{"id":322,"date":"2018-09-25T23:58:56","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T03:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/?p=322"},"modified":"2018-10-03T00:53:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T04:53:31","slug":"meaning-follows-form-sergei-esenin-and-russian-imaginism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/the-russian-countryside-and-the-peasant-village\/meaning-follows-form-sergei-esenin-and-russian-imaginism\/","title":{"rendered":"Meaning Follows Form: Sergei Esenin and Russian Imaginism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this week\u2019s reading, I found it very helpful to historically situate the works of Russian poet Sergei Esenin, as I feel that chronological context allows for a deeper textual extrapolation of his rhetorical choices, such as his frequent use of the passive voice. In fact, I noticed that he often\u00a0 omits verbs altogether. After some historical analysis, I found that using passive voice to describe a series of images (rather than the traditional succinct narrative connected by tasteful verbs we often see in Russian Romantic works) is indicative of Russian Imaginism\u2014 the literary movement that Esenin himself helped found, alongside scholars Anatoly Marienhof and Vadim Shershenevich (Hirsch, A Poet\u2019s Glossary<\/em>, 2014). This movement quickly followed the Revolution of 1917\u2014 the fall of Emperor Nicholas II, and the rise of The Soviet Union. At this sensitive time juncture, there formed workers\u2019 councils\u2014 called soviets\u2014that protected workers\u2019 rights and attempted to give power back to the newfound proletariat. (Klein, \u201cSoviet”,1920).<\/p>\n

Throughout all this research, I often found the word \u201cgrassroots\u201d repeated over and over, referencing not only the soviets and their constituents, but also referencing the general public\u2019s re-adaption to subsistence agriculture (Carmichael, A Short History of the Russian Revolutio<\/em>n, 1964). Reading about subsistence agriculture, or farming focused entirely on the goal of self-sufficiency, revealed various aspects of Esenin’s pieces that I had not originally noticed. For example, most of his selected poems deal with pastoral themes regarding Russian countryside. Many of them begin and end with stream-of-consciousness depictions of desolate farmland. I think that each of these scenes tells a different story, and it is the overall negation of verbs that depicts the void of emotion that poor farmers felt due to economical and agricultural strife during this chronological tipping point.<\/p>\n

To begin, I think that \u201cLand of mine in dire neglect…\u201d perfectly introduces us to the superimposed, verb-less phrases used by Imaginist writers when documenting Russian countryside at the onset of the Revolution of 1917. Purposefully trite remarks about a \u201ccountry run to waste,\/ Fields of hay unmown as yet,\/ Monastery, estate\u201d (Esenin 2-4) offers the reader a sense of the sad, barren countryside. The sun\u2019s rays are deduced to \u201cfoam as shadows fall,\u201d and bright sunset becomes a \u201ctinge,\/ Mould of dove-grey hue\u201d (8, 11-12). It seems to me that there is a strong sense of vapidness and desolation described here, despite the lively depictions of \u201ccrows\u201d weaving past \u201cwindows\u201d (14). There is something backwards here\u2014(much like the backwards syntax, i.e. \u201ccrows past windows weave\u201d): despite the liveliness of the crow scene, there is still a large sense of disjointedness that is complemented by Esenin\u2019s truncated, unusual images and their awkward, forced juxtaposition.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, it is at the end of this poem that the connection between Russian life and a \u201cfairytale,\/ A legend of the past\u201d (17-18). What I take from this ending (up for interpretation) is that the economical and agricultural strife that I mentioned before, along with the constant degradation of the farming class during the 1910s, resulted in a sense of desolation and anguish across Russian farmland\/countryside. The quotation \u201ca legend of the past\u201d leads me to think that Esenin attempts to perhaps suggest a nostalgia for the past, i.e. an agriculturally and economically easier time in Russia.\u00a0 I think that it could be the impending revolution and the grassroots dialogue has caused a vacant and distraught environment for not only Russian farm-country, but more generally, the Russian working class.<\/p>\n

If I had more space in this blog post, I would love to comment on various other sentiments communicated through the unusual series of images in Esenin\u2019s \u201cSong about a Dog,\u201d \u201cThe Hooligan,\u201d \u201cIt can\u2019t be dispelled…,\u201d and \u201cThe disquiet of vaporous moonshine…\u201d Still, this shorter poem “Land of mine…,” along with our analysis, nonetheless shows how that even though subject matter can denote a certain narrative, the methods that the author takes to express that narrative can potentially alter (or perhaps even reverse) the greater meaning of the text. Weaving crows and a lively snowstorm were both utilized in \u201cLand of mine in dire neglect…\u201d however the overall sentiment achieved in this piece was sad and desolate, due mostly to the sentence structure. In fact, restating this example reminds me of our class discussion on Tuesday about Russian writer Turgenev, and how his elongated sentence structure in \u201cForest and Steppe,\u201d for example, expresses a long and fluid movement through the Russian countryside. In each of these pieces from both last class and today, meaning follows form, whether that is the sad, barren pre-revolutionary countryside, or the long fluid depiction of the thriving agriculture of Russia nearly seventy-five years before Esenin and his pieces. Each moment in history can be complimented effectively through not just the literary works produced during that time i.e. Russian Imaginism, but more importantly, as a product of the modes and styles in and through which those works were crafted!<\/p>\n

Please let me know if you noticed any other interesting literary techniques evolving throughout our selected pieces. Perhaps, it would be interesting to see if there is any simultaneous historical context that could potentially strengthen our textual analyses. Would love to hear from you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this week\u2019s reading, I found it very helpful to historically situate the works of Russian poet Sergei Esenin, as I feel that chronological context allows for a deeper textual extrapolation of his rhetorical choices, such as his frequent use of the passive voice. In fact, I noticed that he often\u00a0 omits verbs altogether. After […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-russian-countryside-and-the-peasant-village"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","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=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}