In this week’s blog post, I would like to pay close attention to the way that our selected features of Russian art and literature seem to collectively attribute different characteristics and tones for different genders. Specifically, I noticed that many authors attribute softer, warmer, and more forgiving characteristics, colors, and tones to feminine personifications of the Russian environment, or perhaps even to the female figures featured in landscape pieces by painters like Isaak Levitan and Aleksei Savrasov.
To begin, I will start with Mikhail Lermontov’s poem “The Cliff” and comment on the way that Lermontov personifies both the “golden cloud” and the “mountain’s breast” using female-gendered pronouns (Lermontov). Immediately, the reader feels a proposed connection between sky and woman; words like “gold,” “sleeps,” and “aflame” conflate the color gold with notions of the sky and godliness, yielding the image of a cloud that possesses a warm and powerful feminine force (Lermontov). In contrast, Lermontov’s inclusion of “the trace of dew,” which “looms,” and “softly weeps,” implies a colder and less-powerful masculine force (Lermontov). Even though Lermontov never states the dew as weak and puny, he nonetheless references the color gold, woman, and her godliness. Together, these characteristics comprise a theme of feminine divineness, which is further developed in other literature like Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Autumn,” in which Pushkin invokes a “Mother [Nature]” archetype, along with a description of Her “gentle beauty” and “somber blaze” (Pushkin). It is clear that warm, golden colors, and women have an inextricable, heavenly connection.
If we step away from written literature, we see can that this motif of woman, godliness, and gold, appears also in the Russian paintings of Isaak Levitan and Aleksei Savrasov. First, in “Autumn Day in Sokolniki (1879),” Levitan paints a female figure that walks along a golden path, surrounded by golden trees and emerald grasses. A soft blue sky peeking through fluffy, glowing clouds leaves the viewer with a godly regard for the woman of this landscape. In fact, there is a more obvious connection between woman and her “godly regard” in Savrasov’s “View of the Kremlin in Stormy Weather (1851).” The borders of this painting are comprised of unforgiving blues and solemn greys, though at the center of Savrasov’s painting, there is a female figure that nearly glows from the page. As she traverses a path through what seems to be a Russian village, the viewer watches her as the golden wake she leaves behind transfers some of its godly glow into the surrounding landscape. Viewers can witness this woman’s connection with nature transcending the physical environment— a portion of the scene in the wake of her glow is The Kremlin itself. Perhaps Savrasov is making an even greater claim about not only the link between nature, woman, and divinity, but also between The Kremlin, which itself represents the center of Russian government, and a large pillar of Russian culture.
In addition, other various paintings by Levitan and Savrasov also emphasize many of the gendered characteristics noted above. For example, Savrasov’s figure painting entitled “Rainbow (1873)” utilizes a bright variety of colors, specifically through a rainbow that shines down on the central figure— a female that tends the crops around her. Again, a sense of kindness and harmony is enhanced by warm colors, and a godly regard for the woman of this painting is established through her placement at the center of the canvas.
If I had more room in this blog post, I could elaborate on the cold colors and dark shadows comprising the male figures in both Savrasov’s “Winter (1873)”, and his “Spring Thaw, Yaroslavl (1874)”. Perhaps someone else in the class would be interested in responding to this blog post or creating new entry about what seems to be a stern and unforgiving tone surrounding the masculine features of Russia’s environment, specifically within the context of 19th century Russia. Please let me know what you think!