The Queer Holy Foolishness of Evgenii Kharitonov
Faculty Fellow Lecture
April 9, 2019
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Speaker: 2018-2019 Faculty Fellow Julia Vaingurt, Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures
Evgeny Kharitonov’s collection of autobiographical short stories Under House Arrest was widely circulated in dissident underground circles but was never published in the Soviet Union due to its frank descriptions of gay love. Formally, Kharitonov’s writing is highly stylized and modeled on the solemn and mellifluous speech patterns of Russian religious philosopher Vasily Rozanov and Father Zosima in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I am interested in exploring how Kharitonov inscribes both his vulnerable existence in the margins of Russian society and his homosexuality into the Russian literary and cultural tradition, with its emphasis on humility, resignation, and holy foolishness.Julia Vaingurt, Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures
Date posted
Mar 20, 2019
Date updated
Mar 20, 2019