Category Archives: Russian Culture

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.

The Female Gaze

Last class, we dissected Zinaida Serebriakova’s self-portrait “At the Dressing Table”. We appreciated the incredible brushstrokes and her captivating gaze and the ornate detailing of her perfume bottles. After noting that her hair was in the process of being coiffed and her undergarments not even completely on, we determined that this piece was modern in its unpolished portrayal of Serebriakova. She is beautiful even before she brushed her hair and donned her dress. We discussed the clear deviation from the slew of pieces focused on the male gaze to this piece that focuses distinctly on the female gaze.

“Light Breathing” offers a similar expression of beauty: “To think how carefully some of her schoolmates did their hair, how meticulous they were about their persons, how they watched their every controlled movement! But she was afraid of nothing—neither inkstains on her fingers, nor a reddened face, nor tousled hair, nor a knee suddenly bared if she fell when running’ (124). Olya is also beautiful in her unpolished manner.  She is beautiful as she draws or writes (“inkstains”) and runs (“reddened face”) and neglects her hair (“tousled hair”) and adventures (“a knee suddenly bared”). Both Zinaida and Olya possess a natural, raw, dignified beauty. The glint in Zinaida’s eyes reflects the wildness we see in Olya’s behavior, as she is “naughty and quite unimpressed with the sermons preached to her by her grade supervisor”. The two women and their notable heads of hair shed light on the role of Russian women during this era—they are cultivating the female gaze.

Light Breathing, Heavy Essence

In examining Ivan Bunin’s short story ‘Light Breathing,’ I break down the work into three ‘images’ of Olga, located at the beginning, middle, and end of the piece. These three images give a certain aesthetic symmetry to the piece, as well as characterize the object (Olga herself) of the narrative.

The first image is of Olga’s gravesite, marked by a cross of oak- “strong, heavy, and smooth,” marked by a ‘solidity’ and permanence that the living Olga evaded, smooth in that all the transgressive ‘bumps’ of the living character (as narrative component) are no longer present. The wreath at the foot of the cross is not made up of living flowers-it is, rather, a porcelain wreath, a substance as ‘pure’ in content as it is ‘dead’ in form. An image of Olga herself is set behind glass: her ‘life’ is put behind a physical barrier (as she is beyond the ‘barrier’ created by death), cast into inanimate representation.

The middle image is of ‘living’ Olga: she is portrayed as both curiously one-sided (as a ‘young girl in flower’ device, a tragic-romantic symbol in which the piece can strike its tone) and as ‘modern,’ living and vital in that, through the form of her discovered diary, she has a voice: Olga-as-life-force is a narrative moment that escapes the moment: her voice is discovered, carving a new structure into the work (found-document cuts into narrated-event). Both of these ‘faces’ for the character are alike in that they are alive, full of an energy stands in contrast to the images on either side of it.

The last image is, once more, of the gravesite. Olga, as a character, has lost the narrative ‘voice’ given by the found diary, and is once more a poetic object (this time for the schoolmistress). While the specific imagery contrasts with the first image (her breathing is light, the oak cross is heavy), notions of ‘purity’ and ‘inanimacy’ remain. The schoolmistress struggles to reconcile this symbolic transformation with the idea of ‘living’ character: “The wreath, the mound, the oaken cross! Could it really be that beneath the cross lay the one whose eyes shone so immortally from the medallion above?” Olga’s “light breathing” (lyogkoye dykhanie), once she has crossed the barrier into death, becomes a (Miltonian-angelic) vapor, ‘pure’ of other elements, dispelled into a world that moves without it. ‘Olga’ as character has become ‘vapor’ as essence, and the transformation evoked at the beginning, from transgressive individual into ‘stable matter,’ is completed.

Russia Deceived

The idea of love lost by the hands of  a stranger or foreigner is a reoccurring theme in Blok’s writing and Stravinsky’s ballet. In Blok’s writings, he is prophesying the coming of dark times for Russia, in which people lose sight of what they once loved and are ultimately deceived. The way in which he portrays this deception is through the imagery of sorcery, witchcraft, and demons, as well as the numbing confusion of the blizzard. Both of these ideas lead to amazing spectacles that can beguile the mind but ultimately lead towards death and the loss of beauty and purity.

The sorcerers seduce and deceive and as a result the beauty of Russia is abused and tarnished, and the pure ideas of faith and love are confused. In this era of tumult and confusion, he does not know what god he believed or the girl he had loved. The blizzard, in all of its chaos overturned nature itself in the form of the sky causing the stars to fall, and with his eyes fixated on the descent, Blok writes about how he forgot about Russia and its landscapes that he loved. This deception by the blizzard distracts the individual from Russia in favor of the pure spectacle offered by the chaos.

The Russia that is being left behind, is in Blok’s eyes the true and right form of Russia as it was earlier in its glory days. In a time where the authority of the tsar is questioned and compromised, with the people seeking to destabilize the status quo through conflict and violence, he hearkens back to the simpler and more peaceful days that did not forebode this apocalyptic feeling. Those that would seek to turn Russia away from what it once was and plunge it into the blizzard are the sorcerers of whom he writes.

The foreign identity of the deceptive entity is seen in the ballet Petrouchka, in which the Moor steals away the girl Petrouchka loves. The Moor stands in sharp contrast to the other figures with his exotic style and dark skin and ultimately kills Petrouchka (I think) and steals away with the girl. Therefore what causes the downfall of Russia is a foreign element.

 

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.

Back Towards the Future: Prophetic Rumblings and Temporal Tumblings

Many of Alexander Blok’s lyric poems are heavy-laden with prophecy: Russia (both as Rus’ and Rossiya), feminized and untouchable, is threatened with seduction and collapse, a lone voice rises from the chorus, warning of the ‘cold and gloom’ of the days to come (O, esli b znali, deti, vy, holod i mrak gradushchikh dnei!). Despite a constant ‘dark’ tone in the prophetic language of the various works (no matter which volume of Blok’s complete works you lock someone in a room with, they’d still come out babbling about the end of days or an unobtainable ‘Fair Lady’), I hope to show that, by comparing two ‘prophetic’ poems, one written in 1900 and the other in 1916, differences between both imagery used and notions of ‘prophecy’ from poem to poem will become clear.

In ‘A Red Glow in the Sky,’ the prophesied future [a ‘city’] is ‘distant and unknowable’ (dalyokii, nevedomiy). That there is something to be prophesied about is clear: the future is made both ‘rumor’ and clear ‘talk’ (molva) in one semantic movement, and the heavy row of houses is distinguished by a ‘you’ (ty), whether the reader or a prophecy-receiving reader-as-blank-spot (Ty razlichish domov tizhyolyi ryad). The future, however, while ‘visible’ in its entirety, cannot be penetrated by the gaze: its essence is hidden behind barriers and boundaries, darkened and stern in their impenetrability. While the inquisitive mind can make ready for the revival of the roar of slain cities (pytlivyi um gotovit k vozrozhdeniyu/zabityi gul pogibshikh gorodov), the cities remain closed in their content: as ‘being’ makes a return-movement (vozvratnoye dvizheniye), the future clouds what this ‘being’ will be.

The ‘Kite’, written sixteen years later, presents a prophecy which, while more explicitly bleak in content, is ‘safe’ and predictable, a tragedy erased and reborn in a never-ending cycle. Above an empty meadow the kite inscribes circle after circle (chertya za krugom plavnyi krug), and in the hut the mother’s voice inscribes another circle, of predictable life-patterns, of nurture, grown, and socialization (na xleba, na, na grud’, sosi/rasti, pokorstvuyi, krest nesti). Centuries go on, war makes its noise, villages burn and social disorder arises, yet all of this is foretold, in that it is endless: the country remains the same, in ancient and tear-stained beauty (v krasye zaplakannoi i drevnei). How long must the mother wail? How long must the kite wheel? The question is left unanswered, yet the content of the ‘prophecy’ is made known: the mother does wail, and the kite does circle. The future, bloody and full of grief, does not loom out of the darkness: it rolls along, spinning ever-back into clarity.

Cultural Prophecies for Russia’s 20th Century

On November 7th, 1917  Vladimir Lenin ignited the ultimate stage in a decades-long series Bolshevik of “revolutions” against Russia’s Tsarist government. This would result in the former Tsar Nicholas’ execution, and ignite a multi-year civil war that eventually placed Lenin at the head of the new and unprecedented Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1921, the year of the end of the civil war, the celebrated Russian poet Alexander Blok lay on his deathbed. His disillusionment with Lenin’s new state was evident to those surrounding him. Beyond his masterful verse, Blok seemingly had the gift of prophecy. Although the fraught nature of  early 1917 may have betrayed the utter transformation held by the year’s end, Blok drew further connections, writing of a single “great event” in his diary. Even before this, though, Blok’s poetry held many clues as to the writer’s feelings about Russian and her future.

In Russia, Blok writes “I cannot offer you my pity, / I carry my cross as I can… Squander your wild beauty / on every new magician!”. This stanza, written in 1908, reverberates over the next decade of Russian history with incredible accuracy and foresight. Additionally, it is instrumental in understanding the historical context of Blok’s own play, The Puppet Show, and Stravinsky’s celebrated ballet Petrouchka.

The “you” in the Stanza is quite obviously Russia, as is demonstrated clearly by the poem’s title (Russia). Blok speaks from a point of exhaustion and removal, unable to offer himself to guide Russian through the numerous trials ahead and the coming century. He is offering advice of a sort to the nation, but also speaks from a place of defeat. Blok has his own, personal struggles, and cannot serve as a cultural masthead to lead his countrymen in the decades to come. The second part of the stanza speaks of Russia “and squander your wild beauty”, which probably is a behest to not ,be charmed by fast-talking political showmen (“new magicians”). This relates to Petrouchka, as the puppet Petrouchka in the ballet is in love with the Ballerina, even though she loves the Moor. The Ballerina represents Russia, absorbed by wild charms yet never fulfilled in the Tsarist era. Petroucka is most probably an analog of Blok. This is strikingly similar to The Puppet Show, as Pierrot (Petrouchka’s parallel character) has another episode of unrequited love, saying “My girlfriend smiled into his face”. The Columbine (Pierrot’s love) is obsessed with the Harlequin, another mysterious, magician-like figure who she has no real idea of. The Harlequin and Moor are accurate foretelling of the Bolshevik fervor which would soon sweep the nation, intent on change. The public fell “victim” to the Bolsheviks in a similar way to the Ballerina and Columbine, as Blok could only stand by and watch reason be lost.

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.

Charmingly careless, mournful grief

While discussing Russian music in class on Friday, we noticed a repetition of several folk tunes in song after song. Musicians used Russian peasant music and culture as a means of representing and branding the elusive concept of Russian Culture. Interestingly enough, it is in these pieces of literature on Russian peasants that I get a sense of this previously vague and hazy mass that is “Russian Culture” as a whole. Once more, peasant culture serves to represent all of Russian culture.

 

In “Sketches from a Hunter’s Album”, Turgenev writes, “A Russian is so sure of his strength and robustness that he is not averse to overtaxing himself: he is little concerned with his past and looks boldly towards the future. If a thing’s good, he’ll like it; if a thing’s sensible, he’ll not reject it, but he couldn’t care a jot where it came from” (31). These overly confident blanket statements are wonderfully Russian. With this sureness in “strength and robustness”, individuals are propelled forward into outrageously ambitious drinking competitions. The tone of those sentences mirrors that of Gogol’s mad humor, what with the certainty in absurdity.

 

These trends in Russian culture are clear in “The Singers”. The characters are all engaging in an energetic exercise in alcohol-oriented endeavors.  The story hold all of your classic insults: “you stupid insect”, you “twister, you!”, “you great milksop!”. And with the description of each character comes the description of each character’s nose of course—a remarkably important feature in the Russian man’s face. Each character has a nickname; Booby, Yashka the Turk, and the Wild Gentleman formed a motley crew. And once more, the true Russian heart and soul emerged with the Russian peasant’s song: “A warmhearted, truthful Russian soul rang and breathed in it and fairly clutched you be the heart, clutched straight at your Russian heartstrings” (18). The beauty of this song lies in a “genuine deep passion” and a “sort of charmingly careless, mournful grief”. I find the pairing of the words “charmingly careless” grief to be particularly poignant. This phrase captures the tone of Gogol’s mad, mad stories and the words of Kozma Prutkov and all of the Russian humor we have witnessed thus far. In both Russian literature and music, artists use peasant culture to embody all of Russian culture.