Figurative Language

Horses at Work & in Myth - Russian Horses - Redemptions - Falls

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April 9, 2025

On the next seven pages — 🕊️ Figurative Language, 🐎 Magic Black Horses, 🍷 Nightingales 1, 🐦‍⬛ Nightingales 2, ♒️ Rivers, 🍏 Apples, & 🍎 The Road to Damascus — I show how figurative language can be effective in sounding the depth of Russia’s grand error (the invasion of Ukraine), and in suggesting a soul-racking path to fix that error (reconciliation with Ukraine). Put in terms of the symbolism I’ll be looking at, Russia has ❧ bitten Eve’s apple to the core and ❧ tinted the Dnipro River red with blood. Yet it can still, if it makes a monumental effort, ❧ rein in the black horses of war and ❧ see the light on the road to Damascus.

Perhaps Russia will change its course by reflecting deeply, almost as a Jesuit or Hamlet might, on what it will lose by destroying its Ukrainian neighbour. Perhaps it’ll finally sit down, like Achilles sat down with Priam during the Trojan War, and recognize what Ukraine has been saying for three years now: neither side has anything to gain by killing the other, by burning down the homes and destroying the families.

Perhaps Russians will reconsider their time-honoured imperialism, and come to see that it, like the Roman and British empires, is best thrown in the dustbin of history. They may, to quote from the Eagles’ 2007 song “Long Road Out of Eden,” see “the ghost of Caesar on the Appian Way,” that is, they may see the bent of history and the bloody atrocity that comes with conquering other peoples. Perhaps they’ll then reflect on Britain’s imperial “road to Mandalay” and on America’s “driving dazed and drunk,” and conclude that “the road to empire is a bloody stupid waste.”

Or perhaps Russians will be stirred by compassion, and see how deeply they’re hurting the very people who have resembled them most — at least in terms of language, history and culture. Perhaps they’ll turn over a completely new leaf, and follow the Christian ideal of Father Zosima, who in The Brothers Karamazov says that we all need to ask forgiveness of each other.

Or perhaps they’ll do nothing of the sort. Perhaps our desire for this change of heart is an illusion, like the delicious otherworldly fantasy conjured by the bird’s song in Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale.” Perhaps the only bird song the Russians will hear is the nightingale’s song in Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat, which floats indifferently above the slaughter of Chechens. Perhaps all they’ll hear is the “poo-tee-weet” from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, a sound that echoes in the bombed-out moonscapes of Dresden and Quảng Trị.

Perhaps Russians will continue to reject the example of Saul of Tarsus — Saint Paul, the revered Svyatoy Pavel who persecuted Christians prior to his revelation on the road to Damascus:

[…] as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven. And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? (Acts 9:1-6)

Saint Paul was literally on the road to Damascus when he saw the error of his ways, yet the phrase the road to Damascus is now often used in a metaphoric sense to mean a momentous change of course. For instance, as of today (April 9, 2025) many people around the world are hoping that the US government will change its course, will see the light on the road to Damascus. Lately, it has rounded up immigrants, gutted its own institutions, and alienated its friends. For several months Trump went on and on about Canada as the 51st state. He still hasn’t ruled out using force to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal. The US government has also threatened, and then imposed, enormous tariffs on its closest allies — Canada, Mexico, Europe, etc. More worrying from a global point of view, it has cozied up to Russia, has largely blamed Ukraine for being invaded, and seems more interested in a rare earth mineral deal than a just peace. And finally, just this morning, Trump put a 104% tariff on China. China has responded with an 84% tariff. China says it will fight a tariff war, a trade war, or any other kind of war — and fight to the end.

The rest of us wonder how far this madness will go. The US is on a course of bullying we haven’t seen since Iraq and Vietnam. To put it metaphorically, many are hoping that Trump will have a change of heart on the road to Damascus.

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Horses at Work & in Myth

In this section, Metaphor & Symbol, I combine the metaphor of the road to Damascus with the symbol of horses — especially horses of war and horses of the Apocalypse. I imagine Russia holding the reins of a chariot, spurring it on to the destruction of Mariupol, Maryinka, Soledar, Bakhmut, etc. Will Russia recognize the atrocity and pull up the reins? Will it change its intentions on the road to Kiev?

There are few images more powerful — or more frightening — than that of an army advancing on a city. And there are few natural images more powerful than that of a stampede of horses. Walter Crane gets at both the physical and the mythological power of horses:

At first it may seem odd that Crane depicts the ocean, which has little to do with land or the realm of horses, in terms of horses. The obvious link is that both are powerful — and both are very difficult to stop. Yet there’s also a mythological link between horses and Poseidon (or Neptune), the Greek (or Roman) god of the sea. Hence the title of Crane’s painting, Neptune’s Horses. The awesome, uncontrollable power of the ocean has been seen since Classical times in terms of Neptune riding his chariot across the waves, drawn by sea-horses:

We can also see the horse’s high symbolic status in the horses that pull Helios’ sun-chariot across the sky:

Horses also play a spectacular role in Revelation’s vision of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse:

When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come!” Then another horse came out, fiery red. The one riding on it was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another. He was given a great sword.

In the painting below — The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Viktor Vasnetsov — the lamb, his Good Book, and a rainbow (at top centre) lie apart from the violence. They are above and behind the clouds, which form a barrier. They are also protected by angel wings, which represent Heaven as well as fierce angels such as Michael or Azrael:

While the horses and their riders symbolize human death and destruction, the lamb symbolizes divine goodness and gentleness, and the rainbow symbolizes peace, or the calm after the storm of violence. The placement of the lamb suggests two things simultaneously: ❧ divinity has no interest in violence and war, and ❧ love and forgiveness may appear small and gentle, yet they’re above, or more important than, everything else.

The link between horses and battle is a global one, as we see in the following painting of Krishna’s chariot, which conveys Arjuna into the battle that’s central to both The Mahabharata and The Bhagavad-Gita:

Prior to the battle, Arjuna asks Krishna how he can justify fighting a war against his extended family: “How should we not know to turn away from this sin, we who clearly see the wrong in bringing destruction upon the family?”

Before the slaughters in Bucha and Mariupol, the Ukrainians may well have asked themselves a similar question.

One of the most powerful images of post-war regret can be seen in the next image — of Achilles and his chariot dragging the body of Hector across the battle-field, from The Iliad:

The sight of his son’s body being dragged by horses across the battle field wears down Priam, the King of Troy. Priam and Achilles then meet, and together they realize that their war is a bloody stupid waste.

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Russian Horses

The horse also plays a big role in Russian culture, perhaps because Russia is so large and the need for rapid transport is so great. In some cases, the horse takes on the persona of Russia itself. For instance, on his way back from the Caucasus, Tolstoy writes, “Nothing on the road cheered me so much and so reminded me of Russia as a baggage horse which laid back its ears and despite the speed of my sledge tried to overtake it at a gallop.”

Horses are also used by Gogol at the end of Dead Souls to represent Russia’s mysterious, chaotic, violent, imperial trajectory:

What does that awe-inspiring progress of yours foretell? What is the unknown force which lies within your mysterious steeds? Surely the winds themselves must abide in their manes, and every vein in their bodies be an ear stretched to catch the celestial message which bids them, with irongirded breasts, and hooves which barely touch the earth as they gallop, fly forward on a mission of God? Whither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine? Whither? Answer me! But no answer comes — only the weird sound of your collar-bells. Rent into a thousand shreds, the air roars past you, for you are overtaking the whole world, and shall one day force all nations, all empires to stand aside, to give you way!

A variant type of symbolic Russian horse is used a hundred years later in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, where the Devil’s cavalcade of black horses take an apocalyptic flight toward cosmic redemption. In 🐎 Magic Black Horses I’ll suggest that Bulgakov’s steeds add a road to Damascus possibility to the violent and imperial flight of Gogol’s horses. I’ll use this figurative take on horses to ask, Will Russia pull on the reins and turn away from its violence in Ukraine?

In his collection of wise sayings, Tolstoy includes this quote from the Buddha’s Dhammapada:

I will call the right groom he who can stop his rage, which goes as fast as the fastest chariot. Other people have no power; they just hold the reins. 

Or, to use a Greek statue and a painting by Moreau, what started out as the god Asklepios (the god of healing) leaning “on a staff, around which his sacred animal, the snake, is coiled” (the museum’s description), ends up with Phaeton flying too close to the sun, the snake rising from destruction, and the horses falling from the sky:

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Redemptions

Repentance and reconciliation aren’t likely scenarios, at least not at now, in the second week of April, 2025. For at the moment Putin seems to have the ear of Trump, Trump seems to be leaving Europe and Ukraine in the lurch, and Putin has little reason to rein in the horses of war. In 🍷 Nightingales 1 I argue that a Russian change of course seems more like a fantasy on our part, more like the escape Keats’s writes about in “Ode to a Nightingale,” where the poet wants to escape the depressing world and “cease upon the midnight with no pain.” In 🐦‍⬛ Nightingales 2 (not yet online) I look at the worst case scenario, where the war just drags on, and where we continue the surreal scenario in which human anger and violence are juxtaposed with the beauty of the bird’s song — the nightingale heard by Tolstoy after the slaughter of “the Chechen rebels,” and the “poo-tee-weet” heard by Vonnegut after the bombing in Dresden and Vietnam.

Yet it’s worth noting that the greatest Russian literature contains powerful notions of redemption, from the universal forgiveness of Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, to the reformation of Chichikov and Raskolnikov in Dead Souls and Crime and Punishment, to the cosmic redemption in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.

On the next page, 🐎 Magic Black Horses, I’ll argue that Bulgakov’s Night Flight on horses suggests a path forward for Russia. Symbolically, they suggest an acknowledgment of mistakes, and the possibility of redemption. I argue that this redemption is because of, rather than in spite of aspects of a dark Apocalypse: Bulgakov’s Devil and his retinue leave the violence and punishment of Moscow in their wake, and fly through the Night on black horses toward the dawn. Into this symbolic landscape of catastrophe and damnation Bulgakov weaves in redemption and forgiveness. The Night Flight sounds the depths of darkness and annihilation, yet leads to redemption and light, most deeply indicated by the reconciliation of Pilate (along with his faithful dog) and Christ.

If Pilate can be redeemed, so can Putin. If Germany can repent and atone for WW II & the Holocaust, Russia can atone for its brutal assault on Ukraine. I was going to write unforgivable assault, which may get closer to how Ukrainians feel about the horrid damage done. Yet the word doesn’t work here, since it preempts the idealism Dostoevsky and Bulgakov themselves suggest: nothing is beyond forgiveness & redemption.

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Falls

My point assumes that Russians aren’t alone in having committed crimes against humanity. The same heavy symbolic language I use to refer to Russia’s war — a river of blood, the apple of knowledge, the fall from Eden, Apocalypse, magic black horses, the Road to Damascus, Redemption, etc. — can be used for many acts of massive violence. The Eagles suggest as much in their 2007 song “Long Road Out of Eden,” where they see the road the US is on as a highway. The “dazed and drunk” driver is George Bush, and his “propaganda” is most likely his false claims about Weapons of Mass Destruction and Mission Accomplished in Iraq.

While this is an American vision of error, the general idea of driving dazed & drunk on propaganda & entitlement also apply today to Putin and his war machine.

The end of the song is powerful in terms of integrated figurative language: symbolic metaphors of road and apple are couched within allusions to religion (Saint Paul) and empire (Roman and British):

The “power of the tools” — i.e. Eden’s apple as military knowledge — has been used throughout the world for millennia, from Caesar’s “Appian Way” 2000 years ago to England’s “road to Mandalay,” which presumably refers to the three wars Britain fought against Burma from 1824 to 1865. Using knowledge to create deadly weapons, expand your power, and massacre another people is to bite deeply into the most dangerous, most original, most symbolic apple of them all.

Germany, the US, and Russia figure prominently in any updated list of massive violence — a list that includes, but isn’t limited to ❧ slavery and empire throughout human history, ❧ the Mongol invasions, ❧ the colonization of the Americas, ❧ Tasmania, ❧ the Circassian genocide, ❧ the Trail of Tears, ❧ the Belgian Congo, ❧ the Holodomor, ❧ the Holocaust, ❧ Apartheid, ❧ Native schools across North America, ❧ The Cultural Revolution, ❧ The American War against Vietnam, ❧ Pol Pot’s Cambodia, ❧ Afghanistan, ❧ Rwanda, ❧ Chechnya, ❧ Congo, ❧ Iraq, ❧ Darfur, and ❧ Ukraine. The American violence in Indochina & Iraq, and the Russian violence in Chechnya & Ukraine aren’t unique in their brutality; they’re simply the latest in a long, sad list.

The further you go down the road of massive violence, the harder it is — and the more necessary it becomes — to stop the persecution, and to turn back, like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.

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Next: 🐎 Magic Black Horses

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