The Method

Ugh, I think I’m getting a cold. I haven’t been going to bed until late these past couple days, and I’ve been pretty active. So much for all that vitamin C I’ve been taking. I don’t have any particular event to report today - I just feel like there have been a few little things I want to get down. 

I forgot to mention something about the Nicholas II section of the Romanov exhibit the other day. The very last board of the room was dedicated to the 1917 Revolution, and there was a lot of information about the Bolsheviks. What caught my attention was the huge picture of Lenin on the board, but that moreover, it was cast in reds and other dark, menacing colors. It was undeniably depicting Lenin as the villain, and that really surprised me. It’s weird, after the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a lot of nostalgia for communism. It still exists among the older generation, and I’d say that a ton people here still revere Lenin. On the other hand, however, since the collapse of the Soviet Union we’ve learned a lot about the last Romanovs. We’ve since acquired the technology and the political liberty to fully investigate what happened to them, and there has been a resurge of interest in them (in my opinion). As a result, I thought it was very interesting to see Lenin cast as the bad guy in the Romanov exhibit when obviously everybody thought Nicholas II was the bad guy when he was in power (for good reason). Although I didn’t understand a lot of the writing in the exhibit, from what I did get and from simply being there I would definitely say that the exhibit was extremely sympathetic to Nicholas II and his family, while almost making Lenin look bad. What a little switcharoo that is!

Does that topic interest you at all? What happened to the Romanovs after they died and perhaps looking at how the Russian public feels about them today? I’m toying with that idea for an honors thesis/dissertation that could quite possibly involve the next decade of my life, but if the answer is no and that doesn’t interest you, I swear my idea is more articulate than the three lines I just typed (annnnnd I would disregard your dismissive opinion anyway... Just kidding, I consider myself extremely responsive to other people’s advice). 

On a similar note though, in my Cold War class last night my professor said something about Lenin and Nicholas II that I had never thought of before (I’m ashamed to say). When trying to answer the question, “why did Lenin order the execution of the Romanovs when they posed no threat after Nicholas abdicated?” my answer was always that which we discussed in my Russian history class in high school: that it was to prove a point that there would be no chances of any revival of the monarchy in Russia; we are done with the Romanov dynasty once and for all. While that’s definitely still true, my professor brought up the fact that Lenin gave the order to kill the Romanovs because his own brother was hanged for his revolutionary activities. How did I not put two and two together and come to that conclusion myself? Revenge as the motive - such a simple point, but it was just one of those ohh! DUH, moments. 

Completely changing subjects, I LOVE the food here. My host mom is such a good cook, and I told her the other day that I love everything that she makes. This came after I had just gorged myself for dinner. That night I had a noodle soup and a plate filled with a few potatoes, a piece of chicken, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, some type of caramelized cabbage and buckwheat. Very simple, but so incredibly tasty! I can already tell that I’m going to have some serious cravings when I get home. I think that’s one of the best parts about traveling - the food. It’s hard for me to describe what typical Russian cuisine is like, but I like to say that it has a lot of root vegetables. There is a ton of soup, and I’ve reached the point where when there is soup in front of me my first reaction is something like, “yo, where’s my slice of bread and raw garlic clove to chomp on?!” I’ve gotten snobbishly accustomed to the raw garlic and bread thing... 

There is a lot of bread, which is fine but I definitely want to start avoiding it if I can. Russians love dill (its on EVERYTHING), salads that lack lettuce or spinach (it’s mostly chopped cucumber, pickle, tomato, some meat and mayo), cabbage (in all shapes and sizes), beets (what a pretty color), mushrooms (I want to go on a mushroom hunt), sour cream (so much better than the sour cream in the states), and this type of oatmeal called kasha. I don’t know- it’s not ALL incredibly foreign, in fact, most of it is quite simple, but they do it really well here and I don’t hesitate to try whatever is put in front of me (my 6 year old self would be astounded by how less-picky I’ve become). Additionally, my host parents are really into their dacha, and they grow a lot of their food there which I so appreciate. I don’t know if it came from their dacha, but the honey I ate the other day, which had some sort of small nuts in it, was the best honey I have ever eaten in my entire life. It is a pale yellow, and deliciously thick. I just spread it over a slice of bread for dessert. Hell, I would spread that honey over a tree branch and eat it. 

Bouncing around to another subject, I think I’m REALLY going to enjoy my Nabokov class. I did have to email my professor this afternoon though asking him what in the world he means by “you have a presentation on Russian America on wednesday” in the latest message posted to the class website. Valerii Germanovich is smart and sometimes funny (his mannerisms are slightly Rowan Atkinsonesque, especially the way he moves his eyebrows), but that man is really frickin’ vague. You’re telling me I have a presentation on Russian America and that’s it? That’s all you’re giving me? Screw that. In any sense, I’m not that peeved, and the material is going to keep me in the class if all else fails. 

Ohhh my god Nabokov is an evil genius. For the past two classes we’ve simply gone over the first 4 pages of his longest novel, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, and with incredible patience, we basically analyzed the crap out of each word. Sounds tedious? You’d think so, but I actually found it so amazingly cool. When I first started the book, I read through the first few pages noticing funny things, but never actually taking the time to pinpoint why that name or word sounded funny. First of all, I’m an idiot for not having picked up on 80% of what was hidden in the text. Second of all, Nabokov thinks I’m an idiot too. But actually! My professor told us that a lot of what Nabokov wrote was a joke with himself because he was so confident none of his readers would pick up on all of his puns, references, and innuendos. Well, he got that right. I am Nabokov’s perfect guinea pig to read his books. I read without an English major’s mind, and as a result, I didn’t pick up on why “the tender and wayward age of fifteen” sounded odd. “It sounds strange in English,” my professor told us. “Nabokov’s adding the word 'wayward' makes the sentence sound foreign. You would not say that in Russian either. It’s added and artificial sounding; Nabokov is making the text sound strange to both the American and Russian reader.”

Psssh, OBVIOUSLY.

Is that not enlightening enough for ya? How about the fact that Estoty (a combination of “estate” and “Estonia"), Canady (a combination of “Canada” and “candy"), and Lagoda, Mayne (REPRESENT) are all mentioned on the first page? Furthermore, the first sentence features a quote from the novel “Anna Arkadievitch Karenina [which was] transfigured into English by R. G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor, Ltd.” Sounds pretty legit, right? WRONG. Everything about that sentence I just quoted is infused with some little joke Nabokov came up with. I won’t bore you with all the details, but some of my notes from the past two days of class include: “we are supposed to pay attention to the art of creation;” “Nabokov knows things about naively realistic things;” “Mount Tabor → Greek story about unnecessary labor → everything is in vain;” “Nabokov to the readers: PAY ATTENTION!!” “author is setting some rules → but we may not be acquainted with these rules → switch the reader’s reflection on ↑,” and so on and so forth. In sum, this class, or maybe just Nabokov, is going to blow my mind (and make me feel incredibly stupid all the time). I may love politics and history, but I also have a huge crush on English. I thoroughly enjoy talking to English majors at Conn, and I wish I had more time to take English classes. I get so into analysis (neeeerd), and I think poets and authors are the smartest people when hidden/double meanings are revealed to me in class. IT’S MAGICAL. 

Okay, it’s 5:39 but I’m getting tired. Tootles!