Author Archives: Brennan Clark

Curating or Interpreting?

Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl is simultaneously dealing with depicting the story of the victims of Chernobyl while questioning conventional methods of documentation and storytelling. Alexievich herself ends the novel in her epilogue lamenting, “(Chernobyl) is more powerful than anything literature has to say” (240).  The ending of Alexievich compilation seems to suggest that anyone learning about this catastrophe that did not experience it is unable to understand its severity. One of her narratives near the end emphasizes, “Because no one knows what Chernobyl is. People have guesses and feelings” (236). I believe that Alexievich’s style of storytelling, in the compilation of individual narratives, is not an attempt to show or inform the reader about the event generally. Yes, the narratives circle around the event of Chernobyl, however, Alexievich understands that the tragedy cannot be encapsulating in writing, but rather in experience. Consequently, instead of attempting to write literature about Chernobyl which attempts to display its tragedy, Alexievich resists and instead documents individuals. Acting more as a curator than as the traditional author, Alexievich is able to communicate the unheard stories of the “solitary voices” without generalizing the event in whole.

 

Alexievich asks for a comparison of her historical approach to Toylstoy’s in his novel War and Peace. In her second narrative she documents, “Do you remember how it was in Tolstoy?” (25).  Tolstoy tells the Franco-Russian war through multiple perspectives, similar to Alexievich. Tolstoy’s perspectives are narrative and all from a generally similar background: Russian and of nobility. Although Tolstoy emphasizes the importance of history encompassing multiple narrative of an event, he still writes a literary narrative and not a documentation.

 

Alexievich pushes Tolstoy’s established tradition. She rejects any complete narrative and instead replaces any of her authorial voice with the voice of the victims. Instead of translating and interpreting history as Tolstoy does, Alexievich curates.

The format of Voice from Chernobyl

The impact of Svetlana Alexievich’s Voice from Chernobyl is helped by the book’s unique form. The first part is told in a series of unrelated monologues all circling around personal experience of the disaster. Each incredibly intimate and horrifying monologue begins to add to a collective voice about the event without minimizing or generalizing any single experience.

Alexievivh’s prologue titled “a solitary human voice” (5) begins to justify her unique form. This staring monologue is longer than the rest, taking pages to tell the two-week long suffering and eventual death of one of the first responders to the reactors. The repeat theme of this narrative is the growing de-humanization of Vasily, the narrator’s husband. Once taken away from their home and moved to a hospital in Moscow, the narrator is told multiple times that, “You have to understand: this is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning” (16).  The narrator is instructed to look past the humanity of her husband, ignore him as a victim and instead view him as an object.

Just as the narrator is asked to distance themselves from the humanity of her husband, the Soviet government asked citizens to distance themselves from the human horror of Chernobyl and instead focus their attention on the environmental impact. The rest of Alexievich monologues are an attempt to destroy this crafted blind spot.

Old and New

I thought that the fundamental thing the movie/documentary was trying to show was the different meaning of labor in communist times to the different ethnic groups of Magnitohorsk. As shown by the brief propaganda film, the city was founded for the production of iron ore found in the Ural Mountains. The location of Magnitohorsk is significant for it startles the two continents, Asia and Europe. Consequently, its ethnic diversity is one which is similarly spit. And the thing that brings the two ethnic groups together in Magitohorsk? Labor, work.

However, these two ethnic groups, those from eastern Russian and those relocated from Tartarstan, have very different opinions and outlooks on the labor that is forced upon them. The film follows the two families, the older Tartar couple and the old women who was married to Victor Kalmykov to display these different outlooks as well as the oppression of both groups by the ruling class.

Looking first at the Kalmykovs, they originally embodied Soviet ideals of labor. Viktor lived to work always overproducing, described as, “when he picked up a spade it was like a toy to him.” Labor to Viktor was his life purpose and he graciously did it for the good of the state. And he was rewarded for doing so, given his own room and publicly praised.

Labor for the Tartar couple showed differently. They were content in their home and forcefully removed and transported in cattle cars to Magnitohorsk in a concentration camp like inhabitants. Labor to them was imprisonment.

Both of these groups, however, regardless of their outlook on labor were eventually oppressed by the government. Where Viktor was executed (with only vague reasons given by the film) and his wife forced into interrogation, the Tatar couple remained displaced working in the factory.

The film, importantly, ends on a contemporary note showing two interviews with a mother and a single scientist. These two interviews beg the question of is this sort of forced labor over? Is the oppression that Viktor and the Tartar couple experienced done with?

Yes and no. Although not as blatant, the two interviews show a lack of opportunity for both the mother and the scientist. When asked if she thinks her son will have to work in the factory the mother responds, (paraphrased) “I hope not” with a dark glint in her eye as she ponders this likely eventuality. The scientist women when asked if she wants children responds, (paraphrased) “that is a luxury that I cannot afford” and she remarks that although she can travel freely now (paraphrased), “I cannot afford it.” The similarities of the old and the news tie to their labor and their lack of freedom are astounding.

Rocky Seas, Aivazovsky and our false security

Ivan Aivazovsky seascapes are striking for their dual display of natural beauty and ferocity. Aivazosky shows the sea’s turbulence as equally threatening and awe-inspiring forcing the viewer to consider the sea’s and ultimately nature’s superior power. The human figures in the selected paintings are small and seemingly insignificant compared to the grand natural scenery. Specifically, in The Ninth Wave and The Rainbow the human figure is seen being controlled by the natural environment and in dire circumstance: the sea is in control.

Specifically, in The Rainbow the beauty of the seascape is used as a veil to hide the eventual doom of the lifeboat. In the distance a ship is seen moments before capsizing and crashing into the shore, and in the foreground a group of thirteen men man a crammed and crowded lifeboat. The painting is particularly lightly colored, fogged in light blues and purples showing signs of the calm after the storm, indicating a sense of safety rather than distress. The large swells of the ocean, however, indicate different. With the gunwales of the life boat close to the water and large waves close behind, the small boat is most likely doomed to the same fate as the larger boat in the distance. The specific choice of warmer colors and the inclusion of the rainbow disguise the danger of the natural landscape and instead falsely indicate a certain safety and control of the men in the lifeboat over the natural landscape.

The thirteen men within the ship allude to Jesus and the twelve disciples on the Sea of Galilee. In this biblical story, although the disciples are distressed because of the storm, Jesus remains asleep, his faith un-shook by natures forces. The men on the boat in the painting seem unfazed by the storm. A Jesus like figure appears confident standing near the bow of the boat. The close viewer recognizes that this confidence is misplaced for the boat will eventually crash.

 

Perhaps Aivazovsky is using the natural symbolism of the rainbow in the light colors and the allusion to Jesus on the Sea of Galilee to remind the viewer of our false sense of control over the natural environment, specifically the sea. Regardless of faith, the boat will crash, nature will win.

Barren Mother Nature

“A ‘Pushover’ Job” is not only haunting in its descriptions of forced labor, but also its description of a barren nature, subverting the common trope of the bountiful life-giving mother nature. Of course, in winter, very little things are green or alive. The story begins with a description of the color of the winter landscape, “The hills glistened white with a tinge of blue—like loaves of sugar” (21). Loaves of sugar act as a particularly odd simile estranging the natural landscape. Of course, a loaf of sugar does not exist, but this odd imagery of a collage of bread and sugar highlight the inability of nature in winter to be bountiful. As it would be normal to make a comparison of the natural world to food during other times when the woods are teeming in life, here the narrator has to stretch for an awkward and odd comparison.  Whereas the narrator is continuing to look at nature as bountiful, his impossible comparison begins to show the falsehood of that belief causing his simile to be gibberish.

 

This falsehood of the bountiful nature persists in the narrator’s pushover job of collecting needles for snake-oil like vitamins. The narrator is sent out to collect the needles of evergreen trees, the only green and outwardly alive plant in the forest in winter. The narrator and the other needle-pickers are quite literately destroying the signs of life from the winter landscape. Their actions are pointless in that the elixir made by these needles is useless and also that their work goes unchecked. Even without meeting the quota they are left unpunished and more importantly, regardless of their harvest, they remain unfed, their soup served free of the nourishing vegetables and meat. The only outwardly available bounty of nature in winter is useless. The pointlessness of the narrator’s needle-picking in both gain of the state and gain of himself begin to highlight the false conception that nature is bountiful. The value put on these trees in their supposed cure on scurvy and their break from hard labor for the narrator are both false and constructed myths. “A ‘Pushover’ Job” demonstrates the barrenness of the northern winter landscape and the blind attempts of man to recognize it differently.

Day Dream of Modernity: Tragedy?

One of the most lasting images of the movie we watched tonight is the confusing daydream that served as the climax of the film. Confusing in its lack of transitions, the daydream is presented nearly uninterrupted within the rest of the film’s narrative. The only indication of the start of the daydream is a pan into the television that is set up powerless within the landscape of the Mongolian steppe.

 

The daydream is one that is violent and startling. Our main character is battling with having to prove himself as an “authentic” Mongolian. The character encounters a troop of Mongol soldiers in traditional garb as if they were out of Genghis Khan’s army. Most notably, these troops are on horseback, as our main character is on the bicycle which he bought in town. The main character is easily tracked down on his bike, and is immediately asked, “where is your horse?” to which our character replies, “over there.” The soldiers don’t believe our main character, probably because of his adoptions of modernity in his bicycle and his newly modern hat compared to the netting he was wearing earlier in the movie.

 

The day dream brings up one of the fundamental tensions within the movie and within our main character: do adaptations of modernity diminish some of his more traditional Mongolian ways-of-life?  Of course, at the end, yes, they do with the creation of the factory where his house was. However, for this character, is modernization an assimilating force or is development for a betterment of life? Our character resists modernity in some respects, most notably with his refusal to buy condoms. However, the question lingers is modernity a tragedy?

The Parable of the White Woman a Parable of Colonization

The cultural tensions are incredibly high in A Dream of Polar Fog, for as our protagonist John becomes more and more accepting and immersed in the local culture around him, we are reminded that other Westerns with the damaging biases John first had remain. In the parable of the White Woman, Toko presents a story about killing your brother that can be read as an allegory towards the white men’s mistreatment of native populations and the white men’s inability to see the native populations as their fellow brothers.

The text asks for a parabolic reading. Right before telling the story John is surprised but catches himself, “Stunned, John was about to inform Toko it was nonsense, but then the absurdities of the Bible came to mind…” (104) This is a great moment of John stepping into the shoes of the native people and realizing their possible viewpoint of the white man’s culture. Through inhabiting another cultural viewpoint, John is able to see the similarities between the two culture and, instead of dismissing the other culture for being different, appreciate and learn from people unlike him. Because John is viewing the culture through his Christian lens, the text is asking us to also view the story of the White Woman through that similar lens which renders the story near a biblical parable.

The parable of the White Woman shows a man, out of greed, killing his whale brother who is different than him. This parable teaches the lesson of not killing your fellow kind even if they do not look like you or do not know them. It preaches a common connection between species regardless of greed or possible gain.

Keeping in mind the context of the Canadians and the native Arctic people, this story begins to show the terribleness of the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Just as the whales are the brothers of the Arctic people and should not be harmed or exploited, so are the seemingly different humans who have different languages and customs. The parable of the White Woman reminds to treat fellow humans kindly regardless of difference.

If I had more space, I would do further close readings on the great and dense parable.

 

Edit: Okay I finished more of the reading and have to add on, sorry for the length.

Of course Johns writing corroborates what is listed above, in that eh also feels that this parable like story is one that applies to humanity wider, and more specifically to race relations between the people.  Something that I am confused about is John’s specific species within this parable? A striking line within this section is when John’s sin is described to be equal of that of native people: “Within a few days, all of John’s exposed flesh became so tanned that in color it was hardly different from Toko’s skin” (92). It seems that John can oscillate between his two identities, in some instances he acts as the whale, and in others the human. I wonder how this mixed identity will play out, and what the further come of this in relations to both the natives and the white men. More so, I’m curious what other people think of the stakes and problems of Johns exploitations but also adoptions of this culture? Thoughts?

Clash of cultures and the heightened attention to sound

As we talked about at length with The Cossacks, Russian authors love to play with the large cultural gap between the more rural ethnic groups and the Russians from the city centers of the country. This gap is especially apparent in A Dream of Polar Fog between John and the two natives who take him on his journey to the hospital.

The opening of the book draws attention to the cultural and language gap between the two groups. The explosion, which the two native men initially try to pin to a natural phenomenon, has a similar untranslatable quality as many of the mannerism the “white men” show. In response to the language and the noises the “white people” make, Orvo remarks, “Sometimes the white man says a tender word just so, and then it sounds like curses” (10). The actions of the white men on the ship are so foreign to the two native men that they have no clue between well-intentioned action and harmful action.

The same goes towards John’s relationship with the two native men. John is xenophobic scared of the two native for their different culture, calling the “unwashed” and “savages.” John, however, because he needs their help to make it to the hospital, has to rely on these men of different culture for help. John, instead of trying to understand the Chukchi way of life, remarks, “All people live their own way, and there’s no use making another person do as you do, changing his customs and habits. If you stick your nose into another’s person life but only try to work to mutual advantage then there will be no quarrels” (29). Instead of coming from a place of understand and wanting to learn the Chukchi culture and way of life, John instead is bigoted in his own culture.

I am curious, however, so see how the cultural gap develops within the book, and how the two parties overcome the obstetrical of their different cultural backgrounds. I wonder if John will finally have to bend, as he is hinted to already doing, or if he will remain in his problematic way.

The Cossack Fetish

Much like our modern craze of brands such as North Face and Patagonia, the outdoors and rustic living and adventure is something that is attractive and marketable. Especially to urbanites, rural symbols seem to represent a fantastical status symbol of being organically rooted.

 

The Cossack people and the Caucasus seem to have a similar symbolic value to the characters of Tolstoy’s The Cossacks. Just as people in America once fetishized and wore appropriated symbols of Native American culture to represent a connection to a natural past, and just as people wear outdoor brands today, Olenin on his exodus to the Caucasus similarly fetishizes the Cossack people in a series of daydreams, “All his dreams about the future were connected with images of Amalat-Beks, Circassain maids, Mountains, precipices, fearsome torrents and dangers” (12). Regardless of the dangers of living outside of city walls and moving to a less developed place, Olenin fetishizes the place for the status and brand-like-attributes of the Caucuses, “All of this appeared dimly and vaguely; but, glory, with its allure, and death, with its menace, constituted the interest of that future” (12). Instead of realizing the potential hardships of living rustically and within a different culture, Olenin plays off the branded stereotypes and the mythic fantasies of the land. Olenin does not see the realities of the Cossacks, but the romanticized Taras Bulba like allure to the location.

 

Olenin then begins to have two different fantasies, one of adventure and one way more problematically of a Circassain maid. Olenin sexually fetishizes this woman imagining her as his “slave girl… with submissive eyes… covered in dust, blood and glory” (13). Olenin’s dream of his Circassain maid begins to illuminate the elitism and supremacy he feels towards the Cossack people. Not only does he fetishize her ruralness and imagine her as a savage (with reference to the blood) but further imagines her as someone who he can educate and in a way save, “In the longer winter evenings he began to educate her” (13). Olenin’s fetishized Cossack is not one of their original cultures, but one that he adapts and assimilates.

 

Olenin’s fantasy begins to tell us how Russian urbanites of the time viewed the Caucasus and their culture. Instead of viewing the realities of a less developed (I say this in the sense of infrastructural developed, not culturally) society, they exotified the culture for its seemingly organic rustic way-of-life. If I had more time, I would talk further about the stakes of Olenin fetishizing the Cossack people and specifically more analysis on the daydream of the Circassain maid.

The Masquerading Modern

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “Matryona’s Home” is an exhaustive description of an old peasant women Matryona and her way of life. The text is almost more ethnographical than it is plot driven and seems to work equally as the text of preservation as one of fiction. In small moments through Matryona, Solzhenitsyn acknowledges the doomed eventual extinction of the rural peasant way of life.

In response to hearing a new technological invention on the radio, Matryona remarks, “New ones all the time, nothing but new ones. People don’t want to work with the old ones anymore, where are we going to store them all?” (456). Within industrialization, old technology is constantly being replaced by new, better, and more efficient machines.  If the end goal is the increased production of a commodity, there is no point in maintaining an old less efficient mode of production. Matryona, however, who belongs to a generation presumably before Russia’s industrialization questions the waste this constant innovation. To put it in idiomatic terms, Matryona is thinking in an “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” mindset. Matryona herself has taken actions against the expansion of production. She does not own a cow in fear that it will consume more than she can provide. She does not manure the soil and consequently only has small potatoes. She works for free for the good of others without asking for pay. Matryona’s actions are not only anticapitalistic, but more specifically against development. Matryona cannot conceptualize the necessity for growth; instead, she is content with her simple extravagant life.

Solzhenitsyn follows Matryona’s comments on machines with comments on new and classic renditions on Russian folk-songs, highlighting her affinity to the old preindustrial Russia, and linking her way of life to the preindustrial. After listening to the modern Chaliapin cover of a folk song, Matryona comments, “’Queer singing, not our sort of singing.’ ‘You can’t mean that, Matryona Vasilyevna… Just listen to him’ She listened a bit longer, and pursed her lips, ‘No it’s wrong. It isn’t our sort of tune, and he’s tricky with his voice’” (456). Although masquerading behind a classic Russian tune, Chaliapin’s folk song is not Russian to Matryona. Instead, his rendition is “tricky,” deceiving the listener to seem as if it represents this rural identity. Matryona, however, sees through this disguise, and is disgusting at the semblance of the rural in the modern.

If I had more space, I would explore more themes of how Matryona combats aspects of modern Russian culture which camouflage in the rural identity.