A couple of days ago I sat myself down and wrote a long letter to my professor M. in Sweden about my impressions of Kazan’ – but it was not a letter mainly about Kazan’ itself, but more about the thoughts it brought to life inside of me about Russia in general. After I finished it and read through it, my first reaction was: “I could never publish anything like this on my blog!” Until I received M.’s answer tonight I was unsure of whether or not I had crossed the line with it. In it I have a sentence where I compare the symbolic meaning behind saying you’re baptized in Russia today to what it meant in Soviet times to be a member of the Communist Party. It is practically the same action of subordination to the ruling power, and that’s my firm opinion. You can be with me or you can be against me – it doesn’t matter. Religion is a matter of private choice and should never be the subject of official approval – or disapproval, for that matter. In my letter to M. I also pointed out that I have grown tired and a little disgusted with the far too big and powerful role that the Orthodox Church is allowed to play at institutions of higher education in today’s Russia. First I was thrilled at how much I could show off during seminars at Ural State – because I have read the Bible front to back some four times and the New Testament in three languages (and once I was even a member of a Siberian sect – but anything connected to this is classified information, comrades) – for the professors here love to make connections between just about any literary text and Christianity. But what is behind it all? What is the foundation? Why are people all of the sudden so religious? And shouldn’t God be private, after all? And that’s when I start remembering some of the most horrifying verses from the New Testament: “The person who is ashamed of Me; of him I will also be ashamed….” Or when Jesus says about such people: “On Judgment Day I will tell you: Get away from me! I do not know you”. Once again, though, these feelings – and fears – of mine are personal, private and should be left between me and God to deal with only in silent prayer. Not to be brought up in an academic context. End of story! M.’s answer proved that I had been right, and – as is often the case with me (people sometimes say that there should be a secretary in the room when I start talking, really talking – not just saying stuff) – that he recently visited a seminar on religion and politics in today’s Russia in Sweden, where my critical voice would have been much needed. He suggested to the woman behind this project to contact me, and if she does and asks me to help her with something, then I’m obviously in.
In a way I’m suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome: I’m too close to Russia now to watch it from the outside. Also it would be silly to keep watching something from the outside when inside of it, right? But sometimes I feel that my sharp mind is becoming weaker and weaker and that I have no real outlet currently for what I would really like to say. I can’t write it in my articles that I publish in Göteborgs Posten – for they only want the funny stuff (and I don’t mind giving them that even though I think they should be ashamed of their poor management – but that’s another story) – and I can’t write it on the ‘other’ blog, for I desperately need to keep my job. Especially with all those increased living costs in California looming up ahead. For a while I thought I could write about it here. But then I don’t know exactly who is reading this blog. I know some of my friends and family do; and none of them are that interested in hearing about my intellectual agony. Also I like to publish picture of my cute shoes here – and to put something deeper next to this is almost madness. Or perhaps that’s complete madness. So I’m torn. But as I’m planning on changing the title of this blog sometime in July to «Мысли по поводу и без повода» [excellent title! don’t you think?] maybe this will give me some space to roam freely in my intellectual searching and spiritual yearning. On one hand, I really love my life in Russia and I truly have become very attached to the people surrounding me here. On the other hand, I can’t pretend to be something I’m not. I’m not Russian and I don’t have to comply with this country in any kind of way. And if I had a third hand, then I would add that I’m not really sure what I am anymore. I am losing my native language. It is a natural process – I suppose – when you live for so long abroad and when there’s no real prospect in the future of ever being joined with the country where I was born again. Sometimes I’m not a very good teacher of Swedish; especially lately, when my head has been crammed with so many other things and I’m not always sure of where I’m heading. And what is even more horrible: I am not sure what I’m leaving behind. I don’t think any of my students consider it a secret that I do not love, nor harbor any fond feelings or warm memories of my home country. I can’t even keep a private diary anymore. I don’t know in what language to write it. The other day I caught myself counting in English. Before this I have caught myself counting in Russian several times – but this was the first time it happened in English. Wise old men have said that the language you count in is the language you think in. I’ve tried during all of these years to count in Swedish… I read Dagens Nyheter online every morning. Mainly because I like to drink two cups of coffee for breakfast and this is the only news site that has enough written on it to last through two whole cups of black coffee… And isn’t that a sad confession? I have stopped reading the Bible in the morning. I don’t know how to be a Christian anymore. I don’t know how to keep a dialogue with God anymore. It seems so strange to me that my only promise for this year was that it would involve “more Jesus” – I don’t think there’s ever been less Jesus in my life than right now! I’m not pleased with my thesis. I would’ve wanted to write it differently. The only thing I’m sure of right now is that I am a very good actress. We [the foreign students at Ural State] are rehearsing our annual plays to be performed on May 31st and I can’t help but receiving so much pleasure from this process. I love everything involved with theater – and it kills me to know that working late evenings for most part of the week has robbed me of the opportunity to go and see more plays – and I love what happens inside of your body and mind when you’re acting. I love the control; I love the feeling of making every single, every exact gesture – the control of your voice which lies behind every intonation perfectly spoken, and the control of your body in every carefully counted step. I love it because it is really art to me; a physical form of art. Maybe I should have become an actress instead. My whole body lights up in this strange way and it starts taking over when I’m performing. Maybe that’s why I’m not receiving pleasure from teaching right now: I can’t perform without being in complete control of my body, my mind and my voice. And there’s no control when your thoughts are allover the place…
I’ve made peace with Aksyonov’s novel “Secret Passion” and in the process also made an interesting observation in it: after about half of the novel it starts reminding of a book with smaller and very erotic short stories placed in it. These erotic short stories portray different nights – or days for that matter – which Vakson [that’s Aksyonov’s pseudonym in the novel] spent with a woman he calls Ralissa. Ralissa is blonde and gorgeous and the dream of every other man in the novel. She’s slept around; but then again, she wouldn’t be a blonde, gorgeous woman if she hadn’t. That’s a part of the deal which any man who wants to have such a woman for his own pleasure will have to make and take. But he always makes sure she tells him that “before you there was no one”. He makes her repeat it over and over again; even after she’s showed him some wicked positions in bed [Vakson himself prefers “the 19th century classic” and I think it is safe to say that’s Soviet code for the missionary position] he wants her to confess to having learned them on her own. But we all know this isn’t true. Ralissa is the epitome of the convenient woman. Vakson gets to have crazy sex with – probably – the hottest chick in the Soviet Union of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and he also succeeds in getting her to give up any kind of sexual past. Ralissa made me think of some other interesting observations that I made while reading Dusty’s “The Brothers Karamazov” a month or so ago. In that novel there is a very similar to Ralissa woman: Grushenka. She’s the wet fantasy of both the Father Karamazov and one of the sons Karamazov [Mitja], and when she sits on Alyosha’s lap everyone [if you’ve been there, you can see it and feel it, though Dusty would never say it out loud] knows that he got an erection. Grushenka is at first portrayed as something of a prostitute, and in the first parts of the book – before things start to get serious with Mitja – she is often referred to as being “for sale”, obviously: to the highest bidder. She’s been used by her first love, who later in the novel turns out to be nothing one can ever be used by [if you’re a woman like Grushenka seems to be earlier in the novel, that is], but she’s also in a strange relationship with a wealthy older man. Grushenka made me think of Lisbeth Salander in “Män som hatar kvinnor”. Now, I haven’t read this novel – but I very much appreciated the movies based on the trilogy. So my analysis may be incorrect, but I want to give it a try anyhow. Grushenka and Lisbeth Salander have a lot in common: they have both been sexually abused in their past [Dusty never confesses to this in the novel, but I can feel it coming through every gesture of Grushenka’s in her first appearance], and they are both used by men in the present for sex. Lisbeth Salander may not be as ‘externally attractive’ as Grushenka, but this is a matter of taste. Some people would say Grushenka doesn’t really do it for them, either. And others might argue Lisbeth Salander is supersexy and that they wouldn’t mind tumbling around in the hay with her on a late summer evening. They both share one important trait, though: they’re both unattainable. They’re both women with a mission of revenge. If Dusty had remained true to Grushenka’s initial character all throughout the novel, then I’m sure she would’ve shown up that night to claim her money from the father Karamazov and that she after this would’ve slaughtered him in cold blood – like any female heroine worthy of comparison with Lisbeth Salander would have. But Dusty doesn’t allow for Grushenka to remain a complete character. It wouldn’t have been convenient if she had been. For Dusty’s novel is after all called “The BROTHERS Karamazov” and after all it is a book entirely about men. Instead of freeing Grushenka, Dusty turns her into another convenient woman. In the end of the novel it turns out that, even though she’s a woman “for sale”, she has not been bought by anyone or for any price. And she’s strangely virgin like in the last chapters… Grushenka has to become a convenient woman for the sake of Mitja Karamazov: with him going to prison in Siberia, it would be terrible – outrageous! – for a woman without purity but with a sexual history to follow in his steps of sacrifice. See Sonya in “Crime & Punishment” if you want yet another example of a convenient woman in Dusty’s literary production… This is why Lisbeth Salander to me is the true emancipation of the female literary heroine: she is never turned into a convenient woman, nobody “gets” her in the end – solely because she is not a woman any man can nor will ever receive. Lisbeth Salander remains inconvenient till the very end. Her revenge belongs only to her. And she will never let herself be forced to silence or repression of a past that must perhaps not be told, but which will always be there and may not be such a disadvantage after all.
Currently I’m working on something – maybe it is a short story, perhaps only a sketch – that I want to call “An Inconvenient Woman”. I think the main problem with the character Elva all throughout my work on the novel “Russian Dogs” [English title; it was published in Russian as «Во всех комнатах твоих»] was that I was working on forming the character of an inconvenient woman, but I was – as always – way ahead of myself and my time. Nobody who read the novel ‘got’ Elva. And that’s entirely my fault, for she was created years before I had acquired the real experience behind her story to create a believable character. Essentially Elva belongs to the future; and just like some say Lisbeth Salander is an ‘unbelievable’ character – for she is unprecedented or seldom represented in a world of books written by men preoccupied with the convenient woman – Elva is her fictional sister in this sense. What is so scary about the inconvenient woman, then? The pure realization that you can never have her? Or that someone else have already had her, and that many other men will have her in the future? The inconvenient woman has the same poetics as the woman insane; and the woman insane is dangerous both to men and society [and out society is still male no matter what you say] for she will never be able to comply with the standard role which all women must play. You cannot marry the woman insane, and you cannot have her bare your children. And the inconvenient woman will never marry you. She will never have your children. She will rather explore herself and other men – or women for that matter – whenever your back is turned. She will also never tell you her entire story. She will play along; but that’s all it ever is: a play. Maybe I made the biggest mistake in “Russian Dogs” when I allowed for Elva to walk down the aisle… The inconvenient woman sees marriage for what it really is: an institution constructed by men and fed by our culture which always emphasis romance. I do not believe in romance; I believe in passion. I don’t think romance even exists. Passion, however, I know to be very real.
I think I am an inconvenient woman myself. But don’t consider that something I want to brag about; rather it is the cross I have to take up every single day.
