FOUR
Masochism in Russian Literature
Dmitrii Merezhkovskii once observed that the best Russian writers, however rebellious they may have been in their youth, repented. They ended up preaching smirenie to their readers. Pushkin turned away from his Decembrist friends to write an ode to Nicholas I, Gogol blessed Russian serfdom, Dostoevsky declared, “Humble thyself, proud man! [Smiris’, gordyi chelovek!]” in his famous Pushkin speech, Tolstoy advocated “nonresistance to evil,” and so on. The only exception, according to Merezhkovskii, was Lermontov.1 Perhaps that was because Lermontov died so young.
Selected Masochistic Characters
Whether or not Russian writers themselves were advocates of moral masochism, it may truly be said that Russian literature is filled with characters who welcome their unhappy fate—suffering, punishment, humiliation, even death. But literary scholars have not paid much attention to masochistic literary characters as a category. One has to go to the chapter on Russian fiction in Nadejda Gorodetzky’s opinionated theological treatise The Humiliated Christ in Modern Russian Thought (1973 [1938]) to find something like a survey.2 Gorodetzky’s book is not psychoanalytic at all. But her theme—the humiliated Christ—draws her precisely to characters who are interesting for the psychoanalytic scholar of masochism. Not all masochists in Russian literature are Christian, of course, but all truly Christian characters are moral masochists.
Also very helpful is Margaret Ziolkowski’s Hagiography and Modern Russian Literature, a literarily more sophisticated study which pays particular attention to “kenotic characters” in nineteenth-century Russian fiction.3 In her insightful discussions of characters in the fiction of Dostoevsky, Leskov, Uspenskii, and others Ziolkowski often uses the term “kenoticism” in a way that psychoanalysts would immediately recognize as meaning moral masochism.
Here I wish merely to point to some of the more obviously masochistic characters in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian fiction, without repeating too much of what the theologically oriented scholars have said already.
Turgenev’s peasants, for example, are often very humble and accepting of their sad fate, and they usually explain their situation in Christian terms. “The beginning of faith is self-abasement, humiliation,” says the heroine of “A Strange Story.”4 Beautiful Lukeria in “The Living Relic,” paralyzed by a fall from a porch, accepts her lot wholeheartedly and asks no favors from God: “Why should I worry the Lord God? What can I ask of Him? He knows better than I do what I need. He has sent me a cross which signifies that He loves me.”5 Gorodetzky cites numerous other instances of this kind of thinking from Turgenev. Each of Turgenev’s masochistic characters is unique, however, and many of them constitute complex and fascinating subjects for potential psychoanalytic case histories.
Tolstoy too depicted many Christian sufferers. One thinks of the rich merchant in “God Sees the Truth but Waits” who is falsely accused of murder and is sent to Siberia, where he learns to accept his sad fate with Christian humility and gratitude, even after the true murderer has been found. Or there is the monk Sergii who, when sexually aroused by the presence of a seductive woman in his cell, chops off one of his own fingers with an axe (later he becomes a wandering beggar with no name other than “slave of God”). Platon Karataev, the famous peasant in War and Peace, sits beneath a birch tree with a look of joyful solemnity on his face as he waits for a French soldier to shoot him (cf. Vasilii Shukshin’s character Egor in Snowball Berry Red, who obligingly permits a gang leader to shoot him in a grove of his beloved birches).
There are some not particularly Christian masochists in Tolstoy as well, such as Prince Andrei, who seems determined to die before his time, or Anna Karenina, whose behavior becomes increasingly self-destructive as the novel named after her progresses. Of course all these characters, even the ones in the stories written for peasants, are more interesting and complex than the simplifying label “masochist” would suggest. Each of them deserves in-depth psychological study. Indeed one of them, Pierre Bezukhov of War and Peace, who occasionally behaves in self-destructive fashion, struck me as deserving an entire book.6
Dostoevsky is of course the master when it comes to depicting masochism in literature—Russian or otherwise. His novels are filled with characters who wallow in guilt, crave punishment, or seek injury or humiliation of one kind or another. For example, in Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov, after protracted agonizing over his murder of the pawnbroker woman, confesses to his crime, is exiled to a Siberian prison, and eventually welcomes his prison sufferings as the road to spiritual regeneration. Aleksei Ivanovich, hero of The Gambler, likes to humiliate himself for the sake of women, and repeatedly punishes himself by losing at roulette. The underground man in Notes from Underground manages to be insulted and humiliated by practically anything anyone around him does. Nastasia Filippovna of The Idiot runs off with Rogozhin, a man she knows will abuse her (and who in fact eventually murders her). The Christlike Prince Myshkin of the same novel invites all sorts of aggression and cruelty from those around him. In The Possessed Stavrogin withstands a physical blow from Shatov without responding. And so on.
Welcomed injury or humiliation in Dostoevsky’s works is augmented by body language which seems to prime the characters for outright masochistic acts. For example, Dostoevsky’s characters have a strong tendency to bow down before others. Psychoanalytic critic Steven Rosen counts seventy-five bows, kneelings, earth-kissings, and other gestural abasements in The Brothers Karamazov.7
To be sure, there is more to Dostoevsky’s characters than their masochism. Stavrogin, for example, is a highly intelligent and complex sado-masochist. There are also major psychological differences in what these characters do, even within the masochistic sphere. Both Stavrogin and Myshkin are capable of accepting a physical blow, for example, but the motivation is quite different in each case. Yet the self-destructiveness is also there as a common feature. There is an underlying psychological similarity to many of Dostoevsky’s characters, which may be characterized as a need to be injured in some way. As critic Edward Wasiolek says: “The Dostoevskian hero not only pays back for the hurt he suffers, but he looks for hurt to suffer. He likes being hurt. When he cannot find it, he imagines it, so that it will sting in his blood with the pungency of real hurt. He has a stake in being hurt: he seeks it, pursues it, and needs it.”8 The hurt very often takes the form of narcissistic wounding (“obida” is a key Dostoevskian word, as in the case of the underground man). But it can manifest itself in various other ways as well, such as gross physical punishment, guilt feelings, humiliation, and of course the most self-destructive act possible, that is, suicide (Dostoevsky’s novels are littered with suicides).
Dostoevsky is thus remarkably inventive at finding ways for his characters to attract punishment or to get into humiliating situations. Both conventional and psychoanalytic critics have observed this.9 Moreover, Dostoevsky himself was perfectly aware of what he was doing. Of Stavrogin’s decision to publicize in writing the fact that he had sexually abused a little girl, the narrator says: “The fundamental idea of the document is a grim, naked need for punishment, for a cross, for public execution.” Father Tikhon, to whom Stavrogin confesses, also detects Stavrogin’s masochistic motive: “Yes, it is a penance and your natural need for it has overcome you. The suffering of the creature you wronged has so shattered you that it has brought home to you the problem of life and death, so there is still a hope that you are now on the great, still-untrodden path of calling disgrace and universal scorn down upon yourself.”10