{"id":1116,"date":"2024-05-22T19:42:53","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T02:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/?p=1116"},"modified":"2024-05-22T19:46:13","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T02:46:13","slug":"seeing-water-subversion-of-perception-trough-water-metaphors-in-war-and-peace-by-camila-amaya-navarrete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/seeing-water-subversion-of-perception-trough-water-metaphors-in-war-and-peace-by-camila-amaya-navarrete\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Water: Subversion of Perception Trough Water Metaphors in War and Peace by Camila Amaya Navarrete"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ice cream flavors. Elusive lovers. Operas. The frivolous interests of a young girl in the nineteenth century are hardly compelling evidence for wartime biography. And yet, Leo Tolstoy\u2019s <\/span>War and Peace<\/span><\/i> encapsulates the detachment of Russian nobility from The War of 1812 through the experiences of a young girl named Natasha Rostov. In <\/span>Theory of Prose<\/span><\/i>, Viktor Shklovsky describes Tolstoy\u2019s defamiliarization as the experience of describing events as if being seen for the first time. This technique incites true vision in the characters rather than recognition into previously formed heuristic notions of an event. The character\u2019s heuristic sets are defined as a persuasive set of solutions applied to a problem or an unknown situation in order to react in a more timely and effortless manner. Defamiliarization in <\/span>War and Peace<\/span><\/i> defies this notion of heuristic perception, as it makes an active choice to reject the perceptual set and perceive the new experience in a way that may be elongated through narrations of the subconscious and that may be uncomfortable for the viewer. The juxtaposition of Natasha\u2019s experience at the opera and Prince Andrei Bolkonksy\u2019s observation of soldiers in a muddy pond is explored through defamiliarized narration and water symbolism to subvert a socially accepted perception of nobility and war.<\/span><\/p>\n

By entering the defamiliarized subconscious of Natasha at the opera, Tolstoy emphasizes her naive perspective reformed by the standards of Moscow to reveal the privileged perception of violence that Moscow\u2019s nobility holds. The description of a bright light connotes the presence of a stage and performance that also includes the audience. In this way, the performers on stage and the people of Moscow become one entity in Natasha\u2019s perception. Natasha\u2019s genuine empathy is seen when she feels \u201cembarrassed\u201d for the performers. Her empathetic embarrassment insinuates that Natasha sees herself as part of the performers. However, Natasha goes on to see them as ridiculous, suggesting that Natasha is no longer a part of them but rather observing and mocking them. Both the transition in the opera performance and the transitions occurring in Natasha\u2019s subconscious lead her to a more nuanced perspective of her environment. Natasha\u2019s transcendence to a \u201cstate of inebriation\u201d connotes a loss of control, whether that be physical or mental, depending on the degree of intoxication. Much like the limbs of the performers on stage that Natasha finds strange, Natasha is also losing a sense of control in her inebriated state.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Near the end of the play, Natasha seemingly snaps out of defamiliarization and simply enjoys the performance. Through this change, she consciously becomes complicit in the \u201cpretentiously false\u201d performance of high society.<\/span><\/p>\n

Natasha initially rejects the standards of nobility when she perceives the opera environment as strange. Her naive perception not only shapes the way she views the performance as fake, but also serves as a catalyst to her eventual complicity in conforming. While at first Natasha cannot understand the opera scenography and rejects the habitual nature in which the rest of the Moscow audience is engaged, she eventually mimics the enjoyment of the audience that she called \u201cpretentiously false.\u201d Although Natasha\u2019s subconscious seems to at first reject the illusion of the scenography in the opera, Tolstoy goes one step further and utilizes Natasha\u2019s defamiliarized narration to critique the higher class of Moscow for their unnatural behavior. In the novel, the great city of Moscow is mostly isolated from the war activities. As such, the Moscow upper class lives in ignorance about the war effort. Tolstoy effectively utilizes Natasha\u2019s defamiliarization to criticize the nobility\u2019s synthetic ignorance and privileged understanding of the war.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tolstoy employs defamiliarization as a tool to emphasize animalistic metaphors in Prince Bolkonsky\u2019s revulsed reaction to soldiers in a dirty pond. In this way, Tolstoy reveals the normalized violence of war and its effects on society. After the abandonment of Smolensk, Bolkonsky visits his childhood estate of Bald Hills where he observes soldiers joyfully playing in a dirty pond near the estate. He is repulsed and horrified at the sight of an \u201cenormous number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.\u201d The imagery of flesh and dirty water is the manifestation of their looming deaths. Bolkonsky\u2019s revulsion reflects a subconscious acknowledgement of the vulnerability to violence the soldiers have experienced and the death they may face in the near future. Although the pond\u2019s water is static, it becomes a figurative symbol of the violence on the battlefield. Ivan Podiukov, a writer on the cultural semantics of water idioms in Russian, describes a Russian folk hunting practice performed with ritual water. The idea is that if a hunt is unsuccessful, the hunters must jump in the body of water to draw an animal to them. After the abandonment of Smolensk, which Bolkonsky does not agree with, the soldiers in the muddy pond simulate the predator-prey folk belief identified by Podiukov. Tolstoy\u2019s diction in Bolkonsky\u2019s description dehumanizes the soldiers to \u201ccarp in a bucket\u201d that are soon to be captured and killed. Bolkonsky\u2019s animalistic description of the naked men in the pond exhibits traits of defamiliarization. The unnatural image of carp in a bucket prompts an interrogation about the value of the individual and human agency over the course of a war. Likewise, Natasha’s unnatural description of the performers on stage deems the nobles of Moscow as automated. Tolstoy employs defamiliarization in the opera and military scenes in <\/span>War and Peace<\/span><\/i> to reveal the terrors of war and interrogate the automatization of violence, and the naive complacency that enables it. Like defamiliarized writing, metaphors compare and contrast concepts that sometimes may be contradicting, and in this way highlight certain qualities of the elements presented.<\/span> Tolstoy employs the use of various metaphors throughout <\/span>War and Peace. <\/span><\/i>In particular, there is an emphasis on the water imagery of Natasha\u2019s opera scene and Bolkonsky\u2019s pond scene. As noted in <\/span>The Sea of Life: A Metaphorical Vehicle for Theory Implication<\/span><\/i>, metaphors heighten the awareness of the audience through comparison in order to reflect the meaning and significance of the presented concepts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tolstoy explores Natasha\u2019s life through the progression of an opera in a Moscow theater, eventually revealing her inescapable conformity to Moscow society. Her character is most memorable for her lovable childish naivety. Marya Dmitrievna affectionately calls Natasha her \u201cCossack,\u201d denoting the unruly and abnormal, yet charming character of Natasha. The young actress in the play, presumably the protagonist, reflects Natasha through her transformation in the play. The young actress wearing a white dress is representative of Natasha\u2019s childhood innocence that she maintains as she is on the eve of womanhood. Natasha is often described as wearing white dresses. White, typically signifying virginity and virtue, reinforces Natasha\u2019s innocence. The light blue dress that the actress on stage wears in the second act is more subtly connected to Natasha\u2019s character. The other visuals Natasha perceives in her defamiliarization is the ensemble of actors waving their arms to eventually remove the girl off the stage. The light blue dress and the \u201carms waving\u201d are reminiscent of ocean waves, symbolizing a relatively calm sea, but one that is volatile and at the mercy of becoming violent or subject to violence at any moment. The violence manifests itself in the forceful way the actors are meant to remove the girl off the stage. It is interesting to note that the girl is not taken off the stage immediately. Rather, her transformation is gradual, as the actors \u201cdid not drag her away at once.\u201d Natasha\u2019s transformation as a character thus far has similarly been gradual.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The actors dragging the girl off the stage in the opera may represent the people in Natasha\u2019s life who are not central figures, but who play a manipulative role. H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Kuragin for example, finds Natasha and Anatole Kuragin\u2019s flirtatious interactions amusing even if she knows it is wrong. Before the third act, when the girl is dragged away, Natasha is invited to sit and watch with H\u00e9l\u00e8ne. At this point in the novel, Natasha is engaged to Prince Bolkonsky, invited to sit with Moscow\u2019s most prominent woman, and she is physically separated from her father and Sonya. Count Rostov and Sonya, whom she was accompanied by, are representative of her shielded childhood away from the exploitative and false Moscow nobility. During the third act of the play, the girl becomes completely bare except for a shift. The physical vulnerability of being naked compared to the pure, white dress she began with marks her vulnerability to the ensemble dragging her away. Natasha\u2019s susceptibility to the influence of H\u00e9l\u00e8ne and the example of nobility lead her to assimilate to the audience. Toward the end of the opera performance, Natasha becomes part of the dull and ungenuine audience she describes at the beginning of the theater scene. She is no longer the image of the happily defiant Rostov girl running around her home, riding horses, and performing traditional Russian folk dances. Natasha is a girl compelled to mournfully conform and perform for Moscow\u2019s high society.<\/span><\/p>\n

By utilizing imagery of natural elements to describe the French army siege on Moscow, Tolstoy reduces an entire army to intentionally comment on the illusions of war created to be more digestible for noble society that conceal the irreversibility of violence. Tolstoy\u2019s personification of Moscow when he writes that the soldiers are absorbed like water by sand or poured water on dry ground, highlights the irrevocable impact of the French invasion, citing that the water and dry ground disappear to produce mud. The allusion to dirt and mud ties back to Bolkonsky\u2019s observation about human bodies in the dirty pond that they partake in polluting with their naked bodies. Armies in <\/span>War and Peace<\/span><\/i> are described in a collective, insoluble way. They are not persons or soldiers but rather attachments, wings, and units. The euphemistic descriptions and collective illusion present war in a way that is more acceptable and bearable for a sheltered, noble society. However, the defamiliarization of these events through the eyes of Natasha and Bolkonsky divulges the perverse nature of performance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The elements in Natasha\u2019s opera experience and Bolkonsky\u2019s pond are comparatively very different, presenting a dichotomy of cultural understandings and perceptions. The physical description of the girl in the play wearing a white dress and later being carried away becomes a euphemism for surrender when considering that internationally the color white represents civilian lives in battle or surrender. This repetition of the color white in <\/span>War and Peace<\/span><\/i> is often symbolic of purity and innocence, like in Natasha\u2019s characterization. However, when Prince Bolkonsky describes the naked men at the pond as \u201cwhite, healthy, and muscular flesh,\u201d he degrades them to the disposable flesh of carp. In addition, the color white in certain Asian and Slavic cultures symbolizes death and mourning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The difference in types of bodies of water and their physical state in Natasha and Bolkonsky\u2019s experience is to be noted. While Natasha experiences only a fake ocean with waving hands of performers, the movement of this water is abrupt and big. Toward the end of the third act, the narrator describes a storm of music breaking. This adds to the imagery of ocean turbulence, like the turbulence in Natasha\u2019s life. In addition, the loud audience roaring resembles a loud storm and represents the violent body of nobility in which Natasha finds herself in. Conversely, Bolkonky\u2019s defamiliarized experience takes place at a stagnant dirty pond that he perceives as violent due to the men inside enjoying themselves amidst a war. On the battlefield, these men will be defiled to vulnerable and naked individuals, which echoes the naked girl in the opera scene at the vulnerability of the ensemble. Podiukov cites that although images of water are universally seen as life, water is also seen in Slavic cultures as a medium for crossing the threshold between life and death. The opera and the pond are drastically different environments with different forms of life. While Natasha is in the lively Moscow city, Bolkonsky is in the ruins of Bald Hills. The opera Natasha attends is structurally contained and while Bolkonsky is in the nature of Bald Hills, the pond itself is a contained body of water. While both of the environments that prompt their defamiliarized narration are contained to some degree, they both exhibit signs of life that Natasha and Bolkonsky perceive as violent. Natasha\u2019s perception of the ensemble on stage mimics ocean waves dragging a girl away. For Bolkonsky, the naked men splashing around create a disturbance in an otherwise natural, static pond. The otherwise pleasant experiences are described as violent through defamiliarization to reveal the violence nobility and war perpetuate. Natasha is subjected to the perception of Moscow\u2019s nobility by being put on her own stage to be observed by the Kuragins. Eventually, her vulnerability leads her to conform to the movements happening around her. According to Podiukov, moving water is representative of the movement of time \u201cwhile simultaneously reminding humans of the essential aspects of existence that are not under their control\u201d as well as the energy that moves life and history into motion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The unfolding of history, as prescribed by Tolstoy, is most authentically seen through the eyes of individual persons. According to Podiukov, Slavic language idioms reflect the most \u201carchaic\u201d language and perception of the world. Idioms reflect both the daily life of folk people and the entire ancestry of these people. The presence of Natasha and Bolkonsky at the opera and pond is merely as spectators, yet the scenic elements explored through defamiliarization and water symbolism serve as an impactful commentary on the perception of humanity during wartime.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hodnicki, Donna R., Sharon D. Horner, and Susan J. Simmons. \u201cThe Sea of Life: A Metaphorical Vehicle for Theory Explication.\u201d <\/span>Nursing Science Quarterly<\/span><\/i> 6, no. 1 (January 1993): 25\u201327.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Murray, Paul R. \u201cArt as a Technique: Viktor Shklovsky and Russian Formalism,\u201d Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture Research Bulletin 30, no. 37 (1999): 131-135.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Podiukov, Ivan. \u201cThe Cultural Semantics of Water Idioms in Russian Dialects.\u201d In <\/span>Meanings and Values of Water in Russian Culture<\/span><\/i>, 1st Edition., 15\u201331. London: Routledge, 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Shklovski\u01d0, Boris Isaakovich, Benjamin Sher, and Gerald L. Bruns. <\/span>Theory of Prose<\/span><\/i>. Elmwood Park (Ill.): Dalkey archive press, 1991.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tahin, G\u00e1bor. \u201cClassical, Modern and Heuristic Rhetoric.\u201d In <\/span>Heuristic Rhetoric<\/span><\/i>, by G\u00e1bor Tahin, 3\u201328. Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tolstoy, Leo, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky. <\/span>War and Peace<\/span><\/i>. 1st Vintage Classics ed. New York: Vintage Classics, 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is Color Symbolism?\u201d n.d. The Interaction Design Foundation. https:\/\/www.interaction-design.org\/literature\/topics\/color-symbolism.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ice cream flavors. Elusive lovers. Operas. The frivolous interests of a young girl in the nineteenth century are hardly compelling evidence for wartime biography. And …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-fiction","category-volume23-spring2024"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/scrippsjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}