In his poem \u201cI Do Not Look For Harmony In Nature,\u201d Zabolotsky uses imagery of the river\u2019s stillness and the sunset\u2019s silence when describing the pain and isolation he feels amidst the dark Russian forest. The dark waters that grow quiet and \u201cdrop into exhaustion\u201d are said to magnify a sense of pain for the narrator (Zabolotsky 177). Here, it seems that darkness and desolation transcend the boundary between nature and man through the elements of the environment itself: \u201chuman pain rises\u201d up to the narrator \u201cfrom the dark waters\u201d around him (177). However, this is a passive and weak sense of connection between man and nature compared to man-made components of the landscape, which have expressive description, such as \u201cglittering turbines, voices of labour, electric power,\u201d and \u201cconstruction\u201d (177). It is man\u2019s artificial impact, namely factory and production that supply the energy to the setting of this piece, rather than the silence and darkness of the natural environment.<\/p>\n
In contrast to Zabolotsky, Valentin Rasputin characterize the Russian waterscape by the natural sounds and lively movements of its constituents in \u201cBaikal.\u201d These sounds and movements successfully transcend the boundary between man and nature. \u201cCrying seagulls, falling snow,\u201d and \u201cfish playing in lavish abundance\u201d are three distinct images that independently speak to the liveliness of nature around Lake Baikal (Rasputin 191). These sensory elements have a direct effect on Rasputin\u2019s colleague, and in a similar sense to the still, dark images that cause pain to Zabolotsky\u2019s narrator, transcend the boundary between man and nature, yet do so more actively by \u201clifting his spirits\u201d (191). Whereas nature pales in comparison to industrialization in \u201cI Do Not Look For Harmony In Nature,\u201d and thus falls short of reaching harmony with man, an opposite result is achieved here, as Baikal, \u201ccreated as a mystery of nature not for industrial requirements,\u201d functions more actively in transcending boundary and thus inspiring the Colleague. It seems that Lake Baikal and its natural movement and sound extend far beyond the stifled attempts of Zabolotsky\u2019s setting, largely due to the energy of nature itself, rather than the artificial energy of man\u2019s industrialization in Zabolotsky\u2019s poem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In his poem \u201cI Do Not Look For Harmony In Nature,\u201d Zabolotsky uses imagery of the river\u2019s stillness and the sunset\u2019s silence when describing the pain and isolation he feels amidst the dark Russian forest. The dark waters that grow quiet and \u201cdrop into exhaustion\u201d are said to magnify a sense of pain for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[133,119],"class_list":["post-526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-soviet-aspirations-and-environmental-disasters","tag-rasputin","tag-zabolotsky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526","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=526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2447-fall-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}