The Queer Holy Foolishness of Evgenii Kharitonov

Evgeny Kharitonov’s collection of autobiographical short stories, “Under House Arrest,” was widely circulated in dissident underground circles but was never published in the Soviet Union due to its frank

descriptions of gay love.  Formally, Kharitonov’s writing is highly stylized and modeled on the solemn and mellifluous speech patterns of Russian religious philosopher Vasily Rozanov and Father Zosima in

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.  The talk explores how Kharitonov inscribes both his vulnerable existence in the margins of Russian society and his homosexuality into the Russian

literary and cultural tradition, with its emphasis on humility, resignation, and holy foolishness.

Julia Vaingurt Fellow Lecture sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities.