Russian INVASION

So half of my classes (2) are Russian this semester, a lang. and a lit. They will all probably be Russian next semester... YES. But anyway. I wrote this earlier this afternoon.

On my mind is the dual effect of learning something, or seeing something in a new way: on the one hand you feel relieved to know that there is this explanation (or at least pseudo-explanation) existing in the world, and you feel closer to humanity knowing someone else articulated it first. On the other, you’re devastated to know that it’s true.

Today in my Soviet Lit. class the terms “consciousness” and “spontaneity” came up in discussing the Cossack-Jewish dichotomy in Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel. The Cossacks are the über-military sort, but in the warrior-brotherhood sort of way. They’re large, intimidating examples of such virile manhood that the part of my mind that envisions any possible situation quakes at the mere thought of being transported in time and space to stumble across such a band of pillagers. Their existence consists of war and reaping the benefits thereof. They kill the men, rape the women, drink the vodka, and look forward to their next conquest. They are the “spontaneity” in the equation of opposing forces - instinctual, emotional.

The “consciousness” are the Jews, or more broadly the intelligentsia. These are the people that, in the Party’s scheme of things, don’t immediately fit into the scenario (capitalist bourgeoisie being overtaken by the industrial yet class-conscious proletariat). They represent the consciousness without being the workers, they were the writers, the artists, wondering “What is my role, what is my place?” So people like Babel sign up as propagandists to travel with the armies, selling the Revolution to anyone who can read while witnessing the ravages of the war that will supposedly take them to a new world order. In the course of the stories (Red Cavalry is presented as a collection of nouvelles or really short stories, vignettes) the narrator Lyutov (a jew) obviously desires to be included in the brotherhood of the Cossacks, not really for the raping and killing but for that idealized vision of camaraderie, companionship. But when it does come to actually being a Cossack, i.e. raping and killing, he can’t pull the trigger. Like the Revolution he is trying to unite these disparate forces, the spontaneous workers and the conscious intellectuals, but can’t.

I am the consciousness side, obviously. This holds true for the way that I live and participate in life, the universe and everything - I can’t get over my brain. I don’t do spontaneous. I analyze everything and I’m always thinking. About anything. The part of me that wants to emulate that spunky devil-may-care heroine of teen movies, the one that all the guys fall for because she’s wild and adventurous and can let the world spin without thinking how or why - that part is so entrenched in my consciousness of existence that I’m barely aware that it’s there at all. Surface thinking is where I imagine that I desire to be more like her, and there it remains as an idea, a moving picture that paints a desirable reality rather than the actual one. I just can’t bring myself to pull the trigger. (Bad comparison on that last bit? Well, maybe. Just think metaphor, it’s a metaphor people...)


That's my layman's understanding of this history stuff, or at least where the discussion went today. I feel like if I add/change some stuff it might be more concise and/or readable, but... you'll manage. I can feel it.

muzyka>> Bobby Long, assorted unreleased tracks (especially "Dead and Done": My body's out of work 'cause my mind's in town.)