In contrast to Ginzburg’s hellish experiences, Joseph Brodsky sought preservation of the mind, pursuing preservation of both his artistic identity and freedom. Brodsky was born and raised among the gray lifeless streets of Leningrad in the Soviet Union. Confronted by a stifling aura all his life, Brodsky searched for deeper meaning and individuality. By utilizing his talents of perception as a child, coupled with his impeccable style as a poet, he could bring vibrancy to his experiences. Thus, the question arises, by combining his gift of perception and sharp poetic style, Brodsky used his writings to preserve his sense of artistic freedom and identity. Joseph Brodsky’s habit of daydreaming throughout his early education helped him to retain his imaginative freedom within the oppressive Soviet education system. In his …show more content…
memoir, Less Than One he takes lengths to illustrate how brainwashing the soviet schools were. Every class had a portrait of Stalin, and they all were instantly taught of the evils of the capitalist west. Describing his education as both maddening and omnipresent, Brodsky’s salvation from this brain-dead state was realized in the small material details that he could imaginatively expand upon. One such example would a thin blue line on the wall that Brodsky frequently gazed at in his classes. The line was nothing very special, it merely served as a divider for the sickly green lower half of the wall and the white upper half. However, Brodsky details that as he gazed at this line he would often take it for a sea horizon, fading away to meet a pure white sky. Or on other occasions the blue line stood for nothing at all, simply embodying the empty nothingness that permeated the classroom like a thick fog. The thin blue line took on meaning beyond its physical sense, and became a more abstract representation of salvation from the stifling conformity of classes. From a young age, Brodsky preserved and developed his identity and freedom of creative thought through juxtapose of his atypical childhood against the regime’s oppression.
Education was not the only defining factor of Brodsky’s youth that contributed to his developing identity. Wars, starvation, media lies, and other hardships tormented the Soviet Union during his youth. Brodsky remarks that “all this militarization of childhood, all the menacing idiocy, erotic tension...had not affected our ethics much, or our aesthetics--or our ability to love and suffer.” This is indisputable, as Brodsky’s mere writing of these passages serves as proof of his unhindered conscience. However, whereas many students would go on to lose this ability of artistic expression, Brodsky would fight to retain it, thus marking him as a rather atypical youth. Furthermore, he capitalized on the lunacy and menacing idiocy of his militarized childhood to help catalyze the formation of the very identity he strove to protect. Unlike many others, Brodsky was not made inhuman by the experiences of his childhood, but they helped to shape the path for greater realizations later in
life. Brodsky’s refusal to join the media cemented his position of opposition to the party, and was a crucial step toward his preservation of identity and free artistic expression. Fundamentally, Brodsky’s adult life served as a near-identical extension to the experiences and conclusions of self-preservation he previously made during his youth. Brodsky goes so far as to say that the only difference between his school and the factory he worked at was merely the facade. Both the school and the factory were conditioned to compel those people who worked in them to remain loyal and unquestioning to the glorious party. Thus, this results in a very monotonous life, which, “has been reduced to uniform rigidity by the centralized state.” All had become uniform, people’s faces were the same, the buildings were near identical, and life had become drained and pale. Therein lies Brodsky’s nemesis and savior. Brodsky did not want to consign himself to the media of lies and corruption as so many Russian artists had before. Thus, just as he had during school, he refused to participate. This simple, yet bold action granted him the “freedom” to write about what he chose, even though it would mean a horrible life. Resulting from his media rebuttal, Brodsky’s language and style of his writings demonstrate a contrast from Soviet Press. His compelling, yet somehow unsettling metaphors coupled with an uncanny attention to detail emphasize the absurdity and tedium of life within the regime. Brodsky’s description of his factory, hospital, and prison serve as a fitting example of this. Brodsky emphasized that the factory was the same as the hospital, which was nearly identical to the prison, “one looked like a wing of the other.” Thus, he remarks that his transition from one to the other seemed seamless, as if nothing in his life really changed. This is rather unusual, as one would believe that activity in a factory, hospital, and prison would each be starkly different from one another. Yet, as Brodsky eloquently details, the monotony and stifling oppression of the Soviet Union flatten these experiences into one singular existence, and a rather dull existence at that. Moreover, the oppressive grayness of life in the Soviet Union was heightened by the censor and block to free expression. Thus, without his bold resolve and imaginative personality, his life in the Soviet Union may not have amounted to much on its own. His writings would help him to create an identity for both himself and for his life in the Soviet Union, as well as serve as his outlet for free expression. His individuality was born from and protected by the very details that attempted to stifle it.
Who could possibly be able to imagine the utter hopelessness and misery that a soviet prisoner experienced during Stalinism. Thousands of innocent men were taken from their families, homes, and lives, stripped of their dignity and banished to the harsh labor camps where they were to spend the rest of the days scraping out an existence and living day to day. This is exactly what Alexander Solzhenitsyn tries to express in his masterpiece work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Solzhenitsyn gives the reader a glimpse into the life of every man who ever experienced this hardship and shares the small acts of thriving humanity that are sparingly, but unendingly passed through their dreary lives and offer a bit of comfort to help them get through a single hour, a day, or even just a meal time. Solzhenitsyn uses One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to portray the endurance of humanity through out terrible hardships and shows the strength of the human spirit.
Ivan Ilych was a member of the Court of Justice who was "neither as cold and formal as his elder brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a happy mean between them—an intelligent, polished, lively, and agreeable man” (Tolstoy 102). He lived an unexceptionally ordinary life and strived for averageness. As the story progresses, he begins to contemplate his life choices and the reason for his agonizing illness and inevitable death. “Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done, but how could that be, when I did everything properly?” (Tolstoy
To many individuals the word “progress” has a positive meaning behind it. It suggests improvement, something humans have been obsessed with since the dawn of society. However, if closely examined, progress can also have a negative connotation as well. While bringing improvement, progress can simultaneously spark conformity, dependency, and the obsession of perfection within the individuals caught in its midst. It is this aspect of progress within modern society that negatively affects Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy’s main character in The Death of Ivan Ilych. Ivan’s attempt to conform to modern society’s view of perfection takes away his life long before he dies. Furthermore, his fear of death and reactions towards it reflects modern society’s inability to cope with the ever present reminder that humans still suffer and die, despite all attempts to make life painless, perfect, and immortal.
While this may have in part been true, overall this was a false portrayal of what life under Socialism was really like. In order to secure obedience, the Soviet Union “brainwashed” the younger generation and lied to the entire population about how life in the West was. Peter Sis, a man who grew up in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet Union, writes about this in a children’s book. He writes, “As long as he could remember, he had loved to draw. At first he drew shapes. Then he drew people. After drawing whatever he wanted to at home, he drew what he was told to at school. He drew tanks. He drew wars. He didn’t question what he was being told” (Sis). In this excerpt, Sis writes about his love for drawing as a child, and how as he grew up, the state took away his freedom of choice by telling him what to draw. Later on in his book he writes, “Slowly he started to question. He painted what he wanted to – in secret” (Sis). This shows that despite the image of conformity and obedience, people like Peter Sis went against the rules of the state in order to do what he loved and to have a sense of uniqueness. This need for uniqueness is established yet again in another piece of writing. It focuses on the underground black market that was rampant in the Soviet Union during Socialism. This black market sold Western goods and allowed customers to express their
Akaky cannot be despised for his obsession with an object because his pathetic life made his fixation unavoidable. The overcoat granted him his first sensation of pride, importance, and acceptance, and so he could not help but become attached to it. He was content before the garment entered his life, but Petrovich and the cold St. Petersburg weather force it upon him.
Bazarov personality constantly clashes with many in the book, Bazarov describes himself as a Nihilist or “a person who doesn’t bow down before authorities, doesn’t accept even one principle on faith, no matter how much respect surrounds that principle. (Turgenev pg.19)” Bazarov seeks to destroy the foundations of society, but a problem Turgenev with this idealogoy is that it replaces the destruction with nothing. Pre-modernism at least possess purpose, whereas Modernism replaces it with nothing. Bazarov constantly ridicules and neglects the past, and he also looks down upon those who still hold to the past. Bazarov wants society to change but does not have anything to change society into; just as he want his life to change, he has nothing to change his life to. Brozarov challenges those who fallow the old order, as he despises art, literature, music, and even allegiance to one's country because none of these things have any significance to him. Modernism looked to upset the current political and, from Ivan Turgenev’s perspective, did not have any viable replacement for it. Through Brozarov, Ivan Turgenev expresses his viewpoint that Modernism without some Pre-modern values only leads to destruction. Brazorov ends up dying by his own hand, through his carelessness of anything leading to an outcome befitting of his
He has written and published a few books of stories and poems throughout his life. An underground “cult” following of readers has formed who sometimes live their lives according to Bukowski’s works. At the time of this passage, he had been writing for a little over 30 years. He speaks mostly about his own life and the hardships he faced throughout. Because of this, he is a credible source of his own experiences.
Chekhov relies on several devices to proclaim to his audience that the changes taking place are not merely personal for the profligate Gayev family, but are part of an inevitable social evolution. Through these devices, Chekh...
Count Leo Tolstoy is considered Russia’s greatest novelist and one of its most influential moral philosophers. As such, he is also one of the most complex individuals for historians of literature to deal with. His early work sought to replace romanticized glory with realistic views. A good example of this is the way he often portrayed battle as an unglamorous act performed by ordinary men. After his marriage, though, Tolstoy started to reexamine his attitudes towards life, especially his moral, social, and educational beliefs (Shepherd 401). Many commentators agree that Tolstoy’s early study of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau encouraged his rebellious attitude. This new deep-seated dissatisfaction with himself and a long frustrated search for meaning in life, however, led to the crisis Tolstoy described in his Confession and Memoirs of a Madman. In these works he formulated a doctrine to live by based on universal love, forgiveness, and simplicity (Valente 127). Simplicity and the moral importance of leading a simple life, for Tolstoy, became the only true way to live a spiritually fulfilled life. After arriving at his doctrine of universal love and simplicity, Tolstoy at first refrained from writing fiction. He even renounced much of his earlier work as too complex and not morally uplifting. Nevertheless, because of Tolstoy’s earnest commitment to the view of literary art as a means for bringing important truths to the attention of the reader, he returned to imaginative literature and wrote The Death of Ivan Ilyich to emphasize the message that simple life is best.
The protagonists of the novel, Arkady and Bazarov, are two graduates who return to their homes wrapped up in new, inflexible philosophical views meant to give sense to their meanings and to bring enlightenment to the “ignorant” old generation represented by their parents. However, age is the only thing that unifies the two characters. Thus, they represent the young, enthusiastic generation that wants arduously to build its place in the world and to prove that it is better than the previous “backward” generation. Nevertheless, Arkady and Bazarov portray two completely different personalities. Bazarov is a simple but strong and self-confident character who is indifferent towards the emotional and spiritual world. He promotes the nihilism current, putting value in concrete, objective things rather than abstract ones. He states about Arkady’s father that he “wastes his time reading poetry,” and claims that “a good chemist is twenty times as useful as any poet.” In addition, he thinks of the old generation as being composed of “old idealists” who believe in romanticism and foolery. On the contrary, Arkady represents a simple but weak and uncertain character. He follows his great nihilist friend blindly promoting the belief in nothing and the skeptical analysis ...
His encounter with politics in the nation’s capital and emersion into Russian culture and everyday ...
In other words, their work offers no knowledge. It can make us see, perceive and feel, but it cannot let us see knowledge a true knowledge. What he shares with us is the “lived experience' (in the sense defined earlier) of the 'cult of personality' and its effects” (224). Althusser further finds, “this knowledge is the conceptual knowledge of the complex mechanisms which eventually produce the 'lived experience' that Solzhenitsyn's novel discusses” (224). It is also important here to understand what Althusser means by ‘lived experience’. He uses the term to indicate the staleness of experience. In another word, the writer shares what he wants with the reader. What he shares are the premeditated thoughts which Althusser terms as “lived experience”, the stored or
Social processes are those in which we interact with people and all the ways in which we interact with our environment, while introspective processes are those in which we use cognitive thought to assess ourselves. Identity formation is the development of the distinct personality of a person regarded as their continuous or known personality which is reached at at particular stage in life, when these individual characteristics are reached a person is thought to be known or have formed their full identity. Distinct aspects of the person's identity include a sense of continuity, a sense of uniqueness from others, and a sense of affiliation. Identity formation regards both the creation of a person’s personal identity and the identity they hold as part of certain groups such as friends, family and colleagues. Identity is usually considered to be finite and consisting of separate and distinct parts (family, cultural, personal, professional, etc.), although according to Parker J. Palmer, it is a continuously evolving part of our being in which our genetics ,culture, family, friends, those who have harmed us and vice versa, our actions, experiences, and choices made, come together to form who we are at a certain moment in time.
Anton Chekhov was born on January 17, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia. He was the grandson of a Russian serf, and his father had to escape creditors by sneaking off to Moscow. This abandonment by his father, and soon his whole family, though temporary, robbed Chekhov of a childhood (Kirk 17-18). He was often heard saying, “ In childhood I had no childhood” (Kirk 34). Anton, who was sixteen at the time, spent the next three years in a house that no longer belonged to his family, trying to make a living by doing odd jobs and tutoring. Though Chekhov was initiated into poverty and humiliation early in life, there were lighter moments in his youth, and in those moments he used to entertain his friends. This ability to see the comic in life was probably the source of a writer whose tragic sense of life was always tempered by simultaneous awareness of the ridiculous (Kirk 18).
In One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich written by Solzhenitsyn in 1962, life in a Gulag prison under harsh times of Stalinism has been explored stylistically as a prison novel. The conventions of what is constituted as traits of a “prison genre” is deviated from prison films such as “escape plan” and “escape from Alcatraz”, where they contain similarities of involving the protagonist’s perseverance to escape, the horrid depiction of food, and typically have a routined system in place. Whilst Solzhenitsyn conform to these conventions through the visual imagery of food in the prison, and depiction of Ivan’s routined systematic way of thinking, the novel also deviates away from the genre through the lack of Ivan’s perseverance to escape. This