Onegin et al.

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

6 April 2006

Dear Colleagues,

John Pendergast has made some valuable observations on Chaikovsky's 
version of Onegin.  I hope he will work up his Master's thesis for 
publication.  He concludes:

>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.
>
Agreed.  But there is no "real" Onegin.  We have all been constructing 
him for ourselves ever since Pushkin did.  But some constructs are more 
interesting than others, and some constructs explain certain things 
better than others.

Anthony Vanchu writes:

>I know Lacan has perhaps even fewer adherents than Freud in Russian
>literary studies, but I've generally found that his work can provide
>significant insight (e.g., the concept of "the gaze," which would be
>fruitful in the Onegin example).  This, despite Lacan's all too
>frequently opaque prose.
>
In the 1990s Lacanians were influential in getting psychoanalysis 
started up again in Russia, largely because they offered both 
pedagogical and financial support.  Nowadays, however, the Lacanians 
have less influence among practicing psychoanalysts, who have learned to 
make a living utilizing both classical and more recent 
(object-relations, Kleinian, Kohutian, etc.) approaches.  As for 
psychoanalysis (including Lacanian) in literary studies in Russia, it is 
still almost nil, although I do occasionally come across things which 
seem either vaguely Lacanian, slightly Freudian, or just generally 
pretty tame and/or opaque.

Tatyana Buzina writes:

>Of the possible signs of homosexuality, recaling dandyism which was discussed in such a lively way, Robert Lovelace is certainly very concerned with appearance, both his own and Clarissa's. His detailed description of Clarissa's dress is an example. He describes himself as a great expert on ladies' dresses as he helped so many ladies out of theirs. 
>
>His womanizing which could admittedly be interpreted as overcompensating for his striving for his own sex is explained as revenge on women for his being spurned by a lady he had thought to be his while she had preferred him to some duke. His aim is to ruin as many as he can because he thinks they are not deserving of anything better.
>
Great "experts" on women's clothing are often gay or bisexual.  The 
classic (Freudian) psychoanalytic explanation of Don Juanish behavior is 
that it affords indirect homosexual contact ('bridge effect') with the 
other men with whom all those women have sexual relations.  More recent 
psychoanalytic theory focuses on the narcissism of the man who 
repeatedly needs to prove his worth by seducing as many women as 
possible.  Evolutionary psychology emphasizes the potentially high 
payoff in offspring for promiscuous males as opposed to promiscuous 
females (some anthropologist found a high-status male somewhere in 
Africa with over 600 children; given the obvious biological limitations, 
no female could ever come close - it's somewhere in _Signs of the 
Flesh_; concealed ovulation in female humans [as opposed to other 
primates] might have evolved as a counterstrategy against such male 
promiscuity).

With evolutionary psychology we are getting quite a distance from 
Onegin, But Elena Gapova did take the trouble to knock biology, saying that

>The thing which exists in preundustrial sociaties (and even in the animal
>world) is a "biological act", which happens  because it is "technically
>possible".
>
Not so.  It happens because of natural (Darwinian) selection.  
Heterosexual acts occur because they result in offspring.  Thus

>(the institution of) normative
>heterosexuality is the most fundamental one
>
- because it is the one of the various "imagined" possibilities which 
made our biological existence possible.

Boys and girls and priests and Slavists imagine other possibilities, of 
course.  But they sometimes also see them before their very eyes.  How 
could a girl growing up in the country not observe certain biological 
things, such as

> seeing dogs in the road and stallions in the field engaging in 
> homosexual activity

- as Jules Levin observes.

I thank Yevgeny Slivkin for his observations on Pushkin's explicit 
knowledge of homosexuality.  Pushkin's interest in the subject was even 
more extensive than I had imagined (I think everybody knows the Vigel' 
joke, though). 

Edward Dumanis writes:

>A famous contemporary Russian songwriter, Veronika Dolina, has a poem
>where she portraits  Sancho Panza as a woman who is in love with her
>master. It's a wonderful song, however, I have not heard about anybody
>thinking that this might be what was in Cervantes' subconsciousness. Or
>was it?
>
First, the correct psychoanalytic term is "unconscious" ("subconscious" 
if you are a Jungian).  Second, I say: if Veronika Dolina can imagine 
Sancho in love with Quixote, Tat'iana can imagine Onegin in love with 
Lenskii.

Cheers,

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

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