Low Spirits and Immoderate Meditations in Venedikt Erofeev's Moskva-Petushki

Abstract

My article analyzes Venedikt Erofeev's cultivation of weakness via alcoholic intoxication in Moskva-Petushki against the grain of its standard interpretations. The critical consensus holds that the protagonist (and by extension, the author, with whom he shares his name and autobiographical details) is a sober drunk and a holy fool. By contrast, I read the protagonist's failure to reach his destination and his untimely death in a less celebratory light. Intoxication functions as a means of spiritual seclusion, of finding oneself through the process of “falling out” of all social systems. Via this categorical renunciation of any affiliation, the protagonist aims to escape conscription into any acts of cruelty or destruction ranging from historical atrocities to the most quotidian application of force. The protagonist makes a superhuman effort to avoid any form of belonging out of the ethical imperative not to injure, but ends up inflicting harm upon himself and his loved ones anyway. My point here, then, is that the poema does not celebrate the protagonist's attempt to reach salvation via weakness and solitude, but ambivalently explores the aesthetic and ethical possibilities and limits of his choice as well as the feasibility and desirability of such radical freedom.