Den seksuelle forbannelsens dikter. Homoseksuell tematikk i JiÅà Karásek ze Lvovics 1890-tallslyrikk. Meddelelser, 1999 by Roar Lishaugen (review)

REVIEWS 325 commentary. Kahn is particularly strong on the 'sound orchestration' and versificationof the poem. Partthree introducesKahn's own reading of the poem. The emphasisis on the textual echoes of other works, notably Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve,and, less expectedly, A Midsummer JVight's Dreamand 7The Aeneid.Unfortunately, space restrictionsdo not allowthe authorto develop the Shakespeareantheme at greaterlength here.At presentthisis clearlya fertileareaof Pushkinstudies, hinted at most recently by J. Douglas Clayton in his Wave andStone (Ottawa, 2000) where the Shakespeareanreferences in EvgeniiOnegin are explored. In addition to Shakespeare and Virgil (and many others), the translatorof 7The Iliad,Nikolai Gnedich, through his poem Rybaki, clearly influenced Pushkin. It is therefore appropriatethat a section of the bibliography,which overall is of the same high standard that one has come to expect from this series, is devoted to intertextuality. In addition to English-language and Russianlanguage items, books and articlesin Frenchand German are included. The only omissions are D. M. Thomas's translationof the poema(London, I982) and Neil Cornwell's Reference Guide toRussian Literature (London and Chicago, I998) which has a usefularticleon Mednyi vsadnik by MarilynMinto. There are a number of minor mistakes:the author of the notes on the I824 flood is variously V. N. Berg and V. N. Berkh (p. 58); the pious Madame Kruedener becomes Madame Kreudener (p. 62) and on the same page the verbs molvit' and molit'sia have been confused. There are also various obvious typos which tighterediting would have avoided. These include 'synechdoche' (p. 44) 'geneaology' (p. 55), 'plausability'(p. I02) and 'bureacracy'(p. I20). Despite this, however, this is a very well researched and judiciously argued book which containsfascinatingpassageson the influenceof AugustinThierry (P. I2), on thepoema genre (p. 30), and (p. II4) on the title (why mednyi rather than the more metallurgicallycorrect bronzovyi, which is used elsewhere in the poem?). There is much else besides, notably the section 'Peterand the statue' (pp. IO9-I6), which is a model of its type. Taken overall, and though not without its flaws, this book should be requiredreading for anyone who loves the work of Pushkin and will complement the subsequently published BCP edition of the poem by Michael Basker. Department ofEuropean Studies MICHAEL PURSGLOVE andilodernLanguages University ofBath Lishaugen, Roar. Den seksuelle forbannelsens dikter.Homoseksuell tematikk i Jifir Karasek ze Lvovicsi89o-tallslyrikk.Meddelelser, I999, 82. Department of Slavonic and Baltic Studies,Universityof Oslo, I999. I03 pp. Appendix. Bibliography.Priceunknown. A prolific writer of prose, poetry, and drama, Jiri Kar.asek ze Lvovic (i 87I- I951) is usuallyregarded astheforemost representative ofCzechfinde sieclemodernism. Himself a cultivated, often controversial, critic closely affiliatedwith the Prague-basedjournal Modernm revue, Karasek described his literary method as impressionism or dilletantism. Scholars and critics, 326 SEER, 8o, 2, 2 00 2 however, have often been irritatedby his combination of 'forbidden'themes such as homosexuality, necrophilia and priapism with a proud aristocratic panoply, above all Hellenism, the Gothic and the Baroque. Arguing against the opinion that Karasek'searlyworksare burdened with all the trappingsof provocative decadence, Roar Lishaugen'sbriefstudyon 'thepoet of the sexual curse' is refreshinglystimulatingin its ambition, if somewhat conventional in its approach. Taking the Prague School (Mukarovsky, Jakobson, Cervenka) as his theoretical point of departure, Lishaugen offersa meticulous examination of KarAsek'sfour early poetry collections of the I8gos: Zazdkna okna(Blocked-out Windows), Sodoma, Kniha aristokraticka (TheAristocratic Book),and Sexus necans. He is able to deduce from the individual poems in these, a number of thematic categories including 'longing', 'banishment', 'loneliness', 'death', and 'the transmigrationof souls' aiming to establishhomosexualityas the dominant thematic feature of not only eleven 'key poems' focusing ostentatiously on male-male love, but also of the fourcollections as a structuralwhole. To speakof love between men is alwaysa violation of tact. So it is too in the case of Karasek,whose transgressivetexts are rightlyviewed in relation to his homosexuality (Sodoma was confiscated and branded abnormal according to Czech law). In showing that a major strengthof these collections lies in their obliquity, arising from the need to resort to metaphor in order to express sexual meaning, Lishaugenreveals, at the same time, the effectof oppression, be it on the Czech writer'sworksin particularand on homosexual poetry in general. Among the selected key poems are 'Nevim...

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