Onegin again

[Elena Gapova]

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:

These comments, it seems to me, demonstrate that Onegin's latent 
homosexuality - or his gayness, if you prefer - is detectable even by 
non-psychoanalysts.

I would say, these comments (or their authors) do not detect Onegin's homosexuality, but rather construct it. And this is an interesting thing in itself. Onegin, definitely, is "different" (as well as Pechorin is, and some others), i.e. not like everyone else, but whether he "was" gay or not will forever remains a question, just because Pushkin never said clearly if that was what he meant. So everything we think about Onegin is an interpretation. 

When I was in the 8th grade at school, the interpretation of "being different" (in our textbooks and in literary criticism) was that of "лишний человек".  We used to write сочинения on that topic: "Евгений Онегин - лишний человек". And he was that, because all around him there was царское самодержавие, and a bright person who became bored with the life of leasure, had just nothing else to do. We definitely knew that it was царское самодержавие (and almost tsar himself) that killed Pushkin, and Lermontov seemed to support that point of view.  By the way, as soon as raznochitsy appeared on the scene, lishnie lyudi were gone from it, so our essays deviated to another topic.  

Now, the interpretations that Daniel Rancour-Laferriere quoted are all about Onegin being, as we would now say, gay (I would support the use of the term, for though "gay" as a political identity and a human rights issue emerged in the 1960s, the very idea of that separate identity began to take shape earlier in modernity; I think Foucault writes about it). So царское самодержавие has nothing (almost) to do with his spleen. Which, of course, is also a political point of view, but in a very different way (and clearly "отвлекает трудящиеся массы от классовой борьбы":)    

Isn't it fascinating how wholeheartedly we participate in the construction of "objectivity".

e.g.

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