Homoeroticism and romance — two ways to write the connection between two people who are hurtling towards one another in the gravity well of a plot. Within itself, homoeroticism contains the sublime forces of tragedy and comedy. Its jealous younger sibling, romance, contains nothing but proudly paves the way to dissolution and cliché.
Homoeroticism, always fresh, is the feeling between two people which is in all ways free of roles. A story which is homoerotic is a story which can only exist between equals, between active participants. It is easiest to spot homoeroticism between two men, but it exists also in stories about one man and one woman. The sublime narrative of Amélie could play out between two men or two women without sacrificing anything. In this film, Amelie is not a woman and Nino is not a man, they are two worlds colliding, their insecurities and desires crashing into one another on equal footing, neither one saving or fixing the other, but rather both of them trembling at the unspoken and unspeakable intensity of the quickly vanishing space between them. Homoeroticism wins. We step away from the movie feeling larger and more peaceful than ever before.
As I work my way through Russian literature, the difference between these elements of storytelling become more stark. The homoeroticisms between Raskolnikov and Razumikhin, Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich, Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov, keep Crime and Punishment afloat within the space of tradegy, of dark comedy. And as the novel reaches its conclusion, it is of course the romances between Raskolnikov and Marmeladova, Razumikhin and Raskolnikova, which destabilize and eventually sink all tragedic elements and condemn the novel’s conclusion to emotional banality. To make an example out of Raskolnikov, the story cheats the reader out of experiencing anything beautiful, supplanting real human connection with a farcical love story in the shape of a fetishistic savior complex.
Again, in Fathers and Sons, we see great buildup of homoerotic feeling in the proximity between Bazrov and Arkady, Bazarov and Nikolai Petrovich, Bazarov and Pavel Petrovich, Bazarov and Odintsova… and again it is dissolved to make room for the romance of Arkady and Katya, Nikolai Petrovich and Fedosya Nikolaevna. Here the shift is more powerful, hoewever. It does not merely fizzle out by being subjected to an unconvincing romance like Raskolnikov’s. The tragedy of the story lies literally within the death of Bazarov, and through him, the death of homoeroticism. He is killed by none other than his homoerotic relationship with Odintsova slipping into the cliché realm of romantic feeling for Odintsova in a moment of weakness. Safe so long as he wanted to do battle with her, his fatal mistake is made while he feels listless, empty without her, no longer an individual shaking with fear and desire at the proximity to an equal individual but a slave to the tired roles of romantic love. It is this loss that echoes through and compounds the grief felt as his parents visit his grave, themselves aged out of romance and existing in homoerotic free fall with one another.
We see The Master and Margarita glide on homoeroticism from its start to nearly the very finish line, maintaining its comedic expansion and tragedic center by maintaining homoerotic tension between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua, Master and Margarita, Master and Ivan, in all the dynamics surrounding Woland and his retinue, as well as Margarita’s experiences in the nude. The way the novel comes down from all those lofty experiences? Subverting the sublime via the cliché, dropping us back down into the mundane as we get first a sense of some hollow romantic feeling in the epilogue and then indeed see Ivan go home to his now quaintly romantic life, he and his wife living carefully constructed roles, Ivan and the reader feeling heavy and in need of restorative sleep.
I think about Dead Souls and The Brothers Karamazov, both intended to be just the first parts of trilogies and thus spared from being cauterized with romance, remaining wistful in their last moments, believing in a future.
Like cold water, romance closes the pores of our souls after the author’s recommended dose of tragedy. I wonder if tragedy and comedy might not be brought to greater heights by keeping those pores open and breathing deeply.