Libertinage in Russian Culture and Literature http://avaxhome.ws/blogs/ChrisRedfield Russian History and Culture VOLUME 8 Editors-in-Chief Jefffrey P. Brooks The Johns Hopkins University Christina Lodder University of Edinburgh The titles published in this series are li(cid:2)ed at brill.nl/rhc. Libertinage in Russian Culture and Literature A Bio-History of Sexualities at the Threshold of Modernity By Alexei Lalo LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 Cover illu(cid:2)ration: Vlyublyonnye (The Lovers), by Konstantin Somov, 1910. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lalo, Alexei. (cid:7)Libertinage in Russian culture and literature : a bio-history of sexualities at the threshold of modernity / by Alexei Lalo. (cid:7)(cid:7)p. cm. — (Russian history and culture, ISSN 1877-7791 ; v. 8) (cid:7)Includes bibliographical references and index. (cid:7)ISBN 978-90-04-21119-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Russian literature—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Russian literature—20th century—History and criticism. 3. Libertines in literature. 4. Modernism (Literature) I. Title. II. Series. (cid:7)PG3011.L27 2011 (cid:7)891.7’09358—dc23 2011028623 ISSN 1877-7791 ISBN 978 90 04 21119 3 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhofff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. To Professor Igor S. Kon (1928–2011) who pioneered sexology in Russia. CONTENTS Acknowledgments  .......................................................................................... ix Introduction: Approaching Russian Silences and Burlesques  .......... 1 1.  Carnality and Eroticism in the History of Russian Literature: Toward a Genealogy of a Discourse of Silence  ................................. 23 2.  Golden Silences in the Golden Age: Russian Anxieties of the Body and Sexuality from Gogol to Chekhov ..................................... 59 3.  Silence is Golden, Speech is Silver: Corporeality, Sensuality, and “Pornography” in Russian Literature of the Silver Age  ......... 119 4.  Exploring the Impetus of the Silver Age: The Evolution of Discourses of Carnality and Eroticism in Pre-Revolutionary Russian Literature and in Émigré Writing  ........................................ 173 5.  Nabokov’s Lolita and its Precursors: Silver Age Roots and Sexuality in the Novel  .............................................................................. 219 6.  Joseph Brodsky’s Libertinage: Sexual and Erotic Themes in his Poetry  ............................................................................................................ 253 Conclusion: Russia’s “Threshold of Modernity” and Literary Representations of Sexuality in the Era of Bio-power  ................... 271 Bibliography  ..................................................................................................... 277 Index of Names  ................................................................................................ 287 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I must express my enormous gratitude to Katherine Arens, my adviser and mentor at the University of Texas at Austin, for guiding me through diffferent stages of the project and improving the out- come in so many ways. My friend and colleague Nikolai Shchitov of the Far Eastern National University in Vladivostok has offfered his invaluable pieces of advice over the years on diffferent parts of the text helping me in formulating many of the arguments made in this study and fijinding new directions for develop- ing it. I would like to wholeheartedly thank my senior colleagues at the Uni- versity of Texas at Austin who have helped me to work on this study: Brian Bremen, Craig Cravens, Michael Pesenson, Gilbert Rappaport, Nich- olas Shumway, Janet Swafffar, and Charters Wynn. Special warm thanks go to Cynthia Buckley and Mary Neuburger of the UT-Austin Department for Slavic and Eurasian Studies for kindly support- ing me and my work. The book incorporates, in a modifijied form, the following articles, either previously published or forthcoming: “Sexuality in The Tale of Golden Cockerel and the Tradition of Russian Anti-Utopianism.” Ulbandus, The Slavic Review of Columbia University 12 (2009/2010): “Pushkin.” 105–118. “Exploring the Impetus of Russia’s Silver Age: Representations of Sexual- ity and Eroticism in Aleksandr Kuprin, Ivan Bunin and Georgii Ivanov.” Toronto Slavic Quarterly 31 (Spring 2010). http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/31/ lalo31.shtml “Sexuality and Eroticism in Joseph Brodsky’s Poetry: Linguistic and The- matic Peculiarities” Toronto Slavic Quarterly 35 (Winter 2011) http://www. utoronto.ca/tsq “(cid:10)‘Rules of Attraction’ in Nabokov’s Lolita: Sexual Portraits of Main Charac- ters and their Slavic Pedigree” (accepted by Nabokov Online Journal www. nabokovonline.com).