Despicable Metal: the Entry of the Idiom into Literature

The Russian idiom “despicable metal” in the meaning of “gold/ money” was descendant of the phrases “vile metal” (calque from the French “vil metal”), “worthless metal,” “despicable gold” (calque from the French “or méprisable”). At first, they were used in a moralistic and exemplary context, as a sign of condemnation of the desire for enrichment. The idiom “despicable metal” also has a counterpart in French and German (“métal méprisable,” “verächtliche Metall”). It entered Russian literature at the turn of the 1830s and 1840s, and among the authors of the first row this expression is invariably given in an ironic and parodic manner, even before Goncharov’s Ordinary Story (1847). Nevertheless, the role of Goncharov’s novel in the perception of an idiom new to the Russian language was exceptionally great. “Despicable metal” is one of the cross-cutting motifs of the novel, arising in the context of fundamental polemics with a pseudo-romantic life concepts.