{"id":220,"date":"2018-09-04T22:10:24","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T02:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/?p=220"},"modified":"2018-09-05T20:50:22","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T00:50:22","slug":"the-garden-of-disillusionment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/nature-culture-russia\/the-garden-of-disillusionment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Garden of Disillusionment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I found the use of gardens in both \u201cOn the Golden Porch\u201d and \u201cThe Scent of Apples\u201d interesting because, although on the surface they seem totally different, they both symbolize disillusionment and emotional turmoil throughout the seasons. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tolstaya describes childhood as a garden, \u201cwithout end or limit, without borders and fences, in noises and rustling, golden in the sun, pale green in the shade, a thousand layers thick\u201d (41). Immediately I was struck by the short life of both a garden, especially through a Russian winter, and childhood itself. Though Tolstaya describes Uncle Pasha\u2019s garden as his \u201cParadise,\u201d the garden is also the setting for many of the familial conflicts with Veronika. This familial conflict begins the disenchantment of visiting Uncle Pasha that grows throughout the entire story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first introduction of a garden in the Bunin piece was similarly romantic to that of the Tolstaya: \u201cthe big garden, its dry and thinned-out leaves turning golden in the early light. I remember the avenue of maples, the delicate smell of the fallen leaves, and the scent of autumn apples\u201d (3). Though Benin does not initially make implicit what gardens mean to the speaker, their beauty and impact are obvious. The speaker describes his Aunt\u2019s garden as being famous for its \u201cneglected state.\u201d His Aunt\u2019s home is also where he first claims to have felt serfdom, which is revisited when the author oversleeps his hunt. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The contexts of the stories still strike me as very different, but both introduce a nostalgic look at gardens and how the evolving life of a garden can be very similar to the ever-evolving human condition as it relates to changing societal behaviors and growing up. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found the use of gardens in both \u201cOn the Golden Porch\u201d and \u201cThe Scent of Apples\u201d interesting because, although on the surface they seem totally different, they both symbolize disillusionment and emotional turmoil throughout the seasons. Tolstaya describes childhood as a garden, \u201cwithout end or limit, without borders and fences, in noises and rustling, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":691,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature-culture-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/691"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}