Category Archives: Unit 7: Romanticism and Folk Culture

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?

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.

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.

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:

0 T

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.

Eluding Happiness

In the 1958 movie production of the opera Eugene Onegin, Onegin answers, “I am stronger to happiness,” when responding to Tatyana Larina’s love letter. He, just as Tatyana expected, derides Tatyana and condemns her for her lack of self-control, regarding himself as too wise to value frivolous joy . Tragically, over the course of the opera, Onegin eludes both self-control and happiness.

What does this say about how young or fleeting love was viewed in Russian culture and by Pushkin? Both Vladimir Lensky and Tatyana Larina are struck by love’s spontaneity in the first portion of the opera. Lensky proclaims that he does not fear eternity, yet by the second half of the play he has renounced his love for Olga. Tatyana expresses her adoration for Onegin, asking, “are you my guardian angel?” However, she also expresses fear and shame at her expressiveness, and in the final scene of the play, even subdues her admission of love in favor of stability. She deliberately chooses to elude her desires for happiness, if those are to be equated with her lingering love for Onegin. Likewise, Onegin destroys the only sources of happiness in his life. He trifles with Tatyana’s feelings for him and with Vladimir’s feelings for Olga and as a result of these actions, finds himself in a duel with Vladimir wherein Onegin kills his best friend. Ultimately, this opera presents an even bleaker message than many Russian movies and stories. In most tragedies happiness is absent in reality, fate, situations, etc.; In Eugene Onegin happiness knocks on the door of characters, only to be rejected and eluded by them.

The False Search for Love

Alexander Pushkin’s “Ruslan and Liudmila” continues and adds to the recurring theme of false love and the corrupting search for amorous connection in Russian culture. The The Snow Maiden presents a kind of twisted utopia that values love as a sacrificial means to provide the sustenance that society needs to function; it centers on the search for false love. In contrast, “Ruslan and Liudmila” focuses on the superficial quest from both a male and female perspective; it centers on the false search for love.

A Finnish sorcerer presents the story of his own quest for love to Ruslan, who has had his wife Liudmila taken away from him by mysterious means. The old sorcerer laments his years lost trying to prove himself worthy of the maiden Naina’s love. His attempts as a shepherd, warrior, and finally sorcerer exemplify the futility in searching for love, for none of these endeavors can help forge a connection. Naina’s love, or the force of time, is always a barrier. The old man relays this story to Ruslan, who seeks to cement his legitimacy as Liudmila’s husband by finding her. The sorcerer, however, tells Ruslan that fate will take care of his concerns. Furthermore, through his tale, the old man implicitly cautions Ruslan not to try to make the acquisition of love and marriage a matter arrived upon by free will. By the end of the excerpt, one message about love rings clear: love can only come about by fate, not by free will.

“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.

 

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.