Feminine and masculine imagery of the novel Dead Swell by O. Mirtov

The article examines the novel Dead Swell by O. Mirtov (real name Olga Negreskul) in the context of literary-gender issues in the modernism era. A novel about the life of exiles in a city like Vologda or Vyatka was published in the leading monthly political journal Russkaya Mysl’ [Russian Thought] in 1909. In its ideological orientation, Dead Swell is on a par with V. Ropshin’s Pale Horse (1909), a novel Devil’s Doll (1911) by Z. Gippius and the story Honesty with Oneself by V. Vinnichenko (1914). The literary-gender aspect of the novel is still little studied. There are various feminine and masculine literary types in the novel, fitting well into the modernist gender system. The wife of the protagonist Liza Silina is focused on the inner world of her experiences and is subject to absolute dependence on her own husband (the big Other), which is characteristic of “female hysterical subjectivation”. In the gender system, Liza can be attributed to the spiritual gender type, closely related to the expressed “martyrdom” of the heroine. The image of the accuser Ekaterina Bryantseva is closely connected with the prevailing modernist ideas about the “new woman”, independent and free of patriarchal morality. But the passionate and inconsistent behavior of the heroine in relation to the object of her love can be seen in the context of the continuation of Lacan’s understanding of the nature of passion in the gender projection of modernism. The common-law wife of one of the exiles Sophia Somova (a possible alter-ego of the author) is an image of a “thinking femina” who is able to distinguish truth from lies in search of the real Spirit. The characteristic detachment of the heroine, as if watching the rest of the heroes through a veil, becomes the key to the heroine’s understanding and acceptance of herself and those around her. The literary-gender aspect of the novel is closely related to the crisis of patriarchal values, which is symbolized by the male heroes. The protagonist of the novel, Andrei Silin, a hedonist and erotomaniac, physically incapable of deep affection and preferring the principle of Dionysianism, fits well into the modernist concept of the Dionysian eros by Vyacheslav Ivanov. Closely related to the image of Silin is the theme of the “unread soul”, the “soul under the mask”, which Liza and the other women of the novel are so eager to discover. The direct opposite of Silin and his friend is an intellectual, “philosopher” Leonid Mokhov. Mokhov, Liza’s spiritual brother, considers the main thing to be the knowledge of someone else’s soul, but suffers from his own powerlessness in front of the world around him. The gender-philosophical aspect of the novel is a continuation of the dualistic views of Negreskul, which is reflected in the figurative structure of the novel, where each hero has his own parodying double. The novel reflects the basic principles of feminine-masculine construction (from the concept of spiritual love, dualism and Dionysian eros to female hysterical subjectivation and the crisis of patriarchalism), fitting well into the literary critical gender discourse of the modernism era, which was reflected in various literary-gender types.

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