Category Archives: Calamities of Ice and Water

Nature’s Moral Goodness versus its Deception in Valentin Rasputin’s “Baikal”

After close examination of Lake Baikal in Rasputin’s essay, there seems to be great variability between the moral and heavenly descriptions of Lake Baikal, versus mysterious and sometimes deceptive illustrations of what Rasputin and his colleagues observe within the region.

From the beginning of this piece, descriptions of “the sacred sea,” “the sacred lake,” “ the sacred water,” illustrate Lake Baikal as a region closely connected with the divine. It is said to be “considered enlightened” by those who frequent it, and Rasputin states that this part of Russian is “wrought by God” (188). Here, there is a connotation of spiritual goodness paired alongside Lake Baikal. Later, the accounts of the colleague’s miraculous transformation after visiting the region similarly associate a divine and everlasting power with the region. This colleague states that his “spirits have been lifted” by Baikal, and that he now addresses the lake formally as “Father Baikal” (191). Spiritual imagery, specifically the epithet “Father,” implies Lake Baikal becomes a heavenly force for those who witness it. Now with that supernatural, divine connotation comes a sense of morality mention on page 193—Baikal’s heavenly abundance is evidenced by its vast nature, which in itself “is always moral.” Furthermore, Rasputin states that Baikal “has never refused to help human beings,” even despite their constant utilization of its resources. By use of notions like morality and unconditional support of Russian people, Lake Baikal and its heavenly nature suggest moral and spiritual goodness.

With these various (and seemingly harmless) characteristics of Lake Baikal, such as spiritual enlightenment and even its physically bright, blossoming rocks, there is surprisingly also a notion of deception and mystery portrayed through Rasputin’s observations. In the beginning of this piece, it is mentioned that Baikal noticeably “dumbfounds” its visitors due to its otherworldly nature (188). Specifically, “its rocks seem to blossom” and its snowy mountains are accentuated so much so that the human “eye perceives” them “as many times closer than they actually are” (189). Here, there is a deceptive component to the Baikal region, which almost tricks its visitors into imagining scenery different than it really is. Another scene that depicts similar deceptive notions is during winter when “the transparent ice seems so thin” that one is “afraid to step on it” even though it “might be over one meter thick” (191). This second excerpt and its imagery of ice and transparency coincides the moral goodness of the Baikal region; however, the fact that frozen lake is so clear that it deceives its visitor contradicts the region’s divine, moral goodness.

In sum, Lake Baikal in Rasputin’s essay seems to encompass both moral and divine notions yet simultaneously comes across as deceptive and mysterious. Do you think these characteristics should mutually co-exist? Perhaps they enhance one another, and purposely portray the region as complicated: spiritually divine and moral, yet also deceptive, a force to be reckoned with. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Is all of nature created (and enjoyed) equally?

Valentin Rasputin does a beautiful job writing Baikal. This piece is written in a very lyrical and intriguing manner, both informing and inspiring the reader. Rasputin depicts Lake Baikal as different from other natural landmarks, and at one point, claims it one of nature’s “favorites”.  For me, this begged the question of whether or not nature creates all natural environments equally, to be enjoyed equally by all, none objectively better than another. Early on in this piece, Rasputin writes, “How and with what can its beauty actually be compared? … each of us regards his own region as beloved and dear…From the time we are born we drink in the air, the salt, and the scenes of our homeland; these influence our character and shape our vital makeup to no small degree” (189). According to this view, maybe all of nature is created equally, but experienced differently, and even biasedly, by love who live in it. For instance, I might find that the beauty of my home environment is objectively better than the environment a couple of towns over. This seems right to me in many ways. However, there are some flaws in this view. I love my hometown and will always think that the ocean surrounding my tiny island is the most beautiful of them all, but I must admit that I believe this because of the personal attachment and emotional bond I have with it. I’ve traveled a great deal and have seen oceans must more beautiful than the Atlantic surrounding my island – the colors of the Indian and Atlantic oceans colliding at the very point of Cape Town, the sky above it, and backdrop behind it, were so obviously more beautiful than the ocean I’m used to here. According to this view posed by Rasputin, I should think there is nothing more beautiful than my island ocean, so why is it that, in some ways, I prefer the ocean in Cape Town? This leads me to Tolstoy’s quote:

“How, in the midst of nature’s charms, can feelings of malice and vengeance or the passion to destroy others like himself possibly remain entrenched in man? It seems that all evil in a person’s heart should vanish when it comes into contact with nature, this spontaneous expression of beauty and goodness” (192).

In my mind, I related this quote to the story of the colleague who becomes silent after witnessing the natural beauties of Lake Baikal. He clearly had a lasting life-altering experience that influenced the way he viewed and approached life thereafter, but can all people experience this, as Tolstoy hopes, or does it take a certain type? Maybe an open-minded person more in touch with nature is most capable of this transformative experience because it is obvious that not everyone experiences nature in the same way this colleague does. Looping back to my point of the island ocean versus the Cape Town ocean, maybe it is that I am more unfamiliar with the latter and thus have a greater appreciation from it; and from this, we might say that nature is created equal, and can be enjoyed equally by all, but that it does take a certain type of person, and maybe even some extent of removal from a place, for us to appreciate the full and true beauty of nature.

Art and the Environment

After reading “Baikal” by Rasputin and looking at the Aivazovsky paintings I was struck by the different portrayals of water in both the literature and the paintings. Though the paintings did not necessarily depict Lake Baikal, they paired well with the descriptions, both positive and negative from the narrator in Rasputin’s text.

There were many descriptions of Baikal as sacred, specifically “for its miraculous, life-giving force and for its spirit, which is a spirit not of olden times, of the past, as with many things today, but of the present, a spirit not subject to time and transformations, a spirit of age-old grandeur and power preserved intact, of irresistible ordeals and inborn will” (Rasputin 189). After introducing Baikal as such an important and powerful lake, he reflects on a time when he brought a colleague on a walk around the lake when its “beauty was in full bloom and at its peak” (190). The man by the lake’s beauty that, by the end of the day, he cannot intake anymore beauty. The Aivazovsky paintings, specifically “The Sea,” “Sailboat near the Crimean Shore,” and “Moonlit Night” struck me as portraying the kind of serenity and beauty that the man saw on his visit that day. The landscape is vast and shocking and the water is call and beautiful.

The other paintings by Aivazovsky parallel the other side of Baikal that Rasputin is careful to mention to his friend. The side that “can rage for no reason” and when “the transparent ice, swept clean by the winds, seems so thin that the water beneath it is alive and stirring” (Rasputin 191). The paintings “Night Storm at Sea,” and “The Ninth Wave” show the other sides of water that aren’t seen when the sea is calm and the sky is blue. Though these conditions are different and sound more daunting than the picture-perfect day initially described, they are all shown in the paintings to be stunning, striking, and rich in color. Rasputin agrees with this intensely beautiful portrayal of a raging sea, regardless of the dangers. He ends “Baikal” with a cry for protection of the lake, which is interesting given the lack of thesis or obvious political motivation. I wonder if art and literature ever collided to advocate for the environment.

Is nature reality or anti-reality?

In Valentin Rasputin’s short essay on Lake Baikal, he describes human’s relationship with nature and how that relationship affects their reality. There is of course a great chasm between modern society and the natural world, but as much as humans have attempted to distance themselves from the natural world, there is still a force pulling them to their most natural state. Rasputin writes about this intense urge to reject aspects of human society: “Oh the spirit of Baikal! This is something special, something living, something that makes you believe in the old legends and ponder with mystical apprehension the extent to which people in some places feel free to do anything they please.”

The theme of being able to do anything that one pleases is explored through the text: “Baikal, it would seem, ought to overwhelm a person with its grandeur and its dimensions—everything in it is big, everything is large-scale, enigmatic, and free—yet on the contrary, it is uplifting.” In this quote, Rasputin argues that nature allows humans to be free and live lives closer to how they were meant to be. This begs the question of whether humans are realest when they are freest. Is the most accurate reality for a human to live in a reality in which they are governed only by their own wants and desires? I think that Rasputin is arguing that freedom brings us closer to our natural state, and thus brings us into a true reality,

Towards the end of the text, Rasputin quotes Tolstoy: “How, in the midst of nature’s charms, can feelings of malice and vengeance or the passion to destroy others like himself possibly remain entrenched in man? It seems that all evil in a person’s heart should vanish when it comes into contact with nature, this spontaneous expression of beauty and goodness.” This quote illustrates perhaps the most important part of Rasputin’s thesis, the description of humans falling from goodness and moving towards the corruption of society. Ever since Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, human’s have lost the sense of innocence omnipresent in the natural world. They have needlessly complicated a world that has literally evolved over millions of years to work well and rationally, and be filled with spontaneous perfection.

Mystical Forces of Good and Evil

One important concept that emerges in both Valentin Rasputin’s “Baikal,” as well as Aleksandr Petrov’s “The Mermaid,” is the duality of nature as a mystical force of both good and evil. Both works highlight the tranquility associated with serene bodies of water, but also how one can be fooled into thinking that serenity is the only possible state for these natural settings. In Rasputin’s “Baikal,” the narrator describes Lake Baikal as sacred for its” spirit of age-old grandeur and power preserved intact” (189). The narrator’s colleague, who accompanies him on a visit to the lake, claims that “[his] spirits have been lifted, and that comes from out there, from Baikal,” which underscores how the lake’s mythical power positively impacts individuals who respectfully relish in its beauty (191). The colleague however only saw “the tiniest edge of Baikal… on a marvelous summer day when everything around was showing its appreciation for the tranquility and sunshine,” leaving him without the impression that “Baikal can rage for no reason… as if whipped from inside” (191). While the lake on the surface appears tranquil, the sudden thrashing of the lake water and “winds that can instantly swoop down” reveal a darker side of the lake’s mystical force that go unseen by infrequent observers (191). The lake not only can raise peoples’ spirits, but also poses great danger for reasons only known to itself.

“The Mermaid” also focuses on the duality of nature’s mystical force. While the earlier portions of the film beautifully depict both the water and mermaid, the sudden storm that brews at the end, as well as the mermaid’s attempt to pull the boy underwater, complicate this beautiful depiction. It leads one to believe that beauty may only conceal evil intent, especially seen as the mermaid’s ultimate goal is to knock the boy off the boat and presumably drown him. Just as seen with Lake Baikal, both the mermaid and water appear serene on the surface, but are subject to change at any moment and reveal a dark side concealed by the outward beauty.

It would be interesting to further discuss in class whether one can classify acts of nature as inherently good or evil, especially given Rasputin’s writing that “[n]ature by itself is always moral; only human beings can make it immoral” (193).

Inward and Outward Natures

In the two works, “The Bronze Horseman” and “The Flood,” the descriptions of people and nature are constantly merged. Pushkin describes the river Neva with feminine images and adjectives. Complementing her feminine aspects, “I love thy stern and comely face, / Neva’s majestic perfluctuation, / Her bankments’ granite carapace,” Pushkin uses feminine articles and describes her face as “stern” and “comely” (Pushkin, 9-10). He merges the natural beauty of a river with the romantic beauty of a woman. This becomes further sexualized: “Neva, her clamorous water splashing / Against the crest of either dike, / Tossed in her shapely ramparts” (Pushkin, 11). These descriptions maintain a somewhat militaristic quality, and yet are overly sexualized (for a body of water).

In contrast, in “The Flood,” referring to her pregnancy, “Her stomach was round, it was the earth. In the earth, deep down, invisible to anyone, lay Ganka, and in the earth, invisible to anyone, seeds burrowed with white roots,” Sofya feels within her a connection to the mother earth, and that motherhood is laced with death (Zamyatin, 276). Although new life comes from the earth and from the seeds planted there, it is also where the dead return, a haunting aspect of motherhood when juxtaposed with the earth. Her husband, on the other hand, is first likened to a machine, “And Trofim Ivanych could no longer suppress his laughter; it burst out of his nose and mouth like steam out of the safety valves of a boiler under pressure” (Zamyatin, 257). This description becomes more predatory, and yet still mechanical and cold, “Trofim Ivanych’s face twisted into a strange, slow, ugly smile; he seemed to be smiling only with his teeth” (Zamyatin, 264). His outward appearance reflects a contradiction between his feelings and how he acts on them (i.e. laughing mechanically, smiling through the fury). The intertwining of nature, humans and machines highlights the conflict warring within by bringing attention to the apparently incongruous aspects of humans, nature and machines.

Zabolotsky’s Contradictions

In both “The North” and “Thunderstorm,” Zabolotsky presents images in such a way that they contradict our expectations for them, or he attributes contradictory concepts to them.  In the first stanza of “Thunderstorm”, he paints in the reader’s mind “a scowling cloud,” which (in my mind at least) appears as a heavy, dark, and imposing cloud. Yet just three lines later, he calls the cloud “a lantern lifted high.” Rather than a source of darkness, we are forced to switch our understanding of the cloud as instead source of light. Then, he describes a beautiful image of the cedar whose “lifeless canopy / Props up the dark horizon.” However, “Through its living heart / A fiery wound courses.” Here, we have three contradictions. While the cedar’s stature is lifeless, its heart is living, yet that very heart is also wounded. (There is also a chance that this stanza could be referring to the thundercloud rather than the cedar, but in either case, the contradiction persists.) Zabolotsky continues: “Scorched needles rain down, / Like stars, or curses!” Whereas we typically associate stars with the heavens, and an overall positive, majestic image, here he nests several metaphors into one another, and seems to show stars as a scary image.

In the final stanza, the poet finds these contradictions even within himself. The lines are crafted such that they offer multiple interpretations.

“Split in two, like you, I did not die –

Why, I shall never understand –

In my heart the same fierce hunger,

And love, and singing till the end!”

Just as the earlier images seem to be split into two interpretations, the poet himself is split in two. The poet cannot understand why he did not die from this strike of lightning. Moreover, he can no-longer feel the same immense emotions that he presumably had once experienced. The upshot is that these three states of emotion: fierce hunger, love, and singing, are all very different from one another. If we have been “trained” in this poem not to associate images or concepts in a typical manner, then perhaps the fierce hunger is meant to be a positive hunger? Or, more likely, are we as readers are supposed to leave this poem acknowledging life and nature’s complexity and duality?

[Side note: It seems that the thunderstorm and the cedar tree are both representing very specific things. I wonder what they are specifically standing in for.]

“The North” Zabolotsky also presents both the beautiful, and the gruesome, frightful interpretations of any given image. He ultimately seems to portray the power and awe of nature through this dichotomy. (no space left, but I will delve into this in class!)

Hell is on Earth

In his short story “A Child’s Drawing”, Varlaam Shalamov shows how far a society can fall and how dark human life can be. Set in the horrendous conditions of the Soviet gulag, Shalamov uses a character finding a child’s notebook full of drawings to contrast the isolating dread of conditions in the far North.

The conditions of the world around the characters in the story can only be described as hell-like. Every moment living in the harsh, unforgiving environment of biting cold and long depressingly dark nights is a punishment. This is hell, a land of punishment that can never be escaped. Shalamov describes the weather as a way of purposefully breaking spirits: “Nature in the North is not impersonal or indifferent; it is in conspiracy with those who sent us here.”

This feeling is furthered by a myth told by the narrator towards the end of the story. He describes God literally abandoning the people of Northern Russia, of God condemning them to an existence not truly meant for those He had made in His image. The end of the legend goes: “Later when God grew up and became an adult, he learned to cut out complicated patterns from his pages and created many bright birds. God grew bored with his former child’s word and he threw snow on his forest creation and went south forever.” God has left the people and the land He Had created, never to return. And there is nothing more lonely, more crushing, then feeling that everyday you move further and further away from God’s light.

Continuation of winter and fate in ‘Kolyma Tales’

Last class, we discussed the role of winter in the plots of our various readings. In Lend-Lease from Kolyma Tales, I found that the role of winter played an especially important role in this story’s theme. Further, fate plays a key element in Lend-Lease, as it did in the stories from last class. In this story, Shalamov alludes to the importance of the physical properties of the camp more and more as the plot continues. Toward the middle, he begins to describe the stone and permafrost of the camp as keepers and revealers of secrets, a sort of documentation of the past war. He writes, “Stone keeps secrets and reveals them…The permafrost keeps and reveals secrets”, and of the corpses buried in the stone: “The corpses wait in stone, in the permafrost…The north resisted with all its strength this work of man, not accepting the corpses into its bowels. Defeated, humbled, retreating, stone promised to forget nothing, to wait and preserve its secret”. It appears from this quote that these feelings of defeat are regularly experienced in these camps – prisoners past and present, as well as the physical land – yet a glimpse of hope is present in the preservation of secrets Shalamov describes.

Shalamov’s describes the camp as horrifying, cold, and cruel places, as they were, but the theme of fate seems to lurk in his writing. While the cold led to miserable experiences of labor and frostbite, it also created this frozen earth, capable of preserving the bodies of these people lost to starvation, torture, and cold: “All of our loved ones who died in Kolyma, all those who were shot, beaten to death, sucked dry by starvation, can still be recognized even after tens of years…The corpses wait in stone, in the permafrost” (178). It seems as if being able to recognize the bodies of these people pays them the respect and admiration they deserve, making it sure that people will not forget them – because their physical bodies have not deteriorated, the camp’s history and the individual experiences of these people, too, will not be erased.

Harmony versus Disunity: Rivers in Yuri Norstein’s “Hedgehog in the Fog” and Nikolai Zabolotsky’s “Winter’s Start”

There is a clear distinction in the symbolic functions of the rivers that are present in both Yuri Norstein’s short film Hedgehog in the Fog and Nikolai Zabolotsky’s poem “Winter’s Start.” Specifically, in Norstein’s film, the river exists as a larger metaphor for the randomness of life. It both literally and figuratively intersects the routine homecoming of Hedgehog, who all along intends to return home promptly with raspberry jam for the owl. Disoriented by the fog and enamored by a majestic white horse, the hedgehog falls victim to the natural, untouched elements of the Russian forest. There is a scene where the Hedgehog loses his balance and falls into the river after being deeply distracted by both the fog and the horse. I read this as the river and surrounding environment working in unity to divert the Hedgehog in his mission to return home. Here, the Hedgehog’s self-made schedule to traverse through the Russian forest is collectively obstructed by elements of said forest. The river, portrayed as a windy labyrinth, is just an element of the random and natural aspects of the Russian forest.

Meanwhile, Nikolai Zabolotsky’s “Winter’s Start” illustrates a less harmonious interaction between a river and its natural environment. Here, instead of combining forces to obstruct the notion of routine and order, the “cold start of winter” instead “numbs” the river, causing it to “tremble” and “sense its own demise” (1; 9; 11 Zabolotsky). In other words, the weather does not work with the river, but rather works against it, causing it to freeze over and “die” (17). This time, the animals of this environment are neither enamored nor sidetracked by the elements of their environment; instead, “huge birds stare down,” “attentive” and agent of the forest around them (35-36). Because the weather works to harden the river, there seems to be more of a focus on the transition of seasons, i.e. impending winter, rather than on the animals or the narrator. There is clearly something greater to be said about the comparison between the natural environment and its harmony in Norstein’s short, versus the natural environment and its disunity in Zabolotsky’s poem. To me, it seems that when the natural environment works together in Norstein’s film, it collectively transcends the lives and routines of inhabiting beings. However, when the environment is disunited, as in “Winter’s Start,” there is shortcoming in transcending the natural world alone— a lacking that impedes connections to and influence on forest dwellers.

Do you all have any thoughts on this topic? I am interested in discussing more about how the changing of the seasons seems to represent not only a change in temperature and climate, but more so: a change in the chemistry of the environment. Any other examples of Russian literature where the transition of seasons functions as a disruption of unity, like it does here in Nikolai Zabolotsky’s poem? Or perhaps this transition preserves natural harmony, as nature exists in Norstein’s film? I would love to hear your thoughts!