Man's Relationship to Nature: V. Rasputin's novel “Farewell to Matyora”

-


Poisoned air, rivers, seas and land - everything is begging for help, for protection. Our future and the future of our children depend on the solution of the current environmental situation.

 All these changes occurring in nature and the surrounding world have been always reflected in the literature. 

A number of works by such Russian modern writers as Valentin Rasputin, Victor Astafev, Sergey Zalygin and others are devoted to this problem.



Now we want to turn to Rasputin's novel “Farewell to Matyora” (Прощание с Матерой), which raises the issue of the extinction of villages. Grandma Daria, the main heroine, receives the news that the village of Matyora where she was born will be destroyed the following spring. A dam is being built on the river Angara and the village will be flooded.  Daria resists the decision and, by all means, protects her old hut, where her great-grandfather and grandfather lived, where every log was not only her, but also her ancestors. 
                                                               
The story of the destroyed village was not invented by Rasputin, it is based on real events that the author witnessed himself. The residents of the village of Atalanka where Valentin Rasputin spent his childhood became the prototype for the heroes of the novel “Farewell to Matyora”. 

There is a tendency in modern Russia of more and more people choosing life in bigger cities. Unfortunately, this tendency leads to the extinction of villages, not only because there are no inhabitants left in them, but also because big cities are exhausting their resources.


In Rasputin's "Farewell to Matyora" the village
where Daria lived will be flooded because of a dam being built on the river Angara.  And this is just an example of how populated areas suffer only during the construction of dams, but we also know of numerous examples of dam-induced floods with a huge number of victims in nearby villages and towns. Many dams are built for the purpose of flood protection, but not always ready for extreme flood events.

Just this summer in July, dozens of people died and hundreds are reported missing as a result of dam-induced flood in Laos. The failure occurred  due to continuous rainfall, which led to the accumulation of water in the reservoir of the dam. (Euronews, 24.07.2018) As well in July a real ecological catastrophe happened in the Russian city of Ufa, where a huge number of fish species that lived in Lake Kasimovskoye suffered from a dam-induced flood. (Вся Уфа, 22.07.2018) Earlier in May of this year, a five-point storm destroyed a dam and a road on the Tsimlyansky reservoir in the Rostov region, Russia. Fortunately, in this case, the dam failure did not cause any human losses, but destroyed a part of the urban infrastructure. (Спутник, 29.05.2018)

The examples above reflect only some of the disasters that have occurred over the past six months. But the world knows larger disasters, such as the Malpasset dam failure in France in 1959, when the city of Frejus was almost completely flooded and 423 people died (ASDSO Lessons Learned), or the Bainqiao dam failure in China in 1975 caused the typhoon Nina, where the official number of victims was 26 thousand people (Environmental Justice Atlas).
Obviously, these disasters were not caused only by dam failures, each of them were provoked by torrential rains, typhoons, etc. This should give us the idea that even if we try to improve our living areas, protect us from floods and other natural disasters, nature is still stronger than us and we must constantly take care of it.

Olga Skaistkalne



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Once upon an ecocritical analysis: fear and domination of the wild in “Little Red Riding Hood”

-
Image
Crane, Walter. Red Riding Hood. 1875. Nature and culture are intertwined but traditionally, in literature, we see them in binary opposition to one another (Adler, 2014). According to ecocritical theorist Peter Barry, however, there exists a "gray area" in between the two. In this space, nature and culture coexist and interact. Barry argues that "for the ecocritic, nature really exists, out there beyond ourselves, not needing to be ironized as a concept, but actually present as an entity which affects us, and which we can affect, perhaps fatally, if we mistreat it". Thus, in literature, we can find examples of nature not as a set of metaphorical meanings, but as reflections of the natural world. By analyzing these representations, what we are left with are actual depictions of the relationship between humans and nature. This is where fairy tales come into play. In fairy tales the story often begins when the main character leaves the safety of its home, i
More info »

Estonian epic poem ''Kalevipoeg''

-
Image
One way nature is portrayed in literature is through epic poems that describe how our world came about. In Estonian folkore there is a book called ''Kalevipoeg'' that is in this genre. In Estonia, specifically in Tallinn, there is a lake called Ülemiste and a passage in Kalevipoeg describes how this lake appeared. A woman named Linda was grieving over the death of her man, whose name was Kalev. While burying him under some stones Linda got tired and accidentally dropped one of the boulders. She was too exhausted to pick it back up so she sat on it and started crying. Her sadness was so big and she cried for so long that her tears formed the Ülemiste lake. In real life you can even see the two big stones in the lake that Linda supposedly cried on and they are called the Lindakivi. Besides this, the rocks Linda was burying Kalev under formed Tõnismägi, a place that also exists in real life.  Silmalauge vesi valgus Laiaks loiguks lagedalle, Loigust tõusis ti
More info »

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

-
Image
Many people wish to escape the city life and embrace the simple way of living. For this reason some decide to leave their life and turn to living in the wilderness. Surviving in the forests and feeding themselves with foods they can gather.    One book that talks about a similar instance is ‘’Into the Wild’’ by Jon Krakauer. This book is based on a true story of a young man, Chris McCandless, who gave up his old life in the search of the ragged transcendent (existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level) experience. He loved adventure and frequently took off to live in the wilderness. In his younger years he lived in the desert, hitchhiked through America all the way to Mexico and his final and fatal adventure was in Alaska.    The reason why McCandless ran away so often was his complicated relationship with his father. He feared intimacy and attachment with others. A quote from the book reads: ‘’Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why
More info »