This Onegin thing

Wed Apr 5 21:06:32 UTC 2006

Onegin fans-

I would feel remiss not to take a step into this melee since I wrote my
MA thesis on the topic, albeit some years ago.

My focus was, however, primarily on the opera, and I would submit that
the Onegin of Pushkin's page may be somewhat different from the Onegin
on Tchaikovsky's stage.  I think many contributors have already provided
plenty of insight into the literary Evgeniy, but I want to make a couple
of observations about the person Tchaikovsky creates in his "lyrical
scenes" (the bulk of the evidence suggests that Tchaikovsky himself was
the author of the libretto).

There is an entire maelstrom of other controversies that one stirs up
when speaking about Tchaikovsky's works, especially in the context of
his sexuality, but I will say that I come from the perspective most
fully developed by Poznansky's publications on Tchaikovsky, which states
that he was a self-aware homosexual who entered into a disastrous
marriage naively hoping to gain the social status attendant to marriage
the same year that he wrote the eponymous opera  (parentheically, I
agree with Rebecca J. Stanton's idea that our present-day conception of
"gay" and the sort of lifestyle that Tchaikovsky led are not entirely
similar).  

There is evidence, I believe, in both the libretto  and the score that,
in the context of experiencing the tremendous stresses of his failed
marriage, he created dramatic and thematic juxtapositions that strongly
support the thesis that Daniel Rancour-Laferriere puts forth as being
the cause for Onegin's rejection of Tatiana: namely, that Onegin is more
concerned with flirting with Lensky and making him jealous than in
anything to do with Ol'ga or Tatiana.  I can't guess Onegin's reasons
with any more certainty than anyone else, but I can provide dozens of
examples in the text of the libretto and the music of the score that
show the primary love triangle of Tchaikovsky's creation to have had as
its points NOT Lensky, Ol'ga and Onegin, but Lensky, Onegin, and
Tatiana.

Here are just a few:
1) The theme sung by Tatiana on the words "Kto ty: moy angel li
khranitel'?" in the Act One letter-writing scene is extremely closely
related to the theme sung by Lensky in Act Two on the words "Chto den'
gryadushchiy mne gotovit?"  The secind is essentially a minor key
variation on the first.  There is even a short entr'acte musical
introduction to Act Two in which Tatiana's "Kto ty" theme morphs briefly
into Lensky's "Chto den' gryadushchiy" theme.  I think this clearly
shows Tchaikovsky's feeling that the real choice facing Onegin is
between Tatiana and Lenksy.   

2) The duel.  The sequence of texts selected from Pushkin's original and
arranged for the duel, taken together in the order they appear, give the
impression that Lensky may have Onegin in mind when he sings "zhelannyj
drug, pridi, ya tvoy suprug," especially because Onegin is the person
who appears immediately after these words have been sung.  In the verse
novel, Lensky writes these words in a letter that is sent privately to
Ol'ga, but the dramatic sequence in the opera produces a somewhat
different effect.   The "Vragi" duet, sung by Onegin and Lensky just
before the duel, is set up as a canon, causing each one to repeat their
lines almost tripping over each other, more like a love duet, and in
fact, the theme of Lensky's Act One aria  "Ya lyublyu vas"
(significantly, WITHOUT the notes on which the appositive name Ol'ga is
previously sung) is heard in the orchestra immediately after Onegin and
Lensky's duet.  In the cinematic Tikhomirov production of the opera,
certainly neither Tatiana nor Ol'ga seems to be on either man's mind
during the "Vragi" duet.

I feel that my comments are running a bit long, but I just wanted to
point out that, beyond the interpretation one may glean directly from
Pushkin's words, at least one great interpreter of the work,
Tchaikovsky, seems to have sensed a familiar conflict between Onegin and
Lensky based on homosexual tensions.  Is that because he himself had an
axe to grind?  Perhaps, but the result is a work that resonates, is
immensely popular, and probably actually more familiar to most people
who THINK they know the REAL Onegin.

John Pendergast 
Major, US Army 
Assistant Professor of Russian 
745 Brewerton Rd 
Department of Foreign Languages 
United States Military Academy 
West Point, NY 10996 
Office-845-938-8737 
Cell-914-388-1469 

-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of Daniel
Rancour-Laferriere
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 3:20 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] This Onegin thing

4 April 06

Dear Colleagues,
It is remarkable how persistent this Onegin thing has been.  Have I
touched on a sore point?  Is it really worth that many postings?  I only
mentioned Onegin's homosexual/bisexual orientation as one example of how
psychoanalysis tends to be discriminated against in the Slavic field
(the editor of _Russian Review_ said over the phone that he would be
happy to publish that paper if I would just "delete the homosexual
part").  I wonder, by the way, how many of you whose chains I have
pulled have actually read the paper (in either its English or Russian
variants)?  And how many of you have read _Signs of the Flesh_, where
all the major literature - psychoanalytic, anthropological,
sociobiological - on homosexuality (up to 1985) is surveyed?  Do you
know that there are societies/cultures in this world where ALL males are
expected to engage in homosexual acts in their youth?

Some of you have written me privately or publicly to say that the
thought of homosexuality never even entered your minds until fairly late

in life. "I had no idea," says Svetlana Grenier.   I doubt it.  Have you

tried free association?  Automatic writing?  Have you watched children
play?  Have you listened to children tell you their dreams?  All this
would require time, effort, and probably cash if you took the trouble to
explore your past on an analyst's couch (or took the time to read
reports of said explorations - as I said earlier, serious
interdisciplinary study takes an enormous amount of work) .

The unconscious knows much more than is presented to the self or to the
world at a conscious level (Gogol said this in his Ukrainian tale about
father-daughter incest long before Freud stated it formally).  Yes,
Pushkin's narrator does not tell us much about Tat'iana's childhood, and
lets us just make assumptions, or guides us toward heterosexual
assumptions.  But psychologists know something about childhood too, and
in any case Tat'iana IS bright, IS superstitious (a highly creative
combination), IS desperately in love with Onegin, and so....

Peter Scotto points out an instance where Fedor Pavlovich Karamazov
spends some time before a mirror.  I do not recall whether this was
something he did on a regular basis, however (as in Onegin's case), and
it would be interesting to see the full context of this particular act
of primping.  In any case, Scotto protests:

>Throughout history, dandyism of one sort of another has been a form of 
>male display, and to eqaute it with sexual orientatin strikes me as 
>reductionistic, a-historical, and, in fact, puritanical ("any man who 
>pays that much attention to his clothes can't be a "real man'".
>
But who "equated" dandyism with sexual orientation?  And who says dandys
(dandies?) cannot be "real men?"  Certainly Onegin is man enough to
fight a duel.  There are some pretty tough guys in the gay community,
and indeed some rather violent S&M practices are encountered.  Also note
the parenthesis in what I said to Inna Caron:

> I also like "dandy," since Pushkin himself borrows it from English 
> early in the novel.  Historical studies of dandyism have drawn a 
> connection between dandyism and homosexual or bisexual orientation 
> (although not in 100% of the cases).

The studies in question are in my bibliography, and I understand there
have been more since.

I also point to a commonplace psychiatric observation in SOF: 
tranvestite dressing in males is often NOT accompanied by actual
homosexual behavior (e.g., the man who needs to wear his wife's dress in
order to have sex with her).  If it persists over years, however, it
tends to be incorporated into a pattern of homosexual encounters or a
homosexual partnership.

Svetlana Grenier writes:

> So, are we assuming that Pushkin believes in "customary 
> psychoanalytic" interpretation of dreams and does _not_ believe in 
> _prophetic_ dreams?  Why? What about Petrusha Grinev's dream in _The 
> Captain's Daughter_?  And does not the narrator's description of 
> Tatiana's dream as "chudnyi" imply its prophetic character? We know 
> that Pushkin himself believed in fate, went to fortune-tellers, and 
> was superstitious.  Or am I confused about your assumption, and you 
> are interpreting Tatiana's dream as that of a "patient" independent of

> her creator's intention?

Yes, you are indeed confused about my assumption(s).  First, I am not
asserting that Pushkin makes any "customary psychoanalytic" 
interpretation.  I do that, we do that.  We scholarly readers are the
ones making the interpretations (Pushkin [via his Tat'iana] creates, we
interpret).  Secondly, the dream is prophetic AND has its other meaning.
Why would these two exclude one another?  Why impoverish Pushkin's text
with a single-minded reading?  Many critics have already said the dream
is prophetic - so why deny it?  What most of you seem to be denying is
Tat'iana's creative oneiric response to the narcissistic injury she has
received from Onegin.

As for Lord Byron's portrait, that helps US understand Onegin's
bisexuality (WE know who Byron was).  But for Tat'iana, I think it just
helps her confirm her sneaking suspicion that Onegin is gay too.

Cheers,

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

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