«Андрій Лаговський» Агатангела Кримського: нігілізм, сексуальність і колоніалізм (original) (raw)

«Андрій Лаговський» Агатангела Кримського: нігілізм, сексуальність і колоніалізм

2021, Агатангел Кримський. Андрій Лаговський

The article traces the development of imperial desire in Krymsky's novel "Andriy Lahovsky", which appears as a model of an intellectual novel and demonstrates various aspects of colonial discourse. The subject of the study is the concept of pychopatia nationalis, which brings together an ambivalent desire of belonging to the imperial center, on the one hand, and nihilism and resentment towards the native Ukrainian setting, on the other. Orientalism, homoeroticism, and hysteria mark the space of colonial desire of the main protagonist, a professor at Moscow University and at the same time the tutor of a member of a Russian general's family. A Ukrainian by birth, the protagonist sympathizes with Ukrainophile ideas, but identifies himself with the imperial person and, having come to the Caucasus, behaves as an orientalist and colonizer in his attitude towards colonized Eastern populations, He also appears as a westernizer, identifying himself more easily with those who have access to "German opera from Bayreuth" and Wagner's operas in Moscow than with those who are the subaltern "others," such as Zoya the Greek or his Ukrainian mother.