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THREE Aesthetics and Politics in the Romantic Fashion for Ruins T H E R O M A N T I C I N FAT UAT I O N W I T H F O R E I G N R U I N S t The burning of Moscow and its reception among the educated elite firmly associated the aesthetics of ruin with a Western European sensibility. The scorched earth policy the Russian army adopted in its retreat before Napoleon had been premised on the notion that freedom trumped worldly possessions. Any concern for preserving the national heritage had to give way to the need to retain independence, never mind that Russia’s territory had substantially shrunk in the process. When following the evacuation of the city, the governor of Moscow, Rostopchin, set fire to his suburban estate, he intended to deprive the French army of useful resources and facilities and undoubtedly thought that he was setting a model of patriotic self-abnegation .1 The policies adopted for the reconstruction of the city rested on the principle of building anew. Restoration and conservation of the former city were hardly a consideration at all, nor was there much interest in retaining some ruins, even if only for the purposes of memorialization.2 The ideas prompted by the charred remains of Moscow were nothing but painful. I.M. Murav’ev-Apostol, for example, claimed that he left Moscow in 1813 because he could no longer sustain the view of its ruins, which, in his empathetic identification, indexed the suffering of his compatriots trapped in the city (he himself had evacuated to Nizhnii Novgorod during the French occupation): “No, my friend, I could not get used to Moscow. To have before your eyes day and night the view of ruins—not the consequences of time, but of the savagery of our enemies; to imagine continuously that here they 74 Architecture of Oblivion tormented our fellow Russians with hard labor, that here they desecrated churches . . . no, this is torture, which cannot compare to anything, and having lost the strength to endure it, I left the city.”3 If in Germany ruins had become the visual embodiment of a usable national past, a meaningful alternative to Napoleon’s imperial project, in Russia they evoked the painful memory of a quick surrender of territory. What abetted this sensitivity, arguably, was the fact that with the exception of hasty actions during its retreat (such as attempting to blow up the Moscow Kremlin), the French occupying forces had, in fact, been concerned with the preservation of Moscow (primarily out of self-interest, to be sure) and deployed energetic measures to contain the fires. Napoleon’s invasion left deep and enduring scars. In his Dead Souls, published in 1842, Gogol depicted a landowner unable to contain the decay spreading on his estate. His name, Pliushkin, barely conceals a reference to pliushch, ivy, the eternal companion of ruins. The villages on his sizeable estate are wrecks, with roofs “that had as many holes as a sieve,” dismantled in part by their owners, who had concluded with philosophical resignation that “the roof didn’t protect the cottage when it was raining and, when it was not raining the roof wouldn’t leak anyway.”4 His massive stockpiles of grain are rotting in barns, for buyers no longer show up, driven away by his insane bargaining. His estate is defaced by broken fences, a stone church covered with cracks, and a ruined mansion (with two collapsed belvederes and many boarded-over windows). “This strange castle looked like an invalid on his last legs,” the narrator comments, suggesting vaguely that the disarray on Pliushkin’s estate was somehow a legacy of the war of 1812.5 Indeed, a toothpick lingering ever since it had last been used “before the French invaded Moscow” suggests that Pliushkin’s dereliction of responsibilities coincides with the onset of the war.6 More than a miser, Pliushkin is someone who has lost the plot. His attempts to control his environment have been deflected into a compulsive investment with trivial things, while everything in the big picture falls apart. Instead of managing his estate rationally, Pliushkin roams his property and picks up bits of detritus, which he then hoards in his room, where they pile up and collect dust. He seems resigned to decay inflicted by natural elements and does not mind in the least that his belongings show obvious signs of stress sustained from the wind and rain...

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