{"id":289,"date":"2016-11-02T14:12:39","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T18:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/?p=289"},"modified":"2016-11-02T14:12:39","modified_gmt":"2016-11-02T18:12:39","slug":"lyrically-fated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/russian-culture\/lyrically-fated\/","title":{"rendered":"Lyrically Fated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Among the myriad of lyrical poems assigned for Friday, Pasternak&#8217;s were my favorites, especially following the interesting discussions we had today. With the hopeless tone set by stories like\u00a0<em>The Last Rendezvous<\/em> and\u00a0<em>Will<\/em>, I was in the perfect mindset for the poem entitled &#8220;Hamlet&#8221; (from\u00a0<em>Dr. Zhivago<\/em>). The final stanza resonates: \u00a0&#8220;And yet the order of the acts is planned, the way&#8217;s end destinate and unconcealed. Alone. Now is the time of the Pharisees.\u00a0<em>To live is not like walking through a field.<\/em>&#8221; The dejected realization of destined human struggle is heavy and poignant.<\/p>\n<p>This concept tied in nicely, I thought, with Akhmatova&#8217;s two works &#8220;I have a certain smile&#8221; and &#8220;When a Man Dies.&#8221; \u00a0The speaker grapples with the smile, an inherently beautiful human trait, a symbol of life and vivacity, and how a &#8220;certain&#8221; smile can mean different things to different people. A smile is one of the most profound symbols of love: &#8220;I don&#8217;t care that you&#8217;re brash and vicious, I don&#8217;t care that you love others.&#8221; This declaration proves a beautiful prelude to the latter poem, as the speaker ponders the only time humans break from their mortal shackles, their lyrical fate written from birth, is in death: &#8220;His eyes look in a different way, his lips smile a different smile.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The shift of these tones represents a gorgeous self awareness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among the myriad of lyrical poems assigned for Friday, Pasternak&#8217;s were my favorites, especially following the interesting discussions we had today. With the hopeless tone set by stories like\u00a0The Last Rendezvous and\u00a0Will, I was in the perfect mindset for the poem entitled &#8220;Hamlet&#8221; (from\u00a0Dr. Zhivago). The final stanza resonates: \u00a0&#8220;And yet the order of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":374,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,12],"tags":[119,117,118],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russian-culture","category-unit-9-the-silver-age-and-revolution","tag-akhmatova","tag-lyrical-poems","tag-pasternak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}