The Confessions of Victor X order this book
Edited by Donald Rayfield
Price £30.00 hardback, £20.00 paperback.
 Written just before the First World War for Havelock Ellis's classic series Studies in the Psychology of Sex this book is based on the anonymous sexual memoirs of a highly literate and cultured member of the Russian upper-middle classes. Not only does the book provide an un rivalled insight into the sexual life of pre-revolutionary Russia, but also sheds invaluable light on to Nabokov's great ironic novel, Lolita, which was strongly influenced by Victor X's memoirs.
Victor X gives a totally frank account of his sexual experiences from child hood onwards, and in doing so not only provides a highly erotic description of his various sexual encounters and responses, but also a fascinating and illuminating insight into aspects of Russian cultural life - both personal and social - not hitherto known outside of Russia.
The book has a lengthy postface introduction by Dr Donald Rayfield, who discusses both the literary and cultural aspects of this highly readable sexual autobiography.
From Chapter 5, "Last Liasons":
"At the time there was a book translated from the English, which was very much in vogue with young Russian school students. I might note in passing that it is still in vogue today, Russian intellectuals are very faithful to their bookish predilections (they still read Buckle's work as if it had been written yesterday) and are capable of enthusing over the most Lashing opinions simultaneously: Marx and Nietzsche, Bebel and Weininger, Tolstoy and Bernard Shaw not because they re very broad-minded, but because their ideas are short on clarity, because the Russian mind has a chaotic make-up and iso because they idolise all intellectual celebrities and authorities. Just as religious people can always find a way of reconciling the most contradictory scriptures, so Russians end p by attributing the same opinions (their own) to celebrated men whose opinions could not be more divergent. For instance they interpret Nietzsche in a revolutionary communist and social democratic sense! But we must move n. The book in question was called, I think, Elements of Social Science: Misery, Prostitution, Celibacy. The anonymous author claimed to be a doctor of medicine. In Russia he was believed to be a son of the famous Robert Owen. his book argued ideas about sex and recommended that young people of both sexes should begin sexual intercourse early and practise contraception ('neo-malthusianism') to void pregnancy. There were formulas for contraceptives: using a sponge etc. This book was forbidden in Russia but a Russian text had been published abroad and it circulated underground everywhere; most schoolboys and schoolgirls ad read it, sometimes when they were only thirteen or )fourteen, and often took its advice. I had read this book long before I saw it on Nadya's table (we will call the nihilist's fiancée Nadya)."
ISBN 090457394X. Hardback, 143 pages.
ISBN 0904573982. Paperback, 143 pages.
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