Category Archives: Unit 5: The Founding of St. Petersburg

Individualism in Petersburg

The satirization of power structures looms large over the works of “The Nose,” “A Guide to a Renamed City,” and Lietenant Kizhe. In the midst of a new city, St. Petersburg, that incorporated aspects of all of Europe, and an increasingly centralized and powerful political structure, wherein collectivism and obligation to the state was of paramount importance, I’d like to focus on the concept of the individual. How is he or she presented in each of these works, and to what extent does he or she matter?

Lietenant Kizhe both opens and closes with a sleeping Tsar. Paul’s unawareness positions him as the center of ridicule in the movie, yet also makes a statement on the importance of an individual: namely, that there is none. The individual is merely a scapegoat for the masses in Lietenant Kizhe. When faced with exile, Count von Pahlen and his uncle uphold the fictional character of Kizhe. Yet, when the guardsmen send Tsar Paul an insulting letter, they have no individual to load there problems unto. Tsar Paul claims that a “state is lonely without faithful servants.” Ironically, his one faithful servant is no more than an apparition in Tsar Paul’s world, where personal connection and individualism counts for less than nothing when compared with rules, positions, and respect. Thus the film presents a lonely reality, not because of the absence of society, but because of the absence of an individual.

Joseph Brodsky claims that St. Petersburg “is the city where it’s somehow easier to endure loneliness than anywhere else: because the city itself is lonely”. This is not because there is an absence of people or culture, but rather because there is an absence of an individual identity for the city. It is split between Leningrad and Peter, many different Western influences, capital or disconnected city.

In “The Nose,” by Nikolai Gogol, we see the effects of a part dismembered from a whole, on an individual anatomical scale. Kovalyov loses his nose and subsequently loses his identity as a confident man looking for a promotion and young ladies to seduce. The Nose is able to completely break off from the whole and hide as an individual. To what extent does this mean that the part needs the whole, or that the whole needs the part? Furthermore, how much does the individual need the state? How much does the state need the individual?

Olfactory Blues

This week, I’ve chosen to focus on probably my two favorite readings to date: Gogol’s “The Nose” and Dostoevsky’s “White Nights”. Both stories pandered to the romantic side of me, which I absolutely adored. In “The Nose”, the absurdity of social standing is teased as Kovalyov wakes up without his nose and suffers at its hand as it surpasses him in rank. The narrative of the protagonist wandering around St. Petersburg is cartoonish and charming, especially as he struggles with his love interest’s nagging mother. The ridiculous nature of her letter in response, spinning a missing nose into a proposal acceptance, is hilarious: “If by this you mean to say that I am, as it were, turning up my nose at you, that is, rejecting you out of hand, then I am surprised that you yourself should bring this up, since I, as you are aware, was of a directly contrary opinion, and if you were now to seek the hand of my daughter in the legitimate way I would be prepared forthwith to grant your request, for this has always been the object of my most earnest desire…” (57). The desperate mother peddling her daughter in the face of a rogue nose adds to the sheer madness of the piece and contributes to the social climbing motif in a misogynistic but comical way. The internal struggle of Kovalyov is different yet similar to the struggle of Dostoevsky’s narrator in “White Nights”, as both grapple with a whimsical identity crisis set in a whimsical city — whether stemming from unrequited love or societal insecurity, their experiences are beautifully melancholy. As Dostoevsky’s narrator says, “The dreamer’ – if you want an exact definition – is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort.” Both of these pieces took different spins on the hopeless human condition in a conflicted and cosmic city.