196 Yevgeny Kharitonov (1941 -1981) Four Stories: The Oven
One Boy's Story: How I Got Like That Alyosha-Seryozha The Leaflet All translated by Kevin Moss
226 Gennady Trifonov (b. 1945) Poem: Letter from Prison Three Poems from Tbilisi by Candlelight
Translated by Simon Karlinsky Open Letter to Literaturnaya Gazeta
Translated by Kevin Moss
IV. GAY LIFE REBORN IN THE NEW RUSSIA (1990- )
235 [Anonymous]
Letters to the Editor of Tema and 1/10 Translated by Kevin Moss
258 V. K. and Nikolai Serov
Letters About Prison Life
Translated by Dan Healey
263 Vladimir Makanin (b. 1937)
The Prisoner of the Caucasus (story)
Translated by Anatoly Vishevsky and Michael Biggins
289 Vassily Aksyonov (b. 1932) Around Dupont (story)
Translated by Alia Zbinovsky
301 Yury Past (b. 1954)
No Offense in Love (story)
Translated by Diane Nemec Ignashev
307 Nikolai Kolyada (b. 1957) Slingshot (play)
Translated by Susan Larsen
334 Sergei Rybikov (b. 1962) Lays of the Gay Slavs
Translated by Anatoly Vishevsky and Michael Biggins
342 Dmitry Gubin (b. 1967) Three Poems
Translated by J. Kates
344 Dmitry Kuz'min (b. 1968) Two Poems
Translated by Vitaly Chernetsky
346 Gennady Trifonov (b. 1945)
Two Ballets by George Balanchine (Selections from the novella)
Translated by Michael Molnar
353 Efim Yeliseev [pseud.] (b. 1940s) The Bench (story)
Translated by Anthony Vanchu
380 Vitaly Yasinsky [pseud.] (b. 1946)
A Sunny Day at the Seaside (story) Translated by Anthony Vanchu
384 K. E. [pseud.] (b. 1962) The Phone Call (story)
Translated by Anthony Vanchu
393 Yaroslav Mogutin (b. 1974)
The Death of Misha Beautiful Poem: The Army Elegy
Translated by Vitaly Chernetsky
401 Dimitri Bushuev (b. 1969)
Poem: "The night will burst with hail, and the rain" Echoes of Harlequin (Selections from the novel) Translated by Vitaly Chernetsky
413 Translators
Front cover photo by Vitaly Lazarenko, 1995 Back cover photo by Alexei Sedov
GRAPHICS
Page 2: photo by Vitaly Lazarenko; p. 14: photo of Vyacheslav Ivanov and Mikhail Kuzmin; photo of Alexei Apukhtin; pp. 27, 67, 157, 233: drawings by Victoria Urman-Kuslik; p. 28: drawing of Alexander Pushkin by Heitman; self-portrait drawing by Pushkin; p. 29: self-portrait drawing by Pushkin; p. 48: drawing by Victor Putintsev; p. 68: photo of Mikhail Kuzmin; p. 155: photo of Sergei Esenin and Nikolai Klyuev; p. 158: photo of Yevgeny Kharitonov; p. 226: photo of Gennady Trifonov; p. 234: photo by Vitaly Lazarenko; p. 244: photo by Vitaly Lazarenko; p. 257: photo by Alexei Sedov; p. 262: photo by Vitaly Lazarenko; p. 306: scene from the play Slingshot; p. 345: drawing by Imas Levsky; p. 352: photo by O. Kaminka; p. 379: drawing by Imas Levsky; p. 392: photo by Alexei Sedov; p. 402: photo by Alexei Sedov; p. 412: photo of Dimitri Bushuev.
EDITORS PREFACE
Kevin Moss
Given the pervasive sexophobia in Soviet culture, it is no wonder gay people and gay literature appeared to be completely absent. Yet the material in this collection shows that Russian gay writing was nothing new in the 1990s. As Simon Karlinsky demonstrates in the essay that follows, same-sex love appears in some of the earliest documents of Russian culture. Nevertheless, years of Soviet censorship of any mention of homosexuality and criminalization of sex between men rendered gay-themed writing invisible even to most Western observers.
If asked where to look for gay themes in Russian literature, most Slavists could probably point to the work of Mikhail Kuzmin, the openly gay poet of the Silver Age and author of the first gay novel in Russian, Wings. Many also know Karlinsky's ground-breaking essay, "Russia's Gay Literature and History" first published in Gay Sunshine in 1977 and reprinted, in its revised version, as an introduction to the present volume. But for most, that would exhaust their knowledge. In part our blind spot has been due to the conservatism of older emigre scholars who disapprove of women's and gender studies. Many more recent emigres raised on Soviet puritanism were no more open-minded, especially when it came to homosexuality. And in Russia until the repeal of Article 121 in 1993, it was potentially dangerous to study gay topics. Gay Americans rightly feared the KGB could blackmail them or at the very least forbid them to reenter the Soviet Union if they were found out.' One of the first accounts of gay life in Soviet Russia was published by an American professor under a pseudonym. 2 And to this day researchers can gain access to gay material in some archives only by disguising their real interests.
The situation has changed with the gradual liberalization in Russia itself. For most of the Soviet period, criminalization of homosexuality ensured that gay topics were silenced. Founding of a gay rights group in Leningrad in 1984 proved premature: it was disbanded by the KGB. 3 It was not until glasnost relaxed the restrictions on all topics that discussion could begin again. The Sexual Minorities Association was founded in Moscow in 1989; the next year it became the Moscow Union of Lesbians and Homosexuals, and its newspaper Tema was officially registered in 1990. With the help of the newly-founded International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission the Moscow activists planned to "Turn Red Squares into Pink Triangles" in the summer of 1991. The international conference and film
'Masha Gessen, The Rights of Lesbians and Gay Men in the Russian Federation (San Francisco: IGLHRC, 1994), p. 19.
2 "G," "The Secret Life of Moscow," Christopher Street, June 1980.
3 Igor S. Kon, The Sexual Revolution in Russia (tr.) (New York: Free Press, 1995),
p. 252.
festival were a success in both Leningrad and Moscow, even if only a handful of activists were willing to appear on television or use their real names in print. When, later that same summer, reactionary forces staged a coup, the new gay activists knew where their bread was buttered: they rallied to Yeltsin's side, printing his proclamations on their new Xerox machines and helping to defend the barricades.
Gay publications proliferated: Tema was joined by 1/10, Ty (You), Risk, Gay Slaviane!, Kristofer, Argo, and others (of these, 1/10 has proven to be the most resilient, with a reputed distribution of 50,000 copies). These journals included international and Russian gay news, personal ads, and translations of gay works from the West. But they also published new Russian writing and works by Russian authors previously unavailable in Russia. Increased visibility, however, led to an increased backlash from the ever-more-virulent right wing.
In culture as well as politics, same-sex love and homoeroticism have come out of the closet: there are gay art exhibits, gay plays, and an all-male ballet troupe. Still, the recent boom has its roots in the 70s and 80s. The films of Sergei Paradzhanov, who was imprisoned for several years under Article 121, were distinctly homoerotic. Roman Viktiuk directed increasingly homoerotic plays through the late 80s: his productions sexualized the males and always included handsome shirtless men. If in 1989 Viktiuk's production in San Diego of Kolyada's openly gay-themed Slingshot risked scandal at home, by the mid-90s he was directing "M. Butterfly" and the same Slingshot in Moscow.
In literature as well, gay topics have become increasingly acceptable. Eduard Limonov was perhaps the first to use sex between men to shock his readers in It's Me, Eddie. But in 1979 his novel was of course only published abroad. When post-perestroika authors exhausted the shock-value of straight sexuality, many of them too turned to gay sex, among other ''scandalous" topics, to improve their sales. While this collection includes a few modern straight authors, their works do not exploit homoeroticism or gay themes merely to titillate.
This anthology was conceived as a collection of homoerotic and gay-themed writing in Russian by Russians. It includes a broad range of genres: novel, short story, poem, diary, letter, and essay forms are all represented. We made a conscious decision early in the compilation to include some homoerotic stories from the new gay journals that may not qualify as high literature. These, like some of the letters to the editors of the gay journals, help flesh out the context of gay life in Russia.
We also decided to include only gay male materials. There is a wealth of material on lesbians in Russia that awaits a similar compilation: major authors like Tsvetaeva, Zinovieva-Gannibal, Parnok, and the more recent studies by Diana Burgin, Olga Zhuk, and Masha Gessen, to name a few, should be made more accessible to the wider English-speaking audience.
The sections of the anthology are divided chronologically. The divisions correspond roughly to traditional literary periodization, but they also parallel political changes that affected gay life and changes in the ways gay Russians conceived of themselves.
Part One covers Russian literature's Golden Age, the 19th century, and includes several of its most famous authors. Pushkin and Lermontov are the creators of the Russian verse tradition, and with Gogol and Tolstoy they are among the greatest masters of Russian fiction. None of them was gay in the modern sense of the word. Pushkin and Lermontov's casual treatment of homosexuality show that it was not as stigmatized in early 19th century society as one might expect. Gogol and Tolstoy both reveal their own romantic attachments to men, yet it is unlikely either ever acted on them. Leontiev seems to have been bisexual and probably took advantage of his diplomatic postings in the Near East to indulge his taste in men.
Not surprisingly, many of the materials in this section have been marginalized in various ways: Pushkin and Lermontov's verses published here are not considered central to their canon, Gogol's and Tolstoy's diary selections are buried in obscure volumes, and Leontiev's "Khamid and Manoli" has apparently never been published previously in English. Several of these selections also marginalize homosexuality by setting it in another culture (Pushkin's "Imitation of the Arabic," Leontiev's story set in Crete) or restricting it to a childhood phase (Lermontov's cadet school, Tolstoy's "Childhood").
Part Two, The First Flowering of Gay Culture, demonstrates the explosion of gay literature in the Silver Age (early 20th century). This section too contains major writers, but their works are now more openly gay and they are central, not marginal. In Kuzmin, for example, we find the first gay voice in Russia describing a gay world. Kuzmin wrote both poetry and prose, has a place in the Russian canon, and cannot be read as anything but gay. Sologub, another Silver Age writer associated with Decadence, writes about a sado-masochistic attachment between a schoolteacher and his pupils in his best-known novel of the period. And Rozanov, whose theory that homosexuality is central to Christian asceticism will strike modern Western readers as bizarre, remains an influential figure in Russian philosophical thought.
The flowering of gay culture at the beginning of the 20th Century was to be short-lived. While some argue that homosexuality was decriminalized when the Revolution of 1917 eliminated all laws, there does not appear to be a positive reaction in gay life at the time. Many elite or intellectual homosexuals emigrated, and in 1933 homosexuality was criminalized anew with a vengeance under Stalin. Given the strict censorship applied to all writing under the Soviets, it is not surprising that no gay-themed works were published in Russia until glasnost relaxed the controls. Instead, homosexuality became one of the many themes relegated to underground
and emigre writing.
In Part Three: Hidden from View, authors' biographies compete in their tragic twists with their writings. Trifonov spent 4 years in prison under Article 121. When a gay friend of Kharitonov's was murdered, the writer was brought in and threatened by the KGB, and the resultant stress eventually led to Kharitonov's death. Pereleshin, like many Russians in Siberia, emigrated to China and then to Brazil. In China he was harassed and incarcerated by the Chinese Communists for his homosexuality. All three are major gay writers. Kharitonov, who died in 1981, was virtually unknown until 1993, when his works were finally published in Moscow. Pereleshin, unfortunately, remains little-known in Russia.
Gay Life Reborn (Part Four), which shows the post-Soviet proliferation of gay-themed materials, is the most eclectic. Here we have a wealth of material from the first gay journals: literature, erotic stories, letters to the editor. Compulsory army service for men meant that for many gay men the army was an important place of discovery. And the criminalization of sex between men compounded with the large population of the prison system as a whole under the Soviets meant that prison sexuality played a more central role in the gay imagination than in perhaps any other country. Both of these issues are covered in letters and stories.
If we compare Russian and Western gay writing in the 90s, we find several differences. For one thing, there is hardly any discussion of the impact of aids in Russia. Here aids appears in "The Phone Call" by K. E. and in one letter. The story in which the disease plays the most central role, Aksyonov's "Around Dupont," is set in the U.S. The epidemic has come late to Russia, and its effects have yet to percolate into literary form. As we would expect, there are coming out stories, but they deal only with the issue of the individual coming to terms with his own homosexuality, not with coming out to others. There is little treatment of gayness as a political issue or of the place of gay people in Russian society as a whole. For decades under Soviet rule Russians took refuge in the private sphere and avoided involvement in state politics. The legacy of this separation is reflected here: for most Russian gays, the personal is not yet political.
Perhaps what is most striking is that, for all the differences, the emotional landscape covered in these writings is so familiar, running the full gamut from self-hatred to righteous anger, from passionate love to unrequited lust, from sentimental self-pity to camp wit. They show the range and richness of the gay experience for Russians over the past two centuries.
Out of the Blue owes its very existence to the constant commitment of its publisher, Winston Leyland, to supporting worthwhile projects. The anthology was his long before it was ours, and over the course of our collaboration it was clear that it was a labor of love for him. I am very grateful for his professional advice and commitment to quality, his willingness both to be flexible and to bring intellectual rigor to this project.
PUBLISHERS NOTE
Winston Leyland
The genesis of Out of the Blue goes back fifteen years. At that time I decided to research, edit, and publish an anthology of Russian gay literature in English translation. In my twenty-two years as publisher of Gay Sunshine Press I've had a special interest in bringing to readers collections of gay writing in translation from other cultures and societies: to date these include the two Latin American gay anthologies (Now the Volcano, My Deep Dark Pain Is Love), a medieval Arab anthology (The Delight of Hearts), a Japanese gay anthology (Partings at Dawn), as well as individual books in translation, such as Adonis Garcia, Bom Crioulo and Crystal Boys; and in progress is an Israeli gay anthology.
In the mid 1970s I had already published in Gay Sunshine Journal Professor Simon Karlinsky's pioneering, in-depth article on Russian gay literature—reprinted in a revised version in the present anthology—as well as his translations of poetry by Ivanov, Klyuev, Esenin, Sophia Parnok and Valery Pereleshin. In the early 1980s I located a translator who agreed to take on the anthology project, and we began to research material from the Golden and Silver ages of Russian literature (19th to early 20th centuries). Due to personal circumstances, however, the translator soon had to withdraw from the project, and I shelved it, intending to return to it in a later year. That decision proved to be most fortuitous. In the intervening years Russia underwent its glasnost and perestroika, and innovative gay writing began to appear in newly established alternative gay journals—similar to the process which followed our own Stonewall in 1969. It became obvious to me that this was the right time to resume the project and to incorporate a generous sampling of the new writing into the anthology. The result, dear reader, is in your hands.
I am convinced that this is a remarkably pioneering book. I would like to thank all those who have made it possible: first and foremost the editor, Professor Kevin Moss. The editor and I would also like to thank all the living authors and translators included for their enthusiastic cooperation. Our special thanks to Professors Vitaly Chernetsky, Michael Green, Simon Karlinsky, Anatoly Vishevsky and Anthony Vanchu for their suggestions and assistance, as well as their superb translations; also to the Russian editors who so generously cooperated with the project (see copyright page for a more detailed list of acknowledgments). My own very personal thanks is due to those who were supportive of my vision in coordinating this anthology during the many years in which it was "in progress"— especially Michael Green.
Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949), left, and Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936) in a photo of ca. 1908. From a private collection, Moscow. Ivanov and Kuzmin were housemates but apparently not lovers. See Kuzmin's work on pp. 69-114 and Ivanov's on pp. 140-141 of this book.
Alexei Apukhtin (1841-1893), poet, was a one-time classmate and lover of the composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
INTRODUCTION: RUSSIA'S GAY LITERATURE AND HISTORY
Simon Karlinsky
Like Russian history, Russian literature can be conveniently divided into three periods: the Kievan (tenth to thirteenth centuries a.d.), the Muscovite (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries), and modern (eighteenth century and later). Kievan history began with the unification in the 860s of twelve East Slavic tribes (ancestors of the modern Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians) into a nation with its capital in Kiev. The country's rulers were converted to Christianity in 988. The new religion, which came from Byzantium, brought with it the Slavic alphabet, devised earlier by Byzantine missionaries. The earliest Russian literature, which was also the literature of other East and South Slavic peoples, consisted mainly of historical (chronicles) and religious (prayer books, sermons, lives of saints) genres.
As Vasily Rozanov pointed out in 1913, instances of homosexual love can be found in certain lives of saints (vitae) that date from the Kievan period. For example, "The Legend of Boris and Gleb," written by an anonymous monk at the turn of the eleventh century, enjoyed a wide circulation not only in Russia, but also in other Eastern Orthodox countries, such as Bulgaria, Serbia, and even the non-Slavic-speaking Rumania. (Religious literature was written in all these countries in Old Church Slavic, a medieval South Slavic dialect that had the same function in Orthodox countries that Latin had in Catholic ones.) Combining features of history, hagiography, and lyric poetry, "The Legend" told of the assassination of two young Kievan princes for dynastic reasons. Prince Boris had a favorite squire, George the Hungarian. He had a magnificent golden necklace made for George because "he was loved by Boris beyond all reckoning." When the four assassins pierced Boris with their swords, George flung himself on the body of his prince, exclaiming: "I will not be left behind, my precious lord! Ere the beauty of thy body begins to wilt, let it be granted that my life may end!" Through the standard life-of-saint format, imported from Byzantium, the author's sympathy for the mutual love of Boris and George comes unmistakably through.
George's brother Moses, later canonized by the Orthodox Church as St. Moses the Hungarian, was the only member of Boris's retinue to survive the massacre. His later fate is told in a section devoted to him in The Kievan Paterikon, a compilation of monastic lives dating from the 1220s. Moses was taken prisoner and sold as a slave to a Polish noblewoman who became enamored of his powerful physique. For a year, she tried to seduce him, offering him his freedom and even her own hand in marriage, but Moses preferred the company of her other male slaves. Finally, his mocking refusals exasperated the noblewoman and she ordered that Moses be given
one hundred lashes and castrated. He found his way to the Kievan Crypt Monastery, where he lived for another ten years. The story of Moses the Hungarian is clearly influenced by the biblical account of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. But it can still be read (as Vasily Rozanov maintained) as a tale of a Russian medieval homosexual, punished because he would not enter a heterosexual marriage.
The culturally rich Kievan period ended in 1240, when Kiev was occupied and virtually destroyed by an army of nomadic Mongol invaders. The invasion was followed by 250 years of Mongol captivity. When Russia regained its independence, it had a new capital in Moscow. The Muscovite period may have been the era of the greatest visibility and tolerance for male homosexuality that the world had seen since the days of ancient Greece and Rome. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, foreign travelers and ambassadors, coming from countries where "sodomites" were subjected to torture, burning at the stake, and life-long incarcerations, repeatedly registered their amazement and shock at the unconcealed manifestations of homosexual behavior by Russian men of every social class. Among the numerous testimonies to this visibility in travel and memoir literature are the books by Sigismund von Herberstein and Adam Olearius and an amusing poem by the Englishman George Turberville, "To Dancie." Turberville visited Moscow with a diplomatic mission in 1568, the time of one of Ivan the Terrible's worst political purges. The poet was struck not by the carnage, however, but by the open homosexuality of the Russian peasants.
But homosexuality existed not only among the lower classes; it also extended to the ruling monarchs as well. Grand Prince Vasily III of Moscow (reigned from 1505 to 1533) was homosexual throughout his life. He went to the extent of announcing this fact to other gay men of his time by shaving off his beard when his twenty-year marriage to his first wife was terminated—being beardless was a sort of gay password at the time. During Vasily's second marriage, he was able to perform his conjugal duties only when an officer of his guard joined him and his wife in bed in the nude. The son of Vasily Ill's second marriage, Ivan IV, better known as Ivan the Terrible, was married no less than seven times. But he was also attracted to young men in female attire. One of the most ruthless chieftains of Ivan's political police, Feodor Basmanov, rose to his high position through performing seductive dances in women's clothes at the tsar's court. The nineteenth-century poet A. K. Tolstoy (1817-1875) wrote a historical novel, Prince Serebriany (1862), set during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, where he described with great frankness the paradoxical character of Feodor: a capable military commander; the scheming initiator of murderous political purges; the tsar's bed partner; and an effeminate homosexual who discussed in public the cosmetics he used to improve his complexion and hair.
Also bisexual was the False Dmitri, the runaway monk who claimed to be the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible and who overthrew Tsar Boris Godunov to reign for less than a year in Moscow. During the pretender's wedding to the aristocratic Pole Marina Mniszek in 1606, he was waited upon by his lover, the eighteen-year-old Prince Ivan Khvorostinin. The latter, a scion of a noble family of ancient lineage, was attired for the occasion in a dazzling brocaded outfit, which he managed to change to two other equally dazzling ones in the course of the festivities. In his later life, Khvorostinin repeatedly got into trouble with the authorities, not because of his homosexuality or his involvement with the pretender, but because of his satirical writings in prose and in verse (doggerel, really). His satire was aimed at Russian backwardness and lack of culture. He repeatedly asserted the superiority of Western Protestant countries, their fashions and their high intellectual level. Such praise for the West was considered the height of heresy. The young prince was repeatedly denounced by his friends and servants. But he was quite good at talking his way out of incarceration or confiscation of his property. He never got to realize his great dream of going to live in Holland or Italy; he died of natural causes at the age of thirty-seven.
The main reflection of homosexuality in the literature of Muscovite Russia survives in the writings of Orthodox churchmen who denounced the practice. "Sermon No. 12" by Metropolitan Daniel, a popular Moscow preacher of the 1530s, offers an extended panorama of various homosexual types of his time, both effeminate and not. Archpriest Avvakum was the leader of the Old Believers during the religious schism of the 1650s. (The Old Believers broke away from the Orthodox Church because of the reforms in the ritual and in corrected spelling of biblical names instituted by the Patriarch Nikon; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Old Believer communities gave rise to numerous lesser religious dissenter sects.) In his Autobiography (1673), much admired for its style by later writers, Avvakum states that he refused to hear confession of any man who shaved off his beard. On one occasion, Avvakum enraged a provincial governor by refusing to bless his son, who, by shaving his beard, must have tried to look seductive to other men. The father responded by having the churchman thrown into the river Volga. Apart from clerical admonitions, nothing else restrained the homosexual behavior among the men of Kievan and Muscovite Russia.
Beginning with the earliest known Russian legal code, Russkaia pravda {Russian Justice), promulgated during the reign of Iaroslav the Wise (who ruled from 1019 to 1054) and up to the military regulations of Peter the Great early in the eighteenth century, no Russian legislation prohibited "the sin of Sodom" or any other homosexual practice. As Eve Levin has shown in her book Sex and Society in the World of Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700, unlike Western Europe, which often had laws based on Old Testament in-
terdictions, Eastern Orthodox Christianity considered various forms of sexual deviance not as crimes, but as sins, subject to religious jurisdiction. What Eve Levin established was that in this area the main concern was not so much the sex of the participants or the organs involved, but the relative position of the partners during the sex act. The woman below and the man above was permitted as the "natural" way; reversal of this position was "unnatural" and a sin. Homosexual and lesbian contacts were thus sinful, the sin being of the same magnitude as the reversal of positions in heterosexual intercourse. It was of no concern to civil authorities and it could be expiated by going to confession, doing an assigned number of prostrations, and abstaining from meat and milk products for several months. Summing up the testimony of foreign and native observers of Muscovite Russia, the authoritative nineteenth-century historian Sergei Soloviov wrote: "Nowhere, either in the Orient or in the West, was [homosexuality] taken as lightly as in Russia."
Only after the increase in travel of Russians abroad during the reign of Peter the Great was it understood that the practices the Russians had taken for granted for almost a millennium were regarded with horror or with fury by those who lived in the supposedly more civilized countries in the West. In the eighteenth century, the open homosexuality of the Muscovite period had to go underground. Yet, at the same time, it made a renewed appearance in the religious dissenter sects that split from the Old Believers during that same century. Two of these sects, Khlysty (a distorted plural form of Christ) and Skoptsy (Castrates) had recognizable homosexual and bisexual strains in their culture, folklore, and religious rituals. The major gay poet of the early twentieth century, Nikolai Klyuev, incorporated much of these sects' lore into his visionary poetry.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, Russian literature caught up with the current West European literary forms. The end of that century was in Russia, as elsewhere, the Age of Sentimentalism. The leading Russian Sentimentalist poet was Ivan Dmitriev (1760-1837). He wrote clever satires, saccharine love songs, and didactic fables. Dmitriev was a government official who eventually rose to the position of Minister of Justice in the reign of Alexander I. In his government career, he was nepotistic, surrounding himself with handsome young assistants, some of whom owed their advancement to the fact that they were Dmitriev's lovers. In his poetry, however, he wore a heterosexual mask, pretending to pine for some neoclassical Chloe or Phyllis. The exceptions are his adaptations of La Fontaine's fables "The Two Pigeons" and "The Two Friends," which he turned into unequivocal depictions of love affairs between males.
With Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), Russian literature acquired its first major figure of international significance. A happily adjusted heterosexual, Pushkin viewed alternative forms of sexuality with an amused tolerance that was not otherwise typical of Russian nineteenth-century writers.
In the fall of 1823, while Pushkin was in exile in the south of Russia, he addressed a remarkable letter to the memoirist Philip Vigel (whose subsequently published memoirs described Vigel's orientation and the homosexual circles of his time). In this letter and an attached witty poem, Pushkin commiserated with Vigel for having to live in Kishinev (now the capital of Moldova) rather than in the civilized city of Sodom, ''that Paris of the Old Testament." He mentioned three handsome brothers in Kishinev who might be receptive to Vigel's advances, and invited him for a visit in Odessa, but with the proviso: "To serve you I'll be all too happy/With all my soul, my verse, my prose,/But Vigel, you must spare my rear!" In his poems that imitated the Greek Anthology or Muslim poets, Pushkin assumed the persona of a man attracted to adolescent boys, a literary strate-gem that had no correlates in his life.
Pushkin's younger contemporary mikhail lermontov (1814-1841) wrote of homosexual love in the cycle of poems known as his "Hussar" or "Cadet" poems. Written when he was twenty and a student at a military academy, two of the five poems of this cycle depict the sexual encounters between other cadets. Though the theme is treated with clear distaste, the details are so concrete that Lermontov must have personally witnessed the incidents he described, nikolai gogol (1809-1852), only ten years younger than Pushkin, was one of the most harrowing cases of sexual self-repression to be found in the annals of literature. Totally and exclusively gay, Gogol spent his life denying this fact to himself and to others, mainly for religious reasons. His stories and plays are permeated with fear of marriage and other forms of sexual contact with women, but Gogol enveloped this theme in such a cloud of symbols and surrealistic fantasies that his contemporary readers failed to discern its presence. A sketch for his second play, Marriage (a headlong attack on the entire institution of matrimony), mentioned an official who so loved his subordinate that he slept in the same bed with him, a passage that was removed from the finished version of the play. This brilliant writer committed suicide at the age of forty-three, after confessing his true sexuality to a bigoted priest who ordered him to fast and pray day and night if he wanted to escape hellfire and brimstone.
The two giants of Russian nineteenth-century literature, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, were men of the Victorian age who regarded all forms of sexuality as impure, distasteful, and dangerous. The theme of homosexuality in the life of leo tolstoy (1828-1910) deserves a special study that will undoubtedly be written one day. In his childhood, Tolstoy kept falling in love with both boys and girls, and recorded such experiences in the first two novels of his early autobiographical trilogy Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth (1857). While serving in the army in the 1850s, Tolstoy was strongly attracted to several of his fellow soldiers. But he noted in his diaries that he rejected same-sex love because his attraction to men was purely physical—he was drawn only to very handsome men whose charac-
ters were usually not admirable—while his love for women was based on their personalities and good qualities and not exclusively on their looks. In his later novels, Tolstoy showed male homosexuality in a negative light.
Anna Karenina (1877) contains a brief vignette of two inseparable army officers, whom Anna's lover Alexei Vronsky and his friends avoid, suspecting them, not without reason, of having an affair with each other (Part Two, Chapter XIX). In Resurrection (1899), the aged Tolstoy wanted to indict the inequities and corruption of Tsarist Russia. The novel contains an episode about a high government official who gets convicted for violating paragraph 995 of the criminal code. (Criminalization of male homosexuality for the entire population was enacted in the code of 1832-1845, promulgated during the reign of the most repressive of the Romanovs, Nicholas I. The law was hard to enforce and was very rarely applied.) The convicted homosexual arouses the warm sympathy of St. Petersburg high society and, since his sentence calls for resettlement in Siberia, he arranges a transfer to one of the major Siberian cities, keeping the same rank. Later in the novel, a reptilian government-employed lawman (who spitefully railroads the novel's heroine, Maslova, to a Siberian penal colony) defends equal rights for homosexuals and proposes that marriage between men be legalized. Both of these characters were meant to suggest the country's moral decay.
fyodor dostoevsky (1821-1881) was far less interested in homosexuality than Tolstoy. In an early novel, Netochka Nezvanova (1849), Dostoevsky depicted a passionate lesbian infatuation between two adolescent girls. In Notes from the House of the Dead (1862), a semifictionalized account of Dostoevsky's own experiences in a Siberian hard-labor camp, there are veiled indications that homosexuality was practiced by some of the convicts. But in the curious episode that involves the violent and hardened professional criminal Petrov, the narrator seems perplexed about the reasons for Petrov's fondness for his own person. Petrov seeks the narrator out, plies him with meaningless questions just to be in his presence, and constantly does him favors. In recompense, all Petrov wants is to undress the narrator at the communal baths and to soap and wash his body while seated at his feet. The narrator (who clearly stands for Dostoevsky) offers several tentative psychological explanations for Petrov's behavior but finds them all unsatisfactory. The most obvious explanation of all, which is that Petrov found the narrator physically attractive and desirable, just did not occur to Dostoevsky.
Some of the less-known Russian writers of the second half of the nineteenth century also touched on homosexual themes. Ivan Kushchevsky (1847-1876) was a radical writer who lived only long enough to write a volume of stories and the satirical novel Nikolai Negorev, or The Prosperous Russian (1871). The title character belongs to a coterie of idealistic young revolutionaries, all of whom he eventually drops. At the end of the
novel, looking for opportunities to start a new career, Negorev encounters an apparent homosexual named Stern, who has "prohibited relationships with several young men." Through Stern, Negorev meets a group of aristocratic young men, who refer to each other as "countess" or "princess," brag of their conquests of other men, and are much given to shrieking. Negorev decides to investigate this group, hoping to blackmail one of them —for homosexuality, the modern reader expects. However, the author becomes confused: The fellow does get blackmailed, but for having gotten pregnant the daughter of a powerful official and trying to obtain an illegal abortion for her. By denouncing the couple to the young woman's father and offering to marry her himself so as to cover up her condition, Negorev sets himself up for a major career in the government bureaucracy. (Unlike in Germany or England of the time, blackmail for homosexuality seems to have been unknown in nineteenth-century Russia.)
Homosexuality became somewhat more visible in Russian life and literature after the momentous reforms initiated by Tsar Alexander II in the early 1860s, which abolished serfdom, replaced an archaic legal system with trials by jury open to press and public, and reduced the censorship of books and periodicals, konstantin leontiev (1831-1891) was an ultraconserva-tive political philosopher, a literary critic, and novelist, who spent much of his life in consular service in the countries of the Near East. Bisexual-ity was a theme he often treated in his fiction. In his early novel A Husband's Confession (1867), the husband loves his young wife, but he also falls in love with a mustachioed Turk taken captive during the Crimean War. To give expression to this second love, he encourages his wife to become the Turk's mistress and to run away with him to Turkey. Such simultaneous infatuation of a man with a well-bred but drab female and with a robust and colorful male is also the situation in Leontiev's best-known novel, The Egyptian Dove (1881). His story "Hamid and Manoli," published in 1869, is an account of a love affair between two men, a Turk and a Cretan, which ends in a bloody tragedy because of the prejudices of the Cretan's Christian family. It is the only piece of Russian literature of the nineteenth century that denounces the ugliness of homophobia.
One of the greatest Russian celebrities in the second half of the nineteenth century, both at home and abroad, was the explorer and author of travel books Nikolai Przhevalsky (1839-1888). His accounts of his travels and adventures (such as his famous discovery of the undomesticated horse, Equusprzevalskii) were best-sellers in Russia and were widely popular in translation in England and America. A recent biography by Donald Ray-field showed that each of Przhevalsky's expeditions was planned to include a young male lover-companion. The great love of his life was Piotr Kozlov, who spent Przhevalsky's last years with him and who later became a noted explorer in his own right. The literary qualities of Przhevalsky's books were greatly admired by Anton Chekhov, who in his obituary of the explorer
called him "a hero as vital as the sun." Vladimir Nabokov, in the most personal and perfect of his Russian novels, The Gift, based the character of the protagonist's father on Przhevalsky (minus his homosexuality). Nabokov's description of the father's expeditions to the remote regions of Central Asia is a set of variations on themes from Przhevalsky's writings.
The decade of the 1890s saw a mass emergence of lesbians and gay men on the Russian cultural scene. There were several quite visible gay grand dukes (brothers, uncles, or nephews of the last three tsars). The most overt of them was the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (1857-1905), brother of Alexander III and uncle of Nicholas II, who appeared with his current lover at official functions and at the theater and opera. Close to the tsar's court was the reactionary publisher Prince Vladimir Meshchersky. When the latter got involved in a scandal because of his affair with a bugle boy from the imperial marching band in the late 1880s, Tsar Alexander III ordered the case to be quashed and the witnesses silenced. An associate of the Grand Duke Sergei and of Meshchersky was the poet Alexei Apukhtin (1841-1893), author of flashy salon lyrics and a classmate and one-time lover of Peter Tchaikovsky. Apukhtin's and Tchaikovsky's orientation was generally known, as was that of the liberal lesbian publisher Anna Yevrei-nova (1844-1919) and the poet and editor Polyxena Soloviova (1867-1924). Both of these women lived openly with their female partners, arrangements that were accepted by their families and by society. The association of critics and artists, "The World of Art," headed by Sergei Diaghilev, which in 1898 launched their epochal journal of the same name, was predominantly gay. It was on the pages of that journal that the Symbolist poet zinaida gippius (1869-1945) published in 1899 her travelogue "On the Shores of the Ionian Sea," where she described in detail the homosexual colony at Taormina in Sicily, which was grouped around Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, the pioneer photographer of male nudes. Elsewhere, Gippius published an extended account of a gay and lesbian bar that she had visited in Paris.
The massive, nationwide uprising known as the Revolution of 1905 forced Nicholas II to issue his October Manifesto, which authorized a parliamentary system, legalized all political parties, and virtually abolished preliminary censorship of books and periodicals. From 1906 onward, there appeared in Russia lesbian and gay poets, fiction writers, and artists who saw in the new freedom of expression a chance to describe their lifestyles in an honest and affirmative manner, mikhail kuzmin (1872-1936), the most outspoken, prolific and well-known of Russia's gay writers, made his literary debut in 1906, when the prestigious art journal Vesy (Libra) serialized his autobiographical novel Wings.
Published in book form one year later, Wings used the format of the Bildungsroman (novel of self-education), following the example of such Western classics as Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and Flaubert's Sentimental
Education. The young Ivan (Vanya) Smurov's growing attraction to his older friend Larion turns to fear and revulsion when he learns that Larion moves in St. Petersburg's gay circles and patronizes a gay bathhouse. Vanya learns to accept his own feelings after he stays with an Old Believer family on the Volga who tell him that any form of love is better than repression and hatred. Vanya discovers that he cannot respond sexually to women; then he takes an eye-opening trip to Italy. The novel ends with Vanya accepting Larion's offer to live and travel together, a decision that makes him feel as if he had grown wings.
On its first appearance, Wings was attacked as pornographic by both the conservative and left-wing publications. But the novel's acclaim by the leading poets and critics of the day soon put Kuzmin beyond the reach of journalistic sniping. It was as a poet that Kuzmin soon acquired the stature of a major figure. Despite the themes of gay love and gay sex that permeated his poetry, it was extolled by the greatest poets of the age, from Alexander Blok to Vladimir Mayakovsky. Between 1906 and the early 1920s, Kuzmin wrote and published several other novels, many short stories, plays, and a great deal of poetry. His plays on gay themes, such as Dangerous Precaution (1907) and The Venetian Madcaps (1914) were performed at professional theaters and at amateur theatricals. A whole generation of Russian gay men in the decade before the October Revolution saw Kuzmin as their spokesman. His poetry and Wings became their catechism.
Much gay literature was published in Russia during the first two decades of our century. The leading Symbolist poet vyacheslav ivanov (1866-1949) brought out in 1911 his much-acclaimed book of verse Cor Ardens, which contained a section called "Eros" about the married poet's homosexual experiences. Ivanov's wife, lydia zinovieva-annibal (1866-1907), specialized in the topic of lesbian love. Her short novel Thirty-Three Freaks and her collection of stories The Tragic Zoo (both 1907) were much discussed in the press and made lesbian love a better-known phenomenon. Around 1910, there appeared in Russia a group of poets called "peasant," not so much because of their origins, but because the survival of the peasant way of life in the twentieth century and a sort of peasant separatism from the rest of society were their central concerns. The undisputed leader of this group was nikolai klyuev (1887-1937). Born in a peasant family that belonged to the Khlysty sect, Klyuev learned (and taught his followers) how to combine his native village folklore with the modernist style and versification developed by the Russian Symbolist poets. Klyuev's undisguised homosexuality did not prevent most critics and intellectuals of the time from considering him the leading literary spokesman for the whole of Russian peasantry.
Klyuev's poetry, with its crowded imagery and a tone akin to magic spells and incantations, served as a model for a whole school of poets and fiction writers. The most notable of his disciples was sergei esenin (1895-
1925), much better known in the West because of his brief marriage to the dancer Isadora Duncan. For about two years (1915-1917), Klyuev and Ese-nin lived together as lovers and wrote about it in their poetry. Although married during his short life to three women, Esenin could write meaningful love poetry only when it was addressed to other men.
His last poem, which was also his suicide note, was addressed to a young Jewish poet who had spent the night with him a few days earlier. Because Esenin's poetry was an object of a veritable cult in the last decades of the Soviet system, all references to his homosexuality, in his poetry and in memoirs about him, were banned. Most Russians today respond with stupefaction or rage when this aspect of his life and writings is mentioned.
The February Revolution of 1917 brought to power moderate democrats and libertarian Socialists and it turned the country into a democracy for the next eight months. But the seizure of power by Lenin and Trotsky in October led to the negation and reversal of all the rights that homosexual and lesbian writers and artists had gained through the revolutions of 1905 and February 1917. Because the most visible homosexuals of the prerevo-lutionary decades belonged to royalty or aristocracy (the grand dukes, Meshchersky) or were politically ultraconservative (Leontiev, Przhevalsky, Tchaikovsky), the Bolshevik government assumed from the start that homosexuality was the vice of upper-class exploiters. Lenin himself, who had set out to create the Soviet Union in his own image, was a blue-nosed Puritan in sexual and cultural matters. Lenin was shocked that in Germany women were allowed to read Freud and he declared unequivocally that he saw any kind of sexual liberation as antisocial and non-Marxist.
Much has been written in Germany and England in the 1920s and in America from the 1970s on about the supposed abrogation by the Bolsheviks of all antihomosexual laws after they came to power. What they actually abrogated was the entire Criminal Code of the Russian Empire, of which paragraphs 995 and 996 were a very small portion. A new criminal code was promulgated in 1922 and amended in 1926. This new code did not mention sexual contacts between consenting adults, which meant that male homosexuality was legal. (Lesbianism was never criminalized in Russia.) But as discovered recently, there were two show trials staged right after the appearance of the 1922 code. One trial was of a group of Baltic Fleet sailors who had rented a large apartment in which to receive their gay lovers and friends. The other one involved a lesbian couple, one of whom had changed her name to its masculine form and took to wearing male clothes so that she and her lover could be seen as spouses. The trials were publicized only locally; internationally, the Soviet Union pretended to have the most liberal legislation on sexuality in the world until the late 1920s. The local press accounts recognized that homosexuality did not violate any Soviet law, but stressed that overt homosexual behavior should be punished because the condition is contagious and might lead young people to imitate the be-
havior of the gay sailors or the lesbian couple.
The flowering of gay and lesbian poetry, fiction, drama, and art that existed during the decade that preceded the October Revolution was gradually stifled in the 1920s. The right to print gay-affirmative works, won after the Revolution of 1905, did not become extinct until the late 1920s. Such acclaimed figures of earlier times as Kuzmin and Klyuev were doing their best work during that decade. But their books could no longer be advertised or receive favorable reviews in the Soviet press. One of the worst casualties of these new conditions was the fine lesbian poet sophia parnok (1885-1933). Her two most important books of verse, Music (1926) and In a Hushed Voice (1928), were greeted by total silence in the press, and no one but the poet's friends knew that these books were published. (In the 1970s, the Soviet scholar Sophia Poliakova wrote the biography of Parnok and prepared an edition of her poetry, which she sent abroad to be published. This brought Parnok the recognition she was denied in her lifetime.)
Among the numerous talented poets and fiction writers who made their debuts in the 1920s, there was not a single openly lesbian or gay figure. By 1922, numerous noted writers had emigrated to the West, among them the great bisexual poet marina tsvetaeva (1892-1941), who did her most important writing while in exile; also, the openly gay critic georgy adamovich (1894-1972) and gay poet anatoly steiger (1907-1944); while gay poet valery pereleshin (1913-1992) emigrated to China and later to Brazil. The most important novelist produced by the Russian emigration, Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), later an American writer, had homosexual characters in many of his fictions, though he usually wrote of them in a sarcastic tone.
Of the gay writers who stayed in Russia, Kuzmin and Parnok could no longer publish their work after the late 1920s. Esenin was driven to suicide in 1925, and Klyuev was sent to a gulag camp, where he died. Stalin's criminalization of male homosexuality in 1933 led to the worst stigma-tization and persecution of homosexuals in Russia's history. The mass arrests in 1934 and periodic crackdowns since that time led to the virtual invisibility of gay men and lesbians in Russian life and literature for the next four decades. Only in the 1970s did there appear underground gay writers, such as the poet gennady trifonov (b. 1945), who served a hard labor sentence from 1976 to 1980 for privately circulating gay poetry in manuscript; and the fiction writer yevgeny kharitonov, who died at the age of forty in 1981, but was published to great acclaim in 1993. With the coming of glasnost, gay figures of the past, such as Leontiev and Kuzmin, have been reprinted; a number of gay periodicals have appeared; and foreign gay novels by Marcel Proust and James Baldwin have been translated. Despite the present chaotic conditions in Russia, the recent decriminalization of homosexuality by Boris Yeltsin's government suggests that the future of Russian gay literature might well turn out to be promising.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burgin, Diana Lewis. "Laid Out in Lavender: Perception of Lesbian Love in Russian Literature and Criticism of the Silver Age, 1893-1917." Sexuality and the Body in Russian Culture. Jane T. Costlow, Stephanie Sandler, and Judith Vowles, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993: 177-203.
G. R. "Protsessy gomoseksualistov" [Legal proceedings against homosexuals]. Ezhenedel'nik sovetskoi iustitsii [Soviet Justice Weekly] 33 (1922): 16-17.
Herberstein, Sigismund von. Description of Moscow and Muscovy. Bertold Picard, ed. J. B. C. Grundy, trans. London: Dent, 1966.
Hopkins, William. "Lermontov's Hussar Poems." Russian Literature Triquarterly 14 (1976): 36-47.
Karlinsky, Simon. Marina Tsvetaeva. The Woman, Her World and Her Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987 or 1988.
. "Russia's Gay Literature and Culture: The Impact of the October Revolution."
Hidden from History. Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. Martin Bauml Duber-man, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr., eds. New York: New American Library, 1989: 348-364.
. "Russia's Gay History and Literature. (1 lth-20th Centuries)." Gay Sunshine
29/30(1976): 1-7. Reprinted in Gay Roots. Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine. Winston Leyland, ed. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1991:81-104. . The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1976. Paperback reissue, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Kozlovskii, Vladimir. Argo russkoi gomosek-sual'noi subku'ltury [The Slang of Russian Homosexual Subculture]. Benson, Vt.: Chalidze Publications, 1986.
Levin, Eve. Sex and Society in the World of Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989.
Moss, Kevin (Editor). Out of the Blue: Russia's Hidden Gay Literature—An Anthology. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1997.
Olearius, Adam. The Travels ofOlearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia. Samuel Baron, ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967.
Poznansky, Alexander. Tchaikovsky. The Quest for the Inner Man. Boston: Schirmer, 1991.
Ray field, Donald. The Dream of Lhasa: The Life of Nikolai Przhevalsky, Explorer of Central Asia. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976.
Rozanov, Vasilii. Liudi lunnogo sveta [People of lunar light]. 2d ed. St. Petersburg: Ivan Mitiurnikov, 1913.
Turberville, George. "To Dancie." Rude and Barbarous Kingdom. Lloyd E. Berry and Robert O. Crommey, eds. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.
Zen'kovskii, Sergei. "Drug Samozvantsa, eretik i stikhotvorets. Kniaz'Ivan Khvorosti-nin" [The Pretender's friend, heretic and poet. Prince Ivan Khvorostinin]. Opyty 6 (1956): 77-88.
Zlobin, Vladimir. A Difficult Soul. Zinaida Gippius. Simon Karlinsky, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
GAY THEMES IN GOLDEN AGE LITERATURE (19th Century)
The adolescent Pushkin—from an engraving by E. Heit-man that suggests Pushkin's black ancestry (he was an octoroon).
Self-portrait drawing by Pushkin with caricature aspects.
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is the greatest and best-loved figure in Russian letters. His poetry, prose, and drama set the standard for Russian literature and in many ways created the modern literary language. He was one of the first to make a living by his writing, and his Romantic political verse often got him into trouble with the authorities. Later in his life, Tsar Nicholas I acted as his personal censor. As Michael Green points out, Pushkin was not gay, but he was what we would call gay-friendly, as can be seen from a joking letter Pushkin wrote to his wife about his gay friend Wie-gel: "Tell Princess Viazemskaya that she need not worry about the portrait of Wiegel and that from that side my honest conduct is above suspicion; but out of respect for her request I will place his portrait behind all the others." (to N. N. Pushkina, 21 October 1833)
IMITATION OF THE ARABIC
[Podrazhanle arabskomu, 1835]
Translated by Michael Green
Sweet lad, tender lad,
Have no shame, you're mine for good;
We share a sole insurgent fire,
We live in boundless brotherhood.
I do not fear the gibes of men; One being split in two we dwell, The kernel of a double nut Embedded in a single shell.
Self-portrait drawing by Pushkin (bottom). The other head (top) is probably that of Nikolai Rayevsky ("we loved each other," Pushkin says in a dedication addressed to him).
A PUSHKIN PUZZLE
Michael Green
for Gore Vidal
The poem "Imitation of the Arabic" (printed on the previous page) is likely to take the non-Russian reader by surprise. Such sentiments are not expected of so confirmed a womanizer as Alexander Pushkin, whose great "novel in verse," Eugene Onegin, might well be said to have set the pattern for the fictional treatment of relations between the sexes in nineteenth-century Russian narrative: a lyrical, noble-spirited heroine disappointed by a caddish, if brilliant, hero. What are we to make of it?
This "Imitation of the Arabic" dates from 1835; its author was killed in a duel in January 1837. The poem is to be found in the third volume of a Soviet "complete" (if censored) edition of his work. Although in general liberally supplied with scholarly notes, the edition has no more to tell us about this particular poem than that it did not appear in print during the poet's lifetime—not a word about Pushkin's acquaintance with Arabic literature, no suggestion of a poem on which it might have been modeled. Can this enigmatic little piece be no more than a literary exercise? It would, of course, be as absurd to recruit Pushkin for gay liberation as it would be, on the strength of his Abyssinian great-grandfather Annibal, to claim him as a precursor of black nationalism—even if he did refer to his "nigger profile" as well as to "the skies of my Africa." This said, though, let us not ignore the poem's uncanny anticipation of the mood of a gay pride manifesto: "Have no shame . . ."; "I do not fear the gibes of men ..."
Soviet scholarship, at once provincial and prudish, was more than a little uncomfortable with this aspect of Russia's supreme national genius. Pushkin's attitude to the physical expression of desire between males (to avoid such an anachronism as "homosexuality") seems to have been one of cheerful and benign acceptance. A friend from the scapegrace underground literary clubs of his student days was Filipp Filippovich Wiegel, a career diplomat, later Vice-Governor of Bessarabia, and the author of some fascinating reminiscences that have yet to be published in full. Wiegel made no secret of his sexual preference, and Pushkin, in response to his old pal's invitation to pay him a visit in "the accursed town of Kishinev," where he had just completed three years exile, delivered himself of a missive (it survives in a rough draft) that is unique in the correspondence of one of Russia's most entertaining letter writers. Here are some passages of interest:
You are bored in the godforsaken hole where I was bored for three years. I want to distract you if only for a minute—so I'll pass on the information you asked me for in your letter to Shvarts. Of your three acquaintances, the smallest could
be put to good use; N.B. he sleeps in the same room as his brother Mikhail, and what they get up to really makes the whole place shake—that should enable you to draw certain conclusions, which I entrust to your experience and good sense. The oldest brother is as stupid as a bishop's crosier, as you have already noted. Vanka jacks off.
Which of this well nigh anonymous fraternal trinity can Vanka be? Or is he some other available lad? We shall never know. Odd that Wiegel has requested this rather specialized information in a letter to Dmitri Maxi-movich Shvarts, an official in the service of the governor of southern Russia, Pushkin's anglomane bugbear Count Vorontsov. Could a surreptitious pederastically-predisposed cabal have been flourishing under the count's very nose? But let us give Pushkin his due: the Sodom mentioned toward the end of the letter to Wiegel is associated with incest rather than the "vice" for which its name has become a byword:
I drink like Lot of Sodom, and regret that I don't have a single daughter with me. The young folk got together the other day. I was chief carouser—we all got drunk and made the rounds of the brothels.
The prose portion of the letter is preceded by a rhymed diatribe against a town of which a lengthy involuntary sojourn had given him a cordial detestation. Here are the concluding lines:
But in Kishinev, as you know all too well,/You won't find any lovely ladies,/ Or a madam, or a bookseller./I lament your sad fate!/Toward evening, perhaps/ three handsome lads will come your way;/But anyway, my friend,/As soon as I have some free time/I shall present myself;/I'll be happy to be of service to you/ With verse, with prose, with all my heart,/But, Wiegel—have mercy on my ass!
Pushkin follows this outrageous—and of course famous—final line with something in the nature of an apology: "This is verse, and consequently not to be taken seriously—don't be cross but give us a little smile, dear Filipp Filippovich." It is curious, and somehow very Pushkinian, that the poet does not address his correspondent in the tu form (except in the poem) but in the more formal second person plural: Wiegel was not a close friend.
Pushkin was to give his most ambiguous expression of the theme of sexual nonconformism in a poem of a mere three lines published in 1826. Titled "Sappho," this poetic jotting is concerned, as the editorial note informs us, with the love of the Greek poetess for Phaon:
O happy youth, you've captured me with all: Your spirit proud and ardent and urbane, And with the girlish beauty of first youth.
Sappho, whose name and the name of whose island, Lesbos, were later to denote the form of love of which she is the most famous exemplar, is made to praise the beauty ("girlish," naturally) of a young man. Pushkin would not have been a whit put out—rather the reverse, it is safe to assume—by the assertion of modern scholarship that "the familiar story of Sappho's love for Phaon, and suicide by leaping into the sea from the Leucadian cliff is a transparent later forgery." An attempt to clean up the lady's act?
A decade later, in the last year of his creative life, Pushkin was to hymn the decidedly ungirlish beauty of a stripling in an epigram in the style of the Greek Anthology, using the elegiac meter that is as artificial in Russian as it is in English (yes, another literary exercise). The poem is one of a pair of quatrains that appeared in the December 1836 number of the Art Gazette as adornment to an article by the obsequiously patriotic dramaturge Nestor Kukolnik (The Hand of the Almighty Saved the Fatherland) titled "A St. Petersburg Exhibition at the Imperial Academy of the Arts." The more memorable of these two quatrains, each of which is inspired by a statue of a Russian peasant youth demonstrating a Russian peasant sport, "On the Statue of a player at Svaika" (a heavy nail that has to be cast into a ring) connects the Russian youth with the classical Greek ideal of the discus thrower:
Full of beauty, full of tension, to effort a stranger, a stripling, Slender, sinewy, light as air—is reveling in the nimble sport!
Here's a fitting companion for you, O Discobulus! Worthy, by my oath, When sporting's done with, to rest beside you, locked in amicable embrace.
In an erudite article, "Pushkin's Anthological Epigrams," published in 1986, S. A. Kibalnik, a Soviet scholar, observes drily that the four late Pushkin epigrams (of which our Svaika poem is one) are all addressed to a "Youth," adding that:
Epigrams either addressed to youths or describing them are extremely rare in the Russian anthological tradition and very frequent in the Greek. . . .
We shall follow Mr. Kibalnik's admirable reticence and make no further comment. And what of the remaining two epigrams addressed to youths? Both were unpublished during Pushkin's lifetime. The first, which dates from January 1833, offers the Russian urchin a couplet's worth of sensible advice:
Be moderate at the feast, O youth, and Bacchus' sibilant brew Mingle with water's temperate stream as well as with sagacious talk.
A Pushkin Puzzle / 33
The second, dating from January 1835, mates masculine indifference (or satiety) with feminine perseverance in a roseately sentimental cameo: the youth has suddenly fallen asleep, his head resting on the shoulder of the girl who has been bitterly upbraiding him. She smiles at the sleeper, not wishing to wake him, shedding quiet tears.
Let us turn from the poet's works to his life—or rather to his death. Georges-Charles d'Anthes was the dashing young guardsman (he was twenty-three years old when he exchanged shots with Pushkin) who killed the poet in a duel in January 1837. Prince Alexander Trubetskoi was d'Anthes's army messmate (they shared a billet), and the short memoir "Account of the Relations between Pushkin and d'Anthes," written more than fifty years after the tragic events of 1837, is certainly not intended to blacken the character of the man who had extinguished the luminary of Russian letters—on the contrary, Trubetskoi is evidently much impressed with his companion's worldly success and by his triumphs with the fair sex. It is equally evident that he has no reverence for the memory of Pushkin (whose character is pronounced "unbearable" more than once in the course of this memoir). As a member of the "high society" of which he is writing, the prince is untroubled by the sexual relations he alleges to have existed between d'Anthes and his patron and foster-parent; such relations merit no more than a shrug and the lifting of an eyebrow. Tone and intention are not denunciatory:
He was an excellent comrade, a model officer. He was guilty of a few pranks, but they were all quite innocent, the usual harmless tricks that young folk get up to—apart from one thing, that is, which we only found out about much later. I don't quite know how to put it: did he live with Heckeren or did Heckeren live with him? ... In the high society of those days there was nothing unusual about buggery [Trubetskoi resorts to a word derived from the French— bugrstvo — that is not to be located in the seventeen volume Academy dictionary of the Russian language]. Judging by the fact that d'Anthes was constantly in pursuit of the ladies, one has to suppose that in his relations with Heckeren he played the passive role only. He was very handsome and had been spoiled by his unfailing success with the ladies: his attitude toward them was very much that of a foreigner—bolder and freer than that of us Russians.
What Alexander Trubetskoi is saying here is that the man whose name is familiar to every Russian schoolboy as Pushkin's killer was, not to put too fine a point on it, the kept boy of his adoptive father, the Dutch ambassador at the court of St. Petersburg, Jacob Theodore Derk Borchard Anne, Baron van Heckeren, to give him his full name. Could this really have been so? A distinguished French biographer of Pushkin discounts the story: "If Heckeren had been known as a homosexual, Pushkin would have been only too happy to add that charge to the list of accusations in his final letter of insult. . . . Even more significant is the fact that throughout the
long and brilliant careers of both men, no such allegation was ever made about either of them. . . ."
One somehow fails to be convinced by Henri Troyat's certainties. Can there really have been not so much as a breath of scandal concerning the relations between the middle-aged antique-collecting bachelor "known throughout St. Petersburg for his malicious tongue" and the strapping young horseguardsman with whom he had contrived a domestic partnership? And this in a city where, to repeat Trubetskoi, "there was nothing unusual about buggery"? (a free translation of "V vysshem obshchestve bylo razvito bugrstvo": buggery was developed in high society). Troyat somewhat undermines his own case by quoting the words of one of Pushkin's closest friends, Prince Peter Viazemsky: "Baron Heckeren was known for his immorality; he surrounded himself with shamefully depraved young men. ..." Why then did not Pushkin make use of Heck-eren's homosexuality, of which it is difficult to believe he could have been unaware, as serviceable ammunition? But Heckeren was a foreign dignitary of noble birth; it is inconceivable that Pushkin would have even considered—as Troyat would have him do—alluding to unsubstantiated rumor of so "unmentionable" a nature in a missive to such an adversary. Pushkin was a gentleman.
Pushkin was not incapable of resorting to the poison dart of the pen in such a case—if the context was purely literary and Russian. Let us examine a squib from the poet's pen that made the rounds of the St. Petersburg of Nicholas I:
To make the Academy complete Dondook the prince has claimed a seat. Such honor ill befits, we're told, Dondook—how come he sits so high? The answer, friends, I'll not withhold: Because he has a butt—that's why.
Let us cite the note on this poem in our Soviet edition of Pushkin's collected works, which is unusually forthcoming:
The epigram was passed from hand to hand. It was directed against the Vice President of the Academy of Sciences M. A. Dondukov-Korsakov, who had no scientific publications and who owed his position to the patronage of S. S. Uvarov. The poem hints [!] at the vice linking Uvarov and Dondukov-Korsakov. Thanks to Pushkin's epigram the name "Dunduk" has become a common term.
The Soviet edition, of course, presents a "cleaned-up" version of the final line ("Because he has something to sit down with") in order to avoid the printing of the dreadful word "butt" (zhopa). Not only was Prince Dondukov-Korsakov (it is Pushkin who emends the first syllable of his
A Pushkin Puzzle / 35
name, our own version of which is an attempt to find an Anglo-American sonic equivalent) vice president of the Academy of Sciences, he also occupied—thanks to his affair with Count Uvarov, the minister of education—a post in which he could be far more of a threat to Pushkin the writer, that of chairman of the board of censors. It was as a writer—and Pushkin the proud aristocrat of ancient lineage was first and foremost a writer —that our poet suffered from the attentions of this loving couple. In 1834 Pushkin succeeded in obtaining from the government (= Nicholas I: L 'etat c'est moi) a grant of 20,000 roubles toward the publication of his study of the leader of a peasant revolt some sixty years previously, in the reign of Nicholas' beloved grandmother Catherine the Great (true, at the expense of changing his original title from History of Pugachev to History of the Pugachev Rebellion: as Nicholas succinctly observed, "A rebel can have no history"). The book was not a success, and a furious diary entry for February 1835 might be read as a footnote to the squib englished above:
The public is very critical of my Pugachev—and, what's more, they're not buying it. Uvarov is a scoundrel. From his yelling about this book of mine, you'd think it was something reprehensible. His creature Dundukov [sic] (a fool and a profligate) is persecuting me with those censors of his. . . . Uvarov, incidentally, is a scoundrel and a fraud. He is a man of notorious depravity. . . .
Pushkin then recounts how a respected former minister encountered Uvarov walking arm in arm with Vasily Zhukovsky, renowned poet as well as tutor to the tsarevich. The minister takes the poet aside: "You should be ashamed to promenade in public with an individual of that ilk."
Are we justified in labeling a vituperative reference to a literary foe, a hated representative of the powers-that-be—a reference that was certainly not intended for the printed page—"homophobic," to use a term much in vogue in this concluding decade of the millennium? Can the confidant and auxiliary of Filipp Wiegel's games with the likely lads of Kishinev have really been transformed into a "homophobe" in the space of a decade? Let us not forget that 1835, the year of the furious diary entry, is also the year, to bring these musings full circle, Pushkin wrote (but did not publish) "Sweet lad, tender lad," the year that precedes a (published) pair of epigrams in the style of the Greek Anthology, both addressed, in a manner unhallowed by Russian tradition, to the sculptured forms of handsome peasant lads, including the stripling "slender, sinewy, light as air" who is now familiar to us. Did the abounding "African" sensuality of a man who kept a "Don Juan catalogue" of his affairs with women brim over into "forbidden" regions? Did it find complete fulfillment in the penning of an occasional poem, perhaps in an archaic form, engendered by a tradition (Arabic, Greek) with a strong pederastic component?
Our conclusion can only be a series of questions.
Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841)
TWO POEMS
Translated by Vitaly Chernetsky
Mikhail Lermontov was Russia's second great Romantic poet. Like Pushkin, he wrote both poetry and prose, and like Pushkin, he was killed in a duel. Some of his poems dating from his years in the Cavalry Cadet School are quite bawdy and pornographic. "Ode to the John," and "To Tiesen-hausen" date from this period.
ODE TO THE JOHN [Oda k nuzhniku, 1834]
Oh you, the stinky temple of an unknown goddess! To you I speak ... to you I appeal from the desert Of noisy crowds where for so many days I have Been looking—but in vain—for real human beings. Accept my humble gifts of incense, volatile and free, Our nation's poetry's weak and unripe early blossoms. You are our true protector, and inside your walls I'm not afraid of any envious evil foes; Under your cover neither Mikhailov's gaze Nor Schlippenbach's loud voice will cause our fear.
Just when the cadets rise after the supper, And grab their pipes, and run, and shout "It's time!" The crowd busily gathers right behind your doors. The long pipe has appeared snake-like from a sleeve, Your hospitable safe haven is finally opened then With utter care, and fire covers the tobacco, And then the pipe receives the sweet and cherished smoke. And when Laskovsky's formidable eye appears, You safely hide us from his oh so dreaded search, And then again the white ass of a youthful beau Courageously appears inside you with no cover.
But then the dark of night envelopes our school, Cleron has finally made his usual nightly rounds, And no more music's heard from our old school piano . . At last the final candle next to Beloven's bed
Two Poems / 37
Has gone out. Now it is the moon that sheds pale light
Onto white beds and onto lacquered hardwood floors.
But suddenly rustling, a weak noise, and two light shadows
Glide over all the way to your desired cover;
They've entered . . . and a kiss resounds through the silence,
And a reddening cock has risen like a hungry tiger;
Now it is being groped by an immodest hand,
While lips are pressed against the lips, and words are heard,
"Oh be with me, I'm yours, oh dear friend, please hold
Me stronger, I am melting, I'm on fire . . ." And one
Cannot recount all the impassioned words. But here
The shirt is being pulled up, and one of them has bared
His satin ass and thighs, and the admiring cock
Is towering and trembling over the plump ass.
Now they get closer . . . And in just a moment they . . .
But here it's time to close the curtain over the picture;
It's time, so that the inexorable fate would not
Transform its praise into a caustic reproach.
TO TIESENHAUSEN [Tizengauzenu, 1834]
Do not move your eyes in languor, Do not twist your round ass, Stay away from wilful joking With voluptuousness and sin. Do not go to the beds of others, Don't let others close to yours, Do not offer tender handshakes Either jesting or for real. You must know, our charming Finn boy: Youth does not shine for too long (Even though your lover gives you Golden coins every time). When the hand of God unleashes Storms above your poor head, All of those who now are begging At your feet, stretched on the ground, Will not quench your melancholy With the sweet dew of a kiss— Although then just for a cock's tip You would gladly give your life.
Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)
NIGHTS AT THE VILLA
[Nochl na ville, 1839]
Translated with commentary by Simon Karlinsky
Nikolai Gogol (1809-52) was a great comic writer and a master of Russian prose. In The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol (Harvard University Press 1976), Simon Karlinsky argues convincingly from Gogol's prose and biographical materials that he was a repressed homosexual who may never have had sex with anyone. "Nights at the Villa" is a diary entry describing an affair Gogol had with Iosif Vielhorsky while he was living in Italy.
It was at Zinaida VolkonskayaV villa that Gogol first met Iosif Vielhorsky on December 20, 1838. The meeting marked the beginning of what seems to have been the happiest and most fulfilling period in Gogol's life. Throughout January and February of 1839, Vasily Zhukovsky [poet and tutor to the future tsar Alexander II] was in Rome, and Gogol acted as his guide. In March, Zhukovsky was replaced by Pogodin. Gogol's pleasure at the company of these two old and admired friends and his gradually growing closeness with Iosif Vielhorsky are reflected in some of his letters of the period and in Pogodin's memoir "A Year Abroad." Pogodin was introduced to Vielhorsky and was highly impressed by his potential as a historian. 'The young Count Vielhorsky showed me his materials for a bibliography of Russian history," Pogodin wrote in his memoir. "He's doing fine work, but will the Lord allow him to bring it to completion? The red color in his cheeks bodes no good. Nevertheless, he's working continually."
With the turn of Vielhorsky's illness for the worse in April, Gogol moved in with him at Volkonskaya's villa in order to devote his entire time to nursing him. "I learned at that time that [Gogol] was on terms of intimacy with the young Vielhorsky," wrote Alexandra Smirnova in her memoirs, "but I saw him rarely then and did not try to find out how and when this rela-
'Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya (1792-1862) was one of the most remarkable Russian women of the age. A celebrated beauty and one-time mistress of Tsar Alexander I, she was also a gifted poet, composer and singer. In 1829 she was converted to Roman Catholicism and thereby incurred the wrath of Nicholas I. The tsar allowed her to keep her property, but forbade Volkonskaya to reside in Russia. She decided to settle in Rome, where her magnificent villa soon became an important literary salon and a magnet for all resident and visiting artists and intellectuals.
tionship came about. I found their intimacy comme ilfaut, most natural and simple.'' There is a tinge of defensiveness or perhaps justification in Smirnova's tone that implies, as Henri Troyat has pointed out, that the arrangement may have raised a few eyebrows. But for once, Gogol was beyond caring for appearances. He had at last found a friend whose need for shared closeness and affection was equal to his own. His love was reciprocated; but he fully realized that the days of his loved one were numbered. "I live now only for the sake of his dwindling days," Gogol wrote to Maria Balabina on May 30, 1839. "I catch his every minute. His smile or his momentary joyous expression make an epoch for me, an event in my monotonously passing day." And in the postscript of a letter to Stepan Shevyryov, also at the end of May: "I spend my days and nights at the bedside of the ailing Iosif, of my Vielhorsky. The poor boy cannot bear to spend a minute without me near him."
Gogol kept a journal of his vigils at Volkonskaya's villa. Two manuscript fragments from his journal were eventually discovered in Mikhail Pogo-din's archive. They are usually printed in complete editions of Gogol's works in Russian under the title "Nights at the Villa." Russian critics, both pre-revolutionary and Soviet, often refer to "Nights at the Villa" as a fragmentary work of fiction. 2 It is, however, clearly a part of a larger personal diary, the remainder of which, given the explicit nature of the surviving portions and the attitudes of the Victorian age, may well have been destroyed. Here is the text of these fragments:
They were sweet and tormenting, those sleepless nights. He sat, ill, in the armchair. I was with him. Sleep dared not touch my eyes. Silently and involuntarily, it seems, it respected the sanctity of my vigil. It was so sweet to sit near him, to look at him. For two nights already we have been saying "thou" to each other. How much closer he has become to me since then! He sat there just as before, meek, quiet, and resigned. Good God! With what joy, with what happiness I would have taken his illness upon
2 The Russian custom of considering "Nights at the Villa" a work of imaginative fiction, and of ascribing the love scenes between men that it contains to sensibilities peculiar to the Romantic age, has its exact parallels in the English tradition of explaining away the similar scenes and sentiments in Shakespeare's sonnets in terms of Renaissance sensibilities rather than homosexuality. In his introduction to the sonnets in the 1974 edition of the Riverside Shakespeare, Hallett Smith writes: "The attitude of the poet toward the friend is one of love and admiration, deference and possessiveness, but it is not at all a sexual passion. Sonnet 20 makes quite clear the difference between the platonic love of man for man, more often expressed in the sixteenth century than in the twentieth, and any kind of homosexual attachment" (p. 1746). For a commentator of this type, nothing short of an explicit physical seduction will ever qualify as an expression of homosexual sentiment. And yet, were it a question of a relationship between a man and a woman, no one would have dreamt of denying that an attitude that involved love, admiration, and possessiveness constitutes a bona fide heterosexual attachment.
myself! And if my death could restore him to health, with what readiness I would have rushed toward it!
I did not stay with him last night. I had finally decided to stay home and sleep. Oh, how base, how vile that night and my despicable sleep were! I slept poorly, even though I had been without sleep for almost a week. I was tormented by the thought of him. I kept imagining him, imploring and reproachful. I saw him with the eyes of my soul. I hastened to come early to him and felt like a criminal as I went. From his bed he saw me. He smiled with his usual angel's smile. He offered his hand. He pressed mine lovingly. "Traitor," he said, "you betrayed me." "My angel," I said, "forgive me. I myself suffered with your suffering. I was in torment all night. My rest brought me no repose. Forgive me!" My meek one! He pressed my hand. How fully rewarded I was for the suffering that the stupidly spent night had brought me! "My head is weary," he said. I began to fan him with a laurel branch. "Ah, how fresh and good," he said. His words were then . . . what were they? What would I then not have given, what earthly goods, those despicable, those vile, those disgusting goods . . . no, they are not worth mentioning. You into whose hands will fall—if they will fall— these incoherent, feeble lines, pallid expressions of my emotions, you will understand me. Otherwise they will not fall into your hands. You will understand how repulsive the entire heap of treasures and honors is that attracts those wooden dolls which are called people. Oh, with what joy, with what anger I could have trampled underfoot and squashed everything that is bestowed by the mighty scepter of the Tsar of the North, if I only knew that this would buy a smile that indicated the slightest relief on his face.
"Why did you prepare such a bad month of May for me?" he said to me, awakening in his armchair and hearing the wind beyond the window-panes that wafted the aroma of the blossoming wild jasmine and white acacia, which it mingled with the whirling rose petals.
At ten o'clock I went down to see him. I had left him three hours before to get some rest, to prepare [something] for him, to afford him some variety, so that my arrival would give him more pleasure. I went down to him at ten o'clock. He had been alone for more than an hour. His visitors had long since left. The dejection of boredom showed on his face. He saw me. Waved his hand slightly. "My savior," he said to me. They still sound in my ears, those words. "My angel! Did you miss me?" "Oh, how I missed you," he replied. I kissed him on the shoulder. He offered his cheek. We kissed; he was still pressing my hand.
THE EIGHTH NIGHT
He did not like going to bed and hardly ever did. He preferred his armchair and the sitting position. That night the doctor ordered him to rest. He stood up reluctantly and, leaning on my shoulder, moved to his bed. My darling! His weary glance, his brightly colored jacket, his slow steps—I can see it all, it is all before my eyes. He whispered in my ear, leaning on my shoulder and glancing at the bed: "Now I'm a ruined man." "We will remain in bed for only half an hour," I said to him, "and then we'll go back to your armchair." I watched you, my precious, tender flower! All the time when you were sleeping or merely dozing in your bed or armchair, I followed your movements and your moments, bound to you by some incomprehensible force.
How strangely new my life was then and, at the same time, I discerned in it a repetition of something distant, something that once actually was. But it seems hard to give an idea of it: there returned to me a fresh, fleeting fragment of my youth, that time when a youthful soul seeks fraternal friendship with those of one's own age, a decidedly juvenile friendship, full of sweet, almost infantile trifles and mutual show of tokens of tender attachment; the time when it is sweet to gaze into each other's eyes, when your entire being is ready to offer sacrifices, which are usually not even necessary. And all these feelings, sweet, youthful, fresh—alas! inhabitants of a vanished world—all these feelings returned to me. Good Lord! What for? I watched you, my precious, tender flower. Did this fresh breath of youth waft upon me only so that I might suddenly and irrevocably sink into even greater and more deadening coldness of feelings, so that I might become all at once older by a decade, so that I might see my vanishing life with even greater despair and hopelessness? Thus does a dying fire send its last flame up into the air, so that it might illuminate with its flickering the somber walls and then disappear forever.
Iosif Vielhorsky died in Rome on May 21, 1839. His last moments were darkened by Zinaida Volkonskaya's ill-advised efforts to effect a deathbed conversion to Catholicism. Gogol's opposition to this move earned him Volkonskaya's subsequent enmity. On June 5, Gogol wrote to Alexander Danilevsky: "A few days ago I buried my friend, one whom fate gave me at a time of life when friends are no longer given. I speak of my Iosif Vielhorsky. We have been long attached to each other, have long respected one another, but we became united intimately, indissolubly, and utterly fraternally only during his illness, alas." The relationship left Gogol with some of the most cherished memories of his life. It apparently also saddled him with a lasting sense of guilt.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
'THE IVINS": SELECTIONS FROM CHILDHOOD
[Detstvo, 1852]
Translated by Kevin Moss
Count Leo Tolstoy is a renowned figure in world literature, author of such famous novels as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He devoted his later years to social reform, espousing a type of Christian anarchism. Basically heterosexual, Tolstoy clearly had homosexual leanings, although his temperament led him to take a jaundiced view of all sexuality. "The Ivins" from Tolstoy's Childhood (1852), and excerpts from his diaries of the previous year, show that he was open (at least in confessional autobiography) about his attraction to men as well as women.
"'I 7olodya! Volodya! The Ivins!" I shouted when I caught sight of V three boys out the window in blue overcoats with beaver collars as they followed their young foppish tutor from the sidewalk across the street to our house.
The Ivins were related to us and almost the same age; we had met them soon after our arrival in Moscow and had taken a liking to them.
The second Ivin, Seryozha, was a dark-skinned, curly-headed boy with a little turned up nose, very fresh red lips, which only rarely completely covered his white upper teeth, beautiful deep blue eyes, and unusually lively expression. He never smiled, but either looked completely serious or laughed wholeheartedly with his ringing, distinct, and extremely infectious laugh. His unusual beauty struck me the first time I saw him. I was ir-resistably attracted to him. Merely to see him was enough to make me happy; for a time all the powers of my soul were concentrated on this desire; when I had to spend three or four days without seeing him I would begin to pine and become sad to the point of tears. All my thoughts, waking and sleeping, were of him: as I lay down to sleep I desired that I should dream of him; as I closed my eyes I saw him before me, and I cherished this image as my greatest delight. I would have dared entrust no one with this emotion, so dear was it to me. Perhaps because he grew tired of feeling my restless eyes constantly fixed on him, or perhaps it was that he felt nothing towards me, but he clearly preferred playing and talking with Volodya, rather than with me; still I was happy, desiring no more, demanding no more, and was ready to sacrifice everything for him. Aside from the passionate attraction he inspired in me, his presence aroused in me another feeling, equally strong—the fear of disappointing him, of offending him
somehow, of not pleasing him: perhaps because of his haughty expression, or because despising my own appearance I placed too much store in the advantages of beauty, or most likely (because it is a sure sign of love) because I felt as much fear of him as love. The first time Seryozha spoke to me I became so muddled from this unexpected happiness that I blanched, blushed, and could not answer. He had a bad habit, when he was deep in thought, of staring at one spot and constantly winking, twitching his nose and eyebrows. Everyone thought this habit spoiled his appearance, but I found it so lovable that I unwittingly started doing the same thing, and a few days after we met grandmother asked if my eyes hurt, since I was blinking them like an owl. Not a word of love was spoken between us; but he felt his power over me and unconsciously, but tyrannically used it in our childish relations; no matter how I might wish to tell him everything in my soul, I was too afraid of him to risk a confession; I tried to appear indifferent and obeyed him without a murmur. Sometimes his influence seemed to me difficult, unbearable; but to escape from under his power was beyond my strength.
I am sad to recollect this fresh, beautiful feeling of disinterested and boundless love that died without ever being expressed or returned.
Strange: why is it that when I was a child I tried to be like a grown-up, and ever since I have ceased to be a child, I have often wanted to be like one? How often in my relations with Seryozha did this desire not to be like a child stop the feeling that was ready to be expressed and instead make me pretend? Not only did I not dare kiss him, which I sometimes wanted very much to do, to take his hand, to say how happy I was to see him: I did not even dare call him "Seryozha," but rather "Sergei" without exception, as everyone else did. Every expression of emotion was proof of one's childishness and anyone who permitted himself such emotion was still a "little boy." Without ever having been through the bitter trials that make adults cautious and cold in their relations, we deprived ourselves of the pure delights of tender childhood attachments solely because of a strange desire to imitate "grown-ups."
I met the Ivins in the entrance, said hello, and rushed headlong to grandmother: when I informed her that the Ivins had come my expression showed this news should render her utterly happy. Then, without taking my eyes from Seryozha, I followed him into the drawing room watching his every move. When grandmother said how much he had grown and directed her piercing gaze at him, I felt the same feeling of terror and hope an artist must feel as he awaits the sentencing of his work by a respected judge.
Having asked grandmother's permission, the Ivins' young tutor, Herr Frost, went out with us into the garden, sat on a green bench, colorfully crossing his legs with his bronze-handled walking stick between them, and with the air of a man satisfied with his actions, lit a cigar.
Herr Frost was a German, but of a completely different sort than our good Karl Ivanich: first, he spoke Russian correctly, spoke French with a bad accent, and had the reputation—particularly among the ladies—of a very educated man; second, he had a reddish mustache, a big ruby pin in his black satin scarf, the ends of which were stuck under his suspenders, and light blue pants with straps; third, he was young, had a handsome, self-satisfied appearance, and extraordinarily striking muscular legs. One could see that he was particularly proud of the latter: he considered their effect irresistible with respect to persons of the female sex, and probably with this in mind, always tried to put his legs in plain view, flexing his calves whether he was standing or sitting. He was the type of young Russian German who aspires to be a fine fellow and a lady's man.
It was fun in the garden. The game of robbers was going better than ever; but one circumstance nearly spoiled it all. Seryozha was the robber: while chasing after the travelers he tripped and at full speed hit his knee against a tree so hard I thought it would be smashed to pieces. In spite of the fact that I was a gendarme and my duty was to catch him, I went up to him and asked, concerned, if he had hurt himself. Seryozha got angry with me: he clenched his fists, stamped his foot, and shouted at me in a voice that clearly showed that he had hurt himself badly,
"Well, what's this? After this there can't be any game! Why aren't you catching me? Why aren't you catching me?" he repeated several times, glancing sideways at Volodya and the eldest Ivin. They were playing travelers, jumping and running down the path, and he suddenly let out a yelp and ran to catch them with a loud laugh.
I cannot describe how this heroic act astonished and captivated me: in spite of his terrible pain, not only did he not cry, he did not even show he was in pain and did not forget the game for a minute.
Soon after this, when Ilinka Grap also joined our party and we went upstairs before lunch, Seryozha had the opportunity to captivate and astonish me even more with his surprising manliness and firmness of character.
Ilinka Grap was the son of a poor foreigner who had once lived at my uncle's, was somehow indebted to him, and felt obliged to send his son to visit us very often. If he thought that acquaintance with us could give his son some kind of respect or pleasure, he was thoroughly mistaken, because not only were we not friendly with Ilinka, we paid attention to him only when we wanted to make fun of him. Ilinka Grap was a boy of about thirteen, thin, tall, pale, with a face like a bird and a good-naturedly submissive expression. He was dressed very poorly, but he was always so copiously pomaded that we assured each other that on a sunny day Grap's pomade melted on his head and ran down under his jacket. When I recall him now, I remember him as a very obliging, quiet, and kind boy; then he seemed to me a despicable creature unworthy of pity or even a second thought.
When the game of robbers ended, we went upstairs and began to carry
on and show off with various gymnastic stunts. Ilinka watched us with a shy astonished smile, and when we suggested he try the same, he refused, saying he had no strength at all. Seryozha was amazingly charming; he took off his jacket—his face and his eyes lit up—he laughed incessantly and kept thinking up new tricks: he jumped over three chairs in a row, did cartwheels around the whole room, stood on his head on Tatishchev's dictionaries, which he had placed as a pedestal in the middle of the room, and at the same time did such hilarious things with his legs that it was impossible not to laugh. After this last stunt he thought a moment, blinking his eyes, and suddenly, with a perfectly serious expression, went up to Ilinka. "You try to do it; it's really not hard." When he noticed all the attention was focused on him, Grap blushed and, in a voice that was barely audible, assured us there was no way he could do it.
"Really, why doesn't he want to show us anything? What kind of girl is he? He absolutely must stand on his head!"
And Seryozha took his hand.
"He must, he must stand on his head!" we all cried, surrounding Ilinka, who then noticeably took fright and went pale. We took him by the hand and led him to the dictionaries.
"Let me go, I'll do it myself! You'll rip my jacket!" cried the unfortunate victim. But these desperate cries only inspired us more; we were dying laughing; the green jacket was splitting at the seams.
Volodya and the oldest Ivin bent his head down and put it on the dictionaries; Seryozha and I grabbed the poor boy by his thin legs, which he was waving in various directions, rolled his pants up to his knees, and with a loud laugh threw the legs up, while the youngest Ivin checked the balance of his body.
After our noisy laughter, we all suddenly became silent, and the room got so quiet that only the heavy breathing of the unfortunate Grap could be heard. At that moment I was not completely convinced that all this was so funny.
"Attaboy!" said Seryozha, slapping him with his hand.
Ilinka remained silent and kicked his legs in various directions, trying to break free. With one of his desperate movements he kicked Seryozha in the eye so hard that Seryozha immediately released his legs and grabbed his eye, from which unwilled tears had begun to flow, and he shoved Ilinka with all his might. Ilinka, who was no longer supported by us, fell lifelessly to the ground with a thud and through his tears could only say,
"Why do you bully me?"
We were all struck by the pitiful sight of poor Ilinka, his face in tears, his hair mussed, his pant-legs rolled up showing the dirty boot-tops; we stood in silence, attempting to smile casually.
Seryozha was the first to recover.
"What a girl! What a crybaby!" he said, touching him lightly with his
foot: "you can't joke with him. ... All right, get up."
"I told you, you're a good-for-nothing," Ilinka said angrily, and turning away, he began to sob.
"Aha! Kicks me with his heels and still curses me!" cried Seryozha, grabbing a dictionary and waving it over the head of the poor unfortunate, who did not think of defending himself, but only put his arms over his head.
"Take that! Take that! . . . we'll leave him, since he can't take a joke. . . . Let's go downstairs," said Seryozha, laughing artificially.
I felt bad for the poor fellow as he lay on the floor, his face buried in the dictionaries, crying so hard that it seemed he might die of the convulsions that racked his whole body.
"Hey, Seryozha!" I asked him, "Why did you do that?"
"That's great! ... I hope I didn't cry today when I hit my leg almost down to the bone."
Yes, that's true, I thought, Ilinka's nothing but a crybaby, while Seryozha's a great guy . . . what a great guy!
I did not understand that the poor fellow was crying probably not so much from the physical pain as from the thought that five boys, whom he perhaps liked, had for no reason at all decided to hate and persecute him.
I cannot explain to myself the cruelty of my action. How is it that I did not go to him, defend him and console him? Where did my compassion go, the compassion that sometimes made me break into sobs at the sight of a baby jackdaw thrown out of its nest, a puppy thrown over a fence, or a chicken being carried by the cook for soup?
How could it be that this beautiful feeling was stifled in me by my love for Seryozha and my desire to seem to be the same kind of hero he was? That love and that desire to seem a hero were not enviable qualities! They left the only dark spots in the pages of my childhood recollections.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
PAGES FROM TOLSTOYS DIARIES
[Iz dnevnika]
Translated by Kevin Moss 29 November 1851. Tiflis
I was never in love with women. —There was only one strong feeling like love that I felt when I was 13 or 14; but I [don't] want to believe that this was love; because the object was a plump maid (though with a very handsome face), and furthermore from 13 to 15 is the most muddled time for a boy (youth): you don't know what to throw yourself on, and voluptuousness, in this period, acts with unusual force. —I fell in love very often with men, the 1st love was the 2 Pushk[ins], then the 2nd—Sab[urov?], then the 3rd Zyb[in] and Dyak[ov], the 4th Obol[ensky], Blosfeld, Islav[in], then Gauthier and many others. —Of all of these people I continue to love only D[yakov]. For me the main symptom of love is a fear of offending or [not] pleasing [the love object], simply fear. —I was falling in love with m[en] before I had a concept of pederasty; but even learning of it, the idea of the possibility of intercourse never entered my head. —Gauthier is a curious example of a liking that can't be explained by anything. —Not having any kind of relations with him at all except for buying books. I was thrown into a fever when he entered the room. —My love for Is[lavin] ruined 8 whole m[onths] of my life in Petersburg]. —Though it was unconscious, I didn't think about anything except pleasing him. —All the people I loved could feel it, and I noticed that it was hard for them to look at me. —Often when I couldn't find the moral prerequisites that reason required in my love object, or after some unpleasantness with him, I felt hostility toward them; but this hostility was based on love. —I never felt this kind of love for my brothers. —I often was jealous of them with women. —I understand that the ideal of love is complete sacrifice of oneself to the love object. And this is exactly what I felt. —I always loved people who were cool towards me and only valued me. The older I get the more rarely I experience this feeling. —And if I do feel it, not so passionately and for people who love me, i.e. the reverse of the way it was before. Beauty always had much influence on my choice; take the example of D[yakov]; but I never will forget the night we were driving from P[iro-gov?], and I wanted to hide under the sleigh blanket and kiss him and cry. —There was voluptuousness in this feeling too, but how it got there I can't decide; because, as I said, my imagination never drew lubricious pictures, quite the contrary, I have a terrible repulsion.—
[L. N. Tolstoi. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, t. 46 (M/L: Khudozhestven-naia literatura, 1934), 237-38.]
Drawing by Victor Putintsev, 1994.
Konstantin Leontiev (1831-1891)
KHAMID AND MANOLI
(A Cretan Greek Woman's Story about True Events of 1858)
[KhamJd i Manoli, 1869] Translated by Gerald McCausland
Konstantin Leontiev (1831-91) was a writer, philosopher, and critic. He served as a diplomat in the Turkish Balkans and in Crete, where the story "Khamid and Manoli" is set. Conservative and religious, Leontiev was also gay. One wonders what kind of relations he had with the Turks, whom his orientalizing discourse casts as the debauched other (in this respect Leontiev follows the general European tendency of the day). It is likely "Khamid and Manoli" is based on Leontiev's experiences in the consular service.
I
We were two children in the family, my brother Manoli and myself. Our house was in Anerokourou. From the road to Soudha you've probably seen two villages on the mountainside. One of them is called Skalaria and the other is Anerokourou. Our home. It is all hidden by vegetation and remains intact to this day. No matter how much those damn Turks robbed and plundered the people, they left the area around Khania pretty much alone, no doubt from fear of the consuls.
Our house has long since been sold and I have no refuge, good Sir. Our whole family was born to a bitter lot. My father was a fisherman and drowned in the sea when my brother was but ten years old, and I a little bit older. For a long time our poor mother provided for us as well as she could on her own by sewing socks or cleaning floors or serving in the monastery. Once in a while she would gather the most fragrant jasmine, string it out on a twig and sit on the road and wait. Some bey would come riding by or rich Turkish women would come walking along or a consul or some other rich Frank with his wife under his arm out on a stroll showing themselves off. My mother would bow to them and give them the jasmine, and they would always give her something in return. I must be honest and tell you that the Turks almost never refused. That's just how they are. Others gave as well and would joke with my mother, "So Elena, you're poor now, are you? Sacrificing yourself for your children? How long ago was it that you were the leading beauty of our neighborhood? Wasn't it about you that they wrote the verses:
Queen of all our girls,
You, Elena, the soul of beauty and goodness!"
These jokes would often come from one particular seller, Stavraki, whenever he caught sight of my mother and he would never leave her empty handed. They say that he wanted to marry my mother despite his youth and poverty, but his relatives talked him out of it. His fate turned out otherwise: the daughter of his master, in whose shop he served, fell in love with him. When the rich father saw that his daughter was pregnant by Stavraki, he beat the youth, but nevertheless gave his daughter in matrimony along with his fortune. And my mother married a fisherman.
Those Franks are worse than all the others. What shall I say, good Sir? If it were up to me, I would tie the Franks to the tails of horses and have the horses tear them to bits. The Turks are dull and uncultured and are taught all kinds of evil. This is why we believe in Orthodoxy rather than in their religion. Once my mother gave the jasmine to a French woman, who yelled, "Get out of here! I don't like that smell! How shameless all these Greeks are. They just don't want to work!" Can you believe that? The Greeks are lazy? They don't want to work? Go to hell, you Frankish witch! So, it's shameful for a poor woman to sell flowers? What about your husband, you Frankish bitch! He dragged all kinds of rotten trash from Austria into his shop and now he fleeces our poor simple folk. That's not shameful? Someone buys a rug from your husband, thinking that it's of European quality. A year later and you'll see that the worthless piece of trash has been thrown out. I've seen all kinds of evil from the Franks, my good Sir! And my poor brother Manoli perished at the hands of the Turks. Soldiers crushed him on the Pasha's stairs in front of all the people. That was his fate! He made friends with the Turks, embraced with his soul the whole great shame and sin and perished because of it.
Misfortune has always followed our entire family.
About myself there's not a whole lot to say. Three years after my father drowned I got married and was left a widow just a year after that. My husband, Ianaki, was a stonemason and was crushed by rocks that collapsed onto him while he was working.
Things went well during the half-year we were betrothed, and we lived well during our marriage also. I saw him for the first time at a wedding in our village. He had come from another town. He came and stood leaning against a wall with his broad shoulders, laughing and looking at us. It was carnival time, the Maltese porters in Khania sang and danced and the Italians taught our youth to get dressed up—one as a bear, one as a doctor, one as a consular guard in an Arnautian kilt. Our lads called to Ianaki,
"You get dressed up as well!" but he just answered, "Childish nonsense, I'm certainly not going to get dressed up!" And he glanced over at me out of the corner of his eye. I took a liking to him. He found work in our Anerokourou and then came to visit my mother. We served him coffee and it seemed to me that fate was smiling on me. Although he was just a stonemason he had his own house and on holidays he dressed up very neatly in fine light blue cloth. He liked to show off. Being a schemer myself and knowing what road he took in the evenings from work I would just happen to take that same road every third day or so.
"Good evening, Katerina," he would say and if there was no one around he would take my hand. He was handsome without trying to be so, and everybody liked him. I should say that our Cretans are all good looking. Ianaki's face was not as nice as many, but I loved him anyway!
Once he was going past us and showed me that a button had come off his sleeve. "I'm like an orphan here, Katerina, who in Anerokourou will sew it back on for me?" I told him, "I'll sew it back on!" And I did. And when I bent over his arm to bite off the thread his hand shuddered and he said to me, "I love you with all my heart, Katinko, more than anything on God's earth!"
We told my mother who was naturally pleased. "Thank God, fortune has smiled on my daughter!" Ianaki began coming over to our place every day, gave me silver watches, a silk dress, and more silk scarves than I could count! He fixed up our house by himself. On holidays we would invite the girls, he would bring the other guys and we would all dance on the terrace. We're quite free in that way. I remember how my father would say that the Ianinese girls would not appear on the street and would take communion at night. During the day they would not even go to church so that the men would not see them, but nevertheless they say that there was a lot of debauchery around there. It's not like that in our town—you can go out and dance and talk and laugh—just know how to guard your virtue. If you don't maintain your virtue they'll either kill you or you'll be dishonored for life.
Ianaki and I had fun before our wedding and once married we also lived happily. But once we were married, he said to me, "I am jealous, Katerina. Like the line from that song you all like to sing in Anerokourou: I'll kill you, you bitch, Katerina!"
"Don't be jealous," I would say. "I'll never even look at another man." And we began to live like a pair of turtledoves. He bought me a mule and on holidays took me to the monastery and we went together to pray. I cleaned our yard and planted flowers there. We had a little dog and I enjoyed her. She had been born with no tail but was nonetheless a smart dog. We called her Arkuditsa which means little bear cub.
Momma was happy for us and moved in with us to live. When I became pregnant Ianaki fell in love with me even more. And everyone said about us, "What a good family, they are poor but still live well." Only my
brother Manoli worried us. He was not a bad youth, but simply foolish and dissolute. He perished thanks to his foolishness! May the Lord God forgive him!
Ill
At first Mother gave my brother Manoli over to a painter. They went together from house to house painting doors and ceilings. Manoli, poor though he was, still loved his family back then and whenever anyone gave him baksheesh he wouldn't spend it all but always brought something for our mother. He grew into such a handsome lad that he would always turn heads when he walked along the streets. And me? Next to him I always looked like some gypsy and my husband would joke with my mother, "If I weren't so sure that you were faithful to my deceased father-in-law, I would look at every old Gypsy and Arab and wonder to myself, which one of them had been your lover and fathered my dark-skinned wife!"
"Shameless!" my mother would respond, "How shameless to talk that way!" But she never took the least offense.
The three of us lived together peaceably. Manoli was as light skinned as an English lady. His dark curls, his walk, his stature and his hands were all as in a painting. And his eyes were as blue as the sea on a hot day and would become so pretty whenever he would lose himself in thought. But he was not only without guile but also without common sense. He would believe anyone. If one of the rich merchants shook hands with him at the bazaar, he would run home and report, "A great guy! He shook my hand and asked how I'm doing!"
A "great guy" simply because he shook the boy's hand! But of course it would turn out that this "guy" needed something from Manoli and had sent him on some sort of mission. The boy would claim, "No one can fool me. I can see right through them! Everyone tries to watch out, but my eyes are the sharpest of all!" And he would fix his gaze on us as if to prove the truth of his words.
My husband would say, "Don't look at us like that! You'll scare us."
Manoli would take offense.
He was both hot-tempered and timid. Should the least thing go wrong he would respond, "Huh? Where? What? What is it?" run here and there and accomplish not a thing. We often felt sorry for him and often scolded him. That's why his relationship with my husband got bad. It was better while he was living with the painter. The painter was a strict old man, he himself worked a lot and kept a tight reign on the boy. Manoli was afraid of him.
The trouble started when he met a young Turk, Khamid, who ran a tobacco stand in Khania. The Turks themselves called this Khamid "Deli-Khamid" which in their own language could mean either "Crazy Khamid"
Khamid and Manoli / 53
or "Khamid-the-Daredevil." Khamid was a good and honest businessman. No one ever accused him of cheating in his tobacco dealings. He was a Cretan Turk, from the Selinon area, and he spoke and wrote Greek well. He was no fanatic and in fact he visited the mosque rarely. What did he need the mosque for? Life for him was singing, drinking wine, dressing well and racing around on his horse in front of all the girls. He would pomade his blond mustache to curl upward, throw on a carefully selected hooded cloak, dress himself in trousers of the most delicate and colorful fabric, and decorate his horse in red tassels. He would ride as if he were the child of the best family, the son of some rich bey with the tassels bouncing around on the horse. He had studied with an Italian and played both the violin and the flute. He would go hunting and take the flute along. Having killed some birds he would make his way home joyfully playing his flute. He had no desire to marry although he was already twenty-seven years old. "A wife is a burden," he would say. "The way you have to go and pay court to her family. You can't even buy a simple slave these days, it's already against the law. It's all the fault of the Franks."
Khamid liked wine and drank a lot, but he hated making a fool of himself when drunk. He would sing, enjoy himself and then fall asleep. The other Turks asked him, "Why do you drink with Greeks? The Prophet forbad drinking." As an answer Khamid always had the following story ready.
During the reign of Sultan Murad there lived in Constantinople a drunkard named Birki-Mustafa. Sultan Murad strictly punished all Turks caught drinking and would condemn even those whose breath but smelled of wine. The Sultan himself never tried wine until he met Birki-Mustafa. Once the Sultan was walking at night, looking around the city. He had a guard with him. They came upon Birki who demanded, "Make way for me!"
"I am the PadishahV said the Sultan.
"And I am Birki-Mustafa," answered the drunkard, "and I will buy Constantinople from you and will buy you as well, if you wish." The Sultan ordered that he be taken to the palace and when he finally sobered up on the second day, the Sultan had him summoned and asked, "Where is the treasure, with which you intend to buy both me and my capital city?" Birki took out from under his robe a bottle of fine wine and said, "O Padishah\ Here is the treasure that makes a beggar into a conquering emperor, and makes the least fakir the equal of Two-Horned Iskender. (They say that there was once such an emperor in Macedonia—the Two-Horned—who conquered the whole world. My brother Manoli had a book about him.) The Sultan was surprised, tried the wine and from that moment on was himself the greatest drunkard in the land and brought Birki-Mustafa into the palace as his personal friend.
Khamid would tell everyone about Birki. The other Turks would shake their heads in wonder and leave him saying, "Without a doubt—Crazy Khamid."
This is how he met Manoli. My brother was painting the door of a coffee house. It was a Friday and many Turks were sitting in front of the coffee house on chairs. Khamid was among them, smoking a hookah. He was smoking and looking at my brother. He watched him for a long time and suddenly cried out: "My God and my faith you are, boyaciV Boyaci means painter. He took such a liking to my brother that he called him his God and faith. The Turks murmured to themselves, took Khamid by force and brought him to the religious judge. The judge commanded, "Lock him up in jail. Tomorrow we will investigate the affair." Khamid wasn't worried in the slightest and through the night carefully thought out how he would answer in his defense.
They led him into court. The judge asked, "Is it true, that you called the young Greek painter a God?"
"No," answered Khamid, "I did not call the painter a God, but called God a painter."
"What is that supposed to mean?" asked the judge in surprise.
"Have the boy brought in," asked Khamid. They brought in poor Manoli who was crying in terror.
"Look, Your Honor!" said Khamid. "Look at the eyes of this young Greek. Even full of tears they are so beautiful! Last night these eyes were laughing and their color was even clearer. Who gave them this heavenly color? Who was the painter of these eyes? Must it not be Allah, who alone is all powerful and all good? Who other than He could create such eyes? That is why I called God a painter!"
The judge burst out laughing and all of the Turks said to Khamid, "You are a crafty fellow and you have a lot of daring!" They released him together with my brother.
As soon as Khamid was alone with my brother he began telling him, "Give up your craft my dear child. You walk around with your beauty all covered in paint and it makes me sad. I'm sure you are smart. If you are able to keep accounts accurately, then come to work in my shop. I'll make you a new cloak and buy you a Persian sash and give you a watch. Working for me will be easy. You'll sit in the shop and weigh the tobacco and collect the money when I am not there myself. You can handle money, can't you Manolaki?"
"Yes, my eyes are very sharp, no one can fool me!" answered Manoli.
We tried to convince him not to leave the painter. We were afraid to let Khamid have him. At first he listened to us, but one day he hid his paint and took off without permission and left no word of where he went. The next morning his master began to beat him. It was a Sunday. After a couple of blows Manoli ran out of the house. The master followed behind him and easily caught up with him at the corner. Manoli backed up against a wall and awaited his punishment. His master approached him, stood silently before him for a time and then struck him so that my brother's fez
Khamid and Manoli / 55
fell from his head. He struck him a second time and blood flowed from Manoli's mouth. There were many Arabs and Turks there. They rushed to my brother's aid and pulled him away from the old man. One old Arab said, "You should be ashamed to beat the child like that. And today is one of your holidays, it is simply a sin!"
The old man saw that there were many ready to defend the boy. He left my brother alone but as he left he said to the Turks and Arabs, "My sin is not your affair but it is the degradation of your mind that makes you feel sorry for the young!" For these words to the Muslims the old man spent two weeks in jail. Manoli stopped obeying us after this incident and he moved in with Khamid. In his new clothes and with his silver watch chain he sat pretty as a picture in the shop of the dissolute Turk.
IV
I always wonder why our family has had so much more than its share of unhappiness. In the course of one year my mother passed away, and my husband was felled by a stone and the Turks killed my brother in Khania. The Father Superior of the Most Holy Mother of God Monastery counseled me by quoting the Apostle James: "You must rejoice in all grief and temptation. It is in grief and temptation that human endurance becomes manifest." The Father Superior was a young man and had studied in Athens. He preached in a very high style and he kept strict order in the monastery. People said that he was proud and loved fancy clothes and money. I don't know about that. I only know that in '66 he went into the mountains to the Sphakians where he fought together with the common people against the Turks. Then he disappeared without a trace. I don't know whether he was killed or whether he hid somewhere. I could tell that he spoke to me from the heart and that he himself did not fear grief or death and that he was not afraid to risk his high position and his security. I remember him as still young and cutting an impressive figure in his golden chasuble looking down from his high throne during the service. I felt so sorry for him, perhaps more sorry for him than for my husband and for my whole family. His words helped me get over my grief. I now save all that I earn so that when I die my daughter will inherit only half of it and the other half will go to erect a large silver candelabra on the island of Tinos. This gives my soul peace. I live and await my hour, whenever it should arrive.
But back then I was not at peace. First my mother got sick and passed away. We felt sorry for her. She had always looked after my baby and helped us in all kinds of ways and we never once heard her utter an angry word! But then she died and we buried her. Manoli came out from the city to the funeral but he didn't seem to grieve much. His head had been com-
pletely turned by the kindness and gifts of the Turks and he completely forgot his family.
Around this time there was an uprising of the local Greeks against Veli-Pasha. The people began taking up arms, coming together in mobs and moving toward Khania.
I saw Veli-Pasha myself rather often; he had his summer home in Khaleppa near Khania. The English consul also lived in Khaleppa back then with his wife. The consul was great friends with Veli-Pasha. They invited each other to dinner and took walks together, the Pasha arm in arm with the consul's wife and the consul walking along nearby. We would see this and wondered that a Turk could walk with an English lady on his arm. As if he weren't a Turk but had been born a Frank! We had never had such a Pasha before. Veli-Pasha was from Crete like us. His father had been called Mustafa-Kiritli-Pasha. Kiritli's father held many estates in Crete— they have been sold off only very recently. He owned the largest villa and had the most magnificent gardens near Sersepilia. The moment you walked into them it was like being in paradise! The blooming violets spread their fragrance along the paths. Orange, lemon and poplar trees stood so tall they seemed to reach the sky. The flowing water of the fountains was stocked with red fish. And all around the garden, wherever you looked, you saw wide olive trees, cool shade, singing birds. Spending time there was like finding eternal happiness and peace.
And Veli-Pasha would have lived among us in Crete for a long time if he had not been so afraid to offend anyone.
Political people who understand such things claim that he was not a bad person and had a good education but simply decided to rule independent of the Sultan like an Egyptian pasha or like Prince Aristarkhi had been on the island of Samos. But it hardly matters. I don't know if that is all true or not; but for whatever reason the people began to get restless.
There is a coffee house in our settlement. At the time it was owned by a Greek from Cherigo. This Cherigote (God help us!) was such a patriot. His mustache was incredibly large as were his shoulders, eyes and everything else about him. He could get along with the Turks to his own advantage although above the doors of his coffee house there was painted in blue a kind of flower bouquet that just about anyone with an education or simply with a sharp mind could see portrayed not flowers at all but a Byzantine two-headed eagle. And this Cherigote was also able to get hold of newspapers that the Turks would normally strictly forbid. He would never even say "Crete" but always "the Homeland of Minos" (Minos was our Emperor in Crete long before the Turks arrived). He was great friends with my Ianaki. When there were no Turks in the room the Cherigote would poke my husband in the chest and say, "Such a strong man with such shoulders . . . who never went to war!"
"I'll go to war when the need arises," Ianaki would answer.
Our people began to gather at this Cherigote's place and talk about politics and about the way rights were once given to the Cretan people and then taken away again. These people also began spending evenings at our house. I would be falling asleep in the corner while Kafedzhi would be going on, 'Tell me about rights and about Metternich . . . that Austrian Metternich caused the Greeks a lot of trouble. Now in this place a Muslim judge in a turban judges you according to the Koran, but you should have your own demogerontia, your archbishops and elders to judge you. . . ."
"The people are arming themselves," our people would tell him.
"Words are one thing," shouted Kafedzhi, "all words. You Cretans are all liars. Even the Apostle Paul said that you are all liars."
To that my husband answered, "Many years have passed since the Apostle Paul lived. We have become a different people!"
And truly the people began to gather in Sersepilia even from far off villages and my Ianaki said, "It's time for me to go as well, my dear Katerina."
A lump rose in my throat and I began to cry, but I did not try to talk him out of it. A good man cannot shirk from danger in defense of his homeland while others are coming forward. But he never even got to clean his father's gun. Two days after our conversation he was killed at work by a rock. They feared for me and did not bring his body back home but took him directly to the churchyard. It was there that I saw his poor body.
Of course, my good Sir, even a widow's tears must have an end. I cried for a long time for my Ianaki, but I also had to provide for myself and my daughter. I took my daughter and went into the city to find work as a servant.
I told you, good Sir, that I went to Khania looking for work in some house. They told me that there was a Catholic woman who just lost a servant. I went to see her and agreed to serve there for a half-lira per month. They wouldn't allow my daughter to move in with me so I took her back to the village and left her to be cared for by one of my relatives.
I lived in that house for only one month, I just couldn't stand it. There was a lot of work, much more than my strength could bear, and they abused me terribly without end. "Why do you take such care to dress well? What are you, some kind of lady? Dressing up with that ugly mug of yours! You look like some kind of whore. You want the men leering at you, huh?" Guests would come . . . and mother and daughter would start at it:
"How are you feeling? How are things?"
"How are we? Well, how are we supposed to be in these barbarous lands? From the servants alone there is no end to the troubles."
"You have a new maid? A Greek?"
"Yes, unfortunately a Greek. The common folk are evil brutes in any country, but nowhere is there a people worse than the Greeks! The uppity-ness of these people is beyond belief!"
"Indeed, an evil people. They hate us with their very souls and among themselves and even to the Russians they call us Frankish dogs. The Turks are right to beat them!"
And I would stand there holding a tray with coffee or jam and listen to all this.
Both the mother and daughter were filthy! Whenever there were no guests the place was filled with dirty old junk, but just let someone knock on the door! "Jesus and Mother of God! Visitors! Visitors!" they would cry, "Give me this, give me that, open the door, all at once!"
"We are important people," they would say. "Gentility!"
"Ha!" I would think to myself. "Real gentility has nothing to do with people like you. I know, I've been around!"
They were miserly and mean to such extremes. They would have a dessert cake brought to them and the mother would count the pieces herself and lock them in the cupboard. They couldn't eat such a huge cake themselves but wouldn't think of giving it to the household help. Once the mice and insects had gotten to it they would throw it away.
The old man of the house was somewhat nicer but also much more depraved. When he began to toy with me I left. I was sick to death with despair. Where was I to go? I didn't want to go to the Turks, but there was nothing else to do. I won't hide the truth—I received more kindness from the Turks. One good merchant, Selim-Aga, took me into his harem. "Bring your daughter with you," he said, "and let her play and sleep together with our children." There was less work here and I never heard an insulting word. Selim-Aga was a grim and strict old man, but he never called me anything but "my daughter." His wife sat me beside herself at their table and would not allow her children to insult my daughter in any way. If her son pushed my daughter or said anything unkind to her, she would take brazier tongs and give him a lesson in manners.
I had been raised to eat with forks, but they ate with their hands. That was the only hard thing for me. Otherwise everything was fine!
My brother Manoli would visit me often. He had begun to fight with Khamid. Manoli had now become friends with a certain young Morean. In spite of his being a Christian, the Morean was worse than Khamid. A depraved and despicable person! His kilt was always dirty and his face was thin and evil. His world consisted of drinking, fighting, chasing loose women, thievery, and banditry. His name was Khristo Papadaki. I have no idea what he lived on. He himself claimed, "We Moreans are bandits! Clever fellows! One of our villagers goes to Athens with a dirty kilt and a soiled fez and bows to all."
"Where are you from, friend?"
"From Morea (the Peloponnese), my Lord!"
Before you know it he has remade himself heaven knows how! Now he's dressed in a newly tailored jacket and well-made fez and he's standing at the coffee house leaning against the wall. And if the King himself should ask "Where are you from?" he would answer, "Where from? Where are we from?! Why, from the Peloponnese!" and march off prouder than a government minister!
The Turks had chased Khristo out of Crete a number of times for rowdi-ness and disorderly conduct, but he would always return. The Greek consuls tried sending him to jail by accusing him of murder. But as soon as he began to feel persecuted he would threaten them, "I'll come and show you what a Turk is really like!" And they would leave him alone. This is the kind of bandit that my poor Manolaki became friends with.
Khristo took him to visit those Turkish women who walk unveiled in public and to other nasty places. Khamid learned about this and began to berate my brother and argue with him. Nevertheless he loved him so much that he could never drive him from his shop.
My new master Selim-Aga told me all about this. "Amani (Alas!) Poor Katerina," he said, "what a shame to bring bad news to an orphan and a widow, but your brother will perish. Deli-Khamid's love is an evil thing, but the friendship of a bandit like Khristo is even more dangerous! Manoli will either end up in jail or he will be killed! I heard how Khamid threatened to slash him to pieces if he continued to accompany Khristo to these disreputable places. It's shameful for an old man like me to say such things, but the truth must be told! This friendship makes Khamid terribly jealous and he claims, 'I will never give you up, but will kill you and will myself perish!' This has been told to me by well-meaning people!"
I wept and wailed but the old Aga said, "Call him, together we will talk some sense into him." We called Manoli, and Selim-Aga and I tried to persuade him. But the old man spoiled everything, God forgive him. His talk became heated and he began to insult and frighten the boy.
"Your father was honest and your mother was honest and your sister lives honestly in my home! But you are a deceiver, a depraved bandit! You cannot be admitted into a good house. If you don't reform yourself, I'll eventually have to take this stick and crack your skull, because I knew your father and loved him and I feel sorry for you!"
Aga felt so sorry for my brother he wanted to beat him! He was a simple man and thought that he was doing good, but he just made things worse. Manoli was mortified and when I saw him to the door he said, "Katerina, I will no longer come here! Damn the religion of that old devil and his entire house, and damn his father and mother as well! It seems that any old ass can order me around! He is neither father nor brother to me! Good bye!" And he left red in the face with rage. He walked away from me quickly with only his trousers and the tassel of his fez rustling as he
walked. I stood at the door thinking. How he's learned to swear and damn people to hell with his poor little face so pretty and good as the Archangel Michael, whose icon was brought from Russia by our Father Superior! The very image of the icon we all used to go and admire!
Since that time I have not laid eyes on my brother! The hour of his death was near, but none of us knew anything at all.
VI
Our Christians were arming themselves at that time and gathering at the environs of Khania, near Sersepilia and Perivilia. There were about ten thousand of them from different dioceses and villages. Their leaders were many, but the first among them was one young man, Mavroghenni. Even now, when people speak about the time of Veli-Pasha or the time of Mavroghenni, they mean the same thing. They stood around in gardens and under olive trees neither spoiling nor so much as touching anything even in the Turkish gardens and houses. They sent messengers to all the Turkish villagers in Kissamos and Selinon and other settlements and told them not to leave their work and not to be afraid. "We are at war with Veli-Pasha and have no quarrel with you. You are Cretan people like us and have nothing to fear from us."
Nevertheless the foolish rural Turks didn't believe our assurances but rather believed Veli-Pasha. The Pasha sent people to them to say, "Go and save yourselves in the cities, don't believe the Greeks, there are more of them in the villages and they will massacre you there."
He wanted to cause such confusion in Crete that the Sultan would say, "Only you can bring order back, Veli-Pasha! Without you there is no hope."
Our people said that the English consul also intrigued against the Christians.
The Turks fled in hordes from the villages into the city. Women and children rode on donkeys and mules, carting their belongings with them while the men went on foot nearby with their weapons. They all gathered in Khania tired, angry and hungry. They had all left their work in the fields and had nothing to live on. There was no work for them in the city. As you know, our city is crowded, the streets are narrow and the walls around the city are thick. The gates of the fortress are closed at night and there is nowhere to flee unless you want to throw yourself into the sea. The Christians in the city became frightened. When night fell there wouldn't be a soul around, as if brutal death lurked in the streets! What was there to do? Where could you flee?
Our people from the gardens of Sersepilia sent messengers to the Pasha insisting, "The Sultan should return to us the rights we were promised!" But the Pasha was waiting for military forces from Constantinople and
wouldn't budge. I saw that the Turks in the city were hungry and angry and that with the crowds there was no place for them to live. Those who lived with relatives made the cramped conditions that much worse and God only knows what those without relatives were to do. Not to mention the heat that had to be endured that summer with small children and the sick and the elderly all living together wherever they could.
Whatever the conditions in their villages the houses were all clean and well-kept. They began to threaten us daily. It became dangerous for Greeks to walk around the bazaar. The Turks harassed our women. Once, on a feast day, we followed the Bishop when he came out of the cathedral. The Turks started harassing the Greek women and the Bishop stopped and shouted at them, "Don't touch the women as they come from prayer! That is forbidden by your own laws and customs!" One Kissamian fellow hid a knife underneath his cloak and wanted to attack the Bishop. The Pasha ordered that the young man be clapped in irons. This enraged the Turks even more.
Our men continued to send their threats from Sersepilia. "If anyone touches the Christians in Khania, we will cut off the water supply and the entire city along with the Pasha will perish from thirst." The city was supplied with good water from Sersepilia and the area even had the name / manou tou nerou which means the Water Mother. Where else were the Turks to go for water? In the city there was no other supply of drinkable water and they were afraid to go into the surrounding villages with so few soldiers.
So we suffered like this for a long time. I thought of fleeing the city from fear and the crowds. I thought that it would be better just to eat bread in some village and get by without being paid anything. In the city the nights were the worst. It just got scarier and scarier. When it would be time to lock the city gates and you saw yourself surrounded on all sides by those thick walls that seemed to reach the sky and the Turks were all around you with their grim faces and huge mustaches, the terror was enough to make you weep! As if you had been buried alive along with your innocent child. The Turkish women in the house comforted me and tried to reassure me.
"Don't be afraid, more (silly) Katerina! We won't let anyone get at you! You are safe in our harem, don't be afraid!"
In spite of my gratitude to them I was nevertheless getting ready to leave. "Stay just until tomorrow," said my mistress. "Wash this one dress of mine and then tomorrow you can be on your way."
So I stayed for one more night. My daughter had fallen asleep long ago and I was getting ready for bed myself. Selim-Aga was at the coffee house and had not yet come home. It was near midnight and everything was dark and quiet in the city. Suddenly someone in our household nearby let out a shout. "Slaughter the infidels! Cut them down! Slaughter all the infidels! They are killing us!" In less than a minute there were Turks running from
all directions. Fire and shouts and the sounds of weapons and the doors of the houses slamming. Women were crying and children screaming. My legs would have given out from under me had I not thought of my daughter. I grabbed her and ran for the door. I wanted to flee to the Italian consulate since I remembered the consul, Monsieur Matteo, to be a good old gentleman.
My mistress shouted at me, "Don't go out, you fool! We will wrap you in a rug and hide you underneath the couch. Who among the Turks would come here to a harem to kill you?!" But I was not in my right mind. I broke away and ran out into the street. My sleepy daughter was crying with fright as I ran along carrying her.
I don't even remember the faces of the people I ran across. I remember Turkish soldiers running, and officers, and Greeks, and half-dressed Turkish townspeople, and screams.
One thing I saw clearly. A crowd of soldiers had gathered in one place. I stopped and wondered what to do. I saw how one of our neighbors, an old Turkish bey, dashed out of a doorway half-naked and with a hatchet in his hand. "They're killing us! Slaughter them! Slaughter the Greeks!"
A nizam (regular army) colonel grabbed him by the throat and struck him in the face. "You're lying! They're not killing anyone!" The colonel took the hatchet from him and pushed him back into the house, locked the door and went on further with the soldiers. They didn't even look at me. But I saw that in the next street Greeks with women and children were running in a mob. I ran behind them and reached the French consulate along with them. We still didn't have a Russian consulate in Crete and the Greek consulate was even further away than the French one. I understood, after all, that France was a great European power and that in their consulate it would not be so dangerous. I knew that although the Franks might despise us they would not allow the Turks to slaughter us without any reason. It wasn't because they felt sorry for us (heaven save us from their pity!), but because they wanted to show the world that there was law and order in Turkey. Every child among us understood these elementary political games. So I ran into the French consul's house with the others. His house was already full of Greeks. At that hour every consul except the English one opened his doors to our people. I don't know whether the English consul was simply out of town or whether he decided to refuse us. Whatever the reason, his doors were closed to us.
The French consulate was filled with groans and weeping. Pale guards were walking around and whispering. The consul himself was also walking around deep in thought, he strode across our legs, he smoked silently. He walked out onto the balcony and stood there listening. He then came back inside.
"Do any of you have weapons?" he asked.
"Yes," the people answered.
He called over the guards and had them collect our weapons from us.
"God help you if one of you should by chance shoot off your gun/' he said. "The Turks will think that we are shooting at them from here and then who knows what will happen. Just sit quietly and don't be afraid, you are under the flag of the Emperor of France!"
We calmed down at least a little bit and began to speak softly among ourselves. "What happened?" we asked ourselves.
One Greek told us what had happened. We all listened to his story along with the dragomans and guards and the consul himself. I listened as well and had no idea that his story was about my poor brother. A young Christian knifed a Turk in his bed and wanted to rob him. But his attack was awkward and he ran into the street covered in blood while the bleeding Turk still managed to get to the door of the house and call to the other Turks for help. The Turks all concluded that the Greeks had begun to slaughter them.