Upon reading Blok’s poetic works, I thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast Blok’s two pieces on Russia. I noticed that both poems personify Russia as a female for different effects. The two poems have very distinct tones, especially regarding how they view the personified Russia. The 1906 poem carries a sense of awe and mysticism with ever stanza until the narrator wakes from his dream. The Russian landscape is something ripped from a fairy tale and reminds me of “The Snow Queen.” After the 6th stanza, the poem, still carrying a mystic mood, turns somber. This contrast shows a different world that is far grimmer. The narrator reveals his “nakedness” compared to the gowned Russia. I feel like this tone shift shows the duality of the country as both a fairytale-like land, but also an unstable mess that carries sadness and many existential questions with it. The 1908 Russia poem shows a far more tattered Russia that seems to be a continuation of the second half of the 1906 poem. We see female Russia have the same fate as the girl with the faithless lover in the 1906 poem. The 1908 Russia is used and dilapidated and lacks much of the hope of the first one. This Russia endures, but not to the same standard as it used to have. Russia’s “pure” and “pristine” attributes are far less apparent. I hoped to gain greater insight from comparing these two works, but I’m a little stuck. It would be interesting to hear others’ thoughts on this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Upon reading Blok’s poetic works, I thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast Blok’s two pieces on Russia. I noticed that both poems personify Russia as a female for different effects. The two poems have very distinct tones, especially regarding how they view the personified Russia. The 1906 poem carries a sense of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1025,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-9-the-silver-age-and-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","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\/1025"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}