place in the work): the 1904 English of Chertkov and Mayo (bethink-yourselves.en-1904.md, the read-along edition), the Russian of PSS Tom 36 (bethink-yourselves.ru.md), and the 1904 Swedish Betänken Eder! (bethink-yourselves.sv-1904.md).

The English defines the shape: 13 sections (I–XII and the postscript), 117 paragraphs. It was taken from Project Gutenberg #27189 (Ginn & Company for the International Union, Boston, 1904, reprinted from The Times); page markers were removed, the three translators’ notes became footnotes, and the heading “Postscript” was added. Its wording is otherwise untouched.

The Russian and the Swedish were fitted to it. In both, only paragraph breaks were moved; the words are unchanged and were checked word for word by script against their sources. Where a version has nothing opposite an English paragraph, the slot holds a hidden note (…), as in The Kingdom of God, so the numbering stays in step.

Decisions taken by Johan (2026-10-24): the Swedish goes on the research site lined up with the other two, keeping every 1904 Swedish chapter title; Johan’s ePub (projects/betanken-eder/) keeps the 1904 layout.

Engine changes made for this bundle: reader.segment --missing-tail N lets a version end N sections early (the Swedish has no postscript); the sentence splitter now also starts a sentence at Å, Ä, Ö and » (checked: no other edition’s sentences changed). Swedish sentences that end inside a closing » are still not split, so some Swedish read units are long.

The Russian

How bethink-yourselves.ru.md («Одумайтесь!», PSS Tom 36, pp. 100–148) was made paragraph-parallel to bethink-yourselves.en-1904.md (Chertkov & Mayo, 1904), so the two share one paragraph coordinate. Same method as The Great Sin (the-great-sin/alignment-notes.md).

Source: docs/research/works/non-fiction/essays-and-criticism/1904-bethink-yourselves/extracts/v36_100_148_Odumajtes.txt. The English is the incumbent and defines the shape; the Russian wording is untouched and only paragraph breaks were moved, always at a sentence end.

Result: reader.segment --spine-json build/segments.en-1904.json → “13 sections, 117 paragraphs”, no count error. Every paragraph pair was checked by first and last sentence (all 117 correspond). A script confirmed the file’s words, minus headings, footnote syntax and the one hidden note, equal the extract’s main-text words minus the epigraphs, in order, and also character-for-character once whitespace is normalised. The only things removed from the main text are the PSS superscript note numbers ²⁷ and ²⁸, which became [^1] and [^2].

Totals: 45 merges, 4 splits, 1 empty placeholder paragraph (XI).

Break adjustments per section

“Native” = main-text paragraphs in the extract after the epigraphs are removed. R0, R1… number those native paragraphs from 0.

Section Native Target Adjustment
I 5 5 merge R1+R2+R3 («Люди, десятками тысяч…» + «Что же это такое?…» + «Но нет, это не сон…»); split R4 twice: before «Но как могут так называемые просвещенные люди…» and before «Все знают, не могут не знать главного…» (2 merges, 2 splits)
II 7 7 split R1 before «Ученые юристы, господа Муравьев и Мартенс…» and merge its first two sentences (the tsar’s and the Japanese emperor’s proclamations) onto R0 «Совершается что-то непонятное…» (1 merge, 1 split)
III 7 5 merge «Вспомнишь всё это…» + «То, что единственно отличает человека…»; merge «Непосредственное чувство…» + «И ошалевшие, озверевшие люди…» (2 merges)
IV 7 5 merge «Спросите журналистов…» + «Точно так же объяснят…» + «То же скажет кажущийся виновником всего дела царь…» (2 merges)
V 10 7 merge «Ничто очевиднее речей господина Муравьева…» + «Мы разогнались к пропасти…»; merge «Для всякого разумного человека…» + «Не говоря уже об экономических…» + «Так что же делать?» (3 merges)
VI 7 6 merge the Emperor’s speech: «Прежде чем меня короновали…» + «Люди говорят мне, что я должен делать это…» (1 merge)
VII 5 4 merge «Человеку нет выбора…» + «А большинство людей нашего времени лишено ее.» (1 merge)
VIII 10 7 merge «Возможно ли это?» + «Не только возможно, — отвечу я…» + «Невозможно людям не одуматься…»; merge «Ответ этот в скрытом состоянии…» + «Только бы уничтожились эти два обмана…» (3 merges)
IX 10 9 merge «Вы с ужасом говорите…» + first sentence of «Но если справедливо то…»; split that paragraph before «Так что даже становясь на вашу шаткую точку зрения…»; merge «В этом особенность деятельности религиозных людей.» + «И потому-то и спасение людей…» (2 merges, 1 split)
X 13 11 merge «Любить желтых людей…» + «И что же мы делали и делаем с ними?..»; merge «А между тем религия, отвечающая требованиям…» + «Так что единственно верное средство…» (2 merges)
XI 21 19 merge «Пешая саранча…» + «И вот первый нижний слой…»; merge «И что же, начинают понимать свой грех…» + «Толкуют о потере храброго Макарова…»; merge «Разве не ясно…» + «Ищите Царствия Божия…»; add an empty placeholder paragraph at the end opposite the English dateline (3 merges, 1 placeholder)
XII 45 30 merge the «Котлин» appeal with its last line «Довольно сентиментальничать»; merge «И начатое ужасное дело продолжается…» + «Царь, главное ответственное лицо…» + the Soyen Shaku paragraph (2); merge «Но нет, они не говорят этого…» + «Убьют ли, искалечат ли…»; merge «Он задумался.» + «— Как же быть-то?…»; merge «Вчера я получил… два письма.» + «Вот первое:»; first letter, 4 paragraphs into 1 (3); second letter, 4 paragraphs into 1 (3); merge «Я спросил:» + «— Что это, телеграмма?»; merge «Он остановился.» + «— Это вчерашняя…» + «Он достал другую из кармана…» (2). Dateline «30 Апреля 1904 г.» kept as its own paragraph opposite “13 May, 1904.” (15 merges)
Постскриптум 9 2 ¶1 = «Я никогда бы не кончил…»; ¶2 = the sailor’s letter plus everything after it, merged: the address line, the four closing paragraphs («Прямо словами я не могу ответить…» to «…великая радость.») and the date «8 Мая 1904 г.» (8 merges)

Epigraphs left out

The 1904 English has none of them. 189 extract lines were dropped in all: 2 for the title epigraph, then per chapter the opening run of quotations with their attribution lines. The count below is the number of attribution lines, i.e. the number of quoted sources.

Attribution of a few multi-part quotations (III Тилье, VII Флюгел and «Л. Толстой») is read from the order of lines in the extract, not checked against the page; it doesn’t affect the spine.

Footnotes

The extract keeps the PSS note numbers but not their text; the text was taken from the TEI (primary-sources/tolstoydigital-TEI/texts/works/v36_100_148_Odumajtes.xml), which holds only the first paragraph of each note, and completed from the Jubilee fb2 (primary-sources/jubilee-edition/vol05/vol05.fb2, sections n27 and n28). Labels follow The Kingdom of God’s Russian file.

Content the English leaves out (Russian kept)

Content the Russian lacks

Not touched (worth a look)

The Swedish

Output: docs/reader/non-fiction/essays-and-criticism/bethink-yourselves/bethink-yourselves.sv-1904.md, built from projects/betanken-eder/betanken-eder.md (read only, not edited). Coordinate: bethink-yourselves.en-1904.md (I–XII, 115 paragraphs without the Postscript).

The big finding: the Swedish has no chapter IX

Swedish ch. 8 «»Du skall älska din nästa såsom dig själf.»» ends exactly where English VIII ends («…samt erkänna samma plikter såsom härledande sig ur lifvets innebörd.» = «…recognize one and the same duties as flowing from this meaning.»), and Swedish ch. 9 «Huru skall mänskligheten räddas…» opens with English X’s first line («»Men hvad skola vi göra med de fiender som anfalla oss?»» = “But how about the enemies that attack us?”). None of English IX’s nine paragraphs (“How are we to act now…”, “But before the work of war was commenced…”, “A religious man acts thus…”) is anywhere in the Swedish; a search for its key phrases found nothing.

So the Swedish has 105 paragraphs of real text for 115 slots. To keep Tolstoy’s chapters I–XII and pass the segmenter without inventing words, the ten empty slots hold a CriticMarkup comment paragraph, the same device the Kingdom of God Garnett file already uses («Garnett has no counterpart to the Russian paragraph here…»). The segmenter drops the comment, so each slot becomes a paragraph with no sentences:

The first IX slot also carries one visible editorial line in brackets, so the reader sees why the chapter is empty: [Kapitel IX finns inte i den svenska utgåvan 1904. Det kan läsas i den engelska eller ryska versionen.] It is the only text in the Swedish file that is not from 1904. Whether IX should stay like this is open for Johan.

Per section (native Swedish paragraphs → target)

Merges join adjacent Swedish paragraphs with a single space; splits cut at a sentence boundary. Native counts are after joining the four stray single line breaks in the source (ch. 1 «…talat om detta. / För att icke tala om Haag-konferensen…»; ch. 2 «Alla förära / hvarandra…»; ch. 3 «…barbari. / Och, än mer…»; ch. 3 «…i djupet af sin själ / känner…»).

Totals: 27 merges, 2 splits (both in one paragraph), 10 empty slots. 130 native − 27 + 2 + 10 = 115.

Content differences noticed

Checked by reading the first and last sentence of every paragraph pair, not every sentence in between, so smaller gaps inside long paragraphs may remain unnoticed.

Checks run