MIHAIL KUZMIN: WINGS Educational or initiation novel? Controversy with the Russian literary tradition

Abstract

In its time, the Wings became famous as the first Russian homoerotic novel and at the same time a notorious one. However, the Soviet reading public was not able to get acquainted with it. Kuzmin belonged to the category of the prohibited authors; consequently the re-discovery of his novel in his homeland could not happen before the 1990s. On the one hand, I regard Mihail Kuzmin’s novelette as an educational novel (Erziehungsroman), on the other hand, an initiation novel. On this point Kuzmin’s work is also attached to the tradition of the Russian novel of the 19th century, on the other, as novel-initiation, it is an initiation-novel to the Russian symbolist novels. This dual linkage marches through all of the elements of the prose-structure, including the relating- and quotation systems. In Kuzmin’s novel it is not attached rite that may be led back to the mythological and other traditions, “initiation” is a process, in which, beside the characters, likewise the works of art, operas, literature and particularly fine arts play important role, since the cultural content required for the initiation mediates through them. The main character of the novelette, Ványa, understands “nature” with the help of “dual reflex- ion” provided by the works of art, and consequently her own nature, and accepts the homoerotic relationship itself.