Слово и тело. Сексуальные аспекты, универсалии русского культурного текста XIX-XX веков

The publication includes six large works devoted to the sexual aspects of Russian literature (more precisely, Russian male culture), which were fairly constant throughout the entire historical period under consideration. The 19th century is represented by "Demons" by F. Dostoevsky (the sexual episode in the "renounced" chapter of "At Tikhon's" is analyzed), the 20th century - by works of different genres: "The Tsokotukha Fly" by K. Chukovsky, "Zoyka's Apartment" by M. Bulgakov, "Antisexus " A. Platonova. The work "M/Z, or Catamoran" is a detailed commentary on Paul Morand's story "I am Burning Moscow" (1925); The commentary analyzes the sexual aspects of Lef's life (the "family" of Brikov-Mayakovsky) and the poetry of the "poet of resolution". The last work in the collection, "Glyptocracy", goes beyond the study of literature itself: its theme is landscape sculpture of the Stalin era. The main character of the book is the "problem of gender", taken in its cultural reflections of the 1920-1930s. It is studied simultaneously as a sublimation of the individual complexes of writers, as a reflection of panchronic universals of sexual consciousness and behavior (masturbation, cunnilingus, male experiences associated with the length of the genital organ, etc.) and as a struggle between official Soviet ideology and the needs of man as such. Four of the six works are devoted to the twenties; the latter studies the thirties, the transition to which from the twenties makes sexual discourse “mute”: sexual problems remain the same as at the end of the 19th - first quarter of the 20th century, but they are no longer allowed to be articulated. Hence the natural transition to “silent” sculpture, to “silent discourse”, which the author tries to “talk”, based on the fact that sexual fantasies are universal and hardly change over time. Methodologically, the works gravitate towards psychoanalytic literary criticism, combined with historical cultural analysis, enlivened by the search for hidden quotes and previously unidentified sources of inspiration. Along the way, the book solves a hermeneutical problem: what should a modern commentary on a cultural/artistic text look like, created with the goal of obtaining maximum information encrypted in the text; what levels of text should and can be analyzed and commented on; where and what determines the epistemological limits of commentary and interpretive penetration into the text.