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'Besy', Disorientation and the Person

Abstract:This article explores disorientation of the person in Russian culture. Pushkin's poem 'Besy' — a primary text for this theme, providing one of the epigraphs of Dostoevskii's Besy and informing agonized reflections on the revolution in Iz glubiny — forms the key point of reference. The article starts from Iz glubiny and its predecessor Vekhi in order to discuss conceptualizations of the person in relation to place in Russian thought, from Chaadaev through to Bakhtin. The article then analyses the poetics of disorientation in 'Besy', placing this in the context of Pushkin's work as a whole. Finally, Bakhtin's notion of 'outsideness' is adduced to cast light on the disorientation of the person in the poem, alongside that which is conveyed symbolically through spatial disorientation.