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3 Intro­ duc­ tion Be­ yond Push­ kin as Dogma Alyssa Dinega Gillespie Rus­ sian poet Al­ ex­ an­ der Push­ kin (1799–1837) was a man ­ deeply of his own coun­ try and era, but he has come to be seen as a fig­ ure out­ side place and time. ­ Though he was ­ reared on the En­ light­ en­ ment ­ ideals of the eigh­ teenth cen­ tury, his play­ ful ar­ tis­ tic meth­ ods and sen­ sibil­ ities en­ deared him to the mod­ ern­ ists and post­ mod­ ern­ ists of the twen­ ti­ eth cen­ turyandcon­ tinuetomakehimat­ trac­ tivetowrit­ ersofthe­ twenty-first cen­ tury. Twice ex­ iled from ­ Russia’s cap­ i­ tal cit­ ies and ­ viewed with sus­ pi­ cion by both govern­ ment au­ thor­ ities and his own as­ so­ ciates, he was the un­ likely pro­ gen­ i­ tor of ­ Russia’s na­ tional lit­ er­ ary and cul­ tural tra­ di­ tion. Yet his art was ­ founded on the crea­ tive pil­ fer­ ing, im­ i­ ta­ tion, and as­ sim­ i­ la­ tion of other ­ nations’ lit­ er­ ary forms and ideas; his lit­ er­ ary gen­ ius ­ emerges from a prin­ ci­ ple of ­ lively ar­ tis­ tic syn­ cre­ tism that runs coun­ ter to the gen­ eral Rus­ sian ten­ dency to­ ward con­ ser­ va­ tism and mono­ logic con­ struc­ tion of truth and, thus, ­ stands in a par­ a­ dox­ i­ cal—and often ­ anxiety-producing—re­ la­ tion to the ­ status he has been ac­ corded as the most per­ fect ex­ em­ plar of ­ Russia’s ­ unique na­ tional ­ spirit. In­ deed, the fact that he has been con­ tin­ u­ ally ­ forced into this heav­ ily de­ mand­ ing role (which has, at cer­ tain pe­ ri­ ods, bur­ geoned in scope and sig­ nif­i­ cance be­ yond all rea­ son­ able human ex­ pec­ ta­ tion), com­ bined with the pa­ thos 4 Introduction of his early death, has con­ trib­ uted to the sense that he is a sort of mes­ sen­ ger from an­ other di­ men­ sion: “Push­ kin him­ self lived on a sort of un­ in­ hab­ ited is­ land, but his man­ u­ scripts, ­ sealed in the bot­ tle of time,­ floated on the waves into the fu­ ture and are still out there.”1 This book rep­ re­ sents a col­ lec­ tive ef­ fort to re­ cover some of the mes­ sages that have re­ mained ­ sealed in the bot­ tle of time, ­ whether be­ cause of overt po­ lit­ i­ cal and so­ cial pro­ hi­ bi­ tions on read­ ing and dis­ cuss­ ing them, be­ cause of ­ scholars’ own squeam­ ish­ ness at ven­ tur­ ing into un­ charted and often un­ com­ fort­ able ­ realms, or be­ cause the very ex­ is­ tence of the mes­ sages has sim­ ply re­ mained un­ known and un­ de­ tected until now. Fo­ rays into ­ Pushkin’s own writ­ ings lie at the cen­ ter of our pro­ ject, and these are ­ flanked by in­ ves­ ti­ ga­ tions into the two kinds of con­ text that form an es­ sen­ tial frame­ work for our under­ stand­ ing of the sub­ stance and re­ cep­ tion of his lit­ er­ ary work: the bio­ graphic and the schol­ arly. But be­ fore we open the bot­ tle, let us sur­ vey the ­ shoals of taboo that lit­ ter the ocean in which it has been float­ ing. Push­ kin as Taboo In ­ Freud’s foun­ da­ tional work Totem and Taboo, the con­ cept of “taboo” is­ linked on the one hand with the sa­ cred and the ex­ traor­ di­ nary and on the other hand with the un­ canny, the dan­ ger­ ous, the for­ bid­ den, and the un­ clean.2 The am­ biv­ a­ lence sur­ round­ ing the taboo re­ flects both its de­ sir­ abil­ ity and the risk of im­ i­ ta­ tion—and thus con­ ta­ gion—in­ her­ ent in its vi­ o­ la­ tion; as a re­ sult, the prin­ ci­ ple of the taboo is, in ­ Freud’s terms, “not a neuro­ sis but a so­ cial in­ sti­ tu­ tion,” a “cul­ tural crea­ tion” whose trans­ gres­ sion “would ­ quickly lead to the dis­ so­ lu­ tion of the com­ mu­ nity” and that there...

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