Mischievous eros. God eros is a beautiful celestial dweller in greece. types of love in psychology

In 1992, two collections were published in Moscow: "Russian Eros or the Philosophy of Love in Russia" and "Three Centuries of Poetry of Russian Eros". The names are similar, but the content is the opposite. The first book talks about sublime love and presents mainly religious authors, while the second one is sheer obscenity. Both are primordially Russian, but what prevails in Russian culture and is it possible to combine such extremes?

Eroticism, the figurative system in which sexuality is perceived and symbolized and by which sexuality is formed and structured, is the most important element of the sexual culture of any nation. Even the most primitive physiological popular naturalism actually contains a rather complex symbolic picture of the world, the human body, reproduction and pleasure. In developed cultures, this naive and crude naturalism is gradually completed, improved, molded into graceful, aesthetically and ethically refined forms and images, which then become criteria and standards of individual perception, self-esteem and, to some extent, behavior.

However, the interaction of "low" and "high" culture is always contradictory. Civilization begins by establishing numerous prohibitions and restrictions, trying to eliminate, if not from life itself, then at least from language, consciousness and public behavior, everything that seems to it base, immoral, uncivilized. In antisexual cultures, this internal self-censorship, which in reality stands for social control, is especially tough, tabooing almost all manifestations of sensuality and corporeality. The individualization of public and private life steadily undermines and weakens this control, narrowing the sphere of the forbidden, the unnamed and the unimaginable. That which yesterday seemed unacceptable and strange becomes possible today, and tomorrow acquires respectability. However, this does not mean a simple return to "precivilized" being. It's just that a more complex culture is less susceptible to irrational fears, allows more individual variations and is able to digest a lot of such things, before a less developed consciousness stops in amazement and fear: "There are no giraffes!"

In Russia, as already mentioned, the contradiction between the naturalistic lack of spirituality of the "low" culture and the idealistic disembodiment of the "high" culture was especially acute. These two poles formed two different cultural traditions that occasionally intersected, but never coincided.

The emergence in Russia of overt noble sexual and erotic literature and art dates back to the middle of the 18th century, under the direct influence of French culture, where this tradition had a long history. An example in this was shown by the imperial court of Catherine II. In the Gatchina Palace, presented by Catherine II to her lover Grigory Orlov, extremely free frescoes and special furniture (now kept in the Hermitage) were made on his order, where, for example, the table legs are carved in the form of male members.

French novels of varying degrees of freedom - in Russia everything European and especially French looked free - also penetrate the noble estates. According to Andrei Bolotov, the first "concept of a passion of love, but from the side of a very gentle and directly romantic", he received from the translated French novel "Epaminondas and Celerian". However, the French novels, according to Bolotov, not only "did [him] nothing wrong," but taught him to distinguish between vices and virtues and look at everything with "the most prudent eyes." Young nobles, whose fathers had decent home libraries, eagerly read everything that had anything to do with eroticism. Pushkin will say about this in Eugene Onegin (Chapter 1, stanza IX):

The ardor of the heart torments us early.
A charming deception
It is not nature that teaches us love,
And Steel or Chateaubriand.

The noble youth of Pushkin's time savored not only Denis Diderot's "Indiscreet Treasures" and the works of French "Libertines", but also the obscene verses of Ivan Semenovich Barkov (1732 - 1768). Very little is known about the life of the first Russian erotic poet: he studied at the Alexander Nevsky Theological Seminary and the University of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, from where he was expelled for drunkenness and revelry, for which he was also subjected to corporal punishment. Then he served as a typesetter, copyist and translator. In 1766 he was dismissed from the Academy and two years later he died in complete obscurity. Barkov's poems were circulated in copies, and many later works were attributed to him. The mass Russian reader was able to read Barkov's poems for the first time only in 1991.

Meanwhile, he was highly appreciated by Pushkin, who said to Pavel Vyazemsky: “Barkov is one of the most famous persons in Russian literature; his poems in the near future will acquire great significance ... For me ... there is no doubt that the first books that censorship, there will be a complete collection of Barkov's poems ". Pushkin even dedicated to him the same obscene as the work of Barkov himself, the poem "The Shadow of Barkov", first published in Russia in 1991.

Barkov's poetry is not at all erotic in its Western European sense. "The installation here is most often not on inciting lecherous lust, not on amorous temptations and languor. We do not find ourselves in an alcove-adulterous pink twilight (there is, however, such, but in an insignificantly small dosage!), But in the smoky obscenity of tavern swearing, where they look at carnal intercourse without a crafty playful squint, but loudly regurgitating and goat-verbalizing, so that all the charm of intimacy is destroyed.There is no place for bon vivants, experienced in the mysteries of passion: cursing and drunk ... For we have before us not erotica (when almost nothing but genitals is really not erotica), but mischief that had been waiting for a long time to be renamed hooliganism - then this word, of course, did not exist "(I. Ilyushin).

However, this general mockery is not just the delirium of an inflamed, sick erotic imagination. Under the conditions of strict spiritual and secular censorship, foul language was a direct challenge to the authorities. The kinship of political and erotic poetry was almost the first to be noticed by Nikolai Ogarev. In the preface to the collection of Russian "secret literature" he published in London, Ogarev wrote: "The poetry of civic aspirations and obscenity ... are more connected than it seems. In essence, they are branches of the same tree, and in every indecent epigram you will find a political slap in the face .. . everywhere one enemy of civil freedom is executed. "

Barkov laid the foundation for a whole tradition of Russian obscene poetry, which has not been interrupted since then. The most talented and tragic figure in it is the young Alexander Polezhaev, who, for his mischievous and obscene autobiographical poem "Sashka" (1825), was commissioned by Nicholas I as a soldier, where he died. In the Soviet Union, Polezhaev was always written about as a victim of autocracy, but "Sashka" was printed with cuts, and for some reason Polezhaev's two completely non-maternal erotic poems "Kalipsa" and "Jenny" were not published at all.

Pushkin and Lermontov paid an abundant tribute to frivolous poetry. The full text of Pushkin's "Gabrieliada" was published, with a foreword and commentary by Valery Bryusov, only in 1918, with a circulation of 555 copies. The main obstacle for the pre-revolutionary publication of "Gabrieliada" was not so much eroticism as the anticlerical, blasphemous character of the poem. Lermontov's "Junker Poems" were first published in Russia without cuts only in 1991. In Pushkin's letters, obscene words were replaced by dots.

Elegant, mischievous and not containing direct obscenities, Pushkin's poetic tale "Tsar Nikita and his forty daughters" tells that once Tsar Nikita had forty daughters from different mothers, "forty lovely girls, forty heavenly angels" endowed with all kinds of virtues. The princesses lacked only one small trinket. Which one? In most of Pushkin's multivolume collected works, the tale is presented in a small passage ending with the following meaningful words:

How can I explain this,
So as not to anger at all
Praying important fool
Too prim censorship?

And Pushkin further tells how the tsar sent the messenger Thaddeus to the sorceress for the missing items "between the princesses' legs". The sorceress gave Thaddeus a closed chest, strictly ordering not to open it. Tormented by curiosity, Thaddeus nevertheless opened the chest, forty hermits immediately scattered and sat on the branches of trees. After vain attempts to call them back, the messenger sat down at the open casket and began to demonstrate his own object, the hermits avid for him immediately flocked to him. Thaddeus caught them and locked them back in the chest.

In the second half of the XIX century. it became easier to bypass censorship. Some works were published abroad. As the bibliographer, critic, composer of vaudeville and popular comic poems of an unprintable nature M.N. Longinov,

I'm not writing poetry for the ladies,
More and more about cunt and dick;
I won't censor them,
I will print it in Karlsruhe.

Other works passed from hand to hand in the lists. For example, the anonymous and attributed to Barkov poems Luka Mudishchev, composed not earlier than the second half of the 1830s, and Prov Fomich, written in the last third of the 19th century, enjoyed wide popularity.

Whatever the literary merits and demerits of this type of poetry, it stood beyond the bounds of "high" literature. Quite often these were the collective works of young men locked up in closed educational institutions, trying in this way to throw out and defuse with laughter their rather primitive and quite often "non-canonical" (homoerotic) sexual dreams and experiences. Such compositions successfully performed this psychosexual function and brought the same pleasure to the next generations of youths, but no one took them seriously. Today's sensation around them is largely a tribute to the current moment. If the KGB archives are opened, can literary archives be kept under lock and key ?! We want to know everything! Meanwhile, in the last century, similar - and even much more decent - things could not be printed not only in Russia, but also in "enlightened" Western Europe.

In 1857, in France, which had a reputation in Russia as the homeland of eroticism and debauchery, two trials took place. The author of Madame Bovary was ultimately acquitted, for the "places that offend chastity" "although they deserve all censure, occupy a very small place in comparison with the size of the work as a whole," and Gustave Flaubert himself declares his respect for morality and everything that concerns religious morality. " Charles Baudelaire, however, was convicted of "crude and shameful realism," and six poems from "The Flowers of Evil" were banned. According to the Journal de Brussels, "This vile novel, Madame Bovary, is just a pious reading compared to the volume of poetry that came out these days under the title" Flowers of Evil. "

Collections of Russian obscenities, like the famous "Eros russe. Russian Erotic Not for Ladies", published in Geneva in 1879, were published in the West in tiny editions, at the expense of the authors, and who cares what is published in unknown Russian?

Much more serious was the fact that Russian censorship and literary criticism practically did not see the difference between pornography and eroticism. In the second half of the 18th century. noble youths, and even more so - girls were warned in every possible way against reading not only frivolous French novels, but also highly moral writings of English sentimentalists. For example, Richardson's "Pamela" was considered obscene. In 1806, the Aurora magazine warned its readers against the "harmful suggestions" of the sensual scenes of Rousseau's New Eloise. In 1823, the Herald of Europe praised Sir Walter Scott for not having "seductive" scenes. In the 1820s, the art of romanticism was subjected to violent attacks for "sensuality". In 1865, the journal Sovremennaya Chronicle discovered "eroticism" carried to the most extreme, "most cynical expression" in Alexander Ostrovsky's dramas "The Parent" and "The Thunderstorm". And in the play "In a Busy Place" the playwright, according to the reviewer, "stopped only at the most Herculean pillars, behind which the reign of the Marquis de Sade and the brethren is already beginning."

In the West, erotic art, or what was believed to be such, had one main enemy - the church. In Russia, this enemy was especially strong, relying not only on the own authority of religion and the church, but also on state power. But even worse than external censorship were the internal contradictions of Russian Eros.

Russian classical literature of the 19th century. created exceptionally vivid and deep images of love. The "language of love experiences" (Anna Akhmatova) created by Pushkin made it possible to express the subtlest nuances and nuances of love feelings. But in Russian literature, as nowhere else, the basic contradiction of male sexuality noted by Sigmund Freud is sharply expressed: the mismatch of sensuality and tenderness. The woman in her is either "of the purest charm, the purest sample" or a libertine. There is no middle ground. But both of these poles are just images of the male imagination that have little to do with real femininity.

In the personal life of the aristocrats of the Pushkin generation, such a duality, even in relation to the same woman, was not particularly embarrassing. In Pushkin's poems Anna Kern is "a fleeting vision", "a genius of pure beauty", and in one of his letters the poet, by the way, mentions Madame Kern, "who, with the help of God, I am the other day ...". Because of this, one Soviet Pushkin scholar once found himself in a ridiculous position, unable to make out a well-known word, which seemed incredible to him in this context.

In literature, combining romanticism with cynicism was much more difficult.

For classical Russian literature, coarse sensuality is fundamentally unacceptable. It is impossible to crave Turgenev girls bodily, it is difficult to imagine them in bed. Meanwhile, the same Ivan Sergeevich was the author of very obscene things that were not intended for printing. In his comic poem Pop, he wrote:

People are unreasonable, right:
In our childhood years we want
Love "holy, sublime" - to the right,
To the left we rush, twist ...
Then, having calmed down a little,
Someone ... - and thank God.

Many other respected contemporaries - A.V. Druzhinin, N.A. D. V. Nekrasov Grigorovich, M.N. Longinov, P.V. Schumacher. A great swearing man in everyday life was L.N. Tolstoy. However, this had nothing to do with the official literature, in which strict splendor reigned.

Sexual and, by definition, low "love for the sex", in it, as a rule, is opposed by a sublime spiritual "love for the face" or calm, based on fidelity, "love for marriage" (Herzen). Pushkinskaya Tatiana, who dared to be the first to declare her love to Onegin, did a truly heroic act. However, having married, she no longer has power over herself: "I am given to another; I will be faithful to him forever." Masha from "Dubrovsky" says and acts in exactly the same way. True, Zemfira from Aleko acts differently, but the gypsies are not Russians: “We are wild, we have no laws” ...

The ideal woman of Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century. - an innocent girl or a caring mother, but never a lover. The aristocratic intellectual - "always an egocentric lover, he embraced women, as well as ideas, with that mixture of passion and fantasy that made a lasting relationship almost impossible."

The hero of Chekhov's story "Ariadne" (1895) describes this attitude as follows: "... We are not satisfied because we are idealists. We want the creatures that give birth to us and our children to be higher than us, higher than everything in the world. When we are young, then we poetise and idolize those we fall in love with; love and happiness are synonymous with us.In Russia, marriage is not for love is despised, sensuality is ridiculous and disgusting, and those novels and stories in which women are beautiful are the most successful , are poetic and sublime ... But here's the trouble: As soon as we get married or get along with a woman, two or three years pass, we already feel disappointed, deceived; we get along with others, and again disappointment, again horror, and in the end we are convinced that women are deceitful, petty, vain, unfair, undeveloped, cruel - in a word, not only not higher, but even immeasurably lower than us men. "

Influenced by a not entirely successful or simply prosaic sexual experience, the enthusiastic idealization of a woman is replaced by her aggressive belittling and belittling, and in either case her own individuality is lost, dissolves into the stereotypically universal image of "women in general."

This style of behavior and thinking was imposed on the woman as well. Regardless of her own temperament, the "decent woman" could not show sensuality and had to be ashamed of her even after marriage. If a woman did not experience orgasm and was burdened by marital duties, this was considered good form, but at the same time it sexually alienated the man, prompting him to seek entertainment on the side. Husband and wife, unwittingly, imposed on each other the same model of marital relationship based on conventions and omissions and obviously sexually unsatisfactory.

Many important problems of psychosexual development, such as masturbation and homoeroticism, had no acceptable symbolism at all. One of the painful problems of Russian culture in the 19th century. - masturbatory anxiety goes beyond sexuality as such. “It is no coincidence, not out of simple outrageousness, Rozanov called Russian writers who deny real state life and live, nevertheless, almost exclusively with social and political issues, - masturbators,” writes Dmitry Galkovsky. “I think this is generally a Russian disease. There is a half-joking classification of European peoples: the Germans are inclined to a sadomasochistic complex, the French to erotomania, etc. Russians are clearly inclined to masturbation. A European said that love is a crime committed together. Russians prefer to commit a crime alone. Dreams come true very quickly and in the most crude form. In the form of an ax ... A direct connection between beautiful-hearted fantasies and the grossest physiological reality. A reality that is never fully realized and does not bring genuine pleasure. "

The thesis about the special inclination of Russians to masturbate is nothing more than a witty metaphor in the 19th century. the fear of masturbation and its consequences tormented not only Russians. But the psychological significance of this problem cannot be underestimated either. It was not for nothing that Dostoevsky pondered a lot about her.

Latent homoeroticism is also very important for Russian culture. As the American historian James Billington writes, “the passion for ideas and the development of psychological complexes around certain names and concepts, which are generally typical of European romanticism, were carried to the extreme in Russia ... In the Russian attachment of this period to classical antiquity and to the sublimation of sexuality in creative activity was something unhealthy obsessive.It seems that the amazing and original creative lives of Bakunin and Gogol were to some extent compensation for their sexual impotence.In the egocentric world of Russian romanticism there was generally little room for women.Lonely reflections were facilitated mainly by exclusively male companionship in From Skovoroda to Bakunin, there are strong hints of homosexuality, albeit a seemingly sublimated, platonic sort.This passion comes out closer to the surface in Ivanov's penchant for drawing naked boys and finds its philosophical expression in the fashionable belief that the spiritual is perfect Thy requires androgyny, or a return to the original unity of masculine and feminine traits. In his preliminary sketches of the head of Christ in "The Apparition ..." Ivanov used both male and female nature ... "

All this, of course, was not exclusively Russian and was described more than once in Western European literature, both before and after Freud. Moreover, one should not be surprised at the gap between the literary images of romantic love and the real experiences of the authors.

However, if in the West a negative attitude to sensuality was affirmed and supported mainly by conservatives and representatives of bourgeois circles, then in Russia this system of values ​​was also implanted by commoners.

The aristocrats of Pushkin's time, who from childhood received a good secular upbringing, even while remaining religious people, always distanced themselves from official hypocrisy, and splashed their sensual experiences in playful obscenity. It was much more difficult for the raznochinets, people from a spiritual background and former seminarians, to do this. Breaking with some of the foundations of their past life, they could not overcome others. Transferred to an alien social environment, many of them suffered painfully from shyness and tried in vain to suppress the excitement of their own flesh. Moreover, as with other people, not everything in their sexuality was canonical.

Temperamental, sensual and terribly shy Belinsky is pursued by the thought that "nature has branded" his face with a "curse of ugliness", because of which no woman can love him. The only outlet for him was a passionate, unconsciously homoerotic friendship, the core of which was made up of endless intimate outpourings. "I no longer love Botkin, as before, but I am simply in love with him and recently gave him a formal explanation," Belinsky writes to Mikhail Bakunin.

In the correspondence between Belinsky and Bakunin, young people literally compete in shameful self-exposures. As soon as Bakunin confessed that in his youth he was engaged in masturbation, Belinsky writes that he is even more sinful: “I started when you finished - 19 years old ... At first I resorted to this method of pleasure due to timidity with women and inability to keep up with them; he continued because he had begun. Sometimes voluptuous pictures were drawn in the imagination - the head and chest ached, the whole body was feverish and feverish: sometimes I could resist, and sometimes I would end an ugly dream with an even ugliest reality. "

Despite the constant "need to articulate," these experiences were carefully hidden from friends. "Sometimes St (Ankevich), speaking about his exploits in this regard, asked me if I had practiced this noble and free art: I blushed, made a pious and innocent face and denied." But now, when he and Bakunin confessed to each other their "disgusting weakness", their friendship will surely become eternal ...

It is characteristic that these emotional outpourings ceased immediately after Belinsky's marriage.

The problem of the relationship between sublime love and vulgar sensuality, which he was ashamed of, occupies an important place in the diaries of 20-year-old Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

"... I know that I am easily carried away by men, but I have never had a chance to get carried away with girls or women in general (I say this in a good way, because if I feel uneasy from my physical mood, it’s not on behalf of , but from the floor, and I'm ashamed of that) ... "

The youthful experiences of Nikolai Dobrolyubov are just as painful. "I did not know children's games, did not do the slightest gymnastics, lost the habit of human society, acquired awkwardness and shyness, ruined my eyes, stiffened all the members" ...

A lonely 16-year-old teenager passionately attached to his seminary teacher I. M. Sladkopevtsev: “I never confided in him my heart's secrets, I didn’t even have the proper freedom in conversation with him, but with all that there was one thought - to be with him, to talk to him - made me happy, and after a date with him, and especially after an evening spent alone with him, I enjoyed the memory for a long, long time and for a long time was under the influence of a charming voice and appeal ... For him, I was ready to do everything without thinking about consequences ". This affection remained even after the departure of Sladkopevtsev from Nizhny Novgorod.

Like Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov is very concerned that his own "vices" were characteristic of some of the great people. Thank God, he is not the only one: "They probably say that Fon-Vizin and Gogol were devoted to masturbation, and even Gogol's mental disorder is attributed to this circumstance."

Dobrolyubov dreams of great, sublime love, of a woman with whom he could share his feelings to such an extent that she reads his works with him, then he "would be happy and would not want anything more." Alas, there is no such woman, and "the consciousness of complete sterility and eternal impracticability of this desire oppresses, torments me, fills me with melancholy, anger, envy ..." , which he cannot love, "because you cannot love a woman over whom you are aware of your superiority." Lofty dreams and ambitions do not allow "the slightest feeling to creep into animal relationships. After all, all this is dirty, pitiful, mercantile, unworthy of man."

Neither masturbation, nor homoeroticism, nor the duality of sensual and tender attraction, of course, was anything exceptional. "War against masturbation" (Foucault), or "masturbatory inquisition", as the German researcher Ludger Lüchtehaus called this phenomenon, is a typical product of early bourgeois society. Like any other Inquisition, it created what it fought against. At first, educators intimidated adolescents with masturbation, and then "discovered" its terrible consequences: neuroses, panic, low self-esteem, feelings of inferiority. A painful reflection on this matter is presented in the diaries and autobiographies of Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche, Kant, Schopenhauer and many other great people of the 19th century.

Our revolutionary democrats were, in this respect, ordinary children of their era. But their internal psychosexual complexes had social consequences. Seeing themselves in dreams as beautiful, dexterous, noble, saving fallen women and showing all other people examples of morality, young and ambitious Russian radicals in their writings and critical assessments proceeded not from their real life experience, which they themselves condemned, but from these imaginary images I AM.

Instead of promoting the development of tolerance, an unsuccessful internal struggle turns into a principled - moral and aesthetic - condemnation and denial of all sensuality as vulgar and unworthy.

Unable to either curb or accept his own sensuality, Belinsky extremely disapproves of its manifestations in the poetry of Alexander Polezhaev. Reasoning from the point of view of an imaginary innocent "young boy" who must be protected from temptations in every possible way, "the frantic Vissarion" casually scolds Boccaccio, and Paul de Coca calls the novel "an ugly and vile" work. Dmitry Pisarev condemned Heine for "an easy view of women", etc.

In Chernyshevsky's novel "What is to be done?", Which became the Gospel of the radical Russian intelligentsia of the second half of the 19th century, erotic love is shown positively, conservatives saw in this book a preaching of licentiousness and permissiveness. But the eroticism of Chernyshevsky is rational, it constantly requires justification, justification, apology, there is no immediacy in it.

The suspicious-wary attitude to sexuality, inherited from the sixties and the People's Will, is not just a manifestation of personal psychosexual difficulties, but also a certain ideology. If conservative-religious criticism condemned eroticism for the fact that it contradicts the dogmas of faith and the extra-worldly asceticism of Orthodoxy, then among revolutionary democrats eroticism does not fit into the normative canon of a person called to devote all his strength to the struggle for the liberation of the working people. In comparison with this great social goal, everything individual, personal, looked insignificant. Even the subtlest intimate lyrics of Afanasy Fet, Yakov Polonsky or Konstantin Sluchevsky to radical populist critics of the second half of the 19th century. seemed vulgar, and between erotica, "strawberry" and pornography, they did not see the difference at all.

The views of nineteenth-century Russian feminists were also similar. Although they opposed church marriage and demanded full, including sexual, equality with men, and for this they were often accused of propagating subversive "communist theories of free love", on all important issues of sex their views were the same as those of Puritan English and American feminists. ... The elimination of the double standard was conceived not as the appropriation of sexual liberties of the "stronger sex" by women, but as the raising of men to the level of women.

In short, the socio-political and moral maximalism of Russian democratic thought turns into a militant rejection of the very emotional, everyday and psychophysiological realities that, in essence, make up a normal human life. An artist or writer who tackled a "slippery" topic was subjected to equally violent attacks from the right and left. This seriously hampered the development in Russia of a high, refined erotic art and corresponding vocabulary, without which sex and talk about it inevitably look vile and dirty.

Of course, the picture should not be oversimplified. Although representatives of Russian academic painting of the first half of the 19th century. they did not write explicit erotic scenes, without Karl Bryullov, Alexander Ivanov, Fyodor Bruni, the history of the depiction of a naked human body would be incomplete. Alexander Venetsianov created wonderful images of bathers, ballerinas, bacchantes.

Like their Western European counterparts, Russian artists have for many years been forced to use a strategy that Peter Gay called the "doctrine of distance":

“This doctrine, an impressive example of how cultural defense mechanisms work, believes that the more generalized and idealized the representation of the human body in art, the more draped in sublime associations, the less likely it is to shock its viewers. it meant removing nudity from modern and intimate experience, by giving it the grandeur that can be provided by plots and poses borrowed from history, mythology, religion or exoticism. "

For the time being, sexual and erotic metaphors and images in Russian artistic culture were carefully masked. In the 1890s. the situation has changed. The weakening of state and censorship control brought hidden tendencies to the surface, the secret became apparent. The new aesthetics and philosophy of life was a reaction against both the official church morality and the sanctimonious attitudes of the Sixtecostal Democrats. This was a natural stage in the development of Russian romantic culture itself, which no longer fit into the previous normative ethical and aesthetic framework. Sensualism was a natural aspect of the new philosophy of individualism, powerfully forging its way.

The impetus for the realization of the general crisis of marriage and sexuality was Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata", in which the writer, in a journalistic manner, sharply opposed practically all generally accepted views on marriage, family and love.

In contrast to the liberals and populists, who saw the root of evil in private property and gender inequality, Tolstoy argued that "the incorrectness and therefore poverty of sexual relations stems from the view common to people of our world that sexual relations are an object of pleasure, pleasure ..."

The hero of the "Kreutzer Sonata" Pozdnyshev is terribly afraid of both his own and any other sexuality, no matter how it seems ennobled: "... It is assumed in theory that love is something ideal, sublime, but in practice love is something vile, pork, about which to talk and remember is disgusting and ashamed. " This rigorism, combined with morbid jealousy, makes Pozdnyshev incapable of understanding with his wife and ultimately prompts him to kill her. But this tragedy, according to Tolstoy, is rooted not in the personal qualities of Pozdnyshev, but in the very nature of marriage, based on "animal" feelings.

After the book was published, some of its democratic critics, in particular N.K. Mikhailovsky, they tried to separate Tolstoy from his hero. However, in the afterword to The Kreutzer Sonata, Tolstoy openly identified himself with Pozdnyshev and, on his own behalf, decisively condemned carnal love, even sanctified by church marriage:

"... Achieving the goal of uniting in marriage or outside of marriage with the object of love, no matter how poeticized it may be, is a goal unworthy of a person, just as unworthy of a person ... the goal of acquiring sweet and abundant food for oneself."

More intolerant than the Apostle Paul himself, Tolstoy denies the very possibility of a "Christian marriage": "The ideal of a Christian is love for God and neighbor, is self-denial to serve God and neighbor; carnal love, marriage, is service to oneself and therefore is, in any case, an obstacle to serving God and people, and therefore from the Christian point of view - a fall, a sin. "

Since the work was too frank and explosive - it was generally not accepted to mention the physical side of marriage - the tsarist censorship banned its publication in a magazine or a separate publication. Only after Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya received a personal audience with Alexander III, the tsar reluctantly allowed the story to be published in the 13th volume of Tolstoy's collected works. But the censorship ban only increased the attractiveness of the story, which began to circulate in lists and read in private homes long before publication, causing heated debate.

The same thing happened abroad. Tolstoy's American translator Isabel Hapgood, after reading the book, refused to translate it, publicly explaining her motives (April 1890): “Even taking into account the fact that normal freedom of speech in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, is greater than it is customary in America [a we thought that America was always freer than Russia! - IK], I find the language of the Kreutzer Sonata overly frank ... it is preceded by is obscene. "

The book was officially declared indecent by the US Postal Service, which only increased its popularity. Colonel Robert Ingersol's reaction is characteristic: “Although I disagree with almost every phrase in this book and recognize its plot as crude and ridiculous, and the author’s life position - cruel, low and false, I believe that Count Tolstoy has the right to express his opinion on all issues and American men and women have a right to read it. "

Heated controversies were unfolding in Europe as well. Despite the enormous moral authority of Tolstoy, many did not agree with him. Emil Zola said that the author had something wrong with his head, and the German psychiatrist Dr. H. Beck published a brochure in which he assessed the story "as a manifestation of the religious and sexual madness of a highly gifted psychopath."

Opinions also differed greatly in Russia. Tolstoy received many letters, women’s letters being generally positive and men’s mostly critical. One such letter, preserved in Tolstoy's archives, said: "After reading your Sonata, I heartily advise you to seek help from a psychiatrist, because only psychiatrists can heal the pathological direction of the mind."

Three positions immediately emerged in the public debate about the Kreutzer Sonata. Democrats of the sixties (L. E. Obolensky, N.K. Mikhailovsky, A.M.Skabichevsky) welcomed Tolstoy's debunking of bourgeois and church marriage, but they saw the way out not in renouncing carnal love, but in looking at his wife as an equal person, and then animal feelings will be sanctified and spiritualized. Conservatives (N.E.Burenin, A.S. Suvorin), on the contrary, welcomed Tolstoy's work as a protest against hedonism and the too early passion of young people for sexual pleasures. Finally, the reactionary clergy (for example, Archbishop Nikanor of Odessa) regarded Tolstoy's views as outright heresy, undermining the very foundations of Christian morality and marriage.

"The Kreutzer Sonata" served as an impetus for a broad discussion of all issues of marriage, family and sexual morality. The stories of famous writers A.K. Scheller-Mikhailov, P.D. Boborykina, N.S. Leskov. All the participants in the dispute agreed that society and the institution of marriage are experiencing an acute moral crisis, but the reasons for this crisis and the ways out of it were named different. And if in the 1890s. in the foreground were questions of sexual morality, then at the beginning of the XX century. the problem of sexual liberation began to be discussed outside of any religious context.

The attitude to the "Kreutzer Sonata" by A.P. Chekhov. At first she made a strong impression on him. Although, as Chekhov wrote to Pleshcheev on February 15, 1890, Tolstoy's judgments “about syphilis, orphanages, about the aversion of women to copulation, etc., can not only be contested, but also directly expose an ignorant person who did not bother to read two or three books written by specialists ", the boldness of the work repeatedly expiates its shortcomings. But after the trip to Sakhalin and especially after reading Tolstoy's "Afterword", Chekhov's attitude became sharply critical. "Damn it, the philosophy of the greats of this world!" nothing will happen for this; Tolstoy scolds the doctors as scoundrels and does not polite with great questions, because he is the same Diogenes, whom you cannot take to the police station and you cannot scold him in the newspapers. " Indirect polemic with Tolstoy is felt in several of Chekhov's stories ("Women", "Duel", "Neighbors", "Ariadne").

Following Tolstoy, philosophers joined the controversy about the nature of sex and love. The beginning of a new round of discussion was a large article by the philosopher Vladimir Solovov "The Meaning of Love" (1892).

Soloviev defends love from abstract and harsh moralism, however, in his opinion, "external connection, everyday and especially physiological, has no definite relation to love. It happens without love, and love happens without it. It is necessary for love not like hers an indispensable condition and an independent goal, but only as its final realization. If this realization is set as a goal in itself before the ideal deed of love, it destroys love. "

Moreover. "For a person as an animal, it is completely natural to unlimited satisfaction of his sexual need through a certain physiological action, but a person, as a moral being, finds this action contrary to his higher nature and is ashamed of it ..."

This idealistic position, close to the views of Tolstoy, was opposed by the writer and publicist Vasily Rozanov. In the books The Family Question in Russia (1903) and In the World of the Unclear and Unresolved (1904), Rozanov poeticizes and defends precisely carnal love.

A highly conservative and deeply religious thinker, Rozanov was not and could not be a sexual liberal. For him, the family is not just sacred, but there is a "stage of ascent to God." But this union cannot be purely spiritual. "The family is bodily, seed and blood; these are producers, without whom there is no family." There is no need to be ashamed of your body, it was created by God and it is beautiful. Our skin is not a case, "not a suede bag in which the gold-soul is put", but a part of our human essence: "without skin - neither attachment, nor falling in love, nor love can be imagined at all!" The sexual act, in which Tolstoy sees the denial of religion and culture, actually creates them, this is "an act of not destruction, but the acquisition of chastity."

Physical love is not a vice, but moral love. religious duty. "We are born for love. And how much we have not fulfilled love, we languish in the world. And how much we have not fulfilled love, we will be punished in the next world."

According to Rozanov, the bearers of the ancient and new philosophy of asceticism and sexlessness are primarily homosexuals, "people of the moonlight", who elevate their own irresistible "aversion to copulation to the rank of a universal religious and moral principle, that is, to the union of their genital organ with a complementary genital organ of the opposite sex. "I don't want to! I don't want to! "- like the cry of nature itself, that is what lies at the heart of all these seemingly so anti-natural religious phenomena." These spiritual sodomites, the spokesmen for the world "I do not want", "enthusiastically love", at the same time disdaining everything sexual.

Rozanov recognizes their high human dignity and the right to their own way of life. According to him, it is these people who, having renounced earthly interests and the task of procreation, embody the individual-personal principle of being: “Who made wonderful appeals to God? - They! Who developed all the rituals with wonderful taste? - They! Who weaved all the boundless fabric of our religiosity? - They, they! "

But they are different, and what is good for them is bad for the rest. Meanwhile, they "formed the whole asceticism, both ancient and new, both pagan and Christian. Only while in other religions it occupied a corner, formed a flower, Christianity actually consists of all of it alone." bloodless gathering "," seedless philosophy "," kingdom of seedless saints "are false and dangerous both for the survival of the human race and for personal happiness.

Literally everyone attacked Rozanov, calling him an erotomaniac, an apostle of philistinism, etc. But Nikolai Berdyaev ardently stood up to defend him:

"They laugh at Rozanov or resent him from a moral point of view, but the merits of this person are enormous and will be appreciated only later. He was the first to break the conventional, deceitful silence with unprecedented courage, loudly with inimitable talent said what all people felt, but concealed in themselves , discovered universal torment ... Rozanov, with brilliant frankness and sincerity, declared publicly that the sexual issue is the most important in life, the main life issue, no less important than the so-called social, legal, educational and other generally recognized issues that have received sanction that this question lies much deeper than the forms of the family and is fundamentally connected with religion, that all religions around sex were formed and developed, since the sexual question is a question of life and death. "

Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius also spoke out in defense of the "erotic" theme, although, unlike Rozanov, the apology of carnal love did not mean for them the rehabilitation of physical sexual pleasure. Ideal love remains with them a form of religious revelation. "Sexual love is an unfinished and endless path to resurrection. The desire of the two halves to the whole is in vain: they unite and disintegrate again; they want and cannot be resurrected - they always give birth and always die. Sexual pleasure is the anticipation of the resurrected flesh, but through bitterness, shame and fear of death This contradiction is the most transcendental in the field: enjoying and spinning; then and then not so, so and not so. "

The Russian philosophy of love and sex was more metaphysical than phenomenological. She theoretically rehabilitates abstract Eros, but as soon as it comes to real bodily pleasure, she immediately says "no!" This fearfulness, like interest in androgyny, had its own personal origins. Contemporaries said that the marriage of Gippius with Merezhkovsky was purely spiritual. Gippius was burdened by the fact that she was a woman and “could never surrender to a man, no matter how much she loved him”; but she was also disgusted with the physical side of lesbian love. Non-acceptance and non-realization of one's own homoerotic drives, characteristic of this entire circle of thinkers, gives rise to intellectual inconsistency and ambiguity of formulations. Abstract philosophical forms allow us to identify the problem and at the same time avoid painful personal self-disclosure.

The metaphysical approach allowed Russian thinkers to rise above the limited biological and sociological theories of sexuality. So, Berdyaev criticized such an understanding of feminism, when "the goal of the women's movement and any progressive solution to the women's issue is only to make a woman out of a man, to be like a man, to imitate a man in everything" ... But at the same time, many specific questions remain fundamentally unclear.

Russian thinkers of the early XX century. attracted by such "secrets of sex" as androgyny, hermaphroditism, homo = and bisexuality. A strong impetus to the discussion of these problems was given by the book of the young Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger "Gender and Character" (1903), shortly after its publication, who committed suicide. From 1909 to 1914, this book was published in Russia in at least five different translations, with a total circulation of over 30 thousand copies. This talented, but highly subjective book, the author of which in a theoretical form was settling sad personal scores with his failed masculinity and his rejected Jewry, impressed people in different ways. Some saw it as the first serious discussion of the problem of sex differences and especially androgyny. Others were impressed by the author's anti-feminist attacks, who considered women incapable of independent logical thinking. Still others liked his anti-Semitism.

Weininger strongly influenced Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius. Berdyaev reacted positively and critically to him: "With all Weininger's psychological insight, with a deep understanding of evil in a woman, he does not have a correct understanding of the essence of a woman and her meaning in the universe." On the contrary, Andrei Bely assessed Sex and Character negatively: “The biological, epistemological, metaphysical and mystical significance of Weininger's work under examination is insignificant. Gender and Character is a precious psychological document of a genius young man, no more. And this document itself only hints to us that Weininger and the woman had some kind of personal score. " Rozanov, with his inherent insight in this matter, revealed the essence of these personal accounts: "From every page of Weininger one can hear the cry:" I love men! "

In the early 1910s, Freudianism began to gain popularity. As Freud wrote in 1912, in Russia "it seems that a genuine epidemic of psychoanalysis has begun." Many of Freud's works were translated into Russian, and his followers carried on intensive correspondence with him. This also affected theories of sexuality. However, the naturalistic attitudes of psychoanalysis did not harmonize well with the mystical and anthroposophical views of leading Russian thinkers.

There was more immediacy in fiction and painting than in philosophy, but essentially the same issues were discussed. As Konstantin Balmont put it, "Love has no human face. It only has the face of God and the face of the Devil."

Symbolist poets of the early 20th century proclaim the cult of Eros as the highest principle of human life.

The cold and judicious Valery Bryusov, from his youth a frequenter of chaos (he could go there almost immediately after a date, where, in his own words, "spent several blissful minutes in pure love") in a program article in the magazine "Libra" (1904, no. 8) wrote:

“Passion is that magnificent color, for the sake of which our body exists, like a grain, for the sake of which it languishes in dust, dies, perishes, not regretting its death. The value of passion does not depend on us and we cannot change anything in it. Our time, which sanctified passion, for the first time made it possible for artists to depict it, not ashamed of their work, with faith in their work. Chastity is wisdom in passion, the awareness of the sacredness of passion. One sinns who takes a passionate feeling lightly. "

Vyacheslav Ivanov echoes Bryusov: "... All human and world activity is reduced to Eros, ... there is no more ethics or aesthetics - both are reduced to eroticism, and any daring born of Eros is sacred. Only Hedonism is shameful."

In the collection "Vyacheslav the Magnificent", as Ivanov's admirers called, "Cor ardens" (1911), the cycle "Eros" filled with mystical passion was printed:

I follow you and I tell fortunes
Hiding and running away from you;
I look at you inadvertently, -
I lower my gaze, overtaking ...

Although there was a lot of rhetoric in all this, and in Bryusov's - and undisguised narcissism, eroticism and sensuality received the rights of citizenship in Russian poetry (Alexey Apukhtin, Konstantin Balmont, Nikolai Minsky, Mirra Lokhvitskaya and many others).

At the beginning of the XX century. Russian erotic prose also appears: the stories "In the Fog" and "Abyss" by Leonid Andreev (1902), "Sanin" by Mikhail Artsybashev (1907), "Little Demon" by Fyodor Sologub (1905), "Dacha Corner" and "At Rest Hours" Nikolai Oliger (1907), The Wrath of Dionysus by Evdokia Nagrodskaya (1910), The Keys of Happiness by Anastasia Verbitskaya (1910 - 1913), etc.

A real explosion of eroticism and sensuality occurs in painting. Suffice it to recall the canvases of Mikhail Vrubel, "I'm going Rubinstein" by Valentin Serov, witty sexually explicit cartoons by Mikhail Zichy, the magnificent beauties Zinaida Serebryakova and Natalia Goncharova, elegant marquises and love scenes by Konstantin Somov, bold drawings on folk themes by Lev Bakst, naked Pet Kuz Vodkin, calling "Prostitutes" by Mikhail Larionov. Russian painting convincingly proved the correctness of Alexander Golovin that no costume can be compared with the beauty of the human body.

The same revolution is taking place in ballet. Classical ballet showed mainly a female body, it should have been graceful, but by no means passion. Now everything is changing. Diaghilev's ballets became a real pagan celebration of the male body, which had never been shown so nakedly, erotic and selflessly. Contemporaries noted a special passionate eroticism, expressiveness and relaxedness of Nijinsky's dance and a strange combination in his body of gentle femininity and masculine strength. This was very important. Before that, a man could only be a subject, but never an object of erotic experiences.

The type of ballet costume is changing. The official reason for Nijinsky's dismissal from the Mariinsky Theater was the accusation that at the performance of Giselle he voluntarily put on too thin tight-fitting tights, offending the moral feelings of the Dowager Empress who was present at the performance. (Maria Fedorovna later categorically denied this). However, the new Russian ballet could split even the Parisian public. When Massine appeared on the Parisian stage in a single sheepskin loincloth, according to Benoit's sketch, sarcastic journalists renamed the ballet from "Legende de Joseph" ("The Legend of Joseph") to "Les jambes de Joseph" ("Joseph's thighs") - after -French it sounds the same. After the Paris premiere of Faun's Afternoon, Rodin came backstage to congratulate Diaghilev on his success, and Figaro's publisher Calmette accused him of displaying an "animal body." Passions seethed so much that for the next performance, in anticipation of a scuffle, a police squad was called in advance, which, fortunately, was not needed. But during a tour in the United States, the end of the play had to be urgently changed: the American audience could not bear a clear hint of masturbation.

The new Russian erotica was neither well-behaved nor uniform. According to Alexander Flaker, the Russian avant-garde sought not so much to remove aesthetic prohibitions on eroticism as to lower the traditional image of a woman and “remove” from the concept of love its high, sentimental-romantic meanings. Eros of the avant-garde - "low, earthly eros", and physiology is accompanied by a longing for the lost sublimation.

This art was as varied as its creators. If many Symbolists, including Gippius, Ivanov, Merezhkovsky and even Bakst, considered sex a means of spiritual liberation, for Somov, Kalmakov and Feofilaktov it was just entertainment, a source of bodily pleasure, not associated with any higher values. Nikolai Kalmakov signed his paintings with images of Leda, Salome and odalisques with initials in the form of a stylized phallus. On his scenery for the stage of the Temple of Venus in the St. Petersburg production of Salome (1908), female genitals were depicted so openly that the scenery had to be removed immediately after the dress rehearsal. Nikolai Feofilaktov was called the Moscow Beardsley. He liked to portray half-naked women. His album "66 Drawings" (1909) was very famous. Feofilaktov was highly appreciated by Andrei Bely and Valery Bryusov, who decorated his Moscow apartment with drawings.

Very often in the new art, sexual violence was portrayed and poeticized. Artists used the genre of caricature for this and published in satirical magazines. As in poetry, where Bryusov and Sologub paid a rich tribute to necrophilia, the themes of death and suicide were widely displayed in the painting of the Silver Age, corpses, skeletons, etc. were often depicted. Demonism was very fashionable. VNMasyutin's engravings (album "Sin", 1909) are overwhelmed with fantastic, monstrous images of various monsters.

Same-sex love occupies a special place in this new culture, both at the everyday and at the philosophical and aesthetic level. Until the end of the XIX century. they knew about homosexuality, but they preferred not to talk about it and, in any case, not to advertise it. At the beginning of the 20th century, the situation in bohemian circles changed dramatically. Many representatives of the artistic elite of the early XX century. not only admit, but also defiantly flaunt their unusual sexuality.

Poet Mikhail Kuzmin openly appeared in public with his, as ill-wishers called them, "minions". The peasant poet Nikolai Klyuev, who came from the Khlysty, did not hide his homoerotic inclinations. Deliberately shocking the audience, causing general gossip, Sergei Diaghilev, the founder, together with his cousin, friend and lover Dmitry Filosofov, the magazine "World of Art", and later - the new Russian ballet. According to the recollections of Sergei Makovsky, Diaghilev pretended to be his dandyism, "on occasion he dared to show off, not reckoning a la Oscar Wilde with the" prejudices "of good-naturedness and not hiding the unusualness of his tastes to harm the hypocrites of virtue ..."

An important event in literary life and the formation of Russian homoerotic culture was Kuzmin's autobiographical story "Wings" (1906).

If Kuzmin sings of male same-sex love, then the book by Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal "Thirty-three Freaks" (1907) was the first fictional description of lesbian relationships. Actress Vera upsets the wedding of the young woman she is in love with. The abandoned groom commits suicide, and the two women begin life together. But the bliss does not last long. Vera's friend needs a male company and eventually leaves Vera, who commits suicide. For all the artificiality, antisociality and melodramatic nature of the book, it reveals "a high structure of relations between two women, where it is not eroticism that dominates, but the tragedy of rejection of it."

Along with the complex avant-garde art, which shocked the public mainly by the unusualness of its content, at the beginning of the XX century. a commercial mass culture appeared in Russia, in which eroticism took a prominent place. On the pages of newspapers, illustrated ads like "how to satisfy sexual hunger" or "every lady can have a perfect bust" appear on the pages of newspapers. Photos of naked beauties, etc. are advertised. All this naturally seemed obscene.

Russian society at the beginning of the XX century. was not ready for a differentiated perception of these phenomena. In the minds of many intellectuals, they merged into one general picture of the terrifying "sexual bacchanalia", as DN N. Zhbankov. Sex and erotica acquired the meaning of a generalized political symbol, through the attitude towards which people expressed their general moral and political views. But this symbol itself was contradictory and ambiguous.

The authors of the conservative-protective movement argued that the "obsession with sex", which undermines the foundations of the family and morality, is generated by the revolutionary movement and godlessness. The Social Democrats, on the contrary, argued that this was a product of the reaction that followed the defeat of the 1905 revolution, a consequence of the disenchantment of the intelligentsia in public life and withdrawal into private life.

In essence, both of them were right. The democratization of society inevitably included a critical revision of the norms of patriarchal morality and methods of social control over sexuality; "sexual liberation" was an integral part of the program for the renewal of society that preceded the revolution of 1905. At the same time, the defeat of the revolution, undermining interest in politics, prompted people to seek compensation in the sphere of personal life, and above all, again, sex. Depending on the specific socio-political context, the very essence of sexuality was constructed in different ways.

Among the extreme right, sexophobia merged with Judeophobia and misogyny. Theoretically, this synthesis was already carried out by Weininger, according to which Jews and women are equally hostile to the creative masculine principle, corrupting it and undermining the necessary rational self-control. At the kitchen, propaganda level of the mass anti-Semitic press, like the Zemshchina newspaper, this turned into statements that the Jews, being themselves sexually abstinent and child-loving, deliberately corrupted the Russian people with pornographic writings, prostitution and the propaganda of abortion and contraception. The Black Hundred press assured that the Jews held in their hands all Russian brothels, like the taverns, seeking not only the moral decay of the Russians, but also their physical extermination and reduction of their numbers.

The logic of the right and the left was the same: sex is a dangerous weapon of the class (national) enemy, with the help of which it undermines, and not without success, the spiritual and physical health of “ours”.

Political passions were aggravated by aesthetic ones. Many popular works of erotic literature of the early XX century. were artistically average, if not completely primitive (for example, the novels of Nagrodskaya or Verbitskaya). It was very easy to criticize them, and the mediocre form discredited the problems posed by the authors: "All this is not literature, but some kind of verbiage masturbation."

Any book that, in one way or another, touched on the "sexual question", offended someone and therefore immediately found itself in an atmosphere of scandal. The primitive understanding of literature as a teacher of life led to the fact that books were assessed not according to artistic, but according to socio-pedagogical criteria - whether they are suitable as role models for everyone. And since sexuality, even the most common, seemed dirty, the criticism was especially picky, accusing the authors of all deadly sins.

17-year-old Pavel Rybakov, the hero of Leonid Andreev's story "In the Fog" (1902), does not yet grow a mustache, but the word "woman" "was for Pavel the most incomprehensible, most fantastic and terrible word." Having lost his innocence at the age of 15 and then picked up a "shameful disease" from a prostitute, he considers himself morally and physically dirty. Erotic fantasies are interspersed with plans for suicide. The young man has no one to talk frankly with. The father feels that something is wrong with his son, but does not know how to approach him. Finding Paul's pornographic drawing makes him feel offended and only aggravates the boy's anxiety. Wandering around the city senselessly, Pavel meets a pitiful prostitute, drinks with her and insults her. The woman hits him in the face, a disgusting fight begins, as a result of which Paul kills the prostitute with a kitchen knife, and then stabs himself.

Like many things by Leonid Andreev, the story is melodramatic. But his moral pathos is obvious: Andreev does not incite to sexual promiscuity, he condemns bourgeois hypocrisy, which silences the problems that are vital for adolescents, leaving them morally helpless. Aesthetically demanding and not fond of naturalism, Chekhov positively assessed this story, especially the scene of the conversation between the young man and his father: "You can't put less for it, like 5+."

However, the conservative critic N.E. Burenin called Andreev "erotomaniac", and his story - a harmful, pornographic work. This opinion was supported by Countess SA Tolstaya: "We must not read, not buy up, not glorify the works of Messrs. Andreyev, and the whole Russian society must rebel with indignation against the filth that a cheap magazine is spreading across Russia in thousands of copies." Zinaida Gippius also reproached Andreev for relishing painful experiences.

After reading the first pages of Alexander Kuprin's novel "The Pit", Tolstoy told the pianist A.B. Goldenweiser: "I know that he seems to be denouncing. But he himself, describing this, enjoys. And this cannot be hidden from a person with artistic flair." ... Korney Chukovsky's reaction was also negative: “If Kuprin were really disgusting with this“ ancient way ”, he would have been able to cast his disgust on the reader. But ... he relishes it all so much, so revels in trifles ... catch his appetite. "

The new erotic, and even not entirely erotic art, was accepted by many with hostility. A terrible scandal caused, for example. art exhibition of the Society of Free Aesthetics in March 1910. "Voice of Moscow" wrote that this was "a continuous decadent poshib." Another newspaper responded with a poetic feuilleton:

Literary chatterboxes,
Crazy poetics
Obscene and stormy
Heralds of aesthetics
Symbolists-reciters,
Decadent artists,
Even though there are reformers in art,
But in creations, shoemakers ...
They are voicing like in copper pipes,
And from obscene delirium
Poor walls only blush
At the literary circle.

The police even arrested two pictures of naked women (without any special anatomical details) by Natalia Goncharova, who was accused of seducing young people, but the court acquitted her. It was not so much about nudity, to which the public was already accustomed, and not even about the new aesthetics of the presentation of the nude body, but about the fact that the pictures were painted by a woman. For the same paintings, male artists were not brought to court.

Teachers and doctors talked even more primitively about the harmful effects of erotic literature on young people. Speaking in 1910 at the first all-Russian congress on the fight against prostitution, pediatrician Israel Kankarovich bluntly said that boys who read Jules Verne dream of travel and sometimes run away from home, criminal novels create criminals, and erotic art arouses sexual instincts and creates libertines ...

Shocked by the unusually explicit sex scenes, literary criticism often did not notice what the author really wanted to say.

In Artsybashev's "Sanin" sexuality is constantly intertwined with violence and death. In a short book, there are three suicides and one unsuccessful suicide attempt. Sex itself looks rough and joyless: a man takes a woman by force, humiliates her, she is happy to experience it, and then both feel guilt and shame.

This is what the professional Don Juan and the sadist captain Zarudin feels: "And to the sweet, agonizing feeling of voluptuous expectation, subtly and unconsciously began to mingle with a shade of malevolence, that this proud, intelligent, pure and well-read girl would lie under him, like any other and he he will do with her what he wants, as with all the others. ”And a sharp cruel thought began to vaguely present to him pretentiously degrading voluptuous scenes in which Lida’s naked body, loose hair and intelligent eyes were intertwined in some wild orgy of voluptuous cruelty. I clearly saw her on the floor, heard the whistle of a whip, saw a pink stripe on a naked tender submissive body and, shuddering, reeled from a blow of blood to his head. "

Young student Yuri Svarozhich is a person of a different kind. But as soon as he was left alone with an attractive woman, “... he suddenly felt dizzy. He looked sideways at his high chest, barely covered by a thin Little Russian shirt, and round sloping shoulders. The thought that, in fact, she was in his hands and no one did not hear, was so strong and unexpected that for a moment his eyes darkened. But now he took control of himself, because he was sincerely and unshakably convinced that rape a woman was disgusting, and for him, Yuri Svarozhich, it was completely unthinkable " , although this is what he "wanted more life."

The main character of the novel, Sanin, says that the scoundrel is “a completely sincere and natural person ... He does what is completely natural for a person. He sees a thing that does not belong to him, but which is good, he takes it; which is not given to him, he will take it by force or by deceit. And this is quite natural, because the need and understanding of pleasures is one of the few features that distinguish a natural person from an animal. " And he almost does it himself.

Artsybashev's women are only mellow, succumbing to strength. Lida "was weak-willed and submissive, like a slave, surrendered to his most rude caresses." Karsavina loves Yuri, but surrenders herself to Sanin: "... She did not have the strength and will to come to her senses ... She did not defend herself when he again began to kiss her, and almost unconsciously accepted a burning and new pleasure ... At times it seemed to her, that she did not see, did not hear and did not feel anything, but every movement of him, every violence over her submissive body, she perceived unusually acutely, with a mixed feeling of humiliation and demanding curiosity ... Secret bodily curiosity seemed to want to know what else can do with her this, such a distant and so close, such a hostile and such a strong person. "

By the way, all the women in the novel are innocent, and all men, even the idealist Svarozhich, already have sexual experience.

These simplified schemes were easily amenable to further simplification and parodying. "Russian pornography," wrote Korney Chukovsky in 1908, "is not just pornography, like French or German, but pornography with an idea. Artsybashev not only describes Sanin's voluptuous deeds, but also calls everyone to such voluptuous acts.

People should enjoy love without fear and prohibition, - he says, and this word should - a remnant of the old intellectual habits, a relic of the old moral code, which is disappearing before our eyes. "

However, it was not pornography! Artsybashev argued not so much hedonism as the right of the individual to always remain himself and not set a limit to his desires. In a stuffy provincial town where the action of "Sanin" unfolds, except for sex, there is nothing to do. But does it always have to be this way? In the last scene of the novel, Sanin leaves the city and goes towards the rising sun, as if hinting to the reader that his real life is ahead. This "new man", an individualist and a cynic, is not particularly sympathetic, but strong, and under the conditions of the Stolypin reform, the future may turn out to be his.

Russian culture at the beginning of the century followed the path of creating high eroticism and did it quite successfully and in an original way. The costs and overlaps of this process were inevitable and logical. However, Russian erotic art, to a much greater extent than Western art, was elitist, upper-class. In contrast to the usual, "true-folk" swearing, it was perceived by both the right and the left as something painful, decadent, generated by the crisis of social life, alien to Russian classical traditions, immoral and aesthetically repulsive. The metaphysical Russian Eros was not combined with the Logos, and individualism came into irreconcilable contradiction with the collectivist yearning for "conciliarity."

It was not for nothing that Vyacheslav Ivanov called his ideal "Eros of the impossible", admitting that "Dionysus is dangerous in Russia," and Berdyaev later saw in the Bolshevik revolution "Dionysian orgies of a dark peasant kingdom" threatening "to turn Russia with all its values ​​and benefits into oblivion."

As for erotic art itself, its first weak shoots did not have time to take root in public life and were swept away by the revolutionary storm of 1917.