Tag Archives: Desire

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.

Distinctions of Desire

The opera of Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky presents several different depictions of the morality of desire.

Early in the opera, just before Tsar Boris exits the stage after his first entrance, two children crawl up to him and touch his extravagant garments. They hold their hands out for help, yet Tsar Boris not only denies them, but also seems deeply disturbed. Is it their neediness and desire that causes this reaction, or their mere disrespect? To what extent are these all the same things?

In the depiction of Grigory and the older monk Pimen, Pimen aims to educate Grigory on how to be a moral individual. Grigory has selfish temptation for glory; he wishes not to be a monk for life and perhaps to have fought for Russia and the Tsar as Pimen did). Pimen at once chastises Grigory for this desire and still himself glorifies past leaders. He speaks of Ivan’s repentance in the same monastery, and of Feodor converting the Tsar’s rooms into a monks cell. While Pimen holds royalty in high esteem, he finds love to be a more problematic aspiration and talks of the “treachery of woman’s love.”

Later, Grigory assumes the position of the fake Tsarevich Dmitry and courts a Polish noblewoman named Marina. Here, he makes an entirely different distinction about desire than Pimen did. He claims that he wants Marina to love him and regards her love of his political aspirations as somewhat distasteful initially. Even as Marina saves the argument, she says she says to Grigory that she feels “love and desire for your glory.” But does that mean she has a desire for his glory, or that she desires him to be glorious? How might these different interpretations be regarded in Grigory’s  or Pimen’s mind, and how might they have been regarded in the time when Boris Godunov was written?