Language, Gender and The Dream in Evgenii Onegin

Language, Gender and the Dream in Evgenii Onegin - The Pushkin Review / ...
1 of 12
http://pushkiniana.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=109:beaudoin-article0...
International Pushkin Society
Membership
Donations
You are here: Home Vol. 08-09 Articles / Language, Gender and the Dream in Evgenii Onegin
Language, Gender and the Dream in Evgenii Onegin

Luc Beaudoin
Visitors
Tatianas dream in Evgenii Onegin is an enigma. Occupying a central place in Pushkins novel in verse, it shares the role of novelistic
We have 27 guests and no members
artifact with the protagonists letters and its folk song. Dreams, in particular, hold sway as indicators of special insights, as they have
online
for millenia, and literary dreams in particular make tempting targets for interpretation.[1] In Slavistics, Formalist and structuralist
analyses of the dream include V. M. Markovichs Son Tatiany v poeticheskoi strukture Evgeniia Onegina, and both Iurii Lotmans
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
2 of 12
and Vladimir Nabokovs exhaustive examinations of the dreams folkloric and literary imagery have inspired a generation of Western
Vol. 08-09
(2005-06)
Slavists. Michael Katzs discussion in his Dreams and the Unconscious in Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction provides valuable insights
into the psychology of the dreams role in the text itself, whereas Olga Peters Hasty brings together feminist, literary, and
psychological viewpoints in a synthetic discussion of the dreams symbolism and referents in Pushkins novel in her Pushkins Tatiana. In
a different take on Pushkin, Georgii Gachev provides an unabashedly erotic interpretation of the dream in Russkii eros. Freudian
interpretations of Tatianas dream, such as those by J. Douglas Clayton and Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, have unclothed the striking
sexual imagery presentand repressedin Tatianas novelistic development. These explications of the dream show how we are
witnessing the maturation, on some level, of a girl into a woman within a sexually-repressed environment; both her letter to Onegin and
her dream are filled with passion and desire, and are as erotically charged as a girl in her age and time could conceive. Yet her growth
is primarily linguistic, and the reader feels it: whereas Tatiana is barely known early in the novel, by the end of the novel the reader is
somehow close to Tatiana, even though until her final speech to Onegin she has only been uncovered indirectly, through translated
letters, interpreted dreams, the occasional conversation, and narratorial exclamations. Tatianas entrance intoand construction
Vol. 08-09 Contents
Vol. 08-09 Articles /
Vol. 08-09 Teaching Pushkin /
Vol. 08-09 Notes /

Vol. 08-09 Reviews /
throughlanguage are major thrusts of the novel.
Log in
This paper proposes a gentle reexamination of Tatianas linguistic development in the context of theoretical work by Jacques
Lacan, in the context of the Romantic aesthetic.[2] Lacans ideas work particularly well with literature since his conception of
psychology is based on the formative nature of language, its signifiers, and the gaps between them. If for Lacan we exist as a set of
Username
signifiers which by their nature exclude the Other, then an attainment of the Absolutethat is, a unification with the Other and a
merging of all signifiers (and a grounding of the signifieds, the phallic mother of pre-signification, a union of the split subject and
split Other)is an antecedent to be found in the philosophy of European Romantic philosophers and writers. Nineteenth-century
Password
Romantic idealism and the concurrent notion of Romantic irony are based on the concept of the word as signifier: the word in the poetic
text was to resolve Romantic philosophys foremost paradoxhow to combine an inexpressible Infinite in a physically-based Finite.
Lacans conceptions of the (mis[s])identity of the subject help us chart the stages of Tatianas dream sequence as an expression of
Desire resulting from her rejection by Onegin after she wrote her letter, a rejection which helped facilitate her entry into language and
Remember Me
the Symbolic. For Lacan, signifierslanguageare paramount, and it is through them that we attempt a sense of self. Language defines
us as we enter it.[3] We enter language, however, through a negationa castration performed by the Nom-du-Pre who causes us to
renounce our Imaginary identification with the mother. The play of words in French is with non-du-pre, which categorizes the
function of this father stand-in. That non dissolves the narcissistic identifications of the Imaginary. The separation is the act of
? Forgot your password?

? Forgot your username?
? Create an account
signification, begun by the phallic signifier, which mandates all difference, and which is the basis for linguistic and cultural creation,
the initiation into the Symbolic, and the realization of lack. As such, women are always signified by a negation, therefore possessing
something unknown and unquantifiable, and always meant to be objectified by men (although Lacan simultaneously reinforces that the
phallic signifier is in itself a joke, in that it is itself a cultural and linguistic construct). Once we enter the Symbolic, we express our
Desire through language, and through its cracks and slips of our linguistically-structured (un)consciousness. Post-Lacanian thinkers such
as Luce Irigaray have taken the role of the phallic signifier and used it to a feminist advantage, arguing that the realm of signification
could be reordered so that women and men are equal, and that it is possible for women to enter the Symbolic as men (that is,
dressing in a masculine role), appropriating the Symbolic and denying or absorbing the phallic signifier as her own.[4] Our entry into
the Symbolic creates our Desire, and significantly, for Lacan, Desire can never be completed, for it is a fantasy. Our signification
results in a split subject that is forever cognizant of both the fact that it is not whole and the fact that it has been neutered away from
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
3 of 12
its mirror image of wholeness and illusion (on some level) by the non-du-pre. The difference in Irigarays interpretation is that the
feminine split subject could, perhaps, not be objectified, but rather be an equal to the masculine.
In Evgenii Onegin, Tatiana begins as the Romantic ideal: as readers, we remain unfamiliar with who Tatiana is, whereas we are
quite convincingly introduced to Onegin.[5] Tatiana is an expression of the Absolutea perfection and synthesis of all desires,
uninscribed except through her Imaginary identification with the novels she reads: the same type of novel that her mother had read
before. Tatiana lives alone with her sister and mother, with no visible Nom-du-Pre to allow her to enter into the Symbolic and into
language.[6] As Nabokov and Emerson, among others, point out, she is only as much an entity as allow the texts of male sentimentalist
writers she chooses to read and on whom she modeled her letter, so she writes her letter to Onegin with lines taken from contemporary
male Sentimentalist writers.[7] In it, she exclaims Je vous cris; voil. Cest tout. / Et je nai plus rien vous dire.[8] Tatiana
begins by hinting at her inability to speakshe is not expressing herself with her own language, but once she begins, she continues with
the language of others.
Tatianas letter causes Onegin to reply verbally, as opposed to in a letter, and his reply betrays how inured to the Absolute he has
become.[9] Onegin recognizes in her his female idealHaving found my former ideal (Nashed moi prezhnii ideal; 4/XIII/10)and does
not subject her to masculine fantasy in the realm of the Symbolic. Therefore he can boldly claim I love you with the love of a brother
(Ia vas liubliu liuboviu brata; 4/XVI/3). He will cherish her letter as proof of her passion, but no more: it is the concrete expression
of her Imaginary identification with him and with the novels she has read. It is also an expression of the similar identifications that
Onegin has repressed: Onegin is completely held in thrall by the Symbolic and its power of significationof language. He cannot accept
Tatiana on the terms she is offering, the terms expressed by others and taken up by her in her emotional state. In his life in St.
Petersburg, he viewed women as extensions of his fantasies, as constructions of his own linguistic making. By recognizing Tatiana as
his (former) ideal, Onegin also recognizes an imperative to save her: in essence, he has taken her as she had wished. He dissects her
passion, so awkwardly expressed, thereby redirecting both her passion and language. As such, he becomes the Nom-du-Pre, allowing
Tatiana to enter into the Symbolic and language. This sets the stage for the subsequent morphing of the Tatiana-ideal the reader has
known until now (although Tatianas own understanding of that change only occurs later in Onegins library). His role as non-du-pre
is found in his remarkably succinct advice:
:
;
, , ;
.
You will love again, but
Learn to control yourself;
Not everyone will understand you as I;
To misfortune does inexperience lead. (4/XVI/1114)
Onegin is giving her the key to her own future: Tatiana must take on a masculine sense of the phallic signifier of languageto
enter the Symbolic as a man. Tatiana must, in effect, learn to avoid, somehow, entering the realm of masculine desire as an object (an
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
4 of 12
object of fantasy).[10] To do this, she must become adept in the language into which we are all divided by the chain of signifiers,
beginning with the phallus. If, for Lacan, the Woman does not exist, then for Tatiana, the urgency is to come as close as possible to
this non-existenceas a manto allow herself the ability of becoming the Other while escaping the objectification of men.[11] The difficulties inherent in approaching this status are laid out periodically in the text by those with male language: narratorial and textual
allusions to Malfiltre and Zhukovskii locate Tatianas love as well as her dream within the ironic framework of the adolescent girl,
involved with forces (a ghost, a self-satisfied dandy) which she cannot understand. The dream is, in itself, an exhibit of her (and
Onegins) desire after the advice she was given in the garden, advice that is then subsequently fulfilled.
The dream is constructed as the psychological parallel of the Imaginary world in which Tatiana exists when she meets Onegin, in
which Onegin is the specular mirror of her existence. In clinical practice, Lacan has seen dreams as the expression of Desire (Desire for
the Desire of the Other).[12] As such, the dream sequence is an expression of the desire of both Tatiana and Onegin: an expression of
a roadmap for bothwhat to give and what to receive in order to (re)order their relationship. That, of course, will lead to yet again
more Desire. Tatianas dream offers her a solution as provided by the language she was given earlier and which has penetrated her
unconscious to reveal its surprise of discovery, as I will show below. Tatianas dream in itself marks the continuation of a progressive
change in the Romantic conception of the unconscious, a conception which had its roots in the poetic tradition of Goethe and Brger.
Not only confined to foretell the future and provide revealing insights into the state of the protagonists perceived affairs, nor used to
provide a tenuous union with the Absolute that could only be achieved through the half-reality of sleep, Tatianas nightmare becomes
in fact an explanatory vehicle, illustrating her psychology, and reflecting her Desire through language.[13] In traditional ways, the
women in the literary works mentioned throughout Evgenii Onegin are destroyed by virtue of being ideals which are signified by the men
who desire them. This is Tatianas inevitable end if she allows herself to be taken as an otheran objecta male fantasy. The
paradoxand ultimate solutionis in her own attraction to Onegin as a literary creation (both her own and that of Evgenii Onegins
narrator), an attraction located within a framework of textual possession and destruction, again both in her own essence and that of
the novel itself.
The sequence of Tatianas dream is well-known. In it are, most importantly, two obvious thresholds to be overcome: Tatiana
must cross a brook and Onegin has to cross over to Tatiana, who is behind the door in his hut. There is a third threshold which is also
broached but is not as readily apparent: the metatextual narrator (metatextual in that he is beyond the scope of the narrator who
presents the story to ushe is privy both to Tatianas dream and Onegins feelings, for example) pushes his way twice into the dream.
The crossing of each threshold is linked to the act of signification and entry into the Symbolic.
Upon beginning her dream, Tatiana is in the throes of her own potential sexuality; she is called deva twice in this comparatively
short sequence (as opposed to four times in the remainder of the novel), thereby emphasizing her role as pure Romantic heroine and her
sexual virginity,[14] as well as the unsignified, unpossessed girl, unsignified by language (her sense of identity is still Imaginary and
reflected in the books she has read: she has been rejected by Onegin, and she is still in the process of being symbolically castrated by
language). The metatextual narrators judgmentreferring to her as devalikewise reveals his intrusion into her psychology.
The first threshold Tatiana must cross is laid out in the first stanza. In the middle of winter she comes upon a torrent of rushing
water: the brook as a barrier which must be crossed is an archetype of sexual maturation. (This is clearest in fairytales such as Hnsel
und Gretel, although the concept of the obstacle in itself is universal, and is easily found in the Baba Yaga cycle of Russian tradition.)
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
5 of 12
The water in the brook, significantly, is described as not frozen:

,
,
, .
In the snowdrifts before her
Rumbles, puffs up its wave
A churning, dark and hoary
Stream, not frozen by winter. (5/XI/5-8)
In a metaphorical way, water itself symbolizes female fertility: it is life-giving (nurturing) and is the maternal origination of life
(birth).[15] In Russian, the word voda is a rough transposition of the word used to describe Tatiana (deva), a nuance given more
importance by the word used to describe the ice bridge which could permit her to cross to the other sidedrozhashchiiwhich brings to
mind the Russian verb of giving birth (rozhat). The virgin Tatiana comes across the power of female sexuality rushing across the
winter of her childhood state (the potential of spring and birth, moreover winter is associated with Tatiana throughout the novel),
separating her from the other side, which she must somehow reach. The only way across this barrier is by an ice bridge fastened with
two poles.[16] Ice is the congealed state of water, and as such holds in suspension its fertilizing and irrigating potentials, ready to
release them in the future. In French, which is equally applicable to Tatianas way of thinking, and certainly the language in which she
was possibly dreaming, one possible way of rendering this concept of ice and being frozen is the word gel, with clear associations to
elle, and even more so to je-elle, playing very nicely into the concept that Tatiana is witnessing her entry into the symbolic as a
speaking subject (je) while still navigating the signifiers that govern that language, rooted in the phallus which by its nature makes her
different (elle).[17] It is significant that Tatiana does not face a bridge constructed merely from the poles. Rather, the ice must
remain frozen in order for her to cross the brook: instead of a metaphoric breaking of the hymen (signifying her femininity, making her
an object and resulting in her destruction in the torrent below), Tatianas state of non-signification must be maintained.[18]
In the Lacanian sense, however, the phallus is primarily the first signifier that sets into motion a signifying chain that allows the
subject to enter into language and into the Symbolic. This development forever splits the subject, for signification fundamentally means
a lack. There are two menboth split subjectswhose language both threaten Tatiana and facilitate her entrance into the Symbolic,
providing her with the opportunity to maintain and develop her je-elle, to enter the Symbolic as a man, the master or matre (or
me-tre). If Tatiana succeeds, she will transcend Romantic objectification, and preserve her status, but she will likewise
cataclysmically end both Onegins and the narrators mastery of the Symbolicand the novel. As such, the poles of the dream represent
the two phalluses which have written her life and interpret her lack of signification until nowthose of Onegin (who dealt with her
letter and gave her the key to understanding language) and the metatextual narrator, who in his role as narrator translated her letter
initially, and is now both presenting her dream (in stanzaic form!), possibly translating its scenes from French, and forcing his way into
it. Despite this, Tatiana cannot be possessed by the metatextual narrator: her textual existence in the Imaginary cannot be affected by
his language (his phallus, his pen, one of the poles), but her inner world of growing sexual maturityof significationcan be observed.
Onegin likewise has not yet possessed or objectified Tatiana, although he initiated, with his speech in the garden, her entrance into
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
6 of 12
the Symbolic: he created in her a subtle awareness of the signifiers and language that govern human interaction. Just as neither the
narrator nor the hero (nor, indeed, the [implied] reader) have possessed her, so the ice prevents these poles from coming in contact
with the rushing female sexuality below, and vice versa. It is the bear, her future husbands friend, who guides her across the chasm
safely, preventing her from becoming objectified by the act of phallic signification.[19] The bear, who appears from under the snow, is
a primal object from Tatianas Real: the world that is not reflected in the Imaginary nor signified in the Symbolic. As Tatiana enters
the Symbolic, we can assume that it is in French: Pushkin refers to Tatianas lack of Russian abilities frequently. Her Nom-du-Pre,
then, is also Frenchand in Frenchallowing for Russia to remain hidden, under the snow, unless it appears in a dream
Having crossed the bridge, however, Tatiana is chased by the bear-best-man-representative-of-her-future-husband, is reduced to
a mere shell of her former self, without the ornaments and jewelry of women of her time; without the cultural indicators of French
culture, she is now a strictly bodily woman, she is picked up by the bear and carried to a hut, his gossips home, where he leaves
her.[20] The hut itself is common in the Baba Yaga tales as the portal between the living and the dead, or as here, between a childs
death and an adults birth, or the entrance into a culturally-specified Symbolic. Tatiana is ready for her initiation into manhood; she
stands before the searing intrusion of the inexpressible Real, the limiting of the Imaginary, and the induction into the Symbolic and its
accompanying desire.
The creatures Tatiana surveys in the hut have been identified with the male sexuality to which she must become accustomed into
order to unite with Onegin.[21] Certainly the phallic signifier is apparent; Onegin is fully in control, the master of the dread images
surrounding him. He is the matrethe masterand the me-tre, the one who isby virtue of ability to command the monsters who
surround him: So, he is the master, it is clear (On tam khoziain, eto iasno; 5/XVIII/5).[22] This is emphasized graphically through the
juxtaposition of the pronouns on and vse in stanza XVIII: He gives the signal, and all get busy (On znak podast: i vse khlopochut;
5/XVIII/1). It should be noted that the metatextual narrator has again intruded at this point, but in order to textualize Onegin, the
hero of our novel (geroi nashego romana; 5/XVII/12), implicitly revealing that Tatiana has also become aware of her role in the pages
of the novel (if she is dreaming, how does she know that he is the hero of the novel?). The dual confines of presignified nothingness and
the pages of the text itself are beginning to crack. She is, as a result, removed from beyond her own textual prison.
In her dream, however, she is still trapped, and views Onegin from behind a door[23]the second threshold mentioned earlier. The
door is the necessary division that helps creates the Symbolic. At the end of the stanza, Onegin approaches the door. Tatianas
powerlessness is emphasized by the first line of stanza XIX, where she is reduced to a dative pronoun, ei, caught behind a punctuation
mark in the line, leaving her literally within his grasp:
: .
;
.
Everyone got up: he goes to the door.
And shes afraid: and hurriedly
Tatiana tries to run. (5/XVIII/14, 5/XIX/12)
The narrator relates that as the door swings open, appeared the girl (iavilas deva; 5/XIX/7), an act of initial signification that
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
7 of 12
emphasizes her maidenhood, the state she has preserved while crossing the brook earlier in the dream. Nine lines later the stanza ends
with the most perplexing language of the dream. Upon seeing her, the monsters cry out that she is theirs, but use the neuter form moe.
Why the neuter? the morning after she has written her confession of love to Onegin, Tatiana is referred to once by her nurse as my
child (moe ditia). Her nurse is the representative of female obligations to be an objectshe was married away against her will, just as
was Tatianas mother. In her own eyes, as in the eyes of male society, Tatiana is therefore a neuter in that she has not begun to be
signified: she has not yet entered into the Symbolic, although the potential for sexuality, as expressed in her letter and seen at the
bridge, is there.[24] The monsters see a Tatiana stripped of her earrings and other baubles, presenting herself without her usual
accoutrement of (French) culture, without the identifications she has established throughout her life to this point. When the monsters,
in turn, cry out moe!, they approach Tatiana as representatives of the horror of loss: they are Russia, masculinity, language (which
can create the most horrible beasts and the more terrible voids), and, by their demonic signification, indicators of her repression of
earlier Imaginary associations.
Sigmund Freuds statement Wo Es war, soll Ich werden[25] is not only an almost Lacanian play on signifiers (typically Freud
referred to the neuter das Es), but it betrays the situation here well. Lacan relocated the psychological subject to something that
usually corelates to the Freudian id, the Es.[26] Once it is symbolized by language, the Lacanian subject is split, but this is the only way
to move into being, a being and subject that remains rooted in the Es. The monsters are providing Tatiana with her solution: she must
become woman, establish her je-elleher Ichwithout becoming a masculine fantasy in the language of the Symbolic. When Onegin uses
the same pronoun as the first word of stanza XX (it is italicized as well as set off) he speaks the same truth, but it is much more explicitly tied to his encounter with Tatiana in the garden. The italics indicate that the word is perhaps shouted, the admonition of the
father, the non-du-pre, itself an echo of earlier speech. When he admonished her then, he saw her as a virginal child who had bared
her emotions before him. When he says moe in the dream, he is reenacting that moment. In the French translation, he shouts moi
in response to the monsters cest moi. He is providing Tatiana with the answer to her entrance into language: he saves her from
the others and wants to be desired for it.
Whereas Gregg sees the entire banquet scene as a switch in focus and control from the female to the male, I would venture that
quite the opposite is taking place in the realm of signifiers, for the conflict is between a nonsignified female and the phallic signifier of
language.[27] Tatiana has survived the initiation rite with her purity, and thereby enters language without being (in)scribed as a male
fantasy: she is the mother who does not have the lack of having been signified, has not been symbolically castrated by language, but
rather can enter into language as a true whole Other without being split, a whole subject that has knowledge of her unconscious, for
she is a woman who has entered the Symbolic as a man. With this, Tatiana transcends the limitations of Romantic idealism and irony,
and is not the object of a masculine fantasy: she sits with Onegin on the couch of love holding him. Now the roles are reversed: he
feels desire for the mother figurehe wants to be loved by her, the ideal he has saved, and places his head against her breast.
This is, of course, a dream, and what Tatiana is seeing and experiencing cannot happen while she is conscious, but it reflects her
Desire: it is Tatiana, then, who in this dream wills Lenskiis death. In her entry into signification, she desires the ruin of the man who
plays his own part in the rendering of women as objects (in his Romantic poems). She in turn must try to enlighten her sister
Olgamake her at least aware of her complicity in language. Through her transcendence of signification, Tatiana eliminates the only
true remaining element of Romantic idealism which persisted in its erring quest for the Absolute through the possession of text and
female beauty. Lenskii is destroyed through the primal signifier, and is the victim of Tatianas new-found access to the domain of
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
8 of 12
language/phallus/desire. Tatiana removes the one representative of the novelistic tradition on which she had based her entire
existence and her love for Oneginthe one man who most closely emulates the Onegin-Grandison she desired, but who instead was to
marry her sister.[28] Upon this act of signification the dream ends abruptly.
The dream sequence has given Tatiana an understanding of signification and how it meshes with Onegins admonitions in the
garden, and her knowledge of language and signification is completed when she happens upon Onegins journal and books (7/XXIXXV).
Romantic idealism is buried with Lenskii in his grave.
In keeping with the role reversal that Onegin set in motion during the fateful moments in the garden, it is Onegin who becomes the
slave against the discourse of the master upon seeing Tatiana in St. Petersburg in chapter 8. Here, the metatextual narrator informs
the reader that Onegin is in love with Tatiana like a child:
[]
.
[] Evgenii
Like a child is in love with Tatiana. (8/XXX/12)
It is an echo of the neuter moe of the dream, but here the Es is referring to the unsignifiablethe lack of languagethat Onegin
now has. He loses his ability to speak when faced with his now non-objectified ideal. He can be distraught, for Tatiana has already
secured her chastity and hence remained the ideal: That little girl or is it a dream? (Ta devochka il eto son?; 8/XX/10) and
survived through to adulthood, whereas Onegin has regressed to pre-adolescence (ditia). He is joined in his powerlessness by the
metatextual narrator, who makes this clear through his interference:
,
,
,
- .
Can it be that same Tatiana,
To whom alone he,
At the beginning of our novel
Once read exhortations. (8/XX/13, 6)
The echoes of the interference when Tatiana saw Onegin in the hut are clear: both the narrator and Onegin have no power over
her, and the reverberation of the dream here is a parody of their masculinity.[29] Tatiana refuses to choose the option Romantic
philosophy would have her take: to throw herself into a passion which will objectify and ruin her. As Vissarion Belinskii states, she is
now a woman who knows the worth and price of the world around her.[30] It is now Onegin who is stripped of his masculine garb, and
Tatiana who is truly masculine, having vanquished the limitations of female objectification and literally stepped out of the text. She
possesses him through language, delivering a monologue which reconstructs their past encounter in the garden from a revisionist perspective and eliminates all signifiers except those of woman, socialite, and princess. Yet by rewriting history into herstory, she draws
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
9 of 12
the novel to a close, never even allowing Pushkin the author the ability to continue it. Romantic idealism is parodied to completion
through the inversion of gender within its own semiotic hierarchy.
University of Denver
Download:
Beaudoin, Luc. "Language, Gender and the Dream in Evgenii Onegin." Pushkin Review 8-9 (2005-06): 117-30.
[1] See Harold P. Blum, MD, The Writing and Interpretation of Dreams, in Psychoanalytic Psychology 17: 4 (2000): 65166.
Contemporary scientific study implies that dreams, closely tied to learning, are literal outlets for emotions linked to specific mental
content, a way for us to organize and establish memory. See J. Allen Hobson, Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
[2] See Rosalind Minsky, ed., Psychoanalysis and Gender: An Introductory Reader (London: Routledge, 1996), 15. Minsky provides an
entertainingly readable summary of the manner in which psychoanalysis informs the construction of gender identity, particularly from a
Lacanian and post-Lacanian framework.
[3] An excellent introduction and overview to Lacan can be found in Madan Sarup, Jacques Lacan (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf,
1992), as well as Minsky, Psychoanalysis and Gender. A useful summary can also be found in Mark Bracher, Lacan, Discourse, and Social
Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
[4] See Luce Irigaray, Any Theory of the Subject Has Always Been Appropriated by the Masculine, trans. Gillian C. Gill, in The
Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, ed. Amelia Jones (London: Routledge, 2003), 124. Irigarays interpretation of women entering the
Symbolic as men is fairly negative at this stage in her work, stating that it requires that women make their own specific pleasures
empty, that they submit to the impositions and emptiness that language imposes on them, and that they enter into masculine tropes
and tropisms (ibid.). In her later work, however, Irigaray develops a more nuanced version of this question: The construction of
subjectivity for the woman implies that she comes out of an exclusive relation with the same as herself, the mother, and that she
discovers the relation with a different other, while remaining herself. Egalitarian or separatist strategies cannot resolve such a
problem. What can assist the woman in becoming subject is the discovery of the other, the masculine, as horizontally transcendent, and
vertically transcendent, to her. It is not the submission of the law of a Father that can permit the woman to become herself, corporeally
and culturally, but the conscious and voluntary recognition, in love and in civility, of the other as other. Luce Irigaray, Approaching
the Other as Other, in Luce Irigaray: Key Writings, ed. Luce Irigaray (London: Continuum, 2004), 27. Lacan also obliquely hints at this
inequality in his notion of master and slave discourses: To whomsoever really wishes to confront this Other, there opens up the way of
experiencing not only his demand, but also his will; and then: either to realize oneself as object, to turn oneself into a mummy, as in
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
10 of 12
some Buddhist initiation rite, or to satisfy the will to castration inscribed in the Other, which culminates in the supreme narcissism of
the Lost Cause See Jacques Lacan, crits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 324.
[5] Trina R. Mamoon has written a delightful article on the development of Tatiana in (Re)Re-Reading Pushkin, Russian Studies in
Literature 40: 2 (2004): 3451.
[6] Lacan writes in his seminar Les psychoses 19551956, If there are many more hysteric-women than hysteric-menits a fact of
clinical experienceit is because the road towards symbolic realization in a woman is more complicated. Becoming a woman and asking
oneself what a woman is are two things that are essentially different. Even more, it is because one does not what one asks oneself self
about, and, to a certain point, asking oneself is the opposite of becoming. See Jacques Lacan, Le sminaire de Jacques Lacan: Livre 3.
Les psychoses 19551956 (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1981), 200. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Russian and French are
my own.
[7] See Vladimir Nabokov, trans. and commentary, Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse,2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1975), 2: 37879 and 38694, as well as Caryl Emerson, Tatiana, in Sona Stephen Hoisington, ed., A Plot of Her Own: The Female
Protagonist in Russian Literature (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 620; esp. 1213.
[8] Alexandre Pouchkine, Eugne Onguine, trans. Jean-Louis Backs (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 114. All references to the French
translation of Evgenii Onegin are from this source. Nabokovs reconstruction of Tatianas letter reads as follows: Je vous crisen
faut-il plus? / Que pourrais-je dire encore? (Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 2: 387). Nabokovs reconstruction indicates the writers from
which Tatiana lifted her lines. The Russian translation reads as follows: Ia k vam pishuchego zhe bole? / Chto ia mogu eshche
skazat? All references to the Russian are from the 1937 Jubilee edition of Pushkins works: A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii,
vol. 6 (Moscow: Izdatelstvo AN SSSR, 1937).
[9] Pushkin had, in fact, considered having Onegin reply to Tatiana by letter, keeping to the genre of the epistolary novel. It is
therefore significant that he chose to have them meet and converse instead. See Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 423. Writing is an instance of
control, but it is control as exhibited by the fact that writing is not intended to be read: Lacan claims he put Ecrits on the cover of
his collection because un crit [a writing] in my opinion is made not to be read. See Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1985), 36. The control, then, is in the ironic avoidance of being pinned down in signification: the reader will
inevitably read in whichever fashion suits her, even to the point that a letter may never be really portrayed in a story. Lacans seminar
on Poes The Purloined Letter (1845), explains this best. See Jacques Lacan, crits I (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1966/1999), 1161.
Speech, as language that is uttered more or less spontaneously, is, however, more immediately demandingit is, in fact, a demandand
is much more open to interpretation, existing on the Symbolic plane as the means by which each speakers sense of subject is
constituted.
[10] The object (lower case o) is the cause (as opposed to the goal) of Desire, the surplus that remains from the entrance of the
Symbolic into the Real.
[11] The Woman does not exist, sinceIve already risked the term, and why would I consider it again?in her essence, she is not
whole. Jacques Lacan, Le sminaire de Jacques Lacan: Livre XX, Encore 19721973 (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1975), 68.
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
11 of 12
[12] We discover that certain objects are coveted by the Other and learn to want them ourselves, modeling our desire on the Others
desire. Not only do we want the Others desire to be directed on us (we want to be the object, indeed the most important object, of
the Others desire); we also come to desire like the Otherwe take the Others desires as our own. Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction
to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 54. See also Mans desire is the
desire of the Other; Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 235. See also Bruce Fink, Lacan to the Letter: Reading crits Closely (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2004): And it is this desirethe patients desire which lies beyond his requestthat is fulfilled in the dream (31).
See also Jacques Lacan, crits 2 (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1966/1999), 10710, for a discussion of the dream in its role as part of a
specific analysis.
[13] The inexpressible of the Absolute was best described as a fog, floating at the boundary of consciousness and transcendental
knowledge, much like people today will describe near-death experiences in terms of dark and light.
[14] Richard A. Gregg, Tatjanas Two Dreams: The Unwanted Spouse and the Demonic Lover, Slavonic and East European Review 48
(1970): 492505, esp. 500.
[15] See J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage (London: Routledge, 1971), 36467.
[16] The importance of the reference that the bridge is made of ice (frozen water) has not been generally discussed, although RancourLaferriere, for example, has interpreted its delicacy as symbolic of a virgins hymen. See Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, Pukins Still
Unravished Bride: A Psychoanalytic Study of Tatjanas Dream, Russian, Croatian and Serbian, Czech and Slovak, Polish Literature 25:
2 (1989): 21558, esp. 21920.
[17] In the French translation: Deux perches lies par le gel / Forment au-dessus du courant / Un pont chancelant, dangereux
(Pouchkine, Eugne Onguine, 154). Lacan makes distinctions between the moi, which is in the Imaginary, and je, which is in the
Symbolic.
[18] The poles themselves are interpreted by Rancour-Laferriere as the phallus of Tatianas desired bridegroom. This interpretation
would coincide well with the usual conception that the bear who appears in the following stanza to help her across the bridge is the
future best man (the corollary to the bridegroom) of folkloric tales. The problem remains that there are in fact two phalluses. Both
Rancour-Laferriere and Clayton offer interpretations whose common thread is the involuntary preservation of Tatianas purity, as each
implies that Tatiana cannot be sexually satisfied by Onegin (thereby giving justification to both the concept of the hymen as well as the
idea that the phallus(es) symbolized is that of her future husband). In a folkloric sense, then, it is Tatianas future groom who allows
her to maintain her status as subject. See J. Douglas Clayton, Towards a Feminist Reading of Evgenii Onegin, Canadian Slavonic
Papers 29: 23 (1987): 25565; Rancour-Laferriere, Pukins Still Unravished Bride, 251; and Iu. M. Lotman, Roman A. S. Pushkina
Evgenii Onegin: Kommentarii (Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, 1980), 270. See also Gregg, Tatjanas Two Dreams, 469.
[19] A crossing that allows her to safeguard her chastity for her husband while giving herself sexual release. See Clayton, Towards a
Feminist Reading, 264.
[20] In French, his comprea wonderful tie to the nom-du-pre. See Pouchkine, Eugne Onguine, 159.
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM
12 of 12
[21] Gregg, Tatjanas Two Dreams, 500. This male sexuality can also be based on simple revulsion: the grotesque animals can be
seen as representing the suitors every girls parents would have paraded through the house, with the girl on display like in a zoo.
[22] Gachev also specifically equates Onegin with on, (he). See Georgii Gachev, Russkii eros: Roman, Mysli s zhizniu (Moscow:
Interprint, 1994), 15.
[23] A common symbol of the vagina, which in turn implicitly refers to the phallus and the beginning of her signification. See Cirlot,
Dictionary of Symbols, 85, 149.
[24] It should be noted that Pushkin was aware of the tendency to use the neuter form with brides-to-be in Russian folk songs. See
Rancour-Laferriere, Pukins Still Unravished Bride, 222.
[25]Sigmund Freud, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 15, Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einfhrung in die Psychoanalyse (London: Imago
Publishing, 1940), 86.
[26] For an insightful discussion of Lacans reworking of Freuds statement, see Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan, 9596.
[27] Gregg, Tatjanas Two Dreams, 499.
[28] The motivation of Lenskiis murder likewise can be interpreted in a Freudian fashion: Tatiana justifies Onegins lack of interest in
her by deciding that he must be homosexual, and therefore has him stab Lenskij with a knife, thereby completing homosexual phallic
penetration. See Rancour-Laferriere, Pukins Still Unravished Bride, 244.
[29] Emerson has a fascinating take on this entire section of the novel: Onegin is in fact dreaming. Tatianas reaction, then, would be
wholly in Onegins dream. If this is in fact a dream, the analysis of Tatianas actions would not be different. Just as Tatianas dream,
by virtue of the intrusion by the metatextual narrator, is a vehicle with which to understand both her and Onegin, so his dream would
do the same. See Caryl Emerson, Tatiana, 620.
[30] V. G. Belinskii, Vzgliad na russkuiu literaturu (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1988), 475.
Prev
2014. All work published here remains the intellectual property of its author. All rights reserved.
Header photo by Michael Julius (2004).
24-Nov-15 12:30 PM

Language, Gender and The Dream in Evgenii Onegin - The Pushkin Review

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Language, Gender and The Dream in Evgenii Onegin - The Pushkin Review

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Language, Gender and the Dream in Evgenii Onegin - The Pushkin Review / ...

International Pushkin Society

We have 27 guests and no members

Vol. 08-09 Contents

Vol. 08-09 Articles /

Vol. 08-09 Teaching Pushkin /

Vol. 08-09 Notes /

throughlanguage are major thrusts of the novel.

? Forgot your password?

The water in the brook, significantly, is described as not frozen:

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen