Onegin

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

14 April 2006

Dear Colleagues,
There has been a lot more discussion about Eugene Onegin.  Some of it is 
quite crude, some very nuanced and interesting.

The approach of Maryna Vinarska is paranoid, and does not have much to 
do with Onegin:

>All those efforts to implant "Golubaia kul'tura" into our lives after the beginning of perestroika were so rude, aggressive and overwhelming that they were doomed to failure. With our people it is always like this: the harder you try to impose smth against our wish, the less result you'll get. Or you'll get directly the opposite result. It is still considered to be a medical condition like any other you may be born with, diabitis or heart failure, or whatever.
>

Vera Beljakova writes:

>Please don't start telling
>me that ALL our male literary heroes are 'gay'....
>They are not here to defend their 'honour' or
>challenge you to a duel.
>
Has anyone said "ALL" of "our" literary heoees are gay?  Not that I am 
aware of.  And so what if they were?  What is wrong with being gay?  You 
heard me right.  Matthew Herrington is absolutely right.  What IS wrong 
with being gay?  It is NOT a "medical condition," contrary to what 
Vinarska says.  Freud himself thought homosexual orientation was 
perverse or neurotic, but psychoanalysis has come a long way since Freud 
(and that is one piece of evidence in favor of what Tom Dolack offered 
in his admittedly "partial" bibliography).  You will not find homosexual 
or bisexual orientation termed a "disorder" in DSM IV or among most 
practicing analysts today.  The homophobia is especially evident in the 
peculiar use of the word "'honour'"  by Beljakova.  What would be 
"dishonourable" about someone (real of literary) being gay?  True, an 
educated nineteenth-century Russian more likely than not would view the 
phenomenon with suspicion or hostility, and therefore consider it 
"dishonourable."  But that would not make such an attitude any less 
homophobic.

Note also the xenophobia in this formulation: "our" heroes are not here 
to defend themselves.  From whom?  From some non-Russian "other" who has 
no business looking into the sexual proclivities of certain Russians?  
Or, more broadly speaking, can only the Russians understand "Russian 
soul?"  Recently a Russian psychoanalyst friend of mine wrote to me to say:

>А что касается российского сопротивления прикладному психоанализу, то да, я
>думаю, это оно и есть. Относительно Вас это может быть "сопротивление
>идентичности", аналогичное описанному Э.Эриксоном - опасение, что Ваш
>авторитет, Ваша мощная, связанная идентичность поглотит, разрушит нашу пока
>незрелую, спутанную, несформировавшуюся идентичность российского
>психоаналитика. А в наших национальных проблемах, в "загадочной русской
>душе" мы с удовольствием копаемся сами, но никому не позволим туда лезть,
>тем более какому-то иностранцу! Конечно это сопротивление.
>

Maryna Vinarska's xenophobic soprotivlenie is narrow and focused, but it 
is clearly there nevertheless:

> Psychoanalyse whatever you want, starting from our president to 
> Petrushevskaia. Who cares? But leave our classics alone or keep at 
> least the results of your discoveries by yourself.


> Don't you realize that Onegin, Pechorin and the rest of the company 
> are exactly among those who are not supposed to be presented naked in 
> any way.


> Leave our classics alone, please.

No, thank you.  Your classics are wonderful (including the components of 
"golubaia kul'tura" within them).  Your classics brought me to Russian 
literature in the first place.  You can't chase me away that easily.  
I've been in this business for over thirty years, and even if I drop 
dead tomorrow, what's done is done.  I don't believe Bulgakov's idea 
that "Rukopisi ne goriat," but I do know that you cannot unpublish books.

I see some progress toward the "reader response theory" (Holland, 
Bleich, Iser, etc.) of some decades ago in the comments of Edward Dumanis:

> Let's call the version of
>Onegin that Pushkin had correct by the definition. It does not mean that
>we ever know what that version was but we can utilize some methods of
>reconstruction which, we believe, will lead us closer to that correct
>version. Please keep in mind that it would not necessarily be an
>interesting version. On the other hand, there are might be some
>interesting versions but not necessarily correct ones. This is what I
>meant talking about the two different systems of literary reconstruction,
>and my plea was not to confuse them.
>
But the right hand seems to be taking what the left gives away.  "That 
correct version" is lurking there, always allegedly available for us to 
fall back on to - despite the multiple "interesting" readings now on 
record of Onegin being gay/bisexual/homosexual.

I confess I have not read all of Richardson's huge novel _Clarissa_ , 
but Tatyana Buzina seems correct in saying about it that Lovelace's 
narcissistic problem is the primary issue, not indirect homosexuality.  
Then of course there is the straightforward misogyny ("ruining" women 
and raping Clarissa).  I wonder if the mind of Lovelace has ever been 
psychoanalyzed, by the way?

I understand that a wave of new "blue culture" items has arrived at the 
New York Public Library.  One of them deals with Onegin, although I have 
not yet had the opportunity to read it myself:

>POEZIIA PUSHKINA, ILI PODVIZHNYI PALIMPSEST, M: Novoe lit. obozrenie,
>1999.
>
The author is Oleg Proskurin.

Well, good night, and good luck.

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

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