Poema of Lieutenant Schmidt’s End: Pasternak’s Dialogue with Tsvetaeva through the Prism of Genre.

Boris Pasternak’s poemy are acutely self-conscious of their place in the epic tradition. Lieutenant Schmidt (LS) represents one attempt at exploring the parameters of the poema itself as the poet makes a “difficult” transition from “lyric thinking” to “the epic.” In this article I examine this transition against a contemporaneous example in the genre, Tsvetaeva’s Poema of the End (PE). In LS, structural elements of the poema are counterposed to those of PE. While PE amplifies the individual voice, LS muffles what is personal for the sake of the public voice. While PE is atemporal, LS is historical. While PE unfolds on symbolic planes, with elements of plot kept to a bare minimum (a single moment of separation), LS is a plot-driven account based on concrete, documentary material. Finally, while PE is an “overgrown lyric”—representing the “lyric thinking” that Pasternak hopes to transcend— LS is an exploration of the possibilities that a more traditional model of the poema can offer. Although in the present analysis I draw on several theories of poetic genres, this is by no means an exhaustive study of epic versus lyric forms of poetry. Instead, my analysis focuses on those structural and thematic features of the poema that the poets themselves perceived as central to their texts. Pasternak, for his part, develops the structure and thematics of his poema in ways that are inspired by PE, but also, as we will see, in more significant ways, contrast with it.

Sea surface temperature oscillations in southern Okinawa Trough during last 2700 years from ODP Hole 195-1202B

Most of the temperature reconstructions for the past two millennia are based on proxy data from various sites on land. Here we present a bidecadal resolution record of sea surface temperature (SST) in Southern Okinawa Trough for the past ca. 2700 years by analyzing tetraether lipids of planktonic archaea in the ODP Hole 1202B, a site under the strong influence of Kuroshio Current and East Asian monsoon. The reconstructed SST anomalies generally coincided with previously reported late Holocene climate events, including the Roman Warm Period, Sui-Tang dynasty Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period, Current Warm Period, Dark Age Cold Period and Little Ice Age. However, the Medieval Warm Period usually thought to be a historical analogue for the Current Warm Period has a mean SST of 0.6-0.8°C lower than that of the Roman Warm Period and Sui-Tang dynasty Warm Period. Despite an increase since 1850 AD, the mean SST in the 20th century is still within the range of natural variability during the past 2700 years. A close correlation of SST in Southern Okinawa Trough with air temperature in East China, intensity of East Asian monsoon and the El-Niño Southern Oscillation index has been attributed to the fluctuations in solar output and oceanic-atmospheric circulation.

2014 FIU Cuba Poll: How Cuban Americans in Miami View U.S. Policies Toward Cuba

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2008 Cuba/US Transition Poll

Summary of results from the 2008 Cuba Poll.