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.