"MY 'CHASTE' NOVEL": MIKHAIL KUZMIN'S WINGS AND THE PROBLEM OF QUEER BEAUTY.

This article situates Mikhail Kuzmin's 1906 novel Wings in contemporary discussions of visual aesthetics, especially in relation to what Whitney Davis (2010) theorizes as "queer beauty." The article explores Kuzmin's attempt to represent "non-abstract love" between men by navigating the aesthetic extremes of abstraction and idealization, as represented by the Russian Symbolists, and vulgarity and obscenity, as represented in French literature of the time. In particular, the article focuses on two understudied influences, Dmitrii Merezhkovsky's Voskresshie bogi: Leonardo da Vinci (1900), in which wings is a major motif, and Anatole France's Le Lys rouge (1896), the color symbolism of which has much in common with that of Kuzmin's Wings. Read against these two works and Kuzmin's comments on aesthetics scattered throughout his diary and letters, this article seeks to add nuance to our understanding of the aesthetic positioning of Kuzmin's novel both within the Russian context and within the larger European scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]