Don’t Just Read, Look!: Visual Text in Yevgeny Kharitonov’s 'The Novel'

• In Event: Queer(ing) Archives: Alternative Intimacies, Histories, and Subjectivities

Abstract

The centerpiece in Yevgeny Kharitonov’s book Under House Arrest is the most exuberant and the largest of the entries. Regardless of its ironic title, “The Novel”/“Роман”, it is nothing like a colloquial understanding of the word. Fragments, ranging from one word to a couple of pages in length, represent events of high emotional intensity. Reminiscent of Futurists’ books, the text gains a visual dimension. The semiotic potential of body movements that Kharitonov studied in his doctoral dissertation on pantomime transfers onto the words and pages of “The Novel”. Kharitonov stages his words like actors, so that only through an interpretive viewing of the text can readers unlock its meaning. However, if his interest in pantomime was partly due to the societal oppression of homosexual individuals, pages of “The Novel” do not filter out blunt descriptions of sexual acts and jealous erotic gossip. Aleksey Konakov points out that Kharitonov created the highly autobiographical text of “The Novel” during a period of self-imposed isolation. This further emphasizes the focus on how Kharitonov reconstructs reality from memory. This paper will treat the text as a visual artifact that carries autobiographical memories of the writer. Moreover, a semiotic approach will focus on expanding the field of content (signified) infused with personalized meaning.

Author

• Angel Estevez, Northwestern U