{"id":95,"date":"2016-09-08T22:40:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T02:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/?p=95"},"modified":"2016-09-08T22:40:21","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T02:40:21","slug":"i-am-not-the-first-nor-the-last-warrior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/russian-culture\/unit-1-the-christianization-of-kievan-rus\/i-am-not-the-first-nor-the-last-warrior\/","title":{"rendered":"I am not the first, nor the last, warrior."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI am not the first, nor the last, warrior\u201d is a deceivingly simple sentence. It stands out in a sea of complicated imagery pertaining to animals and aching descriptions of the Battle of Kulikovo. The first time I read it, I understood its sentiment to express \u201cI am neither the first warrior, nor the last warrior\u201d. This humble sentence echoed Theodosius\u2019s \u201cmeek\u201d and pious words and choices in life. It speaks to the warriors of the masses, to those who stand on both sides of the battlefield\u2019s lines. It didn\u2019t feel particularly unique in its message: \u201cI am one of many who have come before me, and many who shall follow, here and around the world\u201d. The next time I read it, I interpreted it completely differently. I read it as \u201cI am not the first or last, warrior\u201d, as if it were addressing an individual warrior. This interpretation establishes this poem as an open letter, with a specific audience&#8211;those warriors who leave their sobbing mothers and familiar homes, with the risk of never being able to return to them. The thing that both interpretations have in common is that they don\u2019t specify the roots of the warriors. Rather than politicizing this battle and demonizing the \u201cother side\u201d, he writes about all warriors and the loss that they each are experiencing. Blok furthers this notion when he writes, \u201cRival swords clash in the wake of the wind\u201d at the end of section IV. Instead of humanizing the people holding the swords, or establishing them as rival warriors, he describes them as \u201crival swords\u201d, detaching the individuals from the violence they are engaged with. This separation contributes to the notion of this poem acting as an open letter to all warriors, rather than to a specific set of them. The multiple interpretations of the line \u201cI am not the first, nor the last, warrior\u201d sets the tone for the poem\u2019s reflection on war and loss, directed towards the warriors, rather than establishing a battle cry or a call for vengeance. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI am not the first, nor the last, warrior\u201d is a deceivingly simple sentence. It stands out in a sea of complicated imagery pertaining to animals and aching descriptions of the Battle of Kulikovo. The first time I read it, I understood its sentiment to express \u201cI am neither the first warrior, nor the last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-1-the-christianization-of-kievan-rus","tag-on-the-field-of-kulikovo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","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\/370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}