Brodsky reflects a lot about the power of the Russian language in his work \u201cLess Than One\u201d. However he contrasts the intricacies of his native language with the reality around him. Interestingly, he argues both that the Russian reality is a pale imitation of the beauty of the Russian language but also that these same words do not fully express the human experience. One of my favorite quotes in this piece makes this first point:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis country, with its magnificently inflected language capable of expressing the subtlest nuances of the human psyche, with an incredible ethical sensitivity (a good result of its otherwise tragic history), had all the makings of a cultural spiritual paradise, a real vessel of civilization. Instead, it became a drab hell, with a shabby materialist dogma and pathetic consumerist gropings\u201d (26).<\/em><\/p>\n This quote struck me because, in my mind, the phrases \u201cshabby materialist dogma\u201d and \u201cpathetic consumerist gropings\u201d describe the US far more than they describe the Soviet Union. Either way, Brodsky seems to believe that even the \u201cmagnificent\u201d Russian language could not prevent their society from being a \u201cdrab hell\u201d. In this quote, Brodsky gives the reasons why Russia should have turned out differently, but does not explain why it did not reach this ideal. Perhaps he does not know. I would be interested in hearing other\u2019s thoughts about Brodsky\u2019s musings about the significance of language throughout this piece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brodsky reflects a lot about the power of the Russian language in his work \u201cLess Than One\u201d. However he contrasts the intricacies of his native language with the reality around him. Interestingly, he argues both that the Russian reality is a pale imitation of the beauty of the Russian language but also that these same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-11-stalinism-thaw-and-stagnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}