Authors

Alina Turygina¹;  ¹ University of Oregon, United States

Discussion

The focus on physicality in Ekaterina Bakunina’s novel The Body (1933) brought a wave of negative responses onto the novel. It was claimed to be pornographical, erotic boulevard reading. Although Bakunina’s novel is exploring the themes of corporality and sexuality like many contemporary writers did, it was never as successful, eventually lost and almost forgotten. In this paper, I explore the narrative system of temporality and physicality in its correspondence, which Bakunina builds in the novel. I strive to compare this system to corporeal narratives of much more thriving writers at the beginning of a new century, among whom are Anastasiia Verbitskaya and Alexandra Kollontai. My question is how Bakunina uses physicality in her narrative? What distinguishes Bakunina’s novel from the texts of Verbitskaya and Kollontai? Is Bakunina awkwardly following a trend or trying to overcome and rewrite it?

Corporality in Bakunina’s novel is inextricably connected to a notion of temporal configuration. Through temporality Bakunina establishes multi-level narrative structure, required by the corporeal reality she is creating her heroine within. Though why is that milti-levelness demanded in the narrative? As I research Bakunina’s novel in comparative perspective, I examine strategies of representing sexuality and  bodily aspects of woman’s identity with a question of their role in the oblivion-fame opposition.