Category Archives: Calamities of Ice and Water

Winter Transformations

Both the excerpt from the “Blockade Diary” and “The Cave” highlight winter’s great transformative power and ability to upset the status quo. In Ginzburg’s “Blockade Diary,” the characters are transformed from sensible to senseless beings through the brutality of the cold and paucity of available food. The city dwellers, despite their acknowledgment of the danger, are not afraid of the relentless shelling of the city, and “instead of being frightened, [they are] annoyed; instead of being afraid of death, [they are] afraid of being stopped on the way and herded into shelter” (35). Additionally, “the man of winter,” as the city dwellers are described, no longer fears the military danger of the siege and instead is fixated on “starving [and] freezing” (34-35). While the people would normally take immediate shelter from the shelling, the winter transforms their senses to the point that they no longer think completely rationally and focus only on staying warm and finding food. The winter and scarcity of food renders the people just shadows of themselves, as they no longer feel any emotion and accept that death is upon them. One girl is described as “grown numb,” and “not a person at all” as a result of the sordid conditions, which causes her to “[not] care because [she knew she] could die at any minute” (53). As the winter has brought with it a sense of the inevitability of death, the city dwellers accept death and completely lose care for anything in their lives. As the girl claims, there is no use in caring when you could die at any moment.

Zamyatin focuses heavily on winter’s transformative power in “The Cave.” Not only do the characters’ behaviors change as a result of winter’s approach, but the humans are frequently portrayed using non-human descriptions. When Martin Martinych contemplates stealing Obertyshev’s wood, one transformation occurs as “The caveman, gnashing his teeth, knocked the other Martin Martinych down and… plunged his hand into the stack of wood” (95). While his old persona, “the Scriabin one” would not have committed the crime, the cold has transformed him into a criminal “caveman,” seen as he steals the wood to provide himself with warmth (95). Not only does the cold lead to Martin to commit crime that he normally would not, but it also causes him to be described as both “Mammothlike” and as having “mechanical contrivances” as limbs (98-99). There are many more examples in both works about the transformation of people and the world, which stresses winter’s unrelenting power to upset the status quo.

Working From Home

Both the Zamyatin and the Ginzburg stories describe the role of food during starvation in relationships between men and women, but the two stories depict the role of men and women during these periods of starvation very differently.

Although the Zamyatin and Ginzburg stories take place in very different venues, the Ginzberg in an urban setting and the Zamyatin in a remote setting, they both focus on the roles of men and women during extreme rationing. The Ginzburg story discusses siege queues in great detail. Though there are no enforced rules about the queue, Ginzberg tells us that it is mostly a woman’s job. She says that “men cope particularly badly with queues, since they are used to the idea that their time is valuable… A man considers that after work he is entitled to rest or amuse himself; when a working woman comes home, she works at home” (39). Ginzberg begins this thought by just saying that men tend to be more frustrated in siege cues, but ends it with a more broad social commentary about difference in how men and women value time. In times of conflict it seems that these values are exaggerated. She argues that men feel like “a stray individual, a woman is the representative of a collective” (39). Because it is normal for women to spend hours on end in queues, it is no longer considered inconvenient, whereas a man is incredibly inconvenienced by this hardship.

The Zamyatin story focuses on one specific couple, Martin and Masha, rather than a starved population. Martin and Masha are living in a very remote setting without easy access to food or resources. Masha is very unwell and she is unable to contribute to gathering and preparing food and wood. The story begins one day before Masha’s birthday, which Martin is preparing for by stealing wood in order to please her. When he boils water for tea, they realize that there is not enough for both of them to have some: “She saw. A moment shot through and through with clear, naked, cruel electric light… ‘Mart, darling! Give it to me!’ Martin smiled distantly. ‘But you know, Masha, there’s only enough for one” (101). Although he considers taking the tea for himself, Masha argues that she’s “not living any more. This isn’t me any more, anyhow, I’m going to… Mart you understand, don’t you? Mart, have pity on me! Mart!’ … Martin Martinych slowly rose from a kneeling position. Slowly working the crane with an effort, he took the blue little bottle from the desk and handed it to Masha” (101). Unlike the Ginzburg story, Martin is the one who is constantly working. Masha is unable to help provide, yet she expects all of the fruits of Martin’s labor.

“A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.” -V

In the two works, excerpt from Blockade Diary and “The Cave,” the authors take very different tones when describing the horrors and desperation of this period during the early-mid twentieth century.[1] Lydia Ginzburg presents the stories of a multitude of people at this time, all with a matter-of-fact tone, yet thoughtful. Her understanding of the terror of the air raids, “He doesn’t want to wake up to find the world falling about his ears, meeting his death in the tiniest fleeting moment. Better to be prepared” reveals to the reader the underlying psychology of someone in Leningrad at this time, futile though it may be in the long run (Ginzburg, 35). She presents the emotions of this time and the ironies of behavior to the outside observer, but while always maintaining that personal interaction with the individuals she describes. Her description of the power of social pressure to not steal or take more than your share, “Nothing more lies between them – no lock, no police, no queue. Just the abstraction of social prohibition” may seem inane and yet it is so effective (Ginzburg, 47). Even her description of the numbness after months of living in this terror filled existence seems so oddly matter-of-fact: “Oh, I’m not afraid of anything. I’d like to find something to be afraid of” (Ginzburg, 54).

Zamyatin veers strongly in a different style of description. Rather than focusing on many, he focuses on one couple. Instead of the matter-of-fact and understanding style of Ginzburg, he writes bordering on the absurd, comparing these people to cave men. Rather than trying to understand and explain everything, he embraces a sense of mystery, “It may be a gray-trunked mammoth, it may be the wind, and it may be the wind is nothing but the glacial roar of some supermammoth” (Zamyatin, 91). Houses are caves, one’s wife becomes a stranger, and around every corner lurks danger, “a human had come from another cave, and—who knows?—he might fly at her and seize [the food]” (Zamyatin, 94).

Both pieces present these fear-filled times to the outsider. Yet encapsulating the true emotions, reasons and psyches of the people trapped in these times requires a great deal of skill and certainly different understandings of human nature. The Ginzburg piece reminds me strongly of the movie V for Vendetta, which I will probably bring up in class. People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.

https://youtu.be/KKvvOFIHs4k

[1] Although these two works were written at different times, it all seems to be one dark period of Russian history.

A New Pushkin?

Pushkin’s The Snowstorm shows us a completely different side of Pushkin, than what we’ve previously seen. In reading works like “Echo”, “Sing not, my love…”, “Autumn,” and “The Hills of Georgia,” we gained an appreciation for Pushkin’s ability to find beauty in every-day imagery. I perceived him as a very classically romantic poet. However, now as we read The Snowstorm, Pushkin seems like an unfamiliar and different writer altogether: a comedian!

To me it seems that Pushkin colors The Snowstorm in a comical way, through the narrator’s sarcasm, and through the inconsistent passage of time through the piece.  (Although it’s possible that I read the whole story in the wrong tone,) I got the sense that the narrator himself leads us to ridicule some of the story line. In the very first paragraph, he chooses to carry us down a logical, yet silly progression, beginning with Gavrila Gavrilobich R—-, then jumping to his “kindheartedness”, to the neighbors who “play ‘Boston’ at five copecks with his wife”, and finally to the true protagonist of the story Marya Gavrilovna.  She “had been brought up on French novels, and consequently was in love” (488). This odd progression to  to an introduction to Marya’s love (the centerpiece of the plot), seems to poke fun, both at the French novels, and perhaps even at the legitimacy of Marya’s love. As he carries on, the narrator still presents Masha’s love in such a way that we are (or at least I am) not fully convinced about her true commitment to him. She “urged the invincible strength of passion as an excuse for the step she was taking” in her letter to her parents. An “excuse” is far from a reason!

The other thing that I found odd, and thus took as a sort of humor, was the varying passage of time. There is the jump from focusing on Masha to Vladimir, which is key to the story’s ultimate “punchline.” However, beyond that, some passages are in real-time, while others jump from 2 weeks to multiple years. These sudden jumps seemed disjointed and thus, comical to me. It seems like Pushkin takes on a completely different writing style, through the use of this narrator character.

_______

A completely different topic that I would talk more about with space: the difference in the “use” of snow across the different works today. In this work, the snow storm is like a blank page itself, which enables a completely unexpected storyline to take place.

The Looming Shadow of Predestination

In “The Snowstorm”, Alexander Pushkin reminds the reader that while humans may feel they have personal autonomy, outside forces are often what ends up determining the direction of their lives. Larger things like who your parents are, and the time period and place in which you are born obviously have a major effect on who you become, but it is also smaller things like the books you read or the friends you make that can end up determining big parts of your life, like who you fall in love with, or where you end up working. Pushkin uses the creeping cold of Russia’s winters and the snow that follows, as an example of this. By making the snow almost a character in the story, and showing how it unintentionally shapes the lives of Murya and Burmin, he shows how even great passion and intention can be thwarted by the weather.

The power of the weather at the beginning of this story, specifically the cold, is presented as a fact of life, an arbiter of the quotidian. At one point Murya passively accepts seeing Vladimir less because of the winter, showing how it is an enemy that can’t be beaten: “The winter came and put a stop to their meetings, but their correspondence became all the more active.” However, in other parts of the story, the cold takes a far less passive position. Pushkin shows how the winter actively affects and changes lives by anthropomorphizing it and giving it motivations and goals: “The snowstorm had not subsided; the wind blew in their faces, as if trying to stop [them]”.

All along Pushkin is showing the capacity the brutal cold has to define the perception of a human suffering in it: “But Vladimir scarcely found himself on the open road, when the wind rose and such a snowstorm came on that he could see nothing. In one minute the road was completely hidden; the landscape disappeared in a thick yellow fog, through which fell white flakes of snow; earth and sky merged into one.” This is a testament to the snows power. And it is describing more than a dramatic scene when Pushkin describes the landscape disappearing into the yellow fog, he is describing the passion of a first love disappearing into the annals of a forgotten youth.

Terrified Fascination

While reading Vladimir Korolenko’s “The Cold,” I was struck by the similarities and differences he describes in the reactions to the cold by animals, humans, and nature. A theme throughout the short story is how the cold affects humans physically and emotionally. While animals are showcased reacting to the cold and changing their mannerisms or habits, they do not seem to suffer any fundamental change regarding their priorities. As for nature, Korolenko frequently personifies the cold as an angry perpetrator with the river as its victim.

Sokolskii introduces the idea of the cold changing people after the men watch the deer, who they presume to be mother and child. He says that his friend is wrong in thinking that the cold makes people kinder: “Cold is death. Have you considered, for example, that a man’s conscience can freeze up?” (6). The idea that the cold can change something so engrained in a person as their conscience is incredibly striking, especially considering the frequently seen, yet futile, power struggle between humans and nature.

The relationship between animals and the cold is best seen by the deer. The men describe the how the deer “overcame such danger right before our eyes, and I think that even Polkan was ashamed to have it end with them being killed on the shore… Did you notice how unselfishly the older one protected the younger from the dog?” (6). Though the deer are facing challenging circumstance, they do not panic in the face of danger, regarding the danger of both the ice and the humans, and they continue to protect each other regardless of the adverse conditions.

As the ice takes over the river, it flows “in a thick and unbroken mass, ready to restrain – once and for all – the submissive and now powerless current” (3). Korolenko referring to the river as “submissive” and “powerless” builds on the idea of the cold as an uncontrollable and terrible force. If the cold is so unmanageable, I can’t help but wonder why the arctic and antarctic have such a strong draw for adventure-seekers and researchers.

Tolstoy: Recurrent Themes Across Master and Man and The Cossacks

A common theme I see between Master and Man and The Cossacks is that of what it means to be “truly happy”. At the end of both of these short stories, Olenin and Vasili appear to believe that a life rooted in altruism is most promising for leading a happy and fulfilling life. First, we have Vasili, a rich landowner that is predominantly concerned about buying land, and his peasant, Nikita, whom he treats poorly and often exploits. After a long and strenuous voyage together, Vasili leaves Nikita to die in the cold but ultimately returns out of a sense of duty. Vasili lies on Nikita to keep him warm and dies to save Nikita. During this Vasili exclaims, “‘I have been frightened. That is clear, and have lost my nerve’”, followed by Tolstoy’s narration: “But this weakness came not as an unpleasant sensation; rather as a notable, and hitherto unknown, delight” (525). To me, this quote explains Vasili’s newfound desire to act in service of others – this once “unknown delight” is now the very reason he sacrifices his life for another.

After his life seemingly flashes before his eyes, Vasili has passed away at last, yet is not disturbed by this; rather, he finds peace in knowing he is no longer alive. I discussed the importance of Vasili’s death in itself above but now want to move on to his “after death” thoughts and reflections, at least how Tolstoy tells it. He writes, “He remembers his money, the shop, the house, the buying and selling, the Mironovs’ millions; and he really cannot understand why that man, called Vasily Brekhunov, had troubled with all those things which he has troubled himself” (527), reminding me of how Olenin feels about his own past. He expresses boredom with his life of riches and purges himself from high society. Olenin makes an effort to leave behind the selfish life he once led to become less egocentric and find purpose in life through giving to others. Both Olenin and Vasili come to realize that the materialistic aspects of their lives are not what gives them purpose and turn to altruism to somehow reverse this. Lastly, Tolstoy writes, “…all his beings speaks joyfully and tenderly. And he feels himself free” (527). This reminded me of how Olenin finds a sense of freedom among the natural environment in the Cossacks. On a similar note, there were elements of nature in both stories that seemed similar to me. Vasili exposes himself to the natural and harsh realities of nature – the cold, wind, ice and snow – to save the life of his peasant. Olenin, too, exposes himself to his natural environment and expects that this will bring peace and happiness to his life. Vasili died in the natural elements while Olenin lived, but both were able to find some sort of inner peace through this experience.

The Duality of Cold

In the two stories, “The Cold,” and “Master and Man,” reactions to extreme cold are either as firm and unyielding as ice itself or as heartwarming as a cup of hot cocoa after sledding, with the aftereffects of the cold still tingling in one’s limbs. The narrator in “The Cold” blurs the line between extreme cold and extreme heat as he describes the sensation, “I thought I felt someone burning my right cheek with flame” (Korolenko, 1). But internally, a similar leap from extreme cold to extreme warmth occurs. Even the dog, bowing to the need of another animal to escape the dangers of the cold, “simply clenched his tail and ran thoughtfully off, seemingly bewildered by his own benevolence” (Korolenko, 5). Sokolskii and his traveling companion in the story also feel this melting of the heart in the face of bitter cold in the desperation to save first the ducks and then the man. His companion despairs at the other’s apparent indifference, “Our conscious had frozen!… Of course, that’s how it always is: all you have to do is lower the body’s temperature by two degrees and conscience freezes up…it’s a law of nature” (Korolenko, 16). When faced with the delights of the warm sleeping quarters, the men harden themselves against the coldness of letting another live slip by into the ultimate cold of death.

In “Master and Man,” Vasily Andreyevich is hardened to the plight of others by his greed, which explains his treatment (and underpayment) of Nikita. Yet in the face of the cold, his heart burns first with fear, “They say people who drink are soon frozen…he began to shiver, not knowing whether from cold or fear” (Tolstoy, 519). The same kindness that the narrator of “The Cold” highlights in the mother deer saving her baby deer is mirrored by Vasily’s selflessness of using himself as a human blanket, “he could not bring himself to leave Nikita for even a moment and so disturb that happy situation in which he felt himself; for he had no fear now” (Tolstoy, 526). Rather than the icy indifference which causes Vasily to abandon Nikita initially, the sight of another human freezing to death melts Vasily’s heart to put the health of another human being above his own.

Yet both Vasily and Ignatowicz die for their kindhearted actions. Both stories ask the question, “Was this individual’s sacrifice worth it?” After all, Ignatowicz did not even manage to save the other man. Would it be better to harden our hearts to match the environment and so survive individually? Combine heat and resources with one another, reminiscent of the communal sharing in A Dream in Polar Fog? Or sacrifice one’s self for the slim hope that someone else can live and warm oneself with the strength of conviction alone?

The True Master: Nature or Man?

Tolstoy’s short story, “Master and Man,” brings to light an important theme about the power that nature has over people. While the story at first focuses on the relationship between Vasily Andreyevich and the peasant Nikita, it ultimately addresses how nature serves as a master over all people. At the beginning of the story, Vasily Andreyevich clearly is Nikita’s master, as he pays Nikita for his work and is called master (492). The relationship between them is clearly understood, particularly since Vasily Andreyevich claims that they “are dealing straightforwardly. You work for me, and I stand by you” (491). This is a typical master and servant relationship, as the servant is expected to perform what the master desires; in addition, another instance of this relationship can be seen in reference to the snowstorm.

Vasily Andreyevich entire motivation for traveling during the storm is to get a favorable price on a plot of forest. The irony of this situation is that in trying to control natural resources, nature fights back and become the main characters’ master. While the storm is raging, Vasily Andreyevich and Nikita reject the offer to stay a night to wait out the storm; instead they press forward for the sake of “business” and the fear that “if you let an hour go, you may not be able to make it up in a year” (506). After being forced to stop their journey because of the storm, they begin to succumb to the masterful power of nature. Nikita articulates his acceptance of nature as the true master when he responds to Vasily Andreyevich question about them freezing by saying “we cannot help it” (513). Both characters are at the whim of nature, as their efforts to progress are constantly stymied to the point that they give up and hope to make it through the night. Neither of the characters have much power to control their fates, as it all depends on what nature desires.

While nature controls the lives of both characters, Vasily Andreyevich’s final action of saving Nikita to some extent calls into question to what extent nature is the true master of man. Interestingly, Nikita is described as saved by being “kept warm beneath his now dead master” (527). The fact that Vasily Andreyevich is described as a master at the end of the story reveals how nature may not be the final authority over all people, as man still has the capacity to act against the power of nature. I am interested to hear everyone’s thoughts about which “master and man” relationship is more significant and whether there are more such relationships in this work.