Erotic utopia

de Olga Matich

"The first generation of Russian modernists experienced a profound sense of anxiety resulting from the belief that they were living in an age of decline. The premised it on a decadent view of history according to which every culture passes through the stages of growth, stagnation, and death. A similar urgency informed their fear of degeneration, the fin-de-siecle European malady that claimed a growing number of individuals and whole nations. What made the early Russian modernists unique was their utopian prescription for overcoming the inevitability of decline and death both by metaphysical and physical means. They theorized their defiance of death in the context of the apocalyptic religious revival at the turn of the twentieth century, suggesting the immortalization of the body through the power of erotic love. Yet they intertwined their mystical erotic discourse with European degeneration theory and its obsession with the destabilization of gender." "In Erotic Utopia, Olga Matich suggests that same-sex desire underlay their most radical utopian proposal of abolishing the traditional procreative family in favor of erotically induced abstinence. By means of an ideological and rhetorical analysis of literary, philosophical, and medical texts, she shows how a brilliant group of Russian writers addressed the pressing concerns of a culture in transition, ranging from physical and psychological health, marriage, sexuality, and gender to anti-Semitism and the meaning of history. Erotic Utopia focuses on the late Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovev, Zinaida Gippius, Alexander Blok, and Vasilii Rozanov, whose writings are situated in the Russian as well as European fin de siecle."--Jacket.