Instead of my usual approach to these blog posts— to derive themes of Russian Romanticism from weekly assigned readings— I instead want to focus this week’s entry on aspects of human versus nature interaction within the poem “Art” by Nikolai Zabolotsky and last week’s fairytale “Vasilisa the Beautiful.” Specifically, I intend to find similarity between the narrator of “Art” and his deference to nature, alongside Vasilisa’s goodwill towards her environment, i.e. her tying of Baba-Yaga’s birch-tree with ribbon, and her feeding of Baba-Yaga’s guard animals with pie and bread. Together, I hope to better understand the theme of positive retribution by Nature throughout Russian Romanticism. I also hope to elaborate on the human’s place in Russian Romanticism: namely, man’s often overt control and thus destruction of The Natural World.
In revisiting Vasilisa’s escape, I want to play close attention to the portion right after Vasilisa runs out in the passage of the house; her subsequent interactions with Baba-Yaga’s cat, dog, birch-tree, and gate each illustrates a human giving back to the Natural World. In a matter of lines, Grumbler-Rumbler the Cat rushes to claw Vasilisa but Vasilisa “throws him a pie,” followed by the dog darting at Vasilisa and Vasilisa giving him a piece of bread (“Vasilisa the Beautiful” 14). Then, Vasilisa interacts with the birch-tree and the gate, each of which respectively attempts to “lash out [her] eyes” and “shut” Vasilisa in (14). Before they hinder her, she ties the birch-tree with ribbon and greases the gate’s hinges. Vasilisa’s attention to the animals, the tree, and the gate ultimately saves her from their (and Baba-Yaga’s) wrath; her thought to give back to nature yields positive retribution.
Upon waking up, Baba-Yaga becomes infuriated and after interrogating (more like berating) the cat, dog, birch-tree, and gate, each of the four reiterates Vasilisa’s attention to them—each testimony reaffirming the theme of positive retribution that ultimately saves Vasilisa.
“…I let her pass, for she gave me a pie. I served you for ten years, Baba-Yaga, but you never gave me so much as a crust of bread” (15).
“…I let her pass, for she gave me some bread. I served you for ever so many years, but you never gave me so much as a bone” (16).
“…I let her pass, for she bound my branches with a ribbon. I have been growing here for ten years, and you never even tied them with a string” (16).
“…I let her pass, for she greased my hinges. I served you for ever so long, but you never even put water on them” (16).
Note the repetition in these verses. Even though we can assume that their repetitive nature is at large due to the mode which fairytales were passed down through Russian history (verbally and from memory), I also attribute the repetition of these phrases to emphasize the fact that in addition to nature’s powerful existence, it is also a retributive force. In lecture, we discussed a personified Nature as “both friend and enemy”(Lecture Sep. 10, 2018) I think the author of this fairytale chooses to emphasize this sentiment not only through the unforeseen compliance of these animated characters, but also through the compositional choice to repeat and draw attention to these characters and their sentiments.
In connection to this week’s poem “Art” by Nikolai Zabolotsky, I also notice both the characterization of the speaker, and Zabolotsky’s form in constructing his argument, each lend value to the theme of positive retribution by nature (and perhaps to a similar but negative force possessed by man). To start, the first four stanzas of Zabolotsky’s poem reference the ways that man reaps the benefits of his natural environment. “Tree” comes with a description of “natural column of wood;” cow is “a solid body,/ set on four endings/” with “two horns like the moon in its first quarter” (Zabolotsky 2, 9-10, 12). A house is “an edifice of wood,/ a tree-cemetery,/ a cabin of corpses,/ a gazebo of the dead—“ all for “man” who is “sovereign of the planet,/ ruler of the woodlands,/ emperor of cattle flesh” (17-20; 25-27). Notice the utilization of epithets to emphasize the severity of power that man enacts on the natural environment. Only at the end of the poem does the narrator “a faceless man,” pleasantly interact with the natural world (33). He blows through a flute, and sings to nature, his “words [flying] into the world[, becoming] objects” (36). Here, just like Vasilisa does through her interactions with the animals and nature around her, our narrator reaches harmony with his environment:
“The cow made porridge for me,/
the tree read me a story,
and the word’s dead little houses/ jumped up and down, as if alive” (37-40).
Again, take note of the repetition—namely the anaphora that begins in each line: “the cow… the tree… the word’s dead little houses.” It is stylistically similar to the writing form through which Zabolotsky introduces the cow, the tree, the houses, and man at the onset of each stanza. Each of these methods emphasizes power and in addition to the power of nature that we both felt in “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” and heard about in lecture, Zabolotsky provides us also a power initiated and sustained by man. The epithets I mention before are competing with the Natural World. There is a component to the natural environment’s “force diagram,” if you will, that was not accounted for in either “Vasilisa the Beautiful” or in many of the other pieces we have reviewed in lecture; that is—the opposing force of man, whether that is positive or negative.
Now if I continue this physics analogy, it would make perfect sense for man’s impact on the natural environment to be negative, even caustic. In order to reach net equilibrium, i.e. natural harmony, would it not be necessary for humans to reap the benefits of the world around them? Though I do not think that this conclusion is what either of these literary pieces intends to prove, I do however, think that Zabolotsky’s emphasis on man’s relentless attitude towards utilizing the natural world is an important reaction to the power of nature. What are your thoughts? Does Zabolotsky’s “Art” lead you to think differently about the themes of nature and its omnipotence throughout Russian Romantic literature?