КАК НАПИСАТЬ СТИХИ О ПУБЛИЧНОЙ ЖЕНЩИНЕ? ‘КОГДА ИЗ МРАКА ЗАБЛУЖДЕНЬЯ…’ Н. НЕКРАСОВА НА ДИСКУРСИВНОЙ КАРТЕ ЭПОХИ

Slavic Literatures (ранее - Russian Literature). 2024. Т. 149. С. 1–31.

Uspensky P., Федотов А. С.

N. Nekrasov’s poem ‘When out of the darkness of delusion ...’ (1845) lies at the origin of the trope of the salvation of the “public woman” (prostitute), widespread in Russian literature of the nineteenth century. However, until now, only N. Gogol’s ‘Nevsky Prospekt’ has been named as the source of this trope. Meanwhile, the trope is connected not so much to a specific source as to discourses about prostitution relevant to the epoch and presented both in bureaucratic documents and journalism, and in lit-erature (J. Janin, E. Sue, O. Balzac). Reacting to the legalization of prostitution in the Russian Empire (1843), Nekrasov creates a poem at the intersection of psychological, social, and religious discourses. The text is especially poignant due to its connection with the ideology of utopian socialism, which was important for the intellectuals of the epoch. The polydiscursive nature of ‘When out of the darkness of delusion...’ made the poem a victor over other poems of the 1840s that were devoted to the theme of the “fallen woman”. The article analyzes in detail various discourses about prostitution and with their help explains the semantic contradictions in Nekrasov’s poem.

Keywords: утопический социализм, Nikolay Nekrasov, history of prostitution, русская литература XIX века, история проституции, Н.А. Некрасов, Honore de Balzac, Бальзак, Н.В. Гоголь, Nikolay Gogol, Ф. М. Достоевский, Fedor Dostoevsky, 19^th century Russian literature, J. Janin, Egen Sue, Эжен Сю, Жанен