Writing as exorcism : the personal codes of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol

This interpretive essay brings a poetic sensibility to bear on the lives and works of three major Russian writers. It is Ilya Kutik's contention that many writers are tormented by secret fears and desires that only writing - in particular, the use of certain words and images - can exorcise. Making this biographical approach peculiarly his own - and susceptible to the nuances of comedy, tragedy and critical equanimity - Kutik reads works of Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Nikolai Gogol, three Russian writers who were demonstrably subject to the whims, superstitions and talismans that Kutik identifies. Exposing the conjunction of literary effort and private act in writings such as "The Queen of Spades", "Dead Souls" and "A Hero of Our Time", Kutik's work aims to provide a new way of understanding these masterpieces of Russian literature and their authors, and a new way of reading the mysteries of life and literature as mutually enriching.