proposal homeland

Natalia Poplawska and my groupProfessor Meena Nayak ENG 25223 April 2014Proposal for a Group Project

Topic: Homeland in poetryTexts we will use: “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova and “Inwokacja” by Adam Mickiewicz

Introduction: Describe “Homeland” in one word (What is the first word that comes to your mind when you hear the word homeland?) Group members share their answers with the class. Then, we open it up to the class to answer the same question. Show 2 minutes of the Music video “Identity”.Having short parts of five poems about homeland on the PowerPoint. Short explanation to transition from the meaning of homeland to the meaning of homeland specifically for Russia and Poland.

Thesis: The poems “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova and “Inwokacja” by Adam Mickiewicz illustrates the beloved and longed homeland as defined by identity, political history, religion, and cultural values.

Main Idea #1: Identity

Sub Point #1: The meaning of Homeland

Evidence #1: Primary Source:

“No foreign sky protected me, no strangers wings shielded my face”

“Such grief might make the mountains stoop, reverse the waters where they flow”-

“The Yenisei swirls, the north star shines as it will shine forever”

“And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of black Marias”

Evidence #2: Secondary Source: “Enormously resilient, intensely obstinate, she refused to emigrate, though she had numerous opportunities to do so. To her, being a Russian meant living in Russia no matter what its government did to her and her loved ones, and being a lyric poet meant writing the truth. In poem 4 of Requiem, Akhmatova looks back at herself as the heroine of her early books and comments – Read poem 4. Yet she had the tenacity to stay in Russia and the capacity to move from her private anguish to the ubiquitous suffering of her nation in the thirties” (Hemschemeyer).

“Some of her gravest and most emphatic poems repeat her claim to have stood fast, accepted persecution, remained with her people, not sheltered “under a foreign wing”

Summary of Analysis for this point: No other country had the financial, military, or political resources to help the millions of people suffering from human rights violations ]besides having people migrate to their countries, although Akhmatova repeatedly made it clear that she would never leave her country by free will. This is another testament to her character. Although there is no chronological order to the poem “Requiem”, this stanza was put at the beginning to show how alone the Russian people were from the world and each other. The second quote enforces the notion that such suffering makes the landscape and bodies of water native to Russia look morose and gloomy as if the actual land is suffering along with the people. She makes actual bodies of waters and mountains suffer with the people through pathetic fallacy in order to show how injustice has not only plagued the charisma of the people, but it has also depressed the land, as if aware of what is going on and dying with the people. The Yenisei is the largest river that flows north into the Arctic Ocean. Instead of running its course north as it should, it swirls in circles as if disturbed or in doubt. The North Star shines, as it will forever is a reference to Christianity. The North Star or God will always shine north and bright to lead people to salvation, but the Yenisei is not God and is suffering with the people, therefore, not flowing north. Another reference to land being ignored or uninvolved in massacre of Russians as if the earth itself was being persecuted for no other reason that being there. Akhmatova wants to drive home the point that it is the common people and the land, together that are being killed: the people for being Russian, the land for being in Russia and it is through the military and the government that they die.

Sub point #2: Identity

Evidence #1:“And if my country should ever assent to casting in my name a monument, I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed not near the seas on which my eyes first opened, my last link with the sea has long been broken, but here, here I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars, because even in blissful death I fear to lose the clangor of the Black Marias”

“One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked in a whisper”

“Can you describe this?” I said “I can”

“I woven them a garment that’s prepared out of poor words, those that I overheard”

Evidence #2: Secondary Source:

“For this reason the poet must never forget, or allow the new barbarism to blot out the past. Akhmatova saw her poetic role as one of remembering and bearing witness. As Roberta Reeder points out in her admirable introduction to The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, “for Akhmatova, to forget was to commit a mortal sin. Memory had become a moral category: one remembers one’s misdeeds, atones, and achieves redemption.” And in those miserable years in which Soviet culture sought to impose a Communist stereotype on every aspect of society, the poet’s personal memories were as communally precious as statements bearing witness to public events and universal suffering “-Bayley.

“In this context Nayman makes an unexpected and devastating point. Strictly speaking, Requiem is the ideal embodiment of Soviet poetry that all the theorists describe.” Its hero is the people, the narod, not the people as the regime wanted them to be, and was continually and hypocritically invoking, but the people as they actually were” –Bayley

Summary of Analysis for this point: Akhmatova realized that she was a famous poet and that millions of people wanted to hear what she’d write. When she mentions a statue being placed in her honor, she specifies its location. She will not accept a statue placed near her hometown by the sea, because that was a long time ago and is not what she wants to be remembered for. She wants the memory of that time and place to be remembered by her statue at the gate where the prison stood, where countless brothers and husbands were slaughtered and helpless women stood in front of the gate waiting for a sign of hope. That is where she wants her memory placed so no one would forget what happened there. When describing the scene where she is standing outside the gate and a frozen looking women with blue lips Identifies her as a person and not as just another body in the sea of women, she asks her to describe the place for the same reason, so no one will forget. It can be argued that Requiem was written for the women of Russia who suffered more than the actual men who were imprisoned because that is what Akhmatova can relate to, and perhaps because there isn’t a lot of poetry dedicated to the nameless mothers and the pain they go through waiting to hear word of their loved ones. Her poem is her gift, it is the garment as she says, that is all she can give back to the people, it is written as a witness and an observer.

Evidence #3: Primary source:

“oh Lithuania my fatherland”

First stanza praises the love for a nation but proclaiming one is aware of it only once it is gone

The words “you are like health” is repeated in every stanza in order to drill the significance of the meaning behind it to the reader.

“My country is health” –

“Meanwhile, bear my soul heavy with yearning's dull pain,To those soft woodland hillocks, those meadows, green, gleaming,

Spread wide along each side of the blue-flowing Niemen,To those fields, which by various grain painted, there lieShimmering, with wheat gilded, and silvered with rye”

Summary of Analysis for this point: This poem delves on the themes of loss, and longing for a separated country to be one again. The poet realizes how important and necessary Poland is for him and the rest of those born there, but only truly understands how much after it has been taken away and divided. Similar to Requiem, “Inwokacja” delves into the theme of longing and suffering of the land; because it is meant to emphasize that the land suffers along with the people as if they are one entity, that when separated, they suffer together. In regards to Identity, without their land, or under the control of another country the people of Poland are not people and they cannot identify themselves as being Russian, Prussian or Austrian, because they are Polish. When their country and freedom is returned, then, they will be able to identify themselves as individuals but more importantly as a country, patriotic under one flag. The poet reminisces on the landscape unique to Poland, the shape and color the life of the earth.

Main Idea #2: Political History

Topic Sentence: Both Russians and Poles experienced significant and similar changes in their homeland and their experience created political issues which added dark pages to their history.

Brief intro of main idea: There are so many similarities between Russia and Poland. Poland used to be the second largest European state which makes it really similar to Russia. The political problems put unbearable burden on Russians and Poles which changed them as nations. Both countries fought for getting back their freedom that they once had.

Sub Point # 1: Unbearable Burden on people

Evidence#1: Primary Source: Prologue“That was a time when only the deadcould smile, delivered from their wars,and the sign, the soul, of Leningraddangled outside its prison-house;and the regiments of the condemned,herded in the railroad-yards,shrank from the engine's whistle-songwhose burden went, "Away, pariahs!"The stars of death stood over us.And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhedunder the crunch of bloodstained boots,under the wheels of Black Marias.”

Summary of Analysis for this point: Akhmatova unfolds the pain and suffering that she sees in her society. She creatively describes the political issues as “The stars of death”. She says the

political problems affected the whole nation that the only individuals that are smiling are the dead ones. The burden of emotional suffering that Russian’s government put on its people was horrible. Russians lost their hope by being prisoners in their own country and not being scared of death anymore, but putting it on their wish list.

Evidence#2: Secondary Source: “Acton pointed out the fact that the Polish state, as an elective monarchy with republican institutions, was not fully legitimate from the point of view of dynastic absolutism. Nevertheless, he also stressed that Poland had always been a recognized member of the European family of nations and that its partition was therefore "an act of wanton violence, committed in open defiance not only of popular feeling but of public law". He meant, of course, the eighteen-century "law of nations" which tried to protect the rights of political nations, i.e. nations having their own states (including states with a limited sovereignty), but not the rights of ethnic nationalities which, unlike Poland, could not ground their aspirations in political legitimism.”

Summary of Analysis for this point: Poles had to fight for their right as a European country and stand for their right. Being a stateless nation and being a member of European family of nations contradicted each other and, sadly, Poles had to fight for their rights. In Akhmatova’s poem Russians prisoners were suffering in a same way and had to fight for their lives. Both Poles and Russians had to go through a journey of suffering only to gain their basic rights as humans.

Sub Point # 2: Fighting for getting the freedom back

Evidence #1: Primary Source: “O Lithuania, my native land,you are like health--so valued when lost beyond recovery; let these words now stand restoring you, redeeming exile's cost. It makes me hope a homesick exile might return.”

Evidence #2: Secondary Source: Roman Szporluk, a distinguished American historian of Ukrainian background said in his book Communism and Nationalism:"The Poles were able to awaken the theory of nationality in Europe precisely because they had been deprived of their independent statehood, which they had enjoyed for centuries, at exactly that moment when they were becoming a modern nation, a contemporary of the new age of sovereignty of the people. For this reason, the Polish case deserves to be placed alongside the French Revolution as a major historical event that had a direct ideological significance in the history of nationalism....."

Summary of Analysis for this point: Poles had to define their nationalism after they lost their independence. Losing freedom and becoming a stateless nation forced them to fight for getting their freedom back. According to the eighteen- century "law of nations" Poland disappearance from the map violate all the norms of law. Many people from both radical side and liberal side agreed that Poland is historically legitimate, but they didn't consider how Poland's situation will have universal applications. Poles journey to get their freedom back affected Europe

significantly, and their journey was similar to what Russians experienced as Akhmatova beautifully described it in her poem. European countries didn’t help as much as they could neither to Poles nor Russians. The journey to freedom taught them many hard lessons such as; perseverance, courage and facing their fears. Mickiewicz demonstrates how after realizing his country has been split the narrator ponders on what a prize and value his stolen land is. He gives hope for the future by saying that with the same patriotism for the country and realization of the consequences, the Polish people will restore their country back. This poem delves on the themes of loss, longing for a separated country to be one again. The poem ends with hope for the future and the restoration of peace.

Main Idea #3: Religion

Topic Sentence: The strong bond with religion in Orthodox Russia and Catholic Poland influenced the analyzed poems and gave the oppressed people a sense of belonging to the same nation.

Brief intro of main idea: Sharing a common religion during oppression helps the people preserve their own culture. The homeland becomes a sacred place and remains in the hearts of its residents, even thou it is lost as a tangible land or territory.

Sub Point # 1: Biblical magnitude of Akhmatova’s suffering

Evidence: The Crucifixion

Summary of Analysis for this point: Akhmatova makes many allusions to the crucifixion of Christ. She compares her son to Jesus. They both were unlawfully sentenced and experienced cruel punishment, even thou they were innocent. Akhmatova also compares herself and her own suffering to the suffering of Mary, the Mother of Christ.

Sub Point # 2: Unity of the Russians under God


“Pray for me. Pray.”

“And I pray not for myself alone . . .for all who stood outside the jail”

“my tortured mouth,through which a hundred million people shout,then let them pray for me, as I do prayfor them”


“One of the main unifying symbols in the Russian state was Orthodoxy. The image of the state as an external form of the realization and spreading of the true faith inherited from the Byzantine imperial concept entered organically into the Russian imperial model. As Svetlana Lur’e notes. The identity of the citizens of the empire was built not on ethnicity, but along religious lines; national diversity was ignored by the state” (Nikonova, 6-7).

Summary of Analysis for this point: Akhmatova constantly uses prayer as a form of unity with her people, the Russians. She acknowledges her homeland being under tyranny. However, she sees the hope for freedom and she calls out for collective prayers as well as prayers for each other. Praying together and praying for others gives Christians a sense of belonging and unity. By staying connected to the Russian people, Akhmatova feels connected to her beloved but lost homeland, free Russia. The critical essay cited as evidence #2 emphasizes the strong bond with religion and church in Russia. It also points out the critical role that religion plays when it comes to people of the same nation staying united under God in order to preserve their homeland.

Sub point # 3: God’s and Virgin Mary’s patronage over Poland

Evidence #1:

Holy Virgin, defender of the Shrineat Czestochowa (…) who saved me once with her miraculous glow. My tearful mother entrusted me (it was her only chance, I was near death) so when there was no other cure, she helped to open up my eyes, and once my lids were raised, though weak, I made a pilgrimage to offer thanks and praise.

Summary of Analysis for this point: Adam Mickiewicz addresses his poem to the Holy Virgin Mary whose miraculous and symbolic painting is located in Czestochowa. This is a reference to the Pole’s cult of Our Lady of Czestochowa. It is believed that She is a patron of Poland and that Her painting saved the nation from the foreigner attacks many times. It also performs miracles, such as healing the sick. Mickiewicz himself was brought to the miraculous painting when he was nearly dead as a child. As a consequence of that entrustment into the Virgin Mary, Adam recovered and later made a pilgrimage to Czestochowa. Remembrance of the religious practices make Mickiewicz feel like he is in his homeland. This bond also gives him the sense of belonging and unity with all the Poles.

Evidence #2:

This memory of resurrection has stayed alive in me since childhood; it makes me hope a homesick exile might return

Summary of Analysis for this point: Mickiewicz has hope and trust in God, who has the power to return the lost homeland just as he returned the poet’s health. Resurrection is an allusion to Christ raising from the death three days after his crucifixion. It is also an allusion to Jesus performing a miracle and bringing a dead man back from the death. Mickiewicz relates those two resurrections to his own, personal one from his childhood. Then, he also hopes for the resurrection of the lost country. He believes that the return of Poland as a free homeland will be done as God’s and Virgin Mary’s miraculous grace.

Main Idea#4: Cultural Values

Topic Sentence: Close relationships with families and the bond with landscape build up the image of homeland in the minds of both poets.

Brief intro of main idea: Russian and Polish cultures are based on very close relationships with immediate and extended family. Bond between a mother and a son is especially strong. The remembrance of family members helps the poets remember their temporarily lost homeland. Thus, “home” where a person lives with his or her family and “homeland” become similar concepts. Landscape is a visual form of homeland. Thinking and writing about it transforms the poets’ minds into the beloved homeland.

Sub Point # 1: A mother-son relationship in Russia


For seventeen months I have cried aloud,calling you back to your lair.I hurled myself at the hangman's foot.You are my son, changed into nightmare.


“Mothers have an obligation to protect the interest of their sons, and that consequently, they have the right to a political voice’. Mothers, in this view, have instincts that make them act against state-sponsored patriotism, at least when it endangers their children” (Sperling, 12).

“Real mother is a woman who went to pull their sons out of military camps and out of prison. Where conditions demanded the ethos of the maternal instinct, and mothers had to bring order and security” (Sperling, 12).

Summary of Analysis for this point: Akhmatova illustrates deep love for her son, extreme pain caused by their separation, and the tries to free her son by begging the government to release him. In this fragment she shows devotion and loyalty to her beloved son. A critical source confirms the strong bond between mothers and sons in Russia. It is both, their instinct and obligation to protect their sons even if it means risking lives, reputation, or becoming humiliated. Getting the son back is for the mother like getting a little piece of her homeland back.

Sub Point # 2: Landscape as a visualization of homeland


“Quietly flows the quiet Don”“The Yenisei swirls”


“to wooded hills, green meadows, and the lakes spread round the River Nieman--that I'd be borne back to that womb of gilded wheat and rye turned silver, to the amber mustard row, buckwheat snow, and clover, burning like a shy girl's blush--to strips of turf, ribbons that show boundaries with green. All this I see so clearly, down to each blossoming pear tree.”

Summary of Analysis for this point: For Akhmatova the main landscape elements such as rivers, help her remember the beauty of Russia, her homeland. The quiet Don is an allusion to the peaceful time before Stalin’s regime. The swirling Yenisei is an allusion to Russians going in circles instead of getting on the straight path to freedom. That means the country did not find its way yet. For Mickiewicz the longed homeland is the synonym for all the beautiful landscaping of Poland and Lithuania. Even thou he is on exile, he can still remember the splendor of rivers, meadows, lakes, hill, and even trees. Every element of nature is in the same time an element of his homeland. He can see all this clearly and thus he feels like home when he writes about them.

Conclusion:

proposal homeland

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