爱与岁月 精神分析视角下的爱情 (美)斯蒂芬·A.米切尔 中国轻工业出版社【新华书店正版图书书籍】 在线下载 pdf mobi 2025 epub 电子版

《爱与岁月：精神分析视角下的爱情》是美国精神分析师斯蒂芬·A.米切尔的遗著。

《爱与岁月：精神分析视角下的爱情》作者出版的《弗洛伊德及其后继者：现代精神分析思想史》（Freud and Beyond:

导论1.安全与冒险2.性存在的奇妙环路3.理想化、幻想和幻象4.攻击和欲望的危险性5.愧疚和自怜6.浪漫爱情中的控制和承诺

斯蒂芬·A.米切尔

（Stephen A.Mitchell，1946—2000）

美国现代精神分析领域中的一位重要学者。曾任威廉·阿兰森·怀特研究所精神分析培训督导师，也是纽约大学心理治疗与精神分析博士后项目的培训教授。

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许多关系中最具讽刺意味的是对方表现出的某个特征促使我们选择对方，但在对方自己的心理经济*中，这个特征通常是用来防御它的相反面的。看起来非常稳重的人，也许一直在防御内心的混乱和冲动；看起来很活泼的人，也许一直在防御潜在的抑郁；有着崇高道德价值观的人，也许一直在防御内心对悖德的隐秘迷恋。性感耀眼的人，也许一直在掩盖一种深深的死亡感和损伤感，等待着某人为自己注入生命的活力。我们会选择他人的他异性作为自己过往关系的解药，会选择看起来和自己很互补的他人，但这恰巧通常隐藏着自己一直希望逃避的特征。当我们全身心地去爱一个人，那么我们会发现爱恋的将不只是那个人本身，还有和对方在一起时的自己——我是谁，我将成为谁。

孩子和成人都有一种强烈的需要，他们需要既认识自己又认识他人，需要一种完全安全的依恋关系。但是在人和人的关系中，安全感和可预测感都非常难得到。我们常常无休止地努力，试图重建那种虚幻的永恒感和可预测感。当来访者抱怨死气沉沉、毫无活力的婚姻时，我们获得了一个可能的机会，向其展示他们其实觉得这种死气沉沉弥足珍贵，展示他们是怎样小心谨慎地维护和坚持它，又是如何把性爱过程变得非常机械化、完全可预测——铸成一座堡垒以抵御意外和不确定性带来的恐惧。因此，除了幻想的、虚幻的、支撑安全的维度，“安全依恋”这概念并不是理解成年人双向浪漫爱情非常有用的模型。尽管我们一直希望爱情能够变得安全，但就其本质而言，爱情是不安全的。

我们的心理生命和爱在孤独与联结间来回摆荡。孤独和联结都可能是令人恐惧的，也都可能充满风风险。但每一中内在危险都可以通过计划和幻想来规避。因此，与婚姻中的法律契约并行的是一种无意识的心理契约。这种心理契约是双方一致赞同的的定，双方约定假装彼此间存在永恒的、不可改变的、实际上却又不可能存在的约束一这种共同约定也使双方必须谨慎守护被此间永远克制的距离。久负盛名的法国精神分析师雅克·拉康似乎认为真实的关系从未有可能存在，但为了描绘虚幻的安全感，他生动地捕捉到“降级了的浪漫不过是一种海市蜃楼”。他写道：“爱情，就是把一件你并不拥有的东西给个你从不认识的人。”

情侣们拥有着充满激情的性生活，却又害怕婚姻，这是一种常见现象。这种害怕并非完全没有根据。当然，扼杀欲望的并不是婚姻本身，而是婚姻得以构建的方式。为了保护爱情，我们渴望着确定感和绝对的安全感。常见的婚姻誓言一“直到死亡将位此分开”一似乎精准地按照这一思路给出了肯定的许诺。前，情侣们通常会觉得自己是自由的、天真烂漫的、爱冒险生动自燃的。在婚烟中，他们却寻求着稳定感和永恒感，开税配时方认同为像母亲和父亲那样的成年人，也就是认同为静态的人。他们把随着静态而来的死气沉沉归因于婚姻制度本身，而不是自身对确定感和永恒感的冲突性渴望一他们需要这种确定感和永恒感，以构建婚姻对自己的意义。

一旦完全的安全感、可预测感和合一感在内心中永恒地确立起来，对方很快就会变成愚钝无趣。

如果我们把日常现实看作客观的基准和朴实无华的真理，那么理想化的想象就是一台幻象机器。但如果我们把日常现实看作对世界、他人和百身的心理建构——这对达成诸多目的而言是必不可少的，但只是诸多可能的心理建构中的一种——那么理想化的想象可能会在有些时候引出或回应到世界、他人或自身的某些面向，这些面向也是非常真实的，但通常会被其他忧虑所遮蔽。

一旦想从对方那儿得到些什么，就会产生依赖，会受制于对方对自己的感受，进而就自然而然地想要控制自己的命运。我想要的是你爱我，是在我需要时你恰好也发现我吸引着你、让你兴奋。但我再怎么渴求都没有用，因为如果我强迫、欺骗或操纵你使你爱我，那么这个爱也就没有任何意义了。

真正的自怜感之所以难以忍受，是因为它意味着我们需要接受自己对这个世界只有有限的控制力，那么真正的愧疚感之所以也难以忍受，是因为它意味着我们需要接受对自身也只有有限的控制力。我们伤害了所爱之人，而伤害是不可逆转的，就像时间一样。

在真正的愧疚感和悲悯感中，我们不会有意识地尝试任何事。我们会觉察自己而产生悲悯，或会考虑自己的行为带给别人的后果而产生愧疚。除了这些感受，我们什么也做不了。我们承受着这些感受并继续前行，增长见识，丰富自己，随后邂逅下一段经历。多重自我的本性允许我们拥有不同的自我状态和观点一—有时同时拥有，有时相继拥有。也许我们会感到悲伤和哀痛，因为曾经经历过他人的背叛、失去了爱情、被抛弃和感到失望，但仍会对圆满的爱情和逐渐浮现的新机会保持开放；也许我因背叛他人感到深深的懊悔和愧疚，但是我仍然对第二次机会和新的可能性保持开放。

编辑推荐

大部分人都渴望着与某个重要他人拥有激情之爱——爱意初萌芽，继之以浓情，长长又久久。我们似乎可以轻易地提出这些问题:是什么让人觉得亲密关系是既饱含激情又富有意义的?这种富有意义的激情体验能经久不衰吗?当我们需要为生计而奔波

、处理家庭琐事、养儿育女、日渐衰老——激情体验又该如何从中幸存呢?本书写得诗意盎然，故事中的困难情境和人物的内心挣扎让人感同身受，它并没有简单地把信息像食物一样放到精美的盘子里送

书籍介绍

大部分人都渴望着与某个重要他人拥有激情之爱——爱意初萌芽，继之以浓情，长长又久久。我们似乎可以轻易地提出这些问题:是什么让人觉得亲密关系是既饱含激情又富有意义的?这种富有意义的激情体验能经久不衰吗?当我们需要为生计而奔波、处理家庭琐事、养儿育女、日渐衰老——激情体验又该如何从中幸存呢?本书写得诗意盎然，故事中的困难情境和人物的内心挣扎让人感同身受，它并没有简单地把信息像食物一样放到精美的盘子里送给读者，让读者被动地等待启蒙。本书最有力量的影响来自读者在阅读过程中深深的个人卷入，作者会潜移默化地邀请你和他一起思考，共 同解密充满激情的关系中人类体验的矛盾本性。爱，何以历久弥新，岁月长存？

• 作者：雨露秋禾 发布时间：2020-02-26 01:24:28

  【网易蜗牛读书】印象里读过一半

• 作者：弥生 发布时间：2022-02-15 23:27:58

  没想到写得这么深刻，最近最愉悦的阅读体验了。不能说基本读懂了，因为智慧的闪光很多很多，但受到了很多启发。

• 作者：placewznoname 发布时间：2022-03-23 01:33:37

  中文系读真的太亲切了，经常有会心之处。目前为止，看到了写浪漫主义的以赛亚伯林，西方文论第一课必讲的写《镜与灯》的哈罗德布鲁姆....还有好多熟悉的人名。还看到了a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose。好喜欢好喜欢。

  当然还有很多我不认识的人，作者的文化涉猎真的很广，能看出来绘画，电影，物理也都有倾注兴趣，所以他的文字才这么晓畅，有这么精准的比喻。（翻译也很好!）内容当然更好，只觉得不够读好吧。

• 作者：不明真相 发布时间：2022-02-18 15:44:58

  以精神分析的视角仔细剖析了爱的现象，对爱的复杂性、多样性有了更加深刻的认识，语言中充满睿智，既细腻又尖锐，让人深思。

• 作者：StepLadder 发布时间：2022-03-28 16:44:45

  当人们不了解自己的需求时候，就会感觉到痛苦，当人们知道其实很多选择都是内心潜意识到选择时，可能会更加开心的接受最后的结果。

  爱情中的不确定性、冲突性本身就很迷人。

• 作者：yorushika 发布时间：2022-03-28 19:07:50

  读完感觉貌似没有写完……？戛然而止的感觉。最有感触的是愧疚与自怜的一章，我们总是把自己放在完全的责任者或者被害者这两端，给中间地带留下很少的空间。说起来这一点和亲密关系貌似也没有太大的关系，不过愧疚引发的修复欲望肯定是亲密关系里很重要的。书里多次引用到伤心咖啡馆之歌，有时间想重新看一遍。还有关于攻击性部分的讨论，让我想到我真的很难去表达攻击性，近期好不容易有改善了。不知道有没有专门讨论攻击性的书

• 必安 子萧 碧烟.....美人枯骨，逢面奈何。细节推。

  作者：J.Cui.Silence 发布时间：2018-02-23 02:44:51

  严重剧透。

  云养猫螺姑娘先镇楼。我最近少女心太可怕。我是个话唠。

  

  一，雇碧烟破坏谢必安和黛袂的人？

  是子萧。

  关键因为：黛袂就是青寐。

  如果子萧不拆散他们，那么黛袂就会永远和必安做地府夫妻（他们已经数十年了）。子萧自己也永驻地府，且直接等不到青寐，忍不了。

  另有细节1，如：碧烟不是画皮鬼（这里其实有点分岔、作者有说过画皮鬼是下了无间刑满而成的鬼、但是我记得又似乎有暗示碧烟不是画皮，好吧就算碧烟是画皮，但关键那种以假乱真的皮能骗谢必安到床上、也只有花子萧满怀爱意且本就深厚画技才能做到）——却有以假骗真的皮，子萧是画皮鬼，画技精湛，且结尾时其实看见了子萧把青寐每一世都画了。

  细节2，雇佣碧烟的人很有钱，且知道碧烟需要钱买通阴差。而子萧很有钱，子萧消息很灵通。

  细节3，黛袂后面几世，都不入鬼门关，直接投胎，根本不给必安等到黛袂机会。

  其实黛袂当时就喝了孟婆汤，后面在转世的几百年间不可能还记得谢必安负她的事。所以不是黛袂自己避开谢必安，而是被安排的。

  花子萧和阎罗及鬼帝关系很好，自然这件事是他安排的。因为子萧知道谢必安在等，但是他绝对不会允许谢必安和黛袂再永世续情的。直到谢必安心里有了碧烟，直到东方媚那一世各种稀里糊涂的重逢........

  （青寐每一次转世都可看出，如果不好练习，是做的饭要毒死人的。所以有次“东方千骑”的玩笑，那个县官说白无常的恩爱夫妻，倒是更多可能说的是碧烟？“人前和睦”）

  二，谢必安是不是因为子萧死的？

  其实，是的。

  首先，谢必安的悲剧开始于黛袂。

  其次，虽然碧烟死了。但是必安之前误会碧烟是因为私怨害他和黛袂分开。谢必安这个人重情重义、又具有正直，所以他后面心里有碧烟，但一直以这个借口对自己自欺欺人，不肯承认。因为在他世界里，碧烟这种“品行糟糕”的女人，他怎么可能爱上，但他的确爱上了。

  碧烟虽然全书短短一千字，却十分出彩，如同那一抹胭脂浓艳，二话不说的、偏执干脆潇洒........的跳了奈何。

  （碧烟初登场冷心冷眼的顽强如野草的生命力，但其实骨子里和谢必安太像，重情义、死心眼。之前那么顽强求生的女人、无论是为人时风尘如草的生、还是死后能让万鬼变色的无间地狱都摧毁不了她，而一个谢必安，她却.........从此灰飞烟灭。）

  这成了谢必安的心病。

  再次，谢必安活了那么久，偏偏这个时候才死。的确是因为东方媚对花子萧说了一句：其他人该投胎的投胎，该走的会走，只有谢必安是会一直在地府的。这如最初，子萧那漫长期盼中好不容易算计而得的十年相守、是不会容忍的。所以子萧很可能对谢必安，说出了当年的真相，或者说了什么其他。谢必安死前那次出门，子萧也跟出门，短时间回来，当晚谢必开始薏症....

  （话说 谢必安知道不知道东方媚是黛袂，这个，我还真不太能把握。这件事很暧昧啊。子萧是不可能告诉谢必安东方媚是黛袂转世，因为他无法肯定谢必安对青黛是否还是执着的，所以他肯定不会冒这个险的，所以我推断、是告诉谢必安、当年关于碧烟的事。）

  三，关于谢必安，楚庄王与绕琴，白玫瑰与红玫瑰？？

  白无常谢必安挺惨挺无辜。从头到尾。

  他那么重情重义的一个人..........哎。比如范无常死了，他就也死了，跟着义兄来了阴间，就为了结拜时“但求同年死”这种情谊。黛袂又跟着他也死了。他这么重情重义的人，如果没有花子萧安排碧烟那一杠子，绝壁和黛袂伉俪情深且无二心，永生永世的。

  碧烟，全书仅仅那么小的几段落，却十分出彩：碧烟表面因世事凄惨、冷心冷情，其实骨子里也是一位刚烈果绝的奇女子，所以才不知觉看重难得重情重义的谢必安，对他有愧，替他叹息，照顾他，爱上他......

  黛袂青梅竹马如那出尘的月色嫡仙，碧烟红尘尽染如心口艳唇的朱砂胭脂。谢必安死时那缕“碧烟”布，到底是为了那爱穿碧烟绕绕的白衣夫人，还是为了那赤红妖娆的碧烟这个人...

  .. 他觉得他是了“楚庄王”，为心中正直不可能选“绕琴”.......世人都选做“楚庄王”、碧烟做了那把琴...琴毁音消....... ......（碧烟的死也是个谜？）

  谢必安，恰恰是因为重情重义，画地为牢，过不去自己的坎，最终跳了奈何，魂飞魄散。

  ..............拿命还了去。

  四，谢必安复活

  “丰都大帝近日决定破例复活白无常，起因是鬼界底子最硬的一只画皮鬼”

  白无常谢必安，他死了那么久，为什么花子萧那时才要他复活..................

  因为，花子萧要死了。

  ...............小心眼的花子萧、挡谢必安和黛袂“重逢”，挡了几百年，哪怕谢必安后来爱的是碧烟，他都不愿看谢必安和青寐有任何机会再见面。

  但花子萧马上要死了，青寐在花子萧死后，会记起所有的轮回记忆.........而谢必安这人，虽然毒舌、但人品好，重情重义，也曾经和黛袂及东方媚有情谊，........大概就是不想青寐真的孤单。曾经设计拿走的，也希望还过去，毕竟他要死了。

  至少往后孤苦无尽中，没了他，还有人/友相陪...不像他..从始自终，他只有她......却，也没有她。

  五，冷蓉是谁杀的？谁泼东方媚污水？

  花子萧。

  花子萧几次都是如此，只要青寐（转世）爱上了谁，在地府的时，他就是要想办法拆开或赶走的。

  谢必安是这样，杨云也是如此，就算杨云是云霄的一部分，算另一个自己，但是对于子萧来说，都不可以。

  细节1，东方媚被杨云伤了心，把子萧当成杨云诉说，且吻了。子萧怎么可以忍受听见她那样卑微而委屈的爱着另一个人，且那人还短时间里不会走。这样的话，东方媚就一直只看着杨云，不会看花子萧。子萧绝壁忍不了，要快点让冷蓉下来、打发杨云和冷蓉配对赶紧走。

  所以子萧吻完东方媚不久，冷蓉就死了。

  细节2，冷蓉说了，一身红衣的东方媚杀的她。子萧才是一直红衣的，画皮鬼画技高超，且一直有东方媚画像（全书结尾提过 子萧都画了青寐每一世的转世）

  因为打发他们走还不够，要设计东方媚对杨云彻底死心，所以花子萧不惜嫁祸东方媚，使杨云彻底对东方媚翻脸。

  六，狐狸？

  其他因为青寐被花子萧害的小喽啰，就不提了。

  虽然子萧变态，但是、狐狸事件他是否有插一脚推波助澜什么的，还是再议……

  七，关于策儿生死蒲。

  子萧有次整整一天没回来，女主泪牛满面的可怜：其实子萧去改策儿生死蒲了。

  改生死蒲之前：女主被少卿当子萧面亲了一口，在必安房里过了一夜，狐狸吐槽她把三个人都睡了，谢必安亲密自然的握女主手。于是，子萧出门......改生死蒲了。——让女主还是快点投胎吧。

  而且子萧其实从始自终都希望女主投胎去。所以之前依然大部分时间礼貌疏离。可能想着：长痛不如短痛。

  但心里的感情让他还是一点小算计：他改生死蒲，恰恰刚好把策儿勾魂的日子定在了东方媚每次定期去探望策儿的日子。因此引发让女主定心在地府十年。

  所以子萧彻底放开自己和东方媚你浓我浓的时候，是策儿事件之后。（外加算计赶走那几个夫君）那时候他还说了句：我不管了。放任自己吃了十年罂粟.......

  八，十年后，花子萧是否是故意放开东方媚？

  1，芳心仅一寸，十年醉梦言。十年最初他没想到东方媚会和他说：她愿意为他下无间。要不然花子萧不会对小王爷睁一只眼闭一只眼。

  但策儿的事，被提前意外揭发。东方媚问他的那些算计的事，他没办法给答案。因为的确他做的。

  所以是：快去轮回——有了十年——十年后要走的——不走了！——走。

  2，子萧的选择，就和最初杨云对冷蓉的安排几乎如出一辙：宁愿安排冷蓉和皇帝快活，丰衣足食，偷偷看着，也不要冷蓉下十八地狱受罪。

  这一点..........他们两个果然是同一个人。

  少卿就不一样，看着东方要嫁人就赶紧把东方弄死了.....哈哈哈

• 《洛杉矶书评》对玛丽亚·斯捷潘诺娃的专访原稿-Mad Russia Hurt Me into Poetry: An Interview with Maria Stepanova

  作者：熬夜看稿五百斤 发布时间：2020-07-31 11:52:33

  《洛杉矶书评》对玛丽亚·斯捷潘诺娃的专访原稿

  “Maria Stepanova was already an important and innovative poet by the time of Vladimir Putin’s accession, but the times called for a tougher, more public role. Unfortunately, her recognition in the West has lagged behind the high profile she has in Russia.”

  “玛丽亚·斯捷潘诺娃早在普京时代前就已经是一位相当重要，充满创造力的诗人，然而时代却呼唤更强硬更公众化的角色。非常不幸，西方对其的认可远远落后于其负盛名的俄罗斯。”

  Mad Russia Hurt Me into Poetry: An Interview with Maria Stepanova

  MARIA STEPANOVA IS AMONG the most visible figures in post-Soviet culture — not only as a major poet, but also as a journalist, a publisher, and a powerful voice for press freedom. She is the founder of Colta, the only independent crowd-funded source of information in Russia. The high-traffic online publication has been called a Russian Huffington Post in format and style, and has also been compared to The New York Review of Books for the scope and depth of its long essays. The Muscovite is the author of a dozen poetry collections and two volumes of essays, and is a recipient of several Russian and international literary awards, including the prestigious Andrei Bely Prize and Joseph Brodsky Fellowship. She was recently a fellow with Vienna’s highly regarded Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Her current project is In Memory of Memory, a book-length study in the field of cultural history.

  Stepanova has helped revive the ballad form in Russian poetry, and has also given new life to the skaz technique of telling a story through the scrambled speech of an unreliable narrator, using manic wordplay and what one critic called “a carnival of images.” Stepanova relishes this kind of speech “not just for how it represents a social language but for its sonic texture,” wrote scholar and translator Catherine Ciepiela in an introduction to her poems. “She is a masterful formal poet, who subverts meter and rhyme by working them to absurdity. For her the logic of form trumps all other logics, so much so that she will re-accent or truncate words to fit rigorously observed schemes.” According to another of her translators, Sasha Dugdale, myth and memory play an important part in poems: “She shares with her beloved W. G. Sebald a sense of the haunting of history, the marks it leaves on the fabric of landscape.”

  Maria Stepanova was already an important and innovative poet by the time of Vladimir Putin’s accession, but the times called for a tougher, more public role. Unfortunately, her recognition in the West has lagged behind the high profile she has in Russia. In this interview, she talks about both roles, and the way politics and poetry come together in her work.

  ¤

  CYNTHIA HAVEN: You’re a poet, but also a journalist and the publisher of a major crowd-funded news outlet in Russia, Colta. Yet Joseph Brodsky said, “The only things which poetry and politics have in common are the letters P and O.” Presumably, you disagree.

  MARIA STEPANOVA: There is a third word with the same letters: postmemory. Contemporary Russia is a realm of postmemory. I think it is a territory where poetry and politics still can meet each other on equal terms.

  Equal? Politics is a much more crude beast, surely. Look at our current elections. Look at elections everywhere.

  Well, we know crude and not-so-crude animals coexist in nature — and sometimes even manage to get along.

  So talk about this unusual coexistence, Russian-style.

  Russian reality is wildly political, but what is meant by “politics” is also wildly different — and not only because the Russian political world is one of repression. Remember that the ways and means of talking politics or even doing politics have long been different in Russia — not for a decade or two, but for centuries. Political thinking was impossible in the open, so it had to disguise itself. In order to form your views, or even to take direct instructions on what to do, you had to read some novel, or even a poem.

  People built their political views on Nikolay Chernyshevsky [author of the programmatic utopian novel What Is To Be Done?] or Dostoyevsky, and thus expected a certain level of political engagement from authors, even from poets. This has a flip side: a reader may treat reality more lightly, as if it were a work of fiction. That’s why it was so easy to revise and rewrite official history — in Stalin’s time or right now, under Putin. You are always looking for an example — for something to imitate — but there is nothing final about it.

  This search for an example, for a predecessor, is pervasive. When Russian politicians try to achieve something, they look for validation from the past — to Ivan the Terrible, to Lenin, to Brezhnev, or whatever. The same with Russian poets, who still rely heavily on different traditions. You can choose the one you like. You can look back to Pushkin or Brodsky, but also to, well, T. S. Eliot or Lyn Hejinian. It doesn’t really matter. The important thing is, we behave as if we are ascending the staircase but looking back. One always needs to feel the bannister under one’s hand. That is, we need something solid and from the past, which makes the present feel more real for us.

  Do you find that poetry, for you, is a space of freedom, even though it’s affected by your political predicament?

  I feel that the poetry is a powerful tool of inner resistance, because what’s important, what really counts, is how much you let the outer forces deform you. Poetry keeps you in shape. More important than outward protests is inner freedom, the ability to stay yourself. That is usually the first thing you lose. You can imitate the motions and doings of free people but be utterly unfree inside. You become an expert in deforming your inner reality, to bring it into accord with what the state wants from you — and this could be done in a number of subtle, unnoticed ways. This kind of damage weighs on us the most.

  I like what you said at Stanford, that poetry is, by definition, a form of resistance, because the first thing it resists is death.

  Absolutely. After all, it is one of the few known forms of secular immortality — and one of the best: your name may well be forgotten, but a line or two still have a life of their own, as it happened to lines of classic poetry. They come to life anew every time people fill them with their own voice or meaning.

  In fact, any activity that involves creating something from nothing — or almost nothing — is a way of taming death, of replacing it with new forms of life. When you are making a pie out of disparate substances — grains of sugar, spoons of loose flour that are suddenly transformed into something alive and breathing — it’s a living miracle. But this is even more evident when it comes to poetry, where the operative space is pure nothing, a limited number of vowels and consonants, which doesn’t need anything to stay alive besides the human mind; poetry doesn’t even need ink and paper, because it can be memorized. We are more lucky than musicians or artists, who need working tools, and budgets, and audience halls — poetry is a lighter substance. You know it was essential in the concentration camps and gulags — if you knew a good amount of verse by heart, they couldn’t take it away from you. Maybe I’m overly optimistic, but I think that poetry is better equipped to withstand political oppression. If you want to make movies or build opera houses, you have to bargain with the state, to make deals, and inevitably to lose.

  And yet you are a publisher and journalist, too. How do you balance the two worlds you inhabit?

  Strange as it may seem, it was never a serious matter for me. I never felt that these two levels were connected, or even coexisted. Maybe this also has something to do with what I was referring to — the schizoid way of addressing the present. It’s quite common in Russia: you can be thinking “this” and “that” at the same time, as if two notions were commenting on each other. This is very typical of the Soviet or post-Soviet space, with its sharp cleavage between the official way of behavior and the way you behave at home, between the official history and the hidden familial history, or what we call the “minor history (malaya istoriia).”

  And come to think of it, maybe I also divide my official face from my inner life. When I was a teenager, a student, I saw how the people who belonged to the previous generation were traumatized by the crash of the Soviet system of literary education and literary work. The Soviet Writers’ Union had been able to give writers enough to live on after publishing a book or a collection of poems in some literary magazine — for the official writers, of course, not to the authors of samizdat. You could live for three years after publishing a book, but it had to be a bad book, because it was the result of an inner compromise. Nevertheless, lots of people had the feeling that they could stay themselves and still, somehow, occupy some cozy step on the enormous staircase of the official Soviet literary establishment. When the system crashed, people were disappointed and disorientated. By 1992 or 1993, it became evident that the utopia wasn’t working anymore, especially for poets. It became evident that a book of poetry would never have a press run of more than 2,000 copies. It would never bring you money or even fame. I saw people crushed, melted, changed because of that. They had relied on a system that had suddenly vanished into thin air. They were still willing to make compromises, but there was no longer anyone to make a compromise with.

  And where did you fit into that architecture? You weren’t tempted to put a foot on that staircase?

  I was quite young and opinionated, so my attitude was rather harsh. I didn’t want to have anything in common with them. I refused to rely on poetry to make a living, to attain a position in the world. I would find some other professional occupation and would be as free as I could be in terms of poetry. It was the easiest way for me to stay independent. I split my world into halves.

  And that’s how it worked. I started in the mid-1990s as a copywriter in a French advertising agency, and then I switched to TV. Journalism happened rather late in my life. I cannot say it doesn’t affect my poetry, because it does. Of course it does. The things I deal with as a journalist get mixed up with the problems that make me tick as a poet. That space I was hoping to make — you know, the enclosed garden — is not secluded enough. It’s not enclosed now — the doors are wide open, and the beasts of the current moment are free to enter. Because I’m changing, too. You have to open the doorways to let the world in — to make the words come in, in fact. Because if poetry is a means of changing language, and changing the language is a means of changing the world around you, you must make sure that you’re ready to receive new words — words you find foreign or even ugly.

  That awareness is evident in your poetry, which features different voices, different registers, and discordant uses of language. Is that how today’s Russia affects your poetry?

  I think so, yes — “mad Russia hurt me into poetry.” You could say that the poet — that is, the author as a working entity — always has a kind of narrative mask or an optical system to serve a special purpose in the moment. The need to invent and reinvent the self never stops: you cannot do it just once, and every single thing that happens demands a complete change. The “you” who deals with new phenomena — birth, death, shopping, an idle conversation at the bus stop — is a new entity that hardly recognizes the previous ones. You know that all the cells of the human body are constantly replacing each other, and in seven years not a single cell of your old body is left. All that holds our personalities together is mere willpower — and our selves are as replaceable as brain cells. The human mind is a flowing thing, it is a process, and it happens somehow that the only solid and constant thing we can cling to is the inner zoo of the soul. I mean the persons and stories from the past that have no relationship to our own stories. Antigone or Plato or Brutus, invented or real, are actors in the theater of the mind. They do not change; they are strong enough for us to test them with our projections and interpretations. You could call the destructive element in yourself Medea or Clytemnestra — but it is you who is switching from one identity to another. In a mental theater, a single person plays all the parts.

  And that’s how you see the poetic process?

  I guess it is a fair description. A play is being performed, or maybe improvised, and there is an actor for every part, and a certain idiosyncratic language for each of them. But it is all centered on some very urgent question that is formulated from the outside, something you’ve been dealing with all your life: you’re born with this question and the need to answer it again and again. W. H. Auden spoke of neurosis as a life-shaping experience that is to be blessed — we’d never become what we are without it. I’m totally sure that certain patterns are shared, extrapolated to the scale of the whole society, so that everyone you know is shaped, at least partly, by the same problem. I guess this could describe what’s going on in a number of post-Soviet states; one can only wonder if a country can undergo some kind of therapy, if it can do collective work on collective trauma. Especially in times that are rather allergic to any collective project.

  I definitely share my compatriots’, my generation’s full range of traumas and voids. A few years ago, in 2014, in the midst of the Ukrainian wars, I suddenly wrote a longish poem about Russia. It was titled “Spolia” — you know, the architectural term, the densely metaphoric way of building new things, using some bits and parts of previous constructions in the process. You see it everywhere in Rome or Istanbul — pieces of marble, columns, stelae are used as mere bricks in a new wall. Sometimes an old building is demolished in order to provide elements for the new one. This involuntary coexistence of old and new is a good description of what happens to language in “interesting times.”

  And my poem was the result of utter shock: language was changing all around me. Not only was it heavily peppered with hate speech, but it also became utterly hybrid. People were quoting Stalin’s speeches, or brilliantly and unconsciously imitated the style of Pravda’s columns from the 1930s or ’50s, never realizing that they hadn’t invented these words. You have a good example of this now in the United States. When Donald Trump speaks about enemies of the state, he doesn’t know whom he is quoting — or even if he is quoting. I was living in a red-hot climate, and I still needed to find some reasons to continue. I mean, you have to love the place you live in. If it becomes utterly unlovable, you need to leave — or to find some other grounds for love.

  In the poem I quoted some of the criticism I was getting from critics regarding my “impersonality.” After my latest book, a number of them claimed that my work was a trick of sorts, empty and unrelatable, because I didn’t have a distinct and constant lyrical voice. I use other people’s voices, so I’m sometimes seen as an imitator, like Woody Allen’s Zelig, never having a full-grown ego, never able to speak in the first person — of myself, of my own needs and fears.

  It rather reflects your views about your country, doesn’t it?

  Well, that is exactly what I can say about Russia. It doesn’t really know what it is; self-definition is not our strong suit. It’s a huge, beautiful, and misused piece of land, inhabited by more ghosts than mortals, full of histories no one cares to remember, so they just keep repeating themselves — full of larger-than-life possibilities and a complete inability to avoid disaster. That was an image of the country I could identify with; in fact, for a while I ceased seeing any difference between myself and Russia, bizarre as it sounds. The Russian Symbolist poet Alexander Blok had called Russia his wife. I had a feeling that Russia was me — that our stigmas were the same.

  I was, in fact, identifying with the country. Not with the awful thing that was happening — the invasion of Donbass, the annexation of Crimea; there is no explanation or excuse for acts of evil, pure and simple, and these are among them. But to oppose the evil you have to learn the language of love. And to love Russia at that moment was a hard job. One had to become Russia, with its wastelands, faded glory, and the horrifying innocence of its everyday life — to speak with its voices and see with its multiple eyes. That’s what I was trying to do: to change my optical system, to dress my hate in a robe of light. You have to be a trickster to do that effectively. Well, my way of writing poetry is distinctive, in that it has to irritate — not only to affect or penetrate, but also to irritate.

  I’m still not sure that I’m answering the question, but maybe it’s the question itself that is important. That multilayered, multifaceted thing I’m trying to create aligns with what is going on in the Russian mind, in the Russian world. There is something very distinctive in the presence of the country, in the way it tends to describe itself, or to be described.

  Of course, we’ve just given a Nobel Prize to a woman who tried to do much of what you’re speaking about in prose, in journalism.

  You’re right, but Svetlana Alexievich writes nonfiction, or documentary fiction, and that’s another story. She is giving voice to real people; there are some true stories behind the books, a number of interviews, the feeling that you are dealing with documented reality. I am speaking with imaginary voices; they are real, but they don’t belong to me. (One Russian poet from the 18th century, Vasily Trediakovsky, used to say that poetic truth doesn’t inhere in what really happened, but in what could and must have happened.) I’m appropriating, or annexing, other people’s lives and voices, as if I were editing an anthology of unused opportunities. Sometimes it means I have to embrace the language of state officials, or criminals, or propaganda. The goal of the poetic, as well as of the political, is to make things visible, to force them into the light, even if they would prefer to stay in the darkness.

  By the way, Marina Tsvetaeva also used those jumbled voices, those different registers. You feel a certain affinity with her, yes?

  My parents conscientiously taught me reading at a very young age — around two-and-a-half, I guess. When I was six, I was reading everything I could lay my hands on, from Pushkin to The Three Musketeers, and lots of suspense novels, too. Then, on New Year’s Eve, someone gave my mother a two-volume edition of Marina Tsvetaeva. That was a rarity in Soviet times. It was an unbelievable gift, a kind of miracle — you couldn’t just go into the bookshop and buy Tsvetaeva or Mandelstam, you had to be a Party member to get it, or spend a fortune on the black market. I knew nothing about Tsvetaeva at the time. I was only seven. My mom read me lots of poetry, but this was something different. I opened the second volume, which had her prose. It was unlike anything I had read before.

  I still have a special affinity with Tsvetaeva. Not in terms of working with the language, because my ways of treating it are different, but in terms of how I see reality. Tsvetaeva lived under ethical standards, a moral pressure that was a constant presence in her life — some moral entity or deity that shaped her life, literally telling her what to do. Sometimes she surrendered to it, sometimes she resisted wildly.

  Nevertheless, she placed all her literary work in some kind of moral coordinate system. I find her example compelling. Because the question that’s essential for me is not the question of “how” or “what,” but rather of “who.” In the case of Tsvetaeva, we get that “who” in its fullest range, larger than life. You still can feel her presence — and that’s what counts.

  https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mad-russia-hurt-me-into-poetry-an-interview-with-maria-stepanova/