A most interesting part of the film “Window to Paris” was the loyalty to Russia that Nikolai Nikolayevich and his neighbors maintained.
His neighbor is particularly vehement, despite acknowledging that life in Paris seems much better: “We held off the Tartar-Mongols for 200 years while they evolved!” “They got fat at our expense!” Nikolai, originally intending to stay, has a nightmare of becoming destitute if he stays in Paris. In Russia, in the school who insisted that they had no need of an aesthetics teacher, the students demand that he return. It turns out that Nikolai and his music are valued in his native land. He even tries to convince the students at the end to return to Russia, in a rare sort of patriotism. He acknowledges that life in Russia, especially at that time, is difficult for everyone. But it is their country and they should stay and work to make it better. This seems like an unusual, sincere patriotism; none of them try to pretend that life in Russia is easy, or even better than in France. But for some reason, they still love their own troubled country.
Author Archives: Anastasia Pruitt '19
Strange new world
Cement presents an ambiguous, nuanced picture of life after the Revolution. One example is the change in the relationship between Gleb and Dasha. She has changed in the time he was at war, become a person who considered herself equal to all other people as a result of the communist ideology:
“It was not by fighting in the war, not by carrying a food-sack on her back and not by doing a woman’s daily chores that she had learned this. No—her spirit had been awakened and forged by the collective spirit of the workers…”
Although she says that she changed because of hardship, and witnessing her own strength in forging through it. Either way, her respect for herself demands an answering shift in his view of her, completely changing the dynamic of their relationship.
“It was not simply his wife standing before him now, but a human being who was equal to him in strength…”
This implies, of course, that before he (and other men) didn’t consider their wives exactly human, with the same rights as men. For Gleb, the change is unwelcome, although to us it looks like a sign of feminist progress. Either way, it’s clear that society was changing in ways that not all of the revolutionaries expected or sought—some positive and some devastating.
In the slumberous fog
(Like many of us, I’m still getting over sickness, so I’m sorry in advance if this isn’t the most coherent or insightful post.)
I adored these poems. The two that struck me most were actually two of the additional poems Professor Gillespie emailed us (which I hope I’m allowed to talk about here!)
He tries to tell her about the giraffe, its stunning beauty and grace, its élan. The passage in which he describes it does seem life-affirming, does seem like it might have the power to lift sadness.
But it won’t work:
“But you have been breathing this slumberous fog much too long,
You wil not believe, not in anything, save for the rain.”
His listener has been breathing the “slumberous fog” of Russia for such a long time that it is impossible for her to envision any other reality. Still, he ends by repeating his first line about the giraffe as she weeps—although he know it won’t help, he knows that she is lost in the mist so the words about Africa mean nothing to her. But he repeats them anyway, perhaps because he doesn’t know what else to do.
And perhaps this poem is still so striking here and now because those circumstances are not unique to Africa and Russia. All of us know what it’s like to be so immersed in our current sadness that we can’t believe in anything else, that stories about a different brighter world are fantastical and useless.
The Darkness of the Days Ahead
Alexander Blok’s poems begin with an obvious patriotism and love for Russia, but an equal recognition of the suffering and turmoil of the years.
“Russia, my beggarly Russia,
your grey huts in their clusters,
your songs set to the wind’s measure
touch me like love’s first tears.”
“If they seduce you and deceive you,
you’ll not be broken or collapse;
though suffering may overshadow
the beauty of your face perhaps…”
The unrest might overshadow Russia’s beauty, but Blok seemed to believe that nothing essential about the country, nothing that he loved, would change.
His poems, through the years, grow somewhat darker. He foretells the apocalypse, war, villages burning. In such times, when peasants were hopeless and starving and the government brutally oppressed protesters, it would have been impossible not to feel this darkness. In the face of so much loss, death, and suffering, even the revolutionaries did not seem hopeful or idealistic but rather desperate.
“How often we sit weeping—you
and I—over the life we lead!
My friends, if you only knew
The darkness of the days ahead!”
However, his attitude toward the country never changes.
“Centuries pass, villages flame,
are stunned by war and civil war.
My country, you are still the same,
Tragic, beautiful as before.
How long must the mother wail?”
It remains beautiful, despite all this horror. He still loves it unquestioningly, although there is something of despair in the final line—this poem was written in 1916, later than most of the others we read; at that point, patriotism for the war had evaporated as it dragged on and living conditions became worse and worse for those who survived. But even this catastrophe was not enough for Blok to succumb completely to despair or anger. Russia, in the midst of this, is “tragic”—but still beautiful.
Creating identity
Represented here by music is the larger struggle of Russian identity, something shapeless and indistinct. The Mighty Handful were attempting to create specifically Russian music, not to excel in the styles learned and borrowed from Europe.
Using classical instrumentation to create a new kind of sound is representative of Russia’s unique position; not belonging fully to Europe or Asia, and without many strong, deeply-rooted cultural traditions or identity, they had the chance to create and shape a unique identity for themselves. Without these established traditions, the composers could be more creative in deciding what “Russian” classical music would sound like.
This seems to be a step away from the inferiority complex Russia sometimes seemed to have in the past, regarding Europe; there is a patriotism in the decision to consciously forge a new style of music based on their homeland. Pieces like “Russia” and “Baba Yaga” intentionally glorify their homeland and its stories. (I’m not enough of a music scholar to seize all these stylistic differences from the typical European classical conventions. But I can recognize the brilliance and beauty of the compositions we listened to; so these works are a successful attempt to establish something uniquely Russian, or at least more so than previous compositions.)
Excitabo Monumentum
Chaadaev’s “Apology of a Madman” expresses a patriotism that falls into neither the ideology of the Slavophiles or those who wished to emulate the European world. It acknowledges the problem of Russia’s “vague” national character, the lack of deep-rooted traditions that allowed Peter the Great to impose his reforms with the success he had.
His conclusion somewhat echoes the savior complex of the slavophiles: “I believe that we have come after the others so that we can do better than the others.”
But he is careful not to align himself with them. Before declaring his love for Russia, his belief in its potential, he first enumerates all its problems and flaws, its unique situation: “alone of all the peoples of the world, we have not given anything to the world, and we have not learned anything from the world.” His potentially subversive message, especially given the country’s totalitarian history, is that it is not possible to be truly patriotic by blindly glorifying one’s country, exalting it based on nothing real. Instead, one has to look for its defects to see how they might be fixed or used to its advantage—as Russia, with no ideas of its own during the European Enlightenment, might learn from the mistakes of other nations and advance more quickly.
(Apologies if this isn’t the most lucid post—I’m still getting over an illness and not completely sure I remembered my Latin well enough for the title: “I will raise a monument”?)
A Portrait of Peasant Life
The Russian painters and their styles exemplify the struggle we’ve discussed throughout the course to establish a unique Russian identity, and the confusion and idealistic and stylistic disagreement between prominent artists. Alexander Ivanov still hung onto the tradition of Neoclassicism. Rubens and Van Dyck, the “old masters”, were held up as ideals (with comparisons to Karl Bruillov’s and Orest Kiprensky’s works.) Many of the artists studied traveled abroad to learn and improve, often to Italy. This follows the tradition of Westernization since Peter’s time, the borrowing of Western Europe’s styles and ideas, and perhaps a sense of inferiority or insecurity about Russia’s own culture.
It also shows a slight increase in social mobility; Vasily Tropinin and Orest Kiprensky were both born serfs, but Kiprensky was freed and educated, while Tropinin pursued education on his own, attending drawing classes in secret. Alexei Venetsianov was from a merchant family, not a serf, chose to depict peasant life, and taught paintings to serfs and people from poor families. Although he did not always meet with approval, his choices still demonstrate perhaps a trend of more people taking note of the serfs’ lives and struggles, and trying to give them a chance to have better lives.
“Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going?”
This seems like a period where the originality of Russian culture is distinct. Perhaps because the music we’ve listened to in the past was religious music, all of it was highly influenced by European art, attempting more or less to imitate it. I don’t have a lot of knowledge about European folk music in the 19th century, but many of these folk songs had a distinctly ‘Russian’ sound to me.
The same thing was true of the Moiseyev dance. Instead of an attempt to imitate or borrow the classical forms of ballet and such from European culture, it was unique, different from any other sort of folk dancing I’ve ever seen. The costumes look almost stereotypically Russian, unmistakable. This could be another example of the divide between the peasants and their folk culture, and the nobles trying to emulate other forms of artistic expression. But these recordings demonstrate that folk culture was eventually recognized as being valuable as well. Moreover, it’s impossible to completely divide culture into ‘folk culture’ and ‘high culture’ with no overlap or influence in both directions (look at Gogol’s writing!). Just as pagan themes were adapted to fit the narratives of Christianity instead of destroyed completely, so ‘folk culture’ continued to have a strong influence on the Russian identity.
All a dream?
The setting of the Nose in St. Petersburg is important and helps make sense of the story. The events are concretely set in the city, with many references to the city’s landmarks throughout. These concrete, realistic details are juxtaposed with the absurd, dreamlike events of the story (Kovalyov having lost his nose without noticing; the strange fog that obscures the ending of scenes, which the narrator waves away). The Russian title is actually “Нос” (Nose), which is the Russian word for dream (“сон”) backwards.
The strangeness of the story is less surprising given this particular setting, because it corresponds with the strangeness of the city itself. The fact that it appeared remarkably quickly and became a focal point of the culture; the fact that it was built on swamps and water, seemingly impossible; the surreal white nights of the far north; all of these make the reality of the city seem more uncertain.
In previous texts, (like Alexander Herzen’s comparison of Moscow and St. Petersburg), the city was criticized for its bureaucracy, the political pressure and ladder-climbing. Gogol parodies this importance of political rank above all else when Kovalyov is afraid to talk to his own nose because it outranks him. No one else seems to notice anything strange about it, either, and pay all due respect to it.
The tsar, exalted above all by God…
One of the most striking aspects of the opera (other than the music itself, which was astonishingly beautiful and moving) was the way Christianity seemed to pervade every aspect of life.
The way the peasants treat Boris in the first scene is very similar to their relationship with God, saying that they are all his children, that they will be orphans without him. It reminded me of the combination of fear and reverence people felt for Ivan the Terrible (or awesome). In the final scene, when they turn on him, it’s through the lens of religion again, saying that he has brought hell and torture on the Christian people of Russia. This was another possible parallel with Ivan the Terrible. It reminded me specifically of Kurbsky’s epistle, where the violence and torture committed by the tsar were even more sinful and terrible because he was supposed to be beloved and representative of God.
Along these same lines, Grigory the monk abandoned his pious, monastic life to impersonate Dmitri and try to claim the throne. He too is praised and almost worshipped by the people, but is actually guilty of terrible “sin”. This too adds to the foreshadowing of dark, tumultuous times ahead for Russia. The final tableau, too, is reminiscent of the crucifixion.