St John's Eve by Nikolai Gogol - audiobook. MagneonBooks This short story was famously the main inspiration for the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's tone poem, Night on Bald Mountain, made known …More
St John's Eve by Nikolai Gogol - audiobook.
MagneonBooks This short story was famously the main inspiration for the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's tone poem, Night on Bald Mountain, made known to the wider international audience by its use in Disney's Fantasia.
"St. John's Eve" (Russian: Вечер накануне Ивана Купала; translit. Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala) is the second tale in the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka by Nikolai Gogol.[1] It was first published in 1830 in the literary Russian periodical Otechestvennye Zapiski in February and March issues, and in the book form in 1831.
There is no doubt that it is this view of urbanization that led Gogol through most of his written work. For him, Ukraine was poor, but in her poverty she escaped the death and disease of European urbanization. He writes concerning the poor appearance of the village in question: “It wasn’t really poverty, because almost everybody went out Cossacking and got large amounts of goods in faraway lands; but further because there was no need of a decent cottage.”
The murder of the young boy represents many things. Primarily, it represents the death of innocence, the death of Eden, man’s sinlessness and the introduction to a world of unsatiable human appetite and lust, leading invariably to the creation of an elite ruling class defending their interests. It also represents the Satanic sacrament of abortion, practiced symbolically among many ancient pagan tribes in Latin America and the Levant. The murder of a boy or girl is meant to buttress the continued success of civilized and urban life, representing, in graphic terms, the rule of lust and convenience over life and family. In modern societies, abortion has been legalized, though force, by these very same elements, and is maintained by a feminist cult that views abortion as necessary to “liberate” women from family and bring them into the workplace to make money for themselves. In other words, babies are sacrificed for continuing prosperity and the illusion of freedom that civilized slavery provides.
The three knolls presents something of a problem. However, Gogol was an Orthodox man and was educated enough to understand the implications of true Christianity. The three knolls may well represent both the Platonic and Orthodox doctrine of tri-compositeness, that man is constituted from three elements: body, soul and spirit. Each of these represents a certain sort of life. The first, to the bestial life of lust, the second, to secular wisdom, and third, to the life within the Holy Spirit in Orthodox asceticism. There is no question that, at this point, Pytor is facing a choice, a choice as to what goods mean the most to him. He clearly chooses that of the bestial man, for its pleasures are the most immediate and crude.
The remainder of the story probably could be recited by the reader by this point. Pytor eventually goes insane. His mind became a blank after the murder, and he was tortured by the memory of something, but something he could never completely grasp. By becoming part of “Europe,” Pytor was robbed of his memory: his actions, one could say, were not his, but were dictated to the lusts created by civilized life, a life that worships dead matter, the matter of gold and silver, over and above the lives of children, workmen, and the mass of the populace in general.
Eventually, in her hope to find a cure, Pidorka runs to the “old hag” who lived beyond the ravine where the murder occurred. The old witch came to the house, on the eve of St. John’s day, which triggered the memory from Pytor. Pytor grabbed an axe and swung it at the hag, who quickly evaporated. The door of the house shut tight, and, when it was finally opened, no one was to be found, The gold and silver had turned to dust, and Pidorka, it was said entered a monastery and became an ascetic.
In Russian culture, the axe represented division, schism. In some societies, the instrument is a scythe, often called the Scythe of Saturn, representing the ultimate schism, the division of man from nature, or the demand of will to conquer and subdue nature for the desires of the flesh, desire leading to institutionalized conflict and domination, or urban civilization.
In Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, the name literally means the “son of schism,” or the “man from the schism,” murdered his hag, in that case the pawn broker and her daughter, with an axe. There too, the axe is used as a symbol of the division of will from the natural order, or the small scale rural settlements and decentralized forms of social authority deriving from them. Decentralized social authority and agrarian communalism are opposed by urbanization, where authority is turned into power, and centralized into the hands of the money changers, or those who finance, and therefore dictate to, the owners of the means of production.
Work is transformed from a seasonal cycle to the unnatural and closed regimentation of the factory and workshop, man is thereby bestialized, living for his lusts and only for his lusts. Of course, the bestial man’s passion can only be satisfied either though civil strife, or, as in the case of post modern societies, at the expense of being able to criticize the lusts of the wealthy. If the average can indulge in pornography, and seek their own interests in the financial sphere, than the wealthy can do so as well. If a man can be brought to accept such institutions as abortion, fraud or pornography, then he becomes dependent on those who guarantee him that apparent freedom.
The problem is laid out throughout the course of “St. John’s Eve,” that is, once one tastes of the fruits of civilization, it is very difficult to go back, and accept the simple life of agrarian community. The “thrills” of the big city to the wide-eyed country boy are not easily dislodged from his head, and, as he returns home, is invariably finds what he considers a humdrum existence. The urban existence, with is oppressive unnaturalness, will soon exact its price on its pleasures. Gogol was hardly the first to deal with this problem: Rousseau also dealt with it in his First Discourse for example. St. Basil the Great, in talking about monastic life, tells of the contradiction between separating oneself from urban life, only to realize that, in the desert, you brought all the memories, feelings and lusts of the city with you, in your mind and memory.
thattimehascome.blogspot.com/…/gogols-st-johns…
MagneonBooks This short story was famously the main inspiration for the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's tone poem, Night on Bald Mountain, made known to the wider international audience by its use in Disney's Fantasia.
"St. John's Eve" (Russian: Вечер накануне Ивана Купала; translit. Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala) is the second tale in the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka by Nikolai Gogol.[1] It was first published in 1830 in the literary Russian periodical Otechestvennye Zapiski in February and March issues, and in the book form in 1831.
There is no doubt that it is this view of urbanization that led Gogol through most of his written work. For him, Ukraine was poor, but in her poverty she escaped the death and disease of European urbanization. He writes concerning the poor appearance of the village in question: “It wasn’t really poverty, because almost everybody went out Cossacking and got large amounts of goods in faraway lands; but further because there was no need of a decent cottage.”
The murder of the young boy represents many things. Primarily, it represents the death of innocence, the death of Eden, man’s sinlessness and the introduction to a world of unsatiable human appetite and lust, leading invariably to the creation of an elite ruling class defending their interests. It also represents the Satanic sacrament of abortion, practiced symbolically among many ancient pagan tribes in Latin America and the Levant. The murder of a boy or girl is meant to buttress the continued success of civilized and urban life, representing, in graphic terms, the rule of lust and convenience over life and family. In modern societies, abortion has been legalized, though force, by these very same elements, and is maintained by a feminist cult that views abortion as necessary to “liberate” women from family and bring them into the workplace to make money for themselves. In other words, babies are sacrificed for continuing prosperity and the illusion of freedom that civilized slavery provides.
The three knolls presents something of a problem. However, Gogol was an Orthodox man and was educated enough to understand the implications of true Christianity. The three knolls may well represent both the Platonic and Orthodox doctrine of tri-compositeness, that man is constituted from three elements: body, soul and spirit. Each of these represents a certain sort of life. The first, to the bestial life of lust, the second, to secular wisdom, and third, to the life within the Holy Spirit in Orthodox asceticism. There is no question that, at this point, Pytor is facing a choice, a choice as to what goods mean the most to him. He clearly chooses that of the bestial man, for its pleasures are the most immediate and crude.
The remainder of the story probably could be recited by the reader by this point. Pytor eventually goes insane. His mind became a blank after the murder, and he was tortured by the memory of something, but something he could never completely grasp. By becoming part of “Europe,” Pytor was robbed of his memory: his actions, one could say, were not his, but were dictated to the lusts created by civilized life, a life that worships dead matter, the matter of gold and silver, over and above the lives of children, workmen, and the mass of the populace in general.
Eventually, in her hope to find a cure, Pidorka runs to the “old hag” who lived beyond the ravine where the murder occurred. The old witch came to the house, on the eve of St. John’s day, which triggered the memory from Pytor. Pytor grabbed an axe and swung it at the hag, who quickly evaporated. The door of the house shut tight, and, when it was finally opened, no one was to be found, The gold and silver had turned to dust, and Pidorka, it was said entered a monastery and became an ascetic.
In Russian culture, the axe represented division, schism. In some societies, the instrument is a scythe, often called the Scythe of Saturn, representing the ultimate schism, the division of man from nature, or the demand of will to conquer and subdue nature for the desires of the flesh, desire leading to institutionalized conflict and domination, or urban civilization.
In Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, the name literally means the “son of schism,” or the “man from the schism,” murdered his hag, in that case the pawn broker and her daughter, with an axe. There too, the axe is used as a symbol of the division of will from the natural order, or the small scale rural settlements and decentralized forms of social authority deriving from them. Decentralized social authority and agrarian communalism are opposed by urbanization, where authority is turned into power, and centralized into the hands of the money changers, or those who finance, and therefore dictate to, the owners of the means of production.
Work is transformed from a seasonal cycle to the unnatural and closed regimentation of the factory and workshop, man is thereby bestialized, living for his lusts and only for his lusts. Of course, the bestial man’s passion can only be satisfied either though civil strife, or, as in the case of post modern societies, at the expense of being able to criticize the lusts of the wealthy. If the average can indulge in pornography, and seek their own interests in the financial sphere, than the wealthy can do so as well. If a man can be brought to accept such institutions as abortion, fraud or pornography, then he becomes dependent on those who guarantee him that apparent freedom.
The problem is laid out throughout the course of “St. John’s Eve,” that is, once one tastes of the fruits of civilization, it is very difficult to go back, and accept the simple life of agrarian community. The “thrills” of the big city to the wide-eyed country boy are not easily dislodged from his head, and, as he returns home, is invariably finds what he considers a humdrum existence. The urban existence, with is oppressive unnaturalness, will soon exact its price on its pleasures. Gogol was hardly the first to deal with this problem: Rousseau also dealt with it in his First Discourse for example. St. Basil the Great, in talking about monastic life, tells of the contradiction between separating oneself from urban life, only to realize that, in the desert, you brought all the memories, feelings and lusts of the city with you, in your mind and memory.
thattimehascome.blogspot.com/…/gogols-st-johns…