{"id":91,"date":"2016-09-08T18:37:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T22:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/?p=91"},"modified":"2016-09-08T18:38:05","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T22:38:05","slug":"scratch-a-russian-find-a-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/russian-culture\/scratch-a-russian-find-a-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"Scratch a Russian, Find a Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we began this class, Fyodor Tyutchev\u2019s question confronted us- \u201cWhat is Russia [?]\u201d Questions of national origin and national \u2018character\u2019 (a term that, while reductive, proves useful when examining how an idea is expressed in cultural productions) pertaining to Russia take on a multiplicity of complicated and oft contradictory forms. Is Russia the \u2018Europe of Peter the Great\u2019, or is it an \u2018Asiatic\u2019 anomaly, stamped with the legacy of Tataro-Mongol occupation? While both of these definitions are problematic, I will narrow in on the second, and examine how the notion of the \u2018Asiatic\u2019 is engaged with in two works-Alexander Blok\u2019s 1918 poem <\/span>The Scythians, <\/span><\/i>and Sergei Eistenstein\u2019s 1938 epic <\/span>Aleksander Nevsky. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In the first stanza of the poem, Blok appears to be making an unambiguous statement on Russian identity- \u201cYes, we are Scythians! Yes, Asiatics, with greedy eyes slanting!\u201d Russia is explicitly positioned as a crossroads of cultures, and given a world-historical mission as a \u201cshield\u201d dividing the \u2018hordes\u2019 of Asia from Europe. The nature of the synthesis between the \u2018Scythian\u2019 and the \u2018shield\u2019 is obscured and, to the \u2018Oedipus\u2019 of the European tradition, inscrutable. Russia is a \u201cSphinx\u201d, a sensuous and bloody dualism, the bearer of a \u201clove as sets our hot blood churning\u201d for the fruits of European culture, yet with a capacity for the violence of the steppe. Europe\u2019s rib-cages burst beneath the \u201cimpulsive ardor\u201d of Russian adulation, a legacy of the \u2018Mongolic\u2019 stamp left by \u201cbreaking in wild horses to the rein, and taming slave-girls to our grip.\u201d Blok acknowledges the Petrine tradition of borrowing, yet \u2018others\u2019 Russia as an entity capable of receding before Europe, presenting an \u2018asiatic mask\u2019 when betrayed. She does not leave without first offering an olive branch, an invitation to \u201chammer [your] swords into ploughshares\u201d, to accept Russia\u2019s call \u201cTo peace and brotherhood and labour\u201d. Here, perhaps, is an echo of the Slavophiles, of Nikolai Danilevsky\u2019s \u2018Slav Role\u2019 as distinct from the West, yet capable of serving as a guiding light.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eisenstein\u2019s film offers a radically different engagement with concepts of the \u2018Asiatic\u2019 and \u2018Russianness\u2019. Much of what is said (and left unsaid) in the film can, of course, be attributed to the exigencies of producing a film <\/span>about beating back the Germans <\/span><\/i>in 1938-priests are occult and cruel, the rich are incapable of leadership, and many of the Teutonic helmets bear a curious resemblance to <\/span>stahlhelms. <\/span><\/i>Putting all that aside, I want to draw attention to a scene towards the beginning of the film, when Prince Alexander rejects the offer to join the Golden Horde. To the entreaty of the Mongol dignitary Alexander responds with a proverb (containing the folksy <\/span>da nye<\/span><\/i> of the peasant idiom, but the role of the peasants in <\/span>Alexander Nevsky <\/span><\/i>is a topic for another blog post)- \u201cIt\u2019s better to die than to leave your homeland.\u201d The Tatar is rejected, and Russianness, through connection to native land, is affirmed. As the Mongols march off, an old man suggests that Prince Alexander fight them. In the face of the German onslaught, the Prince cautions patience- \u201cwith the Mongols we can wait.\u201d In Blok\u2019s poem, the confrontation and contradiction of the Russian with the \u2018Asiatic\u2019 is foregrounded, reveled in. <\/span>Alexander Nevsky <\/span><\/i>brings a very different notion of Russianness to the table-the Mongol will remain unconfronted, the asiatic mask tucked away.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we began this class, Fyodor Tyutchev\u2019s question confronted us- \u201cWhat is Russia [?]\u201d Questions of national origin and national \u2018character\u2019 (a term that, while reductive, proves useful when examining how an idea is expressed in cultural productions) pertaining to Russia take on a multiplicity of complicated and oft contradictory forms. Is Russia the \u2018Europe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,27,28,25,26,24],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russian-culture","tag-accursed-questions","tag-blok","tag-eisenstein","tag-europe-or-asia","tag-mythologising","tag-national-character"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","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\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}