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Hi, I have problem translating these verses:
Никого не заставить любить.
Никому не постичь этой тайны.
As far as I know, it is not mistyped (не заставит/не заставил...), it is like this on multiple russian monolingual lyrics websites, but I am not able to identify subject in the sentences. Any ideas?
For further context, I paste surrounding text here:
"Чтобы понять книгу без слов,
Найти любовь,
Решил Машину создать.
Никого не заставить любить.
Никому не постичь этой тайны.
Но человек Бога смог победить.
И все чувства теперь не случайны."
Thanks
chimeera
Firstly, заставить requires an infinitive. Заставить кого-либо сделать что-либо = to force someone to do something.
Next, in Russian there is such construction as мне этого не понять, "I cannot understand this," with мне, the subject, in dative case.
In the given example with заставить, we see same construction with subject left out to keep the rhythm. So the subject is understand to be a general "one", as in "one can't force anybody to love".
Now, line which starts with постичь is translated as "nobody can understand this mystery". So, if you would like nobody to be subject of the previous line also, you could change the perspective to passive: "nobody can be forced to love".
Thank you. So that it is just shortened. Then how would these two sentences look like in full grammatically correct reading, without the subject being left out? I don´t know in which case it should be.. dative too?
Никого не заставить любить.
One cannot be forced to love
or equally
Nobody can be forced to love
Никому не постичь этой тайны.
One cannot comprehend and truly understand this mystery
or equally
Nobody can comprehend and truly understand this mystery.
The sentence with постичь is complete. The other one would look like this:
Никому никого не заставить любить
To remember the construction, you can pretend that there's an extra word hidden in there, as in ему не (удается/получается) сделать это.
Спасибо ^^