A Window To The West Essay Research — страница 2
Yet he felt that his people were good enough to slave over the construction of the city and die laboring for his cause. It was not uncommon for a building to be designed by an Italian, under the supervision of a Dutchman, continued by a German and so on until its completion. Each of these workers contributed their own racial and national characteristics to each of their roles in building the city. Peter wanted his capital and “window” to be laid out and built along the lines of a great Occidental capital. The Russians saw this development of a Western capital in their Russia as an abandonment of their past and as an invasion of the West; consequently, St. Petersburg was not accepted and feared by the rest of Russia. “[St. Petersburg] had to be as different as possible from the old metropolis which symbolized Old Mother Russia, and which the plebeian classes still considered their capital.”(Voyce 12) The capital of Russia commonly was seen as overly Western and could not effectively and accurately represent Russia as a nation. Not only were so many Russian lives were taken by the city in its construction. But the graves that lay underneath the pillars supporting the city were remembered and martyred, so much so that some Russians believed that the city was built upon the destruction of Russia and its people. Peter’s vision of his Western city was at the expense of many of the Russian citizens involved in the physical dangers of building the city, and the dangers of living in the city. Annually the city of St. Petersburg commonly succumbed to floods of the river Neva. The Slavophile view of the city was that of an accursed monument to the impending destruction of Russian culture.(Leiter 34) The inhabitants of the capital were often victimized by this natural disaster, contributing more to the mythology of Petersburg as an unnatural and evil city. This was also how Pushkin, the author of The Bronze Horseman, a work seen as “the greatest poem in Russian History,”(Lavrin 114) felt about “the dark-hued, unreal city.”(Leiter Preface) Pushkin’s main character, Evgeny, represents the beguiled and exploited occupants of St. Petersburg’s wrath. In Pushkin’s introduction he explains the history of the city, in which he sets his tale. Peter’s campaign to westernize Russia, the decline of the old capital of Moscow and its Old Russian values in lieu of the rise of Petersburg as the new capital with its new values and culture. As the introduction comes to a close, Pushkin addresses the inhuman aspect of the city when he states, “Even the elements by your hand/ have been subdued and made surrender.”(Pushkin 120) Pushkin’s reference to the elements is pertinent to this story, for he is referring to St. Petersburg survival of the flooding of the Neva river while human life cannot survive. Pushkin’s account of the flood is coupled with the internal story of the fate of Evgeny, the “little man.” Evgeny, a penniless man, witnesses the damaging effects of the flood, and, more importantly, we learn that the flood has swept away “a widow and his dream, her daughter,/ Parasha.”(Pushkin 124) These floods plaguing the capital were seen by the Russians as the wrath of the Westerners. Peter built the city for the soul purpose of establishing a “window to the West” and these floods were seen as the West once again attempting to destroy Mother Russia. “Fear of the sea was perhaps to be expected among an earthbound people whose discovery of the sea coincided with their traumatic discovery of the outside world.”(Billington 368) After the natural attack ceased, “The purple radiance of the morning had covered up the dire event,”(Pushkin 126) and the rest of Petersburg woke to rebuild what they had lost and to go on with the happenings of everyday life; however, Evgeny, who puts himself before the state, cannot do so. As St. Petersburg endures, Evgeny cannot continue on with everyday life; Petersburg and its wrath have defeated him. “Spare some pity/ for my poor, poor Evgeny, who/ by the sad happenings in the city/ had wits unhinged.”(Pushkin 126-7) Evgeny takes the streets of the city as his new residence. After months of assaults by children, bouts of hunger, and other demoralizing attacks by the city, Evgeny is demoralized to the point that he exists as “neither beast nor man-/ not this, nor that – not really living/ nor yet a ghost.”(Pushkin 127) Life continued in this such way until a fateful night when Evgeny began to stare “with an insensately/ wild look of terror on his face”(Pushkin 128) at the bronze statue of the city’s founder. After Evgeny’s life comes unraveled, he curses the bronze statue of Peter for
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