DOSTOEVSKY ANDTHE "OTHER"MESHCHERSKY: REFASHIONING MASCULINITIESON THEPAGESOF THE CITIZEN (WITH A DECODING OF A SECTION FROM THE ADOLESCENT)
Identifieur interne : 000504 ( Main/Corpus ); précédent : 000503; suivant : 000505DOSTOEVSKY ANDTHE "OTHER"MESHCHERSKY: REFASHIONING MASCULINITIESON THEPAGESOF THE CITIZEN (WITH A DECODING OF A SECTION FROM THE ADOLESCENT)
Auteurs : Irene ZohrabSource :
- The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review [ 1075-1262 ] ; 2001.
English descriptors
- Teeft :
- Academy edition, Alexander poznansky, Amusing sketches, Andre gide, Anonimnom nasledii, Chistyi dvorianin, Chto, Courtesan, Cultural tradition, Dazhe onymi gorzhus, Dostoevskii, Dostoevskogo, Dostoevsky, Drugoi, Drugoi peterburg, Editorship, Fedor dostoevskii, First issue, Flagrant delit, Gender, Gody redaktirovaniia grazhdanina, Goluboi peterburg, Grand dadais, Grazhdanin, Great deal, High society, Homoerotic, Homoerotic allusions, Homosexual, Homosexual behavior, Homosexual consciousness, Homosexual love, Homosexual orientation, Homosexual personality, Homosexual politics, Homosexuality, Ibid, Igor vinogradoff, Irene zohrab, Issledovaniia, Jeffrey weeks, Karl heinrich ulrichs, Khudozhestvennaia literatura, Khudozhestvennoi literatury, Large newspaper, Last rays, Leipzig, Male courtesan, Many people, Medical history, Meshchersky, Michel foucault, Multiple causes, Nauka, Nineteenth century, Nishcheta kurtizanok, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Numa numantius, Obozrenie, Other petersburg, Otolenie demonov, Peterburg, Peterburgskoe obozrenie, Petersburg, Petersburg news, Petersburg populace, Platonic idealism, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Posledniaia stranichka, Present time, Prince meshchersky, Problema avtorstva, Pseudonym, Redaktsii odnoi, Religious overtones, Rotikov, Russian equivalent, Russian society, Russkaia literatura, Russkii erot, Same time, Several years, Sexual orientation, Sexual relations, Sodom, Sovetskii pisatel, Special consideration, Special kind, Stolichnykh gazet, Such infamy, Sveta, Vladimir.
Url:
DOI: 10.1163/187633202X00071
Links to Exploration step
ISTEX:C6F78E8F41B2CCAB1F377FFD4EEF2A8DFDA20F92Le document en format XML
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<p>IRENE ZOHRAB (Wellington, New Zealand) DOSTOEVSKY AND THE " O T H E R " MESHCHERSKY: REFASHIONING MASCULINITIES ON THE PAGES O F THE CITIZEN (WITH A DECODING O F A SECTION F R O M THE ADOLESCENT) The Prince o f Sodom and Citizen of Gomorrah Advances on Russia with his large newspaper. O Lord! May your righteous and swift judgment Manifest itself, as o f old, in the face of such infamy! Vladimir Solov'ev1 In a recent publication Drugoi Peterburg (The Other Petersburg) (1998), the author o f which has concealed his identity behind a pseudo- nym K. K. Rotikov, it states in the Introduction that the book reveals the "history of Petersburg homosexuality."' On the opening page o f the sec- tion headed "From the Publisher" one is confronted by a list o f both well- known, as well as forgotten personages mentioned in the book. This list includes names such as that o f V. P. Meshchersky, A. N. Apukhtin, P. I. Tchaikovsky, K. P. Pobedonostsev and others. And it is precisely these names that one associates with the weekly newspaper-journal The Citizen (Grazhdanin. Gazeta-zhurnal politicheskii i literaturnyi) while it was be- ing edited by F. M. Dostoevsky. The journal's publisher was Prince Vladimir Petrovich Meshchersky (1839-1914). The recent publication o f the "travelogue" The Other Petersburg has been greeted as an "historical event," for the book is the first publication o f its kind in Russian to pro- vide a historical overview of Russian homosexual culture. In the meantime in the West the history o f sexuality has become a widely studied topic, es- pecially since the publication o f Michel Foucault's History o f Sexuality I- III (1976-84). As one commentator has observed, Rotikov's work is 1. V. S. Solov'ev. Pis'ma, pod red. E. L. Radlova (Peterburg: Vremia, 1923), p. 113. I wish to express my thanks to James L. Rice for the assistance accorded to me while I was preparing to write this article. Of course, any faults or inadequacies are entirely my own. 2. K. K. Rotikov, Drugoi Peterburg (Sankt-Peterburg: Liga Plius, 1998). The title may be an echo of Antsiferov's Dusha Peterburga, 1922.</p>
<p>"populated by titled personages, members o f the Imperial family and for- mer pupils o f the Pages' Corps."3 On the pages o f The Other Petersburg Rotikov cites profusely from a report that has been found amongst the documents o f M. N. Ostrovsky, the Minister of State Property, which sup- plies details about the inhabitants of the world o f homosexuality in Peters- burg o f the 1880s, the so-called "Goluboi Peterburg" o f that time .4 It is re- ported here that "the vice o f homosexuality (muzhelozhestva), though it has existed already for several years [in St. Petersburg], has never been so prevalent as it is at the present time when one could state that there is no class o f the St. Petersburg populace, which does not contain many o f its practitioners...."5 In the context o f the ever growing world wide interest in the history o f sexuality, one is confronted by a series of questions associated with the publication o f The Citizen during Dostoevsky's editorship: why is it that when one reads this weekly newspaper-journal while it was being edited by Dostoevsky and published by Prince V. P. Meshchersky one is struck by a preponderance of material relating to the world of men, by the use o f female pseudonyms by male writers and by what one can only describe as some apparently homoerotic allusions? Why should this be the case in re- lation to some o f the material in this particular St. Petersburg newspaper o f 1873-74, and not in relation to other Russian newspapers o f the time? What was the extent o f Dostoevsky's involvement in this, and what were the reasons for it? Heterosexual himself, what motivated him to be appar- ently involved in the inclusion of such material? And, following on from this, what does it signify in relation to Dostoevsky's novel The Adolescent (Podrostok) written immediately after his editorship, in which the adoles- cent hero is confronted by various forms of consciousness and behavior, including homosexuality. Could Dostoevsky have been influenced while living abroad by the movement to legitimize homosexuality led by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) and the publication o f his numerous pam- phlets from 1864 onwards on "mannmanliche Liebe" (man-on-man or man-mannerly love); from the perspective of today's understanding o f the evolution o f modem homosexual consciousness it seems legitimate and timely to explore the above questions.6 One is further encouraged by the 3. Evgenii Bernstein, "Goluboi Peterburg," Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 39 (1999), pp. 403-06. 4. Rotikov, Drugoi Peterburg, p. 179. 5. Ibid., pp. 358-59. 6. This question regarding Ulrichs's influence on Dostoevsky is explored in detail by the present author elsewhere. See also Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain, Jrom the Nineteenth Century to the Present (London, Melbourne, New York: Quartet Books, 1979); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature a n d Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1993). The following pam-</p>
<p>contemporary assumption that the passional life o f biographical subjects is a distinct part o f their total being and a necessary source o f enquiry to- wards an understanding o f their creative works.' In this regard too The Citizen is of interest; it can be viewed as a precursor o f the typical journals o f the "Silver Age" and its modernist trends, reflecting the movement's preoccupation with Eros, as well as aesthetic and religious concerns. So, on turning to the pages o f Dostoevsky's newspaper one sees that most of the contributions published in The Citizen were unsigned, or signed with a pseudonym. A relatively large proportion o f the newspaper comprised regular columns, whether weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, generally writ- ten, as far as it has been possible to establish, by regular columnists, though unsigned.8 Featured also were columns more ad hoc in composi- tion, which were compiled by the editor Dostoevsky incorporating contri- butions from many different authors, including sometimes his own mate- phlets by Ulrichs were published in Germany some o f which Dostoevsky would have read: (Numa Numantius) "'Vindex' Social-juristische Studien iiber mannmannliche Geschlecht- sliebe" (Leipzig: Matthes, 1864), xii + 28 pp.; (Numa Numantius) "'Inclusa'. Anthropolo- gische Studien iiber mannm2nnliche Geschlechtsliebe" (Leipzig: Matthes, 1865), xii + 32 pp.; (Numa Numantius) "'Vindicta' Kampffur Freiheit von Verfolgung. Criminalistische Ausfilhrungen u. legislatorische Vorschlage. Forderung einer Revision d. bestehenden Criminalgesetze. Urnische Tageschronik" (Leipzig: Matthes, 1865), xxiv + 28 pp.; (Numa Numantius) '''Formatrix' Anthropologische Studien uber umische Liebe" (Leipzig: Mat- thes, 1865), xviii + 66 pp.; (Numa Numantius) '"area spei', Moralphilosoph. u. sozialphi- losoph. Studien über umische Liebe" (Leipzig: Matthes, 1865), xxiv + 93 pp. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, "'Gladius furens.' Das Naturrathsel der Urningsliebe und der Irrthum als Gesetzgeber. Eine Provocation an den dt. Juristentag" (Kassel: Wiimemberger, 1868), 37 pp.; Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, "'Memnon.' Die Geschlechtsnatur des mannliebenden Urnings. Eine naturwissenschaftliche Darstellung. Korperlichseetischer Hermaphroditismus. Anima muliebris vi � li corpore inclusa. 2 Abtheilungen" (Schleiz: Hubscher, 1868), xx + 50 pp, xxxvi + [51-] 135 pp.; "'Incubus.' Umingsliebe u. Blutgier. Eine Erorterung uber, krank- hafte Gemuthsaffectionen u. Zurechnungsfahigkeit, veranlasst durch den Berliner Criminal- fall v. Zastrow. Mit 15 Fallen verwandter Natur" (Leipzig: Serbe, 1869), 93 pp.; ""Argo- nauticus.' Zastrow und die Urninge des pietistischen, ultramontanen freidenkenden Lagers. Mit Erorterungen uber Blutgier u. Zurechnungsfdhigkcit, kleinen Mittheilungen aus d. Um- ingswelt u. den Criminalfallen: Bischoff Morell v. Edinburg, Graf Czarnecky in Posen, Su- perintendent Forstner zu Wien (Leipzig: Serbe, 1869), 158 pp.; "'Prometheus.' Beitr. zur Erforschung des Naturrlthscis des Uranismus u. zur Erorterung d. sittliche u. gesell- schaftlichen Interessen des Umingthums" (Leipzig: Serbe, 1870), 77 pp.; "`Araxes.' Ruf nach Befreiung der Urningsnatur vom Strafgesetz. An die Reichsversammlungen Nord- deutschlands und Osterreichs (Schleiz: Hubscher, 1870), 39 pp. 7. Leon Edel, "Biography and the Sexual Revolution - Why Curiosity Is No Longer Vulgar," The New York Times Book Review, Nov. 24, 1985, p. 13. 8. These columns included "Petersburg commentary" (Peterburgskoe obozrenie), "Moscow Notes" (Moskovskie zametki), "Regional News" (Oblastnoe obozrenie), "Politi- cal News" (Politicheskoe obozrenie), "Domestic News" (Vnutrennee obozrenie) or "Con- temporary News" (Sovremennoe obozrenie).</p>
<p>rial.9 In addition, Dostoevsky contributed his own signed column "Diary o f a Writer" (Dnevnik pisatelia) and later "Foreign Affairs" (Inostrannye 9. These included the columns "From Current Life" (Iz tekushchei zhizni), "The Last Little Page" (Posledniaia stranichka) and "Miscellany" (Eralash). Contributions to "The Last Little Page" o f The Citizen were unsigned and five items from this column have been attributed to Dostoevskii in the past. However, only one o f these attributions was considered to be sufficiently verifiable to be included into the thirty- volume Academy edition o f Dostoevskii's complete collected works. See F M. Dosto- evskii. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972-90), 21: 176-79. One further item was included into the "Dubia" section o f volume 27 o f the Academy edition, which contains all anonymous articles and comments from various periods o f Dostoevskii's life (including a few from The Citizen) which could be attributed with a cer- tain degree o f confidence to him, but the authorship o f which remains nevertheless debat- able. See ibid., 27: 166-67. The other three items from "The Last Little Page" (excluded from the "Dubia" volume) were all attributed to Dostoevskii by the eminent Soviet academician V. V. Vinogradov. See V. V. Vinogradov, Problema avtorstva i teoriia stilei (Moscow: Gos. Izd-vo khudoz- hestvennoi literatury, 1961); idem, Dostoevskii i ego vremia (Leningrad: Nauka, 1971), pp. 17-32; idem, "Iz anonimnogo fel'etonnogo nasiediia Dostoevskogo," in Issledovaniia po poetike i stilistike (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972), pp. 185-211. See also V. A. Viktorovich, "Stsena v redaktsii odnoi iz stolichnykh gazet," Dostoevskii. Materialy i issledovaniia, 11 I (Sankt-Peterburg: Nauka, 1994), pp. 3-11. However, since the time o f attribution some new evidence has come to light (such as copies o f payments to authors) that has demonstrated that some o f Vinogradov's judgments were unfounded, while others have been thrown into doubt. As V. A. Tunimanov has ar- gued the topic remains unclear and requires "further study." See "Neizdannyi Dostoevskii: Zapisnye knizhki i tetradi 1860-1881 gg.," Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 83 (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), pp. 289-365. This was reprinted in the PSS almost in full, though with some significant omissions. V. A. Tunimanov, "Ob anonimnom fel'etonnom nasledii F. M. Dostoevskogo v gody redaktirovaniia Grazhdanina," Russkaia literature, No. 2 (198 1), p. 171. "The Last Little Page" has never been republished (apart from the few above-mentioned items cited by V. V. Vinogradov). A frequent contributor to "The Last Little Page" was doubtlessly Meshchersky Other contributors in addition to the editor, Dostoevsky and the publisher included the critic Ni- kolai Strakhov (1828-1896), who contributed to the column at least on one occasion; the poet Aleksei Apukhtin (1840-1893); Vsevolod Solov'ev (1849-1903), the brother o f the philosopher Vladimir Solov'ev and the son o f the historian Sergei (who was also at one time tutor to the heir to the throne the future Alexander III). Apparently Dostoevsky, whom Vsevolod hero-worshipped, encouraged him to produce some sketches. It is likely that the editorial secretary Viktor Putsykovich (1843-1909) may have been another occasional con- tributor. A. I. Poretskii (1819-1879) who had worked with Dostoevsky in the 1860s on the journals Time (Yremia) and Epoch (Epokha) and appeared to be able to complement, even emulate Dostoevsky's style also contributed from time to time, as is evident from one o f Dostoevsky's letters to him.)</p>
<p>sobytiia).IO A number o f attempts have been made by scholars to try and determine the authorship o f various unsigned contributions (though none of the homoerotic variety)." A number of these attributions have since proved to be unfounded.'2 In the case of any material that has been referred to as homoerotic the difficulties o f attribution are further compounded by the fact that both the imposed and induced codes o f sexuality in nineteenth-century Russia would have served to encourage contributors with unconformable erotic tastes to conceal their identity over and above the usual anonymity o f con- tributions observed at that time. Nevertheless, certain observations can be made about the significance of this material that, it can be argued, ulti- mately served to refashion masculine gender norms on the pages o f The Citizen. In this sense too The Citizen foreshadows some of the trends o f the modernist movement. For instance, the religious philosopher and commentator Vasilii Rozanov (1856-1919), who explores the nature o f sexuality in some o f his works, has acknowledged his debt to Dosto- evsky's Diary o f a Writer begun in The Citizen. In his Luidi lunnogo sveta (Men of Moonlight) where the religious and mystical aspects of homo- sexuality are explored, Rozanov takes as his point of departure the works on ancient religions by Arkhimandrit Khrizanf citing extensively from them, and, significantly, these works were discussed in The Citizen at a time when Dostoevsky was in sole charge of the book review section. With the new awareness o f and researches into the construction o f homo- sexuality during the nineteenth century spearheaded by Michel Foucault, any observations insofar as they might impinge on the sexual-aesthetic discourses in the writing o f Dostoevsky could be of significance.'3 10. Begun in The Citizen, "Diary o f a Writer" was continued in later years as a separate publication. 11. V. V. Vinogradov, Problema avtorstva i teoriiastilei (Moscow: Gos. Izd-vo khu- dozhestvennoi literatury, 1961); idem, Dostoevskii i ego vremia (Leningrad: Nauka, 1971), pp. 17-32; idem, "Iz anonimnogo fel'etonnogo naslediia Dostoevskogo," Issledovaniia po poetike i stilistike (Leningrad: Nauka, 1972), pp. 185-211. See also V. A. Viktorovich, "Stsena v redaktsii odnoi iz stolichnykh gazet," Dostoevskii. Materialy i issledovaniia, 11, pp. 3-11. 12. V. A.Tunimanov, "Ob anonimnom fel'etonnom nasledii F. M. Dostoevskogo v gody redaktirovaniia Grazhdanina," Russkaia literatura, No. 2 (1981), p. 171; B. V. Fedorenko, "K istorii gazety-zhurnala 'Grazhdanin'," Dostoevskii. Materialy i issledovaniia, I1, pp. 246-58. 13. Grazhdanin, No. 1 (1873), p. 25: "Kritika i bibliografiia. Religii drevnego mira v ikh otnoshenii k khristianstvu. Istoricheskoe issledovanie. Arkhim Khrizanfa, rektora s.- peterb. Dukh. Seminarii, SPb., 1873." See also Irene Zohrab, "The bibliographical section and the editorial in the first issue o f The Citizen (Grazhdanin) for 1873 following the as- sumption by F. M. Dostoevsky o f his editorial duties," New Zealand Slavonic J o u r n a l (1996), pp. 209-34; V. V. Rozanov, Luidi lunnogo sveta:metafizika khristianstva (Mos-</p>
<p>These might then be considered also within the sphere o f the cultural tradition o f thinking about desire between men in Russia. Foucault's for- mulation could serve as a starting point: The nineteenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type o f life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious p h y s i o l o g y . . . . We must not forget that the psychological, psychiatric, medical category o � homosexuality was constituted from the moment it was characterized - Westphal's famous article o f 1870 on "contrary sexual sensations" can stand as its date o f birth - less by a type o f sexual relations than by a certain quality of sexual sensibility [my emphasis - I.Z.], a certain way of inverting the masculine and feminine in oneself. Homosexuality appeared as one o f the forms o f sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind o f interior androgyny, a hermaphroditism o f the soul. The sodo- mite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a spe- c i e s . 1 4 From this perspective Dostoevsky's own works invite special consid- eration, since this is one dimension o f his writing that has not been di- rectly confronted by critics hitherto. In this instance, only some prelimi- nary, for the main part contextual comments are being offered for discus- sion and they are not intended to be either conclusive and certainly not exhaustive. Thus the hermeneutics o f homoerotic signs as embedded in certain of Dostoevsky's texts and the application to them o f certain mod- els, such as those o f Rene Girard will be considered in Part II o f this arti- cle. Doubtlessly, the partial responsibility for the inclusion o f homoerotic allusions on the pages o f The Citizen rested with its o w n e r - publisher Prince Vladimir Petrovich Meshchersky, who founded The Cdtizen in January 1872. He was later to become notorious as a homosexual and re- ferred to jokingly by the poet-philosopher Vladimir Solov'ev (1853-1900) as the "Prince of Sodom and 'Citizen' of Gomorrah": Although he [Meshchersky] is illiterate, he has raised aloft the ban- ner of religion and morality in his capacity as a sodomite. Earlier, in his professional role he was obliged to give his attention to articles at cow: Druzhba narodov, reprintnoe vosproizvedenie vtorogo izdaniia 1913 goda, 1990); Michel Foucault, The History o f Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction. Vol. 2: The Use o f Pleasure, trans. by Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1980-86). 14. Ibid., 1: 43.</p>
<p>the back [zadnii stat'i], but now he is suddenly publicizing the fact that in his new, "big newspaper he will be paying special attention to leading articles at the front." Can one trust such a radical change o f di- rection? And is this not a mask for a more opportune propagation o f the idea o f Sodom on the bases o f Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nation- ality? That is how I have understood it and from the depths o f my soul cried out: The Prince o f Sodom and Citizen of Gomorrah,/ Advances onto Russia with his large newspaper./ 0 Lord! May your righteous and speedy justice/ Manifest itself, as in olden times, upon such in- famy! 15 It is likely that Dostoevsky would have known o f or suspected Meshch- ersky's sexual orientation at the time o f his appointment to the position o f editor, which was confirmed on December 20; 1872. 16 Meshchersky came from an impeccable lineage, being on his mother's side the grandson o f the court historian Nikolai Karamzin (1766-1826), an outstanding figure in Russian literature. In the 1860s Meshchersky had been the favorite friend o f the Grand Duke Tsarevich, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1843-1865) (the eldest son of Alexander II and known as "Niksa" within his family circle). Nicholas's affection for Meshchersky is reflected in his letters to him, which remain unpublished in the archives. Nicholas died suddenly in 1865 in Nice, and Meshchersky endeavored to remain on good terms with Nicholas's younger brother, the Grand Duke Alexander, who ascended to the throne in 1881. Their relationship is reflected in their published corre- spondence covering the years 1867-1872." Following the death o f Alex- ander III in 1894 Meshchersky remained close to the last monarch, Nicho- las II (1894 -1917).18 Meshchersky has been described by Count Sergei lu. Witte (1849- 1915), who was to become Minister of Finance, as being one o f the most 15. V. S. Solov'ev, Pis'ma, pod red. E. L. Radlova, p. 31. V. S. Solov'ev, Stikhot- voreniia i shutochnye p ' e s y (Leningrad: Biblioteka poeta, Sovetskii pisatel', 1974), pp. 148,315. 16. L. P. Grossman, Znizn' i trudy F M. Dostoevskogo. Biografiia v datakh i dokumen- takh (Moscow-Leningrad: Academia, 1935), p. 205. See also J. G. Oksman, Tvorchestvo F. M. Dostoevskogo, l81/-I881-1921: Sbornik statei i materialov (Odessa: Vseukrainskoe gos. Izd-vo, 1921), pp. 63-82. PSS, 21 (1980), p. 5. Letopis'zhizni i tvorchestva Dosto- evskogo 1821-1887, 11 (Sankt-Peterburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 1994); B. V. Fedorenko, "K istorii gazety-zhurnala Grazhdanin," Dostoevskii.Materialy i issledovaniia, I 1, pp. 246- 58. 17. Igor Vinogradoff, "Some Russian Imperial Letters to Prince V. P. Meshchersky (1839-1914)," Oxford Slavonic P a p e r s 10 (1962), p. 122. 18. Igor Vinogradoff, "Further Russian Imperial Correspondencce with Prince V. P. Meshchersky," ibid., 1 I (1964).</p>
<p>interesting people he had ever met. Meshchersky possessed the extraordi- nary ability, according to Witte, o f insinuating himself into a person's very soul (priviazchivosti . . . i umen'iu vlezt' v dushu). However, in his published memoirs he leaves an overall negative impression o f Meshcher- sky characterising him as "a most terrible man": All his life Meshchersky has occupied himself only with his favor- ites; he has made a trade out of politics and he uses this in a most shameless way to bargain to his own advantage and that o f his favor- ites. So that I cannot say anything other than that he is a most terrible man. Most people who have anything to do with him know this. 19 Witte mentions some of Meshchersky's "favorites" by name and recalls the Prince's regular evening functions at which he would entertain a wide circle o f friends and acquaintances. It was at one o f Meshchersky's weekly evenings in late 1871 or early 1872 at which he habitually enter- tained intellectuals and writers that Dostoevsky made his acquaintance. Witte continues: Meshchersky was the most fervent protector of, and patron and pe- titioner for a special group of men that always surrounded him. But in this company there was always some one particular young man who played a dominant role. Another prominent government official, E. M. Feoktistov, the Head of the Chief Directorate for the Press has left an even more uncomplimentary description o f Meshchersky: As time went on his reputation became more and more shameful; according to general opinion, which had not been formed without suf- ficient basis, Meshchersky was one o f the most inveterate pederasts. A ' scoundrel, an insolent fellow, a person without conscience or convic- tions, he pretended to be a most ardent patriot, - gushy phrases about his devotion to Church and Throne never left his lips, though all de- cent people felt nauseated by this verbiage, the sincerity o f which no 19. G r a f S. Iu. Witte, Vospominaniia. Tsarstvovanie Aleksandra II i Aleksandra 1II (Berlin, 1923); idem, Vospominania.Tsarstvovanie Nikolaia II. t. III (Moscow: Slovo, Aleks Skif, 1994), pp. 544-62. "Vsis svoiu zhizn' Meshcherskii tol'ko zanimaetsia svoimi favoritami; iz politiki zhe on sdelal remeslo, kotorym samym bessovestnym obrazom torguet v svoiu pol'zu i v pol'zu svoikh favoritov. Tak chto ia ne mogu inache skazat' pro Meshcherskogo, kak to, chto eto uzhasneishii chelovek. Pro eto znaiut pochti vse, imeiush- chie s nim snosheniia."</p>
<p>one wanted, nor was able to believe in. Apparently, only the monarch, once again letting himself be deceived took this in all good faith.20 A more humorous image has been left o f the Prince by the poet- philosopher and close friend of Dostoevsky's, Vladimir Solov'ev, who in addition to referring to Meshchersky as the "Prince of Sodom and 'Citi- zen' o f Gomorrah," also satirized Meshchersky in a comic play The No- bles ' Loan (Dvorianskii Zaem). Although the playlet was written after Dostoevsky's death, already in 1875 Solov'ev did not wish to have any dealings with Meshchersky. Writing from London to his mother on Sep- tember 17/29, 1875 Solov'ev notes: "I hope that fatHer has received my a n s w e r i n t h e n e g a t i v e r e g a r d i n g M e s h c h e r s k y ' s p r o p o s a l . " 2 ' So Meshchersky was the leading character in Solov'ev's unfinished play The Nobles' Loan, wherein the Prince describes himself as being a "pure nobleman, though not pure in relation to certain vices" of which he is proud (ia chistyi dvorianin/ Khotia ne chist ot koi-kakikh porokov/ I dazhe onymi gorzhus '). 22 The play is satirical with a number o f suggestive p u n s i n r e l a t i o n t o M e s h c h e r s k y ' s s e x u a l o r i e n t a t i o n . 2 3 20. Vospominaniia E. M Feoktistova. Za kulisami politiki i literatury 1848-1896 (Len- ingrad, 1929; reprint Oriental Research Partners), pp. 244-45, 247. 21. V. S. Solov'ev, Pis'ma, pod red. E. L. Radlova, p. 31. 22. Ibid. The play is described as a "contemporary civic fairy-tale set in three interiors of the Nobles' Bank." Prince Meshchersky appears in the first scene surrounded by numer- ous stock and shares owning nobles, holding these stocks under their arms, with the inten- tion o f mortgaging them. Meshchersky addresses them: Likuui, rossiiskoe dvorianstvo! Vstupi skorei vo vse prava grazhdanstva! I s blagodarnost'iu chitai lish'h Grazhdanin.. Proshel period oskuden'ia! Proshu u Vas vnimaniia i bden'ia. Vy znaete menia: ia chistyi dvorianin, Khotia ne chist ot koi-kakikh porokov I dazhe onymi gorzhus'. No v mnenii kita, na kom pochiet Rus', Ia samyi predannyi iz vsekh ee prorokov. Mogu dostignut' ia vsego, za chto b e r u s ' . . . Sochuvstvuet moim stremlen'iam . . . I put' k velichiiu - lish' iz moei prikhozhei. Ia drozhzhi dlia odnikh, drugim ia khloroform. Kramola krepko spit, a liberaly skisli. Turetskii moi divan, gde ia rozhdaiu mysli, Turetskii moi divan - gnezdo blagikh reform. Uzh mal'chiki, rezviaz', brosaiut k chertu knizhki; Kto byl gorodovym, idet v professora;</p>
<p>Solov'ev customarily referred to St. Petersburg as the "Finnish City o f Sodom" (chukhonskii Sodom) (see his letter to the poet A. Fet ofMarch 10, 1881 ) and appeared to prefer Moscow to it and even London. 24 There are a number o f memoirs that testify to the prevalence o f homo- sexuality in St. Petersburg, even in the early part o f the nineteenth century. Rotikov, in his The Other Petersburg notes25: During the Gogolian era that is in the 1830-1840s, on the Nevsky Prospekt there reigned "paederast debauchery," as an old Peterburg observer, Vladimir Petrovich Burnashev, described it, having appar- ently some considerable experience in this a r e a . . . . On the Nevsky, recalled Burnashev, among the ranks o f the usual hetaeras wearing skirts (geterami v iubkakh) there were many such wearing trousers. "These were the most attractive-looking postilion b o y s . . . young ca- dets, choir boys from various choirs, artisans and tradesmen from Pod rozgoiu v rukakh u zemskogo iaryzhki Dovolhnyi uchast'iu kholop krichit: ura! Khot' byl neurozhai, strana ves'ma bogata; Na Nevskom vstretil ia sanovnogo kastrata, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , nositelia pobed, Unyn'ia prezhnego na nem ischez i sled: Uzh u nego rastut usy i bleshchut o c h i . . . Speshite zh, gospoda, speshite poskoree I dushi zalozhit', i vse, car mon avis: Lovi, lovi chasy liubvi! At the end o f this scene Meshchersky emits a ceremonial, trumpet-like sound and the nobles imitate him gaily. "The air in the room is filled with the breath o f antiquity better known in chemistry as hydrogen sulphur." Eventually the nobles exeunt, while lightly per- forming the can-can. An old caretaker, Nikifor enters the room, then stops in perplexity, spits, crosses himself and opens the window-pane, muttering: Uzh gde Meshcherskii pobyval, - Sviatykh von! A ved' barin! Takogo dukhu ne pushchial I sam Faddei Bulgarin. 23. lbid. In the second scene set at the Nobles' Bank, when the Bank had ceased accept- ing the souls o f the nobles with the stocks and shares as security, one skeptical noble blames Meshchersky for his advice: "Has Meshchersky yet again missed his aim in this im- portant matter and poked into the wrong place! (Meshcherskii neuzheli / I v etom vazhnom dele / Popal da ne tuda!). 24. Sobranie sochinenii. V. S. Solov'ev. P i s m a i prilozhenie (Bruxelles: Zhizn' s Bo- gom, Foyer Oriental Chretien, 1970), p. 106. 25. Rotikov, Drugoi Peterburg, pp. 357-59.</p>
<p>various trades o f the neat and tidy variety, such as hairdressing, boot- making, tailoring, as well as casual shop assistants, young clerks from the Army and Navy Ministeries, and finally even uniformed and deco- rated officials from various departments." A veritable sociological memorandum! . . . According to the memoirist, "among the young cabbies, especially the dare-devil drivers of smart cabs there were quite a few young fellows who made their living through this infa- mous t r a d e . " . . . There were among them carriers o f the French dis- ease. . . . The inclination towards homosexuality (muzhelozhestvu) in Pe- tersburg was so rife, that actually prostitutes from the Nevsky Pros- pect began to sense a terrible disregard towards themselves, while their madams experienced a loss in earnings. Rotikov continues: Forty years passed since Gogol's age and the author o f the report on homosexuality that has been cited here more than once continues to assert that the vice o f homosexuality [muzhelozhestva], though it has existed already for several years [in St. Petersburg], has never been so prevalent as it is at the present time when one can state that there is no class o f the St. Petersburg populace, which does not contain many o f its practitioners.... this vice is the end result of having had sexual re- lations to satiety, it is a vice that is mainly indulged in by persons o f wealth for whom sexual relations with women have become already abhorrent, and i f the circle o f these people does extend to include oth- ers, who are not wealthy and who are young, then these newcomers serve only as victims to satisfy the desires of the former, and each one of the victims often feels a deep personal contempt for these kinds o f activities, but surrenders himself to them nevertheless, though with feelings of aversion and for the sake of payment that enables him to acquire the means for an easy and enjoyable life style. Another memoirist o f the time describes St. Petersburg in a similar vein: The shameful vice was indulged in by many well-known people in Petersburg: actors, writers, musicians, grand-dukes. Their names were on everyone's lips, many would flaunt their way o f life. Countless scandals were raised by the public disclosure of such activities, but the filthy affairs usually did not go to trial. In this regard Alexander III lacked in resoluteness and tolerated within his own family members</p>
<p>who were just as depraved, limiting himself to occasional dismissals o f individual officers, whose deeds had already received widespread publicity.26 Eventually, even Meshchersky's brother, Prince Nikolai Petrovich, who held a high position in Moscow, complained to Konstantin Po- bedonostsev (1827-1907), an adviser to Alexander III, about the Prince, as did his sister, Countess Kleinmichel. This occurred in 1887, following a scandal involving a young bugler in the Imperial Guards infantry battalion whom Meshchersky wanted transferred to the court music choir. However, this did not appear to affect unduly Meshchersky's relationship with Po- bedonostsev, because they appear to have been still communicating in later years. (In their earlier correspondence Meshchersky would effusively sign off with the following words: "Obnimaiu Vas, Bog s Vami, milyi, dorogoi, i rodnoi. Vash Kn. Meshcherskii."27 Pobedonostsev himself is mentioned by Rotikov in The Other Petersburg as having been known in circles close to him by the feminine name o f "Petrovna"?8 In 1889 Meshchersky was implicated in another homosexual scandal that was said to involve some 200 people, including members o f the Regiment of the Guards and actors from the Aleksandrinsky Theatre. This incident is also mentioned by Rotikov in The Other Petersburg.z9 But even earlier, during Dostoevsky's lifetime Meshchersky associated with known homosexuals, such as the poet Aleksei Apukhtin (1841-1893) (known as Liolia to his friends), who contributed anonymously to The Citizen during Dosto- evsky's editorship in 1873. 30 Many of the uncomplimentary comments about Meshchersky such as the one's cited above were made from the perspective o f apparent hetero- sexuals; however some o f Meshchersky's homosexual friends and ac- quaintances thought very highly o f him, including the composer Petr Tchaikovsky (1840-93). Both Tchaikovsky and the poet Apukhtin were fellow students o f the Prince's at the well-known School o f Jurisprudence 26. Anon. [V. P. Obninskii], Nikolai III: Poslednii samoderzhets (Berlin: publisher not available, 1912), p. 34. Quoted in Alexander Poznansky, Tchaikovsky's Last Days: A Documentary Record (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 4. 27. K. P. Pobedonostsev i ego korrespondenty. Pis'ma i zapiski. Tom I : Novum Regum (Moscow: Trudy gos. Rumiantsovskogo muziia, 1928), pp. 177-78. 28. Rotikov, Drugoi Peterburg, p. 179 29. Ibid., pp. 177-79. 30. "Posledniaia stranichka," Grazhdanin, 1873, No. 1, p. 21; No. 3, p. 75; No. 40, "Noch' v Monplezire" published in the first issue o f The Citizen for 1873 can be read as expressing homosexual love. The parodic poem published in No. 40 appears in Apukhtin's collected works with some additional lines which must have been censored prior to the poem's publication in The Citizen.</p>
<p>in St. Petersburg. In a letter to his sister o f 1861 Tchaikovsky describes the Prince as a "warm, likeable person."31 Most references to Meshcher- sky, who is referred to as "M" were expunged by Tchaikovsky's brother Modest from his three-volume biography o f the composer's life in an ef- fort to conceal their common homosexuality.32 Tchaikovsky also contrib- uted to The Citizen during Dostoevsky's editorship, publishing a series o f four articles on Beethoven. 33 At the time when Dostoevsky began working for Meshchersky, the Prince was thirty-four years old and Dostoevsky was fifty-two. Meshcher- sky had graduated form the School o f Jurisprudence that had the official reputation o f being a "bastion o f moral probity," yet homosexuality was said to flourish there. A hymn to homosexuality written by its students and circulated among them was published in 1879 in a volume o f porno- graphic material entitled Russian Eros. Not f o r the Ladies. 34 Graduates from the Junker School and other military schools were involved, in addi- tion to those from the School of Jurisprudence, testifying to the fact that in Russia o f that time many well-known individuals were or might have been o f a homosexual orientation. The collection contained some early homo- erotic poems by Lermontov published pseudonymously and also the well- known long poem The Adventures o f a Page by A. F. Shenin signed with the initials A. Sh, who had some connection with the Pavlovsk Kadet Corps. A homosexual orientation was widely associated with the worlds of Rome, Greece and the East, especially Persia: Zdes' budet obiasnit' umestno, Chto korpusnye vse pazhi V stolitse severa izvestny Kak burgi ili bardalei. Khochu povedat' otkrovenrio la pokhozhdeniia svoi; Iznezhenyi zdes' utonchenno Bol'shogo sveta vse sloi. Zdes' Rima, Gretscii, Vostoka Voskresli liudi i dela, 31. P. I. Chaikovskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: Literaturnye proizvedeniia i perepiska, 17 tt. (Moscow: Izd. Muzyka, 1953-), 5: 62; this passage is absent in P. I. Chaikovskii, P i s ' m a k rodnym (1840-1879), red. Vladimir Zhdanov (Moscow, 1940), translated as Letters to His Family: An Anthology (London: Dobson, 1981). ). 32. See Alexander Poznansky, Tchaikovsky: The Quest f o r the Inner Man (New York: Schirmer Books, Simon � Schuster Macmillan, 1991). 33. P. I. Chaikovskii, "Betkhoven i ego vremia," Grazhdanin, Nos 7, 8, 11, 12. 34. Erot Russe: Russkii Erot. Ne dlia Dam (Geneva: publisher not available (only 100 copies printed), 1879).</p>
<p>I drevnim milago poroka Vsia prelest' pyshno rastsvela. Menia nevinnosti lishili, Kak v korpus ia lish' postupil Vpolne i skoro razvratili, I grekh Sodomskii uzh mne mil.'5 The collection opened with an ironic address to the reader emphasizing the fact that the content was a reflection o f the mores of a number educa- tional institutions that had produced many o f Russia's leading statesmen: Because the collection o f poems before you presents a picture o f morality in our boarding institutions from which our leading states- men have graduated, as for instance from the Junkers' School (Prince Bariatinskii, Potapov, Timashev, Loris-Melikov), from the Cadets' Corps (Shuvalov, Ignat'ev), from the School of Jurisprudence (Nabokov, Pobedonostsev and others), so one of the contemporaries o f the personages listed above resolved to publish these poems in a print- run o f 100 copies in order to immortalize the glorious names and champions o f our Throne-and-Fatherland (Prestol-Otechestvo), having e n t i t l e d t h i s c o l l e c t i o n ' R U S S I A N E R O S ' . Y e a r 1 8 7 9 . ' 6 None o f the reminiscences cited above use the Russian equivalent o f the English term "homosexuality". The reason for this is that the term did not exist before 1892 in either language. It was introduced into English in order to render a German cognate that had been in use for some twenty years. In Europe before 1892 the expression "sexual inversion" referred to a broad range o f deviant gender behavior of which homosexuality was one. In Russia homosexuality was described as a "pathological" condition. The term "sodomy" and "pederasty" were also used, though sodomites were not necessarily homosexuals. Rotikov discusses some o f the Russian terminology associated with homosexuality, though even he makes some etymological mistakes (some o f which have already been pointed out by r e v i e w e r s ) . 3 ' The modern notion o f "homosexual consciousness" is examined at length by Jeffrey Weeks in his ground breaking study Coming Out: Homo- sexual Politics in Britain, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. When used in the context o f the nineteenth century the notion may be un- 35. Ibid., pp. 20-21. 36. Ibid. 37. Olga Kushlina, "Zelenyi krai za parom golubym," Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, No 39 (1999), pp. 400-02.</p>
<p>derstood to mean in certain contexts also a special kind of sensibility and mode of apprehension. In those who shared in a sense o f homosexual con- sciousness it was often allied to Platonic idealism and encompassed male friendship and love. (Ulrich's early confessional pamphlets on "mannman- nerliche Liebe" referred to above exemplified this trend. See footnote 6.) Love between men was considered to be one of the noblest feelings a hu- man being could experience. It was, o f course, revered by the Greeks (and the upper classes in Russia received a classical education). This special sensibility incorporated a sense o f self-sacrifice and service, loyalty, phi- lanthropy and duty. It was often characterized by its religious overtones, a sense of the aesthetic and sublime. Hence there appears to have existed a disparity between homosexual behavior on a sexual level and Platonic idealism, wherein the spiritual and intellectual aspects o f male love were emphasized (especially when viewed form a heterosexual perspective, which is how Dostoevsky is likely to have viewed it). Therefore it is im- portant to make a distinction between what is commonly understood by the practice o f homosexuality today and what appeared to have been sometimes the case in the second half of the nineteenth century (that is, the Russian equivalent o f the Victorian age). However, the whole question of what constitutes a homosexual personality remains controversial down to the present day. A definition of homosexuality in terms o f a unitary or behavioral type remains problematical. In the 1860s and 1870s Meshchersky's homosexual personality ap- peared to display (certainly overtly) these traditional classical Platonic characteristics, such as religiosity, love o f one's country ie "Throne-and- Fatherland," heightened feelings allied to a sense of focused energy chan- neled into a quest for an ideal. This was combined with extreme commit- ment to his writing on the one hand, and loyalty and devotion towards his male friends expressed in the favors he was always trying to do for them on the other. It must also be remembered that Meshchersky inherited the legacy o f eighteenth-century sensibility espoused by his famous grandfa- ther Karamzin and reflected in the latter's sentimental literature. In addi- tion, he grew up in a society (of the post-Romantic period) that had been "permeated by a cult o f emotion in which Russia found so fertile a soil that it continued, often imperceptibly, to affect the lives o f ordinary Rus- sians to the present d a y Perhaps Dostoevsky initially responded to these manifestations of ex- alted idealism, heightened sensibility, religiosity and apparently fervent commitment to cause and country because he himself was subject to heightened moods and extremes. The existence of these moods and ex- 38. Poznansky, Tchaikovslry. � The Quest for the Inner Man, p. xiii.</p>
<p>tremes have been clinically verified and has been discussed by a number of neurologists and other commentators, as well as having been compre- hensively investigated by James L. Rice in Dostoevsky and the Healing Art: An Essay in Literary and Medical History (1985).39 In addition, there are Dostoevsky's own descriptions o f his moods and ecstatic experiences associated with the aura of epilepsy as conveyed, for instance, to Baron A Vrangel' ca. 1855, to N. Strakhov ca. 1864 and to Sophie Kovalevskaia (Korvin-Krukovskaia) ca. 1865, each published with no apparent awareness or duplication of the others. These too are dis- cussed and listed in Rice's work. There is also the fictional treatment o f these moods in the Idiot. Therefore, because o f his unique apprehension o f the world (for what- ever reason this might have been, clinical or otherwise), Dostoevsky may have identified with some o f these extreme idealistic feelings and drives, replete with religious overtones. He may have associated them uncon- sciously with his own unusual premonitory moods and ecstatic aura ex- perienced apparently in connection with his epilepsy which, it must be emphasized, served also to leave a more long-term imprint on the subject's perception and senses overall. (Dostoevsky's earlier admission to S. D. lanovsky regarding his "own Mephistopheles" which has been interpreted by some commentators as evidence of his alleged youthful infatuation with N. A. Speshnev can only, in our view, be of indirect relevance in re- lation to Dostoevsky's attitude to Meshchersky.)4o The majority o f judgmental comments about Meshchersky such as the one's cited above were made well after Dostoevsky's death in January 1881. In the 1870s Meshchersky appears to have been almost totally pre- occupied with his writing, publishing and socio-political concerns, rather than his homosexual activities. However, there is no reason to suppose that already in the 1870s Dostoevsky would not have been aware o f the Prince's special kind o f nature, sexual orientation and concomitant percep- 39. James L. Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art: An Essay in Literary a n d Medical History (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1985). Professor Rice lists three impeccable medical stud- ies that discuss aura in the light o f modem neurology: Item #177 Cirignotta, MD (1980) [Bologna]; Item # 795 Voskuil, MD (1983) [Netherlands] and item # 859 Geschwind, MD (1984) [Boston]. 40. F. M. Dostoevskii. Y vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (Moscow: Khudozhestven- naia literatura, 1964), p. 172. L. I. Saraskina, Fedor Dostoevskii. Otolenie demonov (Mos- cow: Soglasie, 1996). Saraskina takes Ianovsky's record as her starting point, ignoring the fact that the admission as related by Ianosky is as much a reflection (and justification) o f lanovsky's own complex feelings for Dostoevsky as it is o f the actual Dostoesky. Saraskina develops on the assertion of N. A. Berdiaev that Dostoevsky was "romantically in love with and captivated and seduced" by the creation o f his hero Stavrogin in The Possessed and that this constituted his "weakness, temptation and sin."</p>
<p>tion o f the world. There is nothing in Dostoevsky's correspondence and papers that relates to such matters associated with the Prince. But that is not surprising because his wife, who was responsible for his archives, would have censored any references to anything considered sexually un- lawful or even socially unconventional at the time. There exists no biography o f Meshchersky in Russian, nor it seems in any other language, though we have his own memoirs. In fact, Meshcher- sky is probably the most maligned man in Russian society and culture. Russian critics refer to him with distaste and try to present the impression that Dostoevsky did not get on with him and resigned as editor o f The Citizen at the earliest opportunity, having nothing to do with him subse- quently. This is misleading. Dostoevsky continued to contribute to The Citizen on the odd occasion and even helped Meshchersky edit the occa- s i o n a l a r t i c l e w h e n M e s h c h e r s k y r e q u e s t e d h i s h e l p . 4 1 Meshchersky for his part continued to keep in touch with Dostoevsky and the latter occasionally called on him during his visits to St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky still referred to him as "our most pleasant Prince" (nash milei- s h i i k n i a z ' ) i n a l e t t e r o f J a n u a r y 1 7 , 1 8 7 7 . ° z Therefore there is no question that following his resignation from The Citizen to enable him to concentrate on the writing of his next novel The Adolescent, Dostoevsky did not or would not keep up his acquaintance with Prince Meshchersky. His archives contain numerous invitations from Meshchersky to attend various dinner parties, lunches, a New Year's eve celebration with fortune-telling and so on at the Prince's on a fairly regu- lar basis right up until the end of 1879 (after which time the Prince ap- pears to have been absent from St. Petersburg and his Wednesdays were discontinued). A myth seems to have been created that once Dostoevsky resigned he would have nothing to do with Meshchersky. Meshchersky was still sending Christmas presents to Dostoevsky's children and copies o f h i s o w n p u b l i c a t i o n s t o h i m o n D e c e m b e r 2 5 , 1 8 7 9 . " The last note from Meshchersky to Dostoevsky in the latter's archives is dated April 20, 1880, though the archives include a number of undated notes. There are altogether fifty-three letters or notes from Meshchersky to 41. Dostoevsky contributed "`Iz dachnyk' progulok Kuz'my Prutkova i ego druga" to the column "The Last Little Page" on October 10, 1878 (this can be verified as there exists a manuscript for type-setting o f the 1878 piece handwritten by Dostoevsky's wife, with cor- rections written in by Dostoevsky). Meshchersky requested Dostoevsky's help on May 8, 1874, for instance, to help him rewrite a reply to the ecclesiastical newspaper Tserkovno-obshchestvennyi vestnik. See Central Russian Library (formerly the Lenin Library) F. 93.11.6.77. L.24. See also Letopis' zhizni i tvorchestva F. M Dostoevskogo, 2: 488-89. 42. PSS, 29 (2): 136. 43. Letopis'zhizni i tvorchestva F. M Dostoevskogo, 3: 360.</p>
<p>Dostoevsky covering the period from October 1872 to April 1880. Only four o f Dostoevsky's letters to Meshchersky have been preserved, while all the others are missing. Altogether only five are listed as missing in the Academy edition o f the Complete Collected Works, though there are likely to have been more than five. In his memoirs Meshchersky recalls that Dostoevsky's influence on him was o f the deepest and most decisive kind (glubochaishchee i reshaiushchee). Dostoevsky became "the mind and soul o f The Citizen. ,,44 Significantly, Dostoevsky felt entirely comfortable in Meshchersky's s company. There are few reminiscences o f the older Dostoevsky other than that o f an irritable, withdrawn, touchy, self-conscious and stressed-out in- dividual. However, Meshchersky remembers him also as entirely "charm- ing" (ocharovatelen), and fun loving and relaxed (kogda na Fedora Mik- hailovicha nakhodilo osobenno veseloe nastroenie dukha). While in that mood Dostoevsky was halfway between "skittish and playful" (chto-to . . . srednee mezhdu igrivym i shalovlivym).45 And skittish and playful was the tone o f some of the humorous contri- butions to The Citizen when the two men were at its helm. Such is some- times the tone o f items in the columns "The Last Little Page," "Miscel- lany" and "Petersburg News." Dostoevsky's own column "Diary o f a Writer" also has elements of humor and satire in it, though o f a "darker" and more biting variety, as say, in "Bobok," where there are a number o f allusions to homosexuality. Amusing sketches involving male courtesans appear on "The Last Little Page" and the serialized novels about high so- ciety now and again, the latter written by Meshchersky. For example, in "The Last Little Page" no. 51, the penultimate issue for 1873, some short diary entries made by various fictitious characters representing a cross- section o f Russian society are featured. They are bidding farewell to the old year and welcoming the New Year. The cast o f characters includes a male courtesan, the counterpart o f a female courtesane. In the 1860-70s a courtesane was understood to be a high class prostitute, "la dame aux camelias," "une cocotte," and so on, popularized by Alexander Dumas and by the painter Eduard Manet, especially in the latter's popular painting o f The Naked Olympia (1863). Hence the following sketch in The Citizen would have been replete with some o f the above-mentioned connotations: 44. V. S. Nechaeva, Opisania rukopisei R M. Dostoevskogo (Moscow: Tsentral'nyi gos. akhiv literatury i iskusstv SSSR, Ministerstvo Kul'tury RSFSR, ANSSSR, 1957), pp. 427-32. V. P. Meshcherskii Moi vospominaniia, Tom II, Stremennaia, 12 (Tipografiia A Transhelia), pp. 180-82. 45. V. M. [V. P. Meshcherskii], "Vospominaniia o Fedore Mikhailoviche Dosto- evskom," Dobro, No. 2-3 (1881), p. 33. Quoted in Igo'r Volgin, Poslednii god Dosto- evskogo (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1986), p. 377.</p>
<p>From the Notes o f a Courtesan. "I think I can feel pretty good about myself, and the fact that I have spent the past year pretty well and am about to begin the New Year well. His Excellency asked me: what should he wish me for the New Year? And I replied: Oh, Your Excellency, my wish is one o f sheer lunacy, but it is frightfully overpowering. What is it then? I desire that all humanity would die and that all events would dis- appear. How's that? Yes, Sire, all except you, your spouse, your children and me! Then you would be able to see fully how immeasurably devoted I am to you and then you would live only for me!" In the serialized fiction "Etudes from Petersburg High Society" (Etuidy iz bol 'shogo peterburgskogo sveta) the entire "Etude" No. 4 is subtitled in both French and Russian "Courtesans" (Kurtizany) in the masculine gen- der. Here the question is asked whether the first male courtesan might not have been Cain, who killed Abel? Then it is said that the male courtesan had originally descended from Ham, the son of Noah in the Old Testa- ment. � Ham is described as the first man to have been conscious o f an- other man's nakedness. According to Genesis, one of the sons of Ham, Canaan, was the ancestor o f the Canaanites who spread out reaching the towns o f Sodom and Gomorrah. Their descendants were the Sodomites portrayed as evil men and destroyed by the fire and brimstone o f the avenging Lord. Thus the male courtesan may be presumed to have been intended to represent a person with homosexual tendencies. Since Meshchersky was himself a homosexual, as well as apparently authoring these sketches, this invests the word "courtesan" with semantic over-determination, producing a highly connotative artistic meaning.4' At the conclusion of the "Etudes" on Courtesans there occurs a sudden shift in the narrative voice and the apparently male narrator turns into an amusing female narrator-courtesane (kurtizanka-shutikha), who is address- ing the actual object o f her desire in a letter, who appears to be a particular reader of The Citizen: 46. "Etiudy bol'shago peterburgskago sveta. Etiud IV. Kurtizany. (Les Courtisans) bol'shago sveta," Gra.:hdanin, No. 4 (1873), pp. 114-15. 47. This term refers to linguistic meaning that is determined by causes in addition to those o f natural language. An example o f the use o f this term is that by Michael Rifaterre in his article "Semantic Overdetermination in Poetry," PTL (Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory ofLiterature), 2 (1977), 1-19.</p>
<p>"You, the Sun o f my life, a life that is bleak and gloomy when I do not see you. About your health first o f all; you do not belong to your- self, but to us who adore you as one adores a Divine Being; and there- fore you must not allow any serious activities or responsibilities near you, and especially any serious people; already they are besetting you and making us unhappy. Banish everything, but gaiety! As for laugh- ter you will see that it's as inexhaustible within me as is my adoration for you. Your merry comedienne. N.N." Yet another young male courtesan is featured in another sketch in "The L a s t L i t t l e P a g e " o f T h e C i t i z e n . 4 8 The world o f high society wherein male "Courtesans" were prevalent was described by Meshchersky in his novel Women o f Petersburg High Society (Zhenshchiny iz Peterburgskogo bol 'shogo sveta), first serialized in The Citizen during Dostoevsky's editorship. In the Introduction to the version o f the novel published later as a series o f volumes, Meshchersky describes this world that is so well known to him, wherein: "Muzhchiny slaby, pusty i neredko zhenstvenno-iznezheny," p. iii) (the men are weak, shallow and often effeminate and delicate). He assures the reader that "liudi, vne bol'shogo sveta stoiashchie ne ponimaiut etogo sveta . . . " (people outside this world o f high society do not understand this world). He continues: I love this world o f high society, I can understand both its weak and painful points; I do not pass judgment, I understand and help others to understand that above all one must forgive a great deal, one must make allowances; above all one must refrain from harsh, categorical condemnation. A man who astonishes us today with his shallowness and his moral ugliness [urodlivost'iu], may become tomorrow an excellent husband, 48. Eshche iz mira kurtizanov.Grazhdanin, No. 40 (1873). Osoba rassuzhdaet s drugim menee vazhnym smertnym. - Ne znaiu, kazhetsia-li eto mne tak, ili ono deistvitel'no tak, no polozhitel'no liudi glupeiut. Pravo mne inoi raz kazhetsia chto ia vsekh umnee! - Sovershenno tak, vashe v-stvo, no tol'ko naprotiv. - Kak naprotiv? nemnogo vzdragivaet osoba. - Liudi umneiut, vashe v-stvo, a ne glupeiut, tak chto mne vdvoe priiatnee vashemu v- stvu dolozhith, chto vy izvolite byt' umnee uzhe ne glupykh, a umnykh liudei. Ego vashe v-stvo ulybnulsia.</p>
<p>a good family man. Yesterday's courtesan may turn into tomorrow's c i t i z e n . 4 9 There are a number o f amusing sketches featured in The Citizen that might be said to testify to the less than usual sexual tastes o f its authors. For instance, in one sketch a landowner is cross-dressing a doll to look like the Governor o f the Province and then beating it5o; in another, whip- ping is satirized in the context o f Persian mores, recalling the earlier visit to Russia o f the Shah and his entourage, which received a great deal o f at- tention on the pages o f The Citizen.51 In another sketch, the possibility o f substituting the female gender with something else is broached: From the history o f the women's question. The other day in one of Petersburg's hotels an orator holding forth a discourse on the women's question was heard to make the following observation in passing: O h , F e m a l e S e x , w h a t o t h e r s e x c a n r e p l a c e y o u ? 5 2 Women (apart from foreign opera divas) generally received a "bad press" in the columns o f The Citizen, especially intellectuals, nihilists, bad mothers, flirts, dancers and vaudeville actresses "with their revolting erotic gestures," which warrants a separate study in itself. (Even the fact that opera in St. Petersburg was in decline was facetiously blamed on a woman: "an old woman, who wanted to play the role of the witch in Rus- sian operas and who was declined the engagement, came out o f the Opera house cursing it with the following words: 'May you be in decline for now and forever, may you be without a voice, may you be always in rags, may you be always the laughing stock and the shame of Russian art!'.")53 At the same time in the column "Petersburg News" the references to the military personnel o f various elite regiments accompanying visiting for- eign monarchs and dignitaries to St. Petersburg throughout that period were becoming quite extravagant in their description of their appealing physical characteristics. These included the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm o f Prussia, attended by Prince Bismarck, Prime Minister Moltke and the 49. Zhenshchiny iz Peterburgskago bol'shago sveta. Original'nyi roman v trekh chasti- akh. K.V.M. Chast' tret'ia (S. Peterburg: Tipografiia i khromotologiia A. Transhelia, 1874), III. 50. Grazhdanin, No. 41 (1873), pp. 1109-10. 51. 1. bid., No. 52 (1873), p. 1415. 52. lbid., No. 41 (1873), p. I I 10. 53. "Chto nadelala odna starushka!," "Peterburgskoe obozrenie," ibid., No. 37 (1873), p. 1020. In another column o f "Posledniaia stranichka," No. 38, pp. 1013-1 l4 there was a description o f a young woman in Paris giving birth to a monster (tiulen � ")</p>
<p>Prussian military; the visit o f the Duke o f Edinburgh, the son o f Queen Victoria accompanied by an extensive entourage, including the Dean of Westminster in connection with the Duke's wedding to Grand Duchess Marie, the daughter o f Alexander II; the visit of the Shah o f Persia accom- panied by the Grand Vizir and a suite o f Princes and the military, (as well as horses and dogs), a suite so large that there was insufficient room to ac- commodate them all in the Royal Palaces, so that the Cavalry "so much like our own Caucasians in physical appearance," according to the Citi- zen 's report, had to be accommodated at the Hotel Sobolev on the Moika. 54 The Shah's Adjutant-General was described as being quite hand- some with an attractive physique (ves'ma krasivoi i privlekatel'no' na- ruzhnosti), while the Shah himself was o f medium height, with a dark complexion and dark eyes in which there was much o f the meditative and sentimental (litso smugloe, v temnykh glazakh mnogo zadumwchivogo, sentemental 'nogo).55 Usually an impressive festive parade (velikolepnyi parad) o f all the elite Russian forces listed by name and regiment would take place during these occasions, described in appropriately heightened, y e t f a m i l i a r t o n e s i n t h e c o l u m n s o f T h e C i t i z e n . 5 6 Other topics covered regularly included the epidemic of suicides, espe- cially suicide committed by young men, pupils o f various educational es- tablishments such as the military Junkers School and even that o f boys, in- c l u d i n g a t e n - y e a r - o l d . 5 7 Many items in various columns dealt with matters of hygiene, the spread o f infectious diseases, which sections o f workers were especially vulnerable, the non-availability of doctors and so on.58 The Citizen also campaigned for the right of privacy in a person's own home. For instance, the author of the column "Petersburg News" (usually contributed by Meshchersky) attacks an interpretation o f the law that allows the police to enter private homes in order to catch men gambling " en flagrant delit" - as he puts it, which constitutes an invasion o f privacy (vmeshatel 'sto v chastnuiu zhizn ).'9 The author argues that the police would not consider 54. Ibid., 1873, Nos. 17; 18; 20, pp. 582-84; 1874, Nos 4; 5; 6. See also: Irene Zohrab, "Redaktorskaia deiatel'nost' F. M. Dostoevskogo v zhurnale 'Grazhdanin' i religiozno- nravstvennyi kontekst 'Brat'ev Karamazovykh'," Russkaia literatura, No. 3 (1996), pp. 55- 77. 55. Grazhdanin, No. 20 (1873), pp. 582-83. 56. This familiarity extended to other areas o f military life and news about it, such as for instance, an unconfirmed rumor that two Russian officers who had fallen behind their ad- vancing regiment en route from Tashkent to Khiva, were captured by locals and and im- paled on a stake (posazheny na kol). See ibid., No. 18 (1873), p. 532. 57. Ibid., No. 22 (1873), p. 630. 58. Laid., No. 38 (1873), p. 1021. 59. Ibid., No. 11 (1874), p. 311.</p>
<p>entering a home wherein there was a theatrical performance taking place in order to catch participants "en flagrant delit." " Some of the fiction and poetry published in The Citizen was tinged with a homoerotic hue, while the presentation of gender roles was on occasions depicted from an apparently homosexual perspective. Apukhtin's poetry is a case in point: works such as "Night in Monplezire," published in the first issue o f The Citizen for 1873, can be read as an expression of homo- sexual love. A contribution by M. A. Nedolin called "The Sexton. A Story Related among Friends" (D'iachok. Rasskaz v priiatel'skom krugu) is an- other significant example. It is narrated by an aesthete landowner, the third party in a "triangle," wherein the object of desire is the artistic and feminine village sexton Sofron, whose talent is destroyed by the "despot- ism of his wife," a proud village beauty who beats him. 60 Meshchersky contributed under various pseudonyms (e.g., N. N.), in- cluding very occasionally female ones. One such pseudonym was "Pretty Woman" (Khoroshen 'kaia zhenshchina); she was very much like Meshch- ersky himself: like him she was in her thirties, she had read widely in four languages, she was bright, attractive, confident, observant and had bound- less energy. Most importantly, she was religious and completely fearless. She also possessed a large circle o f friends and acquaintances and was well-off financially: I am a broadminded woman and my understanding of life and peo- ple is fairly wide ranging. I often see Ministers, I see Professors, I meet with women from high society, from the middle classes and from the lower classes, I have often lived in the country and just as often in Petersburg: I have also lived abroad long enough for me to be able to recognize the distinctive features of our life in comparison with life abroad; I read a lot in four languages; I have studied logic, I have come to understand that life without religion is the same as not living at all, as being dead; I have been well brought up, I know the Russian language and Russian history; I love liberty passionately, I feel noth- ing but contempt for despotism wherever and in whosoever it might manifest itself and I do not ever give in to the delusions o f despotism, even when it is spread by honey-tongued literary people and when our progressives cover up despotism with high sounding phrases that con- ceal the passionate, secret desire o f a liberal to act like a Turkish or Persian P a s h a . . . 60. Ibid., Nos. 15/16 (1873). See also Irene Zohrab, " ' A Poem in Prose': The Sexton, a forgotten text at the center o f Dostoevsky/Leskov literary polemic. Appendix: D'iachok," Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, 12, No. 2 (1998), 57-82.</p>
<p>Finally, I must admit that I enjoy material well-being, which is quite important, for were I poor, I might look at people with spiteful feelings o f envy and hate, and blinded by these feelings I could have been deprived o f the possibility o f being impartial, just and good- natured; had I been extremely wealthy I might have looked at people shallowly and falsely !61 In one o f her letters to the editor, signed Vera N., the Pretty Woman in- forms him that she has chosen The Citizen as a vehicle for expression be- cause The Citizen is afraid o f no one: I have forgotten to tell you why I have chosen The Citizen as my publication. The journal has, in my opinion, a fairly respected advan- tage over that o f others; this advantage consists of the fact that it is not afraid o f anyone! This feature gives The Citizen an inner sense o f strength, while other journals, being afraid of far too many things tend out o f necessity to perceive the world from a perspective that is some- times too narrow and even too partial! While writing for The Citizen a writer must feel herself to be in a circle o f writers who respect each other. Increasingly, as time went on Dostoevsky appears to have regarded Meshchersky with apprehensiveness, as a potential loose cannon: here was his apparently fearless superior writing under more than one female pseu- donym. Dostoevsky may have been concerned about his own reputation as well. After all, his wife attests to the fact that Dostoevsky's reputation had suffered as a result o f his editorial work on The Citizen: " . . . many people could not forgive him for his editorship of The Citizen, and echoes o f their dislike still appear in print today."62 Dostoevsky had been jeered at and called names. For instance, his columns in The Citizen were described by a leading reviewer as being those o f a "hysterical woman" (klikushech- nogo fel 'etonista), while Leskov, hiding behind a pseudonym o f "Priest Castor Oil" (Sviashchennik Kastorskii) in an article entitled "Unmarried Conceptions of a Married Monk," accused Dostoevsky o f committing a "serious, ludicrous, and unforgivable act of ignorance" by publishing Ne- dolin's "wretched, impossible, and absurd cock-and-bull Story."6' Dosto- 61. Grazhdanin, No. 4 (1874), p. 125. 62. A. G. Dostoevskaia, Vospominaniia (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1971), pp. 252-53. 63. [V. P. Burenin], "Ochistitel'noe znachenie katorgi i nervicheski-vosklitsatel'nye fel'etony g-na F. Dostoevskogo (Crazhdanin, No. 1, 2, 3)," St Peterburgskie Vedomosti, No. 20 (1873); "Kholostye poniatiia o zhenatom monakhe," Russkii mir, No. 103 (1873).</p>
<p>evsky became concerned when he began to suspect that Meshchersky's identity might be revealed through a letter addressed to the editor and signed with a pseudonym "A little old man" or "Olits" (the writer was la. Polonsky). The letter contained mild insinuations as to the real identity o f "Pretty Woman" and implicated Dostoevsky in these gender games. He tried to protect Meshchersky and warned him that Polonsky's attack should be treated seriously and rebuffed vigorously.64 Meshchersky de- cided to go ahead with his "Pretty Woman" correspondence and a further letter to the editor followed. Meshchersky's reply would have been obvi- ously vetted and closely edited by Dostoevsky. Meshchersky liked being provocative. For instance, in his disguise as "Pretty Woman" he tells the reader at one point that although he is a nice woman, he can easily turn into an evil woman and start "barking" at everybody. It is true that Meshchersky was becoming increasingly more fearless, and he did take risks, and as time went on he became more adventurous and uncompromising in his attitude. The gesture of signing his series o f articles with a female name may have been almost like a "coming out" - no longer concealing the fact that he was a homosexual. So by this stage it is likely that Dostoevsky would have been aware of Meshchersky's sexual orientation even i f he had not been hitherto. Dostoevsky was also familiar with the representation o f homosexuality in European literature. Even before his experiences in the penal colony in Siberia, where Dostoevsky would also have observed homosexual behavior, he refers in a letter to his brother Mikhail of November 16, 1845 to a recurring character who is homosexual in Balzac's trilogy, which begins with Illusions per- dues (Utrachennye illiuzii). One o f the heroes o f this trilogy is Lucien de Rubempre, a poet with ambitious tendencies who soars "over the Mount Sinai of the Prophets without seeing that below hirii were the Dead Sea and the horrible wind- ing-sheets o f Gomorrah." Lucien ends up on the verge of suicide, at which point he is found by Vautrin. The subject of the next volume, Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes (Blesk i nishcheta kurtizanok) is how Vautrin makes Lucien his "creature".65 In the end, Lucien, believing he had be- trayed Vautrin, hangs himself in his cell. Vautrin, the sinister homosexual protagonist is an image o f the new nineteenth-century man conscious o f a sense o f power - power for its own sake, a type also explored by Dosto- evsky; and Balzac influenced him perhaps more than he has been given credit for. There were two copies of Balzac's Complete Collected Works in Dostoevsky's library and Dostoevsky's first literary endeavor was, after 64. PSS, 29: 314-16. 65. Onore Bal'zak, Blesk i nishcheta kurtizanok, Chelovecheskaia Komediia, tom 9 (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1954).</p>
<p>all, a translation o f Balzac's Eugenie Grandest.66 And even before Dosto- evsky's Crime and Punishment and later novels (where various types of the new nineteenth-century man with a consciousness o f power are ex- plored), 67 one can find burlesque allusions to homoeroticism in his earliest works, such as The Double (Dvoqnik). Goliadkin Junior's baiting of Goli- adkin Senior contains some homoerotic innuendo (stemming partly from Dostoevsky's fondness for the burlesque stage in St. Petersburg and the fact that he was a touch "manic" at the time. Incidentally, burlesque was one form o f entertainment he later forbade his wife Anna Grigorievna to watch. What was is it that he did not want her to see?) Later, Dostoevsky would depict aspects of male bonding in The Eternal Husband (Vechnyi muzh) and in The Idiot. It has been suggested that in The Possessed (Besy) the rejected attraction of Petr Verkhovensky to Stav- rogin skirts homoerotic attraction here and there. Stavrogin's sexual iden- tity is further blurred by his inability to feel anything, being as he puts it, neither hot nor cold, and desiring good and evil too. Versilov in The Ado- lescent suffers from a similar malady. Stavrogin has been compared to Adrian Leverkun, the "demonic," homosexual hero in Th. Mann's Doctor Faustus. This link was apparently deliberate on Mann's part, as demon- strated by G. M. Fridlender.68 Could Mann have interpreted Stavrogin's "crime" against a child in the banned chapter "At Tikhon's" as having been committed against a boy? Andre Gide, like Th. Mann preoccupied with the nature o f homosexuality, also indirectly acknowledged Dosto- evsky's mastery at depicting aspects of homosexual consciousness. Gide refers to the "double-headed hydra o f desire that is gnawing Stavrogin. Man ever entreats, says Baudelaire, God and the Devil at one and the same time. At the bottom, what Stavrogin worships is energy. William Blake will give us the key to this baffling character."69 Like many other critics, including L. I. Saraskina '70 he notes that Dostoevsky's "sensualists" (sla- dostrastniki) profess that their hearts are battlefields between the ideals o f Sodom and that o f the Madonna. Gide selects Dostoevsky's gallery of de- structive women for special consideration, such as Raskol'nikov's sister, 66. L. P. Grossman, "Katalog biblioteki Dostoevskogo," in Seminarii p o Dostevskomu. Materialy, bibliografiia i kommentarii (Moscow-Petrograd: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1922; reprinted Letchworth, Herts., England: Prideaux Press, 1972), p. 32. F. M. Dosto- evskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Kanonicheskie teksty, ed. V. N. Zakharov (Petro- zavodsk: lzdatel'stvo Petrozavodskogo Universiteta, 1995), I : 415-578. 67. One o f Dostoevsky's favorite expressions quoted in Crime and Punishment is Vautrin's phrase "Assez cause!" See PSS, 12: 129. 68. G. M. Fridlender, "Doktor Faustus" T. Manna i "Besy" Dostoevskogo. Dostoevskii. Afaterialy i issledovaniia, 14 (Sankt-Peterburg: Nauka, 1997), pp. 3-16. 69. Andre Gide, Dostoevsky (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1925), pp. 165-66. 70. Saraskina, Fedor Dostoevskii. Otolenie demonov.</p>
<p>Nastasia Filippovna and Aglaia in The Idiot, Liza in The Possessed , Katerina Ivanovna in The Brothers Karamazov: "His women, even more so than his characters of the other sex, are ever moved and determined by considerations o f pride"; they do little to encourage the male protagonists t o f o r m c o n v e n t i o n a l m e n / w o m e n r e l a t i o n s w i t h t h e m . 7 1 On the topic o f women one might recall Dostoevsky's little known pri- vate notes on women (in contrast to his well known published declara- tions), whom he considered to be cruel, bestial and knavish, citing some examples o f intense cruelty inflicted by women. He noted that those who defended women by pointing to the Decembrists' wives and Sisters of Mercy were citing isolated cases. According to Dostoevsky there was a fundamental difference between the female and male species: "A woman is always, everywhere and in all respects more cruel and dishonorable than a man."'2 On the other hand, he appeared to attribute the difference between men and women solely to biological make-up, or the laws o f nature, and in- sisted that that was the only difference between the sexes. Yet he ex- pressed some strongly worded misgivings: "In each woman there is some- thing submissive and slave-like, something sheep-like and servile (podchi- nennoe i rabskoe, baran 'e i lakeiskoe). Her actions are not motivated by h e r i n t e l l e c t , b u t b y h e r i n c l i n a t i o n . " 7 3 As has been established by James L. Rice in his study Dostoevsky and the Healing Art: An Essay in Literary and Medical History, everything that Dostoevsky depicts in his novels that has to do with pathological states o f the psyche has been examined and judged to coincide with estab- lished data o f contemporary psychopathology. However, apart from some references to his likely prison experiences reflected in Notes from the House of the Dead and some discussion of "Muzhik Marei" there appears to have been no detailed examination of Dostoevsky as psychopathologist in the context o f the nature o f homosexuality. Yet Dostoevsky is regarded as being a reliable and precise psychopathologist equal to the best scien- tific investigators. As anyone with an understanding o f Dostoevsky's works would expect, he is exceptionally skilful at capturing the "initial stages o f psychopa- thology, since patients receive medical attention only when a crisis has been reached."74 This is because Dostoevsky was driven to depict proc- esses, rather than completed states, as other writers did at the time. Dosto- evsky was also driven to look always for multiple causes, as Rice notes: 71. Gide, Dostoevsky, p. 95 . 72. PSS, 27: 201. 73. Ibid. 74. Rice, Dostoevsky a n d the Healing Art, p. 205.</p>
<p>"multiple causality was an axiom o f Dostoevsky's philosophy in gen- eral."'S And in the depiction o f these multiple causes it would be demon- strated that the initial primary cause would often disintegrate in the proc- ess o f apperception. In relation to homosexual consciousness, it would be o f particular interest to study how the multiple causes that might or might not bring about such an orientation are signified in his work and also ex- plore the means whereby it is shown to develop in the apperceptive proc- ess. In the context of a novel such as The Adolescent written immediately after his resignation from The Citizen, Dostoevsky may have been able to depict this process of apperception as experienced by the adolescent hero Arkady Dolgoruky, because o f the author's intuitive possession of a sense homosexual consciousness, which was sublimated and transcended in his art. The adolescent's Princely name Dolgoruky immediately alerts the reader to the ambiguity o f his divided heritage and accidental family: he is the illegitimate son o f the aristocratic Versilov and the adopted spiritual son o f the saintly Makar Dolgoruky. As the adolescent, perhaps the most appealing o f Dostoevsky's characters, embarks on his journey through life in search o f his identity, he is confronted with numerous experiences, (not unlike those encountered in Balzac's la comedie humaine which no doubt influenced Dostoevsky), and he appears to resolve them, apparently through the process o f subsequently writing them down. He is also ex- posed to the homosexual experience, though he is not consciously aware o f it at the time, though the informed reader recognizes it as such. At the time the adolescent Arkady senses some disquiet as he arrives in the com- pany o f the apparently bi-sexual Lambert and the two young men, the dainty Trishatov and le g r a n d dadais, Andreev at the seedy restaurant in Morskaya street (based on the restaurant Dussot on the comer of Kirpich- nyi pereulok and Bol'shaia Morskaia and mentioned by Rotikov in Drugoi Peterburg): I had previously been to that very restaurant on Sea Street during the drunken and debauched phase in my life and therefore the impres- sion left by the rooms and the waiters who recognized at a glance I was a former customer and, finally, the impressions created by the questionable company o f Lambert's friends in which I found myself and to which I appeared inseparably to belong and, most of all, the dark foreboding that I was willfully letting myself in for something unpleasant and would undoubtedly end up badly - all this suddenly 75. Ibid., p. 204.</p>
<p>pierced me to the quick. There was a moment when I was on the point of leaving, but the instant passed and I stayed.'6 To the uninitiated reader the two young men might not appear homo- sexual. However, there are enough signs in the text to enable the "initi- ated" reader (especially the initiated Petersburgian reader o f the 1870s) to identify them as being o f that orientation. The smaller, attractive looking boy Trishatov is described by Arkady, the adolescent variously as "milo- vidnyi mal'chik, khoroshen'kii, s chrezvychaino milym vyrazheniem, s zvonkim, nezhnym golosom, odet shchegol'ski, sudia po legkoi il'kovoi shube," and so on. Yet Lambert's French mistress screams at him "Ah, le petit vilain," and wants to throw them out because she does not want to be "dirtied" by them. This makes no sense to Arkady. Lambert says Trishatov is a general's son, his family is ashamed of him and he (Lambert) has saved him from going to court. At school Trishatov read novels all the time. He has an older sister, but the family estate has now been sold. In the restaurant Trishatov becomes maudlin and sentimental, and says he is: . . . a sam i a - takoi skvernyi, poteriannyi mal'chishka, vy ne pover- ite! Pustite vy menia k sebe, Dolgorukii, esli ia k vam kogda pridu? - 0 , p r i k h o d i t e , i a v a s d a z h e o c h e n ' l i u b l i u , r e s p o n d s A r k a d y . " Trishatov proceeds to recite Lermontov and confesses: "la, verite li, ni v chem sebia uderzhat' ne mogu." Then he relates in detail how he would compose the opera Faust, with a requiem "Dies irae, dies ilia!" suddenly interrupted by the voice o f the devil singing in tenor. Later he also men- tions Stradella and Dickens's Old Curiositv Shop, followed by an image o f the sun's last rays and a beautiful, nostalgic evocation of the West. This image is reminiscent o f the sun's last rays in Stavrogin's dream in The Devils following the rape o f the child when it appears in conjunction with the image of the spider. The background of Andreev, le grand dadais, is also typical o f that of known homosexuals o f the time. He was a Junker in a Regiment, but was expelled and has been disowned by his family. He is extremely tall, gaunt, but muscular and as strong as Hercules. He has spent his sister's dowry on drink, is full of self-loathing, cries at nights, or rather howls in despair and is suicidal. Good and bad are one and the same to him. The "initiated" Russian reader is likely to associate the Junker Regi- ment with homosexuality or, more commonly, with male prostitution. Sui- 76. PSS, 13: 349; Fyodor Dostoevsky, An Occidental Family (Oxford-New York: Ox- ford Univ. Press, 1994), p. 457. 77. PSS, 13: 49.</p>
<p>cidal behavior was also associated in the nineteenth century with a "patho- logical" sexual orientation that included at that time homosexuality. Ler- montov's poetry was known by the cognoscenti for its homoerotic verse that circulated and was later included in Russkii Erot. Ne dlia dam. Trisha- tov's musicality is reminiscent of that o f aesthete students (and professors) from the conservatory, while the Catholic requiem recalls the poem "Re- quiem" by Apukhtin, the second part o f which is subtitled "Dies irae . . . " (among other obvious allusions such as that to Goethe's Faust). Apukhtin, whose homosexual orientation was well known, was a contributor to The Citizen; he also composed a poem on "Gretchen". Catholicism appears to have been associated in Dostoevsky's mind with names o f Petr Chaadaev and the expatriat Prince Ivan Sergeevich Gagarin, whose effeminacy was well known, as was that o f Prince P. V. Dolgorukov (1816-1868). These references are emblematic o f the sphere from which many homosexuals were said to have emerged, namely that of music, poetry, the arts, West- ernized or expatriate Russian aristocracy occasionally o f Catholic back- ground, and the English connection. 78 In this context Lambert's reference to "Athenian women" may be a veiled allusion to men o f homosexual ori- entation. In conclusion, on the evidence available it can be stated with some con- fidence that Dostoevsky was aware o f and could relate to a sense of homo- sexual consciousness, which determined the actions and the psyche o f Prince Meshchersky during the period of Dostoevsky's editorship o f The Citizen, as well as during the subsequent period of their acquaintance. Dostoevsky was a master at intuitively depicting unconventional psycho- logical phenomena, including those involving sexually alternative behav- ior. Some o f these depictions may have been couched in socially accept- able "Victorian" images that prevailed in Russia at the time, and may even have been "coded," as was some of the language in The Adolescent, estab- lishing a special intimate kind o f communication with the initiated reader. By decoding some o f Dostoevsky's texts by means of several methods o f research, combining elements o f biographical, cultural, comparative, inter- textual and hermeneutic analyzes one should be able to bring to light ele- ments that have not been isolated and uncovered hitherto. This would then enable us to consider Dostoevsky's works in relation to the contemporary concern with "homosexual consciousness" and gender studies as a whole and place them within the continuing cultural tradition relating to Eros. Victoria University 78. Rotikov, Drugoi Peterburg; Weeks, Coming Out.</p>
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