Category Archives: Russian Culture

The Mighty Handful: Themes

The Mighty Handful set before themselves the goal of producing a Russian classical music, a tradition liberated from the mimetic anxiety of European influence. I am not qualified to comment on the music itself: it all sounds ‘good’, but the minutiae of tone and movement are topics best left to others. I would, however, like to examine some of the themes chosen by the Handful for their music, themes that, when considered together, outline the Handful’s Romantic conception of ‘Russianness’.

The ‘Russia’ for which the Mighty Handful aim to forge a classical tradition is at once geographically expansive and culturally consistent. Alexander Borodin’s ‘Russia’ can encompass the steppes of (recently acquired) Central Asia, thus reifying ‘the Orient’ into an object for Russian cultural production. Meanwhile, Mussogorsky’s ‘Russia’ stretches west into a distant and mythologized past: the Great (Golden) Gate of Kiev is suspended between the new Romantic language of the present and the romanticized mists of the Kievan Rus past.  Between these geographical extremes, Russian culture and a ‘Russian tradition’ is expressed almost wholly through the lense of folk culture, or variants upon it. The folktale-uncanny is a source of wonder and inspiration, as shown by Mussogorsky’s ‘Baba Yaga’ and ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ (a narrative of the darkly fantastic, as discussed by John in his post.) Religion is a source of material as well, both in its ‘public’ forms (through Rimsky-Korsakov’s Easter Overture) and in its ‘folk’ forms (through Liadov’s Religious Chant and Carol). In Liadov and Glinka, folk motifs abound, while Balakirev’s choice of theme brings all the strands together: Russia.

In creating a new musical language for the Russian tradition, these composers operate upon a diverse and malleable symbolic language. The ‘Russia’ they evoke can be Oriental or ancient-European, folk-occult or overtly religious. For these composers, Romanticism offers a palette both stylized in content and opaque in meaning.

An Itinerary Indicative of Geographic Context

Nazi Germany reached the Volga River in late fall of 1942. Hitler was intent on crossing the Volga, completing the conquest of Stalingrad, and capturing the rich oil fields of the Caucasus. It is widely accepted in historical circles that the Soviet Union would have been defeated had Stalingrad been a German victory, and the Third Reich’s forces been able to cross the Volga. The Volga is one of many Russian rivers, as is the Dnieper, that have appeared over and over again in name and image in our study of Russia’s culture. There have also been innumerable nameless rivers that are mentioned in the works we have reviewed so far this semester. The Russian visual artistic tradition is as reliably river-featuring as Russian literature. In my review of the paintings for this session, I was struck by the absolute breadth of styles and subjects present even within the Itinerants school of the late 19th century. From Vereshchagin’s paintings of exotic Napoleonic locales, to Makovsky’s epic historical scenes, the 14 Itinerants had as many focuses as there were painters part of the “Society of Traveling Exhibitions”. As a result of this, I focused my analysis on the factors that many of the paintings did have in common. Rivers and bodies of water featured in several paintings, across the Itinerants. Usually in the background, the rivers did not feel like a forced subject, or even prototypical setting. The rivers featured in many of the  paintings felt like a well-established character, one that makes sense when familiar with even a small portion of Russian literature. It is this vaguely unconscious quality that gives the rivers their borderline omni-present quality, in most Russian landscape painting and some outdoor portraits.

The Itinerant Isaak Levitan, quite clearly made rivers the absolute focus of many of his paintings. Levitan’s work is reminiscent of some of the river-obsessed literature we have surveyed, placing rivers at the heart of Russian identity, landscape, and cultural. His ideas of bodies of water emphasize their importance and beauty, as shown in “Evening Bells”.

Levitan’s colleague Mikhail Nesterov incorporated rivers into his art in a slightly different fashion. His rivers appear like a subtle reminder within the paintings, evoking the sentiment “We are here. You owe us everything”. Perhaps most indicative of Nesterov’s attitude is the prominent featuring of a river in his self-portrait.

Other artists feature rivers occasionally, and often in an extremely symbolic fashion, recalling the place they occupy in Russian culture, as Yereshenko does in “Blind Musicians”.

Savrosov (Evening Flight), however, hints at bodies of water, often featuring them around the periphery, as a minor character of sorts among the other pillars of the painting.

This is perhaps the most accurate way of depicting flowing water in Russian life: familiar and omnipresent.

The Heads of Christ

Both Ivan Kramskoi and Nikolai Ge’s portraits of Christ combine a traditional, neoclassical subject matter with some additional, more progressive elements, representing the tumultuous, transitioning influences under which both artists were working. Ivan Kramskoi’s famous “Christ in the Dessert” is traditional in the sense that it adheres closely to realist tendencies. The beautiful landscape and Christ’s weathered face and simple, but carefully documented robes are all accurate and detailed and traditional, particularly in their religious subject matter. His weathered and burdened face are of a different era, however, in their emotional and psychological depiction. The deep creases on his face mirror the ridges in the rocks around him, and his coloring echoes and the coloring in the background. He is of the earth. His face is as weathered as the rocks around him and he carries his burden heroically. This painting serves as a combination of a more regal and formal portrait with the natural landscapes that were growing more and more popular at the time. The psychological portrayal of Christ and the beautiful landscape are both more modern and interpretative, while the realistic depiction of Christ is more traditional.

christinthewilderness

In his second depiction of Christ in “Christ in the Crown of Thorns”, Christ is equally as rugged and his clothing as worn. His eyes are sunken and his hair disheveled and he looks drained and resigned emotionally. His coat and the blood on his neck and the color of his hair are all the same brick red, contrasting starkly with his waxy, pale skin. The wild crown he wears, paired with the noose tied loosely around his neck make him look both threatening and threatened. The realistic depiction of Christ was traditional for the time, but the deep psychological side of it and the wild portrayal is more modern.

christinthecrownofthorns

Nikolai Ge offers an entirely different interpretation of Christ’s portrait. His thick brush strokes and use of 3 main colors deviate profoundly from art trends at the time. Ge painted many portraits throughout his lifetime, and this one is technically a portrait, but it doesn’t completely glorify the subject. Instead, he depicts Christ looking gaunt and practically dead. The only color he uses is a couple of strokes of red on Christ’s forehead, and the rest of the painting is painted in an eerie green-tinted white. This painting represents the major shift of the artistic trends at the time in its untraditional coloring and stylistic choices and in its nuance portrayal of the subject matter.

headofchrist

 

Dumber than Dogs

All three texts are having a conversation with one another about the essence of the Russian identity, and the hope or lack thereof that accompanies it. Could the Madman in both Gogol and Chaadev’s writings be in essence the same person or idea? In my mind, although written before Diary of a Madman, Apology of a Madman seems to be giving a defense for the reason behind the Madman’s insanity. The Madman can be read as your standard Russian state official (most likely in Petersburg) who has been exposed to European customs and represents the group of people that find themselves caught in the gray area between being European but at the same time not being it fully. In The Apology, this Russian identity is superficially tied to that of European culture, and is therefore devoid of all meaning. The European customs that Russia adopts to make itself more European have evolved naturally in Europe’s culture and traditions are therefore full of historical significance and meaning. When Russia merely assimilates those customs they lose their contextual significance and are then devoid of all meaning and are ultimately empty. This therefore leads Russia to chase after superficiality and emptiness to keep up appearances that they are a modern European nation, again making the idea of uncertainty in Russian identity resurface.

Not only is the uncertainty of Russian identity in relation to Europe revisited, but this feeling of inferiority starts to emerge. The contrast is quite stark when Ivanov believes that he only needs to look the part to become it. If he dressed like a man of higher rank he would then ascend the ranks purely based on his appearance, this superficiality is emblematic then of the true nature of the ranks in state service. The ranks were created by Peter the Great in an attempt to modernize Russia by imitating Europe’s state service structures, it did not come from a natural development through the ideas within the country as a whole. The ranks are not authentic but vapid, their only significance in its appearance. One might analyse this constant chase for the superficial to represent the stupidity of the Russian mindset. This stupidity, or in lighter terms, this tendency to find value in appearances only can be seen as a lack of education, an education  which would instruct in things that truly mattered. This is depicted through the books in the director’s study, that whoever possesses them is considered to be a “wise man”. The books however are all in either French or German, books way “above your average civil servant.” It is also depicted through the dogs that are able to write to one another, although one can clearly see the  dogs as being representative of French, or more generally of European culture, with the incorporations of “ma chère” throughout the text. The dogs here are depicted as being more intelligent than humans, however one can make the argument that Gogol is trying to depict the Russians as being less educated than dogs, and thus here comes the feeling of inferiority, echoing the statements made in The Apology.

The response to these ideas of Russian inferiority is then answered by Pushkin with the optimism that Russia will be able to shake off the chains that prevents it from achieving its God given potential.

 

As a Hatter

As an artist, Gogol stands apart from all other creators of literature that we have encountered in the course. His stream-of-consciousness style is remarkable, and he has a certain singular way of painting the desires, motivations, and experiences of the pitiful mid-tier Russian civil servant that immediately took hold of my imagination, and I am sure that of others. He does all this with incredible humor, and manages to construct a narrative with incredible speed and power. The previous Gogol work we studied, The Nose, was understandably fixated on its titular focus. However, this olfactory obsession is not contained to The Nose. At several painfully obvious points in Diary of a Madman, the Gogol work we most recently studied, Gogol brings the faces’ most famous organ to the forefront. On page 165, he rather innocently writes “I had to hold my nose” (as a result of a nasty smell). Later, however, he mentions a dog “trying to sink his teeth” into the narrator’s nose. Again, on page 170, Gogol writes “It’s not as if his made of gold”, in reference to the narrator’s romantic adversary, the Kammerjunker. This is slightly more telling, using the nose as a central to pin an entire personality on. The narrator’s nose is mentioned again on page 176, and on page 178, perhaps most noticeably as the last word in the entire work. This last flourish convinces me that mention of the nose is not coincidental, and instead is entirely purposeful by Gogol. In the last sentence, the King of France is said to have a wart “right under his nose” as a way of devaluing him and demeaning him in the insane narrator’s mind. This goes hand and hand with the earlier description of the Kammerjunker’s nose being “not gold” as a way of rejecting his (in the narrator’s mind) superiority and wealth. I first thought of “noses” in the context of Gogol’s The Nose, it is quite evident after study that Gogol does have a strange fixation on the body part, and particularly enjoys using it as a barometer for certain characters when observed by the narrator.

When reading Diary of a Madman, I initially took the title as a semi-ironic take on the state of the archetypal St. Petersburg bureaucratic existence. As the story progressed, becoming more surreal and Kafkaeque, I took the title at face value, watching with interest as Gogol initiated a subtle descent into insanity. This was cemented during the talking dog (at the apartment) sequence, and carried on into the narrative past this first real expression of “madness” in the narrator. My opinion of the title changed for a third time during the final, “King of Spain” sequence. During this period of the story, in which the narrative becomes feverish and hazy, the title seems more of an overdone farce, Gogol commenting on a modern ideal of insanity, and taking it to full, demonstrative irony. The idea and demonstrated version of madness certainly fits Gogol’s writing in The Nose. I am glad to have discovered Gogol as a writer, realizing his place in the pantheon of surrealists alongside Kafka and Murakami.

Spain has a king. He has been found. I am this king.

Gogol’s “The Nose” probes the role of social mobility and anxiety in Russian society. With the growth of Russian urban life and the general movement towards modernization, individuals were more capable of rising and falling within the Russian hierarchy, spawning discord and hope alike. The prospect of a nose surpassing its individual socially is not unfounded. Gogol continues to examine this theme of social mobility and pandemonium in his “Diary of a Madman” through the image of the nose and the use of animals. He writes “Another reason the moon is such a tender globe is that people cannot live on it any more, and only noses live on it now. This is also why we cannot see our noses—they’re all on the moon.” (176) Once more, the noses have risen above the bodies; they have escaped, leaving their individuals lost and confused. Similarly, the animals seem to be gaining power at a surprising rate. After reading some letters written by dogs, Gogol describes dogs, “I’ve long suspected that dogs are far more intelligent than people. I was even convinced that they are able to speak but are only prevented from doing so by their great stubbornness. Dogs are remarkable politicians: they notice everything, every move a person makes” (164). Not only are the dogs simply more intelligent than humans, but they also have the capacity to read and understand humans in a way that is rare among humans. They are stubborn and “remarkable politicians” while humans are merely the subject of their studies. The notion that both animals and distinct body parts can trump full human beings reflects the general anxiety concerning social mobility.

 

The two main indicators of nobility and social status in this story are education and clothing. The dogs pose a threat because they are well education and can read and write fluently. The October Fourth journal entry describes the director’s study: “Our director must be a very wise man. All the walls of his study are covered with bookcases” (161). The books on his shelves and his clear education both indicate his wisdom and high social status. Not only does the madman recognize that he is knowledgeable and worldly, but he writes, “Take one look at him: you’ll be amazed at the glow of importance shining from his eyes. I’ve never yet heard him pronounce a superfluous word” (161). This association of education with high status is crucial because it reflects Russian culture, and because it offers any hardworking individual a means of accessing success. This message is a hopeful one for aspiring “simple, working men, even a peasant[…]suddenly it turns out that he’s some sort of big shot, and sometimes even a king” (170). This offers individuals some agency in their social position. The other main indicator of status rests in clothing. The madman says, “The only think that has prevented me from appearing at court is that I do not have any legal garb” (174). Gogol correlates clothing with societal status. He describes the director’s daughter: “She wore a dress as white as a swan: such a splendid dress” (161). Elite fashion clearly indicates wealth and also a consciousness of social hierarchy. Social anxiety and restlessness permeate “Diary of a Madman” particularly drawing the notion of hierarchy and disturbed hierarchy.

The Madman’s Self-Deception

Nikolai Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman” and Alexander Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades” both feature protagonists who descend into madness while chasing such morally empty objectives as lust, respect, and fortune. Throughout the path to their eventual insanity and institutionalization for insanity, the symptoms of madness present themselves in a way that degrades the subjects. Madness is not a wild release for the protagonists in this story; it is much more of a reminder of the realities that Aksenty in “Diary of a Madman” and Hermann in “The Queen of Spades” are dissatisfied with. In fact, while Aksenty and Hermann lose their grip on reality through the distortion of insanity, their self-deception also reinforces their position in reality in cruel fashion .

Arksenty Ivanovich Poprischin is a social servant who aims to achieve power and dignity even though he greatly underachieves. He places the blame for this on his boss, the Section Chief, yet  he also sees a path to liberation through the Section Chief’s daughter, Sophie. Arksenty falls in love with her, comparing her to a little bird with whom he could cast aside his personal insecurities. Arksenty’s madness eventually conceives of a dog who writes letters. Arksenty reads the letters, and they reveal Arksenty’s irrelevance to Sophie, her love with another man, and general insults about Arksenty’s appearance. If these letters are an invention of Arksenty’s crazed mind, why do they further degrade him? Even if the letters had been real, his madness now supplies an innocent, objective figure (Madgie the dog) to deliver insults to Aksenty. Either way, the letters seem to reinforce his position of irrelevance which he hopes to transcend. In this way, Arksenty’s madness misleads his ultimate goals by delegitimizing them.

In Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades,” Hermann also misleads himself in the midst of his obsession with discovering the secret of the card game fero. Hermann feigns love for Lizaveta in order to chase an empty and corrupt wealth. He wants to gain access to the countess’ secrets that were born out of necessity and gifted to the countess only to alleviate her from poverty. After his armed appearance shocks the countess to death, Hermann’s mad consciousness punishes Hermann for his shallowness; the wink of the countess’ corpse and her appearance as a ghost to reveal the card game secret only pit Hermann against himself. He misleads himself into thinking that he possesses a secret, and then through this arrogance he loses his final card game and goes insane.

Madness, through all of its distortions, imprisons the protagonists in their own sad realities in these stories. This raises some questions: Is this punishment for their moral shallowness? If so, why is such a punishment self-inflicted, and what does it say about the way Russian society viewed insanity?