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Eros and Empire in Russian Literature about Georgia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Susan Layton
Susan Layton*
Affiliation:
Institut d'études slaves and Institut du monde soviétique et de l'Europe centrale et orientale in Paris
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Extract

In recent years a growing body of studies has analyzed the discursive practices used by Europeans to constitute the Asian, African and American Indian as the less civilized other. A most influential contribution has been Edward Said's Orientalism. Although Said deals essentially with western responses to the Islamic east, his work contains many insights germane to nineteenth century Russian literature stimulated by tsarist expansion into the Caucasus. The Russian case, however, presents interesting variations on Said's model. Russia itself was only semi-europeanized, so that it was more problematic to build constructs of Asiatic alterity. The sense that there was no absolute division between “us” and the “Asiatics” produced extraordinarily ambivalent representations of Caucasian Muslim tribesmen in Russian literature. In “Ammalat- Bek,” for example, Alexander Marlinskii defended the tsarist conquest of the tribes as a European civilizing mission and yet expressed intense self-identification with the freedom and machismo of the Caucasian wild man.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , Summer 1992 , pp. 195 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1992

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References

1. The studies from which I have profited most in working on Russian writing about the Caucasus are Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979 Google Scholar; Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988 Google Scholar; Todorov, Tzvetan, Nous et les autres (Paris: Seuil, 1989 Google Scholar; and The Conquest of America: Perceiving the Other, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

2. For a detailed treatment, see Susan Layton, “Marlinsky's ‘Ammalat-Bek’ and the Orientalisation of the Caucasus in Russian Literature” in The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Thought. Selected Papers from the Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, 1990, ed. Derek Offord (London: Macmillan), forthcoming.

3. My thinking on this subject has been stimulated primarily by Todorov's discussion of “exotisme et erotisme” in Nous et les autres, 341-55; and the more specific study by Lisa Lowe, “The Orient as a Woman in Flaubert's Salammbo and Voyage en Orient,” Comparative Literature Studies 23 (Spring 1986): 44-45. For a discussion of the duality of “natural” woman as other in narratives of the tropical journey by Levi-Strauss, Conrad and Baudelaire, see also Cleo McNelly, “Natives, Women, and Claude Levi-Strauss,” Massachusetts Review 16 (Winter 1975): 8-10.

4. Vinogradov, B. S., “Nachalo kavkazskoi temy v russkoi literature” in Russkaia literatura i Kavkaz, ed. Tamakhin, V. M. (Stavropol', 1974), 23, n. 33 Google Scholar. Cf. a different, modern outlook that places Georgia “a la frontiere de l'Orient,” S. and Gougouchvili, N., D., and Zourabichvili, O., La Georgie (Paris: PUF, 1983), 4 Google Scholar. For pertinent discussion of the Europe-Asia boundary question, see Bassin, Mark, “Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space,” Slavic Review 50 (Spring 1991): 5–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Gukovskii, G. A., Pushkin i russkie romantiki (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1965), 257–59Google Scholar; and Lidiia Ginsburg, introduction to Poety 1820-1830-kh godov, ed. F. la. Priima et al. (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1972), 1: 19-22.

6. Suny, Ronald, The Making of the Georgian Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 20–21 Google Scholar; and, on the impact of Islam, 24-30 and 46-55. See also Allen, W. E. D., A History of the Georgian People (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1932), 73–74, 99, 119 and 270-73. (Rpt. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971).Google Scholar

7. Lang, David Marshall, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 1658-1832 (New York: Columbia University, 1957), 52–53, 189 Google Scholar. Allen recognizes martyrs for the faith among the nobles and also underlines the steady persistence of Christianity among the Georgian peasantry and artisan class but he claims that in this era the majority of Georgian princes displayed “cynical indifference” toward religion: “They combined Mussulman polygamy with Christian drunkenness and interested themselves in either religion only to the extent of celebrating with admirable impartiality the feast-days of both.” A History of the Georgian People, 272.

8. Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 103, 118-20.

9. On the interplay of these various factors, see Marc Raeff, “In the Imperial Manner,” in Catherine the Great. A Profile, ed. Marc Raeff (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 197-200. Events leading up to the annexation are covered in Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 226-50.

10. For detailed discussion of tsarist abuses and Georgian resistance, see Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 253-70, 283-84; and Suny, A History of the Georgian People, 83-84. The gradual emergence of a Russian policy of the assimilation of Georgia during the proconsulship of General Ermolov (1816-27) is analyzed in Anthony L.H. Rhinelander, Jr., Prince Michael Vorontsov: Viceroy to the Tsar (Buffalo: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990). Georgia thus became denned as relatively “cultured” by comparison to the “savage” Caucasian Muslim tribes.

11. An exception to the tendencies I analyze in this article is V. Narezhnyi's Chernyi god, Hi gorskie kniaz'ia (Moscow, 1829), a novel written largely in 1802-3. Narrated in the first person by an Ossetian prince of Persian descent, this work about the Caucasus and Astrakhan features adherents of Islam, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism and a pagan cult of Makuk. But Narezhnyi does not display the typically romantic urge to invent the Georgian as an oriental other. He engages instead in light moral satire of Russian officials and harks back to traditions of Montesquieu's Persian Letters and the eastern tales of Voltaire: cf. N. Svirin, “Pervyi russkii roman o Kavkaze,” Znamia 7 (1935): 224-27, 237-40.

12. Quoted in Vano Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura i gruzinskaia obshchestvennost’ (Tbilisi: Zaria Vostoka, 1958), 347.

13. “Gruzinka,” ibid., 351.

14. Lermontov, M. Iu., Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Iiteratura, 1983-84), 1: 81; 2: 51, 83Google Scholar; and Polonskii, la. P., Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1954), 95, 98 Google Scholar. (Subsequent citations referring to these editions are incorporated into the text.) As discussed by Allen, the wearing of the veil in Tiflis reflected the city's long history as a stronghold of Muslim power; by contrast, in country districts where Christian practices prevailed, the chadra was not customary: seeA History of the Georgian People, 98-99, 356.

15. Petr Kamenskii, Povesti i rasskazy (St. Petersburg: III otdelenie, 1838), chast’ 1, 1-10. (A subsequent citation in the text refers to this volume.)

16. The principle of opposition is stressed in N.M. Lobikova, Pushkin i Vostok. Ocherhi (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), 49-55.

17. Stephanie Sandler, Distant Pleasures: Alexander Pushkin and the Writing of Exile (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 173-82.

18. A. S. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (Moscow: GIKhL, 1959-62), 3: 154. (Subsequent citations referring to this edition are incorporated into the text.)

19. A. Griboedov, Sochineniia v stikhakh (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1967), 332-38. For a plot summary published in the Russian press in 1830 by F. Bulgarin (who considered “Georgian Night” a masterpiece), see Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura i gruzinskaia obshchestvennost', 294-95.

20. See poems by Radishchev, Alexander in Russkie pisateli o Gruzii, ed. Shaduri, Vano (Tbilisi: Zaria Vostoka, 1948), 1: 14–15 Google Scholar. On nineteenth-century Russians’ continuing tendency to associate the Caucasus with Medea, see Bronevskii, Semen, Noveishie geograficheskie i istoricheskie izvestiia o Kavkaze (Moscow: S. Selivanovskii, 1823), 1: viii.Google Scholar

21. Khakhanov, A, “Meskhi,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (1891), kn. 10, no. 3: 36–37 Google Scholar. It is also pertinent to note that according to pagan belief in mountainous eastern Georgia, the primal demon who revolted from benevolent God was His sister, the creator of the female sex: see Charachidze, Georges, Le systeme religieux de la Georgie paienne(Paris: Francois Maspero, 1968), 279–81.Google Scholar

22. Charachidze, Le systeme religieux de la Georgie paienne, 654; and on attributes of the Virgin, Khakhanov, “Meskhi,” 36.

23. Iraklii Andronikov, Lermontov. Issledovaniia i nakhodki (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1964), 268-70.

24. In a late nineteenth century version, Tamar finally is exterminated by a valiant Russian soldier who strikes her with a magic button of his uniform: see Khakhanov, “Iz gruzinskikh legend,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (1898), kn. 39, no. 4: 140. This version stands as a case of a subject people's producing just the kind of story its overlords wanted to hear and were in fact creating about themselves.

25. Andronikov, Lermontov. Issledovaniia i nakhodki, 252-55.

26. Cf. Joe Andrew, Women in Russian Literature, 1780-1863 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 54-60.

27. Ibid., 59.

28. Griboedov, 357; see also Pushkin, 2: 246, 266; Polonskii, 109-10, 141; and lesser poets anthologized in Shaduri, Russkie pisateli o Gruzii, 1: 302, 417-18, 422-23. The Darial Pass also figured frequentiy in Russian literature, as in Marlinskii's “Ammalat-Bek,” Povesti i rasskazy (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1976), 181-82.

29. See Griboedov's “Zapiska ob uchrezhdenii Rossiiskoi-Zakavkazskoi kompanii,” appended in I. Enikolopov, Griboedov v Gruzii (Tbilisi: Zaria Vostoka, 1954), 102.

30. “Poezdka v Gruziiu,” Moskovskii telegraflb (August 1833): 366.

31. Marlinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (St. Petersburg: HI otdelenie, 1838-39), 10 204. (Subsequent citations in the text refer to this volume.)

32. Annette Kolodny, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 4-6, 10-25. Too vast to treat fully within the scope of the present article, erotic engagement with the “virgin” borderland is analyzed in my book-length study The Conquest of the Caucasus in Russian Literature, in preparation.

33. D. Oznobishin, “Kavkazskoe utro,” Otechestvennye zapiski 8 (1840), otd. 3: 151 — 52.

34. Aleksei Meisner, Stikhotvoreniia (Moscow: A Semen, 1836), 79-80.

35. A.A. Shishkov, Ketevana, Ui Gruziia v 1812 godu, reprinted and abridged in Shaduri, Russkie pisateli o Gruzii.

36. L.A. Iakubovich, “Narodnaia gruzinskaia pesnia,” ibid., 420.

37. It is especially notable that the poem induced some Russian women to flirtatiously tell Lermontov that they would like to go flying with his Demon: see M. Iu. Lermontov v vospominaniiakh ego sovremennikov, ed. V.V. Grigorenko et al. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1964), 172.

38. A. Odoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1958), 178-80.

39. G. Dzhegitov, “Pir na Kavkaze,” Biblioteka dlia chteniia 22 (1827), otd. 1: 126-27.

40. In reality, when Polonskii wrote this poem, Russia itself had proved too economically backward to realize any major projects for developing Georgia, as stressed in S. and N. Gougouchvili et al., La Georgie, 116-17. Likewise, in the mid-1840s, Russia essentially turned a blind eye to the slave trade in the Caucasus much to the exasperation of the British who were trying to abolish it: see Ehud R Toledano, Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression, 1840-90 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 42, 115-16, 138-42.

41. Marlinskii's Ammalat-Bek kills a tiger and puts on its skin; and Lermontov's Circassian hero in “Mtsyri” clubs a badger to deadi.

42. Enikolopov, Griboedov v Gruzii, 15-16; Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura i gruzinskaia obshchestvennost', 347, 489-97, 516-17; and Stephen F.Jones, “Russian Imperial Administration and the Georgian Nobility: The Georgian Conspiracy of 1832,” Slavonic and East European Review 65 (January 1987): 61-62.

43. Grigorenko, Af. Iu. Lermontov v vospominaniiakh ego sovremennikov, 49. By contrast to Lermontov, in Journey to Arzrum Pushkin acknowledges the valor of Georgians, even as he maligns their intellect: “The Georgians are a nation of warriors. They have proved their bravery under our banners. Their mental capacities still await development” (5: 431). In the continuation of the passage, Pushkin attributes a jolly disposition to Georgians, marvels at their great appetite for strong wine and finds “oriental senselessness” in their poetic songs.

44. There was in reality a Georgian victim who turned murderess and may have haunted the imagination of Russian writers to such an extent that her “plot” became utterly taboo in literature. In 1803 in Tiflis the deposed and humiliated Georgian queen Mariam drew a dagger and killed the tsarist general LP. Lazarev when he came to her quarters with orders to deport her. The murder naturally made an impression at the time, as seen in Russian documents which describe it as a “bestial” and “barbarous” act displaying a “vengeance and ferocity unexpected in the female sex”: see Akty sobrannye havkazskoiu arkheograficheskoiu kommissieiu (Tiflis, 1868), 2: 112, 114-15. A faint echo of Lazarev's demise sounds in the epilogue of Pushkin's “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” (3: 115). Without mentioning any names, the author refers to the “destruction of Russians” by “vindictive Georgian women” (using the plural, interestingly enough, as though such violence were endemic). An old Georgian peasant in Shishkov's Ketevana also speaks of the murder (453). However, no writer ever built a plot around a Georgian woman's hostility toward a Russian man. To the contrary, the literature insists upon cross-cultural erotic attraction between the sexes and thus can have Georgia both ways, loving Russia but needing to be tamed.