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Freud, Tatlin, and the Tower: How Soviet Psychoanalysts Might Have Interpreted the Monument to the Third International

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Alexei Alexeyevich Kurbanovsky
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Abstract

The first translations of Sigmund Freud's texts into Russian appeared in the early 1900s, and by the 1920s all important works were available; in Soviet Russia they stimulated wide discussion of various medical, pedagogical, and social problems as well as of developments in creative art. Alexei Kurbanovsky argues that “Freudianism” would have seemed very tempting to those early Soviet theorists who believed that they must appropriate the relevant discoveries of western psychology and adopt them for their own revolutionary ends: creating the “new communist man.” The application of Freudian techniques to the analysis of some classical Russian writers as well as painters is documented in writings from the 1920s by Ivan Ermakov; the artistic tendencies of the Russian avant-garde were quite often viewed as reflecting the latest achievements of science and technology. So aspiring Soviet critics might well have attempted psychoanalytical “readings“ of innovatory artifacts. Vladimir Tatlin stands as one of their possible model cases. Kurbanovsky argues that Tatlin's famous spiral tower could be psychoanalytically interpreted in reference to the Oedipal “refutation of father-figures.” Such an interpretation seems in tune with the general cultural climate where other phenomena (such as the October revolution) were seen as having a “hidden, Freudian aspect.” Examining the psychoanalytical underpinnings of the theory of Soviet avant-garde allows us to more fully appreciate its historical and cultural significance.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , Winter 2008 , pp. 892 - 906
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2008

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References

1. Max Nordau, Entartung (Berlin, 1892-1893); the book came out in two parts. In 1894 two Russian translations were published, by R. Sementivskii in St. Petersburg and by V. Genken in Kiev/Khar'kov. A new translation edited by V. Mikhailov came out in 1902. Before 1914 this book had been issued six times in Russia and had been included in Nordau's collected works three times. This fact, as well as the translations into English and French, testifies to the huge impact of this work.

2. Vladimir Stasov, “Nashi nyneshnie dekadenty” (1906), in Stasov, V. V., ed., hbrannye sochineniia v 3-kh tomakh (Moscow, 1952), 3:319.Google Scholar

3. [Freud, Sigmund] “O snovideniiakh,” in Piatoe prilozhenie k Vestniku psikhologii, kriminal'noi antropologii i gipnotizma, trans. A. L. (St. Petersburg, 1904), 50.Google Scholar English quotations from works by Freud are traditionally taken from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans, and ed. James Strachey in collaboration with Anna Freud, 24 vols. (London, 1953-74). Since my concern is not the “English Freud” but the specifically “Russian Freud,” even slight differences between early Russian translations and “standard” English versions are important. To adequately reflect the “Russian reception“ of Freudian texts, I have translated all quotations myself (though I have sometimes consulted the English “standard” translations).

4. Ibid., 19. Emphasis in the original.

5. “If a person who is at loggerheads with reality possesses an artistic gift (a thing that is still a psychological mystery to us), he can transform his phantasies into artistic creation instead of into unhealthy symptoms. In this manner he can escape the doom of neurosis and by this roundabout path regain his contact with reality. If there is persistent rebellion against the real world and if this precious gift is absent or insufficient, it is almost inevitable that the libido, keeping to the sources of the phantasies, will follow the path of regression, and will revive infantile wishes and end in neurosis.” [Sigmund Freud], Opsikhoanalize; piat’ leklsii (Moscow, 1911), 61.

6. Freud, Sigmund, Tolkovanie snovidenii (Moscow, 1913), 221 Google Scholar. A complete Russian translation of diis groundbreaking book appeared earlier than either the French or die English versions.

7. Osipov, N. E., “O psikhoanalize” (1910), in Zigmund Freud, Psikhoanaliz i russkaia mysl', ed. Leibin, V. M. (Moscow, 1994), 111.Google Scholar This is a useful collection where some important texts from the 1910s and 1920s are made readily available.

8. Freud's name and ideas are referred to, among others, by Andrei Belyi, Ivan Bunin, Nikolai Berdiaev, Ivan Il'in, Nikolai Evreinov. See Etkind, A. M., Eros nevozmozhnogo: Istoriia psikhoanaliza v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1993)Google Scholar, chapters “Russkaia kultura moderna mezhdu Edipom i Dionisom” (Russian culture between Oedipus and Dionysus), 47-96, and “Psikhoanaliticheskaia aktivnost’ do 1-oi mirovoi voiny” (Psychoanalytical activities before the First World War), 130-58.

9. Freud, S., Leonardo da-Vinchi, trans. E. S. G. (Moscow, 1912), 110-11, 112.Google Scholar One of Freud's sovirces was the Russian novel by Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, Voskresshie bogi: Leonardo da-Vinchi (1902), which he knew in German translation (Leipzig, 1903), and included among his favorite books in 1907.

10. Friche, V. M., “Zigmund Freud i Leonardo da-Vinchi,” in Voinstvuiushchii Materialist (Moscow, 1925), 3:160.Google Scholar Friche took his general psychoanalytic theory of art from Otto Rank's works.

11. From an oral remark made by Kharazov, G. A. in discussing V M. Friche's report “Freidizm i iskusstvo,” Vestnik Kommunisticheskoi akademii 12 (1925): 256-57.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., 259 (from a remark by Comrade Stolpner).

13. Etkind, Eros nevozmozhnogo, 213-17.

14. Although this conclusion appears quite late in Freud (in “Das Ich und das Es” 1923, promptly translated into Russian as “la i ono,” trans. V. Polianskii, ed. A. Frankovskii [Leningrad, 1924]), it sometimes is used as a “motto” capturing the general spirit of the entire Freudian psychoanalytical project. This short phrase can be understood to embody Freud's purpose to achieve a “positive, curing result,” and as such it reflects his positivist thrust, his dependence on the heritage of the Enlightenment.

15. Bychkovskii, B., “O metodologicheskikh osnovaniiakh psikhoanaliticheskogo ucheniia Freida,” Pod znamenem marksizma, 1923, no. 11-12: 169.Google Scholar

16. Iolan Neifeld, Dostoevskii: Psykhoanalyticheskii ocherk, ed. Z. Freida (Leningrad- Moscow, 1925); Ivan Ermakov, Etiudy po psikhologii tvorchestva A. S. Pushkina (Moscow, 1923), and Ocherkipo analizu tvorchestvaN. V. Gogolia (Moscow, 1924). Both were re-issued, together with the unpublished Dostoevskii manuscript, as I. D. Ermakov, Psikhoanaliz literatury: Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevskii (Moscow, 1999). This edition also includes extensive reviews of Ermakov's publications and other valuable comments.

17. Ermakov, Psikhoanaliz literatury, 27. But “organic nature” runs as a leitmotiv throughout Ermakov's writings. See, for example, in his work on Pushkin and on Gogol': Psikhoanaliz literatury, 99 and 263-64.

18. Ibid., 458-63 (Pushkin) and 469-72 (Gogol’).

19. “Real, not caricature psychoanalysis” is a quote from Valerii Briusov's review in Pechat’ i revoliutsia, 1924, no. 1, quoted ibid., 461.

20. “If we wished to relate the space of the painters to geometry, we should have to refer it to the non-Euclidean mathematicians; we should have to study at some length certain of Riemann's theorems.” Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du “cubisme” (Paris, 1912), cited in E. F. Fry, Cubism (London, 1966), 106. Gleizes and Metzinger's important treatise appeared in Russian in 1913 in two different translations, one of which was edited by the avant-garde painter and composer Mikhail Matiushin, a friend of Kazimir Malevich. It was received as a manifesto and frequendy referred to. Some of the suprematist paintings shown by Malevich at the “0,10” exhibition had titles explicitly referring to the fourtiS dimension: “Movement of Painterly Masses in Four Dimensions,” “Automobile and Woman: Color Masses in Four Dimensions,” and so on. See Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Princeton, 1983), 274-94.Google Scholar

21. Radin, E. P., Futurizm i bezumie: Paralleli tvorchestva i analogii novago iazyka kubofuturistov (St. Petersburg, 1914), 34, 46.Google Scholar Radin seemed to respect and actually enjoy some of the artworks produced by his mental patients.

22. Larionov's personal reminiscences are referred to in the classic study: Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1922 (1971; reprint, London, 1976), 167-68. Originally published as The Great Experiment: Russian Art, 1863-1922 (NewYork, 1962).

23. Nikolai Khardzhiev mentioned a cubist drawing by Tatlin inscribed: “A drawing by Tatlin [who] took Cubist lessons from myself. K.M. [Kazimir Malevich].” Malevich also recalled that, after Tadin produced his first “corner-relief,” he took pains to inform Malevich that he was no longer Malevich's pupil. Cited in V. E. Tadin, A. Strigalev, and Jurgen Harten, Vladimir Tatlin: Retrospektive (Cologne, 1993), 18. Russian art historian Anatolii. Strigalev considers the whole story a mystification: A. A. Strigalev, “Tadin i Pikasso” in M. A. Busev, ed., Pikasso i ohrestnosti: Sbornik statei (Moscow, 2006), 124.

24. Strigalev has established the precise date of Tadin's visit to Picasso's studio: 25 or 26 March (new style, 7 or 8 April) 1914. See Strigalev, “O poezdke Tatlina v Berlin iParizh,“ Iskusstvo, 1989, no. 3:29.

25. Punin, N. N., O Tatline: Arkhiv russkogo avangarda (Moscow, 1994), 56.Google Scholar Although Malevich often invoked “pure painterly culture” as well.

26. Nikolai Punin, “Kvartira No. 5” (a fragment from the unpublished memoir “Art and Revolution“), in Punin, O Tatline, 10.

27. Freud, S., Psikhopatologiia obydennoi zhizni, trans. Medema, V., 2d ed. (Moscow, 1916), 45, 125.Google Scholar The German edition of this work appeared in print in 1901; die first Russian translation was published in 1910.

28. Tarabukin, Nikolai, Ot mol'berta k mashine (Moscow, 1923), 19 Google Scholar. The publication date shows that Tallin's “reliefs” were not considered outdated even in 1923.

29. Malis, Georgii, Psikhoanaliz kommunizma (Khar'kov, 1924), 40.Google Scholar This brochure is a printed version of the public lecture Malis delivered in 1923.

30. Shapiro's article was originally published in Stroitel'stvo i arkhitektura Leningrada, 1976, no. 11, quoted in Lifshitz, Mikhail, Iskusstvo i sovremennyi mir (Moscow, 1978), 141 Google Scholar; Milner, John, Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant-Garde (New Haven, 1983), 169 Google Scholar; Degot', Ekaterina, Russkoe iskusstvo XX veka (Moscow, 2000), 60 Google Scholar.

31. Freud, Tolkovanie snovidenii, 197. Tatlin's father's death in 1904 would not have altered this dynamic, for, according to psychoanalysis, the “Father Complex” is formed in early childhood and remains valid for life.

32. E. N. Tatlin, Otchet o poezdke dlia izucheniia sistemy smennykh brigad na parovozakh amerikanskikh zheleznikh dorog (Moscow, 1893), 6, 54.

33. Mayakovsky, Vladimir, The Bedbug and Selected Poetry, trans. Hayward, Max and Reavey, George, ed. Patricia Blake (Bloomington, 1975), 177.Google Scholar

34. Most psychoanalytical studies of the period contained such “small but revealing detail“—from die ‘Vulture's tail” in Freud's own account of Leonardo to, say, Ermakov's book on Pushkin where Alexandrine verse was interpreted as “the verse of the poet Alexander,“ that is, Pushkin himself. Ermakov, Psikhoanaliz literatury, 45. This may not appear convincing to many readers, but it was quite typical of the Freudian analytic approach.

35. Rank, O. and Saks, G., Znacheniepsikhoanaliza v naukakh o dukhe, trans. Kobylinskoi, M. (St. Petersburg, 1914), 143.Google Scholar

36. Tarabukin, Ot mol'berta k mashine, 42.

37. N. N. Punin, “O pamiatnikakh” (1919), in Punin, O Tatline, 17.

38. N. N. Punin, “PamiatnikTret'ego internatsionala” (1920), in Punin, O Tatline, 19.

39. Ibid., 20-21.

40. Trotskii, Lev D., Literatura i revoliutsiia (1923; reprint, Moscow, 1991), 190.Google Scholar

41. Radlov, Nikolai E., Ofuturizme (Petersburg, 1923), 48.Google Scholar

42. Rank and Saks, Znacheniepsikhoanaliza, 139-40. John Milner refers to these movements while comparing the Tower to the “Zodiac Man” of European medieval medical and alchemic tracts. See his classic work: Milner, Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant- Garde, 165. Yet unlike the obscure writings on the “Zodiac Man,” Freudian texts were not only widely available but played an active role in the cultural discourse of the time.

43. Cf. Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich Mandelstam, trans. Burton Raffel and Alia Burago (Albany, 1973), 175.

44. Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, Futurizm, trans. Engel'gart, M. (St. Petersburg, 1914), 74 Google Scholar.

45. Freud, Leonardo da-Vinchi, 100-101.

46. Arvatov, Boris. I., Iskusstvo i proizvodstvo: Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1926), 125.Google Scholar

47. Matsa, Ivan L., Iskusstvo epokhi zrelogo kapitalizma na zapade (Moscow, 1929), 98.Google Scholar

48. Malis, Psikhoanaliz kommunizma, 71, 76.

49. Ibid., 76.

50. V Iurinetz, “Freidizm i marksizm,” Pod znamenem marksizma, 1924, nos. 2-3: 90, 92. This Soviet critic refers to the German book by Aurel Kolnai, Psychoanalyse und Soziologie: Zur Psychologie von Masse und Gesellschaft (Leipzig, 1920); this book was unavailable to me.