PUBLICITY AS INTIMACY: DISCOURSIVE COUNTERPOINT IN N. A. NEKRASOV’S POEM «NOCH’. USPELI MI VSEM NASLADIT’SA…»

Abstract

The article offers an interpretation and historical contextualization of N. A. Nekrasov’s poem «Noch’. Uspeli my vsem nasladit’sia…» («Night. We had ample time to enjoy it all…»). The poem is understood as a text in which, according to the principle of counterpoint, intimate and social discourses merge. The article shows that such a synthesis was supported by the ideology and practices of Nekrasov’s entourage of the 1840s — late 1850s. Fictitious marriages, triple alliances, communal experiments with sexuality were the pertinent historical background of the poem. The civil and erotic energy of an individual was consecutively connected with the works of N. G. Chernyshevskii, the dialogue with which is found in «Noch’. Uspeli my vsem nasladit’sia…». Still, the radical sexual experiments of the Russian intellectuals of the 1840–1860s faced insoluble internal contradictions, and the very idea of a strong connection between the civil and the intimate suffered a historical defeat, which led to the marginalization of the erotic reading of Nekrasov’s poem.