Author Archives: Price Nyland '20

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist

Amidst Friday’s grab-bag of cultural material, the Pussy Riot video stood out the most to me, especially since it is so contemporary. By combining anti-Putin, LGBT, and feminist sentiments, the band was arrested outside of a church for asserting their beliefs.

I think what interested me most is that this protest highlights the tyranny of Russia for certain people that still exists today. In this class, we have read many texts and seen films depicting the struggles people have faced in exile, indoctrination, censorship, and countless other contentions. However, this riot is bold and courageous; though there is something deeply upsetting about seeing people having to go to extremes for equality (whether that be for women, queer people, etc.). Invoking God and, interestingly, the Virgin Mary as an icon for women, a savior, an insider, Pussy Riot dares to cause a storm in a country still struggling.

I found the parallel between Pussy Riot and the New Wave art, namely Chernyshev’s History of a Love, fascinating. Feminism in the culture we have studied has been present, but preliminary. This painting struck me. As Pussy Riot protested, Chernyshev painted a stark comparison, with a past female,  idealized, glowing, perky… With a modern woman posing next to an antiquated portrait, emotions rise — do you love her for being different? For being herself? Or do you hate her for being different?

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The second half of the painting is strange and alarming, (and I could be totally wrong), but demonstrated to me the desire to pick and choose the parts society maintains of a woman.

A Refreshingly Positive Post

So I was going to write this post about the Menshov film Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, but then I watched Cheburashka and fell in LOVE. Hear me out, because I have concocted a very positive analysis of this precious animated creature that I think will be a nice break from our usually (although beautiful) heavy and serious fodder.

Cheburashka is an adorable misfit. Overwhelmed with oranges, he toppled into a box, fell asleep, and was shipped to a grocer in what I assume is Moscow. He is brought around the city, trying to find a job. First of all, the fact that the film depicts Che and his soon-to-be-new-friend Gena as “working” in their jobs is so underrated — how civil is that?? But then again, these are fully functional walking, talking, pipe-smoking hybrid animals. The animals leave their jobs at the Zoo, which is a beautifully disillusioned idea that I am choosing not to pick apart.

When Gena puts out an ad for a friend, he is met with not one, not two, BUT THREE! I had the biggest smile on my face when Che confirms his fear (he doesn’t know what he is; neither does Gena’s big book), but he can still be their friend! On the surface, the newfound friends are just playing, but looking deeper, they are accepting differences and overcoming homogeneity.

The evil woman with the pet rat is clearly the moral antagonist, and yet, even she cannot stand in the way of the House of Friends being built. The end of this film absolutely wrecked me.

No matter how silly this short was, I absolutely adored it. This might not be the most serious post on the blog, but I certainly needed Cheburashka this week. We can talk about the gender roles of Moscow in class.

 

Blue Hope

I was truly taken with the Akhmatova Requiem reading for Friday (I’m presenting Wednesday’s materials, so I’m jumping ahead for this post). I have been pondering the concise nature of Akhmatova’s concise yet as-poignant-as-possible diction, and I can’t help but note how different a female writer’s perspective is in this time. Writing from what sounds like hell on earth, Akhmatova breaks her audience’s heart, then lifts its chin like she does the blue-lipped woman as “hope still sings in the distance”. She somehow packs as much vivid anguish into her writing, transporting a reader there in her prison, yet still somehow retaining some sliver of perspective and hope: “Only the dead smiled, happy in their peace”; “Stars of death stood over us and Innocent Russia squirmed under the bloody boots,” (282).

Even in destitution and imprisonment, Akhmatova personifies the Motherland as a sympathetic force that shouldn’t be blamed for her situation, as she is struggling too. Even when all that could and should break this woman is happening, Akhmatova’s poetic awareness thrives: “The stone word fell on my beating breast. Never mind, I was prepared, somehow I’ll come to terms with it… I must finally kill my memory, I must so my soul can turn to stone, I must learn to live again,” (284-285). This sentiment is the most inspiring thing I think we have read all semester — instead of unrealistic dedication or unstable clinging to false hope, Akhmatova has looked hell in the eyes and though she will not be the same, she is determined to continue to survive.

The ending of this poem, with Akhmatova’s release, wrecked me: “I would like to name them all but they took away the list and there’s no way of finding them. For them I have woven a wide shroud from the humble words I heard among them. I remember them always, everywhere, I will never forget them, whatever comes,” (287). Surviving the ordeal was her first accomplishment; writing this masterpiece was another, and she gives the credit to the sorry souls that surrounded her. Incredible.

Isaac Babel’s Dispirit Masculinity

Though I enjoyed the Zamyatin excerpts, I much preferred the Babel readings, “The Rabbi’s Son” and “My First Goose”. Though each one is quite short and only allows an in medias res snapshot of a moment, both works demonstrate a raw dedication to specifically Lenin’s works as well as a desolate sense of masculine existence.

In “The Rabbi’s Son”, we watch a young man die on a “wretched mattress”, the victim of gruesome war and subject to his gender. As a man, he was forced to leave his mother’s side: “When there’s a revolution on, a mother’s an episode,” (193). The concept of drafting young men into threatening certain-death warzones is depressing, especially in this story. The rabbi’s son is beaten down, slowly dying, dishonorable and weak amidst his Lenin leaflets and Hebrew texts. Reduced to a fading light, masculinity killed “my brother”.

Similarly, in Babel’s “My First Goose”, we see the protagonist’s affected mask of masculinity, battling with his glasses, as he interacts with his new crowd of soldiers, gruffly establishing himself among them. The most interesting interaction of gender roles, I thought, was between the man and the Landlady. When he asserts himself over her, even in the gruesome slaying of a goose (“The goose’s head burst under my boot and its brains spilled out”), she seems numbly unshaken: “Comrade… I could kill myself,” (208). The interaction proves to me a desolate desensitized regard for gender roles in the throes of war.

Lyrically Fated

Among the myriad of lyrical poems assigned for Friday, Pasternak’s were my favorites, especially following the interesting discussions we had today. With the hopeless tone set by stories like The Last Rendezvous and Will, I was in the perfect mindset for the poem entitled “Hamlet” (from Dr. Zhivago). The final stanza resonates:  “And yet the order of the acts is planned, the way’s end destinate and unconcealed. Alone. Now is the time of the Pharisees. To live is not like walking through a field.” The dejected realization of destined human struggle is heavy and poignant.

This concept tied in nicely, I thought, with Akhmatova’s two works “I have a certain smile” and “When a Man Dies.”  The speaker grapples with the smile, an inherently beautiful human trait, a symbol of life and vivacity, and how a “certain” smile can mean different things to different people. A smile is one of the most profound symbols of love: “I don’t care that you’re brash and vicious, I don’t care that you love others.” This declaration proves a beautiful prelude to the latter poem, as the speaker ponders the only time humans break from their mortal shackles, their lyrical fate written from birth, is in death: “His eyes look in a different way, his lips smile a different smile.”

The shift of these tones represents a gorgeous self awareness.

Gilded Symbolism

I was fascinated with Alexander Blok’s A Puppet Show. Blok employs a great deal of keenly timed symbolism that adds immense comedy and social critique.

Color plays a large role in Puppet Show to convey differing contexts in ridiculous situations throughout. For example, the audience witnesses two couples demonstrate the wide spectrum of romantic interaction. The pallid couple — “Our sleepy story is so quiet. You closed your eyes without sin” — juxtaposed with the “whirlwind of cloaks” black and red couple that busts onto the scene saying, “Watch out, temptress! I’ll remove my mask! And you’ll find out that I am faceless. You swept away my features, and led me to darkness, where my black double nods to me, nods to me,” (28-29).

Better yet than this comical comparison is the third couple, the female half of which merely repeats the final word said by her male companion. This interaction killed me. “O, how captivating your words are! Sayer of my soul! How much your words say to my heart!” (30).

The third person symbolic discussion of death and the end of the world continued into the poem A Voice From the Chorus: “You will be waiting, child, for spring – and spring will fool you. You will call for the suns rising – and the sun will lie low. And your shout, when you start shouting, silence will swallow,” (68). The seasonal symbolism is haunting, personifying spring and nature as heartlessly ignoring a child’s cries for help.

Maybe I am overtired, but this play confused me. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but a good bit went over my head. Blok: 1. Price: 0.

Confession

To be candid, I grappled with the readings this week (blame it on break, I suppose). Though I enjoyed the Gogol story, I struggled to thematically connect it to the other readings in a clear way. To me, “Diary of a Madman” reads as an ironic juxtaposition to the Chaadaev writing. Gogol’s story highlights alienation and mental disintegration over time, as well as a struggle between who the narrator truly is and who he presents himself as. Perhaps most interestingly is the representation of Poprishchin through his dating system: “Don’t remember the date. There was no month either. Devil knows what’s going on”; eventually,  his date is upside-down and right-side-up. The sheer absurdity of this story contrasted with the hyper-Russian-centric responses from Chaadaev and Pushkin demonstrates a sad disconnect in the conversation of Russian cultural domination. “Apology of a Madman” is immensely inspiring: “It is a wonderful privilege to be able to contemplate and judge the world from the height of independent thought, free form unrestrained passions and petty interests which elsewhere disturb man’s view and pervert his judgement,” (314). That is one hell of a sentence. The pride so deeply rooted in this Russian identity is unfaltering, as echoed in Pushkin: “Russia will rise, a joyous, dazzling constellation, will leap from sleep to life and fame; on tyranny’s stark wreck the nation will write for evermore our name!”

Again, I struggled with the conflicting tones of the Gogol story and the Chaadaev/Pushkin combo. However, the arguments asserted by both were vastly striking.

Amuse-bouche

Without giving too much away for my presentation tomorrow, I would like to discuss the beautiful early 19th century Russian paintings. As artistic expression began to include more concepts, artists flourished. Painters like Karl Briullov and Vasily Tropinin shifted from the traditional portraits to expressive moments captured in vivid detail. I was especially interested in the handful of women depicted in varying ways that varied from the rigid usual way:

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Instead of propping this woman up in front of a mantle with her father (which still happened in these paintings, but…) Briullov depicts this woman as autonomous, impressive, and expressive. Her eyes are calm and confident, and her horse’s are wild and roused, but the child admiring her adept says the most. The young girl watches with hope and love in her eyes, dreaming that one day she will grow into a beautiful woman on a majestic horse.

girlwithapotofroses

Though this portrait is less groundbreaking, the naturalistic element of a bouquet of roses in an equal foreground with the subject is striking. The woman’s beauty is complemented and mirrored by an egalitarian appreciation for nature’s elegance — roses.

These two examples demonstrate a freeing of artistic expression and a new appreciation for the earth’s bounty and how lovely it can be replicated on canvas, especially in regards to women’s portrayal in early 19th century Russian art.

Learning to Settle

I really enjoyed Sophie’s discussion of the fairytales in her post — her arguments resonated with me. The tales were my favorite of the core work for this week because they left me analyzing society in the deepest way (which is a tad ironic, I think). Our class discussions were great, and I’m still left pondering the cultural reasoning behind the stories’ nature. Though they weren’t quite as shocking as Frol Skobeev, they were nowhere near as watered down and painfully unrealistic as the Hollywood “Happily Ever After”, and they strayed from the typical religious undertones of prayer and suffering leading to salvation. Instead, these strange tales echoed themes of fated situations of strife — usually familial — in which protagonists invoked the help of magical creatures. Tsarevich Ivan and the Grey Wolf piqued my interest the most, though, because the moral seems to read: “if you’re going to misbehave, misbehave well.” Tsarevich Ivan must appease his father (by and large the greatest consistency through all the stories) by stealing; and yet, when his siblings steal his spoils (as he did) AND quite literally murder him, the happy ending is the reversal. The grey wolf revives him, he returns home, and his ending is cold and emotionless: “Tsarevich Ivan told him [Tsar Berendei] how the Grey Wolf had helped him, and how his brothers had killed him while he slept and Grey Wolf had torn them to bits. At first Tsar Berendei was sorely grieved, but he soon got over it,” (54). I laughed when I read that, because it’s absolutely ridiculous, and yet, it pokes fun at fratricide, great expectations, and settling into stealing when you must. The moral compromises of this tale were far more satisfying to me than everyone turning out A-OK in the end. As Pushkin says in his dedication for Ruslan and Liudmila, “And no one’s praises do I ask from fate, but shall be pleased to thank it”… The Russians know how to settle into a less-than-splendid situation when push comes to shove.