Just Published: “Sexual Neurosis or Creative Catalyst? Hysteria and Demonic Possession in Alexei Remizov’s Solomoniia”
I am delighted to announce the arrival of Mental Illness in Symbolism, edited by my colleague Professor Rosina Neginsky, just out with Cambridge Scholars Publishing. My modest contribution to the volume, is an article on Alexei Remizov’s literary exploration of madness as a form of creativity. The idea of hysteria as a creative catalyst, which Remizov applied to his eroticised retelling of a 17th century religious tale of demonic possession, was also popular with the French surrealists. They addressed it at length in one of the issues of 1928 La Revolution Surrealiste (“Le Cinquantenaire de l’hysterie”).
“The First Night,” Solomonie, Alexei Remizov, 1935. India ink and color pencil on paper, 147 x 164 mm.
