Instead of my usual approach to these blog posts\u2014 to derive themes of Russian Romanticism from weekly assigned readings\u2014 I instead want to focus this week\u2019s entry on aspects of human versus nature interaction within the poem \u201cArt\u201d by Nikolai Zabolotsky and last week\u2019s fairytale \u201cVasilisa the Beautiful.\u201d Specifically, I intend to find similarity between the narrator of \u201cArt\u201d and his deference to nature, alongside Vasilisa\u2019s goodwill towards her environment, i.e. her tying of Baba-Yaga\u2019s birch-tree with ribbon, and her feeding of Baba-Yaga\u2019s 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\u2019s place in Russian Romanticism: namely, man\u2019s often overt control and thus destruction of The Natural World.<\/p>\n
In revisiting Vasilisa\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201cthrows him a pie,\u201d followed by the dog darting at Vasilisa and Vasilisa giving him a piece of bread (\u201cVasilisa the Beautiful\u201d 14). Then, Vasilisa interacts with the birch-tree and the gate, each of which respectively attempts to \u201clash out [her] eyes\u201d and \u201cshut\u201d Vasilisa in (14). Before they hinder her, she ties the birch-tree with ribbon and greases the gate\u2019s hinges. Vasilisa\u2019s attention to the animals, the tree, and the gate ultimately saves her from their (and Baba-Yaga\u2019s) wrath; her thought to give back to nature yields positive retribution.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s attention to them\u2014each testimony reaffirming the theme of positive retribution that ultimately saves Vasilisa.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026I 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\u201d (15).<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026I 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\u201d (16).<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026I 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\u201d (16).<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026I let her pass, for she greased my hinges. I served you for ever so long, but\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 you never even put water on them\u201d (16).<\/p>\n
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\u2019s powerful existence, it is also a retributive force. In lecture, we discussed a personified Nature as \u201cboth friend and enemy\u201d(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.<\/p>\n
In connection to this week\u2019s poem \u201cArt\u201d by Nikolai Zabolotsky, I also notice both the characterization of the speaker, and Zabolotsky\u2019s 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\u2019s poem reference the ways that man reaps the benefits of his natural environment. \u201cTree\u201d comes with a description of \u201cnatural column of wood;\u201d cow is \u201ca solid body,\/ set on four endings\/\u201d with \u201ctwo horns like the moon in its first quarter\u201d (Zabolotsky 2, 9-10, 12). A house is \u201can edifice of wood,\/ a tree-cemetery,\/ a cabin of corpses,\/ a gazebo of the dead\u2014\u201c all for \u201cman\u201d who is \u201csovereign of the planet,\/ ruler of the woodlands,\/ emperor of cattle flesh\u201d (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 \u201ca faceless man,\u201d pleasantly interact with the natural world (33). He blows through a flute, and sings to nature, his \u201cwords [flying] into the world[, becoming] objects\u201d (36). Here, just like Vasilisa does through her interactions with the animals and nature around her, our narrator reaches harmony with his environment:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cow made porridge for me,\/<\/p>\n
the tree read me a story,<\/p>\n
and the word\u2019s dead little houses\/ jumped up and down, as if alive\u201d (37-40).<\/p>\n
Again, take note of the repetition\u2014namely the anaphora that begins in each line: \u201cthe cow… the tree\u2026 the word\u2019s dead little houses.\u201d 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 \u201cVasilisa the Beautiful,\u201d 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\u2019s \u201cforce diagram,\u201d if you will, that was not accounted for in either \u201cVasilisa the Beautiful\u201d or in many of the other pieces we have reviewed in lecture; that is\u2014the opposing force of man, whether that is positive or negative.<\/p>\n
Now if I continue this physics analogy, it would make perfect sense for man\u2019s 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\u2019s emphasis on man\u2019s relentless attitude towards utilizing the natural world is an important reaction to the power of nature. What are your thoughts? Does Zabolotsky\u2019s \u201cArt\u201d lead you to think differently about the themes of nature and its omnipotence throughout Russian Romantic literature?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Instead of my usual approach to these blog posts\u2014 to derive themes of Russian Romanticism from weekly assigned readings\u2014 I instead want to focus this week\u2019s entry on aspects of human versus nature interaction within the poem \u201cArt\u201d by Nikolai Zabolotsky and last week\u2019s fairytale \u201cVasilisa the Beautiful.\u201d Specifically, I intend to find similarity between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-primeval-russian-forest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","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\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}