July 14

In the northern capital a dusty poplar languishes.
The translucent clockface is lost in the leaves,
And through the dark green a frigate or acropolis
Gleams far away, brother of water and sky.

An aerial ship and a touch-me-not mast,
A yardstick for Peter’s successors, teaching
That beauty is no demi-god’s whim,
It’s the plain carpenter’s fierce rule-of-eye.

The four sovereign elements smile on us,
But man in his freedom has made a fifth.
Do not the chaste lines of this ark
Deny the dominion of space?

The capricious jellyfish clutch in anger,
Anchors are rustling like abandoned plows—
And behold the locks of the three dimensions are sprung
And all the seas of the world lie open.
-Mandelstam, "Admiralty"



Friday was back to the Russian museum where we looked at Russian Realism. Thanks to taking a course on Russian art last semester, I could enjoy the paintings more than having to pay attention to every word. Russian art is still rather unappreciated and little known in the West, excepting people like Malevich and Kandinsky and a few of the artists during and after the World of Art Movement, so it was exciting to see these paintings that are not often seen. More likely than not though the recent exhibition on Russia in NYC raised some awareness and got a lot of these paintings outside of Russia. Here are some paintings I thought were kind of cool.

This is part of a Ge painting of Peter the Great interrogating his son (who was imprisoned and tortured and later died at the Peter and Paul Fortress). There’s a good chance that if you’ve studied art history you’ve seen this one. Yay for generational conflict, an unending issue in Russian history!


This is a Repin, “St Nicholas Saving three Innocents” (I think):


This is a not very well executed but frenetic depiction of October 17th 1905.
I love the facial expressions.





Sunrise Over Petersburg:


Random fragment:


Random sculpture:




So after the museum, Alisa, Tania and I walked down to the Admiralty since I’ve been itching to go there since I arrived here in Petersburg. On the way we found this hole in the wall used bookstore where we bought too many books in Russian. Alisa bought all of Dostoevsky’s short stories, Tania bought all of Lermontov, and I bought some Blok and Chekhov’s plays and some Pushkin. Yay! We all tried to get different things so we can share when we get back to Brown, not like we’ll be able to read Dostoevsky for another 10 years. Haha. We might try to translate some Chekhov next semester since he’s not too hard grammar/vocab wise. Everything was incredibly cheap too. I found some old postcards as well. I wish I could’ve bought more books, but my suitcase is heavy enough as it is. After spending a good two hours there, we finally made it to the Admiralty.

There was a nice little garden and fountain surrounded by the busts of some Russian writers and composers. We got pictures with Gogol, Lermontov, and Glinka.
Glinka:


Gogol and I (you see what Russia does to my hair...)


I was excited to see the Admiralty, despite its state of disrepair. It’s one of the oldest buildings and was originally constructed under Peter the Great as a fortified shipyard, part of Peter’s obsession to create a Russian navy and an outpost to the West. With representative figures of the four elements, seasons, and the four winds, the building sets itself up as a kind of central point of Russia (even though it is geographically peripheral), looking in all directions from its high steeple. The building, in a way, works metonymically for the city as a whole and for Peter’s goal to have dominion over the sea and to defy nature by building Russia’s capital in a desolate and inhospitable area. This building is of course neoclassical in style, adorned with various classical gods, including Neptune, god of the sea, and Athena goddess of wisdom (more wisdom goddesses will make their appearance connected to Peter in posts to come). If you can tell from the picture, the top of the steeple is adorned with an image of Peter’s favorite frigate.



We saw some sailors around. Their uniforms are so cute. I actually really like all Russian military uniforms, and I’ll make sure to put up some pictures of them later. But the sailors are especially great since they actually wear white and blue striped shirts and goofy hats and have the v-necked dark blue overshirts that have the little square cape thingy in the back decorated with gold stars. Too much. But the Admiralty was quiet, you can’t actually go in. Here are some more pictures.