“And may St. Petersburg fall to the devil” (unpublished story by A.N. Tolstoy “Slush”)

UDC 821.161.1-32

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.6-21.098

Tolstaya Elena D.,

PhD, Emerita Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

e-mail: elenadtolstaya@gmail.com

Elena Tolstaya brings into scolarly scope a story of Alexei Tolstoy that has never been published: “Sliakot’ (Slush)”, 1912, the only one by this author on the homosexual topic. The action takes place in St. Petersburg. The protagonist, artist Lapin, helps his provincial cousin Grisha obtain a sinecure in the capital. At some point Grisha realizes that this is possible only in exchange for homosexual services. The story satirically depicts the Petersburg high bureaucracy. The scholar connects Tolstoy’s story to his conflict with M. Kuzmin in the winter of 1911–1912. However, the characters in the story point to identifiable figures not in the literary, but in the bureaucratic world of the capital. The background for the story is the artistic Petersburg in the early 1910s with its cultural hobbies.

Keywords: A.N. Tolstoy, “Slush”, M. Kuzmin, St. Petersburg, official circles, homosexuality.

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