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.