Okay, I finally got around to getting my blog up and running again...It's been over a year since I've posted any of my thoughts and musings, or even a nice, long rant. I've been putting more things on Facebook, but still not quite the same. So, here is a random musing on a Russian movie, _The Captivating Star of Happiness_, about the Decembrist revolt of 1825-1826.
I love that the Russians are pretty scrupulous about correct period in their historical dramas, even if they overplay their hand a bit when it comes to, e.g., our brave, noble revolutionary brothers who suffered for the cause, and the women who loved them. Of course, stories are always reinterpreted through the lens of the current age, but it's not as if these particular brave, aristocratic revolutionaries whose activities were based largely on Enlightenment political theory wouldn�t have been absolutely horrified - although the brighter ones probably not horribly surprised - by the people who actually succeeded in bringing about revolution in Russia. Without delving too deeply into the schools of philosophical thought in Russia at the time, the Decembrists and other Western-oriented Enlightenment sortswere diametrically opposed in their reasoning and their aspirations to the Slavic-oriented revolutionaries who focused more on a return to a purer form of Slavic culture. The Slavic-oriented sorts were the closer ancestors of the Communists, but somehow (to stereotype rather broadly and take some historical liberties of my own), I gather that skulking, nihilist, bohemian proto-communists don�t cut the brave, dashing, idealistic figure of the Decembrist officers. At least, not when you're making a movie that focuses on the women who love said officers and give up their status and privilege to accompany them in exile in Sibera.
The movie's execution scene emphasizes the epic theme of Russian history. What has always fascinated me about Russia is the truly epic scale of their history. They don't deal in small change (I find French history alluring for somewhat similar reasons, but even the French never worked on quite the same scale...the Romans and Greeks perhaps a bit more so, maybe a reason I also enjoy Classical history). When the Decembrists fail in their uprising, a few of them are sentenced to death, the rest for exile. The tsar and others had to wait around several hours while the gallows were built, then the gallows collapsed before the hanging, then the ropes were too short so the condemned had to stand on benches, then the ropes broke before they died, then a couple of the semi-hanged ex-officers took advantage of their extra moments of life to tell off their old buddy the tsar before being hanged with stronger rope. They should have been pardoned after the failed execution, but weren�t; so much for tradition.
But perhaps that's not an entirely bad thing. A Russian professor later told me the traditional punishment was being drawn and quartered.
For those of you keeping score, the literary tie-ins are that Pushkin was friends with a number of the Decembrists and wrote poems about them. Tolstoy was the grandson of one of the rebels who was exiled; I've read that War and Peace started as a novel about this revolt, although Tolstoy shifted to the Napoleonic wars. Prince Bolkonsky in W&P has a suspiciously similar name to Tolstoy�s exiled gpa, Volkonsky.
I love that the Russians are pretty scrupulous about correct period in their historical dramas, even if they overplay their hand a bit when it comes to, e.g., our brave, noble revolutionary brothers who suffered for the cause, and the women who loved them. Of course, stories are always reinterpreted through the lens of the current age, but it's not as if these particular brave, aristocratic revolutionaries whose activities were based largely on Enlightenment political theory wouldn�t have been absolutely horrified - although the brighter ones probably not horribly surprised - by the people who actually succeeded in bringing about revolution in Russia. Without delving too deeply into the schools of philosophical thought in Russia at the time, the Decembrists and other Western-oriented Enlightenment sortswere diametrically opposed in their reasoning and their aspirations to the Slavic-oriented revolutionaries who focused more on a return to a purer form of Slavic culture. The Slavic-oriented sorts were the closer ancestors of the Communists, but somehow (to stereotype rather broadly and take some historical liberties of my own), I gather that skulking, nihilist, bohemian proto-communists don�t cut the brave, dashing, idealistic figure of the Decembrist officers. At least, not when you're making a movie that focuses on the women who love said officers and give up their status and privilege to accompany them in exile in Sibera.
The movie's execution scene emphasizes the epic theme of Russian history. What has always fascinated me about Russia is the truly epic scale of their history. They don't deal in small change (I find French history alluring for somewhat similar reasons, but even the French never worked on quite the same scale...the Romans and Greeks perhaps a bit more so, maybe a reason I also enjoy Classical history). When the Decembrists fail in their uprising, a few of them are sentenced to death, the rest for exile. The tsar and others had to wait around several hours while the gallows were built, then the gallows collapsed before the hanging, then the ropes were too short so the condemned had to stand on benches, then the ropes broke before they died, then a couple of the semi-hanged ex-officers took advantage of their extra moments of life to tell off their old buddy the tsar before being hanged with stronger rope. They should have been pardoned after the failed execution, but weren�t; so much for tradition.
But perhaps that's not an entirely bad thing. A Russian professor later told me the traditional punishment was being drawn and quartered.
For those of you keeping score, the literary tie-ins are that Pushkin was friends with a number of the Decembrists and wrote poems about them. Tolstoy was the grandson of one of the rebels who was exiled; I've read that War and Peace started as a novel about this revolt, although Tolstoy shifted to the Napoleonic wars. Prince Bolkonsky in W&P has a suspiciously similar name to Tolstoy�s exiled gpa, Volkonsky.
posted by Deborah | 11:35:00 PM
