One of my Lithuanian professors told me the other day that it would be naive to expect fidelity from the Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam. It didn’t matter how much he loved his wife Nadezhda, she told me - a poet needs his muses. A single woman, a wife, couldn’t provide him with sufficient material on lust and desire.
I can’t say that this professor is a gentle woman, though she may seem that way in cursory interactions. She’s initially quick to chit chat and quick to compliment, but it hasn’t taken me a long time to realize that she has an underlying intensity that’s kind of bitter in nature. She lives with a kitten that she describes as the luckiest animal in the world, and I think she’s spent a couple of decades convincing herself that she’s better off without a husband, probably construing the opinions of Russian modernists in a way that matches the cards she’s been dealt. I like her a lot, and when she apologizes for rambling too extensively about historical context, I try to express to her in the least pretentious way possible how genuinely insightful it is.
She described the next poem we’d read as “the best love poem of the [20th] century.” That title wasn’t her own but instead came from Anna Akhmatova, the most renowned female poet of the same stylistic movement as Mandelstam, Acmeism, which pushed for compact clarity over vague symbolism. What interested me was that this love poem of allegedly magnificent proportions was written about a mistress, not a woman to whom Mandelstam was even ready to fully commit himself. The poem talks about women as fish and Mandelstam tells this beautiful woman not worry because the two of them will be tied together in a strong sack and thrown into the sea.
This professor, with her really bright and thin red hair and kind of sweaty look and attentive eyes, was addressing a complex dynamic of polygamy that many to this day don’t conceptualize. Polygamy isn’t even the right word considering that it was one-sided: Nadezhda herself had only one lover. In loyalty to Osip, she committed all of her husband’s poems to memory due to a classic Soviet distrust in paper and fear of the NKVD, following him to Siberian gulags and spending her most prosperous years in exile. But even if it wasn’t polygamy that existed in their relationship, it was definitely a dynamic that acknowledged the complexity of marriage. A dynamic that also acknowledged the foolishness, probably, of living with an expectation of monogamy that could never be realized. Osip’s relationship with Nadezhda was nowhere near cruel in nature, despite the loyalty he lacked. She understood who she’d involved herself with and still loved him with her stereotypically unwavering feminine devotion.
Just like that, we can discuss the personal life of fellow writer Ivan Bunin only through a similarly unconventional framework. To summarize, while married to a woman named Vera, he fell in love with the then 25 year old poet Galina Kuznetsova as she was vacationing with her then-husband in the Grasse commune in France. Galina left her husband and moved in with Ivan and Vera, which Vera actually was okay with. Galina was considered a secretary and a ‘family member,’ but she soon also fell in love with somebody else who lived in their home named Leonid Zurov. Finally, Ivan’s affair with Galina came to a close when she fell in love with the female opera singer Margo Stepun. Our professor really liked the part where the two women ended up together, and I liked it as well. Bunin’s romances were again polygamous, intertwined with complexity and lesbian relationships too.
The arguably even more respected Russian poet Aleksandr Blok didn’t ever sleep with his wife, instead having sex only with prostitutes because of how deeply he idolized the woman he married.
When looking at Russia’s opinions on relationships through a historical lens, they were often the most tolerant out of any nation. Gay love isn’t even hidden among Russian classics. Sure, that tolerance may have come in the form of apathy, where the general perspective was that nobody should care what goes on in someone else’s bedroom, but that’s its own from of tolerance.
The Russian revolutionaries at the start of the 20th century understood that demanding radical reform in their government and economy meant likewise reforming their social and cultural structures - they were promiscuous and divorced frequently, and they saw marriage not as an institution of love but simply as an institution for extending the family. Love was way too complex and special to be seen a norm that everybody can achieve through their civil union. It was something to be looked for outside of the family unit. Many of these revolutionaries likewise believed that we all have traits that we see as perfect, and it’s impossible for one person to have all of these ideal traits. Nevertheless, we all deserve partners that fulfill our desires for these qualities. The logical progression is that we should seek out different partners to satisfy the different traits we value.
Maybe the reason why I was so fascinated by all of these stories was the fact that Russians today are perceived as some of the least tolerant and open-minded when it comes to love. It starts, of course, at the government level:
It continues, of course, among ordinary citizens. Homophobia truly does abound among Russians and Eastern Europeans. I can say firsthand that it’s really present among immigrant communities, where people of all ages, not just the older generations, often reject all non traditional notions of love.
I actually haven’t been listening to almost any of my own music during my time here, with the exception of a little bit of Bob Dylan. I go through phases where I listen to music for almost every hour of every day, especially when I’m reading and writing and doing work, and of course during walks and commutes and meals, and also during everything in between. I also go through phases where I can’t even stand to put my headphones in, and I have to say that that’s more or less the current phase I’m in. However, when I want to listen to at least something, I’ll put on some random Russian street interviews that ask people in Saint Petersburg or Moscow what they think about certain things. The interviews are often repetitive and predictable but I think they actually give pretty sophisticated insight into how people in these cities see the world. Without providing any unpleasant quotes from them, I can just say that perspectives on everything except heterosexual monogamy remain harsh.
I guess the contrast is just what interests me, between the really progressive romantic assessments of old Russian poets and the current extreme conservatism across Russia and Eastern Europe.
Anyway, the professor asked Leo and I today if we think we have a more accurate view of a person when we are or aren’t in love with them. When we’re in love, everything becomes idealized and shortcomings seem insignificant. Before we could even answer, she said that of course we see people more clearly when we’re in love, because we see them then as God created them, as holy and perfect creatures. There’s also a little joke that says if you’re reading French literature, it means you’re in love. What does it mean, then, if you’re obsessing over Russian literature? I feel like it probably means you’re experiencing some combination of confusion, passion, and angst?
Interesting point about the old Russia's tolerance and the current prohibitions/ phobias.