I did not like this book. I found the numerous characteristics distracting. Though, I will coincide that I probably did not read the book in the best manner. I read in scattered bits of time, sometimes for only twenty minutes and other for few hours. I think I may have gotten more out of the book I had had the time to sit down and just read it through.

While I do not think I was able to fully comprehend the book I do have a great appreciate for Ismailov’s non-chronological time frame and use of magical realism, and Chandler’s translation of it. I found the book very assuming. I was surprised by a lot the things I read, particularly the strong language, attention to reproductive organs, and discussion of bodily excrements.

Gilas to me is a type of “everyday cosmopolitan” environment. There are lot of different cultures and ethnicity at play from Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Jews, Russians, and Chechens, to Tatars, Koreans and a few more. So much so that you see an Indian film being used s the background for a story about an elopement in Gilas.

I also was really surprised to read about Koreans. Initially, I would not have thought they had a place in this book. Here is more info on Koreans in Central Asia for those who are also curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koryo-saram.

While their were numerous italicized passages about “The Boy’” interspersed throughout the novel, I think the symbolic meaning of the “They Boy” can be felt in just one sentence: “An orphan’s father was Stalin, his grandfather was Lenin.” For me, the boy is representative of the implications of the railway. In class we said the railway is used to take people away from Gilas to work camps or wars. The boy is stands for all the children whose parents were taken away. He represents the orphans created by the Soviets.

Going beyond that I think the railway apart from its significance to “The Boy” is essential to the Gilas as depicted in the book. Everything is what is in by in large because of the railway. I know that is a broad generalization but I strongly feel that everything far as political and social interactions and actions founded on there being a railway, …“a never-ending ladder whose wooden rungs and iron rails lay stretched across the earth.”

Oh and on a final note, I was not excepting his redeeming “I love you!”

For my post I will talk about “Forbidden Fruit” since Erik discussed Aitmatov in his.

First off, the title makes me think of Adam and Eve, which makes me think of Cain and Abel. While, the narrator did not kill his sister, he did seem to think what he was doing was the worst thing he could do about.

Secondly, what is so special about pork? Iskander commented on the drinking of alcohol, which is also something that Muslims are not supposed to consume, saying, “I realize it now, without any restraint, no such liberalism was allowed where pork was concerned.” Is it because a pig is an animal? Is it because alcohol has a strong prominence in social interactions in ways that pork does not? This inquiry works best in a non-Muslim country, like Georgia/Russia, which is where this story is taking place, because the majority of population does not sustain from alcohol consumption. Russia is known for vodka after all.

So those were just things I noticed at first…

The first time I read the story I was confused about what it was saying. I figured there was some larger meaning, but was not sure what it was. I had guessed it maybe morally related, like not tattling on someone for your own personal gain, or happiness.

But then I looked at the author info and read this:

“The Muslim minority of Abhkazia* has felt the same oppression from Georgia that Georgia has felt from Russia, but the burdens of Stalinism, and the ugly suspicions and denunciations it brought into people’s private lives, were shared by all – and that’s what “Forbidden Fruit” is really about, even though on the surface it’s only a “children’s story.”

Taking that into consideration…

“I loved my father very much, and this was the only time he ever punished me. Many years have passed since then.”

With this quote than is the narrator saying that this period is the only time that the Muslims were oppressed in Georgia, and that they are not are accepted.

While other the pork was not forced on his sister, I think it insinuates that it would be better for the Muslim community to “assimilate.” To be “less” Muslim.
Also, I noticed the writing is very dramatic: “She ate pork yesterday at Uncle Shura’s,” I said desperately, feeling that the whole world was collapsing around me. I am curious as to what people think this has anything to do with underlying meaning of the story or just the author’s style of writing? I think it may be a little of both, and I think it is the underlying story of oppression that makes it no longer funny. I think the point where it is no way fun is his father’s reaction to his confession.

I think it is interesting how the narrator acts like confessing was so hard for him. He was confessing for his personal benefit.

Largely, I think the story is trying to say that Muslim Abkhazians need to be unified.

*(According to Wikipedia… Large numbers of Muslim Abkhazians, said to have constituted as much as 40% of the Abkhazian population, emigrated to the Ottoman Empire between 1864 and 1878 with other Muslim population of Caucasus, a process known as Muhjirism.)

For this fourth week I chose to blog about Pushkin’s the Prisoner in the Caucasus and not his Eastern poems becomes I enjoyed the prose style translation more because I felt my understanding was more accurate. I left the poem with the question of why did the Circassian girl take her own life at the end. I thought about and I formulated what I think to be three logical hypotheses.

My first hypothesis, and the most sappy, is that she took her own life because she was so devastated by the denial of her love from the Russian prisoner that she felt that there was no reason for her live anymore she drowned herself. For me, this is the less likely, because I did not get the impression that she was so weak. I though of her as someone who is brave because she went to the prisoner when she was not supposed to.

A second though on her rationale for suicide was that because she had let the prisoner her escape she could be killed as punishment. This statement is made with a lot of assumptions. I assume that because the Circassians were such war orientated community that they would not hesitate to kill people as punishment. So since she thought her death was inevitable she preferred to do it on her own terms.

What I like to think is most likely reason for her suicide, though probably not, is he she wanted to make her own life choices. She lived in a time and place where her choice was limited, so it is likely that she had little control over her life. So for her suicide was about her own free will. She wanted control over her own life. When her attempt a true love failed she than made a different live choice for herself by killing herself.

Who you marry is arguably life’s most important choice because it dictates who one spends the reses of their life with. This also explains why she did not go with the prisoner when he asked her to. She wanted true love—someone who loved her as much as she loved them. The prisoner was incapable of this kind of love because he was still in love with a Russian women who did not return his love.

It is interesting how dependent the story of Lermontov’s Bela was on the complete dehumanization of the Asiatic people. All of the Russian characters treat them with utter disdain. They are “horrible brutes” (8) for yelling at the oxen to slow down their travels, trying to swindle the narrator. I don’t understand how exactly this benefits them. Aren’t they only hurting themselves by making the job take longer? Perhaps this is to show how stupid they are? After all, these Ossetians are “incapable of any kind of education” (11). Even Bela, who we are supposed to see as the flower of Asia, isn’t particularly smart or deep. When she learns her father has died, “she cried for a couple of days and then forgot.”

Despite her central position in the narrative, Bela does not have much agency. Pechorin’s plan works perfectly. He steals her away, keeps her in captivity, and as expected, she falls in love with him. Nothing she does is unpredictable. Even when she disobeys the order to stay within the palace walls, it is completely understandable. Her excursion is for a completely mundane reason – to cool herself in the river – and it serves not to grant her any sort of independence, but instead to push forward the narrative to the necessary tragic death. Bela is at the intersection of two identities often used in literature to dehumanize a character, that of barbaric foreigner and that of romantic interest. It’s a wonder she even has a name.

I think Kazbich provides a more interesting example of how dehumanizing narratives shape characters’ actions. He doesn’t entirely fit into the neat categories that both of the narrators rely on. He is a threatening figure, with an ugly face and a mind “as smart as the devil” (15). His ugliness is put into juxtaposition with his beautiful horse. Contrary to what we might expect, the horse is never depicted as ill-suited to him despite their difference in status in the Russians’ eyes. In fact, they are seen as one unit. In a story Kazbich tells Azamat, he tumbles into a ravine to save the horse, and the horse comes right back to save him (17). Kazbich’s deep, almost romantic connection with his horse is incongruent with the narrators’ view of the Asiatic people as cruel, stupid, and shallow. We can put this into contrast with Pechorin’s love for Bela, which seems rather superficial. His kidnapping plan is put forth as a kind of a mischievous scheme. We get the feeling that he wants her just for the hell of it. The traditional markers of the love-lorn man are missing – he is not driven by desperation, but by entitlement. Kazbich’s suicidal attempts at revenge for the loss of his horse are more indicative of love.

I do not like character Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin from Lermontov’s Bela piece of Hero of Our Time.  I really hope that he was not supposed to be the hero.  I found him to be very annoying.  It was as though he had the attention span of a goldfish.  While I thought of him as a very passionate person he never seemed too passionate about a particular thing for very long.  I think it was obvious from his behavior that he had a fortunate upbringing.  I felt that he believed that he had a right to anything he wanted, and the case of Hero of Our Time, what he wanted, was Bela.  While I do admire all the thought and work he put into “getting her” and than wooing her.  I think it all losses meaning as he gets bored with her.  He risked a lot stealing Azmat’s prized steed for Bela’s brother and put so much effort making her he’s but

I felt that Azmat’s love for his horse was greater than Pechorin’s love for Bela.  While I do not doubt that he never loved her, or still loved her any the end, but he had a greater appreciation for his personal needs than for her.  It is like he’s treating her like a toy that he stole from some other kid and played with it for five minutes and now is done and wants to finds a new toy.  Finding a new toy does not meaning finding a new girl it means looking for something new for Pechorin.  As Maksim Maksmich discusses Pechorin was an all or nothing guy.  He either wanted everything to do something or nothing.  For a long time he wanted everything to do with Bela and until he didn’t.  It is understandable why Bela took it so hard.  Pechorin had stolen her away from her family. Although she had initially feelings for him, it took a lot work on his part for her to succumb to them. Pechorin seems to be a perfect embodiment of the phrase you always want what you can’t have.  If Pechorin had not gotten bored with her than Azmat could have not killed Bela.  The only reason Bela had gone outside was because she was lonely had Pechorin spent more time with her she would have not been walking alone outside and therefore not been so easily kidnapped and than stab all in vengeance of a horse.

There here have been a lot of animal parallels in our readings.  Previously there was a strong recurrence of people being described as birds or wolves, but now the focus has shifted to horses.  What is so important about horses? What is the significance of animals in general? Do the authors of the various texts use them as a way to describe the characters? (Like the idea of relating someone to a lion as a way of eluding to their braveness.)

Also I wanted to include this quote because it really resonated with me:  ”I could not help but be amazed at the ability of a Russian man to adapt to the customs of those nations among who he chances to live; I don’t know whether this quality of mind is worthy of censure or praise, but it proves his incredible flexibility and the presence of clear common sense with forgives evil elsewhere he sees its necessity of the impossibility of its elimination.” (27)

As I did the readings for this third week of class I became very intrigued by the similarities found in the Song of Igor’s Campaign and the Zadonshchina (or the Battle on the Don).  The relationship between the two poetic tales was addressed in the beginning of the Battle of Don.  It is suggested that the Song of Igor’s Campaign greatly influenced how Sofony of Riazan wrote the Battle of the Don, to the extent that Sofony imitated the author of the Song of Igor’s Campaign’s use of “…symbolic parallelisms, metaphors, alliterative patterns, and poetic imagery” (211).  On the contrary, in some research I did, I found that there are some who believe that Sofony wrote the Battle of the Don before the Song of Igor’s Campaign was written.  Asserting that the Song of Igor’s Campaign was a seventeenth-century forgery that was influenced by the Battle of the Don.  Though whether the chicken came before the egg or the egg came before the egg does not currently concern me.

What I intend to address is the vast similarities ranging from the same purpose, to the same use of imagery, as well as the significant differences between the two works.  While the purpose of both pieces is to unite the Russian people, the reason for unification slightly differed.  Unification was needed in the Song of Igor’s Campaign because after Igor and his troops were defeated Russia began to fall apart as it was being raided by the Kumans. While the epic of Igor started and ended with nationality unity, the Battle of Don only ended with it.  At the beginning of the Battle of Don the Russian people were in great need of unification.  The Tatars had dominated them for the past century and half.  Lead by prince brothers Dmitry Ivanovich and Vladimir Andreevich the Russians were defeated in the first encounter but ended up conquering the Tatars and ending the reign in Russia.

This is the opposite of the outcome of the Song of Igor’s Campaign, where the men were successful in their first attack, but ultimately did not triumph over the Kumans.  I discussed in my previous blog post that I believed Igor’s campaign failed because his was to rash in his decision to march on the Kumans.  The opposite is seen in the successful Battle on the Don.  In fact, in the poem, the second section is titled “the Russians Prepare for the Campaign.”  One of the first sections under this line reads “Skylark, joy of beautiful days!/ Fly high into the beautiful blue sky.” I think this line a strong significance because the like lines in the Song of Igor’s Campaign, “The sun blocks his way with darkness./ Night, moaning ominously unto him,” (37), foreshadows Igor’s defeat.  Where as the use of optimistic and bright terms foreshadow the Russian victory.

Another similarity that I thought to be important was the strong sense of duty for Russia and Christianity that was depicted across both works.  While the role of Christianity was more prevalent in the Battle of the Don, it was not omitted in the Song of Igor’s Campaign.  The strong sense of Russian and Christian pride can be observed in the Battle of the Don in lines such as “We will put our brave warriors to the test/ for the Russian land and the Christian faith” (214).  I think the words “…for the Russian land and the Christian faith” were written more than any other phrase in the poem.

Additionally, the use of birds and other animals such a wolves were important in both works.  Each piece also and lament at the turning point as well.

 

~Marisa

For my first blog post I thought I would take a look at the role of patriotism in the epic “the Song of Igor’s Campaign” as translated by Vladimir Nabokov. The strong prevalence of patriotism is already felt by lines 48 to 50 for, “[Igor] lead his brave troops… in the name of the Russian land.” This suggests that the soldiers feel their lives are insignificant in comparison to their country. As the author continues he develops and imagery of a patriotic departure with banners, trumpets, and pride. It is insinuated by the author in lines 105 to 110 that the men’s collective identity of being from Rus, is more important than them being seen as individuals from various backgrounds.

Although patriotism is prevalent through out all-of-the epic, there are, in my opinion, several blatant contradictions. One for the first occurring in lines 89 to 90 where it says that Igor’s troops are “seeking for themselves honor, and for their prince glory.” To me, that contradictions the theme of patriotism, because while the campaign is being done for the glory of prince, which one may say therefore also done in the glory of Rus, as Igor is their ruler. However, I do not think true patriotism involves honoring oneself. Though, another man may honor a soldier for that fact that the soldier sacrificed his life for the sake of the people. Personal glory or adoration is not sought in the pursuit of patriotism.

However, even though there are lines that seem to contradict patriotism, and though the campaign, failed patriotism still prevails as a theme. I think the biggest contradiction of patriotism, and why the campaign failed, is that Igor did not lead the campaign in the interest of Russia. Igor was rash and ambitious in his march against the Kumans. There had been know need to campaign against them but Igor did so anyway. Igor’s decision to lead the mark is not patriotic because Russia had no need for it. The Kumans had not been a real threat at the time, and the defeat left the Russian dramatically worse off.

Yet, despite all of this the people’s patriotism persisted. This is most evident in some of the closing lines of the epic where it says: “‘Hard as it is for the head/ to be without shoulders/ bad it is for the body/ to be without head,’/ –for the Russian land to be without Igor.// The sun shines in the sky;/ Prince Igor is on Russian soil./ Maidens sing on the Danube;/ [their/] voices weave/ across the sea/ to Kiev./ Igor rides up the Borichev [slope]/ to the Blessed Virgin of the Tower;/ countries rejoice,/ cities are merry” (842-850). This is such a strong example of Russian patriotism because even though Igor had lead an unnecessary campaign that caused havoc for the Russian people they still felt that they needed him and rejoiced in his return.

- Marisa Lopez

Greetings, and happy new semester!

Although it’s all right with me if you prefer to send me two pages or so of reading notes each week, posting about 500 words on this blog will work even better: everyone in the class will be able to read and comment on one another’s questions, and that often leads to a good discussion!

The course web site has information on the various readings and authors, and questions for reading each work. (Note that I will not post info and questions until a week or so before we get to those readings; I want to make sure that the reading questions reflect the interests of the class, and the themes that are emerging in our discussion. If you know you’ll have to be reading something very early in order to make your schedule work out, let me know and I’ll get you something earlier!)

The third important thing is that I’ve tried to link this course blog, the course web site (at http://www.swarthmore.edu/academics/russian/the-muslim-in-russia.xml) and the Moodle page (at http://moodle.swarthmore.edu/) so that they interface seamlessly and so that each one does the things it does best. Let me know right away if you encounter any problems with any of these – or if there aren’t enough books in the bookstore, etc.

Looking forward to reading your comments and to reading a lot of great things with you,

- Sibelan