Repetition, Earth History, and Recurrence in the Rodina Cycle

• In Event: Alternative Pleasures, Alternative Compulsions: Reading Against Repetition in Russian Poetry and Prose

Abstract

The repetitions characterizing Blok's Rodina cycle are often read as formal manifestations of Nietzschean recurrence. But they are also connected to an elemental poetics, combining depictions of scenes from Russian history with imagery of the earth. In ecologically motivated texts from late imperial Russia, like Solov'ev's "Vrag s vostoka," the image of a stable Earth is implicitly presented as a positive alternative to progressive climatic change, the latter read sign of decay. But in Blok's later poetic cycle, the cyclical character of Earth history becomes a nightmarish manifestation of eternal recurrence, from which Russia struggles to free itself. In this paper, I ask: what insight can the distinction between cyclical and progressive visions of Earth history offer us into the ecological imaginary emergent in this period?

Author

• Rose FitzPatrick, Yale U