{"id":952,"date":"2020-04-09T18:58:25","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T18:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=952"},"modified":"2020-04-09T21:46:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T21:46:35","slug":"longing-for-the-motherland-searching-for-a-national-identity-in-a-time-of-unrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/ewallace\/longing-for-the-motherland-searching-for-a-national-identity-in-a-time-of-unrest\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Longing for the Motherland&#8221;: searching for a national identity in a time of unrest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Tsveataeva\u2019s \u201cLonging for the Motherland,\u201dm the poet uses the physical manifestation of the female body to represent Russia. I think that this has fascinating implications, as the poem\u2019s main character\/speaker is yearning for maternal care and belonging from the past. The main character has been isolated from their \u201cmotherland\u201d and wants to return home. Their native language is not understood by the people they encounter, increasing this sense of isolation of attempting to find their way back home. The attempt to journey back to the places of one\u2019s \u201cbirth\u201d represents an attempt to remember and keep history from being erased. I think the theme of motherhood has dual implications: a longing for the past, a childhood in which one receives maternal care and comfort, and also the physical aspect of a journey to return to one\u2019s home and their place of birth. The poem carries an overt sense of nostalgia. Yet it is interesting that the apparent present is only characterized by this feeling of isolation and helplessness. This demonstrates, potentially, an inability to move on from the past and separate oneself from the comfort of the \u201cmother\u201d figure. This poem, along with many others we have analyzed, illustrate the transience of the time period they were written in. The nostalgia and longing for \u201cMother Russia\u201d evoke this attempt to go back to the past and the comfort of familiarity. Yet I also think these themes express a sense of longing for a national identity and sense of belonging in a time of tumult and national unrest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Tsveataeva\u2019s \u201cLonging for the Motherland,\u201dm the poet uses the physical manifestation of the female body to represent Russia. I think that this has fascinating implications, as the poem\u2019s main character\/speaker is yearning for maternal care and belonging from the past. The main character has been isolated from their \u201cmotherland\u201d and wants to return home. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1026,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-952","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\/952","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\/1026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}