A perspectiva canhota de um emigrado russo: expressão homoerótica na poesia de Valério Pereliéchin (1953-1992)

• Main Author: Carlos Cortez Minchillo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA) 2019-06-01
• Series: Journal of Lusophone Studies
• Subjects: Brazilian poetry; Russian poetry; migration; dictatorship; homoerotic
• Online Access: https://jls.apsa.us/index.php/jls/article/view/301

This article examines the poetry of Valério Pereliéchin ("Valerii Pereleshin" in his native Russian), a gay writer and translator who produced a significant collection of homoerotic poems in Portuguese over the second half of the twentieth century. Pereliéchin was born in Russia in 1913 and soon migrated to China, where he lived among other Russian émigrés in the town of Harbin. In 1953, after a failed attempt to go to the United States, he and his mother arrived in Brazil, where he lived–unnoticed by local writers and artists–for almost forty years. A central issue in Pereliéchin's personal life, homosexuality gradually became the core theme of his work. Through the idea of "existential left-handedness," Pereliéchin challenged heteronormativity, especially by refuting what Lee Edelman has called "reproductive futurity." I argue that Pereliéchin's alternative way of tackling the past and future stems from the intersectionality of his experiences as a gay man and an émigré.