In the two works, \u201cThe Bronze Horseman\u201d and \u201cThe Flood,\u201d the descriptions of people and nature are constantly merged. Pushkin describes the river Neva with feminine images and adjectives. Complementing her feminine aspects, \u201cI love thy stern and comely face, \/ Neva\u2019s majestic perfluctuation, \/ Her bankments\u2019 granite carapace,\u201d Pushkin uses feminine articles and describes her face as \u201cstern\u201d and \u201ccomely\u201d (Pushkin, 9-10). He merges the natural beauty of a river with the romantic beauty of a woman. This becomes further sexualized: \u201cNeva, her clamorous water splashing \/ Against the crest of either dike, \/ Tossed in her shapely ramparts\u201d (Pushkin, 11). These descriptions maintain a somewhat militaristic quality, and yet are overly sexualized (for a body of water).<\/p>\n
In contrast, in \u201cThe Flood,\u201d referring to her pregnancy, \u201cHer stomach was round, it was the earth. In the earth, deep down, invisible to anyone, lay Ganka, and in the earth, invisible to anyone, seeds burrowed with white roots,\u201d Sofya feels within her a connection to the mother earth, and that motherhood is laced with death (Zamyatin, 276). Although new life comes from the earth and from the seeds planted there, it is also where the dead return, a haunting aspect of motherhood when juxtaposed with the earth. Her husband, on the other hand, is first likened to a machine, \u201cAnd Trofim Ivanych could no longer suppress his laughter; it burst out of his nose and mouth like steam out of the safety valves of a boiler under pressure\u201d (Zamyatin, 257). This description becomes more predatory, and yet still mechanical and cold, \u201cTrofim Ivanych\u2019s face twisted into a strange, slow, ugly smile; he seemed to be smiling only with his teeth\u201d (Zamyatin, 264). His outward appearance reflects a contradiction between his feelings and how he acts on them (i.e. laughing mechanically, smiling through the fury). The intertwining of nature, humans and machines highlights the conflict warring within by bringing attention to the apparently incongruous aspects of humans, nature and machines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the two works, \u201cThe Bronze Horseman\u201d and \u201cThe Flood,\u201d the descriptions of people and nature are constantly merged. Pushkin describes the river Neva with feminine images and adjectives. Complementing her feminine aspects, \u201cI love thy stern and comely face, \/ Neva\u2019s majestic perfluctuation, \/ Her bankments\u2019 granite carapace,\u201d Pushkin uses feminine articles and describes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":687,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[122,123,121],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-calamities-of-ice-and-water","tag-feminine","tag-mechanical","tag-motherhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","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\/687"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}