Андрей Белый: автобиографизм и биографические практики - [85]

The erosion of the boundaries between genres that characterizes the «postmodernization of modernism» is at the base of the progressive overlapping of auto-biography and literary work. The fusion of reality and fantasy in new literary forms is based on literary practices which are rooted in literary tradition. The French scholar Vincent Colonna showed convincingly how ancient narrative strategies can be considered under the perspective of autofiction[686] as it was theorized after the mid-1970s. This allows us to imagine that the rise of autofiction in Russia can also be dated back to the modernist era. Some typical aspects of autofiction seem to be useful for a critical interpretation of Belyj’s autobiographical works.[687] In particular, some elements and fundamental strategies which Colonna identifies in various ancient literary works seem to be suitable for Belyj, as he recovers canonical literary devices and elaborates them in a new way. The results of this are not too different from postmodernist autofiction. In the present paper I will rely on the recent monograph by Emmanuel Samé[688] in order to show how zoomorphism and the representation of animals may be considered one of those elements.

Samé believes the relation between autobiography and autofiction resembles that between a father and son. He considers the author of autofiction as an «additional character in the story» usually presented masked as «the figure of the oppressed, of the “perverted” son».[689] He grounds his analysis on the fundamental concept of psychoanalytic therapy, which assumes the interaction between therapist and patient necessary. The relation between author and character in Samé’s view is constructed on the same type of relationship between the two parties, one of which has a stronger authority over the other. Samé first analyzes this «oppressor—oppressed» relationship. Through the analysis of a textual corpus, he studies the imitation, belonging and idolatry relationship that can be established between the two. Samé then reverses it and examines the escape from this relationship by the «oppressed». This happens through a destructive and anti-Oedipal outward projection which can be realized in various forms, such as disease, terrorism, anarchism, duel, or irony. Among these attitudes, which can all be considered in order to analyse the theme of the father in Belyj’s works, Samé devotes a chapter to the representation of the «cynical» animal.[690]

For the French scholar the rhetorical and ideological use of animalism in the representation of patriarchal power has two functions which he explains referring to the philosophy of cynicism, which aimed at proposing a model of life according to the laws of nature, i.e. in a stray and independent way, being indifferent to the essential needs and faithful only to moral righteousness. The first function which Samé describes regards identity, and it is the very act of distinguishing the animal from the human; the second has an apologetic nature, because it attempts to legitimize the use of the animal. Quoting a study by Françoise Armengaud,[691] Samé affirms that in ancient Greek society relationships such as male—female, adult—child, individual—slave, Greek—barbarian were similar to the relationships between man and animal. Such relationships designate the alienated creature, i.e. one which does not belong to itself, who does not exist in itself but only in order to be used by another. In this sense, he argues, the animal is «a-» or «non-» political, and the same are the non-men (women) or the non-free (slaves), the stateless persons (barbarians) who were all excluded from the same political field. The Cynics attributed a positive value to animalism precisely because of that exclusion from the political sphere. The a-political animal was deprived of power and opposed to the «free» man, who instead belonged to the city, the country etc., i.e. to the patriarchal order. The animal, Samé argues, «is not» what the free man «is». For this reason the very existence of the latter is legitimized also by his enslavement of the animal, the woman, the slave, the stateless person, the barbarian, i.e. of the non-men. In this perspective, the body is the political space of reference both for cynicism and, Samé argues, for authors of autofiction. Regarding poetics he examines some examples of a-political, «natural» and «abnormal» men, such as Tirso de Molina’s Don Juan. Compared to a tiger or a wild beast, he is an example of natural man opposed to the conformist society. Samé also quotes Gilles Deleuze’s studies on the return of the flesh to the body and the transformation of the human into the animal in Francis Bacon’s paintings. Within the autofictional corpus analysed by Samé are also studied the positive values of man which, under this perspective, are referred only to the body. The submission and masochism related to the sphere of non-human are positively represented by figures of animals, women and children. The father figure, i.e. the emblem of the static traditional patriarchal order, is not included. Therefore, Samé argues, the escape from the laws of psychoanalysis that regulate the father—son relationship and which constitute an important part in the first formulation ever of autofiction provided by Serge Doubrovsky