Tag Archives: powerful

Redefining the Human-Nature Power Dynamic

Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem “Vladimir Mayakovsky Rented a Dacha One Summer; You Won’t Believe What Happened Next” focuses on the theme of human’s exerting power over nature and upsetting a natural order that had existed up until the industrialization of the early 1900s in Russia. At the beginning of the poem, the narrator expresses his dismay with the summertime conditions of the countryside, describing it as “a mazy heat” as if there were a “hundred and forty” suns (97). He also observes that “past the village was a hole where the sun sank surely, every evening without fail, slowly and securely,” creating a sense of natural regularity and inevitability that humans have no control over (97).  However, this power dynamic of the narrator consistently being subjected to the sun’s rays changes when he calls the sun a “parasite” and bids it to come into his house (98). Once the sun enters the house, the narrator thinks to himself “I’ve forced the fires of heaven back for the first time since creation,” implying that he has the unusual power to control nature that no one has ever possessed in the past (98). The fact that the narrator shouts at and makes demands of the sun highlights a shifting power dynamic from one where the sun has unrestrained power over all people to another where people are at least on the same level as the sun (or nature as a whole).

While the first half of this poem points towards the balance of power tilting towards the humans in their relationship to nature, it is interesting how the narrator and sun engage in conversation and become friends. At the end of their conversation, the sun claims they have become “like a couple of brothers,” which curiously suggests that the narrator’s gain of power in relation to nature allows him to see eye to eye with the sun and better understand it. By engaging directly with nature, even from a place of self-perceived authority, the narrator realizes how both he as a poet and the sun have the important job of lighting the “shadowy walls” of the world (99). The core message remains ambiguous as the narrator surprisingly makes demands of the sun (which may relate to industrialization becoming a formidable force against nature), all while they both achieve a higher level of clarity and understanding through their close interaction.

A Powerful Friend and Dangerous Enemy

Nature in Russian fairy tales plays a dual role: both that of friendly aide and powerful danger. To start with, in “Tsarevich Ivan and Grey Wolf,” two of the mythical beasts (Fire-Bird, and Grey Wolf) play rather willful personalities in which they are literally awesome but eat whatever they care to. Yet differentiating the Grey Wolf from the other beasts is his sentience and omniscience that allows him to talk to and help Ivan and a moral compass that causes him to atone for eating Ivan’s horse by aiding him in his quest.

Contrary to other tales of animals, such as The Big Bad Wolf or The Three Little Pigs, in which the wolf is villainized for being a hungry and dangerous being intent on eating everyone, the Grey Wolf apologizes, “I am sorry” after eating Ivan’s horse (22). The choice of wolf who is not necessarily kind but is honorable and loyal plays with the uniqueness of some of the other Russian poets who find surprisingly good traits in otherwise unlikable seasons and places (in “Autumn” and “My Native Land”). Yet evidence of the wolf’s ‘true nature’ comes through in the tale when he “tore [the other princes] to bits and scattered the bits over the field” (31). The Grey Wolf also has mystical powers, besides those of speech and knowledge, that allow him to shapeshift and bring Ivan back to life. These powers suggest a Russian belief in the might of nature and wild beasts and a certain mystique that the humans do not possess.

Similarly, in “The Hedgehog in the Fog,” all the creatures are personified and can communicate with each other, even those so different as a hedgehog and a bear. The scene in which the bear scolds the hedgehog for being late is the one moment he seems frightening and threatening, despite his friendship with an animal that could be prey. And of course, the ‘villain’ of the story is fog: a natural entity without sentience, but which casts a land known well into a dangerous minefield. And what saves the hedgehog from the river after the fog caused him to lose his way but another kindly animal, suggested to be a water serpent of some kind. Like the Grey Wolf, this serpent is shown to possess a helpful nature unlike those vilified in other stories and yet the most dangerous aspect of either story is a non-human entity.