Piatka

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

15 April 2006

Yevgeny Slivkin writes:

>I do not know about the other Slavic cultures, but in Russian culture which
>is still based on literature the most attractive part of femail body is
>"piatka".
>
>
>Don Guan: (...)pod etim vdov'im chernym pokryvalom
>               Chut' uzen'kuiu piatku ia zametil.
>Leporello: Dovol'no s vas. U vas voobrazhen'e  
>           V minutu dorisuet ostal'noe
>
>                              (A.S. Pushkin)
>


This is a fetishistic conception of female beauty in the mind of "Don 
Guan," while "Leporello" disregards the fetishism, extending the image 
as if it were a normal metonymy in the direction of what is "ostal'noe," 
i.e., in the direction of what normally leads to male sexual arousal.  
Leporello does not seem to understand Don Juan's momentary foot 
fetishism, and follows through with a somewhat vague statement of what 
is more normally perceived as sexually attractive in a woman.  I 
seriously doubt that, for Russian men, "the most attractive part of 
femail body is 'piatka'," although there are SOME men in various 
cultures who cannot achieve arousal and/or orgasm with a woman without 
fixating on her foot - a phallic icon (Peirce) or symbol (Freud).  If 
you think about it, there is a resemblance here to the cross-dressing 
male who needs to wear his wife's dress in order to complete the sexual 
act.  In both cases the castration anxiety provoked by the absence of a 
penis in a woman is overcome (or as sexologist John Money used to say, 
there has to be a "Venus with a penis").  If you wish to delve further 
into this (no doubt disturbing for some of you) phenomenon, see my 
_Signs of the Flesh_ (1985) and the literature cited therein, including 
the earlier paper on the semiotics of the human penis which appeared in 
_Versus_, and which is scheduled to appear in Russian translation.  In 
any case I felt obliged to correct a misconception about what is 
normally sexually attractive to men, including Russian men.

Regards to the list,

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------